Everyone shook his head in wonder. Admiring and even adoring glances were cast in his direction by the women of Accounting. Only Walt would have dared to engage in one-upmanship with so formidable a personage. He cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, yeah, we know all about it. I’ve seen it all myself: riots, revolutions, wars. I was auditing United Fruit when Castro came to power. They came into the plant, guns blazing. We lost half a dozen men. One of these jokers sticks his rifle right under my nose and says, ‘How you lak to shoppen thees pencil, gringo?’ You know how they talk. Well, I wasn’t about to take any crap from the likes of some clown who talked English with a foreign accent. I hit him with a hard left to the midsection and took off. I was on the run for two weeks before I finally made it to Guantanamo. You’d think I’d have some R and R coming. Not on your life. The next day I’m shipped out to the Congo. When Lumumba bit the dust I almost got it too. I was working on the budget for fiscal ‘sixty-two when some bozo with a spear and loincloth comes into the office and introduces himself as the new minister of finance. You can tell he’s not too familiar with double-entry bookkeeping by the way he keeps scratching his head and jabbering away. Couldn’t make out a word he was saying. You know how they talk. Anyway, I must have said something that offended him, because he kind of reared back, fingering the spear like it was going to be his big throw in the javelin event. I went right out the window post haste facto. It was a two-story drop but I took the fall on my feet, rolled over twice and lit out for the jungle. As luck would have it I came to an abandoned village. A girl came out of one of the huts. Couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Sweetest little thing I ever saw. We hid out together for two weeks before crossing Lake Victoria into Tanzania. Got her cherry too.”
“Oh yeah?” Charlie said. “What did you do with the pit?”
There had been exclamations of protest when Walt embarked on this recitation of his valorous exploits but Solly had silenced them with a stern look. Hirsch admired this quality of Solly’s: he took everything in stride, was never disconcerted or nonplussed though on occasion he lost his
temper. He did not feel threatened by Walt, as Hirsch sometimes did. He did not have to raise his voice to make himself heard. He had charisma. Hirsch himself had little to contribute to these sessions. He knew that his chief value to the organization lay in his pronounced powers of observation. More than once, as previously mentioned, Solly had consulted
him about various personal matters, coming to rely more and more on Hirsch’s judgment as time wore on. Hirsch did not press his views. He offered them dispassionately, analyzing each case from every angle. Occasionally he even quoted Solly’s own adages or maxims with an ingratiating show of deference which Solly could not have but found irresistible. It was one of the great lessons that Hirsch was in the process of learning under Solly’s tutelage that there was a chink in everyone’s armor that generally concerned some exaggerated notion of one’s own worth. It was into these chinks that the perspicacious student of human behavior might effortlessly insinuate himself. This was not to say that he was about to advocate any course of action that might be construed as an attempt to exploit or manipulate his coworkers. Nevertheless it was his responsibility to promote the interests of management. Hirsch was aware of the fact that a number of his colleagues regarded him as little more than a spy, choosing to construe the daily briefings he gave Solly as reports on their own activities. Be that as it may, Hirsch was determined to do his job. Solly, at least, appreciated him.
From time to time Solly would also address the office staff formally. These were solemn occasions, otherwise Solly would not have made a point of calling everyone together in the middle of the day, though generally he did so around the time of the coffee break so that a minimum of time would be lost. On one occasion he spoke at length of the
extra effort that was required at inventory time; on another he spoke of the need for special care in handling documents after discovering in one and the same week a stamped invoice that had not been filed and a filed invoice that had not been stamped. During these meetings the staff gathered around him in no fixed order, such as women in front, men in back as when group photographs were taken, though the tendency was for coworkers to stick together—Accounts Payable with Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable with Accounts Receivable and so on and so forth. Hirsch stood off slightly to the side, as though to emphasize that nothing that Solly might say pertained to him and that he was in fact there more as an observer than as an ordinary worker. Of course Solly also attended the frequent conferences in the big ground floor conference room. Hirsch had attended such a meeting just once, when Solly was due to make some kind of presentation and required logistic support. Dolores had attended too. They had sat side by side against the wall like junior officers at a council of war. One of the vice presidents had presided. The majority stockholder had made an appearance. The vice president told a leisurely story about some garbage disposal problem he was having at home, ingeniously tying it in to the Company’s hiring and firing policies, in the way of a parable. The treasurer mentioned something about how Miss Malone had knocked over a vase with one of her pointed breasts and everyone laughed. The treasurer then yielded the floor to Solly. Hirsch was called upon just once, nodding his head when Solly turned to him to confirm a point. Dolores also nodded her head, reinforcing the
positive impression the department was making. She had worn her strong perfume and her leg pressed against Hirsch’s. Coffee was served by someone called Manuel or José who came down from the cafeteria with some pastries as well. Dolores picked out a donut for Hirsch. The crumbs fell into his lap and he also spilled some of his coffee. After Solly finished his presentation he started twirling his tie.
Once a year there was also a meeting in the cafeteria of all the workers in the building, just before the annual stockholders’ meeting. On these occasions the tables were pushed to the side and rows of chairs were arranged in front of the head table where the vice president and the treasurer sat. Of course some people sat on the tables along the walls and Walt and Charlie stood near the exit smirking as the vice president reviewed the year and the treasurer discussed the Company’s financial position. The government was of course the Company’s biggest customer, a great deal of money exchanged hands, there was talk of national security and making the country great. There was little horseplay on these occasions. The girls of Accounting batted their eyes. Some of them chewed gum.
Solly generally ate in the company cafeteria, the women of Accounting generally brought sandwiches to work or even containers with salads of all kinds, though occasionally the husband of the pretty girl in Accounts Receivable would come by to take her out to lunch, or a few of the girls might go up to the cafeteria or even out to a restaurant, and Hirsch generally ate in the Automat. During the coffee breaks Manuel or José also appeared with a selection of pastries and this was of course one of the high points of the day as everyone gathered around the coffee dispenser and bought Danishes and donuts. The cowlike Marcia or Marilyn usually took one of everything but others, watching their figures, rarely got anything, such as the foreign girl who spoke without an accent, though her bad teeth suggested other problems which may or may not have been related to her diet. Dolores usually had a donut. She ate, for the most part, daintily, chewing with her mouth closed and a dreamy or self-absorbed look on her face. Perhaps she was thinking of other things as she ate, sylvan scenes, childhood memories, romance. Occasionally, when someone had a child, a box of chocolates was passed around. Solly, on the birth of his son, had passed out cigars to the men, though it was said that Dolores had jocularly reached out for one too, causing great laughter, but that had been before Hirsch’s time and was part of office lore now. The Company had been in existence for many years. All kinds of people had passed through Accounting. Some were remembered fondly, others had left under a cloud. Dolores was one of the senior members of the staff but had pretty much gone as far as could be expected
in the department, given her health problems, unless of course she was transferred to a position of responsibility in some other department where her missing breast would not be an impediment. Mr. Kroll too, given his age and peculiar habits, was not slated for advancement. That left the matron in Payroll. Hirsch did not consider her a rival. Her background in accounting was limited. She knew little beyond payslips. It was true that there was a rigid chain of command in the office and much attention was paid to precedence. Invoices too worked their way up this chain in a fixed way. As Mr. Kroll never left his cage and Dolores never
left her desk, getting invoices from one to the other was no simple matter. It was determined that Marcia or Marilyn, who sat behind the foreign girl, would be the go-between, though it was in fact the foreign girl who supplied Dolores with the invoices; that is, after checking them against the purchase and delivery orders, she would bring them around to
Dolores’s desk and place them in her inbox. Dolores would then process them and place them in her outbox, at which point the foreign girl would come around again and retrieve them, placing them in her own outbox, after which Marcia or Marilyn would take them and bring them over to Mr. Kroll’s side of the room, clearing her throat to get his attention and placing the invoices in his inbox. It was true that the foreign girl might have leaned over her desk and handed the invoices to Dolores, as they sat opposite one another, and Dolores might have leaned over and handed them back to the foreign girl when she was finished with them, and in this way the foreign girl would not have had to jump up from her desk a dozen times a day, but this was not how things were done in the department. The present arrangement was thought to work very well. Solly himself had approved it.
One day Solly sent Hirsch to Queens to pay one of his tickets in Traffic Court. It was a fine spring day and Hirsch took the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood. He’d never been to Queens before. Later he found a bench and sat in the sun. Someone asked him for a cigarette. Hirsch pointed to his pipe, which he had clipped into his shirt pocket together with his pencils, and made an apologetic gesture. Then he smoked for a while as though to convince whoever might be observing him that he really was a pipe smoker. He smoked a grape-scented tobacco, sucking on the stem like a fish out of water sucking at the air or someone blowing kisses at a lover or a child. It was pleasant outside. He was in a park. He watched young mothers wheeling baby carriages,
chipmunks running up the trees, boys with a ball in the grass. A man dressed in white sold ice cream and soft drinks from a little cart. Girls were skipping rope. A plane came by overhead. The sky was cloudless. The air was hot and still. It made him think of another time, another place. He was bound to that time and place, when there had been the three of them, that is, himself and two others, and all the world was his.
Solly also sent him to the majority stockholder’s daughter again. She was wearing the same short robe but this time she took him by the wrist and led him into the apartment. Then she took the check and stared at it as though not quite certain what it signified. Then she said, “You think I’m happy because I’m rich but I’m not. There’s lots of things I don’t have. I’m alone all day and then he comes home and beats me up. He does terrible things to me. Look.” And again she showed him the welts and bruises. “That’s how it is when you’re rich. Would you like some lemonade?”
Hirsch sat on her sofa and drank the lemonade. The living room was like a movie set, ornately furnished, with
expensive-looking bric-a-brac and creamy fabrics on the chairs. The majority stockholder’s daughter had washed her hair and had a towel around her head. The robe barely covered her hips. She had dark hair between her legs and manicured toenails. Her face was lined and showed her age. She sat beside him and he was tempted to put his hand on her knee but didn’t dare despite the various indications that she would not be averse to such an overture and he could in fact have his way with her, as it was sometimes put. Then the phone rang and he took the opportunity to make his escape, not even pausing to shut the door.
Back at his desk, Hirsch phoned the house, but no one answered. He let the phone ring and ring until the switchboard operator told him to get off the line. Then he arranged his papers and his paperweights, gathered up some stray paper clips, and sharpened his pencils. In effect, the day’s work was done and he had an hour to kill, which was often the case on these lazy summer afternoons. Things got slack between four and five. It was not just Hirsch who dillydallied. The girls of Accounting began to socialize, or visit the powder room. Walt and Charlie pretended to be working, as was generally the case, spending their time drinking coffee and arguing about personal matters. It was only occasionally that they had a real confrontation in matters relating to precedence or authority. Solly shut himself up in his room, talking to his broker. Only Mr. Kroll went on stamping his papers.
In the evening Hirsch told Harriet about Walt’s various adventures in the line of duty. “Which one is that,” Harriet said, “the one with the pimples or the one with the tic?” Hirsch had never noticed either of these features, thinking of Charlie as tall and gangling and Walt as short and powerful, just as he thought of Solly as bald and Dolores as deformed and would have been surprised to hear them described in any other way. Harriet, in any case, did not seem to be listening. She was sketching Infusoria. Later she spoke on the phone for a long time, taking the call in the other room. Hirsch tried to listen in but could barely hear her voice. Otherwise they spent a quiet evening at home. Hirsch put on a record and read a book. Later he made coffee. Then they went to bed.
But he couldn’t sleep. Often it was difficult to sleep and he remembered other times. He remembered taking her, and it had been good. He remembered her strong thighs opening to him—or had he forced them open?—the cries, the moans, the sobs. Or had there been some lack or nagging doubt even then? It seemed to him that there had always been a lack or doubt. It went back to the womb, one could say, but that might not have been true either. Harriet. He said her name. It evoked an image, sexual, erotic, filling him with desire. He had wanted her and he had taken her and such luck had seemed like a miracle, to have had her and to be able to take her at will. He tried to remember that other time, so long ago. Had it been in Paris, where they might have met, or afterwards, here in the house high above the street? On their vacation they flew down south. It must have been the coldest winter in years but in the south it was hot. They lay in the sun and swam in the warm salt sea. They went to nightclubs and even danced. Hirsch read and Harriet made some sketches:
boardwalk scenes, though of another age—men in stiff collars and women in stays, and the ships standing out at sea, and the pennants flying in the breeze. When they got back at two in the morning it was five degrees outside and the house was icy cold, so cold it chilled the bone, and they lay together to keep warm. That was the year the trains broke down and they played in the snow and Harriet wore a woolen hat.
And time went on, day by day or week by week. And it seemed to Hirsch that things were winding down rather than getting into gear. He was, after all, quite young, though nondescript and neither short nor tall or fat or thin. He wore glasses and smoked a pipe. He had a handsome wife who was like a feast. Somehow things weren’t working out. It seemed to Hirsch that there had been a time when things were not so strained between Harriet and himself. What had happened? It was as if Harriet’s remoteness was the natural counterpart of his own buoyancy, the one removed from the other like the opposite poles of a magnet, and something unresolved hanging in the air between them. Though he had tried to draw her out in many and diverse ways, sharing with her his experiences at the office, his assessment of personalities, his judgment of transactions, his appraisal of policy and above all his evolving philosophy of accountancy and the esthetics of double-entry bookkeeping, Harriet through it all would go right on sketching Infusoria. Perhaps he should have known better. It was pointless to remember these things. The past was only in his head. The future
was horizonless, also taking shape in some undisclosed region of his mind. Would he enter it?
Harriet went about her business. That was her most admirable quality, her aplomb, though like Solly she could get annoyed. She dressed and undressed as though he was not there. She rolled her stockings on or off and adjusted her garter belt. She swung her big breasts in or out of her brassiere and pulled her nightgown off in a single fluid motion. She stood naked in front of him for a single tantalizing moment on the high square heels of her silver slippers before going to take her shower. He listened to the water running and then she came out in a towel and dressed. Their coffee cups were laid out side by side on the Formica surface of the kitchen table, set out the night before. Had he dreamed of such things he would have liked to live in a house such as this, and here they were in such a house together. The rooms were fairly big. The sofa was new. Some of their linen had never been used. The view was fine for a city street, with the yard out back and the trees. He knew none of the neighbors though. At most they nodded. Hirsch nodded too. Harriet might have talked to one or two. They bought things from a grocery down the block. On weekends the streets were noisy. On hot nights women came out and sat on their fire escapes in shorts. Loud music could be heard from the street. It was hard to sleep. Sundays were quiet though. Everything was closed. It was a family day. People went away, or stayed in and read their newspapers. Hirsch liked these lazy Sunday mornings when the weather was good and Harriet lounged around the house in dishabille, and later they might go to the park and lie in the grass with a picnic lunch or see a foreign film and have dinner out. Then the long, silent streets were like canyons steeped in shadow, the gray commercial buildings abandoned, the traffic stilled, not a soul in sight. He liked to walk these streets, remembering other times and other places. On Sunday night they watched TV.
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