E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

The bench was of light varnished oak, like the chairs and the spectator benches. It was school furniture. A round-faced school clock with large black hands ticked on the wall, A flag grey with dirt stood in its stand in the corner of the courtroom. There was a picture of the President behind the bench, and a New York State flag in the other corner.

The courtroom was almost empty. A cop stood under one window with his arms folded. He was unarmed and wore no hat. He yawned. A woman with thick legs and low-heeled shoes who was dressed in the same blue color as the policeman’s uniform sat directly behind the couple. There were for this momentous occasion no reporters present. The few people in the spectators’ section were there on their own business with the Judge. They were nervous and sharp with one another. They whispered urgently and told each other to be quiet.

Ascher came back from the bench and addressed his two clients: “Stand up, please, come up here with me. The Judge wants to ask you some questions. Come, come, he won’t hurt you.”

Daniel and his sister Susan stood up and slid along the pew and came out into the aisle. Susan held his hand tightly.

“Come. Quickly, this is a busy place.”

They stood in front of the bench looking up at the bird on his perch in his black feathers and white crest. “Is this Daniel?”

He nodded. “And this is Susan?”

She stared at him making no sign of having heard.

“Isn’t that who you are? Susan Isaacson, don’t I have that right?”

“You must answer the Judge,” Ascher said.

Susan swallowed. He could see her swallowing. He shook her hand, attached to him as if glued, shook it till she nodded.

“Very good. Now I want to ask you children a question, and I want each of you to answer. It is a very simple question, it is an easier question than any you have to answer in school. All right?”

“All right,” Daniel said.

“My question is this: Do you like living at the Shelter? Don’t look at Mr. Ascher. You will have to answer this question for yourself.”

The boy was terrified. He didn’t know what to say. The little girl continued to stare up at the Judge. She was not capable of making a sound.

“Well, surely you can tell if you like a place or not. Are you well treated there? Are you happy there? Or would you rather be somewhere else.”

“Somewhere else,” Daniel said. “We want to go home.”

Ascher was shaking his head. He said something in Yiddish and then he and the Judge began to argue. The Judge’s eyes were brown but around the circumference of the pupils was a rim of light blue. His eyelids lay over the tops of his eyes like hoods. As he talked to Ascher he looked at the children. And they looked at him.

Suddenly, he disappeared.

“We’ll go into the chambers,” Ascher said, holding us before him and shuffling us forward to a door.

We were in an office that had a soft grey carpet and a big desk and black leather chairs and a black leather sofa. There were books in bookcases that had glass doors. We sat on the big leather couch, Ascher sat in one of the chairs facing us, and the Judge sat in another. The Judge had taken off his black robe and he looked smaller. He had a white tuft of hair that stuck out of each side of his pink head. He wore a light tweed suit with a vest that was too tight so that it pulled away from its buttons and made elliptical gaps that showed the white of his shirt. He was a tiny man, and when he crossed one leg over the other, he helped it with his hand, lifting his leg under the knee and pulling it over his other knee.

“Ah, here we are,” he said.

A grey-haired lady had come through another door and approached us with two bottles of soda in her hands. Eyeglasses hung from a chain around her neck. She handed the bottles to us and then put some change in the Judge’s hand. Then she left the room. The Judge had to unfold his legs again to get the change into his pocket.

It was Coca-Cola. My father had once told me that it rotted the teeth. That if you put a tooth in a glass of Coca-Cola it would rot away. At home we never drank it.

“Now this is better, isn’t it? Where we’re all talking together like this instead of out there? Now has Mr. Ascher told you my name?”

“Judge Greenblatt,” Ascher mumbled.

“That’s right, Judge Greenblatt,” the Judge said as if we had said his name. “And I am appointed by the State to be the Judge of the Children’s Court to see to it that children in difficult straits for one reason or another have the best possible chance. You know that.”

“They understand,” Ascher said. “They are both intelligent children.”

“I can see that,” the Judge said. “I can see that very clearly.”

The bottoms of Susan’s thighs were sticking to the leather cushion. She kept lifting her legs and the sound was like adhesive tape coming away from the skin.

“So we have this problem,” the Judge said. “And it is whether, in view of the present cicumstances, it is better for you to stay at the Shelter facility, or to be placed in a private home to live privately with a family the way children are supposed to live. And to be as fair as possible I wanted to know how you children feel about the matter.”

“Excuse me,” Ascher said. “They should be told, Your Honor, of their parents’ opinion on the matter.”

“We will not lead them, Mr. Ascher,” the Judge said, staring at me with his hand tucked between his crossed knees.

“I agree to that,” Ascher said. “To tell them neither how anyone thinks they’re supposed to live. Not even justices of the Federal District,” he added after a moment’s thought.

“Well, children, I am waiting for your answer,” the Judge said. “You understand,” he said turning to Ascher again, “my sole concern is here in this room. There is in your attitude what I detect as a presumption of my brotherhood with a certain Justice of the Federal Court.”

“Oh no, not so,” Ascher said. He seemed genuinely aghast.

“I do not feel obligated to defend the judiciary for that man,” the Judge said. “And I resent the pressure I feel from you.”

“It has been a long and frustrating trial,” Ascher said. “I’m not well. I would like to hear one ruling out of all of this that favors a defense motion.”

“My dear Ascher, these children are not on trial!”

“They most assuredly are,” Ascher said, rising to his feet. He began to pace the room. “Their parents are still alive. They have hope. They have hope of being all together again.”

“I am merely asking a question.”

“It has been answered. May God in Heaven forgive me, if you cannot give these children their mother and father, do not force on them other mothers and other fathers.”

“According to your own words a dozen families have offered their homes. They are all presumably sympathetic?”

Ascher sighed and slapped his arms against his sides.

“Do you know what life is like in a public facility?” said the Judge. “Do you think it can be any good in a city barracks for children for not months but perhaps years? At best? And there is a history here of running away.”

“Once.”

“It is enough. No, you are being melodramatic.”

“The parents—”

“I am not concerned with the parents. Their mental health is not the province of my court. It is the children I must consider and it is for the children’s welfare decisions must be made. You have to make that clear to them.”

The Judge closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “There is such a thing as too much hope,” he said.

TRUE HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR: A RAGA

Cold War is a phrase given to Bernard Baruch, a non-officeholding adviser to presidents and one of the architects of the Baruch plan for the international control of atomic energy. This plan, which was presented to the UN in June 1946, proposed that for the sake of mankind, the United States — the only country that had atomic bombs — would continue to build its stockpile and sophisticate its bomb technology until a system of foolproof international inspection and control had been established to its satisfaction all over the world, including internally in the Soviet Union. While its plan was under discussion the United States exploded another atom bomb in the South Pacific, on the island of Bikini. We may tentatively define Cold War as a condition of incipient bomb-falling hostility by which the United States proposed to apply such pressure upon Soviet Russia that its government would collapse and the power of the Bolsheviks be destroyed. Citations available from Kennan (also known as Mr. X), Acheson, Dulles.