Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (42 page)

Blunt measured it with a quick glance, as he did the man. There was nothing cheap or modest about Joe Jerico; his work was no work that Blunt had ever encountered before, but the tycoon liked the way he did it.

“So you're Frank Blunt.” Jerico nodded at a chair. “Sit down. Tomato juice, orange juice—we have no hard liquor—I can give you some wine.”

“I'm all right.”

No handshake, neither warmth nor coolness, but two men eyeing each other and measuring each other.

“I'm glad you made it this time,” Joe Jerico said finally.

“Why?”

“Because it gives you time for repentance.”

“I didn't come here for repentance.”

“Oh?” Jerico's eyes narrowed. “What then?”

“The doctors give me a year. They're liars. It's in the nature of the profession. If they gave me less, they figure I'd fire them.”

“What do you give yourself?”

“Three to six months.”

“Then I'd say you need repentance, Mr. Blunt.”

“No, sir. I need life, Mr. Jerico.”

“Oh? And how do you propose to go about that?”

“What do you know about me, Mr. Jerico?”

“What's on the record, more or less.”

“Let me fill in then. I began my career by buying a college dean. I found that if the price is right, you can buy—and there are no exceptions. I have bought judges, city councilmen, district attorneys, jurors, congressmen, and senators. I bought the governors of two states. I have bought men and women and thoroughbred horses. I took a fancy to a princess once, and I bought a night in bed with her. It cost me twenty-five thousand dollars. I bought the dictator of a European country and I once had occasion to buy a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He cost less than the princess, but he was more profitable in the long run.”

He said all this, never taking his eyes from Jerico's face. Jerico listened with interest.

“You're a forthright man, Mr. Blunt.”

“I don't have time to crap around, Mr. Jerico.”

“What do you propose?”

“I like you, Mr. Jerico. You see the point and you come to it. I want to live. I propose to buy off God.”

Jerico nodded, his pale eyes fixed on Blunt. He remained silent, and Frank Blunt waited. Minutes of silence passed, and still Frank Blunt waited patiently. He respected a man who considered a proposition carefully.

“You're not dealing with the principal. You're dealing with an agent,” Jerico said finally. “How do you propose to enforce the contract?”

“I'm not an unreasonable man. I'm sixty years old. I want fifteen years more. I've made arrangements with a man whose line of work is the enforcing of contracts. If I die before the fifteen years are up, he will kill you.”

“That's sound,” Jerico agreed after a moment. “I like the way you think, Mr. Blunt.”

“I like the way you think, Mr. Jerico.”

“Then perhaps we can do business.”

“Good. Now what's your price?”

“How much are you worth, Mr. Blunt?”

“About five hundred million dollars.”

“Then that's the price, Mr. Blunt.”

“You're not serious?”

“Deadly serious.”

“Then you're insane.”

Jerico smiled and spread his hands. “What's the alternative, Mr. Blunt? I could suggest the reward that awaits a man who has lived well—but no one takes any money with him to that place. You want it here on earth.”

“To hell with you!” Blunt snorted. But he didn't get up. He sat there, watching Jerico.

“I didn't come to you,” Jerico said softly. “You came to me.”

Silence again. The silence dragged on, and this time Jerico waited patiently. Finally Blunt asked:

“How much will you let me keep?”

“Nothing.”

“A man doesn't live on air and water. A million would see me through.”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I've heard it said that I have more money than God. Now it's reversed. The fact is, Mr. Jerico, that you drive a hard bargain, a damn hard bargain. I don't need money; I have a credit line of twenty million. You have a deal. Suppose we let the lawyers get together tomorrow.”

It took seven weeks for the lawyers to finish the legal arrangements and for the papers to be signed. On the eighth week, Frank Blunt suffered a stroke. He was taken to the Dallas Colonial Nursing Home, which Joe Jerico immediately purchased, installing his own staff of doctors, nurses, and technicians. A year later Frank Blunt was still alive. A mechanical heart had taken over the function of his own weary instrument; a kidney machine flushed his body; and nourishment was fed to him intravenously. Whether or not he was more than a vegetable is difficult to say, but the report issued by Joe Jerico, who visited him once a week, was that he lived by faith—a testimony to faith.

By the third year, Joe Jerico's weekly visits had ceased. For one thing, his home was in Luxembourg—re the tax benefits—and his fortune was increasing at so lively a pace that he abhorred the thought of airplanes. He found his eighteen-thousand-ton yacht sufficient for his travel needs. His revivals had decreased to one a year, but whenever he was in America for the occasion, he made certain to visit Frank Blunt.

Frank Blunt died in 1971—fifteen years to the day from the time in Joe Jerico's dressing room when they had shaken hands and closed their deal. Actually his death was caused by a malfunction of the artificial heart, but it was only to be expected. So much had happened; the world had forgotten Frank Blunt.

Joe Jerico received the word on his yacht, which was lying in the harbor at Ischia, where he had come to spend a few days at the Duke of Genneset's villa, and he was late to dinner because he thoughtfully took the time to compose a message of condolence to Blunt's family. Jerico, at fifty, was still a fine figure of a man, comfortable indeed, but he had by no means lost his faith. As he told the young woman who accompanied him to dinner:

“God works in strange ways.”

17
The Vision of Milty Boil

N
apoleon, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini all had one thing in common with Milton Boil: they were short men. But the most explosive moments in human history have often been the result of an absent six or seven inches in height, and while it is hardly profitable it is certainly interesting to speculate upon what might have been man's destiny had Milton Boil been six feet and one inch instead of five feet and one inch—with a name like Smith or Jones or Goldberg instead of Boil.

But at his maturity he was five feet and one inch, and his name had already caused him so much small suffering that no force on earth would have persuaded him to change it. All his life he had been stuck with pins, pinched and punned upon because of his name and his height; no wonder he was a millionaire before he reached thirty.

He was born in 1940 and he grew up in the time of affluence. His father was a builder of small apartment houses. Milton (or Milty, as he came to be known the world over) came out of college, spent a year learning more about his father's business than the old man ever knew, and then parted company with his father and built his first big apartment house. Milty was a genius. By 1970 he had become the largest builder of apartment houses in New York City. He married Joan Pebbleman, whose father was one of the country's largest builders of office buildings, and they had three lovely children. Joan worked in charitable efforts. Her name was in
The New York Times
at least once a week. She was only four feet and ten inches tall, so from a reasonable distance they were a very handsome couple indeed.

Milty respected money, rich people, brains, organizational drive, very rich people, the government, the church, and millionaires. In an interview, he was asked what he considered the first necessary attribute of a young man who desired to become a millionaire.

“Ambition,” he replied promptly. He respected ambition.

“And after that?”

“Influence,” he replied. “Proper friends.”

And Milty made friends and built influence. By 1975, at the age of thirty-five, he was considered the most influential man in New York City. His influence was such that he was able to have a number of significant changes made in the building code—among them the lowering of the minimum height of the ceilings to seven feet. With this achieved, he built the first one-hundred-story apartment house in New York. In 1980, riding the crest of the wave created by the population explosion, Milty Boil managed to have the city council pass an ordinance permitting ceilings of six feet in all apartment buildings over fifty stories high.

Rival builders sneered at Milty's new house, claiming that no one would be so damn foolish as to rent an apartment with six-foot ceilings, but such was the housing shortage by then that the entire building, with its seven hundred apartments, was fully rented in sixty days.

The cash flow that passed through Milty's deserving hands had by now become so enormous that he was known throughout the business as the “golden boy” or, more often, “the golden boil”; but Milty was beyond the barbs of name-calling. His vision and imagination had lifted him to unprecedented heights, and once again he brought his influence to bear upon the lawmakers. In 1982 his workmen broke ground for a new building of one hundred stories, with ceilings five feet high. Biographers recall this as a moment of great crisis in the life of Milty Boil, and historians look back upon it as a turning point in man's destiny. Suddenly all the forces of conservatism focused upon Milty; he was called everything from a depraved profiteer to public enemy number one; he was abused in the press, in Congress, on the air. There were, of course, a handful of farsighted people who applauded Milty's courage and creativity, but mostly it was abuse that he received. And to this, at his now historic press conference, Milty replied simply and with dignity:

“I give people a place to live at a reasonable rent. Especially the young people, who so desperately desire an urban condition. I give them a place to live at a rent they can afford.”

“Do you, sir?” demanded the representative of
The New York Times
, bold and caustic as befitting his place, leading the attack upon Milty. “How can you say that in the light of the fact that we Americans are the tallest people on earth, especially our youth?”

“I agree,” Milty replied. “This height is a tribute to the American way of life. All my life I have upheld the American way of life.”

“That hardly answers the question,” said a CBS man.

“I intend to answer it,” Milty assured them. “I have never been less than forthright about my plans. I have submitted this problem to a panel of forty-two physicians. They all agree that bending, crouching, and occasional creeping can only be beneficial to human health. Thereby a whole series of muscles formerly ignored are brought into play, and thus my own efforts coincide with the President's plan for physical fitness. As for the defense of democracy on an international scale, nothing better develops a man for jungle combat than the alertness produced by life in a five-foot-high apartment. I have here a statement from the Secretary of Defense—mimeographed copies available—which says in part: ‘The constant concerns for his country's welfare which dominate the thinking of Milton Boil deserve special mention and commendation.' I also have statements from Generals Bosch and Korpulant, both of them experts—”

“Mr. Boil,” he was interrupted, “are you trying to tell us that these low ceilings constitute a positive progressive feature in apartment construction?”

“They do indeed. Futhermore, an apartment is not a place where one lives vertically. We have conducted a survey of the habits of over ten thousand apartment dwellers, and the results show that ninety-two point eight percent of their hours spent in the apartment are spent in a sitting or reclining or prone position. With young married couples, the percentage is a trifle higher—”

So did Milty Boil defend himself, a man alone fighting off the forces of reaction and always contemplating the gigantic profit produced by a building consisting of five-foot-high apartments. But a day later, at his regular board of directors' meeting, Milty found that even those who shared the profits had their doubts.

“It won't work.”

“Milty—you can't go on this way. I hear Washington intends to step in.”

“Did you hear what
Pravda
has to say? I have the translation here—'the final step in the decadence of the United States.' Well, it gives one pause.”

“I don't say it wasn't a brilliant step, Milty. I simply ask: will it work? Can it work?
Life
is not
Pravda
, but listen to its editorial: ‘Has Milty finally flipped? We don't hold with those who characterize Milton Boil as a madman or public enemy. We recognize that the greatest builder of modern America does not make decisions lightly. But if Milton Boil is not mad, neither are Americans three feet tall. If—'”

“No, no!” Milty cried, finally coming to life in his place at the head of the table. “Hold it right there. Read that last sentence again.”

“What last sentence?”. “You know—that business about three feet tall.”

“You mean this—'But if Milton Boil is not mad, neither are Americans three feet tall—'”

“Right! Right you are! There it is!”

“There what is?” asked one of the older members, less able because of his age to follow the pyrotechnics of Milty's thought.

“The whole thing. The whole answer. The key to everything.” Milty's very real excitement began to permeate the others.

“What key, Milty? Don't be so damned mysterious.”

“All right. But tell me this. What is the number one problem of the world today?”

“Communism,” half a dozen board members replied eagerly.