Basic Forms

by Skolnik, Fred;

  So one week ended and another began with the hurried coffee and the crowded train that screeched and swerved on the winding tracks. You could come in up to seven minutes late and not get docked but making a habit of it was naturally frowned upon. Walt and Charlie came in early. Solly was never late. The girls of Accounting came in one by one, sometimes in pairs, talking about their weekends. They said, “Good morning” with a cheerful smile and these mutual exchanges of Monday morning greetings, as on the other days of the week and like the “good night” that ended the day, were a matter of simple office etiquette which no one would think to question. Hirsch had thought to study these rituals in an academic or scientific way but found he was unequipped to carry the project beyond a brief introduction and a few examples. Then everyone sat down to work and the hum and clatter of the office machines filled the air, punctuated by the sound of Mr. Kroll rapidly stamping papers as though on an assembly line. Days passed and then weeks and then months. Winter gave way to spring and then summer came. Hirsch restated the arguments in his letter of resignation in a more forceful way, eschewing the narrative or chronological form and organizing his thoughts around themes or motifs, finding that certain images or phrases would open the floodgates as it were, and felt that he was approaching the moment when he could honestly say the work was done and unabashedly lay the thing on Solly’s desk. That would be a joyous occasion, as far as he was concerned, liberating him from a great onus which he had borne without complaint all these many years in the hope of achieving success in the ordinary way. Harriet had never been convinced that this was the course to follow, though he could not have said what alternate course she had in mind. She had her Infusoria and that had seemed to be enough. They had gone on like this for a time and then a certain disaffection or dissonance had seemed to enter their lives. There seemed no alternative now but to choose a different path, which may have been radical or moderate, depending on his state of mind.

  But who could say what hidden impulses inspired human acts, or how entire complexes of feeling came to be connected?

  Hirsch pondered these matters occasionally, sitting in the dark. He thought of the time before Harriet. He thought of seeing her on the steps of the Library when she had been talking to someone like himself who may have been smoking a pipe. And Harriet looked like a woman being courted, or at least engaging in some innocent or not so innocent flirtation. He imagined that they had run into each other by chance, and had a lot of catching up to do, being old acquaintances. It might have been years since they’d seen each other. There was no way Hirsch could tell. He had a collegiate look. Or perhaps they were closer than he thought. Perhaps they had been going out and had arranged to meet at the Library, outside on the steps. It was the Christmas season. Hirsch had wanted her, and then he had taken her. The days had lengthened and then it was spring.

  Hirsch sometimes took out the gun that had been so conveniently supplied by Charlie along with various other fine-quality leisure-time items at discount prices. He had even thrown in those three boxes of shells. Hirsch would have liked to try the gun out. Having no friends who hunted and not knowing how to go about hunting alone, he wondered if he might attach himself to Charlie some Friday afternoon for a weekend in the country, which was presumably where Charlie went when he showed up in the office in his hunting cap. Granted Walt was skeptical, seeing the cap as part of a disguise, but Hirsch was inclined now to take Charlie at his word. Perhaps Hirsch might come to the office in his own hunting cap, the one Charlie had included with the gun. One thing would then lead to another and surely Charlie would invite him to come along, for it was the deer season now, as Hirsch had gathered from various remarks made in passing by Charlie. Hirsch would not even object if Walt came along. Wasn’t Solly always saying that a team that played together

  stayed together? That was why the Company organized company outings once a year, boat rides, picnics, excursions. It was an opportunity to let your hair down and get to know your coworkers a little better. The year they went to Bear Mountain Harriet stayed home. They had gone by boat. Dolores had worn a straw hat and her very bright lipstick. Miss Malone had worn her bright lipstick but no hat. She wore a see-through blouse that showed off her pointed breasts. The cups of her brassiere were like torpedo heads. She had bony knees and painted toenails. Dolores had shapeless legs and was unsteady on her feet. She wore a blouse that concealed her missing breast. Accounting played Sales or Purchasing in a softball game. Hirsch was the right fielder. Dolores played first base. Needless to say, Solly was the pitcher and Walt and Charlie were the umpires. Charlie brought his rifle and shot some fish. Mr. Belcher brought his second wife. She had short hair and was quite athletic. She hit a double with the bases loaded. Mr. Belcher tried to score from first but fell down rounding third and broke his leg. That ended the game.

  Afterwards everyone drifted off, the men with their wives or girlfriends, Mr. Kroll with Miss Malone, Solly with the treasurer’s secretary. Hirsch sat on a rock and looked out at the scenic view. He smoked his pipe. He had a sense of himself being watched and admired from afar as a thinking man with a troubled past, a lone figure contemplating life. Dolores brought him a plate of food and sat down on another rock. They ate in silence. Neither of them had anything to say. Hirsch was put off by her, when all was said and done. He did not think he could proceed with such an attachment, concluding that the attraction had a psychological root, belying some defect in the fabric of his psychic underwear, as he thought of it. Harriet had runs in some of her stockings. When she wore a good pair and high heels he desired her above all women. When she was barefoot he sensed a tendency toward squatness and the ballooning of her body.

  These thoughts consumed his mind. He was like a spectator at a carnival, never knowing what was coming next. The foreign girl in Accounts Payable with the bad teeth interested him too, and furthermore she had a perfect body, but she had been taken up by someone in Maintenance who sometimes came by to pick her up in the office wearing expensive-looking coats and a felt hat despite the grease

  under his fingernails. The girl married to the broker also had a fine body and was even prettier than the foreign girl. Marcia or Marilyn was not his type, nor obviously was the fat woman who presided over Payroll like the matron of a prison. It was in fact her assistant who attracted Hirsch more than all the women of Accounting. He liked her strong neck and strong legs, the wisps of hair that fell across her forehead, the full lips and fleshy face. And she was not taken, as far as he could see. She might have led a lonely life. But Hirsch had rarely spoken to her. He only undressed her in his mind.

  Hirsch was not deceived by the innocent look of the gun, just as he was not deceived by the innocent look of a snake that lay stretched out on the ground. Both, he knew, were lethal. A child would pick up a gun and pull the trigger, never suspecting that it would explode in his face. Adults too tended to be reckless when you would expect them to know better. They kept picking at things that they knew would fall apart, like scratching pimples until they bled, or put some extra weight on things about to collapse. It was not perversity, it was a kind of testing of limits. You wanted to go further and further, right up to the edge.

  Hirsch too thought about the edge. There was a region where all resistance ceased, when you went over the top, falling free, or soaring into the heavens in a giant apocalypse. It was always out there, just beyond his reach, like a world behind an invisible wall that he would never find. For Hirsch was earthbound. He was not fat but he felt heavy. Sometimes he knocked things over, sometimes he tripped over his own feet, or someone else’s. But sometimes in the street he felt free, moving in a crowd but weaving through it, outpacing it, breaking free. Then his mind would soar.

  Harriet walked slowly. She had all the time in the world. She raised her chin to catch the breeze, letting it caress her skin and blow wisps of hair across her cheek and neck. Men turned their heads to look at her. She was handsome, self-possessed, even sensual. She had b
ig breasts. Hirsch fluttered around her. Hirsch attached himself to her side. If she turned to the left or the right, Hirsch turned with her, not thinking where they might be going. Most often, when he picked her up at the Library, they went to the Automat and had coffee or a bite to eat. Hirsch liked the dishes in the little windows, remembering childhood days. His mind drifted as he listened to the clatter of dishes and the tinkling of cups and the hum of voices. Such scenes were fixed in his mind forever, connected to others invisibly, evoked in chance configurations, or not evoked at all though present like the impulses shot into an amputated arm or leg. Hirsch watched Harriet eat and wanted her. His stomach was tight. His throat was dry. A girl in a white smock came by to clear their dishes away. There was sawdust near the revolving door and it was getting dark outside. Light faded from the sky. Christmas shoppers were hastening home. The trains lurched and rattled on the winding tracks and he saw his reflection in the glass, wraithlike and transparent, and the stations flashing by. She laid her head against his shoulder. Soon they would be home.

  Hirsch wondered if it was still not possible to live an ordinary life. He would have to change. Harriet would have to change. There would have to be certain understandings. He would destroy his letter of resignation and all its drafts. He would let Harriet pick out his ties and clean his suits. She, for her part, would watch her weight and take a greater interest in his concerns. She would not frown when he commenced to relate the saga of Walt and Charlie and his own efforts to outwit them. Just the other day they had set a trap. They had pulled an invoice out of Dolores’s pile and placed it in the middle of Mr. Kroll’s, unpaid. Then they had dispatched Hirsch to locate it. Needless to say, he couldn’t. He became suspicious. He consulted with Solly. Inconspicuously they called Dolores in. She was in tears. Then Hirsch had an inspiration. In the evening he and Solly got a spare key to Mr. Kroll’s cage from Maintenance and went through the invoices stacked precariously on his desk. Sure enough, it was there, fortunately not yet stamped. Solly and Hirsch exchanged meaningful looks. Not a word needed to be spoken. It was Hirsch who transported the invoice back to Dolores’s pile. Solly called her at home and filled her in. The next morning Hirsch showed the red-faced auditors the invoice in its proper place. They fidgeted. They sputtered. They hemmed and hawed. Solly came by and said, “Everything all right, boys?” and everyone in the office burst out laughing.

  Hirsch smiled inwardly. This was a personal triumph, a kind of vindication really. They had been running circles around him, and now this, stopping them cold when they least expected it, like hitting them in the face with a wet towel. They shut themselves up in their room and were not seen for the rest of the day, asking the fat matron in Payroll to send her assistant for coffee. They must have been the last to leave that day, because Hirsch waited at his desk until six o’clock, on the pretext of polishing up a report due the next day on the treasurer’s desk, and did not see them leave but thought he heard, once or twice, their door quietly open a fraction of an inch.

  Such adventures did not seem to interest Harriet in the least. She batted her eyes as he spoke and he could not even be sure she was listening to him. She might have been daydreaming all the while. She might have been counting sheep. Her author had dropped off another manuscript. She eyed it furtively, hungrily, as though it were a piece of cake. Hirsch broke off his narrative, satisfied that he had sufficiently clarified his role in the affair. Did he expect to be rewarded? Was another raise in store? Congratulations had flowed from every quarter. The treasurer himself, it was rumored, had mentioned his name. Hirsch basked in the warm glow of fame for a while. He understood that for obvious reasons his exploit could not be mentioned directly in the company newsletter. He was interviewed of course and the following week there were veiled references to a “lost invoice” that had mysteriously turned up on Dolores’s desk. It was Dolores in fact who became the focal point of the story, with further veiled references to her missing breast. She sensed Hirsch’s disappointment and sent him a little gift. It was a mechanical pencil, in a presentation case. At the bottom of her note there was a drawing of a broken heart. Whether it was meant to be his or hers, he couldn’t say.

  Hirsch showed Harriet the story. She was not impressed. She was even perplexed, as nowhere was his name mentioned. Hirsch went over the affair again, dramatically describing the pivotal late-evening scene when he and Solly had broken into Mr. Kroll’s cage in the deserted office, shadows on the walls and every sound making them jump. Harriet had buried her face in her hands and sighed. Clearly she was tired, after a day at the Library sketching Infusoria. Hirsch made supper. She ate listlessly. Occasionally she looked up and stared at the wall. Hirsch watched her cut her meat with one of the steak knives they had received as a wedding gift. The entire kitchen

  had been equipped with wedding gifts. Everything was new, the china and the crystal and the pots and pans and the gleaming knives and there was linen they had not used and they had a new sofa and a big double bed and a big leather chair in the bedroom from where he liked to watch her dress. Harriet wore simple clothes, skirts and blazers and plain white blouses. Her hips were wide, her breasts were big, her legs were strong, her hair was dark. She had luminous eyes and a sensuous mouth. She was a handsome woman. Hirsch was nondescript. He was neither short nor tall, he was not thin and he was not fat. He had a boyish smile and smoked a pipe. When he smoked the pipe he felt self-contained. It suited him, he thought. Solly smoked a pipe too, or at least had them in a rack, six pipes, perhaps a gift from the wife and kids, a pipe every Father’s Day, and then the rack, but Hirsch had to buy him tobacco. Hirsch smoked a grape-scented tobacco that he picked up in the department store near the office where he got Harriet her cigarettes at a discount. But Harriet seldom smoked. Was she buying them for someone else? Solly had bought a guitar from Charlie ostensibly for one of his children, but who could say? Dolores had bought him the mechanical pencil which he kept on his desk and used to check off figures on his tapes. The tapes were like ribbons that danced in the wind when Solly came by twirling his tie. The clatter of the typewriters and adding machines in the other room never ceased, nor the rat-tat-tat of Mr. Kroll stamping papers, everything a whirligig of activity with messengers darting in and out of Solly’s office all day long and Walt and Charlie ensconced or rooted in their doorway smugly observing the scene and Charlie taking notes.

  There were of course, as mentioned above, quieter times, such as Friday afternoons or afternoons in general, particularly the hour between four and five when specially designated

  officers had to make their way through the lines to rally the troops as it were. Solly came out of his office too, his sleeves rolled up, urging everyone to return to their posts. He would send the fat matron in Payroll to the ladies’ room to roust the girls dawdling there. Sometimes Hirsch would hear an impatient knock at the toilet stall where he was occupied. This was arguably an invasion of privacy but Hirsch was not

  familiar enough with the relevant statutes to lodge a complaint or protest, not that he would have under any circumstances. The executives used an executive toilet. That was what he had been led to believe. Solly used the regular toilet. He felt offended on Solly’s behalf, for it was a slight, intended or otherwise, given Solly’s position. He had wanted to mention it to Solly but had refrained from doing so, a suitable opportunity never having arisen. Walt and Charlie also seemed to be aware of this anomaly, shaking their heads sadly whenever Solly had to relieve himself. Once Hirsch had slipped into the ladies’ room, perhaps by accident, perhaps distracted under the strain or burden of his work, perhaps by design. Dolores had come in and used a stall. Hirsch had held his breath and then slipped out.

  All these confused thoughts and strange impulses that cropped up in the pitted landscape of his mind did not bode well. Any fool could see that. Even Harriet could see that. She observed him with a troubled look. Hirsch noticed this and tried to look preoccupied. Once he even took some papers home in hi
s briefcase and spread them out on the coffee table, appearing to be absorbed in them. Sometimes, when he read a book, he paused and stared into space. Often he listened intently to the news, as though expecting an imminent or long-awaited announcement whose import was such as might affect him directly. He wanted Harriet to believe that it was some sensitive or complex financial matter, some merger or stock split that would affect his personal portfolio in a significant way, though she must have known that he had none, or at least none to speak of. Workers were in fact encouraged to buy company stocks. Hirsch had invested a small sum and reported the daily fluctuations to Harriet, up a quarter of a percent, down an eighth. He worked out the arithmetic every day at the office, borrowing a newspaper from one of the computer people. All this, however, could not explain his somber moods, or why his movements grew heavier, slower. He sometimes went to bed very early and sometimes very late. He ate listlessly, like Harriet herself.

  But Hirsch was not preoccupied. He was agitated. Beneath his calm exterior, as it is often called, he was like a raging sea. Harriet could not have known this. No one could have entered his mind. Solly could not have known this. Certainly