The Anarchist (...Or About How Everything I Own Is Covered In A Fine Red Dust) Read online

Chapter One Point Five

  As the sun lay into its retreat, bringing with it the cold blanket of night, a dull roar rumbled through the maze of towers and apartment buildings that, like thick sprouting hairs, erected from the dragging knuckles of this labored and effete city, that which in the day, panned gold and silver from the sweat and thickly residue of hope and aspiration of its shackled oppressed, while at night, looking ransacked and rambled, remained still, like a half dead mouse, hardly inviting one to pander.

  Tonight, though, a dull roar rumbled. And it was as if a thousand jets were coming in to land not a block or two away; or as if a panel of debating giants was conversing beneath a checkered blanket, under The Teacher’s window.

  Most had penned this city as a sleeping giant with the very same thief, filling their pockets with golden eggs whilst lulling this giant into a stupefied and pacified slumber with the lure of its harp, strumming the same chord of cynical political derision. Tonight, though, the giant would awaken.

  The Teacher could barely contain himself. Looking out his window and seeing the line of police officers at the end of his street, standing with their shields and truncheons, he thought of all the songs and stories and images which inspired him all these years. He imagined himself, amidst a great army of young men and women, all running in one swarming line towards those suited oppressors; shouting words of freedom and liberty whilst thrusting themselves into swinging fists and crashing shields of the thick headed and hot tempered bullies of those fascist capitalist swine.

  “Fascist pigs” he shouted, but it was no use, from the penthouse, only angels or passing airliners could hear what he had to say.

  Still, it felt great to shout it out.

  “Down with government” he shouted. “No rule, no stinking order.”

  “Did you brush your teeth hunny bunny?” asked The Mother.

  “God mummy,” said The Teacher, closing the window as if he were quickly zipping his pants. “Don’t you ever knock?”

  “Did you brush your teeth hunny bunny? And don’t forget to floss. You don’t want to end up like your uncle.”

  “I fucking brushed them already mummy. Just get out okay? I’m doing stuff.”

  “Sorry sweetie poo. Listen, I know you’re doing that thingy tonight. That walk…”

  “It’s a fucking march mummy. A march, okay? And it’s gonna be more than that anyway. You’ll see.”

  “That sounds nice. Now do you think your brothers would like to go along? They would wouldn’t they? And maybe you could take your sister too” The Mother said, crossing her fingers. “You know you’re father and I have that thing…” she said, rubbing a spot on the bend in her arm, as if she were nursing a stinging bruise.

  As she spoke, in the background and dressed in a tanned leather saddle, The Father neighed, bucking on his hind legs and almost knocking over a mantle of statuesque trophies and worldly ornaments, his tedious doldrums turning into reckless aggression as his cloven hooves gnashed at the air. He settled quickly, though, and as The Teacher rolled his eyes in annoyance, The Father marched back to his stables, pawing his right hand again in a casual kind of boredom that neared on bashful frolicking, inviting The Mother for an evening canter.

  “They can’t come,” he said. “This is bigger than your thing. This is gonna change the world. We’re making history. We are history” he shouted.

  As he ran out the door past The Mother, he pulled his black hood over his head and he turned briefly, with his face hidden behind a cloaking blackness, to see his whole family side by side waving while his father picked at a loose thread on his sock.

  “Have fun?” they said. “We love you.”