‘But tell me then,’ said Einar Bark. ‘What is it you paint?’
‘It’s mainly watercolours, the odd portrait and so on. Nothing sophisticated.’
‘But still! I always say that everyone can learn to be really good at something. “That’s easy for you to say,” people tell me. “It’s so easy for you.” But they’re wrong, I’m not more gifted than others, that’s a misconception. It’s become gospel out there, “him with the talents,” as if I hadn’t worked hard. I’ll tell you now that I’ve worked really hard to get where I am today. So keep working at it, that’s the tip I can give you!’
‘Yes. But I don’t have great ambitions with painting. I do it to relax.’
Einar Barker closed his eyes. ‘Mmm. To relax, exactly.’ He opened his eyes again and leaned forward. His voice became more intimate.
‘Lots of people think I’m just a very, very successful businessman.’
Carina nodded.
‘I mean, how would you describe me?’
‘Well…’
‘Be honest!’
‘Yes, well, pretty much. A… skilful entrepreneur.’
‘A mogul, yes. A shrewd businessman. But that’s a far too simple view. I’ve got a completely different side too. There’s something else which characterises me, possibly even more. In any case for those who know me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes… no, forget it actually,’ he said and looked down at the table. ‘This isn’t the place.’
‘Go on, tell me!’
He reluctantly opened his mouth. Hesitated. ‘I write. It’s my true passion. At some point I’m sure I’ll publish something, but at the same time… I’m responsible for the company. Mainly poetry. But I don’t want to bore you with all this!’
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, at the same time as his hand almost invisibly felt in the file that was stood leaning against his chair.
‘But now I’m curious,’ said Carina without conviction.
‘It would be this one, then,’ he said and just at that moment took a sheet of paper out of the file. He cleared his throat. Carina leaned forward. He read:
A stone. A black stone
Big as a mountain
It blocked the way
Everyone was astonished
Who can dislodge the stone?
A character approached
His face like flint
Followed by cinders
He. He can dislodge the stone
Everyone was astonished
The stone turned to sand
Carina waited, thought that there would be more. When he looked up she said ‘Great!’
‘Not exactly one of my best ones. I wrote it when I was building the warehouse. There were lots of hurdles. They didn’t want a warehouse here.’
‘Who?’
‘The council. They wanted to have homes here.’
‘But you didn’t give in! Well done.’
‘And twenty years later they celebrated with us. Then it suited them!’
Einar Bark shunted the poem over the table towards Carina. ‘Toss it in the waste paper basket, please. I’m tired of it. That’s the original, I don’t have copies.’
‘But then you shouldn’t do that, surely?’
‘Yes, just chuck it. Or do what you want with it. You can keep it, though God knows what you’d want that old thing for.’
She took the piece of paper and carefully put it into her bag. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I don’t want to see it!’
‘Thank you!’
‘If it can give you some pleasure.’ Einar Bark shrugged modestly. ‘It’s often the way. People think that I don’t see the value in my own work. “But you write so well.” Sure, but take it then if you think it gives you something. Personally I’m tired of it. I’ve written so many poems that it’s tough to keep track of them all. But of course, if that’s what people want, then perhaps I should publish something.’
Carina agreed. ‘Absolutely, I think so.’
She lifted her coffee, remembered that she’d finished it and put it down again.
‘Refill?’ asked Einar Bark and grasped the pot.
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Now I need to ask you: how does it feel to actually be here? To see all this from the inside?’
‘Well, it feels good. It was fun looking around.’
‘It is a bit of a jack of all trades job, that was clear from the advert, right?’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s how I understood it.’
‘Answering the phone, dealing with returns and so on. We very rarely get complaints, but it does happen occasionally. And then the important thing is to really exceed their expectations. Service, service, service. You’ll of course have others around you who work with this stuff. What is it you do at the moment?’
‘I’m unemployed, actually. Or “between two jobs,” as they say. I was let go when Steens moved their office to Stockholm.’
‘Terrible, terrible.’ Einar Bark sighed deeply. ‘There is something sick with this Stockholm syndrome.’
‘Stockholm syndrome?’
‘Yes. This thing with everyone moving their offices there. It’s tragic. What does Stockholm have that Borås does not? Not everyone can live in Stockholm, surely?’
Carina was about to correct him but didn’t want to cause unnecessary friction.
‘So I’ve been unemployed for about a month,’ she said instead.
‘So that means you would be able to start soon?’
‘Yes.’
Einar Bark sat up in his chair. Something in his expression changed. ‘Attention to detail and due care are extra important in this role. Being interested in people. Do these things apply to you?’
His frivolous tone had vanished. Now he was Bark the CEO, with the demeanour one could expect of a real business leader.
‘Yes, definitely,’ said Carina. Einar Bark’s rapid metamorphosis meant that her voice had become unsteady. ‘I’m always curious to hear about other people.’
‘Ok then,’ said Einar Bark, still with the director’s voice. ‘Where do my wife and I normally go on holiday?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I’m asking where my wife and I go on holiday?’
‘To Rhodes. You said so yourself.’
Einar Bark smiled. ‘Correct. And what is my wife called?’
‘Wasn’t it… Eva?’
He nodded. ‘Let’s up the difficulty level a bit.’
Carina swallowed hard. Had he bored her with those stories just to test her? What else had he told her? They drank wine and went to Thailand too, him and the wife. Or was it that they never went there? What was it, had he worked as a shoe salesman at some point or what was that one about? Oh the hell she was trapped in. It was like a surprise exam and she had just smiled and nodded, not bothered about Einar Bark’s destiny and adventures.
‘Ok. Who wrote the article? The one you read.’
‘Borås Courrier.’
‘Yes, but what was the name of the reporter?’
‘It wasn’t mentioned. There was no byline,’ said Carina.
Einar Bark lit up. ‘Very good! There was no byline.’
‘A trick question then,’ said Carina and smiled.
‘You always need a trick question,’ said Einar Bark. He folded his arms. ‘What was the name of the pizza chef who used my Italian recipe?’
Carina searched in her head. What are pizza chefs normally called? Manuel? Josef? No.
‘José,’ she guessed.
He shook his head. ‘Elias is his name. A really good guy.’
‘Elias. That’s it,’ said Carina, as if she now remembered.
Einar Bark went quiet and looked at her. He hummed to himself. ‘But still. Three out of four points. That’s the best so far.’
‘Best so far? Do you ask everyone the same questions?’
‘The same questions. Rhodes, the wife, the new
spaper article, the pizza chef.’
‘Amazing,’ said Carina.
Einar Bark rubbed his face. ‘There is one quality I value really highly,’ he said.
‘Ok.’
‘Honesty. I want those who work with me to be one hundred percent honest with me.’
‘Of course.’
‘Now I want you to tell me what you think about the poem. Really.’
Carina hesitated. ‘Completely honestly?’
‘Be brutally truthful,’ he said.
Einar Bark smiled. Carina interpreted his smile as meaning that the whole poetry thing had just been a test, maybe to see if her politeness won over her honesty. She thought that he was now showing a level-headed self, free of frivolity. He didn’t write poems at all, he just enjoyed messing around to test his applicants. Pretty imaginative, she gave him that and surely she’d rather have a crafty old dog for a boss than a conceited dreamer? If it was honesty he wanted, then it was honesty he’d get, she thought.
‘Ok.’ Carina took a deep breath. ‘I thought that it was genuinely painful. You should probably stick to office supplies, you seem to be really good at that.’
Einar Bark’s smile vanished, but Carina didn’t notice, carried away with the powerful release of honesty.
‘I was actually worried for a moment,’ she continued, ‘that you really meant all that stuff seriously. That you genuinely believed that…’
Carina went silent when she looked up at Einar Bark, who was trying to hold back his feelings. His eyes were red and moist, his posture slouched. He was breathing loudly through his nose. Visibly beaten, he threw up his arm and pointed to the door.
‘Please. Leave. Now.’
The Soulless
Doers! Oh, how I hate doers. I hate them, those proud, upright, eternally smiling, indefatigable, self-satisfied types. These people who only see possibilities, never hindrances, who don’t doubt themselves, who have no inner darkness, no hidden depths, only surface and lots and lots of self-belief. Oh, how I hate them. They are so fleet of foot, ‘each kilo weighs seven hundred grams,’ although they’ve never read the poem. They get their life philosophy from other doers, those who have done even more than themselves, have become rich from saying that everyone can, everyone has it in them, everyone can become the best. They want to go forward, regardless of direction, toward heaven or hell makes no difference, forwards, now, do, do, do. To succeed, that’s their motto, but at what is unimportant.
It is, I admit, the doers who get things done. For this they receive the favour of the common man, our adulation, for they act – but only without thinking, without considering the consequences of their actions, without acknowledging that the moronic, pitifully small fruit of their labour is negligible, meaningless. If they thought about it, they would see the meaninglessness in acting. There is a devilish logic in this: action is inversely proportional to wisdom. It is the doers who drive society forward while we thinkers shake our heads, full of opinions but paralysed by our navel gazing.
And who am I to call myself a thinker, you wonder? I’m nobody at all. Unemployed, idle, someone who does not take action, a parasite on society, an abstainer, a disgrace. But is this about me? No, it is about them, about those who count. It has always been about them and will always be about them. Doers think that everyone loves them, that’s why they are completely transparent. They don’t have anything to hide, they only have one persona, they are just as private in public as they are public in private. You can hear them unselfconsciously talking on the phone in the bus, about feelings (as if they had any), about business, about all the things which should be whispered in confidence. They are democratic in that sense, because they treat everyone in the same manner, even in those cases where one may have wished that they would adjust their tone to, say, a five year old, or a terminal cancer patient. I’ll give them that. They are themselves through and through, because they only have one dimension.
But we thinkers are also democratic. We hate everyone equally, including ourselves. Loving and hating oneself are just two sides of the same coin. Thinkers and doers, we are all obsessed with ourselves, with our worth or lack thereof, with our greatness or our depravity. The difference is that we, the thinkers, have the truth and they have happiness, because ignorance is the key to bliss. But I’d never swap truth for happiness. Never.
Of all the doers, the salesperson is the foremost. He embodies soullessness, he is the greatest of all inhumans, robotesque. That was why I applied for the job. I wanted, as a part of my search for the truth, to find the root of the salesperson’s being. Are they already soulless from the start, is that a prerequisite in itself for becoming a salesperson, or do they lose their souls through exercising their occupation? I wanted to know if this identity is unchangeable or whether a salesperson can get their soul back – and could I give up my soul if I became a salesman? Thus applying for a job in sales came purely from an academic point of view, a fascination as to how low a person can sink. The unemployed may have reached the bottom, but the salesperson has bored through it, down to the consuming magma below. I therefore was setting out on my mission with my own soul at risk.
I have studied them for years, so I knew in theory how to act. I’d even practiced their way of walking – not, of course, in reality, but in my mind – the straight back, the relaxed but dignified step, the smile, above all the smile, the superior but fraudulently benevolent smile. It was the glint in the eye that I struggled with above all, the salesperson’s voracious look, the obsession with mammon. I wouldn’t say that I actually lied on my CV, but I did, how can I put it… stretch it a little, to be sure to get an interview. My plan worked. He received me, Martin Frisk, the salesman’s salesman, with a casual handshake, as if we were friends, and a ‘How’s it going?’ with an obvious disinterest in the answer. I felt the disdain. Oh, how I felt the disdain for him and for a few seconds I didn’t think I would be capable of going through with the charade. But with science in mind – I was after all doing this in the name of science and science alone – I managed to show restraint. He didn’t notice anything, salespeople notice nothing, they think that they are people people but they aren’t, they don’t even know themselves. And still he tried to get into my soul, he who is missing one himself, through using my first name. My name! My name! He used it like a new toy he’d bought with his sales commission. Have a seat Fredrik, what weather, Fredrik, coffee, Fredrik? He smelled of cologne, the bastard, cologne and posh tobacco and he turned my name into a harlot. It was of course a power play, I understood that, so I made an effort to use his name every time he used mine. Funny that you happen to ask Martin, I have to be honest, Martin, I… But every time I did, it felt strange to me, as if it was my own self that I was giving away piece by piece, instead of conquering his. For him it seemed apparently quite natural. Maybe it’s a given – he who doesn’t know any person in a meaningful way, knows every person just as well and calls each one by name.
It was video conference technology that I was to sell. Not just straightforward retail sales, insisted Frisk, no, here it was real business relationships that counted. Major, serious stuff. Video conference facilities, made to minimise the need for actual meetings, to the gain of virtual ones. There were large amounts of money to be saved on travel by their clients. Why cross half the country, or half of Europe, when you can each sit in your own room with a large screen on the wall? It was wonderful; longer term you’d be able to reduce the number of human interactions in all areas of life. Why go to a grocery store to shop when you could order food to be delivered? Why go to the library, when everything was on the internet anyway? Frisk painted a utopian picture where we could control our daily lives from the home, isolated from the outside world but always connected to a virtual world. I took in his vision of the future with affected enthusiasm, but inside I was screaming abuse at him.
What I really hate the most with doers is their optimism. Oh, how the world is full of opportunity, oh, what an exciting future! Do
they not see that everything is emptiness, a chasing of the wind? Do they not hear that every ticking second means being one dig of the shovel closer to the grave and that mankind’s pursuit of happiness always, without exception, leads to catastrophe? But they don’t have time to listen, they’re too busy building their Tower of Babel. I saw it in Frisk’s eyes, they were alight with opportunities, limitless opportunities. It was no small source of entertainment for me, to think that he, in a world where everything is possible, where we can be whatever we want to be just by believing in it enough – professor, star in a musical, a woman – had chosen to be, yes, a salesman. He hadn’t become an astronaut or solved the climate crisis. No. He sold things. And he saw it as an important mission, almost a calling. When he on one occasion quoted Confucius to illustrate his point, I couldn’t help saying, with acted enthusiasm, ‘Oh, so you have read the Analects?’ I knew the answer, of course he hadn’t read them, but I wanted to completely innocently put him in his place. The quote probably came from a book by some inspirational speaker, who in turn thought that by citing ancient wisdom they could brush over the fact that their philosophy was all smoke and mirrors. A bit of Plato here, a bit of Confucius there, taken from a book of quotes on the internet, because doers obviously do not read Plato, they don’t have the time, no one does. No, give us the smartest things he said in a hundred and forty characters so we can wear his wisdom like an accessory for our own personal brand!
Frisk believed that there were great opportunities for me as a salesman, just so long as I was sufficiently ‘hungry.’ That was another real doer word. People clearly went round and were metaphorically hungry pretty much all over the place. Hungry for winning, for success – presumably a symptom of having never actually known real hunger. Just ambition. Desire. Greed. So, I showed off my absolute hungriest side, said that I had always set aggressive targets, always wanted to outdo myself, was never satisfied with mediocrity. I deliver, quite simply (oh, this sales talk) and am not satisfied, never relax, because you can always better yourself, always make progress, always hone your skills. And if I have occasionally not succeeded, then I have learnt from these mistakes and become even more efficient, even sharper, even hungrier. My metaphorical stomach was really rumbling. There was no mistaking my energy. I almost believed my own words. If I do say so myself, my acting was of the highest quality; Frisk nodded thoughtfully, almost moved, I thought. Maybe he recognised himself, as a young man, in me and felt touched, yes, that must have been it, as a doer is only moved by others if they are reminding him of himself.
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