by J. T. Marsh
“You’re not the man you think you are,” Maria says. “What does that even mean?” Valeri asks, “we work all our lives for this meagre sum and when we become all used up we’re discarded like some broken tool. And they kick us out of our homes to tear them down and build their palaces, their great monuments to nothing at all. It’s not right! It’s not fair!” But once set alight, the working man’s passions cannot be contained, the current wave of demonstrations seeming to encompass all grievances in the aspirations of one man to realize his own destiny. In times like these, with the wealthy man and his managerial apparatchiks seem invincible, but men like Valeri can instinctively sense weakness in the strong and strength in the weak. Led by his instincts, Valeri already thinks to the future when he’ll become part of something more. In the world there’s a mounting tension, between countries and among them. All working men know it, but few have the wherewithal to talk about it, not in ways that might help reveal the critical truth. You see, Britain is a fallen power, and like so many other fallen powers she still dreams herself strong. As countries build up their military strength while beset by internal strife, they willingly set on a path towards a collision of powers. But the war in the offing will be unlike any the world has ever seen.
“When the war comes, what will you do?” asks Maria. “I won’t give my support to the war effort,” says Valeri. “You may not have a choice.” “No one can force me to war.” “You’ll be arrested for sedition.” A pause. “Why all this talk of war?” asks Valeri. And Maria doesn’t reply, not right away, letting a silence settle in the room. This meeting, this conversation is a forbidden act, forbidden not by law but by something far more sinister and far more powerful, the power of a taboo handed down from generation to generation long enough to become almost as instinct. But, Valeri knows, each such conversation, each word uttered amounts to an attack on the power of this taboo, in this and in every other conversation held across the country and around the world. Six months have passed since we’ve started following Valeri and the revolution simmering in the working class and winter’s almost on us.
For free, we look through this time and imagine ourselves not unlike our mothers and our fathers, whether living or dead. In the distance, a burst of gunfire rattles off, sounding like a firecracker. All England seems cast under permanent overcast skies, the temperate heat of the summer having given way to the pattering of a constant rain. It’s dark, it’s always dark, and in the darkness it sometimes seems, even to men as limited in their worldview as Valeri, that this is a darkness never to be brightened by hope. But there’s always hope.
7. An Eye For an Eye
People die, sometimes, killed in industrial accidents, and nothing changes. A few fines are levied and at the last possible moment duly paid. The working man watches as his own are killed, to the wealthy man each death an expense to be paid, an item in a ledger to be accounted for. A young man, crippled in his pursuit of his pittance, taken away in the back of an ambulance, never to be seen at work again. An older man, killed in the sale of his labour for his own pittance, never to be seen or heard from again. As there’ll be wrangling, back and forth, letters sent and calls exchanged, but nothing ever changes. The working man loses a friend, a brother, all for want of money. In the meanwhile, events in the world at large have begun to overtake the deaths of men, a factory’s closure somewhere halfway across the country met, this time, not with muted ambivalence but with anger, defiant workers seizing control of their shut-down factory and refusing to leave until their demands for compensation are met. Fear of death keeps men like Stanislaw Czerkawski under the thumb of their paymasters, enslaved to their pittance. Now, Stanislaw cleans a floor at the shopping centre when his ruthless boss calls him back into the office and says, “you’re only a Polack, and I can find a hundred more like you in a day.” The sudden assault stuns Stanislaw. “Now keep in line,” says his boss, “or you’ll be out on the street picking through trash for food.” Though Stanislaw doesn’t know this, the boss is fully aware of the conversations had by the workers among themselves. Mocked and belittled by racists as simple, dirty Polacks, Stanislaw and his family have little choice but to struggle for whatever little wages they can.
It’s a tense moment, and the fears of a thousand generations have all led to it, the chance seeming self-evident to make a stand and prove, once and for all, on the strength of the working man’s will. The more radical among the occupiers talk of fighting; but theirs is a small voice, the few among the many, and as the police surround their factory and wait for nightfall before turning on powerful lights. Then, they wait, the darkness lingering outside as they cut the factory’s power, in the hot summer’s night the thick, humid air soon invading, straining will and faltering discipline, over the next few days the standoff lingering like the odour of dead flesh left to rot. At the armoury, rumours abound of the brigade’s surely impending deployment abroad. Gunnery exercises are rare, interspersed with endless cleaning and polishing of the guns. But still the Colonel comes to inspect the troops wearing his finely-pressed, perfectly-creased uniform. It gives Private Thompson the impression the prospect of war excites rather than troubles the Colonel. Later, in the barracks with the others Thompson says, “he thinks it the chance to make a name for himself.” Another trooper says, “he comes from a long line of officers. He traces his lineage back to the War of the Roses. He sees war as a gentleman’s endeavour.” The men agree this is abhorrent, but their chance to act on this agreement is not yet at hand.
The stench of decaying infuses every breath Valeri draws in, his nemesis Ruslan having been promoted to some modest level of power. Every day, the shop could shut down; amid the chaos outside Ruslan stops Valeri and says, “it’s high time a good-for-nothing like you was sent packing.” Valeri says, “I support them and I don’t hide my support,” before looking Ruslan right in the eye. But Ruslan only says, “and if your attitude could cost you your livelihood?” Valeri says, you have nothing to threaten me with. You can take away my job, but I’ve been through worse.” Then, Valeri turns and walks away. The move to Surrey takes Garrett Walker and his family some weeks, and they make it out of their old home on the very last day. It’s hard to understand what’s happened to them, except in the most basic, visceral way. The morning after they’ve moved in with his wife’s mother, Garrett wakes in the flat surrounded by boxes and crates, having only slept a little that night. “I’m not much of a man,” he says, “if I have no work and no home. Look at my family, kept up in this tiny flat. I should have the chance to do better.” But even his wife’s mother lives in fear of eviction, at any time the criminal bankers to decide her simple flat worthy of being torn down to make way for luxury towers for profit of another. It makes little sense to people like Garrett, how the wealthy can keep on hastily assembling their towers in the midst of England’s, Europe’s descent into madness and civil war. Too late will he realize the truth.
In truth, there have been many demonstrations since the failed rising fifteen years ago, many haphazard strikes scattered here and there. Even some of them have seen raids like the one that’s burned the union hall to the ground, though such raids have taken place far less often than the strikes that precipitate them. Men like Valeri are still young enough to muster passions not yet dulled and worn by the passage of so much time, and it’s for this reason the future of our rising lies in the hearts of men like him, if only they could see it. Still we’re in that uncertain early period, with the demonstrations of one kind or another so regular an occurrence that they’ve come to blend in with the cityscape, as though inserted by some skilled painter then subtly disguised by the blending of colours around the edges. At a meeting of concerned parishioners, Darren Wright and Sheila Roberts hear myriad views. It’s in a basement beneath a disused shop, dim, with leaky pipes and a smell Darren can’t quite place. “The church has no authority when it consents to war on the working class,” says the speaker, an older man. “Where Christ lives,” says the speaker, “so
is there the working class liberation. Our church has no grand palaces, no ostentatious vestments on its priests, no obsession with ritual, no empty shrines. This church must remain as it is, and our church not only lives but thrives wherever the working man yearns in his heart for freedom.” All present, perhaps thirty, shout their agreement. Darren notices, as the meeting runs its course, there’re Catholics and Protestants alike at this underground church, the rogue priest assuring his new congregants, “all are welcome in a House of God.” The experience sends a shiver running the length of Darren’s spine, and he becomes convinced in an instant this is where he is meant to be. Darren returns to his church but does not tell the priest nor anyone else what he’s heard, keeping to himself the burgeoning spirit that will soon come to commit him irrevocably to the coming war. As it is written in Matthew 24:6, ‘And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.’ Not condoning of war, the rogue priest is declaring to his newfound flock they must be ready at all times for no man can know when all will be called to account.
At the polytechnic, word has spread of the coming protest, with Sean Morrison and his fellow students breathlessly declaring the impending occupation of the streets like a religious zealot confidently predicting the imminent apocalypse. “Our fight is to stop the government from increasing our fees,” says Sean, “but it’s more than that. What use is our degrees and diplomas if we become part of the apparatus used by the rich to expropriate wealthy from the poor?” Sean’s helming a gathering in the polytechnic’s main square, with some dozens of students and the odd member of faculty listening in at any given moment. “There have been many demonstrations over the years,” says Sean, “but ours will be something more!” Already the demonstrations in the streets of London, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the other cities in Britain have reached a fever pitch, the loose alliance of students from across the country standing as one. It’s exactly this moment the traitor in their midst should choose to turn his trust in.
At the shop Valeri nearly come to blows over the way of things. “I’ve had enough of your provocations,” Valeri says, “I can’t stand one more word from your tongue.” But Ruslan lets Valeri have at it, seeming to enjoy watching Valeri dig his own grave. A couple of other workers watch, Albert Nelson one of them. “I’ve always worked harder than you,” Valeri says, “and I won’t be much good to anyone if I can barely stand on my feet.” Ruslan studies Valeri’s face with a look somewhere between contempt and pity. Finally, Ruslan says, “you don’t look so good. It’s all their fault. They ought to have let you go long before now. They’ve been too busy with all these difficulties to notice. But I notice. I’ve had my eye on you for some time.” With the threat of unemployment and thus starvation hanging over their heads at all times, most working men in this day and age would be fearful of such a threat. But Valeri’s lacking in an instinct for self-preservation combined with his intense passion against injustice lead him to only to give himself over to rebellion.
One man looks at another and says, “they’re clearing out.” Elsewhere, another man looks down the street and says, “it’s all right for them to leave.” Still elsewhere in the city another man looks out his window on the busy street and says, “they’re sure to kick us all out of our own homes and tell us it’s our business to find a place to live. But they’ve already taken the other places from us!” It’s written, somewhere, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In it, we sometimes see murderers put to death under the guise of this fairness. Yet, as some worker is killed at work, he is killed by the choices his wealthy paymasters have made in the name of their own profit, his killing accounted for, marked as another line-item drawn against another expense, the persons who made those choices still free to return to their mansions in their gated communities while a family across town faces a bleak future without their pittance to see them through. Meanwhile, Valeri continues to work for the same basic wage, returning every day as he had. Not yet broken, only battered and bruised he comes home exhausted as ever, still there to see his roommate Hannah come home in bloodstained scrubs from another hard day’s night. At the shop, Valeri’s latest run-in with Ruslan has had some effect. “Stop your noise,” says Ruslan, “or you’ll get more than you bargained for.” But Valeri’s insistent, saying, “I’ll speak my piece no matter what. If the truth earns me a target on my back, then I say let there be a target on my back all the same.” Valeri takes a half-step toward his tormentor and nearly lashes out at him with both fists when the fear of losing his job stops him. But the point is made. This is among Valeri’s glimpse of the bottommost depths of life, the very ugliest of its poverty. It’s like the musty, mouldy stench of swamp rot wafting up to him from some unseen point below, and he reaches so eagerly for it.
Among the men Valeri works with, there’s chatter. “There’s been nobody in authority for two weeks,” says one. “If you know too much you’ll get old too soon,” says another. “Sooner or later we ought to make a stand,” says a third. Whether one man or one thousand men, it makes no difference. All are valued; in the death of one, all die, as the smallest grain of sand may contain all creation. Halfway across the country, the workers who’ve seized their shut-down factory don’t know what to expect; they leave doors unlocked and windows open, daring the police to come in and arrest them, expecting to make their point that way. But the police are more cunning than this. The police sit and wait, manning their post outside the factory’s doors, while the local politicians make a show for the cameras out of negotiating, talking, always talking, drawing out the moment just long enough to let the working man’s passions cool, once cooled his passions allowing in a shade of doubt. Soon, the working man agrees to a pittance, in the heat of the moment their pittance seeming like a fortune. It’s been but a few days, perhaps a week since these workers took control of their yet-shuttered factory, in that time much having happened in the world, treaties signed, laws written on scraps of paper and passed, only to be evaded by those who passed them, loopholes sought, terms creatively interpreted, the essence of law building into itself the very mechanisms used to undermine it. When the workers return to their homes, pittance in hand, they resign themselves to the reality of life after death, and after a night or two of drinking and dancing each of them sets themselves about the task of finding their next sustenance, from wherever it may come. We don’t understand what they’ve done, what they’ve been through, and neither do they.
In the midst of this current crisis, Valeri sits in the dark and thinks of Maria, imagining her caught on the street in this latest blackout, until he can stand it no longer. All have roles to play, he’s slowly realizing, in the darkness of his factory’s cavernous innards the light dawning on him like the rising sun. Still we’re in that uncertain early period, even after the failure of this latest general strike still other strikes and demonstrations carrying on, the streets filled with the working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner, still seeming to effect no change as the wealthy man continues his work in the background to put up so many glass and steel towers in a fevered bid to wring every last ounce of wealth from the world before the real war begins. An eye for an eye, the real war will call for, every humiliation and every injustice to be paid back in the eruption of an unvarnished rage. While the working man lives in poverty, the wealthy man far away lives in lavish opulence, but it’s a lavish opulence that can never last.
The working man dies, yet still the wealthy man carries on in his wealth, paying not with his own life but with some small amount of time and money, each of which he has in abundance. None will soon be ready to commit themselves to change, stuck as they are in acting out their assigned roles, reading from a yet-unwritten script. After the workers accept their pittance and leave, their factory is shuttered for the last time, to be torn down, the land underneath to be left for the weeds to reclaim. It’s a small episode, otherwise lost in the hurried transition fro
m one stage of history to the next, and in the wealthy man’s world the act of preserving memory of this episode becomes a small act of subversion. Even as there are no laws forbidding talk of what’s happened, nor recording, transmitting, storing any account of it, knowledge becomes overwritten by the endless stream of not-knowledge and soon the whole episode becomes forgotten in the world at large. “If only we had a chance,” says a man in the street out in front of a church after one Sunday service. “I wish the rebels would come back,” says another man, “We’re all going to get something for our troubles,” says a third. These men have been out of work too long, pathetic and hopeless men pushed to the edge of starvation, almost ready to receive the gospel.
But it’s not so simple. As the working man dies, he’s made to suffer the indignities in death he was made to suffer in life, hauled around and thrown out like a diseased and rotting piece of meat, disposed of so that his little box of a living space can be cleared to make room for another, and after that another, then another, then another, human capital collected and expended for nothing but the profit of another. This elderly man, no one knows how he spent his life working for his pittance in the once-bustling mills in the hinterlands of the province far to the north, on the closing of those mills despair chasing him to the city far to the south. Thereupon, this not yet elderly man became as one with the bulk of the working man’s mass, and in so becoming he losing the very essence of his being, becoming alienated from that which he’d been and reducing himself to the level of an object to be manipulated for the profit of his better. In Valeri’s mind, his work comes not from a place of necessity but from a place of courage, in the face of his own survival choosing to disregard his own self and press forward. Still he works behind the scenes, attending meetings held not in secret but in the open, churches standing in for the burnt union halls. It’s at one such meeting when he meets a young pastor who changes his life, forever.