by Paul Ableman
“Was ever a girl so fortunate!” exclaims Maria, clasping her hands. “What a splendid ruse!”
It was a ruse, of course, but I am not altogether pleased to hear her mention it again. She detects the passing cloud of displeasure on my features and instantly leans back submissively.
“I have everything now,” she assures me. “I know you’re a busy man and I want you to forget all about me until your appointments are over. Forget about my breasts and legs and my irresistible seductive femininity.”
I am naturally glad that she has adopted so sensible an attitude.
“I’ll nuzzle them later,” I assure her. “I’ll help you organize these treasures and luxury commodities that I’ve bought you and then you can repay me.”
As we drive on, I can not help wondering if she will be sufficiently diverted by the mediocre scenes which seem to be all that this taxi can provide.
“Are you enjoying these scenes?” I ask her.
“I accept them,” she replies. “I’m only a simple person.”
And now I see that most of them escape her in any case. They are, on the average, very poor scenes, but occasionally we pass a more general one and then I glance at Maria only to find that she has passed it over in favor of something quite particular and unimportant. Finally the taxi pulls up.
“What am I to do with you?” I murmur, involuntarily allowing my thoughts to escape.
“Is there a problem?” asks Maria, and I am not sure whether her innocence is genuine or assumed. “I thought you had the situation well in hand?”
“You are anxious to accompany me?” I explore. “I mean you wouldn’t like to take your treasures and go somewhere and wait.”
“Where could I go? I know no one in this city,” she pleads. “I gave up my job because of you—and now you want to abandon me.”
“No, I don’t—” I begin, but the taxi-driver, in a stern voice, calls out a large sum of money and begins to manifest signs of impatience. I find that I have no money, having dispensed it all on Maria’s treasures. I begin to feel miserable again and fancy I notice a certain hard light in Maria’s eyes as if she were beginning to doubt her sagacity in accompanying me. Happily, at this stage, Arthur, who must have looked out of his office window and seen our confusion, now comes hurrying from the building and efficiently organizes matters. I am also gratified to find that his natural tact and delicacy extend to pretending that his assistance is merely a polite service rendered to an honored guest and so my worth is rather enhanced than diminished in Maria’s eyes. Later, when Maria and her parcels have been comfortably bestowed in an attractive anteroom, Arthur and I confront each other across his desk.
“Why did you bring Maria?” he asks coldly.
Behind him and a little to the right is the window and beyond that, on the other side of the street, are some more windows behind which some office girls seem to be planning a small zoo. I can not help being fascinated by their activities at the same time as being slightly despondent at the unfriendly tone of Arthur’s voice.
“Cooperate, old chap,” he urges, in slightly more sympathetic tones. “I have to ask these questions. I have to find out about your state of mind and perplexities, otherwise I’ll never be able to help you.” He stands up and walks thoughtfully about the office, trying to create, I feel, an impression of responsible benevolence, like a solicitor or doctor. “Don’t watch that zoo.”
“Is it a zoo, then?” I ask.
“It’s really a mystery to me,” he confesses. “I’ve never inquired. It wouldn’t look right. And I’ve never asked anyone about it. It seems to be a zoo.”
He comes and stands beside my chair. I feel my shoulder tingle expectantly, thinking that he is about to clasp it in brotherly fashion. The pressure does not materialize, however, and we both remain still for some time watching the office girls, who have now been joined by a red, stout and bespectacled office manager, at their unusual occupation.
“You haven’t answered my question,” he says finally. “It’s all right. Don’t shake your head in that helpless fashion. I think I know. You were lonely and thought you fancied her. Isn’t that it?”
“That’s part of it, Arthur,” I nod.
“She’s sitting out there, now,” he reports, having opened the door slightly and peered out, “surrounded by those expensive treasures you bought her. But she looks restless again already. There are some magazines there that I put out for my clients in case I have to keep them waiting. But she doesn’t show any inclination to look at them. That’s revealing. That sort of observation is always revealing. Now she’s pulling up her stocking.”
I hastily join Arthur at the crack but, by this time, Maria has let her skirt fall again. And in any case, I now notice how familiar and unenticing she is.
“She doesn’t resemble Clara,” I remark.
“Not Clara, the gazelle,” Arthur agrees, “whose skin was drawn clearer than a frosty night. Whose body, so young and newly-ripened, so delicate and shy, trembled like water under a breeze or sound. Her bones—I like to think of her bones, fragile, like shells.”
“Did you never speak to her?”
“I never met the girl. It was you who met her, touched her, spoke to her. I only knew her vicariously, I only saw her, as it were, reflected in the light of wonder and the words of admiration you brought back from your meetings with her. Her memory, her beauty is one of the few things I have from you. I must confess—I’m grateful for that.”
“That’s why I’m interested in that zoo.”
“That zoo? The zoo across the street? What has that to do with Clara?”
“That’s her, I think, the darker one cleaning that cage or manufacturing a cage, or reading that file or thinking of burning the file —”
“Is that Clara?”
Arthur moves slowly, in a dreamy way quite unlike the harassed efficiency of his normal business manner, to the window and gazes across the iridescent street. Songs, the stroking of oars across an immense but serene expanse of water, the clattering of machines, broken songs rise like herons from the street.
“I think I see,” nods Arthur. “I think I understand. Clara needed a job. She took work in that office where a man or company of men of initiative and enterprise were planning a new sort of zoo to delight the public. The project has not fared well, nor yet too badly. Although all the details of the zoo have not yet, after several years, been completed, still advance publicity, the results of questionnaires and polls distributed amongst the public in accordance with formulae of great mathematical ingenuity, the word of impartial dignitaries, editors, government officials and other influential and informed people, all seem to augur well for the undertaking. Meanwhile, in that small third-floor office across the street, a team of personnel, amongst whom our Clara is doubtless quite insignificant and junior, have labored to complete the thousand and one administrative and technical tasks contingent upon introducing a new zoo into our closely-knit and intricate society. Where is the trembling maiden you lay with in the violet hollow? Where that form, that tracery of life, lovely and ethereal as the petals of the wild poppies that brushed her slender limbs as she strolled through summer meadows? Bitten, corroded by the acid fumes of our streets. Worn, coarsened by the harsh routines of our work and play, the clamorous prospects, the unceasing rattle and roar—”
“She always looked like that,” I interrupt. “She always looked chubby and rather crooked about the mouth. Her skin always had those pores. It never looked like frosty nights. No, she was never crooked about the mouth but her face was rather thin. It made her look rather stupid and obscene. And then her hair was hair, long strands issuing from tiny holes in the scalp. She had teeth and such rubbish, bowels, kidneys, liver, bladder and heart—an organized mess inside her, and she walked on a mountain ridge, high above the cloister. I can’t honestly say that girl is Clara, because Clara was entirely different, more like Maria. You see Clara had blue eyes, little concentric blue rings on the soles of her fee
t and through these she peered grotesquely at the answering blue of days. She had blue holes in her armpits and blue testicles. Nor would she organize zoos, not for any money. You had only to meet the girl to understand that. There was a quality of elevation, of superiority to the conventional pursuits prescribed for a young lady of her rank and education that impressed everybody who rattled her. And many rattled her. Many racketed with her and tried to report her —”
“It’s no use,” cries Arthur, genuine though not very profound, more like drunken, passion registered on his face and revealed in the unnatural tension of the stance with which, having turned from the window, he confronts me. “No use at all. I can’t rely on you at all. At first you said that girl was Clara and now you deny it. You say she’s not like Clara. Well there’s a broken link, I can’t deny it. Oh, you’re proud in your own miserable way. I gave him Clara, you’re thinking, he could never have found her himself and now I’m taking her away. She is mine to dispose of. No, parasite, no, rascal, you shall not have her again—the Sunday games, the seaside games, the long journeys and make-believe games, the socks, the stuffed boxes, the important branch—all those not you but time has taken, for they were genuinely in its gift. But not Clara, no: Clara you gave sealed in the faint fragrance of violet woods and preserved by a handful of adjectives. Lovely Clara you shall not reclaim. Delicate, fresh Clara is secure from your treachery. Light, trembling Clara—”
So Arthur goes on in an extraordinary fashion. He’s done this before. First he mocks and jeers or at the very best adopts a patronizing attitude—and all this quite rightly as far as I can see—towards my helpless and often quite unpleasant ways and then suddenly he begins to rage and fume as if what I have been saying was not merely the feeble vaporings of a distracted brain but veritable holy writ. I never thought he’d remember Clara. She was only a little fantasy I consoled myself with when they laughed at me in class. And now look at him snorting and fuming and claiming eternal possession and—I hope he doesn’t do me any violence. Sometimes I feel he works himself up almost to the point of doing me real violence and he’s beginning to look pretty worked up right now.
“Maria!” I shriek, rushing to the door of the anteroom. “Maria, protect me, help! Arthur wants to hurt me—Maria—”
She gets up at once and comes into Arthur’s office. I am far from certain that she will take my part for, after all, Arthur supports her and altogether might be expected to have a larger claim on her sympathies than me. Nevertheless, I have a pretty shrewd suspicion that she will look after me, that, at least, she won’t allow any real damage to be inflicted on my island shell.
“Stop it! What is it?” she snaps, obviously nearly as upset as, by now, both Arthur and I are. “How dare you? Shouting and brawling like any ditch lads. What do you mean by it—leaving me to wait, fidgeting and wondering, yes and worrying too. And you—” she says, turning a severe look upon me where I have retired to the elevations to plot. “Oh, I was a fool—a few presents, a taxi ride and I forget all the rest. Oh a fine cavalier—and you—” now she turns her attention to Arthur, “sitting there at that desk like a prince of commerce. Sometimes I wish I’d married that Italian. Smug fool—you think you’re so important, so superior. Well you’re not, you’re just as feeble and helpless and I have to do everything for you too.”
For a moment I think she is going to weep. She stands still making little nervous movements with her head, her hands, even her tongue which reveal the pressure of as yet unexpressed sentiments inside her. But she does not weep.
“I’m not going to cry,” she announces. “That would be foolish. Crying over you two.”
And at that, of course, she does break down and weep. Arthur immediately rushes to comfort her and, while they occupy themselves in bestowing on each other the occasional pledges, assurances and consolations, with which they need periodically to reassure themselves before facing another stretch of the surly routine of living, I slip quietly away to continue my calls.
I look and see the familiar sights, the mines with their charge and volley, the cross pitch and the laggings. Cardinals pass, beating for shells, avoiding both asps and swallows and sinking their percipient lines deep in the fiber. Cardinals pass and re-pass, pausing for surgery, exchanging ages or single dates, stooping over the negotiable humps, counting each other and modeling in asphalt extrusions. They have no obvious leader but ages of practice, of staining their robes with blood, of burnishing the brazen trumpet mouths and hanging tassel to the clouds, have wrought this symphonic perfection. Thus when one of them, a wizened cardinal and cartographer of the Holy See, whose waist is girdled with phials containing samples of all substances that either flicker or propound, leaps to the crest of an adjacent strophe and chants the opening bars of the “Cardinal’s Lament” or “Cardinal’s Glorious Perimeter,” the others interject names and degrees of salvation. Their rhapsody is like all rhapsodies. It is like the little machines that float up to nest in the boughs. It resembles the first glimpse of leaf by emergent grubs, the first cocaine of the plunderers.
I continue on, past the well, past the fern and its reinforcement until I come to the special development. There I take my place in the line of men queuing for employment and gaze at the enormous development.
“It’s for tunneling,” I hear someone further down the queue remark.
“I don’t care what it is,” remarks another.
“It has various sections, volumes and capacities,” outlines a more knowledgeable one. “Much goes into it. Much issues from it. It engrosses much.”
“Is it healthy?” asks a nervous-seeming youth, eyeing, in particular, a barren portion of it, over-hanging and discharging a blast of shadow or synthetic night.
“Don’t you worry, builder, my lad,” urges a rough, dusty and older man whose face and hands are scored with the abrasions of a lifetime spent in actual physical opposition to the inertia of steel and stone. “That’s not for you to worry about. It’s healthy until it kills you—and what good’s health then? No, do your job—it’s got to be done and it’s for you to do it—and collect your money on Friday.”
I am about to ask my neighbor his opinion when I am abruptly summoned away to the manager’s office. This is a large, bare chamber of new brick and concrete in which only an amusing cartoon on the Turkish navy provides any note of stress.
“It’s really for worming,” the manager assures me. “You’ll find me a more convincing employer when my suitable apparel arrives. It’s being fabricated in that next development down the stream. Still your fame has streamed before you.”
Affably he leads me to the window to survey the gigantic project.
“We have no trouble with the men,” he confides. “They work merrily on these towers and domes amidst the emanations. At night we float huge flares above the diggings and double the rations. When day comes through, we ticket it and docket it and send it to another department. The great work progresses. All is planned. We are called converters of transformers. You see,” here he bends cautiously towards me and lowers his voice, “we really work on the mind.”
There is no doubt that he thrives on his labors. He dresses better than Arthur in marine tints. He seems to have full authority and an eye for everything. He points to some defective joints.
“You could start on those. Adhesion is the great thing. Cohesion is what we require. It must all cohere in a large, convincing fashion—you’ll soon be able to run your eye over it, detect a sticky rivet with a single finger thrust, analyze it, adapt your schedule and fulfill many of your quotas. You’ll find it a pleasant life. We have subterranean retreats of every kind. We have kind feelings for each other and teamwork. I’m no more than the least of those yobs, hoisting bricks, mingling their sweat with the girders and cement. I divide myself amongst them and issue each work into their pay packets. Thus the very sandwiches they withdraw from their sweaty rags and munch during their whistle stop are slices of cooperation, selfless harmony and endless, rabid toil
to improve our living standards. They wave these standards, glinting in the blood-red dawn, as they surge on long conveyors into the shops. They plant these standards in the mulch and decay of forests that their great rakes and shovels have curried up from the earth. They seal themselves into the circuit streams of production and the curve rises continually—oh yes—it rises continually—oh yes—” He falters, turns from the opening and, after a pause, remarks, “I don’t wish to bore you.”
“It’s inspiring,” I assure him. ‘It’s your duty to talk like that, just as it’s the men’s duty to behave like valves or gauges, to gear their lives to the demands of this splendid development. Everyone has a job to do.”
“Oh, it’s not all work you know,” he assures me expansively. “There are holidays abroad—you can fly almost anywhere, though not to the poles yet, no matter how you crave illimitable ice, but to Bongalulu or Trepan, or the more familiar splodges of the famous land mass, Prance, Hermany or Slain. You can runnel and turret amongst the quintitudes of these vinish fiefs, each richly stored with slabs and carved treasures, good hotels, petrol everywhere. Of course, those places are being developed now too and everywhere you go, rising from the historic landscape, you’ll find our blocks and antennae. Weeds. Weeds of progress, flowering in the ancient beds of culture. Sometimes you can hardly sniff an ancient rose for the stench of diesels. Still, there’s lots of dynamic fun about, pinching and poking and pursuing into bedrooms with a bottle of joy in one hand and feeling hastily in your pocket with the other for those little rubber charms. Then there’s golf and watching tennis, films, plays, television and girls’ legs in the street. There’s a big party tonight as it happens. Arthur’s giving one to celebrate progress on the development. Would you care to come?”
“Not much,” I confess morosely. “I’ve seen enough of Arthur for one day. Is this his development?”
“Yes, as much as any development of this order, of this breadth and complexity, of this capacity for marshaling significance, can be related to the poky doings of a single particle. He glows a bit, I grant you, and between ourselves there are lots of developments, more than are suspected by the public, or admitted by the editors, that have been touched by the sparkle of that electron’s track. Yes, he’s quite a whirler, quite positively charged is our apparently common acquaintance. And then again, he’s just a bouncer like the rest of us, glancing from collision to collision, gasping out, as he spins and reels amongst the random chances, his philosophy of achievement. The fiery streams of logic that spew from his propulsion vents whirl into the surrounding turmoil. Bits adhere to inflammable stuff and little flames break out. Much is deadened or burns itself out on inert material. Some reacts or combines with other substances in bizarre and unpredictable ways and the whole rages and seethes as before. And our friend, looking back, sees only the lovely curve of his rocket progress, standing clear and bright for a moment, a beacon and a monument, before trickling away to blend with the receptive spaces.”
