The Encounter

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes please’.

‘Earl Grey? Or English Breakfast? I also have Darjeeling if you fancy some’.

‘The Earl Grey would be very nice, thank you very much’.

The irony of such a display of politeness before the signing of the deal did not escape me. Contrary to the barren, desolate landscape of my imaginings, his ‘office’ was a plush air conditioned room with large comfortable sofas. We were seated on navy blue swivel chairs across a beautiful mahogany executive table. There was a filing cabinet in the corner, with large, foot long drawers. For a moment I had the absurd image of him as a recruiter, with the drawers containing files with the CVs of the candidates entering into a contract with him. The room was lit up by strong halogen lights that cast harsh shadows all around.

The overall feel of the meeting that day was tinged by a very strong sense of bathos. I was expecting a grand denouement, the final act of a tragedy where all the tragic elements reach their resolution. Instead we had some very good tea with some seriously delicious cake and discussed the more mundane nitty grittys that accompany the signing of a deal. I say signing because there was an actual contracted drawn out in black and white along with, I saw with amazement a list of ‘Terms and Conditions’.

‘But this is ridiculous!’ I exclaimed.

‘Why?’

‘Because… because…’ I stammered

‘Because this is much more prosaic than the highly romanticized idea of suffering and angst?’ he broke in.

‘This is so…’ I racked my brain for the right word ‘legal,... and bureaucratic’.

He smiled, flashing his pearly whites yet again. ‘Well that is the way the world is. Things always sound better in fiction, in books. In real life everything is very routine and mundane’. At this he suddenly became very serious and earnest, putting his elbows on the table he leaned towards me and asked ‘Are you very sure you want to do this? I want you to understand very clearly that you have a choice, a free will in making your decision. And that once you sign this parchment there is no looking back. I am going to resort to whatever means necessary to get what I want out of you’.

Okay, so he was not the crazy megalomaniac with an obsession for collecting people’s souls. He was a sophisticated, well read megalomaniac who was very scrupulous about making it very clear that he had no scruples. And yes…he did collect people’s souls, but it was not an obsession for him, it was business, his work, his daily routine. He was not the murderer. Instead he was the executioner who operates within laws and institutions, and free of the guilt and fear of retribution that marks a murderer, oversees the loss of a life with dispassionate neutrality.

I quickly signed the contract, not really caring about what I stood to lose by it. He nodded in satisfaction as I handed it over to him. ’You would have never signed it if you actually knew what you were letting yourself in for. But then, that is not my business’.

‘You are a literature student, aren’t you?’

I nodded my assent, suspiciously darting towards the filing cabinet.

‘I like existentialism’ he said dreamily, ‘this is a meaningless world but an individual has free will…free will over destiny and not destiny over free will’. I was not quite sure if the gross over-simplification was more for his benefit or for mine. Did this parting line contain a final warning? To this philosophical reminiscing I uttered a very banal ‘Thank you for the tea and for the cake’.

Not wishing to prolong the meeting for longer than necessary, I got up from my chair and walked towards the door.

As I walked out I knew what I would have liked to call him, what I would call him in my mind…Despair. For that was the word that summed up the cause and the outcome of our meeting – despair, utter and hopeless despair.