Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler [27]
spread through the movement all over the country. The reactionary Press exploited the event with derision. The police ceased their attempts to break the strike, proclaimed their neutrality and let the harbour workers decide for themselves whether they would unload the cargo of the curious black fleet or not. The Party leadership called the strike off and gave orders to unload the cargo. They gave reasonable explanations and cunning arguments for the behaviour of the Country of the Revolution, but few were convinced. The section split; the majority of the old members left. For months the Party led the shadow of an existence; but gradually, as the industrial distress of the country grew, it regained its popularity and strength. Two years had passed. Another hungry dictatorship in the south of Europe began a war of plunder and conquest in Africa. Again the Party called for a boycott. They received an even more enthusiastic response than on the previous occasion. For this time the governments themselves in nearly every country in the world had decided to cut off the aggressor's supply of raw materials. Without raw materials and particularly without petrol, the aggressor would be lost. This was the state of affairs, when again the curious little black fleet set out on her way. The biggest of the ships bore the name of a man who had raised his voice against war and had been slain; at their mastheads waved the flag of the Revolution and in their holds they carried the petrol for the aggressor. They were only a day's journey away from this port, and Little Loewy and his friends knew as yet nothing of their approach. It was Rubashov's task to prepare them for it. On the first day he had said nothing--only felt his ground. On the morning of the second day the discussion began in the Party meeting-room. The room was big, bare,untidy and furnished with that lack of care which made the Party's offices in every town in the world look exactly alike. It was partly a result of poverty, but chiefly of an ascetic and gloomy tradition. The walls were covered with old election posters, political slogans and typed notices.In one corner stood a dusty old duplicator. In another lay a heap of old clothes destined for the families of strikers; next to them piles of yellowing leaflets and brochures. The long table consisted of two parallel planks laid over a couple of trestles. The windows were smeared with paint as in an unfinished building. Over the table a naked electric bulb hung on a cord from the ceiling, and next to it a sticky paper fly-catcher. Round the table sat hunchbacked Little Loewy, ex wrestler Paul, the writer Bill and three others. Rubashov spoke for some time. The surroundings were familiar to him; their traditional ugliness made him feel at home. In these surroundings he was again fully convinced of the necessity and utility of his mission and could not understand why, in the noisy pub the night before, he had had that feeling of uneasiness. He explained objectively and not without warmth the real state of things, without as yet mentioning the practical object for his coming. The world boycott against the aggressor had failed because of the hypocrisy and greed of the European governments. Some of them still kept up an appearance of sticking to the boycott, the others not even that. The aggressor needed petrol. In the past the Country of the Revolution had covered a considerable part of this need. If now it stopped the supplies, other countries would greedily spring into the breach: indeed they asked nothing better than to push the Country of the Revolution from the world markets. Romantic gestures of that sort would only hamper the development of industry OverThere, and with it the revolutionary movement all over the world. So the inference was clear. Paul and the three dock-hands nodded. They were slow thinkers; everything the comrade from Over There was telling them sounded quite convincing; it was only a theoretical discourse, of no immediate consequence to them. They did not see the actual point he was aiming at; none of them