The Front

artwork by th lisa

I realised he was still standing there. Out of respect I turned and smiled in his direction. Instantly he was near me, with his harried eyes. His face was bathed in perspiration, although it was cool inside the room.

'Will you be able to complete it?' On his face were lines of doubt. He was wringing his hands. This just has to be finished somehow. Before tonight. It's a question of reputation for the printing press, really. The first job that's ever come to us from the government, from the Leader himself. It's our success in this that's going to decide all our future prospects.'

I got up from my chair. 'Definitely it can be completed. Please do not worry,' I said, to reassure him. In his frightened eyes a tiny light glimmered and went out. Feeling like having a smoke, I left the room.

I was a foreigner, who had come to work in this country. My proficiency in the language and the degrees I had acquired had been useful. In addition, I had some certificates testifying to a mastery of computers. They were enough to get me a job. The boss's anxiety was not hard to understand. This was the first order placed with him by the government, and he had got it on the strength of recommendations that he had personally obtained from several individuals, links in an invisible chain. The work would embody all these relationships. Delay would destroy them. To earn the displeasure of any of the links would be to earn one's ruin. Thinking of this was what brought on so much trembling. Though at heart he had faith in my capacity to complete the job, he clung simultaneously to his doubt and tormented himself.

In all there were five hundred odd pages. They were written by the Leader himself. That nation's history. Writing was a pastime for him, just like politics. The book was a treatise explaining the centuries-old history of his race and of the nation, and its culmination in the Golden Age of his own rule. Celebrations for his birthday, the release of his book, and the commemoration of the first anniversary of his coming to power were all to be conducted on a single day.

Having had my smoke, I started to work again. I remained continuously at the computer, yielding myself up so utterly to the work that I became red-eyed. A few dozen pages remained to be keyed in. In order to speed up the work, more than three-quarters had already been sent to the camera and plate-making departments. Until all the plates had been prepared, run in the machine, the sheets cut and sewn together and the covers stuck, there could be no rest.

I worked all that night. My eyes burned. The letters fell all muddled on the screen and I kept sorting them out. Darkness alternately seized my field of vision, and withdrew from it. The letters looked like dim stars. I rubbed my eyes and continued. The fingers refused to obey the brain's commands. Strange hands seemed to be pressing me down. I slumped on the desk and slept off.

How many hours I lay like that I do not know, but when I woke up it was dawn. I looked at the still turned-on screen and panicked. Breathing deeply I sat up straight, got up and opened the door and went outside. Rain was falling. The spray soothed my hot eyes.

The boss's car swept in through the water, lavishly swooshing it around. He got out. 'Have you finished?' came the question, even as he was climbing the steps.

'Only six or seven pages more. That's all.'

'Ayyo,' he said. Again, fear and trembling in his face. I was ashamed to tell him that I had dropped off to sleep in exhaustion.

'Don't you know they have to be packed and dispatched this evening? Tomorrow morning is their function. You say it isn't even finished yet! What's to be done? Tell me.'

'Within two hours it will be finished.' I entered the computer room once again. He went to the printing section.

In a little while the phone rang. It was those people, of course. They started asking about the book. The boss spoke appeasingly to them, his voice humble and subdued. 'Quick... quick,' he said, creating a flurry of panic. Everyone began to apply themselves once again to work.

Next moment the electricity went off. The boss groaned, 'Ayyo,' and put a hand to his head.

The mind went numb. My first thought, after a while, was: it's quite normal, they've just shut off the power because of the rain; it will come back. But by then he'd already moaned 'Oh God... Oh God' a hundred times at least. He almost sobbed. Without the heart even to sit down, he paced restlessly back and forth. We sat by, wringing our hands.

The morning went by. Even at midday the electricity had not come back. No one had the heart to go to lunch. The boss's laments, his anguished face, were distressing to watch. Our belief that we could finish the job also began to diminish little by little. I contacted the electricity department on the telephone. The entire city had a blackout, there was a breakdown at the power station, and it was difficult to estimate how much time the repairs would take -- this was the information given out. It pushed us right to the brink of hopelessness.

Cars began to arrive from the Leader's house. With a woebegone face the boss answered their queries. They looked at the half-finished work and left. At that point, only the covers of the book were ready. In the evening the Leader's private secretary himself turned up. He cursed the electricity department in everyone's presence. 'Incompetent management!' he said. Once again there were phone calls, and like a trained parrot the electricity department kept saying the same thing over and over again. To all those from the government, the boss gave submissive replies. He even invited them to spend the night at the press. Once the power was restored, the job could immediately be resumed and completed. That was his plan.

I had no wish to cause any further suffering to a mind already in such anguish. But my inner voice kept telling me that even if the power did come back, the job could not be done. Yet I nodded my agreement, and the others concurred. The boss had food sent in for everyone. He stayed back with us that night.

Daybreak. Apart from the eyes burning as a consequence of having stayed awake all night, nothing had been achieved. The electricity had not come back. Again we telephoned the electricity department. They said the breakdown had not been attended to. Just as we sat back, disheartened, government cars arrived with the Leader's private secretary and a high police official. They took the boss to a separate room and said something to him in low tones. The boss just wagged his head. Immediately the visitors left.

The boss called me, told me their scheme. Blank white pages must be put between the already printed covers. Just ten such books would suffice -- 'books' from the outside, blank pages on the inside. No one outside must find out anything about it. The secret must be kept.

It felt as though a burden had been suddenly lifted. Preparing ten books took half-an-hour -- sewing the pages together, sticking the covers, drying them out. We packed them up attractively. He invited me to go with him to deliver them, and we went and handed them over.

'Secret... Secret!' they warned, as they saw us off.

We attended the book release ceremony at ten o'clock. A demon of a generator was spewing out enough electricity to set the hall awash with light. At intervals of one foot from each other stood security guards holding automatic rifles. An elder statesman ceremonially released the book, and the Leader's mother ecstatically accepted the first copy. Camera and video lights flashed on the dais. As the book's printer, our boss was presented and swathed in a 'golden shawl'.

The Leader rose, the picture of humility as he bowed before the assembly. Tremendous applause. Sounds of acclamation. It took ten minutes for the hall to settle down.

The valedictory speeches commenced. The first was the vice-chancellor of a university. A sonorous voice, it twisted and turned, rose and fell. Adept at bestowing the appropriate vocal stress on every word, he was especially accomplished in the art of praising the Leader with befitting emphasis. He went on and on, piling on praise after praise about the book's excellence. He declared that he was quivering with eagerness to translate it immediately into English and thus place his mother tongue within the purview of the world's acclamation. The minute after the book took shape in English, he said, the Nobel Prize would run up and knock on the door.

The next was a poet. Patriotism, he said, was embedded in the book's many lyrical passages, and he quoted examples, flourishing the book we had produced. Next, a professor came up and evaluated the Leader's work of research as superior both in quality and in cogency to any of the research being done at universities. Then came a famous social worker. Delighting in the cool savour of panegyric upon the tongue, he said the Leader had strung together historical events with an utter lack of bias, and that his style of writing bespoke his humanism. More speeches followed: by a writer who had received the title of 'Monarch of Words', by the leader of the women's wing of the party, and by the director of publicity. Word after word of eulogy, followed by applause... The whole hall lay in a trance.

I was shuddering all over. The words they used to distort the truth bewildered me. When they held up the book and displayed its cover. I really began to have a doubt myself. Was it actually what we had produced, or was it something else? I wanted to cry out to the crowd: O great and honoured public! This is not a book. It's just blank paper! But I was an outsider. What could I do? I whispered to the boss, but he was greatly enjoying the farce, and he shook his head as if to say, "Don't say anything." The panic and bewilderment that had plastered themselves upon his face for two days had completely disappeared. "Look at the people around us," he told me. Every one seated there was in an identical state of mind, in a thrill of devotion, eyes stark and staring.

'Isn't this a fraud?' I asked secretly in his ear. The look the boss gave me seemed to say, Ada, you little boy! Gently leaning across, he told me -- in my ear, 'This is the history of this nation.'

And in a furtive voice he added, 'We, too, have connived at it'.

(Pavannan is a well-known writer in Tamil. V. Surya is a poet/translator.)