In an odd sense the ravages and fires had leveled centuries of complacency and gave way to modern progress and within a decade very little of the scars remained, but one need not look too far to see them.
It also came to pass that Sophie and I married and began a family. We raised a littler of three, two daughters and the youngest a son. The new Commissar gave me a job in this new Republic and I found myself sitting in my old office, at my old desk. Although fire and artillery shells had gutted the old Politiburo, the building was left standing and even though it stood for the old regime, a sense of undue pride mandated we preserve the structure.
There were a few nicks on the corner of my desk made by some bullet rounds and you could follow them and trace them to holes in the wall, most have been plastered over, but if you know where to look you can feel the grooves and divets.
Sophie wanted to hang up pictures and paintings, some recovered from the Montresor that unfortunately burned to the ground taking with it many priceless masterpieces. I took one painting that Ingrid was fond of.
My salary was a mere fraction of what it was. The old ways, the status of a signatory were all a memory and I was simply a citizen. Even the Commissars, were now elected officials and the old Colonel a representative of our peers. He was gifted the authority to select his staff and while he chose many of our colleagues from the former Politiburo, it was necessary as they knew how to govern and could quickly restart the world.
The names of bureaus, station chiefs and so on may all have changed, the emblems and logos also different, but the faces all appeared the same and one could be forgiven when walking through the lobby and hallways of the old Politiburo now renamed the Central Administration, that nothing had changed.
I ate a simple meal delivered by a box cart. A scraggly old man ambled through the hallways hawking his wares and we each picked an item and paid the man. How he made it up the stairs we never knew.
The monthly meetings were the same and the Commissars convened. They were much longer affairs and lasted through the day and sometimes extended into the next. There were more austere measures and none of the whisky and cigars in cordial smaller groups, only coffee and stale donuts. The more miserable the offerings the more noble and honorable it all was. Or so this was the ways of the Central Administration.
Acronyms became very popular and my title as the Commissar Senior Attache of Domestic Affairs and Inquiry was the CSADAI or shortened CADI and pronounced like how you would call someone who carried one's clubs on a golf course. Where ever possible all acronyms started with CA, even if it didn't represent the Central Administration.
The wide boulevards spanned like fingers from the City Center and became the arteries of a new life blood that pulsed. Each named after a great hero of the greatest war. The city itself was renamed Gustaf in honor of Sigmund.
I saved part of a spare donut left on a meeting tray. As it was my duties to fill the coffee pot and set the round pastries for each meeting. Wrapped in a luxurious napkin that somehow was spared and a memory of a bygone era, I slipped it into my coat pocket. The grease already congealed and pooling into a darkened corner that made me wonder if I should have used an extra napkin.
Food scarcity was still a major concern and would make for a good excuse to shoot the old Commissar Peter over crop reports. The fields that were once lush and giving, had been salted and spoiled and while each year we flushed and cleansed what we could, it would take time. Everything was rationed and we each apportioned a ration card with specific times and dates on where and when we could redeem them.
Even the choices were quite spartan and there really was only the choice of the same loaf of bread, the same tin of coffee or salted beef. A small bag of vegetables and fruits were a luxury as was anything that we took for granted in abundance.
Gratefully, a CADI's salary was more than adequate in a time when everyone had only a monthly ration card and it afforded the small luxuries Sophie so missed. Many of the old shops remained and their shelves while spaced more strategically, carried all the items she wanted. It became a game of sort that I recall Oliver and Ingrid playing with the Montresor, now over a pot of jam or cheese and wine.
My other joy, the Island had been wiped off the map and no longer exists. Nor was it replaced or deemed necessary. The camps remained and so too the penal system under a new Commissar who no longer was responsible for the secret police. That social apparatus of intrigue was now under a different commander, my old Colonel.
Even the lowly title of CADI afforded armed guards, a pair of young boys in ill fitting trench coats who followed me everywhere. Their rifle butts clanking on their belts, but were of a high quality and fresh ammunition that never missed. Still amateurs when my time I had full fledged and seasoned officers as attache's. Now I have young recruits who did not know how to salute properly and were distracted by butterflies on a dog's nose.
It was through all this, I spent my spare evenings at a local pub. I made new friends, some knew who I was, but many knew who I am now and I could have simply worn a badge on my sleeve. There was Carl, Rupert and Brennan. Carl was an accountant for a trade organization. Rupert a construction foreman and Brennan the town drunk, but always the bearer of valuable insights.
Many illegal stills and breweries operated and the quality was dubious sometimes, but ours was more reputable and operated in the open. Most were nothing more than speakeasy's hidden behind walls and in basements, much the way they survived during the occupation. Old habits die hard.
The conversation was always the same, light and non-intrusive. We only knew each other by our first names and livelihoods. Beyond that we never pried or asked more than what was common knowledge. This was how we became friends and preferred it that way.
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