I-catcher Console Full

Gaspar at the bottom of the bar in the metro

He plunged his gaze to the bottom of his chaise beer, setting a remaining foam, like the filaments of saliva, a liquid with all the gas had escaped. He looked elsewhere, weeping a brother, a wife, a friend. The cafe was full, and the only place where I could sit down was precisely the stool beside him. One Thursday evening in November, there are always people in the street troquet education. The clientele consisted, as usual regulars, employees of my journal of parliament, officials from neighboring departments, one or the other trader. Him I'd never seen and watched from the corner of the eye. He did not move, he was still staring at the same point as if the bottom of his glass was a revelation any arise. The radio went an old song 70s, one in which the singer regretted the woman he left behind. Orval my drinking, I wondered if it was the same kind of situation that had frustrated the man here. At the end of the song began the news flash. I already knew everything that was going to say and do not intend to pay attention, until I heard my neighbor get to mumble alone. I tried to force my ears to listen to nothing else but what he said, ignoring the whispers of the room, the conversations at the bar, the noise of pumps and refrigerators. I could understand the word "Law". It made no sense, but it was actually what I meant. I felt he was repeating a short phrase is repeated like a mantra, but what was it? Only when the radio went an interview with the trainer that the stranger raised his voice a little and I could clearly understand the words which hitherto did not escape with hesitation and restraint of his mouth. "Give me the law," he said. Give me the law. Insane. I had, in recent weeks met with many government employees who complained about the lack of government which prevented them from working. It was always a lie or half-truths used to hide the search for a new excuse to ask for more money. But if I thought for a few moments he was one of those, I could not help but be surprised by the strange language of his claim. As if reading my thoughts, he raised his head from his glass, looked at me for a few seconds and said, "only my team is at a complete standstill." Pain and distress were read in his eyes, and this coupled with the unexpected arrest provoked in me a silence of some moments. Picking up my spirits, I asked him the only possible question. Thus I became acquainted with Gaspar, enumerator laws.

They are not much to do this job, just a handful. For reasons that seem obvious after the fact, the very existence of a legislative review team is a closely guarded secret. I am convinced that he had been informed that because Gaspar then sank into a depression ethyl and knew my job. Actually, it never asked me for all our discussions making only talk, talk, talk again, pausing only to listen to a few of my interventions. Enumerator of laws is a misnomer, and that evening, he endeavored to dispel the mists that surround this mysterious function well. Thus I learned that Leopold of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, just became the first King of Belgium in 1831, confided to Felix Muelenaere, his prime minister, the task to hire a man to maintain confidence which does name was not yet a database of all laws enacted for the Belgian people and that all decisions of all public bodies, the head of the State to the smallest village. Never named in the history books, Lysander Mayelle performs its work alone for several years, but the deputies, mayors, aldermen, ministers taking to heart their work, he soon had to designate him a few assistants. They would have been a dozen in the first days of 1900 and the frame was stabilized in the fifties, with a score of scribes.

Gaspar hastened to tell me that so noble and useful can be this task, I must not for one moment think that that is why he devoted his life. No: there was a huge change in 1983. The computer, I cried. Gaspar looked at me, pained me to have the audacity to interrupt to get out of my lips such nonsense. Without even bothering to use the negative to articulate my mistake, he continued his explanation and said that the problem was born of a strike by census takers. It lasted several weeks, no one could add new texts to the archives, especially not in view. I thought it would annoy that one or the other lawyer in search of forgotten laws, decrees and orders aging funny but preferred to silent. Good idea, because once again I was wrong. He proved that nobody could, during this month where the scribes crossed arms, imagine, write, pass new laws in confidence. There were so many that the risk was great to redo something that had already been done. And indeed, in some sessions of the House of Representatives that took place, and qu'édiles, bailiffs and journalists preferred to send to the dustbin of history, we revote some text twice and reinvented the laws of 1872 or 1903 without anyone noticing at the time. He whispers a desperate member confided to the president that he would retire if the circus had lasted longer, because its method of voting (green button if he was hungry, white button if he was tired or red button if he thirst, for example ) only worked if he guaranteed it was pronounced only once on each proposal.

Once the conflict is resolved and that this chaos will not occur again, it was decided in an act in public as a pledge of unwavering commitment to modernizing the state to computerize the process collection and eliminate altogether the service review, leaving some in from early retirement, transferring others to the Ministry of Finance and now only four men to their task: two dedicated now to computer and two Other papers in the archives on behalf of the Minister of the Interior. That would have put the end to a long history as Belgium. It was nothing: this was the moment when the enumerator function of law became more secretive than the reports of the SSC, it disappeared from radar and gained public prestige strange, the one single person is aware doing the job because she knows that without it nothing happens but that she knows nothing.

Over the years, a problem made more pressing. Between local councils, ministerial, provincial, lunch with the press, social hotlines, charity events, dinners to Rotary, trade houses, glasses with unions, sinners, publishers, booksellers, small sofas with tenors of culture subsidized openings of bridges, farms ultra-modern, unveiling statues of innocence shattered, first fried, the last beer, buying a major painting for the museum minor artist of corn or a sketch on cloth stained with grease from a major artist for the poor of the city museum, sitting in the stadium seats with a red club provincial football where nobody sings more than celebrity galleries, previews of the latest film from the first film came, champagne go-go, travel to Paris to visit the Embassy History in New York history to visit the UN, Bogota story of visiting a presidential candidate of the jungle, in Tokyo for the Sumo, kind and benevolent presence in a nursery school per quarter, tapping on darlings, speech to the lodge at the palace, among laïcards, readings of local authors who contribute to the greatness of our country, medals for golden wedding, silver, diamonds, they had simply more time to discuss, develop, and adopt laws. The people it was perhaps better, but he did not know. What he wanted is not it, is seeing its agents everywhere - until, if necessary, dying between the legs of a mistress-and wake up each morning with a newspaper talking to him offers details what will change legislatively. He wanted the omnipresent, all-terrain four-wheel drive but he also wanted the answers to the problems passed he did not have the previous day. In well informed circles, it still remembers the poor member of a small town near the border that had cracked after a morning to eat the sausage, ham, sausage with farmers in his region, a meal with a potential investor, a snack with a gallery, the kickoff of a game of basketball, an early evening to support his wife, a late night try to work on a file for the vote tomorrow. He rose from his chair work, realizing that it had been six months since it was like this and the next day he should go see and taste the tomatoes in an old people's home. He judged that it was possible, took his car to go to the Tower of Finance, where it jumped by putting a bullet in the head just to be sure. And others said, too, that was enough. They sought a solution. It soon became clear that the elected was irreplaceable in the field: in a democracy, it does not use look-alikes. By cons, if there were talented people for the job of shadow, one that is to sniff the problem who uses her sweet scent in the air time, then find and eliminate the agents that compose the formula to ensure biochemical success, then there would be more to really work - that's what kills-and it would involve more than others from time to swallow a pill anti-sour stomach and come to parliament to push a button among the three.

Thus we decided to hire five officers with the task of providing problems laws and turn-key elected officials around the country. They are not officially but officials have all the advantages without the disadvantages: they are paid in proportion to their talents, premium Privacy, productivity bonus, premium media coverage. Statutorily independent, under contract to the parliament, they have received wages for a slush fund fed by the secret fund that was entrusted with the prime minister every year. They are called enumerators laws brainer due only to chance and the simultaneous liquidation of real service enumerators. Not only person outside of elected officials, knew these five men until I encounter a strange but if Gaspar became too curious, their names had to turn away from reality. If you can make them using the wrong name, they will never reach the truth.

Gaspar does not deal with compiling, no, Gaspar invent, compose, prosody, cares about poetry. Yes: Gaspar is one of those men who manage to put words on current concerns and the time is ever good enough. Enumerators of laws, Gaspar is the best, the only genius. And that is a genius because his bench coach can not use it is unfortunate. That's why, that night, he tried to flush out the subs at the bottom of his glass pilsner.

(How does one become an enumerator? What is it? Who are his friends? In what habitat does he sleep? What excites him? How does it survive the crisis of institutional climate ? All his answers, and more! - one of those four)