Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"What were you dreaming about last night?" my wife wants to know as she fixes breakfast.

"Derek."

"You were laughing."

"You. I dreamed you were fucking another man."

"You were laughing."

"You were funny. A big black spade. You grabbed me by the prick. I like girls who grab my prick."

"Should I grab it now?"

"I have to get to work. Make dinner tonight."

"I had a horrible dream."

"You were crying."

"In your dream?"

"In yours."

"Why didn't you wake me up? I dreamt I was crying and couldn't stop."

"I was busy in my dream. Maybe it was the same dream. Did you dream you were fucking a big black nigger last night?"

"I don't have to. I get all I want from you."

"I think the bitch is stealing one of our cars. He started to say something at dinner last night and she gave him a look."

"I'll ask her."

"I'll trap her. Make dinner tonight. I like trapping her."

"You're sure coming home a lot these days."

"So what?"

"I didn't mean anything. I'm glad."

"Neither did I."

"And you don't have to yell."

"And I'm not yelling. I don't see why I can't raise my voice around here once in a while without being accused of yelling. Everyone else does. You do. I don't know what you're so edgy about."

"You're the one who's edgy this morning. I'm glad when you come home. You even whistle. Maybe you're starting to enjoy being here with us."

"Of course I do."

"Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine. And would be even better if you stopped asking me if everything's all right."

"I knew it wouldn't last until you got out of the kitchen."

"No wonder I can't wait to get to work."

"If anything's wrong at the office I wish you'd tell me."

"Everything is fine."

"What's wrong?" Green demands of me bluntly as soon as I get to work.

"Wrong?"

"I said it loudly enough." (Oh, Christ — he's in a mood also, and he's taken me unawares.)

"Nothing."

"Don't lie to me."

His exophthalmic eyes are glaring at me with moist and sadistic petulance, and his sensual face is hot and beady around the brows and mouth. Green will normally not allow himself to perspire where other people can see him. (I wonder if he is bothered more this morning by his thyroid deficiency or his enlarged prostate.) He is wearing a large, soft, box-plaid camel suit with notched, wide lapels and a gray vertical weave and fine violet lines, and can get away with it. The rest of us have to wait for festivals and expositions, although box-plaid slacks are okay on weekends at barbecues, marinas, and country clubs. Green is a flamboyant presence with an overwhelming vocabulary that keeps most of his superiors in the company aloof and ill at ease. Horace White shuns him like the plague. Green courts Horace White; White flees from him toward Black, who despises Green and vilifies him openly; Green retreats, nursing his wounds.

"Black is an animal," Green has complained to me. "An ape. There's no point talking to him."

Black is an anti-Semite. Green waits and regards me truculently from behind his desk as though I were to blame for his thyroid, prostate, colitis, or Black.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me unconvincingly," he begins almost before I finish, as though he can anticipate my replies. "It's all right to lie if I don't suspect you. I'm your boss. Don't lie to anyone around here unconvincingly if you want to keep working for me. I don't want anyone working for me to be held in contempt by anyone but me."

"My fucking wife."

"Don't use that word with me."

"You asked me, didn't you?"

"I'm not Andy Kagle."

"I wouldn't tell that to Andy Kagle."

"I like your wife."

"No, you don't, Jack. So do I. What's wrong?"

"I've had four wives and you've never heard me say anything uncomplimentary about any one of them, even though I've hated them all."

"She's not so crazy about you."

"Don't tattle."

"She thinks you're a bastard because you wouldn't let me speak at the convention."

"Stop using her."

"Oh, come on, Jack. You don't like her that much."

"I don't like her at all, if you want to stay on that subject. Would you like me to tell you why?"

"No."

"She drinks too much at some parties and not enough at others. She's stiff and uncomfortable and makes other people that way. She gives off clouds of social uneasiness at company affairs the way other people give off smells."

"I said I didn't want you to."

"She isn't much. She isn't rich and she isn't famous or social and she won't help you and she won't help me."

"You asked me what was wrong, didn't you?"

"And you're using your wife to avoid telling me."

"I'm not. What are you in such a bad mood about?"

"Why are you in a good mood?"

"I'm not, now."

"You're sulking, now," he retorts, grimacing, in a cadence of echoing ridicule, and I surmise that he too may be vulnerable to that squirting impulse to mimic hatefully someone who is vexing him unbearably.

It's called echolalia.

It's called echolalia (the uncontrollable and immediate repetition of words spoken by another person. I looked it up. Ha, ha).

Ha, ha.

Ha, ha.

(It can go on forever.)

It can go on forever.

"Shouldn't I be?" I ask.

"Shouldn't you be?" he asks.

"What's up, Jack?"

"What's up, Jack?" I expect to hear him reply to me in my own voice, as in a nightmare (as I often hear myself lashing back at my wife or daughter in their own voices when I am too riled up and discombobulated to think of a more mature way of hurting).

"Have you been out somewhere sniffing around after a better job?" I hear him inquire instead.

"Better job?"

"You won't find one without my help."

"Should I be?"

"You wouldn't even know where to look."

"What's wrong with my position here?" I feel myself beginning to perspire.

"You're starting to sweat," he says.

"I'm not."

"It's on your face and coming through your shirt. Why do you give me asinine denials? You know I wasn't asking you what was wrong before when I asked you what was wrong. I didn't mean wrong. I was asking you what was right. I was being sarcastic. You've been acting funny. And I don't mean funny when I say funny. I mean strange. And I don't mean strange, either. I mean buoyant. You've been doing a lot of whistling around here lately."

"I didn't realize."

"And you don't stay on key. You must think you're the only one in the company who ever heard of Mozart. You've been making yourself pleasant to a lot of people here I don't like. Kagle, Horace White, Arthur Baron. Lester Black. Even Johnny Brown, and you make more money than he does."

"It's my job. I do work for them."

"Fawning? Let me handle all the fawning for the department. I'm better at it than you. They enjoy watching me fawn. Nobody cares about you."

"Kagle?"

"Kagle's through," he snaps impatiently with a glow of satisfaction. "He spits when he talks and walks with a limp. I could have his job. I probably could. I wouldn't take it. I don't want to sell. Peddling is demeaning. Peddling yourself is most demeaning. I know. I've been trying to peddle myself into a vice-presidency and haven't been able to, and that's most demeaning of all, when you peddle yourself and fail. If you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it and fire you. The company won't fire you, but I will. I will, you know. Red Parker."

"What about him?"

"Steer clear of him. He's been going downhill ever since his wife was killed in that automobile crash."

"I feel sorry for him."

"I don't. He wasn't that fond of her when she was alive. He drinks too much and does no work. Steer clear of people going downhill. The company values that. The company values rats that know when to desert a sinking ship. You've been using his apartment."