The following is an excerpt from John Updike’s gem-studded
collection of completely imagined, highly imaginative interviews with
characters we’ve all met, but never knew as well as we should have. This interview was with "The Bankrupt Man"
. . .
Q: When did you first know that you were bankrupt?
A: I think from birth I intuited I was headed that way. I
didn’t cry, like other infants.
Q: Do you see any possibility for yourself of ever being
non-bankrupt?
A: The instant bankruptcy is declared, laws on the federal,
state, and local levels work in harmony to erode the condition. Some assets are
exempted, others are sheltered. In order to maintain bankruptcy, fresh
investments must be undertaken, and opportunities seized as they arise. A sharp
eye on economic indicators must be kept lest the whole package slips back into
the black. Being bankrupt is not a lazy man’s game.
Q: Have you any word of advice for those of us who are not
bankrupt?
A [with that twinkle]: Eat your hearts out.
. . .
This galls us. We wish to destroy him, this clown of
legerity, who bounces higher and higher off the net of laws that would enmesh
us, who weightlessly spiders up the rigging to the dizzying spotlit tip of the
tent-space and stands there in a glittering trapeze suit, all white, like the
chalk-daubed clown who among the Australian aborigines moves in and out of the
sacred ceremonial, mocking it. We spread ugly rumors, we mutter that he is not
bankrupt at all, that he is as sound as the pound, as the dollar, that his
bankruptcy is a sham. He hears of the rumor and in a note, on
one-hundred-percent-rag stationery, with embossed letterhead, he challenges us
to meet him on West Main Street, by the corner of the Corn Exchange, under the
iron statue of Cyrus Shenanigan, the great Civil War profiteer. We accept the
challenge. We experience butterflies in the stomach. We go look at our face in
the mirror. It is craven and shriveled, embittered by ungenerous thoughts.
Comes the dawn. Without parked cars, West Main Street seems
immensely wide. The bankrupt man’s shoulders eclipse the sun. He takes his
paces, turns, swiftly reaches down and pulls out the lining of both pants
pockets. Verily, they are empty.
. . .
He ascends because he transcends. He deals from the bottom
of the deck. He builds castles in the air. He makes America grow. His interests
ramify. He is in close touch with Arabian oil. With Jamaican bauxite. With
Antarctic refrigeration. He creates employment for squads of lawyers. He gets
on his motorcycle. He tugs a thousand creditors in his wake, taking them over
horizons they had never dreamt of hitherto.
He proves there is an afterlife.
