At the union hall, out-of-work workers talk. “A skilled worker won’t go under in the villages these days,” says one worker. “There’s as much work to be had as you might want,” says another. Both know it was never for want of work that they’re made to languish at the hall along with many others. There’s plenty of work and there’s plenty of workers; this is the question of our time. After that hour together, Valeri hasn’t the money to pay for another hour, having worked to save such a sum for more than two months. Only later does he realize she has not paid her rent in a long while, the money he gave her being instead put to use paying for a new winter coat in anticipation of the coming season on the street. Never left in the open, we all look like her at one point in our lives, she being the strongest in her weakness, the bravest in her fear, the wisest in her narrow, short-term outlook on life. The next time Valeri sees her, not walking the street but in a shop buying food, he dares not approach her, instead exchanging with her a knowing glance from across the grocery store’s aisle as they pass one another, that little light behind her eyes suggesting she has begun to feel something for him, if not love then something that might well yet blossom into love. But it’s all a fraud. It’s a false narrative, framed within the confines of the human heart, made to seem more than what it is. At the armoury, Colonel Cooke puts Craig Thompson and the rest of the brigade through a series of drills and musters, while imposing a strict curfew on the men. Naturally, no reason for the change, leaving the men to come up with their own. “We might be deployed abroad,” says Craig in the bunks after hours. “Where?” asks another. “Who knows? Ukraine maybe,” says Craig. “They’re going to want us to fight the Russians,” says the other. “I won’t go to die for some imperial ambition,” says Craig. And the rest of the brigade share his feelings. But these are young men serving in want of a paycheque. In times of crisis, the war in the streets of their own homes is the war of real concern for ordinary troopers like them.
Over the past several months, Valeri’s been meeting with his neighbours, never sitting down with them and talking at length but running into them in the halls on his way to work or in the laundry room. It’s the little moments that add up over time, the traded glances and the half-serious exchanges that began to tend Valeri towards action. In these radical times, men like Valeri are soon to find themselves at the head of a burgeoning movement which the dark essence may yet choose to use to give itself expression, and with expression, life. But we’re not there yet. While Stanislaw Czerkawski’s ruthless boss never hesitates to fire anyone who looks at him the wrong way, Stanislaw has come to tire of holding his tongue. “I need to stay put,” he says, sharing views with one of the workers on their break, “but sometime my turn will come.” His fellow worker, another Pole, agrees. “It seems so hopeless,” says Stanislaw, “for I have so little. Why do we act as though those with the least to lose are the most afraid to stand?” But soon their break is over and they’re all back cleaning floors and scrubbing toilets. His mind wanders, and he stands tall in a clear picture he has for the future, and once he’s finished cleaning one room but before he moves onto another he looks abroad for his troubles. If he’s afraid of losing his meagre living, then soon he will have no longer any reason to fear. Among the Poles who form this permanent underclass, there’s a grim certainty, and Stanislaw’s wife shares with him a sad, sad perception of gloom.
Still yet evictions put working people out of their own homes, forcing each to find successively more and more creative ways to house themselves. If ever any should look back they’d see another tower, another sleek, glass and steel tower where once a simple, efficient block had stood. Sometimes it seems the same apartment blocks are emptied of the families living inside, made hollow and then torn down, only to reappear the next day again filled with those same families, the act repeating itself in the same time and in the same space for so long as there exists space to be filled. It makes little sense, and if the working man had access to the kind of apparatus that’s at the wealthy man’s disposal then surely, the working man believes, he would use that power to usher in a golden age free of the burden of so much wanton, unbridled greed and waste. The values of the working man, values like chastity, grace, hard work, and ingenuity contrast against the values of the wealthy man, values like vulgarity, indecency, parasitism, and infirmity; it seems, now, impossible to imagine how the wealthy man could’ve ever become so wealthy despite all his weaknesses seemingly making him fit only to lie in bed and wither away into nothing.
As the current spree of evictions and demolitions run their course, the working man sees in the propaganda outlets proclamations of jobs added, of monthly, sometimes weekly increases in the prices of this and that, and daily reports wherein the talking heads gleefully announce the value of their own imagined holdings reaching new heights. The working man sees as none of them stop to spare a word of concern for his own, as he’s always seen, and it inspires in him an instinctive, visceral revulsion he’s become intimately familiar with through his lifetime and which he will never forget even after history turns in his favour. Though emotions run high, this strike peters out over the coming days, its failure laying the groundwork for future victory. The union hall burned, now a smoldering wreck, leaving men like Valeri to think towards their next moves. But the world carries on, and so too must Valeri, returning to find the plant closed, its front gates chained shut with guards standing in front to ward off the small crowd of workers looking on.