The style of type, although not unusual, was effective. Copied no doubt from conventional American machines.
Making himself comfortable he began to load the machine up with work; he pressed the carriage return button again and again, for over an hour. The carriage shot back and forth, causing the machine to lurch gradually across the bed. But the mechanism never failed to operate. In the same fashion he repeatedly tried every control. It stood up perfectly, although several times, when he started to type, he jammed the keys and had to shut off the motor to unjam them.
The carbon impression appeared to be uniform enough. The keys all hit with equal force. He tested the strength of the type-bars. They seemed somewhat flimsy. Probably they would have to be realigned from time to time. The n, he discovered, had already gone out of alignment.
Putting in a fresh sheet of paper he laboriously typed a letter to Susan. Two-finger typing was a slow business, but at last he had what he wanted. He informed her that this was a sample of the work put out by the Mithrias, and that it was up to her to make the judgment on it; his knowledge began and ended with the mechanical aspect. After all, she had been making her living as a professional typist. As to the sales possibilities, he believed that if he could get the machines cheap enough, nothing stood in the way of their unloading them. Then he told her to phone him as soon as she had decided. He typed out the phone number of the motel, sealed up the letter plus a first and fifth carbon, carried it downstairs to the main postoffice and mailed it off to Boise special delivery air mail.
The next day he carried the machine to a typewriter repair agency that offered service on “all makes and models.”
The plump, curly-headed young man behind the counter examined the machine and said, “What the hell is it? One of those Italian portables? The Olivetti?” He turned it upside down and peered up into it.
“No,” Bruce said. “It’s Japanese.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just want to find out if you can service it when it needs service.”
“Wait’ll I get the repairman,” the curly-headed young man said. He went off behind a curtain, and when he returned he had with him a massively-built older man with dark hair and bare, hairy-black arms. The man wore a blue apron and he had ink and grease on his hands. Without a word he picked up the machine, plugged it in and turned it on, listened to it and poked at it.
“It’s built in Japan,” Bruce said.
The repairman scrutinized him. “I know,” he said. “Where’d you get hold of it?”
“In San Francisco,” he said. “In a shop there.”
“What kind of guarantee did they give you?”
He said, “Why?”
“Just curious.”
“None,” he said.
The repairman said, “Well, I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t have one on a bet.”
“Why?” he asked. This was why he had brought it here, to get an opinion from a trained typewriter repairman.
“You can’t get parts. Where’re you going to get parts? Write to Japan? Does anybody in this country stock parts?” He turned the machine on and off, jiggling the switch.
“I guess not,” he said, acting out his role.
“It’s not badly put together,” the repairman said, shaking the machine and operating the carriage return. “Those people are clever and they’ve got little fingers; they can get in and assemble where there’s no space for a white man to stick his thumb. Look at this.” He showed Bruce how close together the moving parts had been placed. “That’s why they can build it so small. But hell, when you want service, how’s anybody going to get a tool into it?” He stuck the end of a screwdriver down and showed Bruce that it could not be fitted into some of the visible screws. “You practically have to disassemble it to clean it.”
“Have you had any in here for service?”
“A couple,” the curly-headed younger man said.
“Better stick to American products,” the repairman said. “It’s like anything else; buy a brand you know.”
Picking up his Mithrias, Bruce thanked him and left the repair shop.
For the heck of it he tried one more shop. A moody-looking man waited on him. Apparently he had never seen a Mithrias before; he viewed it from every angle, saying nothing, not plugging it in or asking anything about it. Finally he turned his head and said, “Is this something new they’re bringing out? Some of the bolts are metric. We’re going to have trouble with these.”
“Can you work on it?”
“Oh sure, we can work on it. What’s the matter with it?” Now he plugged it in and ran a piece of folded paper around the roller.
“Nothing right now.” he said.
“Oh, you’re just getting the news in advance. Is it yours?”
“Not quite,” he said. “It may be. How much do you think I ought to pay for it?”
“Is it new?” The man tapped at the rubber roller. “It’s been used. Look at the key-strikes in the platen.”
They discussed it and decided that the Mithrias electric portable, when new, was worth about two hundred dollars. Probably he would have perpetual trouble getting service on it. But it seemed well-built and if he was lucky he would get a lot of use out of it. The repairman tapped out laboriously a few words, with one finger instead of two, jamming the keys and at last giving up.
“I’m not much of a typist,” he admitted.
“Neither am I,” Bruce said. He thanked the man and departed with his Mithrias under his arm.
So it could be worked on, if the repairman was willing. The problem was no greater than with foreign cameras or cars; maintenance was a calculated risk. That cheered him up. They could sell the Mithrias in good conscience.
He drove to the downtown address at which Phil Baranowski operated. The legend on the office door read WEST COAST OPTICS, and when he opened the door he found himself facing an illuminated and velvet-draped display table of optical equipment.
“Made up your mind?” Baranowski said, from somewhere out of sight. He appeared, his sleeves rolled up, carrying a pry bar. Off the office Bruce saw a small store room; Baranowski had been getting the lid from a packing crate. “Don’t mind if I keep on working.” He returned to the crate and picked up a cigarette that he had left lying on top of it.
Bruce said, “Depending on what you want for them, I’m definitely interested.”
“They’re nicely put together, aren’t they? Overseas they don’t have assembly lines like we have; they don’t shoot them out one after another. The things are made stationary. First one man works on it and then he goes down to the the next one and the next man takes his place. They can turn out professional-quality equipment in a garage. In a basement. With a couple of belt-driven lathes. During the war they hand-ground lenses and mirrors in bombed-out cellars. They made the most intricate electronic equipment with a hundred dollars’ worth of bench tools. If a Japanese shop had had what the average do-it-your-selfer has in his garage today, they would have got the A-bomb before we did.”
“How much do you want for the portables?” he said.
“You want them all?”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t hope to unload them all. At any price. Too much of a service problem.”
“There’s no service problem.” Baranowski paused in his work and gestured with the pry bar. “What do you mean?”
“No parts. And metric bolts. And no space to work; everything packed in tight. You can’t get at anything.”