The Village Workers- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

The village workers

 Taken from our Lives as Fiction- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013

My fellow workers and I at the chateau are driven to work, tough laborious hours right through the night. Our village is right at the foot of a valley, which is hemmed in on every side by the forceful bust of the mountains that dominate the landscape for miles around. We ourselves work at the château catering, cooking, cleaning and entertaining our new arrivals that are over several numbers in force. The new arrivals are so many, that we simply cook for many outside the door of the main hallway. We carry out silver canteens full of soup and hot coffee for the new arrivals but they are so boisterous in their activities and so restless in their pursuits that they simply barge in through the great white vestibules of the main entrance to demand free board, food and lodging. 

They wear great big, bulky knapsacks; carry suitcases and some play the accordion outside so to busk in the hope of making easy money. We have had to ask our regular guests to leave since we have no room for our regulars because the new arrivals have taken up all the free living space we have on each floor and every inch of the attic has been cleared out so several dozen men and women can sleep their at night. Over the past week we have seen the new arrivals come in greater numbers, some beg for assistance and then threaten us with force if we don’t agree to their demands, so eventually we succumb to their demands. One of our guests has decided to bend his knees in acrobatic style at the back of the airing cupboard, another sleeps in our large spacious luxury bath, while several men have decided to sleep in our very own meat room, but after awhile they could not tolerate the intense cold conditions so they decided to lay themselves down in our own main dining room in their sleeping bags and some even play their accordions out the main dormer windows at the front entrance so to persuade and entice some people who might be passing by the main boulevard to search for a café. I eventually found myself suffering from insomnia with the sound of men playing their accordions out my front dinning room windows, serenading the screeching sound of the alley cats who came to hear all the loud clamour of the noisy new arrivals who never seem to sleep whatsoever. When I told one man at the main vestibule to go asleep, he simply smiled and stuck his palm out as if in expectation for some sort of payment. 

Many a day has gone by where my staff has been cooking, cleaning and entertaining the new arrivals and they have been suffering the effects of absolute exhaustion from the incessant work that I have begged the others to complete. The main boulevard itself has been left vacant of all the old tourists, the regular people from our great traditional espirit de corps for culture and the old gentry that once lived in their great prosperous dwelling places on the mountains above, even they cannot be seen anymore, for the street is filled with the new arrivals who have stated that the main street is now to be renamed, and that the main fountain shall be demolished so that they can build and make way for the construction of their own stalls and little convenience stores. They themselves have now got the planning permission from the village council, because the mayor himself is terrified of them, he says “they’re terrible rogues for wants and demands, but I see murder in their eyes otherwise, so I wont allow myself to be on the wrong side of our new people.” The mayor himself has given a grand induction day, with several of his new announcements made all before the new arrivals in the very heart of our main boulevard. He has promised that every household must give hearty provisions to each and every new arrival so to welcome our new “brothers and sisters, to their village which will be renamed as of tomorrow to their exact requirements”. After awhile my staff began to feel the weight of the numbers and the incessant work wares us down.

By this stage we were at least several months into our new work routine and had become used to these extreme adjustments, which we have slaved and laboured for with little respect and gratitude given by the new arrivals. At this time the mayor was ousted from power, because “the majority of the people had spoken” and so they had the old mayor removed so to impose their own candidate and certain deputies and clerks to work under him were put forward. The most worrying piece of news I have received was on the fact that the old Heller Hotel opposite us was taken over, because the Hellers were threatened and driven out from the very heart of the village. The Heller family were the oldest family in the village, and they once owned half the village in their heyday. 

But now it was clearly seen out the rough the window, that Mr and Mrs Heller were looking old, gaunt and shook from the very ruins of their reputation which was lying like a funeral pyre in the face of all the desolation brought to their own very door. I had known them for so long and had enjoyed their company on the odd occasion, but now they were suddenly ousted form their home and age old business, since the building was to become the new fully refurbished centre for new- new arrivals and the centre was set up for the education of new arrivals so make them more qualified and more intelligent than the old village dwellers themselves. My maligned workers have tried several times to leave, but the new village protection force (which was set up by the new arrivals as a means of defending and protecting the rights of the new villagers who have stated that the villagers must not leave under no circumstances whatsoever) have held them under arrest so to be detained until further notice by the village superintendent himself. Over time I have witnessed all the old mansions on the mountains above, which were once occupied by the aristocratic gentry, taken and possessed now by the mayor, his four wives, his deputies, the superintendent and the members of the village protection force.

Me, my wife, my four children and my staff have been given our official orders in regards to what our function is so to “serve the best interest of the village” and such a function is to create a public hostel for the new arrivals who are waiting on the new housing list and are currently without board and lodging. I have to say that my family are tormented by the recurrent demands made to us; we are busy night and day in our huge kitchens trying to feed the masses, cook, and bake from dawn until dusk. All I hear is the sound of exotic music drifting up on through the doors of my front dinning room, the sound of grown men fighting for the last scraps of food and what mere monetary provisions I have been instructed to provide for them and all this has helped to rid me of my last crumb of sanity and patience in this village gone mad!

All our neighbours have gone to live in the sea, that is all I know, the note left on every door stated “gone to live in the sea, the land is taken, we are all enemies of the village and enemies of the new state, so we must go and live our new lives in the sea, where we will try to find affordable housing and employment with the sharks, the dolphins, the crabs and the fishes.” I and my family have been ordered to stay here, we are of maximum importance to the state, for we are the midwives of the village and our job is to feed, to house and entertain the new arrivals which come in droves every day, while all my physical strength has weaned in recent times, but alas I cannot do a thing, for my chateau is no longer mine and I am a man with a duty to feed the multitudes of the villagers, for we are the strangers and the real guests in this remote obsolete land that is so strange to us, for who are we amongst the growing tide of the city people and their law. Who are we?