“They were men who saw the bad and worked for the good,” Philomena told him. “They wanted to change things, not the whole world, but the bad things in their world. Instead those things killed them. My father was forty-six and his friend Eli Feinstein was not even forty. They called him a saint, my father’s friend Eli, and even though he was Jewish, in every church on the east side they lit candles for him and said Novenas. Such a man who believed in good and work and love. I remember him well and of course I remember your mother. Your beautiful mother.”
Aaron spent hours in the library of the I.L.G.W.U. building. He read reports of the fledgling union which had been in formation at Rosenblatts and he read of Arnold Rosenblatt’s angry determined resistance. “Communist instigators, subversives,” the manufacturer had declared.
“He was ahead of his time,” Aaron muttered and doggedly continued to copy the material. Arnold Rosenblatt would have found a good home in Washington, where former friends nervously crossed the street to avoid talking to each other and the word “subversive” was whispered nervously at coffee counters and in library stacks.
In the union library he also found a small pamphlet by Eli Feinstein, a naive political treatise quoting Debs and Marx, Dubinsky and Weber. The Committee would have a ball with it, Aaron thought, and photostated it carefully.
He returned from the union library to his office that day and found his father standing in front of his window.
“Joshua tells me you are interested in the time of the Rosenblatt fire,” David said. “Perhaps I can help you. Come. Let’s go for a walk.”
They strolled along the esplanade by the river and sat at last on a bench. The river breeze moistened their faces and they both took off their jackets and loosened their ties.
“I like this place,” David said. “When our ship, the one we came to this country on, approached New York harbor, I went out on deck and looked across to the shore. A man wearing a white straw hat leaned on the railing and he looked over to the ship, I don’t know if he saw us clearly but he lifted his hat and waved it. We were welcomed. I took it as an omen, a good omen.”
“You’ve had a good life here,” Aaron said, but the statement was suspended like a question between them.
“Yes. But complicated. And perhaps the most complicated time was the time you are so interested in now. The years your mother worked at Rosenblatts when she knew Eli Feinstein. You know now that they loved each other.”
Aaron nodded.
“He was a fine man. A remarkable man. I have some things here that may help you. I went after the fire to his room. There were no relatives and your mother had been the person closest to him but she was sick with grief. So I went to do what I could. I saved his records of the union, some speeches, the minutes of the meetings. From them you can see how innocent, how Utopian his dreams were. You have the financial records there too. People making five, six dollars a week, gave fifty cents of it to a strike fund, a milk fund. Also, I saved the eulogies from his funeral. You may need perhaps quotations from Stephen Wise, David Dubinsky.” David passed a frayed manila portfolio to his son and continued to stare out across the water. A small scow trundled by and plowed up furrows of foam and a man on board leaned forward and studied the harbor.
“Dad,” Aaron said. “You knew everything and you didn’t mind?”
“I minded. It tore me apart. But your mother and I did not marry because of love. It was her right, then, to find love. She found it with Eli Feinstein. She had protected herself, since her first husband’s death, with a barricade of grief and it was Feinstein, not me, who penetrated that barricade, who brought your mother to life again. I cannot say what would have happened if he had not died in the fire. Sometimes, God help me, I was glad of that fire, of the man’s death. I’m not a saint, Aaron. But he did die and he had freed her for love again. That love found my own. We’ve had a good life, Aaron, and we’ve tried to give you and your brother and sister good lives. Now, Joshua tells me, you try in turn to give us something.” David smiled, touched his son’s shoulder.
“I didn’t want you to be hurt,” Aaron said.
David had left then, walking very slowly, his face lifted to the gentle river wind, and Aaron had taken the portfolio back to his office where he and Katie had studied its contents far into the night. In the end they integrated much of it into the report and attached the eulogies as Appendices.
He fingered the report now and glanced at the door. The room was slowly filling. Lawyers for the Committee were taking their seats at the long conference table, assembling their notebooks, hissing nervously into the small microphones. But it was the small section reserved for the press which interested Aaron, and he watched as the first group of reporters filed in and let out a sigh of relief. Each reporter carried a copy of “The Rosenblatt Experience.”
“They have it,” he whispered to Katie.
“Of course. I told you we could rely on Joe Abramson to make sure the press would get it. And they’re reading it already.”
Charles Ferguson slipped into the seat next to Aaron, shook his hand hurriedly. The older man’s palm was wet and his knees shook beneath the table.
“You’re sure the Senator won’t be here?” he asked Aaron.
“I’m sure. This is just a fishing trip, Charles. A preliminary hearing. The Senator won’t touch you until he knows he can make some waves. He’s sent these jokers up to see if anything is jumping.” He waved toward the table and looked curiously at two of the young lawyers who sat there, studying a single document. He knew one of them well. Danny Cole had been in his year at the law school and he had been a good student with one major fault. He had always looked for shortcuts. Well, he had found a shortcut to power but it was too bad, too damn bad. Aaron didn’t have too much sympathy to waste on Danny Cole, who had been known, in his time, to cheat at chess.
It was Danny Cole who began the questioning as soon as Charles Ferguson was sworn in. It took him a few minutes to establish that Charles was an art dealer who had taught for years at the Irvington Settlement House. “Of course, during those years Mr. Ferguson had taught many artists who rose to national prominence. Did any particular name come to mind?” It was a calm, unhurried question. Danny Cole glanced out the window, fingered his tie, smiled reassuringly at Charles.
“No particular name,” Charles said and the word “name” itself made people glance at each other and look away. Each day for months, afternoon headlines had screamed about one Hollywood writer who had “named names” and another who had steadfastly refused to “name names.” America had a new vocabulary and old words had taken on chimerical meanings. It was David who had observed wryly that people were no longer “friends” but “acquaintances.”
“What about the well-known designer and painter, Leah Goldfeder. Isn’t it true that she studied with you?”
“Yes. She was my student until she went to work.”
“Ah. Until she went to work at a place called Rosenblatts?” Danny consulted his notebook and when he looked up Aaron was standing.
“Counselor, it’s very opportune that you mention the name Rosenblatts. When my client told me he had been summoned here it occurred to me that you might have some interest in that particular period in his life. I therefore prepared some material which might spare you and this committee a good deal of time.”
He stepped forward with the stack of reports and noticed that Danny Cole had begun to sweat. His hair was damp and rings of dark blue had formed beneath the arms of his light jacket.
“I think you are out of order, Mr. Goldfeder,” he said.
“Oh? Then I apologize. But since some members of the press have somehow obtained this report I thought it might be efficacious for the Committee to study it.”
The members of the press were now rustling the pages of the report and two men had already left the room. Others were making rapid pencil notes. Danny Cole glanced nervously at his colleagues and cleared his throat. An older attorney leaned forward.
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“I think, Mr. Cole, that this panel should have access to any material which has somehow made its way to the press. It was very kind of Mr. Goldfeder to prepare copies for us as well. If you please, Mr. Goldfeder.”
Aaron nodded and handed the pile of reports to a court messenger to distribute to the men at the conference table. He sat down beside Katie, who had not looked up from her pad.
“They will recess,” she said in a low voice, “until this afternoon. Then they will adjourn.”
Danny Cole coughed.
“We will recess this hearing until three o’clock this afternoon to give this panel an opportunity to peruse this, uh, report,” he said.
There was a low murmur in the room and a shuffling of chairs.
“Congratulations, Goldfeder. It looks like you’ve made them cut bait,” a smiling reporter from the newspaper PM said. “You’d better get extra help at your gallery, Mr. Ferguson. You’re going to be swamped.”
Charles Ferguson looked at Aaron in surprise.
“What happened here? What have you done?” he asked.
“It was all Katie’s idea,” Aaron said. “She’ll explain.”
“Actually another lawyer had the idea a while ago. A woman writer was called before the Committee and it was known that they would try to get her to give the names of people she had known in various committees, forums. Her lawyer prepared a press release saying that she was perfectly prepared to discuss her own activities and affiliations but would not discuss anyone else. Because the press already had the statement, the Committee was left with very little wind in their sails. They couldn’t pretend to great surprise at her intransigence. In the end they excused her. It occurred to me that the same thing would work here. It we furnished the press with all the information on Rosenblatts and the sort of man Eli Feinstein was, the work of the union, it would tear away all the suppressed hints of scandal and leftist operations. The committee specializes in the veiled allusion, but we gave the press whole cloth. If a lawyer says ‘Isn’t it true that Arnold Rosenblatt felt that the union Leah and Feinstein were involved in was subversive and Communistic?’ the implication is that it was. But if we give them background material on Rosenblatt and on the people involved, they’re foiled. There’s danger in rumor and hint, but documented evidence and corroborated statements can overturn that sort of thing.” Katie snapped the lock on her briefcase. “I won’t stay for this afternoon, Aaron. You don’t need me.”
“But don’t you want to stay?” Aaron asked.
“I’m very tired.”
“I know.”
Katie had worked day and night on this report since the afternoon he had arrived home from Joshua’s office and discussed the situation with her. She had conceived of the idea and written the documentation. It had been Katie who found Joe Abramson, a public relations man with years of courthouse experience, who had taken over the job of contacting the press. Now the days and nights of work had left their mark. Dark circles curled beneath her eyes and her white skin had the fragile, translucent look of a sand-thin seashell.
“Go home,” he said softly and put his hand on hers. Her upturned palm was ice-cold to his touch. He watched as she walked to the door, then turned away, a heavy sadness dragging down the elation he had felt moments before.
Katie was right, of course. The hearing reconvened after lunch and was almost immediately adjourned. The afternoon papers were already on the street and the second page of PM carried an ancient photograph of Eli Feinstein with the caption UNSUNG HERO OF EARLY ORGANIZED LABOR. An enterprising Post reporter had already been to see Philomena and obtained a snapshot of her father, and Charles Ferguson had had a call from the Times asking if they could photograph Leah Goldfeder’s large painting Lost in Flames. Eleanor Greenstein had received a call from Washington quashing her subpoena.
Aaron held a brief, spontaneous news conference on the steps of the federal building.
“Mr. Goldfeder,” a reporter asked, “how do you interpret what happened here today?”
“I think today we proved again what my parents and others knew when they came to this country. We proved that in America the truth counts for more than the implication and that the people will not stand by and allow the country to be taken over by sneers and smears, allegations and insinuation,” he said and was surprised at the sudden quiet that greeted his words. Then someone clapped and soon the small group of reporters had put down their pencils and offered Aaron a very rare tribute—the applause of newsmen.
At the bottom of the steps, Michael waited for him.
“Hey, Aaron, everything over already?” he asked.
“We’re adjourned. Hey, what are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be holed up in the Halls of Nassau studying for your graduate record exams.”
“Yeah. Well, I got a ride in and I thought I’d hear you give your argument. Only I thought you’d be giving it in a hearing room, not on the steps.” Michael grinned. He had just noticed that he was taller than his brother and the knowledge pleased him.
“Well, you missed that but I can still buy you a drink. Come on. We’ll celebrate,” Aaron said and threw his arm over Michael’s shoulder. It was Katie he had thought to celebrate with and he thought ruefully of the reservations he had made at the small French restaurant on Sixty-ninth street. Well, he would cancel them and he would not make such reservations again in a hurry. Still, he was being unfair. She was tired, exhausted. Poor Katie. The two words clicked together like magnetic marbles in his mind, and he took Michael’s arm and hurried him across the street.
It was only when they were seated at a corner table in the small, dimly lit bar, which had lost its luncheon crowd and not yet filled up with its after-work drinkers, that Aaron turned to his brother.
“Okay, Mike,” he said. “What brought you into New York?”
“I told you. One of the guys was driving in so I thought I’d grab the ride, listen to you defend the republic, and run up to see Aunt Mollie. Mom wrote and asked me to try to work in a visit. How is she?” Michael fingered his drink but his eyes did not meet Aaron’s.
“Not good,” Aaron said shortly. “Not good at all. Katie and I were there over the weekend. We thought we’d take Uncle Seymour out for a ride but he wouldn’t leave the house. It’s funny, after all those years he spent running around—screwing every model at S. Hart, flying to Miami for nonexistent dress shows—now he won’t leave Mollie’s side even though half the time she doesn’t recognize him. When she does she calls him Shimon and he calls her Malcha. It’s hard to believe after all those years listening to them scream that their names were Mollie and Seymour. But I guess you’re too young to remember those days. Listen, Mike, let’s have a drink and then you tell me what you’re really doing here. It’s hard to believe that you came down to be the dutiful nephew.”
He stared hard at his brother, so suddenly become a man. Since Michael’s childhood Aaron had known instinctively when something was troubling the younger boy. They shared an electric rapport although a dozen years separated them in age. More and more Aaron felt Michael to be his contemporary, sharing his feelings, understanding with peculiar precosity situations complex and undefined. Often, during the two years of his marriage, when he thought of talking to someone about Katie, it had occurred to him that he might drive to Princeton and talk to Michael. He regretted, at those times, the promise he’d given Katie years before, that he would never discuss her with his father. But Michael, after all, was so young. It would have been unfair to burden him with problems he might not even comprehend and in the end Aaron had talked to no one.
Their drinks had arrived and Michael stirred his rum Collins with a red plastic swizzle stick and took a long sip before he spoke.
“The thing of it is, I’m not sure I want to take the graduate record exams. I’m not sure I want to go to M.I.T. for graduate work at all. At least not now. Maybe in a couple of years, but not now. After.”
“After what?” Aaron put a finger int
o his bourbon and licked the drink like a small child. Bourbon was not his drink. It was Katie’s, but she had so taken over his life and thoughts that often in restaurants he ordered dishes that she preferred, bought his shirts in the tones of pale blue that she favored, chose films that she wanted to see, books that she had mentioned reading.
“After the army. I want to go to Korea, Aaron. I’m sorry I let everyone talk me out of it two years ago. I should have served then.”
“And now you’ve missed it all,” Aaron said dryly.
He took a long drink and the bourbon seared his throat.
“You know, Michael, war’s not much fun. The only souvenirs you get are stray bullets where you don’t need them. That is, if you’re lucky enough to stay alive. You wouldn’t remember my friend Gregory Liebowitz. We were going to change the world together. Bring in a new era of freedom. It was the year of the people and Mother Bloor smiled down on all of us. We were going to take from the rich, give to the poor. Wipe out starvation and unemployment. People said things like that back in the thirties and they even believed them. And Gregory, the poor bastard, said them loudest of all. Now, of course, Uncle Joe McCarthy sits in Washington calling people like that dangerous to democracy. Dangerous. Naive, maybe, simplistic, yes, but God, they weren’t dangerous. The only thing Gregory ever was a threat to was himself. But he put on battle fatigues and went to Ethiopia to keep the world safe for democracy. He died there. Of diarrhea. You don’t even get a Purple Heart for diarrhea, Mike.” The bitterness in his own tone shocked him and he ordered another drink. It had been years since he thought of Gregory, of the long weeks in Ethiopia, of the small boy who had carried his father’s head in his arms.
“I remember Gregory, I think,” Michael said. “Look, Aaron, you’re talking to me as though I’m some kind of a kid. I’m twenty-one. I’m graduating from college. My whole life I’ve been the kid, the little boy. No one seems to have noticed that somehow I grew up. I’m not Leah and David’s little boy any more. Rebecca wasn’t much older than me when she went to Europe and then to Palestine. When she fought in the War for Independence. But me—I’ve spent my whole life in Scarsdale and Princeton and now everyone expects me to finish up with a stretch in the libraries and laboratories of exotic Cambridge. Wow!”
Leah's Journey Page 45
