12
PARTISAN REVIEW
a Versailles faction member, leaning on a railing a few steps
further on:
"They're going to smash you, out of humanity!"
At the back of the room, couples were becoming impatient.
After all, aren't we going to dance?
In the black night of the unlighted street, the simple man of
the soil caught up with the lecturer. The sounds of the harmonica
died out behind them, caught up by the darkness.
"See here, you must he hungry."
The archivist felt a hard package thrust into his hands.
"These are English biscuits that I brought back from Onega.
Those buffoons, that rabble back there-they're not like us."
The archivist took the biscuits. "Thanks. So you come from
Onega?" It was said out of politeness. Onega, Erivan, Kamchatka
-it mattered little. But the man from Onega had a secret on the
tip of his tongue. His momentary silence was tense.
"I was also in the Perm government last year when the
Kulaks rose in revolt. They tore open the bellies of the food com–
missars and filled them with grain.
"On the way I was reading Arnold's pamphlet:
The Dead
of
the Commune.
A fine essay! I thought of Milliere. And I avenged
Milliere, citizen! It was one of the few beautiful days of my life.
Step by step I avenged him. On the threshold of the church I shot
down the biggest landowner in the district, just the way they did
him. I don't remember his name any more, and I don't give a
damn...."
He added after a short silence:
"But it was I who cried: 'Long Live Humanity!'"
"You know," said the archivist, "Milliere, fundamentally,
was not a true communist. He was no more than a bourgeois
republican."
"It's all the same to me," replied the man from Onega.
III.
One had to walk for some time along the corridors of the
University to come, finally, upon the room where, on certain
