Gentleman's Agreement (8 page)

“I thought I dreamed it.”

He went out into the hall. Quietly he opened the door to Tom’s bedroom. In the dim light from the doorway the slight mound under the blankets seemed motionless. He went to the bed and leaned down. Even and strong, the boy’s breathing came up to him. For a moment he remained, listening.

W
ILL SHE—DAD,
will she
die?
” Phil turned, saw the stricken eyes watching him. He wanted to ease that look away, lie if necessary to replace it with confidence. But always he’d played it the other way, and he would now. Answers had to be answers.

“She’ll die sometime, just the way you will or me or Aunt Belle or anybody. But maybe it won’t be for a long time.”

“Oh, Dad.”

He put his hand on Tom’s head, ruffling the dark hair.

“The doctor said she might be fine for years if she’s careful. She’s pretty old, and all the packing and unpacking tired her too much.”

Tom moved closer. Phil pushed the lever of the toaster down. The ticking sounded very loud.

“Scram into some clothes, Tom.” He gave him a shove toward the door as if they were roughhousing. “Then you can set the table. We can run this place between us, I bet.”

“All right.” He started to leave, then stopped. “Oh, gosh, Dad.”

“It’s scary, Tom, I know. I was scared last night, too. But we’ll take care of her, and she might be just fine till
you’re
grown up and married and have kids.”

The shoulders relaxed. Phil heard him tiptoe down the hall. “Nothing to worry about.” A dozen times Dr. Craigie’s words had come back. With them had come again the four-in-the-morning silence of the sleeping city around the lighted bedroom, the knowledge that between her first calling out and her second, there’d been the time to dream, to wake, to ponder the sense of peace and continuing life, all unknowing that across a dark hall a dying had begun.

“People with hearts outlive everybody else, if they take care,” Dr. Craigie had said. The quotation marks around “hearts” had been cheery, a comfortable dismissing. “It may prove to be what we call false angina instead of the true angina. She’ll sleep well now, and you keep her in bed for a few days, and then we’ll get her to the office and really see. Angina is actually a symptom rather than a disease— some circulatory deficiency, perhaps, or a kind of anemia of the cardiac—well, no use getting too technical this time of the night, Mr. Green, is there?”

No, don’t get technical. Be calm, pleasant, willing to be routed out of bed, reassure the patient that the sensation of dissolution was merely part of the clinical picture, like the choking off of air, the sword in the arm.

“I never minimize in a sickroom,” his own father had once told him. “I don’t frighten, but I don’t minimize.”

Perhaps Craigie didn’t either. John Minify had called him “one of the best in New York.” Perhaps the suave voice was only a mannerism, acquired, too.

I must call Kathy, he thought, and break tonight.

The day sped remarkably. There was a curious ease to this kind of work, something like that week on Guad, with the mind nailed to the automatic directions for the next step. Life could be a simple thing of small actions on a string. Cook this, get the tray ready, take it in to her, straighten up this room, that room, phone the market, wash dishes, keep Tom quiet, go in now and talk to Mom, she’s awake again, get Tom to bed, wash the dishes. No time for big thinking, no time for foreign policy, losing the peace, badgering your mind. Just do this, then do that. Easy.

It was the first day since he’d got the assignment that he had stayed clear of sifting and seeking. It was a little like desertion, but for cause. At nine in the evening, with Tom gone to bed and no further chores to do, he still avoided the waiting morass. There was no use; he was too tired to think. He had telephoned Kathy to explain why he could not see her. She gave him quick sympathy and offered to find a maid. “At least a temporary one, Phil, what they call an ‘accommodator.’”

“Thanks, Kathy, it’s—well, thanks. I could phone my sister Belle in Detroit to come for a few days, but she gets me down too much.”

He hung up, and began to pace the room. A, B, and C were still side by side as he had left them last night. He looked at the three books listlessly. His fatigue deepened. He had not gone back to sleep after Dr. Craigie had left, nor had he slept all day. It was just as well he’d been forced to desert.

I’ve got some sort of block on the whole damn thing, he thought. If I
could
dig and pry into some decent Jewish guy, I’d get it. Scalpels of the interviewer. The incision. The probing. You just can’t do things to human beings that you do to a Manila envelope full of clips.

Today when Mom had said, “I’m nearly seventy after all, dear,” he’d wanted to ask, “Are you afraid? Is it awful to know you might die soon?” There were questions no one could speak. He would know the answers to those two only when he himself was seventy. It was that way about every question that mattered most, about every question whose answer lay in the heart.

Yet he
had
got answers in the past.

“Every article you’ve done for us, Phil,” Minify had said, “has a kind of human stuff in it. The right answers get in it somehow.”

Sure. But he hadn’t asked for them and pried for them. When he’d wanted to find out about a scared guy in a jalopy with his whole family behind him hoping for a living in California, he hadn’t stood on Route 66 and signaled one of them to a stop so he could ask a lot of questions. He’d just bought himself some old clothes and a breaking-up car and taken Route 66 himself. He’d melted into the crowds moving from grove to grove, ranch to ranch, picking till he’d dropped. He lived in their camps, ate what they ate, told nobody what he was. He’d found the answers in his own guts, not somebody else’s. He’d
been
an Okie.

And the mine series. What had he done to get research for it? Go and tap some poor grimy guy on the shoulder and begin to talk? No, he’d damn well gone to Scranton, got himself a job, gone down into the dark, slept in a bunk in a shack. He hadn’t dug into a man’s secret being. He’d
been
a miner.

“Christ!”

He banged his fist on his thigh. His breath seemed to suck back into his lungs. The startled flesh of his leg still felt the impact of the blow.

“Oh, God, I’ve got it. It’s the way. It’s the only way. I’ll
be
Jewish. I’ll just say—nobody knows me—I can just say it. I can live it myself. Six weeks, eight weeks, nine months —however long it takes. Christ, I’ve got it.”

An elation roared through him. He had it, the idea, the lead, the angle. A dozen times he could have settled for some other idea, but each time he’d thrown it away, tossed it, profligate, stubborn. He’d known that there was somewhere, around some unexpected corner, a better idea, stronger, more real, the only. He’d stalked it, beseeched it, spied for it, waited, rushed, fought. And when he’d found it, this burst of recognition shouted out from him.

“I Was Jewish for Six Months.” That was the title. It leaped at him. There was no doubt, no editing, no need to wonder.
That
would get read.
That
there was no passing up. Six weeks it might be, ten, four months, nine, but apart from that one change, it was it.

Nobody but another writer could know how goddam good I feel, he thought. This was the reward, the strange compelling excitement of getting an idea. Resistance to the series was a vapor, remembered but gone. Nothing could stop this. It would be simple enough. He didn’t look Jewish, sound Jewish, his name wasn’t Jewish—well, Phil Green might be anything; he’d skip the “Schuyler” and not have to bother with assumed names. He checked on himself in his mind’s eye—tall, lanky; sure, so was Dave, so were a hell of a lot of guys who were Jewish. He had no accent or mannerisms that were Jewish—neither did lots of Jews, and antisemitism was hitting at them just the same. His nose was straight—so was Dave’s, so were a lot of other guys’. He had dark eyes, dark hair, a kind of sensitive look—“the
Toledo,
” Kathy had said. Brother, it was a cinch.

In California, no, he couldn’t get away with it anywhere on the Coast. Too many people knew him there; he’d keep running into them, spoiling things. But here—for once he was delighted with his shyness, with his inability to make friends. He’d meant to hang around the office and meet people, writers, editors, but he hadn’t gone in even once. He didn’t know a soul in this whole damn city, except Minify and Kathy—they’d see it, they’d be as excited as he, they’d keep his secret.

He couldn’t wait for morning to tell her, to tell Minify. He’d phone them right now. No, this was no thing for phoning.

“Phil.” From the bedroom, his mother’s voice sounded strong, ordinary. He went in. She looked better; her color was good.

“You don’t have to stay in,” she said. “I feel all right.”

“Don’t crowd things.” He looked at her inquiringly, “Feel like talking?”

She sat forward from the bunched pillows. “Of course.”

“I’ve got it. I’ve got the way to get that series. This isn’t like any of the other ideas I told you.”

“It must be right,” she said. “It always is when you’re this sure.”

“I’m going to be Jewish, that’s all. Just tell people I am and see what happens. See what I feel like. For a while, for however long it takes to feel it.”

“Oh, Phil. It’s brilliant.”

“It won’t be the same, sure it won’t, but it ought to come damn close.” He was almost shouting but he couldn’t decrease his voice. “It’s worth a try—just put myself into every situation I can think of where being Jewish might mean something. It’s so simple. See?”

“Of course. It’s wonderful, really.”

“
Then
I’ll write stuff they’ll read.” He rubbed his thigh. He looked down at her as if she had done him a favor. She’d got it; he’d known she would.

“If we do have a maid tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll go tell Minify. And that girl I told you suggested the series, I want to tell her about it.”

“Can’t you invite them down here now? I’m not going to need anything.”

He looked at his watch. It was only nine-twenty. Had all this thing happened to him in less than twenty minutes? After two weeks of sweating it out day and night? Where did ideas come from, anyway? This one had leaped at him when he’d been exhausted, AWOL from his search. Sometime he’d have to try to trace back every step he’d taken. Not now; he had no time now.

“That’s an idea.” He started for the door. “Will you keep my secret if you meet any new people? It’d have to be without exceptions, you know, to work at all.”

“If you’re Jewish, I am too, I guess.” She waved him out of the room.

He went to the telephone, dialed Kathy’s number.

“It’s me, Phil. I never thought you’d be in.”

“How’s your mother? You sound as if she were better.”

“She is, lots. Kathy, you haven’t a date?”

“I got stood up.” She laughed. “I’m just wrapping presents. Why?”

“I can’t leave her alone here. I’d be afraid to. But I’ve
got
it at last, and I thought, I mean, I’d give a lot to tell you about it.”

“The angle? What
is
it?”

“You wouldn’t—have you any feeling about getting in a cab and coming over for a bit?” It was awkward, saying it. He didn’t care. “It’s just I’d hate to go into it on a phone and I’m pretty set up.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour. What’s your address again?

He went to the kitchen for ice cubes. He went to his room, changed his shirt, looked in the mirror, and remembered he hadn’t shaved till afternoon, anyway. Then he went into the bathroom and got out the electric razor he almost never used. Once over quickly would do it. He tried to phrase a beginning for her so she’d see what a gold mine of a thing this was. Nothing phrased.

His mind raced. There’d be snags, complications, problems. So all right. Every second made him surer that there’d be validity to what he’d find in himself as time went on. There was no rush. Minify had told him that two or three times. If it did take six weeks or nine months—

Nine months. He didn’t usually think in platitudes, yet he kept coming back to this one. He knew he couldn’t delay the series for that length of time, rush or no rush. He was using it as a device to get at something arcane and buried. He put the razor down and lit a cigarette. He smoked half an inch of it before he noticed that the razor was still buzzing. He clicked it off and nodded to his image in the mirror.

Yes, that was it. That’s what he’d been trying to articulate to himself. There
was
a rationale behind his idea, hesitant, unprovable, but there. Just as the embryo in the womb reproduced in nine months the whole evolutionary process of the race, maybe he could reproduce in himself in a short time the whole history of persecution—

“I wish she’d get here.” He finished shaving and went in to his mother’s room once more.

“Want anything?”

“No. I’m all right. Don’t bring them in to meet me, will you? Some other time.”

He shook his head. “I didn't call Minify. Just this Katherine Lacey.”

“Is she nice?”

“Fine.” Never had he made a confidant of her and he couldn’t begin now. “There was some old gag about Michael Arlen,” he suddenly said. “Wait a minute. How’d it go?” She saw him screw up his eyes and remembered him at ten or twelve, laboring over homework. “Oh, I’ve got it—train of thought is a wonderful gadget.”

“What was it?”

“Somebody says to him, ‘Mr. Arlen,
do
tell me, is it true that you’re an Armenian? You sound
so
British.’” He was mimicking the accent of a British dowager. She laughed.” And Arlen answered, ‘Would anyone
say
he was Armenian if he wasn’t Armenian?’” She laughed again and he with her. “
We
would, wouldn’t we?”

“If there was a point to it, and there is.”

The bell rang.

Behind the closing door, she lay back, her book abandoned. If he could always be the way he is now, she thought. Direct, mobilized, all because he is fired with this idea. He doesn’t even stop to think of the difficult parts—there will be many, there would have to be. He could change in five minutes from man of thought to man of action. She had seen him do it when he decided to join the Marine Corps. He signed for OCS and at once he was the officer. The things ahead he ignored, the hardships, the dangers. The inevitable problems of the interrupted career, the separation from Tommy, he had shoved off for future considering. He was that way now—on an island of rock after muddy floundering.