Paul Collins: The Government in Exile and Other Stories

The Government in Exile a short story by Paul Collins

It is Revolution Day tomorrow, and the people are already crowding the streets, preparing for the festivities.

I turn from the blackened window and jog down the stairs. I always run up

and down the stairs. I find it amuses the people in the house. I jog mainly because it is the only exercise I get. I think they resent my jogging. They feel keeping fit is a little excessive.

Ob (this stands for Obese, we think, although it might be an abbreviation

of Oberon) looks up from the table where he is pondering a crossword.

He

nods disdainfully -- I know he thinks I'm a fool for jogging.

I slow to a walk and glance down at his crossword. I have yet to see him

complete one; I wonder why he persists with the charade. He fools no one.

In the kitchen the plates are piled high. Something scurries from beneath

the unwashed cooking utensils. The movement dislodges a knife that is crucial to the pile's balance, and I am barely in time to rescue all but

the large plate, which crashes to the floor. I hear Ob sigh.

"How's the crossword?" I call. It is a joke among the household that has

been festering in Ob's mind like some terminal disease. Cancerous growth?

That would be nice. A terminal cancerous growth.

I hear his pencil rattle across the table and can imagine his bloated face

turning a bright red with every swallowed breath. I should remind him to

save his energy for Revolution Day tomorrow.

I kick the shattered plate into the corner where all the other broken items gather like mould. It is my turn to wash the dishes, as it was seven

weeks ago. Perhaps illogically, I concede that I too will forego this chore. Everyone else has.

Ob is not at the table when I leave the kitchen. No doubt he is upstairs

in his one-windowed room, taking rabid, inspired shots at the unemployed

in the streets. If it keeps him happy until tomorrow, why not?

In the downstairs common room Mary Sue and Ike are watching a re-run of some ancient show. Although originally filmed in colour the celluloid has

slid into sepia. The sound track, too, has regressed. This is perhaps why

Mary Sue and Ike are both huddled close to the TV and do not notice my arrival.

I sit down and daydream a little until the show finishes. It is a hardship

I endure gladly. From upstairs the muffled report of a high-velocity carbine echoes down the stairwell.

"You been upsetting Ob again?" Ike says. He giggles hysterically. I have

deduced that Ike is reliving his childhood.

"His crossword wasn't going too well," I admit. I pull a sad face.

Mary Sue says, "Let's hear it for poor Ob!"

And we all say, "Ahh, poor Ob."

We hear another shot. If we had been taking tally of Ob's kills, I believe

we might have counted a decrease of at least one hundred unemployed this

year. This is a figure of which any government statistician before the Revolution would have been proud.

Dull thuds sound without. It is the unemployed throwing rocks and debris

at our battlements in retaliation to Ob's recreation. Shortly they will throw heavier rocks, and, perhaps, as has happened before, a few of them

will be brave enough to lay siege with a ram at our front doors.

They have never penetrated our defences and I doubt their sanity in attempting to do so now.

"Someone's at the front door!" Mary Sue says brightly. "I wonder who can

it be?" This is her Alice in Wonderland guise.

"I'll get it," I say. But Ike is already trundling after her up the wrought iron staircase to the parapets.

Each releases cauldrons of mineral turpentine and I hear howls of pain as

it ignites.

Mary Sue has long since ceased taking photos of the victims. Once, this entire room was wallpapered with colour stills of the living dead.

Contorted bodies, alive, in poses of abject horror. She no longer takes these pictures, because there is no more film.

Ike has offered to forage for film outside, but Mary Sue declined his offer. There are too few of us left now to lose one for the sake of entertainment, she said. Why not simply go outside and fetch one of the fuckers in instead?

So now that wretch adorns our mantelpiece. Cured over smoking fires for three days he watches us with grotesque eyes, as though he knows something

we do not. Perhaps he does, for tomorrow is Revolution Day.

I have ceased hearing Ob's rifle. It has not stopped -- rather, I prefer

not to hear it rake the unemployed.

"We got at least ten of them!" Mary Sue says merrily as she skips about the room. She blows a kiss at Dumb Dumb, our mascot on the mantle. "Ten more!" she trills, pulling at the leathery cheeks of Dumb Dumb.

She is madder than Rasputin ever was.

Ike and Mary Sue then perform a ritual dance to celebrate. They are always

proud of their efforts to keep down the unemployed.

"What's for dinner?" Ike asks as they whirl giddily about the common room.

"We can have unemployed, unemployed or unemployed," I say.

"Er, let me see," Mary Sue says, pondering over the menu. "I think we'll

have -- "

"Why don't we have unemployed for a change?" Ike says, as though amazed at

his own originality.

"How marvellous, darling," Mary Sue says wondrously." Now why didn't I think of that?"

Her eyes seem bright.

"If we were all geniuses, gentle child," Ike points out, "there would be

no geniuses."

"So we'll have unemployed," Mary Sue decides. "With a dash of speed."

I bow in parody and repair to the kitchen. The chef's duties were once on

a rota system, but that, too, collapsed. It seems to me, as I begin to prepare a frozen chateaubriand, that every system is made to fail.

Should something last more than its scheduled life, it is automatically a

failure. I suck a syringe full of cheap claret and inject it into the meat. I wonder idly whether marinating the meat has any beneficial effect

other than making the vineyards more money, but of course, there are no more vineyards.

They say I am the best chef, and I imagine my popularity in the culinary

arts derives from the culmination of small touches: placing slivers of garlic in the meat, using mixed herbs and spices, reducing the claret for

the gravy, and other such artistic tips I have learned.

It is more probable that I am the chef because no one else can be bothered.

Through the plate glass windows I can barely see the westering sun.

Volcanic ash high in the atmosphere has created magnificent sunsets that I

am unable to appreciate fully owing to the dirt on the windows. Not even

the rain is clean now.

Dark clouds are scudding across the bright orange horizon, and a solitary

bird is gliding with the currents in and out of the great carvings in the

sky. The sun is a molten ball sinking into the water. It is a Dali, come

to life.

Ob's rifle on automatic shatters the Dali. Curiously I crane my neck skyward. I expect to see plummeting unemployed.

Instead I see the bird flick and twist like a piece of charred paper.

It

spirals down. Its wings jar its passage, and briefly I urge the bird back

up among the clouds. For those seconds it appears to gain its balance on

the sky's high wire, but then Ob's carbine, now firing tracers, brings it

unequivocally down.

Tiny, fiery spits ignite the sky and fling the bird's corpse so that it appears space-bound. It punctures like a pillow full of down, and the feathers are carried away.

From upstairs I hear Ob's whoops of laughter. I cut a deep hole into the

meat and bury a piece of garlic.

At dinner there are eight of us. Ike and Mary Sue sit at one end of the table talking sotto voce. It amazes me they have not already exhausted their tiny repertoire of jokes. I can only conclude that they are re-runs,