First Papers (78 page)

For the first time Stefan Ivarin paused. A long time ago, years, he and Eli had been in a fearful row about conformity. The idiom of one’s surroundings, Eli had said; one must protest within the idiom of one’s surroundings.

Eli, my only son, Ivarin thought, and suddenly he felt closer to the imprisoned Garry than ever in his life he had felt to the son of his own blood.

You did not, he thought, addressing Garry in his mind, you did not make your protest in the idiom of your surroundings.

He was wrenched with regret for his son, wrenched with love for this young man in prison. Another night came back to him, that night in the café when Evan told of the country road and the needly little acorns and the ring of ruffians, told, and asked that he write not one piece, but several. That night, sitting there in the café together, the accents and odors and gestures of Europe around them, he had first felt that he and Evan were eternally kin, the foreign-born, the native-born, disparate and various, but one.

Now he felt the same toward Evan’s son, a generation between them, but dividing them less than proving a continuity. A wheel had turned. In 1877 he had gone to prison in Russia for his ideas; in 1917 Garry was in prison in America for his.

Stefan Ivarin closed his eyes. For a while he rested, and then went back to his unfinished piece. He read it through quickly and was sure of it. It was too long, but that was nothing; so often it was too long to start with. Next day’s light was a fierce critic, and his own blue pencil its most willing weapon.

More important was an omission. Should he work in Garry’s letter which Evan himself had brought up in court, saying his son had no wish to hide it? If that went into this first piece, he could lead from it to a powerful paragraph:

And that is
not
why he was arrested. That is not why he was locked up in a cell. That is not why he faces his three years in prison. He was arrested before that letter was sent.

Ivarin considered the possibility as if the words were already written, with his pen hanging above them, ready to descend and scratch them out, or move on to their followers.

Not in this first piece, he decided. Time enough in a second one, or a third. There will be others, about the appeal, perhaps a request for a government review—

A second piece, a third? A series of pieces? Ivarin shoved back from the desk, startled. He was not dazed, not daydreaming. He meant it.

Suddenly he thumped the table. Of course he meant it. He meant to try it, not in a magazine, not in Alexandra’s paper, not anywhere but where he had always meant every word he cared about for most of his life.

And Steinberger said he sometimes wondered if people didn’t feel the need for something that made it legitimate to suffer a little.

Steinberger, “the new top-story.” Steinberger, who had said all the usual things when he took power—no changes, nobody in jeopardy—but had also spoken up of a newspaper’s duty.

Especially, Ivarin thought with a faint interior amusement, when the paper has stayed on a dead circulation plateau for more than a year.

He went back to his work, and hurried on to the end. Before him stood his silver watch, its lid open, propping it up like a sliver of time. When he finished, it showed twenty after four.

How long it had been since he had stayed chained to his desk half the night, writing. How wild a joy there was in doing it again.

In the morning he would read it to Alexandra and translate it for Evan and Alida. And then—

Once more he stopped short.

Then he would go to New York and take it direct to Steinberger. The devil with Fehler. He would write this series not as a staff member; that was forever over. But a new phenomenon was appearing more and more in the American press: the outside columnist, with a space of his own, under his own by-line. Even Brisbane, after two long decades of refusal, first by Pulitzer, then by Hearst, was at last achieving his heart’s desire, an editorial column that carried his name, not only in the Hearst sheets, but in other papers where he was not on the staff. It was another new phase in American journalism.

Why not in the
Jewish News?

In the morning, to his astonishment, he overslept. It was nearly noon when he came downstairs, and Alexandra was already gone.

“For her letters,” Fee reminded him.

“Chortu,
I forgot her letters.” It was he who had suggested this weekly trip to the offices of
Abend
for the secretarial help Simon Tischmann was willing to provide for her mail, and it had proved the solution to her growing problem. At first she had been tongue-tied and miserable, unable to dictate letters to a strange young woman, but so acute was her shame at being two to ten weeks behind, that she had persisted, and by now her weekly trip was her “life-saver.”

Today Ivarin regretted the routine. He wanted her right there, right then. Her return at the end of the day would be too late. “I wanted her to read something,” he said to Fee, “that I wrote late last night about Garry.”

Fee was setting out his fruit and pouring his coffee. At his words, the stream of coffee missed the cup and splashed the oilcloth. “God damn it,” she cried, so unexpectedly that he looked sharply at her. She’s in torment, he thought, and a warmth of sympathy touched him, rare when it came to any of the children, because he scarcely ever could follow what mattered to them and why it should matter.

“It’s nothing,” he said, taking swipes with his napkin at the coffee spill. “I was going to let Mama read it”—he spread his sheaf of pages—”and then I was going to translate it for Evan and Alida. If they’re up to hearing anything about it. It may be too soon.”

Fee poured coffee into a fresh cup. At its side, the narrow white pages lay, written over in her father’s heavy stub-pen strokes.

“Papa,” she said. “Could you translate it now?” She saw his surprise. “I honestly would like to hear it.” Quickly she added, “We’re interested in things our parents do, after all.”

He took a sip of his coffee. Then he remembered the sugar, and stirred in a heaping teaspoonful. She had seated herself across the table from him, and without looking at her, he sensed her eagerness and grief. He picked up his sheets, translating the headline and the secondary head. Then, easily, he continued.

“There is a boy I know who is dead wrong about this war. In my opinion, dead wrong. I call him a boy, because he grew up near me, the same age as my son—”

He heard Fee swallow, but he went on without looking up. Went on until he came to Garry’s arrest. “—was arrested for the things he said. Things about war, about this war and all war. Things it is his right to say in a free country—”

“Oh, Papa,” she cried, and she put her head down on her folded arms and sobbed until the table shook. He put his pages aside and came around the table, standing near her, uncertain, unsure of what he could do.

Suddenly he was again seeing her as a sobbing child of ten, hearing her mimic her own squeaky voice in the classroom, “I think we’re socialists, Miss King.” He had taken her into his lap then, held her, and he had made her know that he understood. “It is very bad,” he had said, “for a little girl to be so unhappy is very bad.”

He wanted to say it now, but he said nothing. He wanted to let her know again that he—terrible father that she thought him when he opposed her—that her father understood what grief was, and loved her for the capacity of it.

But he said nothing. He did nothing. Only when she grew quieter, did he make a gesture toward her. He laid his hand on her head, and was astounded that both her own flew up, holding it hard to her hair as if she would never let it go.

He left for the city without going over to Charming Street. Fee’s response had keyed him to a higher pitch. After another few minutes, she had asked him to finish his translating, and as he came to the end, she said, “It’s so wonderful! I never knew you wrote that way.”

“It’s good to hear that, from your own child,” he said. “I’m going to take it to New York. I may meet Mama too, after her letters. Are you all right alone here? Where is Fran? She’s never at home these days.”

“At the canteen. Do you think I could go over to Mrs. Paige for a while?” Before he could answer, she said, “Oh, Papa, I’m so glad you wrote it.”

She’s forgotten how she hates me, he thought, as he went up to dress for New York. Now I’m a good father again. Well, and why not? There is an equilibrium in it; she is a good daughter again.

By some freak the weather was cool and dry, more like September than the middle of August, and Ivarin walked briskly from his house. The HOUSE FOR SALE sign was at last gone; a slashing rainstorm had finally toppled it to its side, and Alexandra had carted it off, moaning about the “trench” dug into her grassy lawn by its exit.

The briskness made him feel well. For everyone except poor Garry, life had to go on today. Garry and surely Alida. But Evan was already going forward, absorbed in the next move. In the same way, he himself was absorbed by the move he had just taken and what lay ahead. There was authority in his thinking now, not pensive wondering. Not once, in the train to the city, did he ask what he would do if Steinberger said no. Not once, as he started to walk through the streets from Delancey to the paper, so infrequently traveled in these four long years, yet so familiar still, not once did he weigh the possibility of trying it next at the
Forward,
or even at the small but flourishing
Abend.

He did consider seeing Abe Kesselbaum before Steinberger, letting him read it first, even inviting him, if Abe liked it, to go to Steinberger with him. A dual effort, as it were, and were it to go decidedly well with Steinberger, perhaps Abe could feel himself its sponsor.

But if it should not? Saddle poor Abe with some invisible part of it? He scowled, fished out a nickel and went into a candy store to an open phone, hung on the wall. He announced himself to Steinberger with some formality, said that he was in the city and would like to see him if possible.

Steinberger was formal too, but cordial and even inquisitive. He was at Ivarin’s service. In half an hour? Fine.

“We should be alone,” Stefan said amiably. (It sounded too authoritative.)

“I was going to suggest it,” Steinberger said.

For the half-hour Ivarin walked. Going into the building of the
Jewish News
brought his pulse up sharply. It was too early in the afternoon for the staff to be in the halls; he thought it just as well. When he knocked at Steinberger’s door, no secretary let him in. It was Steinberger himself, his hand outstretched.

They looked at each other for a minute. Each thought, He looks older. Each said, “You look better than ever.”

As Stefan Ivarin sat down, he took out his folded white sheets, and said, “Have you followed the Paige case?”

“Yes, and I often thought of you as I read it,” Steinberger said. “I knew that you know the father.”

“Here is an editorial I wrote last night,” Ivarin said, and pushed it across the desk. “As a free-lance submission, you understand.” Then he rose, went to the window and looked down at the busy street below.

It took Steinberger a long time. Too long. Then Ivarin realized that he must be reading it a second time, and he thought, Good man.

“Yes,” Steinberger said at last, and Ivarin turned. They stood in silence, facing each other. “I want to run it tomorrow.”

“As a free-lance submission,” Ivarin repeated. “That’s why I could permit myself to by-pass Fehler.”

“An outside piece. Under your signature.” He suddenly rose and shook hands.

“I am very pleased that you want it,” Ivarin said, and found it unthinkable to suggest a possible follow-up piece, a series, a regular space of his own. It had seemed so rational during the night; now it was unsayable.

“It needs cutting,” he said. “I haven’t cast it up for length.”

“Leave it. Let it run. Let them have enough to chew on.” He looked at Ivarin. “I sometimes feel we don’t give them enough to worry them. Many things wouldn’t arouse them anyway, but I think that readers who remember Europe—I think they get nervous if it seems not so free over here.”

Ivarin agreed. He wanted very much to question Steinberger about his way of proceeding—would he not make a gesture of consulting Fehler about the piece? the policy board? the Landaus?—but he forced himself not to. “You may run some risk, printing it.”

“It’s possible to get out, if we need to weasel. Maybe we will need to.” He shook his head. “So far the press has been fairly strong, where it comes to their being badgered. Haven’t you noticed?”

“For their own freedoms, yes.”

“Let’s try this and see.” He put his hand out to press the buzzer on his desk, but then pulled it back. “Where do you think it should go?” he asked, smiling for the first time. “On the editorial page?”

It was
politesse
and Ivarin meant to take his cue from it. “Anywhere but,” he said. “This is no try at a ‘come-back.’ You follow me?”

Steinberger laughed. “Then the front page,” he said.

Less than a minute after Ivarin left, Joseph Fehler entered. He looked directly at the sheets on Steinberger’s desk and said, “I hear Ivarin was here. How is he?”

“A little older, but fine.” Steinberger was holding the telephone, but he set it back on his desk. With some effort, he kept back a smile. In Fehler’s place he would have wanted to do the same thing, but he wouldn’t have moved an inch from his desk. “I was just about to phone you,” he went on, indicating Ivarin’s pages, “about this free-lance submission of his.”

“An editorial?”

“I want to run it tomorrow. I’m sure you won’t object.”

He handed it over, and made a point of not watching Fehler while he read it. From time to time he did glance at him; he was not surprised that Fehler’s face revealed nothing.

“It’s Ivarin, no question about it,” Fehler said. “A ‘free-lance submission,’ you said. Just this one time?”

“I’m not thinking about anything except this one time.”

“If it were to be more than that,” Fehler said slowly, “if he were to get back on the staff.”