SUDDENLY IT BURST UPON Vee’s mind—the parallelism, the neat, the awful parallelism of her own pain to the pain of those millions.
She was beginning to think again, or she wouldn’t have seen it.
Those first days and nights after Jas had gone, she had not been able to think. Not what one calls “thinking.”
There was only the whirling of her thoughts, the spinning realization, the going over and over every step of the way by which she had come to this cataclysm.
The first nights alone, then the next days and nights when Ann had scarcely left her, that middle-of-the-night when old Dr. Burton had come at Ann’s frightened summons to inject morphia and make her sleep—all through that time her mind had never quieted, but what it did was not the orderly process of thinking.
The sight of Dr. Burton’s kind old face flung up something in her memory, buried there ever since that day last May when she had asked him about the article she’d read about childless couples. She remembered his comfortable old voice saying, “Well, maybe they don’t want children as much as they say they do.” She winced from it, and when Ann said, “I think you’d better tell him all about it, Vee dear,” she only could say, “You do, Ann, you tell him, you tell him.”
She knew she could not produce an orderly report on it, that she would only be swept on in the unruled tide of her rushing memory, as she had been ever since that final bursting moment. “Go ahead alone, then.”
Even when she forced herself, a few days later, to go back to the store, thinking was impossible, in any real sense. She could carry out routine work, she could anchor her mind to a solid problem of merchandise, personnel, sales, but when the anchor was lifted again, the helpless tossing began once more. She began to stay at the store an extra hour every day. She multiplied her own assignments. She tried to keep anchored every moment.
A thousand times a day, there was a sight, a sound, a word to slash to her heart.
Mr. Ralsey in meeting, saying, “Let’s finish this up over some drinks—how about the Oak Room at the Plaza?”
A voice in a crowded elevator, “The Crown man in London, Geoffrey Kane…”
A taxi driver, taking a casual turn into the side street where Dr. Gontlen’s office was…
The Sherry-Netherland, the red roses in a florist’s window, a radio calling out, “This is WJCN,” a pregnant woman on the street, in the store, anywhere…
A thousand times a day, a voice, a word, a number, a name slashed at her. The printed letter J, the red numeral 1 the January calendar, a colored poster of Montego Bay—each of them now had a cabalistic power to strike hot pain into the core of her being.
She kept telling herself it would get easier soon, the shock would die away and she would sleep again and it would seem easier. But the dreary, midnight days of January followed one another and the only time she slept was for the few hours each night when the two blue capsules ordered by Dr. Burton held her down in brief blankness. As their power wore thin, the dreaming would begin. And then, shaken and weeping in the stillness of dawn, she would begin, again on a twenty-hour stretch of trying to bear it. To bear the metamorphosis from the hours of exultant pride and joy with Jas that the beautiful thing had at last happened—to these hours of despair that the beginning life in her womb should be disowned.
And then, from somewhere, this parallelism had burst through her mind, and once again she was related to a world of people.
An instant came and Vee heard the voice of her mind saying, “Why, this is what Germany did—created life, created millions of lives, and then rejected that life, refused it a place, a name, a decent, ordinary existence.”
In that instant she saw that here in this one human body of hers was being enacted in microcosm the tragedy of the betrayed and abandoned the world over. Whatever the excuse—there was always the excuse—the thing was the same: life that yesterday was cherished and secure was now offered the appalling choice between death or the existence of the disowned and unwanted.
A new anger filled her, an anger that included nations that could dishonor and eject part of their own progeny, an anger that narrowed down again to Jasper and her brother David and any other human who could nurture and accept trust from another, and then betray it. Narrowing down to individuals, widening out again to nations, narrowing, widening—this systole and diastole seemed to flow direct from her veins to the veins of all the unknowns who suffered the same treachery she now suffered.
The motherland, the fatherland—the very vocabulary of every people the earth over showed that it was the same treachery. The child brought into existence, trusting, guileless—and then told it was not wanted, there was no room for it in the life of the parent country, no place for it, no safety or honor or desire for it.
The bitterness in the heart, the rawness of the knowledge—a million refugees from Germany and Spain and Czechoslovakia must know the same darting, thrusting agony that she was now knowing.
Yes, she could think again now. She could think of people, of nations, of a world at the mercy of savage men, the ruthless ones who could lay about them when the need came—the need, there was always the need. She could think again; perhaps that meant that her own blinding hurt was lessening at last.
“Oh, Jas, Jas, why did you have to?”
Whenever the telephone rang, whenever the post came, whenever the doorbell shrilled, some silent hope scurried out of its hiding place in her heart. A moment later, like a frightened animal, it darted back again.
It wouldn’t be any good, anyway. The telephone call, the letter, the sudden unannounced appearance at her door—none of it would be any good. She could never trust him again, she could never rely on his most deep and solemn promise. For if the need ever came, he would find the way to betray it.
Long ago, a year ago on the beach at Montego Bay, she had lain in the sunny white sand and argued with her doubts about Jasper Crown. Later she had begun to love him, and the doubts were shoved back, aside, away. But never, not in her greatest perplexity about what he was under all his outer facets—never had she thought him capable of this.
She would go ahead alone. She would go ahead somehow. When she tried to plan how, Ann stopped her. “Time enough after March first, when you leave the store, Vee. We can think it all out then. You can’t think straight yet.”
Time enough. “You have another six weeks to do it without any danger to you.” Now four of those six weeks were gone by. Was Jasper still hoping that she would come to see it his way while there was still time?
Did Jasper take blue capsules to make him sleep for four hours or so? Did he quiver at the sound of the telephone? Jas, Jas, are you happy?
Frank Terson and Giles Craven drank their coffee, paid the check for their dinners, and went back to the office. Jasper had called a meeting for nine.
“The man’s insatiable for work,” Terson said. “He’s the most driving human I’ve ever known.”
“I’ve been worried over him the past month,” Giles said. Sympathy was mixed with puzzled resentment. “He’s killing himself and everybody else with this constant night work. What’s got into him, anyway?”
They walked in silence through the bitter January night. Giles was more irritated than sympathetic. This meeting for nearly a dozen people—it could have been managed during business hours, but here it was. Of course, if you spoke up and pleaded an important engagement, Jasper was completely polite about excusing you from attending, but after doing that once or twice, you found yourself merely nodding when he next said, “Do you suppose we could talk this over after dinner? My days are so jammed up.”
But when the meeting was opened, it was apparent that something was in the air. Jasper seemed a shade more friendly than he had been for weeks. His eyes were more alive; his whole bearing was more relaxed. He was, as always, openly satisfied during the quick check-through of new business and current business. JCN now had 130 affiliated stations and sixty sponsored programs. The daring scheme of selling all the news from one city to one advertiser was even more of a success than anybody had hoped. Four of the leading advertisers in the country had bids in against the first chance to “buy” London or Paris; two wanted Madrid, Berlin, or Prague; two more wanted “any city anywhere that became the next big news spot.” A gross business of over twelve million for their first year now was on the books. Unless disastrous cancellations turned up later, they were “in.”
After an hour and a half, the meeting seemed to be drawing to a close. It was then that Jasper reached forward to the interoffice communicator on his desk. He clicked up a lever.
“Pipe it through, Joe, we’re ready.”
He went to the wall, where a large cabinet stood. A large disk of taut silk was in the center of it. He turned a switch.
“Something I want you to hear,” he said quietly. “First audition.”
For another moment there was silence. Then a voice came into the room. It was a strong, deep voice, the perfect male speaking voice for radio.
“Good evening. This is something new in foreign news commentating. As far as I know, this is the first time the president of a national or international network has taken a nightly job of talking directly to the millions of people who—”
The rest of the sentence was lost. Ten voices spoke at once. They drowned out the words coming through the amplifier.
“God, Jas, you’re not really going to—”
“Every night, Jas? How can you—”
“What a stunt—my Lord, the publicity value—”
“It’s absolutely new. Imagine Paley or Sarnoff—”
Jas turned the switch off and stood listening to the surprised hubbub. Then he held his hand up for silence.
“I’ve been working it out for a couple of weeks,” he said. “I had several recordings made to see how I sounded on the air. Seems all right, doesn’t it?”
A flutter of approving comments came at him. “Resonant”…“born radio voice” …“what a stunt for the head of a network.”
“It’s no stunt,” he said. “I have gone into it from every angle—policy, F.C.C., my time, hooking in when I’m on a business trip, all that.”
“You going to write your scripts, Jas?”
“When I can. I’ve written the practice ones. Been down here evenings, with some of the news staff. When I can’t write the script, I’ll have Borles do it—he knows what I want now. He’ll do most of them. He could be a really great news analyst, but that soprano voice of his—”
Jasper reached for the interoffice communicator once again. “Start it again, Joe—maybe they’ll listen through this time,” he said pleasantly.
“Good evening. This is something new in foreign news commentating. As far as I know, this is the first time the president of a national or international network has taken a nightly job of talking directly to the millions of people who keep turning to that network for information or for fun.
“There is a reason why it has never been done—or something that goes under the guise of a reason. It is thought that a broadcasting company must remain impartial, unbiased. That is a good thought. In a country where freedom of speech is one of the basic props of our national life, every opportunity must be given to the voice of the opponent, the dissenter, even though you thoroughly disagree with what that voice says. The Crown Network has been and will be impartial and unbiased in that regard; indeed, it is the law that we must give equal time on the air to both sides of any question.
“But that does not mean that I, for instance, as an individual who happens to be head of the Crown Network must be silenced before the millions of you that JCN is proud to call its audience. I may, and now will, state my opinions of the news as well as any other man who wishes to be a news analyst—and can get a job as one! I may, and now will, come to you every night at this same hour to sum up the day’s foreign news, to offer you an interpretation of its meaning and importance. It will be my own interpretation, not my company’s interpretation. I will be as much of an individual as if my name were Swing or Heatter or Kaltenborn, instead of Crown.
“Now, my advertising colleagues here tell me this is a dangerous thing to do. I may express opinions that will offend an advertiser. That advertiser may then wish to take his show off JCN and put it on some other network.
“My only answer to that possibility is, and must be, ‘Let him.’ Most advertisers will continue to put their shows on any network that reaches as many millions of people as this one does. Most advertisers believe as heartily as you and I in any man’s right to free speech—even if that man happens to be the head of a radio network. “Now I come to the news of the past twenty-four hours—” The deep, clear-cut voice went on with the news. It was straight-forward speaking, with surprising dashes -of humor and colloquialism. “Like Swing, only slangier,” Giles thought. The broadcast lasted for fifteen minutes, with no interruption for tooth paste, cathartic, cigarettes, or any other product. At the end, the voice said, “Good night,” and another voice immediately came in. “Thank you, Mr. Crown. That was Jasper Crown, President of the Crown Network, in his nightly ten-fifteen summary of the major foreign news. If you have comments or suggestions, write to him personally. Busy as he is, he will answer you personally.”
For a moment there was complete silence. Then the discussion bubbled on all sides at once. Would it antagonize any big advertiser? How many? Which? Did the F.C.C. have any rulings on a thing like this? If this caught on, and Jasper Crown’s name became famous in the new role of commentator—Jasper sat, relishing every word of it. His head was dropped forward while he fiddled with the buttons of his cat. When at last he straightened up, the vices fell away.
“I’ve been going into this myself, from every angle you’ve raised,” he stated calmly. “I’ve called our biggest advertisers on the phone, and all the major agencies, feeling it out. I’ve talked to Washington. I’ve talked to our libel lawyers, in case I get calling Hitler a bastard.”
“What’s the reaction? How’d it go down?”
“It’s big, Jas—you’ve got something terrific—”
He looked about him. Admiration stood upon every face. “He thinks of everything. You don’t catch this guy napping.” He could almost read the praise.
“The general reaction is good enough so I’m ready to do it. The advertisers? Just so I don’t praise That Man in the White House. The agencies? About the same—just so I stay on foreign news and off politics. Washington—that will be all right if we keep on giving equal time to both sides of everything.”
“Want to bet, Jas? Bet you a hundred that inside a month some advertiser will be clamoring to sponsor you.”
Uproarious laughter greeted it. It was midnight when the meeting broke up, in clear agreement to try this precedent-breaking new idea. Jasper left the office with Giles and Frank, and they walked him home. He invited them up to his apartment for a drink.
“I’d like to, Jas,” Terson said. “But I’d better not.”
“Marge would brain me,” Giles said flatly. “This is the third time in a week I’ve left her alone all evening. New baby, and all.”
Jasper nodded. Yes, they had to get home. In the dark, he smiled, and there were ridicule and bitterness behind it.
They parted and he started to go up. Then he changed his mind and went into the bar. He ordered whisky and water, and sat alone, drinking it. He didn’t want it much, and it lasted for a long time. At another table, there were two men whom he recognized. He nodded to them and hoped that they would leave it at that. He would rather sit alone.
Upstairs, he sank into one of the big leather chairs. He was tired, now that the “audition” was over. He was often tired. It was a little surprising, because this wasn’t the first time he had worked day and night for a month at a stretch. Nor was it the last. He’d keep on this way until the company had weathered at least its first year, and had enough backlog of renewing contracts and profits to stand up against any setbacks that might lie ahead. And now, to all his other duties, he had added this new one. He wasn’t doing it out of any hunger for personal fame. He was undertaking it only for the network. Five nights a week on the air; that was a big contribution to make to building its name and fame.
This is the way it had to be. This newest idea was only one idea. There were a dozen more, there would always be a dozen more. He had to be able to dedicate himself to them when they came, all of himself. For another year, there was no choice. She should have been able to see that—God damn it, she should have been able to see that. Perhaps she still would. There was still time.
A hundred times he had thought of telephoning Vee. He missed her badly, he needed her. He had thought of going to see her, to try once more to make her see it his way. But premature efforts at fixing things up always blew up in your face. There was still time, and something might happen to make her realize that it was no good forcing a man into emotions he did not feel. Something as simple as hearing his voice on the air, when his nightly broadcasts started—that might touch her and make her see how much wiser for both of them to wait until he was his own man again, and could turn to the responsibilities of a home and marriage and children. He had always known marriage wasn’t for him, and then he had forgotten that in the absorbing problem of Gontlen and the rest of it. But then he had come face to face at last with what had really happened to him. He had been a fool not to have visualized the whole thing more clearly, and to have known that he was not ready yet. Yes, a fool. He was big enough to face that charge. A Goddamned, Christ-bitten fool.
For nearly an hour, he sat in the big chair. He had never been this tired. The heavy, dragging load that was upon him that first morning after they’d come back from The Jonathan was upon him still. He was never free of it. It balked dismissal, it defied his most determined effort to escape from under it. It was like living with a load of wet cement in your guts—weighing you down, dragging at you. You woke up with it. You went to sleep with it. Even while you worked or argued or dictated letters, you were aware of it. It was like hate, and you hated it back because you couldn’t beat it out of your system.
But he would beat it yet.
Vee did not hear his voice on the air. When the nightly broadcasts started a fortnight later, she did not know about them. She never turned on the radio. The very word “radio” had the power to send her mind hurtling off into the vast associative spaces of memory. Without realizing that she was doing it, she kept her eyes averted from the big instrument in the living room, and from the handsome portable in her bedroom. Particularly from the portable. Jas had given it to her for Christmas. It was a large, heavy one, done in some brownish tweed fabric. It stood on the low table where he had placed it for her. But it stood silent and ignored.
There was an unreality about intense suffering; she was half aware that it was so, but she was powerless to change it. The real world of politics and war, of a Congress voting or a union striking, seemed dim, far off. If you were sick with grief, you lived away from that daily world, hidden from it under the dark envelope of your personal suffering.
She tried to fight back from this unreality as fast as she could. When she read the news from Spain, she would feel herself completely involved with that news. But in the next moments, her own emotions would clap down upon her mind once more.
Of all the world outside, only the Vederles were now real to her. She was one with them. She felt them. They duplicated herself.
When the letters came now, she turned to them with new intensity. She couldn’t understand any longer how she could have let a week go before writing Dr. Vederle about the Washington letter, before writing Zurich the new statement about her motives. Well, that was over. She was no longer so numbed, so shocked that she was unable to act upon anything.
The last letter from Switzerland was full of concern for her illness. They begged her not to spend energy on them for whatever time it took her to recuperate fully. Dr. Vederle had received thirteen letters from his old patients and had sent them off to the Consulate. Everybody in Ascona was newly nervous. Rumors flew about that the newest crises in Europe had so swamped the American Consulates everywhere that no more visas were available for years. Did she know whether there were any basis for this spreading fear? “I myself hope they will soon begin to withdraw the denial of our visas because they now know that Washington watches what they do here.”
She wrote Washington at once. This time the reply did not come so promptly. Each morning she looked for an answer. Almost professionally, she was shocked at the delay. If business were run the way government departments were—
She wrote once more. When she finally found the reply waiting for her one evening, she tore it open as if her future were at stake. She was pinned to the problem now for herself, as well as for them. Now their fight for life and security was a token of something personal to her, too. They had to win their fight; it stood for something that they win.
The letter astonished her.
The Visa Division had heard once again from Zurich. The matter of how and when Dr. Vederle had earned his money was now cleared up. “It is added that all members of the family will be charged to the German quota if their cases are approved, this action being possible under the provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924, by which a wife, if accompanying her husband, may be charged to the quota for the country of her husband’s birth if her own quota is exhausted. Sincerely yours—”
She read it again, to be sure her eyes did not fool her. Even with her mind so worn from the sleepless nights, the constant drugs, the overwork at the store—even so, she pounced upon that bland final sentence as if she would claw it to bits.
The Immigration Act of 1924. But didn’t a Consul General in a foreign assignment know the Immigration Act of 1924? Did he merely forget it, like a dull pupil at the blackboard in a classroom? The various Vice-Consuls at Zurich, who also handled the Vederle case, did they not know the Immigration Act of 1924?
Here was a man who had stood and listened to the news that he must part from his wife for twelve years. Here was a man who had once already lost hope of America. Here was a man who would now be settled in South Africa when his every desire cried out for the United States. And yet, the Immigration Act of 1924 was there all the time.
Then it was needless, the torment he had been through on this one point. It was wanton. How many other rulings and demands and delays were equally needless?
Dear God, would it one day turn out that her own heartbreak was needless, too? Was there some simple thing ignored—some overlooked thing that might yet rescue her from this pain thudding through every waking moment?
August 21 was the day Dr. Platt had put down.
In two weeks, her leave of absence from the store would begin. Mr. Ralsey had been so kind when she had told him it was “doctor’s orders” that she take a real rest. She had murmured something about “jumpy heart,” but he had hardly listened.
“You’ve had us all worried, Vee,” he had said warmly. “You’ve been looking so tuckered out and thin.”
“I know. I’m anemic and ten pounds underweight,” she explained quickly. “The doctor said it was at the danger point.”
She closed her eyes, and he came and put an awkward hand on her shoulder. It was true, it was the very phrase. Dr. Platt had warned her, and Dr. Burton. She had to take care of herself. She had to eat properly. She had to sleep.
Yes, she had to. She wanted the baby to be strong and healthy. She had begun again to think about the baby. For the first weeks after—after that day, she could not think about the baby, as a baby. Her mind had refused the image, her heart had rejected the torment. “A baby you call by a name?” Oh, no, no.
Now again, she could begin the tentative visualizing of a baby. Her body was making its first changes, though she had become so thin that they showed only when she was undressed.
She glanced into the mirror. No, even now, in this loosely fitted wool suit, it was impossible to guess the secret of her body. You saw instead the thin shoulders, the chalky skin, the hollow eye sockets.
She undressed slowly. Yes, you could see, when she stood naked. The first changing had begun. The enlarging curve of the belly, the heavier, fuller breasts. It was beautiful to see, it really was so beautiful. If you were loved and cherished, and saw your body changing so? Proud and happy and loved, and saw this skillful, changing body?
The image blurred and wavered.
She turned away. She walked slowly to the bed, sat down slowly, and then lay down on her back. There was no use even fighting the indignity of the tears, she knew that now. There simply was no way to stop them when she was alone. She had tried for weeks to find the way, she had fought them with every weapon her mind could devise. During the day, at the store, talking to somebody, she could keep an unmoving face, a steady voice. But here, in this bed, where she and Jas had lain together, talked, laughed, made love—
“What do you do when you can’t bear it?” The words suddenly screamed themselves at her inside her head. “What do you do when you just know you can’t bear it any more?”
Later she bathed and dressed again. Bronya was coming to have dinner with her. They were going to the theater. She put more rouge on her cheeks than usual, to make her eyes brighter. The last time they had seen each other was the night before Jas told her.
While she dressed she thought out the cablegram to send the Vederles. The last cable she had sent was that one nearly two months ago, just before Christmas. She had known then, in her soul she had known, though Dr. Platt was so cautious and would not confirm it for another week. She had known, her body had sung with it, and she had known.
She smiled bitterly. Vera Marriner’s private calendar—Vera Marriner’s new chronology: before the day Jas had told her, and after.
She stood up abruptly and went to the telephone.
WASHINGTON RULES ALL VEDERLES ON GERMAN QUOTA IF CASES ARE APPROVED. WHAT REMAINS TO BE CLEARED?
Bronya came in as she was dictating it to the cable operator. She could see the slight, intelligent face watching her, as she finished the message. She put the receiver back slowly and stood up.
“That ought to make them feel better,” she said. “They’ve been thinking for months—”
“You are sick, you have been really sick,” Bronya said. “You didn’t want to tell me? I could have come—”
“No, I—”
She could not say it again. She could not say she was all right, she would be all right. That’s what she had said that morning when Jas had asked her whether she would have morning sickness, whether she were frightened. Those were the very words Ann had cried out to her that night, “You’ll be all right, Vee, you’ll be all right.”
She put her face down into her hands. She would not cry. Bronya knelt beside her; phrases in German came tumbling from her lips, and her fingers were on Vee’s hair.
“Oh, Bronya, Bronya, what shall I do? Something has happened and I don’t know what to do.” You will know—soon it clears out the mind—”
She could not tell her. She could only sit there, hearing the foreign phrases, feeling the touch on her hair. Here was someone else who knew what it was to go on alone, to go ahead alone. Again the tight unity she now felt with the Vederles swept through her.
“It is something bad, I feel that sure—you told me about marriage someday soon—last summer, remember?”
‘Yes, I remember. That’s all over, Bronya. That’s finished. I’m not going to be married, after all.”
Bronya made a low sound of recognition and acceptance. Vee knew what she was thinking. A love affair petered out. A broken engagement. “Betrothal ended by mutual consent.”
She began to laugh, jerkily, then in a rising crescendo. Bronya shook her shoulder, hard, almost angrily. The laughter snapped off.
“I do not wish it, to ask questions,” Bronya said calmly. “You have a nervous strain, you are very thin. If you let, I leave Mrs. Martin’s job and come here, care for you a month, until you are all cured. Lady companion, no?”
Vee sat, shaking her head. But it was good to know that Bronya would be ready to help if she could. There were people you could trust. There were, there were.