They were all going to put' up a holler and see that
they got jobs. They were damned if they were going
to make skeletons to please anybody. He had smiled
at them. "Run along, boys," he had said, "I got
some ideas of my own, and you fellers don't need
me."
"Like hell we don't need you." And then other
words like those on the walls of the hall he and
Jensen used to go to floated and shoved out what the
boyshad said. One for All and All for One. Gosh, he
was getting mixed up. His ears were ringing too bad
to figure things out. It was some tornado.
Look out,
you're rocking the boat. His aunt's face, enlarged
and bloated, swam through the dream. But he was
awake. He could see the red eye of his fire through
the isinglass door of the stove. The wind was chaw-
ing the door. "Don't
bother about me, boys," he
had said. "I got my own little trick. A little gold
mine. I'll treat you all." The raft was heaving to
Black
Hussars
ILYA EHRENBOURG
IT WAS Gorgulov,
the assassin of Barthou,
who
adopted the pseudonym,
"Delirium." This was done
in a moment of mental lucidity. He is not the only
one. Hundreds of Gorgulovs daily utter in print
their anathemas,
maledictions,
threats and abuse;
and it does not so much as occur to anyone that all
this scribbling of theirs is delirium, pure and simple.
Gorgulov was merely a little more brazen and con-
sistent in the matter, that is all.
Take the "Young Russians." They call themselves
"Soviet monarchists." Then the lunatics in the next
ward are heard from, and we find them publishing
the
Messenger of the Czar's Bodyguards.
They
maintain that Nicholas II is still alive, and sound a
a call to "worry our sovereign's foes." And the
metropolitan bishop, Antony, promises a remission
of sins to "each and every avenger" who shall hold
outagainst the "insane, satanic power."
The former Tolstoyan,
N ajivy, offers to "make
away with" Maxim Gorky.
The
Russiai: 'Truth
boasts of the fact that certain "little brothers" have
set fire to a collective farm, and prints in a glaring
headline: GREAT BEAST DESTROYED BY
FLAMES. And Bayan-Kolshko finds fault with the
French for lending support to the Bolsheviks.
Nekto Bostunitch blames the vVaterman Pen and
Kupfenberg Champagne for the reason that these
firms, through their use of the pentagram trade-
mark, are advertising the five-pointed star of Com-
munism.Another madman, Gladky, brings an indict-
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
the top of the trough now, she'd break up soon.
"The lousy bastards,
they've railroaded us all to
hell, but by Jesus they'll get theirs some day," and
Jensen's face had slid into the water. The water had
swallowed him the way it would a knife. His bones
were knocking around now, deep down, against the
coral reefs. The knocking was sending up big, bright,
golden bubbles upon the blue sea. He should have
gone with the boys. He would go yet. The boys
wouldn't let him down; they'd fix that old maid.
They'd hammer on the desk with their fists right
under her nose. So charity ain't for dirty drunks.
It's for Mister c- s- Schoop.
He sighed and his whole chest seemed tearing
'open, ready for the sea to rush in. Then the sea
rushed in and he let the raft ride. It was riding high
and dry, and Jensen was playing a mouth organ.
The water all around was blue, and sprinkled with
golden bubbles big as mushrooms.
ment against the
Jews,
who as he sees it have been
guilty of two historic crimes: in the first place, they
crucified Christ; and in the second place, thanks to
"that communistic agitator,
Christ," they overthrew
the Roman Empire.
In the gazette known as
The
Sentinel,
army orders are printed: so-and-so has beer:.
appointed to such-and-such a post; so-and-so has
been struck from the roster.
vVhat post or what
roster is something that nobody knows. And finally,
a criminal who has thrown a bomb in a Leningrad
club sobs out: "I wanted to ring a bloody alarm
I"
In all this there is to be made out a jumble of
emotions:
bloodthirstiness
and anguish,
megalo-
mania and a senile debility, a hatred of humanity
and the despair of those former parasites who now
have nothing to do but to gad aimlessly and hope-
lessly about the world. This subterranean world is
splendid material for the writer; yet not a single one
of the emigres has been able to bring himself to
portray in all frankness this ghastly human cellar.
Merejkovsky still writes of ancient Egyptian erotic-
ism, and Bunin of the Russia of before the War,
while Allanov is occupied with describing Suvorov's
campaigns. The emigre poets, just as if nothing had
happened,
still go on singing of their dead loves and
the twilight and all the old poetic stuff.
But we are wrong. The Cellar does have its poet,
in the person of the ex-Hussar, Posajnoy. The latter
has publishe·'
two volumes of verse,
Elbrus
and
Songs of the Machines.
No emigre critic, it is true,
neither Balmont
nor Hodasevitch,
has paid the
slightest attention to either of these books, although
no one has depicted better than Posajnoy the very
soul, so to speak, of this underground world.
You will not find any particular ingenuity in Posaj-
noy's verse, for he writes "soulfully." He is not
afraid of calling a spade a spade, and in his printed
7
