by Uwe Johnson
She has a sense of what de Rosny’s getting at by bringing her into this company of privilege-laden men; she knows that it isn’t about her. If asked by his own ilk he’d say something about women’s equal rights; no less a word than emancipation might cross his lips, with the cheerful earnestness that even his friends from the West Coast have a hard time reading mockery into. Then it would all be taken as one of his whims, and one tiny misstep would turn Mrs. Cresspahl into someone paying the price for it. As long as she sits up straight and yet puts one foot in front of the other in exactly the right place, he can accustom his subordinates, men though they are, to the presence of a woman at business lunches, and even to her competence to speak up, so that someday they’ll discuss with her a matter of business where she’ll be representing de Rosny—business in a country that they know very little about . . . but we won’t discuss that now. De Rosny started with invitations to places like the Brussels and Quo Vadis, where his peers, friend or foe, were to help spread the rumor that he seemed to be consoling himself after all for the nasty situation with his wife, he’s barely sixty after all, de Rosny, isn’t he; here, in the boss’s restaurant, the boys’ll think what they’re supposed to think if he wants them to. In any case, de Rosny has clearly forgotten how you’re supposed to treat women—he doesn’t need to give advance notice, it doesn’t occur to him that she might need to prepare her schedule or wardrobe, when he calls he expects Mrs. Cresspahl to come as she is. So now she can no longer come to work in the older dress that’s easy to clean, it’s okay if she sweats in it; her small raise is eaten up almost every month by the shopping she has to do in stores that maybe the Kennedys’ maids could afford but not a bank employee! She got lucky today, with her sleeveless ribbed-silk number from Bergdorf Goodman with a short jacket—formal enough, the color next to the white hopefully works with her hair color—only she’d tried to save on tailoring, it doesn’t fit as well as it could, and up here she feels like she’s freezing in it. The women who work as news announcers on TV get supplemental pay for their clothes, don’t they? Thats messed up. Anyway, we hold our end up well enough in the art of conversation.
Today it plays out once again like a kind of test, because that’s what de Rosny wants. He doesn’t come across as manipulative, he seems fully at ease—the philosophizing boss. The younger men try to catch his eye and at the same time get their meat (grilled lamb cutlets with peas flown in from somewhere) off their plate—worshipful as puppy dogs they are, Wilbur N. Wendell, Henri Gelliston, Anthony Milo, despite the fact that they’d been dictating truly imperious letters to banks on other continents just an hour ago. They’re invisible to de Rosny, who is busy recalling the years 1899 and 1900, as though saddened by the passing of time—the Open Door policy, the directives to expand American business abroad, the canonization of the faith that America must not keep its system, the best of all possible in business as well as politics, to itself but instead bestow it on other nations. Employee Cresspahl keeps her eyes on her plate: she has learned all about this in school, exactly the same facts, just with other words, along with the conceit that the thoughts of anyone ignorant of dialectical materialism were not to be taken seriously. De Rosny has brought his puppy dogs to the point where they want to prove themselves good students. Anthony, poor Anthony. He probably left Brooklyn too soon, left his recent-immigrant mother with her embarrassing peasant head scarf whom he now rides past every day on the commuter train from Long Island. He should have scouted out the lay of the land! Instead, falling for the new nationalism, our Tonio launches into the legends—the troops sailing to the Philippines from California, Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay (1898), the sinking of the Maine earlier that year; blind with zeal he runs right into de Rosny’s knife: Not even John Jacob Astor ever talked like that, young Mr. Milo. Think of our missionaries in China!
It all has something indirectly to do with Mrs. Cresspahl’s secret assignment—this dispatching of American trade and traffic to the benighted nations; she can sense de Rosny’s gaze passing over her out of the corner of her eye. No thank you. It’s too soon for her to triumph over these better-paid men under de Rosny’s thumb. Plus she’s too angry at them. Does Mrs. Cresspahl own a house on Long Island? Does she have a stock portfolio? No, thanks anyway. Tomorrow Tonio will tell James Carmody: You were lucky you weren’t there!
Now de Rosny decides to use ribbed silk as an example: international credit can’t do it, of course, the poor natives can acquire the goods and services of the industrialized nations only when they get jobs, purchasing licenses, trade by means of which they can send the results of their own prosperity back to the USA, let’s say. Now take the ribbed silk in this exquisite dress our Mrs. Cresspahl is wearing. . . .
Thank you. That she does say, then she talks across the table with Mr. Kennicott II, about the Long Island Rail Road strike. Was it bad? Mr. Kennicott may be the head of the Personnel Department but this was a swish of the matador’s red cape that got him, he’s confused, he starts complaining about the heat in the stopped trains this morning. Mrs. Cresspahl won’t let herself be herded into purely feminine topics. Let our purportedly universally admired vice president hold forth on barre ribs, Ottoman ribbing, ribs ondé—the lady isn’t listening, her devoted attention is turned to Kennicott II and nothing seems to matter more to her than how it was on the Montauk line with eighteen out of twenty-four trains from Babylon not in service. She nods, she can imagine, who would doubt it.
Shortly before reaching the late-Egyptian evidence for ribbed fabrics, de Rosny gets bored; he generously yields the floor to Mr. Gelliston (Harvard Business School) and Mr. Wendell, letting them pronounce on how the Open Door policy grew and prosperity resulted under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Wilson, from the Algeciras Conference to the Webb-Pomerance and Edge Acts, the requirements as act, as law, and of American business and the White Man’s Burden. But we have a lady at the table who is not only charming and beautiful but fully educated in Marxism. What do you have to say, Mrs. Cresspahl?
– It is the indispensable duty of all the nations of the earth: she says, apparently gladly, and firmly confident in the preacherly voice by the fifth word, if anything falling too deep into the orotund hollow that the d-y-u leaves in her throat: to know that the LORD he is God, and to offer unto him sincere and devout thanksgiving and praise. But if there is any nation under heaven, which hath more peculiar and forcible reasons than others, for joining one heart and voice in offering up to him these grateful sacrifices, the United States of America are that nation.
Laughter. Applause. She does blush a little, why try to hide it. But it does come out cute, more feminine, diminishing her success somewhat. And again she’s too angry, even more than when she read in one of Marie’s textbooks Levi Frisbie’s sermon dated five years after the French Revolution. Now there’s a bet about this date, and she forgoes the prize, adding an extra year so that de Rosny hands it out to Henri Gelliston. The boss laughed so heartily that his eyes weren’t free to do anything else; she catches his small, approving nod.
Now the conversation turns to dialectics, the railroad strike, the heat, constantly if cautiously circling around politics. The plane with 214 American soldiers on board that Soviet fighters forced to land on the Kuril Islands yesterday is not even mentioned: de Rosny frowns on the current president’s policies, why force him into any awkward repetitions. (On March 16, de Rosny was not received at the White House.) The cost of summer camp, coffee, vacation plans. Mr. Kennicott II is given suggestions for restaurants in Amsterdam. Someone’s already told him about one, what’s the name again, something about a yellow bird. De Rosny advises against. Does Mr. Kennicott want to spend his time in Holland dining with Americans or stock market people? De Rosny knows another place, dark wood paneling, solid old-fashioned furniture, fatherly waiters, the floorboards tremble—some kind of schoolroom Latin name. . . . – Do you mean Dorrius?: Employee Cresspahl says cautiously, like a schoolgirl; she doesn’t want to overdo it. (She’s only seen D
orrius from the outside, it was too expensive for her; she knows more about it from D. E., whom of course all good things are there to serve.) De Rosny is now free to either ruin her offering or visibly praise her among and before his students.
– Dorrius! That’s what it’s called! de Rosny cries.
– It has three exits: Mrs. Cresspahl adds meekly.
Their duet is applauded, de Rosny bows for the both of them, and the amused chitchat about dialectics lasts all the way to the elevator. She can’t get free of him there either. He still does not withdraw into his distinguished chambers; he chivalrously accompanies his team down to their office foyer. Where it turned out he was accompanying Mrs. Cresspahl, and it wasn’t about chivalry, it was to have a word with her behind closed doors. She is suddenly so nervous that she stays standing in the middle of the room that’s set up for her work.
De Rosny doesn’t want to sit down either. He leans against the door, looks around at the charts on the wall, the documents on the metal bureau, seeking an opening.
Who is this de Rosny? What on earth is her connection with him? Was he one of the men who celebrated the fall of France on June 26, 1940, with a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria? No, not him, but maybe his parents. She feels no threat from him with regard to anti-Fascist elements—Fascism’s bad for business. Should she be suspicious of him for being anti-Fascist for the wrong reasons? What does he want, here in her room, behind closed doors?
She has before her a gentleman who has taken care of his body since youth. He won’t die from that. It’ll be an advanced old age indeed that gets him. He’s kept his brain busy, but not forcing it or letting it drift into alcohol. This guy’ll be sharp as a tack when death comes for him. Barely a wrinkle in his brow. A full head of thick hair, flecked with gray but not white like an old man’s. Still, his eyes, usually cool and sharp, are dull today, hardly even still blue. He’ll lose that look tonight, on the golf course on the Sound. She looks at him; she’d recognize him even in disguise; she can’t let her look show what else she knows, which is that he’s one of the people we were warned about in school. He is Money, hateful and malevolent. It has raised him; he serves it; if he does want to extend credit to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic it’s not to improve Socialism there. He understands the aspects of politics that can harm money. He finds it useful to send the Czechs and Slovaks someone who once lived in the vicinity. It doesn’t need to be her, but it is her. Why isn’t that disgusting?
– Mrs. Cresspahl. So here’s the opening. And she clears her throat, and already he’s brought to a stop. Which isn’t what she wanted to do, she was trying to help him out of his embarrassment. – Sir?
– You’re willing to do all these things for us. . . .You’re going to Prague for us, taking your child out of school, from her home in New York . . . it might take three months, six months: he repeats, insists, but not with any regret in his voice. It’s not sympathy he has in mind. Why isn’t he looking her in the eye?
– Yes. Sir: Employee Cresspahl says.
– Would you do something else, too? Something . . . I can’t tell you what it is, I’ve already said too much! You can say no. . . . : he has sped up; in anyone else she’d be sure he felt embarrassment, timidity, shame. He just gives a little smile. I saw Cresspahl’s cat look like that, holding its paw above the mouse.
It’s not the bank I’m doing this for.
I realize that.
You have no idea why I am doing it, Mr. de Rosny.
Maybe not. But as long as it’s useful for us.
I don’t need to say a word to you.
You can refuse the assignment. This is your last chance.
And then get my two weeks’ notice.
You know the terms of your contract, Mrs. Cresspahl.
After two months I couldn’t afford my apartment, after six I’d have to take Marie out of her school.
And if that’s worth it?
You’ll put me on a blacklist and I’d never get another job in any bank in New York State, Pennsylvania, New England.
You’d get compensation.
If I keep my mouth shut.
That’s the way it is, young lady. We could even make trouble with your visa.
And of course you’d apologize.
Only in the moment. Now.
Say it, Mr. de Rosny. Just so I know.
Try to prove I was here in your office, Mrs. Cresspahl. Just try to prove it to anyone!
– I will not refuse to do anything that’s necessary to carry out my assignment: Employee Cresspahl says, stiff and polite. She’s annoyed with herself—she let down her guard for a single moment and now, in the empty space, there’s trust. She’s scared but not of the right thing.
– That’s the kind of courage I admire: de Rosny says, turns, shoulders open the door, leaves it ajar, and is gone. He was never here.
In the remaining hours, Mrs. Cresspahl does her work as if every last bit of it had to be finished by five p.m. today. She can recalculate the LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) again. She can convert it into Czech crowns a third time. She finishes with only two minutes to spare for the memo to the head of personnel: Dorrius Restaurant, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has one exit on N. Z. Voorburgwal, two on Spuistraat (N. Z. = Nieuwezijds = New Side; there hasn’t been an Old Side for about a hundred and fifty years): Sincerely Yours, G. C. When the evening heat assaults her on the street, she realizes she also feels a sharp edge of fear. That’s what it’s like when you’re trying to forget something. Why is more and worse being expected of her than of all the people around her, who are cautiously approaching Grand Central Station and scared of nothing on this first of July 1968 but a sudden burst of sweat, the nun with the beggar’s plate on her knees between the doors of the east entrance, the ragged old woman with her swollen legs asleep on the steps of the Graybar Building with a tattered paper bag held tight in her hand. It’s not fear she feels, it’s worse: it’s like a farewell. Saying goodbye to New York.
July 2, 1968 Tuesday
The American military in Vietnam is battling the press, telling the flat-out lie that reporters’ access to the news in wartime is as rapid and complete as reporters could possibly want. And the newspapers apparently believe it. Last week John Carroll from The Baltimore Sun went to Khesanh and saw with his own eyes how marines were breaking runways into separate steel plates and dynamiting their own bunkers. Since he assumed that enemy troops in advance positions could make similar observations, he sent the news home. The general from the Press Department confiscated Mr. Carroll’s press pass for an indeterminate time; neither embassy nor military personnel will talk to him, and when he wants to get from one place to another no army vehicle will take him. The army says he is an estimated ninety percent right; apparently the remaining tenth of its opinion suffices for a ban. Maybe the retreat from Khesanh doesn’t yet fit with what they’re calling three months of ferocious defense
In Hesse, in the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr. Fritz Bauer has died. He was the chief prosecutor of the State of Hesse and one of the few people in office who from the beginning considered the Nazi crimes prosecutable under the law, and prosecuted them. He especially hunted down the murderers who tried to use clean hands as proof of their innocence, having washed away the stains, from Eichmann to a number of concentration camp doctors. Without him the Auschwitz trial from 1963 to 1965 would never have taken place. There are many sentences she thought of writing to Mr. Bauer, the child that I was—none were ever sent. Only sixty-four years old, and now he’s dead.
The Gesine Cresspahl of the Soviet occupation zone had started a diary in spring 1947.
It wasn’t technically a diary. (And this isn’t either, for different reasons: here she’s agreed to have a scribe—instead of her, with her permission—write an entry for every day but not of that day.) That one she wrote herself, but she left out whole weeks sometimes. It wasn’t because she’d made a New Year’s resolution. It was to keep things from being forgotten, that’s tru
e, but it was for someone else’s sake, not hers. It hardly looked like a book or a notebook. Jakob’s mother wouldn’t have wanted to touch it; Jakob wouldn’t have gotten past the first few lines; she had only a very vague sense of why she wanted to protect it. It lay between now these pages and now those pages of Büchner’s Economic Geography of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which is a dissertation fat enough for a dedication to the author’s parents, thin enough to be a special issue; you could hardly fit more than a couple of slips of paper between its pages. There was no date on the slip of paper—it had to not look like a diary on second glance either. There were few complete sentences, in that adolescent handwriting, just words in rows, kind of like a badly arranged vocabulary list, many of them crossed out. One was still legible: “jagged.” Now and then she forgot what she’d been trying to preserve. We find this word a second time. It bears the recurrent sense that Schoolgirl Cresspahl’s face must look jagged when she’s talking to grown-ups because that’s how she feels on the inside. But what are we to do with an entry like “Ya kolokoychik” or “Packard? Buick?” It’s gone. And there were not only Russian words in the list, crossed out or let stand, but also German words disguised in Cyrillic transcription. It has run away, no one will ever catch it. It wasn’t much of a diary, and it was meant to be one for Cresspahl. If you write something down for a person then he’s bound to come back. A dead person can’t read, right?