THREE ·MEXlCAN STORIES
27
That night he came back accompanied by a group of boys
of his own age. He sat them down around a table in the room
and, taking out of his pocket a handful of lead type, before the
astonished eyes of the kids he distributed it as though he were
in a print shop. Then he took the forms and, like an expert,
rapidly organized a page of propaganda inviting all boys to join
his organization. Another one of the kids carried a bundle of
cheap paper under his arm. They cut it to the proper size and,
with the aid of a kneeling youngster, in less than an hour they
had a pile of leaflets. He divided them up among the boys
present, sent them off to various sections of the city, and told
them to come back the next day. Then he said, offering me his
hand covered with printers ink, "Greetings, comrade." And
went away.
The next day, true
to
the time at which he had told the other
boys
to
come, he arrived followed by a mob ... forty ... fifty;
and each moment more. They sat down and waited silently
with a kind of burning expectation. The boy began
to
talk. His
clean quiet words went deep into the silent eyes of his comrades.
I listened, and the years of my own childhood began to course
through my veins. The harsh panorama of the past crackled
in his accusations; and his voice, shaking the dead dry days,
turned my entrails inside out.
On the kids the effect was otherwise. I saw them clench
their fists and dig their nails into the flesh, panting with fire in
"'
their eyes. When he stopped talking a deep silence filled the
room. They were not child faces now, they were eyes looking
into human tragedy. The boy went on with his work. He had
them name a committee, he gave concrete orders to each who
had a commission to perform, he told them not to lose contact
with the Central Committee, and he let them go.
A group of party comrades, witnessing these activities, and
astonished that the child did not ask for food nor say anything
about a place to sleep or how he was to travel, took up a col–
lection among themselves of ten pesos and gave it to him.
The boy took the money indifferently and when someone said it
was "to buy a pair of overalls," he answered in a matter-of-fact
way, "I need to buy paper first for our propaganda. I'm going
to Villa Cardel tonight, bumming my way on the Inter-Ocean."
Then he picked up his papers, wrote a few notes on them,
shook my hand, and said simply, "Greetings, comrade."
And went away.