The Wind Blows Stronger West

The Wind Blows Stronger West

I (1081)

The wind was blowing restlessly through the bones of the city. It was not yet dark, and the light played in the alleys while dogs howled in the overshadowed yards. The whistling chimneys signalled the end to another bleak day, in the middle of a bleak week.

Through the doorway of a young woman’s squat apartment laid the fruits of a day’s labour; and beside it, yesterdays pay. Dwarfed by the former, the pitiful handful of coins grieved for the child playing beneath the beaten table and the boy who would work in the great underground forges from his sixth summer to his final winter. No one rose from the slums to the over-city, it was unheard of. When the young woman was a younger woman the revolution had made sure the working class where kept beneath ground, where they were deemed to be appropriately placed to fulfil their function, while the middle class remained above ground to over see the production and allocation of the raw materials dug from the heart of the earth.

The cupboards lay bare and seemed to echo of better times. The wood was chipped in places but they bore the unmistakeable, rare hallmarks of craftsmanship. A relic from another world; they clung to the wall as a spiders web clings to a dark corner. Beside a small broken cot, a mattress faced the window, its edges seemed to melt into the floor slowly dripping away while its sole occupant gazed ceaselessly through the window.

Whenever she looked at the child she felt a pang of guilt, the guilt only a mother could feel. Guilty of no crime but bringing a life into the world whose future had been decided before conception.

Through the window, she could still hear the wind blowing dust through the streets and beneath the window grey coated hunched figures scurried home. But among this steady stream sat one, unmoved and unperturbed by time or weather. He called himself an old man despite not being a day over forty and regarded himself as no more than an outcast. Day after day he sat with a faint smile on cragged features hidden by weeks of neglect. He was largely ignored as an escaped vagrant, who would be picked up by a patrol sooner or later – but had thus far eluded capture.

He had no where to go, and no where to be, so he stood and pressed against the tide flowing past him. It was slow going, but by now he was used to it. The column marched on, into the stations and bus stops and he asked himself whether if the wind were not whispering its rules into their minds, would they come and go as they pleased or swarm around trains and buses in an effort to return to where they set out from?

He looked up into the ever staring eyes of an unnamed, tall proud man in a clean cut suit; omnisciently regarding what he saw. Once instated he had never moved from where he stood so long as the old man could remember but as his vision greyed it would be renewed by the casual flick of a brush, setting the dream of today and by the standards of tomorrow.

The old man turned into an alley and was assaulted by the peace and tranquillity of it. Behind him the bustle of the street faded and became a distant memory. He carried on, remembering a time where people didn’t look at you strangely if you weren’t wearing a standard, three buttoned grey jacket with shoes polished to a fine sheen and hair neatly parted in the middle. He used to be a man of importance, a man whose opinion mattered. He liked to think that his articles had made a real impact on people, and the way they thought about the world - but perhaps that was just the wishful thinking of a journalist. Everyone likes to think that they have changed the world for the better, even if it’s just one person’s world. It gives them a sense of contention and comfort in knowing they have been a person of some consequence.

In what seemed like another life he had been a well respected journalist. He had travelled the world, reporting on far off wars, with which the people had no care for. Somehow though he had always been able to write something positive, he had a talent for finding that one fairytale story that melted the heart of the nation at home.

That had all been before the revolution. Allegedly we had been set free from the pressures of poverty and hunger. The state had taken control of everything, nationalising every industry from building to toothpaste making. There were shortages everywhere there wasn’t a station or bus stop – they only stopped where people had passes. Numbers had been fiddled, people had been threatened, and as a result there was a twentieth successive drop in unemployment this year. The old man marvelled at how the smart people on their buses, with the shoes and coats could not see the tyranny surrounding them. The poor where herded into factories each morning and then thrown onto the streets as soon as the whistling chimneys signalled the end of the day.

The young woman looked up from her meagre ration of bean stalks and coarse grain into the eyes of her son.
“Are you still hungry?”
“Yes, I’m really hungry mummy.”
“Of course you are. It’s the first you’ve eaten for days.”
She spooned a little of the greyish food onto his plate, dismissing the low growl of her own stomach. The price of food had skyrocketed and one couldn’t buy a square meal for a week’s wages. The boy was too young to notice his mother slowly disappearing before his eyes, his mind too young to think of others and understand his own selfishness.

At the end of the alley, the old man pushed aside a damp piece of plywood and disappeared through an opening, about the right size for a child to stoop through. It was silent – except for the constant, time keeping of a single water droplet. How lonely that droplet must be; crying out for someone who understood it, constantly wishing for another droplet to make music with.

Outside the old man’s shelter, the wind blew the sun away into the distance plunging the world into a inky blue pinpricked by the light of the over-city.

II (969)

Some years previously, when the old man’s cheeks were separated from the bone by a thin layer of fat, he had stepped off the cattle train at one of few underground stations remaining dressed in torn overalls and creased cap, holding himself with a rarely seen purpose. Clutched to his body was a blue holdall now containing his most treasured possessions. Among the odd old sock and tattered jacket one could have just seen the glint of a pen and the black roll that contained the thin paper he would write on. It was the only way he could write without immediately being censored. He didn’t know how but everything that one typed on a scribores found its way to the man on the billboard who’s disapproving look would force you to start again: lest you need more encouragement.

He fell into line and after looking around the dimly lit cavern with wide eyes; he dropped his gaze to his feet and shuffled towards what passed as a canteen. A mug of lukewarm gruel was thrust into his hand and a tray with a small heap of rice into his stomach. He glanced over both shoulders once, then a second time for good measure and a third for comfort. In the brief privacy the huge room afforded him, he scribbled some notes onto his paper and placed it quickly but carefully back into his bag.

Sometime later, high above him a faint whistle sounded: the miners and walls around him seemed to sigh as one. He joined the throng heading back for the cattle train and as he shifted the weight of his holdall he asked himself why he was really here. Was he here because he wanted to make a difference, or was he here out of a duty he thought he had to these people to get their story heard in the cacophony of shouts and sirens. As he mused he began to pick his feet up a little higher and hold himself a little more erect, and with this new found sense of purpose he tripped on the steps leading to the humid enclosures.
“Watch it, what do you think you’re doing?” demanded the burly man in front of him.
“S-s-sorry, I slipped,” He blurted out.
“I’ll knock your goddam teeth out if you do it again!”

Hearing this a man behind him put his hand on the young man’s shoulder with such care as could only come with the gentlest features. He was one of those people who you would never quite be able to forget but at the same time never quite be able to remember. His hair was tinted with the grey dust from the mine and his eyes shone like searchlights through the crowd, looking every man in the eye, never dropping his vigil.

“Easy now, there’s no need to knock the poor lad out. He said he was sorry.” His voice radiated truth and trust. They were prodded and poked onto the trucks together and during the next two hours to the surface the young man poured his words into this new bastion of hope.

“You don’t look like the working type of guy”
“No, I suppose I don’t. I’m a surface reporter. I came down here because I really want to find out what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the ground.”
“Better keep quiet about that then, there’ll be a guard round at the next stop to replace the dead at the factory workshops. Meet me behind the station house when we get off,” and with that he melted back into the crowded carriage.

The young man did what he was told and found him sitting on his helmet, smoking a dirty looking cigarette.
“Undercover reporter –ey?”
“I can’t believe no one has done it before.”
“Don’t be naïve lad. Of course people have done it before, but it never gets out, see?”
“Well I’ll be the first to. I’ll make people know what happens below them, whether they like it or not.”
“That’s just the point. People don’t want to know what’s happening. There’s quite enough hardship up here without worrying about some people who they’ve never met, and never will meet. If I were you, I’d take my advice and put it down to immaturity and laugh about it in a few years time.” The young man was stunned to hear him talk like this. Surely the whole world needed to know about what it was like down there, and how these people where being treated.

When he got off the next day the gentle man of the previous day was waiting for him, flanked by two faceless figures in shiny black armour. They started towards him. They were moving so slowly, he had all day to turn around and run. With his tired blue bag flung on his back he tumbled through the crowd, he was drunk with adrenaline. His vision narrowed and all he could hear was his beating heart and thumping boots. A booming voice rang out through the cavern and the throng parted all around him, people pushed to get away as if he carried a terrible disease. Something made him stop dead and turn around. As a caged animal does when it knows there is no way out but by fighting. He looked at the man’s confiding smile and knew. He knew he had been sold. Sold to the authority he was denying. He ran to meet the oncoming truncheons and collapsed as a rib broke. It seemed like it was happening to someone else and as he heard his cheek bone split he remembered what the man had said.
“You should have taken my advice,” it rattled through his mind as his eyes shut, and the pain stopped.