They all fell silent, looking at each other, starting to speak, then saying nothing.
“Will it be awful,” Fee asked at last, “when you tell Papa and Mama?”
Eli just whistled, and Fee’s wish came back stronger than ever, that there hadn’t been a secret to listen to, even one as exciting as this. Through the rest of the evening, when they were back in the tent and couldn’t say a word in front of their mother, and even next morning, Fee wasn’t over the feeling of being afraid. She wouldn’t admit it to Fran. The only thing she did say, the moment they were off by themselves, was that she never knew you could just go to court and change your name to a prettier one.
It was a small matter, Fran said learnedly. You could change your name even without bothering to go to court at all, if you felt like it, like taking a nom de plume or a pseudonym or a stage name. The only time the law cared was if you were a criminal, and were changing your name for criminal purposes.
“I could change my name to Francesca Fairbanks,” Fran ended, “or Francesca Fiske or anything I wanted. And you could change yours to Fira Foolish or Fira Phooey or—”
“You keep quiet.”
“That’s what we both have to do, Fee,” Fran said, serious and nice again. “We can’t even breathe ‘Eaves’ in front of Mama. She would just die.”
EIGHT
“TO RECEIVE SUCH PRAISE from you,” Stefan Ivarin said slowly to the man standing beside his desk in the office, “is, you will admit, an extraordinary experience.”
“Now, Stiva,” Joseph Fehler said. “It’s not so unheard of as all that. If only you could drop the chip on your shoulder.” He spoke ruefully, a man regretfully aware of difficulty yet declining to quarrel.
“Last spring, you recall,” Stefan said, “I had rather a nasty fight, overruling you, about the box on the front page—”
“But now that I want your editorial in a box on the front page,” Fehler cut in, “the notion becomes anathema to you.” He indicated the strip of galley on the desk and added, “For even one reader to miss this would be a crime.”
Involuntarily, Stefan glanced down, conscious of pleasure, and of annoyance that he should be so helpless in vanity. The moment the galley had come up from the press room, he had sent word to Abe Kesselbaum, the make-up man, that an error had been made; the editorial was for the regular page, in the usual format. Word had come back that by chance Mr. Fehler had happened to read it in proof and had sent word down that it should appear front-page center.
“ASSASSINATE A BOOK?” the headline said, and as Stefan read it again, his satisfaction with it deepened. There was economy there; “ASSASSINATE” brought anarchist idiocy and madness to mind as no other single word in the world could have done.
“You realize,” Stefan said, looking up at Fehler, “that if his book ever does get into print, between the efforts of your crowd and any money we raise here, I will still denounce his ideas at every opportunity?”
“Yes, Stiva. I didn’t think we had made a convert.”
Stefan grunted. He wished he could order Fehler to stop addressing him as “Stiva,” but the specific harshness eluded him. The sycophant’s tone Fehler had adopted this evening sent a chill of distaste through him, though the office was as clammy hot as if it were August instead of late October. Now, in his final phrase about making a convert, Fehler’s disdain for “the softness” of the moderate socialist twanged like a fat ’cello string. Stefan looked down again at the strip of smudged galley.
This paper has fought Anarchism for twenty years. It still does.
Yet it is a shock that in this free country, not one publisher will accept Alexander Berkman’s Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist. To assassinate a book, we need only to refuse it print.
Readers of the Jewish News, so many of whom still recall the tyrannies they escaped from when they came to America, say again and again, “It’s a free country,” and their hearts hammer with gratitude and love.
But that great banner, “A free country,” will wave only while all writing and speaking and thinking remain free, even that which we detest, despise or fear.
Therefore this newspaper now invites its readers to send in money orders for a special fund to publish Berkman’s book privately—
As Stefan read on, he was aware of Fehler’s eyes upon him, of the triumph in them. He is a fool, Stefan thought; like every extremist, he is so obsessed with his own ideas, he loses the ability to reason as men reason. Now he is certain he is “using” me and the paper. He cannot see that by robbing this book of martyrdom, we not only maintain a principle, but doom the book to the oblivion it undoubtedly deserves.
“I must either overrule you on position, Fehler,” he said aloud, “and restore this to the editorial page where it normally would appear, or else, call a special meeting of the policy staff and put this vexing matter to a vote.”
Joseph Fehler shook his head. His handsome face, ruddy and still tanned from his late vacation, seemed to elongate and harden. “I will be outvoted,” he said. “I am always outvoted here.”
Stefan Ivarin picked up a heavy pencil, changed the printing directions on the smudged galley, and shouted “Boy, Boy,” until an old man in a sweater appeared and took the galley from him. “Yes,” he said to Fehler, “you would be outvoted.”
“Your conception of freedom,” Fehler said bitterly.
A current of anger shot through Stefan but he controlled it. “This old story,” he said wearily. He rose so that he could face Fehler. “If you wish to be in the voting majority, Fehler, you must join the staff of an anarchist paper. Perhaps Johann Most could use your talents as business manager on Die Freiheit.” Fehler started to reply, but Stefan refused to allow it, his voice growing in volume, ploughing right on. “But here on the Jewish News, where you are the single anarchist, among an entire staff of Democrats and Socialists, do you really daydream about majorities?”
“You would celebrate for a week,” Fehler said, “if I went to another paper.”
“Perhaps not for a whole week.”
Stefan felt the heat mounting in his forehead and eyes; in his mind, Alexandra said, “Stiva, please, your face is getting red.” He lowered his voice. “Are we to descend to sarcasms now about ‘celebrating’? Bickering like young girls with hurt feelings?”
“I did not intend to bicker.”
“Neither did I. It does not matter.” He seated himself at his desk once more. “What does matter,” he said, “is that the owner of the paper approves of your efficiency, whatever he may feel about your political formation. The paper’s circulation grows, the income grows, he wants no changes. So it has been for five years, so let it be for another five years.”
“Perhaps,” Fehler said, and left the room.
Stefan looked after him. Yes, sooner or later, a show of power, and not over Fehler’s anarchism, either. He will choose a more popular arena, where he has more chance to tear me apart.
“It will break his heart,” Alexandra said bitterly.
“Mama, please don’t cry,” Fee begged. “Please don’t.”
“He’ll raise the roof,” Eli said. “That I grant, but it won’t break his heart. Nothing could.”
They were in the kitchen, Alexandra and the girls, Eli and Joan. Alexandra put her hand on Fee’s thin shoulder, nodding as if in obedience to the child’s entreaty. But tears kept flooding her reddened eyes; nothing under heaven could stop them now.
Joan looked at Eli in reproof for his roughness, and wished he had put it off once again, as he had put it off so many times since they had done it in June. Father Ivarin wasn’t there, and maybe that was why Eli had chosen tonight to tell his mother about Eaves. An hour had passed since he had, and all Joan could think of now was how to end it and get Eli home. If he didn’t calm down, he wouldn’t sleep, and he’d have a frightful day tomorrow. His new school was way out in Brighton Beach and he had to leave at seven-fifteen each morning to get there in time.
“Don’t you tell him
about it,” Joan advised Alexandra. “Eli and I ought to tell him ourselves—we don’t want to put it off on you.”
“I can’t hide a thing like this.”
“Can’t you make up some excuse? You could say you’re worried about the baby, a sudden temperature, something like that. Then tomorrow I’ll come back and tell him myself.”
“The shock—I’m so distracted—”
Eli exploded. “For God’s sake, I can’t stand all this,” but Joan said to her mother-in-law, “Of course it’s a shock.”
“I knew what we were in for,” Eli added. “If you take it this way, can you imagine him?”
“But you decided in May, before the baby was born, and all these months you were living a lie with your own parents.”
“Right,” he said without any note of regret. “I wasn’t going to put Joan through it while she was pregnant. And not right afterward either. I wanted to keep it a secret for as long as we could, a year, maybe more.”
At the word, “secret,” Fran and Fee exchanged glances. Neither of them had ever had such a secret to keep in all their lives; it had changed their last two weeks at the beach, so they would not blurt it out right in front of Mama. And since getting home, they would talk about it in whispers, if they talked of it at all, and they had each taken a special oath not to tell their best friends. Neither one of them had betrayed the oath.
Until this evening, keeping the secret so well had seemed an achievement, something everybody would praise them for when it was at last revealed. But tonight, after Joan and Eli had told Mama, Joan had let something slip about the walk along the beach on Fran’s birthday, and telling the girls about Eaves then.
“You know?” their mother cried, turning on them in disbelief. “You knew this and never told me? For nearly two months, like—like conspirators, you let me live on in a fool’s bliss, while you both knew?”
“Oh, Mama,” Fran said, in her special way.
It infuriated Alexandra. “Oh, Mama, oh, Mama—you take sides against me automatically,” she said. “Maybe you also are ashamed of your father’s and mother’s name.”
“That’s not fair,” Joan put in sharply. “Being ashamed never came into it. Not for one moment.”
“No, no,” Alexandra apologized quickly. “I shouldn’t have said it.” With her next breath she added, “Just the same, if our name was Rockefeller or Carnegie, you wouldn’t even dream of changing it.”
Fee looked at her mother with a new interest. Not once, never since the day she was born, had it even once occurred to her that her mother could be wrong, totally, absolutely, positively wrong. But now she was wrong.
“Why, Mama,” she began excitedly, “you’re saying something that’s the exact opposite of—”
There was silence from all of them. Suddenly Fee felt as if she were again standing up alone in the middle of the stage in the auditorium just after Miss Mainley had announced, “The next will be a recitation, ‘Sally Ann’s Experience,’ by Fira Ivarin, sixth grade.” Her breath stuck in her throat, and her heart squeezed with knowing she had to begin, that everybody was waiting, and that she couldn’t escape until she had recited.
“The opposite of what?” Mama asked, coaxing, as if she knew that whatever was to come, it would be a first step for her youngest child.
“Of what you always say about getting Americanized and being Americans. If our name was Carnegie or Rockefeller it would be American already, so Eli and Joan wouldn’t have to change it. They just did it for Americanizing, not out of being ashamed.”
“Thanks, kid,” Eli said, his eyes brightening. “You’ve got it straighter than Ma has.”
His praise made her feel marvelous. But then he said to Joan, “Maybe Fee’s just been elected to tell Pop.”
“No, I haven’t,” Fee shouted at him. “Don’t you make fun of me, don’t do it, don’t you dare be so mean and horrible to everybody.” And she ran from the room, sobbing, racing up the stairs two at a time.
Down below, they could hear her furious crying, and for a moment nobody spoke. Alexandra thought, Despite Fee’s point, I know and Eli knows that being ashamed of a foreign name like Ivarin did enter into it; I’m glad Fee didn’t see quite that far.
“I’ll come over tomorrow,” Joan said, “before Father Ivarin is awake, and I’ll tell him myself. Please wait until then.”
Alexandra shook her head. “I’ll tell him tonight.” She looked at Eli. “When he comes home, I will tell him. I couldn’t sleep in the same house with him all night, and keep silent about a thing like this.”
She dried her eyes on a kitchen towel and went to the sink for a glass of water. Behind her there was silence, and before she turned back to them she said, “It’s really time for you to go home. Otherwise Eli will be too exhausted tomorrow, and start another attack.”
Upstairs, Fee lay in the dark, waiting for her father to get home. When Franny came up to bed, she pretended to be asleep, her face turned toward the wall, and her arm over her eyes, so her sister couldn’t see whether her eyelids moved.
“Fee,” Fran whispered as she came in, “are you asleep?”
She didn’t answer; she could hear Fran come around to try to see better, but behind her concealing arm, she felt safe.
“I don’t believe you,” Fran announced after a second or two, but she left Fee’s bed and began to undress.
When the light went out, Fee opened her eyes, and lay still, trying to guess what would happen when Papa heard about it. She tried to remember back to the promise on the beach, back to that first instant, that first knowing about Eaves, to see how she and Fran could ever have thought it was all right to keep it a secret from Mama just because Eli and Joan said they should.
Had Eli and Joan made them promise before they told them what the secret was? Or had they first told them about Eaves, and then later on asked them to keep it a secret? It was terrible not to remember.
If you promised to keep a secret before you knew what it was, then you were not responsible for keeping it. At least not as responsible as if you first heard the secret, and then afterwards promised not to tell. Had Eli and Joan told them first, and then made them promise? If it had been in that order, then they really couldn’t help keeping Mama in a fool’s paradise; there was no way out. She wished she hadn’t made Fran think she was asleep; Fran might remember which came first, the secret or the promise.
Maybe she ought to go downstairs now, to explain to Mama that they would rather die than hurt or fool her, but that it had been impossible to do anything except what they did do. It was so mixed up, if being proud of being able to keep a secret could suddenly turn into being so ashamed.
A fool’s bliss, Mama had said. She meant “a fool’s paradise,” and tonight nobody would have joked or teased her about the right way to say it. But at other times they would have, and Mama would have laughed and said, “a fool’s paradise, all right. A brochure.”
They would have all burst out laughing at “brochure.” It was a word that was special for them all, a family word, a family joke that never failed, with Mama laughing as hard as any of them, even though the joke was on her.
It had happened a long time ago, when Fee was only nine, and at first Fee had laughed only because Eli and Fran and Papa had all laughed so hard. Only later did she understand for herself how funny it was and every time the word “brochure” was spoken after that, it just got funnier and more of a special private word.
In a way, it was dirty too, but nobody thought of that any more. The day it happened, Mama had been talking about one of Dr. Wiley’s worst enemies, a bad man who owned a big food company and wouldn’t stop using preservatives in canned goods, benzoate of soda and coal-tar dyes and things like that, even though Dr. Wiley was part of the Government and Congress had just passed the Pure Food Laws he wanted, laws that everybody had to obey.
This bad man was stubborn and said Dr. Wiley had no right to interfere with a man’s private business, and that he was going to fig
ht back.
“So he let out a big brochure—” Mama said.
That was as far as she got. There was a roar of laughter from Papa and Eli and Fran; through the laughter, Mama kept trying to explain that this stubborn angry businessman had written a booklet, had it printed on rich heavy paper, and then had mailed thousands of copies to lots of important people. But it was no use. They wouldn’t listen or stop laughing and at last, in a questioning tone, Mama herself repeated, “let out a big brochure.” “Oh, I see,” she said, and began to laugh with them, which started them off once more.
Now in the darkness, Fee remembered how jolly their laughter had sounded, and wished desperately that it were that night again, instead of this awful one of waiting until Papa got home and heard what Eli had done.
Everything was so happy then, with Mama explaining that no matter how brilliant you were about any language you learned when you were grown up, you still could make mistakes in slang or in idioms. Papa had agreed, and told them he had never felt he really knew the English language until the night he had had his first dream in English, instead of in Russian.
This was like a dream too, a nightmare of Mama turning on Fran and her as if they were traitors. It was Eli’s fault, for starting it all. Eli was a wonderful brother, but he certainly had a way of doing something and then not worrying about what would happen. Right this minute he probably was sound asleep, not lying awake wondering what his father would do when he walked up the hill tonight and came into the house and listened to what Mama would tell him.
Elijah Eaves. It sounded silly and crazy now, though it hadn’t when she first heard about it. About a week after that walk on the beach, Fran had said as a joke, “Maybe I’ll do it too, before I start teaching.” And Fran had started mimicking her own future pupils in her future classroom. “Yes, Miss Eaves. I’m sorry, Miss Eaves. Good afternoon, Miss Eaves.”
Francesca Eaves, Fee thought now. Fira Eaves. She squirmed and wondered if Fran really had been joking. Maybe she should wake her; she would die unless she could hear Fran promise never never to change her name to Eaves, to stay Francesca Ivarin until she got married, and say that Fira would be Fira Ivarin until she married too.
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