When Igor entered Boris Panofsky’s office, it felt more like he was descending to a crypt than climbing to the pinnacle of a publishing empire. The famous shelves of signed first editions stood in a gloom. The only light came from a banker’s lamp on Panofsky’s desk. The great publisher sat beyond the lamp’s reach, shirt sleeves rolled past the elbows, back hunched so he teetered over the papers scattered across the desk. When Igor shuffled closer, he saw that the papers were covered in numbers. He had worked as Mr. Panofsky’s personal assistant for nearly twenty-five years and never once had he seen Mr. Panofsky pore over such papers. Usually, Mr. Panofsky set before himself papers filled with words: large words, grandiose words, poetic words, wise words, words of every sort imaginable. It saddened Igor to see the great man reduced to bean-counting. But what choice did the man have? Only yesterday, he had declared that there was nothing for it but to rationalize (itself an interesting word) and so, straightening his bow tie and swilling a shot of single malt whiskey, Mr. Panofsky made the long walk to the accounting department and fired the bookkeeper.
“This is beneath me,” the old man muttered.
Igor shuffled to the faux-antique globe and cracked it open. He poured out three fingers of fifteen year old Balvenie and set the glass within the circle of light on his boss’s desk. The amber liquid refracted the light in rich and complex ways, no doubt mirroring the rich and complex effect it would have on Mr. Panofsky’s palette.
“Thank you, Igor.”
Boris took up the glass and leaned back in his pleather chair. He waved to the shelves which rose to the ceiling, then he waved to the palisades of books that ringed his desk.
“They tell me, Igor, that these are obsolete.”
The old man’s eyes grew moist. He drained the glass and asked for another. As Igor returned to the globe, the old man muttered something about those damned ebooks. “Everything’s changing so fast. A global swill bucket. A race to the bottom. There was a time, Igor—and you’ve been with me long enough to remember it—there was a time when publishing was an esteemed enterprise. Now, any two-bit hack with a blog can publish something, even if it IS a load of crap.”
Igor set a fresh glass of Scotch by the edge of the desk and slid it to his boss. As Boris took up the glass, he pointed emphatically to the shelves closest to Igor.
“Take something.”
Igor hesitated, knowing their value to the old man.
“Go ahead. Hell, I never read any of ‘em anyways. Too damned precious.”
Igor found a signed first edition of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It was the biggest heaviest book he’d ever held. He opened the book to the inside cover and read the inscription:
My dear friend Bores,
All the best, DFW
Igor wondered if his boss had noticed the spelling mistake.
“There was a time…” Boris let his voice get loud, as was his habit after two drinks. “There was a time, my friend, when the book was a great thing. A source of strength. A symbol of empowerment. For the little people. A rallying cry. A reason to hope. Now, every Tom, Dick and fricken Mary wants to be empowered. Water down a perfectly good symbol. Drink your Scotch neat, my friend. Drink your Scotch neat.” Boris raised his glass, but it was empty. He slammed the glass onto his desk and demanded another.
Igor left his new book on the corner of the desk and returned to the globe. With a third glass of Scotch in hand, Boris waved Igor around to his side of the desk.
“Come, let’s sing one of the old songs.” Boris wanted to sing Waltzing Matilda but Igor didn’t know that one. For him, the old songs were the folk songs of his native Romania. He had no idea who this Matilda was, but he was certain she was nothing compared to his Ivana.
After a couple verses, Waltzing Matilda came to a crashing halt. Boris had slammed his glass onto the desk and some of his beloved Scotch splashed onto the sheets of numbers. The old man scrambled to save his Scotch, holding the papers in a “U” above his open mouth and draining the amber fluid down his gullet. He smiled and declared that it’s a sin to waste good Scotch, then laid out the sheets to dry on his desk.
“You know, Igor,” the old man said, “I didn’t call you in so you could serve me Scotch all evening.”
“Of course not.” Igor picked up the copy of Infinite Jest. “You called me in to give me this.”
“Er, well, whatever.” Boris gave a lopsided smile. “Igor, I called you in to tell you this: you’re fired.”
The two men stared at one another across the desk, Boris with his tall frame and haughty eyebrows, Igor with his dwarfish mien and hunched back. Igor thought of Ivana. Maybe she would leave him if he could no longer afford to buy her nice gifts. Who would bother with a man like him if he couldn’t also offer gifts? Igor wondered, too, at the abruptness of the announcement. Boris hadn’t couched his words in pleasant euphemisms. Instead, he had drunk himself to a place of courage. He had used the Scotch as a surrogate to say for him the words he was too cowardly to say for himself. Igor felt his panic and bewilderment transform into rage.
“Twenty-five years!” he shouted.
“Actually twenty-four and three quarters.”
“A long time. Half my life. I’ve given half my life to you and your publishing house.”
“Now Igor.”
“Don’t you ‘now Igor’ me.”
Igor’s voice rose to a scream. He felt the blood rush hot to his cheeks. He felt his heart thump loud in his chest. An energy seized his limbs and moved him like a man possessed. He dashed around the desk holding the great book high above his head. Boris tried to get up from his chair but stumbled for all the Scotch in his veins. Igor drew down the book upon the old man’s head and was amazed at how the body went limp and toppled onto the desk. The cheek lay flat against the scattered pages and the comatose eyes stared at the shelves of books.
“You bastard!” Igor screamed. Again, he slammed the book against the old man’s head, and again, and again, so many times he lost count. Blood flowed from under the head, clotting the hair and obscuring all the old man’s precious numbers. Igor took up his signed first edition of Infinite Jest even though it was spattered with blood. Panofsky was right. The old books were a source of empowerment. Feeling strong, Igor ran shuffling with his book into the night.