When everyone was seated, Eustaly, standing at the front of the platform and smiling like a sly professor about to spring a surprise examination, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to the organizational meeting of the League for New Beginnings.”
He paused, and beamed at us, and said, “I hope you’ll approve the name I’ve chosen. New beginnings are the ultimate goal of all of us, are they not? New beginnings which cannot come to their ascendancy until the old has been done away with.” Something dangerous gleamed in his face and voice when he said that, and when he added, “We are all of us in this room, I believe, vitally concerned with the doing away of the old.”
That got him a rumble of agreement that made me think of feeding time at the zoo. He stood smiling above us, apparently unafraid of being eaten, and when the rumble died away, he said, “Now, I believe we should introduce ourselves.” He took a piece of paper from the desk. “As I mention your name,” he said, “please rise and tell us a little about the group you represent.” His smile dripping geniality, he added, “No speeches, please, we are a bit pressed for time. Just one or two brief sentences. Now, let’s see.” He consulted his list. “First, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp, Householders’ Separatist Movement, HSM. Mr. and Mrs. Whelp?”
Two kindly-looking middle-aged overweight people in the front row got to their feet and faced us. If you have ever watched daytime television, you have seen Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp. The master of ceremonies carries a microphone up the aisle while the audience laughs at the sight of itself on the monitor screens, and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp have the aisle seats about midway up on the left. The announcer, knowing these two will never say anything off-color, stops and asks, “And how long have you folks been married?” “Eighteen years,” says Mrs. Whelp, and blushes and smiles. Mr. Whelp smiles, too, and looks very proud.
What was a couple like this doing at an organizational meeting of terrorists? After the monster at the door, and the cloakroom full of weapons, I’d expected an assembly of Boris Karloffs at the very least, not a couple of Saturday Evening Post subscribers. (With the paranoia inherent in every one of us, I suddenly began to suspect it was a gag after all, with me the butt, and so I looked around suspiciously, hoping to find somebody giggling behind his hand. But sober reflection for about an eighth of a second convinced me I was hardly likely to be the butt of a practical joke involving the active assistance of Angela, Murray, the FBI, and about fifteen total strangers. One way or the other, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Whelp had to be legitimate terrorists.)
They were. “I’m Fred Whelp,” Fred Whelp told us in a reedy voice, “and this is the missus. Now, what we of HSM believe is that the whole trouble in the world is because of the big nations like the United States and Russia. Things were better back when all the countries were small, so nobody could figure he could whip the whole world. Now, what we want is for all the states in the United States and all the states in Russia to separate from one another and be separate countries like in Europe and Africa. Now, the first step is for New York City and Long Island to secede from the United States and start our own country, and call it Roosevelt. New York City’s been robbed by those people up in Albany too long, and it’s time somebody did something about it.”
Mrs. Whelp then said, in a voice like blueberry pie on the window sill in June, “We’ll help everyone here any way we can, and what we’d like you all to do to help us is help us blow up the Governor’s Mansion in Albany and maybe the United Nations Building later on, we’re not sure.”
“To publicize our cause,” explained Mr. Whelp. “We know damn well public opinion would be on our side, but the damn newspapers—”
“Thank you, Mr. Whelp,” Eustaly said, smoothly breaking into Fred Whelp’s developing harangue. “Thank you, Mrs. Whelp. And now I’d like you all to meet Mrs. Selma Bodkin of the Gentile Mothers for Peace, GMFP. Mrs. Bodkin?”
Reluctantly, as Mrs. Selma Bodkin got up, the Whelps sat down.
Mrs. Bodkin would also have been in that daytime television audience, but no announcer would be stopping to ask any questions of her. He’d pass right on by, knowing just from looking at her that she was (1) a widow, and (2) opinionated. A hefty woman packed into a black dress, she carried a shiny black purse hanging from her forearm, and her graying hair was in a severe permanent — home-induced — but a little disarrayed.
She told us, without preamble and in a raucous voice, “This country today suffers from its enemies both within and without, and most of these enemies within are Commie-inspired. Don’t you think for a minute there’s anybody but the Communist Party behind the attempted mongrelization of our good old American blood lines. The Commies know their only chance to beat us for world domination is to sap our strength with a lot of inbreeding with inferior races like Catholics and Jews and Negroes. Mongrelization is the—”
But she was drowned out by a sudden rash of shouts and calls from others present, who seemed for some reason to have taken offense at something Mrs. Bodkin had said. Over their cries Mrs. Bodkin could still be heard, roaring something about “... American boys and girls in the back seats of automobiles with...” And so on.
Angela leaned close to me and whispered, “They’re crazy, Gene. They’re all crazy.”
“I know,” I whispered back.
“Catholics aren’t a race,” she whispered.
I looked at her, and I didn’t say anything.
Up front, Eustaly was making that gavel sound again — since nearly everyone was standing now, I couldn’t see whether he actually had a gavel or not — and he was calling for order, which he very gradually obtained. Silence eventually settled on the hall, a silence that quivered like a tuning fork. Nearly everyone was glaring at someone else.
Eustaly, just the slightest bit ruffled, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please. As I said when I first approached each of you, among you there are wide divergences of opinion, opposing points of view. None of us will get anywhere if we allow ourselves to become emotionally involved in ideological disputes. Let us simply accept the fact that while we do have certain methods in common, otherwise we have nothing in common at all, and let us attempt for the general good to maintain at least a state of truce during the course of our association together in the League for New Beginnings.”
These buttery sentences served to ease the tension in the air, permitting the combatants to relax a bit. When Eustaly paused to see if there was going to be any more trouble, the silence that met him was complete and unchallenging. He smiled, encompassing us all in his good feeling, and said, “Excellent. I knew I could count on your sense and discretion.” He consulted his list and said, “Next, Mr. Eli Zlott of True Zion Rescue Mission, TZRM. Mr. Zlott.”
At first. it seemed that no one had stood up, but then I saw a head moving up there near the platform, and realized that Mr. Eli Zlott must be something under five feet tall. Except that he had a wild and wiry mass of gray-black hair atop his head, I had no idea what he looked like.
What he sounded like, though, was something else again. His voice was as big as his body was small. It boomed out, sharp and rasping and irritating, as though coming to us through a really bad public address system.
“Six million dead!” cried this voice. “That’s what we can thank the goyim for! And what do they do about it? A few Eichmanns they give us, and that’s supposed to make us happy? No! Total destruction of the German race, that is the answer, the only answer, the final solution! That German embassies should exist in New York City, in Washington, D.C., here in the heart of democracy, the greatest nation ever known, that we should get down on our knees and thank God every night, no! A thousand times no! Blow them up, burn them out, every man and woman and child of them, make the world safe for democracy! Is this—”