City Fables

Fables, traditionally, are little moral tales; but time changes all things, and in our own time, among the complex denizens of urban communities, a new kind of fable has been going the rounds: a kind of amoral -- or even immoral -- tale, usually involving infidelity. You have undoubtedly heard, and told, some of them yourself; others may have escaped your attention. Here are three of the best, collected and retold by Mr. Hoke Norris, newspaperman, author of the book "All the Kingdoms of Earth," and recipient of a 1957 "best creative writing" citation from the Society of Midland Authors. Says Norris: "I got the fables from men who swore they were true. Not that they personally knew the principal actors, you understand, but the fellow who told them said the fellow who told him ..." Thus are all fables, moral or otherwise, born and propagated.

Sam's Wife, Mary, had been carrying on rather brazenly with another man (call him Joe) for some time. She was sure Sam didn't suspect, because (she reasoned) she had never betrayed herself. You see, Sam was a man of rigidly regular habits: he was home during certain hours, at his office during certain hours, at his club on certain nights -- and from this regimen he never wavered. You know the type. This was very convenient for Mary, but even so, she took no chances. Though she had provided Joe with a timetable of her husband's comings and goings, admonishing him never to phone her except when the coast was clear, she was careful to add, just in case, that should Joe ever phone and be greeted by a man's voice, he must pretend he'd got a wrong number. That is, Joe was to make up an apocryphal number and ask if this was that one. None of that shoddy If-A-Man-Answers-Hang-Up stuff for her.

This proved to be a wise precaution, for one morning, the usually sound-as-a-dollar Sam said he wasn't feeling so good, a touch of the flu maybe, and would stay home in bed all day.

When the phone rang, with Sam in bed in the bedroom and Mary seated there before him in a chair, Mary darted forward, but the extension was right at Sam's elbow on a bedside table, and, with speed surprising for a sick man, he picked it up and said hello.

A man's voice, after an instant of hesitation, asked if this was Chester 3-0912.

"Yes," Sam replied.

The voice hesitated again, and then asked, "Is this the Gibraltar Life Insurance Company?"

"Yes," Sam said.

This time, Sam heard a sharp intake of breath. Then the caller asked, in a rather strained voice, "Is Mr. Smith there?"

"Smith speaking," Sam said, cool as could be.

The caller hung up, rather abruptly. Sam put the phone down and returned to his magazine. Mary had stood through the entire performance, and now she seemed to break in the middle. She slumped down into her chair.

"Wrong number," Sam told her, without glancing up from his reading.

Helen and Ralph were married to each other. Marvin and Judith weren't married to anybody at all and didn't particularly want to be.

Let us begin with Helen and Marvin. Unmarried Marvin was a man of no mean wealth -- a giver of fabulous gifts. Married Helen was a giddy little female with morals approximately those of an alley cat. They were very happy together, for a while, in their extra-marital way. Marvin surprised her on one of her birthdays by giving her an ermine jacket that cost him five or six thousand dollars. Nothing but the best. Helen wept when she felt that fur around her shoulders, wept with a joy that was pure and beautiful.

But after she'd got her wits about her again, it occurred to her that she couldn't possibly take the thing home with her, lovely and divine though it was. No story she could possibly tell husband Ralph would be adequate. Finally, between them, Helen and Marvin devised a scheme: she would deposit the jacket in a locker at the railway station, take the key home and tell Ralph she'd found the key on the street. And she'd suggest that he go by and see what the locker contained. Perhaps it would be something quite valuable.

The next morning, Ralph took the key and repaired to the station. He walked as casually as he could to the locker and opened it. He took out the box and went to the men's room and into one of those dime booths and opened his prize. You can imagine his amazement upon discovering in the box an ermine jacket. He closed the box and stepped out and looked around, and bent down and looked beneath the doors of the other booths. The place was completely empty. He walked out, the box beneath his arm, and hailed a taxi. He gave the address of a Park Avenue apartment house.

Some time later, he returned to home and Helen, a box in his hand. It was a smaller box than the one he had carried before and he had found it not in a locker but in a drugstore. "Here, dear," he said, "this is what was in the locker." Helen fainted dead away and Ralph was left holding the box of chocolate creams in outstretched hand.

Judith, who lived on Park Avenue, just loved her new ermine.

Fred and Evelyn married happily and lived ever after, to tamper with the usual phrase a bit. They presented as compatible a facade to the world as any couple does. They seemed attentive to each other in normal social intercourse and solicitous if one or the other was ill or encountered a difficulty. Their arguments were not violent and were decently spaced in time.

Fred had a growing business that made them prosperous members of one of the better exurbs. Yet this business made its demands, of course. Fred began calling Evelyn and telling her he wouldn't be home for dinner. Several times he told her he'd be working late. On one occasion he announced that he wouldn't be working at all, he'd be taking his beautiful secretary out to dinner. Evelyn gasped, and then laughed. "Oh, you big kidder," she said, and he laughed, too.

And so it continued. Sometimes Fred would tell Evelyn he was working, sometimes he'd tell her he was taking his secretary out for the evening. And Evelyn would laugh, and he'd assure her that he wasn't kidding at all, and Evelyn would laugh some more. It was excessively jolly.

It wasn't long before Fred added trips out of town to his absences from home. Sometimes he'd tell Evelyn he was leaving on business. Sometimes he'd tell her he was taking his beautiful secretary on a pleasure trip, and they'd have quite a laugh. And eventually Evelyn began originating the jest herself, interrupting Fred to say, "And it's that secretary again, I suppose." Sometimes he'd say yes, and sometimes he'd say no.

So it went, and so it might have continued if Evelyn hadn't asked Fred for a new car. Fred told her they couldn't possibly afford one, that he'd lost $2000 on the horses just the week before, and $1000 the week before that.

Evelyn was horrified at first, but she studied her husband, and finally she laughed. "Oh, Fred," she said, "you're kidding again." Nothing would convince her he wasn't kidding, until he got his check stubs and showed her -- two stubs totaling $3000, and farther back, several for smaller amounts. Evelyn sobered considerably, and there was no more talk of a new car. The air was, in fact, rather chilly throughout the house.

The next time Fred called and announced that he was taking his secretary out for the evening, there was a hollow note in Evelyn's laughter.