The World Is My Home: A Memoir

by James A. Michener

  She was one of those appealing subjects who seriously wanted her fortune told and leaned forward to hear every word. I instinctively liked her, not only for her beauty but also for her obvious intelligence, and I rather outdid myself in the completeness of my report. Her Head column proved that she was of more than average intelligence and that her ventures were sure to succeed for that reason. Her Home situation was good, and both her Health and Wealth seemed far above average. She had several interesting trips ahead, but when I reached her Heart column I saw fearful confusion, and when I studied more closely I saw that what had at first appeared like favorable signs in the Health column were actually signs of violent disorder that coincided at every level with equal disruptions in the Heart line. I cannot now remember what it was specifically that alerted me to a grave problem, but I certainly remember what I told her, for this became a subject of much conversation in the weeks that followed: ‘Young lady! I see a most serious confusion in your love life. You are being pulled in contrary directions, and have been for some time, and unless you decide which of these fine-looking young men you really prefer, you’re going to find yourself in serious trouble. And what gives me most concern is that this confusion in problems of the Heart seems to affect adversely your general Health, or well-being.’

  The tent was silent. The young lady stared at me, then averted her eyes, and her male companions looked away. Rarely had I ever told a fortune that elicited such a downcast reaction, and as the young people filed out I felt that in some unknown way I had offended them all, but later one of the men came back privately to inform me that the subject I had taken to be a beautiful young lady was actually a professional transvestite who appeared in nightclubs and whose emotional life was, as I had detected, in chaos.

  My fortune-telling, which was beginning to earn large sums for our festival, came to a bad ending. It was my custom, and that of many clairvoyants, I suspect, to draw back from reading the more disastrous combinations of cards, especially those that predicted impending death. I was not averse to telling a subject: ‘You would be well advised to have that operation within the next two months. Do not delay,’ and one of my loveliest experiences in what was becoming almost a trade came when I told a woman of ninety-one whose grandchildren had brought her into the tent: ‘Madam, you will live to be ninety-seven,’ because years later those grandchildren told me in a letter: ‘One of the best deeds you ever did, Mr. Michener, was to tell our grandmother: “You’ll live to be ninety-seven, so get yourself a new set of teeth and some pretty dresses.” We’d been unable to get her to spend a penny on herself, because she kept telling us: “I won’t be here long enough to enjoy it.” You changed her entire outlook and she did get new teeth that gave her comfort and three new dresses, which she loved. She died at ninety-six, a dear and contented grandmother.’

  The bad ending came abruptly. When a woman in her fifties sat across from me, I saw something I had never seen before: at the bottom of her Health line were the two and three of Clubs, at the bottom of Travel the two and three of Spades, the worst configuration possible. Before saying anything else, I told her with some force: ‘Madam, you and your husband are driving to Iowa next weekend. I implore you, don’t go.’ She gasped, but decided to ignore my comment. She returned the next year to ask: ‘Mr. Michener, do you remember me? Last year you warned me not to take a trip to Iowa, but we went, and the first night out our car was hit by a truck and my husband was killed.’

  This, and other extraordinary coincidences that resulted from sheer guessing, began to make me think that what I was doing was irresponsible; it had become far more serious than just a silly game, and I realized that I had better quit the nonsense, because even if I refused to take it seriously, others did.

  I was not allowed to quit entirely, for sometimes at parties my wife would casually tell of my exploits as Mitch the Witch and guests would importune me for an illustration of the system; I would be almost forced to spread the cards and run through my nonsense. At one such party in Hawaii the guest of honor was the famous industrialist who had taken up residence on Oahu, Henry J. Kaiser. As soon as he heard about my skill he revealed himself as a devotee of the art and insisted that I tell his fortune. When the cards were spread I saw an interesting configuration, and the first words I told him were: ‘By next weekend you will have to arrange a loan of four and a half million dollars or you’re going to be in serious trouble.’ He gasped, and I was never to know how close I had come to the truth, but it was obviously what Navy people call ‘a near-miss,’ which sometimes does almost as much damage as a direct hit.

  That night Kaiser adopted me as his local seer, and sometimes came to my apartment for readings, always calling on me at any social gathering for a quick look at the cards. He had at that time almost adopted a charismatic full-blooded Hawaiian tenor named Alfred Apaka, whose melodious records of island songs enjoyed a wide sale both in the islands and on the mainland. He had given Apaka, who sang with great success in Kaiser’s big tourist hotel, a white Continental convertible, and sometimes the two men would arrive at my place so that Henry J. could have his cards read. One afternoon there was such a heavy concentration of bad news in the Health column that death was clearly indicated. This was not improbable, since Henry J. was in his mid-seventies and somewhat overweight, but I had an invariable rule: ‘No matter what the cards say, never tell anyone he or she is about to die.’ It was easy to pass this part of the fortune in silence, because I saw in related columns that it was not Kaiser himself who was doomed but one of his friends. It is to be expected that if a man is advanced in years he will have a few acquaintances older than himself, so with the constraint lifted, I said: ‘Henry J., one of the friends you’ve cherished in the past is going to die and you will mourn his loss.’

  A few days later, Alfred Apaka, a young fellow in full possession of his unusual powers, dropped dead and I told no more fortunes.

  • • •

  I have gone into this fortune-telling episode more fully than might have been expected because I wanted to make several points. Fortune-telling as the Princess taught me to practice it bore a striking resemblance to storytelling. In both activities one used observation, shrewd guesswork and the proper selection of emotion-laden words to create empathy. One also performed best if one relished the jovian exercise of moving mortals here and there on the chessboard.

  There the similarity between my fortune-telling and my fiction ends. Never once, not even when I was reaping great acclaim as a seer, did I believe a word of what I told my subjects, nor did the Princess. We each had an animal type of cunning, seeing things that others missed. We had an overdeveloped sense of humor, and we loved the world’s wild contradictions. In traveling about in various lands we had acquired an intense love of storytelling. But each of us acknowledged that what we did was nothing but delightful trickery.

  Whenever others who believed in a world of spirits, gnomes and Tarot cards tried to enlist me in their crusades, and this happened often, I demurred. I was frequently invited or badgered to confess that I had supernatural powers, or was in touch with spirits, or had at some point been inducted into the world of black magic, but I was never remotely inclined to accept such nonsense and quickly dropped my involvement when others began to take fortune-telling more seriously than I did. I had no powers of spiritualism whatever. Tarot, I Ching and astrology disgust me, and I think that newspapers that publish daily horoscopes are enemies of sanity. When people ask ‘What sign are you?’ I cringe.

  Because my mother must have had inadequate nutrition during her pregnancy with me, I was born with deficient bone structure, especially in my rib sections, and low levels of calcium in my teeth which made them weak. I also had severe astigmatism, which required frequent changes in the prescription of my glasses, once I began to wear them.

  Otherwise I was gifted with a remarkably durable body that was able to withstand considerable punishment. Twice I walked completely across Scotland in two unbroken days, the f
irst time covering nonstop a stretch of some sixty miles from St. Andrews toward Oban. I made similar tough journeys in Afghanistan and when hitchhiking across the United States. Three times I drove alone practically nonstop from New York to San Francisco, pausing alongside the road when I grew tired to sleep in the car. I was never a weakling.

  Through a series of the most fortunate accidents I never smoked or drank, or ate harmful foods or experimented with drugs, so that my body husbanded whatever strength its genes entitled it to. It was mostly luck that determined these patterns, for without a father or a surrogate father in my home I might have fallen into bad habits. Fortunately, when I started hanging around Frank Mitch’s enticing pool hall at an early age, two townsmen who frequented the place, Henry Ullman and Russell Gulick, took me aside and said: ‘Jim, you’re not the type of kid who ought to be here. You’re better than this. Don’t come here anymore, and don’t fool around with cigarettes,’ and I obeyed.

  Shortly thereafter I fell into the hands of an excellent basketball coach, Allan Gardy, who had jumped center for Lehigh University. He was one of those foursquare men to whom everything was either good or bad, and he not only knew the difference but was also eager to tell others. Smoking was bad. Alcohol was bad. Fatty foods were bad. Girls were bad. Democrats were bad. The good things were manliness and basketball, and he offered instruction in each. Once on the night before a big game Coach Gardy peered in the window of a hot-dog stand that had introduced a new-style dog called the Texas Weiner at ten cents rather than the usual five. It was bigger, fatter and topped by a generous helping of chili swimming in heavy golden grease, and I had decided to try one.

  Coach Gardy merely looked at me, his face full of disgust, and he passed beyond the window, leaving me to gag on the chili dog in my mouth. When I see my friends dying prematurely of emphysema, cancer, complications from obesity and alcoholism, I reflect on the great good my early instructors did me when they steered me away from destructive habits.

  I was always careful to keep my body strong and healthy. I engaged furiously in games, became something of a minor star in high school sports, played semi-pro basketball for a while and on a championship volleyball team in New York gyms. In later years I played a tremendous amount of tennis, continuing the game well into my seventies. Above all, I walked, covering many miles each week no matter where or how I lived, and I neither stopped nor slowed down when I came into my mid-eighties. I have said with accuracy: ‘Whenever my writing goes poorly, it’s because I haven’t walked enough at sunset,’ because it is on those quiet rambles that I have not only cleared my mind and relaxed my muscles, but also contemplated the structure of what I wanted to write the next morning. The hundreds of characters whose lives I have reported lived those lives with me from seven to eight on summer and winter evenings.

  I passed the first five decades of my life without physical incident except for a badly broken nose sustained on three different occasions when I was speaking when I should have been listening. A main difference between boys and girls is that no matter how tough a fellow may be, he is dead certain to meet, sooner or later, some other lad who is bigger and tougher, and in such humbling situations noses get broken. All my adult life I have had a difficult problem with breathing through my once-shattered nose, but I have also learned to live with my fellow men in relative harmony.

  I also broke my right elbow in schoolboy roughhousing, and this had a curious effect on my athletic aspirations. Badly set by an inept doctor, it left me unable to use my right arm in a normal way and thus terminated my career as a pitcher in baseball. But it gave me a monolithic arm as rigid as an oak tree, and if I have never been able to scratch my right ear with that arm or develop a good forehand in tennis, I was able to shoot a basketball with great accuracy, no matter how many opponents slammed into my right, shooting arm, and because of its extraordinary strength I had a powerful backhand in tennis and an equally powerful shot to the undefended back corner of the opponent’s court in volleyball.

  I was fifty-three when I first met the famous heart doctor Paul Dudley White, who was then in his energetic late seventies. We were in Leningrad attending a meeting of Soviet and American private citizens and during a break he told me of how the American military at the close of World War II had handed him an extraordinary commission: ‘They told me to assemble a team of heart specialists and go to the great air bases in Alaska, where young colonels who had served in the war were reporting for duty, doing a good job and then going out on the ski slopes and dropping dead. Terrible attrition of first-class men in their forties and fifties.’

  Seeing that I had more than the usual interest in the subject, since I was the same age as some of the stricken colonels, he explained: ‘We never found the exact cause, and we won’t till sometime in the next century when computers can make sense of the reams of statistics we’re gathering.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘We found without question that seven factors—ultimately they may turn out to be seventeen—seem to produce killing heart attacks. The first four you can control. High blood pressure, elevated level of cholesterol, gross obesity and smoking. The last three are inherited characteristics, and you’re stuck with them. Diabetes, a family history of father or older brother dying prematurely of a heart attack, your somatotype.’ When I asked what that meant he said: ‘It means body build. Bones, muscle, chest structure, the whole mix. Three distinct types have been identified. Ectomorph, the long, lean stringbean type like John Kenneth Galbraith sitting over there on the other side of the table. They never get heart attacks, or hardly ever. The round, pudgy type, endomorphs, like Pierre Salinger. He’s not a pound overweight. God meant him to be that way, and his kind doesn’t often suffer a heart attack.’

  ‘What’s the third type?’

  He pointed directly at me: ‘Mesomorphs like you. Heavy chest structure, arms attached somewhat like an ape, forward leaning as you walk, big-boned, a throwback to primitive man. Most superior athletes are mesomorphs, many powerful political leaders. Tense men who pay the price with sudden heart attacks.’

  I remember questioning him in greater detail because we had spoken casually about the possibility of my working with him to write about this fascinating subject, and at the conclusion of our meeting there in Leningrad I asked directly: ‘Well, if I don’t smoke or have diabetes and am not overweight, and have a moderate cholesterol index and an extremely low blood pressure, am I relatively safe?’

  ‘With clear cause and effect not yet known, we can never give assurance,’ he said. ‘How about your father and brothers?’

  ‘I’ve never known who my father was.’

  ‘You could be at risk, and we know that you’re an almost prototype mesomorph.’

  So I left him feeling somewhat vulnerable. Later I discovered that I had not told him the complete truth about diabetes, not because I was trying to hide something but because I was ignorant of the facts.

  One afternoon when I was in my mid-forties I played in a vigorous basketball game at the YMCA in Honolulu, and later, when I was about to enter the shower room, I gave my left big toe a tremendous bang on the raised doorsill. I thought I had broken the toe, and during the flight back to New York the next night the pain became so unbearable that the airline radioed ahead for an early morning ambulance to meet me at the airport in San Francisco.

  Suffering from the worst pain I had ever had, I was whisked to a local hospital, where a clever doctor asked only four questions: ‘Where were you when you broke your toe?’ At the Y. ‘What time was it when you broke it?’ About five-thirty in the afternoon. ‘Did you go out for dinner that night?’ Yes. ‘How far did you walk to the restaurant?’ About five blocks.

  The informed reader already knows the solution to this mystery, but I didn’t. The doctor smiled at me reassuringly and said: ‘I have good news and bad. The good is that your toe is not broken. The bad is that you have gout and you will have it for the rest of your life.’

  H
e proceeded to give me a crash course on this dreadful disease about which those not afflicted have made many unfeeling jokes. ‘It comes from an oversupply of uric acid crystals that your urine cannot dispose of. It’s exacerbated by consuming rich food, heavy wines and champagne. Attacks come two or three times a year, and their severity can be lessened by not eating liver, brains, kidneys, heavy gravies or lima beans and by forgoing red wine and champagne. You can also help yourself by drinking lots of mineral water, which flushes away some of the uric acid.’

  ‘About the pain right now. No cure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m giving you these little white pills. Colchicine. You take one every half hour with plenty of water until you vomit. Then stop.’

  The pain on my flight to New York was almost more than I could bear, and the colchicine treatment kept me close to violent nausea the whole way. In later days I consulted with other specialists and heard only confirmation of what the San Francisco doctor had said: ‘It’s a lifetime affliction. The pain is often unbearable. Make a little tent over your toe so that the bedcovers can’t touch it. And take what comfort you can from the known fact that gout is the disease of geniuses.’ One of the doctors read from a paper the names of great men who had suffered from the ailment. Statistically, at least, there did seem to be an affiliation between high-strung brilliant men and the disease, but since I was markedly low-strung and not close to the genius class, I found little comfort in that.