Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

Last month the whole city was for the united revolutionary army; the dictator had represented the foreigner, and the city hated foreigners; the immense petty bourgeoisie was democratic, but not Communist; this time the army was there, menacing, not in flight towards Nanking; Chiang Kai-shek was not the executioner of February, but a national hero, except among Communists. All against the police last month; the Communists against the army today. The city would be neutral, rather favorable to the general. Scarcely would they be able to defend the workers' quarters; Chapei perhaps? And then?. If Clappique had been misinformed, if the reaction delayed a month, the Military Committee, Kyo, Katov would organize two hundred thousand men. The new shock groups, composed of thoroughgoing Communists, were taking the Unions in hand; but at least a month would be necessary to create an organization sufficiently strong to maneuver the masses.

And the problem of firearms remained unsolved. What he wanted to know was not whether the two or three thousand guns they possessed ought to be surrendered, but how the masses were to be armed in case of an attack by Chiang Kai-shek. As long as discussions continued, the men would be disarmed. And if the Military Committee, on the one hand, insisted on being given arms, no matter what happened, the Central Committee, knowing that the Trotskyist theses were attacking the union with the Kuomintang, was terrified by any attitude which might, rightly or wrongly, seem to be linked to that of the Russian Opposition.

Now Kyo could just make out the dim lights of the Military Committee headquarters, through the fog that had not yet lifted, and that obliged him to walk on the sidewalk to avoid the passing cars. Opaque mist and night: he had to light his cigarette-lighter to see his watch. He was a few minutes late. Deciding to hurry, he slipped his arm into May’s; she pressed gently against him. After a few steps, he felt in May’s body a jerk and a sudden limpness: she was falling, slipping in front of him. “May!” He stumbled, fell on aU fours, and, the moment he was starting to get up, received a violent blow from a bludgeon in the nape of the neck. He fell forward on top of her, full length.

Three policemen stepped out from a building and joined the one who had struck the blow. An empty car stood parked a short distance away. They bundled Kyo into it and drove off, binding him only after they were under way.

When May came to (the jerk that Kyo had felt had been caused by a blow below the ribs) a picket of Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers was guarding the entrance to the Military Committee headquarters; because of the mist, she perceived them only when she was almost up to them. She continued to walk in the same direction (she was breathing with difficulty, and was suffering from the blow), and hurried back to Gisors’ house.

As soon as he had learned that a bomb had been thrown at Chiang Kai-shek, Hemmelrich had run to get news. He had been told that the general was killed and that the murderer had gotten away; but, before the overturned car, the torn-off hood, he had seen Ch’en’s corpse on the sidewalk-small and bloody, already drenched by the fog-guarded by a soldier seated nearby; and had learned that the general was not in the car. Absurdly, it seemed to him that his having refused to give Ch’en shelter was one of the causes of his death; he had run to the Communist post of his quarter, in despair, and had spent an hour there vainly discussing the attempt upon Chiang Kai-shek’s life. A comrade had entered.

“The Union of the spinning-mill workers at Chapei has just been closed by Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers.”

“Didn’t the comrades resist?”

“Al who protested were immediately shot. At Chapei the militants are also being shot or their homes are b^rced down. The Municipal Government has just been dispersed. All the Unions are being closed.”

No orders from the Central Committee. The married comrades had immediately run home, to save their wives and children through flight.

The moment Hemmelrich stepped outside, he heard volleys of gun-fire; he risked being recognized, but he must at all costs get the child and the woman off to safety. Before him, through the fog, passed two armored cars and trucks loaded with Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers. In the distance the volleys continued; and others, close by.

No soldiers in the Avenue of the Two Republics, nor in the street where he had his shop. No: no more soldiers. The door of the shop was open. He ran in: on the floor, heaps of smashed records scattered in large pools of blood. The shop had been “cleaned” with grenades, like a trench. The woman was slumped against the counter, almost crouching, her whole chest the color of a wound. In a corner, a child’s arm; the hand, thus isolated, appeared even smaller. “If only they are dead!” thought Hemmelrich. He was especially afraid of having to stand by and watch a slow death, powerless, only able to suffer, as usual-more afraid even than of those cases riddled with grenade fragments and spattered with red spots. Through his shoe-soles he could feel the stickiness of the floor. “Their blood.” He remained motionless, no longer daring to stir, looking, looking. … He discovered at last the body of the child, near the door which hid it. He was scarcely breathing, overwhelmed by the smell of the spilt blood. In the distance, two grenades exploded. “No question of burying them. ” He locked the door with a key, stood there before the shop. “If they come and recognize me, I’m done for.” But he could not leave.

He knew he was suffering, but a halo of indifference surrounded his grief, the indifference which follows upon an illness or a blow in the head. No grief would have surprised him: on the whole, fate this time had dealt him a better blow than usual. Death did not astonish him: it was no worse than life. The thing that appalled him was the thought that behind this door there had been as much suffering as there was blood. This time, however, destiny had played badly: by tearing from him everything he still possessed, it freed him.

He entered the shop again, shut the door. In spite of the catastrophe, of the sensation of having the ground give way under his feet, leaving nothing but empty space, he could not banish from his mind the atrocious, weighty, profound joy of liberation. With horror and satisfaction he felt it rumble within him like a subterranean river, grow nearer; the corpses were there, his feet which were stuck to the floor were glued by their blood, nothing could be more of a mockery than these murders-especially that of the sick child: he seemed even more innocent than the dead woman;-but now, he was no longer impotent. Now, he too could kill. It came to him suddenly that life was not the only mode of contact between human beings, that it was not even the best; that he could know them, love them, possess them more completely in vengeance than in life. Again he became aware of his shoe-soles, stuck to the floor, and tottered: muscles were not aided by thought. But an intense exaltation was overwhelming him, the most powerful that he had ever known; he abandoned himself to this frightful intoxication with entire consent. “One can kiU with love. With love, by God!” he repeated, striking the counter with his fist-against the universe, perhaps. He immediately withdrew his hand, his throat tight, on the verge of sobbing: the counter was also bloody. He looked at the brown blot on his hand which was trembling, as if shaken by an attack of nerves: little flakes were falling from it. He wanted to laugh, to weep, to find relief from the awful pressure on his chest. Nothing stirred, and the immense indifference of the world settled, together with the unwavering light, upon the records, the dead, the blood. The sentence: “They wrenched off the members of the victims with red-hot tongs,” rose and fell in his brain; it was the first time it came back to him since he had read it at school; but he felt that it somehow meant that he must leave, that he too must tear himself away.