This was April 14. It
was nearly a month since the outburst of the Revolution, and surely
there should be signs in the streets of the results of such a cataclysm.
There were, on the surface, no signs. There was the same little cinema
on the canal with its gaudy coloured posters, there was the old woman
sitting at the foot of the little bridge with her basket of apples and
bootlaces, there was the same wooden hut with the sweets and the fruit,
the same figures of peasant women, soldiers, boys hurrying across the
bridge, the same slow, sleepy Isvostchick stumbling along carelessly.
One sign there was. Exactly opposite the little cinema, on the other
side of the canal, was a high grey block of flats. This now was starred
and sprayed with the white marks of bullets. It was like a man marked
for life with smallpox. That building alone was witness to me that I had
not dreamt the events of that week.
The thaw made walking very difficult. The water poured down the sides of
the houses and gurgled in floods through the pipes. The snow was
slippery under the film of gleaming wet, and there were huge pools at
every step.
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