The Trespassers (51 page)

“
If
we really can get in to see him,” he said, “and are not told to go home and write for an appointment.”

“We’ll get in.” She stated it as fact. “I wired him from London.”

“You what? You—what did you—?” He looked disturbed. “I thought it best
not
to write first.”

“I know—I think this is different though, with me going. I was very polite, but, Franz, we
would
be in the wrong just to arrive and expect to barge in. We mustn’t be in the wrong about anything; they’d fasten on the smallest thing.” She was quite firm. “I didn’t
ask.
I just wired something like ‘Flying from London to discuss case of Franz Vederle family for whom I am American visa affiant; arriving July17; hope you will be kind enough to reserve few minutes for interview. Thank you.’ ” She beamed at him. “Polite? Diplomatic? No?”

“You really teach me lessons all the time, Vee.”

“Well, damn it, they’ve stretched this as far as it will go. Now it’s got to snap.” She pushed her lips and chin out in a child’s gesture of defiance. He smiled, and shook his head in a pleased bewilderment.

“You are an unbelievable mixture,” he said. “You—well, never mind.”

At the Consulate, Vee went up to the first clerk she saw.

“Will you get word through to the Consul General’s office, please,” she said quietly, “that Mrs. V. M. Stamford of New York is here? He expects me.”

In a few minutes, they were led to a desk where a young man waited for them. Under his breath, Franz said, “Vice-Consul, this one.”

“Mrs. Stamford?” The voice was pleasant. When she nodded and said, “And Dr. Vederle,” the young man extended his smile and greeting to Franz. “May I help you? The Consul General’s day is completely taken by appointments and—”

“We’ll wait,” Vee said quietly. “When I wired from London, I knew we couldn’t expect to find him at leisure in all of this.” She waved to the crowded room, the rows on rows of waiting people.

“I understand. But the Consul General won’t be free for some time and the usual procedure is—”

Vee made a sharp gesture with her purse. It was a small bag but scarlet, and the quick flash of it caught the eyes of the people seated near them. Franz saw them watching the small group that he and Vee and the official made.

“Usual procedure,” Vee, said, and her voice hardened into a clear enunciating. “Dr. Vederle and I have had just about enough of it. Please tell the Consul General that I flew here from London and Dr. Vederle came up from the south because we think it’s time for some unusual procedure.” Her voice rose a little. It was emphatic. She was conscious that some heads had turned, that eyes were upon her.

“But, Mrs. Stamford, you surely do not expect—”

“We do not expect the Consul General to drop everything, no. But you might just tell him that we’ll be waiting here all afternoon, and then all tomorrow morning and afternoon, and as long as needed until he does see us. Also that if necessary, I’ll—but never mind that.”

The Vice-Consul seemed to be struggling with some inner emotion. “Probably he’d like to slap my face,” Vee thought. “I sound like one of those awful troublemakers. Well, I am.”

“Very well,” he finally said. “I shall tell him that.” Unexpectedly, he grinned a little. “He’s one of the nice ones,” Vee decided.

They sat down to wait. Only then did the buzz of voices immediately around them really reach through to her mind. She looked at Franz, and saw that he was listening to it intently. His eyes were clouded.

“They are amazed at this, Vee,” he said. “All these people around us are telling each other what you said, the ones that understood it passing it on to the others. It is so long since they have dared to fight an official of any kind whatever. It stirs them—you can’t guess how much.”

Her throat tightened. She looked about the crowded room then, seeing faces, seeing expressions in eyes. She was not familiar with the consular waiting room as Franz was, and when they had come in, she was too intent on what they had to do—and too scared, she admitted to herself. If this should boomerang, and add impossible new prejudice to Franz’ case—but she had thought that out last night. Casablanca, Lisbon, bootleg visas—it might come to that at last. But there was time enough to worry about boomerangs when they started coming at you. She had decided that once before.

Now, looking about the room, she saw these people, saw the faces that hoped, the faces that despaired, saw the young faces and the old, the calm and the nervous and the tearstained. She heard the voices, and could not understand the low, rapid words. But she could understand the tones, of anger, of grief, of resentment. And of hope.

“Oh, Franz, how could you bear it, all this time?” she said suddenly. “All these, how can they—?”

“At least they are in Switzerland,” he said somberly. “Imagine the consulates in Austria and Germany and Poland and all over Central Europe.”

“I wonder how many there really are, and how many will ever get out—oh, I forgot.” She looked into her scarlet bag. “I copied something for you last week. I was going to mail it.” She handed him a slip of paper.

“Although asylum for the oppressed is one of the oldest and most honored of American traditions,” he read; “it has not been written into our immigration law…The existing world emergency…has brought home to many Americans…the conflict between America’s tradition of asylum and our existing immigration policy.”

She watched his face as he read the lines, saw him go back to the beginning and read them again.

“It’s from an article just published by the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,” she explained. “Not just by some hotheaded radicals.”

“And yet,” he said thoughtfully, “America is better even now than most of the countries. Some people I know, maybe they are just lucky ones—” He told her several stories of other recent immigrants, how they had found at various American Consulates a quick friendliness, a simplicity as to detail. He went on then, to tell her of others who had found the same impenetrable wall of unwillingness that had been his lot. “But even so, America does still take in some people when almost every other country is locked tight. I try not to forget that when I am so upset about
our
trouble.”

They sat talking in low voices for a long time. It was nearing the closing hour when a voice said to them, “This way, please.” They jumped up and followed the messenger. Franz looked at his watch. “Not quite two hours, Vee, he kept us waiting.”

“Remember to let me do most of it,” she said in a low tone. “If he’s mad, it’s better at me than you.”

A door was opened before them. Behind a large desk, the Consul General half rose to nod to them, and then sat heavily back into his chair. As he did so, he glanced at the clock on the wall. Then his eyes went to the open dossier that lay spread before him. He flicked it with a fingernail.

“I have been glancing over this material,” he said, addressing neither of them directly, but speaking into the air just above the documents on his desk. “I see the applications are approved; visas are to be issued.” He paused. “Your telegram came yesterday, Mrs.—ah—Stamford. There was no address for reply.”

He spoke as if he had dealt with any question that might be raised. But without changing his inflection, he went on. “You came here, ah, from London, on a specific mission?”

“Of course.” Vee looked at him directly. Her face was expressionless.

“I assumed from the notification,” Franz said, “that as soon as the new quotas opened on July first, the Consulate—”

“There are always assumptions in these cases,” the Consul General said to the dossier. “Applicants forget how many thousands upon thousands of previous—”

“I beg your pardon,” Vee said coolly. “We know how busy you are, and that you have no time for generalities about the visa situation as a whole. Can you tell Dr. Vederle now
when
his turn will come? He is not trying to shove any previous applicant aside, but—”

“It is impossible to tell with any certainty whatever,” the answer came. “But rest assured that—ah—Dr. Vederle and his family—”

“I can no longer rest assured about my friends’ visas in any way,” Vee said. Now her voice deepened to a lower register. “There has been every conceivable reason why such assurance is no longer possible for me. I’ve come here today with Dr. Vederle because it is humanly impossible for them to wait on indefinitely.”

“There is nothing that can be done to change the order of—”

Vee leaned forward abruptly. A feathery red stain spread upward on her throat. The clear gray of her eyes was very light against the flushed skin of her face.

“It was apparent almost from the beginning,” she said intently, “that the Consulate here questioned the depth of my interest in the Vederle family. I’m told that in the absence of a blood or marriage tie, a certain caution is usual and desirable, although the amount of that caution varies in the consulates. One reason I came here from London is to assure you myself that there is nothing perfunctory in my interest.”

“There is no longer any question of that,” he stated, raising his eyebrows in surprise at her. “That was disposed of some time ago. This has been a rather difficult and tangled case.”

“Definitely. Far too difficult, sir, and far too tangled, it seems to me.” Now her words came faster, and a recklessness sounded in them. “The whole piecemeal way in which new questions were put in this case, the apparent mistrust of Dr. Vederle’s statements, the wasting of weeks and months of these people’s lives, the war of nerves during all the side-stepping and back-tracking—”

Now the other was leaning forward. The face was no longer pale. He said, “Now, look here, this heated talk—” But Vee did not stop. Franz stirred in his chair. She rose.

“And the emotional torment caused for months, for instance,” she went on, a shade more deliberately, “by your Hungarian quota ruling, when the Immigration Act of 1924 specifically—”

The Consul General raised his hand sharply. His facial muscles ridged. “There is nothing to be gained,” he said stonily, “by a discussion of matters which a layman cannot evaluate.” He slapped the dossier with his knuckles.

“There may be something to be gained,” she answered, and suddenly her voice was quiet, “by a transatlantic telephone call to Washington. I really am so interested in this case that I put a call through from London yesterday. Then I thought I would wait two or three days more, canceled it, and came here instead.”

He looked at her coldly. Franz cleared his throat to speak, but Vee made a small gesture, reminding him of his promise.

“You cannot intimidate me, Mrs. Stamford, by threatening, to report—”

“Intimidate? It’s the farthest thing from my mind.” Her voice sounded almost sincere. “Action is all I want. ‘May, June, maybe much later,’ the Consulate wrote Dr. Vederle. I telephoned Washington about that from New York, and then I myself counseled Dr. Vederle to have patience until July first because of the previous applicants. But the waiting seems to be starting all over again. And now I know that
later
applicants from Austria are already in the U.S.”

“In exceptional cases, of course, famous writers and—”

“This is an exceptional case right now,” she said. Her voice rang again, this time with an odd assurance. “I also can telephone the President’s Emergency Committee in New York—I have an entree there. They handle exceptional cases, I understand, and get quick results. All I want is results—not just the fun of making a fuss.”

The Consul General frowned, his features closed with distaste. For a long stretch of seconds, there was dead silence in the office.

“The visas
will
be issued,” he said. “That has already been stated. The available number for July is already pledged.”

“Then what about the August number?” A dizzy elation swept through her blood. She realized that her knees had no starch, and sat down again.

“The first of August is a Tuesday,” Franz said. “We could be here for the official application and the medical examination that very day. Two weeks from today.”

Vee permitted herself one glance at him. His face was impassive; his eyelids were lowered, so that she could not see his eyes. The fine, long hands lay loose on his knees.

“It is impossible to make so definite an appointment,” the Consul General said. Again there was a pause. “Is there some exceptional reason—are you planning to travel on the same boat, for instance?”

“We have been planning to,” Vee lied. She spoke in a completely different tone. A faint smile was on her lips. She gathered her gloves and scarlet bag, as if the interview were over.

“It takes many weeks now, to get passage of any kind,” Franz said. “I hear some boats are sold out for months ahead.”

The Consul General pushed a buzzer on his desk. “I can promise nothing,” he stated flatly. “Nothing whatever. The assigning of these visas will occur precisely according to the usual procedure, as if you hadn’t come here. Good day.”

But the tone of it belied the words. Franz and Vee rose.

A young man came in, in response to the buzzer. He took the dossier from the outstretched hand of his chief.

“Arrange for the formal application,” the Consul General ordered curtly, “under the August quota. Ah—early in August—if that can be done, although I have not promised any precise date. Notify Dr. Vederle when you have assigned the date.”

“We’ll just go along,” Vee said brightly, “and get the date set right now.”

Again a tension sprang alive in the room. But a long moment later, the Consul General nodded dismissal to the young man, Vee, and Franz simultaneously.

“Thank you so much,” Vee said primly. “I felt sure a personal meeting—”

Franz merely bowed and said, “Good afternoon.” The moment they were outside the door, he took her arm between his hands and squeezed it. His lips moved and some odd sound came forth, but no words. The young man was striding ahead to a desk behind a low railing.

“I think, Franz,” she said in a tone of vast innocence, “I sort of think I was practicing a little blackmail, wouldn’t you say?” She laughed, but Franz did not answer.