...
'I'm from the
Timesaving Bank. Permit me to introduce myself: Agent No. XYQ/384/b. We hear
you wish to open an account with us.'
'That's news to me,' said Mr Figaro. 'To be honest, I didn't even know
such a bank existed.'
'Well, you know now,' the agent said crisply. He consulted his little
grey notebook. 'Your name is Figaro, isn't it?'
'Correct,' said Mr Figaro. 'That's me.'
'Then I've come to the right address,' said the man in grey, shutting
his notebook with a snap. 'You're on our list of applicants.'
'How come?' asked Mr Figaro, who was still at a loss.
'It's like this, my dear sir,' said the man in grey. 'You're wasting
your life cutting hair, lathering faces and swapping idle chitchat. When
you're dead, it'll be as if you'd never existed. If you only had the time to
lead the right kind of life, you'd be quite a different person. Time is all
you need, right?'
'That's just what I was thinking a moment ago,' mumbled Mr Figaro, and
he shivered because it was getting colder and colder in spite of the door
being shut.
'You see!' said the man in grey, puffing contentedly at his small
cigar. 'You need more time, but how are you going to find it? By saving it,
of course. You, Mr Figaro, are wasting time in a totally irresponsible way.
Let me prove it to you by simple arithmetic. There are sixty seconds in a
minute and sixty minutes in an hour - are you with me so far?'
'Of course,' said Mr Figaro.
Agent No. XY Q/384/b produced a piece of grey chalk and scrawled some
figures on the mirror.
'Sixty times sixty is three thousand six hundred, which makes three
thousand six hundred seconds in an hour. There are twenty-four hours in a
day, so multiply three thousand six hundred by twenty-four to find the
number of seconds in a day and you arrive at a figure of eighty-six thousand
four hundred. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, as you
know, which makes thirty-one million five hundred and thirty-six thousand
seconds in a year, or three hundred and fifteen million three hundred and
sixty thousand seconds in ten years. How long do you reckon you'll live, Mr
Figaro?'
'Well,' stammered Mr Figaro, thoroughly disconcerted by now, 'I hope to
live to seventy or eighty, God willing.'
'Very well,' pursued the man in grey. 'Let's call it seventy, to be on
the safe side. Multiply three hundred and fifteen million three hundred and
sixty thousand by seven and you get a grand total of two billion two hundred
and seven million five hundred and twenty thousand seconds.' He chalked this
figure up on the mirror in outsize numerals -- 2,207,520,000 -- and
underlined it several times. 'That, Mr Figaro, is the extent of the capital
at your disposal.'
Mr Figaro gulped and wiped his brow, feeling quite dizzy. He'd never
realized how rich he was.
'Yes,' said the agent, nodding and puffing at his small grey cigar,
'it's an impressive figure, isn't it? But let's continue. How old are you
now, Mr Figaro?'
'Forty-two,' the barber mumbled. He suddenly felt guilty, as if he'd
committed a fraud of some kind.
'And how long do you sleep at night, on average?' 'Around eight hours,'
Mr Figaro admitted. The agent did some lightning calculations. The squeak of
his chalk as it raced across the mirror set Mr Figaro's teeth on edge.
'Forty-two years at eight hours a night makes four hundred and
forty-one million five hundred and four thousand seconds . . . We'll have to
write that off, I'm afraid. How much of the day do you devote to work, Mr
Figaro?'
'Another eight hours or so,' Mr Figaro said, apologetically.
'Then we'll have to write off the same amount again,' the agent pursued
relentlessly. 'You also spend a certain proportion of the day eating. How
many hours would you say, counting all meals?'
'I don't exactly know,* Mr Figaro said nervously. 'Two hours, maybe.'
'That sounds on the low side to me,' said the agent, 'but assuming it's
correct we get a figure of one hundred and ten million three hundred and
seventy-six thousand seconds in forty-two years. To continue: you live alone
with your elderly mother, as we know. You spend a good hour with the old
woman every day, that's to say, you sit and talk to her although she's so
deaf she can scarcely hear a word. That counts as more time wasted -
fifty-five million one hundred and eighty-eight thousand seconds, to be
precise. You also keep a budgerigar, a needless extravagance whose demands
on your time amount to fifteen minutes a day, or thirteen million seven
hundred and ninety-seven thousand seconds in forty-two years.'
'B-but -' Mr Figaro broke in, imploringly. 'Don't interrupt!' snapped
the agent, his chalk racing faster and faster across the mirror. 'Your
mother's arthritic as well as deaf, so you have to do most of the housework.
You go shopping, clean shoes and perform other chores of a similar nature.
How much time does that consume daily?' 'An hour, maybe, but -'
'So you've already squandered another fifty-five million one hundred
and eighty-eight thousand seconds, Mr Figaro. We also know you go to the
cinema once a week, sing with a social club once a week, go drinking twice a
week, and spend
the rest of your evenings reading or gossiping with friends. In short,
you devote some three hours a day to useless pastimes that have lost you
another one hundred and sixty-five million five hundred and sixty-four
thousand seconds.' The agent broke off. 'What's the matter, Mr Figaro,
aren't you feeling well?'
'No,' said the barber,'- yes, I mean. Please excuse me . ..' 'I'm
almost through,' said the agent. 'First, though, we must touch on a rather
personal aspect of your life - your little secret, if you know what I mean.'
Mr Figaro was so cold that his teeth had started to chatter.
'So you know about that, too?' he muttered feebly. 'I didn't think
anyone knew except me and Miss Daria -'
'There's no room for secrets in the world of today,' his inquisitor
broke in. 'Look at the matter rationally and realistically Mr Figaro, and
answer me one thing: Do you plan to marry Miss Daria?'
'No-no,' said Mr Figaro, 'I couldn't do that...' 'Quite so,' said the
man in grey. 'Being paralysed from the waist down, she'll have to spend the
rest of her life in a wheelchair, yet you visit her every day for half an
hour and take her flowers. Why?'
'She's always so pleased to see me,' Mr Figaro replied, close to tears.
'But looked at objectively, from your own point of view,' said the
agent, 'it's time wasted - twenty-seven million five hundred and ninety-four
thousand seconds of it, to date. Furthermore, if we allow for your habit of
sitting at the window for a quarter of an hour every night, musing on the
day's events, we have to write off yet another thirteen million seven
hundred and ninety-seven thousand seconds. Very well, let's see how much
time that makes in all.'
He drew a line under the long column of figures and added them up with
the rapidity of a computer.
The sum on the mirror now looked like this:
Sleep
441,504,000
seconds
Work
441,504,000
do.
Meals
110,376,000
do.
Mother
55,188,000
do.
Budgerigar
13,797,000
do.
Shopping, etc.
55,188,000
do.
Friends, social club, etc.
165,564,000
do.
Miss Daria
27,594,000
do.
Daydreaming
13,797,000
do.
Grand Total 1,324,512,000 seconds
'And that figure,' said the man in grey, rapping the mirror with his
chalk so sharply that it sounded like a burst of machine-gun fire, '- that
figure represents the time you've wasted up to now. What do you say to that,
Mr Figaro?'
Mr Figaro said nothing. He slumped into a chair in the corner of the
shop and mopped his brow with a handkerchief, sweating hard despite the icy
atmosphere.
The man in grey nodded gravely. 'Yes, you're quite right, my dear sir,
you've used up more than half of your original capital. Now let's see how
much that leaves of your forty-two years. One year is thirty-one million
five hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds, and that, multiplied by
forty-two, comes to one billion three hundred and twenty-four million five
hundred and twelve thousand seconds.'
Beneath the previous total he wrote:
Total time available Time lost to date
1,324,512,000 seconds 1,324,512,000 do.
Balance 0,000,000,000 seconds
Then he pocketed his chalk and waited for the sight of all the zeros to
take effect, which they did.
'So that's all my life amounts to,' thought Mr Figaro,
absolutely shattered. He was so impressed by the elaborate sum, which
had come out perfectly, that he was ready to accept whatever advice the
stranger had to offer. It was one of the tricks the men in grey used to dupe
prospective customers.
Agent No. XYQ/384/b broke the silence. 'Can you really afford to go on
like this?' he said blandly. 'Wouldn't you prefer to start saving right
away, Mr Figaro?' Mr Figaro nodded mutely, blue-lipped with cold. 'For
example,' came the agent's grey voice in his ear, 'if you'd started saving
even one hour a day twenty years ago, you'd now have a credit balance of
twenty-six million two hundred and eighty thousand seconds. Two hours a day
would have saved you twice that amount, of course, or fifty-two million five
hundred and sixty thousand. And I ask you, Mr Figaro, what are two measly
little hours in comparison with a sum of that magnitude?'
'Nothing!' cried Mr Figaro. 'A mere flea bite!' 'I'm glad you agree,'
the agent said smoothly. 'And if we calculate how much you could have saved
that way after another twenty years, we arrive at the handsome figure of one
hundred and five million one hundred and twenty thousand seconds. And the
whole of that capital, Mr Figaro, would have been freely available to you at
the age of sixty-two!' 'F-fantastic!' stammered Mr Figaro, wide-eyed with
awe. 'But that's not all,' the agent pursued. 'The best is yet to come. The
Timesaving Bank not only takes care of the time you save, it pays you
interest on it as well. In other words, you end up with more than you put
in.'
'How much more?' Mr Figaro asked breathlessly. 'That's up to you,' the
agent told him. 'It depends how much time you save and how long you leave it
on deposit with us.'
'Leave it on deposit?' said Mr Figaro. 'How do you mean?' 'It's quite
simple. If you don't withdraw the time you save for five years, we credit
you with the same amount again.
Your savings double every five years, do you follow? They're worth four
times as much after ten years, eight times as much after fifteen, and so on.
Say you'd started saving a mere two hours a day twenty years ago: by your
sixty-second birthday, or after forty years in all, you'd have had two
hundred and fifty-six times as much in the bank as you originally put in.
That would mean a credit balance of twenty-six billion nine hundred and ten
million seven hundred and twenty thousand seconds.'
And the agent produced his chalk again and wrote the figure on the
mirror: 26,910,720,000.
'You can see for yourself, Mr Figaro,' he went on, smiling thinly for
the first time. 'You'd have accumulated over ten times your entire life
span, just by saving a couple of hours a day for forty years. If that's not
a paying proposition, I don't know what is.'
'You're right,' Mr Figaro said wearily, 'it certainly is. What a fool I
was not to start saving time years ago! It didn't dawn on me till now, and I
have to admit I'm appalled.'
'No need to be,' the man in grey said soothingly,'- none at all. It's
never too late to save time. You can start today, if you want to.'
'Of course I want to!' exclaimed Mr Figaro. 'What do I have to do?'
The agent raised his eyebrows. 'Surely you know how to save time, my
dear sir? Work faster, for instance, and stick to essentials. Spend only
fifteen minutes on each customer, instead of the usual half-hour, and avoid
time-wasting conversations. Reduce the hour you spend with your mother by
half. Better still, put her in a nice, cheap old folks' home, where someone
else can look after her - that'll save you a whole hour a day. Get rid of
that useless budgerigar. See Miss Daria once every two weeks, if at all.
Give up your fifteen-minute review of the day's events. Above all, don't
squander so much of your precious time on singing, reading
and hobnobbing with your so-called friends. Incidentally, I'd also
advise you to hang a really accurate clock on the wall so you can time your
apprentice to the nearest minute.'
'Fine,' said Mr Figaro. 'I can manage all that, but what about the time
I save? Do I have to pay it in, and if so where, or should I keep it
somewhere safe till you collect it? How does the system operate?'
The man in grey gave another thin-lipped smile. 'Don't worry, we'll
take care of that. Rest assured, we won't mislay a single second of the time
you save. You'll find you haven't any left over.'
'All right,' Mr Figaro said dazedly, 'I'll take your word for it.'
'You can do so with complete confidence, my dear sir.' The agent rose
to his feet. 'And now, permit me to welcome you to the ranks of the great
timesaving movement. You're a truly modern and progressive member of the
community, Mr Figaro. 1 congratulate you.' So saying, he picked up his hat
and briefcase.
'One moment,' said Mr Figaro. 'Shouldn't there be some form of
contract? Oughtn't I to sign something? Don't I get a policy of some kind?'
Agent No. XY Q/384/b, who had already reached the door, turned and
regarded Mr Pigaro with faint annoyance. 'What on earth for?' he demanded.
'Timesaving can't be compared with any other kind of saving - it calls for
absolute trust on both sides. Your word is good enough for us, especially as
you can't go back on it. We'll take care of your savings, though how much
you save is entirely up to you - we never bring pressure to bear on our
customers. Good day, Mr Figaro.'
On that note, the agent climbed into his smart grey car and purred off.
Mr Figaro gazed after him, kneading his brow. Although he was gradually
becoming warmer again, he felt sick and
wretched. The air still reeked of smoke from the agent's cigar, a dense
blue haze that was slow to disperse.
Not till the smoke had finally gone did Mr Figaro begin to feel better.
But as it faded, so did the figures chalked up on the mirror, and by the
time they had vanished altogether Mr Figaro's recollection of his visitor
had vanished too. He forgot the man in grey but not his new resolution,
which he believed to be his alone. The determination to save time now so as
to be able to begin a new life sometime in the future had embedded itself in
his soul like a poisoned arrow.
...
