DONALD BARR

SAM

"The table I write on I say exists -- that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed -- meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odor, that is, it was smelt; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a color or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. That is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions."
--BISHOP BERKELEY

I

WHEN SAM TAUBENSEEL GOT fired, his friends in the Principe Organization gave him a half-secret going-away party. It was a great success. Dick Trewinning and Tom Howard brought their wives and Herman Gluck did not bring his.
Mildred Gluck did not care for the guest of honor. She had made quite an oration about it, with that pejorative New York lilt of hers: "Sam Taubenseel! That's all I hear: Sam Taubenseel. Eight years now, Sam said this, Sam said that. You know what Sam said today? He said blah blah blah. Who told you that joke? Sam, who else? And nothing to him, nothing, a lightweight. Why should I go?"
"Sam has been a good friend," replied Herman sturdily. "A good friend to Acquisitions, a good friend on the outside." (Acquisitions was Herman's department.)
"He's so great, why did they fire him?"
"I -- I'm not sure. Okay? You can't ask, you know."
As the party broke up, everyone said to Sam, "Keep in touch! Keep in touch!" and Sam said yep, he would keep in touch.
But he did not.
They thought perhaps he was embarrassed because he seemed to have difficulty finding a job. Hendrick ("the Shmendrick"; Sam had given him the nickname) Van Kleeck wrote several letters of recommendation for various kinds of employment and sent them to the agency that Sam was signed up with, but Hendrick never heard, either from Sam or from the agency, about any referrals, and he never heard from any prospective employers.
Dick Trewinning, after waiting for Hendrick the Shmendrick to hear, finally wrote to Sam at the home address on file in the Personnel Office, but perhaps he had waited too long. Everything came back "Undeliverable. Not known at this address." Sam had left no forwarding address with the Post Office. He could not have moved very far, however, because he retained the same telephone number. All his friends called him, but invariably, whether they called during the day or at night or in the early morning, they got the recording from his answering machine. It was a cheerful recording, purporting to tell them that Sam was unable to come to the phone just now but if they would leave their name and telephone number he would call them back just as soon as he could. It sounded as if Sam were about to bounce in his front door and harvest his messages and start calling immediately. They did leave their names and telephone numbers, and he never called back.
Hendrick the Shmendrick caught him at home just once -- apparently Sam was expecting an important call, a business call perhaps, and answered the telephone. Hendrick had no sooner uttered the words "Ah! Sam! It's wonderful to hear your voice live, so to speak," when the telephone clicked and he was cut off.
Naturally, after a few months Sam's friends began to lose interest. They did not admit this to themselves. Each professed to be worried for Sam, anxious to do something for Sam, indignant at Sam's ill-treatment by the Organization; but between them they rarely discussed Sam, and if they thought about him at all, it was at three o'clock in the morning or some other ungodly hour. And after a few more months, it was almost as if Sam had never existed.
The last of Sam's friends to forget him was Dick Trewinning, but one morning Dick said to Mrs. Trewinning, "You know, I'm having the damnedest aphasia."
"What's that? What's an aphasia? Is it catching?"
"It's when you can't remember a word. You remember something but not what it's called, or some little thing happens but you can't recall when it could have been."
"My birthday? That's all right, it isn't for a month."
"I know your birthday.... This is very peculiar. I'm thinking of a person but his name is gone. It's as if I was looking at a stranger. You remember Sam? We went to his house that time, and he served that seafood casserole? Suddenly I can't remember his last name. Sam -- Sam -- I've been thinking and thinking for hours."
"Sam," said his wife, not really trying. "Sam...Sam...I can't think of his last name either. Anyway, what brings him up? You haven't heard from him in years."
"Months. But he's one of my oldest friends, and now...I must be -- I must be getting Alzheimer's, I can't remember his last name."
"Oh, it'll come to you when you stop thinking about it."
But he stopped thinking about it and it did not come to him.
Weeks later, for no reason at all, the name "Sam" came into Dick Trewinning's head. He remembered his aphasia, and said out loud, "Sam --," trying to charge around his mental block. Wally McNeill happened to be nearby, and McNeill looked at Dick and said, "Who?"
"Sam. I think it was Sam. Or something like that."
McNeill frowned and said, "Sam who?"
Of course, Wally had never been as close to Sam as Hendrick and Dick, so there was nothing particularly sinister about it.

ONE DAY, GOING through a drawer full of old souvenirs and mementos, Tom Howard came across a picture of three men standing near a fishing boat. The middle one of the three was Howard himself, holding a long fishing rod from the end of which dangled a fair-sized fish. On Tom Howard's right stood Hendrick the Shmendrick. On Tom Howard's left stood the third man.
Mrs. Howard made a practice of peering over her husband's shoulder whenever he was going through mementos because she believed that her husband was keeping things from her. "Who are those men?" she asked.
"This is me, and this one here is Hendrick Van Kleeck."
"Oh yes. I met him once," said Mrs. Howard. "And the other fellow?"
"I dunno," said Tom.
Mrs. Howard sensed a certain uneasiness in his tone. "Oh," she said with bogus heartiness, "you can tell me. What's the big secret?"
"Well," said poor Tom, "he looks familiar. I -- I'm not sure.... Well, the name escapes me. Probably just some guy at the outing."
"Yeah," said his wife, boisterously but insincerely cynical, "those outings. Why don't you take me along ever?"
Herman Gluck came across a telephone number scribbled in the margin of an old magazine. "Whose number is that?" he wondered, and called his wife over. "Here's somebody's number. Do you have any idea whose it is?"
"Call them and find out."
He did so. It was about three minutes to ten P.M., and he felt guilty about calling at so late an hour, but he dialed the number, and received a recorded message: "This is Sam Taubenseel. Don't hang up. I can't come to the phone right now, but if at the tone you will just leave your name and telephone number, I will get back to you as soon as I can."
Herman Gluck hung up the phone, puzzled. The recorded voice was unfamiliar, but there seemed to be a note of desperation in it, as if the phrases Don't hang up and I can't come to the phone and if you will just leave your name were the pleas of a prisoner. I will get back to you sounded like....
"Well?" said his wife.
"Guy I never heard of before. What is that number doing there?"
"It's your writing," Mildred Gluck pointed out, and drew the moral:
"Don't you ever write down a name with a telephone number? You have a bad habit of just scribbling numbers here and there and then not knowing afterward.... "
"I have a lot of bad habits," retorted Herman, "but writing down the numbers of total strangers is not one of them."
"Maybe you dialed it wrong," said Mildred Gluck.
Herman dialed it again. This time he got the voice of the doom operator: "Your call cannot be completed...."
"You wrote it down wrong," said his wife, "that's all."
This explanation satisfied Herman Gluck, almost. He had the feeling that he was missing something.
Herman happened to mention this trivial episode to Hendrick the Shmendrick, by way of illustrating the truth that we are all getting older. Hendrick said, "Hm! Sam? Taubenseel? I can't help you there, old man. Ha ha. Let's look him up in the phone book. How do you spell 'Taubenseel'?"
"T-a-u-b-e-n...," said Herman, without thinking.
No soap.
"Try T-o-w...," said Herman.
That was no better.
"We could try the yellow pages," suggested Hendrick. "How are your feet? Have you been thinking about trying a podiatrist? A proctologist? A shrink?" he asked, becoming obvious, as he always did sooner or later. "Ha ha."
But evidently this Sam Taubenseel, whoever or whatever he was, had dropped out of Herman's universe, such as it was.
"Come on, now, it can't be important," said Hendrick the Shmendrick.
"No, it isn't, but old age is one long pain in the ass."
"Better long than short."
The Organization, like every modern organization, kept files on all its former employees. Some pension problem or legal issue might arise. The paper record -- known as "the paper trail" -- was too bulky to keep in its entirety. After a certain point the Organization coded the salient data and stored it in the mainframe, while the original documents were bundled into transfer files and warehoused in New Jersey.
It happened that the name of Sam Taubenseel came up during a meeting. It figured in a lawyer's notes as that of someone who might testify to a promise which had been made in the way of business -- and broken in the way of business. The name was not written very clearly--the lawyer was a young lawyer -- but he was fairly sure his note said "Sam Taubenseel." He asked Hendrick the Shmendrick how to get in touch with this Sam Taubenseel.
"Who?"
"Sam Taubenseel. His name is in my notes, as having witnessed the promise we allegedly made to Bergen Associates."
"Why should we want to get in touch with him, then?"
"We don't per se, but we certainly don't want Bergen Associates to get in touch with him. We can't embargo him if we can't find him."
"'Sam Taubenseel.' I'm not sure that...," said Hendrick. "Let me see that name. Have you got your original notes?"
The young lawyer rooted in his briefcase. "Here."
"It looks more like 'Sam Farben -- something,'" said Hendrick.
"Now that you mention it, it isn't so clear," admitted the lawyer. "It could be 'Farbenteil.'" He had not noticed this before.
"I don't know who Sam Farbenteil is either," said Hendrick helpfully.
They consulted the computer. To no one's real surprise, it failed to turn up either a Sam Farbenteil or a Sam Taubenseel.
"That's strange. The name 'Sam Farbenteil' is vaguely familiar," said Hendrick. "Not the syllables. The rhythm, kind of. Let me ask Dick Trewinning."
Dick Trewinning was not helpful. "I draw a blank," he said, "but Herman might know. He's retired now, but he's still pretty sharp. Mind like a steel trap. He might just remember."
Herman was down in Maryland, doing a little consulting in his retirement. "Well," he said, "I don't... it doesn't really ring a bell. Are you sure you have the name right?"
"It isn't terribly clear," said Dick. "The 'r' is clear, and the 'F' is sort of clear. Well, we must have it wrong, that's all. When I went to school, they taught cursive. God knows what they teach now."
"Tell you what," said Herman. "You fax me that page, and I'll see if it calls anything to mind.... Well," said Herman a few minutes later, "but the 'r' isn't all that clear, and I'm not sure about the 'a' and the 'm'. Yes, it could be an 'r', but I just...I don't have a clue. Sorry. I know it's important to the lawyers. How's Francie?"

II

One night, about four years after Sam Taubenseel got fired, a young man named Bill Perlzweig, who had nothing to do with the Principe Organization and in fact had never heard of it, woke up at 3:15 A.M. Twice recently he had awakened like this in the small hours with the impression -- it was hardly more than that, really -- of having heard a single piercing cry, like a desperate call; it was certainly in his head, and could have been his own cry; and yet it seemed distant, somehow. Tonight was somewhat different. He had been dreaming, a curiously vivid dream, and for all of twenty seconds after he woke up, he remembered it, and then it left him, as if it had soaked into the pillow like sweat. But this time one detail remained behind: a name, "Sam Taubenseel." But who "Sam Taubenseel" was, or what he was doing in the dream -- all of that was clean gone.
Bill Perlzweig was a college senior and had enough on his plate. Somebody -- D. H. Lawrence or somebody -- had once written that your dream is like your wastebasket, by which he meant, Bill Perlzweig supposed, that its contents are mostly rubbish of no significance, among which are one or two items of great significance which you would prefer not to keep. Bill Perlzweig dismissed the dream and went back to sleep.
He had a singularly good memory and in the morning he remembered the incident.
The next night he had a similar dream, he awoke again in the early hours of the morning, and again the name "Sam Taubenseel" stayed with him.
He looked up the name in the telephone book for Manhattan, and for Brooklyn, and for the Bronx, and Staten Island, and Queens. There was an S. Tauber, and a Samuel Tarnowski, and a Schmelke Trauerstein. He devoted the evening to ingenious investigations, pretending to be a bright young telemarketer from an investment counseling firm, but it was clear: none of these were his Sam Taubenseel, whoever that might be.
What strange filament of memory had retained this name? he wondered. Was he blocking out some shameful experience ? Was a stranger, or a dead man, trying to communicate with him through some parapsychological or occult channel of the consciousness?
Bill Perlzweig could not afford a psychiatrist and did not want to go to the College Health Office and be laughed at. In any case, he was reasonably certain that if his inability to remember Sam Taubenseel -- the Sam Taubenseel behind the name "Sam Taubenseel" that he did remember -- was due to "repression" of some painful experience, the name would not have outlived his dream. It would have vanished with all the other details when he woke up. He did believe, however, that the mind retained much more of one's experiences than the conscious efforts of the mind could retrieve. And he had heard that hypnotism could, under certain circumstances, get at these smothered or mislaid after-images.
He had a friend, a psych major, who was dabbling in hypnotism, having wandered into an impressive demonstration in Carnegie Hall and having then bought several popularizations of the art. Bill Perlzweig went to his friend and asked if the friend could fish out the experiences at the end of this tendril of memory.
The would-be hypnotist tried and at length was able to record on paper an experience of Bill Perlzweig's youth some five years before. It was not a shameful experience; in fact, it turned out to be a rather pleasant one.
At that time, Bill had a summer job -- it was after his junior year in high school -- as a messenger or delivery boy for a job-printing company. One weekend he had been given a set of proofs to deliver to the apartment of a Mr. Sam Taubenseel in Westchester, on an emergency basis. He spent too long on the phone with his girlfriend and then had some trouble finding Mr. Taubenseel's apartment house and was late getting there. He was petrified that Mr. Taubenseel would have called the printers' office and reported the non-arrival of the important packet. And indeed Mr. Taubenseel had already done just that, but he took one look at the sweaty, anxious young face at his front door and heard the stumbling account of Bill's reasons for being late, and he rushed to his phone and called the printers' office again. He told them that it was all his own mistake, that he had not heard the doorbell; the messenger had therefore gone looking for the janitor and the janitor had let the messenger boy into the apartment as far as the foyer table) that he, Sam Taubenseel, had called to complain before looking at his own foyer table, where the package was in plain view. When Mr. Taubenseel hung up he smiled at young Bill Perlzweig and said, "Now, you've got to back me up on this." "Oh sir," said Bill Perlzweig, "that was wonderful. I'll never forget your kindness!" "Nonsense!" said Sam Taubenseel. "You did your best. I got the proofs, didn't I?" He then led Bill Perlzweig downstairs and over to Constantine's Restaurant and treated him to a large dish of ice cream with a great deal of chocolate syrup on it, and sent him on his way with ten uncovenanted dollars in his pocket.
On being recalled to normal consciousness, Bill Perlzweig said, "By God, that's right! That's who it was. That was the name. Sam Taubenseel! Did you get the address?"
"Yes," said the amateur hypnotist, "I even got the address." And he gave it to him.
The following Sunday, Bill Perlzweig went up to Westchester with a three-dollar Street Map and Guide in his pocket. There was, of course, no public transportation that would get him very close to the address--Westchester having progressed not at all in five years -- and he got a cab at the station. When he gave the address to the driver, the driver looked at him with a deadpan expression.
"What's the matter?" asked Bill Perlzweig.
"Nothin'," answered the driver. "Nothin's the matter."
It occurred to Bill Perlzweig that the address might be in some way notorious. He was young enough to want to assure the cab driver that he was not going to a whorehouse or a drug kingpin's headquarters or anything of that sort.
"None of my business," said the taxi driver. "Anyway, I don't know anything about that address. It's in a funny neighborhood. Gone down."
It was indeed a peculiar neighborhood, desolate; a few of the houses were abandoned, some of them with the window openings formally sealed with rusted sheetmetal. Two buildings were burnt out.
The taxicab inched along the street.
"This must be it," said the driver.
Bill Perlzweig cleared his throat. "Wait here." Then he added, "For God's sake, don't leave me."
"I wouldn't leave you," said the taxi driver. "You ain't paid me yet."
Bill Perlzweig mounted the steps of what had once been a town house, and approached the front door. It was the right house, the number 319 was still legible; but there was no sign of life. What he supposed was déjà vu now occurred: he remembered the trembling relief and apprehension he had felt when he belatedly found that number five years before.
Bill Perlzweig stood on the front steps and looked toward the cab, then looked toward the door. He tried the handle. It turned freely but was somehow disengaged from any lock.
He shoved the door. It rattled but held. He looked for a doorbell and found the little round recess where the button had been. There were two wires inside the recess. Bill Perlzweig took a pencil from his pocket and pushed the corroded copper ends of the wires together. There was no spark. He moistened his little finger and thrust it into the aperture. He received no shock. He banged on the door.
As he went down the steps toward the cab, a boy on a skateboard swerved by.
"Hey, kid," said Bill Perlzweig.
The boy executed an elaborate, rocking, curling stop.
"Anybody live here?"
The boy looked at him as if he were crazy. "Does it look like it? Nah!"
"When did they move?"
"I dunno, nobody there in my time." The boy must have been all of eleven years old.
Bill Perlzweig climbed back into the cab.
"That house," said the driver. "In the last stages. A house don't get that way overnight. Gotta be ten years. Fifteen years? Twenny years, that house is empty."
"It couldn't have been twenty years," began Bill Perlzweig faintly. "I --"
"Look up there."
Number 319 had long ago been broken up into apartments. The front windows had once been grand, but all except two were vacant, black, some of them cracked and reinforced with dirty adhesive tape; one of the two exceptions was closed with peeling plywood and had a graceful curve scorched into its Palladian lintel; and in the one the driver was pointing to, on the third floor, the glass was dusty but reflected the dying afternoon sky, so that Bill Perlzweig could not be sure of what he saw behind it. The curtains looked desiccated. They looked as if they had been slowly shredded by gravity. For some reason the word "cerements" came into his head. Actually, though, they looked like photomicrographs of brain tissue.
Yet behind that window, only five years before, he had met a cheerful, kind, vague, garrulous, baldheaded man who took him to a diner and asked him questions about his school work while he sat eating a vast dish of Dolly Madison vanilla ice cream drowned in chocolate sauce.
And as the chocolate odor, and the prattling voice, and the shine of the afternoon light on that tanned bald head came back to him, he saw something move behind the desiccated curtains: a face came very slowly into view: it was pale, and seemed to advance into the light timidly; it looked down at Bill Perlzweig intently, and Bill Perlzweig could see the gleam of a hairless scalp as the face looked down at him and lit with a gradual smile.
Bill Perlzweig hastily pulled his head back into the cab. "Here. Thanks," and he shoved a ten-dollar bill at the driver. "Is Constantine's still in business?"
"Closed Mondays. And the food is greasy, they use that heavy oil."
"This is Sunday." Bill Perlzweig climbed out of the cab and marched up the steps of Number 319. He thrust his pencil into the doorbell aperture and saw a tiny spark as he brought the wires together.