Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

When he was called to New York in the spring of 1950 Ben was twenty-three years old. He went directly from Penn Station to the Harkness Pavilion. It was still early morning. He politely inquired of the head nurse on the fourteenth floor whether Mr. Finsberg was receiving visitors.

“No. Mr. Finsberg is very ill. His condition is grave.”

“Oh,” Ben said.

“Are you a member of the family?”

“Not the immediate family. Mr. Finsberg is my godfather.”

“You’re Ben?”

“You know my name?”

“Go in. It’s 1407. Well, you’d know that from the telegram, wouldn’t you?”

“You know about the telegram?”

“Did you get your pocket money?”

“It’s in my pocket. You know about my pocket money?”

“We shouldn’t delay, Ben. Your godfather is a very sick man.”

They entered the room, Ben feeling a little guilty. Here was someone about to change his life perhaps. If the man had been behindhand in his attentions, Ben had been equally remiss. Their mutual indifference to each other made him feel, if the relationship existed, a sort of godson out-of-wedlock.

The old man lay diminished beneath a giant cellophane wrap, the oxygen tent. Ben could hear the frightful crinkle of his respiration. He sounded as if he were on fire.

“He’s sleeping,” the nurse whispered.

“I can come back.”

“No, no. There might not be time.”

“What does he have?” Ben whispered.

“Everything,” the nurse said.

“I’ll come back later,” he whispered.

“I won’t hear of it,” she whispered back. She went to an enormous cylinder of oxygen and turned some handles. Immediately his godfather began to gasp for breath.

“Uugh — kagh—” his godfather skirled. The tent collapsed.

“What are you doing?” Ben demanded.

“Mr. Finsberg,” the nurse said, “your godson’s arrived.”

“Uugh — Ben? Uurgh. Ben’s here? Arghh. Uughh. Okk.” She turned the oxygen back on and Ben watched the bubble reconstitute itself. “Ben. Is that you, godson?”

“Yes, sir.”

And then the executives would really hear something, poring over Fortune’s profile in their Lear jets or in their all but empty first-class cabins as they sipped captain’s compliments. Would learn — as he’d learned — that there were more ways to the woods than one, that inheritance or self-creation were not the only alternatives in the busy world of finance, that there were all sorts of success stories, qualitative distinctions, that the world was a fairyland still. That he, Ben Flesh, the owner of franchises from one end of the country to the other, was where he was today because—

“Sit down, please, Ben. What I have to say will take some time. As I am old, as I am dying—”

“Oh no, sir, you’re—”

“As I am dying , I have to conserve my energies. Seeing you stand is a drain on those energies; watching you tire tires me. Please, godson. Please sit down.”

He looked around for a chair. Only then did it strike him how curious a place it was. Except for Julius Finsberg’s hospital bed and the oxygen and two hat racks of the medical on either side of his bed, they might have been in a first-class apartment. It was not like a hospital room at all. From his position he could see something of the other rooms in the suite, none of them having the least thing to do with the practice of medicine. There was a living room with a sofa and easy chairs. There were coffee tables and lamps. At the far end of the billiard room was a gaming table with slots for poker chips at each corner. There were oil paintings on the walls and he could see, off the hall, two guest bedrooms, an open bathroom with decanters of bath salts and oils on a ledge beneath the vanity. He could see a kitchen with an automatic dishwasher, a refrigerator with a tap for ice water.

His godfather lay in the dining room. Near his bed a table was set for eight, the crystal and silver and china beautiful against the thick white tablecloth. Napkins were folded like tiny crowns beside each place setting. He removed one of the chairs from the dining-room table and drew it beside his godfather’s bed. He sat at the man’s right beside a stanchion that supported an I.V. upside down in its collar, trying to ignore the clear tubing that led from the bottle of dextrose and was attached by a sort of needle, not unlike those used to pump up basketballs, to his godfather’s wrist. The hand, like a loaf on a breadboard, was taped to a wide brown splint. His other arm, he saw, was receiving plasma, and a catheter ran from beneath the bedclothes to a spittoon. This he noticed only after he had sat down. The spittoon was between his shoes and every once in a while he heard a tiny splash.

“I am privileged,” his godfather began, “as most men are.” It was difficult to hear him, the voice muffled as it was by the great tent and working against the hiss and boil of the oxygen. (Nor was it easy, really, to see him, his face a smear behind the clouded plastic, like features masked by exploded bubble gum.) “You can hardly live in the world and not come under the influence of some advantage. Like golfers, all of us have our little handicap, however measly. So thank your lucky stars, Ben. It itches.” He paused and lifted his dextrose hand, bringing the board up parallel with his nose and rubbing it. “Ouch. Son of a bitch. I think I’ve got a splinter. Nurse. Nurse!” he called. A middle-aged woman in a tweed suit came from the hall.

“My godfather wants the nurse,” Ben said.

“I’m the nurse,” the woman said and went up to the old man.

“Just hold on while I sterilize this sewing needle with this match.”

She turned off the oxygen and his godfather gasped. Terrified, Ben watched the old man thrash about, rolling first on one needle, then the other.

“Uugh — ach — hurry— hurry! ”

The nurse burned the needle till it glowed red, wiped the carbon off with Kleenex. She turned the oxygen back on and stuck her head in under the tent with his godfather.

“Gracious,” she said as she tried to get at his godfather’s splinter, “there’s hardly light to see. I shall have to speak to the window washer again. I asked him just yesterday to wash off your tent. You heard me, Mr. Finsberg. You heard me, didn’t you? There, that’s got it.”

She came out from beneath the tent.

“Do you?” his godfather said. Some blood was coming from the side of his nose.

“Do I what?” Ben asked.

“Thank your lucky stars?”

“Well no, sir, not literally.”

“I’m not speaking literally. I was in the theatrical costume business, I’m speaking figuratively.”

“Here,” the nurse said, “will you look at that? You could pick your teeth with it.” She held up the splinter. “Should I keep this to show Mrs. Finsberg?”

“No,” his godfather said. “Give it to the boy.”

The nurse handed Ben the splinter. He took it and slipped it into his wallet with his pocket money and return ticket.

“How crowded is the universe,” his godfather said and moved the plasma arm vaguely. “How stuffed to bursting with its cargo of crap. Consider, Ben. You could have been a pencil or the metal band that holds the eraser to the wood, the wire of lead that runs through it. The black N in ‘Number 2’ stamped along one of its six sides. Or one of its six sides. Or the thin paint on another. You might have been a vowel on a typewriter or a number on a telephone dial or a consonant in books. There are thousands of languages, millions of typewriters, billions of books. You might have been the oxygen I breathe or the air stirred by this sentence. It is a miracle that one is not one of these things, a miracle that one is not a thing at all, that one is animal rather than mineral or vegetable, and a higher animal rather than a lower. You could have been a dot on a die in a child’s Monopoly set. There are twenty-one dots on each die, forty-two in a pair. Good God, Ben, think of all the dice in the world. End to end they’d stretch to the sun. Then there are the rich, the blooded with their red heritage like a thoroughbred’s silks. You might have been a stitch in those silks, a stitch in any of the trillions of vestments, pennants, gloves, blankets, and flags that have existed till now. Let me ask you something. How many people live? Consider the size of their wardrobe over the years. A button you could be, a pocket in pants, a figure on print.