Fire in the Unnameable Country (17 page)

May I ask a question, Mamun Ben Jaloun says, and continues,
though the man neither agrees nor disagrees: What is your position in this company.

I am director of internal communications.

And what is your name.

What business is it of yours. Zachariah blows smoke into the boy's face.

May I have one.

The director of internal communications slides his mother-of-pearl cigarette case across the table and even offers his own lit cigarette as fire.

Because, the boy says, smoking, feeling much better after the first few draws, I feel mirrored in your features, and I have heard stories, though my mother will not verify them and one cannot rely on rumours, that my father works in the Ministry of Radio and Communications. Is that not where we are.

Yes, Zachariah Ben Jaloun says.

After this exchange, which does not culminate in ecstatic reunion, the bureaucratic procedure flies more smoothly. Though it is still not discovered what the boy's charges are, and since it will take several months yet for the offices to confer and compare files from investigations to date, and to create these if they did not yet exist, Zachariah Ben Jaloun allows Mamun Ben Jaloun to sit in a corner of his office beside the door, to reside there during the day, and to curl up and sleep there at night, sit quietly while people come and go during daytime appointments, or to leaf through the senseless bureaucratic manuals, though many of these are censored in black. At lunchtime Zachariah forces him not to eat the scraps of not any and all employees, but only from his plate. This second arrangement is less than suitable, for it regulates Mamun's diet in unappealing ways: Zachariah Ben Jaloun prefers cooked onions in just about everything, including in his rice pudding as well as his black coffee. Eventually,
since Grenadier Lhereux's office and even certain lower departments are backlogged and will be so for the foreseeable future, Zachariah Ben Jaloun offers Mamun a job.

A job, what kind.

Judging from the nature of your arrest, your youth, and your keenness with words, you can be a wardrobe orderly.

The claustrophobic sound of the title brings back memories of Khrushchev's kicks to his shoulders and back, and Mamun isn't thrilled by the prospect.

I will pay you a salary, which will be credited against your consumption of foodstuffs, go toward compensating us for your boarding in my office, and even toward the systemic expenses any citizen incurs from being processed as an unnameable for an extended length of time.

I didn't know of such costs.

There are. So what do you say to, and Zachariah Ben Jaloun stated a paltry sum unworthy of mention.

I don't seem to have much of a choice, the boy casts his eyes downward.

One always has choice. Here is the most intolerable assertion to Mamun, which flies against the face of all veritable logic, and by which he feels crushed.

When he first started in the wardrobe, it was difficult to breathe or to see anything, but slowly, Mamun Ben Jaloun grew accustomed to the cracks of light that flittered in, and when the Director was not looking, it was even possible to hold the doors slightly ajar, just as long as no one was able to tell he was keeping post inside the furniture. The job of an orderly was custodial and secretarial, to provide general assistance, whether to leap out of the armoire at the exact moment
and serve tea to interviewees, as you will recall from Zachariah Ben Jaloun's first trip to the Department, to mop up blood and other effluvia from pre-interrogational tortures, or to retain whole memoranda inside the skull and supply the odd forgotten word or even large chunks of memorized text during the course of institutional transactions that occurred in the room.

Every day, they come and go and speak of this interned, that interned; due to the high costs of internment in even a wardrobe, the organization's goal is to intern the subject in his own home at his own expense and to defer the responsibility of internment to many organizations and individuals.

After three months of good labour, Zachariah presents Mamun a tailcoat and a crisp pair of black trousers, which, he informs, is uniform for his trade.

Is it possible to have a light in there, not a candle, because that might lead to fire, but maybe an electric lamp.

Zachariah is stunned by the question. No orderly has ever asked for such a, in fact most prefer the darkness because it offers the correct shade to remember the details of the work and in which to nap during the long horary spans of inaction. But I will inquire with others, he nods slowly with a knitted forehead.

No no no no, Mamun takes back his request, he does not wish to cause a fuss, especially when he feels he is edging closer to some judgment on his purgatorial condition. Nothing for sure, of course, but he has heard things. Sometimes, when Zachariah Ben Jaloun is away on business on another floor for hours at a time, he visits the officials of the central room, where they cluck away at typewriters and to each other and forget whose thoughts are whose, so that some memoranda will be filled with another individual's invoice figures. And what strange names they have. Calamity A through to M, and then the letters take off from N onward, but beginning with some other prefix, such as
Filibuster, Mylar, or Nanaimo, before the alphabet starts again in other equally strange way. They are nicknames, surely, since what mother would call her son Mylar, no matter how thin or strong he was. Mamun Ben Jaloun cannot say he has become friends with any of the officials, since they still do not always remember who he is, but once, one of the Calamities, a woman called Calamity L, mentions that things are pushing along, the grenadier's office has been reviewing a transcript of Khrushchev's speech and is cross-referencing it with eyewitness reports as well as police documents that describe a member of the Screens matching Mamun's description.

After the initial bout of fear, our hero is relieved. Even a guilty verdict would be a grateful change. Prison would be worse, surely, in many respects than the life of a wardrobe orderly, but at least his meals would be his, and perhaps there would be no shackles.

And what of Qismis, he asks, though he realizes that he is lucky enough to have received any information at all about his own case.

A grumble passes through the office just then, though he is not sure if it is just thunder from the daily stress or a response to his question.

I am sorry, Calamity L pushes up her glasses, that information is not ready for release or has been classified by higher authorities.

The months pass, and his longing for the aimless backspeech of his mother, those few errant caresses from Qismis, and much else belonging to his everyday life with the Screens drowns him with memories of the future, which will not, with frustration and hatred for all the hallways and offices and wardrobes of the world, as his case disappears into the annals of institutional memory—a polite way of saying its movements are unnoticeable if they occur at all. And that no knowledge leaks out. The system is porous, Mamun realizes from his conversations with the bureaucrats, but like a cell membrane that selectively allows certain materials to exit its perimeter and not others.

Flight: a new beginning. The possibility exists, he thinks. The
window in Zachariah Ben Jaloun's office is only three floors above the ground. Outside, there is a courtyard and the gate is guarded, but the darwan is a drowsy guard who may respond well to the sleight of throat. Near the northwest corner of the wall grows a baobab tree with a waterswollen trunk, palmate leaves, and long hanging fruits. On one of the higher branches is situated a large white beehive, and sometimes a man, like an apparition, garbed in loose-fitting all-white clothing, his face covered with a handkerchief, will bring a high high stepladder, which he will climb to inspect the hive. He wonders if. But the lock on the window is too difficult, and who knows whether the beekeeper would help with his very high stepladder.

Time passes. Two months or perhaps only a day that drags on sixty times as long. Housed in his usual darkness, Mamun provides the whole copy of an interrogation transcript in whispers gauged to travel exactly as far as Zachariah Ben Jaloun's ears and not to reach those belonging to the deputy chief of Inspections sitting across the desk, complete with every ow ow ow ow ow ow, every wince and hyperventilation and scream, though ask the boy whether he remembers the nature of the case and he will be unable to respond.

One day, based on his exemplary service, Mamun is offered a reward: Anything you like, young man, call it by name and it shall appear.

Our hero's request is simple: A sewing needle, he says.

When asked why such a trifling object, be bold in your asking, anything I said anything, Mamun Ben Jaloun replies, There are two reasons, sir: the first is sentimental, a sewing needle would remind me of my ailing mother, whom I have not seen for nearly a year, while the second is practical: my trousers have many tears, as is plain to the eye, he shows, and I feel embarrassed to walk about in their condition, though I pass through these halls like a clinking ghost and no one takes notice of me.

A day later, Mamun receives a small velvet box with a silver needle and black thread to match the colour of his pants. And after a week to the day—he bides his time for the exact moment and to provide himself sufficient occasion to ward off bubbling fears—he visits the central office and makes his usual rounds, asking all the natural questions, asking the young ones what are your evening plans, though he knows these are shut-ins, not the bottle smashing motorcycle driving late-show cinema types, how is your mother's health, has your sister married yet, oh she has eloped what an extraordinary turn of events, while to the older ones he inquires what are your aches, would an echinacea pastille not clear up that unsightly skin irritation, the lower back, yes, even for a youngster like myself, quite a vulnerable place on the body, agreed.

Eventually, he comes around to Calamity L, who is quieter than the others and hides behind a mountain of papers, who is more forward with her responses and unlike most in the office, remembers Mamun Ben Jaloun's name.

How now, she greets, nodding up down up down at the sight of his arrival like a pecking hen.

Just fine, Calamity L, although I have been itching madly at the ears.

Then scratch, why not, she nods vigorously.

But I have not explained: the itch resides deeper inside the ear canal.

Oh, a more difficult issue, then, to do away with.

Yes, for exactly that reason I was wondering if you could lend me one of your hairpins.

My hairpin, whyever for, she is suspicious.

But to scratch with.

She looks me up and down up and down.

You know, anything, a twig, a pencil, a pencap, would suffice.

Her voice rises in pitch-volume and the office cabal cranes its many necks, have they all nothing better to do—Mamun's palms clam up with sweat, his heart races for this is no ordinary request, but he tries to brighten the occasion with a smile, a shuffle, a jingle of his chains.

Eventually, after a lengthy description of the merits of exactly the hairpin she wears at digging into reservoirs of cerumen, The wax you see is less likely to come out, he gestures with a finger in the ear, and then the scoop in the back of your pin would be perfect for so forth.

Calamity L removes a single hairpin from her chignon and tweezes it into his hands.

I'll remember you by this, he kisses it and bows with grand romantic gesture, drawing winks and knowing glances from all the men, now we see the true nature of the exchange, nods and laughter, as Calamity L flushes and removes her foggy glasses to give them a good wipe-down.

Before we go further, for the story of the wardrobe orderly is a swift chapter in the life of Mamun Ben Jaloun, and before we realize it will come to a close, we must at least try to decipher the nature of Zachariah's flight from family and home and his relocation in the labyrinth. But the fact remains, there is less to know than we would imagine; that he is hollow is clearly observable. In the past twenty years, the spongiform tissue of Zachariah Ben Jaloun's lungs has depleted due to a rare, slow, wasting consumptive illness assisted by his tobacco addiction. In appearance, he is gaunt and his eyes have lost the permanent reflection of the Victoria dusklight that was once his favourite food besides raw onions. Today, Zachariah Ben Jaloun labours over the arrest of eight hundred youths in connection to a treason case, whose thoughtreels are so many, papers so haphazardly stored, and whose trial will so obviously never see the light of day
that the matter has leaked even into the international press due especially to the accidental capture of a foreign dignitary's son vacationing ratpack a whole bunch of them. He was plucked for questions, the mid-level functionary reported to Lhereux. And now, the grenadier asked. The functionary fidgeted for the right words, and made the sign of blackness with his hands.