Snap. The voices in the room are audible again. He nods his head, comforted by the sight of his assistant, dutifully taking notes. Marko is aloof. Some might call him inscrutable. So his uneasiness now probably goes unnoticed by anyone who doesn’t know him intimately. Few do. Perhaps he could take comfort in that.
Hard and handsome, with shocks of white in his well-groomed dark hair, women often found him irresistible, even forbidding. Of course, the woman in question pays him no heed. She is busy with her translation, assisting the influential security chief Marko is meeting, as he often does, to assess the situation of the country that shall not be named.
This isn’t about the woman. Marko doesn’t pay much attention to her. He doesn’t look at her body, nor does he imagine it beyond its current confines. Her curvaceous form wavers softly in the backdrop, nebulous, out of focus. He is more interested in her extremities, the tips of her toes moving imperceptibly, perhaps even uncomfortably, held tightly in her high heels.
She is doing her job. And Marko, well, this is a rare instance when he isn’t. Contrary to belief, he takes his work very seriously. True, he had done well for himself, becoming a diplomat when he was still young, in his mid-30s, but he never forgot where he came from.
He had lived in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other troublesome countries as a young captain, steadily rising in rank until he became a colonel. He had been young and reckless, seeing war as a tool. He had been married and separated. He had seen so much violence that life lost its taste. He’d had many women but held on to none. He’d learned how to live alone and how to be hard on himself, how to push his body to the limits until he created new ones. He didn’t have the arrogance of accomplishment; he had worked hard for this.
Hardly ever letting his guard down, Marko expected he was under constant surveillance. He knows where he is, that he is there at a key moment of the nation’s history, when the tides could turn this way or that. When everything could implode. So, he is bewildered by this moment. By losing self-control over a toe.
Partly hidden, subjugated by that fantastic arched shoe, it taunts him. Only a sliver of the woman’s pale skin shows, luminous. It bewitches him. He isn’t sure why because this hasn’t happened before. It isn’t sexual, yet he can’t remember the last time he was this stirred up. A nudge indicates that the meeting was over. He decides to see one of his lovers. The universe will re-order itself again, in a short while.
Long after Marko had severed ties with his wife, he held onto to his seemingly casual encounters, which were no longer hushed or urgent. They offered the consolation of bodies that knew each other well, that fit, like clothes. He’d had a lover since his marriage had become cheerful indifference. That was how they’d cut each other out. Slowly. They settled into polite avoidance until she left. Detachable. Easy come, easy go, he’d say.
Now, home was a bachelor’s flat in a high-tech building, a space far from the ordered chaos that ruled outside, the competing political parties and standpoints. The coloured flagposts of identity.
The following week unfolds with the meetings, briefings and visits that are Marko’s professional life. The situation is fragile. His goal is to make sure the country does not collapse. Sooner than he knows it, he’s back at the familiar building, passing through security check after the next, to meet the same top-level security chief he met the week before. This time, Marko finds that his palms are damp with anticipation.
The interpreter is there in her usual place, in a long dress, button-down. It only reveals the tops of her ankles. She’s laced up to the knee, he guesses, though he can’t tell exactly from the way she is sitting. It’s hard to tell her age, he thinks he can spot surgical enhancements. She has that look. Slightly taut and unmoving. But try as he might, he is inevitably drawn back to the tips of her toes. The Sedona red nail polish that makes him think of sunsets and deserts. He searches for meaning. Discussions go on around him in a blur. He nods with the others.
The combination of corrugated textile on skin against sculpted, wooden stilettos draws him into a dizzying vortex. He imagines cobras standing on their tails. He becomes the dark line that separates her big toe from its neighbour, around which everything spins, like the centre of a whirlwind. It spirals, plummets out of control. He’s in the thick of it. Maybe it is their vulnerability that entrances him so, their diminutiveness in the grand scheme of things. Or maybe, it is that this woman serves one of the most influential men in the country.
He wants to squeeze them in their helplessness. It is dangerous but it must have some significance. He begins to see things through a tinted lens. In his mind, the nail polish on the woman’s barely visible feet comes to indicate developments in this country, the one that shall not be named.
There is a startling variety of colour. His days are like ink blots, diluted blacks, greys and cappuccino creams, merging amorphously but the days he sees the woman unfold in a spectrum of bright iridescence. Her colours are clues, pointers to this or that party threating the country of mini-states. Everything comes to depend on her nail-polish. Each party or militia is represented by a specific colour. Sometimes the colour Marko notices is the top coat. Other times, it’s the shoe or a combination of both, if necessary, when more than one threat needs to be pinpointed.
They are in on it together, Marko thinks. The woman is sending out signals only he can interpret. This excites him about making big decisions again, about consulting with the higher-ups. If he is held hostage to the maelstrom of vivid colours and symbols, he convinces himself that it is willingly. It becomes the only reality he knows, an alternate reality others can’t see, so he has to translate for them. He has a dozen encounters with the lady in the high heels. Not once do they exchange a word.
Marko manages to sell his theories until they become more and more random. The brows of the men facing him furrow, look confused. He is asked to take a break. Perhaps he’s suffering from overwork? His bosses believe in him but he isn’t making much sense. Things could wait a couple of weeks. It’s either this, or his job is at risk.
Glumly, Marko accepts. They don’t want to listen to him even though he has the clues that lead him to believe he is helping prevent all-out war. These aren’t voices in his head. They are clear for the world to see, except for those who are colour-blind, or myopic.
As he goes to the final meeting with the security chief, he enters the room feeling anxious. He has no idea what he will do for the next two weeks without this anchor to the storm that his days have become. But sitting in the woman’s place is someone else. A younger woman with short-cropped hair, wearing trousers and a satin top. The security chief isn’t there either. Marko understands from the chatter in the room that his term has not been renewed. It was an abrupt decision. Now there is a new interpreter. The other woman? She is gone.
