The Book of Daniel

by E. L. Doctorow

  “A man is going to come and make an offer for the furniture. A hundred, a hundred fifty dollars at the most is what we’ll get. Tomorrow in court I am filing a pauper’s oath for your brother. Do you know what that means?”

  “Vey iss mir, vey iss mir …”

  “It means the court will appoint me the attorney and the court will pay my fees so that I can continue to represent your brother and his wife. Vershtey? It means also that these children are the children of paupers and have no place to go. If you will not take them in, Mrs. Cohn, your flesh and blood, they will be out on the street. Vershteyen zie? They will be wards of the state.”

  “Babies!” Aunt Frieda wailed. “What do I know from babies!”

  “Now what I suggest is that you get their belongings together—maybe the boy can help you—and get them ready to leave.”

  “Now? This minute?”

  “It is imperative.” Ascher looked at his watch. “The man will be here to give me a price for the furniture. I don’t think it is good for children to see that. I don’t want them to watch their house dismantled.”

  “I got to lug baggage to Brooklyn? I can’t lift things.”

  “Don’t worry, they have little enough. I will send you in a cab.”

  “Where will I put them? What do they eat?”

  “Lady,” Ascher shouted. “They are your brother’s children. They are not animals from the zoo. What is the matter with you? Vas iss der mair mit dein kopf? Have you no pity? Don’t you know what trouble is? Don’t you know what terrible trouble these people are in?”

  Abruptly Ascher sat down. He sat like a king with his arms on the arms of the chair, cooling off in his rage while Aunt Frieda smiled placatingly and wept at the same time.

  Her apartment had an indescribable smell. It was the smell of a withering, unloved body. It was the smell of dust and of Brooklyn air-shaft darkness. It was the smell of slipcovers on the furniture and double locks on the doors. It was the smell of lights that couldn’t be turned on because it was a waste of money. It was the smell of no pleasure to be found around any corner, down any hall, in any closet. It was the smell of a stranger’s drab home, where I didn’t belong. It was the smell of a life of no account to anyone.

  “Daniel,” Ascher said, “I want to talk to you a minute. Come in here.”

  Daniel rose from the floor and followed the lawyer into the kitchen. Ascher sat down at the kitchen table and turned to face him. Ascher saw Susan in the doorway. “No no, little girl, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. You may go back and watch the program.”

  In answer Susan sidled just inside the doorway, with her back to the wall. She stared at Ascher gravely.

  “Very well,” the lawyer said. “You can listen too. Children, your Aunt Frieda has consented to take you into her home until your parents are free again. This may be a month or two. Maybe three. But I have spoken to your parents, each of them, and they have decided that under the circumstances, that would be the best thing. In the meantime the house will be closed up here.”

  “We heard you,” Daniel said. “We know.”

  “Yes. Well, I cannot pretend this is a happy adventure. But your mother and father are most worried about you and want to make sure that you are cared for and not neglected while they are away from you. You know she has a candy store downstairs in the same house where she lives.”

  “Yes,” Daniel said. “But she doesn’t let you touch anything. She’s a stupid woman.”

  “Shhh.” Ascher put a finger to his lips. “She may be hard to understand. People who are afraid are sometimes hard to understand. Being afraid makes people say things they don’t mean. Can you appreciate that?”

  “I suppose.”

  “She’ll learn how to be good from you, Daniel. She’s not a mean person. She’ll learn how to be strong from your example. You’re a wonderful boy. Both you children are fine children,” Ascher said, turning his eyes toward Susan.

  “Where is Mommy?” Susan said.

  Ascher sighed. “In jail. She’s in jail.”

  “What is jail?”

  “Jail is a place people stay instead of home. Like a hotel. Like a school. They are other places to stay instead of home.”

  “Jail is worse,” Daniel said to Susan. “You can’t come home if you want to.”

  “All right,” Ascher said. “All right.”

  “Will they put me in jail?” Susan said.

  “No, don’t worry.”

  “Is my mommy coming home?”

  “Daniel, I cannot go on explaining these things to her.”

  “Is my mommy dead?”

  Ascher stood up and raised his arms in exasperation. “Please, little girl! Enough. Your mommy is not dead!” The gesture startled Susan. She burst into tears. Daniel went to her and put his arm around her. “She misses our mother and father,” Daniel explained over his shoulder.

  “What is wrong, what is the matter?” Aunt Frieda called from upstairs.

  “Nothing,” Ascher yelled. “Nothing is the matter. Now children,” he said lowering his voice, “there are things to be done. Shhh, don’t cry, Susan. Your aunt is packing up your clothes. I want you to help her so she’ll know what to take. Any of your toys and things like that, you will have to show her what is important to you. And you both look—unkempt. Can’t you wash yourselves a little bit? Can’t you make yourselves clean?”

  “I’ll wash her,” Daniel said. “And there are things like our toothbrushes. We’ll have to take those.”

  “That’s right.”

  Daniel patted Susan till she was no longer crying. Her body shook with sobs that were like hiccups. He said to Ascher: “Why can’t we go see them? The guards can search me and they can search her and they’ll see that we don’t have guns or anything like that.”

  “Well, it is not a matter of guards, Daniel. Your mother and father both feel that it would upset you to see them in the jail.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when the time came to leave they wouldn’t be able to leave with you. And you and especially your sister might not understand and be upset.”

  “Maybe they would be upset too,” Daniel reflected.

  “That’s right. And so it would be worse than not seeing you at all.”

  “Well, how will they know where we are?” Daniel said.

  “They asked me to ask your aunt if you could stay with her, I will report to them that you are with her.”

  “Do they know the address?”

  “They know it.”

  “If we write to them from there will they get the letter?”

  “I have arranged it so they will.”

  “I got the letter they sent,” Daniel said. “When you see them tell them to write more often.”

  “But you see I told you, Daniel, they are allowed to write just one letter a week. So you can get no more than one letter a week. They also have to write each other.”

  “You mean they aren’t in the same place?”

  “Your father is in one jail and your mother is in another jail which is for women. They haven’t seen each other since your father was arrested.”

  What God hath joined let no man tear asunder—FATHER OF THE BRIDE, with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor

  Who wrote that Russian story, was it Babel or maybe Yuri Olesha, about a man dying in his bed. His death is described as a progressive deterioration of possibilities, a methodical constriction of options available to him. First he cannot leave the room, so that a railroad ticket, for instance, has no more meaning for his life. Then he cannot get out of bed. Then he cannot lift his head. Then he cannot see out the window. Then he cannot see his hand in front of him. Life moves inward, the sensations close in, the horizons diminish to point zero. And that is his death. A kind of prison cell concept of death, the man being locked in smaller and smaller cells, his own consciousness depleted of sensations being the last and smallest cell. It is a point of light. If this is true of death, then a real prison is death’s m
etaphor and when you put a man in prison you are suggesting to him the degrees of death that are possible before life is actually gone. You are forcing him to begin his dying. All constraints on freedom enforce conditions of death. The punishment of prison inflicts the corruption of death on life

  “You mean they are by themselves?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they unhappy?”

  “They are not too happy.”

  “Are they frightened?”

  “No, they are not frightened. They are innocent so they have nothing to be frightened of. They know they will be released after their trial. We shall prove that they are not guilty. And then you will all be together again. You hear that, Susele? Your mommy and daddy will return to you and hug you and kiss you and you will all be living together again.” (So you must be a good girl and do what your brother tells you. So go now both of you and help your aunt.)

  Ascher took out a big handkerchief, gave it a flap, and jammed it to his nose. We stood and watched him. He turned his back to us and blew his nose loudly, a ridiculous sound as if in antic celebration of the day my parents would be let out of jail.

  Just two or three images left from this period of our life. Aunt Frieda’s long, hard, change-picking fingers folding a five and two ones given her by Ascher in half, in half again, and pressing the pellet of bills into her change purse, snapping it shut, snapping her pocketbook shut. The cab driver yawning behind his wheel. On his dashboard, in a shallow cigar box with no lid, a fascicle of pencil nubbins bound in rubber bands. In times of crisis I am always sensitive to the people on the periphery. The cab driver was named Henry Lichtenstein, and his number was 45930. He wore a tan beret at a hundred-eighty-degree angle on his head. He had a toothbrush mustache and a gold tooth that flashed in his rear-view mirror when he yawned.

  “I’m not making any promises,” Aunt Frieda told Ascher through the window. “I’ll do my best, but that’s all.”

  I’LL DO MY BEST BUT THAT’S ALL.

  In those days the cabs were still limousines, with jump seats in the back. This was a big yellow De Soto. Our bundles were piled on the floor at our feet. Susan sat in the middle between me and the bird woman. Ascher said goodbye and moved away from the window. I had perhaps eight seconds for a last look before the cabbie put down his clipboard, put the De Soto into gear, and drove us away from our home. Up from the alley rose Williams embracing an ashcan. Riding his great flat feet with an eagle’s grace, floating his body through the air like a song. Stops, puts down his burden. I watch his breath steam out of him. He looks at the taxi. I stare into his red eyes of menace. He dips his head and points his arm at me, the cab lurches, and he is gone. In front of Aunt Frieda’s head, on the other side of the seat, the diamond interstices of the schoolyard fence become blurred. I have not once mentioned school to Ascher or my aunt. I have not mentioned leaving school, or transferring to another school, or anything about school. They have either forgotten or don’t care. But no school is what I have worked out with myself as a justification for going with Aunt Frieda. It will turn out to be not enough. Somewhere in the Bronx she orders the cabbie to the IRT. She will save most of the seven dollars by dragging us up the stairs, valises, bundles and all, and standing us with her on the elevated all the way to Brooklyn.

  They’re all gone—the friends, the girl who writes for Cosmopolitan, the photographer. Artie Sternlicht is on his back on the mattress with his hands behind his head. “I have no energy,” he says. His voice is soft now. “I’m sick. I can’t get up off my ass.”

  Daniel wants to leave but both Artie and his girl insist that he stay for dinner. She is in the cubicle kitchen just inside the front door, where boards lie across a sink-bathtub to make the table, and the icebox is half-sized so that you stoop down to open it, and the blackened two-burner stove has curved legs. The whole apartment is this front alcove converted to a kitchen, a closet bathroom with a water tank and pull chain hanging from the wall, and the bedroom furnished with a mattress, a table, a color TV set and a collage.

  “Your sister mentioned you only once,” Artie says. “She said she had a brother who was politically undeveloped. She made it sound like undescended testicles.”

  A Japanese paper lantern around a hanging bulb provides the light in the room.

  “She’s beautiful,” Baby says from the kitchen. “I really like her. I didn’t figure her to freak out. I mean, y’know, she’s not the kind.”

  “I think she was coming here, she was on her way here,” I tell them. “I think she was bringing you material for your collage.”

  Baby stands in the doorway. “Save the Isaacsons,” she says. “That poster.”

  I nod. Artie sits up and folds his legs. “Oh Christ,” he says. He folds his arms.

  “You discussed it with her?”

  “Ah shit. I wish I could drink some wine. I wish I could turn on. When do we eat, Baby?”

  “I’m making whole-wheat spaghetti.”

  “It’s too fucking hot,” Artie says. “This fucking city is like an oven.” He stands up and starts to pace the room. “You want to know what was wrong with the old American Communists? They were into the system. They wore ties. They held down jobs. They put people up for President. They thought politics is something you do at a meeting. When they got busted they called it tyranny. They were Russian tit suckers. Russia! Who’s free in Russia? All the Russians want is steel up everyone’s ass. Where’s the Revolution in Russia?”

  He looks at me as if he really expects an answer. He paces. “The American Communist Party set the Left back fifty years. I think they worked for the FBI. That’s the only explanation. They were conspiratorial, They were invented by J. Edgar Hoover. They were his greatest invention.”

  “How do you know Susan?”

  “Baby, how do we know Susan? I think we met her in Boston when I was up there to rap.”

  “That’s when it was,” Baby calls in.

  “She was into this thing about your parents,” Sternlicht says.

  “Right.”

  “Well, man, I mean can I tell it to you straight or are you gonna trip out the minute I open my mouth?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Your folks didn’t know shit. The way they handled themselves at their trial was pathetic. I mean they played it by their rules. The government’s rules. You know what I mean? Instead of standing up and saying fuck you, do what you want, I can’t get an honest trial anyway with you fuckers—they made motions, they pleaded innocent, they spoke only when spoken to, they played the game. All right? The whole frame of reference brought them down because they acted like defendants at a trial. You dig?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean someday they’re gonna really off me. When the Federales wake up and they see I’m not just some crazy acid-head, when they see that all the freaks are together and putting it together we will be set up for the big hit or the big bust or both, which is all right because I don’t give a shit about dying, when you’re into revolution you have to die, and you can’t be a revolution unless you’re willing to die. But man, if they ever put me on trial my action will be to show them up for the corrupt fuckers they really are. That trial will be my chance. I will turn that courtroom on, and what I say and do in that courtroom will go out on the wire, and the teletype, and kids all over the world will be at that trial and say, ‘Man, who is that dude, dig the way he’s got his shit together!’ And if they find me guilty I will find them guilty, and if they find me innocent I will still find them guilty. And I won’t come on except as a judge of them, a new man, like a new nation with new laws of life. And they will be on trial, not me. You see? They blew the whole goddamn thing!”

  “And Susan disagreed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She said nevertheless they were martyrs,” Baby said from the kitchen.

  “Sure they were martyrs. But the revolution has more martyrs than it needs. Like all
the spades you never heard of murdered in their beds, and in every jail in the world, and like the millions of kids murdered in their schools, and like the people starved to death or shot or burned in Vietnam. We’ve got martyrs up the ass.”

  “You can’t disagree with Artie,” the girl says. Sternlicht sinks back down on his mattress. “We’ll have to go see her,” he says.

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea. She’s way down. She doesn’t like to talk to anyone.”

  When we eat there is silence in the room. Our table is the floor. The lights of Avenue B shine on the curtainless raised windows translucent with dirt. The sounds of Avenue B flow in like heat. I am thinking if Phyllis had met him she would have gone with him and made the right choice, all her rhythm liberated, and this revolutionary stud would fuck her and afterwards they would both laugh and feel good. And she would not be hung up, a child all form and empty heart, with a man who didn’t fill the form of all her impulses and fashion copies and make them come true. I am glad my wife never met Sternlicht. He is probably a champion fucker. He does not put a woman in bondage.

  I look at Baby who wears a halter and short shorts, and has long hair pulled back in a ponytail. She is a thin girl, not really pretty but sexy, with a thin sexy life force in her skinniness that I find attractive, and that I understand in the sense of understanding what Sternlicht goes for, as she pokes a forkful of spaghetti into her open mouth,

  “It would’ve been good if your sister had managed to get the picture here,” Sternlicht says. “It would have been good for her. We would slap it up there on the wall, right Baby? And she would have done it, and she would have been done with it. Everything is significant, every small act changes the world.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about her trust money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Foundation for Revolution?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think of the idea?”

  Sternlicht smiles. He drinks off a glass of milk that has left a ring on the floor. He wipes his mouth. “I told your sister if she had all that bread to pass on for a bail fund or a free university or any good shit like that, that I would change every opinion I have about the Isaacsons, and I would gladly become a beneficiary of her Foundation. Fuck me if I’m ever consistent. I told her if there’s bread for the Movement I don’t care if it’s in the name of Ronald Reagan. I told her for thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of soupbones for the diggers’ pots I would kiss the ass of every pig in the city of noo yawk. That’s what I said. Are you satisfied with my answer?”