Fire in the Unnameable Country (25 page)

Excuse me.

One moment.

Three hundred moments passed and the air grew heavy and began to smell foul. Out of the corner of an eye, the receptionist satisfied himself of the uninspiring dimensions of the person before him and coughed, Tell me, would you alert anyone if I used the number six twice to make this set work, he pushed the crumpled pages of last week's newspaper toward Mamun Ben Jaloun.

You have my word, Mamun swore, as it seemed like an easy way to push along.

The clerk only rejoiced in his answer, and with a few tugs on his long, thin beard returned to the puzzle in earnest.

I am merely looking for

Not yet, the clerk crossed out some figures, replaced them with new ones until satisfied with having solved a great dilemma. He directed with a hand without looking up from the puzzle: To file for
sickness or matrimony, follow the hallway to the left and up the stairs to the second-floor lobby; for a minor insurance claim, also to the left, but up four flights of stairs, it will wind you, walk slowly, though that is only personal advice; for a major insurance claim, right hallway, third door, easy enough; for all other matters consult the General Information Desk on the second floor: take the right vestibule all the way to the end and go down to the basement.

The basement but also the second floor.

The clerk did not repeat himself, content with having supplied the correct information. For two moments longer, Mamun Ben Jaloun remained standing in place. But then, noticing that it was he himself who was delaying the task at hand, he walked toward his destination.

In the equatorial climate of the region one never feels cold, and yet in the important ministries it remains fashionable to run the air conditioning at blizzard settings in order to reflect the atmospheres of the northern continents. The farther Mamun walked down the hall, the colder he felt, and he swore at himself, though he could not have foreseen the circumstances, for not having brought a scarf. His chest began to hurt and he was sure icicles were forming in his lungs and that surely he would contract pneumonia, pulmonary fever, other deathly illnesses. His breaths were slow, laborious contractions, and several times he knelt to rest in the empty hallway, which filled up with cries or maybe laughter, though from where, what sources. When he reached the end, he wondered if he should turn around, the basement would surely be even colder and damper, but he had travelled so far and it had cost him perhaps nearly half a day; besides, the tender memory of his friends deserved at least a portion more of his suffering, let alone the monetary promise he had made to Shukriah.

What he discovered, however, was quite the contrary: the basement was a tropical hothouse, well lit, with colourful weeds
growing seamlessly out of cracks in the floor. His destination turned out to be an expansive room with a large set of movable screens that workers shifted to make new three-coloured/four-cornered workspaces, and which looked as chaotic as a university newspaper office, with movie posters, stacks of papers, and typesetting machines growing like hallway plants out of the floor. Employees, or people one gathered were employees, rushed about fulfilling what were no doubt important tasks judging from the swiftness and surety of their movements.

Mamun Ben Jaloun wanted to test the contradictory information he had received, second floor and basement, to see whether he had arrived in the right place, and a bespectacled woman, noticing a stranger was standing around with no place to go, approached him with suspicion: Are you here for the warehouse position.

Before he could answer, someone from behind a nearby screen shouted: Tell him to fill out an application and rush it immediately to Augusto.

Recall he had come here to file, but before any full thought could be uttered, Mamun Ben Jaloun found himself led by the hand by the bespectacled woman whose feet flew faster and dragged him flying behind her, You must understand that unlike other ministries we do not tolerate tardiness, you are already several hours late for your appointment and Augusto is generally an intolerant man. While I do admit that lately he has acquired some respect for me due to my organization of the last two shipments, I cannot spend my arduously acquired professional currency on strangers. Strangers, she stopped for a second and let go of his hand, which glowed from being nearly wrenched from the socket, to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking.

Ben Jaloun, my father panted a reply, you walk very fast, quicker than most people run.

Thank you, she seemed legitimately pleased by the observation, and before giving him the chance to make her acquaintance in turn,
the nameless woman grabbed his hand again and flew up a set of stairs, crossed an expansive hallway in under a minute, made some deft turns and then: they arrived at the entrails of industry.

Recall that while his parents, Gita Nothingatall and Zachariah Ben Jaloun, began their stories serving the unnameable country's brain and sympathetic nervous system, it would be my father's fate to wind up at the colon of the unnameable country. Around him, forklifts struggled desperately with shapes. The light fell crooked and smelled noxious. The sounds were those of the hidden variety to which only the average person, the factory worker, the warehouse dispatcher, the lowly street pirate, or the restaurant dishwasher, is privy, and although my father had once been a famous playback singer, he had clearly fallen underground.

What did you say.

My mouth said shudder, replied my father to Augusto.

A nearby man broke from a group of workers who were laughing loudly and unkindly. He was almost perfectly spherical and struggled to remain on his feet as he approached them.

Morgiana, what runt have you brought me, I told you I need a big man to move these mirror-walls, at least two hundred pounds.

I am sorry, Augusto, the woman genuflected, I assure you I won't fail you next time, she bowed her head as my father stared mouth agape, astounded by her sycophancy, but he was the only one who answered the call, she mumbled a barely audible excuse.

At this point, Mamun Ben Jaloun might have admitted that he was not here for a job and instead he had only come to unlock his bank account and report the deaths of three of his friends in a small town called Epsilante, but it touched him to the quick when recalling he was an unemployed man with a family to support, a beggar, in short, who had little right to be choosy about where he worked or in what conditions.

I was a, he began, about to say singer.

You were, were you, Augusto said, before telling him the job consisted of heavy lifting, no experience required, have you ever dealt with mirrors.

No, sir.

Be careful because they scratch easy, and because of the bad luck business when shattering.

Scandalized by his weak lungs and lack of spinal fortitude, Shukriah was put slightly at ease by Mamun Ben Jaloun's awareness that steady employment was a surer way of staying alive than by savings. Within several days, however, it grew obvious that my father, who had always been among the boniest of the Screens and had been physically weakened, as had they all by recent misadventures, dropped and cracked three mirrors while also nearly stepping in the way of a forklift.

You are not meant for this job, the spherical Augusto informed him, not unkindly, as my father pleaded with him on his way out that if there were another position, sir, elsewhere in the ministry, I should be happy to.

Probably, in fact certainly, Augusto said, though I don't know of any, try consulting General Information Services, and slammed the door behind him.

Mamun Ben Jaloun discovered the same hallway through which Morgiana had dragged him flying behind her lightning feet and he tried for several days to traverse the hallways of the ministry in hopes of returning to the office with the movable screens and the colourful plants which grew right out of cracks in the floor. People hurried by and glowered or stared right through him as if they were ghosts, some smoked thick cigars and unfurled newspapers from under their armpits. Farther along, a pair of old men played Chinese checkers while a crush of people threw change, placed bets shouting incomprehensible.

He slept in a thoroughfare and awoke with a cop's shining flashlight
a retinoscope into his eyes. He heard them say not him, though no one spoke the words. He was not arrested.

Sometime later, he arrived at a snaking queue and tapped a shoulder to ask what is this here, brother.

The man sniffled, and he shifted from foot to wooden foot. Veterans' Bureau, informed the hobbling man, before mumbling something about an infection. He opened his mouth wide as if to a doctor: a swollen mouth in which there unhinged from the upper palate and from the lower jaw innumerable rows of suckers not unlike a lamprey's, and the mouth within the mouth hissed at Mamun Ben Jaloun like a prehistoric marine animal.

My father shuddered and hurried on. He had not eaten for forty hours and purchased a spicy clove and cinnamon tea from an old woman who sat on a stool in front of a cauldron, which was heated by a lonely flame underneath, powered by a canister of fuel. She asked which hallway was his destination, and he responded second floor, basement, to which she nodded with closed eyes and pursed lips before proffering directions for several minutes without stopping thiswaythatwayrightthenleft, she kept saying until Mamun realized this ministry building was a more massive labyrinth than he had imagined or that the woman was mad or simply desired the company of a stranger on whom to unleash words, any words at all.

He walked along after passing her a few coins more than she had asked for, and came upon the first stairwell he had seen since he began his journey. Gingerly, he lowered himself down the steps, not wishing to spill the hot tea, taking sips now and then, but his care would be lost to the wind, which, once he opened the door to the belowfloor, blew with such gale force that the hot fluid flew up and scalded his face. In pain, Mamun Ben Jaloun pressed himself flat against the wall, against the wind like a cockroach, and inched along on his side until the first door, which was locked. He continued along for ten minutes until the
second door, whose handle turned; he was thrown headlong into someone's chest.

Mamun Ben Jaloun excused himself profusely but the stranger waved off the sorries, patted down his tie, none of that, there has been some malfunction of the ventilation system, you're not to.

Then a gaze of recognition from those large eyes belonging to a flat, elliptical face as the neck extended forward for closer scrutiny: You are Mamun Ben Jaloun, is this true.

My father was confused; it had been so long since anyone had recognized him by face.

The playback singer. There were one or two photos of you in magazines, he explained when my father said nothing.

Yes, my father smiled sheepishly, though I haven't sung a note in years.

Ah, the man lifted a finger to his lips, my wife still puts on some of your records now and then. At any rate, I was expecting to hear from you tomorrow, not today, at least as General Information Services informed; but the ventilation mishap gives me some time today and I don't mind seeing you now.

They knew that

Yes, they said it would probably take three days due to the traffic and your inexperience with this part of the ministry. Please sit, sit, please, may I offer

Mamun asked for water as the man disappeared behind a large stack of papers. Mamun looked around. The sign on the desk said Assistant Archives Supervisor, and there was no name. The room bore a musty smell and water dripped from the ceiling at various parts onto plastic buckets, and on the sides of the higher-than-human stacks of paper it was possible to see the bright orange mould growing.

Supervisor smiled as he offered water and the meeting began in earnest after a few further instantiations of smalltalk, reminiscences of
what La Maga Studios was before the Great Fire, what it had become now that the President's forces had infiltrated, Sharmilla, do you know the actress.

Yes, my father said, I have worked with her and even offended her on occasion.

Supervisor leaned closer and placed a hand at one corner of his mouth, this is just a secret from a fan to a former filmi: she is an Organ, an intelligence officer.

Sharmilla, Mamun raised his voice unconsciously. He was incredulous: I didn't imagine her to be politically motivated one way or another.

That's precisely the kind of individual they look for. What one needs are eyes and ears, nothing more, just your organs without the body, because otherwise.

For a moment the assistant archives supervisor just stared; then with his hands he torqued an imaginary wrench: Imagine I am twisting your genitals, Mr. Ben Jaloun. My father's face narrowed as the assistant archives supervisor laughed a little too loudly. Anyhow, I am taking us away from the true purpose of our meeting.

Yes, my father said coolly, I am looking for work that involves no lifting.

Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Ben Jaloun, the Archives Department of the Ministry of Records and Sources cannot promise that you wouldn't have to lift the odd file or thoughtreel.

Thought what.

Thoughtreel, yes, it's best we get right to the Archives themselves and I'll show you our library. Supervisor stepped around the desk and the high various folders, he pressed a button Mamun had not noticed, and the wall to the left of them sprang apart and revealed a larger than usual but still cramped dumbwaiter. We shall have to squeeze tightly, I don't trust you to go alone since you have never been to the Archives.

My father didn't believe it could be done, perhaps they would be crushed in the attempt, and when he suggested the mortal possibility, Supervisor only repeated that he did not trust Mamun Ben Jaloun to take the dumbwaiter alone.

Come along, it's been done many times.

So they pressed body to body like cooked shrimp in an elevator fetid breaths for the ride, in a machine a tiny box whose dimensions also held Supervisor's large side-bag dug into Mamun's ribs/ the elevator jerked, it dropped two or three stories, caught its fall, before descending a long distance smoothly. When they got out it took a long time for Mamun to straighten out his spine and for his eyes to adjust to the dim light showed dark shelves as they got closer. Lines, squares, and rectangles extended upward several stories, and above them floated a black sky from which shone a track of faintly lit red obelisks.