Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [89]
I have no idea what Shimkin made of these reports or if he even read them, but they were, of course, just the kind of thing that Max loved. He annotated them in thick blue Chinagraph writing, adding his own comments, demanding further reports and readings, and circulating them throughout the company, often to people who had little or no idea what they were about.
It was as a result of this that I was drawn more directly into Schwed’s orbit. He needed somebody to help him with the editing of his list, now that it was growing in size. I was not at all sure that I wanted to move from reporting directly to Henry to reporting to Peter, who would doubtless make more use of my time, but my doubts were as nothing compared to his about me.
If I wanted to work for him, he told me, I would get far more to do. He was happy to leave much of the editing to me, except with those authors whom he couldn’t delegate, such as P. G. Wodehouse. He would square things with Henry, and of course I would continue to work with Max and to do whatever I was doing with Bob. The only thing that gave him pause, he said, looking at me intently, was whether I was altogether trustworthy.
It had not occurred to me that my trustworthiness was an issue. I had been conspicuously loyal to Henry, which was more than anyone else in the company could say, and so far as Max was concerned, I had been not only loyal but discreet. Others might make fun of Max, but I did not.
Perhaps because of his background at Provident Loan, Schwed was one of the few executives at S&S who favored the banker style in office furnishings. He sat behind an enormous varnished-wood desk with a dark brown leather top, tooled in gold, on top of which was a fake colonial brass lamp of the kind favored by bank vice presidents in those days, and a whole array of matching leather desk furnishings—blotter, in tray, out tray, calendar, as well as a pen set on an alabaster base—so that one felt about to be turned down for a mortgage. To one side of him was an impressive array of pipes, which he smoked nonstop. From time to time he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and fieldstripped it before lighting it again.
In what way, I asked, did he find my loyalty questionable?
Schwed rammed a pipe cleaner down the bore of his pipe and drew out a thick wad of brown goo. I had to understand something, he muttered, examining the results of his probe, unlike a lot of guys around here, he was a straight shooter. He was the kind of guy who always called the shots as he saw them.
I nodded vaguely. Sports metaphors have never meant much to me, and I have always had a tendency to distrust those who use them, a prejudice that was by no means limited to Americans. Englishmen who refer to any kind of difficulty as “a sticky wicket” leave me just as cold, if not colder. Besides, I am a born skeptic. The moment someone tells me how honest and straightforward they are, I find myself mistrusting them.
I had a certain reputation, Schwed went on, for being a Machiavellian type, rather than a team player. That wasn’t his way of operating at all. He was open, up-front, honest, outspoken, blunt. Did I think I could live with that? And did I think I could play a straight game with him?
I looked him in the eye as firmly as I could and said yes, upon which we both stood up and shook hands, leaning across the big desk. Schwed’s handshake was of the kind that feels as if you’ve just put your hand in a rock crusher. I continued to smile while he squeezed my hand in his. Once he let it go, I slipped it in my pocket, hoping to regain the use of it soon. Schwed waved his pipe at me from behind a self-created fog bank of tobacco smoke. “Welcome to the team,” he said.
THE TEAM, as it turned out, was strikingly modest—no larger, really, than Henry’s. Whereas Bob did, in fact, have a substantial team (though it would not have occurred to him to apply that word to his