Coast to Coast Read Free Page A

all its buffooneries, its presence is one of New York’s noblest claims to fame. It is an extra-territorial pride, for technically it is not on American soil at all, but in a diplomatic enclave of its own: but its precarious survival in this cut-throat keep has subtly affected the moods of Manhattan, sharpening the city’s deep-rooted cynicism, often acerbating its prejudices, and touching it with a new, if reluctant, grandeur.
    There the great edifice stands, like a slab of fire, with its parade of white flag-staffs gleaming in the street-lights, and the humped black limousines patient at its doors. You lean your arms on a wooden barrier, perhaps, at the bottom of 45th Street, and beside you a policeman sits bored but vigilant upon his horse, and behind you the city traffic rumbles away in the dark, and to the west the last glimmer of day still hangs over New Jersey: and out of that severe but glittering structure there seems to emanate a kind of hum or pulse, like a beat of turbines, asthough it is some tall strange engine working away there in the night, or a missile primed for the count-down. It feels almost mystically aloof and preoccupied, shut off from its shabby surroundings by gardens, plazas and promenades; and when, after a moment or two of dazzled contemplation, you duck beneath your barrier and cross the road to the United Nations, it is like traversing some unmarked but crucial frontier, or a gulf between constellations. “Watch the lights, now‚” says the policeman from his horse, and instinctively you turn and offer him a diffident farewell wave, as an astronaut might bravely gesture to the last workman on the launching pad.
    Sure enough, there is a cosmic flavour inside the place, when you have shown your pass to the guards at the gate, proved that your bag contains no bombs or phials of poison, and crossed the wide empty plaza to the entrance. You sense a sort of insulating miasma forming around you, as though you are being sealed in protective cellophane, and the moment you step inside the revolving doors, to see the great golden pendulum swinging from the ceiling, you feel hermetically removed from the very atmosphere of New York. The air is unfamiliar from the start, prim but pungent. A faint suggestion of scent and disinfectant lingers among the pillars. The attendants at the door wear a special blue uniform of their own, like republican Ruritanians, and down the hall towards you shuffles a man with a broom and a plastic dustpan, swishing away the last speck of human dust, the last atom of nationality, the last morsel of fallibility. There is a distinctly dedicated feeling in the air, making you wonder uneasily whether you ought to take your hat off. No razzle-dazzle of free enterprise informs these high halls, no bugle calls of empire echo through the marble. You must on no account whistle Rule Britannia as you cross the foyer, and it might be worth checking, before you venture upstairs, that your buttons are all done up.
    A new order of acolytes attends the shrine, presiding with icy competence over its information desks, delicately operating its elevators, standing beyond race or sovereignty, beyond error, beyond fatigue. It talks in a muted half-foreign English, such as a computer might utter, and it has to its manners some of the hush of the Ivy League, and some of the concentration of brain surgery. Its girls, in svelte blue skirts, saris or Chinese tunics, are all extraordinarily beautiful and unbelievably nice: if ever you spot one examining a colleague’s couture, it is only with an expression in her eyes of unfailing sisterly affection. Nor do the men seem to suffer from any of the usual human failings. They are splendid of physique, tireless of energy, never hot, harassed or impatient, and they answer your every query with unvarying, smiling, anonymous,almost robot-like goodwill. They are a supernal breed. I once trod on an attendant’s toe, stepping off an escalator. He was six feet