Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  The teachers consulted in undertones. Bifocals put an end to the caucus. “Young man, we’ve been thinking. We have a nice clean hotel near the station. Our travel agent back home swears by it. We’ve each of us got a good-sized room to ourselves. Two of us could double up for the night and let you have the spare room. That’ll give you a chance to look around.”

  Peter’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Golly!” he said warmly. “Golly, that’s nice of you!” It was true, what refugees like his father said: Americans were a kind people. Peter tried to imagine any European he knew, starting with the babbo, being glad to sleep two to a bed so that a college kid who was dressed kind of funny would have a place to lay his head. But Americans were like that, especially the ones from the heartland. His mother might do it, coming from Marietta. Still, she was relatively young. It was harder, Peter knew, for old people, who were generally poor sleepers, to share a room. The cockles of his heart moved. O brave new world! As he used to tell his mother, you should not judge a book by its cover.

  At the same time, a cynic inside him warned him to take it easy. He could not figure himself joining a tour of old grade-school teachers from Kansas or whatever. That was the catch: the helping-hand type of American was usually not the type you wanted to see a great deal of, abroad or at home. And they were the type that would not take No for an answer. If he refused, the teachers would assume it was because he was bashful or afraid of putting them out and keep pressing him till he agreed.

  “It’s awfully kind of you—” “Not at all. Not at all.” They smiled, showing gums and dentures. “We Americans have to stick together.” But that was not it. They were doing themselves an injustice. If he were a foreigner, they would be just as determined to help him out. Like a lot of people, they were embarrassed by doing a good deed and felt they had to find a lousy reason for it.

  “Well, thanks,” he said. “But the thing is, I have to be on the other side of town. Near the Sorbonne. Tomorrow I have to register and all that. You know, buy books for my courses and check in with my professors. Stuff like that.” He was aware that this did not sound convincing; he could have used a few lessons from the babbo, who was a master of invention when the need arose. “Well, then, why not leave that pack and those grips of yours at our hotel for the time being? You can go out and scout around then. If you find a room, well and good. If you don’t, we’re glad to accommodate.”

  Peter did not point out that he could check his bags at the station. He sought a more gracious argument. “I thought I’d park my stuff with the other students in my group. They got here yesterday by plane, and we’re supposed to sort of keep in touch. I would have come on the plane with them, but my mother doesn’t like me to fly.” He had hit the right note. “Well, why didn’t you say so? The way you were talking, we pictured you as all alone in the big city. If your friends are here already …” He was free. There was no way they could ever find out that his group’s charter flight was not due to arrive for a week. Even if it crashed and they read about it in the paper, they would have no reason to associate it with Peter.

  He was appalled by his line of thought. Accepting the loss of his classmates, like a giant pawn sacrifice, if only he could be safe in his corner. As soon as he got to Paris, he would turn over a new leaf. They were now in the suburbs. Fifteen more minutes, he reckoned. He went to the toilet. Coming back, he found the teachers buttoning up their coats. They had taken down their hand luggage. As his eye traveled upward to inventory his effects, he became aware of his leather helmet, where he had tossed it on the rack. He froze. It seemed hardly possible that the teachers could have failed to see it while taking down their stuff. The chin strap was dangling through the spokes on the rack. His mind raced. How could he explain what this distinctive piece of headgear was doing there, if they were to ask him, which they might do any minute? He was carrying it for a friend? He wore it to protect his ears because of a mastoid operation? “ ‘Never apologize, never explain,’ ” he muttered to himself. But whoever said that had never been subjected to several hours’ direct questioning by a team of elementary-school teachers. Admit the truth? That would entail further explanations: he would have to say why he had disclaimed possession of a motorcycle. And in fact his reasons for doing so now escaped him. Maybe he was a psychopath and just getting to know himself, removed from the context of home and school. The helmet stared at him. He tried looking the other way in the hope that it would become invisible. Finally a feeble answer suggested itself. “I guess somebody must have left it there,” he could hear himself croak, in his mind’s ear. “That guy you saw on the pier. Maybe I’d better take it to the Lost and Found.” Somewhere outside a cock ought to be crowing. But now that he was prepared, the three Norns did not call on him. They were pinning on corsages of sweet peas that somebody had sent them to the dock at Le Havre. Still, they appeared friendly. They smiled. Maybe they had not noticed the helmet after all.

  Gratitude made him remorseful. They had offered him their bed. In the light of that, his own secretiveness and mumbling reserve looked shady. He had been acting like a miser, hoarding his gold. He was unable to give. Too late, he recognized that he ought to have accepted their invitation. At least left his bags with them while he went around looking for a hotel. Even now he could volunteer to take the old lady to the dentist. In his place, Don Quixote would have jumped at the opportunity. But Peter felt too embarrassed. If Miss Lewis had been disguised as a beggar-woman or a ragged refugee, it might have been different, he told himself. Anyhow, he would have plenty of other chances to be a model American, once he was in Paris and free of his compatriots.

  But of course he was not free, as he quickly discovered in the station. He was trapped by all the lies he had told. He had been assuming that it would be simple to lose his train-companions in the howling mob on the platform. But he took the extra precaution of letting them get off first, while he lingered in the compartment, pretending to be strapping on his pack. As a final safety measure, he stowed the helmet, pro tem, in his book bag. As soon as the coast was clear, he would get a porter to take his bags ahead to the checkroom and hurry down the line himself to claim his motorbike. Once his bags were checked, he would speed off on his motorbike to look for a hotel room. The chances of the teachers’ seeing him, from the top of some tourist bus, were one in several million. And even if they saw him, they would not be able to make a positive identification—a cycling outfit made you look like a hundred other guys.

  Reassuring himself, he counted up to fifty and then peered out the window. At the rear of the train, outside the baggage car, the teachers were gathered, with the rest of their tour and their tour director, supervising the unloading of their suitcases. There seemed to be an argument. He quickly withdrew his head. He decided to count up to a hundred. Sweat broke out on his forehead; he was wilting in his leather jacket. He craned his neck out the window again. A motorbike was being lifted off the train. The teachers were coming his way. Ducking, Peter urged himself to be patient. No one could steal the motorbike as long as he was here watching.

  The crowd on the platform was thinning. From his coign of vantage, effaced against the wall, he saw the teachers go by. He stood up and breathed easier. In only another minute, they would have disappeared through the gate. Unless they stopped to talk to somebody they knew. He was alone on the train, he presumed. And now he discovered fresh grounds for alarm. What if the train backed out of the station with him aboard? The car he was in gave a jolt. “Descendez, monsieur. Descendez!” a train official called out from below. “Vous êtes à Paris.” “This is the end of the line, buddy,” an American voice said. Peter slung his book bag around his neck. He adjusted his pack, picked up his suitcases, and limply descended from the train. His patience had been rewarded: there was no sign of the teachers. Nor, he became aware, of his motorbike. Outside the baggage car, the platform was empty, and the baggage-car doors were shut. The unthinkable had finally happened.

  As if in a dream, he heard himse
lf shouting. “Au voleur!” Words he could not have imagined himself uttering and which yet sounded strangely familiar, as though he had read them in a story or a play—which he had, he recognized several hours later: it was the shriek of poor old Harpagon, the local Shylock—Stop, thief! Nobody answered him; they stared and shrugged. He moderated his pitch. “On m’a volé mon vélomoteur!” Tears and perspiration were running down his face. Suddenly the train official and several porters all talked at once. “A la douane, monsieur! Vous le retrouverez à la douane. Il faut passer par la douane.” They were pointing at some vehicles that had been whizzing past, loaded with trunks, crates, and suitcases. He descried a wheel and a bit of mahogany fender. “Voilà votre vélomoteur!”

  Peter blinked. He still did not understand. Where were they taking it? “A la douane!”repeated the train official impatiently. “Customs!” “You have to go through customs,” an American voice said. “There’s a big hall in the station where you wait for your baggage. Then an inspector comes and looks at it.” “But I’ve already been through customs. At Le Havre. Monsieur! J’ai dédouané déjà—au Havre.” It was the same story. They refused to listen. “You went through immigration at Le Havre,” the American said. “This is customs.” Peter shook his head stubbornly. He knew what he had done. Finally he dug. Customs for boat-train passengers was in Paris. He was a boat-train passenger. Q.E.D. Sighing, he repaired to the customs hall, which was still milling with angry people. Someone’s baggage was being searched—the Persian. “They’re looking for hashish,” he heard a woman say. He retired to a corner and sat down on his big suitcase to wait his turn.

  Soon he heard voices he knew. “Hoo hoo! Hoo hoo!” They were still around. The whole tour had spotted him and was heading in his direction. “Here we are! Are you having an awful time getting one of those inspectors? My! We’ve been here for hours, seems like. You just come right along with us. Our tour director will help you. Here, Mr. Kormendi, will you get that man to mark the young man’s bags too?” Before Peter knew it, he had gone through customs a second time. “Now what you need is a taxicab. Mr. Kormendi will show you where you stand in line for one. We’re going to walk, ourselves. Our hotel is just across the way. Here, Mr. Kormendi, tell that porter to come back and take the young man’s bags to the taxi line.” Peter said he was planning to go by subway. “I have to economize.” “Well, let Mr. Kormendi show you where you get it. He might as well make himself useful.” Peter started to say that this would be too much trouble, when the tour director, a tall fat man with protruding teeth, resembling a hare, interposed in a guttural accent. The young gentleman would not be permitted in the Métro with so much baggage. If the ladies wished, he would be glad to accompany their young friend to the taxi queue.

  Peter drew a deep breath. Across the hall, the motorbike was standing. On its fender was a chalk mark made by the inspector this morning at Le Havre, which meant that it would be easy, he supposed, for anyone to walk off with it. If he allowed himself to be put in a taxi, he would never see it again probably. “Excuse me a minute,” he pleaded. “I think I see somebody I know.” And in fact his sweat-drenched eyes had caught sight of the pharmaceuticals salesman, like a natty mirage, proceeding toward the exit with a porter and his cases of samples. “Hi!” called Peter. “Why, hi there!” said the pharmaceuticals salesman. “I was wondering what had happened to you.” He stared at Peter and the conclave of teachers. “Say, you look kind of white!” “Can you give me a lift?” said Peter quickly. “To the Left Bank.” As the salesman told him afterward, he could see right away that Peter was on the verge of fainting; having been a druggist, he was familiar with the signs: glassy eyes, cheesy color, profuse sweating. He did not ask any questions. “Why, sure,” he said. “Sure. I’ve got a car meeting me. Happy to drop you anywhere you want to go.” He tipped his hat to the teachers. Peter gave a feeble wave of the hand in their direction. “Thanks again. Don’t let me keep you any longer. I’ve met this friend.”

  Half an hour later, he was in a Caddy ’62. In his wallet was a check for the motorbike, which had been left in the consigne at the station, and he was being deposited at a hotel on the Left Bank that catered to the American Air Force. While he waited in the station bar, munching a ham sandwich and drinking a restorative cognac, the salesman had fixed it up for him. It had only taken a couple of phone calls. There was an Air Force general, it seemed, that he had helped out once with some penicillin for a base in the south of France. The general was glad to return the favor. This hotel, which was not too far from the Sorbonne, was reserved for the military in transit and their families. Civilians not connected with the service were not supposed to stay there. But if you knew somebody, they could usually find you a slot.

  Peter listened wanly. He had tacked from Scylla to Charybdis and he no longer cared. When the salesman had said that he knew a cheap hotel on the Left Bank, he had omitted to specify what kind of hotel it was. A man of action, he shot off to telephone, while Peter, the man of reflection, was left to await results. When he reappeared making the V-for-Victory sign, it was too late to jib. The starch had gone out of Peter. Without experiencing any special surprise, he allowed his liberator to check the motorbike (“Take my advice and sell it; it’ll always be a headache”) and “fill him in” about the hotel they were bound for. It was not the Ritz, said the salesman, but the room should be fairly clean, and you did not have to tip. Peter was going to pass for the general’s wife’s nephew. He must be sure to remember that when he checked in with the sergeant at the desk.

  From the back seat of the Cadillac, Peter looked out the rain-splashed window. This was Paris. Tonight—“to make it legal”—he and the salesman were going to have a drink at the Crillon with the general. Later, after dinner, they might go on to the Lido. Peter did not protest. He had stopped protesting. He was floating, like a human shipwreck, on a tide of good will. It was no use fighting against it. If he could only hold out long enough, the tide would recede and leave him to his own resources. All he had to do was avoid further entanglements. The virtue, he argued, of a military hotel was that they would kick him out after a couple of nights. Meanwhile, in the words of the salesman, the tab would be minimal. He would be able to take a shower and maybe, he told himself, crossing his fingers, the sergeant would let him keep his motorbike in the cellar. He wondered where his family had ever got the idea he was obstinate.

  Epistle from Mother Carey’s Chicken

  33 RUE MONSIEUR-LE-PRINCE

  Paris 6ème

  1 Brumaire, CLXXIII

  Dear Ma:

  I have finally found an apartment. It’s on the fifth floor (American sixth), which is good exercise for me. One room, “furnished,” plus a separate jakes and a sort of bird bath. I’ve bought a student lamp, which helps. It has a radiator, but the heat hasn’t come on yet; the furnace is in the landlady’s apartment, and she doesn’t feel the cold. She has let me have some sheets and a so-called blanket, which I took to the cleaner’s. Still, it’s better than those hotels I’ve been staying in. Did I write you from the one where they had six Japanese acrobats sleeping on the floor in the room next to me? Contortionists, I assume.

  I’m glad to be on my own, making my bed and sweeping. It’s good to do a little physical work, and you feel less lonely in your own place, with your stuff unpacked. Also, I never could solve the tipping problem. That was the good part of that military hotel on the rue Littré. But in those other fleabags, where the service was compris theoretically in the price of the room, I was constantly on the horns of the dilemma. I mean, being an American and getting money from home, I felt I ought to tip the chambermaid even if the other inhabitants didn’t. “From each according to his abilities.” You know. But then I figured that if I tipped, it was scabbing on the others, who didn’t have the dough. Being prepotente, the rich American youth. Buying the red carpet. And if I crossed the chambermaid’s palm, I did get more service, I found out. In one hotel, every time I started to go to the communal
toilet, down the hall, she would rush ahead of me—“Un instant, monsieur”—and clean it with one of those filthy hard-rubber brushes they have, all caked with excrement, and when I thanked her, she backed out, curtseying: “A votre service, monsieur.” It was on account of that I moved. It got so I was lurking in my room, waiting for her to leave the floor so that I wouldn’t get this special treatment I seemed to be paying for. If the other inhabitants had to use a dirty, stinking toilet, why should I be the exception? In fact, it was her job to clean the toilet.

  On the other hand, when I didn’t tip, I felt like a cheapskate. Because of the way I’ve been brought up, I guess. It’s all your fault (ha ha). I tried asking myself what Kant would do in my position: “Behave as if thy maxim could be a universal law.” If my maxim was not to tip because the next guy didn’t, that would be pretty hard on the chambermaids of Paris, I decided. So, if he was true to his philosophy, Kant would tip. Of course he didn’t have to face the issue, never leaving Königsberg. But you could also argue that tipping made it tough on the non-tipper (which I could produce some empirical evidence for), and therefore Kant might be against it. If I understand him, he is saying that an action should be judged by its implications, i.e., if everybody did what you are doing, what would the world be like? Well, a world in which every student gave a five-franc gratuity weekly to the woman who cleaned his room would be OK, but what about a world in which every other student did it? Maybe the categorical imperative is not the best guide for Americans abroad. When you think of it, the rule of thumb about tipping is just the opposite of Kant: watch what everybody else does and do the same.