She didn’t know how long she had been lying there. At some point the cover of the box must have been opened by some built in mechanism. Her presence returned to her, just as the coldness was slowly leaving. There was not a specific moment at which her consciousness came back. Something was ringing deep within the apartment, and she pushed herself up reflexively. Crouching, she felt that there was nothing inside her: no muscles and no strength within. She was limp. She collected all of her energy just to throw her arm over the edge of the box. The telephone rang. She pulled herself together again. She threw her second arm like rubber after the other and hung her head over the edge. Three minutes later the telephone stopped ringing briefly and then started up again. The weight of her head and arms, pulled her upper-body slowly down toward the floor, where she landed softly with a groan. With long rests in between, she pulled herself across the wooden floor toward the telephone. With her nose she pushed the receiver from the telephone, which was laying on the floor, and breathing heavily, let her head sink next to the ear-piece. A reflex stored in her spinal cord released a sound from her. The sound was raw and a bit inhuman.
“Hellooo!”, said a young, energetic male voice. “This is the Institute for Media Research. We would like to do a little survey with you. Of course, if for some reason you are busy in the moment or you aren’t in the mood, because you just came home worn out from work, then we could arrange a time for me to call you back. Hello– are you still there?”
“Hmm.”
“OK, good. You’ll see, it won’t take longer than a couple of minutes.”
He assured her of her rights regarding privacy. The words fell like little drops into her head. Only phrases that he repeated often provoked something in her: a need to imitate. She was learning how to say “yes” and “no”. After a while a curtain drew back slowly and she understood very clearly what he said. At least she could make sense out of the sentences, one word at a time. He asked what kind of electric devices and appliances she owns and read out a list of items that one might expect in a modern household. Her glance swept through the room without catching on to anything.
She answered with either yes or no, just as it came to her. When she heard the word “DVD player”, she hesitated.
“What is that?”, rolled slowly out of her mouth.
“You mean you don’t know what a DVD is, yet?”, he asked, astonished and entered the corresponding register in the computer. The clock was running.
“Now to what you do in your free-time. Do you play any sports? Any crafts such as knitting or stitching? Do you have any pets - a dog, a cat?”
She studied the spider web that she had broken apart when she picked up the phone.
“Spider”, she said.
“Ah ha, so, exotic pets. Do you have a garden?”
This word set loose a wave of warmth and tenderness that was like a buried memory which comes back to life with an unexpected brightness.
“That would be nice”, she said, struggling with every word.
The young man entered “no” and glanced at the time in the upper right corner of the screen. If the woman continues to answer so slowly, he will begin to lose points. What was wrong with her? Why did her voice sound so distant and weak? He clicked a row of “no” boxes and jumped to the question about the last television and radio shows she saw or heard. With the exception of BRC she didn’t recognise any of the programs that he read off.
“When was the last time that you heard BRC: Yesterday, over a week ago, or over a month ago?”
“Yesterday”, she answered after a while. The word simply would not go away. It sounded beautiful.
“OK, good”, he said and breathed in deeply. “In order to make it easier for the interviewee to answer, we would like to ask you to do the following: Reconstruct your day yesterday, hour for hour, beginning with the moment when you woke up.”
She couldn’t speak any more. The use of her vocal cords had made her tired. The young man envisioned the negative points he was getting. If he were to interrupt the interview, he would lose more points. He had already gone too far. He listened carefully to every word she said through his head set. He tried to imagine this woman whose voice, which before was so coarse and rough, now sounded ageless and supple.
“When did you get up this morning?”
His voice sounded warm and alive to her.
“What time, approximately?”
“Eleven”, she attempted.
“P.M. or A.M.?”
“One eleven.”
“Excuse me, please? Ah, twelve, twelve at noon. What did you do then? Did you go to the bathroom first, or to the kitchen? Do you have a radio in your bathroom? Which program did you hear? BRC. Ah ha, of course. And then you went to work, didn’t you?”
No, she doesn’t own a car radio. She spent the day in the office. While she worked, she didn’t listen to the radio. After work she went shopping. Music was playing in the shopping centre. Then she met some friends at a bar. Recorded music was playing. At night she watched television from ten until midnight. He was almost finished. Twelve negative points meant a deduction of six percent of his total earnings for the day.
“How many people under sixteen years of age are living in your household?”
“I’m hungry, I believe.”
“I can understand that very well”, responded the man after a while. “We are also almost finished with the questions.”
While he mechanical read things off the screen and clicked on boxes just as randomly as she answered, he tried to piece this woman together. She was a bit reserved. She was pretty. This was of course idiotic, but he could hear this. She lived by herself and worked in an office. Probably doing something creative. Something that required a lot of concentration. But how was it possible that she didn’t know any stations; neither the public nor the private. Except BRC, one of the oldest stations in the country, that had recently been bought out and privatized. And why did she wake up at noon during the week?
To conclude, he asked her how long she thought their conversation had gone on. She said “ten”, and he saw that they had been speaking for thirty five minutes.
“Did you think this conversation was interesting, in general, or rather uninteresting? “
“Interesting. Very.”
Now he read off a question directly out of his head. The time had clearly run out and he would have really liked to have heard at least one coherent thought from her. So he asked her if there was still something she would like to ask or say.
She would have liked to ask if anything interesting or important had happened over the past few days or years. (She would have learned that there had been a power outage in the entire country with a terrible aftermath).
But she said “no”, and he said “thank you” and cut off the connection with one last click. The constant beeping of the dial tone hurt her ear. She focused all of her energy and put the telephone back on the cradle. She pulled herself over the rough and scratchy carpet across the room. The mirror leaned slanted against the wall. It had accumulated a layer of dust about a millimetre thick and was beginning to slip like an avalanche. She looked composed at the pair of eyes across from her. Her unwrinkled skin was pale with a touch of blue. Upon the urge to smile a few folds appeared in the dimples around her mouth and disappeared immediately. The telephone continued to ring.
When she reached the phone and took it down off the hook she heard his voice.
“I know, it is probably a bit strange, but would you allow me to invite you to dinner? “
“Yes”, she said, “something warm, please.”