Robert Coover - Public Burning

She might have snorted again at this, but she didn’t. She was watching me in a new way, studying me curiously. She looks a little bit like Claudette Colbert at that, I thought. Only softer, more like one of those Italian actresses. Her dress hung loosely on her and gave you the impression it was all she had on. She poked absently into her skirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, gazing thoughtfully at me all the while. She didn’t flip a cigarette from the pack, but reached in carefully with her fingertips, plucked one out, and fitted it between her lips. Her hand was trembling faintly as she lit it.

“It’s…uh, it’s not allowed,” I said uneasily, glancing up at the NO SMOKING sign on the wall.

“No? What do you think they’ll do to me, Mr. Nixon?” she asked drily, and exhaled a lungful of smoke. She seemed almost to be pitying me. I did not object to this. I was no longer sure just what I was doing here, but it had to be for good reasons, and I knew that somehow, difficult as it might be, I would succeed. She stood close to me now, small, delicate, even fragile. I realized that I really didn’t want her to die.

“Mrs. Rosenberg,” I said as gently as I could, attempting a smile but feeling it twitch away as soon as I’d tried it, “Mrs. Rosenberg, we want to, uh, help, I want to help, Pat and I—”

“You’re wasting your time,” she said simply. “I am innocent. My husband is innocent. We know nothing about any espionage.” She kept her head up but she seemed close to tears. There was a tremor in her voice. How much time did she have left to live — seventy minutes? eighty? She took another deep drag on the cigarette, then dropped it on the floor and squashed it out with her slipper, creating an ugly black smudge in the middle of all that gleaming wax polish. She exhaled slowly, then gazed up at me again. I was touched by her great reserves of strength and serenity. “We understand these desperate moves,” she said. “You’ve made a mistake and now you’re trying to get out of it!”

“But, Mrs. Rosenberg — Ethel! You don’t understand!” She seemed surprised I’d used her first name, and with such feeling. Dumfounded even. I was surprised myself. “I tell you, Ethel, this has nothing to do with the government — I’ve run away from the government — believe me, it’s you I care about, can’t you see that?” She seemed startled, confused, disbelieving. I could hardly believe it either, it was sheer madness, but I couldn’t stop now, I’d turned some corner and there was no going back. Besides, my instincts told me I was right. “I’ve come to save you, I don’t know how, but I’ve got to get you out of this, I’ve got to get you out of here!” What did I mean? That I was going to pick her up and make a run for it? Trade clothes with her like they did in the movies? Maybe it was the utter impossibility of it all that drove me on — it couldn’t happen, so I could be all the fiercer in my insistence that it would. It reminded me of my greatest moments with Ola. “I don’t want your confession, Ethel! I don’t care about the past, it’s now I care about!”

“You…you can’t be serious!” she whispered.

“But I am!” Not serious! To question my seriousness was like questioning Ike’s smile. “I believe in you! I’ve made a careful study — I… I don’t want you to die!”

Even though she was shorter than I was, I’d felt all the while she had been gazing down on me. Now we seemed to be on the same footing, face to face. We were very close. My heart was beating wildly. I thought: there’s just the two of us left! I felt her eyes, dark with anguish and uncertainty, searching my own. I struggled, with my eyes, against her distrust. I felt I had not known such intensity since I was a boy in high school. I wanted to weep so that she would believe me and I tried to remember those lines from Bird-in-Hand: I’ve never had but one child — that’s ’er… Then suddenly she seemed almost to collapse, her knees seemed to buckle — I reached forward, gripped her arm. She did not resist. “All right,” she said weakly. “All right. Where’s Julie?”

“Julie—?”

She drew back, one hand in front of her face as though to ward off bad breath. “Did you mean you were going to save me and leave Julie to die—?!”

“But…but, Ethel—!” Why did women always expect this of me?

“So that’s it! My life is to be bargained off against his! I need only grasp the line chivalrously held out to me and leave him to drown without a backward glance!”

The metaphor betrayed her. “You’re just pretending, Ethel,” I said coldly. “You’re faking it!”

“How diabolical! Oh, I could retch with horror and revulsion! You are proposing to erect a sepulcher in which I shall live without living, and die without dying!” All of this sounded familiar. Like lines from some soap opera. I kept thinking of Aeneas and Dido , but that was absurd. Some Horatio Alger novel probably. “Over and over again, I shall sob out the last heartbroken wracking good-byes and reel—”

“Damn it, Ethel, cut that out!”

“And what of our children!” I’d forgot about the children. Yes, and it came back to me now what had happened to my handkerchief, too…. “What manner of mercy is it that would slay their adored father and deliver up their devoted mother to everlasting emptiness?”

Perhaps, I was thinking, I should just walk out of here while there was still time. But was there still time? The state she was in, she’d probably shout it all out at the top of her voice in Times Square tonight, right in front of the whole goddamned world. And how would I explain that at Monday morning’s Cabinet meeting? I could just see old Foster staring down his nose at me, Ike peering over his spectacles, Lodge licking his chops. I wondered what Abraham Lincoln would do in this situation…

“I should far rather embrace my husband in death than live on ingloriously upon such bounty!” Ethel cried, still carrying on. “I shall not dishonor my marital vows and the felicity and integrity of the relationship we shared to play the role of harlot to political procurers!”

Political procurers—! That pissed me off. “Crap! You don’t love him, goddamn it, and you never have!” Her eyes blazed with fury, the veins in her neck throbbed, she clenched and unclenched her hands. I thought she might lash out at me, claw at my eyes, start shrieking or something, but I was no longer afraid — I was no longer afraid of anything! The worst of the crisis, I knew, was past. This was the creative phase now! “It’s all been just an act, Ethel, and you know it! Part of the strategy!”

“What…what are you saying—!”

“Who do you think you’re fooling? You even forgot your anniversary last year!”

She was trembling. I was towering over her. “You’re…you’re saying this to divide us! It’s not enough we have to die—”

“Admit it, Ethel! You’ve dreamed of love all your life! You dream of it now! I know, because I dream of it, too! But you’ve never known it, you’ve never given yourself to him, you’ve never given yourself to anybody!” My God! I was amazing!

“I… I don’t believe in bourgeois romance,” she said hoarsely, but there was no conviction in it. “That kind of love is sick, it’s selfish, we mustn’t—”

“Damn it, you know better than that! You’re an artist, Ethel, a poet! You know what love is, what it might be! All the rest is just lies!”

Her resistance crumbled. I was amazed to watch it. She turned away, lowering her head. Almost inaudibly, she whispered: “I respect him so…”

“Yes, and you needed him, I know that — when you met him you felt abused and alone, and he was kind and sympathetic. I know all this, all about the illnesses and bad luck. I know about the bastard who tried to force himself on you, know how your own family frustrated your best hopes, how they failed to understand you, and then the Depression — what a lousy future you had to look forward to! And you thought Julie could save you from it, you thought — do you know what you thought back then?”