E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

Paul realizes that he has to adjust to the reality of the situation. Howard “Red” Feuerman, the Chief U.S. Attorney, is a thin, boyish fellow with freckles, and thin sandy red hair and a tenor voice. He is younger than Paul expected, perhaps his own age, and he too wears a glen plaid suit, of brownish tone, although his fits him better. Feuerman is a war hero. He commanded a destroyer. His career has been meteoric. He is a graduate of St. John’s, and is married to an Irish girl and has seven children. Paul runs his hand through his hair. He quickly tightens the knot at his collar. He wishes at this moment, and it is unbelievable to him, and it shames him, but he wishes at this moment he could be back in his cell. On the window ledge, under the bars, he keeps the shoebox with his letters from Rochelle and the children, and his hairbrush, and his toilet articles, and the cigar box with his collection. He has a very good way of folding the extra blanket at the foot of his cot. He might be having a chat now with Doyle, the day guard, a very decent man who has had much sorrow in his life.

But you can see that is part of it too, the enforced isolation, the sapping of confidence so that being with other people in a room without bars is suddenly a terrifying thing. They are counting on just the feelings I am feeling now. I will show them they can count on nothing.

Nevertheless he feels he’s lost something even in the few minutes he’s been here. A run scored for the other team. Ascher is now up at the bench with Feuerman, and he looks to his left across Ascher’s empty chair and catches Rochelle studying him worriedly. Behind them, filing in through the rear doors of the court, are the people from whose numbers a jury will be chosen. Surely it is ridiculous to suppose that even one Communist is among them. He wants to reach out, to touch Rochelle’s hand. He puts down the urge. They have agreed to be calm and dignified and under no circumstances make of themselves spectacles for the watching eyes of the press. To show no emotion, to give no satisfaction, to provide no hearts with occasion for scorn or pity. Not pity but justice is what they will have, and not by groveling for it but by demanding it. They have worked it all out — Rochelle has been very emphatic on this point.

He must clear his head and keep cool. What matters is that he maintain his faculties. To analyze the situation and assess it correctly and do what has to be done on the basis of that assessment. He understands that the trial will be held in recognizable New York accents. His adversaries are human beings with jobs to do. They will do their jobs feeling that they honor the standards of justice. An American flag, a beautiful flag with gold fringe, hangs from a pole which is socketed in a stand behind the judge’s bench. I am to be presented as an enemy of this flag. Yet Mrs. Goldstein, my fourth-grade teacher, told me of all the children in the class, I had the finest straightest salute, and I was commended to the notice of the other children: “The way Paul stands, children, that is the way to stand, nice and tall and with a straight back when you say the pledge of allegiance.” The marvelous Mrs. Goldstein. The marvelous smell of the classroom on rainy days, with all the raincoats and rubbers. A schoolroom on a rainy day, steamy with wet raincoats in the closet and wet rubbers. The windows fogged with steam, the rain dripping down the outside of the windows. The hot lunch program. The hot soup. To each other the teachers spoke Yiddish, which was ridiculous because nine tenths of all the children were Jewish and they understood Yiddish from the mothers and fathers, from their grandfathers. The maps that pulled down like shades. The watercolors of Washington and Lincoln and Coolidge framed in glass high on the walls.

All societies indoctrinate their children. The marvelous Mrs. Goldstein in total innocence taught us the glorious history of our brave westward expansion: our taming of the barbaric Indians, our brave stand at the Alamo, the mighty railroads winning the plains. Thus I must understand the nature of the conspiracy against me: it is mounted in full faith and righteousness by the students of Mrs. Goldstein.

He begins to feel better. His stomach is settling. The long drawn out process of picking jurors has begun. He sits with his hands clasped on the edge of the table. He does not stare too intensively at each of these people who may decide his fate. His personal manner will offend no one. His mind is working, and he is no longer stunned. He feels the satisfaction of a soldier having done everything necessary to prepare himself for battle. It is a moment of clarity and exhilaration.

My darling, whoever is looking will think I am writing a note on some legal aspect to Ascher. I will pass it to him and he will pass it over to you. You look so pale, my sweetheart. Don’t be afraid. Don’t you know your girl longs for you with a love that is indestructible? Look up and you will see me smiling at you.

R.

It is as she says. He smiles, and at this moment all the fear backs up on him and the treacherous muscles of his smile mean to betray him and cause him to cry out. He swallows this dreadful feeling, swallows the terror, tastes it, gulps it. Oh Rochelle! Oh my darling. Do you know what? There is no one behind us. I have checked. Not a face we know. Neither Frieda nor Ruth. Nor anyone from the Concourse Jefferson Club. We are absolutely alone.

Who is the higher authority? Who do I call? Who saves me. The muscles of let me out. The muscles of they can’t do this to me. When the cell door first closed I thought it would open if I tried it. They actually locked me in a cell. They actually do that, put someone in a place so that he can’t get out. It is done. And the same people who have put me in here are trying me. What can I expect of a trial conducted by the same people who have arrested me and put me in their jail. The wish to get out. It is a terror that makes rigid the muscles in your arms, your sphincters, the cords of your sex; your body winds up on itself, it all tightens and begins to radiate this tremendous fearful energy that attaches to nothing. You smear electrons on the cellblock. You melt the palms of your hands on the bars. The more insane and infuriating and ridiculous the fact that you must stay here in this cage, the more it is true. With every minute that passes it becomes more terrifyingly insane and more true. And finally you reach the point when you realize that the situation is contrived to make you realize you are your own enemy: the muscles of let me out will destroy you. You have to untangle them, unhitch them from the rage in your throat, loosen them from the mind. Slack your ropes. At the moment you slack your ropes and begin to breathe you begin to do time. That is the name the inmate community gives to this adjustment. Doing time. You begin the process of outlasting the animosity of those who have put you here. You destroy the time in your life, the minutes and the hours, scorch them with your own indifference, make them valueless to yourself before they do it for you. As the Red armies retreated before Hitler, burning the earth behind them, their own earth, their own crops, their own fruition, so that it would not fall in its living ripeness to them.

This morning, when they came to take me to my trial, every man in the cellblock wished me luck.

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

Mr. A, a Mr. Feuerman called, left no number or message except that he had a matter of mutual interest to discuss — wouldn’t talk with anyone else. Have a happy.

Joanne, 515pm

“I don’t understand, Jake. You mean they even now have the power to call it off?”

“There are ways. He goes on the assumption that whatever it is you confess to generates a new legal situation that must be studied.”