by Mari Reiza
I could foresee that even when Clara would have made it to Father and accumulated power and money, this would be no protection for her being a stick at a party. She reminded me of that mechanical doll, Olympia, in Les Contes d’Hoffman, an automaton created by a cruel inventor. Except even with magic glasses on, I could not have fallen in love with her. It looked like she periodically ran down and needed to be wound up before she could continue, and you feared that at some point she would fall and break into many pieces.
Her dress sense did not help either; you would have been excused for believing she was a rare vintage fashion icon, but no, she truly was wearing her grandmother’s coat, an austere religious conservative woman from Asturias (Clara wasn’t even strictly Latina). She complemented it with nun shoes and a tight chignon, and you had the feeling that a hair escaping from that chignon could have prompted the inquisition because, ‘Only whores wear hair across their face.’
At that time, my Squad had been tasked with empowering Peter’s (and my) small New York client, an industry body, by creating a fourth external advisory committee, differing but overlapping in remit to three already existing committees. Yet another committee that would tell the organisation which position to take on certain issues, or possibly rubber stamp the positions they were already taking as decided by the other committees. All the usual waste of time we loved to lengthen.
Except that the loser we were dealing with at the patient was out of The Sopranos, and he wanted to knife his colleague, a perfect Aryan American of German descent named Heinrich, who was heading the third overlapping committee which another of our Squads was advising on. I hope it’s all as clear to you, Reader, as it was to us.
We had our own stab at the way things had gone to arrive at such a complicated state of business. We concluded our direct contact at the patient, ‘Tony Soprano’, had asked his CEO, a Mr. Fortaleza, for an Enterprise budget, because he felt that having his own personal matones elevated him in status. Mr. Fortaleza happened to be a smart, cynical guy who enjoyed a good fight so he had given both teams, Tony’s and Heinrich’s, budgets large enough for a sustained debauchery. It was obvious that the dynamics of our engagement would be complex. We knew we were playing a game of many pieces, where the potential for real wins looked remote, but this would have us busy on and off making dosh for the whole of 2006 and a good part of 2007 (with two teams!) and that is what I needed to be doing for now to get up there with Peter-Moses.
And it was fun.
Heinrich ran a rational and tidy team and co-operated with his Enterprisers, whilst our team worked pretty much like I could have imagined a Colombian drugs gang would, with nightly ‘I am gonna rip out your heart and eat it for breakfast’ calls from Tony Soprano at 2.30 am. In addition, we had the problem that Clara was enjoying all the attention from Mr. Soprano, who suffered from a nun fetish. Although in truth, I eventually saw this as a positive, and very much hoped that she would at least lose her virginity as a result of her project staffing, so that whatever happened I could claim to have achieved my second goal: Developing Better Mankind (DBM).
Keeping up morale
We really wanted to be seen as caring at Enterprise, to help our peers and juniors in their struggle.
As a Confrère, I had Rich, Matt and even cocky Mike running down my neck because they could not find time do their music, or to fuck their girl, or host their orgies, or whatever it was. I would have been happy to throw money at the problem, from my perspective it always worked. But NO, that was not the way at Enterprise.
We talked and talked about the problem at their level, at my level, at the highest of levels. At all levels, really, to hear ourselves talk. We loved over-obsessing about our health index which we had built to track hundreds of parameters other than money, naturally.
Next, we set up committees for initiatives to tackle any shortcomings we had identified, which were never real shortcomings but merely things we did well but could do even better. We surveyed each and every individual, let them have a voice (except for PEN-ers’ survey forms, which went straight to the bin because they weighed one in a million in any case versus a real Enterpriser and were not worth the effort to be counted), and cut and recut the data we obtained from these so thinly, anyone could work out what other people had answered and no one wanted to fill the damned surveys in anymore. They hardly ever changed anything anyway, the surveys, but led to more working groups making our juniors, who were of course the ones ultimately charged with discussing and solving their own problems, busier. And to Bev making more and more laughable speeches.
But still none of us would have time to host our orgies, do our music, fuck our wives – even though mine would not have had me anymore at that stage.
Tobias was one of the most eager to help with the problem of facilitating a healthier life for Enterprisers, even if he was one of the worst offenders when it came to time at work.
‘Do we consider him the best suited to lead this initiative?’ Nobody listened to me.
I worried that Tobias was somewhat unstable, and perhaps not the best man for the job, but he was more caring than Trojan, and Alakrita. He soon had a whole new website built called BALANCE, which talked about physical well-being, leisure time and study experience. The pictures looked great. In red there were some coordinators’ phone numbers which never rang. Nobody dared to be the guinea pig, in case the whole thing was a trick to weed out the slackers.
To soften our pain further, Tobias also came up with Fun and Inspiring schemes for our troops. Under Inspiring, he launched Female Specials (FS), with lady peer stories shared once a week with photos stuck to Enterprise office toilet doors all over the globe.
Alakrita went AWOL. ‘I am deeply humiliated,’ she said, and it took a lot for her to be humiliated.
I found it disturbing myself, to have the eyes of a female colleague on glossy paper, looking at me whilst I was struggling to have a shit in the two minutes between the tenth and the eleventh conference call of my morning. I couldn’t concentrate.
Tobias and his team ravaged their brains for more.
Nuts and Bolts (N&B) of how to make it; TREWS, standing for true news, hectoring apathetic Enterprisers to feel pride in our role in the world; Straight Talking (ST), inspiring stories on imparters facing courageously key moments of truth; Two Minutes at Two (2@2) to reflect on emails from our CEO, learning something new every day; Celebrating Inspirational Leaders Survey (CILS) because admiration was intoxicating.
But it was not good enough and many of our troops still couldn’t take the pressure.
Then Nal got involved too.
‘Good is standard at Enterprise, and we all have stretch goals but seldom is our individual person congratulated, only the Enterpriser in us,’ he exposed at a senior meeting.
It was amazing. Nal was recognising publicly that it could be tough, which would come as a great relief to many of our juniors, to hear a god like Nal humbling himself.
Next, he would come up with a bulletproof process, he promised.
‘To hold ourselves together when things go wrong. If the shit hits the fan in an instruction, the Squad should re-group and hug,’ he said and designed a special hug and gave it a name, branded it. It was the ‘We’re so Good We’re Misread (WGWM)’ hug, after which we would never bring whatever cock-up we were hugging about up again.
‘It is a Hug & Bury strategy,’ Trojan had defined it.
And the whole process as designed by Nal and endorsed by Trojan took off and became a hug-e success, and a neat way to relieve some of the pressure off our soldiers. We needed to preserve our dignity, to leave our reputations and confidence intact; it was the only way and we were all hugely indebted to Nal. Still, my juniors could not find time do their music, or to fuck their girl, or host their orgies, or whatever it was.
After the toilet Female Special fiasco, Nal still encouraged Tobias to continue his work to devise alternative Fun for Enterprisers, because he didn’t want to be seen as taking over.
He only gently suggested that he change tack slightly.
So, Tobias had his minions brainstorm for him in working groups some more, to come up with a Global Friday Bingo (by conference call), Monthly Enterprise Fit Run, and Mid-week Chocolate Eggs. It was also agreed that Bev would send scented candles as presents to the PEN-ers (even to the boys) once a year, accompanied by a handwritten card, to help make their corral a bit more human. Tobias had a soft spot for the PEN-ers and we soon discovered why.
His plan backfired though.
‘Is it Bev’s handwriting?’ somebody complained about the card.
‘Hardly.’
‘It looks like her secretary’s.’
‘It’s scanned in and photocopied, does that count as original?’
PEN-ers discussed the matter for days whilst the Enterprise requests grid was collapsing, and they came to the conclusion that it was Julia’s writing after all, Bev’s assistant.
‘It is still better than Daniel’s presents though,’ Rich concluded.
The story went that Daniel, the Truth Leader who had founded Enterprise’s gay society, Allure, had weeks before taken possession of a very coveted corner office with great views of the advertising boards of Leicester Square, in front of the PEN-ers favela. Unpacking one of his boxes following his move, he had found some unwanted coffee he had been sent after working for the CEO of Starbucks or some other coffee place. (Maybe that was why Enterprise Squads all over the world had their breakfast coffee from Starbucks?)
Daniel had stormed out of his office with a grin like some Médecins sans Frontières doctor about to save the world, showering the PEN-ers with free coffee they did not want either.
When Rahim saw the scene, as he arrived from the bathroom, he had thought that he was having a hallucinatory experience from the new rejuvenating face cream he had just applied, mixing with the UV protection factor that he had slapped on earlier in the morning. But it wasn’t. It was the real Daniel, giving out real Starbucks coffee as if it was gold nuggets.
After the nervous laughs, thank-yous and giggles from the PEN-ers, Daniel had gone back into his office and never spoken to them again, not even to say good morning when he strolled in at around 11 am most days, complaining about his wilted office petunias.
It was following Daniel’s sad incident, and the disappointment about Bev’s handwriting, that Peter-Moses decided to rock the boat to make fun of what he called ‘All the keeping up morale bullshit’.
The man had recently bought a twenty-eight-metre cruising yacht he had named Virtue that he was mooring in the Bahamas. He must have had a good bonus. And one day he sent an email to Enterprisers-All inviting ANYBODY to join him for boat trips around the islands during weekends. The emails read, ‘Believe me, my young friends, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about on boats.’ He signed it Kenneth Grahame.
Had Peter the Coventry chav been read Kenneth by his truck-driving dad as a child?
You had to give it to Peter, that he was a first class arse. And I just could not imagine anyone anywhere wanting to do or be anything else but him. How could I ever leave Enterprise?
II
DISCIPLESHIP
8
Nuria Friedman to Vittal Choudhary, August 2020
My dear Vittal,
I empathise with your struggle to distinguish between reality and imagination. But there is nothing wrong with imagination. Putting real people in a book is very dangerous indeed and we all know what you perceive can be more accurate than what you remember.
Would you rather be a mercenary to the precision of events?
Reality is a big misunderstanding of humanity.
Your story does not need to be faithful to what occurred but to your heart. And it cannot be lukewarm. It needs to feel powerful and real even if you detach yourself from it. I thought that I had chosen you because you were brave, so do not let me down. The key thing is, don’t forget to write important things. People will always hate you anyway for one reason or another but that is fine, otherwise you would be writing rubbish. Remember the reader wants to go to bed feeling that they have understood the whole Creation. Readers want writers who dare to show their vulnerability standing naked, who transmit their fear so that they can sense it too, how it feels when you can lose everything. If you are looking to free yourself, you know that it is the only way.
I also want to believe that you are more than a little Alceste by Molière quick to criticise the flaws of everyone around you then shy away to a life of solitude. I sense that you will find meaning and search to rebuild. You want to believe in people again, you need to. From the ashes, you want to raise characters that feel, love and laugh, and stand up for themselves and for a better world. But you know that this cannot happen until your story is told, until you take responsibility for your part in it. You have to dehumanise to rehumanise. You, as much as me, want to understand so that you can live again.
My dear Vittal, I do not want to torture you for nothing, but it is my job. We both know what the story is about, about the connections that should have been and were not made between people and about boundaries. About happiness and the fear of failure. About love and power, about collective faith and individual identity, stability and disintegration. About the real and the imaginary that we make real, the sound and the insane and who decides. It is all dead serious, and I am sure that we will need to laugh to deal with the pain. Feel free to be as acerbic as you want, I do not care, but do not lie to yourself. People love hoaxes in theory from the distance, but they also hate being tricked.
Believe me, I am not immune to the plea for warmth from your conceited self, opening to love again. You want my heart? Write for it.
Your devoted correspondent,
Ms. Nuria Friedman
9
The Triple Bagger 2. Hôtel Mansart, Paris, July 2014
She can hear the rolling sound of his bag along the corridor, a slur and a clunk like a muffled version of the old coaches.
‘I knew it was you,’ she says when he opens the door.
‘You should have worked for MI5,’ he replies all cheerful, and plays a James Bond pose.
Just for me, she thinks. She is in such a jolly mood too today, it must be Paris making her blood boil, her body turning into a lava flow.
He is wearing light trousers and a Cambridge blue shirt under a tailored jacket, Persol sunglasses. The tailor has done a great job. Something about the jacket is rejuvenating. Money can easily buy good design but so often it doesn’t, there is so much dull out there, she thinks to herself. But this one jacket is a bravura of sorts. Everything about his clothes today is claiming him for the open air, a sports car on the bendy roads to the Bassin d’Arcachon. He takes his jacket off and hangs it on the chair by a table, in front of the window, and leaves the glasses on the table surface by the lamp. Who is this man? She wonders if she would be better or worse knowing more. In all likelihood, he has a large family house somewhere to keep his wife and kids safe. Does she care? His face is soft and he has a good smile, with warm eyes. He looks athletic and has great hair, and she is still working out what makes him tick. He is looking at her.
‘A Givenchy today,’ she says, ‘because we are in France.’
Baby blue and orange satin with black lace appliqués, pleated on the skirt. She knows that it is an irresistible piece, one that has the capacity to spellbind the viewer and the viewed. With it on, she feels like the incarnation of something grand, bright against the rubble, serene but open to new adventures.
He thinks how they must look, their worn-out bodies stretched in the exalted air of that tiny room, lighting up like landscapes. He has placed his bags near the chair and moved to the window. No skyline. Only the warm walls of nearby buildings. ‘That’s Paris hotel rooms for you,’ he sighs.
She did not think that he was going to come to see her today.
They make themselves a drink, gin and tonics from the room’s minibar. She has to s
it on the bed because there is only that one chair by the desk for him. Her expensive satin rubs against the cheap bedspread. Some books fill the shelves behind her. Random fictions old guests have read and left there, probably because they did not enjoy them or because they had no space in their luggage. There is more looking than talking but they exchange some pleasantries. She irons out wrinkles in her dress and fiddles with her cigarettes to pass the time and fill pauses gracefully.
Then he is back to his story. His child from Alonissos, the triple bagger, was now a young man full of desire but burdened by duty. ‘He was making Ikosians proud, travelling across the Mediterranean, advising kings and statesmen with great skill. There were never enough hours in the day.’ He pauses. ‘One day, he went on a visit to a wealthy businessman from one of the Dalmatian islands. He had come from the Greek mainland and was making his way up the coast. The sun was bright above the thin clouds, lending to the scene a silvery glow leaching the sea of colour. The islands looked like hips of grey dust on the calm sea waters, and the breeze blowing inland carried a tangy smell.’
He looks at her looking at him, probably thinking how it will all finish, that no ending exists that could bring his feelings justice.
‘Following a pleasant enough boat trip from a small harbour, the man reached the island where the wealthy merchant lived. The people of this island were not used to Ikosians,’ he assures her. ‘This was not Athens, and it was not full of wealthy people requiring their advice. Therefore, the man was preparing himself for the grimace of disgust as inhabitants saw his face, but they would also understand from the rest of his appearance that he was a powerful man.’
