.
.
8
PA.RTISAN REVIEW
tion, you learn to depend on it. And so you strengthen us. You are
unable to take a step without us."
He therefore thought it would be unsporting to grant Satya's
request. "Your tactics are wrong. I cannot-as one commander to an–
other-" and here he raised his lip again, spreading the bristles of his
moustache-"allow you to pursue such poor tactics. My good man, I
must refuse!"
Satya therefore announced that he would proceed without per–
mission. The years of self-discipline and control were in vain. He now
felt himself growing angry and he knew that he was on the verge of
haranguing the commander with a review of the party's history, and
of recalling, to his complacently short memory, the number of times
that the party had shaken the government by its disobedience move–
ment and brought it to the verge of falling.
Party members had long since refused t01 bow themselves out of
an official's presence. Satya stiffly walked away. "One moment!" the
commander called after
him.
"Hey, boy! Not that door--out the
other way!" Satya, disobeying, did not tum back.
In the courtyard he recognized two of his guards who had
evidently followed him to the city. Thereafter, one of the three In–
defatigables was detained at the mud-hole, while the other two, in
furry headgear, accompanied him to the library, to the stacks and
about the city in the blazing sun.
As
he sat and worked, one guard
stood on
his
left, the other on his right. When he walked in the street
one preceded him and the other followed. The Indefatigable at the
head of the procession, never knowing which way Satya would tum,
was constantly wandering off in the wrong direction or being left at
street comers and always had to be recalled.
Ever since the death, some three years earlier, of Bapu, who had
led the resistance party for nearly half a century, Satya had been the
head of the movement. His official title was party president, which,
in itself, meant little, for he had held the same office for ten years and,
thus, while: Bapu had still been alive. The old man had preferred to
serve without office and had withstood all urging with
his
well known
stubbornness, replying, when pressed, that he was obviously unfit for
politics. "There is only one office for which my poverty qualifies me
-treasurer," he had said on one semi-public occasion, at a confer–
ence of district leaders. Later, in private, Satya had reprimanded
him.
"Bapu, allow me to say, you take too much pride in your humility.
You make it conspicuous."
