Time Will Run Back Read Online Free PDF

stopped to watch them.
    Suddenly and miraculously, he caught sight of the girl from the library! He elbowed his way over to her, fighting the human torrent.
    “What a coincidence!” He grabbed her arm.
    She was startled. “Is it?”
    “Oh come now,” he protested. “Do you think I’ve been following you?”
    She gazed at him steadily. His naïveté half melted her suspicions and she broke into a smile. They were being jostled along by the crowd.
    “May we see the parade together?” he asked. 15
    “How can I avoid it?” she said; but her tone had changed to a good-natured banter.
    They were lucky enough to get a place near Lenin’s Tomb.
    Ten o’clock. A great cheer came from the crowd, and a band struck up the International .
    The ranking members of the Army and Party, marching in single file, began to fill up the temporary reviewing stand on top of the tomb. Rear rows were filled first. Army officers and Party members of increasingly high rank began to fill the rows in front.
    “Watch the line-up carefully when the first row comes in,” said the girl. “That’s how we find out about changes in the Politburo.”
    “You already know my name is Peter,” he replied irrelevantly, “but you haven’t told me yours.”
    She pointed to her badge: L—92-05.
    “Yes, but—” he persisted.
    “Comrade Maxwell.”
    “You have a first name?”
    She hesitated. “Edith.”
    The first row was filling up. A hush fell on the crowd. Politburo members ranged themselves on one side, the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force on the other. They left a vacant place in the exact center.
    “No change in the rankings,” announced Edith in Peter’s ear. “Bolshekov, on Stalenin’s left, is still No. 2, Adams No. 3...”
    The music stopped, followed by a burst of drums. Then amid complete silence Stalenin, in a pure white uniform, marched to the center position, turned to face the crowd, raised his clenched fist, held it for a dramatic moment, and then dropped it smartly.
    The crowd roared. The band burst into “Wonworld Forever!” The parade was on. First came the infantry, then the tanks, and then a cloud of planes roared overhead. This took an hour. “The parade is to be very short today,” said Edith again in 16
    Peter’s ear. “Stalenin has an important speech to make at the end.”
    “Where do you learn all this?”
    “Don’t you read the New Truth? ”
    A fresh burst of cheers. A barelegged majorette was leading a brilliantly uniformed band. Then came row on row of male gymnasts and athletes, barrel-chested, big-muscled, faceless, each carrying a basketball, football, tennis racquet, or other symbol of his sport. Then came the women athletes, heavy and hard-looking.
    Next the professions: bureaucrats with briefcases, doctors with kits, painters with palettes, journalists with notebooks and pencils.
    Each group carried a banner proclaiming Stalenin not only the world’s greatest citizen but the greatest in their particular line. He was the doctor who watched over all; he epitomized the scientific spirit; he knew the news before the newspapers; he was the architect of socialism, of industry, of the State; the supreme engineer; the poet of progress; he created the poetry that others could only record.
    Next came the workers: bricklayers with their trowels, carpenters with their saws, plumbers with their wrenches. Rows of railroad workers with blacksmiths’ hammers alternated with rows of farm workers with sickles. They swung these in reverse unison. At the top of each swing, hammers crossed sickles to bursts of applause.
    Next came the floats, dedicated to the Spirit of Work, of Efficiency, of Production. Some carried enormous charts, showing the output of guns, tanks, steel, wheat, pigs, education, music and poetry. All charts showed sharply ascending curves.
    But to Peter the most interesting floats were two that came at the end. The first consisted of a great steel cage. Inside was a peasant family