Chapter 5: The South Pacific Sailing Directory

67.

I cannot say the world greeted the end of the North American continent with either rejoicing or regret. Relief, yes. When the news of the last demolition was given and it was clear the Grass was unable to bridge the gap, the imaginative could almost hear mankind emit a vast sigh. The world was saved, they could go about their business now, having written off a sixth of themselves.

I was reminded of Miss Francis’ remark that if you cut off a man’s leg you bestow upon him a crippled mentality. For approximately two centuries the United States had been a leg of the global body, a limb so constantly inflicted with growingpains it caused the other parts to writhe in sympathy. Now the member was cut off and everyone thought that with the troublesome appendage gone life would be pleasanter and simpler. Debtor nations expanded their chests when they remembered Uncle Shylock was no more. Industrial countries looked eagerly to enlarge their markets in those places where Americans formerly sold goods. Small states whose inhabitants were occasionally addicted to carrying off tourists and holding them for ransom now felt they could dispense with those foreign undersecretaries whose sole business it had been to write diplomatic notes of apology.

But it was a crippled world and the lost leg still twitched spectrally. I don’t think I speak now as a native of the United States, for with my international interests I believe I have become completely a cosmopolitan, but for everyone, Englishman, Italian, Afrikander or citizen of Liberia. The disappearance of America created a revolution in their lives, a change perhaps not immediately apparent, but eventually to be recognized by all.

It was the trivial things we Americans had taken for granted as part of our daily lives and taught the rest of the world to appreciate which were most quickly missed. The substitution of English, Turkish, Egyptian or Russian cigarettes for good old Camels or Luckies; the impossibility of buying a bottle of cocacola at any price; the disappearance of the solacing wad of chewinggum; the pulsing downbeat of a hot band--these were the first things whose loss was noticed.

For a long time I had been too busy to attend movingpictures, except rarely, but a man--especially a man with much on his mind--needs relaxation and I would not choose the foreign movies with their morbid emphasis on problems and crime and sex in preference to the cleancut American product which always satisfied the nobler feelings by showing the reward of the honest, the downfall of evildoers and the purity of love and motherhood. Art is all very well, but need it be sordid?

As I told George Thario, I am no philistine; I think the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal are lovely buildings, but I would not care to have an office in either of them--give me Radio City. I don’t mind the highbrow programs the British Broadcasting Corporation put on; I myself am quite capable of understanding and enjoying them, but I imagine there are thousands of housewives who would prefer a good serial to bring romance into their lives. I don’t object to a commercial world in which competitors go through the formality of pretending to be scrupulously fair in talking about each others’ products, but I must admit I missed the good old American slapdash advertising which yelled, Buy my deodorant or youll stink; wash your mouth with my antiseptic or youll lose your job; brush your teeth with my dentifrice or no one will kiss you; powder your face with my leadarsenate or youll keep your maidenhead. I would give a lot of money to hear a singing commercial once more or watch the neon lights north of Times Square urge me to buy something for which I have no possible use. Living within your income is fine, but the world lacks the goods youd have bought on the installmentplan; getting what you need is sound policy, but how many lives were lightened by the young men working their way through college, or the fullerbrushman?

I think there was a subconscious realization of this which came gradually to the top. In the beginning the almost universal opinion was that the loss of the aching limb was for the better. I have heard socalled cultured foreigners discuss the matter in my presence, doubtless unaware I was an American. No more tourists, they gloated, to stand with their backs to the Temple of Heaven in Pekin and explain the superior construction of the Masonic Hall at Cedar Rapids; no more visitors to the champagne caves at Rheims to inquire where they could get a shot of real bourbon; no more music lovers at Salzburg or Glyndebourne to regret audibly the lack of a peppy swingtune; no more gourmets in Vienna demanding thick steaks, rare and smothered in onions.

But this period of smug selfcongratulation was soon succeeded by a strange nostalgia which took the form of romanticizing the lost land. American books were reprinted in vast quantities in the Englishspeaking nations and translated anew in other countries. American movies were revived and imitated. Fashionable speech was powdered with what were conceived to be Yankee expressions and a southern drawl was assiduously cultivated.

Bestselling historical novels were laid in the United States and popular operas were written about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson. Men told their growing sons to work hard, for now there was left no land of opportunity to which they could emigrate, no country where they could become rich overnight with little effort. Instead of fairytales children demanded stories of fortyniners and the Wedding of the Rails; and on the streets of Bombay and Cairo urchins, probably quite unaware of the memorial gesture, could be heard whistling Casey Jones.

But handinhand with this newfound romantic love went a completely practical attitude toward those Americans still existing in the flesh. The earliest expatriates, being generally men of substance, were well received. The thousands who had crossed by small boats from Canada to Greenland and from Greenland to Iceland to Europe were by definition in a different category and found the quota system their fathers and grandfathers had devised used to deny their own entrance.

They were as bewildered and hurt as children that any nation could be at once so shortsighted and so heartless as to bar homeless wanderers. We bring you knowledge and skills and our own need, they said in effect, we will be an asset to your country if you admit us. The Americans could not understand; they themselves had been fair to all and only kept out undesirable immigrants.

Gradually the world geared itself to a slower tempo. The gogetter followed the brontosaurus to extinction, and we Americans with the foresight to carry on our businesses from new bases profited by the unAmerican backwardness of our competitors. At this time I daresay I was among the hundred most important figures of the world. In the marketing and packaging of our original products I had been forced to acquire papermills and large interests in aluminum and steel; from there the progression to tinmines and rollingmills, to coalfields and railroads, to shippinglines and machineshops was not far. Consolidated Pemmican, once the center of my business existence, was now but a minor point on its periphery. I expanded horizontally and vertically, delighted to show my competitors that Americans, even when deprived of America, were not robbed of the traditional American enterprise.

68. It was at this time, many months after we had given up all hope of hearing from Joe again, that General Thario received a longdelayed package from his son. It contained the third movement of the symphony and a covering letter:

“Dear Father--Stuart Thario--General-- I shall not finish this letter tonight; it will be sent with as much of the First Symphony as makes a worthy essence when it goes. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but there is a place (perhaps not in life, but somewhere) for the imperfect, for the incomplete. The great and small alike achieve fulfillment, satisfaction--must this be a ruthless denial of all between?

“I have always despised musicologists, makers of programnotes, little men who tell you the opening chords of Opus 67 describe Fate Knocking at the Door or the call of the yellowhammer. A child draws a picture and writes on it, ‘This is a donkey,’ and when grown proves it to be a selfportrait by translating the Jupiter Symphony into words. Having said this, let me stultify myself--but for private ears alone--as a bit of personal history, not an explanation to be appended to the score.

“I started out to express in terms of strings and winds the emotions roused in me by the sight and thoughts of the Grass, much as LvB took a mistaken idealization of his youth as a startingpoint for Opus 55; but just as no man is an island, so no theme stands alone. There is a cord binding the lesser to the greater; a mystic union between all things. The Grass is not an entity, but an aspect. I thought I was writing about my country, conceived of myself in a reversed snobbishness, a haughty humility, a proud abasement, as a sort of superior Smetana. (Did you know that as a boy I dreamed of the day when I should receive my commission as second lieutenant?)

Boston, Massachusetts

“I interrupted this letter to sketch some of the middle section of the fourth movement and I have wasted a precious week following a false trail. And of course the thought persists that it may not have been a false trail at all, but the right one; the business of saying something is a perpetual wrestle with doubts.

“We leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination--Portsmouth probably and then somewhere in Maine, hoping to wrench from fate the time to finish the score. It seems more than a little pompous to continue my explanation. The Grass, the United States, humanity, God--whatever we write about we write about the same things.

“Still there is a limit to individual perception and it seems to me my concern--at least my musical concern--is enclosed by Canada and Mexico, the Pacific and Atlantic. So, rightly or wrongly, even if the miracle occur and I do finish in time, I cannot leave. A short distance, such a short distance from where I scribble these words, Vanzetti died. No more childish thought than atonement was ever conceived. It is a base and baseless gratification. Evil is not recalled. So I do not sentence myself for the murder of Vanzetti or for my manifold crimes; who am I to pass judgment, even on me? But all of us, accusers and accused, condemners and condemned, will remain--forever indistinguishable. If the requiem for our faults and our virtues, if the celebration of our past and the prayer for our resurrection can be orchestrated, then the fourth movement will be finished. If not--

Aroostook, Maine

“By the best calculations we have about three more days. I do not think the symphony can be finished, but the thought no longer disturbs me. It would be a good thing to complete it, just as it would be a good thing to sit on fleecy clouds and enjoy eternal, nevermelting, nevercloying icecreamcones, celestially flavored.

“The man who is to carry this letter waits impatiently. I must finish quickly before his conviction of my insanity outweighs the promises I have made of reward from you and causes him to run from me. My love to Mama, the siblings and yourself and kindly regards to the great magnate.

Joe”

69. About the same time I also received a letter which somehow got through the protective screening of my secretaries:

“Albert Weener,

Savoy Hotel,

Thames Embankment, WC1.

“Sir:

You may recall making an offer I considered premature. It is now no

longer so. I am at home afternoons from 1 until 6 at 14, Little Bow

Street, EC3 (3rd floor, rear).

Josephine Spencer Francis”

In spite of her rudeness at our last meeting, my good nature caused me to send a cab for her. She wore the identical gray suit of years before and her face was still unlined and dubiously clean.

“How do you do, Miss Francis? I’m glad to find you among the lucky ones. Nowadays if we don’t hear from old friends we automatically assume their loss.”

She looked at me as one scans an acquaintance whose name has been embarrassingly forgotten. “There is no profit for you in this politeness, Weener,” she said abruptly. “I am here to beg a favor.”

“Anything I can do for you, Miss Francis, will be a pleasure,” I assured her.

She began using a toothpick, but it was not the oldfashioned gold one--just an ordinary wooden splinter. “Hum. You remember asking me to superintend gathering specimens of Cynodon dactylon?”

“Circumstances have greatly altered since then,” I answered.

“They have a habit of doing so. I merely mentioned your offer because you coupled it with a chance to advance my own research as an inducement. I am on the way to develop the counteragent, but to advance further I need to make tests upon the living grass itself. The World Control Congress has refused me permission to use specimens. I have no private means of evading their fiat.”

“An excellent thing. The decrees of the congress are issued for the protection of all.”

“Hypocrisy as well as unctuousness.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“You have a hundred hireling chemists, all of them with a string of degrees, at your service. I want to borrow two of them and be landed on some American mountain, above the snowline, where I can continue to work.”

“Besides being illegal--to mention such a thing is apparently hypocritical--such a hazardous and absurd venture is hardly in the nature of a business proposition, Miss Francis.”

“Philanthropic, then.”

“I have given fifty thousand pounds to set up nurseryschools right here in London--”

“So the mothers of the little brats will be free to work in your factories.”

“I have donated ten thousand pounds to Indian famine relief--”

“So that you might cut the wages of your Hindu workers.”

“I have subscribed five thousand pounds for sanitation in Szechwan--”

“Thereby lessening absenteeism from sickness among your coolies.”

“I will not stoop to answer your insinuations,” I said. “I merely mentioned my gifts to show that my charities are on a worldwide scale and there is little room in them for the relief of individuals.”

“Do you think I come to you for a personal sinecure? I don’t ask if you have no concern outside selfish interest, for the answer is immediate and obvious; but isnt it to that same selfish interest to protect what remains of the world? If the other continents go as North America has gone, will you alone be divinely translated to some extraterrestrial sphere? And if so, will you take your wealth and power with you?”

“I am supporting three laboratories devoted exclusively to antigraminous research and anyway the rest of the world is amply protected by the oceans.”

She removed the toothpick in order to laugh unpleasantly. “Once a salesman always a salesman, Weener. Lie to yourself, deny facts, brazen it out. The world was safe behind the saltband too, in the days when Josephine Francis was a quack and charlatan.”

“Admitting your great attainments, Miss Francis, the fact remains that you are a woman and the adventure you propose is hardly one for a lady to undertake.”

“Weener, you are ineffable. I’m not a lady--I’m a chemist.”

The conversation deadlocked as I waited for her to go. Oddly enough, in spite of her sex and the illegality of her proposal, I was inclined to help her, if she had approached me in a reasonable manner and not with the uncouth bearing of a superior toward an inferior. If she could find a counteragent, I thought ... if she could find a weapon, then the possibility of utilizing the Grass as a raw material for food concentrates, a design still tantalizingly just beyond the reach of our researchworkers, might be realized. Labor costs would be cut to a minimum...

I could not let the woman be her own worst enemy; I was big enough to overlook her unfortunate attitudes and see through the cranky exterior to the worthy idealist and true woman beneath. I was interrupted in my thoughts by Miss Francis speaking again.

“North American landtitles have no value right now, but a man with money who knew ahead of time the Grass could be destroyed...”

How clumsy, I thought, trying to appeal to a cupidity I don’t possess; as if I would cheat people by buying up their very homes for sordid speculation. “Miss Francis,” I said, “purely out of generosity and in remembrance of old times I am inclined to consider helping you. I suppose you have the details of the equipment you will need, the qualifications of your assistants, and a rough idea of what mountain you might prefer as a location?”

“Of course,” and she began rattling off a catalogue of items, stabbing the air with her toothpick as a sort of running punctuation.

I stopped her with a raised hand. “Please. Reduce your list to writing and leave it with my secretary. I will see what can be done.”

As soon as she had gone I picked up the phone and cabled Tony Preblesham to report to me immediately. The decision to send him with Miss Francis had been instantaneous, but had I thought about it for hours no happier design could have been conceived. Outside of General Thario there was not another man in my organization I could trust so implicitly. The expedition required double, no, triple secrecy and Preblesham could not only guard against any ulterior and selfish aims Miss Francis might entertain--to say nothing of the erratic or purely feminine impulses which could possibly operate to the disadvantage of all concerned--but take the opportunity to give the continent a general survey, both to keep in view the utilization of the weed, whether or not it could be conquered; and whatever possibilities a lay observer might see as to the Grass perishing of itself.

70.

“Mr. Albert Weener,

Queen Elizabeth Hotel,

Perth, Western Australia, A.C.

“Dear Sir:--

According to yr. instructions our party left Paramaribo on the 9th

inst. for Medellin, giving out that we were going to see possible

tin deposits near there. At Medellin I checked with our men & was

told that work gangs with the stuff needed to make landing fields

together with caches of gas & oil, enough for 3 times the flying

required had been dropped both at Mt. Whitney & on Banks Island. A.

W., I tell you the boys down there are on their toes. Of course I

did not tell them this, but gave them a real old fashioned Pep Talk,

& told them if they really made good they might be moved up to Rio

or Copenhagen or may be even London.

“Every thing being O.K. in Medellin, we left on the 12th inst.,

heading at first South to fool any nosey cops & then straight West

so as to be out of range of the patrol boats. It was quite late

before we could head North and the navigator was flying by

instruments so it was not until dawn that we saw land. You can sneer

all you like at Bro. Paul (& of course he has not had the benefits

of an Education like you, A. W.) but I want to tell you that when I

looked out of the port & saw nothing but green grass where houses &

trees & mtns. ought to have been, I remembered that I was a

backslider & sinful man. However, this is beside the point.

“The lady professor, Miss Francis I mean, & Mr. White & Mr. Black

were both so excited they could hardly eat, but kept making funny

remarks in some foreign language which I do not understand. However

I do not think there was any thing wrong or disloyal to you in their

conversation.

“You would have thought that flying over so much green would have

got tiresome after some time, but you would have been wrong. I am

sorry I cannot describe it to you, but I can only say again that it

made me think of my Account with my Maker.

“While I think of it, altho it does not belong here, in Paramaribo I

had to fire our local man as he had got into trouble with the Police

there & was giving Cons. Pem. a bad name. He said it was on the

Firm’s account, but I told him you did not approve of breaking the

Law at all.

“We had no trouble sighting the party at Mt. Whitney & I want to

tell you, A. W., it was a great relief to get rid of the Scientists

altho they are no doubt all right in their way. Some of the work

gang kicked at being left behind altho that was in our agreement.

They said they were sick of the snow & the sight of the Grass

beyond. I said we only had room in the transport for the Banks Is.

gang & anyway they would have company now. I promised them we would

pick them up on our next trip.

“Miss Francis & the 2 others acted like crazy. They kept shaking

each other’s hands & saying We are here, we are here, altho any body

but a Nut would have thought saying it was a waste of time as even a

small child could have seen that they were. And any way, why any

body should want to be there is some thing beyond me.

“We took off from Whitney on the 14th inst., flying back S. West.

There were no land marks, but the navigator told me when we were

over the Site of L. A. I have to report that the Grass looked no

different in this Area, where it is the oldest. Then we flew North

E., looking for the Gt. Salt Lake according to yr. instructions. I

am sorry to say that we could not find it altho we flew back & forth

for some time, searching while the instruments were checked. The

Lake has disappeared in the Grass.

“We headed North E. by E., finding no land marks except a few peaks

above the snow on the Rocky Mtns. I am very glad to say that the Gt.

Lakes are still there, altho much smaller & L. Erie & L. Ontario so

shrunk I might have missed them if the pilot had not pointed them

out. The St. Lawrence River is of course gone.

“We followed the line of the big Canadian Lakes N., but except for

Depressions (which may be Swamps) in the latitudes of the Gt. Bear &

Gt. Slave Lakes, there is nothing but Grass. We stayed over night at

Banks Is. & it was very cold & miserable, but we were happy to

remember that there was no Grass underneath the Snow below us. Next

morning (the 16th) after fueling up we took off (with the ground

crew) for the Homeward trip.

“Stopping at Whitney, every thing was O.K. except that I did not see

the lady professor (Miss Francis, I mean) as Mr. White and Mr. Black

said she was too busy.

“I will be in London to meet you on the 1st as arranged & give you

any further news you want. Until then, I remain,

Yrs. Truly,

A. Preblesham, Vice-Pres. in Chge of Field Operations,

Cons. Pem.”

I cannot say Preblesham’s report was particularly enlightening, but it at least squelched any notion the Grass might be dying of itself. I did not expect any great results from the scientists’ expedition, but I felt it worth a gamble. In the meantime I dismissed the lost continent from my mind and turned to more immediate concerns.

71. The disappearance of American foundries and the withdrawal of the Russian products from export after their second revolution had forced a boom in European steel. English, French, and German manufacturers of automobiles, rails, and locomotives, anticipating tremendously enlarged outlets for their output--even if those new markets still fell short of the demand formerly drawing upon the American factories--had earmarked the entire world supply for a long time to come.

Since I owned large blocks of stock, not only in the industries, but in the rollingmills as well, this boom was profitable to me. I had long since passed the point where it was necessary, no matter how great my expenses or philanthropies, for me to exert myself further; but as I have always felt anyone who gains wealth without effort is no better than a parasite, I was contracting for new plants in Bohemia, Poland, Northern Italy and France. I did not neglect buying heavily into the Briey Basin and into the Swedish oremines to ensure the future supply of these mills. In spite of the able assistance of Stuart Thario and the excellent spadework of Preblesham, I was so busy at this time--for in addition to everything else the sale of concentrates diagrammed an everascending spiral--that food and sleep seemed to be only irritating curtailments of the workingday.

It was the fashion when I was a youth for novelists to sneer at businessmen and proclaim that the conduct of industry was a simple affair, such as any halfwit could attend to with but a portion of his mind. I wish these cynics could have come to know the delicate workings and balances of my intricate empire. We in responsible positions, and myself most of all, were on a constant alert, ready for instant decision or personal attention to a mass of new detail at any moment.

72. On one of the occasions when I had to fly to Copenhagen it was Winifred and not General Thario who met me at the airport. “General T is so upset,” she explained in her vivacious way, “that I had to come instead. But perhaps I should have sent Pauline?”

I assured her I was pleased to see her and hastened to express concern for her father.

“Oh, it’s not him at all, really,” she said. “It’s Mama. She’s all bothered about Joe.”

I lowered my voice respectfully and said I was sure Mrs Thario was overcome with grief and perhaps I had better not intrude at such a time.

“Poo!” dissented Winifred. “Mama doesnt know what grief is. She’s simply delighted at Joe’s doing a Custer, but she’s awfully bothered about his music.”

“In what way?” I asked. “Do you mean getting it performed?”

“Getting it performed, nothing. Getting it suppressed. That a long line of generals and admirals should wind up in a composer is to her a disgrace which will need a great deal of living down. It preys on her mind. Poor old Stuart is home now reading her choice passages from the Winning of the West by Theodore Roosevelt to soothe her nerves.”

I had been more than a little apprehensive of meeting Mama again, but Winifred’s report seemed to reassure me that she would be confined, if not to bed, at least to her own apartments. I was sadly disillusioned to find her ensconced in a comfortable armchair beside a brightly burning fire, the general with a book held open by his thumb. He greeted me with his usual affection. “Albert, I’m sorry I wasnt able to get to the airport.”

I shook his hand and turned to his wife. “I regret to hear you are indisposed, Mrs Thario.”

“Spare me your damned crocodile tears. Where is my son?”

“In his last letter he suggested he would remain in our country as long as it existed; however it is possible--even probable he escaped. Let us hope so, Mrs Thario.”

“That’s the sort of damned hogwash you feed to green troops, not to veterans. My son is dead. In action. My grandfather went the same way at Chancellorsville. Do you think me some whimpering broompusher to weep at the loss of a son on the battlefield?”

Stuart Thario put his hand on her arm. “Easy ... bloodpressure ... no excitement.”

“Not in regimentals,” said Mama, and relapsed into silence.

We had a very uneasy dinner, during which we were unable to discuss business owing to the presence of the ladies. Afterward the general and I withdrew with our coffee--he did not drink at home, so I missed the clarity which always accompanied his indulgence--and were deep in figures and calculations when Winifred summoned us hastily.

“General, Mr Weener, come quickly! Mama...”

We hurried into the living room, I for one anticipating Mama if not in the throes of a stroke at least in a faint. But she was standing upright before the open fire, an unsheathed cavalry saber in her hand. It was clearly a family relic, for from its guard dangled the golden tassel of the United States Army and on its naked blade were little spots of rust, but it looked dangerous enough as she warned us off with a sweep of it. In her other hand I recognized the bulky manuscript of George Thario’s First Symphony which she was burning, page by page.

“Some damned impostor,” she said. “Some damned impostor.”

“Harriet,” protested the general, “Harriet, please ... the boy’s work ... only copy...”

She fed another leaf to the fire. “ ... impostor...”

“Harriet--” he advanced toward her, but she waved him away with the sharp blade--”can’t burn George’s work this way ... gave his life...”

I had not thought highly of Joe’s talents as a musician, believing them byandlarge to be but reflections of his unfortunate affectations. I think I can say I appreciate good music and Ive often taken a great deal of pleasure from hearing a hotelband play Rubinstein’s Melody in F, or like classical numbers, during mealtimes. But even if Joe’s symphony was but a series of harsh and disjointed sounds, I thought its destruction a dreadful thing for Mama to do and the more shocking, aside from any question of artistic taste, because of its reversal of all we associate with the attitude of true motherhood.