And when the firemen arrive, the sight greets them of an apartment block set alight, flames pouring from its windows and doors, outside its residents gathered on the sidewalk across the street, some looking on their burning homes while others hold phones to the sides of their faces and call out to someone, anyone at all. The firemen work to put out the fire, but can’t save the building, in the morning the wreckage still smoldering even after the last flames have been fully extinguished. But Valeri is now completely unemployed, even the minimal earnings of a day labourer no longer available to him. It’s a perverse irony that as he’s lost his livelihood so have many others, the apartment blocks in the working class part of town now so filled with the unemployed and the rent-delinquent that the police can’t but evict them all. In their desperation, they have found their salvation in solidarity and in unity. In solidarity, the remaining prisoners’ commitment has only hardened. In the night, still more prisoners have defected, choosing to abandon their positions in favour of the amnesty offered by the troops staring them down. Stanislaw Czerkawski mans the prison’s defences with the rest, looking down the road. In the meanwhile, Stanislaw has heard from his wife; she’s safe, living in the basement shelter of a church repurposed to house the many who’ve lost their homes in the war spiralling out of control. For the migrant, his is a life made of being forced to endure as the other, deprived of the solidarity with the rest of the working class which he is rightfully entitled to. In rising, his is assuming his place, denied him for so long. When the troops opposing Stanislaw and the rest of the inmates move in, all will be lost. In losing all they have to lose, Stanislaw and the inmates will have a release.
It happens in the night; such things always happen in the night. In the midst of an all-night session, members of recently-formed parliamentary coalition find themselves caught in the midst of an orgy of hatred and self-recrimination when one lone member votes one way when he’s expected to vote another, sending the whole thing collapsing in on itself. Fractures form, individual members turning on one another, one petty squabble in an instant becoming a hundred, the parties breaking with each other, then each party breaking within itself. Alliances, so carefully negotiated, now collapse as a vote is held which brings this still-new government down, the vote passing not by the slimmest of margins but by an overwhelming majority. Even members of the governing coalition vote mostly in favour of bringing it down. This latest failure, this latest inability to proceed through these difficult times does not bode well for they who would seek to lead us through. In the morning, when news breaks of this latest government’s collapse, the working man and his allies the student and the parishioner disregard their duties and take to the streets again, filling the open spaces in this city and in cities across the country with their rage. The rebel, though, does nothing but watch and wait, knowing this is his time not to act. While a new caretaker assumes the reins of power, the last of the power there is to assume gradually slips away, lost the midst of a sea of rage in the streets and a world of hostile powers jockeying for control of such limited and petty things as land; the rebel, standing over a map in his hidden headquarters, can only smile as his moment draws nearer by the day.
21. Hidden Terrors
After the collapse of the old government, the old parties have fragmented into a dozen factions, each with their own competing interests, each with their own competing ideas on what how to proceed. But within each faction there are a dozen more, with each more a dozen more still, out of the chaos emerging something unlike what we’ve ever seen before. In the night, a new government comes to power, a caretaker government made up of chosen representatives from each of the old parties, so chosen by one another because of their willingness to compromise. Compromise, it’s believed, is the key to a peaceful resolution to the current crisis that’s so rapidly spiralling out of control. Announcing their grand coalition on the steps outside in front of the national assembly, the leaders of the old parties share embraces, give speeches in turn, make a good show for the screens broadcasting their day across the country and around the world. But it’s a fraud. In the night, suddenly, there’s the bursting of gunfire outside the prison, Stanislaw roused from his sleep by the stampeding of feet along the floor and by the shouting of voices surprised and scared. He reaches the front barricade, rifle clutched close to his chest, and looks confusedly down the road. But it’s not the troops who’ve opened fire. By now, this, the migrant’s fate has been sealed, cast as his lot is in with the others in the working class, but still it’ll take every agonizing step forward for him to reach out and seize his destiny. Though Stanislaw may not be able to articulate it as such, he’s come to know the truth so long expounded by the rebel’s apparatchiks: the future may be inevitable, but it is never assured.
Huddled around his screens, the working man and his allies, the student and the parishioner, and the rebel, too, all see through the fraud, knowing their struggle has not yet begun. But there are others who see themselves as delivering the nation from evil, that tight-knit group of officers loyal not to the law but to the land, not to words printed on the page or scrolled across a screen but to ideas in their hearts. These loyal officers soon secretly commit themselves to exerting their influence over this grand coalition, and in so committing themselves they change the course of our common history in their own way. Hidden from the working man’s view, these loyal officers work to put their plan into action, aware as they are of the need to look past the day and into the future with patience, the working man not yet able to see them but soon enough to feel the effects of their secret actions. It’s almost time. Manning the army’s roadblock, Private Craig Thompson hears the thunder of nearby gunfire and dives for cover. In the confusion, there’s little that can be done, little to be seen, the rebel’s gunmen attacking only for a moment, just long enough to inspire in the troopers a bitter resentment. This has become a routine, still never losing its power to draw down the strength and the interest of the finer points of mind. Spiralling out of control, the men of the artillery brigade can’t see a way forward under the banner of the King. In time, when the rockets shoot across the sky and when the darkness of the night lights up with thunderous explosions, not all will be as it seems. The order comes in, squawking over the radio, to fire. But the troops refuse. Private Thompson leads his gun crew in standing down, acting according to no plan, under the influence of nothing but the passion of the working man, one for another, he for his brother. It’s a sweltering heat, the summer’s sun beating down on their backs, as the others stand down, refusing to fire. What happens next, none of them could’ve foreseen.