“In the days before the Ruin—what were you? What sort of work did you do? How did you earn your living?”
He knew that, pointless as the question seemed, there was something that mattered behind it; his face was being searched for the truth and the ring of listeners had ceased to jostle and were waiting in silence for the answer.
“I—I was a clerk,” he stammered, bewildered.
“A clerk,” the other repeated—as it seemed to Theodore suspiciously. “There were a great many different kinds of clerks—they did all sorts of things. What did you do?”
“I was a civil servant,” Theodore explained. “A clerk in the Distribution Office—in Whitehall.”
“That means you wrote letters—did accounts?”
“Yes. Wrote letters, principally ... and filed them. And drew up reports....”
The question sent him back through the ages. In the eye of his mind he saw his daily office—the shelves, the rows of files, interminable files—and himself, neat-suited, clean-fingered, at his desk. Neat-suited, clean-fingered and idling through a short day’s work; with Cassidy’s head at the desk by the window—and Birnbaum, the Jew boy, who always wore a buttonhole.... He brought himself back with an effort, from then to now—from the seemly remembrance of the life bureaucratic to a crowd of evil-smelling savages....
“You were always that—just a clerk? You have never had any other way of earning a living?”... And again he knew that the answer mattered, that his “No!” was listened for intently.
“You weren’t ever an engineer?” the old man persisted. “Or a scientific man of any kind?”