The Long and Spectacular Life of Agnes Magnusdottir 16

Extract from The Ministry of Complaints  

 

The swoosh of air from the closing doors puffed out their candle and for several long moments they stood in complete darkness as Hans fumbled to relight it. As the wick finally caught illuming the room with a gentle glow Hans let out a yelp of shock. In here were more gurneys, one pushed up right next to where they were standing. 

    "Oh my goodness," he said. "Oh my golly goodness."

    At the same time as he said this Amelia started to scream. The scream got louder and louder until obviously quite overcome with horror of it all the little girl slumped down to the floor, fainting dead away.

 

Hans had never seen anything like it before and he did not think he would ever forget it. 

    Where the features should have been there were none. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no eyelids. As if the head were a giant orange the skin had been peeled right away. Eight of them in total. All exactly the same.

    Were any of them Zelig Krüger? 

    Without a face it was impossible to say.

    And who would want to say? The sight was gruesome, worse even than Hans’s worst nightmare where he had been tied naked to a bed and penetrated by huge throbbing penises. Grabbing Amelia under her arms he had dragged her out of the room and sat with her cradled in his arms saying over and over that everything would be alright although he was not sure that it ever would be. There are some things that you never forget.  

    It was ten or fifteen long minutes before Amelia came around and the first thing she said on opening her eyes, her voice shaking, was, "Can you go back in and check that one of them is not my father?" She took a big gulp of air. "He had the little finger missing on his left hand. It was bitten clean off by an alligator at the zoo. You'll know if it's him or not."

    It took Hans some time before he was ready to return and even then he did so with a heavy heart. 

    The worst thing was the eyeballs. They swam motionless in an ugly mass of red raw flesh and as Hans had lifted the sheet on each of the gurneys they had seemed to be staring at him accusingly.

    ’It is your fault I am here. It is you who have murdered me and may you never rest in peace.’

    Hans was in and out as quickly as decency would allow. The only good thing was the news he was able to impart afterwards.

    "None of them were your father." 

    Hans wiggled his hands comically in the air. He was doing his best to make light of it. 

    "All fingers intact. No alligators have been nibbling at those poor chaps. That’s one thing at least off their minds.”

 

Later that same evening Hans found he was not able to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes those faceless corpses swam before him. Thick gobbets of blood dripped down onto his sheets, eyes rolled horrifically in their sockets. 

    Giving up on the hope that he would ever drift off he rose and went over and pressed his forehead against the glass of the window. It was cool. Cooling. Comforting. Outside the city was dark. Soon it would be morning, lights would come on and people would arise like automatons and go to work. 

 

Directorate Article 7, Subsection 1. All Citizens of the Directorate will be provided with employment. We will all work together to provide a better future. Laziness will not be tolerated.   

 

If he was going to have to face Meyer, Becker, Hoffman and Schmidt, they all acted like a cheese grater upon his balls one way another, then he seriously needed to get some shut eye.

    He had an idea. 

    Lifting up the loose floorboard under his bed Hans pulled out the coded pages. 

    Didn't those rows of unintelligible letters have a soporific effect stronger than any sleeping draft?

    It was, however, just when he wasn't expecting or looking for it, the answer to cracking the code came to him.

    He stood from his desk and punched the air in joy.

    He was a genius. 

 

Chapter 10.

 

’Please do not contact us again regarding Miss Magnusdottir. Any further correspondence will be considered an act of harassment and will be reported as such to the police.’

    After reading the email a number of times and having considered for a while with the publisher I decided I would try a different tack. I would go and visit him in person. One look at my face, or lack of it, and he would feel sorry for me. If he was a homosexual, like a lot of publishers are, he might even invite me back to his penthouse suite where he would ply me with expensive champagne, take off all my clothes and, kneeling with his face was pressed against my small penis, he would have his way with me. Afterwards he would get Magnusdottir directly on the phone. That would be the deal. You scratch my back I scratch yours. 

    When I had been at the newspaper on a more regular basis such stories were commonplace, especially amongst the interns who were rabidly keen to get ahead. And who had better bodies and so more bargaining power. 

    If only the general public knew how lascivious the world of letters was. Truly they would be shocked.  

 

The secretary was sitting behind a glass-topped desk with an earpiece and microphone fixed to her head like she was about to go on stage at a pop concert.

    I wrote out who I was and who I wanted to see and ripped out the page and slid it across the glass towards her.

    She smiled ingratiatingly and lifted her own pen off the desk. For a moment I thought she was going to write out a reply, like she assumed this was my preferred method of communication, but instead she used the wrong end of it to stab at the number-pad of a phone in front of her. I didn't hear her say anything but after a few seconds she smiled again and told me to take a seat, it shouldn't be too long.

    Twelve o’clock came and went and then so did one and two. At two fifteen I went back over to the secretary. She held up her hand, fingers spread, and mouthed, ’Five minutes’. It's a shame she didn't have thirty-five fingers. That would have been closer to the mark. At two fifty she finally gestured that I could go up.

    Gartree McPhearson had an office on the forth floor. The carpet was deep enough to bury a teaspoon in, or an unwanted baby, and as could be expected of a publisher each of the walls of his room was lined floor to ceiling with books. Pride of place, right behind McPhearson’s own imposing desk with cover out-facing was a copy of The Ministry of Complaints. A first edition I assumed.

    "You look like you’ve been in the wars," said McPhearson gesturing for me to sit down. "I don't usually meet people on spec but my secretary said you look ’interesting’. What happened to you?"

    I wrote my reply in large bold letters and held up the page against my chest

    "IT’S A LONG STORY."  

    "Put down the rest and I might consider publishing it. We'll take the large print market by storm!”

    When he guffawed I realised he thought he had made a joke. Not being able to laugh myself I slapped my sides like I had seen Zara do when she was in panto. 

    “So what do you want?” 

    McPhearson’s face had changed. Now we were down to business. 

    If I'd have been able to speak I would have come up with a cover story, beaten around the bush, flattered him a bit, but having to write everything down I was somewhat limited. I told McPhearson I was a journalist and I was doing a piece on Magnusdottir. I wanted to know if he knew where she was, and if he did would she grant me an interview, it was a long time since she’d disappeared and didn't he feel now was the right time she told her side of the story and finally quashed all the rumours? Then I added what I thought was my pièce de résistance. I said that if he didn't comply with my request then I would run with the story I already had, that Magnusdottir's grandfather was a Nazi.

    I didn't expect a direct answer but I did expect something, something I could use in my article, a quote about privacy and integrity and the pressures of fame. Or even an abrupt dismissal of the Nazi claim. Instead there was nothing, not one single word. 

    McPhearson fixed me with a thunderous stare and seconds later two goons each with muscles up to their eyeballs appeared. My arms were grabbed and less than elegantly I was escorted from the building. If they could have dropped me straight down the lift shaft and got away with it I'm sure they would have done. Instead I was thrown onto the pavement outside and told not to come back. 

 

 

Extract from The Ministry of Complaints

 

The corridor was cold and damp. Hans took a deep breath and held it. Moving slowly forwards he kept to the shadows. 

    He was chancing his arm to be stepping out again so soon. If he was caught sneaking about outside of the curfew then he would be reported and who knew what would happen then? The latest talk was of grown men being dissolved slowly in vats of acid, starting from the toes. 

    Avoiding the trails of snot and pools of wee left by the youths who saw these small acts of defilement as the only rebellion they could make against the imposed order of their lives Hans made his way down to the entrance lobby. 

    And there it was.

    It was as simple as that. 

    Pride of place in a glass display case by the door, the grey stiff covers something that every citizen could recognise. 

    'Articles of the Directorate. A Guide to Life and Living.'

    It was a book. A book that as a Ministry of Information employee Zelig Krüger would have been involved in writing and updating and which every citizen would have access to.

    What better text to use as the key for his code?

 
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