Birds of America

by Mary McCarthy

“You have a point,” conceded Chuck. Still, on the whole, he did not favor dropping atomic hardware on Hanoi. “We can do it with conventional stuff, if we have to.” “But why should it be necessary, sir?” said Silvanus Platt. “Wouldn’t a clear warning suffice? As you say, they know we have the wherewithal to wipe them out tomorrow.” “Yeah,” said Benjy. “But they don’t think we’ll use it. We’ve got to show them.” “Benjy!” “Mais votre fils a raison, madame,” said the Frenchman. Le pauvre papa Khrushchev had been willing to listen to reason; when Kennedy threatened, he understood. But these Orientals were fanatics. …

  “We can’t bomb Hanoi!” Peter burst out. “I mean, it’s impossible for us to do a thing like that.” “Why not?” said Benjy’s stepfather, a bald man who had something to do with trade or economics. “I don’t say I favor it necessarily. I just want to know, why not? I was in the Air Force. We bombed Germany.” “OK, OK,” said Peter, feeling weary. “I agree, we had to do that. Though maybe I would have been against some of those raids if I’d been alive then. I think you can draw a line between bombing military targets and bombing civilians.” “The Nazis didn’t.” “But they were Nazis! For Christ’s sake, that was the point, wasn’t it?” “What’s so sacred about a civilian?” said the general. “If he’s working in a factory making war goods? Grow up, boy.” “I think Peter’s right, Dad,” said Jean. “We have to be better than our enemy.” “I agree,” said Benjy’s mother. “We are better than our enemy!” shouted the general. “I haven’t finished what I was saying,” objected Peter. “Let him talk, honey.”

  Peter started again. “So we bombed Germany. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My generation was born with that on its conscience. My mother says I started kicking inside her when Hiroshima happened.” “If it shortened the war, it was worth it,” interrupted the general. “Saved American lives and Japanese lives. And if we hadn’t bombed those dear German civilians, the Nazis would have had the bomb ahead of us. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” “Chuck!” “Don’t you think Truman could have dropped one teensy atom bomb on a deserted atoll?” said the woman on Peter’s left in dreamy tones. “That would have given the Japanese a chance to surrender when they knew what they were up against. If they didn’t surrender then, it was their own responsibility.” “ ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children,’ ” muttered Peter. “Maybe that might have been the best way, Helen,” said Mrs. Lammers soothingly. “But one man can’t think of everything, you know, especially with a war on. We were certainly all grateful to President Truman when it was over. Now let’s go into the other room and have some coffee and let Peter Levi have his say.”

  “OK, skip Hiroshima. Well never agree about that. About Germany, I’ll even concede that maybe our saturation-bombing helped shut down the gas ovens, though my father claims it was the opposite—it stiffened German morale. But anyway the Nazis were bombing England, which was our ally. The North Vietnamese aren’t bombing anybody.” “Just minding their own business, eh?” said the general. “Are they helping the Viet Cong or aren’t they?” put in Benjy’s stepfather, getting excited. “Have you heard about infiltration? And atrocities? Civilians—women and children—ruthlessly murdered. Grenades tossed into theatres and other public places. Assassination of teachers and local officials.” “Standing operating procedure,” said the general, nodding. “Poisoned arrows,” said Benjy. “And those punji stakes dipped in shit that they make traps out of. They don’t abide by the rules of war.” “Beheadings. Kidnappings. Standing operating procedure,” repeated the general. “Do you approve of that kind of stuff, Levi?”

  Peter groaned. “No.” He was starting to feel sick. The general followed up. “Maybe you think it’s all U.S. propaganda?” “No, I guess not. I guess those things happen.” “Happen! Somebody does them. Somebody directed from Hanoi. Directed, supplied, and instigated. We have documentary proof and plenty of it. Now how are you going to put a stop to that?” “I don’t know,” said Peter.

  He was getting the worst of the argument. Across the living room, Roberta Scott had her chin sunk in the palm of her hand, like a statue of Dejection; no help there. And the irony was that he had charged into the debate partly to curry favor, on the theory that a girl like that, from Philadelphia, was bound to be a dyed-in-the-wool Quaker. “Go ahead,” insisted the general. “Give us your ideas. We’re listening.” Peter’s head was buzzing. It was like an exam nightmare. He tried to recall things Bob and his mother had said, things he himself had said, during the Goldwater campaign, which already seemed so long ago, like a Golden Age of clarity. And he remembered his father telling his mother that Peter might make a good judge but he could never be an advocate.

  Put on the spot, he could not think of a single alternative to the unthinkable, which was bombing those frail little people in conical hats. The slogan “land reform” floated into his ken, like a beat-up slug of printer’s type. Give the South Vietnamese peasants something to fight for—a stake in their government? But even if land distribution was possible, it would take a long time and might not end the war but actually intensify it, assuming both sides became equally determined—had anybody ever considered that?

  “We should negotiate,” he said at last. “Great. Hear, hear,” said Mr. Burnside. “I couldn’t agree more. But how are we going to get talks going? It takes two to negotiate. We’re ready and willing to sit down and talk, but Hanoi claims there’s nothing to talk about. We just withdraw our support and let the Viet Cong take over. Simple.” Peter licked his lips. “But isn’t that what we’re saying ourselves? They should withdraw their support. Why should we have the right to demand that and not them? It’s more their country than ours.” “So you favor a Commie takeover,” said the general. “No! But if I had to choose between that and bombing them, I guess I’d be for that.” “So you favor it. You kids might have the guts to say what you think, instead of pussyfooting. Lay it on the line.” “Maybe there wouldn’t be a takeover,” said Peter, voicing his deepest wish. The general gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, God, friend, where have you been all my life?”

  The other youths, with the exception of Benjy, had been silent for a long time. It was impossible to tell on whose side they were now, apart from the question of their own personal survival. Roberta Scott was studying some little ivory chessmen on the table beside her; she looked as if every word spoken were making her unhappy. “It’s inconceivable!” Peter cried. “Don’t you see that? Doesn’t anybody see that?” “What’s inconceivable, honey?” said Letitia. “That we’ll bomb North Vietnam. If we do that, I think I’ll kill myself.” “Is that a promise or a threat?” said Chuck, kidding. “Hey, take it easy.” “Why are you getting so worked up?” said Donna Elvira kindly. “I don’t like the idea myself, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it? What’s so special about bombing Hanoi?” “They can’t retaliate,” said Peter, letting his breath out with a long sigh. “And that’s why we’d do it. To prove to them how powerful we are. If we thought they could retaliate, we wouldn’t.”

  Roberta raised her eyes and met his. She nodded. “Yes. Golly, yes.” “Since when is superior weaponry a reason for not using it?” inquired Chuck. “This is war, not a horse race, buddy.” Peter had had enough. Tears rushed to his eyes. “You don’t give a damn about your country, you stupid patriot. You don’t care what it does. Or about its fair name. I love America or what I used to think was America. Listening to you, I don’t recognize it any more.”

  To his amazement, nobody moved to throw him out of the apartment. “I think Peter needs a little fresh air,” Letitia said quickly. “We all do. Let’s get our things on and go out and play softball now. It gets dark so early these days. Though we ought to be grateful to French Daylight Saving. …” Still chattering, she was guiding him to the bathroom. She turned on the cold-water tap. “You just put this damp washcloth on your eyes and you’ll feel better. We gave you too much bourbon. I always forget that it’s a hundred-proof.” “I’d better go home now,” sai
d Peter, applying the cold cloth to his burning face. “I’m sorry I was rude.” “Just a good clean argument, honey. Good for the digestion. You’ll forget all about it when you’ve had some exercise. I know Chuck will. Between you and me, it kind of got under his skin to see that girl refusing to touch her food. I saw that right away. He’s such a wonderful host, loves to entertain.”

  Peter nodded. “Tell me the truth, Mrs. Lammers. Are we going to bomb Hanoi?” “I don’t know, Peter. I wouldn’t know a thing like that. Chuck wouldn’t either. He was just talking off the top of his head. Got carried away. And that Benjy upset him too. We’ve known him since he was a toddler, when we served with the Burnsides in Madrid. They’re beside themselves with worry. When you see a boy like that wanting to go out and get killed in that crazy war, it makes you wonder. Underneath, Chuck would a lot rather see him sign up for the Peace Corps. I want you to believe that.”

  “OK, I believe you, Mrs. Lammers.” Peter rested his head against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall. “Chuck agrees with you more than you realize. But we just can’t walk away, can we? I mean, we have a commitment. If we walk out, our allies right here in NATO will start wondering whether they can trust us. There would be all these repercussions that the ordinary person doesn’t think about. You are for the NATO shield, aren’t you?” As she took the washcloth from his hands, she darted an anxious glance into his eyes.

  “I guess so,” said Peter. He was not sure what he thought of NATO. His father said it was a necessary evil, which you could say about a lot of things without their becoming good. Still, as long as there was no fighting going on here in Europe, Peter found it hard to take an interest in NATO, one way or another. Which was possibly reasoning in a circle, since if there were no NATO, there might be fighting. Your opinion, he supposed, depended on your assessment of Russian intentions. But he did not want to use his brain any more this afternoon, if he could help it.

  Out in the Bois, as Letitia had predicted, he felt somewhat better. He was on Chuck’s team, and though he struck out his first time at bat, in the field he was fairly fast on his feet. The stars were the long-legged Roberta, in the pitcher’s position, and the big Mrs. Burnside at bat. The French colonel, surprisingly, was an agile shortstop and outfielder and fleet on the bases. Benjy was terrible. He would never survive basic training, even if he passed his physical; his nicotine-stained fingers were all thumbs, and he panted noisily, trotting after an easy fly.

  A small crowd of French children gathered to watch les Américains and to chase an occasional ball. Peter found he was enjoying himself and even enjoying the sense of being an American, as, waiting his turn at bat, he explained the game in French to the kids. Then in the fourth inning, running after a line drive into left field, he found he had the hiccups. Taking part in the national sport, on top of the national bird, had been too much. He tried holding his breath and swallowing accumulated saliva, hoping they would pass before anybody noticed. Instead, they got worse. When Chuck waved him in at the end of the inning, he was hiccupping so loudly, like a drunkard in a play, that the French gosses began to imitate him, whirling around, jerking, and making burpy noises. He could not even get his breath to tell them to scram.

  Various remedies were suggested: drinking from the wrong side of a glass, hanging his head and counting to a hundred, getting a sudden shock. He went in search of a drinking-fountain. Needless to say, this being France, none materialized, though he walked for half a mile; the lake where he used to go rowing, polluted, naturally, rose before him like a cruel mirage. Chuck was at bat when he reappeared in their midst. “Hic!” The general, making a foul tip, glanced at him with annoyance. Benjy offered to go with him and try to find a café.

  When they had finally found one and Peter had drunk four glasses of Evian while holding his breath, the hiccups subsided. But then he had to wait for Benjy to finish a Pernod he had ordered. “Would you like to smoke some grass?” said Benjy, feeling in his pockets. Peter shook his head. “Let’s get back to the ball game.” But it was a long way from the café. By the time they got to the Bois, dusk was falling; the little meadow where they had been playing was empty, and all the players had fled. Peter was bitter. “Wouldn’t you think they would have waited for us? Hiccups can be a serious thing. Christ, there’ve been cases of people who’ve had them for a year and finally kicked off!” “Yeah. I read about one of those.” “And that girl is supposed to be a doctor! Well, a medical student anyway. All she was interested in was pitching. What about the Hippocratic oath?” “Still, you’re OK now, aren’t you?” “But they don’t know that.” “I see what you mean. You can’t rely on most people, that’s for sure. That’s what appeals to me about the Army. The buddy-system. Like today. You had it bad in the windpipe, and I stuck by you. You’d do the same for me.”

  Just then a voice called “Hi!” Jean had waited for them. She emerged from a sort of copse. “Mother was worried about you. She said to take you to the American Hospital if your hiccups hadn’t stopped.” “I’m OK now, thanks. It was nice of you to wait, though. What happened to the others?” “Benjy’s parents went home. And Roberta had to go to a concert.” “Oh … She didn’t leave any message?” “Why, no. But she agreed with Mother that you ought to go to the American Hospital. They could give you an antispasmodic, she said.” “She didn’t say anything about dinner?” “Dinner? Gosh, can you still eat?” “I don’t mean now. I asked her to dinner next week. A vegetarian repast.” “Isn’t that great of you, Peter! Do you know how to cook?” “Yes.” “I love cooking myself. What kind of dishes can you make?” “Oh, you know, spaghetti. … At home I used to bake cakes, but here I don’t have an oven.”

  The three started walking through the landscaped wood. Peter could see that if he was not careful he would be entertaining Jean for dinner soon. And smoking grass with Benjy. Those two seemed to be his real friends. A final hiccup issued from his craw. “Oops!” Jean giggled. “Dad is a card. He thinks you can cure hiccups by will power. That’s what he said, just now.” “And Roberta, what does she think?” “She claims they’re a medical mystery. Doctors don’t know what causes them or why they go away.” “Like love,” said Benjy, astonishingly. “Something in your chemistry that you can’t control. Yeah.” They continued pensively walking in the direction, they hoped, of a Métro station. For a while they were lost in the wood.

  Leviticus

  IF IT HAD NOT BEEN for his draft status, Peter would have quit the Sorbonne. He was bored by his classes, which, being for foreigners, were on a childish level, like the course for Stranieri at Perugia. The lecture hall, thronged with humanity, was plunged in hyperborean darkness. True to form, the French were hoarding the electricity; the professor, doubtless under orders from the Ministry of Education, never turned on any lights, so that you could not take notes or draw pictures to alleviate the tedium. There was practically no ventilation, and when he could not get a place on the window sills, Peter chose to sit on the floor, unable to stretch his legs without prodding somebody’s bottom but hopeful that the air was purer down there.

  It was not just him, as he tried to make clear to his family; the other 1,999 foreign kids segregated in French Civilization felt bored and gypped too. In fact, the Left Bank was full of American drop-outs, not bothering to show up at classes any more, since nobody took attendance and their supervisor, if they had one, could not be more indifferent. At the end of the year, there was going to be an exam, which the majority infallibly failed, but even if you failed, you could get a “certificate of attendance” from the professor—a meaningless document that only meant you were registered.

  Most of the kids Peter knew were resigned to writing this year off as a total loss, academically, whether they did any work or not. Quite a few were switching to the Alliance Française, where at least they got practice in speaking; at the Sorbonne, all they gave you in “intensive French” was grammar, and the professor did all the talking. But the kids who made that move could be ordered to report
straight home for a physical, if their draft board wanted to get tough. You rated a student deferment by being enrolled in a recognized college or university, and going to the Alliance Française, though it actually taught you something, was like going to the Berlitz School at home or taking a correspondence course, as far as Selective Service was concerned. Up to now, as it chanced, General Hershey had not gone fishing in the draft pool of juniors abroad. But there could always be a first time.

  Nobody’s parents understood the score here. They could not use their imagination and realize that if a bunch of young aliens were isolated and ruthlessly exploited by a chauvinistic French university, naturally they lost all incentive to study; it was the same as in the schools in Harlem. The Sorbonne was only interested in collecting the tuition. As Dag had kept pointing out, it was no accident that the French Civilization class was scheduled for 8:00 A.M.: they wanted the kids to cut it, for the simple reason that two thousand were registered for the course, while the hall seated five hundred. Dag was convinced that the curriculum had been devised by the French tourist industry to lure under-age foreign suckers to Paris. And he meant that literally. No wonder the poor methodical Marxist had got deported back to Norway; he had tried to expose the system to everybody he talked to, like the Enemy of the People.

  But parents thought their kids were throwing away a wonderful opportunity. His stepfather wrote that he had counted thirty-seven negative words and expressions in Peter’s last communication, which was only a page and a half long. In Bob’s reckoning, “finally” was a negative, as in “My landlady has finally turned the heat on,” “I have finally got a library card to work in the Bibliothèque Nationale,” “The packages you sent finally came,” “A French girl finally spoke to me in a café yesterday. She wanted to know the time.” Reading over his letter, which Bob had enclosed, marked with blue pencil, Peter had to agree that the omission of “finally” would have given some of those sentences a more positive thrust. Evidently, he was bidding for sympathy, which his parents were unwilling to give. Self-pity in the eyes of Bob and his mother was a disgusting habit; if you were sorry for yourself, they would not be sorry for you—a duplication of labor, Bob claimed.