A Calculated Life

by Anne Charnock

  He still thinks of Sunjin as “Sunjin” though his friend lives easily with his new name. And he smiles. Sunjin sees the whole subterfuge as some sort of professional challenge. “I like to imagine,” he once explained, “that I’ve gone covert. You know, police officers went undercover for years. And, if they could hack it, so can I. It’s called deep cover.”

  He’ll never lose the lingo, Dave thinks. Even so, he is quietly impressed. Sunjin, the farmhand: in character, he never speaks unless spoken to, stays in the background on the rare occasions when someone visits—a utility worker or their neighbor who likes to pass the time of day by sharing the minutiae of their endeavors. Dave sidesteps these social encounters as best he can. In any case, he needs no advice. He sometimes looks at Sunjin and sees a man whose every waking thought is devoted to these five acres as though he’s never known or wished for any other life.

  But Dave can’t let go in the same way.

  During these quiet times, as he looks over the orchards, he gnaws at old bones. It’s a habit he can’t drop yet it brings no satisfaction. He recalls conversations and tries to edit them with hindsight; tries to force a different emphasis onto the words he spoke back then, words he now re-enacts, slightly amended. Three years have passed and he still tries to make the words come out differently. I should have…I could have said…

  And, all the while, his eyes flick to the winding road and a mental image is repeatedly triggered. He imagines—though he never formulates or captures any words inside his head—a figure, walking along a section of the road that’s beyond his view. The figure must surely emerge; he wills it to happen.

  He feels good in many ways. He’s beaten the system. But he feels cheated—it could be so much better.

  Dave knows the Constructor picked her up at the terminus. The whole office knew the day it happened. “It was total fucking mayhem,” he told Sunjin later. Everyone heard Olivia and Benjamin; they screamed blue murder at the Constructor. But there was no getting her back, the small print made sure of that. He looks back and struggles to remember any detail from the first days. He was stupefied, dumb, numb. And though no one questioned him, about anything, he broke into sweats. He hid himself away in Archives and all he can recall now is an acrid smell that wafted upwards from his sticking shirt, and a sense of stasis.

  On the Saturday after her disappearance, he traveled to Enclave W8, to the safe house where he found Sunjin. And on the next three Saturdays, he returned with provisions. With each visit they refined a plan.

  At first, their plan was simple. Sunjin would disappear for a few months among the migrant workers, just to get out of sight. He couldn’t hang around the safe house indefinitely. Neighbors might have become curious. They talked about the money stashed in bank accounts, share certificates, the bio data for false identities, which Sunjin had grabbed before scarpering. But Sunjin had insisted: no touching the money, perhaps not for a long time.

  Sometime around his second or third visit, Dave can’t quite remember now, he mentioned to Sunjin about the walk down Clothing Street, the things she’d said later in his flat. They returned time and time again to these shards of conversation. “But she only said it in passing,” Dave had said. Sunjin was sure they should act on her few remarks. She was, after all, the guru on such matters. So, when Dave eventually found a buyer for the Wiener Werkstätte brooch (it was, as she’d scribbled on the scrap of paper, a Josef Hoffmann design) their ideas had coalesced. A trader’s license it would be. And the nature of Dave’s trading was also clear. For her words were incised from constant use: People don’t need to buy books but they do need to buy food.

  Finally, Dave provoked an argument with Hester. He was out the same day.

  We’ve done well.

  He hears the satisfying, wholesome sounds of empty wooden boxes being stacked over on the far side of the farmhouse. Sunjin’s day has started. Soon the irrigation system will kick in and he’ll start his morning rounds. He’ll meticulously check any suspect nozzles, look for any leaks, before he takes his breakfast. Sunjin, the sleuth, turned farmhand. Dave laughs quietly, under his breath, at the mental image of Sunjin darting around the orchards, a long-haired, manic preacher who makes the trees sing to his tune. And Dave remembers a conversation he had with Sunjin two weeks ago, when they’d sat together replacing damaged slats in some of those fruit boxes: “Are you all right doing this, Sunjin?”

  “I’m making a fair job of it.”

  “No, I don’t mean that. Are you bored doing this sort of thing?”

  “It’s all part of the process.”

  “But are you enjoying it?”

  “Yes, I like the process.”

  “What?”

  Sunjin had explained, patiently: “I like the small tasks because I know how they fit within the overall venture. It’s the attention to detail that makes the whole operation work smoothly. How will the cooperative regard you, Dave, if you turn up with battered boxes? I’ll tell you. They’ll think you’re a loser. And what’s the point of us running our farm with such care if a protruding nail scratches a single fruit? One protruding nail in, say, 30 per cent of our boxes would make a serious dent in our gross profit. It’s all a question of detail. Our margins are too slender to throw money away simply through a lack of rigor.”

  “Suppose so.”

  “I know so. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  Which indeed he had.

  When Dave bought his license to work as a fruit vendor, Sunjin became an itinerant and worked among the major citrus groves and smallholdings, west of the enclaves. He moved from farm to farm and slept in huts or under canvas, whatever the owners cared to provide. While Dave learned how to sell, Sunjin learned how to farm. He was on a mission: to learn, observe, absorb everything—varieties, planting schemes, root stocks, grafting, how to prune, when to cut back, how to irrigate, when to water, when not to water, when to pick, when not to pick. He became a collector of ideas and good practice; one idea from here, another from there. He learnt from the bad farmers and the good farmers alike—all the time he collected evidence for later prosecution. When they met as planned, eighteen months later, Dave barely recognized him with his matted hair, tautened physique, and sun-blackened skin.

  Dave stirs from his morning vigil and makes his way up the slope to complete his circuit. Who would have thought…? These words have become wind chimes and they hang from all the trees. He hears them day in, day out.

  Sunjin continued as a laborer for a further six months after meeting Dave. By then they had accumulated a small but significant pot of savings and, more to the point, Dave had operated his stall long enough to justify, to the outside world, an elevation in his circumstances. He took out a loan and augmented their savings with a modest cash withdrawal from one of their many fraudulent nest eggs. Dave acted on Sunjin’s advice and bought a neglected smallholding of mixed citrus and avocado. And the new double-act began: Dave the moderately successful entrepreneur and his one farmhand, a farmhand who knew how to turn around a failing enterprise.

  At the very least, the farm will become a front, to mask their earnings from elsewhere.

  Dave reaches the highest irrigation block on his circuit and smacks the top of a stumped avocado. It grieved him when they moved to the farm that, straight off, Sunjin had decided to cut half the avocado trees down to one-meter stumps. “They’re overcrowded, too tall for efficient harvesting.” He now sees the sense in it. They will start to produce after four or five years and, at that point, the rest of the avocado grove will be stumped. One day, they will reap the benefit of a surgical approach. But it still seems brutal.

  By the side of the farmhouse door stands a specimen Jamaican tangelo; its boughs hang over the kitchen yard. To Dave’s mind, there’s no taste like the Ugli fruit of this tree. Its tangy sweetness belies an ill-favored appearance. He sits outside many evenings and stares up into the canopy, convinced he can see the unlovely fruits grow.

  This is their tree. They take the
best of the harvest for their own table. It’s their only extravagance. And Dave loves this tangelo tree most of all on a morning such as this when a perfectly ripe fruit hangs within easy reach just over the kitchen door.

  He looks across to the higher slopes. Sunjin is making his way into the far orchard. Dave shouts, “Breakfast in twenty!” He pulls the fruit. And Sunjin, without turning, raises his hand.

  EPILOGUE 2

  “With respect, Beatrice, how many times in the past six months has anyone referred to any of these books in relation to a billable job?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “In the last year? Two years? I’ve been here nearly four years and I can only recall eight occasions.”

  “It’s still not the point.”

  “But I believe it is.” Hannah feels she must stand up to this resolute octogenarian. “You see, if we auction the most valuable—the ancient documents and the first editions—and then donate the rest to whoever you like—The Law Society, The Inns of Court Library—we’d raise a great deal of money that we could invest in more extensive digitized access. Our fee-earners need the very best. And, we could free up shelf space for more pertinent documentation that’s currently festering in storage.” Mistake. I’ve given two reasons instead of one. Each reason will undermine the validity of the other.

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about shelf space.”

  I walked into that one. Hannah is aware that she’s operating slightly under par; not tired, as such, but her nights have become heavy with dreams. How long has it been going on? Four, five weeks? At least. Now she comes to think of it, her first bad dream occurred seven weeks ago. There was a gap of two weeks before it returned and since then it has reoccurred with ever-greater frequency; most nights now. These nocturnal spins leave her slightly disoriented and off-center. It’s as if the color of her dreams tinges her waking hours. She wonders if she has experienced a troubling conversation that’s still lurking just beneath her consciousness. That’s exactly how it feels: as though there’s unfinished business, something left in abeyance.

  “I know my attitude to the library may seem callous, Beatrice—”

  “It’s an outrageous suggestion you’re making. Surely you see that,” interrupts the senior partner, evidently taken aback by the degree of Hannah’s insensitivity on the matter.

  “It’s my job to make sure the knowledge management system in this law firm is second to none. We need to guarantee speed to give us a strong competitive edge.”

  “On the other hand, think about this, Hannah. We are one of the oldest established firms in the City. It’s an important differentiator. That’s why we use this room for key-client meetings.” She waves her walking stick at the perfectly arranged, perfectly categorized tomes. “These old books say to our clients ‘We’ve been here a long time. We’ve seen it all before. There’s nothing we can’t handle.’ Or do you suggest we sell the collection and put fake books in their place?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Our clients love this room and they don’t give a damn about our problems with shelf space.”

  Hannah’s back stiffens. Strong language bothers her somehow. When anyone in the office swears she instinctively prickles. She asked her friends back at the rest station if their colleagues used bad language. No one seemed to share her concern. It’s not that she dislikes this form of speech. She just reacts, she feels, more than she ought.

  “More than anything else, Beatrice, our clients want fast results. So can we decide here and now to increase my budget, with or without selling off the library?”

  “Hannah, the library is not even up for discussion.” Nevertheless, Beatrice sags as if defeated. “I just wish you could appreciate…” Her voice trails off as though the conversation is exhausting her.

  “Appreciate what?” she says quietly.

  “The history of these things.”

  Hannah raises her eyebrows in reply.

  “Have you ever looked at any of these books?”

  “Well, no. That’s surely the point. I haven’t needed to.”

  “But you’ve noticed, Hannah, that other directors come in here, from time to time, to leaf through old volumes.”

  “Yes. But it’s usually the more…senior directors.”

  “And do you ever wonder why they come in here?”

  “I do. I assume it’s one of those things I just can’t grasp. It’s beyond me.”

  Beatrice stares hard at her. She knows this woman will accept her rebuff with good grace. But she would still like to help her to understand. “You see, Hannah…it’s about a different path to…revelation. How can I say it? A path that’s more direct—not quicker, but more direct—by which I mean less mediated. And it’s not simply a matter of being old-fashioned, and it’s not nostalgia.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, for one thing, it feels more satisfying…to remember a case in the Law Reports, or to recall something mentioned at a conference, or a reference made years before by a colleague, or to find a judgment in a digital catalogue… The point—” she nods her head in emphasis “—the point is…it’s a thrill to know we have the original case report here in the library. To find the specific bound volume, slide it from the shelf, and turn the pages. Your eyes hit the names. You have it, there, in your hands.”

  “It’s the same information, though. And it’s slower to access.”

  “I know.” Beatrice stamps the polished wooden floor with her walking stick. “But there’s something about finding—” she stamps the floor again “—the book.”

  Is this what happens in old age, Hannah wonders? You can’t find the words to convey your thoughts. It’s in your head but you can’t translate the idea into language. If only I could be inside Beatrice’s mind at this very moment and see for myself. Hannah offers a conciliatory smile but she won’t give in. “I think you’re mistaken, Beatrice. It’s pure nostalgia…Let’s agree to disagree, shall we?”

  Beatrice pushes herself out of the chair and the younger woman steps forward to take her arm. “You can have your bigger budget. But you’re not selling our library.”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  “There’s one condition. I want you to spend the rest of today in here, Hannah. I want you to look at these books. Touch them. Maybe you’ll see things my way if you immerse yourself. I’ll make sure you won’t be disturbed.”

  “I have meetings at eleven and two-thirty.”

  “Internal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cancel them.”

  Hannah tilts her head sideways. “Okay then. It’s a deal.” She opens the tall library doors for her colleague.

  “Try to keep in mind—” Beatrice halts on the threshold “—that this library holds many, thousands, of the judicial decisions that make up our common law, and that common law is constantly evolving; the law is a living process and you can touch it here. You can follow the paper-trail, read the views of legal commentators through the decades, the centuries even.” She rallies herself, for she won’t give up on Hannah. “Look at the Law Reports and the first editions; they’re so close, so proximate to the courtrooms of the day—” she leans forward “—you can almost hear the judges, the barristers, speaking; feel them breathing out of the page.” But she knows she still hasn’t conveyed her feelings. She can’t quite get there.

  “I promise, Beatrice. I will try.”

  She stands by the leather armchair vacated by Beatrice and surveys the library. The furniture arrangement, she notices, coerces any visitor to sit in solitary contemplation. It’s more of a shrine for her older colleagues. She pushes her hands through her hair. There are so many other tasks she could be working on today. But if Beatrice wants her to do this, how can she refuse? And does it matter which books she looks at? No. It can’t possibly make any difference.

  She slowly paces the perimeter of the library, tracing with her forefinger the shelf at shoulder height. She sighs at the thought of Beatrice’
s delusion that these books offer a particular pleasure. All the information in these books is so static. It’s so utterly pointless…Maybe I’ll go through the motions. She likes the phrase. It conjures the idea of a physical process, executed on automatic, that serves neither practical nor intellectual purpose. But there’s a hint of deception, too, which she’s not entirely sure about. A few quiet hours in here, a few hours of analysis, might help to clear my head, help me work out what’s wrong. I want to pinpoint this feeling of unfinished business, whatever it is. She pulls a book, not bothering to read the spine, and returns to the armchair. Should I report my nightmares to the Constructor? Or wait?

  The book lies in her lap.

  After all, the dreams may stop as suddenly as they began. She places her fingertips together and rubs her forefingers against her chin. Sitting in silence, she stares through the library’s high arched windows at the neighboring glass-fronted towers and watches the minor movements of people in their offices. All doing their bit, unaware of her gaze. And it seems incongruous to her that, here, in the heart of the capital’s commercial district she finds herself effectively task-free, completely idle. Or, at least, she regards looking at old books as a fairly idle way of passing a whole day.

  So. The nightmares. The first thing that concerns her is that she can’t get a fix on them. There are no images, no specific thoughts, no narratives. She wakes the same way most mornings now, with her heart pounding and a thick sheet of sweat coating her skin. That is, she wakes in fear. She knows such a strong emotion should be alien to her but she doesn’t feel inclined to broadcast her problem. Thus, a new precaution has entered her routine. She keeps a towel on her bed overnight and when jolted out of her dream into the very real surroundings of her quarters she sits up and dries herself. And in the morning, she throws back the sheets, allowing them to dry before she leaves for work, and before the rest-station domestics make their rounds.