Class Warfare by D. M. Fraser

You’d caught up to me by then, I don’t remember how. Hopelessness has its own perfection, you said. The library was hung with flags celebrating athletic events, & the librarian was a snaggle-toothed bitch who looked like my mother & carried a golden key on a chain. She said, Why don’t you sit still & read Spinoza like a lady, but I wasn’t listening to her, I was looking around for you because you weren’t there any more, & then she threw me out, she was waving her golden key & screaming, dancing around & yelling Soul Sister, Soul Sister. I rolled down a long grassy hill, through a lot of broken glass & tin cans & used condoms, to the Ganges River, I know it was the Ganges because there was a sign on the bank saying so, & it was full of naked men who looked like you, singing Hare Krishna over and over again. New Jerusalem was on the other side, it looked like Sudbury, Ontario, & there was a railway trestle I had to walk across with my eyes closed, holding your hand. The telephone rang & I got up to answer it, & when I found you again we were still in New Jerusalem, only this time it looked like Calgary, & you’d shaved your head, you said you were joining the Order. I said that was unnecessary, you’d always been a part of it. We were driving down a long flat street in the Austin, & a woman on the radio was talking passionately about scabies. We passed a row of brown-brick houses with For Rent signs in the windows but we didn’t stop, because we knew no one was about to rent anything to the likes of us. We were searching for the railway station because there was a train we’d just got off & had to get back to, but we couldn’t find it because the only map was in the library & we’d already been thrown out of there. We went around the corner & there was the librarian, hitchhiking, she wouldn’t get into the car when we stopped for her. She said she had no authorization to accept rides from strangers. You said, The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night, & I started to laugh, & then you called me a closet reactionary, & spat in the ashtray. I was humiliated but said nothing, I was too proud. The librarian gave you her golden key, & you kissed it & put it in the ignition & drove away with her, chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. I don’t remember what I did then, but when I got to the railway station you were there, & she wasn’t, & there was a delegation from the U.N. officially welcoming us to New Jerusalem: they were all women & all colours, & they spoke in sentences. Everyone was drinking beer. You stood close beside me & made a short pithy speech about the need for protective tolerance in post-industrial society, & everyone clapped & cheered. I wept, for the joy of it. You were even handsome in your uniform, your hair gleaming blond & waxed, your eyes alert for danger. There is always danger, always, you said, & I believed you. The librarian drove up in the Austin & made a speech about smoking in approved areas only, please. She looked very old & sallow, & everyone observed a moment of silence, for her sake. Some people lit cigarettes, furtively, & I wanted one but didn’t have the nerve. Then the train was leaving & I was on it, but you weren’t, & the last thing I saw before the telephone rang was a row of brown-brick houses with For Rent signs in the windows, & a street that seemed to go to the end of the world, & you in your uniform, crying, walking slowly somewhere else …
    â€¦ & that’s what I dreamed last night, as I remembered it & wrote it down when I woke up.
THE RADIANT BODY
    Gerard Macklewain in his room strums his guitar, sings the blues:
    Â 
Look over there, Brother
    what do you think you see
    Is it a man marked for death
    and does he look just a bit like me?
    See the man marked for death
    Old Mortality
…
    Â 
    Outside it’s growing light. He could sleep now, easily, but there’s work to do: the