The Celestial Bureau

Alexander Charkin

THE CELESTIAL BUREAU

My rights have been explained to me and are fully understood. I wish to give my statement in Russian. I require neither counsel nor an interpreter. I am not registered with a psychiatrist or an addiction clinic, and I have never been prosecuted in Russia or anywhere else. I am unmarried, alert, and in reasonably good spirits, though none of that appears relevant. Born in 1995.

Regarding the allegations against me, I can state the following. It began about a year ago, when members of the public started calling and demanding that I provide them with legal advice free of charge. What follows has, with the investigator’s permission, been copied from my notebook and diary in order to preserve both the chronology and what remains of the narrative logic. I ask that it be treated as the only reliable account.

The phone is ringing again. Or perhaps it has been ringing continuously and I have only just noticed. Either way, someone has got through. This is the ninth call today, and it is barely one in the afternoon.

I would not mind so much if anyone paid me. I still have no idea why the public decided that my number belonged to the legal profession’s branch of the Red Cross, but the calls kept coming. I did not even try changing it. Whoever was posting my number would no doubt track down the new one with the persistence normally found in debt collectors and minor government agencies. All in all, the phenomenon supplied me with two months’ worth of extraordinarily varied practice: divorces prompted by threats from mistresses, complications arising from the construction of a morgue, and everything in between.

My usual office was a compartment on the second-to-last commuter train out of Moscow. During the short journey I could dispense advice to seven, sometimes ten, questioning “souls.” Having opened a travelling franchise of goodness and justice in the rear carriage, I guided my uninvited clients into the previously undiscovered world of statutes, deadlines, and official fees. That was when I began writing down every request and everything I did afterward. Organising one’s practice is not merely satisfying. It may later prove useful during questioning.

I did not know these people, yet I felt responsible for them. Responsibility is difficult to avoid when someone addresses you as though you alone are the court of final appeal, a Roman praetor, and the last trumpet of justice rolled into one. There is a catch, of course: it is difficult to be the last trumpet of justice when you have only the faintest idea where you yourself are going.

There was, in fact, an obscure sense of obligation behind the whole affair, which is probably where I should have started. It was never clear who owed whom more: the callers, or me. Sometimes the voices demanded advice as if I had borrowed a large sum of money from them and could repay it only through this peculiar setoff. At other times their apologetic tone made me feel as though I were speaking to the debtor. When the train reached my station, my office hours ended.

That evening a special taxi was waiting for me. Its number plate read NOT 666.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve that plate,” the driver began. “People keep cancelling. Makes it impossible to work.”

“Why? It says not 666,” I replied with a small smile.

The driver laughed.

“Exactly. And I take priests to morning service. I only picked you up because I thought a man might freeze standing out here at night.”

“Where are you headed after this?”

“Vnukovo Airport.” After a moment he added, “Now those people will have a real dilemma: cancel because of the number, or miss their flight.”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “A dilemma.”

The symbolism was, frankly, vulgar. A taxi promising not to take you to hell; disembodied voices calling to ask about justice. Even then I felt the whole story reeked of cheap paperback mysticism. I am getting ahead of myself, but cheap paperback mysticism was exactly what it turned out to be.

Determined to understand the strange sense of debt that came with the calls, I began prodding at it. Trial and error established one thing: the debt was not financial. It became most acute just before sleep, when I had not yet fallen into dreams and was sliding along the edge of consciousness. The debt, or perhaps the credit, appeared to me as a dark marble sphere threaded with white veins. It may not have been entirely marble. It may not have been marble at all. That is not important.

What mattered was that this marvel of metaphysical thought hung directly above me, held back by nothing I could see from falling onto my already unfortunate head. Naively assuming that anything in the world could be paid off, I settled every debt I had. The stony chill above my scalp did not retreat. A desperate turn to charity achieved nothing either.

And then I was hired.

Well, not exactly hired. That would be inaccurate, and calling it a job would be generous. What happened was this: I stepped out of my flat one morning and found an envelope under the door, addressed to me by the Federal Public-Private Office of Celestial Administration and Associated Afterlife Matters, hereinafter “the Celestial Bureau.”

The level of vulgar mysticism, already exhausting, continued to rise. All that remained was for me to walk into a strange fog and emerge somewhere in the Moscow Region in the 1930s. I could then explain the virtues of a fair and honest trial to a three-man tribunal, which would presumably sentence me to death for obstructing the administration of justice.

Back in our own reality, the envelope contained an employment contract bearing my signature and a congratulatory letter from “the best company in the world.” It promised a “competitive salary,” praised my “invaluable contribution to the proper development of society,” and thanked me warmly for agreeing to become Junior Assistant to the Senior Specialist of the Legal Department.

The fact that complete strangers possessed my signature did not especially surprise me. Nor did their knowledge of my name and address. What baffled me was the method of fraud. They could have taken out a loan in my name or forged a power of attorney. Instead, they had chosen to stage some elaborate nonsense involving an employment contract and a welcome letter.

After some thought, I decided to visit the address. They were clearly not planning to beat me up; it would have been far easier to wait for me somewhere along my already known route. Besides, jobs for lawyers – especially jobs so determined to hire one – are not always easy to find.

At the address stood a vast Soviet building in a particularly heavy strain of Brutalism, a place where no human foot seemed to have ventured in years. I walked around the hulk, tried several locked doors, and eventually found a staircase leading down to the basement. Beside it was a brass plaque engraved with the words FEDERAL PUBLIC-PRIVATE OFFICE OF CELESTIAL ADMINISTRATION AND ASSOCIATED AFTERLIFE MATTERS: THE CELESTIAL BUREAU.

I descended the steps and squeezed through an unlocked door that appeared to be barricaded from the inside by something heavy. The interior suited the building: an old Soviet office with narrow corridors and plank floors. The letter instructed me to attend a “welcome interview” in Room 3.

Inside, a fat man in a grey jacket was waiting for me. On his lapel was a badge showing a quill from which a long wing had sprouted. His face seemed fixed in a state of permanent dissatisfaction, as though I had interrupted important work and had also had the poor taste to arrive with a stupid question.

“Mikhail,” the man said by way of introduction. “Were there calls?”

“There were calls. Anton.”

“A pleasure.” Mikhail held out his hand. “The letter?”

“The letter. A pleasure.”

“With the contract?”

“With the contract.”

At this point, an idiotic idea took root in my mind.

“Passport,” he said.

“Passport,” I repeated.

The man sprang up and slammed both hands onto the desk, although given his weight it looked less like a blow than an abrupt lowering of the arms.

“No jokes in here. We’re a fucking serious institution with centuries of history, powerful market positioning, and a corporate culture.”

I tried to explain myself, but apparently the outburst had merely been his chosen prelude to orientation.

“You think I do this for fun? First I have to find you, then I spend half the day in this miserable office asking you these questions?” His voice shifted into command. “Listen carefully. We follow the Stanislavski method here: whatever you give me, I give back with full conviction. So far, all I’m getting from you is aggravation. Once I’ve accumulated enough, I’ll start returning it. Questions?”

“Yes. What is this almshouse, exactly?”

“You’re the almshouse. This company existed before anyone had even considered producing you. Granted, we only acquired formal legal status and state funding under the tsar, but that in no way diminishes our proud standing or our great mission. The various suffixes came later, depending on the historical period.”

“And what is the mission of this enterprise?”

“We help people who have left this world put their affairs in order. Mostly documents. We correct inaccuracies…”

“Restore justice?”

“Justice should not concern you too deeply. Your job, as a junior assistant, is to receive an assignment and complete it properly, and above all by the deadline set by management. Don’t even think about screwing up, dodging the work, or simply ignoring it. With our connections, I can load your name with so many morally questionable transactions that you’ll lose your fucking mind. And it won’t stop at a dildo delivered without discreet packaging, if you understand me. That’s all for today. You start tomorrow.”

It would have been foolish to assume that tomorrow might fail to arrive. On the way home, answering calls, I found myself accepting everything on some automatic level. Yes, organisations sometimes hired people by strange means. Yes, I had been given a vague account of a great mission and an ancient history. The same could be said of almost any enterprise.

That night the sphere was waiting for me as usual. In the hope of reaching the kingdom of Morpheus more quickly, I imagined rolling it down a bowling lane, scattering stacks of paper covered in complicated legal terminology.

The Bureau’s daily schedule was an incontrovertible force, apparently designed to waste employee time in the strangest way possible. It began with a stand-up meeting, halfway through which I barely managed to arrive. For some reason, the meeting had started before the working day.

Squeezing into a room with a round table, I appeared to have entered in the middle of a monologue by a large and angry executive.

“That is why you must exercise the greatest caution when alternating rapidly between carrot and stick. Subject a person to too much of that and the mind may shift right out of place. You there.” Like a heroic worker on a propaganda poster, he thrust an open palm in my direction. “Do you have the faintest idea what we do here?”

At that moment it became clear that I could not produce a meaningful answer on my own. Mikhail, seated to the chief’s right, came to my rescue. Yesterday’s phrase surfaced in my mind.

“We help people put their affairs in ord-“

“What affairs?” The chief brought his outstretched hand crashing down on the table as though cleaving an invisible enemy. “The fucking genius who invented that piece of shit ought to be put on the first flight straight to hell.”

He paused, exhaled heavily, and continued in a calmer voice.

“Once again, for those who have plumbed the deepest depths of our positioning, and for those who have yet to plumb them, I repeat. As the classics observed, the trouble is not that man is mortal. The trouble is that he is suddenly mortal. And when he suddenly goes and gets himself dead, he leaves behind an unfinished matter. Sometimes two.

“Since we are simultaneously a private company, a state corporation, and at times a fucking travelling circus, we answer to owners who are shareholders, legislators, and spectators all at once. It is in their interest that every unfinished matter left by the departed should reach its proper conclusion.

“Document Control.” He leaned forward and turned to his left. “That conclusion must be reached competently. Not like your last performance with the national property register, when you couldn’t tell a house from a shed.

“For the hundredth time today: the state’s overriding interest is the stability of civil commerce. No confusion in ownership, transactions, or obligations.” He leaned to his right, toward Mikhail, and raised his voice. “Can the Legal Department hear me over there, with all its legal entities and articles of law?”

“We hear you,” the Legal Department replied gloomily.

“The corporate rats, meanwhile, do not want shares, ownership interests, corporate rights, and all the rest of that rubbish passing unexpectedly from hand to hand. As happened in…” He stopped as if he had nearly said something indecent over lunch, then rose from the table. “Well. You all know the case.”

An awkward silence settled over the room. The chief looked down on everyone, smiled, and declared, “Onward with a song, ladies, gentlemen, and comrades. Let us lead our branch to decisive victory in the international arena. You are dismissed.”

Mikhail seized me by the arm and whirled me in a waltz through the corridors, hissing in imitation of the chief.

“Can the Legal Department hear me? Can the Legal Department hear me? We hear you! With hours like these, you’d confuse your taxpayer number with your corporate registration code, never mind your prick with the handle on a tram.”

“What is our interest in the circus?” I thought it prudent to change the subject.

“Where?”

“The state makes sense, and so do the corporations. I mean the part where we’re a travelling circus and there are spectators. What does that mean?”

“That part is relatively simple. As you’ve probably gathered, we have three classes of client. The first send us routine, standard assignments in ordinary envelopes through the Russian postal service. They’re forever late with payment, but that is Accounting’s problem. The second send unusual, complicated assignments in pleasant-smelling document envelopes from foreign courier companies, and they pay in advance.”

“And the third come here themselves?”

“Come here themselves? What the fuck are you talking about?” His voice rose. “Communication is strictly one-way. Our commitment to customer service is second to none. The third group has no consistent system of delivery or payment at all. We used to send their cases back. Then we started throwing them away. Then international agreements reclassified the entire category as petitions from members of the public, and now we’re legally required to consider every one within thirty days. That will be your area of responsibility.”

I needed time to digest what I had heard and seen, but the volume of information had done nothing to reduce my number of questions. Meanwhile, we passed various offices and utility rooms and arrived at a substantial black door. Behind it lay a room renovated with obvious care.

Everything about it suggested an entirely ordinary modern office. Most surfaces were white or grey, which soon began to tire the eyes. The wooden desks helped. Each held standard office equipment: an all-in-one computer, a printer, a keyboard, and a mouse. Beside them stood neat stacks of folders and stationery.

Full-length mirrors faced the workstations, making both the department and its staff appear far larger than they really were. There was some subtle allusion here. Perhaps one was expected to work for two; perhaps the mirrors represented the spacious horizons of unfettered thought. My own thoughts, still recovering from the meeting, had no desire to take flight, and I quickly lost the sacred meaning.

In answer to my unspoken question about why the Legal Department looked so different from the rest of the Bureau, Mikhail explained that some contracts, no matter how ingeniously one manipulated statutes, penalties, liquidated damages, and the allocation of funds, still left behind a few crumbs within the limits of mathematical error. In theory, those crumbs could be spent on a great many good deeds.

A call on the internal line prevented him from finishing. I had little difficulty guessing that, in the right department and among the right people, theory aligned with practice exactly as it was supposed to.

At my desk I noticed one difference from the others. Beside my monitor lay a single lonely folder, too thin even to boast of containing many pages. Mikhail, already retreating deeper into the office, tore himself away from the phone long enough to explain, briefly but colourfully, that I was not to touch or distract the other employees. My assignment consisted solely of whatever lay on the desk. Once it was finished, I could stamp it and go home.

For the record, I will list the documents contained in the folder.

The passport of a man born around 1965; I do not remember the exact year. The photograph showed the face of someone just beginning his advance into that respectable, almost caricaturally glorious condition known as old age.

The passport of a woman born around 1990, again approximately. One detail stood out: both passports bore marriage stamps dated the same day, but the woman had kept her own surname.

(To be continued.)