Yes, We Have No Bananas

A Fable. by S. Langfur

Part II

"Could we talk to Simon now?" Melvin asked.
"Who's that?"
"The one that looks so noble and likeable. You promised." "Oh, yes," said the doctor. "Do you think you can navigate on your own?" "I'll give it a try."
Hesitantly, carefully, Melvin followed the doctor at a distance, making his way around the dim but brightening forms. Finally he reached the stately old man, who shone so brilliantly, the forms seemed to vanish again.
"Oh, noble sir!" Melvin began.
"Nobel," the old man corrected him.
"Oh, Mr. Nobel," said Melvin, "what in the world do you have in that coconut? I couldn't imagine anything - diamonds or pearls - that could keep me such a prisoner as you."
"I am a prisoner, indeed. I shackle myself to the peace process."
"Now that's more like it!" exclaimed Melvin.
Simon the Nobel contemplated his coconut. "I could be bounded in a nutshell, sir, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have marvelous dreams that would benefit all. Look here!" He removed his hand from the hole and offered the latter to Melvin's eyes, though not letting go of the nut. Melvin saw a golden glow inside. He grew very excited. This time, he thought, there is something. On examination, however, it proved to be the reflection from Simon the Nobel's face.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Nobel," he said, "I don't see anything."
"That is because it doesn't exist yet. You must be able to see with an eye to the future."
"Oh, now I understand why the doctor wanted me to talk with you last," said Melvin. "Past, present, and future."
"If you stay with me and develop a futural eye, you will learn that the only way we can survive in this region is to normalize relations."
"Normalize!" said Melvin. "That sounds very good, after all I've seen!"
"They will have to accept us, we will have to accept them."
"How symmetrical!" said Melvin. "Like splitting the yogurt!"
"Shhh!" said Simon, looking anxiously about. "Don't mention splitting! Someone might think we were trying to split the you-know-what."
"What?"
Simon leaned down to him and whispered in his ear: "You're better off not knowing. You see that man over there?" He indicated a nervous-looking fellow with an enormous coconut. "That's my assistant. You don't want to see what he's got in his!"
"What is it?" asked Melvin.
"Just a little project I had a modest part in. It rhymes with dukes. Dukes, pukes, flukes… Like, put up your dukes! Put up your nnnn…" He nodded eagerly at Melvin.
"Nukes?" tried Melvin.
"Shhhh!" said the gracious old man, placing his finger to his lips and glancing anxiously about. "We do not like to talk about that. We shall not be the first, I say, to introduce them into the region!"
"Well," said Melvin, with a wave toward the enormous coconut, "if that's not introducing, what is?"
"Until it goes off," said Simon the Nobel, "you haven't been properly introduced."
"I'd rather not be," said Melvin. "That's the ultimate suicide-bombing, seems to me."
"Let's change the subject," said Simon the Nobel. "Try looking into my nut again. I think your eyes may already be futural enough. You will see our country as the brains of the region."
Melvin looked, but still he saw nothing. He gestured toward the forms around him, which were nearly solid again, despite Simon's radiance. "What about them?"
"Who?" asked Simon.
"Them. All these. The ones without coconuts."
"Ah, they are the muscles. Together, brains and muscles, we shall make up one body among the great industrial regions of the world."
"What if they don't want to be muscles?" asked Melvin. "What if they want to be brains?"
"They don't have a choice. We are already here, and we are the brains. It's a reality they will have to accept. What's their alternative? They can't throw us into the sea. That's what my little project is for." "But how do they know about your little project, if you don't tell them?"
"It's the Mae West question," Simon answered. "'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?' We'll be glad to see them, and they'd better be glad to see us."
"Well, I don't know," said Melvin. "They don't look glad. I don't see how what you are doing can make them glad. What if they don't get glad enough? What if they keep on not being glad? If all you've got in the end is your little project…"
Just then the monkey went scampering by. Melvin turned to the doctor. "Hey, doc, the monkey got loose!"
The doctor shrugged. "The banana rots by the end of the day. If only they had bananas, Mr. Tucker! Or anything else. It's this nothingness that's so hard to cure!"
Simon the Nobel gave a start. "What nothingness?" he asked. "This is where we live, doctor. It's not nothing to us. We don't have anywhere else."
"The trouble is," said the doctor, "you don't know where you live. You think you live in the Bible, you think you live in Europe, you think you live in a New Middle East. The one thing you don't know is where you live. Until you do, you've got nothing. When you take what does not belong to you, it turns what you've got to nothing."
Simon the Nobel glanced quickly into his coconut. A look of tranquility again crept over his sad and stately face.
The doctor sighed. "Come, Mr. Tucker, I have something else to show you. A little surprise." He led our hero a few steps further, and there was an unclaimed coconut with a nice fresh hole, chained to a nice fresh stake.
"This one is for you, Mr. Tucker," the doctor announced. Melvin's heart leaped. He picked it up and looked inside, and for the first time, much to his delight, he could see things. He saw the holy city of Jerusalem gleaming in gold. He saw the mountains and valleys of the biblical heartland. He saw the frozen yogurts of Tel Aviv. He saw the whole land pulsing with high-tech, linked to the other great nations of the globe. He saw happiness and splendor - a paradise on earth. As though in a trance, he inserted his hand and grasped it all. "I am one of them!" he thought. "I belong here!"
Just then, however, Melvin noticed the others around him, great masses of the coconutless. They kept fading in and out. For a moment they disappeared once more, and Melvin thought, "Ah! I can be happy!" But then they flickered again into presence, becoming as solid as people - indeed, they were people! A strange feeling crept down Melvin's arm to his hand in the nut. He felt as though he'd been caught doing something shameful. He quickly withdrew it.
"No, doctor," he said. "This is not my nut."
"I am glad to hear it," said the doctor. "I think we can leave now."
They headed toward the door. As the doctor opened it, a shout arose. It was the ones with coconuts. They were surging toward the opening in frenzy, only to be whipped back by their chains. They surged again and again, like the waves of the sea, with piteous cries of yearning.
"Let go!" Melvin shouted back from the threshold. "Just let go! There's nothing in there!" But they merely kept surging, arrested each time, as if grabbed by their very own hands.