“Plenty of Indians in the dungeons, eh?” The window-cleaner laughed uproariously, making Ismet regret his rational explanation. “I’m better off on the outside, if you ask me. Watch out for the bucket.” Ismet had almost knocked this over in pulling out his chair. His visitor swung the bucket up over one arm and made for the door.

Ismet said, “I’m sorry I startled you.”

“Should be used to it by now. Plenty of you looking out when I come along.”

Setting his papers in order, Ismet heard the bucket loudly put down in Pastore’s room next door. A moment later, Pastore was in the doorway.

“Nothing but interruptions all morning.”

“Exactly,” said Ismet.

“I need Leslie to take a message to Jaspersen in the Committee Room.”

“She’s doing a memorandum for me.”

“This is urgent.”

“So is mine.”

“I’ve already asked her to go.”

Nothing, Ismet thought, makes a more fanatical official than a Latin. Organization is alien to their natures, but once they get the taste for it they take to it like drink. They claim to be impulsive, but they’re the most bureaucratic of all, whatever they may say. “Whatever you say,” he told Pastore.

“The combination and interplay of such components,” the speaker was saying, “within deeply rooted conflicts—”

Try as he would, Jaspersen could not take it in this morning. He pressed his hand to the device over his ear. He even glanced surreptitiously at the interpretation dial beside his chair, to make sure it was turned to the proper language.

“—obstruct the evaluation process…”

“Personal life,” the Chief had said; “personal friend.” One’s life, one’s friends presumably could not be other than personal, yet the distinction had developed. I suppose this is my official life, Jaspersen said to himself, looking about the chamber. “Official life” sounded like a posthumous document, some tedious work of commissioned biography with all the interesting incidents suppressed.

“My government takes the view…”

Everyone else was scribbling now, on scraps of paper, on the margins of documents, on pads provided for the purpose.

“My government thinks, my government feels…”

It gave him a sense of isolation, being the only one having personal thoughts in such an official chamber.

“Bearing in mind my government’s long devotion—”

One said “relationship” nowadays about those one loved, and put one’s friends in slots: words like “devotion” were reserved for official purposes.

A young man in gray had come to where Jaspersen sat, at the end of the row of seats, and was handing out copies of an amendment. Jaspersen, passing them along, thought how like church it all was. The deferential hush, the single voice intoning. O Organization, wherever two or three are gathered together in thy name … Jaspersen gave an unholy laugh.