The funeral parlor was calculatedly quiet. Everywhere one could sense the
invisible hand of a Murnau or a Fritz Lang; the thick carpetry, the organ,
the chiaroscuro produced by the lighting, all contributed to an eeriness,
a distortion of perspective, a deliberate reverential hush. Even the plants
lining the walls were too mannerly, as if afraid to be conspicuous in their
vitality.
The director frowned as Wolf hurried in, hung up his ragged jacket, and
crossed the antechamber to the recess in which the switchboard was situated.
The old man sat down in front of the array of lights, buttons, and wires,
affixing the headset over his ears.
The director slid out from behind his polished teak desk, left his office
and traversed the gloomy entrance foyer, stopping on the other side of the
reception partition. He glared down at Wolf.
"You're late again."
Wolf nodded.
"This makes the third time this month."
He received no answer. His employee sat with owered head and drooping shoulders.
"I should think," the director resumed, "that since we only
use you two nights a week, it would be easy for you to arrange your affairs
so as to be punctual!"
Again, Wolf nodded glumly.
"I'll speak plainly, Wolf. You are being tolerated on sufferance.
Any irregularity whatsoever will result in termination of employment. This
is your last chance."
Pivoting on his heel, the director stepped daintily across the dark inlaid
marble floor, reentered his office long enough to wrap a cashmere scarf
about his neck and don a grey topcoat with fur collar, then departed for
the night, carefully closing the thick walnut door behind him.
His own breath was not the only scent of mortality tht disturbed Wolf.
Decay pervaded his life.
It rose from the uncollected garbage strewn in the unlit corners of the
stairwell he climbed each night to reach his fifth-floor apartment.
Even in the funeral parlor, headily scented with incense, his sensitive
nose detected the putrescence of decomposing flesh.
Corpses terriied him. Though they kept the bodies in the basement, where
he never ventured, he imagined their sightless eyes staring upward, penetrating
the floorboards, prickling at the soles of his feet, lewdly ogling his back
and legs...
At midnight, he patched through a call to the embalmer from that man's
wife. He hated plugging into the hole connecting the phone with the preparation
room. He imagined the formaldehyde wafting up the wires, seeping out of
the socket into his chamber.
A few minutes later, the embalmer hurried into the entranceway with his
coat on. Explaining that he had a family emergency, he told Wolf to listen
for the back bell. There was a hearse scheduled to arrive.
Wolf pretested that his job had nothing to do with hearses, but the embalmer
left without paying any attention.
Wolf was alone in the mortuary.
Time crept by, and the shadows kept pace. Huddled in his cubicle, Wolf
sharnk from every night noise and wished the phone would ring to take his
mind off the dreadful solitude.
He began to nod off. At 1:45, the back bell clamored, startling him out
of an uneasy sleep. Heart pounding, he leapt to his feet.
UPDATE, APRIL 2001. Good news. According to Marvin Kaye, the original book in which this story appeared
is back in print.
Says Marvin: "The Possession of Immanuel Wolf and Other Improbable
Tales," originally published by Doubleday has been reissued
by Wildside Press. The story is longer by several thousand words
from the version that appeared in my anthology, Brother
Theodore's Chamber of Horrors.
"The arrangement between Theodore and I was that he would retain total control of all film rights, but all literary rights were mine. The story
should be credited "by Marvin Kaye (with Brother Theodore)."
The details of the collaboration were these: Theodore wanted to film the story with him playing the lead. When I asked him if I could print his Foodism lecture in my anthology, at first he agreed, but then changed his mind and asked me to please write this idea he had in mind. He outlined some of the plot and gave me a few books to read as research, most importantly, The Mind of Adolph Hitler, and a lengthy excerpt from The Morning of the Magicians. I developed the plot and did all the writing. When the draft was done, Theodore added a number of Wolf's most dramatic remarks, which were inserted into the last section of the story, all of them in CAPITAL LETTERS, so it is easy to tell which things were directly from Theodore..."