Living Outside The Truth

Meanwhile, back at Irregular Property Consultants Inc. progress was at last being made.

Our website had hit cyberspace and we had even employed a (completely inexperienced) salesperson. Admittedly the advertising was still only in the discussion stages, but at least we had taken stands at two largish overseas exhibitions.

Unfortunately for my boss, this just wasn’t enough. Regardless that he had chosen to set up shop in a saturated market and regardless also that he was averse to investing the necessary funds, after only three months he was in full panic that his venture was never going to get airborne.

Now I was no business woman, but even I was aware that expecting to go from zero to property tycoon in twelve weeks was pushing the bounds of probability somewhat; and when one is not speculating enough to accumulate very much at all, well, instant success becomes an even harder target to hit.

But he was not to be swayed, and began to take ever more drastic measures – to the cost of his new employees.

The first shock was being informed that any time off at all during the first twelve months would be out of the question. It was a defining point in my life, and the exact moment I realised without a shadow of a doubt that I was all about working to live. Not even tentatively did I belong in the living to work category.

No freedom? No chance.

He then decided to reduce our remuneration: the business not taking off as speedily as he had anticipated apparently leading him to the conclusion that we were being over-paid.

In amongst almost overwhelming feelings of frustration, I was also surprised to discover that I was more than a little intrigued.

For our boss was a devout and godly man, who spent (as is the wont of most Jehovah’s Witnesses) the majority of his free time either at his local temple or knocking on people’s doors to see if they too would like to spend the majority of their free time either at their local temple or knocking on people’s doors…

He was a devout and godly man who had also inveigled two people into working for him under somewhat false pretences: first baiting us with an offer of employment, before switching to self-employment once we had been hooked, purely to save himself money – thus ensuring we forgo free health cover, unemployment pay and job security (we could have been told that our ‘services were no longer required’ at any time), only to then try and diddle us out of the financial compensation he had initially offered to make up for these disadvantages.

The self-deluding qualities of the terminally religious were hard at work.

Just as they were when another devout and godly colleague of that faith (who, incidentally and stupefyingly, spent months proselytizing in Tehran in the company of his Iranian wife) ignited heated debate when he devoured a large slice of my birthday cake.

Now, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays because they believe that only after death, can you assess whether or not a person’s life was worthy of celebration.

Fair enough, I suppose.

But having opted out not only of the spirit of birthdays, but also the contribution towards birthday gift or card, then surely they should not feel free to go nibbling at office birthday cake?

This colleague declared himself unable to see my logic, and yet to me his behaviour seemed flawed on so many levels.

What can I say? I’m apparently very petty…

But in the interest of cordial colleague-relations and in order to draw attention from my rampant atheistic cynicism, I did attempt a polite interest in the faith that took up so much of their lives, led to them being estranged from so many non-JW members of their family and caused them to mutter darkly in my presence about the arrogance and predicted fiery demise of those who refused to accept The Truth come judgement day.

Thus I discovered that almost without exception, every one of them had been preyed upon converted during a very low point in their lives: financial crisis, serious illness, marital break-up, emotional instability and so the list went on.

I was proudly informed that “Witnesses” rarely partook of activities outside their temple; attending multiple meetings throughout the week, plus the weekend door-thumping for which they are beloved the world over. Such application to the cause apparently adding to the heavenly brownie points (redeemable in the next life?) stacking up in preparation for the day a chosen few will at last be able to thumb their noses at the unbelievers below as they are winched up towards the firmament.

I managed not to vent my spleen when a colleague answered my questions on how far family ruptures along religious lines really went, with the astonishing declaration that she would almost certainly cut off her only son if he left the religion. The temple elders strongly “suggested” such courses of action in these matters.

I even went so far as to delve into a couple of copies of The Watchtower – vague, uninformative, self-serving, fact-twisting, were the only printable descriptors I could come up with.

But eventually, the stress and uncertainty caused by the boss’s lack of confidence in both his company and his staff, led me to abandon my attempts at cultivating cordial colleague relations in order to jump employment ship once again.

It was during the tumultuous months spent trying (and failing) to make a success of job number two, that it dawned on me that my relationship was Abel was heading precisely nowhere.

By the time I had come to this decision, he had been at Granada University for eight years – labouring over a five-year pharmacy course.

How could that possibly be? I hear you ask; well let me give you a little insight into the Spanish university system in the late 90s early 00 (it may have changed since then).

In order to obtain a degree, it was necessary to study and subsequently pass exams on a number of different subject modules. In the case of a degree in pharmacy, there were forty-odd modules to pass, with each module being assigned a number of points. One had to gain a specified number of points in order to pass from one year to the next and on to the completion of the course.

However, and this is a BIG however, students were given EIGHT chances to pass each exam. So in theory (and presumably also in practice) one could take all the forty-odd exams SEVEN times each, and fail, but would still only fail the course itself if the eighth attempt at passing was unsuccessful.

So Abel had a potential three hundred and twenty attempts at passing his exams in order to become a pharmacist, and BOY can that take up a lot of one’s time.

It wasn’t that I didn’t sympathise: I certainly did not have the abilities to nail a university degree in anything – which is why I didn’t even attempt it. No, what I really struggled with was that he seemed incapable of facing the realities of his situation and taking the reins of his life into his own hands.

Abel was far from being a stupid man, but for whatever reason, a degree in pharmacy was patently not going to be for him. He could have changed to a degree course better suited to his capabilities, he could have stepped out into the world of work – hell, he could have taken his allowance and travelled the world for a year.

Instead he was racing up to the age of thirty, still chucking his father’s hard-earned cash at a failed endeavour and dismantling his own self-esteem into the bargain.

There were of course other things that were not as they should be, but when you start to lose respect for someone, attraction and affection are not far behind. And since I had moved to Marbella fourteen months previously, our visits had become more strained with each passing month: I would frequently come home from work to find him lying on the sofa exactly where I left him nine hours previously, and any comment would be met with a barrage of accusations that I was undermining his efforts to finish his education.

A twenty-year relationship could perhaps weather such a crisis. A three-year relationship that has already been pretty crisis-laden from the get go, cannot.

There are ways and ways of terminating a love affair and I chose the wrong way (apparently).

I sent him a letter. Well, what was I supposed to do? I knew that he would only make me feel guilty if he was sitting in front of me.

The fall-out from that misguided decision was to last an entire summer.

The first hint that this was to be the case was when he appeared on my doorstep a week after I had dropped the fatal missive into my neighbourhood letter box. To say it was awkward would be a large understatement, so to make things a little less intense I suggested that we step out for a coffee.

By the time we were on our second coffee the atmosphere  had calmed, so when Abel asked me if I still loved him, it seemed that honesty would be – if not the best as far as his pride was concerned – certainly a fairly safe policy.

So when I confirmed that I had fallen out of love with him and he promptly hurled a lake of stress-induced vomit all over the café table, I couldn’t decide whether to feel flattered or not…

Of course what I actually felt was very bloody guilty.

So having mopped him up, I heard myself assuring him that our separation was only temporary; that I hadn’t fallen out of love with him much, and untruthful so on and dishonest so forth (are you starting to see why the letter-writing option really was the best one for me?)… well, at least it put a stop to the vomiting.

So although I was eventually able to pop him back on the bus to Granada in a slightly more cheerful frame of mind, I realised that my relationship problems were far from over.