He emerges for a moment from the fog along the night-time wharf. We have to focus on him rapidly or he will fade from us, six feet plus, gray cap, bulked heavily in woolen blue, flattened to the shadows of the shed. In this flash, this pulse, we gasp how young he is, carrying the burden of this enterprise. His body is supple, large as it is. He seems to have ten seconds or ten days, but quickly blends to black of bulkheads, barrels. Darkness is his friend. His back is bolstered by the wooden wall behind. His weapons are two brawny hands, his mind, two maps between the heels of each shoe and its last. He's never killed a man but would do so if he thought his mission, ours, was put in jeopardy, his fingers strong enough to pressure a carotid, crush a neck.

Is he not our surrogate, and does he not take with him all our aspirations, history? We cannot see him for the moment, camouflaged by dark, stand in his shoes with muscles ready for this task, heart resolute, each sense alert. What we see is this: a docking area in fog, a waterfront. We hear the slap of chop against the sea wall, make out ratline shadows as they undulate between the pier and the Mannerheim, now laden, riding low but still substantial, outlined in this fog which eddies, flows with every push of wind.

Do we wait an hour? More? What is the burden of these minutes tugging us toward some event ahead, we know not what? Unlike him we grow impatient for the denouement, our bodies taut as tripwires ready to go off. We cannot see him but he's there.

Do we hear a noise? Before we have a chance to wonder what could that have been we see a flashlight's beam, once, twice, thrice. A signal, warning, what? He steps out of shadow not in some cautious shamble but not hurried as with reason to be swift. He crosses to the gangplank, mounts. At the top he embraces a figure much like his. Two men, one mass. A moment's unifying bond. They move apart, exchange some papers. One descends toward us. Walks off into the fog. Benno goes below to sail.

*

"Comrade." Leonov nods unsurprised at Benno, cap in hand, who has just been escorted in, crosses to look out the office windows to the raucous street life below in the Arbat. Or does he search for something, someone down there in the throng? He is quite casual with Benno dropped in from America.

He presses a buzzer. Zatsepin joins them from the other room. The space is functional, no more. We are in the maids' quarters of the urban palace of a merchant prince. Moscow has few inches it can spare, even for Cheka Headquarters. "Take your seat," Leonov says to Benno, "Comrade Zatsepin"; he gestures toward his right.

The furnishings are what could be commandeered. In revolutions everything is always up for grabs. Even silence is electric here. Every second tense, the men sit stiffly on three biedemeier chairs around an ornate empire desk.

Zatsepin is obviously the one in charge. His hooded trout-colored eyes study Benno openly, rudely. They take in Benno's massive chest, sturdy arms, lithic neck, stare into his tiger's eyes. But they're not satisfied with what they see. His gaunt cheeks crease. He shakes his tousled head testily at Leonov. "We asked for a man." Dismissively, "This fellow here is still in University." In Russian, "Leonov, what the fuck goes on? Were my orders unclear?"

Leonov purses his thin lips. He fingers his forehead strawberry birthmark as he always does in moments of stress. He isn't certain of the tone he wants to achieve in answering. This man they sent looks fine to him. On the other hand Zatsepin's from Baku. Who knew what power base he had. He answers carefully, in Russian. "Considering your specs, they must have thought he was ideal. American. Knowledge of Berlin. Speaks German fluently. Physically strong. Committed to the Revolution."

Zatsepin brushes off his words with just one baleful look. "I've seen the dossier." He scowls, deliberates.

Benno thrills. He understands enough to get the gist of what was said. He's made it here! He puts their boorishness to the urgency of what's to do. They have a State to build. What difference if they believe he's still a student when he received his EE last year? Their information's out of date, that's all. He's concerned only with being present in the here and now. He looks at the antique brass inkwell, so out of place, the past in the process of being swept away. He himself inhabits history's flow, brings shape to this amorphous world. Moscow! The Kremlin a stone's throw away! He knows these must be high-placed men to have so many square feet to themselves. They are his comrades! He theirs!

Zatsepin's head swivels suddenly to him as if to catch him out. "You know Berlin?" It's in the dossier of course and Leonov has just told him that.

"Yes."

"How so?"

"Berlin born, comrade. 1897. My father emigrated there from Lvov, 1895. Blacksmith."

"A Jewish blacksmith?" Zatsepin permits himself a fleeting smirk.

Benno goes past it. "A Jewish blacksmith, comrade."

Zatsepin considers Benno's answer briefly, impatiently. "You left when for America?" Although the dossier is an inch away. We think this aggressive style is more than his mode, perhaps his profession.

"1910."

"Do you know why you're here?"

"No."

We are amazed to hear this answer but would we not have done the same, no mission named? Crossed any ocean to advance the Cause?

They leave him and go to the other room. Outside, a Nation's coming noisily to birth, using scantlings, antiquated boxcars, tuppenny nails, its people's armies firing ancient cannon, vying North, East, South. Streets explode with sound, its shards penetrating to us here. We hear the hammerbeat of worlds in flux, tectonic plates of economic architecture shifting. It is early February, 1921.

If Benno is heroic he hasn't noticed it himself. He carries his body, his lifted, solid head like a third string soccer player waiting to discuss new strategy, or hopeful he'll be allowed on field. But we are sure we've measured right his value to us here. We know he is the very man to get things done.

They return. Leonov places papers on the desk. "First chance you get you'll study these," he says. "Visas, passports, identities you'll need, tickets. The German explains itself. The Russian show if asked. You leave for Berlin tomorrow morning. You'll note the schedule. In this envelope are documents you will deliver to our comrades there. These are the addresses you will try. If you get intercepted - but you know all that. Once delivered, you will return to your home," he refers to the dossier, "in Croton, in New York. Now put these away. Comrade Zatsepin has some words."

Zatsepin, with his ferocious hawk's face, uncombed hair, strides about as though the world requires his instant attention but this conference, they, in all their insignificance, detain him here. He frowns, accepting the burden that it is his energy alone that controls events, even those detonating leagues away. Right now he's only angry. We watch him growing up his rage. How much of it is spurious? We have no way to know. Leonov and Benno wait, Benno having swept everything into his pockets.

Zatsepin sits abruptly although he seems ready to spring up without notice. He juts his sharp nose forward like an awl opening a hole in space, speaks low as if the walls can actually hear. His words are just above a whisper, guttural, charged. "Der Tag. What meaning does it have to you?" he asks. We have to strain to hear.

Benno wonders if he needs to guard himself. Everyone knows these words. Zatsepin knows. Of course he does. Mentally, he shrugs. "It is the day the German Party will rise up. We had assignments in Berlin, my father, me as young as ten years old, our comrades, meeting in the blacksmith shop in back - who would be responsible for what when the day, Der Tag, when that day came."

We like his voice, its musicality, its firmness, depth. It is the very voice we'd have ourselves if we had choice. He goes on. "When Spartacus rose up two years ago we cheered all night. My father closed his shop on the Boston Post Road the whole next day. Der Tag!" He stops, remembers. When he resumes his voice is choked, his tone lower, although his face stays resolute. "Spartacus. It lasted what? Some hours, a day? The Telegraph taken? The Post Office? My father brooding they went off half-cocked. Karl murdered by the Polizei inside the station house. Rosa pushed in the canal by the Freikorps."

Zatsepin nods brusquely as though to say he knows all that, that death is death, none more important than another one, each failure one more chasm over which to fling a bridge. He exchanges a look with Leonov. It seems to us a vaunting look, of things confirmed, superiority. He thrusts his head forward again, speaks emphatically at low volume. "An apparatus that goes off half-cocked, your father's words, a crime is being done. You understand me, comrade? A crime against the proletariat. Down with such adventurism! How will they be remembered by the masses, your Liebknecht and your Luxemburg? As left extremists, comrade - unequipped for the task of leadership. And at what cost?" As though he now has set this history aright he leans back and says flatly, "It is to that end you go to Berlin."

Benno lets the lecture resonate. He weighs these words against his knowledge of, the legends of these heroes of his youth. Half-cocked? Who can be forever wise enough to know this is the very day, this is Der Tag, and you must now rise up with what it is you have? Might the moment pass you by if you didn't seize it by the throat before it left? "There will be an action?" he asks Zatsepin, taut as sisal, every fiber ready to be used.

"Was to have been, comrade. It is adventurism we must guard against, the enemy within, we ourselves with our bourgeois sentimentality, the adventurers among us." Zatsepin is worked up finely now, face flushed, rises to pace the room, look out the window. He gyrates his index finger in the direction of Benno's pocket. "The instructions you carry tell our German comrades discontinue what they've planned. Versteh!? Stop! It is the Comintern which orders this with unanimity. If they should question you, Berlin, you will remember that! It is the Comintern itself for whom you're courier!"

*

Benno braces to step up. He's grown a moustache in the week en route. We think he planned it so. It ages him. We swing aboard the Number 68 when he gets on. He pays his 20 pfennigs but he stands although there's room for him to sit. His footballer's head is on a level with the holding bar which he disdains. He seems to be looking at the adverts on the kiosks, Mampe Brandy, Telefunken, Aida playing at the Opera elephants and all. Or is he remembering his final lessons at the Hochschule the days before he left Berlin, or behind his tawny eyes does he see Sundays with his parents at the Tiergarten, and does it come to him, the stink of the slaughterhouse near where they lived on Eldenauer Strasse, the blacksmith shop behind?

The trolley jangles, sways, as it takes the curve with ease, not even jolting us. This is the seventh trolley this morning, countless alleys, parks. Does he traverse this route from memory? We've seen Berlin now, traveling with him. Random cafés to nurse a lone kaffee in thick hands. A few words muttered to the waiter in a lower register. A nod. But we're no closer to what we would consider substantive, a talk, a meeting with a man (a woman?) in the Hall of the Natural Sciences confronting animals of South America, let's say. He threads the city unruffled, strolling like a touring heavyweight down the Kurfurstendamm, Unter den Linden, makes a right turn at the Brandenburg Gate. There is a deadline he must meet but he seems totally at ease. And now we ride with him again.

A woman boards, face hidden by the lambskin collar pushed high against the cold, her blue cloche hat completely covering her hair. With the car half-empty she chooses to seat herself two inches from where Benno stands as stolid as a triumphal arch. A gray cloth cap holds down his curly brown hair. Her thin, reddened hand remains clutched at her collar although the car is warm. Because her gaze is on the floor, we cannot see her eyes. We pass the crowds at Stettiner Station, baggage handlers wheeling carts of trunks, valises, roped-up packages. We make a stop to let somebody off.

Benno sits. Has he tired of standing then? Or does he wish to speak with her? But no, they utter not a word, him hulking, her petite. Why does he concentrate on the receding street? We see nothing special there, a Daimler or two, a Ford, a horse-drawn baking van, the coffee-roaster's shop featuring Mexican Blend, 4 marks the kilo. The woman can see nothing but the gritty floor with her eyes still downward cast.

We think Benno might just be headed to this commercial center we are entering right now, throngs of people despite a temperature of under 20_ F. Is he assessing the masses, the degree of their penury, their confusion, their readiness to join the struggle, or else their apathy? There are no demonstrations here, no street actions in progress, although as always we see lumpen proletarians hawking Steel Helmet, the Volkischer Beobachter, on the corners, in front of movie ticket offices, beer-bellies, one-limbed cripples from the War, fellows down on their luck, a few pfennigs only in their trousers for a Gilka and a flop at the Palme where the ancient clerk still keeps his picture of the Kaiser on the wall beside the register. Yet there is something, yes?, we feel, as we move smoothly on. Faces seem unusually sullen. People go about their business, yes, but these are troubled streets. Something's afoot. Perhaps right here.

But no, we're past the heavy traffic now, the Frankfurter Allee Station, Lichtenberg. And suddenly, at least it's startling to us - Achtung! End of the line. We hope not inauspiciously, for across from us is the Herzeberge Insane Asylum. When we have all got off, it does appear that Benno and the woman are walking side by side, him towering over her. They turn a corner. In the time it takes to hurry after them they're down the alley on the left. We're proud of how efficiently they manage it.

*

Here's Schmeckert, head bent, studying the documents that Benno's brought to him. The top of his skull is completely bald, shiny in the light of the desk lamp, fringes of hair on the surround making him seem a Rhenish monk. We note the profusion of books and papers. Indeed they are the room, overwhelming us with words, the weight of words, the what has been, the exhortations urging us to seize the future in our hands, words squeezed onto bookshelves, the very corners of the room occupied with them, the horsehair sofa stacked with words, words in their precarious piles upon his desk. As though words are arms, or better, fortresses. As though the pen is truly mighty as the sword. We've not read all these words, not all of them, but we are certain Schmeckert has, many of them his. It seizes our imagination as it always does - words, ideas, the power they exert to lever worlds. Schmeckert stares at these pages Benno's given him, turns back a page to check some words, continues on.

Benno can appreciate this simple country house, throbbing with ideas, the dwelling of an intellectual, a revolutionary, etchings, watercolors on the walls, heavy volumes, some with English titles on the spine. He has delivered what has been asked of him. We knew he would. He sits beside the fire in a wing chair, half-turned toward the desk. The heat feels good. Mission at an end successfully. He fills the chair with his muscled 200 pounds, Greek wrestler shoulders, thick chest.

When Schmeckert looks up from the documents we see his face is stricken with unspeakable grief. He uses his pipe, lips compressed to retain what cannot be expressed. His cheeks seem concave to us, his eyes bloodshot so we can't quite see the color they may have.

He pushes at the papers he's just read as if to rearrange them, discover something new, but we sense he's on the verge of violence. The room is cozy. It is gray outside with February skies. Benno feels the breathless rush of history arriving, pausing, leaving from this landmark station on its way. Or is this station local only, a footnote on the page of words?

We see in the set of Schmeckert's mouth, his reddened eyes, that he views Benno as no less an enemy than these fateful words he's brought. His teeth are clenched so tight we think he'll bite the pipestem through. He smiles unsurely, if we can call this rueful, tight parting of the lips a smile. "If I may. I practice English. Yes?" he says neutrally, but he is crushed, engulfed, there is no doubt of it.

Benno notes the desperation, pain. He is empathetic, yes, but he is just the messenger, not the news itself, nor author of events.

"They have known our plans, our comrades of the Comintern, for now a year, from the day we formulated them, these plans. With their encouragement, comrade, with their blessing, we proceeded carefully. After every meeting a despatch. A year it's been, perhaps a few days more. Three days from now is the event, Der Tag, the rising we have worked and planned. Three days. With every comrade underground for weeks the Comintern now says we have these same three days to contact all of them, dismantle all our plans, the staging of events. Three days. I ask you comrade, how can this be done?" He takes the pipestem from between his teeth and jabs it forward in the air an inch, a blunt blade aimed toward Benno's chest.

The question is rhetorical of course for how can Benno, how can we be called upon to answer it?

Benno answers nothing then. He has agonized about this question as he's made his way. Undo Der Tag? Stop it in its tracks? Unthinkable. And yet he has to answer, as does Schmeckert to the Comintern. There can be no aspect of this that they haven't seen, considered, understood. We must assume the bedrock of their reasoning.

For a moment Schmeckert shakes his head vigorously from side to side as if to clear his mind. There is angry gruffness in his voice, bitter as vetch. "They are a thousand miles away, comrade. A thousand miles. I am here. Our situation is now perilous. I think...." he stops and turns the pipestem toward his heart, "my blood goes fast. . . . they plan this as a sabotage. They plan that all must be subservient to them, the Soviets. That's why they wait until this moment, this moment when in haste we may make errors, open now to every oversight, for spilling out my comrades' lives. I have been a Party member all my life and I call this betrayal, comrade, nothing less."

We're shocked. To voice these words is outside possibility. We look to see how Benno's taking this. His face shows nothing, nothing. He stares past Schmeckert's head to gray sky outside, follows the flight of crows. He hears his father's voice in Schmeckert's. But no, one cannot argue with the Party, with the Comintern. Be a Wobblie, Anarchist for that! It is the Discipline one must accept. And yet - wreck Revolutions!? Call off Der Tag!?

His agitation is our own, for do we not feel the same as he? Dismantle risings? Not our business, no. The opposite. Outside the world is fibrillating, hair trigger, ready to explode. Inside this room, this cyclopedia of knowledge, of philosophy, we are at the center of the decades past, the centuries, the what's ahead, the center of the heaviness this moment lays upon us, yes. It is humanity, we, all of us: awaiting - what? some call that we will answer, that will make us whole, ennoble us. Some words. Our history at last.

Schmeckert is voiceless. His eyes are bleak as though released from any hope at all, haunted by this endgame unforeseen, the possibilities not weighed sufficiently. He reaches for his pipe again, but hesitates, denies himself. We marvel at his calm, if calm it is, or is he beaten thoroughly, the power that was his the day before now wrested from him, plans for struggle, victory, now smashed to smithereens. Do we see tears in Schmeckert's bloodshot eyes? To confirm our vision there is wetness on his cheeks. Tears!? What kind of Discipline is this? When he speaks his voice is flavorless, without color. He tents his fingers.

"Your mission is fulfilled, comrade, mine is not. And yet I am alone and time is brief. I do not know your politics or if you will report me for my outburst, treason, some might say. Lives are in the balance here. I have no choice but ask. I need your help."

We gasp. But that's impossible. Benno has completed what was asked of him. He now goes home. Schmeckert lacks authority to ask for help. Enormous risk. Grave consequences if events unravel as they can. Our hearts are stopped. What will Benno say?

But Benno's silent, listening. Schmeckert speaks again, perhaps emboldened by Benno's abstention from saying no. "If it is not clear to you I'll make it so. They will accuse me, comrade, that I had no right -- but if you help me they will aim at you as well. You can leave here now, task fulfilled. I urge you to remain -- I cannot say the dangers you may have to overcome."

We study Benno's face, stamped with its raw humanity, broad nose, full lips, moustache, mouth turned down, yellowish-gold eyes in pain, remembering, remembering Berlin, his father, comrades of his youth. A fighter in the Cause of all. World citizen.

His shoulders square, like Atlas taking on the burden of the globe. "What is it you propose I do?" he asks. Would we not have asked the same?

*

Does Benno wait impatiently? He sits before the fire staring back at it as if it can't be hot enough, sometimes paces, looking out the window at the leafless trees. The knowledge in his eyes has added years to him. The telephone has rung all afternoon. He hasn't answered it of course. Logs crackle softly in the fireplace. The room is calm, so soothing we could fall asleep in it. Events outside sprint on to their catastrophe or crest. The gear shifts of machinery are being forcibly manipulated.

Flushed with falling temperature here's Schmeckert now returned. It is dusk, so swiftly has the history of the afternoon gone by. He disposes of his hat and scarf and coat. He pauses at the mirror, puts fingers to his hair. He seems much smaller than he looked behind his papers in profusion on his desk. He nods at Benno, stands before the fire next to him, rubs his hands together - or is he wringing them? He clears his throat then takes his seat, his back to the window as usual. He seems to us aloof, professorial, about to lecture us on some dry subject, surplus value, Hegelian philosophy. And yet his passion illuminates his face.

"I had hoped I could accomplish everything myself, not call upon you even as a last resort. In the streets -- confusion everywhere, the masses near starvation, the Kaiser abdicated. Comrades poised. I have told them to stand down or else I've put the wheels in motion so they will not rise, not now, not this time, perhaps not at all. The Comintern has told us this is not Der Tag. Although it is not clear what leadership we bring to bear at this historic moment which can go either way, we have successfully brought our action to a halt." He pauses, reaches half-heartedly for his pipe but doesn't lift it from the tray. Is there a tremor we can see around his lips? "Except."

Benno waits impassively.

"The Hamburg sector can't be reached. They are too deeply underground. No trace. No avenues they've left exposed. The consequences, comrade? They will rise and perish even as they take their stand." He pushes back his chair, agitated, moves to the window to confront the night now that time's become his enemy. He bows his head, returns to his seat.

We must surmise what Benno feels. He's sitting as he's sat, athletic, large, his strong hands in repose. He waits. The Discipline has taught him that.

"Do you know Hamburg, comrade?"

Benno shakes his head. A negative.

Schmeckert seems gaunt although his cheeks remain ruddy with the cold outside or with perhaps his inner fire rising as though he wears his politics on his cheeks.

"I cannot go myself. Not now. They must be warned. The news must get to them. Our Hamburg comrades must be made aware. If I show you names, addresses, streets perhaps, just maybe you'll get through. If we allow two days to get there you might have ten, twelve hours at the most. Can you take responsibility for that? To find them if they can be found?"

Benno understands the history that's being written here. For Karl and Rosa, father, all, the Cause, of which the Comintern is only part. He sees Zatsepin's face, sees him in another light. He's ready, nods his head, aware that Schmeckert has no knowledge of his name nor history, and has no need of it.

*

We're here at last. Freight trains, shank's mare, occasionally a van. We're opposite the Rathaus. Hamburg bursts its seams with outpourings of citizens. Are they returning home so soon from work, rushing off to meetings, rendezvous' in the slate gray 4 o'clock? Time. How much do we have? Some hours only. Tomorrow they will rise.

Benno has memorized everything en route, maps, hangouts, bordellos, passageways to boarded-up spice warehouses. He ambles north along the Ballindamm. Perhaps he is a tourist taking in the famous copper roofs, red brick. He merges with the mass as though he has no weight, no heft at all, along with hatted men in shoddy suits, women bulked in flimsy coats, long skirts, hunched against the cold. Benno stops in at a meat stall, a café. No luck. The crowds! The streets seem lacking politics, no banners, no parades. Or is this not the hour for such things? Perhaps the uprising itself will not come off.

Kids with caps and earmuffs, swarms of people. Benno stops before a drayman who has a cigarette dangling from his lips, wears an improbable bowler hat, feeds his swayback horse some oats from a leaky pouch. He whispers something in the drayman's ear. No luck.

He enters courtyards, sometimes tries a door. A spiral staircase with mahogany bannisters rises to a ghostly skylight five floors up. He knocks softly on the door right off the entranceway. Echoes rise. No luck. We don't see desperation as we read his face. Fear is mounting in our breasts. Benno has the Discipline. He makes a right on Holzdamm and a left on St. Georgestrasse. It's as though he's lived here all his life. Dusk is overtaking us. We know how little time we have.

He goes to a certain door on Lange Reihe. Nothing doing there. We head southwest along narrow cobbled streets, houses with slanted copper roofs, dull beneath the dusky night sky pressing down, winds kicking up some loose debris. Not quite so many people here. We stop in a café and make our way to the billiard room in back and find it empty, not a soul. Benno confers with the proprietor. No luck.

For all his seeming aimlessness our Benno walks a goodly pace. Sees a leather cap approaching, pauses, squints, moves on. He peers down crooked alleys, puts behind him thirty, forty city blocks and suddenly we see the rough stone archway of the Grosse Michaelkirche. Atheist Benno walks right in. Why we are comrades is never meaningful as that we are. Our free will tells us that. Some follow lofty impulses. Candles on the altar, soaring gothic vault. As softly as he walks the echo of his steps reverberates. He sits solid in the front pew on the aisle. Is he getting weary then? Awaiting someone? Are we closer to a chance encounter here? Benno's steady eye is on the candles, flames flickering in draft, and on the ghostly shadows to the side.

For the moment stationary, does he float up an implausible prayer for his comrades, his comrades in their jeopardy? That he will find them, save them, our numbers few, tasks overwhelming as they are. To make our world a nobler place. If God gave us raw clay, it's Benno who will fix it up, leave it better having passed this way. Whispers rise from worshippers a few rows back. And now we lift ourselves and start our trek once more. Whomever Benno hoped to meet, that comrade is no farther than a mile away and readying himself for what will be.

The fog and clouds have gone. The cold black sable night is flung about with stars. We walk along the Martin Luther Strasse. It is what? Nine, ten o'clock? We smell the sea, we must be near the Elbe. We stop before a pile of rubble, metal beams, a baby carriage filled with bricks, blocks of cement. This might have been a barricade. From when? Which battle then? From Spartacus? Not here.

He's never seen a rising, although he's heard the tales of them, the Iliad's and Odyssey's of the Movement. Storms of action, rapid lightning blows, flow as of a tide, untidy, unaligned, spontaneous. The enemy in rout or else lives spilled in vain, dead leaves from history's book, perhaps a paragraph like Karl, or else not even a small asterisk, just leading in between the lines, the ampersands.

We're near the port for here's St. Pauli Landungsbrucken terminal, around us drunken tenements held up by hope. And here we slow, proceed from doorway to doorway, peering through a window when there is one clear. Benno tries a door. It's locked.

It is a vivid night life for these flat broke stevedores, dock wallopers, ship's chandlers, cargo smashers, riggers, layabouts. We hear their songs and catch, even from this distance, the Nationalists in voice, the words of Watch on the Rhine:
"There comes a call like thunder's peal,
The billows roar and cloak of steel..."
until a shout goes up from revellers more close at hand who bellow out some war songs of their own. Why not? We're at the Memorial to Iron Bismarck. As we approach the Fischmarkt we near midnight too.

Has Benno's pace picked up? We think it has if that is possible. It matches now a certain rhythm, recklessness, as couples, drunks, weave down the streets, stop for corniches of hot potatoes, dumplings, beer from vendors off the curb who sell from under awnings, dimly lit by kerosene lamps swaying in the wind. Can we believe that history's in the making here? The street is filled with rollickers, working people, herrenvolk, sailors, travelers, veterans. Is there a Revolution brewing here?

Benno heads north to the Reeperbahn, the prostitutes and merchant seamen there. He merges with them, stops in doorways, rings some bells, goes down some stinking alleys toward the water, cuts on back. He stops at flea bags, hot bed hotels, sex parlors, gambling hells. Although his hour glass is running out he's quick. He reads his faces well. When he's spotted what he's sure will be a sympathetic ear he has a word for it. In vain.

Our time is ebbing with the night. We're growing desperate. Benno is our rock, our compass point. We hear the creeping in of silences as Benno circles round Spielbudenplatz and toward St. Pauli's once again. The night has always been his friend. He's trying to fend off the coming day, Der Tag, the day he wished would come. We're frightened but he hasn't reached the end of his resources yet.

His pain-filled eyes refract the light of streets, seem haunted now by possibilities of avenues unknown to him, of hideouts, alleys, unexplored. The tundral silence seeping through the streets is that of breathless moments just before the earthquake hits, the stillness of the stricken, frozen cactus wren as baby anacondas flick their tongues.

We're on the quay now, turning left to see what we can find in this direction, up this alley straight ahead. Our hearts are with our comrades who will burst upon some cobbles in the sixish dawn to find the whole world silent, no one ready for their rise. Already in the east Der Tag inexorably comes on.

We're at the Zircusweg, above the Fischmarkt when we hear a sound of gears or many sounds as one, as that of twenty trolleys taking left turns quietly. We hurry toward the noise. We see military lorries pulling up on both sides of the flanking square. Tarps hide cargoes but we see muzzles of machine guns poking out of some, a hand, a rifle barrel's glint. Baggage wagons clatter up behind the vehicles, a field kitchen. A field kitchen? Where is this army they intend to ambush? Here? Here in the Fischmarkt? The army we have searched for? The army of Der Tag? Is this the place? If so how did information get to hands of enemies? Something rotten here.

Troops in full field pack, rifles slung, bed-rolls on their backs, get down, deploy on both sides of the street. Three youthful soldiers quickly set up a machine gun nest at the intersection, as though drilling on a regimental field. History is being written on the dawn.

Benno's understood, goes racing down the Spielbudenplatz again, right at Davidstrasse. He is arrested in his tracks by lorries pulling up not twenty yards ahead.

Soldiers effortlessly drop to cobbles, melt into doorways, afix machine guns to their tripods, angle them and freeze in place, this corner now secure. They are the masters of this battlefield however many storm their site. Why don't they break down doors, infiltrate the alleyways? They don't, the noise of preparation ended now. The world is hushed again. They wait.

Benno's dry eyes weep for what he's left undone, his limited geography. He is more than a match for any three of them, four, but squads, platoons? Hands in pockets, up against the wall, we are in suspended animation in these first glimmerings of dawn, the hint it will be bright.

Who knows how long we wait. The soldiers have all day.

And then pellmell from alleys, tenements, our comrades burst upon the street, mouths screaming open in the fierceness of this liberating hour, as though shouts and calls are yet more powerful than arms. This youth a shovel, that one blacksmith's tongs. Some rifles thrust aloft. Women, kids not out of high school yet, men, old-timers rush the street, spread out. The block is filled with them, their clamoring humanity. This woman's weapon is the Rote Fahne, the red flag. It is as though the earliness of day is all of their surprise. Do they see the ambuscade awaiting them or are they so intent, so certain in their hundreds they have won the day before they've gone a thousand yards that it has made them sotted, blind?

A loud command! And then the firing begins. Soldiers step from doorways, aim, shoot, reload and shoot again. A young man sinks, blood spurting from his stomach like a spring. The rattle of the rifles cuts their vanguard down. Our comrades roar like animals at bay but still advance, smoke rising with the sound of fireworks, and then the chatter of the skeletons begins, machine guns open up both front and rear. They chop our comrades at the knees, wilt them, topple them, bowl them over sideways, knock them back as with a kick. One woman circles drunkenly and drops.

Those not yet hit are frozen in their places, encircled side and rear. They recoil, try to adhere and then the fire is too much -- they scatter, stumbling over rag-doll bodies in the street, the cobblestones soaked red with comrades' blood.

The sun is rising, bearing witness to this spilling out of life. Ten minutes, is it ten? The operation stops. We hear the groans go up of those still clinging to what's left of them.

Benno's flat against the wall with open eyes that will remember everything. What Revolution will direct his steps? Which Revolution will he lead? When Der Tag comes, will we not follow him?

 

This story was published by South Carolina Review, Spring 1999.