CHAPTER
ONE
Let us begin with this: to those looking at his life from
without, it would have seemed that Mr. Berger led a dull existence. In fact,
Mr. Berger himself might well have concurred with this view.
He worked for the housing department of a minor English
council, with the job title of closed accounts registrar. His task from year to
year entailed compiling a list of those who had either relinquished or
abandoned the housing provided for them by the council, and in doing so had
left their accounts in arrears. Whether a week’s rent was owed, or a month’s, or
even a year’s (for evictions were a difficult business and had a habit of
dragging on until relations between council and tenant came to resemble those
between a besieging army and a walled city), Mr. Berger would record the sum in
question in a massive leather-bound ledger known as the Closed Accounts
Register. At year’s end he would then be required to balance the rents received
against the rents that should have been received. If he had performed his job
correctly, the difference between the two sums would be the total amount
contained in the register.
Even Mr. Berger found his job tedious to explain. Rare was
it for a cab driver, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus, to engage in a
discussion of Mr. Berger’s livelihood for longer than it took for him to
describe it. Mr. Berger didn’t mind. He had no illusions about himself or his
work. He got on perfectly well with his colleagues and was happy to join them
for a pint of ale—but no more than that—at the end of the week. He contributed
to retirement gifts and wedding presents and funeral wreaths. At one time it
had seemed that he himself might become the cause of one such collection, for
he entered into a state of cautious flirtation with a young woman in accounts.
His advances appeared to be reciprocated, and the couple performed a mutual
circling for the space of a year until someone less inhibited than Mr. Berger
entered the fray, and the young woman, presumably weary of waiting for Mr.
Berger to breach some perceived exclusion zone around her person, went off with
his rival instead. It says much about Mr. Berger that he contributed to their
wedding collection without a hint of bitterness.
His position as registrar paid neither badly nor
particularly well but enough to keep him clothed and fed, and maintain a roof
above his head. Most of the remainder went on books. Mr. Berger led a life of
the imagination, fed by stories. His flat was lined with shelves, and those
shelves were filled with the books that he loved. There was no particular order
to them. Oh, he kept the works of individual authors together, but he did not
alphabetize, and neither did he congregate books by subject. He knew where to
lay a hand on any title at any time, and that was enough. Order was for dull
minds, and Mr. Berger was far less dull than he appeared. (To those who are
themselves unhappy, the contentment of others can sometimes be mistaken for
tedium.) Mr. Berger might sometimes have been a little lonely, but he was never
bored and never unhappy, and he counted his days by the books that he read.
I suppose that, in telling this tale, I have made Mr. Berger
sound old. He was not. He was thirty-five and, although in no danger of being
mistaken for a matinée idol, was not unattractive. Yet perhaps there was in his
interiority something that rendered him if not sexless, then somewhat oblivious
to the reality of relations with the opposite sex, an impression strengthened
by the collective memory of what had occurred—or not occurred—with the girl
from accounts. So it was that Mr. Berger found himself consigned to the dusty
ranks of the council’s spinsters and bachelors, to the army of the closeted,
the odd, and the sad, although he was none of these things. Well, perhaps just
a little of the latter: although he never spoke of it, or even fully admitted
it to himself, he regretted his failure to express
ONE
Let us begin with this: to those looking at his life from
without, it would have seemed that Mr. Berger led a dull existence. In fact,
Mr. Berger himself might well have concurred with this view.
He worked for the housing department of a minor English
council, with the job title of closed accounts registrar. His task from year to
year entailed compiling a list of those who had either relinquished or
abandoned the housing provided for them by the council, and in doing so had
left their accounts in arrears. Whether a week’s rent was owed, or a month’s, or
even a year’s (for evictions were a difficult business and had a habit of
dragging on until relations between council and tenant came to resemble those
between a besieging army and a walled city), Mr. Berger would record the sum in
question in a massive leather-bound ledger known as the Closed Accounts
Register. At year’s end he would then be required to balance the rents received
against the rents that should have been received. If he had performed his job
correctly, the difference between the two sums would be the total amount
contained in the register.
Even Mr. Berger found his job tedious to explain. Rare was
it for a cab driver, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus, to engage in a
discussion of Mr. Berger’s livelihood for longer than it took for him to
describe it. Mr. Berger didn’t mind. He had no illusions about himself or his
work. He got on perfectly well with his colleagues and was happy to join them
for a pint of ale—but no more than that—at the end of the week. He contributed
to retirement gifts and wedding presents and funeral wreaths. At one time it
had seemed that he himself might become the cause of one such collection, for
he entered into a state of cautious flirtation with a young woman in accounts.
His advances appeared to be reciprocated, and the couple performed a mutual
circling for the space of a year until someone less inhibited than Mr. Berger
entered the fray, and the young woman, presumably weary of waiting for Mr.
Berger to breach some perceived exclusion zone around her person, went off with
his rival instead. It says much about Mr. Berger that he contributed to their
wedding collection without a hint of bitterness.
His position as registrar paid neither badly nor
particularly well but enough to keep him clothed and fed, and maintain a roof
above his head. Most of the remainder went on books. Mr. Berger led a life of
the imagination, fed by stories. His flat was lined with shelves, and those
shelves were filled with the books that he loved. There was no particular order
to them. Oh, he kept the works of individual authors together, but he did not
alphabetize, and neither did he congregate books by subject. He knew where to
lay a hand on any title at any time, and that was enough. Order was for dull
minds, and Mr. Berger was far less dull than he appeared. (To those who are
themselves unhappy, the contentment of others can sometimes be mistaken for
tedium.) Mr. Berger might sometimes have been a little lonely, but he was never
bored and never unhappy, and he counted his days by the books that he read.
I suppose that, in telling this tale, I have made Mr. Berger
sound old. He was not. He was thirty-five and, although in no danger of being
mistaken for a matinée idol, was not unattractive. Yet perhaps there was in his
interiority something that rendered him if not sexless, then somewhat oblivious
to the reality of relations with the opposite sex, an impression strengthened
by the collective memory of what had occurred—or not occurred—with the girl
from accounts. So it was that Mr. Berger found himself consigned to the dusty
ranks of the council’s spinsters and bachelors, to the army of the closeted,
the odd, and the sad, although he was none of these things. Well, perhaps just
a little of the latter: although he never spoke of it, or even fully admitted
it to himself, he regretted his failure to express
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