One of them, a tall, fair-haired young man in a clean blue coat was up on his feet, standing over them. He might have been handsome, with his fine, straight nose, but for his tight thin lips that never stopped twitching and a pair of lacklustre, staring, scowling eyes. He was standing over the singers, obviously transported as he solemnly and jerkily beat time over their heads with a bare, white arm and awkward fingers stuck out at all angles. His coat sleeve kept slipping down, and the young boy kept rolling it up again with his left hand, scrupulously, as if there was something special about that sinewy white arm, and it had to be kept bare for waving at them. In the midst of all the singing the outer passage and the porch erupted in sounds of fighting and shouting. The tall young man gave one final flourish.
‘That’s it!’ he shouted magisterially. ‘A fight, boys!’ And he went out to the porch still rolling his sleeve up.
The workmen followed. They had brought the tavern keeper some skins from the factory that morning, he had treated them to wine, and they had stayed there drinking under the leadership of the tall young man. Some blacksmiths working not far away had heard the sounds of revelry coming from the drinking-house, and jumped to the conclusion that it had been broken into. They wanted to smash their way in as well. There was fighting in the porch.
The tavern keeper was scrapping with a blacksmith in the doorway, and the factory workers came out just in time to see the smith reel away from the tavern keeper and fall flat on his face on the pavement.
Another blacksmith was shoving the tavern keeper with his chest as he struggled to get through the door.
The young man with the rolled-up sleeve came at this intruder, hit him in the face and roared to his men, ‘Come on! Our boys are getting beaten up!’
By now the first blacksmith, back on his feet, was scratching blood from his battered face, and wailing.
‘Police! Murder! They’re killing people! Over here, boys!’
‘Holy saints! He’s been beaten to death! There’s a man here dead!’ screamed a woman coming out of the gate next door. A crowd soon gathered round the bleeding blacksmith.
‘Not satisfied with ruining people and fleecing everybody?’ someone asked the tavern keeper. ‘Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and killed him, you swine!’
The tall young man, now standing by the porch, looked blearily from tavern keeper to blacksmiths and back, spoiling for a fight but not knowing which way to turn.
‘You murderer!’ he roared suddenly at the tavern keeper. ‘Tie him up, boys!’
‘Come on then. I’d like to see you try!’ roared the tavern keeper, tearing himself away from his attackers. He snatched off his cap and hurled it down on the ground. It was as if this action carried some deep and ominous meaning: the factory workers crowding in on him stood where they were, unsure of themselves.
‘You listen to me, mate. I knows the rules. I’m going to the police. You think I won’t find them? Nobody gets away with robbery, not nowadays they don’t!’ bawled the tavern keeper, picking up his cap.
‘We’ll go too, damn you!’
‘Come on then, damn you!’
The tavern keeper and the tall young man were gabbling the same things one after another, and they both moved off down the street. The bloody-faced blacksmith was keeping pace with them. The workmen and a mob of bystanders came on behind with much chattering and shouting.
Standing on the corner of Maroseyka, opposite a big house with closed shutters and a cobbler’s signboard, were a couple of dozen miserable-looking boot-makers, a skinny, weary lot dressed in loose smocks and torn coats.
‘Owes us our money, ’e does!’ a thin workman with a straggly beard and severe scowl was saying. ‘Sucks the blood out of us, and then he’s off. Strung us along he has, all this week, and now look – ’e’s gone.’
He stopped when he saw the mob and the bloody-faced blacksmith. The boot-makers watched them with interest, only too eager to join in with the moving crowd.
‘Where’s everybody going then?’
‘I’ll tell you where. They’re going to the police.’
‘Is it true our lot’s had it?’
‘Well, what do you think? Listen to what folks is saying!’
The air was thick with questions and answers. As the rabble grew the tavern keeper saw his chance, dropped away and went back to his house.
The tall young man never noticed his foe slipping from him; his bare arm was working away as he gabbled on, attracting everybody’s attention. The mob were homing in on him in particular, somehow assuming he might have the answers to the questions that worried them.
‘ “What we wants is law and order!” he says. “That’s what the government’s for!” Isn’t that right, good Christian folk?’ said the tall young man, with the ghost of a smile on his face.
‘Does he think there’s no government? How could we get by without a government? We’d all get robbed, wouldn’t we?’
