by Uwe Johnson
Education: Lutheran Evangelical school. “Did well in school,” the best of the five Sirhan sons. Father wants to make sure that something will come of this one; beats him. Parents fight
1956 Suez War. Sirhan 12 years old
1957 U.N. and World Council of Churches pay for the family to come to the US under a refugee-admission program. They receive visas from a limited quota; can immigrate on January 12. Come to New York City
1957–1964 (?). Sirhan at John Muir High School in Pasadena, did well enough to gain admission to Pasadena City College but dropped out Mother had a steady job; Sirhan often unemployed. Liked to hoard his money
Doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink. Can’t stand being told what to do Tends the garden, the neighbors like him, plays Chinese checkers with elderly neighbors, one of them a Jewish lady
Wanted to be a jockey but was only allowed to walk horses around after a run to cool them down
1965 Applies for work at a state racetrack. Has to have his fingerprints taken
After the Negro riots in Watts a man named Albert Herz in Alhambra fears for his life and buys a snub-nosed Iver Johnson eight-shot revolver for $31.95
1966 Works at Granja Vista del Rio ranch. Moves horses. Falls off one, injures chin, stomach problems. Doesn’t think he receives enough compensation. Claims vision problems
1967 Israeli war against the Arabs. Loses his homeland
Since September 24 employed at a food store in Pasadena. $2.00 per hour. Gives tirades about the Israelis who have everything but still use violence to take Jordanian land. Meanwhile Mr. Herz has given his gun to his daughter, Mrs. Westlake. She became uneasy about having a gun in the house and gives it to an eighteen-year-old neighbor in Pasadena, who sells it in December to one of Sirhan’s brothers
1968 In the store Sirhan boasts often that he is not an American citizen (which is required to legally buy a gun). On March 7, his employer makes a comment about Sirhan’s work. End of that job
On June 4 walks into the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
On June 5 at 12:17 (3:17) a.m. shoots the whole magazine at Kennedy and his friends
Evidence against Mrs. Cresspahl: TV is appropriate. Useful for schoolwork even. Ads don’t work
Now bring Kennedy and Sirhan together. Reasons why they met.
Death in America (Eagle-Eye Robinson, Gesine C., probably D. E. too).
Evidence or counterevidence?
Violence a national characteristic?
Conflict because immigrant nation, many countries of origin?
Violent eradication of the Indians
Darwinism transferred to pursuit of gain?
Nation enriched by
War against the Indians
Mexicans 1846–1848
Spanish 1898
(Civil War 1861–1865)
National history as a Western movie with a guaranteed murder, usually by shooting
Murders in labor disputes: the Molly Maguires in the coal mining districts of Pennsylvania, 1854–1877
Again 1937, during River Rouge plant strike, Dearborn, Mich.
The right of an American man to carry a gun. Toy. Ernest Hemingway.
Gun clubs. Gun manufacturers and gun dealers lobby. Annual gun deaths: 21,000. Per capita of population 1 gun in the cupboard.
Recent murders (1966): Richard Speck, 25, murdered eight student nurses in Chicago
Charles Whitman, 25, shot at random down from the Texas University tower, killing 16, wounding 31
Robert Benjamin Smith, eighteen, forced three women and two children to lie down on the floor in a cosmetics salon in Mesa, Arizona, like spokes in a wheel, shot them as planned, two survived
1967:
1968:
Attempted and successful assassinations since the Civil War (guns only):
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President, † April 15, 1865
WILLIAM SEWARD, Secretary of State, wounded, 1865
JAMES GARFIELD, President, † Sept. 19, 1881
WILLIAM MCKINLEY, President, † Sept. 14, 1901
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, ex-President, wounded during campaign, Oct. 14, 1902
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, President-Elect, not hit, Feb. 15, 1933
ANTON CERMAK, Mayor of Chicago, † March 6, 1933 (instead of Roosevelt)
HUEY P. LONG, Senator for Louisiana, † Sept. 10, 1935
HARRY S. TRUMAN, President, not hit, Nov. 1, 1950
JOHN F. KENNEDY, President, † Nov. 22, 1963
MALCOLM X, Negro leader, † Feb. 21, 1965 (Broadway and 166th)
JAMES MEREDITH, Negro leader, wounded, June 6, 1966
GEORGE LINCOLN ROCKWELL, Nazi boss, † Aug. 25, 1967
MARTIN LUTHER KING, Negro leader, † Apr. 4, 1968
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, Senator for New York, † June 6, 1968, 4:44 ante meridiem, Eastern Daylight Time
Did Sirhan Bishara Sirhan have enough time here to learn the American way of having a conversation? Eleven years, one hundred and forty four days
Reason (from Sirhan’s notebooks, found at 696 East Howard Street, Pasadena): For June 6, 1968, the first anniversary of the last Arab-Israeli war, Robert F. Kennedy was due to give a speech, a plea for Jewish votes in this country, a favor to the Israelis who had taken Sirhan Bishara Sirhan’s country away from him, or at least his part of it. Kennedy needed to die before he could give that speech?
(But why are they letting that be broadcast on the news so that no one can deny they’ve heard it? They won’t be able to get an untainted jury anywhere in Los Angeles. Again with no trial?)
Played Chinese checkers with an old Jewish lady
For this reason
From that day on
Then the first bullet entered Kennedy’s right armpit, burrowed upward through fat and muscle, and lodged just under his skin, two centimeters from his spine, in one piece.
The other bullet hit an extension of his temporal bone just behind his right ear. One centimeter farther right (viewed from the back of the head) and the small bullet would have ricocheted off. As it was the empty tip of the bullet hit the “spongy, honeycomb mastoid bone” and sent bone and metal fragments into the cerebellum, the midbrain, the right hemisphere. The brain, already damaged by lack of oxygen, was impaired in the following functions:
Balance and movement control (cerebellum)
Vision (occipital lobe)
Eye reflexes, eye and body movements, nerve connections between cerebrum and cerebellum (midbrain)
Control of heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, digestion and muscle reflexes, emotions (the brain stem, the “old brain”)
So he wouldn’t have wanted to live.
He took slightly more than twenty-five hours to die. He never regained consciousness. After the three hour and forty minute operation the blood was circulating properly in the brain, twelve hours later the circulation was undetectable. He had to pump blood through his heart and breathe for seven more hours. Then he was no longer able to give his speech.
Now I just have to write it all up.
The Air Force Boeing 707 with the coffin on board left Los Angeles International Airport at 1:28 (4:28) and is expected to reach Kennedy Airport in New York in four and a half hours.
In Fremont, California, 2,400 workers left a General Motors assembly line when a supervisor prohibited them from stopping work by saying Robert F. Kennedy “got what he deserved.” He allegedly explained his opinion by saying: “All these Kennedys are ————————.”
Outline
?
Contents
Sources: New York Times, Vol. CXVIII, No. 40,310 and 40,311
Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language, 1902
Columbia Broadcasting System and National Broadcasting Company, news programs, panel discussions, medical demonstrations, etc., June 6, 1968, between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Telephone calls with friends
Addendum: Evening programs on the radio
WQXR (the New York Times station)
Ads turned off.
General Telephone & Electronics brings you, in consideration of the tragedy, a musical program without any interruption by commercial announcements. You are listening to music by Michael Haydn
WCBS
9:35 p.m. The coffin is off the plane
it’s on the Triboro Bridge
the funeral will be organized by an expert, Mr. McNamara
9:40 p.m. eight to nine thousand people are standing at St. Patrick’s Cathedral
sirens in the air on the radio, everywhere
the reporter describes where he’s standing, the people along the street, whatever he sees. Calm voice, swinging in strong slow acoustic waves
almost all the cars following it are government vehicles police whistling
the close family is gathering for a private viewing. They’ve really left you shaken up
they’re arranging that themselves
the coffin is in its box, broadcast dead
only notes. Now I just need to write it.”
June 7, 1968 Friday
On the south side of Ninety-Sixth Street, starting at West End Avenue, workmen are painting the curb, about a hundred feet of it to the number 19 bus stop. The men are using hand brushes fastened to broomsticks with two pieces of string. They are working away, unhurried, not without a certain pleasure in their expertise, they’re about to take a break. Dave Brubeck, “Take Five.” The yellow paint shines in the sun, fresh enough to eat. Life must go on. But we know one child who doesn’t understand that.
I wonder if Marie knows that these TV sets have a way of imploding when someone watches them for ten straight hours with schoolbook in hand, as she did again today?
At the newsstand the papers were again stacked up higher than in normal times. Along the plywood fence around the burned-out building there are additional copies, it’s hard to say how many. The line stretches south from the newsstand; the people coming from the north slow-wittedly follow their usual habit and just grab the topmost paper, holding out money in their other hand. This morning the crippled fingers are already busy with other people’s money, though; the papers have been divided up into those available to anyone and those for preferred customers; now line up with everyone else, fifth on line.
– You, darling! the old man says severely, as if reprimanding. Today he wants to talk to you, doesn’t he. – Don’t you ever stand on line with me again! Are we friends or what?
The customers on line patiently, even approvingly, hear that the old man’s on special terms with this lady and is willing to say so out loud. Today it seems the display of emotions is allowed, even entirely unaccustomed emotions.
In the subway fewer passengers than usual are waiting on the platform, though it’s a work day. They get onto the train with almost no pushing and crowding, and who do we have here? a heavyset old Negro with a rheumatic bent back offering some random white woman his seat. – It’s not easy for you either: he says. Are we still in New York?
Beneath Times Square the city is like itself again, so thick is the stew of people. On Lexington Avenue the people are walking shoulder to shoulder, as if all in a march. The sunlight here has shriveled up. Signs hangs on some of the shop doors saying they’re closed, other stores announce that they will be closed tomorrow, and thus still manage to attract customers’ attention the way they want. A young West Indian girl bats her eyelashes on a side street—she is wearing an elegant shirt, from Bloomingdale’s at least, and showing off her thick eyebrows and thin legs, she has business to take care of too.
From the cafeteria entrance to Sam’s counter is about sixty or seventy feet, and Sam calls to the kitchen as soon as he’s glanced at the door: Large black TEA! so that he can hand over the brown paper bag two minutes later. Meanwhile he wants to know how things are going. – First with me! I want to, but I can’t! he says, and he means the proper emotion he is incapable of producing. – Man, Gesine, this is going to be quite a day!
For the bank is working. That is, our allegedly adored vice president can’t leave it at mere instructions, he has to explain the obvious in a memo: Today is Friday, regular payday for most wage earners in the city, and all the checks need to go out before the weekend; For All Departments, de Rosny. If he wanted to he could have added: Incidentally, I also have the support of the Chamber of Commerce in this matter. The employees on the lower floors might be obediently counting bills, weighing bags of coins, checking accounts, or clicking conceptual money through the four arithmetical operations on calculators; on the sixteenth story we find the most blatant reading of newspapers. They are hardworking, these people who allow their employer two weeks’ grace in which to pay them; they have long since turned to the center page, where the articles on Kennedy are continued from page 1. Mrs. Lazar, whose job is to defend the department with life and limb, barely looks up from whipping the pages backward and forward in an irritated, schoolmarmish manner. Here we have Henri Gelliston, who regards the banking business as the pinnacle and indeed the whole extent of earthly knowledge, absorbing the headline with a look of amazement: White House Plane Flies Body From Los Angeles. He’s about to find out that the hearse there was blue and that Mrs. John F. Kennedy yielded precedence to no one, even in boarding the plane. As far as Wilbur N. Wendell is concerned, the financial business of all of South America might just as well suffocate under the spread-out pages of his Times—he is busy studying a photo of the cemetery personnel at Arlington measuring out the grave for tomorrow. Tony, Anthony, so intent on making us all forget that he was born in a poor Italian neighborhood of New York, our man with his rigidly perfected manners, is sprawled right across the desk to make sure that he doesn’t crease the newspaper; like yesterday, the first page of a paper he normally wouldn’t polish his shoes with—The Daily News, New York’s Picture Newspaper—lies neatly folded in his weekly planner. It’s as quiet as a reading room in the executive lounge; apart from one minor detail the sight could serve as an ad for The New York Times. De Rosny may know why he shouldn’t make the rounds this morning: he’d be in for a shock at his subordinates’ industriousness.
The employee by the name of Cresspahl betakes herself into her office none too swiftly either. She fritters away work hours next to our elegant Tony’s desk. On the front page of the Picture Newspaper, on the left, the word “Final” is printed, which probably means Last Edition. On the right is the price, eight cents, so now you know. Below that, a weather report: sunny and warm. You could put it that way. The letters in RFK DEAD are almost two inches tall. Why not five? Below that, in a thin black border, the dead man is looking the newspaper buyer trustingly in the eyes, somewhat concerned about the bad state of the world, his lips suspiciously loose, his face a little bloated. His hair is shaped into artificial dishevelment as ever, his left shoulder juts forward a little, dependably warm and attentive. His wife has been able to tug his tie closer to the top shirt button than he usually wore it. Cresspahl would be happy to buy this scruffy paper from Tony, she’s not sure whether Marie has it, but she doesn’t have the courage to suggest it. It would be for Marie, right? Who else would it be for.
All the papers now have to eat their words like old hats. Ruthless: it turns out he wasn’t that. He may have fought more recklessly than wisely in his younger years, but the Times is willing to forgive him for that now, since he hadn’t done so for a low or merely personal triumph. It still doesn’t grant him a full regard for the legal process, it sees him as a warrior, and also as a big man who at his death was still growing. What is de Rosny to do now with his countless stories about Bugs Bunny, the crazy cartoon inventor who robbed his neighbors of health and property with, say, a motorized hammock—he will have to come up with a new victim, de Rosny that is. Want to bet it’s Richard Milhous Nixon, w
ho cries so nicely?
As if there were no homework in the newspaper. Not all the Czechoslovaks smiled and waved at the Soviet convoy rolling through the countryside, probably in greater than expected numbers, and with heavy equipment; the weight limit had to be raised specially from thirty to seventy tons, not a problem among dear friends. Such mutable bridges might have given the interior minister something to ponder, except he had his own secret police to worry about, which were acting like they were still answerable to Stalin. Write that down. Recently there’ve been up to thirty thousand cases in which internal security officers provided trumped-up charges for the prosecution of innocent citizens.
The person who, by three o’clock, can no longer stand such preparations for a trip to Europe is Employee Cresspahl. Marie doesn’t answer the phone in the apartment. That may be a good sign. If she can’t hear the phone she is far from the tube, the newscasters, doing homework at Pamela’s, or in the park with Rebecca listening for the ice-cream man’s bell instead. If you can’t believe that, you’ll think the child is at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But what’s the point, after all the coffin is closed. She wouldn’t care, she might still want to walk past it and brush the flag on the casket with her fingers. She shouldn’t be standing there alone. Someone should be there to get her. Cresspahl decides to leave early, and can’t tell anyone, even Mrs. Lazar has already left.
The line now ends on Lexington Avenue, at Forty-Seventh Street. It’s so wide that walking next to it on the sidewalk is like walking on a balance beam. Too early to find Marie outside the angular plate-glass cookie of Chemical Bank—she must have joined the end of the line a long time ago. She’s not in front of the Barclay Hotel, nor the Waldorf-Astoria. How yellow the General Electric building is: crazy Gothic with a crown full of holes that has a water pot in it. All the people standing still make you feel like you’re walking faster—irrational but true. Business is merrily going on all around, hawking pins that say “In Memory of a Great American. Robert F. Kennedy. 1925–1968.” Maybe buy one for Marie. Fifty cents each. Probably 100 percent profit. Here’s another entrance to the IRT, Fifty-First Street, the next stop is Grand Central, from there it’s twenty minutes to get home. The people are hardly dressed in mourning—this man could board a sailboat in those clothes, you’d expect to find that lady working in her backyard. Here we have a mailman who’s gotten stuck in the procession once too often, and now even the phone booth is occupied. – I’m forty-five minutes behind schedule! he says to the people standing near him, who smile and nod back. That’s how things go in New York when something’s happened; anyway, he was only looking for sympathy, and found it. Where’s this line going? Now it’s winding around the Seagram Building block and turning south down Park Avenue. Seagram’s is handing out plastic cups, though not with whiskey, water is good enough advertising. Nobody’s visibly in tears—the conversations may not be happy but a certain good humor prevails. Here there are more commemorative buttons, now they’re a whole dollar, maybe due to the fancier surroundings of the Embassy Club and the back of Chemical Bank. How much percent profit there? Here a garbage can is being stormed by two teachers intending to make paper hats for their whole class of boys. Such stately towers of business and at their feet the people are strewing plastic, paper, tin cans. Whenever someone collapses the line bulges out toward the curb; here two girls in too-tight pants are leaning against the pillars of Union Carbide, tired out. People faint not so much from the muggy heat as from the car exhaust fumes. For other New Yorkers are driving on Park Avenue, out to the country, or the beaches, even if many have their automobile lights on as a gesture of mourning. Here it takes an hour to move a single block, if you stay with the line. The police have set up gray barricades to protect those waiting against line cutters. There are a lot of children here, almost every third person looks underage; but this must be about number five thousand, it’d be easy to miss Marie. No one is talking about the reason they’re all there, not even about Thursday’s amendment to the gun laws. Previously, mail-order businesses were free to send out pistols, revolvers, hand grenades, and mortars; now they are limited to rifles and shotguns. Including the kind of rifle used for the other Kennedy. Bankers Trust, the Colgate-Palmolive command center, the headquarters of International Telephone & Telegraph. Looking back from the corner, before the line turns west onto Fifty-First Street, you could still see the Pan Am Building, where the Kennedy fortune is managed. At Madison Avenue the police actually did form two rows, to let the line cross the street. On this corner, one cold winter, Cresspahl too once walked up and down, carrying a sign, outside the New York Archdiocese, the palace of Cardinal Spellman, who so loved the war. Here the last stage begins, and the soft-drink vendors are becoming aggressive. One vendor feels stared at by an extremely ragged beggar in the line—he’ll teach that beggar to envy him, for a while he holds out the brightly colored cans so that they invariably pass under the thirsty man’s nose, until he turns away. Again and again there is a Puerto Rican, a Negro, among the whites—about every fifth person has dark skin. They were the ones who felt spoken to when this millionaire spoke of them. What could they have believed he would do? Among them most of the women are not carrying their shoes in their hands, the men have only slightly loosened their ties. At the church the police are in a holiday mood, moving nimbly between the elephantine TV broadcast vans, chatting comfortably over their walkie-talkies, waving up at the helicopters. The true lord of the scene is a cameraman, hanging with his equipment high overhead in a seat shaped to his buttocks. This close to the goal, people now begin to resist when someone tries to cut the line, though not as viciously as on normal, unsacred days—with comments referring to the dignity of the occasion, in a preachy tone where possible. At the northwest church entrance, uniformed men lop off five or six heads at a time from the front of the line, with wordless gestures. Inside there is something golden, brilliantly lit, to see. If Marie did go in she’d have wanted someone Catholic with her. She’d have wanted to do everything right: the genuflecting, the sign of the cross. She isn’t here either, and for the next fifteen minutes, the length of time it can take to walk past the coffin, she doesn’t come out the south entrance, and yet her mother has seen her many times and sees her again while walking away past the gray wall of Fiftieth Street and the weeping women in the hot western light.