EDWARD GAUVIN

With apologies to Kafka~

Behind the counter sits a postal clerk. To this postal clerk comes a man from the suburbs who has a package that will only take a few minutes to mail. But the postal clerk is not taking customers at the moment. There are five windows at the counter, and only one of them has a postal clerk sitting behind it. The man wonders if he should have picked a better time to come. But the sign on the counter at the window says OPEN, so the man walks up to the window, hoping to attract the postal clerk’s attention. The postal clerk says, “Please wait your turn behind the yellow line, and don’t come up till you’re called. We reserve the right to refuse service at any time, for any reason. Don’t make me call my supervisor out back.”  The suburban man has not expected such difficulties: services should always be available for everyone during normal business hours, he thinks, but as he now peers more closely at the postal clerk with his bored, superior air, his tired eyes, his flesh beleaguered by a sedentary sinecure, the man decides it would be better to wait on the chance his slowly building frustration will find release, however delayed, rather than make a scene and be forced to leave even more frustrated than before. He stands behind the yellow line marked in tape on the floor, first with all his weight on one foot, then the other. There he shifts from foot to foot for minutes and hours. He makes many attempts only to be denied service, and wears the postal clerk out with his requests. From time to time, the postal clerk makes small talk about the weather and many other things, but he doesn’t lift his eyes from the paperwork he’s shuffling behind the counter, and in the end, always says he isn’t taking customers yet. The man, who has not brought a single thing along to distract himself, fiddles with his keys, checks his shoelaces, tries to wheedle and cajole the postal clerk. The postal clerk ignores his pleas, or acknowledges them with a sigh, saying like a long-suffering schoolteacher, “The longer this takes me, the longer it’ll take you.” As the hours pass, the man never takes his eyes off the postal clerk. He forgets about the supervisor in back: this postal clerk seems to him the only obstacle to the completion of his task. He curses the unlucky circumstance, at first muttering to himself; later, as the golden hours of the very morning slip away, he seethes in what he hopes and fears is an audible hiss. He becomes childish and, since in the long hours studying the lobby he has also come to know the spiders that inhabit cobwebs in its corners, even enjoins them to help him persuade the postal clerk, perhaps with some rare toxin that will render him, if not susceptible to suggestion, at least open to plain reason. Finally the man breaks out in a sweat, his bladder strains, he knows if he does not leave soon he will wet his pants. Before he leaves he musters his experience of the entire time into one question which he has not yet put to the postal clerk. He gives a little wave, since he can no longer walk without revealingly squeezing his thighs together. The postal clerk deigns to peer over the rims of his glasses, for things have changed considerably, to the man’s disadvantage. “What now?” asks the postal clerk. “You’re never satisfied.” “Everyone has things to mail,” says the man, “so how is it that in all these hours no one has been waiting in line here but me?” The postal clerk sees the man is about to leave and snarls, “Do you think this window was built to handle only your mail? I’m going to lunch.”