“We did that in Spain just four years ago.”
“And with what results? What have you brought to completion in this time? I drive through the country and once I leave Madrid I see only miserable villages. Skinny peasants on burros, goatherds, barefoot children, women sitting in the sun picking lice out of each other’s hair.”
“You’re exaggerating, Phil,” Judith said. “Señor Abel’s feelings may be hurt. You’re talking about his country.”
“About a part of it,” Ignacio Abel said quietly, furious with himself for not leaving, for continuing to listen.
“You waste your energy on parliamentary battles, on speeches, on changes of government. You say you’re a Socialist, but inside your own party you’re fighting! Are you a Socialist in favor of the parliamentary system or a participant in the uprising last year to bring the Soviet revolution to Spain? I had the pleasure of meeting your coreligionist Don Julián Besteiro last year at a diplomatic dinner, and he seemed a perfect gentleman, but I also thought he was living in the clouds. Forgive me for speaking frankly: part of my work entails looking for information. We have a good deal of money invested in your country and wouldn’t like to lose it. We want to know whether it’s advisable for us to continue working and investing money here, or would it be more prudent to leave. Is it true that new elections will be held soon? I arrived in Madrid last month and the papers were full of photographs of the new government. Now I’ve read that a crisis has been announced and the government will change. Look at what Germany has accomplished in the same time. Look at the highways, the expansion of industry, the millions of new jobs. And it isn’t a question of racial differences, of efficient Aryans and lazy Latins, as some people believe. Look at what Italy has become in ten years. Have you seen the highways, the new railroad stations, the strength of the army? I also don’t have ideological prejudices, my dear Judith — it’s simply a practical question. In the same way I admire the formidable advances of the Soviet five-year plans. I’ve seen the factories with my own eyes, the blast furnaces, the collective farms plowed with tractors. Ten, fifteen years ago, the countryside was more miserable and backward in Russia than in Spain. Just two years ago Germany was a humiliated nation. Now once again it’s the leading power in Europe. In spite of the terrible, unjust sanctions the Allies imposed on it, especially the French, who wouldn’t be so resented if they were not also incompetent and corrupt—”
“And the price doesn’t matter?”
“Don’t the democracies pay a horrifying price as well? Millions of men without work in my country, in England, in France. The breakdown of the Third Republic. Children with swollen bellies and eyes covered with flies right here on the outskirts of Madrid. Even our president has had to imitate the gigantic public works projects of Germany and Italy, the planning of the Soviet government.”
“I hope he doesn’t also imitate the prison camps.”
“Or the racial laws.”
“Dear Judith, in that regard I’m afraid you have an insurmountable prejudice.”
It took Ignacio Abel a moment to understand what they were saying. He observed that Judith Biely had turned red, and that Van Doren was enjoying his own cold vehemence, the sense that he was controlling the conversation. He wasn’t accustomed to the North American ease in combining courtesy with crudeness.
“Do you mean I despise Hitler because I’m a Jew?”
“I mean that things have to be considered in their exact proportions. I don’t have prejudices, as you well know. If you wanted to leave the position you have now in a university that in my opinion is mediocre, I would recommend immediately that you be offered a contract at Burton College. How many Jews were there in Germany two years ago? Five hundred thousand? How many of them will have to leave? And if there’s no place for all of them in Germany, why don’t their coreligionists and friends in France, England, or the United States rush to take them in? How many Russian aristocrats and parasites had to leave the country, voluntarily or by force, when the Soviet Union began to be created in earnest? And the Spaniards, didn’t they burn churches and expel the Jesuits when they started out? How many Germans found themselves forced to leave the land where they were born so that Beneš and Masaryk could have their beloved Czech homeland complete? In America, we also expelled thousands of Britons, a great many colonists who were as American as Washington or Jefferson but preferred to continue as subjects of the English crown. It’s a question of proportion, my dear, not individual cases. As we say in our country, there’s no free lunch. Everything has a price.”
Van Doren had been glancing sideways at his watch as he spoke. He inspected in dry flashes of attention everything that happened around him, what he could deduce from the gaze, the gestures, the silence of his interlocutor. There was a suggestion of imposture in his conviction, as if he were capable of defending with the same intensity the opposite of what he was saying, laying a trap to find out their hidden thoughts. The servant in the short jacket and carrying a tray came in silently and leaned over to whisper in his ear. Ignacio Abel suspected he came in at a prearranged hour to interrupt a meeting that shouldn’t be prolonged. In Judith’s eyes he saw a complicity that hadn’t existed when they entered the room: something that had been said there placed them on the same side. Her sharing with him something that excluded Van Doren not only flattered him, it produced an intense sexual desire, as if they’d dared an unexpected physical closeness that no one else saw. Van Doren looked at his watch again and spoke to the servant, detached from what was happening between them. Or perhaps not — nothing escaped his cynicism or his astuteness, his habit of controlling, subtly or rudely, the lives of others.
“You don’t know how sorry I am, but I have to leave. An unexpected appointment at the Ministry of Information. The question is whether the minister will still be minister when I get there… Seriously, my dear Ignacio, I’m sorry we talked about politics. It’s always a waste of time, especially when there are more serious things to be discussed. Judith, how do you say to make a long story short in Spanish?”
“Ir al grano. To get right to the point.”
“An admirable woman. To get right to the point, Ignacio, I’m authorized to offer you a position as visiting professor in the Department of Fine Arts and Architecture at Burton College next year, the fall semester if that’s convenient, and if University City is inaugurated on time, which I hope with all my heart. And during that time I’d like you to study the possibility of designing the new library, the Van Doren Library. The project will have to be approved by the board, of course, but I can guarantee you’ll be able to work with absolute freedom. You’re a man of the future, and if the future, by your calculation, doesn’t belong to Germany or Russia, perhaps the best thing for you is the future in America. Now I have to go, if you’ll both forgive me. Make yourselves at home. This is your house. I’ll be waiting for your reply, my dear Ignacio. À bientôt, my dear Judith.”
Van Doren stood, extended his arms, and with no effort put on the sports jacket the servant held for him. In the sharp, acute look of his eyes, in the movement of his depilated eyebrows, was a quick suggestion of obscenity, as if offering to Judith Biely and Ignacio Abel the room he was about to leave, as if he’d already guessed and taken as certain what they themselves still didn’t dare to think.