In another message Stas wrote:
"а мы с михаилом не согласны. получается, за отказ прочесть рукопись его в полчаса расчитали, посадили в самолет и депортировали за пределы родины, на рудники пожизненно. нелогично. грамматика - да, смущает. но я несколько раз натыкался на подобные несоответствия у других авторов. у меня есть подозрение, что сами англичане не считают свои перфектные правила такими уж перфектными. а у вас нет ?"
Let me try to explain how I see the whole thing (in the accordance to the basic rules of English grammar), and then, perhaps, you'll tell me what is wrong.
So, chronologically, the situation developed like this:
1) Morning of the x-th day of the y-th month. A postman (masquarading as a wolf :) ) knocks in the door of Faber brothers house (or office) and produces a bulky package - PGW's manuscript.
2) The manuscript in question frightens the brothers (who still get easily terrified by "quiet and unfunny" stories) so much, that they start "shoving it from one to another, each trying to avoid the task of reading it".
3) Finally, the twins give up and summon clerk Simmons.
4) Clerk Simmons obediently arrives, looks at the pile of paper he has to read through and thinks "How long?" Then he thinks "I'm through with this small-time stuff. I ought to be striving for something bigger". " Perhaps, for coffee-planting in one of those underdeveloped African countries. Why not in Kenia?" So he resigns...
5) ... And goes to Kenia...
6) Meanwhile in the Castlewood... Oops... Meanwhile in the French restaurant, having suffered from a bad quarrell, the brothers are finding PGF loud and funny enough to laugh their asses out.
7) And they start preparing the manuscript for the publication, which, naturally, takes some time...
8) Meanwhile, clerk Simmons successfully arrives in Kenia and starts his small business. Perhaps he even writes a letter to his former employers thanking them for such an impossible task as to read PGW's essays that made it possible for him to quit his job and find something with a future.
9) So, when PGW is asked to write a foreword for his almost published book, he has already heard the news about the lucky clerk. Which he duly tells us.
Uff... That's about it.
