The Trespassers (37 page)

This
was too absurd, too unpardonable. Now she would have to risk it and go above Zurich’s head and everybody’s head. She had to. She must brush aside every caution, ignore Meany’s or Ann’s experience and advice, change her tactics once and for all. Otherwise this idiotic nonsense might go on for years.

They remained silent at the Consulate for some time after I sent my arguments that my resources are as “sufficient” as with dozens of other applicants. Then two days ago, I get yet one further demand. This time I am so much astonished, I am torn between laughing and cursing for the way they do things.

The Consulate suddenly notified me that I must prove the fact that the money is in fact my money. This new demand came to me on a mimeographed form, as so many of the Consul’s requirements do. I was so taken by surprise that I called by long-distance telephone and asked the Vice-Consul if I had not already proved it last summer by the statement from the bank, the photostats of the bankbook pages, and all the rest.

Carefully he explained me, in this cool voice that angers me so. All I had so proved was that this sum is now in my possession. I must prove how I earned it and when. It might be only a loan from a friend or even one of the usurers who make big interest so, lending sums to refugees to be paid back so soon they have the visas granted.

Now, dear Mrs. Stamford, I never realized before—did you?—that if I show you ten dollars and say it is mine, how impossible for me if you suddenly say, “But prove it is
really
yours, not a loan, not a theft, not a temporary ten dollars but a permanent ten dollars…”

He went on to say he could and would prove it. He had indeed begun on the lengthy task. Among his private papers which he had taken from Döbling, he had the names and addresses of all his British or American patients who had in the past eight years sent part of their fees to his account in Switzerland. He had written to fifteen of them, explaining the situation, and asking them to supply a statement, duly sworn and notarized, saying that they had done so. If it were possible for them to search out and find any canceled vouchers of those payments, he hoped they would go to the extra trouble of doing that, too.

“I am sure, helplessly sure,” he ended, “that before my letters can reach, or be forwarded to, so many people, then be answered and notarized, returned by them via all sorts of slow or fast mail—I am sure that at least two months must have gone by. To the middle of February, it will be. Perhaps March. All people are not so able, or so eager, as you to see lawyers, visit notaries, catch fast boats. Shall I laugh or curse this strange Consulate here?” He had spent nearly ten hours writing all the letters. He had politely written the Consulate, informing them that he could not supply this new evidence for six or eight weeks, but would certainly do so. He had asked whether there had been any new ruling on the quota for his wife, inasmuch as they had still to inform him about that point. And then he had determined to wash his mind of the American Consulate for the two months that must elapse.

If she could think of anything to suggest, he would be glad of her advice. If she could think of anything to do, he would be grateful for her help.

But in the meantime, he was turning his energies to a far more immediate problem. Their Austrian passports would expire with the new year. There were to be no more Austrian passports, since there was no more Austria. He had, therefore, to go to the Nazis at Lugano, to ask for a transfer into German passports. The very notion of having in his pocket a German passport revolted him. But that was what he would now have to do. otherwise—no passports at all.

The whole letter had a tone of almost humorous despair. It enraged Vee as on previous letter from him had. Politic or no, she must now proceed as her pumping fury told her to proceed.

She put her finger on the desk buzzer and held it there steadily. Miss Benson came on a run.

“I’m writing the State Department,” Vee said. “You remember last time I started to, I got talked out of it. But now I’m not even asking anybody. May I have the whole file on the Vederles? You have extra copies of the affidavit and my guarantee letter and all that, haven’t you? I’m going to enclose anything Washington might ever need to see.”

She began to dictate. Her very voice was violent. As she summed up the entire history, from the very first request for affidavits through this latest demand, each of the bits and pieces of the cruel hodgepodge blazed up in the fire of her outrage. She was furious at herself too, for waiting so long before she appealed to the highest authority. The consular back could go up and up and up now. She was through forever with patience and diplomacy.

“…and so at last I appeal to you,” she ended, “because I can no longer stand by and see my friends subjected to this interminable succession of new demands, new objections, new delays. I write as a layman, as an ordinary citizen, who cannot believe, that it was the spirit and intent of our immigration laws to declare $10,000 ‘insufficient,’ or to separate a family for twelve years because of a technicality, or to imply that a sworn declaration of an applicant’s moneys may be a fraud. Nor can I see why our Consulates should not be able to make all their demands at once, instead of spinning them out one by one, with weeks and months wasted in between.

“At the best, this whole piecemeal performance looks like the good old snarl of official red tape; at the worst it seems almost that our Consulate there is determined for some reason unknown to the Vederles or to myself, to bar them from coming to the safety and freedom of the United States. I beg you to take whatever steps are necessary to bring this unhappy story to a good close.”

She waited for the letter to be typed, signed it, sent a copy to Larry Meany, and one to Franz Vederle.

She took the three envelopes with her as she left the store. “If it’s a boomerang,” she said grimly to herself as she chucked them into a mailbox, “I’ll find out how to handle boomerangs, that’s all.”

Within forty-eight hours, she had a reply. The Chief of the Visa Division had himself written her. A complete report was being requested from the Consulate General at Zurich. “Upon receipt of the reply, I shall be better able to make suggestions in this case.”

“Boomerang, hell,” said Vee aloud. She sat studying the short letter. Then she picked up a pencil to draft a cable. It was extravagant and premature. But it might make them feel a little better about their first holidays away from home.

ASKED INTERVENTION AND HELP FROM WASHINGTON. THEY REQUESTING REPORT FROM ZURICH AND WILL THEN ADVISE US. MAY YOU HAVE A HAPPIER YEAR IN THE U.S.A. IN 1939.

I
T WAS NEW YEAR’S
Eve. By six o‘clock, Vee was ready to start. Her overnight bag stood in the hall, with her bulky beaver coat and thick red wool mittens thrown on a chair near it. She was dressed. and waiting for Jasper to come for her.

The tweed suit and camel’s-hair sweater made her even more aware of how hot her cheeks felt, but she did not mind. It would be bitter cold in the country, frosty and clear and quiet. They could stay only twenty-four hours, for Jas had a big meeting at ten Monday morning, but going off together was an irresistible idea. It was Jasper’s notion to leave New York and go out to The Jonathan Inn and that made it even better.

The doorbell rang and she flew to let him in. “Happy New Year, darling,” they said simultaneously. Vee added, “The happiest ever, the really best,” and her voice threaded with a fuzzy warmth. He looked at her, surprised.

“Why, Vee, you’ve got it bad, haven’t you?” he taunted.

“Badly. Adverb.”

“O.K., adverb. You
really
sentimental about New Year’s and things?”

“I’m not sentimental about anything. Except about going to the country.”

“All right, we’re off.”

He took her coat from the chair and held it for her. She started to slip into it, and then stepped aside and turned to him.

“Let’s have a drink first, just one, to send us on our way.”

“Sure, let’s—what’s got into you, Vee? You’re different.”

She laughed and eluded him. He followed her into the living room, and made the cocktails while she fussed about, helping him. He filled their glasses and then raised his with a flourish.

“To the network and you,” he said grandly.

“No—oh, no, to us, Jas—make it to you and me.” Again her voice caught his ear because of the special ring in it. Suddenly she put her glass down and faced him, her hands clasped hard together. He thought how beautiful she looked, how alive and beautiful.

“Darling, what’s up, anyway? You get a raise, a bonus? Something’s happened to you, I can feel it.”

“It’s happened, Jas, it’s begun, darling.”

“What’s happened? What do you mean?”

“I’m pregnant. It’s happened at last. We never need to wonder and wait any more.”

He set his glass down. The base hit the table with one edge and the drink slopped over the side.

“Vee—I—oh, Vee—”

“You don’t really believe it—I can tell by your look—but it is, it’s really so. I went to have the test made two days ago.”

“Two days ago? You’ve known for two days without telling me?”

She laughed at his dazed look.

“No, you silly, I didn’t
know
till this afternoon. I almost went down to your office. I thought I should wait till we got to the Inn and had dinner, and were alone, but when I saw you, I couldn’t keep it to myself for hours.”

“No, oh, Christ, no.”

He sat down suddenly, and closed his eyes so tight that deep wrinkles fanned out over his cheekbones. Blindly he stretched one hand out to find her; she bent awkwardly over him as his arms went hard around her waist, his head crushed against her stomach. She heard the dry, hard gulp in his throat.

“When did it happen—I mean when did you first think—Vee, tell me everything about it.”

She sat down beside him then. His eyes were open now; his face was very nearly ugly, his nostrils wide, his lips apart for his hard breathing. She had never seen it so human, so lovely a face. Jas—Jas—these aren’t the words I used to imagine, but this is it in every way.

“About three weeks ago,” she said. “The twelfth. There was the little cross on my calendar pad. Monday, December twelfth. That day passed, and the next, and even that soon I began to wonder, and then the next day and the next, and I couldn’t get to sleep wondering if maybe, maybe—oh, Jas, I
wanted
so for it to be true.”

He nodded. He was watching her mouth as if he would snatch the words from her lips before they were formed.

“Then Tuesday before Christmas I went to the doctor and he said it was simply impossible to tell, to come back when it was seventeen days, and even that might be too early. So then again I waited, and another day and another went by, and I was simply positive because I’ve never been late in my whole life.”

He took her hands, but his eyes were on hers and he made no move to speak a word.

“Christmas Day I thought I’d go crazy, wanting to tell you, but I’d sworn not to until it was certain. I couldn’t have stood it to tell you and then have it a false alarm and then have to tell you that—”

“Good God—no!”

“So then some more days and nights and then it was seventeen days over, and I went to him again, and this time he said he thought so, but only the test would be infallible. It takes forty-eight hours. So he phoned me this afternoon and the report says ‘positive.’ ”

“Christ, I can’t tell you—I don’t know how to tell you—” He made fists of his hands and leaned his forehead down against them. His voice came up to her, muffled. “The years—all those years—damn them, damn them forever—they’re gone, now I
know,
Jesus, now I know.”

Neither of them thought of the country. For an hour they stayed there, endlessly going over Vee’s story. He had to know it, minute for minute. He found out more than ever before about her day-by-day work at the store, the Vederles’ story, her letter to Washington, her evenings when he was not with her—because he made her reconstruct for him every hour of the time from that Monday, the twelfth of December, until this one, when his long torture came at last to an end.

When he tried to tell her what he felt, he managed only a jerky sentence or two. But he did not need to say anything in words. His face, his whitened knuckles, his clinging to her hands, made a richer vocabulary. When he came back, at last, to his ordinary manner, he was almost clumsy with his casualness.

“We’ll go to Connecticut to be married,” he announced. “New York’s no good for either of us.”

She laughed at him.

“Jasper Crown, what a proposal!”

He grinned uneasily. “We’ll drive out for the license right after my meeting on Monday. Don’t we have to wait five days or something?” He suddenly broke off short. “When will it happen, do you know when it will actually—?”

“August, darling. August 21, he’s got me down for. We can tell people ‘end of September.’ Somebody might really believe the ‘premature’ story.” She looked completely unconcerned about whether they did.

They finally remembered their plan to go to the country, and left. It was a long drive, with the halt for food at a roadside stand, and they cheerfully predicted they would be worn out when they reached The Jonathan, just over the Pennsylvania line. But neither of them felt a moment’s fatigue.

Vee watched Jas sign the register. “Mr. and Mrs. J. Crown,” as he had done so long ago at Kingston, Jamaica. She thought, “But it’s really not a lie now,” and her throat tightened. All the years of being alone, all her steady envy of women who loved and were loved by husband and children—that was done now. She was as rich and blessed and ordinary as any of them.

In the pleasant room waiting for them, a wood fire was burning, and she exclaimed happily over it. “Fifty cents extra,” Jas said, and made a large gesture of disdain which said that money was nothing. They laughed and talked and stayed awake till long past the chimes and bells of the New Year, and Vee felt prouder of herself and of her being a woman than she ever had in all the time she had been one.