What the Body Does When It Doesn’t Know What Else to Do

The events which led to my curious position at the department of public polling began during election season when the seven-term mayor, in order to prevent fraud, instituted the new policy of staining the thumbs of voters with phosphoric dye. One man, one vote, he said.

I had very little understanding of politics. I knew nothing of polls. I lacked accounting skills, but I was talented with imaginary numbers. I was mostly suited for work that involved raising eyebrows or gesturing puzzled expressions, poorly equipped for professions involving human empathy, such as the time I worked as a florist and suggested to a middle-aged man he would have better luck throwing himself from the bridge than growing begonias. A few days later I read his obituary in the newspaper.

My only real talent was in alchemy. Sadly, the market had been depressed for years.

As a child I had been enamored with solutions. To encourage this curiosity my parents purchased a chemistry set. After creating an indestructible bubble, causing eggshells to disappear, and generating enough static electricity to kill a colony of mice living beneath the floorboards, I considered myself an amateur Faustus. I toyed with transmogrification and came close to discovering the universal solvent. My greatest success came when I combined a certain genus of flower with a honeysuckle and ammonia solution which, when ingested, induced indifference. I tested it with remarkable success on cats.

My experiments alarmed my parents, concerned I might grow up into one of those people written about in history textbooks.

I tried for years to create an invisibility ink which would afford me a reprieve from human interaction, but only succeeded in creating an ink which left an irreversible stain. I sold my invention to the government and squandered the earnings. Defeated by the chemical world, I took a position as an apprentice at the local confectionery where I wrapped candies.

On Election Day, Mayor Bremmer proudly displayed his stained thumb and then gave an impromptu speech, waxing eloquent on the plight of the working man whose labors made him alien to his own body. Later he came to see us at the confectionery shop. The mayor was known to have a sweet tooth.

The mayor shook my hand. I handed him some butter-scotches because I knew they were his favorite.

“You might need these,” I said. “To celebrate.”

The crowd of constituents cheered when the mayor emerged from the confectionery, a bit wobbly, displaying his severed thumb. He held it high above his head. It was green with phosphoric dye. Apparently, the thumb had been severed while reaching into the machinery that processed the butterscotch candies.

The mayor waved his severed thumb. “The people united!” he shouted. It was his campaign slogan.

Later that night I sat in the doorway and watched as many celebrated the mayor’s landslide victory. The confectioner, a man named Ernst, marched with the crowds as a guest of honor, waving his whisk like a magician’s wand. In the frenzy of confetti and kissing and idiotic imitation of our political figures, half a dozen people lost their thumbs in various accidents. Applause erupted from the crowds. Two children were hospitalized after mistaking thumbs randomly discarded in the gutter for butterscotch candies.

While the medics tended to the children I began to poll the crowd informally on the likelihood the children survived. One of the parents said that if I was asking such questions I must have intimate knowledge of the affair.

“You don’t have an inked thumb,” one of the men said.

This was true.

“He doesn’t believe in voting. Perhaps he prepared the candies,” one of the fathers said.

He informed the police who approached me: “You poisoned the children with candy?” they said.

They brought me before a judge: “So, you’re the anarchist?” he said, shuffling through the papers.

As a firm believer in democracy, I remained silent on the charges. I passed a few years in jail reflecting on the situation and determined that politics and alchemy were not distant bedfellows. Perhaps politics was the proper vocation to avoid grief in my employment and find purpose in my aimless existence.

I was released once the children had recovered.

“You were fortunate,” the authorities said. They warned me not to encourage any malfeasance.

A new election cycle was underway. I immediately found a position in the department of public polling. I was given an office cubicle and several bubble grids attached to a clipboard. I was told to find solutions. My supervisor was a husky fellow who harbored a profound affection for data. The polls have all solutions! he was fond of saying.

I was assigned to the mayor’s reelection campaign. I knocked on doors asking such questions as “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the water supply?” or “If God exists, do you approve or disapprove of his handling of animals?”

Once finished, I spent the rest of the day at my cubicle looking nervously over the data, pursing my lips and raising eyebrows in notorious fashion. I felt very qualified for the position, having never voted either for or against anything in my life, the epitome of indifference.

The mayor’s opponent was a legless man in a wheelchair named Horst who had made his fortune in manufacturing. Plastics, I believe. He was a war veteran. At rallies he spoke of budget deficits and the need for bureaucratic layoffs. He spoke of his hatred for government.

“If the eye wanders, pluck it out. If the hand offends, cut it off,” he said. “Government is a body that needs to be disciplined.”

People loved his speeches.

The mayor was nervous because Horst had no legs. Voters loved that kind of vulnerability. All the mayor could display was a measly prosthetic thumb.

“Of all the luck!” the mayor lamented, biting his fake thumb. “Damn it! I should have gone to war.”

Not satisfied with the loss of his legs, candidate Horst promised to eliminate his own position if elected. “There is no need for a mayor,” he shouted to the crowds. “Man can self-govern! We must eliminate the waste!” This was his campaign slogan. Very catchy.

To prove his seriousness on the matter, candidate Horst accidentally inflicted on himself an aneurysm three months before the election. He remained in a coma. There was a vigil where his campaign aides vowed to keep his name on the ballot.

“Because democracy deserves better than another political pessimist,” they said.

The crowds cheered.

“It’s a touchy situation,” the mayor told the press. “When you run against a comatose man you’re limited as to what you can say.”

The day after Horst slipped into a coma Mayor Bremmer approached my cubicle. I tried to appear anxious while surveying the recent poll data. He stood there for a good while before mustering the courage to look me in the eye. “Horst will win the election,” he said. “People love a man in a coma.”

“Yes,” I said. “The polls indicate favorable results.”

“He’s promised to cripple the department. We’ll all be out of a job.”

“What can we do?” It was the kind of thing you say to act sympathetic when you really do not give a damn, but Bremmer’s face twisted with a pensive grimace.

“I think it’s best if I eliminate my position,” he said in a sobering voice.

“That’s brilliant,” I said without hesitating. It was alchemical. It was the solution we had been searching for. I’m not sure why I was so eager to eliminate Mayor Bremmer. He had never wronged me. He had sacrificed his thumb for the people. I had always considered him a mentor.

After consulting the polls I advised him on which liquids to mix together that would induce elimination.

The next day Mayor Bremmer was not in his office. He missed a luncheon the following afternoon. Then one morning we arrived and the papers from his desk were scattered on the floor and the windows were smashed. There was blood on the carpet. We peered through the shattered window and could see workers from the Department of Sanitation washing away a dark stain on the asphalt.

We announced the mayor’s elimination. Some received the news with relief, others with surprise. Horst’s campaign scoffed at these dramatic tactics.

“Imitation is a cheap form of flattery,” Horst’s chief of staff told the press. “We have the only candidate with a vision for the future. The best the establishment can offer the public is an eliminated man.”

We published an obituary. The burial was a grand affair. Bremmer’s popularity, now that he had eliminated himself, surged in the polls.

Imagine our surprise when less than a week before the election we arrived to find Mayor Bremmer in his old office. His hair was disheveled, his pants wrinkled, and he did not wear his signature blue tie. It was Bremmer and it was not Bremmer.

The staff was fascinated. Why was Bremmer so relaxed and pleased with himself? Had he eliminated weight? Had he redistributed his fortune? Or did he eliminate doubt and discover God?

“Have you spoken with Bremmer?” his secretary asked. “He seems like a different man.”

“That’s not Bremmer,” I said, still in disbelief. “Bremmer has been eliminated.”

“Then who is it?” She looked confused.

I shrugged.

I observed Bremmer most of the afternoon. He reviewed the recent poll data. He answered his phone but conversed only briefly. Mostly he scribbled in ledgers. When I decided I could avoid it no longer I went into Bremmer’s office.

“Welcome back, Bremmer,” I smiled.

He did not acknowledge me. After scribbling numbers and other data in one page of ledgers he proceeded to the next. I was envious of his skill but also his dexterity with a pen. His hand left long, brilliant brushstrokes on the page.

“Kraus wanted me to deliver these,” I said. “He thinks you’ll approve of your recent position in the polls.” I offered the stack of papers.

“No thank you,” Bremmer said. “I’ve eliminated my position.”

“We need to formulate a strategy, sir. The election is in less than a week. The press will wish to speak with you. Given the circumstances, the public demands answers.”

“The public can demand nothing of me,” he said. “I’ve eliminated my position.”

“What about your family, sir?”

“My family understands I have been eliminated.”

“Very well,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “There is only one problem, sir: If you eliminated your position, why are you still here?”

Bremmer stopped scribbling in the ledger. He let out one of those exhausted breaths from between clenched teeth. Then he stated very plainly he was an eliminated man, not an imaginary one.

“Will you go on record with that statement, sir? We can consult the polls. Your constituents might find that position favorable.”

“That’s unlikely,” he said. “They know as well as I that I have eliminated my position.”

There was no reasoning with him. He was determined to maintain his eliminated condition.

As a parting gift I offered him a butterscotch candy. He kept it on his desk while scribbling in the ledger.

“It must be eliminated, sir,” I said, nodding at the butterscotch.

He unwrapped the candy and placed it in his mouth. Before I had reached the door a curious thing happened. Bremmer choked on his butterscotch. His hands went to his throat. He made some faint whistling noises, then fell out of his chair. He did not twitch.

I had no time to react. One minute Bremmer was with us and the next he had been eliminated. My only regret was that I had offered the butterscotch. I had interfered. Yet I told myself this was the respectable thing. If given a second chance I would have encouraged Bremmer’s elimination once more.

In a few minutes most of the staff were standing in the doorway trying to get a better look at Bremmer. He lay on the floor like a piece of old chewing gum. The mayor’s secretary, a chubby woman named Ketzia, stood at my side. We looked down at Bremmer. Ketzia could not blink.

“We’ve eliminated Bremmer,” she said. She looked very beautiful, in a helpless way.

We later learned when they cut him open for the autopsy they did not find the butterscotch. Apparently, it had dissolved in Bremmer’s throat as a last act of elimination.

The following week, as one might expect, Bremmer won the election in a landslide. As the polls clearly indicated, in politics an eliminated man is king.

We were hired as Bremmer’s staff in the mayoral offices. Everybody loved Bremmer. His favorability ratings in the polls surged to an all-time high.

About a month later a woman who worked in the division of public accounting made an appointment to speak with me. Apparently people believed I had been close to Bremmer because I was put in charge of handling his calls and given the title Special Assistant on Matters of the Public Good. The woman felt that, in Bremmer’s absence, I was best suited to consult on her condition.

“What can I do for you?” I said.

“I wish to eliminate my position,” she said.

I did what any rational individual would do: I consulted the polls.

And so it began. I never finished any of my work on the public good because there was somebody in town each day who wished to eliminate his or her position. I listened. I consulted the polls. Some were permitted, others were not. I had an obligation to defend and find solutions for the public good.

Those who succeeded in elimination were shortly after elected to various municipal positions. It was an alchemical imperative.

Eventually, I grew tired of consultations with the public. It was exhausting, this empathy. I was Mephistopheles, interpreting the dreams of others with the polls, but I longed to become Faustus. The solution was elimination.

I needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Now that Mayor Bremmer had been eliminated, I put my name on the write-in ballot. The special election is next week. I have scheduled my own elimination. The polls indicate favorable results.