CONQUERED CITY
7
from farms, factories, forgotten offices, in thin, underground,
sewer-like streams. A blue enamel plaque, fastened above the car–
riage entrance read:
Property of the Society of Real Estate Insur–
ance.
One December evening, a sailor from the
Vautour
had come,
by order of the Soviet of the Second District, to fasten underneath
it, on the door, with four tacks, a hand-written notice bearing the
stamp of the Committee for the Poor, " ...
is declared the property
of the state...."
Shady traffickers in outmoded coats, who prowled
about the consulates, and were supplied with land titles as out–
dated as the seignorial titles of the 16th century, would resell this
house every two weeks in the restaurants of Helsingfors; a good
price was still being given for it, hut in Tzarist roubles, which
were in circulation only among smugglers and traitors.
On the ground floor, the bevelled plate-glass windows of a
shop, covered now with a mixture of dust and frost, concealed the
tarnished mirrors within.
Celine, Paris Fashions.
These words, in
rounded gilt letters, ended with a fine flourish, widening toward the
end. Water-stained draperies hung over the nickel rods, designed to
show off the latest models from the Rue de la Paix. A Jewish family
lived there. Sometimes, when a corner of the curtain was lifted,
one could get a glimpse of a dark, graceful, wild little thing of
about eight years, rocking to sleep an amazing rag doll with a
wonderfully painted face. In the morning, an old man would come
out; under the hunting cap which he wore, one could make out
only the large drooping profile, the flabby cheeks and rheumy eyes.
He would go to sell Lord knows what at some market.
The other shop window, not long ago a shoemaker's, now
served a forlorn grocery: saccharine in little tubes, tea made from
Bowers, packed almost like the genuine Kouznetzov teas, coffee of
some unidentified bean. Some potatoes, sprouting where they lay
on a porcelain plate, attracted the eye like some rare, out of season
fruit. What phantom trade went on under the sheltering shadows
of these wares? The sailor from the
Vautour
spoke to the Commit–
tee for the Poor about breaking into this store, which surely must
be filled with stolen sugar and flour. But the secretary of the Com–
mittee, a busy little man, with a powerful jaw and a limp, who
claimed to have been wounded in the Carpathian mountains, hut
who was certainly lying, calmed the sailor without appearing to,
with
the assurance that he was keeping an eye on "that really
