“Good. But don’t improve too much. Too great of an improvement could hurt your character.”
They had eaten the tiny almond cakes and drunk the foamy coffee; the lady demanded the bill and paid. The waiter with the fez had miscalculated by one dollar. Although he considered himself a connoisseur of humankind, he had only received a two-dollar tip from the lady, which was still, as he reassured himself, four times the amount he usually received from guests at this restaurant. No one worried whether he was satisfied or not. After all, he was happy to be allowed to work here. He had no papers. He had remained in the port of New York, where he had arrived as a cook on a Turkish freighter. As long as he did not get in trouble with the police, it could be years before he was caught and deported to Lebanon or wherever he was from.
4.
When the lady was standing on the street with Beckford and opened the door of her Cadillac, she asked him: “Where would you like me to drop you off?”
“If you don’t mind, ma’am, at the Rockefeller Institute.”
“Okay. Rockefeller Institute.” She started the car, which purred to life. Beckford almost strained his neck as he was looking out the car all around them during the first half mile of the ride.
He said: “Excuse me, ma’am, but this is not the direction to the RI.”
“Of course not. But first I have to make a short visit in that building,” she said, pointing to an office building that was twenty floors high.
“I will wait here, ma’am.”
“It may take me too long, so if you’re in a hurry to get to the Rockefeller Institute, you can take the subway. There is a station just around the corner to the left and you would get there in just a few minutes.”
“That’s a great idea.”
“Would you do me a favor, Mr. Beckford?”
“I would do more than one favor for you. In any case, I owe you for the excellent Arabic meal.”
“Don’t say such impolite things.”
“Okay, what may I do for you?”
“Would it be possible for you to wait for me here at the entrance of this building at eleven thirty tomorrow morning?”
“Nothing easier than that.”
“The question is whether you’ll be here tomorrow at eleven thirty?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be here on time.”
“Excellent. See you tomorrow then.”
Beckford walked to the subway station.
The next day, at exactly eleven thirty, he showed up in front of the office building. Ten seconds later the lady appeared. She had left her car in a nearby parking garage.
“I’m happy to see that you are so punctual, Mr. Beckford,” she greeted him.
“You learn that in the Marine Corps. It’s nothing new.”
They both entered the building. The elevator whisked them to the tenth floor.
Now they were standing in a hallway lined by office doors. On the glass panels of the doors, the names of their respective companies appeared in such obnoxious ways that you would think they were screaming for new customers. The lady walked along the hallway and stopped in front of one of these doors. Beckford had followed her. When he glanced at the glass panel, which took up the entire top half of the door, he exclaimed: “Wow! That’s not me, is it?”
“Who else?” said the lady. “Of course that’s you.”
On the glass panel, painted from the inside, were thick black letters, discreetly and tastefully framed in gold:
Beckford stared at the writing for a few seconds, and then he knew what the lady wanted from him. This office space was neutral territory, completely innocent and unsuspicious, where they would meet to please each other. No one visited this entirely unknown company. And to make totally sure, in case they did not want to be interrupted, all he had to do was hang a small cardboard sign saying CLOSED IN THE AFTERNOONS.
“Enter your office,” she said, without revealing in the least how much she was enjoying his surprise.
He opened the door and saw that the room was furnished as a functioning office. He said to himself: I guess I was wrong. This is not what a love nest looks like.
He thought so because an approximately twenty-three-year-old secretary sat behind a brand-new large typewriter at a brand-new metal desk. When the door opened, she slid the newest issue of True Confessions she’d been reading under the table. She blushed because they had caught her like this. But it wasn’t really her fault, since she had been sitting there for two weeks without a single person coming to bother her. She quickly stood up, politely stepped back from the typewriter like she had learned in vocational school, and waited to be addressed.
The lady said to Beckford, presenting the secretary: “Miss Amy Greengold, your temporary secretary.” And she looked from Miss Amy to Beckford: “Mr. Clement Beckford, president,” to which Amy responded dutifully: “How do you do, Mr. Beckford?”
He answered just as dutifully: “How are you, Miss Greengold?” to which she answered just as dutifully: “Call me Amy, Mr. Beckford.”
Beckford thought: I guessed wrong again. With this chaperone around, this wouldn’t be much of a love nest. I was really wrong. And now I’m even less sure what this deliciously smelling lady wants from me. When I look a little more closely at Amy, though, considering that we will be alone quite often, of course only for dictation, maybe it can turn into something more serious. And maybe the cardboard sign CLOSED IN THE AFTERNOONS can still serve its purpose after all. It’s a shame, truly a shame, that I can’t see her legs.
“How long should I hold the door open, Mr. Beckford, for you to come and get to know your personal office?” And it was true, there she stood in the open doorway, inviting him to enter the room with a gesture of her hand. He was confused, and he could have slapped himself there and then for always letting his thoughts wander.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just thinking whether it might be beneficial to move those two file cabinets into that corner so Miss Greengold has more freedom to move about.”
“Good idea,” said the lady. “Really, a good idea on your part. The people who carry furniture don’t care much about where and how to place it, and it gets moved anyway, just like in a new apartment.”
When Beckford saw the second office, he could not suppress an exclamation of surprise.
“But this is—this is, but I don’t even know—”
There, spread on the large table, he found a model in high relief of the complete canal system of central Europe from the Rhône to the Vistula. Not even a museum could have possessed a more beautiful and accurately designed model.
The scale was indicated in the lower right corner, and although Beckford knew little about the geography of Europe, he recognized at first glance that the proportions had to be accurate, as accurate as is possible in such a model.
Now his gaze landed on the opposite wall, which was covered with maps of canals. The Suez Canal in all its details, the Panama Canal, the Kiel Canal. Canals in Holland, in Russia, in China, in the East Indies, in Africa, and in North America. Canals of which he had never heard and about which he had never read. Even the canals of the Americas, except for the Panama Canal, remained unknown to him.
The lady pointed to the table, which was covered in a mountain of rolled-up maps. “On these maps, you will find even more canals, and in addition, detailed drawings of all the canals you can see on the maps on the walls. Those drawings include the minutest explanations, all the difficulties that had to be overcome, and the repairs that have become necessary since the opening of those canals. And in those books, you will find the history of each canal from the day of its inception to the day of its first use by a ship.”