The Last Gentleman

was heavy and chunky, a pleasant thing. It was German.
    It must be admitted that although he prided himself on his scientific outlook and set great store by precision instruments like microscopes and chemical balances, he couldn’t help attributing magical properties to the telescope. It had to do with its being German, with fabled German craftsmen, gnomic slow-handed old men in the Harz Mountains. These lenses did not transmit light merely. They penetrated to the heart of things.
    The conviction grew upon him that his very life would be changed if he owned the telescope.
    This morning he emerged from the control room under Macy’s into the thundering morning twilight of Seventh Avenue. All at once he had to own the telescope. Not another hour must pass without it. As if his life depended on it, he plunged underground again, sat on the edge of the subway seat drumming his fingers on his knees, emerged at Columbus Circle, hopped around to the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company, withdrew the balance of his inheritance and soil-bank money, a sum of $2,008.35, stuffed the money into his coat pocket, skimmed back around the Circle and whisked into the optical store, but not before casting a single fearful glance at the window. Ah, there it was, a low-down mean mortar of an instrument, a somehow military thing. Another five minutes and the telescope plopped like a walnut into its case, a kind of hatbox of blue leather which exhaled an intricate German smell and was strapped, bradded, buckled, and bulged out in front like a toilet bowl, a wicked unlovely and purely useful thing. The interior of the case was molded into irregular recesses like hollow viscera and lined in chamois and fitted with a little rack containing prisms, eyepieces, sun plate, clock drive, and a tiny camera of satiny metal which lay invested in the chamois like a platinum clip. He turned the neck of the telescope, which was knurled and calibrated with a black spiderlash in the nickel: it turned like a gear socketed in oil.
    Sweating like a field hand, the engineer climbed the steps of the Y.M.C.A. with his prize, doing his best to look like a young Christian come to bowl. In his room, he sat at his desk drumming his fingers on the varnished metal and presently jumped up and undid the straps with trembling fingers. But suddenly the corner of his eye was filled with shooting sparks and he felt dizzy. Falling upon his narrow bed, he lay perfectly still for some minutes. He felt his forehead; it was cold and greasy with sweat. Ah, I’ve forgotten to eat again, he thought. Jumping up again, he threw a few punches: his arm, developed by five years’ work on the Y.M.C.A. sandbag, felt as strong as ever. When he lay down again he was seized by a rigor, shook for a full minute, and fell fast asleep. When he awoke, he felt refreshed but weak and hungry. It was growing late. The light in the window was yellow and from the park there drifted up the four-o’clock sound of sparrows.
    After washing his face in cold water, he clamped the telescope to the window jamb, selected a terrestrial eyepiece, and screwed it in place. He focused on a building clear across the park and beyond Fifth Avenue. There sprang into view a disc of brickwork perhaps eight feet in diameter. Now stripping to his shorts, he drew up a chair, made himself comfortable, and gazed another five minutes at the bricks. He slapped his leg. It was as he had hoped. Not only were the bricks seen as if they were ten feet away; they were better than that. It was better than having the bricks there before him. They gained in value. Every grain and crack and excrescence became available. Beyond any doubt, he said to himself, this proves that bricks, as well as other things, are not as accessible as they used to be. Special measures were needed to recover them.
    The telescope recovered them.
    7 .
    He dressed and paid his last visit to Dr. Gamow, his psychoanalyst.
    For the thousandth time he took his seat in a reclining chair that had been purposely set in a position that was neither up nor down, neither quite faced the doctor nor faced away. Dr. Gamow, who had had it specially designed and constructed, called it his “ambiguous” chair. He learned a great deal about a patient from the way he sat in the chair. Some would walk in and sit straight up, swivel around to face the doctor across his desk like a client consulting a lawyer. Others would stretch out and swivel away to face