And now his day was done. And it was quiet. The parade had ended, and he was alone.
It occurred to him that, in the office, on those days when he was alone, when he did his correspondence himself, he would always tear, from the sheet, the exact number of stamps he required.
Alone, on a Sunday, or on a Saturday afternoon, having completed his letters, having addressed them and sealed the envelopes, he would turn to the drawer and remove the buff folder which held the sheets of stamps. He would tear a crenellated block of stamps from the sheet—up and across, up and across—and when he turned his attention to paste them on the mail, whether he’d done five or ten or forty letters, he would find he had torn off that exact number of stamps.
It pleased him. And then he would denigrate both his achievement and his pleasure, thinking, “This is not, as I would enjoy it, a sign of ‘election,’ no; but merely the logical expression of a skill practiced so many times as to’ve become automatic.
“It would be remarkable,” he thought, “if, on the other hand, I were not able, unconsciously, to approximate the number of stamps.
“Yes, yes. Yes, but,” a small voice said, “you’ve not approximated it. You have hit it exactly. As you do each time you perform the task.” It was this thought that nagged him, each time he approached the moment in the day when he would take out the buff folder.
“I know I can do it,” he thought, “if and as long as I am ‘unconscious’ of it. And I know I can do it even conscious of the process; but I do not know if, conscious of the process and conscious of my pleasure—in that way which only can be vanity, which only can be idolatry (for have I not said that I do not ‘approximate’ but exactly fulfill the correct number? do I not discount my ability as quite normal and, at the same time, reserve the right to feel it … to feel it …” Here a small descant in his mind added the words with which he was loath to comfort himself: “a sign of election”…) “I do not know if in that case I can do it.”
Sometimes he would will the number of stamps not to correspond with the number of envelopes. Infrequently this would occur.
Then again, he would berate himself for the pleasure he felt.
“As if,” he thought, “I now reward myself for contriving not merely achievement but randomness.”
Finally, the meaning of the ceremony, he thought, was this: It came at the end of a perfect time.
After a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday alone, or virtually alone, inside his office, in the factory—able to catch up on the elusive ends of the business, able to put his house in order. Somewhat at his leisure. Like a chef, he thought, perhaps: after the banquet. Ordering his kitchen.
He cherished his time alone in the office. He felt it was a reward, a Sabbath, even though he was at work.
He felt a sort of pleasant omnipotence in doing his own correspondence. In it he found leisure to contemplate and power to express.
In it he stemmed the torrent of business and diverted it and made it run to a purpose and to his pace. And it all ran though him.
And if he chose to rest, to look out of his window, to smoke a cigar, to lie down on the couch and smoke a cigar into the heat, his coat on a hanger in the press …
If he rested the back of his shoes, above the heels, on the arm of the couch, his head low, the ashtray next to him, close by his left hand, down on the rug, his mind drifting to thoughts of that girl, of any girl, of girls like those in the mural in the club: high breasts, small boyish hips, no waist which could not be encompassed by his hands … And once he woke with a start, in a fantasy of fire, his back wet with the sweat of a too-deep summer nap.
Well, then, the thing for that, as he well knew, the universal tonic, was iced coffee. And thank God for someone to run for it.
What could be better than iced coffee, with just the merest drop of cream? And how he pitied those “unweaned,” as he thought of it, who took it one part coffee to two parts milk.
Iced coffee. Just a drop of cream. No sugar, thank you, to exacerbate the heat of the day; a wet towel to wipe his neck, and then a dry one. The handkerchief from the side pocket folded in under the shirt collar.
Then the coffee would come, and then he would have a cigarette, back at his desk, his correspondence almost done.
It was a reward to order it into the stacks, the one of envelopes, the other of letters, then to reduce the two to one.
One stack of correspondence, waiting for the stamps.
And then the coda of the stamps. For the brief, anxious, but enjoyable byplay was just a leave-taking, was it not? Yes, he thought, it was. After which he would have to go home.