After this latest demonstration the streets are reclaimed by the way of things, the current order seizing them anew from the temporary occupation by the angry crowd. Still war rages that we can’t see, lying beyond the sight of men like Valeri. Every minute of every day we are immersed in a sea of grey from top to bottom, the firm, steady scrutiny of a tight fit strained across his broad, powerful back. In some visceral way it’s never seemed right, the fit and the strong working men like him answering to the authority of a balding man who grows fat off the work of others even as he’s never done a day of honest work in his life. But Valeri doesn’t know the bosses like Mr. Kennedy have been nursing a bitter hatred for the men and women who took part in the failed rising fifteen years ago. It’s only Mr. Kennedy’s ignorance of Valeri’s mother and father having taken part in the failed rising that keeps Valeri employed. This is not because Mr. Kennedy lost much of anything; a few profits can’t compare to the loss of loved ones. But hatred and recrimination are the way of the wealthy, something Valeri has come to learn at some great cost. It matters little, though, who the individuals are that may yet achieve the advance of our history from one page to the next. Whether Mr. Kennedy has his way or not, the sort of person he is will have their way with the future.
A young man named Sherman Ross has little to lose, in seemingly forever without even a pittance to sustain his hopes for the future. He hasn’t worked a steady job in many years, sometimes given the chance as a day labourer selected only when needed to tear down working class apartments or put up in their place luxury quarters for the wealthy bankers who never seem to come around. His muscles and lean and sinewy, and callouses cover his hands and feet. The clothes he wears have holes, some of the holes small but grouped together in clusters, others gaping wide but lonely. His stomach sometimes growls, but he silences it with a glass of water and an unfiltered cigarette with nothing but Chinese characters all over the package. Twenty-seven is too young to have lost hope, yet here he is, made to watch as screens boldly proclaim the rising in value of some imagined figure making them all wealthier than ever before. Sherman Ross is much too young to be so jaded, so cynical on his lot in life. But Sherman sees the gleaming, glass and steel towers reaching for the sky in the distance and feels an instinctive anger rising from his heart. Sherman sees on his screens triumphant declarations of new projects built, promises of lavish new quarters of the city to be built, even fanciful proclamations of a bold, new vision for the city marked by gleaming spires and a dazzling array of multi-coloured lights. It’s all a fraud. Sherman can never know belonging in this new world taking shape all around him, something he realizes in a purely instinctive, guttural way, like an animal sensing the gathering storm. Out of work, he looks on the unrest in the streets and he joins in, not to further a cause or help wage war but to vent his rage, in hurling bricks and smashing glass adding his own voice to the chorus. Though young men like him can’t know it, limited as they are in their vision to the ground right in front of them, their undisciplined and misguided outbursts are like the sowing of the fields, with the reaping to come only when enough blood has been shed to make the land fertile again. Already at war, we see the fires of liberation burning into the night, accompanied by the intermittent rattling of gunfire and the muffled thud of bombs going off.
Still one event has transpired that gives us a glimpse of the very near future, in the time it’s taken for one moment to yield to the next a sense of impending doom invading the streets like a thick fog seeping in from the sea. As night falls, the flashing lights and the wailing sirens sound out through the darkness and pierce the restless murmur of the thousand-and-one voices lingering in the background. In the midst of a planned power outage, one young man cast out on the street takes his last breath before his now-lifeless body slumps over. A life extinguished, one of so many, in the darkness of the night a banner flying, invisible to all but the few among the working man’s ranks who’ve read the forbidden book, acquired the forbidden knowledge, soon to be given the opportunity to put it to good use.
9. An Intemperate Nature
A knock on the door in the middle of the night wakes the working man suddenly, and he leaps out of bed at the sound. Another knock, then another, then another, while the working man pulls on clothes and makes good his escape through his bedroom’s window. This is not what’s happened here today, but in another time, another place, leaving the working man alone and confused as storm troopers sift through his things in search of something that isn’t there. After a traumatic day, the working man ought to have a peaceful night, his peace interrupted by the braying of horns and by the wailing of sirens pouring in through his open window. Not entirely unaware of what’s going on in the streets below, the working man thinks to fight back with whatever means he has; it’s in this mindset that men like Valeri find themselves longing to lash out. In Valeri’s little apartment block, the storm troopers move, barging through doors, knocking down old men and frightening little children in search of something that isn’t there. Moving floor by floor, flat by flat, the storm troopers soon make their way closer to Valeri’s. Roused from bed, he crouches half-naked, Sydney at his side.
At the police station it’s to take weeks for Stanislaw and the rest of the crew to fortify the place. In that time Stanislaw sees the police lorries go out empty and come back full of prisoners many times. The nights are long and made longer by the gnawing guilt in the back of his mind. At home, he tells his wife, “I feel guilty for working to help the police become stronger while they keep going out and arresting ordinary people.” In the dining room, she passes him a cup of coffee before pouring her own. He says, “I know we have to make ends meet and we can’t afford to upset our pay. But how I’d like to put that ruthless boss in his place.” His wife sits next to him, and reassures him simply by resting her hand on his and giving a warm but firm touch. But the storm troopers pass him by, and he looks out only when the morning has come and the last of the troopers has left. In their wake they leave shattered glass, holes punched in walls, and broken bones. This attack, this current wave of invasions into the working man’s homes in an attempt to root out subversive elements is but the instinctive reaction of the wealthy man and his political apparatchiks against the burgeoning movement which should one day seize what’s rightfully his.
After the inspection, Private Thompson and the rest were punished for their show of insubordination further by confinement to their barracks and a stricter than ever regime of marching and mustering in formation. But it does little to quell the tensions. “Tell you what,” says one of the soldiers to Craig Thompson at night, “if that Colonel thinks we’re going to be his playthings so he can get some glory he’s sadly mistaken.” But Craig only murmurs something in response. In the early morning the whole brigade musters, then piles into the backs of their lorries, guns in tow, and makes for the range. But hardly a hundred yards out of the motor pool the first lorry breaks down. A few hundred yards later, the second breaks down. Less than a mile from the range and two more break down seemingly at once. These lorries haven’t been taken out of the motor pool in several months. The truck Craig’s in suffers mechanical trouble but doesn’t break down, the driver able to get back on the road and limp along in first gear, painfully rolling into the range’s garage two hours later. It’s deeply degrading for Craig and the rest of the troops to stand at the side of the road while the mechanic tinkers about in the engine, the scene playing itself out in the shadow of the small but still looming threat of war. In the midst of all these strikes, the shop where Valeri works can hardly stay open. Still petty concerns dominate. “If you keep on talking then everyone will hear,” says Ruslan, taunting Valeri with a wry, sly grin. “Let them hear, I’m going to wind up leaving this place anyways,” Valeri says, “I’d rather take my chances in the street than hang around this den of jackals. They spy on us, they threaten us, they treat us like dirt. And it’s always been this way. What good is staying around to earn enough to keep on starving for one more day.” By now, a few others are listening. “Keep talking,” Ruslan says, “and you’re going to get exactly what you want.” It’s a tense moment, and Valeri can hardly feel his face for the rage surging in him.