The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (89 page)

 

 

But the little people of the world weren't pleased with deviationists.
Cynthia wondered if she herself would have the courage to continue
to defy the well rooted common beliefs of the world. She hadn't told
either Anne or Yale that Rabbi Weiner had telephoned her. It had been
a rather one-sided conversation. She had invited him out to the house,
but he had curtly refused.

 

 

"I don't know how to say this to you," Rabbi Weiner had said. "If
you don't mind, I'll make it simple for myself and refer to you as
Mrs. Marratt." Cynthia noted the implied disgust in his voice, and
was tempted to tell him that bigamy was quite a common custom in old
Jewish chronicles. She refrained and listened. "What I briefly wish to
point out to you is that if you have any love for your people and your
traditions, you should disassociate yourself from this madness. The
Jews in Midhaven are a small respected group. Prejudice has been at a
minimum. Now, since that disgraceful advertisement and that terrible
episode last week, we have become a target of enmity. Innocent people
are being held responsible for your actions." Rabbi Weiner intimated
that while he wouldn't come out to Challenge Farm, he would very much
like to talk with Cynthia in his own home. "I think you have forsaken
your people, Mrs. Marratt. Come and let my wife and me remind you how
good and peaceful it can be to follow your own traditions."

 

 

Cynthia knew that he was wondering what kind of person she was. Probably
after reading the story of what had happened to her and Anne in the
newspapers, and seeing that picture that had been published in one of
the out-of- town newspapers showing both of them half-naked -- similar
to pictures she had seen of women in German concentration camps --
probably Rabbi Weiner assumed that she had deserved what had happened
. . . a tribulation.

 

 

She couldn't forget it. Detail by detail she remembered the horror and
shame and utter degrading fear that she had known. Just a few weeks ago,
Saturday, after Pat's advertisement had been printed, and after the fright
they had received, thinking Harry and Sarah might have been burned alive
in their own house, Anne had suggested that they both needed a change.
They would go into Midhaven and buy some new fall clothes, and then stop
on the way back and pick up some groceries at the supermarket that had
just opened on the New York highway.

 

 

Cynthia remembered, afterwards, that she had a premonition that they were
being followed. But she had forgotten about it as she and Anne piled two
carts high with groceries; both of them enjoying the fun of deliberating
over hundreds of exotically packaged foods while they decided what they
could buy that wouldn't be too fattening. When they brought their carts
to the check-out counter, Cynthia noticed a noisy group of high-school
boys dressed in jeans, their shirttails tied nonchalantly around their
middles, milling around in front of the store. Two of them walked into
the store and stared boldly at them as the clerk packed their purchases
into cartons.

 

 

One of the boys nudged Anne and said, "Hey, what's the scoop? Is one guy
really gettin' into both of you?"

 

 

"Jeez . . . he must have a big dick!" the other one said, smirking
at Cynthia.

 

 

"Maybe neither of them is gettin' enough."

 

 

One of the boys grabbed Cynthia's arm. She stared at him, terrified.

 

 

"Wanta try it with a man?" The boy leered at her and put his pimply face
close to hers.

 

 

Anne pulled him away from Cynthia, and demanded that the check-out clerk
get the manager of the store. She told him to call the police and tell
them that they were being accosted. Cynthia noticed that a group of
women shoppers had collected around the entrance and were watching,
nodding their heads and smiling sarcastically at each other.

 

 

And then two more boys walked into the store. They grabbed their cartons
of groceries. The first two boys, although they probably weren't more
than eighteen or nineteen years old, towered over Anne and Cynthia. They
quickly clasped Anne's and Cynthia's arms behind them and propelled them
through the door into the waiting crowd who let out a yell of pleasure
as they surrounded the girls.

 

 

There must have been at least fifty of them, mostly teen-age boys, a few
girls, and a handful of older men. Both Anne and Cynthia screamed their
fright as they suddenly realized that they were prisoners in the middle
of a rioting mob. Their screams were greeted with a roar of delight,
as the tough looking boys milled around them, calling them whores and
worse; saying the filthiest words Cynthia had ever heard in her life.

 

 

When the girls had tried to break out of the circle and run for their
car the boys surrounded them, pinching them, trying to fondle their
breasts, and grabbing at their buttocks. Just as they reached the car,
one of them clasped Cynthia around her waist. Another boy bent down and,
ignoring her kicking, yanked her dress over her hips, tugging at it,
and tried to pull it over her head. She felt the dress being ripped at
the belt. She screamed in panic as she realized that her arms would be
captured by the dress and she would be trapped inside while they dragged
her around. Just before the dress was pulled over her head she saw one
of the boys slashing at Anne's dress with a switch knife.

 

 

They were both being stripped in front of this raving mob! Cynthia
screamed, clawing at them frantically. She felt hands rubbing her
body, ripping off her panties. She felt them clutching at her bra,
and then suddenly her dress, that had caught at her neck and armpits,
was yanked violently. The garment gave way and she stumbled forward,
free of it and naked into the arms of several grinning boys. They held
her arms and she watched frozen with fear while another group ruthlessly
stripped Anne. Anne had stopped struggling and was letting them cut off
her clothes while she dazedly watched them.

 

 

Naked, they were pressed into a narrow circle by a yelling, slobbering
crowd of teen-age boys who kept shoving them from one to the other,
squeezing them and feeling their bodies everywhere.

 

 

"You like to walk around naked!" one of them yelled. "We're just giving
you a chance."

 

 

"Come on, shake those titties for us."

 

 

"Hey, which pussy do you like best?"

 

 

"Look at the knockers on that Jewish babe."

 

 

"Share the wealth! Who does Yale Marratt think he is with all this hot
ass for himself?"

 

 

"Hey, it's my turn. Let me feel some of that stuff."

 

 

Cynthia shuddered as she recalled the horror of the moment with the boys
crowding around them, all trying to touch them. She felt hands rubbing
and searching her body everywhere, and knew that the same thing was
happening to Anne. It was filthy! Ugly! Degrading! As she sobbed her fear
she realized the furious panting breathing was the sound of a crowd gone
mad. She wondered if she and Anne were going to be raped in the middle
of the day in the bright sunlight just off the New York turnpike.

 

 

Then someone yelled that they'd better clear out. The cops were coming.
Cynthia felt herself being lifted bodily off the ground, and then she
was dumped into the back seat of their car. Anne, naked as she was,
screaming now, was shoved in beside her, followed by their groceries,
tin cans, and glass jars smashing on the floor beside them. All around the
windows of the car, male faces leered at them and made vile remarks. Some
of them started to shake the car, screaming happily as they watched Anne
and Cynthia being jostled back and forth against each other.

 

 

Anne realized that they were going to turn the car over. Cynthia
remembered that Anne had the presence of mind to grab the edge of the
window which had been lowered. She screamed for Cynthia to hold her
around the waist. As Cynthia clutched her arms around Anne's stomach,
the car went over with a bang, shattering the windows on the opposite
side. They heard the piercing scream of the police sirens. Then there
was utter silence. The mob had disappeared. Slowly, Cynthia placed her
feet on the shattered window. She relinquished her grasp on Anne. "Oh,
my God, Anne. Oh, my God," was all that she could say.

 

 

John Norwell was at the house with Yale and Agatha when the police
car drove up with Anne and Cynthia. After satisfactorily eyeing them,
enjoying their nudity, the policemen had concluded that the girls'
clothes, scattered in the parking lot, were torn beyond repair. They
proffered their coats.

 

 

Anne sat in the back seat of the police car, and held her arms around
Cynthia while the policeman who wasn't driving tried to interrogate her
and find out what had happened. When the police had got there not one of
the boys was in sight. All that remained were a few of the clerks from
the market and a group of women shoppers whom the police had questioned.

 

 

"It was one of those gangs from Helltown," the policeman said. "They've
been incited by all this stuff in the newspaper. He stared at the girls.
"It's your own fault in a way. The Marratt family shouldn't air their
dirty linen in public. You're lucky. I think you are both more scared
than hurt."

 

 

"We are hurt," Anne whispered, tears running down her cheeks. "It may not
show, but believe me we are hurt!"

 

 

Cynthia had stopped crying when they walked into the house. Yale looked
at them astounded, and demanded to know what had happened. One of the
policemen tried to explain. "It was unfortunate," he concluded,
"but at least there was no physical harm done."

 

 

"Yes, it was very unfortunate," Cynthia said looking at Yale coldly.
"It was unfortunate, Yale, that you wouldn't let our love be private.
Now half the young men in Midhaven have squeezed our breasts and stuck
their fingers in our crotches." Cynthia took off the policeman's coat
and handed it to him. "Since you don't mind us parading around naked,
I suppose it doesn't matter."

 

 

Astonished, Yale and John Norwell had watched her walk up the front
stairs. Anne ran after her.

 

 

 

 

Yale had been drowsily awake when Cynthia crawled into bed with them. He
felt her cold feet touch his, and the warmth of her breasts and belly as
she curled softly against him. This is a good thing, he thought. We have
discovered that the depth of love begins and continues not in the genital
organs but in the probing of the human mind as it searches and merges
with other minds in the upward struggle for a humanity that transcends
individuals. Anne, Cynthia, and he were proving in a small way that it
was possible for minds to merge without destroying individuality.

 

 

Yale had heard Anne say to Cynthia that "nothing could touch our love
for each other." He guessed that Cynthia was thinking about the frightful
and degrading attack that had occurred at the supermarket.

 

 

Yale remembered that he had rushed upstairs after Cynthia and Anne,
forgetting that John Norwell had come to discuss the future of the
Latham Shipyards with him. Norwell had just finished telling Agatha
and him that he was a very conservative Scotchman. "I might consider
the idea of the presidency of Latham's, but what bothers me," he said,
"is identifying myself with this Challenge business. It's a madness,
Yale Marratt. I think you better have done with it. Right or wrong,
no man ever changed the world, at least for the better."

 

 

Just as he spoke, the policemen had come into the living room escorting
Cynthia and Anne. Yale remembered how pathetically frail and very feminine
they looked with their hair mussed, tears in their eyes, the policeman's
coat jackets scarcely covering their nudity.

 

 

Upstairs Yale found Cynthia on the canopied bed, sobbing. Anne was
running the water for a bath. "I feel so dirty." Anne shuddered.

 

 

Yale examined them and found several bruises and scratches from their
rough handling. "I have a terrible frustrating anger," Yale said. "I feel
as if I should have Midhaven turned upside down and find every last one
of the rabble involved in this, and yet I know that it will do no good
to answer hatred with hatred."

 

 

He massaged Cynthia's back. She rolled over and looked at him with swollen
eyes, her face tear-stained. "Yale, I love you. Nothing can ever stop that.
But you'll never know what Anne and I have been through. You don't know
what modesty is for a woman. The Germans knew when they reduced the
Jewish women to animals. The French knew when they shaved the heads of
the women who collaborated with the Germans." Cynthia shivered. "This
morning, Yale, Anne and I might just as well have been raped. It couldn't
have been much worse. I'll feel unclean the rest of my life. Don't you
understand why this happened?"

 

 

Yale didn't answer because he guessed that Cynthia would say it had
something to do with anti-semitism. She confirmed his thought.

 

 

"It happened because I am a Jew," Cynthia said. "Sure, the Challenge ideas
are different and strange and people fear them, but now that your father
has identified you with Harry Cohen and me, he has implanted the idea that
the whole business is instigated by Jews. When they were tearing at our
clothes, you should have heard the terrible things those boys said. They
didn't have those thoughts all by themselves. I think everything that
happened was subtly promoted by older people who are determined to stop
Challenge by any means." Cynthia was crying wildly. "Don't you understand,
Yale? Anne and I were attacked with the same kind of cold hated used
against the Jews in Germany. If the police hadn't arrived, I think they
would have killed us."