“Call Europe $1.42,” said a phone-company ad we saw a couple of weeks ago. “Additional minutes are only 80c each.” Our phone was a short reach away as we read this ad, and there in the list of available countries were Austria, Denmark, France, Italy, and Sweden, where people live whom we thought instantly of calling up to say, “Hi! It’s us!” A dollar forty-two for a minute with Europe struck us as an amazing bargain. And the ad gave a number to call for international information.

We called it and got the number of a woman in Copenhagen we haven’t seen in ages, wrote it down, sat and studied it, drew some lines and circles and fancy patterns around it, and finally put it away in a desk drawer. We simply couldn’t think of what to say to Europe. The first minute would go like this:
WE: Hi! It’s us!
SHE: Who?
WE Us!
SHE: You’re kidding! Where are you calling from?
WE: America!
SHE: Really?
WE: Really!

More exclamations, an exchange of “How are you?”—”Fine”s, additional surprise, and “What time is it there?” That minute would be worth $1.42, no question about it. But we couldn’t think of what might sustain the additional, eighty-cent minutes. After the initial drama of a call from America, the conversation might very well go dry.

“So. What’s new?” she would say. “Oh, not much.”

We’d feel foolish calling Europe only to say, “Oh, not much. What’s new with you?”

We’ve always written letters to those Euro-friends. A particular type of letter: written small, with a fountain pen, on an aerogram made of translucent blue featherweight paper. A very carefully composed letter. In our book, “Dear Georges, Just a note to say hello and hope you’re doing O.K.” is not how a letter to Europe is supposed to begin. A letter to someone so distant should be a belle lettre, an essay, a little masterpiece, a real keepsake. The idea of calling up Europe and saying, “Hi! It’s us!,” as if we were calling St. Paul or San Francisco, strikes us as odd, a violation of the scale of distance, although we’re sure that a great many Americans will do exactly that. Poland is available, and Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, and one can imagine all sorts of benefits coming from inexpensive normal, loose-jointed telephone conversation along the “What’s new?” line.

Our lingering loyalty to the composed lettre on the precious translucent paper has more to do with the instruments involved, we think, than with the message. We like the feel of a good pen when we’re stroking along, thinking hard about our reader across the miles, laying down a particularly graceful “g” for her, an “m” that looks poised for flight, a plump and cheerful “q.” We enjoy the ceremony with the ink bottle, the memory of early penmanship, the lip-chewing over a sentence that can’t find its predicate, and, finally, the triumph when we have the whole thing in hand—a
handsome draft, unsmudged, the lines in smart formation—and seal it with our tongue and pound on the stamp, and savor the delicacy of the letter, as light and fragile as what we wrote inside.

To us, a telephone is a blunt, cold instrument, and there’s not much more to say about it than that. Three minutes of holding a receiver to our ear, and we can’t wait to set it down. And yet saying goodbye into a phone is much more complicated than writing “Yours ever” or “Best” or “Hugs & kisses.” We can imagine that call to Copenhagen drifting on and on while the meter clicks as two people try to sign off:
WE: Well, I better be going.
SHE: Same here. Thanks for calling.
WE: It was fun talking to you.
SHE: I was so surprised to hear your voice!
WE: Well, you sound great.
SHE: I’m amazed at how clear you sound. It’s as if you were calling from next door.
WE: Yeah. Well…
SHE: Well, I’ll let you go. This must be costing you a lot of money.
WE: No, actually the rates are pretty reasonable. A dollar forty-two for the first minute, eighty cents for each additional.
SHE: You’re kidding! That’s wonderful.
WE: Well, I got to be running along. I’m supposed to be someplace in a little while.
SHE: O.K. Well, be sure to write.
WE: You bet I will. See you, now.
SHE: Thanks again for calling.
WE: My pleasure.
SHE: ‘Bye.
WE: ‘Bye.