From the very beginning, they asked me, not once but again and again, what it was that was so special about our leader. It wasn’t that they were curious about why people were drawn by the thousands to him. They simply wanted to be able to recognise and arrest him. You would have thought this would have been easy enough. After all he travelled all over the place and he taught openly. But, strange as it seems, identifying him had proved a real problem to the authorities. Why, this year alone they had taken in six men, each of whom claimed to be the leader. Funny, isn’t it? The special police actually executed one poor wretch. And, just when they thought their troubles were over, the incidents began all over again in another part of the country.

I clearly remember the morning I first met him. I was lounging against a tree by the market-place, watching the housewives haggling, and wondering if they did the same in bed with their husbands. Yes, I spend a lot of my time watching the goings-on at street corners … and day-dreaming. My mother complains bitterly about this. “You should get a job, Ju,” she grumbles. “Earn some money. What good’s a son to a widowed old mother if she has to work her fingers to the bone just to keep body and soul together?” And, believe me, once Mum starts on this tack, very little can stop her.

I was just beginning to doze when something woke me sharply. It took me a while to realise that the whole street had suddenly gone quiet. I could see the housewives still bargaining, but their voices were hushed and their gestures less violent. At first I thought it must be a raid by the special police. These raids are common, the cops sweeping through crowded places looking for freedom fighters (they call them subversives, of course). And you know what the police are like—ready to pick up any layabout they can find if there’s no one else suitable. I stood up quickly, got ready to run and found myself looking straight into his face.

An ordinary face, it was. Soft perhaps, with gentle doggy eyes in which I could see myself quite clearly. He smiled and nodded, agreeing that the reflection I stared at was truly my own and in that same movement he called me to him. I left the tree and joined his group. There wasn’t anything unusual about them—Sy, Jim, Tom, Andy—and we shared no great secret. Then why did we follow him? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.

“What’s so different about his brand of subversion anyway?” asked the deputy chief of the special police. “Why, even squabbling rebel groups want to join him.” People in his line of work tend to answer the questions they ask and the deputy was no exception. I would have laughed but controlled myself. Guys like the deputy have no sense of humour and, what is worse, turn quickly to violence.

So I said, “He talks about a universal brotherhood and—”

“Ah-ha,” he interrupted. “Wants to get all the subversive groups under his leadership.”

“… and love,” I added limply.

The deputy scratched his bald head. “Now, that’s a bit puzzling.” He frowned for a while, then suddenly brightened. “I see, I see. Wants his followers to know he’s not against a bit of fun and games, eh?”

“Not quite…” I began.

“Anyway,” he snapped. “Who cares? What we want to do is to nab the bastard.” He laughed and turned to his lieutenant.

“You know they say he’s actually a bastard—illegitimate, I mean.”

The young man laughed and the deputy continued, “Getting a positive ID has been a real pain in the arse. The bastard,” he chuckled again at the word, “seems to be everywhere and everybody. Zeus wept, you wouldn’t believe the number of chaps who claim to be him! All ordinary enough blokes.” He shook his head. “Refusing to admit, even under intense interrogation, that they are just Joe Blow the cobbler and not the great leader.” He turned to me. “You really think the festival is a good time to get him, do you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We’ll be having dinner together and the best time to pick him up will be immediately after this. Just ask your men to keep close to me and there’ll be no mistakes.” It seemed a good time to bring it up so I added, “Could you pay me in gold, sir?”

“Gold?” he said, looking sternly round the room. “Why gold? Don’t you trust our currency?”

“It’s not that, sir,” I wheedled. “But it’s my old mother, sir. She says these are troubled times and gold is the only thing you can trust.” I looked abject. “You must understand, sir, we will have to move to another town if my part in all this comes out.”

Gold, the deputy said, would be hard to get at such short notice, so we finally settled on silver. I hope I got the exchange rate right. Mum would be really mad if I was short-changed. She was planning to buy the house at the bottom of the street. The one with the biggish garden and its own well. At last, she said, her boy was going to be able to give her something she had wanted all her life—a house of her own. I was happy at the thought.

Most people were booked out for the festival but Sy (trust him!) finally found us a joint a little out of town. It wasn’t a classy place, mind you, but at least we had a room to ourselves. Sy always insists on a private room. Feels more comfortable, I guess, as he usually drinks too much and often falls asleep during the meal.

Dinner over, someone suggested a walk in a nearby garden. A good idea, since most of us had eaten and drunk too much. I looked around as we left the place. There were a few blokes hanging about looking pretty liquored up. They certainly didn’t look like members of the special police. Anyway, none of them made a move to follow us.

The leader seemed a little agitated and went off by himself as soon as we reached the garden. The rest of us dozed, lying on the grass or propping ourselves up against the trees. There was no sign of the special police. Well, perhaps they’d changed their plans. Even arrested someone else claiming to be the leader. Yes, that must have been what had happened. I was glad and at peace.

When the leader returned he was wonderfully calm and we all began walking slowly through the still, dark garden. Suddenly we were surrounded by men carrying torches. These they thrust into our faces. Their light was hot, blinding.

“Which one is he?” they shouted, shoving us about. “Which one’s the great revolutionary leader?” I heard the sound of a slap. “Come on, come on. We haven’t got all night, you know.”

Any one of us there could have betrayed him: Sy, a coward always, but especially so now that the effect of the wine was wearing off; Tom, the sceptic and sophist who would find, later, some justification for his action. But I was the one who had taken the silver…

I looked across at the leader. There was no way the police could distinguish him from the rest of us. No, it wasn’t he who had become like us. It was we who had become like him. A great love welled up inside me. I walked over and took his face in my hands and kissed him. There was no way of knowing whether the tears I tasted were mine or his.

Then I was thrown to the ground. I heard the sound of clubs landing on flesh and the leader scream as a bone snapped. After this he was fairly quiet, only moaning occasionally as a blow fell or a boot found its mark. The moans became fainter as they dragged him away, but my body continued to hurt as though it was still being pummelled, and I am certain that the tears that streamed down my face were not produced by my eyes alone.