by Gergely BÍRÓ
Although the writer of these lines is not a sincere man he cannot be one, please, believe me, simply because I do admit this slight shortcoming of mine to you. I might have just put it improperly and now, I'm afraid, you suspect there is something disingenuous in it. People often want to tell the truth and while they are keen on doing so, they may believe that they do so. However, supposing they are mistaken, they still are not lying. Well, it was the same with our honored writer, but he knew he was wrong, which meant he was lying. So he put the question to himself whether to write at all. Shall he do exactly what he did not want to? I would like to remark here that he was not the first author obsessed with this problem. His predecessors had resolved this difficulty by writing in first person singular but composing the title in third person. For example, in one of Antal Szerb's best short stories, Prince Pico and Monna Lianora, it is Prince Mirandola talking all the time. It was as if he, like an eye, were observing someone and then, a minute later, he would get into the mind of that person previously described and continue to look around from inside thereafter. Well, when you read my story from the beginning till the end, you'll notice that in any line which catches your eye, regardless of the title, you are going to see me, the porter. Mr. Writer withdrew into the title and it was quite wise of him we must admit, since he believed it would be unimaginable in any other way, as he had some obscure images about the limitations of the human mind and he was completely aware that our mind fits into us, but we do not fit into our mind. (Well, this is a real self-interpreting sentence, isn't it, Mr. Mostert?) However, we are both there even in the title; perhaps Mr. Artist would have liked to have it all for himself so that I, the porter, would not even utter it, nor know about the fact that I am to confess, many times, fragmented. But I know it as well as I know that my fall is necessary. I'm that sort of tragic hero whose unavoidable fate is not at all pleasant for himself more so, as I haven't got the slightest idea how it will be accomplished. I am much more terrified at the latter than at my fall itself. When I think of it, dull pain starts in my stomach and I begin to feel anguish as a remote suspicion worries me, namely that I might lose my job. But this is not for sure, either.
The interpretation of the Self is different for everyone: it is either self-consciousness or the truth inside the man; the only thing I can unmistakably declare is: I am a porter. Not simply a man who earns his living by being a porter I am entirely that, I believe. (Still, I cannot be a sincere man, given what I've mentioned above, so I'm asking you to take my confessions with some reservation.) And this is what others do not believe, but do not dare to tell me. It is also possible that it is not their lack of guts that keeps them from expounding their opinion, but their prudence. If it goes on like this, they will accept my self but there will be silence between us, and distance, like it is right now. No matter, I'm a world of a single person.
One who works in a porter's room, moreover, takes the night shift, usually imagines his job to be a transitional one, which is even more probable when that person is twenty-two. It is also said that the first days are unbearable only one hour after starting to work. Things are different with me. I do want this, for itself. I am here half an hour before the start of my working hours so that the porter of the previous shift could let me know in time who has received a letter and when he comes for it, and things like that. I am available at any time, for I am always sitting at the reception desk. This suburban power electronics stock corporation is quite a good place! I've got my TV, my milk, my tea, my food, a rolling chair made of leather (I can even set its height), a long marble counter (all right, its cover is patterned like marble).
Some days ago when I got here for the first time, I was told to look for the chief warden, he was supposed to be somewhere in the basement, called Charles. And I found him down there and introduced myself to him. Then I noticed his card pinned to his chest. Under his name there was his title: industrial operation-leader. A hardly noticeable smile flitted across my face. 'I'll make one like this for you as well' and he pointed at his own card. 'So, it is you, Sir, who designs and makes these, right?' I asked him, to which he nodded. Even though everybody calls him chief warden (perhaps not because of disdain but because it is easier to say; Mr. Industrial Operation-Leader! how difficult it is to pronounce), it is to the outside world that the card showed the seriousness of his position and perhaps to the inner one, as well which did not change anything but made it seem nicer. I wondered what he would write under my name, under the name of his direct subordinate. Would I be a porter? (This would not trouble me in itself, but rather as the fact that a chief warden who calls himself an industrial operation-leader would only give me the title 'porter' expressing and making me feel my immense defenselessness.) I relaxed when I read night attendant written on my card.
When one of the managers, the forwarding manager, arrives in the mornings at about seven and asks for the key of his room, my gaiety disappears, although everything has been all right so far (apart from the moments when Mr. Manager hands down his key in the late afternoon hours). So, he always arrives with his secretary, who opens the glass door for him, and then they both step to my desk, talking to each other. I greet them. The manager is just explaining something, too busy to hear my voice, and Mr. Secretary is paying attention to his words, still, he is willing to reel off a 'Morning' while looking into the manager's eyes. No matter how confidential their talk is they never speak silently, which I don't like at all. Or here we have our development engineer, a woman, a malignant tumor in a brown wrap I don't even know her name just waiting her chance to pick on me. When she has no other idea, she needles me saying, 'you live like pigs in clover, you just sit here and no one bothers you, for you have nothing to do.' Others have a notion that a porter is nothing else but two considerable ears that their knick-knacks should be poured into. Thus many things settle down in me: who embezzles and how smartly he does it ('damn him'), or which manager seduces which secretary, 'an old scoundrel,' but no need of being afraid for the secretary either, 'that self-seeking tramp', and so on and so forth. I'm really amused by these rumors, honestly. Anyway, Charles, the chief warden, is a good guy, at least. Also, our manager of development is considerate to me. I was just about to start my first working day at about four o'clock in the afternoon when he came to hand down the key to his room. He realized that he did not know me. He greeted me, leant over my counter and we shook hands though a bit clumsily. Since then we always exchange a few words when he arrives in the mornings or leaves in the evenings.
Strangely enough, Uncle Mickey from our polishing workshop seems to hold me as his superior although I don't have any contempt for him at all; actually, I do like him very much. When we talk, he mutters with his eyes downcast and anxiously fidgets with his hands, which he either hides in his pocket or puts at his waist or else he gets a handkerchief and blows his nose. Yesterday, I went down to him, he was just repairing the compressor. I asked him what the trouble was. He began to explain something, which I didn't quite understand, but I managed to reduce the tension of the old guy with some well-inserted interjections, so that he didn't bother about his hands anymore. With an innate ease he started to beat the air with them as well as swinging them while he was talking to me. Then, when I was just about to leave, I held out my right hand. Uncle Mickey's hand was stained with lubricating oil, therefore I decided to grab his wrist. He realized it in time and he bent his tensely flexed hand and offered his wrist to shake. All the while, he was embarrassed again and his eyes were downcast. 'Bye, Uncle Mickey' I said, and he replied something but, due to his muttering, I couldn't really catch it. I suppose he said goodbye. While walking back to the porter's room, I felt pity for him. I decided that I would really pump him next time, inquire about his machines and firmly grab his oily hand.
Then there is Liddie, the cleaning woman I often have a good chat with. It has struck me that she seems to be far too nice to me. She likes me, I suppose, and her respecting me is deliberate so that I won't feel myself redundant. I think she misunderstands me. I've got not much to do, it's true. I just watch the screen whether there are any cars arriving or leaving; when there are, I open then close the gate by pressing a button. Then I record these data using a special computer program: number-plates, time of arrival and leaving, that is to say, I have to keep track of the traffic. It is also my duty to switch on the light inside and outside when it's getting dark and to feed Nellie, the watchdog, just as to switch on the central heating on chilly April days and shut the doors in the evenings.
I've been working just for a few days now, but I enjoy it very much. You can't imagine what's going on here after seven p.m.! It's good that I've hit upon the idea of telling you about this right now, as it's exactly 7:30 p.m. At the moment there's not a single soul in the building, for it's Friday, you know. I open a small window in a nearby room and leave the door open. I sit down, turn sideways in my leather-chair and push the huge hopper-light that looks like that of a cheap health care clinic a slit open, then I draw up the shades. Leaning out of my armchair I switch off he light, open the doors of my locker and turn on the neon light inside it. The room's lit light blue now. I'm preparing to have my meal. I always consume my dinner slowly (not in order to kill time but because I like to savor food at a leisurely pace). I produce a bun that is gauzily light and a bit wrinkled, then I spread a liberal amount of processed cheese on it. I bite off a piece and have a slice of salami with it. Then I take a little Port Salut, dip it into a bit of salt and bolt it, followed by a round slice of my curling, fairly hot green pepper. This phase is finished by a generous gulp of milk. Then I start it all over again until I am satisfied.
I whisk the crumbs off my clothes and I put everything away. Then I take off my shoes, my jeans and my pullover, and slump back into my chair wearing only drawers and an undershirt. I lean back, making the joint of the chair creak a bit and I put my bare feet on the counter. I glance out of the hopper-light. Patches of the horizon can still be seen. There is a slight wind blowing. I sit in the line of draught between the two windows and I feel the rain-cooled breeze touching my face. Everything becomes slow and calm (that's why I'm annoyed whenever a draught of air stirs some paper on the desk). Time passes slowly, for I really feel fit and alive. I light a cigarro, lean my head back and let my nape hit the headrest. The smoke is carried towards the next room by the flow of air. I shiver slightly from the cold streaming in. It's drizzling outside and the hollow thud of the raindrops hitting the leaves of the trees and the ground deceives me: I think I hear footsteps. But it doesn't sound frightening at all. Such peaceful calmness spreads all over me, so that I couldn't care less even if someone stripped me naked, then plunged me into honey and threw me in front of bees for food.
Sometimes the wind induces quite weird scales of tones in the eaves and the chimney. I rock gently in my chair which moans softly under me. Gradually I doze off. Bit by bit the creaking moan of the chair gets louder, as if it were the mast of a ship cracking in a night storm, while a roaring wind is whistling and the rain first patters, then comes pouring down. I venture from handrail to handrail, or I'd just fall over right into the sea. Panicky seamen are running up and down the deck. Someone grabs my shoulder and I spin around. It is the captain standing in front of me. Now more and more sailors join us, they cross-examine me and I confess everything. We quarrel, they curse, and I make them a modest proposal. Just then a fist, coming from the side, hits my ear. From the force of the blow I fall on my face and slide down the sloppy boards into the sea. I sink deeper and deeper while the storm dies down above. My muscles cramp in the icy water and it's so cold that I'm shivering and it bites, almost burns me. The unbearable pain startles me out of sleep, my chair's creaking sharply... damn it, Mr. Writer, you know I've just started to feel so good here... I'm going to oil this joint tomorrow.
Months pass and now it's October, and evening again. The building is empty. I've observed on the monitor that people passing by usually stop at the corner of the premises to light up. Corners are like that. This place is quite near to the electronic sliding gate and the gate-phone belonging to it. Now something flashes into my mind. I like the idea, yet at the same time it frightens and unsettles me. I try to dismiss it for fear of my job and I don't really wish to please Mr. Writer too much, either. Besides, I think, I'm hungry, too.
According to my long-standing habit, I'm preparing for dinner. I switched over to marinated fish; I stoke up a little bucket of it every two days. I flip off the cover, take the pickled onion and potatoes out of the fridge and reach for my fork. The first bite leaves quite a weird taste in my mouth. It's bitter as bile. It must be because of my having consumed a pack of jujubes earlier. After the second bite my stomach just turns over. I throw the fish onto my plate and cut its belly open. It hadn't been gilled. All the entrails are in front of me and halfway down my throat. And the maw of the fish, like a kind of pink, half-bitten tumor, informs me of the fact that its missing part will go on falling into decay inside me.
I begin to feel dizzy. The telephone rings. I stand up, but my feet are almost totally stiff. I feel just as Mihály did in Az utas és holdvilág (The Voyager and the Moonlight): the tiles of the floor draw me down like a whirlpool. Second ring. I recover a bit, take a deep breath and swallow. I partly regain my balance. Third ring. I snatch up the receiver; it's Sagschon. He's saying something, but I start retching. I let the receiver fall onto the desk and I rush for the lavatory, nauseated.
I relieve myself. I keep gargling for long minutes trying to charm away this taste in my mouth somehow. Mr. Artist, stop torturing me... do you hear? Why don't you answer? Anyway, we are far enough from the title now, so even if you did speak it wouldn't reach my ears. I go back to the porter's room. I take the receiver from the desk but it's busy. I'd call Sagschon back, but I don't know his number, less do I know how he came to know the number of the porter's room. I stare at the monitor. I ponder. O. K., Mr. Writer, as a matter of fact, it occurred to me, as well. I will definitely be fired. Being so brave as to make this decision I seem really venerable to myself, and my lips curl into a smile. It's all so very easy, but only because I don't reconsider it. When I first do it, my finger is shaking as I put it on the button of the microphone. I look at the monitor: a middle-aged, unkempt man is puffing near the gate. I bend close to the microphone (oh, I forgot to turn on the volume, that's it) and roar a not very original 'Hey, you fool!' into it. Without as much as a glance at the monitor I rush, giggling with excitement, to the opposite side of the counter and hide behind it. As I calm down a bit, I discover that this is no good, as I haven't seen a single thing, so what am I guffawing at? By the way, why do I escape at all, when they can't even see me? I run back to the monitor. Now all it shows is a deserted sidewalk. I get the hang of it real soon. This time, for example, making use of the headphones of my Walkman, I even provide musical emphasis for my proclamation. A sudden, spine-chilling music accompanies my passionately performed speech, beginning with 'Escape, thou outsider, the Moon has risen with evil shine today...' and so on. The man just puffing on his cigarro now drops it into his shirt, scared to death, and I, struggling against death by suffocation with laughter, am watching as he tears his shirt out of his trousers and bolts. I need time to recover. Wow! That was wonderful.
I fall into the leather-chair a bit shaky but happy. Then I jump again, as I'm so excited I cannot stay put. How much time has passed since the call? I keep eyeing the wall-clock for a while. It seems more and more hopeless that Sagschon will call again. I cover up the traces of the unsavory remains of my food in a hurry. That's better now. I begin to read Kafka's The Trial. I am just reading that part when the office attendant in his conversation with K. hints at the fact that it was high time the pupil had a good thrashing. K. says no, as this would only worsen his situation. But why can't he find a way to do it so that the pupil would not recognize him, I wonder. I see a dark street. I step into a gateway. I take my disproportionately long, chrome-tipped walking stick (with a silver knob and a black shaft) and stab the pupil with it. I leave it all there. Who'd see me? I'd just walk home. But then it occurs to me: somebody might have just looked out of a window or I might pass somebody in the street.... and here I realize that for the last fifteen lines I haven't been paying attention to the book, but rather to how I'd kill that person if I were K. I start all over again. I'd like to add to the topic just as much that this was very interesting. My imagination got loose and I didn't even think of interfering in the flow of notions by force of logic. This'd be as if I had set a mill wheel on the water with buckets on it, that'd turn the river over and over and slow its flow. Similarly, it is not running that exhausts the imagination, but if it's held up. And I think that's true for writing, too. The question is not what more do I want to say but to think over what I've already said (forgive me, Mr. Artist, that I, a layman, just drivel at writing here). Why did I have to realize that I got a bit carried away? I regret it a mite and now I'm sad. Just then the telephone rings. I'm surprised, as normally no one calls me so late. Oh, it's Sagschon! I've forgotten all about him. He'll be here in a few minutes and now I'm waiting for him.
The glass door opens, my friend has arrived. I'm not only happy to see him, but I take it as an honor that he turned to me. He's depressed nowadays and finds spiritual comfort in hurting himself physically (he carries a razor blade all the time). I'm flattered he has visited me instead. We talk for an hour with interruptions of several minutes. He's not very talkative, so I try to ply him with questions. During a longer period of silence I fall asleep in my chair. Sagschon shakes me out of it, for he's thirsty. There is no tea left and the water in the lavatory tastes odd. I send him to the polishing workshop, the tap's O.K. there; I only ask him not to linger too long in the yard, I don't want him to be seen. I doze off again. In my slumber I feel that it's very hot. I wake up. I'm dripping with sweat. The heating system must have gone crazy. I should go out to have a breath of air ... but I don't feel like doing so. I have neither a blower nor a fan. My mind's dull; I'm depressed and weak. For a minute I think: it'd be good to stay here and fall asleep forever... What are you saying, Mr. Writer? Your voice sounds so irate and urging.... 'Sagschon?!' Sagschon! He is not yet back. I'm getting worried. I don't even know how long I've slept. Maybe he should have been back by now or maybe not yet. Now it's 9:30 p.m. I wait. After ten minutes I start panicking. I run to the polishing workshop, it's closed. I call his name in the yard. Nothing. Maybe he's hidden somewhere and by the time I get back, he'll be waiting for me, guffawing in my leather-chair. I burst into the porter's room. Not a soul there. Now I'm panic-stricken. He's killed himself somewhere. I had been his last thread of hope, but I've failed. I feel I'm a loser and a stranger in his eyes. I search through the whole building (which does not take long, as all the rooms are closed). Now I rush to the fence at the yard. I peer out, nobody's there. I'll have to climb over in order to find him. I clamber up. But I mustn't leave this place, or I'll be fired. I plop back this side of the fence. I say to myself: I should perish, here and now. Shit. I decide to climb over anyway. Panting, I scan the yard once more. I catch a glimpse of something glint in the darkness of the passage between the fence and the polishing workshop. I move closer, while I get totally relaxed. It was the zipper of Sagschon's coat reflecting the light of the street lamp. So that's where he's hiding. I'm bawling at him, but he keeps answering me calmly, furthermore, he even smiles. Now there's a plump woman turning into the street at the corner. Maybe I'd better give vent to my rage inside. I grasp his arm and take him in.
As soon as we step in I start yelling again. With no effect. I tell Sagschon that we should both go to sleep now. I make myself comfortable in my seat and begin to shake my hands in a spectacular way for I'd like him to notice how much I've been worried about him tonight. He looks at my hands wide-eyed then shrugs and prepares to sleep, too. This hasn't come through either. I curse aloud, at a great length, and then all I hear is the glass door slamming. I look up. It's that plump woman at the desk, the malignant tumor, now in a brown coat instead of her usual brown wrap. She's left something here and asks for her keys, saying nothing about Sagschon. Soon she's back and says good-bye. I have a restless night.
Friday. Charles, the chief warden, tells me to read what he has put on my desk and asks me not to receive any of my buddies here in the future. I tell him there has been only one. And thus I manage to piss him off I shouldn't have corrected him. I'll fix that woman.
It's so queer at the porter's desk now. I keep remembering how I was looking at the clock yesterday between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. and how uneasy I felt over my being so powerless in such a huge and empty building. I feel a dull pain in my stomach again. Therefore it comes in handy that it's time to feed Nellie, the watchdog. I'm heading for the yard with her food in my hand. I light up on my way. I shouldn't have. Cigarro makes me more edgy. I get to the yard. It's almost dark now, and as I shovel the grub into her dish I look around. Again it's last night that comes to my mind. I was wandering around here all alone, aimlessly, and wavering. Though now it's not dark yet, it's still bad enough. I get more and more frantic at the sight of each garbage heap, and I feel as if I were inhaling a good deal of hopelessness at each pull. I throw my cigarro away. It's no good out here so I just go in.
On the desk I find the chief warden's text. He has been flooding me with all kinds of regulations lately. This time it's a fire-regulation, saying what I should do in case of fire, and the like. With a quick movement, I promptly dig out the rules of the house from the desk to compare them. In fact, a regulation is considered to be a formal standard of a lower level that can not take a contrary position to the higher-ranking rules of the house. But it does not. Damn it, how I'd have loved to find fault with it. By the way: rules of the house. I think these are contrary to public law. Moreover, being a porter is a profession contrary to civil rights as having to sit and stay at the same place means encroaching upon the right of one's freedom of movement. Jeez, what bastards. But after all, what's the use of my making such a fuss about it as civil rights are just there to be infringed.
Friday again. 9:30. I've brought something to read with me, so now I have Sándor Márai's The Confessions of a Citizen in my hand. I don't know if you've noticed that the title of this short story (what short story! It's already quite clear at the very beginning what will happen in the end. What about the climax then?) and that of Márai's novel are quite similar. Maybe you'll be angry with me now, as I'm just striving to disillusion you, but don't look for any analogies between the two writings. As for Mr. Writer, though as a fourth-year arts student this book is on his list of required reading, he has not read it. He gave up somewhere near page 90 (even that he managed to take some six days to read), as when he skimmed through the rest of the pages, he became exasperated. He deplores that the whole thing is a description and there is no dialogue in it. By the way, I can't get on with it very much, either. Every five minutes I'm distracted by an arriving car or that maniac employee, who has been calling me for half an hour about whether I've found his umbrella in the lavatory. I haven't; just leave me alone. I want to read.
Finally it's all peaceful here, but now my mind keeps wandering. More precisely, my mind comes to a halt and I realize I've been only staring at the letters. I've never imagined I could ever feel so empty. Those Brazilian soap operas in the afternoons must have stupefied me. But the only reason I've begun watching them is that I had just been working for an hour, and the recognition that I have yet another fourteen hours to linger here simply spooked me. Moreover, due to my sweating yesterday my buttocks are all burning and now I feel uncomfortable in whatever position I sit. I don't even feel like reading. I'm cowering helplessly in my leather chair as my plan has gone up in smoke. Of course I don't have a clue what I should do. I've got it! I'll just sleep. I'm glad I could at least find out something... it's not a very original idea though, and this makes me sad. Never mind. I turn off the lamp. I haven't been lying for five minutes when the telephone rings. It's that ass again with his lost umbrella. 'I guess you've just flushed it down the john!' There's an obtuse voice, just about getting indignant. I slam down the receiver. I'll get mine for this tomorrow. I'm so bugged that it chases away the last remnants of sleepiness from my eyes. It's bad enough: you simply can't doze off, not even long enough to get one tiny kink in your hair. I know it takes a lot of stress in the morning, when you are late anyway, to try to re-assimilate that persistently unruly lock of hair. It's odd, but I'd love to have a stress like that now and the fact that it's impossible gets me down. I miss my buddy, Sagschon. I still don't know his number. Once again, the rules of the house and one's freedom of movement come to my mind. I turn on the light. It's obvious, but I become aware of the fact just now that I'm on the ground floor of a building where all the rooms are empty and are closed in front of me. This hurts. I'd love to sit into the place of the forwarding manager or that engineer woman, just to mock them without their knowledge, of course. But getting into their rooms is even theoretically impossible. The keys, which are usually deposited with me, are equipped with a dough-stamp. This means that they are kept in a box, similar to an eyeglass case, and their covers are held together by a sealed, dough-like material. If I open them, it tears. Anyway, I'll have a walk upstairs.
Closed doors everywhere and pictures on the walls. Do you remember the shot in Titanic, when the camera moves along the floors of the wreck, the rooms, and there is all that stuff, water enclosing them with mud, and seaweed on everything? And not one soul anywhere! Now it's just like that here, with the difference that I'm present. However, it feels as if I weren't here either and it's just the camera that shows everything I see. The pictures on the walls would 'talk', if there were anybody to talk to. It's all tidy and clean that's the most peculiar. If a place is desolate, it should at least be deserted, filthy, like a back-street alley with heaps of rubbish, dented garbage bins, or like the attic of a battered block of flats. All these would make me disgusted; but here I feel as if someone wanted to make me believe that I'm the only living creature in civilization where there should be life, but it's currently latent, in hiding. I prowl up and down. But what if life is not latent, nor does it hide, and I'm the only one, all alone. This idea, the horrible weight of responsibility, nearly crushes me. I begin to panic again. I'd better go down. Maybe I can sleep yet.
It's a cold November afternoon. Charles, the chief warden, has called me into his room because of that little rumpus last Saturday. Now I'm sitting here, facing him. It wasn't more than just 8 or 10 of my buddies who happened to drop in that night. They had a few drinks and began to cool it. That was when I enforced the rule of the porter's room, according to which the prevailing porter chooses a chair for himself, and that's his. The rest are for the rest to choose from, so a fight for the remaining three chairs began. We got loud and I sensed we ought not. So I suggested playing hide-and-seek. And they all loved it. One of the guys stood upon the can so that his hiding place could not be inferred by looking under the door. But first he turns down the seat for he knows he is drunk and is afraid he might slip on the porcelain bowl. And then the seat snaps under his weight. Now the chief warden would like to know how it got broken. Of course, I say nothing about the large company or the hide-and-seek. I take the responsibility for it and reply: the swimmer got stuck in the tank so I mounted the seat to have a look. 'Were you drunk?' Charles asks. I don't answer him immediately. I'm just about to utter something when he politely prompts me to leave by stating: 'Thank you, that's all I wanted to know'. I close the door behind me. Damn it, why didn't I retort a straight 'No'?! Or 'Yes'?! Why did I start thinking? Considering all the possibilities I've chosen the worst. So I resign to it, but I'm still angry for some reason. I've got it! How does the chief warden dare to accuse me of being drunk? Who could have made him suspicious?
A few hours later he just steps in to the porter's room and tells me that this is the last time he will turn a blind eye to my fault.
It's evening, late November. I still eat slowly and leisurely, switched over to the 100-sort of cigarros and I relieve myself in the lavatory at length. Hardly anything has happened here for a week now, except for the last five minutes. It was Liddie, the cleaning woman, who popped in the porter's room and we've had a chat again. In her opinion it was that engineer woman who had crammed the chief warden with lies saying I was a tippler, for when she returned to her office that night I was cursing and that made her draw the conclusion I was an alcoholic, and a hard drinker as such. She's a fool and Charles is a fool and I'm a fool, too.
I wait till all the employees leave the company. Bye-bye. Then I fetch the dough-stamped key of the engineer woman. I don't care a bit, I just rip up the sides of the box. The key falls out. It's obvious again, but getting into the room of the engineer woman means breaking out of the porter's room. I want to take revenge on her for the injury I suffered, though I still don't know how. I go upstairs, walk along the corridor and open that door. Light! It's a carpeted room. At the threshold I instinctively take off my shoes. I'm heading for the desk opposite the door. As I advance I feel a sharp prick and I utter a cry. I examine my sole, it's not bleeding, but I pull a bugger twirled sharp out of my socks; it got stuck vertically in the carpet when it first landed there. That's what I call inviting, my lady engineer. Now I remember the one-time words of the malignant tumor addressed to me: 'You live like pigs in clover, you just sit here and no one bothers you for you have nothing to do'. I wash my hands. I take that 'bayonet' with a handkerchief and put it onto the white desk. I step back two paces. Thanks to the white background it can be seen perfectly, even from there. I take a piece of paper from the drawer and improvise the following letter: 'I'm a bit surprised that instead of principal axes you design such stuff. I'll see to it that all your colleagues find out about this tomorrow. Best wishes: the Porter.' I leave the paper, on which I also draw a huge arrow showing into the appropriate direction, beside that 'mini-mine'. Of course I won't see to anything. I close the door and return to the porter's room. I put the key back into the box, stop up the hole with the dough, but I have no stamp. I don't loose heart however; I don't even feel any repentance. I know that tomorrow everything will come to light.
The engineer woman had the sense not to make a row. She simply made Charles fire me quietly, who, though he liked me, acted in accordance with our previous agreement. That's how I got sent off the porter's room.
Mr. Writer, right at the beginning of the story I already wanted to give voice to my indignation for putting only the indefinite article 'a' in front of my capacity in the title, but now I don't regret it anymore, for while I kept on dedicating myself to my work, I was but a porter, just a porter. I bear no malice, yet there is just a tiny little thorn left in me for your not giving me a name. But even this I can forgive you, as though you made me fall, you spared me and I didn't have a big fall. I'm just grateful for that.
Translated by Judit T. Czingili and Roland Kiss