The Engineer Who Had Other Fish to Fry

Nobody knew the troubles he had to confront with since the day he was made redundant in his company. It was on a cool Friday around noon. He could see the signs of spring everywhere, but the days were still short and cold. The new changes in his life took place when he had completed 40 years. He did not know what to think about them. He was confused. He was still trying to understand why it had happened so quickly and unexpectedly. He still remembered how he had gone as white as a sheet when his boss had called for him: "Indeed, a very weird sensation", he thought with a point of ironical humour, "for a dark-skinned man". He had been one of the oldest employees in the company, but the relationship between the boss and the subordinates, no matter how long they had been there, was always reserved and professional. Besides, that piece of news he had read in a tabloid newspaper a couple of weeks ago…So, when he entered the bosses’ office that day, he had a very serious, ceremonial look on his face. The boss asked him to sit down, and went on to explain how bad the financial situation of the company was. "The general economic situation of our country now is far from rosy", he heard his boss saying to him, "but the outlook is not as gloomy as it sounds". Even though he was a trustworthy and competent design engineer, he instinctively realised that he was going to be dismissed. He mechanically shook the big, outstretched hand of the boss, and heard from him that he would be reemployed in case the company should get out of the doldrums it was in. "The crisis is certainly temporary, but we have to take measures to save the company, do you understand?" - added the boss. Yes, he did. He thought that there was something snake-like in the bosses' blue eyes. He was still listening to his boss when it suddenly dawned on him that he had read an advert of his company in a national tabloid newspaper. They had been seeking a young, dynamic design engineer with a management background to work on a project basis. He did not give any further thought to that, because he felt that he was still in the prime of his life. Yet that might have been the reason for his dismissal: he was regarded as ‘old’ and ‘too expensive’ to be kept in the company. Yes, the boss simply wanted to get rid of him in order to make the firm more profitable!

He went back to his office. He was feeling very angry. The first object he binned was the photograph in which he appeared shaking hands with the boss during the celebration of the firm golden jubilee five years ago. It used to hang behind his chair. Then he started with the shelves. He picked up some design books, an Oxford dictionary of the English language, separated the work files from the personal ones, put the letter on top of the books and deposited everything in a large leather bag he had always kept in the office. Then he moved to his desk. He took the photographs of his by now grown-up son from the table-top and put them in his briefcase, opened the drawers and bagged and binned everything that was in there. He was sure that his boss had lied to him. He did not want to take leave of his colleagues. He was glad that it was lunch time, otherwise everybody would have seen him packing his personal belongings: he would have had to withstand the inquiring looks, and he would have surely loathed the pitiful ones... He searched the office once more for any other personal objects to dispose of. He did not like the idea of leaving anything that could possibly give the new employee a clue of his predecessor’s identity. Nobody could have ever told that he had worked in that office for such a long time after he quietly closed the door behind him and left forever.

He spent the rest of the day wandering around the old woods in the northern part of the city. It was not very far away from his place, but he did not want to go home straight away. He knew that he was in a tight spot and needed time to think. He wanted to find the words to tell his girlfriend about the new situation. They had just bought a house and they were still paying instalments. Everybody would have to tighten their belt in the family. He was not sure about the way she would react to the piece of bad news he was bringing home. They had been living together for six years by now. His first wife had gone away and taken their son with her. He had then made up his mind never to marry again. At least not in a hurry!

It was getting dark when he opened the front garden gate of his house. "Where is the dog?" he thought as he drove in the garage. Bushy always welcomed him warmly when he returned home from work, wagging its tail animatedly, barking excitedly. The lights in the house were off. "Strange", he thought again, "she always comes home before me". He looked around to see whether his girlfriend’s car was there, too. It was not. That was really weird. He knew his girlfriend’s routine very well and he knew that there would be no ‘surprise’ birthday party this evening, because some friends had been invited for the weekend to celebrate the occasion. He did not like much noise around him. He unlocked the door, went in, turned on the lights and saw an envelope lying on the drawing-room table. He immediately recognised his girlfriend’s handwriting. He started feeling uncomfortable. The letter was addressed to him, but he did not open it. Instead, he went into the kitchen, made himself some tea, returned to the drawing-room, swept the ashes from the fireplace, put new logs in there, lit the fire, placed some candle sticks around the room, turned off the electric light, lit the candles, poured himself some tea and collapsed into the armchair beside the fireplace. He disliked artificial lights. The moonlight was coming in through the windows, filtered by white curtains. The atmosphere was peaceful and quiet. That had been the reason they had moved into such a remote district: its relative wilderness and silence. It was surrounded by unspoilt forests and the city electricity company had not yet put street lamps on the road outside. The nearest house was about two hundred metres away from theirs. In his previous whereabouts he was fond of going for walks at night and marvelling at the stars above and the darkness. Darkness always had a soothing effect on him. All that changed dramatically on the day the interfering electric company put street lamps everywhere in his district and he felt stranded in that. He used to tell his girlfriend, whose views differed considerably from his own, that artificial light enclosed humans in its deception, making them forget nature, making them fear it. She would only nod her head on these occasions. He would go on to explain how he felt the relation of darkness to light, and of silence to noise, as an ultimate question of space. He argued endlessly with his girlfriend about the meaning of life. He insisted on the idea that space was essential for everybody, otherwise it would be impossible to be ourselves, to spread out our consciousness or heighten our awareness, our powers of perception. This is exactly what city life and technological living could never offer him. His girlfriend was not very convinced about the advantages of living in the country. It had not been very easy to win her approval to buy that house. She preferred the glamour of the city, the endless blares and flickers of her television. She hated the threatening silence of country life. She could not stand being alone.

It was only after he had drunk two or three cups of tea that he managed to open his girlfriend’s letter. Indeed, he had a sudden premonition of what the absence of her car in the garage might mean, but he did not actually believe that she would dump him without bidding him farewell properly. "Very well," he said quietly. "It is time to know what surprises she has reserved for me this time". Her written English was good, her style was concise, and the content of her letter was shocking: she had simply packed her stuff in a big box and vanished with his dog, which she also liked very much.

When he was married and lost his job for the first time, he thought that he would quickly find another one, because the economy was doing well and the number of unemployed had tumbled to its lowest level in five years. That was not the case, though. He began to worry when his wife started asking whether he had already found something new. It became a maddening experience for him to get up early every morning just to see everyone leaving home at 7.30 to get into their cars and drive to their appointed pen. He had to stay indoors. He was afraid that the neighbours would scowl at him for living on the dole, even though he had paid his taxes on time and honestly for years. He felt uncomfortable then, but the situation was a different one now. His former wife at least warned him that she would go and take the child with her. She was afraid that he would not be able to keep the wolf from the door. They did not split up in hatred and frustration, but he was deeply disappointed about her lack of confidence in him. The ironical touch in the whole situation was that he had eventually managed to claw his way from joblessness. Now he was not married and the woman had left him without even knowing that he had been booted out. The ‘letter’ she had left behind consisted of no more than twelve sentences: "I am afraid I am leaving you today. I cannot bear life in the countryside. I have found a better paid job in another town. Sorry for taking the dog with me, but I love her too much. I shall send her back to you when the turmoil in my mind has calmed down. Please do not try to find me. It is no good for us both. Hope you will understand me some day. I wish you a Happy Birthday, my friend".

Yes, the situation was a bit different now, even better this time, because he did not have to worry about the neighbours. They were inhabitants from another planet who happened to live a hundred metres away from his house. His first thought was to get up, run into the garage, get into his car and start looking for her, but she did not say in the letter where she had gone. She did not want him to follow her either. After all, she had run away from him. "There is nothing I could effectively do at this time", he said to himself. "Trying to find her in a big city at night", he continued, "would certainly end up being a bit of a wild goose chase. Besides, I don’t want to involve the police in my affairs". He decided that he would sleep on it. He stood up, went into the kitchen, cut some slices of bread, got some cheese from the refrigerator, put everything on a plate, went back to the drawing-room, reached out for a candle, fetched a bottle of wine from the cellar, opened it and sat back in his armchair by the fire. "I don’t actually care about being unemployed. I’ve gone through this situation twice before, but in neither case did I succumb to circumstances. I’ll survive. I’ll have more time to dedicate to the house and travel around the world. The only fly in the ointment is that I have nobody with whom I can share this bottle of Hautes Côtes de Nuits right now", he said to himself. He had other fish to fry.

Do you have a story or a memory you have written and want to share with others? Just email it to askarlene@scrtc.com  and put the words short story in the subject line.  

Back to Short Stories.

TODAY'S HELPFUL HINT! When making your telephone calls, try to keep your costs down, even the long distance ones because part of living well is saving money by finding out how to save money in this world of spiraling expenses! We have a real inexpensive plan where you can call from anywhere for only 3.5 cents a minute. No need for cell phone plans or other expensive items. We all want the best value for our hard earned cash and we can do it for only 3.5 cents a minute nationwide or 10 cents a minute to over 200 countries with Telcom3. We have been using them for years. No state or federal taxes and we can call from anywhere using a toll free number. Check out Telcom3 today!

Buy & Sell Art at the Yessy.com Art Gallery

It is fun and easy to sell your stuff on ebay.

Get a FREE PayPal account now!

Got something to sell or looking for something? USFreeads has produced good results for us. Try it. Free Classifieds from USfreeads!