Aslan Norval

7.

One month later, they founded the company under the name Atlantic-Pacific Transit Corporation, or APTC for short. President: Aslan Norval. Vice president: Grayson Brady, an esteemed New York banker. Holved was part of the board. His name and that of the banker, Mr. Brady, assured the public that this was a serious company.

To his great surprise, Beckford had been named general manager upon Aslan’s recommendation. Three months ago, he had been nobody. Not even a student at the Technical Institute. He had been living off his veteran’s pension, which barely kept him alive and had been about to run out. And still he did not know what Aslan really wanted from him, and for what purpose she wanted to use him. He would have understood the situation if she had made him her lover. But it seemed an affair was further from her mind than ever.

In the world of finance, everyone knew that Aslan was an incredibly rich woman. In a country in which women outright owned or controlled through shares fifty-six percent of the entire national wealth and where more than one hundred women were bank presidents, it was hardly noteworthy that a woman, especially one as rich as Aslan, was the president of a company that had billions of dollars in capital.

Aslan had become a celebrity when she inherited twenty-eight million dollars at the age of eleven. Her name made the front page again a few years later when she inherited an additional nine million dollars. Up until the day she met Holved, she had received six inheritances and none of them had been contested. In the coming years, she could hope for further inheritances, since she belonged to one of the oldest and richest families in the country.

Only a few close friends knew that she had married Holved, since she had kept her maiden name, which was an advantage in the business world. Everyone knew that her unimaginable wealth was administered by the strongest and most reputable bank in America. It was only natural for venture capitalists to be interested in what her new company intended to do. It was certainly going to be something big. No wonder, then, that the shares of the APTC sold like hotcakes.

The company rented an entire floor in an office building in lower Manhattan. Beckford remained in his offices as president of his own company, where he was to await orders from above. And it was in Beckford’s office where Aslan was now studying a map of the Panama Canal, which she had found spread out on the table, likely because Beckford had been studying it for lack of anything better to do.

“You know, ma’am,” he said, standing at the table and pointing to the map, “I found out something very interesting today.”

“And what is that?”

“Although the Panama Canal is a hundred meters wide, wide enough to allow two or even three ships to pass simultaneously, large passenger ships like the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary cannot use the canal.”

“And why not?”

“Because of the locks. When they built the canal, they apparently did not think that there might be ships like the Queen Elizabeth, with a length of three hundred forty-four meters and a width of thirty-seven meters. The locks of the Panama Canal only have a length of three hundred thirty meters and a width of thirty-four meters. There are even oil tankers that are forty-two meters wide.”

“That’s news to me,” said Aslan, “but it proves that we have to build our canal so that two boats like the Queen Elizabeth can pass each other without scratching their paint.”

“It will be expensive, ma’am.”

“Forget the costs! We will leave the calculation of the costs to our accountants. We will begin the work as soon as we have the permit. Once we have started, none of the shareholders will want to lose money. Therefore, they will get the money necessary to continue the project one way or another.”

She glanced at another map. “The canal seems to cross lakes here.”

“That’s right,” affirmed Beckford, “those are lakes indeed.”

“Lakes can definitely make the construction of a canal easier and cheaper, don’t you think?”

“I’m not so sure about that. A lake or a swamp might pose more problems for the engineers than dry land or mountains.”

Aslan thoughtfully rolled up the maps. For a while she said nothing. Then she said: “We need data. Massive amounts of exact and convincing data. Numbers. Numbers that have anything to do at all with our canal. Numbers whose correctness can be verified, and that you are able to cite quickly and convincingly. Get going, Mr. Beckford, study as hard as you can. Accurate numbers! Memorize them. Recite a row of numbers as if you were being held responsible for all the sins of the world.”

“Ma’am, I am sorry, but I am not an actor,” interrupted Beckford.

“If you aren’t one yet, then try to become one. Get going, memorize as many numbers as you can.”

Aslan took her gloves, and then her purse, and left the office through the door that led directly into the hallway. Since she had come in that way, Amy could not know that Aslan had even visited the office. Amy probably did not even know whether Beckford was in his office. As long as he did not call her, politeness stopped her from bothering him in any way. Since there was still no business, she was bored to death during business hours.

After Aslan’s departure, Beckford did not know what to do with himself. While Aslan’s elegant perfume was still wafting around the room like an ephemeral cloud, he did not feel like memorizing numbers to recite at opportune moments, like a circus clown. The memorizing could wait until it was urgent, especially since if he started now, by then he would have forgotten the numbers, which did not interest him at all. He would then be forced to start all over with cramming or whatever Aslan called it.

He pulled out a hand mirror to brush his hair.

Then he studied his face, turning it from left to right. Then he lifted and lowered his nose. When that did not satisfy him, he pulled out a smaller mirror and held it at an angle toward the bigger one. He studied his profile intently.

He looked at his watch and, admiring himself in the mirror one last time, he said to himself: “Four thirty. What should I do?”

He pulled himself together and entered the front office where Amy was engrossed in her True Confessions.

Amy didn’t notice that Beckford had entered the office. At that moment, she was busy thinking about the rather delicate situation of a very young, very pretty, very innocent and inexperienced salesgirl who’d found herself in a large warehouse. This pitiful victim of brutal capitalist greed had received an ominous order to help the company’s interior decorator create a lovely, yet sexy bedroom for newlyweds in the display room. It was eleven at night and the salesgirl was alone with the brawny decorator in the spooky warehouse.

Beckford cleared his throat fairly loudly. With a start, Amy apologized while trying to slide the magazine under the table. She managed to do so without Beckford noticing, at least so she thought. She blushed terribly, on the one hand because of what she was just about to read: the incorrigible decorator was going to consummate the bridal bed with the pretty salesgirl. On the other hand, she blushed because it was now the sixth time that her boss had caught her reading erotica instead of sitting up straight behind her desk, waiting for his beck and call.

“Outrageous! You’re reading immoral love stories during the hours I pay you, and I pay you very well, I might add. Amy, I should really tan your hide, don’t you think?”

“If you seriously believe I deserve that, Mr. Beckford, then please be my guest.”

Her willingness changed the course of Beckford’s intentions. He had meant to say that since there was nothing in particular to do, she should go home and that she was to bring him all newspapers she could get ahold of the next day. From Aslan he had gathered that the first propaganda campaign of the new company would probably launch in the next few hours.

“How do you like it here?” he asked unexpectedly.

“I like it very much. Thank you.”

“At the moment, there is not much to do, as you might have noticed.”

“That’s to be expected with a newly founded company, Mr. Beckford. I’m sure your company will be well on its way shortly.”

Beckford leaned against the window, his eyes on Amy. She’s really cute when I look at her carefully, he said to himself. Soft curves. I would love to know how old she is. I can find out from her insurance card. Well, it’s not like I care. While filing his nails, he said out loud, ostensibly without thinking: “It won’t be long, I can tell you that, before you’ll have so much work that you won’t be able to do it all yourself.”

“I am used to hard work, Mr. Beckford. The more intense it is, the more I love it. I don’t mind overtime either. Not at all. Even if I have to work till eleven or midnight.”

“That will probably only happen rarely, Amy. As soon as business picks up, you’ll get all the help you need, especially with the menial work that a girl with little experience can do just as well. I need you here for the really important job of my private secretary, whom I can trust unconditionally with all business and personal affairs.”

“You can trust me absolutely, Mr. Beckford. I’ll consider it an honor to be allowed to serve as your preferred private secretary.”

Beckford walked a few steps back and forth but kept his distance from her.

“Now, I remember, I have to send an important letter,” he said, stopping in the middle of the room. At once, Amy had her shorthand pad in hand.

“It can wait till tomorrow,” he said, shrugging.

Suddenly remembering something, she got up from her chair a little, took a deep breath.

“Oh, Mr. Beckford, I almost forgot. I would like to thank you so much for the raise. You know, Mr. Beckford, money just runs through one’s fingers these days.”

“Who told you about the raise?” he asked, although he knew that the message could have come from one person only. “I had planned to tell you myself on Saturday afternoon to make your weekend a happy one.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, covering her mouth with a girlish gesture of horror. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything. But Miss Norval called an hour ago and told me that the real work starts next week, and that you’re granting me a raise for that reason.”

“Well, as I said, I had planned to surprise you with this news myself. However, I can see that Miss Norval had the same idea. The main thing is that you are happy here, Amy.”

“I am very happy here. I couldn’t have a better situation,” she said as she gently smoothed down her hair.

He walked back over to the window and, bored, he looked at the street for a few seconds.

Amy was cleaning the type slugs of the typewriter. It was brand-new, and nothing had ever been written on it. Beckford thought: Unless Amy has typed a dozen love letters on it. It made him think of his impression when he had met Amy there for the first time.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked, so suddenly that it took Amy’s breath away for a few seconds, since she thought she had misheard.

“Tonight?” she repeated, more to make sure she had heard right than to answer his question.

“Yes, tonight.”

“Oh—I—um—I have no plans in particular. Actually, I had planned to go to the movies. The only thing you can do on a weeknight when you have to work the next day.”

“So, the movies?”

“Yes, they are showing a new film, which seems to be very interesting. You know, juicy.”

“What’s it called?”

“Your Past—the Despair of Your Present. And the subtitle is: ‘Everything women and girls of marriageable age need to know to avoid such a fate.’ Sounds interesting, don’t you think, Mr. Beckford?”

“Sounds like real trash of the worst kind.”

“Well, in any case,” she said, looking for a lipstick in her purse, “in any case, it must be a very provocative film, don’t you think?”

“Do you need provocation, Amy?” he asked as if he were inquiring what she had eaten for breakfast that morning.

“I’m not sure whether I really need something provocative or not,” she answered coolly, holding the lipstick she had finally found and fishing in her purse for a small mirror with the other hand. “You know, sometimes I’m actually so aroused that I could commit the greatest nonsense.”

She doesn’t take this very seriously, Beckford thought as he watched her carefully color the full curves of her lips.

“And then there are times,” she continued, “when nothing at all can excite me.” Even the hottest film leaves me stone-cold and the wildest kisses on the screen bore me. And why do they bore me? Because they are so extremely dumb and silly and put on without any feelings at all, exactly like the director ordered, standing there with a stopwatch. Can you tell me how a girl could feel bone-dry one day and burning up inside the next?”

“Why are you asking me, Amy? I’ve never been a girl, and maybe not even a girl could answer this question in a satisfactory manner.”

“Of course you can’t, because a man has his profession, which occupies him so thoroughly that he has no time at all to consider any emotions.”

“But you also have a career, Amy.”

“But it doesn’t fulfill me. I just sit here and have nothing at all to do. All manner of thoughts occur to you in a situation like this.”

Suddenly she stopped talking, and an expression of shock crossed her face as she lowered the lipstick and mirror.

“Oh, I am so sorry that I let my guard down and did my makeup in front of you. It’s time for me to go home and I did it automatically. Please forgive me.”

Pure woman, Beckford thought. In any case, this is the woman I plan to get to know more intimately today.

Out loud he said: “Indeed, it is time for you to go home. And yet, you have only partially answered my question about your plans tonight.”

“Why partially?”

“You have not answered whether you are accepting my invitation?”

“Invitation? What invitation?” she asked, raising her eyebrows, picking her lipstick and mirror back up from her lap. “You didn’t say anything about an invitation. At least not until this very moment.”

“I mean the invitation to go out with me tonight,” said Beckford without approaching or looking at her.

“Now that sounds more explicit.” Again, she dropped her lipstick and mirror in her lap and turned toward him. “An invitation, then.”

“I’d like to get to know you a little more, Amy. Since we’re going to work closely together for some time, I’m sure that it’s mutually beneficial if we find out what we each think about this, that, and the other in daily life.”

“I agree. I’d also like to know how I have to behave to avoid misunderstanding, as much as that’s possible in such an office.”

Now, finally, Beckford turned toward her and laughed. “Whether we see the movie first or eat dinner first, let’s talk about when we should meet, okay?”

“You never said anything about dinner.”

Amy was starting to get playful now.

“Absolutely. Dinner is a given, Amy, whether we see the film or not. Where and when should we meet?”

“Eight o’clock, near the exit of the subway station in north Times Square.”

“Excellent, I will wait for you there,” said Beckford in a businesslike manner. “Okay. Eight o’clock. See you then.”

With those words he left the room through the main door.

Deep in thought, Amy looked after Beckford, holding the lipstick and tiny mirror in her lap. For several seconds she could see his contours through the frosted glass in the door as he was pushing it closed.

Is this really business? Amy asked herself, finishing her makeup with haste. I guess I’ll find out tonight.

She put the lipstick and mirror in her purse, pushed back her hair, got up, pulled on her gloves, threw her coat over her left arm, and left the office, closing the door carefully, gently humming a melody.

Wearing the same suit as he had worn to the office, Beckford arrived at the rendezvous spot two minutes before eight. At three minutes after eight, Amy appeared.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Beckford, that you had to wait for me. The bus pulled away as I reached the bottom steps of the stairway.”

“It’s not a big deal,” said Beckford, “we won’t miss the movie.”

He was embarrassed and did not feel like her employer at all. Suddenly, he had lost the conviction that he could easily conquer Amy. Seeing her, he felt as if he were on the dance floor standing across from a row of pretty girls, like a youth who had lost the courage to ask even one to dance.

The Amy who was waiting for him was not his secretary. He hardly recognized her. Had she not addressed him and had she continued past him, he would have kept waiting for Amy. She was not dressed to kill, which he had expected. Amy was elegant in a quiet unassuming manner meant to impress both men and women but not to call attention to herself. In terms of dress and stance, she was not much different from Aslan now. At her side, Beckford felt not only homespun but rather shabby. He could have slapped himself for not having worn his best suit. He had not even shaved again. The only thing he had done was to have his shoes polished.

Now I understand, he said to himself, how it’s possible that just eighteen weeks after selling men’s cotton socks, a salesgirl at Macy’s or Gimbels can strut around on the silver screen as a princess or duchess, as if she had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Amy took his arm and they set off toward Thirty-Fourth Street.

“Okay,” he said. “You win, Miss Amy.”

Suddenly he did not dare use her first name without the prefix.

“Yes, as I said, you win. First: Your Past—the Despair of Your Present—is that the correct title?”

“That’s correct.”

“And then dinner.”

“And then dinner,” she repeated.

He happened to glance at a big, brightly illuminated clock in the middle of a towering advertisement for nail-buffing cream.

“We have thirty minutes till the movie,” he said. “What about a cup of coffee?”

“Wonderful,” she agreed, “we might get thirsty, since the movie is at least an hour and forty-five minutes.”

In the café, as he was stirring in the sugar, he said without looking up, as if nothing in the world interested him more than his coffee: “Your Past—the Despair of Your Present. So, you think it will be a sexy film?”

“I’m sure. Two of my girlfriends who saw it told me that there were a couple of times during the film when just couldn’t contain themselves.”

Silently Beckford thought: Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to see this film with her, even if it’s terrible. Provocative. That’s exactly what she needs tonight.

This thought gave him back his aggressiveness from that afternoon. He felt his embarrassment waning slowly. In any case, I’m the boss, he assured himself, and as her boss I don’t need to let her intimidate me. I’m the one who’s meant to intimidate her. She lives off of me. I pay her salary. Then he realized that he also depended on Aslan’s money.

I don’t actually care where the money is coming from. I must be worth the money and the office to her, or else she wouldn’t spend it so easily on me. Therefore, I earn it honestly. I didn’t ask her to furnish an office for me and to leave such a large sum of cash in the safe. And I still don’t have a clue what she really wants from me. It’s possible that this new company in which I am apparently to play an important role is designed to be a gigantic haul in which five hundred idiotic honest men get robbed blind and left outside of the fence. And then I as the general manager will be saddled with the blame for the entire fraud. Then I’ll sit comfortably in prison for five years, and when I get out—

Suddenly he realized that Amy was looking critically at his face. “What are you thinking about, Mr. Beckford? Business worries? These days we all have worries, even if we don’t own a business and have to live off a salary instead. Forget your worries for a few hours.” She glanced at her watch. “It seems that it’s just about time to get to the theater.”

“You guessed right, Miss Amy. I do indeed have grave, very grave worries, fears, and sorrows. All right, let’s get to it. Maybe the past of a woman who is completely unknown to me will distract me from my own present.”

Amy laughed. “How cleverly you transfer the title of the movie to your personal circumstances!”

“If only you knew, dear Miss Amy, how I—”

He meant to say how I suffer, to spark and possibly keep her interest. He expected that such feelings would help overcome the resistance she was sure to put up against him. But he failed. She didn’t ask about what he had wanted her to know. For a few seconds he considered whether he should just leave, pretending that he did not feel well. However, his curiosity about how the evening would end outweighed his desire to get rid of her immediately.

Now they were sitting in the movie theater. Nestled into soft, deep armchairs. Surrounded by darkness. In front of them was the innocent screen, which a group of experienced and trained engineers had used to create an illusion. In a businesslike and coldhearted manner, they were attempting to uncover the background and internal discord of an utterly shattered human life. They uncovered it so brutally and nakedly that even a mentally disabled street sweeper would be forced to understand that life happened like this and in no other fashion.

The armchairs were incredibly comfortable. It felt good to sit there and watch those on-screen struggle fiercely.

But these comfortable armchairs had one disadvantage. Apparently, they had been created for people who had been married for more than forty years and who only remembered every three months that smoldering-hot love had gotten them into marriage in the first place.

Beckford had imagined everything beautifully. He had allowed Amy to convince him to go to the movies only because of the seats. The seats alone had convinced him. Usually seats in the movie theater allowed you to lightly touch your female neighbor’s knee to interest her in more after holding hands had lost its initial appeal. If she returned the pressure of the knee, at first only very gently and then as if by coincidence, you increased your own pressure. If the female knee did not retreat in a pout, then that was already proof of her thoroughly weakened resistance.

But clearly these chairs had been designed and enforced by some kind of anti-vice committee, who did not tolerate any kind of fun. They had designed these chairs so cleverly that it was difficult, if not impossible for Beckford to use his usual art of seduction. For that simple reason, the movie lost all appeal that it might have originally had for him. It was not even possible to whisper something into Amy’s ear. The distance was too far due to the ridiculously wide armrests.

No wonder Beckford was in a bad mood. Even the provocative scenes left him cold. Since Beckford had no interest in these steamy scenes, he observed Amy at his side and realized that she kept shifting in her seat. He remembered that she had told him that her girlfriends also had not been able to sit still during certain scenes of the movie.

It was not the movie that excited him but Amy’s continuous movements. Finally, earsplitting brass music announced the end with deafening noise.

“Well, how did you like the movie, Mr. Beckford,” asked Amy, pulling on her gloves and slowly ambling toward the exit.

“The movie wasn’t bad. Better than I expected. Especially the scene when he threw her across the bed, though he probably could’ve been gentler with her…”

“Don’t you think? That roughness was totally unnecessary. I thought the same thing when I saw that.”

In the meantime, they had reached the street and she took his arm. “Do you agree with many others and especially the clergy, who claim that it is one of the most immoral movies shown in New York in the last few years?”

“No, I don’t think so at all. On the contrary, I think it is a rather tame movie. Nothing immoral about the whole story. This is what life is like.”

“That’s what I say. The movie isn’t immoral at all. It’s rather educational. Every day you can read more about immorality and rape in the newspaper. Did you know, Mr. Beckford, that it is illegal to screen the movie in Massachusetts and Connecticut under penalty of six months’ imprisonment?”

“I really pity the people who are not allowed to partake in this educational film.”

Beckford tried to speak in the monotone of a preacher thinking it would most impress Amy. Though he had barely seen half of the movie and had only been interested in Amy’s restlessness, his suspicions had been confirmed: this film was trash of the cheapest and most miserable kind.

Nevertheless, he enthusiastically corroborated whatever positive thing Amy said about the movie. If you wish to conquer a woman, don’t argue with her, he thought. You will only lose precious time, and nothing will come of it. Your life is complicated enough. When it comes to women, agreeing with them will get you to your goal faster and with fewer detours.

However, he failed completely. In this particular case, his philosophy did not hold true. He did not know enough about the independent character of an intelligent girl like Amy, who stood on her own two feet and earned her daily bread honestly.