Class Warfare
Page 6
Today, he is expansive, in expectation of pleasure, the evening’s wine and music, the tender ladies. Among the proletariat, he shines. The proletariat seem not to notice. He takes this indifference, sometimes, as an affront, a breach of manners; even now, it hurts. “Have I not done enough?” he complains. “What have I failed to do?” He leans confidentially across the table. “Everything that lives is holy, but some things are holier than other things. I know at which door to take off my shoes, at which to leave them on.” His friends nod, as if in assent. They also have known the sweetness of life. This young man will go far, they are thinking. They understand that he is always going somewhere, to do something. They understand that the Empress of India will not be kept waiting.
What matters, of course, is the maintenance of harmony. He is not beyond greasing the gears, if the machine falters. Mere sloppiness offends him, confutes the proper deployment of things in nature. “A tree is never sloppy,” he likes to say. “If the beasts of the field had needed the vacuum-cleaner, they would have invented it.” No one doubts the perspicacity of this.
The Empress of India pours tea, delicately, from a well-wrought urn. “When I attained enlightenment,” she tells him, “I was sitting under an acacia tree, freaking. The air was full of sulphur dioxide and ash. I was thinking about cause and effect, in the matter of chicken pox: does the itch generate the scratch, or the scratch the itch? That was my koan, after a fashion. Three ducks were floating on the pond, in perfect formation. I was wearing my sea-green robe, and my hair was spread luxuriant around me. At that moment, nothing anywhere was flawed. Ah, the vanity of the material world, the vanity, before I was enlightened.”
There are other options. He is addressing his public, in a gazebo: “It is possible to savour the experience of conversion for its own sake. Merely to stand transfixed, in the luminous instant, is often enough. In Honolulu, quite suddenly, all the women ran down to the sea. The leis were still bright, still fragrant, around their gleaming shoulders. Aieee! they cried out. Oh! Aieee! Aieee! Such things are not vouchsafed freely, in the material world; they do not come in like the morning tide, faithfully, on schedule. Patience is demanded: patience and diligence, the unglamorous sisters. No one requires that the linden be compassionate, that the asphalt aspire to godliness. No one censures our great Mother, the sea, for slapping at the recalcitrant shore. We perceive now that woman will seek her own, like unto like, in her own good time. Do not be afraid. At the apex of rapture, there is neither Form nor Content. One day there will be enough love. One day we shall unite all the contradictions, all the dissonances, in love.”
Another day, he is having his hair styled, in a room of mirrors, accusing lights, softly whirring voices. As he works, the stylist talks steadily, through his superb teeth; his hands make practised, articulate gestures. “Have you known the sweetness of life, can you remember it? Have you danced to the gentle strains of Pachelbel, in the stilly night? Have you loitered till dawn in waterfront bars, contemplating the mythic sailors who never appear? Have you ever wanted to be an antelope? a goldfish? My heart lusts constantly after equilibrium, a stasis amidst the flux; I have conducted feasibility studies in this field, with discouraging results. As a child I was considered precocious, because I ventured to say aloud what other children had the tact, or guile, to keep to themselves. Small noises, flutterings in the dark, appalled me, then as now. Angel wings, my mother called them, when the creepies came. These days I have set myself a discipline: to detach myself, rigorously, from the mysteries of the body. Yet I am not at peace. Something always intrudes. A goldfish’s memory lasts longer in warm water than in cold; of man, it may be that the reverse is true. Herennius, the Sicilian, showed signs of madness and was confined by his friends; determined to thwart them, he beat his brains out against a post.”
The telephone rings; he answers. A sinister whisper speaks: “Whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth. Prudential Life, New York Life, Mutual Life, Metropolitan Life, Sun Life, Equitable Life, A.T.&T., I.T.&T., Atlantic Richfield, Continental Oil, Standard Oil, Mobil Oil, Imperial Oil, Sinclair Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Phillips Petrol, American Can, American Express, American Airlines, American Smelting, Pan American, National Distillers, National Biscuit, National Cash Register, International Paper, Coca-Cola …” It goes on and on. He hangs up, obscurely discomfited.
Slowly, slowly, the Empress of India winds toward him, her eyes an invitation. In a far room, someone is dancing a minuet, someone is smoking hashish, the candles are flickering. A cigarette butt drifts forlornly in a half-filled goblet. Hold this moment, let it stay with you a long time. The Empress of India says, “In my dream of the world, we were never called upon to defend ourselves. Day shifted confidently into night, again into day, like a Lamborghini in passage, while we slept. It was a world of expertise and fine machinery, a complaisant element. Occasions were fluid, as we moved in them. We walked once in a Japanese garden, minutely apart, in the calm of a summer’s evening, savouring what was there to be savoured. Stone lanterns, immaculate pebbles, shrubbery artfully bent. A small man, skin like dried fruit, was tending something, seriously, at a distance. What were you saying to me? Why was I not listening? Tradition shone in the air, alien light glinting through an archway (as I understood it), striking still water. Yes, there were goldfish in the pool, and other species. The noise of traffic was indistinguishable from wind, the conversation of large indigenous trees, the scraping of unaccustomed sandals on gravel paths, as we strolled together. And I was happy, I was then entirely happy, without thought.”
In his mind, he is saying to her, “There are worse things to remember than happiness, if such it was. We walked in a Japanese garden, beside the languid water, and I was young and strong and full of passion. I was not yet detached from the material life, the manifest world. Nor am I now, though I pretend otherwise. Your body in the twilight appeared to me as drapery, the costliest of fabrics, voluptuous as amber in a green bowl. Gossamer hung on your hips, your magnificent thighs; I could not forbear to praise you. Oh, oh, the sweetness of life, that has such visions in it. Your lips moved as if in speech, but you said nothing.”
Do you know the song now? Do you recall the words? Never mind, chances are no one is listening. Yet. Now it is only a stridency of guitars, triumphant, somewhere down a hallway. Along this perspective a door may open, or it may not. And if it does, what will come raging through? There are things he is powerless to anticipate: irruptions, incursions, blind processes of history, things. He is going somewhere, to do something, but there are turnings he cannot foresee, from this vantage. Suppose—
—Suppose that one night we go out driving together in the rain, out of the city, out through the lowlands, marshlands, industrial flatlands, out past the chemical factories and refineries, military reserves, television towers, wrecking yards, across rivers of effluent, down boggy vastnesses streaked with powerlines, pipelines, all that complicated pasta of roadways, freeways, pavement blue as steel under mercury light, the trusty Chevy spinning along, patient buzz of moving parts, Pachelbel on the radio, and the two of us trying to carry the tune, out of key: until, at some unremembered intersection, some exit no map prepared us for, entered upon so swiftly, helplessly, that there’s no time to scream OH NO or JESUS, or to bargain, plead, change heart, change gears, then—
Well, just suppose. Meanwhile in his safe house he will stand at a window, with his true love, hearing percussion: congas, spoons, tambourines, clear girlish voices singing Alleluia, far away. This cacophony signifies something, yes indeed, and it is coming closer. Hold on, hold on. He, for his part, will hold on. The Empress of India extends a pale hand, traces his spine; the flesh is pliant. “Come the Revolution,” she says, “all this will be swallowed up, it will all be consumed. We have been exempt too long. You and I will fall, our beauty torn and discarded like Kleenex after a virus: and who will rescue us? It is late, late for an act of Grace, were one ever thinkable, and I am more tired than you suspect. I have considered s
oberly, in my way, the efficacy of love, but have come to no opinion. In the circumstances, that may be all for the best. Those who come after us will never taste, they will never tell stories, of the sweetness of life.”
CLASS WARFARE
CLASS WARFARE
… Et surtout mon corps aussi bien que mon âme, gardez-vous de vous crosier les bras en l’attitude sterile du spectateur, car la vie n’est pas un spectacle, car une mer de doleurs n’est pas un proscenium, car un homme qui crie, n’est pas un ours qui danse.
—Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour an pays natal
TIME SEEMS TO BE running out, for all of us. Many of the stories lately have an apocalyptic ring; the air is full of rumours, intimations of collapse. It is being said, more and more often with more and more conviction, that things are getting “out of control,” that Order is “breaking down,” that Civilization-as-we-know-it is at an end, or close to it. That is entirely possible. It was what we were hoping for, at the outset; it was what we planned for, what we conspired to accomplish. True, we were as surprised as anybody else when it began to happen: but now we are no longer greatly surprised by anything. Events occur, and we participate in them, we do what demands to be done, we allow for contingency, even for the possibility of success. It is not as remote an eventuality, today, as it once was. Even if we fail, we succeed.
The abduction itself was almost laughably simple. The essential factors were speed and timing, coordination, a precise calculation of the knowable variables. No bodily violence, no theatrics, no gunfire in the night. The prisoner made no attempt to resist us, or to escape; he did not once cry out. It was strangely as if he had been expecting us, waiting for us—as if he had known for a long time that, sooner or later, we would be coming for him. Whatever the reason, he was calm and co-operative. What the press subsequently referred to as our “daring midnight raid” was as straightforward as going to call on an old acquaintance, and taking him away. Some of us, perhaps, were even slightly disappointed by the ease with which we were able to achieve our objective. We had geared up for heroics, and none were necessary.
At present, there are five of us active in the collective; until recently, there were six, but it became expedient to eliminate the sixth. That was Alex, whom we executed. Our history has been a succession of such adjustments, revisions of the scenario, improvisations; for this, we are sometimes called “adventurists,” and disowned by other, more rigidly programmatic groups. It is a subtle accusation, and there is doubtless a degree of merit in it, but less now than formerly—although, like all human creatures, we are to some extent at the mercy of circumstances, and it would be delusional to suppose otherwise. We are not delusional: rather we strive for, and often attain, a synthesis of doctrine and praxis. The exigencies of praxis should not be underestimated. When it seemed appropriate to arm ourselves, we went out and bought guns, or stole them, and in time we taught ourselves how—and when—to use them. (It was difficult at first, to be sure; it was somewhat like being in the audience at one of those performances, much in vogue a few years ago, in which the actors come down from the stage to embrace the spectators, drawing them into the play, reciting in some counterfeit of intimacy I love you, do you love me? … To which the answer must always be no. Guilt is involved here, and a certain residual paranoia. We are children of peacetime, after all, and the arts of warfare do not always come naturally to us. I, for example, had never fired a gun before, had never even had occasion to hold one in my hand, and I was unprepared for the weight of it, for the recoil.) We find ourselves, again and again, doing things for the first time.
It is probably unwise to be writing this, producing evidence which, if discovered, can only incriminate us. That was the mistake Alex made, one of his mistakes: he allowed himself to become conspicuous, a “personality.” His name was widely known, and his face, his mannerisms, his style. In our work, visibility is counterproductive, individual recognition a hindrance. One cannot proceed directly from a raid to a television studio. But, at this point, I am still invisible: you have passed me a thousand times, in public places, without seeing me. And it will be easy enough to destroy these papers, if I must; I have no great attachment to them. It was harder to destroy Alex.
This should not be construed as an official communiqué. I am writing merely on my own initiative, for my own purposes, not the least of which is to pass the time. Required as we are to guard the prisoner constantly, we become, in effect, prisoners ourselves; it is an irony my comrades may not appreciate. There is the element of hazard, of course, to spice the days—admittedly, we feel a spasm of apprehension whenever we hear a siren, or whenever some passerby seems to gaze too long at our house—but that order of hazard is so much a commonplace of our lives that, for most of us, it is no longer really a stimulant. We either will, or will not, be captured. As propositions go, that one is hardly sufficient to occupy the mind through these hours of tedium.
In the group photograph, before we destroyed it, Alex was the third from the left; smiling wickedly, in his outsize sombrero, he could have been the villain in a spaghetti western. (It was our early, bandito period, before the purge, before we went underground.) It may be significant that, on the day of our first serious raid, he managed to have urgent business elsewhere. It may be significant, too, that the raid was not a strategic success, that we very quickly found it advisable to abort it. We may have had insufficient discipline, in those days. The issue has never been wholly resolved to anyone’s satisfaction, but it was taken into account—perhaps too much so—in our eventual judgement of Alex. It had not entered our minds, then, that we might be making a mistake, overreacting.
There was no coherent intention, at first, to form a cell: it was more as if the cell had always been there, an empty space in history, waiting for us to come along, discover it, take possession of it, fill it. It seemed to exist before we knew what it was, or what it could become … But it may be premature, absurd, to linger on this, to ask: what happened to us all, how did it happen, by what route have we come here, to this dim and barricaded room, these policies? It is not a subject we discuss often among ourselves, having little taste for nostalgia, preferring to speak of more impersonal things, specifics of action, points of theory, our quotidian preoccupations. Introspection is not encouraged, nor should it be. What do I know of my comrades, or they of me?—only everything that matters: who is competent to do what, who can be trusted, whose thinking has evolved to what stage, in which direction. Of the rest, the private histories, there is occasionally a glimpse, no more: a story told for some instructive purpose, a confession, a self-criticism, sometimes—very rarely—an incursion of something like wistfulness, the merest glimmer of sadness, regret. Such moments go by swiftly, driven out by the urgencies we deal in. But the temptation to remember the irrelevant is difficult to resist at times, and the days are long, and in our present isolation it is easier than before to drift carelessly into reminiscence, the old miasma of a life long since renounced, abandoned, almost forgotten, never completely forgotten …
Somewhere it begins. Somewhere (after you’re already moving, on your way, too late to get off, go back, even if you wanted to) it dawns on you that the journey is not an excursion tour, a holiday, that it’s not a round-trip ticket you have. That can be exhilarating—and dangerous. And it is true that in the early phases of that journey our liberty, the sense of release, was always teetering on the edge of hysteria. It was the hysteria encountered, from time to time, on shipboard: a sanctuary into which the Real World may not venture. The wars and punishments go on elsewhere, in other coordinates of time and attention. A treaty is confirmed with one’s ticket, an amnesty for all us shabby travellers—the old women wrapped in furs and Central European dialects, the mothers of yowling infants, the beaten fathers, movie-mag addicts, guileless hippies in happy dopehaze, itinerant workers, eager juicers, seducers and seduced—the whole kit-n-caboodle of us abruptly reprieved, pardoned, delivered of all such burdens as the ordinary world a
fflicts us with, set briefly free to celebrate the transient madnesses, the ritual lies of passage. We were aboard ship, indeed, in our innocence, in the merciful night, toot-toot and then gone, and who remembers what manic jazz-loud parties there were, whooping and hollering in every bottle-strewn stateroom, every streamered corridor, love in the lifeboats, everything allowed, the band swinging into the Muskrat Ramble now, and why not, dance, you buggers, get it on, yeah, and every bleary eye blind to the icebergs, the treacherous heaving water, fog sneaking up closer and closer with none of that pretended majesty of final, absolute things … It didn’t last long. We were children in those times.
Enough, enough. How can I explain, justify to the collective, the compulsion under which I fill these pages? It is surely no more than foolishness, no more than presumption, to expect that an arbitrary arrangement of words—words no other eyes than mine may ever see—will in some fashion advance our cause. I know better. Even Alex, toward the end, knew better. What was it he said? We were walking home from an incident, a rally we’d done our best to disrupt; it was raining; I had been holding forth on Revolutionary Art, the need for it, the function it could perform in the pre-revolutionary state. All at once Alex stopped walking, and turned on me: Ah, you dumb bastard, you think you’re so fucking tough, such a hardliner, and you’re soft as a baby’s arse. Admit it. Look at yourself, sitting up scribbling your pretty words in the middle of the night, digging every moment of it, that’s the way to fight for the masses, sure it is. Do you imagine they love you for it? Or care at all? Who’re you trying to kid? Do you seriously believe you’re defending anything, liberating anything, redeeming anything, inciting anyone to action, feeding one empty belly except your own? Some shit-hot revolutionary you are, yapping all the time about your precious Art, just like any other faggot lackey, as if a goddamned word of it is ever going to change a thing on earth. Ah yes, wonderful, isn’t it. People are out there working and dying like animals while you sit on your ass and dither about Style, about aesthetics, world without end amen. That’s great, you’re just what we’ve all been waiting for, a raving comsymp who writes Nice Prose. With all the punctuation in the right place, too. Next you’ll be telling us the story of your life: How I Forsook the Bourgeoisie and Became a Fearless Urban Guerrilla. Big deal, buddy. When are you going to wake up to what’s going down in this world? When are you going to wake the fuck up? I heard the argument before: in the revolutionary society there would be no artists, no need for them. Come the day, I’ll have to accept it. But it seemed a curious sentiment, somehow incongruous, coming from Alex.