Again, that night, he discussed his progress with Gretchen. She was very pleased. “There,” she said proudly, “you see how easy it is to use these simple people in our work? Is it not rewarding? How foolish they are, and how grateful they seem for our first tentative offers of guidance.”
“But where do I lead them?” asked Weintraub.
“They will need little direction, now,” she said. “They will follow the obvious path. That is much the better, for they have not the slightest idea that they have been subverted. It is all voluntary. It will seem like recreation to them.”
Gretchen’s prediction came true. The small literary group channeled its collective energies into debating the traditional standards of conduct; their discussions soon grew away from the definite cases into abstract realms of pure speculation. This is where Weintraub felt the most secure, for nothing that was said could be pinned down and proven in practical terms. Generally he sat quietly and listened, putting in a word only now and then, to keep the flow of argument following along acceptable Party lines. At last, after several weeks of talk, some of the members began to write short essays and articles. A few were published in the Springfield weekly newspaper. Others were merely read aloud at the meetings of the Literary Association and criticized by the assembled members. Weintraub volunteered to draft a long presentation, summarizing the main points of these statements, which could then be submitted under the authorship of the Springfield Literary Association.
Using this as a first stepping-stone, Weintraub began making appointments to meet with various civic and cultural leaders in the area. He spoke at meetings of parents and teachers organizations. He lectured to library groups in nearby towns. As a Jerman citizen, his ideas received serious attention, although Weintraub never lost the feeling that he was resented on a barely hidden level. One day in early summer, he received an invitation from an important religious leader in the state. Gretchen was excited; it was the first tangible proof of their success and she was proud and happy, although it meant that Weintraub would have to be away for several days.
Thus, a week later Weintraub visited another of America’s crowded cities. He had arrived half an hour early for his appointment, and now stood nervously outside the office. The sign on the door read: jerman-american council of protestant clergy, DR. HERBERT S. TIEFLANDER, president. Weintraub knocked on the door and entered.
Dr. Tieflander sat behind a large, bare desk. “Good afternoon,” he said, “Herr…?”
“Weintraub. Ernst Weintraub. Good afternoon. It was very kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule to see me today.”
“Not at all. What can I do for you, Herr Weintraub?”
“I have come to discuss with you certain aspects of Christian behavior which concern me and my associates.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sir. It seems to us that the church is sadly behind the times, as far as social consciousness is concerned. Surely situations have changed since medieval days. People and circumstances are never simply black and white, as they have always been pictured in church literature. These are the nineteen twenties. Why does the church differ so radically from modern psychology, sociology, and even common sense?”
“I had no idea that such a discrepancy existed,” said Dr. Tieflander, looking sincerely and earnestly across the polished desk top.
“Ah, but it does. Do you, personally, interpret the Bible literally?”
“Why, not precisely. The use of symbolism and metaphor is quite obvious.”
“But the extent to which an individual considers Scripture as ‘metaphor’ varies, does it not?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And who is to say what is correct? It follows, then, that behavior must be judged similarly, depending upon the circumstances. Things are relative. What is definitely wrong in one situation is sanctioned in another.”
“Is this some sort of faddish new morality? Are you demanding a permissive society to replace the present ethical order?”
“I demand nothing,” said Weintraub, steepling his forefingers and smiling. “I am only suggesting that the church might benefit from a more humanistic and socially aware perspective.”
“I see. But we have neither the time nor the funds to become involved with secular matters.”
“Your congregations would be anxious to help. That is where the church is needed most, remember. I think it is time for you to make a sally from your ivory towers.”
“Perhaps you are right, after all.”
“It would help to unite our troubled nations if the church discovered its role anew. The social restrictions of ancient times which necessitated clerical prohibitions are long since extinct. A Christian should be freed from outdated canons, and made to act responsibly and maturely, answerable only to the higher law within the individual.”
“Do you have some printed material that presents these views?”
Weintraub opened his briefcase. “Certainly. You may keep these if you like.”
“Thank you. I am very interested, and I would like to show them to some of my colleagues.”
Weintraub shook hands with Dr. Tieflander and bid him good day. Outside the man’s office, on the long marble staircase, Weintraub saw his own reflection in the mirrored panels of the wall. He grinned at himself, and held up his right thumb for victory.
CHAPTER 10
Ernest and Darlaine made slow headway down Fulton Street, toward the intersection of Flatbush Avenue. The crowd was getting thicker, the pace slower. Ernest found himself muttering, and the sign of mental strain worried him. He took Darlaine’s hand and pulled her behind him, out of the channel of the traffic, into Carlton Avenue. “I want to get out of that horde,” he said. “Let’s cut across town here. We can probably make better time going down De Kalb.”
“Whatever you think, Ernie,” said Darlaine.
Even the side streets were jammed now. It was the middle of the afternoon, and people were beginning to get upset. If they hadn’t found the token booths by now, they must be hidden too well. The stations might all be too far away to do any good. It might be too late. It might really be too late. Ernest kept repeating that to himself, then realized what he was saying and shook his head angrily to clear the thoughts. But it always came back: it might already be too late.
They moved past a row of identical modapt buildings between Fulton and Greene Avenue, another row of modapt buildings between Greene and Lafayette. There was a school building on the next block, and Ernest led Darlaine through a gap in the wire fence around the playground. “Let’s figure this out,” he said to her.
“I don’t see anything to figure,” she said, panting.
“I don’t either, but it isn’t kind to mention it. We haven’t seen the slightest flicker of excitement yet. That means there can’t be a token station anywhere near where we’ve been. By now, people are going to be so worked up, there’ll be a ring of brawling idiots ten blocks thick around every booth. Let’s get up somewhere and look.”
“You won’t see anything in this city,” she said. “The way these rows of buildings are, all you’ll see is into the neighboring street. You’d have to be right on top of a station to see anything, and then you wouldn’t have to get on the roof of a building, anyway.”
“I know and I’m goin’ get one,” said a low, thick voice behind them. Ernest turned; there was a ragged derelict walking toward them across the playground. He was dressed in torn, stained black trousers and jacket, with a battered gray hat. He wasn’t very old —not much older than Ernest himself—but his face and hands were in worse condition than his clothing. Ernest took Darlaine’s hand and began to lead her away. The man waved at them drunkenly. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I know them tokens.”
“You know how to get a token?” asked Ernest. “Tell me, how do you get a token?”
“My sister works on the City Planning somethin’. They had to plan this, you know. Couldn’t just do it right off, had to plan the whole t
hing, and my sister takes care of me, this time. Told me they was just going to use subway stations. Nobody’s thinking about subways. Just go up to them and ask for your token. Nobody at all down there.”
Darlaine stared at Ernest. “I wonder,” she said. “Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen anything so far.”
“I don’t know,” said Ernest. “You want to trust this guy?”
“You have anybody else to trust?” she asked.
“You have a dollar, maybe?” asked the drunk. “I need a dollar more for a place to sleep. I got my wine.”
“Sorry,” said Ernest. They hurried out of the playground toward the nearest subway entrance a few blocks away on De Kalb Avenue. They pushed harder than ever through the crowds, having a destination for the first time that day. Darlaine had a difficult time keeping up with Ernest. He was cursing loudly now, viciously fighting his way down the street. Almost an hour later, they had nearly reached the subway entrance.
“I hope that wino knew what he was talking about,” he said.
“Sometimes they do,” said Darlaine hopefully. “They have to, part of the time. It’s just being able to sort it all out. Anyway, it made sense, sort of. Nothing else even makes that kind of sense.”
“I’m hungry again.”
“I’m thirsty,” she said.
“I’m pretty damn tired, too. And I’m scared. And I’m fed up with people kicking my legs.”
“When this is all over, maybe we ought to sue the Representatives. It would have been a whole lot better if we had just sent in post cards with our names and telephone numbers. They could have put them all in a big hopper and made drawings. Then they could call the lucky contestants during some television movie and ask simple questions. If you didn’t win a token, you might at least end up with a dozen blouses or a waffle iron.”
Ernest didn’t laugh. “Remind me to tell you about my Mardi Gras idea,” he said
“All right,” said Darlaine, “but I think I can guess. It’s still a better way to handle it than this. Somehow this situation is in awful taste. That’s what it is. I’ll bet they’re a whole lot more orderly in London. I’ll bet you can’t hear a sound, over there. They know how to behave.”
“You know what?” said Ernest.
“What?” she said. Darlaine pushed herself through the people who closed in behind Ernest’s back. They rested at their goal, a sheltered doorway only a few yards from the subway.
“We got to get one of those tokens.”
The girl laughed. “Yeah. Two. Where?”
Ernest wiped his upper lip with his wrist. “I don’t know. Down there, I hope. You know what else?”
Darlaine sighed. “No.” She looked out over the swarms of people. If they had, in fact, been in some sort of movement toward an unknown objective, their short rest had already lost the couple what advantage they had won in the last half hour.
“This crowd is really getting to me.”
“Me, too,” she said.
Ernest started to push back into the crowd, but the girl held his arm. “How many tokens do you need?” she asked.
“Huh? You have some? All this time?”
“No,” she said, looking past his shoulder. “I just wondered.”
Ernest hesitated. “One. Just one. Why?”
“I only need one, too, I guess.”
Ernest laughed. “That makes things much simpler, doesn’t it?”
A couple of trash cans had been shoved down the stairway into the subway, and garbage and litter was piling up on them. Among the cans and bags Ernest could see a motionless arm. While he stared down into the dark, cavernous stairwell, the crowd behind him shifted and threw Darlaine against him, knocking both of them off their feet. They tumbled heavily down the flight of stairs, landing painfully in the mass of garbage.
“I needed that,” said Darlaine. “I really needed that.”
“At least we got here,” said Ernest. He stood up and helped the girl to her feet. He kicked some of the trash aside and uncovered the corpse of a small girl, about twelve years old.
“She got here, too,” said Darlaine, looking at the body with disgust.
“I wonder if she was trying to get out of the station,” said Ernest. “I just wonder if she has a token.”
“You’re not going to look through her clothes,” said Darlaine. “There’s an easy way of finding out.” She pointed past the girl’s body into the dimly lit subway station. Ernest nodded and stepped over the corpse. Darlaine cursed and followed.
There was no one else in the station. Ernest’s steps echoed from the moist walls as he hurried to the token booth. It was closed, dark, empty. He wouldn’t admit how much he had counted on the drunk’s being right. He didn’t want to acknowledge how much the disappointment weakened him. He turned to Darlaine.
“Well, that’s that. It’s another rumor we can cross off our list.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I don’t suppose they’d be passing out shelter tokens in every subway station in New York City. That’s a lot of stations.”
“Well, how the hell are we going to find out which stations are the right ones?” She wouldn’t answer. Silently they retraced their steps, through the abandoned underground passage, past the morbid hint of what would soon happen to all of them.
They cut across Fort Greene Park, where the open spaces were not as thickly jammed with people. There was little likelihood that a token station would be anywhere in the area, but Darlaine thought the government might set one up for the benefit of the CAS forces billeted near the East River. Ernest had no objection to her idea. They stopped to rest twice, for a few minutes each time.
As they merged with the street-molded streams of people on the far side of the park, Ernest succumbed to his real fear once more. He viewed everything from a frightening distance; the scene flickered like a bad splice in a reel of film. The world was sliding away, out of control, and he couldn’t tell himself anything that eased the panic. It meant nothing that the real world was never in his control to begin with. He wanted to cry, but that passed into a sick nightmare feeling. He wanted to scream, or hurt himself, or somehow do anything to regain his sense of vitality. But the teeming streets and the shouting, brawling people scared him again and again.
“Gretchen,” he thought, “I’m with you now. For the first time in many, many months we’re together. I know what you feel, I understand what you’re afraid of, and it can’t do either me or you any good. It’s a sick joke, Gretchen, and I hate you for it. And you’re sitting around that rotten tin room, staring at the flat set, watching the gray snow falling on every station, hating me because I forced you to admit that there was something to be afraid of. Hold Stevie for me, Gretchen. It’s too late for me, now. It’s too late for everybody. I think it’s even too late for those sons of bitches who found the token stations.”
He looked around. They were in a neighborhood completely unfamiliar to him. He wanted to weep, but instead he began punching a woman in front of him. Darlaine caught his arm and he whirled, ready to attack her. He saw the contempt in her expression and calmed himself.
“You know what?” asked Darlaine.
“Yeah.”
“We’re not getting anywhere here, either.”
“Well, goddamn it, what do you want to do about it? Wherever those stations are, if they aren’t pretty damn near here, they’re not going to do us one bit of good.”
“You know the bench in the park where we stopped?”
“Yeah,” said Ernest suspiciously.
“I’ll meet you there tonight.”
“What?”
“If we split up, we’ll stand a better chance. Two of us looking. Right now I’m duplicating your effort. And I’m slowing you down. If I find one, I’ll tell you. Or you’ll tell me.”
“You running off to meet somebody now? How many times you done this before? How many other guys are you working with?”
“Three,” said Darlaine quietly.
“Am I
supposed to trust you? I mean, if one of those guys tells you where you can get a token, are you planning on telling the other three of us?”
Darlaine looked hurt. “Of course I would. You should know me by now.”
“Yeah, I do. And when we all get tokens, who are you going off with? You’re lucky, you know that? You got more to bargain with.”
Suddenly, everything he had ever said to a woman took on a new dimension. Every word that had passed from a woman to him became a kind of emotional merchandise. His own feelings, products of his finer motives or, more frequently, merely abstractions of his physical urgings, became nothing more than a debased currency. No one, male or female, had ever dealt with him on more than a simple level of trade; he had provided something—security, emotional gratification, money—and the other had provided simulations of friendship or love. Gretchen stood out as an exception. Gretchen was too simple, too unskilled to compete in that kind of market. It was too futile a thing to cheat her. One could deal with Gretchen only on her own dull but basic plane. And for that reason, Ernest regretted the time he had spent—wasted, gambled, refunded—in return for approximations of her shrill, honest feelings.
“I’ll stick with you,” said Darlaine.
“Right,” said Ernest. “You want me to believe that. Well, I’ll be there at ten tonight.”
“I love you, Ernest.”
“I’ll see you.”
Meanwhile 5
Night crept westward, sweeping more of Africa under her trailing cloak. The poor of the city happily gave up their occupations and hurried to their homes to join their families for the evening meal. The wealthy few considered the entertainments and casually made their choices. Along the city’s central avenue, shops closed up and iron shutters were locked over display windows. The marketing noises stilled, until Ernst could hear the bugle calls and shouted orders of the Gaish as they drilled on the sand before the city’s northern gate. The day’s liquor had had its desired effect, and so the noises failed to remind Ernst even of Czerny’s anger.
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