Hari Kunzru - My Revolutions

One evening I was standing over her as she knelt, naked, on the floor, when we noticed Claire watching us from the doorway, open-mouthed with shock. Anna’s reaction was instant. “Get out!” she screamed. As Claire fled, she hurriedly got dressed. For the first time since I’d known her, she seemed ashamed, humiliated. Claire lost no time in calling a meeting to spread the news of Anna’s hypocrisy. Oh, yes, the woman who’d forced her to cut her hair, who’d reduced her to tears by calling her a slave to patriarchy, had been groveling on her knees to a man. Organization sex. Capitalist perversion.

For me it was a disaster. It spelled the end not just of our private meetings but of all intimacy between us. It was as if Anna slammed a door shut. I’d had a glimpse of something I shouldn’t. Now she would eradicate her deviation, without interference. I felt confused, bereft.

The morning after Claire’s denunciation I went out to the end of the street in search of fresh air and time to think. To my astonishment, I found Miles Bridgeman filming the houses. “I’ve come to join up,” he told me, indicating his camera. “I’ve brought my truth machine.”

I was surprisingly glad to see him. Just then it would have been good to see anyone from the world outside Sylvan Close. Miles’s urbanity and his silly surface Chelsea cool were exactly what I needed.

He told me he wanted to document the occupation. It was, he said pompously, a historic confrontation. He asked a lot of questions. Who’d been around? Who was in favor of the new hard line? I was happy enough to chat. Besides, he’d brought a bottle of Scotch and some blues and I’d been subsisting for days on adrenalin and watery vegetable stew. As ever, Miles’s studiedly casual clothes, like his studiedly revolutionary attitude, betrayed a hint of flash that made him stand out against his surroundings. When he asked if there was enough hot water for him to take a bath, it was my pleasure to reveal there wasn’t even a functioning toilet.

The first sour note came from Sean. “Who let the spiv in?” he asked sarcastically. I told him the spiv was with me, which calmed him down until Miles took out his camera. Sean immediately threatened to smash it. “We don’t want any pig reporters in here,” he said. “No fucking observers. Are you here to take part or just watch?”

I told Miles to ignore him. The two of us sat up late, sharing his whisky and talking about what had happened in the months since we’d last seen each other. He’d been in California, filming for the BBC. He’d picked up a lot of new jargon about Gestalts and Rolfing. Ursula had been sleeping with a German bass player, but was now with a guy who worked at the zoo. The last thing I remembered was the light streaming through the window as Miles described an orgy he’d attended at some hot springs.

When the fight broke out I was asleep. I had a splitting headache and the mid-morning light was making me nauseous, so it took a while before I could make sense of the shouting in the street. It seemed Claire had woken up to find Miles going through her things. She’d alerted some of the others and they’d thrown him out. Miles was still talking, trying to get back into the house, but Sean and Claire were blocking his way. Sean was throwing punches. I leaned

out of the window and Miles shouted up, pleading with me: “Chris, it was a misunderstanding. I thought it was my bag.” He wanted his camera, which he’d left upstairs. Eventually I threw the thing to him and watched him jog off down the street, casting little nervous glances behind him.

Why did I vouch for Miles? Because I wanted to. Because I didn’t believe there was anything sinister about him. Claire said she’d found him looking through her address book. Though I told her she was being paranoid, I didn’t really know what to think. I didn’t have much time or mental space for Miles. Sylvan Close was obviously going to end badly. We were down to ten people and there seemed to be very little support for our cause. No press, no demonstrations. We retreated into one house and spent the next twenty-four hours working continuously, building a wall of breeze-blocks downstairs, filling buckets with sand and water, constructing an escape route across the roofs. We decided there was no point in everyone getting arrested. Six people should go back and reopen Workshop Thirteen. The others should stay. Sean, Claire, Anna, and I volunteered.

As we waited for the final assault, the Apollo ii crew landed on the moon. Tranquility base. Up there the crew-cut astronauts could see the whole world as a blue-green disc. Down below, we were in our bunker. We stayed awake for forty-eight straight hours before the attack came. A massive battalion of police blocked the end of the street, guarding vanloads of council workmen. There was no sign of Mallory: it was obviously going to be a completely different operation. As a small group of supporters shouted slogans from behind a cordon, an inspector with a sergeant-major’s penetrating tone told us through a bullhorn that we had twenty minutes to get out. We refused and they moved forward, forming a ring that closed in through the backyards until number thirty-four was surrounded by a triple row of uniformed officers. We had a huge red and black flag, which we waved out of the window as the workmen swarmed into the empty houses around us with crowbars and sledgehammers.

Within half an hour most of Sylvan Close had been rendered uninhabitable. Floors were torn up, toilets smashed, pipes and cables pulled out of walls. The council was evidently determined that, whatever else happened, we weren’t going to be able to move back in. Watching the ruin of the rest of the street was somehow more frightening than listening to the bailiffs breaking down our barricade. They weren’t just smashing up our crude repair work but all the things we’d imagined: the long refectory table, the kindergarten, the workshops. When they finally broke through the wall we retreated to the roof. My lasting memory of that day is the shudder of the bricks under my hands as I clung to the chimney, watching the black slates tremble and spray upward as the council workmen battered their way through.

* * *

Sylvan Close was on Miles’s mind too as Pat Ellis left the room after her press conference. I craned my neck to watch her leave, followed by a train of advisers and assistants. Miles studied my perspiring face. “She did legal work for you after Leyton, didn’t she?”

“That’s right.” I felt like a lab animal, skull shaved for the probe. “So now you’ve performed your little experiment, you can tell me the results.”

“What?”

“Stop baiting me and tell me what you want. What have I got to do with Pat Ellis? I haven’t seen her since — for longer than I haven’t seen you. You know she had nothing to do with anything. Whatever you’re involved with, I won’t be part of it. It’s not my business. I just want to be left alone.”

“For God’s sake, Chris. Let’s at least get out of the building. Stop raising your voice and we’ll go and find something to eat. Eat, then we’ll talk, I promise.” He gripped my elbow and steered me outside. On the street he hailed a taxi, giving the driver the address of a members’ club in Soho.

All four of us pleaded not guilty. Hoping to turn our trial toward some political purpose, we disrupted the proceedings, shouted at the bailiffs and policemen who were giving evidence. Sean and I were given short prison sentences. Claire and Anna were fined; I think the judge was feeling chivalrous. While I was locked up in Brixton there were riots in Northern Ireland and British troops were sent over to keep the peace. I heard later the soldiers were welcomed by the Catholics, who thought they were going to protect them against a police force staffed and controlled by their Protestant neighbors. To the Thirteen collective it looked like one