The faces in the vast crowd—several thousand strong—were morose, the brows lined, the lips compressed.
She saw such faces every day in the streets and trams, weary Russian faces, with forbidding eyes.
Dasha remembered walking about the islands in Petersburg one Sunday, before the war, when her escorts— two barristers—had turned the conversation upon just such faces.
"Take the Paris crowd, Darya Dmitrevna— gay, good-humoured, bubbling with fun.... And here you see nothing but scowling countenances.
Look at these two workers coming towards us!
Shall I go up to them, and try and joke with them? They wouldn't understand, they'd be offended. Russians are so ridiculously slow in the uptake, so heavy in hand...." And now these humourless folk stood there, agitated, sombre, tense and determined.
The same faces, but dark with hunger now,' the same eyes, but the expression fiery, impatient.
Dasha forgot what she was there for.
The impressions accumulated during the life which she had exchanged for her lonely existence at the window in Krasnye Zori Street, Petrograd, carried her away like a storm bird, and she abandoned herself to them with pristine innocence.
She was not really stupid but, like many other people, she had been left to herself, with only her own tiny store of experience to guide her.
But she thirsted for truth—she thirsted for it as an individual, as a woman, as a member of the human race.
A speaker was holding forth on the situation on the various fronts.
What he had to say was not particularly encouraging.
The grain blockade was closing in: the Czechoslovaks were cutting off supplies from Siberia, Ataman Krasnov, from the Don.
The Germans were meting out ruthless reprisals to the Ukrainian partisans.
The ships of the Intervention were threatening Kronstadt and Arkhangelsk.
"But the revolution is bound to win!" The speaker flung his slogans into the air, nailed them in space with his fist, and, picking up his brief case, ran quickly off the platform.
The applause was languid— there was little inclination to clap in such a depressing state of affairs.
Heads hung, eyes disappeared beneath scowling brows.
Dasha's eyes met those of the boy with the gleaming teeth, and he grinned cheerfully at her.
"Things are bad, my lass, they want to starve us out. What's to be done about it?"
"Are you afraid?" asked Dasha.
"Me?
I'm scared out of my wits! What's your name?" People began looking round with cries of "sh!", "quiet, you there!"
Dasha looked at him. His black shirt was open, showing a muscular chest, he had a bull neck, a merry face, and a bright smile; his hair lay in damp curls, his round eyes were those of a confirmed philanderer, and he was covered with grease and dirt.
"You think you're a fine chap, don't you?" said Dasha.
"What are you grinning at?"
"My mother dropped me when I was a baby.
Look here—come with us to the front the day after tomorrow!
Will you?
You'll come to grief here in Moscow, anyhow.... We're taking an accordion, my lass...."
His words were drowned by a storm of applause.
A new speaker had ascended the platform, a short man in a grey jacket, his waistcoat showing horizontal wrinkles.
His bald, bumpy head was bent over the notes in his hand.
"Comrades!" he began, and Dasha noticed that he spoke with a slight burr, and that he looked worried, screwing up his eyes as if the light was in them.
His hands rested on the table, on a sheaf of notes.
When he said that his subject today would be the acute crisis which was bearing down upon, the whole of Europe and on Russia heaviest of all, and that this subject was famine, three thousand people held their breath beneath the smoke-blackened roof.
He began with general statements, speaking in level tones, trying to establish contact with his hearers.
He stepped backwards and forwards from the table.
He spoke of the world war, which the two predatory groups, who had each other by the throats, neither could nor would bring to an end—of the crazy profiteering in famine. He said only the proletarian revolution could bring the war to an end....
He said there were two ways of fighting famine: one was unrestricted private trade, distending the profits of the speculators, the other—state monopoly.
He moved three paces from the end of the table, and bent towards his audience, thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat.
This pose brought into prominence his domed brow and big hands, and Dasha noticed that the index finger of his right hand was inky.
"We have always stood, and always will stand, shoulder to shoulder with the class together with which we came out against war, together with which we have overthrown the bourgeoisie, and together with which we are bearing the whole brunt of the present crisis.
We must stand by grain monopoly to the end...." (At these words the young man with the grin gave an approving grunt.) "It is our task to conquer famine, or at least to lessen its burden till the coming of the harvest, to enforce the grain monopoly, the rights of the Soviet government, the rights of the proletarian State.
We must gather up all grain surpluses and see that stocks are sent where most needed, and are properly distributed.... But our main task is to keep society going and see that the stupendous work required is never relaxed—and this can only be accomplished by united, unremitting effort...."
The breathless silence was broken by a hollow exclamation, the cry of some tormented soul stumbling on the icy ascent to which the man in the grey suit was urging them all.
His brow seemed to hang above the audience— beneath its protuberances the eyes were steady, inexorable.
"...We are faced with the necessity of carrying out a revolutionary and social task, and there are enormous difficulties in our way.
Our epoch is one of bitter civil war.... It is only by defeating the counterrevolution, by pursuing a socialist policy in regard to famine, and by the struggle against it, that we shall conquer both famine and the counterrevolutionaries exploiting famine...."