Harry Harrison! Harry Harrison!

by Harry Harrison

  The weather grew better, which we hoped was a good omen. Our fellow passengers appeared at the dinner table—speaking English again: Italy unhappily left behind. The good weather continued and the sun was shining clearly through the smog when we entered New York Harbor. Well over a year since we had left. We were two hours late docking and, when we emerged from customs, we were delighted to see the round figure of Avram Davidson, who had been patiently waiting for us all day. If the delay had disturbed him he was too much the gentleman to admit it. He had a book to read and had brought us a hot pastrami sandwich, now cold, as a welcome-home present. It was wonderful.

  We were back in New York. There were very important things to do, such as find a doctor for Joan at once, and pay a visit to the agent to cheerfully cut his throat or something. And after that? We had absolutely no idea. First things first and then we would decide. Our health worries vanished after Joan’s first visit to the doctor. She was anemic, and iron tablets took care of that. It was one of the most commonplace complications of pregnancy—and the Italian doctor hadn’t recognized it? We took a silent oath never to be ill again in Italy.

  We stayed with Joan’s parents in Long Beach while we looked for a furnished apartment. There proved to be plenty of them about, and very cheap too since the holidaymakers were long gone and the cold, green Atlantic was already pounding the beaches. We had to sign a contract agreeing to leave by May first or pay a thousand dollars a week rent, which was a simple way of assuring that the apartments were available for well-heeled vacationers when the summer season started.

  The literary agent question resolved itself simply. When I went to see him I realized, a little belatedly, that he was both incompetent and stupid and not worth venting my ire on, a pleasure to fire and forget. I remembered what Conrad had written in Nostromo about a certain villainous character. “Let him live, for he is his own damnation.” As long as I was in New York I wouldn’t need an agent, but I would have to find one before we left the city.

  And the science fiction novel was still there. Never forgotten; looked at—but put aside far too often while I did the bread-and-butter work. I was still grinding out comic scripts for Fleetway in London, and of course Flash Gordon scripts for Dan. I polished off the current assignments as quickly as I could and did another chunk of my novel, Deathworld. I was perhaps three-quarters of the way to the end by this time, but was still very insecure about this, my first novel. I sent what I had written so far to John Campbell, editor of Astounding, who summoned me to his office.

  He was not pleased. He had assumed that after all this time I had sent in the complete novel. He wanted it done, through, finished as soon as possible. I left his office sweating and knew that the time for completion was to hand. Or else. But other equally important—or far more important—events were happening. On January 9, 1959, Joan woke me a little past midnight. I blinked rapidly when I saw that she had her coat on. “I’ve timed the contractions,” she said, “and they are now two minutes apart. I’ve called the cab and it’s on the way.”

  At last a hospital visit with some good results! Moira was born later that night, and has blessed us with her presence since that day. She is now Dr. Harrison and teaches diabetes to pharmacy and medical students and carries out research into Type 1 diabetes at the University of Brighton, UK. Todd works for a gas analyzer company in California. We have always been proud of our children—with very good reason.

  I had finished writing the book. John Campbell had had the Deathworld manuscript for what felt like a very long time—though it was only a matter of some days. All the other copy I had submitted to him had been done through an agent. So I had no idea at all how long he took to report, or what I should do if the delay stretched out much longer. The tension was beginning to get to me. I tried to work ahead on the Flash Gordon scripts but couldn’t concentrate. Then the letter came. Street & Smith Publications was the return address. Why was my hand shaking? Because it was a letter of rejection? What else could it be? I tore open the envelope, which proved to contain no letter at all, just a check, made out to me, for the sum of $2,100.

  John was certainly parsimonious with words once he had extracted what he wanted from a writer. But what could a covering letter say that the check didn’t? Seventy thousand words at three cents a word. Two thousand, one hundred dollars. An incredible sum considering the fact that I had earned very little more than that during the entire previous year. We had money ahead for the first time in our life, real money. We could plan our future and not stumble on from circumstance to circumstance. And I was almost a novelist. I had sold the serial rights to my first novel, to the most prestigious and important magazine in science fiction. For once everything was coming together perfectly.

  “We can go back to Europe now,” I said.

  “I would like to live in Levittown,” Joan answered.

  We had been to Levittown to see Ed and Carol Emshwiller. He was the top artist in SF, she a fine new SF writer. They had children—and they were both creative artists while living in the comforts of suburbia. So why couldn’t we? If not Levittown on Long Island, then why not Levittown, Arizona? These were tracts of inexpensive and attractive houses built mostly for returning GIs. That excellent writer Cyril Kornbluth had lived in one and died of a heart attack while running for a commuter train. There were both good and bad things to be said about them.

  I could fully understand how Joan felt. At times it was not easy schlepping around the world with an infant. And now we had two children, which made life that much more complicated. Distant countries did not compare well with a clean modern house, a garden for them to play in, the English language, nearby schools and friends. It certainly looked attractive.

  I hated to even think about it. We had made the big move, escaped the clammy clutch of suburbia and middle-class existence. The thoughts of returning to them made me break out in a cold sweat. I had to make Joan understand. Having lived in that big and fascinating world out there I could not bear the thought of sinking again beneath the surface of this society I had known all my life. Far fields were still hideously attractive. We were at loggerheads. We both knew exactly what we wanted to do and why. Except that for the very first time our needs and desires were diametrically opposed.

  Details of married arguments are bitter at the time and distasteful to recall. But I must mention the ending of this one, because it has to go on the record.

  We couldn’t compromise. I couldn’t make her understand what Levittown would do to me. My anger was rising. Once in school, and later in the army, I had been so angered by a situation that I had blacked out with rage. For just the third time in my life overwhelming anger washed out intelligence and I raised my fist. But, furious as I was, I could not hit a woman, especially my wife, lying tiny and pale on the bed. It wasn’t a conscious thought. But this kind of rage needs an outlet so I twisted about and slammed my fist into the closet door, with sobering results. I had punched right through the thin wood. I pulled my hand out and saw that my little finger was hanging down; I had broken it when I struck. Laughable by hindsight—shocking at the time, in context.

  This is when Joan made one of the major decisions that affected our lives. My actions had delivered a message that logic and reasoning had not. The gravity of my feelings was more than obvious. “Of course we’ll go back to Europe,” she said calmly. “I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about it.”

  Our traditional sexual roles had been reversed; man the logical, woman the emotional. It was I who had exploded with uncontrollable anger when logic no longer worked. While it was Joan, whose perceptions of emotions were far more understanding than mine, who had seen clearly how I felt. She had her desires and needs, but at that moment she put them second place to mine. When I saw the doctor I discovered that the little finger is too small to splint by itself. It was taped to the ring finger, then all my fingers immobilized in plaster in a sort of curved hook shape, very handy for picking up boxes when we packed.

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nbsp; We made our plans in private. Parental lamentations would be great when we announced we were leaving for a third time. But where should we go? Not back to Mexico, certainly. Not with the endemic malaria and a small baby. England? Memories of smog and cold still bit deep. Italy? Thank you, no. After Joan’s experiences with the medical profession there we were not going to subject an infant to their ministrations. By happy coincidence I was still in touch with Preben Zahle in Denmark, and a visit to the travel agency revealed the fact that the only nonstop flight to Europe was SAS to Copenhagen. Why not? I had sold articles to a magazine there and Preben would help us find a place to stay. We would take the Anglia car out of storage and ship it by sea; it would arrive a month after we did. By which time we would have made plans to move on, stay, or whatever. It seemed a sound and logical plan.

  Of course seeing it typed out like this, half a century later, it carries more than a whiff of utter madness. How could we have thought we were being logical and practical? Flying off to an unknown country where they spoke an unknown language, with a few hundred dollars and two tiny children? Why hadn’t Joan forced me to go to Levittown? There are some questions that can possibly never be answered. Except to say, yet again, that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Under a cloud of double-barreled parental guilt and scathing recriminations, we boarded the SAS plane for Denmark. One half of the Astounding money had purchased our tickets. We sat three in a row in tourist class with four-month-old Moira asleep in the bassinet mounted on the bulkhead before us. Todd, a seasoned transatlantic traveler by the age of two, stayed glued to the window.

  It was the summer of 1959 and Copenhagen was warm and sunny. Our room in the Pension Gotha was comfortable and charming and the city fascinating. If we could find any fault at all it was the almost perpetual daylight. The sun moved slowly across a cloudless sky then most reluctantly dropped behind the horizon close to midnight, shuffled along below the twilight horizon, only to pop up again about two A.M. One needed heavy curtains to get any sleep. We rented a car and explored the green countryside that began at the city’s gate. Everything we saw we liked, and by the time the Anglia arrived we had determined to stay here for a while. We had found a house to rent and moved in.

  We might have reacted differently if we had known that this was the warmest summer in Danish history. Across from the Pension Gotha was the Botanisk Have, the botanical gardens and museum. Deep in the museum’s multilayered depths were storerooms. Including one containing bulbs brought back to Scandinavia by Linnaeus himself in 1730. For the first time since they had been placed there, centuries earlier, warmth had penetrated to the cool chamber and these bulbs had germinated. We were too uninformed to get this message. We thought every Scandinavian summer would be like this!

  By the time autumn and the first chill nights arrived we were settled in and had no desire to move. Modern and sprightly, Denmark really was the human paradise that Britain and the States aimed at. Clean, organized, socially responsible. The schools were incredibly good and the socialized medical system human and reliable. In America we have been brainwashed to believe that socialized medicine is creeping communism. In reality this is just big pharma and medical business propagandizing us in order to continue with their incredibly expensive private health insurance profits. But socialized medicine really works—and works quite well. We, as consumers, were more than pleased. As foreigners we had to pay something toward the universal health insurance—but just a few hundred dollars a year. After that everything was free. Prescriptions had to be paid for but half the sum was returned and government control meant that medicine was fairly priced. The doctors and nurses were well paid and enjoyed the work. We were beginning to realize how lucky we were, that the workings of chance had brought us to a country where we could raise the children in safety and comfort.

  And I was now a novelist. My new agent, Bob Mills, had sold Deathworld to Bantam Books for the then astonishing sum of $2,500. I was financially secure for the first time in my life, as well as emotionally secure, savoring the fact that I could write, in fact had written, a salable novel. It was time to get back to work. I started my second novel.

  11

  Our first house in Denmark was newly built in Bistrup, a suburb of Birkerød. This was a dormitory town for Copenhagen, which was some twelve miles away. We were at number 10 Bregnebakken. Bregne means fern in Danish, and a bakke is a hill. Bregnebakken was dead flat; but “the fern-hill” still had a romantic sound. As we began to settle in we started to learn more about the culture in which we were being immersed.

  I wouldn’t say that the Danes are the direct opposite of the Mexicans—but they sure came very close. One northern, the other subtropical; a Germanic language, a Latin language; one very organized, the other very laid-back. Take the Bistrup sidewalks—or lack of them. Since this part of Bistrup was newly developed, with houses still being built, there were no sidewalks. Or rather there was a gravel-covered path that was separated from the paved road by a row of cobblestones set on end. This made good sense since all the utilities, water pipes, sewers, gas, and electricity were laid under the gravel path, which meant that the paved road was never dug up to make utility connections to a new house. In the fullness of time, when all the houses had been built and utilities connected, the gravel would be replaced by preformed concrete slabs. If, at some later date, some of these pipes needed attention, the road would still not be torn up. The slabs would be lifted aside and repairs done. Nothing could be simpler or more practical.

  And all the gravel looked quite attractive, smooth, and neat. Except in front of number 10, where it was bumped and pitted. I assumed that the city took care of this sort of thing until I noticed that all the householders were raking their gravel smooth every day, voluntarily. Not a bad idea; I would have to get a rake pretty soon and take care of my stretch of gravel. I put the day off until a scratching woke me up one morning just after dawn. Our neighbor, Herre Larsen, had raked his patch smooth then had done mine as well. I bought a rake the same day.

  The Danes like to be organized and exact great satisfaction from doing everything the same way. This was proven a short time later when I made a new number for the house. The small brass 10 on the front door was very hard to see from the road. Coming back one evening from the post I passed a pile of the brick-shaped granite cobblestones that were put into place to separate the gravel path from the road. I had learned all about moonlight requisitioning in the army. The moon was indeed up, no one in sight; one of the stones made its way to my garage. We had some blue paint left over from decorating the kitchen. I painted the face of the stone blue, and when it was dry painted a neat 10 on it in white. I buried this at a thirty-degree viewing angle in the grass next to the gravel sidewalk-to-be. Now visitors could find our house.

  Not only ours—but they could find everyone else’s house as well. Within a month most of the houses on Bregnebakken had a half-sunk cobblestone with a number on it prominent in their front gardens, undoubtedly obtained from the same supplier that I had used. What I found most appealing was the fact that they were all sunk into the grass at a thirty-degree angle—and had white numbers against a blue background. The same color as our kitchen walls. The Danes are a very, very organized people.

  I pointed this out to a reporter from a Copenhagen newspaper who interviewed me for an article. There were very few foreigners living in Denmark in 1959 and they found the idea of an American author immersing himself in their economy and culture most interesting. I was queried at length about national differences and, as an example, I mentioned that when the lunch hour whistle blew in an American factory everyone downed tools and left. But from our pension window when we were in Copenhagen I had watched two tall cranes that were working on a new building. At quitting time the crane operators, instead of simply turning the things off and leaving them, took the time to line the cranes up end to end so that they formed a straight line. I found this quaint and amusing and the reporter wrote it all down
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  The article duly appeared and a friend translated it for me. The American factory and the Danish cranes were there. But the slightly smug conclusion was: look how much better at organizing things the Danes are. Not like the lazy Americans. I was beginning to like the Danes.

  All of the Danes seemed to speak English—but we were determined to learn the language. A retired translator was happy to tutor us at home. Although she was Danish, she had worked for the war crimes trials doing simultaneous translation between German and English. She had a nice linguistic story from the trials when she was translating for a colonel in the judge advocates department who had previously been a judge in the American South. During the trial he queried her.

  “Ma’am, you seem to be having some difficulties there. I note that you begin to say something—then change your mind.”

  “I’m very sorry, Your Honor. You see, in German the verbs come at the very end of the sentence and I sometimes have to guess what is coming in a long sentence. I’m sorry if I guess wrong.”

  “Not your fault at all, ma’am. I understand. Now you just tell these Germans to put their verbs in the middle of the sentence just like the rest of us do.”

  It was time to get back to work. I had sold John Campbell a short story entitled “The Stainless Steel Rat.” It had been fun to do, the villain as hero, what Kingsley Amis had called a picaresque hero. Cheered by the feedback I wrote a sequel, “The Misplaced Battleship,” which John also bought. But the character of the Rat himself, Jim diGriz, would not lie down. I adapted and expanded the two short stories into a novel, also called The Stainless Steel Rat. I sent it off to Bob Mills, who duly sold it to Pyramid for fifteen hundred dollars. A financial step backward from Bantam—but a sale was a sale.

  We were making friends—and so was Todd. Muriel Overgaard was English and married to a Danish marine engineer. She and Joan became the best of friends. The Overgaards’ three sons spoke English at home and Danish outside of it. Thomas was just Todd’s age and they became very close. Todd listened to all the Danish around him, but spoke only English. Although when he talked with Thomas we heard more and more Danish words getting mixed in. Within six months he was talking Danish as well as the other children—with a North Zealand accent just like theirs.