The Place Where

by Rodion Pretis

  The townspeople tried not to pay attention to me, but I was too impressive a sight. In the end, they all hid with an embarrassed, indignant look. I lay on my back, staring at the gray sky, holding my hands on my stomach and sobbing after them with laughter when a pile of epoxy tile exploded next to me, showering me with tar shrapnel; several fragments hit me painfully in the ribs and arm. The security officer at the entrance to the street lowered his "superbuck" and gave a short order through the loudspeaker:

  - Work!

  After that, it was no longer so funny. Edith, perhaps, did not regret anything [33], but I began to compile new lists for self-pity.

  I am pretty sure I lost track of the time we were locked up in this old office center. Maybe I had a concussion - frères weren't particularly ceremonial, giving us cuffs to the right and left. However, I doubt it; it's more likely that I just stopped thinking myself, accepting this as a way to survive these days.

  Until the evening when they began to divide us into groups.

  This happened in the dining room. Without saying a word, frères began to sort people. The more feeble trastafar were sent to two special groups - according to my guess, they were waiting for less hard work.

  Unlike the scene that erupted when we were brought here, everything went almost without noise. I still haven't seen Sissy anywhere - but given that all of us had shaved heads, I'm not sure I would have recognized her.

  Only I managed to notice that one group was different in appearance from the others, as the pointing finger directed me towards it, giving me the opportunity to study it from a closer distance.

  We were a rather gloomy company; and I immediately had a very unpleasant feeling, which did not diminish at all at the sight of the grin frère with which he pushed us out of the dining room. Just like a shepherd, I thought. Once again I looked around the faces of the trastafar around me, and I suspected that disturbers had been gathered in our group. We were rejected.

  Day 9: All-Metal Bun [34]

  The next morning, I began to serve the Paris Commune seriously. Our group was taken out of the hut, loaded into the back of an old van and taken in the direction of one of the external arrondissements. Here, the shooting in the streets sounded much louder than was usual for me, and I felt a caffeinated prick of fear when we were brought into a dark, abandoned store and arranged for a bivouac in the cellar. We were given new clothes: Bangladeshi belts, woven from some strange plastic fiber, and brand new cotton T-shirts, still unusually stiff, which should be worn under our kind Communard uniform blouses.

  In the anemic sunlight of April morning, we were led outside to lead us to death.

  Oh, of course, they did not tell us this.

  “You are connected,” frère told us when we stood in the middle of the street. He was wearing lieutenant stripes, although he had only one earring in his ear, and spoke with a mouthpiece to be heard behind the shots that clicked on neighboring buildings like enraged dogs. “We are now knocking out forms from this county,” he continued. - Fights go for each building, and our ammunition consumption is very high. We cannot afford to lose fighters in order to bring cartridges to our positions, so this is the responsibility of you. Follow me, monsieurs.

  He took a step toward the corner of the house. I started after him - it hardly made sense to linger so that someone from the gloomy security guards shot me.

  At the end of the next quarter, the frères group lay behind the disrupted Citroen. Shots rang out from somewhere because of the structure across the street from them. Our lieutenant crept up to the group behind the wrecked car and exchanged a few words with them.

  “Take it,” the corporal said, throwing me a canvas bag. I caught her and was forced to suppress several very army expressions - this thing weighed almost a ton. She dulled muffledly with such a sound, as if stuffed with cheap toys. Everything was immediately explained when I looked inside and saw that there were plastic shops in it.

  “Not you,” said the lieutenant. He pointed to the last of the stragglers who approached the Citroen. “My friend, it is time for you to do your job.” - He made me a sign; I shrugged and threw the bag over to a latecomer - a bony trastafari, on whose cheeks there were still traces of a temporary tattoo. Trastafari dropped the bag - and he didn't hesitate to express his opinion about its weight.

  “Lift it,” the lieutenant ordered. “Your life may depend on how well you convey it.” In this building across the street is our combat brigade. You bring them this bag and ask if you can hear anything from the brigades that are further down the block. Damned forms again drown out our connection.

  I looked along the line drawn by the lieutenant finger. The distance seemed not so big. Just a couple of weeks ago, I would not have particularly thought about crossing the street, even bearing in mind the Paris movement.

  Making his way through the wreckage, the guy reached the corner of the last building on our side of the street. He looked to the other side, reminding me of an old man whom I had seen from time to time in Ryu Texas - that one took forever to gather courage and challenge traffic in our narrow street. The dust gave the trastafari's face the same gray tint as that of that old man. I suppose I myself should have felt lightheaded, but I do not remember that I even felt anything.

  I saw on the other side of the street and a little further some movement - it must have been that the combat brigade was hurrying its messenger. The guy turned and looked in our direction, and I was amazed at how wide his eyes were open and how white they looked. The lieutenant waved a hand carelessly, sending him forward; however, the pistol in his lieutenant's hand gave the gesture much more significance. The guy started to run.

  The next second, he was no longer running, and a crimson puddle flowed down the pavé [35] from under his twisted body. I did not hear the shot, and the guy also made no sound - except for the dusty shuffling blow of the body against the stones. However, for our lieutenant, obviously, this was not at all such a surprise.

  - You spotted? He asked the corporal. - Come on, fast!

  The corporal nodded, while waving his hand at one of his companions, who gave him something too small for me to see; the corporal stuck this thing in the socket of a bulletproof laptop. The second frère raised his thumbs up and threw a sooty, sinister-looking rifle on his shoulder. Then he stepped around the corner into the street, put a rifle to his shoulder, shot and stepped back, under cover of the pockmarked wall from the bullets. Somewhere outside my field of vision, one of the buildings exploded.

  The sound was as if he had lifted half the city into the air. It was like being inside a thundercloud; I instinctively pressed my hands to my ears in a belated attempt to protect them. The incredible noise had not yet subsided when our lieutenant picked up another bag of the same kind from the ground, handed it to me and ordered:

  - Go on.

  Until that moment, I was in a daze, just looking at what was happening, but not really seeing anything. When my fingers closed on the handle of the bag, and I felt a coarse fiber scratching my palm - it was the same as if I suddenly surfaced on the surface of a warm lake, being in the fresh, icy air. It was at that moment that I realized that Sissy was dead. That we all died. There was no point in fooling herself: most likely, they killed her on the same day when they raided the Dialton. There were many very different options for how exactly this could happen, and none of them mattered to me.

  “You all go to hell,” I said calmly, and went outside.

  I did not run - what was the point? I walked as if I just decided to take a walk to the corner to buy lunch. If I could, I would start whistling some carefree melody, something from Maurice Chevalier or Boy George. But my mouth was too dry to make me carefree enough.

  I walked past a trastafari, absurdly crouching in the dust on the pavement. I paused to take a look in the direction from which the fatal shot had apparently been fired, and was surprised to see that the building at the end of the quarter was mostly intact. This terrible explosion, whose final bass no
te has not yet played, was caused by the destruction of just one room. The unfortunate chambre, [36] along with the window - and, obviously, with the sniper blank behind it - was torn out of the building like a rotten tooth. And now I went for a walk so that our lieutenant could see if there was another sniper here. Now I understand that, apparently, that was what it meant to “fight for every building and every room” - but at that moment I was not thinking about anything.I didn't feel anything. I was just walking.

  There was no shot. A long line did not cut through my back, tearing out lungs like wings behind me.

  I reached the building I was heading towards and found that the combat brigade had already left it, moving into the courtyard and further into the next quarter. A lonesome grimy frère was waiting for me. Grabbing my bag, he spat at my feet and hurried, hurrying to join his comrades. I suspect that he did not like my sangfroid [37].

  During that time, while our lieutenant approached me with the other recruits, I had the opportunity to think a little. I pulled off a brand new tough shirt and woven belt, burying them under the rubble. I didn't know what exactly they were, but I was absolutely sure that they had something to do with the way our lieutenant was able to determine the location of the sniper with the bony trastafari with such accuracy. Frères could have killed me - but I was not going to give them the opportunity to get any benefit from it.

  They drove us through the ruined building after the combat brigade. Another body lying in the middle of the next street silently testified to the presence of another sniper blank somewhere nearby. The lieutenant pointed to the bag of ammunition lying next to the body - which, as I now saw, belonged to that grimy frère whom I had forced to play catch-up, and said to me:

  - Do not leave it to disappear. Take her with you.

  I smiled broadly.

  “With joy,” I answered. “But you can turn off your computer.” - I spread my arms and shrugged: - There is no belt. There are no t-shirts either. And there is no benefit from me either! “I'm pretty sure I giggled at the same time;” the whole scene was no less surrealistic than the night spent in the club trastafara.

  Before the lieutenant could answer me or do anything, between us stepped frère with headphones on his head.

  “Lieutenant,” he said. - Monsieur le sergeant Abalain [38] wants to talk to you.

  And suddenly, for no apparent reason, the lieutenant's face became pale - no less than on the face of a dead trastafari. This impressed me: I would never have thought that an officer could be so scared of a sergeant, even as poisonous as Abalen. The lieutenant took the headphones, put them on, closed his eyes and began to listen.

  “It was a T-shirt,” said Abalen.

  We sat in his office, in a converted nineteenth-century apartment building. From the window I could see the office center, which served as a barrack for me during the first weeks of my nightmare.

  - They are made of special fabric penetrated by sensors. They were designed to treat the wounded on the battlefield - sensors record the direction and speed of any object that hits the fabric. Well, we modified them somewhat by stitching small transmitters in the collar. This is a very convenient way to locate snipers - all the more so since neither blanks nor penisers still know that we have such an opportunity. - He spread his hands and smiled. “Of course, your appointment to this job was a mistake.”

  I took a sip from the glass Abalen gave me. The wine was good, with a rich and full bouquet; the tannins were almost completely weathered, but the wine still retained a slight aftertaste of the blackberry. I suspect that it lay in a cellar for a good ten years before it was called upon to contribute to the cause.

  I deliberately forced myself to think about wine in order to keep my emotions in check. Almost twenty-four hours have passed since I was dragged from the suicide squad, and it seems that I stopped shaking only immediately before they brought me to Abalen's office. I still have vague recollections of how fear and rage burst out of me when they led me away from the massacre, as I kicked the lieutenant in the groin. Of course, this could well be fantasies.

  For some reason, only now, taking a sip of wine, I remembered that several weeks had already passed since I smoked the last cigarette. But this was reflected only in the fact that the taste of wine felt better - apparently, I was too busy or too scared to pay attention to nicotine starvation.

  - Does this mean that I am free and can go?

  Abalen laughed; it sounded like a clang of a deadbolt on a cemetery fence.

  “I bow to your sense of humor, monsieur,” he said. “Believe me, if I could, I would send you back home to Ryu Texas - but my report on our little conversation about your work aroused interest among some very significant people.” Accordingly, I was ordered to provide you with a new opportunity to serve the cause ...

  The next day I came to the office, following the corridor after Abalen's office. It wasn't even about as well-furnished - however, it wasn't a camera, and no one shot at me here, so I decided to consider this a change for the better. I never saw either that lieutenant or any of my fellow targets again. I confess that their fate didn't really bother me.

  Abalen said he was going to give me directions regarding my new appointment. Waiting until he came up - and I had no doubt that I already knew what this appointment would be - I decided for myself that I would undertake the study. I could not help myself: when I face an array of data, I just have to find out what it is. Well, a shabby metal table, which occupied most of the cabinet, could serve as a clear definition of the concept of “data array”. On the table, occupying almost its entire surface, three piles were piled up with crumbling slopes, ready to collapse at any moment. Two of them consisted of papers, the third had a variety of storage devices: magneto-optical disks, a couple of ancient diskettes and even one or two holo-cubes.

  The closest piece of paper to me was various official trash: press releases, telegraph printouts. Those that caught my eye belonged either to the UN, or to one of the three main organizations of the forms. The second heap contained documents that were practically undecipherable in French, in which I was eventually able to identify working reports of Libertine officers and secret agents.

  “You can make some sense out of it, can you?” - Abalen stood in the doorway.

  For several seconds I looked him in the eye, then turned back to the reports.

  “What kind of meaning do you want me to make?”

  “You will do the same work that they described to me when you just, uh ... were mobilized.” I need information enclosed, as I suspect, in all of these reports and press releases. It is required of you, using your skill, to pull this information to the surface. The sergeant smiled at me - encouragingly, as he no doubt convinced. He probably used to be some kind of management consultant before deciding that a revolution could provide more opportunities to have people in all holes.

  “You will work here and send me information as soon as you have anything worthwhile.” At your disposal an electronic notebook and laptop, they are located in the upper right drawer of the table. They are connected to a fiber that goes directly to a protected folder on my desktop. Unfortunately, access outside will not be provided to you, but do not worry about this: I will make sure that you have all the information you need to work.

  “This information is more than enough for me,” I thought to myself.

  Day 30: Revolutions will not be granted benefits

  - I must admit, I do not understand this revolution.

  “Why not understand here?” - Abalen offered me a "Marley"; I was somewhat surprised by such a gesture on his part, and even more surprised to realize that I was shaking my head negatively. “We, in fact, are not revolutionaries; you yourself know that. We are trying to restore the glory of French culture - in a sense, it rather makes us conservatives.

  “I think the more correct term here would be“ reactionaries, ”I thought.

  “Which, without a doubt, explains why so many of your slogans look so much like a di
ner advertisement,” I said, showing him one of the leaflets. - “France and you: on your way!”

  “The philosophy of eateries is basically French,” said Abalene. - This is the philosophy of the peasants, and not some kind of decorated bourgeois haute cuisine [39]. This is the same as the epoxy tile to which you and the similar "Old-Timers of Paris" are so dismissive - it is fully consistent with the scientific rationalism of a genuine revolution.

  Abalen spoke lively, fluent French. Last week, he caught me on the fact that I was listening too carefully to one of his telephone conversations, and without warning doused me with a hurricane of French speech. Seeing from my expression that I undoubtedly understood everything, he nodded in satisfaction and returned to his conversation, as if he had not expected anything else.

  “If you don't spread Disney with her,” I objected.

  “Well then, this is cultural imperialism,” said Abalen. I could have liked him if he smiled at the same time or at least showed something that he has a sense of humor. But he was deadly serious, and I hated him even more for that.