The World Is My Home: A Memoir by James A. Michener
In these self-assessments I often fell dismayingly short, but there were times when I felt I had done passably well. However, when I worked in the bleak refugee camps established in Thailand to house the boat people fleeing Vietnam, I came upon a group of young Frenchmen whose selflessness put me to shame, and never, not even in my imagination, could I ever have hoped to match them. They were doctors, members of Médecins Sans Frontières, a group organized in Paris, which believes that physicians should not move directly from university into big-city practices but that they must first volunteer to serve humanity in general, without significant pay, by working in the Third World. The ones I watched were young, bright, dedicated to their mission and in complete agreement with the philosophy of their group. I saw their unflagging devotion to the sick, and concluded that whereas I had worked, to the extent possible, at humanitarian tasks in many parts of the world, my contribution when compared with theirs ranked as nothing. In later years I saw their colleagues at work in other desperate locations, and my evaluation was always the same: I met no fellow Americans who equaled them for truly Christian service.
It was by accident that I met the two men who brought me unwavering pleasure throughout long years. I had been invited by some distinguished agency to report on happenings in Tahiti, and when I settled into my seat in the airplane in Los Angeles I saw across the aisle but somewhat ahead of me a face with which I, like most other Americans, was familiar. It was that of Walter Cronkite, the distinguished television commentator, a rather forbidding man with his wide knowledge and imposing manner of imparting it. I warned myself: Don’t be boring in his presence!
Down the aisle, somewhat behind me, sat another gentleman whose round, cherubic face was also well known. It was the humorist Art Buchwald, who occasioned an even sterner self-admonition: Don’t try to be funny on this trip! And I grew apprehensive lest this become a strained situation in which I would constantly have to watch myself.
When we landed at dawn we were met at the airport by a Tahitian princess laden with flowery leis for me. Beautiful of face, she weighed about three hundred pounds and had starred in a movie made from one of my novels, Hawaii, so when she saw me she rushed forward and embraced me so tightly that I was well nigh lost in her bosom. As she shoved me away she asked: ‘And who are these two?’ pointing to Cronkite and Buchwald. Art, fearing that he too was about to be smothered, shied away, but she caught him and gave him the same kind of embrace. Apparently Cronkite seemed too formidable, so all he got were flowers.
From then on, inhibitions were lost in the tumult of life on that enchanting island. When I first reached Tahiti during the war, natives had warned me: ‘You should have seen it a dozen years ago. Then it was paradise.’ And when I returned two or three times in later years I had been told: ‘You should have been here a decade ago. Then it was great.’ Now we heard the same thing, but Tahiti has an embrace like that of the princess who had welcomed us at the airport, and in the days that followed, Cronkite, Buchwald and I had the kind of vacation harried New Yorkers dream about. We toured the gorgeous islands, enjoyed native feasts, attended dances held in our honor, met longtime residents with their entertaining stories, paid our respects to the lively widow of James Norman Hall and climbed the colorful mountains that had been known to Captain Cook’s men and Pierre Loti and Somerset Maugham.
The more we moved about, the more evident it became that Art Buchwald was even funnier in person than he was in print, for he kept up a fusillade of wit, the kind that grows naturally out of the immediate situation. At times he would be a brash New York wise guy reacting to a world he had never seen before and could not believe existed; next he was the bored and supersensitive Parisian boulevardier visiting the colonies; at other times Cronkite and I would be the butt of his jokes, or he would lampoon himself. He had one of the sharpest wits I had ever known—all his remarks were improvised on the spot. And he sustained his ad-libbing like machine-gun fire for nine days, and we all agreed that he was one of the warmest traveling companions we had ever known. In the years that followed, Art could make me laugh just by turning his expressive face in my direction as if he were going to say something, and when he did say something, I was never disappointed.
Cronkite was an amazement. He was always ready for an outing or an interview with old settlers, or for a game. He and his son Chip and I formed an exhibition team with a Frisbee. We had an unbroken sequence of more than a hundred undropped tosses, at long distances, and each of us developed an elegant throw that kept the Frisbee floating upward in the air for an unbelievable length of time. I knew few more enjoyable pastimes in the nonsense category, and our exhibitions were applauded on all the islands.
Cronkite was an avid sailor, and wherever we went he wangled a sailboat; in a sunset storm we covered that incomparable run from Tahiti to nearby Moorea, surely one of the most spectacular cruises in the world, and then, under my urging, because I wanted to see the unspectacular low islands of the north, he finagled another boat and we went sailing between those two islands, Raiatea and Huahine, that move me so deeply because of my wartime experiences on them. What happened during our sail seems so improbable that I am almost embarrassed to report it. As we pulled into the ancient quay at Raiatea we found awaiting us at the tip end of the dock a very beautiful young American woman in a native sarong, flowers in her dark hair and a violin at her chin. As we approached the tie-up she played for us in the most exquisite manner the solo parts of Brahms’s violin concerto. She had been one of the first violins of an important California orchestra and had fled to the islands to find herself, and I have often wondered what she thought when she found instead Cronkite, Buchwald and Michener coming at her out of the island mists. An easier question is: What did we think? We were staggered, complimented her on her playing, and offered her a drink. I told her: ‘You play that at concert level,’ and she said: ‘I know.’
We spent most of our time on Bora Bora, still to me the finest island in the world, where I renewed my friendship with those golden people I had known during the war: ‘Where is Francis Sanford?’ Gone to Paris as a big-shot politician. ‘And where is Malama, the lieutenant’s girl?’ Gone to live on Maupiti with her two American children. ‘Do you ever hear from any of the sailors who lived here during the war?’ Many send us presents.
We were much taken with a blond-haired German who told me: ‘One day in Germany after the war, horrible time, I read your book, Michener. And you made it sound so wonderful that my entire energy was to get to the South Pacific. And here I am on the finest island, and that glass-bottomed boat over there is mine and you will sail out with us.’ We sat in the bottom of the boat, our arms cocked on a railing, and stared through glass at the bottom of the incomparable Bora Bora lagoon as he maneuvered his craft out into deep water. Using the central volcano and markers placed along the reef, he triangulated his boat over where he had learned the coral would be, and there an hour of enchantment began: while an island steersman who spoke a little English guided the boat, the German, clad in bathing trunks and armed only with a very long screwdriver tucked in his belt, put on his scuba gear, let himself down into the water and with his rubber fins propelled himself close to the bottom while his helper told us what would be happening.
‘Everything is in order,’ the islander in the boat said. ‘Always same, every day. First the little fish, very colorful.’ And myriads of blue and gold fish, each one about the length of a finger, crowded around the German, who dispersed them with a wave of his hand. ‘Now he chum,’ and from a pouch the German diver produced a handful of minced clam. As he scattered it the next group of fish moved in, much bigger and more varied in color: ‘First light yellow, then blue come, then big black.’ And as if the fish could hear the announcement they obeyed, a parade of dazzling beauty.
Adjusting the power in our boat to keep it locked in position, our guide then said: ‘Now he dive deeper, get big clam,’ and down he went, using his long screwdriver to pry a shellfish from coral at
‘Now we see for real!’ the guide said, and as we watched the lovely coral formations over which the German hovered, we saw very large fish, maybe three feet long, begin to move in, and these he fed one at a time by hand. They did not crowd in on him, each fish apparently approaching on some kind of cue. At any rate the man steering the boat could foretell the order, for he called them out by color: ‘Purple, green he come, maybe three blue, next one gold.
‘We save this for last,’ our guide said, and the German now recovered from his pouch the big pieces of clam he had sequestered there. And as he took his accustomed position among the coral heads, huge fish at least five feet long and two more almost six feet long came up to him slowly as if coming to meet an old friend. I was not prepared for what happened next. The German had placed between his teeth, with his lips holding it in position, a large chunk of clam, and as a huge fish approached slowly but steadily the German jutted out his face, whereupon the silvery fish deftly picked the clam from between his lips, brushed his face with its tail and swam on.
Six big fish in turn appeared to pick their snack from his lips, and when the parade ended, a tourist who had accompanied us gasped: ‘My God! He’s tamed an entire lagoon.’ When we were back on shore the German told us: ‘Mr. Michener made this life possible for me. I visualized it all when I read his books.’
The Cronkite-Buchwald-Michener excursion had an amusing conclusion, but it came years later. When it became known that we three musketeers knew one another and had gone on other explorations of Bali and Haiti and two of us to the Amazon, it became a habit for worthy charitable institutions in their fund-raising efforts to give a gala dinner in New York or Washington or Chicago to honor one of us. This enabled them to get a speech for free along with the possibility that we would invite the other two and get free speeches from them also. It became a racket, and since these were years when we were all in the limelight, more or less, we began to get two or three invitations a month. When Cronkite was honored, Buchwald and I were supposed to dance attendance upon him as if he were a Balkan prince, and when Buchwald received one of his dozen awards, Cronkite and I were to do the same. The unpleasant part of this fandango was that quite often the man being honored—say, Cronkite—was supposed to pay a thousand dollars for a table of eight, while Buchwald and I were also required to buy our own tables, ‘since you will certainly want to honor your good friend.’ Having taken vacations with these two clowns was turning out to be very expensive.
Two typical telephone calls illustrate how desperate charitable organizations are to find free speakers. ‘Is this James Michener, the writer? We’re giving a gala dinner on Friday night, Jewish Hospital on Long Island, and we want to award you the society’s medal as one of America’s greatest writers.’ I explain that I’ll be busy Friday. ‘But’—petulantly—‘Norman Mailer assured us you would be free.’ Since Mailer and I had never spoken, I lied: ‘I forgot to tell Norman of my previous obligation.’ Long pause, then: ‘Mr. Michener, do you happen to know any other famous American writer who might be free Friday night?’ I said I knew that Gore Vidal would be free.
It was the next conversation that broke the camel’s back: a demand from the brassy chairwoman handling a prize so distinguished that its award ceremony is covered by newspapers and television: ‘Mr. Michener, you don’t know me but I’m Gloria Nelson, and the committee that chose you for our big award puts the specific arrangements in my hands. Now, I suppose you know that it is customary for the recipient to take eight or nine tables—each seats ten, one thousand dollars per table. You invite your family, your college friends—a time for joyous reunion. Then we’d like to have you give us the names of eight or ten of your other friends, especially those you do business with. We hope you’ll encourage each of them to take his own table. We’ve been told that you know Art Buchwald and Walter Cronkite. It would make the evening special if each of them would take a table and say a few words.’
Shocked by the size of the contribution—$16,000—I was supposed to make or con my friends into making, I asked: ‘What date did you say the award was to be given?’ When she replied, I said: ‘What rotten luck. I have to be in Belgium.’
‘Cancel it.’ she said. ‘You have to attend our gala. The announcements saying you’re coming have already been printed.’ Very firmly I said: ‘Use them for notes. Print new ones, because I can’t be there.’ Pleadingly: ‘But, Mr. Michener, don’t you have eight or ten friends who would take tables?’ to which I replied: ‘I don’t even have eight or ten reliable enemies.’ It was then that I decided there would have to be a Cronkite-Buchwald-Michener compact banning all such fund-raising scams, which, as soon as I proposed the idea, was approved by Buchwald, who organized it and laid down the ground rules. In the original agreement he had phrases like ‘pain of death’ and ‘boiling oil,’ but the essence was that from that day forward none of us would ever buy a ticket for a dinner honoring either of the other two. As Art phrased it with his customary tact: ‘If that cheapie Walter Cronkite can’t afford to pay for his own meals, let him not look to us to feed him.’
Resolutely we have kept to our original promises. I willingly broke the rule once to help honor Cronkite on his retirement; Art came out of retirement to honor me with one of the funniest speeches on record, a parody of my writing: ‘Millions and millions of years ago there was a dinosaur in Bucks County.…’ And recently Walter flew all the way to San Antonio to attend one of my dinners. On such occasions we enable our gracious hosts to collect thousands of dollars for good causes, and if we agreed to go out three or four nights a week we could collect millions. But we firmly refuse to buy tickets for the other guy’s dinners.
I do not view this agreement as sacrosanct, and I am sure that Walter and Art don’t either. We respect the people who want to honor us and certainly we respect the causes they support. If we were younger, had more time, and were trying to make our way in the world, we would go out more frequently and even joyously. I will let Cronkite speak for us. I told him I was about to sail on an extended trip around South America to gather material for a book and was afraid I was going to be pestered. ‘I know just how you feel, Jim,’ Cronkite said. ‘Four years ago I took that trip and was scared to death I’d be pestered by everyone on board, but Cunard officials assured me: “We’re accustomed to having passengers sail with us who want to be left alone. We know how to protect your privacy.” On the third night after our departure from Miami, Betsy and I were sitting in a corner of the nearly empty bar, and I suddenly asked: “Betsy! When are they going to start pestering me?’ ” In that cri de coeur he spoke for all of us.
* * *
* Some accounts claim that the prince and Flora sailed to Skye from Benbecula. In 1773 Flora emigrated to North Carolina; there her husband joined the British army during the American Revolution.
VI
Politics
My introduction to politics was so shameful that I bore the scars for decades, but from it I learned a lesson of brotherhood that would dominate my adult life. In the autumn of 1917, when I was ten and in the grip of wartime hysteria focused against Germany and the Kaiser, I took a pair of old shoes to the elderly cobbler who had his shop a few doors from our home on North Main Street. This area had always been called Germany because many of the original settlers there had come from that country and their descendants still spoke that language at home rather than English. My shoemaker, of course, was German.
When I handed him my shoes I saw to my astonishment something I had not noticed before. On his wall, behind his lasts and knee-held anvils hung a large chromolithograph of the Kaiser. As as I stared at it over the old man’s shoulder the glare from the hooded eyes was so menacing, the set of the jaw so cruel, that I was speechless, and fled the shop. I had seen the enemy about whom the orators ranted and he was lurking in my backyard.
Hurrying home, I bro
I did not sleep much that night, which I spent struggling against the Kaiser, dodging his submarines and holding him back in the trenches lest he storm Paris. I left my bed the next morning in such a blaze of patriotic fervor that I marched to the cobbler’s, slammed my way into his workshop, and, ripping the traitorous portrait from the wall, carried it out into the street and tore it to bits before a small crowd that had gathered.
I heard for the first time the heady sound of applause, and there were admiring cries: ‘He’s a little hero, that one!’ At the height of the celebration I looked past my aplauding neighbors to the doorway of the cobbler’s shop, where the old man who had so often befriended me looked on in confusion and dismay.
Someone in the crowd reported my patriotic deed to the local newspaper, and I believe that the first time my name appeared in print was as the local hero, ten years old, who had struck a blow for the cause of the Allies and against the tyranny of the Hun. But the praise I received was dampened by the look I had seen on the old man’s face as the poor cobbler watched his little world being torn apart by a child.
I was inducted into local politics in a manner almost as dramatic. Our elegant rural county of Bucks, tucked in between Philadelphia and New York, and one of the few counties in the nation known widely by name, was staunchly Republican and was ruled by a benevolent tyrant named Joe Grundy. He owned a profitable manufacturing plant at the lower end of the county and had but one ambition, to keep Bucks County totally Republican and the nation safely in the hands of the G.O.P. In later years he became president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a United States senator, and he fused the two positions so completely that no observer could discern whether he was acting as a senator or as a manufacturer.