At 8:03 he clocks into work. He hurries past the secretary in the prim skirt, who sits at the desk in the lobby minding her own business, and up the stairs to the 2nd floor. There he settles himself behind the desk in the 4th cubicle on the right. With a flick the workstation whirs into existence. He surveys the recordings stacked on the desk with a brief glance. He can hear colleagues taking their places in the cubicles around him. The day has begun.
Without ceremony he grabs the first recording and pops it into the machine. He adjusts the headphones till they fit snugly and block out incidental office noises. He pushes play. The disembodied voices of a business call stream into his ears, nothing special; they have been getting more of those lately. He has been with the company from the beginning and feels lucky to have the job. The call goes on for quite a while. He has to pause, rewind, and re-listen a number of times to understand it all. Business calls bore him. He prefers private calls, easier to follow, to listen to, to report. He slowly gathers the salient points of the conversation and orders them into a report: report number 6858-71/1. Someone will read report 6858-87/1. They will glean knowledge of the business call he has listened to from the words. He files his report and moves on to the next recording.
He hears only scratches and screeches. A corrupt recording, he figures. That happens sometimes. Things go wrong and have to be fixed. He skims through the recording, fast-forwarding, checking whether he can use any of it. He manages to make out a word here and there. Maybe a fight. Maybe two lovers fighting. Maybe two lovers fighting after one discovered the other cheating. He can’t really tell. He fills out the report “corrupt recording” and files it.
The next recording holds another business call, something about a merger, something about a new product. Dead details fly back and forth. He takes them all in through the headset and puts them in the report like a camera taking a photograph of a distant landscape. He listens as voices slowly swell and then retreat. He writes as the conversation goes on and by. It ends with curt goodbyes and hurried excuses. He keeps listening, silence follows. He will have time for one more before lunch.
He starts the next recording, a private call. Katerina tells a friend the plans for her daughter’s birthday party, her 15th birthday. Word after word, sound following sound come to him from the recording, through his headphone, like a lover’s whispered secrets. Birthday parties take a lot of planning. The plans must be discussed and rediscussed. Every detail must be worked out to the 8th decimal place. Facts spill out. He listens. He remembers his own birthdays. Katerina has grand plans for her daughter’s party. He hears them all. Some he likes; some he doesn’t like. As each detail passes he writes it down for the report. Finally, Katerina runs out of things to say. He works a bit longer, compiling all of Katerina’s plans into the report for his superiors. He manages to finish before lunchtime.
He eats lunch quietly. Maybe tonight he’ll go to Katerina’s party tonight. He’d bring a gift, of course, that movie Katerina mentioned. Niépce St., number 56, he’d walk through the gate to the backyard. He would say ‘hello’ to everyone and help serve the cake; chocolate, he thinks, but he’d have to check the report to be sure. He — like a friendly uncle — would mingle and chat and fit right in. Katerina would smile at him and they would share a strange and awkward intimacy; they know the plans behind the party.
After lunch he listens through a few more recordings and summarily writes up their reports. At 5:07 he turns off the machine and collects his coat. The recordings he has listened to today sit on his desk. He leaves them there. Later, nameless hands will replace them with a fresh stack for him to listen to. He heads towards the parking lot.
He walks past the rows of cars neatly lined up that sit and wait obediently to take their owners home again. The parking lot stinks of asphalt and sunburned metal. He steps inside his silent automobile parked in stall 307 and coaxes it to life. The highway takes him quickly downtown. He hardly notices the other cars. He get off 2 exists past where a car lies wrecked in the shoulder, and heads straight for the mall. Another parking lot greets him. He parks the car in the first free space he comes to.
The air-conditioner inside refreshes him. All around him people shop. Corralled by the mall’s corridors they shuffle past chatting gaily. The walls feed his ears an echoic soup of sound from which he cannot discern individual voices. Once in a while he brushes up against a stranger and wonders whether perhaps he has listened to them before. Out here he passes them like just another upright citizen on an outing to the mall to shop. At work he listens to them and the minutia of their lives like the best friend they never had. However, he doesn’t look at the crowd much; he came here to shop. He looks through the store windows he passes; he takes in their content and notes what he would and would not want to have.
He slips into the video store by the food court. While he stands in line to buy that new film he’s heard so much about, 2 teenage girls gossip loudly by the door. They really ought to keep their voices down; everyone can hear them, and no one actually cares what John said to Jane at the party last night, it’s embarrassing. He wanders the mall some more. He stops in at a few more shops, but only to browse. When he has seen enough he goes back to the car and drives home.
He sprawls on the leather couch; around him lies his drive-through dinner in paper-bags and Styrofoam. He takes large bites and quickly finishes. He then throws the wrappers in the garbage. The remote brings the TV to life. He watches idly as he waits for his show to come on. He watches the news-anchor tell him what has happened today: a murder 3 blocks away, a coup in some distant land and a celebrity got married. He watches commercials tell him what to buy: a new car and a prescription for a pill to cure a disease he doesn’t think he has. He watches. He falls asleep.
Tomorrow he goes to work again. He files a report and then reaches for the next recording. Katerina speaks in his ear. He listens for a moment, shocked. It’s political.
He rewinds. He listens again. He listens to the whole recording. He wanted to make sure before reporting to the superior. They didn’t all do that. They didn’t all care. He cares. He had liked Katerina. He wanted had to save her, but the words kept coming. He listened and did his job. He wrote the report and went to his supervisor.
Someone must have made a mistake. He had never before received the same person twice. Company policy couldn’t allow such a thing. Someone screwed up and left him stuck with Katerina and her political phone call. He would report this to his superior. Whoever screwed up ought to be punished.
No job is perfect. At times like these he doesn’t really like his job. He took a philosophical approach however. No job is perfect.
The supervisor had listened to the report with a faint smile and earnest nods calculated to give him a kind, fatherly expression. They both knew what would happen now. The supervisor would send it in. Someone somewhere would read it over quickly and call someone else. That someone else would hand down the order for someone to carry out. The order was already executed.
Slowly he walks back. He has more work to do before lunch, unimportant work anyone could do.
de Vries 2006