The Seventh Candidate (37 page)

The director felt a brief flare in his
bowels. He slumped into a chair.

After a while he nodded off.

***

10

When the pain awoke him he returned to the
chaos of the office for the pills in his desk drawer. Lying among
the debris of her desk he saw her expensive-looking diary with the
twining pink flowers on the blue linen cover and the tiny
heart-shaped brass lock. Near a broken pencil and a scattering of
paper clips there was the tiny brass key. He picked them up and
went over to his desk.

He switched on the lamp and without
hesitation unlocked the heart-shaped clasp. He was too numb to feel
guilt at the intrusion. He didn’t have the conscious thought that
within the pretty flowered covers there might be an explanation for
the destruction that had placed the diary in his hands. He leafed
through it.

He came upon the sketches at once. There was
an uninspired but recognizable ink head of Theo. Also, even less
successful, Theo again, practically nude on his ladder, painting
the office. She was poor at male anatomy. A few pages further his
own face shocked him. It covered the whole page. It was badly done,
more an unsuccessful caricature than a portrait. Or was that how
she saw him? He looked like a blind man with those opaque glasses.
She’d drawn something tiny in each lens with a fine-pointed pencil.
He had to turn the diary upside-down to make it out, recognizably,
as herself, great-eyed, one in each lens. On other pages there were
long lists. Numerous grocery lists, mainly tinned and frozen food.
Lists of fruit trees, apples and pears.

The farm was a major subject. She’d sketched
the roughest of maps of the route there. He observed National
Highway 18, saw the turn-off and the road that wiggled into
childish representations of mountains with no names. On the next
page she’d sketched the farmhouse. There was a kitchen garden and a
field filled with lollypop representations of trees labeled as
peach. How was that possible? She’d said only apples came there.
But he’d heard of protected situations, windbreaks, south-exposed
walls. His horticultural knowledge, picked up in the encyclopedia,
was fragmentary.

He turned his attention to her notes. The
relative importance (to her) of an entry was disclosed at a glance
by the size of the writing, the use of capitals and exclamation
marks. There were adolescent-style self-admonitions in big caps:
“
I do it too
much.
Stop
doing it!!!” “Did it again.” “Oh, hopeless.” “Leave it all.” “Leave
everything.”
Lorz
concentrated on the last twenty or so pages.

June 15. Jon last night. Much much better
than Max. More gentle.

There were numerous notes on other men,
their strong points and shortcomings, perhaps psychological. The
director thought of the claimed bluebirds long ago and the belled
goats. Then he encountered a reference to “Peter” and her
indignation at what he’d told her at the restaurant: that he liked
“older women.” The presence late in the diary of “Peter” removed
his doubts. He, the director, could vouch for the authenticity of
Peter: the fat cross-eyed job inspector. It gave authenticity to
the other men friends. She’d made no secret of her “freedom” as
they called it. What exactly did she “tell him not to do”?

On the next page, June 30, he saw the huge
capitalized words:
!!!! Read Teddy’s lips finally. He said my name. Over and
over, my name. Not said really but you could see it was that:
Do-ro-the-a.
Here the
director pictured Theo’s lips, gigantic in his mind, as he’d seen
them that night in the underground and tried to impose
“D-or-o-the-a” on the movements. The syllables fitted more or less
except for the initial labial. But “Basic White” fitted better.
“Ed-mond” clearly didn’t fit at all. He went on leafing though the
diary.

July 12. He did it again. I wish he would
stop it.

Who was the “he”? Peter? Jon? Joseph?
Others? Stop what?

A few pages further there was a giant
exclamation mark down the whole of the left margin.

August 4. !!! Teddy spoke to me. Looked
straight into my eyes and said something. Didn’t understand. Asked
him to repeat. He didn’t. Foreign language? Tell E. about it?

August 5. !!! Understood this time. !!!
Almost fainted. Of all things for his first words! Comic, almost.
Answered no, of course. Never tell E. about it.

August 8. Again. Said no again. Told him my
age. Lied a little. As if he couldn’t see! Asked him who he was,
real name. Said same thing. No, I said, no. Not now.

August 9. Says nothing. Won’t even look at
me. Later, maybe, I said.

August 11. Wouldn’t accept the sweets. I
cried. Hand on shoulder. Yes, later, I said. Everything all
right.

August 12. Oh God, I must be crazy. Crazy,
crazy. Almost killed. Gentle, gentle, I said.

The director stared at the entry. He took
out his address book and looked at the calendar. August 12 was a
Sunday. There was little doubt where they had been.

The director heard shuffling footsteps in the
corridor outside the office door, coughs and a key in the lock.
Quickly he closed the diary, locked it and placed it and the key
back in the chaos where he had picked them up. It was bald
tubercular-looking Number 4, followed by fat twitchy-faced Number
10, so 5:00am. Ten past five, they were always late. He’d slept
longer than he’d thought.

The operators didn’t look confused at the
presence of their employer. They gave no more than an unconcerned
glance at the wrecked desk. The rest of the morning shift straggled
in, bleary-eyed, yawning and unshaved, also uncurious about the
chaos in the office, making no comments about the mangled locker in
the storeroom. They took their knapsacks and ladders and shuffled
out of the office.

Lorz locked the door behind them. He went
through his drawers in search of the ineffectual pills for the
burning, back again after so long. He turned off the lights in the
office, went into the storeroom, filled a glass with water and
gulped down two yellow capsules. He took his shoes and jacket off,
turned off the light and lay down on the cot. He feared the
worsening pain in his bowels would keep him awake but he fell
asleep at once.

The glaring light from the office awoke him.
Or perhaps it had been the key in the lock. He heard her say, “My
God” repeatedly and heard her stirring about the ruins of her desk.
She stopped at the threshold of the storeroom and saw him on the
cot. She was holding the flowered diary in her hand. She hadn’t
seen the violated giant locker yet. It was 7:45am. She switched on
the storeroom lights. “What are you doing here? My God, what
happened to my desk? And the typewriter? What were they looking
for? Were you here when it happened?”

“No,” he replied, glasses still facing the
ceiling. He had his hands clasped behind his head and had removed
his shoes. He looked comfortable and unconcerned.

“Why don’t you get up and help me with the
desk?” she almost shouted.

Glue the pieces together? He was too tired
to make the sarcasm. Then she saw the gutted locker. She must have
made all the connections all at once because she made another
little “Oh” sound like the day before. He heard her sitting down.
His eyes were still shut against the light. After a while she asked
in a weak voice: “Did Teddy do that?”

“Unless there was a second burglar with a
key to the office. Count yourself fortunate. It could have been you
instead of your desk.”

He heard her say that now at long last he’d
have to buy her another desk, a new modern one, metal this time,
they stood up better than wooden ones. And of course a typewriter,
electric this time. She mentioned different makes, quoted prices.
Lorz saw his mother in the gutted flat, with her husband just dead,
intent on pasting together the pieces of the smashed Chinese vase.
Now his assistant was saying that she wanted him to buy another
locker, much more solid this time with a fool-proof lock and that
when Teddy came back at 12:30pm he wouldn’t be given the chemicals,
ever again. He agreed absently.

She returned to it again and again. No
chemicals, ever again, did he hear?

Finally to make her stop he said that Theo
wouldn’t be coming back for quite some time. Wasn’t that obvious?
He had what he wanted.

After a long silence she wondered why it had
to be their chemicals, their paint, any white paint instead of
Basic White could have done. He could so easily have bought it.
When would he be back?

The director said he didn’t know why it had
to be Basic White and why theirs. Secretly he thought he did. He
said that he’d be back, theoretically, when he ran out of Basic
White. When? Say a liter of Basic White a day. Those rectangles and
squares were a drain on the paint. He’d taken four hundred liters.
It was a problem for six-year-olds. “A year and a half,” she said
after a while. “One year, four months and two weeks,” he corrected
in his curiously distant uninvolved voice. “But so many things can
happen before then.”

Now the director spoke in a low tone of
voice as to himself. The supplier had to be contacted, at least two
thirty-liter drums to tide them over the week. The desk was beyond
repair. So was the typewriter. A second hand machine and desk had
to be picked up, it shouldn’t be too dear. They had to get the
stolen drums back: not just because of the cost of the paint,
considerable, but to cut off his supply. If they told him the
Commission or even the police would be informed he’d bring them
back. Probably. It was a possibility at least.

No problem getting hold of him, the director
went on. The only place he could possibly have stored those bulky
drums of paint was in his flat. He had to be there at this very
moment. He’d worked (sabotaged, rather) all day long till past
midnight in the underground. He must have been dead tired even
before the burglary.

He ignored her interruption (“He’s not a
burglar!”) and grappled with the enigmas surrounding the theft,
maybe to put off facing the full implications of the twisted empty
locker and the smashed desk.

The burglary must have taken place between
12:30am and 3:30am. He’d glimpsed the boy at 12:15am in the
May 23
station. How had he been able
to manage it? The second shift arrived at 9:00pm, picked up their
chemicals in their padlocked lockers. They returned at
approximately 12:30 and would have noticed the burglary, left a
note. So Theo had operated after 12:30. But the underground shut
down at 1:30am. This gave Theo barely an hour to transport almost
half a ton of Basic White. From
Central Station
(the nearest station to
Ideal
) to Theo’s flat required at least twenty-five
minutes. Only one trip was possible. How had he managed that half a
ton? One thing was certain: he would return to the flat for
supplies.

The director resumed his reflections in his
detached voice, more to the ceiling than to her. Theo had certainly
been exhausted when he finished hauling (how?) the last of the
drums of Basic White to his flat, he said. He must have pitched
into his bed and gone to sleep. He had to get sleep sometime. He
turned his head and looked at her. Theo was asleep in his bed right
now, he said. No chance he’d wake up for hours. So in an hour’s
time, he’d go over and wait till Theo came out of the building. Oh
yes, he knew where it was located. He’d make him bring the paint
back. An ultimatum.

But he was too tired for that now. In half
an hour she should wake him up, he told her. He turned toward the
wall.

He woke up an hour later. The office was
empty. She’d left a note on the table. She would be back that
afternoon.

At almost 9:30am night seemed to be closing
in. The sky was black with thunderclouds. The long-announced rain
was almost upon the capital after months of drooping roses and
marigolds in the public squares. The atmosphere was stagnant.

Lifting his face as the first fat drops
pattered down he saw a strange glow in the fourth-story window as
though an old fashioned roller-shade intercepted the light within.
Drops exploded on his uplifted lenses. The last time he’d looked
out of wet lenses a few hours ago he’d seen real chaos and taken it
for an optical illusion. This time the distortion of the wet lenses
produced a ghostly smiling face superimposed on the fourth-story
shade, a genuine optical illusion this time, harmonious instead of
chaotic. The light inside the room, at least, was no illusion.

He’d been right. Theo was there. Theo hadn’t
even had the energy to switch the lights off before collapsing onto
his bed.

Luck was with him. A mason burdened with
tools and a sack of plaster came and started struggling with the
street door. Lorz held it open for him. The man fingered the code
buttons for the corridor door. Lorz was helpful again. Once the
mason had disappeared up the stairs he slipped inside. He
encountered no one in the gloomy staircase. When he reached the
fourth floor he saw two doors on the short landing. One was
curiously boarded up. A key dangled from the lock of the other
door. It was ajar. He pushed it open.

No neutral refuge for his eyes except the
floor. They were plastered everywhere else in rigorous order on the
walls and the ceiling: laughing children, tender-eyed dogs,
pine-rimmed lakes, starry skies, piled-up clouds, fondled cats,
snow-capped mountains, smiling Helena on her swing, russet forests,
blue skies, flower-spangled meadows, vineyards, surf on the beach
where Helena strolled, sailing-boats with pregnant sails, geometric
gardens, patchworks of tilled fields, hand-in-hand couples in the
forest, sea gulls, roses, wheat fields, birds on flowered boughs,
herds of zebras, old bridges, celebrated towers, weddings, blue
bays.