Diary of a Shopkeeper, 6th June
For the third time in the past year, I came into the shop to find an envelope of documents lying on my doormat. This time was slightly different, as the package wasn’t entirely anonymous. There was a scrawled message on the front:
I wis reddan oot me grandfaither’s owld hoose in Wyre short ago when I came across this paepers at the back o the press. There was a note pinned tae hid wae a roosty paperclip: ‘Thank you for the cockie chicken! One drumstick in Eden! Kind regards, E and W.’ Best kens whit hid aal means – maybe naething ava, maybe hid’s a heap o bruck. In which case hid’ll fit your shopkeeper’s diary aafil weel. K.
I was intrigued. ‘E and W’? Could that possibly be Edwin and Willa Muir, making a return visit to Edwin’s home island? I would have asked K for more information, but I had no idea who he or she was.
What of the manuscript itself? It was three or four pages long, written in green ink from a fountain pen on yellowing paper. I made myself a coffee and sat down to read…
. . .
As Gregor Sanday stood up one morning from behind the cheese counter, he found himself transformed into a giant slater. ‘What has happened to me?’ he thought. His shop, a regular whisky, cheese and wine deli, lay quiet between four familiar walls.
His hard, as it were armour-plated, back rested against the coffee grinder and his numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
‘How am I going to cut cheese with only legs to pull the wire?’ he thought to himself. ‘I wonder who’s working with me today? Maybe I can just lounge about talking to the customers, and leave someone else to do the actual work.’
With immense difficulty Gregor lowered himself to the floor, then scuttled over towards the back wall of the shop, where the week’s rota was pinned up. On the way he paused to scoop a fallen crumb of cheese off the lino and into his jaws.
‘I wouldn’t normally eat off the floor,’ he thought to himself, as he chewed. ‘But still, I can’t deny it’s a delicious morsel.’
Gregor placed several pairs of his front legs on the shelving unit and used them to lever himself upwards, rocking the lower part of his body – which he had not yet seen and of which he could form no clear conception – back and forth for momentum.
When he finally got his head over counter height, he felt too scared to go on climbing, for after all if he let himself fall back it would take a miracle to keep him from injuring himself. Worse, he might land on his domed back and be stuck there, legs waving helplessly in the air.
Gregor peered at the coloured squares of the rota spreadsheet on the wall.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed – and it sounded like a gust of wind. ‘I’d forgotten that L is on holiday this week. I’m manning the shop myself, if manning is the right word any more. How am I going to get through the day and perform all my tasks with no arms and having to crawl rather than walk?’
At that very moment there was a rap at the front door. Gregor’s eyes darted to the clock on the wall. It was only five to ten, not opening time yet. Still, he hated to turn away a customer.
Gregor squeezed his broad, armour-plated body out from behind the counter and scuttled the length of the shop.
‘Just coming!’ he cried as loudly as he could, hoping his words would carry, despite being muffled somewhat by the hairy little legs that protruded from either side of his mouth.
There was another knock on the door, and Gregor could see the shadow of a large man in an anorak looming behind the blind. ‘Let me in!’ shouted the man. ‘I want a miniature of Scapa whisky.’
Gregor reached for the door handle with his hairy maxillipeds, then paused. ‘Oh, sorry. We don’t have any. Scapa don’t release miniatures, only full size.’
‘I don’t want a big bottle, you hear, I want a miniature.’
‘As I say, sir, Scapa don’t make miniatures, I’m afraid. I can’t sell what I can’t get.’
‘Well that’s just not good enough. You really have to try harder. Do you have any local cheese?’
‘Oh yes, we have several!’
‘Give me your finest Orkney sheep’s cheese then. A blue, preferably.’
‘I’m really sorry, no one produces sheep’s cheese in Orkney. Nor any blues.’
‘Dear oh dear! This is most disappointing. Call yourself a shopkeeper? I shall take my business to one of your competitors and no doubt get much better service there.’
‘But wait…’ Gregor scrabbled at the key in the door. The hard edges of the metal cut painfully into the soft flesh of his isopod limbs, but he persevered, such was his desire not to lose a customer.
At last the key clicked, and with a tremendous effort, Gregor threw the full weight of his scaly body against the heavy door, butting the glass with his cephalothorax. The door swung open a little and Gregor fell face-first into the gap, landing half in and half out of the door that now wedged him tight against the frame.
There was a piercing scream. Gregor craned his stalk-eyes upwards and peered at the person in front of him. Rather than a whisky-loving tourist in an anorak, he saw the all-too-familiar figure of Mrs S in her equestrian-style check blazer and A-line midiskirt.
She shrieked again, and backed away, pointing in horror at Gregor with one shaking finger and clutching her handbag to her tweedy chest with the other hand.
‘Henrietta, it’s me, Gregor!’ he tried to explain, but the pressure of the door was crushing the breath from him, and all that issued from his hairy lips was a guttural moan and a string of viscous digestive juice.
Beyond Mrs S, a flash of colour and movement caught his eye: two slim yet well-knit men in closely-fitted hi-vis uniforms with all kinds of pleats, pockets, buckles and buttons. It was the Hospitality Investigation Department.
‘Are you the so-called shopkeeper,’ one of them spat out as they raced down the close towards Gregor, ‘Who’s been refusing to supply Scapa miniatures to officially tested and approved tourists?’
‘I can’t sell what I can’t get,’ gurgled Gregor, but the officers of the HID paid no heed, occupied as they were with unclipping a dozen sets of miniature handcuffs from their utility belts…
. . .
And here the manuscript ends, enigmatic and paradoxical. If any reader would care to furnish me with an explanation of this remarkable nightmare vision, please write to me care of The Castle, in the town of K.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 9th June. Other diaries continue to appear weekly. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.
For the record, we do not have an infestation of giant slaters or even normal-sized ones in K&G. In fact, now you mention it, I’ve never seen a single slater in the shop, ever, except for Jim and Marion, and they are always welcome!
What I have seen, and read, is Franz Kafka’s story ‘The Metamorphosis’, originally published in 1916 and translated by Edwin and Willa Muir in 1948. The ‘Ungeziefer verwandelt’ that Gregor Samsa transforms into is strictly translated as a non-specific ‘monstrous vermin’, though most readers imagine, based on descriptions in the text, a giant beetle or similar insect. Or an enormous slater.