People in Glass Houses

by Shirley Hazzard

  ‘One could see something was coming when he looked up like that.’

  ‘Les fleurs du chagrin … I suppose one could hardly have said Les fleurs du mal. …’

  A Russian came back with a loaded tray. ‘What are you laughing at?’

  One of the English interpreters said, ‘It would be better not to give us a prepared text at all than to make all these departures from it.’

  ‘What did you think of the speech?’ Mr Willoughby asked a white-haired Frenchman who paused to greet him.

  ‘Most interesting.’ Mr Raymond-Guiton bowed to Miss Kingslake over his tray. ‘And particularly well calculated — that interpolation about the flowers.’

  Miss Kingslake said, ‘I rather thought that seemed extempore.’

  Mr Raymond-Guiton smiled. ‘Most interesting.’ The repetition of the remark had the effect of diminishing its significance. He passed on with his tray and disappeared behind a screen of latticed plants.

  ‘Now wasn’t it he’, Miss Kingslake asked, wrinkling up her brow, ‘who refused to go to the Bastille Day party because of his aristocratic connexions?’

  ‘You’re thinking of that fat chap in the Development Section. This one’s too well-bred to do a thing like that. Miss Kingslake, shall we go?’

  No sooner had they risen from their chairs than two pale girls in short skirts came up with their trays of tea and cake and started to push the empty dishes aside. Miss Kingslake and Mr Willoughby lost one another briefly in the maze of tables and met again outside the glass doors, in the relative shelter of a magazine stand.

  ‘May I see you to your elevator bank, Miss Kingslake?’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ she said.

  They went down a short flight of steps and walked slowly along a grey-tiled, grey-walled corridor lined with blue doors.

  ‘I wonder’, she said, ‘if we will ever meet again.’

  ‘I have been wondering that too,’ he answered without surprise. ‘In a place like this there are so many partings and reunions — yet one does find one’s way back to the same people again. Rather like those folk dances they organize at Christmas in the Social and Anthropological Department. I feel we shall meet.’

  They reached a row of elevator doors. Mr Willoughby pushed the Up button.

  She said, as if they were on a railway platform, ‘Don’t wait.’

  ‘I really should get back to the office’, he said, ‘and see if my Travel Authorization’s come in yet.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Shall we say good-bye, then?’

  ‘Why yes,’ she said, but did not say good-bye.

  A Down elevator stopped but no one got off. A messenger boy went slowly past wheeling a trolley of stiff brown envelopes.

  ‘Miss Kingslake,’ Mr Willoughby said. ‘Miss Kingslake. Once, in this corridor, I wanted very much to kiss you.’

  She stood with her back to the grey wall as if she took from it her protective colouring.

  He smiled. ‘We were on our way to the Advisory Commission on Administrative and Budgetary Questions.’

  Now she smiled too, but sadly, clasping her fingers together over the handle of her bag. This prevented him from taking her hand, and he merely nodded his farewell. She had not spoken at all — he had gone quite a way down the corridor before that occurred to her. He was out of sight by the time the elevator arrived.

  ‘Thirty-seven,’ she announced, getting in.

  Someone touched her shoulder. ‘So good to see you, Miss Kingslake.’ It was Mr Quashie from Archives.

  ‘Oh, Mr Quashie.’

  Mr Quashie, wearing a long, light-coloured robe and scrolling a document lightly between his palms, moved up to stand beside her. ‘I suppose you were at the meeting?’

  ‘I was, yes.’

  ‘I thought the D.-G. looked tired.’ Mr Quashie stepped aside to let someone get out. ‘But then — I hadn’t seen him since he addressed the staff last Human Dignity Day.’

  ‘Nor had I.’

  ‘What a job he has. One wonders how anyone stands it. No private life at all. What did you think of the speech, by the way?’

  ‘Quite good. And you?’

  ‘Oh — here’s my floor.’ Mr Quashie glanced up at the row of lighted numbers. ‘I didn’t hear much of it. We were busy in the office, and I stayed to answer the phones. Getting off, please. Getting off. And then I took the wrong staircase in the conference building. So I only came in at the very end. I was just in time to hear about the flowers, you know. About how we need more flowers of joy.’

  3. The Meeting

  Just before the meeting, which was fixed for three-thirty, Flinders took a walk in the Organization’s rose garden. This garden was set in a protected angle of the buildings and looked towards the river. Seagulls — for the river was in reality part of an estuary — swooped over Flinders’s head as he crunched up and down the pebbled paths between beds of wintry spikes tagged ‘Queen Frederika’ or ‘Perfect Peace’ or ‘British Grenadier’. About him, plane trees scored the sky and frozen lawns rolled down to the cold river. With the exception of two uniformed guards and a statue ferociously engaged in beating swords into ploughshares, Flinders was the only human figure in sight. The grounds were closed to the public at this season, and the staff were sealed in their narrow cells, intent on the Organization’s business.

  Enclosed on three sides by the congested streets of a great city, the Organization was nevertheless well laid out in the ample grounds of its foundation-granted land, and stood along the banks of the river with something of the authority that characterizes Wren’s buildings on the Thames at Greenwich. Here as at Greenwich the river’s edge was faced with a high embankment and bordered, where the lawn ended, by a narrow walk. From this walk one looked across the river to the low-lying labyrinth of docks and factories, surmounted by an immense Frosti-Cola sign. Behind the Organization’s back, the skyscrapers of the city rose as abruptly as the Alps, an ascending graph of successful commerce. The setting impressed all newcomers, and still had an effect on those members of the staff who had been with the Organization since the signing of its Founding Constitution. Flinders, who had spent the past two years in a North African town, was all but overwhelmed by it.

  A forester and agricultural conservationist, Flinders had been recruited by the Organization two years before to serve as an expert in its Project for the Reforestation of the Temperate Zone. With a single stop here at Headquarters for briefing, he had flown from his home town in Oregon to a still smaller town some hundred miles to the south of the Mediterranean. Now, on his way home with his mission at an end, he was at Headquarters once more in order to report on his work and to be — although the word was yet unknown to him — debriefed.

  He had no idea of what he should say at the meeting. He had never attended meetings at all until he got involved with the Organization. His profession had kept him out of offices. His two years in North Africa could not be contained within reportable dimensions in his mind. Throughout his assignment he had, as instructed, sent in quarterly technical reports to his opposite number at Headquarters, a certain Mr Addison. These Reports on Performance in the Field (an expression which allowed Flinders to fancy himself capering in a meadow) had given a faithful account of his initial surveys, the extent and causes of erosion in the area, the sampling of soils, availability of water, and ultimately the selection and procurement of young trees and the process of their planting.

  In addition, he had reported in person, as he was required to do every few weeks, to the Organization’s regional office at Tangier. Apart from these trips to the coast, he had lived a solitary life. At El Attara, where the Organization had provided him with a comfortable house, he dealt with the local farmers and landowners, who were cheerful and polite, and with the local officials — who, though less cheerful, treated him well. He kept two servants and a gardener for the overgrown terraces that surrounded his little house. In the evenings he strolled in the medina and drank mint tea in the café,
or he stayed at home studying Arabic by an oil lamp. He wore the djellabah — in summer a white one, in winter one of rough brown wool. He learned to walk as the Arabs do, with a long stride designed to cover many miles, and to ride sideways on a donkey when necessary. He drove his jeep to his work in the hills, and sometimes camped at the planting sites for days at a time. At the beginning he was appallingly lonely, and for the first two months crossed off the single days on a Pan American calendar he had tacked up on his bedroom wall. But he was accustomed to an independent, outdoor existence and gradually became absorbed in his work and in the simple life of the town. The silence in the hills, the peace and variety of the countryside pleased him immensely. During his obligatory trips to Tangier, he swam in the ocean, ate French food, bought books and toothpaste, and took out an enigmatic girl named Ivy Vance who worked at the Australian Consulate. When Ivy Vance’s tour of duty presently came to an end and she was posted to Manila, Flinders began to postpone even these short trips away from his work.

  By the time his mission was over, he had completed not only his own assignment but also that of two other experts, once promised him as assistants, who had never materialized. No mention of this appeared in the communications he received from Mr Addison; nor did Flinders expect or wish for any. Flinders had no complaint. His salary cheques, having been afflicted by some early confusion, were arriving regularly by the second year of his stay: there was nothing to spend money on at El Attara and he saved a useful sum. Also towards the end of his mission he received full instructions for his return journey, and a large envelope containing a Briefing Kit that outlined the work for which he had been engaged and that had been omitted at the outset. Otherwise, all had gone smoothly. Mr Addison had replied to his letters with reasonable punctuality — five weeks having been the maximum delay — and had run up a creditable score of answers to questions asked. Flinders had no complaint.

  Flinders had no complaint. This fact alone, had it been known, would have made him an object of curiosity in the Organization.

  Two days before, on his return to Headquarters, he had met Mr Addison — a singularly small person to have been selected as opposite number to a man as tall as Flinders. Mr Addison greeted him pleasantly and introduced him to his secretary, to whom Flinders gave, for typing, a sheaf of handwritten pages containing his suggestions for conserving and extending the plantations at El Attara. The tentative inquiries he made of Mr Addison mostly seemed to fall within the competence of some other authority. Mr Addison had replied anxiously, ‘Mr Rodriguez-O’Hearn will tell you about that,’ or ‘That belongs in the province of Mr Fong,’ or ‘You’d better ask Miss Singh in Official Records.’ And, ‘Sorry your final cheque isn’t ready. Our accountant is on leave without pay.’ Otherwise, all had gone smoothly.

  Mr Addison explained to Flinders that he was himself under great pressure of work, at the same time producing a ticket for a guided tour of the building. The secretary to whom Flinders had handed his manuscript then showed him where to take the Down elevator and gave him a yellow slip on which was written the time and place of this afternoon’s meeting.

  Flinders looked at his watch, and turned back towards the main building. The gravel paths were narrow and at each of his impractical long strides his coat was clawed by Gay Flirtation or Pale Memory. His Rush Temporary Pass had not yet been issued and he was obliged to explain his business to the guard at the door, and once again at the cloakroom where he collected his briefcase and papers. It was exactly three-thirty when he took the elevator to the meeting.

  Patricio Rodriguez-O’Hearn, short, bald, blue-eyed and in his fifties, came from Chile. His reserve was unusual in a man of Latin and Irish blood, but would not otherwise have been noticeable. He was calm and courteous and, since he made a policy of being accessible to his staff, often looked exhausted in the afternoons. Within DALTO — the Department of Aid to the Less Technically Oriented — he was responsible for the overseas assignments of experts. It was to Mr Rodriguez that Mr Addison and his colleagues in the Opposite Numbers Unit reported, and Mr Rodriguez reported in his turn to the Chief Coordinator of DALTO. Rodriguez had been married twice, had a number of young children, and was known to play the piano rather well. When he sat at his desk or, as at this moment, at the head of a conference table, he would occasionally follow imaginary notes with his fingers while waiting for discussion to begin.

  Flinders was quite far from Rodriguez, having been placed midway down the table. A large lady sat on Flinders’s right, and Addison had naturally been seated opposite. There were some fifteen other members of the meeting, and Flinders found that he was not the only expert reporting that afternoon. On his left, a shock-headed young man named Edrich, back from a three-year assignment as a Civic Coordination expert in the Eastern Mediterranean, was leafing confidently through an envelope of documents. Senior members of DALTO were taking their seats, and there were, in addition, representatives from political departments of the Organization — a thin gentleman with a tremor from the Section on Forceful Implementation of Peace Treaties, and a young woman in a sari from Peaceful Uses of Atomic Weapons. A secretary was distributing pads of white paper and stunted yellow pencils. The room was lowceilinged, without windows, and carpeted in yellowish-green. At one end of it stood a small movie-screen and at the other a projector. At Flinders’s back, a bookcase contained a 1952 Who’s Who, and a great number of Organization documents.

  Flinders, having turned to look at the bookcase, soon turned back to the table. By assuming an alert expression he tried to include himself in various conversations taking place around him, but no one paid him any attention. A young man next to Addison said, ‘These problems are substantive, of course, not operational,’ and Addison replied, ‘Obviously.’ ‘Essential elements,’ declared a Japanese, and ‘Local infrastructure,’ responded a Yugoslav. The Forceful Implementation man looked very angry, and the girl from Peaceful Uses put her hand on his arm and murmured, ‘Under great pressure.’ Someone else said soothingly, ‘We’ll put a Rush on it.’

  When all the places were taken, Rodriguez-O’Hearn coughed for silence, welcomed the two experts to Headquarters, and introduced them to the meeting. The large lady leant across Flinders to ask Edrich a question, but Edrich was nodding around the table and did not see her. Edrich, Flinders noted enviously, seemed to know everybody and had greeted several people by first name. Apart from Addison, who had gone into temporary eclipse behind the leaning lady, Flinders knew no one at all.

  Mr Rodriguez-O’Hearn called on Edrich to describe his work to the meeting; he then leant back in his chair and took off his glasses.

  Edrich bent forward and put his glasses on. He placed on the table a list of points he had drawn up. ‘I have’, he said, ‘recently submitted, in six copies, my final report and this will shortly be available’ — he turned up another paper — ‘under the document symbol E dash DALTO 604’ — he glanced again at the paper in his hand — ‘slash two.’ He therefore proposed, he said, to give only a brief summary of his work to the present meeting, and with this in mind had prepared a list of points on which emphasis might effectively be laid. (Flinders, looking over his shoulder, saw that there were fourteen of these, on which emphasis had already been effectively laid by underlinings.) Moreover, in accordance with instructions, Edrich had brought with him a short film showing various stages of his performance in the field.

  Rodriguez-O’Hearn here suggested that the film be shown first, in order to give even greater reality to Edrich’s list of points. A young man was sent for who, under Edrich’s supervision, set up the reel in the projector. Rodriguez shifted his chair, and Flinders, who had his elbows on the table, was asked to move back so that the lady on his right might see the screen. Edrich borrowed a ruler from the outer office, the lights were put out, and the film was set, hissing and crackling, in motion.

  Flinders was immediately struck by the similarity of the opening scene to the countryside he had just left. The eroded hills, thoug
h steeper, were garlanded with terraces of vines and fruit trees and glittered white in the meridional sunshine. The village, though even smaller than El Attara, was composed of the same whitewashed houses, the same worn steps and pitted doors. At the well, the women stood talking with their jars at their feet or their children in their arms, and outside the single tavern the old men played cards. The camera wavered over flat roofs and small peeling domes and squinted at stony hills. And upon the whole, as though marking a target, Edrich’s ruler now described a great circle.

  ‘This was the deplorable condition of the area when I arrived. Low level of overall production, cottage industries static for centuries, poor communications with neighbouring towns, no telegraph or telephone system, partial electrification, dissemination of information by shepherd’s rumour, little or no interest in national or international events. In short, minimal adjustment to contemporary requirements, and incomplete utilization of resources.’

  Screaming with laughter, a child raced into the camera’s path in pursuit of a crowd of chickens.

  ‘As you know,’ Edrich continued, ‘the object of the Civic Coordination Programme is to tap the dynamics of social change in terms of local aspirations for progress. These aspirations may be difficult to establish in a society where there has been no evolution of attitudes or change in value orientation for generations and where there are no new mechanisms for action within the community structure. In order to create a dynamic growth situation resulting in effective exploitation of community potential, aspirations must be identified in relation to felt needs. The individual thus feels himself able to function as a person, at the same time participating in implementation of community goals.’

  ‘What are the group relationships?’ The lady next to Flinders sat forward tensely for the reply.

  ‘I’m glad you ask that, Miss Bass. Owing to traditional integration of the family as a unit, the individual seems reluctant to function in a group or sub-group situation. These social patterns may take some time to break down. And this is natural.’