Read Online Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson - Free Book Online
Authors: Laura Z. Hobson
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not. Dave was like him in every essential, had the same boyhood patterns, the same freedom from either extreme of poverty or wealth, the same freedom from any creed-bound faith. They had both grown up in a generation when religion did not work itself very deep into life. Whatever Dave felt now—indifference? outrage? fear? or contempt?—would be the feeling of Dave as a man, and not Dave as a Jew. Dave as citizen, as American, and not Dave as a religious being. That, Phil was sure of. And that was good.
He began to glance through his hundreds of notes, pausing over this episode or that to ask himself what would go on in a man like Dave when he read of it in his morning newspaper. Betty’s paperweight sat on top of the thin sheaf of clips which he had not yet read. Idly he picked up the heavy chunk of glass and began tossing it from one hand to the other. His eyes were on the top clipping where the oval outline of the paperweight still showed, like the imprint of a doctor’s thumb into the puffed flesh of edema. It was the first page of an issue of Time magazine, nearly two years old. He began to read it. Congressman John Rankin had stood up in the House to attack the soldier-vote bill; he had referred to Walter Winchell as “the little kike I was telling you about.”
His fingers tightened around the cold smooth glass. Time’s next words were, “This was a new low in demagoguery, even for John Rankin, but in the entire House no one rose to protest.” Shame for the Congress twisted in him. He read on through a column and a half to Time ’s sentence: “The House rose and gave him prolonged applause.”
The House. The Senate. The great Congress of the United States.
He stood up abruptly. “Jesus, what’s happening to this country? A country never knows what’s happening to it.” How many of Time ’s million readers had felt like rushing down there, punching Rankin in the jaw, yelling at the whole House? And if a reader were Jewish—could he be any more outraged? What had Dave felt when he’d come on this? The same, exactly the same as he himself did. He’d bet a million on that. He knew that.
The thick glass in his hand was moist. He set it down and wiped his hand against his trousers.
He thought he knew. There was that good familiar click of certitude he always felt when his instincts were true. But there was no way to check on himself, no way to prove he was correct.
He would have to write Dave after all, have to get to know this Joe Lieberman, have to do personal research on this as he did on every other problem he had ever worked on.
“How do you do, Professor Lieberman, let’s talk about how you react to antisemitism in the good old U. S. A.” Damn it, he’d die first. “Dear Dave, Give me the lowdown on your gizzard when you read about Rankin calling people kikes or a Jewish kid getting his face slashed by Jew haters in New York City.”
Out. It was out. All of it was out. There was no way he could dig and prod and tear open the secret heart of a human being. This was blind alley, too.
He turned on the radio. In an instant he snapped it off. He picked up the evening papers. The news was stale. He thought of writing letters and abandoned the idea. It was only eleven; if he went to bed, he’d never sleep.
Again he’d felt himself pressing the hard edge of discovery; again he’d slipped right through it. Like the oily turnstile. Flickering across his mind was a wonder about whether he was losing his grip for a while. It happened to, writers. Maybe it was his turn.
Grimly he told himself not to start yammering. His gaze traveled slowly over the room as if he were looking for affirmation that other writers had fought and struggled for an idea. Books—the room was full of books. Books told about people's feelings, private reactions. There hadn’t been many novels where the main characters were Jewish, but there’d been some.
For half an hour he searched the shelves. He was a hoarder of
He began to glance through his hundreds of notes, pausing over this episode or that to ask himself what would go on in a man like Dave when he read of it in his morning newspaper. Betty’s paperweight sat on top of the thin sheaf of clips which he had not yet read. Idly he picked up the heavy chunk of glass and began tossing it from one hand to the other. His eyes were on the top clipping where the oval outline of the paperweight still showed, like the imprint of a doctor’s thumb into the puffed flesh of edema. It was the first page of an issue of Time magazine, nearly two years old. He began to read it. Congressman John Rankin had stood up in the House to attack the soldier-vote bill; he had referred to Walter Winchell as “the little kike I was telling you about.”
His fingers tightened around the cold smooth glass. Time’s next words were, “This was a new low in demagoguery, even for John Rankin, but in the entire House no one rose to protest.” Shame for the Congress twisted in him. He read on through a column and a half to Time ’s sentence: “The House rose and gave him prolonged applause.”
The House. The Senate. The great Congress of the United States.
He stood up abruptly. “Jesus, what’s happening to this country? A country never knows what’s happening to it.” How many of Time ’s million readers had felt like rushing down there, punching Rankin in the jaw, yelling at the whole House? And if a reader were Jewish—could he be any more outraged? What had Dave felt when he’d come on this? The same, exactly the same as he himself did. He’d bet a million on that. He knew that.
The thick glass in his hand was moist. He set it down and wiped his hand against his trousers.
He thought he knew. There was that good familiar click of certitude he always felt when his instincts were true. But there was no way to check on himself, no way to prove he was correct.
He would have to write Dave after all, have to get to know this Joe Lieberman, have to do personal research on this as he did on every other problem he had ever worked on.
“How do you do, Professor Lieberman, let’s talk about how you react to antisemitism in the good old U. S. A.” Damn it, he’d die first. “Dear Dave, Give me the lowdown on your gizzard when you read about Rankin calling people kikes or a Jewish kid getting his face slashed by Jew haters in New York City.”
Out. It was out. All of it was out. There was no way he could dig and prod and tear open the secret heart of a human being. This was blind alley, too.
He turned on the radio. In an instant he snapped it off. He picked up the evening papers. The news was stale. He thought of writing letters and abandoned the idea. It was only eleven; if he went to bed, he’d never sleep.
Again he’d felt himself pressing the hard edge of discovery; again he’d slipped right through it. Like the oily turnstile. Flickering across his mind was a wonder about whether he was losing his grip for a while. It happened to, writers. Maybe it was his turn.
Grimly he told himself not to start yammering. His gaze traveled slowly over the room as if he were looking for affirmation that other writers had fought and struggled for an idea. Books—the room was full of books. Books told about people's feelings, private reactions. There hadn’t been many novels where the main characters were Jewish, but there’d been some.
For half an hour he searched the shelves. He was a hoarder of
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