Plexus (73 page)

If I had come across this piece of wisdom in the period I am writing of I doubt if it would have had any effect upon me. It was just impossible for me to take a detached view of things. The day was full of problems, full of complications. There was mystery in everything, irritating mystery. The mystery surrounding the universe—that was sheer intellectual luxury. The whole meaning of life was wrapped up in the solution of how to keep afloat. It sounds simple, but we knew how to complicate even such a simple problem.

Disgusted with our haphazard way of life, I made up my mind to take a job. No more gold digging. No more chasing rainbows. I was determined to earn sufficient for the daily necessities, come what may. I knew it would be a blow to Mona. The very thought of taking a job was anathema to her. Worse than that, it was sheer black treachery.

Her response, when I broached my resolution, was characteristic. “You're undermining everything I've done!”

“I don't care,” I answered, “I've got to do it.”

“Then I'll take a job too,” said she. And that very day
she hired herself out as a waitress at The Iron Cauldron.

“You're going to regret this,” she informed me. By this she meant that it was fatal ever to leave one another's side.

I had to promise her that while looking for work I would have my meals at The Iron Cauldron twice a day. I went once, for lunch, but the sight of her waiting on tables discouraged me so that I couldn't go back again.

To get regular employment in an office was out of the question. In the first place there was nothing I could really do well, and in the second place I knew I would never be able to stand the routine. I had to find something which would give me the semblance of freedom and independence. There was only one job I could think of which filled the bill—and that was the book racket. Though it wouldn't offer me a regular salary my time would be my own, and that meant a great deal to me. To get up every morning on the dot and punch a clock was out of the question.

I coluldn't go back to work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica again—my record was too shady. I'd have to find another encyclopedia to handle. It didn't take long to discover the loose-leaf encyclopedia. The sales manager, to whom I had applied for a job, didn't have much difficulty convincing me that it was the best encyclopedia on the market. He seemed to think I had excellent possibilities. As a favor he gave me some of his own personal leads to start with. They were “pushovers,” he assured me. I left the office with a brief case filled with specimen pages, various types of binding, and the usual paraphernalia which the book salesman always carries about with him. I was to go home and study all this crap and then start out. I was never to take “No” for an answer.
Soit
.

I made two sales the first day, netting me quite a handsome commission since I had managed to sell my customers the most expensively bound sets. One of my victims was a Jewish physician, a charming, considerate individual who not only insisted on my staying to dinner with the family but who gave me the names of several good friends of his
whom he was certain I could sell. The next day I sold three sets, thanks to this kind Jew. The sales manager was secretly elated but pretended that I had the usual beginner's luck. He warned me not to let this quick success go to my head.

“Don't be satisfied because you sell two or three a day. Try to sell five or six. We have men who sell as many as twelve sets a day.”

“You're full of shit,” I thought to myself. “A man who can sell twelve sets of encyclopaedias a day wouldn't be selling encyclopaedias, he'd be selling the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Nevertheless I went about my work conscientiously. I followed up every lead religiously, even though it meant journeying to such outlandish towns as Passaic, Hoboken, Canarsie and Maspeth. I had sold three of those “personal” leads the sales manager had given me. He thought I should have sold the entire seven, the idiot. Each time we met he became more friendly, more conciliatory. The publishers were going to have a big show at the Garden soon, he informed me one day. If I kept on my toes he might arrange to have me work with him in the booth which the firm was renting. He implied that there, at the Garden, the sales fell into your lap like ripe plums. It would be a cleanup. He added that he had been studying me; he liked the way I spoke. “Stick with me,” he added, “and we may give you a big piece of territory to handle—out West, perhaps. You'll have a car and a crew of men under you. How does that appeal to you?”

“Marvelous!” I said, though the mere thought of it terrified me. I didn't want to be that successful. I was quite content to sell one a day—
if I could
.

Anyone who tries to sell books soon learns that there is one type of individual who takes the wind out of your sails. This is the fellow who seems so pliant and yielding that you almost feel sorry for him when first you sink your hooks into him. You feel certain that he'll not only buy a
set for himself but that he'll bring you signed orders from his friends in a day or two. He agrees with everything you say, and goes you one better. He marvels that every intelligent person in the land is not already in possession of the books. He has innumerable questions to ask, and the answers always incite him to greater enthusiasm. When it comes to the last touch—the bindings—he fingers them lovingly, dwelling with exasperating elaboration on the relative advantages of each. He even shows you the niche in the wall where he believes the set will show up to best advantage. A dozen times you make ready to hand him the pen in order to sign on the dotted line. Sometimes you rouse these birds to such a pitch that nothing will do but call up a neighbor and have him look at the books too. If the friend comes, as he usually does, you rehearse the program all over again. The day wears on and you find yourself still talking, still expounding, still marveling over the wonders contained in this beautiful and practicable set of books. Finally you make a desperate effort to pull in the line. And then you get something like this: “Oh, but I can't buy the books
now
—I'm out of work at the moment. I sure would love to own a set, though.…” Even at this point you feel so certain the guy is sincere that you offer to stake him to the first installment. “You can pay me later, when you get a job. Just sign here!” But even here the type I speak of will manage to squirm out. Any barefaced excuse serves him. Only at this point do you realize that he never had the least intention of buying the books, it was just a way of passing the time. He may even tell you blandly, as you take leave, that he never enjoyed anything so much as hearing the way you talked.…

The French have an expression which sums it up neatly:
“il n'est pas sérieux.”

It's a great business, the book racket. You learn something about human nature if nothing else. It's almost worth the time wasted, the sore feet, the heartaches. One of the striking features about the game, though, is this—once
you're in it you can think of nothing else. You talk encyclopaedias—if that happens to be the line—from morn to midnight; you talk it every chance you get, and when there is no one else to talk to you talk to yourself. Many's the time I sold myself a set in an off moment. It sounds preposterous, if you're not in the grind, but actually you get to believe that everyone on God's earth must possess the precious book you have been given to dispense. Everyone, you tell yourself, has need of more knowledge. You look at people with just one thought in your mind—is he a prospect or not? You don't give a damn whether the person will ever make use of the damned set: you think only of how you can convince him that what you have to offer is a
sine qua non
. As for other commodities—shoes, socks, shirts, etc.—what fun would there be in selling a man something he has to have? No sir, you want your victim to have a sporting chance. You'd almost prefer him to turn his back on you—then you could really put on your song and dance with gusto. A good salesman doesn't enjoy taking money from a “pushover.” He wants to
earn
his money. He wants to delude himself that, if he were really put to it, he could sell books to an illiterate—or to a blind man!

It's a game, moreover, which throws interesting characters across your path, some of them having tastes similar to your own, some being more alien than the heathen Chinese, some admitting that they had never owned a book, and so on. Sometimes I came home so elated, so hilarious, that I couldn't sleep a wink. Often we lay awake the whole night talking about these truly “droll” characters whom I had encountered.

The ordinary salesman, I observed, had sense enough to clear out quick when he saw that there was little prospect of making a sale. Not me. I had a hundred different reasons for clinging to my man. Any crackpot could hold me till the wee hours of the morning, recounting the history of his life, spinning out his crazy dreams, explaining his
mad projects and inventions. Many of these witless ones reminded me strongly of my cosmococcic messenger boys; some, I discovered, had actually been in the service. We understood one another perfectly. Often, in parting from them, they would make me little gifts, absurd trifles which I usually threw away before reaching home.

Naturally
I was bringing in less and less orders. The sales manager was at a loss to understand; according to him, I had all the requisites for making an A-1 salesman. He even offered to take a day off and make the rounds with me, to prove how simple it was to get orders. But I always managed to dodge the issue. Occasionally I hooked a professor, a priest or a prominent lawyer. These strikes tickled him pink. “That's the sort of clientèle we're after,” he would say. “Get more like them!”

I complained that he rarely gave me a decent lead. Most of the time he was handing me children or imbeciles to call on. He pretended it didn't matter much what the intelligence or station in life of the prospect might be—the important thing, the
only
thing, was to get inside the house
and stick
. If it was a child who had fallen for the ad, then I was to talk to the parents, convince them that it was for the child's good. If it was a nitwit who had written in for information, so much the better—a moron had no resistance. And so on. He had an answer for everything, that guy. His idea of a good salesman was one who could sell books to inanimate objects. I began to loathe him with all my heart.

Anyway, the whole damned business was nothing more than an excuse to keep active, a means of bolstering the pretense that I was struggling to make a living. Why I bothered to pretend I don't know, unless it was guilt which prompted me. Mona was earning more than enough to keep the two of us. In addition she was constantly bringing home gifts, either of money or of objects which could be converted into cash. The same old game. People couldn't resist thrusting things on her. They were all “admirers,”
of course. She preferred to call them “admirers” rather than “lovers.” I wondered very often what it was they admired in her, particularly since she handed out nothing but rebuffs. To listen to her carry on about these “dopes” and “saps” you would think that she never even smiled at them.

Often she kept me awake nights telling me about this new swarm of hangers-on. An odd lot, I must say. Always a millionaire or two among them, always a pugilist or wrestler, always a nut, usually of dubious sex. What these queer ones saw in her, or hoped to get out of her, I could never fathom. There were to be plenty of them, as time went on. Right now it was Claude. (Although, to be truthful, she never referred to Claude as an admirer.) Anyway, Claude. Claude what? Just
Claude
. When I inquired what this Claude did for a living she became almost hysterical. He was only a boy! Not a day over sixteen. Of course he
looked
much older. I must meet him some day. She was certain I would adore him.

I tried to register indifference, but she paid no heed. Claude was unique, she insisted. He had roamed all over the world—
on nothing
. “You should hear him talk,” she babbled on. “You'll open your eyes. He's wiser than most men of forty. He's almost a Christ.…”

I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing. I had to laugh in her face.

“All right, laugh. But wait till you meet him, you'll sing a different tune.”

It was from Claude, I learned, that she had received the beautiful Navajo rings, bracelets and other adornments. Claude had spent a whole summer with Navajos. He had even learned to talk their language. Had he wished it, she said, he could have lived the rest of his life with the Navajos.

I wanted to know where he came from originally, this Claude. She didn't know for sure herself. From the Bronx, she thought. (Which only made him all the more unique.)

“Then he's Jewish?” I said.

Again she wasn't sure. One couldn't tell a thing about him from his looks. He didn't look anything. (A strange way to put it, I thought.) He might pass for an Indian—or for a pure Aryan. He was like the chameleon—depended when and where you met him, the mood he was in, the people surrounding him, and so on.

“He was probably born in Russia,” I said, taking a wide swing.

To my surprise she said: “He speaks Russian fluently, if that means anything. But then he speaks other languages too—Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, German, Portuguese, Hungarian.…”

“Not Hungarian!” I cried. “Russian, O.K. Armenian, O.K. Turkish ditto, though that's a bit hard to swallow. But when you say Hungarian, I balk. No, by crickey, I'll have to hear him talk Hungarian before I believe that one.”

“All right,” she said, “come down some night and see for yourself. Anyway, how could you tell—you don't know Hungarian.”

“Righto! But I know this much—anyone who can talk Hungarian is a wizard. It's the toughest language in the world—except for the Hungarians, of course. Your Claude may be a bright boy, but don't tell me he speaks Hungarian! No, you don't ram that one down my throat.”