Students of the Technological Institute followed, rows of young, earnest faces, of grave, clear eyes, of straight, taut bodies, of boys in black caps and girls in red kerchiefs, red as the banner that said:
THE STUDENTS OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE ARE PROUD OF THEIR SACRIFICE TO THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION
Members of his Party Collective, rows of black leather jackets, marched gravely, austere as monks, stately as warriors, their banner spread high and straight, without a wrinkle, a narrow red band with black letters, as sharp and plain as the men who carried it:
THE ALL-UNION COMMUNIST PARTY OFFERS ALL AND EVERY ONE OF ITS LIVES TO THE SERVICE OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION
Every factory of Petrograd, every club, every office, every Union, every small, forgotten Cell rolled in a single stream, gray, black and red, through a single artery of the great city, three miles of caps and red kerchiefs and feet crunching snow and banners like red gashes in the mist. And the gray walls of Nevsky were like the sides of a huge canal where human waves played a funeral dirge on a snow hard as granite.
It was cold; a piercing, motionless cold hung over the city, heavy as a mist that cut into the walls, into the cracks of sealed windows, into the bones and skins under the heavy clothes. The sky was torn into gray layers of rags, and clouds were smeared on, like patches of ink badly blotted, with a paler ink under them, and a faded ink beneath, and then a water turbid with soap suds, under which no blue could ever have existed. Smoke rose from old chimneys, gray as the clouds, as if that smoke had spread over the city, or the clouds had belched gray coils into the chimneys and the houses were spitting them back, and the smoke made the houses seem unheated. Snowflakes fluttered down lazily, once in a while, to melt on indifferent, moving foreheads.
An open coffin was carried at the head of the procession.
The coffin was red. A banner of scarlet, regal velvet was draped over a still body; a white face lay motionless on a red pillow, a clear, sharp profile swimming slowly past the gray walls, black strands of hair scattered on the red cloth, black strands of hair hiding a dark little hole on the right temple. The face was calm. Snowflakes did not melt on the still, white forehead.
Four honorary pall-bearers, his best Party comrades, carried the coffin on their shoulders. Four bowed heads were bared to the cold. The coffin seemed very red between the blond hair of Pavel Syerov and the black curls of Victor Dunaev.
A military band followed the coffin. The big brass tubes were trimmed with bows of black crêpe. The band played “You fell as a victim.”
Many years ago, in secret cellars hidden from the eyes of the Czar’s gendarmes, on the frozen roads of Siberian prison camps, a song had been born to the memory of those who had fallen in the fight for freedom. It was sung in muffled, breathless whispers to the clanking of chains, in honor of nameless heroes. It traveled down dark sidelanes; it had no author, and no copy of it had ever been printed. The Revolution brought it into every music store window and into the roar of every band that followed a Communist to his grave. The Revolution brought the “Internationale” to its living and “You fell as a victim” to its dead. It became the official funeral dirge of the new republic.
The toilers of Leningrad sang solemnly, marching behind the open red coffin:
“You fell as a victim
In our fateful fight,
A victim of endless devotion.
You gave all you had to the people you loved,
Your honor, your life and your freedom.”
The music began with the majesty of that hopelessness which is beyond the need of hope. It mounted to an ecstatic cry, which was not joy nor sorrow, but a military salute. It fell, breaking into a pitiless tenderness, the reverent tenderness that honors a warrior without tears. It was a resonant smile of sorrow.
And feet marched in the snow, and the brass tubes thundered, and brass cymbals pounded each step into the earth, and gray ranks unrolled upon gray ranks, and scarlet banners swayed to the grandeur of the song in a solemn farewell.
“The tyrant shall fall and the people shall rise,
Sublime, almighty, unchained!
So farewell, our brother,
You’ve gallantly made
Your noble and valiant journey!”
Far beyond the rows of soldiers and students and workers, in the ranks of nameless stragglers that carried no banners, a girl walked alone, her unblinking eyes fixed ahead, even though she was too far away to see the red coffin. Her hands hung limply by her sides; above the heavy woolen mittens, her wrists were bare to the cold, frozen to a dark, purplish red. Her face had no expression; her eyes had: they seemed astonished.
Those marching around her paid no attention to her. But at the start of the demonstration, someone had noticed her. Comrade Sonia, leading a detachment of women workers from the Zhenotdel, had hurried past to take her place at the head of the procession, where she had to carry a banner; Comrade Sonia had stopped short and chuckled aloud: “Really, Comrade Argounova, you — here? I should think you’d be the one person to stay away!”
Kira Argounova had not answered.
Some women in red kerchiefs had passed by. One had pointed at her and whispered something, eagerly, furtively, to her comrades; someone had giggled.
Kira walked slowly, looking ahead. Those around her sang “You fell as a victim.” She did not sing.
A red banner said:
PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
A freckled woman with strands of rusty hair under a man’s cap, whispered to her neighbor: “Mashka, did you get the buckwheat at the co-operative this week?”
“No. They giving any?”
“Yeah. Two pounds per card. Better get it before it’s all gone.”
A red banner said:
FORWARD INTO THE SOCIALISTIC FUTURE UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF LENIN’S PARTY!
A woman hissed through blackened stumps of teeth: “Oh, hell! They would choose a cold day like this to make us march in another one of their cursed parades!”
“You fell a-a-as a vic-ti-i-im
Inour fate — fullfight,
A vic-tim of e-end-less de-vo-o-otion....”
“... stood in line for two hours yesterday, but best onions you ever hope to see....”
“Dounka, don’t miss the sunflower-seed oil at the co-operative....”
“If they don’t get shot by someone, they shoot themselves — just to make us walk....”
“Yougave a-a-all you had fo-o-or the people you loved ...”
A red banner said:
TIGHTEN THE BONDS OF CLASS SOLIDARITY UNDER THE STANDARD OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY!
“God! I left soup cooking on the Primus. It will boil all over the house....”
“Stop scratching, comrade.”
“Your ho-nor, yourli-ife and your free-ee-ee-edom....”
“Comrade, stop chewing sunflower seeds. It’s disrespectful....”
“It’s like this, Praskovia: you peel the onions and add a dash of flour, just any flour you can get, and then a dash of linseed oil and ...”
“What do they have to commit suicide about?”
A red banner said:
THE COMMUNIST PARTY SPARES NO VICTIMS IN ITS FIGHT FOR THE FREEDOM OF MANKIND
“There’s a little closet under the back stairs and some straw and no one can hear us in there.... My husband? The poor sap will never get wise....”
“Let the millet soak for a coupla hours before cooking....”
“God! It’s the seventh month, it is, and you can’t expect me to have a figure like a match stick, and here I have to walk like this.... Yeah, it’s my fifth one....”