The Ministry of Harmony
The four low rise apartment blocks formed a small square at the centre of which two bodies hung from the arm of a faded yellow crane. They twisted in the breeze, as the residents waited for the morning announcements to start the day.
The sun was just rising and light reflected off the giant golden head of Beloved Leader that stared down on the city. Milo gazed with what he hoped looked like adoration at the statue that stood in front of the great palace on the hill.
The public address systems boomed into life. ‘Beloved Leader is all knowing. Beloved Leader is all seeing. Beloved Leader is love.’
Milo joined in enthusiastically with the chants that crashed into the square. He could hear his parent’s voices from the window below. All the residents were present and shouted the chorus. It was a ritual none dared miss.
The red dust started to blow from the east, giving the morning the pinkish haze the capital was famous for. In the distance, a Sunday morning temple bell sounded.
‘Beloved Leader, splendid inheritor son of dear departed Great Leader, has started the celebrations to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the glorious rapture. With the divine guidance of Beloved Leader, the Most Reverend Ali exposed the heretics and ….’
Milo had lost track of what Sunday it was; it had been a month of Sundays at least. Sometime earlier Beloved Leader had said he didn’t like Mondays and since then no one had been brave enough to move the calendar forward. Different factions put forward solutions; the eternal Sunday faction, the two Tuesdays faction and the Comrade Number 1-day faction.
Milo tried to orientate himself, as the voice rose; it was Sunday the 18th, so was this Tuesday or Wednesday? Milo couldn’t remember.
‘…production of crude oil exceeded quota.’
‘All glory to Beloved Leader.’ Milo screamed over and over as the list of wonders and blessings bestowed by Beloved Leader grew and grew.
Finally, the tannoy clicked into silence. Milo reached for his schoolbooks and opened ‘Beloved Leader - guardian of the world’s natural resources'. Today there was a test on the destruction of the rainforests by the decadent West and how Beloved Leader had inspired their conservation. Milo wasn’t feeling confident. Miss Grove, the test administrator, loved to include material that hadn’t been covered. A low-ranking party member, she used the poor scores to berate her senior colleagues. The party protected and promoted her, and punished Milo’s teachers for their students’ failures.
There was a knock at the front door and some muffled talking. It was a little past seven, who could be calling so early? When he went downstairs, he saw a package for him.
‘Special delivery for you,’ said his father, not looking up from his bowl.
Milo didn’t think his parents would try to poison him again, but he was careful to take the porridge from the communal pot. As he ate, Milo opened the package; taking great care to save the paper for future use. When he saw the green cloth, fear closed his throat. It was a Santebal uniform, the secret police. He trembled as he read the note attached to the parcel; finally he crumpled the letter and sat staring at the jacket in his hands.
When his parents saw what he was holding, they shivered. Milo could tune into their thoughts. It wasn’t hard, if you could be bothered to read faces, you could almost see the individual words of sentences crawling under the skin. Across the canvas of flesh, bone, skin and muscle Milo saw surprise, fear, desire, calculation and all the other emotions he had come to associate with his parents. As their brains slowly tried to work out what to say, Milo saw all of their inner emotions flashing and swirling in the fleshy book of their betrayal.
Finally, Milo’s father spoke, ‘Looks like they want you again. I knew they would. I’ve, we’ve always been proud of you.’
Milo heard the words, but what he saw was the fear. They were like little rabbits around a wolf. In one stroke, Milo had been transformed. He was like a Super Hero, those funny creations who were so popular in the other world. But compared to the power he had just been given, what was flying or shooting bits of web?
Milo smiled at his father, whose face crumpled into pathetic gratitude. In silence, Milo had communicated he would not have them hauled off to the labour camps, or Floor 7, or the School of Mechanics.
His mother and father sat at the table; his mother’s hands clenched in her lap, his father wiped his eyes. The yellow daisy in the jam jar on the table seemed too bright; the wind fluttered the blue curtains. Beloved Leader smiled down from the wall. Milo could not bear it. He grabbed the parcel and jumped up from the table. His parents sat in silence, as his chair clattered to the floor.
In his room, his hands tingled, as he started to put on the uniform. There was trouble all right and he was at the centre of it, but it was not aimed at him. The signature on the note had told him that: the wrong pressure on the letter a, the curves of the g and the f. The note writer had written their inner turmoil more plainly than the signature they had scrawled.
The regulation green underwear was first. Then he pulled on the poison green breeches, tucked in the white shirt. Sitting on the bed, he pulled on black shiny knee-high boots. The tunic was last, the same green as the breeches, five golden buttons, the golden tiger’s head collar badges on the yellow tabs. Staring at his reflection in the mirror, he saw a Captain of the Santebal staring back. He ran his fingers over his medal ribbons and thought of the earth erupting, fire falling from the sky, shrapnel flowers bursting to colour the dawn red.
The tension snapped tight around his head, tighter and tighter. He concentrated hard, trying to keep the attack away, but it was no use. Time stopped, there was a great light and all the world was dancing. His brain fired into white lightning and he was free.
The abyss dragged him in and saw many things, a helicopter raining fire on the earth, a girl falling in space, a smiling monk holding a statue. Fragments of time past and future, images so bright they burnt like snow. Epileptic brainstorms, visions and prophecies; a gift of imagination and abnormal brain chemistry. All creation was in the storm and nothing.
From deep fathoms, something called him back and he rose.
‘Milo, you shining one, you son of the morning. Once, when you were young, you used to light the sky.’
Milo knew that old silver voice so well. He had no idea how long he had been out; the second hand sweeping slowly told him less than a minute. After every attack, he felt sick and sat shivering as nausea rose and fell in his throat.
Some people called it a blessing. He did not feel blessed. He broke from his visions; the world was regained and he dragged himself back onto his bed.
‘You were cast down to earth, but now you could rise.’
The cool fingers of Death run across his uniform. The tap, tap of a finger, on that one medal ribbon sat alone atop the rest. Milo’s body sagged, as the weight of that tiny piece of cloth dragged him down.
‘I wish I could see your face again.’
‘Not now, not today,’ said Death, and Milo felt the coolness of his touch, ‘read chapter six. It could save you.’
Then he was alone.
Read Chapter Six? Milo picked up the book. Chapter six was about the Amazon. How could this save him? Death could be annoyingly cryptic at times.
How could anything prepare him for his coming interview? Time was calling him back to a place he did not want to go.
The tram rattled through the old quarter, Milo slumped into his chair and pulled his uniform coat closer to him. He read chapter six of ‘Beloved Leader - guardian of the world’s natural resources’, but the questions raced in his mind.
Why were they calling him back?
His reflection in the window was the face of a normal teenager: ears, lips, cheeks, teeth, and hair. Nothing strange or unusual at all. He should be worrying about normal things like exams or trying to ask Fatima for a date and being rebuffed, as he knew he would be, or being drafted to the war. If only the bullies in his school were the biggest problem in his life. He could happily endure their taunts and the occasional beating. But in the iridescent pools in the back of his eyes, he saw the truth. Milo turned angrily from his youthful reflection. He already felt like an old man, worn down by the horror he had brought upon the earth.
Fear radiated all around him, swirling blue and red. The yellow tabs of the Secret Police uniform, the rank insignia of Captain were alien to tram 39, and his presence terrified every passenger. The background babble of conversation was tense, the everyday comments stilted with shrill hysteria. Milo turned away so he couldn’t see the effect he was having. The uniform should feel dirty like it was crawling with lice. But under it all, the power tingled like a golden thread of pleasure.
Conversation stopped as the tram clattered across the points and swung into Avenue of the True God and headed towards the Fountain of the Martyrs. Its hugeness silenced even those who saw it every day. The hundred-foot blood-red jet that rose from it; the seven-hundred life-size gilt statues of the fallen, and the noise, the endless wailing and kerning and howling of the black crows who surrounding the Fountain. They were the mothers of the dead. Enveloped in the black cloth of mourning, they flapped around like a demented flock. The wailing and throwing of holy spice to colour the water red was an act of faith; the death rites without end, a reminder to God so their never-to-return sons might more quickly enter heaven.
As they poured the spice and wailed, Milo wondered if they knew of the Most Reverend Luther and the act of remembrance. Three hundred years ago, this Blessed Elder of the chosen religion invented this ritual. His partner Mohammed Jones, a spice dealer, had invested heavily in a new spice from the north. It had a delightful smell and colour but tasted repellent. The ritual of the Blood of the Lambs appeared soon after. With the profits, both men grew rich and indeed they were graced. Milo might now be a Captain of the Secret Police, but even a Captain did not dwell too much that Little Boots, Beloved Leader’s eldest son, held the monopoly on the import of the red spice.
The tram turned into Beloved Leader Sun of the World Street. Milo jumped down and walked to Victory Avenue where, at the end of the wide boulevard, was an old familiar park. A large truck was on the grass and a gang of workmen were unloading another statue of Beloved Leader carefully onto a marble plinth. As soon as they finished their job, the workmen scurried away. Milo stopped to look at it for a while to calm his nerves, always aware of the heavy presence of the building behind him.
The statue showed Beloved Leader as a golfer. Recently, in his first game, he had shot 38 under par with 11 holes in ones. He had graciously retired to give the less gifted a chance. Milo counted the other statues in the park; Beloved Leader as a war hero, as a painter, as a scientist.
How many more statues does he need? Milo shivered. If he was to survive, he needed to control his emotions. Thoughts like that could slip out and get him killed. He felt the old surge of fear. He could never forget what had happened. Or the danger his exile had put him in.
Milo turned to face his past. The Ministry of Harmony was one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, perhaps even in the world. It was twenty stories high, perfectly proportioned, built from the finest red and white marble, with gold leaf on the domes. Milo called it ‘the invisible building’; it was there, but not there; when they were passing, people would look to the ground, to the side, to anywhere but at the building itself.
A small crowd gathered in front of the building. They must have morning appointments. The doors opened at 8.30 and closed one minute later. The protocol instructed you gathered at 8.20 in the portico to wait for ten minutes. Milo was certain they were not sending him to Floor 7. However, others waiting for the doors to open were not so sure. A kaleidoscope of sweat and wafts of terror submerged Milo. An old woman with a mop slopped her way backwards and forwards. The water carried away any tears, or piss, or vomit. When faced with even the smallest chance of an interview on Floor 7, courage was mist in the morning.
The clock chimed and the great verdigris copper doors swung open. Milo entered the lobby, walking on mosaics of the flags of the enemies and the faces of their leaders. He presented his pass at the desk, stood to one side, and waited. He gazed up at the huge screen that played Beloved Leader’s speeches on an eternal loop. This was about the glorious war against the East; he knew it word for word, as did everybody.
To take his mind off Beloved Leader, Milo watched the other people, as they presented their appointment cards. Gulps of relief at the prospect of a normal interrogation or faces that suddenly sent orange flares of relief into the air when they found out they were just there to renew a form. Although he had long ago told himself that what he saw was just a projection of abnormal brain chemistry, he sometimes couldn’t believe that everyone did not see it as well.
The pyrotechnics of fear and relief immersed Milo. A full Colonel of the Secret Police pushed his way to the front of the queue and flung his appointment card down. The certainty of promotion flickering across him, it was almost as if the single star of General was hovering a few inches in front of his eyes, reflected for Milo to see. The Colonel didn’t register the eyes or the facial muscles or any of the many other signals the receptionist radiated. To Milo, it was clear as a spoken word.
Thirty seconds later the screams started. The face of the Colonel crumpled from arrogance to hysterical fear as his escort pressed button number 7. Then the elevator doors closed, the face disappeared and there was silence.
A guard called Milo. In the elevator, they smiled, and their finger hovered over the 7 button. Milo knew it was just a macabre joke and did not react. The guard disappointed that he had not scared him, jabbed 14.
‘I know the way.’ Milo dismissed the guard as they reached the floor. He wanted a few seconds to be alone before his appointment. He walked along the familiar corridors, the ornate inlaid floors, the paintings.
So much beauty, he thought, but Milo could not delay any longer and he knocked on the door.
‘Come in.’ Brigadier Jones was an imposing figure in his green military fatigue, a large pistol strapped to his thigh. About his neck hung a necklace of animal skulls and totems of the stolen souls of jungle animals.
