The Trespassers (55 page)

And then there was the great bill, the bill which caused the momentous stir, the hot debate. That was the bill for the children.

This Wagner-Rogers Bill was introduced in April, jointly, to the Senate by a Democrat and to the House by a Republican. It wanted to save twenty thousand of Germany’s children who could be saved in no other way. It proposed to admit them apart from the crowded quotas, ten thousand of them each year for two years. Their expenses would be paid by private funds; homes and support fund by private exertion; only to children under fourteen would this legislation apply, and only to children traveling alone.

Public hearings were held; the furor started. Some newspapers warmly endorsed and encouraged, other newspapers denounced and scolded. Citizens’ clubs and the labor unions worked for the bill, and flag-waving “patriotic groups” worked to kill it. There were those who reckoned only the immediate need of the children, and there were those who warned of the far future when these boys and girls would grow old enough “to take jobs away from Americans.”

In May, the Wagner-Rogers Bill was reported favorably by the joint subcommittee of the two Committees on Immigration. But there had been enough pressure from people who felt that aliens were aliens, whatever their age. The bill, like the others, never went through.

For there were always the ears that were deaf to the prodigious music. These were the ones who were deaf, too, to the muted voice of the consular waiting room, to the flat tone of the refusing official, to the child’s high cry at railroad station or dock, “But it’s better at home than
anywhere.
”

And in their deafness, they prepared the pale welcome that waited for those fortunate ones who did manage to get the visas and the permits, who did finally complete the journey across the borders, across the frontiers and over the seas. In each country they prepared it, in England, in France, in the Low Countries, and in all the continents beyond the oceans. They prepared it by speeding up new antialien measures, new professional rulings, new employment and licensing requirements, and piling them on the old anti-foreigner restrictions already in existence. They prepared it by surrounding nearly every job, every trade, every profession with bristling fences that defied the new arrival to make a living for the five slow years that must elapse before he could become a citizen.

In the United States, during the thunderous months of 1939, they prepared the bristling welcome.

In less than ten of the states could the refugee physician or surgeon now practice until five years had crawled by and he became a citizen.

In eight of the states no engineer could be engaged unless he were a citizen, and in six of the states on architect. In sixteen of the states no man might be a certified public accountant until he became a citizen, and in twenty-six no liquor license could be issued except to citizens. No man anywhere in the land could get an A.F. of L. union card until he became a citizen, though the C.I.O. unions had no such restrictions. In four states a man could be neither a plumber nor a barber unless he were a citizen, and in twelve he could not embalm or bury the dead.

The new rules, funny or solemn, sprang up week after week and perched upon the old. In nearly every trade and profession and business they sprang up, in nearly every corner of the great sprawling land where three centuries of earlier men from overseas had freely made the tough amalgam of a nation.

And even in the great Congress itself, the antialien infection spread. On that sultry summer night in the last week of August, while the Vederles slept toward the hour when they would set sail for America—at that moment there were pending before the Seventy-sixth Congress more than a score of antialien bills. And already over a hundred more were being thought about or drafted into final shape for introduction in the months that stretched darkly ahead.

HR 3032 was one such bill already introduced for consideration. It would suspend all immigration for ten years.

HR 4172 would deport any alien who failed within one year of entry at an American port to file his intention-of-citizenship papers.

S 2231 would force Negro Americans to migrate to Africa.

HR 999 would deport all noncitizens and end all immigration at the end of 1939.

HR 3033 and S 407,would place the whole Western Hemisphere on a quota basis and would cut all quotas ninety per cent. (Come to America, twenty-five Spaniards; come, eighty-six Hungarians and ten from the Free City of Danzig.)

These and many others kept working at American hearts, nibbling away at the old, reckless American warmth.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…

For the moment too many in the sprawling land had forgotten. But the words are cut deep into the bronze plaque in the tall statue in New York Harbor; all the acids of passing moods and hatreds cannot erode them too much. They are still legible. They will endure.

P
LUMING OUT ENDLESSLY FROM
her bow, the feathery spread of the wake stretched flat and long on the quiet sea. The small white ship continued westward in unhurried progress. Three days out of Le Havre, she seemed, on that unbroken sea between unbroken horizons, to be on a voyage that could never end at a bustling dock where time and regulations and responsibilities would once again seize every one of her passengers.

It was the old, sweet illusion of isolation and suspension. On other such trips, Vee relaxed always into the illusion, giving herself to it in a surrender that ended only on the last night at sea. But this time, though the physical illusion was there, it could not claim her mind.

Around her she felt the whole ship restless as she was, sharing the upheaval of the news that hammered ceaselessly through the ship’s radio. Hour by hour the news came; the grim bulletins outside the Purser’s office and the Wireless Room drew clusters of people who forgot their formality in the need to talk over each new installment of the murderous serial story. Big or small, each new paragraph stirred their anxiety afresh and always to a higher plateau. The rapid notes between London and Berlin; between Paris and Berlin, the massing of Russian troops on the Polish border, the final packing up at the French, English, and Polish Embassies in Berlin, the plans to evacuate 650,000 London children, the ration cards for Germans…

War. The word was on every lip, in every eye. Threading through every other thought or consideration among the ship’s passengers on this tranquil voyage under the summer sun went the idea, the image, the blood of the word.

For Vee, like all the others, the idea, the bloody image coiled in and out of every other thing she thought and felt. But she had, too, a more personal upheaval.

Franz had telephoned her just before she left her hotel, to prepare her for the fact she would meet when she boarded the boat at Le Havre. The train trip had seemed endless, and when she had boarded the ship and gone direct to their cabin on D deck, she had known nothing to say. Franz was calm, his voice level as he told her that Christa had responded to the drugs, that her temperature had fallen during the night, risen again in the morning, and then fallen enough so that she was able to walk aboard ship and not betray her sickness to any medical officer who might otherwise have prevented the sailing. But his calm and level voice did not hoodwink her. Franz was fighting deep fear, and she knew it.

She took the children off his hands at mealtimes and during the day. Ilse moved in with her to her tiny, hot cabin, and Paul was assigned a bunk in another, in spite of its owner’s protests. Once the ship was beyond Cherbourg, Franz had called the ship’s doctor and Dr. Jacquerin had ordered the changes. She saw Franz only for the occasional moments when he came on deck to reassure the children and then tell her privately the truth about Christa’s condition.

Her heart seemed to break into angered bits when she listened. “God, this too, this too.” The drugs would bring the fever down, and then it would mount once more. Dr. Jacquerin was deeply concerned lest the “process spread to the other lung.” That afternoon Franz had radiogrammed Dr. Marreux, and the reply had just come.

IF TEMPERATURE ELEVATED AGAIN MORNING HALT DRUGS SAVE OXYGEN IN CASE EDEMA.

Franz’ voice was still strong and calm, but his eyes told her that he was close to the ultimate panic. She could not ask him what he thought, and now, standing for a moment at the rail, watching the sun slip its lower arc through the wide arc of the horizon, she begged something to help him in this fight.

“Franz, is there—” She could not speak the question.

“I don’t know how much hope there is, or what chance.”

He left her a moment later, to go back to the cabin. She went to the game room, where the children sat, watching other children play. Paul’s face struck clear through to her deepest pity; he was suffering, he was afraid, and he was trying to keep Ilse and everybody else from knowing that he was.

“How is my mother, Vee?” he said with an odd dignity.

“She’s pretty sick, Paul. But maybe tomorrow she will be better,”

“Will she be all right when we get to New York?” Ilse asked, and Vee reassured them both with the poor words she could contrive to produce. Their father had told them at last that it was pneumonia.

That evening, she sat in the lounge over coffee, talking with two business acquaintances until she grew exasperated at their steady assertion that this war was none of our business and, what the hell, nobody could attack us ever. She went into the ship’s library and began to look through the August magazines. She could not concentrate on what she read. She kept wondering about what was happening in the cabin where Franz sat watching at Christa’s side. She turned over the pages of the magazines, read an item here and there, but her mind was never tightly engaged with the words she read.

And then she came to the six-line item, and her attention sprang erect. It was in the “Milestones” column of
Time,
in a series of other short items captioned in bold-face type, “Died,” “Born,” “Married,” “Divorced.”

“
Divorce Undone.
Set aside by Mrs. Bethella Crown, 36, the divorce granted her last November from Radio Rocket Jasper Crown, 36, head of the Jasper Crown Network and lively contestant for No. 1 honors on Crossley’s Radio Poll of news analysts; last week, by court action under seal; in Reno.”

She read it, and then read it once more. An icy pleasure bit into her mind where the memory lay of how he had killed her faith and happiness. She was ashamed of it, ashamed to feel this stab of grim delight that he was balked, cheated in something
he
wanted. For once Jas was not the victor. There was a sort of vicarious nemesis about this and she would be too noble and melting sweet not to have this moment of cold satisfaction. It evaporated almost at once, but she did not disown or deny its brief existence.

She turned to the front cover of the magazine: August 7, 1939. If Ann had wanted to, she could have written to her in time to reach her, but she had not. For a long time, Vee sat, the first whip of reaction quiet now, trying to decipher the meaning behind the bland announcement. She tried to remember the legalities that might arise to have a decree set aside. Collusion? Duress? Fraud? What could this mean in terms of ordinary life? Beth had brought the action, it said. Some terrible motive must have made her do it. Perhaps there was something between them as ugly and rotten as—

Her mind wrote a small footnote for her to examine when she got around to it. She was aware of a side process going on while she sat quietly puzzling about what could have happened between them. But she went on with the puzzle and ignored it.

This action meant then that Jasper would
not
be free to marry when he finally decided the convenient time had come. This meant that he could not, some time or other, add “marriage and children” to the agenda of things to attend to next. Not until Beth died or changed her mind again. And if she had motive enough to have done this now, it would probably be years before she would relent.

“Poor Jas,” she thought. “He’s made a pretty bitter mess for him self.”

And then the small footnote drew her attention. “You are over it at last,” it said. “Look how calmly you sit here, thinking. once the very mention of his name—”

The last bad time she had had was a week ago in Paris; when she had awakened, she had known in her very nerves the date of the day. August 21. But the hot flare of the old pain had been only for the baby she might have been bearing in these very hours. All day she had gone about her appointments and duties in the lovely and nervous streets of Paris, and all day her heart kept imagining how this August 21 might have been for her.

But when she had gone to bed that night and seen her watch pointing to one o‘clock, some final leaf of an old calendar had fluttered over and lain still.

In the cabin, Dr. Jacquerin and Franz leaned over Christa’s bed. A small tank of oxygen was propped beside it, and Franz held a mask over her nose and mouth. Vee stood against the porthole, watching, waiting.

It was midnight, the fifth day out. Before Franz had told her, she knew that Christa was worse. Her own stewardess had whispered to her, softly so that Ilse would not hear, “The crisis approaches for Madame; the steward there told me. They have to prop her against four pillows; the shortness of breath is too bad otherwise.”

The oxygen seemed to be helping. There were two tanks of it aboard, each one enough for several hours. Franz had told her that afternoon that they would soon use it. Another radiogram from Marreux had directed him to start tonight if she did not improve.

Franz moved the mask away, and Vee could see that Christa’s face had a rosy tinge, so blessedly different from the gray, clothy look it had worn before they started the oxygen. She saw Dr. Jacquerin look at Franz and raise his eyebrows in a question.

“We’ll have to wait before we can be sure it helps,” Franz said. He turned toward Vee.