“Like take a bath, for instance.”
“I’m too old for baths,” said the bird. “My feathers fall out without baths.”
“He says you have a bad smell.”
“Everybody smells. Some people smell because of their thoughts or because who they are. My bad smell comes from the food I eat. What does his come from?”
“I better not ask him or it might make him mad,” said Edie.
In late November Schwartz froze on the balcony in the fog and cold, and especially on rainy days he woke with stiff joints and could barely move his wings. Already he felt twinges of rheumatism. He would have liked to spend more time in the warm house, particularly when Maurie was in school and Cohen at work. But though Edie was goodhearted and might have sneaked him in, in the morning, just to thaw out, he was afraid to ask her. In the meantime Cohen, who had been reading articles about the migration of birds, came out on the balcony one night after work when Edie was in the kitchen preparing pot roast, and peeking into the birdhouse, warned Schwartz to be on his way soon if he knew what was good for him. “Time to hit the flyways.”
“Mr. Cohen, why do you hate me so much?” asked the bird. “What did I do to you?”
“Because you’re an A-number-one trouble maker, that’s why. What’s more, whoever heard of a Jewbird? Now scat or it’s open war.”
But Schwartz stubbornly refused to depart so Cohen embarked on a campaign of harassing him, meanwhile hiding it from Edie and Maurie. Maurie hated violence and Cohen didn’t want to leave a bad impression. He thought maybe if he played dirty tricks on the bird he would fly off without being physically kicked out. The vacation was over, let him make his easy living off the fat of somebody else’s land. Cohen worried about the effect of the bird’s departure on Maurie’s schooling but decided to take the chance, first, because the boy now seemed to have the knack of studying —give the black bird-bastard credit—and second, because Schwartz was driving him bats by being there always, even in his dreams.
The frozen foods salesman began his campaign against the bird by mixing watery cat food with the herring slices in Schwartz’s dish. He also blew up and popped numerous paper bags outside the birdhouse as the bird slept, and when he had got Schwartz good and nervous, though not enough to leave, he brought a full-grown cat into the house, supposedly a gift for little Maurie, who had always wanted a pussy. The cat never stopped springing up at Schwartz whenever he saw him, one day managing to claw out several of his tailfeathers. And even at lesson time, when the cat was usually excluded from Maurie’s room, though somehow or other he quickly found his way in at the end of the lesson, Schwartz was desperately fearful of his life and flew from pinnacle to pinnacle—light fixture to clothes-tree to door-top—in order to elude the beast’s wet jaws.
Once when the bird complained to Edie how hazardous his existence was, she said, “Be patient, Mr. Schwartz. When the cat gets to know you better he won’t try to catch you any more.”
“When he stops trying we will both be in Paradise,” Schwartz answered. “Do me a favor and get rid of him. He makes my whole life worry. I’m losing feathers like a tree loses leaves.”
“I’m awfully sorry but Maurie likes the pussy and sleeps with it.”
What could Schwartz do? He worried but came to no decision, being afraid to leave. So he ate the herring garnished with cat food, tried hard not to hear the paper bags bursting like fire crackers outside the birdhouse at night, and lived terror-stricken closer to the ceiling than the floor, as the cat, his tail flicking, endlessly watched him.
Weeks went by. Then on the day after Cohen’s mother had died in her flat in the Bronx, when Maurie came home with a zero on an arithmetic test, Cohen, enraged, waited until Edie had taken the boy to his violin lesson, then openly attacked the bird. He chased him with a broom on the balcony and Schwartz frantically flew back and forth, finally escaping into his birdhouse. Cohen triumphantly reached in, and grabbing both skinny legs, dragged the bird out, cawing loudly, his wings wildly beating. He whirled the bird around and around his, head. But Schwartz, as he moved in circles, managed to swoop down and catch Cohen’s nose in his beak, and hung on for dear life. Cohen cried out in great pain, punched the bird with his fist, and tugging at its legs with all his might, pulled his nose free. Again he swung the yawking Schwartz around until the bird grew dizzy, then with a furious heave, flung him into the night. Schwartz sank like stone into the street. Cohen then tossed the birdhouse and feeder after him, listening at the ledge until they crashed on the sidewalk below. For a full hour, broom in hand, his heart palpitating and nose throbbing with pain, Cohen waited for Schwartz to return but the brokenhearted bird didn’t.
That’s the end of that dirty bastard, the salesman thought and went in. Edie and Maurie had come home.
“Look,” said Cohen, pointing to his bloody nose swollen three times its normal size, “what that sonofabitchy bird did. It’s a permanent scar.”
“Where is he now?” Edie asked, frightened.
“I threw him out and he flew away. Good riddance.”
Nobody said no, though Edie touched a handkerchief to her eyes and Maurie rapidly tried the nine-times table and found he knew approximately half.
In the spring when the winter’s snow had melted, the boy, moved by a memory, wandered in the neighborhood, looking for Schwartz. He found a dead black bird in a small lot near the river, his two wings broken, neck twisted, and both bird-eyes plucked clean.
“Who did it to you, Mr. Schwartz?” Maurie wept.
“Anti-Semeets,” Edie said later.
GEO. ALEC EFFINGER
Paradise Last
The nightmonsters of satire bathe happily in Jewish love. They’re the happy endings that laugh at themselves, the sour faces that turn into prunes, last decade’s reruns on the late-late show, dirty jokes that come true, traditional sadnesses, horrors muted with glibness, true love and happy days as witnessed by the Borscht Belt, Rube Goldberg, S. J. Perelman, and The Marx Brothers.
Herewith a science fiction story, a satire with self-consistent details and extrapolations—and, of course, loaded premises, purposely rooted in quicksand. A story of Jewless Jews, bright children, problematical machines with almost all the answers, subtle diasporas, planets with turquoise grass, and movie-media emotions.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an original story written expressly for this volume.
THERE WERE FIVE MEN who ran the world. They were called Representatives, though democratic elections had long ago been eliminated as “too inaccurate.” There was a Representative of North America, one of South America, one each from Europe, Asia, and Africa. They had all been in power for a long time, and they seemed to enjoy it. The citizens of their continental domains were glad of that. The last thing the overburdened people needed was a war.
Helping the Representatives in their duties was TECT. More comprehensive than just a calculating device, TECT was an immense machine buried far beneath the surface of the earth. It contained the sum total of everything mankind had yet learned about the universe; but, of course, so did several private and public computer installations throughout the world. TECT had special powers and abilities, though, which set it apart from other species of machine. It understood. Questions could be asked of it which were impossible to translate into basic computer binary input. TECT could interpret all human languages; if a built-in imprecision of common speech led to ambiguity, TECT would query the speaker. One might ask, “What is the difference between right and wrong?” and expect a quick reply. The machine’s answer would not be merely a philosophic abstract compiled from the vast recorded literature of the human race; that is what one would receive from the other, more accessible computers. No, from TECT there would be a slight pause, and then a closely reasoned, “personal” opinion made on the basis of TECT’s current measure of data. Such questions were rarely asked, of course; even from TECT, the answers were never conclusive, always impractical. And it was a very practical world.