Anila Angin | Scribbles for the Soul

Two Tales of Obedience

By Anila Angin | 21 August 2011

Civil Service Chronicles, Conformity, Fear, Freedom, Satire, Work

Woman with Apple and Snake by Jocelyne Coupaud

“The rules are quite simple then: obey your boss, be respectful, work hard, do not question authority or, god forbid, argue and debate,” commanded the Director of Organization Preservation at the end of her briefing.

The interns stirred restlessly. “But why do we have to obey our boss?” asked the girl, her eyes flashing rebellion.

“Exactly! Why do we have to follow rules? What if they’re stupid?” asked the boy christened Mean Bean by the other interns.

The third intern said nothing. He was bent with great absorption over a game of balls lobbed at a series of indignantly squawking birds on his phone.

The Director was momentarily derailed by this unexpected resistance. “That’s just the way the organization is preserved,” she replied feebly.

“But why does the organization need to be preserved?” asked Mean Bean.

“Follow the rules and the path will clear itself for you,” said the Director grandly, hoping that the line was vague enough to impress the recalcitrant youths into defeated silence.

“You haven’t told us yet why the system needs to be preserved,” repeated Mean Bean, persistent as a housefly. “The only things I remember that need preserving are Egyptian mummies and jams. It’s to prevent decay to dead things. Is our organization decomposing?”

If Mean Bean had indeed been a housefly, the Director would have loved to bring a fly swatter down hard over his bean-shaped head. As it was, she contented herself with a repressed gurgle of rage.

She cast a plaintive glance at the Chairman, who had been observing the briefing with impassive silence. He nodded. It was a general nod and she couldn’t tell if it was meant to encourage her, or if it was in appreciation of Mean Bean’s remarks. She decided that it had to be the former. “When at a loss, tell a story,” the Chairman had once instructed. The Director clung affectionately to the theory that everything her boss said was the absolute truth. Accordingly, a story at this juncture seemed like a brilliant if desperate attempt to fend off a further barrage of questions from this brood of ill-bred interns.

“How would you like me to tell you a story?” asked the Director in the sweetest voice she could muster.

The interns greeted her proposal with no more interest than a school of fish who had been offered a recital of the Penal Code.

“There once was a very good girl who did everything right,” began the Director hastily, taking the interns’ lack of opposition as a mark of approval. “She was beyond reproach in all aspects of her behaviour. She was obedient, kind and respectful, and by virtue of having followed all the rules carefully laid out by her teachers, she topped her class every year. This clever girl soon won every scholarship available, and when she graduated, she was offered the plummiest job in the country.”

“I knew it!” shouted Mean Bean. “Plums become prunes when preserved. I told you all our jobs have to do with death and decay.”

The Director glared frostily at the offending boy. Then she resumed, “Once again, our heroine proved herself to be a marvellous worker. She worked twice as hard and fast as everyone else, and she was always unfailing polite and respectful, carrying out her duties with the same obedient industry that won her all those scholarships.”

“Sycophantic minion,” muttered the rebellious girl under her breath.

The Director did not hear the girl’s remark, or perhaps she chose not to. “Before long, she was offered a promotion, and within ten years, the girl had been promoted twenty times. She earned a great deal more money each time she was promoted, and with all that wealth, she could afford several very nice large houses, much to the envy of her less hardworking compatriots.”

“Did she marry?” asked the boy who had been playing with his phone.

“Um, no, I don’t think so. She was possibly too busy to marry,” stuttered the Director.

“So why did she need so many houses if she was an old maid living by herself?” pursued the boy.

“I was going to ask that too. What a stupid story,” said Mean Bean very certainly.

“That was a deplorably dull story!” declared the rebellious girl.

“You sound like you could use some help,” said the Chairman suddenly.

To be criticised for adopting the Chairman’s favourite tactic was too much for the Director. She flumped into the nearest chair with an expression of abject gloom.

“Why don’t you tell us a story then?” asked the phone boy.

“Yes, tell us a story,” chorused the others like a challenge.

“Once upon a time, there lived a very good girl called Sandy,” began the Chairman.

The phone boy bent his head over his game of squawking birds again. The other interns regarded the Chairman with disappointment. It seemed like every story the bosses were capable of telling was unimaginative in the extreme.

“She was born seemingly with an inherent love for following the rules. She did everything she was asked to do, slept at the right time, never wailed unnecessarily as a baby, ate her greens like candy, did her homework, was always on time, always respectful and always top of her class.”

“Was she beautiful too?” asked the rebellious girl with disgust.

“Not exactly. She was a rather scrawny, severely short-sighted child – from all those hours bent over her books.”

The interns relaxed. An ugly and obedient child they could live with. It seemed like a just price to pay for such an unnatural abundance of goodness.

“Because she loved rules so much, Sandy was always made the class prefect. When she started working, her obedience and discipline did not go unnoticed. Sandy was rewarded with one promotion after another, until she rose to the rank of President of her company.”

Mean Bean sighed very audibly at this point.

“Now the King had a policy of opening his royal gardens to Presidents,” continued the Chairman unperturbed. “He felt that a breath of fresh air would do the Presidents good, so that they could lead their companies better and make the country richer. You can imagine therefore that Sandy was most excited about her first visit to the gardens, which the hoi polloi were never afforded the privilege of feasting their eyes on. That is, unless they happened to be the gardener or the gamekeeper or a sweeper.”

“What was so special about the King’s gardens?” asked the rebellious girl.

“It was said to have curative properties,” replied the Chairman. “Whoever walked in there came out changed. There was just one rule that everyone who entered the gardens had to follow, and that was to stay on the path at all times.”

“Why?” demanded Mean Bean.

“That was exactly what Sandy asked of the keeper, who first presented the information to her. He only answered darkly that there were strange beasts that wandered in sometimes.”

The interns were beginning to enjoy the story. Even the third boy had ceased his tender ministrations of his phone.

“Sandy commenced her walk and enjoyed the many fantastic sights along the path. There was a tree that kept changing its colours before her eyes as if it couldn’t decide whether it was spring or autumn; fountains that appeared like magic and danced to invisible music; and flocks of rare animals who grazed peaceably in the surrounding fields. At all times, no matter how great the temptation to explore afield, Sandy stuck rigidly to the path. As she walked, she congratulated herself, ‘If I had not been promoted to President, I would not be walking here today enjoying these sights.’ And she smiled with the self-satisfied air of the virtuous.

“Finally, at the furthest reaches of the King’s gardens, where she had just turned around to make her way back, Sandy found an unexpected obstacle sitting in the middle of her path. Upon closer inspection, she saw that it was a viper. If she moved back on the path, she would be trapped by the wall that marked the boundaries of the King’s garden. The only way back to the entrance was past the viper. The alternative was to step off the path and skirt around the viper. But the garden to her side was fenced with coarse bushes, and the thought of breaking a rule was more loathsome to Sandy than walking past a viper. Trembling a little, Sandy thought, ‘If only I hadn’t been promoted, I would be safe in the office now working on my next presentation.’

“Then she remembered a golden adage that had been taught to her when she was just an intern at her company: Follow the rules and the path will clear itself for you. Of course! How silly of her, she thought, here was her chance to prove the sanctity of the rules she held so dear. As long as she abided by them, even nature would yield to her like the sea parting for Moses.

“Taking heart, Sandy pressed forward on the path, bravely expecting the viper to slither away into the bushes. The viper marked her approach and took fright. It did the only thing it knew best how to do under duress. In the open jaws of the viper, Sandy saw too late the sting of death that awaited her. No one heard her cry as she fell, except the snake and the trees.”

“An excellent story!” declared the girl intern, miraculously shorn of the rebellion that had marked her earlier speech.

“The best story ever,” agreed Mean Bean emphatically.

“What kind of story was that?” asked the Director, scandalised. “You’ve given them all the wrong sorts of ideas about the job now.”

“At least I was honest,” said the Chairman as he rose to leave, the interns following with alacrity in his wake.

The Director of Systems Preservation has been promoted to the post of Chairwoman, but she hasn’t been invited to tour the King’s gardens yet. Neither does she have any intention of accepting if she is.

CONNECT:

Share your thoughts »

The Troll Who Became a Boy

By Anila Angin | 24 July 2011

Beauty, Enlightened parenting, Fables, Love, Vignettes

Childhood Phantasy by Tom Swift

There was once a beautiful countess who gave birth to a boy who was unfortunately endowed like a troll. The count, convinced that his wife had mated with a goblin, retired mournfully to his study, where he buried himself for years in his books, refusing to see his wife and his son.

So the countess was left with the thankless task of raising their only child. Each day, she sat with her ugly baby, shining on him the way the sun warms a weed. She didn’t allow anyone else near him, perhaps because she didn’t want the servants to talk.

The baby, having no one else to look at but his beautiful mother, grew up believing that only goddesses paced the earth. And as he basked in the light of his mother’s loveliness, a strange thing began to happen. His features grew softer, more human, and in time to come, he became positively princely and charming, with curls that danced when he bobbed in bed.

Only then did the countess introduce her son to the rest of the world, and to his father. The count, astonished by the transformation of his son from troll to boy, remarked, “Was your mother’s beauty so great then, that in drinking of it daily, you had no choice but to reflect her back like a mirror?”

The boy pondered a while, then replied, “No, it was because in her eyes, I saw a love so deep, it showed me where my beauty was hidden. Like a bucket dropped into the well of my ugliness, what she drew up was the clearest of water, blooming with petals in the sunlight of her presence…”