Parking

My job is to take money from the people parking their scooters. It’s not a particularly exciting job, and I don’t think it’s ever going to make me rich. What it does allow me to do though is watch. I watch the people come and go, they’re on their way to business meetings, or to meet friends, or make deliveries. All of them have a story, all of them are going somewhere. Some have loaded up their scooter, others bounce lightly off and just take their selves to wherever it is they need to be.

Sitting on my little plastic stool, I like to lean back into the traffic whizzing past. I just imagine the lives of all of these people. Seemingly too many to all fit in one place. All of them going in a different direction, on a different time schedule. This isn’t the biggest city, I’ve been to the capital and yes, it’s bigger and the roads are wider and there are more people. But it doesn’t have the heartbeat that my city has. The pulse beats more strongly here.

The pulse of the city is what made me want to document it. I’m just the parking guy, so I don’t know what everyone is doing, I can’t document facts. What I can document is the aggregate of all of the little snapshots I see. Piece together the snippets from each passer by and stitch them together and make a story of the city. A story that isn’t about any single inhabitant of the city, but a story that is everyone in the city and no one in particular all at once. That’s how I started, it was a long way from the reason I had to stop.

This is a city with a history in squashing dissent. Those old political motivations are gone now though, it’s not about who is right, or about any ideology prevailing. Now it’s only about pride, it’s about image, and it’s about my story cutting a bit too close to the bone for the Prince.

Of course I didn’t start by telling my story to the Prince, that wouldn’t come for a long time. I started just telling my story to my friends. Over a bowl of noodle soup we’d sit and chat, entertain each other. It was in these convivial moods that my story telling started. In a city without radio or television it was just another way to keep our minds occupied. I’d put the pieces together that I’d seen, and I’d fill in the blanks as best I could. With a clean conscience, I wasn’t embellishing or trying to be scandalous. I wouldn’t shy away from scandal either; if I’d seen who was going off with an unmarried woman I’d mention it. In the abstract of course, we didn’t know these people, they were only characters in my mostly non-fictional narrative.

My friends loved it. They laughed at the funny things I’d seen, and they also felt sadness at some of the observations I made. There’s a lot of inequality in this city and often we ignore it if it isn’t pointed out to us again. My friends loved it so much that it became a regular feature of our gatherings. It wasn’t too long before they bought other friends, and then, as you can guess, friends of friends. And so on, until there were strangers coming to see me talk. I’d somehow become a storyteller in a city where there weren’t enough stories being told. More than enough stories were going on of course, I just happened to note them all down in my head and recount them for the pleasure of others.

I’d be overly modest if I told you that I didn’t enjoy those sessions. I got better and better at it, the telling came easier and I became more observant in my day to day life, soaking up more stories to entertain the crowds later that night. I still just told them as I’d seen them, maybe filling in the blanks in more detail than before, this was only because I was seeing more from my vantage point in the middle of the city. I was one man standing still amongst the hustle and the bustle, taking a mental note of the mundane drama that was unfolding unnoticed.

These nights became more successful over time. They were less impromptu and more planed. Instead of catching up with friends they became organised story telling nights. My friends would tell the people they knew when to come. The venue didn’t change, it was always the same old restaurant that I’d kept going back to. Now the old man sweating behind the soup pots would give me free soup before the stories now. I’d long been a good customer, but now, now I was bringing in more people that he could deal with. We’d let him know ahead of time when we were coming so he could organise for his brother-in-law to take the afternoon off from his job to help in the kitchen. There were more customers than he’d ever had. My story telling was more than keeping his business afloat. I’d brought a little bit of money to the chef in my favourite restaurant, that was one thing I have never regretted.

There was the occasional regret of course. From time to time I’d tell a story that offended someone. People would think I was talking about them, I almost never was. I’d scan the audience as I wolfed down my noodles and make sure I wasn’t preaching to the choir, so to speak. Not airing anyone’s dirty laundry in front of their friends. But people still thought I was talking about them. On more than one occasion I had two people shouting at me at the same time, telling me I’d been following them or had stolen their story or was setting out to shame them. They’d be in the same room, at the same time as someone else who thought I was talking about them, both shouting at me at the same time. Both unable to see that the stories are so universal that they aren’t anyone in particular, at the same time as they’re about all of us, about the whole city all at once.

That was the kind of situation that eventually led to the end. My “downfall” if I wanted to be dramatic. Honestly though, I don’t’ really want to be dramatic anymore, it’s got all too serious to be dramatic. Now, I just want to go back to the scooter parking and watch the world go gently by again.

These nights of mine became popular, more and more strangers would come, people from outside of my wider group of friends, and people who I hadn’t seen before. This made me a little bit nervous. Telling stories like I did, it wasn’t exactly forbidden, it’s just that there wasn’t any form of story telling that was expressly allowed. Back in the political times most forms of mass communication had been closed down or turned into channels of propaganda. As things settled down, nobody really challenged that. The city focussed more on the important things like food and shelter and life moved on without television, or radio, or theatre. Nobody missed it at first because they were too busy, and nobody missed it later on because they had been so long without it.

This situation suited the King at the time. While he is a good man at heart, he’s also a practical man. He wanted the city to settle back into life, he wanted his message to facilitate that. So he let things as they were.

These nights of mine, these performances, they weren’t illegal, but we all knew that they were unprecedented. That feeling of testing the waters is exciting, and that’s what kept me going I think. Looking back I do wonder if it might have been different if the Prince hadn’t have seen me when he parked his scooter one afternoon. If he hadn’t have seen me at the scooter park he wouldn’t have realised that I was the person telling the stories the night before. I wouldn’t have transformed from “a story teller” that he’s snuck off to see, into a servant – at least in his eyes I was a servant. I was the person who parked his bike, he recognised me and joined the dots. And like the others who’d mistaken my stories for theirs, he drew more lines than I’d intended.

The story itself wasn’t actually that scandalous. I didn’t mention royalty or rank or even come close to suggesting the Prince. The Prince was only one of the many important men who I’d see discreetly meeting women. Women who weren’t the princess, or the other men’s wives. It was a common theme in the city, and I’m sure in any city. But the guilty are paranoid and they see accusation in observation, even if the observation isn’t of them at all. I seriously wasn’t thinking of the Prince when I told that story. There’s a local law man who I see regularly, he’s famous enough in this town that people recognise him but not famous enough that he thinks he needs to be as discreet as the Prince is.

I tried to explain this to the Prince’s men on the night that they came and arrested me. They wouldn’t hear it, and why would they want to. Their boss is a man who isn’t known for his rationality or even-handedness. The second son who wants to be treated with the respect that his father has, but who is happy not to have any of the responsibility of his older brother. He’s essentially just a rich playboy with a chip on his shoulder and the job of these men is just to keep him happy. As far as they’re concerned justice has been done. I’ll just end up sitting here until they’re told by the Prince to let me go or, maybe worse. The biggest problem with that of course is that the Prince has probably already forgotten about me.

If I’m in here I’m not telling my stories and making perceived slights against the royal family, I’m a solved problem. In more political days I would’ve probably been some kind of martyr, built up to be more than I am and a cause to be fought for. I’m not though, I’m just a man sitting in a cell with no one to tell a story to, and no desire to even tell it anymore. The only story that I have now is my story. There isn’t a stream of stories running past me in here. I don’t see very many people at all now. So it’s only me, me and my story over and over again.