The house I grew up in recently burned down. My father called me about it last week, though I’d already heard it from my sister. We hadn’t been living there for years now. It was an antiquated sort of house in the lesser fortunate area of the city. It wasn’t a sightly house, and neither was it ugly—it was a house that one didn’t mind on one’s walk.
For a moment, I debated whether I should go down and see the burnt down shell of the house I’d spent such many years in, though the idea had fled my mind as soon as new work was placed on my desk. Dossier after dossier, all piled up on one side of the table. Somewhere a Beethoven sonata was playing, though certainly not from our office. Someone was commenting on the loud volume of the piece and another went into the adjacent office to complain, and never came back.
The memories of the house had left my mind in a second’s notice even though they had been firmly stuck for two decades now. I could not remember my room, I could not remember the kitchen, the living room, my father’s study, my sister’s room—nothing. All was gone but the memory of one summer’s day in the garden, neath a dark cloud of impending thunder. The one memory, the one thing that was left, it was of such brief length, of such lacking importance that I tried to discard it too, yet it remained. My father had expected a clear sky and wanted to show me Venus in daylight. It seemed then, as though the clouds had waited on our descent of the backdoor stairs, and hazed over the sky the minute we walked out onto the porch and into the yard.
I was trying to keep a calm voice as my father recited memories of the house over the phone, though it seemed as though he didn’t know of my having to work; he didn’t seem to mind my lack of time. The Beethoven sonata went on just as before and as eventually another co-worker went over to the adjacent office, I looked over the typewriter from my low chair and saw a congregation of interns waiting on something by the water cooler. We had only recently acquired electrically powered water coolers and those who wanted to evade work had found another way to do so now.
They were laughing over some crude joke a nearby fellow had made and as a dark suit and tie broadly appeared through the door frame, they hustled to find some place to sit and look busy. Paul Henley had opened a window in the corner and it was obvious that he was smoking out of it. I could well see the incandescent glow of the frail object in his hand and how he, occasionally coughing, puffed out each drag. There was something about it that seemed oddly hypnotizing. As my father droned on about all the times he’d tripped on the step between the kitchen and the living room, the smoke fled the room as though sucked into a vent; and each littlest cloud of grey dissipated into the air, never to be seen again. Eventually, the cigarette ran out, my father stopped speaking, and the Beethoven sonata ended. Another day, just like the others. The interns were being scolded by the suit and it wouldn’t have impressed me much if some of them had been sent home, though not a lot of me cared in that moment. The one thing I, or rather my power of memory, seemed to care about were celestial formations. Was it Venus in the day sky, or Vega in the night, they seemed to be the only memories I had ever cared for; even if I did not want to.
Outside, planes landed at the nearby airport and—in rhythmic perfection—took off again. I’d gotten used to working between and through noise of all kind. There was never a silent moment in this office and each time, as some of the newer co-workers tried to stop a noise, they learnt that sound is infinite, and that chaos is inevitable in a thin-walled office building built right next to an international airport. Someday there will be nothing left here, but a desert and its starving people, I thought. Outside, the planes flew by and the building rattled in all kinds of senses. I had hung up the phone and stared out of the closest window. I saw before my mind’s eye a house—our house. Red bricks, tipped roof, white window frames, a heavy wooden door and a brass doorbell. I could certainly remember what it had looked like, though it seemed impossible to recall anything that had happened relating to the house. I saw flames sprawl out like greedy mouths gasping for air, something else would happen and another memory would arise, though I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how. Someday, I thought. There will be nothing left here, but a desert and its starving people anyway. It wouldn’t matter what I recalled or not. The house was gone, the flames had eaten it up and released it into the air like the smoke escaping from the window. It was all gone now, the smoke, the house, my father’s voice—nothing was left. Nothing but a quiet sensation that something was hiding beneath the pile of papers on my desk. Something had to be stuffed beneath the endless paragraph signs and henceforths. I looked through the papers, read each line carefully only to find the usual work. The one I’d spend all of my career with.
“Dunwick.”
A voice called over to me. I looked up and couldn’t immediately make out where the voice had come from.
“Over here.”
Jack Leighton was calling to me. His hair had gotten greyer over the weekend and he seemed—with unflattering motions of his hand—to try and distract one’s eye from the salt and pepper that had been cast over his head.
“You know who that is?”
He asked. I looked towards the man at whom he was pointing. It was the well dressed man I had seen scolding the interns earlier.
“I have no idea.”
I said.
“Do you know who he is?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t either. I’ve been working here for almost thirty years and never once have I seen that man.”
He said, writing down a thought on a note.
“He looks important.”
“There have been so many of these men recently.”
Leighton said, peeking over his desk again.
“What men?”
“You know, important-looking men I’ve never seen before. I think we might be merging.”
He looked over his desk. It was meticulously clean. Not one spot, not even the slightest sign of dust. It all reflected himself. Jack Leighton had never smoked, had never drunk and had never even given thought to inflating his performance at his job. He was honest; earnest. Yet, he too, seemed to hide something intricate. Just like the pile of papers on my desk, or the locked away memories set deep in my mind, I had always had the feeling that someday he would reveal something dark, something severe about himself. He would never look one in the eyes and he would never be the first to extend a greeting hand. He would rarely appear at functions or festivities and it seemed that, after his workday ended, he disappeared to everyone but his family.
“A merger? I thought we had a record-breaking year.”
I said, a hint of disbelief in my voice.
“Well, that’s what they tell us. But I really shouldn’t say more.”
He went back to his work and I was left with more questions than answers. Why had the house burned down? Why had I hung up on my father? Why was the company not doing as well as we’d been told?
The pile of papers appeared normal again. Its ominous aura had dissipated and was now little more than the dog-end of Paul Henley’s cigarette, or what remained of the interior of the house I had grown up in.
Share This Post