Hang Those Who Talk

We’re doomed, her gaze said — even before she could give a literal voice to the bleak assessment of their prospects to her coworkers. When she could speak, she said: “They’re saying that it’s inevitable. That if we defend our allies in the region, it will escalate, we will get pulled in, Brice, and they…”

Who could have anticipated that on a backcountry road, an intercepted milk truck would touch off mass anxiety on such a massive scale; the whole world, really? Judging by the breathless, beady-eyed media coverage on every single radio, television and Internet channel, one would think the answer would be: Everyone, for it seemed that nobody speaking on the subject of “the new crisis” was at all surprised that things had taken such a rotten turn for all concerned.

So why was Rivqah Zingel finding herself unable to concentrate upon doing a careful read of her morning’s workload? Because it was a lie; plenty of people, outside of government or media jobs, were caught napping by the speed with which the illusion of world peace had been shattered, again. She worked for a firm with a federal contract, yet this crashed like an emotional high tide. Her coworkers, whom she had viewed as her friends, were vulnerable to the agita she was feeling.

Brice Cummins, the senior accountant, was in mid-bustle to get another big folder from the office when he noticed her expression. “What’s wrong?” he barked, not in an unfriendly way; it was just how he spoke in general, with great big booms of sound, no malice intended. “Did something happen? It’s not trouble with the family, I hope. Riv?”

“You’ve seen. You’ve heard. Now they’re saying, sanctions could lead to airstrikes." Her own voice sounded odd to her, cracking with emotion, yet somehow flatter than usual. "It’s those two horrible brothers, they’ve got a choke-hold on their entire —” She gasped for breath. “Talking about missiles now, air-raid sirens going off. I thought we lived through this already!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he said, and tried not to swear, under his breath. His wife had exacted a promise from him, in the form of a New Year’s resolution, to get his relaxed attitude towards profanity a bit under control, and it made an impact on his nerves to have to be so circumspect. “Yes, it’s the only thing everyone’s… look, this isn’t the time. Maybe we can talk about it at our break. Is that okay, or do you… ‘need a moment’ right now?”

A new morning at Wimond Accounting was, nominally, a good experience for her. Rivqah had felt out of place in her last firm, owing less to a deficit of skill than to an abundance of years lived — she shared a workroom with six others who were no older than her daughter, a recent college graduate. None of the kids there gave more than lip service to getting to know her much better, and most were fixated on reading their text messages when not engaged in actual work. She had finally decided to send out her resumes, and one interview got her that new position with Wimond, located in Baltimore, only forty miles from her home in the District of Columbia’s Georgetown.

“Morning, my fine-feathered friends,” Ayo Pretorius could be heard calling to them, out in the hallway as he approached the front door of the office. At age twenty-eight, he was the baby of the accounting department. He strode up to his much older coworkers and favored them with a bright smile, which faded upon contact with the gloom radiating from Rivqah. “At the risk of offending anyone: Who died?”

^^^^

Her answer, “Maybe all of us, pretty soon,” struck Brice as bizarre. Rivqah, he believed, was just not rattled easily; she had handled bureaucratic red tape, ailments, even a tempestuous adolescent at home, all with admirable poise, in the decade-plus he had worked alongside of her. She made it clear: it was the state of affairs in that African country and its implications for conflict on a global scale that had robbed her of her peace of mind. He didn’t expect Ayo to have much to offer in terms of advice — but by his own admission, Brice wasn’t good with emotional stuff, either, and he was near Ayo’s father’s age. Someone had to step up here.

He steered office conversations clear of the international incident at least two times before lunch. In due course, he glanced at his watch, and waved Rivqah and Ayo over to his desk. “I don’t know what your plans are for lunch,” he said in as casual a voice as he could feign, “but I want to show you guys this place I know. Just started going there. I’m buying. Come on.” Brice was the senior accountant. Rivqah wanted to voice an objection, but he reiterated with less casual warmth, “I think we need to do this, champs.” He was a sensible Nebraskan.

They went along with him on his invitation. Brice drove them there — he knew the place, and the way to it. Rivqah kept frowning, all the way there, but once Morandi’s Italian Pizzeria loomed large before them, Brice was all smiles, and Ayo joined in on the smiling. “Two points,” Brice said, as he was about to hold open the door for his colleagues. “No shop talk, and no world news. Let’s have a good meal and… well, you know.”

He had talked up the place to them before, but they had never dined with him there before. Brice could see how Rivqah was fighting her dread about what a pair of tyrannical siblings could do to drag the United States into yet another regional war overseas. Her concerns were not confined to a nephew serving in the Army; the country in question had enjoyed a lot of financial support from China, its neighbors had worked out similar business dealings with Russia, as the other major world powers paid attention without trying to stir the pot too much. “We can’t just ignore it,” she insisted.

Ayo was a great help to him, in trying to raise her spirits. “I’ve got friends who monitor this stuff online,” he said, “and we’re not getting the straight story. In fact, the brothers probably don’t even have the means to manufacture the type of weapons they’re claiming to have — biological things, you know, like viruses and things to cause crop failures. The truck was a giveaway. They’re full of it.”

“You kids and your hacking,” she said, with the first smile they had seen on her that day. “I trust you, Ayo, to figure this whole thing out. Maybe, you can hack us all a generous raise? I don’t ask for much — it’s not like they’re accountants. I mean, we could make this whole world crisis go away, with our arithmetical powers alone.” She gulped her root beer — no alcohol; their work day was not yet wrapped up — took a deep breath, and yawned.

“That’s the spirit,” Ayo said, before her expression made him laugh out loud. It turned out to be a great meal. Brice was pleased to see the calm it had seemed to produce in Rivqah. As they walked back to Brice’s car, she suggested that it would be a good idea for them to share their lunches more often, in the future. Ayo and Brice agreed.

Once they were back to Wimond, the young custodial worker who was tidying up the place asked them if they had heard the news: the brothers were said to be readying themselves to fight their neighbors. Nuclear powers would not be indifferent to the outcome of such a fight, and maybe, could not be persuaded to stay uninvolved in it. Things had gone, in a single lunch, from bad to worse.

^^^^

The world did not end before dinnertime, of course. Civilization persisted into the night, onto the Friday that followed. The unthinkable remained just that, a full weekend later. A full week after, Wimond’s fretful numbers crunchers still fretted, though the news remained glum, but… they were still alive, as was humanity. They paid bills, exercised and entertained and prayed. They did the possible.

Throughout it all, Brice maintained an almost willful disdain for bad news, to the point that Ayo and Rivqah were beginning to fret about his well-being. He couldn’t ignore events forever, could he? Or was he indifferent to them, in the way of middle managers, through the ages, who did what the company asked of them? Finally Ayo, an easygoing Cincinnati native, walked into Brice’s office, hearing the alarmed words of Brice’s wife issuing from the phone, and Brice’s soothing responses. Ayo thought he had it worked out: Brice was acting as a leader!

Other men and women led this world, in trying to defuse the crisis in Africa. Three accountants, working to track expenditures for Uncle Sam from their office in Maryland, could neither offer olive branches of diplomacy nor rattle sabers of military might, but they could, and they did, follow the news — a bit more sparingly, in Rivqah’s case— and talk over their apprehensions with the other people in their lives: their spouses, children, Rivqah’s rabbi. They could consult history books, old movies, and the eldest people they knew who were still living, who told them, We danced to this same tune when we were your age, and we’re still here.

Brice, Rivqah and Ayo continued to share their lunches, and, on Friday nights, to hit happy hour at a nearby tavern, the Forelock. “You know, you remind me of Shakespeare,” Ayo said, to his supervisor’s bafflement. Referring to his new girlfriend, he clarified: “Ariane’s been going out for more dramatic roles, and I’m reading her books on the Bard. There’s this bit in Macbeth that goes, ‘Hang those that talk of fear’, because he’s not trying to hear anything like a cowardly noise out of anyone. Then he says, ‘Give me mine armor.’ Got to look this world in the eye, and keep moving forward. That’s what you’re doing for Rivqah and me. I just want to say, I really appreciate that. You’re the O.G. here, Brice.”

“I don’t know what you just said,” claimed Brice, none too convincingly, as the third member of their party staggered from the ladies’ room back to the table where they sat. "Just want the office to focus on getting through each day with a minimum of heartburn." Ayo did not appear convinced by this.

Rivqah was definitely, as the expression goes, feeling no pain, clutching her moist cocktail glass: “I just know what I can do, what I can’t do, and the difference between them. Isn’t that how that’s supposed to go, Ayo?” She winked at her friends and “confided”, “I’ve been a changed woman, ever since my first gin rickey with lime. Damn it, I should call Karla” — referring to her daughter — “to see if she was right. She thinks Luis is going to propose! It looks like I might have to take that vacation, after all.”

Ayo knew the worm had begun to turn at last when, one night as Brice locked up the office and wished them a pleasant evening, Rivqah stopped to remark that the crisis was over a month old. Ayo promised to remind her when it was two months old, then three. She laughed, but he was as good as his promise. It gave him a good feeling to know that he and Brice had been able to soothe their friend’s fears, during such a plutonian time for the world.

It didn’t hurt that each night, after Ayo had bid each of them good-night, he repaired to his home to log onto a discussion board to discuss world events. Someone there reached out to him, to let him know that Rivqah could ‘rest assured’ that everything was being done to defuse the crisis, that tyrannical brothers abroad would continue to experience frustration — and failure. He couldn’t help but wish that he could let Brice and Rivqah in on his secret.

© Eric Wolf 2022.