What I thought about when I heard you were missing

Two ways of living with despotism

What I thought about when I heard you were missing.

A jumble of images, in which I struggle to recall the last time I’d seen you, the last time I would see you, knowing as I do, the significance of our euphemism.

It would have been the President’s Day rally at which you spoke last October. I’d thought about trying to talk to you but did not bother; I rationalised your busy schedule, your security detail, the possibility that I might be embarrassed by your barely recalling me. Maybe I didn’t want to.

I did notice that the President sat down and ended your applause after only six minutes, a full minute less than the previous year. I did not give this much thought; you were no longer a rising star to be encouraged. The time would have been allocated elsewhere. Only now do I see that it may have been significant.

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The time I would choose to remember, then, is a few years before that, at the junior functionary’s conference to which we spoke as examplars,  promising spokesmen of the new generation. I had long assumed that you had overtaken me in fulfilling that promise. Not so, as I am still alive.

I allow myself the brief thought that I may well have had, or will have, more effect on our nation than you. I have spent the last two years overseeing new agricultural developments: new mechanised planting techniques, new strains of cereal with high yields, which will grow in places inhospitable to our native grains. People will eat who would not have done so. What could be claimed for you? Liberalisation of the universities? The law of unforeseen consequences will determine how that is viewed.

I’ve just nipped downstairs to see if your photo is still up in the official display; it is, but it’s the weekend. Monday, it will be taken down ‘for maintenance.’  I wonder what time this will happen and laugh quietly at the idea of a lottery on this �" I’d pick between 11 and 12, just before lunch so it will be seen by all those leaving and arriving. This is just the sort of marginal humour that drew you to me, I know; not cynicism exactly, yet more than scepticism. Drink fuelled that friendship as drink fuelled my sarcasm. Nowadays I confine my drinking to lone sessions and my sarcasm to thoughts safe in the rebel territory of my head.

That conference was in a former seminary on a low hill outside a small coastal town. It was the first and last time either of us ever went there. The clumsily gothic architecture still bore traces of its past function: crosses in the wire balustrades, ceramic doves and fishes in the window frames. It was a long narrow building of three floors with turrets bearing staircases strung along it at intervals. Sessions were in the former chapel on the first floor of the central block and in smaller rooms alongside. The ground floor held the offices and canteen, the third floor cell-like bedrooms. We shared a cell, you on the top bunk.

That first night, there was wine with dinner, thin oxidised rotgut. It was worse than the sun-wine my grandfather used to make by leaving a ceramic jug of grape juice out in the yard for a week or two. I could only ever drink that with the addition of honey. I wondered about asking for some honey. Was I now senior enough? I didn’t know, and still sharing a room suggested not, so I sipped at mine to be polite. You snorted in open disgust and pushed yours aside. The principal made a short speech of welcome and we and the students ate in silence.

‘Shall we go for a proper drink?’ you asked afterwards in the ground-floor library, as you smoked your roll-up of the filthy green tobacco they still grow in your province.

‘How? We are on curfew.’ My enquiry was of strategy, not principle.

Your answer was oblique as it often was. ‘Interesting building, this. There are three floors, 8 towers of staircases, 4 to the front and 4 to the rear. How many routes do you think there are to get from here to our room, or vice-versa?’

‘Lots.’

‘Almost infinite, all those ups, downs, alongs and acrosses. I say almost; there may be a formula for calculating the actual number. I don’t care to calculate it. Only 2 ways in and out, though.’

‘2?’

 ‘The main doors, well monitored, and a back door from the office of the concierge, at the rear of the lobby. The old clerics obviously didn’t trust their occupants not to wander.’

Thus it was, with some combination of bribe and threat that we found ourselves, half-an-hour later, out in the service area of the Seminary. It was getting dark by then and the turrets, spires and gargoyles loomed over us in condemnation. The village twinkled below.

‘I assume there are bars there.’

‘OK.’

We walked down the hill in silence. From a crossroads we could see two options. Down towards the sea there were lights and a murmur of conversation and music, to our right a small dark building with a wooden barrel hanging above the door. You turned towards this.

‘We’ll stand out more in a place like that,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, we will.’

You, we, went anyway.

 Inside I found a table at the rear and you went up to the bar, returning with a beer for me, wheat -spirit for yourself.

‘Do you think there might be a spy in here, it being so close to the centre?’ I asked.

‘Yes, it’s the bald fellow, I got him a drink.’

A stout little man raised his glass to us in acknowledgement.

We drank and talked. What did we talk about? Colleagues, politics, the news, our families, I recall nothing specific.

Not about women, you never did. Later, those who knew of my…what?...friendship, relationship, closeness?...whatever it was with you, made oblique enquiries or insinuations about your apparent celibacy, or rather sexlessness.  It never really struck me at the time. I have neither denied nor confirmed any suggestion.

We were in that happy state between sobriety and stupidity by the time we found ourselves back up under the gaze of the gargoyles. I had assumed that whatever deal had been negotiated had included a return fare. Not so. The back door was locked, the janitor’s area in darkness.

We ambled round to the main door and, glancing in, were immediately spotted by the dark man lurking in the booth in the lobby. You marched up the steps boldly and headed for the stairs.

‘You two. Names.’

‘You know our names.’

‘Where have you been?’

There was a phone in his booth. ‘I assume you know where we’ve been.’

‘You will be reported.’

You looked steadily at him. ‘I will be governor or minister or even president soon, and you and your family will still be here.’

He hesitated and his eyes flicked to your silent shadow, myself.

‘And he will still be my friend.’

The dark man gestured brusquely that we should head to bed. We did.

You had already risen by the time I came round the next day. By the time I got to the hall you had spoken and left.

Now you are gone. I’m not really surprised.  

 

 

 

Author's Note

This could be set anywhere. No specific regime is envisaged.