The Puttermesser Papers Page 6

  “I bought it,” the golem wrote. “I did everything my mother instructed. I cleaned up the kitchen, made the bed”—a new blue bedspread, with pictures of baseball mitts, covered it—“mopped the whole house, did the laundry, ironed everything, hung my mother’s blouses and put my mother’s panty-hose into the drawer—”

  Puttermesser grabbed the sheet of paper right off the golem’s pad and tore it up without reading the rest of it. “What do you mean you bought it? What kind of junk is this? I don’t want the Statue of Liberty! I don’t want baseball mitts!”

  “It was all I could find,” the golem wrote on a fresh page. “All the stores around here are closed on Sunday. I had to do down to Delancey Street on the Lower East Side. I took a taxi.”

  “Taxi! You’ll shop when I tell you to shop!” Puttermesser yelled. “Otherwise you stay home!”

  “I need a wider world,” the golem wrote. “Take me with you to your place of employment tomorrow.”

  “My foot I will,” Puttermesser said. “I’ve had enough of you. I’ve been thinking”—she looked for a euphemism—“about sending you back.”

  “Back?” the golem wrote; her mouth had opened all the way.

  “You’ve got a crooked tooth. Come here,” Puttermesser said, “I’ll fix it.”

  The golem wrote, “You can no longer alter my being or any part of my being. The speaking of the Name fulfills; it precludes alteration. But I am pleasant to look on, am I not? I will not again gape so that my crooked tooth can offend my mother’s eye. Only use me.”

  “You’ve got rotten taste.”

  The golem wrote, “It was my task to choose between baseball mitts and small raccoons intermingled with blue-eyed panda bears. The baseball mitts struck me as the lesser evil.”

  “I never wanted a bedspread,” Puttermesser objected. “When I said to make the bed I just meant to straighten the blankets, that’s all. And my God, the Statue of Liberty!”

  The golem wrote, “A three-way bulb, 150 watts. I thought it so very clever that the bulb goes right into the torch.”

  “Kitsch. And where’d you get the money?”

  “Out of your wallet. But see how pleasantly bright,” the golem wrote. “I fear the dark. The dark is where preexistence abides. It is not possible to think of pre-existence, but one dreads its facsimile: post-existence. Do not erase, obliterate, or annihilate me. Mother, my mother. I will serve you. Use me in the wide world.”

  “You stole my money right out of my wallet, spent a fortune on a taxi, and brought home the cheapest sort of junk. If you pull this kind of thing in the house, don’t talk to me about the wide world!”

  IV. XANTHIPPE AT WORK

  BUT THE NEXT MORNING the golem was in Puttermesser’s office.

  “Who’s the kid?” Cracow asked.

  “Marmel’s letting me have a typist,” Puttermesser said.

  “Marmel? That don’t make sense. After demoting you?”

  “I was reassigned,” Puttermesser said; but her cheeks stung.

  “Them’s the breaks,” Cracow said. “So how come the royal treatment? You could use the typing pool like the rest of us.”

  “Turtelman’s put me on a special project.”

  “Turtelman? Turtelman kicked you in the head. What special project?”

  “I’m supposed to check out any employee who broods about lawsuits on City time,” Puttermesser said.

  “Oh come on, Ruth, can the corn. You know damn well I’ve been maligned. My lawyer says I have a case. I damn well have a case. What’s the kid’s name?”

  “Leah.”

  “Leah.” Cracow pushed his face right into the golem’s. “Do they hire ’em that young? What are you, Leah, a high-school dropout?”

  “She’s smart enough as is,” Puttermesser said.

  “Whyn’t you let the kid answer for herself?”

  Puttermesser took Cracow by the elbow and whispered, “They cut out her throat. Malignancy of the voicebox.”

  “Whew,” Cracow said.

  “Get going,” Puttermesser ordered the golem, and led her to the ladies’ room. “I told you not to come! I’m in enough hot water around here, I don’t need you to make trouble.”

  The golem plucked a paper towel from the wall, fetched Puttermesser’s ballpoint pen from the pocket of Puttermesser’s cardigan (the golem was still wearing it), and wrote: “I will ameliorate your woe.”

  “I didn’t say woe, I said hot water. Trouble. First kitsch, now rococo. Observe reality, can’t you? Look, you’re going to sit in front of that typewriter and that’s it. If you can type half as well as you cook, fine. I don’t care what you type. Stay out of my way. Write letters, it doesn’t matter, but stay out of my way.”

  The golem wrote, “I hear and obey.”

  All day the golem, a model of diligence, sat at the typewriter and typed. Puttermesser, passing en route from one fruitless meeting to another, saw the sheets accumulating on the floor. Was Xanthippe writing a novel? a memoir? To whom, after all, did she owe a letter? The golem looked abstracted, rapt. Puttermesser was hoping to patch together, bit by bit, her bad fortune. The gossips ran from cubicle to cubicle, collecting the news: Turtelman’s niece, an actress—she had most recently played a medieval leper, with a little bell, in a television costume drama—was engaged to the Mayor’s cousin. Marmel’s aunt had once stayed in the same hotel in Florida with Mrs. Minnie Mavett, the Mayor’s elderly widowed adoptive mother. (The Mayor had been an adopted child, and campaigned with his wife and four natural children as a “lucky orphan.”) Marmel and Turtelman were said to have married twin sisters; surely this was a symbolic way of marrying each other? Or else Marmel was married to a Boston blueblood, Turtelman to a climber from Great Neck. On the other hand, only Marmel was married; Turtelman was an austere bachelor. One of the secretaries in the Administrative Assistant’s office had observed that Marmel, Turtelman, and the Mayor all wore identical rings; she denied they were school rings. Turtelman’s “restructuring,” moreover, had begun (according to Polly in Personnel) to assume telltale forms. He was becoming bolder and bolder. He was like some crazed plantation owner at harvest time, who, instead of cutting down the standing grain, cuts down the conscientious reapers. Or he was like a raving chessmaster who throws all the winning pieces in the fire. Or he was like a general who leads a massacre against his own best troops. All these images failed. Turtelman was destroying the Department of Receipts and Disbursements. What he looked for was not performance but loyalty. He was a mayoral appointee of rapacious nature conniving at the usual outrages of patronage; he was doing the Mayor’s will. He did not love the democratic polity as much as he feared the Mayor. Ah, Walt Whitman was not in his kidneys. Plunder was.

  Cracow, meanwhile, reported that several times Adam Marmel had telephoned for Puttermesser. It was urgent. “That new girl’s no good, Ruth. I’m all in favor of hiring the handicapped, but when it comes to answering the telephone what’s definitely needed is a larynx. I had to pick up every damn time. You think Marmel wants to put you back up there in the stratosphere?”

  Puttermesser said nothing. Cracow thought women ought to keep their place; he took open satisfaction in Puttermesser’s flight downward. He nagged her to tell him what Turtelman’s special project was. “You’d rather do special projects for the higher-ups than date a nice guy like me,” he complained. “At least let’s have lunch.” But Puttermesser sent the golem out to a delicatessen for sandwiches; it was a kosher delicatessen—Puttermesser thought the golem would care about a thing like that. By the middle of the afternoon the golem’s typed sheets were a tall stack.

  At a quarter to five Turtelman’s bony acolyte came puffing in. “Mr. Turtelman lent me to Mr. Marmel just to give you this. I hope you appreciate I’m not normally anyone’s delivery boy. You’re never at your desk. You can’t be reached by phone. You’re not important enough to be incommunicado, believe me. Mr. Marmel wants you to prepare a portfolio for him on these topics toot sweet.”


  Marmel’ s memo:

  Dear Ms. Puttermesser:

  Please be good enough to supply me with the following at your earliest convenience. A list of the City’s bank depositories. Average balance in each account for the last three years. List of contact people at banks—names, titles, telephone numbers. List of contacts for Department of Receipts and Disbursements (referred to below as “we,” “our,” and “us”) in Office of Mayor, Department of Budget, relevant City Council committees, Office of Comptroller. Copies of all evaluation reports published during past year. Current organization chart showing incumbent, title, and salary for each of our Office Heads. Why do we not have any window poles? Where have all the window poles gone? How to get toilet paper and soap regularly replaced in executive washroom? What kind of Management Information System files do we have on the assessed value of City real estate? How effective was our last Investors’ Tour? Old notes disclose visit to sewage disposal plant, helicopter ride, fireboat demonstration, lunch and fashion show for the ladies—how to win goodwill this year from these heavy pockets? What hot litigation should I know about in re our Quasi-Judicial Division?

  It was the old story: the floundering new official perplexed and beleaguered. Puttermesser felt a touch of malicious pleasure in Marmel’s memo; she had known it would come to this—Turtelman, having thrown her out, now discovered he could not clear a space for himself without the stirring of Puttermesser’s little finger. Marmel, spurred by Turtelman (too high-and-mighty to ask on his own), had set out to pick Puttermesser’s brain. He was appealing to Puttermesser to diaper him. Each item in Marmel’s memo would take hours and hours to answer! Except for the window poles. Puttermesser could explain about the window poles in half a second.

  “Stand by,” she said to the bony acolyte. And to Xanthippe: “Take a letter!”

  Mr. Adam Marmel

  First Bursary Officer

  Bureau of Summary Sessions

  Department of Receipts and Disbursements

  Municipal Building

  Dear Mr. Marmel:

  Window poles are swiped by the hottest and sweatiest secretaries. The ones located directly above the furnace room, for instance. Though lately the ones who jog at lunchtime are just as likely to pinch poles. When they get them they hide them. Check out the second-floor ladies’ room.

  The fresh air of candor is always needed whenever the oxygen of honest admission has been withdrawn. Precisely WHY [“Make that all capitals,” Puttermesser said, dictating] have I been relieved of my position? Precisely WHY have you stepped into my job? Let us have some fresh air!

  Yours sincerely,

  R. Puttermesser, Esq.

  The bony acolyte snatched the sheet directly from the golem’s typewriter. “There’s a lot more he wants answers to. You’ve left out practically everything.”

  “Window poles are everything,” Puttermesser said. “The fresh air of candor is all.” She observed—it was a small shock—that the golem’s style had infected her.

  The bony acolyte warned, “Fresh is right. You better answer the rest of what he wants answered.”

  “Go home,” Puttermesser told the golem. “Home!”

  During dinner in the little kitchen Puttermesser was nearly as silent as the golem. Injustice rankled. She paid no attention to the golem’s scribblings. The nerve! The nerve! To throw her out and then come and pick her brain! “No more Swedish soufflé,” she growled. “Cook something else for a change. And I’m getting tired of seeing you in my old sweater. I’ll give you money, tomorrow go buy yourself some decent clothes.”

  “Tomorrow,” the golem wrote, “I will again serve you at your place of employment.”

  But in the morning Puttermesser was lackadaisical; ambition had trickled away. What, after so much indignity, was there to be ambitious for? For the first time in a decade she came to the office late. “What’s the special project, Ruth?” Cracow wanted to know right away. “The kid was burning up the typewriter yesterday. What is she anyhow, an illegal alien? She don’t look like your ordinary person. Yemenite Israeli type? What is this, already she don’t show up, it’s only the second day on the job? The phone calls you missed! Memos piled up! That gal from Personnel back and forth two, three times! They’re after you today, Ruth! The higher-ups! What’s the special project, hah? And the kid leaves you high and dry!”

  “She’ll turn up.” Puttermesser had given the golem a hundred and twenty dollars and sent her to Alexander’s. “No taxis or else,” Puttermesser said; but she knew the golem would head downtown to Delancey Street. The thronged Caribbean faces and tongues of the Lower East Side drew her; Xanthippe, a kind of foreigner herself, as even Cracow could see, was attracted to immigrant populations. Their taste and adorations were hers. She returned with red and purple blouses, narrow skirts and flared pants of parrot-green and cantaloupe-orange, multicolored high-heeled plastic shoes, a sunflower-yellow plastic shoulder bag with six double sets of zippers, a pocket mirror, and a transparent plastic comb in its own peach tattersall plastic case.

  “Hispanic absolutely,” Cracow confirmed—Cracow the bigot—watching Xanthippe lay open boxes and bags.

  But Puttermesser was occupied with a trio of memos. They appeared to originate with Marmel but were expressed through Polly, the Atropos of Personnel, she who had put aside her shears for the flurry of a thousand Forms, she who brooded like Shiva the Destroyer on a world of the lopped.

  Memo One:

  You are reported as having refused to respond to requests for information relating to Bureau business. You now are subject to conduct inquiry. Please obtain and fill out Form 10V, Q17, with particular reference to Paragraph L, and leave it immediately with Polly in Personnel.

  Memo Two:

  In consideration of your seniority, Commissioner Alvin Turtelman, having relieved you of Level Eleven status in the Bureau of Summary Sessions, Department of Receipts and Disbursements, due to insufficient control of bursary materials, weak administrative supervision as well as output insufficiency, has retained you at Level Four. However, your work shows continued decline. Lateness reported as of A.M. today. Fill out Below-Level-Eight Lateness Form I4TG. (Submit Form to Polly in Personnel.)

  Memo Three:

  As a result of a determination taken by Commissioner Alvin Turtelman in conjunction and in consultation with First Bursary Officer Adam Marmel, your Level Four appointment in the Department of Receipts and Disbursements is herewith terminated. Please submit Below-Level-Six Severance Form A97, Section 6, with particular reference to Paragraph 14b, to Polly in Personnel.

  Severed! Sacked! Dismissed! Let go! Fired! And all in the space of three hours! “Output insufficiency,” a lie! “Decline,” a fiction! “Conduct inquiry”—like some insignificant clerk or window-pole thief! Late once in ten years and Cracow, litigious would-be lover, snitches to Polly, the Atropos, the Shiva, of Personnel! Who else but Cracow? Lies. Fabrications. Accusations. Marmel the hollow accuser. Absence of due process!

  The Honorable Malachy Mavett

  Mayor, City of New York

  City Hall

  Dear Mayor Mavett:

  Where is your pride, to appoint such men? Men who accuse without foundation? An accuser who seizes the job of the accused? Suspect! Turtelman wanted me out in order to get Marmel in! I stand for Intellect and Knowledge, they stand for Politics and Loyal Cunning. Hart Crane, poet of New York, his harp the Brooklyn Bridge, does that harp mean nothing to you? Is Walt Whitman dead in your kidneys? Walt Whitman who cried out “numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,” who embraced “a million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality . . .” Oh, Mayor Mavett, it is Injustice you embrace! You have given power to men for whom Walt Whitman is dead in their kidneys! This city of masts and spires opens its breast for Walt Whitman, and you feed it with a Turtelman and a Marmel! Ruth Puttermesser is despised, demoted, thrown away at last! Destroyed. Without work. Doer of
nought, maker of nothing.

  This letter remained locked inside Puttermesser’s head. Cracow was trying hard not to look her way. He had already read Marmel’s memos manifested through Polly the Destroyer; he had surely read them. He stood behind the golem’s chair, attentive to her fingers galloping over the typewriter keys— including the newly lengthened one; how glad Puttermesser was that she had fixed it! “Hey Ruth, take a gander at this stuff. What’s this kid doing? That’s some so-called special project for Turtelman.”

  “The special project for Turtelman,” Puttermesser said coldly, “is my vanquishment. My vanishing. My send-off and diminishment. So long, Leon. May you win your case against the mediocre universality of the human imagination.”

  “You been canned?”

  “You know that.”

  “Well, when Polly walks in you figure what’s up. You figure who’s out.”

  “Beware of Schadenfreude, Leon. You could be next.”

  “Not me. I don’t look for trouble. You look for trouble. I knew right away this whole setup with the kid was phony. She’s typing up a craziness—whatever it is, Bureau business it isn’t. You let in the crazies, you get what you expect.”

  At that moment—as Cracow’s moist smile with its brown teeth turned and turned inside Cracow’s dark mouth—a clarification came upon Puttermesser: no: a clarity. She was shut of a mystery. She understood; she saw.

  “Home!” Puttermesser ordered the golem. Xanthippe gathered up her clothes and shoved the typewritten sheets into one of the blouse bags.

  V. WHY THE GOLEM WAS CREATED; PUTTERMESSER’S PURPOSE

  THAT NIGHT THE GOLEM cooked spaghetti. She worked barefoot. The fragrance of hot buttered tomato sauce and peppers rushed over a mound of shining porcelain strands. “What are you doing?” Puttermesser demanded; she saw the golem heaping up a second great batch. “Why are you so hungry?”

  The golem looked a little larger today than she had yesterday. Then Puttermesser remembered that it was in the nature of a golem to grow and grow. The golem’s appetite was nevertheless worrisome—how long would it take for Xanthippe to grow out of over one hundred dollars’ worth of clothes? Could only a Rothschild afford a golem? And what would the rate of growth be? Would the golem eventually have to be kept outdoors, so as not to crash through the ceiling? Was the golem of Prague finally reversed into lifelessness on account of its excessive size, or because the civic reforms it was created for had been accomplished?