Laura Z. Hobson

by Gentleman's Agreement

  “What’s eating you, Phil?”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve been giving me the once-over for five minutes.”

  “I got bogged in the series when you asked about it, and I started thinking what makes people look or not look Jewish.”

  “Come on, let’s get down to it. Who’s this Minify, anyway?”

  Phil started at the beginning, his first jaundiced sureness that “it would be a lousy flop unless I caught hold of some hot idea.” Without surprise, he noted that Dave showed as little steam as he himself had, nodding judiciously, trying to visualize it as if he were also a writer, but not aroused. Obscurely it pleased him that Dave should react also on this low-voltage level. He’d been right—they were just the same about things like this. He shoved back the tenuous shyness that persisted in him as he got nearer the point.

  Once Dave interrupted. “You expecting a call, Phil?”

  “A call?”

  “You keep looking at the phone every few minutes.”

  “Hell.” A moment later he added, “I had a scrap with my girl. I guess I want her to be the one to phone.”

  “Suppose I take that shower now?”

  Phil shook his head and went on. He’d got to the part about the three books and found himself worked up all over again.

  “Why shouldn’t they write about swinish Jews?” Dave put in. “Don’t Christians write about swinish Christians?”

  It brought him up short. He said, “Sure, but—” and then remained silent. Finally he shook his head, rejecting it.

  “It’s a question of timing, Dave. Fire-in-a-crowded-theater.” He walked to the bookcase and took one of the books down holding it flat on his palm as if he were guessing the weight. “These authors aren’t dopes. They know they can add to the panic by this kind of thing.”

  “Balls. If they wrote only about big beautiful Jewish heroes—you’d get the business of glorifying. Chosen People Department.” Idly, Dave tapped his thumbnail against the edges of his lower teeth. In the quiet room the clicking sounded like some new Morse code. “A two-thousand-year start on the master-race business,” he said coldly, “by one small bunch of crackpot Jews—and look how many generations haven’t paid it out.”

  “That’s a point. I never thought of it.” An excited twinge went through Phil.

  “I read it somewhere,” Dave said. “Doesn’t explain the whole thing—too many pat explanations all over the place. The big hole in this one is the world won’t be persecuting Germans two thousand years from now because they fell for the same crap.”

  He went to the Scotch and poured himself another drink. He waved the bottle at Phil and then took it over to the glass he held up.

  “But that’s not the point right now, Phil. Did you ever get your special angle?”

  The odd reluctance arose again. It wasn’t the skeptical mistrust that had sent him in to Minify that morning. It was only that Dave seemed cold about the articles. That had been all right at the start, but now it disturbed him. Politely interested he was, nothing more.

  “Don’t you want a good stiff series in a big national magazine, Dave?”

  “Me? Sure.”

  “You sound bored.”

  “Hell, I’m anything but. In my outfit—no, I’ll save that for later. It’s just—” Dave smiled, as if in anticipation of his next sentence. “Well, I’m on the side lines on anti-semitism.” He raised his glass in salute. “It’s your fight, brother.”

  Phil thought it over. “O.K., I get it.”

  “The Jewish part is, anyway. The rest of it’s everybody’s fight. I bet we’re in for a hell of a scrap, what’s more.”

  “I bet. The Jews are always just the first.”

  “The hell with the Jews, as Jews.” Dave hitched forward. He wasn’t cold and polite any longer. “It’s the whole thing, not the poor, poor Jews.” He waved toward the windows, as if he were waving to the whole stretch of country beyond.

  Involuntarily, Phil looked outside. The last daylight was still there, wan, impotent against the encroaching dark.

  Dave’s voice went on, somber now. “The price for anti-semitism is so damn big, Phil. And there’s always a price for it.”

  A current of affection shot through Phil. Dave’s face had gone hard; there was neither unease nor concession in it. He was staring into his drink as though there were a speck in it.

  “You mean price reckoned in constitutions and preambles, things like that?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. Don’t force me to make with the big words.” Dave shrugged, amiable again. “Anyway, let’s hear the rest of it, for Pete’s sake. You still hunting for the angle?”

  “No, I finally got it.” Quickly Phil told him what he’d been up to. “I’ve been doing it,” he ended, “for about two weeks.”

  Dave didn’t say anything. Phil waited. Dave carefully set his glass down and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Then he remembered they were on the table near him. He got one out and lit it. He inhaled deeply and blew smoke out hard. Then he looked directly at Phil.

  “Why, you crazy bastard,” Dave said slowly. “You goddam crazy bastard.”

  Phil suddenly remembered the three of them in the pup tent in the woods near the house. The daylight all but gone, fierce rain battering the canvas. Through the open triangle the streaming pepper trees were as black green as sycamore and eucalyptus. They’d be thoroughly scolded when they got home, they knew, but the chilling excitement of the game held them there. Nine, maybe ten, they’d been. Their wooden rifles were at the ready, their eyes strained into the howling gloom.

  “There,” Petey had whispered hoarsely, “behind the trees. Lions and the jagers and the big cats. See?”

  “Ready, men?” That was Dave.

  “Ready, sir.” Petey and he together.

  Dave’s voice went majestic.

  “Let them have it. The jungle holds no terrors for Cecil Rhodes and his gallant band.”

  The delicious feeling of unity, friendship, safety together —whatever it was then, suddenly it stood warm and fresh again in him. He looked across to Dave’s chair.

  “Crazy bastard yourself.”

  Would she call him? Was she waiting for him to call her? Off and on all afternoon, the question mark had curled its separate existence in his mind. When Dave finally went for his shave and shower, Phil dialed her number. There was no answer.

  Suddenly he knew that through all the hours, using Dave’s presence for a screen, he’d been in hiding from his own sense of disaster. If he’d been alone, he’d have watched each hour of silence as a new semaphore of warning. He’d have faced the truth: that she, too, must have been charged with unspoken thoughts, stifled challenges. Dismay must stand thick in her heart, too.

  Perhaps he’d dialed the wrong number. Sometimes you got balled up on the simplest mechanical things. He lifted the receiver again. Extreme care went into the operation this time, as if he were Tom adventuring with the delightful fact that if you did thus and so you could really pick Jimmy Kelly’s house out of all the houses in New York. Not until the dial clicked hard against the metal stop each time did Phil release it and regard that step as successful. Then he waited. He counted the rings up to seven. There was no answer.

  Just before he and Dave left for dinner, he said, “Oh, I’d better call Kathy.” Dave waited. Phil whistled a phrase of music while he dialed. “Harder to get tickets for a concert than for the theater,” he said, and hung up. “Thought she might join the celebration about your being home,” he added heartily. “Guess she’s out to a movie or something.”

  They went to a restaurant in the East Fifties which Kathy liked. As they waited for the Martinis they both ordered, they sat without talk. The tables were all filled; waiters hurried by with platters of charred steaks or creamy mixtures; thick oblongs of butter were forked out to them by a smiling bus boy. When their drinks came Phil swallowed a third of his in the first go.

  “Want to talk about it?” Dav
e asked.

  “Just one of those things.” Phil put his drink down and lit a cigarette. “I’d probably be wiser staying on my own,” he said. “You lose the instinct for marriage after seven years alone.”

  “Nuts.”

  “You and Carol get off on tangents much?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “I don’t mean fights about the kids or money or things. I mean about ideas.”

  Dave started to ask something but changed his mind. From anybody else it would have been a direct question about Kathy, Phil thought, and was grateful. He stared at the tip of his cigarette. In the amber light of the room it burned greenish white, without redness. Betty and I never— but that was a bad business to start on, even with himself. Betty was Betty and Kathy, Kathy. Nor had he ever set up yardsticks for Betty’s thinking; he hadn’t himself been moody, susceptible to shift and self-questioning then. Politics and principles hadn’t even cut deeply into his existence in those days. All at once he wanted to find Kathy, apologize to her for being ratchety. And go meekly to Jane’s party and “just not bring it up”? He ground out his cigarette.

  “Those are the toughest fights,” Dave said dispassionately, “the ones about ideas. Suppose Carol was a faithful party-line girl—can you imagine our life? Or suppose she’d been an isolationist in the old days or pro-Franco? Families break apart over ideas. In hot times like these, anyway.”

  “Like the Civil War. Pro-North husband and pro-South wife.”

  “Like anything that’s explosive inside.”

  The waiter put large menus before them. They ordered. “Damn it,” Phil said loudly, “let’s cut the gloom.” Asperity edged his manner as though it were all Dave’s fault.

  “Sure. I feel like blowing people to drinks. Know anybody to get?”

  “Might try Minify.” He laughed. “Not what you had in mind, hey? Trouble is—say, there’s Anne, I’d forgotten her. Anne Dettrey, on the magazine, smart as hell. She’s always fun.”

  “Give her a ring, why don’t you?”

  In the booth, feeling stealthy, he tried Kathy first. Then he called his house. There were no messages. He found Anne’s number in the book.

  “Nonsense, Phil,” she said, “I’m putting my one New Year’s resolution to its first test.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “To go to bed early—and alone—three times a week.”

  “You wouldn’t want to go into a thing like that too easily?” His spirits rose. This was just anything-for-a-laugh talk, yet it seemed exceptionally important to argue her into coming. He explained about Dave and his first night back.

  “By golly, patriotism,” she said, and asked where they were.

  He watched Dave and Anne as if he were years older, remote forever from the business of flirtation and attraction. Instantly she set in motion a campaign to appeal to Dave; instantly Dave changed, as if he’d peeled off a layer of personality and emerged younger, cleverer, more alive. Phil felt shoved aside. Odd sensations of pride mingled with the thin stridency of jealousy in him. Toward Anne he felt pride that he’d produced Dave; toward Dave it was the reverse. Deftly Dave was managing to inform her that he was a married man with two kids even while he announced that he’d be wanting to catch up on theaters and night clubs while he stayed on in town. She knew he didn’t mean to go alone. She immediately accepted the situation and the invitations to come. They’d have a fine lighthearted time together, Phil thought, and again envy squeaked in his heart. High spirits, carefree hours, distance from loneliness and solemnity—perhaps those were the great desiderata of life after all.

  He thought of Kathy.

  It’s more than just having fun. All at once he knew she was at no movie. She’d known he would telephone sooner or later; she’d wanted that unanswered ringing to assault him. She’d meant it to bash him, teach him a lesson, bring him to terms. Women knew their weapons well. He glanced across the table. Anne and Dave were laughing about something he’d missed. Two young men in new dark suits, their haircuts still GI, were passing the table, weaving a bit.

  “I don’t like offishers,” one announced and stopped uncertainly. Dave looked up, indulgent. The long-suppressed resentment, he thought, to army brass. The young man raised his voice. “An’ shpecially if they’re yids.”

  Dave’s arm reached. His hand had the speaker’s wrist before he’d shoved up out of his chair. His free hand was a fist, pulling back for leverage. Phil was up too, fury tearing through him. And yet he had time to notice the control in Dave’s impassive face.

  “Sorry, sir,” the other young man cried. “He’s terrible when he’s tanked up, sir.” He pushed angrily at his friend; the loss of balance was too much for the uncertain legs; the buckling body began the slow collapse the expert dancer simulates to get a laugh. Somewhere near, a girl tittered nervously.

  Dave’s grip was twisting the arm. As the body crumpled floorward it was only his hold which checked the descent. Waiters were hurrying up; heads were turning. Dave let go, brushing his fingers off against each other as if they were fouled. Anne urgently said, “Please, Phil, Dave.”

  They sat down. Anne muttered, “Horrible little fool,” and Phil thought, You’re mad, sure, but you’re out of it. Then it was as if his whole mind gulped. My God, I forgot again.

  Around them talk burst forth while a waiter and the mortified friend struggled to lift the drunk. Heads were averted as if near them on the carpet were a sour pool of vomit. Limp as a hammock the drunk was carried off. Anne asked for another drink.

  Phil looked over to Dave; their eyes met. Dave’s were hard, but his mouth bore a sardonic twist. “Take it easy, boy,” Dave said.

  “Let’s don’t even talk about it,” Anne said. “This isn’t just antisemitism; it’s battle fatigue, too.” Dave laughed, and Phil said, “I told you,” with a gesture toward her as of the producer of a hit show toward its star.

  Like a spitting rain, it was over. The new drinks came; their talk moved on to other things. Secretly, though, a core of rage burned inside Phil. There was that sudden need to crack your fist into bone when it happened; only that sagging, falling body had stopped Dave. You couldn’t punch an unconscious man. You had it and you were left brutish when you were balked. He’d read the story about Rankin in Congress; he’d had it; he’d punched no jaws, yelled at no applauding House. Always there were reasons; only rarely was the circumstance so arranged that you could fight back. The rest was this pouring of your adrenalin and this futile dammed-up fury.

  He knew. Now he knew. In his own guts and veins and muscles it stood intimate and exact. It wasn’t Dave alone who’d been called “yid.” Anne was the outsider and onlooker, but not he. Once it would have been he as well as Anne. Not now. Not ever again. Identification. Dear God, yes.

  “Don’t be grim any more,” she said suddenly.

  “Who, me?”

  He glanced at her and then again at Dave. Composed and indifferent he looked, but his pulse jumped like a nerve at the side of his throat, just above his collar. The anti-semite offered the effrontery—and then the world was ready with harsh yardsticks to measure the self-control and dignity with which you met it. You were insensitive or too sensitive; you were too timid or too bellicose; they gave you at once the wound and the burden of proper behavior toward it.

  “I was thinking we might go somewhere where there’s music,” he said to Anne.

  “Not for a while,” Dave said. “I like it here.”

  Anne leaned forward so that she addressed both of them impartially. “Tell me why,” she said plaintively, “every man who seems attractive these days is either married or”—she looked at Phil—“barred on a technicality?”

  Her woebegone look and exaggerated sigh made them all laugh. Dave patted her hand. “Your timing is lousy,” he said, “but your instincts are just great.”

  After an hour they did go on to a night club and later to another. They took turns dancing with Anne; they all laughed a good deal at their own wit. A
fter they’d taken her home, Phil said, “Coffee?” and knew Dave would agree before he could nod. There was something about wanting to stay on together even though they talked of nothing that mattered. In the Third Avenue all-nighter, brilliant with white tile and hundred-watt bulbs, noisy with taxi drivers’ talk and dance music from Hollywood, they hardly bothered with each other, but they stayed for a second mug of the hot black chicory-flavored coffee. The night blurred by. Somewhere there was sleep in it, and then Phil was awake and at once in a sharp hurry to get to the office. He would telephone from there. In his bedroom, Dave was sleeping so deeply that Phil dressed without fear of waking him. He would call Kathy without belligerence, without apology. But he wouldn’t be able to back down either.

  Miss Wales greeted him. “Mr. Minify’d like you in there, Mr. Green. It’s some sort of meeting. They’ve already started.”

  The personnel manager, Jordan, was there, and Mary Cresson with her dictation book open on her knee. John looked formal, aloof. The round of “Morning’s” was without friendliness.

  “I’ve asked Mr. Green in,” Minify said to Jordan, “because he might pick up some detail for his series. You know what he’s working on?”

  “Yes,” Jordan said. “But, Mr. Minify, you’ve really got me wrong. I never think about what a person is.”

  “It’s what’s done or what’s not done I’m interested in.” He gestured toward Phil without looking at him. “Mr. Green would do well to devote a page or so of his series to me for never thinking to check down the line in my own outfit.”

  “If Mr. Green had come right to me—”

  Minify turned so sharply in his swivel chair, Jordan stopped.

  “My niece told me about Miss Wales,” he said coldly, “so don’t imply that Mr. Green did. She brought it up just to twit me. For a minute I didn’t even catch—then it hit.”