The workers’ procession was already approaching the square. The first thing that Ri saw was a blur of colours. The colour red predominated, but it was hemmed in on every side by blue, green and yellow - the colours of the effigies, standards and emblems, which contrasted with the dark background of human figures. In almost every row of the procession, portraits were shouldered - huge likenesses of the leaders drawn in Indian ink on canvas, portraits so enormous that even from where she stood, high above the procession, Ri could make out Stalin’s face. Always identical - severe and ironical smiling - it weaved its way through the colours. Ri could see the eyes best of all – the eyes narrowed in an ironical smile, slightly reproachful, slightly condescending and encouraging – and she felt that those eyes were fixed on her, Ri, the wife of the foreign engineer on the third floor of the foreigners’ hotel. She could not evade their thousand-fold gaze. And the human tide flowed on, with new columns appearing all the time; the procession was endless. Ri felt overwhelmed, crushed, silenced and impotent. It was as if she were watching a tornado, a natural force sweeping away everything in its path. There were so many people that they were no longer people, but instead an alien and inscrutable force – unearthly and nameless. Ri was still alive only because the human flood could not reach high enough to drag her away (though Ri fancied that it just might be possible, so she held tightly to the edge of the writing desk by the window). She now realised that any kind of struggle was out of the question. How ridiculous she felt! Struggling with a whirlwind that crushed everything in its path! She was humbled and silent. She would come to terms with it; she’d do anything, anything at all. She’d get a job in a factory – a cleaner, a worker, whatever. She’d haul planks in a factory yard or stand at a lathe – it was all over now. She’d serve this world and serve it meekly. There was no way to resist, she simply wanted to live – to live as the lowest of the low, to live, breathe and eat. There was no struggle, there was no compromise; all that remained was service. Submission was the only way to save herself from isolation. She could not even hide or shut herself away; there was no hiding place or burrow that could not be penetrated by those narrowed hawkish eyes from the portraits. But it was impossible for her to love this world the way Robert did. Was it possible to love a whirlwind – was it possible to shout at the storm to cease?