by J. T. Marsh
Events have come to a head. Whatever the wealthy man and his apparatchiks in government might’ve expected, this announcement produces only a renewed burst of rage on the streets. The working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner defy the state of emergency and fill the streets once again, at the centre of their mass the Victory Monument jutting into the sky like a pillar of salt cast from a mould of steel. As punishment for their failure to turn for muster, Dmitri and the others have been confined to quarters, the stockade on base already filled beyond capacity. In the afterwards, the rebellious fervour among the crew of the Borealis has nearly reached its inevitable climax. Still Dmitri thinks of his friends on the Australis, sunk by a Russian hunter-killer submarine. There are no survivors. Lying in his cot, he says to himself, “they die for no purpose but a sacrifice to the criminals in parliament.” While confined to quarters, Dmitri and the others can hear the cries of the people in the streets through the distance like the surging of a mighty river through the rapid’s jagged rocks. To Dmitri, this is the call of the wild. And he bitterly resents being locked in his quarters while so many are fighting and dying not only on the faraway battlefields in a foreign land but on the streets of this very city.
In the night, parliament falls, the coalition government cobbled together from a dozen different parties giving way to a new coalition government cobbled together from a different assortment of parties. At times like these, no one really knows who’s in power. But news of this sudden and new formation of government does not resonate far, the working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner still in the streets. There’s violence; of course there’s violence. The troopers attack with their batons, their water cannon, and their pepper spray, while the crowds respond with hurled bricks and raised fists. Gunfire cracks through the air. Bodies fall. Blood stains pavement. This is an orgy of violence without end, which must never end, a grand act of theatre under which all must carry out their prescribed roles to their logical and inevitable ends, no matter the futility. It becomes as one could’ve predicted, a storm of chaos unravelling by the day, as each new sequence of events brings with it a new burden placed on the way of things, soon the day coming when there’ll be one burden too many and it’ll all come crashing down. In the street, in the halls in his little apartment block, Valeri meets Tonya, asking her, “are you leaving?” She replies, “never.” “Good.” He’s about to go on, when she pre-empts him by saying, “I’m not going anywhere.” “I’m glad to hear it,” he replies, “with people like you on our side, how can we fail?” She smiles.
“Have you spoken to your friend?” Valeri asks. “I have,” Tonya replies, “and we’ll get what we need.” A few days later, Tonya knocks on his door and presents him with a package, inside a semi-automatic rifle and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. “Just one?” Valeri asks. “It’s all I could get,” Tonya replies. And Valeri believes her. He takes the rifle in his hands, holds it as one would and looks down the sights, envisioning his soon-to-be target. With the couple of revolvers and the old, bolt-action rifle they’ve been able to scrounge from among the remaining residents, this is the arsenal they’ll have to defend themselves from the coming attack. They’ll be hopelessly outgunned, but Valeri knows in his heart it’s not the firepower they can muster but the mere act of raising arms in defense of the right to live in their own homes that matters. Although the rebel has been carrying out his attacks for months, theirs will be, with others, the first rising of the ordinary worker. It’s a tantalizing thought, one which makes Valeri’s mouth water even as it makes his stomach turn. In the night, there’s regular blackouts, the power switched off, they say, to make the city less vulnerable to enemy air raids and to enemy ships and submarines that might be lurking just offshore.
As if life on the street in the working man’s part of town could become any more distant, any more of a struggle, from day to day the rest of that mass of people live, now, under the harshest of circumstances, the vaguest yet most insidious of threats, the suggestion that bombs might fall at any moment on his head without warning seeming at the same time absurd and frightening. As the glass and steel towers of yesterday have become little more than monuments to the disorder and to the chronic shortages plaguing every part of the country, permeating all aspects of our society, resources commandeered and supplies redirected; immediately, it’s as though the whole country has been placed under a blockade, with not a single shot fired by any enemy against our homes or our people nor with a single bomb dropped from any of the aircraft that can be seen to fly past at so high an altitude they’re all but invisible to the naked eye. None of us can know what’s going on, and they who would have you convinced they can see where this is all headed are liars, plain and simple. It’s a hard thing to do, admit when you’re wrong, so hard that there are many who will die in the coming months, years rather than put themselves through the arduous effort such an admission requires. Pride, it seems, will be the wealthy man’s downfall, not his avarice or his wrath.
The rebel has all but called off his armed campaign, laying low for a while, gathering his strength, letting loose only the occasional attack on recruiting stations, on power plants, on bridges and on railway stations. Britain’s army, toothless from decades of expensive blunders and cuts, struggles to control the urban areas. The wealthy man and his apparatchiks in the current government, whoever might be pulling the strings, they choose to interpret the apparent subsiding of the rebel’s campaign as proof that their decision to take the country to war was the right one, even as their armies are humiliated on the battlefield and as civil discontent rises with each passing day. It’s all an act, it’s always been little more than an act, but when you are fighting this kind of war an act is all that matters, all that one needs to be concerned about. The wealthy man’s apparatchiks take to the screens of the working man and proclaim an end to what they call the terrorism and the lawlessness that’ve come to plague this city and this country, even as the working man and his allies the student and the parishioner keep on filling the streets like water fills the mightiest of rivers. It’s all a deeply confusing time, for you and for me, and in this time it becomes so entirely unlike any of us to imagine something more than what we have.
In his weaker moments, the wealthy man can only look on these times and imagine something entirely different had transpired. But as we linger on these moments, these moments in time when the hopelessness of our common path seems self-evident, know that there are those who would seek to change the course of our history and in so changing make possible through great suffering and great anguish a tomorrow better for us all.
26. Face of the Enemy
At last, it comes. Troopers approach the front of the building, the two at the front of the formation carrying a battering ram. From a fourth-floor window, Valeri watches, waiting for the troopers to come closer, closer, still closer, when they’re a half-metre from the front door tightening his grip on his rifle and drawing in one last breath. There’s the crack of gunfire as his first round fells one of the lead troops, the others scattering for cover instantly, the rest of Valeri’s opening volley punching holes in the concrete. There’s more gunfire, there’s shouting and screaming and the wailing of sirens, the storm troopers falling back, then withdrawing altogether, in the time this brief exchange of gunfire has taken the fires of liberation burning brighter than ever before, here and around the city. The troopers scatter, drawing gunfire from Valeri’s people manning third-floor windows, but scramble for cover in time. Valeri’s people don’t know what they’re doing, even if they’re convinced they do; these are not trained soldiers, not even enthusiasts, workers only learning to use firearms for the first time. Valeri leans out of the window slightly, looking to take another shot, a bullet to the wall scaring him into falling back into his apartment. More rounds burst around him, then stop. He picks himself up and pins himself against the wall, edging forward, listening to the sound of erratic gunfire, on reaching the
window seeing no troopers where once they’d been. It’s over, for now. Valeri turns his gun into the sky and fires one, two, three more rounds, using the last of his ammunition as exclamation points on the day’s events. But it’s not over yet, it’s never over. As night falls, this same sequence of events plays itself out a hundred times across the country, coordinated not by some master plan but by the dark essence that’s already begun to run its course in the common pulse shared by working men here and everywhere there’s work to be done. Then, it happens.
Another exchange of fire, quickly after the first attack. In the street, a loose formation of armoured cars making their way past when someone opens fire on them. Valeri returns to his position, gun at the ready. This is the promise of the uprising fifteen years ago finally realized, Valeri thinks. This is what his mother and father died for, along with the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of many others just like him. A thunderous explosion booms through the air, sending a plume of smoke rising from the street. Valeri stops. He can’t tell what’s happening. There’s a rumbling felt under his feet, next the walls shaking slightly for a half-moment or two. A wall of smoke obscures the sun’s light. A wave of heat fills the air. For a moment Valeri thinks he’s dead. For a moment he thinks this must be his time. But the smoke clears. Valeri stands up and looks out the window, the street empty, without any troopers in sight. There’s an abandoned truck, shot through with fire, windows shattered. A body lies motionless. Shell casings are everywhere. A quick survey of the building reveals bullet holes, broken glass, parts of walls fractured along beams, and two of the defending workers dead. But Valeri keeps his gun in hand, though it’s empty brandishing it as if it were loaded. From across the city the sound of gunfire rattles intermittently into the night, at sunset rising columns of smoke blending with the after-industrial haze that lies permanently over the city. It’s over, for now. In the confusion of the night, there’s no one moment when it’s clear they’re no longer under threat, and for the rest of the night there’s more shooting, more troopers coming by here and there, the whole city, the whole country in a state of confusion.
It may seem Valeri’s instincts have become honed to the sensitivities of this fight, but it’s not so simple. In fact, his instructions were to take this moment to rise, as part of a wider offensive about to take place here in this city and across the country. We have reached this stage, when not all is as it seems, when our enemies in state have grown overconfident and have come to foresee in their own actions victory where there, in fact, lies only the inevitability of defeat. When the night is upon us, men like Valeri can sleep but can never rest. As night comes, the dark essence chooses this moment to complete its descent into our world, reaching out to the working man in his moment of weakness to inhabit him with the ultimate strength. For when there’s no clear way forward, there can be only one choice for the working man: resist.
In the night, Valeri feels the tightening of his muscles and an electric sensation running the length of his spine at precisely the moment this dark essence has come to him. But still he lives in a world hostile to his way of life and to his quest for liberation, in this moment of weakness the dark essence choosing the most pathetic among us to serve as a vessel with which to grant itself form. There’s more gunfire, rattling off through the night as troopers stage attacks on holed-up workers who’ve taken over factories, warehouses, yards, and apartment blocks across the country, some attacks failing to dislodge the workers, others succeeding with deaths on both sides. But, this is by design. As the working man rises to no clear end, around the city and across the country the rebel lies in wait, about to spring his own trap. Taking stock of their situation, Valeri meets with Roger and Tonya on the roof, Roger there to say, “I’ll be damned if we lived through that,” Tonya nodding before saying, “but what’s next?” Valeri’s first thought is to admit he doesn’t know, but he pushes doubt from his mind and says, “we wait for help. If they attack again, then we’ll fight them again. So long as we fight for our homes and our families, we can never lose.” This may not have been where any of us thought it’d take us, but it’s where we were, all along, destined to be.
As the last of the rebel’s known strongholds in the area are ferreted out and destroyed by the reactionary’s troopers, all seems lost for the way of the future. Continuing his speech to the world, the wealthy man lays out his case for reconciliation with the working man, promising change even as all who listen know it a false promise. Even the wealthy man knows it a false promise. Still he is compelled to promise change, just as an apple falling from the tree is compelled to drop to the ground by the immutable laws of nature, the wealthy man rendered impotent in his own words, the rebel lying in wait, licking his lips as the appointed time draws nearer by the second.
As if he knows what’s to come, the wealthy man finds himself roused by an ever-mounting passion, screaming himself hoarse, his lies burying upon lies, he becoming an absurd caricature of himself. Meanwhile, the residents of Dominion Courts look to Valeri for their next move. Valeri, Tonya, and Roger agree to tell the others to keep watch and send runners out for supplies, but until the rebel reaches into the city to relieve them, they must posture themselves as though the next attack could come at any moment. Valeri doesn’t know what to expect but he puts on a brave face for the others, only letting it down when alone on the roof standing watch for the next attack never to come. The dark essence from above lives in Valeri, now, as it lives in men like him around the world who’ve irrevocably pledged themselves to the task of their own liberation.
Already teetering on the edge of collapse, the way of things needs only the gentlest nudge to send it plunging into the abyss. Naturally, the rebel intends not to give the slightest nudge but the hammer blow. Tonight, as the wealthy man declares to the world that the revolution was well and truly finished, his ally, the reactionary, knows better. As the wealthy man finishes his speech to the world, already the first shots mark this new and dramatic escalation of the revolutionary war, bullets tearing through the wealthy man’s lies as though they’re tissue paper, shredding the last, best hope the way of things have and clearing the way forward to a new beginning.
II
27. At the Threshold
At dawn’s first light, it begins. Gunfire rattles through the air and columns of smoke rise into the sky. As the first confused reports filter onto screens across the country and around the world, it seems, to some, this is but another of the episodic outbursts we’ve all grown used to, but these first confused reports are wrong. As the day wears on, the attacks only intensify, the number of the rebel’s gunmen in the streets only multiplies. They strike at police stations, at public halls, at government offices and at docks and airports, all at once. By the time the day’s out, most of the rebel’s gunmen have been killed, taken prisoner, or beaten back, but that matters little to the rebel himself, as he watches on the screens breathless new reports of the carnage and the chaos the sly grin on his face only growing wider with each passing moment on this decisive day. Still on the ground, Valeri greets the arrival of the rebel’s offensive by flying the red flag from one corner of the roof using a hockey stick as a makeshift pole. With the rest of the residents in the building, they’re tired and they’re hungry but the promise of liberation keeps them all going strong.
Meanwhile, on board the cruiser Borealis, Dmitri and the others have been released from their quarters, allowed to return to duty on account of the severe shortage of manpower crippling the navy. But still they can’t put to sea on account of yet-unrepaired battle damage. “Our moment is at hand,” says Dmitri to the crewmen with him in the ship’s forward compartment, “and we must not miss it.” Having established contacts with the rebels in the popular front, Dmitri and the others on board must now seize the moment. Breaking free, they reach the cruiser’s armoury and arm themselves with rifles, then leave a pair of their own to guard the armoury while Dmitri leads the rest to the bridge. On arrival, they find Captain Abra
movich and the other officers gathered, unarmed. It seems they were expecting exactly this when ordered to release the crew from confinement. “Do what you’ve come here to do,” says the Captain, looking Dmitri right in the eye. “I haven’t come to kill you,” Dmitri says. “Oh?” the Captain asks. “No,” Dmitri says, “I’ve only come to see to it that the crew of this cruiser are fighting for our own people for once.” He orders the Captain and the other officers taken into custody, and soon the whole lot of them are being led at gunpoint down to the ship’s brig. But on the way past, the Captain shoots Dmitri a mean look, filled with venom and bile, the glare of a man impotent with rage.
As this day dawns, Valeri hears the rattling of gunfire, the residents manning their apartments defences as though they could fight off a determined attack. Without ammunition for their few guns, they couldn’t withstand another attack, were the police not consumed in the rebel’s offensive. Valeri’s acutely aware the police could come again at any time, and if they should try the residents of Dominion Courts would make for easy prey. But still it escapes him the ease with which they fought off the first attack was owing to the working man’s own determination to survive, not anything conscious in their planning. The working man knows, fully knows that his is a struggle not only against the truncheon of the trooper’s physical oppression, but as well against the vast continuum of ideas meted out upon him, ideas posed as natural, healthy, yet which are designed by their very nature to instil in him a division against himself. Struggling, always struggling, the working man pledges to ignore the growling of his stomach and the fatigue behind his eyes, so sure he is of the honesty and the nobility of his cause that he’s willing to put himself through an untold suffering to see it through. As the day drags on and the rebel’s attacks don’t peter out but escalate, the air fills with the endless chattering of gunfire and the thumping of exploding bombs blending into a terrible cacophony of hell building until there’s nothing but death sounding out.