Five more minutes went by. Another five. By now, Fee was no longer sobbing; she sat as if paralyzed, upright, staring, her cheeks wet under the unpausing flow of her tears, looking only toward the vestibule where the implacable telephone faced her.
Then it rang.
Stefan raced for it. “He is?—Oh, good boy, good boy—”
He never finished that sentence. Fira, Fran, Alexandra, all of them incoherent, tumbled into the vestibule so that his footing was precarious. Each one had to grab the telephone in turn to hear Eli say that as the guard opened the locked door to the expanse of iron cages, he had whistled his special signal and at the first note “Shag just about pulled the place down.”
“Let me talk to Pa again,” Eli ended. “I can’t get him out because of the license, but I said somebody would be there first thing in the morning.”
“First thing in the morning,” Alexandra promised. “I’ll leave here by eight.”
“The morning?” Fee cried in new alarm. “Something might happen overnight.”
Alexandra said, “Now, dear, it’s so wonderful he’s found, be reasonable.”
“But he’ll be so scared when Eli leaves him. And all night long he’ll think—”
“But we can’t help it, Fee. It’s nearly five o’clock right now.”
Stefan interrupted by taking the phone from Alexandra, muttering about mothers who do not see the absurdity of talking reason to a grief-stricken child.
“Listen to me, Eli,” he said. “If you will simply stay there in the building, so they cannot take it into their heads to close a few minutes early, I will come there myself with the godforsaken license.”
“Tonight, Pa? I told them—”
“Yes, yes, but I never trust officials—if an error can be made, they’ll make it and chloroform the wrong dog tonight. So it’s better to get him right now. Can you wait there? I should make it by six.”
Eli promised, and Fee flung herself at her father in gratitude so intense that he finally yelled at her not to delay him for these precious minutes or he would certainly be too late. She jumped back and away, and off he went, trying without success to stuff Shag’s collar, leash and muzzle into his pockets as he hurried out of sight.
Two full hours had to elapse before Stefan Ivarin could possibly be expected back, but long before it was sensible, Fee and Franny went out to the porch to keep watch. It was a clear day, and the late-afternoon light was brilliant and open; the streets stretching away from the house to the brow of the hill were like pale ribbons, every inch visible except where the deep shadow of some tree scooped away a strip and left a long dark gap.
Once or twice there was a false alarm as a figure appeared in the distance, and Fee or Fran cried “There they come,” but being wrong was delicious when the outcome was so exciting to wait for. Alexandra unpacked a nightgown for each of them and herself, and then came out to the porch also, rocking back and forth, back and forth, overjoyed that tragedy had only brushed instead of striking her children.
Occasionally she smiled at the reason Eli had been so slow about calling them back: 1718-W was a party line and it was busy. He had tried it every other minute, he said during her short turn on the phone with him, and the buzz-buzz drove him mad. Not one of them, waiting as the minutes dragged by, had thought of this simplest of all reasons, neither Fee nor Fran, nor herself, not even Stiva, splendid though he was through the family’s torment, even Stiva’s brain had failed on that everyday point. He had been splendid and she loved him for going off to Brooklyn then and there. If she told him so, of course, he might twist it around into a hidden accusation that he was a good father so rarely, it was like a national holiday when he actually did something for his children.
Fee cried, “This time it’s them.”
Just at the crest of the hill, Stefan appeared with Shag. Even that far away it was clear that Shag was virtually hauling him off his feet by his pull on the leash. Fee and Fran flew toward them, screaming “Shag, Shag,” whereupon Shag leaped into the air in a pure perpendicular ascent. When he hit the ground again, Stefan shouted, “You halfwit, you,” and dropped the leash entirely.
Shag became a reddish blur racing toward the girls. He bounded at Fee with such abandon that they went down together, Fee squealing and laughing while he dashed around her and at her and over her. Franny called him, and he repeated his performance, though Fran managed to keep upright. He raced back to Fee, beyond her to Stefan, then hearing from the distance Alexandra’s voice, he abandoned all three and turned reddish streak once more until he hurled himself at Alexandra, who had had the foresight to sit down firmly on the porch floor to await the onslaught.
Later, as Shag lay under the kitchen table at their feet, a place usually forbidden him when they were at supper, Stefan supplied the details they begged for. He had been lucky with connections from trolley to train and had reached dog pound and Eli with ten minutes to spare. Eli stood leaning on the outer door as though he would put his foot in the way if they tried to lock up early. They had presented Shag’s license plate to the man in charge, with its 421 and 1912 shining up like all the stars of heaven, and handed over one dollar.
“Then he took us inside,” Stefan said. “It’s an unhappy place, with the dogs all whimpering and howling and running back and forth. Before I could spot Shag, I called out, ‘Here, boy, here, Shag,’ and Eli whistled for him. Down at the far end, that crazy fool nearly beat his brains out with excitement, and when the guard unlocked his gate, Shag must have scraped half his fur off his sides, pushing through the first inch of space—”
“He was so relieved,” Fee cried, “and so happy.”
“He flew straight for me—my life was at stake, I tell you, and then Eli’s. You saw for yourselves how he can be. I never knew such a maniac of a dog.”
“He was so happy to see you, Papa,” Fee repeated, her eyes suddenly wet again. “He must have loved you so for going after him yourself.”
“He must have,” Alexandra said ardently, not looking at Stefan. “Who could help it?”
SIXTEEN
THE CATALYST THEORY WAS correct, Ivarin thought, but Fehler astonished him by his gloom over the final spurt of donations for the Berkman Printing Fund.
Apart from the paper’s activity, Berkman’s own group had been holding fund-raising “readings” of the manuscript, and at last a specific day could be announced for the book’s appearance next month, in September. But still Fehler gave no sign of triumph, and Ivarin was puzzled.
He had little time for speculating. Mail from readers had been mounting week by week in volume and intensity, and by August, he was reaching a wider readership than ever before in his whole life as writer and editor. The praise, the disapproval, even the abuse was elixir indeed, whether it was evoked by one of “Evan’s articles” or by one of his last-call pieces on Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. Deeply, in the unknown place where generals know a battle is being won, Stefan Ivarin knew he was crossing new lines in his fight to make the Jewish East Side see what America meant by freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
“Not afraid to print a book of its enemies—what a country!” one letter ended, with fifteen two-cent stamps enclosed for the book fund. The letter was shaky in its writing, misspelled, a little soiled, and somehow more valuable on all three counts. Ivarin underlined the final sentence, and tacked the letter on his bulletin board where people could glance at it as they passed.
Here, too, Fehler surprised him. “And what a relief,” he said sourly, “not to be a post office any longer, for thirty cents’ worth of stamps.”
Ivarin exchanged glances with Abe Kesselbaum and Saul Borg. They were all in his office to see some new formats Abe had developed for Page One, and at Fehler’s words, Ivarin found a sardonic gleam in Abe’s eyes. Behind his thick lenses, he winked at him. To Fehler he only said, “I can’t write my review until they send me Jack London’s preface—they haven’t forgotten, have they?”
“They’ll sen
d it when they’re ready,” Fehler said shortly.
Ivarin went wrathful on the instant. “If you please, you will not take that tone. Next you’ll be telling me I’ve damaged our newsstand sales to help get your damnable book printed.”
Again Fehler surprised him. Conciliatory at once, he said, “I will admit—sometimes I wish you had let it alone, sink or swim. The police may investigate us over the Berkman fund; that could damage us everywhere, not just at newsstands.”
“The police? Is it so?”
“I hear rumors.”
“Let them. It would be a routine nuisance at the worst, a good story at the best.” He sounded gruff, but Fehler’s emotions struck him as delectable. Fehler the Business Manager versus Fehler the Faithful—that was a jousting bout worthy of Ivanhoe.
“Well, the book didn’t sink,” he said, thinking, My review should help do that. He had read the final manuscript a few weeks ago; it was just about what he had foreseen. But Fehler had read it also without perceptible misery. Was the unseen preface the new element contributing to his gloom? Suddenly Ivarin wanted to get hold of it at once, tonight if possible.
“Do you agree, Mr. Ivarin?”
That was Borg, and he came back to the business at hand with all his attention, for Abe Kesselbaum had labored like a miner to dig out these new ideas on format. Passing by the open door, Isaac Landau said, “May I see too?” and joined them. He looked tanned and well, his stomach troubles forgotten under the new regimen set up for him, and for the next half-hour, Ivarin’s office was filled with the impersonal give-and-take of preference and discussion.
But the moment he was alone again, Ivarin returned to the absentee preface. Everybody knew that Berkman and his cohorts had induced the world-famous author of Call of the Wild to write a special foreword for the book; they treated it as a grand coup, the final guarantee of success. Even if it had been late in getting to them, it must be in proof by now. Were they withholding it from all reviewers, or just from him, whom they had lauded to the skies for his campaign on behalf of free speech and free writing? Fehler would never tell him.
His nerves tightened; soon irritability gave him a headache. When the first press run began, he went down reluctantly to the café for his usual bite and for the ending of a game of chess begun the night before.
His opponent, a neighborhood expert, was a violinist at the Metropolitan Opera, a night owl by necessity for most of the year and by predilection for the rest. He sat at a side table, the board before him, the pieces in tidy rows along its side, and as Stefan appeared he began to set up certain pieces and pawns, consulting the notations he had made when they had finally called a halt after two hours of play.
Lucky man, Stefan had thought then, needing to write them down, instead of seeing them on the chessboard of his brain all night.
Now, approaching the table, he said, “Your move, Feifel. I had moved Queen to Queen’s Bishop Four.”
“Yes, a big attack,” the other said.
The game went slowly. It is abominable, Ivarin thought, that Fehler and his comrades keep me from my final connection with Berkman’s opus. They’ve known all along I would blast it the day it became a duly published book, blast its idiotic “defense” of assassination as a political principle, blast the stupor of its reportage on life in prison.
A child in kindergarten could write the review. But London’s preface might yield something worth a man’s time. London is a socialist, not an anarchist, a man of reason, moderation and talent; whatever he writes is worth a reviewer’s attention.
I’ve become obsessed with this preface, he thought, and the recognition soothed him. He was; he was correct to be. This decision made, Ivarin gave himself completely to the game at last.
From a nearby table an old man rose and came over to watch. He wore a black skullcap, and his shoulders were huddled up, his head lowered between them and his eyes peering, as if he were running a seam in dark cloth by dim light. He was soon engrossed in their game, and when he was joined by another watcher from another table, he whispered proudly, “It’s Ivarin, when he sometimes plays with Capablanca, all Capablanca gives him is pawn and move.”
“You don’t mean it? Capablanca?”
The old man said to a passing waiter, “He doesn’t believe that a world champion like Capablanca gives Ivarin only pawn and move.”
The waiter snorted. “Lasker, too,” he said, casting an appraising glance down at the nearly emptied board, holding his tray aloft above the violinist’s head.
Suddenly Ivarin sat back in his chair. He lifted his glass and tossed off the cold final inch of tea from it. Lemon pits slipped into his mouth and unceremoniously he popped them back into the glass.
Absentee preface indeed. He would not wait around one more day for them to send it; he would travel to the preface. He would go uptown himself in the morning, directly to Berkman or Emma Goldman or Johann Most in their Mother Earth Publishing offices, and read the preface there. Prolixity was not a characteristic of Jack London, and his much heralded preface surely could be read through in a measurable time.
Measurable time, Stefan Ivarin thought, is precisely what is at my command to finish off this business. He felt better than he had all evening. What had been needed all along, to borrow their lingo, was a little Direct Action.
“Check,” his opponent said.
He looked back at the chessboard. Feifel had said “check” in a mild voice. Too mild. A disagreeable sensation rose inside Ivarin; he was not what was called “a good loser,” and doubted that anybody else was. He examined the new positions, waiting only long enough to be sure. “Check?” he said. “I beg to differ. It’s checkmate.”
“No, no,” the spectator in the black skullcap protested. “You have many moves, Mr. Ivarin, to get out of check.”
“Useless moves, all of them,” Ivarin said, and laid his king on its’ side to signal “I resign.” Again he felt better. Reality was good, always. Waiting tactics, futile moves to stave off the inevitable—pah. That was for children.
The thick letter alarmed Alexandra. She had grown increasingly worried about Joan’s condition in these final days of waiting for the new baby, and calling Eli and Joan for news only convinced her that they were hiding something, “not to upset her.” Yesterday she had called Stefan to ask the truth. He had been busy and brusque. He had heard nothing. She should know that all confinements need not go as quickly and smoothly as Joan’s first one.
She had hung up resentfully. Premature labor pains had sent Joan to the hospital twice already; twice she had been sent home the following day and told not to worry; but compared with the simple time she had had with Webby, it was inevitable that such a difference should worry them all.
Now Alexandra took the heavy letter from the postman and said, “I hope everything is all right.”
“Don’t you worry,” the postman said. “It’s a nice big love-letter from your husband.”
She ignored his witticism. It was of course from Stefan; his angular handwriting on the envelope was unmistakable even upside down. But his letters were never more than single pages, usually to ask some question about a bill that he was sure was an error since it was too large.
This heavy a letter was not about bills. In a flash she visualized it filled with words of pain and grief, descriptions of disaster and ambulances—
She ripped the envelope open and at Stiva’s opening salutation, her worries departed.
ASSASSINATE A PREFACE?
He had printed it like a headline but right underneath it, he reverted to ordinary letter style.
Dear Alexandra,
It is too good to be true! I have chortled—
She closed her eyes in relief and thought, Thank goodness it’s not about Eli. Immediately she corrected this to “not about Joan,” thoroughly ashamed of herself, and returned to the letter. She was still standing beside the mailbox at the rear of their tent, and the wind whipping at the sheaf of pages in her hand made a pleasing ch
itter-chatter. She decided to stay outside in the sun and enjoy Stiva’s chortling together with the heart-lifting August day.
Dear Alexandra,
It is too good to be true! I have chortled for three days now, and if that barbarian tent where you immure yourself had a telephone as per solemn promise each year, I would have called you when I finally untangled the brave shenanigans of our friends, Berkman, Goldman, Johann—that special group of screamers about the Free Speech they are denied in America.
They have denied a bit of Free Speech themselves. To Jack London no less! Because he dared to say—but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. You’ll discover his crime in the enclosed.
The comedy is too great for me to write in a letter—if you were at home, we could enjoy it properly over a good glass of tea. But I want you to know of it and relish it even off there in Thoreau’s palace, so I am sending you my editorial, which will run the same day as my review of Berkman’s book. I may put the editorial on Page One.
So here it is; do not lose it; I did not wait to have a copy made at the office, because then Sunday would interfere and you could not see it until next week.
Please return it as soon as you have read it. Don’t forget to put your return address on it. Even though I know most of it by heart, it would be a nuisance to lose it. And do not read it aloud even to one of those hordes you describe as my admirers out there by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea.
Alexandra smiled. He would never realize how much he had revealed to her in this impatience to have her read his editorial, in this willingness to send it without having a copy made, he who would raise the roof looking for a misplaced page of anything he had written.
Difficult, unreasonable, hurtful, moody—but he was the most glorious husband and friend and comrade and sharer of her life.
First Papers Page 27