You're a Big Girl Now

by Neil Gordon

And he knew it.

  Gingerly, he lifted his mic to his mouth and spoke. “Gentlemen, I have a positive ID. Repeat, I have a positive ID. Jason Sinai is northwest in quad 4, the back row of the orchestra. He’s in a baseball cap and is accompanied by a girl, perhaps twelve, perhaps his daughter.”

  Faint in his ear, Numeroff’s voice.

  “Christ on a fucking stick, is that him? I got him from here.”

  And Robbins. “Yes, sir, that’s what I’m talking about. I confirm. I have a positive repeat positive.”

  Walt wasn’t senior here, but like it or not he was walking point. “Go take a whiz, Mike, and when you come back, go to the back of the orchestra, northeast. Get Duane Street on the circuit while you’re in there. Richard, hold your position. Let’s wait till he moves—he’s got a child with him, he must have to take a bathroom break sometime—these fucking old men are going to talk forever. Plan A is to take him out of the auditorium at intermission, plan B at his exit. Agreed?”

  7.

  It was agreed. In the bathroom, Mike radioed it in to the Federal building, four blocks away on Duane Street, and established a link to their local radio connect.

  Within twenty minutes, the Borough of Manhattan Community College was cleanly, thoroughly surrounded.

  Jason Sinai sat, smelling camphor, watching as one by one the brigadistas spoke to the audience, wondering where his father was, and feeling something he hadn’t expected in the back of his throat, up where his spine entered his head.

  Maybe it was the audience, so many people, so like him.

  Maybe it was the college students, actual kids, coming to pay homage to the Abraham Lincoln brigadistas.

  Or maybe it was the ancient brigadistas themselves, each one illustrating and indeed enlarging, because many were not Jewish, John Sanford’s observation that in Judaism, it is the old men who are beautiful.

  Whatever it was, the sensation running through Jason’s throat and up his spine to his skull was one he had not felt in a very long time but which, as it happens, he was to have ample time to explore soon.

  The sensation was tears.

  8.

  Jack Sinai, looking through the wings at his family while the brigadistas took their seats, heard rather than saw what was happening at the podium. Moe was talking, and Jack slowly realized that Moe was talking about him. A girl wearing a Che T-shirt was at his side, ready to escort him to the stage. He turned, thoughtfully, and straightened his jacket. He was too old, far too old, for stagefright. And yet that sharpening of the sense of the present, that emergency jettisoning of the extraneous—as the body draws blood in from the extremities during danger—was focusing him intensely on what he was about to do. Now the Spanish Ambassador, under a spotlight, was talking, and Jack found himself listening with mild curiosity. It is my profound pleasure, on behalf of not just the people of Spain but of those, the world over, who honor the fight against totalitarianism, who honor liberty, who love freedom, to ask Julius Aaron Sinai, Jack, to the stage. Jackie, hermano: bienvenido!

  He watched his own steps out of the wings with super-real clarity, the girl in the Che T-shirt holding his arm. At the very edge of the stage he stopped her and, kindly, disengaged his arm. Then he was there. Standing in front of the handsome, larger-than-life ambassador and, while the ambassador recited an honorific that he did not hear, slightly dipping his head to allow to be placed the Legion of Honor medal around his neck.

  Then he was staring over the audience, receiving the huge energy of their applause, a wave of noise that seemed to open and enter his heart.

  This, too, was no surprise: he knew the amazing narcotic power of applause, and took what was happening to him for exactly what it was, pure pleasure, no more, no less. Something to drink in, to let bathe you in its heat, while it happened. Then, something to forget, because applause can also corrupt.

  And it was a powerful force. The entire audience, perhaps five, six hundred people, clapping and roaring their attention. It eradicated doubt; it left you unable to feel pain. You felt it in your stomach and arms, not just your ears. Four full generations of Americans. He watched them with benign, warm gratitude, feeling—despite himself—a flush in his cheeks. From the balcony, a girl—college age—gave a long whistle, and a boy answered with a rock-concert shout from the orchestra. And the noise rose, if possible, a bit higher.

  He was not going to give a speech, he knew that now. Just a few words of thanks, when the applause died, short and sweet.

  But the thing was, the applause was not dying.

  9.

  Now what was this? The guy was crying.

  Walt, trying to listen to Duane Street speaking in his ear against the roar of the applause, all the while watching Jason Sinai through the scope.

  “Agent in the field, please advise. We can take the auditorium, or wait for exit and take him quietly. Backup is in position, either way. Please advise as to course of action.”

  Crying. Well. Nor was he alone: scanning left and right with the scope, Walt saw that there was high, very high emotion in the audience. It was the old dude on the stage, he supposed. Some kind of liberal sentimentalism. Their version of his own father’s crying in front of the Vietnam wall. Should he tell Duane Street? But how would he explain it? Worse, how would they take it? He spoke up, loud against the clapping. “Duane Street, advise against any action. This audience could blow in a second. Emotion is high in here. The suspect is actually crying. I’d estimate at least a hundred college students.”

  That point did not need explaining: the possibility of a national scandal—a New York City Waco—was in everyone’s mind. Robbins spoke up, and Walt felt a wave of appreciation in his stomach: “Duane Street, we have three sets of eyes on the subject. This sucker is as good as arraigned already.”

  There was a brief silence in his ear that coincided with a shift in the applause to yet another, higher decibel range as people began to rise through the audience. Walt listened, half to the noise, half to the silence on his earbud. No doubt consultation was occurring at the Federal building, and Walt felt his heart pound. These people were eminently capable of screwing this up.

  “Agents in the field, you are advised to follow the suspect out of the auditorium and, if possible, make the arrest in the lobby or the street. Please confirm.”

  One after another, their soft voices: “Sir yes sir.”

  “Roger.”

  “Got it.”

  The last, breathed on a sigh of relief, was Walt.

  10.

  Dimly Jason Sinai realized that instead of quieting so his father could begin his speech, as if suddenly getting its second wind, the applause had grown, then grown some more. He dipped his head, surreptitiously, so I would not see, into hands and tried to wipe dry his eyes. Crying. Jesus fucking Christ. Then, instinctively, he took my hand and looked around, as if for danger. Here and there people were getting to their feet, then more people, and the clapping was still not stopping but growing, and growing, and a cheer was spreading, a huge, bass-pitched, open-throated cheer. On the stage, he saw the Spanish Ambassador take his father’s arm, leaning over, saying something.

  Jason had risen, by now, with the audience in its thunderous ovation. As if surprised to have done so. And standing, he found himself looking directly across rows of the audience at his father. He felt his breath stop in his chest. He was smaller, of course, and hunched, with none of the vitality Jason remembered: a very, very old man now. But his hair was full, shockingly white, and his gaze was direct and clear.

  Jack Sinai, his father, clearly not quite understanding the ovation, was letting himself be led now to stage right, where two seats awaited him and the ambassador. He sat, and then the ambassador, moving slightly off and turning ceremoniously to face Jack Sinai, joined the applause.

  What was Jack Sinai thinking? Probably something not far different from his son, who pronounced to himself, twice: Good God. Shocked not just by the standing ovation, nor by the occasion, but at the rea
lization of how deeply they needed, these people, a reason to clap. How deeply they needed an occasion to hope. That slim, tiny little struggle over an enemy years and years dead—or not even the victory over an enemy, for they had lost in Spain, but rather victory over despair. It was that they were clapping for, Jason Sinai knew it, and perhaps Jack Sinai did too because, there onstage, slowly he began to recover his composure and to accept with grace this amazing accolade, not for him, he knew, but for something much greater than himself.

  And then at last, at long last, the applause was fading, and the audience was taking its seat. The ambassador sat also. And now, at the lectern which Jack Sinai and the ambassador had vacated for their seats on stage right, a black woman in an evening gown had taken their place, and now the lights were falling, and the clapping silencing, until there was no noise at all in the hall except, when it started, the sudden pure soprano of the young woman, beginning to sing, pronouncing the words in a diction—and singing with a discipline—that revealed professional training, words that Jack Sinai had never thought to hear sung again:

  Arise, you prisoners of starvation.

  Arise, you wretched of the earth

  For justice thunders condemnation,

  For a better world’s in birth.

  For a long moment, listening to the girl’s voice, Jason sat as if a spotlight had been dropped not on his father, but on him, stunned.

  And then a new sound was added: a thin, high, reedy soprano, and Jason turned to the balcony to see an ancient woman in black standing also and joining the girl across the sixty years between them.

  No more tradition’s change shall bind us.

  Arise you slaves, no more in thrall.

  The earth shall rise on new foundation

  We have been naught, we shall be all.

  And from there, of course, in the way that will happen in crowds, the mood of the audience shifted suddenly, nearly instantly, and in one smooth motion, as if choreographed, the audience was on its feet again and singing together, open throated:

  So comrades, come rally

  And the last fight let us face

  The Internationale

  Unites the human race.

  Unable to stop himself, Jason rose to his feet again, too, and as he did so, the house lights came up: someone had decided, while they sang, to light the audience. Staring at his father in disbelief as his father sat and watched out at the audience with an expression that defied description, but might be called amazement, a long, slow pan from left to right, coming ever closer, ever closer, until Jason, as frozen in the headlights, as if powerless to act, felt his father’s gaze fall directly upon him, and stop there for a long moment before Jason, his knees literally giving way, sat.

  11.

  Jack Sinai thinking: no man should have to take this. It is just too much. The soprano had changed languages, but a huge portion of the audience was following her:

  Debout, les damnés de la terre

  Debout, les forçats de la faim

  La raison tonne en son cratère

  C’est l’éruption de la fin.

  L’éruption de la fin. For God’s sake. No man should have to take this, but especially no man who had had the day he had had. Onstage, Jack sat heavily in his chair, looking out at the audience, lighted now by house lights, watching the multitude—on their feet again, singing their hearts out—with the grace he could muster, nodding to the many, many people he knew there beyond the stage as the thunderous song went on, and on, and on: his son, Danny; his wife, Eleanor; Maggalah and Laura, and behind them Raymond Hermann, an old fellow traveler from the Vietnam years, and up to the right young Alan McGowan, one of the very last to be blacklisted, in the ’60s, and over a bit Ellen Greenberg, who had worked on Owen Lattimore’s defense with him, and Harry Farmer from Defense and Aid, and Joe Salvatore from the Lawyers Guild, and Donald Black, Jasey and Danny’s pediatrician, a Red Diaper baby himself, who seemed to be in tears.

  But as the song went on, it was a face he didn’t know that kept attracting his attention, directly across the audience now, from his new position on stage right. The face of a middle-aged man, nearly bald, with just the remnants of red hair under his baseball cap, in a corduroy jacket, not singing but silent, and Jack asked himself, why does this man seem so familiar?

  Du passé faisons table rase

  Foules, esclaves, debout, debout

  Le monde va changer de base

  Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout

  And then it came, slowly, like a sodden object released from the deeps rising with Brownian indirection to the surface.

  I knew it!

  Jack Sinai’s heart leapt into life, an acceleration so rapid he was not sure he could bear it. Was he going to collapse? No—but his vision swam and for a moment, a long moment, he looked down at the ground.

  He was, in fact, nearly scared to look up.

  But then he did, and when he did, he found a hole in the audience where the man had been. Had he sat down? Jack stared and stared, not willing to lose the spot in the audience where, a moment ago, he had seen the face of his son.

  12.

  A slight panic had risen in Walt as the audience began to sing, then grown as it stood up again, and then blossomed when, watching Jason, he saw that the man’s face had dissolved in tears. Why was that? What was this fucking song? What language was this?

  Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,

  die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!

  Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde

  nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.

  Something about this noise, this high emotion, made him feel he was losing control. Should they take Sinai out? It was time for a decision. Smoothly, without a thought, he pivoted on his left foot into the backstage, out of sight, and pulled the night scope off his face.

  He turned and experienced a brief disorientation when he found himself right behind Jack Sinai and the Spanish Ambassador. The girl in the Che T-shirt was staring at him in shock. Staring back, holding her gaze, Walt reached out his shield and held it up. He put a finger over his lips, shh. Then spoke into his mic, shouted really, over the huge noise of the audience singing, in English again, roaring really:

  So comrades, come rally

  And the last fight let us face

  The Internationale

  Unites the human race.

  The Internationale

  Unites the human race.

  “Richard, Michael, I am made, repeat, I am made. Take him out now, repeat now, before the singing ends.”

  Mike’s voice came back, nearly inaudible in the background noise. “Lost my view. Richard, you have a sight line?”

  A long moment of terror for Walt. Then, thank God: “Can’t miss him. He’s standing, holding his daughter, in a baseball cap. He’s crying his fucking eyes out. I’m heading up, can you see me? Follow my vector, come straight down and grab him from behind.”

  “Roger, I am moving. Walt, hold tight boy.”

  Staring at the girl in the Che T-shirt, as if his gaze were physical, Walt did more than hold tight. He held his breath.

  13.

  There was someone on the edge of the stage. There was someone on the fucking edge of the fucking stage.

  In the dimness at the edge of the audience, Jason Sinai saw someone pivoting into the backstage, and every bone in his body moved to stand up.

  Had stood up. Had grabbed my hand and started toward the emergency exit, like a skeleton clanking, toward the exit, all levers and ball joints, physics, no muscle, all will. All the while that the audience roared and roared:

  The Internationale

  Unites the human race.

  The Internationale

  Unites the human race.

  14.

  But what was this? Jack Sinai turned. In the corner of his right eye someone had jumped down a short flight of stairs from the stage wings to the audience, and began running toward the rear along the rail.

  Singing had
given way to cheering, a last, huge cheer, and Jack stood. There was something happening in the audience. He craned his neck, but it was impossible to see clearly into the standing audience. Two men were sweeping toward the emergency exit, carrying a struggling man between them. The man, in turn, held a child. The other man, who had run from the stage, was running toward them. Then it was all lost in the sea of people. What was this? Had anyone seen? It all happened so quickly, and apparently, no one noticed, because the thunderous applause went on, wave after wave after wave.

  15.

  Someone was running toward him, hard; the harsh feel of a large man’s oncoming strength, something he had not felt for decades. Then, he would have responded with rage. Now, Jason Sinai slowed to face his capture. Two obvious cops, huge men, hands on holsters under their jackets, were coming toward him. In the corner of his eye there was a third, running up from the audience. For a moment, everything froze, suspended in the deafening applause.

  And in a sudden second, he surrendered.

  And then all sense stopped as the three passed him, converged on a man down the last row of seats, standing clutching, and lifted him bodily over the seat back. Then two, holding him by the arms, rushed him toward the emergency exit, his Red Sox baseball hat falling off his head, while the third lifted a child, a little girl, out of her seat and ran after them.

  Brad Flanagan tried to shout, but one of the cops had a hand over his mouth; he tried to struggle, but in an instant they were out the door, his Red Sox baseball cap on the ground the only proof that anything had happened.

  Jason Sinai, dragging me, moving on dead muscles, muscles paralyzed by the intellectual overriding of their irresistible instinct to flee, turned sharply left, crossed the auditorium behind the back row, stepping on the Red Sox cap as he went, and went out through the main exit.

  In the hallway he stepped sideways into the bathroom, took off his jacket and cap and stuffed both into a garbage can. Now he rushed me to the edge of the lobby and stopped, watching a phalanx of agents bundling the man and his daughter out the front door into the street. Holding my hand, he turned left and strolled through the cafeteria to the courtyard exit, through the courtyard to West Street and then, and then, as soon as we were around the corner, began to run, free, still, so improbably, free.