Richard, my manager, told me to get a teddy bear from one of
the small conference rooms. I didn’t like the idea, because I’d just been doing
some thinking about teddy bears and realised that they might be contributing to
general metaphysical confusion in the West. However, the task was connected
with supporting a charitable organisation and a bunch of tired, sleepy kids who were about to set out for London, so I grudgingly –
a sentiment about which Richard never learnt – agreed and made my way to the room.
It was still before 7am. We’d already served some simple breakfast and lots of hot drinks to our exceptional guests and I hadn’t managed to have my consciousness-giving espresso yet. When I opened the door, it turned out that I
didn’t need any espresso after all: the size of the thing I’d been sent for made
me fully awake in a second. Soon I was crushing into all sorts of things while carrying down
the corridor a soft toy which was bigger than myself and made it impossible to
see what was in front. 'What kind of bloody sins have I been committing to suffer like that?' I was wondering.
The bear and I somehow managed to reach the ground floor and we found there all the kids ready to board a coach parked just outside the hotel's main entrance. Someone from the charity which organises fun-packed trips for terminally ill children thanked Richard for our hospitality and the kids started getting in.
I was standing there with the ridiculous beast and waited for instructions where and how to dump my embarrassing cargo. The kids kept disappearing inside the vehicle and a small military band was playing some bracing music. A little boy with a very pale face and no hair looked at me, or at the bear. He was too sleepy, or too devastated by his illness, to smile. But I did. Whether I wanted it or not my smile said ‘I am sorry’. And it wasn’t ‘sorry, kid, that you’re dying’. It was ‘sorry that I’ve killed you.’
The bear and I somehow managed to reach the ground floor and we found there all the kids ready to board a coach parked just outside the hotel's main entrance. Someone from the charity which organises fun-packed trips for terminally ill children thanked Richard for our hospitality and the kids started getting in.
I was standing there with the ridiculous beast and waited for instructions where and how to dump my embarrassing cargo. The kids kept disappearing inside the vehicle and a small military band was playing some bracing music. A little boy with a very pale face and no hair looked at me, or at the bear. He was too sleepy, or too devastated by his illness, to smile. But I did. Whether I wanted it or not my smile said ‘I am sorry’. And it wasn’t ‘sorry, kid, that you’re dying’. It was ‘sorry that I’ve killed you.’
