Collected Stories

with a note. Dear Dad, Please carry me this month, Yours, W. He watched the clerk with his sullen pug’s profile and his stiff-necked look push the envelope into his father’s box.

“May I ask you really why you and your dad had words?” said Dr. Tamkin, who had hung back, waiting.

“It was about my future,” said Wilhelm. He hurried down the stairs with swift steps, like a tower in motion, his hands in his trousers pockets. He was ashamed to discuss the matter. “He says there’s a reason why I can’t go back to my old territory, and there is. I told everybody I was going to be an officer of the corporation. And I was supposed to. It was promised. But then they welshed because of the son-in-law. I bragged and made myself look big.”

“If you was humble enough, you could go back. But it doesn’t make much difference. We’ll make you a good living on the market.”

They came into the sunshine of upper Broadway, not clear but throbbing through the dust and fumes, a false air of gas visible at eye-level as it spurted from the bursting buses. From old habit, Wilhelm turned up the collar of his jacket.

“Just a technical question,” Wilhelm said. “What happens if your losses are bigger than your deposit?”

“Don’t worry. They have ultra-modern electronic bookkeeping machinery, and it won’t let you get in debt. It puts you out automatically. But I want you to read this poem. You haven’t read it yet.”

Light as a locust, a helicopter bringing mail from Newark Airport to La Guardia sprang over the city in a long leap.

The paper Wilhelm unfolded had ruled borders in red ink. He read:

Utterly confused, Wilhelm said to himself explosively, What kind of mishmash, claptrap is this! What does he want from me? Damn him to hell, he might as well hit me on the head, and lay me out, kill me. What does he give me this for? What’s the purpose? Is it a deliberate test? Does he want to mix me up? He’s already got me mixed up completely. I was never good at riddles. Kiss those seven hundred bucks good-by, and call it one more mistake in a long line of mistakes– Oh, Mama, what a line! He stood near the shining window of a fancy fruit store, holding Tamkin’s paper, rather dazed, as though a charge of photographer’s flash powder had gone up in his eyes.

But he’s waiting for my reaction. I have to say something to him about his poem. It really is no joke. What will I tell him? Who is this King? The poem is written to someone. But who? I can’t even bring myself to talk. I feel too choked and strangled. With all the books he reads, how come the guy is so illiterate? And why do people just naturally assume that you’ll know what they’re talking about? No. I don’t know, and nobody knows. The planets don’t, the stars don’t, infinite space doesn’t. It doesn’t square with Planck’s Constant or anything else. So what’s the good of it? Where’s the need of it? What does he mean here by Mount Serenity? Could it be a figure of speech for Mount Everest? As he says people are all committing suicide, maybe those guys who climbed Everest were only trying to kill themselves, and if we want peace we should stay at the foot of the mountain. In the here-and-now. But it’s also here-and-now on the slope, and on the top, where they climbed to seize the day. Surface narry is something he can’t mean, I don’t believe. I’m about to start foaming at the mouth. “Thy cradle….” Who is resting in his cradle — in his glory? My thoughts are at an end. I feel the wall. No more. So ––k it all! The money and everything. Take it away! When I have the money they eat me alive, like those piranha fish in the movie about the Brazilian jungle. It was hideous when they ate up that Brahma bull in the river. He turned pale, just like clay, and in five minutes nothing was left except the skeleton still in one piece floating away. When I haven’t got it any more, at least they’ll let me alone.

“Well, what do you think of this?” said Dr. Tamkin. He gave a special sort of wise smile, as though Wilhelm must now see what kind of man he was dealing with.

“Nice. Very nice. Have you been writing long?”

“I’ve been developing this line of thought for years and years. You follow it all the way?”

“I’m trying to figure out who this Thou is.”

“Thou? Thou is you.”

“Me! Why? This applies to me?”

“Why shouldn’t it apply to you? You were in my mind when I composed it. Of course, the hero of the poem is sick humanity. If it would open its eyes it would be great.”

“Yes, but how do I get into this?”

“The main idea of the poem is construct or destruct. There is no ground in between. Mechanism is destruct. Money of course is destruct. When the last grave is dug, the gravedigger will have to be paid. If you could have confidence in nature you would not have to fear. It would keep you up. Creative is nature. Rapid. Lavish. Inspirational. It shapes leaves. It rolls the waters of the earth. Man is the chief of this. All creations are his just inheritance. You don’t know what you’ve got within you. A person either creates or he destroys. There is no neutrality…”

“I realized you were no beginner,” said Wilhelm with propriety. “I have only one criticism to make. I think ‘why-forth’ is wrong. You should write “Wherefore then dost thou…’” And he reflected, So? I took a gamble. It’ll have to be a miracle, though, to save me. My money will be gone, then it won’t be able to destruct me. He can’t just take and lose it, though. He’s in it, too. I think he’s in a bad way himself. He must be. I’m sure because, come to think of it, he sweated blood when he signed that check. But what have I let myself in for? The waters of the earth are going to roll over me.

V

Patiently, in the window of the fruit store, a man with a scoop spread crushed ice between his rows of vegetables. There were also Persian melons, lilacs, tulips with radiant black at the middle. The many street noises came back after a little while from the caves of the sky. Crossing the tide of Broadway traffic, Wilhelm was saying to himself, The reason Tamkin lectures me is that somebody has lectured him, and the reason for the poem is that he wants to give me good advice. Everybody seems to know something. Even fellows like Tamkin. Many people know what to do, but how many can do it?

He believed that he must, that he could and would recover the good things, the happy things, the easy