The Red Room - August Strindberg (best summer reads TXT) 📗

who have usurped the power, and influence to the most unscrupulous.”

“Stuff! It isn’t really as bad as all that?”

“Isn’t it? Well, then I must speak more plainly. I’ll show you the inner working of one of the six departments for which I had put down. The first five I left at once for the very simple reason that there was no room for me. Whenever I went and asked whether there was anything for me to do, I was told No! And I never saw anybody doing anything. And that was in the busy departments, like the Committee on Brandy Distilleries, the Direct Taxation Office and The Board of Administration of Employees’ Pensions. But when I noticed the swarming crowd of officials, the idea struck me that the department which had to pay out all the salaries must surely be very busy indeed. I therefore put my name down for the Board of Payment of Employees’ Salaries.”

“And did you go there?” asked Struve, beginning to feel interested.

“Yes. I shall never forget the great impression made on me by my visit to this thoroughly well-organized department. I went there at eleven o’clock one morning, because this is supposed to be the time when the offices open. In the waiting-room I found two young messengers sprawling on a table, on their stomachs, reading the Fatherland.”

“The Fatherland?”

Struve, who had up to the present been feeding the sparrows with sugar, pricked up his ears.

“Yes. I said ‘good morning.’ A feeble wriggling of the gentlemen’s backs indicated that they accepted my good morning without any decided displeasure; one of them even went to the length of waggling the heel of his right foot, which might have been intended as a substitute for a handshake. I asked whether either of the gentlemen were disengaged and could show me the offices. Both of them declared that they were unable to do so, because their orders were not to leave the waiting-room. I inquired whether there were any other messengers. Yes, there were others. But the chief messenger was away on a holiday; the first messenger was on leave; the second was not on duty; the third had gone to the post; the fourth was ill; the fifth had gone to fetch some drinking water; the sixth was in the yard ‘where he remained all day long’; moreover, no official ever arrived before one o’clock. This was a hint to me that my early, inconvenient visit was not good form, and at the same time a reminder that the messengers, also, were government employees.

“But when I stated that I was firmly resolved on seeing the offices, so as to gain an idea of the division of labour in so important and comprehensive a department, the younger of the two consented to come with me. When he opened the door I had a magnificent view of a suite of sixteen rooms of various sizes. There must be work here, I thought, congratulating myself on my happy idea of coming. The crackling of sixteen birchwood fires in sixteen tiled stoves interrupted in the pleasantest manner the solitude of the place.”

Struve, who had become more and more interested fumbled for a pencil between the material and lining of his waistcoat, and wrote “16” on his left cuff.

“ ‘This is the adjuncts’ room,’ explained the messenger.

“ ‘I see! Are there many adjuncts in this department?’ I asked.

“ ‘Oh, yes! More than enough!’

“ ‘What do they do all day long?’

“ ‘Oh! They write, of course, a little.⁠ ⁠…’

“He was speaking familiarly, so that I thought it time to interrupt him. After wandering through the copyists’, the notaries’, the clerk’s, the controller’s and his secretary’s, the reviser’s and his secretary’s, the public prosecutor’s, the registrar of the exchequer’s, the master of the rolls’ and the librarian’s, the treasurer’s, the cashier’s, the procurator’s, the protonotary’s, the keeper of the minutes’, the actuary’s, the keeper of the records’, the secretary’s, the first clerk’s, and the head of the department’s rooms, we came to a door which bore in gilt letters the words: ‘The President.’ I was going to open the door but the messenger stopped me; genuinely uneasy, he seized my arm and whispered: ‘Shsh!’⁠—‘Is he asleep?’ I asked, my thoughts busy with an old rumour. ‘For God’s sake, be quiet! No one may enter here unless the president rings the bell.’ ‘Does he often ring?’ ‘No, I’ve never heard him ringing in my time, and I’ve been here twelve months.’ He was again inclined to be familiar, so I said no more.

“About noon the adjuncts began to arrive, and to my amazement I found in them nothing but old friends from the Committee on Brandy Distilleries, and the Board of Administration of Employees’ Pensions. My amazement grew when the registrar from the Inland Revenue Office strolled into the actuary’s room, and made himself as comfortable in his easy-chair as he used to do in the Inland Revenue Office.

“I took one of the young men aside and asked him whether it would not be advisable for me to call on the president. ‘Shsh!’ was his mysterious reply, while he took me into room No. 8. Again this mysterious shsh!

“The room which we had just entered was quite as dark as the rest of them, but it was much dirtier. The horsehair stuffing was bursting through the leather covering of the furniture; thick dust lay on the writing-table; by the side of an inkstand, in which the ink had dried long ago, lay an unused stick of sealing-wax with the former owner’s name marked on it in Anglo-Saxon letters; in addition there was a pair of paper shears whose blades were held together by rust; a date rack which had not been turned since midsummer five years ago; a State directory five years old; a sheet of blotting-paper with Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar written all over it, a hundred times at least, alternating with as many Father Noahs.

“ ‘This is the office of the Master of the Rolls; we shall be