First Papers (18 page)

“Yes, here,” she said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

He came in, his face pale, with the grey look that could mean ill-temper or else ordinary fatigue.

“Why not?” he asked.

“No reason, just not.”

He had brought
The World
and
The Call
as well as the
Jewish News
with him, and he put them on the table as he said, “I had a bad time with Fehler. It’s getting worse, with him.”

“That fool,” she said. “What happened?”

He began to pace up and down the small kitchen as he told her of the altercation between them, and though she listened to each word, a part of her mind kept thinking, How can I change the subject to the real subject? How can I prepare him, how lessen the blow to his dignity? Aloud, she made sounds of indignation at Fehler’s too-obvious attempt to get Berkman’s book on the front page of the paper, and these she alternated with praise and approval of everything Stiva had said and done.

“There will be worse times with him,” he ended. “Before too many years have gone by, he will try to seize control of the whole paper, you will see. He will tell me what to write and what not to write. You will see.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said. “The readers would rebel, every reader the paper has, if Fehler dared. They would picket the office, they would call mass meetings, they would make it clear enough how they worship Ivarin’s work.”

He smiled. “You are a wonder, Alexandra,” he said. “When it comes to defending one of the children, or defending me, you become a mobilized army, all by yourself.”

As he spoke, he passed the chair in which she was sitting, and he paused, as if to take a second look at a stranger. She
was
a wonder in many ways. Of course, she could also drive a man mad, drive him out of the house, make him travel the whole distance to New York to earn a few hours of respite. But that did not alter this other truth: in many ways, there was no one on earth like her. Picket the office, call mass meetings!

“It won’t come for a while,” he said. “Fehler is clever. He knows he has to wait. In the meantime, I’d rather think of a glass of tea and something to eat.”

The water had been boiling for some time; the tea waited in the strainer inside the rim of the tumbler, the lemon was cut, and the sugar bowl set on the table. Alexandra also had set out a package of Uneeda Biscuits and some homemade quince jam.

She waited until he had started on his tea and jam. Then she said, “Stiva, I have something bad to tell you.”

“Anybody sick?” he asked. “One of the children?”

“It’s nothing like that. It’s only something that will make you angry. I wish I could keep it from you.”

He put down the square white cracker he was spreading with quince jam, but picked up his glass of tea.

“But you cannot keep it from me,” he said. “It is too big; I can tell from the way you look. I did not notice before, I’m sorry.”

At the kindness in his voice, the concern in his words, Alexandra felt the familiar, the abominable stinging in her eyes, and she pressed the tip of her right pinkie finger as hard as she could. Fee had once told her that you could hold back a sneeze that way. You had to press the tip so hard it began to burn; perhaps it would work now to hold back something more important.

“It’s something Elijah did,” she said. The trick must have worked. Her eyes did not sting; the tears had not begun; the break in her voice had not come.

“Something Elijah did that will anger me? Once a day he does something that angers me. He may yet harden into manhood, I do not know, Alexandra, but so far he seems—well, never mind.”

The spineless Adonis speech was nothing she could permit just now, she thought. Alas that she could not. How much easier it would be than what was to come in its place.

“This is different, Stiva,” she said. “They decided, before the baby was born, they talked it all out, and they both agreed to do this.”

Stefan looked at her attentively. This was of major importance, clearly of major importance. But she was unable to tell him. She was afraid to tell him. Afraid of how he would take it.

“They agreed to do what?” he said, with a note of impatience. “Come, Alexandra, you are dragging it out like a French novel. They decided
what?”

“To change—it’s about changing their name. The baby, after all, is born an American, of American parents on both sides, and Webster does not go very well with Ivarin.”

“But they picked ‘Webster’ because of her father.” The very act of speaking the words canceled them out. Before she could speak again, he added, “That isn’t it. They are not changing ‘Webster.’ Of course, of course. They are changing ‘Ivarin.’”

She said, “Yes, Stiva, yes, that’s it.” Her voice suddenly roughened, as Eli’s always did during an attack. “It is done already. There is not even a chance to argue with them, or persuade them against it.”

He said nothing. He did not stir. He simply sat, one hand still circling his half-empty glass of tea, the other lying close and unmoving beside it, like a tired companion.

She watched the hands, unable to look at his face. The silence in the kitchen grew. Outside it began to rain, and from the north a wind blew strong and fresh, the first heavy rain of autumn. Soon the last leaves would drift from the trees, the earth would go brown, and winter be on its way.

“I know how you feel,” she said at last. “In my own shock of hearing it, I ran to the telephone but I changed my mind. I could not tell you this—this agony, over a wire strung along a thousand electric poles from here to New York.”

He pushed his chair back and began to pace the kitchen once more. He walked up and down, up and down, and then, as if he were throwing off constricting garments, he turned abruptly through the kitchen door, and walked into the dining room, then into the living room, and then into the small front vestibule near the porch. There he turned and traversed the entire route once more.

For a time, Alexandra remained at the table in the kitchen. He was fighting the first rage, the first wound. It was wisdom, and kindness too, to give him time, to wait no matter how long, until he himself felt ready to speak.

Minute followed minute, and still she sat quiet. He had not even asked what they had changed it to. He did not care about the specific; it was the principle of it only, the total of it.

Five minutes went by, then ten. Once she heard him pause, but she guessed he was only making a cigarette, and the sound of his striking a match on his heel a moment later told her she was right. Again he resumed his pacing, still out of sight.

At last she went into the dining room. He had not turned on the light, but against the chalky walls, she could see him clearly. He had wrenched loose the necktie that lay at the base of his stiff wing collar, open at the gullet like an encircling fence with an entranceway cut into it. He seemed less erect than usual, his shoulders were uneven, the right higher than the left, as they always were after he had worked at his desk too long.

He gave no sign that he knew she had come in.

“Do you want to know what name they took?” she finally asked.

“Of course.”

“Eaves. They decided finally on Eaves. Webster Eaves, the baby is, and they are Mr. and Mrs. Elijah Eaves.”

“Well,” he said mildly. “It’s euphonious enough.”

She was startled. Whatever she had been braced for, it was most certainly not this. Most definitely and clearly nothing whatever like this. Euphonious indeed.

She watched him go through the dining room, the living room, the small vestibule, watched him turn, repeat the whole pattern, turn, repeat. It’s like a minuet, she thought. Is he going to say nothing?

“Stiva,” she began tentatively. “If you would rather not talk about it now, I would understand.”

“Yes,” he said, “I would rather not.”

“The first shock is terrible for you,” she said. “I know exactly what you feel, what the pain is like.”

For a moment he made no answer. Then he said, “You agreed we needn’t talk about it.”

“But to bottle it up inside is worse. I know how it is. I told Eli it would break your heart.”

“But it does not break my heart,” he said. “I’m afraid you were wrong.”

She stared at him in disbelief. His voice was patient, steady, not sharper than usual.

“You mean you do not mind?” she asked.

“Of course I mind. If my only son shelves my name forever, it is inevitable that I mind.”

He turned as if to resume his walking, but an exasperated “Stiva!” brought him to a halt.

“Is that all you have to say?” she demanded. “Nothing else?”

“What can I say? He’s a married man, a father, it’s his life, he’s within his rights.”

“His rights! Does that give him
carte blanche
to strike a dagger into his parents’ hearts?”

He frowned. He always frowned when her language grew “too volatile,” as he called it.

“Was there a dagger in my parents’ hearts,” he asked, “when I was arrested at the University and sent to prison?” Before she could answer, he went on, “And then when I was rescued by Drubhinov, and I left them for America, forever, for the rest of their poor lives—did they feel daggers then?”

“Stiva, what is wrong with you?” she said. “You know this is not the same kind of thing, what Eli is doing.”

“True enough. It is not the same. But is also true that he has the right to make his own life.”

“He can’t make his own life as Eli Ivarin?”

She spoke heatedly and at last, over the words, her voice broke, and her eyes filled. She was furious at Stefan’s calmness, his Olympian control. For hours she had been in torment for his sake; now, he was showing her up for a sentimental fool. How perverse he could be, how maddening.

“He has decided,” Stefan said, still not raising his voice, but now spacing his syllables, as if he were talking to one of his pupils in Beginner’ English, “it will be a better life as Eli Eaves. His ideas about life include, perhaps, matters that do not seem weighty to you or to me.”

“Weighty,” she said angrily. “What a word to use!”

“But they are weighty enough for him. And he is free to act on anything weighty, you follow me?”

“Free,” she cried. “It’s inhuman, this logic of yours, I can’t stand it.”

Abruptly, she started out of the room. At the door, she stopped. “Good night,” she said. “It’s good you do not suffer about this as I was so sure you would.”

His back was toward her, and he did not turn around. She waited an instant, sure he had heard each word anyhow. He continued his pacing, and furious once more, she suddenly screamed at his retreating back, “Because if you did, you could not bear it.”

T
HE GIRLS COULD NOT
believe it. At the risk of being late for school, they made Alexandra tell them every word she could remember about the way Papa had taken it.

“But, Mama,” Fran said, “it’s a relief, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it’s a relief.”

She said it without conviction. In her old grey bathrobe, which the girls had not seen since spring, she looked greyer and older than usual, her eyes lusterless and her hair still in its short grey braid down her back, despite her rule that nobody could appear at breakfast without a washed face and combed hair.

“But you sound funny,” Fran persisted. “I should think you’d be just plain happy that he didn’t get mad.”

“Yes, darling, you would think so.”

Fee, who had been listening in silence, now asked, “Will he be in a bad mood when he gets up?”

“I don’t know,” Alexandra said. “I can’t decide what he feels, no matter what he said last night. It didn’t ring true, that’s all.”

“Then he will be in a mood,” Fee said. She sounded resigned, not frightened, but prepared. Now began the uneasy time, the queer time that lasted as long as Papa’s moods lasted. Sometimes they were over in a day or two, but sometimes they would go on and on forever.

Out in the vestibule, the telephone began its one-two, one-two that meant it was their half of the party line. “It’s Joan,” Alexandra said positively, “to find out if I did tell him last night.”

Fran and Fee followed her out to the boxlike little hall that held only a clothes tree of varnished oak and a high narrow table for the tall black telephone.

“Yes, I did,” Alexandra said at once into it. “He remained—well, judicious. Aloof, that’s a better word, Joan.” She listened. “No, not angry at all. I was quite surprised.”

“Come on, Fee,” Fran said. “We’ll just make it by the skin of our teeth as it is.”

“Go, children,” Alexandra said, turning from the telephone to kiss them. “And don’t worry.”

But as they hurried off, half running to the corner where they had to separate, apprehension spun its faint web across both their faces.

“Franny, will you get home right after last period?” Fee asked.

“I can’t. Today’s basketball.”

“Then I’ll hang around Study Hall a while. But don’t go for a sundae or anything after basketball, will you?”

Fran promised and Fee went off alone. Off and on during the day her apprehension returned. While Papa was in a mood, he would never look at anybody, never say a word to anybody. Or else he would yell out orders, “Stop that infernal racket,” or “Get out of my room—it doesn’t
need
any cleaning.”

Even the way he walked told you he was in a mood. He would come down the stairs slowly, clearing his throat again and again, making thick phlegmy sounds, not caring whether it made other people feel sick to hear him. If anyone was in the kitchen, he would grump a good morning or a hello at the air in general, and then sit over his paper, drinking coffee but ignoring any cereal or eggs or fruit put before him either by Mama or the Polish servant girl, if this was one of the times they had a new one.

Not once would he look up from his reading; “working,” he called it because he was always on the hunt for something to write about. And then the afternoon mail would come and he would start on that. Before the first day of a mood was over, the whole house felt as if somebody were in bed dying. And after the second or third day, the sight of his untouched food could suddenly drive Mama out of the kitchen, out of the house. She would go downtown to Main Street, and stay down there long enough to buy a million dollars’ worth of clothes and groceries and jewelry and books. When she finally did come home, he might still be sitting there, and again all he would do would be to grump some words about “going upstairs” or “going to the office.”