would say that, of course. His father is a landlord, and when he is talking about imperialism what he is really saying is, ‘ Whatever you people do, stay away from my father and family.’ ” Or they might debate—they did it every two weeks, and everyone knew what would be said on either side—whether the peasantry or the industrial proletariat was going to bring about the revolution. In spite of all the killings, the movement was becoming more and more a matter of these abstract words.
In the middle of this came news of Einstein’s action. He had done it all as he had said, and it had failed. Einstein had said that the high wall of the minister’s official house was good for the action because it would hide Einstein and his friends in the kidnap car. But his research was not as thorough as he had boasted at the sector meeting. What the wall also did was hide the full security arrangements of the house from Einstein. He had thought that there was only one armed guard and he was at the gate. What he discovered, on the day of the action, and seconds away from the intended kidnap, was that there were two further armed guards inside. He decided to call the whole thing off, and almost as soon as he had entered the yard he pushed his way back past the guard at the gate and got into the car. The lights were against them, but the man they had deputed to stop the cross-traffic did his job beautifully, walking slowly to the middle of the road, pulling on big white gloves and stopping the traffic. Some people had thought that this was the weakest part of the plan. As it turned out, this was the only part that worked. And, as Einstein had said, it was hardly noticed.
When he reappeared among them, he said, “Perhaps it’s for the best. Perhaps the police would have come down really hard on us.”
Willie said, “You were pretty cool, to cancel at the last moment. I probably would have pressed on. The more I saw myself getting into a mess, the more I would have pressed on.”
Einstein said, “All plans should have that little room for flexibility.”
A senior man of the council of the movement came to the next section meeting. He was in his sixties, far older than Willie had expected. So perhaps the boastful madman who had talked about being in all the movements for thirty years was right in some things. He was also something of a dandy, the senior man of the council, tall and slender and with beautifully barbered, glossy grey hair. This again was something Willie hadn’t expected.
Einstein, to turn the talk away from his own abandoned plan, said to the man of the council, “We really should stop talking about the liberated areas. We tell people in the universities that the forest is a liberated area, and we tell people in the forest that the universities are a liberated area. Unlikely things happen: these people sometimes meet. We are fooling nobody, and we are putting off the people we want to recruit.”
The man of the council fell into a great rage. His face became twisted and he said, “Who are these people who will want to question me? Have they read the books I have read? Can they read those books? Can they begin to understand Marx and Lenin? I am not Kandapalli. These people will do as I say. They will stand when I tell them to stand, and sit when I tell them to sit. Have I made this long journey here to listen to this kind of rubbish? I might have been arrested at any time. I have come here to talk about new tactics, and I get this tosh.”
His rage—the rage of a man who had for too long been used to having his own way—clouded the rest of the meeting, and no one raised any further serious points.
Later Einstein said to Willie, “That man makes me feel like a fool. He makes us all fools. I cannot imagine that we have been doing what we have been doing for his sake.”
Willie said (a little of his ancient London college wit unexpectedly coming back to him, overriding his caution), “Perhaps the big books he has been reading have been about the great rulers of the century.”
THE NEW TACTICS that should have been discussed at that meeting came directly