Triumph

by Philip Wylie

  (she doesn't mind a bit!). It furnished the best laugh we've had so far. He's a shy person, in some ways, is Peter Williams, but a wonderful clown.

  "Still! And not just because of things like Kit's recollection of the upper-class joking idea their shelters would save merely servants! And not just because Valerie keeps calling the group 'our League of Nations'! But for some other reason I cannot put my finger on, for the first time in my life I feel Chinese!

  "I'm not sure if I like it or don't.

  "As a child, in Hawaii, being Chinese meant nothing very special to me. The kids in my class were all sorts of racial mixtures. Daddy always took a scathing attitude toward the pride my grandfather used to have in the fact that our family was still pure Chinese. I didn't care. I was American, like all the other kids, of whatever 'tint'--and I remember the absolute heaven we felt when the Territory became a state. My class--the fifth grade--marched in the Statehood Day parade. All of us girls wore grass skirts made of paper and all the boys, imitations of the feather cloaks the Polynesian nobles wore: chicken feathers, colored with Easter-egg dye. Very gaudy. After the parade I was one of twenty girls picked to do a hula for a group of important men from Washington. And the cord supporting my skirt broke so I had to go through the whole dance with only one free hand! I was so embarrassed! But U. S. Senator Willet picked me out after we finished and lifted me and kissed me and presented me with a tiny American flag that already had fifty stars. I never felt prouder, or more American.

  "At the University of Hawaii, of course, nobody even noticed whether you were part Hawaiian and part Portuguese, part Swedish and part New England Yankee--or what.

  One boy in one of my classes--statistical analysis and computer programming--told me, near the end of the first semester, it had only just then dawned on him that, among twenty-seven undergraduates in the class, he was the only--he had to struggle to get the word I'd understand--'Caucasian.' And that boy was six-two, an ex-Marine, with tow-colored hair and blue eyes--as 'white' an American as exists. With that sort of unawareness by anybody of our differentnesses, I never even kept in mind, in my first university years, that I'm Chinese. And in New York, if it made a difference, the difference was fun: I was exotic and oriental and a sought-after young woman! At Radcliffe there didn't seem to be any race prejudice. Certainly more Harvard men dated me--or tried to, anyhow!--while I was there, than dated most American white girls.

  "Now, though, I do feel Chinese. Why? It's from something the others feel. But what? I must ask George Hyama if he feels Japanese. Perhaps it's this: that the others expect me to be more stable, less flighty, less spontaneous, more imperturbable than they are! Orientals--in cheap fiction--are supposed to be that. And I find myself trying to be!

  Trying not to show how sad I feel. Trying to look inscrutable and imperturbable. Don't they know the Chinese are far more expressive of their real inner feelings than white, mainland Americans ever dream of letting themselves be? I think not! And if that's why I have often felt my Chineseness down here, far more than anywhere else, I'm going to bust right out some day and bawl, or have hysterics, so they can see that being oriental doesn't mean you're a different kind of human person!

  "We're all edgy, though.

  "It shows in unexpected ways. A week ago I asked Mr. Farr--Vance--if he had stocked any diaries. I did it quite thoughtlessly, since, after a week down here, we'd all begun to think Vance Farr was a wizard. There seemed to be nothing--absolutely nothing-

  -you could dream of needing that he couldn't produce from one of the stockrooms that open off dozens of different corridors. The man has a simply enormous amount of foresight--something businessmen aren't supposed to have, except about their special enterprise. (But I always knew differently, owing to knowing how far-seeing and imaginative Daddy is!) Was.

  "Anyway. I asked if there were diaries. And Vance Farr had a fit about it. Pure remorse!

  Humiliation! You'd have thought I'd asked if there was anything to eat and he had forgotten to store food here! It was so amazing it was almost scary.

  "I hurriedly said I didn't mean a regular diary-just any sort of notebook in which to write impressions, as time passed and I felt in the mood. He said, of course, there were notebooks. Then, leading me through a maze-I still haven't seen a tenth of the rooms of this placet-he opened up a veritable stationery store. And kept on apologizing for forgetting diaries! And even added--which made me feel pretty somber--that he should have had diaries printed up for next year too, and stocked them!

  "Later, at lunch, he told everybody, almost angrily, about forgetting to stock diaries. It was the first 'necessity,' as he called it, that he'd been 'caught without.' And, naturally, we all tried to calm down his self-rebuke. But he ate very little lunch and left the table first, muttering he hoped to God he hadn't overlooked any other 'vital need'!

  That may give some notion of our state of nerves.

  "But, of course, Vance Farr has had an additional mental burden to carry, since Angelica and the others were saved.

  "Even before she was on her feet again--and days before her alleged brother, Al, was up and about--all of us were told, by one or another person, that Angelica had been Mr. Farr's girl friend and had lived in a nearby apartment he rented for her: Candlewick Manor, or whatever it was. We were told that, I suppose, because those who didn't know were astonished at the sudden way Mr. Farr changed after Angelica's rescue. Changed from a vehement, active, very capable leader to a sort of quiet, hangdog man who forever asks somebody--Valerie, mostly--whether this or that should or should not be done. I mean, instead of just giving orders, though he had always framed them as mere suggestions, he grew dependent.

  "Guilt, of course. Hard to imagine him using a long tunnel through a high, rock hill, to get away from a wife at night. Hard? Impossible! --to see a man as worldly, as sophisticated, as Vance Farr, rebuilding that old tunnel, so he, like his father, could sneak out, the father pretending to be turning wine bottles, Vance Farr, to be working on this subterranean wonderland. Mrs. Farr takes it calmly. But she goes on drinking.

  "As for our eleventh-hour quartet, the children are the biggest blessing.

  Everybody's crazy about them, loves playing with them--and there's a nightly debate, after they're tucked in bed, about who will tell their daily story. Also, about who'll teach Dot and Dick what subjects, come September, and time for school to start again!

  Evidently we'll be here that long, anyhow.

  "Al--the Italian-looking man--still limps around and wears bandages on his face and seems full of self-pity. Connie told me--she and I gossip a good deal together; she's a dreamt--that Al actually doesn't need the bandages but is merely so vain he won't let us see his face till it's healed perfectly. And we're all sure he's not Angelica's brother--or even half-brother, which they both later told us. They don't talk like people from one family. Or look alike in any way. AI's slight, about five-nine, with those dark, seeking, liquid eyes Italians have--Puerto Ricans, too, and other Latins. Black hair, slicked back from a middle part. Apparently, under the bandages, is a beaky nose--though nothing to match Dr. Bernman's. AI's mouth is womanish, too shapely, a bit pretty-looking, given to the droops at its comers--though he seems wiry and healthy and moves like some sort of athlete. So far he hasn't done much talking to anybody, I'm sure. Judging from what I saw of what was left of the clothes he'd had on when they brought him here, he's one of those

  'chiffon-type dressers'--the Broadway hanger--on sort: mauve suede shoes and matching silk trousers and the remnants of a turquoise sports shirt piped in cloth--of-gold, no less!

  A gigolo costume! We are sure he was Angelica's boy friend--I mean her real one. Mr.

  Farr was merely the man who paid the bills, and saw her only now and then.

  "As for Angelica, I personally like her very much. For one thing, it was she who virtually forced Al to take along the two, abandoned children, when they went to that cave. For another, she's dazzlingly attractive. Half Spanish--South
American, maybe--and half Irish. She has that blue-black hair that some Italian women possess, but it's wavy and light, not heavy like most such hair. The largest, bluest eyes I ever saw, with that Irishness, that look of I dare you, and also of curiosity, which some Irish girls have. I can understand how it drives men nutty! She's beautifully built--with a doll's waist, actually (we measured) smaller even than mine, and with absolutely lush bosoms and legs anybody would go mad to have for a front row in a chorus. She's more than just a chorine, too--which she was when Mr. Farr plucked her, and 'plucked' would be the word.

  She had run away from home--some nasty-sounding coal town in Pennsylvania--in her third year at high school. To New York, of course! Worked as a waitress in divey-sounding joints and used her earnings to take dancing lessons. Then she got work in a theatrical road company and went on trying very hard to learn to be a great dancer, for three years. Traveled allover the world with two shows--I haven't seen either, but one was Space Ship Stowaway, the musical that the censors kept out of many cities, and the other was How about Her?, just as censorable!

  "However, though Angelica has dancing ability and talent as an actress--and sings in one of those lowdown, belt-it-out voices, too!--her real lifework is, plainly, Man.

  Down here, I can see, she is making a tremendous effort to stop doing things almost instinctive with such girls. Girl?--she's about twenty-seven! Things, I mean, that make men go crazy, like the way she switches her head and makes that wonderful dark hair flash around. She doesn't seem the least bit embarrassed about her liaison with Mr. Vance Farr--in fact, she almost ignores him, and concentrates on the other men. Even gray-headed, reserved, sweet old Paulus Davey likes to watch her move about! And she gives George Hyama fits. Furthermore, she acts almost as if she had never even met Alberto Rizzo! I've seen him try, several times, to catch Angelica's eye. It never works. He just sighs--not aloud, but you can see his shoulders drop as air goes out of him--and I'm beginning to believe Mr. Rizzo is considering aiming those romantic, Venice-canal-gondola-glances at some other woman. Me, even, maybe! What a disappointment for him, if he does!

  "Once, when I woke up thirsty at night and found I'd forgotten to fill the thermos on my bedside--really bunkside--table, I put on a housecoat and slippers and opened my door to go down the hall with the thermos to the showers and toilets, the women's, and fill it. I was just in time to see AI knocking furtively on Angelica's door, which he'd opened a little ways. She must have answered because he muttered his name and something about 'having to see her' and 'not being able to stand the loneliness.' Then I heard her say, so loudly it came through the door, 'Beat it!' He pushed the door farther in after that, but it was on a chain. He slunk back to his place, farther down the hall--which is only dimly lighted at night, so he didn't glimpse me.

  "After that I've put the chain on my door, though I feel it's rather silly of me. Only Mr. Rizzo, of all the men here, would annoy any woman. Of course, if a woman asked the man to call-- well! --nobody has posted any house rules! But the feeling we have is that we must behave like monks and nuns. Partly because our world is dead. And partly because, if people started visiting, it could make all sorts of problems. I told no one of catching Al at Angelica's door, but I was sure he was not making a brotherly call. Even a half-brotherly one! And perhaps it is the discovery by Mr. Farr that his 'little lady friend'

  has her own 'boy friend'--or had one-that further causes Mr. Farr to act so morose and ashamed. He should!

  "In spite of it all, though, as I said, I like Angelica very much. She is vivacious, full of fun, and not in any way ashamed of herself or her life, so I feel sure she has nothing to be truly ashamed of. Last night she danced a number for us all, with the record player in the Hall making it ring with music from one of her shows. Mr. Farr walked out, on some pretext. Al said his burns hurt, and retired. The rest of us, though, enjoyed it greatly--including Valerie, who was already 'gauzy' but seemed truly delighted by Angelica's attempt to lift our morale. Angelica's kind. Affectionate. And, no doubt, very passionate. So what? Should women continue denying they are that, forever?

  "It is men I feel sorry for, sometimes, when I see them look at Angelica. It always makes me think of a Chinese proverb my mother used to repeat, in Chinese. In English, it might sound rather dull:

  To men, lovely women are flowers;

  They would pick every sort;

  Only women know that the picked flower withers . . .

  As does the one left untouched.

  "Not that philosophy, but the attitude it shows, in men, is what I refer to. They watch Angelica laugh, or sing, or dance--even, load the dishwasher--and they are seeing a flower of a sort they must pick. They cannot help trying. It is so tragic! Or is it funny?"

  That was the third entry in Lodi Li's irregularly-kept diary.

  Other written records were also made. Some, like Ben Bernman's, were full of scientific terms and contained little about human doings within the shelter. Thus, while the Chinese girl was noting her impressions of people and moods, Ben, in the communications chamber, wrote, under the same day and date and year, the following:

  "This afternoon the amateur radio sender who signs himself 'Buckie' and whose call letters are W2HL6V, sent the following message, with a steadily-more-uneven 'key':

  "'Seems we were mistaken about the air-filtration capacity of this dump. We have no means of determining outside radiation levels but they must be high. Far higher, at least in the first few days, than our system could cope with. As stated yesterday, radiation sickness first appeared among us four days ago. Dr. Stannar, Mrs. Jeffry L. Teal, Mary Teal, Evelyn Bishop, and Reverend Thomas C. Bullen have died, since my previous message was sent. Am ill myself. All those remaining alive in this shelter are ill and plainly dying. List of living, now: Mr. Charles Tobin, Mrs. Perry Wigman, Genevieve Phelps, Collin M. Wetmore, and an unidentified man rescued from street before this deep shelter was sealed, who has not regained consciousness and is now near the end. Plus self. Have raised no other ham operator anywhere. Static still unbelievable. Nearby Des Moines apparently still burning, as our air remains smoky. This will probably be my last trick. Buckie.'

  "At Sachem's Watch Center," Ben wrote on, in his scrawling hand, "we have now received parts or the whole of some fifteen messages similar to the above. One by one those amateur radio operators, so often of great value in past disasters, have apparently met the same fate. All, in any case, seem to have gone off the air. Today the first word of conditions in the Soviet reached us, as we intercepted--and Connie Davey translated from French--part of a government message sent from a powerful station located in Africa. In the midst of a long description of political and social turmoil in various African nations (and an accompanying request for aid in 'pacifying hysterical native tribes') the message merely noted that 'information' now reaching them 'indicated' all of European and Asian Russia, Siberia included, was 'dead and motionless, mere cinders, without signs of life.'

  "George and I speculate this report may have come through messages from space-station personnel or even some plane making a very dangerous reconnaissance over the U.S.S.R. It confirms my own estimate of the effect of the successful American penetration of enemy defenses by the anticipated one-third to one-half or better of our various bombers, besides sea-borne planes, missiles, and submarine-fired weapons. The U.S.S.R. lies dead!

  "The ground levels of radiation here have now dropped to an average of about 150 roentgens--far higher, after a two week period, than had been anticipated by the federal officials and military. But this may be due to some special accumulation of hot isotopes in our particular area. The incredible (but not quite!) million-roentgen levels produced (plainly) by deep, oceanic mines surrounded by sodium oxide and set off along our coasts, has, of course, halved its level every fifteen hours and is not now a major factor in the residual readings.

  "I have recommended, however, that any attempt at surface reconnoitering be deferred for some weeks. In such a lapse of time, I
estimate, the radiation in this immediate environment will have sunk to perhaps ten roentgens, or less. However, we must be conservative about emergence, as it may require blasting to open an exit, not then readily closed off. Also, wind and rain may abruptly raise local levels of radioactivity. We must not, I feel, open any hole from this amazingly-efficient shelter until we are sure it is safe to do so. We can, after all, probably subsist here, in comfort, for a period of time Farr privately mentioned to me which I still am unable to contemplate: two years.

  "We have twice reoxygenated the recycled air in the vast caverns Farr excavated.

  We shall do so weekly. No outside air has been drawn upon and the system now in use works better even, I think, than that of the latest-type nuclear submarines. With our presently-used capacity for dehumidification, the removal of CO2, smoke, and other noxious substances, and the recycling of oxygen-enriched air, together with the near-incredible extent of the shelter and its accessory tunnels and chambers, it will not be necessary to draw upon external atmosphere for several months, for human use. Even then, after a careful examination of the outer-air-filtration equipment I am satisfied we could, for a long period, bring atmosphere of a much higher radioactive level than now exists into the system and remove almost one hundred per cent of all hot atoms.

  Fortunate, indeed, Farr had the private resources to build such systems! And ironic that an adaptation of the gaseous-diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, which made possible the first two uranium-isotope bombs, has enabled at least this group to anticipate such long-period survival.

  "I might add a note about water supplies and waste-disposal facilities, only just now inspected by me. These are as ingenious and costly as the long-range means for maintaining a breathable atmosphere. In tanks only slightly less deep than the main Hall (515 feet under the summit of Sachem's Watch) enough pure water is in storage to supply all the possible wants of our fifteen persons for well over one year. In addition, as this water is used, pumps bring into other tanks, from very deep, semi artesian wells, fresh stores of water.