The Phone Call

The sound of the clock struck an unknown time. It was 2, maybe 3pm. Was it 1pm, was it 5pm? It really didn’t matter. The ledge on which she sat seemed a shade of brown previously unknown. The telegram was clear: it would be war. She repeated in her mind everything she had gone through in the previous two weeks. Every single note, every single quote. It was everything there, in the report. How could the decision have been this? She had stated and re-stated so many times: peace would win, peace would win us the war that had yet to show.

And this war, how would it be, even? Would it be diplomatic? Would it be military? Would we close up shop, or would we ration food? Would we be revolutionaries and help the war effort or would we stay at home, patiently waiting for the 5 o’clock news? What kind of war, did they think, could be waged today? Did they imagine it would be a global conflagration? Did they count the ways in which the war would affect modern, developed societies? The decision was clear, the reasoning, unmistakable. She had offered precious advice and it had been all but thrown into the rubbish. And how, when, for what reason had they even asked for her input, if they decided to go against it? Did they not know how much work and sweat was going into every single letter? Was this war … worth it?

The phone rang. It was Jasper. He announced he had news about the war. It would be diplomatic, he said. All the country’s diplomats would be involved. It would move from traditional, old style diplomacy, to roundtables, to parties. Everything and anything in the diplomatic book would go. Even warring diplomacy. We would be diplomats, fighting a war. Diplomats at war. Warring diplomats. Or diplomats lying to ourselves.

Apart from that, none of us could continue their personal lives as they were. Since the war effort would be so high, it would inevitably engulf our entire social lives and some of the personal ones. No calls, no photos, no messages. Maybe a visit here and there. Maybe a project together here and there. Who knew, maybe even some socialisation at lunch. But beyond that, nothing was allowed. It was a draconian new system. Nobody had seen anything like it before. She was shaking with the pressure of it all. She was trembling. Her coffee levels were dangerously high. The body was out of range. What could she say… that she missed her husband? Of course not. And who was her partner?

Someone from Russia, they announced.

The call went out. Bleep, bleep, bleep. “Are you there?”, Jasper asked. “Yes”, she replied, white. To have a partner from Russia meant, basically, that the war would, in fact, be just as warring as any. All the diplomatic exchanges that would have gone into the war effort had it been a military one were now still on, but without weapons. Without weapons of the concrete kind, that is. She would have to lie, steal, cheat, pretend, and believe. She would have to buy every single imaginative story she would be told and prepare hers, in return. She’d have to tell and re-tell the stories about a love incredible, about how she had met her husband, how they were together and how they loved it. She would have had to even invent children.

But the problem was not that. So what if a few years of her life would go eaten away at by a war that never wanted to be? It was the life she had chosen. It was the life she had subscribed for. Parties, how hard could that be? All the elegance and the glitter and whatever else was part of this life she had yet to know. The problem was she was probably among the very few people who knew this war best. She knew the conflict, she had read about the conflict, she had negotiated it, she had described it, she had categorised it, she had analysed, counted and imagined it. This was her food. It was her homework. It was her Bible. Such a conflict had no shot at being … just … diplomatic. Such a conflict had teeth, it had veins that were pulsating with blood, it had even… dirt. This would be a new kind of diplomacy, it would be the warring one. This would be every single word, every single breath, every look, every bite and every swallow. It would engulf their life and the life in it, too. It would demand. It would moralise. It would dance and jump and grip. This war would be their all. And they hated it, for it.