The soapies could not find an easy way. Only the drummer, whose pulse and drumsticks seemed to threaten anyone that blocked his path, proceeded with much speed. The camera crew and the photographers walked backwards through the traffic. Their lenses squared the scene and transformed this hapless chaos, unintended and shortlived, into an act of scheming anarchy. Marching in a traffic jam to the formal beat of drum and to the blatant discord of car horns, the protest had undermined itself. It could hardly move. The rule of modern cities is that wheels and legs must keep on moving or keep out of town. At least they should keep separate. They should observe the segregations of the kerb.
The police arrived — a single officer, already wet and robbed of patience — and there were comic scenes adorning both the evening and the morning television news and the front pages of the daily papers, showing the drummer and policeman eye to eye. Both had their sticks raised in the air, both were intent on beating skin. The policeman, though, had been discreet and brought his nightstick down upon the drum and not the drummer. The drummer was less restrained. He beat a tattoo on the policeman’s hat. In the photograph, two traders were stepping forward through the jam of cars to intervene. They held placards as if they meant to chop the policeman down. One placard said, They Shall Not Pass — ironically, in view of all the chaos in the street. The other exhorted, Save our Market from the Millionaire. That was the picture that the city saw. Those were the slogans that introduced them to Arcadia.
The traders were elated. Now they understood that, for a while at least, two hundred citizens could bring the city to a halt. They formed a crowd, a laughing, animated crowd, at the top of the steps to the tunnel beneath Link Highway Red. Soon they were chanting slogans with one voice, walking unencumbered except by wind and rain down the centre of the mall. Their voices ricocheted wetly off the office glass and stone and sounded like a bullet sounds when it is shot in a ravine and lodges in the buttocks of an elk. They were loud enough to summon Signor Busi and his host from their breakfast to the parapet of Victor’s rooftop garden, and to crowd the tinted, toughened windows of Big Vic with staff, including Anna on the 27th floor.
The mall had not witnessed noise or passion such as this, not since the builders had removed their huts and debris and left the buildings clean and free for business. The architecture said Don’t raise your voice, Don’t run, Don’t hang around. Office workers, coming, going, did what they were told. The mall prepared them for the obeisances of the office desk just as the aisles of churches subdue their congregations between the door and the altar. But the procession of greengrocers was not intimidated by the prospect of a desk. Encouraged by the cameras, the echo and the camaraderie of rain, they bellowed slogans down the mall. The closer that the soapies got to Big Vic, the unrulier they became. To see their faces you would think that they were mutinous and angry. In fact, these men and women were having fun. What is more fun than making noisy mayhem in a place where you’re not known but, yet, are flanked by a company of friends? For once they felt like crusaders instead of selfish middlemen in trade. This day enriched them. Indignation and a drum would save their market from Arcadia.
They lined up with their placards outside Big Vic, unprotected from the rain, ennobled by discomfort, emboldened by their fears of being driven from their stalls. What then? No one had thought to make a speech or send a deputation in or lobby for support and signatures from Victor’s office staff.
‘They only need to see us,’ Con had said. ‘And hear us too.’
So they stood firm and wet; and they began to chant and clap and jeer and offer leaflets whenever anybody passed them by to enter Victor’s fort.
Just before eleven the architectural press began to arrive for Victor’s conference, but there were other writers too, from papers and from magazines that would not normally concern themselves with building schemes. Rook’s phone calls, Victor’s press release and invitation, the early radio reports of trouble in the marketplace and streets, had stirred the news editors and the diarists to send their representatives. The Burgher himself had come (again my face is hoist above the parapet), and I was keen to follow up the anecdote of Victor’s coddled fish with something else to make the rich seem ludicrous. I noted what the placards said — Save our Market from the Millionaire — and when I took their leaflet, saw what comedy the Burgher could construct from Signor Busi’s pregnant domes. Already — and without, as yet, much cause beyond an appetite for mischief — the traders had a champion. The Burgher loathed those men who gained their power and wealth from trade.
‘Who are these people?’
Signor Busi was glad of an excuse to leave the breakfast table and look out on the mall. An hour of non-business conversation with Victor had obliged him to sit silently, engaged in food, or else — his choice, in fact — to hold a monologue. As Victor showed no sign that he was either bored or entertained, the monologue was free to range untrammelled and, perhaps, unheard, amongst the pleasantries of Busi’s intercontinental life. He talked at length about New York, its obesity. Did Victor know New York? No? So Busi spoke about Milan, the town he loved and loathed the most. It was more Celtic than typically Italian, he believed. Did Victor realize that London was closer to Milan than Sicily? Victor had not realized, but seemed prepared to accept Busi’s word.
Now the architect was stuck. The more he said, the less he had to say. So he was happy to stand and help the old man to the parapet and relay — his eyes were sharp — what he could see; the banners, the picket line, the drama in the mall. No, Victor did not know what all the distant noise was for. He sublet twenty-three floors of Big Vic to fourteen different companies, so there were fifteen possible reasons for demonstrations at the door.
When Anna came to lead her boss and Signor Busi down to the press conference, she said that there would be delays. They had expected just five writers at the most and perhaps an agency photographer, but there were thirty journalists in all, including a film crew and two people from the radio. The meeting room was far too small. They’d have to find a larger venue.
‘Then use my office suite,’ Victor said. ‘You might have guessed there’d be wide interest.’
Anna thought it prudent not to detail the width of interest that had gathered in the mall. She replied to Signor Busi’s urbane bow with a ceremonial smile and left to fetch the press.
Both men were pleased to launch Arcadia to such an eager group. The cameras were put to work as soon as the two men came down by Victor’s private lift. Anna distributed plans and paperwork. Each file contained an architectural brief, a plan, a sketch, an article from the International Gazette about the Busi Partnership. Big Vic’s Publicity Manager introduced the two men to the press. Signor Claudio Busi, he explained, would say a word or two, and then there would be questions and photo-opportunities and wine.
Signor Busi embarked upon his second monologue that morning, but on this occasion he had come prepared. The speech that he had already made to Victor would do for these people, too, except that now there was no need ‘to glorify the vision of the man who pays’.