by Paul Theroux
THE ODD-JOB MAN
to bed with these thoughts, though Shelley woke him throughout the night with her coughing.
'It's not like Ralph to miss a day,' said Sid, the landlord, the next day.
Bloodworth said, 'It's not important.' He wondered if Ralph had betrayed him to Bellamy, and he knew a full minute of panic.
He met Ralph after closing time on the road. Ralph said, 'Running away, are you?'
'I thought you weren't coming.'
'It's all in here,' said Ralph. He slapped his shirtfront. Blood-worth heard the sound of paper wrinkling at the stomach of the shirt. He was excited. His Introduction would be definitive. The book would be boxed. It might cost twenty dollars. Ralph said, 'Let's go somewhere private.'
They chose the churchyard, a shield of gravestones. Ralph said, 'My wife was off yesterday. She gets these depressions. I might as well be frank. It's her tits, see. I don't understand women. I keep telling her they're not supposed to stick out. Look around, I says, lots of women have the same thing. But she-'
'What about the poems?' Bloodworth said.
'Don't rush me,' said Ralph. 'You don't care about anybody's problems but your own, do you? Just like old Bellamy.'
'We're taking the evening train.'
'First the money.'
Bloodworth peeled off five five-pound notes and counted five more ones into Ralph's dirty hand.
Ralph said, 'Why not make it forty? You're rolling in it.'
'We agreed on thirty.' Bloodworth hated the odd-job man for putting him through this.
'Have it your way.' Ralph undid the buttons on his shirt and took out a creased brown envelope. 'I hope you appreciate all the work I put into this. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to, but I said to Doris, "Thirty quid is thirty quid."' He handed the envelope to Bloodworth.
'I'm glad you're a man of your word,' said Bloodworth.
'Well, you seemed to want them awful bad.'
Bloodworth shook the hand of the odd-job man and hurried to 'Batcombe' to tell Shelley. But partly from fear, and partly from superstition, he did not open the envelope until he was on the train and rolling through the Kent hopfields. At first he thought he had
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been swindled; the folded sheets, about ten of them, looked blank. But they were only blank on one side. On the other side were the collapsing rectangles of typed stanzas, lines which broke and sloped, words so badly typed they had humps and troughs. And there was a letter: / hope you apreciate all the work I put into this but a deals a deal altho it take me a whole day to type up this stuff and any time you want some more lets see the colour of your money! Yours faithfully, R. Tunnel. PS I enclosed herewith one I wrote meself so you can compare.
But the drunken typing and misspelling that made them valueless to Bloodworth did not disguise the beauty of the lines. Reading them made his eyes hurt. He turned quickly to Ralph's own poem, which began,
The odd-job man thats me Messing around in my bear feat Can make a stie from some tree Raise up pigs for the meat.
The polecat, he thought, and his anger stayed with him for four English days. But back in Amherst he recovered himself, and when the department met for drinks and showed their trophies - Water-ford crystal, a Daniell engraving of Wick, a first edition of Howards End - Bloodworth brought out his folder and said, 'I've got some unpublished Bellamy variants in here, and the work of a new poet; he's terribly regional but quite exciting.' Prizeman squinted; Margoulies smirked; the others stared. He shuffled the summer's result, but as he passed the poems around to convince the men, it struck him that he had the oddest job of all.
Portrait of a Lady
A hundred times, Harper had said to himself: / am in Paris. At first he had whispered it with excitement, but as the days passed he began mouthing it in a discouraged way, almost in disbelief, in the humiliated tones of a woman who realizes that her lover is not ever going to turn up. His doubt of the city made him doubt himself.
He was in Paris waiting for a sum of money in cash to be handed to him. He was expected to carry this bundle back to the States. That was the whole of his job: he was a courier. The age of technology demanded this simple human service, a return to romance: he tucked his business under his arm - the money, the message - as men had a century ago. It was a delicate matter; also, it was illegal.
Harper had been hired for his loyalty and resourcefulness. His employer demanded honesty, but implied that cunning would be required of him. He had impressed his employer because he wasn't hungry and wasn't looking for work. And, a recent graduate of Harvard Business School, Harper was passionate about real estate investment. Afterward he discovered that real estate investment was carrying a flat briefcase with eighty-five thousand dollars in used hundreds from an Iranian in Paris to an office in Boston, to invest in an Arizona supermarket or a chain of hamburger joints. They probably didn't even eat hamburgers, the Iranians - probably against their religion; so much was. Money (he, from Harvard Business School, had to be told this) shows up in a luggage x-ray at an airport security check as innocently as laundry, like so many folded hankies.
/ am in Paris. But his first sight of the place gave him the only impression that stayed with him: there were parts of Paris that resembled Harvard Square.
He had told his wife that he would be back by the following weekend, and had flown to Paris on Sunday believing that he could pick up the cash on Monday. A day to loaf, then home on
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Wednesday, and his surprised wife seeing him grinning in the doorway would say, 'So soon?'
He had not known that Monday was a holiday; this he spent furiously walking, wishing the day away. On Tuesday, he found Undershaw's office closed - Undershaw was the Iranian's agent, British: everyone got a slice. Harper's briefcase felt ridiculously light. That afternoon he tried the telephone. The line was busy; that made him hopeful. He took a taxi to the office but found it as he had that morning, locked, with no message on the dusty glass. On Wednesday he canceled his flight and tried again. This time there was a secretary in the outer office. She did not know Undershaw's name; she was temporary, she explained. Harper left a message, marked it Urgent and returned to his hotel near Les Invalides and waited for the phone to ring. Then he regretted that he had left his number, because it obliged him to stay in his room for the call. There was no call. He tried to ring his wife, but failed; he wondered if the phone was broken. Thursday he wasted on three trips to the office. Each time, the secretary smiled at him and he thought he saw pity in her eyes. He became awkward under her gaze, aware that a certain frenzy showed in his rumpled clothes.
'I will take your briefcase,' she said. She was French, a bit buck-toothed and angular, not what he had expected.
Harper handed it over. Not realizing its lightness until it was too late, she juggled it and almost dropped it. Harper wondered whether he had betrayed his errand by disclosing the secret of its emptiness. A man with an empty briefcase must have a shady scheme.
The street door opened and a man entered. Harper guessed this might be Undershaw; but no, the fellow was young and a moment later Harper knew he was American - something about the tortoise-shell frames, the new raincoat, the wide-open face, the way he sat with his feet apart, his shoes and the way he tapped them. Brisk apology and innocent arrogance inhabited the same body. Still sitting, he spoke to the secretary in French. She replied in English. He gave her his name - it sounded to Harper like 'Bnmgarner.' He turned to Harper and said, 'Great city/
Harper guessed that he himself had been appraised. He said, 'Very nice."
Bumgarner looked at his watch, did a calculation on his fingers,
no
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
and said, 'I was hoping to get to the Louvre this afternoon.'
He is going to say, You can spend a week there and still not see everything.
But Bumgarner said, 'What part of the States are you from?'
Harper told him: Boston. It required les
s explanation than Melrose.
'I'm from Denver,' Bumgarner said, and before Harper could praise it, Bumgarner went on, 'I'm over here on a poetry grant. National Endowment for the Arts.'
'You write poems?' But Harper thought of his taxes, paying for this boy's poems, the glasses, the new raincoat.
Bumgarner smiled. 'I've published quite a number. I'll have enough for a collection soon.'
The secretary stared at them, seeing them rattling away in their own language. Bumgarner seemed to be addressing her as well as Harper.
'I've been working on a long poem ever since I got here. It was going to be simple, but it's become the history of Europe, and in a way kind of autobiographical.'
'How long have you been in Paris?'
'Two semesters.'
Harper thought: Doesn't that just sum it up.
'Are you interested in poetry?' Bumgarner asked.
'I read the usual things at college. Yeats, Pound, Eliot. "April is the cruellest month.'" Bumgarner appeared to be waiting for him to say something more. Harper said, 'There's a lot of naive economic theory in Pound.'
'I mean modern poetry.'
'Isn't that modern? Pound? Eliot?'
Bumgarner said, 'Eliot's kind of a back number.'
And Harper was offended. He had liked Eliot and found it a relief from marketing and accountancy courses; even a solace.
'What do you think of Europe?' Bumgarner asked.
'That's a tough one, like, "Is science good?'" But seeing that Bumgarner looked mocked and wary, Harper added, 'I haven't seen much more than my hotel and this office. I can't say.'
'Old Europe,' said Bumgarner. 'James thought it corrupted you - Daisy Miller, Lambert Strether. I've been trying to figure it out. But it does do something to you. The freedom. All the history. The outlook.'
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Harper said, 'I can't imagine any place that has more freedom than the States.'
'Ever been to Colorado?'
'No,' said Harper. 'But I'll bet Europeans go. And for the same reason that characters in Henry James used to come here. To escape, find freedom, live a different life. Listen, this is a pretty stuffy place.'
'Depends,' Bumgarner said. 'I met a French girl. We're living together. That's why I'm here. I mean, I have to see this lawyer. My wife and I have decided to go our separate ways.'
'Sorry to hear it.' He will go home, thought Harper, and he will regret his folly here.
'It's not like that. We're going to make a clean break. We'll still be friends. We'll sell the house in Boulder. We don't have any kids.'
Harper said, 'Is this a lawyer's office?'
'Sure. Are you in the wrong place?'
'Anywhere away from home is the wrong place,' said Harper. 'I'm in brokerage. I haven't fallen in love yet. As a matter of fact, I'm dying to leave. Is Undershaw your lawyer?'
'I don't know Undershaw. Mine's Haebler - Swiss. Friend of a friend.' Then Bumgarner said, 'Give Paris a chance.'
'Paris is an idea, but not a new one,' said Harper, i tried to call my wife. The phones don't work. Where do these people park? The restaurants cost an arm and a leg. Call this a city?'
Bumgarner laughed in a patronizing way; he didn't argue. It interested Harper to discover that there were still Americans -poets - finding Paris magical. But this poet was getting a free ride: who was paying? Only businessmen and subsidized students could afford the place. Harper had had a meal at a small restaurant the previous day. The portions were tiny, the waiter was rude, the tables were jammed together, his knees ached from the forced confinement. The meal had cost him forty-seven dollars, with wine. No wonder poets had credit cards. It was a world he understood, but not one that he had expected.
Soon after, a tall man entered: Bumgarner's lawyer. Recognizing him, Bumgarner galloped after him. Harper was annoyed that the poet had shown so little interest in him, and Eliot's kind of a back number had stung him. The divorce: he would make it into a poem, deal with it like a specimen in a box and ask to be excused. But
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
the other things - the dead phones, the restaurants, the bathtubs that couldn't take your big end, the pillow bolster that was hard as a log, the expense account, the credit card - they couldn't be poems. Too messy; tney didn't rhyme. Go homel Harper wanted to scream at Bumgarner. Europe's more boring than Canada).
The secretary made a sorrowful click of her tongue when Harper rose to go. She had to remind him that he had left his briefcase; empty, it hardly seemed to matter. He was thinking about his wife.
On Friday, Undershaw rang him at ten-thirty, moments before Harper, who had started sleeping late - it was boredom - was preparing to leave his hotel room. Undershaw said he had been out of town, but this was not an apology.
Tve come for the merchandise,' said Harper. He wanted to say, Yve wasted a week hanging around for you to appear. He said, 'I'd like to pick up the bundle today.'
'Out of the question.'
Harper tried to press him, but gently: the matter was illegal.
Undershaw said, 'These things take time. I won't be able to do much before next week.'
'Monday?'
'I can't be that definite,' said Undershaw. 'I'll leave a message at your hotel.'
No, thought Harper. But he could not protest. He was a courier, no more than that. Undershaw did not owe him any explanation.
Harper had come to the city with one task to perform, and as he had yet to perform it his imagination wouldn't work. He had concentrated his mind on this one thing; thwarted, he could think of nothing else. He was on the hook. His boss had sent him here to hang. Paris seemed very small.
Waiting in Paris reminded Harper of his childhood, which was a jumpy feeling of interminable helplessness. And childhood was another country, too, one governed like this by secretive people who would not explain their schemes to him. He had suspected as a child that there were rules he did not know. In adulthood he learned that there were no particular rules, only arbitrary courtesies. Children were not important, because they had no power and no menace: it took a man twenty-eight years to realize that. You wait; but perhaps it is better, less humiliating, if people don't know you're waiting. Children were ignorant. The strength of adulthood lay in being dignified enough not to expose this
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impatience. It was worse for women. Now Harper could say to his wife: / know how you feel.
The weekend was dreary. Sunday in a Catholic country punished atheists by pushing them into the empty streets. Harper felt unwelcome. He did not know a soul except Bumgarner, who was smug and lucky and probably in bed with his 'mistress' - the poet from Colorado would have used that silly word. Harper lay on his bed alone, studying the repetitions in the patterned wallpaper, and it struck him that it is the loneliest traveler who remembers his hotel wallpaper. He was exhausted by inaction; he wanted to go home.
He had been willing to offer the city everything. There were no takers. He thought: All travelers are like aging women, now homely beauties; the strange land flirts, then jilts and makes a fool of the stranger. There is less risk, at home, in making a jackass of yourself: you know the rules there. The answer is to be ladylike about it and maintain your dignity. But he knew as he thought this that he was denying himself the calculated risks that might bring him romance and a memory to carry away. There was no hell like a stranger's Sunday.
I'll leave a message at your hotel, Undershaw had said. That was a command. So Harper loitered in the hotel on Monday, and when he was assailed by the sense that he was lurking he went out and bought a Herald-Tribune; then he felt truant. At five there was no message. He decided to go for a walk, and soon he discovered himself to be walking fast toward Undershaw's office.
'He is not here,' the secretary said. She knew before he opened his mouth what Harper wanted.
To cover his embarrassment, Harper said, 'I knew he wasn't here. I just came to say hello.'
The girl smiled. She began to cram papers and
envelopes and keys into her handbag.
'I thought you might want a drink,' said Harper, surprising himself at his invention.
The girl tilted her head and shrugged: it was neither yes nor no. She picked up her coat and switched off the lights as she walked to the door. Still, Harper was not sure what all this meant, until with resignation she said, 'We go. 1
At the bar - she chose it; he would never have found it in that alley - she told him her name was Claire.
"4
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Harper began describing the emptiness he had felt on Sunday, how the only thing it was possible to do was go to church.
Claire said, 'I do not go to church.'
'At least we've got that in common.'
A man in the bar was reading a newspaper; the headline spoke of an election. Harper mentioned this.
Claire thrust forward her lower lip and said, 'I am an anarchist.' She pronounced the word anarsheest.
'Does that mean you don't take sugar?' Harper playfully moved the sugar bowl to one side as she stirred her coffee.
She said, 'You have a ring.' She tapped it with a pretty finger. 'Are you married?'
Harper nodded and made a private vow that he would not deceive his wife.
She said, 'How is it possible to be married?'
'I know,' Harper said. 'You don't know anyone who's happily married. Right? But how many single people are happy?'
'Americans think happiness is so important.'
'What do the French think is important?'
'Money. Clothes. Sex. That is why we are always so sad.'
