by Paul Ableman
“Idiocy?” I repeat uncertainly.
“In a sense,” nods the lieutenant.
“But tell me about yourself,” I inquire. “I can see that you don’t remember me very distinctly. That’s not really surprising, but I’ve often brooded about what you said. Tell me, what is your ultimate ambition?”
“To hear people say they’ve brooded about what I said,” replies the lieutenant.
I can not help admiring this nimble response and I begin to congratulate the lieutenant and ask him how I can contact him at some future time. However whistles are heard and the sloshing sounds of equipment being rapidly re-baled, and I catch a glimpse of the chief, now looking extremely brisk and departmental, glaring, with an expression of severely taxed patience, at the lieutenant and tapping an accessory. I discreetly make the situation known to the lieutenant and he, stifling a smile of scorn, nods farewell and strides briskly away. A moment later, with a cry from the men, and a ragged cheer, not entirely devoid of irony, from the surrounding spectators, the mobile, the newly mobilized odd-calls department grinds away.
The crowd shakes itself down with much subdued sarcasm and, from the more technically minded, a little intent speculation on the equipment that the fabulous department brought with it. People begin to trail wistfully away to their lodges, feeling the sad comparison between the plunging, mobile glamor of the department and their own humdrum lives, but also feeling a certain residual pride in the tough fiber of these humdrum lives, which fiber is ever ready to be knitted into armor vests. But there are other elements too, which make nonsense of these considerations and these are also drifting in the situation.
I go back to bed and watch anything that’s drifting. Nothing, however, seems to be drifting, but, on the contrary, everything seems to be fixed and rigid. However, nothing really seems to be fixed and rigid, unless something has been newly fixed and I haven’t heard of it. What chance have I had to hear of it? What chance do I have to keep in touch? The only way open to people in our situation is to consult newspapers and none ever drift in my neighborhood. If you read a newspaper without waiting for it to settle, you see nothing but red lines. These red lines are written there by special editors whose job it is to mark out items concerning national effort, but with newspapers moving at their current speed, under hopeless circumstances, these only look like red fences. They give no comfort. No matter how often you count them, all that’s vital and true, all that really matters, drains away into other departments. Ink blots are all you get in the end, where lazy officials have fallen down on the job. They have special editors to help these officials up again and promote them according to seniority. If they’re lucky, they get assigned to off-shore duties and have to report on “chasms.” This is a favorite assignment because it gives one scope to re-read the old files about “chasms.” Merkitt is now working in one of these immense sections and he has won a good deal of praise there by distributing fruit. Merkitt, in fact, has disappeared there and may never turn up again. I should miss him, if no one else did, because, although he was never friendly and never interesting, he was someone I knew and I couldn’t abandon him really.
“You needn’t worry about Merkitt,” Susan reassures me when she comes up with my egg.
“No?” I ask.
“No,” she insists. “I’ve just seen him going down the street, some paces behind a stranger. He looked very well.”
“Then I was completely wrong?” I ask. “All the things that I’ve been thinking about him?”
Susan, however, merely shakes her head and purses her lips in vague dismissal.
“I don’t know,” she adds. “I only mentioned him because you used to talk about him sometimes and I thought you might be interested in the latest report, no matter how incomplete it seemed.”
“It does seem incomplete,” I admit. “It’s just a reference really. Still, if you have absolutely nothing to go on, even a reference makes an enormous difference. First there’s nothing, just void and emptiness and then there’s a casual reference which makes a point in the void and this speedily grows to the image of a small man, clothed in flame, who threatens to fix everything forever. His thesis is that, being in possession of two mobile arms, he is entitled to point in any direction at all. That’s only one of the dangers of casual references.”
“You’re just trying to keep me here talking,” sulks Susan. “I can understand that. You must get lonely, lying here, seeing only the roof of life, that is the roofs of houses and your own little room. But I’m too busy to stay here. I’ve got to go and change Jane and see that Maria isn’t doing anything extravagant or silly and go on like that. However, look—your being lonely—I did have something to say connected with that. One day, perhaps, you can take up where you left off and shoulder your tools again and begin again and start living again—really—you know—but not yet. Now, you’ve got to be patient and go on being patient and lying here in this dreary room. I’ll bring you reports about Merkitt and possibly others and sometimes I may say unguarded things about domestic relations here in the house which will provide you with a pleasant hour’s entertainment through trying to probe their significance and so forth. But what I must insist on, is that you stay quietly here the way the professor thought advisable and indulge in no more of these excurions that only upset both you and the busy world outside, with no profit that I can see accruing to either party. So be patient. So be amenable. Don’t wander off again and we’ll plan something decent for you some time.”
Susan then hands me my egg, draws my curtains and goes away. I am left with the impression of tramps on a bridge, basement windows and refreshments. The refreshments retain a magical quality in my memory. The incident to which the memory refers is a very trivial one connected with my mother. Unhappily, I can not remember exactly how my mother was connected with the incident. Possibly, she had gone to the lavatory or she may have been dead and perhaps I am confusing a lady or a matron buying a stamp with my mother. No, I think not. I think my mother was complaining about the soot that had lodged in the engineering. I was in a foreign country, a sheep-producing country although, of course, the relevant milieu was far from agricultural. It was, in fact, rather social. Little groups and constituents of society were involved. They were rather timid and rather touchy, the way people become when they find themselves in a foreign milieu on the brink of war, having lost their mother. Officials, inclined to be rather hysterical, the way foreigners get about emergencies and even, sometimes, about natural disasters, such as earth waves and shocks, or even hazards, were trying to marshal the various national groups. Prominent amongst these was an old dentist. He refused to be marshalled. He just sat stolidly on his suitcase picking his teeth. He had the air of a man waiting to be approached so that he could wash his hands of everything. Circumstances, however, proved differently for, at the height of the emergency, he bolted off onto the bridge. They tried to shoot him off the bridge, but he was too quick for them and summoned his mother, a terribly imperious and beautiful woman, to intercede for him. They questioned her in a convenient annex, and she soon lost her commanding qualities. Fortunately, however, the local commandant was very taken with her appearance and ascribed it to her foreign air. “You’re really the opposite of one of us,” he roared, slapping both his thigh and his pet leopard which had just slunk in off a siding. And it was then that I saw someone drinking something delicious. And if I could have found my mother, she’d have got me some. But she was in the pines. She must have been very unhappy for, when the boat drew near the shore, she managed to get across the strip of water and disappeared amongst the pines. She can never be found now. They’ll never touch those forests. The forests have no scent but they ring with a special purity. It is a purity my mother found but no one else has ever found. Everyone wants that purity but no one else has ever found it and if anyone else ever did, they’d have to chop down all the forests. Just once, they’d have to do exactly what I told them.
I then crack the top of my egg
and eat two mouthfuls of it. It tastes like Hamlet. Lonely as the routes of languages, I go to the window and look at the familiar taint. The morning is tainted with everything, especially with a Roman arrow which would escape the latest delegation. I have some sort of mission or thing to do but can’t begin, this grey dredge, to tackle it, I should like to find light and life today. The mere utterance of the words releases a stream of renewed appetite and, stiffening to its force, I dress hastily and creep out of the house. As I open the secular door, the dreadful dart pierces me once more with the message “this very moment is all” and then, still giddy from the wound, I reel down towards the cinema, shaking my head to dissuade the mocking bladder.
By the time I have reached the corner of the street, however, the oppressive moment has withdrawn and I feel quite cheerful when, a little later, I enter Arthur’s club. At this time of day, of course, the only occupants of the imposing and quaint premises are disreputable characters. Arthur, along with the other reputable members, is away at his office. I have not been in the club long before the atmosphere of guilty and wanton leisure becomes rather oppressive and, for a moment, I feel rather ashamed. I soon realize, however, that I have no real cause to reproach myself since I am merely taking a well earned and legitimate rest from my arduous quest. This was advocated by the registrar. His words at the time, I recollect, were, “Be off for a legitimate rest. Seek out light and life and bask in them for a short period. And then start again with your mission.”
“Will everyone please go into the Crop Room,” a voice now requests. I look round the lounge and see that the voice belongs to a retainer who continues rather creakily: “If people go into the Crop Room, they will hear there a relayed voice.”
He goes on to explain that the voice of a national figure on a theme of national importance will soon be available in the Crop Room. After he has gone, the people in the lounge react characteristically. A few start away into the Crop Room, but most of them exchange feeble witticisms at the expense of the national figure and only subsequently make their way into the Crop Room. I go along too and listen to the voice.
“Good morning,” it says, sounding austere and intelligent. “I want to tell you about the sorts of things that are currently preoccupying members of the government like myself. In one sense, we have a firm grip on events, in another, we’re at the mercy of them. We are obsessed by duty. Go on believing in us. Now I’d like, this morning—”
An expectant rustle is made plain as everyone senses that the body of the address is about to begin. Everyone listened politely to the preliminary remarks and now they lean forward to try and guess what particulars may lie cocooned in the topical rhetoric which is as close as this sort of voice ever gets to talking about life. A feeling of high expectation, of almost religious intensity, soaks through the austere setting. The light streams in through the great pointed Gothic windows, steeping the solemn ranks of the listeners in various grave hues. Pipes are lit and narcotic fumes are soon seeping through tissue. The voice of the choir lifts in holy chant and, amongst the snowy boys, I am astonished to detect the impudent face of Merkitt. He notices me at the same moment and bares his teeth in an expression of such exaggerated desperation that, for a moment, it robs the exalted ceremony of all its transcendental significance. I smile and, impulsively, for an instant forgetting the extreme impropriety of such behavior on such an occasion, I nudge my neighbor, point and say:
“There’s Merkitt.”
I am instantly recalled to my senses not by any violent or even overt reproof but simply by the way the man, without obviously moving, seems to draw a little away from me and, clamping his pipe, stares with impregnable attention at the knob. However, I do receive a little comfort from a chap behind me who leans forward and says:
“Bravo. Cheers. I don’t know Merkitt, but I do see your point. Terrible stream of mud. Bravo.”
I am both contrite and amused to find that he garners the reproaches that I have merited. Calls or rather hisses of “Quiet,” “Hsst” and “Really” for an instant eclipse a vital statistic, and so are immediately followed by anxious inquiries of “What was that?” “How many?” and “I missed that.”
Later, the voice having leapt back through its field, and the choir having sung a farewell anthem, very beautifully but in a new style or manner that no one can make out, we all gather at the bar to discuss the implications of this latest governmental statement.
“Quite absurd,” a chap standing near me remarks warmly. “Half that number would do perfectly well.”
“Do you mean,” asks his courteous companion after a slight, puzzled pause, “half? I mean, you don’t mean double?”
“Look here,” returns the other, with as much patience and goodwill as he can manage. He seizes at once on a concrete example. “Last Thursday, I —”
Just then the fellow who applauded me earlier on, comes up and resumes:
“Really lovely. What is Merkitt, anyway?”
I try to explain that Merkitt is someone whom I saw hopping beside a ditch once after a team had deposited structural equipment in the vicinity. I try to re-create the atmosphere of the occasion, the cloudy day, the clouds flying and the few trees that remained amongst the broken concrete, huddling together so that their voices, as they tried to supplicate the impatient wind, would gain strength from unity. Earlier, they had tried to gain Merkitt’s attention, but he had responded merely by hurling a clod of earth at one of them. This one had murmured to the others: “He is aiming at a crow, not at me. He lives over there.” And he had pointed across the wastes towards the low silhouette of the dark city outlined by its own haze of light.
“Have a drink,” the chap now says cordially but still distractedly, “and tell me about Merkitt.”
I realize that he has missed my entire explanation, having been darting glances swiftly around the chamber to see if he can notice anything promising. I also sense that he is already a little bored with my company which he finds rather mysterious and unsympathetic. This feeling is confirmed when, before he has ordered me a drink, he suddenly notices someone and says:
“Excuse me a moment,” and then hurries away.
I do not stay much longer after this and, as I make my way out past the trophies, I hear a few words being exchanged between two people and one of these words is “Merkitt.” When I get out into the thronged street again, I feel relieved to be out of the rather oppressive political atmosphere of the club. Out here it is not political except for certain groups being conducted here and there. This is managed so discreetly, however, that one can hardly distinguish these groups from the ordinary knots and tangles of pedestrians caused by faulty control.
A sense of oppression has been hanging over me for some time and suddenly I realize what it stems from. It stems from desire. It stems from longing for someone to love, someone who will love me. One goes on for a long time, thinking one is whole and competent, and then suddenly one finds that one is alone. And perhaps then one is nothing. I suddenly feel like nothing. My first impulse is to hurry home, but then the conviction that this would be futile comes to me and so I go into the park and try to reach an understanding with a woman sitting there. However: “I’m a married woman,” she tells me. “See, I have a baby.” And she indicates a baby waving a leaf nearby.
“Then,” I ask, “you won’t reach an understanding with me?”
“Of course not,” she insists. “I’ve only been married a short while. I married an Italian.”
“Like many girls,” I comment, “noble or plebeian.”
“I don’t know about that,” she reflects, but her eyes, and with them her concern, remain tied to the little object lurching and pausing in front of us.
“Get the ball,” she urges. “Go and get the ball.”
And the amiable child trundles down the slope towards its ball. Before it gets there, however, a blade of light distracts it, which it inspects for some moments and then, having started again, at the last moment some new interes
t deflects its course and it swerves away in a different direction. Then, having completely forgotten the ball, it merely waits and stares mildly up at us.
“Like mankind,” I observe, “pursuing truth.”
“You sound like a philosopher,” she says ironically. “You should meet some of my friends. They could use a bit of philosophy.”
“I’m not really a philosopher,” I confess. “As a matter of fact, I was nearly a plumber once. And recently, I nearly became one of Arthur’s assistants.”
“Deary!” calls the woman. “Lovey. Come here, baby. Come here, we’ve got to go now.”
And then, when an approving eye has seen the unsteady, frequently distracted progress at least begin, she turns to me again.
“Are you educated?”
“Not really. I was apprenticed to a plumber for a while, but I was never much good with pipes and things. And anyway Arthur doesn’t like me to mention it now. He’s rising swiftly. But I’m not really educated.”
“Still, you talk a bit like a philosopher. Do you think you could help my friends?”
“Where are your friends?” I ask.
But for a few moments maternal duties occupy her and she has to brace her son on her knee and pat him into shape.
“Do you think you could help my friends?” she asks again, absently. “I don’t see why you should—still—Maria could use some help.”
“Not my Maria?” I ask, startled.
“This one went to school with me. We had little secrets—but now she seems to have cracked up.”
