E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

“Also I play chess with some of the other inmates. We make our own boards and paper men marked with the pieces they are. And we shout out our moves. You remember how I taught you to notate on the chessboard?”

“Yes.”

“I always thought chess was a waste of time. It is! It’s a terrible waste of time. I look forward to the baseball season. They’ve already broadcast some of the exhibition games of the Dodgers and the Giants. Over the loudspeaker. Are you still a baseball fan?”

I shrugged. It was a taste I felt guilty for having. He thought all sports a means of keeping people subjected. He felt loyalty to a baseball team was the worst kind of working class gullibility.

“Well, they’ll make one of me yet!” he said with a laugh. I was looking directly into his face, at his eyes made large and rude by his eyeglasses. He sighed, pushed us away, and got up to pace the room. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and jerked his hand upward so that a cigarette came out of the pack. He put the cigarette between his lips and lit a match to it and replaced matches and pack in his shirt pocket. He did all this with a practiced economy of motion. Yet I had never known him to smoke a cigarette.

“Time,” he said. “There’s so much reading you can do. So many exercises. You have to find ways to make it go past. To fill it. You know what I mean? Time which is so valuable — in jail you’ve got to kill it. But I’m writing a book. I’m making notes for it now. Lenin wrote when he was in jail. All of them. They knew how to make the best use of it. As in everything, model yourself on the masters.”

He sat down and grabbed me by the shoulders. He held his cigarette between his fingers and the smoke curled up past my eye. I noticed the ash was about to fall — if it did it would fall on my shoulder.

“They can put a person in jail, but they can’t put his mind in jail.”

I squirmed away. I brushed at my shoulder.

“What’s wrong? Did I burn you? No, look here, it didn’t fall, the ash is still here, you see?” He laughed.

“They are the ones whose minds are in jail. But don’t worry. Don’t worry. Already things are happening. This outrage will not happen. I have it on good authority — public sentiment will gather for us. You cannot put innocent people to death in this country. It can’t be done. The truth will reclaim us. You’ll see. You’ll see, my big handsome boy. Am I right, Jake?”

“Of course. But calm yourself.”

“Before our trial even started we were found guilty by the paid hirelings of the kept press. There was no possibility for a fair trial. On that ground alone.”

“Paul.” Ascher stood up. He was looking at the guard. “I don’t think this ought to be discussed right now,” he said.

“It’s all right. I want my son to know. An organization is being founded to fight for our freedom. To tell people the truth. He should know that. He should know we’re not alone, the Isaacson family. Soon the whole world will be behind us in our fight to regain our freedom. And he can help! You want to help, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s my boy, that’s my wonderful boy.” He held my face in his hands and pulled me toward him and kissed the top of my head.

Why hadn’t my mother mentioned this? Without her endorsement I couldn’t tell if it was true. Nevertheless, on the drive back to New York it was his voice I heard in my mind. I had felt the humiliation of having to leave them there. But as I thought about it it seemed less degrading to my father to be in prison than to my mother. It was his voice that rang in my ears outside the prison, in the car, on the way back to New York.

Probably none of this is true. There’s a lot more I can’t remember. But the first visit was the worst. The other visits were easier. We had things to tell them. We played games. We drew pictures. We settled into a regular routine. We shared the joys of a number of stays of execution. And toward the end they were allowed to see us at the same time. And the four of us in that room in the Death House, the family, back together, at last. And the four of us were together in that room. And we were reunited. And at last we were reunited.

Before the famous Egyptian adjustment of the Chaldean calendar, in 4000 B.C., judicial astrology proposed thirteen signs in the Zodiac of approximately 27 degrees each. The thirteenth sign was Starfish. We do not today know where it was located in the Zodiac. It is believed that as the earth’s axis gradually altered, an entire chunk of the night sky, including this constellation, disappeared. But until that time Starfish was considered one of the most beneficial of signs. A Starfish ascendant suggested serenity and harmony with the universe, and therefore great happiness. The five points of the star lead not outward as is commonly believed, but inward, toward the center. This symbolized the union of the various mental faculties and the coordination of the physical faculties. It referred to the wedding in the heart of the five senses. It implied the unification of all feelings. Belief was joined with intellect, language with truth, and life with justice. Starfish in opposition to Mars usually meant Genius. Under the influence of Venus it suggested Peace. For some reason astrologers today don’t mention Starfish and there is a common superstition that it means bad luck. This is undoubtedly because modern man can conceive of nothing more frightening than the self-sufficiency of being of the beautiful Starfish: he mistakes it for death.

LOOKING FOR STERNLICHT

I had not wanted to take Phyllis with me. There was an element of danger, crowds, confrontation. And since I was going to do what was being done, perhaps without grace, perhaps with flagging resolve, perhaps failing, perhaps shitting all over myself, I didn’t want her there. But she began to feel the old torture, she said I was excluding her. It wasn’t true but I didn’t want her to feel that way. And then I thought of driving into the heart of darkness alone, across borders, across checkpoints, and the thought of being able to talk to her appealed to me. So there we were, all of us driving down a crisp sunny morning late in October 1967. I had put a hundred and eighty dollars into the trip. Brakes, front end, two new tires, new plugs, a tune-up. It was a tight smart little Volvo. There were other cars on the road with recognizable people in them, cars with five and six passengers, and horns blew on the Turnpike and people in little cars scooting around the trailer trucks waved at each other and held two fingers up to the windows. Nevertheless a sense of driving across borders. Across checkpoints. A sense of driving into the heart of darkness.

In this capital city of wide streets and white marble monuments and public greens, a sense of foreign country.

“Is it just me?” I said.

“I think everyone must feel it who’s coming for the weekend,” Phyllis said.

Great caution is required. You drive slow. You hug the wheel. In one public building is a famous crime museum. In the famous crime museum are pictures of the Isaacsons in handcuffs. A shortwave radio from Isaacson Radio, Sales and Repair. A dental x-ray mounted like a Kodachrome against a light screen. Tourists stroll by. In another public building is a file no one has ever seen.

We drive to the designated church, park the car, and join the others. It is a quiet beginning on the Friday afternoon of Pentagon Weekend. A few hundred only, marching from the basement of a church to the doors of the Justice Department. We string out for a quarter of a mile. Movie cameramen walking backwards photograph our faces. I do not see Sternlicht. Washington cops on motorcycles with sidecars purr alongside in the warm sun. It seems to be an academic gathering. Many poets from the universities. Middle-aged publishers in tweeds. Academic wives and sexy church ladies wearing loafers. Longhaired college boys in denim who chant Hell No We Won’t Go. It is a peaceful, orderly march. The sun is out. I carry Paul. Phyllis, beside me, smiles and hugs my arm. The self-conscious sense of doing something animates the marchers. Old friends gossip. The line strings out.