— God has put me in your city like a horse on a noble gadfly of combat…125
A second bout of vomiting cut his sentence short.
— Bah! I retorted, while holding his head to let him vomit more comfortably. Why carry on now with that old song-and-dance?
— Song-and-dance? he gurgled with difficulty.
His anxious eyes flew to the rotary press, then to his big pocket watch, and he shouted at me in a fury:
— The sixth edition is already in press! Did you bring your quota of blood? It should go six columns’ worth! What about the photos of the decapitated woman?
— Yes, Boss, I answered. I was your “bloodhound”; it was my job to hunt down blood every day, so readers of the sixth edition could quaff it like a nightcap before bedtime. I had to find a gory crime and muck around in it, gather the brackish filth of mutilated cadavers and grubby souls, then season it all with the sweet-and-spicy sauce of the sentimental-pornographic; once the delicacy was ready and printed up in point-size seven, it was tossed to the beast, along with illustrations of pathological anatomies and copious crocodile tears.
— So what’s wrong with that? retorted my Boss. The anonymous man-in-the-street, the low-brow without a life, needs his daily fix of violence.126 “God has put me here in your city…”
— Oh, come on! Enough of that old routine! Time was when the man-in-the-street, at the end of his work day, used to go home to the warmth of his family and catch the last laughter of his children, appreciate the grace of his wife, or simply take a look at his own inner world. It was his time to look and be looked at; and you robbed him of it. It was the only time left to the ox to raise his head and savour a bit of the earth’s sweetness; you stole that time from the ox. And, as a substitute, you gave him ten pages laden with ignominy.
By talking away like that, I must confess, I got myself almost ridiculously worked up. So it was no surprise when my Boss, in response, half guffawed, half vomited:
— The poet! Now I remember! Didn’t I fire you because I caught you writing cute little verses in the editorial room?
— They weren’t cute little verses, Boss! I responded. That day, between a major fraud and a crime of passion, I was starting a sonnet.
— Counting syllables on your fingers! That’s what you were doing when I found you out. How absurd!
— I’m no syllable-counter! I protested. I was using my fingers to count the matches in those five-cent boxes.
— Matches? I don’t remember that.
— There were supposed to be forty-five matches in each box. You ordered me to count them. I found a few boxes containing only forty-four. You threatened to denounce the manufacturer with the headline: “Consumers robbed of one match!” The manufacturer paid up without a peep. And that was the end of that!
My Boss laughed heartily:
— Just having a little fun! he pondered. A witty prank! I’m sure we didn’t get much money out of it.
— And the “prank” with the restaurant? I reminded him.
— I’ve forgotten it.
— The idea was to have someone eat at a high-class restaurant and get food-poisoning from the oysters or the paté de foie. The victim would inform the editorial room. Then, a phone call to the restaurant owner letting him know that, sadly, our journalist was duty-bound to publish the name of the establishment, and bingo…
— Trifles! he commented. Can’t even remember them. It was art for art’s sake. My masterpieces, on the other hand, will remain forever unknown.
— Don’t I know it. But I’ve seen the beleaguered characters filling your waiting room, day in, day out — bankers, politicians, criminals, professionals, shifty-eyed men — all on their way to see you, Boss, to beg for some venal discretion or a four-figure silence.
— Quite so. But people don’t realize how hard it is to milk the exceedingly tough udders of some consciences. And they have no idea of the sickening solitude one suffers afterward.
— I do. Sometimes I imagined you in your solitude like a movie gangster, the kind who sends his men out to commit a crime and then stays alone in his monumental office-suite, smelling the perfume of a gardenia, sensitively playing a Beethoven sonata on his concert grand. Do you remember Walker, Boss? The red-headed editor? He came up with a very poetic name for you: The Thief in His Forest of Bricks.127
— Walker was a sentimentalist, growled my Boss.
— According to what I hear, he died of revulsion.
— He died of dementia. He was one of those types who can’t take life’s hard knocks. So what of it? After all, everything goes on the same as always.
— No, Boss. It’s all coming to a close.
— To a close? he laughed, looking triumphally at the rotary press. Just look! The sixth edition is about to come out!
He lumbered heavily toward the end of the machine.
— Sixth! he was shouting. Sixth!
I was still watching him when a quite different character hove into my line of sight. He was an individual of dubious classification; he might have been a businessman, a movie actor, an amateur boxer, or all three in one. He was dressed ostentatiously, Yankee-style — baggy, grey-flannel trousers, sports jacket, loud tie. The mirth in his face did not quite conceal the sly gleam in his squinting, beady little eyes. The man looked me over for a good while, as if hesitating.
— Brother! he cried at last, opening his arms wide to receive me. I didn’t recognize you at first, but blood speaks louder than words…
— You mean ink, I corrected him. And don’t wax sentimental on me; I can see right through you.
— But, brother! he exclaimed in a wounded tone. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill. I had no choice but to give you the sack: a newspaper is a newspaper, not a first-aid service.
— The night of the fire I was just following your damn lessons, I said.
— What lessons?
— The ones you used to give us guys in the newsroom every two weeks. I can still see you with the pointer in your hand, standing in front of a figure painted on canvas, which you said represented the Standard Reader. According to your doctrine, the Reader’s interests were arranged in the following hierarchy: first came the interests of his stomach (and your pointer would go to the figure’s belly); right after that, those of his wallet (and with the magisterial pointer you would indicate his pocket); next, those of his heart (and you would point to the flaming red heart of the figure); finally, the interests of his intelligence (and you would indicate the stylized brain of the Standard Reader). A good journalist, you taught us, was obliged to serve all those interests in the order established by your pointer.
— A good lesson! he exclaimed enthusiastically.
— A lesson I followed to the letter, even though it cost me my job.
— You followed it? protested the tabloid-man.
— Absolutely. I was fascinated by the smile of inexpressible imbecility on the Standard Reader’s face in your famous painting. Incredible as it may seem, his smile inspired in me such tenderness that I resolved to defend the Reader’s interests right down to my last drop of ink. And I got my first chance when I discovered the Saint Ignatius Dairy was selling watered-down milk or milky water. Understanding this as harm done to the Standard Reader’s first-level interests, meaning those of his stomach, I wrote an irate editorial that was never published…
Here, the tabloid-man guffawed obstreperously:
— You crashing idiot! he cried. Didn’t you know that the Saint Ignatius Dairy was giving us twenty columns’ worth of advertising a month?
— Your pointer failed to point that out, I said bitterly. The second time I applied your doctrine was when the streetcar companies tried to raise the fare. It was an insidious attack against the Standard Reader in his second-rank interests, those of his wallet; and, borne aloft by my righteous wrath, I wrote an editorial that never got the go-ahead from your red pencil.