“Just like that?” I said.
“The figures are correct,” he said. “To me this means you must go out of business.”
“But what does it mean to me? I love this business and want to remain in it. I’ve spent three years building it and look at the progress I’ve made!”
“It can’t be helped,” he said. “Business is business. Your publishers are not sentimental. When they send you books, they want to be paid.”
Of course I intended to pay, I assured him. But I couldn’t pay everyone all at once. And if I was serving as an agent for their wares, couldn’t some of them wait? Or couldn’t I go to the bank for another loan?
“Impossible,” he said. “Furthermore, no one cares about your good work or your bad work. Your problem is that you haven’t the money to meet your bills.”
Strangely enough—immorally perhaps—it had never occurred to me that this was my problem. Finally I said, “As a favor to me, could you pretend that you hadn’t come here this evening? Could you forget this conversation? As I see it, nothing has changed whatsoever. So far, the only person threatening me with bankruptcy is yourself. It seems to me that if you will just stop talking about it, I am no longer bankrupt.”
My accountant poured himself a cupful of pink medicine, smacked his lips, and burst into tears. He assured me that I was partially responsible for his ulcerated stomach. And he told me of his fate ... the three times he had tried to pass the C.P.A. examinations ... the scorn and derision to which he was subjected by fools like me ... the plight of his wife and his children ... and his simple allegiance to the truth of numbers.
I began to feel terribly guilty. What had I done to him by not breaking beneath the impact of his shocking pronouncement? “Please don’t cry,” I said. “Nothing is really changed, actually. I just don’t believe in figures. I don’t believe in bankruptcy. I still believe in people, in myself, in my work. Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling joyous and sometimes I go to bed feeling wretched, but that’s life. However, it is entirely my fault for making you cry. I meant to take you seriously, but I have a complete contempt for figures.”
I brought him some water in his own antiseptic cup and told him the story of the Little Prince and the Fox and how the Fox made the Prince repeat: “Remember always—what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes her so important. Love means care and labor and respect. You are responsible for what you love.”