The Table
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Why would she need a television set at the tenement when she can peer into the polished table of the Great Leader? It is her window on the world at his august fingertips that displays his glorious expansion of the motherland.
She changes the direction of her hand’s circular motion and stares at her reflection to gauge the progress of this labour of love. Her shoulder is stiff again, and the arthritis in her knuckles pains her as she polishes, yet such encumbrances are trivial. She feels more privileged than any babushka in the federation. Millions would give anything for such proximity to the sun. And to think, she is just a humble cleaning woman. Her face is not quite there. It is still blurred by wax. Only when the table reveals the crystal clear image of her puffy, pale cheeks, baggy eyes and greying hair will she know that the sheen on this masterpiece of oak is ready for the coming day. She changes direction again and presses the cloth against the wood with renewed vigour. Her back burns, but the discomfort is a price worth paying. She knows this table more intimately than the notched, pitted counter in the communal kitchen of her home. Every evening, as a hush falls across the city and the palace empties to become peacefully silent, she inspects it with dedication. The presidential table is seven meters long with a moulded apron and sculpted legs, says the official guidebook, a copy of which she showed her beloved grandson Yuri when he visited on his way to the front. The world’s statesmen have sat here to imbibe the Great Leader’s wisdom as he extends the reach of their civilization. History is woven into its very grain. As her hands work their way towards the centre, her excitement grows and, suddenly, the details in her face become visible. This is a moment she waits for every evening, for it is when her screen comes to life. The Great Leader appears before her, instructing his generals, telling them how to conduct the patriotic campaign, applying his strategic mastery. |
EUGENE O'TOOLE is a freelance journalist in London. He writes short stories and has gained grateful recognition in a few competitions. His first novel, Molly Path, a working-class story for young adults, was published by Hawkwood Books in August. He is married and has three daughters.
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She examines his noble features, rounded but stern, an orb bisected by an imposing, manly mustache. His penetrating eyes explore a map of liberated territory. He is pointing to a city, the site of a famous victory, no doubt. His reflection fades and now she sees the troops marching in perfect formation unto war, so fine in their crisp tunics, so disciplined. There is her grandson, her beautiful boy, handsome beneath his helmet, his rifle as polished as her table. Now he is handing out bread, dispensing medicine, shepherding the children watched with admiration by the womenfolk. She is overcome with pride that he is disseminating the virtues of the motherland with the needy peoples whom their generous state takes under its wing. She recalls the dignity of his expression when he told her that military service was his calling. We will advance the motherland’s borders to emancipate lesser peoples from their corrupt leaders, babushka. We will bestow upon them the gifts of order and progress.
These pictures disappear and she finishes her work then trudges home through the dark streets of the city. A leaden wind hints at imminent snow, her ankles throb, and age weighs her down. It is a burden being old, the need to work in order to offset a tiny pension, but she is sustained by the knowledge that her sacrifices are for the greater glory and Yuri’s future. The thought of the Great Leader smiling in praise of her loyalty eases her load.
This reverie is interrupted by the howl of a solitary dog as she reaches her block. She climbs the concrete stairs and catches her breath outside the door of the collective apartment. As she enters, she feels the warmth immediately, smells the boiled cabbage, is revived by the camaraderie of her neighbors filling the space left by her grandson.
As she lies in her bunk beneath Olga, she hears her old friend praying for their troops. The woman is a saint whose supplications propel them towards victory with such devotional force that she knows her lad is safe in the palms of angels. She recreates his face, such an upstanding, courteous boy, so well-mannered, so kind to his babushka. She does not fear for him at the front, for the invincibility of the federation shields him with its iron destiny.
She rises at dawn and must break ice in the pail in order to wash. The sounds of the waking estate are muffled by a blanket of snow. There are holes in her boots and water seeps into her stockings as she tramps into the metropolitan centre. The trams are so packed with bureaucrats these days it is easier to walk, even if the journey is tedious. She likes to look in the windows of the bakery and smell the cooked pastries, although it has been closed these past months due to shortages of flour.
The presidential palace is busy. As she mops the marble floor of the grand hall, she watches activity outside the anteroom to the Great Leader’s suite. Ambassadors and ministers come and go with entourages of underlings, serious men and women clutching papers, their demeanour sober, expressions grave. Generals in the high command posture, their hats pinned under their arms.
She returns to the basement to buff the silverware for the feast to commemorate independence. This reminds her that she must polish her table especially well. It is a task she anticipates more than any other in the hush that descends after the palace staff depart. As she sits in the cleaner’s closet chewing cheese and pickle, she thinks of the familiar, comforting face she will see in the stateroom.
It is evening now and she wanders the noiseless corridors with her bucket containing cloths and wax as she has these twenty years. She enters the empty chamber and shuts the door with a soft click. She scoops a fingernail of wax on her cloth and sets to work at the opposite end to the leader’s chair. She spreads the wax thinly, as the table is pristine, but dutifully follows her routine. She glances at the clock, knowing that within half an hour she will have reached the middle. It is there that she always stops to catch her breath and stare into the table. That is when her patriarch appears and her admiration overflows.
Today, however, something has changed. An unusual tiredness stiffens her arms and her shoulders are taut. Perhaps she is ill? She hears herself exhaling as she labours to reach her objective. She is inclined to look at the clock again, but resists because doing so would provoke guilt. She loves her task and does not care how long this endures, yet something is amiss. It takes her forty-five minutes to reach the middle. How can this be?
She steps back, trying to ascertain what has changed, then concentrates intensely as she always does. Slowly, the Great Leader’s round face takes shape, coming into focus, and for an instant she is calmed. She awaits his paternal smile, but what is this? He is farther away than before, beyond her reach. His brow is furrowed, his eyes glare, his fist is clenched, his generals are uneasy. Is he angry? She cannot tell, for she has never seen him in the flesh. She is unnerved, her legs shake, she finds herself quite breathless. She pulls out a chair and sits to regain her composure.
Her unease persists on the bleak journey home. Inexplicably, the streets seem less familiar, filled with unexpected shadows, and she suspects her mind is playing tricks. Is she not of the generation that survived the siege, resisted the invader’s onslaught? Her shoulders are hunched. She does not feel invincible tonight.
This condition must be etched upon her face, for Olga asks her what is wrong. It is as if her friend can read her inner thoughts, so uncanny is her instinct. She dismisses these cares but heads for her bunk, saying she is under the weather, it is a chill, she will be fine in the morning. Olga follows her with a suspicious glance, eyes flitting like a moth disturbed by a flicker in the twilight.
She tosses and turns beneath the blanket, troubled by dreams of animals hunting outside the cabin of her childhood. Their prey steals with panic into the obscurity of the forest. When she drifts off at last, Yuri comes to her, but her grandson no longer smiles.
In the morning, a blizzard whips the streets and lashes her sore spine. She resolves that on her day of rest she will buy something to wrap around her neck. Hawkers in the flea market sell the clothing of the dead at bargain prices. Perhaps she will find a woolen shawl.
At the palace, she pours tea from the samovar that the cook puts out, but is not perturbed by hunger. Instead, she is replete with trepidation, unsettled by the previous day’s experience. She goes about her chores, but with a novel drudgery, biding time, waiting for the evening to see what she shall see.
The day is long and the generals throng the corridors, the hectic clip of their boots on crystalline floors a staccato that echoes throughout the building. They brush past her as she works as if she were invisible. She cleans, eats her cheese, rests, then cleans some more until the time comes for her principal task. The palace is no longer silent. The grand hall has become a war room that never rests.
This evening she is apprehensive. She stares from the doorway of the stateroom at the table. It seems longer than before and, as she approaches, stretches into the distance. The Great Leader’s chair at the far end is unreachable. She fears that if she sets off to walk there now she will never arrive.
She begins to polish, a task that proves more arduous than it has ever been. The surface no longer yields to her cloth but resists, demanding more exertion, and she finds blemishes that she cannot erase.
She has been at work an hour and to her dismay has not yet reached the middle. She redoubles her efforts, her forearms aching with tensile stress, her crooked hands stiffening. At last she reaches the halfway point and rests both palms upon the polished wood, awaiting her reward. She concentrates. Finally, a shape forms, but it is grey and indistinct and not what she is expecting. The table looks more vast than ever, extending to immeasurable length, stretching within a room whose walls retreat to accommodate it.
Figures emerge from the lustre and, suddenly, when she realises what they are, she stumbles backwards to the floor. She clutches the chair to raise her ageing body but there is a weakness in her knees that she notices only now. Her legs quiver and she has to sit, the still air interrupted by her wheezing. For the first time in her life, she considers abandoning a duty that has defined her.
Yet these images swallow her in their dreadful maw. Men in uniform, soldiers with guns, rampage with a lust for blood. She watches them in horror from behind, concealed within their trench coats, slaughtering innocents, putting children to their bayonets, raping women as they find them. Who are these monsters? Is this the atrocious enemy she is told of?
All around lie ruins, hellish smoke rising from the rubble, cadavers of civilians heaped in bloody piles. The soldiers go about their heinous work with mechanical determination then stop, rigid, halted in a seizure. They turn to face her, with purposeful inertia, and she shields her eyes, expecting something terrible.
An inexplicable compulsion lowers her hands to bring the features of this murderous horde into focus through her tears. Their brows are delicate, their eyes blue as a summer sky above the steppes, their cheeks rosy with youth, their lips finely sketched, and she is overcome with relief, and love, for they are all to a man her darling Yuri and smile at her like he did on the day he marched to war.
Then those lips stretch to reveal obscene, bloody teeth transformed to yellow fangs. The soldiers become the demonic beasts of her nightmare, misshapen, shrieking creatures that tear at the flesh of their victims with unnatural hunger. Behind them glowers a figure in abysmal black screaming visceral hatred from a twisted mouth, his bent finger pointing at a map. It is the Great Leader.
A mournful cry rises from the fathomless recesses of her soul. She abandons her cloths and wax and runs through the corridors wailing, overcome by consternation, deranged with bewilderment. She flees the palace into the shivering night never to return, never to polish the table again, never to see the ghosts in its waxen film. She will perish in the lonely winter listening to Olga’s prayers, haunted by Yuri’s crimes.
These pictures disappear and she finishes her work then trudges home through the dark streets of the city. A leaden wind hints at imminent snow, her ankles throb, and age weighs her down. It is a burden being old, the need to work in order to offset a tiny pension, but she is sustained by the knowledge that her sacrifices are for the greater glory and Yuri’s future. The thought of the Great Leader smiling in praise of her loyalty eases her load.
This reverie is interrupted by the howl of a solitary dog as she reaches her block. She climbs the concrete stairs and catches her breath outside the door of the collective apartment. As she enters, she feels the warmth immediately, smells the boiled cabbage, is revived by the camaraderie of her neighbors filling the space left by her grandson.
As she lies in her bunk beneath Olga, she hears her old friend praying for their troops. The woman is a saint whose supplications propel them towards victory with such devotional force that she knows her lad is safe in the palms of angels. She recreates his face, such an upstanding, courteous boy, so well-mannered, so kind to his babushka. She does not fear for him at the front, for the invincibility of the federation shields him with its iron destiny.
She rises at dawn and must break ice in the pail in order to wash. The sounds of the waking estate are muffled by a blanket of snow. There are holes in her boots and water seeps into her stockings as she tramps into the metropolitan centre. The trams are so packed with bureaucrats these days it is easier to walk, even if the journey is tedious. She likes to look in the windows of the bakery and smell the cooked pastries, although it has been closed these past months due to shortages of flour.
The presidential palace is busy. As she mops the marble floor of the grand hall, she watches activity outside the anteroom to the Great Leader’s suite. Ambassadors and ministers come and go with entourages of underlings, serious men and women clutching papers, their demeanour sober, expressions grave. Generals in the high command posture, their hats pinned under their arms.
She returns to the basement to buff the silverware for the feast to commemorate independence. This reminds her that she must polish her table especially well. It is a task she anticipates more than any other in the hush that descends after the palace staff depart. As she sits in the cleaner’s closet chewing cheese and pickle, she thinks of the familiar, comforting face she will see in the stateroom.
It is evening now and she wanders the noiseless corridors with her bucket containing cloths and wax as she has these twenty years. She enters the empty chamber and shuts the door with a soft click. She scoops a fingernail of wax on her cloth and sets to work at the opposite end to the leader’s chair. She spreads the wax thinly, as the table is pristine, but dutifully follows her routine. She glances at the clock, knowing that within half an hour she will have reached the middle. It is there that she always stops to catch her breath and stare into the table. That is when her patriarch appears and her admiration overflows.
Today, however, something has changed. An unusual tiredness stiffens her arms and her shoulders are taut. Perhaps she is ill? She hears herself exhaling as she labours to reach her objective. She is inclined to look at the clock again, but resists because doing so would provoke guilt. She loves her task and does not care how long this endures, yet something is amiss. It takes her forty-five minutes to reach the middle. How can this be?
She steps back, trying to ascertain what has changed, then concentrates intensely as she always does. Slowly, the Great Leader’s round face takes shape, coming into focus, and for an instant she is calmed. She awaits his paternal smile, but what is this? He is farther away than before, beyond her reach. His brow is furrowed, his eyes glare, his fist is clenched, his generals are uneasy. Is he angry? She cannot tell, for she has never seen him in the flesh. She is unnerved, her legs shake, she finds herself quite breathless. She pulls out a chair and sits to regain her composure.
Her unease persists on the bleak journey home. Inexplicably, the streets seem less familiar, filled with unexpected shadows, and she suspects her mind is playing tricks. Is she not of the generation that survived the siege, resisted the invader’s onslaught? Her shoulders are hunched. She does not feel invincible tonight.
This condition must be etched upon her face, for Olga asks her what is wrong. It is as if her friend can read her inner thoughts, so uncanny is her instinct. She dismisses these cares but heads for her bunk, saying she is under the weather, it is a chill, she will be fine in the morning. Olga follows her with a suspicious glance, eyes flitting like a moth disturbed by a flicker in the twilight.
She tosses and turns beneath the blanket, troubled by dreams of animals hunting outside the cabin of her childhood. Their prey steals with panic into the obscurity of the forest. When she drifts off at last, Yuri comes to her, but her grandson no longer smiles.
In the morning, a blizzard whips the streets and lashes her sore spine. She resolves that on her day of rest she will buy something to wrap around her neck. Hawkers in the flea market sell the clothing of the dead at bargain prices. Perhaps she will find a woolen shawl.
At the palace, she pours tea from the samovar that the cook puts out, but is not perturbed by hunger. Instead, she is replete with trepidation, unsettled by the previous day’s experience. She goes about her chores, but with a novel drudgery, biding time, waiting for the evening to see what she shall see.
The day is long and the generals throng the corridors, the hectic clip of their boots on crystalline floors a staccato that echoes throughout the building. They brush past her as she works as if she were invisible. She cleans, eats her cheese, rests, then cleans some more until the time comes for her principal task. The palace is no longer silent. The grand hall has become a war room that never rests.
This evening she is apprehensive. She stares from the doorway of the stateroom at the table. It seems longer than before and, as she approaches, stretches into the distance. The Great Leader’s chair at the far end is unreachable. She fears that if she sets off to walk there now she will never arrive.
She begins to polish, a task that proves more arduous than it has ever been. The surface no longer yields to her cloth but resists, demanding more exertion, and she finds blemishes that she cannot erase.
She has been at work an hour and to her dismay has not yet reached the middle. She redoubles her efforts, her forearms aching with tensile stress, her crooked hands stiffening. At last she reaches the halfway point and rests both palms upon the polished wood, awaiting her reward. She concentrates. Finally, a shape forms, but it is grey and indistinct and not what she is expecting. The table looks more vast than ever, extending to immeasurable length, stretching within a room whose walls retreat to accommodate it.
Figures emerge from the lustre and, suddenly, when she realises what they are, she stumbles backwards to the floor. She clutches the chair to raise her ageing body but there is a weakness in her knees that she notices only now. Her legs quiver and she has to sit, the still air interrupted by her wheezing. For the first time in her life, she considers abandoning a duty that has defined her.
Yet these images swallow her in their dreadful maw. Men in uniform, soldiers with guns, rampage with a lust for blood. She watches them in horror from behind, concealed within their trench coats, slaughtering innocents, putting children to their bayonets, raping women as they find them. Who are these monsters? Is this the atrocious enemy she is told of?
All around lie ruins, hellish smoke rising from the rubble, cadavers of civilians heaped in bloody piles. The soldiers go about their heinous work with mechanical determination then stop, rigid, halted in a seizure. They turn to face her, with purposeful inertia, and she shields her eyes, expecting something terrible.
An inexplicable compulsion lowers her hands to bring the features of this murderous horde into focus through her tears. Their brows are delicate, their eyes blue as a summer sky above the steppes, their cheeks rosy with youth, their lips finely sketched, and she is overcome with relief, and love, for they are all to a man her darling Yuri and smile at her like he did on the day he marched to war.
Then those lips stretch to reveal obscene, bloody teeth transformed to yellow fangs. The soldiers become the demonic beasts of her nightmare, misshapen, shrieking creatures that tear at the flesh of their victims with unnatural hunger. Behind them glowers a figure in abysmal black screaming visceral hatred from a twisted mouth, his bent finger pointing at a map. It is the Great Leader.
A mournful cry rises from the fathomless recesses of her soul. She abandons her cloths and wax and runs through the corridors wailing, overcome by consternation, deranged with bewilderment. She flees the palace into the shivering night never to return, never to polish the table again, never to see the ghosts in its waxen film. She will perish in the lonely winter listening to Olga’s prayers, haunted by Yuri’s crimes.