Your burden, you bear it

My name is unimportant or rather it was until I turned him in to the Third Section. Now, my name is on some very incriminating documents that he, and the circle of friends that will soon be arrested with him, will read, and (hopefully) be slightly surprised that I am the one responsible for their downfall. Strictly speaking, that isn't true they are responsible for their own fate, just like the rest of us. Their little "insurgency" and the circle of people who were involved knew the risks they were taking when they started to take them. I don't feel sorry for them, nor do I bemoan their fate(s). They broke several rules of the conspiracy game, the main one being don't get too big too fast, the other critical one is to vet the people you are letting into your circle very, very, closely.

Conspiracies of the type this lot were planning are not meant to be fast growing like the bamboo plant. Too much, too soon and mistakes are bound to be made, and if you are the one making these mistakes the price is very, very high. If they were French, we would ship them off to Devil's Island, and France would be done with them. If they were Irish, we would transport them to Van Diemen's Land, and move on to the next group of wild eyed revolutionaries that need to be suppressed. But they aren't they are not getting shipped via boat anywhere, they will have to trudge thousands of kilometers to the Artic wasteland that the Motherland has deemed suitable as the world's largest open air prison. That, if they are lucky, will be their fate. The facts, as I reported them to the Third Section, are far from all being gathered, and it is my humble opinion that the majority of them will be stood up against a very convenient public wall and shot. An example to others as the saying goes.

As another saying goes, "that is them problem, not a me problem" my problems the ones that led me to turning my coat, and taking the sovereign's coin to send foolish (but brave) men to their cruel fates, are a bit more mundane. I am not, despite how this looks, a bad person. I am not, despite the number of times I've been called it, a cunt. Not that I am some angel either, I don't help little old ladies across the street, and I don't love my mother as much as I perhaps should. I am somewhere in the half light between do gooder, and absolute bastard, the half light that, in my opinion, bathes the majority of the world's population. A boy's got to pay the rent, and food is, on occasion, a nice thing to have, and the Third Section (those light blued uniformed bastards) know this, it is one of their main tools of recruitment, the other being people who just like to get other people in trouble, and don't care if the rumors they tell the Third Section have any basis in truth whatsoever.

Therein lies the difference, I took the state's coin because I needed the money. Don't for a second think I enjoyed it. Becoming a company man is not a pleasant experience, and I do not recommend it. However, I do not recommend starving to death either it is also an unpleasant experience, which is why I chose not to do it. My other defense is that they were actually guilty. Their plan to overthrow the regime, free the peasants, and start a New Order, while naive and destined to be a glorious failure, was still treason. This is something that I fear history will forget when it comes to be written, and I will be (unfairly in my view) be condemned to either its dustbin, or to a special place in its hall of villains. I am also fairly certain, that since at least one member of this group is a very bright literary fellow that he will make a defense that will be eloquent enough to throw some doubt on my reports of his treason. That is why you take good notes, and write things down. You might have a memory that borders on total recall, but you aren't going to live forever, nor are you going to always be around when your name is being mentioned as a lying, cheating bastard that probably doesn't love his mother.

As I write these words, they are somewhere in some dark, and dank prison cell trying to sort out how the actual fuck this happened to them. They have little to no clue as to how careless they were, and no idea who "betrayed" them. They will see it as a betrayal, they will curse my name (when they find it out) and damn me forever in their letter, diaries,and memories, if they survive to create any of them. That is risk I have to assume, and come to grips with once I became an informer. It is a dirty business, and you have to do some dirty things in the process, but again a boy's got to pay the rent. I am not so naive to think that the Third Section is done with me. After all, I got them their men, and that is what those bastards want. They don't care how, they aren't overmuch worried as to why, they just want results, and the day I stop providing them results, is the day that I either go back to starving, or the day I find myself in a cell of my own. It is the informer's curse be useful, or we will find a use for you, i.e. make an example of you for the encouragement of others.

It will soon become a fine line. I console myself with the fact that this particular group of fools was actually committing treason, and I take my coin not with pleasure, but with the knowledge that I did a job that needed doing, and I did it well. But what of next time? Treason doesn't, in spite of what the suspicious bastards in Third Section think, grow on trees. Certainly, this lot weren't the first group to want to rebel against the crown, and be cut down for it, nor will they be the last. But, are there really that many groups like them festering in our fair land? If there are not then perhaps.... (nice try Third Section, but I am not so foolish as to write down my "treasonous" thoughts). The enduring problem is that eventually I am going to outlive my usefulness to the Third Section, and will probably then starve, but at least the wolf is kept from the door for the nonce.

I can only imagine the terror, surprise and finally anger when the group of people I have turned in read the warrants and the reports with my name attached. A sense of betrayal will certainly sink in, and perhaps, if any of them survive, I may have to spend some time in the future looking over my shoulder for one of them bent on revenge. Luckily for me, the sentence(s) they are facing involve either them not being a problem for anyone ever again, or at least not for a very long time. The best they can hope for is exile to the wasteland that provides its own set of challenges to survival. Disease, neglect, and a less than sturdy constitution may take care of several, if not all of them. Still, I will do periodic checks on them (if they aren't shot) to make sure that I am not wandering down the street one day and walk "accidentally" into a knife that has "my name on it" fifteen or sixteen times.

For now, I will try to obscure my tracks, go back to being some relatively unknown nobody, and see if perhaps there is life after one turns one's coat. I certainly hope so, the good news, if there is any good news, is the turning of my coat is not going to be broadcast in the daily papers. That would defeat the purpose of the Third Section.. They will splash the lurid details of the "major conspiracy" that threatened the "very core of our government" and all the other buzz words that will make citizens feel safe in their beds. Those citizens don't have to know the more mundane details, that this group of people were so idealistic in their thinking that their "master plan" could  not have toppled a house of cards.

However, they will spend their time, if they are not shot, in the House of the Dead, and I will continue to be useful to the Third Section until am I not, then I may join them or I may sail away to Singapore in the hopes of finding a new life one far, far from the maddening crowd. However, until that day arrives one must just wait and hope. 

 

The Two Masons

This is the story of two masons, their names for the purpose of this story are Pierre and Jacques those aren't their real names, and they may not actually be real people. That's for me to know, and for you not to worry about. Your job, if you choose it, is to read, and hopefully enjoy, the story of the Two Masons.

This story starts simply enough with two masons. Bricklayers to the common folk of the world, but they prefer the term mason. It's like saying something is "organic". If you hire a bricklayer you get them cheap, if you hire a mason, you've stepped up a class to impress the neighborhood, and you get the privilege of paying an additional fee. The Johnson's next door need to learn their place, so you hired a mason to do your work, not some low class "brickie" that talks in a funny accent.

Pierre and Jacques did their living, working, breeding, and dying in the same city. A city of moderate size, big enough to accommodate a fair number of masons without being so small that they continually got in each other's way.  It was a city that provided its own set of challenges, it had its toffs who thought that a certain percentage of the population just didn't exist, and if they did exist it was only to serve them in some fashion. It had it pretentious section populated with people who thought the toffs were only there to give them money while they slummed around and "found themselves". It also had it slums, the areas where the people whom the toffs didn't like to think existed struggled to exist. A large(r) part of this particular town than the city fathers would like to admit at fancy dinner parties, but again that's what cities are, good, bad, and ugly.

Each of them had their niche, a set of jobs that they preferred to do, for the most part Jacques worked in the dirtier, less beautiful part of the city. He did good work, and had a considerable number of customers. His theory was that squalid has it own sort of beauty that just needs a little more attention to become breathtaking. He was fond of saying "that any damn fool can make the cathedral of Florence look good, it takes talent to make a stone tower glow".  Maybe he was right, or maybe he was just lazy, or just not quite good enough for the toffs of the city to hire. Either way he made his living with some aplomb, and even had the occasional success that surprised his colleagues and critics (who were generally the same group of people).  He was fond of heights, repeatedly saying that "things always look different from higher up". However, given the part of town, and the types of commissions he usually took, he didn't get to indulge his fondness for heights overmuch. I suppose "a boy's got to pay the rent" was his main theory when it came to his work.

Pierre preferred the toffs, the people who had disposable income that he liked for them to dispose into his pockets. He wasn't exactly the "pretty people's mason" but he was one that at least they used frequently enough to know his first name. He was clever enough to know that most pretty people are fickle, and they liked options. After all, what's the point of having all that money, if you don't have options?  Not a fan of any particular style, Pierre, would build anything pretty much anywhere, if the money was right, and the mood struck him.  He had his moods, did our Pierre, and sometimes he would retreat from his work like Napoleon retreating from the Russian winter of 1812. Rarely did these "retreats" last very long. Pierre liked the work, and the work generally liked him. Because he got bored easily, he liked to have multiple projects going at once. Based upon the theory that "the more the merrier".

Our two masons knew each other, but not particularly well. They worked, drank, and played in different circles, and their paths crossed only occasionally.  They rarely, if ever, bid on the same job. Jacques wasn't good at talking to the toffs, being the first mason in his family, and the offspring of a bricklayer while Pierre was "as smooth as goose shit on glass" and knew when the toffs were vulnerable to his sales pitch, and was an expert in timing and tailoring his pitch to that vulnerability. Neighbors across the street put up some ostentatious piece of frivolity that is throwing shade  (in both a literal and figurative sense)upon your grand estate? Then call Pierre, he can soothe your wounded pride, and help you build something equally frivolous, and maybe even at half the price if you want it enough.

Pierre preferred to work during the summer months the "hot" time of year when the brickwork was pliable and soft and easier to mold. "Heat is a wonderful thing, it increases the ardor, and allows for some truly eye pleasing works of art" he would say.  Jacques, by contrast, preferred the wintertime. "It might be wicked cold, and the brickwork might be a little moody, but who doesn't like a bit of a challenge now and then?" would be his reply when asked why he liked working in the cold. Cold was something he perceived as a challenge an hurdle to overcome in his own fashion, and in his own time.

They both had their successes and they both had their failures. Buildings that stood the test of time, crafted with what passed for love for these two that are still visible in their fair city today even if the mason has moved on to different projects. Nothing that rivaled the work of Brunelleschi, after all he was an engineer and a genius with a flair that our masons were either unwilling or unable to match. If you want a dome call Brunelleschi, if you want an orangery or a stone tower call Jacques, or if you are a toff call Pierre. Of the two, Jacques knew the limits of his talent more clearly, and perhaps that was his problem the self doubt about his limits sometimes kept him from understanding that his mark was lower than the actually talent limit he possessed. Pierre knew no limits. His was a confidence born of both success, and a unshakable self belief that would allow him to attempt almost any project that could hold his wandering interest. It's not that Jacques didn't wander, he possessed a great deal of wanderlust in his own right, it was just his field of wandering was limited by his doubting his own talent.

They had their failures as well, projects that could never get past the foundational stage, projects that after the stone had been dressed, it just refused to come together into anything that any self-respecting (and they both possessed a great deal of self-respect) mason would attempt to build. Dressed stone, the type used in ashlar masonry was a particular weakness with them both. They both preferred the rougher hew of an undressed bit of masonry the type used in rubble masonry, claiming that it was an easier medium in which to work.  Jacques was much more into rubble masonry because he claimed the requirement of regular courses stifled his creativity. 

They weren't rivals and they weren't exactly friends. They knew of each other, and of each other's work but rarely did their paths cross either professionally or personally.  Except on the rare occasion, when a local builder who wasn't a toff or a prole needed a bit of work "done" (as the saying goes). The building itself was complete, but there was some recent expansion that hadn't gone quite to plan, and the builder found themselves with the sudden, unexpected need of a new mason. Sadly, (as it turned out later) Jacques didn't notice the fine cracks that were showing in the facade of the building, and being a mostly honest type told the builder "everything is grand, don't ruin a good thing by complicating the brickwork already in place".  Pierre, being more of a chancer, and perhaps a bit more perceptive explained to the builder the flaws in the building, but at first decided that the repairs were either beneath him, or that he didn't have the proper feeling of the builder's plan to make the building "up to code" again. 

Eventually, Pierre convinced the builder that the cracks were slightly more serious than they actually were, and obtained the commission to make the building "right as rain".  He managed it just, and for a while all was right in the world at least for the builder and Pierre. Jacques, ass out of the commission was at first a bit put out, but eventually started to work on his own grand tower for some towering queen that most people were unable to know. Both of our "heroes" loved stone because of its smoothness Jacques because it was cold, Pierre because of its earthly smell. Neither were above the task of picking pebbles out of a drain, but neither ever claimed they were themselves stones.