No matter how simple a project might be, Karen could make it complicated. I had had a good dose of his eccentricity while serving as his apprentice in a bureau of anthropological research some years previously. He had initiated me into the absurd complexities of a decimal system for filing which made our Dewey system seem like child’s play. With Karen’s system we were able to index anything under the sun, from a pair of white wool socks to haemorrhoids.
As I say, it was some years since I last saw Karen. I had always regarded him as a freak, haying respect neither for his vaunted intelligence nor for his athletic prowess. Dull and laborious, those were his chief characteristics. Now and then, to be sure, he indulged in a hearty laugh. He laughed too heartily, I might say, and always at the wrong time or for the wrong reason. This ability to laugh he cultivated, just as he had once cultivated his muscles. He had a mania to be all things to all men. He had the mania, but no flair.
I give this thumb-nail sketch because it happens that once again I’m working with him, working for him. Mona too. We’re all living together on the beach at Far Rockaway, in a shack which he has erected himself. To be exact, the house isn’t quite finished. Hence our presence in it. We work without compensation, content to room and board with Karen and his wife. There’s much yet to be done. Too much. Work begins from the moment I open my eyes until I drop from fatigue.
To go back a pace … Running into Karen on the street was something of a God-send for us. We were literally without a cent when he happened along. Stanley, you see, had told us one evening, just as he was setting forth to work, that he was fed up with us. We were to pack our things and get out immediately. He would help us pack and see us to the subway. No words. Of course I had been expecting something of the sort to happen any day. I wasn’t the least bit angry with him. On the contrary, I was rather amused.
At the subway entrance he handed over the valises, put a dime in my hand for carfare, and without shaking hands turned abruptly and stalked off. Not even a good-bye. We of course got into the subway, not knowing what else to do, and began riding. We rode back and forth two or three times trying to decide what the next step would be. Finally we got out at Sheridan Square. We had hardly walked a few steps when, to my astonishment, I saw Karen Lundgren approaching. He seemed unusually pleased to have found me again. What was I doing? Had we had dinner yet? And so on.
We accompanied him to his town flat, as he called it, and while his wife prepared the meal we unburdened ourselves. He was even more delighted to hear of our circumstances. I’ve got just the thing for you, Henry, he said, with his insensitive cheerfulness. And he began at once to explain the nature of his work, which sounded like higher mathematics to me, meanwhile plying us with cocktails and caviar sandwiches. He had taken it for granted, when he began his discourse, that I would give assent to his project. To make things more interesting I pretended that I would have to think it over, that I had other things in mind. That of course only stimulated him more.
Stay with us overnight, he begged, and let me know what you think in the morning.
He had explained, to be sure, that in addition to acting as his secretary and amanuensis, I might have to give him a hand with the house-building. I had warned him frankly that I wasn’t much good with my hands, but he had waved this aside as unimportant. It would be fun, after working with one’s brain, to devote a few hours to more menial tasks. Recreation, he called it. And then there was the beach: we would be able to swim, toss the ball around, perhaps even do a bit of canoeing. In passing he made mention of his library, his collection of records, his chess set, as if to say that we would have all the luxuries of a first class club.
In the morning I said yes, naturally. Mona was enthusiastic. She was not only willing, but eager, to help Karen’s wife do the dirty work. O.K. I said, no harm in trying it.
We went by train to Far Rockaway. All during the ride Karen talked incessantly about his work. I gathered that he was engaged in writing a book on statistics. According to him, it was a unique contribution to the subject. The data he had amassed was enormous, so enormous in fact that I was terrified before I had even moved a finger. In his customary way he had equipped himself with all manner of devices, machines which he assured me I would catch on to in no time. One of them was the dictaphone. He had found it more convenient, he explained, to dictate to the machine, which was impersonal, than to a secretary. There would be times, of course, when he might feel impelled to dictate direct, in which case I could take it down on the typewriter. You needn’t worry about the spelling, he added. My spirits dropped, I must say, when I learned of the dictaphone. However, I said nothing, just smiled and let him roll on from one thing to another.
What he had omitted to tell us about was the mosquitoes.
There was a little storeroom, just big enough to accommodate a creaky bed, which he indicated as our sleeping quarters. The moment I saw the netting over the bed I knew what we were in for. It began at once, the first night. Neither of us slept a wink. Karen tried to laugh it off by urging us to loaf for a day or two until we got adjusted. Fine, I thought. Mighty decent of him, I thought. An Oxford gentleman, what! But we didn’t sleep the second night either, even though protected by the netting, even though we had greased ourselves all over, like Channel swimmers. The third night we burned Chinese punk and incense. Towards dawn, utterly worn out, our nerves frazzled, we dozed off. As soon as the sun came up we plunged into the surf.
It was after we had breakfast that morning that Karen intimated we ought to begin work in earnest. His wife took Mona aside to explain her duties. It took Karen almost the whole morning to explain the mechanism of the various machines he found invaluable for his work. There was a veritable mountain of records piled up which I was to transcribe on the typewriter. As for the charts and diagrams, the rulers, compasses and triangles, the slide rules, the filing system, and the thousand and one details which I was to familiarize myself with, that could wait a few days. I was to make a dent in the heap of records and then, if there were still enough light, I was to assist him on the roof.
I’ll never forget that first day with the bloody dictaphone. I thought I would go mad. It was like operating a sewing machine, a switchboard and a victrola all at once. I had to use simultaneously hands, feet, ears and eyes. If I had been just a bit more versatile I could have swept out the room at the same time. Of course the first ten pages made absolutely no sense. I not only wrote the wrong things, I missed whole sentences and began others in the middle or near the end. I wish I had preserved a copy of that first day’s work—it would have been something to put beside the cold-blooded nonsense of Gertrude Stein. Even if I had transcribed correctly, the words would have made little sense to me. The whole terminology, not to speak of his plodding, wooden style, was foreign to me. I might just as well have written down telephone numbers.
Karen, like a man who is accustomed to training animals, a man of infinite patience and perseverance, pretended that I hadn’t done bad at all. He even tried to joke a bit, reading over some of the screwy sentences. It will take a little time, he said, but you’ll get on to it. And then, to add a little sauce: I’m really ashamed of myself for asking you to do this kind of work, Henry. You don’t know how much I appreciate your assistance. I don’t
