Authors: Laura Z. Hobson
That very afternoon on the telephone was merely another case in point. “I thought you could stop by for a cocktail.” Again it was too small a matter to turn into an issue, though they both knew he could have had his long-distance call transferred to any restaurant, any cocktail bar, certainly downstairs at his own hotel.
But the little issues, each too petty to balk at, each contributed its own thin strand to the tapestry of their relationship. Vee watched the strands warily sometimes—ignored them other times.
“You’d hate what?” Jasper asked.
“Don’t you see? It’s not conventionality; it’s just that if you gave me things like this—and I let you—it might, it could be—I’d hate it if the fact that we sleep together got translated into something with good practical aspects like acquiring jewelry.”
“But I don’t think of it that way at all. I want to give you a beautiful thing. I can afford it. You like it. Why is it any different from sending you a book or a picture or flowers?”
“It
is
different. Because—well, maybe because I couldn’t afford to buy this for myself. We know I can buy the books or pictures.”
“Oh, Vee, this is the damnedest.” Now he was openly irritated.
“Jas, please see—I’m sorry, because you planned something beautiful for me. But honestly, there’s something here—”
“We’ve been sleeping together long before this idea struck me. I’m not trying to buy your consent—”
“No, oh, no. Don’t. It’s just—look, when I think about us, when I think do I want to go on, do I want to quit—up to now, it’s been only on the basis of our being drawn to each other, or not drawn to each other. But if you started giving me gorgeous jewels I could get mixed up—I
could
unconsciously feel that you were a passport to possessions, a passport I wouldn’t want to have a fight with…”
“O.K., O.K., have it your way.”
He stood looking at her, his eyes quiet and oddly dead. He had never looked at her that way, and an unreasoning terror, like that of a child’s, bit into her heart. Then he took the pink box, snapped it shut, and chucked it on to the coffee table.
They sat moodily over the new cocktails Harvey brought in. They tried to talk about other things. The long-distance call came through, and when Jasper came back he found her with her hat on.
“I think perhaps I’d better not stay for dinner,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, darling, truly; it was so dear of you to think of it.”
“Don’t go. We’ll feel better after dinner. We might go for a drive later.”
He took her into his arms, and peace crept along her nerves.
“It’s all right,” he finally said. “Maybe I even like you for it.”
But the rest of the evening was strung like a tight chain across the hours, linked of long silences and short, difficult spurts of talk. Even the drive was silent and somehow motionless, as if they could not get away, for all the tearing speed of the car, from the uncomfortable geography of cross-purposes and clashing moods. When he drove her back to her door, he made no move.
“Want to come up for a nightcap?” she asked.
“Thanks, guess I’d better not.”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry, Jas—it was dear of you to think of it;
that
pleases me so.”
“Forget it.”
He waved and was off.
The next morning, she woke tired and unrested. Depression dragged inside her. The memory of the evening was a splinter of uncertainty that pointed it up sharp.
She walked to the office through the cool April morning. On her desk she found the Vederle documents and looked at them gratefully. They would take her back to the real world, away from the nebulous one of shadowy feelings and fears.
It had taken ten days for the documents to be drawn up. Now they were ready for mailing, properly sworn to, notarized, photostated.
The
Ile de France
was sailing at midnight. In a week, the Vederles would have the registered letter with this handful of legal and financial papers; they would call at the American Consulate, buy their railroad and steamship tickets, and be on their way. A month after
Anschluss;
that was fast, decisive.
She opened the top sheet. It was the photostatic copy of the seven checks which had paid her 1937 income-tax installments. “This check is in payment of an obligation to the United States and must be paid at par.”
That small legend was stamped on the face of each of the four checks made out to the Collector of Internal Revenue. In all the years she had been paying Federal taxes and receiving canceled checks, she had never noticed that authoritative command—weren’t all checks always paid at par? The small revelation raised her attentiveness to a higher notch. She was dealing with august and mighty governments in this whole matter of affidavits; she’d better not be offhand about it.
She hitched her chair up foursquare and went on to the next document.
It was a stately assurance from her bank to the world at large that she had banked with them for eight years, was regarded by them as in the highest degree financially responsible and reliable. The usual. She gave little more than a glance to it.
Then came the affidavit itself. This was five closely typed pages of legal foolscap, headed
AFFIDAVIT OF SUPPORT.
She read carefully, watchfully, to learn precisely what it was that the undersigned, Vera Marriner Stamford, being duly sworn, deposed and said.
Some lengthy matters about her own birthplace, present residence, marriage, divorce, freedom from dependent relatives, and such. Then “…that deponent is especially interested in, and desirous of promoting, the welfare of Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, M.U., and his wife, Christa Vederle, and their infant son, Paul Vederle, eleven years of age, and their infant daughter, Ilse Vederle, five years of age….
“…That Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle was born in Austria in 1899. Mrs. Christa Vederle was born in Budapest, then Austria-Hungary, in 1903…
“That Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, his wife and two children, are Aryan. The Vederle family was not and is not, however, in sympathy with the Nazi political government now in power in Austria since the union of Austria with Germany and its incorporation into Germany as an integral portion thereof…”
Vee closed her eyes for a moment. An integral portion thereof. The Vederle family was not and is not, however, in sympathy. She got a sudden vision of a curly-haired five-year-old girl picked up from her toys and dolls and made to cross continents and seas because she was not and is not, however, in sympathy with Hitler, or Franco, or Mussolini, or Stalin…
She went back to the reading of what she had duly sworn to and said.
“Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, prior to the recent political changes in Austria, had built up and enjoyed a lucrative medical practice in Vienna…graduate of the University of Vienna…specialized in psychiatric studies and became a psychoanalyst. During the past ten years Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle has become internationally known and has enjoyed an international reputation as an outstanding and respected analyst. Many Americans have gone to Vienna to become his patients. They value him highly. He has prepared many scientific papers and has been a leader in the seminars of the Psychoanalytical Institute of Vienna. Informed circles would accord him a rating of one of the first ten most important psychoanalysts in Vienna…
“Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle…” (Couldn’t they leave out the given names by now? Did they think that some Consulate official might read this document and become bewildered suddenly, if they switched to a simple, stark Dr. Vederle? Oh, these legalities.) “Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle and Christa Vederle, his wife, being fundamentally opposed to the Nazi regime in Austria, decided voluntarily to give up their lucrative practice and to leave the country…and are exceedingly anxious to immigrate to the United States of America and become American citizens.
“Deponent feels that the United States of America would gain internationally recognized professional ability by permitting their entry into this country…also feels that their entry into this country would be in harmony with the traditions of the United States of America to accord to political refugees a haven of refuge.”
Vee stopped, went back, reread the last sentences eagerly. A lift of pride and love of country moved her. This was good American talk, fundamental and of the essence. For all the deponent this and deponent that, these last phrases were right out of the grist of the American idea, way back there when men first sought out this wild and lonely land so they could be free to meet and vote and work and worship as they needed to. Pilgrims making their hazardous landing…fur-capped hunters shooting wild turkey for those long-ago Thanksgivings…small white churches of many denominations building in New England, side by side…her own family long ago…
All those forgotten days lived in this wordy document going off to some foreigners she had never seen.
She shook her head sharply and went on to the next paragraphs about the Vederles’ private capital of forty thousand Swiss francs, their chances of building up quickly a sustaining income in this country, her own financial status, her employment; she was “willing and in a position to post a bond if the Immigration Authorities or the American Consul shall deem the delivery of such a bond necessary or advisable…hereby assuming full responsibility for…the would-be immigrants, and promises and guarantees that…they will never become a burden or public charge upon the United States of America, or upon any city, county, or municipality there.
The affidavit thereafter wound up with quick, packed paragraphs about deponent’s positive knowledge that the Vederles were in excellent health, had never been convicted of any crime or misdemeanor whatsoever, did not advocate the overthrow of the present form of government by force, and thus, “that deponent, as a responsible American citizen, hereby respectfully requests that the Honorable American Consul will issue an immigration visa to the said Dr. Franz Wilhelm Vederle, Christa Vederle, his wife, and their two infant children, Paul Vederle and Ilse Vederle, and thus permit them to come to the United States of America for permanent residence herein. Sworn to and subscribed…”
Vera smiled. This cautious and loquacious document didn’t overlook much. Still, a kind of security hid between all the sedate lines fenced in neatly at either side by the blue-lined margins of the foolscap pages. An assurance that nothing had been forgotten, that now nothing could go askew.
She gathered the various documents together, slapped their edges briskly on the desk, aligning them, folded them, and slipped them into the envelope. She glanced at her watch and rang for Miss Ben- son. Just then the buzzer hummed twice. Perhaps Jasper was telephoning.
“Vee, darling, it’s Ann. You haven’t mailed the Vederle stuff yet, have you?”
“Just this minute going to. Why?”
“Glad I caught you. I just had a cable. They couldn’t wait. They’re already on their way to Switzerland. Mail them there instead, will you? The Karl Hof, Albanstrasse, Basel,” Vee wrote it down.
“O.K., Ann. You’d have been too late in five minutes. It’s going
Ile de France.
”
“Have you heard direct from Vederle?”
“No. I’m writing a brief note to him, though, to go with all this stuff. There is a lot of it, isn’t there?”
‘Yes, but it saves on red tape later.”
She rang again, then waited for Miss Benson to address a new envelope. She wrote a brief letter, on her private stationery; it was her first personal communication with the Vederles, and she felt a little shy as she wrote.
Dear Dr. and Mrs. Vederle,
Enclosed is everything you will need to present to the American Consul. Mrs. Willis and her lawyer have really been in charge of the entire matter—all I have done is sign my name to the documents they put in front of me. I feel sure that between us we have overlooked nothing, and I hope that your travels toward a new life in this country can begin at once. I do hope we shall meet when you arrive. I would so like to wish you well personally.
Cordially,
VERA M. STAMFORD
“Register it, will you, Benny?” she said. “That’s done, thanks be, and I feel better.”
As she said it, a shrimp-pink box flew open in her mind; diamonds and a great sapphire glistened in white satin. She was odd about jewels, she reflected. They were beautiful, yes. But they were still stone.
Jasper Crown was an inveterate first-nighter. Something in him was most completely satisfied in the theater on opening nights. The taxis and private cars moving up to the lighted marquee, the furs and jewels and brilliance of the women, the staring crowds on the sidewalk, all gave him pleasure.
He would walk down the aisle slowly, look about, greet people; if he paused for a moment, he invariably tapped lightly on the knuckles of his left hand with the flat black disc of his collapsed silk hat. This gesture had all the delicacy of a woman tapping with a frothy lace fan, yet it was not grotesque as he did it.
Going to the theater with him for the opening of a play was important to Vee always; tonight she dressed for it with a nervous self-consciousness. He would be withdrawn and silent as he was last night; no, he would be offhand and talk only of the network. She was ready ten minutes too early.
She rang for her maid, Dora, a crisp slim, Swedish-American girl who had been with her for five years. Dora came in with a square florist’s box, its green tulle ribbons untied. Vee’s heart leaped and left apprehension behind.
In a few moments she heard the house buzzer sound from the kitchen. Jasper had sent his car for her early.
But in a moment, another bell rang, and she heard Dora at the front door, Jasper’s voice giving her “Good evening.”
She waited for a moment, then went in to the living room. He was turned away from her, examining for the hundredth time the tides of the books on the bookshelves.
“Hello.” He wheeled around at her voice, came toward her.
“God, you’re beautiful in that,” he said.
“Thanks for the gardenias, Jas—it was sweet to make me feel—”
He waved it aside.
“I changed my mind about dinner at home,” he said. “We’ll have a drink here and dine out.”