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In Every
Country...
Excerpt from Exit Unicorns
In every country with a rebel past or a
rebel future there are similar rooms for similar men with
different faces. Cramped, dark, dirty rooms. Cold with damp,
cold with snow, cold with pain. The only real warmth coming from
the internal fuel of idealism, the belief that their moment in
history has come. In Russia there will be a bottle of vodka on
the table, a dog-eared copy of ‘The State and Revolution’,
tattered slogans adorning the walls from last season, last year,
last century. In Beirut, qahveh, lemons and the Koran will grace
the table, a fine scree of sand under the bed. In El
Salvador a picture of Che beside a statue of the bleeding
Christ, priests who disrobe in order to serve God more clearly,
martyrs who die in foreign lands fighting for lost causes. They
will travel everywhere in search of a hope, a prayer. Men with
delicate amber faces working the kitchens of white hotels in
cold, chattering cities. Tall straight-backed ebony princes
trudging through the snow and indifference of the northern
hemisphere’s great bloody swathe of industry. Cities built on
the backs of their ancestry, cities where they must now beg,
borrow, steal time and money, where the past is prologue and
prologue past.
In Belfast there is tea, tepid and
scummy, a bottle of Powers whiskey half drunk in a doorless
cupboard, a nicotine stained copy of the Proclamation of 1916
lining a drawer in a desk rarely used. Paint peeling walls, a
cot without sheets for men on the run, men who sleep briefly
during the brightest hours of day and flee at night with
messages, with guns, with the hope of a nation in their hands.
Men on intimate terms with fear, exhaustion, dirt, a rebel Celt
version of the White Rabbit, running, running, forever madly
running, with the vision of a cell in the not too distant
future. Not a job for the easily disillusioned or the romantic
of heart, not a job for a human being.
Hope skips a generation and returns in
the form of a strong back and even stronger mind, idealism
stripped down to a bare bone and left in a corner of the soul
for the knacker’s cart. The men vary and there will be the odd
woman thrown in but for the most part they will be
working-class, raised on bleakness, poor diets, piety and fear
of the other. There will be a few from the upper classes, well
educated, maybe bored, maybe afflicted with true idealism,
waiting to be crushed by the great slow grind of social change.
The question, regardless of country,
will always be the same. How to inspire hope, naked and raw, in
the minds, hearts and bellies of the general population? How to
pull a people up off their knees and remind them as they clutch
their rosaries and plaster saints that God helps only those who
help themselves. Blood, their own and that of The Other will
often be the answer, the only answer that demands certain
attention.
Casey Riordan knew such rooms. Knew
that hope sometimes was as simple as washing the cups, keeping
the tea hot, the whiskey bottle full, the walls painted and a
warm blanket on the bed. Taking the proclamation, the ghostly
ideals out, shaking off the dust and pinning it back on the wall
where it can be seen. As simple as being ready, regardless of
the mindless fear, to bleed and die for a thought, a breath of
words spoken generations ago. As simple as a lit candle in a
dark window, even if the comfort of light was only for yourself
and your memories.
He sat down on the edge of the freshly
blanketed bed, eyeing the new white paint, the clean cups, the
re-hinged cupboard, the polished desk with satisfaction. He
looked then into the clear heart of the candle flame and
whispered to the night and its ghosts.
“I’m home daddy.”
© 2002 Cindy Brandner
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