Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 (10 page)

MOON LANDING

7/26/69

THE MOON
, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin
*
went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.

7

Body and Mind

HUNGER

4/4/31

YESTERDAY IN THE GRAYBAR BUILDING
I bumped into my friend Philip Wedge, looking like the devil. The sight of him gave me a start—he was horribly thin, nothing but skin and bones.

“Hello, Wedge,” I said. “Where is the rest of you?”

He smiled a weak smile. “I'm all right.”

We chatted for a few moments, and he admitted he had lost almost forty pounds; yet he seemed disinclined to explain. Had it been anybody but Philip Wedge, I would have dropped the subject, but this queer skeleton fascinated me and I finally persuaded him to come along to lunch. At table, we got to the root of the thing quickly enough, for when the waiter appeared Wedge simply shook his head.

“I don't want anything.”

“Good Lord,” I said, “why not?”

Wedge fixed his eyes on me, the hollow gaze of a death's-head. “Look here,” he said, sharply, “you think I'm broke, or sick. It happens I'm neither. I can't eat food, and I'm going to tell you why.”

So while I listened he poured it out, this amazing story. I shall set it down as it came from him, but I cannot describe his utter emaciation of body, his moribundity of spirit, as he sat there opposite me, a dying man.

 

“It wasn't so bad,” he began, “while I still had coffee. Up to a few weeks ago I used to get along pretty well on coffee. Practically lived on it. Now even coffee is gone.”

“Gone?” I asked.

“Full of rancid oil,” said Wedge, drearily. “In its natural state the coffee bean contains a certain amount of oil. This gets rancid, same as any oil.” He drew from his pocket an advertisement telling about rancid oil in coffee. When I had read it, he folded it and returned it to his pocket.

“I haven't always been this way,” he continued. “I used to eat what was set before me. I believe it all started when I learned about marmalade's being made out of bilgewater.”

“Out of what?” I gasped.

“Bilgewater. I was only fourteen. A friend of my father's, visiting at our house, told us. The oranges are brought to Scot-land from Spain in the holds of ships. During the voyage the oranges float around in the bilge, and when they are unloaded the bilgewater is dumped out with them. The manufacturers find that it gives the marmalade a rich flavor.”

“Holy Moses,” I murmured. Wedge raised his hand.

“I could never eat marmalade after that. Wouldn't have mattered, of course, but soon other foods began to be taken from me. A year later I learned about wormy pork. Saw an item in the paper. Whole family wiped out, eating underdone pork. Awful death. I haven't had a mouthful since.”

I glanced down at my plate and gently pushed it to one side.

 

“Used to be crazy about cheese,” Wedge went on. “Did you ever see the bulletin that the Department of Agriculture issued in regard to mold? If you sniff mold it starts to grow in your lungs, like seaweed. Sometimes takes years but finally gets you. I gave up everything that might be moldy, even bread. One night I was opening a bottle of French vermouth, and the top of the cork was alive with mold. I haven't had a peaceful moment since. Jove, it seems as though every day I learned some-thing awful about food. Ripe olives—every time I opened a newspaper, one or two dinner parties poisoned, people dying like rats. Sometimes it was éclairs. In 1922 I learned about what happens if you eat spinach from a can.”

Wedge looked at me steadily.

“The vaguest rumors used to prey on my mind: casual re-marks, snatches of overheard conversation. One time I came into a room where a radio was going. A speaker was ending his talk:'. . . or sulphuric acid from dried apricots, or the disintegration of the spleen from eating a poor grade of corn syrup.' That was all I heard. Haven't touched any dried fruit or any syrup since.

“Maybe you recall the track meet some years ago in Madison Square Garden, when Paavo Nurmi
*
collapsed. Put his hand to his side, threw back his head, and collapsed. That was veal. Still, even with wormy pork and veal gone, my diet wasn't so bad until I found out about protein poisoning: somebody ate meat and eggs and nuts, and swelled up. I gave up all meat and all eggs, and later all nuts. At meals I began to see not the food that was actually before me—I'd see it in its earlier stages: oysters lying at the mouths of typhoid rivers, oranges impregnated by the citrus fly, gin made from hospital alcohol, watercress in drainage ditches, bottled cherries dipped in aniline dyes, marshmallows made of rotten eggs, parsley vines covered with green caterpillars, grapes sprayed with arsenate of lead. I used to spend hours in my kitchenette testing cans of foodstuffs to see if the cans sat flat. If a can doesn't sit flat, it has an air bubble in it, and its contents kill you after a few hours of agony.

“I grew weaker right along, hardly took a mouthful of any-thing from day to day. I weigh ninety-five now. All I've had since yesterday morning is a graham cracker. I used to drink quite a lot—alcohol kept me going. Had to quit. Fragmentary bits of gossip I picked up: ‘. . . lay off the Scotch in the West Forties,' ‘The liqueurs contained traces of formaldehyde,' ‘. . . she died of fusel oil in homemade wine.' I even gave up cigars when I heard how they were made. You know how the ends of cigars are sealed?”

I nodded.

 

“Life is hell these days. I'm wasting away fast, but it's better than eating things you're scared of. Do you know what happens inside the human stomach when fruit is eaten in combination with any of the root-vegetables such as carrots, turnips . . . ?” Wedge's voice was failing. His eyelids drooped.

I shook my head.

“Enough gas is formed to inflate a balloon the size of . . .”

Wedge swayed in his chair, then slumped down. The poor chap had fainted. When he came to, I held a glass of water to his lips, but he motioned it away.

“Not potable,” he murmured. “Reservoirs . . . too low.” Then he fainted again. In the sky over Forty-third Street a buzzard wheeled and wheeled on motionless wings.

UP AND DOWN

3/13/37

FEELING FIT AS A FIDDLE
, we dropped into the Psychiatric Institute the other afternoon, to pay a small call. Maybe you don't know it, but the Institute has two entrances—one on Riverside Drive, another about a hundred feet above on 168th Street. Anyway, we entered from 168th Street, stepped into the elevator, and asked for the sixth floor. Just as we were bracing ourself for the ascent, the car dropped out from under us, descended a flight or two, the door flew open, and the operator (who by this time we suspected was one of the patients) waited for us to get out.

“Sixth floor,” he said, sternly.

We stepped out, gibbering, and it
was
the sixth floor. Luckily we come from hardy stock and can withstand colossal japes like that; but we should think it would be tough on the nervous patients of the Institute, particularly those that are troubled by little men who chase them up airy mountains, down rushy glens.

MY PHYSICAL HANDICAP, HA, HA

6/12/37

SIX MONTHS AGO
I began to suffer from dizziness. It is an unhinging of the equilibrium, a condition of the body which gives rise to queer street effects, dreams, and fancies. I will be walking along the street, say, and will take three normal steps in a forward direction; then, as I am about to set my foot down for the fourth step, the pavement moves an inch or two to the right and drops off three-quarters of an inch, and I am not quick enough for it. This results in my jostling somebody on my left, or hitting the corner of the Fred F. French Building a glancing blow. It was fun for a few days, but I have recovered from the first fine ecstasy of dizziness, and am getting bored with it. Once I sidled into a police horse, and he gave me back as good as I gave him.

Although I am sick of my dizziness, I can't say my friends are. They still go into gales of laughter over my infirmity, and if I had lost both legs and travelled in a tiny cart drawn by a span of Baltimore orioles, I don't think I could give them more pleasure. I have consulted doctors, but doctors lose interest in any man who sticks to the same story. At first they were suspicious of my teeth, so I let them have a couple to calm them down. Then they fooled around with some flora they claim grow in the intestines, but they soon learned they were in a blind alley. Several of my friends have tried amateur witchcraft on me, including one lady who insists that my trouble is psycho-logical; she says I stagger through streets because, deep in my heart, I loathe streets. She is, of course, a mad woman. If there's anything I enjoy (or used to), it's messing around the streets.

After listening to friends and doctors, I have drawn my own conclusion about my staggering. I am of the opinion that I have simply lost the knack of walking. Is that so incredible? A biped's ability to get along smoothly on only two legs has always seemed implausible to me. What if I say I've lost the trick? I don't think such an explanation is half so crazy as that I ought to have my tonsils out—which is the most far-fetched idea I ever heard of.

However, I didn't sit down to write about my physical disability; I sat down to write about how I amuse myself now that I am handicapped. At first it was no easy matter. I couldn't work; and while that in itself is amusing, it isn't everything. For a while I had a bad time, but one day, thumbing through a copy of
Hygeia,
I ran onto a list of things to do—a page of suggestions called “Suggested Activities for Persons With Impaired Health or Physical Handicaps,” and for the first time I really felt as though I had hold of something.

The list was alphabetical, and apparently had been running as a serial, because in my copy (the April number) the list started with the “J”s and went through the “P”s. I lit a cigarette, snuggled into the couch, where I wouldn't feel dizzy, and began in earnest:

 

Jail, help families whose father or mother is in

 

This suggestion, though ingenious, I discarded. I had never helped anybody whose father or mother was in jail even when I was well, and it would be a queer time to start just because I happened to feel bad myself. I continued:

 

Jam, exhibit for state fair

Journalism, study for

 

This was getting closer. I ordered currants, raspberries, gooseberries, ten pounds of sugar. They are still around the house, mute reminders of my jam-making days. But I didn't stop with the “J”s, I went on to the “K”s.

 

Keep watch for the milkwagon horse

Knit, knit, knit, be one of the millions

Kitchen aprons, sell to tourists

 

I didn't see why I should sell the only kitchen apron in the house to tourists, especially since I contemplated making jam; but it
was
fun knitting and being one of the millions. I did that for two or three days, till I got complained about. In odd moments, I watched for the milk horse, and he for me. Life was indeed straightening out.

Then came the “L”s:

 

Languages, study by phonograph records and textbooks

Lease your barn for a summer theatre

Leather tooling

Listening ear (Manhattan cocktail at 5
A.M.
)

 

And the “M”s:

 

Marmosets, breed

Milkwagon horse, keep watch for the

Mineralogy, study on your walks in wood (with hammer along)

Minks, breed

Missing antiques, hunt for

Mothers, adult education for young

Mothers of several small children, watch

Music, study, compose, teach

 

I let my barn, tooled a little leather, and one morning I arose at five o'clock and mixed myself a Manhattan. It made the day. Even the marmosets, breeding steadily among themselves, seemed less quarrelsome seen through alcohol's beneficent haze. Streets, and street staggering, began to seem a long way off. I found that a man can occupy himself pleasantly without walking all over town. Quietly, through the long spring evenings, 1 watched a mother of several young children, and she returned the stare. My minks were sterile but good company. The only “M” that let me down was the mineralogy walks—for me they would have been only another dizzy stagger. And besides, I never carry a hammer. Not after what I've read in the papers.

I'm down to the “N”s now:

 

Newspapers, sell

Newspapers, send forgotten lines of poem to inquirer in Night popstands at summer theatre, sell hot coffee or sandwiches

Nurse, have a versatile

 

There seems to be something for a handicapped man in all these suggestions. The last one practically has my name written on it.

LIFE PHASES

2/20/37

WE ARE NOT SURE
we agree with President Roosevelt that seventy is the age when a Supreme Court judge should retire. If we must establish an arbitrary pension age, it should be either fifty or ninety, but not seventy. At seventy, men are just beginning to grow liberal again, after a decade or two of conservatism. Their usefulness to the state is likely to improve after the span of life which the Bible allows them is complete. The men of eighty whom we know are on the whole a more radical, ripsnorting lot than the men of seventy. They hold life cheaply, and hence are able to entertain generous thoughts about the state. It is in his fifty-to-seventy phase that a man pulls in his ears, lashes down his principles, and gets ready for dirty weather. Octogenarians have a more devil-may-care tactic: they are sometimes quite willing to crowd on some sail and see if they can't get a burst of speed out of the old hooker yet.

 

A man's liberal and conservative phases seem to follow each other in a succession of waves from the time he is born. Children are radicals. Youths are conservatives, with a dash of criminal negligence. Men in their prime are liberals (as long as their digestion keeps pace with their intellect). The middle-aged, except in rare cases, run to shelter: they insure their life, draft a will, accumulate mementos and occasional tables, and hope for security. And then comes old age, which repeats child-hood—a time full of humors and sadness, but often full of courage and even prophecy.