One American Dream

by Bernard Beck

  My father shook his head no.

  “They were a group of newspaper illustrators who believed that when you draw a picture for a news article in a newspaper, it should show life as it really is rather than how a newspaper editor would like it to be. So their news illustrations showed all the bad parts of what they were illustrating as well as the good. Metaphorically, they showed the ash cans when they drew pictures of streets.”

  “But I thought you said you’re a writer, not an illustrator.”

  “Yes, that’s right. One of the artists was a friend of mine, and what they were doing at the time was very controversial. A lot of the newspaper publishers were fighting it because they didn’t want their papers to show anything that looked too bad. I started writing news articles defending and promoting what they were doing. It turned out that I was pretty good at it, and they gave me more and more responsibility. But nothing that I wrote was original, it was just reporting.

  “Mr. Davis’s son had been in some of my classes, and we became friends. He recommended me to his father. He thought that I should write a book about the Ashcan School, and Mr. Davis asked me to send him a synopsis and the first few chapters. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, when Mr. Davis read what I had written, he offered me a job as an editor instead. I took the job and I’ve been editing for two years now. I like doing it very much.”

  “So what do you edit?”

  “Usually books that someone else has written. I help them rewrite it to make it more interesting.”

  My father was nodding enthusiastically. “What exactly can you do with Ruthie?” he asked, nodding at me and hoping that I would join the conversation.

  “Well, I read her story, and I have to tell you that what she has written is much better than anything I could have written. I can help her expand it into a full-length novel. But she will do all the writing—I will just be like a coach. I’ll make suggestions and encourage her.”

  My father now gestured openly to me to join in the conversation, but I held back, still sitting outside the conversational circle.

  “So,” my father said, as he stood and walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, subtly nudging me into the conversation, “what do you say Ruthie?”

  I felt trapped, there didn’t seem to be much of an alternative. “I guess we could give it a try next week, if that’s OK with Mr. Berger.”

  “There’s no time like the present,” my father said heartily, “if that’s OK with Mr. Berger.”

  “You can use the dining room table,” my mother said, rising from the easy chair. “Is that OK?”

  I felt trapped, and I looked helplessly at Harry Berger. “I’m sure Mr. Berger has other appointments today,” I said a little too quietly. “Maybe we should wait until Mr. Berger has more free time.”

  But my father and mother had already begun removing the lace cloth from the dining room table. And then, as if orchestrated by some unseen stage director, they walked into the kitchen, leaving Harry and me alone.

  Harry was obviously uncomfortable, and he remained on the sofa. I sat where I was, facing him with my back to the dining room table.

  “I think I should tell you a little about myself and the reason why Mr. Davis is interested in your story,” he began. “First of all, other than Mr. Davis, I’m the only Jew at Davis and Hart. And actually, although Mr. Davis was born Jewish, he is married to a non-Jew. His family, which is quite wealthy and influential, has been pushing him to publish a book on a Jewish subject. So when he came across your story, he knew that he had found exactly the right property.

  “As for me, I live in Manhattan. I’m a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Journalism. I have written a lot of nonfiction, but I have never published anything. I have been told that I’m a pretty good editor. This is my third assignment.”

  Harry asked me to read my story out loud to him. I had never read any of my stories aloud before, and it was quite a moving experience—nearly as emotional as the first time I had heard the story from my grandfather. My voice thickened, and my eyes teared up as I read the Rabbi’s response. Harry was spellbound.

  “My God, that’s a powerful story,” Harry finally said. “Now I understand why Mr. Davis liked it. How did you ever conceive of such a story?”

  “Actually,” I replied, “my grandfather told me the central story. It’s about his sister in Lomza, in The Pale. I changed some things around to give it a setting and a beginning and an end, but the core of the story is from my grandfather. But it’s just a story, and it will never be enough for a book. That’s what I told Mr. Davis.”

  “I see what you mean, but that’s not what Mr. Davis is looking for. He wants a kind of historical novel about Jewish life in The Pale. He likes your story, and he would like us to make it the centerpiece of a novel, but he is more interested in the history and the atmosphere. He wants you to write a few additional stories that can be tied together and that will capture, in an informal way, what it was like to live as a Jew in The Pale at the end of the century. He wants some history, some fiction, and a lot of emotion. We can do the research on the history together, but it will be up to you to supply the emotion. Do you think your grandfather has more stories?”

  “Oh, he’s got lots of stories,” I said, “but they’re usually folk tales from the books that he reads. I can try to get him to tell me some personal stuff that he remembers from when he was a child in Lomza. Stories are easy, it’s the historic material that I don’t know.”

  “That’s easy,” Harry said with a smile. “The New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street has a fantastic history section, and the librarians know every source. It will take some time, but we can get all the information we need.”

  We, I thought to myself. I liked the way that sounded. I had never been a “we” before. I had gone out on dates to the theater, and gone to dances, and even went boating in the park, but it had always been “you” and “me,” never “we.”

  “It’s going to be a lot of work, Ruthie,” Harry said, “but I’m sure we can do it.”

  “But I’m hoping to go to college next fall. Do you think we can get it done by then?”

  “Sure. We’ll just have to work extra hard during the summer. When do you graduate from high school?”

  “The beginning of June, but I really don’t have any important classes after the middle of May, so I could probably start working on the book then.”

  “How about Sundays? Are you seeing somebody?”

  I involuntarily blushed and was immediately embarrassed. “No,” I said softly, “not just now.”

  “Good. Then we can spend our Sundays together. Mr. Davis will be very pleased.”

  And so will I, I thought to myself.

  Chapter 12

  Harry was a cosmopolitan—a bon vivant—living the good life. He was the only son of an affluent German-American Jewish family and had been raised to enjoy life, rather than to earn a living. His wealth, excellent manners, and good looks provided an easy entry into the postwar cultural world, and, though he spent his days working as an editor, he spent his evenings in the artistic demimonde. He attended private art openings, art gallery shows, museum previews, concerts, Broadway theaters, jazz clubs, and every other sort of cultural experience that his mother could suggest. His circle of friends with whom he attended these events consisted of young, unmarried men and women from similar Jewish backgrounds, all of whom seemed to be seeking appropriate matches. Harry often attended these events in the company of some wealthy and eligible young woman, but he never developed any long lasting romantic attachments.

  He was an observer and an outsider rather than an active participant—more interested in the motivation of the artists and musicians he befriended than in the value of their work. He enjoyed his relationships with the artists, and he frequently dropped into their studios just to talk with them and watch the
m work. He was non-judgmental and a good listener, and he encouraged the artists to share their ambitions and frustrations with him.

  He had no personal ambition, and, for the artists like me that he spent time with, the fact that he would never compete with them or copy their style was reassuring. He was both supportive and discreet. He had never thought about “what he would like to be when he grows up” because he never planned to grow up. There simply was no compelling reason for “growing up.” He had found a comfortable niche in both the social and artistic worlds, and he was content to remain there as long as possible.

  Although he was ostensibly a writer, he had been exposed to a variety of other cultural experiences and was conversant in many. His personal preference was for jazz. He did not sing or play an instrument, but he appreciated the freedom and creativity of jazz musicians. For the most part, he avoided the big band concert stages and halls and stuck to the small jazz clubs and speakeasies. His parents did not approve of this, and they aggressively encouraged him to spend his time in more socially acceptable company. This was a source of endless conflict, and eventually Harry moved out of his parents’ apartment and rented a small apartment in Harlem near 125th Street, where several of his favorite jazz clubs were located. He spent many late nights and early mornings in the clubs, waiting until after they had closed to the public and the musicians played for themselves. That was when they would try new sounds and orchestrations, and Harry wanted to be there to enjoy their creativity and to encourage them.

  Harry was a third-generation American. His grandfather had come to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth-century. The family had owned a large candle factory in Germany on the Swiss-German border, and his grandfather, as the oldest child, had been sent to the New World charged with the responsibility of establishing a branch of the family business there. He had traveled throughout the country and finally decided to open a candle factory in Philadelphia. This was before electricity, and candles were an important household item. Harry’s grandfather, however, realized that candles also had a romantic quality, and so his factory not only produced utilitarian candles, but, in a departure from the German parent company, it produced decorative candles as well.

  Harry’s father, who had inherited the factory, had recognized the potential market for electric lamps and had converted the factory to manufacture electric table lamps. His timing was perfect, and the factory thrived. In 1920, having survived the post-war recession, Harry’s father had sold the factory to a competitor and had become an early full-time investor in the soaring stock market. He also was involved in the workings of Temple Emanu-El, the enormous Reform synagogue that was being built on Fifth Avenue. He was very proud of his German-Jewish heritage.

  Harry’s mother was a “trophy wife.” She was tall, strikingly beautiful, and spoke with a velvety southern accent. She had been born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina and was one of the few Jewish girls to have attended a finishing school there. These schools gave girls training in social graces and proper etiquette. Although some academics were taught, the primary goal of such schools was to help girls learn to be good wives and more interesting women overall.

  Unlike my parents, Harry’s parents were bright, inquisitive people who knew a great deal about a large range of subjects, but were always trying to learn more. They never raised their voices, and they never spoke about things that they were not familiar with.

  When I got to know Harry better, I visited their home on Fifth Avenue, which occupied a full floor. The elevator opened directly into the entry hall, with the kitchen and servants’ quarters on the left, the living room straight ahead, and the dining room also to the left. There was a large balcony outside that ran the full length of the dining and living rooms, and faced Central Park. All of the furniture in the living room was upholstered in French silk moiré, with Italian marble topped tables. There were gold drapes on all the windows.

  But I am getting ahead of the story.

  __________

  That spring and summer, I spent most of my time in the Fifth Avenue Library doing research on the Jewish communities of The Pale. I would take the West End subway every morning from the Fifty-Fifth Street station in Borough Park to Times Square and then walk east on Forty-Second Street to the central library. That library and its wonderful reading room became my home for the summer. The librarians at one end of the room and the wooden tables with their green lamps were my daily summer companions. I studied every book on the subject I could find, plus every book the librarians recommended. As I read, I took copious notes, which I integrated into my book. By the end of the summer, it seemed to me that I knew everything there was to know about The Jewish Pale of Settlement.

  Every Sunday afternoon that summer, Harry and I would meet, and review and edit the additions that I had made that week to my book, which was getting longer and more complex. Inevitably, just by proximity, and biology, and the occasional intentional touch, an unmentionable undercurrent of sexual tension developed between us. In all fairness, we foolishly and futilely tried to overcome it, but Harry and I were both healthy, attractive people, and we were both young and . . . human.

  We did nothing to satisfy this inexorable force. In fact, we fought valiantly against it, but it remained lurking in the background, waiting to be explored once the book was finished.

  By September, when we took a break for Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—we had been working for four months, and the book was over 300 pages long. It had chapters on the Polish Jewish community, the Polish governmental structure, the growth of the cities, and the writings of the King James Bible. I also devoted a great deal of effort to a description of the academic life in Westminster University in the early seventeenth century and the selection process for the fifty-four scholars who would actually do the translation of the Hebrew Bible. I even had a chapter on the disruptive effects of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution on the Jewish community. I had tried to cover every aspect of Polish Jewish history that I thought might have had an effect on the circumstances that surrounded the characters in my story.

  Although I was very careful to maintain the storyline throughout, I tried to include as much of the information as I thought was relevant to the story, and to present it in as clear a way as possible. Harry and I agreed that we had done a herculean job and that the book would certainly satisfy Mr. Davis’s requirements. We had worked extremely hard that summer, and we had come to the end of our task. The draft of the book, we felt, was ready to be submitted to Mr. Davis. I was ready to start my college career, and Harry, I thought, was ready to begin a romantic relationship with me.

  Just as a last step before submitting it, we decided to reread the book from cover to cover during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I gave Harry the typewritten original, and I read the carbon copy.

  Perhaps it was as a result of the clarity that comes during a time of self-examination, but I realized, quite definitely, that my book, although scholarly and informative, was, in fact, terrible. I had taken a good short story and turned it into a tedious historical dissertation. I actually fell asleep out of boredom reading my own book.

  On Yom Kippur night, after the break-the-fast, I called Harry. Not surprisingly, he had come to the same conclusion. “I can’t imagine what we were thinking,” he said. “It seems like somewhere along the way we lost all perspective.”

  The problem was that I was scheduled to begin my college career that week, and I would no longer have free time to work on the book. We had wasted the summer and produced exactly nothing! Harry was worried about his job, and I was just plain fed up with the project.

  I hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place. I had allowed myself to get talked into it by my father and Mr. Davis, and now it was time to move on. After all, I was close to eighteen-years-old, and some of my friends were even starting to get married.

  I packed up the manuscript an
d sent it to Mr. Davis, along with a note explaining that I had tried my best and that, although I was not particularly satisfied with the manuscript, I had warned him in the beginning that I was not an experienced novelist. I told him that this was, in fact, my best effort. I made it clear that I was about to start college and that I would not be able to do any further work on the book.

  A few days later, Mr. Davis made a special trip to Brooklyn to meet with my father. Both Harry and I were present at the meeting, but we were not given an opportunity to speak. Mr. Davis was angry and threatening.

  “Mr. Rubin,” he began, “I have invested a great deal of time and money in your daughter’s book. So far, although the progress has been quite slow, she and my assistant have started developing a theme that shows some promise, but it needs to be reworked and it is certainly far from finished. I understand that your daughter has chosen to attend college rather than continue working on the book. This is most unfortunate.

  “Now, don’t get me wrong, she has the right to go to college, and Brooklyn College is a fine college for immigrant children, but I have invested a good deal of money in this book, and I cannot wait until she is ready to continue. As a business man, I am sure you understand my position.”

  My father visually bristled at the word “immigrant,” but he kept his silence and dignity. His anger, I knew, was simmering just beneath the surface.

  “Mr. Davis,” he replied in measured tones, “I am a man of my word. I understand your concern and appreciate all the effort and expense that you have sustained on behalf of my daughter. You have my word; she will finish the book even if that means that she must delay her college.”

  I was sitting in my usual place at the dining room table, and I heard it clearly—it resonated in my head. “Delay her college,” he had said. Just like that. Delay her college. I had fought for my parents’ permission to go to college. They had said that girls didn’t need an education like boys. “Girls,” they said, “just have to get married.” But I had fought, day after day. And finally they had agreed. I would have been the first in our family to go to college. And now, in a meaningless effort to impress Mr. Davis, my college dreams were dashed. Perhaps forever.