Thread: A Game of Chess (Excerpt from Part 4 of Each Man Fixed His Eyes)

I got bored writing Part 1...or 2 and 3 for that matter so skipped on a bit to the start of part 3. Between the start and here some stuff has happened, Financial Crisis, and the Irish banks collapse, UK tries to bail them out and the UK economy collapses bringing large portions of Europe with it. Right wing nationalist party sweeps power and does some benefit but restricts human rights to bolster economy and strengthen government, yada yada yada.

This is the start of the section where the government starts clamping down Chinese Firewall style, bit of initial reflection on the sneaky Governmenting going on and the effects of the collapse and new Government seen on Tchai (Based on Tchai Ovna in Glasgow).

Also I know there's a lot of stray/missing words, grammar hick ups that I haven't fixed. I'm looking more for stylistic critique, flagging up minor hick ups is ok too though since I might miss them in a rewrite.

It was seven years since I had first met Emma, but today was the first time she let me accompany her to Tchai. Tchai was an independent tea room that had somehow survived the collapse, before the Troubles it catered to a fairly left and liberal clientèle and among them only those who did not mind drinking from dirty china. It was a hub of free expression, Emma revealed that she had once performed a series of sonnets for the Arab Spring, I don't know if the Arab Spring is still common knowledge but it was a temporary democratisation of parts of the Middle East, she always refused bluntly to show them to me whenever I asked. It hosted regular performances by an range of experimental musicians, foreign artists would travel specifically to play to a meagre audience of twenty or so people, for it was something of a badge of honour, perhaps even bordering on a necessity of pilgrimage. Most importantly it fostered debate, both planned and spontaneous which often spread throughout the packed room segregating patrons to one side or the other. Strangely they rarely fostered any animosity, participants never arguing for the sake of winning but for the belief they were right.


All of this is a second hand recollection, so for none of it I can vouch as definitively true, but I believe that when Emma told me these stories she had no intent to deceive and any deviation from the truth was out of love for the establishment. But when I first walked in it was the definition of ramshackle. The lack of patronage had not been kind to the place: a large front facing window was cracked, but not yet broken through, it too had been covered in a film of grime; one corner had been devoted to broken furniture, cracked tables, chairs, shelves and an old stain glass cabinet rested at the head of the amassed wooden hill, the coloured glass depicting the good Samaritan bent over the traveller all cracked, the middle portion of the Samaritan's arms reaching down completely missing so he floated over the injured Jewish traveller. The remaining tables that were working, or near working were strewn around haphazardly, most of which were unoccupied.


Presently, Emma led to to what she called her table. 'Why is it your table?' I asked.
'See here,' she said pointing to the centre of the table where someone had inscribed, maybe that is too grand a description, where someone had scratched, 'Emma is a cunt.' I was initially taken aback, which I think is the normal reaction to someone relating favourably to an insult.
'I don't know if I'm the Emma,' she explained, 'I hope I am. It's always better to make waves. “Boring damned people. All over the over the earth. Propagating more boring people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with him.”'
'What was that?' I asked, slightly confused.
'Bukowski, I had to send all my copies back. It's all I had left. And this is the only place I can say it.'
“You would rather be hated than ignored then?' I asked.
'Probably. They can love me, or they can hate me but to not make ripples, to grey or flat, to be everyone else is morally unforgivable. And yet now it's encouraged. But it's only here, only here I can say it.' With that she stood up and went to order. I was left wondering if it was only here you could say such things, for there was no censorship laws at all. People were free to speak as they wish, but on large they did not. The press, too, was able to print freely, but they had for many years shared a collective opinion, speaking with one voice but multiple titles, multiple affiliations to old political stances. The papers, around the time they began to agree, had been nationalised en masse so their nationalisation gone unreported and their dedication to a certain political base remained.