Elite Cleaners plc
Bash was a bricklayer from far away with a strong accent and a mop of black hair. I enjoyed his utter inscrutability. The man did not move his face for anyone or anything, and as a result, few could understand him. But he had walked deadpan across Europe on his own, learned the language and even when pranked, would barely blink. Having said that, Bash did have another side: a crazy recklessness in which he would laugh like a maniac and destroy things. And very occasionally he would crack a tiny wry smile – barely visible to the human eye, after which I would point at him, triumphant. 'Careful! Don't smile! It tells me what you're thinking.'
‘You’ll never know that.’
‘Are you thinking?’
‘Piss off,’ he would say, then his favourite, ‘you’re nothing special.’
I agreed, and we passed through glass doors to the lobby with its sharp blue sign saying, 'Elite Cleaners plc' and the company's devious strapline 'Number One in Cleaning.' Down the corridor and across a plastic carpet to the stairs. Plastic plants, plastic people, then into the stairwell where our voices boomed.
‘College boy,’ says Bash, evidently pleased with himself. ‘Just because you’ve read a lot of books.’ He keeps coming back to this.
‘I couldn’t read until I was twelve,’ I say, ‘so am making up for lost time.’
‘But what’s the point? You’re full of posh words.’
'I am. Jargon is my middle name, but I try not to use it.'
‘Yes. Jargon.’ He repeats the word twice, enjoying its shape. ‘Most of the time I can’t understand you.’
We enter the changing room and begin pulling our kit from the lockers. ‘That’s pretty rich coming from you,’ I say. ‘As someone who needs his falafel order translated’ (I was referring here to a delightful breakdown in communication that had occurred ordering lunch on the previous day). ‘Any area of knowledge has its jargon. Would you expect me, a novice, to understand your bricklayer words? Of course not. You worked hard for that knowledge and that vocab. I did too.’
We wriggle awkwardly on the wooden benches, pulling on white overalls, white boots, hoods, gloves and finally the visors which stick out like baseball caps. The floor is slick and upon standing, we look like spacemen.
‘So,’ says Bash. ‘What do you know?’ Face blank. Visor twitching.
I take him seriously. ‘History,’ I say. ‘Philosophy definitely.’ I rummage in the back of my locker for the work rota. ‘Psychology too. Lots of books. I have quick words, so don’t mess with me.’
'It's here,' says Bash, and he waves the rota towards me. 'I did have one good teacher at school. She taught me ancient history. It's very interesting you know. There were some bad boys back then and I don’t just mean European. I know my Roman Emperors, same as anyone else.'
‘I bet you do Bash, but you make a lousy know-it-all. You’ve got to get pompous and belt it out. Like: do you know that the Emperors of Imperial Rome added only one new province to the Empire: a tiny primitive shithole off the coast of Gaul, shrouded in mist and full of crazy tribal fucks who killed anything they did not understand? That was England.’
I wait. Bash blinks.
'Before the Emperors were four hundred years of teeming radical Republicanism, assembly-based mass public meetings and smart collective decision-making. It was the citizen-soldiers of Republican Rome – in their own forums, electing their own generals, making a few good laws and allocating resources to massive engineering works – that built the Empire and took over the ‘known world’ – not the fucking Emperors!’
‘Are you ok?’
I shrug.
‘You need help. Maybe a doctor.’
‘Could be. ‘Dear doctor, I can read. Any chance of corrective surgery?’’
‘No,’ Bash interrupts, surprising me. ‘Don’t let them do that.’ He is suddenly, unaccountably, coming to my defence. ‘Fucking doctors.’ He stares down at the rota. ‘This is not good.’
‘What.’
‘Am learning English with a nutcase.’
‘No, really. What’s the problem?’
‘We have 406 and 921. It’s the 9 I don’t like. Maybe we should get that done first and work our way down.’
‘If you say so.’
Walking along the corridor, Bash asks, as he often does, whether he should return to college. He sees me as an alien being but doesn’t want to be a cleaner all his life and has been looking for a course – something practical that makes money. A while back, I helped him with an official letter, and now he wonders if I could do the same with an educational application. I tell him to avoid university at all costs, though I would gladly help if he wanted. But he says, 'I hate words.’
‘Really?’
‘I have to search for them, like at the bottom of a bin and just out of reach. None are mine. Am telling you: English is a fortress.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘You should be.’
'It does allow us to communicate though, or at least on a good day. Imagine if we had no common words at all!'
The half-smile. ‘It would be quieter.’ He nods. ‘Like on the fourth floor. And I wouldn’t have to listen to you.’
'True. But we’re already losing words. You can't say 'lie;' 'hypocrisy;' 'democracy; 'evidence;' even the word 'we' – they've all been purposely gutted of meaning and lay there like boneless chickens. Politicians and adverts have abused them and now they're gone. It makes communication impossible. You know, a bit like us when we try to talk.'
Blank-faced, Bash listens.
‘Tell you what,’ I continue, ‘in 1651, a short and nasty little Englishman by the name of Thomas Hobbes translated a book written two thousand years before him that said the ancient Greek world collapsed ‘because words lost their meanings.’ That’s a weird reason for a whole culture to die. I guess they couldn’t talk. After the words were lost, they started killing one another and had a particular interest in plastering each other – alive – into walls. I think the same thing is happening to words today.’ I waved my hand. ‘Without the plastering.’
‘Buried in walls,’ says Bash, impressed.
‘That’s right.’
‘And plastering.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And the Tower of Babel which they could not build because they could not talk to each other.’
‘Good one. I had not thought of that.’
‘And nowadays everything’s a rip-off anyway.’ He looks down at his shoes. ‘It’s all lies.’
We sign out the fat 20 mm hoses and drag them snaking along the corridor. The dented chrome doors to the lift draw open, and we step into its glinting steel box, pulling in our kit and complaining. Working quickly, we fasten the hoses to the massive taps at the back of the lift, Bash presses nine and we judder upwards.
‘I’d be good in prison,’ I say, mostly to myself. ‘I can read books and write letters for other inmates.’
‘Put on your gloves,’ he says.
‘Ok.’
‘You’re not going to like 921, college boy. It’s disgusting.’
‘Worse than the library?’
No response from Mr Talkative. Instead, he turns the big red taps on full, and we listen as the pumps gain power. 'I hate the rich,' he says, expressionless. 'They're nothing special.'
The sound of the motor increases and I can feel the pressure build in the hose. 'Jesus. Is this ok? You've turned it way up high.'
Evidently not ok. Maniac Bash is back.
‘Get ready! Hang on!’ He is roaring and laughing as the engine noise swells and he extravagantly positions himself in front of the doors, crouching to absorb the kickback from the hose. ‘Visors down!’
‘Oh Jesus.’
The lift stops with a hiss, and for a second, there is silence. We brace ourselves and glance at one another. Then the doors click open.
The room before us is of white plastic, neon-lit and smeared with dirt. The smell is so bad I wince, and it takes a few seconds for my eyes to focus. Half-naked people are swaying back and forth, groaning, some just standing there. A noise in the corner comes from two who are fighting, but absurdly, like squealing windmills. Another, close to us, picks at her legs and scowls. There are streaks of blood on the floor, and some of the rags they wear are stained a violent red.
But it was not the smell, nor the dirt, nor even the primitive sounds that disturbed me. After all, most of their wounds are just scratches – often self-inflicted – and the puddles of piss don't seem to bother them. What shocks is their avoidance of human contact. Their eyes do not seek yours. That most basic of human reflexes, shared with most animals and birds, is to engage in eye-to-eye communication, to locate you and be recognised. Yet these high-paying customers will bend their heads back or turn away to prevent that. If you hold their faces right in front of you, hard, they will look straight up, as though at a skyscraper, again avoiding your eyes. These are the children of the rich elite. They have everything they want, though barely use it, and instead pace like caged cats and grunt and cry and claw at one another, having largely lost the power of speech.
A combination of my growing disgust and Bash's psychosis, at last, overwhelms us and whooping, we open the hoses full blast, spraying white foam all over them and the walls and covering the steel furniture. Beside me, Bash is shouting, 'What the fuck?! Fill it!'
Soon, there is nothing but a bulging wall of white approaching us, streaked black and moving towards the lift itself. I can hear the retching of those inside.
‘406?’ Asks Bash, a picture of calm.
My hose is dribbling, eyes wide, and I am breathing hard.
‘At last! He says, somehow triumphant yet entirely devoid of expression. ‘Dr Kung-Fu-Bullshit is lost for words!’
And we grin.