In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  3

  On August 2, we returned to New York. Gertrude stayed in New York for an additional week to straighten out various matters, and I returned to Philadelphia alone.

  I found my $72 check for "The Imaginary" waiting for me and with that, and with Henry Blugerman's untouchable $300, my bank account reached a dizzying height of $854.80. I had no qualms about marriage; I was simply rolling in money.

  Also during that week I received the October 1942 Thrilling Wonder, which contained "The Hazing," 2 and earlier I had received the August 1942 Super Science, which had contained "Victory Unintentional." 3 Of all the stories I had sold, only "The Imaginary" remained to be published, and that appeared in the November, 1942 Super Science. 4

  With that, it was almost as though the writing part of my life were over, after four years. I didn't entirely abandon it. I did think of a story I called "The Camel's Back," which involved, essentially, the formation of a black hole, decades before astronomers began to talk about black holes, but I never got past the first few pages.

  Writing just didn't concern me. Only Gertrude and the job, in that order, did.

  4

  On August 8, I went to New York once again—for the thirteenth weekend in a row—and on August 9, 1942, I brought Gertrude to Philadelphia. 5

  August was, however, most uncomfortable. It was largely humid,

  2 See The Early Asimov*

  3 See The Rest of the Robots.

  4 See The Early Asfmov.

  5 In the world outside, the Germans were pushing east of the Don bend toward Stalingrad, and the United States finally began the counteroffensive, eight months after Pearl Harbor, by landing Marines on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

  rainy, or both, and the two of us were living in someone else's house. I had lived there alone for four months and there had been no problems, but why not? I was away daytimes and weekends, and was no trouble to the owners. Once there were two of us, with Gertrude home all day, and both of us all Sunday, things were altogether different. On August 15-16, I spent my first weekend in Philadelphia, alone with Gertrude, and things got very frosty, indeed. We were asked to leave.

  That, in itself, didn't bother us, for we wanted to leave. The question was where.

  Walnut Street

  We spent several days looking for a place and finally found one just a block away, at 4715 Walnut Street. It was an apartment that we sublet from the previous tenants, who were leaving. The lease had only four months to go, but we felt that it could be renewed if necessary.

  The rent was $42.50 a month, which seemed stiff to us, but we decided to handle it, since our combined assets had now topped the thousand-dollar mark. On August 31, 1942, we began moving into the new apartment, and by September 2, the move (our first move as a married couple) was completed.

  For the first time in my life, I lived in an apartment of my own, with a bathroom of my own, a kitchen of my own, a living room of my own—all paid for by myself.

  It had its disadvantages. It had no proper bedroom, with a bed standing in it, for instance. It had a Murphy bed, which meant we had to take it down each evening and put it up each morning (with at least a minimum of smoothing out) unless we wanted a double bed in the middle of our none-too-large living room during the course of the day— which we generally didn't.

  This also meant that the first thing we had to buy for the apartment was not a bed, but a mattress. After all, you could eat out, and you could sit on the floor, but you couldn't very well sleep on the floor if you were newlyweds.

  Gertrude had to do all the shopping, by the way, because I was at work every day but Sunday, and the stores were closed on Sunday. Except for those stores that were open on at least one evening of the week, I was helpless. Gertrude did well, though, with such help as I could give. Almost everything we bought then lasted us for many years.

  Another disadvantage of the apartment was the fact that its four windows all faced in the same direction so that there was no cross-ventilation unless we opened the door into the hall and put a blanket across for some privacy. The summers in Philadelphia in the early 1940s were uniformly hot and humid—and miserable. The lab was air conditioned and I spent much of the day in comfort, but Gertrude didn't have that advantage.

  Then, too, we had no telephone. Nor could we get one in the war years. It meant I couldn't call her from work or she me at work. It meant Gertrude had to spend rather lonely and uncomfortable hours in a small apartment six days a week.

  What's more, not only did Philadelphia as a corporate entity have the reputation of being a dead town and of rolling up its sidewalks at eleven, it also seemed that all its citizens did the same.

  There were strict apartment rules against playing the radio after 11 :oo p.m., and careless walking about on a floor that as yet had no rugs brought banging from below. I had to sympathize with the restrictions for I believe in quiet neighbors myself, but it did seem hard, once we got a radio, that I could not hear the 11:00 p.m. news when the Battles of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal were raging. Even though I turned it on so low that I had to put my ear against it to hear, there were nevertheless instant shouts from somewhere crying, "Turn off that so-and-so radio."

  The manager of the apartment building, a Mr. Moses, was one of the most unpleasant and hateful people I have ever encountered. He was, quite literally, a nonstop talker who never listened. I heard his voice droning on and on in another apartment one time and the tenant's voice finally rose to a shriek: "Will you let me say something, damn you?"

  Little by little, the apartment was filled with furniture. We even got a rug once the manager spent some time yelling at Gertrude in nonstop fashion, ordering her to get a rug for the living room because the people underneath complained about our "jumping up and down," by which I presume they meant our walking. Within a week we found a rag rug for $15, which was just the thing—at least it was just the thing for us, but, as it turned out, it didn't satisfy the people beneath.

  The neighborhood itself was not terribly different from Brooklyn, but little differences loomed large. Small stores were not so thickly strewn, and some Jewish delicacies (bagels, for instance) took some looking for.

  The movies usually ran single features and started them at fixed times, once in the afternoon and once in the evening. There were no continuous showings and you couldn't walk in whenever you wanted to.

  Then, too, the relatively small subway system and the intricate network of streetcars took getting used to, as did the rather duller quality of the newspapers. I quickly fixed on the Philadelphia Record as the liberal newspaper, however.

  There were pleasant things. I was very fond of the Philadelphia Library, of the Franklin Institute, of Horn and Hardart, but I never grew

  to think of Philadelphia as my home. It was always a way station, someplace I was staying "for the duration." It was an interruption in the serious business of my life, which was that of getting my doctorate.

  It would have been helpful if Gertrude had obtained a job, not so much for the extra money it would bring in as to get her out of that apartment and with other people. The war made jobs plentiful, but most of the desirable ones were for American citizens only at that time. The Blugermans had come to the United States on a visitors' visa and had never bothered to regularize their status so that not only was Gertrude not an American citizen, but also she could not even begin taking steps toward citizenship without returning to Canada first and then entering the United States on an immigrant basis. And as an "alien" she had to report at the post office every January and could not take any war-related job.

  On September 5, 1942, which was my mother's forty-seventh birthday, we finally returned to New York for the weekend and established a kind of routine. Once a month we would make the trip. I would go on Saturday and return on Sunday (for the Navy Yard was as much a rigid yoke upon my neck as ever the candy store had been). Gertrude either left the preceding Wednesday and returned with me on Sunday, or went with me on Saturday an
d returned the following Wednesday.

  I always looked forward to the monthly visits with dread, always fearing that Gertrude would refuse to return to Philadelphia with me. Things were so much more comfortable for her in her parents' house than in our apartment, after all.

  And in mid-September, Lee married Joe Goldberger. Apparently, she had decided, at last, he was good husband material. Or perhaps the sight of Gertrude finding a husband as a result of that double date that had been designed only to gain an estimate of Joe from her, inspired Lee to a spirit of emulation.

  The job was developing social discomforts, too.

  The people at the Navy Yard were simply not like those at Columbia. At the Navy Yard, there was virtually no one with whom I could have the long conversations on war, politics, and science from a common ground of assumptions. The fellow workers at the Navy Yard tended to be conservative in politics, or, if they were not, they tended to keep their mouths shut.

  About the only fellow worker with whom I found myself truly con-

  genial was Leonard Meisel, an incredibly thin mathematician with a beak of a nose that was not unusually large really, but that seemed tremendous when attached to his stick-figure body. We were both in the car pool, driven by Bernie Zitin, which took us to work and back, and our quick verbal exchanges were hilarious. (Well, we found them so, and that was all that mattered.)

  The Jews at the Navy Yard did not feel themselves to be in an enviable position. It seemed to some of us that there were strong feelings among some of the Gentiles that the war was being fought to "save the Jews" and that Pearl Harbor was a put-up job somehow arranged by Roosevelt and his Jewish friends. It seemed reasonable for us Jews to fear that continued reverses in the war would cause a vast increase of anti-Semitism in the United States.

  In fact, some of my fellow Jews spoke to me about my effervescence in the lab. They hinted that I ought to keep a low profile, since if I made myself annoying and unpopular that would reflect on the Jews generally.

  I told them to go to the devil. It was quite clear that anti-Semitism in the world of 1942 could not be blunted by the "good behavior" of individual Jews any more than the lynching of blacks could be stopped if some of them behaved like cringing Uncle Toms. So I stayed myself. Being myself did me no particular good, but I don't think it harmed the Jewish cause particularly.

  A kind of crisis arose in September, however, as the first High Holiday season of post-Pearl Harbor times approached. Before Pearl Harbor, Jewish employees at the Navy Yard were routinely given time off for Rosh Hashonah (the New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The new rules after Pearl Harbor, however, made it quite clear that the only day off other than Sundays was to be Christmas. No exceptions.

  Some of the Jewish employees, however, felt very strongly that they oughtn't to work on Yom Kippur, even if they worked on all other Jewish holidays. It occurred to someone that perhaps a deal could be made. If the Jewish employees were allowed to take Yom Kippur off, they would work on Christmas.

  Bernie Zitin approached me on September 15 and asked how I felt about the Jewish holidays. I said, quite flatly, that I never observed them and that I had no objection to working on them. He told me what was being planned, the switchover of Christmas for Yom Kippur, and said it wouldn't work unless the petition was signed by all Jews without exception. Otherwise the attitude would be that if some Jews could work, all could.

  So I signed. It was against my principles but I couldn't bring myself to interfere with the concerns of many people for the sake of my principles.

  The next day, Bob Heinlein stopped in to see me. "What's this I hear about your not working on Yom Kippur, Isaac?"

  "I signed a petition about working on Christmas instead/' I said.

  "You're not religious, are you?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "You're not going to temple on Yom Kippur, are you?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "Then why are you planning to take off on Yom Kippur?"

  By now I imagine I was flushing with annoyance. "I won't go to church on Christmas, either," I said, "so what difference does it make which day I take off for nonreligious purposes?"

  "It doesn't. So why not take off Christmas with everyone else?"

  I said, "Because it would look bad if I didn't sign. They explained to me that. . ."

  Heinlein said, "Are you telling me they forced you to sign?"

  It seemed to me that I was going to be used as a stick to beat down the petition.

  "No," I said, strenuously, "I was not forced to sign it. I signed it voluntarily because I wanted to. But since I freely admit I intend no religious observances I will agree to work on Yom Kippur if I am told to, provided that does not prejudice the petition."

  And that's the way it was. On September 19, the Navy Yard announced that Jewish employees would be allowed to take off Yom Kippur with pay, and without having to work Christmas—and because of Heinlein's encounter with me, I had ended up volunteering to work on Yom Kippur.

  On Monday, September 21, 1942, I was therefore the only Jewish employee at the Navy Yard (I believe) to show up at work.

  It was no great hardship, but I must admit that I resented Heinlein's having put me on the spot. He meant well, I'm sure, and we have stayed good friends, but I have never been able to erase the memory of his having backed me into a corner.

  3

  During the first months of our marriage, Gertrude and I ate out. While we were in the rooming house, we had to, of course. And after we moved into the apartment, we were too concerned with buying furniture and settling in to get involved with meals at home.

  There was a small hotel in the neighborhood, the Brierhurst, with an attached restaurant in which there were meals at three levels of prices—65 cents, 75 cents, and 95 cents. We always ordered one of the alternatives at the 65-cent level, sometimes splurging to 75 cents. I don't think we ever touched the 95-cent meals.

  They had the best hot rolls I ever ate. They would serve three and we would eat them and ask for three more and eat those, too. I don't remember what else we ate—but I do remember those rolls.

  Then, on October 2, 1942, I came back from work and when I entered the door I found waiting for me an aroma of cooking. It was a surprise dinner and I recorded the menu: pineapple juice, vegetable soup, veal chops with potatoes and string beans, chocolate pudding, and coffee. Since I know exactly what brides' first meals are supposed to be like from my assiduous observation of events in movie comedies, I feel impelled to add that nothing was burned and nothing was raw.

  It was, in fact, a good meal, and Gertrude was a good cook. She would always insist that her mother was a better cook, but these overall betters and worses are misleading. Gertrude's mother could make wonderful roast chickens, noodle puddings, and apple strudel. No one could touch her on that. Gertrude herself, however, could make Chinese-style meat or shrimp better than Chinese restaurants did, and had some chicken recipes that it was impossible to eat enough of.

  After I was introduced to Gertrude's meals, the Brierhurst's offerings lost their glamor.

  4

  Between eating out and consuming every roll in sight, and then experiencing Gertrude's good cooking and large portions, I began to gain weight. I had weighed 153 pounds when I was married, and I had been at that weight for several years. I was under the firm impression that this weight was fixed, regardless of how I ate. What gave me that firm impression, I haven't the faintest idea.

  By October 9, after I had been married just over ten weeks, I weighed 162 pounds. My weight kept going up farther, not spectacularly at any one time, but rather steadily over the years.

  Of course, even when I was thin, I always had a pot belly. A sedentary life does nothing to strengthen those abdominal muscles, which are only too likely to weaken, bulge, and lie flaccid. Consequently, I always looked fatter than I was, for people judge fatness by waist measurement. My arms and legs were never fat, even when I was at my stoutest, and my face thickene
d only somewhat.

  The abdomen was rather spectacular, I suppose, and it helped make me the butt for comment. Of course, I never served as a butt in quiet resignation, but always handed it back—sometimes with unfortunate results.

  There was a girl in the laboratory, for instance, who was rather pretty, but quite thin and with a figure consisting almost entirely of vertical lines.

  I was carefully pouring something from one vessel into another and I suppose I made a humorous figure as I stood there in a frozen attitude, with my rubber apron rounding the curve of my corporation.

  Struck by the humor of it, the thin young woman picked up a long piece of glass tubing and, holding it spear-fashion, said, "I'm going to puncture your stomach and let out the air so that you'll look more like a man."

  "All right," I said, still pouring, "and when you get the air, use it to pump up your chest so that you'll look more like a woman."

  There was a loud shriek from the young woman (who could hand it out but apparently didn't like to get it back), and she picked up a large chair, heavier than she was, with the full intention of throwing it at me. I left the lab in a hurry and didn't return for most of the day.

  5

  Gertrude introduced me to a widened dietary. My mother (who also had her good points as a cook—her boiled beef and attendant lima bean soup seemed unparalleled to me) had a very limited scope.

  Gertrude did far better. I had not only never tasted shrimp until Gertrude prepared them for me, I also had never seen shrimp. Nor had I eaten cauliflower till she prepared it for me. I had never eaten chicken fried in butter until she prepared it so, and I found to my amazement that the chicken did not taste buttery, but rather that it tasted better than any other fried chicken I'd ever had.

  But I'm a quick learner. My food preferences widened very rapidly and eventually became more catholic than Gertrude's. I remember, once, ordering bear steak in a restaurant while Gertrude sat there and shuddered.