The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  "Hey, which pussy do you like best?"

  "Look at the knockers on that Jewish babe."

  "Share the wealth! Who does Yale Marratt think he is with all this hot ass for himself?"

  "Hey, it's my turn. Let me feel some of that stuff."

  Cynthia shuddered as she recalled the horror of the moment with the boys crowding around them, all trying to touch them. She felt hands rubbing and searching her body everywhere, and knew that the same thing was happening to Anne. It was filthy! Ugly! Degrading! As she sobbed her fear she realized the furious panting breathing was the sound of a crowd gone mad. She wondered if she and Anne were going to be raped in the middle of the day in the bright sunlight just off the New York turnpike.

  Then someone yelled that they'd better clear out. The cops were coming. Cynthia felt herself being lifted bodily off the ground, and then she was dumped into the back seat of their car. Anne, naked as she was, screaming now, was shoved in beside her, followed by their groceries, tin cans, and glass jars smashing on the floor beside them. All around the windows of the car, male faces leered at them and made vile remarks. Some of them started to shake the car, screaming happily as they watched Anne and Cynthia being jostled back and forth against each other.

  Anne realized that they were going to turn the car over. Cynthia remembered that Anne had the presence of mind to grab the edge of the window which had been lowered. She screamed for Cynthia to hold her around the waist. As Cynthia clutched her arms around Anne's stomach, the car went over with a bang, shattering the windows on the opposite side. They heard the piercing scream of the police sirens. Then there was utter silence. The mob had disappeared. Slowly, Cynthia placed her feet on the shattered window. She relinquished her grasp on Anne. "Oh, my God, Anne. Oh, my God," was all that she could say.

  John Norwell was at the house with Yale and Agatha when the police car drove up with Anne and Cynthia. After satisfactorily eyeing them, enjoying their nudity, the policemen had concluded that the girls' clothes, scattered in the parking lot, were torn beyond repair. They proffered their coats.

  Anne sat in the back seat of the police car, and held her arms around Cynthia while the policeman who wasn't driving tried to interrogate her and find out what had happened. When the police had got there not one of the boys was in sight. All that remained were a few of the clerks from the market and a group of women shoppers whom the police had questioned.

  "It was one of those gangs from Helltown," the policeman said. "They've been incited by all this stuff in the newspaper. He stared at the girls. "It's your own fault in a way. The Marratt family shouldn't air their dirty linen in public. You're lucky. I think you are both more scared than hurt."

  "We are hurt," Anne whispered, tears running down her cheeks. "It may not show, but believe me we are hurt!"

  Cynthia had stopped crying when they walked into the house. Yale looked at them astounded, and demanded to know what had happened. One of the policemen tried to explain. "It was unfortunate," he concluded, "but at least there was no physical harm done."

  "Yes, it was very unfortunate," Cynthia said looking at Yale coldly. "It was unfortunate, Yale, that you wouldn't let our love be private. Now half the young men in Midhaven have squeezed our breasts and stuck their fingers in our crotches." Cynthia took off the policeman's coat and handed it to him. "Since you don't mind us parading around naked, I suppose it doesn't matter."

  Astonished, Yale and John Norwell had watched her walk up the front stairs. Anne ran after her.

  Yale had been drowsily awake when Cynthia crawled into bed with them. He felt her cold feet touch his, and the warmth of her breasts and belly as she curled softly against him. This is a good thing, he thought. We have discovered that the depth of love begins and continues not in the genital organs but in the probing of the human mind as it searches and merges with other minds in the upward struggle for a humanity that transcends individuals. Anne, Cynthia, and he were proving in a small way that it was possible for minds to merge without destroying individuality.

  Yale had heard Anne say to Cynthia that "nothing could touch our love for each other." He guessed that Cynthia was thinking about the frightful and degrading attack that had occurred at the supermarket.

  Yale remembered that he had rushed upstairs after Cynthia and Anne, forgetting that John Norwell had come to discuss the future of the Latham Shipyards with him. Norwell had just finished telling Agatha and him that he was a very conservative Scotchman. "I might consider the idea of the presidency of Latham's, but what bothers me," he said, "is identifying myself with this Challenge business. It's a madness, Yale Marratt. I think you better have done with it. Right or wrong, no man ever changed the world, at least for the better."

  Just as he spoke, the policemen had come into the living room escorting Cynthia and Anne. Yale remembered how pathetically frail and very feminine they looked with their hair mussed, tears in their eyes, the policeman's coat jackets scarcely covering their nudity.

  Upstairs Yale found Cynthia on the canopied bed, sobbing. Anne was running the water for a bath. "I feel so dirty." Anne shuddered.

  Yale examined them and found several bruises and scratches from their rough handling. "I have a terrible frustrating anger," Yale said. "I feel as if I should have Midhaven turned upside down and find every last one of the rabble involved in this, and yet I know that it will do no good to answer hatred with hatred."

  He massaged Cynthia's back. She rolled over and looked at him with swollen eyes, her face tear-stained. "Yale, I love you. Nothing can ever stop that. But you'll never know what Anne and I have been through. You don't know what modesty is for a woman. The Germans knew when they reduced the Jewish women to animals. The French knew when they shaved the heads of the women who collaborated with the Germans." Cynthia shivered. "This morning, Yale, Anne and I might just as well have been raped. It couldn't have been much worse. I'll feel unclean the rest of my life. Don't you understand why this happened?"

  Yale didn't answer because he guessed that Cynthia would say it had something to do with anti-semitism. She confirmed his thought.

  "It happened because I am a Jew," Cynthia said. "Sure, the Challenge ideas are different and strange and people fear them, but now that your father has identified you with Harry Cohen and me, he has implanted the idea that the whole business is instigated by Jews. When they were tearing at our clothes, you should have heard the terrible things those boys said. They didn't have those thoughts all by themselves. I think everything that happened was subtly promoted by older people who are determined to stop Challenge by any means." Cynthia was crying wildly. "Don't you understand, Yale? Anne and I were attacked with the same kind of cold hated used against the Jews in Germany. If the police hadn't arrived, I think they would have killed us."

  Yale took Cynthia in his arms. "Yale," Cynthia sobbed, "I'll do anything for you. I'll have your babies. I'll scrub your floors, but if you love me . . . if you love Anne . . . then let us both out. You run Challenge by yourself. I don't want you to give it up. But honestly, I can't stand it. I'm afraid that I'll crack up. Honey . . . Honey . . . don't you understand? I just want a quiet home, and the three of us, and our children."

  Yale tried to quiet her. He told them that from now on when they went out they would be guarded, but as he said it he knew that they couldn't live a happy life that way. "We'll build our own private fortress right here. If you prefer, you won't have to go anywhere."

  "But we'll go on challenging the world?"

  Yale sighed. "Don't you understand, Cindar? What happened to you and Anne is just what Challenge is fighting against."

  "Do you think that those boys who stripped us and slobbered over us are God, too?" Anne demanded.

  "Yes." Yale paused. He looked at both of them quietly. "You don't really have to ask me that. We rewrote Mat's book together. We are agreed that if men are taught they are sinful or partially evil, then they have an excuse. When Man knows that he alone is the Ultimate then there is no she
lter for him. He must love his brother."

  "Yale," Anne said, sitting on the bed near Cynthia, "I think you should know." She paused. "Cynthia . . . you better tell him. . . ."

  Cynthia smiled sadly at him. "I suppose it is too late to complain. We've hitched our wagons to your star, Yale . . . wherever it may lead." She looked at him thoughtfully, "I guess for the next few months we'll have nothing to do but live quietly in your fortress, walking around with our big bellies. Anne and I are both pregnant . . . about ten weeks."

  Yale grinned as he remembered Anne's remark to Cynthia. "Look at him! He's really pleased with himself! The male ego. He thinks he is a maharajah with his harem!"

  He was pleased. Anne and Cynthia's easy acceptance that they would bear his children was more than a sop to his male pride, it was re-assurance that all their love for each other had solid foundations. When Yale realized that they were both pregnant he insisted on calling Doctor Starkey to examine them. Lurid details had already reached Starkey. He promised to come immediately. While they were waiting for him to arrive, Agatha and Barbara came upstairs and listened in shocked silence to Anne and Cynthia as they recounted what had happened to them.

  "It's Pat's fault, Yale," Barbara said. "He should be ashamed of himself. What kind of man is he, anyway?"

  Yale pondered that. "I suppose Pat would tell you that it's my responsibility and I guess he would be right."

  Doctor Starkey thought it was definitely Yale's responsibility. After he had examined Anne and Cynthia thoroughly, and looked at the black and blue pinch marks on their arms, and on their buttocks, he said to them, "I won't withhold my opinion. As far as I can determine you both are all right. You are lucky young women. Those boys could have hurt you badly. What I don't understand is why do you girls put up with it? Both of you are attractive enough to get your own husband. This situation will only get worse for you." He looked at Yale grimly. "Who in hell do you think you are, Marratt?"

  Watching the day grow bright and the rain slowly diminish, enjoying Cynthia's warm breath against his shoulder and feeling the light pressure of Anne's hand as she intertwined her fingers with his, Yale asked himself the same question that he had been unable to answer for Doctor Starkey. Who did he think he was? When he told Anne and Cynthia laughingly that he was God, they understood. They understood that they were God, too, and that he respected their love so much that he would never make any attempt to possess it.

  "You understand, don't you, Anne . . . Cindar, I love you both very much. But I'm not a bigamist. The solution that we made is a solution for us. It might even be the solution for other men and women . . . but probably not for most people. What we are trying to say to the world is that the ultimate for man is to comprehend the grandeur that exists in all men. If there is a God then this God is an active principle only when men realize that there are no narrow solutions to living; that life is an unceasing challenge, and Man is the measure of Life."

  Yale asked them what they thought when they listened to someone like Doctor Starkey who obviously believed they were all quite cracked.

  "We went to bed with you and you made us pregnant. We wanted to be pregnant. We helped you with Mat's book. We are as responsible as you are, Yale," Anne said. "I love you."

  Cynthia had smiled as she listened to Anne. "Yale, I love you, too. Don't you realize that right or wrong I've been indoctrinated by either you or Mat for eight years. I believe as you do. The only thing I'm not sure about is how far we should challenge the world. Isn't it possible for us to live our lives together, not in a fish bowl?" She studied Yale's face as she spoke, and then grinned and patted his cheek gently. "I should know better than to ask, shouldn't I?"

  "You know," Yale had said, "I sometimes think that both of you wonder what drives me." His look was solemn. "You see, I have a complex . . . nothing so simple as an Oedipus complex . . . what I have is an Icarus complex. You remember the story. Icarus had a father who was a very progressive and far-seeing man. Both of them were imprisoned. Call that prison the demands of life itself. Anyway, Daedalus fashioned wings for both of them. Consider that Daedalus, a sincere man, warns Icarus that the wings are wax. He tells him not to fly too close to the sun . . . but Icarus, the son, can't help himself. He has a compulsion to discover what his father dared not." Yale grinned at Anne and Cynthia who were obviously wondering if he were joking or sincere. "Don't worry. Because I have an Icarus complex doesn't mean that I will fly too close . . . just near enough for a quick look. But what you shouldn't overlook was that it was Daedalus who had the divine concept to escape in the first place."

  But Yale couldn't help wondering where Challenge was leading them. Would they always have the courage to overcome the hatreds that they were inadvertently creating? Would the day come when Anne and Cynthia would look at him in fear and demand to know why he persisted in trying to change the world? Would he be able to answer them? What was he trying to accomplish anyway? Was there some fatal flaw in his personality that would make him fight for a lost cause until he had ruined all their lives? If he had never known Cynthia, never had his love for a Jewish girl attacked because of her religion, never had discovered the depths of anti-semitism that ran in deep channels throughout much of what was supposedly known as the civilized world, would he have become so obsessively involved with leading people and revealing to them, if only in a small way, the extent of hatred, large and small, dominating their lives and shriveling their power to love? The answer was yes. Whether he had known Cynthia or not had little to do with it. His love for Cynthia had simply triggered the man who had become Yale Marratt.

  Perhaps, as Rabbi Weiner had pointed out to him last week, he was doing more harm to the Jews in Midhaven than he realized. Rabbi Weiner had told him that he couldn't fight anti-semitism with a flaming torch. It was a mistake for Cynthia to be identified with such a volatile program as Challenge. Yale disagreed with him. "It is you who are making this identification with Judaism. Challenge is fighting all hatred and intolerance." Yale pointed out to him that Challenge essentially denied all religions. "Cynthia is a woman to me. This . . . not her religion . . . is the all-important fact of her existence."

  But Yale couldn't avoid the certainty that his own sense of mission and his obsession with the ideas that he, Anne, and Cynthia had found in Mat's book and paraphrased as Commandments were gradually affecting the lives of many people. How many people had already been influenced by his unwillingness to accept the world as it was? Obviously the more than three hundred thousand people who had purchased the book, Spoken in My Manner , thus indirectly subsidizing Challenge, were having the direction of their lives changed. For how many of those thousands, he wondered, would it be a disruptive experience? He could ask himself, for that matter, what right he had to subject Anne and Cindar to the glaring spotlight of the bigamy trial? Was he doing it for personal aggrandizement as Saul, who had tested him thoroughly with a thousand questions in the past few days, had asked. "I'm trying to find what makes you tick, Yale Marratt." He grinned when Yale became a little annoyed. "If I detected a false note in your beliefs or statements, I'd drop this case like a hot potato."

  Cynthia had answered for him. "You won't find a false note, Saul," she said. "Both Anne and I can tell you that. Crazy . . . yes, but not false."

  No, Yale thought, he had no fear of his motives. What did frighten him was whether he had the right to tamper with other lives. Would the lives of Anne, Cynthia, the Chinese girl Tay Yang, his sister Barbara, Pat and Liz, Paul Downing, Harry and Sarah Cohen, Alfred Latham, and Jim; even people who had existed on the fringe of his life like Marge Latham . . . would their lives be happier or more complete (certainly more placid) had Yale Marratt never existed? How many more lives would be changed or twisted into new channels because one man was attempting to use twentieth-century techniques of money and advertising to make all men aware of their divinity.

  Yale sighed. The questions that would plague him as long as he would live were fruitless. There were no
answers. He was a product of his times. If he were crushed "assailing the seasons" then the world would have to wait the coming of a more likely messiah.

  It was strange, that as a result of the frightful attack on Cynthia and Anne at the supermarket, he had discovered a new ally. When the girls had come in half naked, escorted by the policemen, John Norwell had waited downstairs, forgotten in the excitement. Agatha had remembered him. Sitting in the rocker in their bedroom, she told them, "Unless I miss my guess, seeing you two girls in tears and hearing from the police what happened to you wrenched at his Scotch sense of chivalry. I think he has a proposltion for you, Yale."

  Agatha had been right. Yale had hurried downstairs and apologized to Norwell for keeping him waiting. Norwell shook his craggy head and told Yale not to be concerned. "It was a terrible thing," he said, rolling his "r's". "Those are decent lassies. It's rotten men there are in the world could do that to women. You should have the city turned upside down to find them."

  Yale told him that he didn't believe in reprisals as a solution for hatred.

  Norwell smiled at him. "I thought not. I've read your book since I saw you last. Don't get the idea that I'm a convert. I'm not. But I am interested in seeing how deeply you believe your own ideas." Norwell stared at Yale a second. "You probably know without me telling you that the Lathams hate your guts." Yale nodded, and Norwell continued. "I wouldn't want to guess who is the angriest at you, Alfred or Jim. Probably Jim. Alfred is seventy-six, so the prestige of the thing can't mean a damn to him for long anyway, but Jim has got his life ahead of him. What I want you to do is to give Jim a moral victory. Re-elect Jim president of Latham's." Norwell smiled at Yale's surprise. "I know, laddie . . . you don't have to. You could bring in some bright boy from some other Yard who could put Latham's on its feet. You wouldn't need me, even. But I can tell you that if you have the courage to put your hand out to Jim now . . . I promise you we'll make a better thing out of Latham's than any outsiders could."