Jesse Ball: The Way Through Doors

We went out into the main room. Sure enough, the clock was three hours ahead.

— Well, that’s obvious enough, I said. But I’m busy. Don’t you have something to do?

— Try figuring out why you have…

She reached into the sleeve of my suit and pulled a long white handkerchief out of a secret pocket. It was monogrammed: S. M.

— …secret pockets in your clothing. Tell me that, buster.

She spun around and left out a different door, one on the far side of the room.

Only after she was gone did I wonder, how had she climbed the ladder with a cup of tea on a saucer? Evidently there was more to Rita than met the eye, though what met the eye was just fine.

Turning back to the desk I found an envelope. Within there was a letter, two days old.

Seventh Ministry

21 July xxxx

Mr. Selah Morse,

Imagine that you are being written to from a place no larger than a gourd. In this gourd, furthermore, the necessary supplies for writing letters do not exist. Therefore, we make do with other mediums. Or perhaps this business of the gourd is a lie, a simple way of beginning a letter that I had hoped I would never have to write. The simple matter is this — up until now there has always been one Municipal Inspector in the city. For there to be two, well, I simply was not prepared for the circumstance to arise. Yet here you are.

I have it on good authority from Rita, the message-girl, that you cannot be trusted with any task, and that we should despair of your ever becoming a useful member of our little cadre. However, at the time of her saying this, Rita was operating under the clever assumption that you were only an idea and not an actual person. The contrary, rather, is the case. You are an actual person, and the work that you have to accomplish here is merely an idea.

Do you understand? We inspect things. We go about the city and occasionally stir ourselves to inspect virtually anything we choose. Our authority is both unlimited and nonexistent. It operates on a case-by-case basis. On a given day I might have the power to shut down a dam. The next I cannot cause a street vendor to move from off a corner. Vaguer and vaguer! I’m sure you understand now. After all, you were recommended to us as a sly young man. This you had best prove.

Senior Inspector, Seventh Ministry

Mars Levkin

I set the paper down. By the window I found my tea. It was quite cold. In fact, it looked like someone had been ashing a cigarette in it.

— That wasn’t for you to drink, said Rita, opening the door again.

She had a tray this time. On the tray was another envelope, and a cup of tea. She brought it over and set it down gently.

— I’m Rita the message-girl, she said.

— I’ve been told that, I replied.

She adjusted the hem of her skirt.

— Any messages to send? she said.

— Could you tell Levkin that—

— No! she said. Only written messages. What sort of message girl do you think I am?

She stalked off, leaving me with the tea and letter.

I took a sip of the tea. Irish Breakfast, with just the right amount of milk and sugar. Thank you, Rita. I opened the letter.

Seventh Ministry

21 July xxxx

M.I. Selah Morse,

I do hope you’re settling in. Things have been dreadfully strange around here ever since Maude ran away (the gray tabby). I think you are quite handsome and pleasant to talk to, and you mustn’t get the wrong idea about me. I am excited to see if you can do the work, and if you like it. Also, I had a cousin named Selah who died when he was very young. He died right after he learned to read. The doctor said some people aren’t meant to read. No one knows if he was joking or not, but we have to assume so. Was it a funny joke? I have never been in a position to tell. Anyway, good-bye for now,

Rita Liszt, M.G.

Seventh Ministry

I closed the letter and smiled to myself. On an ordinary day, I would be reading in the park or working on one of my pamphlets in my cramped apartment. Was it true? Had I really come up in the world? I inspected my clothing for secret pockets and found several more, including a rather clever one that went all the way down the pant leg, starting beneath a false belt loop. Or, I suppose, the belt loop was a belt loop truthfully. But it also had this other business of being the start of a secret pocket.

HOWEVER, the true business began later, and about that we will now speak.

Several months, perhaps six or nine, had passed since I had begun work as an inspector. I was quite used to my schedule and to my responsibilities. It was late in the day, when afternoon has begun quite visibly to crumple around the edges and one can smell rather than sense that evening will soon be upon us. Quite the opposite is true in winter, when one sees night approaching from afar on spindly noiseless legs. But now it was the spring, and I was heading towards a noodle shop happily situated between a sort of pretend-dadaist gallery and an old movie theater named the Grand Corazon. Whenever I was in that neighborhood I made a point of stopping by the noodle shop.

As I walked, a girl came out of a doorway ahead of me and paused in the street. She was very happy, perhaps as happy as a person could be; one could tell this at a glance. She looked up at the second-story window. It was closed. Presumably she had just come from the apartment to which it belonged. The girl was quite fine-looking, with bare shoulders and a beauty that I have always ascribed to the Han dynasty of ancient China. Not that she was Chinese. No, I didn’t know what she was, Slavic maybe, and elegant.

Out of nowhere, a taxi came speeding. There was a great honking of horns, a shouting. The girl made as though to jump back onto the curb, but instead went the other way, out into the street. With a dreadful thud, the braking taxi smashed full into the girl, sending her flying up into the air to land flat on the pavement some twenty feet away. The whole thing was rather like a geometry problem. Except that one could see immediately how truly injured the girl was, and one oughtn’t to say such things or even think them at such times.

I dropped the brown paper parcel I was carrying and ran to where she lay. One isn’t supposed to lift or move people who have been struck by dynamically heavy and fast-moving objects; however, I couldn’t help but lift the girl off the street. She was completely unconscious. All her gladness had paused a moment.

— Driver! I shouted.

The cabdriver approached reluctantly, looking away and mumbling things to himself. I could see he would be of little use in the fast-approaching solution. Nevertheless,

— Driver!

— Sir, and — I didn’t see her, and — She came out of nowhere.

— We must get this girl to the hospital. Pull the cab up here.

In moments the cabdriver had pulled the cab up beside the struck girl. We lifted her into the back of the taxi. I climbed in the front with the driver. Away we went.

An orderly came and took the unconscious girl away down the hall on a gurney, leaving me standing before the emergency desk. I started to go after, but the clerk called out to me.

— What’s her name? You have these forms to fill out.

— I don’t know, I said.

— But you are the one who brought her in, no?