When I go into a bank I get
frightened. The clerks frighten me; the
desks frighten me;the sight of
the money frightens me; everything frightens me.
The moment I pass
through the doors of a bank and attempt to do business there, I become an
irresponsible fool.
I knew this before, but
my salary had been raised to fifty dollars a month and I felt that the bank was
the only place for it.
So I walked unsteadily
in and looked round at the clerks with fear.
I had an idea that a person who was about to open an account must
necessarily consult the manager.
I went up to a place
marked “accountant”. The accountant was
a tall, cool devil. The very sight of
him frightened me. My voice sounded as
if it came from the grave.
“Can I see the manager?”
I said, and added solemnly, “alone.” I don’t
know why I said “alone”.
“Certainly,” said the
accountant, and brought him.
The manager was a calm,
serious man/ I held my fifty-six dollar, pressed together in a ball, in my
pocket.
“Are you the manager?”
I said. God knows I didn’t doubt it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can I see you,” I asked,
“alone?” I didn’t want to say
A big iron door stood
open at the side of the room.
“Good morning,” I said,
and walked into the safe.
“Come out,” said the
manager coldly, and showed me the other way.
I went up to the
accountant’s position and pushed the ball of money at him with a quick, sudden
movement as if I were doing a sort of trick.
My face was terribly
pale.
“Here,” I said, “put it
in my account.” The sound of my voice
seems to mean, “Let us do this painful thing while we feel that we want to do
it.”
He took the money and
gave it to another clerk.
He made me write the
sum on a bit of paper and sign my name in a book. I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank
seemed to swim before my eyes.
“Is it in the account?”
I asked in a hollow, shaking voice.
“It is,” said the
accountant.
“Then I want to draw a
cheque.”
My idea was to draw out
six dollars of it for present use. Someone gave me a cheque-book and someone
else began telling me how to write it out.
The people in the bank seemed to think that I was a man who owned
millions of dollars, but was not feeling very well. I wrote something on the cheque and pushed it
towards the clerk. He looked at it.
“What are you drawing
it all out again?” he asked in surprise.
Then I realized that I had written fifty-six dollars instead of six. I was
too upset to reason now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the
thing. All the clerks had stopped writing to look at me.
Bold and careless in my
misery, I made a decision.
“Yes, the whole thing.”
“You wish to draw your
money out of the bank?”
“Every cent of it.”
“Are you not going to
put any more in the account?” said the clerk, astonished.
“Never.”
A foolish hope came to
me that they might think something had insulted me while I was writing the
cheque and that I had changed my mind. I made a miserable attempt to look like
a man. With a fearfully quick temper.
The clerk prepared to
pay the money.
“How will you have it?”
he said.
“What?”
“How will you have it?”
“Oh-” –I understood his
meaning and answered without even trying to think— “in fifty-dollar notes.”
He gave me a fifty
dollar note.
“And the six?” he asked coldly.
“In six-dollar notes,” I said.
He gave me six dollars and I rushed
out.
As the big door swung behind me I heard
the sound of a roar of laughter that went up to the root of the bank. Since then I use a bank no more. I keep my
money in my pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.
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