To not return is to let me down. For two days I kept this job alive. Others might have conceded but I thought it suitable for you, for you alone. The Office Manager spoke to me about it, she called me into Central Office. It was by way of a reprimand. I said you would be here and you were not.
She looked at me when she spoke. I found that difficult, and to distinguish her verbal utterances required a concentration beyond my own.
I was not used to being looked at. I dont want to be unfair to people of the female gender but this is my personal experience.
She was talking to me again. What in God’s name was she saying? She was a forthright lady. Aged thirty-three. I knew she was. Thirty-three is an age I regard positively. She had a small face. Women I go for usually dont have small faces although I have got nothing against them, it is circumstances. But it may operate in reverse, that women who dont have small faces tend to be more interested in me. I am as putty in their hands. Women with small faces tend to go for other fellows, they go for obvious lookers. I am not an obvious looker. I would say for most women I am barely on the planet until if ever there comes a time, when that time arrives I shall be everywhere; look into my eyes and quiver ye lowly mortals. I shall have passed over but this is a form of transcendence and not a metaphorical reference to death man when I refer to death I make no bones and although I am being facetious that is truly what I believe, I hate all that fucking stuff; let us be honest between people, and more especially ones to whom we are attracted, and that includes male to male, I would never be exclusive about matters existentially crucial. It is what I am talking about.
She had finished and was waiting for me to respond. I nodded. What happened is I was actually robbed, I said. I had my bag, I said, it was the day after I left here. I was walking up by Roebuck Terrace and that little park they have there, they use it as an occasional music venue.
She frowned.
You dont like it there? I do. It is quiet; office workers and shop workers take in their sandwiches at lunch-time. Some feed the birds. They see the birds flying off into the blue sky and they have to return to the office. I was in the little park and I sat down on a bench, man I was tired, it was a while since I had slept. You know my circumstances. I think you do.
I waited for a comment. Instead she resumed from where she left off the last time.
That took me by surprise: I hadnt finished what I was going to say about how I hoisted up the old legs and fell asleep on that damn bench, so that is how the robbery took place, when I was asleep the dirty cowardly scoundrels: at least do the loathsome deed face to face etcetera etcetera. Except if the robber had been some poor bastard down on his luck, I suppose you could make a case for him. How was he to know I was in a bad way? in an even worse way than him. He would not have known. Why the hell didnt he ask! Especially if I was sleeping on a bench. Benches are not hotels. Then too the apparel, one tries to keep up but fashion tends to pass one fucking bye bye, the old catwalk and so on. Then if music is playing, music seems to play at important stages of my existence; at these times I am doing my utmost to concentrate on moments unconcerned with music, with non-musical moments, and there is a tension in this struggle, and this tension appears to impact psychologically. Normally I hear big extrovert symphonies. Schubert’s Ninth. That is me, that is a day in my life. One actual day! It is like a whole world of human experience, it is just like goodness me!
Instead of me saying all that the bureaucrat woman stole the initiative and was doing the talking in her upper English accent. Maybe she was related to the Queen of Britain. Some of the Queen’s relations are required to earn a crust in blue-chip defence ventures. She referred to important clients. On one’s behalf a client was kept waiting for a period of three hours.
Who was this client?
She tapped the keyboard and I glimpsed a light flickering on my details, imprisoned forever. Certain phrases shimmered upward from the hard drive. I tried to read them before they vanished: clients are impressed by qualifications; promotional opportunities arise; salary scales are pleasing.
I shook my head in wonder. I was observed doing so. Would you be interested in less attractive options? she said, as though these existed. She did not wait for an answer but smiled remotely, tapping the keyboard and studying the screen. Here is one, she said. This is a provisional position. Opportunities for advancement do not exist, which is normal practice. Do you understand that?
Yes, I said, where I come from we take early steps in life.
Even should you indicate a willingness to learn and improve your all-round workskills superiors will not waive normal practice.
We dont begin with giant strides.
She stared at me. I smiled. I was not being sarcastic. My language, however, was a challenge. People use language of this nature rarely. Not unless they themselves are in an advantageous position. Advantageous.
When I left school I attended night classes and was fortunate that one class featured the place of linguistics in theories of economic psychology, being a grey area loosely associated with traditional philosophy: Celtic Continental as opposed to Roman. Roman forms are by nature imperialistic, especially at the personal level where ‘the negation of the other’ is the key to survival if not the ability to learn. The class was an aid to intellectual life and this had a negative impact on my capacity to serve and thereby earn a living in this country where non-thinking automata have been the vogue for for
For nothing. Since the dawn of the Holy Empire, that deadening blanket of wrong reasoning, governed governed and governed again.
I thought the bureaucrat woman intriguing and hoped it was mutual. She gave me the address and interview card, advised me of the bus I could take to get to this place of provisional employment. I stared at this card which was a pale green; lined, numbered and strongly luminal. I brought out my wallet, crushed the moths and blew off the dust, inserted the card into a compartment.
Then it was interview ended.
How had that happened? One minute I was sniffing her perfume the next I was stepping out onto the pavement.
Such is life. I am just so fucking trusting an individual. I always was. There is that bottom line with bureaucrats and some of the tools of their trade are tricks of deception. They get us doing things of which we, as it were, are unconscious. We seem to be unconscious. Yet we walk about and act in the world of other humans. It is not so much depressing as something less so, less depressing. I would have said it was not depressing, not at all, when I left the Agency on this occasion.
And it was this occasion and I was going to have to remember it was this occasion. And not forget.
She had diverted my attention. She had.
Here I was outside the actual building, and I had had plans.
I never leave buildings unless all internal possibility is sealed off. One wanders corridors. One has a look here and there. One makes discoveries. Too late now.
One’s defences are there to be lowered. This problem is singular. It exists for all individuals. The bureaucrat woman and myself were of an age. I had reckoned on a kind of I dont know man honesty. From her. Something. Is ‘solidarity’ too absurd a concept? Even using the word makes me turn my head a little, as though disguising my own naivety.
I shuffled along, then frowned and walked properly.
I felt like a think. There was a little grassy square with benches. I glanced to the sky then sat down.
One could only sigh.
Next thing I woke up! How long had I been sleeping! Who knows! No one. No one but God, and God is not a one, God is a all.
Still daylight. A bus; I spied it trundling round a far corner. On its near-side front window a sign read: ‘World Freedom From Exhaust Day’. Until midnight all bus travel was free. What luck! I took the address and interview card out of my wallet, then flung away the wallet!