by Uwe Johnson
If only we’d stuck to the continuations and not the new story tucked away on page 28! Such a seemly old lady, letting herself get caught in such embarrassing circumstances! She’d be ashamed to report such things about anyone else. But it’s herself. It’s . . . it’s . . . confidential.
The opening, if not entirely innocent, is not too surprising. Yesterday afternoon, a federal commission studying discrimination against Negro and Puerto Rican white-collar workers met again at Foley Square and charged the news media with giving a false image of these minorities: just like that, in the Times headline, no quotation marks or sign of doubt. And surely our tried and true supplier of reality is above such suspicions.
The commission finds that the communications industry is giving Americans a false image of the society in which they live, and in addition giving Negroes and Puerto Ricans a distorted view of themselves. Of course. But not The New York Times, right?
Want to bet?
Come on. This industry holds a place of awesome influence in the nation, and it is these employers who in less than no time could create an intellectual climate for significant social change. The New York Times is in a position to do so, no question. If some may have shirked their responsibilities here, our upstanding old auntie—just, helpful, an ethical figure-head—won’t number among the guilty. She knows what it means to be among the opinion and tastemakers “in a grave period of our national history”; she will do her duty. And right away she gives the percentages of these minorities in New York City (Negroes: 18 percent, Puerto Ricans: 10 percent), so that we can get down to business well-equipped with the facts.
The competition—the lesser competition, the New York Post—well, you know. Caustically, no other term will do, the commission addressed the Post: so The New York Times tells us, again in her sweet-and-sour way. Out of a total white-collar workforce of 450, only 24 Negro or Puerto Rican employees: 5.3 percent. Tsk tsk. Does it bother the New York Post, as a basically liberal newspaper, that there is a virtually segregated press in New York City?: the commission felt compelled to ask. And the Post could only reply snippily, as you’d expect: Any type of segregation bothers the New York Post. Har har. And only four black reporters out of all fifty-three. 7.5 percent. Humph. There you have it. Not one black editor. Those hypocrites at the Post.
This really demonstrates why we have riots and explosions of despair in our cities: the commission says.
Anyone wanting to scoop The New York Times had better get out of bed earlier. She has already paid a visit to the police in Los Angeles, Detroit, Virginia, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, to weapons factories in Memphis, in Springfield. Orders have been placed for Vietnam-type military helicopters, even. Next time the police will use the chemical called “banana peel” that makes the streets so slippery that it’s difficult to walk on them, let alone riot. The New York City police have ordered five thousand helmets, $20 each—that’s $100,000.
That’s on a different page.
And now for the Times. A flourish of trumpets for the favorite!
All honor to the truth. The Times didn’t come through unscathed either. But the commission was not so caustic with her, so cutting, so biting. It was critical, sure. Maybe to protect her. Spare an old lady the humiliation, sitting there before the judge in her little black dress, her tastefully preserved youth, the dignity of age, wringing her hands in her lap, anxious after all, and now she has to admit that out of her 200 reporters, no more than three were Negroes. 1.5 percent. That’s right.
We picture a stunned silence.
The New York Times, née Ochs-Hays-Sulzberger, hurries to add: That refers only to the New York office.
Which doesn’t help. The same was true for the Post too, wasn’t it? And the old lady fails to show that the proportions in the Washington or Paris offices would be any better, though she implies it. Might be true. Right? Could be.
Then she regrouped. Held her head high once more, looked the commission straight in the face, said firmly: She wasn’t proud that only 7 percent of her white-collar employees were from the minorities upon which these hearings were focused. At least she gets credit for her attitude.
Then she squanders her moral gains and trips herself up with her manic addiction to completeness. She says: A year ago it was 6 percent.
Oh my. That’s less than the Post. And its number is only “about” 7 percent. Does The New York Times have a single black editor in its employ? She may have told the commission, but she isn’t telling her readers. We better not ask.
There the old lady sits, humiliated, unmasked, with no respect paid to her age and merits. Is she staring down at the tips of her shoes? Blowing her nose? It doesn’t help; the commission has a question for her.
Does she perhaps wish to retract part of her prepared statement? Where it says that the Times is trying not only to preach but to practice accordingly?
–No, I don’t want to: she says.
Does The New York Times see herself as a leader in the newspaper field?
– Possibly: she replies. We can just picture her, chin held high once again, her proud gaze on the unachieved goal, her haughty schoolgirl tone.
That’s a good deal of modesty: the commission responded. One could only hope that someone like the Times would extend its leading position into the field of equal employment.
– We are vigorously attacking the problem: The New York Times says. This is the last thing she reports about herself: a promise. Is it a promise? But the tears watering down her voice, those we could hear.
Time for a quick getaway. To Time magazine, Columbia Broadcasting, American Broadcasting, Doubleday & Co., the J. Walter Thompson Agency, Grey Advertising. They must have their own dirty laundry. They don’t come off much better. But anything to draw a veil over the horrible, intolerable scene that has just happened! Anything that’s true. And then it’s not enough. So she turns to the Jews.
But the Jews aren’t even the focus of the hearings!
Doesn’t matter. There’s enough there for at least two paragraphs, all facts, and therefore justified: 25 percent of the city population is Jewish, but only 4.5 percent of the 2,104 officers of 38 major corporations are Jews. Yup. Speak of the beam in my eye and I’ll speak of your mote. It’s especially banks, insurance companies, shipping concerns, and law firms that take a hostile attitude toward Jewish executives. There you have it. And the hearings will continue today, and we’ll see what else comes out!
I can hardly even recognize her.
A nagging treacherous old bag with a bad conscience. She’s the one you let tell you all about what goes on in the world when you’re not looking? And most of the time you can’t be there to look, Gesine.
Doesn’t it count for anything that she publicized her own scandal?
It seems she’d rather be accused of lying with euphemisms than of lying by suppressing anything.
But she didn’t hide it, did she? She lists it right in the table of contents.
Look closer, Gesine. There’s nothing there of what’s in the headline. She couldn’t resist one last try. It doesn’t say anything in the contents about a false image of society, just “False Image.”
If I throw this aunt out of the house, who will take her place?
You’re saying you expected as much?
If I admit that today’s story came as a surprise, what would that say about me? No thank you.
January 19, 1968 Friday
Fifty ladies were invited to the White House yesterday to discuss crime in the streets, among them The New York Times and the singer Eartha Kitt. Miss Kitt had an answer to the question of why young people rebel in the street, take drugs, and cut school: “Because they’re going to be snatched from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.” “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed.”
The president’s wife did turn pale but she stood up and said, voice trembling, tears welling: You can’t solve every problem with violence.
Eartha Kitt: The other gue
sts knew the ghettos from visits, but she’d lived in the gutters.
Mrs. Johnson: I cannot understand the things that you do.
Miss Kitt: Then they’d missed out on something.
The Times tells the story almost first thing. Do we want to be friends again?
Lisbeth Cresspahl now felt she was in a fight too, with all of Jerichow, wherein were more than two thousand persons, and also much cattle. She had no desire to be forgiven for testifying against others before a judge; this way she could hold on to her guilt. Meanwhile, she preemptively forgave the Robert who had caused the whole to-do, and forgave Cresspahl in turn for cheerfully saying that he’d throw the denouncer out of the house right through the barbed wire. With that she reaped yet another tribulation.
She did not look depressed after the trial, and Cresspahl for his part expected a reasonable period to come next (he didn’t want to think about sickness). Instead, it was more like Lisbeth could no longer keep her confusion and peace of mind in separate, alternating phases; there must have often been a mixture of both in her head. She was even more resistant to setting foot in town. To be judged by others’ glances too, no, she didn’t want that, no matter how much it would have added to her stockpile of suffering. For errands that with the best will in the world she couldn’t entrust to Louise or Aggie Brüshaver, she didn’t stop in Gneez, she took the connecting train to Lübeck, and a first-class compartment too, thereby avoiding any conversations with people she knew from the Jerichow area. And earning a reputation for extravagance. She didn’t have to worry about many chance meetings in Lübeck, not in the shops, not in the department stores. She often stayed longer than she needed to, and had stories to tell back home about the new facade of the Holsten House, to which the Nazi building authority had added some new gables, or the old Gothic buildings on König Strasse, Meng Strasse, Schrangen, as though that proved the construction in Germany was less about the war than Cresspahl knew to be the case. He didn’t fall for this gambit; he had learned to mistrust this bantering tone; he looked at her. Then he thought back to their time in England, her leisurely, carefree walks through the strange city, the clear-eyed look she’d had when she’d walked right past him in Richmond once. It was the look of someone who knew she was alone; now it was more fixed, more eccentric, clouded with brooding. There was still that soft line of the eye sockets from brow to cheekbones, and anyone who saw her in the padded first-class seats, possibly occupied with a silent smile, would more often than not pull open the compartment door and address her as ma’am, before realizing that the young woman in question was not in as friendly a mood as she looked, and that actually there was something wrong with her smile. Then Lisbeth would pull her coat around her, stiffen, turn her face to the window, all so that no one would go after her for Warning’s hundred and twenty days in prison.
Not that that would have happened even on the line from Gneez to Jerichow, where none of the trains had first-class compartments. People in Jerichow saw things very differently. Our Lisbeth. Our Lisbeth had done the right thing. Our Lisbeth wasn’t a man, after all, and perjury’s men’s business. What could Lisbeth do about a fake brother like that. The anger was directed at Warning: both for not having the brains to keep his trap shut on the train and for putting Lisbeth in such a bind. Talk generally then turned to the fact that Warning was one of those people who’d rest his chin on his spade handle while the cow’s bleating next to him, and that behind his amiable, in any case quite enjoyable grumbling, there was no real get-up-and-go. People helped out his wife by giving her odd jobs and sometimes money in exchange for nothing; he would face a different homecoming to Jerichow than the one he was probably imagining in Dreibergen near Bützow. And what about Hagemeister. All he’d wanted was to hear that Griem had grown fat as a prize sow, or that top hats sure’re nice but you cant wear em properly if youre not used to em. Then Warning opens his big mouth to bring up ancient history. And Hagemeister liked to say, now in his usual half-asleep way, now with genuine feeling: Cresspahls wife saved my ass. Lisbeth Cresspahl saved my ass.
That’s how far things had gotten in Jerichow. Lisbeth wasn’t Papenbrock’s daughter anymore, she was Cresspahls Lisbeth.
Hear she’s sick. Never see her around anymore. All the more credit to her that she told a real live district court head judge to his face that he was asking about twaddle. Nothing but the truth. That’s what she said: Twaddle. Nonsense. You try that.
She didn’t hear about any of this, and it wouldn’t have helped her if she had.
– And now the story about the water butt: Marie says.
– What water butt? You don’t know anything about that.
– I know that James Shuldiner was at the Mediterranean Swimming Club three days ago and he told me: Your mother wouldn’t let you fall into the water butt.
– No!
– All right, Gesine. Start.
– For one thing, it was the summer of 1937, we’re way past that.
– What’s a water butt, anyway?
– Annie probably has one in Vermont.
– Annie’s not here.
– A Regentonne, Marie. . .
– Yes?
– You usually find them in the country, freestanding is best but you want to make sure that leaves and pollen don’t blow in. It’s a rain barrel, there to collect rainwater because that’s the purest kind you can get in nature. It does contain nitrogen, carbon dioxide, ammonium nitrite, and whatever else it picks up from the atmosphere, but not the calcium carbonate and salts that come from the soil. It’s basically just condensed steam. Feels soft, that’s why it’s called soft water. Country rain is the purest. We had more ammonium because we got saltwater spray from the coast. Ammonium makes water softer. It lathers better that way. For the laundry, I mean. If the barrel’s wooden, the water can turn brownish because the ammonium picks up trace organic substances. In England they call it a water butt.
– Wow, you’re avoiding this story even more than you do Robert Papenbrock.
– You’ll wish I hadn’t told you.
– You treat me like such a little kid sometimes. I’m ten years old. Ten and a half.
– Cresspahl had set up a water butt next to the barn. That made it farther to carry the water, but the rain couldn’t come down any purer. The fact was, until 1938 every part of the property was put together and maintained perfectly, like a textbook illustration. No iron cramp was left loose for long, the spring water didn’t run back down into the ground but into a wooden tub where the child could sail little pieces of wood or cool her feet. It wasn’t finicky either; after the new window was put in over the back entrance, a pane was taken out again so that the swallows could fly into the hall the way they were used to and build their nest on their ancestral beam. While they were there the red tiles were simply scrubbed more often, since the birds didn’t always hit the Lübeck Gazette laid out beneath the nest. The water drum that the previous owners, the Pinnows, had set up by the kitchen window under a pipe running down from the roof was the same kind of thing. Cresspahl left it there. It would probably have fallen apart if he’d tried to move it. It wasn’t watertight, which was why it was always surrounded by lush high grass and blooming weeds. I liked seeing that. But since the rainwater from the roof carried the debris of moss and wind dust, it was hardly ever used for washing and the lid was almost never taken off. But the lid was new, Cresspahl had made it so that I wouldn’t pull a footstool over and then climb up and fall in the water.
– If the lid was missing, it could have been a mistake.
– A stranger’s mistake maybe. But everyone who lived there knew about me and the cat. It was a big gray beast, fat and lazy. When Cresspahl was turning the Pinnow barn into a workshop and sleeping in the stalls next to his tools, this cat had come to visit him and stayed. Lisbeth and the child were still living in Papenbrock’s house, and when they moved in the cat insisted on its preexisting rights. It didn’t like me. I tried to get it to play with me. But it only wa
nted to lie on the inside kitchen windowsill and look out at the birds. It was old, too, not just sluggish. The child used to stand outside there a lot, head back, looking up at the cat and talking to it, and the cat looked back at me as though it knew a secret and still wouldn’t say it.
– Negligence. Your mother couldn’t keep you tied to her apron strings, and I know how it is with four-year-olds, they disappear like baby rabbits.
– You see.
– And now you have to climb up on the lid to look at the cat’s face, and fall in the water, Gesine!
– Exactly.
– And your mother, she was standing right there?
– Yes. No. When I think it out of the corner of my mind I can see her. She’s standing outside, by the back door, drying her hands on her apron, or wringing her hands, either one could be the other. She’s watching me in amusement, the way grown-ups watch children’s antics waiting to see how they turn out; she’s looking at me seriously, approvingly, as if trusting me to make it all turn out right. When I try to remember, I can’t see her.
– And she didn’t move.
– I was underwater by that point. I could still see her in my mind; only then did I realize that all I could see in the round shaft of the barrel was the sky.
– Then she pulled you out.
– Then Cresspahl pulled me out. He’d come around the corner of the house behind her and saw her looking on. After the war he didn’t want to tell me too many details about what had happened, he just said she stood there “as if paralyzed” while he carried the dripping bundle, me, past her into the house.
– Cresspahl taking off a child’s wet things, washing her, drying her, getting her dressed, I can’t see it.
– She did that, he went to get her for that. And when I had a new dress on, and was cheerful, had forgotten being underwater. . . .