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reconstruct the series of failures that led her today, at her age, and unemployed, to apply for a job that is not very well paid and has obvious risks?). Shatzy Shell set up the photographs of Eva Braun and Walt Disney on the table, put a sheet of paper in the typewriter, and tapped out the number 22.
    â€œRead me 22, Gould.”
    â€œReally, you’re supposed to start at the beginning.”
    â€œWho said so?”
    â€œThat’s No. 1, people always begin at No. 1.”
    â€œGould?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œLook me in the eyes.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDo you truly believe that when things have numbers, and one thing in particular has the number 1, that what we have to do, what you have to do, and I, and everyone, is to start right there, for the simple reason that that is the number-one thing?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSplendid.”
    â€œWhich do you want?”
    â€œ22.”
    â€œ22. Can the applicant recall the nicest thing she ever had to do when she was a child?”
    Shatzy sat shaking her head for a moment and murmuring incredulously “had to do.” Then she began to write.
    When I was little the nicest thing was to go and see the Ideal Home Exhibition. It was at Olympia Hall, which was an enormous place, like a station, with a cupola-shaped roof. Enormous. Instead of trains and tracks there was the Ideal Home Exhibition. I don’t know if you remember, Colonel. They did it every year. The incredible thing is that the houses were real, and you walked around as if you were in some absurd town, with streets, and street lamps at the corners, and with the houses all different, and very clean, and new. Everything was in place, the curtains, the front walk, and gardens, too—it was a dream world. You might have thought it would all be cardboard, and yet the houses were built out of real bricks, even the flowers were real—everything was real. You could have lived there, you could go up the steps, open the door. They were real houses. It’s hard to explain, but as you walked into the middle of it you felt something very strange, a sort of painful amazement. I mean, they were real houses and all, but then, in actuality, real houses are different. Mine was six stories tall, and had windows that were all alike, and a marble staircase, with a little landing on each floor, and a smell of disinfectant everywhere. It was a beautiful house. But those houses were different. They had odd-shaped roofs, and fashionable features like bay windows, or a front porch, or a spiral staircase, and a terrace or balcony, things like that. And a light over the entrance. Or a garage with a painted door. They were real, but not real: this was what bothered you. If I think back on it now, it was all in the name, the Ideal Home Exhibition, after all what did you know then about what was ideal and what wasn’t. You had no concept of
ideal
. So it took you by surprise, from behind, so to speak. And it was a strange sensation. I think you would understand what I mean if I could explain to you why I burst into tears the first time I went there. Seriously. I cried. I had gone because my aunt worked there, and she had free tickets. She was tall and beautiful, with long black hair. She had been hired to play a mother working in the kitchen. You see, every so often the houses were animated, that is, there were people who pretended to live there, I don’t know, a man sitting in the living room reading a newspaper and smoking his pipe, or maybe even children, in their pajamas, in bed—they were bunk beds, marvelous, we had never seen bunk beds. The idea was always to give that impression of the
ideal,
you see? Even the characters were
ideal
. My aunt played the
ideal
in the kitchen, looking elegant and beautiful, in a patterned apron: she was arranging things, opening the kitchen cabinets, and she opened and closed them continuously, but gently, all the time taking out cups and plates,