First Papers (75 page)

The ringing of the telephone sent them indoors; she went ahead while Evan at last turned off the lights on the car. It was a reporter from one of the papers, and Evan answered his questions patiently and fully, even taking time to suggest that the name of Synthex be omitted, since it had no bearing on the story. As he hung up, he told her that newspapers had begun to call at the office in the late afternoon, and said, “We ought to warn the Ivarins, so they won’t come on it out of the blue tomorrow.”

“Later, Vanny,” she said. “Don’t, for a minute.”

She had called him Vanny before they were married, far off back when they were young, when they had known no death of one son, no imprisonment of another. It moved him now, and he talked to her of his own pain and fear, seeing that it assuaged hers, and it was late into the night that they sat together.

Fee was the first one in the Ivarin family to know. She saw Garry’s name shooting up at her from the newspaper. She was staring at the headline,
CHEMIST ARRESTED UNDER WARTIME ACT,
and the smaller letters under it, “Held in Tombs for questioning; Father acts as counsel,” when his name, as sudden as two arrows, shot up at her.

“Acting under instructions from the Department of Justice in Washington, Deputy Federal Marshal Joseph P. Glover yesterday took into custody a research chemist, Garrett Paige—”

She cried aloud. At the stove, her mother did not hear her above the splatter and sizzle of the eggs she was frying, but underneath the table, at her feet, Shag growled. As usual Alexandra had brought in the papers from the front porch the moment their neighborly thud signaled their arrival; as usual, she had been unable to resist pulling out the two overlapping “ears” the newsboy still made, though papers were often up to twenty-eight or thirty pages now, and harder to fold into the familiar thirds. She saw the war headlines, and said to Fee, “Papa will be upset again,” pointing to the news from Petrograd about the growing split in the new government. But then resolutely she had set both papers aside.

Behind her Fee suddenly rushed out of the room, and she called out, “Your egg is ready,” but Fee was already halfway up the stairs. Alexandra grumbled that the egg could go frozen cold for all of her. She didn’t notice that one of the papers was gone.

Upstairs Fee started all over again and almost cried out once more when she came to his name … “—Garrett Paige, 29, of 315 Turnpike Rd., Flushing, employed in Long Island City as a research chemist by Synthex, Inc., specialists in artificial silks and synthetic compounds.

“Arrested upon his arrival at the Synthex plant in the morning, the suspect was taken to the Federal Building, on the charge of alleged interference with and obstruction of the enlistment or conscription of male persons between 21 and 31 years of age.

“Preliminary questioning of the accused was conducted by Assistant U. S. Attorney C. A. Edmonds, but when Mr. Edmonds proved unable by six o’clock to arrange for a determination of bail, Paige was remanded to The Tombs Prison overnight—”

Fee dropped the newspaper on her bed. The Tombs—that’s where they put murderers, and he’s there in a cell, locked up, behind bars. If anything happens to him, I’ll die.

Suddenly she cupped her face in both hands with such vehemence that the lobes of her ears were swept forward by her thumbs, and her eyebrows were pulled down by her fingertips until the top arc of her eyesockets burned.

If anything happens to him, she thought again, I just can’t stand it. She dropped her hands and looked at the paper. Standing above it, rigid, not bending to touch it, she still could see the two words, “Garrett Paige.”

Once again she forced herself to go on with the story. “… remanded to The Tombs Prison overnight.

“Counsel for the chemist is his father, Evander Paige, 22 Channing Street, Barnett, Long Island, a partner in the law form of Turner, Paige, Levy and Payson. The attorney has been widely active with the Free Speech League and the American Union Against Militarism, which upon our entry into the war, allegedly abandoned its previous pacifism and adopted the goal of ‘a democratic peace’ and ‘world federation at the end of the war.’ This organization is now reported merging with, or branching into, the Civil Liberties Bureau, recently formed as a special wartime unit, with Roger N. Baldwin, 33, its Director.

“The twenty-eight others taken into custody as wartime suspects during the past twenty-four hours included—”

Downstairs her mother called out in exasperation. Soon she would see his name too and say, “Oh my goodness,” and carry on as if it were
her
tragedy. It would be unbearable. Luckily Fran wasn’t around; she had been off at eight for New York every morning for a week, secretly looking for a place to live in the fall.

Fee picked up the newspaper. Again the arrows flew at her, piercing her eyes, and this time they brought tears, burning all vision away.

Down in the kitchen Alexandra glanced at Fee’s egg; the butter was glazed, and it looked revolting. But she couldn’t be bothered. Already she was at work, as she was from her first waking hour every day, always searching for an idea for the column she had to start today, always clutching at something, examining it, growing fond of it, then suddenly turning on it in discontent and tossing it aside. Maybe she was already stale on her writing; perhaps she had been wrong to say, “No beach this summer.” Everybody was giving up vacation trips because of the war; she had felt a hypocrite to have her decision taken as self-denial by her pupils, by Alida, even by the milkman and garbage collector.

“Where could I keep all my papers in a tent?” she had asked Stefan when she had first told him they would stay at home. “Where could I keep my books, the Montessori, Dr. Holt, the women’s magazines, and all the rest?”

The glory of becoming well-known as a writer had never ceased; it had grown, ripened, gained in meaning and inner joy, even in these days of war. But the doubts grew too, and the confusion; she did not have an orderly mind, nor a lifelong habit to substitute for it. She was forever floundering, forever falling behind. Not only on the letters, but on the articles themselves; two a week were four times as hard as one a week, why she did not know. Even the house was neglected; half the time it was a shambles. The girls were only too happy to slide out of their share when she was unable to do her own.

“Fee,” she called again, but there was still no reply. She sat down and surrendered to the newspaper; something did seem to be going wrong in Russia, and worry nipped at her. Day by day for nearly two weeks, Stefan had been saying there was difficulty, dissension, a play for realignment of forces. He denied that he feared for the revolution, but she knew he did fear it, and so deeply that he dared not say it aloud. The war on the Galician front was going badly, too; she prayed it would suddenly swerve toward a huge victory for the Russians, to unify them.

Otherwise Stefan would go on in this deepening gloom, and end in God knew what mood. It had been a long time since he had been in a bad one, but even longer since he had been satisfied and happy. He did not admit it; he was too busy with his lectures, too fascinated with the war news; he certainly was never bored. But when he did speak of himself, or of the future, he spoke of having less energy, of getting older.

“You’re only fifty-six,” she would protest.

“In four years, I’ll be sixty.”

It saddened her. She was the same age as he, and she never spent ten seconds on it. She felt strong, she was never ill, never needed a day in bed. She slept harder than she had in years, like one of the girls, all sleep, total sleep.

She heard a rush down the stairs, and then Fee was with her. “Mama, look, they arrested Garry. He’s in prison.”

“What are you saying?”

By now, Fee’s tears were so ungovernable she could not see. She felt her mother rip the paper away from her, heard the thud of her body on the wooden chair. There was no “Oh my goodness,” there was nothing. Fee finally saw her mother’s stricken face, open lips, like Eli in an attack, saw her rush toward the stairs. In a moment she heard her fling open her father’s bedroom door, heard his sharp “What?
What?”
and heard his feet thump on the floor as he sprang out of bed.

“Stiva, how can it be? What for? That wonderful boy.”

“This damnable hue and cry. Here, let me dress, I must get to Evan.”

Somehow their pain helped her own.

Stefan was nearer Alida when her composure finally broke, and Alexandra watched him try to comfort her, clumsy with his gestures. He patted Alida’s bowed head as if she were his child, and put an arm about her shoulders, holding her awkwardly in an embrace.

It was a strange thing to see, a piece of sculpture cast not in marble or bronze but in the warm flesh of life, and Alexandra’s heart ached with the seeing of it. A long time ago, she used to tease Stefan about Alida; it had amused him at first, even flattered him a little, and then it had begun to annoy him. “You sound like the girls, everything is a crush—it’s barbaric.”

She had stopped, not because of his strictures, but for the far sounder reason that not long after, she had overheard Franny discoursing learnedly to Fee, learnedly and lasciviously, on the theme that old people could get crushes and fall in love too. Franny’s tone outraged her, and especially so, since among Stefan’s multiple faults there had never been this meanest one of all.

Now, over Alida’s head, he looked to her for help and Alexandra went closer. “If only you’d come back home with us,” she said, “and not wait here alone all day.”

“The phone,” Alida said. She moved away from Stefan then, still keeping her face turned from them both.

The Ivarins looked at each other. From the moment they had arrived they had known what the night had been for her; her swollen lids and cheekbones had told them all too vividly. When Alexandra phoned to ask if they might come over, she said, “I’d be so thankful,” and then added, “Evan left two hours ago,” as if his absence might change their minds. “I mustn’t talk about it too much,” she had begun, and then had opened her heart to them as she had never yet done, unaware of herself, needing only to tell what had befallen her. She concealed nothing, not the warrant, not the four letters nor the things they said. It was only when she came to the final moment when Garry had to go off to the Tombs, that she broke down.

As she faltered, clinging to Stefan, he could see the final scene, the rows of vacant chairs, the morning crowd diminished to a handful of desolates, still waiting for something to happen, for somebody to appear. Then Garry hearing the news from Evan, his stone-silence as he heard it, Evan looking away to let the boy get control of himself. And then Garry’s departure, out of the room, through the door, down the corridor off to The Tombs.

Off to a cell, Ivarin thought. No stomp of boots, no Cossack uniforms, but off to a cell, as once his own young self had gone off to prison in Russia. There was no knout waiting for Garry, but arrest in itself was an assault on a man.

For a young man, a man with a basic decency, it was an assault he would not forget through all his life. The moment of arrest, the words of the law, the start of the process, the start of fear—

Yes, the fear. Nobody need tell me, Ivarin thought, it’s there still, that taste and tightness of fear as they marched me off to my first night in prison.

And now Garry has had it too. And for what? An arrest based on nothings, on the tyranny of orthodoxy, under the Czar Conformism, the Emperor Conformism. Garry was unorthodox—throw him in a dungeon.

“An American boy in Siberia!” He said it violently, and Alida shivered and moved away from him, closer to Alexandra as if to restore a balance. “I beg you,” Ivarin cried, “forgive me. It was unpardonable. I was thinking of something—”

“I know,” she said. “Don’t be distressed.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Alexandra asked, ashamed of Stefan’s lack of tact. “Let me make some new, and perhaps a slice of toast.” The women began to talk together and he stood apart, still flushed with his gaucherie.

Gaucherie because he had blurted it out to the boy’s mother. That was all, that was the only trouble. Perhaps in some lecture soon, he might use it to express his point. There was a clang to it, a hard ring, like the hooves of a Cossack’s horse on frozen cobblestones at night.

When could he see Evan and hear the whole story from him? Alida had left nothing out, but he had to hear it from him. And from Garry as well. Edmonds or no, bail couldn’t be stalled off for a second day, and doubtless Garry would be here with his parents this evening; perhaps at some point later on tonight, he could talk directly to him, hear it directly, the best way to start anything.

“The carbon of his letter to the Exemption Board,” Alida said behind him and he turned to see Alexandra already reading it. “Evan didn’t mail it when he got it out of the car,” she said. “There’s no hurry now.”

Ivarin moved over to Alexandra and they read the letter together. Then he took it and read it through once more before he gave it back to Alida. “He is a good man,” he said simply.

Alexandra said, “He means each word. You feel it right through.”

Alida stood, folding and refolding the letter.

Ivarin went on thoughtfully. “I disagree with him, mind you, but it’s the letter of a good and upright young man. I am proud to know him.”

“Oh, Stefan.”

“There must be something I can do—There must be.”

I
T WAS FROM
C
YNTHIA
Aldrich that Letty heard it. Since she had separated from Garry, she never did more than glance at the paper, but today with a new client coming early, she hadn’t even done that. She was barely inside the door of the shop when Cynthia called.

“Have you seen it?”

“Seen what?”

“Don’t tell me I’m to be the bearer of bad tidings. Oh, Letty.”

She told her, and then read the story from the newspaper as if to lend authority to her words. She could hear Letty say, “Oh, no,” and “It’s too awful,” but these phrases were not addressed to her, and she did not pause over them. When she came to the end of the newspaper account, there was silence.