In the tradition of Gogol's The Overcoat and Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, Argentine author Guillermo Saccomanno's The Clerk
features an office flunky droning away at his desk. But with this tale,
we're in a city gone seedy, sickly and violent: terrorist bombs explode
in crowded restaurants, poisonous gas frequently shuts down the subway,
guerrilla attacks, bank robberies, shootouts between gangs of drug
traffickers on busy streets are as common as weekly sporting events.
Anyone from the slums who makes it out of their teenage years in one
piece deserves a metal.
Both the clerk and city remain unnamed -
and for good reason, the clerk could be any white collar stiff; the city
could be any urban center in the near future, Buenos Aires or Boston,
Belgrade or Bangkok, since the various facets of business and commerce
are homogenized and pasteurized, made uniform for optimal efficiency.
At
the end of one particular workday, all desks vacated, all computers
switched off, we can spot a solitary individual amid the ocean of
darkness: our clerk.
Our clerk, the tale's protagonist, feels
both fatigue and an overwhelming sense of sadness. He watches as the
computer on his desk flickers off and the screen grows dark with a sigh.
The clerk arranges his pens, inkwell, stamp pad and the rest of the
standard office supplies on his desk, paying particular attention to his
letter opener; after all, although the steel opener looks harmless, it
could be used as a weapon.
The clerk reflects on how appearances
can be deceptive, that in spite of his meek, mild character, given the
proper circumstance, even he, the milk-toast clerk, might be fierce.
Indeed, if the right circumstance presented itself, he could be someone
else entirely. Nobody is ever what they seem to be.
Now, what
could or would qualify as the right circumstance for our clerk to turn
fierce, for our clerk to unleash his authentic inner self? Perhaps we'll
find out following an unexpected event taking place in the first
several pages: our clerk's heart is awakened by the fire of love.
Oh,
yes. the clerk isn't the only office worker who has remained in the
building when everyone else has left. As if by a miracle, there she is:
the boss' secretary. One thing leads to another and then another and he,
the faceless, flunky clerk, enjoys a passionate round of sex with the
secretary in the secretary's apartment. The clerk can hardly believe
something so wonderful has happened to him. “He wouldn't mind dying
between her legs.”
Such an incredible emotional high but,
invariably, the clerk must return home. The clerk frequently remarks on
how his family holds a special, cherished place in his life. However,
the reality is quite different, his home is "a rented apartment near a
terminal on the outskirts of the city, a three-room place facing the
back of the building: dark, close, and fetid. His wife, a lump with
horsey features, is a sour, despotic sort, and his children a litter of
obese, ill-behaved brats."
Nowadays, the wife subjects him to
beatings and his children have become a continual source of torment, an
unending hell on earth. Well, at least there's El Viejito, his frail,
albino son who "inspires feelings of something other than revulsion."
And
life at the clerk's office amounts to a different set of torments: an
overbearing, obnoxious boss and a coworker who can't be trusted. And
wouldn't you know it, this morning the clerk realizes a firing is about
to take place.
"In one instant, just as soon as everyone has
taken their places, a loudspeaker announces the name of the man or woman
who's been dismissed. in a neutral voice, like an airport announcement,
the victim's name is formally revealed. A security team surrounds the
deposed man or woman's desk, preventing any opposition to the measure."
Discussing
his novel, author Guillermo Saccomanno alludes to the clerk as an
anonymous, pathetic creature moving in a world where no one can be
trusted and even the smallest sign of kindness can be interpreted as a
sign of fear, weakness or even imminent treachery.
Yet the clerks
of the world cling to their office and place within the organization as
if hanging on to a lifeboat bobbing during a storm at sea. For, outside
the office, down on the streets, society has become deadly. "The most
dangerous ones are the suicide guerrillas who walk into a bank, a
ministry, or a restaurant loaded with explosives. Then the downtown area
becomes a combat zone. A mass of desperate people seeking refuge amid
deafening explosions and gunfire."
A final reflection on The Clerk
by the Argentine author: "Since literature doesn't exist independently
of social processes, it seems to me that my novel might not be so much a
prediction of the world to come as a diagnosis of the one we're already
in. I'm not afraid to contradict myself: it's likely that my novel
isn't either dystopian or predictive, but realistic."
Up for a Latin American novel that's a brutal portrayal of modern city life? Guillermo Saccomanno's The Clerk - go for it!
Argentine novelist Guillermo Saccomanno, born 1948
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