Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 Page 8

MR. McNEIL* AND MR. VISHINSKY exchanged fables last week, thereby charming the United Nations with a fresh obliquity of expression. We were glad to see this trend, and we commend to the delegates the fable of the Raccoon and the Fresh-Water Mussel. It goes like this:

  After the long bloodiness of the jungle, the animals assembled their delegates in the council place to put an end to the scourge of trouble and to establish a community of beasts, de-void of tooth and fang, free from the legacy of fear. Delegates were soon making speeches, among the longest of which were the speeches of the Bear, the Eagle, and the Lion.

  “It is quite clear,” said the Bear, pounding the table with his paw, “that the Eagles are up to no good. Everything Eagles do is warlike and wrong. Lions are bad, too. The jungle would be an excellent place if all animals would act more like Bears and would turn matters over to the head Bear. Bears are the thing.”

  The animals listened attentively to this speech and the Raccoon applauded loudly. Then the Eagle rose and opened his beak.

  “The trouble with Bears,” said he, “is that they keep too much to themselves. I would like to see Bears mingle more. Because a Bear likes raspberries, it doesn’t mean I like raspberries. Because Bears sleep in winter, must an Eagle who stays awake be called stupid?”

  “Good speech,” said the Lion. “Jolly good. Furthermore, time runs out.”

  There followed a few other speeches by minor animals and then the delegates withdrew to their personal jungles.

  The first to get home was the Eagle.

  “What happened?” asked all the Eagles.

  “If you were listening to your radios, you know what happened,” answered the Eagle. “There will be a rebroadcast at ten-thirty this evening for anybody who missed the proceedings.”

  The Lion was the second to get home.

  “What happened?” asked all the Lions.

  “Here—read all about it,” said the Lion, handing them copies of the London Times.

  The Bear was the last to get home.

  “What happened?” asked all the Bears.

  “Well,” said the Bear, “I simply told the other animals how the Eagles and the Lions were preparing for war. I explained that the jungle would be all right if everybody would be more like Bears and would turn things over to the head Bear. I made it clear that Bears are the thing.”

  “What did the others say to that?” asked the delighted Bears.

  “What did they say?” said the Bear. “Say? Why, they said the same old stuff. What they said was propaganda. You Bears don’t need to know what they said, because it is without meaning.” And the old Councilbear smiled. That night, when some of the more inquisitive of the Bears turned on their radios, all they heard in their radio sets was the sighing of the wind in the treetops.

  The debate continued for several months. Each jungle session saw the Bears, the Lions, and the Eagles at odds. After each session, the Council-animals returned and made their familiar reports. Once in a while a very small animal would make a speech—a Chipmunk, or a Water Beetle—but nobody paid much attention. Everyone concentrated on Lions, Bears, and Eagles.

  The Eagles worried so much about what the Bears were doing they got ulcers. Some Eagles had to sip milk in the middle of the morning. It was humiliating. The Bears, on the other hand, worried about what the Eagles were up to. The more they worried, the closer they kept to themselves. They would sleep for months at a time, hibernating, in the wintertime of fear.

  The Eagles, sensing trouble, sharpened their talons and stockpiled steel toenails. The Bears, sensing trouble, sharpened their teeth and stockpiled brass claws. Everyone in the jungle was acutely unhappy, except, of course, the Chickadees, who never allowed anything to depress them. The small animals were restless, realizing that the jungle was overburdened with strong Bears lying low, strong Eagles flying high. It was a bad situation. However, things weren’t impossible. Bears didn’t re-ally dislike Eagles, and the Eagles didn’t really dislike Bears. It was all on paper—or in the mind.

  It wasn’t till the day a Raccoon ate a Fresh-Water Mussel that the lid blew off.

  “You can’t do that to a Mussel!” screamed an Eagle.

  “Why not?” asked the Raccoon, who had acted on impulse.

  “Because it’s unkind and because I have an arrangement with Fresh-Water Mussels,” said the Eagle.

  “Never heard of it,” said the Raccoon.

  “Well, lay off Fresh-Water Mussels! Who strikes a Fresh-Water Mussel strikes me!” screamed the Eagle. “Death to Raccoons!”

  “O.K.,” said the Raccoon, “death to Eagles!”

  “This concerns me,” said the Bear. “Raccoons are my little brothers. Who strikes a Raccoon strikes me. Death to the people who strike Raccoons!”

  “O.K.,” cried the Eagles, who were immediately joined by the Lions, “death to Raccoons and Bears!”

  In almost no time, the Bears and the Eagles and the Lions tangled, and were joined by Water Beetles, Chipmunks, Moles, Luna Moths, Porcupines, Jackals, Ladybugs, Sloths, Barn Swallows, and Whirling Mice. It was a mess. The Eagles and the Bears were the only ones that had real power, and they fixed everything quick. For the next three or four million years, the jungle was silent and relaxed. Only the sound of the wind disturbed it—and the small whirring noise in some of the radio sets abandoned by the dead Bears.

  SNOWSTORMS

  12/22/51

  THERE WAS A FLURRY OF SNOW one morning recently—a sudden gaiety and white charm at breakfast time, the snow descending prettily across roof and wall. The moment we saw this cheerful sight, this unexpected bonus, our mind rocketed back to a time in childhood, a morning unforgettable because of snow. The snow that day arrived in blizzard force; at eight o’clock the fire siren, muffled by the blast, wailed the “No School Today” signal, and we retired in ecstasy to a warm attic room and to Meccano. The thing we remember is the coziness, the child’s sense of a protective screen having been quickly drawn between him and his rather frightening world. This feeling was perfectly reproduced for us the other morning. For about five minutes, the snow seemed quite capable of insulating us from all harm, from every trouble, from evil itself, and we were again in the warm, safe attic with a straightforward problem in mechanical engineering.

  The Russians are trying, with their curtain, to draw the protective screen and make it snow forever in the world, for their special benefit. They long for the sense of security that circumstances and their own stubbornness have denied them. A childish surrender to unreality, the curtain not only does not shut out evil, it is evil. The curtain is not merely the screen that makes it impossible for the West to relax its arms, it is itself the core of Russian armament. It is poison gas in political form.

  There ought to be a healthy debate going on today—a debate between capitalism and socialism, between individualism and statism. The curtain has prevented this debate from taking place, and although there is plenty of talk in the forum, we are really stuck with the fact of having no discussion. The Russians do not qualify as debaters, because they have boxed their argument, sealed their people, and turned out the house lights. In consequence, the delegates to the United Nations stand around and talk about peace and disarmament—subjects on which there is no real difference of opinion. (Everybody loves peace by the terms of the contract, and nobody can risk disarming under the conditions created by the curtain.)

  An interesting experiment would be to place the curtain itself on the agenda. It is not a secondary matter, to be buried in committee; it is the big thing. The U. N. cannot much longer pretend that questions can be genuinely discussed under Russia’s terms—with all ideas being halted at the border, with writers being instructed how to write, with radio being jammed. Such “discussions” are farcical, and are quite expensive, too. The United States has proposed that the curtain be opened just enough to allow inspectors to walk through and look about for concealed weapons. That begs the issue. The free nations of the U. N. should ask Russia to show cause why her
curtain should not be abandoned—not as an approach to disarmament but as a precondition of further debate on anything at all. The curtain is the one topic that must acutely embarrass the Soviet lords, it is such a telltale device: evidence of their fear, symbol of their immaturity, and sure sign of their contempt for people. The curtain is their private snowstorm, behind which they hope to withdraw and play with their construction set.

  PIRANHAS

  11/29/52

  THERE’S A TROPICAL-FISH STORE in this vicinity, and one of the tanks contains a solitary piranha—a little fish that looks something like a sunfish. The price tag says $25—quite a sum for a three-inch pet that sulks in a watery corner, slowly waving its pectorals. However, the piranha has this to be said for it: it is a man-eater. Fierce, remorseless, and with a taste for the flesh of warm-blooded animals, it will attack furiously. We pass the fish store almost every day on our way to work, the blood flowing warm in our veins, the prospect of another day at a typewriter filling our head with suicidal fancies, and we always stop for a moment in front of the piranha. We like having a murderous fish in the neighborhood; it is reassuring to know that all we have to do is dive into a nearby tank to be stripped flesh from bone in a matter of minutes.

  A glance at the calendar, a glimpse of Gristede’s,* set us exploring our private reserves of gratitude and adoration. To forget the world’s abundance, even briefly and in a moment of spiritual penury, is to lose one’s toehold on the ladder. The sun rises, the leaves fall, the park grows cold, the springs flow, the birds rip by on knowing wings, the pumpkin accedes to the throne, and men prepare. For what do they prepare? Unlike birds, trees, sun, they prepare for war—or else they prepare for they know not what, which is almost the same thing. They prepare, perhaps, for cold. Fearing the worst, they prepare for the worst. But there is still room for thanks—not for the pass we’ve reached but for the setting against which we’ve reached it, a backdrop beyond compare, a scene of wild and illimitable promise, a revolutionary cyclorama of cleverly concealed progress, with good men holding firm. Wanted: a third act. Until we know that the playwright has collapsed or gone in with the piranha, until we know that all’s behind, we shall innocently assume that all is ahead, and render thanks, at the customary time and in the customary way, for the privilege of a walk-on part in the show.

  CITIZEN OF THE WORLD

  12/19/53

  OUT IN SUMMIT, NEW JERSEY, the students of the Junior High recite a school pledge at their assemblies, and the pledge used to start, “I, a student of Summit Junior High School and a future citizen of the world, promise to obey and uphold the laws of my country and school.” The Veterans of Foreign Wars got wind of this dangerous condition and persuaded the school authorities to strike out the offensive phrase “citizen of the world.” The school children must, therefore, have been surprised the other day when the same phrase popped up in President Eisenhower’s address to the United Nations. “The atomic age,” he said, “has moved forward at such a pace that every citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in comparative terms, of the extent of this development.” Clear case of the President of the United States going over the heads of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. We don’t know what the next step of the school authorities should be—give up assemblies, perhaps, as being a breeding ground for difference of opinion.

  FRIENDSHIP CARDS

  6/19/54

  A GREETING-CARD FIRM has sent us some statistics about the expression of friendship and good will in America. The figures are staggering. In 1953, some three and a half billion cards were mailed, carrying greetings of one sort or another. Friendships ranked high on the list, along with Get Well Soons, Happy Birthdays, and Merry Andsoforths. For a firm dealing in the emotions of love and affection, the statistician’s mind runs on very strange matters indeed. Thus we read that the money spent on “friendship” in 1953 would “pay for a battleship.” And if stacked one atop another in their envelopes, those three and a half billion messages of love would “make a pile so high that even the Russians couldn’t invent a guided missile that could get over the top of it. It would be 4,375 miles up in the ionosphere.” There seems to be something wrong here somewhere. Perhaps we should simply stack these friendship cards instead of mailing them, thus warding off unfriendly missiles. Or perhaps we’re sending cards to the wrong people. Why doesn’t some enterprising greeting-card firm get up a mailing list of our “enemies” (there must be billions of them), to whom a friendship card would come as a real surprise? The money spent on the cards would still pay for a battleship, but if the cards worked, the battleship might never have to open fire.

  HUNGARIAN REVOLT

  12/22/56

  A FEW YEARS AGO, when Joseph Stalin was still alive, we tried to write a Christmas allegory in the form of a playlet. It didn’t come off. But we are reminded of it this year because of recent events in Europe. Our story was about a Russian emissary to the United States who goes back to his homeland at Christmas to check in. As a gag, he brings Stalin a gift of a luminous candy cane from America. The cane arouses the Marshal’s curiosity. He pumps his man about life in the United States, and the two of them have a few drinks. Stalin wants to know what Christmas is like over here. He asks to be filled in on the story of the Nativity, and the emissary tells it, rather blunderingly. Stalin wants to know why the candy cane shines. “They doctor it up with something, I guess,” the fellow says. The two men get a bit drunk. And before the underling leaves, he tells his boss that, actually, it isn’t just candy canes that act this way. A lot of things in America seem to be sort of luminous; things just get looking lighter than they should—streets, buildings, the sky, the faces of little girls in the park when they buy the popcorn and the pigeons fly up and the wings of birds are all around them. The emissary leaves after a while. Stalin is furious at the inadequacy of the man’s explanation, the rambling tale of unexplained luminosity. The room grows dark. The cane, hanging on a hat tree, shines in the gloom, a bright inverted J. Finally, after making several attempts to eat the cane and being scared off by the possible consequences, he rings for an aide and orders the hated object removed. He tells the aide to bury the cane—secretly, so none shall see the light from it.

  As you can gather from the synopsis, this wasn’t much of an allegory. But now, in 1956, at Christmas, a candy cane does indeed hang in the Kremlin on the hat tree. The cane is a luminous one, and sheds the old, disturbing, familiar light. It is of Hungarian manufacture,* brought back by an emissary, and not as any gag, either. The presence of this object gives the 1956 Christmas a different look from any Christmas the world has had in a long, long while. Mr. Stalin is dead, and few are the mourners. His successors, the heads of state, will be afraid to eat this luminous cane, because of the mysterious nature of its ingredients, and they will be unable to get a satisfactory explanation of what makes it shine. (The light generated by men on their way toward freedom has never been really explained.) And even though the heads of state bury the disagreeable object, which they will surely try to do, there is no assurance whatever that it will stay down, or that somebody will not have caught a gleam from it on its way to the graveyard.

  KHRUSHCHEV AND I

  (A STUDY IN SIMILARITIES)

  9/26/59

  UNTIL I HAPPENED TO READ a description of him in the paper recently, I never realized how much Chairman Khrushchev and I are alike. This fellow and myself, it turns out, are like as two peas. The patterns of our lives are almost indistinguishable, one from the other. I suppose the best way to illustrate this striking resemblance is to take up the points of similarity, one by one, as they appear in the news story, which I have here on my desk.

  Khrushchev, the story says, is a “devoted family man.” Well, now! Could any phrase more perfectly describe me? Since my marriage in 1929,I have spent countless hours with my family and have performed innumerable small acts of devotion, such as shaking down the clinical thermometer and accidentally striking it against the edge of our soli
d porcelain washbasin. My devotion is too well known to need emphasis. In fact, the phrase that pops into people’s heads when they think of me is “devoted family man.” Few husbands, either in America or in the Soviet Union, have hung around the house, day in and day out, and never gone anywhere, as consistently as I have and over a longer period of time, and with more devotion. Some-times it isn’t so much devotion as it is simple curiosity—the fun of seeing what’s going to happen next in a household like mine. But that’s all right, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Chairman’s so-called devotion was simple curiosity. Any husband who loses interest in the drama of family life, as it unfolds, isn’t worth his salt.

  Khrushchev, the article says, “enjoys walking in the woods with his five grandchildren.” Here, I have to admit, there is a difference between us, but it is slight: I have only three grand-children, and one of them can’t walk in the woods, because he was only born on June 24th last and hasn’t managed to get onto his feet yet. But he has been making some good tries, and when he does walk, the woods are what he will head for if he is anything like his brother Steven and his sister Martha and, of course, me. We all love the woods. Not even Ed Wynn loves the woods better than my grandchildren and me. We walk in them at every opportunity, stumbling along happily, tripping over windfalls, sniffing valerian, and annoying the jay. We note where the deer has lain under the wild apple, and we watch the red squirrel shucking spruce buds. The hours I have spent walking in the woods with my grandchildren have been happy ones, and I hope Nikita has had such good times in his own queer Russian way, in those strange Russian woods with all the bears. One bright cold morning last winter, I took my grandchildren into the woods through deep snow, to see the place where we were cutting firewood for our kitchen stove (I probably shouldn’t tell this, because I imagine Khrushchev’s wife has a modern gas or electric stove in her house, and not an old wood-burner, like us Americans). But anyway, Martha fell down seventeen times, and Steven disappeared into a clump of young skunk spruces, and I had all I could do to round up the children and get them safely out of the woods, once they had become separated that way. They’re young, that’s the main trouble. If anything, they love the woods too well.