Free No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series) by Darren Koolman Luis Chitarroni

should vary in proportion to the number of tasks completed and the number that would have been completed, during the remainder of this period and the whole of the next, adjusting for age, the relative advantage and disadvantage of being made redundant when young, when mature, or when not far from that permanent redundancy of death, and all in accordance with the terms of the contract. The figures, however, did not matter. These can always be altered, and the amount extrapolated adjusted according to the arbitrary standard by which justice is usually dealt out. Insofar as the redundancy calculated at the expense of one’s dignity is proportionate to effort, he believed it to be just, and would pay that amount without scruple. The value of work not done, on the other hand, required of the employer an inordinate degree of generosity. Because the dismissal in this case was not unfair, it was a result of a conflict of interest. The scarcity of resources was the employer’s first defense, and those he had at his disposal, could be called to visibly attest to his humble way of life, and furthermore, they would illustrate the stark contrast between reality and mere show, which was the fashion of his age, an age when the condescending image of the real, the superficial, had been overthrown by something altogether alien and antagonistic, although he, being an artist, would have certainly reduced the issue to a contest of wills, hoping that, in the struggle, in his writings, he could produce a better substitute, someone more attentive, more benign, and less distracted than himself.
     
    An outside intervention , please
     
    It had begun raining so he left off writing. How much better he felt dictating on this occasion! In reality, the lives of the George and Lydia Smith of this world mattered more to him now than before—although their situation was, in reality, less hopeful—and he came to realize that, in all the time since making their acquaintance, he had scarcely learned anything about them … He should allow himself to recover. He did so tentatively, at first, even fearfully, as those people frequently do who have spent or misappropriated their store of passion—and he remembered, could have listed many a case—with obstinate greed, and afterwards, wheezing satiety.
     
    They first came to Lamb House recommended by Lucien Sordido, a Corsican gentleman of Napoleonic stature who in bustling London, where word so quickly turns to gossip, was unable to prevent news spreading of his broken reputation. But Sordido certainly held him in high esteem, although it was the kind of esteem a man with an irreparably broken reputation bestows on one who is careless with his. Lucien Sordido had sent the couple to his home with a letter of introduction ; it must still be in the notebook in which he was working at the time. He vowed to go looking for it, but not at that moment, since there was nothing in the contents he didn’t already know. During that first interview, he avoided interrogating them, for although he intended to improve, or at least not depreciate, the matrimonial economy, his sudden interest in them, after so many years of rebuffal, might have intimidated, or been interpreted by them as a prologue to a threat or a warning. But—taking into account the possible consequences, especially when fueled by a bottle of sherry—he wasn’t going to bring them to task for former actions they could not undo. His careful scrutiny of them, however, might have yielded answers to queries discretion prevented him asking: how much had redundancy affected them, and did it correspond to one of those pathetic destinies he had imagined? For not being content with ignorance, he transformed a mere presentiment of debility and destitution, of desperation and crisis, into an augury. His only duty was to be alert, should their conduct betray any subtle confirmation of it, or should their claims induce in him any impressions of