The Trespassers (35 page)

“I’m cabling the refugee organization, Bronya, just to be sure there were no new delays since the Nazis—” She hesitated: “I want to be sure you hadn’t heard anything.”

“No. I—but they informed here at the branch is still all right for everybody with visa and tickets.”

“I’m sure it is all right. Don’t worry, Bronya. You’ve been so splendid.”

She dialed Western Union and sent two cables. The one about Rosie Tupchik she sent to the main office in London, asking for a report direct to her. The other went to Switzerland:

WHY DELAY? WHY SILENCE? CAN I HELP FURTHER?

The operator intoned them both back to her, and she felt an odd relief, even at this much action. She had been patient too long—telling herself that tomorrow or next week a letter from Switzerland must surely come.

She went back into the living-room. Jasper stirred and opened his eyes wide.

“Hello, you darling,” he said sleepily. He swung his legs around and sat up. “I’m not a very exciting fellow to spend time with these days.” She laughed and he grinned in response.

“If you were any more exciting, I’d cave in.” She looked at him appraisingly. “And you’re about to. Suppose I take myself home right now and let you get some real sleep?”

“Suppose I take you out somewhere and give you some fun instead—we haven’t even been to a movie for a month.”

“Oh, Jas, don’t fret about things like that. Look what’s been happening in
your
life. How could you possibly bother with just fun?”

He didn’t say anything, and she added softly, “Just the same, I love it when you’re thoughtful about things.”

He came swiftly toward her, and took her into his arms. His mouth pushed her hair away from her ear and he spoke softly right over it.

“Never, never will I forget it, Vee—the way you’ve stood by me these last weeks. You are my darling—I never felt this way about you before.”

Her heart thudded about. She could think of nothing to say.

“I’m
not
cruel, I’m not a cold-blooded heel,” he said. “They drive at me, they force reactions that I hate as much as anybody. I get driven and driven until—”

He broke off. His arms dropped and he moved away from her. He caught her hand as he passed in front of her, and without any more words began, gently, to lead her into his room.

Half an hour later, he was asleep, this time for the night. It was about eleven, far too early for her to be sleepy. She lay quietly near him, thinking. They, had slipped into most of the ways of marriage, without the openness of marriage. Only a few people knew of their relationship; there was still the clandestine about it. Still, in six weeks, he would be free to marry. Or would he be free even then—free of that deep, dark conviction that there was only one valid reason for marrying? And if that never happened after all? Oh, but it would, it would, it must happen. For each of their sakes now, her own sake as much as his because she dreamed so of how it would be. Because these months of waiting had sprung alive her own instincts, which the circumstances of her marriage and divorce had previously subdued. Now she was fired with the primitive desire to be as other women the world over and give birth to a child.

She could imagine the moment when she knew. She could imagine Jasper’s face when she told him. She knew the very words.

“Jas, Jas, darling, it’s happened. I’m pregnant. Listen, do you hear?”

His face—the relief, the joy.

“Darling, oh, God, darling, are you sure?”

“Yes, oh, yes, I’m sure. I went to the doctor. It’s true.”

“When…oh, Christ, I’m happy.”

Always it went something like that in her fantasy. The radiance she’d feel, the wild, beautiful gratitude. It had to happen someday. If it didn’t, if it never happened—

She turned over with a sudden jerky movement. She turned on the small bedside light and began to read. When her watch pointed to midnight, she got up, dressed noiselessly, and went quietly to the door.

Downstairs, the doorman glanced behind her toward the elevator, and then accepted the fact that she was alone. He nodded to her gravely.

“Taxi, Miss, or are you walking?”

“Taxi, please.” She felt her cheeks flushing.

T
HE DAYDREAM, THE FANTASY
, the imagined words that would rush from the heart when the waiting should at last be over and the blessed goal achieved.

All over newly frightened Europe, a million men and women warmed their courage on the same embers that glowed for Vee as she lay in the dark telling herself that the desired thing would someday happen,
must
someday happen.

Your papers are not in order? Your visa is not yet issued? The quota is full? Ah, do not be beaten back, or you are lost forever. Keep up the dream, do not give up, do not give in to them, not you, not you…

In Switzerland, in Spain, in Poland and Hungary, everywhere wives exhorted husbands to keep trying, husbands pleaded with wives to hold fast to their hopes. And secretly in the restless night they could imagine how their own voices one day would exult, “It’s happened at last—we are safe, the children are safe, we leave tomorrow…”

Now there were 400,000 new ones in flight from Czechoslovakia. Now they would join the ranks of the earlier exiles, would take their places in the swelling lines at the consulates. At first, they would be buoyed up by quick hope, then they too would know the sagging faith, the savage despair.

Do not give in to them, any of you who seek to cross the borders, to leave the ports, to go up the gangplanks to freedom again, to decency again. Do not surrender to the laws, the immigration laws. There is to be no war, not now, for he has won again with no drop of angry or honorable blood spilled to halt him. But that does not mean that there can be peace for you.

So hold fast to the purpose. If South Africa is closed to you, if the United States is indifferent to you, then look further, twist about, turn elsewhere to find the open gate to some better future.

Do not, of course, turn to Argentina. Twelve days after the Evian Conference, she closed her Immigration Office, and less than a month later, she suspended the granting of landing permits to any new case.

Do not, either, turn to Brazil. Even in the year just past, she tightened her restrictions so much that the quotas were not filled. The new Immigration Law of 1938 is even sterner. Perhaps if you have relatives in Brazil, or if you are a farmer with capital…

Do not, indeed, waste many of your dreams on any of the other South American countries. They have all been busy with new Alien Bills, with new Immigration Acts, humanity’s newest barbed wire and pill boxes to halt you smartly in your tracks. If there is now no place for you in the four and a half million square miles of Argentina and Brazil, you surely will not cling to stubborn hope about the smaller countries. Surely not, for the barbed wire and the pill boxes show very clear now in this closing half of 1938:

Small Uruguay shut her doors tight after the Evian Conference.

Paraguay now will admit only an occasional farmer.

Oil-rich Venezuela states clearly her reluctance to accept any refugees. As for
Östjuden,
Jews from eastern Europe—they are prohibited completely.

Colombia will now admit only some few “exceptional cases”—Colombia, whose delegate to Evian so feelingly warned that “the bad example of the old World can spread to other continents and make the planet uninhabitable.”

Ecuador demands $400, plus $100 landing money, but she is small; no more than a handful may go there.

Civilized Chile still gives some visas—on a “highly selective” basis. For a year Jews have not been selected.

It is the same with Peru. Neither Poles nor Jews may be admitted.

Bolivia is easier in some ways, though Poles, Russians, and Jews are barred. But men whisper there is a wide-flung visa-selling racket there that will soon be exposed. Then there may be expulsions to face, renewed flight to contemplate. But if you chose to run the risk…

Perhaps there is more chance for you in Central America. Honduras, now—if you will give up your science or your painting or your teaching and turn to raising bananas, you may possibly arrange to go to that small land.

Guatemala still allows a few immigrants; $5000 is the minimum you must bring in.

Costa Rica is now closed. So is Nicaragua.

Or perhaps you now long for at least the physical welcome of sunlight and an open sky, for the vivid blue seas of the Caribbean countries. Yes, but you are hopelessly tardy—too many others have made frantic attempts to find haven there.

Barbados and Trinidad will accept a few families of considerable means; none others need apply.

It is the same in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.

Jamaica will accept no one; the bars are up to all.

Mexico is considering the problem of welcoming some few hundred refugees, especially from Loyalist Spain. However, her general immigration restrictions are tight and thoroughgoing. It is not simple to go to Mexico and settle.

But look, there is a chance for you in Australia. Perhaps Evian touched Australia’s emotions, for she is working on a new plan that would grant five thousand visas each year for the next three years. That would be fine indeed, if it came to pass; in the year just gone only four hundred German families were admitted to Australia, and thirty-six families in the year before that. But do not be skeptical of this change in heart; you can ill afford to question good intentions.

And China—perhaps you did not think of China. Yes, she has been at bloody war for over a year, and by now some twenty million of her own people are moving over her unending miles, carrying their earthly possessions in green cotton sacks on their backs, carrying their universities and their factories bit by bit away from the invader. But these are kindly people, they know what it is too long for the view from the kitchen window, the comfortable smile of a long-known neighbor. They are lucky, too, these travelers toward safety, for they are still on their own soil, they do not know the sting of feeling alien and despised.

Go then to China, if you are as determined as all that to escape. For two thousand reichsmarks, five hundred dollars, a hundred pounds, a man may go now from Central Europe to China. It is so easy—virtually the only place on the globe today where a human being can land without a passport and visa is Shanghai. The International Settlement is not paradise, it is true, for some three million Chinese refugees surged into it and into the French Concession, when the triumphant Japanese took the city proper. There are some few camps for these Chinese wanderers, and the rest swarm the streets, sleep in the roads, half starved, half naked.

But you would find your own countrymen there, too. About eight thousand of Germany’s terror-driven are already there, and about one in four is self-sufficient and needs no help from the refugee agencies. You might manage independence in Shanghai.

Face it, face it, there is no place for you near at hand, where you would feel less strange, where you would rather be.

Forget France, it can only wound you to remember the long years when the doors of France stood wide for every refugee from tyranny. That is done now, finished. Now, in the second half of 1938, new immigration and detention stations are set up everywhere on France’s borders. The police cars daily round up “illegal refugees” and carry them to the nearest frontier; others are jailed and others forced to live “underground.” Almost no foreigner may now enter France legally, unless he already has passage and papers for an overseas destination. For you, France is Halfway House or nothing.

And England? Better no fantasies about settling in England. England never did flaunt a brave banner as a country of sanctuary, but now even that banner is hauled down. Some few poor thousands of you are on English soil now, and that is enough. The visa system has just been introduced here; visas are not for everybody. It is wiser to assume that you may not set foot across the Channel unless you show “guarantees of subsequent emigration.” You may go through England, but not to England.

Belgium has just closed all her frontiers. Only the stealthy ones at night, so desperate that no law has meaning, only they still cross into Belgium. A lawful, permanent residence there now is out of the question.

The same goes for Holland. None but transients will be tolerated. If something goes wrong, if you outstay your transit visa, you are subject to arrest.

Switzerland will not accept you. Her borders are well closed now. You frantic ones crossing at night, stumbling over the line exhausted—you yourselves forced Switzerland’s hand. Now there are sentries at every point, and for the first time in her long centuries Switzerland too has instituted a strict visa system of her own.

Finland has this summer placed “an embargo” on all refugees.

The vast U.S.S.R. permits permanent entry to no one. The only exceptions possible are to some few intellectuals and party members from other lands.

Denmark, Sweden, Eire—no, no, you can find no country large or small over all the face of Europe where you may now go to unpack your bags and breathe the long, tired breath of the voyager at last in port.

It is not that we are inhumane. We understand, we sympathize—did we not send delegates to the conference at Evian? But we must be realistic men.

So keep moving, keep searching. Trespassers are forbidden here. We cannot let you in; it is the law, the new immigration law. Once this was a generous country, open as a meadow to any good and honest man who came to our boundaries. But not now, not today.

Today, the need is too great.

Vee arrived at the restaurant early, and while she waited for Ann Willis, she opened the letter again. She had already read it twice, but the story it told was so long and tangled that it baffled her still.

Dr. Vederle had typed it; it ran to several pages. The long cable he had sent in answer to hers had said that he had managed to get extensions of their Swiss permits, that they were moving south from Zurich, and that he would write her soon. But the letter had come only this morning, with the first week of November already gone. He could see no way she could do anything just then. Her eyes went again to the first lines of it.