Kuba's Rotation
The traumatic
events of the days leading up to the incarceration of an officer of the Brno
city hall in the Cernovice mental
asylum.
The unfortunate
subject of this story, a Mr. Kuba, citizen and former civic officer of the city
of Brno now resides in an asylum of that city, largely unaware of his sad
circumstances but content in his ward, surrounded as he is by camellias of
fifteen different species one of which has a lovely fragrance which he sniffs
regularly but, so the nurses think, rather wistfully. The following story
relates the incidents in the days before his committal to the Cernovice asylum,
from which it is not expected he will be leaving any time soon...
Raising his right hand Kuba reached
into the collar of his shirt and scratched the itch on the left of his chest. A
bead of sweat rolled down his temple. Since the ordeal of shingles four years
ago, this recurrent itch had been a barometer of the state of his nervousness
and today, sitting on a bench in Namesti Svobody, he was feeling very nervous
indeed. He had only taken his job in the town planning office as a way of not
having to work, so that he could concentrate more fully on tending to his
camellias, and now, he could see, there was every possibility he would soon be
unemployed and unemployable.
The file in his
left hand, light though it was, weighed heavily on him as he couldn't see at
all how its contents could fail but to end his short career, and with it the
salary and short working hours so favourable to the care of his camellias.
Possibly as soon as today, in as little as less than an hour. He had an
appointment with an important official – a certain Professor Pavlovsky - from
the Town Hall's Alterations to Historical Monuments Department and he was
convinced that it would go badly. Worse than that, he would very likely be
thrown out of the office, papers hurled after him and in short, become a
laughing stock and a liability to be fast-tracked out of the office.
He frowned, got up
from the bench, and his attention was immediately arrested by the obscure
rotating black clock planted off-centre to the South of the triangular town
square. But after all, he reasoned, they had managed to get the appropriate
permissions and stamps and agreements and legal say-so not to mention political
wherewithal and clout to have that folly built. It gave him a glimmer of hope.
A clock from which not even the creator can give you an accurate measure of the
time must have been a hard sell, but sold it was, and erected too.
Kuba raised his
troubled eyes still further to the Baroque plague column on his right. One last
look, for inspiration. The trouble was, it looked perfectly fine. There was
nothing much wrong with it. True it wasn't a match for the layered bodies which
reached up to the heavens over Vienna or the grandeur of Olomouc's golden
column, but in its own unassuming way it did its job as it had done for
centuries yet and irked nobody. He would never be able to convince anybody of
the sense of this plan. Least of all Professor Pavlovsky of the Alteration of
Historical Monuments Department.
Two weeks earlier, his mind on a
particularly troubling suspected case of petal blight in a favoured Camellia
Calendonta, Kuba had attended a meeting in a state of more than his customary
absent-mindedness.
'Now, as you
know,' his boss had begun, 'The Roads and Streets Department of the city has an
easy time of it. This year Milada Horakova street, next year Husova road, the
year after that, who knows? Who cares, frankly? There's always another square
to re-pave and the cash just keeps rolling in to their coffers. Next to the
Treasury, they're the most influential department in the Town Hall. We over in
Monuments though... well that's another story – we need to fight our corner. We
need a project, a big one, to secure next year's funding and this office's
continued existence before we get subsumed by those bastards over at Concrete
and Brass Structures.'
Kuba's thoughts
were elsewhere. The humidity was probably wrong. He would have to increase the
output of his humidifier. See if that had any effect on the petal blight. It
was possible that the bloom could be saved. He was used to this bluster from
his boss, Ing. Zdenda so it mostly went over him and didn't distract from the
thought in hand. He'd heard the stories of the meetings where the clock's
erection had first been proposed and the awful hush that filled the room after
the presentation of how one was supposed to tell the time from it. He'd
witnessed first hand last year's unveiling of plans for a monumental equine
statue which many held to be more similar in appearance to a giraffe than the
steed befitting the great Jobst of
Moravia. Only narrowly had he avoided being included in the team for that
project.
Clearing his
throat, and casting a glance over to K, who was not in any appropriate state of
concentration to return or even notice it, Ing. Zdenda continued...
'Now then, we've
just about filled up all the available parcels for new monuments so this year
we're in a bit of a bind. We have to think laterally to find an appropriate
project and rather than create, this year we're going to rotate! That's right,
rotate! The Plague column in Namesti Svobody, we'll rotate it by 90 degrees. It
will change the aspect of the square entirely. Revitalize it and give a good
impression to the citizens that their officials are punctilious and attuned to
the details of the city. For too long now, that angel on the top of the column
has been staring off aimlessly down Koblizna street, rather than facing
Southwards towards the train station, welcoming new arrivals into the heart of
the city.'
Torn from his
cares by the unusually high degree of senselessness of this latest of his
superior's plans, Kuba's eyes focused somewhat, and it began to dawn on him
that this proposal was clearly a poisoned chalice. He'd seen it before from
Ing. Zdenda. When he wanted to fire somebody, this being nearly impossible to
achieve through the conventional means, his preferred method was to humiliate
them or create such a scandal around their name, that it became politically
feasible to lean on the Employees Rights Department such that they wouldn't
kick up too much of a fuss.
“Kuba, you are to
do it. You're just the man. Here is the file. I've lined up a meeting with
Professor Pavlovsky from Alterations to Historical Monuments for tomorrow. I
want you to present our proposals to him using all your powers of persuasion.
His support is crucial. We need him on board. If we are to attain the go-ahead,
not to mention the funding from the town hall, it is vital that Professor
Pavlovsky supports this project Kuba. Don't let us down.'
Kuba took the
file, as the room rapidly emptied, and sat down with it, leafing through the
proposal. Dig up and rotate, through 90 degrees, the plague column, with a view
to the angel on top facing, head-on, new arrivals to the city. Those, at least,
who chose to arrive by train. Who in their right mind could possibly support
such an entirely unnecessary rotation?
A trap had been
laid and K had failed not to take the bait, and now, as he turned to walk down
Koblizna street, feeling the stare of the plague column's angel on his back he
could feel all to clearly the push and the jerk of the hook within that damn
file that was to seal his fate, and lose him his job.
As he walked down
the gentle hill to the Magistrate's office at the bottom of Koblizna street
where Professor Pavlovsky's offices lay, his thoughts turned to the left, to
the Jesuit College where in 1682 Georg Joseph Kamel had novitiated, before
leaving on his travels through Cadiz to the Phillipines and Manila where he
would document the fauna and flora of those islands in greater detail than
anyone before, and leave with the most beautiful of all the flora his name,
camellia. How Kuba wished now, to be in Manila.
He entered the
magistrate's office and stared at the lift. It hummed continuously, as its
rose-wood cubicles whirled round and around. Suited officials with name tags
and briefcases as though momentarily taking leave of the straitened formality
of their clothing and purpose leapt on and off the ascending and descending
platforms and disappeared head-first or appeared shoes and socks-first. K hated
these Paternoster lifts, designed to throw the casual user completely off guard
before an important meeting, whilst those who worked in the building and used
them regularly were experts, even able to offer the customary 'Good day' or
'Good Bye' to their fellow travellers mid-leap. Kuba leapt, and steadied himself
with the hand which didn't contain the file, against the back wall of this
cubicle of perpetual motion ascending to his fate.
Two thirds of the
way down an interminable corridor Kuba stopped in front of a door with a name
plate which read, 'PH dr. Professor P. Pavlovsky Ph d.'
'Good morning
Professor Pavlovsky. My name is Kuba, from Monuments. Thank you for seeing me.
I have with me a... a proposal which I would like to discuss with... er, with
you, and we'd very much welcome it if you would, well, support our ideas in
next month's meeting with the town council.'
He could feel that
the skin of his temples and forehead was not quite as dry as would befit the
Alterations to Historical Monuments Department and his voice lacked conviction.
The professor would sense it.
'Well, what do we
have here?' Professor Pavlovsky indicated the file still clutched by his side,
in Kuba's left hand. 'Hand it over and let's have a look. Sit down, sit down.'
With a leaden arm and a sense of grief for his expected loss, Kuba lifted the
file into the outstretched hand whose proportions had grown to fill entirely,
his consciousness.
'Of course, it
will be difficult. Most of the proposals from your lot are nonsense. We've had
to take away Mendel's Pea, after all. Looked nothing like a pea. Don't know how
it lasted so long. Collection of bottles. Anyway, let's see what you've got.'
'It's not a new
proposal, as such, professor. It's more of... an amendment.'
'An amendment, you
say. An amendment. An amendment of what exactly?'
'Of the Plague
column, professor.'
'And what is it
about the Plague column that needs amending, precisely?'
'Well, professor,
what we propose is a 90 degree rotation of the column, such that the angel
faces towards those arriving in the town from the train station. At the moment
anyone arriving in the town square from the station has only... well a side-on
view, and we, I, the department feels that a rotation will give the square...
well a new spin. An improvement, more than an amendment, I would say. A new
aspect. A... a... breath of fresh air.'
'A breath of fresh
air from a plague column, you say. A 90 degree change in the angle of the
angel?'
'No professor, not
the angel. The whole column. After all the proposal is meant to lend a new
perspective to the square.'
The professor took
the papers, and spent a full 3 minutes turning the pages, during which time his
eye-brows performed a series of swerves, climbs and plummets of increasing
rapidity. Looking up, and removing his glasses, he fixed Kuba with astute blue
eyes.
'This is nonsense!
Pure idiocy! Rotating a column which already has a perfectly good aspect for no
fathomable reason whatsoever. Who employed you? Who sent you here, eating into
my lunch hour with this humbug!? Is this some kind of joke? Is that it?'
The professor got
up, opened the door to his office to check that nobody was waiting outside in
the corridor and, finding nobody, slammed it shut.
'I will not lend
my name to this labyrinthine absurdity of yours. I shall not be advocating even
the slightest twist to the column. It's perfectly fine how it is. I shall,
however, be writing to your superiors over in that catastrophic ministry of
yours to tell them never to send you in this direction again!'
The professor's
words ringing in his ears, Kuba fled, close to tears. His mind raced over what
was to come. He had failed, utterly to convince the professor of the sense of
the plan. Of course he had. He had never been meant to be able to. Ing. Zdenda
had sprung his trap, and Kuba was caught in it, squirming and exposed for all
to ridicule. He turned from the corridor into the vestibule where he saw two
pairs of legs, the pinstripes gradually disappearing upwards, the stockings
lengthening into a skirt, blouse, head. The damned paternoster. Should he take
the stairs? Steeling himself, he jumped forward, no longer really caring even
for his own safety. As the lift creaked and wobbled its way downwards, K could
see what lay ahead for him. He would return to the office shamefacedly, and
report to Ing. Zdenda that all was lost – Professor Pavlovsky had not been at
all supportive of the proposals, however unjustifiably, whereupon he would immediately be consigned
to intensive paper-shuffling. Then the rumours would start. Overheard
conversations about how the department had been made a laughing stock. His
colleagues would wonder more or less distinctly in his direction whether the
department wouldn't be closed down, whether they all might not lose their jobs
shortly. An announcement would no doubt be made within two months of a
departmental reshuffling – a repositioning, a change of aspect. And he would be
first out of the door.
The bottom was
approaching all too fast for Kuba's liking as his vertical open-cask coffin
conveyed him downwards. The pate of an officer hove into view and K realized
that he would have to try to avoid this man as he performed his outward leap.
Careful timing and positioning would be required not to bump into him. Shifting
over to the right K waited for the optimum time to jump and as he did so,
distracted by the 'Good day' the officer wished him, he fell, and his file flew
up into the air, unfurling its papers which started to float down, and into the
rotating cubicles of the lift.
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