“I see. All right. I owe you two cigarettes.”
“Four,” the Fink said.
“Why four?”
“For the second tip. Get a guy to owe you.”
Feldman presented the pass that the Fink had made out for him to the guard. Saying nothing, the man unlocked the door. He was in a part of the prison he did not remember having been in before. Offices opened onto a long central corridor. He wondered if the warden’s office was in this building.
He knocked at a door marked “Personnel.” “Come in,” a voice called, and he opened the door. “You want
Inmate
Personnel,” a man said harshly.
At Inmate Personnel there was no answer and he had turned to go when the door opened. A large ruddy-faced man with white hair stood inside. He had loosened the knot on his tie, and his shirt collar was open. His jacket had been carelessly placed across the back of a chair.
“Hi ya,” the man said expansively.
“I’m looking for Major Plubo, sir,” Feldman said. (The guards’ ratings were astonishing. Feldman had never seen one below the rank of captain. The guard who had directed him to the pencil man was a lieutenant colonel. The pencil man himself had been a one-star general.)
“I’m Plubo. Call me Plubo. I figure an officer earns his respect or he doesn’t deserve it. What good does it do me if you call me ‘sir’ to my face and something else behind my back? Isn’t that right, sir?”
“I was told to see you for an assignment.”
“That was a question. You have to answer a question. I asked, sir, if this business of saying ’‘sir’ isn’t finally meaningless unless it’s earned.”
“I guess that’s right, Mr. Plubo,” Feldman said.
“And you can drop the ‘Mister,’ sir. Plubo’s good enough. Titles aren’t that important to me. There’s just man and man. Don’t you feel that, sir?”
“Yes, Plubo. I feel that.”
“Of course you do, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’ either, Plubo,” Feldman said uneasily.
“Well, you see, sir, I respect you. That’s why I do that. I
already
respect you. It’s a voluntary thing.”
Uh oh, Feldman thought. Uh oh, uh, oh. Not for nothing were people in jails. Even the guards. Jail was where the extortion was. A place of forced gifts, hidden taxes, tariffed hearts. You paid through the nose, and it was difficult to breathe. But if that was what he wanted, Feldman could stir him with ‘sirs.’ He would pay the sir tax. There would be no sir cease. And in a way, ‘sirs’
were
earned. Robbery was hard work, and Feldman
did
respect him. As he respected many people here. Hats off to the strong-arm guys. Wide berths to the breakers and enterers. He was learning to send along the best regards of his suspicion and fear.
“Sir,” he said, “I’ve been ill since I came here—in my cell—and though I wanted to work, sir, though I wanted to pull my own weight, it was impossible until just now. And then I didn’t have a prison uniform, sir, and as I say, sir, I’ve been sick in my cell—”
“Sick in your soul, you say.” Plubo winked at him.
Feldman, at a loss, smiled.
“That’s more like it,” Plubo said. “Time out. This is off the record, mate. Time out.
You’re lying. You’re a liar
. That’s all right. There has to be lies and there has to be truth. You’re doing fine now. Go ahead. Eat more shit…You were ill? And?”
“I didn’t get an assignment.”
“Well now, you want an assignment, is that it?”
“Yes sir.”
Plubo reached behind him and slipped into his jacket. He buttoned the gold buttons. He did the button at his neck and tightened his tie. “Well,” he said, “well. What experience have you had, Mr.—”
“Feldman, sir.”
“What experience have you had, Mr. Feldman? (Is this tie straight? There has to be straight ties and there has to be stains in the underwear.) Have you ever made any license plates?”
“No sir.”
“How about molds for manhole covers, have you poured any of those?”
“No sir.”
“Stop signs? ‘Busses Must Halt at Railroad Crossings, Open Doors and Blow Horn’? ‘Caution—S Curve’?”
“No sir,” Feldman said.
“Well now,” Plubo said. “That’s all right. Don’t be nervous. We’ll find something for you. I know. Have you bristled brushes?”
“Sir, I owned a department store.”
“Well, if you’ll forgive me, Feldman, we don’t have much demand for that kind of experience in here. Stand up straight a moment. Turn around.”
Feldman did what he was told.
“You’re a pretty big fella, aren’t you?” Plubo said.
“I’m heavy, yes,” Feldman said. “I’ve always eaten all I’ve wanted of the things I’ve liked.”
“Yes,” Plubo said. “Of course you have. Have you played much sports?”
“No sir,” Feldman said. “I haven’t lived very physically.”
Plubo considered him, and then came around from behind his desk. “Let me feel those arms,” he said. He squeezed Feldman’s arms, digging hard into the flabby biceps. He put both hands around Feldman’s left arm and increased the pressure steadily.
He knows, Feldman thought. He knows about the homun-culus.
Plubo let go of Feldman’s arm. “A man your size, I see you on the football field,” he said ominously. “No? You don’t think so?”
Feldman rubbed his arm.
Plubo had seated himself behind his desk again. He put on his glasses and studied some papers. “Report to the canteen,” he said. “
Dismissed
.” He hissed the word contemputously. “Jerk,” he said, “jerk clerk. Bad man. You make me sick—you and your comfortable kind. All the bad men in here are clerks. Like you. They’re not in the foundries, not in the shops. None of them. They’d be a danger to themselves, to others. Glutton. Pig. Sedentary piece of shit.
You’re dismissed, I said!
”
Feldman turned to go.
You salute me, you jerk clerk jerk. And you say ‘Thank you, Major Plubo, sir.’”
“Thank you, Major Plubo, sir,” Feldman said. He was terrified.
“We’ve got your number,” Plubo shouted as Feldman closed the door. “We’ve got your number, and it’s zero. It’s nothing. Jerk clerk, clerk jerk.
Nothing!
”
Feldman, breathless, stood beyond Plubo’s door and cursed the surreal. Well, it was
cheap
, he thought.
Calm again, he asked a guard to unlock the door for him, but the man wouldn’t let him back into the other wing until he had gotten another pass. For a pass he needed another permission slip. He was afraid to show the permission slip he already had; he didn’t know if it was valid in this wing. He waited twenty minutes for a pencil man to get another one.
“Not on
this
side,” the pencil man said angrily when Feldman told him what he wanted. “On this side you get permission slips from the opposite number.”
“I don’t understand,” Feldman said.
“Who’d you just see?”
“Major Plubo.”
“Major Plubo is in charge of Inmate Personnel. His opposite number is Major Joyce in Personnel. Rap three times and jiggle the doorknob twice so he’ll know what you’re there for.”
Feldman nodded.
“It’s a cross-check. There’s got to be cross-checks. Otherwise a con could float around in here indefinitely without ever reporting to the man he’s been given the pass to see. It’s an angle.”
“There’s got to be curves and there’s got to be angles,” Feldman said ardently. He understood. The place was not surreal; it was a place of vicious, plodding
sequiturs
, though not even the oldest lifers fully understood it, not even the warden.
I
’11 explain the operation,” Manfred Sky told him when he reported to the canteen. “Mr. Flesh is my assistant. And Walls here is in charge of stock. You’re his assistant.”
Feldman nodded. Walls was arranging packages of gum in a pyramid.
“You had a department store on the outside. That’s very impressive.”
Feldman shrugged.
“No,” Manfred Sky said, “it’s nice. Hey, Walls, this guy had a big department store on the outside. What do you think about that?”
Walls whistled.
“You had a thing like that going for you,” Harold Flesh said, “and
still
you had to fuck around. It don’t make sense.”
“Leave him alone, Harold,” Sky said. “You don’t know anything about it. Maybe he was framed. Were you framed, Leo?”
“In a way,” Feldman said.
“You see, Harold? In a way he was framed. Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions.”
“He’s got a blue suit on,” Walls said.
“I look at the man, not the suit,” Sky said. Sky was wearing a dark suit with white, thickish, diagonal pin stripes. The pin stripes were not straight, but abruptly angled like bolts of lightning in a comic strip. It was difficult to look at him.
“
Still
,” Walls said. Walls wore a bright pink polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. They seemed perfectly normal except that there were neither buttons nor zipper on his open fly. It was difficult to look at him too.
“The operation,” Harold Flesh said impatiently. There seemed nothing unusual about his apparel. He wore the grayish sweat suit that was the normal prison uniform. Catching Feldman’s glance, Flesh spoke irritably. “It’s cashmere. All right?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s cashmere. My uniform. And like yours it don’t fit. All right? Satisfied?”
“We just look funny,” Walls said, “but Harold
smells
funny. When he sweats—the cashmere—it’s terrible.”
“Shut up, Walls,” Flesh said.”
“I was just telling him,” Walls said defensively. “He’d find out anyway,” he added.
“All right,” Sky said, “all right, let’s settle down here. Let’s not kill each other. Let’s leave that to the authorities who get paid for it. Come on, Leo here wants to know about the operation.”
“I pile the chewing gum, that’s the operation,” Walls said. “I make it in neat stacks.” He giggled, and Flesh walked over and knocked his pyramid down.
Feldman, surprised, heard Manfred Sky laugh. “Come on,” Manfred Sky said—he was still laughing—“what kind of impression do you guys think you’re making?” He turned to Feldman. “Tell them the impression they’re making.”
“It’s an impression,” Feldman said neutrally.
“;Mind your business,” Walls said from the floor. He was gathering up the gum that Flesh had tumbled. “I ain’t making any impressions on nobody, you fat bastard. How do you know you ain’t making an impression on
me?
How do you know that? The truth is you are. I’m down here on my hands and knees, picking up chewing gum, and there’s a draft in my crotch, and you’re making an impression on
me
. It’s not a good one.”
“Walls,” Sky said.
“It’s not a good one, Manfred. A blue suit is a blue suit.”
“All right, all right,” Sky said. Harold Flesh had drifted off toward the rear of the canteen—it seemed to be several converted four-man cells—and was thumbing through inventory slips. “I’m going to explain the operation if it kills me,” Manfred Sky said.
Feldman, who was uneasy, wished he would begin.He looked as wide-eyed as he dared at Manfred Sky.
“First of all,” Sky said, “you’ve got to imagine it’s a gigantic, permanent depression, and everyone’s on relief. Everyone. That’s this place. These guys don’t have any money. They use prison chits. The state pays them three-fifty a month, after taxes, for the work they do here. Almost everybody gets the same.”
“Some get more?” Feldman asked, surprised.
“Some get less,” Sky said. “You do, I do. All the bad men.”
“That’s not fair,” Feldman said. “That’s not legal.”
“It’s for our costumes,” Harold Flesh said, plucking at his cashmere sweat shirt. “They dock us for the labor and the special material. They get another five dollars from the outside if their family comes up with it. It’s credited to their accounts. I suppose you won’t have any trouble about that if you’ve got a department store.”
“That’s right,” Walls said, “in the department-store department he’s all fixed.”
“You’re a clown, Walls,” Harold Flesh said.
“You’re a clown too, Harold. We’re all clowns.”
“I won’t go on with it, okay?” Sky said dramatically. “I’ll stop right there.”
’No, Manfred, tell him,” Walls said.
“No. You guys want to crap around, crap around. Go on. I’ll just sit here with my mouth shut.”
“The conniver in conniptions,” Harold Flesh said.
“The dissimulator digusted,” Walls said.
“The piker piqued,” Harold Flesh said.
“That’s enough,” Sky told them. He turned to Feldman. “I cheated the poor,” he said. “I nickeled-and-dimed them. Widows and grandpas, the old and the sick. I reduced the reduced.”
“Oh Christ,” Flesh said, bored, “explain the operation, Sky.”
“This
is
the operation,” Sky cried, wheeling. “What do you think? This is the operation. There are fortunes in doom and dread. Look,” he said, staring at Feldman, holding him, “during the war—”
“We’ve heard all this, Manfred,” Flesh said.
“During the war—everything I touched.
Gold!
The things I sold. Amulets. To send to their boys so they wouldn’t be hurt. And privilege. I made my collections. Like the insurance man I went around from scared door to scared door. I sold a policy to the parents, the wives—Prisoner-of-War Insurance, ten dollars a week. People are stupid,
they
don’t know. They think, when they’ve nothing, that things are controlled. They believe in our money. Theirs only buys bread, but ours can buy fate. I told them I worked through the international Red Cross, that their boys would be safe as long as they paid. They couldn’t afford not to believe me. That’s where the money is. Where people gamble because they can’t afford to take the chance.”
Sky closed his eyes. “Ah,” he said heavily, “I never had any confidence in my generation. I thought we’d lose the war. I’m here today because we won.”
“This all came out at the trial,” Walls said wearily.
Sky opened his eyes. “Well,” he said, suddenly cheerful, “forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones.”
“Guilty as charged,” Walls said.
Flesh—the tough one, Feldman guessed—snickered.
“All right,” Sky said, “you keep the accounts. Is that okay?”
“Whatever you say,” Feldman said.