But Karfeld had heard the music, and it quickened him remarkably.
‘I am an old man!’ he shouted. ‘Soon I shall be an old man. What will you say to yourselves, young men, when you wake in the morning? What will you say when you look at the American whore that is Bonn? You will say this: how long, young men, can we live without honour? You will look at your Government and say; you will look at the Sozis and say: must we follow even a dog because it is in office?’
He quoted Lear, Turner thought absurdly, and the floodlights were extinguished at one turn, at one black fall of the curtain: deep darkness filled the square, and with it, the louder singing of the Marseillaise. He detected the acrid smell of pitch carried on the night air, as in countless places the sparks flickered and wheeled away; he heard the whispered call and the whispered answer, he heard the order passed from mouth to mouth in hasty conspiracy. The singing and the music rose to a roar, picked up suddenly and quite deliberately by the loudspeakers: a mad, monstrous, plebeian, unsubtle roar, amplified and distorted almost beyond recognition, deafening and maddening.
Yes, Turner repeated to himself with Saxon clarity, that is what I would do if I were Siebkron. I would create this diversion, rouse the crowd, and make enough noise to provoke him into shooting. The music boomed still louder. He saw the policeman turn and face him and the young detective hold up a hand in warning. ‘Stay here, please, Mister Bradfield! Mister Turner, stay here please!’ The crowd was whispering excitedly; all round them they heard the sibilant, greedy hiss.
‘Hands out of pockets, please!’
Torches were lit all round them; someone had given the signal. They rose like wild hopes gilding the sullen faces with belief, making mad dreams of their prosaic features, setting into their dull eyes the devotion of apostles. The little band was advancing into the square; it could not have been more than twenty strong, and the army that marched in its wake was ragged and undecided, but now their music was everywhere, a Socialist terror magnified by Siebkron’s loudspeakers.
‘The Sozis!’ the crowd cried again. ‘The Sozis are attacking us!’
The pulpit was empty, Karfeld had gone, but the Socialists were still marching for Marx, Jewry and War. ‘Strike them, strike our enemies! Strike the jews! Strike the Reds!’ Follow the dark, the voices whispered, follow the light, follow the spies and saboteurs; the Sozis are responsible for everything. Still the music grew louder.
‘Now,’ de Lisle said evenly. ‘They’ve drawn him.’
A busy, silent group had gathered round the raw, white legs of Karfeld’s scaffold; leather coats were stooping, moon faces flitting and conferring.
‘The Sozis! Kill the Sozis.’ The crowd was in mounting ferment; the scaffold was forgotten. ‘Kill them!’ Whatever you resent, the voices whispered, kill it here: Jews, Negroes, moles, conspirators, rejectors, wreckers, parents, lovers; they are good, they are bad, foolish or clever.
‘Kill the Socialist Jews!’ Swimmers leaping, the voices whispered; march! march!
We’ve got to kill him, Praschko, Alan Turner told himself in his confusion, or we shall be wearing the labels again….
‘Kill who?’ he said to de Lisle. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Chasing the dream.’
The music had risen to a single note, a raucous, crude, deafening roar, a call to battle and a call to anger, a call to kill ugliness, to destroy the sick and the unwieldy, the maimed, the loathsome and the incompetent. Suddenly by the light of the torches the black flags lifted and trembled like waking moths, the crowd seemed to drift and lean until the edges broke and the torches floated away into the alley, driving the band before them, acclaiming it their hero, smothering it with close kisses, dancing in upon it in playful fury, smashing the windows and the instruments, causing the red banners to flourish and dip like spurts of blood, then vanish under the mass which, cumbersome and murmuring, led by its own wanton torches, had reached into the alley and beyond. The radio crackled. Turner heard Siebkron’s voice, cool and perfectly clear, he heard the mordant command and the one word: Schaffott. And then he was running through the waves, making for the scaffold, his shoulder burning from the blow; he felt the survivors’ hands holding him and he broke them like the hands of children. He was running. Hands held him and he shook them off like twigs. A face rose at him and he struck it away, riding the waves to reach the scaffold. Then he saw him.