Mary’s Visit

We are not to be squeamish as to the ruthlessness of  bureaucratic power, as Kafka knew prior to the Great War at the heart of Europe’s then federal empire. Ninety years later a new sullen federal Eurocracy, incorporating Britain, was in the making, based in Brussels, that brooked no subversion. Its parliament had decreed that Europe’s prisons should be vaster but fewer; and legislated capability to contain, if not stifle, ideological opponents upholding the sanctity of ethnicity, was at work.  One such silenced opponent was Mary’s imprisoned lover.