irretrievably and turn to dust as soon as a different and slightly fresher air was let in?
“Get up, you little shit,” I said to him, which was as good a thing to say as any after such a long pause, which looked like it was about to drive him over the edge in any case, unaccustomed as he was, no doubt, to being faced with silence when someone had taken the trouble to come see him. It was hard to say whether he was relieved or appalled that the silence was now being broken. He sat there stooped and sullen in any case, motionless, with his little gimlet eyes that he couldn’t manage to keep still. I saw that he was missing a button on his shirt, that it was his tie which was keeping his collar in place, and this inspired me to go that much further.
“Get up and listen to what I’ve got to say!” I said, overconfidence making me pompous and bombastic. Because he really was a pathetic sight, sitting there pale as if he’d just been to the doctor and received a death sentence by way of a merciless x-ray. There was nothing else for it but to let rip, something I felt duty bound to commit to anyway, now that I’d started.
“You little shit!” I roared at him, “hiding away so that people can’t see just how ridiculous and incompetent you actually are! Sitting rotting in an office all day long. Your name might be on that brass plate outside the door but you’re not the boss. You probably couldn’t put two words together if someone came up and asked you what it is we actually do here! Why? Because all you know how to do is cheat! All you’ve learned to do in life is to sneak, and swindle, and suck up! All you’re good for is lying and deceiving! There’s nothing more pathetic than the sort of people who cheat because they can’t succeed any other way! Shrewd and spineless, what a wonderful combination! But every fraud in the world has more dignity than you! You asshole! You’re the sort who cheats his parents from the time he’s born, who dupes and deceives his friends, who’d have cheated on his girlfriends if he had any, and whose crowning glory, after years of swindling, was his wedding day! All you’ve ever earned money on was deceit! Everything you’ve built up and all the times you’ve succeeded, all of it was a swindle from start to finish, you miserable bastard!”
Fired up by my own words, and with an intense pressure in my chest from the excitement, I leaned over his desk and roared, more at the shiny forehead than at the man slumped under it: “I’ve seen your notes on the desk drawer, so I know how you think! I know how you work! If you can call it working, earning money the same way you wring out a cloth! I know how you’ve got a hold over the old man! I know all about your methods, how you began to ingratiate yourself when the time was ripe, how you stayed in the background and let everyone else have their say, and then afterward you took Schiong aside and told him what you thought! How you found out about the unpaid bills, and about the health insurance, which were only mere formalities, problems that could be fixed in a wink, and how you blew them up out of all proportion to Schiong, who was long past understanding anything like that, and how you talked him into letting you take care of it, quietly, and how in reality you didn’t need to do anything at all apart from make a few calls and reallocate some insignificant funds! How you patted him on the shoulder afterward and told him he could relax now, that everything had been taken care of, that everything was in safe hands! Safe Hands! The greediest, filthiest, most unscrupulous sticky-fingered pair of crook’s hands known to man!”
All the yelling had begun to take it out of me. I took a breath and leaned back but not so far that I didn’t keep a good grip with both hands on the edge of the desk. Before I continued, I lowered my voice, a murderous whisper accompanied by an almost inaudible whistling: “A good few of your workers are starting to get on in years, you realize that? Some of them might retire as early as next year. What are you going to do then? Where do you plan on finding the new blood to replace the old guys down there? How do you plan on replacing your workforce, something that has to happen, and still manage to come close to maintaining current levels of production? Do you think kids today have the least bit of interest or respect for a business as unprofitable as this? They want to step out into the light, not down into the darkness and noise of this place. Do you think that on the day we all leave you there’ll be nine fresh-faced kids standing down there, in our workshop coats, one machine each, blessed with the knowledge and patience we have, to guarantee that this lousy little business of yours, in spite of old and out-dated equipment, doesn’t suffer in the least as far as efficiency and delivery schedule? And what about the technological revolution that’s set to explode all through trade and industry, have you considered that? Have you any idea at all of what demands are going to be made? Have you, and I just thought of this now, have you any concept at all of what quality means? Or maybe you just think it’s a matter of getting hold of some people who work fast enough? You should consider yourself lucky, you crook, that the business you got your hands on almost runs itself. You should thank the devil that it was all in place, the whole thing, the day you made a fool of old Schiong. Because you, Konrad Didriksen, are one of the worst imaginable types of creep that crawls on the surface of the earth, living off of all the misery you manage to sniff out, and if something isn’t already rotten the day you get your claws into it, then you make sure it perishes, you soil it and contaminate it so that it’s ready to be taken over and the death blow can be dealt without your risking anything at all.”
I remained standing when I had finished, and he stayed seated, and there wasn’t a sound from him or from me, neither of us moved a muscle. I didn’t quite know how I should feel after finally speaking my mind in that way … I noticed that I was sad more than anything, sad on both our behalfs, standing there in the unbearable heat from his electric radiators in the mistaken belief that it served any purpose. I got it into my head that it was up to me to break the spell. But I couldn’t manage to say anything, so instead I cleared my throat: Didriksen gave a start, and then he stood up, as if he’d been asked to give a speech. With a contemptuous sneer, he made clear what he thought about what I’d said, as a pretext to come and disturb him while he was working, what an impudent little idiot, what a spineless bunch of bastards we all were … without meeting my eyes a single time, instead looking around continuously, as if trying to locate something in the room that could confirm his preposterous accusations. Fortunately he was standing with the fly-swatter in his hand and now he shook it, weakly, as if fanning himself in the stifling heat, while he told me what a wretched person he thought I was for disturbing him in the middle of his work for nothing … he wondered if I’d spared a thought about everything that was piling up down there in the meantime … if I had even considered the responsibility that rested with him at the end of the day … he repeated that last part a couple of times: rested with him, rested with him … and then he motioned angrily with his hand, with the result that he give himself a whack on the mouth with the swatter: at which point, finally, he looked up at me, as if he instinctively blamed me for this. I averted my eyes and caught sight of the white entrails of a fly hanging off the side of his computer … it looked like an abscess had been squeezed out of its grey skin … he’d obviously landed a direct hit right before I’d made my entrance. There was no way I could imagine that there was any chance at all of that thin lump regaining consciousness and yet it occurred to me that Didriksen was impatient to be left alone so that he could go over to get his bag and finish the job before it was too late.
But I was hardly halfway down the stairs when he started to speak again, and now in a voice that was barely recognisable.
“My wife is very ill” he said, as if he was talking to himself, but hoping that I’d overhear.
I remained standing with one foot poised over a step, unable to decide which reaction would be most natural. But soon I’d hesitated for so long that there was no going back. I turned and said: “Excuse me?” as if I hadn’t heard what he’d said.
He stood looking at me gratefully, as far as I could make out over the edge of the desk.
“My wife is very ill,” he repeated, looking down as if he was ashamed of it.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked politely.
“A rare form of cancer” he replied, my question seemed to have made it easier for him because he was looking down at me again. “One there’s no treatment for. They’ve tried everything, but nothing works.”
“Can’t