First Papers (40 page)

“When are you going to advertise again, Letts?” Garry asked now, as they sank into chairs at the nearest Childs Restaurant. “Too many days like today would kill you off.”

“I know. Do you remember Hank Stiles’ brother Peter?”

“Sure I do.”

“His private hobby is collecting antiques, mostly eighteenth-century.” She looked pensive. “He said Wall Street bored him.”

Garry laughed. “He’s forty or so, isn’t he? Could a young chit like you be
his
boss?”

“Why couldn’t I? I could have salespeople of fifty or even sixty. Most antique dealers do.”

“Would any Stiles ever become a salesman in any shop?”

“I suppose not.” Again she looked pensive, but in a moment her face brightened. “If I ever did find somebody like Peter,” she said, “he wouldn’t have to be a salesman. I could call him Assistant Manager.”

“You clever girl,” he said. “I guess you could.”

The decent time of mourning and legalities went by, and still there was no announcement about the reorganization of the paper.

“Any news?” Alexandra asked every time Stefan Ivarin came back from New York.

“None.”

A dozen times in the past weeks she had promised not to ask the question any more; a dozen times he had promised that the moment there was news of Landau’s successor, he would let her know, even if it came in the middle of the night when she was bound to be asleep.

The inclusiveness of this promise always set her mind at rest for a day or two, but then again she would greet him with that instinctive question. “Any news?”

Landau’s death had made Alexandra weep, and these tears had touched Stefan to the point of pain. She was grieving, not only for an old companion of his last twenty years, but for the years themselves, gone now as Isaac was gone, irrecoverable as youth itself, as its limitless energies and hopes.

She had gone to New York to the funeral, though neither of them believed in religious ceremonials for the dead, regarding them as leftovers from primitive rites, just as they felt about religious ceremonies at weddings. One was a sanctified orgy over sex and procreation, the other a sanctified orgy of self-laceration and agony in public.

She herself had emerged so wrecked by the experience of Landau’s funeral, to which he had not gone, that she kept returning to it as a topic of discussion for days, and at last he had drawn back in some reflex of distaste. Was she weeping for Landau’s death, or in a self-pity of worry about her husband’s future at the paper?

The moment the thought was born, it proved itself a giant, a Gargantua, not to be vanquished in a few casual bouts of reason. “The more you fret and worry about what will happen at the paper,” he finally burst out at Alexandra, “the harder it is for me not to.”

By that time a month had gone by since Landau’s death. At the paper, the word “reorganization” had become virtually an oath. By the New Year, it could no longer be doubted that Miriam Landau and her four daughters and their four husbands and their several advisers, lawyers and relatives were in some inexplicable paralysis at reaching a solution of the problem death had presented to them. By then the acuteness of first anxiety throughout the staff had diluted down to a milder form, but there was an almost daily display of temperament or quarrelsomeness among the reporters or press crew or stenographers.

Late one afternoon Jacob Steinberger, now Miriam Landau’s lawyer, came to the office to explain matters to the three remaining members of the policy group. Steinberger had been Isaac’s friend as well as his attorney for some twenty years, and he was chagrined at his inability to get Isaac’s family to agree. It was partly his doing, he told Ivarin and Fehler and Kesselbaum. He was not satisfied with the man finally selected by the four Landau daughters and their husbands, and he had persuaded Mrs. Landau to hold out for somebody else. With the mother’s veto of their candidate, all semblance of family solidarity had disappeared, and thus far had not been recaptured. In the circumstances, he could not predict when and where they could find the person they would all agree on. The makeshift techniques they had been following since November would have to continue.

They did. The paper kept appearing day after day with no official owner at its head, with everything in abeyance, with a standing alibi for every grievance unanswered or denied. Once a week Mrs. Landau signed a check, countersigned by Steinberger, so that wages were paid on Friday mornings as they always had been. But promptness ended there. The old bookkeeper, Dov Moskowitz, held back all the weekly and monthly bills that used to go to Isaac Landau for approval and payment. With fine impartiality, old Dov kept them out of sight as long as possible, whether they were for a box of pencils or tons of newsprint, typewriter ribbons or inks for the presses, the Associated Press wire service, telephone and electricity or erasers and rubber bands.

Only when the first bill was superseded by a Statement of Arrears, and then with incredible speed by an ominous
“Final Warning”
did he appear in Joseph Fehler’s office, slap the threatening notices and bills on his desk and demand, “So?”

“I’ll see to it, at the policy meeting, Dov.”

As always, Ivarin showed himself so bored by “these trivia” of invoices, bills, arrears, first, second and final warnings, that Fehler soon offered to take them straight to Mrs. Landau and her lawyer without bothering Ivarin at all.

“A capital idea,” Stefan said, grateful that Fehler for once understood his basic emotions. Kesselbaum shook his head in disapproval, but Stefan said, “Don’t you agree, Abe? It’s a capital idea.”

Later that night, Abe came up from the press room to Ivarin’s office, frowning and uncertain. “Can I speak up about your decision?” he asked.

“Speak up,” Ivarin said, but Abe hesitated. Stefan waited without impatience. Abe was a good boy, a good man, rather, with his birthday this month proclaiming him thirty-six and his dark hair so thin now that although he had no bald spot, the sheen of his scalp could be seen pinkly through the black sparseness, everywhere except around the base of his skull. His wife had had another baby recently, their fourth child, and their oldest boy was now fourteen, the age at which Abe had first begun to work in a press room. It was inevitable, Abe’s ferocity of determination that Freddy should stay in school and go on to the education he himself had never had. For Kesselbaum, Landau’s death had been a particular misfortune; he had been promised a long-awaited raise on December first, which had been automatically halted when Itzak died.

“Your decision to not bother with the bills,” Abe said at last. “It makes me nervous. Fehler and Mrs. Landau going over them together each week—”

Ivarin saw the effort it cost Abe to put his fear into words. “But would you have me tag along with Fehler each time, with his bills and invoices?”

“Of course not,” the younger man said. “You are an editor. What have you to do with running to widows to get bills paid?”

“Precisely nothing.”

“But that is why I worry. He will get to know her so well.”

“He knew Landau well for years.”

“Much good it did him.” Abe suddenly grinned.

Ivarin developed a philosophical detachment toward Borg’s elation over his survey. Borg had lost no time starting it, and during the darkest gloom and uncertainty for everybody else, he basked in the new sun of his private opportunity. He was collecting a mass of material in five large proof-books: one for funnies and cartoons, another for exposés and running series, another for scientific articles, another for women’s specials and one marked, “Human Interest.”

“What other kind of interest would a newspaper be likely to attempt?” Ivarin asked mildly one night when Borg ran on over this latter category. “Animal interest? Fish interest, tree interest, bird interest?”

“You
hear
words, Mr. Ivarin, that nobody else hears. I’ve said ‘human interest’ a thousand times but not one person—”

“Editors are lunatics about words,” Ivarin said. “But, if you’ll permit a suggestion, Saul, these are not days to talk a thousand times of your beloved survey in any way at all.”

Borg said, “You’re right, I won’t,” but Ivarin knew he would. The next day he passed Borg’s cubbyhole and saw him showing his newspaper-size portfolios to one of the stenographers, who was listening with interest and resentment mixed.

Poor Borg, Ivarin thought, as deluded as an illicit lover who swears prudence but reveals his ardent secret with every breath and every glance. What makes it worse is that a hundred people wish they were as well-off as he just now.

Whereupon Ivarin went down the hall to Fehler’s office. “I think it would be a wise health precaution,” he began, “if you called a temporary halt on Borg’s survey.”

Fehler did not look surprised. “Temporary for how long? Until the new management is announced and the staff settles down?”

“Long enough,” Ivarin agreed. “Borg can’t restrain his enthusiasm, and fevers are developing all around him.”

“It’s true,” Fehler said unexpectedly. “Bunzig said the same thing yesterday.” Bunzig was one of the older reporters, who had been on the staff a long time. “I’ll tell Borg we’re calling it off for a few weeks.”

“Until this damnable announcement is made.”

When the announcement did come, Stefan Ivarin learned of it a day before it was made official. His informant was Mrs. Landau herself.

“I want to explain something to you,” she said in an agitated voice on the telephone. “May I come to the office tonight to see you? Itzak would have wanted me to explain it myself.”

“Any time, yes, surely.” A wave of heat pumped through him and he knew. But he asked what time would suit her and then waited for eight o’clock and her arrival. She was still agitated, and constantly glanced about the room and over her shoulder. She had been a handsome woman, but time and grief had harrowed her face and it was destroyed. Ivarin had seen her twice since Isaac’s death, but her appearance now shocked him.

“You know how I admire every line you write,” she began in a tumble of words, looking at his thick lenses gropingly as if she was searching for his eyes, “and my daughters, too, and their husbands.”

“Thank you.”

“But the only man we can agree on,” she sped on, “at last we admit it, the only one. He has to like business, almost like a banker, a real strict businessman.”

“Yes, he has to.”

“You don’t like such things, you wouldn’t even be interested in that part of the paper.”

“And I would be no good at it.” He was sorry for her, even as he hated what she was going to tell him. Futile, awkward, her preparatory lotions of honeyed apology. He almost blurted out her news at her himself, to cut it short.

“So we agreed finally,” she pressed on. “He has been the Business Manager—now let him be the General Manager. Mr. Fehler.”

“Yes,” he said. “Fehler, of course.”

“My lawyer suggested it,” she said. “He said he’ll keep an eye on things for me, and we can change again later if it’s no good. But to go on this way any longer—”

“Impossible.”

There was a pause. They sat looking at each other, silent, and the pause lengthened. Then she leaned toward him, her hand out, but not touching him.

“Nothing will be different for you,” she said, beseeching him to believe her. “What could be different on this paper, for Ivarin?”

I
MUST GO AND
congratulate him, Stefan Ivarin thought, but he did nothing. And I must call Alexandra at once, as I promised. But he turned his back on the telephone.

In the half-hour since Miriam Landau had left, he had done nothing except pace the familiar length of his office. Fehler knew already, she said at the end of her palpitating visit; Steinberger had told him that afternoon, and made it clear that nothing was to be different for him, Ivarin.

“Ivarin is a big name,” Steinberger had said, “part and parcel of the paper. Nothing must disturb him or his work.” It was language Fehler understood, business language. Talk of a paper’s big assets, and the need to protect them. Fehler was part and parcel, too, in a different area, Steinberger had said, and they would all keep remembering both sides of this long-established truth, as they had done while Isaac was alive. Fehler had been in total and instant and unreserved agreement with every word Steinberger said.

Why not? Ivarin thought now. It is so easy, agreeing with a plea for eternal peace, when you have just won a victory.

His own cynicism irritated him. Fehler would avoid any immediate war between them in any case. To find another editor was not the work of a moment, and whatever Fehler might do later for larger sales and profits, he would not lightly tackle so thorny a proposition.

I am like some young reporter, Ivarin thought angrily, canvassing the situation, checking it, deciding, My job is safe. The devil with “safe.”

He left his office and walked along the corridor to Fehler’s. Ordinarily nine o’clock would be too late to find Fehler still at the paper, but tonight would be different. The door was wide open and for a moment Ivarin stood looking in at him, seated in profile at the broad flat table he used, preferring it to a desk. This was the man who would now be boss of the entire staff. His boss. At least, to the extent that Landau had been his boss.

“Congratulations,” Ivarin said, offering his hand as he went in. “I’ve just heard the news.”

“Thanks, Stiva,” Fehler said, jumping up. “So she did come? She was worn out and thought she might wait a day.”

“She was uneasy about how I would take it,” he said. There was a pause. As always, he wished he could forbid Fehler the use of “Stiva” and as always he did nothing. “I’m not sure,” he went on, “how I do take it.”

Fehler smiled faintly. He was being careful to show no triumph or undue joy, and Ivarin gave him unheard applause for that show of taste.

“You will take it as it was intended,” Fehler said. “They did not come rushing to me; I’m not forgetting that. Only as a compromise, three months after Itzak died.”

Ivarin waved that aside. The pumping of heat that had begun with Miriam Landau’s telephone call had died away but now it began again; he knew that Fehler was reading his reddened color as accurately as a doctor. But a rise in blood pressure was stimulating, as well as uncomfortable, and he was alive to his nerve ends. This modesty of Fehler’s was a wise move, a useful lubricant for the days ahead.