The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  “You mean that I—sterile—I’m not—”

  “No. You are not sterile. I am sure you have never been so, not from the clinical standard. Ten years ago, you may have had so poor a count, and with such low motility, that such a diagnosis was possible—”

  “But now—you are sure, you really know—”

  “I am sure only that there is no sterility. I cannot be sure whether treatment will produce fecundating spermatozoa. But I can see no reason why not.”

  “God, Doctor, I don’t know how—”

  “I should like to suggest,” Gontlen said rapidly, almost as though a man’s relief, a man’s God-given gratitude, were embarrassing, “that your wife—does she know a gynecologist who specializes in this problem?”

  Jasper hesitated. Was it necessary to explain? Vee’s face came vividly into his mind, anxious, waiting. It was the first time he had even thought of Vee since he had arrived at Gontlen’s office.

  “She must, of course, be checked also,” Dr. Gontlen continued. “I shall give you the names of two or three men who are excellent. She should see one. He will report to me, if there is anything wrong with her.” He paused. Then he scribbled rapidly on a prescription pad, tore the sheet off briskly, put it into Jasper’s hand, and himself closed the fingers over it. “Tell her to go at once,” he said. “You are both in this together.”

  Jasper folded the small paper carefully, put it into his wallet. He still was stunned, his mind gaped with the great hole this small chunk of a doctor had blasted out of its very tissues, where its cancerous secret had lain for ten tormenting years.

  “She’s all right,” he said. “There’s no reason to suppose—”

  “Then go home and tell her there’s no good reason to suppose you will not be all right someday. But remember, I still cannot say when.”

  “But you can say I’m not—this isn’t sterility? To me that’s—”

  “I can say that. I do say that.”

  Jasper stopped at the nurse’s desk automatically, agreed to an appointment for the basal metabolism test two mornings later. He accepted an appointment card, and started out, with it still in his hand. Outside, he blindly motioned for a taxi, then realized that there was none in sight. He took out a cigarette; it was the one he had tried futilely to light, and its very presence in his pocket told him how his whole being had been concentrated on Dr. Gontlen’s words. Now he put his head down to light it.

  “Darling—”

  He whirled around. It was Vee. But this was impossible. Vee? Here?

  “Is it—did he say—do you know?” Her voice, her eyes searched. Then, “Darling, I know—I can tell by looking at you.”

  He put a hand on each of her arms, half lifted her from the ground, and kissed her. They were on the street, there were people passing. He did not care and knew that she did not care.

  “Yes, he told me, I’m—it’s O.K., it’s going to be O.K.” He whispered it, and even the whispering carried exultation. “How—where did you come from?”

  “God, oh, thank God, thank everything,” she said. Tears stung her eyes, she made no move to hide them. “I—I didn’t come from anywhere—I’ve been waiting here—I saw you go in.”

  “You what? All this time? You—”

  All that hideous time inside, all that waiting time, she, this Vee, this woman had waited outside. Waited in case he had come out once again in the blind despair of self-loathing—

  “Vee, I—” He turned quickly away from her.

  “Come on, my darling,” her soft voice came to him. “Come on and have some drinks. They’re on me.”

  He made no answer, only signaled to a passing cab.

  “You might put that card away,” she said. “Maybe you’ll need it.”

  “It’s for you,” he said. “No, not this one. This—” He pulled out the prescription blank, gave it to her. “Come on, I’ll tell you all about it. Maybe you won’t want to play this game out.”

  They got into the taxi. She read the names of three doctors. She knew that she had expected this. After only a moment she turned to him, nodded.

  “I’ll stay with it right through,” she said. “You know it.”

  “Yes, I know. God, now there’s no stopping until the whistle, is there, Vee?”

  “I won’t stop.” She hesitated. “But maybe now that you know—”

  “You can’t know until it really happens.” He closed his eyes tightly. “Until then it’s only medical opinion, after all. It could be wrong—” He looked at her again. “A man has to know.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE NOTIFICATION HAD arrived. It was signed by the Consul General himself.

  The crisp official note on crisp official stationery announced that Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle was to appear at the American Consulate General on the sixth of July at 9:50 A.M.

  Franz’ heart leaped in gratitude. “You will be notified next week.” He was now notified. The past was past, the delays were done. No more officious clerks, no more young Vice-Consuls. He was to see the Consul General himself. It could mean only one thing.

  In twenty minutes he was on the way to the city. When he arrived, he found the waiting room already crowded, but this time he was hardly aware of anything but the sheet of smooth vellum in his pocket.

  Voices drifted about him, the mélange he had so often heard by now, anxiety, subdued anger, sailing dates, future plans, all mixed into a new thing, the voice of the consular waiting room. But he could not react this time. Once only, when a woman’s words rose shrill and anguished above the others, “But my Swiss permit expires tomorrow, tomorrow, do you hear, and they will send me back to be killed,” was he caught up high above his own thoughts by the hook of another’s cry of terror. He half rose, but in the next moment the woman stumbled out of the room and was gone.

  He felt in his pocket. The beneficent sheet was still there. He took it out, opened it, read the curt message for the dozenth time, then sat examining the sheet itself, the powerful sheet of paper that might prove strong enough to carry four lives to safety and freedom at last.

  Centered at the top, printed in deep blue, were three lines: THE FOREIGN SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. What words they were, what world-sweeping humanity they could mean, how enviable he would seem to Europe’s despairing and helpless, if they, could see him holding in his hands this oblong of official stationery.

  “His son is at Dachau, but he’s afraid to let the mother—”

  “It’s impossible—they haven’t a cent, so—”

  “Thirteen months, already, but the passports—”

  Around him the voices rose and fell, always the same voices, telling the same stories. He had heard them in the. Consulate at Vienna, he had heard them in the small Consulate at Basel, he had heard them right in this same waiting room at Zurich. One deafened at last, even one who was a comrade in flight. How then expect strangers, the great world of the secure and unknowing, to be keened to them?.

  He sighed, and went back to his examination of the paper he still held. The upper left corner held a seal, also printed in blue, with the words DEPARTMENT OF STATE under it. Was this the seal of the department, or was it the seal of the great United States? He needed, all at once, to know. The seal showed the American eagle, its wings outspread and flaunting upward, and a shield of stripes over the eagle’s body. Above it was a round plaque of some kind, and two snaky scrolls. These defied deciphering. Below, one of the eagle’s talons held what looked like an olive branch, but the other—he pored over it intently. Then in defeat, he grinned broadly, for more than any other thing, it looked as though that second talon clutched the bundle of faggots which was the symbol of Italian Fascism.

  He held the paper up to the light at the window. The watermark appeared, and it was the same seal, greatly magnified. But even in this size, he could not determine what it was that the American eagle grasped in his mighty left claw.

  He chided himself for this escape from the growing reality behin
d the door to the office. Yet he welcomed the diversion, too. Men had curious ways of helping themselves during tense moments of waiting, he reflected. Some smoked or paced, others twisted their fingers about—and others—well, others examined the stationery of great world powers.

  He went back to his self-imposed assignment. Also in the upper left-hand corner, above the printed blue seal, were some small words, “In reply refer to File N.,” and filled in with a typewriter was, “811.11.” Some typed initials followed the numbers.

  He hadn’t noticed that before, and oddly the discovery depressed him. Mechanics, filing cabinets, efficiency—“811.11.” It was necessary, it was imperative that things be orderly, be mechanically feasible, and so there had to be filing systems and people had to become digits and decimal points. But when one was one of the digits?

  “Vederle next.”

  He jumped up and forward, made his way inside, conscious that everyone’s eyes followed him jealously.

  In the large office, his eyes went eagerly to the man behind the desk. Here was the head of this particular piece of America, this Consulate which once had been perhaps a routine Foreign Service assignment, but was now transformed, as other consulates had been transformed, into a major island of rescue, a major life line into the future.

  The Consul General looked up.

  “God morning, sir,” Franz began. “I am so happy to—”

  “Be seated, please.”

  The Consul General bent closer to the papers before him. There was a stack of dossiers at one side of the desk, and as he read, his right hand went out toward the stack, came to rest upon it, the fingers drumming listlessly on the top of the pile. Moment followed moment, the drumming fingers changed temp, shifting from an accelerando to an andante so deliberate that Franz caught himself counting the taps of the fingers, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two…

  Finally the reading was done. The Consul General closed the dossier, piled it on top of the stack at the side, shrugged wearily, and muttered to himself, but clearly enough for Franz to hear, “Where do they all come from?” He shook his head with an air of bewildered boredom.

  “You are—?”

  “Vederle, Dr. Franz Vederle,” he replied. His voice was pleasant, a voice of greeting and explanation. It was firm and easy. Yet he knew that his pulse had gone up in the seconds just past. He had no time to explain it to himself, he merely noted it with his practiced mind, and let it go for later meditation.

  “V-e-d—yes, here’s your dossier.” He began to read again. “Yes. Hmm.” He read further. “Ah, yes.”

  Franz waited. Every movement of the other’s hands, every twitch of eyelid or lip, caught at his heart now.

  “Yes. You see, there is this matter of your forty thousand francs.”

  “My forty thousand francs? They are—”

  “Just a moment please. I have not finished. You have stated in a letter, not on the application, but in a letter, that you have this sum. But you have not proved it.”

  “Oh, that’s so easy. I can of course—if you will—”

  “The preliminary report here says that you have been vague and—the word here is ‘evasive’—about this sum.”

  “Well, of course I didn’t explain it in detail. You see, it, was outside in the outer office always. Nazi agents mingle in the crowd. Since Anschluss it is a crime, you know that, sir, a capital crime, to have money in another country. But now—inside here with you-—”

  “You will see that without evidence to corroborate this—ah—claim of yours, it cannot be accepted.”

  “Of course. But I can submit evidence. My bankbooks—” .

  “All new evidence about financial claims must be submitted in writing.”

  “I will do so at once. Does this delay mean—”

  The Consul General held his hand up. If the arm were extended, it would have been the salute of a Fascist, Franz thought angrily. He forced his face to remain expressionless, but everything in the other’s manner roused indignation in him.

  “May I point out, sir, this is not merely a ‘claim,’ ” he said quietly. “This forty thousand francs is a fact. It exists. It is on deposit right here in a Zurich bank, the Stadts—”

  The face before him remained blank.

  “Yes, yes. You understand that all new evidence pertaining to financial status must be submitted in writing.”

  Before Franz could reply, the other began again consulting the dossier. Two or three minutes passed. Franz waited.

  “The other deficiency in this case arises from the relationship to the affiant. There is no proof that this—er—Mrs. Stamford—is related to you by blood or marriage.”

  “No, I explained that. She is—”

  “She is not your sister or sister-in-law or cousin?”

  “No, she is a very good friend. It was clearly explained.”

  “Nor related in any way to your wife?”

  “No. Mrs. Stamford is deeply interested in our welfare. She is—”

  “There have been too many cases,” the Consul General began impressively, “where an affidavit is trumped up with a stranger’s signature, and is therefore unsatisfactory to this department.”

  “Of course. But the affidavit explains that completely.”

  “There must be, you understand, a definite obligation to support the visa applicants. An affidavit is not legally binding; therefore, the obligation of blood ties is the most reliable.”

  “But the affidavit. I read it myself. It is clear, the obligation is fully undertaken. I read it myself.”

  His voice now was so urgent, so underlined with sudden panic, that the face opposite him seemed to draw back with distaste.

  “Yes, of course. These things are a matter for this department’s judgment, not for anything else.”

  “I do not imply—”

  “If there are no blood relatives existent, then this department’s judgment must be completely satisfied that the affiant undertakes specific responsibility.” He waved away the dossier before him, with a gesture of large disapproval. “Not this vague promise.”

  “They did not—the instructions did not, the official instructions did not—”

  The other was not listening.

  “The application, therefore, on these two counts, is denied.”

  “Denied?” Franz sprang to his feet, stood there, leaning forward slightly. “The visas are denied?”

  The Consul General did not look up. He closed the dossier, placed it on the stack at the right, began drumming upon it. One, two, three, four, one, two…

  “I must ask you—you must understand what this means to me, to my family. Denied? Or did you mean ‘delayed’?”

  The Consul General stopped the drumming. His hand rested motionless on the pile of dossiers, on the top dossier, the one with the legend 811.11. The fingers were splayed out across it, motionless, possessive. The face above the desk was also motionless, the eyes looking off into distance past Vederle’s vest, bored, bored.

  “I said ‘denied.’ ”

  “But—”

  “To reopen a visa case, you must submit in writing.”

  “I understand. I beg you, one more question—”

  The Consul General looked up now. His shoulders sagged a notch, as though he were completely weary.

  “When and if you do resubmit in this matter,” he said carefully, “please do so only for yourself and the two children under the German-Austrian quota. Your wife’s application goes under the Hungarian quota.”

  All memory of the final question he wished to ask drained out of Vederle’s mind.

  “God—no—the quotas are different—they, we might—”

  “The Hungarian quota is full for twelve years.”

  “Twelve—what? Months—weeks—you cannot mean—”

  “I said twelve years, not months.”

  Franz’ mouth was open. No sound came from him. He gripped the side of the desk.

  “The children of
course could remain with their mother. In these cases, it often expedites matters for the husband to emigrate first and then send later for—”

  “Never. No, never with two small children. There may be war this summer, this fall. Leave them behind—no, never.”

  Now the Consul General at last looked into Franz’ eyes. His own were magisterial.

  “You are not Jews—you say—nor political refugees. You are not in trouble with the new regime there. You can return to Austria, can you not?”

  He returned to his papers. Simultaneously his fingers touched a buzzer. The door opened and a clerk came in. The Consul General merely nodded.

  Franz stood staring at the impassive forehead. Then he turned and followed the clerk out.

  “I cannot tell them, I cannot tell them, I cannot tell them.” All the way out through the outer office, through the waiting room, down the stairs, his mind repeated the phrase. “I cannot tell them, I cannot g home and tell Christa and the children, I cannot, I cannot…”

  For an hour he walked the quais, crossed one bridge after another, noted the sparkling shine of the Limmat, felt the caress of the sun, heard the bells and horns and voices of the busy city, and only knew that they were lost, lost.

  Christa would be waiting for him, but he could not return. He could not merely go back, see her eyes go stricken, hear her gasp of despair. He must plan, he must put in motion the next step before it was conceivable to go back to them.

  This smashing news about the Hungarian quota meant that America was gone for them. They must give up the dream. They must look to some other country then, France, after all, England, Holland, Belgium. No, no, he could not do it; if war were to come, there would be millions of new refugees, as in Spain, in China. He and his family would again be uprooted, cast out.

  This, anyway, he could not decide now, it was too momentous. Only one thing was clear—he must not tell this monstrous part to Christa at all. Not about the twelve years—not about the sadistic cruelty of that. It would remain his own secret. If she knew, she would feel that she stood in the way—it would enlarge her problems until they were unconquerable.