Notes From Neal Pollack's Underground
by Dennis DiClaudio (dennisdiclaudio@yahoo.com)
Neal Pollack is a sick man... Neal Pollack is a spiteful man. Neal Pollack is an unattractive man. Neal Pollack believes his liver is diseased. However, he knows nothing at all about his disease, and does not know for certain what ails him. He doesn't consult a doctor for it, and never has, though he has a respect for medicine and doctors.
Besides, he is extremelysuperstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,anyway. (He is well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but he is superstitious. Oh, that Neal Pollack.) No, he refuses to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, he understands it, though. Of course, he can't explainwho it is precisely that he is mortifying in this case by his spite, and he is perfectly well aware that he cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; he knows better than anyone that by all this he is only injuring himself and no one else. But still, if he doesn't consult a doctor it is from spite. His liver is bad, well-"Let it get worse!" Neal Pollack always says, though no one asks.
He, Neal Pollack, has been going on like that for a long time-twenty years. Now he's somewhere in his thirties (I'm not certain where). He used to be in the government service, but is no longer. He was a spiteful official. He was rude and took pleasure in being so. He did not take bribes, you see, so he was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but Neal Pollack will not let me scratch it out. I wrote it at his request because he thought it would sound very witty; but now that it's written we both agree that it appears as though he, Neal Pollack, only wanted to show off in an unseemly way-He will not allow me to scratch it out on purpose! And that's his exclamation point. He stands over me and broods as I write.
Sometimes, he seethes, but mostly he just broods. It is quite distracting. It's the brooding that really gets me. The seething doesn't so much.) When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which he sat, he used to grind his teeth at them (for such an unattractive man, his teeth are quite nice; see, he is grinding his at me now), and felt intense enjoyment when he succeeded in making anybody unhappy. He almost always did succeed. For themost part they were all timid people-of course, they were petitioners. But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular Neal Pollack could not endure.
He, the officer, simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a disgusting way. Neal Pollack carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that sword. At last he got the better of the officer. He left off clanking it. That happened in Neal Pollack's youth, though. (Can you imagine a cherubic little Neal Pollack playing on the swing in the back yard, sipping lemonade, boiling in anger.
I better get back to the point; he's getting mad now.) But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about his spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of his acutest spleen (isn't that a funny phrase? "acutest spleen". I didn't choose it. Neal Pollack made me write it. I wanted to write "greatest bile", but I was outweighed), Neal Pollack was inwardly conscious with shame that he was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that he was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing himself by it. He might foam at the mouth (a strong masculine mouth...uh-oh), but bring him a doll to play with,give him a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe he would be appeased. He might even be genuinely touched (although he was not much touched when I brought over that frozen pizza the other night, in fact he yelled...he's gesturing with his hand now...), though probably he would grind his teeth at himself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after.
That was Neal Pollack's way, his lovely way.
