Class Warfare by D. M. Fraser Page B

trappings of the ordinary world, the impedimenta of accumulated objects, wasteful loves, money, safety: those things fall away like dead skin, a welcome riddance. But it
is
painful, a continual rending, to detach oneself from the sound of one’s own voice, the rhythms and modalities of a lifetime’s speaking, writing, thinking … this addiction, the last, always, to be shed. And I have not yet managed to shed it, and may never. Precisely as Alex was unable to quit the theatre in which his life was staged, I cannot bring myself to flee the story in which mine is written. One day I must, or betray everything—our people, our intentions, everything we collectively strive for. One day I will have to acknowledge that the only story is the world, and action the only language in which to tell it.
    The task is to purge, permanently, the elements of Style: to obliterate personality itself, in effect
to disappear.
All this affectation, this posing, this strutting selfhood, must go. It serves no function. It must be forsaken as remorselessly, as irretrievably, as we were called to leave all the overstuffed baggage of that other life, that sleep …
    Â 
    Midnight now, twenty-four hours to the deadline. In the streets, loud voices, a howling of tires, car doors slamming, metallic sounds. The radio reports that we have been traced to “a house in the East End”; that is a lie. We have not been traced, and we are not in the East End. Someone outside is playing a mandolin. In a special broadcast from his home, the prisoner’s father pleads for clemency, in a voice close to breaking. It is not specified to whom the clemency ought to be extended. There have been other abductions: a minor government clerk, a vice-consul from one of the colonial powers, the wife of an oil-company executive; the pattern is more or less haphazard. Here a hijacking, there a plastic bomb. It will continue. A famous evangelist has recommended summary execution for all “enemies of mankind.” At least it remains possible to smile.
    That is one of many things I had not foreseen, when I embarked on this course.
    For there are, oddly enough, compensations we had not looked for, satisfactions that have, as we receive them, nothing directly to do with our historical situation, our stated goals. It may be improper to dwell on these things; it may be no more than self-delusion; it may illuminate nothing. But it is present, felt, in each of us: the concealed weapon, the one that can never be confiscated.
    There are compensations. Here in this room, as I write, here, where we are together, it is permissible for a moment to forget, for this duration, the burden of what we set out to do, what we will yet have to do. Just now we are in suspended animation. Late-night traffic growls inoffensively in the street, outside, where it ought to be. Kids in muscle cars, prom princesses superlatively coiffed, going home. And a lone woeful baritone cracking into song:
    Â 
I’ve given up expecting trains
    to take me anywhere,
    I’ve had enough of looking for
    a friendly place to be,
    I’ve had a lifetime going places
    finding nothing for me there,
    It means nothing any more.
    I’ve had enough of travelling in this company.
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    The radio plays on, drowning out the singer. The news is predictable, the commentary typically inept, typically jejune. A shoot-on-sight order has been issued for us; there have been complaints, from liberal quarters, that such measures are unusual, that they set a distressing precedent. “Democracy” is said to be hanging by its fingernails. The world continues, entranced. Somewhere—in another zone, another theatre of operations—an evacuation is proceeding, approximately on schedule; public servants address audiences, to applause; negotiations collapse; steps are taken to deal with crises. Someone seizes power, crying Emergency, and is not opposed. The Loyal Opposition is grateful. A