Fire in the Unnameable Country (40 page)

As if one has a choice in these matters. Refusal means an immediate sixty days' prison sentence and ineffable branding as unpatriotic by the British Council, among other hassles.

No, sir, I am delighted and surprised.

Yes, as I am surprised by your tardiness, you will not receive a cheque this week and you are henceforth relieved of your duties, he stamps loudly and tosses a paper, which floats high in the room, carried by the ceiling fan in a zigzag way.

How will I afford onions, Zachariah Ben Jaloun thinks, for the next two weeks, already feeling his eyelids shrink at the thought, his vitreous humour drained and with it all his emotions. A rattle of teacups. The miniature woman with the papers in one hand and the balancing tray
on her head tracks its movement with short assured steps and deftly catches the page between her teeth.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun arrived at the steps of the imposing cathedral that was never a religious edifice, that was built only in the last twenty years in the style of old European Gothic churches to serve officious government, and whose outer walls bore many intricate carvings of inscrutable faces: gargoyles or saints, politicos or traitors, one could not be sure. He was told to arrive in the morning, but no one specified the hour, and so anxious was he about being late he spent the night sipping a full thermos of coffee and pacing, ready-dressed in a starched shirt and sharp-ironed pants, munching on raw onion after onion. He stayed from trying to write any lines of the blank verse just in case it interfered with his insomniac plan. On the past few occasions he had been seized with vomiting sessions when trying desperately to sketch out an outline of the poem that had grown into quite epic proportions in his mind, and it had become impossible to predict what effect writing would have on his body these days.

On the steps of the edifice lay several large sleeping dogs, and Zachariah Ben Jaloun could not tell whether these were strays or guard animals. They appeared to take no notice when he approached, but these were not ordinary dogs, he realized: they were striped like tigers and much larger than they had seemed at a distance, enormous, the size of nearly grown tigers, and with the faces of bullmastiffs. A small man with wizened white hair and a shrunken arm appeared before them and seemed to be their custodian.

Don't worry, they don't bite, they only prick up their heads to regard those exiting.

Those exiting.

Yes, to guard against theft.

Against theft.

Do you always repeat others like a fool.

Not always, no, I am merely thinking.

Of what.

Of nothing exactly, please go on.

Huh.

I mean, please could I have some description of what is inside this building of such value as to warrant theft.

Why, thoughtreels. Although, the reedy man lowered his voice, hushhushed with a finger to lips to indicate chupi-chupi. He beckoned with the same reedy finger comecloser, although, he said, even to speak of them causes a little urination in my pants, he said with a shudder of excitement or fear.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun took a step back and looked at the crooked nose, the strange white face of the man before him, his reedy figure and withered arm. What is this place, he looked up for a sign or some indication.

The Ministry of Radio and Communications, the little man spat, though Zachariah had not spoken the words, you really do have the jaws of a fool.

Oh, I must be at the wrong place, Zachariah took out the piece of paper where the overseer had written the address, I am here for a junior commanding position in the infantry, look here, he held it out to the man, who shook his head and refused even to glance at it.

I know what is written there, he said, you merely have to walk down the first hallway until the end, go up the stairs between the third and sixth floors, and you will find the station you are searching.

Station.

Yes, man, and don't go jawing about repeating their words, they'll take offence and then you will really be in trouble.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun stepped over the massive dogs. He had trouble pushing open the heavy door and felt embarrassed, pulled the handle, but that did no good either.

Here, let me, the little man said, and easily pushed it open with his good arm and hidden strength.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun muttered thanks and walked into an arid windy corridor that extended into the distance. In the far distance there was a faint light. There was no one else in the hallway and he walked alone in silence save for the sounds of his shoes against the floor, clutching his tie, which fluttered like a disembodied tongue. He walked and his steps echoed against the high ceilings. It took a long time for him to reach the stairs and then he had to decide whether to take the elevator adjacent to the stairwell. He decided against it, thinking it better to follow Withered Arm's instructions as closely as possible. He rose up the steps and decided on the third floor as where he should like to arrive. There he noticed only one other man, a young man like himself awaiting his turn in a mercilessly hot room with plastic chairs and a bespectacled woman seated behind a desk shuffling through papers. A caged mynah hung in the corner.

Zachariah took his seat after confirming the time of his appointment with the receptionist, taking little notice of the other man in the space. He was forced to wait a very long time. Hunger, thirst, the erratic predictable flight of a drosophila, the cries of the black bird, the itching of a welt on his right ankle from shoes of slightly incorrect size.

Ben Janoun, the woman called out, and Zachariah resisted the urge. Surely it was the other man who possessed that name and he would assume his spot, but since he did not, Zachariah wondered whether the woman was simply mispronouncing. Ben Janoun, she repeated.

Yes, I am he, Zachariah's mouth decided to take the chance, and his feet leapt up. Room 6119, she handed him a slip of paper on which there was written some inscrutable text beside the twisted number.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun focused unfocused his eyes, turned it upside down, but still the letters failed to reveal meaning. The more he tried the more he drowned in nausea. At first writing and now reading as well. Either I am going mad, he thought, or this is truly the loss of the written word. When he knocked on the indicated door, he received no reply. Though it was insensible to enter a room into which he was not invited, he tried the handle and found it locked. Without recourse he walked down the hallway and found to his surprise other doors also marked 6119. Well, which one, he laughed, and stopped in front of a random.

Yes, a voice from within.

At least something, he said softly, and went inside.

An ordinary moonfaced man with not a follicle of hair on his face or on the top of his skull, with long, feminine eyelashes, sat behind a large desk.

I'm Zachariah Ben Jaloun, and I've come here for a.

Ben Jaloun.

Yes, that's right.

No, we didn't call for a Ben Jaloun, you must mean Ben Janoun.

I see.

Are you Ben Janoun.

And Zachariah again had the opportunity to correct the mistake and save himself from the dispirited future that awaited him within the walls of this evil edifice, whose history he was not yet bound to shape. Once more, however, he chose to assume the mask of the other, this Ben Janoun. I am he, Zachariah said softly.

The man said good, then go down to the end of this hallway and make a left and knock on the second door of the second wing of the 6119 Department, in which you will find a man who looks like me, but who is, in fact, my brother. He will lead you through the rest of the interview process.

You mean the interview has already begun.

Yes, said the bald man with long eyelashes.

I am Zachariah Ben Janoun, he announced himself, and a man nearly identical to the one he had just encountered pointed him to the plush leather chair over there reminded him of the cushions in the professor's house, though these were a drab brown.

Would you like a hot drink, tea possibly. And without waiting for Zachariah's answer he muttered something imperceptible and a full-grown man sprang open the doors of a large chest of drawers behind the chair, barrelled and out, excuse me pardonsorrysir, nearly tripping over the long coattails of his jacket streaming behind him, with a steaming hot receptacle, handing Zachariah a saucer and a cup.

Zachariah held the cup and could not help but wince as several boiling droplets of fluid struck his hand as the man poured.

Manu, Ordinary Man Two shouted, and began rebuking the waiter with such ire.

Zachariah Ben Jaloun, or Ben Janoun shall we say, for we had better start getting used to this new name, better sooner than later, felt a great need to defend, my very fault, sir, I shifted position in my seat and so forth.

Very well, Ordinary Man Two glared, and sniffled di-dit, as if that were an indication for the servant to return to his wardrobe.

Does he live there, asked Zachariah.

In a manner of speaking, as a hermit crab lives in his shell. And no further speech passed regarding the waiter or the wardrobe. But throughout the interview, Zachariah Ben Janoun was forced to ignore a weeping whimpering scratching sound like a neglected dog emerging from inside the furniture.

Ordinary Man the Second began to read from a page before him. Zachariah Ben Janoun. Five years' experience in the infantry along the Somali border. Rise to Major in two years excellent. Associated with Black Organs in retrieving information through expert knowledge of Arabic, Amhari, and Quinceyenglish. Received the Order of New Jerusalem at age twenty-seven, Ordinary Man the Second looked up from the paper with an intense glare of respect.

At any point Zachariah could have interrupted, screamed out, no I am not these things, none of the individual facts and certainly not the composite hero you are describing, I am a minor poet only, no Ben Janoun but Zachariah Ben Jaloun, a quite happy man when reading E.E. Cummings naked alone and lying with a kindly washergirl several times a month, though I do not prefer her as much as the woman with the sleepy eyes I met once and more so another, whom also I have seen also on one occasion, a woman with grey eyes, who, though I have not thought of it until this moment, may be the source of a literary constipation the likes of which no human being should have to experience, and which brings me to my real question: why is orthography the source of nausea and vertigo for me now when it has always et cetera, and to continue I would say only that I am here for a job in the junior infantry position, hopefully one that allows me much time outdoors to think and to surreptitiously scrawl poems and marginalia into a notebook that may one day be transformed into another published slim volume, I know I will never be a great poet, but have you ever consumed a raw onion, there is no sweeter poetry than a cold unpeeled raw onion between one's teeth, Sir, I would only like to live inside the womb of language and to eat the light of dusk my whole life, indeed these are my true desires.

But Zachariah Ben Janoun said none of these things and assumed the mask of a valorous past, learned swiftly that as Zachariah Ben Janoun, he had never hunched his shoulders and had known how to
defeat an enemy with a glare, to note slight changes in an enemy's psychological patterns, to destroy his familial ties and poison his friends against him, how to frame any words he has ever written in order to prevent him ever from writing again if he is a dissenting writer, and if he is a carpenter, how to turn his hands against him, how to make him feel his craft is ugly, his head is a shameful pot of lies, how to do these things and more to hammer to harm to harm to harm. Why, Zachariah Ben Jaloun. And yet no one would ever know himself.

Welcome to the Ministry of Radio and Communications, the ordinary man welcomed him with a clammy handshake. We are honoured to have such a decorated member join Department 6119. While as major you were no doubt informed of some of the inner workings of the Ministry of Radio and Communications, the affairs within these walls are of a deeply secret nature and much more complex; please allow me to give you a brief tour.