The whole
day long she would move around like a squirrel in a wheel, cook
dinner, and boil lilac-colored gelatin and glue for the proclamations.
Some people would come, leave notes with her to deliver to Pavel,
and disappear, infecting her with their excitement.
The leaflets appealing to the working people to celebrate the first
of May flooded the village and the factory. Every night they were
posted on the fences, even on the doors of the police station; and
every day they were found in the factory. In the mornings the
police would go around, swearing, tearing down and scraping off the
lilac-covered bills from the fences. At noon, however, these bills
would fly over the streets again, rolling to the feet of the
passers-by. Spies were sent from the city to stand at the street
corners and carefully scan the working people on their gay passages
from and to the factory at dinner time. Everybody was pleased to
see the impotence of the police, and even the elder workingmen would
smile at one another:
"Things are happening, aren't they?"
All over, people would cluster into groups hotly discussing the
stirring appeals. Life was at boiling point. This spring it held
more of interest to everybody, it brought forth something new to
all; for some it was a good excuse to excite themselves--they could
pour out their malicious oaths on the agitators; to others, it
brought perplexed anxiety as well as hope; to others again, the
minority, an acute delight in the consciousness of being the power
that set the village astir.
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