Charlotte Stein - Sweet Agony

He has an old-fashioned street lamp in one corner, complete with a flickering candle behind the dusty glass panels. In fact, the street lamp is the only thing lighting the room. The sun has no chance of filtering through the closed and extremely heavy purple curtains, and where a ceiling light should be there is just a blank space.

But that only makes everything seem stranger and even more mysterious. It’s like looking through syrup at a scene from the nineteenth century. There are thick rugs on the floor and the fireplace is real and as I stand there I realise the sound I’m hearing is the somnolent tick of a grand old clock on the mantel.

By the time he speaks I think my limbs have gone a little weak. I want to sink into this heaven, and his voice does nothing to assuage that. It rolls into the room in one long ribbon, so deep and sinuous I could almost overlook his instructions. I could, if they were not completely bizarre and insane.

Oh, God, I think he might be insane.

‘Turn the chair beside you around, so that it faces the window. Once you have, you may be seated,’ he says, which I suppose is not that bad really. However, when you put it together with him speaking those words through a door, it all gets a lot stranger.

They suggest only one thing: he does not want me to look at him. He disappeared on purpose, so I could not catch so much as a glimpse – an idea that sounds bonkers but is pretty much borne out by all the evidence. I mean, what other explanation could there be? I thought he just wanted to leave me fumbling and unsure, then make some grand entrance. He seemed the type to make a grand entrance.

But now I feel less certain.

Maybe he has a problem, I think, a terrible and awful problem that he can never let anyone see. I read the other day about a man with a foot for a hand, and although I feel fairly confident that this was a lie it’s about all I can imagine now. He will come in with shoes on the ends of his arms and gloves on the ends of his legs, then scream in agony when he sees I ignored his instructions.

All of which is utter nonsense, I know, but I just go ahead and sit facing the window anyway. It seems best, considering all the real problems that he might actually have. He could have had his face blown off in the war, or some form of agoraphobia that means he can’t cope with people looking, and despite the high probability that he is just a haughty arsehole I want to respect these possible issues.

Though I will admit that it gets hard when I hear the door open. I want to turn so badly I can feel it in my teeth. I have to clench everything just to keep myself contained, but parts of me still do their best to escape. My heart almost lunges out of my chest at the sound of him drawing up his own chair. All the hair on my head seems to be prickling and bristling, as though he had taken a handful of it without me knowing.

And then just yanked .

‘I can see you fidgeting, you know.’

‘I would probably be doing it less if we were having an ordinary interview.’

‘And what would you consider an ordinary interview?’

‘Both of us occasionally making awkward eye contact.’

‘Sounds ghastly, if you ask me.’

‘I doubt I ever would.’

‘Would what?’

‘Ask you. You seem like the very last person to discuss the possible merits of eye contact with, considering our current positions.’

‘I have very good reason for this request.’

‘And that reason would be?’ I try, even though I know it will fail. I understand it will before he even emits his little snort of derision.

‘You ask too many questions.’

‘Well, I just thought if I was your housekeeper…’

‘If you were my housekeeper, what? You will feel the need to ask me irrelevant things in a constant and ever more intrusive manner?’

‘I would have thought it was necessary. I mean, what if you have a foot for a hand? I might accidentally kneel down to put on your shoes, only to find fingers where your feet should be. That seems at best like an embarrassment we could avoid,’ I say, then almost marvel at myself for doing it. That thing is happening again. That thing at the door where I got to say all the things I was never able to before. All of these insane leaps in logic just bound right out of me, so utterly ridiculous that he is rendered speechless.

God, I love rendering him speechless.

‘Did you really just accuse me of having a foot for a hand?’

‘I think “accuse” is a little strong. I have nothing but sympathy for your plight.’

‘There is no plight, you ridiculous creature. My hands and feet are where they are supposed to be, I can assure you.’

‘So the problem is your face.’

‘I see what you are clumsily attempting.’

‘I thought I was attempting it quite well, actually.’

‘Then allow me to disillusion you immediately. Your technique is that of a sixteen-year-old boy fumbling at the underwear of my mind.’

‘I could try harder. Probe more deeply.’

‘You believe I wish to be probed ? No, dear me, no, that won’t do at all. See, it is exactly as I predicted: you are in every way unsuitable for this position. I cannot possibly have some snooping reprobate rummaging through my life,’ he says, at which point I know I should be insulted or annoyed. He said I was a teenage boy. He called me clumsy. He thinks I am some criminal who snoops.

Yet somehow all I can think is:

He said ‘reprobate’.

He said ‘disillusion’.

He uses the sorts of words I’ve waited all my life to hear spoken aloud – words I barely know how to pronounce because the only time I’ve ever encountered them has been in books. I had no idea that ‘reprobate’ curled that way, or that ‘disillusion’ sounded so small to begin with and then so big at the end. Though, granted, part of that might be down to the way he talks. His tongue practically makes love to each syllable.

I feel like his sentence should smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop.

I think I might need to smoke a cigarette, directly after the full stop. Something is sure happening to me. I seem to be sweating just about everywhere and my breaths are coming hard and high, like he is a hill and I just ran up him.

Only that sounds agonising, and this is the opposite.

This is so sweet I would do anything for another taste.

‘Do you think you could say that word again?’

‘You honestly want me to repeat one of the things I just said, despite the fact that most of them were sneering insults?’

‘Are you kidding? The sneering insults were the best parts.’

‘Well, that settles it. I can’t hire you. You are quite mad.’

‘You cannot possibly decide that, based on me enjoying you saying the word “reprobate”. You turned the letter R into Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. People will probably be playing that letter O at funerals. There is nothing unreasonable about enjoying how the whole thing sounded – not to mention the fact that you said it at all. I mean, who says “reprobate” these days?’ I ask, and again there follows a silence. A big one, that he seems very bitter about once he finally responds. How dare I make him momentarily speechless, I think, and what he says bears that out.

‘People who have read these things called books – you might have heard of them, papery things with lots of squiggles inside,’ he says, and I attempt to hate him here, I really do. I stiffen at the implication, and when I speak my voice is cold.

‘Oh, you mean the things I used to hide under my floorboards so no one would take them away from me?’ I tell him.

But then he goes and says this :

‘Are you suggesting that you had books stolen from you? That these books were somehow forbidden you? By whom? Tell me at once who this monstrous individual is so that I can immediately have them arrested,’ he says.