by Howard Fast
She telephoned Joe the night Barbara left. She found him at the hospital, between operations.
“What is it? I don’t have much time, Sally,” he said to her.
“I’m still at Higate.”
“Don’t you think you should come home?”
“What difference will it make?”
“That’s a peculiar thing to say.”
“You’re not there, so what difference does it make?”
“I try to be there as much as I can,” Joe explained impatiently. “I have work to do.”
“I know.”
“What does that mean? You know, I’m not out with some dame. I’m here at the hospital.”
“I know that.”
“When will you be home?”
“I’ll wait for Barbara. Then I’ll leave. That will be in two or three days. I’ll help take care of Sam.”
“They don’t need you for that. They have a whole damn institution there at Higate.”
“It’s to take care of wine, not babies.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Sally said. “I’m trying to stay alive. I’m twenty-two years old, and I’m trying to stay alive.”
“Will you please make sense.”
“All right, Joe. Don’t worry. I’ll be back as soon as Barbara returns from Washington.”
“O.K.,” he said. “Take care.”
She put down the phone, thinking that he hadn’t even asked how his own daughter was.
***
When Barbara returned home after picking up Sam at Higate and then stopping to see her father at the hospital, it was already on to evening, and she was hardly overwhelmed with delight to find a reporter from the Examiner camped on her doorstep. He was an aggressive young man who would not accept the excuse that she was tired and that she had a wet baby to diaper and feed. He tried to be ingratiating by admiring the Victorian decor of the outside of her house.
“If that’s the case,” Barbara said to him, “you can sit right here and admire it for the next hour. If I’ve finished everything I have to do, I’ll talk to you then.”
“Hey, come on, why can’t I sit inside and wait?”
“Because I don’t want you there,” Barbara said.
When she opened the door over an hour later, he was still waiting. “I admire your persistence,” she admitted. “Come inside.”
“You’re a tough lady, Mrs. Cohen. I’m not out to get you. I want to be helpful.”
“I can do without the Examiner’s help.”
“Yeah, but I can’t do without yours. I’ll get clobbered if I don’t come back with something. I tried to find your husband at his garage. They tell me he’s out of town. Where?”
“I don’t think that enters into it. You’ll have to ask him when he returns.”
“O.K., I’m not pushing. After your experience, what is your opinion of the House committee?”
“Low, very low.”
“Low opinion.” He made notes. “You know, I agree with you. I read your first book. Overseas—you know, the armed services editions, those little paper books. I liked it. I haven’t read the second one yet, but I’m going to. What about the names?”
“What about them?”
“Are they local people?”
“Mostly, yes.”
“I guess it wouldn’t do any good to ask you who they are?”
“No.”
“Suppose Congress cites you for contempt. Will you go to jail?”
“I hope not.”
“What is your opinion of the Communist Party? I mean, do you think they’re subversive? I mean, do you think they’re dedicated to the overthrow of the government by force and violence?”
“I haven’t the vaguest notion.”
“Would you describe yourself as an anticommunist?”
“You’re cute,” Barbara said. “If I say yes, I’m lumped with those cretins in Washington, and if I say no, you’ve got a wonderful hook for your story. Do you know what I think? I think you’d better go.”
“Aw, come on. You’re an old newspaperman yourself. I’ve got to try. Just another question or two. What about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“I hear he may get a Republican designation for Congress. What does this do to his plans? Are you friendly?”
“Goodnight, dear boy,” Barbara said. She ushered him to the door, ignoring his fervent pleas. Well, my love, she said to herself as she closed the door behind him, the hayride is over. You are no longer girl guide. You have pink spurs, and the trouble is, you’ve really done nothing at all to earn them.
Finally she had a chance to go through her mail. There was a letter from her publisher, which was cheerfully supportive, but in the final paragraph he voiced the hope that her new novel would not be “too political.” She went upstairs and gratefully found young Sam sound asleep. Downstairs again, she positioned herself in front of her typewriter, guiltily reviewing the days lost, but the words would not come. She sat for a whole hour staring at the keys, and her thoughts were everywhere but on the page of white paper that confronted her. Only two weeks before, sitting in Huntington Park with Sam in his stroller, she had engaged in a conversation with a French nursemaid. Barbara had been delighted to find someone to speak with in French, and after they had chatted away for fifteen minutes, the nursemaid had asked her what part of France she came from. At first she refused to believe that Barbara was an American, and then, when she had accepted it, she wondered whether Barbara was a nursemaid. “In a manner of speaking,” Barbara told her. “The truth is that I dearly love to come here with my boy. I’m a writer. I write books.”
“And you waste your time with this?” the nursemaid asked unbelievingly.
Barbara did not try to explain the past fifteen years. She had lived three lives, and now she confessed to herself that she desperately wanted the third life to continue. She wanted her world to remain just as it was, no wider than the narrow Victorian house on Green Street. She wanted her large, moody husband to be sitting in the next room, listening to recordings of the Well-Tempered Clavier. His lust for Bach was as incongruous as everything else about him. He had over three hundred recordings of Bach’s music and could follow most of it in an off-key da-da-da. She no longer had any desire to travel, and she did not want to forage in the past. She loved her tiny study, the walls lined with books. She had paid her dues, as she saw it, and the guilt that had come with an inheritance of fifteen million dollars had been assuaged by her creation of the Lavette Foundation. She was romantic enough to appreciate her action of renouncing the inheritance, and she considered herself to be a very decent, normal human being. There was hardly one of her girlhood friends who had not been psychoanalyzed or divorced, and she was fiercely possessive and protective of her own unshaken castle, the little wooden house that was her home.
All of which only went to make the past two weeks more unbelievable. She was essentially a cheerful person, rarely given to depression; now, unable to write, she set about paying the bills that had accumulated since Bernie’s departure. At eleven o’clock, she turned on the radio and listened to the news.
She and Bernie had discussed the purchase of a television set. Most of her friends already possessed one, but Barbara was uncertain about taking the step. She looked upon it as a sort of intrusion, images of people coming into her home uninvited. Bernie had argued otherwise. “Good golly, Barbara,” he had said, “how different is it from radio? I can remember when there was no radio, and so can you. I remember building a crystal set when I was a kid. The whole thing cost seven dollars, and I remember the first time I asked Rabbi Blum to try the earphones. I expected him to be annoyed, but he was as excited as a kid. He said he had always tried to imagine on what level God communicated, and now he finally knew. Of course, he didn�
�t say who the sponsor would be. He didn’t think that way.”
Now she hadn’t expected her own voice. It was impossible for her to think of herself as a news item, and here she was listening to herself being asked questions and answering them. She was far more interested in the news from Palestine, which had taken on an agonizing sameness. The Mufti’s men had ambushed a bus with grenades and machine-gun fire. Twelve Jewish children and four adults had been killed and twenty-two others wounded. War loomed on the horizon. The Arab nations were poised for a four-pronged invasion of the tiny Jewish state. A kibbutz had been wiped out, with the loss of thirty-seven settlers, men, women, and children. There was no emotion in the announcer’s voice, and Barbara reflected that the world had become inured to the killing of Jews. It was a matter of course.
“God help me,” she whispered. “I’m taking it that way myself. All I can feel is relief that Bernie is on his way back. Why don’t I cry out with their agony? Why don’t I weep? My husband is Jewish. How can I just sit here and listen so calmly?”
She turned off the radio, put out the lights, and went upstairs. In the luxury of a hot bath, she found herself relaxed and dozing, but when she crawled between the cold sheets of her bed, she was wide awake again.
For a time she made a conscious effort to find sleep; then she gave up and allowed fancies and images to crawl around in her mind. The thought that something might have happened to Bernie had always lurked there; it surfaced now. In all the years of war, he had never been wounded, never even scratched, and he had told Barbara of how an Indian soldier in North Africa had ascribed it to his karma. Self-consciously and feeling somewhat foolish, Barbara once made a trip to the library to read about karma, but she could make no more of it than that Buddhists considered it to be the record of past existences acting upon the present one; since none of it was within the scope of her belief, she had dismissed it from her mind. She had not thought about it for years, but tonight she clung to it as some of her friends clung to the convolutions of their horoscopes. She was not a person who enjoyed sleeping alone. The male body in bed alongside her was an assurance of wholeness; a single sex was a fragmentation. To awaken at night and reach out and feel a body, the swell of muscles, the pressure of a body against hers—this was night as it should be. The night was lonely and empty, filled with shadows and anxieties.
In the morning she called Jean and said, “Mother, would you be a dear and baby-sit for a few hours. I have to meet Dr. Kellman at the hospital, and I can look in on daddy while I’m there.”
“You’re not ill?”
“No, I’m fine. It’s not medical, it’s something else.”
“They’re letting Dan come home tomorrow, so that doesn’t have to take you to the hospital. You did see him yesterday.”
“I know. It’s just that it’s convenient for the doctor.”
In the hospital room, Dan was sitting in bed, growling over the Examiner’s treatment of his daughter. “Those bastards!” he exclaimed. “I’d like to buy the rag and fire the lot of them!”
“Mr. Hearst’s not selling,” Dr. Kellman told him, “and unless you learn to stay calm, I’ll just keep you here.”
“How is he, really?” Barbara asked the doctor as they walked down the corridor to his office.
“He’s good for another twenty years if he takes it easy. Now what is it, Barbara? If it’s about that money I gave you for Spain, for the medical supplies—well, I don’t give a damn whether you give them my name or not.”
“No, it’s not that, and I won’t discuss this business of the names with anyone, including people like you. That’s my problem, and only mine.”
“I’d just like to make it easier for you.” Sitting in his office, he lit a cigarette and looked at Barbara inquiringly. He was a thin, bald man of about fifty. His smile was reassuring, a nice smile, Barbara thought, for a doctor, very reassuring. “Well?” he asked her. “You’re not sick. You look worried but healthy.”
“Have you ever given money to help the Jewish settlers in Palestine?” she asked bluntly.
“Well, there’s one I didn’t expect. Yes, I have. Some. Not enough.”
“How do you do it? I mean, is there an organization of some sort here that has connections with Palestine?”
“Why, Barbara?”
“Please, I have my reasons.”
“It’s no secret. It’s called the United Jewish Appeal. Yes, I’d say they have connections in Palestine.”
“Do you know the man who runs it?”
“I know him. His name’s Alex Denaman.”
“Could you call him and ask whether he’ll see me now? As a favor, please.”
“No problem.” He picked up the phone and made the call. Then he said to Barbara, “He’ll see you in half an hour. It’s over on Market Street. I’ll jot down the address.”
When Barbara walked into the office on Market Street, a small, plain room about ten by ten, half of it taken up with files, she was greeted by an affable, plump man who apologized for the condition of the place. “I’m looking for a secretary,” he explained. “Not that there’s any place to put her, but my typing…We use volunteers. Volunteers—draw your own conclusions, Mrs. Cohen. Welcome. Any friend of Doc Kellman’s. What can I do for you? Have you come with a checkbook?” And seeing the expression on her face, he said quickly, “Sorry. That’s a joke. Please sit down.” He pulled an old wooden chair into place for her. “Joke—yes, no. We’re desperate for money. We’re always desperate, but these days…That’s my problem, not yours. How can I help you? Or how can you help me?”
“I’m not Jewish,” Barbara said.
“I suspected as much.”
“My husband is. I want to tell you what he’s done, and then perhaps you can help me. I’d like to tell you this in confidence, if I may, simply because my father is involved.”
“All right, in confidence. You’re not only pretty, you have an honest face. Wait a minute—of course, you’re the Barbara Cohen I’ve been reading about.”
Barbara nodded. “Yes. Does that change anything?”
“No, no. Go ahead.”
He listened attentively without comment while she told him the facts about Bernie and the ten C-54s. When she had finished, he said with feeling, “That is a story. That is something. Do you know, this is the first I’ve heard of it? Just great. And you mean they actually got the planes to Tel Aviv, with the guns and the Messerschmitts inside?”
“Yes. I had a cable from my husband that said so.”
“He must be quite a man,” Denaman said.
“He is, yes. But this cable was sent nine days ago. According to the cable, he had made arrangements to take boat passage from Haifa to Naples, a plane from there to England, and then a plane home. But I’ve heard nothing, not a word, and I’m worried sick.”
“Perhaps he was held up in Haifa, delayed. Those ships have no regular schedule.”
“Then he would have telephoned me. I know him.”
“Ah, but it’s not so easy, young lady. I’ve had to wait three, four, five days to get through to Haifa. Maybe I don’t get through at all. The same with cables.”
“But it’s been nine days.”
“What would you like me to do? You tell me the way your father takes out a hundred and ten thousand dollars—my goodness, I am speechless, absolutely speechless.”
“Can you try to find out what happened to my husband, whether he’s all right and where he is?”
“Look, I can do this. I’ll call our New York office, and I’ll make a big mystery out of it. I’ll tell them it’s double-A-one priority. If it’s humanly possible, I won’t take no for an answer. So maybe I’ll have something for you. Only don’t worry. A man like your husband—well, don’t worry. It will be all right.”
“I’m sure it will,” Barbara agreed. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
/> “Don’t thank me yet. We’ll see what I can do.”
Barbara gave him her address and telephone number, and when she left, she felt better. On the cable car, mounting California Street, she was able to smile at her own fears and frustrations. If Bernie were on his way home, why should he bother to communicate with her? It would only be a matter of days, and then he could have the pleasure of ringing the doorbell and seeing her face when she opened the door. What a dramatic nuisance she had made of herself, both with Dr. Kellman and with Mr. Denaman!
She told Sam about it that afternoon as she trundled him over to Huntington Park. She had read somewhere that mothers who take refuge in one-sided conversations were demonstrating a highly neurotic pattern of behavior, but then, Barbara was not given to chattering. Unlike her sister-in-law Sally, she did not indulge in what she thought of as verbareah, a word she had invented to describe Sally’s condition; and since Sam did not yet possess any critical facilities beyond gurgles and two words, one of which was “mama” and the other in all probability “cookie,” he remained an appreciative audience. He good-naturedly accepted her apologies, and she considered that one day he might make a useful diplomat. “Or a garage mechanic,” she told him. “That’s nothing to sneeze at. The ability to fix a car is becoming just about the most useful skill in our society, and both branches of my family made it with their hands. Daddy began as a fisherman—crabs, which is why he never eats them now. He was responsible for the death of heaven only knows how many thousands of crabs, and naturally with all his guilt he couldn’t face one today. It’s true that mother was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, out of what San Francisco loves to refer to as the highest echelon of its society, which freely translated means two generations of money—and after all, her daddy, my Grandpa Thomas, was president of the Seldon Bank. But the deep, dark family secret is that Grandpa Thomas’ father was a placer miner, although it is rumored that he owned a dance hall, which was a large tent and not really a dance hall at all, if you get my drift, which I will not go into any deeper in light of your youth. But he soon discovered that usury paid even better than the oldest profession, and here we are today, only a hundred years later. Grandma, on the other hand, came from a very posh Boston family and her name was Asquith. I don’t remember her too well, except that she was a tall lady with a long, thin nose. We all of us seem to run to long bones. But on daddy’s side they were all fishermen, which makes it much simpler—”