I’ve been summoned back to the office, which is strange. It’s become an abstract entity in my mind, it exists in another dimension, somewhere at the edge of a black hole, where time stands still. I, meanwhile, have been living on this planet, where time does not stand still, where, strictly speaking, life only has meaning because there’s a history, a present and a future. (Eternal life is devoid of meaning, so those who aspire to it must be content with a soulless existence.)

Anyway, if some fateful day my present were to end and my future to vanish, then what I’d like most of all is for my life to be turned into a beautiful story. A story in which the materials and objects are described in all their dazzling glory. A story of gold, cashmere, dates, silk, airy chocolate mousse, fresh tobacco, gleaming oak wood and ripe mangos. A story where people have all the time in the world to land in unexpected situations, ending up in strangers’ beds and tripping on acid. A story where the alarm never goes off, where credit cards are never declined.

But my life does not lend itself to a story like that.My life exists in a world of foam rubber, stained carpets, stale coffee and mouldy dishcloths, and I’ll just have to accept that. Meanwhile, the office is slowly shifting from that other dimension back into this one. Centimetre by centimetre, the building has moved from the borderlands of my black hole (also the divide between a fever dream and cold reality, the threshold between the past and the now, the borderline between tadpole and frog) and has slowly settled back on Earth. It stands there now, along a canal whose water barely stirs, where you’ll find fish swimming, miraculously enough, and drowned bikes rusting, and where a human body part occasionally gets caught in a tour boat’s propeller. That’s where I’m going, to that doll house filled with little dolls sitting almost motionless at little doll machines.

*

We (‘We’, my boss wrote, as if such a thing exists) have a meeting in ten minutes. It’s not clear what the meeting is about, the email had just a date, time and ‘see you Wednesday’. The word ‘meeting’ was in the subject line, and that was it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen my co-workers. It feels as if I’ve become a different person. I have been transformed, although I don’t know exactly how. Maybe my colleagues and my boss will no longer recognize me, even though my appearance has barely changed.

The office has come into view. I stroll along the canal up to the narrow building. In this neighbourhood I see money everywhere. I know how expensive everything is, I see it in the red cobblestones on the street, the clean, tidy houses where the rich people live, the gleaming cars in front of the door, the espresso in the coffee shop on the corner, the planters in the windowsills, the window frames. Everything polished so it gleams. Now I understand that this is the decor I must surround myself with, this is where I must play my role. I’ll just have to try and accept the fact that from now on I’m going to be surrounded by people who look down on white bread.

I stop in front of the heavy wooden door to the office and stare at the gilt doorbell. I have to prepare myself for a moment. When I was put on leave I had to hand in my key. Policy, HR had said with an apologetic smile, as if he had no say in the matter, as if he wasn’t the one who made that policy, as if he was just as powerless in this situation as me.

I used to hope I would be sent one of those thick envelopes people in movies receive when they’re put in the witness protection programme. A new passport, new childhood photographs, new diplomas and a map of your new location, a safe house where no one sticks little notes on your door when you’re not looking. Then I’d be able to start over with a clean slate. But I was kidding myself, because of course it’s not that easy. Letting go and carrying on isn’t a question of some new documents, a new address. You have to imagine you’re disentangling yourself from a ball of sticky thread, escaping from a giant spiderweb, the filaments strong as steel – a web where you’re not merely stuck fast but also starving to death. You can kid yourself, you can ignore things, sometimes for a very long time, but there will always come a point when you can no longer keep up the act.

*

In my hometown, a housing authority inspector once went into a man’s bedroom and found his corpse. The man had shared the house with his two brothers and two sisters. They guessed the man must have been lying dead in his bed for around four years. His body had entirely decomposed. His brothers and sisters had been living in that same house all that time, but they told the police they’d had no idea. They hadn’t smelled a thing, hadn’t suspected a thing. They’d simply accepted the fact that they hadn’t seen him for a few years. The last time they’d seen him, years before the discovery of his mortal remains, they had argued. The man had stomped off to his room in a rage and told his brothers and sisters to leave him alone. So that’s what they did. He died and turned into a corpse whose time of death – the day, the month, even the year – could not be established with certainty. After the man was buried in an unmarked grave, the village mayor worried that the same thing might happen again, perhaps to one of the other family members in that house. These people, you see, were experts at ignoring things.

‘But what can you do?’ shrugged the mayor, in an interview with the local paper. ‘I can hardly stop in every month and check that they’re still alive, can I?’

*

I ring the bell. Someone I’ve never seen before opens the old wooden door. Before I can introduce myself or even say hello, he’s already turned his back on me and disappeared. Strange. I push the door open and pause there for a moment. It’s so dark in the foyer. Was it always this dark? There’s a smell of burnt coffee in the hallway. As I walk past the little kitchen, I see that the coffee machine is turned off. The light over the sink is off too. Maybe the company is trying to save money on the energy bills? I wonder how my printer is doing. Is he still switched on? I wonder for a moment if I could just walk on and go upstairs. I don’t think I can, I no longer have the necessary authorization. I head for the conference room.

The main office is deserted. It is dark, all the lights are off, the screens are black. This part of the building receives very little daylight, being located in the centre of the building; only the rooms at the front and back, like my little office, have windows that let in the sunlight. Where is everybody? My meeting was supposed to be today. The collection of little toy figurines over the wooden doorframe, carefully arranged by an intern who is now long gone, still stands. I see people’s bags hanging on the coatrack, half-empty mugs on some of the desks, a phone, a diary, a notebook. My colleagues can’t be far. Is this how we’re supposed to react when there’s a nuclear threat? I’d imagined it differently.

Then the fluorescent light above my head starts flickering. Am I seeing things? It does it again. No, it was really flickering. Again. Very briefly, a fraction of a second. It’s like a strobe light in here, a few aggressive flashes lighting up the room like in a horror film. Then there’s a clicking sound and everything plunges into darkness again.

Office Manager comes into the room. The sole survivor! ‘Hey!’

She doesn’t say anything about the darkness. ‘Hi, we’ve got to go down to the conference room.’ We? She’s saying it very calmly. Office Manager glides smoothly through the darkness, as if her eyes have already adjusted. We descend the staircase. She has no difficulty, but I have to cling tight to the banister. The conference room downstairs, the largest and most important of the firm’s conference rooms, is dark too. As I enter the dusky space, I sense the presence of other people before I see them. When my eyes are finally used to the darkness and I can pick out the silhouettes of my co-workers, I am startled at seeing so many people gathered round the table.

‘Hey,’ says PR. ‘Long time no see.’ PR doesn’t mention the lack of light either. Am I the only one who thinks it’s dark in here? Have my eyes just contracted a rare, acute disease? Or was it always like this, but I was just used to it before, when I came into the office every morning? I take a seat next to Marketing. He doesn’t seem very well, I can tell, even in the darkness. He is hiding his trembling hands in his lap. I can smell his sweat.

Product is sitting across from me, a few seats down. He looks very relaxed, as if he’s meditating. The last few people trickle in. There’s no room for them round the table so they stand at the back, against the wall, like the least important people at a crowded funeral. This meeting isn’t about me at all!

Almost everyone is here. The room is starting to quieten down. At first there are still a few people talking softly, but then the voices hush, and after that nobody is bold enough to break the silence. I hear Marketing’s deep, shaky intake of breath. It sounds as if he’s struggling to get air. Then the boss enters, followed by a man in a business suit I have never seen before. At our office nobody ever wears a suit. The people in this office still call one another ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, even if they’re over thirty. They wear hoodies and go to festivals in special rave clothes. They’d only wear business clothes as an ironic statement.

‘Thank you for coming,’ says the boss. ‘It’s most unfortunate, I realize, for the power to go out just as we are having this difficult meeting. I am sorry about that.’

Everyone remains silent. The man in the suit shows no emotion.

‘But first, I’d like to introduce you to someone!’ My boss says this in a remarkably enthusiastic voice. The business-suit man is a labour lawyer, and he has been invited here today because the boss has bad news. They have tried for a long time to turn the tide, but the start-up’s financial picture has grown increasingly dire of late. A major investor withdrew at the last moment. The boss and Head of Finance have made budgets, frameworks, roadmaps, they’ve tried restructuring, spoken to other investors, done market research, and have finally arrived at the following conclusion: sixty per cent of the staff are having their contracts terminated as of today. They’d hoped, naturally, for a different scenario, says the boss, but now they are convinced that this is the only option. (What are the twelve remaining employees going to do? I can’t help thinking. Twelve-person picnics?)

At the far end of the table, sitting side by side, are my two pregnant colleagues, Sales and Administration. They know, as I do, I think, that they are in that sixty per cent. But at least they have plans for the future. They have a goal in their lives, they are producing, bringing forth. They are accepting their role in Creation – yes, if anyone stands close to God, it’s my colleagues Administration and Sales, surely. They are giving life, and that is what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? Creating life whichever way you can.

My boss hasn’t finished. ‘Of course, we want to settle things properly with the group of people whose last work day is today. If you are in that group, you will be receiving an email within half an hour, asking you to present yourself at Conference Room One.’ Everyone will have a ten-minute session with the boss and the labour lawyer, so that they’ll be able to explain the whole thing again, make you sign a contract, make it clear that you’ll get two months’ salary and after that, nothing.

There’s a charged silence in the dark room. I would not be surprised if someone took off their shoe and flung it at the boss’s head. Product’s still sitting there, unconcerned. He is staring into space, his eyes wide open, as if someone’s just taught him how to look sincere. He nods from time to time at no one in particular. Product is not being fired, everyone knows it, he knows it himself, without a doubt. If we gave him the chance, he’d probably tell us to look at this as something positive, a fresh start! Nobody gives him the chance.

*

Once back upstairs, still in the pitch black, my colleagues nervously sit down at their desks. Since the computers aren’t working, they all place their phones in front of them so that they’ll notice if the screen lights up with the news of their sacking. I want to go up to my little office, but I have the feeling I can’t, I’ve been away too long. But where else should I go? This may be my last chance to see my printer. I make my way up the stairs. At every tread I can sense catastrophe drawing closer. Even before opening the door to my room, I know nothing good will come of it.

The brightness stings my eyes, even though there’s a blind on the window now with its slats half-closed. My little office isn’t my office anymore, that much is clear. The fan has been replaced by a portable A/C. There are cards with awful inspirational quotes on the wall. The paper supply cupboard is still there, though, a throwback to my former tasks. I open one of the sheaves, run my finger across the pages and feel at once that the paper is not in good condition, that it’s drying out in here, curling up. My desk chair has been swapped for an exercise ball. Product has colonized my room. The desk is crammed with two monitors, a special sort of keyboard, a mouse (mousepad included) and silicone wrist pad. Next to the mouse lie a pair of computer glasses, to protect Product’s eyes from the screen’s blue light, so that he can put in extra-long hours without ruining them. He has a little plant, a humidifier. It feels like strangers have moved into my house while I was away on holiday: they’ve replaced the couch, put down a different rug, hung an ugly painting on the wall.

But something else is off too. I could see from the corner of my eye when I walked in that it was all wrong, of course, but I couldn’t quite face it yet. I take a deep breath and turn to the spot where the printer used to be. There’s a gaping hole.

I stumble downstairs, back into the darkness. I’ll check the storage room, where most of the discarded equipment ends up. Maybe that’s where my printer is waiting for me. I run into Administration in the foyer. I can tell it’s her from her pregnant silhouette. Maybe she’ll know more about my replacement, in which case I’ll be able to find out what’s happened to my machine.

‘Hey,’ I say to Administration. ‘Do you by any chance know who’s taken over customer support?’

‘Hey [my name].’ Oh, that’s right, I have to get used to being among people who know my name. ‘We stopped printing, it’s all been digitized. But don’t worry, the inbox has been reassigned.’ Customer service will now be carried out by a chatbot. The chatbot also has a name. It’s a woman’s name, and is different from my name by just one letter. I’ll do my best to think of that as pure coincidence. Administration doesn’t say anything about what happened to my printer and I don’t dare ask. I must get to the storage room.

My colleagues in the dark, quiet open-plan space are still staring expectantly at their phones. The little hall with the fuse box and the storage room are at the far end of the room. I have to cross it in order to reach my printer. It’s lucky that I’m just a shadow. I stride forward purposefully, as you have to when you’re doing something illicit: no dawdling, no hesitating, just proceed as confidently as you can, with that painting under your arm, to the exit, the watchful eye of the museum guard upon you; give a friendly nod in his direction, then out the door. Two more steps, and I have crossed the River Styx.

The storage room door is not locked. I go in and close the door as quietly as possible behind me. It’s cool in here. I automatically fumble for the light switch and push the knob. It stays dark. Of course, what was I thinking? I scan the room with the torch on my phone. It is a small, square space. The objects my flashlight illuminates come to grey life very briefly, one by one. Shelves on two of the walls hold mega-packs of ballpoint pens, kitchen rolls, paperclips and soap. Ring binders everywhere. Against the back wall I finally locate the shelves with all of the discarded equipment. I point my flashlight in their direction and see five landline phones in a heap, the black cords tied together. On the bottom shelf, two obsolete PCs. The rest of the shelves are empty. The printer is not here.

Then my phone’s battery icon starts flashing red and the torch goes off. The screen is black. I can’t see a thing anymore. Are my eyes open? For a fraction of a second I think: this room is my coffin. Narrow, shut in, pitch black. The feeling you get when the doors of a cramped old lift don’t open – I can’t breathe! But then I take a deep breath, no problem, it works, I suck in the dark air, and I feel my body, alive. I’m standing, at least. I stand therefore I live. Nobody stands upright in their own coffin.

I smell the office supplies, the ink of the pens, the vague whiff of cleaning product, the dry scent of stone tiles on the floor, the dusty odour of cardboard boxes. My eyes aren’t adjusting to the dark, the gloom is too black, too fresh, but I know what I saw. The blank space where my printer should be. I saw that empty space, and I will fill that space by leaving a part of myself behind there too. Some things must remain in the dark.

I’m dusting off my memories one by one and placing them carefully, like little porcelain ornaments, on that shelf. It is still dark in here, yet they gleam. The lives of the past, the main players, my classmates, the neighbours, my best friend and I, the place, look, there’s the street, I can pull it all up, build it out of minuscule bricks and doors the size of a postage stamp. The entire neighbourhood is emerging. The gangs of children celebrating Halloween, the school, the snack bar on the corner where we used to buy lollipops, the charred front door, the spray paint on that house, the front gardens and the paving stones. Wondering how many five-guilder coins remained (when they were taken out of circulation, did the rest of them get melted down?). The stench, I can still smell it now, vaguely, of a car in flames, rubber, petrol, melted plastic, the silent onlookers standing there, the unexplained absence of certain people, exchanged glances, averted eyes, people avoided in the street, things that have never been spoken about since. My memories glide through the narrow streets like Pac-Man in his maze. They are accompanied by my fears, the disaster scenarios I concoct, as if we weren’t already in the middle of a disaster back then; the fear that everything, or at least a great part of it, may have been my fault. Well, we’ll never know.

My fears, like Pac-Man’s little ghosts, will continue prowling about on every street, in every house and every life, as ghosts are meant to do. I’m putting them here, deposited neatly on the shelf, because there’s space for them there.

*

After my termination chat, I emerge from the dark office building into the sunlight. The light is so dazzling that it blinds me, I don’t have my sunglasses, so my eyes have to get used to the sharp brightness after all that time in the dark. I am leaving it all behind: the office, everything in that dark cave. But my printer. There’s no way I can let him go just like that. I still think about him every day. In my termination chat I couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask my boss what happened to my machine, and of course the labour lawyer wouldn’t have a clue.

It was an awkward meeting, but what did I expect? The boss had solemnly accepted the contract I’d signed and then, in a very perturbing move, went in for a hug, while I extended my hand. The boss recoiled, suddenly afraid he’d overstepped the mark, and with a red face gave my hand a firm shake, and then, to make matters worse, began vigorously pumping it up and down. The labour lawyer stood by and watched.

I’m walking along the canal. It looks very different now. It’s the same buildings, the same water, the same sky, yet it’s different, no longer my place of work: now it’s just a place. I’m moving as if in a dream, effortless. It feels as if I’m floating. The first trees are starting to lose their leaves, summer is coming to an end. The branches are still green, but the street is littered with dry brown leaves. They’re falling earlier than usual, this summer’s heat is speeding up the process. The leaves crunch under my feet, I hear them, and that is how I know I still exist in the world. I hear the leaves crunching, I let them crunch, the world exists and I exist too. How wonderful to be outside. To see the colour restored to everything. The office was black and grey. But out here! Here the colours are so deep, so saturated, words can’t possibly do it justice. If it didn’t mean risking death, I would start skipping right now. The city looks like a movie, the golden sunlight reflected in the windows, it glances off the cars and chrome handlebars, as if someone designed it that way, lit it just like that.

*

‘Hey [my name]!’ It’s Marketing. I can hear him calling my name, but I can’t imagine he really means me.

‘[My name], wait up!’ I look back and slow my pace. He’s been running to catch up with me and is panting as he draws up by my side. ‘Hey.’ He is quiet for a moment, getting his breath back, and walks beside me nervously. Marketing was also let go. ‘Awful, isn’t it.’ He seems to be saying it because he feels he has to, the way people say climate change or war is to be deplored; awful, isn’t it, yes, terrible. Marketing doesn’t live in my part of the city, he’s walking with me in the wrong direction. ‘Did you hear, by the way, about [name of colleague]’s mother?’ He’s talking about my squeaky-clean colleague Partnerships.

‘What?’ An uneasy feeling washes over me.

‘Yeah, it was a few weeks ago – right, you weren’t there of course, but I thought, maybe someone else already told you?’ He looks at me, then turns his eyes back to the canal. Just at that moment, a pigeon comes streaking out of nowhere, headed straight for his face, and he has to duck to avoid a collision.

I act as if I haven’t seen a thing. ‘No, I haven’t heard, no one told me anything.’ I don’t dare ask what happened to Partnerships’ mother. Thousands of possibilities whirl through my mind at once, it’s making me nauseous. I take a deep breath and force myself to remember that my legs will keep carrying me, the sun will keep warming me, that my heart will keep beating, it does so automatically. Marketing is still coming to terms with the pigeon attack, so he didn’t see that I almost passed out.

‘I haven’t spoken to anyone from work lately.’

‘Well… that’s no surprise, really.’ He looks at me gravely. ‘You had to get better, of course.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, OK, I thought, maybe you’d like to know anyway. Because her mother, yeah, such a shock… So she – although it’s too late now, of course – she got laid off today too.’ He pauses. ‘And then her mother, on top of everything…’ His thoughts wander off. ‘Well, anyway, for her it’s even worse, of course.’

‘Of course.’ I’m keeping my eyes on the pavement. It isn’t clear to me what happened to Partnerships’ mother, but it doesn’t feel right to ask. ‘How awful for her,’ I say, but I say it very softly and a car is just passing by, so Marketing doesn’t hear it.

We walk down the canal. Marketing walks with his back very straight, like an extra in a commercial who’s been cast as Walk-on 1. I do my best to think of something to say to him, something nice, something reassuring, but I can’t think of anything.

*

At home I see the package waiting for me. It’s been a while since I opened it. I was nervous, but I knew it had to be done. After getting to the giant hardware store, finding the screwdriver, buying it and removing the plastic wrapping, the garbage man and I got on our knees in the parking lot, the chest between us on the ground. When I finally lifted off the heavy cover, we were met with what looked like a pool of dark, sticky blood, so old it was almost black. The blood of an animal, entrails, mortal remains, decay, a big puddle on the bottom of the chest. I felt my chest grow tight. They had finally found me.

The garbage man looked in, touched it, and said, ‘No, it’s ink. Look.’ He pressed his index finger into the dark red, glistening substance. He touched the outside of the box and left a dark, sticky fingerprint there, like a child in nursery school’s attempt at finger-painting. It made me think of a tiny handprint, a baby’s footprint.

It really was ink, I could see that now. It had left a Rorschach test all over the chest’s insides, soaking the bottom with a thick layer of goo. The stuffing that filled the rest of the box was dark brown, like the bloody remains of a small animal. I couldn’t make up my mind: was it a threatening message from someone who was out to get me, or some kind of message from my machine? It was like that optical illusion where you spot a duck, then a rabbit. The duck and the rabbit aren’t visible at the same time, only a special kind of person can see both, and I’m not one of those people. I told the garbage man about my two theories and he accepted them, he did not try to reassure me. He simply sat there, on his knees, at my side.

But then I noticed, underneath the inky mess: a package of ink cartridges, Multipack for the Best Value! They had leaked, maybe even spontaneously exploded. It couldn’t have happened that long ago – the ink was still wet in some places.

It was just ink. Just ink, for my printer! Not a threat from an anonymous stalker, no anthrax envelope. Not a warning from my past. Just something for my machine, nothing sinister after all. If only I had known that earlier.

The garbage man drove me home from the hardware store, it was a long way in the little van. I held the package on my lap with my arms slung round it, not as tightly as before, just loosely, to keep it from sliding off. The vibration, the van’s low noises, could have lulled me to sleep; I was feeling very relaxed. Relieved. I’d been given a whole new perspective.

When we arrived at my apartment building, the garbage man asked if I needed him to stay, but that wasn’t necessary. I carried the package across the threshold. I put it down on the floor and opened the window a crack to let in some fresh air. I washed the breakfast dishes, I drew the curtains halfway. I could hear the sound of a neighbour’s television.

I decided to hoover, opened the curtains again, tied them to the side and washed the windows, I even ran a dust cloth over the plug on the wall, the door handle. The little things you tend to forget. As I was cleaning, I thought it would be a good idea to give the cooker a good scrub, to empty my two kitchen cupboards and wipe them out too. I turned my mattress on its side so that I could vacuum underneath with a special attachment, I descaled the showerhead, scrubbed the bathroom walls, used the scouring side of the sponge to clean the grout between the tiles until the sponge disintegrated, bits and pieces scattered all over the bathroom floor. I took the laundry out of the washing machine in the building’s laundry room and hung it up on the rack parked in the middle of the room, since there’s nowhere else to put it.

Of course, I didn’t know then that I was going to lose my job, that we were all going to lose our jobs, so I was still thinking about taking the package to the office the next day, where it probably belonged. But why should I go to all the trouble? Suddenly it seemed absurd. I decided I could do whatever I wanted with this package, it belonged to nobody, or, if it belonged to anyone, it belonged to me. After all, it was addressed to me, and postal confidentiality law is sacrosanct, my time in customer service taught me that. I sat down in my clean room on the floor next to the package. I decided to dip my index finger into the ink, which was still sticky and wet on the bottom of the chest, and started drawing figures on the outside. Squiggles, lines, a smiley face, a sad face, an arrow, a sun. Then I lifted it onto the little table.

There it sits, in its very own spot, on the table I’d wiped down with a dust cloth when I first brought it here. I dust it from time to time. It sits there on display, like a piece of art, an exhibit without a glass case so that it can breathe free. I have taken the package under my wing and I have made something of it that it wasn’t before, my very own casket.

*

As I was cleaning, I also decided to give my front door a dusting, something I’d never done before. The blue note was gone. I don’t know what happened to it, the concierge might have removed it, disappointed that I hadn’t reacted to his little joke. Maybe it fell off, the tape must have dried up, lost its stickiness. Maybe someone saw it lying on the floor in the corridor and decided to recycle it. I haven’t gone spying in the other hallways or floors in the building to see if there are any other little blue notes on people’s doors. I’ve never been brave enough to go where I don’t have a reason to be. I’ve lived in many buildings in this city and have never once gone a step further than my own front door. I’ve never explored attics, never opened basement doors. On a rare occasion I’ll knock on the door of another flat or room so I can hand over a package that was delivered to me by mistake, but I always feel uneasy about it, as if I’m encroaching on enemy territory. I managed to ignore my own anxiety only once, the time I broke into my office to see my printer, to get my package. It was my bravest exploit yet.

*

As a little child, as a teenager, I was much bolder than I am now. I’ve turned into a different person; I don’t recognize myself in school pictures. I can barely remember myself, who I was. There are at least seven different iterations of me, separating the person I once was and the person I am now. I remember someone once compared themselves to the smallest in the pack of Russian dolls. I could be any of them. Would I be the biggest doll – a new doll, grown over the previous version – or am I the smallest one, after the others have all peeled off? I am, I believe, too young to live so close to my innermost core. And yet. I have changed. I used to be bold, but now I have only fears. Is that something to do with getting older? Do you develop a fear of heights when you age because by then you feel how close death can be? Maybe you’re recognizing at last what is real and you realize: I could actually fall off this rock, I could slip, I could drown, I am not immortal. Maybe that isn’t fear but sanity. I don’t want to become more afraid, but I do want to be realistic.

*

The next morning, I’m still in bed when my co-workers spring suddenly to my mind. There they stand, lined up like a football team. They’re all staring at me. I don’t see their faces, their bodies, their clothes, their individual traits, I can’t tell which of my colleagues these are, they have no specific distinguishing features. They don’t move, only their eyes blink, and from time to time one of them will raise an eyebrow. The group is homogeneous, has just one aim: to keep a watchful eye on me. I have the eerie feeling that they’ll be watching everything I do from now on: when I’m cooking, when I walk in the street, when I go to the supermarket, when I’m lying on the couch. They’ll be peering over my shoulder. They won’t be able to comment directly, they won’t be writing up reports on my choices or behaviour, but I will feel their prying eyes nonetheless. I’ll never feel truly alone again. I’ll be so ashamed, I’ll have to apologize all the time, I’ll have to say sorry out loud. They’ll just stand there, maybe even a bit embarrassed, but as soon as I’m not paying attention they’ll start whispering about me. When my alarm goes off for the second time, I do my best to shake off this unpleasant hallucination.

Climbing cautiously down from bed, it isn’t until my feet touch the floor that it occurs to me: I don’t work there anymore! I’ve been sacked. My colleagues aren’t my colleagues, that was just a dream, a sombre thought, a shadow that, as the morning wears on, will fade until the light breaks through.

At my small kitchen counter I make coffee in my French press. I glance out the window, across the parking lot where the cars gleam in the sunlight. Next to the rubbish bin at the pavement’s edge, I spot some rejects. Furniture, a few smaller objects, perhaps a piece of equipment, over there, on the right? I can’t really make it out from here. It would be weird if it was him, how would he have got there? Still, I’ll just go and have a look.

It’s quiet in the street, it’s still early. When I reach the rubbish, I see it’s not him. A particle board cupboard, two pillows without pillowcases, wooden plates, a metal stand, maybe it once held a lamp. An old PC, a box with a picture of a stick blender, empty, a chair with worn upholstery. I am disappointed, relieved. In my heart I already knew. Thank God, I think, thank God this is not his final resting place.

*

What now? What should I do with my time? I daydream about a different life. I could study, train for a new career. Biochemistry. Carpentry. I’m still young, I have time, anything’s possible, I can practise until I have mastered a new skill. I dream of life as a sailor on a ship; we are sailing through the Greek Cyclades, we are making a year-long voyage in Odysseus’s footsteps. Sirens sing, but we do not hear them. Our sails are full as we steer east, straight towards the orange morning sun. I think about life as an architect. From a mere idea sketched out in a drawing, a bridge emerges, a bridge where water once barred the way. The structure looms up on the skyline, its red steel silhouetted against the clear blue sky, and people wait for the right moment to take a photo. I could become a carer, setting out early in the morning to wake my clients up. I could switch on their radio, the news, classical music, the reassuring voice of the announcer; I could help them get their socks on, make a joke. I would know them and they would know me. I’ll learn bookkeeping, how to install electrical sockets, I’ll learn the PLU codes for fruits and vegetables by heart, I’ll learn how to bone a trout, how to blow glass, how to make a cunning move just at the right moment, I’ll learn to tell the difference between a baby’s cries. Sitting at a big desk with a map of the world unrolled in front of me, I chart the best route in a dotted line.

*

I still miss my printer. I miss our conversations. I can’t accept the thought that I may never see him again. What could I have done differently? Should I have taken him, instead of stealing the package, back then? It wasn’t for a lack of will, I simply couldn’t see any practical way of doing it. He must still be somewhere, surely? I hope he hasn’t been destroyed, taken apart. Perhaps if he’s been disassembled, I could go to the waste collection point and try to find out if his components have turned up somewhere, see if I can buy his individual pieces, the spare parts that make him whole, like when people donate their organs after they die.

*

In the afternoon I go to the employment agency. The closer I get to downtown, the more colourful the houses, the cars, the trees. Yes, it’s in the city centre that the sun shines brightest. I pass two tourists talking loudly. They’re not just talking to each other, they want the rest of the world to hear them too. They’re looking around slowly, up at the narrow houses lining the canal.

‘The brickwork is wonderful,’ one of them says.

‘It really is,’ says the other. They stare at a wall. Then they continue on their way, strolling across the street.

‘I wish we had more time here.’ The first one rummages through his large bag, hunting for his camera. When he’s found it, he parks himself in the middle of the street, paying no attention to the traffic. He takes a couple of steps back and the camera clicks. ‘Lovely,’ he says.

What is he going to do with those photos? Where will they end up? In an album? On the internet? On a Wikipedia page dedicated to the history of bricks? I’m jealous. I wish I could talk about masonry with such enthusiasm.

*

The employment agency’s front window is dirty; the sunlight shows fingerprints on the glass, the window is dusty on the inside. I examine the framed job listings. I don’t even know what most of the job titles mean. I only understand the openings for customer service jobs, but I’d much rather be an order picker, whatever that is, or a process operator on a five-day rotating shift.

A little bell tinkles as I step inside. The floor is covered in diagonally laid laminate; a grey desk takes up the back of the room. There’s a row of three plastic seats mounted on the wall. For a long time nothing happens. I would like to have a reason to get up, to examine a painting on the wall, for example, but there are no paintings on the wall to examine. As I’m about to leave, my hand already on the door handle, I hear a little cough behind me. I turn to see that a woman has appeared on the other side of the desk.

She isn’t as friendly as you’d expect of a woman at an employment agency desk. ‘Do you have a personal document to identify yourself?’

‘A passport? Yes, I have one, but not on me right now. I just came to get some information.’

‘Were you aware that in this country you are obligated at all times to be able to show your identity by means of an ID?’

‘Uh…’

‘Do you have a residence?’

‘Do I own a house, do you mean? No. But I do live somewhere, I mean, I do have a home, in that sense of the—’

‘The employers are offering accommodation with the job. Do you have any objection to seasonal work?’

‘Well, not exactly—’

‘Do you speak English? Would you mind having to share your lodgings?’

Somewhere in my spine, a nerve is tingling.

‘For what timeframe are you seeking a position? Are you willing to work with your hands? Peak time for this type of work is September. If you are available then, you can apply by filling in this form.’

I once read somewhere that in the west of the country the greenhouses put out so much artificial light that it sends the region’s animals into total chaos. The roosters don’t know when the sun is supposed to rise anymore. Birds no longer fly south; they keep circling around the brightest light source until they’re utterly exhausted, then they fall down dead.

The woman from the employment agency slides a grubby sheet of paper towards me with someone’s date of birth on it, nothing else.

‘The date of birth is already filled in,’ I tell her.

‘Oh!’ The woman is taken aback. ‘I’ll get you another form.’ She disappears through a half-hidden door in the grey wall behind the desk. I hurry out of the door. Thank goodness, out here the world still exists! And I’m alive in it!

Once my salary stops, maybe I’ll do nothing. Just nothing. These days it’s frowned upon, but doing nothing can be a good thing. I wouldn’t do a thing, I wouldn’t need a thing, no money, no worries. I would be someone, a person, and that’s all. I would live like Diogenes in his barrel.

On the walk home, a new sensation takes hold of me, intense but hard to define, gone before I’m even properly aware of it. What was that? I’d compare the sensation to the smell of the first day of spring after a rainy winter, or the feeling of getting off a train in a foreign country with vivid green hills and low stone houses. Or to a mountain hike, your footsteps on the rocky path, it’s hard at first to find your footing, but you grow used to it eventually. You’re hopping from stone to stone, you clamber effortlessly over a large rock. It’s quiet all around you, the wind rustling gently in the low bushes, a swallow soaring in the distance, wheeling slowly through the sky. You know that there are wolves in this region, you saw one once, in the overgrown grounds of the big old house at the foot of the mountain. You caught sight of it from the doorway, the pale grey wolf pacing calmly past the house, in the cool, dusky morning. You were not afraid.

*

Luck, that’s what it is. A little ball on a roulette wheel that lands on your number, your colour. It has nothing to do with strategy or planning; in that sense it’s the easiest game in the casino. You don’t need any skill. One person gets all the breaks and the other all the misfortune. The grapes in a glass of wine on the sunny café terrace are picked by people from Brazil and India. Luck. We have to thank the providential being who is responsible for our welfare (which of the Greek gods is that?). We should be leaving offerings at their feet, nectar and ambrosia or whatever it is they eat, or maybe bright flowers instead, sweet honey, twigs of rosemary, holy water from Lourdes.

That’s Hades, by the way. The Greek god who deals out prosperity, the horn of plenty, gold and silver, riches. I looked it up on the internet. Hades is also the god of the underworld; I found out his other name is Pluto, from the Greek word for wealth, ploutos. The smallest and most remote planet, no longer even a planet, just a piece of rock, was named after him. But at the time, that was by pure coincidence. The name Pluto did not specifically refer to the god of riches, it doesn’t refer to the wealth of joy a person might feel when he’s managed to point out the existence of a planet no one else has found (just imagine the loss, the grief you’d feel, if that classification, planet, later got snatched away). Nor did Pluto’s name refer to the land of shadows, to the gloomy underworld, to the darkest corner of our solar system, the orbit most distant from the sun’s brilliant light. A twelve-year-old girl from England came up with the name Pluto for the rock that was still a planet back then. She won five pounds for it, which might sound a little measly, but it was a great deal of money at the time. Oh, and by the way, Pluto is a proper noun, and proper nouns are written with a capital.

*

There is a beginning somewhere, I think, you just have to find it, like pulling at the edge of a Sellotape roll. I must aim for something new. What might that be? Surely it’ll all become clear to me soon. I’m not talking about a clean slate, of course. I know such a thing does not exist. But it doesn’t have to, either. A beginning, that’s what it’s about.

The bit about Pluto and the underworld, by the way, comes from actual Greek mythology, the mythology on which people have based their proverbs, company names, athletic teams, the mythology in children’s books, books I have never read. I just made something up, before, that story about the whirling, nervous spirit, about the villagers and their volcano. I just did it for fun. For my own amusement, or the printer’s. I do understand that people don’t often appreciate it if you just fabricate something entirely. Hearing someone telling a completely made-up story is, to the listener, like having to listen to a drunk person’s monologue. You nod politely, but…

*

In the evening I return to the billiard hall. I spend the whole night at the bar. My best friend is working. The elapsing hours are empty: I have nothing to do tomorrow, the rest of the week, the month, the year: nothing. I can do whatever I want. My future stretches out before me like a wide-open plain. Now that I no longer have a job, what will become of my life?

After last orders, when everyone has gone home, my best friend and I flip the barstools on top of the bar, so that the cleaners can mop the floor later. I walk home through the dark, empty streets. The moon hangs low against the sky like a streetlamp. A lonely bird whistles, maybe it’s almost morning. I already can’t even believe that yesterday morning I still had a job, or thought I did at least. It feels like centuries have passed. I’ll never again have to tell people at a birthday party or a reunion that I work in customer service. I’ll no longer have to tell them that I’m in charge of the printer. Sure, I rarely go to birthday parties and never go to reunions, so it doesn’t really make any difference that I’ll never have to say those things again. (When do you know if something has really made a difference? It could take years.) I’d like to supply them with another answer instead, but I can’t think what that would be. ‘What do you do?’ strangers will ask, as they always used to. I wander through the nocturnal city, I would answer. I wander and I’m having this conversation in my mind.

*

The next day the bell rings. It makes me jump. It’s the garbage man.

‘I’ve got something for you.’ He had seen it sitting there, round the corner of the office, by the rubbish containers, and he thought he recognized it from the stories I’d told him. He had lifted it into the back of his van. Nobody blinked an eye, of course, because a garbage man can put anything into the back of his van. ‘Will you come have a look, see if it’s him?’

I go with him. We stand side by side in the lift. On one wall there is a large mirror. I look at the garbage man in the mirror, he’s leaning against the wall, next to all the buttons, he’s pushed G. I look at him, at myself. His fluorescent uniform stands out against the lift’s silver-grey walls. He looks at me and the walls of the lift in the mirror, but not at himself. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone looking in the mirror but not at himself. We walk outside, to his little van. If it’s my printer, I will be relieved. So happy! And if it isn’t? I don’t know what I’ll do.

I look inside the metal boot. It’s like seeing your father in a busy train station, the father you never see. You see a little old man shambling slowly along with a shabby rucksack on his back. The brisk people striding purposefully through the station’s great hall catch up with him and breeze right past him. He doesn’t notice; he is occupied with working out where he’s going, with keeping his balance. You take it all in in a fraction of a second. It’s only after that brief moment that you realize the old man is your father. It’s your dad! Oh, how old he’s getting. Oh, how small he is. You know, of course, that time passes, that people grow up, you see babies getting bigger, a puppy transforms into a dog, a seed into a plant, but between that objective knowledge and the acceptance that your father, too, will someday become an old man (if you’re lucky) there’s a gap, small but significant.

The machine, in the dust cart’s boot, looks different. Shrunken. A patient in a hospital bed. I hardly dare to believe that he still works. He was the right size in my office, in proportion to the other objects in the room. Next to the dust cart, on the little green in front of my block of flats, stands a solitary oak tree. King of a sacred grove. Compared to this oak, the printer is tiny. A collection of cheap plastic. Of course I’ll take care of him, because I am loyal, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. He can’t help it.

The garbage man carefully lifts the printer out of the boot. This machine knows everything about me. He knows my thoughts, my fantasies, my dreams. My love and my hate. And he is the only one who knows that story, the story for which there’s barely any space, except in some dark storage room where no one ever goes. If anyone knows who I am, it is he. He was the listener, I the storyteller. Wasn’t that it? Seeing him here now, after such a long time apart, I’m not really sure I believe it. Yes, suddenly I feel it’s a question of belief. The machine is just a device, almost just as ordinary as the printers in the copy shop. But for all that time, I thought he was different. I really thought he could hear me, that he understood me. But maybe I just imagined it all.

We carry him into my flat. I put him down on the table and plug him into the wall outlet. It doesn’t seem to affect him. I used to think I could feel something when I turned him on, that I could detect a little spark of energy. The ghost in my machine. Not this time. Oh well. I shrug it off. It’s probably just me. Of course I hope that he’s still in working order, that there’s still something there. But I also know that, either way, everything will be different now. I sit down, the printer before me on the table. The garbage man takes a seat. I wrap my arms round the printer, hold him tight for a moment, and then, deep breath, I press his button: on.