Читать книгу The Ball - Erik Pethersen - Страница 14
1.2 LIFE - FIVE
ОглавлениеAt 2:40 pm there are still all the company settings up and statutory amendments to be registered, for a total of ten documents. In four hours, I should be able to complete my work, just keeping my eyes on the screen constantly, I think.
As for the company settings up, I just need to register the transfer of ownership and input all the company data, the company directors’, the statutory powers: everything. It is a hard task, not a bit creative. The modifications are quite simple: I just have to register the updated statute and input a small amount of data, let aside unfortunate circumstances that could get the company contract to be not just amended but completely altered.
I start with the settings up, I set a core of my brain on auto. I open the pdf file of the first document and I start inputting data in the document in every field of the form: name, registered office, activity and all further necessary information, according to the legal status implemented.
I have been working here at Alessandro’s firm for fourteen years now, however it is a temporary situation, as I often repeat to myself: I must do something in life, I can’t be idle, waiting to find my path. As a matter of fact, as soon as I finished university, my only goal was to start working right away.
Considering the historical period, I had completed my university studies, my father advised me against taking up something similar to what he was doing, building and selling properties, nor had he suggested to work with him. An opportunity that, when you think about it, I did not even take into consideration.
In the 80’s luxury properties located in winter tourist resorts in the north of Italy allowed him to achieve a considerable entrepreneurial success. So much so that our lifestyle was comfortable enough to raise two children, to own a house in the city and two winter and summer holiday homes around the province. My memories of that period, although blurred, are those of a wealthy family background: my mother looked after us kids and our father was often missing, or rather he was around construction sites. Around the mid 90’s, as I grew older, I remember that there was talk about winter tourist market saturation in mountain areas so that my father had to get some work around Lake Garda, in search of new buyers, people who loved the place so much during the summer break that they would consider buying a steady home on the lake shore: luxury homes or homes which would attract wealthy people only. Several German tourists, but also tourists coming from eastern Europe, especially from Russia, beside some Italians with huge assets to invest, no-one knew where that wealth was coming from. So, our standard of living became more than comfortable: my father was getting busier with signing deeds of sale and being less around construction sites; in the meantime, I was growing up, I completed my higher education and I enrolled on a Business Economics and Legislation course at university.
Since my teenage years, I have been always interested in the manufacturing world: to make something tangible, maybe to manufacture a mass-produced item, a real object replicable in a large number of specimen. Once I completed university I did not exactly how to start off a business. I went for a temporary job, connected to the sector I wanted to get into. A job in an established notary office could give me a good chance to keep a close eye on the business world from inside and learn to understand it, a good ground to make ideas germinate.
So here I am, lost in an endless sequence of stories concerning companies, settings up, mergers, liquidation settlements. Ideas for businesses, examples not to follow, models to draw inspiration from. Then also all the series of events which are not really concerning companies, countless stories of people and surrealistic stories, meanwhile time, my time, goes by faster and faster. Marlon goes around the world with his volunteer mates, my parents withdraw to Germany to renovate my deceased grandfather’s home, and I am still wondering what I want to do when I grow up.
I hope that some other core in my brain has finished filling in properly the form of the file, while I was getting lost in my thoughts. I check the whole thing: the data seem to be complete. Check. Amend. Check. Amend.
Almost all right.
Check. Amend. Check. Send. Filed.
I stare at the screen and I realize that if I focused a bit more instead of wandering off I could get this pain in the ass over and done with more quickly. I can’t though, I feel unfocused today.
New file, new company. Name, registered office, date of incorporation, corporate purpose, company directors, powers. Attachments.
Sign. Amend. Delete. Attach. Sign. Attach. Sign. Check. Amend. Check. Send.
In two years’ time, at least four companies out of six will already be gone. I should suggest to Alessandro to put in the liquidation fee too in the registration quotes, just to pre-empt the situation.
⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎
I can hear a light sound of rain and a quick glance out the window validates my perception.
Probably you will be able to see the rain now from the seventh floor too. Provided it will stay there, all day.
Here are now the Ciapper brothers going past my office and heading off to the deed of sale room: their faces are quite gloomy. They are tagged along by Domenica who is following them; after a few minutes I can hear the door of the room close, there beyond the wall of my burial recess.
I must file the documents, keep on filing. There are three company settings up still left. The first one I am taking care of at the moment, is a simple limit liability partnership so I should deal with that in just a few clicks.
This void, this emptiness, you can almost have it, you know; you can almost have it, you know; you don’t remember what you want1, a gloomy half neuronal processor pounds, in the meantime.
Received. Saved.
The one before last. This is a standard limited liability company: what a drag.
So, with two cores, I am wondering how I ended up here: stagnant, without a real reason nor any conviction about what I really wanted. With my two cores spinning fast, what is unclear is what I want now which I realize now, I just don’t know what it is. One thing is sure: I have never dreamed of having what I have in my life now.
I stare at the screen.
The human brain has no cores and multitasking does not suit human beings: keeping the mouse cursor halfway through the form, I realize that my prefrontal cortex is just sending confused ideas to an unspecified part of the brain; it is overloading my work memory with unnecessary stimuli, wasting precious brain resources which could be better used in order to finish up this wearisome task.
Probably that’s what the notary public means: I am gloomy because of my prefrontal cortex. Not just within myself. I am visibly sombre and trapped in the darkness. I am stuck in a pattern, like the grid’s answer slots of a crossword puzzle. Three across, still, motionless and sombre, six letters and it ends with N-D-O.
I move the mouse and finish off two fields, I scroll down, skipping the optional data, and an unspecified part of my brain states that the file is ready to be forwarded to the Chamber of Commerce.
Send. Amend. Send. Amend. Send. Screw you. Amend. Send. Filed.
This is the last one, the front part of my brain declares, before starting again to endlessly question myself as how my life could take this unchosen direction. My right hand stops again, stopping the mouse halfway down the bottom of the form. The idea overtakes the queuing working memory, elbowing through the newly set company data, and freeze every other scheduled thought, while waiting for the requested processing.
I stare at the monitor with my head leaning slightly forward and my eyes open wide. It’s because it was supposed to be a temporary solution, while waiting to do what I wanted. Why not taking up something else straight away, my PFC goes on undeterred, now that a preferential route has been discovered to overwhelm the other neuronal flows. Unless you have completed whatever, you can’t do anything else, so you can just do something for the time being. Just do it then and that’s it, don’t be a pain in the ass, the occipital lobe proclaimed annoyed.
I hear the door into the deed of sale room open, I blink a couple of times and I lean back on my armchair. Domenica says goodbye to the Ciapper brothers, goes past the door of my office and disappears in her office; Alessandro exchanges a few words with the enlightened businessmen whose faces are duller than before, taking them down the corridor.
«So we are back to the origins: Banano rental estate belongs to Ciapper again, the building company which built it. It has been owned by so many companies, poor building!» he utters.
«Yes, sure: dreadful!. It was the beginning of the end» the elder brother, one of the company directors, replies.
I shift the mouse, I press some buttons, I browse and attach the pdf file and I press enter: this is filed too.
No rectification? Where is the button really? I wondering about this while I save the receipt.
«Goodbye notary; have a nice evening, Miss» I hear in the distance.
She is not a Miss: she is married. Even if she wasn’t, Tamara is forty. In the 1800’s people used to say Miss: come on, get the hell out of here, you too Ciapper, you and your Banano estate.
1 Afterhours (artist), Padania (album title), Padania (track title), 2012 (year)