The Impracticalities of Ignorance

L had to admit that he’d grown tired of forever being criticised for his decision-making. Whether he chose to do good or bad; be altruistic or selfish, the way people treated him remained consistent.

‘It’s your own fault,’ said the coach driver, standing on the pavement next to his vehicle. He used a match to light a cigarette before offering one to L, which he declined with a wave of his hand.

‘This is exactly what I mean,’ said L, inspecting the bottom of his boot. ‘I’m merely trying to prepare for work this week, where I’ll be interviewed for a new position. But even now, as I come to you - a coach driver - with my concerns, you tell me that I’ve done something wrong. All I’m trying to do is understand. I’m trying to be a more successful person.’

‘Well,’ began the coach driver, taking a long contemplative drag. He looked up, suddenly, as if offered some new truth by the sky, then exhaled for a long time. L looked at him, leaning forward in anticipation of his sage reply. But there was nothing. The coach driver stubbed out his cigarette on the faded blue paint of the wheel arch then tossed the butt into some dry shrubs marking the boundary of the park. A smartly-dressed octogenarian turned briefly towards this scene, then went back to shuffling folding chairs around the stone epitaph.

L watched the driver shrug, climb aboard, and shut the doors.

Furious, L spent the next hour walking the tree-lined parks of the city. His only reprieve from self-criticism came when watching a squirrel burying nuts in the grass. The small creature darted from trunk to trunk, searching for acorns under the fallen oak leaves with what seemed like boundless energy. L was impressed by the squirrel’s devotion to the task at hand. Despite dogs on leads, a drunk man riding a bicycle, and a sudden gust of wind that sent dry sticks and oakmast cascading down from the bare canopy, the squirrel worked on. Ignorance, it seemed, was paying dividends.

As he returned to the pavement, L was struck by the decision to employ this method himself. If the squirrel could work with such intensity, oblivious to the potential dangers of its environment, then so could L. This epiphany halted him in his tracks, and he pulled his small notebook and pencil from his breast pocket. There was a need to remember this feeling. Having stopped so suddenly, he was forced to step sideways allowing a scowling woman to pass, pushing her two children in a pram. L could only mumble an apology before leaning against a telephone box and finally touching the blunted tip of his pencil to the paper. He managed to write the words IF A SQUIRREL in capital letters before pausing to replay what had just happened in his head. Had he imagined it, or had those small children been frowning at him? His eyes followed them up the road but they didn’t look back.

L checked the page and re-read the word IF many times before giving up trying to remember what it was he was going to write. He bit his top lip and slapped the telephone box hard with his hand. The notebook and pencil were deftly slipped back into his pocket.

*

He’d been out for hours before giving in to pangs of hunger. He felt quite suddenly weighed down by his lack of blood sugar, so took the shortcut through the arcades to a quiet basement bar he knew well. Having stepped through the street level doorway, he paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the almost dark, then descended the varnished wooden stairs to the next set of doors and walked through them as well.

‘Greetings!’ exclaimed the landlady, gesturing wildly from behind the bar then pumping his hand with the same vigour.

‘Are you alright?’ asked L, disarmed by such a warm welcome. He pivoted on his heel one way and then the other to take in the lively scene. The bar heaved with drinkers cheering and chanting and spilling their beers as they clanked glasses together in the musty darkness. Many were wearing scarves of the same colour.

‘You speak _______, don’t you?’ asked the landlady. She took his hand again, holding on tightly and squeezing it. He felt she was preventing him from leaving.

‘Errr, I speak a little, yes,’ said L.

‘I need you to ask them to leave,’ said the landlady, her eyes now panicked and insistent.

‘What? How?!’ cried L, trying to retract his hand.

The landlady gripped tighter. She didn’t blink.

‘What makes you think they’ll listen to me? And why do you want to get rid of them? You must be making a fortune!’ L was finally able to create some distance between himself and the landlady, wiping both palms on the sides of his trousers then crossing his arms, then resting his hands on the bar, then crossing his arms again.

‘Their team won the football match. They’re celebrating. Someone told them about our local ales. They’re drinking me dry.’

‘Well can’t you just take a few days off once that actually happens, and wait for the next delivery?’

‘It’s the Mayor’s funeral tomorrow,’ the landlady explained, wiping her own hands on her apron and clearing the bar of empty glasses in a quiet frenzy. ‘This was his favourite place to drink – you know this – so the wake will be happening here. We can’t toast to the deceased with dry kegs, can we?’

L was about to protest.

‘There will be one hundred people here tomorrow,’ she continued. ‘The widow doesn’t like me as it is, knowing what she does about the affair.’ She looked at the floor for a moment then adjusted her bra. ‘So I have to keep up my side of the agreement for the proceedings and ensure things run smoothly. This is very important to me. He was a good man, the Mayor, and as strong as an ox in the bedroom.’

L had his eyes closed. He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger until the image passed. He remembered the squirrel. He remembered its success through a commitment to ignorance. But how could he ignore this? Even the image of the squirrel was fading fast – dissolving into the claustrophobic atmosphere of the basement bar. But he couldn’t leave now. He wouldn’t be welcomed back, and besides, he had no food at home. It was already late and in any of the other pubs with an open kitchen, he’d run the risk of bumping into his ex-wife and her book group. This was L’s last refuge in the city. In the dim light, the landlady watched him pensively. Turning cogs and aching belly.

‘I need you,’ the landlady said. There was a sympathetic note to her voice that hung in the stale air for a moment before dissolving. ‘Just do something good for once, won’t you? You’re such a let-down. Do something good for this town, for the Mayor, for me.’

L was so weary he held his belly in both hands and let out a small groan which may have been from hunger or pure despair. He sucked in a large breath through his nostrils and opened his eyes. 

L made sure to order the venison pie and two pints of ale for himself (on the house), before climbing onto one of the bar stools.

When he began to speak _________ at full volume, it felt disjointed: a mess of half-remembered phrases from his year working abroad, which suddenly seemed a very long time ago:

‘Please, fellow drinkers… of the ale. I am asking you leave. There is no more ale. Because you have consumed all for your celebration of the foot… game. You are not wanted here. Please finish your drinks… and exit… the bar.’ L pointed towards the double swing doors he’d walked through just moments ago. ‘This the exit. Goodnight.’

There was a moment, as L turned his back to the crowd and steadily dismounted the stool that he believed he’d been successful. In those few snatched seconds of victory, he could smell the pie he’d ordered, could see his first pint waiting for him on the bar. When both feet were again on the sticky stone floor, he looked over at the landlady for the smile that would confirm his success. But where was she? L stood stock still for a moment, a coldness creeping up his back. There she was, the landlady with the two barmaids, crouched under the sink, their trembling hands protecting their heads.

As L straightened up, a chair brushed past his ear, touching his shoulder very lightly before it smashed with great violence into the mirror behind the bar, shattering the glass and the bottles of rum and vodka hanging there.

A cacophony of noise erupted from behind him and he turned to face it. The bar was being trashed. Tables were being flipped and pictures torn from the walls. Many faces were looking at L specifically, and a recognition of his failure dawned on him at the very moment innumerable hands grabbed and snatched at his clothing. Resignation was L’s overriding emotion as he was dragged to the floor. His body remained limp and placid as his trousers and shirt absorbed the puddles of beer and probably blood. L wasn’t punched so much as slapped and pinched and pushed down where fifty pairs of boots were stamping. The din of the ruckus consumed him and he was lost. He could have been in there for an hour or a week, he didn’t know. The lack of natural light in the bar always had the effect of distorting time, and the pure sensory experience of the brawl was more than he’d ever encountered. In the absence of any productive logic, he regressed to a feeble, curled state somewhere between the serving hatch and the restrooms.

*

L came to, in the far corner, half on half off the stage for the house band. From what bulbs remained intact, he could just make out the decimated bar in the dim orange light. It was deserted. Then the fuzzy outline of another man materialised out of the darkness: lying in the broken glass, fast asleep and snoring. L’s hands were stinging with cuts, so he clenched his fists and pressed his knuckles into the floor to push himself up. With an audible groan he ascertained the damage to his joints and limbs. He checked behind the bar. No one was there. L reached over and ran the water tap. He watched the bright red blood from his hands flow and swirl around the plughole before reaching for an intact glass. After downing two pints of water he picked his way through the debris, through the doors that hung half off their hinges and back up the stairs to street level.

The outer doors were completely missing with long splinters of wood the only evidence they had ever existed. The night air tightened around L’s torso like a cold shower. He shivered, and noticed the landlady sitting on the pavement with her back against a lamppost.

‘You’ve ruined me,’ she said, not even opening her eyes. She was bloodied and soaked with drink.

‘You should have known this would happen,’ protested L. ‘You saw how much they’d been drinking. How was I supposed to just turn up and get them to leave?’

‘Well, you did,’ said the landlady. ‘And now it’s your turn.’ She made a pained effort to move her head and look at him. ‘Consider yourself barred, if I can ever afford to open again. And I wouldn’t show your face at the funeral if I were you.’

L ran his hands through his hair and took a step towards the landlady. 

‘But my boss will be there,’ he began, then thought better of it. He took a step forward and reached down to take her hand, but she recoiled with such violence leapt back in shock. He looked around, the streets empty and the sky mauve in the east. To bed. 

Before limping away, L paused to say something of great import and with such gravity he’d be immediately relieved of any and all responsibility. But nothing came. Even the thought of speaking with precision exhausted him, and a sense of paralysing impotence wrapped itself around his organs, sending forth a long, damp exhalation that swirled up and out and vanished in the last of the night’s darkness.

The landlady watched him through a furrowed, burgundy brow then wiped her cheek. A cat darted out from behind the bins and a telephone rang in an adjacent street. L’s steps were irregular and syncopated as he cut through the empty city, a wet darkness pervading patches of lamplit pavement, the weight of his failures slowing him. In sight of his apartment, the sun began to rise. Between the concrete structures in that direction, the cloudless sky had turned peach. An almost godly light seemed intent on defining the edges of the trees and fences, shining in curtained windows and causing L to squint gently as he climbed the outer steps. He rested his forehead on the cool door. Then he patted down his pockets, trying to find his keys.