top of it, Kos would pull out the spirit-level while I would anxiously try to determine if the pillar had been moved.
If the bubble deviated from its circular centre-point so much as a millimetre in any direction, the pillar would have to be dug up, realigned with the mark-stone, and relaid.
Once, when the stone was out to a barely perceptible degree, I suggested we might simply dig around it to make it level. From the expression on the surveyor's face, however, I realized that my idea was sacrilegious.
It was my turn to take the pick again. Trying to emulate the surveyor's technique I threw myself at the rock as though deranged, but I managed only to chip away a few tiny fragments. Drops of my sweat fell on the ground and were quickly soaked up by the dry dust.
I crawled out of the trench and went to the car, where I had left some warmish water in a bottle. I took a drink and then pulled a hammer and chisel from under the car seat.
If only we had decent tools.
The surveyor now took his turn. The rock sang like a stone bell.
I sat down on the fresh pile of broken rock. I didn't have the energy to walk the short distance into the shade.
The bell rang insistently, summoning the prisoners.
I had tried to position myself in one of the back ranks, but the others had pushed me into the front row. From the right, where they were ringing the bell, a group of supervisors and overseers in yellowish uniforms and red arm-bands approached. The officer leading the group, turned to me. Don't like the look of this one, he said. Two weeks of special treatment.
They grabbed me and led back to the wooden barracks. I was not surprised; not even frightened. I knew that,
eventually, I would meet everyone I loved in those special treatment barracks. They were merely leading me off to meet my fate, my story. I even looked forward to new encounters.
The surveyor jumped out of the trench, peeled off the rust-coloured sweater which he almost never removed, and measured the results of our work so far with a folding ruler. We were two-thirds finished. He handed me the hammer and the chiseclass="underline" it was my turn to make the bell ring. When I had prised away an especially large chunk of rock and tossed it out of the pit, I discovered nothing underneath it but a layer of earth mixed with small stones.
After half an hour, we had set the mark-stone in the bottom of the hole and jockeyed it into position so that the bubble stood motionless in the centre of the level. The surveyor set up a tripod over the pit and dropped a plumb-line from it. Then he balanced himself over the hole like an acrobat and I helped him shift the tripod until the plumb-line pointed to the centre of the crossed lines. We measured the depth of the mark-stone below ground level and then very carefully, so as not to knock over the tripod, we filled earth in over the plate, packed it down and measured the height again. Only now could the stone pillar be set over it.
The upper part of the stone had been properly shaped, while the lower part looked like an undignified, ridiculous leg. We carried it from the car and carefully lowered it into the hole. Kos then sat on the edge of the hole, held the stone in place with his knees and, armed only with the spirit-level, the plumb-line and his patience, he began his duel with a piece of rock that I could scarcely lift.
I was now sitting a little way off, watching him work
with the precision of a clock-maker on a 150 pound chunk of granite. Just when it seemed that the plumb-line was properly centred at last, the surveyor would set his level and the stone, with its ridiculous, misshapen leg, would refuse to sit true. He would then try to straighten it with gentle, almost invisible movements, but now the plumb-line was off-centre and the whole annoying operation would start all over again.
Finally, in a whisper, as though he were afraid his breath might unbalance the stone, he said: 'That's it!' The stone stood true in all its axes. So I took some earth, and carefully, so as not to move either the tripod or the stone, which Kos was still holding firmly clamped between his knees, I tipped it into the hole. At the same time, I felt a sense of relief, even satisfaction, as though I had just placed a word in a sentence so firmly and precisely that no one could question it, and the sentence would sound exactly as I had meant it to.
MrK
Director
The Office of Social Security
Prague
Dear Mr K.
By casting doubt on the nature of my work, an activity that, until now, I and several other people considered artistic, you have played a role in my becoming for a time at least, a surveyor's assistant. I consider it proper, therefore, to report to you on my progress so that, among other reasons, you may lack no opportunity to cast doubt on this work also.
In evidence of my work as a surveyor's assistant, may I provide you with the following information: during the month of September, I have cleaned and painted seventy-nine stakes, dug out approximately eight cubic metres of earth, set thirty concrete bases and five mark-stones in the ground. In various walls, mostly church and cemetery walls, I have chiselled holes for five bolts. I have also assisted in most of the surveying and related work.
I am aware that it is only with the approval of your office or rather of those who have been summoned to its head (I am employing the Russian turn of phrase favoured in your circles) that reality becomes genuine reality and work becomes genuine work, and I am not succumbing to any false or inflated notions about what I have accomplished in the field of surveying. It is entirely possible that I am living in a state of complete and utter illusion. I am truly curious about what conclusions you will come to.
Yours sincerely
K. (Surveyor's Assistant)
Home
ON FRIDAYS WE would return to town around noon and, having removed the tools from the car and swept out the week's debris so that the car looked almost clean, I'd hurry inside to change in time to catch the afternoon train.
The station was neat and full of flowers, and I was usually the only passenger there. The train stopped here, it seemed, out of nostalgia, as a gesture to the old days, which I could scarcely remember, days when there had been farmers' markets, fairs and isolated farm cottages in the countryside with women who would take the train into town to do the shopping.
When the train arrived — a single, red locomotive with a driver and perhaps three or four passengers, usually Vietnamese men — I would get on, dust off a seat, and sit down. Then I would look out of the window and watch as autumn settled on the now familiar countryside, as the last fields of sugar beet were harvested, as the reeds in the marshlands turned ochre and grey, as the tamaracks yellowed and the dogwood and sumacs burned an ever more brilliant red.
I have a home, of course, but have always lived in a city. So there is no country landscape to which I can properly