“Hope you’ll excuse the way we look, Mrs. Stamford,” one of the men said, rubbing his hand over his cheeks and looking down at his tweed suit.
“Hope you’ll excuse the way we do,” Vee said. “Bit overdressed for a business talk, aren’t we?”
They all laughed. They ordered drinks, chatting about nothing. Then Jasper said, “Well, look here, Stark—” and the four picked up from where they’d been all afternoon. Vee sat listening, and knew soon that they were almost unaware that she was there.
She had never seen Jasper in action. Now she watched him and listened to him in a nervous fascination. He gave off the aura of being complete master of these men and she did not even know by what means he did it.
“The five per cent debentures”…“thirty thousand shares of preferred at one hundred, paying six”…“twenty per cent of the common…”
The talk was already heated. The man called Stark seemed stubborn about something, though what it was precisely had not cleared through to Vee. Conerhan seemed to differ on some point, and kept shaking his head. They turned to Friedman and he seemed irritated at both of them. Jasper alone seemed perfectly calm.
“It’s the amount of common I stick at,” Mr. Stark said. He thumped the table. “It seems pretty arbitrary, this limitation you put on your own investors.”
“Yes, that’s the sticking point for all of us.”
“I simply can’t see why—”
Jasper sat forward, his head on one side, his strong lips pursing thoughtfully.
“Look here, gentlemen,” he began in a new voice. It was patient, pleasant. “Let’s go over this once more. Here’s what it looks like.” He reached for the menu, accepted the pencil that Stark offered him. He wrote the figure $10,000,000.
The three men and Vee watched him as he paused over it, watched his pencil as it stroked and restroked the dollar sign until it was very black, very perfect.
Underneath it he wrote $2—, $3—, $5.
“That’s how it breaks down. I know this is boring by now, but let’s do it all the way through.”
“Sure, that’s the way,” Mr. Friedman said.
Jasper smiled at him.
“So it’s two thousand debentures at a thousand each—that’s two million.” His pencil nicked the $2. “It’s thirty thousand shares of preferred at a hundred each—that’s three million.” His pencil nicked the $3. “And it’s five hundred thousand of the common at ten each—that’s five million.” His pencil pointed to the $5.
“Right,” said Mr. Conerhan.
“Now, here am I,” Jasper said, and he leaned back easily. “I have a desire to start my own network. I do start it. Naturally I must control it.”
“Nobody says—”
“I have one million dollars,” Jasper continued. “I put the whole one million into this, taking as much risk as I’ll let any other single investor take.”
“I thought Mandreth, Drake, and Niles—” This was Mr. Conerhan.
“No. Nobody has more than a million.”
“But if we’re willing to put it all in common—” Mr. Stark interjected.
Jasper held up a hand. Vee noticed that the palm was a little dirty. Cigarette ashes, probably.
“Let’s not get back to the confusion again,” he said, asking them for co-operation, for tidy minds, for rational methods, as if he were asking for a cigarette, with no possibility of refusal. Mr. Stark sank back and smiled.
“All right. So I have a million, and no other investor is permitted to have a bigger cut than mine. That’s certainly a reasonable position for me to take. Any of you would do the same thing.”
Friedman and Conerhan nodded. Stark retrieved the pencil and began to draw linking circles on some papers in front of him.
“So far, so good. Now, you hear about this project; you get interested; Fred Willis, your lawyer, brings us together. You listen to my plans. You decide I know what I’m doing. A year ago you might have doubted me when I said flatly that it was feasible to broadcast news every day from all the major cities of Europe. You would have called me impractical, visionary. Then the Vienna crisis proved I was right.”
He spread, out his hands in the pattern of helplessness. It was a heart-warming gesture, appealing and trustable.
“First I went crazy over the Austrian thing. I really suffered about it—felt beaten at the post, before I could start. But now I see I needn’t have been so upset. They’ve dropped it again. Just because that crisis ended, they’ve dropped it. NBC broadcast only twice from Austria in April—nothing in May or June. CBS followed through well until the fake plebiscite on April tenth, then they relaxed too. They’ll both pull it again at the next crisis—kind of emergency rabbit.”
“CBS sure did a brilliant job while it lasted, though, didn’t they?” Conerhan asked admiringly.
Vee stirred. She knew how Jasper hated even to remember that. But now he only nodded graciously.
“They really did,” he said. “That first half-hour roundup was magnificent. Shirer from London, Murrow from Vienna, Huss from Berlin, Mowrer from Paris. I’m told they tried to get Gervasi from Rome, but it fell through—short-wave transmitter not available and their plans to route through Geneva flopped. I’m also told they got co-operation from everybody—PTT, EIAR, RRG—everybody.”
“What’s RRG and those others?” Vee put in, apologetically.
They all turned toward her at once. She smiled, deferring with her waiting eyes to their greater knowledge. She had listened carefully to everything, and at each moment she felt she understood perfectly. Yet the whole talk had a foreignness, as if she were listening to a political discussion in French, knowing each word but never quite sure of the whole drift or purpose of any sentence. It was actually pleasing to have one thing she could fasten on to ask a simple question about.
“RRG is the German company,” Mr. Stark explained. “Reichs Rundfunk Gesellschaft.”
Jasper nodded at Vee indulgently.
“And PTT is the French, and EIAR is Italian, and BBC the British. Anything else, ma’am?”
“I knew BBC,” she answered.
“You’ve been working out your own deals with all of them, I’m told?” Mr. Friedman asked.
“Oh, yes. I’ve closed with RRG already. PTT hasn’t a short-wave transmitter yet—it goes by phone out of Paris. But I’m closing with them next week. London will be lead-pipe easy. Moscow tough as nails. Later I’ll work out the Middle East, the Far East—and all the rest of it. Global network.”
There was a silence.
Vee noted that the talk had escaped the hard boundaries of the financial discussion that Jasper himself had laid down. Was that a point against Jasper’s control of the situation? She thought back. No. He had shifted it himself, by introducing the Vienna crisis—which another man would have wanted to slide over. He was using even that for his own purposes, the triumph of another company. How skillful he was.
Now the whole mood at the table had changed. There was excitement, looking ahead at what radio could one day become as the most powerful weapon of communication, steady, dependable, day-by-day dependable. Now they were in a conspiracy against the future, and Jasper leading them.
“To get back to the common-stock ruling—” Jasper said.
“Look here, Ted,” Mr. Friedman said. “What’s the use of kicking this around Robin Hood’s barn? Mr. Crown puts his whole million into common—he doesn’t want the notes, doesn’t want the preferred; he’d rather take the bigger gamble and sock it all into common. It shows his own faith in the future, anyway.”
“Yes, of course. But why can’t we also take the same gamble? It shows our faith, too.”
“It’s impossible, Stark,” said Jasper. “I set this company up so that I’m the only individual who’s allowed to hold twenty per cent of the common. I set it up so that no other individual investor or corporate investor can hold more than ten per cent of the common. My holding is one hundred thousand shares of the common. Yours can b
e fifty thousand shares with the balance in debentures and preferred on this two-three-five pattern.” He pointed to the menu. “That’s the way it is.”
His tone said discussion was childish. His eyes said, “Take it or leave it.” His smile said, “Now I know you won’t leave it.”
Conerhan cleared his throat importantly.
“We’ll talk it over in the morning, what say?” he said casually. But Jasper sat back a little further in his chair, called the waiter for new drinks, and Vee knew he knew he had won.
“Let me tell you a bit more about my principle of setting aside twenty-five per cent of the securities and offering it to the stations. It’s getting me practically every station I want, it’s so unheard of. It’s driving the big companies out of their heads already. They of course never dreamed of such a thing.”
“What’s the F.C.C. feel about it?”
“Oh, they love me in Washington. They think I’m dandy.”
“Breaking the monopoly picture for them, hey?”
The three laughed heartily. Jasper waited for the laugh to wear thin. The talk went on. Station relations, the new idea of a Station Advisory Board, the splitting of five per cent of net earnings before taxes for the entire staff of the network, allocated in proportion to salary…
Somewhere outside, chimes sounded. Vee glanced at the big clock over the door. Midnight. Jasper’s birthday and the thirtieth of June were done. “Midnight” was a dark, mad word to her, as “noon” was a sunny, expansive one. She supposed the overtones of words began in one’s childhood, to carry, forever after, the emotions and connotations that began then. Midnight was the fateful hour, the hour that strikes doom for the golden coach, the glass slippers; it was the witching hour of the night, the dreary hour for ravens to be born…She smiled to herself at her train of thought.
“You laughing at us?” Jasper asked. To her at least, his eyes revealed the comfortable triumph of the victor.
“No. I was off on another track for a moment.”
“We must be boring Mrs. Stamford with all this,” Mr. Stark apologized.
“Oh, not at all. I—oh, you know the silly things that cross your mind.” She waved her hand in a deprecating gesture. The men had already turned back to their talk.
She did not even try to follow the discussion again. She was contented just to be there, watching Jasper, remembering their own talk, the evening before it, the clock.
It was still at her house. On one of the dials the hour pointed to midnight. On another it pointed to five. It was already summer dawn in France and England and Switzerland. The Vederles were asleep, soon they would wake to another day. Perhaps to the day when her last letter would arrive, with all the new material that would tie up the loose ends at last. More likely the letter had already arrived; perhaps Dr. Vederle had already taken it to the Consulate, perhaps at this moment the visas were theirs.
And what time was it now in Czechoslovakia? She did not even know whether her other “affidavit case” was properly under way or not. Everything had been sent off to Rosie Tupchik in Karlsbad, sent within a week after she had promised Ann to undertake it. That was about three weeks ago. She had acted almost automatically on this second case. She had not even read the affidavits and other documents, since they were merely copies of the Vederle ones, with the names and details changed. She had signed her name wherever a penciled cross made by Meany told her to. She and Ann had put up steamship money between them. A few days later, a brief, self-conscious letter of thanks had come in the morning mail. The foreign writing with the New York postmark explained it before she had opened it. It was signed Bronya something.
With a flick of remorse, Vee realized she had not yet answered it. She had meant to take it to the office and reply at once, but she had laid it aside and forgotten it. It was still at home somewhere. If it were lost, she would have to get the girl’s name and address again from Ann, or Meany, and apologize at once for her silence. How callous people could be, not meaning callousness, but simply because they were preoccupied with other things.
But that was no excuse with an unfortunate like this Bornya, working over the toilets in a department store. She probably felt snubbed, angry, even though she knew that the very woman who now ignored her was the woman who had sent the affidavit off to Czechoslovakia a short while before.
Vee knew. She had some trick of projection into other people’s reactions that made her feel certain of what they were going through. She knew how the Vederles must feel over each new delay, each new demand from the Consulate, each new week that passed. Now she knew how this Bornya must feel, the mixture of gratitude at some unknown sending affidavits to her mother in Central Europe and the resentment that this person would receive words of tormented gratitude and stay silent, out of reach.
Vee never questioned the justice of her instinctive decision about how it must be with the other person: If she, in a like situation, would feel so and so, then surely other human beings must be experiencing the very same things. Otherwise there would be possible none of that common material in the minds of humanity that made a poem, a play, a song universally appealing. People were the same, in all the deep human ways the same, whether they were here or abroad, whether they were rich or poor, whether they were strong or weak.
Waiting was the same. Watching the mails for some vital letter was the same. Waiting for Jasper to come out of Dr. Gontlen’s office would be the same. Time could pass so slowly, could taunt nerves so sadistically.
Soon time would become significant in a new way to her and Jasper. From the hour he finally walked into Dr. Gontlen’s office, time would become a new personal equation in both their lives.. First a small piece of time, until the results of the first tests were known. Then if there were some hope, if treatments were begun, then a larger piece of time would begin for them both, until the weeks or months of treatment had gone by.
She knew, by another trick of projection into the future, that these two pieces of time would always have for her a special quality. If the results were happy, then she would forever look back upon them with the melting heart of gratitude. If the results were unhappy for Jasper, and thus for her, then she would always look back upon them with the stab of pain, the bitter taste of defeat.
Time. Jasper’s several-dialed clock reminding one of the slow passage of dawn or midnight across the boundaries of states and shore lines of great seas. Midnight passing, June 30 done and the first day of July sweeping in a slow, deliberate arc over all the countries of the earth.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT DAY VEE lunched alone and then went shopping. She had rented a small house on the Connecticut shore at Greens Farms, as a week-end place, and there were, as always, small gaps in the furnishings. It needed more lamps, and some comfortable furniture for the low, wide porch. She had asked Ann and Fred Willis up for the week end of the tenth. Jasper would come for Sunday, if he got back from his trip to the Middle West in time.
New York was very hot. Stepping out of air-conditioned Ralsey’s into the hot sunshine of Fifth Avenue was a physical assault, appalling in its directness. Vee stopped for a salad and a soda at Hick’s and then took a taxi, sitting back against its damp leather and smoking a muggy cigarette gratefully.
“Macy’s.”
Her mind wandered down the list of things she had to buy. She was tired, eager, happy. Last night was so important. They had stayed on at the Plaza until nearly one, then Jasper had ended the meeting, as he had begun it, in complete control of everything. Outside, as soon as they were alone, he told her what she knew instinctively.
“They’ll sign Monday,” he stated calmly. “They’ll argue it out all over again over the week end, and then they’ll come in. They’ll do it partly because they want to for its own sake, and partly because they’re scared to death that they’d be shown up for saps later on if they pass it up.”
“You are terrific with people like that, darling. I was so proud of you.
“Come on, Proud,
I’m going to pick up my birthday present.”
He had stayed all night, and left her, still asleep, some time in the early morning. She woke, full of some secret triumph of her own that had nothing to do with the kind of triumph Jasper knew about. It was warm and snug and female. She pleased him; with a singing her heart told her that, and she listened and felt uncomplicated and happy.
She did her shopping as quickly as she could. Several things she could not find at Macy’s and, because she hated to come back another day, she phoned the office to say she would be late and went on to Gimbel’s. Simple porch furniture was not so easy to find as she had believed.
It was nearly three when she was ready to leave. She was sticky hot, she could see her own nose shiny on her face. She went into the washroom to freshen up and change her dry-feeling lipstick.
A large, string-haired woman attendant was emptying used paper towels out of a container. Vee glanced at her, looked hastily away from the tired, sweaty face, then furtively looked back at her.
That morning, waking with her mind full of Jasper, she had again forgotten to search for the unanswered letter. She finished washing her face and hands, carefully put her make-up on once more. In the mirror, her eyes kept seeking out the face of the woman. She started to leave, and then stopped. How conventional, how cowardly she could be.
“Are you—” she began, turning away from the door. “I’m looking for somebody that works here.”
“Who you want?” the woman asked, astonished.
“Her name is—” She did not remember the last name. “Are you Bronya?”
She blurted it out, felt as a child feels over some malapropism that makes adults laugh. But the woman’s face lit up with interest.
“No, ma’am. Bronya is there.” She pointed downward. “Third floor. Ladies’ dress floor. You know Bronya?” She looked admiringly at Vee’s beige, linen suit, at the tiny hat, the brown bag.
“Yes, in a way, I do,” she answered. “I’d like to see her, since I’m here. Thank you.”
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