Abnormal Occurrences (2 page)

On seeing her now in the office that was an anteroom to Nebling’s, Phipps let Fallon, whose idea this was, do the talking. Though he had got away with the earlier nonsense, he did not wish to try it on Barbara, whose opinion of him was low enough as it was.

But after speaking a few incomprehensible words to her, Fallon treacherously abandoned him and went out the door by which they had come.

As expected, Barbara was very chilly in her introductory and of course meaningless remarks. But because they had once been intimate, and since he had begun to worry that his failure to make any sense of spoken language, including his own, might have brought him to the threshold of insanity, Phipps threw himself on her mercy.

His intention was to say, “Look, Barbara, I wish we could be friends at least, and talk to each other as friends do. I’ve got a problem at the moment: everything I hear people say sounds nonsensical to me, and the same thing is true even when I say something myself. Frankly, I’m on the edge of panic.” He paused a moment, and then asked, “Do you understand anything I’m saying?”

Barbara’s reactions were not really appropriate to what he had tried to say, but they were very pleasant to experience nonetheless. Her brown eyes suddenly became again as they were when he and she had been on intimate terms. She rose from her desk and, right there in the middle of the office, with the door open, kissed him warmly. He was much moved by this and oddly reassured though it had nothing to do with his basic predicament except perhaps in the sense that it is generally better to attract kisses than kicks.

Before he had an opportunity to show a visible reaction, however, Barbara ushered him into the presence of John C. Nebling, who for a few moments was invisible behind the back of his chair, which was turned so that its occupant could contemplate a view of the glassy facade of other buildings similar to the one in which he found himself.

But eventually the executive revolved slowly to face Phipps. Today Nebling looked even more desiccated than usual. Every time he saw the man, Phipps decided anew that the rumours of satyriasis must be the fictions of malicious wits. It was hard to believe that Nebling had ever felt a sexual urge and impossible to think that any woman would have been willing to gratify it.

Nebling now extended the sharp points of his nose and chin toward Phipps, as if to impale him. Evidently he, like Fallon, had a complaint to bring, but Nebling did not raise his voice or show anger. His style was subdued in volume but penetrating in effect. Even though Phipps could not understand what the man was saying, he could detect, with his nerves as it were, the corrosive sarcasm which characterized every element of the statement, and he could only assume that what Fallon had started, Nebling would accomplish: namely, his firing.

And once again he could not suppress his anger. “
You
should talk! Everybody thinks you’re a joke. No wonder our competitors are walking all over us. You are as stupid as you are ugly.
Keep
the job, you ridiculous old man!”

But before Phipps could turn and make an indignant exit, Nebling put out a hand and said something in a speculative tone. This could hardly be a response to what Phipps had just said, if Phipps had said what he intended to, which of course he had no way of knowing.

Nebling next picked up a fat file of documents and presumably began to speak about them, tracing with a forefinger. Eventually he lowered the file, turned it to face Phipps, and pushed it across the desk.

Phipps put on his half-glasses and began quickly to examine the papers. Until this moment he had assumed that he retained the power to understand written language. But apparently such was not the case: he could not make out more than a word here and there, a “so” or an “as” or “than,” but suspected some of what he thought to be vaguely familiar were perhaps only cases of coincidental resemblance: e.g., “beyondings,” “distribukor,” and “cripple flypass.”

He could only too easily have surrendered to panic at this point, but by now was something of a veteran at gibberish, having survived the earlier experiences. So he nodded, stared sternly at his employer, and plunged in.

“What we have here is a bold and inventive plan that if instituted is guaranteed to smoke our competition in the Southwest, and not only that. As you have better reason than most to know, in recent years we have more or less slunk out of New England with our tail between our legs. I frankly believe this state of affairs could be altered to our advantage as soon as the first quarter of next year. But don’t take my word for it. Look at the graphs!” He turned the file toward Nebling and pushed it back.

Even had his speech been comprehensible—which it had certainly not been to his own ear—the content of it was spur-of-the-moment invention. The company was already in the process of closing the Northeastern division: no “new plan,” even if potentially wonder-working, could possibly be put into effect quickly enough to change that situation. Not to mention that if there was such a plan, he knew nothing about it. He had no idea of what was really in these papers.

But Nebling received the bogus information soberly. He studied the first few pages in the sheaf, nodding deliberately and then picked up the pace with his sharp chin. Finally he shut the folder, raised it, and having walked around the desk, presented it to Phipps with a crisp and positive gesture, like a drill sergeant returning a rifle to a recruit after finding it suitably clean. He clapped Phipps on the shoulder cap and uttered what, by its tone, could only be an affirmative sentiment.

Folder under his arm, Phipps left. He now felt so confident that he was able to pass Barbara with a smile and a wink. As to Fallon, however, he could not be so easygoing. Now was the time if there ever was one when, backed up by his new support from Nebling, he could try to even the score with his immediate superior. He continued on past his own cubicle to Fallon’s office.

Fallon was on the telephone when he entered, but soon hung up and, babbling amiably, indicated that Phipps should take one of the chairs that faced him.

Phipps however thrust the folder across the desk. “You fool,” he tried to say. “John Nebling and I agree that this plan of yours is disastrous. John was so furious about it that he even began to consider whether you might be an agent provocateur planted on us by one of our competitors. But I saved your job. I assured him you were too dumb to play such a role!” With a cruel grin he dropped the folder on the royal-blue blotter in its rosewood frame.

All of what Phipps had wanted to say came out in the now usual nonsense sounds, and he could not imagine what interpretation Fallon could possibly make of it, but the man was smiling as he opened the folder and began to examine its contents.

After a moment Phipps sat down. He experienced some failure of nerve. It was all very well to pretend to be having fun, making the best of a bad job, but if looked at clearly his predicament was disastrous. Thus far today he had proved absolutely incapable of communicating with his fellow human beings. How could any good come of that?

Fallon looked up from the papers, smiling more broadly than ever, tapped them with his forefinger, and said something obviously approving, Then he put his hands behind his head and leaned back. He gave every appearance of being expansive, gestured benevolently and spoke at some length, with genial simpers here and there and even, in conclusion, a wink. Finally he stood up and put his outstretched hand across the desk.

Phipps really had no option but to accept it and return the warmth of the grasp. He was willing to consider that he had misjudged Fallon in the past: after all, the man was always under unbearable pressure from his own superiors. Though Nebling had been a nice guy today, it was unrealistic to assume he had gotten where he was by kindness. Surely he had been at least as rough on Fallon as the latter had been on Phipps. Maybe Fallon was a better fellow than could be expected. Phipps found his own apparent success, in a situation that could have been calamitous, made him more generous to his fellow man.

He returned to his own desk, where a stuffed In-basket awaited him. One by one, he found the documents therein to be as undecipherable as the oral language that he had been hearing all day and saw that he had no choice but to dispose of them in the same cavalier fashion as he had dealt with the spoken word. Some papers he initialed forthwith and tossed into the Out-basket. Others that bore densely printed texts he simply slipped into the waste-can, but anything showing a graph was first defaced with a felt-tipped pen and anything with numbers he crushed and balled before discarding.

Occasionally such work was interrupted by the buzzing of the telephone. As he had no idea of what the caller said, Phipps showed ever less patience with each, until finally his response was simply to lift the receiver, say, “You’re talking absolute crap,” and hang up.

The strain of so performing, however, had begun to tell on him by lunch time, and though John C. Nebling had sent for him to come eat in the corporate dining room—an invitation he understood only after Barbara had led him there—he had no anticipatory appetite.

His mood changed when he recognized some other guests who had arrived before him: among them, the governor of the state, the mayor of the city, and a number of the best-known local businessmen, including several to attain celebrity across the nation if not the world. Phipps was no longer depressed. He was now terrified.

But the governor, a large silver-maned man with an outsized set of sparkling teeth, seized Phipps’s hand with both of his own and pumped it, then acted as his ambassador to the others, each of whom naturally addressed him in gibberish, but it was obviously benign.

The dining room, which he had never seen before except in photographs, was quite a splendid, chandeliered place and large enough to seat several hundred persons. He found himself at the long head table, on a dais at a right angle to the tables of the other guests. He was flanked by the governor and the mayor. Across the wall behind him was stretched a huge white banner displaying a legend in blue letters. He could make no sense of the words thereby formed, but in a moment he had remembered seeing a recent report on TV news to the effect that as one phase of the strenuous effort currently being made to dissuade businesses from leaving city and state, an Outstanding Executive of the Month would be chosen from among the local firms for public commendation. The reporter did not fail wryly to note that the meal served at such ceremonies would be paid for by the company receiving the reflected honor, and not the taxpayer.

Phipps’s inclusion in the event was an unexpected benefit of the new esteem in which he was held by John C. Nebling, who until a few hours before would barely have recognized his name. It was very satisfying to be in the company of those to whom success and power were routine, even if nothing said by any of them was comprehensible to him. His terror began to ebb. He chuckled at what were surely supposed to be the witticisms of the mayor, who was noted for his puckish humor, and murmured in response to the paternal-sounding remarks made to him by the governor. He even swallowed a few bites of his chicken, which turned out to be better than, having heard such fodder routinely disparaged by those who ate it regularly, he expected. By the end of the meal he felt so at ease, in fact, that he was about to try a little joke of his own on the mayor, when John C. Nebling stood up behind the lectern that was mounted at the middle of the table and began to speak.

Phipps of course understood nothing of what the big boss was saying, but he nodded here and there as if he did, and joined heartily in the applause that came when Nebling finished. But then in horror he saw Nebling beckoning to him. By the time he had at last struggled to his feet, hindered rather than aided by the governor’s powerful pats on the back, Phipps was so desperate he might have bolted from the room had Nebling, blocking the route of escape, not thrust a varnished plaque into his hands.

He could not read the words that were incised into the bronze tablet affixed to its face, but eventually realized that he had been chosen as the Outstanding Executive of the Month—and obviously was obliged to say a few audible words of thanks...

Then it occurred to him that he could say anything he wished to this roomful of influential citizens, for there had now been sufficient precedent to suppose that they would be received by the audience as at least meaningful enough.

But when a simple “I had not expected this, but I’m pleased to receive it” was followed by deafening applause, and a reference to Nebling’s leadership as having been “an inspiration to himself and all his colleagues” evoked an explosion of laughter, he grew bold. “And, hey, you understand I’m speaking not of business but sex!” He looked at the boss and said, “You randy old bastard you.” To his ears this was gibberish, and it could hardly have been understood literally by those to whom it was addressed, for Nebling himself was still smiling benevolently.

Feeling his oats, Phipps next turned to the mayor. “Your Honor—I use the title loosely, for you’ve proved in the last three years that whatever you have, it’s certainly not honor!” The mayor participated energetically in the general roar of laughter. Phipps went on, “But you’re not quite the Number One crook in this state. That designation has to go to this big smiling fraud on my right, our sainted governor, who spends more on hairspray than on our schools.”

Phipps gestured at the official so named, and got a standing ovation. Then he proceeded to deride those who were celebrating him. “As for you idiots, you haven’t the dimmest understanding of what I am saying, have you? And I admit that the same thing is true of me: not only wouldn’t I comprehend anything said by you, but I can’t make sense of a word I myself utter aloud, though my thoughts are as rational as ever. I can’t explain this bizarre state of affairs, but since it’s come about I have been much more successful at work than I ever was before, and I suspect the same will be true of my love-life, which hitherto has been lackluster at best; at worst, humiliating. I don’t mind boasting that since I have accepted a world in which words make no sense, I have prospered, and I’m sure that if I go beyond that and enthusiastically embrace it, I shall be invincible!”