Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks. Alan Coren
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mean you don’t take whites?’
‘Don’t say “you” like that.’ He frowned, and put down the magazine. ‘It’s not just me. If I had my way, why, sure, I’d take you in. But I got other things to consider.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, like I said, it’s not me. It’s the neighbours.’ He looked at me, eyebrows raised in appeal. ‘How’re they going to feel about it? A man doesn’t live alone, y’know. And this isn’t just any old neighbourhood. No offence meant – but this is a pretty good-class street.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I like it.’
He shook his head.
‘Man can’t always have everything he likes. Take me – I get on fine with you people. I was in the war with white boys, fought right alongside ’em; you couldn’t wish for better soldiers. I work with white people right now. They pull their weight same as the rest of us. I got white acquaintances – why, I count them among my closest friends. They come here all the time, we sit around, chew a lot of fat; you know the sort of thing.’
‘Only you wouldn’t have one living in your house?’
He sighed.
‘I’m gonna level with you. Suppose you were to come and live here. You got white friends, right?’
I nodded.
‘Okay. Pretty soon, they’re gonna start visiting here regular. Maybe some of ’em’ll get to like the area; why not? What then? Maybe they’ll take it into their heads to move in. What the other people in the street gonna do? I’ll tell you. They kinda respect me, know what I mean? I do a lot of work for them, address meetings, all that stuff. So they see I got a white boy living here. They’ll reckon it’s okay. So maybe they’ll let your buddies move in. Pretty soon, we’re gonna have us a – you’ll excuse me – a white neighbourhood. I mean, let’s face it, that’s the way you folks are, am I right? Soon as a couple of you take hold, next thing you know there’s a whole colony.’
‘Well, would – I mean, is that so terrible, after all?’
He looked at me as if I were a child who’d misspelled ‘cat’.
‘Don’t stop there, though, does it? I’ve lived in white areas, see? Like Greenwich Village. Now, I don’t like those people who say that white men are all no-good drunks and loafers – but I’ve seen ’em on paynights down there, blind drunk, shouting and singing, running after women. I don’t say there aren’t good and bad, nor that coloured people don’t behave that way sometimes. But there’s no point, far as I can see, in having a lot of people like that coming in and raising hell.’ He leaned forward. ‘Lot of white men find coloured girls pretty attractive, huh?’
Caught either way. All right.
‘Some. Like any other girls, I suppose.’
‘That’s just it! They’re not. See what I mean? Pretty soon they’re gonna start walking out together. Maybe even get married.’
‘Well, even if things go that far, would that be so bad?’
He pursed his lips.
‘Look, I’m liberal, like I say. I know all the reasons, too, and about love and all that, and skin not mattering, and the same blood, and so on. Except –’ he shook his head, and gave a small laugh,‘– it still kinda goes against the grain, thinking of a coloured girl going to bed with a white man. No offence?’
‘No offence,’ I said.
‘If I had my way, I’d like to see everyone getting along together, next door to one another. But – I can see you’re a man of the world, an intelligent human being – you don’t expect me to be the first, do you? A man has to live.’
‘I suppose you’re right. I don’t expect you to be the first.’
‘Sure you don’t.’ He smiled comfortably now, relieved. ‘It’s been interesting talking to you.’ He stood up, and we went into the dim hall. ‘Good to see you understand. About the room and all. But I guess that’s nothing new to you; a man who’s been around must’ve run into this sort of thing from time to time?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It all sounds pretty familiar.’
We shook hands on the step, and he closed the front door. I walked down the stone stairway, and two little coloured boys chasing one another down the street sidestepped to dodge out of my way. I took the list of addresses out of my pocket, and screwed it up, and threw it in the gutter.
Manhattan’s largest fallout shelter, the New York Telephone Company Building rising near the Hudson River, will have 21 storeys without a single window. The vertically striped fortress will house 3,000 workers, who will be capable of surviving a near-miss atomic attack for two weeks.
Life Magazine, November 9th, 1962
For the first few moments, I was convinced that some joker had directed me to the sanctum sanctorum of one of California’s more esoteric sects. The doors sighed shut, sealing me into a huge pastel-coloured hall; on the facing wall was etched the outline of a bell, beneath which stood a long low table flanked by two gently revolving plastic bushes hung with pink, blue, olive and yellow telephones. A row of multicoloured phones, doubtless freshly picked, garnished the table. Behind these sat a motionless young woman, smiling fixedly. In order to approach her, it was necessary to pass between two long rows of identical desks, on each side of which stood a telephone of a different colour, and a rack of pamphlets. No one sat at the desks, and, apart from myself and the votary at the far end of the hall, the place was empty. It is almost impossible to walk down a long aisle towards someone who has been trained to smile. I committed the miserable error of starting my own smile as I began to walk; consequently, by the time I reached the table, I had considerable difficulty in speaking through the grinning death-mask into which my face had been turned.
‘Good morning,’ I gritted. ‘I should like to have a telephone installed in my apartment.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she murmured, softly. ‘If you’ll wait over there by the lavender instrument, I’ll have someone help you with your problem.’
‘I haven’t got a problem,’ I said. ‘I want a phone. Can’t I just leave my name and address with you?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ The same monotone coming through the glazed smile. ‘Bell Telephone has found that the most efficient way of dealing with clients’ problems is through the instrument.’
I sat at the desk, looking at the Instrument, wondering whether I ought to smile at it. I heard the girl murmuring on her own telephone. I casually opened one of the bright pamphlets in front of me, and found the familiar catechismal layout prescribed by PR departments of the great industrial organisms. I turned the pages with waiting-room languor, impervious by now to the frenetic hyperbole; after all, I had known before coming here that the net worth of Bell Telephone approximates to that of England, that it is wealthier than the five wealthiest states in the Union, that soon it will have a satellite all to itself, and so on. I was beyond surprise by Bell. And then, on the last page of the pamphlet, I came on this: ‘At present there are more than 85 million phones in the U.S., and by 1975 there will be more than 160 million.’ I went back and re-read it. And realised that the telephone was reproducing at approximately three times the rate of the population of China. This in itself, all other implications aside, had a staggering effect on me. Until then, I had, like almost everyone else, accepted as the two yardsticks by which all other quantities