Birth of Our Power by Serge Victor

Author:Serge, Victor [Serge, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Politics
ISBN: 9781629630526
Amazon: B093XWR35G
Goodreads: 59500048
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 1931-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

Paris

A LARGE EMPTY RECTANGLE ON THE TAPESTRY OF THIS LEGATION WAITING room betrays the absence of a portrait of the Emperor. I consider for a moment that canvas turned against the wall somewhere in an attic storage room among broken-down umbrellas and faded screens. Two colonels are chatting quietly under the bare tapestry. The voyage of this canvas, by way of the service stairs, may prove rather troublesome to their destiny. Several young officers in high boots greet each other with precise bows and clicking of heels: magnificent suppleness, these vigorous bodies. St. George Crosses, cigarettes held in slender fingers, disdainful glances falling sharply in the direction of our corner. What are we doing there, in fact: me, a printer dressed up in his Sunday best and my neighbor, who introduced himself unceremoniously: “Fleischmann. And you?” More than shabby, Fleischmann: moth-eaten, and, almost, broken down. But, not quite—thanks to the old steel spring he carries somewhere in him in place of a feeling heart. The jacket, four years ago gray and well-tailored, no longer has any shape or form. Both pockets bulge: one round with a half-head of Holland cheese, easily recognizable, the other square with a book containing several bookmarks, themselves marked up in turn in a scrawling hand. His detachable celluloid collar displays a combination of rancid yellows and dubious whites bordering on yellow. A three-day-old shave, a pair of comical pincenez shored up in the middle with a piece of that black cord (known as gendarme’s thread), perched slightly askew above a Galician nose; large eyes, underlined with wrinkles, veiled by the parchment-like lids of an old night owl concealing an extraordinarily preoccupied, mobile and tenacious gaze that sticks to you, strips you bare, insistent, and then suddenly turns away. A penniless Jew, well past forty: twenty years of struggles, of poverty, of lectures in the co-operatives of the rue Mouffetard and the clubs of Whitechapel, of illegal correspondence with the homeland. I am guessing at this past, for our conversation is practical. I am “going home” too. I want to go home in order “to fight,” an official formula which fools no one. We will be fighting in any case, but not in the manner in which these old colonels understand the word. So we are in agreement: Let’s have them receive us together.

Four paces across the carpet and the décor changes. Décor, for here everything is as in a stage play, from the sober politeness of the officer offering us his leather armchairs with a gesture to our circumspect manner. The officer listens to us amicably, his gaze gliding over my necktie and Fleischmann’s in turn, which probably remind him of the realistic details in naturalist novels. A handsome chronometer marks the times of his appointments on his wrist. The harmony of style between his silver epaulets and his American-style mustache, trimmed every morning, is obvious. St. George Cross. Harmonious timbre of a charming conversationalist’s voice: “Gentlemen, or rather comrades …” (The mocking tone echoes

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