Twelve Red Roses: The Continuing Narrative

“The Boss wants you…” began Ruben, but with the suddenness of a car breaking suddenly, the driver suddenly broke the car. We were brutally thrown forward, and if we hadn’t “made it click,” things could have gotten messy.
“Dang it!” yelled Ruben. “What the hang was that?”
“Sir,” said the driver, “By adroitly breaking, I have avoided sustaining considerable injuries to our fender, sir.”
“How’s that?”
“There was a vee-hicle in front of us that ceased to move with an abruptness that I confess had me startled; I believe the driver was checking for mice in his glove-compartment, not unlike the Strange Case of the Cautious Motorist, if you will remember.”
“But this is madness.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suppress such beliefs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dispose of the Cautious Motorist.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t allow him to stand in your way.”
“No, sir.”
“Plough through.”
“As you say, sir.”
“And enough with this “Yes, sir, No, sir, As you say, sir” business. We’re beginning to sound like a sampling of Wodehouse dialogue.”
“Rightchar, then.”
“Thank you.”

For the rest of the journey Ruben seemed to be sunk in a moodful reverie, possibly on the subject of the cautious motorist and the hazards he presents to the modern forward thinker. My existence and importance was forgotten. I did venture to lubricate the general chit-chat with a comment or two about the weather, but the result was only a disapproving stare and a terse observation that talking in a moving vehicle induced nausea, and that to enforce such an abject condition upon a person was probably encroaching on the Bill of Rights, and if the League of Nations didn’t have something fairly scorching to say on the subject, then someone was very much mistaken.

I was just beginning to nod off, when we pulled up outside a fairly imposing building. When I say fairly imposing, I mean it would have been if it weren’t for the frantic renovations going on. The streams of tradesmen pouring from the side entrances and still more swarming across the face and roof of the building lessened its impossibility somewhat. In fact the two men brawling nine stories up on the scaffolding pretty much submerged it. The peculiar thing about these men, however, was that they all seemed to be men of surprisingly romantic inclination, for they all wore buttonholes in their overalls.

The main entry, however, was unmarred. The grandeur of its arches and Corinthian columns was not lost on me. Nor was the impressive nature of the forty-nine steps up to the door. These doors, for they were plural, had the ominous monogram R.I.P emblazoned across them and their handles were in the shape of thorny roses. So thorny, in fact, that I began to have doubts about placing my hand on them so as to open the doors. It was a thorny problem.

All throughout our ascent Ruben had retained a determined grip on my arm, but as we trod the twenty-second step, his impersonation of a vice seemed to lose something of its conviction. At the twenty-seventh, his features palled. By the time we reached the thirty-fifth, he was positively quaking. And when we gained the forty-eighth he gave the distinct impression of a man who, having arrived late for a dinner party, finds that, in addition to having to enter under the gaze of simply everyone, he has forgotten to change his bedroom slippers for his dress-shoes and spats, and decides that he really would rather be at home reading a one of Austen’s wittier novels.
Could it be the grotesque statues of aphids lurking between the pillars? Or was it knowledge of what lay behind these doors?
Looking like a sailor unsuited to the turbulence of his profession, Ruben called to one of the men in black who had brought up the rear of our party.
“This is Zebulun – not his real name, you understand – he will take you the rest of the way,” he said to me. “I find that I am incommoded in the going forward.”
He shook my hand.
“Well, this has been jolly, but I really must be off,” he said, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. Then he was gone, bounding down the steps five at a time.
All this had a disparaging effect on my constitution.

“You mustn’t mind him,” Zebulun reassured me, “Ruben is of a nervous inclination. Even as a small child, I remember he would quail at the administration of the cod liver oil. A most peculiar boy, mother often remarked on it.”
“Oh, really,” I said, feeling I was required to say something.
“But as to business…” Zebulun marched up to the door, pricked his hand on the handle, swore, and kicked the door open instead. And we entered

The ceiling went right up to the ninth floor, from whence was heard the faint clanging and cursing of the work men, like the distant cooing of doves. Well, not really, but it’s poetic.
The general atmosphere was of an ancient library on a wet day where They frown and look at you askance if you enter with the intent of reading something or are too eager in your pursuit of an obscure novelist. Gloomy, one might say. Oppressive, even, but in a majestic way.
Books lined the walls, bookcase upon bookcase, floor upon floor, fifty staircases leading to a hundred mezzanine floors wound their serpentine way about the walls or rose up suddenly in the middle of the room like the pillars that we had just recently left behind us outside.
In some places the books were padlocked behind wire girdles, as if whoever put them there were afraid of their escaping.
Loose sheets of paper lay piled up on desks or on the floor, covered over on both or one sides with writing, in all manner of differing hands –hasty, pedantic, old-fashioned, feminine, bold, meek, erratic, blithe or moody– some scribbled out as though rejected, some bound together with string or staples as if they formed a whole. On the floor were heavy chests which I had no doubt contained still more papers. These, too, were locked, each with multiple locks.
The strangest thing was that, although one could see that nothing was ever touched or moved, there was not a speck of dusk to be found, unless it was floating in the rays of sunlight that filtered down from the windows near the ceiling.
Nor was there a chair to be seen, neither overstuffed and welcoming, or stiff and uncomfortable.
From somewhere came a tuneless humming, sounding as though it was emitted from the white mustached mouth of a contentedly eccentric old man in pince-nez.
“Old Dinggle seems happy enough today,” muttered one of my escort to Zebulun. He murmured his concurrence.
“This is the Room of Bans,” he whispered to me in reverent tones, by way of an explanation, “Here’s your card.”
He handed me a plastic card with nothing on it but a barcode.
We approached the far wall. At first I thought we were making for a picture of a young girl, hanging on the wall. I don’t mean to say that it was a picture of a young girl hanging on a wall, but that it was the picture, of the girl, which was hanging on the wall, if you get my meaning. The subject in the picture looked as though she thought the artist and his art was a thorough bore. But as we drew near, she suddenly moved, causing an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, like when one spies a ghost where one doesn’t expect to see one.
It was a window, not a painting, and a real, bored girl, not an imitation one. She looked about to wish us good morning, but Zebulun gave her a glance of iron austerity.
“Here! None of that, missy.” He said.
He thrust an identical card to the one he had given me at her. Simultaneously, the ten others produced like cards. The interest that had glimmered briefly in the girl’s eyes when she had first seen us died away. After shooting a glance of deepest pity at my person, she glazed over again. She opened a draw with the handle of a rose (carefully avoiding the thornéd steam) and, with lethargy dripping from every limb, drew forth a rose shaped gun, and pointed it at each card as it was presented to her. Twelve times the gun emitted a high-pitched, double beep, and twelve times the girl said in weary tones, “You’re cleared.”
“Pipe down, down there!” came a cry from about four stories up, and a head bearing a remarkable resemblance to the tousled A. Eisenstein, only more so, peered over a rickety banister. The head, which appeared also to have a hand attached, raised a feather duster of ostrich feathers at us and waved it about intimidatingly. “You’ll raise the dust! Don’t exhale! Don’t inhale! Don’t hail! The weather looks ill! Cads! Bounders! Terrorists! Down, I say! Heel! Out! Out! Out! Howzat! Wipe your feet first! You’ll let in the dust! Leave your shoes at the door! Leave your hat at the door! Leave your mind at the door! Apply for leave! Leave! The dust falls like the leaves in the autumn!”
As he discharged this authoritative oration, the head rapidly began to descend from his high perched throne, bobbing and bouncing, clambering down ladders, skittering across landings, bounding down stairs like the deer and roe upon wherever they bound.
Evasive action seemed to be called for, and evasive action, true to its duty, was preformed. The girl hit a button on her desk (the button was shaped like an opened rosebud), and a secret door appeared next to her window. We dashed through the door and the girl pulled down a wooden shutter over her window, showing a turn of speed that proved that the vegetable was not her only state.
Zebulun was the last to enter. He slammed the door with vehemence. A sound against the other side was heard quite loudly, as though books were being hurled against it.

The Work Camp, part 3: The Continuing Story

Part 1 / Part 2

'Here, what's this then?'

The grating voice came from behind the van. I wheeled around to find myself confronted with a swarthy, sweaty, crude-looking man who wore an oily moustache – more like Stalin's than Hitler's – and smoked a fetid smelling “roll-your-own” of dubious ingredient. He wore a colourless military cap slung at a slovenly angle and decorated with what – at first glance – looked like badges, but were in reality beer bottle caps. And not just Tui, but Speights, Heineken, Stella, Monteiths, Tasman Bitter, DB Canterbury Draught and many more.
At his side, tied to his belt by means of a cheap, third-world-country-manufactured green garden twine, was an empty Tui bottle. No, maybe the bottle wasn't empty after all. It was half-filled with what looked like bits of shredded coconut....
“It can't be!” I thought to myself. Choking back the rising nausea, I identified the bottle's contents – bitten off ends of finger nails; and perhaps even toe-nails – that large, thick sliver on the top (I could just make it out through the black glass and peeling label) looked as if it could once have belonged to a big toe. Needless to say, it didn't make things look overly hopeful in the way of constructive hobbies and pastimes in my new home. If the guards had to resort to fingernail collecting as an amusement, what did the detainees do?
Standing behind my new acquaintance, like one of the gargoyles on the old cathedrals in Europe – before they'd been destroyed – was my old friend, the Limper. An ugly leer of ugly intent decorated his ugly face.
I drew a sharp breath of consternation and frustration. “Now I'm for it,” I thought, “No chance to find Kit now.”
The new man spoke again, his voice was certainly not subject material for the romantic poets. “This won't do,” he rasped, “A male detainee walking free in the woman's camp? What's his number? Who's the dipsomaniac responsible for keeping him 'safe'?'
'Not thinking of running off were we lad?' he croaked at me. 'In these parts we don't take none too kindly to folks who go putting themselves forward. You're at Camp Kaiapoi now, and if you start any monkey business, then my name's not Superintendent Kronckendolf if I don't make it your hell. Understand? Good.'
'Hell? Dosen't he know that's a real place?' I tried to think up some suitably bitting remark, but was interrupted in what I confess is a unbelievably difficult exercise and not to be undertaken by those apt to be caught on the proverbial hop. Hopping is an entirely different form of work-out altogether. A milk of a different ilk.
'Here, Harry!' the repulsive superintendent gasped at the Limper, 'Get this boy back in the van with the others. He'll come to no harm there, I'll see to that personally.'
'Right you are, chief,' the Limper shrilled.
They made a good pair, the Limper and the Superintendent – a soprano and a wood-saw. A perfect duet.

Back in the bus with the other male prisoners, I tried to shrink inconspicuously into one of the back seats.
'You just come an' sit up the front with us, kid,' came the rasping command, 'I want to keep my eye on you.'
'Curse it,' I muttered, wondering if the circumstances would excuse me if, just this once, I used a much more potent expletive than was usually heard to issue from my lips.
The superintendent shoved me roughly into the chair next to him. As I hit the seat (bad springs – with the foam padding bursting through the faded coverings) my hand touched something small, hard and lumpy clinging to the underside of my chair. Why must they always stick their chewing-gum there?

One of the guards gave me a toothless, unsavory grin. Or was it a smirk? It's a peculiar thing that you become so distracted in times of trial by the smallest details such as application of word definition.

'Well now, me bonnie lad,' began the Superintendent. 'Bonnie...' he repeated, running the word over his tongue as if he relished the taste. That word has a distinct flavour of horse-radish to me – bitter. Over the coming weeks I was to learn that 'Bonnie' is synonymous with humiliation.
Chuckling in perverse delight – a sound not unlike a heavily asthmatic sheep – the Superintendent leaned over to the Limper. 'Where's Bonnie here staying?' he asked. The Limper grasped at a muddy Adidas backpack, from which he extracted a battered clipboard. Muttering the alphabet under his breath, he ran his finger down the list: 'Smythe, Andy; Admitted April 23 '07, No. 0065219, Sector 12, Block C, Hut 511.'
They already have everything planed, even down to the date I would be “admitted”. How long have they been watching me? How long has my name been on on their list?
These thoughts and more darted through my mind.
'What say we relocate him over to Sector 13, eh? We'll put him up in a nice, special place.' The asymmetrical leer returned to Limper's face as he heard these words. Across from me the other guard's eyes widened in excited anticipation.
'Sector 13, Hut 666, that's were we'll put you up in.' said the Superintendent, committing a gross prepositional solecism. 'You superstitious, Bonnie?'

The whinny of Limper and the drunken gulp from Toothless mingled with the incredible imitation of farmyard animals with respiratory trouble pushing furniture over concrete emitted from the Superintendent.