Contact! (14 page)

Two Berlins

‘I'm the Boss' was the first T-shirt slogan I saw, on the ample bosom of a housewife dancing a vigorous jig with her decidedly un-henpecked husband. East Berlin was having a public holiday, and at the hotel beside the lake several thousand citizens, great-grandmothers to babes in arms, were enjoying a family feast in the sunshine. How genially they laughed, danced, sang, drank their beer and ate their pickled pork knuckles! With what indefatigable smiles the two bands alternated, one with the old oom-pah-pah, the other exploring the less raucous fringes of rock!

That same evening, al fresco in the Grünewald woods on the other side of Berlin, I observed two middle-aged ladies, mother and daughter, perhaps, sharing delicate jokes over their asparagus, and balancing their purses carefully on the rims of their glasses to stop the chestnut blossoms falling into their wine.

Algérie Française

I stand in the big public forum of Algiers, outside the government buildings, watching the citizenry. The square is packed to suffocation, the crowd spilling away through the pleasant
gardens, up and down steps, across neighbouring squares, until it peters away at its fringes into clutches of foot-weary housewives at the tables of deserted cafes. There stand the grim paratroopers, the high priests of mid-century Algiers, dressed in boots and camouflage suits, festooned with tommy guns, grenades and pistols, lounging about in attitudes fearfully tough and jungly, or swapping badinage with the crowd. There are the queer bigwigs of this confused and unhealthy city, hastening up the steps to the Governorate, or briefly appearing upon some flowered balcony: ramrod generals in kepis, greasy double-breasted politicians, wild creatures of the nocturnal right, bearded plotters or fanatic militarists. A sickly cheer greets a token delegation of Muslims: spindly old men with ragged robes and a covey of bewildered white-robed women, with a trilling of high voices and an arabesque of reedy clarinets. Before long that vast crowd, like so many maudlin drunks outside a saloon, is caught up in histrionics, swayed to a man by the querulous, pitiful passions of Algiers–until the whole assembly, with a roll of drums and a sting of hot tears, bursts into the ‘Marseillaise', and for a moment all seems clear, all seems honourable.

Allegory in Amsterdam

Standing on a bridge in Amsterdam, I noticed a sleek tourist motor boat, all glass and chrome, gliding down the waterway with a warm hum of diesels. Inside it, snug behind the glass, sat five young Americans in bright open-necked shirts and jeans–servicemen, perhaps, from some air base. They all wore sideburns, and peered through their windows with an
air of concentration; and as they passed slowly by, inspecting me, too, as though I were a medieval monument, they emanated a powerful sense of allegory. They were new men in a very old world. Their identity tags flashed at their necks like ritual amulets. They seemed to me like young priests from some distant cloistered seminary, on a mission of dogmatic inquiry.

All American

For me the All American has always been the city bus driver. Since I first saw him clicking that little lever above his change machine, to the tinkle of the nickels and dimes sorting themselves out–since I first heard his timeless response: ‘Yeah, lady, get out at City Hall'–since I first plucked up courage to ask him if he could manage change for a ten-dollar bill–ever since I first made his acquaintance he has exemplified for me The American. His slumped shirtsleeved posture over the wheel, the weary reach of his arm towards that change machine, the occasional cursing at a cab driver, the unflustered answering of questions as he drives, his eyes always flicking to the mirror–all are the hallmarks of a man who knows the world for what it is, knows his own city to be its epitome, and has no illusions left. ‘So it's a big city? Sure it is. So they're tall buildings? So?'

Dinkum Aussie

In Darwin you may meet the Australian male at his most confident, on the edge of the great Outback. He may be of any age, this dinkum Aussie. He may be a humdrum bank clerk, or a prospector driven wildly in from his shack in the wilderness to squander his money on drink and loose living. Whoever he is, he is magnificent to meet: as free a spirit as you can find in the world today, shackled by no inhibition of class or disadvantage, with little sense of thrift and still less of decorum, no agonizing reserve, no contempt, no meanness. It is as though he has been relieved of the burden of the centuries, strengthened and cleansed by the southern sun, and allowed to begin history all over again.

Suddenly there emerges…

Suddenly there emerges from some unexpected alley of Kyoto a vision of the legendary Japan–a geisha in all her plastered glory, moving fast and purposeful towards an assignation. Immensely tall is her mound of hair, jet black and shiny; her face is vivid with white and scarlet, her costume is gorgeous with silks, sashes, the gaudiest of clashing colours and the floridest of patterns; and as she hastens awkwardly down the street, embellished from head to foot with paint and brocade, she seems less like a living woman than some fabulous toy, some last masterpiece by Fabergé, enamelled like a queenly trinket, animated by ultimate refinements of clockwork.

A queen rides by

The people around you seem instinct with an air of happy collusion, as though they all know one another, and are linked in one long line of neighbourly acquaintance from Admiralty Arch to the Palace. The soldiers lining the street look fresh faced and rather touching, the policemen are properly genial, and presently you will see, undulating strangely above the crowd, the head of the Queen of England, in a tricorn hat. You can hardly see her horse for the people, but high above the soldiers and the policemen, as she paces grandly by, you may study her pale face–a sad, antique face, it seems to me at such a moment, young but tired, half commanding, half embarrassed, half person, half idea–a face lined with the blood heritage of Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, Roderigo the Cid, Barbarossa and her great-grandmother Victoria, Empress of India.

Saturday lunch in Hong Kong

There seem to be a couple of thousand tables at the restaurant, and at them in uproarious enjoyment sits a vast multitude of Chinese, in families running the gamut from infancy to old age. Nobody is alone. Nobody is silent. The noise is deafening, all that talking and laughter mingling with the clanking of plates, the shouts of waiters from one side of the room to the other, the occasional cries of babies, the sizzling of woks and the Chinese music blaring from hidden loudspeakers. In we go, extremely European, and it
is like sitting on the edge of a maelstrom, as we vacantly study the enormous menu (bound in gold and scarlet). But we are offered encouraging nods and incomprehensible explanations from the family at the next table, and we smile ourselves in a baffled and innocuous way across the Chinese mass. In a daze we order, and as by a miracle our food arrives, piping hot and indefinable, and in no time at all we are slurping it happily away, all inhibitions lost, and nodding appreciatively to our neighbours as to the Chinese manner born.

Immigrants

Courtesy of the Department of Immigration, I once stood in the background of an immigration booth at JFK to watch passengers from Europe coming through, and it was revealing to see what emotions passed through their eyes when they noticed me there, looking I suppose like an unusually well-disguised Secret Service agent: suspicion nearly always, ingratiation very often, sometimes a hint of collusion, and occasionally a look I had never encountered before, which I took to be fear. Some of the new arrivals had clearly roistered their way across the Atlantic with champagne and canapés. Others, especially the mothers, the squirmy children, the stout beldames with swollen feet, arrived exhausted at that frenzied airport, into the glaring lights, the unremitting noise and movement of the New World; and as they looked wearily from the immigration officer to me, searching I imagine for some warmth of understanding in our faces, I sometimes thought I detected a flicker of regret in theirs.
The officer treated everyone exactly the same, down to the badinage: ‘Oh, please don't look at my picture there, I look terrible.' ‘It's like we always say, ma'am, if you look as sick as you do in your passport, you're not fit to travel.'

An ugliness

I was once held up on a seashore track by the unloading of live pigs from the Chinese mainland. This is a familiar ugliness of Hong Kong. The pigs are transported in narrow cylindrical cages of wire or wicker, into which they must be jammed so tightly that they lie there grotesquely squashed and distorted, and frequently in pain. That day they were squealing heart-rendingly as they were bumped in barrows at speed towards their slaughter, and I stood helpless and grieving beside the track. At that moment there came in single file from the opposite direction, on their way home from school, a line of small girls in almost exaggeratedly English uniforms, crested blazers, pleated white skirts, small neat knapsacks their backs. Demurely they filed past, their faces exuding school pride and team spirit: and they took not the slightest notice, as they walked daintily by, of the doomed animals screaming in their torture chambers.

‘We'd be famous'

Off the top of a building we fell that day, and sidled across the Hudson River, and in few moments the helicopter stopped, shook itself and gingerly descended a couple of
hundred feet. Looking out of my side window I found myself hovering, with a disrespectful clatter, close to the nose of the Statue of Liberty. We hung there for a minute, and the sunshine reflected off the water hung about her head. Then, with a last curtsey, we flew away. ‘If we hit her we'd be famous,' I said to the pilot as we darted off. ‘What a way to go,' he said. ‘I'd be the guy who assaulted the Statue of Liberty, and you'd be instant Shakespeare.' Later I climbed up the statue from the ground, and sympathized with the lady who wrote in the visitors' book that it was ‘a nice sight but the stairs weren't that wide'.

Subterraneanism

The station was excavated in the early days of the New York subway system, and suggested to me a particularly cramped and airless cave, or perhaps a sunken submarine. The lady at the booth was elderly and all white, almost albino. Her face was ashen. Her eyes seemed to have no pupils. It was as though she had never in her life emerged into the daylight, but had been born and bred down there. When I asked her how she liked working underground, and whether she did not miss the sun, she was rather affronted. What could I know about it? She had worked in the subway for thirty years, and did not regret a moment of it. She loved the old station, liked to see the trains go by, and had many friends among the passengers; and, sure enough, when a black man walked by he called out unexpectedly to that pallid lady behind her grille: ‘Howya doin', ma'am? Keepin' well?' ‘I'm fine, Jack, thank you kindly,' she replied. ‘Keepin' just fine.'

In Old Vienna

Watch now–stand back–here come a couple of ministers down the steps from the Council Chamber in the Austrian parliament, portly important men, deep in portly and important matters of state–and swoosh, like a rocket from his office leaps the porter, buttoning his jacket–out of his door, panting a little, urgently smoothing his hair, down the steps two at a go,
bitte, bitte!
–just in time, my goodness only just in time to open the door for Their Excellencies, who acknowledge his grovel only with slight inclinations of their heads, so as not to interrupt the flow of their discourse, as they lumber out beneath the figures of Minerva and her attendant sages to their waiting limousines.

Altercation on the Zephyr

I had pleasant companions at breakfast on the California Zephyr–a girl from Fresno who had never been on a train before, and two railroad buffs who kept me informed about the state of the track. However, I did have one altercation in the dining car. My ticket, I had been told, entitled me to anything I liked on the menu, but when I asked for cornflakes and scrambled eggs I was told I was entitled to one or the other, but not both. I called for the supervisor to expostulate, but I did not get far. I had got it wrong, the functionary said, not unkindly, and I quote him word for word: ‘You're not from this country. You don't understand the lingo.' But the girl from Fresno thought that man had been rather rude, and one of the train buffs offered to share his scrambled
eggs with me–only fair, really, because I had already urged upon him some of my Cooper's Oxford Marmalade.

A very Irish lady

A very Irish lady, sitting beside me as the ferry chugged doggedly across Sydney harbour, told me sadly that her car had just been stolen, and deliberately driven over a bluff. Never mind, I said, it was only a thing. Her eyes misted. ‘Only a thing! Sure that's the way to look at it. Only a thing! I must look at it that way. God bless you, God bless you for that!' ‘God bless you too,' I responded lamely, not knowing, as so often happens in discourse with the Irish, anything better to say.

Liveable city

Following the tourist signs towards the Old Town District and the Chinatown of Portland, Oregon, and expecting the usual harmless flummery of restored gas lamps and dragon gates, I crossed Burnside Street and found myself in a corner of hell. Suddenly all around me were the people of Outer America, flat out on the sidewalk, propped against walls, sitting on steps, some apparently drugged, some evidently about to vomit and nearly all of them, it occurred to me, idly wondering whether it was worth while mugging me as I passed. Portland has repeatedly been voted one of the Most Liveable Cities in the United States, but, thought I, you must choose the right part to live in…

A performance in Athens

On a lovely spring day I climbed the Mouseion hill in Athens, all among the olive trees, to see the celestial view of the Parthenon from its summit. The morning smelt delectably of pines, flowers and dust, and my mind was full of Hellenic glories. Halfway up a Greek sprang from the bushes, opened his mackintosh wide and revealed to me his manly equipment. Well, I supposed, why not? Greek art had been displaying masculine glories for a few thousand years, and for that matter the sentries outside the royal palace, down in the city, were something of a disappointment to one of romantic fancy. Goose-stepping up and down in their full and famous finery, they looked to me less like soldiers of lyrical myth than farm boys in drag–bulging, rather sweaty young men who might easily, in their off hours, mount a performance on the hill of Mouseion.