Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

  “Demandez aux autres si vous ne me croyez pas!” he cried, getting angry. “Tout le monde ici peut confirmer que je dis la vérité!” He was not the sole witness to the fact that Makowski had not budged from the curb; there were the flower-seller on the corner and the newspaper-vendor in her tarpaulin shelter—courtesy France-Soir—and the butchers in their bloody aprons. They had all been standing there like stage extras or a speechless chorus, contributing local color. “Qu’il parle bien le français!” a voice murmured behind him. Peter disregarded the flattery. He was going to insist that the cops take his testimony. “Voici mon passeport et ma carte de séjour!”

  A shower of membership cards, guarantees, and certificates fell to the pavement as he searched wildly in his wallet for his carte de séjour, which to his chagrin was not in his passport; he hugged his plant awkwardly to his body to free a hand. Bystanders picked them up and restored them to him; a young lame girl offered to hold the Fatshedera: “Quelle belle plante!” The senior gendarme, who seemed to be a sergeant, took the documents and slowly looked them over, frowning at the membership in the Jeunes Ornithologistes de France. “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” He found the carte de séjour folded into the yellow health certificate. He studied it. Then he tapped all the documents into a neat pile and handed them back, together with Peter’s passport. “Bon. Merci, monsieur. Tout est en règle,” he said. “Allons-y!” he shouted to the driver of the Black Maria. The motor started. Peter gasped. They were not going to release Makowski! Apparently he was supposed to count himself lucky that they were letting him go free. He gave an inarticulate howl of despair.

  In back of him, someone coughed noisily. He heard a hoarse, deep female voice. “Il a raison, messieurs. L’américain vous dit la vérité. L’autre n’y état pour rien. Qu’est-ce que vous faites là? C’est une honte.” It was les Journaux in her leather apron and thick sweaters. Peter had always bought the Times and Tribune from her when he lived in the hotel on the rue Littré; ô juste ciel, she recognized him! He felt a lump in his throat. He had made it; he was finally “accepted” by old Marianne, la France. And now other “popular” voices were joining in, muttering and grumbling, les Fleurs, a window-washer, an old lady with a cane.”Soyez raisonnables! Qu’est-ce que cela vous fout? Après tout! Un peu de calme! Ce sont des enfants!”

  The police sergeant appeared to reflect. His subordinates were watching him. “Vos papiers!” he said to Makowski. And of course Makowski did not have any. “Et alors?” said the policeman sharply. That settled it. This was France, after all (the Embassy was right), and, regardless of any specific charge, not having your papers was prima-facie evidence that you were up to no good. The attitude of the bystanders confirmed this. “Il n’a pas ses papiers. Zut!” A collective shrug disposed of the Pole, whose broad face had assumed a plaintive, aggrieved, innocent expression, as though he could not dig what this fuss was all about. You would think he was some hayseed who had never heard of a travel document. Peter himself experienced an appreciable drop in sympathy. What a clown!

  The doors of the Black Maria were shutting on the heap of sprawling kids. Peter’s conscience jabbed him. “Makowski!” he yelled. “Jan! Don’t worry! I’ll go tell the Embassy. Right away. I promise.” “Stay out of this, Peter Pan!” the Pole’s voice answered rudely, adding an obscenity that made Peter hope that these French did not understand English. He fell back a step, feeling his neck turn red. It came to him that, insanely, Makowski held him responsible. Doubtless he had counted on the vérification d’identité taking place later, in relative privacy, at the station-house or wherever, when the cops had had their lunch and were in a good humor. But now it was public knowledge that he had been picked up without any papers.

  Peter declined to swallow Makowski’s tales of mass deportations; that could not happen to American citizens, he felt sure. But in the face of those closed black doors, his confidence was eroding. The tumbril’s engine started. He realized that he did not even know where they were taking Makowski now. The spectators on the corner would not commit themselves. “Sais pas.” “Ah, non, monsieur, je ne saurais pas vous le dire.” “Peut-être à Beaujon?” “C’est pas mon affaire. Demandez aux gendarmes.” But Peter—the old story, he guessed—felt a horrible diffidence about asking the flics outright. The window-washer came to his rescue. “C’est pas la peine, mon gars. Ils ne le disent jamais. La police, vous savez …”

  The Black Maria’s motor was still idling. Once it bore Makowski off, Peter might never be able to find him in the maze of French bureaucracy. With sudden resolution, he banged on the door. A policeman stuck his head out. Peter asked if he could accompany his friend, as a witness. “C’est pas un taxi, monsieur,” the policeman retorted, slamming the doors. In the interior, Peter could hear raucous laughter. “Alors, arrêtez-moi!” he shouted. “Foutez-moi la paix,” came the grumbling reply.

  It was typical of the French that if you asked them to arrest you, they would not help you out. In his fury, he thought of a ruse. All he had to do was open his mouth and say “Nazi!” and every flic in the quartier would spring on him. He would not even have to say it very loud. He swallowed several times in preparation. At home, among his peer group, he could speak lightly of the cops as fascists, but now, to his astonishment, his vocal cords felt paralyzed. As in a nightmare, his mouth opened and closed. No sound came out. Yet it was not from fear, as far as he could determine, but from a profound lack of inclination.

  His father was always giving people the drill if they used the term fascist when, according to him, they should have used conservative or repressive or just brutal: if you kept throwing that term around, like the boy crying “Wolf,” as an expression of simple dislike, you would be unable to recognize real fascism when and if it came. Peter could not recall all the “objective criteria” that the babbo said had to be present to justify a diagnosis of fascism but he felt certain the French police would not qualify.

  Yet there was more to it than that—some squirming aversion in him, related maybe to delicacy. Actually, he was unable to imagine circumstances in which he would find it easy to call anybody a Nazi, including Hitler probably. If you called Hitler a Nazi, he would not mind, obviously, so what would be the use?

  A flic in a blue cape had emerged from the corner café, where presumably he had been telephoning or answering a call of Nature. He barked out an order to the driver. Peter heard the clash of gears. It would be hopeless to chase after the police-wagon. Even if it had to stop for the traffic light at the next corner, he would be incapable of keeping up for more than a block, hampered as he was by his plant. Then in the distance he sighted a taxi coming up the rue de Rennes. He dashed into the street to flag it down, foreseeing, as he waved, that the driver might decline to follow the panier à salade; they loved telling you No. Closing his eyes, he recited one of his magic formulas: “Perseverance, dear my lord, keeps honor bright.” “Attention!” someone called.

  The police-wagon shot backward. Peter jumped out of the way. His heel struck the curb behind him; his ankle turned, and his long bony foot got caught in an opening in the gutter. He lost his balance, tried to right himself, throwing out his arms. The Fatshedera was sliding from the crook of his elbow. Endeavoring to catch it, he fell. As he did, a ringing, explosive sound reached his ears, seeming far away; it was the clay pot shattering on the pavement. Somebody was helping him up. They were asking if he was hurt. He stole a glance around. Moist black dirt and reddish shards and slivers of the pot were scattered all over the street and sidewalk; the plant was lying in the gutter with its whitish root system exposed. Les Fleurs carefully picked it up and wrapped it in a newspaper. “Tenez, monsieur.” She handed it to him. He thanked her. She meant well, he assumed. But he had seen the crown of pale new leaves lying a yard away, like a severed head, near the Métro entrance. Some passer-by had already stepped on it, leaving a green smear on the sidewalk.

  The Black Maria, naturally, had made its getaway, after putting him hors de
combat. If Peter had not leapt aside, would the hit-and-run driver at the wheel have jammed on the brakes in time? According to Dag, a lot of “traffic accidents” were really engineered by the Deuxième Bureau. If the cops killed a person while giving him the third degree, they just stretched the body out on the autoroute on Sunday and called it a highway death. Shaking, Peter sat down on the top step of the Métro entrance and buried his head in his hands. His ankle hurt, and pulling down his sock, he found blood where he had scraped it. Maybe he would get blood poisoning and croak. He ought to find a pharmacy and buy some Mercurochrome, but at this hour they would all be closed probably. The butchers had taken in the meat, and the fruit and vegetable merchants along the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs were covering their produce. Les Journaux was bending over him, wondering if he was all right. He got to his feet. “Votre plante,” she reminded him. He picked it up. In his mind, he mimicked his mother’s consoling voice: “Never mind. We’ll get another, Peter.” Aloud, he cried out “No!”

  While he was sitting there, nursing his ankle, a vile temptation had visited him, whose source was that artful Eve, his parent. There was an amusing plant he had read about in his manual, known as Dumb Cane, a member of the Dieffenbachia species; the stem, when chewed, paralyzed the tongue. If he were to whip over to Les Halles this afternoon and look for one …? Today, as it chanced, was Friday. He thrust the thought from him. He would have no more plants in his Stygian kingdom, no substitutes, successors, or duplicates, and as for the Fatshedera, he would not take it home for decent burial: he would junk old Fats here at the scene of its decapitation—good riddance. Yet a last trace of humanity remained, he was sorry to perceive, in his hardened heart. He could not perform the committal in plain view of les Fleurs, whose stubby chilblained hands had wrapped the grisly trunk in France-Dimanche: she would be sorry for her trouble. He would have to wait till he found another trash-basket

  Actually, he disposed of it on American soil, in a wastebasket at the Embassy, where he went to report Makowski’s arrest to a bureaucrat in the consular section who could not have cared less. “If you students take part in street demonstrations, there’s nothing we can do to help you. It’s strictly against regulations for American citizens to meddle in French politics.” “He wasn’t taking part in a demonstration,” Peter protested. “You just wrote that down yourself in your notes. He was standing on the curb, next to me.” The official frowned over his notes. “Ah yes, so you said. I see it here. Well, all I can tell you is the next time you see a march or a demonstration, walk rapidly in the opposite direction. Don’t linger there to gawp. For one thing, you may get hurt. A few years ago, during one of their protest rallies, some bystanders were crushed to death in a Métro entrance. Luckily there were no Americans among them.”

  Silence followed. The man fiddled with some papers on his desk. “You mean you won’t do anything?” Peter said finally. “Is that the Embassy’s policy?” “Consular policy,” the man corrected, “is opposed to taking unnecessary action. Your friend’s case isn’t as unfamiliar to us as you appear to think. Ordinarily the French police hold these people a few hours, to teach them a lesson, and then let them go.” “Yeah,” said Peter. “I’ve heard that too. But I’ve also heard that they deport foreign students they pick up, just like that, without a trial or investigation or anything. Actually, it happened to a friend of mine.” “An American?” “Well, no.” “Just as I thought. It’s rare,” he went on in a musing tone, “that they deport an American unless he’s been up to some mischief. Odd as it seems, they discriminate, if anything, in our favor. One of those little diplomatic mysteries. It may have something to do with the balance of payments. Every one of you students, you realize, who stays here getting money from home and spending it is hurting the dollar.”

  From the wall, the photo of Lyndon B. Johnson looked at Peter with eyes of reproach. The official leaned across the desk. “Are you sure that this Makowski is a naturalized citizen of the United States?” “I’m not sure. I only met him this morning. But he talked like an American.” “Didn’t you see his passport?” “That was the whole trouble! I explained to you. They were just going to let him go when it turned out he’d left his passport at home.” “He didn’t describe it specifically as an American passport?” Peter sighed. “No. Why would he? Imagine anybody saying ‘I left my U.S. passport at home this morning.’ I mean, that would imply you had several passports.”

  “I’m not here to engage in semantics with you. And under the circumstances, I don’t see how we can help you. We can’t intervene without more information than you’ve been able to furnish. You have no idea of the number of inquiries we get about you students. Usually from parents, wanting us to find out why Bobby hasn’t written. If we called the police and the hospitals about every Tom, Dick, and Harry, we’d have no time left for normal consular business.” He got up. “Run along now. If your friend doesn’t turn up in a day or two, come back and see me. That’s the best I can offer.”

  “Great!” said Peter bitterly. “You haven’t understood the point. I don’t know his address. So how can I tell if he turns up or not?” “You can find him at the Sorbonne, I suppose.” “He’s not at the Sorbonne. He’s at the Institute of Oriental Languages. And tomorrow is Saturday. The Embassy will be closed. By Monday he might have been deported. They give you twenty-four hours to leave the country.”

  His hoarse voice broke. Some secretaries looked up. In a minute, he supposed, they would call the Marine guard to remove him from the chair in which he remained sunk, feeling too weak and dejected to dislodge himself. He remembered that he had not eaten since morning. Then the man reached in his pocket and spoke in a kindlier tone. “I tell you what you do. Here’s a jeton. There’s a pay phone in the corridor, by the cashier’s window. Call the Commissariat of the arrondissement where this bagarre took place and ask if they’re holding your friend. The Commissariats are listed in the front matter of the telephone book. Then come back and tell me the result.”

  “There won’t be any result,” said Peter, getting reluctantly to his feet. “You don’t know the French, sir, the way a student does. It’ll just be a waste of a jeton. Can you figure me trying to spell Makowski to some half-crocked police sergeant? ‘MarieAnatolKléberOscarWashingtonSuzanneKléberIrma’?” He gave a hollow laugh. “If you’d call, it would be different. They listen to somebody with authority.” “On your way,” said the man. “Right through those doors.”

  It was just as Peter had prophesied. “They hung up on me,” he reported back. “I think they recognized my voice.” For the first time, the official cracked a smile. He chuckled. “Oh, Jesus!” he said. Still overcome by merriment, he pointed to the chair, and Peter obediently sat down. He failed to get the joke, but it did not matter. He knew he had crossed the Rubicon. He watched the man pick up the telephone. “Monsieur Dupuy, s’il vous plaît … Bon, j’attends. … Allo, Jacques? C’est nous encore. Pas mal. Et vous-même? Oui, c’est ça. Une petite bagarre. Comme d’habitude. Vous êtes au courant? Un certain Makowski, étudiant …” He doodled on a pad. “Ah, bon, bon. Merci. A la prochaine fois, Jacques.” Jan Makowski, naturalized U.S. citizen, born in Poland, had been released at 3:50 P.M. after verification of his papers.

  Peter guessed Makowski had scored after all. He left the Embassy in a good mood. In the end, the vice-consul (he had given Peter his card) had seemed glad that somebody had prodded him into being somewhat nicer than he customarily was. It was funny how people never remembered the well-known fact that virtue was its own reward but had to keep discovering it as a novelty. In the garden, he paused to pay homage to the seated statue of Ben Franklin in his wide bronze rumpled coat. He liked the patron saint of inventors sitting mildly amid the ornamental shrubbery. He looked home-made, like the funny Stars and Stripes still waving over the Embassy’s portal. Some English ivy was climbing up his pedestal.

  Peter took the lay of the land. Outside the gate, two gendarmes were walking up and down. In the driveway, a cha
uffeur sat at the wheel of a big black Embassy car. But nobody was paying attention to Peter in the gathering winter dusk. He advanced stealthily toward the statue, taking his time. With his trusty pocket-knife, he cut some long shoots of ivy. When one of the gendarmes glanced his way, he had already stored the booty in his sheepskin-lined jacket; the heart-shaped leaves of the Fatshedera’s creeping cousin were nestling in his bosom. Hedera helix rooted easily in water, and then you could plant it in earth. Satisfied by this act of vandalism committed on U.S. property, he sped toward the Métro station. The idea that a new resident of his apartment had been acquired free of charge and at some slight personal risk compensated him for the passing of the old one. Life had to go on. Actually, in the place of one sickly specimen, he could have a whole lusty tribe, in pots, trained on strings to climb up his walls and turn his room into a bower. Offering his second-class ticket to be punched by the ticket-taker, he felt like Prometheus, with a gift of green fire. The punishment, he expected, would come later, in the guise of a crise de foie induced by the unhealthy French diet.

  Round Table, with the Damsel Parcenet

  A HARUSPEX PEERING INTO the entrails of the sacrificed traditional bird would have warned one Petrus Levi to beware of divisive controversy on the feast of Thanksgiving. Holidays, as he ought to know, were unlucky for him anyway. Instead of obeying the summons to partake of turkey ’n’ trimmings with the other waifs assembled by the general’s wife, he would have done better to stay home with the door bolted holding no communications. Holidays brought out the worst in everybody; the Last Supper, terminating with the Agony in the Garden, was par for the course. As they handed over their coats to the Spanish maid in the vestibule of the general’s pad in Neuilly, the motley crew viewed each other with a natural suspicion. Besides the male strays, readily identifiable in their unwonted ties and sports jackets, there were a functionary from the Embassy and his family who had inescapably put the finger on Peter in the close confinement of the elevator (“I guess we all want the fifth, don’t we?”), a tall fresh-faced girl with long American feet, an Air Force wife minus a husband, and some middle-aged French reactionaries, military, with their unattractive daughter, who were supposed to be getting a free glimpse of real American hospitality. After the vast repast, preceded by bourbon and laced with sparkling Vouvray, they all had to go and play softball in the Bois.