by Nigel Dennis
All the company shuddered; but at this critical moment, when whole days of matter-of-fact behaviour might have flown up the chimney, Lily retained her grasp of basic things. “I have told you twice before, Art,” she said, “that it was the Nazis, not the Germans, … who … did that to Max.” A flash of anger and emotion came into her cool face, and she said to the company: “I just don’t know how, or where, or who, he made that identification, but it does burn me up to think that perhaps some loose-mouth … and when he’s no older than five.” “I’ll bet!” said Heather, suddenly reaching for Lily’s hand and pressing it affectionately. “I just will not believe,” said Lily, “that he got Germans from me … And, in any case, Art,” she continued, “Mr. Morgan knows all about it already, so you don’t have to tell him anything.” “Do you know?” said Art, staring at the visitor—and suddenly his father’s swarthy suspicion appeared in every feature. “Yes, I do; I promise,” said Morgan, as pale as if he had seen Divver’s ghost. Art turned away with some disappointment. “C’mon, now!” Mort cried, “how’s about our little game?” “Who told you?” said Art. “Your mother, of course,” said Morgan, and Art collected his darts, giving his mother a resentful glance. “You throw first,” said Mort.
The bell rang, and Heather worked the buzzer. “I’m pretty sure that’s Morgenstern,” said Lily, “so if you’ll take care of him, Mort.” “Sure will,” said Mort, laying down his darts. “Play!” cried Art. “No, dear, Heather and I will play with you,” said Lily; “Mort has to look after Dr. Morgenstern.” “What’s he coming for?” “He’s coming to take some things away, dear.” “Why is a doctor coming?” “He’s not a real doctor, Artie; just very bright and from another country, so they call him doctor.”
Willi Morgenstern appeared in the doorway. His face was pre-arranged into the doleful contours that he presumed would be appropriate in America at such a time: but the women responded with bright smiles and waves of the hand, and Mort took him firmly by the elbow and led him away to the bedroom. When Art followed them, Lily caught his shoulder and pulled him back. “Heather and I have got a surprise to tell you,” she said.
They held Art between them, and Lily, with interjections from Heather, began to spin a very long story, inventing as she went along, unrolling a trip in the near future to the Bronx Zoo—“and ice cream after the seals, of course,” said Heather. From the bedroom, Morgan could hear Mort’s comments: “… any tailor who’s half-way decent … now that’s a real good tweed …” and Willi Morgenstern’s less confident replies: “… so large at the waist too … and the hat, of course, impossible … but the stockings wonderful: I badly need: I am deeply grateful …” “Take everything,” said Mort; “I am sure you have a friend you could pass things on to. We’ll just heap everything into these suitcases … there … just pile it all in.” “So, are you excited?” concluded Lily, leading Art into the kitchen, “and tomorrow at school you can invite any boy or girl you want to come too.” “I’ll invite Nobby.” “O.K. Nobby’s the lucky boy.”
Soon, Willi Morgenstern emerged from the bedroom, a large suitcase in each hand, uncertain what to do next. “So long, Dr. Morgenstern!” Lily called from the kitchen; “see you again soon.” “Thank you, it would be a pleasure,” stammered the doctor, and Mort threw open the apartment door. “I guess it’s time for me to run too,” said Morgan, jumping up. “Thanks for coming!” cried Lily: “be seeing you.” “Goodbye,” said Heather; “S’long,” said Mort. “Where’s he going, mom?” “To another place, dear.”
Downstairs, Morgan relieved the doctor of one of the suitcases. At the corner, Dr. Morgenstern bought a newspaper and looked at the headlines, nodding in a satisfied way. “I said all this would happen, in 1928,” he said; “but everyone in the world told me I was crazy.”
Outside the subway, they stopped at a caféteria for a cup of coffee. “Tell me now,” said the doctor, tapping one of the suitcases, “who was this gentleman who was the husband of one of those ladies? Somebody told me he was killed by the Germans. Where? How? What was he doing to be killed? They try not to kill Americans, normally.”
“Nobody seems to know exactly. He was trapped in the Polish Corridor. He was a reporter; a hell of a nice guy.”
“So … But that is a very tragic thing, no?”
“Sure.”
“Then why does the lady present in her trousers?”
“So that she can relax.”
“You mean that in her heart she is too femininely tense?”
“That’s right.”
“You see, I have to learn these things. I am here already one year, but still I am a stranger to the new customs. Now, you have told me a new fact, so I thank you: when a husband dies, a lady in America puts on the trousers, relaxing through rejection of her feminine role … how psychologically curious is this disguise! Or is it her unconscious desire to show that in this tragic moment only the masculine principle is deserving of reverence? Or perhaps it is she plays a profound game, hoping in her mad pain that her husband still survives, in the fact of trousers. Or again: no doubt she is ashamed, like all unmarried women, to have no husband, and so she hides her inferiority under a masculine symbol. How wonderful! I could think of a dozen more interpretations, all of equal merit … But after a period, when the new suitor comes to her door, then she again assumes her skirt?”
“I’ve no idea, Dr. Morgenstern: I don’t think it’s anything definite like that.”
“There must always be a definition. Slowly, I will learn all. What is your work?”
“Nothing. I go to college soon.”
“Oh; then you are very young?”
“Eighteen.”
“But eighteen is nothing! All your life is still before you. What will you do when you leave the university?”
“I have decided it is better to wait until then before I make up my mind.”
“Is that the American custom?”
“I never thought.”
“What is the difference between good-bye and so-long?”
“So-long means I’ll see you again; good-bye means I probably won’t or don’t want to.”
“Then good-bye is very rude—just for the office-boy?”
“That depends.”
“But so-long is better, safer?”
“I guess so.”
“Then so-long, my young friend, and thank you for your assistance. I wish you good luck in your university.”
They shook hands, and Willi, bowed under his heavy inheritance, descended into the subway.
*
It was almost dark when he reached home, and he was chilly and nervous. His mother had lit a fine fire in the living-room and was seated beside it in a deep chair, turning over some papers and looking very motherly. He gave her a warm kiss, which pleased her greatly, and stood in front of the logs warming his hands, losing his nervousness in the homey cosiness. “I didn’t enjoy my visit one bit,” he said.
“Poor Jimmy, naturally you didn’t. I would have suggested your not making it, if it weren’t that I promised to let you make all your own decisions. Was Lily very upset?”
“Not especially. I decided not to tell her what I told you: somehow I felt it was none of her business … Who are the Stones?”
“Very old friends of the Divvers. Heather was at school with Lily, I think; and Mort has a most stimulating mind. Were they there?”
“Yes. And the little boy.”
“Poor Jimmy! Well, it’s all over and done with now.”
“Thank God!”
He warmed himself a little longer, in silence, his mother gently watching him. “I’m not sure how to put it,” he said, “but, in the Divver issue is there going to be much that is personal and human about Max; or will it just be about his politics?”
“Oh, all his human side: we are doing our best to show that he was a real person. Beef Collins has done what I think is a wonderfully life-like drawing of him: he knew Max slightly, and Lily gave him some old photographs to work fr
om. The union tributes are very warm and vigorous, and Hecky Putnam has sent a poem which, in my opinion, will be in all the ’39 anthologies.”
She handed him the exhibits, and the sight of so many columns clustered around Divver’s repeated name made him feel much happier. “I don’t care what they say so much,” he explained, “just so long as they don’t give people the feeling that he was dry and cold. I suppose I feel that way because I learnt so much from him.”
“Naturally. No, all his human qualities are there: his sense of humour, his modesty, his frankness, his love and tolerance. We are also printing a beautiful letter he once wrote to Lily from Denmark.”
“You know, he advised me to go to college, and I think he was right: I should like to go.” For a moment he saw the warmth of the hearth replaced by an icy circle of indefatigable searchers after basic truth, and became nervous again; but his mother’s pride and pleasure in his decision helped him to swallow the medicine. “I won’t learn anything,” he said, “but I ought to get hardened to the idea of resisting friends, of saying no when I would rather say yes, of maintaining my prejudices and irresponsibility in all social questions.”
“My dear Jimmy! What a very strange reason for going to college!”
“I learnt it from Max. I forget how, exactly. Oh, what the hell!”
His mother was very puzzled, but she soon resumed her papers, saying: ‘Well, the main thing is that you are going, and the past is the past … But time is short, so I must ask you to say quickly if you find any inaccuracies in the Divver issue.”
“I am sure it will all be O.K. I don’t have any desire to interfere any more. So long as I can remember the surface truth of the matter, you can do what you like with the basic and social.”
“Here are the union tributes, and the State Department piece. After what you said yesterday, we have had to modify our attack but we have still left it as a kind of challenge. The fact that they just happen to be in the clear, for once, does not, we decided yesterday, mean that they usually are, or that we should seem to approve their general conduct of foreign relations. I think we have written something which shows that although we don’t insist on the question of how poor Max died, it is our duty to ask how our bureaucrats feel in regard to the principles for which he lived. In short, I think we have retained our integrity in all directions; and, what’s more, have not lost the human touch. A lot of hard work and careful thought have gone into it; poor Untermeyer spent all last night re-working it.”
“Didn’t he ask why it had to be re-worked?”
“No, dear. Untermeyer always takes my word.”
She rose, a tall, impressive figure, and handed him the manuscript. “Supper in fifteen minutes,” she said. “How very nice is it to have you back, dear Jimmy!”; and kissing him on the forehead she passed out to the staircase. Alone, in the warm, rosy firelight, he took up the manuscript and read
AN OPEN LETTER TO SECRETARY HULL
September 15, 1939
Forward,
2, Rockefeller Avenue,
New York, N.Y.
My dear Mr. Hull,
I know that in these desperately critical days, you are overburdened with international problems and decisions and have little time to spare for lesser matters. Furthermore, I am sure that you find it just as irritating to hear my opinions on State Department matters as I would find it to hear yours on the editing of a weekly magazine. But perhaps we can agree that each of us shows, precisely in his irritation, a characteristic common to human beings? I hope so, because it is about a human being that I am writing this letter.
I doubt if you ever heard of my friend Max Divver. Probably you are wondering why, with half the world in flames, Forward should be devoting two-thirds of this issue to a nonentity. If you will give me fifteen minutes of your time and patience I shall do my best to give you an explanation.
Max Divver is no longer alive; he died in the Polish Corridor two weeks ago. Neither you nor I, Mr. Hull, knows how, specifically, he met his death. However, your Polish diplomats are only too content to set the matter aside as an unfortunate accident. Will you take offence, Mr. Hull, if I say frankly that I would expect them to take just that attitude? I trust not. You are a bigger man than that.
But what I most want to talk to you about is not Max Divver’s death but something more important—his life. I think you will understand, because your own life, Mr. Hull, has been long, and full of creative experiences. Like most of us Americans, like Max Divver, you are not the pampered scion of some established lineage. You have rubbed shoulders with all sorts of men. From 1893 to 1897 you served in the Spanish-American War, in which you rose to the rank of captain. Later, you became a judge of the Circuit Court in your native Tennessee. After that, you served your state and your nation for thirty years, first as Representative, then as Senator. Between 1913 and 1916 you were engaged, despite reactionary opposition, in revising the outmoded Federal tax laws respecting income, estate and inheritance. You also devoted twenty full years to the House Ways and Means Committee. Largely through your efforts the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act became law in 1934—permitting you, when you assumed your present crucial office, to conclude valuable commercial treaties with more than a score of nations. Meanwhile, you have done your utmost to make the name of this country sound less odious in Latin-American ears; and last May you requested the Congress you had so recently left to permit the sale of arms to non-aggressor nations.
All this is of great interest to me, because I do not believe that in the course of your ascent to broad international objectives you have ever lost sight of the individual human beings without whom, of course, there would be no need for trade-agreements and, in fact, no nations with which to conclude them. But I wonder if I am able—or, for that matter, if you are able—to feel the same trust in your subordinates, in members of the State Department at home and abroad? I wonder, for example, if any one of those polished gentlemen of Yale and Harvard entered your office when Max Divver died, and tried to explain to you the nature of his life and fate? I doubt that anyone did so do; and so, Mr. Hull, with your permission I will try to make a brief explanation myself.
Let me begin with a certain winter day about ten years ago. There was a strike in New York. It was not any big, important strike—just a handful of men and girls asking their employer for a few more dollars, and perhaps a little more justice. Max Divver had no business being there; the strike wasn’t “news.” An icy wind was driving up Sixth Avenue: he was an editor with plenty of work on his hands, and a steam-heated office where no one would have thought him wrong for being. Nonetheless, it was on Sixth Avenue that he had taken up his stand, and when I asked him why, he hung his head, raised it to look at the shivering pickets and their crude signs, and replied: “Oh, I just wondered what it was all about. So I stopped.”
Max Divver always stopped, Mr. Hull. He stopped because he was always ready to be halted by injustice—while others, for whom oppression existed more in theory than in practice, “advanced” to more abstract, better-heated horizons, leaving the winds of Sixth Avenue to worriers and zealots. But any one of his co-workers, from editors to typists, could tell you, Mr. Hull, that fancy notions of progress were not in Max Divver’s philosophy. He had a brain, and a finely-tuned brain, as readers of this magazine well know; but he thought of himself primarily as a responsible person, one who independently must stop, examine, and act.
I do not suggest that his beliefs were individualistic. On the contrary, his singularity sprang specifically from his conviction of being part of a social entity, universal in scope. He was the first American to enter the lair of Fascism and meet the dictator face to face (that was before your day as Secretary, Mr. Hull); he has become the first American to lay down his life in the face of an even more savage reign of terror (that is in your day as Secretary, Mr. Hull.)
He did so in the act of saving a friend’s life. That too was typical of Max Divver, Mr. Hull. He had gone to Poland at his own request
because he could not endure to be in safekeeping while thousands suffered. He believed he had to go there—to stop, to see for himself, and to report. It was not by your order, or by ours for that matter, that he reached, alone, the conclusion that it was his human, social and cultural duty to join the Polish army. And, on that grim September day, it was not part of his assignment to leave the relative safety of the port of Tutin and scour an abandoned village in the Polish Corridor for a missing friend. But he knew that friend, Mr. Hull. He knew that that friend was of special concern to the democratic world. He considered that man’s work more important than his own safety. That was all.
We, who are left behind, may believe that Divver was probably too generous. Modesty was as much a part of him as fearlessness. Max Divver’s courage, Mr. Hull, was the rarest kind —a readiness to stop and identify himself with human situations that were below the dignity of men with a position to keep up. Max Divver recognized only one position; namely, a position based upon social principles, and activated.
He became a New Yorker and a respected editor. But his birthplace was an Iowa suburb. This meant, in his case, a natural affinity with, and equal understanding for, the problems of farmer and factory-hand alike. Similarly, he both was and was not a product of the prevalent forces of his era. He imbibed and retained the independent questioning nature of the Middle-West, even as he socially shook off those of its values that were suffocating, outworn or rotten. He brought to New York a mind already eager for new intellectual avenues but still retentive of a sturdy native skepticism. The nature of his death might lead you, Mr. Hull, to envision him as an eccentric Don Quixote of the machine-age. I beg you not to do so! His death, like his life, was a decision based on the facts at issue, a last stop in a life of stopping, a voluntary tribute to the human and intellectual demands of his time.
