He was such a liar. She had numbers right here in her notepad that proved what he was saying was “patently untrue.” According to the State Department, half of the visas in 1938 went to British or Irish immigrants, people who had nothing to fear from Hitler. And no more than a handful of the remainder had been granted to “those of the Jewish race.”
Most of the others in the room were nodding their heads in agreement, including a substantial number of reporters. Why were they so willing to take Long’s misinformation at face value? Why hadn’t anyone done their homework? She clenched her hand tightly around her pen. Tante had asked if Americans knew what Hitler was planning, if they cared. The answer was all too obvious.
“But we must exercise our largesse with caution, for these are difficult and dangerous times. There is no doubt that many of these so-called immigrants are actually Fifth Columnists, Nazi spies masquerading as Jews, who come here to commit sabotage against our great and generous nation. And this we will not accept!”
There was a long round of applause.
“So to this end,” Long said after a significant pause, “I have approved a new regulation. It mandates that every American sponsoring an immigrant be screened to determine their motives. And all would-be immigrants will undergo the same at their respective consulates.” He put his hand over his heart as if reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “I promise if any suspicions are raised, the visa will be refused. We cannot and will not take this chance! Our national security depends upon it!”
Now it was a standing ovation, and Alizée could feel the crowd coalescing into a single being ready and eager to follow Breckinridge Long. She had no choice but to haul herself to her feet. It was impossible to deny that the man was shrewd. Not only had he just declared he was going to make it even more difficult for European immigrants to get visas, but by focusing on those canny villains who disguised themselves as Jews, he’d devised a way to deny entry to as many Jews as he wanted.
She seethed as she waited for the question-and-answer session but grew more incensed by the snippets of conversation around her.
“That man’s got his head screwed on right.”
“They’ll take all the jobs, and we don’t have any to spare.”
“They’ll insinuate themselves until they’ve got their hands on all the money. You know how they are. That’s always their goal.”
These people were being brainwashed with untruths. Someone needed to set the record straight. And she had the numbers to do just that. Tante always said that honey caught more flies than vinegar. But Long didn’t deserve honey. He didn’t even deserve vinegar. Acid was more like it.
She was used to hearing anti-Semitic comments, growing up in Cambridge, in Arles, living here in New York. It was a fact of life, background noise, and she’d never spent much time thinking about it. When she was in first grade, she’d been completely bewildered when a boy started screaming on the playground that she’d killed Christ; she hadn’t even known who Christ was. When her mother explained the situation and the lie, assuring her the boy was uninformed about history and that she should feel sorry for him, she’d taken Maman’s words at face value. But now that a man representing the US government was turning that background noise into action, everything was different.
She busied herself with her notepad, trying to memorize her statistics.
“Probably ain’t going to need that.” The reporter next to her pointed at the notepad. “He’s only going to repeat the high points of his speech. Not going to answer any questions either. Except from his own people.” He tilted his head toward an older gentleman, who was better dressed than the rest of the group. “As if we don’t know who they are.”
Just as the reporter had predicted, Long, with a wide smile oozing friendliness, reiterated what he’d just said, and the first question he took was from the well-dressed man.
“When do you think your friend Franklin Roosevelt will promote you from assistant secretary to actual secretary of state?” he asked as if the question had just popped into his head.
Long chuckled modestly. “The president and I have been friends since our navy days during the Great War, but as far as I know, he has no intention of taking the position away from Cordell, who is also a friend. Secretary Hull has, and will always have, my complete support.” He scanned the crowd for another question from one of his own.
Alizée raised her hand, hoping the fact that she was a girl would fool him into thinking he could trust her. And it worked.
“The girl on the left,” he said, pointing at her. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Babette Pierre, sir,” she said meekly, hoping to build on the edge his underestimation gave her. “And I just want to tell you, Secretary Long, how much I respect you for the help you’ve given to all those poor refugees.” She’d purposely dropped the “assistant.”
He beamed at her. “It is the least our great country can do for the poor souls caught up in a war not of their own making.”
“But I’m a little confused about the numbers you just quoted.” She smiled at him, fluttered a bit of eyelash. “I hope you can help me figure it out.”
Long bowed slightly in her direction. “I’m always happy to be of service to a girl as young and beautiful as yourself.”
The reporters chuckled, and one blew a loud wolf whistle.
She bobbed her head as if she were both pleased and embarrassed, cleared her throat, and purposely stammered, “I, ah, I understand that so far this year over three hundred thousand German refugees, mostly Jewish, have applied to come here. But then I read in the Sun that fewer than ten thousand visas have been granted by the State Department since January. Which doesn’t sound right.”
She frowned as if laboring to understand. “According to the Immigration Act, one hundred fifty-four thousand visas are available each year to citizens of European countries. So how can one hundred forty-four thousand still be outstanding with less than four months left in the year? I don’t understand how a State Department as committed to helping ‘fleeing immigrants’ as you’ve described could have this kind of backlog.”
Long appeared happy to explain. “You’re absolutely right about the three hundred thousand German applications, Miss Pierre. It’s the Sun that’s wrong about the number of visas granted.” He raised his eyebrows and chuckled. “As they so often are.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you about the Sun,” Alizée said with a sly smile, “as they’re my employer.” She nodded at Long as the laughter began to subside: I see what you’re doing, and two can play this game.
“But let’s forget the Sun.” She glanced at her notepad. “You just said a significant proportion of the two hundred fifty tousand visas you’ve granted have gone to European Jews. So then we must be talking about at least sixty or seventy percent which would mean somewhere between one hundred and fifty thousand and one hundred seventy-five thousand Jews have been allowed into this country since Hitler came to power. That can’t be right, can it? An awful lot of Fifth Columners, I’d think.”
Instead of being angry or defensive, Long’s eyes sparkled at the challenge. “I’m surprised you would say such a thing, my dear. We all know that the vast majority of the Jewish race pose no threat to the United States. They’re just the unfortunate victims of that crazy man on the other side of the ocean.”
The reporters were eating this up, all eyes following the verbal tennis match.
“So I take it that means you’ll soon be authorizing visas for many more of these unfortunate victims.” For a moment, she caught herself thinking that maybe he could be reasoned with. He was clearly smart enough to appreciate the facts.
Then her head cleared. What a ridiculous notion. Breckinridge Long was a man whose actions were based on hatred not logic. He was the man putting her family in danger. So many others. Merde. If he could charm her, whom couldn’t he charm?
“Touché, Miss Pierre, touché. You’re not only beautiful but clearly intelligent. Unfortu
nately, you’re also very naive.” He doffed an invisible hat. “I’d love to discuss this with you further, but that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the reporters here. Please feel free to call my secretary to schedule a private meeting.” He winked at her knowingly, then pointed to a woman whose clothing was a few stripes above that of the other members of the press. “Mrs. Appleton, do you have a question for me?”
16
DANIELLE, 2015
I borrowed my mother’s car again and went back to visit Grand-mère the following weekend. I brought Lily Pads and a painting of my own, a brightly colored collage made of paint, string, canvas, and cloth, which I thought she’d like. I hadn’t seen it in over a year and regarded it impassively: it wasn’t half bad. The idea for it had come to me in a flash. I pulled an all-nighter, and when the first smudge of dawn appeared I couldn’t have been more surprised; I thought only seconds had passed. How I missed those moments when passion muddied time, when the painting and I were one.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I thought about how Grand was going to perk up when she saw Alizée’s “pretty painting” again. How, like hearing a favorite song, it might spark a whole range of memories. Who knew, the sight of it might give her a blast of real joy, free her, even for a moment, from the haze. She’d cared enough about this painting to save it from my grandfather’s heartbreaking demand to destroy what was too painful for him to see. And maybe she’d be happy to see my work, too.
Whistling—which is very uncharacteristic for me, especially in the morning—I lugged the two unwieldy canvases into the elevator and gave the button a punch with my elbow. When I got to the living room, I found Grand-mère sitting in the same chair in half shadow, but she was slumped completely to one side and her eyes were closed. She wasn’t moving.
I ran to her, picked up her wrist, felt a fluttering pulse, shook her. “Grand!” I cried. “Grand, wake up. Are you okay?”
This was a mistake. She startled, stared at me uncomprehendingly for a moment, then started to scream. She flailed her arms, pushed me away with surprising strength. “I hate you, Stephanie,” she yelled. “Go away!” She pointed to the two paintings in my hands. “And take your ugly children with you!”
Nurses and aides rushed toward us, tried to calm her, and then quickly took her to her room. An aide apologized to me—although I knew it was my fault for disturbing her—sat me down and brought me some tea. I pressed the mug between my hands, hoping it would stop the trembling. It turned out that Grand had mistaken me for a nurse she was none too fond of. So much for joy.
Pretty much everyone I know, including my mother and my cousin’s five-year-old, uses their various electronic devices for all the necessities of daily life from checking the weather to getting on a plane. I’m equally guilty. Last week I raced back up three flights of stairs because I’d forgotten my phone, and I was taking a two-minute trip to the grocery store. Who knew who might text? What breaking news I might miss? What trivial question I might desperately need an answer to?
Still, there’s a Luddite part of me that can’t give up my file cards. Yes, file cards, those three-by-five rectangles made of thin cardboard. They used to be ubiquitous, but I’m not sure anyone but me uses them anymore. Maybe elementary school teachers, but probably not. I’d bet my life there’s an app for that. Anyway, the cards help me think, to focus in a way nothing with a screen can. I like the weight of a pen in one hand and a pile of cards in the other.
So that’s what I used to get a handle on where I was with my search for Alizée. On the top of a card, I wrote: What do I know about Alizée? Returned to the States in 1937 at nineteen. Lived in Greenwich Village. Maybe hung out with Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Mark Rothko. Was a talented painter. Probably knew Eleanor Roosevelt. Had some kind of nervous breakdown. Went into a mental institution and was never seen again. I doodled a picture of a young woman with blonde, curly hair painting a canvas in one corner of the card, a sketch of Eleanor Roosevelt in another.
Family lore has always centered on the Alizée-was-crazy explanation for her disappearance. After leaving the hospital, the thinking went, she either got lost or had an accident or had amnesia or killed herself, maybe all of the above. I wrote these choices on another file card.
Grand-mère, granted not the most reliable of sources, had suggested Grand-père was looking for Alizée in France before 1945, which would mean she’d left the States and returned to Europe before Pearl Harbor, probably sometime in early 1941. Unlikely, but I wrote it down and drew a caricature of Adolf Hitler, mostly mustache.
What else? I started a new card. Maybe she did it on purpose, just disappeared because she wanted to disappear. Maybe she’d had it with all those nutso artists and wanted to start a new life somewhere different. I’d had the desire myself, more than once, although obviously for much more mundane reasons. Like when I got pregnant when I was eighteen. Or when I had to tell my mother I’d failed three courses in college because I was more interested in partying than studying. And definitely when I discovered Sam cheating on me for the second time.
While I was living within each of those situations, I’d yearned for that long highway heading west, looping over all those rivers and mountains and plains, bringing me to a new place, a place where I could be a new me. Obviously, I’d never done it, being the same old me that I’d always been. I reminded myself that Alizée wasn’t me; she seemed just the type who could pull it off.
It was also possible she’d never left the hospital, which no one knew the name of. Maybe she fell in love with a fellow patient—better yet, a doctor—and decided to stay there under an assumed name. Maybe she was so drugged she couldn’t leave, and the staff faked her discharge papers because they didn’t want to admit what they’d done to her. I began to draw a 1940s electroshock machine but stopped myself. Too ghoulish. What if she’d died there, and the hospital had covered it up?
Orphaned at twelve, all of twenty-two in 1940, without her family and with a tortured artistic soul. It was possible that any of these awful things had happened to her. Or something equally awful I hadn’t thought of yet. Clearly nothing good. Probably nothing I even wanted to know.
But I did want to know. About Alizée, her story, her art, her demise. I also wanted to know who painted the squares, and if it turned out to be Alizée, to get her the recognition she deserved.
It would have been a lot easier if Anatoly and George had given me permission to pursue this through Christie’s. But they couldn’t control what I did in my free time—or even what I did on the side at work—and I was damned if I was going to let their self-interest hold me back.
So I Googled the hell out of every possibility on my file cards. Not a single hit on Alizée Benoit and, unfortunately, as with the Pollock and Krasner papers, few other hits because most of the online information started in the mid- to late-twentieth century, more late than mid. The frantic twenty-first-century digitizing of every possible piece of data hadn’t yet reached that far into the past.
I was surprised to discover that in 1940 passenger ships and commercial airplanes were still traveling between New York and Europe. So theoretically, Alizée could have gone there, but as no passenger manifests were available, it was impossible to know.
No mention of an Alizée Benoit in the smattering of marriage and death records I found for the New York area in that time period.
I called various police departments: in Greenwich Village, where she’d lived; in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she was born; in DC, in case she went there after her release to see her good buddy Eleanor. I left multiple messages that mostly weren’t returned. And when they were, I found myself quickly dismissed or sent to hold hell.
I turned back to the Archives of American Art database, checking on other artists in New York City at the time: reams and reams of material, no mention of Alizée.
I stared at Lily Pads and Turned. Who was the woman who’d painted them? Had she also painted the squares? Was she the conduit who car
ried the Abstract Expressionists into their new school of art, the so-called missing link? I was no closer to an answer than I’d been the first day the carton appeared.
And then, one night as I was absently scrolling through some of the Krasner papers, I came across a transcript of a video interview Lee did with Bruce Landau in 1982 about her early years in the WPA. As my eyes scanned down the page, Alizée’s name jumped out at me as if it were highlighted.
BL: The image of all of you at the time was that you were wild and crazy. Is that a fair assessment?
LK: More than fair. It was a wonderful time. Youth, hope, art. Very heady stuff. Most of us were on the project. Not de Kooning because he wasn’t an American citizen. But Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Phil Guston, Alice Neel. So many great talents. Such fun. Sure, we partied, hung out at the Jumble Shop, were what might be called sexually promiscuous, but mostly we worked. We worked hard on the project and we worked hard on our own art.
BL: Can you talk about how you influenced each other? About the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism?
LK: (frowns) We never thought we were the beginning of anything so specific. Not in that sense. We were working in a way that was meaningful to us, not trying to start something that could be named.
BL: But you did. Abstract Expressionism is the first true American school of art, when we began to export our artistic ideas to Europe instead of vice versa. You should be proud of that.
LK: (crosses arms over chest) It’s not a matter of pride or not pride. It’s all semantics. Not worth discussing.
BL: So then let’s get back to the influences. Who was your single greatest influence?
LK: There’s never any one greatest, it’s not possible. I studied with Hans Hofmann for a long time, so him. And of course Pollock. But we were always in and out of each other’s studios. In each other’s faces about what we were doing. Or not doing.
BL: Did you ever work together on a single project?
LK: No, never. It wasn’t like that. Except once, I guess. If you could call it that . . .
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