Death Kit (12 page)

Diddy winced. The original edifice had been enclosed by two huge parentheses of ugliness. The building spoiled. But perhaps not entirely. All depends on the viewer. To see beauty under most circumstances, one had to look discreetly. Wasn't it like that always? Narrowing the aperture of vision, bestowing the fraction of a look. The better to discriminate between beauty and ugliness, life and death.

Diddy could narrow his look and see just the central portion of the building, a rather handsome example of Victorian factory architecture, where the firm's offices, laboratories, and demonstration rooms were located (now). The factory proper having been moved into the wings. The ugliest construction of all, a building dating from the 1950's which served as warehouse and shipping office, is located in the rear and mercifully hidden from Diddy's present view.

Jim was greeting some men who were getting out of the limousine which had pulled up behind us. Diddy standing apart. Waiting for Jim, looking up. And not simply at the cloudless azure sky.

The blue and gold dome which topped the old brick structure had been the founder's pet idea. After the architect brought from Boston had drawn up his plans, Amos Watkins (1834–1909) had insisted on his redoing them in order to work in a chapel. At noon and in the late afternoon, all factory employees from the lowliest janitor to the heads of the firm were convoked for prayer meetings.

His son Hubert (d. 1931) had dismantled the chapel at the turn of the century. After ripping out the pews and the altar, but leaving the stained-glass windows depicting an allegory of the Triumph of Industry, Amos' son installed desks and files and personnel, mostly women, of the expanding firm's bookkeeping department. In 1928, someone convinced Hubert that the huge vaulted space could be used still more wisely. Bookkeeping cleared out, the main laboratory of the company's department of research and technological development moved in. But the dome remained, forever hinting at, while quite properly lacking, a cross. Presiding over the chapel that (now) no longer existed.

The present Watkins, Hubert's son (1914–  ), knew only the laboratory. His grandfather's chapel was a quaint ancestral folly. Not real at all. The old flooring still exposed in the narrow aisles, between the squarish bulky machines and the long worktables of the technicians, was worn quite smooth; holes made by the bolts that fastened down the pews had long been filled in. The stained-glass windows were taped on the inside and then covered by heavy tan drapes, to prepare for the advent of reliable, uniform, artificial light.

Diddy, alongside his three New York colleagues, crossing the carpeted lobby of the old building. Waving to some men he knows from the Los Angeles office, nodding to the resident personnel. The four men identify themselves to the receptionist, receive a smile in return, and head for the elevators. To the left of the elevators are the high wide wooden doors that once admitted all employees to the old chapel. More restricted (now). “Research and Development.” Later, Diddy will step in, as usual, for a look.

We are standing in front of the elevator, which Diddy thinks of as a vertical bore through the center of the building. A bore which might exit into the dome itself. Could one go up there (now)? In all these years Diddy had never inquired about that. It's about time. Here's a tiny idea, a pretext. Diddy will propose that a visit to the dome be added to the tour of the plant offered to the public each Wednesday at eleven o'clock. Entirely suitable. For this is what the dome had become: an asset for public relations. This third-generation Watkins, noting that the dome was (now) just a head missing a body, an idle, spiritually pretentious ornament atop a busy profane building, was unwilling to leave it at that. The wrong head for this body. Hubert's son considered decapitating the building, then decided upon a reprieve. Invested the useless dome with a new function, one that was strictly secular. The dome, re-gilded for the first time in forty years, was designated as the company's emblem. Henceforth, a colored image of the dome was stamped on all microscopes turned out by Watkins & Company, inscribed at the top of the company's stationery and business forms, painted on the side of all vehicles owned by the company, stenciled on retail packaging and on the crates in which the instruments were shipped to dealers, and featured prominently in advertising. Look, the woman elevator operator has the outline of the dome sewn on her blouse pocket. And on the Oriental chauffeur's uniform? Diddy hadn't noticed.

The elevator doors close. Moving up. The conference room is on the third floor.

But maybe it was an insult to revive the dome on these terms? Let the dead rest, leave what is superseded to its natural repose. The adoption of the dome as the firm's insignia took place in the mid-1940's, when wartime government contracts had tripled the company's profits. Just before a portion of these soaring profits was allocated for constructing the outsized wings that (now) flanked the old building; whose bulk and ugliness had the effect of making the dome seem so much smaller and less imposing than it had been. A miniature dome (now), shrunken vestige of its former glory. A kind of toy.

Even though its colors were, by constant repainting, kept brilliant. Visible at a considerable distance.

But for Diddy, the tiny figure on the letterhead, on the microscopes, and on full-page ads was one thing; the massive original, with its curious history, quite another. During the ten years he'd been with the company, Diddy, a chronic if erratic connoisseur of spiritual independence, had developed his own view of the dome.

It was the fantasy expressed in Amos Watkins' addition to the architect's original plan that Diddy appreciated. Like the fantasy that produced the original sketch of what became the Micro-Recorderscope.

To think of uniting two such different devices in one compact, high-powered, easily manipulable tool. A bold thought when Amos Watkins had it, around 1900. Cameras then were large, cumbersome, bulky, relatively new contraptions: hoisted and precariously maintained aloft on tripods. While microscopes, in existence since the late sixteenth century, were, had always been, small and delicate: ready for use as soon as they were set down, secure on their horse-shoe base, upon any table, or even a window ledge. Watkins had insisted that it was feasible to combine the aristocrat and the upstart. The big and the small. A bizarre marriage was being planned.

That sparkling playful dome that incongruously topped the austere brick building was the embodiment of old Amos' energies. More than the compulsive godliness of a typical old-style Protestant. In Diddy's imagination, Watkins was a truly pious man. Not the piety that's illustrated by his having been a pillar of the church who never defaulted on his tithes, who contributed generously to the mission in China, who wanted all his employees to pray as well as work. Not even the inane but convenient piety which persuades greedy men that becoming rich is a duty, gratifying to the deity; for which God must be thanked, on the very site of one's labor. Pious in a larger sense. Old Amos must have been pious about himself. Must have felt lucky, fortunate, blessed. That's what the dome proclaimed. Obstinate, shameless pleasure in making useful machines and in raking in profits. Pleasure in being himself: not only shrewd Yankee businessman, ardent Methodist and Republican, but also successful eccentric. One who had had his way.

It was that energy of self-approval commemorated in the sturdy dome which had always charmed Diddy. Who didn't find it easy to love himself. And felt no greater admiration than for those who could. Those who could affirm their lives. Diddy, not pious toward himself, revered the relics and clues of innocent well-being. The vision of a man who does not inhabit, but simply is, his life. Amos Watkins the Pious had his acolyte. In this mediated sense: Diddy the Pious.

There are six people in the crowded elevator, (now) passing the second floor. For someone from the Chicago office has gotten on with Harron and Allen and Katz and What's-his-name. We're chatting loudly, but Diddy is silent. Reassuring and yet also numbing to Diddy's mind: to be cooped up in a small space. Without alternatives. Focused mainly on the task of maintaining himself in an upright position, without getting in the way of the other bodies or allowing them to get in the way of his.

Diddy wishes the elevator could go straight up, into the dome. And nestle there. He could get out first, then rudely close the others in. Less rudely, he could simply send the elevator down to the third floor, without him. Another possibility: the elevator might stall between floors. The lights go out, and there's no explanation. Some of his fellow passengers are bound to panic, but Diddy will remain calm. Offering to go for help, he will get a boost from Jim and force open the trap door in the roof of the elevator cage. Climbing up the cable, hand over hand, is messy work; cables in elevator shafts are covered with thick grease. But, if necessary, Diddy the Clean would do it. Until he reaches the top. Leaving below him in the shaft the small dark cube of the elevator, immobile, filled with nervous passengers … Any of these situations would do, as long as he can gain the dome by himself.

Once left to explore the dome alone, who knows what Diddy might find? Is it a great cool place, heavily timbered and sheathed with planks? Or claustrophobically hot, humid, soaking up the sun through its thin outer shell?

Perhaps Diddy will find he is not alone. Perhaps he'll come across a workman repairing the inner face of the dome; removing broken planks and decaying timbers, nailing up fresh supports. Or the workman may not be visible at first. Diddy will think he has the whole dome to himself. Until he notices a small exit, hardly big enough for a large man to squeeze through; and, peering out of the dome, sees the workman precariously stationed on a flimsy scaffold, buckets and brushes at his feet, applying to the outer face the necessary fresh coats of blue and gold. Diddy just wants to see what he's doing, to watch him work. He wouldn't intrude, or ask questions, or make any sudden movement that might startle the workman and cause him to lose his balance and fall. A long fall, the equivalent of six stories. Certain death. The body of the workman sprawled on the grass below. Limp, broken, bleeding.

Diddy knows what's possessing him. And that these are not the right thoughts for him to be entertaining while on the job. While sharing this small space with four other delegates to the conference; in an elevator that's stopping (now) at the third floor. Diddy has promised himself not to dwell on the gory anecdote about the railroad worker. Not here.

Time for us to get out. “Here we are.”

But suppose Diddy can't keep his mind reined in tightly? Suppose, having vowed not to resurrect Incardona in his mind, he does do just that? Diddy knows a remedy. There's something else, rather someone else, to think about. When the spectre looms up before his retrograde vision, she comes to caress his face and to kiss his eyes. To banish the workman, to heal Diddy.

She never fails to come. But always after. The workman arrives first. Diddy driven and counter-driven.

Upon leaving the elevator on the third floor, meeting and greeting. Considering what heals. Who heals. But Diddy was already thinking of her before.

When he and his colleagues first clambered into the black limousine, it instantly occurred to Diddy that, on the way to the factory, we might have to pass the Warren Institute.

Impatient. Looking out of the car window; insisting that the window be rolled down. About to ask. Then, within minutes after so-called Chang drove the car away from the Rushland, Diddy figured out it wasn't going to happen. Diddy, since childhood, gifted with an excellent sense of direction. On the overnight hikes in the woods his brother and he took, during the summers spent at their grandfather Edward Dalton's farm in Ohio, Paul was always getting lost; but Diddy's gift for spatial orientation brought them safely home. Dad had acknowledged Diddy's talent, too. Before starting first grade, he'd sometimes been allowed to come along when his father went out on house calls in the afternoon. His father would start the motor of the Buick, recite the patient's address while backing out of the driveway; then let the child tell him how to go. That acute memory for place, even places visited just once, allowed Diddy the Navigator to figure out rapidly that the factory lay in the same general direction as the hospital. But that to reach the factory we ought to take a slightly different route out of the center of town.

Becoming patient. Diddy could dispense with that quick scanning look at the hospital building he would have managed, had we been carried past it in the black limousine. Could forgo the satisfaction of being able for a brief moment to throw his gaze, let it adhere to the wall: an instantaneous, motorized replica of the gaze of a bashful suitor prowling for hours before his beloved's darkened house.

No matter. Diddy intended to phone Hester during the day and tell her he would come by during the evening visiting hours.

The first day's session at the plant.

On time. We're in a spacious, high-ceilinged, wood-paneled room. High windows with maroon drapes. Portraits of past presidents of the company. Nineteen men seated around the long oval table; each man's place supplied with an ashtray, a pad of paper, and two finely sharpened pencils. A stenographer at the far wall, taking the minutes.

Diddy in harness, eager to prove that he can function on the surface of life without slipping into a dark hole. A pompous speech of welcome by Reager. A longer speech by Watkins extolling the company's democratic structure of decision-making, and not so subtly reminding those present of the profit-sharing scheme enjoyed by all employees in managerial posts. Coffee and sandwiches served; everyone settled down to work. Memoranda and charts passed around the long table, figures scrawled on the blackboard. Whispering and exchanging of notes. Factions were being grouped and battle lines were drawn up. We were jovial. But there is a tacit signal known to everyone that starts the arguing. Bad feelings spill from people's mouths, like cold greasy coffee.