420
PARTISAN REVIEW
"You must have seen him. He came in a while back."
"No, but I didn't."
Wilhelm fumbled out a pencil from the top pocket of his coat and
began to make calculations. His very fingers were numb, and in his
agitation he was afraid he made mistakes with the decimal points and
went over the subtraction and multiplication like a schoolbov at an
exam. His heart, accustomed to many sorts of crisis, was now in a new
panic. And, as he had dreaded, he was wiped out. It was unneces–
sary to ask the German manager. He could see for himself that the elec–
tronic bookkeeping device must have closed him out. The manager
probably had known that Tamkin wasn't to be trusted, and on that first
day he might have warned him. But you cou ldn't expect him to interfere.
"You get hit?" said Mr. Rowland.
And Wilhelm, quite coolly, said, "Oh, it could have been worse,
I guess." He put the piece of paper into his pocket with its cigarette
butts and packets of pills. The lie helped him out. Although, for a
moment, h e was afraid he would cry. But he hardened himself. The
hardening effort made a violent, vertical pain go through his chest, like
that caused by a pocket of air under the collar bones. To the old
chicken millionaire who, by this time, had become acquainted with the
drop in rye and lard, he also denied that anything serious had happened.
"It's just one of those temporary slumps. Nothing to be scared about,"
he said, and remained in possession of himself. His need to cry, like
someone in a crowd, pushed and jostled and abused him from behind,
and Wilhelm did not dare turn. He said to himself, I will not cry in
front of these people. I'll be damned if I'll b'reak down in front of
them like a kid, even though I never expect to see them again. No! No!
And yet his unshed tears rose and rose and he looked like a man about
to drown. But when they talked to him, he answered very distinctly. He
tried to speak proudly.
" . .. going away?" he heard Rowland ask.
"What?"
"I thought you might be going away too. Tamkin said he was
going to M aine this summer for his vacation."
"Oh, going away?"
Wilhelm broke off and went to look for T amkin in the men's
toilet. Across the corridor was the room where the machinery of the
board was housed. It hummed and whirred like mechanical birds, and
the tubes glittered in the dark. A couple of businessmen with cigarettes
in their fingers were having a conversation in the lavatory. At the top
of the closet door sat a gray straw hat with a cocoa-colored band. "Tam–
kin," said Wilhelm. He tried to identify the feet below the door. "Are
you in there, Dr. Tamkin?" he said with stifled anger. "Answer me.
It's Wilhelm."
The hat was taken down, the latch lifted, and a stranger came
out who looked at him with annoyance.
"You waiting?" said one of the businessmen. He was warning
Wilhelm that he was out of turn.
