The Defenestration of Bob T. Hash III Read online

  This was a grave loss indeed on my first day at work! To show my concern, I put on the same expression of disappointment I’d seen one day on Bob’s face, when his lawn mower had run out of gas. I laid down the manuscript though not letting it entirely out of my grasp in the off chance someone (not necessarily Miss Ratcliffe) might make a lunge across the desk for it and dash out of the office. Miss Ratcliffe said she knew how important and busy I was and so had brought me a temporary replacement—a timorous stenographer who up to this point in the conversation had been hiding behind Miss Ratcliffe and who was now introduced to me as Miss Happ. In the event that the matter remained unresolved, Miss Ratcliffe’s efficient team was as we spoke already vetting a new batch of applicants for a permanent replacement. I expressed both my thanks for Miss Ratcliffe’s sensitive, efficient handling of the matter and my concern regarding the well-being and whereabouts of Miss Scarlett. I said that if there were any developments she should let me know at once.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Hash,” she said. “If we get any news, you’ll be the first person to know.”

  She’d said “person.” I looked up at the oversize wall clock three feet across in the face: it was just gone a quarter past nine.

  8

  Asking For and Telling the Time

  —It’s half past a quarter to twelve

  Note to the language instructor: Open teacher’s picture manual at the clock page (page 9) and prop up against a vertical surface in front of class. Students will readily identify the in-house artist’s impression of various iconic timepieces depicted with terpsichorean flair—the Viennese waltzing mantelpiece baroque; a noble pin-striped Big Ben dancing the Charleston; a Jacques Cousteau deep-sea diver’s “Monde-du-Silence” Bangkok Rolex doing the polka; a regal long-cased grandfather clock with Roman numerals doing the military pendulum two-step; a tap-dancing “Matilda Hash–ian” luminous ivory cuckoo with a tiny pink tongue; a living room carriage with classic “dead-beat” escapement mechanism doing the cancan; the somber, charcoal-faced entrance clock over the mad Valletta Arch at Broadmoor; the puppet-ringed astrological clock in Prague’s Old Town Square; a doctor’s pulse-quickening fob watch; not to mention Mr. Hash’s very own digital radio alarm, which woke us up with a businessman’s tango on page 38.

  Each clock has a different time on it; teacher will point at faces in random order and drill exhaustively with class. Teacher should also make use of other pages of the picture manual where clocks nestle in corner frames of vignetted sequences orchestrating various characters’ routines: Miss Scarlett arrives at the office at 8:15; Tushi Moto has lunch at 12:45; at half past eight in the morning Mr. Hash packs his suitcase for a routine business trip, etc.

  A blackboard, felt-strip duster, and stick of traditional chalk—preferably a chronographer’s white—(not to mention teacher’s versatile windmilling forelimbs) may also be useful for this exercise.

  Skit

  You are on your way to an important business meeting in London. Your wristwatch seems to have stopped and you are worried you might be running late. Big Ben is nowhere to be seen, and there do not appear to be any horologists present. Why not check with that traditional beefeater standing at the corner?

  YOU: “Excuse me, Constable. I’m on my way to an important business meeting. My watch seems to have stopped and I’m worried I might be running late. You wouldn’t be able to tell me the correct time, please?”

  TRADITIONAL BEEFEATER: (pulling watch chain from breast—the big hand is pointing to seven, the little one to three): “Certainly, sir. It’s five past nine, sir.”

  YOU: “Golly, Constable. If I get my skates on, I might just make that meeting after all!”

  9

  Having dispatched her news regarding the nonappearance of the normally punctual Miss Scarlett (alarm clock malfunction? trapped in a freak traffic jam? kidnapped by alien space invaders?) and no doubt under the indelible impression that she had imparted her tidings to Bob T. Hash III, Miss Ratcliffe returned to her lair in the department of human resources, leaving me to my own devices at the helm of the worldwide organizational headquarters of the Acme International Institute of Languages—publisher of, among other things, the celebrated Forward with English!

  It’s perhaps worth pointing out that Bob T. Hash III is by no means the first paterfamilias and principal protagonist in the course book tradition to find himself in the position of being replaced. In fact, there had been no fewer than six other principal actors before him, each the linchpin to his own edition, each of whom in his time had undergone such a fate. Bob himself had taken over the reins from straw-haired Stan Waldman of stolid reputation from the sixth edition of Forward with English! And Stan Waldman had in turn taken over from suave corn exporter Warren Crosby from the fifth. Warren had stepped into the shoes of dapper Hank Redford from the much loved and, at the time, seemingly eternal fourth. Before whom came the avuncular Mr. Cotton from the not-so-long-lived third (atrocious proofreading). Before Mr. Cotton, there was Mr. Phillips, the cigar-smoking garden sprinkler magnate. And before them all came the inimitable Winfield Norton: pathfinder, prophet, and original template. Though mostly retired and gone from sight, these once exemplary giants of grammatical rectitude do still sometimes bob up (see Idiomatic Expressions) for a cameo appearance in later editions—you’ll see them turn up for some meeting to bring up the numbers or swan in for the odd round of golf. Mr. Cotton, for example, no longer in the fray of things, has, like a well-meaning President Carter, been recycled as a congenial fellow diner in the coffee shop, and in that new role has proved a far more popular figure than he’d ever been as main protagonist.

  What is unusual, in Bob’s case, is the unorthodox manner of his replacement—not to mention the spectacular fact that his having been replaced at all seems to have escaped everyone’s notice. Without exception, and with good grace, Bob’s forerunners were replaced, each in turn, according to the tradition whereby they would resign when the edition over which they presided was superseded by a new one, like honorable sea captains going down with their sinking ships. The colors in the old Forward with English! come to look sun-bleached and pallid, the décor and props become dog-eared, the exercises grow a tad shabby, the cast a tad jaded. That’s when it’s time for the stories to get re-plotted, the routines refreshed, the exercises rehashed—with a nod or two to modernity thrown in for good measure (like those funky computer monitors that appeared on the office desks in the sixth edition). That’s when it’s time for the old edition to be phased out, withdrawn from service and a new, spruced-up version with a client-friendly spill-proof cover to hit the front display counters in the institute foyer. A brand-new protagonist now emerges, providing not only a figure with whom the aspiring linguist will come once again to readily identify, but whose workaday triumphs will again form the loose-fitting plot around which the grammar examples find a natural focus.

  In my mind I’d sometimes imagined those deposed grandees gracing now a range of banknotes of varying denominations, now as profiles chiseled democratically into a rock face like the implacable presidents at Mount Rushmore (Forward with English! editions one through seven). At other times I’d imagined them as an inspection parade of Russian dolls, with a new one right after Bob—the eighth—a big cartoon question mark hovering over its blank silhouetted face as if some unidentified criminal or a mystery guest on a TV game show. I’d envisioned them as the solemn enigmatic statues of Easter Island staring into the mothballed distance. But as I come to learn no one before Bob actually chose of their own free will to abandon his cushy tenure (see Active vs. Passive). Bob was the first one to duck out, the first to go AWOL. He is also the first protagonist to have been replaced by a metamorphosed parrot.

  I was wondering what might have become of my illustrious antecedents when, Miss Ratcliffe now gone, I read on into the manuscript from where I’d left off. I was impressed, as I’d been before Miss Ratcliffe’s interruption, by the presentation, and by a clear sense of purpose.
The details—granted the cocoon of its mild late-fifties-early-sixties time warp—were accurate: the picture book picket fence was freshly painted, the lawns evenly irrigated and luminously green, recognizably from our very own dear Belmont.

  On the other hand, for all its veneer of professionalism, I was beginning to get the feeling that something faintly peculiar was going on. Clearly, the collection of exercises and pictures I’d found was meant to be some kind of guidebook or grammar primer—not entirely surprising, I suppose, given this was the Acme International Institute of Languages. My hunch was that my discovery had something to do with course material for the new—that is, an eighth—edition of the grammar. After all, the seventh edition had been around now for quite a while (as had Bob) and rumors had been circulating around Belmont for some time now that a new one was in the pipeline. What was surprising, however, was that something about the content of the exercises did not quite ring true. Even on my first brief pre–Miss Ratcliffe perusal of the Asking for Directions section, I’d sensed the odd snag, sensed something jarring to my eye, and those same sorts of snags seemed now to be creeping into the section on telling the time—as if the author was somehow winding us up. Don’t get me wrong—the overall impression was still convincing; the regular grammar book format and canonical phrase book conventions were adhered to throughout; the layout beyond reproach: I too would have wanted to learn my English from it! Yet something I couldn’t quite put my finger on was amiss—more a crypticness of tone, a slight free-flowing freestyle topsy-turvy discombobulation, as it were, than, say, straightforward grammatical or spelling mistakes (though for all I know there may well have been some of those in there too). I put down the manuscript and took off my Clark Kent specs. For the second time that morning I found myself rubbing my chin.

  This was turning out to be a strange affair indeed. My own dramatic metamorphosis, the business of Bob’s elopement, and the Rubiconic office door with the Bakelite telephone on the office desk. But it was the mystery manuscript, and, more to the point, its riddled idiosyncrasies, that I found strangest of all. What had I stumbled upon, by this somewhat unusual and circuitous route? What might it all add up to? Could this really be the new eighth edition of Forward with English!? And, if so, to what degree was Bob involved in its compilation? Might not the oddities simply be some kind of teething problems confined to its opening sections, or some as yet remaining and uncorrected errata-in-progress—which Bob, as editor in chief, had been working on right up till he eloped to Acapulco?

  Let’s just hope that whatever the cause of the problem it will be rectified in the sections to come.

  10

  Vocabulary for Beginners

  Everyday household objects, instantly recognizable and universally beloved personages, artifacts from Mother Nature—detach themselves from their more familiar contexts with prelapsarian panache. Unmoored, free-floating, and apparently self-propelled, the pulsating nomadic monads take it in turn to approach the student with their mute but cheerful introductions.

  To make this exercise more realistic, the world has been blotted out and replaced by a vast amniotic depth of uniform air-conditioned blackness, from which the approaching well-behaved, water-birthed objects emerge. From the blackest void, objects whoosh up toward us on slow-motion comet-shaped orbits, and magnify themselves, urging us like Adam to call them by name. When identified correctly by the student, the object seems to blush, hovering for a modest curtsy that will help imprint the name indelibly on the student’s mind, and proceeds on its course. If, on the other hand, the student calls an incorrect name, the object will hold back, egging us on to try again, the mind on the tip of its tongue. If student continues to err, the object must give up and it too (a trifle offended) must pass on, merging back into the starless heavens whence it came, perhaps never to return. In this exercise the student’s task is to offer a commentary on the procession. Please note that the indefinite article is preferred:

  “Here comes a book; this is a book, and this is a map of the world. Here’s Mr. Hash; here comes a hat; here comes a suitcase. Here comes a taxi; here comes a plane; the driver is waving. Here is Matilda; here comes the sky. Here comes some seed; please shut the window; let’s have a look in the mirror. Here is a box of cigars; here comes a tree; a spade is a spade. Here comes a house; here comes a sprinkler. This is a clock; here comes a lamp; that rings a bell. This color’s turquoise; this is magenta; all swans are white. Here comes a flag; here comes a menu. That man’s a fireman; the woman’s a nurse; that’s a policeman. Here comes a pencil, here comes a rope, here comes a wrench, here comes a mishap. Ecstasy, rapture, a thousand enchantments. Here come the martians; here comes a ladder…

  …and there goes the bell; class dismissed!”

  11

  From the reaction that his PA’s failure to turn up at the office had caused, one can imagine the even greater distress the news of Bob’s own disappearance would have created—and the ripple of panic that would have spread among his colleagues as the true scandal of his elopement came to light. And yet, over the coming days, no one was to express even the faintest suspicion that anything was amiss regarding the personal identity of heroically stalwart Bob T. Hash III. Thanks to my immaculate physical clone likeness and to my long-suffering observations from various strategically placed perches; thanks to my familiarity with the picture book epiroutines; thanks to my considerable natural powers of emulation (voice modulation, mannerisms, gestures, inflection of mood); and thanks not least to my parrot’s mastery of lite-speak, slotting into my new role of Bob Hash was as easy as—well, as easy as falling off a log. My intimate knowledge of the picture book geography and its dramatis personae conferred on me, besides, a sort of immunity to surprise. From Bert, who sold me my newspaper at the newsstand in the morning (“How much are the Belmont Gazettes, please?” “Here’s your change, Mr. Hash. Have a nice day!”) to hardworking colleagues (“I’ll have that report on your desk by three this afternoon, Bob”) to my recently acquired children (“Sure, Betsy, just make sure you’re back by ten”), I was by greeted and treated with the same convinced matter-of-fact respect that had been rightly accorded my predecessor. Not once did someone look at me askance. Not once did anyone furrow their brow or rub their chin. Not once was I asked if I was feeling off-color and if I would like to sit down and be brought a nice glass of water. Nobody in fact seemed the slightest bit aware of the, quite frankly, cataclysmic substitution that had taken place right under their noses. Nobody seemed to suspect that when they now spoke to Bob T. Hash III, they were in reality conversing with a nearly six-foot-tall African gray parrot with a crimson-tipped tail.

  Without having ever formulated it to myself, then, in any explicit punch-in-the-air, rung-gained, mirror-glancing, whoop-inducing, high-fiving kind of way, it seemed I’d been fast-track promoted, in one fell swoop, from the position of picture book avian mascot to fulcrum tycoon. For the first day or two of my new existence—laying aside for a moment any romantic complications with Matilda—I was content to trundle along the grooves of Bob T.’s routines, to roll along with events, with little thought of any long-term implications, and simply wait for whatever surprises the cuttlebone and fate had up their sleeves. I would not have been surprised, for example, if during those early days the magical effects of the cuttlebone had with little warning simply worn off, obliging me to return, perhaps at the most inconvenient and embarrassing of moments—need I say more—to my perch. Nor would I have been entirely flabbergasted to see teamleader™ Bob himself pop up again in grammar book Belmont. But the more time went by, the more it looked like whatever biochemical gestalt flip had taken place was this time firmly rooted, and the more I could take my human incarnation for granted. And, equally, the more time passed, the less likely it seemed big loser Bob would be returning to picture book Belmont.

  The person with whom I might have anticipated the trickiest situations vis-à-vis the cataclysmic substitution, namely Matilda, seemed, if anything, to detect a
n actual improvement in her marital situation—though, fortunately, without this raising any alarm bells regarding the flush synchronicity between the vanishing and apparently defenestrated Comenius and the improvement in question. I should point out that Matilda and I had always had a bit of a soft spot for each other, back from my days as a parrot—so it was perhaps not surprising that my relationship with her would turn out to be the most real and, for want of a better word, the most human relationship that I was to form in my new incarnation. She confided to me—me now being her husband—how greatly her marriage in all aspects had lately improved. “It’s like we’re newlyweds again,” she declared. The great tenderness and passion with which I so generously nursed Mrs. Hash through her parrot bereavement was, I believe, an important factor in shortening that bereavement, and in softening her very terrible loss.

  It was in the delicate matrimonial matter of biblical mating especially that I might have expected to face the most nuanced, most sensitively charged tests of my emulatory talents. And, lo and behold, I found myself undergoing such a test on my first full night in Bob’s shoes (perhaps I should say slippers), the origin and seed of which—its genesis—was that famous peck after dinner. Not having ever seen my host and hostess at congress, I had, of course, no template to follow. Nor was this the breeding season for parrots. Notwithstanding these terrible handicaps, I that night, in Matilda’s own words, introduced into the department of sheet an “injection of thrill and a new lease on life.” If a test of my emulatory talents this was, I had passed—no, I had surpassed the test—and with flying colors. It is a well-known fact that the parrot (along with a number of other but inferior species of bird) is both an honorable and a monogamous coupler.