Duke of Deception

by Geoffrey Wolff

  “Is my father a Jew?”

  “Not that I know of. He never went to a synagogue.”

  “Was his father a Jew?”

  “Not in the regular sense. He didn’t believe in God.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. You know what I mean.”

  “Well, roughly speaking, I guess you could call him a Jew, yes. But not your grandmother, I’m quite sure of that, so you’re only a quarter Jewish.”

  “My grandmother wasn’t a Jew?”

  “Well, maybe she was. Yes, I guess she was. She was in Hadassah, a wonderful lady.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I promised your father I wouldn’t.”

  “But why, dammit!”

  “I don’t know, maybe to spare you the pain he felt. There never seemed to be a right time for it. When you were with me you were so young. Then it was his problem. I don’t know.”

  Even before he knew what schlemiel meant Toby announced that he wanted to leave for Israel and a kibbutz; later he said he wanted to fight Arabs in the Six-Day War, but then the sixth day came, and the seventh, and he was still here. I went around for a few weeks after my talk with my mother telling all my friends I was a Jew. I thought I was; I had long ago converted to Jewish habits of mind, as I understood them from books: melancholy, acid humor, skepticism. These attitudes suited me, just as British manners had suited my father. When I told my friends I was a Jew most of them said sure, of course, so what?

  A member of Priscilla’s family flew four hundred miles to tell her, a month before we were married, that if she didn’t care herself about the consequences of a “mixed marriage,” she should “think of the children.” They’d never be welcome in Hobe Sound, or Delray, or some other place on the Atlantic coast of Florida. My wife laughed, and became my wife.

  Ten years later my older son, Nicholas, came home from school with a question I had asked my father:

  “Am I a Jew? What’s a Jew?”

  I tried to answer him seriously. I explained that Jews didn’t think of me as a Jew because I didn’t worship as a Jew and wasn’t raised as one. Israel didn’t think of me as a Jew: under the Law of Return you are a Jew only if your mother is a Jew. My mother was Irish Catholic …

  “You’re talking about Granny?”

  “Yes.”

  Then I explained to Nicholas that his paternal great-grandparents were a German-Jewish believer born in Scotland and an atheist Jew born in England. His mother’s people were of gentile English stock. His question was difficult to answer. But he answered it, telling his little brother, who had been listening:

  “Hey, Justin, you’re a mutt.”

  “You too,” Justin said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  My mother and brother were at our wedding; my father was in prison again, bad checks or grand theft or defrauding an innkeeper. Toby was in the Army. I sent my father rent money, one hundred fifty a month when he was free, and California merchants dunned me for his debts. I bought a used Volvo to get me to work at The Washington Post, where my father wrote telling me he wanted a BMW, “a damned sensible vehicle.” He could get one with only a thousand miles on it, a “demo.” I could make the down payment, carry the monthlies, what did I say? I said no, and stopped writing. The letters kept coming in from strangers around Los Angeles. My father set beds on fire in the fleabags where he lit from time to time. An ex-cellmate called me at the office collect to sell me information, he knew a “fairy actor” who knew who killed Kennedy, how much was it worth, “your old man said to call.”

  I got a letter from Mrs. Ira Levenson. She had known all us Wolffs during the war, when we lived in Manhattan Beach and shopped at her husband’s grocery store. She had just seen my father:

  Dear Sir:

  Mr. Levenson and I made our first visit in our lives, yesterday, to ANY jail, and the impact of what we saw, and experienced in the L.A. County Jail, where we saw your father, caged and bewildered, sick in mind and body, is indeed an indelible impression and memory, not easy to forget or erase. We talked; I should say we bellowed at one another through the heavy wire, over the noise and din of hundreds of inmates and their visitors clawing their fingers, straining their eyes and ears against the caging.

  I told your father of our telephone conversation, and explained to him that you believe he can and will best be served and assisted if you do not at this time attempt to clear away all the criminal charges against him by paying off his bad checks and all the other indebtedness he has incurred, by charges and unpaid rents and damages to property, etc., etc. I told him it would be wise and desirable for him to co-operate with you in your effort to gain medical care and hospitalization for him. He is a lost soul, and he wailed “What can I do? Can’t I go East to my son?”

  I further tried to explain to your father that this would be quite impossible all things being as they are today and then he asked me “Do you believe my son will get me out of here?”

  I tried to assure him that you will make every effort to help him to help himself, and that you may even find it possible to come to Los Angeles yourself. My opinion is that unless your father’s dilemma is forthwith dealt with through channels of kinship, understanding, and human kindness and if your father’s physical and mental failings are not given first consideration over and above the many other failings that undoubtedly are the result and outcome of these failures, then my guess is that Arthur S. Wolff III can be written off right here and now, with all his fine education, background and various degrees etc., etc.

  Because we knew your father many years ago, Geoffrey, and the sight of him handcuffed in the courtroom first, and the sickening visit I had with him in the jail yesterday, I found it impossible to write you just a brief note about all this. The fact that you phoned as soon as you heard about your father is a gratifying and honorable gesture. All of us here are pleased for your father’s sake that you called. In fact, when I told him yesterday that I came to see him on your request, and gave him your message and said you would write him immediately, his bulky frame shook as the tears left his eyes …

  I asked Ben Bradlee to help, and he did. He arranged for Newsweek’s Los Angeles bureau chief to visit my father. What Karl Fleming saw in jail is what the Levensons had seen, the wreck of a desperado. Fleming gave him pocket money, and tried to cheer him, but no one could set him free, of prison or himself. He served a year, was released.

  Toby stopped off to see him in Manhattan Beach on his way to Vietnam in 1967 as a first lieutenant in the Green Berets:

  “The first time I saw him I didn’t know it was him. He was just an old geezer, staring at the surf, with white stubble on his face and little white globs of hair sticking out of his ears. What did I feel about him? I felt pity. I wanted to give him a nice couple of days. We had a pretty good time, a couple of laughs. He was very seedy, hesitant. He’d lost his power. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. His clothes were tacky, and not clean. He was no Tom Buchanan, just an old Hebe. He had B.O. He said you were a sell-out suburbanite. He deplored many things. He had met Joe Pyne. You remember Pyne, the television patriot? Pyne also deplored many things. He seemed to like the old man, from a distance. The old man took me to meet Pyne at a marina. Pyne was scouring the teak decks of his yacht. He looked like he hoped the old man would offer to help, but he didn’t.”

  He was using assumed names now. His favorite was Saunders Ansell-Wolff III. He opened an account at the Bank of America under the name, and used a bad check to buy a watch. He was caught, tried, convicted. Sent to Chino. He had his hand almost cut off at the wrist after a fight with another Chino inmate about whether to watch I Spy or Run for Your Life on the cellblock television set. I thought he’d kill himself. What else could he do? I tried to imagine the desolation of his life. Books and movies with their dialogues must have been an awful affront to a solitary, sociable man. No hope. I thought he’d kill himself because he never shot off at his mouth about killing himself.

  But he didn
’t, and he didn’t, and he didn’t. One day I got a rational, blunt letter. It came from prison, said I had sold myself at discount writing book reviews for The Washington Post. Never mind, the letter said: he could be released immediately into my custody, two years early, it was up to me. My father didn’t beg, all he said was this: “I’d like to leave here, now, and live with you and Priscilla. What do you say?”

  A District of Columbia probation officer came to see us. He was a black man, soft-voiced and gentle. He said that while the District of Columbia had no special appetite for my father’s presence, he was no grave menace to society. Here was an opportunity for my father, if I wanted to take it. My father would have to live with us. The parole officer noticed that my wife was pregnant:

  “Maybe the place would be too crowded with a father-in-law under the roof?”

  The probation officer gave me my father’s “rap sheet,” as he called it, his record. It reported my father’s sworn statement to the probation officials of the state of California that he had “graduated from Deerfield Academy when he was 17 years old and subsequently obtained a degree at Yale University, matriculated at the Sorbonne in Paris, France in Aeronautical Engineering, obtaining a master’s degree, he states.”

  It also remarked that he had been committed in 1963 to Norwalk State Hospital as mentally ill. The defendant was diagnosed by a Metropolitan State Hospital psychiatrist as psychoneurotic reaction, depressive reaction. He states he recently had surgery at Los Angeles County General Hospital that involved the blood circulation from his waist to his knees. He has no religious preference. He has not been a member of any organizations other than the Racquet Club in New York and spends his leisure time hunting, playing golf, and reading. Attached to this report is Defendant’s written statement in which he says in part that the last five years have been a great disappointment to him … He states he has two sons, one of which is the Editor of The Washington Post and the other is awaiting his commission in the Airborne Special Forces, so he does not feel that his life has been entirely inadequate. The first one is named Geoffrey.

  Under the rubric “Interested Parties” my father’s record included a letter from the chief psychiatrist of Norwalk State Mental Hospital. For the sake of the record this letter appeared in the language of abbreviation, thus:

  “First mental hospitalization [sic] June 11, 1963, some history excessive use of Dexamyl and Doriden, possible alcohol excesses, at least two suicdal attempts drug ingestion (1962 and 1963) and one to two arrests for failure to pay bills [sic]. Course in hospital: group and individual therapy, Thorazine 101 mgm daily, ineffectual industrial performance in warehouse. Two assaults on other patients and much lying during interviews.” (My father had been told by his young analyst that the only way out of the deep hole he was in was by way of the truth. Now, asked the analyst, what was my father’s most recent line of work before his arrest?

  “I was a psychoanalyst, actually,” my father told the psychoanalyst.)

  The profile continued: “Left arm now healed and functions normally. Patient is suitable for unskilled labor. Long range prognosis is poor for social and economic rehabilitation. Discharge to self. 6-16-63: Social Service Note: Approved by the ward team for discharge—patient advanced many excuses for remaining in the hospital. He was given $5 by the hospital and a referral card to the Bureau of Public Assistance. Patient had become an irritant on the ward, and there were many complaints from patients and ward staff about his provocative personality traits. Discharged improved, nonpsychotic.”

  “In other words,” I asked the probation officer, “they sent him away from the state mental hospital because his behavior was abnormal and unpleasant?”

  “More or less. You want him here?”

  The probation officer looked at his watch. It was dinnertime. I looked at my father’s record. There it was, his biography, in part:

  Arrest Record:

  Sources of Information:

  10-15-41 LAPD—TRAFFIC WARRANT—NO DISPO.

  7-30-42 SO, SAN DIEGO—DRUNK—7-30-42, $25 OR $2 PER DAY.

  12-21-45 PD, BURBANK—APPLICATION CHIEF PROJECT ENGINEER

  12-28-45 PD, HERMOSA BEACH—DRUNK DRIVING—RELEASED $250 BAIL.

  4-23-54 PD, NEW LONDON, CONN.—DRUNK DRIVING—NOT GUILTY, FINED $60 ON RECKLESS DRIVING.

  9-13-58 PD, WESTPORT, CONN.—FRAUD CHECKS—12-1-58 DISMISSED.

  3-11-60 LAPD—23102 (DRUNK DRIVING MISDEMEANOR)—3-11-60 $250 OR 10 DAYS, $125 OR 5 DAYS SUSP., PAID FINE.

  8-14-61 LASO—487.3 (GRAND THEFT AUTO); 10851 VC (UNLAWFUL TAKING OF VEHICLE)—10-20-61, 10851 VC SENTENCED TO TIME SERVED, COUNT ONE DISMISSED.

  10-20-61 LAPD—WARRANT, TRAFFIC, 21453A VC; 537 PC (NEWPORT BEACH)—10-23-61

  SENTENCED TO ONE DAY. $10 OR 2 DAYS SUSP.

  10-26-61 SO, SANTA ANA, CALIF.—537 PC WARRANT—11-1-61 CASE DISMISSED.

  11-9-61 PD, SAN DIEGO—GRAND THEFT, DEFRAUDING INNKEEPER—11-10-61 RELEASED, GRAND THEFT.

  12-15-61 SO, SAN DIEGO—ILLEGAL U TURN & FAILURE TO APPEAR—NO DISPO.

  4-17-62 SO, SAN DIEGO—TRAFFIC, 8 VIOLATIONS—NO DISPO.

  7-1-62 PD, DOWNEY—TRAFFIC WARRANT FROM LAPD—POSTED BAIL.

  9-27-62 PD, SANTA MONICA—WARRANT SAN DIEGO, TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS—9-28-62 BAIL POSTED

  1-3-63 SO, SANTA ANA, CALIF.—484 PC (PETTY THEFT); 487 PC (GRAND THEFT), WARRANT—HOLDING FOR THE D.A. 7-1-63 DISMISSED.

  1-23-63 PD, SANTA MONICA—INTOXICATION, GLUE SNIFFING—6-5-63 DISMISSED

  9-19-63 LASO—DISORDERLY CONDUCT & DRUNK—ARRESTED BY CHP; NO DISP.

  9-9-65 LASO—476A PC (CHECKS NSF); ON WARRANT FROM LAPD—PRESENT OFFENSE.

  There it was, up to date except for UNLAWFUL FLIGHT TO AVOID PROSECUTION after he jumped bail in 1961, and his conviction for littering in Newtown, Connecticut. The “present offense” was the purchase of a wrist watch from a jeweler, Donavan & Seamans, with a check for $248.70 from an account that had been closed more than four years. My father didn’t need the watch—he had a dozen others—and he finally gave it to Toby on Toby’s way to Vietnam. The watch cost him two years in Chino.

  In the summer of 1968, when my father was free of crime and institutional punishment for the last time, I wrote a novel, Bad Debts; it suggests with considerable accuracy how I (or the cruel cartoon of myself I called Caxton) felt about a prospective association with my father (Freeman) in Washington, D.C. The following scene is set at a dinner party. The hostess is a Georgetown legend for her dinner parties:

  There was not a person there (wives excluded) whose face Caxton did not immediately recognize and there was not a person there to whom Caxton had previously been introduced … The guests included an associate justice of the Supreme Court … the Secretary of State, three senators, an ambassador and five journalists (one managing editor and four columnists) … The hostess’ manner when she introduced Caxton implied that they were very old friends indeed. That they were not, she seemed to promise him, would be their secret. She prodded him for his opinions, encouraged him to talk about himself. Yet she was perfectly discreet; she never asked for information that might possibly compromise his work or injure his feelings. She asked no questions about Caxton’s opinion of his colleagues, no questions about where he was born or whom he had by way of parents. The party represented perfectly what Washington at its best gave the illusion of being: a meritocracy.

  And Caxton had been forewarned of the bounds within which he would be expected to confine himself: no sham humility, no ungoverned laughter, no strongly held opinions forcefully expressed. By the fish course Caxton was secure … There had been no ruptures in the plain cloth of his discourse, he had refused a third glass of wine (to the evident satisfaction of the managing editor) and he was about to enjoy the company of the younger of his two attractive companions when the table turned with a change of courses. Then the butler went to the hostess. And she said, “Caxton dear, your father seems to be at the door.”

  It was a holocaust. The hos
tess insisted that Freeman be brought to the table and served wine (“Why didn’t you tell me your father would be here? You are very wicked—we would have been honored to have him.”) And Freeman, without the slightest hesitation, dressed in khaki trousers and a tweed jacket (and wearing Caxton’s Princeton tie—black with orange tigers dancing upon it …), pulled up a chair as though he were joining a poker game and shook hands all round.

  Caxton remembered asking, choking the question past his furious blush, when Freeman had arrived. And his father, smiling cheerfully, replied that he had hitched a ride up from Charlottesville with a truck driver. He had found the hostess’ invitation stuck in his son’s mirror. “What took you to Charlottesville?” someone asked him. “Passing through when the Bentley blew up on me,” he replied. “Damned nuisance, really.”

  It got worse. Caxton had never heard him talk so much … or heard his inventions come forth so fantastically unfinished. At the table were half a dozen men known by Caxton to have been in the OSS during the war: Freeman spoke obsessively of his secret assignments and near escapes. The managing editor was a trustee of Yale, and the same age as Freeman. So Caxton’s father spoke disdainfully of an imaginary colleague in “Bones” whose imaginary name was an amalgam of the family names of two of the men who sat with him at the table …

  He asked the hostess whether she got to New York often (he called it “The City”) and when she said that she did not much go there, he said, “Pity. You’re missing fine theater, music, best food in the world.” When he was asked what at the theater had entertained him recently he had no answer, didn’t even try to bluff out an answer. He shrugged …

  Caxton insisted that he and his father had to leave. The hostess did not urge them to stay longer. She saw them to the door (her face a mask of hospitality), where Freeman, to Caxton’s unspeakable shame (nothing would ever again wound him so grievously), slipped into a raccoon coat. And said “Cheers!” as they took their leave.