The Trespassers (25 page)

“No, I explained that. She is—”

“She is not your sister or sister-in-law or cousin?”

“No, she is a very good friend. It was clearly explained.”

“Nor related in any way to your wife?”

“No. Mrs. Stamford is deeply interested in our welfare. She is—”

“There have been too many cases,” the Consul General began impressively, “where an affidavit is trumped up with a stranger’s signature, and is therefore unsatisfactory to this department.”

“Of course. But the affidavit explains that completely.”

“There must be, you understand, a definite
obligation
to support the visa applicants. An affidavit is not
legally
binding; therefore, the obligation of blood ties is the most reliable.”

“But the affidavit. I read it myself. It is clear, the obligation is fully undertaken. I read it myself.”

His voice now was so urgent, so underlined with sudden panic, that the face opposite him seemed to draw back with distaste.

“Yes, of course. These things are a matter for this department’s judgment, not for anything else.”

“I do not imply—”

“If there are no blood relatives existent, then this department’s judgment must be completely satisfied that the affiant undertakes specific responsibility.” He waved away the dossier before him, with a gesture of large disapproval. “Not this vague promise.”

“They did not—the instructions did not, the official instructions did not—”

The other was not listening.

“The application, therefore, on these two counts, is denied.”

“Denied?” Franz sprang to his feet, stood there, leaning forward slightly. “The visas are denied?”

The Consul General did not look up. He closed the dossier, placed it on the stack at the right, began drumming upon it. One, two, three, four, one, two…

“I
must
ask you—you must understand what this means to me, to my family.
Denied
? Or did you mean ‘delayed’?”

The Consul General stopped the drumming. His hand rested motionless on the pile of dossiers, on the top dossier, the one with the legend 811.11. The fingers were splayed out across it, motionless, possessive. The face above the desk was also motionless, the eyes looking off into distance past Vederle’s vest, bored, bored.

“I said ‘denied.’ ”

“But—”

“To reopen a visa case, you must submit in writing.”

“I understand. I beg you, one more question—”

The Consul General looked up now. His shoulders sagged a notch, as though he were completely weary.

“When and if you do resubmit in this matter,” he said carefully, “please do so only for yourself and the two children under the German-Austrian quota. Your wife’s application goes under the Hungarian quota.”

All memory of the final question he wished to ask drained out of Vederle’s mind.

“God—no—the quotas are different—they, we might—”

“The Hungarian quota is full for twelve years.”

“
Twelve—what?
Months—weeks—you cannot mean—”

“I said twelve years, not months.”

Franz’ mouth was open. No sound came from him. He gripped the side of the desk.

“The children of course could remain with their mother. In these cases, it often expedites matters for the husband to emigrate first and then send later for—”

“Never. No, never with two small children. There may be war this summer, this fall. Leave them behind—no, never.”

Now the Consul General at last looked into Franz’ eyes. His own were magisterial.

“You are not Jews—you say—nor political refugees. You are not in trouble with the new regime there. You can return to Austria, can you not?”

He returned to his papers. Simultaneously his fingers touched a buzzer. The door opened and a clerk came in. The Consul General merely nodded.

Franz stood staring at the impassive forehead. Then he turned and followed the clerk out.

“I cannot tell them, I cannot tell them, I cannot tell them.” All the way out through the outer office, through the waiting room, down the stairs, his mind repeated the phrase. “I cannot tell them, I cannot g home and tell Christa and the children, I cannot, I cannot…”

For an hour he walked the quais, crossed one bridge after another, noted the sparkling shine of the Limmat, felt the caress of the sun, heard the bells and horns and voices of the busy city, and only knew that they were lost, lost.

Christa would be waiting for him, but he could not return. He could not merely go back, see her eyes go stricken, hear her gasp of despair. He must plan, he must put in motion the next step before it was conceivable to go back to them.

This smashing news about the Hungarian quota meant that America was gone for them. They must give up the dream. They must look to some other country then, France, after all, England, Holland, Belgium. No, no, he could not do it; if war were to come, there would be millions of new refugees, as in Spain, in China. He and his family would again be uprooted, cast out.

This, anyway, he could not decide now, it was too momentous. Only one thing was clear—he must not tell this monstrous part to Christa at all. Not about the twelve years—not about the sadistic cruelty of that. It would remain his own secret. If she knew, she would feel that she stood in the way—it would enlarge her problems until they were unconquerable.

He must find some way to open this totally unexpected impasse. Other people had been able to go to America under the same quota—hadn’t Maria Schenkin been a Pole before she married Otto? He would ask, inquire.

Or must he really give up, defeated and done, about America? Was there any sense in going to the bank, writing Mrs. Stamford for a more specific pledge, submitting a new application in spite of this new block? It would only create a new and terrible situation, if his new application were accepted and visas arranged for himself and the children, but not for Christa.

He must think before he acted at all. He must understand, chart out this new, hostile geography he had stumbled into, before he could decide whether he must now abandon forever the path to America.

He walked, sat on a park bench, walked again. His hand went to the sheet of official vellum in his pocket, and drew back as if the touch were an offense to his skin. A short while ago that same touch had been a blessing, a reassurance. Now it was an assault; now it said, “Go elsewhere, can’t you see you’re not wanted here?” He and his wife and his two beautiful children.

“Wait, wait, do not give in to your resentment so easily,” he counseled himself. He must think, he must plan, step by step. From now on, he must split himself into two entities, that much was clear. The new one must concern itself with a brand-new plan of flight for himself and his family, must look to some new horizon and begin moving toward it—England, France, South Africa, Brazil, somewhere, anywhere new.

But the older entity must not concede defeat, must not give up the American chance. Not yet, not yet. That half of him must go on, must proceed with the new application to the American Consulate, must prosecute it as vigorously as though the “twelve years” had never been spoken. Or as though that ruling might yet be changed.

He must cable Mrs. Stamford. A letter now was too slow. Another month would go by before a letter could reach her, be acted upon, and its answer received here. He made his way to the cable office, entered, hesitated, then looked about him rather foolishly and went out again. Was he obligated to tell her about the “twelve years”? If she knew of this new obstacle, this hopeless hurdle, would she not inevitably feel that further time and effort were useless?

But he could not keep silent about it, either. It would be a treachery. But would it? He must think this through further before he even knew what to cable her.

He bought a copy of
Le Matin,
tried to read it to gain time and composure. He could not. “The visas are denied.” “Do you mean delayed or denied?” “I said ‘denied.’ ” “The Hungarian quota is full for twelve years.”

The phrases seethed and pumped through his brain. He could not follow an orderly train of thought because of them. He still suffered from a kind of operative shock, severed with brutish suddenness from the sustaining prop of the long months.

An hour later, his mind began to clear.

A cable was no place to tell Mrs. Stamford about the Hungarian quota. She could do nothing about that, anyway, so he would merely write her about it in a letter following the cable. She could do nothing about the financial statement either; he himself could straighten that out by fetching his bankbooks, going to the bank, getting signed statements from the officials there, and submitting that new evidence to the Consulate. So it was only on the matter of relationship and obligation that he had to appeal to her.

He returned to the cable office. At least in this one area of the new problem, he could again be brisk, decisive, in control.

VISAS DENIED BECAUSE INSUFFICIENT PROOF OF MY FORTUNE AND BECAUSE YOU NOT RELATED BY BLOOD OR MARRIAGE THEREFORE INSUFFICIENT OBLIGATION TO SUPPORT. AM SUPPLYING FURTHER PROOF OF FIRST CAN YOU HELP ON SECOND WITH MORE SPECIFIC PLEDGE? WRITING.

He sent it at the fast rate, costly as it was. It was noon here, early morning in New York. Perhaps she could begin to act on this outrageous new demand at once. Even a day mattered.

A day. How many days already! He glanced at his newspaper to check the date. July 6, 1938. The date carried some significance for him, but it was so nebulous he could not get hold of it.

He stood still, at the curb, and began to read the headlines, searching for something that might explain the sense that this day was a marked day—
L’ANGLETERRE
…
M. REYNAUD VEUT
…
NIEMÖLLER FAIT
…No, it was something else. On an inside page he found it:
EVIAN-LES-BAINS
.

“God, oh, God, let them
do
something there.” He said it half aloud. He was not a religious man in any literal sense whatever, yet he found himself pleading, praying to some great humanity which could, at the moment, find no other name in his mind. Let them understand, let them see, let them for one moment
feel
the shut door, the cold eye, the hostile official, the stung and baffled pride.

The cable arrived before nine o‘clock, but Vee was not at home. Dora held it in perplexity; she knew it must be important. What ought she do with it? Maybe she ought to try one phone call?

For the first time, Vee had stayed the night at Jasper’s apartment. Now it did not seem to matter what his servants thought, what the elevator men and lobby attendants downstairs thought. They knew her by sight, of course, they would know when she went out in the morning. Some old, untouched conventionality, still alive under all the acquisition of modern theories, had always before prevented her from staying through the night, but this night had been too important, too dear and real, to bring it to the usual close of dressing again, leaving, going home.

“Stay all night, darling,” Jasper had said again and again. “We’re all different now. This is different, isn’t it?”

She knew it was different. Everything had deepened, had become in the five days since Jasper’s visit to Gontlen a shared quest, a beautiful voyage into the future.

Last night, they each had magnificent news for the other. Dinner waited for an hour while they talked, confided intimate details, laughed at vulgarities and innuendo they now found permissible in their new union of purpose.

“I’m a fine specimen, all right,” Vee began her report.

“Don’t say specimen to, me,” he shouted, and they choked with laughter. Vee told him with almost complete candor of her own visit to the doctor she had chosen, told of the tests and checks, step by step, and each one an assurance…

“I’m going to be, maybe not right away, but sometime, pretty fine myself,” Jas said and was smug, happy, proud. “It might be just the low thyroid, at that. I’m minus thirty, would you dream that ever? Apparently it isn’t
always
tied up with the amount of energy you seem to have.”

He discoursed learnedly on the thyroid gland, the “master gland,” the boss of them all.

“If the thyroid lies down on the job, all the others lean on their shovels,” he said. “Pituitary, antuitary, obituary, all the little fellows.”

“Jas, don’t be idiotic.”

“Sure. They do. So I’m on a thyroid regime. Two grains a day for a month, then a basal checkup, then less or maybe more grains.”

He told her of other regimens and tests that Gontlen was considering for his case, should they be necessary.

“I almost wish there was something wrong with me,” Vee said at last. “All these treatments sound so interesting.”

Later in the evening, he said, casually and without emphasis, “I went over to see Beth yesterday. I—you know, we’ve never bothered about a divorce.”

“Yes, I do know.”

“She’ll be all right about it.”

“Oh, Jas, are you—does she—is this going to hurt her?”

“Heavens, no, we’ve been separated for over two years.”

He shrugged as he said it. She wondered if Beth really did not mind. So often a woman who had lost everything from her marriage but the name and status of marriage suffered inordinately at the break of those last thin links.

“She’s not going to start for Reno tomorrow, I don’t mean,” he went on. “You know, she’s got the right to think it over awhile and get adjusted to it. I wouldn’t rush her right off—” Her heart drew back from him as she heard the self-approval coating his tone.

“Oh, Jas, maybe she—women
do
care—”

“Vee, please. Beth and—we’ve both known that someday one of us—” He paused. “You know I never say much about things like this. I think you ought to trust me.”

It was true. He never put into words the deepest feelings he had. Even now, he did not speak of love, of marriage, of wanting their home and their son. “I’ve never felt so right with anybody else.” And later on, “
Now
there’s no stopping till the whistle, Vee.” So he let her know, bit by bit, the drift of his feelings, the change in his purposes with her. But never had he made the foolish, dear avowals that she wanted to hear. Perhaps he never would. It left part of her heart always waiting, always listening. Words, she often told herself, were unimportant. Everything he did now was an avowal.