Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes Read online

  Not until the last minute, the evening of the day before the UN African Aid Committee was due to arrive in the morning at 11, did Bomo think of the limousines they would need at the airport. He gave his chauffeurs—twelve liveried men—hell for not having checked out the big Mercedes-Benzes days before now, but all the chauffeurs claimed to have been on their feet fighting fires. The Mercedes looked fine, but they would not run, not one of them, and Bomo had twenty. One needed a wheel and a carburetor, another a windshield, another a steering wheel, another the key even to open its doors, while other unstartable cars were a mystery. Bomo ordered his mechanics and chauffeurs to work all night, if necessary, and to get three limousines in working order.

  They failed. It was Lulu-Fey’s brilliant idea to have the citizenry pull the limousines by long gay cords. It would look more respectful, she remarked, and Bomo saw her point.

  The UN Committee’s small jet landed on schedule, but hit a couple of potholes in the runway, which knocked a wheel off and damaged one wing tip, so the Committee and its five aides disembarked in a state of slight shock.

  Bomo’s military band played the Nabutian national anthem. Children strewed flowers. Smoke still ringed the city, and some of the Committee members whipped out handkerchiefs to cover their noses and mouths after a few steps on land. Bomo advanced to meet them in his hottest uniform with the tunic collar and Sam Browne belt plus medals.

  Douglas Hazelwood, head of the Committee, announced himself, smiled, and shook Bomo’s hand warmly. So did all the others.

  “Smoky!” someone remarked cheerfully.

  Bomo had no reply, but kept his dignity as he led the way to five limousines in front of which barefoot children stood with long colorful cords and ropes in hand like horses champing at the bit. The smoke was a lot worse than at this time yesterday, because late last night, Bomo had made the mistake of ordering the fires put out with water, and many hadn’t gone out entirely but were still smoldering. The usually blazing sun was only a hazy yellow patch in the grey sky, like the sun before a typhoon. Its heat came through but not its light, and the hour might have been dusk.

  With the band marching behind, the limousines moved slowly toward the capital. The destination was the Hotel Bomo of Nabuti, where thirty-five rooms on the ground floor had been prepared. Bomo had expected some wives and servants with the Committee. At any rate cold water ran in the hotel, even if there was no air-conditioning. This hotel was five storys high, with elevators that did not work, but for the Committee’s visit there was no need of elevators. Here the Committee unpacked, had a wash, and climbed back into the limousines, which had been waiting in the sun and smoke, to go to the Small Palace for an apéritif.

  Lulu-Fey was dressed in a floor-length wrap-around cotton piece with gold bangles at wrists and ankles, feet bare. She made a charming hostess, Bomo thought with pride, even though she knew not a word of English. The gentlemen drank pink gins, Scotch and water, tomato juice, anything they wanted, while servants at all the windows and open doors swung decorative fans to keep out the smoke or at least stir it. Some of the Committee coughed, but all appeared merry and asked Bomo not too difficult questions about agriculture, copper, exports and health. They were to look at the copper mines later today, and since the mines were abandoned now Bomo had prepared a tale of worker unrest and strikes for wage increases so unreasonable that he had not yielded. Then, declining the limousines, they went off on foot toward Government House, because one of the Committee recalled from the last visit that it was within walking distance, though at the moment they couldn’t see Government House for the smoke.

  Roast pig. Olives. Baked yams and fresh fruit of all kinds, orange and purple flower blossoms, and fine silver. The long table with its white linen cloth looked rather splendid in the main salon, which was to the right of the elevators as one entered. But the smell was awful, and inexplicable. Bomo noticed the glances of puzzlement and alarm among the Committee before they sat down. And the smoke seemed to have followed them right into the salon. Champagne was poured by Bomo’s best servants in white jackets and black trousers, then Bomo stood up and toasted his guests. He made a little speech of welcome and goodwill, which he had rehearsed only once, but the speech was none the worse for that. Bomo sounded sincere when he said: “My country welcomes all of you and thanks you all for the many blessings, the machinery, the money you have given us.”

  The guests applauded, coughed and smiled.

  Lulu-Fey was on Bomo’s left, smiling also, restless and eager for her part of the show which was her belly dance. Musicians sat in a corner playing on stringed instruments and a drum. Bomo saw to his annoyance that the windows had been opened and that servants worked to stir the haze of smoke as they had done in the Small Palace.

  The roast pig and piglet had just been sliced and served, when there was an urgent knock on the closed hall door. When a servant opened the door, a man pitched forward onto the floor, and a billow of dark smoke followed him before the servant could get the door shut again. The fallen man’s message was that the building seemed to be on fire. This was not at once translated into English, but the sudden alarm of the servants and of Bomo had everybody uneasy and several of the Committee got fearfully to their feet.

  Bomo learned that some idiot had succeeded in pouring gasoline on the roof of the stuck elevator and dropping a match on to it, with an idea of cremating the bodies, which was the Nabutians’ religious custom. A servant said a couple of the men’s wives were responsible for this.

  “Gas masks!” Bomo yelled. “Get them fast—on pain of death!” Servants scurried, soldier guards dashed about as if on fire themselves. Everyone had to get out, and everyone tried, though one Committee man collapsed on the floor and had to be dragged across the lobby. The elevator shaft leaked smoke at every invisible seam, like something about to explode, while the smell of the smoke suggested hellfire. Figures dashed or reeled out of the doors of Government House on to its steps, into a grey atmosphere in which objects were more visible but breathing hardly less dangerous.

  “The gas masks, Your Excellency!” cried a lieutenant.

  Soldiers rushed up with armloads of gas masks, which were opened and rapidly jammed on to the heads of the Committee members and their aides.

  “Yo’ moufs on d’pipe!” shouted Bomo, recalling suddenly some instructions he had heard long ago. He was pleased with his soldiers for having got the masks out so quickly. Along with his soldiers, a couple of whom already wore masks, Bomo helped buckle the masks securely around the necks of the dazed Committee men, and to lead them leftward toward the Small Palace, where the air appeared clearer, at least for the moment. Bomo gallantly declined a mask, and gripped Lulu-Fey protectively by the hand. Across her face she held a white napkin dampened with champagne.

  The Committee staggered and struggled as if trying to get the masks off. Two men fell.

  “Pick ’em up!” Bomo yelled to his soldiers.

  Smoke swirled. A soldier with a mask dropped and lay writhing feebly.

  In the Small Palace, servants got to work fanning. The Committee men were laid out on the floor, face up. Some didn’t move. It was amazing to Bomo.

  “More fans!” cried Bomo. “And wet towels at once!” The towels were for the people without masks, like himself, for instance.

  After a couple of minutes, things seemed to be better. The wind had shifted in their favor, fresher air blew through the house. But of the gentlemen of the Committee and their aides only two or three stirred and were still again, moaning.

  Kuo, who had left his tour of duty to attend the banquet, waved smoke from before his face, rubbed his eyes, and said, “We might take their masks off now, father. Y’think?” He was stooped on his heels like Bomo, not to see the men on the floor better, but because the smoke tended to rise in the room.

  Bomo agreed. He and Kuo and a couple of servants began unbuckling the masks. One servant cried out in alarm, shrilly, though it was a man servant.

  “Ant
s!” he yelled in his native tongue, shaking both hands.

  “Holy spirits! You are right!” Kuo jumped up, slapping his hands together, rubbing their backs. “Them big grey ants!”

  Everyone knew this particular grey ant, which hibernated or aestivated in the oddest places, and emerged in droves, blood-thirsty and furious, if disturbed. They had got into the filter fronts of the masks, a circular flat portion that was porous but rather felt-like. Now all hands in the house fell to dragging the Committee men by the shoulders or feet out of the house, because it would be hell indeed if several of these ants escaped and stayed in the house. The idea was to remove the masks and burn them outdoors. Kuo, with white gloves on now, got the first mask off and found the man’s face bleeding from ant bites besides being blue. Servants hopped, masks were cut off, and Bomo ordered a fire started on the Small Palace lawn.

  Shrieks came again, from servants male and female. Napkins, towels, anything to wipe the infuriated ants from forearms, hands and bare feet! Every man whose mask was removed was blue-faced, dead from asphyxiation, because the ants’ bodies had blocked the air flow through the filters from the start.

  Ghastly as it was, Bomo had to give orders for all twenty corpses to be burnt. Their bodies were arranged in a ring with feet outermost like the spokes of a wheel. No time for niceties! The ants had to be dealt with first, so kerosene was poured over the masks and heads, a match thrown.

  Servants stamped the ground, looking for fleeing ants. Squealing as ants nipped her bare feet, Lulu-Fey shot spray from a can of insecticide which she had found in the Small Palace’s kitchen, making a circle with it on the ground around the projecting legs of the Committee men and their aides.

  “The pilot!” Bomo said suddenly, frowning, recalling that he had seen one figure at the controls of the plane, maybe two.

  His son Kuo heard him, and raised a finger to indicate that he understood. “I send a message to the airport!” He spoke with one of his soldiers who stood nearby tending the fire, and drew a finger across his own throat, and the soldier departed.

  The American pilot and co-pilot, who had stayed behind at the airport to try to repair, with the help of some Nabutians, the damage done to their small jet, were surprised by a squad of five soldiers with bayonets on their rifles, who approached them in an aggressive manner and beheaded them without a word.

  So disappeared the United Nations Committee on African Aid, which was a division of—some other well-meaning department. The small jet had its useful contents removed, also its motor, and the carcass was broken up and burnt beyond recognition the evening of the same day as the deaths of its passengers. When the telephone calls came in the next day, asking where Mr. Hazelwood and his Committee were, the telephone operator, on Bomo’s orders, said that the Committee’s plane had never arrived, though they had been expecting it yesterday morning at 11. It was easy to suggest that their neighbor country Gibbi, which was known to be always making trouble for Nabuti, had shot the plane down. At any rate, President Bomo had no information to give, and deeply regretted that the Committee had not been able to make its visit, to which he had been so much looking forward.

  Sweet Freedom! And a Picnic on the White House Lawn

  You bump into them everywhere, in New York, in Chicago or Philadelphia, or they bump into you. They are called nuts, if the citizens are in a tolerant mood, and parasites if the citizens are not. They are mildly or totally insane, often ranting to the open sky, or earnestly conversing with someone who is not there.

  Nobody knows what to do with them. “There’re so many of them!” some people say in desperation. Or “Why do they all have to come to New York?” Or Chicago, or wherever. There are as many females as males, sometimes hard to tell which, since the garb is an overcoat, worn-out flat shoes or boots, an old felt hat or a pulled down woolen cap, and they don’t bother with haircuts. They gravitate to big cities, because there they can be anonymous, they don’t stand out like sore thumbs, they can sleep in doorways, go underground and live in the subways for a few days, or in winter find a warm grille in the pavement and stake it out, defend it from would-be usurpers and sharers by interlacing barbed wire in the grille except for the length needed for one person to sleep on. In big cities there are also doss houses costing from one to three dollars a night, but there one has to watch out for thieves among fellow-sleepers.

  Where do they come from? Many are from state mental institutions, released with instructions to go to the nearest drug dispensary and get the pills needed. “It won’t cost you anything, but don’t lose your prescription or the address of the dispensary.” Many of these people are too far gone to hang on to anything, or to remember that they are supposed to take pills once a day or week. No matter, the overcrowded institutions were shot of them. Still other of these wandering zombie-like figures are castouts of ordinary households. Old Aunt Fran, who could never get along with anybody, because she suspected and kept accusing everybody of plotting against her, a belief confirmed to her when her own family pushed her out of the house. Or Cousin Ben, a bachelor and inclined to tipple, a habit which cost him his job, and now he wanders the streets of New York, reduced to cheap wine from the Scotch for which he once had a fine palate.

  Aline Schroeder, going out of her kitchen door to hang some laundry on the line, was surprised to see two strange men standing in her garden, apparently absorbed in looking at the roses. Having set her basket down, she was approaching them to ask what they wanted, when they turned toward her, and she screamed.

  “Eddie!—Eddie, come down!” And she ran toward the house. Aline Schroeder knew mental cases when she saw them.

  That was a Thursday morning in a small town in Ohio. Eddie Schroeder, getting nothing from the two vague men, except that one wanted to go to Chicago and the other to New York, kept an eye on them, while he asked his wife to telephone the police.

  “They’ve escaped from the loony bin,” Eddie murmured to her. “I don’t want to take ’em on. Not our business.”

  “They were supposed to go to the bus stop,” said the police when they arrived. “Brookfield’s letting a hundred or so go back home today. These two must’ve just wandered off.” The police, with no trouble, got the men into their car with a promise to take them to the town bus terminal.

  Aline Schroeder was speechless with shock, and Eddie was scowling.

  “Get ’em all the hell outa here, Sam,” Eddie said to one cop, whom he knew.

  “We will, but we got strict orders to treat ’em kindly,” the officer replied.

  Aline Schroeder went into her kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. The story got round town, of course. And, despite the police efforts, the residents of Temple are not yet convinced that the police got them all out of town that memorable Thursday. Especially since more, many more “official medical discharges” occurred since. Yet the old Brookfield Center edifice on the edge of town is still overcrowded.

  Brookfield Center is typical of many state and semi-state-run institutions in the United States. It is occupied not entirely by the mentally ill, because it accepts also the elderly whose families haven’t the money for more expensive rest homes, and also convalescent people from state hospitals. Nevertheless in Temple, Ohio, Brookfield has always been known as “the loony bin.” It was common knowledge that some rooms had padded walls and windows with bars. One could see these windows from the outside. Residents of Temple fifty and sixty years old could remember driving past Brookfield with their parents when they were children, and staring at the windows, hoping to see the face of an inmate, though at the same time scared too, because even then it was “the loony bin.” Parents discouraged the children’s curiosity, suggesting that the inmates were all dangerous people, though also to be pitied. But one thing was certain, they had to be kept locked up.

  Because of overcrowding in such institutions, a directive went out from Washington, DC in the late 1960s, and was repeated in the 1970s, to release inmates who were not considered violent. This cam
e as a blessing to Brookfield’s harassed staff and to many other such places across the nation. The same message went to prisons, and the slogan was “economy plus humanity,” meaning that the nation could save money by doing this, as well as make life happier for people whose confinement was not necessary.

  Some ten percent of Brookfield Center inmates sprang to the minds of Dr. Nelson and his head nurse, Superintendent Dorothy Sweeney, when they received their “Guidance Paper on Federal and State Medical and Psychiatric Institutions,” faces they knew well, along with many of their names too.

  “Louis Jones,” said Superintendent Sweeney. “God knows he’s harmless. Takes his sedatives by himself now.” And she smiled her first smile in months.

  “Ye-es,” said Dr. Nelson, thinking that Louis Jones was innocence itself after a decade of sedatives. Louis was simply vague, a bit sleepy-looking. “And Miss Tiller, maybe.”

  “Yes, and the Kelly twins maybe. And Bert!—And Claude! We must make a list. Then we’ll look at our records and add a lot more.”

  They made a list. Nothing wrong with Miss Tiller, except that she thought she was Cleopatra, and hadn’t she a relative in Massachusetts with whom she might stay, at first, at least? Nothing wrong with Bert, who was the soul of politeness. And of course Brookfield would arrange to keep in touch with all these people. What a relief it would be to have some breathing space in Brookfield!

  When Dr. Nelson and Superintendent Sweeney broke the news that evening in the refectory during dinner and over the loud speaker, not everyone understood, which was to be expected.

  “Some of you will be leaving soon—if you want to go. And when and if it is convenient for all concerned.” Superintendent Sweeney said with a smile. Five or six strong male helpers stood, as usual, around the walls of the refectory, hands free in case of trouble.