Hemmelrich stepped up to him. The child, up there, cried out anew.
“The kid is answering you, said Hemmelrich. “Is that enough? What in hell would you do with the kid who’s going to croak and the woman who is moaning up there — not too loud,so as not to disturb us? …”
The almost hateful voice was indeed that of the face with the broken nose, the deep-set eyes which the vertical light replaced by two black stains.
“Each one has his job, answered Kyo. “The records also are necessary…. Katov and I will do. Let’s go and get some fellows (we’ll find out on the way whether we attack tomorrow or not) and I. ”
“They may discover the corpse at the hotel, you see, said Katov.
“Not before dawn. Ch’en locked the door. They don’t make the rounds.
“P’rhaps he had made an engagement.
“At this hour? Not very likely. Whatever happens, the essential thing is to have the ship change its anchorage: so if they try to reach it, they will lose at least three hours before finding it. It’s at the end of the port.
“Where do you want to have it moved?
“Into the port itself. Not to a dock of course. There are hundreds of steamers. Three hours lost at least. At least. '
“The capt’n wiU be suspicious. ”
Katov’s face almost never expressed his feelings: the ironic gayety remained. At this moment, only the tone of his voice betrayed his anxiety-all the more markedly.
“I know a specialist in the business of firearms, said Kyo. “With him the captain will feel confident. We don’t have much money, but we can pay a commission.. I think we’re agreed: we’ll use the paper to get on board, and we’ll manage after that.
Katov shrugged his shoulders as if to signify that this was obvious. He slipped on his blouse, which he never buttoned at the neck, handed Kyo the sport- jacket hanging on a chair; both shook Hemmelrich’s hand warmly. Pity would only have humiliated him more. They went out.
They left the avenue immediately, entered the Chinese city.
Low clouds heavily massed, tom in places, left the last stars visible now only in the depth of their rifts. The movement of the clouds animated the darkness, now lighter and now more intense, as if immense shadows had come, fitfully, to intensify the night. Katov and Kyo were wearing sport shoes with crepe soles, and could hear their own steps only when they slipped in the mud; in the direction of the concessions-the enemy-a light outlined the roofs. Slowly ^^ng with the long wail of a siren, the wind which brought the subdued rumble of the city in state of siege and the whisdes of launches
q
retu^rning to the warships, passed over the dismal electric bulbs at the ends of blind alleys and lanes; around them crumbling walls emerged from empty darkness, revealed with all their blemishes by that unflinching light from which a sordid eternity seemed to emanate. Hidden by those walls, half a million men: those of the spinning- mills, those who had worked sixteen hours a day since childhood, the people of ulcers, of scoliosis, of famine. The globes which protected the electric bulbs became misty, and in a few minutes the great rain of China, furious, headlong, took possession of the city.
“A good district/’ thought Kyo. Since he had started to prepare the insurrection, over a month ago, working from committee to committee, he had ceased to see the streets: he no longer walked in the mud, but on a map. The scratching of millions of small daily lives disappeared, crushed by another life. The concessions, the rich quarters, with their rain-washed gratings at the ends of the streets, existed now only as menaces, barriers, long prison walls without windows; these atrocious quarters, on the contrary-the ones in which the shock troops were the most numerous, were alive with the quivering of a multitude lying in wait. At the turn of a lane his eyes were suddenly flooded by the lights of a wide street; veiled by the beating rain it preserved nevertheless in his mind a horizontal perspective, for it would be necessary to attack it against rifles, machine guns that fire horizontally. After the failure of the February uprisings, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party had intrusted Kyo with the coordination of the insurrectional forces. I n each of these silent streets in which the outline of the houses disappeared under the downpour that carried a smell of smoke, the number of the militants had been doubled. Kyo had asked that it be increased from 2,ooo to 5,ooo, and the military direction had succeeded within the month. But they did not possess two hundred rifles. (And there were three hundred rifles on the Shrmtung that slept with one eye out there on the choppy river.) Kyo had organized one hundred and ninety-two combat groups of about twenty-five men each, all provided with leaders; these leaders alone were armed.
They passed in front of a public garage full of old trucks transformed into buses. Al the garages were “marked. The military direction had constituted a staff, the assembly of the party had elected a central committee; from the moment the insurrection broke out, it would be necessary to keep them in contact with the shock groups. Kyo had created a first liaison detachment of a hundred and twenty cyclists; at the firing of the.first shots, eight groups were to occupy the garages, take possession of the autos. The leaders of these groups had already visited the garages and would have no trouble finding them. Each of the other leaders, for the last ten days, had been studying the quarter where he was to.fight. How many visitors, this very day, had entered the principal buildings, asked to see a friend who was unknown there, chatted, offered tea before leaving? How many workers, in spite of the beating downpour, were repairing roofs? All positions of any value for the street- fighting had been reconnoitered; the best firing-positions marked in red on the plans, in the headquarters of the shock groups. What Kyo knew of the underground life of the insurrection helped him to guess what he did not know; something which was infinitely bey him was coming from the great slashed wings of Chapei and Pootung, covered with factories and wretchedness, to make the enormous ganglia of the center burst; an invisible horde animated the night.
“Tomorrow?” said Kyo.
Katov hesitated, stopped the swinging of his large hands. No, the question was not addressed to him. To no one.
They walked in silence. The shower, little by little, died down to a drizzle; the tattoo of the rain upon the roofs diminished, and the black street became filled with the bubbling of the streams in the gutters.
Their facial muscles relaxed; then discovering the street as it appeared to the eyes-long, black, indifferent — it struck Kyo as being an image of his past, so great was the obsession which urged him forward.
“Where do you think Ch’en went? ” he asked. “He said he wouldn't go to see my father before four. To sleep? ”
An incredulous admiration lurked in his question.
“Don’t know.. To a whorehouse, perhaps. He doesn't get drunk.”
They reached a shop: Shia, Lamp Dealer. As everywhere, the shutters were fastened. The door was opened. A hideous little Chinaman stood before them, his figure cutting across the dim light from within: with the halo surrounding his head his slightest movement caused an effect of oily light to slip down over his thick nose studded with pimples. The globes of hundreds of storm- lanterns hanging in rows extending to the invisible back end of the shop, reflected the flames of two lighted lamps standing on the counter.
“Well? ” said Kyo.
Shia looked at him, rubbing his hands unctuously. He turned round without speaking, made a few steps, rummaged in some hiding-place. The grating of his fingernail on a piece of tin set Katov's teeth on edge; but already he was re^^^g, his braces sliding off his shoulders. He read the paper he was bringing, his head lighted from below, almost glued to one of the lamps. It was a report of the military organization which was working with the railroad-workers. The reenforcements which were defending Shanghai against the revolutionaries were coming from Nanking: the railroad-workers had declared a strike; the White Guards and the soldiers of the governmental army were forcing those whom they could seize to run the military trains under penalty of death.