THE STORIES THEY TELL

At sidewalk cafes, in dreary queues, on street corners and stubble-strewn fields throughout the world, men paused last week (as every week) to pass a word with their fellows and lighten their burdens with a wry joke. Here 85 there, as the talk shuttled, TIME'S correspondents bent an ear to listen:

In Bucharest, Rumanians forgot for a moment the might of the Red army in the account of the latest U.S. super-super-super Flying Fortress. It was so huge that the pilot, hearing a noise behind him, had to dispatch a courier by motorcycle to locate the trouble. "Just a football game on the lower deck," came the report. Another ruckus. "A water polo match in the swimming pool." A terrific bang. "Now the boys are furious, sir," reported the messenger. "A Russian plane was trying to buzz us. It flew in through the window and crashed on the basketball court."

Also from Bucharest last week came another story (true), of a U.S. diplomat who had some business to conduct with a high-ranking official of Rumania's heavily guarded Ministry of the Interior. After several unsuccessful attempts, he finally managed to work his way into the imposing white ministry building, and past innumerable guards, to the top floor. There stood two doors with a hardboiled, armed member of the security police posted before each one. The American showed his credentials to the guard at the first door, who looked him over suspiciously and disappeared into the official's office. The American waited, standing first on one foot, then on the other. Suddenly the guard at the other door glanced furtively up & down the corridor. Then, sidling up to the astonished diplomat, he whispered hoarsely: "When are the Americans coming?"

In Communist Budapest, where the shadow of the Kremlin grows longer and blacker every day, they were telling an old story* to cheer themselves up. Two workers, Erno and Lajos (Magyar for Pat & Mike), were discussing whether life under the people's republic was better than the old days. "Obviously it is," said Erno. "Why?" asked Lajos. "Well," said Erno, "in the old days you lived in a cold, dirty flat, ate a few crusts of bread for breakfast, and then shivered on the street waiting for a tram. After a long, hard day you returned to your flat and froze all night.

"Now it's different. The boss's car takes you to work. You work in a warm, clean office, and when the day is done, the boss's car takes you to his luxurious apartment. There you eat steak, drink red wine, and, after brandy and coffee by the fire, you go to bed in a soft, clean bed in the boss's bedroom."

"This happens to you?" asked Lajos in amazement. "Don't be silly," said Erno. "I'm talking about my daughter."

The latest plight of the parsimonious Nizam of Hyderabad was being relished by many an Indian who had never seen moths fly out of a tightwad's purse in U.S. vaudeville. The Nizam, they told one another, had stacked his private vault with some 250,000 rupees in Indian currency long before his country was grabbed by India. When he came to get it, however, the worms had got there first and the Bank of India refused to honor the half-eaten bills.

A Londoner, obsessed by the high cost of living in Britain, wrote to the Times about the excesses of this year's Guy Fawkes Day, on which London urchins traditionally beg "a penny for the Guy, sir?" "I do not complain at the poorness of the floor show that they were putting on," he wrote solemnly, "but I recoiled to hear them cry, 'Tuppence for the Guy, sir?' ... I feel constrained to inquire whether the country can today afford a surcharge of 100 percent for such a matter."

And from Paris came a dialogue between two Frenchmen in a bar:

First Frenchman: If the Russians invade France, Mr. Truman will drop his atom bombs on Russia, but not on Paris.

Second Frenchman: C'est c,a. Then the Russians will deport us all to Russia, like the Germans did.

First: C'est c,a. Then all the Russians will come and live in France.

Second: C'est c,a. So the best thing is to explain the situation to Mr. Truman, then he won't drop his atom bombs on Russia.

First: C'est c,a. Then if he doesn't drop them on Russia, the Russians won't send us to Russia.

Second: C'est c,a. Then Truman won't really need any atom bombs.

First: C'est c,a. So what do we have to worry about?

Second: C'est c,a. Let's have another drink.

First: C'est c,a.

* The same gag, turned now against the Communist big shots, had been chortled over many times in Central Europe in the early part of this century, when it was told to describe the future of emigrants to the capitalistic U.S.

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