The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  The letter astonished her.

  The Visa Division had heard once again from Zurich. The matter of how and when Dr. Vederle had earned his money was now cleared up. “It is added that all members of the family will be charged to the German quota if their cases are approved, this action being possible under the provisions of the Immigration Act of 1924, by which a wife, if accompanying her husband, may be charged to the quota for the country of her husband’s birth if her own quota is exhausted. Sincerely yours—”

  She read it again, to be sure her eyes did not fool her. Even with her mind so worn from the sleepless nights, the constant drugs, the overwork at the store—even so, she pounced upon that bland final sentence as if she would claw it to bits.

  The Immigration Act of 1924. But didn’t a Consul General in a foreign assignment know the Immigration Act of 1924? Did he merely forget it, like a dull pupil at the blackboard in a classroom? The various Vice-Consuls at Zurich, who also handled the Vederle case, did they not know the Immigration Act of 1924?

  Here was a man who had stood and listened to the news that he must part from his wife for twelve years. Here was a man who had once already lost hope of America. Here was a man who would now be settled in South Africa when his every desire cried out for the United States. And yet, the Immigration Act of 1924 was there all the time.

  Then it was needless, the torment he had been through on this one point. It was wanton. How many other rulings and demands and delays were equally needless?

  Dear God, would it one day turn out that her own heartbreak was needless, too? Was there some simple thing ignored—some overlooked thing that might yet rescue her from this pain thudding through every waking moment?

  August 21 was the day Dr. Platt had put down.

  In two weeks, her leave of absence from the store would begin. Mr. Ralsey had been so kind when she had told him it was “doctor’s orders” that she take a real rest. She had murmured something about “jumpy heart,” but he had hardly listened.

  “You’ve had us all worried, Vee,” he had said warmly. “You’ve been looking so tuckered out and thin.”

  “I know. I’m anemic and ten pounds underweight,” she explained quickly. “The doctor said it was at the danger point.”

  She closed her eyes, and he came and put an awkward hand on her shoulder. It was true, it was the very phrase. Dr. Platt had warned her, and Dr. Burton. She had to take care of herself. She had to eat properly. She had to sleep.

  Yes, she had to. She wanted the baby to be strong and healthy. She had begun again to think about the baby. For the first weeks after—after that day, she could not think about the baby, as a baby. Her mind had refused the image, her heart had rejected the torment. “A baby you call by a name?” Oh, no, no.

  Now again, she could begin the tentative visualizing of a baby. Her body was making its first changes, though she had become so thin that they showed only when she was undressed.

  She glanced into the mirror. No, even now, in this loosely fitted wool suit, it was impossible to guess the secret of her body. You saw instead the thin shoulders, the chalky skin, the hollow eye sockets.

  She undressed slowly. Yes, you could see, when she stood naked. The first changing had begun. The enlarging curve of the belly, the heavier, fuller breasts. It was beautiful to see, it really was so beautiful. If you were loved and cherished, and saw your body changing so? Proud and happy and loved, and saw this skillful, changing body?

  The image blurred and wavered.

  She turned away. She walked slowly to the bed, sat down slowly, and then lay down on her back. There was no use even fighting the indignity of the tears, she knew that now. There simply was no way to stop them when she was alone. She had tried for weeks to find the way, she had fought them with every weapon her mind could devise. During the day, at the store, talking to somebody, she could keep an unmoving face, a steady voice. But here, in this bed, where she and Jas had lain together, talked, laughed, made love—

  “What do you do when you can’t bear it?” The words suddenly screamed themselves at her inside her head. “What do you do when you just know you can’t bear it any more?”

  Later she bathed and dressed again. Bronya was coming to have dinner with her. They were going to the theater. She put more rouge on her cheeks than usual, to make her eyes brighter. The last time they had seen each other was the night before Jas told her.

  While she dressed she thought out the cablegram to send the Vederles. The last cable she had sent was that one nearly two months ago, just before Christmas. She had known then, in her soul she had known, though Dr. Platt was so cautious and would not confirm it for another week. She had known, her body had sung with it, and she had known.

  She smiled bitterly. Vera Marriner’s private calendar—Vera Marriner’s new chronology: before the day Jas had told her, and after.

  She stood up abruptly and went to the telephone.

  WASHINGTON RULES ALL VEDERLES ON GERMAN QUOTA IF CASES ARE APPROVED. WHAT REMAINS TO BE CLEARED?

  Bronya came in as she was dictating it to the cable operator. She could see the slight, intelligent face watching her, as she finished the message. She put the receiver back slowly and stood up.

  “That ought to make them feel better,” she said. “They’ve been thinking for months—”

  “You are sick, you have been really sick,” Bronya said. “You didn’t want to tell me? I could have come—”

  “No, I—”

  She could not say it again. She could not say she was all right, she would be all right. That’s what she had said that morning when Jas had asked her whether she would have morning sickness, whether she were frightened. Those were the very words Ann had cried out to her that night, “You’ll be all right, Vee, you’ll be all right.”

  She put her face down into her hands. She would not cry. Bronya knelt beside her; phrases in German came tumbling from her lips, and her fingers were on Vee’s hair.

  “Oh, Bronya, Bronya, what shall I do? Something has happened and I don’t know what to do.” You will know—soon it clears out the mind—”

  She could not tell her. She could only sit there, hearing the foreign phrases, feeling the touch on her hair. Here was someone else who knew what it was to go on alone, to go ahead alone. Again the tight unity she now felt with the Vederles swept through her.

  “It is something bad, I feel that sure—you told me about marriage someday soon—last summer, remember?”

  ‘Yes, I remember. That’s all over, Bronya. That’s finished. I’m not going to be married, after all.”

  Bronya made a low sound of recognition and acceptance. Vee knew what she was thinking. A love affair petered out. A broken engagement. “Betrothal ended by mutual consent.”

  She began to laugh, jerkily, then in a rising crescendo. Bronya shook her shoulder, hard, almost angrily. The laughter snapped off.

  “I do not wish it, to ask questions,” Bronya said calmly. “You have a nervous strain, you are very thin. If you let, I leave Mrs. Martin’s job and come here, care for you a month, until you are all cured. Lady companion, no?”

  Vee sat, shaking her head. But it was good to know that Bronya would be ready to help if she could. There were people you could trust. There were, there were.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “THERE’S A LADY WAITING to see you, Mr. Crown. She has no appointment.”

  He looked up quickly. His face was without expression. But something corded and knotted in his chest.

  “Her name is Willis,” his secretary went on evenly. “Mrs. Frederick Willis. She says you know her.”

  “Damn it.” His eyes instantly went dead. “You know I’m too busy.”

  He waved to the stacks of letters on a long table at the side of his office. There were hundreds of letters there, chosen from out of the thousands that kept pouring in to applaud his nightly broadcasts.

  The girl nodded and moved to the door.

  “Send her in,” he rapped out wit
h irritation. “Break it after ten minutes.”

  Ann came in slowly. She did not greet him, except with a nod and the deliberate examination her eyes made of his face. He also was silent, waiting for her to sit down. His eyes were on the bright-green feather on her hat.

  “It’s about Vee,” Ann said at last. Her tone was calm, with neither color nor pressure in it. It was big and deep as it always was, but it was calm. She settled her large frame in the chair.

  “Yes?”

  “I know about the whole thing. I would like to suggest one plan you may not have thought of.”

  “Does Vee know you are here?”

  “Don’t be absurd. It is already absurd enough for me to be in the position of meddler. I resent it deeply, I assure you.”

  He waited. His right hand had picked up a pencil and was tapping softly on the desk as he sat silent, politely waiting for her to go on.

  She delayed until his eyes should meet hers. But they did not.

  “It seems to me that you and Vee might marry for six or eight months and then arrange a divorce.”

  He frowned. Ann saw how deeply the lines went into his flesh. “He looks all in, too,” her mind noted for her coldly.

  He said nothing. The only sound in the room was the soft tap-tap-tap of the pencil. His lips pressed inward on his teeth, and his eyelids shielded his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “But I do not care to discuss this with you.”

  “You cannot, conceivably, snub me, Jasper. You might think over that suggestion later on, though. It’s one way out of a beastly situation and that’s why I came here.”

  “There is a better way,” he unexpectedly said. “I still believe that Vee will see it my way. Forgive me if I go on believing that. There is still another week or so.”

  Ann rose. A seam split in her right glove, and she unclenched her fist and examined the gap thoughtfully. He rose also.

  “Another week—you’re still counting on having your own way. That’s a big gamble to take, this late in the game,” she said.

  For the first time his eyes met hers directly.

  “I’m used to taking big gambles.”

  She examined his face once more. Then she turned and left the office.

  He swiveled his chair about, so that his back was to the desk and the letter-stacked table. He looked out at the sky, but he still saw the small white ellipse of her hand through the seam of her glove. She hated him; Ann Willis had been calm, almost impersonal, but she hated him so much that her clenched fist had burst her glove.

  He knew hate like that. He knew it well. And it never frightened him.

  The plan she offered was a maniac’s plan, and to be dismissed as such. He wished only that he could dismiss the whole God-damned thing as easily. The mistake, the horrible mistake his mind had made, not to see long before that in his crowded life he couldn’t yet fit in domesticity and dutifulness and bondage to home and kiddies.

  He had been honest with Vee; long ago he had told her he didn’t believe in marriage, that he had no time for it, that it hadn’t worked out for her or for him, that it killed the kind of thing they had had. It was she who had urged him on with this Gontlen business—and now here he was in this terrible trap. Dear Christ, he had chewed his guts out, thinking.

  The irony of timing. Here was this smash hit he was making on the air—and he couldn’t feel set up and good about it because he couldn’t feel good about anything.

  He suddenly wheeled about, so that he faced his desk once more. His right hand banged on the desk in his fury of exasperation.

  He could not stand the laded, soggy weight any longer. It would drive him mad, never to be free of it, whatever it was. He used to feel this way when he’d first left Beth. He’d got over it, finally. Maybe he’d get over this soon.

  The door opened, and his secretary came in with checks for him to sign. He picked up his pen. The first one was the regular monthly check to Beth. He had heard nothing from her, only that she had taken an apartment in San Francisco for a while. He signed the check and then threw his pen down.

  “Fix it with the Treasurer’s office,” he ordered, “to send these out direct, from now on.”

  “Yes, Mr. Crown.”

  He lit a cigarette and saw that his hand was shaking. Hate could do that to him. The way fear did to some men.

  The moment she was awake, Vee knew the date of this dark February morning. Tuesday, the twenty-first. Six months from today.

  When she got home from the store that night, the phrase changed. “Six months from tonight.” The little phrase droned and hummed through her mind.|

  She was leaving the store on Friday. That would be good. She could not imagine yet how she would get through the long daylight hours without the specific tasks to which she could nail her thoughts. But she would learn to manage that, too. This overwork could not go on; it could not be good for her physically.

  For the last few days, she had been rushing the final preparations for the spring “line” in every department; designing, conferring with the staff of buyers, talking with a dozen major manufacturers in each accessory division. She worked after hours every day with her assistant, shoveling a thousand directions and pointers into her mind, to make the transfer of duties go as smoothly as possible after she left.

  Each evening when she at last took a taxi at the side door of Ralsey’s, she sank back against the seat and closed her eyes, too limp to light a cigarette. At home, she would lie down and tell herself that this time she would be able to take a nap. But sleep was-as impossible under the incessant drubbing of her thoughts as it was later at night.

  This evening was the same. The best she could do was to rest. She would be alone until eleven, when Ann was coming up from a dinner she had to go to, Ann who managed to come over every other night, for all her busy life.

  Dora tiptoed in with a tray.

  “Just some good soup and some sliced chicken?” Dora coaxed. “Please try if you don’t feel hungry tonight.”

  “Yes, Dora, I am hungry. It looks fine.”

  “You say that, then you hardly touch—” She broke off, then she gathered her courage together. “Ever since you had that influenza, I been so worried. If you broke off with—you know, I can’t help knowing he don’t—”

  Vee made a small gesture. Dora cut the sentence and left the room.

  “You’re sweet to think about me, Dora,” Vee called after her. She ate as well as she could. She gave her attention to it, consciously trying to eat the little that was on the tray. It was simply out of the question to eat more than a few mouthfuls. A glass of milk, coffee, two or three bites of a sandwich at luncheon, some soup and crackers—beyond that, she simply could not manage food. She drank a second cup of coffee, and. then she went and put on her coat and hat.

  She would take a longer walk tonight even though she was so tired. She might sleep better if she got more exercise. For three nights now she had refused to take the blue capsules, and she was glad to be done with them. There was humiliation in needing their help. She would get over this horror of sleeplessness soon.

  She did not know how long she walked, or how far. It was a windless, starry night, almost mild, with that first easy feel of spring which sometimes comes to enchant the world in late February. The soft air on her face was reassuring.

  Time was passing, and time healed, and someday the terrible knowledge that the Jas she had loved so passionately…

  She kept on walking. Fatigue lay along her muscles and in her bones, but she kept on as long as she could.

  She let herself into the apartment at about ten. The newspaper lay folded on the coffee table in the living room, and Dora had left a glass of milk and some cookies for her. She sank down into the sofa and drank the milk gratefully. Her eyes went to the headlines, shocked again at the hopeless news from Spain. Madrid would fall in a few days and the war would be over. The last-ditch fighting was useless, there was no hope.

  The paper slid fr
om her hands. She never had been so exhausted. Maybe she was coming down with grippe or flu—there was that all-over ache in her bones. She ought to go in and lie down until Ann came. To lie absolutely still and rest her legs and back would be comforting. But she did not move.

  Her eyes fell on the coffee table. She could see it as it was on another evening, with a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket, a red rose wired to one handle, a gay red satin bow to the other. That was the evening he decided he would go to Dr. Gontlen. She had urged him to go, she had wanted him to go—to end his torment, to make him happy, to be happy herself.

  “But I trusted you then, I trusted you—”

  She clipped her mind off. She stood up and went into her bedroom. The brown-tweed portable caught her eye. It was absurd to go on cutting herself off from radio news any longer. There might be some late news about the war. Anything, rather than the thinking, the remembering. She turned suddenly to the radio, and clicked it on blindly.

  A deep, resonant voice came out to her.

  “…tonight in the streets of Madrid. It is a lost cause, it is a hopeless cause…”

  The voice, this voice, this familiar sound in her ears. What was this? How—? Her hands flew up to her head—something was spinning—Jasper’s voice was filling her ears.

  “…but every man of honor, every man of integrity, will understand their honor, their integrity…”

  She heard her own voice yelling. There was the spinning somewhere, but her voice was yelling, “Honor—integrity—God, oh, God—honor and integrity.”

  She was near it. She was near that voice. She was near his voice. She heard herself screaming and she felt herself stooping. She had the thing in her hands; it was heavy, but she raised it over her head. High, higher, with that voice she knew still coming out, into her house, into her bedroom, to talk of honor and integrity.