Birth of Our Power (23 page)

We philosophize. The sirens have stopped wailing. The night—like other nights. Gray clouds move slowly across a background of stars. Explosions crackle on endlessly. We see nothing out of the ordinary. Yet somewhere, up there above these clouds, among the phosphorescent shadows crossed by fresh gusts from distant continents, men dressed in leather are trying to fix this city in their bombsights. And explosive blossoms, forming concentric circles in the middle of the sky, search for them—hunters made prey—in turn. This game lasts about thirty minutes.

Broux is talking about his former shopmates (he is a cabinetmaker); about the duties, totally ridiculous duties, which he performs at Vincennes; about the manifesto,
To Mothers,
published by a few comrades who have just been arrested, a rather mediocre piece of work. “As if the mothers could do something about it!” And, suddenly uncovering the glowing bowl of his pipe, he concludes:

“It is impossible to escape.”

A prison, this city, this country, the war, Europe.

“And America, Japan, New Zealand, Mozambique, Borneo! A prison—the universe. Even in the brush, in the untamed jungle, they count out money, bend men's backs under the rod, obey orders, go about their dirty jobs. Everywhere it is necessary to undergo fourteen hours of pain, of servitude, or of degradation each day, depending on the circumstances, in order to reach the fifteenth, which may be spent with the great Walt or old Elisée. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones,” says Broux, “for the intensity of the work is less crushing in the workshops than in the factories. I am not totally brutalized in the evening. Those who work in factories, on the line, come out exhausted in the evening, good for the movies, old boy … And all washed up at the age of forty: good for the little café …”

He who tries to save his life will lose it. A handful, out of thousands, get rich, discover the other side of the world through the windows of sleeping cars. The money costs them dearly, and there is always the risk of never making it. To step over the bodies of a hundred others in order to become one of those thickheaded scum, the
nouveau-riche?
To grab up sous, then francs, then gold louis out of the misery of other men and then to say that the world is well made, when everyone who fills his lungs with the fresh air of the beach is followed by an invisible train of
men and women bent under their tasks, imprisoned by the machines as in a vise, imprisoned by hunger, by love, by the wish to live, for the wheels are grinding perfectly when all a man's desires fall back on him with the weight of chains?

Civilization reaches its high point in this senseless combat above the Louvre, which bombs that are in no sense “strays” may very well be destroying at this very moment. The bombing plane closes the cycle that began with the victory at Samothrace. Masterpieces of ingenuity, summing up the work of all races in all times—millions of men suffering, striving, daring—seek each other out, with the greatest human lucidity, in order to destroy each other; yet it's only an artillery duel. And the essential business of this city consists in turning out shells.

“It's a question to ask ourselves if we're not mad. But who are the madmen, in God's name? Those who wonder about it, or the others? If we ever began to speak out loud, what would they do with us, tell me?”

Broux has stopped believing in rebellion since he saw rebels gouging their money out of the blood of old landladies and then being pushed off to the guillotine like the monsters who strangle little girls.
⁹
“There are stray forces, like your friend from Haiti, the landowner at Grande Saline. They are wasted forces. It's mathematical: either they adjust or they will be cut down. Your Negro was born to leave his skull, more or less full of holes, among a whole pile of other skulls, under a monument to be erected by the cannon makers later on …”

The working class does every kind of job, except its own, without, when all is said and done, being aware of its own existence. How can you expect it to emerge from this nullity when every morning they measure out the fodder for its belly and the fodder for its mind: so much bread and meat on the ration card, so much poison for the mind. Tell me, do you remember the myth of the general strike? A real myth, right? And of the “insurrection against the war?” Those who used to demand it are now demanding that they bomb Munich to wreak vengeance on the Pinacothek for the risks run by the Louvre, about which they don't give a damn anyway. The Kaffir warrior who lay sleeping within their souls has awakened: “An eye for an eye …” We will all end up blind, for they will put out our eyes too.

Somewhere I read a report about the
Quinze-Vingts
Hospital. There are several badly wounded men living there who have, no more arms or legs, and who are blind.

Haven't you ever been grazed by a bus in the street and secretly wished for an accident? When you go home after having done some dirty job for a hundred sous. When you have cheated a comrade for fifty francs, because it was the last thing you could think of before throwing yourself into the Seine or cutting the throat of an old gentlemen going home late at night? Haven't you ever looked at things and told yourself coldly that you would rather not be there any more? I can tell you how refreshing it is. If you are passing through the war in order to get to the revolution, then do your filthy soldier's job as well as you can and don't weigh yourself down with scruples; that's my advice. After Factory Man, halfway between Shantytown Man and Barroom Man, Trench Man is still a fine specimen of humanity. Just tell yourself that life—after what they've made of it—is not such a great good that it is a crime to take it or an evil to lose it.

The bombardment dies in the distance and disappears. We do not know that a house has just been split in two and that a nestful of crushed children is struggling under the wreckage. The silence has nearly the perfection of infinitude. We do not know that a Gotha is flaming in the fields ten miles from here; that two human forms, instantaneously emptied of human content, are being thrown up, cradled, rolled, and cast down there by the sumptuous flames. Eyes which were full of this night, of these stars, of that anxiety of battle when, an hour ago, you pointed out to me with your hand the two fraternal portraits hanging behind us, have seen the world come to an end in a blaze of fire like a collision of stars. It is nothing; exactly nothing. Newspapers: “Last night's Gotha raid was not marked by any notable incidents. The damage was insignificant.”

“In short,” says Broux, “impossible to live. I withdraw into my corner and I read. I try to live a little anyway, but unnoticed, in order to be forgiven for that. What is to be done? the impossible?”

The revolution? Who will make it? Cannon, machines, poison gas, money, the masses. Masses of men like you, yanked bodily out of their submissiveness in the end, without at first understanding anything about it—by cannon, machines, poison gas, money. Don't you see, Broux, your
two great old men, Walt and Elisée, are not good masters. I could almost hate them, I who love them. Their fault is in being admirable. They arouse us to the impossible; they almost make it possible. It is not for us to be admirable! We must be precise, clear-sighted, strong, unyielding, armed: like machines, you see. To set up a vast enterprise for demolition and to throw ourselves into it with our whole being because we know that we cannot live as long as the world has not been made over. We need technicians, not great men or admirable men. Technicians specialized in the liberation of the masses, licensed demolition experts who will have scorn for the idea of personal escapism because their work will be their life. To learn to take the mechanism of history apart; to know how to slide in that extra little nut or bolt somewhere—as among the parts of a motor—which will blow the whole thing up. There it is. And it will cost whatever it costs.

9
   Allusion to the “Bonnot Gang” or “Tragic Bandits” of French anarchy whose fate deeply affected the young Victor Serge (see translator's biographical note Victor Serge, page 220).

“
WHAT? YOU, HERE?
”
EXCLAIMED PHILBERT, STANDING ON THE EDGE OF THE
sidewalk of the rue de Buci, a newspaper in his hand. “Will you have some coffee? One should always appreciate coffee in troubled times. Humanity is wailing and suffering: let us sip the delectable mocha slowly; mine will be the egoist's cup, yours whatever you wish; but it will leave the same bittersweet taste in our mouths.”

He took me by the arm and we went into a bar. I am rather fond of Philbert, who is nicknamed, depending on one's mood, Fil-en-quatre, Fil-à-l'anglaise, Fil-à-la-patte, for he makes no bones about being a bastard and is agreeably intelligent. He is looking rather well, in spite of having the pasty look of a night owl who must have carried some rather nasty diseases; in fact, he gives an almost elegant appearance, in spite of a certain pimpish air about him. His handshake, cordial, moist, and flabby is the handshake of a good pal who is “a bit of an s.o.b.” His brown eyes—the eyes of a native of the Belleville quarter—make it easy for him to pass for Spanish. In private, he tells me that he is a draft dodger and performs certain vague and lucrative duties in the market aux Halles at night. The charm of his conversation come from a certain topsy-turvy cynical idealism.

“So you ran out on them, eh, your half-baked revolutionaries? You were perfectly right, my friend, I would have done the same. It's much better, I assure you, to work the rackets in Paris, even in these terrible times, than to set up barricades under the Mediterranean sun. Is Lejeune still holding up? Would you like a job in our combine: inspecting iceboxes? You'd be able to have that ideal relationship that Don Juan never had: the eternal female and refrigerated beef from La Plata. General coefficient: the war.

“No! Really? You're leaving for Russia? Been mobilized? You must have been broke for the last six weeks; or maybe it's your wife who's
turned you into a neurotic … For after all, you know very well that one should always be in favor of revolutions—when they happen—try to profit from them, and avoid them like tornadoes. Besides, what could be more comfortable than a decaying world?”

There is, however, something in his mocking way of undressing ideas, like a tiny diamond in a lump of cow dung … His normally deceitful look, belying his biting words, hesitates at times, timid, ready to steal away, ready to yield to a private gloom. He probably doesn't feel very well, alone by himself.

“Where are you staying? With Broux? A good man. But a jerk. All those important problems must give him a headache; the more he thinks, the stupider he gets and the prouder he is of himself. A kind of onanist, like all thinkers.”

As we are about to separate, Phil adds:

“It's a quiet spot, but watch out anyway. Fugitives cast two shadows: their own and the stool pigeon's.”

Suzy, for whom he had been waiting, comes toward us through the street where the sunlight dances. A double ray glimmers under the shade of the brim of her felt bonnet. Our three shadows converge into one, star-shaped shadow.

Suzy, with her pretty gray-gloved hand around Philbert's arm, looks at me and admires him. Her eyes seem to say to me: “Isn't he wonderful, and so intelligent, and so brave, my lover, if you only knew! And there are mysteries in his life …” Mysteries like the ones in well-made novels. A fragile, almost sickly bliss radiates from this couple.

“Come over to our house for dinner, tonight,” Philbert proposes. “You'll see what kind of housekeeper my baby is. You should spend the night with us. You know, a fugitive ought to sleep out from time to time, just on principle. You never know when will be the right time.”

Tempted, I refuse. I have an appointment. Phil inquires: business or pleasure?—and as I hesitate to answer, he makes a hasty guess: “Oh, well then that's sacred. Good luck.”