From time to time the MWL baby sat for the daughter of one of the working women in the neighborhood while she plied her trade. Although he did not entirely approve of what she did for a living, he heard that she did it very skillfully, and with much enthusiasm, and he was certain that she did it with considerable dignity. Besides, the little girl was sparkling, sharp and intelligent.
What he liked best about the child was that, although she knew precisely what kind of woman she would ultimately become, she kept that person out of sight and hidden, even from herself, so that she was completely a little girl, and completely transparent. But she dropped hints, and the hints intrigued him.
When the mother had a job and the MWL was in the park, she would bring the little girl as close to the ladder as was possible without making what she was doing obvious, and say as loudly as was necessary to catch anyone's attention who needed telling "now just stay here." And pointing vaguely in the direction of nowhere in particular, and edging the little girl slightly closer to the ladder, she would tell her again to stay put, until finally the little girl was firmly planted against the back of the ladder, and everyone had been adequately communicated to. "I will pick you up in an hour, two hours at the most. Do you understand?" she would ask, and look at the MWL, and the little girl would say "yes" quietly, and the MWL would look away and nod as inconspicuously as possible and wonder who baby sat for the little girl when he himself was working.
Since it was not a real babysitting job he did not receive real wages, but when the mother returned to pick up the child, whose name was Tatyana Schwartz, she always had a bag with fruit or pastries in it, and she would say, to everyone who needed telling, something like, "I brought us a treat," and then, feigning surprise, as if the grocer had put an extra apple or pastry in the bag, offer it to the MWL, as if it was him or throwing it away. Once, when she worked overtime, she found a five dollar bill underneath the ladder that she insisted he must have dropped and forced him to accept it as his own.
There were times when he wondered why she did not just come out and ask him to watch the child, but he decided she must have an especially good reason for this elaborate charade, and he just accepted it as the way he was permitted to baby sit for Tatyana.
They did a variety of things together when he baby sat. Sometimes he would point out the different animals, seen and unseen, that made their home on the ground underneath the ladder. Other times he would identify different kinds of birds, real and imaginary, that flitted from tree to tree above them. Most of the time though, she would ask him to tell her a story. He would usually resist, saying he knew few stories, and these were not suitable for children, but she would insist, and he would finally give in and make up a story for her. The stories he told her were interesting.
"Well," he began one day, "in this government office there were three men."
"That's no way to begin a story," the little girl corrected him.
"Have you heard this story before?" he asked, querulously.
"I don't think I ever heard a story about three men in an office before," the little girl answered. "But I know for a fact that that is no way to begin a story."
"Well, It's the way this story begins," the MWL answered a little petulantly. Then having second thoughts he asked, "How should it begin?"
"It should begin," the little girl responded, "once upon a time. "
The MWL thought for a moment. "I know for a fact that that's an entirely different story," he said, "but O.K.." Once upon a time, in this government office, there were three men."
"What did they do," asked the little girl.
"I was just going to tell you that," said the MWL.
"Well," said the little girl, "I just wanted to be sure."
"It happens that these men collectively were responsible for ideas, and each one was responsible for a different kind of idea."
"Like what kind of idea," the little girl asked suspiciously.
"Are you going to let me tell this story or...."
"O.K.," the little girl responded defensively. "I just thought it would help if I knew from the start what kind of ideas we were talking about."
"Well the first man was responsible for the idea of how to begin things, and the second was responsible for ideas about how to take a beginning and end it."
"And the third man," the little girl demanded to know, "what kind of idea was the third man responsible for?"
"Well, no one really thought about what kind of idea he was responsible for. He was just part of the way the office worked. In fact," the MWL added, "that's the nub of the story. This third man didn't ever seem to be working. What this office did, you see was, well, someone somewhere would come up with an idea for an idea...."
"You mean an intuition," commented Tatanya Schwartz.
"...and they would send it to this office in the bowels of the government," said the MWL completing his thought. "Where did you learn that word?" he asked.
"What does bowels mean?" the little girl asked in return, without answering his question.
"It was in Washington," the MWL said.
"You mean," the little girl said, "that it was like a place for making insights into ideas."
"That's it, exactly," said the MWL.
"Suggestions for ideas would come into this office from all over the world and when an underdeveloped, immature idea came in the office manager would look it over and give it to the man who it seemed to belong to."
"To whom it seemed to belong," the little girl corrected.
"Exactly. That was what I meant to say," said the MWL, "When it looked like it was an idea that needed a new beginning, he would give it to the first man, and when it was an idea that was well begun but needed an ending, he would give it to the second man."
Well, when the manager gave an idea to the first man, he would take it into his office and work on it. When he was done with it, the first man would give it to the second man.
"You still haven't told me what the third man did."
"You are impatient," the MWL said to her. "A funny thing happened all the time. I don't know whether you are going to believe this," the MWL added, looking down to the ground.
"If I try hard I can believe anything if it helps make a story more interesting," said Tatyana.
"Well, whenever the office manager got an idea that he thought was somehow between the two of them, requiring something that was neither a beginning nor an ending, he would give it to the third man and say, 'Work on this,' but no sooner had he done this than the third man would say something like, 'You remember that idea that came in yesterday that you gave to the first man? Well,' he would say innocently enough, holding the idea up in the managers face, 'if you just think about this the right way, like such and such,' and he would describe a very strange way of looking at the idea the office manager had just brought in, 'if you look at it this way, it's just like that idea. So,' he would say, 'I think you had better give it to the first man.' The third man was very nosy and because he was never very busy he was always looking over the office manager's shoulders when the mail came in.
"And the office manager would take it back and go into the first man's office and say 'you know, if you looked at this idea in this way,' and he would repeat more or less what the third man had just said. 'If you looked at it in this way, its very much like the idea that came in yesterday.' And the first man would say, 'you know, if you did look at it that way, all these ideas,' and he would grab this handful of ideas that were littering his desk and that he couldn't figure out how to give a good beginning to, 'all these ideas are just the same idea,' and he would gather them together with a happy look on his face and he would move them around and make some rough calculations and come up with this other idea and throw the old ones into the waste paper basket and hand this new idea to the office manager. 'Give this to the second man,' he would say, 'he'll know what to do with it.'"
"Sometimes when he handed the third man an idea the third man would say, 'you remember that idea you gave the second man a few weeks ago. Well,' he would say, 'if you looked at this idea in this way,' and then he would describe a very peculiar way of looking at the idea he had in his hand, 'it's just like it.'"
"And the office manager would take the idea back and go into the second man's office and say, 'you remember that odd ball idea I gave you a few weeks ago? If you look at this idea,' he held out the idea to the second man, 'if you look at this idea like this,' and he would repeat just what the third man had said a moment before, 'if you look at it this way, then it's very much like that idea.'
"And the second man would say, 'that's interesting, I would have never thought of that' and add, 'you know if you looked at it that way then, you could also look at it this way' and he would spell out an another entirely different way of looking at the idea. Then he would go over to his desk and lift up the rock keeping the pile of ideas that had stumped him in a neat pile, and look through the pile and pull out a few. 'Give these ideas to the first man,' he would say,' they need new beginnings ' and then he would rifle through the ideas that were left on his desk, and furiously scribble something down on a piece of paper. And when he was done writing he would hand the piece of paper to the office manager and with a flourish, sweep everything on his desk off into the waste paper basket."
"That's interesting," the little girl said. "So work did get done after all."
"A great deal of work," said the MWL. "The office had a world wide reputation for putting out the best ideas in the nation."
"So what's the story," the little girl asked.
"It's coming, it's coming," the MWL protested.
"Well, one day, there was a move in government to save money and an inspector general came around. He watched the office at work looking for a way to save the government some money. He was an expert in the efficient workings of offices and knew just what to look for. He saw the first man and the second man working, their desks piled high with papers, but the third man sat with his feet up on a clean desk smoking a cigar."
"'That third man,' the inspector said to the office manager, 'doesn't seem to be very busy. What does he do?'"
"'Well I give him the ideas that are neither badly begun, nor ready yet for an ending,' said the office manager, but he really had no good answer to the question. The truth is he did not understand how the office really worked even though he managed it, and actually managed it fairly well. What the third man did was a mystery to him, but as long as ideas came in, and ideas went out, he just accepted the arrangements as they had always been.
"The inspector watched for a few days and when he saw the third man take whatever ideas the office manager gave him and quickly redirect them to one of the other two men in the office he decided that the third man did nothing useful at all. 'Fire that man,' he ordered the office manager and the office manager did as he was told.
"'You're fired,' he said to the third man, even though he was quite fond of him.
"'I need a vacation,' the third man replied, and went off happily."
"And then," asked the little girl.
"How do you know there is a then?" asked the MWL.
The little girl smiled. "Even a three year old knows that in every story there is an 'and then,'" she replied seriously, "and I am five."
"And then," said the MWL. The little girl smiled. "Well this time there happens to be an 'and then,'" he said brusquely.
"Well, what was it?" asked Tatyana.
"The 'and then' is that somehow the ideas stopped coming out of the office. They kept coming in," the MWL said. "People kept sending the best intuitions they had to this office, seeds of ideas brimming over with promise, to be given beginnings and endings and sent into action, but try as they could, somehow the first man and the second man and the office manager could not seem to give the ideas that were coming in, rich beginnings and fruitful endings.
"After a while the first man and the second man were swamped with work and their desks were piled so high with paper they couldn't find anything at all. 'We could use another person in the office,' the office manager said to himself. Because he liked the third man who he had fired, he thought he would hire him again to help out temporarily, until things settled back to normal. He called the third man.
"'You're lucky,' the third man said cheerfully when the office manager called, 'I just got back from my vacation,' and he came back to work immediately.
"The office manger took the very next idea that he received to the third man who was sitting with his feet up on the top of his desk, smoking his cigar. But before the manager could get out of the door the third man had his feet on the floor and said 'you know I haven't been here for a while, but before I left I remember you giving the first man an idea very much like this one. If you didn't think about this one like this, but as if it were,' and he sketched out a way of thinking about the idea he had in his hand.' I think this ought to go to the first man' and handed it back to the office manager."
"I bet I know what happened," said the little girl.
"I'll bet you do. The first man cleaned off his desk."
"And I'll bet that when the next idea came in and the office manager brought it in, he gave it back and said if you look at it this funny way it really belonged to the second man."
The MWL laughed. "You are a smart little girl."
"It comes from hearing a very lot of fairy tales," the little girl replied.
"It turns out you're right. The third man showed the office manager that the very next idea that he brought in for him to work on really belonged to the second man if you just saw it in a slightly different way than the office manager did.'"
"And I bet the second man cleaned his desk off too."
"Exactly," said the MWL.
"And what happened the next time the government ran out of money and the next inspector came around looking to economize and make the office efficient?"
"There wasn't a next time, honey," the MWL said." They left the office alone after that and the third man sat around smoking with his feet on the desk and the office manager never complained again."
"Did you ever work in an office?" Tatyana asked, not so innocently.
"A long time ago," answered the MWL, "a very long time ago."
"What did the third man really do?" the little girl asked after a thinking a long while.
"No one really knows or at least they didn't say, that I heard of," replied the MWL. "Only whatever it was it was very, very important. If I had to guess though...," he said, dropping his voice. The girl wrinkled up her brow and prepared to listen very carefully. But, just then, her mother appeared from behind the ladder saying, "I brought us a treat," and the MWL whispered, "next time."