A - The City

The City

Vulture

Snow, he thought. Snow falling gently on hills and frozen rivers.
Silent slow big flakes.
The last bits of shredded paper fluttered into the bowl, settling on
the water, floating there.
He flushed. The paper whirled around with the water then
vanished.
*Suck.
His thesis was gone.
That's it, he thought. To save us.
Tears blurred his vision. The dirty little toilet was swimming away.
The current pressed him down, down to the ground.
Shit, he thought sitting on the mucky tiles, his back against the cold
wall. He cried.
Shit.

*Bang! *bang!
The front door.
*Bang!
They are coming.
He gets up slowly. Dries his face on his sleeves.
-Get every member of the household together. Quick!
The voice hurts his ears. He has to leave the toilet, go to the
kitchen, he knows, but his body doesn't let him move. Instead he stares
into the little mirror. He doesn't look healthy, the eyes so large, the
cheeks so hollow.
-Everyone!
It is such an effort to move. His hand reaches for the door in slow
motion. He sees it pushing against the yellow mouldy wood. Nothing
happens. His strength is gone.
-Destroy your creation and you destroy part of yourself, a voice
whispers in his head. It sounds familiar but he can't place it.
-Destroy your creation and
-Destroy your creation
-Destroy
The door yields. He nearly falls into Hannah's arms. Her white arms.
Skinny fragile.
-Destroy
-Come to the kitchen, idiot, she says in her tired voice, leading the
way.
The kitchen is crowded. Philippe and Nadja and P?re and a big man in
uniform.
-Sit down!
The voice is too big for the room. He sees the walls bulging, the
window caving in.
The man is too big for the room. His head goes straight through
the
-Are you Sun Yaobang? he shouts. Or says. It's hard to make out.
Strange enough, there's power in a name, he thinks. I've woken up. I
can think again. He knows that the big man is inflated like a lifeboat,
otherwise of no importance.
-I am.
-Wait and be silent!
How oddly -silent- issues from his mouth. A strange plant that doesn't
grow there.
They sit down. Hannah is ill. Her dark hair seems thin. They are
looking at Sun. Where is the thesis, they ask but he can't
answer.
The big man is a bulky silhouette on the edge of sight. A uniformed
brainless monster. A shadow, he deserves no more.
The real threat, Sun knows, is the vulture.
The Vulture, Nadja mouth then bows her head, blond curls hiding her
face.
Sun turns to the door through which two soldiers squeeze taking their
stance to each side of it.
We are so used to guns we don't see them anymore, Sun thinks. How
sad.
The door-opening blackens. Something walks into the kitchen.
It's only a man, Sun thinks or tries to think.
Only a
Vulture
Tall slender stooping razor-sharp clean-shaven hawk-nosed
And deep-set eyes
And claws
Not claws, Sun thinks. He fixes his eyes on the man.
Dimly he is aware of sounds from the other rooms.
Steps, *Bang! steps, *bang!
-Commander Saltsea! the uniform shouts and presumably salutes.
-Sergeant Cabbage, a thin voice answers. Have you found anything
yet?
-No sir!
Why am I terrified, Sun thinks. There's nothing for them here. We've
destroyed every scrap of document.
Yet the air is thick with thought. Dissident thought. Sun can feel it.
Saltsea can feel it. He sniffs. He sniffs the air through his hooknose.
The sound is disagreeable. His nose wiggles in his white face.
Commander Saltsea knows but he has no proof.
Even his dark-green uniform and red tower emblem doesn't give him the
authority to arrest them without proof.
So far.
Sun shivers. Something seems out of place suddenly. For a moment he is
sure that the uniform should be black and the emblem different:
something white and red and black
An almost audible *click
And reality is re-instated.
There's Commander Saltsea: a middle-aged man with grey in his dark
hair, maybe slightly resembling a vulture. Sun breathes in and out
slowly in a painfully controlled fashion.
-We didn't find anything, Sir, a voice reports from the corridor.
-Are you certain? Saltsea asks.
Unnecessarily, Sun thinks and nearly bites of his tongue.
-We apologise for the inconvenience, Saltsea says and he's speaking to
Sun now, hopefully such an error will not happen again. He smiles and
Sun knows that he hopes to find something the next time.
There he goes his uniformed back stiff and he like an iron pole.
Sergeant Vegetable follows. His grin is like a bleeding rip in his
pear-skull.

Philippe's head is on the kitchen table and his hands cover his ears.
He won't budge for the next two hours. He's always doing that. Nadja is
crying silently and Hannah is stares off into space then lights a
cigarette. P?re falls to his knees on the floor ruffling his white
hair.
-What have we come to, he mutters. This is hell, silent hell. The word
will be lost, it will burn, sizzle away like stinking flesh, while the
masses rejoice. Oh, what are we to do?!
And Sun would shout at them if he weren't afraid the Police could still
hear him. He would shout -It's my work that's gone. What have you ever
written in your miserable life, old man, but Party propaganda in the
old days? And you, Philippe, you self-pitying melancholy wannabe
intellectual!? Or you, Nadja, nothing but careful and deluded science
fiction! You're all looking to me for a brighter future but if it came
you would take the glory. I am sick of it! All you do is moan, moan
about the badness, the greyness, the how-oppressed-we-are-ness of all
this. You think you're dissidents but you delude yourselves. Instead of
standing up you hide and grovel. I can't believe I've destroyed the
best work I've ever written to save you! I wish I hadn't and we were
all in prison to be questioned and tortured for hours and humiliated
and mistreated for years. I might just wake you up!
Sun doesn't open his mouth. He leaves the house to wander about the
evening city the broad streets the loneliness the squalid houses the
old ache in his heart.