lad near Piet went dull red. Piet good-naturedly jerked his elbow into him, and put up his hand like a schoolboy and said: ‘I haven’t done anything yet.’
At which the African, Elias Phiri, nodded in reply to Andrew’s glances and said: ‘I’m ignorant of these matters. But I am very interested.’
They regarded him with a warm sympathy: after all, it was on behalf of his people they were all here. He accepted their glances with a broad smile.
‘Now we all know where we are,’ said Andrew. ‘The lads here have had experience in Britain. But it does no harm to have the principles stated.’
‘None at all,’ agreed Anton quietly, holding them with his eyes, one after the other. He began: ‘Comrades, this is the dawn of human history. We have the supreme good fortune and the responsibility to be living at a time when mankind takes the first great step forward from the barbarity and chaos of unplanned production to the sunlight of socialism – from the babyhood of our species to its manhood. Upon us, upon people like us all over the world, the organized members of the communist party, depends the future of mankind, the future of our species.’
He spoke slowly, drawing the sentences out one after another from his brain where they were stored waiting, and handed them to the listeners, his voice measured, unhurrying, not cold so much as anonymous.
Martha found herself leaning forward, tense, on her patch of hard bench. When she looked around, the others were in the same condition of joy and release. It seemed to her this unhurrying voice was cutting the past from her, that ugly past which Maynard had described that afternoon as a record of misery, brutality and stupidity, ‘a bunch of knaves administering a pack of fools’. It was all finished. She was feeling a comprehensive compassion: for the pitiful past, and for the innumerable unhappy people of the world whom she was pledging herself to deliver.
Also, the calm voice was linking her with those parts of her childhood she still owned, the moments of experience which seemed to her enduring and true; the moments of illumination and belief.
It said: ‘Comrades, the infinite complexity of events, each acting and interacting, so that there is no phenomenon in the world which is not linked with and affects every other – in nature nothing happens alone …’ and she was returned to a knowledge of the thrust and push of knitting natural forces which had grappled with the substance of her own flesh, to become part of it, in the moments of illumination in her past.
It said: ‘Comrades, men make their history …’ and she felt her shoulders straighten, with an influx of strength, as if she had been given a gage of trust. So had she felt years ago when the Cohen boys at the station put books into her hands, as if they were giving her a key and trusting her to use it well.
It said: ‘Comrades, the bourgeois illusion of eternity, the illusion that the present system of government is permanent …’ and the terrible fear that haunted her, the nightmare of recurring and fated evil was pushed by the words into a place where it was no longer dangerous.
It said: ‘The motives of men making history in the past were often good; but the ideology of reformers often had no connection with what they actually accomplished; this is the first time in history that men can accomplish what they mean to accomplish; for Marxism is a key to the understanding of phenomena; we, in our epoch, see an end to that terrible process, shown for instance in the French Revolution, when men went to their deaths in thousands for noble ends – in their case, liberty, fraternity and equality, when what they were actually doing was to destroy one class and give another the power to rob and destroy. For the first time consciousness and accomplishment are linked, go hand in hand, supplement each other …’ And Martha felt as if a light had been turned on for her: she might still admire the great men she had been used to admire; they had been misguided, that was all. And she herself need not dwindle out (like her father, for instance) savage with the knowledge of belief betrayed. There could be no more misguided passion for the good, or soured idealism.
She was swung, because of the calm and responsible certainty of Anton Hesse’s voice, on to a state of quiet elation and purpose. She knew that everyone in the room felt as she did. She was linked with them all, and from the deepest needs of her being. The people in the room, listening, exchanged small trusting smiles with each other; eyes, meeting, pledged faith with each other and with all humanity.
Anton Hesse spoke for more than three-quarters of an hour. It would not be said of him that he was carried away – he was not; but his words had the power and passion of the great men from whom he had taken them; and the confiding silence of the fifteen people listening released in him a faith in them which had most certainly been missing when he had begun to speak. His very pale-blue eyes, shining from the white light over his head, moved from one face to another – not in any sort of appeal; but in certainty, because the words he used were a proof of goodness and trust.
He finished with a quiet: ‘And now, comrades, I have laid before you the barest bones of that structure of thought, Marxism. You must not imagine that I have done more than sketch in an outline. If we are to be serious, we must study. We must study hard.’
He let his shoulders loosen and his head drop to his papers, which he shuffled together, as if anxious to be off.
‘I should like to congratulate Comrade Anton on the best brief outline of Marxism I have heard,’ said Andrew. ‘I suggest we appoint him forthwith as Education Officer.’
‘Agreed,’ said Jasmine promptly.
Anton said patiently and ironically: ‘Comrades, may I point out that in the Party one does not appoint an Education Officer, or any other kind of officer on a wave of enthusiasm.’
‘Quite right,’ said Andrew. ‘I apologize.’
‘Is there anyone here who does not want to join the group?’ asked Jasmine.
No one spoke. After a moment it was seen that they were all looking at the African Elias. He smiled and nodded. Andrew said: ‘I think I can speak for the lads from the camp.’ The four airmen with him all nodded.
‘So there’s no one who wants to stay out. Well, of course not,’ said Marjorie excitedly.
One of the airmen, a young Scotsman with flaming hair, turned red and said with a consciously rueful despair: ‘But man, I’m no scholar. If it is going back to school, then I’m willing enough. I left my schooling at fourteen, but I’m an ordinary working lad, that’s all.’
At which the urchin Tommy Brown said: ‘I think the same. I’m not up to all this. I mean, I liked what you said, but I left my schooling at fifteen.’
Anton sat up, fixing his eyes first on the young Scotsman, then on the young Colonial. He said: ‘Comrades, do I understand you to say that the workers are not capable of studying? Of education?’
‘Ah, heck now,’ said the Scotsman. ‘No one says a word against the workers while I’m by. But all this is too high-falutin’ for me, it’s the truth.’
‘No, it is not the truth,’ said Anton Hesse. He leaned forward, holding Murdoch Mathews from the slums of Glasgow with his eyes, while the young man writhed under the cold stare. ‘Comrade, when you speak like that, it means that the propaganda of the capitalist class that the workers are not fit for the best, has affected you. You are a victim of their propaganda. As a worker, you are fit only for the best.’
Murdoch, having tried to exchange humorously desperate glances with Tommy the urchin, who was too serious to be humorous, said: ‘For all that, I don’t understand half of what you say, comrade.’ His tone was still weakly rueful. Under the peremptory urging of Anton’s eyes he sat up, however, and said differently, in a manly responsible tone: ‘But I’m willing. I’m willing to learn if you are willing to teach.’
Comrade Anton turned to Tommy. ‘Comrade Tommy, did you really not understand what I said?’
‘I understood the general thing,’ said Tommy apologetically. ‘But a lot of the words you used were too long.’
‘Then