The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics)

by Victor Serge

By candlelight, during a power breakdown caused by a night bombing of the port, he received the first of the visitors whom Yuvanov had wanted to strike from the list, a Socialist lieutenant colonel, a lawyer before the Civil War, of bourgeois background — a tall, thin young man with a yellow face which his smile etched into ugly lines. He spoke intelligently, and his remarks were full of unequivocal reproaches. “I have brought you a detailed report, my dear comrade.” (In the heat of conversation, he sometimes let fall a perfidious “my dear friend.”) “In the Sierra we never had more than twelve cartridges per man … The Aragon front was not defended; it could have been made impregnable in two weeks; I sent out twenty-seven letters on the subject, six of them to your compatriots … Air arm entirely insufficient. In short, we are losing the war — make no mistake about that, my dear friend.” “What do you mean?” interrupted Kondratiev, chilled by the precise statement.