First Papers (71 page)

Again she thought about it before answering. “He’s forever saying, ‘It’s a great country’ or ‘It’s the hope of the world.’ “

“But that’s as close as he gets, isn’t it? And your mother—sentimental as she is—?”

“Or he’ll talk about how immigrants love it, and how native-born Americans sort of forget what it stands for, and they need immigrants coming here to remind them, to let them see it again with new eyes.”

Garry leaned back a little, the unsuspected teacher within him satisfied. “Some words you can’t say straight out, Fee,” he said. “Some things may seem ‘wild’ to other people, but you can’t talk out about what’s back of them or inside them.”

“I suppose not,” she said.

“There are so many ways to show whether you love your country,” he said slowly. “You can work for it, in some real way, or even suffer for it.”

“Or die for it?”

He repeated, “Or die for it. But not kill for it.”

“In a war—even then?”

“I wouldn’t think it was the same, Fee. You could kill off one enemy, or ten, but that’s not the same as doing something for your country itself, or its future.”

He could almost see her mind working over what he had said. That somber, thoughtful look, he thought, you don’t see that very often. People look interested or bored, happy or sad, annoyed or furious, but rarely thoughtful and somber. She’s weighing and balancing, trying to decide.

Suddenly he said, “You funny girl,” and smiled at her.

The call from Abe Kesselbaum early that evening puzzled Stefan Ivarin, but he willingly agreed to meet him late the same night. He was more puzzled when Abe rejected the café and suggested instead another restaurant several blocks away from the
Jewish News.
“Something happened today at the meeting,” Abe said and that was clue enough. So often had Abe been the source of flash news—he was his last connection with the privileged speed of journalists the world over—that he had assumed this was another scoop from the ticker, but it was shoptalk which Abe didn’t want to pass along too publicly. Ivarin told him about Alexandra’s “promotion” and turned the telephone over to her so Abe could congratulate her himself, but he was already wondering what this news could be.

He arrived at the restaurant much too early, fortified with the early morning editions of everything. Each front page told of the ten-million registration across the country, still being counted but unprecedented, larger than any known before in any land on earth, told it, yelled it, shouted it. Two months of being in the war had made over the entire American press, English-language and foreign; roaring headlines were a daily affair now with all the papers, and there would be no return to a civilized mien for any of them until the war ended. Pure garishness was no longer the circus barker that brought people in; the human eye had deadened to the sight, the inner ear deafened to the shriek. Ivarin wondered if Abe would tell him circulation was off at the
Jewish News
and vaguely hoped so. Hearst’s
American
and
Journal
were in a slump, their circulation down, their international wire service long barred from France and England, the rags themselves now barred from Canada, the Hearstian harvest of years of anti-British tirades and pro-German admiration, but proof too that sensationalism alone was no longer a guarantee for any paper.

“Am I late? Have you been here long?” Abe said, hurrying in.

“It’s nothing, I was early.”

“Have you heard anything, from anybody else?”

“Not a word.” Ivarin saw Abe’s pleased look and waited for him to order. Time and disappointment had done their work on Abe; he was forty now and looked it; the sheen of pink scalp that used to gleam through his thinning black hair now had no interference at all. But he looked better, stronger as a personality; his years of discipline as the Number Two man on layout and make-up had toughened him and taught him he could survive. A valuable tonic for any man.

“It starts with Miriam Landau,” Abe said. “I told you she was sick? Well, it got worse. Last week she had a sort of paralysis in her legs, and she can’t go anywhere, attend meetings, nothing.”

Ivarin made a small sound of acknowledgment. He could feel no warmth toward her, but it was unpleasant to hear about the physical pain or destruction of anyone.

“She’s nearly seventy, would you believe it?” Abe went on. “I never thought she was older than Isaac, five, six years older.”

“I had no idea.” He was startled; of recent years he had begun to be aware of people’s ages, and to remember them, but when something reminded him of Itzak, he was the man he had been when he died. He had to calculate now: if he were alive, Itzak would be about sixty-five. “So she’s seventy,” he said, believing it at last.

“And Steinberger has to think ahead. Those four daughters, remember? And their four husbands?” Ivarin cast his eyes upward and Abe gave an unfeeling little laugh. “Steinberger is resolved not to live through another performance like last time, not to put the whole staff through it all over again.”

An arrow of memory pierced Ivarin. That fearful waiting, that damnable wrack of not-knowing. Impatience seized him now. “Come, Abe, let’s have it, has he a way out?”

“He arranged the succession
now,
you might say,” Abe said in a sudden rush. “She’s transferring her stock to the daughters now, and Steinberger is to represent all of them. He has a big contract, five years, renewable for another five. He’s turning over most of his law office to his son, to do it.”

“A contract as what?” Ivarin leaned forward.

“As the top Something,
over
Fehler,” Abe said. “Oh, Fehler remains Publisher, nothing changes there. Borg stays City Editor, my boss stays my boss, everything stays the same, everybody the same. But the paper has a new top-story, that’s all.”

Ivarin thumped the table. “That
is
a piece of news, Abe.” He ripped off his glasses. “A new top-story, by whatever name.”

“President of the
Jewish News
—that may be Steinberger’s title. Maybe Chairman. Does it matter?”

Ivarin said it did not matter. Involuntarily, dismayingly, his mind had already asked, Would this mean I could go back there? Could I be an editor again? After nearly four years, could it ever work? Never, not with Fehler and Borg and Miriam and Miriam’s daughters. No matter who’s the “top-story.” Never. Let me not get into that torture chamber again.

“How did they take it, Abe?”

If Kesselbaum saw his agitation, he gave no sign of it. “They were full of joy, big congratulations. Fehler ‘congratulated the paper’ on its good luck. Since devoting himself to Miriam’s interests, Fehler had said, Mr. Steinberger had become a true expert in journalism, as he always became expert in his clients’ affairs. Et cetera.”

“And Borg?”

“The same, and Bunzig and Kinchevsky. Even I. Just like a big bar mitzvah.” He laughed, but Ivarin didn’t notice.

“And Steinberger? Did he say anything special?”

“That there would be no changes. The usual. But then he said something else.” Abe lighted a cigarette and went on more slowly. “He said he sometimes wondered if people didn’t feel—now, in this time of war—feel the need for something in the paper that made it legitimate to suffer a little. Even if they didn’t have a boy in uniform.”

“A point,” Ivarin said. “A good point.”

A long time ago he had thought Steinberger might be an interesting man to know, had he not been tied to Miriam Landau. Now he thought it again. But that kind of thinking was trying the knob of the torture chamber, and he moved back from it sharply. After a time both men fell silent, Abe smoking, Ivarin intently watching the curl and twist of smoke from his cigarette. How long it had been, too, since he was tormented by a cigarette in somebody else’s fingers. But he was free of it forever and would stay free. Life changed and curled and twisted, its problems and burdens took new shapes, and one grew accustomed to the new. Then there might be another twist, unexpected, unsought for, perhaps welcome, perhaps too late to be welcome.

“Please
buy one more,” Fee begged her mother. “Harvey’s Dad bought another thousand dollars’ worth, it’s so sneaky.”

“One more twenty-five,” she said. “That’s the last.”

“I’ll take one more for twenty-five, too,” Ivarin volunteered and Fee jumped.

“That’s grand,” she said. “There’s only three days left; if it doesn’t go over the top, I’ll die.”

“It will,” her father said. “Closer to three million than two, the estimates say.”

And when he was proved right, Fee felt it a triumph, apart from her private pleasure over winning the prize for Most Bonds Sold By A Girl. Now she could turn to study again; Regents Week was at hand.

From the first minute of the French I exam, she had the sure feeling; she raced on, hardly stopping to think. The only thing she was nervous about was proctoring. It would start the minute she turned in her French, because German I was given that morning too, in the auditorium, where all Regents were given. They had let her choose which to take first, but when she finished it, she saw the rub.

She wasn’t allowed to leave the room. Or go to the basement cafeteria for lunch or anything. Somebody who had already done German I could tell her the questions.

“You’re to go to Mr. Fitch’s office for your German I,” Miss Mercer said. “I’ll go along. Do you want to stop off first?”

Fee felt her face go hot, but she had to say yes. In the girls’ room, everybody looked at her when Miss Mercer came in at her side, because teachers had their own, and there was buzzing and giggling while Miss Mercer took up a post outside Fee’s swinging door. But being proctored had to include every minute, like being in a spy story.

At one o’clock Mr. Fitch sent a freshman for soup and crackers and milk, and Fee told him she thought proctoring made exams fun. The whole week went on wheels, with either two or three Regents each day, but with eleven exams done by Thursday evening Dr. Wohl said, “You’re the only one left who’s still in the pink,
Fräulein Fira.”

“Tomorrow,
Herr Doktor.
FOUR.”

“Let’s hope the faculty holds up.”

She started in Assembly Hall with everybody else from nine to twelve and then one to four, taking French III and German IV. Then they made her go to Mr. Fitch’s office again, to rest for half an hour, alone, with the door locked. Then from four-thirty to seven-thirty, Mercey proctored her on algebra, and at eight Dr. Wohl came back to school, just for her, and stayed through the geometry. By then it was eleven; even the janitor was gone.

For supper she had had sandwiches and milk Fran brought from home, but she was too wound up for more than a bite or two. She almost had hysterics when Mercey opened up each sandwich and looked inside before handing it over. “If anybody later on said you had a set of answers smuggled in, Fee, you could lose your entire scholarship, so don’t giggle.”

Again they had let her decide which ones she would do in the evening, and she had picked geometry and algebra, because with those, it was either right or wrong, no style of writing involved, not even any judgment about the best way to translate a sentence. She’d been smart to do it; tired or not, she just knew it was a 98 or 100 on each. The whole week had been grand; the only boner she knew about absolutely was that awful one about Longfellow.

And that was her mother’s fault.

How many times had she heard her mother recite, “What is so rare as a day in June?” and call it Longfellow? All her life, every time the month of May ended! And then later on, when she herself k
new,
how many times had she bitten her tongue to keep from blurting out, “Not Longfellow, Mama, Lowell.”

Then, taking English IV, just before the bell, while she still had three questions to go, there was “What is so rare as a day in June?” and she wrote, Longfellow.

If she lost her scholarship by a fraction of a point, she would never forgive her mother.

The recruiting booth was a one-story white cottage, the size of a roomy vacation lodge up on Lake Winnepesaukee, and as Eli cut off his engine and propped his motorcycle at the curb, he glanced inside the open door and saw that it was nearly empty. Only three men were already in line, and the sergeant behind the desk still looked calm and unhurried.

What a box to be in, Eli thought; why did I ever get into it? School had been unendurable this entire month of June. Halfway through, the first Americans landed in France, at Boulogne, fewer than two hundred, and just four days ago, some fourteen thousand at St. Nazaire, mostly raw recruits who had volunteered the day war was declared. Half the teachers on the staff had stopped him in the halls, with some smart dig about those heroes “enlisting the very first day.”

Eli loosened his necktie and went inside the booth. At each breath, the muscles at the sides of his neck widened and hit his collar; the attack was a pretty mild one so far, sounding like a rotten summer cold.

It was cooler inside than it had been on the bike, the air a little easier to get some purchase on. This was the last day of school, there was no putting it off any longer. He should never have said a word about enlisting, not to the family that night, not at school, not to his in-laws. There was always something about the Paiges and Garry that made him say the first thing handy. That’s what had started this mess.

With the others it was easy to undo it, but he could hardly use the Board of Ed right at school, and if he didn’t go through with it today they’d never stop the smart remarks for the rest of his life. It was all so needless; that’s what riled him the most. By now nobody was enlisting, except the romantics and the bums; the rest were waiting for the official drawing of the draft numbers, still held up by politicians, still put off week after week. The whole business of exemptions was still way up in the air. There were four thousand exemption boards, as many as there were draft boards; nobody knew how fast exemptions would be acted on, or even exactly what for. Of course, with two kids, he’d never be drafted. Enlisting was something else again.

But he was in a hurry; he was due at the new summer school by the Fourth of July. Never would he catch up on expenses, and if he told Joan they had to cut down, she told him to sell the bike, the one escape he had from the eternal arguments and the kids’ eternal banging around.