(Note: This little story is best read around April, though it can (hopefully) be enjoyed all year round.)

THE TAX BELL

by

ZVI ZAKS

At a quarter to six, after nine long hours battling the dragons of governmental bureaucracy, George Bullington left the office and went home. He was a rugged, thirtyish man, a knight, if not in shining armor, at least in a handsome gray synthwool suit, and filled with the tired satisfaction of having finished another difficult day. He pressed his thumb on the keypad to his apartment and opened the door. "I'm home!" he said.

Marc, his ten-year-old son, looked away from the tri-D screen and smiled. "Hi, Dad."

"Hello, dear," his wife, Mary, said from the kitchen. He found her taking a sizzling roast from the oven. Wearing a green dress and a kerchief, she was plain and modest but, to George, quite attractive. Her face glowed, both from the heat of the oven and from the warmth of her smile. He loved his wife dearly, but couldn't afford to show it. They kissed, closing their eyes in their embrace.

The tax bell rang.

George and Mary jumped apart like children caught necking. The tax bell, a jarring clang, had rung with two different tones, the lower for him, and the higher for Mary. Damn. For a blessed moment George had forgotten the bell, that gnawing intrusion into his the innermost parts of life these past four years. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked around, staring at the sink, refrigerator, dinner table -- anything but Mary or the cursed pleasuretax meter. No use; he couldn't resist ambling casually to that little box under the wall clock and looking. Her kiss to him had rung up 0.3 units, but his kiss to her only 0.2. Ah well, he thought. I could have kissed her better if I'd wanted to. But we have a budget.

He wandered through the apartment. The bedspread lay tightly stretched over most of the mattress, though one corner was conspicuously rumpled. The bathroom sink gleamed, but a tube of toothpaste dripped its contents onto the counter. George voided into the toilet, flushed, and then left the seat up. Vacuum cleaner tracks covered three quarters of the living room rug, the remainder ignored. Just right, he thought. The apartment is neither depressingly sloppy nor neat enough to set off the bell -- it's a perfect bland. He suppressed the thought and asked, "When do we eat?"

"Come on in. It's just about ready, dear."

George, Mary, and Marc sat down to dinner -- meat, potatoes, and salad, a simple meal but looking and smelling scrumptious. George sat with hands clasped in front of his plate.

"Do you want to say grace?" Mary asked.

"No. I'm waiting for you to enter the tax code."

Mary laughed. "Oh, silly me," she said, reached for her pocket keypad, and entered the supermarket's pretax code number for the groceries they were about to eat.

"If you keep forgetting to enter the stores' codes, computer central won't know that we already paid the pleasuretax, and we'll be taxed twice." He took a deep breath and let it out suddenly. "You don't want that, do you?"

"No, dear." She looked down.

George started eating and, after a couple of bites, smiled in spite of his frustration. "Actually, Honey, this meal is delicious. You've outdone yourself."

The tax bell rang.

"What was that for?" George asked. "You entered the code."

Mary blushed again. "I'm sorry. I'm always happy when you enjoy my cooking. I must have been more elated than the code number allows."

He threw down his fork and sighed. "My fault as much as yours. We'll just have to be more careful. This budget will never work unless we both avoid unnecessary pleasures."

After dinner they fidgeted before checking the final reading on the dreaded meters; to their dismay the twenty four hour total stood at 66 units of taxable pleasures. At three percent, the tax owed came to almost two full units for just one day. George tottered into the living room and sank into his favorite chair, an overstuffed, brown relic he had owned for decades. He relished that chair hugely, even ferociously because it was "grandfathered"; an implanted damper allowed him or Mary to enjoy it -- within limits -- without ever having to pay a tax.

"You look so tired, dear. Would you like me to dry the dishes?" Mary asked from the kitchen.

"What! Are you crazy? That would be worth at least two units and then we'd have to pay the tax!"

"You don't have to shout. I was just trying to be nice."

"Better I shout than be grateful!" he shouted, "or I'll have to pay another tax."

George got up and, entering the code on the bottle, poured himself a double Scotch. The damned dishes could drip themselves dry. If only he had worked late at the office again, he thought, he could have avoided the dreaded bell. It didn't ring on the job, not that the revenuers hadn't tried to put the bell there. But chaos had overwhelmed the workplace. People fought and insulted each other because cooperation and courtesy rang the bell. Consequently, droves of workers had quit, the economy had collapsed and -- most importantly -- tax revenues had plummeted. That last made the Internal Revenue Service relent -- except for coffee breaks and truly extraordinary satisfactions, working hours would be free time, an oasis of blessed relief from the accursed bell.

The economy soared. People worked late rather than go home and fight the bell. Bureaucrats didn't care if workaholism overtook the nation, or if the divorce rate skyrocketed. They didn't even care about the ensuing suicide epidemic. None of these kept the taxpolice from their none too gentle rounds. But let the tax revenues fall, and the bureaucrats cared.

Mary said, "Dear, did you hear, that nice Mr. Rodgers down the hall was arrested for tax fraud? He gave his girlfriend an engagement ring while they were at the movies, hoping the dampers in the movie theater would keep him from having to pay the extra tax, but her reaction drove the meter off the scale."

"I don't want to hear it," George said loudly, and forced himself to relax.

Marc bounced a basketball into the living room and sat on the nearby sofa. "Dad, why do you and Mom have to pay a tax when you kiss each other?"

George shook his head. Why couldn't Marc ask about nuclear physics, politics or something else, anything else but taxes. But he, George, had his duty as a father.

"Long ago, Marc, the government taxed people only when money changed hands, for example, if you bought something."

"Like my basketball?" Marc asked, bouncing the ball again, loudly.

George grimaced from the noise. At least he wasn't enjoying this. "Exactly. But people evaded taxes by trading instead of paying money. So the government said that anything pleasurable, whether paid for or not, was taxable."

"Even within the same family, Dad?" Marc looked incredulous.

"Even within the family. People formed communes, extended families, to avoid taxes. So that loophole had to go."

"But how about kids?"

"Marc, my boy, when you are thirteen, a microchip will be implanted under your scalp and the taxbell will ring for you, too."

Mary came in and sat on the sofa next to Marc. "I hate to upset you, dear, but the radio says the tax board wants to lower the age to eleven."

"Oh, Hon.." George choked. He was about to say "honeybunch" but Mary loved that term. And they couldn't afford the tax. "What will we do? We're barely surviving now!"

"At least they aren't increasing brain wave detector sensitivities."

"Thank goodness for small mercies. It's hard enough to avoid enjoying life as is."

George spent the rest of the evening reading a book, a thrilling saga about the heroic inventors of the brain wave detectors. Like the dinner, the scotch, and everything else bought at a store, the price had included a code to avert further tax if he liked the book. He didn't like it. Unfortunately, the government never returned taxes. The units went in one direction only.

With careful boredom, George and Mary avoided taxable fun until bedtime. They climbed under the covers, lying quietly until George turned towards his wife, snuggling. Mary's rose perfume and her warmth against his loins aroused him. He murmured seductively, "You know, it's legal to disconnect the tax bell for 10 minutes if the noise would be too distracting."

She giggled and kissed him passionately.

The tax bell rang.

"George, we can't afford it! You know what a bill you ring up!"

That did it. George's sanity -- and erection -- shriveled like a tax collector's compassion. He bolted from bed and, screaming heresies like, "Bureaucracy must be stopped!" grabbed his antique hunting rifle, an heirloom which for years he had secretly maintained in working order. Still in pajamas, he raced up the fire escape to the rooftop where brain wave detectors proliferated, their antennae like malignant flowers. Muttering softly, he asked the antennae, "Why weren't you set to detect rage? Then you could have protected yourselves from me," but he knew the answer. Preventing rage and violence would infringe civil liberties; taxing pleasure merely increased government coffers.

Taking careful aim, George shot an antenna, exulting in the crack of the rifle and its thrust against his shoulder as the bullet splintered the antenna into useless metal. He gloated, and shot out another, and a third, all the while shouting obscenities at the I.R.S. The taxpolice came quickly, sirens whining as green and white cars converged in front of the apartment building. Searchlights beamed upward while a sergeant's voice echoed from a megaphone. A crowd gathered, fascinated by the excitement.

Even in his insanity, George felt the drama of his stance. Now he was truly a knight fighting the common enemy, the dragon of the tax collector. People below would see his struggle and understand his martyrdom; he felt loved and proud.

The police saw George as a mad anarchist, a threat who was far more dangerous to society than a common criminal. They had to stop this madness lest it infect others. Stop it they would, and with a sense of extraordinary satisfaction because this time the public would thank them instead of complaining about police brutality.

Meanwhile, onlookers, entranced, stared at George. This was no television melodrama, but a real, live tragedy unfolding in front of them, more enthralling than any performance.

And for George, for the police, and for the crowd...

The tax bell rang.

Why not write Zvi the Fiddler and let him know how much you liked this story?

Revised 11/01