The Fight - Suspense of sorts...

[Malanimal]

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Hello all, been a bit busy so writing has fallen off lately. The following was inspired by the August Comp, although I didn't really stick to the plan!

This work is Copyright 2008 and the author asserts his rights under the Berne convention.

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The Fight

 

My feet are hot from the pavement as the midday sun bakes down. The sweating warmth of the day has tightened my clothes around me, made voices too loud and cars too fast. A coffee shop is busy with steam and shouted orders and bright young things half talking and half posing. I am too tired for such places, there is no respite there.

 

Next door is a run down antiques store, peeling green paint around the door, shut tight against the day. In the window a clock is balanced on twisted gold, by that a thick rug, not so much displayed as thrown down, over it two stuffed birds face each other, eyes still bright. On the far side a dark armoire rests against the window as if trying to shoulder through the glass. Yet the shop looks quiet and cool, as good a place as any to escape.

 

A wash of cool stale air hits me on opening the door. To my left a long table is piled high with toys upon books upon china upon, upon… well I don’t know what. Something with hair, a stuffed paw, and dim copper spikes. To my right is a wall of books, no bright pulp paperback jackets, all blue or grey hardbacks. I hadn’t seen so many books like that since I left home, since the war.

 

A shaft of sunlight penetrates to the back of the shop. I do not see the shopkeepers face, only wrinkled hands resting on a wooden desk, sorting through a mound of coins. I give a nod and begin browsing, glad of the cooling musty air and the still confines. It takes me several moments before I register that the volumes on this shelf are not English, but in my own language. What extraordinary luck! I recognise one title to be an autobiography I had read as a teenager. I pluck it out, feeling the solid weight in my fingers, the rough blue cover. For me this book had been an introduction to activism, to politics, to thinking beyond what we were taught at school or told on the radio.

 

Through the window of the shop the sunny street is full of bare flesh and laughter is too bright, too bright to be real. More real are memories of friends, of meetings, of love. The urgent intellectual discussion in private. The small talk outside that was a cover for action and subterfuge. Strange now that all I remember now is the small talk, not the endless philosophising but the short sweet joking words, like fine red wine.

 

Then comes more memories, animal memories. Of fear and loss. Of hatred and numbness.

 

I glance upwards. In the darkness the hands are now moving the coins from their tumbled heap into rigid piles. Counting his takings perhaps.

 

I breathe hard and look at the book once more. It has been so long since reading my own language, that of my home, that the words swim for a while in front of me.

 

The passage I read talks of freedoms that I have been used to for so long. Words that once seemed so revolutionary do not carry their power now. So strange that this book was banned. Maybe the writer of this book would be horrified at some of the freedoms that have been given, or taken; even in our homeland. I remember endless discussions, laughing at some of the old revolutionaries who orated on changes for the good of all humankind, yet at the same time seemed as bad as any dictator! But now I too am sometimes surprised at my reaction to the world. Now I am the old revolutionary, the reactionary.

 

I close the book but do not place it on the shelf just yet. More titles I recognise, and I am drawn to approach the man in the shadows, “Excuse me”.

 

The hands stop their counting of the money. I notice that three piles of coins has formed. The coins are not copper as I had first thought, but seem to be bronze, or perhaps even gold. “Do you come from this land?”, I point at the books.

 

A deep rattling monotone comes back, without expression “Yes”.

 

“I, I came from there many years ago. When the war started. I… it is a very good collection”

 

“It was given to me by a traitor”, again no expression, but despite the sweat on my forehead my bones chill.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t…”

 

“A traitor, who tried to save his wife by buying me off.”, the hands pause, one of the coins gleams bright in the shaft of light, “I suppose you were a traitor too, saving your skin, leaving your comrades to pay for what they did”

 

And there I was again, running, running from the police as they came for us. The tears of my mother still damp on my shirt, a piece of paper with a contact in my pocket, my hands checking it is still there every second moment, the night air around me. Wanting to scream and be silent at the same time.

 

“We fought for what was right”, my eyes blazing, blood rushing in my ears.

 

“Still a soft headed fool”, another wheezed laugh, mocking.

 

The street outside is still there. To go to it, to run from this place, please. But to run after all these years, to still be running. This was not home, this was England, where there was justice and prosperity and freedom. This was not forty damn years ago. Here we were equals, however high in the state this man had been, we were equals now. “We fought for freedom”, my back straight and head held high, no matter I was in my white office shirt curving round an office paunch.

 

“Freedom is an escape from responsibility. That was what you were running from child. Responsibility to a greater good, something the young so often misunderstand”

 

“No! Everyone understands it now. This place. Full of junk, your ideas are junk. Everyone in UK understands what freedom means. Responsibility, to each other, not to dictator who tortures and…”

 

He is laughing a loud, a hooting sound. I hope it kills him, this humour. But it does not.

 

“They understand he says.”, leaning over the desk, a gash of light on his cragged mouth, “They don’t understand, my silly young comrade, don’t understand anything beyond what is happening in the latest soap or what new things they can buy. They don’t care who is running the country or the rest of the world. They do not know how to question or ask why, only how to say yes or no. Soon no will no longer be acceptable.” He laughs over the last few words, picking up a coin and holding its golden face to the light.

 

I look around, for an exit or a weapon, I don’t know which. To do something to this man, to show him the pain that we felt, that he so obviously does not feel.

 

“The door is behind you. You can take that book, I have no need of it.”, his voice imperious again, and despite myself I bow my head.

 

“I hope you die soon”, I whisper to that creature sat in the darkness, counting money like an old dragon. I make to drop the book but it will not leave my fingers. The door bangs aside and I reel into the heat of the day. Footsteps scuffle around me. All I see is my home, my family, my friends, my love, all burning as sharp as they ever did.

 

Then through my tears comes the blue sky, and I take from it big draughts of air. I look down to see my hand gripping the book with knuckles white. My fathers book, I know it now, from the study that formed so much of me. My memories in that shop along with the shopkeeper, old and near death. But for the first time in years I feel youth in my blood, a strength borne out of struggle that has lain unworked and untested for so long. I will need new books, written for these new times. I will need new words. But I can beat him. I have many years on him.

 

Suddenly I feel no longer tired and withered by the heat of this day, but renewed. Leave him to his junk and his trophies, in that cold dark place. Leave the schemes and plans of old men to fester and rot. In the light and heat of the day, the fight begins again.

[pattricia]

I think this is terrific.!