The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski [91]
The discovery of that terrible truth would strike them down with a blow worse than a father’s death or the last glimpse of his lifeless body. People had always been comforted by their belief in God, and they usually died before their children. Such was the law of nature. Their only consolation was the knowledge that, after their death, God would guide their children through their lives on this earth, just as the children found their only solace in the thought that God would greet their parents beyond the grave. God was always in people’s minds, even when He Himself was too busy to listen to their prayers and keep track of their accumulated days of indulgence.
Eventually Gavrila’s lessons filled me with a new confidence. In this world there were realistic ways of promoting goodness, and there were people who had dedicated their whole lives to it. These were the Communist Party members. They were selected from the whole population and given special training, set particular tasks to perform. They were prepared to endure hardship, even death, if the cause of the working people required it. The Party members stood at that social summit from which human actions could be seen not as meaningless jumbles, but as part of a definite pattern. The Party could see farther than the best sniper. That was why every member of the Party not only knew the meaning of events, but also shaped them and directed them toward new aims. That was why no Party member was ever surprised at anything. The Party was to the working people what the engine is to a train. It led others toward the best goals, it pointed out shortcuts to an improvement of their lives. And Stalin was the engineer at the throttle of this engine.
Gavrila always returned hoarse and exhausted from Party meetings which were long and tempestuous. The Party members evaluated each other at these frequent meetings; each of them would criticize the others and himself, give praise where due, or point out shortcomings. They were particularly aware of events around them, and they always endeavored to forestall the harmful activities of people under the influence of priests and landlords. Through their constant watchfulness the members of the Party became tempered like steel. Among the Party members there were young and old, officers and enlisted men. The strength of the Party, as Gavrila explained, lay in its ability to rid itself of those who, like a jammed or crooked wheel on a cart, impeded progress. This self-purging was done at the meetings. It was there that members acquired the necessary toughness.
There was about it something immensely captivating. One looked at a man dressed like everyone else, working and fighting as they all did. He seemed to be just another soldier in a great army. But he might be a member of the Party; in a pocket of his uniform, over his heart, he might be carrying his Party card. Then he changed in my eyes as did sensitized paper in the darkroom of the regimental photographer. He became one of the best, one of the chosen, one of those who knew more than the others. His judgment carried more force than a box of explosives. Others grew silent when he spoke, or spoke more carefully when he listened.
In the Soviet world a man was rated according to others’ opinion of him,