Robert Coover - Public Burning

Maybe Julius, like me, had somehow gotten this quality from his mother. Sophie had come to the United States at the age of fourteen, had worked eleven hours a day, six days a week, for eight dollars a week, and had somehow saved enough out of that to bring her own mother and four brothers over from Poland, then had wed Harry Rosenberg, a fellow worker, at age eighteen. They’d been flamboyant, romantic, in love with the old Polish culture, but terribly poor, living on the top floor of a five-story tenement on Broome Street where the roof leaked and in winter icicles hung from the ceiling and windows. Like my own father, Harry Rosenberg had tried to keep a store going, a dry-cleaning business, but had failed, fallen into abject poverty, and then, through hard work and tenacity, had fought his way back through bread lines and soup kitchens, had finally reached the point where he could afford for his family an apartment with steam heat. Like something out of a Horatio Alger story, except that Harry was a socialist. Phantom-seed brought from the Old World like lice in an old hat brim. Also, Judaism was not the prevailing faith of the Alger heroes, but in this regard one couldn’t help but admire the Rosenbergs’ orthodoxy and commitment. Little Julius had been very serious about his religion as a boy — we shared this — and moreover he’d been a strict fundamentalist. At the synagogue, they’d called him “Jonah,” and he’d been elected vice president of the Young Men’s Synagogue Organization. Like me, at Christian Endeavor. He had led lessons and had even considered becoming a rabbi, just as my mother had always thought I might become a Quaker missionary. He was younger than me, about the age of my baby brother, Arthur, who’d died when I was twelve. Julius was a sickly boy with bad eyesight, given to allergies, sudden illnesses — he’d nearly died of a ruptured appendix when he was ten, just a year or so before my bad attack of undulant fever, and he’d suffered from asthma and other psychosomatic problems. Kept him out of World War II and set him up for his spying mission — he became an inspector of electronics products manufactured by private industry for the Army Signal Corps — but his draft deferment pissed me off: didn’t he care about all those poor fellow Jews in Germany? Whose war was this anyway? A lot of things he’d said at the trial and in letters had disgusted me, but one of the worst was when he got Reveille mixed up with Taps. Of course, I suffered from hay fever myself, but my problem was strictly physical, and I joined the Navy anyway. His problem was, he was sick. Probably started when he was a little boy and his mother had to go with him to the bathroom at night to hold a lighted candle — it was down an unlit corridor, and he was afraid of the dark. A stinking place used by everybody on the floor. Rats rustling behind the walls, drunks sprawled in the hallways. Maybe one of them asleep on the toilet right now. Or holding a knife. Back in the night of my parents’ bedroom, I could hear my father calling me a baby. I was afraid that when I stepped through the door I’d fall down a deep hole. Mother was angry and told me to hurry. Tallow dripped into the stool. It was clogged up. Stuff seemed to be moving down there. I couldn’t get started. I thought I could hear my dead brother crying behind the walls….

I reared up with a start. Where was I? I glanced about: the office was empty. Just the documents scattered about. Ah yes, the Rosenbergs…. I gazed blearily at all the litter, wondering what Pat might have back home in the icebox. What a mess. What if somebody came in here and saw me like this? I thought. At least I should sit up straight, be seen to be thinking, concentrating. The Spartan look. But I was too tired. My back was stiff and my butt hurt. I wondered if I’d got blisters from sitting too long. Or boils — didn’t that happen to somebody famous? My old butt ain’t so ironic as it used to be, I mused to myself as I got to my feet and staggered off to take a piss. I grinned at this and said it out loud: “My old butt’s not as ironic as it, uh, used to be…” It didn’t sound as funny out loud. Like Saypol’s puns at the trial: “Did you say ‘a Russian business’ or ‘rushing business’?” Even Bloch pretended to enjoy that one, and Judge Kaufman said: “Try to restrain your desire to be another Milton Berle.” Which might sound like a scolding, but which in fact was a gentle compliment, drawing an affectionate link between himself, the comic, and Saypol, and serving in its embracing humor to unite Judge, jurors, lawyers, spectators, the outside world — indeed everyone except the two outcast defendants, suddenly more isolated than ever — while at the same time subtly providing a bit of promotion on the side for Uncle Miltie, one of Kaufman’s former clients and oldest friends, setting him up as the very paradigm of American wit and humor.

I checked the refrigerator again. For the fortieth time. Nothing there but an empty cigar box, empty cottage cheese carton, half a bottle of ketchup, and a tin of maple syrup, almost empty. I uncapped the syrup, tipped it up — it took forever draining down, and then all I got from it was a long stale lick. I threw the can in a wastebasket, did a few deep knee-bends, trying to stir the dead cells, get alert enough to bring this thing to a close, make conclusions, clean it up. Late. Very quiet. Spooky in fact. I could hear voices very far away, chanting. I knew the National Gallery Orchestra was performing some new work celebrating the Old South this week, but it didn’t sound like “All Quiet Alone the Potomac Tonight.” Too late for that anyway. The demonstrators probably. They’d been infiltrating the Capital all week. Clemency vigils tonight at the Odd Fellows Hall. Could be dangerous out there. I should get home and get to bed. Cabinet meeting tomorrow morning early. But in fact, to tell the truth, I liked staying up all night. Got in the habit back in high school when I had the bell tower to go to. I was always more efficient at night, something about the pressure in the air, and I liked the dark down around me. So did Kaufman, apparently. He liked to brag he slept only ninety minutes a night during times of stress. And visited the synagogue several times a day. For meditative catnaps probably. I yawned.

Jesus! I realized I was stretched out again, this time on the leather couch. I scolded myself angrily, did three fast sit-ups there on the cushions, then sprang to my feet and resumed my pacing, throwing short shadow punches like Rocky Marciano. Unff! Unff! All right, wrap it up, I said to myself. Something’s bugging you, what is it? Something about the linkages. If you walked forward through all this data, like the journalists, like the FBI invited everybody to do, the story was cohesive and seemed as simple and true as an epigram. The Soviets tested an A-bomb in 1949, sudden proof they’d stolen the secret from us. The nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, arrested in England by Scotland Yard, verified the theft and led the FBI to his courier Harry Gold, who confessed that his Russian contact was Anatoli Yakovlev. Yakovlev had sailed away to Russia with his wife, two kids, and all relevant secrets aboard the S.S. America some time earlier. Journalists tended to find the name of the ship deeply ironic. Gold also put the finger on David Greenglass, a machinist at Los Alamos and former Communist, and Greenglass in turn, his wife Ruth collaborating, turned state’s evidence against his sister Ethel and Ethel’s husband Julius Rosenberg, also ex-Commies. Or maybe not ex. Other witnesses substantiated this charge and widened the ring to include Morton Sobell, who had fled to Mexico, but who with the help of Mexican police had been “returned” to the U.S. and captured. There were no doubt others — the Rosenbergs and Sobell seemed like small-time operators at best — but so far none of these three had said who the people behind them were. Or, if Hoover was right and Rosenberg was the Master Spy, who the others in his ring were. Which was why maximum pressure was being applied, although in fact the FBI already had plenty of evidence on other members of the conspiracy. They said.