The Broken Mirror

The Eiffel Tower still stood above the Champ de Mars, and the Mediterranean Sea, unmoved by apocalyptic whips, still gently lapped Riviera beaches. But Frenchmen felt that it had been a close call.

The Tightrope. Headlines in Paris papers had trumpeted: "Tomorrow the world is going to blow up," and Scientist Robert Esnault-Pelterie had warned that Crossroads might well start a fatal chain reaction. On the appointed Day of Wrath, a load of wooden wine caskets broke loose from a truck in Casablanca, French Morocco, and hollowly thundered on the cobbled street. That touched off riots: thousands of Arabs were sure that the Angel Israfil was summoning them to their doomsday tightrope, whence (so said the Prophet) the damned would fall into hell.

Christendom's faithful, nearly as apprehensive, crowded French churches in record numbers to be shriven. Millions of listeners sat paralyzed by their radios. Said the Paris announcer: "Now you will hear some silence from Bikini." After 15 seconds of torturing silence, the announcer said: "A listener just phoned to say that the bomb went off 45 minutes ago. It is hard to believe that the listener is better informed than we." But he was.

Nelson's Hat. The Thing had grown a little less awful as a result of Bikini; its apparently infinite power was finite after all. Le Canard Enchaine ran a cartoon of a fashionable woman refusing a rendezvous the day before the test: "I really can't tomorrow. I have the end of the world. How about the day after?" Cried Communist Humanite: "The bomb lost some of its prestige. . . . They will no longer be able to play so easily with the nerves and imaginations of people. . . ." Said a disappointed London clerk: "I rather imagined Nelson's hat falling off in Trafalgar Square." Japan was hardly more interested. Said Mrs. Kiku Mori, a Tokyo housewife: "We Japanese women do not like to think of these things." In Shanghai's bars the crack-of-the-week was: "The Russians will probably get the bomb on the Shanghai black market."

But the first impression of anticlimax soon gave way to serious comments. Said London's News Chronicle: "Nothing could detract from the essential solemnity of the occasion--not even the vulgar high spirits that . . . painted on this instrument of fate the picture of a pinup star 'in a low-cut gown.' We cannot defy history by guffawing in her face."

Perhaps the best indication that the bomb had lost nothing of its political force came from Russia. Wrote Pravda: "In New York one may buy atomic ties, in restaurants they serve atomic cocktails, and on variety stages there are atomic blondes. . . . Against such a background . . . the results of the tests were more modest than . . . expected. [But the test confirmed] that the atomic bomb possesses enormous destructive power." Pravda stuck to its story that the U.S. was plotting atomic war: "[The test] basically undermined faith in the seriousness of U.S. talks of atomic disarmament."

Bad Luck. Bikini left plain people as worried as Pravda, but for different, vaguer reasons. In Paris' rue Cambon, about 25 minutes' walk away from the Big Four Conference Hall, the day after Bikini a long narrow mirror fastened to a wall suddenly fell to the ground without apparent cause. A crowd gathered about the broken glass that boded seven years of bad luck to someone. A frowzy woman murmured: "The atom bomb." The people near her nodded gravely.

*Most extreme example: Fifth Avenue's Ricardo's jewelry advertisement: "BURSTING FURY --Atomic Inspired Pin & Earring. New fields to conquer with Atomic jewelry. The pearled bomb bursts into a fury of dazzling colors in mock rhinestones, emeralds, rubies and sapphires. . . . As daring to wear as it was to drop the first atom bomb. Complete set $24.75."

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