First Papers (63 page)

It also was a valuable object lesson to the girls; it told them as words never could tell them, that there were not limitless quantities of money available to fulfill their every wish, whether it were Fran’s endless need for new clothes and new trimmings for her tennis court, or Fee’s periodic spasms about going to college, which she doubtless soon would outgrow.

Now that Alexandra and he would reject any offer for the house, it was pointless to keep the sign there. Yet he clung to it, like an ignoramus who thought it had proved its power to ward off the evil eye.

Between them, he thought comfortably, they had indeed warded off the worst. Since they had put their house on the block, their fortunes had climbed upward—in every particular except his writing. Miraculous though it seemed, his heavy schedule of lecturing did not shoot up his blood pressure in any lethal way; both doctors had to agree that he was physically better when he was not in a black mood, and lecturing always lifted his spirits, elated him, made him feel at his best. These mysteries were beyond the medicos, that was certain; if, because of holidays, he had periods with no lectures, and did nothing but rest and stay quiet, his blood pressure soon was at an alarming high. When he was up on the platform, excited and concentrated day after day, it behaved remarkably well.

The second campaign for Wilson last year, and the wartime attacks on the slightest demands of labor as “unpatriotic,” both had sent his speaking schedule to new heights. By the end of the year his lectures had brought in very nearly the same money as he would have made had he still been on the paper.

The Paper. No longer did a snake leap and writhe in his bowels at the thought of it, the sight of it, the mention of it. No longer was it a painful pleasure to see Abe Kesselbaum, and hear the latest news of it, a pleasure vitiated at first by an insensate envy and rage, yet a pleasure he could not deny himself because it satisfied his undiminishing interest in what was happening to Fehler, to Borg, to Mrs. Landau and Jacob Steinberger, a man he could have enjoyed getting to know had Steinberger not been bound to Miriam Landau, that female Uriah Heep.

The paper’s circulation, Abe kept reporting, was “up again.” It kept rising with cliff-like abruptness for over two years and then had leveled off, holding steady at 200,000, second by a few thousand only to the
Forward.
The profits, despite the greater costs and much larger staff, had gone up sharply too. Nothing was too cheap to get by, either in text or in pictures, though Steinberger had finally balked and persuaded Mrs. Landau to vote against one expose of working girls seduced by factory owners, not on the ground of vulgarity but on the livelier one of possible libel suits. This had been rather recent; Abe had told him of it the last time they met, told it with relish, as Ivarin had heard it with relish. He found himself mortified that he should be pleased, but pleased he was.

“You know Borg and how he’d take it,” Abe Kesselbaum said with a malicious grin.

“I suppose so.”

“He had talked it over with every living soul on the paper beforehand. Remember the way he talked to everybody about his damned survey until you had to call him off?”

“I remember.”

“He’s ten times worse by now. Whatever idea he gets, he chews off every ear on the paper about it, from the press room up. So when he was voted down on his seduced girls in the January meeting, he took it as a public kick in the teeth, thank God.”

Ivarin laughed with unfeigned pleasure. With Abe he had never dissembled; he never would. Of late they were meeting again in the café next door to the paper. Ivarin still had a special sensation each time he walked the familiar route from the Delancey Street station, but for a long time now the “specialness” had been free of that early bitterness of longing to be back on the paper as its editor. There was still a faint sadness, a deprivation, but no longer anything strong enough to be destroying.

This easing-off was not true of his feeling toward Fehler. It was Fehler who had killed him on the paper, and he had no ability to love his enemies. He was delighted that the
Times
had climbed even higher than the
Jewish News,
to a steady 325,000 circulation and five millions in advertising, and all this without any of the trashy tricks and gaudy splash of Fehler’s paper.

Well, Ivarin thought now as he approached the newsstand, I’ve done well enough, despite Mr. Fehler. We’ve done well enough, rather.

Alexandra had been remarkable, and that was a fact. Not once had she tired or complained of working too hard, and by now she was ready to lord it over him when the word “lecture” was used. Three separate groups of immigrant women she had now, on three separate evenings, each group held about twenty, and in the war-born prosperity, the fee was twenty cents, so some twelve dollars a week came in this way, in addition to the ten or twelve more from her many lessons.

Prosperity, he thought wryly. In a way we are both war profiteers. He had reached the stationery store where he went twice each day for the latest papers, unless he was out of town. The owner had his three papers ready for him, the
Evening World,
the
Sun
and the miserable
Journal
with its thousand distortions, that he read as if he were still an editor and bound to keep track of the entire field. For him, in truth, there was no such thing as a glut of reading about the war. For him it was not only the war it was for everybody else: for a man born in Russia more than half a century ago, it was also the incredible possibility he had dreamed of and youthfully worked for and endlessly believed in. From the first days of the war, he had found a never-slaked thirst and hunger in him for news, but in addition there was a special passion for war news involving Russia. Ever since the loss of a million men on the Eastern Front, since the rumors of the demoralized army, the workers openly threatening strikes, his political sixth sense had been telling him that gigantic news was in the offing. History was on the march in Russia again.

Unconsciously, Ivarin speeded his pace as he walked up the hill. Drubhinov—was he still alive, that marvelous being who had drawn him into the movement, and then arranged his escape from prison? He had never written from America; it was their code. Foreign stamps and postmarks awoke the interest of the authorities too deeply, too fast.

Of course Drubhinov is alive, Ivarin thought. Petya was my age, why shouldn’t he be? He suddenly saw the fair-haired handsome young face, and longing stirred in him. They had quarreled about extremism as they became closer friends, quarreled over Stefan’s conviction that even within a revolutionary movement, extremism was a proposal to exchange an old tyranny for a new.

“You and your tactic of moderateness, both of you belong in England,” Petya once told him. “Or in France or America. Not here in Russia.”

Had Drubhinov stuck fast to that rejection of moderation? In the 1905 Revolution, then, he would have sided with the Bolsheviki, opposed to Stefan and the Mensheviki. Enemies!

Stefan let his mind drift and speculate. Soon Shag was upon him, and in the house Alexandra greeted him as if she had been lying in wait for him. “Maybe you can help me remember,” she said before he had shaken the snow out of his overcoat and overshoes. “I want to tell my other two groups that story about Joey and the pictures, but I can’t remember how I started it. Can you?”

“Something about wanting to tell them of a little boy with the most wonderful manners—”

“That’s it. Just a second—I’ll write it down.”

He watched her scribble it on the back of a bill from the grocery store, and he said, “I told you, you should always make notes so you
won’t
forget.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “I’ve tried, but it’s no good. Later on, I don’t know what the notes are supposed to lead me to.”

“Then write it all out, like a letter. Make believe you are writing somebody all about it, perhaps in a letter to me. ‘Dear Stiva, Today I told Sophie’s group about a little boy named Joey who had the most wonderful manners.’ Do you follow me?”

“And go on to the end?”

“The idea is to keep you from stiffening up and getting formal. Just you try writing down the two words, ‘Dear Stiva,’ and see if it doesn’t help.”

“I’ll try it right now.” Supper was late that night, and she looked weary when they had it. But at about midnight, she appeared upstairs at his desk, saying, “Could you glance at this?”

The pages she handed him were from his own writing tablet; he frowned at the larceny, and began to read.

Dear Stiva,

Let me tell you about a little boy with the most wonderful manners. His name is Joey. He is in kindergarten. In his school one day, the teacher was giving some of the modern tests, to tell whether a child was quick-minded and attentive to detail.

In order to do this, she handed Joey a picture, and said, “Tell me what you see, Joey.”

The first picture was of a woman with two ears on each side of her head.

Joey stared at the picture, turned it upside down and then turned it right side up again.

“Thank you, it’s wonderful,” he said, handing it back.

“Is anything wrong with the picture, Joey?” his teacher said.

“No, ma’am, it’s nice,” he said, and with a polite little smile he accepted the next picture she gave him. This one was of a horse and wagon. The horse had the right number of ears, but he had only two legs, one in front and one in back. Joey stared at this picture, until his teacher said, “Is anything wrong, Joey?”

Then he said, “No, ma’am, it’s nice,” and smiled politely once more.

Then the teacher gave him a third picture of a dog with three legs, another of a tricycle with five wheels, and last of all, a top spinning on its thick bottom, with its metal point in the air. Each time, Joey gave the same answer. So the teacher decided he was backward about “perception” and she sent a report to the principal, who then asked Joey’s mother to come to school to hear the sad news.

Poor mother! She was heartbroken about her little Joey, and when she got home, she asked him if he had not noticed that the woman had four ears, and the horse only two legs, and so on. Joey burst out laughing.

“Sure,” he yelled. “But you always slap me if I say it’s rotten, so I didn’t.”

From this little story of Joey, maybe you will see a moral: Tell your child to be honest and say just what he or she thinks. Don’t, please, force the poor little one always to say “it’s lovely, it’s perfect, thank you.”

Maybe you don’t think you are forcing your own child to be such a hypocrite. But if you have ever scolded him for saying “it’s no good,” or “I don’t want it,” when you or anybody else gives him something, why, then you’re in danger of having a little Joey on your hands, instead of a good lively little soul who says everything from the heart.

So stop nagging at your little boy or girl to say “Thank you, it’s wonderful,” and let them say what they think. In the long run, life will tell them when to be tactful. You needn’t worry about it now.

Stefan began to smile almost at the first paragraph, and at the end he let her see he was delighted. “It’s good,” he said, “quite pleasant reading, human and natural all the way through.”

“Oh, Stiva.”

“You ought to do just this,” he said, “every time you give your women some anecdote they seem to like. You know the other two groups will like it too, and you have it saved up as soon as you write it down.”

“It does fix it in my own mind,” she agreed. “I might even read it aloud to Anna’s group tomorrow night.”

“When you’re through with Joey,” he said jovially, “don’t throw him away. Give him to me.”

“What for?”

“A souvenir, should I say?” He looked at her mysteriously. “No, that’s not it. I want to—” he broke off and said, with a touch of irritation, “Do I have to account for every impulse I may have?”

Several days went by before he said, “Are you through with Joey or not?”

“Yes, I forgot,” she said and went to her sewing room for it. Forgot, he thought. She’s probably beside herself wondering why I should want it.

“And here is another one I did,” Alexandra said, giving him a set of new pages as well. “This one is about spanking, about what you said to Eli about making a liar out of Webby. But I didn’t give any names.”

This time Stefan did not seem amused as he read. But he read with attention, even absorption, and then said, “That’s it too, a different genre, but it will catch at them.”

He put the Joey pages into his pocket and as soon as he was alone at his desk, he inked out “Dear Stiva,” and sent them off to the editor of
Abend,
a small evening newspaper that had been in existence since the first winter of the war. He signed the pages only “Alexandra Bartschoi,” though on the back of the envelope, he wrote, “Ivarin, 800 Hill Avenue, Barnett, L. I.”

Having written it in ink, he paused and stared at it. Force of habit, he thought, and wondered whether there were some motive mixed into this reflex action. He considered tearing up the envelope, and writing another. “A.B.I., 800 Hill Ave, Barnett” would be return address enough; “Ivarin” was not essential. But he had already put a stamp on it. Nonsense; he would mail it as it was.

Garry found a three-room furnished flat in the town of Flushing, not more than a twenty-minute drive from the Synthex plant. It was on the second floor of a two-family house, ugly as sin, with one saving grace: a view of Flushing Bay from the front windows.

Even in the denuded landscape of early March, with the low-lying ground still patched with smoky snow, there was a sparkle to the water that cheered him when he went about in the unfamiliar morning silence, shaving, dressing and getting his breakfast. He liked to cook, he discovered, but it was so new, so abnormal almost, to wake alone, to spend this first hour of the day in total solitude, that each day began with heaviness. He wondered if Letty was finding it the same experience; she had Blanche, of course, a human presence around. It must make some small difference.

He would get used to it. His parents had invited him—he had known they would, and he had known that he would refuse—to live at home again, but he was twenty-eight, a man who had been married for seven years, nearly eight, and he couldn’t go back to being a child in his parents’ house again, not even as a temporary thing.