On the boat he recovered slightly and thought over his task.
Little Loewy with the sailor’s pipe came to meet him on his arrival. He was the local leader of the dock-workers’ section of the Party; Rubashov liked him at once.
He showed Rubashov through the docks and the twisting harbour streets as proudly as if he had made it all himself.
In every pub he had acquaintances, dock workers, sailors and prostitutes; he was everywhere offered drinks and returned salutations by raising his pipe to his ear.
Even the traffic policeman on the marketplace winked at him as they passed, and the sailor comrades from foreign ships, who could not make themselves understood, slapped him tenderly on the deformed shoulder. Rubashov saw all this with a mild surprise.
No, Little Loewy was not odious and detestable.
The dock workers’ section in this town was one of the best organized sections of the Party in the world.
In the evening Rubashov, Little Loewy and a couple of others sat in one of the harbour pubs.
A certain Paul was amongst them, the section’s organization Secretary. He was an ex-wrestler, bald-headed, pockmarked, with big sticking-out ears.
He wore a sailor’s black sweater under his coat, and a black bowler on his head.
He had the gift of waggling his ears, thereby lifting his bowler and letting it drop again.
With him was a certain Bill, an ex-sailor who had written a novel about the sailor’s life, had been famous for a year and then quickly forgotten again; now he wrote articles for Party newspapers.
The others were dock workers, heavy men and steadfast drinkers.
New people kept coming in, sat down or stood at the table, paid a round of drinks and lounged out again.
The fat pub-keeper sat down to their table whenever he had a free moment.
He could play the mouth-organ.
Quite a lot was drunk.
Rubashov had been introduced by Little Loewy as a “comrade from Over There” without further commentary.
Little Loewy was the only one who knew his identity.
As the people at the table saw that Rubashov either was not in a communicative mood, or had reasons not to be, they did not ask him many questions; and those which they did ask referred to the material conditions of life “over there”, the wages, the land problem, the development of industry.
Everything they said revealed a surprising knowledge of technical detail, coupled with an equally surprising ignorance of the general situation and political atmosphere “over there”.
They inquired about the development of production in the light metal industry, like children asking the exact size of the grapes of Canaan.
An old dock worker, who had stood at the bar for a time without ordering anything until Little Loewy called him over for a drink, said to Rubashov, after having shaken hands with him’
“You look very like old Rubashov.”
“That I have often been told,” said Rubashov.
“Old Rubashov—there’s a man for you,” said the old man, emptying his glass.
It was not a month ago that Rubashov had been set free, and not six weeks since he knew that he would remain alive.
The fat pub-keeper played his mouth-organ.
Rubashov lit a cigarette and ordered drinks all round.
They drank to his health and to the health of the people “over there”, and the Secretary Paul moved his bowler hat up and down with his ears.
Later on Rubashov and Little Loewy remained for some time together in a cafe.
The owner of the cafe had let down the blinds and piled the chairs on the tables, and was asleep against the counter, while Little Loewy told Rubashov the story of his life.
Rubashov had not asked him for it, and at once foresaw complications for next day: he could not help it that all comrades felt an urge to tell him their life history.
He had really meant to go, but he felt suddenly very tired—he had, after all, overrated his strength; so he stayed on and listened.
It turned out that Little Loewy was not a native of the country, although he spoke the language like one and knew everybody in the place.
Actually he was born in a South German town, had learnt the carpenter’s trade, and had played the guitar and given lectures on Darwinism on the revolutionary youth club’s Sunday excursions.
During the disturbed months before the Dictatorship came to power, when the Party was in urgent need of weapons, a daring trick was played in that particular town: one Sunday afternoon, fifty rifles, twenty revolvers and two light machine guns with munitions were carried away in a furniture-van from the police station in the busiest quarter of the city.
The people in the van had shown some sort of written order, covered with official stamps, and were accompanied by two apparent policemen in real uniforms.
The weapons were found later in another town during a search in the garage of a Party member.
The affair was never fully cleared up, and the day after it happened Little Loewy vanished from the town.
The Party had promised him a passport and identity papers, but the arrangement broke down. That is to say, the messenger from the upper Party spheres who was to bring him passport and money for the journey, did not appear at the pre-arranged meeting-place.
“It’s always like that with us,” added Little Loewy philosophically.
Rubashov kept quiet.
In spite of that, Little Loewy managed to get away and eventually to cross the frontier. As there was a warrant of arrest out for him, and as his photograph with the deformed shoulder was posted up in every police station, it took him several months of wandering across country.
When he had started off to meet the comrade from the “upper spheres” he had just enough money in his pocket for three days.
“I had always thought before that it was only in books that people chewed the bark of trees,” he remarked.
“Young plane trees taste best.”
The memory impelled him to get up and fetch a couple of sausages from the counter.
Rubashov remembered prison soup and hunger strikes, and ate with him.
At last Little Loewy crossed over the French frontier.