[6/16/2011] Perelman Tonight: Departure day looms -- Part 2 of "Westward Ha!" (continued)

The world travelers (by Hirschfeld)

"I lived in a whirlwind of activity, haunting cut-rate luggage shops for bargains in paper satchels, falsifying declarations for my passport, issuing ukases to my tailors for cummerbunds and stengah shifters. Hardly a day passed that I did not issue at least three ukases, and hardly a day that I did not receive three back informing me that my credit was exhausted."

-- our man prepares for departure,
in tonight's installment of Westward Ha!

Westward Ha!

"GOODBYE BROADWAY, HELLO MAL-DE-MER"

Part 2

How to describe the days that followed? There was Hirschfeld to be put on the train to Hollywood (and Hirschfeld to be taken off again, when it turned out to be the wrong train); there was Hirschfeld's thirteen-months-old baby to be shipped west to be present at our sailing, though the poor thing was so backward it could not even speak English; it was Hirschfeld this and Hirschfeld that until sometimes I thought I must go mad. I lived in a whirlwind of activity, haunting cut-rate luggage shops for bargains in paper satchels, falsifying declarations for my passport, issuing ukases to my tailors for cummerbunds and stengah shifters. Hardly a day passed that I did not issue at least three ukases, and hardly a day that I did not receive three back informing me that my credit was exhausted. Nevertheless, by judicious shopping I managed to gather a splendid kit for my journey—a machete, a sola topee, a poncho, an apparatus for distilling sea water, and deuce knows what-all. The Army-and-Navy stores I bought them at will be paid just as soon as the lawyers probate the will of my uncle in Australia, a very wealthy man.

Even the veriest tyro knows that the first consideration of the experienced world traveler is a good set of maps. The air was like wine and my step was springy one fall morning as I pushed open the door of the Aardvark map shop in Radio City. A listless citizen in an alpaca jacket ceased scratching his fundament long enough to survey me vacuously. I outlined my simple needs -- a detail map of Melanesia, one of India, and still another of Africa. With an air that clearly implied he found the role of salesman demeaning, he nodded toward a rack. I dug out what I needed and reached for my wallet. To my chagrin, I discovered I had only thirty-seven cents in change. Producing a blank check on the Vulturine and Serpentine National Bank, in which I am an important depositor, I scribbled out a draft for two dollars and fifty-five cents. The salesman picked it up as though it were infected, vanished into the stockroom, and returned with another incompetent.

"This is our manager, Mr. Register," he said.

"Cass Register," his superior added with an important cough, "at your service. Is this your check?"

"No," I replied sweetly, "it's an old sampler woven shortly after the Deerfield Massacre by Charity Sumpstone, my great-grandmother fifth removed."

"How's that again?" he frowned, a puzzled expression invading his fat face. I instantly regretted the frivolous line I had taken, and, with extreme civility, requested him to okay the check. He asked for some identification; I drew out various letters of accreditation for the trip, a note from Admiral Halsey asking me to have a collar starched for him in Shanghai, and other trivia of the sort.

"Hm-m-m," he murmured skeptically, "got any other identification? Social Security card?" My wattles flushing a dusty pink, I extended my Pennsylvania driving license. He examined it closely under an infra-red ray, shook his head majestically. "No good -- this comes from Pennsylvania."

"Look," I said patiently, "the leather in these shoes I'm wearing comes from the Argentine. But I come from New York."

"So do a lot of other dead beats, brother," he remarked with an intimate smile. I disemboweled him with a glance.

"You know, of course," I reminded him, "that it happens to be a state and federal offense to pass a bad check. Do you think I'd put my neck in the noose for a measly two dollars and fifty-five cents?"

"Well, we get some pretty shifty specimens in here," he replied steadily. Ultimately, by leaving behind a platinum watch and a 25 cc. test tube of arterial fluid, I won my freedom. I spent the balance of the forenoon in a dark booth at Tim Costello's, reducing my blood pressure with Golden Wedding laced with paraldehyde and weaving dirty limericks around the name of a certain map company.

Purely out of deference to my life insurance company, I underwent the customary routine of inoculations for typhoid, paratyphoid, typhus, smallpox, tetanus, yellow fever, plague, and cholera. A physique hardened in every bodega in Manhattan withstood the shock admirably, except that now and again, without any warning, I abruptly ran a fever of 108 and pitched forward in a dead faint. An infinitely more grueling complication, though, came about quite by accident. One evening, at a musical soirée, I found myself vis-à-vis a young person of the most extravagant charms, whose manner left no doubt that she wished to trifle in the conservatory. I allowed myself to be beguiled out behind a potted palm, but just as I was slipping my arm around her yielding waist she sharply brought me back to earth. It transpired that she was a contact lens technician and that her interest in my eyes was entirely professional.

"We're going to throw away those glasses of yours, Charlie," she announced forcefully. "I wouldn't let you go on a trip like that with those crutches. Report to my web tomorrow morning at ten-fifteen."

Sheep that I am, I found myself stretched out at the appointed hour on a surgical table in her office. A sinister Torquemada with a Brooklyn accent was bending over me with what he conceived to be a reassuring manner.

"Now hold still a second, sonny," he said silkily, "we'll just make a little mold of your eyeball -- hey presto!" A hoarse cry died stillborn in my larynx; simultaneously I felt the impact of hot cobbler's sealing wax on my retina. I reared up like Levi Jackson bucking the Harvard backfield, at the same time kicking outward as in the French savate. When the technician had finished probing bits of Erlenmeyer flask and optical glass out of my face, the hands of the clock pointed to four and I was compelled to leave, as it was time for my Malay lesson at the Berlitz School. Promising to return the next afternoon for my try-on -- a pledge I had no intention of fulfilling -- I tottered out.

My reasons for taking Malay were fivefold, the other four of which I seem to have forgotten. The chief object was to get rid of eighty dollars which was burning a hole in my pocket, though I pretended to myself that the language would be indispensable from Australia to Singapore. I also wanted to be able to salt my speech with an occasional picturesque phrase like "Boy, tell Missy's amah to take this chit to the Residency chop-chop."

The first fifteen minutes of the session with Dr. van Oost, my Malay teacher, went off swimmingly. I was compelled to bellow slightly to make myself audible, since the doctor wore a formidable hearing aid, but in a few seconds my accent was indistinguishable from that of a native of Batavia (Batavia, New York, that is). Midway through a typical colloquialism, "Boy, beli besok ayam di atas papan tulis" (Boy, buy me tomorrow a chicken in the blackboard), I experienced the distinct sensation of being alternately smothered and roasted. The classroom could not have been at fault; it was over five feet square and had a nice large transom to admit the air. Dr. van Oost's voice gradually began to fade in volume and a rivulet of perspiration coursed down my nose; I realized with a sinking sensation that the typhoid inoculation was taking hold by the moment. I half rose, plucked ineffectually at my collar, and sank limply into the doctor's arms. Aeons later, I came to in the principal's office, revived by a flabby Mittel-Europan who kept blowing cigar smoke into my face and making pointed references to my manhood.

I acquired my contact lenses a day or two later and they worked superbly. To insert them was but the work of a moment; all I had to do was pry open my eyes with a buttonhook, force the lenses in, and gulp as though swallowing a Chincoteague oyster. The resulting vision was practically 20-20. Everything looked milky and I could drill a photo of Nelson Eddy between the eyes at point-blank range. The lenses also materially enhanced my comeliness; in profile I had the melancholy grandeur of a carp at Fontainebleau. The effect on family and friends was equally gratifying. My children turned to stone at the first glimpse of their sire, and then broke wildly for cover. It took a fabulous bribe to tempt them out from underneath the bed. The mem, more articulate, put her opinion in a single succinct sentence.

"Stunning," she observed. "You certainly ought to set Singapore aflame with those immies in your head." Perhaps the most practical suggestion came from an old college classmate I met on the street.

"Why don't you have another one made up?" he proposed.

"Why? They're unbreakable -- they're made of plastic."

"Sure," he agreed, "but it's a great chance for a shell game. If you meet an easy mark on your travels, you can always whip 'em out of your eyes, shuffle 'em, and say, 'Now, under which one of these is my cornea?'"



In the cold gray light of a winter dawn they gathered at the airport to bid me Godspeed, the gallant band of relatives who had stuck by me through thick and thin like leeches. Tears streamed down the cheeks of cousins and nephews who now would have to go back to work. One crapulous uncle, last employed shortly before the battle of Cerro Gordo, was especially eloquent. "Won't seem like the same place any more without you," he snuffled. He was dead right; his days of free-loading were over.

The Battle of Cerro Gordo, April 1847 (Mexican War)

Only my immediate family betrayed its sincere feelings. My wife looked ten years younger already; the sudden release from years of tyranny acted on her like vintage champagne. The children's eyes danced at the prospect of the destruction they could now cause with impunity. They signalized their freedom by firing off cap pistols in my ear, sprinkling sneeze powder over the luggage, and generally behaving with such winsomeness that I promptly made a note to cut them off without a farthing.

The motors roared, a final embrace, and we were aloft. The airstrip receded; I was alone in the empyrean except for two dozen other escapists speeding toward Cathay. Seventy minutes later, my wife heard the shrill repeated ring of the telephone. She laid down her glass, picked up the receiver. The voice of the man she loved drifted faintly over the wire.

"What?" she demanded mystified. "Are you in Bali already?"

"Well -- er -- not exactly," I hesitated. "The plane was grounded in Camden. I'm calling you from Joe's Coffee Pot."

"That's nice," she replied. "Give my regards to the other loafers." And she hung up. I drew my balmacaan a bit tighter about me, kicked over a spittoon, and went slowly up the tarmac. From now on I would have to play it solo, a high heart set resolute and unafraid against the unknown.


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