Two

Through the window beyond Lazlow’s head he could see a horse and cart go down the street. For a moment his attention was diverted from what Lazlow was saying and, realising that he had not heard the last two or three sentences, he became nervous. Was it a direct consequence of his tiredness, this inability to concentrate? Or had it always been a fault? He could not remember.

Lazlow paused long enough to take a cigarette from his jacket. He searched for a match and when he failed to find one he began to dissect the cigarette with a paper-knife. Berg watched this performance without surprise; in his state of nervous fatigue, he felt that he had let slip the reality of the situation and that in any case there was nothing particularly surprising in the sight of a man carving a cigarette with a knife.

‘Is your health good?’ Lazlow asked.

‘As I said in my application form, I’ve never had any serious illnesses. I had chickenpox as a child——’

‘What about complaints that you would describe as other than serious?’ Lazlow had finished with the broken cigarette and was now sweeping a little pile of tobacco and some shreds of paper to the side of his desk.

‘I had my tonsils removed, of course,’ Berg said.

‘Why “of course”? Is it a universal principle that people beyond a certain age no longer have their tonsils?’

Berg allowed himself a little laugh which—when he saw that Lazlow had remained serious—he quickly contained. He had no wish to give Lazlow an impression of levity; rather, he wanted to impress him that here was a serious individual, capable of concentration and diligence.

‘Anyway, your health isn’t of any great importance in this post,’ Lazlow said. He took Berg’s application form from a drawer and spread it on the desk. Seeing this, Berg was alarmed. His own handwriting, dense and black and affected, embarrassed him—even if he couldn’t remember now what he had actually written. Besides, since he had already received official confirmation that the post was his, what was the point of the interview? Was the position now in some doubt? Had there been confusion? Had they changed their minds about him? Worse still, had he made the two day journey from the capital—two days huddled alongside strangers in a sticky, noisy railway compartment—for nothing? No, he thought; he was worrying unduly. It was only natural that Lazlow, who would be his superior, should want a chance to get to know him.

‘The post is entirely sedentary and will not involve strenuous activity. For one thing, you won’t need to go to the Site. If you ever have to contact the Site Agent, you use the telephone. So the state of your health, you see, is of little real significance. But I had to ask. For the record, you understand.’

Berg smiled again, though feebly this time, in such a way that his expression was open to various interpretations. The last thing he wanted was for Lazlow to consider him frivolous.

Lazlow rose, holding the application in one hand.

‘Your main function here will be to check invoices against original orders. For discrepancies. The work calls for a sharp eye and a quick brain.’

Lazlow walked up and down the room staring at the form as if it were itself an invoice that had to be scrutinised for errors—which, Berg thought, in a sense it was. On the form he had written as many of the remembered details of his life as were required. But had he omitted anything? Were there discrepancies? In his fatigue, the room seemed to swim before his eyes.

Lazlow sat down. ‘It isn’t often that we get someone coming up here from the capital. Usually the traffic runs in the other direction. There isn’t much in this town to attract a man born and bred in the city, like yourself … Unless, of course, he has a taste for the quiet life.’

Berg cleared his throat, pleased that Lazlow’s scrutiny of the application seemed to be at an end. ‘I felt like making a change,’ he said.

‘Change is often the harbinger of chaos,’ Lazlow said. He immediately wiped his lips with the back of his hand as if he regretted the remark. His eyes—which were small and intensely bright—had a fixed appearance, like those of someone seeking to bring a distant object into focus. ‘You will report for work tomorrow morning at eight.’

‘Yes,’ Berg said. He was inclined to add that he was an early riser by nature, as well as being industrious and conscientious, but decided against it. He also had it in mind to ask some questions about the nature of the work on the Site, but these could wait until his work had begun. He got up from his chair and for a moment he and Lazlow stared at each other.

They went together to the door.

‘How are your lodgings?’ Lazlow asked. ‘Mrs Jacobitz has a splendid reputation.’

Berg, who was on the point of saying something critical about the spartan nature of his room, was deterred by Lazlow’s remark on the widow’s reputation—and before he had time to say anything at all, he had been shown on to the street.

‘Until tomorrow,’ Lazlow said.

Outside, Berg walked in the direction of his lodgings. The interview, he thought, had gone quite well—in spite of the fact that he needed a shave and a good night’s sleep. The train journey from the capital, to say the very least, had been an ordeal. The compartment had been full of agricultural workers making the trip northwards, who had insisted on drinking and singing and Berg, unable to sleep except in brief snatches, had watched the black landscape flit past. The journey had drained him of his energy and in some way had depressed him—as if the decision to leave the city were something he unconsciously regretted. But he regretted nothing. The time had come to make a clean break and having made it there wasn’t room for regret.

He found his way back to his lodgings without difficulty. It was only when he was lying on his bed and smoking a cigarette that he realised that not only had Lazlow not smiled in the course of the interview but he had succeeded in looking overwhelmingly solemn. Yet for Berg it was an axiom that those who were slow to smile, those who did not squander their smiles, were those who could best be trusted in this world, and he felt that Lazlow was a man on whom he could depend—if he ever needed such a person.

He lay down and closed his eyes. In spite of his tiredness he did not fall asleep at once. Possibly it was the effect of lying in a strange room or possibly because his mind—against his will, against all his resolutions—continued to regurgitate images of the city he had only recently left. He turned on his side; the bed was hard and uncomfortable and he could not avoid comparing it with the one he had slept in at his mother’s apartment … although that seemed an age away now.