Mr. X was one of those inscrutable people who do not exist.
But the reason Mr. X did not exist was as far from inscrutable as far can be. Had Mr. X (like certain martyrs of whom you and I have read) vigorously refused to exist, there might have been an element of inscrutability involved in his not existing (and then again, there might not). If, on the other hand, Mr. X, like Our Very Best People, had tacitly agreed to not exist, inscrutability would have jumped into a parenthesis and risen to the nth power of itself before anyone could murmur Q.E.D. Unfortunately, Mr. X was neither best nor a martyr. He was merely inscrutable. But to make matters worse, this inscrutable man did not exist for the very far from inscrutable, the, in fact, merely obvious, reason that he was always much too busy not existing to exist even a little. He was merely a man, in the first place. In the second place, he was merely the kind of man of whom the world will remember that one warm, still day in February a cold March wind was blowing as Mr. X did not walk down the street.
Having introduced my reader to Mr. X, I am now in a position to turn the tables by introducing Mr. X to my reader; which means nothing more nor less than introducing Mrs. X—and that suggests the good old proverb “it never rains but it pours,” because Mrs. X was the sort of woman who needs no sort of introduction.
The Xs lived happily ever after in more than one and less than two rooms, accurately situated on the nonexistent or thirteenth floor of a model Workers’ Home just outside Mekano City (if you know where that is). But they did not live alone or with each other or even by themselves. Quite the contrary. They lived with Flora and Fauna, their children; Flora being twins.
And the Workers’ Home being a model Workers’ Home, the view from the Xs’ front window was always different. Sometimes it consisted of Mr. X’s underwear and it sometimes consisted of Mrs. X’s underwear and it consisted sometimes of the children’s underwear (and sometimes of Mr. and Mrs. X’s and the children’s and sometimes of Mr. and Mrs. X’s and sometimes of Mr. X’s and the children’s and sometimes of the children’s and Mrs. X’s) but never, never, for any reason, under any circumstances, did it consist of nobody’s. When Mr. X arose, of a twilight, he opened his eyes on underwear and when Mr. X retired, of a twilight, he shut his eyes on underwear. As Miss Gertrude Stein would say, there was somehow no escape from underwear. He had tried everything, but without success. So had Mrs. X. Being a woman, she had done more than try everything without success. She had put a flowering geranium on the windowsill; which made the underwear look a little more like underwear than it had previously looked like underwear.
Every morning, dark and early, when the last robberies were occurring among the First Families, Mr. X cursed the day he was born, swallowed a package of Lifesavers, bit Mrs. X, kicked Fauna, knocked down the twins and (breathing deeply) walked five miles to town to have his breath examined by the First Assistant Superintendent of Breaths in the great Wheel Mines at Mekano.
Like the Workers’ Home, the Wheel Mines were model. And now I suppose you will ask me what model Wheel Mines are like. Well, they are like nothing. In the first place, they are model. That means, not underwear, as in the case of Mr. X’s habitat, but shafts and efficiency and steam and elevators and silence and electricity and machines and discipline and (last but not least) people. In the second place, all the wheels of all the machines of model Wheel Mines mine nothing but wheels. That means bigger steam and busier electricity, and better discipline and efficiency, and hundreds of silences, and thousands of elevators, and hundreds of thousands of shafts, and thousands of thousands of machines all mining wheels, and millions of billions of people all mining wheels, and (last but not least) trillions of quadrillions of septillions of nonillions of absolutely nothing but wheels.
If you can imagine wheels, and if you can imagine but, and if you can imagine nothing, then you certainly ought to be able to stand on your head and imagine nothing but wheels; and if you can do that, you can get some idea of what model Wheel Mines are like. In my opinion, they are like a novel by Mr. Dos Passos, only different.
The Mekano branch of the great Wheel Mines, in common with one billion, two hundred and thirty-four million, five hundred and sixty-seven thousand, eight hundred and ninety (and Heaven knows how many other) branches, was owned and operated by Drof, the greatest industrial genius of the twentieth century; and indirectly, of course, the richest man on earth. Drof, as you might expect, had started in a small town as a poor baby in a poor baby carriage with a poor mother and a poor father. The poor father had died, leaving the poor baby in the poor baby carriage with the poor mother, who was forced to sell the poor baby carriage. It was nothing more nor less than this terrible catastrophe that inspired poor baby Drof with the extraordinary notion which I am on the verge of attempting to expound.
Deprived of its poor baby carriage, this poor baby realized, in its tiny way, that what makes the world go round is wheels. Consequently, no sooner could it walk than (with characteristic Yankee ingenuity) it apprenticed itself to an old wheelwright, who taught it the secrets of wheels from Z to A and vice versa or, in other words, backwards and forwards. Having thus learned whatever there is to learn about wheels, the boy Drof opened a tiny model Wheel Mine of his own and was soon mining all the wheels that were used in the neighbourhood. A little later, at the the tender age of eleven, Master Drof had paid off all his poor father’s debts, had established his poor mother in a model Renaissance mansion, with running water, a pianola and everything, and was negotiating with a prominent junk man the purchase of the original and only poor Drof baby carriage, for which the junk man (who was a Hebrew) wanted ten dollars.
At twenty-two, Drof had extended his business to include all the wheels used in the U.S.A.; which enabled him to sell the Renaissance mansion and buy a model Moorish palace with real fountains, in the strictly geometrical center whereof he caused to be erected a supremely magnificent tomb of imported Parian marble for his model mother, who immediately died. Meanwhile things were looking up. At thirty-three, this invincible man was mining all the wheels used all over the world with the sole exception of Greenland, and had purchased (in such parts of Europe, Asia and Africa as were known to be unthinkably rich in vitamins) three hundred thousand two-hundred-acre farms for the amusement of his rapidly disintegrating employees; most of whom enjoyed that particularly insidious form of epilepsy which, being characterized by violent delusions of grandeur coupled with an insatiable spinning of the vasculomotor centers, is affectionately known as “Drof’s disease.”
Of course, what made Drof a really great man was, not that he mined wheels from Zanzibar to Arizona, nor yet that he learned wheels from A to Z. Between you and me and the fencepost, it was the fact that he loved wheels. For since he loved wheels, Drof also loved the things that mined wheels; he loved machines. And since he loved machines, Drof also loved the things that run machines—that is to say (or as Dr. Frank Crane would remark) he loved people. And now I am going to tell you something that will really astonish you. I am going to tell you that this contemporary Colossus of Rhodes, this nowadays Napoleon of industry, this tireless and momentous and many-sided personality, was at heart just a plain, honest, simple, normal, straightforward, natural, unaffected person with only one hobby: the collecting of idées fixes. This sounds incredible and I don’t want you to believe it if you don’t want to; because all I want you to believe is that at the time our story opens the Drof model collection of imported and domestic idées fixes (comprising scientifically tabulated specimens of practically every known and unknown variety of idée fixe extant or obsolete) was already without a parallel in the whole course of human history. Needless to add, Drof’s incomparable and model collection functioned solely for the benefit of Drof’s innumerable and loving employees; all of whom familiarly called him “Papa Drof” and, in return, were forbidden to drink, flirt, play cards for money or on Sunday, marry foolishly, read light fiction, sing, lie, expectorate, or swear. Which brings us back to the inscrutable Mr. X.
Arriving, after his five-mile stroll, at the grand portcullis of the Mekano branch of the Drof Wheel Mines, Mr. X surrendered himself unconditionally to the Second Assistant Superintendent of Breaths, who tested Mr. X’s breath for traces of alcohol by the latest and most approved scientific methods, sparing neither the mah jong nor the litmus paper. Having failed to find any alcohol, the Second Assistant Superintendent of Breaths stamped OK in red ink (with the date) on Mr. X’s left knee-cap and called for silence—whereupon the somewhat exhausted Mr. X was immediately handcuffed to a murderer, marched down a corridor by several policemen and locked in a pitchdark room with his vis-à-vis and the admonition to be “more careful next time.” Ten minutes passed. A trapdoor in the ceiling then opened to admit the Third Superintendent of Minds; who, leaping to the floor, and paying no attention whatever to the murderer, thoroughly vacuum cleaned Mr. X in the hope of finding telegrams from Moscow. But as no telegrams were forthcoming, the Third Assistant Superintendent of Minds OK’d Mr. X’s right elbow in green ink (with the date) and called for silence—whereupon guards rushed in, unlocked the handcuffs, beat the murderer into insensibility and escorted Mr. X upside-down as far as a vast chapel, presided over by the Fourth Asssistant Superintendent of Souls. Here Mr. X was righted and immediately placed among such of his innumerable fellow workers as had been lucky enough to get their OKs. The entire group then sang Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, Anabaptist, Mormon, Quaker, Lutheran, Holy Roller, Christian Scientist, Dutch Reform and Unitarian (but no Hebrew) hymns without interruption for twenty minutes, to the accompaniment of an electrically controlled calliope (the Largest in the World); after which all were forcibly seated by a squad of plainclothes men. The radio was then turned on with great ceremony and silence reigned for an hour, while everybody enjoyed a Daily Good Will Lecture entitled, “We Are All Just One Big Family,” by Papa Drof, broadcasting in robin’s-egg-blue pyjamas from his suite at the Hotel Ritz-Carlton, New York City.
But precisely as the mammoth automatic earth-inducted clock over the altar indicated 4:55 A.M., Papa Drof’s voice ceased. Mr. X, along with his comrades, silently stood up, silently about-faced and silently marched to the door of the chapel; where he silently received in his open left hand a lollypop and on the strictly geometrical center of his silent forehead the OK of the Fourth Assistant Superintendent of Souls, in ultraviolet ink (with the date). These formalities accomplished, Mr. X silently entered elevator number ZA-AZ and (meditatively sucking his lollypop) dropped seventy stories in twelve seconds. He then silently quitted the elevator, silently checked his silent lollypop at the silent Lollypop Desk, silently stepped on an escalator, silently floated to machine number 0987654321, silently stepped off the escalator and silently began to silently mine silent wheels.
With which split infinitive, we will leave him.
From The Bookman, September 1927.