Lottery
Lebensraum is the city of burnt out lives and expired dreams, where those who have exhausted reality go to imagine a better one. It therefore has some justification in calling itself the last place on earth.
—Hastille Cologne, Biographer to the City
Light.
Unrelenting, unforgiving light burns through eyelids like dawn of Apocalypse.
Squeeze tight defective flaps of skin. Turn away from white fury.
Light still on face, eye shields still pink and hot. Taste dust in mouth.
Something wrong.
Open eyes.
Heinous discovery—shelter gone, stolen, leaving self bare to morning sun. Skin itching hot.
Blink in yellow alien world. Sea of wood, chicken wire, canvas and dust; hutches pressed one against another like corpses in paupers’ grave. Self now homeless among homeless. Who has done this? Who has visited indignity on self? Scabs to left and right do not answer, keep to hutches and pretend not to hear questions. Confirms own suspicions: scabs not to be trusted. Silence no doubt bought by servants of enemy. Anger comes but must control, must not play enemy’s game.
Dust thick and dry in mouth.
Stumble down to river, through debris and rubble fashioned into beggar homes. Wash face and private area in thick, brown water; careful not to wet wound of wronged hand. Don’t shit where eat adage unknown to Babble folk. Swill out mouth and spit into sun-spotted surface. Dirty river water like tarnished mirror—emptyof reflection. Could be anyone washing face.
Vexed on returning to hutch-space. Takes many minutes to find patch. Blood grows hot with understanding—space filled by new hutch. Squatter occupying space is fat man, scavenger; bigger than self. Forces self away; calls self scab in voice raw with anger. Babble is scum washed up against walls of city; living on fear and hate—predatory. Curse all scabs (and neighbours) and abandon home to squatter. Belly is needful, adds own insistent voice to terrible clamour.
Join stooped fellows shuffling on road alongside wagons heading for gate in outer wall. Pass vendors’ stalls offering vermin for breakfast; better to drink river water than eat sale carrion. Will fill belly in city with fresh scran. Nosewards, defensive walls shimmer in morning heat haze, leaning away from beggar settlement in disgust, in horror. Too late. Rot spread clear to all: cracks in masonry ruin proud battlement lines. Upper wall like broken and rotting teeth of beggar men. Black-wings rise from holes in guard tower roofs, catching swells of hot city air or swooping low for scraps in Hobbleton. Others soar above city, rising above dark structure at heart. Sight of enemy brings back memory of outrage; force eyeballs down. Follow dusty track, side by side with beggarkind, keeping pace with sluggish river. Onwards.
At walls wagons and carts—engines hot and noisy—pass unhindered under rusty-toothed portcullis, carrying cargo to market, oil for gears of city.
Men in uniform eyeball Babble folk suspiciously. Self made to join line of hopeful no-hopes, half-delirious from empty bellies and opium-jacked blood. All scabs, all damned in search of soul. Watchman at head of line carries metal stick. Watchman asks questions and, prodding with stick, sends each back. Watch too fearful to touch rags of outcasts. Fellow guards sit on fat arses and scratch bellies, already tired by heat of day; disgusted by queue, by job. Bellamy once said watchmen’s piggy eyes show fear that one day Babble will rise up and claim city, drowning rulers and servants alike. Self disagreed, watch too piggy-eyed to see beyond lunch.
Stick pokes chest, arresting and painful.
Hold it, boy, says watchman, What’s your business in the city?
Shrug shoulders. Visiting father, speaks tongue, birthday.
Smiles at self, showing fat, yellow teeth sticky with saliva. Says, You wouldn’t be thinking of doing any begging now would you—not from your father or anyone?
Smile back, raise hand and flip coin into air. Watchman catches coin in palm of gloved hand.
Stick drops away, breathe easy again. You can go, says watchman. Step under arch, under blunted portcullis teeth. Prickly heat of sun doused by city wall.
Walk under grey arches into shadows; past decayed, long-unused machines, past wooden crates destined for merchants. Watchmen examine goods of traders, money changes hands, crates pass unopened into marketplace.
Pass into light, into Lebensraum.
