by Ward Just
"It's good to see you here, Axel," the red-faced man said, smiling tentatively.
"A disappointing night," Axel said sadly, extending his left hand.
"We lost Mobile. Can you believe it?"
"I want you to meet my son. I was just telling him some family history, some stories from the old days. Alec, this is Lloyd Fisher. We were friends in the war."
Lloyd Fisher smiled and shook hands, his grip hard as iron, and returned to the matter at hand. "Mobile, can you believe it? My wife's family comes from Mobile and they assured me it was safe, we didn't have to worry. And I believed them. Mobile, it doesn't seem possible. First time in history, Mobile goes to the Republicans."
"Grant won it in 1872."
"You're joking," Lloyd said.
"General Grant," Axel said, raising his eyebrows.
"That explains it then. They're unreliable in Mobile. They're idiots. You can't trust people who'd vote for a man who defeated their army in a war and generally fucked them over, excuse me, Alec."
"An omen for the future," Axel said.
"We can be proud of our campaign, though." Lloyd smiled sarcastically.
"Adlai can. I don't know if we can."
"The historians'll like us even if the people didn't."
"Too bad there aren't more historians in Mobile, Lloyd."
"What the hell, you do what you can. Sometimes it's beyond your control; people believe what they want to believe. Racial, ancestral, whatever you want to call it. We lost too many Chicago Poles this time around. We had their wallet but Ike had their heart. The Poles approve of generals running things. They're a romantic people. They liked the Sikorskis and the Pilsudskis and now they like Ike. I'm damned if I know what they think he intends to do. Listen to them and you'll get the idea that he'll throw a nuke into the Kremlin and send the Marines to declare the restoration of Great Poland, free, strong, and Catholic once again. And stop the sideshow in Korea so that we can get on with the real war, the one against the Soviets. I always thought a man voted his wallet, but sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes he votes his genes or his adolescent memories, Mass at Saint Stanislaus, trolling for perch in the Warta, a Chopin sonata, or his grandmother's noodles, not forgetting his permanent state of grievance."
Axel began to laugh. Alec was mesmerized.
"Democrats are soft on communism, it's well known. The shit from Wisconsin has done more damage than Fuchs, Hiss, and the Rosenbergs put together. He's a greater menace than Stalin, though I don't have to tell you about that, do I?"
"No, you don't," Axel said sharply.
"So our Chicago Poles forgot about the New Deal and the Fair Deal and talking sense to the American people. They left their union cards in their lunch buckets when they went to vote, because Ike's going to liberate their homeland. And I'll tell you something else. We've lost them for a generation. André agrees with me."
"I have no doubt," Axel said.
Lloyd looked at Alec, then back at Axel. "Emma left me."
Axel said, "I heard."
"Hated it in Chicago. Hated the weather. She thought all anyone was interested in was money, which is true but that's what Chicago is, a money foundry. If you want to sniff flowers, move to Mobile, which she did for a while. She's with someone, I don't know who." He rubbed his knuckles and frowned. "She was in a permanent state of grievance, like our Chicago Poles. Aren't women unpredictable?" Alec saw the sadness in Lloyd Fisher's eyes and his father's evident embarrassment. They stood quietly a moment, lacking words to illuminate either grievance or unpredictability. Alec thought both men were masters of disguise.
"Forget it," Lloyd said. "You should come back to Chicago with me tomorrow. We can survey the battlefield, count our casualties, see where we are and where we're going and who we're going with, next time around. Adlai might try again."
"Might," Axel said.
"Depends on how much he liked it. What he felt like when he went to bed at night and what he thought when he woke up in the morning. If he can remember the good shots and forget the bad. Politics is like tournament golf; you have to believe the ball will go in the hole and if it doesn't it's not your fault, it's the fault of the weather or the groundskeeper or the spike marks on the green. And he'll have a better chance, next time around. The Republicans don't know how to govern, never did. They'll screw up. So Adlai's our man if he remembers the putt that went in the hole instead of the four shots it took him to get out of the bunker." Lloyd paused then and put his hand on Axel's shoulder, squeezing. "I'm sorry about your trouble."
Axel nodded, glancing warily at his son.
Lloyd didn't miss Axel's caution. "And I'm glad to see you dodged the bullet."
"It wasn't close," Axel said.
"We've all got to be careful." Lloyd sighed and lowered his voice, though no one was within earshot. "That committee, they've got investigators everywhere and informers. Damned gumshoes. Vigilantes. I heard they were looking into your European operations."
"I have some charities in Europe. They didn't care for some of the people who were running the charities."
"I had a feeling, Axel Longfellow's bank was an accident waiting to happen."
"It wasn't anything to do with Longfellow's," Axel said. "They thought it was, but it wasn't."
"Yessss," Lloyd said, smiling.
"It was a fishing expedition."
"Where did they get their information?"
"He's no longer with us."
"Not Carl?"
"No, not Carl," Axel said.
"Who was the real target? Ed?"
"They want you to grovel," Axel said suddenly.
"It's either that or a contempt citation."
"I didn't grovel."
"That's what I heard," Lloyd said.
"What else did you hear, Lloyd?"
"That you got an apology from Tail-Gunner Joe himself."
"Not quite an apology," Axel said.
"And Cohn, too."
"It wasn't Cohn. Cohn's never made an apology in his life. Never will. McCarthy said, 'I have no further use for this witness.' If you want to call that an apology, that's what he said."
"He ask you if you were a Red?"
"He asked me how much time I'd spent in 'that France.' Then he asked me if I was or if I'd ever been. I said I wasn't now but had no memory of then."
"Jesus," Lloyd said.
"I didn't like it," Axel said. "However, it's a great opportunity to find out who your friends are."
"I found that out a long time ago," Lloyd Fisher said, turning to Alec and telling him how lucky he was to have a chance to watch Election Night at ground zero, like a box seat at the World Series, ha-ha, except your team's getting the shit kicked out of it with no chance for ninth-inning heroics. Still, the important thing was being there. Taking part. Getting to know the people involved. You get your father to bring you to Chicago; we'll have a night on the town, I'll introduce you to some wiseguys. Lloyd nodded vigorously, opening his mouth to say something more—but touched Axel on the arm, and wandered off in the direction of the bar.
"So," Axel said to his son. "Do you like it at ground zero?"
"No," Alec said. "And it would've helped if you'd said something about McCarthy's committee. So that I'd have some warning in the event my name shows up in the newspaper. What's it about, anyway? Or is it another secret?"
"I should have put you in the picture. McCarthy thought I was part of the twenty years of treason, and when he decided I wasn't, he let me gc. I give money to certain people in Europe. Some of them are socialists, social democrats they call themselves. Washington doesn't get the distinction. McCarthy thought I was Stalin's banker. I have friends who helped out, made telephone calls. Hard to know what would have happened without the friends and their phone calls. I got to people who got to him. I should have told you. But I was busy day and night. And I only did just dodge the bullet."
"Is it over now?"
"It's never over," Axel said. "That committee throws mud and
it sticks, nothing to be done about it. Means: in the holy war you were friendly with the antichrist. No one ever forgets. I suppose you've noticed." Axel raised his head and looked around. "That I'm not the most popular man in the room."
But it seemed to Alec that his father was neither more nor less popular than usual. People always treated Axel Behl with caution. "Popular" was not a word he associated with his father.
"It got into the newspapers then?"
"No, but it's out. Some version of the hearing, what Senator Joe said and what I said and what Cohn said." He said, singsong, "Axel Behl, that prick. What did they have on him? I heard he got it quashed. I heard he had something on Joe and got a man to make a phone call to make certain Joe knew. What do you suppose it was, the evidence that Axel had? Something to do with money. Money or women. Axel Behl's rich as sin and's not afraid to pay for information..."
"And that was what you did?"
Axel shrugged.
"Who are they? The people you helped."
"They're good people," Axel said after a moment. "They're excitable. They worry about the future. Us and the Soviets, we're so big and so very thoughtless. They worry about the future because they've lived in darkness and their eyes aren't accustomed to the light. They only want to avoid the giants. They want to cross the bridge safely, avoiding the trolls underneath. They want their privacy back, Alec." Axel smiled, but his son looked at him coldly. "So I help them out. I give them money. I make it possible for others to give them money."
"Bribe money," Alec said.
Axel looked at his son as an appraiser would look at a portrait of dubious provenance, something not quite genuine in the shape of the eyes and the suggestion of a sneer around the mouth. He was not drawn by a single hand. Alec was the product of an atelier, careless artisans working on deadline. He had so much to learn and his appearance was against him. "Don't be a moron," Axel said.
Alec smiled then. "And in return you get—"
"Loyalty," his father said.
The governor drove downtown to make his concession speech. The room was silent, everyone watching him speak; and then they turned away. The television set remained on, but no one watched it except Axel and the men who had been working the telephones; they had discovered that the television was quicker and more reliable than their informants in the precincts. Axel moved closer until he was only a few feet away, the electric glow of the screen reflected on his forehead. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. Alec stood in the doorway watching his father bend forward toward the soft shadows. An announcer was reading from a piece of flimsy paper, nothing but bad news everywhere. Axel did not seem to be listening, intent only on the watery surface of the screen, rippling now as if a breeze had disturbed it. Axel muttered something to himself. They did not own a television set, yet his father was staring at this one with the most open fascination. He turned to one of the men beside him and said, "It's like watching the invention of gunpowder."
The exodus had begun. The room was nearly quiet except for four men in coats talking earnestly in whispers near the door, the coats loose on their shoulders like capes. Lloyd Fisher was in a corner of the room with Leila Berggren. The room had the forlorn look of a hotel lobby at midnight. A servant was collecting empty glasses and dirty ashtrays. The governor was nowhere to be seen. Axel sighed, fumbling in his coat pocket. He took out a vial, shook a pill into his palm, and swallowed it dry.
"Isn't it time to go now?" Alec said.
"In a minute."
Axel caught bits and pieces of the conversation near the door. They were making book on the new faces of 1953, Cabinet officers, White House staff, agency heads, ambassadors, assistants beyond count. Axel listened carefully, amused at their neglect of the obvious, the appointments that were never announced formally though word got around quickly enough—the friends, who was coming to drinks or dinner and who was in the foursome at Burning Tree or spending the weekend in the private quarters of the White House or on the fantail of the Sequoia at dusk, and not all the friends were men. Friends of Franklin, friends of Harry, and, as of tonight, friends of Ike. And with a few conspicuous and obvious exceptions they were different friends; and, of course, they had friends who'd enjoy meeting the chief executive, have a cocktail, maybe play some bridge and talk business on the side, suggesting perhaps the ideal choice for chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission or Secretary of the Treasury. When the White House changed hands a whole new set of keys were handed out. The old ones were useless because the locks had been changed.
The servant opened one of the windows, causing a blast of cold night air to fill the room. With the cold air, inside it and surrounding it, came the sound of traffic and faraway laughter. Axel glanced at the window, shivering, and his son quickly took off his own coat and pat it around his father's shoulders.
"Will you close that god damned window?"
Alec did as he was told and the sounds of the outside world vanished.
"What are you two doing, sitting over here alone? The party's over." Leila Berggren reached down to touch Axel on the arm. She carried two bottles of beer and handed one to Alec. Axel smiled up at her. He said, "Surprised?"
She said, "No."
"Memphis?"
"Maybe Memphis," she said.
"Leila does her homework, keeps an open mind," Axel said. "Knows the numbers. Knows the people who make the numbers. Leila's a professional in a basket full of amateurs, gave up a fine career on Wall Street to work in government. Leila's a mathematician."
"Statistics," Leila said.
"What she doesn't know about capitalism isn't worth knowing."
"Don't listen to him, Alec. You have no idea how much isn't known."
Alec laughed. "All I do is listen to him."
"Axel," Leila said. "You were not lecturing this man?"
"He's still in school, Leila."
"He used to lecture me, too," Leila said to Alec. She smiled and brushed a stray curl from her forehead. "But he doesn't anymore."
"Leila's interested in bias theory," Axel said.
"Voters' biases?" Alec asked.
"In the statistics," she said. When he looked at her blankly, she added, "The numbers lie."
"Leila's not your ordinary statistician," Axel said.
"That's what they thought on Wall Street," Leila said.
"Republicans," Axel said. "What can you expect?"
"More than I got," she said. "And the Democrats aren't any better. They talk better. They're great with talking. Not so great when it comes to doing, and even worse when it comes to paying."
"You have to be patient," Axel said.
"Bull," she said. "You've always been square, though."
"Leila did some work for me," Axel said.
"I love my numbers," she said to Alec. "The uglier the better. But sometimes they're unfaithful. They tell you they love you but they don't, really. They're alley cats, following their own instincts, in and out of every bed in the neighborhood. They're promiscuous."
She was drinking beer while she talked, raising the neck of the bottle with two fingers, sipping and swallowing. Alec watched her neck muscles work. She and Axel seemed to occupy the same rung on the ladder; she was almost playful with him. Alec said, "I never thought of them as having personalities. I never thought of loyalty as a characteristic of numbers."
"Believe it," she said
"If you say so."
"Numbers were invented by human beings. Error inherent. Error predictable. Error fundamental."
"And unfaithful," Alec said.
"That most of all."
"Yet you love them.'
"More than anything. I love their instability."
"Their distance," he said.
"Not that, no. I want my fingers on the plow," she said, backing away. She winked at Alec and waved at Axel, then disappeared down the stairs, swinging the beer bottle by its neck. Alec watched her go, watched her hips move, watched her hand smooth her dark hair, and listened to
the commotion when she arrived on the first floor, and then the door opening and closing. And then silence. They seemed to be alone now. The telephone began to ring again but no one answered it.
Alec said, "What did she mean about the plow?"
"She's given to mystification," Axel said. "But I believe the expression is Lenin's. Maybe Lenin's wife. At any event, a Russian."
"How do you know her?"
"She did some work for me."
"That's what she said. What kind of work?"
"This and that," Axel said. "The markets. Customer confidence in a product as it relates to price, packaging, and so forth. She thought there was a way to compare that to a political campaign. But there isn't. Or if there is, she didn't find it."
"She was doing this for you?"
"I put up the money. If she'd been right, her results would've been worth knowing. It didn't cost so much. She's a bright girl."
Alec sneaked a look at his wristwatch. It was after midnight.
"We can go now," Axel said. His voice had acquired a familiar edge and he was working again at his scar. Two men emerged from a side room, talking quietly, pausing under the Lincoln portrait. One of them made a brusque motion with his hand and stepped to the door, the other following, apparently explaining something. When one of the men raised his voice Alec heard Leila's name; nothing complimentary, from the look on their faces.
Axel sighed and said, "She made a mistake in her numbers. Leila did. One important mistake but that's all you get, one. The Helpfuls didn't like it and now they're on her back. Women are unreliable, too emotional to work with numbers, et cetera. Phases of the moon and so forth and so on. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that Leila doesn't like certainty, doesn't believe in it. She believes the numbers are always unfaithful and her task is to discover the nature of the faithlessness. In any set of figures one number is having an illicit relationship with another; she calls it the F Factor. A complicated concept, too complicated for the derby hats." Axel smiled blandly. "Of course they've got her all wrong. They think she's a bubblehead. They think she's not serious, ruled as she is by the phases of the moon. But it's the opposite. She's a theoretical mathematician in a business that calls for simple arithmetic." Axel grunted, not unkindly. "Stay away from her, Alec. She plays around."
