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General Tao was not an economist.
He had told them that from the start.
He was absorbed in remembering this when outside in the courtyard there was a sudden volley of rifle fire.
Tao did not wince, but wondered which of his staff it had been. They had been shooting members of the Committee for Currency Examination and Revaluation all morning. It started with the intern. Just before the sunup the guards dragged Yun from his cell. The young man had not gone quietly. He screamed that he was innocent, that he had only done what he was told and how mostly that had been to fetch tea for the senior Committee members. He kicked and wriggled and fought. Tao heard the clang of Yun’s prison issue shoes against the bars and the guards laughing as he soiled himself. Then the dull thumping of rifle butts against flesh.
The sound was a perverse comfort.
It reminded Tao of better times. Simpler times. Everything had made sense during the war. All the guns were pointed in the same direction. You could tell the enemy by the color of his uniform, the color of his skin.
One didn’t really need an economic background to head a Finance Committee, of course. Tao’s job was mostly to sign off on reports. Dozens of them. Sometimes hundreds in a few days — there were weeks where close to a thousand had crossed the General’s desk. Too many for an old man with arthritis. It wasn’t long before he was snowed under. Tall stacks of paper-clipped reports would pile up awaiting a skim, a hurried signature and a quick stamp. Once processed they would be shunted to some moldering corner of the Ministry of Finance — one or two might eventually loop back for a second look. It was the State equivalent of a circulatory system. It kept the bureaucratic synapses firing, ensured steady paying work for all the Party favorites. Availed them the use of big offices and attractive secretaries.
Tao’s wore her raven hair in a long ponytail that ran halfway down her back.
The General spent long mornings staring out his office window. The city sprawling out below him was an institutionally grim shade of grey. The buildings were nearly all concrete block and most mornings thick banks of fog lingered between them. There had been nothing appealing about the view until the first snow: fat white flakes like those that had fallen during the winter months on the front.
General Tao had been so taken with the snow he had the intern, Yun, sign and stamp some of the forms in his place.
As it happened, buried in the stack was a policy recommendation. It was the only one that had ever landed (and for that matter ever would land) on the General’s desk.
The recommendation was that the Ministry chop three digits off the value of the country’s currency to “curb” inflation.
Yun had not read the report. Tao had never even seen it. It went right back into the system like all the others: a loose fish thrown back in the river — another anonymous member of a larger school.
A second barrage of rifle fire in the courtyard.
Tao struggled to his feet.
His back ached. He was an old man after all and the freezing, drafty prison cell had brought out the worst of his arthritis. He shuffled to the barred window, back hunched, a dull hurt creeping up toward the base of his neck.
The window was a little higher than he was tall, and he had to stand on tip-toe to see outside. The pain in his back intensified. He gripped the window’s iron bars for support. They were iced over and the cold cut into his palms like knife-blades.
The courtyard was blanketed with snow.
At one end a row of five soldiers stood at attention, rifles at their sides. At the other was a high wooden post, only just thinner than a telephone pole. A young woman in tattered prison coveralls was tied with her hands behind it. She was slumped forward and the snow around her was freckled with blood.
Despite the striped prison fatigues Tao recognized the long pony-tail that ran halfway down her back.
A square-shouldered officer in a tan uniform stood next to the corpse, his sidearm pressed to her temple.
The smell of burnt gunpowder lingered in the air.
It was not until the riots started that the overlooked recommendation came back through the paper-trail veins of the Finance Ministry. The devaluation had wiped out millions of workers’ savings. The people wanted blood, and the People’s Revolution (ever sensitive to its domestic credibility), was more than happy to oblige. When the report finally got back to the General’s desk it was accompanied by an armed escort.
Tao inhaled deeply.
He welcomed the shot when it came — the scent of gunfire like incense against the crisp winter air.
Nick Lewandowski‘s fiction has appeared online at Every Day Fiction, hackwriters and Bewildering Stories. He is currently locked in a desperate struggle to sell his first novel.
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FOREIGN EXCHANGE LOSSES • by Nick Lewandowski,
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22 Responses to “FOREIGN EXCHANGE LOSSES • by Nick Lewandowski”
Comments
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May 19th, 2011 at 3:15 am
I hate when people overreact. I love this story, it is absolutely what would happen (imagine having $1000 in the bank and suddenly it’s only $1).
But, if the people had only given the new system time.. they would have realized that their $1 would buy as much stuff as the $1000 would previously.. so no harm done.
I bet if the government had said instead.. let’s print more money so you’ll have $1,000,000, easy peasy.. the people wouldn’t have had a problem with it at all!!
May 19th, 2011 at 3:19 am
Hmm. The star rating didn’t save my vote. 5 bullets!
May 19th, 2011 at 3:42 am
Poor old General Tao. Some nice touches here, like the very economic signatures of the secretary and the intern. Which war did the general remember, I wonder?
May 19th, 2011 at 3:43 am
Nice work Nick. I gave it .005 stars…or was it 5000? Nice story either way.
May 19th, 2011 at 4:34 am
Great story Nick! The lead up to the end was beautifully done then the twist… I can understand his welcoming the end. Great read so Thank You Nick
May 19th, 2011 at 4:45 am
Even though almost the whole story is tell-instead-of-show backstory, the pacing and the skillful way the setting and context is gradually revealed makes this work for me.
I especially enjoyed the characterization of the old General.
And I also really liked this: “The sound was a perverse comfort. It reminded Tao of better times. Simpler times. Everything had made sense during the war. All the guns were pointed in the same direction.” Wonderful word-weaving.
Well done. Five stars from me.
May 19th, 2011 at 5:37 am
I couldn’t drum up a lot of sympathy for the General. Sure, he welcomed the shot; he was old. What about Yun and his secretary? Dead because of the General’s incompetance.
Sorry, story did not do a lot for me, though I did like the last line. Wondered if Tao would have time to smell his own gunshot.
May 19th, 2011 at 6:59 am
People can become complacent in their jobs, few, however, pay the ultimate price for such complacency. Excellent setting for exploring that particular idea and excellent characters to fill in the details.
I liked the story. I wondered a bit about the smell of gun powder at the end (like ajcap). That said, four big ones on this cautionary tale….
May 19th, 2011 at 7:00 am
Really liked it, especially the twist with the General being in jail. What I liked also was the vagueness of the war, who it was fought with, who won. By leaving out these details, I imagined the setting to be a post World War III world, where China won, presumably against the United States. By not naming the secretary and describing her raven hair, it can even be imagined that she is American and that the setting is an American city, run by the new Chineese government. That’s how I saw it anyway.
May 19th, 2011 at 7:49 am
Excellent! People often complain about the anonymous bureaucracy, but hardly anyone has the guts to actually write about and explain it. A very enjoyable read.
My only gripe is with this metaphor, which I felt was out place, since I just can’t connect fish and shuffling paperwork: “a loose fish thrown back in the river — another anonymous member of a larger school.”
May 19th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Beautifully written. I really loved this story. I didn’t read it as his own gunshot. I thought it was his secretary’s final bullet. But I didn’t understand his welcome of it.
May 19th, 2011 at 10:39 am
Though there was some beautiful imagery and wonderful writing, some of it was repeated too often, IMO. (My own back was starting to hurt.) I wanted something to make me care about the MC, and found nothing. I didn’t see him emotionally connecting either to the lives or deaths of his staff, just observing them.
IMO, this would have been a more compelling story if Tao had been a young idealist during the war, who wanted to make the world a better place, then ended up shuffling and stamping papers.
May 19th, 2011 at 11:25 am
A great piece of creative writing. Well executed. No pun–okay. The pun is intended. I wish there was less telling but the telling is so good that it adds to the impact of the story. Well done.
May 19th, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Nice story. I was confused by the description of the girl with the ponytail starting with the General’s name. “Tao’s wore her raven hair in a long ponytail that ran halfway down her back” I makes it sound like a girl names Tao has her hair in a ponytail. Of course Tao is male and the General. As no one else commented on it though, I’m wondering if there’s something I’m over looking?
May 19th, 2011 at 2:18 pm
Very good.
Four stars.
May 19th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Hi all!
First, thank you for your ratings and comments.
Just a bit of background: this is (very) loosely based on actual events in North Korea a couple years ago, where a minister botched a currency revaluation and was eventually executed. (I like Todd’s post-war dystopia, though – made me glad I didn’t get into specifics).
I was living in Egypt when I wrote this, too, so I’m sure the time I spent dealing with the inscrutable bureaucracy there also had some influence.
Like Beverly and ajcap my sympathy for the General was also limited. I wanted to look at dictatorship from the perspective of a cog in the machine and his character was what I ended up with. Distant and out of touch with more than a dash of incompetence.
Thanks again for the comments!
May 19th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
oh, I get it now. The girl is Tao’s favourite. Sorry, missed that at first read
May 20th, 2011 at 1:44 am
Nick, you carried off your intent well. The general spending his last hours on earth settling in his mind the events that led up to the killing of his staff makes a kind of sense; guilt that great would unhinge anyone. And the way you show in particular and convincing detail how the very system caused this to happen was fine work. Your comment was just what I had expected, and it prompts me to say that I was curious as to how this could have been taken deeper into the N’s mind. The explanatory stuff shortened up, and then an inner journey. But perhaps the General wasn’t capable of it. Anyway, again, good story.
May 20th, 2011 at 5:06 am
Paul, #14, it took me a couple of reads to get who the girl with the hair was. The previous sentence mentions secretaries, so I believe the author was referring to Tao’s secretary.
May 20th, 2011 at 8:15 am
Thanks Ajcap. I realized my mistake later. I’d first took it as “Tao’s hair”, but later saw it was referring to the secretaries in the previous bit. So really “Tao’s favourite secretary’s hair” or the hair of Tao’s favourite secretary.
May 20th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
Awesome! Loved it. Very… atmospheric… <—- does that make sense?
I didn't realise it was about that Korean General. That didn't take away from it in any way though.
May 21st, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Quite a bit of this story that’s written in the past perfect (i.e. ‘had been’) could have been written in the past simple (i.e. ‘was’) to retain the immediacy more effectively.
That said, a memorable, workmanlike piece of writing.