People in Glass Houses

by Shirley Hazzard

  Pylos was a man who could recognize his own defects. He could not, however, dwell on them. Tracing the Ashmole-Brown débâcle back to its origins, he swiftly recalled that he had been new to the Organization at the time, and that Ashmole-Brown had been virtually unknown to him. Soon he was reproaching himself for nothing more than having relied too heavily on the judgement of others. And these others were quickly fused into a single figure.

  Miss Graine, seeing Ashmole-Brown’s book on Pylos’s desk, had experienced a feeling of dread. It was not simply the existence of the book; it was the fact of Pylos’s having left it there, in flagrant violation of their mutual security pact. The sensation that her power was passing communicated itself, mysteriously, from Miss Graine to her colleagues. Exhibiting a new sense of impunity, several people drew her attention to articles on Ashmole-Brown, ingenuously asking if she remembered him. One morning she found a magazine on her desk, opened to a large heading: ‘Are You an Ashmole-Brown Enthusiast?’

  The Ashmole-Brown development was in fact causing unrest throughout DALTO. The sooner his candle of understanding guttered out, the better it would be all round, and especially for Pylos. But Ashmole-Brown’s success gave no sign of flagging. The fact that no official recognition had been forthcoming for this exceptional case was encouraging a sense of injustice in all — where a juster system would have imposed proportionate expectations. The staff, though naturally enjoying the discomfiture of authority, felt that the joke was somehow on them. Some token acknowledgement of their dissatisfaction was called for.

  It happened that Miss Graine, passing by the Organization bar one day on her way back from lunch, glimpsed Mr Pylos in earnest conversation with one of his friends — another Greek, named Apostolides, who had recently become head of the section dealing with staff assignments abroad. Now there were a hundred official matters that Pylos might have earnestly discussed with Apostolides, and there was no reason why Miss Graine should have been alarmed by the sight of the two together. Nevertheless it is true that all the way back to her office she was haunted by a quotation that she could neither place nor complete: ‘When Greek meets Greek,’ she repeated to herself, and wondered what came next. If she had ever known, she could not remember. But she felt sure it was nothing good.

  When Sadie Graine was assigned to Central America, she appealed against the decision. She contested it on the grounds that she did not speak the language — a not unreasonable objection but one which had not operated on behalf of those still labouring in localities like Kabul. Her objection was overridden and her assignment confirmed for a period of two years, with possibility of extension.

  It will be thought that Miss Sadie Graine got what she asked for. But who, surveying the course of his own life, can honestly say that he has not asked for something he yet hoped not to get?

  It only remained to choose a farewell present for Miss Graine and give her a departmental party. Pylos, when asked for his advice regarding the gift, suggested a suitcase. The idea was proposed to the subscribing staff members, and met with such enthusiastic response that a set of Spanish language records was bought with the money left over.

  There had been many farewell parties in DALTO since its inception, but none so well attended as the one given for Miss Graine. It was held at the end of the day, in a private room adjoining the Disarmament Council lounge. Drinks were served, with nuts and potato chips, and the merriment seemed at times almost saturnalian. When gaiety began to verge on rowdiness, Choudhury — who was looking particularly fit — called for silence, and Pylos made a short speech. It was a speech similar to many he had given before, expressing fervent appreciation for Miss Graine’s services, profound regret at her departure, and great pride that she had been selected for this difficult mission. He dwelt, with some office pleasantries, upon his own self-sacrifice, depicting himself as a man willing to renounce his own well-being for the greater good: Mr Pylos, in effect, had loved not Caesar less, but Rome more. The response to his jokes was overwhelming, the ultimate applause deafening. The suitcase, and a box of records labelled ‘Never Too Late to Learn’, were brought forward. So was Miss Sadie Graine. Pylos made the presentation, calling her Sadie for the first time.

  He had intended to kiss her on both cheeks, but could only rise to one when the moment came.

  6. Official Life

  ‘Tuesdays are the worst,’ Luba said. She was sitting on a chair in Ismet’s office taking off her waterproof boots. A succession of people had used the chair for the same purpose in the last fifteen minutes because the office coat-rack was just outside Ismet’s door. This annoyed Ismet in general, and he minded particularly when it was Luba.

  Luba, a beauty, was looking terrible — her auburn hair newly released from a plastic headdress but soaking all the same, her open coat revealing a succession of sweaters, her sleep-flattened face not made up. ‘Tuesday mornings are worse than Mondays, I tell you why. Mondays you’re still fresh from the weekend. Wednesday you already look forward to Friday. But Tuesdays — Ismet, I tell you, Tuesdays are No Man’s Land.’ Now she had her boots off but still sat on the edge of the chair, holding each boot up by its top. Her accent thickened when she got emotional, which was a good deal of the time. ‘What a morning. An hour to get here. What a country.’ She rolled her eyes towards the grey window. ‘Did you see the television last night? Not one thing worth seeing. I watched till midnight. I told my husband, What decadence.’

  Go away, Ismet was saying, in his mind and his own language. Go away.

  ‘What would I give to go away. Now the pension can be drawn at fifty-five, I count to myself, how many years. Still so many.’ Luba put her hand to her lank hair and repeated quickly, ‘So very many.’

  ‘Jaspersen’s going to the Committee this morning.’ Ismet drew attention to the work on his desk. ‘I have to prepare —’

  ‘Jaspersen’s going down? What’s being discussed?’

  ‘Item Six. The Question of Unification.’ Ismet again pointed to the papers on his blotter. The Question of Unification came up annually. Countries had been divided, subdivided. Some pleaded to be put back, others demanded guarantees that it would never happen.

  Ismet’s phone rang. He snatched it up without looking to see if his secretary had arrived at her desk by the coat-rack. ‘Contingency Section, Ismet.’ Before anyone spoke, he gave Luba an apologetic nod over the mouthpiece, denoting a long conversation. ‘Ah — Mr Nagashima, Yes, I called you yesterday evening but you’d already gone…. No, no, of course, it was well after hours, I was working late and didn’t keep track of the … Yes, the Question of Unification. I think you have a false docket from the main file.’

  Luba stood up, still holding a boot in each hand. ‘That Nagashima loses things,’ she said. ‘Once, a whole set of working-papers.’

  Ismet said into the phone, ‘When you find it, then, perhaps you’d call me.’

  Luba nodded. ‘Another time, a folder of MOVs.’ These were Miscellaneous Obligating Vouchers.

  ‘Let us lunch some time,’ said Ismet, prolonging the telephone conversation in the hope that Luba would leave. ‘Yes. Thursday would be fine.’ He turned the pages of his desk calendar with his left hand and found the day blank. However, since Luba now did leave, he said into the phone, ‘Sorry, I do have something — another day perhaps. Let’s be in touch when you find the file then.’ He replaced the receiver quietly and lifted the uppermost folder from his tray.

  A shadow on the frosted-glass partition alongside his open door informed him that Leslie, his secretary, had arrived. Not wishing to advertise her lateness, she alone of all the section did not use his chair to take off her boots.

  ‘Leslie,’ he called.

  There was a scuffle and a suppressed metallic scraping as she hung up her coat, then Leslie appeared. Leslie had shoulder-length brown hair and darkly outlined eyes. Her stockings, yesterday of black wool, were of white lattice today. She said truculently, ‘I’m sorry.’ She was new to the section and had not
quite established her right to address Ismet by his first name, although she invariably used it behind his back. Since he was only Step Two in the Specialized Category, she disdained to address him formally. ‘This rain,’ she said. ‘Pee-ew!’

  Ismet could not get up the nerve to admonish her after all. He said, ‘I’m preparing a paper. I don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s urgent. Do you have something to go on with?’

  ‘I’m collating.’

  ‘How long will that take you?’

  Leslie made an estimate, doubled it. ‘Half an hour.’

  Ismet added to his many defeats by letting her go. At her desk outside he heard her take up the phone and dial her friend in the typing pool. Her husky voice was at its most pervasive when lowered. ‘I went to this dance,’ she said, ‘the one on the bulletin board. Pee-ew!’

  Ismet drew a typed sheet towards him. A memorandum — to, through, and from higher authorities, with copies to those higher still — had been sent to him for a draft reply. ‘Pending accrual,’ it began. Ismet bowed his head over his work.

  Nagashima was standing by his window, watching the rain. These winter downpours were, to be sure, no worse than the spring rains of his own country, yet how he disliked them, what nostalgia he felt, leaning from this window of another world, looking on a scene that contained scarcely one familiar item. An immense building was being demolished nearby, the walls smashed by repeated blows of a swinging metal ball. An almost identical building would certainly rise from these smashes. In Japan, too, temples had been erected and re-erected on the same sites over centuries. Obviously a similar sense of continuity was involved, but he had not been able to link the two traditions.

  He looked down at his window-sill — a broad inner ledge formed by the covers of the heating apparatus and, in Nagashima’s case, completely stacked with dossiers, with folders, with innumerable, unmemorable documents. (Just yesterday he had been informed once more that it was forbidden to cover the heating vents in this way, but where then could these papers possibly go?) The false docket — such a strange name, like some treacherous Dutchman — that Ismet wanted was there, he knew, must be there, but he would never find it. He would lift them all, examine each title, his fingers would become frantic, his palms moist, but he would not find it. This had happened so often now that he sometimes did not look at all. The papers had ceased to be — had perhaps never been — quite real to him. If he actually believed in the existence of the file, then he might find it.

  Once he had almost believed in these files and their dockets; had come, indeed, to the Organization as full of assiduity and goodwill as the refinements of his upbringing would allow. But his goodwill had glanced off the Organization like calf-love off a courtesan — the Organization did not require or even notice it. Unrequited, it had become a somewhat humiliating burden, furtively borne. Nagashima sighed, shifting but not unsettling this weight.

  He began to turn over the first pile of folders. Ismet’s file wouldn’t be there — but here was the set of vouchers someone had wanted last month, that woman, also of Ismet’s section, the one with the face like a cliff. Nagashima put the vouchers in an old inter-office envelope and sent them to Luba, having heavily scratched out his name on the envelope as former addressee.

  ‘If I had high cheekbones like yours,’ said a chubby little girl named Gabrielle, ‘I’d do my hair like Greta Garbo.’ She came to stand next to Luba at the mirror where she was making up her face. Through an oversight, the ladies’ room had an inordinate share of windows, but the fluorescent tube over its mirrored counter gave a light so ghastly that it was rumoured to have been systematically chosen as the result of a time-and-motion study.

  Luba, whose ability to admire her own image, however poorly illuminated, was a match for any time-and-motion study, went on applying rouge. She looked pleased. ‘It is the planes,’ she said.

  Gabrielle looked towards the window. ‘Planes?’

  ‘The planes of the face.’ Luba was growing rosier with every twirl of her fingers. ‘Garbo has planes. I see her in the street. No make-up, old clothes, nothing fashionable. Only planes. She is the friend of a very close friend.’

  ‘I can’t use that.’ Gabrielle was examining Luba’s powder-box. ‘I have it specially made. My skin is too sens —’

  ‘Who’s looking after the phones?’ asked Luba abruptly. ‘The phones must be covered. Time after time I say it. Time after time, every girl leaves his desk.’

  Gabrielle said sulkily, ‘Leslie’s there.’ At that moment Leslie came into the room, and Gabrielle went out without a word.

  Leslie came to the mirror and whitened her lips a little with a lipstick taken from her pocket. She carried a small assortment of cosmetics in her pocket in order not to be seen leaving the office with her handbag. Over her ashen face she flicked a chalky puff. ‘What do you use?’ she asked, taking up Luba’s powder-box.

  Luba finished with her hair and took the powder-box back. ‘I’m just using that up,’ she said. ‘It’s not really right for me. My skin’s too sensitive.’ Seeing Leslie’s sceptical look in the mirror, she added, ‘Would you like it?’

  Leslie said coolly, ‘Jaspersen was looking for you.’

  ‘What? Just now?’ Luba began ramming objects into her handbag. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She met her own wild eyes in the glass. ‘No time. Never any time.’ She transferred her glance again to Leslie. ‘No wonder we look as we do.’

  ‘It’s O.K.’ Leslie brought out a bottle of iridescent nail lacquer from her pocket and began to shake it, her first vigorous action of the day. ‘He’s gone to the Committee now.’

  Jaspersen took up his resolution — his draft resolution, that is to say, with its folder of proposed amendments — bent over his In-tray to read a note on the topmost file there, and walked across to the windows. Jaspersen’s office was carpeted, an obvious indication of senior rank; the carpet was grey and somewhat worn — a more subtle suggestion, perhaps, of modifications within seniority. On Jaspersen’s desk the density of paper was as great as on Nagashima’s window-sill, but these papers of Jaspersen’s — these files and false dockets, these drafts for approval and final versions for signature — gave an impression of having just alighted, or of forming the course of an ever-flowing stream, whereas Nagashima’s were as still and stagnant as lake water.

  Jaspersen was a man whose Out-tray was fuller than his In-tray; whose head was above water, whose feet were on the ground. Who administered a section, and would one day direct a branch. Jaspersen had everything to live for — in short, every reason to get up in the morning and come to his office. For years he had tranquilly pursued his work as head of the Contingency and Unresolved Disputes Section, and would eventually go on to even more gratifying tasks in areas yet more contentious.

  Nevertheless, on this morning when the Question of Unification was coming up for debate, Jaspersen was in a melancholy mood. Although this was unusual for him, it had happened before, and he understood that the mood would pass away. Jaspersen had been heard to say that the Organization was his religion, and it is well known that moments of unaccountable doubt are the earmarks of the devout. Jaspersen had even gone so far as to make this analogy to himself. At such times he had learned to immerse himself more deeply than ever in his work, and with this in mind he now lifted two documents — the Provisional Report of the Working Group on Unforeseeable Contingencies, and a Study on the Harnessing of Cartographic Skills — from his window-sill and set them aside for reading at home that evening.

  This mood of Jaspersen’s would not even have been discernible beyond the Organization’s walls. Had it been suggested, for instance, by some uninformed outsider, that the Organization had ever seriously erred in some particular, that it had ever acted with less than its potential effectuality, Jaspersen would have been as ready as always to correct this misconception with precise legal and statistical information; to cite chapter and verse — or, rather, resolution and amendment (while acknowledging, with w
ry witticisms, the larger but more bearable truth of universal human fallibility).

  Jaspersen looked at his watch. It was now long past the hour set for the opening of the Committee meeting, and even a little past the time at which it might actually have begun. Jaspersen left his office, inquired for Luba of one of the secretaries, and, not finding her in, put his head around the door of his deputy, an Italian named Pastore.

  Girolamo Pastore had been standing by the window. In fact, his window was directly below Nagashima’s and, had the human eye been capable of distinguishing forms thirty storeys up, the two would have been on view in identical attitudes, one a few inches above the other and quite unaware of the proximity. Pastore’s gaze travelled over buildings of glass, buildings of aluminium, a building with a sharp pinnacle that looked like a hypodermic needle stood on end. Why was it, Pastore was wondering, that at the very moment when architecture began to use the limitless upward resource of the sky ceilings had become so very low? More than commercialism: something to do with man’s ceasing to demand noble rooms for himself, taking less pride in being a man. A man by himself — what was that these days? One counted merely as — a member of the staff.

  In the Mediterranean town from which Pastore came, the streets were lined with small palaces whose every balcony invited the delivery of an oration (not that those balconies and their orators had proved entirely free from disadvantages); whose great doorways and windows offered glimpses of supreme moments in artistic creation; whose interiors gave on to courtyards adorned with fountains, with flowers, with curving stairs—