4Building the Seven Stairs
You’d be surprised how humiliating it can be to wrap books in cramped quarters.
As business grew, Saturday afternoon became a great but soul-shattering time for me. The shop was filled with people, music, conversation. There was the delicious thrill of selling, tarnished still by the dubious proposition of taking money, and followed finally by the utter physical subjugation of package wrapping. One moment I was riding a wave of spiritual exhilaration; the next moment I was the contorted victim of some degrading seizure as I grappled with paper and twine while people pressed about me. The shop was too small!
Ben Kartman had constantly encouraged me to expand. But expand where? Well, there was a back room occupied by a dancer who had given up his career because of a psychotic fear of travel. It was a fine, big room, and it too had a fireplace. He was very friendly and I had helped him find a bit of solace through HavelockEllis’The Dance of Life. The only course now seemed to be to persuade him to move into one of the vacant studios upstairs. This proved not difficult to do so far as he was concerned, but what of our landlord?
So again I was calling my landlord, and with his voice dripping with its usual sweetness he invited me to come right over.
It was all just the same, the little patent leather shoes, the pin striped trousers, the pearl grey vest, the stickpin in the tie, the waxed moustache, the mincing steps across the thick rugs of the rich, imperious, and somewhat decayed quarters. There was the same circuitous conversation with a thousand extraneous asides, but somehow it resulted in my signing a two-year lease for the doubled space. And this time I didn’t even need a co-signer. My landlord felt sure my success was as good as made.
I firmly believed I was on my way, too. I had suffered and nearly broken more than once, but the dream was working. I was building a store with love in it. I wasn’t merely selling books—I was teaching. And in my awesome love for books, every package of fresh, new volumes, cold and virginal to the touch, shining with invitation, returned my devotion with a sensuous thrill. In discovering this world, I felt I had discovered myself. I had been tested, and the future was open before me.
Of course, I had no money. But I was young, my nervous system could take endless punishment, my stomach could digest anything, and I could sleep on a rock. Beholden to no one, I hit upon a principle: If an idea is psychologically sound, it must be economically feasible.
Now I was sure. The breakthrough was more than the penetration of a wall into another room. It would be a breakthrough for my heart and a new beginning in my life.
The first thing to do was to bring in a building contractor. He surveyed the situation and assured me that the job was simple—two men could do it in a week. It would cost about one thousand dollars.
Well what about it? Of course all of my profits were tied up in increased stock, but I was certainly not going to let money check my enthusiasm at this point. The time had come, I decided, to see about a bank. Every day while riding the bus I saw signs offering me money on my signature only. Do you want a new car? Need to pay old bills? Buy a car? Buy a refrigerator? Buy anything? See your friendly banker. What really decent fellows these bankers must be!
I had also been told at the separation center that as a former soldier I was entitled to certain kinds of help from a grateful government, which included financial backing in any promising business venture. I could not see anything standing seriously in the way of my borrowing a thousand dollars for my breakthrough.
Therefore, bright and early on a fine morning, I went to the bank. I had dressed myself with care. My tie was straight and my shirt clean. I wore my only suit. My shoes were shined. I had shaved carefully and brushed my hair with purpose. After all, I reasoned, a banker is a banker—you must respect him. I had never known a banker before in my life, and I scare easily.
When I sat down with the bank officer, I was glad I had taken care to make a good impression, for he looked me over while I stated my business. Apparently his mind was not on my attire, however.
“Do you carry life insurance?” he said.
“No, sir.”
“Do you have a car?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you have stocks or bonds?”
I felt slightly ill. No one in my entire life had ever mentioned stocks or bonds to me.
“Then what will you do for collateral?”
Again a word no one had ever used in front of me.
I tried another tack. “I believe I ought to tell you more about myself.” Then my voice dried up. Tell him what? That when I was in college, I learned theOde to the West Windby heart? That I believed in the impossible? That I would rather die than fail to meet an obligation to his bank? It would never do ... not for this man with the pale, hard eyes.
He was not unkind to me. He pointed to a little, old lady across the floor and said, “Now suppose that woman making a deposit were told that I made a loan to you of one thousand dollars without the security of any collateral, do you know what she could do? She could have me fired for jeopardizing her savings.”
I didn’t have the heart to ask about the happy signs in the buses, but grasped at one last straw. “Isn’t it a fact,” I said, “that the government will guarantee this kind of loan if I can show justification for it?”
He admitted this was correct. “But we’d rather not make that kind of loan,” he said.
That was twelve years ago. Today the banks are generous and I can get a loan without shining my shoes or straightening my tie. The answer is terribly simple. Banks only loan money to those who already have it.
I walked defeated along Michigan Avenue under the cloudless sky. It was all so simple, logical, and perfectly mechanical. I just couldn’t make something out of nothing, no matter how strong my will or how deep my faith. I had to have money.
As I walked, a comment of my father’s flitted through my mind: “Some men make it early in life, but you, my son, will make it a little late in life. But you’ll make it.” I said to myself, “Look, nothing has changed. Nothing at all. If you don’t expand, what of it? Are you beginning to think of the kind of success that feeds the infantile longings of so many adults? What’s wrong with what you’ve accomplished?”
I remembered going to my father to talk about college. “Go to college,” he told me. “It is very important to get a college education. I’m right behind you.”
“It takes money to go to college,” I said.
“Money?” he said. “What fool can’t go to college with money? The idea is to make it without money!”
And so I did.
I was feeling better when I reached the shop, but was still so deep in my soliloquy that I rested my head on the desk and did not even hear Ben Kartman’s steps when he came up the stairs.
“What’s the trouble, Stuart?” he said, standing in the doorway looking at me.
“I went to the bank,” I told him. “They turned me down. I’m a poor credit risk and they never heard of World War II, believe me. So there’ll be no expansion.”
“How much will the construction cost?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“But you’ll need some more money for stock and to fix the place up, won’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Well?” He began to laugh while I talked my problem out. Finally he stopped laughing and I stopped talking.
“Get your hat and come with me,” he said. “I’ll get you the money.”
We went to the bank together. Ben signed the notes with his house as collateral. I got the money and the breakthrough began. But I owed the bank two thousand dollars! I no longer slept so well.
Anyway, down went the partition and the Seven Stairs expanded. Joe Reiner, then sales representative for Crown Publishers, happened in and, observing that I needed more book shelving, took me to see Dorothy Gottlieb, who was moving her Gold Coastbookstorebookstoreto the Ambassador East Hotel. She had plenty of shelving to sell.
On a Sunday morning, Joe and I got a mover to bring in the new fixtures. We came puffing and grunting in with the shelving and nearly annihilated my sick ballet dancer, who was supposed to have moved out a week before.He lay on a mattress in the middle of the floor and, upon seeing us, let out a yell and drew the blankets up to his chin, crying, “What do you think this is? A Frank Capra movie? Here I lie on my virtuous couch, too ill to move, and you...!”
I developed several successful techniques for selling books. For example, when I read a book that I liked very much, I would send out a post card to everyone I believed might be interested in it also. There is not much room on a post card, so the words describing the value of the book had to be selected carefully. I avoided the dust jacket phrases. “Great,” “brilliant,” and “exciting” won’t cut any mustard. You must know your book and know your mailing list.
Another technique was the use of the phone call—a very delicate tool that must not be employed indiscriminately. The call must, first of all, be made to someone who you are reasonably sure won’t resent it. And you must know exactly what to say and say it quickly.
When a friend came into the store, I might greet him with “Ah, guter brudder, glad you stopped in. I have a book for you.” Or, “Here is a new Mozart recording you must hear.”
To have a successful book store means also to be a slave to detail. This I found killing. Often I would struggle for hours to track down a title someone had requested, go to the trouble of ordering it (more often than not on a money in advance basis), only to find that the customer no longer wanted the book. Or I would special order abook, run like a demented fool over to the customer’s office to deliver it personally, and discover that the wrong book had been ordered in the first place. You could pretend to yourself that this kind of service would endear you to the customer and cement a faithful relationship, but it didn’t always work that way.
I worked hard, but my customer relations were not always perfect. I demanded that customers buy books for the same reasons that I sold them—out of a serious regard for greatness. I could not stand having myself or my books and records treated as a toy by the jaded and self-satisfied. And I was a jealous god. Today I know better, yet I instinctively back away from a customer who comes into the store carrying a package from another bookseller.
But well or poorly done, it took all kinds of doing: typing post cards, making phone calls, washing and sweeping the floor, cleaning the windows and shelves, running to the post office, delivering books, and talking in the meanwhile on the mind of Spinoza, the beauty of the Mozart D Minor Quartet, the narrative power of Hemingway, or the value ofThe Caine Mutiny, which on first appearance was slow to catch on.
Still, the business was developing. Each day I met someone new. Each day presented new challenges to one’s strength and intuition and pure capacity for survival. Around this struggle there developed a convivial circle which was ample reward for anything. On any Saturday afternoon it might include Nelson Algren, Jack Conroy, Studs Terkel, Ira Blitzsten, Dr. Harvey Lewis,Marvin Spira, Evelyn Mayer, David Brooks and Dr. Robert Kohrman, holding forth on an inexhaustible range of subjects, filling the air with tobacco smoke, drinking fiercely strong coffee from sometimes dirty cups, and munching salami and apples. The world of the Seven Stairs was beginning to form.
For months I practically made a career of selling Nelson Algren’s neglected volume of short stories,The Neon Wilderness. Nelson had already received considerable acclaim for the book, as well as his already published novels,Somebody in BootsandNever Come Morning, but short stories don’t sell (it is said). In any event, these stories represent some of Algren’s finest work (which at its best is very fine indeed), and I placed the book in the hands of everyone who came into the shop. I sold hundreds of copies. Then to keep the book alive, we held periodic parties. One month we would call it Nelson’s birthday, another month the birthday of the publication of the book, still another the birthday of the book itself. We invariably invited many of the same people, along with new prospects. At one point, Ira Blitzsten was moved to remark that he didn’t want Nelson to autograph his copy as he wanted the distinction of being the only person in Chicago with an unsigned copy.
Algren is a tall, lanky individual with mussed blond hair and a sensitive face, sometimes tight and drawn,sometimessometimesrelaxed. In those days he wore steel rimmed spectacles and Clark Street clothes—a pin stripe suit, a garish shirt, a ridiculous tie, in spite of which he still had a fairlyconservative bearing. Once he even wore a bow tie that lit up.
He is a quiet man. You sense he has a temper, but he seldom uses it. He is an authority on the argot of the “wild side of the street,” and I never heard him utter a vulgar word. He has the faculty of putting others at ease. When he talks with you, he gives you a remarkable singleness of attention. Even if the room is overflowing with people, you know that he is listening only to you.
He is a loner who reveals nothing of his private life. In fact, he never gave me his address. When he is introduced to someone, he shakes hands and nods his head at the same time. He gives you the simultaneous impression of understanding and remoteness. You are not surprised to find that his humor is sardonic.
Nelson Algren and Jack Conroy could perform a remarkable duet on the subject of James T. Farrell, Conroy in a broad Irish accent, Algren in a clipped, half muttering manner. I never learned the personal source of their animosity, but the name of Farrell had the magic to channel all their hostilities and frustrations into a fountain of pure malice. It was wonderful.
Sometimes Nelson brought his mother. Sometimes he would bring with him one of the girls related to the novel he was then writing,The Man with the Golden Arm. One night Nelson took me to “the wild side.” We entered a Clark Street tavern, a long, bare hall perhaps 150 feet long and thirty feet wide. Along one wall stretched a huge bar. It was a busy evening—every stool was occupied. We crossed the wooden floor to the other side of the room where there were rows of small tables with foldingchairs set around them. Before we were seated, one of the men at the bar slugged his woman in the mouth, and the two fell off their stools, blood gushing, and landed, one on top of the other on the floor. The bartenders came around and dragged them out, pitching them into the street.
A moment later one of the bartenders was at our table asking for our order. He knew Nelson, and they chatted easily. I was, frankly, sniffing, for as the stale beer smell of the place settled, I had a sense of being literally in a zoo.
As I looked about, I observed a mesh of wire fencing across the section of the ceiling beneath which we were sitting. I got up and inspected. There above us were live monkeys sitting on a bar behind the fence. I sat down and asked Nelson what this meant.
He said, “Wait and see.”
The tavern din was terrible, a demonic blend of shouting, laughing, swearing, name-calling—the human cries at inhuman pitch. It was out of a Gorky novel.
We drank several beers and waited, talking very little. Nelson’s face seemed fixed in a slight smile of playful disdain. It was impossible to say of what.
My bafflement was intensified when two men walked in and approached the place where we were sitting. They pulled a ladder from the wall, climbed the steps, and opened the door of one of the cages. One of the men took a monkey by the leather strap attached to its collar, placed it on his back, and climbed down the ladder. He walked to the far end of the room, opened a door, went in, and closed the door after him and his companion.
I sat rooted to my seat, failing to understand what I had seen. Was this in some way the meaning behind the phrase, “a monkey on his back”? I knew that whatever was going on here could scarcely be an idle zoological experiment, yet somehow I felt an impenetrable wall between my innocence and the full possibilities of human depravity.
I looked once more at the people in the tavern, and all at once it was with different eyes. I no longer saw them as “dregs” and “strays.” I saw something terrible, humiliating, too outrageous to form into words.
What is happening? Who are these people? Are they, indeed, people? But am I? Have I an identity?
My smugness melted and the distaste I had felt for what I saw now angered me. I had come into this place small, mean, and superior, a cad and a fop, the epitome of what I had long viewed with scorn in others.
I had a better notion of what Nelson was seeing and the nature of his protest. He had shown me a world where people lived without choice or destination.
I lived for days with this nightmare, asking myself why I should feel guilt for those who no longer feel responsible for themselves. Then it occurred to me that the question was never one of guilt, but only of love. The agony exists regardless of the setting. The lack of love is not alone on Clark Street.
To be successful, an autographing cocktail party must be planned with consummate skill and attention to detail.You must leave nothing to chance. You may not pretend that everything will work out satisfactorily at the last minute. It will not. And because I respected writers so much, I tried to guard them against the ultimate humiliation of sitting at a table before a pile of their own books, with no buyers.
I adopted the following procedure: First, get from the author his own list of names—people he would like personally to invite to his party. Phone each of them, or at least write a post card asking if they are interested in receiving a signed copy of the book. Next, send out the invitation to all your charge accounts, then check the mailing list for people you think will be interested in the book. Avoid freeloaders. Invite the press and the literary critics and try to write a short human interest story for the columnists. In short, build up as big an advance as possible.
Furthermore, don’t throw a skimpy party. People carry away impressions, and the onlyimpressionimpressionyou can afford is a bountiful one. It is said that all the world loves a lover, but one thing you can be sure of is that they love a winner. So avoid failure by planning against it, and then pray. Pray that it won’t rain or turn freezing cold, that the pipes won’t break or the electricity be turned off. Pray that you may fulfill your multiple responsibilities; to the author, the publisher, and your own hopes for continuing operation.
It seemed natural that one of our greatest cocktail parties should be given for Nelson Algren upon publication ofThe Man with the Golden Arm. Yet behind the scenes things went very oddly, and for a time it was hard to tellwhether either the author or the publisher wanted the party—or the large downtown department store, either, which entered the picture as a prospect for the event.
Anyway, it took place at the Seven Stairs. Ken McCormick, Editor-in-Chief of Doubleday, Nelson’s publisher, flew into Chicago. I can see him still, loaded with books in both arms, carrying them from one room to another.
There was high excitement—newspaper photographers and an unbelievable crush of people. It all began to tell on Nelson’s nerves and mine. It seemed to me he was writing too long in each book, and at times he would change his mind in the middle of an inscription and ask for another copy (to Nelson such revision was a literary exercise, to me a spoiled copy was a financial loss). The line of guests seemed endless and I began to develop an active dislike for people, for money, for the whole business. Besides, it was getting awfully hot. Nelson and Ken and I removed our coats. Nelson even gave up writing long paragraphs in each book. I tried keeping a cool drink at his side at all times. It seemed to help.
It was a great but strange party. Nelson was a success, and in a way I was, too. And this altered things enormously. It had never occurred to me how people attach themselves to the rescue phantasy, how easily failure inspires love, how differently even the semblance of success affects relationships. All at once, people who had only wanted to help me became hypersensitive and found me snubbing them. And I was feeling a new sensitivity also: “You can’t destroy me in the process of buying from me.” It was the beginning of a new struggle.
The last guest finally left. Ken McCormick was a very happy publisher. I swept all interior confusions aside and counted up the books. We had sold one thousand copies ofThe Man with the Golden Armin a single night! It was almost too much for Ken—he had to see it to believe it. And we were all dead tired. Just as I was about to turn the last light switch before we went out the door, I remembered and asked Nelson to autograph a book for me. As he bent down to write, I could see Bob Kohrman and myself sitting on the sand dunes reading the galleys of the book. I remembered conversations with Nelson and Jack Conroy in regard to the title, and Jack’s needling of Nelson when the advances were running out, saying, “Any day now you’ll be begging to come to work on the encyclopedia” (the constant drudgery to which Jack has given most of his working hours for two decades.)
Nelson, crouching over the book, wrote: “For Stuart and Jennie. The best in the West (as well as the South, North and East). Because he’s the boy with the golden wife—and she’s the girl with the golden guy.”
For there was indeed now a Jennie, a golden girl with whose short life mine was now linked in a more responsible relationship than I had ever imagined I would assume—a decisive part in the unimaginable future building before me.
We were all on our way now, but Jack Conroy was the last to leave. He had waited until the very end to say, “Papa, it was a fine party. I’m proud of you and your efforts for Nelson.” They were all gone now, the columnists,the celebrities, the crowd that stretched in a file of twos almost to the corner drug store. Only Jack Conroy, a huge and gentle man with his “Hello, Papa,” the extended hand, and the tiny stare in the blue, grey-flecked eyes, always waiting, wondering how you are going to accept his greeting.
This is the wild, humorous, tender man who gave Tennessee Williams his first important break, who first published Richard Wright, who wrote abestsellerbestsellerthirty years ago that is highly regarded by the few who remember it, and who is rated as the second most popular American author in all of Russia, one below Melville and one above Poe.[1]His only material reward: a purported fortune in rubles which he has no intention of ever collecting.
When Jack editedMidland Humor, a discerning anthology published in 1947, he was late to his own party at the Seven Stairs. When he arrived, I was shaken, as I always am, by his look of, “Will I be scolded? Will I be forgiven?”
He can be the most jocular of men, and the most understanding. One afternoon over coffee at the Seven Stairs he reported at hilarious lengths on the drinking prowess of his friend, Burl Ives, who was then doubling between a cabaret engagement at the Blackstone Hotel and the vaudeville show at the Chicago Theater. I was in the depth of my psychiatric period and suggested that help might be in order.
“He doesn’t seem unhappy about it,” said Jack, innocently.
Today Conroy, one of the most talented men in American letters, quietly stands and looks. When he talks, he stares directly at you, or turns his head entirely away and speaks to empty space.
I think he is the most honest man I have ever met: in his intent, in his appraisal of others and their writing, and in his own bereavement. As the gait grows slower, the shyness becomes more pronounced and the gaze extends away farther and farther.
He has been called the Samuel Johnson of the Chicago South Side. The designation fits in many ways—the large physical build, the forceful expression and comprehensive knowledge, the long toil in the compilation of reference works—and in some ways not at all. He has been many things, at times even a wandering player, and his physiognomy suggests a somewhat more cerebral William Bendix.
He can provide the most wonderful encouragement to others. But his own burden is lack of time—lack of time for all his obligations, for all he should do. Publisher after publisher offers him handsome advances, and he declines them. He knows he would not fulfill the obligation.
We were at lunch not long ago. “I’m going down to Mexico on my vacation,” he said. “I’m going to visit Motley.”
I had known the tragic eyes of Willard Motley, whoseKnock on Any Doordid not fill our friend, Algren, with any particular enthusiasm.
“You know, that Nelson is mean,” Jack said. “He wrotesome nasty things about me in theReporter. Did you see that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he did. We used to see a lot of each other.”
We walked back to the office building where Jack does his faithful, painstaking hack work.
“I’ll drop you a line from Mexico,” he said. “I’ll tell Motley that you’re writing a book. Take care of yourself. I’ll see you when I get back.”
The grey-blue eyes were suddenly swollen with sadness, and the voice stretched in a heavier drawl. I wished with all my heart that things would work out well for Jack Conroy.
The relationship between genius and disaster is too deep for me to comprehend. I do know that genius is never made; it is only discovered. There has to be a front runner. The notion that genius will out, regardless of circumstances, is simply to ignore the nature of genius, which must center upon itself in order to function. I sometimes think that the energy expended in creating a really imaginative work drains the humanity out of the artist. If his personal life suffers as a consequence, his business acumen is even more incidental.
The Man with the Golden Armwas Algren’s great commercial success, and the harvest was reaped by others. The story is told, or at any rate that part which has any bearing on this discourse, in a classic letter from Nelson to Otto Preminger, producer of the movie which bore the title, if not the imprint, of the novel:
Hotel Vermillion6162 West Hollywood Blvd.Los Angeles, CaliforniaFebruary 16, 1955
Hotel Vermillion6162 West Hollywood Blvd.Los Angeles, CaliforniaFebruary 16, 1955
Hotel Vermillion6162 West Hollywood Blvd.Los Angeles, CaliforniaFebruary 16, 1955
Hotel Vermillion
6162 West Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, California
February 16, 1955
Mr. Otto PremingerColumbia Studios1438 Gower StreetLos Angeles, California
Mr. Otto PremingerColumbia Studios1438 Gower StreetLos Angeles, California
Mr. Otto PremingerColumbia Studios1438 Gower StreetLos Angeles, California
Mr. Otto Preminger
Columbia Studios
1438 Gower Street
Los Angeles, California
Dear Mr. Preminger:
I am advised by your office that arrangements are now under way to award me the sum of two hundred and three dollars and seventy-eight cents, spent by myself to proceed, upon your invitation, to the city of Los Angeles. I find this gesture most generous, but am compelled to inform you that this money was spent to no purpose to which you are member. Thank you all the same.
I am further instructed that arrangements are also under way to compensate me, at the rate of thirty-five dollars per diem, for listening to the expression of certain thoughts, after a manner of speaking, by yourself. These occurred between January 27th and 31st inclusively. But since these were all, like the novel about which you wove them, the property of other persons living or dead, I cannot in conscience honor them by acceptance of such compensation. Again I am grateful. And again I am instructed that a check for the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, in addition to the above items, is due me from yourself. I assume this may well be an effort to repay me for some twelve pages of double-spaced typing I achieved in an effort to discover what in God’s name you were talking about. Since these pages served only to confuse you further, no moneys are rightfully due me. Yet your thoughtfulness does not cease to move me.
Should this concern for me derive from a simple and heartfeltgratitude for a diversion afforded you for a full week by “an interesting person,” as you so happily put it when the moment came for parting, I do not feel you are so much indebted. Although I did not find in you an interesting person, I did discover one of arrogance approaching the uncanny. Upon the basis of mutual amusement, therefore, I am the debtor. And since you are decidedly more uncanny than I am interesting, I must at a rough estimate, owe you close to forty dollars.
And forward this sum confident of your satisfaction in alms from any quarter, however small, and remain
your obedient servantNelson Algren
your obedient servantNelson Algren
your obedient servantNelson Algren
your obedient servant
Nelson Algren
“He jests at scars who never felt a wound.”
5The Day My Accountant Cried
I dislike being interrupted when I am interesting someone in a book. One late afternoon while I was engaged in making a sale, my accountant tiptoed over and stood close to me. I moved away, but he came close again. I frowned; generally that was enough to frighten him. But not this time.
“I must speak with you,” he said. “It’s very important.”
“Well, what is it?” I said.
His thin shoulders sagged and when he finally spoke, his voice contributed to the general impression of a small, furry animal in a trap. “You are bankrupt,” he squeaked.
My accountant was a limp rag of a man with a lined, ashen face and a bald head spotted with a few patches of nondescript hair. The color of his eyes was an odd mixture, neither grey nor brown, and he never met your gaze, but looked down at your feet or to one side. He wore a grey suit with a vest that had specially made pockets to contain his pharmaceutical supplies, includingnot only pill boxes and bottles, but his own spoon and a collapsible cup.
Although he was very neat, he bit his fingernails to the quick. Still, I found his hands fascinating when he added up columns of figures. His figure 8’s and his 7’s had a special quality about them, a precision bordering upon elegance.
He came into the store once a month, went over my bookkeeping, prepared the necessary forms for my signature, and left. Sometimes he would linger for just a few minutes looking at titles on the bookshelves. Then he would turn, shrug his shoulders, and depart.
When he looked up and informed me tragically, “You are bankrupt,” the words were utterly meaningless to me. “Wait until I finish,” I said, waving him aside, “then we’ll talk.” His distress was pitiful, yet I couldn’t help laughing.
Talk we did. He showed me the stack of unpaid statements, then my bank balance, then the cost of my inventory. There was no doubt about it: I was bankrupt. Those pretty 8’s and magnetic 7’s proved it. The ledger sheets with the long red and blue lines and the numbers so small and so beautifully shaped within the spaces spoke the awful truth. But somehow this truth meant nothing to me, except strangely to remind me of a story told by my father about a man who lost a leg but ran on as though he still possessed two.
I looked at my accountant in silence. He sat next to me, his squeaky voice now still, his red-rimmed eyes peering at me and at the evidence lying before us on the desk,along with a neat pile of Kleenex sheets, a spoon, and a bottle of pink medicine. My accountant’s adam’s apple began moving silently in his throat and as I observed this, I placed my man as a literary character with whom I was well familiar, the awful little man inThe Magic Mountainwho mashed all his food together, bent his head over it, and shoveled and pushed the mess into his mouth. Again I began to laugh helplessly, and my accountant kept saying, “Not funny, not funny, remember—you are bankrupt.”
“What do you suggest?” I finally asked.
“There is not muchtosuggest,” he said. “The books show bankruptcy. File for bankruptcy and call it a day.”
“Just like that?” I said.
“The figures are correct,” he said. “To me this means you must go out of business.”
“But what does it mean to me? I love this business and want to remain in it. I’ve spent three years building it and look at the progress I’ve made!”
“It can’t be helped,” he said. “Business is business. Your publishers are not sentimental. When they send you books, they want to be paid.”
Of course I intended to pay, I assured him. But I couldn’t pay everyone all at once. And if I was serving as an agent for their wares, couldn’t some of them wait? Or couldn’t I go to the bank for another loan?
“Impossible,” he said. “Furthermore, no one cares about your good work or your bad work. Your problem is that you haven’t the money to meet your bills.”
Strangely enough—immorally perhaps—it had neveroccurred to me that this was my problem. Finally I said, “As a favor to me, could you pretend that you hadn’t come here this evening? Could you forget this conversation? As I see it, nothing has changed whatsoever. So far, the only person threatening me with bankruptcy is yourself. It seems to me that if you will just stop talking about it, I am no longer bankrupt.”
My accountant poured himself a cupful of pink medicine, smacked his lips, and burst into tears. He assured me that I was partially responsible for his ulcerated stomach. And he told me of his fate ... the three times he had tried to pass the C.P.A. examinations ... the scorn and derision to which he was subjected by fools like me ... the plight of his wife and his children ... and his simple allegiance to the truth of numbers.
I began to feel terribly guilty. What had I done to him by not breaking beneath the impact of his shocking pronouncement? “Please don’t cry,” I said. “Nothing is really changed, actually. I just don’t believe in figures. I don’t believe in bankruptcy. I still believe in people, in myself, in my work. Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling joyous and sometimes I go to bed feeling wretched, but that’s life. However, it is entirely my fault for making you cry. I meant to take you seriously, but I have a complete contempt for figures.”
I brought him some water in his own antiseptic cup and told him the story of the Little Prince and the Fox and how the Fox made the Prince repeat: “Remember always—what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes her soimportant. Love means care and labor and respect. You are responsible for what you love.”
I observed a different accountant sitting before me. In the course of my resistance to the destruction of my dream, I had apparently turned upon him in a way that was completely novel, neither scorning him nor using him, but speaking to him as a member of the human race.
“I’ve never done this before,” he admitted, wiping his eyes. “But your attitude in the face of certain failure just broke me up. And here I am ... owning two houses, a piece of a hotel, and some stocks and bonds ... more money than you’ll probably ever see. Yet I realize how very little I have ... on the other side of the ledger.”
I was astounded that he was not angry, found a copy ofThe Little Princeto give him, and as he left called, “You’ve forgotten your spoon and the medicine.” He hesitated a moment, but did not turn back.
My accountant never again told me I was bankrupt. Several months passed before I next saw him, but since I continued to ignore the “figure” side of the business, his absence did not disturb me. Then one bright and lovely morning he came in wearing a fresh, newly pressed suit and ... no vest!
“How marvelous!” I said.
“No vest, ever again,” he assured me.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, you remember when I left? I still didn’t believe you, but I readThe Little Princethat evening. I used to think that facts and the gathering of facts were the only basis for living. But I realize now it is a much harder job.It is easier to be hypochondriac ... or a slave to the logic of the marketplace ... or anything but one’s self.”
Does experience teach? Is it possible that a human being may be altered or set free through the written word? Are books important? Is it important to be a bookseller? Even though you are going broke? I had been turning like a worm in an apple for so long that it seemed a little more turning could scarcely hurt me.
One night I was awakened by the insistent ringing of the telephone.
“Can you come down to the restaurant at once, son?” It was Ric Riccardo’s voice.
In less than an hour, I was seated in a booth with Ric, the late Henry Beaudeaux, then art critic for theChicago Daily News, and Michael Seller, a psychoanalyst, with whose professional world I had just begun an acquaintance through interesting circumstances which I shall soon describe.
After I had sipped my coffee, Ric smiled thinly and said, “Mike, tell him.”
“How would you like to go into the publishing business?” Mike said.
Then Ric took over. Chicago needed a publishing house, he argued. He was going to put up the money and establish the organization. But we would publish only Chicago talent regardless of their métier ... art, poetry, novels, whatever. He continued for perhaps an hour in this vein, dwelling upon the resources of talent which existed in the Chicago area and the absurdityof depending on New York to “discover” it. Finally, I wanted to know where I fitted in.
“I supply the money,” Ric said. “You set up the office, start the company going, get the writers. Tomorrow we’ll meet with my lawyer.”
He didn’t ask whether I liked the idea. He knew I was crazy about it and would work day and night to see it through.
“Have you a name for the firm?” I said.
“We’ll call it the BrentR Press,” Ric said solemnly. And with enthusiastic handclasps over this peculiarly ranch house designation, we parted.
Our first book was to be an art book titled,Eleven Plus Four, principally to indicate the number of drawings to be found in the book. The drawings by John Foote were considerably more astounding than the title, and Sydney J. Harris, columnist for theChicago Daily News, wrote as literate and perceptive an introduction as one is likely to encounter.
Ric and I worked like a pair of furies on the project. My association with the enterprise had a promotional value that helped business at the store and I felt certain that the way ahead lay open and that hard work was all that was required.
When Ric gave me a check for $5,000.00 and said, “Go to a bank and open an account,” I headed straight out to find the vice president of the bank where I had but a few years earlier been turned down for a loan. He was gone, but in his place I found a banker who was also a man.
Following this successful encounter, I rushed back to show Ric the receipted deposit slip. He laughed and took me up to his studio. He pointed to an army footlocker and said, “Open it.”
I did, and the sight of its contents overwhelmed me. It was full of money—currency of every denomination.
“When you need money, come upstairs and help yourself,” he said. “Only tell me afterwards.”
I wondered what my accountant would think. Even after his reformation, this kind of profligacy must have been beyond his comprehension.
At first nobody talked about it. Ric had become ill and he could not be seen. When there were urgent decisions to make, I was told, “Make them yourself.” But I was not sure of myself, I explained. The answer was the same. Ric was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.
Two months passed before I was permitted to go to the hospital to see him. He lay curled up in bed like a child, incredibly thin, the close-cropped hair completely grey, the skin waxen. I sat beside him for a long time before he unwound his body and looked at me.
“Go ahead and work, son,” he said. “You can do everything. When I get better we’ll talk about the book. If you need anything, go see Charley. I’ll call you when I can.”
I left feeling certain that I would never see Ric alive. I called Michael Seller and asked him to level with me. “It was his heart,” Mike said. In his judgment, it was just a question of time.
I hung up feeling that my world was coming to an end.If Ric was wounded, I was, too. If his survival was in doubt, I questioned my own. Every pattern I touched, no matter how vital, seemed to resolve itself into my own lostness.
But we were all wrong, doctors and friends alike. Ric came back strong. To be sure, the bags about the eyes were more pronounced, the skin hung a bit loosely about the face and neck. But one had only to look into the eyes to see that the fire was still there. Ric was all right, loving life, loving people, giving joy to all who came into his presence.
There was a new mark upon him, however, of increased gentleness. He spoke gently, moved gently, dressed gently, even ate gently. When we played chess, it was no longer with the same intensity. He would even interrupt the game to talk about the nature of God. He was becoming non-attached.
Finally the book came off the press. It was a beautiful job of production, and everyone whose name was known in Chicago seemed to have come to the autographing party in the spacious rooms above the restaurant. Ric sat at a table surveying the scene, and couldn’t have cared less. He was gracious to everyone. He nodded his approval at all the checks I had received for advance orders. He seemed pleased with my enthusiasm for success. But something had gone out of him—at least so far as ardor for parties and promotion was concerned.
Ric died one week later, and with him many dreams, the BrentR Press among them.