Temporary People

by Steven Gillis

  “So you say, but how do you suppose?” Zak Frazor indexed the flaws in my plan, all the risk for arrest and worse. A few drops of water escaped from the plastic bag on the floor. I went and put my hands behind my father’s chair and replied in turn, “We know what will happen other wise. Teddy’s just waiting for us to gather our rifles and pitchforks and what sort of plan is that?”

  “It’s the only plan,” Don Pendar placed his boot atop the bag of ice. Several men hooted and cawed while others encouraged me to go on. “What about the movie?” Jak Kleer wanted to know. “The movie, most definitely,” I told them. “We’ll boycott that as well.”

  “I’m for it,” Edd Huff in a sailor’s suit said.

  “A strike is our best option,” I repeated.

  “The best laid plans,” Gari Charuf mocked.

  Morus Hunds agreed with me. “Business is always the root.” “Money is the core.”

  “If we cut Teddy off at the source.”

  “It’s true.”

  “If we can.”

  “A strike then?” Ali called for a vote, while Don Pendar reminded everyone of Emilo, argued again in favor of a more aggressive attack. We debated this way for some time, until Jeri Fulan and Ryle Naceme turned and asked, “What do you think, Gabriel Mafante?”

  My father rolled his head forward. No pacifist, I knew he wouldn’t reject the idea of revolution simply because I asked. Still, he’d grown impatient waiting for those who supported an open rebellion to present a viable plan, and flicking his fingers across his belly said, “I think for now a strike works best.” He raised his chin so that the folds in his neck parted, exposing the inner seam of fleshy creases. “We could, of course, schedule another meeting and discuss the matter further, evaluate again the pros and cons, examine both sides, make a list, take our time, conduct a study and put our findings through a committee. Or we can accept that a strike is a sufficient choice for now and focus on what needs to be done.”

  I remained beside my father’s chair, relieved by his endorsement, however much it came with reservation. The others glanced among themselves, and deferring to my father, turned their attention back to me. “What now then?” they asked. “What now?” I also wondered.

  Don Pendar stood across the room, the bruise on his face a purplish-red. His anger clear, he came toward me, leaned in and whispered, “Congratulations. It’s quite an achievement to mislead so many people this way. What do you expect to happen when we walk out of the factories, the docks and mines and water plant? The soldiers will enjoy themselves, won’t they? A strike, André? Lambs to the slaughter. You think you’re the only one with history? Jallianwalla Bagh, André. What makes you think you know best?”

  I turned away, stopped listening and shifted my attention to the others and the work at hand. I spent the next half hour keeping myself busy with lists and assignments, answering questions and making calls, organizing what I could, who to contact and where to start, and when I did at last look up again Don Pendar was gone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Chief Inspector Warez’s second wife, Casmola Gil Warez-Daumatero, wanted very much to be in Teddy’s film. As an actress, she’d no appreciable training, her talents less artistic than corporeal, and still she had Warez ask Teddy to consider her for bigger parts. Twice now Teddy agreed to look her over. When Casmola heard about the American director, she insisted on meeting him. The Chief Inspector carried headshots and copies of Casmola’s tapes in his car, promised to arrange an audition once Leo Covings reached the capital.

  Tonight however, Warez was worn through and didn’t want to talk of anything having to do with the American or Teddy’s movie. A few short hours after the incident in the Plaza, a box marked ‘Liquor’ was carried into Mendola’s Social Club and placed behind the bar. A girl named Tobbie HaHa was dancing for the soldiers to Chaka Kahn’s, ‘Tell Me Something Good,’ when a blast blew chunks of her into the street. Warez spent much of his evening kicking through the rubble, the building in collapse, the light fixtures dangling from wires like the necks of dead swans.

  Driving back through the Plaza, the Chief Inspector noticed the stage was gone, set ablaze and burned to the ground. Earlier, he had his men dismantle the stage but Teddy rescinded the order. “The platform’s a great reminder. Let’s leave her there.” He instructed Warez to reassemble everything as it was before. In no time the stage was torched. Warez slowed his car, made sure the danger had passed and the fire wouldn’t spread. He flicked his cigarette into the ash and went home.

  Casmola was laying on the couch in the front room as he came in. A video of Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers,’ which Warez bought his wife last week off a bootleg dealer was playing on the TV. “Which one was it?” she asked without moving her eyes from the screen.

  “Mendola’s.”

  “Harrhh. Why do they always hit the good ones?”

  The Chief Inspector tossed his hat on the chair and removed his jacket. His clothes smelled of smoke. He slipped his holster from his shoulder, left it hanging on the knob of the door. The house was from his first marriage. His ex-wife, Valari Demil Warez-Blancar, was once a dancer, before the weight of middle age altered her figure and shifted her creative fires to a travelling seed broker from Vecine. Casmola was much younger, her career to date included two digital movies and a part in the serialized television drama, ‘Tweener’s Retreat.’ (She appeared as Waitress #2.) A month after Valari left, Warez met Casmola at a Halloween ball where he came as Ivan the Conqueror and she a fille de joie. The Chief Inspector stood behind the couch, watched three actors - two boys and a girl in their early twenties - stare through a large black metal gate at a riot taking place in the street. ‘The Dreamers’ was set in France, 1968, during the second French Revolution. The reenactment was of the fighting between students, soldiers and police at Nanterre University, the Sorbone and the Boulevard St. Michel. So much violence upset the Chief Inspector. He pointed at the television and said of de Gaulle’s closing Nanterre, “What did he expect?” After twenty-six years as a police officer, Warez was still amazed how ill-equipped most governments were at keeping the peace. Dictators always pulled the reins too tight until something snapped, while liberals misconstrued democracy for a license to relax civil law. Under both extremes order collapsed, further complicating Warez’s ability to do his job.

  “All things in moderation,” he believed in asserting his authority with an even hand. That said, the function of the Chief Inspector was impossible to separate from Teddy Lamb. Warez tried absolving himself of accountability by insisting his violations were political and beyond the province of his office. The rationale failed. He knew of Good Baby before the truth got out, was in on plans to take care of Abel Morkin, Emilo Debar and others. The best he could do was tell himself things would be that much worse under a different Chief Inspector. It was at times sufficient comfort.

  “This is what they make a movie about?” Warez shook his head, thought again of Mendola’s, of Emilo and Abel and mentioned each to his wife. Casmola waved her hand and told her husband to, “Be quiet. I’m trying to listen.”

  The scene changed. Warez saw the three actors, naked then in their apartment, as removed from the fighting as Casmola on her couch. Tired, he rubbed at his face, considered a drink before bed. The light from the television caused half the room to glow. He ran a hand across the back of his neck, and looking at the litter of dishes and clothes, magazines and ashtrays overflowing, wondered if the chaos which had followed him home wasn’t part of a pandemic. “About all this,” he said to Casmola. “With how busy I am, and how little it seems you have to do, it would be nice to come in and find things a bit more tidy.”

  “It would be nice,” Casmela held up her hand without turning her attention from the TV. The Chief Inspector stared at her fingers, wondered if she might listen better if he nibbled on them. “It’s all filth,” he said louder. “Do you think perhaps tomorrow?” He tried sounding less impatient and waited for his wife’s response.
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  Casmela paused the video, annoyed at having her movie interrupted. “Tomorrow what, Frankie?”

  “This mess.”

  “I know. It’s too much, isn’t it?” She sat up and tossed her head so that her hair dangled over the back of the couch. “I mean here you are, the Chief Inspector, and look how we live. Some days I get up and just want to scream. Who’s to clean this mess now?” Warez gazed down at his wife, thought for a moment she must be joking. “Who you ask?” He moved away from the couch, stood for a second as the images on the TV came back to life, and turning, kicked off his boots and said to Casmola, “I’m going to bed. It’s late and I’ve seen enough.”

  Our strike began three days after the meeting at my father’s house. From the Port to the factories, to the markets and shops, people did not go into work. The mines were abandoned, the water plant closed, ships in the harbor without shoremen unable to dock. We quit our costumes, ran from the soldiers and refused to be filmed. Merchants and mechanics, waiters and store clerks, secretaries and laborers stayed home. To feed ourselves, we diverted our produce - grains and milk, eggs and meat and cheese - through an underground network of vendors. The government responded by raiding our farms, seizing our supplies and destroying our secret markets. Gas and utilities were rationed at triple the cost. (After one week the line to purchase government fuel and cooking oil exceeded two days wait.) Money lenders and sellers set up booths outside Teddy’s banks, took advantage of our deflated currency by exchanging our assets for American dollars, marcs and euros and francs.

  Despite the strain, our strike endured. Each night, at 8:00 p.m., we showed our solidarity by standing at the curbs and blowing whistles, clapping hands and beating loudly on metal pots. With my office closed, I spent my days riding about the capital on Ali’s I old brown bike, answering questions and offering support. A letter signed by my father, Davi Suntu, Paul Bernarr, Mical Delmont, Josh Durret and myself was sent to Teddy laying out our demands for ending the strike. Open elections and a permanent moratorium on filming headed the list. Instead of a reply, Teddy twice again raised the cost of electricity, water, oil and gas.

  Each day soldiers on patrol made arrests. Shopkeepers, farmers and laborers were thrown into the back of jeeps and taken to Moulane Prison. More men spoke of revolution then, quit the capital and joined the rebels in the hills. Emilo was released from the hospital with his feet inside thick plaster casts, his shattered bones held together by screws. His face re-stitched, gave him a permanently offended sort of scowl. I brought him food and drink in the morning and at night. As it hurt him still to move his lips, I was able to talk without interruption. “I think,” I told him. “I believe,” I said of the strike.

  Even so, whenever I started in, my worry surfaced, the words catching clumsily in my throat. Emilo drank whiskey through a straw, listened to me stammer, pointed at my ears, my mouth and eyes and shook his head.

  Katima and I sat in the kitchen late at night and compared notes about our day. Somehow the demands of our strike agreed with her. She slept little and ate less, yet appeared more fit than ever. Rising early, she rode about the capital on her own bike, worked with a group of women who coordinated the needs of families, making sure everyone had daily staples, medicines and clothes. I confided my concerns, counted on her to understand and rally my mood against my worst fears. When I said of our progress, “It feels as if we’re beating at fires with straw brooms and sticks,” she rubbed my cheek and answered, “Of course it does, André. What did you expect?”

  Yesterday, Katima brought home four fresh oranges and cheese which she sliced and arranged on a plate. One by one we ate each piece. Afterward, we undressed upstairs and slipped into bed where I reached and touched her shoulder, the soft flesh near her breast. Her brown hair lay dark against the pillow. Making love, I didn’t think of Tamina the way I once did, first unavoidably and then more purposely until the need past, but held Katima while taking in the immediacy of the moment. I was still no less surprised that we had met at all that day at the pool, though things had settled in between us, the unexpectedness of my current happiness becoming less extreme, Katima’s proximity now something I relied on.

  Laying in the dark, I thought of a book I read recently, a history of the Solidarity Movement in Poland. Alina Pienkowska was a nurse at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 who, along with Bogdan Borusewicz, Jacek Kuron and Lech Walesa, helped organize a protest after workers were fired unjustly from the yard. The remaining workers locked themselves behind the gates, refused to leave even as the government threatened to send soldiers in. Over the next few days dozens of other Polish factories went out on strike in support of Gdansk. Negotiations were contentious, but eventually the conflict between the shipyard and the government was resolved. As the workers celebrated and headed home, Alina turned to Walesa and shouted, “You betrayed them! Now the authorities will crush the others like bedbugs!” She accused the men of abandoning the factories still on strike. “Solidarity! Solidarity!” she shouted until all the workers returned to the yard.

  The moon covered our bed through the window. I could see my tower in the glow across the way. On my dresser was a photograph of Tamina. I shifted closer to Katima, thought again of Alina, how despite the success of the Gdansk strike the communist government clung to power, declared martial law, the Solidarity Movement officially banned. Alina was jailed for over a year while Bogdan Borusewicz was forced into hiding. (In 1983 Alina and Bogdan secretly married, with Alina giving birth to a daughter the following summer and Bogdan attending the baptism disguised as an old woman.) Finally, in 1985, the communist government collapsed. Lech Walesa was elected president and Alina went back to working at the yard. Of her return, Alina said, “Here in the shipyard I stopped being afraid, stopped running away, and became a real person.” She died of cancer ten years later, at the age of 50. I considered then our own situation, our strike and Teddy and the rest. I saw myself with Tee, and Katima now, thought of Alina and Bogdan not so long ago, the brevity of it all and how time passes.

  June ran on and our strike continued, the tension in the capital a spring trap noose. “This is not a campaign which will be lifted by the people or defeated by Teddy,” Abel Dureci, a retired shop foreman said to me one night, “but rather a movement that will simply languish.” Every day I made my rounds, attended meetings and spoke with people about the strike. Students from the University came to see me, boys like Daniel Osbera, Cris Contamorre and Bo Ratise who I knew casually before, appeared in my yard almost nightly now. Eager to talk, they impressed me with their knowledge, took turns discussing history : Pinochet and Allende, Kissinger and Nixon, Ireland’s Sinn Fein rebellion of 1919 - the same year Gandhi introduced passive resistance to India - the sacking of Constantinople, the French and American and Chinese Revolutions, the battles in Davao City, the Boxer Rebellion, the massacre of Mexican students in Tlatelolco and Chinese dissidents in Tiananmen Square.

  Two and three times a week I phoned the American Embassy, hoping the American Consul would agree to help us mediate with Teddy. I was told always that Erik Dukette was indisposed, until finally at the end of June, I received a call inviting me downtown. I arrived at the Embassy just after 10:00 a.m. and was brought upstairs to an office cluttered with files and books, folders and maps scattered about. The American Consul was square framed, with limp strands of red hair cut in uneven patches. His shoulders were flat, his round legs bending stiff. He called my name as if we were the best of long lost friends, waved at me to, “Come in, come in!” and extended his hand.

  A stack of papers was removed from a leather chair and I was motioned to sit down. Dukette leaned against the front of his desk. “Can I get you something? A sandwich perhaps? You must be starved,” he tapped his belly. “Better yet, I have some nice Texas steaks, freshly frozen and shipped. You should take a box home.”

  “No, thank you,” I felt something sharp poke against my hip from between the leather cushions. “I’m fine.”

  �
�You’re sure?” He signalled his secretary to close the door. “A cigarette then,” he rattled off a list of brands. “We have Winstons, Kools. American tobacco. Raleighs in the hard box. Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Take them for your friends then. I have connections,” he gave a wink while I reached behind me and removed a pen from beneath the chair’s rear cushion. “Yes, well,” The American Consul shifted his feet on the floor, raised his eyebrows and said, “I’m glad you’re here. It’s good we can finally talk.” He bent his fingers until the knuckles cracked then touched his forehead as if he’d forgotten something and offered me a drink. “A bit early for a sip, but a bottle perhaps? Something to take with you? A nice California wine? Anything you want. Gallo, Crane Lake, Ramey Hudson, Canyon Road?”

  “No, really.”

  “Beer?”

  “No.”

  “Bud? Coors? Schlitz malt liquor? Some candy then? Something sweet. American chocolates. Hershey, Pennsylvania. Take a box home for your lady friend.”

  The reference to Katima made me uncomfortable, and handing Dukette his pen, I decided to move things along and said, “About the strike.”