Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [34]
‘Doesn't matter, we'll be waxing it Saturday, Signora Dirce, you'll see how nice it'll come up …’ says Signora Pensotti.
‘Oh, I've nothing against Dr Uggero, you know, Signora Pensotti, between you and me it's Dr Pistagna, that…’
Paolino doesn't listen. He's thinking of the young man and the typist in the other room. When men and women do overtime together after dinner, there's an atmosphere as if they were undergoing some kind of special trial together. They're working hard, you might say, but they put something tense, something secret into it. Paolino wouldn't know how to put it into words, but it's something he saw in their eyes, and he'd like to go back and see them.
‘Hey, hold on to the steps, sleepyhead! You want me to fall off, or what?’
Paolino starts to look at the graphs hanging on the walls. Up, down, up, up, down a bit, up again. What do they represent? Perhaps you could read them by whistling: a note that goes up, and up, then a low note, then a longer high note. He tries whistling the line of a graph: Whee, wheeeeee …’ then another, then another. A nice tune comes out. ‘Stop whistling, are you stupid?’ his mother shouts. ‘Do you want a spanking?’
Now Paolino goes round with the bin to empty all the ashtrays. He goes back to the office with the two working overtime. He can't hear the tippety-tap of the typewriter. Have they gone? Paolino pokes his head round. The girl is standing, stretching out a hand bent at the knuckles and with brighdy varnished nails towards the brylcreamed young man; he lifts an arm as if to take her by the throat. Paolino begins to whistle: what comes to his lips is the tune he invented a few moments ago. The two compose themselves. Oh, it's you again?’ They've already got their coats on and are standing together looking at some papers for tomorrow's work. ‘The ashtray!’ Paolino says. But they're not interested, they put the papers down and go. At the bottom of the corridor he takes her arm.
Paolino's sorry they've gone. Now there really is nobody left: all he can hear is the hum of the polisher and his mother's voice. Paolino crosses the Board of Directors' conference room with its mahogany table, so shiny you can see your face in it, and the big leather chairs all round. He'd like to take a run up and do a fish dive on the table top, slide from one end to the other, then collapse in a chair and fall asleep. But all he does is rub a finger across, look at the damp mark it makes like the wake of a ship, then rub it off with the elbow of his sweater.
The big accounts department is divided into lots of cubicles. There's a tippety-tap coming from the bottom. There must be somebody there still, working overtime. Paolino goes from one cubicle to another, but it's like a maze where every passage is the same and the tippety-tapping always seems to be coming from a different place. In the end, in the very last cubicle, bent over an old adding machine, he finds a skinny accountant in a pullover, with a green plastic eyeshade halfway down a bald, oblong skull. To tap the keys the accountant lifts his elbows with the movement birds make when they beat their wings: he looks just like a big bird perched there, his visor like a beak. Paolino goes to empty the ashtray, but the accountant is smoking and at that very moment puts his cigarette down on the rim.
‘Hi,’ the accountant says.
‘Good evening’ says Paolino.
What are you doing up and about at this time?’ The accountant has a long white face and dry skin, as if he never saw the sun.
I'm emptying the ashtrays.’
‘Litde boys should be in bed at night.’
Tm with my mother. We do the cleaning. We start now.’
‘How late do you stay?’
‘Till half-past ten, eleven. Then sometimes we do overtime, in the morning.’
‘The opposite of what we do, overtime in the morning.’
Tes, but only once or twice a week, when we do the waxing.’
I do overtime every day. I never finish.’
‘Finish what?’
‘Getting the accounts right.’
‘They won't come out right?’
‘They never do.’
Motionless,