One of the people who the MWL knew well was a local banker whose name was Samuel Leumis the third. He was a small, thin, angular black man with a mat of steel grey hair.
Samuel Leumis worked in the neighborhood office of a branch of one of the major banks in the city. He had worked his way up through the hierarchy of assistant tellers and clerk tellers and counting tellers to become assistant manager of the branch. When they were about to promote him to manager, he asked to be moved out of the "cash area" into "personnel and supplies."
His decision puzzled bank officials. He seemed to love to handle money and he was extraordinarily competent. Everything about him had led people to believe that he would end up in a very high position in the industry. "Personnel and supplies" was a career path that dead ended chest high against the back door of the branch office. Because they were short of blacks in this district they accommodated him, but they put a little mark in his record next to a pregnant empty space signifying some sort of a betrayal.
He was part of a circle which met irregularly on Saturdays. In addition to the banker, it included Arthur Davis, who painted, and Willard Smuth, who wrote short things of a variety of sorts, and the MWL, who listened better than most people talked.
Arthur Davis lived in a barter economy in which money had the same place as brandy to reformed alcoholics. Necessity, pride and theology had led him to renounce it, but its appeal was enduring and irrationally strong.
Willard Smuth's conception of money had been damaged by a childhood case of poverty and was deformed. He was the kind of writer who sold what he wrote by the word, and this had led him to count and value money according to the number of words it was worth. A dollar was worth ten words, any ten words. He dealt with larger sums in terms of sentences and pages. He ate page meals when he could afford them, and smoked three sentence cigars when he was flush. He confused libraries with banks, and had a very hard time balancing his checkbook which he would read and reread, as if it were a novella.
The MWL found money to be emotionally unattractive, like a woman who was beautiful on the outside but empty and repulsive inside, whom one loved because she made other men jealous and envious.
But it was Samuel Leumis the third who terrorized the circle with his cynical attitude towards money and his absolute contempt for banks. The rest of the circle believed that this cynicism was born of information he was privy to because he worked in a bank. He kept that belief alive by periodically denying, without being asked, that the banks were collectively hatching a scheme on everyone's hard earned money.
Actually, part of this contempt came from a secret fear he had. He kept most of his savings on deposit in a different bank than the one he worked for, because this other bank gave better interest, and had free checking for five hundred dollars less than his employer. The bank for which he worked had circulated an ambiguous memo on the matter of "fraternizing and loyalty" which he read as a personal warning. He disregarded it, but he was anxious that his rationality would be discovered and that another mark would be placed next to some other pregnant, open space in his record.
Except for his spontaneous denials, he stayed away from the topic of money. Arthur Davis, however, raised it frequently. Once after Willard reported that his cat had died, Arthur said," Money makes a good pet. It's quiet and it doesn't have to be walked. It doesn't need to be fed often, and it doesn't require a license."
Samuel Leumis dissented. "Money is always in heat," he responded, "besides the only dollar bill with a pedigree is a counterfeit." He put the lid on the topic, but the MWL noticed everyone feeling around for their wallets.
Another time, apropos nothing at all, and merely to get a rise out of the banker, Arthur offered, that "he knew a man who insisted that every bill over five dollars had its own particular personality." Everybody ridiculed him except the Samuel Leumis.
"I wouldn't be to sure," he said. Then, he picked up the gauntlet. "Money is orphaned power," he whispered. "It's the dark phase of love. Money is capable of tender mercies," he added. He said it with such a sense of nostalgia and feeling that everyone sat bolt upright. It was very unlike him.
"Doesn't matter," he added. There was nothing but silence for a moment. He noticed the MWL intensify his listening. "The computer," he added by way of explanation.
"I am not sure I understand you," Arthur Davis said argumentatively.
"No more money," the banker stated simply and decisively. The banker looked at the artist straight in the eye. "Before us, people worked. We went to the heart of economics. Before us people were happy to hear money talk. They liked to listen to it tell of the places it had been, the things it had seen , the miracles it had worked. Before us, money only talked. We made it sing."
No one was quite sure of who 'us' or 'we' were, but everyone suspected that ambiguous references were the way that Samuel Leumis referred to banks collectively, without having to take responsibility for that meaning in case someone from a particular bank was listening. Only the MWL thought that the 'we' and 'us' meant just that, everyone, all of us, but he kept his mouth shut. Everyone else shuddered.
"We found that it could speak foreign languages, take actions, make decisions. We found that it was a poetry of the past and the future. Before us, money only talked. We made it sing," he repeated, "only the song it sang."
"We discovered money was slow, that it had to be printed, counted, sent, arrive, that it had to be passed from hand to hand, that it could be hoarded, drooled over, that it had to be imprisoned like a thief, protected like a child. We found," he continued, hardly catching his breath, "we found that people liked it for its designs, for the netting that hooked the numbers; that people found something aesthetic in it, taped it to the pages of books, collected it, bought and sold it for the way it looked, for how scarce it was. We went to the heart of economics and found that money's little feet couldn't take it around fast enough, that it tripped and tumbled and fell into some old lady's purse and stayed there forever; that little kids saved more of it than they needed to buy something that they shouldn't want, that it wore out jingling in pockets being passed from hand to hand, that people put it in their mouths waiting to make change."
"You are working up to something," Willard shouted at him. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Money," Samuel Leumis answered, "Money. We realized that money didn't matter, that it was a nuisance, that we could do better, that human debits and credits could be made to dance and sing at the speed of light on the head of an electronic chip in the synapses of a computer that accounted every transaction, that forgave no debtor, took no risk, made no bad judgments, remembered everything, forgot nothing and was able to take its pound of flesh without a drop of blood. Numbers on cards, money on line. Invest in computers," he said. "No more banks tomorrow. No more money."
Everyone looked at him strangely, as if he had taken leave of his senses. "No more money tomorrow, only dial tones and electronic transactions. No more checks, no more pass books," he announced as if he were bringing news of a cataclysmic change in the order of the universe. "Only, only...," he hesitated, and the MWL heard Mr.Kurz in the jungle of the cities, poised on the edge of darkness. "Only the electricity. When the juice goes off," the banker continued, "billions on billions will stop and disappear into wires and if the electrons stay in their holes and the plugs are dead in their sockets we will go bankrupt and freeze to death with billions to our names."
It was a terrifying vision and when it was displayed, the banker relaxed.
"Maybe not tomorrow," he said. "Definitely not tomorrow."
"How about some beer while we're waiting?" Willard suggested, a little relieved.
"I'm a little short today," the banker replied. "You don't think they'll take a credit card?" he asked, laughingly.
"I will buy," said the MWL remembering the ten dollar bill with the moustache and the sour disposition in his pocket.