Inside Out of Bubble

Copyright

1. A Pride

The traffic had been stationary for at least ten minutes, but Clive kept holding his steering wheel firmly and staring straight ahead just like he was still driving. He almost expected that his sheer desire would somehow force the traffic to start moving again. But nothing was happening, so he started tapping his fingers on the wheel, barely resisting the urge to join the cacophony of horns tooting uselessly all around him. Clive glanced to his right, at the tram lane. Although it was separated from his lane by a yellow-painted curb around ten centimetres high, it had taken only two or three minutes after the traffic stopped for a number of cars to be driven over the curb and get stuck on the tracks, jamming the trams from moving too; this was in spite of their drivers constantly ringing the bells.

He felt he was starting to boil inside, not only because of the delay or the hot day, but even more because it took so little for people to show their ruthlessness and selfishness. He made a mental effort not to direct his anger at just those individuals in this city and this country; he knew from experience that pretty much the same would happen in any other big city and country.

He was returning from work to his home in the central, old part of the city, only a kilometre away from where his car was blocked. His workplace was on the city outskirts and he drove daily in the opposite direction to rush hour traffic, morning and evening. This advantage, though, worked only outside the inner city circle. Within it, traffic was permanently congested, so he had to endure it when driving either way. The twenty kilometre drive between work and the centre would usually take only a minor slice of his forty minutes or so of drive time, whilst the rest would be consumed by stop-start moving at snail’s pace within the centre. Clive hated city driving.

He felt the tickling of a sweat drop sliding from his eyebrow down to the corner of his eye; he wiped it nervously with the back of his hand. It was mid-summer and the cabin of the immobile car was heating up. Clive looked down at the instruments and started tampering with buttons and switches to enhance the air conditioning and direct the air vents towards him. This resulted in a sudden blare of tooting.

‘Hey, you asleep, move on, you idiot!’ The yelling came from behind, but he did not turn his head.

He looked up; the cars ahead were moving slowly. Then, after a few metres they stopped, so everything was going to repeat, again and again. He idly daydreamed about how good it would feel to simply leave the car in the middle of the street and walk the short distance home, but he also knew this would be in sharp disagreement with his orderly nature; sadly, this option was unacceptable to him. To divert his frustration, he started pressing different buttons on the car stereo in rapid succession, hoping to find some music he liked. But, there was only blathering on each and every station, whether talk shows, which he considered meaningless and boring, or commercials, which he hated. He checked the glove box for music disks, but there were none, only two disks with Arabic language courses. He closed the glove box, disappointed, but then opened it again; this isn’t going to be very relaxing, he thought, inserting the disk in the player, but it’ll certainly switch my mind.

He and Mary had started to learn Arabic after he took up his first job working on a three-year bridge building project in the middle of nowhere, in the Middle East, and they used it throughout the following almost twenty-five years of working on a range of other projects throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Ever since they had moved back to Europe some ten years ago though, their Arabic had started to fade gradually but progressively; they were trying to preserve at least some level of fluency through refreshing and practicing it using advanced audio courses. He checked that the windows were indeed completely closed, turned up the volume and started loudly conversing with the teacher from the disk. Still, he heard the ringing in the background when it came, so he quickly turned off the player and switched on the hands-free phone.

When he answered, Tom’s deep, loud voice filled the cabin: ‘Clive, buddy, where the hell are you? I left a message with your secretary this morning for you to call me back as soon as you got out of the meeting, but you never did. You lazy bugger!’

‘All right, all right, I was going to call you as soon as I got home. But, no, that’s not good enough for you, there’s always just one and only deadline in your mind – yesterday!’ Clive almost shouted again; that was how they usually talked. ‘What’s the hurry?’

‘Emergency, man! I’ve got a disaster developing here, at home. Kath wants to completely rip out our bathroom, and put in some new stuff – I don’t know, tiles, taps, whatever. Perfectly good bathroom, if you ask me, but what do I know? Wives always know best with interior design, so they say…Look, I’ve got a headache already, you have to come and sort it out.’

‘Tom, are you crazy? Call a plumber, for God’s sake! I can give you the numbers of some who I think are good, if you want. I can’t help you myself, I’m a civil engineer, not a plumber, remember?’ Clive explained to him, just as he’d done many times before in other situations with other people he knew privately.

‘Buddy, you only have to design a nice bathroom, that’s all. Then I’ll call all the plumbers you need, of course. Kath’ll accept any bathroom you design, anything from you, and then my nightmare’s over!’ He spoke in a quieter voice.

Clive calmed down too: ‘Sorry, buddy, I just don’t do such things! I don’t do houses, let alone bathrooms, never did, never will! I’ve always stuck to what I know, what I like. I like designing and executing those complicated and problematic infrastructure projects, like I’m doing now at the Civil Engineering Institute. And, frankly, even if I did houses and bathrooms, I wouldn’t do them for you. In any such job, the customers always have some complaints, some grudges, there are always some arguments. I don’t want to get into that with you; our friendship’s too precious to me. I know all about it from my job! They constantly ask me to achieve the best quality for the least amount of money, to keep everyone happy, investors, national and local governments, the public – but they rarely are!’

Tom laughed heartily: ‘Clive, I know all that, don’t worry. But I had to give it a try…Both Kath and I would kill to steal a piece of your competence which those others get to enjoy. But I take aboard what you say, our friendship’s top priority to me, too. Listen, shall we unleash our wives to make a plan to get together – you know, good food, nice drinks?’

‘Now you’re talking,’ Clive laughed too. ‘Sure. And, drinks – not just nice, but a large amount!’

Clive entered his street as they finished their conversation, drove around the block until he eventually found a parking space and walked up to the entrance of their character building. He looked up at the windows on the third, top floor with keen anticipation. The daylight was fading and the clear sky was becoming dark, ink-like blue, but the street lights were not yet switched on. Yes, he could see the smiling face of his wife peering down, and her fine arm, whitish against the dark sky, waving at him. Clive smiled and waved back, pushed the heavy, wooden entrance door and started climbing up the cream-coloured marble stairway fenced with black, cast iron handrails; he never used the slow, clunky elevator.

They lived in a large apartment occupying the whole floor, and which Mary inherited from her parents, who unfortunately died, just as Clive’s parents did, soon after they had finally returned from their long between-countries hopping to live in their childhood city. His climbing up the stairway was gradually speeding up, unconsciously; he was looking forward to spending the evening with his wife. He was quite lightly built but agile for his age. Mary was standing at the open door, waiting for him, as always. He loved it, and she loved doing it.

‘God, you’re dripping!’ she sighed looking at his sweaty face and wet patchy shirt, but hugged him firmly and kissed him unhesitatingly, regardless.

She took the briefcase from his hand, stepped aside and pushed him gently on his back as he was entering: ‘Go straight to the shower, and use lukewarm water, not cold!’

Her voice did not sound as if it was proposing or advising, but more as if it were ordering; it even had a somewhat angry tone. He well knew all the tones in her voice, and all her types of anger too. This one did not convey blame, but rather that she was worrying for his welfare.

Bit of sweat or cold water isn’t going to kill me, Clive thought, I’ve survived both for decades, but he said mildly: ‘All right.’

After he finished in the bathroom, he walked to the bedroom to get dressed. As ever, he did not even glance at the wardrobe; a change of at home clothing, neatly spread on the bed, was waiting for him.

In the dining room, Mary was sitting at the fully set table and with fresh, chilled, gazpacho soup in bowls. She always had perfect timing with serving dinner, as she followed the sounds of his usual routine. Clive was normally quite hungry by dinner time and he ate fast and in silence. She considered that to be bad manners and bad for digestion, but still, she never complained about it. He had exhausting days at work, with worries and responsibilities, so at home he needed the freedom to do little things just as he felt; that was how she looked at it. Besides, when they dined out, his manners were always impeccable. When Mary brought in the main meal, filled his plate and poured two glasses of wine, Clive just lifted up his glass towards her and looked at her eyes briefly; a silent toast. Then he tucked into his plate again with eagerness like there was no tomorrow, while she was still eating her soup.

Soon, though, he put down his cutlery on the empty plate, sat back in the chair with a deep sigh and smiled warmly at her: ‘That was absolutely delicious! You’re spoiling me!’

‘Yeah, well it’s more than that. You’re getting older, you know, so you’ve got to eat properly to keep healthy. Especially because you work so long and hard every day, and just on a sandwich for lunch; although at least it’s homemade…It’s not good for you being so skinny,’ she frowned slightly.

She continued eating, and he sipped wine and watched her, defensive eyes slightly narrowed: ‘You know I eat as much as I can! Please don’t keep comparing me with other men, large bellies and sagging boobs…you wouldn’t like me to be like that.’

She shook her head dismissively, chewing a mouthful rapidly, and obviously keen to reply, but he continued quickly to prevent her making more predictable comments on his allegedly worryingly skin-and-bones appearance: ‘You know what I was asked today by Jeff during a coffee break? What on earth made us agree to live for so many years in third-world countries?’

Mary nodded her head: ‘I can guess…Probably he meant but didn’t say, that you’d have to be mad to leave clean, orderly Western Europe and go there, surrounded by dirt, infectious diseases, savages and chaos. And that no amount of money in the world would make him do that. So what did you tell him?’

‘That we liked it and felt happy there, of course! That, when it comes to living in any country, there are nice aspects and there are undesirable or even ugly aspects, but we’re always focused on the nice things…We enjoyed the historic sites, the great local foods which were new to us, the wilderness you can observe just outside the cities. And that people there seem able to enjoy life itself, in spite of the poverty and misery apparent to visiting westerners, and they value their family life above anything else. I told him we, westerners, could learn a thing or two from them about the relevance of inner contents, as opposed to outside ones, for the joy of life.’

She smiled with only the corners of her mouth: ‘Then, Jeff must have said that locals can’t be happy in spite of the occasional smiles we noticed on their faces, since every day they have to find a way to survive just that day. So in their constant struggle, all those aspects of their homeland that we enjoy are unnoticeable, almost irrelevant to them…And, each and every one of those locals would move to our country, on a one way ticket, the very instant an opportunity appeared. So, what Jeff probably strongly believes, although maybe without ever formulating it consciously, is that poverty equals unhappy life; and inversely, money equals happiness. Well, he’s a proper member of the club, a shiny example of our consumer society!’

Clive looked at her for a few moments, silently. Her comment reminded him anew of her ability to see through people, even those she did not actually know, and anticipate their stands and reactions just by reasoning based on their situation and surroundings. It was estimable, but slightly irritating as well. When it came to people’s actions and reactions, he almost had trouble to find anything to tell her that she either did not know already or could not work out by herself. And the feeling that you can say something novel in a conversation is a pleasant one, and necessary sometimes. But then, he liked her obvious intelligence, clear thinking and understanding of human nature so much that such a minor irritation had no real importance.

Her proven skill of reading people, so much better than his own, had served them well throughout their marriage, and not only privately, but it had helped his professional success as well. He always talked in detail to her about his work and the people involved. In many critical situations, with co-workers or clients having interests or agendas opposite to his or his company’s, her comments were crucial to him understanding what others meant, wanted or whether they were being manipulative – so then he’d be able to make the right decisions. She’d never been employed at his work, but all these years he’d felt like she almost worked with him.

‘Probably, but Jeff isn’t an exception, the large majority of people in our society believe it too.’ Clive paused as Mary was waving her hand negatively.

‘Not me! I think: the more experiences you have – emotional, intellectual, exploratory – the happier you are. Not more possessions.’ Her voice slightly sharpened.

‘But remember, on one hand, those poorer people perceive us as rich bastards, yet, on the other hand, they want to become those rich bastards themselves, given the opportunity. It’s a complicated thing, human nature, very seducible – and most quickly, by money!’ Clive sounded a little fatalistic.

Mary finished her plate and was now clearing the table; he didn’t help. He knew that she didn’t want him to. It was part of her contribution to their team work.

She went into the kitchen and yelled through the clinking of plates: ‘As for the bastard part of the rich bastards, it isn’t because they actually believe that we’re bastards – it’s down to jealousy. It’s caused by them seeing that we have something that they need or want, but don’t have…And that situation never changes, in spite of how hard they work. I mean, the bastardom annotates to general injustice rather than our badness as human beings. We shouldn’t take it personally!’

He waited for her to return to the dining room, sit down at the table again and sip from her wine glass, before saying: ‘Jealousy, ha? Considering that you and I aren’t rich by Western European standards – there are many who’re better off but lots worse off than us – I wonder how much you have to be financially better off, compared to other people living here, for jealousy to lift its ugly head? I mean, what’s the amount of money separating unhappy from happy people here, in our consumer society?’

‘Well, now you’re, again, singling money out of the bigger picture of unhappiness versus happiness! I think that, actually, unhappy people are sometimes jealous just because somebody else appears to be happy. Happiness is entirely subjective and individual, and it’s affected by a range of circumstances, not just money. Given the same amount of money, some people are probably happy, some probably aren’t.’ Mary was now speaking faster, somewhat impatiently.

‘Ha, now you’re simply relativizing the importance of money! You can’t deny that lack of money generates directly or indirectly the large majority, if not all, of the serious technical difficulties that people have. And those make them unhappy.’

Mary pointed her finger at him: ‘Have you heard of that study which found that disposable income and personal happiness aren’t always directly related?’

As he shook his head, she continued: ‘At first, as the income increases, going up from poverty, so does the feeling of happiness, due to our basic needs being met, so there are fewer worries. But, once there’s enough money for reasonable comfort – that’s the borderline. Any further growth of money is followed by progressively smaller increases in our happiness until finally there’s no increase at all. From there on, only things other than money increase our happiness. So you aren’t correct in saying that only money would produce happiness in people.’

‘Well, I didn’t say that!’ He was quite loud although sitting only at arm’s length from her. ‘Not only the money! But you forget that ordinary people here believe that they still haven’t reached that money borderline providing reasonable comfort you mentioned. Some additional comfort would still be reasonable to them. That means that, even in this country, the happiness of ordinary people would keep increasing if they had more available money.’

‘Who are these ordinary people exactly, who you know so well? Everybody’s got their own money borderline until which their happiness increases, and after which it stops increasing; it’s entirely individual. What on earth makes you believe that you can speak on behalf of ordinary people about where their borderline is or what makes them happier?’ Mary’s voice had become shrill and she gesticulated very energetically.

She always likes to be right, he thought, and if she can’t find enough arguments for her point, sometimes she’ll modify, or even swap, the main issue of discussion. It really annoyed him whenever he felt she was doing that.

He was red-faced now: ‘You’re blind if you can’t see that we’re talking about two different things! I’m talking about the starting point of our discussion – poor people who’d be much happier, and less jealous of us, if they only had enough money to pay bills, buy food and school their children. You’re referring to people who have all that already secured, and aren’t getting any happier in spite of accumulating more money. So what are you arguing about, actually?’

Mary put down her glass sharply, and started to walk around the table: ‘I’m simply saying that some people have a drive to keep accumulating money even when it doesn’t make them happier. For various reasons, but here are a few examples…Some, because they see money as power enabling them to control others – they can enforce their own will. Some are competitive and need to keep winning to prove they’re better than others. Then, others run businesses where they have to keep rotating and reinvesting money because of the fundamental laws of economics, a kind of professional duty or even inertia. Maybe some because they want to provide for generations of future descendants, or even to solve some global world problem, or because they’ve got nothing else left to do in their otherwise empty lives. I don’t know. Some even say that getting large chunks of money is better than sex – although I don’t understand how these two different sensations can be compared…’

He interrupted her sharply and loudly: ‘What you’re talking about isn’t drive, it’s just plain greed…and greed means total disregard for the effects on others. But even if the greed can’t be justified, the accumulating money ultimately increases the happiness of the greedy people. So, coming back to the poor people being pissed off, or just jealous, because they can’t meet their own basic needs…’

She suddenly rushed to the kitchen, but grunted over her shoulder: ‘I’ve had enough of this conversation!’

‘Of course, you always stop the discussion when it becomes anything else except your monologue! Or would you like to just give me a lecture, and I’ll just keep agreeing silently and take notes?’ Clive spoke through clenched teeth, following her, but stopped at the kitchen door.

‘And you never listen seriously to what I have to say, but you always oppose it, by default! Although you listen to other people carefully and patiently! Why is that? I’m more stupid than everyone else?’ Mary pushed furiously by him, went to the lounge, threw herself down in an armchair and turned on the television.

Clive remained motionless for some minutes, rubbing his forehead, depressed now. It just happened again! Yet another heated argument starting from nowhere, because of a meaningless disagreement…It was never about key, important things. It had been like this from the very beginning of their relationship.

Eventually, he too went to the lounge and sat in the armchair farthest from her, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed that she was wiping tears from her cheeks. Many years ago, he would have been quite shaken by seeing her crying after an argument and would do anything to make her feel better, regardless of what had caused the tears or whose fault it