Sophie's Choice - William Styron [9]
One day, soon after he assumed command, the Weasel called me into his office. He had an oval, well-larded face and tiny, unfriendly, somewhat weasel-like eyes which it seemed impossible to me had gained the confidence of anyone so responsive to the nuances of physical presence as Thomas Wolfe. He beckoned me to sit down, and after uttering a few strained civilities came directly to the point, namely, my clear failure within his perspective to conform to certain aspects of the McGraw-Hill “profile.” It was the first time I had ever heard that word used other than as a description of the side view of a person’s face, and as the Weasel spoke, moving up to specifics, I grew increasingly puzzled over where I might have failed, since I was certain that good old Farrell had not spoken ill of me or my work. But it turned out that my errors were both sartorial and, tangentially at least, political.
“I notice that you don’t wear a hat,” the Weasel said.
“A hat?” I replied. “Why, no.” I had always been lukewarm about headgear, feeling only that hats had their place. Certainly, since leaving the Marine Corps two years before, I had never thought of hat-wearing as a compulsory matter. It was my democratic right to choose, and I had given the idea no further thought until this moment.
“Everyone at McGraw-Hill wears a hat,” the Weasel said.
“Everyone?” I replied.
“Everyone,” he said flatly.
And of course as I reflected on what he was saying, I realized that it was true: everyone did wear a hat. In the morning, in the evening and at lunchtime the elevators and hallways were bobbing seas of straws and felts, all perched on the uniformly sheared, closely cropped scalps of McGraw-Hill’s thousand regimented minions. This was at least true for men; for the women—mainly secretaries—it seemed to be optional. The Weasel’s assertion was, then, indisputably correct. What I had up until then failed to perceive, and was only at this moment perceiving, was that the wearing of hats was no mere fashion but, indeed, obligatory, as much a part of the McGraw-Hill costume as the button-down Arrow shirts and amply tailored Weber & Heilbroner flannel suits worn by everyone in the green tower, from the textbook salesmen to the anxiety-ridden editors of Solid Wastes Management. In my innocence I had not realized that I had been continually out of uniform, but even as I now grasped this fact I stirred with mingled resentment and hilarity, and did not know how to respond to the Weasel’s solemn insinuation. Quickly I found myself inquiring of the Weasel in tones as grim as his own, “May I ask in what other way I haven’t fitted the profile?”
“I cannot dictate your newspaper-reading habits, nor do I want to,” he said, “but it is not wise for a McGraw-Hill employee to be seen with a copy of the New York Post.” He paused. “This is simply advice for your own good. Needless to say, you can read anything you care to, on your own time and in privacy. It just does not look... seemly for McGraw-Hill editors to be reading radical publications at the office.”
“What should I be reading then?” It had been my lunchtime custom to go down to Forty-second Street and pick up the early afternoon edition of the Post along with a sandwich, both of which I would consume in my office during the hour allotted me. It was my only newspaper reading of the day. At the time I was not so much politically innocent as a political neuter, a castrato, and I read the Post not for its liberal editorials or for Max Lerner