As if life on the street in the working man’s part of town could become any more distant, any more of a struggle, from day to day the rest of that mass of people live, now, under the harshest of circumstances, the vaguest yet most insidious of threats, the suggestion that bombs might fall at any moment on his head without warning seeming at the same time absurd and frightening. As the glass and steel towers of yesterday have become little more than monuments to the disorder and to the chronic shortages plaguing every part of the country, permeating all aspects of our society, resources commandeered and supplies redirected; immediately, it’s as though the whole country has been placed under a blockade, with not a single shot fired by any enemy against our homes or our people nor with a single bomb dropped from any of the aircraft that can be seen to fly past at so high an altitude they’re all but invisible to the naked eye. None of us can know what’s going on, and they who would have you convinced they can see where this is all headed are liars, plain and simple. It’s a hard thing to do, admit when you’re wrong, so hard that there are many who will die in the coming months, years rather than put themselves through the arduous effort such an admission requires. Pride, it seems, will be the wealthy man’s downfall, not his avarice or his wrath.
The rebel has all but called off his armed campaign, laying low for a while, gathering his strength, letting loose only the occasional attack on recruiting stations, on power plants, on bridges and on railway stations. Britain’s army, toothless from decades of expensive blunders and cuts, struggles to control the urban areas. The wealthy man and his apparatchiks in the current government, whoever might be pulling the strings, they choose to interpret the apparent subsiding of the rebel’s campaign as proof that their decision to take the country to war was the right one, even as their armies are humiliated on the battlefield and as civil discontent rises with each passing day. It’s all an act, it’s always been little more than an act, but when you are fighting this kind of war an act is all that matters, all that one needs to be concerned about. The wealthy man’s apparatchiks take to the screens of the working man and proclaim an end to what they call the terrorism and the lawlessness that’ve come to plague this city and this country, even as the working man and his allies the student and the parishioner keep on filling the streets like water fills the mightiest of rivers. It’s all a deeply confusing time, for you and for me, and in this time it becomes so entirely unlike any of us to imagine something more than what we have.
In his weaker moments, the wealthy man can only look on these times and imagine something entirely different had transpired. But as we linger on these moments, these moments in time when the hopelessness of our common path seems self-evident, know that there are those who would seek to change the course of our history and in so changing make possible through great suffering and great anguish a tomorrow better for us all.
26. Face of the Enemy
At last, it comes. Troopers approach the front of the building, the two at the front of the formation carrying a battering ram. From a fourth-floor window, Valeri watches, waiting for the troopers to come closer, closer, still closer, when they’re a half-metre from the front door tightening his grip on his rifle and drawing in one last breath. There’s the crack of gunfire as his first round fells one of the lead troops, the others scattering for cover instantly, the rest of Valeri’s opening volley punching holes in the concrete. There’s more gunfire, there’s shouting and screaming and the wailing of sirens, the storm troopers falling back, then withdrawing altogether, in the time this brief exchange of gunfire has taken the fires of liberation burning brighter than ever before, here and around the city. The troopers scatter, drawing gunfire from Valeri’s people manning third-floor windows, but scramble for cover in time. Valeri’s people don’t know what they’re doing, even if they’re convinced they do; these are not trained soldiers, not even enthusiasts, workers only learning to use firearms for the first time. Valeri leans out of the window slightly, looking to take another shot, a bullet to the wall scaring him into falling back into his apartment. More rounds burst around him, then stop. He picks himself up and pins himself against the wall, edging forward, listening to the sound of erratic gunfire, on reaching the window seeing no troopers where once they’d been. It’s over, for now. Valeri turns his gun into the sky and fires one, two, three more rounds, using the last of his ammunition as exclamation points on the day’s events. But it’s not over yet, it’s never over. As night falls, this same sequence of events plays itself out a hundred times across the country, coordinated not by some master plan but by the dark essence that’s already begun to run its course in the common pulse shared by working men here and everywhere there’s work to be done. Then, it happens.
Another exchange of fire, quickly after the first attack. In the street, a loose formation of armoured cars making their way past when someone opens fire on them. Valeri returns to his position, gun at the ready. This is the promise of the uprising fifteen years ago finally realized, Valeri thinks. This is what his mother and father died for, along with the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of many others just like him. A thunderous explosion booms through the air, sending a plume of smoke rising from the street. Valeri stops. He can’t tell what’s happening. There’s a rumbling felt under his feet, next the walls shaking slightly for a half-moment or two. A wall of smoke obscures the sun’s light. A wave of heat fills the air. For a moment Valeri thinks he’s dead. For a moment he thinks this must be his time. But the smoke clears. Valeri stands up and looks out the window, the street empty, without any troopers in sight. There’s an abandoned truck, shot through with fire, windows shattered. A body lies motionless. Shell casings are everywhere. A quick survey of the building reveals bullet holes, broken glass, parts of walls fractured along beams, and two of the defending workers dead. But Valeri keeps his gun in hand, though it’s empty brandishing it as if it were loaded. From across the city the sound of gunfire rattles intermittently into the night, at sunset rising columns of smoke blending with the after-industrial haze that lies permanently over the city. It’s over, for now. In the confusion of the night, there’s no one moment when it’s clear they’re no longer under threat, and for the rest of the night there’s more shooting, more troopers coming by here and there, the whole city, the whole country in a state of confusion.
It may seem Valeri’s instincts have become honed to the sensitivities of this fight, but it’s not so simple. In fact, his instructions were to take this moment to rise, as part of a wider offensive about to take place here in this city and across the country. We have reached this stage, when not all is as it seems, when our enemies in state have grown overconfident and have come to foresee in their own actions victory where there, in fact, lies only the inevitability of defeat. When the night is upon us, men like Valeri can sleep but can never rest. As night comes, the dark essence chooses this moment to complete its descent into our world, reaching out to the working man in his moment of weakness to inhabit him with the ultimate strength. For when there’s no clear way forward, there can be only one choice for the working man: resist.