I returned to my desk
and stared at the documents that had piled a foot high in the metal ‘to do’
tray. Most weeks I quickly dispatched all I had to review and
evaluate. But over the past few days I had trouble concentrating on work;
my attention would continually drift away from the tasks in front of me, back
to Nabokov’s tale. My young colleagues were gripped by suspense as they
waited for Nabokov’s next chapter. I already knew the tale well, having
witnessed its original unfolding. There was nothing in it to surprise me
and the initial shock of all that happened had worn off years ago. I
still, however, remained appalled by Bell’s behavior and wondered what shapes
and images the memory of his actions fabricated in his mind. Had time enabled
him to see the turpitude of his conduct? Had his conscience finally
overcome his instinct for self-preservation or did he still see himself as the
victim of persecution? I remembered how he ranted violently as he spewed
obscenities at the company’s executives when they confronted him with physical
evidence of his crimes. At one point, his screams could be heard in the
outer offices as he accused them of plotting to destroy him because he had
grown too popular among the clients and staff. As that scene replayed
itself, I stared at those documents and knew that the basic moral elements had
never entered his mind; he possessed an insatiable ego, which viewed everything
in terms of how it affected him. The consequences of his actions, the
effect they had upon others never occurred to him. He and he alone was
the measure of anything and everything. As a result, nothing he did could
be forbidden, taboo, or immoral. His desire superseded all moral
boundaries; it ruled him as absolute sovereign and in his judgment granted him
canonical authority and justification for whatever he did. What he wanted
he had a right to have; what he said was the final word on a subject.
Those who disagreed with him or even suggested that his opinion or behavior
might be wrong were dismissed as ignorant. When anyone refused to submit
to his view, he wasted no time smearing that person with the vilest rumors he
could imagine.
I looked again at the
pile awaiting my attention and realized I had to shake off the memories that
kept invading my thoughts. I walked over
to the coffee pot, which someone had just brewed, poured myself a large mug,
and returned to my desk eager to drink the black liquid and determined to
devour that pile before the day ended. I
set to work and didn’t raise my eyes until one document remained in the
tray. I picked it up, stood to stretch
and saw that all my colleagues had departed.
To my astonishment it was already eight o’clock. I let the papers slip back into the tray and
walked out of the office. I was especially
satisfied with the work I had completed, since it was nothing more than the
usual useless data analysis that management required us to do.
When I entered the
corridor, I encountered two night crew cleaners, leaning on their brooms,
talking and laughing. As I passed, I
heard one of them mimicking their supervisor.
Apparently, he demanded too much of his workers when he expected them to
diligently clean the areas assigned to them.
Whenever he chided them about their slackness, they promised to be more
thorough and while he watched them, worked furiously. Once he left they lapsed into the languid
routines they solemnly observed.
Their laughter
followed me to the exit and ceased when the door clicked shut behind me. In the warm night air crickets chirped
rhythmically; I knew that sound foretold that fall would soon silence
them. Once in my car, I turned my
thoughts to my three young lunch colleagues.
I had enjoyed watching them work tirelessly at their jobs and
remembered that same cheerful energy I once had. Back then, the senior colleagues seemed much
older than I thought I appeared to be. I tried to imagine how I appeared to my lunch
companions, but I could form only vague impressions of what they might see. By the time I arrived home, night had
expelled the day and darkness covered both the outside and inside of my
home. I entered the house, and turned on
the lights in the front parlor, the kitchen and the den. Too late to prepare and cook dinner, I made
toast and tea and read Trollope’s Barchester
Towers. I read for two hours, and
felt revived after the tedium I had suffered all afternoon.
The next morning, I drove to work early and expected
the parking lot to be empty, but one car was already there. It was a black BMW and Jonathan Bell sat
behind the steering wheel. I often went
to the office earlier than my colleagues and I had never seen Bell at our
building that early. In fact, Bell
usually appeared twenty minutes late and strolled casually through the main entrance. Ever since he failed to get a promotion he
believed he had deserved, he relentlessly found ways to show his contempt for
the company’s management. There was no
supervisor he did not passionately hate and he enjoyed denouncing them all as
stupid and incompetent. They feared him and did anything to appease
him whenever they had dealings with him.
His eyes seemed fixed on an invisible object
somewhere in front of his car and I was able to pass by him unnoticed. It was just as well; I preferred to avoid
talking to anybody in the early mornings, and knew that if he initiated a
conversation I would be detained for a very long time. I made it to my desk without seeing another
person, and worked on the remaining document from the night before. After, I drew up plans for the projects I
would be working on over the next two weeks. In my youth, I had enjoyed preparing ahead any
assignment I had. I would formulate the
methods I would use and even imagine each step the project would take. Nabokov would needle me about my “schemes,”
as she called them. “Still writing those
plans?” She would laugh and tell me to
“Give up that Frivolity!” I sometimes
agreed with her and wanted to break from the habit, but its grip on me was too
strong and like the alcoholic whose dependence on drink overpowers every
intervention, I continued to plan beyond appeals to reason.
At ten o’clock, Nabokov appeared at my office door
and signaled for me to come immediately to her side. “What do you need?” I asked when I reached her.
“You must come to the conference room and see this.” Her urgent tone stirred my curiosity and I went with her quickly down the corridor to the room she’d mentioned. Once inside, she led the way to the windows, which looked out on the front drive of the building. Outside there were two police officers conveying Jonathan Bell, who was shackled in handcuffs, toward a waiting police car. Startled by the sight, I gasped, “What has happened?”
“I don’t know.
Nancy (our red-headed colleague) saw the cops leading him through the
halls and ran to tell me about it. I can
only guess what legal entanglement he’s gotten himself into. It’s surprising, but hardly shocking.” I continue to watch the police cars. The officers got in and drove out of the
parking lot. I followed their progress until the road curved with the landscape
and they disappeared into the tree lined street leading Bell to his
incarceration.
Everyone was stunned by Bell’s arrest and keen to
hear what had precipitated it. Nothing
like it had ever happened at the company before. Sure, there had been incidents the management
had dealt with. A young male
employee, for example, had been mysteriously “let go” one day, never to be seen or heard from
again. It was said that he had an
uncontainable penchant for the underage girls who interned regularly at our offices, and when
the parents of one such girl threatened to call the police because he wouldn’t
leave her alone, the management thought it best to take quick action. Other employees had been suspected of similar
inclinations and some even married young women who, as teenagers, had been
their interns. Stories circulated about
these men and often they would be seen benevolently guiding their young charges,
a hand resting on the young girl’s shoulder or touching her wrist. Once, a young man who worked with Joe Schmitt
in Algorithms and Measurements was overhead ardently imploring an intern not to
leave him for another department. It was
unclear whether she had altered her career goals or found fault with the way he
mentored her. Either way, she severed
the association and quit her internship abruptly one Friday in the spring of
that year. As far as the management was
concerned, if they heard nothing, they saw nothing; it was a policy that reflected
the expedience of their ethics.
As usual, I went to eat lunch with our little story “club.” Of course, we talked about the morning’s
event and spent almost the entire lunch conjecturing about what he had done to bring
the law down upon him. Nabokov alluded
to an act of vandalism Bell committed during his connection with Don Driscoll,
suggesting that maybe he had committed some similar crime. But when Nancy asked what Bell had done back
then, Nabokov waved her off and said something vague about property damage. None of us knew about Bell’s life outside of
work, so we had no information to direct our guesswork. Realizing we were getting nowhere, Nabokov suggested
we bring Finn into our lunch group; if anyone knew about Bell, it would surely
be Finn. We congratulated her for this flawless
idea, but I could tell the three young colleagues were also disappointed that
our lunch had slipped away without another segment of the Bell and Driscoll
tale. Nabokov assured them that she
would finish that story and added that now we had two compelling narratives
unfolding simultaneously. They laughed
and Erica, the young, quiet woman with no opinions, said she never thought going
to work could be so interesting. “Interesting,
but so strange too,” Nancy replied. I was
glad to finally hear Erica speak; I had begun to think she might be mute.
Nabokov asked me to call Finn that night and invite
him to our lunch. She knew he would not
hesitate now that Bell was no longer in the building. When I left the building Bell’s car was atop a
flatbed tow-truck, which was driven by a heavily tattooed woman wearing a
railroad engineer’s cap. She winked at
me when our eyes met and smiled a little too invitingly. I
fumbled for my keys as quickly as I could, and ducked into my car. Later that evening, I called Finn and left
him a voicemail to ring me back, which he did shortly after midnight. “Hey Jim!
I just got your message.
Obviously, it’s about Bell.”
“Yes. We’re
all in the dark about why he was arrested.
And Nabokov asked me to call you for two reasons. Now that he’s gone, how about joining us for
lunch; and maybe you can shed light on what he did.”
“I would love to eat with you guys. And I can shed some light. I won’t tell you everything right now,
since it’s too late. What I will say is what I heard from a friend of mine who works in the precinct where Bell
was taken. Two nights ago, Bell killed his
elderly mother. Apparently, he strangled
her in her pajamas sometime in the middle of the night.” I was speechless
for several moments, and then told him I’d see him tomorrow at lunch. That night I tossed and turned and went
without sleep. When the sun peered
through my bedroom blinds at dawn, I got up, showered and fixed myself
coffee. I knew I would accomplish nothing at the office that day, so I lingered an extra hour at home trying to chase from my mind the
images Finn had put there the night before.
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