The Western Gate

That I was young at the time of this story, my mind was inquisitive beyond my youthful wants. It were more the quest for knowledge and the appeasement of existential suffering that consumed me. Indeed I would easily forgo a date with the gorgeous and much fancied girl who had asked me out, opting instead to curl up with a well worn and aged book of esoteric wonderment. I was content and worried not that unlike others my mind was a whirlwind of imagination and I’d interpret the world before me with both cynicism and sarcasm rather than satisfy the torment of exploding juvenile hormones.
At the time I worked in a large hospital on the outskirts of Essex as a maintenance electrician, fixing this or that and fiddling about with one thing or another. It so happened that a vacancy was filled for another electrician who aroused at first my suspicion and then my curious and inquisitive nature. An avid people watcher I would craft about a person I had only met or seen for the briefest of moments a vast array of possibilities, a tangled web of obscure, perverse and unimaginable atrocities. It were much as the cartoonist would redraw a sitter into an awkward and crooked exaggerated caricature.
His name was Tim.
He seemed to know everything. Whatever the subject, he’d have a comment at the ready. I should add at the outset, initially I was more fascinated by this creature than having any predisposition towards jealousy. There was also, THE book. At times, whether working or if he were anecdoting on any number of subjects he would often produce from his inner jacket pocket a dog eared and well battered notebook, he would seemingly turn pages straight to where the answer lay. If we were working on some technical piece of equipment the notebook would guide him. If dates needed to be check for this, that or the other, out would come THAT notebook. If history lessons or armchair battles needed to be explored in the mess room, THAT notebook would appear and everything from Napoleons defeat to the races of Celtic Britain would be relayed via whatever scribbles he had previously entered. It were more, so it would seem, concise than a whole heaving library of encyclopaedia Britannica. Over time the fascination waned replaced by a loathing of THAT book. Perhaps it was jealousy, but the act of producing the ragged book at every juncture increased my bile. Inflamed my angst.
What was more peculiar was the manner in which he would clutch that awful oracle, it were secret, arcane and no shoulder pedestrians or tailgaters onto the pages were allowed, he’d open it slightly if prying eyes were in his personal space, such that they were obscured from seeing, god help them, the contents of that musty wrinkled old notepad.
It so happened one afternoon and I was assisting Tim on fixing steel conduits to the outside wall of the mortuary. He, was upon the scaffold and I, still an apprentice would watch, learn, “ask the right questions” and generally scuttle to and from the storehouse for anything he needed, which being as methodical Tim (that was his nickname) wasn’t required. Everything down to the last screw, rawlplug and suchlike was all prepared and carefully collated. Nothing was amiss. Well except that I had, in spite, hidden the masonry drill bit needed to affix the ‘saddles’ to the wall that would hold the conduits. Tim was walking up and down the scaffold, measuring one height, one length, taking out his pencil and making notes in THAT book. He reached for the drill and then, panic, where was the drill piece? why wasn’t it affixed to the side of the drill with the tape that Tim would always use, to ensure everything was methodically and perfect in place.
“Dave !” he bellowed, “Have you seen the masonry drill bit, 8mm, it was…” he tailed off, and I saw, perhaps a hint of stress from the one time zen master of contentment.
I watched as Tim marched up the scaffold his eyes scouring the planks for the luminous yellow tape that firmly held, at one time, the drill piece to the side of the drill.
“Have you found it?” I questioned in a manner clearly suggesting that he was butter fingered and I was growing impatient.
“No I….” he ruffed up his hair and retraced his steps, then gave me a look, a look that would reflect abject shock, horror or fear… “I….”
remarkably, he took out his book, scanned quickly the pages, I stepped back a little, what would THE BOOK say? where the drill piece was? The inner schadenfreude inside laughed a little and as young apprentices do and with my hands uncaringly in my pockets I pretended to look for the missing piece on the ground below all the while stroking the offending absconder in my pocket. Tim leaned over the scaffold to view my quest.
“I cant see it” I offered and looked up to see Tim, distraught, his hair ruffled and in his hand the book mocking him with flicking pages from the wind that careered into the crosswind creating about us a tiny vortex of malevolence. And. It was this that were enough to cause Tim, to stumble, leaning over the scaffold to view my progress, perhaps too far, indeed, for a moment it were a comedy skit as he seemed to be whipped into the gaps between the scaffolds and next minute, grasping a horizontal pole hanging there like Buster keaton, of course he had to surrender THAT book to the coasting wind, and it was THAT book that his eyes followed, watching it fall downwards to my feet. His eyes widened as I leant down to pick it up whereas I should immediately have rushed to Tim’s aid.
“Wait… I !…” he yelled, his eyes firmly on THE book. Time seemed for a moment to slow. It is as if the universe stops to watch the unfolding scene, a paradigm shift of importance.
As I reached for the book, Tim placed his foot on the horizontal scaffold below, this would be enough for him to jump, perhaps 8 feet to the ground, but the pole was rounded, his foot slipped over, and as my hand took the book, Tim’s hands relinquished their grip on the Toe-board that were supporting him.
Down he came, hard onto the floor. The comedy now was over, the tragedy had consumed the scene as he lay there, unconscious for a moment and then stirring, clawing to reach out for, what I imagine was another toe-board or scaffold pole to grasp onto, though we all know he was trying to retrieve THE book.
“Peter The Porter” had just viewed the calamity from the corner of the mortuary block and came rushing up, calling on his ‘walkie talkie’ for assistance.
And so it was that I viewed Tim, placed into a wheelchair being taken to accident and emergency, often panicked, looking around at me standing there, watching him.
I now had in my possession, the drillbit wrapped with luminous tape and… THE BOOK.

With heart racing I opened to view the contents, the facts, the figures, the anecdotes. Inside was nothing, perhaps some scribbles, not shorthand, just time consumed doodles of wayward shapes. No writing, no figures, nothing, just old well thumbed pages and a few carefree scribblings.
Tim was in fact illiterate, though he had a brain that seemed to compensate by filling itself with everything needed to be known. The book, well, perhaps that was his comfort blanket, his outward mask to the world. For the rest of the world this tome of Shrangri-la was another folly, another found ancient tomb of dust and decay.