The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  He must find some way to open this totally unexpected impasse. Other people had been able to go to America under the same quota—hadn’t Maria Schenkin been a Pole before she married Otto? He would ask, inquire.

  Or must he really give up, defeated and done, about America? Was there any sense in going to the bank, writing Mrs. Stamford for a more specific pledge, submitting a new application in spite of this new block? It would only create a new and terrible situation, if his new application were accepted and visas arranged for himself and the children, but not for Christa.

  He must think before he acted at all. He must understand, chart out this new, hostile geography he had stumbled into, before he could decide whether he must now abandon forever the path to America.

  He walked, sat on a park bench, walked again. His hand went to the sheet of official vellum in his pocket, and drew back as if the touch were an offense to his skin. A short while ago that same touch had been a blessing, a reassurance. Now it was an assault; now it said, “Go elsewhere, can’t you see you’re not wanted here?” He and his wife and his two beautiful children.

  “Wait, wait, do not give in to your resentment so easily,” he counseled himself. He must think, he must plan, step by step. From now on, he must split himself into two entities, that much was clear. The new one must concern itself with a brand-new plan of flight for himself and his family, must look to some new horizon and begin moving toward it—England, France, South Africa, Brazil, somewhere, anywhere new.

  But the older entity must not concede defeat, must not give up the American chance. Not yet, not yet. That half of him must go on, must proceed with the new application to the American Consulate, must prosecute it as vigorously as though the “twelve years” had never been spoken. Or as though that ruling might yet be changed.

  He must cable Mrs. Stamford. A letter now was too slow. Another month would go by before a letter could reach her, be acted upon, and its answer received here. He made his way to the cable office, entered, hesitated, then looked about him rather foolishly and went out again. Was he obligated to tell her about the “twelve years”? If she knew of this new obstacle, this hopeless hurdle, would she not inevitably feel that further time and effort were useless?

  But he could not keep silent about it, either. It would be a treachery. But would it? He must think this through further before he even knew what to cable her.

  He bought a copy of Le Matin, tried to read it to gain time and composure. He could not. “The visas are denied.” “Do you mean delayed or denied?” “I said ‘denied.’ ” “The Hungarian quota is full for twelve years.”

  The phrases seethed and pumped through his brain. He could not follow an orderly train of thought because of them. He still suffered from a kind of operative shock, severed with brutish suddenness from the sustaining prop of the long months.

  An hour later, his mind began to clear.

  A cable was no place to tell Mrs. Stamford about the Hungarian quota. She could do nothing about that, anyway, so he would merely write her about it in a letter following the cable. She could do nothing about the financial statement either; he himself could straighten that out by fetching his bankbooks, going to the bank, getting signed statements from the officials there, and submitting that new evidence to the Consulate. So it was only on the matter of relationship and obligation that he had to appeal to her.

  He returned to the cable office. At least in this one area of the new problem, he could again be brisk, decisive, in control.

  VISAS DENIED BECAUSE INSUFFICIENT PROOF OF MY FORTUNE AND BECAUSE YOU NOT RELATED BY BLOOD OR MARRIAGE THEREFORE INSUFFICIENT OBLIGATION TO SUPPORT. AM SUPPLYING FURTHER PROOF OF FIRST CAN YOU HELP ON SECOND WITH MORE SPECIFIC PLEDGE? WRITING.

  He sent it at the fast rate, costly as it was. It was noon here, early morning in New York. Perhaps she could begin to act on this outrageous new demand at once. Even a day mattered.

  A day. How many days already! He glanced at his newspaper to check the date. July 6, 1938. The date carried some significance for him, but it was so nebulous he could not get hold of it.

  He stood still, at the curb, and began to read the headlines, searching for something that might explain the sense that this day was a marked day—L’ANGLETERRE…M. REYNAUD VEUT…NIEMÖLLER FAIT…No, it was something else. On an inside page he found it: EVIAN-LES-BAINS.

  “God, oh, God, let them do something there.” He said it half aloud. He was not a religious man in any literal sense whatever, yet he found himself pleading, praying to some great humanity which could, at the moment, find no other name in his mind. Let them understand, let them see, let them for one moment feel the shut door, the cold eye, the hostile official, the stung and baffled pride.

  The cable arrived before nine o‘clock, but Vee was not at home. Dora held it in perplexity; she knew it must be important. What ought she do with it? Maybe she ought to try one phone call?

  For the first time, Vee had stayed the night at Jasper’s apartment. Now it did not seem to matter what his servants thought, what the elevator men and lobby attendants downstairs thought. They knew her by sight, of course, they would know when she went out in the morning. Some old, untouched conventionality, still alive under all the acquisition of modern theories, had always before prevented her from staying through the night, but this night had been too important, too dear and real, to bring it to the usual close of dressing again, leaving, going home.

  “Stay all night, darling,” Jasper had said again and again. “We’re all different now. This is different, isn’t it?”

  She knew it was different. Everything had deepened, had become in the five days since Jasper’s visit to Gontlen a shared quest, a beautiful voyage into the future.

  Last night, they each had magnificent news for the other. Dinner waited for an hour while they talked, confided intimate details, laughed at vulgarities and innuendo they now found permissible in their new union of purpose.

  “I’m a fine specimen, all right,” Vee began her report.

  “Don’t say specimen to, me,” he shouted, and they choked with laughter. Vee told him with almost complete candor of her own visit to the doctor she had chosen, told of the tests and checks, step by step, and each one an assurance…

  “I’m going to be, maybe not right away, but sometime, pretty fine myself,” Jas said and was smug, happy, proud. “It might be just the low thyroid, at that. I’m minus thirty, would you dream that ever? Apparently it isn’t always tied up with the amount of energy you seem to have.”

  He discoursed learnedly on the thyroid gland, the “master gland,” the boss of them all.

  “If the thyroid lies down on the job, all the others lean on their shovels,” he said. “Pituitary, antuitary, obituary, all the little fellows.”

  “Jas, don’t be idiotic.”

  “Sure. They do. So I’m on a thyroid regime. Two grains a day for a month, then a basal checkup, then less or maybe more grains.”

  He told her of other regimens and tests that Gontlen was considering for his case, should they be necessary.

  “I almost wish there was something wrong with me,” Vee said at last. “All these treatments sound so interesting.”

  Later in the evening, he said, casually and without emphasis, “I went over to see Beth yesterday. I—you know, we’ve never bothered about a divorce.”

  “Yes, I do know.”

  “She’ll be all right about it.”

  “Oh, Jas, are you—does she—is this going to hurt her?”

  “Heavens, no, we’ve been separated for over two years.”

  He shrugged as he said it. She wondered if Beth really did not mind. So often a woman who had lost everything from her marriage but the name and status of marriage suffered inordinately at the break of those last thin links.

  “She’s not going to start for Reno tomorrow, I don’t mean,” he went on. “You know, she’s got the right to think it over awhile and get adjusted to it. I wouldn’t rush her right off—”
Her heart drew back from him as she heard the self-approval coating his tone.

  “Oh, Jas, maybe she—women do care—”

  “Vee, please. Beth and—we’ve both known that someday one of us—” He paused. “You know I never say much about things like this. I think you ought to trust me.”

  It was true. He never put into words the deepest feelings he had. Even now, he did not speak of love, of marriage, of wanting their home and their son. “I’ve never felt so right with anybody else.” And later on, “Now there’s no stopping till the whistle, Vee.” So he let her know, bit by bit, the drift of his feelings, the change in his purposes with her. But never had he made the foolish, dear avowals that she wanted to hear. Perhaps he never would. It left part of her heart always waiting, always listening. Words, she often told herself, were unimportant. Everything he did now was an avowal.

  So now she only said, “I do trust you, Jas. Don’t even talk about it—I don’t want to pry into it. It is your problem, and Beth’s.”

  They stayed up late,, and every hour was of a special quality. Implicit in all their talk and their behavior was the admission that this was no longer “an affair.” Even when he talked of business, there was a new intimacy. He revealed the secret figures of everything, the costs and expenditures, the salaries he was paying already, the salaries he would pay.

  And when they were in bed at last, that was different too. They said nothing about what they hoped. And each knew the other was hoping it.

  For a long time after he fell asleep, Vee lay thinking, dreaming into the future. She had lain so before, but in her own house, where he was the “outsider,” and this reversal was strange and exciting. Waking together in the morning was strange, too. He woke to a full preoccupation with business matters and seemed already used to the novelty of having her in his room in the morning. This gave her a benevolent amusement, as though she knew things he did not know and could react in ways sharper than he had yet learned. She was contented just to be there, to watch him shave through the half-opened door of the bathroom, to learn that he turned the radio on almost as soon as he was awake.

  When the telephone rang, she only half knew that a bell had rung somewhere. Her mind still drowsed through the secret half-ways of sleepiness.

  “It’s for you, Vee,” Jasper announced. “Dora, I’d say.”

  “Why, she didn’t know—”

  “She seems to have made a lively guess.”

  Dora apologized profusely for trying to reach her. But since it was a radiogram—

  Vee listened intently.

  “Read it again, Dora, will you? I want to copy it down.”

  Long after she hung up, Vee lay back, staring at the words she had written.

  Denied? But it wasn’t possible. Not now, not after all the care, all the requests and the prompt fulfilling of each of them. She held back open anger, because it would get in the way of thinking, yet something swept her blood in spite of herself.

  Jas came in, looking his question. “It’s the Vederles; their visas were denied. I can’t see why.”

  She handed over the written message. He read it thoughtfully, frowning.

  “Didn’t they know you weren’t related—?”

  “Of course, from the beginning. That Larry Meany, you know, the young lawyer Ann Willis sent me, he’s handled dozens of affidavits—”

  “Better ring him up, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ll get on this right off.”

  He glanced at his watch, and she knew he was pressed for time against his first appointment. She swung up, hurried into her clothes. She reached Meany at his house, and shortly after she got to her office, he arrived. He was sympathetic with her irritated mood, but matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

  “It will happen,” he said calmly. “Sometimes everything goes along on grease, sometimes nothing seems to be what they want.”

  “But the time they’ve lost. Couldn’t the Consul or somebody have discovered this way back in April, when the affidavit first got there?”

  “Sure, they could. But there are so many cases, you know. Try to be philosophical about it. It will straighten out.”

  “Philosophical? Just imagine how the Vederles must—”

  “I don’t let myself. I handle a lot of these, you know. I can’t let my imagination get going.”

  She understood completely. He was right; if he expended orgies of emotion on each visa case, he would soon be used up. But she could not be so remote about it.

  “I know. But I feel, well, somehow I’ve begun to feel as if they were part of my family or something. I’ve thought about them at odd times, and—well, never mind. What do I do now?”

  “I’ll handle it for you. I’ll send up a new letter for you to sign.”

  “No.”

  He looked up in surprise.

  “I mean, yes, of course, do everything you know ought to be done. But I’m going to get into this myself somehow—I’ve got to think.”

  “Of course. I’ll prepare the usual second statement.”

  “What’s the usual ‘second statement’?”

  “Guarantee of a specific weekly amount to support them. You’d do that, I suppose?”

  “Yes, of course. But didn’t the affidavit—”

  “Sure. But some of the Consulates seem to like repetitions, details, new legal pledges, everything but the kitchen stove.”

  “Well, put in the kitchen stove this time, will you?” She looked so vexed, he liked her for her very annoyance. She cared, all right.

  “There must be something I can do myself,” she said. “Maybe write direct to the State Department.”

  “That helps, sometimes,” he said, but his voice was cautious. “Sometimes pressure helps, sometimes it gets the consular back up.”

  “Damn the consular back. They’re government people, aren’t they? Civil servants and all that?”

  “Yep, that’s what they are. They also are—some of them—tight little, mean little major-domos, so jealous of their importance—”

  “Well, I’ll think twice before I do anything.” He left her still struggling with a bafflement she had not known before. She wanted to act herself, but she did not know in the slightest how to begin.

  She buzzed for Miss Benson.

  “Please let me have all the copies of the Vederle stuff, will you, Benny? It’s gone wrong somewhere.”

  “Yes, Miss Marriner.”

  She walked out briskly, the perfect secretary, bent on perfect service to her employer. Within her, Benny’s heart seethed with sudden outrage.

  “This damn refugee stuff,” she thought. “As if I didn’t have enough to do with my regular work. It’s all right for her to do all the big gestures of saving souls, but it’s me who does the extra work. Photostat this, write the bank, call up the brokers—”

  She came back a moment later with two Manila folders.

  “I brought the Tupchik one, too, Miss Marriner,” she said decorously. “I thought you might want to check something there.”

  Miss Benson sat down at Vee’s desk, pencil and notebook docile, attentive. Vee began to read. “Never mind, I’ll not want you for a bit,” she said in a moment, and was glad when the girl left. She was getting angrier within her, and she needed secrecy for anger.

  The affidavit. It was three months since she had read and signed it. Rereading it grated her nerves. It was so tediously careful about every detail, so overflowing with minutiae. She remembered that she had forgiven its redundancies because it overlooked nothing. Nothing except the possibility of a mean little, nasty little major-domo.

  “That deponent hereby assumes full responsibility for Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, Christa Vederle, arid their two infant children, Paul Vederle and Ilse Vederle, the would-be immigrants, and promises and guarantees that Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, Christa Vederle, and their two infant children, Paul Vederle and Ilse Vederle, will never become a burden or a public charge upon the United States of America, or upon any city, c
ounty, or municipality thereof.”

  There it was, word for word. What, in God’s name, could be more thoroughgoing a promise, more binding a pledge?

  She picked up a pencil, began to draft a letter. She addressed it to “Visa Division, The Department of State, Washington, Sirs,” and then once again sat baffled and uncertain. Was it wise to ignore what Larry Meany had just said and write, anyway? It would relieve her feelings enormously, but would it help the Vederles? If she wrote Washington, she would be “going above Zurich’s head.” In the business world, the one positive result from such tactics was resentment and enmity from the head that had been gone over.

  After a bit, she pushed a pencil heavily through the words she had written. Then she telephoned Ann Willis. Ann too was cautious. It was too soon to appeal to Washington. Wait and see if the new guarantee letter didn’t do the trick. Better not antagonize Zurich.

  In the end she contented herself with a cable to Franz Vederle:

  RUSHING NEW GUARANTEE. DELAY UPSETS ME TERRIBLY ALSO.

  She looked at her desk calendar. July 6; July would be nearly gone before this new material could be in the hands of the Consulate there. July would not be an easy, happy month for the Vederles.

  She wished that she were going abroad on a summer buying trip, as she had for so many years. If she were in Europe now, she would go to Zurich, meet them, perhaps go to the Consulate itself with them. Who knew but that an appearance of an American citizen with them might be the one small thing that would make up the consular mind?

  She sighed over the daydream as she gave it up. She herself had told the Boss that this year she could not, should not, leave the store long enough for the usual trip abroad. The buyers, of course, were going; her own trips were not really essential any more. Mr. Ralsey had urged her to go; almost ordered her to go, but she had argued him out of it. The true reason, and she knew it without expressing it even to herself, was that now she could not bring herself to leave Jasper for the two months these buying trips took. Just now, with this new glory of hazard before them, to lose two months was an unendurable thought.