Waiting for Rain
The drought has continued for seven weeks.
The treatment will cost about forty pounds. That is more than two pounds a year in lost interest. Should she skip a meal or two to make up for it? That is a false saving, for she will only eat more at the next meal; and our Greta loves her food. Besides, if she once uses the tactic as a money-saving device, she is liable to take it to extremes and starve herself to death.
She is filled with anxiety, not for the first time, as she sees the small island which is her money shrinking around her. Forty pounds here ; two pounds fifty there; fragments washed off by the tide of necessity, never to return. Time and again, in meticulous calculations, she has balanced income against expenditure, only to find it falling just short. She must dip into her capital, in turn reducing the interest, and so on down the slippery slope.
She can economize no further: her life is already pared down to the essentials. She must somehow supplement her income. She decides to seek a job.
(If the personnel manager at the supermarket wonders about the origin of Greta’s Mona Lisa smile, it is this: that money, which is freedom, can only be obtained by enslavement. Even Greta, who thought herself immovable, has compromised. She has agreed to chain herself to the till for fifteen hours a week in order to conserve what little freedom she can.)
Nothing comes free of charge, especially not money. Greta lost a mother to get hers. Others give up their health, their peace of mind, their dreams; most valuable of all, their time. Every life is mortgaged. Greta’s is no different.
It is hot in the supermarket. From where she sits she can see the light beating against the glass doors. Greta is one of those who are released by heat; she adores it; looks out of the doors with the eyes of a lion gazing through the bars of a cage. She is almost literally chained to the till, for she cannot leave it unless a supervisor comes with a little key, attached to a chain, and switches it off so that no-one can get at the money inside.
And now Greta discovers how dirty money really is. The coins are warm and greasy in her palm and the notes dusty and dry. By the end of the afternoon her hands are black from it, and up in the staff toilets she has to soap and rinse, soap and rinse, to remove the metallic smell. Her mouth is full of money words, too: they are all she has spoken all day. When she eats the food tastes of money.
One of the supervisors is kind, the other is cruel. Once they have a disagreement about Greta’s tea break: standing in front of her they argue about it. At last Greta is allowed to go.
The canteen is a dismal place with no windows. Everyone wears the blue uniform with the name badge and the emblem of the supermarket; Greta’s is wrongly spelled. The name badges prevent people from introducing themselves.
The cruel supervisor sits opposite Greta as she drinks her coffee. Greta feels she should speak. She says: “There was some dispute about whether I should have a tea break?”
Immediately she regrets having referred to it. She has stepped out of line. The supervisor leans towards her and her heavy brows almost meet in the middle.
“There was no dispute,” she says scornfully. A pause. She leans closer. Greta cannot quite make out what she says. It sounds like: “You don’t know me, do you?” It sounds like a threat.
Greta hastily leaves the canteen.
