The Tender Hour of Twilight

by Richard Seaver

  * * *

  Barney opened our hastily convened executive committee meeting on an unusually quiet note: “What the fuck are the Fur, Leather, and Goddamn Machine Workers doing trying to organize Grove? It makes no goddamn sense!”

  Indeed it did not. Why, we wondered, not the bigger houses? Random House? Simon and Schuster? Doubleday? Ten times as many employees as Grove. Harper had an in-house union, someone remembered, but it was a rather benevolent, nonthreatening group whose main goal was to make sure middle- and lower-rank employees got their fair share of benefits.

  “We still don’t know whether this is anything more than a probe,” said Jules Geller, the authority among us, for in the 1930s he had been a union organizer in the Midwest. “Just because the union met with a few employees doesn’t mean they’ll make an all-out attempt.”

  “Do we know who went to the meeting?” Barney wanted to know.

  “Several from the editorial department, I’m sorry to report.” I had asked around as soon as I heard the news. “Robin Morgan for one. Cicely Nichols. And I think Mary Heathcote…”

  At the last named, Barney winced, for she was a friend whom he had urged me to hire. “I never liked that Robin Morgan,” he said. “She always struck me as a troublemaker. But Mary…”

  “Ward Damio was there,” Fred put in.

  “Oh, God, him!” Barney hissed.

  Damio was a young man with a big motorcycle. In any other company, he would have been a misfit. At Grove he was just another employee who was somewhat different from the other different employees. Well, not quite. He worked for Myron Shapiro in the book club, but his job performance, according to Myron, ranged from perfunctory to near zero. The black-leathered, chain-bedecked Damio lavished most of his time and love on his cycle, leaving little time or energy for work. No one had to clock him in or out of the office: the roar and screech of his cycle indelibly marked his comings and goings.

  “What the hell was Damio doing up there?” Marty asked. “Or did he think the ‘Machine’ in the union’s name referred to his motorcycle?”

  “It gave him an excuse to cycle up to Twenty-sixth Street?” Morrie suggested.

  “Also got him out of work for a couple hours,” Barney growled.

  “Can’t you control your employees, Myron?” Jules asked, only half jokingly, for I knew there was no love lost between the two.

  “Up yours, Jules,” Myron responded icily, his Trotsky chin whiskers bobbing furiously.

  If there’s trouble in the ranks, I remember thinking, the executive committee is not exactly a peaceable kingdom either.

  As best we could make out, most of the people who had attended the union meeting had done so in support of the peons on the ground floor and at Hudson Street. Conversations with several confirmed that if they went, it was to help right a perceived wrong, namely, to have the salaries of Myron’s slaves raised from seventy-five dollars to eighty-five dollars a week. If you thought about it, they were acting in true Grove tradition. But the message received was quite different. Regardless of motive, these people were in Barney’s mind traitors. For him, Grove was not just a place of employment, it was a cause, and those who betrayed it should be hanged from the yardarm.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” he said grimly. “I intend to fight this to the death. If ever Grove is unionized, it would spell the end of the company.”

  “Careful,” Jules warned. “You can’t take any action against the people you know are pro-union, or attended union meetings. We’ll be monitored.”

  “But that’s true only when there’s an official organizing drive going on, right?” Barney said.

  “Yes,” Jules said, “that’s true.”

  “So if we ever wanted to fire people, now would be the time, right? As I see it, we have a very narrow window of opportunity.”

  Jules shook his head. “They’ll still try to prove there’s a connection between our knowledge of the union activities and the firings. They’d probably take us to arbitration.”

  “But they couldn’t prove there was a link, could they?”

  I glanced over at Barney. His forehead was knit in a deep scowl, and his tight lips looked like the proverbial seamless scar. He was as white as I’d ever seen him. This was, I knew, the pre-explosive Barney.

  “Why don’t we try to find out more before we go off the deep end?” I ventured, suddenly seeing half my editorial staff gurgling down the drain.

  Barney looked over at me as though I had lost my mind. Fact was, I didn’t really believe my own words. I had the sinking feeling we were already well into the deep end.

  * * *

  That night when I arrived home—late as always—the children were long in bed and Jeannette looked as though she would have my head if she could remember where she had put the ax. But when she saw my face, she suddenly softened. “Trouble in paradise?” she asked.

  I nodded, then filled her in on the day’s events.

  “So what’s the solution?” she asked. I told her Barney’s plan was to fire several people immediately, before the organizing drive began. “But won’t that be obvious?” she insisted. I nodded. “Wouldn’t it be best just to go through the process? There are enough sane people at Grove to vote against it, aren’t there?” I agreed and said I had made that suggestion at today’s meeting, to no avail. “How long would the whole unionization process take?” she persisted.

  “Two or three weeks, maybe a month.”

  “Then you should definitely go through with it,” she concluded. “Wait and see, if you fire all those people, all hell will break loose. What’s more, I can just see you coming home two or three hours later every night, with as much work as ever and three fewer editors to do it. As it is, you don’t see your children half enough. Not to mention me … You know, darling, I swear you love Grove more than you do me.”

  Game, set, and match.

  * * *

  Next morning the tension at Grove was palpable and mounting. The pro-union folk knew that we knew, and the scornful looks we received as we entered the sixth-floor elevator could have killed. Another hasty meeting was called. Buttressed by Jeannette’s compelling arguments the night before, I made a last-ditch plea not to fire people until we’d gone through the unionization process, which I proclaimed we would surely win.

  “And if we lost?” Barney said.

  “Dick’s right,” Jules said. “I’ve checked, and this will be all over in roughly two weeks. Maybe sooner. If we fire these people now, God knows the price we might pay.”

  “And if we lost?” Barney said again.

  “Jules and Dick are right,” Morrie said. “Firing people now will swing more votes to the union, that’s for sure.”

  “And if we lost?” Barney insisted. At which point we knew our advice was immaterial. The kid who owned the football dictated how and where the game would be played.

  Further discussion about who had to go wavered between eight and fifteen, until we settled on nine.

  “I assume we should inform them on Friday,” Jules suggested.

  “Friday, hell!” Barney objected. “Tonight!”

  “What if, when we tell them, they refuse to leave the premises?” Morrie asked.

  “That’s a distinct possibility,” Jules said. “A sit-in might be joined by a lot of others.”

  “We’ll do it by Western Union,” Barney said. “A telegram informing them they’re fired and are not to set foot here again. But at least three, starting with Robin, I want out of here today.”

  There was heated discussion about both the timing and the draconian telegraph method, but again Barney was adamant. That day, April 9, and the next, pink slips in the form of yellow Western Union telegrams arrived at all nine employees’ homes. It was perhaps a needlessly cruel way to go about it, but Fred and Barney were scheduled to leave for Denmark that weekend to view some more Scandinavian masterpieces for the already-overburdened Grove film archives and wanted all this out of the way before they departed
. We who were left behind had the job of coping with the repercussions. I had mixed feelings about both the firings and the way they were handled. I also remembered Jeannette’s prescient thought that with four of the nine beheadings from the editorial department—for in addition to Robin, Cicely, and Mary we had let go a first-rate young editorial assistant, Beverly Ravitch—my life was going to be sheer hell. I sensed, too, that there would be serious consequences of the late-night telegrams. Over the weekend I conjured up in my mind several scenarios, but none was even close to what actually came to pass.

  * * *

  Monday morning, up at dawn after a second sleepless night, I arrived at the office well before nine to find the place seething. A couple dozen people—mostly Grove employees, to judge from a cursory look around—were milling about outside the building, talking, arguing, several handing out broadsheets. Someone pressed one into my hand as I passed. It was a one-page mimeographed sheet whose headline read: WOMEN HAVE SEIZED THE EXECUTIVE OFFICES OF GROVE PRESS. I glanced up at the sixth floor: a red and white banner floated from one of its windows. Inside the building I found a magnified repetition of the scene outside: employees arguing in the corridors, shouting, gesticulating wildly, threatening. From what I could gather, about half an hour earlier a number of women, parading under the banner of the Women’s Liberation Front, had arrived, taken the executive elevator to the top floor, and locked themselves in Barney’s office. They had blocked off access to the top floor by shoving desks and chairs and files against all the doors. Myron, on the floor below, I found wringing his hands. Jules, Morrie, and Nat were huddled at a nearby window, talking in hushed tones.

  “They want to meet with Barney and won’t leave till he sees them,” Myron said.

  “Didn’t you tell them he’s out of the country?”

  “They won’t talk with me. As soon as I say who it is, they hang up.”

  “Shit! Does anyone know where Barney’s staying in Copenhagen? Where’s Judith?”

  The triumvirate by the window joined us. “Anybody know where Barney is?” I repeated, and all shook their heads. Judith was not yet in, and she alone knew his hotel. Meanwhile, I figured we’d better go up to the top floor and break in. Jules shook his head. “We’ve already tried that. They’ve got the top floor pretty well barricaded. Anyway, I’ve told them Barney was in Europe. They told me in that case they’d only talk to you.”

  “Any tactical suggestions?” I asked.

  “Try to find out what they want.”

  “I know what they want. Have you seen the broadsheet? They want editorial control of all Grove publications, a few million dollars for assorted causes, a day-care center for children. God knows what else.”

  There was a stairway from the fifth to the sixth floor, which we climbed to find, as expected, that door too was barred. Three of us tried to force it open, but it wouldn’t budge. “Probably bolted from the inside,” Jules said, and an examination of the safety door one flight down showed one could lock it from within.

  “Do we know who’s in there?” I asked.

  “The only one we know is Robin Morgan,” Morrie said.

  “Any other Grove employees?”

  “None that we know.”

  “How many in all?”

  “About ten,” Jules said, “according to those who were here when they arrived.”

  We climbed back up, and I shouted through the metal barrier. “Robin, this is Dick. Tell us what you want.” Silence. I tried again, even louder. Even louder silence.

  “I don’t think they can hear you,” Jules said. “Why don’t we try to call them on the intercom.”

  Back downstairs, I dialed Barney’s number, and a dulcet voice replied, “Women’s Occupation Forces. Who’s this?”

  “Dick Seaver.” Pause. “Is Robin there?”

  “Just a minute.” A few seconds later Robin came on.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing, Robin?” Across the room I could see Jules gesturing for a softer approach.

  “We’re demanding that Grove give us editorial control. You all have made millions exploiting women. It’s time you paid us back. All your pornographic films and books degrading us…”

  “Come on, Robin,” I tried. “Let’s be reasonable. Give us a list of your demands and we’ll see if we can meet any.”

  “First of all, all those who were fired must be reinstated.”

  “How many Grove employees are up there with you, Robin?”

  “None of your business, Dick. Furthermore, if you don’t meet our demands, we’ll destroy all the Grove Press files.”

  Suddenly a vision of the precious correspondence—Beckett’s, Genet’s, Pinter’s, Burroughs’s, Ionesco’s, Miller’s—going up in Nazi-like flames nearly made me sick to my stomach.

  Robin must have been reading my mind, for she went on: “And we’re serious about that. Read the broadsheet carefully. It’s all laid out there.”

  I looked down at the paper I had grabbed without really reading it. Even at a glance I could see the absurdity of the demands, which the broadsheet labeled “just conditions,” the first of which was that Grove cease all publication of books and magazines, and the distribution of films, that degrade women. In other words, censorship again, this time not from the customs or postal authorities but from a band of perhaps well-meaning, but sadly misguided, women. As soon as the thought passed through my mind, I regretted giving them the benefit of the doubt. Well-meaning, my foot!

  “I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” I said to Robin.

  I looked around at my esteemed colleagues, none of whom I had to brief, for I had had Robin on speakerphone. We all had copies of the broadsheet. We were guilty of “oppressive and exploitive practices against our own female employees.” Nonsense! Women employees at Grove in key positions of editorial, production, and marketing were legion, and our work hours (thirty-five per week), medical benefits, vacations, and holidays were well above industry average and always had been, even in times of financial stress, which were many. “A 24-hour free childcare center controlled by women”; a fund for recently divorced women “to help them get back on their feet”; a fund to establish abortion and birth-control clinics; “a bail fund to free each month a minimum of 100 ‘political prisoners’ [read: prostitutes] from the Women’s House of Detention”; finally, “women must control 51% of all decisions, editorial and otherwise.”

  I looked up, as did almost simultaneously the other four gathered there.

  “I knew Robin was a pain in the ass,” Jules offered, “but I didn’t know she was stark, raving mad.”

  “If I understand correctly,” I said, waving the broadsheet, “there are a dozen or so women up there, and the only Grove employee is Robin. So what’s this shit about her speaking for all women employees at Grove? In my experience, nobody even takes her seriously.”

  “More to the point,” Jules said, “do you think they’re crazy enough to actually destroy those files?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Jesus!” I said. “Those files are priceless. Grove’s whole history is there. Somehow we’ve got to break in.”

  “How?” Morrie said. “They’ve blocked off the elevator, and we’ve seen we can’t budge the safety door.”

  “Through the window?” Myron suggested, and I could just see him—or any of us—scaling the vertical brick wall à la Spider-Man, breaking a window, presumably with an elbow, scrambling in through the shards, and, if not yet bleeding to death, taking Robin in a stranglehold. At the very least, seven years for assault and battery. Seven years?

  Just then Judith arrived, flustered but still cogent enough to give us Barney’s telephone number in Copenhagen. While Frieda was putting through the call, I asked Judith what she knew of Barney’s schedule, for in Europe it was now past mid-afternoon. He’s booked solid, she thought, but should return to the hotel before dinner. Eventually, I reached the concierge, found that Mr. Rosset was indeed out, and left a callback message. I di
dn’t use the word “urgent,” for fear he would panic, but I did say “important.”

  I got Robin on the phone again and told her we couldn’t reach Barney, but had left word for him to call as soon as possible. Meanwhile, under no circumstances should they destroy property; among other things, that could get them serious jail time. I had no idea if that was consistent with the law but hoped it might deter them at least momentarily.

  Meanwhile, we all went back downstairs and told people everything was under control, please get back to work, but few seemed inclined to do so.

  Around noon our time Barney called. It was Judith who answered. “How are things?” he said.

  “Fine,” she lied, “the only thing is, I’m not in my office. I’m down on the fifth floor.”

  “Why?” Barney wondered.

  “Because the sixth floor is occupied by a women’s liberation group.”

  “A what!” he yelled. At which point she handed me the phone, and I filled him in on the morning’s—now afternoon’s—events.

  “And they’re threatening to destroy the files?” he screamed. “Get them out of there!”

  “The elevator’s cut off, and the back stairs are blockaded and locked from the inside.”

  “Then go in through the skylights,” he advised, forgetting there was no access, except from the top floor, to the roof. Maybe we could use skyhooks, I remember thinking, a faint remembrance from my callow youth when as an eight-year-old at summer camp I had been told, and firmly believed, that the heavens were held up by these magical skyhooks.

  “Do any of you other geniuses over there have any ideas?” he bellowed, referring to the august executive committee hovering around the phone.

  “We could call the cops and have them evicted,” Jules the Wise suggested.

  “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard!” the voice-across-the-water replied. “How many times have we been arrested over the years? Two hundred? Three hundred? Grove resorting to the police? They’d laugh in our face!”