by J. T. Marsh
It’s a mild delirium, a rising insanity that makes the experience seem like a dream. As it’s summertime, we see in the distance a shimmering, shimmering pool of silver hiding behind rising waves of heat. As it’s summertime, we wade through the crowds and make our way to the leading edge of history, once there finding ourselves trapped in a little cone of silence even as we’ve immersed ourselves in a sea of people, each of them there for a different reason yet all of them united behind one cause, for at least one day. “Sergei is dead,” says Sydney. “What?! When?!” Valeri asks. “Today,” she says, “not long ago. He was killed in one of the protests. He was struck in the head by one of the canisters of gas the police fire. He died on the way to the hospital.” Valeri sits in silence for a moment, Sydney, for a second or two, letting the silence hang. “Valeri? Valeri?” she asks. “I’m here,” he says. “Please don’t run out and get yourself hurt,” she says. And he says, “I don’t think that’s up to me…” But this night at the pub, Neal has one drink too many, his tongue loosening just enough. “No!” he says to Max Kelly, “I’m tired of doing what you say.”
Not much comes of it, not right away, but the next day when he shows up at his construction site there’s no work there for him, even as the foreman hasn’t enough workers there to accomplish the day’s work. Distraught, Neal goes to the union hall, the very same union hall where Valeri still calls home, asking for work, any work, to sustain himself for at least some time more. But the clerk on the other side of the desk shakes her head, already their ranks swelling with others in need of work. Some of them have children, wives, elderly parents to provide for; there’s no work for someone like Neal, a man responsible for no one but himself. Even as the talking heads on the screens proclaim a dire labour shortage, still there are thousands left idle, to rot until such time as they are deemed worthy of receiving their own pittance. Neal argues with the clerk, as many others have, but the square-jawed look on her face never wavers, having been practiced many times over the past few years. And Neal is only one man, like the thousands of others, pleading the same case, appealing to the same sense of decency, asking for the same favours from they who’ve learned not to care. “You must be mad, coming here like this,” says Max. “You’re damn right I’m mad,” says Neal. “You stand there and accuse me, but where were you at the time?” Max asks. “I was--” “You were still in primary school when I was almost killed in the street,” Max says. “I’m not--” “You’re not what?” Max asks. There’s more, but they can’t have at it all day. Punches are thrown, dust’s kicked up, some scrapes and bruises but nothing worse. At the end of the day, Max gets to keep his job, while Neal’s tossed out with all the other surplus workers. His spot’s filled instantly. He winds up in a church, receiving his rations from the overworked clergy, with no knowledge of when next he’ll be able to have at a pittance to sustain him. Thin soup is his meal, and he forces down this watery soup from a spot at the end of a long table which permits him a look through a window and out across the city. The distant glass-and-steel towers going up on the edge of the working class districts taunt him, their opulence and their garishness contrasting against the sight of him wearing still the boots and vest he had worn when working every day to put those very towers up.
After events have unfolded, the working men of the world return to work as if nothing had happened, as if their lives were to be carried on regardless. We all have rent to pay, and we pay our rent not by agitating in the streets but by selling our labour for less than what it’s worth; our loss is their profit. We go home in the evening with sore backs and dirty hands, returning to our ramshackle apartments filled with second-hand clothes and torn, ragged furniture, with the smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air even in the rooms of those who haven’t ever smoked a day in their lives. Our enemies, soon to be known by another name, have left us only unemployment and addiction, and in turn they declare us lazy and shiftless, lacking in the virtues of hard work and ingenuity they themselves lack; these stampeding marches, these impassioned riots are but a symptom of the disease that has come to infect the way of things. The revolution has not yet begun, yet still it has begun gathering strength, conserving its power even as opposing forces themselves begin to muster, these opposing forces having not yet coalesced into something real, something capable of striking back except in ways brutish and instinctive. We all pay the price, together, for our foolishness, for our impetuousness, and in so paying we earn our place in the future we’ve yet to build. As a calm settles on these streets, I invite you to hear the screams and the shouts that only hours earlier had filled them, hiding as they are amid the silence. It might take a little imagination, but I can hear it, and if I can hear it then so, too, can you. If you can’t, then I pray for you to be visited upon by the wisdom to see what’s coming. But it’s not here yet. No, wisdom isn’t necessary, and it’ll never be. Just watch. All that’s necessary is for each of us to play our part in the coming days of rage.
In the morning, news breaks of the signing of a new treaty among a group of countries, including this one. It’s left unsaid but widely understood this’ll put many more men out of work, left to fend for themselves. The wealthy men of this country can foresee the impending revolt and are seeking to evacuate their holdings beyond the reach of the working class alliance, this turn of events met still with a muted ambivalence from the country’s workers. Too long betrayed, the whole lot of them are in a state of mind where outrage and ambivalence can occupy the same time and space in their collective consciousness. There’s a sporadic outbreak of protests, of disenchanted youths tossing rocks at troopers mustered. But for Valeri, it’s different. For Valeri, it’s personal. In Valeri’s dreams, memories of his mother and father nourish his own personal flame, soon to blend with the fires of liberation already smoldering around the world. If the wealthy men of this country expect a revolt, then Valeri will count among those who oblige them.
11. No More a Chance
In the night, one night, there’s a meeting in the basement of one of the churches in the working class districts. It’s a meeting between two working class parties, one called the Worker’s Party, the other called the People’s Party. Both are illegal, banned as extremist. Between them, they have perhaps ten thousand members nationwide. At this meeting, they sign a secret protocol pledging themselves to a union of parties in pursuit of a common goal. But this secret protocol and the act of signing it is a formality; the true agreement has been reached through months of careful negotiations and consensus building. They’ve been preaching their gospel of unilateral disengagement from the way of things for decades; it’s only been in the wake of the failed rising fifteen years ago working men have been given to this gospel. Since the death of his parents, Valeri has become exactly the sort of person this gospel is meant for.
As if to punctuate the arrival at this union, in the night a new round of riots begins, the darkness lit up by the fires of liberation burning at the behest of this new holy alliance. Still thinking of Sergei’s death, Valeri can’t sleep, instead lying in bed with the window wide open and his bedroom flooding with the distant emanations of the unruly masses seizing control, for the night at least, of the shantytowns in which they live. In the morning, Valeri rises to a world seeming identical in form to the world of the night before but radically different in essence. He says to Hannah, “you’re paying a small price compared to what she’s going through.” In the night, Stanislaw reads through the daily reports on escalating prices of homes, of food, of fuel and of clothes, and he, like the others, feels a mounting gloom. It’s been this way for so long as he can remember. But as he’s put to work in the days preparing fortifications for the police, he thinks of his family in the city and he wonders if they might yet see through the day. None of this means anything. It’s all a confused and confusing mess. Stanislaw means well, but when he turns in his gear after another long day of putting up barbed-wire fencing and armoured walls, he comes home too tired to think straight. A
nd this time, this time is no different. He’s late to the party, so to speak, for this very reason, but when his wages can no longer suffice to pay for food, he still hasn’t come to think of doing away with this whole way of life.
Although Valeri is not yet a member of either party, he learns of this new union from Mark Murray, with the implied understand Murray’s learned of it from his friend Arthur Bennington whom Valeri hasn’t seen since their first meeting. Soon, the news finds its way onto the screens of millions, not from official sources but on the dark corners of illicit networks reaching around the world. What Valeri doesn’t know is this new union of parties has pledged itself to follow the path not laid out for it in full view. “I don’t think I could live alone again,” Hannah says in a moment of clarity. “This isn’t just about you,” says Valeri, “it’s about what’s best for all of us.” And Valeri says this as he looks wistfully into the night. “I miss moments like this more than anything,” he says. “Me too,” she says. Although the power’s gone out in the night, the fires of liberation burning in the streets cast a flickering, orange glow through the windows, shadows dancing against the far wall. At the armoury after a week’s exercises, Private Craig Thompson has not seen the Colonel since that inspection of the troops. The sergeant squelches any dissent, leaving still the only forum for discussion the bunks after lights-out. They don’t know of the secret protocol, only of the still burning fires of liberation across the country. “It can’t be we’re going to war,” says one private. “I heard they’ll send us to Northern Ireland,” says another. “Have you seen the riots there?” asks the first. “There’s riots everywhere now,” says the second. Thompson interrupts, saying, “they’ll send us somewhere. We’ll find out soon enough.” Lurking in the shadows there’s that very same essence which guides all revolutionary men, looking on these dispirited troopers, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to descend on them and make them whole with it. But they are young men, too young, given as young men are to flights of fancy, already Private Thompson filling his mind with fantasies of rebellion entirely of his own accord. He’s almost ready.
This is the true flag of the union of parties, not colours bled onto fabric but darkness emerging from the light. In an alley behind an apartment block nearly identical to the one Valeri lives in but some kilometres away, an older woman named Miriam Doyle stands in the shadows and says, “do you ever think we should just stop doing this?” Her companion, a younger woman named Monica Dawson says, “you make me feel like I’m not good enough.” Miriam says, “I don’t often get the chance to talk to someone like you,” then reaches into the gym bag she’s brought and draws out a gun. “Don’t leave this lying anywhere,” Miriam says, “keep it hidden until the time comes.” Monica quickly takes the gun and stashes it in her bag, then asks, “how will I know when the time’s come?” Miriam says, “you’ll know.” After the power comes back on, they’ve disappeared into the night. After standing outside their member of parliament’s office for hours and venting their rage, the unemployed workers they hear nothing but further platitudes from the member who won’t come out and confront the lot of them. Someone throws a bottle, then another, soon a full-fledged riot has broken out, with Garrett Walker retreating at the first sign of trouble. He’s too old to go down this road, but taking his place the younger men who hurl bottles so well. It’s a deeply confusing mess. Nevermore assured of himself, Garrett returns to his little flat and sinks into a deep depression, tempting him with the tantalizing possibility of a new tomorrow but always keeping it out of reach. He has two daughters and a wife, and he can provide for none of them. His is a deep-seated shame. But when his older daughter’s caught up in the police raids, he wonders where he’d gone wrong. Before this crisis is ended, his daughters will be killed, gunned down in the streets in an exchange of fire between the rebels and the troops. It’s all spinning out of control, careening towards an impossibly violent cataclysm which will burn everything we know. Men like Garrett can’t even fathom what’s to come, but when it comes an instinct will seize them and compel them to join in. That time is coming much sooner than any of them think.
As the world burns, so too do we burn, not in our essence but in the very components that when put together make up who we are. In the aftermath of this fire having claimed another victim out of the fabric of the unreal, it seems sometimes there’s a low cry, a silent song lamenting the plight of the children who once lived inside. In the streets Valeri sees poverty, hopeless causes, the wretched lying in pools of their own blood and tears. After he’s seen enough, he turns to Sydney and says, “whatever you’re going to ask, the answer is no.” Sydney says, “you must be mad, coming here like this.” But Valeri asks, “you’ve done a bad thing for a good reason before, haven’t you?” Sydney shrugs and says, “bad or good there’s nothing that can be done to bring Sergei back.” They speak not of the union of two parties but of something far more personal, something intimately known between them but left unsaid too long. “Could you be happy here with me?” he asks. But she can’t answer, not right away. “We could be arrested for this,” he says. “That wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen,” she says. “Don’t even joke,” he says. She only flashes the briefest smile before turning away. After seeing Father Bennett looking so downcast after the last week’s sermon, Darren Wright feels in him a gnawing guilt for having turned his back on the church that’d been good to him for so many years. Before the next Sunday’s sermon, he approaches Father Bennett’s open door, announcing his presence with a subdued knock on the doorframe. “It’s good to see you,” says Father Bennett, his voice sounding sincere. “It’s been a while since I’ve come to meet with you,” says Darren, sitting across from Father Bennett, the two looking each other over quickly. From within the confines of the Father’s office, they can hear the distant sounds of the streets burning, and Darren struggles to control his enthusiasm for the men fighting and dying even before their war has begun in earnest. Darren and the Father talk not about the faith, for either of them is, despite their struggles, committed as ever. Instead, they talk on the coming rebellion, on the discontent brewing in the streets, with Father Bennett voicing concerns that lead Darren to consider, for at least a little while, the Father might be more given to the rogue priest’s cause than he’d thought. He won’t know it until it’s too late, but he’s wrong.
Then, Monica receives a call. “Midnight, under the bridge,” says an unknown voice, “come alone.” An hour later, he’s there, under one end of the bridge looking towards the other. Monica meets Miguel Figueroa. He’s one of the few who yet count themselves among the members of the newly-formed popular front This meeting, carried out in secret, marks the beginning of a new step in our struggle. He passes her instructions; this has to be done in person because of the need for secrecy which no electronic communications can provide. For now, this is all the people of the new front task themselves with, ordinary men like Valeri concerning themselves by contrast with the minutiae of their own lives. While Monica will end up sacrificing herself for something much greater than herself, Valeri struggles against the little indignities that’ve come to characterize every day of his life. In the nights after the Worker’s Party and the People’s Party join forces, a simmering tension takes hold in the streets, imperceptible, but surely there. It’s as though the physical vessel of our world has become inhabited by some new essence, the secret act of two working class parties joining in union silently marking the moment our histories turn from one epoch to the next. In taking to the streets, Sean Morrison and the other students vent their rage, knowing as they do that their future is filled only with the unemployment and despair already dominating the lives of millions. But soon there will be a place in the popular front, training as they are to join its ranks whether they realize it or not. In the student hall at the polytechnic classes have been called off for the crisis gripping the streets, leaving Sean and Julia free to commit themselves to their own growing radicalism. They meet i
n secret, or so they think, speaking of the union of parties. “Will they help us?” Julia asks. “No one knows,” Sean says. “What will they do?” Julia asks. “They’re the only parties that want to free us from the wealthy man’s grip,” Sean says, “and that’s good enough for me.” The existence of the illegal parties is widely known in the working class blocks, but still it gives students like Sean and Julia a thrill to talk about them. Soon the name of the illegal parties will not thrill but will embolden them while striking fear into the hearts of the enemy. For now, though, Sean and Julia know the popular front will remain small, with few soldiers and fewer weapons. But in these troubled times, it’s the spirit, the essence of the illegal parties and their popular front that’s important. They’ve been working behind the scenes since the failed revolution fifteen years ago to make sure the next revolution won’t fail, and their time is almost at hand.
