"Comrades!"
A fist struck against his mouth. His head wabbled. Another fist struck against his eye. The two men holding his wrists were striking into his uncovered face with their fists. A gleeful, joyous sound went up. Rachel stared at the wabbling head of Tesla. The street laughed. Fists hammered at an uncovered face. People were coming on a run to see. A bell clanged. Beside her a man shrieked, "Make him kiss the flag, the dirty anarchist!"
Things slowed again. A film was over the scene. Tesla was being dragged down the steps. His head kept falling back as if he wanted to go to sleep. Then something happened. A laugh, high like a scream, lit the air. It made her cold. The men dragging Tesla down the steps paused, and their fists moving with a leisureliness struck into his face, making no sound and not doing anything. It was Tesla who had laughed. The fists kept moving through a film. But he laughed again—a high laugh like a scream that lit the air with mystery.
When the pack began to sift and sweep her into strange directions she felt that Tesla was still laughing, though she could no longer hear him. The street became shapeless. Something had ended. A bell clanged away. People were again walking. They had dull faces and were quiet. She caught a glimpse of the step on which Tesla had stood behind a mist and cried, "Comrades!" She remembered often having stood on the step herself in coming to the office of The Cry. This made her sicken. It was her wrists that had been twisted, her uncovered face that had been struck by fists.
The emotion left her as a hand tugged eagerly at her arm. It pulled her up on the crowded curbing.
"Good God, Rachel, what are you doing here?"
She looked up and saw Hazlitt in uniform. He kept pulling her. Why should Hazlitt be pulling her out of a crowd in 10th Street? She tried to jerk away. She must run from Hazlitt before he began talking. He would make her scream.
Turning to him with a quiet in her voice she said carefully:
"Please let me go. You hurt my arm."
But his hand remained. His eyes, shining and indignant, prodded at her.... The street was quiet. Nothing had happened. Unconscious buildings, unconscious traffic, faces wrapped in solitudes—these were in the streets again. She turned and looked with amazement at her companion. People do not fall out of the sky and seize you by the arm. There was something stark about Hazlitt pulling her out of the street mob and holding her arm. He was an amputation. You pulled yourself out of a filth of faces and sprawled suddenly into a quiet, cheerful street holding an arm in your hand, as if it had come loose from the pack. It seemed part of some arrangement—Tesla, the pack, Hazlitt's arm. Her amazement died. Hazlitt was saying: