The Word Read online

  THE WORD

  The Word

  William Lane

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  Copyright© 2018 William Lane

  First Published 2018

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  A cataloguing-in-publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-1-925760-13-2

  Thank you Jonathon Lane for your ideas and encouragement You helped me write this story

  Prologue

  Janis was knitting while watching television. Kenric sat nearby, reading Janis’s knitting magazine (or was it a manual? he wondered – no, too masculine a word).

  ‘Where did you go for lunch today?’ Janis asked Kenric.

  ‘The little Spanish place,’ he replied.

  ‘Same as yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Just myself,’ said Kenric.

  ‘So you just sit there in silence?’ asked Janis.

  ‘I talked to the waitress a little bit. I’ve learned she’s called Paloma. And she’s Spanish.’

  ‘Well, she would be,’ said Janis.

  Kenric was noting the knitting magazine’s patterns, instructions and strange exhortations:

  Tension is most important!

  HOW TO CHECK YOUR TENSION –

  Before you commence knitting, check your tension carefully – on this depends the success of the finished article.

  ‘Why do you always creep off for lunch by yourself, Kenric?’ asked Janis. ‘It’s borderline pathetic, I almost feel sorry for you.’ Janis added in a mutter, ‘Sometimes I think I will never understand you.’

  ‘KENRIC’

  – in three sizes with or without sleeves –

  Janis’s face had set with the resignation that follows long-term disappointment. Perhaps disappointment had yet to occur to Kenric – an undefined restlessness better characterised him.

  ‘What did you do today, Janis?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, this and that. The accounts for The Foundation. I bought some wool – I’m trying out a pattern from that old knitting magazine. And I had my hair done. Which you didn’t notice.’

  Kenric apologised.

  ‘Never mind,’ sighed Janis. ‘You think I’m not used to it by now?’ Janis lowered her knitting needles, looked at Kenric and shook her head: ‘Now, Kenric, I wish you wouldn’t wear that ghastly old sweater. Let me make you a new one, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  A

  Holiday

  Sweater

  to

  Capture

  the

  Romantic

  Mood

  of

  Carefree

  Amalfi

  on

  Europe’s

  Holiday

  Coastline

  ‘I don’t need a new sweater, do I?’

  ‘But you look worn-out and scruffy in that thing. I don’t want to remember my husband looking like that.’

  Special Note –

  Avoid

  Disappointment –

  Buy the wool

  Recommended

  Buy wisely –

  Buy enough of the

  One dye-lot –

  The same dye-lot

  Cannot be

  Repeated

  ‘There’s even a pattern in that magazine named “Kenric”.’ Janis smiled.

  – in three sizes with or without sleeves –

  Janis had resigned herself to the probability that Kenric would never receive another promotion.

  A Lightweight – with or without sleeves

  Ideal for TV knitting

  One of The Foundation’s other employees had recently asked Janis, ‘What kind of man is Kenric?’ She had had to think.

  ‘Adventurer’? No, not that. Kenric was in advertising, always had been, and had only ever had the one job, working for The Firm. ‘Huntsman’? No, he was certainly not an aggressive type – not even forward. ‘High Score’? No, no, not that either – never a high achiever.

  Don’t Forget

  Vagabond, Stroller, Fairway, Shipshape, Riverside, Topnotcher, Ski-high, Sightseer.

  Well, ‘Riverside’, perhaps.

  Perhaps I should have married that Aaron, Janis thought, looking at Kenric from over her knitting needles. Aaron had definitely liked her during their last lemon-lit year of school. Janis had seen Aaron recently, in the pink light of the butcher’s. After all these years, Aaron looked exactly the same – only stretching a bit, she admitted. Aaron was big. A bigger man … to have married someone larger …

  SIZE B –

  WITH PATTERN –

  main colour…………………....16 balls

  contrasting colour………………3 balls

  WITHOUT PATTERN……….19 balls

  Nineteen balls – that was a lot. She preferred men without pattern.

  ‘Your turn to decide,’ said Janis, handing Kenric the TV guide. ‘But tonight, I don’t want to watch anything like that dreadful Blowfly film.’

  ‘I liked it,’ remarked Kenric. ‘Remember the little man caught in the giant spider’s web, screaming in his tiny voice, “Help me! Help me!”? I found that funny, for some reason. It was so true, somehow.’

  ‘True?!’ exclaimed Janis. ‘I can’t think how. It was ridiculously B-grade.’

  ‘I meant true metaphorically.’

  ‘I never really understood metaphor, Kenric, and I think I’m sick of trying,’ said Janis. ‘Can’t we just speak plainly?’

  ‘Now there’s an idea,’ said Kenric. ‘Actually, it’s not called The Blowfly, Janis, it’s The Fly.’

  ‘Whatever. You’re always so finicky with words.’

  ‘That’s my job,’ said Kenric.

  ‘But can’t you leave words at work?’ Janis wondered.

  Kenric had never thought of that before. But yes, perhaps he should do just that. Janis sometimes said interesting things, despite not wanting to.

  1

  The next day at The Firm, Ramsey – in retail – burst into Kenric’s office just before lunchtime. ‘Now, Ken, how’s about lunch?’ he almost shouted at Kenric, as was Ramsey’s way. ‘Five minutes? I thought we’d go to that little Greek joint on the corner.’

  Introducing

  ‘Ramsey’

  – in three sizes –

  (Showerproof )

  ‘The corner? You mean the Spanish place?’ asked Kenric.

  ‘Yeah, whatever – Greek, Spanish, Lebanese – are you in? Been wanting a word with you, Ken. By the way, your desk is a bloody shambles, mate. You might be an f-ing genius with words, but there’s no excuse for untidiness. Meet you by the lift in five. Have a leak first.’

  Kenric frowned. He knew this moment would worry him sooner or later – why, he could not say. Then, with a single swivel of his chair, Kenric was staring at a man in the building opposite. The stranger, in shadowy profile, leant back with one foot up on a desk, and gestured largely as he spoke – speaking to himself, it seemed.

  Soon Ramsey and Kenric were walking the main street, jostled in the lunch hour. Kenric saw the drab restaurant on the corner, and his stomach curiously fluttered at the thought of the waitress, Paloma.

  ‘The thing about you, mate,’ said Ramsey, as he tucked in to a steak, ‘is this – what kind of a bloke are
you?’ Ramsey dabbed at his mouth with his napkin; a deeper than usual sheen glossed his face, and his eyes were a painfully peeled-away blue. ‘I’m a bit of a philosopher, myself,’ maintained Ramsey. He pointed his steak knife at Kenric: ‘What kind of a bloke are you?’

  Kenric dawdled a fork in his side salad.

  ‘Let me tell you this, Ken – I like you,’ said Ramsey. ‘You and me go back. Way back. We started at The Firm together. And let me tell you this: many people in The Firm like you. Now, I like to see people happy, Ken. It makes me happy.’

  Kenric offered a slice of cucumber the protection of a lettuce leaf.

  ‘Now, Ken – are you happy? What I’m trying to say is: are things at The Firm going the way you would like them to go? Look, let’s not beat about the bush – you joined The Firm God knows how many years ago, and after your first promotion you’ve been doing the same job ever since – when Quick, who’s now our boss, was a messenger boy, what, nine, ten years ago? He was our messenger boy, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I’m not interested in becoming a partner or anything like that, Ramsey,’ said Kenric, ‘you know that. You know me. I’m only interested in the message – the words and the message. I’m not much good at anything else, anyway.’

  ‘And you’re very good at what you do, Ken, everyone knows you’re the guy with the magic words. No focus groups, no market research, no whiteboards or brainstorming sessions when it comes to you and your work. You think up the brand names that sell, and the messages that stick. But you’re hopeless at the other stuff – hopeless – you’ve got no personal skills, no business skills, no marketing skills, you can’t draw and you’re no songwriter – and for someone who’s not dumb, you just show a general lack of awareness.’

  ‘But those other skills aren’t my job,’ said Kenric. ‘A man like me –’

  ‘I only want you to realise you’re vulnerable, Ken, because you’re highly, very highly specialised,’ Ramsey continued. ‘You live in a dream, completely focused on one thing – the words, the words that count, the words that stick. But this business is not all about the words, you know, and no business is. There’s more to a jingle – more to any ad – than the words. And there’s more to the world at large than words. That leaves you exposed, Ken. Sometimes I wish you’d be more aware of what’s going on around you – toughen up a little, face the real world. Words are only words, Ken, they’re not real – words are not reality.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m in danger of losing my job?’

  ‘Nah, mate, only that things are changing,’ said Ramsey. ‘Quick’s bursting with some new energy, wants to give The Firm a real shake-up. Something’s come over him. He’s changed – again. You know how he is. It’s these personal development and enrichment courses he’s always taking. He gets fancy notions – self-realisation, threshold performance – that sort of mumbo jumbo. Personally, I think he’s gone bonkers this time. But just remember this, Ken: there are always other firms.’

  ‘I know I get lost in words,’ Kenric admitted, ‘far too much for my own good –’

  ‘You do. Exactly. You’re a dreamer.’ Ramsey belched. ‘Ooh, look at that rump, will you …’

  Kenric looked at Ramsey’s empty plate.

  ‘Not here – there!’ gasped Ramsey, waggling a finger, indicating a waitress leaning over a table. ‘Do you still do it, you know, with your wife?’ Ramsey asked, wiping his jowls. With his tongue he made one last exploratory orbit of his lips, then settled down to the house red. ‘No? Not often? God, these young ones, they’re getting bigger with each generation.’ Ramsey moaned into his wineglass, while dragging the basket of congealing garlic bread towards himself. ‘It’s so frustrating, you’ve only got to look and – like with The Firm, Ken – if only you’d open your eyes and see!’

  Special Note –

  Avoid

  Disappointment –

  Ramsey, his pale eyes roaming, began licking the garlic dripline between his fingers.

  The next day Kenric rang Flower & Flower to suggest that they shelve the Hush Soap Suds project he was working on. It had occurred to him, in a slow flowering in his stomach, which usually meant he was working well, that Dove was a better name, the name, for the Flower & Flower product. Kenric consulted ‘dove’ in the dictionary, then leant back in his chair and repeated the sound: ‘dove’. Yes, it was good. But the accompanying message for the soap suds – what might be the message? Of course it must flow from the source word, from ‘dove’: soaring – spirit – freedom – flight; feelings of purgation, renewal, purification, rebirth, resurrection – that sort of thing. The words began to percolate in Kenric’s mind, his progress towards the perfect messaging measured with little stabs and contractions in his gut.

  Kenric adored words, whether the eye-catching monolithic splendour of the isolated brand name, the more intimate and confiding embrace of the accompanying message in smaller type, or, last but not least, the paragraphs of hard information squeezed into tiny type on the side or back of a packet. He harboured a secret preference for the concealed treasures of smaller type – those unexpected, unassuming subsidiary paragraphs. Now, as Kenric regarded the man across the road, whose face he could not quite see, he felt, for the first time, an impulse to ring that man, and divulge the message that even now was emerging in Kenric’s mind from the linguistic field accumulated about the word ‘dove’ (‘Middle English … akin to “dive”’) – a quickening of language that would soon distil and set into the product message.

  Perhaps Kenric’s love of words derived from his belated birth into language, for Kenric had been deaf as a small child, and experienced only at age eight the sudden activation of hearing. No doctor had been able to diagnose the cause of his deafness, let alone explain how his hearing came to correct itself. At the age of eight Kenric had experienced speech – and words in general – as a miracle, and he still did.

  Now he was older and well-practised with words, Kenric sometimes suspected he could go further with them – go beyond brand names, beyond messages even. What if the message were to be lengthened? Make it two lines, instead of one?

  He rubbed his jaw, considering the possibilities: two lines, instead of one … or even three. Quick always said, however, ‘they never read past the first phrase’.

  Sometimes Kenric would spot one of his products in the aisle of a supermarket, or advertised on a billboard by the road- or railside as he caught the train home. It gave him real pleasure to think he was presenting to the public beautiful words and elegant, eloquent messaging. Sometimes he felt tempted to tap strangers on the shoulder and say, ‘See those words? They’re mine.’ Yet anonymity afforded a deeper pleasure, and even when Janis invariably selected the one brand Kenric had named from the ten on offer, it was a pleasure he preferred to enjoy alone. It irritated him when he saw products that had been misnamed or were misleadingly labelled; it irritated him when the words did not match the product, the thing under the label. Inevitably a gap existed between words and things, he had to admit; for a start, the words were old, but the things – the products – were often new, after all –

  At that moment Quick, The Firm’s overseeing mind, banged on Kenric’s office door; Kenric swung around to face him.

  Huntsman

  ‘I want a word with you over lunch today, Kenric,’ said Quick. ‘Meet me at the lift in five. How is the Flower project going? Well? Good, we’ll talk about it at lunch. Five minutes. Ciao.’

  When Quick had first appeared at The Firm on work experience, his physical appearance was particularly unpromising: his clothes were nondescript, his face formless and impossible to recall. Since then, however, Quick had undergone a series of physical transformations in keeping with each ascending rank he somehow wrested from all others at The Firm, until now he was purposeful, concentrated, groomed and tanned. He had lost one accent and acquired another.

  Soon Kenric was following Quick, striding downtown in the direction of the Spanish restaurant, Kenric anxiously noting
that Ramsey and he had lunched at the same restaurant only the day before. The staff would think it odd he kept returning there, they would anticipate his order …

  ‘I don’t have much time, Kenric,’ Quick said, glancing at his watch. ‘Now, you know the next meeting of The Firm will be held first thing Monday, and I’ll have a few things to say on that occasion about The Firm at large.’ Quick spoke rapidly. ‘Some of the issues concern you, Kenric, so today I’m just preparing the ground. We’re pushing to capture a larger share of the market. I think you know that’s been in the air a while.’

  Kenric bit his bottom lip and nodded. First he had heard about it.

  ‘That requires a change in The Firm’s strategy,’ said Quick – Kenric now noticed Quick was modulating his tone, as if speaking to a child – ‘and that may not be an easy thing for you at first. I value you, Kenric. You are something of a freak. The thing is, you appeal to something higher in consumers than their base desire – but you’re going to have to expand your appeal. That’s the point. Basically, The Firm’s main thrust henceforth is to work on a larger base of desire. Until now you have isolated and worked on a single aspect of consumers’ desires, their desire for escape, for flight – for beauty, if you will. Now, Kenric, I want you to think more broadly than that, think big. What else do consumers want, Kenric, what do they really want, at base? The Firm has to expand its approach. Are you following me, Kenric?’

  Kenric looked at the pavement, watching the shoes pass. Quick crossed an intersection, although the light was red. Obliged to follow, Kenric was almost hit by a car. The driver shouted abuse.

  ‘Kenric, do you understand what drives consumers?’ continued Quick. ‘It’s this: competition. What is competition? It is the need to consume one another. Once upon a time it was to consume literally – nowadays, of course, this drive has been sublimated so we find many and varied expressions of people eating one another metaphorically. That’s consumerism, at base. To exploit this deep-seated cannibalistic drive, we must employ more aggression in our advertising. We need to make people feel they are buying a weapon when they buy one of our products – a weapon, Kenric. I don’t mind spelling it out.’