With a theoretical frenzy alien to the practical Dutch, quoting Marcuse, Rosa Luxemburg, and Plekhanov, he revealed that radical change, subjectively not desired by the masses, was becoming objectively increasingly necessary. The late-capitalist working class, still exploited to the point where it had lost its identity, resigned itself unconsciously to its relative prosperity and to formally democratic structures, which served only to conceal the violent nature of imperialism. How, then, was the extraparliamentary opposition of students and intellectuals in the metropolitan centers — who after all did not participate in the production process — to break out of its isolation and create its necessary mass base? He asked this with an elegant gesture of his slender, sensitive hand; the translator imitated even that with her ring-covered fingers. This was to be found exclusively in the Third World. Only there was there a new proletariat, not perverted by false consciousness — and only out of solidarity with the liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin-America, with the present genocide in Vietnam acting as a catalyst, could a praxis be created as a radical negation of world capitalism that at the same time could be the first impulse toward a new anthropology, which would allow us to avoid the perversion of the revolution by the Soviet Union and its satellites, since it was there that the dictatorship of the proletariat had degenerated first into the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party, then into that of the bureaucratic state apparatus, and finally into that of one man, Stalin, with the accompanying repression, brutality, torture, and cruelty; all this by way of a demonstration of the distinction — already made by Marx in his Okonomisch-philosophiiche Manuskripte—between despotic and democratic Communism.
It had all been too fast for the translator, who was only able to stammer something about "perversion" and "Stalin," but Dutschke had been understood anyway. He received warm applause, which he did not acknowledge with so much as a nod of his head, descended from the platform to join his comrades in the front row — and suddenly there was an incident. It happened so fast that neither Max nor Onno were able to follow it. All at once the German ideologue was lost from sight, having been thrown to the ground by a screaming and kicking man. Other people came rushing up, and the whole auditorium rose to its feet. In the turmoil someone shouted that he knew the guy, an infamous fascist from West Amsterdam, whom he had seen the previous day at the Belgian frontier, but who, according to someone else, was a card-carrying Communist from east Groningen.
"If you can have two enemies like that," said Onno laconically, "you must be profoundly right."
Max's thoughts were with Ada, who was about to perform. He considered going backstage and suggesting that the duo change places with the orchestra which was to round off the evening, but stagehands were already pushing a grand piano onto the stage and setting down a chair and a music stand. While the attacker, still cursing at the top of his voice, was being conveyed to a side door with his arm twisted painfully behind his back, Bruno and Ada appeared. She held her cello. The sight of them had an immediate calming effect and everyone sat down, at least insofar as they were not forced to stand; the guest speaker seemed happy not to have incurred many injuries, because he remained in the auditorium.
Ada, now in jeans and a white shirt from Max's wardrobe, took the cello between her legs and arranged her score — she placed the bow on the strings, looked at Bruno, raised her head for the opening..
Janáček. At the very first notes it seemed to Max as though a rent had been made in all the political and transitory goings-on here, a rent through which something eternal was glimpsed, as though he were turning around in Plato's cave. Onno was right in his view of music — it was not of this world — and Max thought of what the German activist was now thinking, having just been kicked and beaten. Perhaps of Lenin's words: "I too should like to be moved by the Appassionata, but this is no time to be moved by the Appassionata, it is a time for chopping off heads." The music — perhaps not Eisler's, but that of Schubert or Janáček — was obviously the voice of the blackest reaction, archenemy of progressive humankind, public enemy number one. The audience, which a moment ago had been in violent tumult, listened like a well-trained concert audience. Many were undoubtedly hearing something of this kind for the first time in their lives: while at home on the radio such dreary music was always turned off and replaced by something catchy, they were now receiving an artistic knighthood.
Max looked proudly at Ada as she bowed and returned for another curtain call with Bruno.
"Take very good care of that girl," said Onno. "You don't deserve her at all."
There was some truth in that, thought Max. The whole evening his eyes had been wandering toward the back of a head in the third row, with unruly curly red hair; the woman to whom it belonged seemed to feel this, because now and then she looked to one side, not directly at him, but nevertheless in such a way that he must be at the edge of her field of vision, because he saw that she was not looking at what she was seeing but that she saw what she was not looking at, namely him. There was nothing for it. It was bound to happen, whether he wanted it to or not.
The grand piano and the music stand had disappeared, and the forum discussion was taking place at a long table. The forum consisted of the left-wing elite of the Cuba Committee — the writer, the chess player, and the composer — joined by a distinguished-looking old lady, who had been a nurse with the Reds in the Spanish Civil War and had still not regained her Dutch nationality. The chairman was a generally respected journalist and publicist, himself no longer very young, a former anarchist and now an anarchist once again. Each member made a short statement, after which a discussion arose on the points that the rabid German had in fact already discussed exhaustively.
The old lady drew attention to the fact that the obvious primary interest of the pharmaceutical industry in a capitalist economy was that patients should not get better, and it was clear what consequences that had for the quality of medicines and hence of public health, whereupon the serial composer raised his hands above his head and praised Chinese medicine, which under the inspirational leadership of Chairman Mao could dispense with anesthetics even in serious operations.
At that moment Onno could suddenly no longer contain himself and shouted: "You hysterical fool! In ten years' time you'll be as right-wing as an American general!"
"I must disagree," said the composer, laughing.
Whereupon Onno stood up and declared with great dignity: "I don't want to be disagreed with, I want to be knocked down."
Things began to go with a swing. The writer, too, had to put up with an interruption. When he expressed his concern, without too much conviction, that the workers were leaving the intellectuals in the lurch, someone shouted:
"Why don't you piss off, mate! Go and cut sugarcane in Cuba."
"I have cut sugarcane in Cuba."
"Yeah, for a fraction of a second — for the cameras."
The writer leaned back with a superior smile and said no more.
"What a creep," said Max.
Onno nodded. "You're a bit like him."
At that moment someone in the auditorium stood up and said in a thunderous voice: "I'm a worker!"
All heads turned in his direction. It was true. There he stood. No doubt about it: a worker. Heavy industry, probably. Blast furnaces. A beret with a stalk on his head, his heavily lined face ravaged by exploitation, his hands held slightly open at hip height, ready to cope with any chore. There was applause here and there; the old lady bent over her microphone and invited him to have a seat at the table. The chairman tried to prevent this, but the worker was already on his way, chin aloft, exuding deep contempt for everyone who was not a worker.