Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  And it was then that he made his second irreparable remark. When someone asked if Nietzsche’s superman philosophy justified murder, Judd perversely replied, “It is easy to justify such a death, as easy as to justify an entomologist impaling a butterfly on a pin.”

  The room became quiet. Danny Mines of the News said, “We all had a little Nietzsche in college, Steiner, but that doesn’t mean you have to live by it.”

  “Why not?” Judd demanded. “A philosophy, if you are convinced it is correct, is something you live by.”

  We all studied our menus. “The herring is excellent here,” Judd announced to McNamara, “but I suppose you don’t like herring – you aren’t Jewish.”

  Throughout the meal he continued to flash his erudition, and against my will, I was being pushed by the others, set up as the antipode – for I too was a university graduate at eighteen. Repeatedly, Judd seemed to challenge me, with a reference to Anatole France, a reference to Voltaire. On these I could keep up with him, but I had not read Sappho, even in translation. “The Medicis!” he cried. “We all have a time to be born in. I should have lived in the time of Cellini or Aretino, don’t you think? You’ve read Aretino, surely?”

  How much Judd was a part of his own century we could not then know.

  Only at the end of the meal, as we arose, Judd took an opportunity to talk quietly with me, as two who are publicly opponents but privately have much in common. “Have you seen our friend Ruth?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance in the last few days, but I talked to her on the phone. She – she sent you her sympathy.”

  He gave me a furtive look. “Make my apologies to her, will you?”

  As Horn was hustling the boys away, a reporter called a last question. Did they have any word for their parents?

  “Yes,” Judd snapped, “tell my father it’s time he got me a lawyer.”

  As it was Saturday night I went to see Ruth.

  This should have been my moment of triumph – a young reporter coming to his girl after trapping the most sensational murderers in all history!

  As I entered, she came toward me with a forced smile. “No, really, Sid, it was fine what you did, it was brilliant, and I want you to know-” We stood near each other, we almost leaned to kiss, but then only grasped hands, and I knew it was gone.

  I gave her Judd’s apology. She whispered, “Poor kid.”

  My nerves were all gone. I burst out, “Why keep sympathizing with him? He’s a plain monster! Artie at least has some remorse, but not Judd! He’s even bragging! He throws us all this fancy Nietzsche superman philosophy as if it makes everything excusable!”

  She stood listening, silent, and this provoked me to a stumbling, even patronizing, effort at reconciliation. Too bad, I went on, that she had been attracted by Judd for a few days, fooled, but now -

  Her eyes had filled with tears. I reached for her, but she drew aside. “Oh, Sid!” was all she said. Then Ruth let her tears flow, and I felt they were not only for Judd, not only for us, but for the whole sick world.

  Ruth said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

  As we walked to the park, I found myself suddenly talking in a streak about the case, about us. “Ruth, it was when I told you about Judd’s glasses that I saw you believed he had done it. Something in you knew. That was when I went out to find more proof.”

  She drew her hand from mine. “Then I did it too,” she said.

  “What, what did you do? For God’s sake, how can you blame yourself, how can you blame us for catching them?”

  “Oh, no. They had to be caught. Oh, I suppose I’m a coward.” We stood in the park and then, oddly, sat on a bench.

  “Sid, I owe it to you – there’s something I have to tell you,” she said. And she told me about going out with Judd that time to the dunes.

  I felt sick, sick for myself, then frightened as she talked. Alone, out there. He could have done anything.

  “Nothing happened,” Ruth said.

  But the sickest part I couldn’t ask in words. Had she felt – as with me?

  She sensed that question too and took my hand this time. “It was something different, not like with you. Sid, something drew me to him. Perhaps because he needed someone so much and he keeps everything down deep inside himself.”

  How could I feel jealousy for the poor bastard? And yet I blurted, “And after that, on the dunes, you went out with him again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, Ruth? Why?”

  “I don’t know… he even spoke of marrying…” Her voice cried for understanding. “I – I think then I loved him. Oh, Sid, it would be wrong not to tell you. Perhaps it was only pity. I knew he was suffering from something terrible he couldn’t tell me. He hides everything in himself. Perhaps” – her voice became small, choked – “perhaps that’s even what made him do it.”

  I didn’t quite understand that remark and felt that she would not be able to explain it either. Then she was calmer; Ruth even asked, it seemed to me quite impersonally, if I believed they should be executed.

  I said I believed intellectually that capital punishment was pointless, merely vengeance, but when you saw a thing of this kind you simply felt that the perpetrators should be put out of this world.

  She was silent, and I blundered again. I said, “Ruth, why should this make anything wrong between us? I didn’t murder anyone.”

  Then it all burst out of her, in agony, in bitterness. “No? Haven’t you been working night and day, so excited, so eager too to be in on the kill, and don’t you want to see them hang even though you’re intellectually against it!” She doubled over, weeping. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  If I could have admitted, then, some feeling of shame, we might have got past that dreadful barrier. I see that now.

  The two families could no longer deny the facts to themselves. Artie had been permitted to telephone his mother; thus she had indeed finally heard it from his own voice. “Yes, Mother, it’s true, I did it. I’m sorry for what it’ll do to the family. I’ll do anything you want me to.” It went on like that. His mother couldn’t speak except to repeat his name and ask over and over again, “Why? Why? How could you, Artie?”

  Mrs. Straus was upstairs when Artie’s telephone call came. She and Artie’s father took the call together; though he would not speak into the phone, he sat beside her. Then he went into his study.

  All were afraid for him. Randolph Straus was high-strung, sensitive; that was why he was sometimes so unapproachable. A nephew of Nathan Weiss, the founder of the great Corporation, he was now its executive head, and already, Straus knew he would resign. The name must not blot the company. He would resign, for he could not face the world.

  What private guilts arose in each of the parents? Did Artie’s mother ask herself if it was a punishment for unfaithfulness to her church, for not raising her children as Catholics? Did his father partly revert, asking himself if the ancient archaic laws could be in force?

  Then, at last, his brother Gerald walked in and said, “We have to make plans.”

  Plans, plans – what plans were there to make? But he came out with Gerald, and sat with them; his sons, his brothers, his wife’s brothers, and the Feldschers had come. There was talk in twos, in threes, mostly hushed – the child’s clothes burned in their own furnace, right here in this house – and the dreaded word unuttered, then uttered at last. It could only be insanity.

  And that word sounded at last the deeper fears. For as in every large family, there was one who was sick – a cousin in an asylum – and now the waves seemed to reach for them all. Would every girl of the family feel the dread fate in her womb? Was this what Artie had done to them?

  But Randolph Straus would not accept it. And he stood up and spoke for all of them to hear. “It’s his own fault! That boy had everything! Since he was a child, he’s been taking advantage, getting himself into trouble because he knew we’d have to get him out of it. We’ve covered up every mess he got into – he lied
, he was wild, he cheated at cards, he stole; yes, we all knew it. He drove like a wild man, not caring for anyone’s life. No one can say we didn’t try with him; he’s no good, and now he has done this and he will pay for it himself! Let him take the consequences of the law.”

  His voice did not break but seemed barely to reach to the last word. And he would speak no other word. He had denounced Artie, he had reverted to those ancient archaic laws, he would not speak Artie’s name ever again, he did not want to hear of him.

  After a moment his brother Gerald said, “But we’ve got to get him a defence. You can’t call that interfering with the law.”

  Lewis remarked, “Whatever we do, they’ll say we’re trying to buy it.”

  James said, “If we don’t help him, it’ll look worse.”

  The sons confronted their father. But the father remained silent. No matter what was done, Artie’s life saved, or his body hanged, to him Artie was eliminated.

  With this point reached, cousin Ferdinand Feldscher suggested talking to Judah Steiner; the families should perhaps best act in unison.

  When the call came from the Strauses, Judah Steiner did not have the strength to go. “You go, Max. What needs to be done for him, do it.”

  Max had seen many of them only a few days ago at his engagement party. They asked solicitously about his fiancée – had she gone back to New York?

  “She’s fine, just saw her – she’s taking it like one of the family.”

  Artie’s father was no longer in the room; his Uncle Gerald had taken charge. The gloom and shame had been brushed aside; there was work to be done, a campaign to organize.

  The question had two parts: what was best for the families? And what could be best for the boys?

  Who could say in so many words what stood darkly in every mind: best for all might be the quickest, the quietest end. If the boys had to hang, then let it be got over with; there was no need for a spectacular trial with the family names in the headlines for months to come.

  It was Ferdinand Feldscher who finally suggested, “Plead guilty, then there’s no jury trial, only a quick hearing. Ordinarily on a guilty plea you would get a deal, a life sentence, but in this case-”

  But Uncle Gerald Straus spoke up. Was it a foregone conclusion that there could be no other verdict? What about insanity?

  Edgar Feldscher spread his palms. “Of course they’re sick, the crime itself shows it. But if you plead insanity you automatically go before a jury, that’s the law. And in a case like this, I can’t imagine any jury letting them live.”

  Gerald said, “There is no such thing as being sure of what a jury will do.” He would get the best help there was, he said, even if it cost a million dollars! And if the case remained in the headlines, let it! The harm had already been done. At least, let the world see that their families stood by these two brainsick children!

  The younger Feldscher the bald-domed Edgar, had been listening as though gathering up all that was valuable; his voice was soft, in contrast to Uncle Gerald’s. “We could do something more than merely defend them. We could spare nothing to try to find out, as far as modern science can, what made them do it.” They all looked at him with the respect owed a man who worried over the deeper elements in things. All of them knew how close Edgar had been to the cousin who had become mentally troubled. Now Edgar ended, rather tentatively, “Suppose we get the best men, even from Vienna. Make a full study. Perhaps it could prove of some use to humanity, too.”

  Uncle Gerald said that was a real point. Especially if it was going to be an insanity defence. But right now strategy was the problem. First, as to legal counsel. Ferdinand Feldscher was certainly one of the biggest trial lawyers in the whole country -

  “No, no, you don’t have to watch out for my feelings, Gerry,” Ferdinand interrupted. “We all know there is only one man to go to.”

  “My father always believes in getting the best,” Max Steiner said.

  James Straus said, “The question is, would Wilk take it? I understand he only defends the poor.”

  “He’ll take it, he’ll take it,” Ferdinand Feldscher said, “out of vanity if for nothing else.”

  Even though it was past midnight, Gerald was for going directly to Wilk’s house.

  “Go home, go home,” Judah Steiner kept telling his sister-in-law and her husband, until at last she said, “You’ll be all right?” and he promised her he would go right up to bed.

  He went through the motions of undressing, and then he drew on a robe and returned downstairs.

  Unaccountably there had come into his mind the thought, Maybe it was because for the last baby they had wanted a girl.

  He was uncomfortable with it. He had never let his mind go into such things, these complicated psychological things that people brought into the conversation nowadays. He had not even wanted to know, exactly, that story about the boys a couple of years ago, in Charlevoix; Max had brought him the story – well, you know, a couple of young boys horsing around. Such things, the dirty things in life, had to be shut out.

  Still, it came to his mind again, Judd’s going to school that first time when they had lived on Michigan Avenue, and the only decent school nearby was Miss Spencer’s where they had only girls.

  The unending arguments! Mother Dear, can’t you see the boy is miserable, everybody teases him, a sissy with all those girls. Finally he had taken Judd out and sent him to the public school. But that had lasted only a few months. Until that day when the stupid nurse had been late to fetch him, and Judd had come running home himself with the bloody nose.

  No, no, even so, a bloody nose, every boy has to go through it, he had argued, but his wife and her sister had talked him down. The boy was weak and frail even for his age. So Mother Dear insisted it was better to send him back to Miss Spencer’s – at least the girls didn’t beat him up and call him sheenie.

  Judah Steiner had been sitting in the dark in the large leather chair where he usually smoked. Now he leaned over and switched on the lamp.

  He went to the back of the library and uncovered a projector he had bought especially because of Judd’s little film last summer. Taking out the film, he managed to thread it, though this was something he had usually asked Judd to do. To set up the screen, he moved almost stealthily; he did not want servants to come. Then he sat on the high-backed chair by the carved-legged library table, watching the picture.

  There was the boy, crouching, alert, his eyes so bright. It was on the dunes, the high weeds, the sand. Now the camera picked out the birds, hopping on the branches of a high bush – a special lens had been used to enlarge them from that distance.

  Now Judd came out, standing near the bush. He held out his hand, with some bird seed, or crumbs, whatever he used for them. A bird hopped close. It was thought these warblers were gone altogether, migrated for ever, or maybe died out, until Judd discovered them there on the dunes. The State of Michigan had sent the cameraman to make a record of the discovery. An ornithology magazine had printed an article Judd wrote. Perhaps the boy was right, perhaps he should have been a scientist…

  The tears came to his eyes.

  Mistily, he saw the bird hopping up onto Judd’s forearm – and Judd was smiling now, his serious, dignified smile, people said like his father’s.

  Judah Steiner’s eyes were so filled with tears that he couldn’t see any more. He felt the tears roll down his face.

  By then already a legendary figure, Jonathan Wilk devoted more time to lecturing, writing, philosophizing than to the law. In a courtroom, he was purely and simply a great plea-maker. None like him has since arisen. Though from a technical point of view he was an amazing cross-examiner, dogged, devious, even cunning when necessary, his spectacular qualities emerged on the simplest level of pleading for human compassion. He spoke of himself as a materialist, but I suppose what came through was the heart of a mystic, a man of great soul who sought to open the souls of other men.

  He had become famous as a labour lawyer in
a great railway strike. For an entire generation he had defended labour leaders accused of violence. In a frame-up, Wilk had been completely broken and nearly disbarred; he had then regained his career in an endless series of trials, defending criminals, defending underdogs, defending Negroes, defending; defending. He was a reformer, sometimes an iconoclast, an awakener, and he had lived long enough to become a legend.

  His body was beginning to show weariness – rheumatic spells sometimes kept him bedridden for weeks. Wilk resided in a third-floor walk-up overlooking the university and the park. The stairs were too much, but he would not abandon the apartment, with its magnificent view.

  Gerald Straus led the way up the stairs. James Straus and Max Steiner had come with him.

  Mrs. Wilk herself came to the door, a compact woman, with a humorous mouth, quick eyes. They told her who they were.

  Wilk had heard the bell; he was sitting up in bed. Gerald Straus said, “We’ve come to you as the only man who can save our boys.”

  As he had been secluded all day, reading, the last Wilk knew of the Kessler sensation was that two rich boys had been picked up for some silly coincidence about eyeglasses.

  “But anyone can get your boys out,” he said. “It’s obviously only a coincidence.”

  “No, no, they’ve confessed!” Hoarsely, Gerald Straus pleaded, “You’ve got to take the case. You’re the only one who can get them off.”

  Wilk sat erect. “Get them off?”

  Max quickly interjected, “Save their lives. Just so they don’t hang. Let them go to jail for life, we wouldn’t even ask for less.”

  “It will be a great case,” Uncle Gerald said, recalling Feldscher’s suggestion. And he added, “You can name your own fee.”

  Wilk seemed not to have heard the last part. By his lifelong philosophy he was doomed to defend them, even if it killed him, and it might, it just might.

  “I don’t know,” he said cautiously, sighing. “Where are they now?”

  “State’s Attorney Horn has them. He’s been running them all around town; they’ve been talking their heads off.”