Red Storm

I

BEFORE the demigod Odenov moved in, the Propaganda Office had housed other gods — it had been a temple. Odenov’s private office had been the main shrine. He had ordered that the gods be removed and the room made ready for him in three days. He came in on the third day with his enormous desk, and with cases upon cases of books, papers, and documents, but the place was not ready.

‘Three days to clear out these foolish idols!’ he stormed. ‘That’s time enough to change the whole of China, my friends. How long, then, will it take you to clear out foreign battleships, abolish extraterritoriality, and get back the concessions? I ask you! Answer me!’

Odenov whirled about so abruptly that his three Chinese aides jumped backward, stumbled, and almost fell against the wall.

‘Move them in!’ he shouted to the astonished coolies in temporary charge of his cases and boxes, and then darted back menacingly toward the carpenters still at work. ‘Get out, you sluggish pigs, or I’ll crack your ribs!’

One of his aides, sensing danger, ran up hastily, tugged at his sleeve, and whispered, ‘They are Union men.’

‘Hang the Union! What fine revolutionists you fellows are!’

What irked Odenov most was that, even in the revolutionary city of Canton, in the revolutionary year of 1927, there were so many things not ready for him. But ready or no, he determined, there was going to be a revolution — a Communist revolution. So the gods who had no time sense and had smiled through the ages were forced out, and the god who never had enough time and frowned at every passing moment moved in.

His temple, for the construction of which he would not allow more than three days, was a makeshift affair. Only two things were in their right places — the Soviet flag hanging on the wall, and Odenov himself below. His head was closely cropped, and his high, tight-skinned forehead was brown and shiny. His fiery eyes, his rather impudent nose — in fact, his whole countenance was vindictive. His shirt collar was open at the neck, his sleeves rolled up, and the hairy chest and arms thus revealed gave one the impression that he was a man at the height of his vitality. In his enormous hand he clutched a big red pencil, in readiness to mark crimson the map of the great city of Canton. Already his encircling arms claimed it for his own, although at times his uncertain glances at the map betrayed that he was not so sure.

A uniformed orderly darted back and forth, bringing in messages which Odenov opened with an unnatural jerk. Invariably he scanned the signature before he proceeded to read, and his expression — a grin, a scornful smile, a tightening of the jaws, a lifting of the brows, a straightening of the body, or a drooping of the mouth — indicated the nature of the report.

II

Presently a group of aggressive, energetic young men came in. One by one Odenov called them by name, without so much as raising his head to look at them, as if he knew them by their footsteps. He merely motioned them to sit down on two rows of chairs along the walls. He allowed the silence to gather until it became oppressive, then, with dramatic suddenness, lifted high his massive head, drew up his figure to its full six feet, and raked over the faces of his visitors with a cold, hard stare. His left eye was capable of emitting a glow of comradeship, not warm enough to be personal, but with just that degree of mellowness to make those in his presence feel comfortable and to inspire confidence in him. This eye was human and capable of love; but there was something demoniacal about the other that made one’s blood run cold. It appeared to see without seeing, to pierce through a man’s external features into his very soul. That dreadful right eye never winked, but always remained wide open in an icy, vengeful stare as though it belonged to a dead man who had suffered some grievous wrong and who, even in death, refused to forget it. Few knew that it was an artificial eye, and Odenov was careful to keep the secret.

At last he spoke.

‘Comrades!’

The nerves of his hearers seemed to snap an echo in their bodies with a loud sound like that made by a strained bow which has just set the arrow free. Slowly Odenov rose from his chair, threw back his head, took a deep breath, and then, as if his chest were bursting under the pressure of so much air, he poured out a torrent of words.

‘Comrades! The reports you have submitted distress me. You have made fine promises to the people — promises of rice, of homes, of every kind of betterment you could think of. But in the making of promises you are no better or worse than our Christian friends who tell the people they will go to Heaven.

‘Make them promises and they will sit down and wait for others to bring about fulfillment, sluggish and vainly hopeful animals that they are. To teach them to love is to teach them to submit meekly to fate, to their overlords and their enemies, and to be content with their miserable lives. That is a cruelty which I do not want you to commit.

‘What you must do is to make them hate! Go to the people and tell them what miserable dogs they are. Make them despise their condition and their very lives. Make them see that they are so miserable that they cannot be worse off no matter what happens. Make them feel that their lives are so utterly unbearable that they will be ready to do anything in the most reckless manner. Then, when hatred and cruelty are boiling within them, tell them who their oppressors are, and let them rise up against them. You will be the gunners to take aim; the aroused emotions of the people will be the guns, the shells, the high explosives!’

In making speeches, as in everything else, Odenov knew that enough was enough. And to encourage his subordinates, and impart to them a sense of confidence both in him and in themselves, he was not above a little backslapping. He insisted on being called ‘Comrade Odenov,’ and those who made use of the appellation always felt that they had committed a conscious impropriety, just as though one had hailed an austere father by his first name — only to find that he responded to it as a matter of course and seemed to enjoy it.

Now Comrade Odenov stepped forward and took the hand of each of his subordinates, patting it affectionately and whispering to each a kind word of encouragement, just loud enough to be heard but not overheard. It was as if he were taking them individually into his secret confidence. This done, they all gathered about the colored map of the city, bending over it as in a military council.

‘Do you see these red circles?’ he said. ‘They are laborers’ sections. In each section there are about one thousand workers of all sorts. I rely upon you to win them over — in two weeks! Each of you is a born leader of the common people, but what is a leader without power? Power lies about on every hand, neglected like ungathered rice. We must harvest it!’

With this, his voice died away. He took three resolute strides back to his desk and stood there, tense and alert, waiting impressively. He knew the power of silence better than a lover. He knew, too, the magic of words — hot, earnest, eloquent. The stillness was shattered with his final charge: —

‘An ideal is sacred only when you and I and the people have shed our blood over it. Go! The world is yours!’

III

In China the mill of evolution has turned slowly, ponderously, through many centuries. Her millions of people are quiet and patient, little given to interfering with the deliberate processes of natural law. Theirs is a complete abstraction of the self from its surrounding circumstances, like that of the ruminating cow which forgets alike the heavy yoke and the free, green pastures. It is their habit to hope in terms of years and to despair resignedly in terms of hours and minutes. Theirs is the ability to ‘eat bitterness’ without end, never showing evidence of physical or nervous strain; the ability to live in monotony without being bored. These are qualities of mellowness and maturity, at once a blessing and a curse to the nation. And these were the qualities which Odenov charged his young men to change — in two weeks.

‘Why don’t the people look at their lives as we do?’ his disciples asked among themselves. ‘Why are n’t they as conscious of their misery as we are?’

Odenov himself was wiser. He was an astute revolutionist. He knew that this poise, this composure, of the nation was real, and that it must first be destroyed. ‘Go to the people and tell them what miserable dogs they are. Make them despise their condition and their very lives.’ He knew, too, that they must be given a symbol against which they could direct their collective hatred. ‘Tell them who their oppressors are, and let them rise up against them.’

Over and over he had conjured up before the minds of his young men the picture of the mad, vengeful Dragon of the Yellow River as it rushed over the water gates and washed down the dikes built to control it. With picks and shovels in hand, he and his ‘comrades’ were to sit astride the dikes and gates, ready to break them. But the water of the human stream had been calm and stagnant a long time. Could it be made to flow again? And would it run in the new channels so feverishly dug for it?

IV

Sam Kee’s restaurant was one of the places to which Odenov’s men brought their gospel. Like other eating houses patronized by dock coolies, ricksha men, and other manual laborers, it was seething with life and business. For it was five o’clock in the afternoon, the time to ask those one met, ‘Have you eaten rice?’ — a question which hearty fellows liked to be able to answer, with a sucking sound of the teeth and a sweeping of the tongue against the inner lips, ‘I have.’

There were some thirty tables in the room, square, unpainted, uncovered. About them, not sitting, but squatting on long benches in the position peculiar to their class, were many brown, strongbodied men. Bare to the waist and with sweat-drenched towels flung across their shoulders, these hardy fellows ate with incredible zest and appetite, even though their faces, half hidden behind heaping bowls of steaming rice, retained the expression of unclouded, leisurely calm that was habitual to

them. The food in their mouths muffled somewhat their cheerful conversation and loud laughter. The healthy smell of human bodies that had steamed all day in the sun was mingled with the pungent odor of meat fried with bean sauce, ginger, and wine. From the kitchen, which was exposed to view, came the quick rhythmical sound of food being chopped into small pieces with two knives, as if an accomplished snare drummer were practising his art on a block of wood.

‘A bowl of rice! ’ A bronzed customer loudly gave his order to the waiter twenty yards away. ‘A bowl of rice!’ The singing waiter caught up the words and hurled them at the cook. ‘A bowl of rice!’ The cook echoed the refrain;

then, seizing the steaming dish, he chanted again, ‘A bowl of rice!’ to the waiter, who repeated in his turn, ‘A bowl of rice!’ to the customer, who answered, ‘Here!’ Other echoes went round the dining room to the tune of ‘A pot of wine, warm!’ or ‘A dish of stewed beef with garlic and salted beans!’

There were the singsong cries of the peddler as he sailed serenely between the tables with his delicacies in a basket balanced on his head, announcing them in flowery and tempting terms. When a customer got up to leave, there was the waiter’s shouting of the price to the cashier, who shouted it back as a matter of counter-checking. Then there was the vociferous wit of Gold-Tooth Four, who until a month ago had been Broken-Tooth Four. These names testified to the accident which had befallen him and to the decorative repair work which now made him the envy of his companions; the word ‘Four’ might mean that he was the fourth son of his mother, although he always denied it, insisting that he was an only child.

‘You mean,’ someone spoke up to tease him, ‘that all your brothers and sisters died and you are the only wretched left-over.’

‘Left-over so that your mother may not be widowed,’ he retorted, ‘and wretched because I have a son like you.’

‘A pot of wine, rice wine!’ he called to the waiter; and then to Old Sam,

‘Chalk it up! ’ He ran an account which Old Sam kept on a blackboard on the wall behind the counter.

‘You’re getting mighty extravagant nowadays, Broken-Tooth — er — GoldTooth Four,’ said Sam, tapping the blackboard with a piece of chalk. ‘Fifty-five cents and four cash. When are you going to pay?’ (A cash is one tenth of a cent.)

‘And a dish of curry beef!’ GoldTooth Four shouted another order, ignoring Old Sam’s question.

‘What? ’ said Sam, pressing his point. ‘Have you again stolen and pawned your wife’s trousers?’

‘Whatever happens, son, your good mother will always have clothes on her back. Don’t worry. Chalk it up!’

‘But when are you going to pay?’

‘I pay when I pay.’

‘When?’

‘Before the New Year, as always.’

‘Suppose you die before then?’

‘I will pay before I die.’

‘Suppose you die prematurely?’

‘Then I will pay prematurely. But say, how can I die prematurely when I have a son as big as you ? ’

‘Suppose you die accidentally? Suppose that dog’s life of yours gets snuffed out under the big Russian’s car?’

‘Then I will pay accidentally. I am not one of the Divide-the-Property Party.’

‘Guard that dog’s tongue of yours with care,’ said Old Sam, looking around to see if there were any unfamiliar faces in the room. ‘They will divide it into pieces, only it is not worth a rusted cash.’

‘What’s wrong with my tongue, eh? Any tongue is good enough that can win a woman.’

‘Yes, and appreciate Old Sam’s food.’

‘Your food! Ta-ta-ta-ta!’ GoldTooth Four clucked his thick, heavy tongue contemptuously. ‘Don’t worry, old man. If you die, — killed, say, by the Red Dividers, — I’ll buy you paper money with what I owe you and burn it to your spirit.’

The house shook with laughter. Satisfied and light-hearted, the men lingered on in the restaurant. They sat about or squatted, smoking and picking their teeth. The setting sun shone upon their wine-reddened faces.

Suddenly one of them shouted, ‘Here they come, sure enough!’ Then, seizing Gold-Tooth Four and holding his jaws like a dentist, he added, ‘They’re coming, I’ll bet, to pull out your new tooth and divide the gold!’

V

Erect and serious, they did come, Odenov’s men. The coolies, the dock hands, and others had often heard their young, eager voices haranguing the crowd, and they had shouted with them, ‘Love our country! Save our country!’ They had seen these whiteclad, well-kept forms parading in the sun to the music of a military band with which their own untrained feet had been unable to keep time. Most of them had said, each to himself, while panting for breath and mopping the sweat off his face, ‘Surely my children will be like them!’ Then they had pulled harder and run faster; and when the meagre price for their sweat had been hastily thrust into their hands, they had asked, looking at it, ‘Will they, though?’ — and had shaken their heads, too simple and too tired to think further.

Now Odenov’s men entered the restaurant and launched forth into their speeches. But it was altogether new, strange, and unbelievable to Ricksha Man Number 286 to hear from the only class of people in whom he had any confidence — these students — that he need not labor like a horse and be treated like a dog; that he was entitled to the food, clothing, and shelter of a human being. ‘A human being? That’s funny,’ he thought. ‘Then I am not a human being. Who is a human being? Old Sam, the proprietor, is one. No, he also works like a horse. Perhaps the fellow who rode in my ricksha this morning? No, he was a wild-begotten son of a monkey. The Mister Students before me? Yes. And certainly that big man who did not wait for his change.’

And in his mind he ran over all the ‘human beings’ he had ever seen, amusing himself by selecting the one whom he would most like to be. His imagination led him to the house of that ‘human being.’ He would get lost in the undreamed-of labyrinth of rooms and halls and corridors; he would go to sleep on the ‘human being’s’ bed, and be unable to rise because of its deep softness. He would shout orders to the servants and use them like dogs out of revenge for his being so used by others, but he would pay them good wages to show that, though rich, he was generous and kind.

The speech-making was still going on. ‘You are like oxen and horses,’ shouted Odenov’s men, ‘sold for a handful of grass!’

‘Yes, yes. That’s right,’ they nodded.

‘You are doomed to eternal labor, and so are your sons and your sons’ sons!’

‘Aya! That will be terrible,’ someone spoke up. ‘I was hoping that my sons would be like you, Mister Student.’

‘The rich men are robbers!’

‘Yes, yes, to be sure.’

‘Let us divide the land! Let us share the property!’

And before the eyes of the laborers swam visions of vast tracts of land and enormous wealth, and into their minds popped a most un-Bolshevik thought — that if they had a share of it they would ‘cripple themselves,’ as the saying goes, and just sit and eat without want, generation after generation.

VI

When night fell, the conversation was more lively and the laughter louder than ever before, for these tired ones had found a new subject to talk and laugh about. Someone would start the ball rolling with: ‘Say, let me divide your property.’ He was asking for a match or a pinch of tobacco.

‘All right. I’ll share yours the next time, you stingy devil.’

‘But you don’t understand this Divide-the-Property-ism. It all means that what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.’

‘Good! Then take my debts and the boil on my leg. That’s all that’s mine.’

Then they would ask each other curious questions, more for the sake of a laugh than for information: —

‘Who is this Violent Peace [Lenin]?’ put in Ricksha Man Ah Hing.

‘First, Violence and War; then, Peace and Order. He must be a great general to have a name like that,’ answered Ricksha Man Ah Foo, with due display of scholarship.

‘What’s in a name?’ retorted Ah Hing. ‘Your name is Foo [Rich], but you are poor.’

‘And who is Cow Marks [Carl Marx]?’ Dock Coolie Number 130 wanted to know.

‘What do you care whether it is Cow Marks or Horse Marks?’ remarked Carrier Ah Wong. ‘ You are a pig anyway. Have a smoke from my Pig Mark and look at your double on the bag.’ With that he tossed the coolie a bag of tobacco which carried the picture of a pig as its trade-mark.

‘Let us divide it!’ They passed the tobacco around.

‘If you don’t leave me enough for tonight, we’ll divide the women of your family among us.’

‘Say,’ spoke up Odd Jobber Ah Po with a sly wink, ‘did you notice the girl students who spoke to us?’

‘You croaking, silly green frog!’ taunted Jobless Ah Fook. ‘How can you hope to eat the flesh of the white swans of the sky? That beggar girl over there is much too good for you.’

‘And what’s wrong with the beggar girl, eh?’ said Street Cleaner Ah Wing.

‘Give her a cake of soap and a bucket of water — splash, splash! — then a fiftycent dress — and what’s the difference?’

Thus the first few days went by. To the laborers, Communism was just a new subject for mischievous humor, a joke provoker, a wit sharpener. There was a contagious mirth among them.

‘Hello, Communist!’ became a greeting to be meaninglessly and cheerily tossed at strangers. At the jesting request, ‘Let’s communize your tobacco,’ jealously guarded bags flew open in good fellowship. In the restaurants they had a great time when they ‘practised Communism’ — that is, snatched a piece of cake from under somebody’s nose.

VII

But such pranks and jollity were not to last. For Odenov’s disciples, determined to beat into the heads of the laborers a hatred of their lives, continued their incessant harangues, and before long they began to be conscious of their misery. A great weariness descended upon the men. Feet that had never refused to run now lagged; hands that had been nimble and quick now became heavy and slow; shoulders slumped under burdens, and muscles ached. They ate with less cheer and gusto. In the restaurants they gave their orders more curtly, and washed down their food with curses on the cook and the waiter. They paid their money unwillingly, as if to a robber, often leaving another curse for tip.

The contagious mirth of the first days gave place to a contagious moroseness. Jokes were no longer amusing; instead of bringing forth laughs, they loosened unkind tongues and often provoked the use of fists. At night an ominous silence fell on their quarters. Now and then the tootle of a bamboo flute or the whine of a coconut-shell violin was still to be heard, but the music betrayed the choking breath and unwilling hands of the players and would break off abruptly in a few ill-tempered notes. In the shadows, against trees and walls, leaned muttering men. When, at last, they retired to their quarters, they were galled by their close contact. The slightest tossing in bed brought down a volley of curses on the restless one. He who let out an audible sigh was promptly offered a trousers string to hang himself with.

In short, the mystical sense of abstraction from their surroundings had left them. The cow now felt the burden of the yoke, but the freedom of the green pastures seemed as far off as ever.

The tiredness that was on them lingered like the extreme languor of a tropical noon, exasperating and maddening. It ate deeper into them with each rumor of suicide, with each disappearance among their fellows. Singly, these laboring men stood or walked like beings lost, their heads hanging limp. Suddenly they would rouse into frenzied, aimless motion, as diseaseridden dogs sometimes do, only to subside into a deeper dejection. After some work had been unwillingly performed, they mopped the sweat off their faces and necks so violently that they all but ended in strangling themselves with their towels. They complained to one another. They formed into groups, then turned their backs upon each other — attracted and repulsed, seeking company and shunning it. From street to street, from corner to corner, they wandered — restless, tired, dazed.

Thousands of faces, easy, frank, and friendly but a week before, now wore one expression, as if some ruthless monarch envious of their happiness had decreed that they put on gloomy masks of a uniform design. Theirs was the anguish, the mute anger, of a struggle against something incomprehensible and unconquerable — something that was crushing them down, intangible as a shadow, yet heavy as a mountain. Their life had become a hell; nothing mattered any more. And when nothing matters, men will do anything.

VIII

The moroseness of these under dogs now turned into bitterness. The hatred of their own lives now became hatred of all lives. At those outside their class they stared with malignant directness, pursing their coarse lips in contempt. Ricksha men deposited with a bang both fat merchants and bobbed-haired feminists, bound-foot women and market-going farmers with baskets of eggs. Running carriers purposely splashed pools of muddy water on well-dressed passers-by. Dock coolies threw luggage on the ground and jabbed their elbows into the ribs of customers. Everywhere there were angry and exorbitant demands. A refusal to comply always elicited the muttered warning, ‘Watch yourself!’ From dark corners stones were hurled at those whose clothing betrayed their wealth. Men returning from crowded centres found the back of their coats stained with ink or smeared with filth.

Soon the whole city was afflicted with a bad case of nerves. It was as if the air were laden with germs of some contagious disease, infecting all who breathed it. The people were shaken out of their habitual calm and composure. They fidgeted, they fretted, they feared. Dread and apprehension — of what they did not know — were written on the faces of the thronging pedestrians. Before stepping from their doorways, they looked this way and that, like nervous rats coming out of their holes. On the street they broke into a confused and hurried gait. There were no loud and cheerful greetings when acquaintances met; like ants, they drew their heads together timidly, whispered a few words, then swiftly parted.

Panics occurred every hour. For no apparent reason hundreds of black heads would turn and look over their shoulders, as if they were so many puppets manipulated by a mysterious master showman; their scared, helpless expression was that of a flock of sheep lost in a dark forest where their quickened ears hear the snarls and growls of invisible wolves. The rude order of a policeman would cause a stampede in which many would be hurt. The backfire of an automobile would send hundreds scurrying for shelter, while other hundreds dropped flat on the ground and a few jumped into the river. Shops and houses near the scene would be closed and bolted.

When the commotion had subsided, frightened faces would peep through half-opened doors and windows to find out what had happened. ‘Some kind of panic,’ people would say. A moment later, exaggerated rumors of ‘ pistol shots’ or of an ‘uprising’ would spread to another part of the city, starting there another frenzied stampede, another maddening din of shutting doors and clanging chains. This, in turn, would give rise to more rumors, and immediately new panics would break out elsewhere. Thus the circle of fear extended like expanding waves started by a stone thrown into the water, and whispers flew about that ‘such things happened all over the city.’

What ‘such things ’ were the city did not know. It writhed and twitched in convulsions. It had taken poison into its system — and must throw it out.

IX

Night fell. Doors were closed early, doubly chained and heavily bolted, then barricaded with tables and chairs. Few lights appeared, and these were extinguished early. Men laid their heads on the edges of their pillows so that they might hear better. Now and then a motor car rumbled through the darkness. One listened with straining ears to catch the faintest sound, for the sleeping Beast of Revolution was stirring, stretching itself with a deep, rolling yawn. The car stopped. There were subdued whisperings and muffled footsteps, the stealthy opening and shutting of doors. Quietly the car drew away. Another came. More opening and shutting of doors. More shuffling of feet — bare feet, soft and furtive on the pavement. There were sounds like that of running sand, faintly rasping — someone was marking the walls with chalk.

What was that! A tin can crashed to the ground. Yes, it must have been a can, but it sounded strangely muted — no vibration — the echo stilled as if by liquid contents. Then a deathly silence.

All of a sudden a tremendous roar rolled from the dark throat of night. The city was aglow, as if the lids of innumerable huge lanterns had suddenly and simultaneously been lifted; as if the Titan Prometheus, unable any longer to bear the vulture tearing at his vitals, had broken loose and flung down fire to destroy all creation; as if a mock god had said, ‘Let there be light!’ — and there was light. By the glare of the conflagration, scuttling figures could be seen carrying gasoline cans. Blinded and choked by the hot wind and smoke, with arms raised and mouths grimacing, they heaved toward the flames, like savages in a ritual of fire worship. At the same time a frenzied mob surged through the streets brandishing weapons of every description — bamboo poles, rods and bars of iron and wood, pikes, axes, guns.

All night hoarse voices shouted, ‘Open! Open!’ Terror-stricken faces looked down from dark windows at the upturned faces, sinister and bloody. ‘Open! Open!’ Kerosene cans were drummed and raised in menace. ‘Open or be burned!’

Daylight was long in coming because of the great canopies of smoke that hung over the city. When it did come it made no difference. Life seemed to have lost all value; nothing mattered; only death was real. The storm of insane hate was blind, impersonal. It did not choose its course. It tore its way through wood, through bricks and mortar, through the breasts of men. It had neither centre nor direction. In its boiling, surging, and tossing, there was no distinct slogan, no clear battle cry.

Motor cars roared through the streets at headlong speed, running over heaps of debris, over pools of blood, over dead bodies and live bodies; they flew red flags announcing the establishment of a So Vai Ai Government — a meaningless translation of ‘Soviet.’ The maddened crowds did not read the characters on the flags. The few who did read did not recognize the characters, and he who chanced to recognize them did not understand them. Only ‘Ai’ has a clear meaning — sorrow.

From the cars red bands and ribbons were showered on the throng — as if they were tickets for the great spectacle of looting and killing. Arms were distributed. ‘Take this! Go make yourself a fortune! The world is yours!’ Hundreds of eager hands clutched at the weapons, like victims of a shipwreck grasping at the nearest object. The current whirled, sucking in those outside it, tossing out those already caught in it, wave breaking on wave. People were borne hither and thither, the red bands around their wrists, arms, and necks like bleeding wounds received in the fierce struggle. There were shrieks of greed, of vengeance, of agony, of meaninglessness; the tumult and uproar of hacking, of hammering, of shooting; the crackling of the flames, the groaning, rumbling fall of buildings. And through it all the upward-thrusting tongues of fire licked at the sky while the downward-sweeping tongues of smoke curled over the earth.

X

Two days and three nights the storm raged. And where was Odenov? What had he been doing?

On the third morning the government troops recaptured the city and set about exterminating the Communists. But who were the Communists? That was simple. The coolies, the dock hands, the miserable laborers, still wore their red bands, and by this token they were marked as such. Communists they were in no other sense, but that was enough, and the soldiers shot them down. Although the bands were hurriedly torn off in the fighting, their skin had become stained with the red dye during the many mad, sweating hours. The circles around their wrists, arms, and necks made purple garlands to go with them to their common grave.

And where was Odenov?

He was in his office. There he was, and there he had been since the second morning of the revolution.

All his life he had been consumed with the craving for power, and he had come to China to realize his ambition. The people whom he had called ‘complacent, ruminating cows’ he had fed on some ‘insane root,’ and had climbed on their backs, spurring them to a frenzied, riotous ride. The thing had happened just as he planned it; the city was in flames, every man’s hand was against every other man’s, the issue hung in the balance. All that remained was to await the right moment when, the first fury having spent itself, the people would be ready to accept the yoke of the strong man who could bring order out of chaos. So from the second morning he had been in his office, issuing his curt commands, receiving reports, pacing the floor, waiting — until, at last, worn out by the strain and the effort, he had dropped exhausted in his chair. There he now lay, half on the desk, half under it, his head on one outstretched arm, his sunken face partly covered by fringes of unkempt hair. He was fast asleep.

Suddenly the door of his office was flung open. In jumped one of his aides. Odenov leaped up. At the expression on the other’s face he cried, ‘Out of control, Comrade -?’ But before he could finish, a squad of soldiers burst into the room. Odenov stiffened at sight of them, then slowly sank in his chair.

‘You call this a revolution, do you?’ jeered his former aide. Odenov did not answer. ‘“An ideal can be made sacred only by the blood of youth” — is n’t that what you said? You’re the one who would bleed the world to death in order to possess it!’ Odenov continued to sit motionless. Once he glanced at his pistol, which lay within arm’s reach, but he made no motion to seize it and submitted meekly to arrest.

When he was taken out to be shot, the people lined the streets to see him. In his face there was no hatred, no appeal to sympathy, no emotion at all. And not a bitter word was uttered by the people, not a hostile look was cast, not an accusing finger was raised. The passing of Odenov amid the stoic throng was like the passing of the last patch of storm cloud over a cornfield where the tempest has left nothing but stubble, stiff and still. Who shakes his fist at a storm after it has blown over? It was all so impersonal, so incomprehensible, that there was nothing for the people to do but say, ‘What has been, has been,’ and start life anew with what was left.

Only here and there, in the great silence, a woman wept quietly for her husband or son. Here and there, in a bloodstained corner, a woman burned paper money and clothing. The smoke ascended like a prayer from the smouldering city.