The following is a first draft of a translation of an episode from Bruno Jasie?ski’s novel Pal? Pary? (I Burn Paris – the title arose from a misunderstanding on Jasie?ski’s part of the French idiom). In the novel, Paris is cordoned off after being hit by a plague and ascends into anarchy. There are different statelets dotted around the city. The passage below deals with the problem of the police.

‘Parable of the Navy Blue Republic

On the third day the Cit� Island was witness to the first ever demonstration of unemployed police in history. A crowd of unemployed navy blue people stretched across the entire island, pouring into the square before the Prefectur�. At the head of the march, demonstrators carried banners bearing slogans like �The Republic is Dead. Long Live the Republic!�, �We demand some kind of government!� and �A Police Force with no Government is like a Tram with no Electricity!�.

An impressive political meeting took place in the square in front of the Prefectur�. After lengthy debating it was decided, in the name of saving the police as such, to approach each of the governments of the newly formed statelets and offer them their services.

�It�s not a question of the colour or even the nationality of the government,� the plan�s proponent explained. �The police, in order to regain its raison d�etre, to return from the land of fiction to the ranks of real institutions, must try as soon as possible to seek some kind of government, or even the idea of a government. Without the concept of law and order we are shadows of our former selves.�

The plan was accepted unanimously and messangers were sent with the offer to all the governments, with the exception of the communist government in Belleville.

All the governments, fearing the introduction into their territories of a foreign element, replied in the negative, justifying their position by the impossibility of feeding new arrivals given the extremely meagre supplies of food left (�we�ve enough of our own mouths to feed�).

In a final impulse of self-preservation the proposal of one policeman to find any old civilian and force him to declare a dictatorship on the Cit� Island was accepted. It was decided to organise a raid without delay.

After fruitless half-hour searches a patrol appeared at the entrance to a small street carrying in their arms an unknown, paralysed old man. The old man betrayed unmistakeable signs of terror. When he was brought into the Prefectur� he started to cry and tried to break free – in vain, of course.

In the Prefect�s study a delegation of police officers informed him that he was a dictator and as such he should issue a few decrees reinstating the idea of authority by law and order.

The old man sat apathetically in a chair, not reacting at all to the honour and power that was being offered to him. Attempts were made to explain the thing to him in the simplest words. In vain. As it turned out, he was deaf.

With difficulty they manaaged to come to an understanding with him in writing. The office drew up a declaration, which the old man, after long hesitation and threatened by a revolver barrel, eventually decided to sign.

An hour later the first declaration of the dictator went up on the walls of Cit� Island. In this declaration the dictator stated that he was taking power in Cit� Island and establishing a state of law and order. Anyone who dared to oppose the authority of the new dictator would be regarded as illegal and liable to the harshest condemnation/ extermination. It was signed Mathurin Dupont.

The whole island that day heaved a huge sigh of relief. The institution of the police, as such, had been saved. Exultant police marched around with a swagger, their heels ringing on the asphalt as if they wanted to assure themselves of their undeniable reality.’

Bruno Jasie?ski was a Polish futurist and later socialist realist who was murdered by the NKWD in 1938 or 1939. Before his death he wrote in a letter to Jezhova, chief of the NKWD, the following:

Such punishment, though I have not deserved it, will be an entirely justified form of self-defence on the part of the soviet state against its enemies and I will accept it without dissent. Only, please let me not be tortured any longer — that is my final and only request.

There is a short biography of Jasie?ski here.