E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

BETH DAVID SYNAGOGUE

Grand Concourse and 175th St.

Bronx 57, New York

February 4, 1954

My Dear Robert,

I am not writing this at the office but wanted quickly to let you know I don’t see what purpose your coming up to NY would serve. It is impossible to defend in this trial. Hirsch has ruled that my clients may be questioned about their political associations as establishing their motive for the crime they are accused of. Therefore no matter what strategy I employ by the inversions of logic of these times a conclusion will be derived that makes them guilty. Whether they declare their communism or take the Fifth, communists they are shown to be. And if they are communists they are liars. And if they are liars this dog Mindish must be telling the truth. That is because even if he is a communist he is a witness for the United States Govt. All I can have the Isaacsons do is deny Mindish’s testimony. But if Mindish testifies he met with the famous Thos. Flemming, who is known in certain circles as Talkative Tom because he has been used by the govt in three trials already, and Flemming who is brought from his prison cell to the courtroom testifies he took orders from Kusnetsov of the Soviet Govt, how, not being there, can my clients deny that? Yet they are held to account for it. They are held to account for the Soviet Union. They are held to account for the condition of the world today. And all the indictment states is that they met with Mindish in the kitchen of their own house.

I don’t think it is advisable for you to leave your classes. Please don’t. If I think you can help I will call on you. I expect to lose the trial but win on appeal. I am saying yiska for your father. God forgive me, in one sense I am glad Samuel is no longer on earth — that he would have to see in this case the sometimes terrible power of his beloved law.

My sincerest regards to you and your lovely bride.

Jake Ascher

VERDICT

The Isaacsons are convicted of conspiracy to give to the Soviet Union the secret of the atom bomb. No — the secret of the hydrogen bomb. Or is it the cobalt bomb? Or the neutron bomb. Or napalm. Something like that.

One day after a rain, a young man trying to interpret and analyze the awful visions of his head makes an ordinary visit to his sister in her sanitarium. It is the autumn of a really great year. He stands outside her window, his cheap boots darkening in the wet grass. He searches for her first on one wet foot, then on the other. She’s not in the bed, she’s not in the chair, she’s not in the corner near the door. If she is in the room she is somewhere along the window wall beyond his line of sight. A face appears in the safety-glass panel of the door. The door opens and he ducks. He hears a voice, cheerful, patronizing and solicitous. It is a voice for addressing pets.

The sanitarium is built to look like a series of connected garden apartments. It is located in a quiet residential street of Newton, not far from Boston College. Behind it is a professional building for doctors and dentists, also built to look like a series of garden apartments. The sanitarium and the professional building share a parking lot. One day in the previous week, this young man hunkering here in the shadow of these garden apartments, rushed out of the sanitarium and across this parking lot, his fleece-lined jacket flying from his upraised hand like a battle flag. He was screaming incomprehensibly, making hoarse guttural sounds of rage, he was really behaving quite poorly. Behind him trying in vain to call him to account, his foster father came out of the door of the sanitarium, just as the young man disappeared through the doors of the professional building. Behind the young man’s foster father came the young man’s foster mother. Behind the foster mother came a nurse. They were quite alarmed. Somehow the young man had gotten it in his head that his sister, a patient in the sanitarium, was being considered for shock therapy. A strong electric current is applied by means of electrodes fastened to the scalp earlobes shoulders nipples bellybutton genitals asshole knees toes and soles of the feet, to the nervous system of the patient. The patient does a rigid dance. The current is stopped and the patient relaxes. The current is applied again and the patient dances again. The current is relaxed. The young man was going after one of the doctors with an office in the professional building, a psychiatrist named Duberstein. He was going to kill this Doctor Duberstein. In his zeal he forswore the professional directory in the lobby and simply went down the halls, flinging open the doors of the waiting rooms and treatment rooms and x-ray rooms, banging doors and scaring mothers and their babies, old men with the shakes, and boys with severe cases of acne. It is just as well. Had he been a killer he would have moved quietly. But preceded by his shock waves he alerted the supposed victim, sending him a signal of the ritualistic nature of his fury. Not that Duberstein picked this up. His chair was warm and a manila folder lay open on his desk and his pipe smoke hung in the air. He was GONE! A lucky thing too, I would have killed him.

But you see I was learning. I was learning how to be an Isaacson. An Isaacson does things boldly calculated to bring self-destructive results. It is a way of making the world do your bidding. My face now bearded, my hair longer than it has ever been, I careen through my changes at an accelerating pace. The sense is of running too fast downhill. But why not, why the fuck not.

In the aftermath of my assault on his office Duberstein told the Lewins he would withdraw from the case unless they guaranteed to keep me away from her. I said I would guarantee to keep away from her if they would guarantee to have him withdraw from the case. My father, a lawyer with some knowledge of arbitration, suggested this compromise: I would guarantee to keep away from Duberstein’s hospital and his person if they guaranteed to keep his miserable hands off the voltmeter. The agreement was made.

At the same time I initiated discussions with the Lewins with the end in mind of becoming Susan’s sole legal guardian, an idea I view with warmth on days of sun, and coolly on days of rain. Today is chill. My feet are getting wet. I raise my face above the window sill and I see that the competent nurse has placed Susan back on her bed. The door is just closing. I watch my sister. Slowly her legs spread, her feet slide over the sides of the mattress and her toes hook into the crevice between the mattress and the spring. Her arms move outward; her hands curl over the edge of the mattress and find the same ledge. She holds her bed in her hands and by her ankles. Her tunic has risen above her knees. Her legs are skinny and have not been shaved. Her face is gaunt. She writhes gently on her back, swaying like something underwater, staring intently with her DP eyes at the ceiling. Finally the pillow is dislodged and falls to the floor. She presses her head back and peers at the junction of ceiling and wall directly over the headboard. And now firmly attached to the bed she does not move.

Today Susan is a starfish. Today she practices the silence of the starfish. There are few silences deeper than the silence of the starfish. There are not many degrees of life lower before there is no life.

Daniel raises the window, hoists himself to the sill, and climbs through. He has a document which he puts with the others in the drawer in her bedtable. But that is not the main business of today.

He stands at the foot of her bed. To be objective, she is learning to rest upon what is designed to be rested on. From here I can see that the sanitarium does not require underwear. Look at that. A wave of hot guilt breaks over Daniel’s ears. He moves aside, out of the beam. That is the last thing to go. More than once I have asked myself if I’d like to screw my sister. I mean I have not asked myself, I have examined myself to see if that was what I wanted. But in our history I don’t think I have ever wanted that. My involvement with Susan has to do with rage, which is easily confused with unnatural passion. My interest, my raging interest is higher up, somewhere in the heart’s canyons with their clear echoes up into the throat: it enrages me that anyone, let alone my kid sister, could have characterized my actions, could have found in what I was doing and the way I was acting enough consistency, enough of a pattern, to make a confident moral judgment.