The Trespassers (19 page)

That would have been very good.

Franz lingered another moment at the counter. No one paid any attention to him now. Then he picked up his packages, the chemistry set, the toy loom, the scarf. He went out again to the Stadtsquai and started for home. It was, after all, only a small disappointment, he told himself.

Small, small. It was too easy for any refugee to magnify the small into the great; he must watch himself or he too would be doing it. The Vederle family, in reality, were lucky. They had enough money, their affidavits were ready, they had all the collateral documents, they had, even, their quota reservations. Today was the very day the old quota year ended in the United States; the new quota year opened tomorrow and there would be visas now for those who sought them.

The American quota lists were open again. Again the waiting ones who had been denied could flock to the American Consulates in Zurich, Vienna, Stuttgart, Berlin, Prague; in Hamburg and Naples and Belfast and Paris; in Bucharest and Warsaw and Lisbon…

A new American quota year would begin at midnight, and a moment later July 1 would mean another chance. To the waiting ones, these who had long since registered for quota numbers only to hear the icy syllables: “The quota is full; you must wait for the next quota”—to these all destiny lay in the midnight moment when June 30 gave way to July 1. Never had a New Year’s Eve brought so heartfelt a farewell to the past, so intense a greeting to the future.

Each one, each separate one of The Waiting, believed his moment was at last at hand. Each one knew that he had been patient, as patient at least as man may be, and now would be rewarded with the priceless stamp of the American visa on a page in his passport.

At the most, each of these waiting ones could balance off his hopes about the new quota against the hopes of a hundred or possibly two or three hundred other migrating ones who also looked to the new year. These he could visualize; he had seen them in the consulate, ahead of him, beside him, coming in as he left. He knew that they too had been permitted to register for their quota numbers; they too had been told to wait.

Yes, each of the waiting ones, each his own center of his own universe, could know that the new chance, born in that midnight moment, would belong to others as well as to him; could understand the comradeship or the rivalry that extended from his center to a hundred or two hundred other centers of other private universes.

But beyond that, the personalizing mind could not go, the threatened heart could not feel.

As the grave midnight approached on the last day of the old quota year, the old fury of frustration died away for each of those who had so long been entered in the official pages of the consulate books. The old disappointment, the old helplessness, were now in each case forgotten, perhaps even forgiven, now the time had come. The unwritten page, the unfilled list, the open ledger were all that mattered now.

As the midnight came to all the American Consulates in all the attacked or threatened places of sick Europe, only officialdom knew what hope lay beyond the sixtieth minute of the twenty-fourth hour of June 30.

The waiting ones could not know the figures of the State Department of the United States of America. Each of those Germans and Austrians who had registered and waited could not know that 139,163 other Germans and Austrians waited for that same midnight with them, and that the American quota of 27,370 was full for the next five years. Full until June 30 of 1939, until June 30 of 1940, of 1941, of 1942, of 1943. Full already, full if never another German or Austrian were to walk into an American Consulate and ask for one more visa.

Each farsighted Czechoslovakian who had registered and waited could not know that 18,642 others in his small country also believed in that same midnight, and that the American quota of 2874 was full for seven years.

Each Pole who had thought long on Danzig and the Corridor and who had entered his application, and waited never suspected that 41,949 of his countrymen had also duly thought and registered, and that the American quota could welcome only 6524 of all of them in the year of 1938-39.

Nr could an uneasy Hungarian know that 12,262 others in his own country had become uneasy too, had already made arrangements for emigration, were waiting only for the new quotas, but that the magic of the words “new quota” would extend to precisely 869 of them, distributed neatly and proportionately over twelve months. For the rest that midnight moment was already oversubscribed for the next fourteen years.

Take out your pencils, Humanitarians, play with digits on a pad, they are only numbers. Do not be afraid of them, do not remember that the digit 1 stands for Franz Wilhelm Vederle, that another digit 1 stands for Christa Vederle, that another digit 1 stands for Paul, aged twelve, and yet another digit 1 for little Ilse who wept for her ladybug. Do not think, merely jot down figures, merely note that from these four countries alone, 174,379 too many were already registered for that midnight moment. To those there would be another twelve months of the threnody, “The quota is full.” Or perhaps another twelve on top of that, and another twelve and another…

Take out a pencil, jot down these digits, they make only columns of tidy, cool figures. Write 1374 Albanians, 1286 Belgians, 1128 Bulgarians, 2105 Danes, 1712 Estonians, 2487 Greeks, 4046 Lithuanians, 11,342 Norwegians, 1555 Portuguese, 8738 Rumanians, 4627 Soviet Republicans, 2949 Spaniards, 1188 Swiss, 3734 Syrians, 3076 Turks, and 3065 Yugoslavians…

How does a child say “ladybug” in Syrian? What is the Rumanian or Norwegian for “I don’t
want
to go there, I want to stay home”?

No, no, ignore that, it is the list that matters. It is tidier to make only four-figure and five-figure entries—ignore the 330 Danzigers, the 619 Finns, the 244 Latvians, and all the other smaller groups, so far from the Vederles, who also on that midnight waited for the new year.

Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and all the other large or small groups—already registered over and above the fillable quotas of the twelvemonth just going were 232,803 humans. And all of them carried in their hearts the slow hands of a clock ticking away June 30,1938.

But these were only the ones who looked toward the United States. Only the ones who, looking, had already done something official about it. In thousands, in millions of other beating hearts all over the sick continent of Europe, there was the same longing, the same waiting for escape into England, into France, into Australia and Brazil and Africa.

Many of these other countries had no quota system for immigration. The quota list was an American device, efficient and native, like the moving belt, the Ford V8 motor, the roadside stand. Many other countries had no such devices. In them the possibilities were limitless. Each individual case was decided “on its merits.” The well to do, the well connected, the renowned had only to spend money, pull wires, use their names, to have a reasonably good chance for welcome. As for the poor, the unknown, the humble—they could pray or curse in their secret and ashamed hearts as they pleaded in a hundred consulates for visas to—anywhere.

A nation has to be careful, does it not? A nation cannot simply fling open its doors and be swamped with the strange, the alien, the foreign? There is danger to the whole business structure if despairing foreigners come in, there is danger to the labor unions if laboring hands become too abundant, there are too many doctors in a nation already, are there not, and too many teachers and glovemakers and chemists and farmers?

The nations were careful. Even the United States had granted, in the year just closing, only 19,552 of the available 27,370 German and Austrian visas. That is being careful, using judgment, ignoring the sentimentalities. In five and a half years, England had permitted only 8600 refugees from the new Germany to settle on her soil, but had had to refuse permanent settlement to untold thousands of others. Palestine announced that Jewish immigration would be limited to 12,000 in any one year. The Soviets maintained their decisive policy against immigration. Belgium, Holland, France, Sweden, Denmark looked to their borders and sent sealed instructions to their consulates everywhere. And on the desk of Josef Czerny, the Minister of the Interior in democratic Czechoslovakia, there lay, in those gentle hours of the last June night, 51,000 applications from Austrians alone, waiting for emergency action. But Josef Czerny hated Jews, hated liberals, hated Communists, hated. The 51,000 applications lay on his desk. The Czech borders were closed. A nation has to be careful.

But none of this was hopeless. The great conference at Evian-les-Bains was only six days away, at that clogged and overladen moment of midnight. The delegates to it would know the secret figures of the State Departments of all the countries they represented; they would know the pushing, crowding thousands and hundreds of thousands back of these waiting ones; they would know that if the dangers in Europe were indeed to keep on spreading, then new hordes would keep on storming to the consulates.

They would know. They would see that delay was no longer possible. They would scheme on a bold and beautiful new scale for this leaping, gigantic problem of flight, they would reckon the fearful acceleration in its tempo, they would project into the nervous future the possible piling up of its momentum.

And they would look then at the open world, the whole un-crowded world, and say, “Let us think on more in terms of 869 from Hungary and 106 from the Free City of Danzig.”

Let us now have imagination, let us look at the far horizons and offer the very horizons to the endangered, to the hated, to the bravely protesting ones.

Look there at Australia, for instance, not at all of it, of course not, but just at the southeast quarter alone. Six million people live there—and here are experts who say that this great southeast quarter could support twenty million. Let us arrange even part of that.

And look yonder to Africa, no, no, not to the jungles and deserts and impossible fever-ridden swamps, but there, inner Africa, between Sahara and the Zambezi. Some 79 millions live there now, and here are the experts, the studious ones in matters of resettlement and colonization, who believe the “carrying capacity” of that one section of Africa is 1500 million.

And best of all perhaps, let us look at great Brazil. Her population is 44 million. Here are authorities who can show you how Brazil could support—not receive, but support—300 million people, and still not be as “settled as the United States.”

Suppose the experts are a little wrong, suppose they are wrong by ten per cent, twenty, sixty. Even so, even wrong that much, the grand earth has so much rich soil and so many deep mines, has so many rivers to fish and so much grain to gather, has cattle and hemp and diamonds and slate, has teaching and weaving and dyeing and doctoring to do, has frontiers to cross and roads to build…

It is easy, there is room, there is need, and not only in Africa and Australia and Brazil, but in Canada and New Zealand, in the United States and Mexico, in the Argentine—across every meridian there are countless square miles of earth where men may live and work and breathe free again.

It needs a plan, many plans. It needs money, much money. Like war, that too needs plans, that too needs money. Millions of dollars, of pounds, of lire, of rubles, of yen disappear each day when there is war. War is for killing, for agonizing;
these
plans and moneys would be for building, for creating.

There is room, there is need. From thirty-two civilized nations, delegates are daily arriving at Evian-les-Bains. They are men of good will, they are empowered to act. They will meet soon, they will act while there is still time.

V
EE STUCK THE SIXTH
red candle into the birthday cake and stood back to survey it.

Six looked skimpy, inadequate, as though she had run out of candles. But thirty-six—you wouldn’t see the forest for the trees, and the forest in this case was the most important part of the cake, the special Jasperish design she had ordered for the top of it. No, thirty-six, wouldn’t do. Six wouldn’t do either. A fine dilemma for a grown woman, she told herself. But she only smiled and kept on pondering it.

It was Jasper’s birthday, and that evening they would celebrate it together, just the two of them. Jasper’s own wish had limited the personnel. A week ago she had said she wanted to give a birthday party for him. He had unknowingly pleased her by looking startled, and then touched, and then by saying, “All the women should be named Vee—let’s just have a party ourselves.”

They would have the birthday dinner alone at her house, and then improvise a gala evening afterward.

Now she was happy in the fussing over final details. She had left the office at four, because she needed time to do the candles, arrange the flowers, decide where to put his birthday present, and exactly when in the evening to give it to him. Just before dinner might be best, or during dinner or perhaps not until coffee and brandy.

Another dilemma. “Can you call a three-pronged business like this a dilemma,” she asked herself cheerily, “or do you have to be a purist and call it a trilemma?”

That made her chuckle, and Dora looked up from her cooking with an inquiring glance. “That picture on that cake,” Dora said, “reminds me, postcards of that tower in Paris.”

“The Eiffel Tower,” Vee answered. “It does, doesn’t it? This is supposed to be a radio tower, one of those transmitters—see, that’s why these jagged lines are coming out on each side up here.”

“It’s real pretty.” She studied it. “Looks like for a man, all right.”

“Something wrong with the candles, though.” Vee lit a cigarette, and studied it again. “Oh, I know, Dora. I’m going to add nine more. Would you just run out to the newspaper store and get me another dozen?”

Fifteen candles was the perfect answer. Twenty-one, plus fifteen. “Fifteen years of man’s estate,” she could explain to him when he puzzled over the number. “The growing-up part doesn’t count.”

Dora looked displeased.

“I ain’t got too much time, Mrs. Stamford. All these special things you ordered for this dinner—”