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p.
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429
that you shouldn't he able to see it." "I came here to talk to you about
a job, not to see you throw a fit," he said.
"It's the principle of the thing," I replied. "It seems to escape
you. Simply because I am no longer a member of their party they
have instructed, him and boobs like him not to talk to me. Don't you
see what's involved? I have a right to he spoken to. It's the most
elementary thing in the world. Forbid one man to talk to another,
forbid him to communicate with another and you forbid him to think.
And there's the end of human freedom and the beginning of tyranny."
"Come, come," said Myron. "You're making too much fuss over it." "I
should be making twice as much fuss," I said. "It's very important."
"But you've been through with them for years, haven't you?" Myron
asked. "Do you mean to say you've just discovered this?" "I
haven't forgotten, that's all. I haven't forgotten that I once believed
these people were devoted to the service of some grand flapdoodle, the
Race,
le genre humain.
Oh yes, they were! By the time I got out I
realized that any hospital nurse did more for
le genre h!Unain
with
one bedpan than they did with their entire organization. In those
days they used to pound into us the futility of 'reformism'. About a
month after we parted company I sat down and wrote a letter of
apology to Jane Addams."
"Did you?" he said looking at me curiously. "I never mailed it,"
I said. "Maybe I should have. Don't you believe me?"
"Why
shouldn't I?" "I changed my mind about redoing the world from
top to bottom a Ia Karl Marx and decided in favor of bandaging a
few of its sores at a timle a Ia Jane Addams. Of course, that was
temporary, too ..." "Was it?" he said. "You know that, Mike," I
said loudly.
The man who was sitting with Burns turned round but the latter
still pretended not to see me. "Thlilt's right," I said. "Look the
other way. That boy is mad, Myron. He's never been sane. He
sticks, how he sticks.. Everything is just as it used to J:>e.
He still
wears that proletarian bang and dreams of becoming an American
Robespierre. The rest have compromised themselves to .the ears, but
he
still believes in th(" revolution. Blood will run, power will change
hands and then the state will wither away according to in-ex-orable
logic. rd gamble my shirt on it. Let me tell you something about
him. Do you know what he used .to have in his room? I went up
with him one day and there was a large scale map of the city, with
pins in it. So I said, 'What's this for, Jim?' And then-I swear this
is; true--he started to explain that he was preparing ·a guide for street
fighting the day of the insurrection. He had all the critical streets
marked in code for cellars and roofs, kinds of paving, how many news
stand& there were on each corner and whether they could be thrown
