224
PARTISAN REVIEW
meekly like a cat. He never spoke with both confidence and politeness.
All of a sudden, he looked at me and said, "You're still here? You'd bet–
ter go jn, I think!"
I felt like killing him. If he could have sent me into the office when–
ever he wanted, why did he keep me there for fifteen minutes? In our
bookshop, no one behaves in such a meaningless way. I was angry
enough to complain about him to the proprietor.
I went inside to the main offices. One by one, somebody or other
stopped me and asked with whom I had business. I kept showing them
the letter-it was like Lord Brahma's arrow-that I had in my posses–
sion. But none of them seemed intimidated by it. One person took me
to another person, who took me to another person. That man looked
like a railway station booking clerk. I knew it
wa~
not the proprietor of
Saraswati Company-I had met him.
When he saw me, the booking clerk nodded his head the wa\' he
would jf he had asked "What?" As if he were doing very important
work, he lifted the telephone receiver and was about to dial, stopped,
then put down the receiver, moved the notepad in front of him, took a
pen out of his pocket, took off its cap, touched the pen tip
to
the paper,
replaced the pen cap, and put the pen away in his pocket. Then he lifted
the magazine lying on his right side, put it on his left side with a loud
noise, and lifted his head
to
look at me. "What do you want? What
business do you have?" he asked, mumbling.
I suspected that the booking clerk was a mental case.
Until then, I had been standing quietly. "I need to see the proprietor
please," I said.
The booking clerk's face turned red as a khanda root. With fire and
smoke coming out of his ears and his whole body shaking, he spat out
the words,
"If
the proprietor has to meet all these good-for-nothing peo–
p le face to face, why are we here? If you tell me what this very impor–
tant business of you rs is, then I will look into it. Further, for your
information, the proprietor is not in town. He's gone
to
Utee. He won't
be back for another fifteen days."
"That's fine, I'm not in a hurry," I said. "After fifteen days I'll tele–
phone and come aga in. "
"Even if he's in town, w hy do you think he's going
to
take care of
your business himself? He would send you to us," the booking clerk
said.
To us, I th ought. I didn't know if someone had joined him, or
whether he believed himself to be equal
to
ten people. I stopped listen–
ing and walked away.
