Erik Dorn Part 37

CHAPTER VII

The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world--the dark, furtive hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day in the streets of Munich. Working men with guns. A sweep of spike-haired, deep-eyed troglodytes from the underworld of labor.

Factories, shops, and alleys vomited them forth. Farm hovels and stinking bundles of houses sent them singing and roaring down the forbidden avenues, past the forbidden sanctuaries of satrap and burgher.

From behind curtained windows the upper world looked on with amazement and disgust. A topsy-turvy April morning. A Spring day gone mad. Here were the ma.s.ses celebrated in pamphlet and soap-box oration. An unG.o.dly spectacle, an overturning. Grinning earth faces, roaring earth voices come swaggering into the hallowed precincts of civilization. Workingmen with guns marching to take possession of the world. An old tableau decked with new phrases--the underfed barbarian at the gate of the grainary.

The singing and the roaring continued through the morning.

"_Es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ _Es lebe das Rate Republik!_ _Hoch!_ _die soviet von Bayern_ ... _Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"

From the twisting, blackened streets, "_Hoch!_" Men and women squeezing aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "_Hoch!_ _Hoch!_"

from faces cl.u.s.tered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in the squares.

Red flags, red placards like a swarm of confetti on the walls and in the air. A holiday war.... The morning hours marched away.

With noon, a silence gradually darkened the scene. A silence of shuffling feet and murmuring tongues. The revolution had sung its songs.

An end of songs and cheerings. Drifting, silent ma.s.ses. An ominous, enigmatic sweep of faces. Red placards under foot in cubist designs down the streets.

The afternoon waned, the hundred thousands closed in. Darkness was coming and the pack was welding itself together. Rifles were beginning.

Machine-guns were beginning. Holiday was over. Quieter streets. The orators become audible. Still faces, raised and listening. The orators had news to give.... One of the garrisons had gone over to the soviets.

Two garrisons had vanished. Treachery. A long murmur ... treachery. The armies of General Hoffmann were marching upon Munich ... twenty kilometers from Munich. They would arrive in the night. ... "We will show them, comrades, whether the revolution has teeth to bite as well as a song to sing."

A growl was running through the twilight.... _Es lebe das Rate Republik!_ A fierce whisper of voices. Workingmen looking to their guns, ma.s.sing about the government buildings. A new war minister in the uniform of a marine, speaking from a balcony. Workingmen with guns, listening. Women drifting back to the hovels and stinking bundles of houses. In the cafes, satraps and burghers eating amid a suppressed clamor of whispers, plans. The foolishness was almost over. The armies of General Hoffmann were coming ... Twenty kilometers out.... Arrive at night. The corps students themselves would saber the swine out of the city....

Night. Darkened streets. Tattered patrols hurrying through mysteriously emptied highways, shouting, "Indoors! Inside, everybody!" Suddenly from a distance the bay of artillery. Workingmen with guns were storming the cannon of the artillery regiment outside the city. A haphazard cross-fire of rifles began to spit from darkened windows ... an upper world showing its teeth behind parlor barricades.

In the shadows of the ma.s.sive government buildings an army was forming.

No ranks, no officers. Easy to drift through the sunny streets singing the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ and the International ... to mooch along through the forbidden avenues dreaming in the daylight of a new world ... with red flags proclaiming the new masters of earth. Hundred thousands, then. But now, how many? Too dark to see, to count. An army, perhaps. Perhaps a handful....

Feverish salutes in the shadows.... "_Gruss Gott, genosse!_"

Was it alive? Did the revolution live? What was happening in the empty streets? Who was shooting? And the armies of Hoffmann? _Gruss Gott, genosse._ Under Rupprecht the armies had lain four years in the trenches. Great armies, swinging along like a single man, that had once battered their way almost into Paris against the English, against the French.

"_Gruss Gott, genosse._ _Hoffmann kommt_ ... _Ja wohl, Gruss Gott!_"

Now twenty kilometers away and coming down the highroad against Munich--against the drifting little cl.u.s.ters of lonely men whispering in the shadows--the great armies of the Kaiser, an iron monster clicking down the road toward Munich. Would there be artillery to meet them?

_Gruss Gott, genosse, wer shusst dort?_ No, they had only guns, old guns that might not shoot. Old knives at their belts.... Darkness and rifle-spattered silences. Where was the revolution? The shadows whispered, "_Gruss Gott...._"

The shadows began to stir. A voice was talking in the night. High up from a window. Egelhofer, the communist. No, Levine. Who? A light in the window.... Egelhofer, thin-faced, tall, black-haired. Egelhofer, the new war minister. 'Shh! what was he saying?... "_Vorwaerts, der Banhoff...._"

Yes, the armies of Hoffmann had come. The shadows stirred wildly.

Forward ... _es lebe die Welt Revolution!_ This time a battle-cry, hoa.r.s.e, shaking. Men were running. Workingmen with guns, guns that would shoot ... _"Der Banhoff ... der Banhoff...."_

The shadows were emptying themselves. A pack was running. Two abreast, three abreast, in broken strings of men. Groups, solitary figures, hatless, bellowing. The revolution was moving. The empty streets filled.

An army? A handful? Let G.o.d show in the morning. Workingmen with guns were running through the night. Munich was shaking.... "_Der Banhoff, genosse, vorwaerts!_"

The revolution was emptying itself into the great square fronting the station. Little lights twinkling outside the ancient weinstubes began to explode. There must be darkness. Pop!... pop!... a rattle of gla.s.s. A blaze of shooting. The railroad station was firing now.

"_Es lebe das Rate Republik!_" from the darkness in the streets. A sweep of figures across the open square. Arms twisting, leaping in sudden glares of flame. The revolution hurled itself with a long cry upon the barricades of thundering lead.

In the single lighted window of the government buildings a face still spoke ... _"Ich bin Egelhofer, ihr Krieg's minister ... Ich komm...."_

Waving a rifle over his head, the war minister rushed from the building.

A marine from Kiel. A new pack loosened itself from the shadows. A war minister was leading.

Moving swiftly through the streets, Dorn hurried to the seat of the new government--the Wittelbacher Palais. Von Stinnes was waiting there. He had been delayed in joining the Baron by the sudden upheaval about the hotel.

The wave had pa.s.sed. Almost safe now to skirt the scene of battle and make a try for the Palais. As he darted out of the darkened hotel entrance, the thing seemed for a moment under his nose. An oppressive intimacy of tumult.

"They're at the station," he thought. "I'll have to hurry in case they fall back."

He ran quickly in an opposite direction followed by the leap of firing.

Several blocks, and he paused. Here was safety. The revolution a good half-mile off. He walked slowly, recovering breath. The street was lighted. Shop windows blinked out upon the pavements. A few stragglers walked like himself, intent upon destinations made serious by the near sound of firing. An interesting evening, thus far. A stout, red-faced man with a heavily ornamented vest followed the figure of a woman. Dorn smiled. Biology versus politics.... "Excuse me, pretty one, you look lonely...." A charwoman. Black, sagging clothes. Dorn pa.s.sed and heard her exclaim, "Who, me? You ask me to go with you? Dear G.o.d, he asks me!

I am an honest workingwoman. Run along with you!" The woman, walking swiftly, drew alongside. She was chuckling and muttering to herself, a curious pride in her voice, "He asked me, dear G.o.d--me!"

The abrupt sound of rifle-fire around the corner startled her. Dorn halted. The woman turned toward him, puzzled.

"They are shooting a whole lot to-night," she spoke in German.

"Quite a lot," he answered.

She looked back at the red-faced man who had remained where she had left him.

"What do you think of that dunce?" she whispered, and hurried on.

Dorn followed leisurely in the direction of the Palais.

CHAPTER VIII

A rabble of dictators, ministerial fledglings, freshly sprouted governors, organizers, departmental heads, scurried through the dimly lighted corridors of the old Palais. Dorn, with the aid of a handful of communist credentials that seemed to flow endlessly from the pockets of the Baron, pa.s.sed the Palais guard--a hundred silent men squatting behind a hastily erected barricade of sandbags.

Within he stumbled upon von Stinnes. The Baron drew him into a large empty chamber.

"We must be careful," he whispered. His voice buzzed with an elation.

"Already two ministries have fallen. There is talk now of Levine. He's of the extreme left. I thought you would like to see it. It has its amusing side." He laughed softly. "I was with the men in the streets for a while. There was something there, Dorn. Life, yes ... yes ... It was amazing. But here it is different. What is it the correspondents say?

'All is confusion, there is nothing to report.' ... Yes, confusion.

There are at present three poets, one lunatic, an epileptic, four workingmen and a scientist from Vienna, and two school teachers. They are the Council of Ten. Look, there is _Muhsam,_ the one with the red vand.y.k.e. A poet. He used to recite rhymes in the Cafe Stephanie."

The red vand.y.k.e peered into the room. "Stinnes, you are wanted," he called. "I have my portfolio. I am the new minister to Russia. I leave for Moscow to-morrow."

"Congratulations!" the Baron answered.