The Zebra Derby

by Max Shulman

  “I could have sworn,” I said, “that all these things were in the 1942 model.”

  “The hood,” continued Triscuit, “is opened from inside the car. Like this. See? This other lever over here opens the ventilator. Keeps your feet cool in the summer. Listen to the horn. Loud, eh? It’s a Klaxon. Now, let’s start the motor up. Just push the little button and—there. How’s she sound to you?”

  “Like the 1942 model,” I said.

  chapter ten

  I parked my new Ford in front of the next house and walked to the door. This house was somewhat different from the others I had called at. It was painted bright red. Hammer-and-sickle designs were outlined on the shutters. Above the door hung a pennant proclaiming “SOLIDARITY FOREVER.” I pushed the bell and heard the first three notes of the “Internationale” chime within the house.

  A dark-eyed, finely mustached woman in a close-knit burlap dress came to the door. “What is it, comrade?” she asked.

  “Yetta!” I cried. “Yetta Samovar!”

  For it was she. What a profusion of memories raced through my mind as I looked at her! How quickly those days came back to me when we were fellow students at the University of Minnesota! We had even been lovers for a time, but she had thrown me over when I had refused to resign from my fraternity.

  “Fraternities are counterrevolutionary,” she had said.

  And I had answered in anger, “Yetta, I won’t have you talking like that. Alpha Cholera is a darn swell frat and it’s loads of fun.”

  We had both been stubborn and our romance had withered. We had gone our separate ways—I through a whirl of campus activities that rounded out my personality and gave me the poise that now served me so well; she following her leftist bent, attending meetings of the Subversive Elements’ League, distributing leaflets, writing letters to the editor of the student newspaper, burning the dean of the business school in effigy.

  “Yetta,” I said, “don’t you remember me? I’m Asa Hearthrug.”

  “I remember you,” she said. “You menshevik.”

  “Come now, Yetta, surely you don’t still hold my fraternity against me.”

  “Kulak,” she spat. “Why did you come to see me?”

  “Well, I didn’t come to see you particularly. I was just looking for the lady of the house. I’m selling Little Dandy cooky cutters. I am the Postwar Man. I bring you your future today.”

  “Cooky cutters,” she sneered. “How typical! That’s what the new world means to you. Selling cooky cutters.”

  I drew myself up. “Madam,” I said, “I know very well what the new world means. It means peace and prosperity without parallel. It means well-being in all the far recesses of the earth. It means new opportunities, new freedoms, new comforts. It means the end of strife, hatred, and prejudice, the death of evil over the world. It means unity that denies time and mocks space. It means the reinstatement of the world’s dispossessed. That’s what it means.”

  “So you sell cooky cutters. What a jerk! Ah, Asa, Asa, you haven’t changed a bit. Come into the house, gaspadin, we’ll have a glass tea.”

  I followed her in and took a seat in a room papered with photomurals of Lenin, Stalin, and a woman I did not recognize. “Who is this?” I asked, pointing at the woman’s picture.

  “‘Who is this?’ he says,” mocked Yetta. “Oh well, what can you expect from a fraternity man turned cooky-cutter salesman?”

  “Now just a minute,” I cried, the hackles rising on my neck. “The cooky cutters I sell happen to be the answer to humanity’s cry for better living.”

  She laughed sharply, without mirth. Then she took my hand and said softly, “Asa, do you really want to benefit mankind?”

  “More than anything in the world.”

  “Then listen to me.” She poured two glasses of tea, gave me one and put a lump of sugar between her teeth. “Russian style,” she explained.

  I nodded and put a lump of sugar between my teeth.

  She said, “I see by your discharge button that you’re a veteran.”

  I started to tell about my war experiences, but she held up her hand. It was just as well; I couldn’t talk anyhow with the lump of sugar between my teeth.

  “For you,” she continued, “the war is over. For me it has scarcely begun. As long as there is oppression in the world, I fight on. As long as one man exploits another, the battle continues. As long as there is sweat in one shop, I cannot rest.”

  Deeply moved, I took a sip of tea. It washed against the lump between my teeth and cascaded over my bosom.

  “Organization,” she said. “That’s the answer. Workers of the world, unite. The people must be brought together. They must be educated. They must be taught the power of collective action.”

  I tried drinking the tea through the corner of my mouth, but I could not open wide enough and it ran down my neck, soaking my hackles and trickling under my collar.

  “Nor is it all grimness. A struggle, yes. But there is joy in the people’s movement, joy in communal labors, joy in sharing the fruits of toil, joy in the folk arts. Strong, bronzed people working side by side, singing as they work, clapping one another on the back with simple heartiness, dancing madrigals in the village green on feast days.”

  I tried setting the glass down on the table and sucking, but it only sprayed in my eyes.

  “That’s my postwar world, Asa. And yours too, if you will only open your eyes. What are you doing to yourself? Think, man. You are knocking on the doors of petit-bourgeois slatterns, trying to sell cooky cutters, suffering their idle, shrewish abuses that you may someday amass enough money to become a petit bourgeois yourself and abuse who knocks on your door. Shame, Asa. That you should betray your own working class.”

  I took out my lump and protested. “But what of the technological advances, the new sciences, the new industries, the new skills, the new comforts, the new—”

  “All new ways to make money for the bosses,” interrupted Yetta. “New opiums of the people. New ways to trample down the masses. New sops to forestall the inevitable revolution.

  “Asa, humanity is at the crossroads. You must choose now which direction you will follow. Will you travel the snare-lined path of capitalism that leads you to the abyss, or will you march triumphantly up the people’s way into the sun?”

  “March triumphantly up the people’s way into the sun,” I said promptly.

  “Comrade,” she said.

  “What shall we do first?” I asked.

  “First we must show the way to the rest of the country. We must set an example for all to follow. The Minneapolis Central Committee has decided to set up a model collective community near here. We are now negotiating for the land. We will establish a complete self-sustaining proletarian community. The eyes of the nation will be opened by this experiment. Collective communities will spring up all over the land. After that the People’s State will soon be a fact.”

  “It sounds wonderful, Yetta, and I am proud to be one of you.”

  “Proud to have you, comrade,” said Yetta.

  “There is just one question I would like to ask.”

  “Of course, comrade.”

  “Who is the woman whose picture is on the photomural?”

  “That is Popula Shopishnok, winner of the Soviet Union fertility medal. She was the mother of twenty-nine children.”

  “Twenty-nine children!” I exclaimed. “Where is she now?”

  “Siberia. She murdered her husband.”

  chapter eleven

  “I’ve missed you,” said Nebbice, lifting me up and kissing me.

  “How’d it go, boy?” asked Alaric.

  “I have something to tell you both,” I said.

  “Won’t it keep until we’ve had dinner?” Nebbice asked. “I fixed something special for you. I wanted to show you what kind of cook you were getting into.”

  “No, I must tell you now.”

  “But dinner will be ruined,” protested Nebbice. “I made otter haunches and m
angrove salad and shirred plovers’ eggs—everything a man likes.”

  “What’s up, Asa?” asked Alaric.

  “Oh, good friends,” I cried, “wake before it is too late. We are at the crossroads and you must choose. Where will you be when the millennium comes?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Alaric asked.

  “How blind we all have been! How stupid to think of the new world as a place to enrich ourselves! How easily we fell dupes to the schemes of the bosses! Cooky cutters! Ha!”

  “Oh, I see,” said Alaric. “You don’t like to sell cooky cutters. Well, Asa, to tell the truth, I’m a little sick of it myself. I’m willing to write the whole thing off to experience and go after some real dough. Now, I was talking to a fellow this afternoon—”

  “That’s just the point!” I exclaimed. “Going out after some real dough, as you put it, is precisely what they want us to do.”

  Alaric turned to Nebbice. “Where’d you pick up this jerk?”

  “I told you. On the train.”

  “Couldn’t you have been a little more selective?”

  “Look at me,” she said.

  “No, I guess not. Now, Asa, who wants us to go out after some real dough?”

  “The bosses, of course. They’re the ones who make the real money on what you sell. Don’t you see? They keep you contented with crumbs from their table—just enough to keep you peaceful and tractable. Just enough to keep you from trying to break out of your chains.

  “Is that what the war was for? Is that why I crawled through the swamps and jungles of the Pacific? Is that why you plodded through the trackless wastes of the Pentagon? To come home and find new exploitation disguised in new trappings? No!

  “I say the day of the common man is at hand. This is the hour of action. This is the time of decision. Strike! We have nothing to lose but our chains. Thank you.”

  There was polite applause from Nebbice, but Alaric frowned. “Asa,” he whispered, “what you said—that’s communism.”

  Nebbice raced to the windows in alarm and pulled the shades.

  “That’s red communism,” repeated Alaric.

  “Call it what you will,” I said, “my eyes have been opened. I’m leaving tonight to become a member of the model collective community of the Minneapolis Central Committee.”

  “Bolsheviks!” exclaimed Alaric. “They’ve all got beards and they carry bombs.”

  “Come now,” I chuckled. “I spent the afternoon with one of them and didn’t see a single bomb. Moreover, her mustache was scarcely visible.”

  “You were with a woman,” wailed Nebbice. “Why, you little—”

  “Shut up,” said Alaric. “Beating him up isn’t going to do any good. Let me handle this.” He took me by the shoulders. “I wouldn’t have thought,” he said, “that this could happen to a man of your intelligence. It just goes to show that you can never relax. You can’t let your guard down even for a minute. It’s insidious poison, Asa, this communism. If we don’t keep fighting it every second, it may yet undermine the American way.

  “Asa, this country was made great by free private enterprise. From its very beginning, America has stood for free private enterprise. Why did your ancestors first come to America?”

  “They were wanted for pederasty in Lapland,” I said.

  “Oh. Well, at any rate, this country was settled by people who came here to exercise the right of free private enterprise. Free private enterprise opened the West, drove the savage red Indians from the plains into Tulsa. Free private enterprise drew sustenance from the earth and ores from beneath the earth. Free private enterprise built our great industries, our great transportation network, our great cities, schools, theaters, museums, banks, dams—in short, America.

  “Everything you are, everything you do, reflects free private enterprise. Take a day in the life of an average man and you will see. What does Mr. Average Man do when he gets up in the morning?” asked Alaric.

  “Goes to the toilet,” I said.

  “Built by free private enterprise and installed by a freely enterprising plumber.”

  “Then he eats breakfast,” I said.

  “Grown by free farmers and milled by free Kelloggs.”

  “Goes downtown to work,” I said.

  “In a car built by free private enterprise from materials mined by free private enterprise.”

  “Sits down at his desk,” I said.

  “Built by free private enterprise from trees felled by free private enterprise.”

  “Can’t escape it, can you?” I said.

  “No more,” said Alaric, “than you can escape the air you breathe. Free private enterprise is the very essence of America, the strength of America, the wellspring of America. It is the fountainhead and the matrix of that which we all hold dear. It has made us the light of the world. It has carried us through the late great crisis so that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free private enterprise. Thank you.”

  Nebbice and I applauded until our palms smarted. Then we carried Alaric around the room on our shoulders. Then Nebbice carried Alaric and me on her shoulders.

  “I’ve been a fool,” I said after Nebbice put us down and went in the kitchen to get dinner ready to serve.

  “Forget it,” said Alaric.

  “You’re awfully patient with me.”

  “We’re partners, aren’t we? And that reminds me. I tried to tell you before. I was talking to a fellow this afternoon who gave me a tip on where to pick up some surplus war materials for a song.”

  “Let’s make it a duet,” I said, my brooding gray eyes crinkling with laughter.

  Laughing, we sat down to Nebbice’s otter haunches.

  chapter twelve

  “I couldn’t sleep,” said Nebbice, climbing over Alaric and snuggling up close to me.

  “It is difficult with three in a bed,” I said.

  “I was thinking,” said Nebbice.

  “About what, Nebbice?”

  “Oh, lots of things. Love, mostly.”

  “Love,” I mused. “Quite a subject.”

  Nebbice grasped my arm in a quarter nelson. “It’s mysterious and exciting,” she breathed. “It comes over you swiftly and silently and leaves you helpless.”

  “Yes, love does funny things to people.”

  “It turns your bones to water,” she breathed. “It destroys the will.”

  “Sometimes,” I agreed, “but other times it works just the opposite. It makes a tiger out of a jellyfish.”

  “Not with me!” Nebbice shouted. “When I’m in love there’s nothing a man can’t do to me. Nothing, d’you hear?”

  “Shh! We’ll wake Alaric.”

  “Don’t worry. I put four grams of nembutal in his coffee.”

  “Oh. Well, as I was saying, it sometimes makes a tiger out of a jellyfish … Say, that’s rather well put, don’t you think? A tiger out of a jellyfish.”

  “Sure, Asa, you’re a wizard with words. I can’t resist you when you talk. Or when you don’t talk.”

  I chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I do have a bit of a knack with language. I’ve often thought of writing professionally. I’d like to do a novel based on my own life.”

  “What an unusual idea!”

  “Isn’t it, though? I’ve often wondered why nobody else has ever thought of it. You know, when you stop to consider, just about everybody’s life would make a good novel.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way before.”

  “Yes. Well, to get back to love—”

  “By all means,” she cried, throwing one leg over mine.

  “This jellyfish I had in mind who was turned into a tiger by love was a friend of mine named Tristram Shandy. Most timid fellow you ever saw. If you so much as spoke to him, he would blush and fly in confusion.

  “Tristram’s life was not an easy one. A stenographer by trade, he could never hold a job more than a few days. He was all right as long as nobody talked to him, but as soon as somebody
said one word, he’d go into utter panic. He would simply lose control of himself. One time he was sitting at his typewriter and a girl at the next desk remarked to him that it was a nice day. Whereupon Tristram inserted his necktie into the roller of his typewriter, wound it up, and typed, ‘Yrs. of the 16th inst. received and contents noted’ on his forehead.

  “Well, sir, he finally got a break. The only people who didn’t unnerve Tristram were young children, and he found a job running the nursery of a large department store. Mothers would leave their children there while they went shopping.

  “Tristram did well at his job. All day long he happily pushed tykes down slides, played with them in the sandbox, rode with them on the carousel, cut out paper dolls for them, read them the poems of A. A. Milne.

  “One day a beautiful young woman came in and left her five-year-old son. Tristram was smitten with the woman instantly. Naturally he was too shy to approach her. It was only after she had left the boy there more than a dozen times that he could summon up enough courage to say hello.

  “She answered him affably and then she said, ‘I’ve been meaning to thank you for the way you’ve taken care of Junior. He’s gotten quite fond of you. You see, his own daddy is dead.’

  “A widow! Tristram’s heart sang with joy. Inside of a year he found himself able to ask her whether she and Junior would like to have dinner with him. She accepted, and in the months that followed Tristram took out the widow and her son regularly. The three of them went to the theater, to the beach, to art museums, to the races—everywhere.

  “Well, sir, one Sunday afternoon they all went on a picnic. Tristram found a lovely spot overlooking a cliff and they spread their lunch on the lush grass.

  “‘Isn’t this heavenly?’ said the widow.