ON THE EVE
29
persons who fought hard to save some of them; I should like to
put on record here our deep gratitude.)
There were some Italian friends whose morale was fine: a tall
straightforward old man of reformist opinions, a young and adven–
turous Trotskyite, and an old and temperamental Garibaldian. It
seemed that in their comer of the world they could clearly hear the
framework of the whole edifice cracking. They explained that the
moment had arrived when even those who were profiting by the
fascist regime had become aware that their only hope of salvation
lay in a readiness to sell out.
There followed round-ups, petty arrests, denunciations, short
imprisonments aboard a boat during holidays, messages from con–
centration camps, helpful letters from America. We lived on
tenterhooks. The news came of Trotsky's assassination in Mexico;
the darkest hour in the history of the working class was a fitting
time for the Old Man to have departed-he who in its days of hope
had risen so high. There was news of the suicide or murder of
Walter Krivitsky in Washington, and of the disappearance of Hil–
ferding and Breitscheid from among ourselves. There were suicide3
all around.... Despite all this I worked on a novel, though not for
any love of "literature." Andre Breton read aloud to us, admir–
ably, poems which he wrote in a green-house under a November
sun. We named the dilapidated chateau in which we were living:
"Espervisa." Others, who had become professional life-savers and
were swamped by their task, worked desperately. But the ship–
wreck was too great. Only a few of those in danger got away.
Suddenly we found ourselves aboard a freighter moored at
Pier 7. It was fixed up strangely like a floating concentration
camp. I took my leave without joy; if it had been possible I would
have a thousand times rather stayed. How one clung to this Europe,
with its Russians dying before firing squads, its Germans trampled
underfoot, its crushed France. We were leaving only to return,
only in order to carry on our work. In the open Atlantic, after
passing the shores of the Sahara, we gathered together on the upper
deck between the smokestack and the lifeboats. The stars pitched
and rolled over our heads. We were forty comrades among three
hundred. The other refugees were intent only on escaping, for the
most part unpolitical, and a great many of them were reactionary.
What could I, when it was my tum, have to say that was essential
