Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (7 page)

“Dinner in a half hour,” she said to him. “I cooked Mexican. I know how you love it.”

“It's fattening.”

“Devil take the calories tonight!”

“I'll be in the garden,” he said.

In the garden, he observed with delight the appearance of a second flower. The everting breeze was beginning to blow the pollen, and his first impulse was to reach down and pick the flower. Then he stopped, and for quite a while he just stood there and observed the two lovely blooms.

The cat approached. He saw it from the corner of his eye coming toward him, slowly, tentatively. He bent and reached out his hand toward the cat. It arched, hissed, and struck, and there were four claw marks on the back of his hand.

He was licking the back of his hand when Barbara came out of the house and joined him.

“What happened?”

“I'm afraid our cat has reverted back to his true nature.”

“What a pity!”

“Well—perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“You have another flower on that beautiful thing!” she exclaimed with delight.

“Oh, yes.”

“Your new species, isn't it?”

“Well, it's a cross breed of sorts, but whether it will breed true or breed at all, that's hard to say. Some cross breeds are sterile, you know. “We'll let mother nature decide. The old lady is very wise about such things.”

“Dinner?”

He turned to her, took both her hands, and said, “My dear Barbara, I love you very much. I always have. An act of love is something we create within us, and, if we are lucky, we nurture it.”

“I like that,” Barbara said. “I'll remember it.”

“We both will, and we'll try as hard as we can, won't we?”

“What an odd thing to say! Of course we'll try, You're very strange tonight.”

Then he put his arm around her waist, and they went in to dinner.

5
Tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal

A
t precisely eight forty-five in the morning, carrying a copy of tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
under his arm, the devil knocked at the door of Martin Chesell's apartment. The devil was a handsome middle-aged businessman, dressed in a two-hundred-dollar gray sharkskin suit, forty-five-dollar shoes, a custom-made shirt, and a twenty-five-dollar iron-gray Italian silk tie. He wore a forty-dollar hat, which he took off politely as the door opened.

Martin Chesell, who lived on the eleventh floor of one of those high-rise apartments that grow like mushrooms on Second Avenue in the seventies and eighties, was wearing pants and a shirt, neither with a lineage of place or price. His wife, Doris, had just said to him, “What kind of nut is it at this hour? You better look through the peephole.”

Knowing a good tie and shirt when he saw them, Martin Chesell opened the door and asked the devil what he wanted.

“I'm the devil,” the devil answered politely. “And I am here to make a deal for tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
.
”

“Buzz off, buster,” Martin said in disgust. “The hospital's over by the river, six blocks from here. Go sign yourself in.”

“I am the devil,” the devil insisted. “I am really the devil, Scout's honor.” Then he pushed Martin aside and entered the apartment, being rather stronger than people.

“Martin, who is it?” his wife yelled—and then she came to see. She was dressed to go to her job at Bonwit's, where she sold dresses until her feet died—every day about four-twenty—and she saw enough faces in a day's time to smell the devil when he was near her.

“Ask your wife,” the devil said pleasantly.

“It wouldn't surprise me,” said Doris. “What are you peddling, mister?”

“Tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal,”
the devil repeated amiably. “Everyman's desire and dream.”

“It's an old, tired saw,” Martin Chesell said. “It's been used to death. Not only have a dozen bad stories been written to the same point, but
The New Yorker
ran a cartoon on the same subject. A tired old bum looks down, and there's tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
at his feet.”

“That's where I picked up the notion.” The devil nodded eagerly. “Basically, I am conservative, but one can't go on forever with the same old thing, you know.” He walked sprightly into their living room, merely glancing into the bedroom with its unmade bed, and measuring with another glance the cheap, tasteless furniture, and then spread the paper on the table. Martin and Doris followed him and looked at the date.

“They print those headlines in a place on Forty-eighth Street,” Doris said knowingly.

“Ah! And the inside pages as well?” The devil riffled the pages.

“Suppose you let me have a look at the last page?” Martin said.

“Ah—that costs.”

“Mister, go away. There is no devil and you're some kind of a nut. My wife has to go to work.”

“But you don't? No job. Bless your hearts, what does a devil do to prove himself. My driving license? Or this?” Blue points of fire danced on his fingernails. “Or this?” Two horns appeared on his forehead, glistened a moment, and then disappeared. “Or this?” He held up finger and thumb and a twenty-dollar antique gold piece appeared between them. He tossed it to Martin, who caught it and examined it carefully.

“Tricks, tricks,” said the devil. “Look into your own heart if you doubt me, my boy. Do we deal? I sell—you buy—one copy of tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
. Yes?”

“What price?” Doris demanded, precise, businesslike, and to the point, while her husband stared bemused at the coin.

“The usual price. The price never changes. A human soul.”

“Why?” Martin snapped, holding out the coin.

“Keep it, my son,” the devil said.

“Why a human soul? What do you do with them? Collect them? Frame them?”

“They have their uses, oh yes, indeed. It would make for a long, complicated explanation, but we value them.”

“I don't believe I have a soul,” Martin said bluntly.

“Then what loss if you sell it to me? To sell what you do not own without deceiving the purchaser, that is good business, Martin—all profit and no loss.”

“I'll sell mine,” Doris said.

“Oh? Would you? But that won't do.”

“Why not?”

“No—it just wouldn't do.” He looked at his watch, a beautiful old pocket watch, gold and set with rubies and with little imps crawling all over it. “You know, I don't have all the time in the world. You must decide.”

“For Christ's sake,” Doris said, “sell him your damn soul or do we spend the rest of our lives in this lousy three-room rathole? Because if that's the case, you spend them alone, Marty boy. I am sick to death of your sitting around on your ass while I work my own butt off. You're a loser, sweety, and this is probably the last chance.”

“Good girl,” the devil said approvingly. “She has a head on her shoulders, Martin.”

“How do I know—”

“Martin, Martin, what do you have to lose?”

“My soul.”

“Whose existence you sensibly doubt. Come, Martin—”

“How?”

“Old-fashioned but simple. I have the contract here, all very direct and legal. You read it. A pinprick, a drop of blood on your signature, and tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
is yours.”

Martin Chesell read the contract. A pin appeared like magic in the devil's hand. A thumb was pricked, and Martin found himself smearing a drop of blood across his signature.

“All of which makes it legal and binding,” the devil said, smiling and handing Martin the paper. Doris forgot her job and Martin forgot his erstwhile soul, and they flung the paper open with trembling hands, riffled to the last page, where the New York Stock Exchange companies and prices were printed, and scanned the list. The devil watched this with benign amusement, until suddenly Martin whirled and cried:

“You bastard—this is a rotten day. Everything is down.”

“Hardly, Martin, hardly,” the devil replied soothingly. “Everything is never down. Some are up, some are down. I will admit that today is hardly the most inspiring of days, but there is a surprise or two. Just look at old Mother Bell.”

“Who?”

“American Telephone,” the devil said. “Look at it, Martin.”

Martin looked. “Up four points,” he whispered. “That makes no sense at all. American Telephone hasn't jumped four points in a day since Alexander Graham Bell invented it.”

“Oh, it has, Martin. Yes, indeed. You see, until two o'clock today, it will just dilly-dally along, the way it does every other day, and then at two precisely the management will announce a two-for-one split. Yes, indeed, Martin—two for one. Just read those prices again, and you will see that it touches a high of five dollars and seventy-five cents over the two o'clock price, even though it closes at a profit of only four points. So you see, Martin, if you sell at the high, you can clear five dollars and better, which is a very nice return for an in-and-out deal. No reason at all why you shouldn't be a very rich man before today is over, Martin. No reason at all.”

“Marty,” Doris shouted, “we're going to do it. We're going to make it, Marty. This is the big one, the big red apple—the one we've been waiting for. Oh, Marty, I love you, I love you, I love you.”

The devil smiled with pleasure, put on his forty-dollar hat, and departed. They hardly noticed that he had gone, so eager were they to be properly dressed to make a million. Doris tied Martin's tie—something she had not done for a long time. Martin admired the dress she changed into and quietly agreed when she snapped at him:

“You keep that newspaper in an inside pocket, Marty. Nobody sees it—and I mean nobody.”

“Right you are, baby.”

“Marty, what do we go for? Five dollars a share—is that it?”

“That's it, baby. Suppose we pick up twenty thousand shares—that's one hundred thousand dollars, baby. One hundred thousand bright, green dollars.”

“Marty, have you lost your mind? This is it—the one and only—and you talk about one hundred thousand dollars. We pick up a hundred thousand shares, and then we got half a million. Half a million dollars, Marty. Beautiful, clean dollars.”

“All right, baby. But I'm not sure you can buy a hundred thousand shares of a stock like American Tel and Tel without influencing the price. If we drive the price up—”

“We can't drive the price up, Marty.”

“How do you know? What makes you such a goddamn stock market genius?”

“Marty, maybe I don't know one thing about the market—but I know how it closes today. Honey, don't you see—we have tomorrow's
Wall Street Journal
. We know. No matter how many shares of that stock you buy, it is going to stay put until two o'clock and then it's going to go up to five dollars and seventy-five cents. Isn't that what he said?”

Marty opened the paper and concentrated on it. “Right!” he cried triumphantly. “Says so right here—no movement until two o'clock—' and then zoom.”

“So we could buy two hundred thousand shares and make a cool million.”

“Right, baby—oh, you are so right!”

“Two hundred thousand shares then—right, Marty?”

“I hear you, kid.”

They took a cab downtown to the brokerage office of Smith, Haley and Penderson on Fifty-third Street. When you have it, you spend it. “Lunch today at the Four Seasons?” Doris asked him. “Right, baby. Right, baby.” Rich people are happy people. When he and Doris marched up to the desk of Frank Gibson, their poise and pleasure were contagious. Frank Gibson had gone to college with Martin and had supervised his few unhappy stock market transactions, and while he did not consider Martin one of his more valuable contacts, he found himself smiling back and telling them that it was good to see them.

“Both of you,” he said. “Day off, Doris?”

Doris indicated that days off were the farthest things from her mind, and Martin outlined his purpose with that superior and secure sense that the buyer in quantity always has. But instead of leaping with joy, Gibson stared at him unhappily.

“Please sit down,” Gibson said.

They sat down.

“If I understand you, Marty, you want to buy two hundred thousand shares of American Telephone.. You're putting me on.”

“No. We're dead serious.”

“Even if you're serious, you're putting me on, Marty,” Gibson said. “This kind of goofing—well, someone gets upset. Someone gets angry.”

“Look, Frank,” Martin said, “you are a broker. You are a customer's man. I am a customer. I come to buy, and you tell me politely to go take a walk.”

“Marty,” Gibson said patiently, “that much American Telephone adds up to over ten million dollars. That means you have to have at least six million, give or take a few, to back it up. So what's the use, Marty? Take the gag somewhere else.”

“Then you won't take my order?”

“Marty—Marty, no one will take your order. Because you got to be some kind of nut to even talk that way when I know that you and Doris between you—you got maybe twenty cents.”

“That's a hell of a thing to say!”

“Is it true?”

“For heaven's sake, Marty,” Doris put in, “come clean with him and get the thing on the road. Here it is, Frank. We got inside dope that Telephone is going up five points this afternoon. At two o'clock today they are going to announce a stock split—and it will go.”

“How do you know?”

“We know.”

“Nobody knows. That rumor has been around for months. Telephone is the blandest, dullest piece of action on the market. You are asking for a day sale, and this firm would not stand for even a little one. It's out of the question.”

“You mean you won't sell me stock?”