Big Money

The Camera Eye (44)

the unnamed arrival

(who had hung from the pommel of the unshod white stallion’s saddle

a full knapsack

and leaving the embers dying in the hollow of the barren Syrian hills where the Agail had camped when dawn sharpshining cracked night off the ridged desert had ridden towards the dungy villages and the patches of sesame and the apricotgardens)

shaved off his beard in Damascus

and sat drinking hot milk and coffee in front of the hotel in Beirut staring at the white hulk of Lebanon fumbling with letters piled on the table and clipped streamers of newsprint

addressed not to the unspeaker of arabic or the clumsy scramblerup on camelback so sore in the rump from riding

but to someone

who

(but this evening in the soft nightclimate of the Levantine coast the kind officials are contemplating further improvements

scarcelybathed he finds himself cast for a role provided with a white tie carefully tied by the viceconsul stuffed into a boiled shirt a tailcoat too small a pair of dresstrousers too large which the kind wife of the kind official gigglingly fastens in the back with safetypins which immediately burst open when he bows to the High Commissioner’s lady faulty costuming makes the role of eminent explorer impossible to play and the patent leather pumps painfully squeezing the toes got lost under the table during the champagne and speeches)

who arriving in Manhattan finds waiting again the forsomebodyelsetailored dress suit

the position offered the opportunity presented the collarbutton digging into the adamsapple while a wooden image croaks down a table at two rows of freshlypressed gentlemen who wear fashionably their tailored names

stuffed into shirts to caption miles lightyears of clipped streamers of newsprint

Gentlemen I apologize it was the wrong bell it was due to a misapprehension that I found myself on the stage when the curtain rose the poem I recited in a foreign language was not mine in fact it was somebody else who was speaking it’s not me in uniform in the snapshot it’s a lamentable error mistaken identity the servicerecord was lost the gentleman occupying the swivelchair wearing the red carnation is somebody else than

whoever it was who equipped with false whiskers was standing outside in the rainy street and has managed undetected to make himself scarce down a manhole

the pastyfaced young man wearing somebody else’s readymade business opportunity

is most assuredly not

the holder of any of the positions for which he made application at the employmentagency