Back Then by Anne Bernays

Author:Anne Bernays
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Discovery #2, 1953.

Herb was a nonstop talker—about almost anything; he had read everything, thoroughly digesting the lot. He had opinions the way beer has fizz. He would get an idea into his head and nothing, no evidence or protestation, could dislodge it. Once he had decided that I hated my father, that was it. “I know you hate your father, but . . .”

Each time you visited Herb in his ample office with its grand desk and stylish auxiliary furnishings, you knew you would be there at least an hour, mostly listening as wit and brilliance frothed off his tongue. He had stories (some suggesting that after his stint as an army sergeant he had operated a black market of spare tank and aircraft parts), tales of youthful indiscretions, gossip about people you knew and people whom you’d only heard of. He could be passionate and dismissive at the same time. Herb kept several white shirts in the office because he sweated so profusely that he had to keep changing them. If you were there, he’d do it right in front of you, flashing that swollen chest. Whenever his glasses needed cleaning, he would ring for his secretary, who, answering his summons, took the specs from his outstretched hand without his looking at her, and returned with them minutes later, washed, dried, and polished.

After a visit to Herb’s office I would walk, somewhat giddily—for he had an effect on those who loved him of strong drink on an empty stomach—down the hallway of the twenty-seventh floor, trying but unable to recall any but the tiniest scraps of the conversation just over. And this happened to others who confessed to the same thing: “What the hell did Herb say?” Some thought of him as a hugely warm and generous man; other saw him as a kind of devil, a tyrant, and a bully.

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