The Seventh Candidate by Howard Waldman
***
3
Lorz wore the most subdued of his ties, none of which were exclamatory, also his most sober jacket, an almost funereal charcoal gray. He surveyed his voice, not allowing it to escape into registers other than those of dryness and matter-of-factness. He felt that he projected soundness, a quality he set great and envious store by. The black leather briefcase provided assistance here with the competent click of the brass clasp as he freed the flap and took out the typed pages of his proposition (Silberman might ask to see it and weren’t the mind-men graphology experts too?). This too was for show, for he had it all within him, rehearsed in the small hours a hundred times.
He sat down and explained with a purposeful touch of pedantry in vocabulary and syntax that the idea had not originated with him. His assistant, Miss D Ruda – with whom the doctor, he believed, was acquainted – had suggested the move.
Technically this was true. But it was also true that the idea had come to Lorz a week earlier, an idea so bold that he’d kept it to himself, not daring to broach the subject to Silberman. He polished it in his mind. He rounded the edges, experimented with cunning formulations and time went by. He decided to talk it over with his assistant but kept putting it off. He was certain that she would point out all the dangers involved. She was always right about whatever concerned Ideal.
But one day she said point-blank: “Why don’t we try Teddy out on a part-time basis? Here in Ideal I mean.”
Lorz gazed across the office at his assistant for a few seconds before replying dubiously: “I’d never thought of that.” She found arguments. He persisted in his skepticism. The boy’s first job attempts had been fiascoes, he pointed out. Mightn’t he prove disruptive? She went to great lengths to convince him. He said he’d think it over and if he accepted her proposition would speak about it to Dr Silberman.
Lorz repeated with a slight deprecatory smile that his assistant had suggested the move. Frankly he had, at first, reacted negatively to it. He’d had “misgivings.” (“Misgivings” was the soundest of terms. He repeated it). Then after serious reflection he’d come round. At least to the extent of being willing to give it a try. He’d drawn up the model contract. But it was to be understood that strictly business considerations would determine if the experiment was to be continued. Sentiments had no place in business. He started reading it after a dry cough.
1. He, Edmond Lorz, director of Ideal Poster, agreed conditionally to hire the individual known as Teddy on a part-time basis for office work …
The doctor interrupted him. “I’m the wrong person to be telling this to. I have very little to do with Teddy. In any case, I find the idea strange to say the least. You propose to hire Teddy in your office? In the very place where he was injured? You can’t be serious.”
“Exactly my own reaction when my assistant made the suggestion,” said Lorz with a slight smile of satisfaction at their concordance of views. “But then I reflected on the matter. After all I was injured there too. That didn’t prevent me from returning. I also came to the conclusion that the office is, in a sense, no longer the same office.”
Lorz paused and then explained untruthfully that the office had been totally renovated following the explosion.
“He wouldn’t recognize the place, I assure you. The new wall is completely different from the old one. And the other walls have been repainted a different color. The furniture has been changed.”
The director realized, too late, that these fabrications would oblige him at the very least to have the office repainted. At what expense? It could be added to the long list of expenditures on the boy’s behalf, like the ivory chess-set, the watch and all those spurned delicacies. He drove the distracting idea out of his mind and concentrated on the immediate task.
Moreover, he added (and he knew that this would be a decisive argument), Teddy would be in the constant presence of two individuals whom he knew and trusted. Lorz paused to give additional weight to his point.
The doctor said nothing. But his willingness to go on listening was an initial victory. Lorz peered down at the interrupted typed sentence.
Agreed, then, conditionally to hire on a part-time basis the individual known as Teddy for office work at the prevailing rates for such work. Naturally there would be a trial period of three weeks.
Silberman wanted to know what sort of office work.
Transporting and pouring harmless chemicals, paints for the most part, Lorz explained. Preparation of knapsacks. Maintenance of the wheeled stepladders, largely cleaning and oiling. Sorting posters. Sweeping up. Small errands. Lorz went on and on with the enumeration. The catalogue of tasks to be accomplished in three hours sounded like exploitation. Actually it could all be disposed of in forty minutes.
Silberman came up with another objection. Apparently he’d finally taken the underground early or late enough to notice the “eradicators” as he called them. He found their job highly dangerous. What if the ladder rolled off the platform onto the rails? With the eradicator on it.
Lorz smiled politely at this almost comic notion. He pointed out that the ladder was equipped with a foolproof braking device. Such an accident was unthinkable. In any case it was out of the question that Teddy would ever participate in poster-rectification.
He shared Silberman’s disquiet but for reasons which he’d already tried to explain to the Volunteer Visitor and which he kept to himself now. The underground was turning into a jungle. Still another of his operators was in hospital, not stabbed, this one, but beaten bloody. It was out of the question exposing the boy to such perils.
No, the only risks involved in the proposition were purely commercial ones, he explained. For himself if the experiment didn’t work. He felt confident that there were no risks as regarded Teddy.
The director leaned back in his chair and waited while the doctor abstracted himself from his surroundings. His globular eyes blinked steadily behind the lenses of his pince-nez and his forefinger tapped on his desk. Suddenly he was back with Lorz.
“Teddy might very well prove to be … difficult, let’s say. You would have to be prepared for that.”
The director said he was confident he could deal with any problems that might arise.
Silberman glanced at his watch and got up.
“The Commission meets on February 12,” he said. “I’ll mention your proposal. That’s all I can do. I have no power of decision. I promise nothing.”
Beneath his joy, which he carefully concealed, Lorz wondered if the Commission in question was the same Commission that decided to switch off patients judged hopelessly comatose.
An alarming thought came to him.
Much more was at stake than permission for his candidate to try out a new job. The Commission, he felt certain, would rule on Theodore’s fate.
The job at Ideal had to succeed.
Two weeks later the Commission accepted the proposal. Theodore was to start on Monday, February 24. He would be inspected at weekly intervals. At the start he would be accompanied to and from the job.
The director had lost one of his names for the boy. Theodore was no longer a candidate.