The street was blocked by a large brocade. The fabric was tall as a building and reached all the way over the street. It was white, strong and ornamented with red flowers and yellow birds, so strong indeed that it hadn't ripped when a fierce wind blew through the street. Instead the long tree trunks to which the brocade fabric was nailed, and which in turn had been attached to the buildings at each side of the street, had been torn out of the wall. The long steel screws that had been drilled to hold it all together stuck out like thin teeth from the wood.
Behind the brocade a diverse group were waiting in tense silence. Hooligans, local shop owners, far-left terrorisers, old women from the care home and riff-raff from this and neighbouring neighbourhoods. They all knew that the police was closing in, but they couldn't see anything for that enormous piece of flowery cloth that blocked the eyesight and made sound tactical decisions very hard. They had prepared, of course. They were armed with steel rods, broken bottles and small firearms.
"We should've made 'oles in it," a young girl without her front teeth said. "The wind is gonna be our worst enemy."
"So they would be able to see us through it! Think lass!" and old wino in a kimono said. “They would cut us down with machine gun fire before we could say, daft pigs.” He was holding a frying fork in his left hand, and even though he was dirty, fat and miserable, he frankly looked very dangerous – even in this crowd.
"Shit! We are gonna die," a large bald man whimpered.
A mate struck him over the head. "Shut up you wimp. You know that the brocade will protect us. It's holy! Sister Ross-Meyer said so, and she is never wrong." He nodded knowingly. "My gran says so and she is never wrong."
Another violent gust of wind tore at the brocade. It held, but the tree trunk that had already been torn out of the wall came loose even more. It made a violent creaking sound, and some bricks fell down. A hiss went through the crowd, but when nothing more happened, people calmed down.
"We might die here today. But remember brothers and sisters – we fight for something Imp... " Someone hit the speaker, and the proclamation ended in a nasty fight between what looked like two factions of the crowd.
Then suddenly the wind rose, the brocade was filled like a sail, the trunk tore loose from the wall and was thrown into the crowd, ripped free from the fabric. It flew and rolled through the hundreds of people gathered. They screamed. Terrible sounds of anger and pain. Part of the building to which the trunk had been attached began to collapse, sending rubble and dust into the already wild wind. And it was then – while the gigantic piece of brocade flapped wildly in the wind, and the air was white with particles of mortar and plaster – that they all saw that it was not the police who awaited them behind the curtain, but a solemn cast of commedia dell'arte actors.
Pulcinella lifted his right hand in the papal gesture of benediction, and the play began.
