Alien Accounts (2 page)
Henry C. Henry
Rodney Klumpf
Harold Kelmscott
Edward Warner
Edwin Futch
Henry was never to learn the names of any of the sixteen or forty clerks outside this circle of desks, but soon he ‘caught on’, or moved into the general work rhythm. He accepted from Rod or Ed Warner a batch of forms, removed paper clips from some, marked a few of them with numbers and initials, erased the numbers or initials from others, sorted them by his own arrangement, clipped them together, and gave them to either Bob or Willard.
Willard was born and raised in the Southern part of the United States, while Bob’s younger sister was sure to become salutatorian of her high school class. Meanwhile Bob or Willard was undoing part or all of Henry’s work, then passing the stuff on to Clark or Harold or Karl, who in turn undid part or all of his (Bob’s or Willard’s) work, then passed the stuff on to Rod or Ed W. or callow Eddie Futch; each man along the chain approaching the work as if no one had gone before and no one would come after. Numbers would be erased, altered, changed back to their original values. Forms might be sorted by names, then dates, then colour, then in numerical order, alphabetical order and alphanumerical order. Often enough, work came back to Henry from two to three times. This was indeed a vicious circle!
Section IV: The Happy Ending
Happily, sooner or later every form ended up with Karl, the stapler, who might put a staple in it and send it out of the department for good. Work flow was thus:
Thus a kind of progress was achieved, without, however, sacrificing routine. The happy days blended into one another like molten glass.
Section V: The Departures
No one ever saw Mr. Masterson on the third floor. He seemed to send all his orders through the old clerk, who descended every morning with a memorandum to be tacked to the bulletin board.
The speaker of the intercom, fixed in the ceiling, made crackling noises that might have been the voice of Masterson. The shape of a name emerged from the static. A clerk at once rose, squared his shoulders and climbed the stairs. He did not come back.
The room was filled with the anxious murmur of the clerks, discussing his departure. The same thing had happened a dozen times or more, it was said. They never came back.
The discussion stamped everyone. Some clerks stood leaning against their desks, arms akimbo. Some tapped pencils on their blotters, made spitting motions, or leaned back. Others pretended to move their jaws sideways, while still more others sharpened pencils and drank water from paper ‘cups’. Bob Kegel continued to read numbers from a list to Rod Klumpf, who punched the buttons of a small adding machine. Karl picked at his stapler with a preoccupied air. Big Ed Warner, an older man known for his leaky heart and halitosis, was swivelled around to talk to Eddie Futch. Had the bomb (or a Hiroshima-size atomic bomb) gone off at this moment, at 5,000 feet above Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, the shadow of Ed would no doubt have protected the acne-riddled face of Eddie from the direct effects of the blast, or is this just wishful thinking?
Ed told the young man that the departed clerk was dead, and that nothing, no power on earth could bring him back.
‘Is that any way to talk? Jesus! Is that any way …’
Eddie ran off to the lavatory to pinch pimples from his hot, raw cheeks. Big Ed considered the word ‘laughter’.
Section VI: Kegel and Klumpf
Bob Kegel and Rod Klumpf were alike. Often Henry tried to envision some mirror arrangement that would allow him to see, in place of the back of Bob’s head in front of him, the back of Rod’s head behind him. Clearly the virtual image would be the same.
They were tall, slim and polite, with round heads, round shoulders and long, narrow feet. They wore fashionable clothes and reasonable smiles and neat cowlicks, and they read the same consumer magazine, which prompted them to buy many of the same articles: antifreeze, air conditioners, Ascots, attaché cases, beer mugs, berets, blazers, brandy snifters, cameras, carpeting, cars, cats, deodorants, door chimes, filter cigarettes, golf clubs, hats, L.P.s, luggage, movie cameras, movie projectors, shavers, silverware, slide projectors, tape recorders, typewriters, television sets, toothbrushes.
At first Henry supposed that he could tell them apart by Rod’s freckles and Bob’s half-rimmed glasses. But the sun soon brought out freckles on Bob also, and he proved to be quite vain in regard to his glasses, wearing them less and less. At the same time, Rod purchased and began to wear a similar pair of glasses, and since he kept out of the sun, his own freckles began to fade. Being of a size, the two friends loaned one another clothes. Occasionally, for a joke, they would exchange desks. Both spoke in the same modulated tones, and both moved with the grace of bowlers.
It was always Bob or Rod who got up a football pool, who sent out for coffee, who tacked up humorous signs, who started charity drives, who instituted fines for tardiness and swearing, who collected money for
flowers whenever anyone fell ill, died or married. Tirelessly and good naturedly, these clean young men organized the life of the office. The others despised them.
Section VII: The Coffee Break
Division A: The idea of coffee break
Coffee break was an old tradition at the Masterson Engineering Company, instituted some years before by Mr. Masterson when he had read in a management magazine the following advertisement:
UP PRODUCTION WITH A COFFEE BREAK!
Get more out of your workers by giving them a short mid-afternoon rest, with
coffee
, the all-purpose stimulant. Coffee perks up flagging minds and bodies the way fuel injection pumps up the power of an engine.
They
will gladly pay for the coffee – while
you
reap the extra productivity!
His frequent memos on the subject claimed that coffee breaks cost him an enormous amount of money, but that he was determined his clerks should be happy at all costs.
Division B: Coffee break praxis
It was during coffee break that Henry began to learn the peculiar vocabulary of the clerk.
First he heard Clark Markey, the non-lawyer, say, ‘I certainly did finalize that item.’
A delighted smile invaded the solemn features of Karl Henkersmahl. ‘Finalized it, did you? You do not know the meaning of the word
finalize
. Did you expedite it or ameliorate it? Did you even estimate the final expenditures? Or did you merely correlate the old stabilization programs? Ha!’
Harold Kelmscott stirred his coffee with a peculiar new kind of pencil. Laughter hissing in his blue eyes, he said, ‘Quit it, Karl. We all know what a poor expediter you are yourself, and you’re a non-conservative estimator, unless I miss my guess.’
Karl nipped off his rimless glasses and polished them in aggravated silence. It was hard for him to acknowledge the presence of a superior will, but he did so with his best grace. His tiny, wide-set eyes, were on the move, looking for a smile he could challenge.
Karl often let his pride and quick temper draw him into an argument on any subject, especially on the subject of Germany, about which he possessed a number of interesting statistics. Claiming to know the exact reason Germany lost the Second World War, he usually won any arguments simply by shouting the same words over and over until his opponent gave up. The only man who ever won the war argument from Karl was Ed Warner, who maintained that Germany had
won
the war.
Division C: False teeth
Karl swallowed his coffee and said, ‘I estimate that the productionalized operational format will be updated by mid-March at the very earliest.’
Harold smiled. ‘But that’s hardly a conservative estimate, is it, Karl?’ The smile became an orange balloon, orgulous and threatening. Karl stared at its teeth in disbelief.
Modestly swirling his coffee and studying the rainbow in it, Harold said aloud that he had found two discrepancies today.
Two! A low murmur of approval went around the group. Indian, or ‘ideal’ summer descended on the city, and a new movie came to the Apollo. Hurricane Patty Sue was breaking up. The eyes of Eddie Futch glistened with frank hero-worship, which Harold accepted graciously. Even Bob and Rod paused in their counting of the proceeds of a turkey raffle to make the well-known gesture of ‘nice going’.
Karl alone refused to congratulate Harold. ‘I hope you itemized them both,’ he said testily, ‘before you followed a plan of procedure.’
‘Of course I itemized them. What did you think I’d do –
standardize
them?’ Harold
quipped
. The others
laughed
heartily, as much in glee at Karl’s discomfiture as in open admiration of the excellent
bon mot
, or good word, of his inquisitor.
It was hard not to like Harold Kelmscott, for he was a true clerk, descended from a line of clerks that could trace its name back to the twelfth century, to a Benedictine monk who broke his vow of celibacy. Harold once lectured to an orientation class of incoming clerks at a business college. He said:
Section VIII: A Priesthood
My esteemed fellow-clerks:
There have not been so many ways in this world in which a man might earn his daily bread, that the desiderata of clerkdom could invariably vie with more dramatic ways of ‘bringing home the bacon’ (slide shown of Francis Bacon’s
Study for a Portrait
, 1953, or
Head IV
, 1949, or
Painting
, 1946), such as police detection work, mass hypnotism, name any sport.
What, then, is it about clerkdom, that draws so many millions of fine young persons of all levels to dedicate their lives, so to speak, to the world of paper and telephones; to join, if I may be permitted a small jest, the pen and pencil set? (Slide shown of comic figure climbing out of inkwell, copyright by Ub Iwerks. Boos and clatter of neolite soles on Armstrong cork floors. Guards take firmer grip on Smith & Wesson .38 calibre police special revolvers, glance inadvertently at tough Yale locks on all doors, but H.K. has it under control.)
What it is, we may very well ask, for it is an unanswered and perhaps unanswerable question. Let us unask it, then, and move on to a history of paper. The first clerks, we know, lived in ancient cities where they wrote on stone, clay slabs, wax tablets. But very quickly, they moved into their
true capacity as priests. (Mixed hissing, but a general feeling of well-being pervades the auditorium. Guards relax and even light up Camels and Luckies. Wearing a plain black business suit, Foreman and Clark with vest and extra pair of pants at home, Harold spreads his arms in benediction. He is plump and blond, but even so, serious as a nose. He is all-English, black round-rimmed glasses and an unruly lock of hair his trade mark.) Yes,
priests
, a shocking word but oh so true!
You
shall be priests in the tradition, handlers of the lamb, then the lambskin then paper. Your hands will caress no whiter flank than the margin of form 289-XB-1967M. Your rituals are many and important, and you will dedicate your life to preserving their routine, that endless cyclic round that drives the universe. Whether you work in the death, birth or marriage registration bureau, it is your work which moves civilisation in its great orbit. God bless you all! (From the front of the hall guards and firemen move in with firehoses, using Townely-Ward 1½” nozzles and Townely-Ward pumpers to empty the hall and flush it out for the next lecture.)
Section IX: Jax TV Lounge
Division A: Rod
Henry stood at the bar and began a conversation with Rod or Bob. Around them, clerks murmured a kind of plainsong cadence of complaint, and Henry was pleasantly aware of being a clerk himself. He was one with the two clerks in the corner, arguing about the finalization of finalizations. He was one with the boisterous group of tic-tac-toe players in the corner. He was one with the three clerks at the other end of the bar, their arms about one another’s shoulders, who counted off by tens. Nearby another comrade was showing someone how to fold a dollar-bill ring. Henry’s hands itched for paper to feel. The bar, foreseeing this, had provided a tiny paper napkin with each drink, which his hands raped as he talked.
