The Winter War (23 page)

twenty-five

EVA WENT OVER TO ST PAUL'S
one day and found Russ in the process of rigging up a sound system for a political rally that was apparently going to take place later in the evening. It had snowed all week, and big drifts were piled up outside the tents. A man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask was shovelling snow in the small square. Eva had walked all the way from Piccadilly Circus to Fleet Street, and several times she'd been forced to jump aside to avoid being sprayed with slush when the big red double-decker buses roared past.

‘Back again?' said Russ.

He was standing inside the white tent that had been dubbed the University.

Eva didn't answer as she looked around, thinking it was funny that even a global grassroots movement would have such obvious accessories. Hanging on the wall was a rainbowcoloured flag with the word PEACE on it. A Palestinian shawl had been wrapped around the microphone stand. On a black, hand-painted board she read: ‘BANKERS, POLITICIANS, THE GLOBAL ELITE AND THE MASS MEDIA ALL LIE, STEAL, BRAINWASH AND DESTROY YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.'

For the past few nights the temperature had dropped below freezing.

‘Don't you get cold sleeping here?' Eva asked.

Russ was wearing a cap, and he'd exchanged his corduroy jacket for a down coat. He seemed to be in good spirits.

‘It's not so bad. The snow is worse. Last night I had to shovel the snow off the roof or the whole tent would have collapsed. And since the wind has been so strong we had to work out some way to anchor the tents in place. We can't stick stakes into the cement, so I brought over some sandbags.'

Eva wondered how long Russ was going to last in this place. He seemed determined and involved, like someone who enjoyed what he was doing. Russ picked up a pile of cables and began untangling them.

A young guy came into the tent to ask Russ if he felt like ‘coming with us'.

‘Are you leaving now?'

‘Yeah. In about five minutes.'

The guy was wearing fingerless gloves, and he had a long scarf wound loosely around his neck. He was properly dressed for the winter weather, with multiple layers, almost as if professionally outfitted.

Russ hesitated. He looked at Eva.

‘No, I think I'll pass. You go ahead. I can catch up with you later.'

‘Okay.'

After he'd left, Eva asked Russ what the man wanted.

‘The water pipes to the tap we've been using froze. So now we have to go around to the nearby shops and local businesses to get water. But I have enough for a while,' he said.

Eva couldn't picture herself sleeping here. She wasn't sure why. But she didn't understand how these tents, and these people with their flags and Palestinian shawls, were going to accomplish anything concrete, anything that would make a difference in a fundamental way. She wondered if it was her attitude or theirs that was the problem.

Suddenly she saw a familiar face appear in the tent opening.

It was Malik.

Eva hadn't seen him even once since Christmas. His only communication with the students had been through Laurie. He'd also assigned them what he called ‘inspiration weeks', which meant they were supposed to work on their own until it was time to gather for group critique sessions again. Some of the students had lost patience and claimed they weren't getting their money's worth from the course and should demand a new teacher.

In three weeks it would be Eva's turn to show what she'd been working on. Nothing was finished yet; in fact, she'd started over several times, scrapping ideas and painting over pieces that she'd spent weeks working on.

Now Malik was standing right in front of her, wearing a little woollen cap on his head. Maybe it was meant to make him blend in with the Occupiers.

‘If you've come here to persuade Russ to go back to class, you're wasting your time. I've already tried, and he's not budging. I think this is his calling,' said Malik as he went over and put his hand on Russ's shoulder.

There was something about the body language between the two men – something new compared to the way Malik had treated Russ in class during the autumn. Eva was so surprised to see Malik that she couldn't think of a thing to say. She had never before felt excluded from male company, had never felt threatened by it. The guys' jargon was surprisingly easy to comprehend. But right now it was like arriving at a party only to realise that she hadn't been invited.

‘I'm not going back to college,' said Russ as he wound several cables around his elbow.

When he was finished, he hung the cords over the back of a chair and took out a tobacco pouch and papers. Then he sat down and rolled himself a cigarette, focussing all his attention on what he was doing.

When Eva studied Malik more closely, she saw that he'd completely changed his style of clothing. He was wearing high boots and a green military jacket. He was also unshaven. She wondered whether Malik had tried to seduce Russ. She didn't really want to think about that, but she couldn't help herself, and she pictured Malik's big arms wrapped around Russ's slender body.

Eva turned to Malik and asked, ‘So, have you moved out here too?'

She couldn't really imagine Malik living here – not this man who showered four times a day, who changed his clothes twice daily, who was dependent on full-length mirrors, who started each morning with a double espresso, who claimed that he ‘hated nature' and thought that ‘a traffic jam is more beautiful than a fucking symphony orchestra'. Would he really choose to live in a tent?

‘There's something big happening here, Eva. I don't know what it is yet, but it's big, and it's fucking fantastic to be living in a time when we get to experience it.'

He seemed manic, high on something.

‘There's so much adrenaline here, you can almost touch it.' He waved his fist in the air as if to show how he was touching the adrenaline.

‘Do you sleep here?' asked Eva.

He shrugged. ‘I still have to correct tests and shit like that. But I come over here every day. It's electrifying, all these bloody people – anarchists, communists, hackers, environmental freaks. You should stay out here. It might all end tomorrow, but right now it's fucking magical,' Malik said, and then he left the tent as abruptly as he'd entered.

Russ raised his eyebrows. ‘I think he's high.'

Eva was relieved to hear him say that.

‘Have you eaten yet?' she asked.

‘What time is it?'

‘Almost three.'

Russ seemed to consider whether he was hungry or not, as if he had to remind himself about his own body and its needs. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. Then he lit another one.

‘I suppose I could eat something.'

As they came out of the tent, Eva looked up at St Paul's. The sky had clouded over again, and the dome seemed to disappear in the haze. She was freezing.

Russ noticed her looking at the cathedral.

‘Have you ever been inside?'

She shook her head.

‘If you're not in a hurry, let's go in,' he said. ‘I need to use the toilet, and I prefer the one in there.'

On the revolving mahogany door Eva noticed a Bible quote printed in big white letters: ‘This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.'

It was warmer inside the cathedral, which was pervaded by a great sense of calm, as if they found themselves somewhere other than the centre of London in January, as if they had travelled back in time. A few tourists stood in the small corridor that led to the desk where visitors paid an entrance fee.

Russ nodded to the cashier, and she let them slip past.

‘I'm just going to make a quick stop at the loo. You can go in and look around. Take as much time as you like.'

The cathedral was enormous and so beautiful that it took her breath away. Eva walked further in and sat down in a pew. She studied the details of the dome, the dark brown space glittering with gold. She looked at all the paintings on the ceiling and the intricate patterns of the windows. She didn't notice when Russ joined her.

‘Pretty impressive, isn't it?' he asked, as he hugged himself to warm up his hands.

‘How long has Malik been coming here?' she asked.

‘A fortnight. He's driving me crazy. But he has money, and if there's one thing we need, it's financial support. It's expensive to keep the whole place running, especially now that people keep turning up who are hungry and have nowhere else to go. It's become something of a refuge.'

‘We haven't seen him at college in two weeks.'

‘I think Malik just wants to be in the thick of things. I think he sees this as a way to collect some kind of cultural capital or good karma. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think we're going to be here much longer. Things have got tougher since the holidays. More vandalism. A few nights ago somebody cut up a couple of tents.'

‘Do you think they're going to give up?'

‘It's not just that. The thing is that this anti-hierarchical model isn't viable. Everyone's been trying to set up a sort of horizontal democracy, with no one acting as the leader or making all the decisions, but it just doesn't work. People still let themselves get manipulated away from their original goals. And somebody has to be the face of the Occupiers, somebody has to talk to the media and guide the movement forward. You can't have everyone going off in different directions, because nothing gets done. I mean, it's a little like a family. Not everyone gets to decide, and it's not always possible to come to a consensus. It doesn't work. Someone has to make the decisions.'

‘So you're thinking of coming back to college?'

‘No, definitely not. If there's one thing I've realised here, it's that I need to be working. Actually, I think that everybody needs to feel that they're doing something that has meaning. The work itself is what's important. Doing something and having a reason to get up in the morning. The whole Occupy movement is a kind of workplace for people who can't stand ordinary jobs. So it's ironic that we get criticised for being lazy and not working, when in reality we're working really hard. The problem is that so many other people don't see it as work. But we're trying to stir up questions and bring issues to the forefront – and that can only be useful to society. The people here are simply trying to show that there's another way of living, based on other things than constant growth and unregulated capitalism. I've met people here who have spent most of their lives living in tents,' said Russ.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Sitting in the cathedral reminded Eva of Österbotten. She thought that if she ever got married, she would want a church ceremony. It was ridiculous to be thinking of that now, but she couldn't help it.

‘Did you say something about getting food?' asked Russ.

Eva treated Russ to lunch in a nearby café, and afterwards they walked back to St Paul's. That afternoon a meeting called the ‘General Assembly' was being held. Everyone used various hand gestures to indicate what they wanted to say, so as to prevent all the participants from talking at once. If someone rolled his hands forward, it meant that he wanted the discussion to move on; if someone waved one hand in the air, it meant that he agreed with whoever was speaking. The participants included all age groups. The youngest attendees Eva saw must have been seventeen: two girls with cloth bags and close-cropped hair who held hands or rolled cigarettes as they listened.

One of the items on the agenda had to do with stolen valuables. Someone had nicked a portable stereo. One woman repeated that everybody had to take responsibility for their own things. Then they discussed how they were getting electricity. Someone suggested they ought to get rid of the generator since it would be more environmentally friendly to rely exclusively on solar panels. The subject caused a lively discussion, but ultimately they all agreed that it was more important for people to be able to use their computers so they could tweet and blog directly from the Occupier site. It was also decided that it was ‘a lesser of two evils' to pay for the electricity out of the general, shared account rather than force people to go to nearby capitalistic businesses in order to use their laptops.

That evening a vicar and a professor were scheduled to give speeches, but Eva was too cold and tired to stay. She stood with Russ outside his tent, trying not to shiver as she talked to him.

‘Russ, if you ever have time, I'd like to see you again. Maybe someplace else. I've thought a lot about you ever since you came to visit us in Finland.'

‘I've been thinking about you too. But I decided not to call because you didn't seem interested before. I just don't have the energy to compete with someone else. If nothing ever happens between us, I'll survive.'

‘I know, I know. I'm sorry.'

He scratched his moustache.

‘I was thinking of asking you something,' he said.