trans. N. N. Trakakis

I wonder how I didn’t immediately spot their satanic plot: they sought to goad me into doing something unjustifiable, so as to have a case afterwards for their unfair accusation. Of course, any discussions at work between us, three clerks in all, were few and far between. They would even struggle to offer a reply to my morning greeting, and their conduct, over many years now, had all the repugnant signs of baseness: they’d snigger when the boss would shout at me, or they’d look at me with that infuriating indifference when I wanted to speak, invariably to ask for an eraser or for the time. But when the Company placed a small wall clock in every office, I too decided to buy my own erasers. The silence today, however, was so obstinate that for a moment I thought they were playing a joke on me. I was overcome with a boundless tenderness. “For them to joke around with me,” I said to myself, “means that they don’t despise me as much as I thought.” So you see how at times one can be unfair to others! Have I never behaved badly towards them? And I remembered an uncle of mine, my father’s brother, who lived with us, in a small room next to the terrace, his life had passed by quietly, a pitiable figure, always wearing a faded smile, as though he were looking at something beautiful, but from a great distance, the swelling started in his legs and spread to his stomach, so I went to see him, the entire room reeked of aged, unwashed flesh, it made me sick. “I’m going to die,” he softly said, “give me your hand.” I, being so young, replied: “Leave me alone, there’s nothing wrong with you.” “I’m going to die,” he repeated with an air of shattered uncertainty. An hour later, as I was playing with my brother in the dining room, mother came in. “Your uncle has died,” she said, ashen-faced. “And I didn’t give him my hand,” I immediately thought. And so a month ago, all the staff had gathered in the courtyard, the Company was celebrating its anniversary, and the minister had been invited. As he approached I stretched out my hand – he looked so much like my uncle, though he was clearly more presentable and was also wearing a medal. His Excellency looked at me sternly and moved on. Afterwards, the boss summoned me and criticised me harshly, while the others watched, “you’re mad! how dare you stretch out your hand to a full-blown minister!” he shouted. “But he might die soon,” I said, in such an ordinary tone that I myself was taken aback.

“What came over me to reply in such an unhinged way?” I asked myself that night – but do we ourselves control what we say or do? These things are prepared, years in advance, in our darkest depths. The more I turned it over in my mind, of course, the more the resemblance between my uncle and the minister seemed non-existent. “Was I, then, trying to make an impression?” I wondered. Maybe that was it, sometimes that happens to me, it’s like someone holding your head down in water, you fight and fight, until at some point you break free and take a deep breath – otherwise, in a short while, you would have suffocated to death.

In the end I got all confused and couldn’t work out if that actually happened or if I had simply invented it. Because it’s happened to me before, at the time when my wife left me for a scumbag friend of mine, “you’ve done nothing in your life!” she screamed at me, “not even a dog would want to stay with you!” And so I decided to kill both of them, I spent months planning it all in my mind, afterwards, of course, I’d hand myself in, so that one morning, as I woke up, I felt calm and relieved, as though the murder had already taken place. I was so sure that I got dressed, as meticulously as possible, so that they wouldn’t pass me for a boor, and I went to the police, but they, after making some phone calls, and after long deliberations in secret amongst themselves, dismissed me, very politely I must admit.

“If they realise what you really think of them, they might well bump you off,” that’s what I always thought about others, and so I’d try to stay composed, saying little, walking quietly, and stepping aside at the pay office to let those who arrived late receive their pay first. “People prefer that you be like them. Otherwise they’ll never forgive you,” I’d think. And in order to bring you down to their level, they’d have no qualms in even cutting off your head.

But even my appearance seemed to be colluding with the others, it didn’t draw attention to itself – ah, we must be honest if we want to occupy this small spot in the world with a bit of pride. In my neighbourhood I was a stranger, no one greeted me, the same thing would happen at the office, what’s so unusual about that? you might ask, nothing, you see, only in a manner of speaking no one pays you any attention, for when they want to do you harm, they discover you, if only for a moment, and cruelly hurl their words to your face, as though poking their fingers into your eyes, then they leave you alone again, as you collapse in your corner.

On the third day I noticed that one of the two clerks was absent. They surely did this deliberately, your job gets done better with one man alone, there’s no doubt that the other person had been transferred, even though it was made out that he had fallen sick, it’s not out of the question of course that he gave in to their promises, for to play this wicked game on me they surely would have been promised much. They left behind the clerk opposite, a wretched man suffering from rickets who made a point of ignoring me, with the obvious intention of making me get up and slap him, or grab him from the lapels of his jacket and shake him so hard as to empty all the villainy out of him. All day long he went about things as though I didn’t exist, he would smoke, order coffee, walk around the office, or sit down again, at one point in fact he turned in my direction and stared at me in such a way that you’d think he really was staring into the void. That detail made an impression on me. “What a hypocrite!” I thought. “He would have made a great actor. That way he would have been able to parade his filthy talent on the stage also: his talent for resting his nose on the buttons of his jacket whenever he finds himself before his superiors.” And so I took care with every one of my movements, I had to restrain myself at all costs. “Everything depends upon you keeping your cool,” I said to myself. “They might even be looking through the keyhole, or through some holes they made in the night. It’s not out of the question that they even brought in the Company doctor to keep an eye on things.” And so I pretended to be indifferent when I caught that loathsome individual, opposite me, looking for a second time in my direction, with the same vacant expression, as though he were staring into the void. 

I could feel myself sweating. Whenever something happened to me, in the beginning it would be as though my body was melting from the accursed sweat, which would give me away, and afterwards the same sensation I had during that nightmare would sweep over me, it was the night after we had buried my mother, in the afternoon, just as we were about to head for the cemetery, a car stopped outside the house and two men took out a coffin. “Another coffin!” everyone exclaimed, and so imagine what happened when the men said that they had made a mistake, that the first coffin should have gone to a different address, and it is indeed true that we were surprised to have received such a beautiful and expensive coffin after having paid only a very small sum (and one which we had borrowed). And so they took mother out and laid her on the floor, the flowers strewn about, but she was silent, she didn’t say a word, what could she say? she knew that if you’re born poor you can’t then be buried as though you’re rich – that’s how she always was, quiet and full of forgiveness. That night I fell sick, perhaps I had caught a cold, the fever brought on nightmares, I found myself in a desert, it was night, and I suddenly realised that my entire body, including my face, was made of ice, but as happens in dreams this struck me as completely normal, I even enjoyed this ingenuity of creation. But as day dawned I slowly began to grow anxious, I noticed some small alterations to my body. And when the sun eventually came out, I was seized with panic, the ice was melting, my feet and hands were becoming more and more thin, my chest was caving in, and I started to scream: Help! Help! But who could help me? And how? In any case, as my face was melting, my voice was turning increasingly hoarse and inarticulate, until at one point there remained only a moist shadow in the form of a body, and it too dried up in a little while, leaving nothing behind. It was a terrifying sensation, forcefully felt: I no longer existed.

And so as time went by and I reflected on things, the more convinced I became that this conspiracy had begun long ago. They were always following me, trailing my every move, they’d change tactics and personnel, their cleverness was equal to their filthiness, and they waited for a moment of weakness in me  to strike their final blow. And naïve as I am, I always fell victim to my gullibility, as happened with that scoundrel who was charged with monitoring me, and I became fond of him, “I too have a friend,” I thought to myself, and I felt as though half the world was mine, and I’d fall upon his neck and cry and bare my soul to him, until he ran off with my wife. And those two men with the coffin were most definitely part of the conspiracy, and I wouldn’t even rule out my uncle being mixed up with it, “I’m going to die,” he mumbled, why are you telling me this while leaving me for the rest of my life with this hideous hand that I didn’t hold out to you? 

It seems, however, that deep down I became aware of something, because over time I developed a sixth sense in immediately finding a remedy to the traps they were setting up for me. And so whenever someone called me an idiot, I promptly sought to feel like an idiot, to take on the mindset and habits of an idiot, even making their pathetic grimaces, to the point where I’d find it so natural that I’d have no reason to get angry. It would in addition give me a chance to broaden my knowledge. The same thing happened on another occasion: my landlord was threatening to throw my belongings into the street if I didn’t give him the three lots of rent I owed him by the next morning, what was I to do? I had a distant relative, a wholesaler, and so off I went, in the rain, late one night, and knocked on his door. They let me in and I could see from the hallway that they were having a soiree in the other room, shouting and laughter could be heard. After explaining to my relative why I had called on him, he replied “again?”, implying that he remembered well the fifty drachmas he had given me six years ago. We went to the dining room, he sat down, I remained standing, there would have been five or six couples, married couples by all appearances, all looking flushed and tipsy. “I’ll give it to you,” my relative said, “on one condition: that you sing for us.” “Yes! Yes!” the others chimed in. I got all flustered and went to leave, but then I realised that if I did leave, tomorrow night I’d be sleeping on the street. An idea occurred to me. I imagined I was a famous singer: these gentlemen want me to sing for them, it would be the height of arrogance to refuse them. And so I started to sing, and I was soon so convinced about my new gift that I can confirm that the final notes were delivered with great gusto. I took the small sum of money I had requested and quickly left. On the road, in the unrelenting rain, I was amazed to see that I had no shoes on. I remembered they had asked me to take them off when I entered, so as not to wet the carpet.

Similarly now with that sneaky clerk, whom I caught for a third time staring vacantly at me. “They’ve tried every which way to grind me down, and now they want to mess about with my very existence,” I thought. Is that how far their depravity reaches? That’s an offence against you, O Lord, for you are my creator, and it’s as though they were spitting in your face.” I tried once more not to lose my temper, because they were obviously expecting something like that, and I decided to see the situation as a problem where I had to prove the opposite to be the case. “You’ve been paid to play that obscene part,” I thought with the clerk in mind, “and it’s true that you play it brilliantly, and you might not have even been paid but agreed to do it so that you too could wield power over someone, there are a great many people like you. But I, my dear friend, have a brain, and I know how to overturn your wickedness with arguments that are logical through and through. How is it possible, then, for me not to exist when at this very moment I’m putting my documents in order, I’m copying out these damned invoices, I spit in your direction (with genuine revulsion), and I remember so many things, for example: when I was in the ninth grade of high school, above the teacher’s desk there hung a large picture of Christ in the Mount of Olives, a Christ full of sweetness and disburdened, for he had now decided what to do, one time at morning recess everyone went out while I stayed behind on my own, I knelt before the front desk, before Christ, and began crying – not even I knew why I was crying. A student suddenly came in, he was at a loss initially, then he appeared to laugh and rushed out to spread the news. I was embarrassed – my God, how embarrassed I felt! I’ve always wondered why we get embarrassed about our most genuine feelings.”

Would I be able, then, to do so many things if I didn’t exist? “I’ve caught you out, pal,” I reflected with satisfaction. But the devil was already nearby. “What if not existing means not existing in the eyes of others, even though you may well exist in your own eyes? You don’t of course see a dead man, but how do you know that he doesn’t continue to live in some other way, a way all his own?” The questions came out of the blue, I heard them, I assure you, I heard them, as though someone had whispered them in my ear. I remembered my mother when she was young still, after she had finished tidying up she’d treat me to a game of hide and seek, I’d hide behind the see-through curtains, with all the light behind me, or under a wicker chair, yet mother would look all over for me, “where is he? where is he?” she’d say every now and then with a faint smile. When I was a bit older, I realised that she had done this on purpose so as to prolong my pleasure, and perhaps also to instil in me the confidence to believe that my mind is sharp and that I can make the right choice – something which my hapless mother attempted in vain. “Or maybe she really couldn’t find you, and these were little advance warnings of your nonexistence.” This thought was so abhorrent that I felt it within my head like a cockroach rummaging in the garbage bin. “Those accursed books are to blame,” I thought. For, having no friends and spending all my time locked up in my room, I had developed the habit of doing a lot of reading, I particularly liked strange books. “First thing I do when I get back home this evening is throw them in the fire.” “And mother: did she too not exist? Did each of us create the other in our own minds, so as to have someone to be there for us?” I admit I was so incensed by this obstinacy exhibited by my brain that I was about to utter all sorts of profanities against the saints and shove their mugs down the gutter, when my wife came to mind, a year after she had left I found out where she had moved to, I went and hid around the corner until the street was empty, I then broke down the door, she was alone, half-naked, I began hitting her pitilessly, she fell to the floor, her face streaming with blood, it struck me that she hadn’t screamed, not a word, as I was leaving I noticed that a few cats had gathered and were licking her blood which had trickled down the staircase, I then went back to the corner. “See, I wasn’t even aware of going down the stairs.” I looked at the house, it had no stairs. I was ready to concede, of course, that I hadn’t been paying close attention, when a terrible suspicion arose within me. “Surely they got rid of the stairs to make me believe that I’m not well,” I reflected with raging fury, and I forcefully threw the clerk out the window as he was nonchalantly smoking by the ledge. I saw his body falling, then came the hollow thud on the ashphalt. “So that you realise that I exist and that I’ll send the very first scumbag who doubts it straight to hell!”

I never imagined that I could feel so calm after what I had done. And I admit that I was puzzled by this calmness, or rather that it cost me. “My God, how dearly one pays for their small place in the world,” I thought to myself. “One might even pay for it with a crime.” The sun at this time was setting, the breeze was soothingly fresh, when I get out of prison, I thought, I’ll still have a few years to live, I’ll try to sort myself out and start a new life, when all is said and done I too may have been at fault for all this, we’ve got to be fair, I was a bit hot-tempered, at the drop of a hat my imagination would create myriad tribulations for me. “And so will everything be different someday?” I wondered. “But of course I always loved them deep down.” I turned towards the door, full of remorse for the unfortunate clerk, ready to go and hand myself in, when I froze, dumbfounded.

Sitting in the same spot, in the corner, the clerk opposite stared continually at me with that vacant expression of his, as though he were staring into the void.