E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

What things, I asked Fein.

“Oh, it’s a lot of bullshit. That’s the way they all talk. Even before the execution, when the heat was on to commute the sentence, they dropped these hints about evidence they had and couldn’t use in the interest of national security. Like there’s this big report in the Justice Department that they’ve never released because of security, and no one can see it, and it’s supposed to have indisputable evidence. But a friend of mine in Justice told me if the report has evidence like they claim they would have released it. There’s a report all right, and the reason it’s classified is because it favors the defense. Shit, between the FBI and the CP your folks never had a chance.”

Jack Fein is a chain-smoker. He slid his Camel cigarettes out of the pack and laid them on the table in a row like cartridges in a belt. He drinks black coffee. He does not carry a camera or a pad. We were in this luncheonette. It was warm there but he kept his coat on and leaned all over the table with his coat sleeves flopping.

“You’re a tough baby,” he said. “That’s good. I’m glad to see that you’re hangin’ in there. What’s the name of your Foundation?”

“The Paul and Rochelle Isaacson Foundation for Revolution.”

“What’s it gonna do?”

“We’re, urn, funding publications to develop revolutionary awareness. We’re going to finance community action, urn, programs. We’re going to assert the radical alternative.”

“Great. You want to tell me where your Foundation is getting its money?”

“Sure, man, it’s no secret. It’s my trust money and my sister’s trust money. It’s a lot of money.”

“The thing the old lawyer put together, Ascher. From that committee.”

“Right.”

“What does it come to now?”

“Well, um, I haven’t been counting.”

“Beautiful. You’re a beautiful baby. Are you in SDS?”

“No.”

“PLP?”

“No.”

“Where do you live now?”

I tell him.

“What about your sister?”

“Well, see, I don’t think she wants to talk to anyone right now. She’s recovering from the trial.”

Wicked.

“Yeah.” He lights a new Camel with an old one. “Yeah, I heard something like that. Yeah. She would be how old now.”

“Susan is twenty.”

“And where is she?”

“Out of state, that’s all I can tell you.”

“What about your foster parents. Could I talk to them?”

“Look, I don’t care about blowing our cover. I don’t think any of us care anymore. Anyone who was interested could have traced us up to Boston. But I mean there are certain family things to be settled by all of us, not me acting alone. We’ve all got responsibilities to each other.”

“I understand. Don’t worry, I don’t fuck around.”

I do not like the sudden sympathetic turn of things. Here I’m laying the Foundation on him and he wants to talk to the responsible adults. It occurs to me that I am dealing with a professional. The son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed a dozen years ago for crimes against the nation, has established a Foundation to clear their name.

“Of course it can’t be done,” Fein assures, me.

“But that’s not the purpose,” I tell him.

“Listen, kid, a radical is no better than his analysis. You know that. Your folks were framed, but that doesn’t mean they were innocent babes. I don’t believe they were a dangerous conspiracy to pass important defense secrets, but I don’t believe either that the U.S. Attorney, and the Judge, and the Justice Department and the President of the United Sates conspired against them.”

“I thought you said the evidence was phony.”

“That’s right. Those guys had to bring in a conviction. That was their job. But no one would have put the finger on your parents unless they thought they were up to something. In this country people don’t get picked out of a hat to be put on trial for their lives. I don’t know — your parents and Mindish had to have been into some goddamn thing. They acted guilty. They were little neighborhood commies probably with some kind of third-rate operation that wasn’t of use to anyone except maybe it made them feel important. Maybe what they were doing was worth five years. Maybe. But that would have been in the best of times, and in the best of times nobody would have cared, nobody would have cared enough to falsify evidence. No one would have been afraid enough to throw a switch.”

FANNY ASCHER

570 West 72nd Street

Fanny Ascher was curious to see how I’d turned out. That’s why she agreed to talk to me. There was also a repugnance or fear of me, and what I came from, or of my name, and that’s why she sat on the edge of her sofa with her ankles crossed, with her chin high, in wary widowhood. She is a thin lady with very fair skin, finely wrinkled, and grey jeweled eyeglasses, and hair tinted blue. It is difficult to clasp fingers painlessly around a diamond ring and a wedding band on that fourth finger. The crookedness bothered me, the distortion in that hand’s form the arthritic form

“You are a student still?”

“Yes.”

I have been trying to keep up with what you people are doing with your long hair and strange clothes. I am an enlightened woman and I like young people. Nevertheless I am disappointed that you look this way. It does not inspire confidence.

“And married, with a baby?”

“Yes.”

She shakes her head.

“And your sister?”

“She’s getting better.”

“Still?”

“Yes.”

The woman’s head oscillates left right left right left right. Her eyes are fixed on me.

“I don’t want to take up a lot of your time.”

“My time? What do you think I do with my time?”

“Well, I only came to ask if there were any papers, any letters you know about. Any files.”

“There are none. Robert has all the files. I gave him everything I found. How is Robert?”

“He’s OK.”

“You go up there?”

“Yes, when I can.”

“They are busy people.”

“Yes.”

“I hear from them every year on the high holy days. A card.”

“Yes.”

Photograph of Ascher on the baby grand. A younger man than I remember, smiling in soft focus in a leather frame,

“Well, that’s all I came to ask you.”

“Jacob saved everything. For over a year every day I went to the office to go through his papers. Bills, letters, notes to himself — he threw away nothing. When I sold the practice and closed the office I had to clean up the garbage of thirty-five years. But it was all filed. There was no confusion. He was a man with an orderly mind.”

“Yes.”

“It was very difficult for me. I made myself ill.”

“Yes.”

“Robert did not want the practice.” We consider that for a minute. Daniel fears his boots have dirtied the carpet. This is wall-to-wall carpeting, rose beige, on 72nd Street.

“Would you like something, a glass of milk? There was a point Jacob and I seriously discussed adopting you ourselves.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, it’s true. How we would have managed at our age I can’t tell you. It was his idea, of course, not mine. I held my breath and he talked himself out of it. I was frankly surprised. Only after he died did I think maybe he knew he hadn’t long and that was why he decided he couldn’t. Otherwise, who knows. Jacob made the decisions. It was characteristic. He didn’t know when to stop for people. The poorest client, he was meticulous.”

“Yes.”

“We were not the same in that respect. He was generous to a fault.”

“He was very kind to us.”