The Steel Spring (12 page)

‘Do you feel like a sheep?’

‘I said almost. There were groups of politically active individuals, and once the low-water mark was reached, they started to grow again. More and more people realised that what the so-called theorists of the Accord philosophy called standard of living and peaceful revolution was nothing other than a criminal attempt to make people accept the universal meaninglessness that had resulted from a crazed political and sociological experiment. It’s amazing it took so long for everyone to see it. All you had to do was look about you. It was meaningless to work, meaningless to learn anything except a few technical operations. Even the physical aspects of life became meaningless: eating, sex, having children.’

‘You didn’t come up with all that by yourself,’ said Jensen.

‘No, I didn’t. I’m mainly quoting what others have said and written. But I understand it well enough to see how bad things are.’

‘If we can stick to the facts for a moment,’ said Jensen. ‘What else did you do in your political club? Did you organise demonstrations?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you hope to gain by them?’

‘We were working to make people understand their own situation. To crush Accord society. It was only once we’d blown the Accord apart that we could get at our arch-enemies.’

‘Which arch-enemies?’

‘Well, social democracy, which had betrayed the labour movement and sold out to capitalism. And then the capitalist system as a whole.’

‘And how were you able to do it?’

‘There weren’t all that many of us, but on the other hand, numbers kept growing. At first the police were the only ones who took any notice of the demonstrations. The vast mass was entirely indifferent to them, as expected. People had been rendered entirely apathetic by the attempt to impose standardisation on them by all available means. Gradually even the police stopped opposing us, on the orders of the government I assume. We interpreted it …’

‘Yes? How did you interpret it?’

‘We interpreted it as a positive development. We thought that the people pulling the strings had taken fright and wanted to avoid drawing attention to our actions at any cost. They succeeded to the extent that the vast majority of people still didn’t take any notice of us, although our numbers were swelling and we demonstrated more and more often. The only thing that seemed to annoy people was our obstructing the traffic. But the police soon started helping us with that, too, and directed the protest marches to their destinations as smoothly as they could. We saw that as a sign of fear, too. Of the regime seeing its main role, as usual, as that of not distressing people, not waking them up from their dream world of material affluence and strictly contained anxiety.’

‘Did your organisations make any headway in elections?’

‘In a way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well we didn’t get all that many votes, but more and more people abstained from voting. Even that, the fact that political ignorance was growing at the same rate as boredom and suppressed dissatisfaction, showed us that we were right. Of those who did take part in the elections, almost all of them voted for the Accord, of course.’

‘Why?’

‘From sheer force of habit. They or their parents had once upon a time learnt to vote either for social democracy or for the right-wing parties. And we had no propaganda resources to call on, either. But we carried on campaigning even though our shouts fell on deaf ears, right up until …’

‘Right up until?’

‘Right up until everything changed.’

‘And when was that?’

‘Some time in September.’

‘What changed?’

‘I don’t know. The people, maybe … The first time I noticed anything was on the twenty-first of September.’

‘What happened on the twenty-first of September?’

‘I’ll try to tell you.’

He screwed up his eyes and grimaced with pain.

‘Is it hurting?’

‘Yes, there’s this pain in my legs.’

The man on the sofa writhed convulsively. Groaned.

Jensen took the tube the police doctor had given him, shook out one of the white tablets and poured out another fizzy drink.

‘Take this,’ he said.

Jensen slid his right hand under the back of the man’s neck to raise his head gently so he could swallow the pill.

He suddenly thought of the nurse and the fact that he had once seen her cry.

Within a couple of minutes, the man on the sofa was asleep.

Inspector Jensen sat motionless, watching him calmly and without expression.

Exactly one hour and ten minutes had passed when the man on the sofa woke up again. He opened his eyes and looked at Jensen in bewilderment. After a minute or so, his face cleared.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Now it comes back to me.’

‘Is the pain still bad?’

‘No, it’s all right now. Thanks.’

The words came huskily, as if the man’s throat was dry. Jensen poured a little fruit soda into the plastic cup and supported the man’s head. He drained the cup thirstily.

‘We were talking about your political activities.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘You explained where you stood.’

‘You do understand that we’re right?’

‘No, but I’d be interested to hear what comes next.’

‘There’s no more to tell.’

‘What happened in September?’

‘Oh yes. That.’

The man lay in silence for a few moments. Then, without taking his eyes off Jensen, he said:

‘I can’t explain what happened. I don’t understand it.’

‘But you know what happened to you personally.’

‘I know what happened to several of us.’

He broke off again.

‘But I can’t explain it,’ he said.

‘Let’s just stick to the facts,’ Jensen said amiably. ‘Plain and simple facts.’

‘Facts. There are no plain and simple facts.’

‘What your job is, for example.’

‘I’m a sociologist. Used to work at the alcohol research unit.’

‘Was it complicated work?’

‘Yes, very complicated.’

‘Taxing?’

‘Not physically taxing. I was just one of many in the statistics section. We collated figures that came in from the alcohol retailers, the police and the detox clinics. It was easy work in itself.’

‘A lot of responsibility?’

‘Hardly. Our statistical tables were sent on to higher authorities, where they were worked over. That’s to say, they were put through the mill over and over again and sent from one authority to another. When they finally got to, well, whoever they were meant for, they were distorted beyond all recognition. Improved, if you like. Even we, the ones who’d put them together in the first place, had no chance of recognising them.’

He shook his head.

‘No, it was a simple job.’

‘So what was the difficulty? The complicated part?’

‘The difficulties were of an ethical nature.’

‘Ethical?’

‘Yes. First and foremost, the fact that the whole procedure went against the basic principles of statistical science. The figures we got in were works of fiction from the very start. Then they were further falsified, quite consciously and almost entirely openly. Knowing that made it hard to endure it there.’

‘Did your colleagues share your way of seeing it?’

‘A few of them did. Most just got on with the job, like robots, without thinking or asking questions. In other words, their attitude to their work was the same as almost everyone else’s in this country.’

The man paused for a moment before going on.

‘But the really unbearable thing was having to deal with the issue per se.’

He looked at Jensen.

‘As a policeman, you’ve doubtless had plenty of dealings with the alcohol legislation and the way it’s applied?’ Jensen nodded.

‘Drink-driving laws? Being drunk in public places? Domestic alcohol abuse? All that stuff.’

‘Yes.’

‘Each law more insane than the last one? The number of suicides, especially among the drunks?’

‘I’ve experienced plenty of sudden deaths,’ said Jensen.

The man laughed.

‘There, you see,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to explain.’

‘No,’ said Jensen. ‘What was it you found unbearable?’

‘The hypocrisy, of course. The duplicity. The cowardice. The ruthless profiting from it all. Do you know what alcohol costs here?’

‘Yes.’

‘They impose several thousand per cent tax. That’s an old right-wing idea, dictated by stupidity and greed in equal measure. It’s proposed as one among other measures for combating abuse. The dearer the price of the alcohol, the fewer the cases of drunkenness. A completely absurd thesis, but even the teetotal brigade within the so-called labour movement were tricked into accepting it. Or rather, perhaps, pretended they believed in it. It makes no odds, because they’re all as
bad as each other; extortion or criminal stupidity, it’s all the same.’

‘Go on.’

‘With what? Can’t you see the bigger picture? We know people have to have alcohol, some so they can bear to carry on living, some for the courage to do away with themselves. So the prices are hiked, and the state’s put to work, first criminalising the use of alcohol and calling it abuse, and then poisoning the drink with substances that supposedly wean them off it, which in turn generate deeper depression and lead to even more suicides.’

‘You ought to watch your tongue.’

‘Why ought I? Are you thinking of pulling it out?’

Jensen had made the comment out of sheer routine and force of habit. He felt a vague sense of surprise and stroked the tip of his nose.

‘We’ve got the highest suicide rate in the whole world, and rates of drunkenness as high as in the most perfidious capitalist dictatorships. We’ve also got the lowest birth rate. Since the regime finds this worrying and is also a little bit ashamed of its own impotence, they try to lie it all away.’

‘Well,’ said Jensen, ‘what actually happened in September?’

‘Just a minute, let me finish my argument. So what do they do then? Well, they punish the individual for being forced by them to become an alcoholic, just as they punish people they’ve forced to live in substandard housing. They also punish the workers because they haven’t bothered to teach them that work can be a meaningful end in itself. They even persuade us to pollute the very air we have to live in. Whole classes of society have to endure this curious form of punishment. The only ones who can escape are the profiteers, who can afford to live abroad
or buy big houses in the forest or their own islands in the archipelago. It all hangs together, emanates from the same evil root. Now do you understand why I find my work unbearable?’

Jensen did not answer that question. He looked past the man on the sofa and said:

‘Was it that way of thinking you wanted to launch through your demonstrations?’

‘Among other things. But anyway, launch isn’t the right word. We weren’t presenting anything new. We just wanted to remind people about a phenomenon they already knew about deep inside, though they’d done all they could to forget it.’

‘What phenomenon?’

‘The class struggle. Can I have something else to drink?’

Jensen took the plastic cup and filled it up again.

‘Thank you. Can I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Do you drink alcohol yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said Jensen. ‘Or I used to, anyway.’

‘Every day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘The same reason you take tablets. I was in pain.’

‘Was that the real reason?’

Jensen looked at the man for a long time. Finally he said:

‘If we can go back to what happened in September.’

‘I can’t explain it. Everything changed. And everybody.’

‘How did you yourself change?’

‘I didn’t change. At any rate, I had no sense of doing so. It was the world around me that changed. Do you think that sounds strange?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was, very strange.’

‘When did you first become aware of it?’

‘The third Saturday in September. The twenty-first.’

‘In what context?’

‘We used to demonstrate on Saturdays.’

‘I know.’

‘For practical reasons. Most people were at home and off work then. This autumn we upped the tempo because of the election campaign. Not that we had much hope of success. I mean, the Accord’s propaganda machine had been steamrollering away all spring and summer. They had every conceivable resource, as usual. We had nothing at all. We weren’t even thinking in terms of the election result, yet we still thought we knew …’

He gave a start, suddenly on the alert. His eyes darted to and fro.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Jensen. ‘Just a drunk getting a bit carried away down in his cell. What did you think you knew?’

‘That there was pause for thought at the highest levels. Voter turnout had been going down every time over a period of quite a few years. Rumour had it that it was starting to annoy the regime. In its supreme stupidity, it didn’t understand why people weren’t voting for its excellent system. I’m talking mainly about leading figures in the trade union movement and former members of the social democratic party. The capitalists, the ones really pulling the strings, knew better of course. At any rate, that was the reason why the election campaign was so intensive and waged on such a broad front.’

‘And what did your lot do?’

‘We thought we’d do what we could to annoy them even more. That was why we focused so much on the demonstrations. It
didn’t seem to help, though. People were as indifferent as ever. Until that day, the twenty-first of September.’

‘Did you demonstrate that day?’

‘Yes. We organised an anti-imperialism protest march. It was going to start in the suburbs as usual and move in towards the centre. And we were going to round off with a public meeting. They mostly followed the same pattern.’

Jensen nodded.

‘I went out to the assembly point by taxi with two friends of mine. A printer and his wife. My best friends. They were the same age as me, and members of our society. We’d known each other for years. Worked together a lot.’

‘Worked? On what?’

‘We did a lot of the society’s practical work. Printed leaflets, did poster designs. Made placards and banners. Lots of other stuff, too. We had a duplicating machine and produced a little news-sheet for distribution to members. Yeah, we’d known each other a long time and very well.’