Temporary People

by Steven Gillis

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Also by Steven Gillis:

  Walter Falls

  The Weight of Nothing

  Giraffes

  To my mom - the constant voice, forever with love.

  You beat the grass and probe the Principle,

  Only to see into your nature.

  Right now, where is your nature?

  - Zen Koan

  To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames.

  - Robert Musil, from The Man Without Qualities

  All we are saying

  is give peace a chance.

  - John Lennon

  BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1

  The babies’ heads are fat as fruit grown ripe beyond all natural measure. I remember the first time I saw one, her woebegone look and swollen scale, with hair stretched out in gossamer patches, as ill-proportioned as an artist’s lampoon. Startled, I couldn’t help but stare and wonder what had happened. Three months later, as the numbers rose and hinted of an epidemic, the truth came out and to no surprise gave us Teddy Lamb, a.k.a. the General.

  In the center of the Plaza, Teddy has built an enormous movie screen, some forty feet high and ninety feet wide. Night and day clips are shown from Teddy’s past performances, footage from General Admission and the film he’s now making. All Bameritans are included in the current cast, are given roles and costumes, our parts and outfits changing constantly. In the last ten months I’ve been dressed as a pirate, a peasant, and a wealthy industrialist sporting a silver suit and leather briefcase filled with stones. My acting is poor and I make no effort to improve. For many years I’ve run a small business, selling insurance to my neighbors, an idea I had following the War of the Winds and the death of Tamina.

  My thinking was simple. Feeling as I did, as gutted as a road struck deer, I was looking for a way to recover. The policies I created offered coverage against any sort of injury suffered through acts of revolution, governmental gamesmanship or political terror. Teachers and store clerks, day laborers and farmers arrived one by one to discuss my plan. I found a reliable partner to invest the proceeds from premiums as I knew nothing then and still know little now about handling money. The funds were pooled, the receipts put into international stocks. I took the profits and expanded my business, offered group coverage to private companies, college students and civil servants. With my success I lived comfortably and placed a percentage of my earnings back into the community, helping with schools and charities and such. All of this was easy, an uncomplicated plan, limited in sophistication and - because this is Bamerita - there for others to copy and corrupt.

  The cameras Teddy uses are state of the art and mounted throughout the capital for constant filming. Teddy insists his movie making is for the good of all, the way he observes us and orders us about meant, he says, to bring us closer together. As everyone’s on tape, collectively and systematically recorded, the implication of his claim is open to interpretation. He tells us his way of creating films will change how motion pictures are viewed forever. He says he plans to submit his film to all the major festivals where he expects to sell distribution rights for millions of dollars. Few of us care. We’ve had enough of Teddy and his movie business, have tired of his other schemes and offenses. The sentiment is widespread, and still I worry about the consequence of our discontent and where things will likely go from here.

  The scenes for Teddy’s movie are shot out of sequence and no one can say for certain what the film’s about. Even when the soldiers come and order us into our costumes, we’re not shown a script. At best, we hear rumors that the movie’s a multi-generational saga weaved through the telling and retelling of a 3,000 year old fable. The focus of the fable changes however, each time the rumor’s repeated. Teddy reviews all the daily rushes, assesses the caliber of our performance. Everyone’s uneasy about how they appear. The perception we give is not always as intended. Our fear isn’t artistic but rather a concern for our safety. In evaluating the scenes, Teddy’s impatient with people who disappoint him. Those found deficient are removed from the film and rarely heard from again. “That,” Teddy says, “is show biz.”

  In Bamerita our history is like the rim of a wheel made to turn around and around, our political cycles nothing if not redundant. Teddy’s taking over our government has us less surprised than disappointed and people are restless to overthrow the bastard. We’re an old island, ancient by western standards, populated well before Jesus, Tao, the Bhagavad Gita and Dutch Reform. At 4,600 square miles, Bamerita is moderately sized, smaller than the Bahamas though larger than Aruba and Barbados combined. Our population is 1.5 million. We currently sit on a longitudinal line of 36 degrees, 300 miles southeast of the Azores Islands, our waters warmed by the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay, some 2,000 miles south of Reykjavik, Iceland.

  I say “currently sit,” as we’re an island unmoored, a body created by enormous volcanic eruptions deep in the ocean sending up pumice and ash, limestone and molasse. Pyroclastic surges have lifted us, much as the islands of Hawaii were formed and continue to be affected by the steady explosion of the Lo’ihi sea mount active for millions of years. A composite of fire and stone fused into ignimbrite - the volcaniclastic rock commonly known as “tuff,” where other land masses have settled, their plates idle and magnetic pull of their Curie Points no longer swayed by the steady motion of the waters, Bamerita remains susceptible to shifts in substratum and palaeomagnetic indiscretions. The same forces that lead Gondwana and Atlantis to ride the waves and whole continents to drift apart like pieces of a jigsaw scattered, now float us back and forth upon the tide.

  Ethnically, we’re a mix of Mamaties, Kalmuns and Dataks. Our religion is Catholic, Muslim and Jewish, our language Spanish, Arabic and English; the latter dominating our shops and schools, newspapers and books. Our first revolution was the War of Redemption in 1305, as then-King Porett XXIV introduced Bamerita to Greek philosophy, Athenian Democracy and the Technology of Allotment. A constitution was drafted, our laws and liberties codified, a parliamentary form of government created with ultimate authority retained by the King. Jai Datisa, the army’s Major-General and a parliamentary representative for the northern city of Lobre, opposed the plan to leave so much power vested in the throne. By summer the debate turned violent. Men on horses, with broadswords and claymores, raided villages known to back the King. Before Porett could respond, the revolt swallowed him whole. The King was taken from his palace, bound and weighted with stones and tossed into the sea.

  As conqueror, Jai Datisa disbanded parliament and installed himself as Potentate. Since then, the cycle of revolution has continued. Rebellions and coups occur with remarkable frequency, give rise to new governments, intervals of democracy followed by periods of tyranny and further revolt. (Jai Datisa was himself assassinated in 1327, as he relieved his bladder near a eurasian tree, his throat slit by a boy who would be king.) Forty years ago my father fought in the War of the Sorrows, while twenty years later I helped start the War of the Winds. Our success each time seemed promising though wound up shortlived. Recently Teddy Lamb marched thirteen members of then-President Dup
ala’s cabinet down to the water, strapped them to single logs, cut their feet and set them adrift. President Dupala was chained to two logs, the waves pulling his legs left and right until he was split in half and his entrails fed the fury of fish beneath. A month later, the movie-making began.

  Last week I stood on the scaffolding surrounding the tower I built for Tamina and called to those who came to speak with me about rebellion. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

  Emilo below, kicked at stones, yelled back, “Sure you can!” He waited until I climbed down, squeezed my arm, said “Get your dress shoes, André,” and dragged me to a big-headed baby funeral.

  “Starch and sugar,” Paul Bernarr explained how the manufacturer of Good Baby replaced nutritional supplements in milk powder with cheaper ingredients. “Babies fed the counterfeit formula are undernourished.”

  “But their rosy cheeks?”

  “A sign of malnutrition.”

  “So they starve?”

  “Eventually, yes.” Dr. Bernarr said, “Teddy’s found himself another windfall. The poor are easy marks.”

  I paced among the graves. Emilo in black jeans, brought his guitar. Some folks with no time to change came in costume, wore medieval outfits, panne corsets with decorative inserts and flared peplum bodices, brown slacks and vests. Musketeers in large hats and boots and velvet tunics lowered the tiny casket into the ground while Emilo played, “The River of Babylon,” followed by the Beatles’ “Revolution.” (“Well you say you want a rev-uh-loo-tion.”) Soldiers appeared and frightened the mourners standing near the grave, got them to sing a different tune.

  We left the cemetery around 5:00 p.m. and headed back to Emilo’s shop. Emilo kept his guitar out while we walked and continued playing. At the start of the War of the Winds he’d fronted a band called ‘Mr. Marker.’ The group was named for Chris Marker, the radical documentarian, founder of the French collective SLON - la Societe de Lancement des Oeuvres Nouvelles - whose seminal works included, “Far From Vietnam” and “Be Seeing You.” Mr. Marker played a mix of reggae, calypso and American pop, appeared on the local circuit of bars and clubs until the military dragged then-President Kenefie from his office and left him dangling from the roof of the Museum of Natural History. Overnight, the new government censored all artists’ work. Unable to play in clubs, Emilo started an underground movement, wrote two new songs - “Junta Heartache” and “The Half Finished Bridge” - which became the anthem for our National Bameritan Democratic Front. Twenty-some years later the NBDF was being resurrected to take on Teddy while my name, along with Emilo’s and Justin Avere’s, was circulating in places I wish they wouldn’t.

  Emilo strummed Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy, Mercy Me,’ said “Sing it with me, André.”

  “Ah, things ain’t what they used to be.”

  “That’s it.”

  “War is not the answer.”

  “What? Whoa. No. Wrong song.”

  “Picket lines and picket signs.”

  “That’s not ‘Mercy,’ it’s ‘What’s Going On?’”

  “Right.”

  “But I said ‘Mercy.’”

  “Mercy me. Don’t punish me with brutality.”

  He stopped his playing, slid his guitar strap around so that the guitar hung behind his back. On the night Teddy staged his coup and dragged President Dupala from his office, Emilo found four large buckets of red dye and a thick bristled brush he used to paint the words, “Koupe tet, bioule kay!” across the rear walls of the Ministry of Interior, Enforcement and Defense. The phrase “Cut off the head, burn down the house!” - was first chanted in 1804 by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian slave leader who organized a revolt against the armies of Napoleon. Hoping to inspire a similar response, Emilo waited for others to join him, but the army had a vice grip on the capital. The night passed and the next afternoon the painted words were removed by Teddy’s soldiers using sandblasters, ammonia and steel wool.

  We crossed Kefuntin Boulevard, the sun hot on my shaved head. After Tamina died, I cut off my hair, fitfully at first, and then routinely as I began to study Satyagraha following the war. I was looking for something to throw myself into, some way of becoming constructively lost, and stumbled onto Satyagraha in a book while drunk. I reread the chapters again the next afternoon, learned what I could about self-help, self-sacrifice and faith without fear. Satyagraha lead me naturally to Ghandi and passive resistance, the movement described as, “An all-sided sword. It never rusts and cannot be ”An all-sided sword. It never rusts and cannot be stolen.” Before Teddy, I thought if I was ever to raise a sword again it would be this one.

  A sign above the camera on Forbushe Avenue directed all “non-performers” where to walk. Traffic was rerouted, cars removed from the curbs. A few blocks from Emilo’s shop, we stopped in a designated viewing area to watch part of the day’s filming. A woman in a brown burlap skirt, a peasant costume complete with grey cloth apron and dung-soled leather shoes, was fighting with three soldiers dressed as livery hands. We stood behind the orange barricades and observed the woman struggle and cry out as the other actors pounced and grabbed and fell on top of her. The violence was not choreographed, was fluid and free flowing, given over to what Teddy called “method acting.”

  Here again, we could only worry how such a performance fit the arc of the film’s overall plot. Our suspicion had long been that Teddy was more interested in blurring the lines of reality than finishing a film, that he was looking for a way to present all acts of violence as make believe, and in so doing, confuse what was and wasn’t part of our normal daily life. Those who raised such a claim in public soon found themselves cast in roles that proved life did, in fact, all too closely at times imitate art.

  Much of the woman’s clothes were torn while the soldiers mounted her in ways that looked entirely real. The cries and groans stirred the crowd. After three or four minutes, a voice through a speaker hidden in one of the jacaranda trees called, “Cut!” We all waited then as the soldiers got up and adjusted their costumes before helping the woman to her feet. A robe was brought and the woman bent for ward. There were scratches on her face and ar ms and bite marks on her neck. The crowd watched as she straightened herself finally and forced a smile. The soldiers, as always, assured us that everything was fine. A few in the crowd applauded on their own, while others did so only as additional soldiers approached the barricades and instructed us to cheer. I recognized the woman then as one of Adim Furle’s daughters, and tried to reach her, but the soldiers pushed me back.

  “Acting is it?” Emilo took my arm as we walked off. “What we need to do,” he said, bending first to stab his penknife into the front tire of a government jeep. I stepped to the side, looked back as Rachel Furle was being helped from the street by a group of peasant women. Emilo swung his guitar across his chest and broke into a loud verse of “Junta Heartache.” The first time I heard the song I was a young father, married to Tamina. My own father, Gabriel Mafante, was editor of the Bameritan Sentinel. A suppor ter ofPres id ent Kenefie, my father wrote a series of ar ticles condemning the military for its latest coup. In response, the government removed my father as editor and took control of the press. When he continued publishing essays in a private print, the government charged him with sedition and threw him in jail. Emilo, Justin and I organized a series of protests, formed the NBDF, did what we could until we were forced to flee the capital. I moved my mother, Tamina and our children - Anita and Ali - to a safe house and went to join the rebels in the hills.

  We were at best a ragtag band of novice revolutionaries, outnumbered and without supplies, forced to scramble for old rifles, boots and food and ammunition. After two months the weather turned wet and then dry again, the breeze off the ocean filling the air with the smell of recent battles. The skin on the soles of my feet peeled away, the colors in the photograph I had of Tamina bleeding from the heat. I lay with her picture between my hands and chest at night, recalling days before the War when we would walk at night t
o the water’s edge, explore the coves with candles lit and our shoes left at the shore.

  We remained in the hills another two months. The military government was run by three colonels who directed the War from a position of safety inside the capital. Impatient, convinced they could crush us in one major assault, they ordered their soldiers into the woods the second week of October. We were over whelmed and in retreat made use of the only advantage we had - our superior knowledge of the hills. The soldiers charged and we laid traps, dug pits and planted spikes covered with twigs. Emilo and Justin placed explosives triggered by wires, while I hid with the others in tall grass, buried by dirt and sod, and opened fire. The soldiers blitzed and we circled around their perimeter, struck and fled, fired and ran. Our strategy allowed us to survive the first wave, and then the second, and still if not for luck we’d have lost the War for sure.

  From their bungalow in the capital, having coordinated their army’s offensive by radio, the three colonels anticipated an evening of frolic with several young girls, and as an aphrodisiac, downed a large serving of mussels and snails. The meat in the shells had spoiled however. The colonels soon bent and barfing, collapsed in a heap, cramped and shit themselves to death by morning. Without command, the soldiers became splintered and easily picked apart.