The Trespassers (39 page)

He punched his hands into his pockets, dropped his head again, stretched his legs, taut and braced, before him.

“We’ve just seen the kind of thing that crops up now. Get the hell out West, fix
that
up; come back, there’s a crisis on recorded programs; do something fast about the forty separate deals in South America—in fact, you’d better get down there yourself before somebody cuts right under us; censorship in Berlin—investigation by the F.C.C.—how about this—what about that. My God, this next year is the toughest, tightest time of all. Can’t you
see
?”

He flung his arms out in appeal. His head snapped up, and she saw his eyes. They were outraged at the demands the future would make upon him.

“I do see, Jas.” She was quiet. Except for the hard breaths, she was quiet. “So what are you trying to tell me?”

He suddenly came near to her. His face pleaded with her.

“Vee, it shouldn’t be that way. It should be right, and when we’re ready—not now. It should have happened a year from now—we didn’t see that, I didn’t see that—I couldn’t think of anything but having it happen and ending the doubting and the sickening not knowing if it would.”

She moved back a step.

“Maybe it should have happened a year from now,” she said slowly. “But it’s now. I—do you want me to say I’m sorry?”

“No, Vee, no. I’m only sorry about the timing—because I haven’t the right to split my mind now.” He came closer to her, so that she had to look at him. “But, look, Vee. We
know
about us at last. There’s no more wondering—we know we could make it happen again. If we agreed—if we stopped this one—and then in a year when everything’s
right—
”

“Ah-h.”

It was a long, strident expelling. It was denial, revulsion; it was refusal and horror.

“Wait a minute. Don’t think I don’t understand. I do, I’ve gone mad thinking. But now that we know that it
can
happen, we’re free of all the compulsion. We can plan it. Next winter we could be ready—I could be ready—now I’m not my own man. I belong to the company, I’m its backbone, its guts, I have to give it all of everything in me. By next year—”

“You mean an abortion, you want me to have an abortion. You’re asking me—”

He nodded painfully.

“I can’t. I’ll never do it. I’d rather die first.”

“Don’t, Vee, don’t be dramatic. Other people have, a million times over, there’s nothing—”

“No.”

“Can’t you see, it would be better? Can’t you understand? I’ve told you before that the network is bigger than anything else, bigger than individuals, bigger than being happy. It’s doing a job that must go on, it’s doing it better than anybody else is doing it, when the world has got to
know—
”

“Stop it. Stop it, Jas—don’t. I can’t bear it if you talk about the world and the network now. I can’t stand it.”

He kept on, driving ahead, his arguments bludgeoning their road through to her mind.. After a while, she stopped answering, except for a numb shake of the head to show him she could not do this thing he asked. When he paused she found no words to speak except, “I can’t. I just can’t.” He shifted from argument to pleading to confession that he was strange, dark, unlike other men. But it all added up to his desperate urging to give him one more year to dedicate himself, whole and uninvolved, to his life’s work.

“I can’t. I just can’t go and have it done.”

By now, her voice was gray; her eyes were stupid with shock and pain. But the core of her rejection was intact.

He stopped talking. Silence stood between them, thick barrier at their impasse. Minute followed minute, but the barrier stood firm.

When he spoke again, finally, there was a change in his tone. She raised her head to look up at him. His face was immobile, his lips were sparing of movement, his eyes flat and dead.

“Well, I’ve tried to make you see it from
my
point of view. You won’t. I can’t force you. But you can’t force me either.”

She stood up. Her hand went to the back of the chair.

“The more I’ve talked,” he went on, “the clearer it’s become. I will not be trapped into the biggest mistake of my life. You won’t wait until it’s not a mistake. O.K. Go ahead.”

“Go ahead? O.K.—go ahead? Jas, Jas—don’t say it—don’t ever say this to me.”

“I’ll say it. I’m saying it now. There’s a way we could solve this terrible mistake. You won’t do it—all right. I’m through.”

“You can’t be through. You wouldn’t just walk out—”

“A man’s work comes first. You never believed that. I’ve warned you a hundred times that it would always come first with me. You said you understood that. Well, it does.” He started for the door. “I’m through. Solve it your own way, if you won’t take mine.”

She cried out so hard that he stopped.

“You mean you won’t get married? Do you mean that? Is that what you are saying?”

He stared at her. His mouth was bitter; his upper eyelids were low over the lifeless brown of his eyes. He nodded, and kept on nodding and nodding, six times, seven times, ten times, pausing in the gesture, and then resuming it.

“Jas—no—it isn’t possible. This isn’t ‘being caught’—we went to doctors—we did it together—you wouldn’t, you couldn’t—” Her voice rose with hysteria. “It would be just yellow—cowardly—horrible—you wouldn’t, you’ll think it over and change back again into you.”

He looked past her.

“And my hope is that
you’ll
think it over, and do it my way. You have another six weeks to have it done without danger to you.”

“Never. I’ll go ahead alone.”

He began the slow nodding again, staring at her, his face jutting toward her, grotesque. She thought of primitive masks, savage paintings in caves, totem poles. This was nightmare—it would be over in a few seconds. In a moment he would speak and this would be over. He would, he would, in just one moment more, he would speak, and this would be over. You couldn’t count on somebody, trust somebody, build everything on another human being, and then have him let you down. Hurry, Jas, hurry, hurry and say something, my darling.

“Go ahead alone, then.”

He was gone.

She felt she would never sleep again. This torture, this heartbreak, this end to her love, this wild need for oblivion—this she had. But to curl her hand under her cheek and sleep, calm and quiet? How could she ever again do that?

It was avalanche, torrent, this pain roaring through her. “Jas, Jas, how could you do it? Oh, it’s not so—it’s not so.”

The telephone would ring. He would call her and say again that he had gone mad, that he loathed himself for his words; he would beg her to let him come up at once and make it right again.

The doorbell would ring. Now in the middle of the night, ten hours after he had left her smashed, crushed, gasping with the shock—he would ring the bell and come in and heal her again.

The telephone did not ring. The doorbell was silent. The apartment was empty of sound. All afternoon, all evening, now at two in the morning, the only sound had been her own terrible bursts of crying, her hoarse, strident crying. Not even the ordinary small noises of a house had broken the stillness. She felt the silence like an active, continuing assault.

She had had no food. Coffee—finally sometime during the hours she had gone into the kitchen and made herself strong coffee. It was Dora’s day off; that was good. No human being must see her this way, destroyed. Now she went back again, heated some milk, drank it slowly. That might make her sleep.

Sleep would renew her. She needed to close this torture out of her mind and go to sleep. She lay down on her bed.

The thing, twisting and searing at the cone of her ribs. It was there, physical, real. It pierced, it crushed at body and mind alike.

If the telephone did ring, if the door did open—it was no good, anyway. Forever it would be no good. She could never trust him again, never rely on him, never believe his promise, his pledge.

Promises, pledges, faith in another’s word—of those things life itself was made, happiness held or shattered. There was something here, something wildly familiar.

In her mind, she saw Jasper’s head, bent slightly forward. His face wasn’t jutting at her now. It looked tired, a little listless. His eyes were closed, and he shielded them with one hand, the thumb pressed over one eyelid and the middle finger over the other, his other fingers flaring gracefully away.

God, oh, God, it was a trick. Her mind had played her a trick. That was David’s gesture—that was her brother David’s gesture…

She fell asleep at last, on top of the blankets. For two hours, she slept. When she woke to Dora’s knock at eight, she had one moment of numb forgetting. Then it leaped at her.

Friday, Friday night. Saturday, Saturday night. Sunday, Sunday night. Hour upon hour of the pain, the inexhaustible pain.

She ate almost nothing; she slept as she had that first night, only when in an exhaustion that refused denial. She telephoned the office that she was ill with influenza, told Dora and any telephoning friend the same, thing. Hour upon hour of the hot, smashing pain.

“I must stop this suffering, I must do something to end it, this might hurt the baby, I must find out how you stand this.”

She would leave the house then, take a long walk. She watched people on the street, speculated about their errands, studied their faces. But she would have to return to the apartment when she grew tired.

There it was, ready to leap at her. Friday, Friday night; Saturday, Saturday night; Sunday, Sunday night.

Suddenly she knew she could no longer bear it. It was the silence of it, the voicelessness of it. Inside her, writhing, twisting, the betrayal, the treachery.

She could not stand it any more. She walked uncertainly to the telephone, dialed a number. During the long, steady ringing, she glanced at her watch. It was past midnight.

“Ann, it’s Vee.”

“Vee, what’s the matter—what is it?”

“Could you come over to me, Ann? Something bad has happened.”

“I’ll get right over.”

Fifteen minutes later Ann Willis came through the door.

“Vee, you’re sick, you’re—what’s happened to you? You’re ill.”

“I’ve—I’m thin, I’ve lost six pounds in the last four days and I mustn’t, Ann, I mustn’t—”

It came in gasping, rushing pieces, then, the whole story. She heard her own voice thick, she felt her tears hot, she did not care, she could not hold anything back. She saw Ann’s face white with anger, tight with loathing. She saw it change to warmth, to understanding, and then go back, at the mention of Jasper’s name, to a cold, solid hatred.

“I can’t, Ann, I can’t do anything but have the baby,” Vee ended. “I can’t make myself stop it. You’ll help me, I know I’ll need help, and you’ll help me.”

Ann had her arms about her, rocking her a little, assuring her, praising her for her decision. There was solace in it for Vee, some curious, long-forgotten comfort in crying out her misery to an older woman and finding the haven of compassion and love.

Through most of the night, they talked. When Vee looked too far ahead, Ann pulled her back to more immediate horizons; if Vee said passionately that she would not try a hole-and-corner existence, but would face the world unashamed of her pregnancy, Ann merely nodded and thought to herself there was plenty of time for such major decisions later. She knew that the first task was to get Vee over this appalling shock, to quiet her again into some more endurable state. The rest of it could come later—perhaps she herself could come to live with her, or perhaps Bronya would have that role to play. Perhaps, even, Jasper would feel remorse—

“That swine,” she exploded, her gruff voice coarsened with anger. “That unspeakable, ruthless swine. Someday, somewhere, somebody is going to pay him back for the way he’s smashed around him all his life. It won’t be you, Vee, you don’t go in for smashing back. I could, but not you. But somehow or other—God, I hope it’s big when it strikes home at last.”

“Nobody could ever touch him,” she answered in a small voice. “He always thinks he’s right, so he doesn’t even care what other people think. He calls them “his enemies” and forgets them. A long time ago, a man named Grosvenor, Timothy Grosvenor—”

Ann gestured it away impatiently.

“You wait. He’s laid up too much. I know things about his office you never hear. I know about his ten years at the other company. About his marriage. Things about this employee, that colleague, this stockholder. Always it comes out at the same place—he let somebody down, he double-crossed somebody who helped him or trusted him.” She clenched her hands and shook a fist in the air. “You watch, someday, somebody is going to have the guts to hit back.”

An unnamable thing screamed inside Vee’s mind, “I hope so, I hope so; maybe he’ll know then what this feels like.” She shrank away from it, from this new and terrible hate, this killing, murderer’s hate.

The strident, ugly crying began again; she could not stop it. She was ashamed of it, but she could not halt its possession of her. Over it, Ann’s voice sought her attention, Ann’s loyal, insistent voice. “There, Vee. You’re all right, you’ll be all right, you’ll be all right.”

F
RANZ VEDERLE LAUGHED ALOUD
as he went up the steps. The idea was delightful.

Inside the German Consulate, he banished the smile and strode importantly to the desk of the Vice-Consul with whom he had dealt the first time he had come to Lugano. The young Nazi was talking to a shabby man, seated before him.

Franz cleared his throat impatiently. The Nazi looked up.

“How long will you be with this—this business?” Franz asked. The wave of his hand included not only the papers spread on the desk but the shabby man as well. “I have very little time.”

Automatically, the Vice-Consul rose. Deference was on his face.

“
Heil Hitler
,” he said. “I will be only a moment, Herr—”

“Dr. Vederle,” Franz replied with some annoyance. “You will remember. I have expected the new passports every day for three days. It has been too long by far, this simple matter.”

“Yes, sir, I will be with you in a moment, sir.”