CONQUERED CITY
15
"Parfenov, you are right to believe in the future. It is the
new God, a reincarnation of the oldest deities, who makes the pres–
ent bearable. I believe in it also, but in another way, because the
future is a spiral without end ••. are you happy at the factory,
Parfenov?"
"Ah, no! I've had enough of it already. Vadime Mikhailo–
vitch, I am preparing to leave you. I have asked to go to the front;
the secretary of the district is backing me; it will go through."
He felt the need to talk. And Lytaev listened with a kind of
confused joy to this young male voice, poured out impetuously in
the rude slang of the day. The walk on the ice through the darkness,
in the midst of this solitude, gave these two men an understanding
of one another beyond the strict meaning of their words.
"The factory? .•. We take a week to produce as much as we
did in a day last year. I had to start having the workers searched
again on their way out; they steal everything. They came around to
call me names: 'Policeman! Aren't you ashamed! ••. You your–
self protested against the search in '17; "an indignity" you called
it! But you just wait, commissar, your turn will come..•.' The
worst of it is, the search doesn't help much. They throw tied up
packages through the windowr The women carry off yarn between
their legs, and linings wound around their bodies. I can hardly
tell the porters to feel their buttocks! They defy me!"
Lytaev replied gently:
"They must live, Parfenov."
"Yes, that's the worst of it. So they steal. They make slip–
pers out of the jacket cloth and sell them at the market for 40
roubles. The workers must certainly live, but the revolution must
not perish. When I say that to them, some of them answer: 'Isn't it
making us perish?' Some of them have no conscience at all,
Vadime Mikhailovitch."
"And it is with this blind force that you would transform the
world, Parfenov?"
"With them and for them. Otherwise, they will never be
human beings. In spite of them, if necessary. 'Policeman?' I said
to them, 'All right, I'm not afraid of words. Insult me as much as
you please, I am your comrade and your brother, perhaps I'm
here just for that; but I will defend what belongs to the republic
against you.
If
someone must perish, I want to perish, with you,
