Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!

by Harry Harrison

  I knew her type; my heart fell when I met her. She was an ancient virginal time-server in a dead-end civil service job, letter of the law and no exceptions. And the letter this time was that poor Massoud was trapped in a catch-22 situation. He had been with an Indian regiment during the war and had been captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. He had spent some months in a prison camp and had not liked it at all. One day he escaped into the jungle and decided to walk back to India. Yes, they are on the same Asian land mass, but over fifteen hundred miles apart. It took him a year, going from one village to the next, working to earn his keep. It was a heroic adventure that he never discussed very much. Then why couldn’t he join his family in the United States? Because, while London had a record of his entering the army, there was nothing on record of his leaving it. He could be anything; a deserter perhaps. His records had been destroyed by the Japanese in Singapore. What could be done? I groped for a way out. A piece of paper, that was it. A letter of some kind, the document so sacred to the bureaucratic mind.

  “You know his records were destroyed by the Japanese?” I said with enthusiasm.

  “That is what he says.” Sniff of suspicion.

  “What if I got the British Army, someone in charge of documents, to give you an official statement that his records were destroyed, along with those of everyone else in his company? And that the entire company was captured by the Japanese. Would that suffice?”

  She turned the idea over and over for long moments. I smiled ingratiatingly and made charming comments about the importance of her job and how nice it was to see this matter in her competent hands. Flattery—or fact—won the day. The idea was approved. I wrote the letter for Massoud and, within a few days, the important paper came back from the British authorities. He and his English wife, Barbara, would soon be on their way across the Atlantic.

  Meanwhile the money was running out. My New York agent was not answering letters and we were in hock to Smith’s Hotel for almost four weeks’ room and board. I worried about money and couldn’t write—and we couldn’t get out of the place until I wrote something and got some money. I was trapped in a catch-22 of my own. It was last-resort time. I took a deep breath and typed out an outline for a confession story. I bypassed my noncommunicative agent and sent the outline directly to True Confessions. They had liked my work in the past and had bought everything that I wrote. And they paid five cents a word—as opposed to the SF magazines’ one to three cents—and equally important they would take stories up to ten thousand words, and could we use five hundred dollars!

  I wrote good confessions—but I loathed them. I had to get very feminine and weepy for a week at least, since you can’t write category material and fake it. I had to believe sincerely in what I was writing, feel it throbbing to the very core of my being. I hated it but I did it. I had always managed to come up with ideas that would grab the readers’ attention. At this time there were lots of young adults in America who had been victims of the poliomyelitis epidemic, some of them so paralyzed that they spent all of their time in a chamberlike apparatus called the iron lung. It did their breathing for them. Those luckier could manage outside the iron lung for longer periods, usually just spending the nights in the machine. I had talked to doctors and made notes before leaving New York, but had never written the piece. I did now, and it was called “My Iron Lung Baby.” Sensational? Yes, but true as well. I got a good deal of fan mail, all approving. And the five hundred dollars bought us out of Smith’s little suburban hell.

  But where should we go? I mentioned my problem to Massoud and he said that there was a bed-sitter vacant in the rooming house where he lived and it was very cheap. We grabbed it and thus began some of the most fascinating months of our lives. Massoud and his wife Barbara had moved out of their room, into the frigid attic of the building, so we could have the room. This was a true kindness that we never knew about until some years later. We arrived in the building as friends, not strangers, and were soon good friends with everyone else living there as well. They were all Pakistanis, most of them cooks in the new curry restaurants that were springing up all over London. They were all warmhearted and social, and living there was more like Mexico than the frigid north. We loved it.

  The best part was that we hadn’t eaten curries since Hans Santesson had introduced them to us in Harlem, some years previously. Like Mexican food it was very tasty, spicy, interesting. We were converted. Joan was practically a professional cook before we left, having learned to cook curries side by side with chefs in the communal kitchen. Todd didn’t take to the food too well, but he was a dab hand at helping to mash dal.

  Money was still in short supply since nothing had come in since the True Confessions check. London publishing had shut down over Christmas and we were slowly freezing to death. Central heating was unknown in Britain at this time. I remember that I did an article for a New York magazine on English public houses. In this I scotched the rumor that the English served warm beer. They did not. Their beer was served at room temperature. However, English room temperature was about the same as American refrigerator temperature.

  In our furnished room we had a gas fire with attendant coin meter. Insert sixpence, turn the knob, and light the fire, which extinguished itself with a popping sound in what seemed like an incredibly short period. Only a lucky accident kept us alive. For some reason we had a lot of American pennies with us—and they proved to be the same size as an English sixpenny piece. We fed them one by one into the meter and stayed warm. But they ticked away there like a time bomb; we had to find a way to get out of town before the man came to empty the coins and discovered our crime.

  Our communal Pakistani Christmas dinner, while not traditional or Western, was simply incredible. The season of joy was upon us, but apparently doomed to be a dry season. Joan didn’t drink, nor did the Moslem Pakistanis, which left only me and Barbara to represent seasonal Anglo-Saxon alcohol swilling. We chipped in one and three each for a grand total of two and six. Two shillings sixpence; thirty-four cents American. Just enough to buy a pint bottle of VP sherry. A particularly loathsome drink made of powdered Cyprus grapes, sweet and vaguely alcoholic. We toasted and wished a merry Christmas to all.

  We had to leave. The dreadful winter, and the threat that our crime would soon be exposed when the meter box was emptied, drove us on. This was before the Clean Air Act in Britain and a time of killer fogs. The coal soot in the air would combine with the water drops in the fog to make an impenetrable wall. You could not see more than a yard ahead, two at the maximum. Traffic crawled, and if you had to go out, you felt along the curb and groped your way across the pavement.

  We needed money—and a warm destination. By happy circumstance an old friend supplied the latter. I need to say more about Garry Davis here. Garry Davis had flown a bomber during the war and had emerged a pacifist—and was determined to do something about his beliefs. He burned his American passport at the United Nations, which was then meeting in Paris, and had declared himself the first “citizen of the world.” This action drew international attention and soon he was leading the world citizen movement. At one time we had shared an office in New York and it was there that I had designed the World Passport. The passport was a nifty green job that faithfully copied the American passport. It was in English and Esperanto and I still have mine. Garry used his to travel around the world, causing government officials a good deal of grief. He had gone back to Europe just about the time we went to Mexico. We kept in touch when we went to England; now he was in Paris. He wrote that he hoped to go to Italy soon, southern Italy. He had world citizen friends there who had arranged a place for him to stay. Perfect; we would meet him there. All we needed to do this was some more money. I couldn’t face another confession so it was time to call on the old boys’ network again. When I had edited pulp magazines and Hans Santesson was unemployed, I had commissioned articles from him. Now he was editor of a new SF mag, with the shy title of Fantastic Universe. I sent him the outlin
e of a story titled “The Robot Who Wanted to Know.” I said it would run to five thousand words. Unlike Astounding, Hans could only afford to pay a penny a word. But, also unlike Astounding, he paid in advance to prevent our death by freezing and starving. Fifty dollars was more than enough to get the camera out of hock, pay the rent, and buy some food—and leave a bit over. The robot story went out by airmail—along with an outline for another story, to be titled “Arm of the Law.” This would also be five thousand words in length. And, unbelievable as it seems now, the fifty dollars it earned would pay for our train tickets to Italy.

  The famous footlocker was shipped ahead to Naples. We would pick it up before we departed for Capri, where we were to meet Garry. John Blomshield, my painting teacher, knew the island well and had once loaned me a copy of The Story of San Michele, written by a Scandinavian super con man who settled there. I didn’t remember much about Capri from the book, other than the fact that oranges grew there. It had to be warmer than London.

  We said our tearful good-byes and headed for Victoria Station.

  9

  The footlocker had gone on ahead and should be waiting for us in Naples station. We were saying good-bye to London—and hopefully to winter as well. When we reached Victoria Station, there, standing at the platform, were the gleaming black-and-gold coaches of the world-famous train, the Golden Arrow. As an old rail fan I had read, with some envy, about this elegant way of traveling from London to Paris. A one-class train—first class of course—that sped nonstop to Dover to the waiting ferry, where the coaches would be uncoupled from the locomotive and rolled aboard the ferry by puffing, coal-fired donkey engines. Should they care to, the passengers could enjoy the pleasures of the Channel ferry during the crossing—or remain in the dining car, where the champagne undoubtedly flowed. The coaches of the Golden Arrow would of course be first off in Calais, to be coupled quickly to the Paris train—and away, an elegant and comfortable way to travel.

  However, this first-class train was far too expensive for us and we weren’t going to Paris, not yet. We passed by the gleaming delights of the Golden Arrow and on to the next platform, to the dusty second-class coaches of the stop-everywhere local that eventually trundled its way to Dover. By the time we had arrived at the coast the sun had vanished and a cold rain was falling. I grabbed up the suitcases, Joan took Todd by the hand, and we hurried to the waiting ferry.

  It was still raining in Calais and our first view of France was the sodden railroad yard where we stumbled across the wet tracks as we followed the signs leading to our train to Rome. This proved to be an elegant—and clean—French Wagons-lits. Our spirits perked up. This was more like it. We were in France, on the continent of Europe, ready to cross it to Italy and—hopefully—the sunny south. We found which one of the glossy black carriages was ours and climbed aboard. The waiting conductor welcomed us—in English. He was equally facile in greeting our fellow travelers in French, German, and Italian; a polyglot who appeared to speak every known language. He consulted our tickets and showed us to our compartment, bowed slightly, and left. If this was second class—what luxuries could there possibly be in first?

  A long couch to the right stretched the width of the compartment; a large window filled the far wall. A sink, all dark wood, gilt plumbing, and engraved glass, was built in beside the door. Among its practical fittings, we quickly discovered, was a concealed potty. This was a tribute to French practicality and design. When the hinged door below the sink was pulled open, the chamber pot was revealed. It resembled an immense gravy boat as it hung there in its fitting, pouring-spout down. After utilization—at night, in the dark, with no witnesses, of course—it was slipped back into place. When the supporting door was closed its contents were decanted onto the tracks.

  After dinner in the splendid dining car we returned to find that the train staff had been busy while we were away. The back of the couch had been lifted up, another cot swung down, and the entire thing converted neatly into three berths, now made up with linen and blankets. The perfect count for our family. Todd on the bottom complete with teddy bear, I with my nose to the ceiling, Joan in between where she could keep a watch on us both.

  We slept—and slept so well that we almost missed our connection. We were in the station in Zurich, Switzerland, where we had to change trains for Italy. Unlike the more easygoing parts of the world that we had grown used to, here everything ran on time. And run is what we did, following the porter with our bags, down the stairs, through the tunnel, and up to a different platform. To watch our train pulling out, an almost tragedy but not a disaster. It appeared that a new train was being assembled from bits and pieces from all over northern Europe. There was some rapid muttering by the porter in German, consultation of a wall chart, a guttural oath, and another dash through the tunnel. Only two-year-old Todd seemed to enjoy all this.

  This time we made it, safe harbor at last. No sleeping car now because this was a daytime trip, but rather a compartment for eight passengers who appeared to be right out of a Graham Greene novel. Whistles blew, trainmen waved flags, and we moved slowly forward. Rattling through the switches in the station and out onto the main line. Dark buildings slipped by, faster and faster—until we were in the suburbs; trees and white houses. Then the countryside with the mountains beyond, with the snow-covered Alps brilliant against an electric blue sky.

  Inside the train we were the objects of great attention. Hard as it is to believe now, there were no visible American tourists in Europe in 1958. The jumbo jet had yet to be invented, while the few Super-Connies, the three-tailed Constellation transport that we crossed the Atlantic in, thrashed their propellers for twenty hours to get their passengers between the United States and Shannon. It was not a popular form of transport. The rich and well-off Americans took the liners across the ocean and stayed at expensive hotels after they arrived. If they took the train they went first class. Hippies hadn’t been invented yet; guitars were for bars, backpacks for the mountains. We were a novelty. All the European eyes sparkled with curiosity at the sight of this American family group.

  It was the Italian mother who cracked first. A little girl sat on her lap and motherhood radiated from her as from a maternal nuclear reactor. She had been clamping her lips shut, not wanting to be the one who broke the silence, while looking admiringly at Todd’s fair blond hair. Finally, no longer able to control herself, she leaned over and asked Joan, “Quanti anni il bambino?”

  Italian is close enough to Spanish for Joan to make out the meaning. Plus—what is the first question a woman asks about a child? How old was he? Just over two years. And your little girl, she’s very pretty, how old is she? Joan was speaking Spanish, the other woman Italian, no barrier at all to concerned maternal conversation.

  Of the eight of us in the compartment, there were four, possibly five different nationalities. (One silent, dour man never spoke, never looked up.) It was our first introduction to normal European linguistic convention. Speak the language you know and hopefully it will be sorted out. It soon became Italian, Spanish, French, and English. Someone tried German and did not get very far.

  We discovered that the man next to the window, in a smartly cut three-piece suit, was a trader in gemstones. We must have looked an honest lot—particularly since we were graced with the presence of the Italian army officer hunchbacked under the weight of medals and decorations—because after discussing the fortunes of international sales he actually produced some of his product wrapped in tissue paper. There was appreciation on all sides.

  We had some food with us—and apparently so did everyone else. We unwrapped our sandwiches and hardboiled eggs; a bottle was opened and wine shared around. Then some incredibly delicious salami appeared. When we reached Rome late that afternoon it was like the end of the party.

  After the linguistic chaos of the train I looked forward to some good Esperanto communication. I had found the address of the Hotel Montenegro in the Jarlibro, the Esperanto yearbook that was filled with names
and addresses of clubs, businesses, and hotels. The ad had promised cheap and clean accommodation. I had written and reserved a room for the night. I had not received an answer but was not worried. Mexico had been an education into the Latin mind and since it was now winter, Rome suitably chilled, there should be room at the inn. A taxi, a little difference of opinion over the fare, settled amicably—again after Mexican training—and a ring on the door and the affable owner who spoke only Italian appeared. Yes indeed, the room was ready, enter, enter. An explanation that of course he didn’t speak Esperanto, Italian was good enough for him. But he advertised because all Esperantists were poor but honest, clean and willing, good customers. He led us to our quarters, opened the door, and proudly waved us in.

  He had something to be proud about. I am sure if we had slipped back in time and had rented the room in 1858—or 1758 for that matter—I don’t think we would have noticed the difference. Only the single feeble electric bulb, hanging shadeless over the bed, spoke of the twentieth century. The bed, the curtains, the giant dark wardrobe, all were a part of history, as were the washing arrangements. Hot water brought in a pitcher and poured into a bowl. Toilet down the hall and shared by all on this floor. The giant bed, piled high with feather comforters, was more than big enough for the three of us. Comfort if not luxury, and a view of the Tiber from the window and five hundred lire for the night, eighty cents American at the time; I had a feeling that we were going to like Italy.