Эптон Синклер - Oil!

Bertie was furious, of course; she didn’t dare say much to Dad, for the old man was still the boss, and would tell her “where to get off.” She took it out on Bunny, storming at him, because he was the one who might have saved Dad from this dangerous vamp. Bunny couldn’t help laughing, because Mrs. Olivier was so far from the type which the Hollywood directors had taught him to recognize: a stoutish, elderly lady, sweet and sentimental, with a soft, caressing voice—it was too funny to listen to her coo to the fierce and surly Indian chief, “Now, Red Wolf in the Rain, are you going to be nice to us this evening? We are so glad to hear you again! Captain Ross’s little grandson is here, and wants you to tell us if the faces of the redmen are white in your happy world.”

Bunny was taking Vee about to see Paris; a city which was exhibiting to the world the moral collapse of capitalist imperialism. In the theatres of this culture centre you might see a stage crowded with naked women, their bodies painted every color of the rainbow; some of them died of the poisoning which this treatment inflicted upon the system, but meantime the war for democracy was justified. While Bunny was there, the artists of the city took offense because the managers of the underground railway objected to an obscene advertisement; to express their scorn of censorship, some hundreds of men and women emerged at dawn, having torn off their clothing in drunken orgies, and invaded the subway cars entirely naked. These beauty-creators and guides of the future held a festival once every year, the Quatres Arts Ball, a famous event to which Vee, as a visiting artist, was welcome; and here, when the revels were at their height, you might stroll about a vast hall, and see, upon platforms set against the walls, the actual enactment of every variety of abnormal vice which human degeneracy had been able to conceive.

With the time he had left from such diversions, Bunny was preparing for “The Young Student” a moving protest against the Roumanian White Terror. He left this nearly completed manuscript on the writing table in his hotel room, and when he came back it was gone, and inquiries among the hotel staff brought no information. Two days later Bertie came to him with another tantrum; she knew all the contents of his manuscript and what shame he was bringing upon their heads! “So Eldon’s been setting spies on me!” exclaimed Bunny, ready to get hot himself; but Bertie, said rubbish, Eldon had nothing to do with it, it was the French secret service. Did he imagine for a moment the government was failing to keep track of Bolshevik propaganda? Or that they would let him use their country as a centre of plotting against the peace of Europe?

Bunny wanted to know, were they so silly as to imagine they could keep him from writing home what he had learned in Vienna? He would do the article over, and find ways to get it to America in spite of all the spies. Then Bertie actually broke down and wept; of all countries for him to pick out—Roumania! Here she had been pulling wires to get Eldon appointed to a high diplomatic post, with the combined influence of Verne in Washington and Prince Marescu in Bucharest; and now Bunny came along and smeared them with his filth!

And more than that! Blind fool, couldn’t he see that Marescu was interested in Vee? Did he want to give her up to him? The prince would of course hear about this matter through the French government, which was arming Roumania against Russia. Suppose he were to come back to Paris and challenge Bunny to a duel? The young smart-aleck answered, “We’ll fight with tennis rackets!”

Matters came to a climax. A letter for Bunny, bearing a French stamp, but in a familiar handwriting that made his pulses jump. He tore it open and read: “Dear Son, I am in town for a few days and would you like to meet me? Yours for old times, Paul Watkins.”

Bunny was twenty-four years old now, but it was just the way it had been eleven years ago, there in Mrs. Groarty’s back yard, when he had left his father and run shouting, “Paul! Paul! Where are you? Please don’t go way!” Bunny had a date with Vee, but he got out of it—his sister would invite her to one of those diplomatic tea-parties where you met the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That. Then Bunny hurried off to the obscure hotel where his friend was staying.

Paul was haggard; one does not take a trip to Moscow to get fat. But his sober face was shining with a light of fanaticism—the same thing which his brother Eli called the glory of the Lord! Dad would have said there were two of them, equally crazy; but it didn’t seem that way to Bunny, who mocked at Eli’s god, but believed in Paul’s—at least enough to tremble in his presence. Paul had been living under a workers’ government again—and this time not as a wage-slave, a strike-breaker in army uniform, but as a free man, and master of the future. So now in this dingy hotel room Bunny was sitting opposite an apostle; Paul, with his sombre, determined features and toil-accustomed figure, the very incarnation of the militant working class!

And the miracles of which he had to tell were real. First of all a spiritual miracle—a hundred million people proclaiming their own sovereignty, and the downfall of masters and exploiters, kings, priests, capitalists, the whole rabble of parasites. It was a physical miracle, too, because these hundred million people controlled one-sixth of the earth’s surface, and were building a new civilization, a model for the future. They were poor, of course; they had started with a country in wreck. But what were a few years, and a little hunger, compared with the ages of torment they had survived?

Paul described the sights of Moscow. First of all, the youth movement; a whole new generation being taught to be clear-eyed and free, to face the facts of nature, and to serve the working-class, instead of climbing out upon its face and founding a line of parasites! You saw those young Communists in class-rooms, on athletic fields, in the streets—marching, singing, listening to speeches—Paul himself had talked to tens of thousands, in his little bit of Russian, and nothing had ever meant so much to him. He had but one interest for the rest of his life, to tell the young workers of America about the young workers of Russia. He began by telling Bunny!

He talked about the councils he had attended, the international gatherings where the future of the parties all over the world was charted out. Bunny of course made his protest against this. Did Paul really think it was possible for an American political party to have its course determined in a foreign country? Paul smiled and said it was hard enough—the Russian leaders couldn’t understand how far back in history America stood. But what else could you do? Either you meant to have world order, or you didn’t. If you left the party in each country to determine its own course, you were right back where you were before the war, with men calling themselves Socialists, and holding power in the name of Socialism, who were in reality patriots, ready to back the exploiters of their own land in wars against the exploiters of other lands.

That was the thing which threatened to destroy the human race; and the only way to end it was to do what the Third International was doing—have a world government and enforce its orders. The workers’ world government was located in Moscow, because elsewhere the delegates would be thrown into prison, or assassinated, as in Geneva. But before many years the Third International would hold a Congress in Berlin, and then in Paris and London, and in the end in New York. The workers of the world would send their representatives, and that Congress would give its orders, and the nations would stop their fighting, just you bet! Thus Paul: and Bunny, as usual, was swept along upon a wave of enthusiasm.