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Neumann's Journey Part IV: Neumann’s Suspicion
Neumann was still waving the envelope when he noticed the cabbie across the street trying to catch his eye. Neumann ignored him and continued walking. He didn’t need a ride. Besides, he made a point of never paying the extortionary rates commanded by taxis. Nevertheless, the driver climbed out of his car and called after him. Neumann continued to ignore him, but the man was persistent, pursuing Neumann for nearly half a block, all the while calling to him in a language Neumann didn’t recognize, before finally giving up with a dismissive wave and a rude gesture of his hand. Neumann had never before seen such a vigorous effort to attract a fare and resolved to file a grievance with the appropriate authorities at the earliest opportunity.
When he got to his stop, he realized he was still holding the envelope, which was catching the afternoon sun in quick bright flashes. The recent incident had caused the ink on the front to run and blur, and transformed the calligraphy into a sign only Neumann could read. The paper doily was spotted and discoloured, but Neumann was pleased to see the marks of his encounter with the waitress. They spoke to him of a shared experience.
Neumann had never learned the need for discretion in the handling of his few possessions. While the pleasure he derived from each was unique and profound, it was rarely accompanied by a sense of custodial responsibility. Neumann never knew what he would find when he reached into his pocket, and if one of his treasures were to slip out while he was sitting or vanish in any of the mysterious ways things had of vanishing, he was likely neither to notice nor mourn the loss. And while on more than one occasion he found reason to fear for the security of his person, which he knew was liable to be violated on any number of pretexts, he’d never before seen a look of longing cast on the sundry bric-a-brac he carried about; the value, he had supposed, was non-transferable. Something had changed, however, and Neumann found the new circumstances extremely unnerving.
One after another, strangers let slip a peculiar interest in his envelope. In his simplicity, Neumann failed at first to see this interest for what it was, attributing the strange behaviour around him to the peculiarities of the individuals involved. But cautious by nature, Neumann quickly grew suspicious of the attention he was drawing. Still, it was only after the most improbable proposition, by some swarthy second-generation hoodlum, that he resolved to keep his envelope safe from prying eyes. The man had the audacity to lay his hands on it when Neumann turned his head to consult the bus schedule. Neumann was horrified. He pulled his hand away and hurriedly stuffed it and the envelope into his trouser pocket. He would have fled, but the bus was moving and he was still a half-dozen stops from his destination. He looked away as the man bent close and whispered that he had money; Neumann was invited to name his price. Instead, he jumped up, just as the bus came to a halt, and darted out the rear door.
Neumann had plenty of time to think during his walk to the apartment but was unable to make the least sense of the situation. It was impossible to imagine anyone believing his envelope had a price. Granted, it had been sealed with something resembling a price tag, but he’d removed that awful, gummy thing at the first opportunity. Neumann chuckled at the thought that someone might fancy the treasure hidden inside. Envelopes such as his weren’t produced to enclose money, and Neumann’s enclosed nothing. It had been destined to dissolve in a trouser pocket.
Neumann waited until he got home before taking his hand out of his pocket and smoothing the wrinkles out of his strange treasure. The paper lace had come unglued and the calligraphy was finally reduced to a featureless blue stain. Neumann looked at his palm and saw the stain there as well. He looked from one to the other and noted the differences. The stain on his hand was expanding, propelled by perspiration in line with the topography of his palm. Neumann would have liked to stare at it longer, but the unpleasant attention his envelope had drawn was weighing heavily on his mind. He wondered if it wouldn't be prudent to contact the sender for answers. It was a novel thought and Neumann was tempted to dismiss it as he dismissed many novel thoughts. The situation, however, was genuinely unfamiliar and Neumann wasn’t blind to the occasional need for creative solutions.
He began scouting around the room for the card that came with the envelope. His limited success came as no real surprise, though he was uncertain whether this stemmed from a failure of technique or of effort. His hopes were cruelly raised when he found what turned out to be an old library card, protruding from a book he could not recall reading. Further inspection uncovered a well-worn pencil, but Neumann could find nothing else of interest. He put the pencil in his sock and the card in the band of his hat, and was about to admit defeat when he recalled the circumstances of his disappointment with the envelope’s contents.
How comfortable he had made himself in his reclining chair before giving over to the pleasure of examining his correspondence; how disappointed he had been to discover that this marvellous package contained nothing more remarkable than a business card; how quickly he let the card fall to the floor as he turned his attention to the fascinating minutiae of the envelope itself. There were three staples to a side, he noticed, large, heavy strips of steel that could surely bind a hundred pages with ease but which were called on to penetrate but a single folded sheet of construction paper. All six were unaccountably deformed, as though stymied by the terrific simplicity of the task for which they were required. As Neumann pulled himself from his thoughts he noticed that he was sitting in his chair, staring at the envelope as he had that first afternoon, and had only to look down to see the card lying in full view on the floor to his left. It was technique after all, Neumann concluded, and bent to pick up the card.
It should not have surprised him that it was out of reach. He had never been challenged in his conviction that the comfort of a chair was proportionate to the thickness of the padding, and his was one of the most comfortable chairs he had known. He was thus obliged to climb out and walk over to the card in order to retrieve it. He did this nimbly enough, but cracked his skull as he straightened up with the card. And when he flopped back into the chair, rubbing the goose egg on his cranium, the uprush of air propelled the envelope off the armrest and onto the floor where the card had been sitting only a moment before.
Neumann cursed the envelope, but quickly directed his animosity to the card, of which he was rather less fond. Then he cursed the chair, which once again hindered him from reaching over from where he sat, and finally cursed himself for sitting there, like an overturned tortoise, flailing his arms ineffectually, instead of getting up and walking over to the envelope on the floor, as he knew he would in the end. He stopped short, however, of cursing himself for sitting there wasting his time cursing himself, though he considered it, and turned his attention without further delay to the business card in his hand.
It was about as unremarkable as any business card he had ever seen, though it had an unpleasant stiffness very much at odds with what Neumann considered appropriate for a paper product. The heavy linen was embossed in a large font with the name of a stranger and, in somewhat smaller type, with a phone number. Neumann took no notice of the absence of an address or affiliation; he had no interest in transacting business with this Mr. Saint-Pierre, C.A., LL.B, D.Div. He had an eye for detail, however, and he discerned with surprise that the telephone extension was written by hand, neatly penned in dark ink and only barely distinguishable from the numbers typed beside it, added as an afterthought, perhaps, in the production of the card. Neumann was pleased to have discovered this detail, but disappointed that he could not deduce a single interesting consequence from it. The card, however, had become invested with sufficient mystery, which Neumann owed his grudging respect. He put it in his breast pocket and climbed to his feet to retrieve the envelope before heading to the payphone down the street for answers from this Mr. Saint-Pierre.
Neumann could count on one hand the number of times he had been obliged in recent years to make use of a telephone, and it was a matter of certainty that such a device would never be installed in his own apartment. It was not a question of money, though he in fact had none to spare, or even of his opposition in principle to the idea of squandering money of any amount on the opportunity to access a telephone from one’s room. As Neumann did not consider himself duty-bound to yield to any demands on his attention while in the confines of his personal space, and was similarly disinclined to initiate any contact from there, he could think of not a single reason to own one. Certainly, it was possible that telephoning from the comfort of his own chair could mitigate the unpleasantness of the whole undertaking, but Neumann would rather drag that heavy piece of furniture down to the corner each time he needed to place a call than suffer such an encroachment.
Neumann was thus taken aback each time he observed that there was, in fact, a telephone in the apartment, mounted, moreover, by some perverse coincidence, on the wall in the only place Neumann could fit his chair. It was not his phone, of course, for it was not his apartment and he ignored it on principle. He had lately succeeded in forgetting it was even there, though his memory was jogged for the second time that evening when he gathered the envelope off the floor and cracked his head on it as he straightened up. Early in his tenure as apartment custodian, Neumann had been intermittently reminded of its presence, often with the most inconsiderate persistence, until he was finally obliged to disable its ringer. Since that time, he noted its continued existence only on those rare occasions when he became entangled in its knotted cord or, as tonight, when he encountered it bodily. He had no reason to suspect that it wasn’t still functional, perhaps calling at that very moment, mutely, for his attention, but Neumann gave it not so much as a second glance as he stuffed the envelope into a pocket and left for the payphone down the street.
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Go on to Neumann's Journey Part V