“You’ll laugh at this. Tony called me a Jew today.”
“That’s not very funny.”
“No, I suppose it’s not. Here, right?”
“Yes.”
They turned in a dark doorway and began to climb some dim stairs.
“You don’t think of the Jews having a government in exile,” Leets said.
“It’s not a government in exile. It’s a refugee agency.”
“Everybody knows it’s political.”
“It’s powerless. How can that be political? It’s to try and keep people alive. How can that be political? It’s funded by little old ladies in Philadelphia. How can that be political?”
The sign on the door said something in that squiggly funny writing and beneath it ZIONIST RELEIF AGENCY.
“Jesus, they can’t even spell.”
“It is pitiful, isn’t it,” Susan said bitterly.
She’d been coming for months now, three, four nights a week. First it was a joke: her father had instructed her in a letter not to forget who she was, what she came from, and though she blithely said she was an American, from Baltimore, she dropped in that first time only because she recognized Yiddish on the door. But gradually, it began to get under her skin.
“What the hell do you get out of it?” Leets had wondered.
“Nothing,” she said.
Still, she kept it up, until it became almost obsessive.
But it wasn’t as if she could do any good, any real good. That was the bitter joke beneath it all, though for Leets it wasn’t a joke anymore, merely a bitterness. They were so pathetic: from the old man Fischelson on down, the girls in the office, all hysterics, scared, most of them. They needed so much help and Susan did what she could, with paper work, and telephones, small things like dealing with the landlord, making sure the place stayed heated, proof-reading the news releases, even in their fractured, East Side Yiddish-English. She knew all along that nobody was listening.
“It’s Communist, isn’t it?” he said.
“It’s Jewish. Not quite the same thing. Anyway, the man whose money started it was a rich, conservative land- and factory-owning aristocrat. A banker. What could be further from communism?”
Still, Leets had his doubts. “I don’t know,” he said.
“It’s his kid. In the hall. Josef Hirsczowicz: he’s the father. One of the richest men in Europe. That’s his child. Or was.”
“They’re dead?”
“They didn’t get out. That little boy, Jim. Think of that. The Germans killed him, because he’s Jewish.”
“They’re trying to kill a lot of little boys. They tried to kill this little boy. Religion has nothing—” but he stopped. He didn’t want to get back into it.
They reached the door at the end of the stairway.
“You’re wasting your time,” he cautioned.
“Of course I am,” she said. The Zionists hoped to communicate to the indifferent Western world what they maintained was happening in Occupied Europe. Susan had monstrous tales, of mass executions and death camps. Leets told her it was propaganda. She said she had proof. Pictures.
“Pictures don’t mean a thing,” he’d instructed her brutally weeks ago. “Pictures can be faked. You need a goddamned witness, someone who’s been there. That’s the only way you’ll get anybody to listen to your stuff. Listen, you’re going to get in trouble. You’re an officer in the United States Army. Now you’re hanging around with a group of—”
She’d put a finger to his lip, ending his sentence. But later she talked of it. Nobody would believe, she said. The Zionist leaders sat in the offices of great men in London, she explained with great bitterness, who’d listen earnestly, then shoo them out after a polite moment or two.
Now, standing in the outer office, about to lose her, Leets felt the beginning of a headache. The headaches always ended in rage.
Christ, what a hole! All that peeling paint and those blinky, low-watt bulbs that almost looked like candles. It smelled like a basement up here, and was always chilly, and all the other people seemed pallid and underfed and would not look at him in his uniform.
“Thanks for walking me over, Jim,” she said. “I appreciate it. I really do.” She smiled, and stepped away.
“Susan.” He grabbed her arm. “Susan, not tonight. Come on, we’ll do the town.”
“Thanks, Jim, but we had our fun.”
He didn’t mind losing her to Phil — he knew he would in the end anyway — but he hated losing her to this.
“Please,” he said.
“I can’t. I’ve got to go.”
“It’s just—”
“Just Jews, Leets,” she said. “Me too.” She smiled. “Believe it or not.”
“I believe, I believe,” he protested. But he did not believe. She was just an American girl, who’d invented her membership in this fossil race.
“No, you don’t,” she said. “But sometimes, I love you anyway.”
And she disappeared behind the door.
The next morning, in the office, Leets’s headache still banged away. He stood looking across the gray skyline.
And where was Roger? Late as usual, he came crashing in, uniform a mess.
“Had trouble finding a cab,” he said. He’d once pointed out that he was probably the only enlisted man in any army who took a cab to World War II each morning.
“Sorry,” he continued.
Leets said nothing. He stared grumpily out the window.
“Guess who I met last night? Go on. Guess, Captain.”
Leets complained instead. “Rog, you didn’t sweep up last night. This place isn’t the Savoy, but it doesn’t have to look like Hell’s Kitchen either.”
“Hemingway.”
“You could at least empty the wastebaskets once in a while.”
“Hemingway. The writer. Over from Paris, from the Ritz. Met him at a party.”
“The writer?”
“Himself. In the flesh. Big guy, mustache, steel glasses. You should have seen him pour the booze down.”
“You travel in flashy circles.”
“Only the best. I go to all the good parties. Don’t let my stripes keep me out of anything. After Bill Fielding, he’s about the most famous man in the world.”
The door flew open; Tony Outhwaithe swirled in as if the star of the play.
“Captain Leets, send this boy out to hit balls against a wall or something,” he commanded.
“Roger, out.”
Roger was off in a flash. “I’ll be at the squash club, you need me.”
Tony turned to Leets. “The news is bad. Bad for you. Rather good for me.” He smiled with great satisfaction.
“You love to top me, don’t you?” Leets said.
“Yes, but there are tops and tops, and this is a true top.”
Leets braced; was he being shipped to Burma to hunt Japs in jungles?
“Are you still banging away on that assassin matter?”
“Sort of. Not getting any—”
“Excellent. I can now prove you wrong. New data.”
“What?” Leets sat up, his heart beginning to excite a bit.
“My, interested so soon.”
“What?”
“All right. Last night I happened to run into a donnish sort from PWE. Know what that is?”
“Your Political Warfare Executive. Sort of like—”
“Yes. Anyway, it seems he can identify your phantom acronym. WVHA.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” Tony was richly satisfied. He was enjoying every minute of all this. “It has nothing to do with us. It doesn’t even concern the war. It’s not related to intelligence or espionage or the racket at all. You’re out of luck, I’m afraid.”
“What is it?” Leets demanded. Why was his heart going, why did he have so much trouble breathing?