Aslan Norval

by B. TRAVEN

  “Why? It’s all the same.”

  “Most of the time. Yes.”

  Now she began studying the menu carefully, which gave him the opportunity to study her face more thoroughly.

  When I really look at her, I have to say she is rather pretty, he thought. If I only knew what she wanted from me! Why was she so happy to run into me by coincidence? Is she really so desperate? Probably married to a nincompoop much older than her who bores her to death. I bet he only thinks about making money. Perhaps I should stay away after all. She’s the kind of woman who causes headaches if you get too involved, and terrible ones at that. And once you’re hooked and want to get away, she gets a gun out of her fat purse, blows out your brains, and claims that you tried to rape her. And then she cries a river for the jury, shows her beautiful legs, and the jury says: not guilty. And I haven’t even looked at her legs yet. “She’s probably one of those women who wants to be fed three times a night.”

  Beckford was so caught up in his thoughts that he spoke the last one out loud. He bit hard on his lips. He blushed, thinking that perhaps he had said more than he remembered.

  “Fed,” she repeated. “Fed. It’s good that you say that. You must be hungry as a—as a—”

  “—as a lion.” He helped her finish the sentence.

  “I don’t think I really wanted to say lion.” She laughed at him. “I don’t know a thing about lions. Well, not a lot at least. Of all the lions I’ve ever seen in a zoo, I’ve never seen one that was hungry.” The tone of her voice changed.

  “Do you think, Mr. Beckford, that animals in a zoo or in any kind of captivity are happier than those who live in the wild?”

  “I wouldn’t say they are happier but I think they must be more contented. They don’t have to worry about food, they always have water and a roof over their heads, and they’re protected from their enemies, even fleas, lice, and ticks, which can make life unbearable for an animal.”

  No one had asked him what he wanted for lunch among the twenty different entrees on the menu. When the waiter brought pita bread, a large bowl filled with radishes, green onions, young yellow onions, and cress, and added two large glasses of jocoque, she smiled and said casually: “I think you will like what I chose for you.”

  He was just about say: I am old enough to know what I want to eat and what I don’t like, when it occurred to him that the lady did not deserve such a rude response. He realized that he knew absolutely nothing about these Arabic dishes and would have embarrassed himself in front of the lady and the waiter in the fez.

  The only thing he could think of saying at that moment was his usual: “As you wish, ma’am.”

  Now it was she who came close to answering impolitely.

  “You know, I could throw this onion in your face for that eternal ‘As you wish, ma’am’! At least use a different tone now and then and don’t always say it in that monotone. Why don’t you say ‘Go to hell’ or at least ‘Leave me alone!’ every once in a while? Even a wet dog couldn’t stand this.”

  His breath caught in his throat.

  She enjoyed his shocked expression. “See, now you don’t have anything to say anymore.”

  Her tone changed again. “How do you like the food?”

  “I’ve never eaten anything like this before. It’s very good. And in regard to the ‘As you wish, ma’am,’ I promise I’ll get better.”

  “Good. But don’t improve too much. Too great of an improvement could hurt your character.”

  They had eaten the tiny almond cakes and drunk the foamy coffee; the lady demanded the bill and paid. The waiter with the fez had miscalculated by one dollar. Although he considered himself a connoisseur of humankind, he had only received a two-dollar tip from the lady, which was still, as he reassured himself, four times the amount he usually received from guests at this restaurant. No one worried whether he was satisfied or not. After all, he was happy to be allowed to work here. He had no papers. He had remained in the port of New York, where he had arrived as a cook on a Turkish freighter. As long as he did not get in trouble with the police, it could be years before he was caught and deported to Lebanon or wherever he was from.

  4.

  When the lady was standing on the street with Beckford and opened the door of her Cadillac, she asked him: “Where would you like me to drop you off?”

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, at the Rockefeller Institute.”

  “Okay. Rockefeller Institute.” She started the car, which purred to life. Beckford almost strained his neck as he was looking out the car all around them during the first half mile of the ride.

  He said: “Excuse me, ma’am, but this is not the direction to the RI.”

  “Of course not. But first I have to make a short visit in that building,” she said, pointing to an office building that was twenty floors high.

  “I will wait here, ma’am.”

  “It may take me too long, so if you’re in a hurry to get to the Rockefeller Institute, you can take the subway. There is a station just around the corner to the left and you would get there in just a few minutes.”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “Would you do me a favor, Mr. Beckford?”

  “I would do more than one favor for you. In any case, I owe you for the excellent Arabic meal.”

  “Don’t say such impolite things.”

  “Okay, what may I do for you?”

  “Would it be possible for you to wait for me here at the entrance of this building at eleven thirty tomorrow morning?”

  “Nothing easier than that.”

  “The question is whether you’ll be here tomorrow at eleven thirty?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be here on time.”

  “Excellent. See you tomorrow then.”

  Beckford walked to the subway station.

  The next day, at exactly eleven thirty, he showed up in front of the office building. Ten seconds later the lady appeared. She had left her car in a nearby parking garage.

  “I’m happy to see that you are so punctual, Mr. Beckford,” she greeted him.

  “You learn that in the Marine Corps. It’s nothing new.”

  They both entered the building. The elevator whisked them to the tenth floor.

  Now they were standing in a hallway lined by office doors. On the glass panels of the doors, the names of their respective companies appeared in such obnoxious ways that you would think they were screaming for new customers. The lady walked along the hallway and stopped in front of one of these doors. Beckford had followed her. When he glanced at the glass panel, which took up the entire top half of the door, he exclaimed: “Wow! That’s not me, is it?”

  “Who else?” said the lady. “Of course that’s you.”

  On the glass panel, painted from the inside, were thick black letters, discreetly and tastefully framed in gold:

  FLOOD REGULATIONS AND CANAL PROJECTS

  CLEMENT BECKFORD

  PRESIDENT

  Beckford stared at the writing for a few seconds, and then he knew what the lady wanted from him. This office space was neutral territory, completely innocent and unsuspicious, where they would meet to please each other. No one visited this entirely unknown company. And to make totally sure, in case they did not want to be interrupted, all he had to do was hang a small cardboard sign saying CLOSED IN THE AFTERNOONS.

  “Enter your office,” she said, without revealing in the least how much she was enjoying his surprise.

  He opened the door and saw that the room was furnished as a functioning office. He said to himself: I guess I was wrong. This is not what a love nest looks like.

  He thought so because an approximately twenty-three-year-old secretary sat behind a brand-new large typewriter at a brand-new metal desk. When the door opened, she slid the newest issue of True Confessions she’d been reading under the table. She blushed because they had caught her like this. But it wasn’t really her fault, since she had been sitting there for two weeks without a single person comi
ng to bother her. She quickly stood up, politely stepped back from the typewriter like she had learned in vocational school, and waited to be addressed.

  The lady said to Beckford, presenting the secretary: “Miss Amy Greengold, your temporary secretary.” And she looked from Miss Amy to Beckford: “Mr. Clement Beckford, president,” to which Amy responded dutifully: “How do you do, Mr. Beckford?”

  He answered just as dutifully: “How are you, Miss Greengold?” to which she answered just as dutifully: “Call me Amy, Mr. Beckford.”

  Beckford thought: I guessed wrong again. With this chaperone around, this wouldn’t be much of a love nest. I was really wrong. And now I’m even less sure what this deliciously smelling lady wants from me. When I look a little more closely at Amy, though, considering that we will be alone quite often, of course only for dictation, maybe it can turn into something more serious. And maybe the cardboard sign CLOSED IN THE AFTERNOONS can still serve its purpose after all. It’s a shame, truly a shame, that I can’t see her legs.

  “How long should I hold the door open, Mr. Beckford, for you to come and get to know your personal office?” And it was true, there she stood in the open doorway, inviting him to enter the room with a gesture of her hand. He was confused, and he could have slapped himself there and then for always letting his thoughts wander.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just thinking whether it might be beneficial to move those two file cabinets into that corner so Miss Greengold has more freedom to move about.”

  “Good idea,” said the lady. “Really, a good idea on your part. The people who carry furniture don’t care much about where and how to place it, and it gets moved anyway, just like in a new apartment.”

  When Beckford saw the second office, he could not suppress an exclamation of surprise.

  “But this is—this is, but I don’t even know—”

  There, spread on the large table, he found a model in high relief of the complete canal system of central Europe from the Rhône to the Vistula. Not even a museum could have possessed a more beautiful and accurately designed model.

  The scale was indicated in the lower right corner, and although Beckford knew little about the geography of Europe, he recognized at first glance that the proportions had to be accurate, as accurate as is possible in such a model.

  Now his gaze landed on the opposite wall, which was covered with maps of canals. The Suez Canal in all its details, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal. Canals in Holland, in Russia, in China, in the East Indies, in Africa, and in North America. Canals of which he had never heard and about which he had never read. Even the canals of the Americas, except for the Panama Canal, remained unknown to him.

  The lady pointed to the table, which was covered in a mountain of rolled-up maps. “On these maps, you will find even more canals, and in addition, detailed drawings of all the canals you can see on the maps on the walls. Those drawings include the minutest explanations, all the difficulties that had to be overcome, and the repairs that have become necessary since the opening of those canals. And in those books, you will find the history of each canal from the day of its inception to the day of its first use by a ship.”

  He approached the books. Without taking out a single one, he skimmed the spines of the vast number of books. They were organized in ceiling-to-floor shelving. Even in the Institute of Technology, where he sometimes spent several hours in the library, he had never seen so many works solely devoted to canals, dikes, dams, and river control.

  He was speechless. He pushed a chair in front of the shelves and sat down to look at the books as he might look at a large painting in an art gallery. He was alone with himself and his thoughts, dreaming with open eyes while the hundreds of books disappeared behind a thin fog.

  Beckford had been forced to participate in a war about which he was completely indifferent. It had only seemed to serve an excessively influential group of oil manufacturers, industrial magnates, and stock exchange speculators. As a result, he had not only lost interest in his own personality and any ambitious drive to make something useful out of his life, but he had also stopped caring over the last few months whether he was dead or alive. He could not even consider for a minute whether human beings had a reason for existing, or whether this reason was a delusion. Such a delusion served to help humans believe that they distinguished themselves from animals and that they had been created by a personal God in his own image. Therefore, humans could unscrupulously do with animals, birds, insects, and everything else they found on earth whatever they wanted. They did not have to worry that messing with the environment would eventually cause the extinction of humans, and that insects alone would remain as the invincible rulers of earth.

  Beckford just vegetated. He daydreamed through life. What did you live for? Why exert yourself? Create offspring, so that one day they would have the same questions for the same reasons as he now faced? They would be as incapable of answering them as he was. Why work so hard, tear up your nerves, bear the burden of worries? For whom? Why? What did he care about the world? What did he care about people? Why should you have ideals? A new war, and he would be right back in the middle of it. Then it would all end for good anyway. Why should he worry about unsolvable equations? What use was it to be able to juggle cubic squares, parabolas, tangents, logarithms, powers, the square around a circle, and the circle around a square better than a trained sea lion could juggle plastic balls in the circus?

  Why work so hard? The hydrogen bomb, a nuclear projectile remote-controlled from a safe underground chamber, would solve all problems and answer all questions human beings had ever had. And for good. Why put in so much effort if it all amounted to the same thing?

  Beckford got up and began pulling out individual books. He read the titles, the names of the authors, the dates of the prefaces, and the publication dates. He did this with about a dozen books and again he was confused.

  Now how does this make sense? he asked himself. Here is a book that was completed six weeks ago, and yet it was printed eight weeks ago. It’s meant for the next two generations. And here is another book printed a year ago. At the time, everyone, especially architects, knew that hydrogen bombs existed, in the West as well as in the East. And the engineer who wrote this book knew that remote-controlled planes could dump hydrogen bombs three thousand miles away from where they took off. That means these well-educated gentlemen hadn’t abandoned hope that the world would continue to exist. Otherwise, they would have saved themselves the effort of writing and publishing such hefty books. For whom were they writing? For the surviving insects? These serious men are unshakably convinced that humans will continue to exist. And if honestly working men believe in the continuation of the world, who am I to say that it’s worthless to work toward the future?

  While Beckford philosophized in his head, the lady studied the maps on the walls more carefully than you would have expected from a woman in general.

  “That door”—she suddenly interrupted Beckford’s thoughts, pointing to a second door in the room—“also leads to the outside hallway. So you can leave your personal office without being seen by visitors who are sitting in the front office, which I might add could be an advantage at times.”

  How strange, thought Beckford. Very strange that she has rented an office with two entrances for me, so that people can come see me without being seen by Amy. What does this woman want from me? She doesn’t even seem to be considering an affair. That’s clear enough. Everything here looks very professional. Canals. Dikes, dams. What does she have to do with any of that? Those are all enterprises exclusively led by men. Maybe she wants a large irrigation system installed in her big farm in the west? And since I don’t have an engineering diploma, I am supposed to do it cheaply for her? But in that case, why this elegant office in this expensive business district of New York, where rent is in the thousands? She hasn’t mentioned the salary she plans to give me. I bet it’s all about her husband. He’s probably a millionaire five times over, and she wants
to get rid of him. That’s why she has set up this trap so elegantly here. You can come in here and leave without being seen. Who knows what a woman will do to cash in on five million and simultaneously get rid of her old man? Something is not right here. I am sure something is not right.

  “And over there in the corner”—she interrupted his thoughts again—“is the steel safe.” With a slight nod of her head, she pointed it out while fishing a small card out of her purse. “You will find the combination number on this card. Don’t lose it. I haven’t kept a copy for myself on purpose.”

  Now look at that, thought Beckford. No copy? And I’m supposed to believe that? No way, my dear. He took the card, looked at it briefly, and put it in his breast pocket.

  “If you need money, Mr. Beckford, you will find it in the safe. All the money you could need. Just leave a receipt.”

  Then she walked to the desk with two telephones. “This one”—she indicated one of them—“is the business phone. The other one is your personal phone. That number is not in the phone book. Your secretary or whoever is sitting in the front office cannot listen to those calls. They can only listen to calls on the business phone.”

  Very ingeniously planned to the last detail, said Beckford to himself. The perfect murder. But for now, I’ll stay far away from that, until I see what’s really going on with all this.

  The lady picked up the personal phone. Beckford walked to the door to leave the room in order to give her some privacy.

  “Thank you for your kindness,” said the lady with a smile, while she was dialing, “but please do stay. What I have to say concerns you too.”

  He immediately thought, Now she will set the trap. Not so fast, doll. Papa has to be here.

  “I would like to speak to my husband, please,” said the lady into the phone. “How are you, darling? Good? I’m glad. I just wanted to let you know that I’m bringing a guest for dinner tonight. A young, hopeful engineer. Yes, engineer—yes—where I found him?—Now listen here, I don’t go searching for my guests. We just crossed paths. That’s all. He knows how to tell wonderful stories about terrible floods and about logarithms and unsolvable equations and about parabolas, tangents, and Pythagoras. Yes, Pythagoras. You are asking about Pythagoras? No, I don’t know where he’s living currently. He must be some kind of schoolteacher who runs around with a lantern during daylight. Don’t say such silly things. Don’t let me mess with you so easily. You have known me long enough. So, dinner. No, no. Of course, he’s not coming in a tuxedo. He’ll come as he is so you don’t need to worry about your own tuxedo. Plus, I think that both your tails and your two tuxedos are at the dry cleaner’s. Bye-bye.”