Abnormal Occurrences: Short Stories

by Thomas Berger

  Folder under his arm, Phipps left. He now felt so confident that he was able to pass Barbara with a smile and a wink. As to Fallon, however, he could not be so easygoing. Now was the time if there ever was one when, backed up by his new support from Nebling, he could try to even the score with his immediate superior. He continued on past his own cubicle to Fallon’s office.

  Fallon was on the telephone when he entered, but soon hung up and, babbling amiably, indicated that Phipps should take one of the chairs that faced him.

  Phipps however thrust the folder across the desk. “You fool,” he tried to say. “John Nebling and I agree that this plan of yours is disastrous. John was so furious about it that he even began to consider whether you might be an agent provocateur planted on us by one of our competitors. But I saved your job. I assured him you were too dumb to play such a role!” With a cruel grin he dropped the folder on the royal-blue blotter in its rosewood frame.

  All of what Phipps had wanted to say came out in the now usual nonsense sounds, and he could not imagine what interpretation Fallon could possibly make of it, but the man was smiling as he opened the folder and began to examine its contents.

  After a moment Phipps sat down. He experienced some failure of nerve. It was all very well to pretend to be having fun, making the best of a bad job, but if looked at clearly his predicament was disastrous. Thus far today he had proved absolutely incapable of communicating with his fellow human beings. How could any good come of that?

  Fallon looked up from the papers, smiling more broadly than ever, tapped them with his forefinger, and said something obviously approving, Then he put his hands behind his head and leaned back. He gave every appearance of being expansive, gestured benevolently and spoke at some length, with genial simpers here and there and even, in conclusion, a wink. Finally he stood up and put his outstretched hand across the desk.

  Phipps really had no option but to accept it and return the warmth of the grasp. He was willing to consider that he had misjudged Fallon in the past: after all, the man was always under unbearable pressure from his own superiors. Though Nebling had been a nice guy today, it was unrealistic to assume he had gotten where he was by kindness. Surely he had been at least as rough on Fallon as the latter had been on Phipps. Maybe Fallon was a better fellow than could be expected. Phipps found his own apparent success, in a situation that could have been calamitous, made him more generous to his fellow man.

  He returned to his own desk, where a stuffed In-basket awaited him. One by one, he found the documents therein to be as undecipherable as the oral language that he had been hearing all day and saw that he had no choice but to dispose of them in the same cavalier fashion as he had dealt with the spoken word. Some papers he initialed forthwith and tossed into the Out-basket. Others that bore densely printed texts he simply slipped into the waste-can, but anything showing a graph was first defaced with a felt-tipped pen and anything with numbers he crushed and balled before discarding.

  Occasionally such work was interrupted by the buzzing of the telephone. As he had no idea of what the caller said, Phipps showed ever less patience with each, until finally his response was simply to lift the receiver, say, “You’re talking absolute crap,” and hang up.

  The strain of so performing, however, had begun to tell on him by lunch time, and though John C. Nebling had sent for him to come eat in the corporate dining room—an invitation he understood only after Barbara had led him there—he had no anticipatory appetite.

  His mood changed when he recognized some other guests who had arrived before him: among them, the governor of the state, the mayor of the city, and a number of the best-known local businessmen, including several to attain celebrity across the nation if not the world. Phipps was no longer depressed. He was now terrified.

  But the governor, a large silver-maned man with an outsized set of sparkling teeth, seized Phipps’s hand with both of his own and pumped it, then acted as his ambassador to the others, each of whom naturally addressed him in gibberish, but it was obviously benign.

  The dining room, which he had never seen before except in photographs, was quite a splendid, chandeliered place and large enough to seat several hundred persons. He found himself at the long head table, on a dais at a right angle to the tables of the other guests. He was flanked by the governor and the mayor. Across the wall behind him was stretched a huge white banner displaying a legend in blue letters. He could make no sense of the words thereby formed, but in a moment he had remembered seeing a recent report on TV news to the effect that as one phase of the strenuous effort currently being made to dissuade businesses from leaving city and state, an Outstanding Executive of the Month would be chosen from among the local firms for public commendation. The reporter did not fail wryly to note that the meal served at such ceremonies would be paid for by the company receiving the reflected honor, and not the taxpayer.

  Phipps’s inclusion in the event was an unexpected benefit of the new esteem in which he was held by John C. Nebling, who until a few hours before would barely have recognized his name. It was very satisfying to be in the company of those to whom success and power were routine, even if nothing said by any of them was comprehensible to him. His terror began to ebb. He chuckled at what were surely supposed to be the witticisms of the mayor, who was noted for his puckish humor, and murmured in response to the paternal-sounding remarks made to him by the governor. He even swallowed a few bites of his chicken, which turned out to be better than, having heard such fodder routinely disparaged by those who ate it regularly, he expected. By the end of the meal he felt so at ease, in fact, that he was about to try a little joke of his own on the mayor, when John C. Nebling stood up behind the lectern that was mounted at the middle of the table and began to speak.

  Phipps of course understood nothing of what the big boss was saying, but he nodded here and there as if he did, and joined heartily in the applause that came when Nebling finished. But then in horror he saw Nebling beckoning to him. By the time he had at last struggled to his feet, hindered rather than aided by the governor’s powerful pats on the back, Phipps was so desperate he might have bolted from the room had Nebling, blocking the route of escape, not thrust a varnished plaque into his hands.

  He could not read the words that were incised into the bronze tablet affixed to its face, but eventually realized that he had been chosen as the Outstanding Executive of the Month—and obviously was obliged to say a few audible words of thanks...

  Then it occurred to him that he could say anything he wished to this roomful of influential citizens, for there had now been sufficient precedent to suppose that they would be received by the audience as at least meaningful enough.

  But when a simple “I had not expected this, but I’m pleased to receive it” was followed by deafening applause, and a reference to Nebling’s leadership as having been “an inspiration to himself and all his colleagues” evoked an explosion of laughter, he grew bold. “And, hey, you understand I’m speaking not of business but sex!” He looked at the boss and said, “You randy old bastard you.” To his ears this was gibberish, and it could hardly have been understood literally by those to whom it was addressed, for Nebling himself was still smiling benevolently.

  Feeling his oats, Phipps next turned to the mayor. “Your Honor—I use the title loosely, for you’ve proved in the last three years that whatever you have, it’s certainly not honor!” The mayor participated energetically in the general roar of laughter. Phipps went on, “But you’re not quite the Number One crook in this state. That designation has to go to this big smiling fraud on my right, our sainted governor, who spends more on hairspray than on our schools.”

  Phipps gestured at the official so named, and got a standing ovation. Then he proceeded to deride those who were celebrating him. “As for you idiots, you haven’t the dimmest understanding of what I am saying, have you? And I admit that the same thing is true of me: not only wouldn’t I comprehend anything said by you, but I can’t make sense of a
word I myself utter aloud, though my thoughts are as rational as ever. I can’t explain this bizarre state of affairs, but since it’s come about I have been much more successful at work than I ever was before, and I suspect the same will be true of my love-life, which hitherto has been lackluster at best; at worst, humiliating. I don’t mind boasting that since I have accepted a world in which words make no sense, I have prospered, and I’m sure that if I go beyond that and enthusiastically embrace it, I shall be invincible!”

  Again the audience rose to its feet, and now it remained so, the applause reverberating from floor to chandelier. The mayor put Phipps in a bear hug, and the governor placed a hand on each of his shoulders and, looking down, irradiated him with the grandest smile of all. After each of the officials had said a few (incomprehensible) words from the lectern, gesturing lavishly at Phipps, they took their leave, followed by TV cameramen, and Nebling linked arms with Phipps and led him back to the west wing, trailed at a respectful distance by a group of obsequious subordinates, among whom were Fallon and the others who had once lorded it over him. Nebling spoke in a tone of lively affection, and Phipps was sure he was being promoted, with a substantial raise in pay. By now he could feel such messages and with a certainty he had never been able to associate with words, which by their nature were so ambiguous—think, for example, of all the possible connotations of “success,” or “prestige,” or, for that matter, “love.”

  With his newfound sense of power Phipps decided, after leaving Nebling in the latter’s office—and speaking some rubbish to Barbara that obviously left her eating her heart out for him—to go home. Anything further would have been by way of anticlimax. He would come back on the following morning, prepared to begin a campaign the aim of which could be not other than eventually to unseat John C. Nebling himself. There was no reason to set any limit whatever on the reach of nonsense. He could say anything at all to other people, and they would inevitably interpret it to his advantage. He might well go on to become mayor or governor, and more.

  At his current elevation he did not belong on a bus. He therefore walked around the corner to the one-way cross street that went in the direction of his apartment and looked for a taxi. A young man in neat business attire, including a gray felt hat, approached him smiling.

  When he was very near Phipps, he opened his soft-sided briefcase and displayed the revolver within. “Look at this,” he said, “and give me your money.”

  “I can understand you!” Phipps shouted. “You’re the first person I can understand since I got up this morning!” The man scowled and reached into the briefcase. “God!” Phipps cried. “What a relief! I thought I was crazy.”

  “Stop making that noise,” said the man.

  “Only,” Phipps said, the implication having struck him now, “what’s that going to mean to my career, my life? How can I return to being what I was?”

  “You’re one of those jerks who read somewhere that if you act crazy and babble away, you’ll scare a robber off,” the man said scornfully. “I’m telling you for the last time to knock off that gibberish and give me your money, or I’ll kill you.”

  “You don’t understand,” Phipps shouted. Desperate to get his meaning across, he clutched at the man’s lapels. “Suddenly I had it all, because of this weird thing that came over me—oddly enough, not the magical power to do something, but rather the lack of—”

  The holdup man twisted away, took the gun from the briefcase, and shot him, and, as Phipps was falling, said with contempt, “Either you don’t speak English or you want to be a hero. So where did it get you?”

  Lying on his side on the pavement, Phipps watched the man walk rapidly away and be replaced by a crowd of other people, some of whom knelt near him and asked questions which he was in no condition to answer, for now he could not speak at all. But there would have been little point in trying to inform them he was dying: that was surely self-evident and, like all the essential matters, beyond words.

  Granted Wishes: Ugly Guy

  FRANK VERMILYEA HAD BEEN extremely ugly even as an infant. It was routine in his family for one member or another to say, at any moment and apropos of nothing, that Bimbo the Boston terrier, if dressed in baby dress and bonnet, would be more attractive than their son or brother. And in fact this was said so often that eventually it seemed no longer to be merely one of those easily uttered absurdities but rather something capable and worthy of being realized and therefore the three of them, his father, mother, and sister, carried it out, removing little Frank, and putting Bimbo the dog in the crib, appropriately attired. Then they invited many friends to come visit, all of whom after simpering at Bimbo, turned to the Vermilyeas and made some expression in this wise: “Little Frank has certainly become a beautiful baby! I don’t mind telling you that we used to think he was awfully ugly.”

  “Yes, aren’t we fortunate?” was the kind of thing that the grownup Vermilyeas said in reply. Geraldine, Frank’s five-year-old sister, would just snicker and hide her face in an armpit.

  Meanwhile, Frank himself was concealed somewhere; perhaps a bureau drawer, of course opened a crack so that he could breathe; or on Bimbo’s blanket on the floor of the broom closet (from which, naturally, the mops, wet and dry, had been removed, along with the dustpan and wringer-bucket); or sometimes back of a door where the newspapers were kept until recycling day.

  When Frank got a bit older and could move about under his own power, he chose his own places of concealment, for he was aware of how unsightly he was and he didn’t want to upset anybody by forcing them to look at him. He had to admit that he had never seen anyone who even approached him in ugliness. It was amazing. He looked nothing like either parent, both of whom were so-so, and certainly did not resemble his sister, who kept getting prettier as she grew.

  The awful thing about being as ugly as Frank is that no one has the compassion for you that might be possible with regard to some form of disability. This seemed completely unfair, but there wasn’t much that could be done about it. Frank went through childhood without having any friends at all. While at college, however, he got a bright idea when he saw a man being led by a seeing-eye dog. Of course! It was only a pity that it had taken him so long to arrive at the obvious conclusion that he should frequent the blind.

  But what he had not taken into account was that the dog, a handsome German shepherd, might find him repulsive! So in short order, and as usual, Frank was alone with his ugliness. However, he was an extremely intelligent individual and excelled at anything in the scientific line, and his progress through the undergraduate program and then on to a doctorate in nuclear physics was and remains unique in the records at State, consuming as it did only two and a half years, owing to his utter lack of a social life or even a roommate.

  When Dr. Frank emerged from the university he was immediately hired, for a lucrative fee, as trouble-shooter at a nuclear-power generating plant which was notorious for its accidents. In this job Frank usually went about in a coverall that concealed him from head to toe, and its face mask had only one aperture, a narrow slit across the eyes, and its window was of smoked glass, too dark to see through from the outside. Once his ugliness was concealed, of course no one had any objection whatever to being in Frank’s presence, and he was popular at work as long as he stayed inside his coverall.

  However, once he forgot his problem and, because it was not the most convenient garment to wear except when you were actually inspecting the atomic pile at close range, Frank removed the headpiece of the coverall and unthinkingly approached a group of his friends in the laboratory. Well, one woman physicist fainted dead away, and all the men covered their eyes.

  Another scientist, a close friend so long as Frank was concealed, said, “Look here, we can’t put up with this, and why should we? It’s really unpleasant, Frank. And you know I say that without animosity.”

  Frank answered sadly, turning his back on the group. “You’re right. But you’ll admit it’s my only flaw.”

&nbs
p; “Unfortunately,” said his friend, “it’s the kind that outweighs most of your virtues.”

  “Then tell me this,” asked Frank. “What about plastic surgery?”

  “No,” said the female physicist, who had been revived by now. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good, Frank. It’s not any one thing that’s wrong with your face, like a crooked nose or a big mouth or flap-ears. You’re just completely ugly, and there’s no answer for that.”

  The other scientists fervently agreed with this assessment, and Frank’s best friend among them said, “You’ve just been given a dirty deal by Fate. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

  Oddly enough, Frank had never really thought about it in that way, but he could see now that what his friend said made sense. So where did that leave the situation? Did he have no choice but to do away with himself?

  But when he went home that night to his little studio apartment he said to the ceiling, as he lay in bed, “I don’t want to commit suicide, for gosh sake! I am really interested in my work, for one thing. And then I enjoy all my meals, and I get a lot of pleasure from my telescope and my collections.” Frank was an amateur astronomer and he collected foreign coins and antique political-campaign buttons. “Why should I kill myself just because I’m not handsome?”

  But then he thought of how much he’d like to have some lady friends, he who thus far in life had never had even one date, and he fell into a despondency.

  “It really is lousy to be so ugly,” he told himself. “And it’s ridiculous, when you think that all my troubles could be solved if I were just better looking.”