Arkady

by Patrick Langley

  Jackson had taken Frank to places like this a few times before, but the Citadel felt different. The group who started it – Nell, Arthur, Lali, Caspar – called it an ‘occupation’: to others it was a ‘brazen, Robin Hood attempt to redistribute wealth’ (the local paper); a ‘grim hovel of spoilt snowflakes and whiny troublemakers’ (a government spokesperson); a ‘cynical, pointless scam’ (Pendragon, the multinational developer who owned the land).

  An energy flowed down the Citadel’s concrete corridors, under the glare of industrial lamps. Heat moved through the metal-walled rooms: an indignant belief that they were the good guys, the government and the developers bad. The world was fucked up, needed fixing, and they were the ones to do it. Frank guzzled it up. That unstable concoction of frustration and despair intoxicated him.

  ‘There’s no way the city will change,’ he says, ‘because no one knows what change looks like. We’ve never seen it, not out there. We can only make it happen in miniature.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call this miniature,’ says Nell. ‘We’ve helped hundreds of people. Thousands are watching the videos.’

  ‘And what does it actually change?’

  Nell shrugs. ‘Opinion.’

  ‘If voting made a difference they’d have made it illegal,’ says Frank.

  ‘Who fed you that one? Caspar? Think about the people who’d be on the streets without this place – who will be on the streets tomorrow.’

  They drift towards the garden’s end. Grass fizzles out to a dirt path that runs round an orchard of crab-apple trees.

  It wasn’t always a garden. The dirt beneath their feet has gathered over decades, sifted from the sky, compacted to mulch in the wake of dead industry. Only hardy plants survive here, roots delving through soil studded with buried coal. To the east is a dry, wide barren pool of dust, a dumping ground for the factories’ chemicals. It’s a miracle anything grows here, according to Nell, who keeps a book of pressed flowers, stalky specimens of rabbit-fur brown and powder blue.

  Frank plucks a lump of coal from the dirt and hurls it at a nearby tree.

  ‘To make things better you need to know what better looks like, right?’ he says. ‘But everything’s confused. There’s no centre.’ He peers at the Citadel, where a group of activists are attaching a black banner to the roof: people not profit. ‘Arthur wants to make noise and piss people off for no real reason. Caspar’s itching to start an anarchist revolution. Lali wants to go viral. Marco wants to make a fucking documentary. All the new arrivals are protest tourists. There’s nothing higher. Nothing shared.’

  ‘We’re a collective. Of course it’s messy – that’s almost the point. What do you want? What does Jackson want? You’re here but you’re not here. You come and you go.’

  Frank observes the sky. High winds carve the cliffs of vapour, shearing the mountainous clouds into steeper angles.

  ‘It changes,’ he says. ‘First he thought it was us alone against the world, and that the only way to live how we wanted to live was to shut everyone out, y’know… To protect each other. Be disciplined, insular, like a cell. He wanted a revolution. I guess he thought revolution began at home – that if you got things right between two people, that was a model for how a whole world might work. Then we met Lali.’

  ‘And she brainwashed him?’

  ‘I never said—’

  ‘I was joking. He’s very strong-minded. I’m sure she just… pointed him in a direction.’

  ‘It seemed like maybe we weren’t alone. But we’re working things out still. Everyone is.’

  ‘I get that,’ says Nell. ‘It wasn’t an accusation.’

  ‘And he’s not as aloof as you think. He was with you at court.’

  Nell had organised a demonstration at the district court building, where the Citadel’s committee had gone to fight Pendragon’s Warrant for Possession. Frank had stayed at the Citadel to guard the building against the lifters. He watched the marchers return at dusk. Fewer than fifty were left. Those that returned moved slowly, heads bowed, bedraggled and drained. They carried tatty placards as they streamed down the cobbled street.

  During the day, whilst the crowd outside the courthouse waited for the verdict, and whilst the Citadel Committee made their arguments to the judge, the street became a miniature festival. Music throbbed from a bass-bin. Faces were painted: lions, tigers, blazing suns. Protestors climbed trees to hang bright banners and flags from the branches. A table, strategically manned by the cutest kids, offered leaflets and cups of tea. News filtered out of the airless courtroom. The crowd’s mood plummeted; the carnival soured. People in costumes and face paint stood with hunched shoulders, wobbly tears in their eyes. The DJ killed the music. A banner slid off a tree-branch, pooled in a heap in the gutter; a moment later, a bus crushed it under its wheels.

  Frank had rushed down the path to greet the returning marchers. None paid him any attention. They walked in silence through the Citadel’s grounds and slouched on logs and plastic seats around the fire pit. Jackson, finally, appeared. There was a gash on his cheek, a red swipe clouded by mauve. The shoulder of his raincoat was torn.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jackson replied.

  ‘Nothing has a strong right hook.’

  They halted at the rim of the fire pit. Fragments of dead leaf glistened on rain-wet charcoal.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’ Frank asked. ‘Everyone’s drifting along like a zombie.’

  ‘We lost,’ said Jackson. ‘That’s it. End of. The eviction will happen. No appeal.’

  The lobby was strewn with paints, paper, glitter, and scraps of card. The colours, so bright that morning, were pale in the murk of the unlit room.

  In the kitchen, Jackson cracked open a can and gulped. Lit by the cold of the open fridge, his face was wan and slack, and the scratch on his cheek lurid red. Frank fetched the first aid kit from under the sink. He unzipped the green fabric satchel and offered it to his brother: antiseptic, sheaf of plasters, roll of gauze.

  Jackson sneered. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, gulping another mouthful of beer. ‘Just got trampled.’

  ‘Trampled? Who gets trampled? Did a load of wildebeest turn up and—’

  ‘One of us fell over. Went to help them up. Tripped. Cheek got wedged against a brick,’ he said, pointing. ‘What are you smirking at?’

  The Citadel’s garden faces southwest: it caught the last of the day’s fading light. The sun cast long shadows over the soil and the tangled growths in the allotments, vegetables that would, in time, be ripped up, bulldozed, pulverised to baby food. Frank glanced at the scarecrow as they stepped into the cool air. Lit from behind, the empty eyes of the Prime Minister mask glowed red.

  A stage has been erected near the fire pit: a knackered platform of wooden crates, topped with plywood sheets, with a painted banner backdrop. Mizzle sifts from the sky. The air is effervescent. One of the Citadel’s residents sets up a stool and a mic-stand on the improvised stage and shuffles off a moment later, ankle tangled in a stray audio wire.

  ‘There are so many people,’ says Frank.

  Even compared with the court date, when dozens of strangers gathered to march, the Citadel’s yard has the crushed stressful feel of a major station at rush hour. Bodies criss-cross and paths overlap. Nearby is the trio Frank saw this morning, perched in a ring near the beetle-bright trailer, munching salads from tupperware boxes and scrolling on their phones. There are nervous young people in hesitant clutches hovering by doors or walking tight circles in the gardens nearby. There are strident kids who scream and laugh, oblivious to their parents’ angst; teenagers cross-legged on the dirt, arguing over online articles; a topless man, perched on an oil drum, slapping bongos; and people gathered beneath the awning, milling, like bus stop tourists, waiting for a sign.

  And then, beyond the crowd, are Caspar’s friends.

  They appeared in a van last week, a bunch of six young men.

  At first Frank thought
they might be brothers.

  They shared Caspar’s hunted physique: those striated, long-distance-runner’s limbs, that sunken look in their scheming eyes. Today, like every day, they all wear monochrome. Black jeans ripped at the knee; black coats stitched with shouty patches; black fisherman’s waistcoats, pockets loaded with who-knows-what. They move like foxes. Scrawny, mean.

  The wall is Arthur’s bright idea. Built from junk and salvaged scrap, he thinks it will keep the fuckers out – even though, as several people have pointed out, there’s already a wall around the whole plot of brownfield: a ten-foot hoarding and a buffer of outhouses. Will a layer of heaped junk make a difference? Nell called it a waste of time and energy, an exercise in posturing. Almost everyone agreed. There was a vote. Hands were raised. When Arthur comfortably lost, he shrugged, and said he was doing it anyway.

  Caspar’s friends are keen technicians. Side-by-side they slot junk into the trench. Kitchen doors and broken furniture. Mattresses buckled on chests of drawers. One of them – slightly stockier than the others, with a sculpted beard – hauls a red plastic jug as he walks, slopping gulps of greasy fluid into the trench.

  ‘Come,’ says Nell.

  She guides him through the double doors. The frames are rust-red like the building’s front, the panels fogged with scratches.

  ‘I want you to talk at the meeting,’ says Nell. ‘If we ever get there, that is.’

  ‘Talk how?’ Frank asks. ‘I don’t have anything to say.’

  ‘Ask questions,’ says Nell. ‘Agree. Disagree. Just… talk, okay? Open your mouth.’

  The crowded reception is sauna-hot. Leaflets, banners and placards are stacked in towers. In the corner, a young woman shields the windows with a patchwork of baking trays, gaffa tape, and newspaper pages that muddy the light. A group of young protestors whom Frank doesn’t recognise are testing handcuffs on the staircase railings.

  ‘Do they fit?’ one asks.

  ‘Your wrists are too fat, man. No offence.’

  Frank is used to the reception. He often spends time here in the mornings before lessons and lectures; he’ll sometimes set up a chair in the corner to read. In the mornings, there is coffee and talk as people ready themselves for work; in the afternoons there are workshops, exercise classes, art therapy for kids. Today the space feels chaotically different. Isolated, aimless groups jostle at the curved front desk, under the absurd watchful gaze of the storage company’s logo.

  Nell steps over the protestor slouching on the stairs, whose wrists are now chained to the railings: ‘Haven’t you got jobs to go to?’

  The young woman chained to the railings laughs.

  They reach the creaking blue door at the top of the stairs. Frank follows Nell down the strip-lit, identical corridors lined with identical doors, a stutter of interior tunnels that shudder with a colourless light. Footsteps shiver down the corridors, tight echoes bouncing off the bare metal walls. Now that eviction is imminent, the building feels like a place of departure. Now and then they pass an open door. The rooms’ floors are littered with things left behind by vanished residents: molehills of clothes, pillows and sheets; a photo of a beach hut tacked to a wall; power cables snaking over rugs and sleeping bags.

  They pass rooms in which people are gathered, packing rucksacks and saying goodbyes. Frank glimpses other preparations through open doors: a spot-lit table on which glass bottles are laid; a smoke-filled room with a circle of stools; a load of saws, hammers, and crowbars scattered on dunes of sawdust.

  ‘Wait,’ says Frank, feeling dizzy, twisting his head so the corridors spin.

  Nell glances back. He’s reached a crossroads or a junction, a point where corridors overlap.

  ‘I’ll meet you upstairs,’ he says. ‘I won’t be late.’

  He jogs beneath the bleachlight of fluorescent tubes. Numbers flicker as he goes. Sound carries oddly in the Citadel, partitioned into near-identical rooms whose walls are so thin you can hear people breathe next door: the corridors fizz with echoes and whispery voices. Eventually he reaches Lali’s door, which is closed. He stands for a moment listening, raps his knuckles against the blue.

  ‘Yes?’ she yells. ‘I’m busy.’ He knocks again; she opens the door a fraction. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘it’s you.’

  Her tiny cluttered room is piled with clothes, suitcases, books, and bags. Perched on the flocked blue skin of her deflated mattress is her laptop, the window open on several self-replenishing feeds; in the corner is a battered armchair salvaged from one of the unclaimed rooms. She is packing her stuff up, preparing for tonight. The eviction is hours away. She will be banging the drum on social media, tapping into her contacts, spreading the word.

  Frank finds her gaze disconcerting: she never seems to blink. ‘You coming to the meeting?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, sounding distracted. ‘Help me pack, will you?’

  The room is roughly the size of a shipping container. There is space for a single bed and not much else; the walls are unadorned, except for a few bluetacked photographs and a screenprint poster of the Citadel. She asks Frank to help pack her bag with clothes on the foot of the bed. Abruptly, it makes him feel awkward, unsure of his clunky hands: folding the T-shirts in which she sleeps, packing her knickers and bras. The room’s trapped air sustains odours. Incense has burned here recently: a perfume of scorched dust floats.

  Lali lowers her phone and fixes Frank with her levelling stare.

  ‘You’re staying at the Citadel tonight,’ she says. In typical Lali fashion, this is not an enquiry but a statement of fact. ‘Since this morning there are plenty of rooms.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Frank says, folding his arms. ‘I’ll have to ask Jackson,’ he says, and, although he feels the truth of it, the words sound faintly pathetic. ‘It’s fucking pointless,’ he snaps, ‘isn’t it?’

  Shrugging into her raincoat, Lali shoots Frank another sharp look. The small room amplifies her presence, concentrates her gaze: Frank is struck by the sense that he’s being held in this room against his will.

  ‘Since when were you so cynical?’ Lali asks, leaning back again, shaking her head. ‘You’re too young to be this jaded. You should fight. Otherwise you’re just… I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘Giving up. Giving into hate when you could make use of its opposite.’

  ‘There’s nothing to love about this city,’

  ‘God, you’re such a pointless contrarian,’ Lali replies. ‘You’re worse than Jackson.’

  ‘I paired your socks for you,’ says Frank, grabbing a T-shirt off the top of the pile. ‘Don’t I get a thank you?’

  Lali pauses to write a message, fingers scurrying over the screen.

  ‘Love isn’t just a squishy word,’ she says, not looking up at Frank. ‘It has real political power. What else do you call what we’re doing here? If people like you got up and did something about it, we wouldn’t be in this shit. We wouldn’t have apathy. We’d have—’

  A quick report of knuckles sends a shudder down the metal door. Without waiting Caspar strides in, so tall he must duck to avoid the lintel. His head is scrappy with brownish hair. His Adam’s apple juts obscenely from his sinewy throat; watching him swallow makes Frank feel sick.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, clocking Frank.

  Frank is still holding Lali’s T-shirt. He looks down at the T-shirt, up at Caspar, down again.

  Caspar nods at Frank but looks at Lali. ‘Is he—’

  ‘Helping me pack,’ says Lali, leaning over to drop a dry kiss on Caspar’s lips. He closes his eyes; she doesn’t: they separate. ‘What’s up?’

  Behind him stand a pair of Caspar-clones, the black-clad skinny figures Frank spotted earlier, building Arthur’s wall. They mumble to each other in the corridor. The taller one stops talking when he sees Frank.

  ‘We should go,’ says Caspar, enveloping Lali’s shoulders in a skinny arm, squashing her face into his earwiggish torso. ‘The meeting’s about to start.’

  The meeting, in fact, has already
begun. There is barely any room left; the rooftop is swollen with plants and crowds. People sit cross-legged on the floor or perch on oil drums and stools, staring at Marco, who holds the stage. Frank hovers with Lali at the edge of the audience. He sees a few faces he knows. Caspar stands by the fire exit, scowling.

  Seated, legs crossed on the plywood bench, Marco traces a shape in the air with his finger.

  ‘We travel in circles,’ he announces. ‘We walk and we walk. There are cogs in our bodies and cogs in the world. Constant motion, round and round. Portals open. The window shifts.’

  Chunky lenses magnify Marco’s eyes. His blue shirt hangs limp off hunched shoulders, collar loose round his neck. He has always looked to Frank like a turtle, wizened and stooped. There is a ripple of amusement at his words.

  ‘We are the pebble,’ says Marco, ‘the city’s our pond. Be the wingbeat that triggers the hurricane.’

  Puddles have formed on the Citadel’s roof. They mirror the rosemary, lavender, potatoes, and kale, the fronds withered in the smog and in need of nourishing sunshine.

  ‘Tonight we can open the future,’ says Marco. ‘Believe it. Embrace it. Open that door,’ he says. With closed eyes, gently, he rests his hand on his heart.

  There is a smattering of light applause and many bemused expressions. Marco bows stiffly and shuffles offstage, leaning on his cane for support. He walks with a lilt that makes his camera swing round his neck with each step. He grins at no one in particular.

  ‘He sounded stoned,’ Frank hisses, clapping his hands.

  ‘Don’t be rude,’ says Lali. ‘He’s probably just had one too many peppermint teas.’

  These meetings are usually held in the reception downstairs, or, when it’s warm, in the yard out the front. Frank has been to a few and he finds them intensely boring. First is the mind-numbing subject matter, the rotas, schedules, resident updates, and interminable lists of repairs. Second is the non-hierarchical approach. No one takes a lead. People can talk for as long as they want. The meetings usually collapse into quagmires of interminable back-and-forth tedium. But today, Nell appears to be in charge.