FEAR PRESIDES over these memories, a perpetual fear. Of course no childhood is without its terrors, yet I wonder if I would have been a less frightened boy if Lindbergh hadn't been president or if I hadn't been the offspring of Jews.

When the first shock came in June of 1940—the nomination for the presidency of Charles A. Lindbergh, America's international aviation hero, by the Republican Convention at Philadelphia—my father was thirty-nine, an insurance agent with a grade school education, earning a little under fifty dollars a week, enough for the basic bills to be paid on time but for little more. My mother—who'd wanted to go to teachers' college but couldn't because of the expense, who'd lived at home working as an office secretary after finishing high school, who'd kept us from feeling poor during the worst of the Depression by budgeting the earnings my father turned over to her each Friday as efficiently as she ran the household—was thirty-six. My brother, Sandy, a seventh-grader with a prodigy's talent for drawing, was twelve, and I, a third-grader a term ahead of himself—and an embryonic stamp collector inspired like millions of kids by the country's foremost philatelist, President Roosevelt—was seven.

We lived in the second-floor flat of a small two-and-a-half-family house on a treelined street of frame wooden houses with red-brick stoops, each stoop topped with a gable roof and fronted by a tiny yard boxed in with a low- cut hedge. The Weequahic neighborhood had been built on farm lots at the undeveloped southwest edge of Newark just after World War One, some half dozen of the streets named, imperially, for victorious naval commanders in the Spanish-American War and the local movie house called, after FDR's fifth cousin—and the country's twenty-sixth president—the Roosevelt. Our street, Summit Avenue, sat at the crest of the neighborhood hill, an elevation as high as any in a port city that rarely rises a hundred feet above the level of the tidal salt marsh to the city's north and east and the deep bay due east of the airport that bends around the oil tanks of the Bayonne peninsula and merges there with New York Bay to flow past the Statue of Liberty and into the Atlantic. Looking west from our bedroom's rear window we could sometimes see inland as far as the dark treeline of the Watchungs, a lowlying mountain range fringed by great estates and affluent, sparsely populated suburbs, the extreme edge of the known

world—and about eight miles from our house. A block to the south was the working-class town of Hillside, whose population was predominantly Gentile. The boundary with Hillside marked the beginning of Union County, another New Jersey entirely.

We were a happy family in 1940. My parents were outgoing, hospitable people, their friends culled from among my father's associates at the office and from the women who along with my mother had helped to organize the Parent-Teacher Association at newly built Chancellor Avenue School, where my brother and I were pupils. All were Jews. The neighborhood men either were in business for themselves—the owners of the local candy store, grocery store, jewelry store, dress shop, furniture shop, service station, and delicatessen, or the proprietors of tiny industrial job shops over by the Newark-Irvington line, or self-employed plumbers, electricians, housepainters, and boilermen—or were foot-soldier salesmen like my father, out every day in the city streets and in people's houses, peddling their wares on commission. The Jewish doctors and lawyers and the successful merchants who owned big stores downtown lived in one-family houses on streets branching off the eastern slope of the Chancellor Avenue hill, closer to grassy, wooded Weequahic Park, a landscaped three hundred acres whose boating lake, golf course, and harness-racing track separated the Weequahic section from the industrial plants and shipping terminals lining Route 27 and the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct east of that and the burgeoning airport east of that and the very edge of America east of that— the depots and docks of Newark Bay, where they unloaded cargo from around the world. At the western end of the neighborhood, the parkless end where we lived, there resided an occasional schoolteacher or pharmacist but otherwise few professionals were among our immediate neighbors and certainly none of the prosperous entrepreneurial or manufacturing families. The men worked fifty, sixty, even seventy or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from laborsaving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing woolens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arranging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family's books while simultaneously attending to their children's health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale. A few women labored alongside their husbands in the family-owned stores on the nearby shopping streets, assisted after school and on Saturdays by their older children, who delivered orders and tended stock and did

the cleaning up.

It was work that identified and distinguished our neighbors for me far more than religion. Nobody in the neighborhood had a beard or dressed in the antiquated Old World style or wore a skullcap either outdoors or in the houses I routinely floated through with my boyhood friends. The adults were no longer observant in the outward, recognizable ways, if they were seriously observant at all, and aside from older shopkeepers like the tailor and the kosher butcher—and the ailing or decrepit grandparents living of necessity with their adult offspring

—hardly anyone in the vicinity spoke with an accent. By 1940 Jewish parents and their children at the southwestern corner of New Jersey's largest city talked to one another in an American English that sounded more like the language spoken in Altoona or Binghamton than like the dialects famously spoken across the Hudson by our Jewish counterparts in the five boroughs. Hebrew lettering was stenciled on the butcher shop window and engraved on the lintels of the small neighborhood synagogues, but nowhere else (other than at the cemetery) did one's eye chance to land on the alphabet of the prayer book rather than on the familiar letters of the native tongue employed all the time by practically everyone for every conceivable purpose, high or low. At the newsstand out front of the corner candy store, ten times more customers bought the Racing Form than the Yiddish daily, the Forvertz.

Israel didn't yet exist, six million European Jews hadn't yet ceased to exist, and the local relevance of distant Palestine (under British mandate since the 1918 dissolution by the victorious Allies of the last far-flung provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire) was a mystery to me. When a stranger who did wear a beard and who never once was seen hatless appeared every few months after dark to ask in broken English for a contribution toward the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, I, who wasn't an ignorant child, didn't quite know what he was doing on our landing. My parents would give me or Sandy a couple of coins to drop into his collection box, largess, I always thought, dispensed out of kindness so as not to hurt the feelings of a poor old man who, from one year to the next, seemed unable to get it through his head that we'd already had a homeland for three generations. I pledged allegiance to the flag of our homeland every morning at school. I sang of its marvels with my classmates at assembly programs. I eagerly observed its national holidays, and without giving a second thought to my affinity for the Fourth of July fireworks or the Thanksgiving turkey or the Decoration Day double-header. Our homeland was America.

Then the Republicans nominated Lindbergh and everything

changed.

For nearly a decade Lindbergh was as great a hero in our neighborhood as he was everywhere else. The completion of his thirty-three-and-a-half-hour nonstop solo flight from Long Island to Paris in the tiny monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis even happened to coincide with the day in the spring of 1927 that my mother discovered herself to be pregnant with my older brother. As a consequence, the young aviator whose daring had thrilled America and the world and whose achievement bespoke a future of unimaginable aeronautical progress came to occupy a special niche in the gallery of family anecdotes that generate a child's first cohesive mythology. The mystery of pregnancy and the heroism of Lindbergh combined to give a distinction bordering on the divine to my very own mother, for whom nothing less than a global annunciation had accompanied the incarnation of her first child. Sandy would later record this moment with a drawing illustrating the juxtaposition of those two splendid events. In the drawing—completed at the age of nine and smacking inadvertently of Soviet poster art—Sandy envisioned her miles from our house, amid a joyous crowd on the corner of Broad and Market. A slender young woman of twenty-three with dark hair and a smile that is all robust delight, she is surprisingly on her own and wearing her floral-patterned kitchen apron at the intersection of the city's two busiest thoroughfares, one hand spread wide across the front of the apron, where the span of her hips is still deceptively girlish, while with the other she alone in the crowd is pointing skyward to the Spirit of St. Louis, passing visibly above downtown Newark at precisely the moment she comes to realize that, in a feat no less triumphant for a mortal than Lindbergh's, she has conceived Sanford Roth.

Sandy was four and I, Philip, wasn't yet born when in March 1932, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh's own first child, a boy whose arrival twenty months earlier had been an occasion for national rejoicing, was kidnapped from his family's secluded new house in rural Hopewell, New Jersey. Some ten weeks later the decomposing body of the baby was discovered by chance in woods a few miles away. The baby had been either murdered or killed accidentally after being snatched from his crib and, in the dark, still in bedclothes, carried out a window of the second-story nursery and down a makeshift ladder to the ground while the nurse and mother were occupied in their ordinary evening activities in another part of the house. By the time the kidnapping and murder trial in Flemington, New Jersey, concluded in February 1935 with the conviction of Bruno Hauptmann—a German ex-con of thirty-five living in the Bronx with his German wife—the boldness of the world's first

transatlantic solo pilot had been permeated with a pathos that transformed him into a martyred titan comparable to Lincoln.

Following the trial, the Lindberghs left America, hoping through a temporary expatriation to protect a new Lindbergh infant from harm and to recover some measure of the privacy they coveted. The family moved to a small village in England, and from there, as a private citizen, Lindbergh began taking the trips to Nazi Germany that would transform him into a villain for most American Jews. In the course of five visits, during which he was able to familiarize himself at first hand with the magnitude of the German war machine, he was ostentatiously entertained by Air Marshal Göring, he was ceremoniously decorated in the name of the Führer, and he expressed quite openly his high regard for Hitler, calling Germany the world's "most interesting nation" and its leader "a great man." And all this interest and admiration after Hitler's 1935 racial laws had denied Germany's Jews their civil, social, and property rights, nullified their citizenship, and forbidden intermarriage with Aryans.

By the time I began school in 1938, Lindbergh's was a name that provoked the same sort of indignation in our house as did the weekly Sunday radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin, the Detroit-area priest who edited a right- wing weekly called Social Justice and whose anti-Semitic virulence aroused the passions of a sizable audience during the country's hard times. It was in November 1938—the darkest, most ominous year for the Jews of Europe in eighteen centuries—that the worst pogrom in modern history, Kristallnacht, was instigated by the Nazis all across Germany: synagogues incinerated, the residences and businesses of Jews destroyed, and, throughout a night presaging the monstrous future, Jews by the thousands forcibly taken from their homes and transported to concentration camps. When it was suggested to Lindbergh that in response to this unprecedented savagery, perpetrated by a state on its own native- born, he might consider returning the gold cross decorated with four swastikas bestowed on him in behalf of the Führer by Air Marshal Göring, he declined on the grounds that for him to publicly surrender the Service Cross of the German Eagle would constitute "an unnecessary insult" to the Nazi leadership.

Lindbergh was the first famous living American whom I learned to hate—just as President Roosevelt was the first famous living American whom I was taught to love—and so his nomination by the Republicans to run against Roosevelt in 1940 assaulted, as nothing ever had before, that huge endowment of personal security that I had taken for granted as an American child of American parents in an American school in an American city in an America at peace with the world.

The only comparable threat had come some thirteen months earlier when, on the basis of consistently high sales through the worst of the Depression as an agent with the Newark office of Metropolitan Life, my father had been offered a promotion to assistant manager in charge of agents at the company's office six miles west of our house in Union, a town whose only distinction I knew of was a drive-in theater where movies were shown even when it rained, and where the company expected my father and his family to live if he took the job. As an assistant manager, my father could soon be making seventy-five dollars a week and over the coming years as much as a hundred a week, a fortune in 1939 to people with our expectations. And since there were one-family houses selling in Union for a Depression low of a few thousand dollars, he would be able to realize an ambition he had nurtured growing up penniless in a Newark tenement flat: to become an American homeowner. "Pride of ownership" was a favorite phrase of my father's, embodying an idea real as bread to a man of his background, one having to do not with social competitiveness or conspicuous consumption but with his standing as a manly provider.

The single drawback was that because Union, like Hillside, was a Gentile working-class town, my father would most likely be the only Jew in an office of some thirty-five people, my mother the only Jewish woman on our street, and Sandy and I the only Jewish kids in our school.

On the Saturday after my father was offered the promotion—a promotion that, above all, would answer a Depression family's yearning for a tiny margin of financial security—the four of us headed off after lunch to look around Union. But once we were there and driving up and down the residential streets peering out at the two-story houses—not quite identical but each, nonetheless, with a screened front porch and a mown lawn and a piece of shrubbery and a cinder drive leading to a one-car garage, very modest houses but still roomier than our two-bedroom flat and looking a lot like the little white houses in the movies about small-town salt-of-the-earth America—once we were there our innocent buoyancy about the family ascent into the homeowning class was supplanted, predictably enough, by our anxieties about the scope of Christian charity. My ordinarily energetic mother responded to my father's "What do you think, Bess?" with enthusiasm that even a child understood to be feigned. And young as I was, I was able to surmise why: because she was thinking, "Ours will be the house 'where the Jews live.' It'll be Elizabeth all over again."

Elizabeth, New Jersey, when my mother was being raised there in a

flat over her father's grocery store, was an industrial port a quarter the size of Newark, dominated by the Irish working class and their politicians and the

tightly knit parish life that revolved around the town's many churches, and though I never heard her complain of having been pointedly ill-treated in Elizabeth as a girl, it was not until she married and moved to Newark's new Jewish neighborhood that she discovered the confidence that led her to become first a PTA "grade mother," then a PTA vice president in charge of establishing a Kindergarten Mothers' Club, and finally the PTA president, who, after attending a conference in Trenton on infantile paralysis, proposed an annual March of Dimes dance on January 30—President Roosevelt's birthday—that was accepted by most Newark schools. In the spring of 1939 she was in her second successful year as a leader with progressive ideas—already supporting a young social studies teacher keen on bringing "visual education" into Chancellor's classrooms

—and now she couldn't help but envision herself bereft of all that had been achieved by her becoming a wife and a mother on Summit Avenue. Should we have the good fortune to buy and move into a house on any of the Union streets we were seeing at their springtime best, not only would her status slip back to what it had been when she was growing up the daughter of a Jewish immigrant grocer in Irish Catholic Elizabeth, but, worse than that, Sandy and I would be obliged to relive her own circumscribed youth as a neighborhood outsider.

Despite my mother's mood, my father did everything he could to keep up our spirits, remarking on how clean and well-kept everything looked, reminding Sandy and me that living in one of these houses the two of us would no longer have to share a small bedroom and a single closet, and explaining the benefits to be derived from paying off a mortgage rather than paying rent, a lesson in elementary economics that abruptly ended when it was necessary for him to stop the car at a red light beside a parklike drinking establishment dominating one corner of the intersection. There were green picnic tables set out beneath the shade trees full with foliage, and on this sunny weekend afternoon there were waiters in braided white coats moving swiftly about, balancing trays laden with bottles and pitchers and plates, and men of every age gathered at each of the tables, smoking cigarettes and pipes and cigars and drinking deeply from tall beakers and earthenware mugs. There was music, too—an accordion being played by a stout little man in short pants and high socks who wore a hat ornamented with a long feather.

"Sons of bitches!" my father said. "Fascist bastards!" and then the light changed and we drove on in silence to look at the office building where he was about to get his chance to earn more than fifty dollars a week.

It was my brother who, when we went to bed that night, explained why my father had lost control and cursed aloud in front of his children: the homey acre of open-air merriment smack in the middle of town was called a beer

garden, the beer garden had something to do with the German-American Bund, the German-American Bund had something to do with Hitler, and Hitler, as I hadn't to be told, had everything to do with persecuting Jews.

The intoxicant of anti-Semitism. That's what I came to imagine them all so cheerfully drinking in their beer garden that day—like all the Nazis everywhere, downing pint after pint of anti-Semitism as though imbibing the universal remedy.

My father had to take off a morning of work to go over to the home office in New York—to the tall building whose uppermost tower was crowned with the beacon his company proudly designated "The Light That Never Fails"—and inform the superintendent of agencies that he couldn't accept the promotion he longed for.

"It's my fault," announced my mother as soon as he began to recount at the dinner table what had transpired there on the eighteenth floor of 1 Madison Avenue.

"It's nobody's fault," my father said. "I explained before I left what I was going to tell him, and I went over and I told him, and that's it. We're not moving to Union, boys. We're staying right here."

"What did he do?" my mother asked. "He heard me out."

"And then?" she asked.

"He stood up and he shook my hand." "He didn't say anything?"

"He said, 'Good luck, Roth.'" "He was angry with you."

"Hatcher is a gentleman of the old school. Big six-foot goy. Looks like a movie star. Sixty years old and fit as a fiddle. These are the people who run things, Bess—they don't waste their time getting angry at someone like me."

"So now what?" she asked, implying that whatever happened as a result of his meeting with Hatcher was not going to be good and could be dire. And I thought I understood why. Apply yourself and you can do it—that was the axiom in which we had been schooled by both parents. At the dinner table, my father would reiterate to his young sons time and again, "If anybody asks 'Can you do this job? Can you handle it?' you tell 'em 'Absolutely.' By the time they find out that you can't, you'll already have learned, and the job'll be yours. And who knows, it just might turn out to be the opportunity of a lifetime." Yet over in New York he had done nothing like that.

"What did the Boss say?" she asked him. The Boss was how the four of us referred to the manager of my father's Newark office, Sam

Peterfreund. In those days of unadvertised quotas to keep Jewish admissions to a minimum in colleges and professional schools and of unchallenged discrimination that denied Jews significant promotions in the big corporations and of rigid restrictions against Jewish membership in thousands of social organizations and communal institutions, Peterfreund was one of the first of the small handful of Jews ever to achieve a managerial position with Metropolitan Life. "He's the one who put you up for it," my mother said. "How must he feel?"

"Know what he said to me when I got back? Know what he told me about the Union office? It's full of drunks. Famous for drunks. Beforehand he didn't want to influence my decision. He didn't want to stand in my way if this was what I wanted. Famous for agents who work two hours in the morning and spend the rest of their time in the tavern or worse. And I was supposed to go in there, the new Jew, the big new sheeny boss the goyim are all dying to work for, and I was supposed to go in there and pick 'em up off the barroom floor. I was supposed to go in there and remind them of their obligation to their wives and their children. Oh, how they would have loved me, boys, for doing them the favor. You can imagine what they would have called me behind my back. No, I'm better off where I am. We're all better off."

"But can the company fire you for turning them down?" "Honey, I did what I did. That's the end of it."

But she didn't believe what he'd told her the Boss had said; she believed that he was making up what the Boss had said to get her to stop blaming herself for refusing to move her children to a Gentile town that was a haven for the German-American Bund and by doing so denying him the opportunity of his lifetime.

The Lindberghs returned to resume their family life in America in April 1939. Only months later, in September, having already annexed Austria and overrun Czechoslovakia, Hitler invaded and conquered Poland, and France and Great Britain responded by declaring war on Germany. Lindbergh had by then been activated as a colonel in the Army Air Corps, and he now began traveling around the country for the U.S. government, lobbying for the development of American aviation and for expanding and modernizing the air wing of the armed forces. When Hitler quickly occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium, and all but defeated France, and the second great European war of the century was well under way, the Air Corps colonel made himself the idol of the isolationists—and the enemy of FDR—by adding to his mission the goal of preventing America from being drawn into the war or offering any aid to the British or the French.

There was already strong animosity between him and Roosevelt, but now that he was declaring openly at large public meetings and on network radio and in popular magazines that the president was misleading the country with promises of peace while secretly agitating and planning for our entry into the armed struggle, some in the Republican Party began to talk up Lindbergh as the man with the magic to beat "the warmonger in the White House" out of a third term.

The more pressure Roosevelt put on Congress to repeal the arms embargo and loosen the strictures on the country's neutrality so as to prevent the British from being defeated, the more forthright Lindbergh became, until finally he made the famous radio speech before a hall full of cheering supporters in Des Moines that named among the "most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war" a group constituting less than three percent of the population and referred to alternately as "the Jewish people" and "the Jewish race."

"No person of honesty and vision," Lindbergh said, "can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them." And then, with remarkable candor, he added:

A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. . .We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.

The next day the very accusations that had elicited roars of approval from Lindbergh's Iowa audience were vigorously denounced by liberal journalists, by Roosevelt's press secretary, by Jewish agencies and organizations, even from within the Republican Party by New York's District Attorney Dewey and the Wall Street utilities lawyer Wendell Willkie, both potential presidential nominees. So severe was the criticism from Democratic cabinet members like Interior Secretary Harold Ickes that Lindbergh resigned his reserve commission as an Army colonel rather than serve under FDR as his commander in chief. But the America First Committee, the broadest-based organization leading the battle against intervention, continued to support him, and he remained the most popular proselytizer of its argument for neutrality. For many America Firsters there was no debating (even with the facts) Lindbergh's contention that the Jews' "greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." When Lindbergh

wrote proudly of "our inheritance of European blood," when he warned against "dilution by foreign races" and "the infiltration of inferior blood" (all phrases that turn up in diary entries from those years), he was recording personal convictions shared by a sizable portion of America First's rank-and-file membership as well as by a rabid constituency even more extensive than a Jew like my father, with his bitter hatred of anti-Semitism—or like my mother, with her deeply ingrained mistrust of Christians—could ever imagine to be flourishing all across America.

The 1940 Republican Convention. My brother and I went to sleep that night— Thursday, June 27—while the radio was on in the living room, and our father, our mother, and our older cousin Alvin sat listening together to the live coverage from Philadelphia. After six ballots, the Republicans still hadn't selected a candidate. Lindbergh's name was yet to be uttered by a single delegate, and because of an engineering conclave at a midwestern factory where he'd been advising on the design of a new fighter plane, he wasn't present or expected to be. When Sandy and I went to bed the convention remained divided among Dewey, Willkie, and two powerful Republican senators, Vandenberg of Michigan and Taft of Ohio, and it didn't look as though a backroom deal was about to be brokered anytime soon by party bigwigs like former president Hoover, who'd been ousted from office by FDR's overwhelming 1932 victory, or by Governor Alf Landon, whom FDR had defeated even more ignominiously four years later in the biggest landslide in history.

Because it was the first muggy evening of the summer, the windows were open in every room and Sandy and I couldn't help but continue to follow from bed the proceedings being aired over our own living room radio and the radio playing in the flat downstairs and—since an alleyway only barely wide enough for a single car separated one house from the next—the radios of our neighbors to either side and across the way. As this was long before window air conditioners bested the noises of a neighborhood's tropical nights, the broadcast blanketed the block from Keer to Chancellor—a block on which not a single Republican lived in any of the thirty-odd two-and-a-half-family houses or in the small new apartment building at the Chancellor Avenue corner. On streets like ours the Jews voted straight Democratic for as long as FDR was at the top of the ticket.

But we were two kids and fell asleep despite everything and probably wouldn't have awakened till morning had not Lindbergh—with the Republicans deadlocked on the twentieth ballot—made his unanticipated

entrance onto the convention floor at 3:18 A.M. The lean, tall, handsome hero, a lithe, athletic-looking man not yet forty years old, arrived in his flying attire, having landed his own plane at the Philadelphia airport only minutes earlier, and at the sight of him, a surge of redemptive excitement brought the wilted conventioneers up onto their feet to cry "Lindy! Lindy! Lindy!" for thirty glorious minutes, and without interruption from the chair. Behind the successful execution of this spontaneous pseudo-religious drama lay the machinations of Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, a right-wing isolationist who quickly placed in nomination the name of Charles A. Lindbergh of Little Falls, Minnesota, whereupon two of the most reactionary members of Congress— Congressman Thorkelson of Montana and Congressman Mundt of South Dakota

—seconded the nomination, and at precisely four A.M. on Friday, June 28, the Republican Party, by acclamation, chose as its candidate the bigot who had denounced Jews over the airwaves to a national audience as "other peoples" employing their enormous "influence. . .to lead our country to destruction," rather than truthfully acknowledging us to be a small minority of citizens vastly outnumbered by our Christian countrymen, by and large obstructed by religious prejudice from attaining public power, and surely no less loyal to the principles of American democracy than an admirer of Adolf Hitler.

"No!" was the word that awakened us, "No!" being shouted in a man's loud voice from every house on the block. It can't be. No. Not for president of the United States.

Within seconds, my brother and I were once more at the radio with the rest of the family, and nobody bothered telling us to go back to bed. Hot as it was, my decorous mother had pulled a robe over her thin nightdress—she too had been asleep and roused by the noise—and she sat now on the sofa beside my father, her fingers over her mouth as though she were trying to keep from being sick. Meanwhile my cousin Alvin, able no longer to remain in his seat, set about pacing a room eighteen-by-twelve with a force in his gait befitting an avenger out searching the city to dispose of his nemesis.

The anger that night was the real roaring forge, the furnace that takes you and twists you like steel. And it didn't subside—not while Lindbergh stood silently at the Philadelphia rostrum and heard himself being cheered once again as the nation's savior, nor when he gave the speech accepting his party's nomination and with it the mandate to keep America out of the European war. We all waited in terror to hear him repeat to the convention his malicious vilification of the Jews, but that he didn't made no difference to the mood that

carried every last family on the block out into the street at nearly five in the morning. Entire families known to me previously only fully dressed in daytime clothing were wearing pajamas and nightdresses under their bathrobes and milling around in their slippers at dawn as if driven from their homes by an earthquake. But what shocked a child most was the anger, the anger of men whom I knew as lighthearted kibbitzers or silent, dutiful breadwinners who all day long unclogged drainpipes or serviced furnaces or sold apples by the pound and then in the evening looked at the paper and listened to the radio and fell asleep in the living room chair, plain people who happened to be Jews now storming about the street and cursing with no concern for propriety, abruptly thrust back into the miserable struggle from which they had believed their families extricated by the providential migration of the generation before.

I would have imagined Lindbergh's not mentioning the Jews in his acceptance speech to be a promising omen, an indication that he had been chastened by the outcry that had caused him to relinquish his Army commission or that he had changed his mind since the Des Moines speech or that he had already forgotten about us or that secretly he knew full well that we were committed irrevocably to America—that though Ireland still mattered to the Irish and Poland to the Poles and Italy to the Italians, we retained no allegiance, sentimental or otherwise, to those Old World countries that we had never been welcome in and that we had no intention of ever returning to. If I could have thought through the meaning of the moment in so many words, this is probably what I would have been thinking. But the men out on the street thought differently. Lindbergh's not mentioning the Jews was to them a trick and no more, the initiation of a campaign of deceit intended both to shut us up and to catch us off guard. "Hitler in America!" the neighbors cried. "Fascism in America! Storm troopers in America!" After their having gone without sleep all night long, there was nothing that these bewildered elders of ours didn't think and nothing that they didn't say aloud, within our hearing, before they started to drift back to their houses (where all the radios still blared away), the men to shave and dress and grab a cup of coffee before heading for work and the women to get their children clothed and fed and ready for the day.

Roosevelt raised everyone's spirits by his robust response on learning that his opponent was to be Lindbergh rather than a senator of the stature of Taft or a prosecutor as aggressive as Dewey or a big-time lawyer as smooth and handsome as Willkie. When awakened at four A.M. to be told the news, he was said to have predicted from his White House bed, "By the time this is over, the

young man will be sorry not only that he entered politics but that he ever learned to fly." Whereupon he fell immediately back into a sound sleep—or so went the story that brought us such solace the next day. Out on the street, when all anyone could think about was the menace posed to our safety by this transparently unjust affront, people had oddly forgotten about FDR and the bulwark he was against oppression. The sheer surprise of the Lindbergh nomination had activated an atavistic sense of being undefended that had more to do with Kishinev and the pogroms of 1903 than with New Jersey thirty-seven years later, and as a consequence, they had forgotten about Roosevelt's appointment to the Supreme Court of Felix Frankfurter and his selection as Treasury secretary of Henry Morgenthau, and about the close presidential adviser, financier Bernard Baruch, and about Mrs. Roosevelt and Ickes and Agriculture Secretary Wallace, all three of whom, like the president, were known to be friends of the Jews. There was Roosevelt, there was the U.S. Constitution, there was the Bill of Rights, and there were the papers, America's free press. Even the Republican Newark Evening News published an editorial reminding readers of the Des Moines speech and openly challenging the wisdom of Lindbergh's nomination, and PM, the new left-wing New York tabloid that cost a nickel and that my father had begun bringing home with him after work along with the Newark News—and whose slogan read, "PM is against people who push other people around"—leveled its assault on the Republicans in a lengthy editorial as well as in news stories and columns on virtually every one of its thirty-two pages, including anti-Lindbergh columns in the sports section by Tom Meany and Joe Cummiskey. On the front page the paper featured a large photo of Lindbergh's Nazi medal and, in its Daily Picture Magazine, where it claimed to run photographs that other papers suppressed—controversial photos of lynch mobs and chain gangs, of strikebreakers wielding clubs, of inhuman conditions in America's penitentiaries—there was page after page showing the Republican candidate touring Nazi Germany in 1938, culminating in the full-page picture of him, the notorious medal around his neck, shaking the hand of Hermann Göring, the Nazi leader second only to Hitler.

On Sunday night we waited through the lineup of comedy programs for Walter Winchell to come on at nine. And when he did and proceeded to say what we had hoped he would say just as contemptuously as we wanted him to say it, applause erupted from across the alleyway, as though the famous newsman weren't walled off in a radio studio on the far side of the great divide that was the Hudson but were here among us and fighting mad, his tie pulled down, his collar

unbuttoned, his gray fedora angled back on his head, lambasting Lindbergh from a microphone atop the oilcloth covering on the kitchen table of our next-door neighbor.

It was the last night of June 1940. After a warm day, it had grown cool enough to sit comfortably indoors without perspiring, but when Winchell signed off at nine-fifteen, our parents were moved to go outside for the four of us to take in the lovely evening together. We were just going to walk to the corner and back—after which my brother and I would go to sleep—but it was nearly midnight before we got to bed and by then sleep was out of the question for kids so overcome by their parents' excitement. Because Winchell's fearless bellicosity had propelled all of our neighbors outdoors as well, what had begun for us as a cheerful little evening stroll ended as an impromptu block party for everyone. The men dragged beach chairs from the garages and unfolded them at the foot of the alleyways, the women carried pitchers of lemonade from the houses, the youngest of the children ran wildly from stoop to stoop, and the older ones sat laughing and talking off by themselves, and all because war had been declared on Lindbergh by America's best-known Jew after Albert Einstein.

It was Winchell, after all, whose column had famously ushered in the three dots separating—and somehow magically validating—each hot news item ever so tenuously grounded in fact, and it was Winchell who'd more or less originated the idea of firing into the face of the credulous masses buckshot pellets of insinuating gossip—ruining reputations, compromising celebrities, bestowing fame, making and breaking showbiz careers. It was his column alone that was syndicated in hundreds of papers all across the country and his Sunday- night quarter of an hour that was the country's most popular news program, the rapid-fire Winchell delivery and the pugnacious Winchell cynicism lending every scoop the sensational air of an expose. We admired him as a fearless outsider and a cunning insider, a pal of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, as well as a neighbor of the mobster Frank Costello and a confidant of Roosevelt's inner circle, even a sometimes guest invited to the White House to amuse the president over a drink—the in-the-know street fighter and hardboiled man about town whom his enemies feared and who was on our side. Manhattan-born Walter Winschel (a.k.a. Weinschel) had transformed himself from a New York vaudeville dancer into a callow Broadway columnist earning big money by embodying the passions of the cheesiest of the new subliterate dailies, though ever since the rise of Hitler, and long before anyone else in the press had the foresight or the wrath to take them on, fascists and anti-Semites had become his number one enemy. He'd already labeled as "ratzis" the German-American Bund and hounded its leader, Fritz Kuhn, over the air and in print as a secret foreign

agent, and now—after FDR's joke, the Newark News editorial, and the thoroughgoing denunciation by PM—Walter Winchell had only to disclose Lindbergh's "pro-Nazi philosophy" to his thirty million Sunday-evening listeners and to call Lindbergh's presidential candidacy the greatest threat ever to American democracy for all the Jewish families on block-long little Summit Avenue to resemble once again Americans enjoying the vitality and high spirits of a secure, free, protected citizenry instead of casting themselves about outdoors in their nightclothes like inmates escaped from a lunatic asylum.

My brother was known throughout the neighborhood for being able to draw "anything"—a bike, a tree, a dog, a chair, a cartoon character like Li'l Abner— though his interest of late was in real faces. Kids were always gathering around to watch him wherever he would park himself after school with his large spiral pad and his mechanical pencil and begin to sketch the people nearby. Inevitably the onlookers would start to shout, "Draw him, draw her, draw me," and Sandy would take up the exhortation, if only to stop them from screaming in his ear. All the while his hand was working away, he'd look up, down, up, down—and behold, there lived so-and-so on a sheet of paper. What's the trick, they all asked him, how'd you do it, as if tracing—as if outright magic—might have played some part in the feat. Sandy's answer to all this pestering was a shrug or a smile: the trick to doing it was his being the quiet, serious, unostentatious boy that he was. Compelling attention wherever he went by turning out the likenesses people requested had seemingly no effect on the impersonal element at the core of his strength, the inborn modesty that was his toughness and that he later sidestepped at his peril.

At home, he was no longer copying illustrations from Collier's or photos from Look but studying from an art manual on the figure. He'd won the book in an Arbor Day poster contest for schoolkids that had coincided with a citywide tree-planting program administered by the Department of Parks and Public Property. There'd even been a ceremony where he'd shaken the hand of a Mr. Bann-wart, who was superintendent of the Bureau of Shade Trees. The design of his winning poster was based on a red two-cent stamp in my collection commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of Arbor Day. The stamp seemed to me especially beautiful because visible within each of its narrow, vertical white borders was a slender tree whose branches arched at the top to meet and form an arbor—and until the stamp became mine and I was able to examine through my magnifying glass its distinguishing marks, the meaning of "arbor" had been swallowed up in the familiar name of the holiday. (The small magnifying glass--

along with an album for twenty-five hundred stamps, a stamp tweezers, a perforation gauge, gummed stamp hinges, and a black rubber dish called a watermark detector—had been a gift from my parents for my seventh birthday. For an additional ten cents they'd also bought me a small book of ninety-odd pages called The Stamp Collector's Handbook, where, under "How to Start a Stamp Collection," I'd read with fascination this sentence: "Old business files or private correspondence often contain stamps of discontinued issues which are of great value, so if you have any friends living in old houses who have accumulated material of this sort in their attics, try to obtain their old stamped envelopes and wrappers." We didn't have an attic, none of our friends living in flats and apartments had attics, but there'd been attics just beneath the roofs of the one-family houses in Union—from my seat in the back of the car I could see little attic windows at either end of each of the houses as we'd driven around the town on that terrible Saturday the year before, and so all I could think of when we got home in the afternoon were the old stamped envelopes and the embossed stamps on the prepaid newspaper wrappers secreted up in those attics and how I would now have no chance "to obtain" them because I was a Jew.)

The appeal of the Arbor Day commemorative stamp was greatly enhanced by its representing a human activity as opposed to a famous person's portrait or a picture of an important place—an activity, what's more, being performed by children: in the center of the stamp, a boy and a girl looking to be about ten or eleven are planting a young tree, the boy digging with a spade while the girl, supporting the trunk of the tree with one hand, holds it steadily in place over the hole. In Sandy's poster the boy and the girl are repositioned and stand on opposite sides of the tree, the boy is pictured as right-handed rather than left- handed, he wears long pants instead of knickers, and one of his feet is atop the blade pressing it into the ground. There is also a third child in Sandy's poster, a boy about my age, who is now the one wearing the knickers. He stands back and to the side of the sapling and holds ready a watering can—as I held one when I modeled for Sandy, clad in my best school knickers and high socks. Adding this child was my mother's idea, to help distinguish Sandy's artwork from that on the Arbor Day stamp—and protect him from the charge of "copying"—but also to provide the poster with a social content that implied a theme by no means common in 1940, not in poster art or anywhere else either, and that for reasons of "taste" might even have proved unacceptable to the judges.

The third child planting the tree was a Negro, and what encouraged my mother to suggest including him—aside from the desire to instill in her children the civic virtue of tolerance—was another stamp of mine, a brand-new tencent issue in the "educators group," five stamps that I'd purchased at the post

office for a total of twenty-one cents and paid for over the month of March out of my weekly allowance of a nickel. Above the central portrait, each stamp featured a picture of a lamp that the U.S. Post Office Department identified as the "Lamp of Knowledge" but that I thought of as Aladdin's lamp because of the boy in the Arabian Nights with the magic lamp and the ring and the two genies who give him whatever he asks for. What I would have asked for from a genie were the most coveted of all American stamps: first, the celebrated 1918 twenty- four-cent airmail, a stamp said to be worth $ 3, 400, where the plane pictured at the center, the Army's Flying Jenny, is inverted; and after that, the three famous stamps in the Pan-American Exposition issue of 1901 that had also been mistakenly printed with inverted centers and were worth over a thousand dollars apiece.

On the green one-cent stamp in the educators group, just above the picture of the Lamp of Knowledge, was Horace Mann; on the red two-cent, Mark Hopkins; on the purple three-cent, Charles W. Eliot; on the blue four-cent, Frances E. Willard; on the brown tencent was Booker T. Washington, the first Negro to appear on an American stamp. I remember that after placing the Booker T. Washington in my album and showing my mother how it completed the set of five, I had asked her, "Do you think there'll ever be a Jew on a stamp?" and she replied, "Probably—someday, yes. I hope so, anyway." In fact, another twenty-six years had to pass, and it took Einstein to do it.

Sandy saved his weekly allowance of twenty-five cents—and what change he earned shoveling snow and raking leaves and washing the family car

—until he had enough to bicycle to the stationery store on Clinton Avenue that carried art supplies and, over a period of months, to buy a charcoal pencil, then sandpaper blocks to sharpen the pencil, then charcoal paper, then the little tubular metal contraption he blew into to apply the fine fixative mist that prevented the charcoal from smudging. He had big bulldog clips, a masonite board, yellow Ticonderoga pencils, erasers, sketchpads, drawing paper— equipment that he stored in a grocery carton at the bottom of our bedroom closet and that my mother, when she was cleaning, wasn't permitted to disturb. His energetic meticulousness (passed on from our mother) and his breathtaking perseverance (passed on from our father) served only to magnify my awe of an older brother who everyone agreed was intended for great things, while most boys his age didn't look as though they were intended even to eat at a table with another human being. I was then the good child, obedient both at home and at school—the willfulness largely inactive and the attack set to go off at a later date

—as yet altogether too young to know the potential of a rage of one's own. And nowhere was I less intransigent than with him.

For his twelfth birthday, Sandy had gotten a large, flat black portfolio made of hard cardboard that folded along a sewn seam and was secured at the top edge with two attached lengths of ribbon that he tied in a bow in order to fasten the leaves. The portfolio measured about two feet by a foot and a half, too big to fit into the drawers of our bedroom dresser or to be stacked upright against the wall in the crowded bedroom closet he and I shared. He was allowed to store it—along with his spiral sketchpads—laid out flat beneath his bed, and in it he saved the drawings he considered his best, beginning with his compositional masterwork of 1936, the ambitious picture of our mother pointing overhead at the Paris-bound Spirit of St. Louis. Sandy had several large portraits of the heroic aviator, in both pencil and charcoal, stowed away in his portfolio. They were part of a series he was assembling of prominent Americans that concentrated primarily on those living eminences most revered by our parents, such as President and Mrs. Roosevelt, New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis, and the novelist Pearl Buck, who'd won the Nobel Prize in 1938 and whose picture he copied from the jacket of one of her bestsellers. A number of drawings in the portfolio were of family members, and of those at least half were of our sole surviving grandparent, our paternal grandmother, who, on the Sundays when my uncle Monty brought her around to visit, would sometimes serve Sandy as a model. Under the sway of the word "venerable," he drew every wrinkle he could find in her face and every gnarl in her arthritic fingers while—as dutifully as she'd scrubbed floors on her knees all her life and cooked for a family of nine on a coal stove—tiny, sturdy Grandma sat in the kitchen and "posed."

We were alone together in the house only a few days after the Winchell broadcast when Sandy removed the portfolio from under his bed and carried it into the dining room. There he opened it out on the table (reserved for entertaining the Boss and celebrating special family occasions) and carefully lifted the Lindbergh portraits from the tracing paper protecting each drawing and lined them up on the tabletop. In the first, Lindbergh was wearing his leather flying cap with the loose straps dangling over each ear; in the second, the cap was partially hidden beneath large heavy goggles pushed up from his eyes and onto his forehead; in the third, he was bareheaded, nothing to mark him as an aviator other than the uncompromising gaze out to the distant horizon. To gauge the value of this man, as Sandy had rendered him, wasn't difficult. A virile hero. A courageous adventurer. A natural person of gigantic strength and rectitude combined with a powerful blandness. Anything but a frightening villain or a menace to mankind.

"He's going to be president," Sandy told me. "Alvin says

Lindbergh's going to win."

He so confused and frightened me that I pretended he was making a joke and laughed.

"Alvin's going to go to Canada and join the Canadian army," he said. "He's going to fight for the British against Hitler."

"But nobody can beat Roosevelt," I said. "Lindbergh's going to. America's going to go fascist."

Then we just stood there together under the intimidating spell of the three portraits. Never before had being seven felt like such a serious deficiency.

"Don't tell anybody I've got these," he said.

"But Mom and Dad saw them already," I said. "They've seen them all. Everybody has."

"I told them I tore them up."

There was nobody more truthful than my brother. He wasn't quiet because he was secretive and deceitful but because he never bothered to behave badly and so had nothing to hide. But now something external had transformed the meaning of these drawings, making them into what they were not, and so he'd told our parents that he'd destroyed them, making himself into what he was not.

"Suppose they find them," I said. "How will they do that?" he asked. "I don't know."

"Right," he said. "You don't. Just keep your little trap shut and nobody'll find anything."

I did as he told me for many reasons, one being that the third-oldest

U.S. postage stamp I owned—which I couldn't possibly tear up and throw away

—was a tencent airmail issued in 1927 to commemorate Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. It was a blue stamp, about twice as long as it was high, whose central design, a picture of the Spirit of St. Louis flying eastward over the ocean, had provided Sandy with the model for the plane in the drawing celebrating his conception. Adjacent to the white border at the left of the stamp is the coastline of North America, with the words "New York" jutting out into the Atlantic, and adjacent to the border at the right the coastlines of Ireland, Great Britain, and France, with the word "Paris" at the end of a dotted arc that charts the flight path between the two cities. At the top of the stamp, directly beneath the white letters that boldly spell out UNITED STATES POSTAGE are the words LINDBERGH–AIR MAIL in slightly smaller type but large enough certainly to be read by a seven-year-old with perfect vision. The stamp was already valued at twenty cents by Scott's Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, and what I

immediately realized was that its worth would only continue increasing (and so rapidly as to become my single most valuable possession) if Alvin was right and the worst happened.

On the sidewalk during the long vacation months we played a new game called "I Declare War," using a cheap rubber ball and a piece of chalk. With the chalk you drew a circle some five or six feet in diameter, partitioned it into as many pielike segments as there were players, and chalked into each the name of one of various foreign countries that had been in the news throughout the year. Next, each player picked "his" country and stood straddling the edge of the circle, one foot inside and one out, so that when the time came he could flee in a hurry. Meanwhile a designated player, holding the ball aloft in his hand, announced slowly, in an ominous cadence, "I—declare—war—on—" There was a suspenseful pause, and then the kid declaring war would slam the ball down, in the same instant shouting "Germany!" or "Japan!" or "Holland!" or "Italy!" or "Belgium!" or "England!" or "China!"—sometimes even shouting "America!"— and everybody would take off except the one on whom the surprise attack had been launched. His job was to catch the ball on the bounce as quickly as he could and call "Stop!" Everybody now allied against him would have to freeze in place, and the victim country would begin the counterattack, trying to eliminate one aggressor country at a time by walloping each as hard as he could with the ball, beginning by throwing at those closest to him and advancing his position with each murderous thwack.

We played this game incessantly. Until it rained and temporarily the names of the countries were washed away, people had to either step on them or step over them when they made their way down the street. In our neighborhood there was no other graffiti to speak of in those days, just this, the remnants of the hieroglyphics of our simple street games. Harmless enough, and yet it drove some of the mothers crazy who had to hear us at it for hours on end through their open windows. "Can't you kids do something else? Can't you find another game to play?" But we couldn't—declaring war was all we thought about too.

On July 18, 1940, the Democratic Convention meeting in Chicago overwhelmingly nominated FDR for a third term on the first ballot. We listened on the radio to his acceptance speech, delivered with the confidently intoned upper-class enunciation that, for close to eight years now, had inspired millions of ordinary families like ours to remain hopeful in the midst of hardship. There

was something about the inherent decorum of the delivery that, alien though it was, not only calmed our anxiety but bestowed on our family a historical significance, authoritatively merging our lives with his as well as with that of the entire nation when he addressed us in our living room as his "fellow citizens." That Americans could choose Lindbergh—that Americans could choose anybody—rather than the two-term president whose voice alone conveyed mastery over the tumult of human affairs. . .well, that was unthinkable, and certainly so for a little American like me who'd never known a presidential voice other than his.

Some six weeks later, on the Saturday before Labor Day, Lindbergh surprised the country by failing to appear at the Detroit Labor Day parade, where he had been scheduled to launch his campaign with a motorcade through the working-class heartland of isolationist America (and the anti-Semitic stronghold of Father Coughlin and Henry Ford), and by arriving unannounced instead at the Long Island airfield from which his spectacular transatlantic flight had begun thirteen years before. The Spirit of St. Louis had been secretly trucked in under a tarp and stored overnight in a remote hangar, though by the time Lindbergh taxied the plane onto the field the next morning, every wire service in America and every radio station and newspaper in New York had a reporter on hand to witness the takeoff, westward this time across America to California rather than eastward across the Atlantic to Europe. Of course, by 1940, commercial air service had been hauling transcontinental freight, passengers, and mail for more than a decade, and doing so largely as a result of the incentive of Lindbergh's solo feat and his industrious efforts as a million-dollar-a-year consultant to the newly organized airlines. But it wasn't the wealthy advocate of commercial aviation who was launching his campaign that day, nor was it the Lindbergh who had been decorated in Berlin by the Nazis, nor the Lindbergh who, in a nationwide radio broadcast, had blamed overly influential Jews for attempting to drive the country into war, nor was it even the stoical father of the infant kidnapped and killed by Bruno Hauptmann in 1932. It was rather the unknown airmail pilot who'd dared to do what had never been done by any aviator before him, the adored Lone Eagle, boyish and unspoiled still, despite the years of phenomenal fame. On the holiday weekend that closed out the summer of 1940, Lindbergh came nowhere near besting the record time for a coast-to-coast nonstop flight that he'd himself set a decade back with an aircraft more advanced than the old Spirit of St. Louis. Nonetheless, when he arrived at Los Angeles Airport, a crowd consisting largely of aircraft workers—tens of thousands of them, employed by the big new manufacturers in and around L.A.—was as overcome with enthusiasm as any ever to greet him anywhere.

The Democrats called the flight a publicity gimmick stage-managed by Lindbergh's staff, when in fact the decision to fly to California had been made only hours earlier by Lindbergh alone and not by the professionals who had been assigned by the Republican Party to steer the political novice through his first political campaign and who, like everyone else, had been expecting him to turn up in Detroit.

His speech was unadorned and to the point, delivered in a high- pitched, flat, midwestern, decidedly un-Rooseveltian American voice. His flight outfit of high boots and jodhpurs and a lightweight jumper worn over a shirt and tie was a replica of the one in which he'd crossed the Atlantic, and he spoke without removing his leather headgear or flight goggles, which were pushed up onto his forehead exactly as Sandy had them positioned in the charcoal drawing hidden beneath his bed.

"My intention in running for the presidency," he told the raucous crowd, once they had stopped chanting his name, "is to preserve American democracy by preventing America from taking part in another world war. Your choice is simple. It's not between Charles A. Lindbergh and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It's between Lindbergh and war."

That was the whole of it—forty-one words, if you included the A for

Augustus.

After a shower and a snack and an hour's nap there at the L.A.

airport, the candidate climbed back into the Spirit of St. Louis and flew to San Francisco. By nightfall he was in Sacramento. And wherever he landed in California that day, it was as though the country hadn't known the stock market crash and the miseries of the Depression (or the triumphs of FDR, for that matter), as though even the war he was there to prevent us from entering hadn't so much as crossed anyone's mind. Lindy flew down out of the sky in his famous plane, and it was 1927 all over again. It was Lindy all over again, straight- talking Lindy, who had never to look or to sound superior, who simply was superior—fearless Lindy, at once youthful and gravely mature, the rugged individualist, the legendary American man's man who gets the impossible done by relying solely on himself.

Over the next month and a half he proceeded to spend one full day in each of the forty-eight states, until in late October he made his way back to the Long Island runway from which he'd taken off on Labor Day weekend. Throughout the daylight hours he would hop from one city, town, or village to the next, landing on highways if there was no nearby airstrip and setting down and taking off from a stretch of pasture when he flew to talk with farmers and their families in the remotest of America's rural counties. His airfield remarks

were broadcast over local and regional radio stations, and several times a week, from the state capital where he was spending the night, he broadcast a message to the nation. It was always succinct and went like this: To prevent a war in Europe is now too late. But it is not too late to prevent America from taking part in that war. FDR is misleading the nation. America will be carried to war by a president who falsely promises peace. The choice is simple. Vote for Lindbergh or vote for war.

As a young pilot in aviation's early, novelty days, Lindbergh, along with an older, more experienced sidekick, had entertained crowds throughout the Midwest by skydiving in a parachute or walking out parachuteless onto the plane's wing, and the Democrats were now quick to belittle his barnstorming in the Spirit of St. Louis by likening it to these stunts. At press conferences, Roosevelt no longer bothered to make a derisive quip when questioned by newsmen about the unorthodox Lindbergh campaign, but simply moved on to discuss Churchill's fear of an imminent German invasion of Britain or to announce that he would be asking Congress to fund the first American peacetime draft or to remind Hitler that the United States would not tolerate any interference with the transatlantic aid our merchant vessels were supplying to the British war effort. It was clear from the start that the president's campaign was to consist of remaining in the White House, where, in contrast to what Secretary Ickes labeled Lindbergh's "carnival antics," he planned to address the hazards of the international situation with all the authority at his command, working round the clock if necessary.

Twice during the state-by-state tour, Lindbergh was lost in bad weather and each time several hours passed before radio contact with him was reestablished and he was able to let the country know that all was well. But then in October, on the very day Americans were stunned to learn that in the latest of the destructive night raids on London the Germans had bombed St. Paul's Cathedral, a news flash at dinnertime reported that the Spirit of St. Louis had been seen to explode in the air over the Alleghenies and plummet to the earth in flames. This time it was six long hours before a second flash corrected the first with the news that it was engine trouble and not a midair explosion that had forced Lindbergh to make an emergency landing on treacherous terrain in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. Before the emendation was aired, however, our phone rang continuously—friends and relatives calling to speculate with our parents on the initial account of the fiery and probably fatal accident. In front of Sandy and me our parents said nothing to indicate relief at the prospect of Lindbergh's death, though neither did they say that they hoped it wasn't so nor were they among the jubilant when, around eleven that night, word came

through that, far from having gone down in flames, the Lone Eagle had emerged safely from the undamaged plane and was waiting only for a replacement part so as to take off and resume his campaign.

On the October morning that Lindbergh landed at Newark Airport, among the entourage waiting to welcome him to New Jersey was Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf of B'nai Moshe, the first of the city's Conservative temples, organized by Polish Jews. B'nai Moshe was a few blocks from the heart of the old pushcart ghetto, still the city's poorest district though home no longer to B'nai Moshe's congregants but to a community of impoverished Negroes, recent migrants from the South. For years B'nai Moshe had been losing out in the competition for the well-to-do; by 1940, these families had either left Conservatism and affiliated themselves to the Reform congregations of B'nai Jeshurun and Oheb Shalom— each planted impressively amid the old mansions on High Street—or joined the other long-established Conservative temple, B'nai Abraham, located several miles west of where it had been originally housed in a former Baptist church and adjacent now to the homes of the Jewish doctors and lawyers living in Clinton Hill. The new B'nai Abraham was the most splendid of the city's temples, a circular building austerely designed in what was called "the Greek style" and vast enough to hold a thousand worshipers on the High Holidays. Joachim Prinz, an emigre expelled from Berlin by Hitler's Gestapo, had replaced the retiring Julius Silberfeld as the temple's rabbi the year before and was already emerging as a forceful man with a broad social outlook who offered his prosperous congregants a perspective on Jewish history marked strongly by his own recent experience at the bloody scene of the Nazi crime.

Rabbi Bengelsdorf's sermons were broadcast weekly over station WNJR to the hoi polloi he called his "radio congregation," and he was the author of several books of inspirational poetry routinely given as gifts to bar mitzvah boys and newlyweds. He'd been born in South Carolina in 1879, the son of an immigrant dry goods merchant, and whenever he addressed a Jewish audience, whether from the pulpit or over the air, his courtly southern accent, along with his sonorous cadences—and the cadences of his own multi-syllabic name—left an impression of dignified profundity. On the subject, for instance, of his friendship with Rabbi Silberfeld of B'nai Abraham and Rabbi Foster of B'nai Jeshurun, he once told his radio audience, "It was fated: just as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle belonged together in the ancient world, so we belong together in the religious world." And the homily on selflessness that he proffered to explain to radio listeners why a rabbi of his standing was content to stay on at the head

of a waning congregation, he introduced by saying, "Perhaps you will be interested in my answer to questions that have been asked of me by literally thousands of people. Why do you renounce the commercial benefits of a peripatetic ministry? Why do you choose to remain in Newark, at Temple B'nai Moshe, as your only pulpit, when you have six opportunities every day to leave it for other congregations?" He had studied at the great institutions of learning in Europe as well as at American universities and was reputed to speak ten languages; to be versed in classical philosophy, theology, art history, and ancient and modern history; to never compromise on questions of principle; to never refer to notes at the lectern or on a lecture platform; to never be without a set of index cards pertaining to the topics most engaging him at the moment, to which he added new reflections and impressions every day. He was also an excellent equestrian, known to bring his horse to a halt so as to jot down a thought, employing his saddle as a makeshift desk. Early each morning, he exercised by riding out along the bridle paths of Weequahic Park, accompanied—until her death from cancer in 1936—by his wife, the heiress to Newark's wealthiest jewelry manufacturer. Her family mansion on Elizabeth Avenue, where the couple had been living just across from the park since their marriage in 1907, housed a treasury of Judaica said to be among the most valuable private collections in the world.

By 1940 Lionel Bengelsdorf claimed the longest record of service at his own temple of any rabbi in America. The newspapers referred to him as the religious leader of New Jersey Jewry and, in reporting on his numerous public appearances, invariably mentioned his "gift for oratory" along with the ten languages. In 1915, at the 250th anniversary celebration of the founding of Newark, he had sat at the side of Mayor Raymond and delivered the invocation just as he delivered invocations annually at the parades for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July: RABBI EXALTS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was a headline that appeared annually in the Star-Ledger every July fifth. In his sermons and talks calling "the development of American ideals" the first priority of Jews and "the Americanization of Americans" the best means to preserve our democracy against "Bolshevism, radicalism, and anarchism," he frequently quoted from Theodore Roosevelt's final message to the nation, in which the late president said, "There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag." Rabbi Bengelsdorf had spoken on the Americanization of Americans in every Newark church and public school, before most every fraternal, civic, historical, and cultural group in the state, and news articles in the Newark papers about his speeches were datelined with the

names of scores of cities around the country to which he'd been called to address conferences and conventions on that theme as well as on issues ranging from crime and the prison reform movement—"The prison reform movement is saturated with the highest ethical principles and religious ideals"—to the causes of the World War—"The war is the result of the worldly ambitions of the European peoples and their effort to reach the goals of military greatness, power, and wealth"—to the importance of day nurseries—"The nurseries are life gardens of human flowers in which each child is helped to grow in an atmosphere of joy and gladness"—to the evils of the industrial age—"We believe that the worth of the workingman is not to be computed by the material value of his production"—to the suffrage movement, whose proposal to extend to women the franchise to vote he strongly opposed, arguing that "if men are not capable of handling the business of the state, why not help them become so. No evil has ever been cured by doubling it." My uncle Monty, who hated all rabbis but had an especially venomous loathing of Bengelsdorf dating back to his childhood as a charity student in the B'nai Moshe religious school, liked to say of him, "The pompous son of a bitch knows everything—it's too bad he doesn't know anything else."

Rabbi Bengelsdorf's appearance at the airport—where, according to the caption beneath the photograph on the front page of the Newark News, he stood first in line to shake Lindbergh's hand when he emerged from the cockpit of the Spirit of St. Louis—was a source of consternation to great numbers of the city's Jews, my parents among them, as was the quotation attributed to him in the paper's account of Lindbergh's brief visit. "I am here," Rabbi Bengelsdorf told the News, "to crush all doubt of the unadulterated loyalty of the American Jews to the United States of America. I offer my support to the candidacy of Colonel Lindbergh because the political objectives of my people are identical with his. America is our beloved homeland. America is our only homeland. Our religion is independent of any piece of land other than this great country, to which, now as always, we commit our total devotion and allegiance as the proudest of citizens. I want Charles Lindbergh to be my president not in spite of my being a Jew but because I am a Jew—an American Jew."

Three days later, Bengelsdorf participated in the huge rally held at Madison Square Garden to mark the end of Lindbergh's flying tour. By then the election was but two weeks away, and though there appeared to be growing Lindbergh support among voters throughout the traditionally Democratic South, and close contests were predicted in the most conservative midwestern states,

national polls showed the president comfortably ahead in the popular vote and well ahead in electoral votes. Republican Party leaders were reported to be in despair over their candidate's stubborn refusal to allow anyone other than himself to determine the strategy of his campaign, and so, to draw him out of the repetitious austerity of his interminable barnstorming and envelop him in an atmosphere more like that of the boisterous Philadelphia nominating convention, the Madison Square Garden rally was organized and broadcast nationwide on the evening of the second Monday in October.

The fifteen speakers introducing Lindbergh that night were described as "prominent Americans from all walks of life." Among them was a farm leader to talk about the harm a war would do to American farming, which was in crisis still from the First World War and the Depression; a labor leader to talk about the disaster a war would represent for American workers, whose lives would be regimented by government agencies; a manufacturer to talk about the catastrophic long-term consequences for American industry of wartime overexpansion and onerous taxation; a Protestant clergyman to talk about the brutalizing effect of modern warfare on the young men who would be doing the fighting; and a Catholic priest to talk about the inevitable deterioration of the spiritual life of a peace-loving nation like our own and the destruction of decency and kindness because of the hatred bred by war. Lastly there was a rabbi, New Jersey's Lionel Bengelsdorf, who received an especially hearty welcome from the full house of Lindbergh supporters when his turn came to take the lectern and who was there to expatiate on how Lindbergh's association with the Nazis was anything but complicitous.

"Yep," Alvin said, "they bought him. The fix is in. They slipped a gold ring through his big Jew nose, and now they can lead him anywhere."

"You don't know that," my father said, but not because he wasn't himself steamed up by Bengelsdorf's behavior. "Listen to the man," he told Alvin, "give the man a hearing. It's only fair"—words uttered largely for Sandy's benefit and mine, to keep the startling turn of events from seeming as terrible to the two of us as it did to the adults. The night before, I had fallen onto the floor in my sleep, something that hadn't happened since I'd first graduated from a crib to a bed and to prevent me from rolling out of it my parents had to set a pair of kitchen chairs at the side of the mattress. When it was assumed automatically that my falling like that after all these years could only have had to do with Lindbergh's showing up at Newark Airport, I insisted that I didn't remember a bad dream about Lindbergh, that I just remembered waking up on the floor between my brother's bed and mine, even though I happened to know that I virtually never got to sleep any longer without envisioning the Lindbergh

drawings stashed away in my brother's portfolio. I kept wanting to ask Sandy if he couldn't hide them in our cellar storage bin instead of under the bed beside mine, but because I'd sworn not to speak about the drawings to anyone—and because I couldn't bring myself to part with my own Lindbergh stamp—I didn't dare to raise them as an issue, though they were indeed haunting me and rendering unapproachable the brother whose reassurance I'd never needed more.

It was a cold evening. The heat was on and the windows were closed, but even without being able to hear them you knew that radios were playing up and down the block and that families who wouldn't otherwise consider listening to a Lindbergh rally were tuned in because of the scheduled appearance there of Rabbi Bengelsdorf. Among his own congregants, a few important people had already begun to call for his resignation, if not for his immediate removal by the temple's board of trustees, while the majority continuing to support him tried to believe that their rabbi was merely exercising his democratic right of free speech and that, horrified though they were by his public endorsement of Lindbergh, to attempt to silence a conscience as renowned as his did not fall within their rights.

That night Rabbi Bengelsdorf disclosed to America what he claimed to be the true motive behind Lindbergh's personal flying missions to Germany in the 1930s. "Contrary to the propaganda disseminated by his critics," the rabbi informed us, "he did not once visit Germany as a sympathizer or a supporter of Hitler's but rather he traveled each and every time as a secret adviser to the U.S. government. Far from his betraying America, as the misguided and the ill- intentioned continue to charge, Colonel Lindbergh has almost single-handedly served to strengthen America's military preparedness by imparting his knowledge to our own military and by doing everything within his power to advance the cause of American aviation and to expand America's air defenses."

"Jesus!" cried my father. "Everybody knows—"

"Shhh," whispered Alvin, "shhh—let the great orator speak."

"Yes, in 1936, long before the beginning of the European hostilities, the Nazis awarded Colonel Lindbergh a medal, and, yes," continued Bengelsdorf, "yes, the colonel accepted their medal. But all the while, my friends, all the while secretly exploiting their admiration in order better to protect and preserve our democracy and to preserve our neutrality through strength."

"I cannot believe—" my father began. "Try," muttered Alvin evilly.

"This is not America's war," Bengelsdorf announced, and the crowd at Madison Square Garden responded with a full minute of applause. "This," the

rabbi told them, "is Europe's war." Again sustained applause. "It is one of a thousand-year-long sequence of European wars dating back to the time of Charlemagne. It is their second devastating war in less than half a century. And can anyone forget the tragic cost to America of their last great war? Forty thousand Americans killed in action. A hundred and ninety-two thousand Americans wounded. Seventy-six thousand Americans dead of disease. Three hundred and fifty thousand Americans on disability today because of their participation in that war. And just how astronomical will the price be this time? The number of our dead—tell me, President Roosevelt, will it be merely doubled or tripled or will it perhaps be quadrupled? Tell me, Mr. President, what sort of America will the massive slaughter of innocent American boys leave in its wake? Of course, the Nazi harassment and persecution of its German Jewish population is a cause of enormous anguish to me as it is to every Jew. During the years I was studying theology with the faculties of the great German universities in Heidelberg and in Bonn, I made many distinguished friends there, great men of learning who, today, simply because they are Germans of Jewish extraction, have been dismissed from long-held scholarly positions and are being ruthlessly persecuted by the Nazi hoodlums who have taken command of their homeland. I oppose their treatment with every ounce of my strength, and so too does Colonel Lindbergh oppose their treatment. But how will this cruel fate that has befallen them in their own land be alleviated by our great country going to war with their tormentors? If anything, the predicament of all of Germany's Jews would only worsen immeasurably—worsen, I fear, tragically. Yes, I am a Jew, and as a Jew I feel their suffering with a familial sharpness. But I am an American citizen, my friends"—again the applause—"I am an American born and raised, and so I ask you, how would my pain be lessened if America were now to enter the war and, along with the sons of our Protestant families and the sons of our Catholic families, the sons of our Jewish families were to fight and die by the tens of thousands on a blood-soaked European battleground? How would my pain be diminished by my having to console my very own congregants—"

It was my mother, usually the least ardent member of our family, the one ordinarily quieting the rest of us when we turned demonstrative, who all at once found the sound of Bengelsdorf's southern accent so intolerable that she had to leave the room. But until he finished his speech and was loudly cheered off the stage by the Garden audience, no one else moved or said another word. I wouldn't dare to, and my brother was preoccupied—as he often was in such a setting—with sketching what we all looked like, now while listening to the radio. Alvin's was the silence of murderous loathing, and my father—divested for perhaps the first time in his life of that relentless passion he brought to the

struggle against setback and disappointment—was too stirred up to speak.

Pandemonium. Unspeakable delight. Lindbergh had at last stepped onto the Garden stage, and like someone half demented, my father leaped from the sofa and snapped off the radio just as my mother came back into the living room and asked, "Who would like something? Alvin," she said, with tears in her eyes, "a cup of tea?"

Her job was to hold our world together as calmly and as sensibly as she could; that was what gave her life fullness and that was all she was trying to do, and yet never had any of us seen her rendered so ridiculous by this commonplace maternal ambition.

"What the hell is going on!" my father began to shout. "What the hell did he do that for? That stupid speech! Does he think that one single Jew is now going to go out and vote for this anti-Semite because of that stupid, lying speech? Has he completely lost his mind? What does this man think he is doing?"

goyim."

"Koshering Lindbergh," Alvin said. "Koshering Lindbergh for the

"Koshering what?" my father said, exasperated with Alvin's

seemingly speaking sarcastic nonsense at a moment of so much confusion. "Doing what?"

"They didn't get him up there to talk to Jews. They didn't buy him off for that. Don't you understand?" Alvin asked, fiery now with what he took to be the underlying truth. "He's up there talking to the goyim—he's giving the goyim all over the country his personal rabbi's permission to vote for Lindy on Election Day. Don't you see, Uncle Herman, what they got the great Bengelsdorf to do? He just guaranteed Roosevelt's defeat!"

At about two A.M. that night, while soundly asleep, I again rolled out of my bed, but this time I remembered afterward what I'd been dreaming before I hit the floor. It was a nightmare all right, and it was about my stamp collection. Something had happened to it. The design on two sets of my stamps had changed in a dreadful way without my knowing when or how. In the dream, I'd gotten the album out of my dresser drawer to take with me to my friend Earl's and I was walking with it toward his house as I'd done dozens of times before. Earl Axman was ten and in the fifth grade. He lived with his mother in the new four-story yellow-brick apartment house built three years earlier on the large empty lot near the corner of Chancellor and Summit, diagonally across from the grade school. Before that he'd lived in New York. His father was a musician with

the Glen Gray Casa Loma Orchestra—Sy Axman, who played tenor saxophone beside Glen Gray's alto. Mr. Axman was divorced from Earl's mother, a theatrically good-looking blonde who'd briefly been a singer with the band before Earl was born and, according to my parents, was originally from Newark and a brunette, a Jewish girl named Louise Swig who'd gone to South Side and became famous locally in musical revues at the YMHA. Among all the boys I knew, Earl was the only child with divorced parents, and the only one whose mother wore heavy makeup and off-the-shoulder blouses and billowing ruffled skirts with a big petticoat underneath. She'd also made a record of the song "Gotta Be This or That" when she was with Glen Gray, and Earl played it for me often. I never came upon another mother like her. Earl didn't call her Ma or Mom

—he called her, scandalously, Louise. She had a closet in her bedroom full of those petticoats, and when Earl and I were alone together at his house, he'd show them to me. He even let me touch one once, whispering, while I waited to decide whether to do it, "Wherever you want." Then he opened a drawer and showed me her brassieres and offered to let me touch one of those, but that I declined. I was still young enough to admire a brassiere from afar. His parents each gave him a full dollar a week to spend on stamps, and when the Casa Loma Orchestra wasn't playing in New York and was out touring, Mr. Axman sent Earl envelopes with airmail stamps postmarked from cities everywhere. There was even one from "Honolulu, Oahu," where Earl, who wasn't above cloaking his absent father in splendor—as though to the son of an insurance agent having a saxophonist with a famous swing band for a father (and a peroxide-blond singer for a mother) weren't amazing enough—claimed that Mr. Axman had been taken to a "private home" to see the canceled two-cent Hawaiian "Missionary" stamp of 1851, issued forty-seven full years before Hawaii was annexed to the United States as a territory, an unimaginable treasure valued at $ 100, 000 whose central design was just the numeral 2.

Earl owned the best stamp collection around. He taught me everything practical and everything esoteric that I learned as a small kid about stamps—about their history, about collecting mint versus used, about technical matters like paper, printing, color, gum, overprints, grills, and special printing, about the great forgeries and design errors—and, prodigious pedant that he was, had begun my education by telling me about the French collector Monsieur Herpin, who coined the word "philately," explaining its derivation from two Greek words, the second of which, ateleia, meaning freedom from tax, never quite made sense to me. And whenever we'd finished up in his kitchen with our stamps and he was momentarily done with his domineering, he'd giggle and say, "Now let's do something awful," which was how I got to see his mother's

underwear.

In the dream, I was walking to Earl's with my stamp album clutched

to my chest when someone shouted my name and began chasing me. I ducked into an alleyway and scurried back into one of the garages to hide and to check the album for stamps that might have come loose from their hinges when, while fleeing my pursuer, I'd stumbled and dropped the album at the very spot on the sidewalk where we regularly played "I Declare War." When I opened to my 1932 Washington Bicentennials—twelve stamps ranging in denomination from the half-cent dark brown to the tencent yellow—I was stunned. Washington wasn't on the stamps anymore. Unchanged at the top of each stamp—lettered in what I'd learned to recognize as white-faced roman and spaced out on either one or two lines—was the legend "United States Postage." The colors of the stamps were unchanged as well—the two-cent red, the five-cent blue, the eight-cent olive green, and so on—all the stamps were the same regulation size, and the frames for the portraits remained individually designed as they were in the original set, but instead of a different portrait of Washington on each of the twelve stamps, the portraits were now the same and no longer of Washington but of Hitler. And on the ribbon beneath each portrait, there was no longer the name "Washington" either. Whether the ribbon was curved downward as on the one- half-cent stamp and the six, or curved upward as on the four, the five, the seven, and the ten, or straight with raised ends as on the one, the one and a half, the two, the three, the eight, and the nine, the name lettered across the ribbon was "Hitler."

It was when I looked next at the album's facing page to see what, if anything, had happened to my 1934 National Parks set of ten that I fell out of the bed and woke up on the floor, this time screaming. Yosemite in California, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Mesa Verde in Colorado, Crater Lake in Oregon, Acadia in Maine, Mount Rainier in Washington, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Zion in Utah, Glacier in Montana, the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee—and across the face of each, across the cliffs, the woods, the rivers, the peaks, the geyser, the gorges, the granite coastline, across the deep blue water and the high waterfalls, across everything in America that was the bluest and the greenest and the whitest and to be preserved forever in these pristine reservations, was printed a black swastika.

2

November 1940–June 1941

Loudmouth Jew

IN JUNE 1941, just six months after Lindbergh's inauguration, our family drove the three hundred miles to Washington, D.C., to visit the historic sites and the famous government buildings. My mother had been saving in a Christmas Club account at the Howard Savings Bank for close to two years, a dollar a week out of the household budget to cover the bulk of our prospective travel expenses. The trip had been planned back when FDR was a second-term president and the Democrats controlled both Houses, but now with the Republicans in power and the new man in the White House considered a treacherous enemy, there was a brief family discussion about our driving north instead to see Niagara Falls and to take the boat cruise in rain slickers through the St. Lawrence Seaway's Thousand Islands and then to cross over in our car into Canada to visit Ottawa. Some among our friends and neighbors had already begun talking about leaving the country and migrating to Canada should the Lindbergh administration openly turn against the Jews, and so a trip to Canada would also familiarize us with a potential haven from persecution. Back in February, my cousin Alvin had already left for Canada to join the Canadian armed forces, just as he said he would, and fight on the British side against Hitler.

Till his departure Alvin had been my family's ward for close to seven years. His late father was my father's oldest brother; he died when Alvin was six, and Alvin's mother—a second cousin of my mother's and the one who'd introduced my parents to each other—died when Alvin was thirteen, and so he'd come to live with us during the four years he attended Weequahic High, a quick-witted boy who gambled and stole and whom my father was dedicated to saving. Alvin was twenty-one in 1940, renting a furnished room upstairs from a Wright Street shoeshine parlor just around the corner from the produce market, and by then working almost two years for Steinheim & Sons, one of the city's two biggest Jewish construction firms—the other was run by the Rachlin brothers. Alvin got the job through the elder Steinheim, the founder of the company and an insurance customer of my father's.

Old man Steinheim, who had a heavy accent and couldn't read

English but who was, in my father's words, "made of steel," still attended High Holiday services at our local synagogue. On a Yom Kippur several years back, when the old man saw my father outside the synagogue with Alvin, he mistook my cousin for my older brother and asked, "What does the boy do? Let him come over and work for us." There Abe Steinheim, who'd turned his immigrant father's little building company into a multimillion-dollar operation—though only after a major family war had put his two brothers out on the street—took a liking to solid, stocky Alvin and the cocksure way he carried himself, and instead of sticking him in the mailroom or using him as an office boy, he made Alvin his driver: to run errands, to deliver messages, to whisk him back and forth to the construction sites to check on the subcontractors (whom Abe called "the chiselers," though it was he, Alvin said, who chiseled them and took advantage of everyone). On Saturdays during the summer, Alvin drove him down to Freehold, where Abe owned half a dozen trotters that he raced at the old harness track, horses he liked to refer to as "hamburgers." "We got a hamburger running today at Freehold," and down they'd shoot in the Caddy to watch his horse lose every time. He never made any money at it, but that wasn't the idea. He raced horses on Saturdays for the Road Horse Association at the pretty trotting track in Weequahic Park, and he talked to the papers about restoring the flat track at Mount Holly, whose glory days were long past, and this was how Abe Steinheim managed to became commissioner of racing for the state of New Jersey and got a shield on his car that enabled him to drive up on the sidewalk and sound a siren and park anywhere. And it was how he became friendly with the Monmouth County officials and insinuated himself into the horsy set at the shore—Wall Township and Spring Lake goyim who would take him to their fancy clubs for lunch, where, as Abe told Alvin, "Everybody sees me and all they're doing is whispering, can't wait to whisper, 'Look at what's here,' but they don't mind drinking my booze and getting treated to great dinners and so in the end it pays off." He had his deep-sea-fishing boat docked at the Shark River Inlet and he would take them out on it and liquor them up and hire guys to catch the fish for them, so that whenever a new hotel went up anywhere from Long Branch to Point Pleasant, it was on a site the Steinheims got for next to nothing—Abe, like his father, having the great wisdom of buying things only at discount.

Every three days Alvin would drive him the four blocks from the

office to 744 Broad Street for a quick trim in the lobby barber shop behind the cigar stand, where Abe Steinheim bought his Trojans and his dollar-fifty cigars. Now, 744 Broad was one of the two tallest office buildings in the state, where the National Newark and Essex Bank occupied the top twenty floors and the city's prestigious lawyers and financiers occupied the rest and where New

Jersey's biggest moneymen regularly frequented the barber shop—and yet a part of Alvin's job was to call immediately beforehand to tell the barber to get ready, Abe was coming, and whoever was in the chair, to throw him out. At dinner the night that Alvin got the job, my father told us that Abe Steinheim was the most colorful, the most exciting, the greatest builder Newark had ever seen. "And a genius," my father said. "He didn't get there without being a genius. Brilliant. And a handsome man. Blond. Husky, but not fat. Always looks nice. Camelhair coats. Black-and-white shoes. Beautiful shirts. Impeccably dressed. And a beautiful wife—polished, classy, a Freilich by birth, a New York Freilich, a very wealthy woman in her own right. Abe's shrewd as they come. And the man has guts. Ask anybody in Newark: the riskiest project and Steinheim takes it on. He does buildings where no one else will take a chance. Alvin will learn from him. He'll watch him and see what it is to work round the clock for something that's yours. He could be an important inspiration in Alvin's life."

Largely so my father could keep tabs on him and my mother could know that he wasn't surviving on hotdogs alone, Alvin came to our house a couple of times a week to eat a good meal, and miraculously, instead of his getting stern lectures about honesty and responsibility and hard work at the dinner table every night—as in the days after he'd been caught with his hand in the till at the Esso station where he worked after school and, until my father prevailed on Simkowitz, the owner, to drop the charges and himself made good with the money, looked to be headed for the Rahway reformatory—Alvin conversed heatedly with my father about politics, about capitalism particularly, a system that, ever since my father had gotten him to take an interest in reading the paper and talking about the news, Alvin deplored but that my father defended, patiently reasoning with his rehabilitated nephew, and not like a member of the National Association of Manufacturers but as a devotee of Roosevelt's New Deal. He'd warn Alvin, "You don't have to tell Mr. Steinheim about Karl Marx. Because the man won't hesitate—you'll be out on your keister. Learn from him. That's why you're there. Learn from him and be respectful, and this could be the opportunity of a lifetime."

But Alvin couldn't bear Steinheim and reviled him constantly—he's a fake, he's a bully, he's a cheapskate, he's a screamer, he's a shouter, he's a swindler, he's a man without a friend in the world, people cannot stand to be anywhere near him, and I, said Alvin, have to chauffeur him around. He's cruel to his sons, is uninterested even in looking at a grandchild, and his skinny wife, who never dares to say or do anything to displease him, he humiliates whenever the mood takes him. Everybody in the family has to live in apartments in the same luxury building that Abe built on a street of big oaks and maples near

Upsala College in East Orange—from dawn to dusk the sons work for him in Newark and he's screaming and yelling at them, then at night he's on the house phone with them in East Orange and he's still screaming and yelling. Money is everything, though not to buy things but so as to be able always to weather the storm: to protect his position and insure his holdings and buy anything he wants in real estate at a discount, which is how he made a killing after the crash. Money, money, money—to be in the middle of the chaos and in the middle of the deals and make all the money in the world.

"Some guy retires at the age of forty-five with five million bucks. Five million in the bank, which is as good as a zillion, and you know what Abe says?" Alvin is asking this of my twelve-year-old brother and me. Supper is over and he's with us in the bedroom—all of us lying shoeless atop the covers, Sandy on his bed, Alvin on mine, and I beside Alvin, in the crook between his strong arm and his strong chest. And it's bliss: stories about man's avarice, his zealousness, his unbounded vitality and staggering arrogance, and to tell these stories, a cousin himself unbounded, even after all my father's work, a captivating cousin still emotionally among the rawest of the raw, who at twenty- one already has to shave his black stubble twice a day in order not to look like a hardened criminal. Stories of the carnivore descendants of the giant apes who once inhabited the ancient forests and have left the trees, where all day long they nibbled on leaves, to come to Newark and work downtown.

"What does Mr. Steinheim say?" Sandy asks him.

"He says, 'The guy has five million. That's all he has. Still young and in his prime, with a chance someday to be worth fifty, sixty, maybe as much as a hundred million, and he tells me, "I'm taking it all off the table. I'm not you, Abe. I'm not hanging around for the heart attack. I have enough to call it a day and spend the rest of my life playing golf."' And what does Abe say? 'This is a man who is a total schmuck.' Every subcontractor when he comes into the office on Friday to collect money for the lumber, the glass, the brick, Abe says, 'Look, we're out of money, this is the best I can do,' and he pays them a half, a third—if he can get away with it, a quarter—and these people need the money to survive, but this is the method that Abe learned from his father. He's doing so much building that he gets away with it and nobody tries to kill him."

"Would somebody try to kill him?" Sandy asks. "Yeah," Alvin says, "me."

"Tell us about the wedding anniversary," I say.

"The wedding anniversary," he repeats. "Yeah, he sang fifty songs. He hires a piano player," Alvin tells us, exactly the way he tells the tale of Abe at the piano every time I ask to hear it, "and no one gets a word in, no one knows

what is going on, all the guests spend the whole night eating his food, and he is standing in his tux by the piano singing one song after another, and when they leave he's still at the piano, still singing songs, every popular song you can think of, and he doesn't even listen when they say goodbye."

"Does he scream and yell at you?" I ask Alvin.

"At me? At everybody. He screams and yells wherever he goes. I drive him to Tabatchnick's on Sunday mornings. The people are lined up to buy their bagels and lox. We walk in and he's screaming—and there's a line of six hundred people, but he's yelling, 'Abe is here!' and they move him to the front of the line. Tabatchnick comes running out of the back, they push everyone aside, and Abe must order five thousand dollars' worth of stuff, and we drive home and there is Mrs. Steinheim, who weighs ninety-two pounds and knows when to get the hell out of the way, and he phones the three sons and they're there in five seconds flat, and the four of them eat a meal for four hundred people. The one thing he spends on is food. Food and cigars. You mention Tabatchnick's, Kartzman's, he doesn't care who is there, how many people—he gets there and buys out the whole store. They eat up every single slice of everything every Sunday morning, sturgeon, herring, sable, bagels, pickles, and then I drive him over to the renting office to see how many apartments are vacant, how many are rented, how many are being fixed up. Seven days a week. Never stops. Never takes a vacation. No manana—that's his slogan. It drives him crazy if anybody misses a minute of work. He cannot go to sleep without knowing that the next day there are more deals that will bring more money—and the whole damn thing makes me sick. The man to me is one thing only—a walking advertisement for the overthrow of capitalism."

My father called Alvin's complaints kid stuff, and to be kept to himself on the job, especially after Abe decided that he was going to send Alvin to Rutgers. You're too smart, Abe told Alvin, to be so dumb, and then something happened beyond anything that my father could realistically have hoped for. Abe gets on the phone to the president of Rutgers and starts shouting at him. "You're going to take this boy, where he finished in high school is not the issue, the boy is an orphan, potentially a genius, you're going to give him a full scholarship, and I'll build you a college building, the most beautiful in the world—but not so much as a shithouse goes up unless this orphan boy goes to Rutgers all expenses paid!" To Alvin he explains, "I've never liked to have a formal chauffeur who was a chauffeur who was an idiot. I like kids like you with something going for them. You're going to Rutgers, and you'll come home and drive me in the summers, and when you graduate Phi Beta Kappa, then the two of us sit down and talk."

Abe would have had Alvin beginning as a freshman in New Brunswick in September 1941 and, after four years of college, coming back as a somebody into the business, but instead, in February, Alvin left for Canada. My father was furious with him. They argued for weeks before finally, without telling us, Alvin took the express train from Newark's Penn Station straight up to Montreal. "I don't get your morality, Uncle Herman. You don't want me to be a thief but it's okay with you if I work for a thief." "Steinheim's not a thief. Steinheim's a builder. What he's doing is what they do," my father said, "what they all have to do because the building trade is a cutthroat business. But his buildings don't fall down, do they? Does he break the law, Alvin? Does he?" "No, he just screws the workingman every chance he gets. I didn't know your morality was also for that." "My morality stinks," said my father, "everybody in this city knows about my morality. But the issue isn't me. It's your future. It's going to college. A four-year free college education." "Free because he browbeats the president of Rutgers the way he browbeats the whole goddamn world." "Let the president of Rutgers worry about that! What is the matter with you? You really want to sit there and tell me that the worst human being ever born is a man who wants to make you an educated person and find you a place in his building company?" "No, no, the worst human being ever born is Hitler, and frankly I'd rather be fighting that son of a bitch than waste my time with a Jew like Steinheim, who only brings shame on the rest of us Jews by his goddamn—" "Oh, don't talk to me like a child—and the 'goddamn's I can live without too. The man doesn't bring shame on anyone. You think if you worked for an Irish builder it would be better? Try it—go work for Shanley, you'll see what a lovely fellow he is. And the Italians, would they be better, you think? Steinheim shoots his mouth off—the Italians shoot guns." "And Longy Zwillman doesn't shoot guns?" "Please, I know all about Longy—I grew up on the same street with Longy. What does any of this have to do with Rutgers?" "It has to do with me, Uncle Herman, and being indebted to Steinheim for the rest of my life. Isn't it enough that he has three sons that he's already destroying? Isn't it enough that they have to attend every Jewish holiday with him and every Thanksgiving with him and every New Year's Eve with him—I have to be there to be shouted at too? All of them working in the same office and living in the same building and waiting around for only one thing—to split it all up on the day he dies. I can assure you, Uncle Herman, their grief won't last long." "You're wrong. Dead wrong. There is more to these people than just money." "You're wrong! He holds them in his hand with the money! The man is totally berserk, and they stay and take it for fear of losing the money!" "They stay because they're a family. All families go through a lot. A family is both peace and war. We're going through a

little war right now. I understand it. I accept it. But that's no reason to give up the college you missed out on and that now you can have and to run off half-cocked to fight Hitler instead." "So," said Alvin, as though at last he had the goods not only on his employer but on his family protector as well, "you're an isolationist after all. You and Bengelsdorf. Bengelsdorf, Steinheim—they make a good couple." "Of what?" my father asked sourly, having finally run out of patience. "Of Jewish fakes." "Oh," said my father, "against the Jews now too?" "Those Jews. The Jews who are a disgrace to the Jews—yes, absolutely!"

The argument went on for four consecutive nights, and then, on the fifth, a Friday, Alvin didn't report to eat, though the idea had been to keep him showing up regularly for dinner until my father wore him down and the boy came to his senses—the boy whom my father had single-handedly changed from a callow good-for-nothing into the family's conscience.

The next morning we learned from Billy Steinheim, who was closest to Alvin of any of the sons and concerned enough about him to telephone us first thing Saturday, that after having received his Friday pay packet Alvin had thrown the keys to the Caddy in Billy's father's face and walked out, and when my father rushed off in our car to Wright Street to talk to Alvin in his room and get the whole story and gauge just how much damage he had done to his chances, the shoeshine parlor proprietor who was Alvin's landlord told him that the tenant had paid the rent and packed his things and was off to fight against the very worst human being ever born. Given the magnitude of Alvin's seething, no one less nefarious would do.

The November election hadn't even been close. Lindbergh got fifty-seven percent of the popular vote and, in an electoral sweep, carried forty-six states, losing only FDR's home state of New York and, by a mere two thousand votes, Maryland, where the large population of federal office workers had voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt while the president was able to retain—as he could nowhere else below the Mason-Dixon Line—the loyalty of nearly half the Democrats' old southern constituency. Though on the morning after the election disbelief prevailed, especially among the pollsters, by the day after that everybody seemed to understand everything, and the radio commentators and the news columnists made it sound as if Roosevelt's defeat had been preordained. What had happened, they explained, was that Americans had shown themselves unwilling to break the tradition of the two-term presidency that George Washington had instituted and that no president before Roosevelt had dared to challenge. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Depression, the resurgent

confidence of young and old alike had been quickened by Lindbergh's relative youth and by the graceful athleticism that contrasted so starkly with the serious physical impediments under which FDR labored as a polio victim. And there was the wonder of aviation and the new way of life it promised: Lindbergh, already the record-breaking master of long-distance flight, could knowledgeably lead his countrymen into the unknown of the aeronautical future while assuring them, by his straitlaced, old-fashioned demeanor, that modern engineering achievements need not erode the values of the past. It turned out, the experts concluded, that twentieth-century Americans, weary of confronting a new crisis in every decade, were starving for normalcy, and what Charles A. Lindbergh represented was normalcy raised to heroic proportions, a decent man with an honest face and an undistinguished voice who had resoundingly demonstrated to the entire planet the courage to take charge and the fortitude to shape history and, of course, the power to transcend personal tragedy. If Lindbergh promised no war, then there would be no war—for the great majority it was as simple as that.

Even worse for us than the election were the weeks following the inauguration, when the new American president traveled to Iceland to meet personally with Adolf Hitler and after two days of "cordial" talks to sign "an understanding" guaranteeing peaceful relations between Germany and the United States. There were demonstrations against the Iceland Understanding in a dozen American cities, and impassioned speeches on the floor of the House and the Senate by Democratic congressmen who'd survived the Republican landslide and who condemned Lindbergh for dealing with a murderous fascist tyrant as his equal and for accepting as their meeting place an island kingdom whose historic allegiance was to a democratic monarchy whose conquest the Nazis had already achieved—a national tragedy for Denmark, plainly deplorable to the people and their king, but one that Lindbergh's Reykjavík visit appeared tacitly to condone.

When the president returned from Iceland to Washington—a flight formation of ten large Navy patrol planes escorting the new two-engine Lockheed Interceptor that he himself piloted home—his address to the nation was a mere five sentences long. "It is now guaranteed that this great country will take no part in the war in Europe." That was how the historic message began, and this is how it was elaborated and concluded: "We will join no warring party anywhere on this globe. At the same time we will continue to arm America and to train our young men in the armed forces in the use of the most advanced military technology. The key to our invulnerability is the development of American aviation, including rocket technology. This will make our continental borders unassailable to attack from without while maintaining our strict

neutrality."

Ten days later the president signed the Hawaii Understanding in

Honolulu with Prince Fumimaro Konoye, premier of the Japanese imperial government, and Foreign Minister Matsuoka. As emissaries of Emperor Hirohito, the two had already signed a triple alliance with the Germans and the Italians in Berlin in September of 1940, the Japanese endorsing the "new order in Europe" established under the leadership of Italy and Germany, who in turn endorsed the "New Order in Greater East Asia" established by Japan. The three countries further pledged to support one another militarily should any of them be attacked by a nation not engaged in the European or Sino-Japanese war. Like the Iceland Understanding, the Hawaii Understanding made the United States a party in all but name to the Axis triple alliance by extending American recognition to Japan's sovereignty in East Asia and guaranteeing that the United States would not oppose Japanese expansion on the Asian continent, including annexation of the Netherlands Indies and French Indochina. Japan pledged to recognize U.S. sovereignty on its own continent, to respect the political independence of the American commonwealth of the Philippines—scheduled to be enacted in 1946—and to accept the American territories of Hawaii, Guam, and Midway as permanent U.S. possessions in the Pacific.

In the aftermath of the Understandings, Americans everywhere went about declaiming, No war, no young men fighting and dying ever again! Lindbergh can deal with Hitler, they said, Hitler respects him because he's Lindbergh. Mussolini and Hirohito respect him because he's Lindbergh. The only ones against him, the people said, are the Jews. And certainly that was true in America. All the Jews could do was worry. Our elders on the street speculated incessantly about what they would do to us and whom we could rely on to protect us and how we might protect ourselves. The younger kids like me came home from school frightened and bewildered and even in tears because of what the older boys had been telling one another about what Lindbergh had said about us to Hitler and what Hitler had said about us to Lindbergh during their meals together in Iceland. One reason my parents decided to keep to our long-laid plans to visit Washington was to convince Sandy and me—whether or not they themselves believed it—that nothing had changed other than that FDR was no longer in office. America wasn't a fascist country and wasn't going to be, regardless of what Alvin had predicted. There was a new president and a new Congress but each was bound to follow the law as set down in the Constitution. They were Republican, they were isolationist, and among them, yes, there were anti-Semites—as indeed there were among the southerners in FDR's own party

—but that was a long way from their being Nazis. Besides, one had only to listen

on Sunday nights to Winchell lashing out at the new president and "his friend Joe Goebbels" or hear him listing the sites under consideration by the Department of the Interior for building concentration camps—sites mainly located in Montana, the home state of Lindbergh's "national unity" vice president, the isolationist Democrat Burton K. Wheeler—to be assured of the fervor with which the new administration was being scrutinized by favorite reporters of my father's, like Winchell and Dorothy Thompson and Quentin Reynolds and William L. Shirer, and, of course, by the staff of PM. Even I now took my turn with PM when my father brought it home at night, and not just to read the comic strip Barnaby or to flip through the pages of photographs but to have in my hands documentary proof that, despite the incredible speed with which our status as Americans appeared to be altering, we were still living in a free country.

After Lindbergh was sworn into office on January 20, 1941, FDR returned with his family to their estate at Hyde Park, New York, and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Because it was as a boy in the Hyde Park house that he had first become interested in collecting stamps—when his mother, as the story went, had passed on to him her own childhood albums—I imagined him there spending all of his time arranging the hundreds of specimens that he had accumulated during his eight years in the White House. As every collector knew, no president before him had ever commissioned his postmaster general to issue so many new stamps, nor had there been another American president so intimately involved with the Post Office Department. Practically my first goal when I got my album was to accumulate all the stamps that I knew FDR had a hand in designing or had personally suggested, beginning with the 1936 three- cent Susan B. Anthony stamp commemorating the sixteenth anniversary of the women's suffrage amendment and the 1937 five-cent Virginia Dare stamp marking the birth at Roanoke three hundred and fifty years earlier of the first English child born in America. The 1934 three-cent Mother's Day stamp designed originally by FDR—and displaying in the left-hand corner the legend "In Memory and in Honor of the Mothers of America" and to the right of center the artist Whistler's celebrated portrait of his mother—was given to me in a block of four by my own mother to help get my collection going. She'd also contributed to my purchasing the seven commemorative stamps Roosevelt had approved in his first year as president, which I wanted because prominently displayed on five of them was "1933," the year I was born.

Before we went to Washington, I asked permission to take my stamp album on the trip. Out of fear that I would lose it and be heartbroken afterward, my mother at first said no but then allowed herself to be won over when I

insisted on the necessity of at least having with me my president stamps—the sixteen, that is, that I owned of the 1938 set that progressed sequentially and by denomination from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. The 1922 Arlington National Cemetery stamp and the 1923 Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Buildings stamps were far too expensive for my budget, but I nonetheless offered as another reason for taking my collection along that the three famous sites were clearly pictured in black and white on the album page reserved for them. In fact, I was afraid to leave the album at home in our empty flat because of the nightmare I'd had, afraid that either because I'd done nothing about removing the tencent Lindbergh airmail stamp from my collection or because Sandy had lied to our parents and his Lindbergh drawings remained intact under his bed—or because of the one filial betrayal conspiring with the other—a malignant transformation would occur in my absence, causing my unguarded Washingtons to turn into Hitlers, and swastikas to be imprinted on my National Parks.

Immediately upon entering Washington, we made a wrong turn in the heavy traffic, and while my mother was trying to read the road map and direct my father to our hotel, there appeared before us the biggest white thing I had ever seen. Atop an incline at the end of the street stood the U.S. Capitol, the broad stairs sweeping upward to the colonnade and capped by the elaborate three- tiered dome. Inadvertently, we had driven right to the very heart of American history, and whether we knew it in so many words, it was American history, delineated in its most inspirational form, that we were counting on to protect us against Lindbergh.

"Look!" my mother said, turning to Sandy and me in the back seat. "Isn't it thrilling?"

The answer, of course, was yes, but Sandy appeared to have fallen into a patriotic stupor, and I took my cue from him and let silence register my awe as well.

Just then a motorcycle policeman pulled alongside us. "What's up, Jersey?" he called through the open window.

"We're looking for our hotel," answered my father. "What's it called,

Bess?"

My mother, enthralled only a moment earlier by the dwarfing

majesty of the Capitol, immediately went pale, and her voice was so feeble when she tried to speak that she couldn't be heard above the traffic.

"Gotta get you folks out of here," the cop shouted. "Speak up,

missus."

"The Douglas Hotel!" It was my brother eagerly calling out to him and trying to get a good look at the motorcycle. "On K Street, Officer."

"Attaboy," and he raised his arm in the air, signaling the cars behind us to stop and for ours to follow him as he made a U-turn and started in the opposite direction up Pennsylvania Avenue.

Laughing, my father said, "We're getting the royal treatment."

"But how do you know where he's taking us?" my mother asked. "Herman, what's happening?"

With the cop out front, we were headed past one big federal building after another when Sandy excitedly pointed toward a rolling lawn just to our left. "Up there!" he shouted. "The White House!" whereupon my mother began to cry.

"It isn't," she tried to explain just before we reached the hotel and the cop waved goodbye and roared away, "it isn't like living in a normal country anymore. I'm terribly sorry, children—please forgive me." But then she began to cry again.

In a little room at the rear of the Douglas there was a double bed for my parents and cots for my brother and me, and no sooner had my father tipped the bellhop who'd unlocked our door and set our bags down inside the room than our mother was her old self—or pretended as much by arranging the contents of our suitcases in the dresser and noting appreciatively that the drawers were freshly laid with lining paper.

We'd been on the road since leaving home at four in the morning and it was after one in the afternoon when we got back down to the street to look for a place to have lunch. The car was parked across from the hotel, and standing beside it was a sharp-faced little man in a double-breasted gray suit who doffed his hat and said, "My name is Taylor, folks. I am a professional guide to the nation's capital. If you don't want to be wasting time, you might want to hire someone like me. I'll drive for you so you don't get lost, I'll take you to the sights, tell you all there is to know, I'll wait and pick you up, I'll make sure you eat where the price is right and the food is tasty, and all it will cost, using your own automobile, is nine dollars a day. Here's my authorization," he said, and he unfolded a document of several pages to show to my father. "Issued by the Chamber of Commerce," he explained. "Verlin M. Taylor, sir, official D.C. guide since 1937. January 5, 1937, to be exact—the very day the Seventy-fifth U.S. Congress convened."

The two shook hands, and in his insurance man's best businesslike manner my father flipped through the guide's papers before handing them back to him. "Looks good to me," my father said, "but I don't think nine bucks a day

is in the cards, Mr. Taylor, not for this family anyway."

"I appreciate that. But on your own, sir, you doing the driving and not knowing your way around and then trying to find a parking space in this city

—well, you and the family won't see a half of what you'll be able to see with me, and you won't enjoy it anywhere near as much either. Why, I could drive you to a nice place to have your lunch, wait for you with the car, and then we can start right off with the Washington Monument. After that, down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. Washington and Lincoln. Our two greatest presidents—that's how I always like to begin. You know that Washington never did live in Washington. President Washington chose the site, he signed the bill making it the permanent seat of the government, but it was his successor, John Adams, who was the first president to move into the White House in 1800. November 1, to be exact. His wife, Abigail, joined him there two weeks later. Among the many interesting curios in the White House, there is still a celery glass owned by John and Abigail Adams."

"Well, that's something that I did not know," my father replied, "but let me take this up with my wife." Quietly he asked her, "Can we afford this? He sure knows his oats." Our mother whispered, "But who sent him? How did he spot our car?" "That's his job, Bess—to find who's the tourists. That's how the man makes a living." My brother and I were huddled up beside them, hoping our mother would shut up and that the easy-talking guide with the pointy face and the short legs would be hired for the duration.

"What do you want?" my father said, turning to Sandy and me. "Well, if it costs too much. . .," Sandy began.

"Forget the cost," my father replied. "Do you like this guy or not?" "He's a character, Dad," Sandy whispered. "He looks like one of

those duck decoys. I like when he says 'to be exact.'"

"Bess," my father said, "the man is a bona fide guide to Washington,

D.C. Don't believe he's ever cracked a smile but he's an alert little guy and he couldn't be more polite. Let me see if he'll take seven bucks." Here he stepped away from us, walked up to the guide, they spoke seriously for a few minutes and then, the deal struck, the two again shook hands, and my father said aloud, "Okay, let's eat!" as always teeming with energy even when there was nothing to do.

It was hard to say what was most unbelievable: my being out of New Jersey for the first time in my life, my being three hundred miles from home in the nation's capital, or our family's being chauffeured in our own automobile by a stranger called by the same surname as the twelfth president of the United States, whose profile adorned the twelve-cent red-violet stamp in the

album in my lap, hinged between the blue eleven-cent Polk and the green thirteen-cent Fillmore.

"Washington," Mr. Taylor was telling us, "is divided into four sections: northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest. With some few exceptions, the streets running north and south are numbered and the streets running east and west are lettered. Of all the existing capitals in the Western world, this city alone was developed solely to provide a home for the national government. That is what makes it different not only from London and Paris but from our own New York and Chicago."

"Did you hear that?" my father asked, looking over his shoulder at Sandy and me. "Did you hear that, Bess, what Mr. Taylor said about why Washington is so special?"

"Yes," she said, and took my hand in hers to assure herself by assuring me that everything was now going to be all right. But I had only my one concern from the time we entered Washington until we left—preserving my stamp collection from harm.

The cafeteria where Mr. Taylor dropped us off was clean and cheap and the food as good as he'd said it would be, and when we finished our meal and headed for the street, there was our car pulling up to double-park out front. "What timing!" my father cried.

"Over the years," Mr. Taylor said, "you learn to estimate how long it takes a family to eat their lunch. Was that okay, Mrs. Roth?" he asked our mother. "Everything to your taste?"

"Very nice, thank you."

"So's everybody ready for the Washington Monument," he said, and off we drove. "You know, of course, who the monument commemorates—our first president, and in the opinion of most, our best president alongside President Lincoln."

"I'd include FDR in that list, you know. A great man, and the people of this country turned him out of office," my father said. "And just look what we got instead."

Mr. Taylor listened courteously but offered no response. "Now," he resumed, "you've all seen photos of the Washington Monument. But they don't always communicate just how impressive it is. At five hundred fifty-five feet, five and one-eighth inches above ground, it is the tallest masonry structure in the world. The new electric elevator will carry you to the top in one and a quarter minutes. Otherwise you can take a winding staircase of eight hundred and ninety-three steps to the top by foot. The view from up there has a radius of some fifteen to twenty miles. It's worth a look. There—see it?" he said. "Straight

ahead."

Minutes later Mr. Taylor found a parking spot on the monument

grounds and, when we left the car, trotted bandy-legged alongside us, explaining, "The monument was cleaned just a few years back for the first time. Just imagine that for a cleaning job, Mrs. Roth. They used water mixed with sand and steel-bristled brushes. Took five months and cost a hundred thousand dollars."

"Under FDR?" my father asked. "I believe so, yes."

"And do people know?" my father asked. "Do people care? No. They want an airmail pilot running the country instead. And that's not the worst of it."

Mr. Taylor remained outside while we entered the monument. At the elevator, our mother, who again had taken hold of my hand, drew close to our father and whispered, "You mustn't talk like that."

"Like what?" "About Lindbergh."

"That? That's just expressing my opinion." "But you don't know who this man is."

"I sure do. He's an authorized guide with the documents to prove it. This is the Washington Monument, Bess, and you're telling me to keep my thoughts to myself as though the Washington Monument is situated in Berlin."

His speaking so bluntly distressed her even more, especially as the others waiting for the elevator could overhear our conversation. Turning to another of the fathers, who was standing alongside his wife and two kids, my father asked him, "Where you folks from? We're from Jersey." "Maine," the man replied. "Hear that?" my father said to my brother and me. Altogether some twenty children and adults entered the elevator, filling it up about halfway, and as the car rose through the housing of iron pillars, my father used the minute and a quarter it took to get to the top to ask the remaining families where each was from.

Mr. Taylor was waiting outside when we finished our tour. He asked Sandy and me to describe what we'd seen from the windows five hundred feet up and then he guided us on a quick walking tour around the exterior of the monument, recounting the fitful history of its construction. Next he took some pictures of the family with our Brownie box camera; then my father, over Mr. Taylor's objections, insisted on taking a picture of him with my mother, Sandy, and me with the Washington Monument as the background, and finally we got into our car and, with Mr. Taylor again at the wheel, started down the Mall for the Lincoln Memorial.

This time, while he parked, Mr. Taylor warned us that the Lincoln Memorial was like no other edifice anywhere in the world and that we should prepare ourselves to be overwhelmed. Then he accompanied us from the parking area to the great pillared building with the wide marble stairs that led us up past the columns to the hall's interior and the raised statue of Lincoln in his capacious throne of thrones, the sculpted face looking to me like the most hallowed possible amalgamation—the face of God and the face of America all in one.

Gravely my father said, "And they shot him, the dirty dogs."

The four of us stood directly at the base of the statue, which was lit so as to make everything about Abraham Lincoln seem colossally grand. What ordinarily passed for great just paled away, and there was no defense, for either an adult or a child, against the solemn atmosphere of hyperbole.

"When you think of what this country does to its greatest presidents.

. ."

"Herman," my mother pleaded, "don't start."

"I'm not starting anything. This was a great tragedy. Isn't that right,

boys? The assassination of Lincoln?"

Mr. Taylor came over and quietly told us, "Tomorrow we'll go to Ford's Theatre, where he was shot, and across the street to the Petersen House, to see where he died."

"I was saying, Mr. Taylor, it is the damnedest thing what this country does to its great men."

"Thank goodness we have President Lindbergh," said the voice of a woman just a few feet away. She was elderly and she was standing apart, by herself, consulting a guidebook, and her remark seemed spoken to no one and yet prompted somehow by her overhearing my father.

"Compare Lincoln to Lindbergh? Boy oh boy," my father moaned. In fact the elderly lady was not alone but with a group of tourists,

among whom was a man of about my father's age who might have been her son. "Something bothering you?" he asked my father, assertively

stepping in our direction.

"Not me," my father told him.

"Something bothering you about what the lady just said?" "No, sir. Free country."

The stranger took a long, gaping look at my father, then my mother, then Sandy, then me. And what did he see? A trim, neatly muscled, broad- chested man five feet nine inches tall, handsome in a minor key, with soft grayish-green eyes and thinning brown hair clipped close at the temples and presenting his two ears to the world a little more comically than was necessary.

The woman was slender but strong and she was tidily dressed, with a lock of her wavy dark hair over one eyebrow and roundish cheeks a little rouged and a prominent nose and chunky arms and shapely legs and slim hips and the lively eyes of a girl half her age. In both adults a surfeit of prudence and a surfeit of energy, and with the couple two boys still pretty much all soft surfaces, young children of youthful parents, keenly attentive and in good health and incorrigible only in their optimism.

And the conclusion the stranger drew from his observations he demonstrated with a mocking movement of the head. Then, hissing noisily so as to mislead no one about his assessment of us, he returned to the elderly lady and their sightseeing party, walking slowly off with a rolling gait that seemed, along with the silhouette of his broad back, intended to register a warning. It was from there that we heard him refer to my father as "a loudmouth Jew," followed a moment later by the elderly lady declaring, "I'd give anything to slap his face."

Mr. Taylor led us quickly away to a smaller hall just off the main chamber where there was a tablet inscribed with the Gettysburg Address and a mural whose theme was the Emancipation.

"To hear words like that in a place like this," said my father, his choked voice quivering with indignation. "In a shrine to a man like this!"

Meanwhile Mr. Taylor, pointing to the painting, said, "See there? An angel of truth is freeing a slave."

But my father could see nothing. "You think you'd hear that here if Roosevelt was president? People wouldn't dare, they wouldn't dream, in Roosevelt's day. . .," my father said. "But now that our great ally is Adolf Hitler, now that the best friend of the president of the United States is Adolf Hitler— why, now they think they can get away with anything. It's disgraceful. It starts with the White House. . ."

Whom was he talking to other than me? My brother was trailing after Mr. Taylor, asking about the mural, and my mother was trying to prevent herself from saying or doing anything, struggling against the very emotions that had overpowered her earlier in the car—and back then without anything like this much justification.

"Read that," my father said, alluding to the tablet bearing the Gettysburg Address. "Just read it. 'All men are created equal.'"

"Herman," gasped my mother, "I can't go on with this."

We came back out into the daylight and gathered together on the top step. The tall shaft of the Washington Monument was a half mile away, at the other end of the reflecting pool that lay at the base of the terraced approach to the Lincoln Memorial. There were elm trees planted all around. It was the most

beautiful panorama I'd ever seen, a patriotic paradise, the American Garden of Eden spread before us, and we stood huddled together there, the family expelled. "Listen," my father said, pulling my brother and me close to him, "I

think it's time we all had a nap. It's been a long day for everybody. I say we go back to the hotel and get some rest for an hour or two. What do you say, Mr. Taylor?"

"Up to you, Mr. Roth. After supper I thought the family might enjoy a tour in the car of Washington by night, with the famous monuments all lit up."

"Now you're talkin'," my father told him. "Sound good, Bess?" But my mother wasn't so easy to cheer up as Sandy and I. "Honey," my father told her, "we ran into a screwball. Two screwballs. We might have gone up to Canada and run into somebody just as bad. We're not going to let that ruin our trip. Let's have a nice rest, all of us, and Mr. Taylor will wait for us, and we'll go on from there. Look," he then said, with a sweep of his outstretched arm. "This is something every American should see. Turn around, boys. Take one last look at Abraham Lincoln."

We did as he instructed but it was impossible any longer to feel the raptures of patriotism turning me inside out. As we began the long descent down the marble staircase, I heard some kids behind us asking their parents, "Is that really him? Is he buried there under all that stuff?" My mother was directly beside me on the stairs, trying to act like someone whose panic wasn't running wild within her, and suddenly I felt that it had fallen to me to hold her together, to become all at once a courageous new creature with something of Lincoln himself clinging to him. But all I could do when she offered me a hand was to take it and clutch it like the unripened being I was, a boy whose stamp collection still represented nine-tenths of his knowledge of the world.

In the car, Mr. Taylor plotted the rest of our day. We'd go back to the hotel, nap, and at quarter to six he'd come to pick us up and drive us to dinner. We could return to the cafeteria near Union Station where we'd had our lunch, or he could recommend a couple of other popular-priced restaurants whose quality he could vouch for. And after dinner, he'd take us on the tour of Washington by night.

"Nothing fazes you, does it, Mr. Taylor?" my father said. He replied only with a noncommittal nod.

"Where you from?" my father asked him. "Indiana, Mr. Roth."

"Indiana. Imagine that, boys. And what's your hometown out there?" my father asked him.

"Didn't have one. My father's a mechanic. Fixed farm machinery.

Moved all the time."

"Well," said my father, for reasons that can't have been clear to Mr.

Taylor, "I take my hat off to you, sir. You should be proud of yourself."

Again, Mr. Taylor gave only a nod: he was a no-nonsense man in a tight suit and with something decidedly military about his efficiency and his bearing—like a hidden person, except there was nothing to hide, everything impersonal about him being plainly visible. Voluble talking about Washington, D.C., close-mouthed about everything else.

When we got back to the hotel, Mr. Taylor parked the car and accompanied us in as though he were not just our guide but our chaperone, and a good thing it was, because inside the lobby of the small hotel we discovered our four suitcases standing beside the front desk.

The new man at the desk introduced himself as the manager.

When my father asked what our bags were doing downstairs, the manager said, "Folks, I have to apologize. Had to pack these up for you. Our afternoon clerk made a mistake. The room he gave you was being held for another family. Here's your deposit." And he handed my father an envelope containing a ten-dollar bill.

"But my wife wrote you people. You wrote us back. We had a reservation months ago. That's why we sent the deposit. Bess, where's the copies of the letters?"

She pointed to the bags.

"Sir," said the manager, "the room is occupied and there are no vacancies. We will not charge you for what use you all made of the room today or for the bar of soap that is missing."

"Missing?" Just the word to send him right off the rails. "Are you saying we stole it?"

"No, sir, I am not. Perhaps one of the children took the soap as a souvenir. No harm done. We're not going to haggle about something so small or start looking through their pockets for the soap."

"What is the meaning of this!" my father demanded to know, and under the manager's nose pounded his fist on the front desk.

"Mr. Roth, if you're going to make a scene here. . ."

"Yes," my father said, "I am going to make a scene till I find out what's up with that room!"

"Well, then," replied the manager, "I have no choice but to phone

the police."

Here my mother—who was holding my brother and me around the

shoulders, shielding us alongside her and at a safe distance from the desk--

called my father's name, trying to prevent him from going further. But it was too late for that. It always had been. Never could he have consented to quietly occupying the place that the manager wished to assign him.

"This is that goddamn Lindbergh!" my father said. "All you little fascists are in the saddle now!"

"Shall I call the District police, sir, or will you take your bags and your family and leave immediately?"

"Call the police," my father replied. "You do that."

There were now five or six guests aside from us in the lobby. They'd entered while the argument was under way and they were lingering to find out what was going to come of it.

It was then that Mr. Taylor stepped up to my father's side and said, "Mr. Roth, you are perfectly in the right, but the police are the wrong solution."

"No, that is the right solution. Call the police," my father repeated to the manager. "There are laws in this country against people like you."

The manager reached for the phone, and while he dialed, Mr. Taylor went over to our bags, swept up two in either hand, and carried them out of the hotel.

My mother said, "Herman, it's over. Mr. Taylor took the bags."

"No, Bess," he said bitterly. "I've had enough of their guff. I want to talk to the police."

Mr. Taylor reentered the lobby on the run and without stopping bore down on the desk, where the manager was completing his call. In a lowered voice, he spoke only to my father. "There is a nice hotel not very far away. I telephoned them from the booth outside. They have a room for you. It's a nice hotel on a nice street. Let's drive over there and get the family registered."

"Thank you, Mr. Taylor. But right now we are waiting for the police. I want them to remind this man of the words in the Gettysburg Address that I read carved up there just today."

The people watching all smiled at one another when my father mentioned the Gettysburg Address.

I whispered to my brother, "What happened?" "Anti-Semitism," he whispered back.

From where we were standing we saw the two policemen when they arrived on their motorcycles. We watched them cut their engines and come into the hotel. One of them stationed himself just inside the door, where he could keep an eye on everybody while the other approached the front desk and beckoned the manager over to where the two of them could speak confidentially.

"Officer—" my father said.

The policeman spun around and said, "I can attend to only one party to a dispute at a time, sir," and resumed talking with the manager, his chin cupped thoughtfully in one hand.

My father turned to us. "Got to be done, boys." To my mother he said, "There's nothing to worry about."

Having finished his discussion with the manager, the policeman now came around to talk to my father. He didn't smile as he had intermittently while standing and listening to the manager, but he spoke nonetheless without a trace of anger and in a tone that seemed friendly at first. "What's the problem, Roth?"

"We sent a deposit for a room at this hotel for three nights. We received a letter confirming everything. My wife has the paperwork in our bags. We get here today, we register, we occupy the room and unpack, we go out to sightsee, and when we come back we're evicted because the room was reserved for somebody else."

"And the problem?" the cop asked.

"We're a family of four, Officer. We drove all the way from New Jersey. You can't just throw us into the street."

"But," said the cop, "if somebody else reserves a room—"

"But there is nobody else! And if there was, why should we take a back seat to them?"

"But the manager returned your deposit. He even packed up your belongings for you."

"Officer, you're not understanding me. Why should our reservation take a back seat to theirs? I was with my family at the Lincoln Memorial. They have the Gettysburg Address up on the wall. You know what the words are that are written there? 'All men are created equal.'"

"But that doesn't mean all hotel reservations are created equal."

The policeman's voice carried to the bystanders at the edge of the lobby; unable any longer to control themselves, some of them laughed aloud.

My mother left Sandy and me standing alone in order to step forward now and intervene. She had been waiting for a moment when she wouldn't make things worse, and, despite her rapid breathing, seemed to believe this was it. "Dear, let's just go," she beseeched my father. "Mr. Taylor found us a room nearby."

"No!" my father cried, and he threw off the hand with which she had tried to snatch his arm. "This policeman knows why we were evicted. He knows, the manager knows, everybody in this lobby knows."

"I think you ought to listen to your wife," the cop said. "I think you

ought to do what she tells you, Roth. Leave the premises." Jerking his head in the direction of the door, he said, "And before you wear out my patience."

There was more resistance in my father, but there was still some sanity in him as well, and he was able to understand that his argument had run out of interest to anyone other than himself. We left the hotel with everybody watching us. The only one to speak was the other cop. From where he'd stationed himself just beside the potted plant in the entranceway, he nodded amiably and, as we approached, put a hand out to muss my hair. "How you doin', young fella?" "Good," I replied. "Whattaya got there?" "My stamps," I said, but just kept going before he could ask to see my collection and I had to show it to him to avoid arrest.

Mr. Taylor was waiting on the sidewalk outside. My father said to him, "That has never happened to me before in my life. I'm out among people all the time, people from all backgrounds, from all walks of life, and never. . ."

"The Douglas has changed hands," Mr. Taylor said. "This is a new

ownership."

"But we had friends who stayed there and were a hundred percent

satisfied," my mother told him.

"Well, Mrs. Roth, it's changed hands. But I've got you a room at the Evergreen, and everything is going to work out fine."

Just then there was the loud roar of a low-flying plane passing over Washington. Down the street where some people were out walking, they stopped and one of the men raised his arms to the sky, as though, in June, it had begun to snow.

Sandy, who could recognize just about anything flying from its silhouette, knowledgeable Sandy pointed and cried, "It's the Lockheed Interceptor!"

"It's President Lindbergh," Mr. Taylor explained. "Every afternoon about this time he takes a little spin along the Potomac. Flies up to the Alleghenies, then down along the Blue Ridge Mountains, and on out to the Chesapeake Bay. People look forward to it."

"It's the world's fastest plane," my brother said. "The Germans' Messerschmitt 110 flies three hundred and sixty-five miles an hour—the Interceptor flies five hundred miles an hour. It can outmaneuver any fighter in the world."

We all watched along with Sandy, who was unable to conceal his enchantment with the very Interceptor that the president had flown to and from Iceland for his meeting with Hitler. The plane climbed steeply with tremendous force before disappearing into the sky. Down the street, the people out walking

burst into applause, somebody shouted "Hurray for Lindy!" and then they continued on their way.

At the Evergreen, my mother and father slept together in one single bed and Sandy and I in the other. Twin beds were the best Mr. Taylor had been able to locate on such short notice, but after what had happened at the Douglas nobody complained—either that the beds weren't exactly made for rest or that the room was smaller even than our first accommodations or that the matchbox bathroom, heavily doused though it was with disinfectant, didn't smell right— especially as we were welcomed graciously when we arrived by a cheerful woman at the front desk and our suitcases stacked on a dolly by an elderly Negro in a bellhop's uniform, a lanky man the woman called Edward B., who upon unlocking the door to the ground-floor room at the nether end of an airshaft, humorously announced, "The Evergreen Hotel welcomes the Roth family to the nation's capital!" and ushered us in as though the dimly lit crypt were a boudoir at the Ritz. My brother hadn't stopped staring at Edward B. from the time he loaded our luggage, and the next morning, before anyone else was awake, he stealthily dressed, grabbed his sketchpad, and raced to the lobby to draw him. As it happened, a different Negro bellhop was on duty, one not picturesquely grooved and crannied quite like Edward B., though from an artistic point of view no less of a find—very dark with strongly African facial features of a kind Sandy had never before gotten to draw from anything other than a photo in a back issue of National Geographic.

We spent most of the morning with Mr. Taylor showing us around the Capitol and Congress, and later the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Mr. Taylor knew the height of every dome and the dimensions of every lobby and the geographic origins of all the marble flooring and the names of the subjects and the events commemorated in every painting and mural in every government building we entered. "You are something," my father told him. "A small-town boy from Indiana. You should be on Information Please."

After lunch, we drove south along the Potomac into Virginia to tour Mount Vernon. "Of course, Richmond, Virginia," Mr. Taylor explained, "was the capital of the eleven southern states that left the Union to form the Confederate States of America. Many of the great battles of the Civil War were fought in Virginia. Some twenty miles due west is the Manassas National Battlefield Park. The park includes both battlefields where the Confederates routed the Union forces near the little stream of Bull Run, first under General P.G.T. Beauregard and General J. E. Johnston in July 1861, and then under General Robert E. Lee and General Stonewall Jackson in August 1862. General Lee was in command of the Army of Virginia, and the president of the Confederacy, who governed from

Richmond, was Jefferson Davis, if you remember your history. To the southwest a hundred and twenty-five miles from here is Appomattox, Virginia. You know what happened in the courthouse there in April 1865. April 9, to be exact. General Lee surrendered to General U.S. Grant, thus ending the Civil War. And you all know what happened to Lincoln six days later: he was shot."

"Those dirty dogs," my father said again.

"Well, there it is," said Mr. Taylor, just as Washington's house came

into view.

"Oh, it's so beautiful," my mother said. "Look at the porch. Look at

the tall windows. Children, this isn't a replica—this is the real house where George Washington lived."

"And his wife, Martha," Mr. Taylor reminded her, "and his two stepchildren, whom the general doted on."

"Did he?" my mother asked. "I didn't know that. My younger son has Martha Washington on a stamp," she told him. "Show Mr. Taylor your stamp," and I immediately found it, the brown 1938 one-and-a-half-cent stamp that pictured the first president's wife in profile, her hair covered with what my mother had identified for me, when I first got the stamp, as something between a bonnet and a snood.

"Yep, that's her all right," said Mr. Taylor. "And she is also, as I'm sure you know, on a four-cent nineteen hundred and twenty-three and on an eight-cent nineteen hundred and two. And that nineteen hundred and two stamp, Mrs. Roth, that is the first stamp ever to show an American woman."

"Did you know that?" my mother asked me.

"Yes," I said, and for me all the complications of our being a Jewish family in Lindbergh's Washington simply vanished and I felt the way I felt in school when, at the start of an assembly program, you rose to your feet and sang the national anthem, giving it everything you had.

"She was a great companion to General Washington," Mr. Taylor told us. "Martha Dandridge was her maiden name. The widow of Colonel Daniel Parke Custis. Her two children were Patsy and John Parke Custis. She brought to her marriage to Washington one of the largest fortunes in Virginia."

"That's what I always tell my boys," my father said, laughing as we hadn't heard him laugh all day. "Marry like President Washington. It's as easy to love 'em rich as poor."

The visit to Mount Vernon was the happiest time we had on that trip, perhaps because of the beauty of the grounds and the gardens and the trees and of the house, commandingly situated on a bluff overlooking the Potomac; perhaps because of the unusualness to us of the furnishings, the decoration, and

the wallpaper—wallpaper about which Mr. Taylor knew a million things; perhaps because we got to see from only a few feet away the four-poster bed in which Washington slept, the desk where he wrote, the swords that he wore, and the books that he owned and read; or perhaps just because we were fifteen miles from Washington, D.C., and from Lindbergh's spirit hovering over everything.

Mount Vernon was open until four-thirty, so we had plenty of time to see all the rooms and the outbuildings and to wander the grounds and then to visit the souvenir shop, where I succumbed to the temptation of a letter opener that was a four-inch pewter replica of a Revolutionary musket and bayonet. I bought it with twelve of the fifteen cents I'd been saving for our visit the next day to the stamp division of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, while Sandy prudently bought with his savings an illustrated history of Washington's life, a book whose pictures he could use to suggest more portraits for the patriotic series stored in the portfolio under his bed.

It was the end of the day and we were off to have a drink in the cafeteria just as a low-flying plane in the distance came zooming our way. As the roar grew louder, people shouted, "It's the president! It's Lindy!" Men, women, and children all ran out onto the great front lawn and began to wave at the approaching plane, which as it crossed over the Potomac tipped its wings. "Hurray!" people shouted. "Hurray for Lindy!" It was the same Lockheed fighter we'd seen in the air over the city the previous afternoon, and we had no choice but to stand there like patriots and watch with the rest of them as it banked and flew back over George Washington's home before it turned to follow the Potomac north.

"It wasn't him—it was her!" Someone claiming to have been able to see into the cockpit had begun to spread word that the pilot of the Interceptor was the president's wife. And it could have been true. Lindbergh had taught her to fly when she was still his young bride and she'd often flown alongside him on his air trips, and so now people began telling their children that it was Anne Morrow Lindbergh whom they'd just seen flying over Mount Vernon, a historical event they would never forget. By then her audacity as a pilot of the most advanced American aircraft, combined with her demure manner as a well-bred daughter of the privileged classes and her literary gifts as the author of two published books of lyric poetry, had established her in all the polls as the nation's most admired woman.

So our perfect outing was ruined—and not so much because a recreational flight piloted by one or another of the Lindberghs happened by chance to have passed over our heads for the second day in a row but because of what the stunt, as my father called it, had inspired in everyone except us. "We

knew things were bad," my father told the friends he immediately sat down to phone when we got home, "but not like this. You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare."

It was the most eloquent line I'd ever heard him speak, and arguably distinguished by more precision than any ever written by Lindbergh's wife.

Mr. Taylor drove us back to the Evergreen so we could wash up and rest, and promptly at five forty-five returned to drive us to the inexpensive cafeteria near the railroad station; we'd all meet up afterward, he said, to start the night tour of Washington postponed from the day before.

"Why don't you come along tonight?" my father said to him. "It must get lonely eating by yourself all the time."

"I wouldn't want to invade your privacy, Mr. Roth."

"Listen here, you're a wonderful guide, and we would enjoy it.

Treat's on us."

The cafeteria was even more popular at night than it was during the day, every chair occupied and customers standing in line waiting to have their selections spooned out by the three men in white aprons and white caps who were so busy serving they didn't have time to stop and dry their perspiring faces. At our table my mother took solace in resuming her motherly mealtime role

—"Darling, try not to lower your chin to the plate when you take a bite"—and our having Mr. Taylor seated beside us as if he were a relative or family friend, though not so novel an adventure as being thrown out of the Douglas Hotel, provided the opportunity to watch someone eat who'd grown up in Indiana. My father was the only one of us paying attention to the other diners, all of them laughing and smoking and diligently digging into the Frenchified evening special—roast beef au jus and pecan pie a la mode—while he sat there fingering his water glass, seemingly trying to figure out how the problems in their lives could be so unlike his own.

When he got around to expressing his thoughts—which continued to take precedence over his eating—it wasn't to one of us but to Mr. Taylor, who was just starting in on the piece of pie topped with American cheese that he'd chosen for dessert. "We are a Jewish family, Mr. Taylor. You know that by now, if you didn't already, because that's the reason we were evicted yesterday. That was a big shock," he said. "That's hard to get over just like that. It's a shock because though it's something that could have happened without this man being president, he is the president and he is no friend of the Jews. He is the friend of Adolf Hitler."

"Herman," my mother whispered, "you'll frighten the little one." "The little one knows everything already," he said, and resumed

addressing Mr. Taylor. "You ever listen to Winchell? Let me quote you Walter Winchell: 'Was there any more to their diplomatic understanding, other things they talked about, other things they agreed on? Did they reach an understanding about America's Jews—and if so, what was it?' That's the kind of guts Winchell has. Those are the words he has the guts to speak to the entire country."

Surprisingly, someone had stepped up so close to our table that he was hanging half over it—a heavyset, mustached elderly man with a white paper napkin jammed into his belt who seemed inflamed with whatever he had in mind to say. He had been eating at a nearby table and his companions there were all leaning our way, eager to hear what was coming next.

"Hey, what's doin', bud?" my father said. "Back up, will ya?" "Winchell is a Jew," the man announced, "in the pay of the British

government."

What happened next was that my father's hands rose violently from the table, as though to drive his knife and his fork upward into the stranger's holiday-goose of a belly. He hadn't to elaborate further to communicate his abhorrence, and yet the man with the mustache did not budge. The mustache wasn't a dark close-clipped little square patch like Hitler's but one conceived of in a less officious, more whimsical spirit, a conspicuously substantial white walrus mustache of the type displayed by President Taft on the light red 1938 fifty-cent stamp.

"If ever there was a case of a loudmouth Jew with too much power

—" the stranger said.

"That is enough!" Mr. Taylor cried and, jumping to his feet, placed himself—undersized as he was—between the large figure looming over us and my outraged father, pinned in below by all that ludicrous bulk.

Loudmouth Jew. And for the second time in less than forty-eight

hours.

Two of the aproned men from behind the serving counter had rushed

out onto the floor of the cafeteria and taken hold of our assailant from either side. "This is not your corner saloon," one of them told him, "and don't you forget it, mister." At his table, they pushed him down into his chair, and then the one who'd chastised him came over to us and said, "I want you folks to fill your coffee cups as much as you like. Let me bring the boys some more ice cream. You folks just stay and finish up your supper. I am the owner, my name is Wilbur, and all the desserts you want is on the house. Let's bring you fresh ice water while we're at it."

"Thank you," my father said, speaking with the eerie impersonality of a machine. "Thank you," he repeated. "Thank you."

"Herman, please," my mother whispered, "let's just go."

"Absolutely not. No. We're finishing our food." He cleared his throat to continue. "We're touring Washington by night. We are not going home till we tour Washington by night."

The evening, in other words, was to be seen through to the end without our being frightened away. For Sandy and me that meant consuming big new dishes of ice cream, delivered to our table by one of the countermen.

It took a few minutes for the cafeteria to come alive again with the squeaking of chairs and the rattle of cutlery and the light tinkle of plates, if not yet the full dinnertime clamor.

"Would you like more coffee?" my father said to my mother. "You heard the owner—he wants you to fill your cup."

"No," she murmured, "no more." "And you, Mr. Taylor—coffee?" "Nope, I'm fine."

"So," my father said to Mr. Taylor—stiffly, lamely, but beginning again to push back at everything awful that was surging in. "What kind of job did you do before this one? Or have you always been a guide in Washington?"

And it was here that we heard once again from the man who'd stepped up to inform us that, like Benedict Arnold before him, Walter Winchell had sold out to the British. "Oh, don't you worry," he was assuring his friends, "the Jews will find out soon enough."

In all that quiet there was no mistaking what he'd said, especially as he hadn't bothered to modulate the taunt in any way. Half the diners didn't even look up, pretending to have heard nothing, but more than a few twisted round to look right at the offending objects.

I'd seen tarring and feathering only once, in a Western movie, but I thought, "We are going to be tarred and feathered," envisioning all our humiliation sticking to the skin like a coat of thick filth that you could never get off.

My father was stalled for a moment, having to decide once again whether to attempt to control the event or give in to it. "I was asking Mr. Taylor," he suddenly said to my mother while taking her hands in both of his, "about what he did before being a guide." And he looked at her like someone casting a spell, someone whose art is to prevent your will from being free of his and keep you from acting on your own.

"Yes," she said, "I heard." And then, her anguish once again filling her with tears, she nonetheless drew herself up erect in her seat and said to Mr. Taylor, "Yes, please tell us."

"Keep eating your ice cream, boys," my father said, reaching out and patting our forearms until we looked him right in the eye. "Is it good?"

"Yes," we said.

"Well, you just keep eating and take your time." He smiled to make us smile, and then said to Mr. Taylor, "The job before this one, your old job— what was it you did again, sir?"

"I was a college teacher, Mr. Roth."

"Is that right?" my father said. "Hear that, boys? You're eating your dinner with a college teacher."

"A college history teacher," added Mr. Taylor for the sake of

accuracy.

"Should have known," my father admitted.

"Little college in northwest Indiana," Mr. Taylor told the four of us.

"When they shut half the place down in ' 32, that was it for me." "And so what'd you do then?" my father asked.

"Well, you can imagine. What with unemployment and all the strikes, I did a little of everything. Harvested mint up in the Indiana mucklands. Packed meat for the slaughterhouse in Hammond. Packed soap for Cudahy in East Chicago. Worked a year for Real Silk Hosiery Mills in Indianapolis. Even worked a stint at Logansport, at the mental hospital there, worked as an orderly for people suffering mental diseases. Hard times finally washed me up here."

"And what was the name of that college where you taught?" my father asked.

"Wabash."

"Wabash? Well," said my father, soothed by the very sound of the word, "everybody has heard of that."

"Four hundred and twenty-six students? I'm not so sure they have. What everybody has heard of is something that one of our distinguished graduates once said, though they don't necessarily know him for being a Wabash man. They know him for being U.S. vice president, 1912 to 1920. That is our two-term vice president Thomas Riley Marshall."

"Sure," my father said. "Vice President Marshall, the Democratic governor of Indiana. Vice president under another great Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. Man of dignity, President Wilson. It was President Wilson," he said, after two days of tutelage under Mr. Taylor, himself in the mood now to elucidate, "who had the courage to appoint Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. First Jewish member ever of the Supreme Court. You know that, boys?"

We did—it was hardly the first time he'd told us. It was only the first time he'd told us in a booming voice in a cafeteria like this one in Washington,

D.C.

Sailing on, Mr. Taylor said, "And what the vice president said has

been famous nationwide ever since. One day, in the United States Senate—while he was presiding over a Senate debate—he said to the senators there, 'What this country needs,' he said, 'is a really good five-cent cigar.'"

My father laughed—that was indeed a folksy observation that had won the heart of his whole generation and that even Sandy and I knew through his repeating it to us. So he laughed genially, and then, to further astonish not only his family but probably everyone in the cafeteria, to whom he'd already extolled Woodrow Wilson for appointing a Jew to the Supreme Court, he proclaimed, "What this country needs now is a new president."

No riot ensued. Nothing. Indeed, by not quitting he appeared almost to have won the day.

"And isn't there a Wabash River?" my father next asked Mr. Taylor. "Longest tributary of the Ohio. Runs four hundred and seventy-five

miles clear across the state east to west."

"And there is a song, too," my father remembered almost dreamily. "Right you are," replied Mr. Taylor. "A very famous song. Maybe as

famous as 'Yankee Doodle' itself. Written by Paul Dresser in 1897. 'On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away.'"

"Of course!" cried my father.

"The favorite song," said Mr. Taylor, "of our Spanish-American War soldiers in 1898 and adopted as the state song of Indiana in 1913. March 4, to be exact."

"Sure, sure, I know that one," my father told him. "I expect every American does," Mr. Taylor said.

And all at once, in a brisk cadence, my father began to sing it, and strongly enough for everyone in the cafeteria to hear. "'Through the sycamores the candlelights are gleaming. . .'"

"Good," said our guide with admiration, "very good," and outright bewitched by my father's baritone bravura, the solemn little encyclopedia smiled at last.

voice."

"My husband," said my dry-eyed mother, "has a lovely singing

"That he does," said Mr. Taylor, and though there was no applause

—other than from Wilbur, back of the serving counter—here we abruptly got up to go before we outstayed our tiny triumph and the man with the presidential mustache went berserk.

3

June 1941–December1 941

Following Christians

ON JUNE 22, 1941, the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact—signed two years earlier by the two dictators only days before invading and dividing up Poland— was broken without warning when Hitler, having already overrun continental Europe, dared to undertake the conquest of the enormous landmass that stretched from Poland across Asia to the Pacific by staging a massive assault to the east against Stalin's troops. That evening, President Lindbergh addressed the nation from the White House about Hitler's colossal expansion of the war and astonished even my father by his candid praise for the German Führer. "With this act," the president declared, "Adolf Hitler has established himself as the world's greatest safeguard against the spread of Communism and its evils. This is not to minimize the effort of imperial Japan. Dedicated as the Japanese are to modernizing Chiang Kaishek's corrupt and feudal China, they are equally dedicated to rooting out the fanatical Chinese Communist minority, whose aim is to seize control of that vast country and, like the Bolsheviks in Russia, to turn China into a Communist prison camp. But it is Hitler to whom the entire world must be grateful tonight for striking at the Soviet Union. If the German army is successful in its struggle against Soviet Bolshevism—and there is every reason to believe that it will be—America will never have to face the threat of a voracious Communist state imposing its pernicious system on the rest of the world. I can only hope that the internationalists still serving in the United States Congress recognize that if we had allowed our nation to be dragged into this world war on the side of Great Britain and France, we would now find our great democracy allied with the evil regime of the USSR. Tonight the German army may well be waging the war that would otherwise have had to be fought by American troops."

Our troops were at the ready, however, and would be, the president reminded his countrymen, for a long time to come because of the peacetime draft established by Congress at his request, twenty-four months of compulsory military training for eighteen-year-olds, followed by eight years on call in the reserves which would contribute enormously to fulfilling his dual goal of "keeping America out of all foreign wars and of keeping all foreign wars out of America." "An independent destiny for America"—that was the phrase

Lindbergh repeated some fifteen times in his State of the Union speech and again at the close of his address on the night of June 22. When I asked my father to explain what the words meant—absorbed by the headlines and weighed down by all my anxious thoughts, I was more and more asking what everything meant— he frowned and said, "It means turning our back on our friends. It means making friends with their enemies. You know what it means, son? It means destroying everything that America stands for."

Under the auspices of Just Folks—described by Lindbergh's newly created Office of American Absorption as "a volunteer work program introducing city youth to the traditional ways of heartland life"—my brother left on the last day of June 1941 for a summer "apprenticeship" with a Kentucky tobacco farmer. Because he'd never been away from home before, and because the family had never lived with such uncertainty before, and because my father objected strenuously to what the OAA's existence implied about our status as citizens— and also because Alvin, already off serving with the Canadian army, had become a perpetual source of concern—Sandy's was an emotional leave-taking. What had given Sandy strength to resist our parents' arguments against his participating in Just Folks—and planted the idea to apply in the first place—was the support he'd received from my mother's vivid younger sister, Evelyn, now executive assistant to Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, who'd been appointed by the new administration to serve as the first director of the OAA office for the state of New Jersey. The announced purpose of the OAA was to implement programs "encouraging America's religious and national minorities to become further incorporated into the larger society," though by the spring of 1941 the only minority the OAA appeared to take a serious interest in encouraging was ours. It was the intention of Just Folks to remove hundreds of Jewish boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen from the cities where they lived and attended school and put them to work for eight weeks as field hands and day laborers with farm families hundreds of miles from their homes. Notices extolling the new summer program had been posted on bulletin boards at Chancellor and at Weequahic, the high school just next door, where the student population, like ours, was nearly one hundred percent Jewish. One day in April, a representative from the New Jersey OAA had come to talk to the boys twelve and over about the program's mission, and that evening Sandy showed up at the dinner table with an application blank that required a parent's signature.

"Do you understand what this program is actually trying to do?" my father asked Sandy. "Do you understand why Lindbergh wants to separate boys

like you from their families and ship them out to the sticks? Do you have any idea what's behind all this?"

"But this doesn't have anything to do with anti-Semitism, if that's what you think. You have one thing on your mind and one thing only. This is just a great opportunity, that's all."

"Opportunity for what?"

"To live on a farm. To go to Kentucky. To draw all the things there.

Tractors. Barns. Animals. All kinds of animals."

"But they're not sending you all that way to draw animals," my father told him. "They're sending you there to fetch the slops for the animals. They're sending you there to spread manure. You'll be so bushed by the end of the day that you won't be able to stand on your feet, let alone draw a picture of an animal."

"And your hands," my mother said. "There's barbed wire on farms. There are machines with sharp blades. You could injure your hands, and then where would you be? You'd never draw again. I thought you were going to take classes at Arts High this summer. You were going to take drawing with Mr. Leonard."

"I can always do that—this is seeing America!"

The next night Aunt Evelyn came to dinner, invited by my mother for the hours Sandy was planning to be at a friend's house doing his homework; that way he wouldn't be around to witness the argument that was certain to flare up between Aunt Evelyn and my father on the subject of Just Folks, and that did indeed erupt upon her entering the house to announce that she would be taking care of Sandy's application the moment it reached the office. "Don't do us any favors," said my unsmiling father.

"You mean to tell me you're not letting him go?" "Why should I? Why would I?" he asked her.

"Why on earth wouldn't you," Aunt Evelyn replied, "unless you're another Jew afraid of his shadow."

Their disagreement only grew more passionate during dinner, my father maintaining that Just Folks was the first step in a Lindbergh plan to separate Jewish children from their parents, to erode the solidarity of the Jewish family, and Aunt Evelyn intimating none too gently that the greatest fear of a Jew like her brother-in-law was that his children might escape winding up as narrow-minded and frightened as he was.

Alvin was the renegade on my father's side, Evelyn was the maverick on my mother's, a substitute elementary school teacher in the Newark system who'd been active several years earlier in founding the left-wing, largely

Jewish Newark Teachers Union, whose few hundred members were competing with a more staid, apolitical teachers' association to negotiate contracts with the city. Evelyn was just thirty in 1941, and until two years before, when my maternal grandmother died of heart failure after a decade as a coronary invalid, it was Evelyn who'd cared for her in the tiny top-floor apartment of a two-and-a- half-family house that mother and daughter shared on Dewey Street, not far from Hawthorne Avenue School, where Evelyn usually subbed. On the days when a neighbor wasn't free to stop by to keep an eye on our grandmother, my mother would take the bus over to Dewey Street and look after her until Evelyn got home from work, and when Evelyn went to New York to see a play with her intellectual friends on a Saturday night, either our grandmother would be driven to our house by my father to spend the evening with us or my mother would return to Dewey Street to tend to her there. Many nights Aunt Evelyn never made it home from New York—even when she'd planned to return before midnight—and so my mother would be forced to spend the night away from her husband and children. And then there were the afternoons Evelyn didn't get back until hours after school was over, because of a long-standing off-and-on love affair with a substitute teacher from North Newark, like Evelyn a forceful union advocate, and unlike Evelyn married, Italian, and the parent of three children.

My mother would always contend that if Evelyn hadn't got waylaid at home for all those years nursing their invalid mother, she would have settled down to marry after getting her teaching certificate and never have ended up falling in and out of "unsavory" relationships with married men who were her fellow teachers. Her large nose didn't prevent people from calling Aunt Evelyn "striking," and it was true, as my mother observed, that when tiny Evelyn walked into a room—a vivacious brunette with a perfect, if miniaturized, womanly silhouette, enormous dark eyes slanted like a cat's, and crimson lipstick guaranteed to dazzle—everyone turned to look, the women as well as the men. Her hair was lacquered to a metallic luster and pulled back in a chignon, her eyebrows were dramatically plucked, and when she went off to sub, she donned a brightly colored skirt with matching high-heeled shoes and a broad white belt and a semisheer, pastel-colored blouse. My father considered her apparel in poor taste for a schoolteacher, and so did the principal at Hawthorne, but my mother, who, wrongly or not, reproached herself for Evelyn's having had to "sacrifice her youth" caring for their mother, was incapable of judging her sister's boldness harshly, even when Evelyn resigned from teaching, quit the union, and, seemingly without a qualm, abandoned her political loyalties to work for Rabbi Bengelsdorf in Lindbergh's OAA.

It would be several months before it occurred to my parents that

Aunt Evelyn was the rabbi's mistress and had been ever since he'd met her at a reception following his speech to the Newark Teachers Union on "The Classroom Development of American Ideals"—and they realized it only then because, on leaving the New Jersey OAA to assume the job of federal director at the national headquarters in Washington, Bengelsdorf announced to the Newark papers news of his engagement, at age sixty-three, to his thirty-one-year-old firebrand of an assistant.

When he first ran off to fight Hitler, Alvin imagined that the quickest way to see action would be aboard one of the Canadian destroyers that were protecting the merchant marine ships carrying supplies to Great Britain. Stories in the newspaper regularly reported the sinking by German submarines of one or more of the Canadian ships in the North Atlantic, sometimes as close to the mainland as the coastal fishing waters of Newfoundland—an especially ominous development for the British because Canada had become virtually their only source of arms, food, medicine, and machinery once the Lindbergh administration overturned the aid legislation enacted by the Roosevelt Congress. In Montreal Alvin met a young American defector who told him to forget about the navy—it was the Canadian commandos who were in the thick of things, carrying out nighttime raids on the Nazi-occupied continent, sabotaging utilities vital to the Germans, blowing up ammunition arsenals, and, alongside British commandos and in concert with underground European resistance movements, destroying dock and shipyard facilities up and down the coastline of western Europe. When he recounted for Alvin all the many ways the commandos taught you to kill a man, Alvin dropped his original plans and went to join up. Like the rest of the Canadian armed forces, the commandos were eager to accept qualified American citizens into their ranks, and so, after sixteen weeks of training, Alvin was assigned to an active commando unit and shipped to a secret staging area in the British Isles. And that was when we heard from him finally, receiving a six-word letter that read, "Off to fight. See you soon."

It was just days after Sandy, all on his own, took the overnight train to Kentucky that my parents received a second letter, this one not from Alvin but from the War Department in Ottawa, advising Alvin's designated next of kin that their nephew had been wounded in action and was in a convalescent hospital in Dorset, England. After the dinner dishes were cleared that night, my mother sat back down at the kitchen table with a fountain pen and the box of monogrammed stationery reserved for important correspondence. My father seated himself across from her, and I stood looking over her shoulder to observe how her

cursive script uniformly unfurled because of the handwriting mechanics she'd employed as a secretary and taught early on to Sandy and me—the third and fourth fingers positioned to support the hand, and the forefinger nearer the pen point than the thumb. She spoke each sentence aloud before writing it down in case my father wanted to change or add anything.

Dearest Alvin,

This morning we received a letter from the Canadian government telling us that you were wounded in action and that you're in a hospital in England. The letter contained nothing more specific other than a mailing address for you.

Right now we are at the kitchen table, Uncle Herman, Philip, and Aunt Bess. We all want to know everything about your condition. Sandy is away for the summer, but we'll write him about you immediately.

Is there any chance you will be sent back to Canada? If so, we would drive there to see you. In the meantime, we send you our love and hope you will write us from England. Please write or ask someone to write for you. Whatever you want us to do, we will do.

Again, we love you and we miss you.

To this message we appended our three signatures. It was nearly a month before we got a response.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Roth:

Corporal Alvin Roth received your letter of July

I am the senior nurse on his unit and I read the letter to him several times to be sure he understood who it was from and what it said.

Right now Cpl. Roth is not communicative. He lost his left leg below the knee and was seriously wounded in his right foot. The right foot is healing and that wound should not leave him impaired. When his left leg is ready, he will be fitted with a prosthesis and taught to walk with it.

This is a dark moment for Cpl. Roth, but I wish to assure you that in time he should be able to resume his life as a civilian with no significant physical problems. This

hospital is limited to amputees and burn cases. I have seen many men undergo the same psychological difficulties as Cpl. Roth, but most of them come through, and I strongly believe that Cpl. Roth will too.

Sincerely, Lt. A. F. Cooper

Once a week, Sandy wrote saying he was fine and reporting how hot it was in Kentucky and concluding with a sentence about life on the farm— something like "There's a bumper crop of blackberries" or "The steer are being driven crazy by flies" or "Today they're cutting alfalfa" or "Topping began," whatever that might mean. Then, below his signature—and perhaps to prove to his father that he had stamina enough to do his artwork even after working all day on the farm—he'd sketch a picture of a pig ("This pig," he noted, "weighs over three hundred pounds!") or a dog ("Suzie, Orin's dog—her specialty is scaring snakes") or a lamb ("Mr. Mawhinney took 30 lambs to the stockyards yesterday") or of a barn ("They just painted this place with creosote. P-U!"). Usually far more space was taken up by the drawing than by the message, and, to my mother's chagrin, the questions she would raise in her own weekly letter, asking if he needed clothes or medicine or money, rarely got answered. Of course I knew my mother cared for each of her children with equal devotion, but not till Sandy was gone to Kentucky did I learn how much he meant to her as someone distinct from his little brother. Though she wasn't about to grow despondent over being separated for eight weeks from a son already thirteen, all summer long there was an undercurrent of the forlorn noticeable in certain gestures and facial expressions, particularly at the kitchen table when the fourth chair drawn up for dinner remained empty night after night.

Aunt Evelyn was with us when we went to Penn Station to pick Sandy up on the late-August Saturday that he arrived back in Newark. She was the last one my father wanted coming along, but just as when, against his own inclinations, he'd eventually allowed Sandy to apply for Just Folks and accept the summer job in Kentucky, he had yielded to his sister-in-law's influence over his son to avoid making more difficult a predicament whose ultimate danger still wasn't entirely clear.

At the station, Aunt Evelyn was the first of us to recognize Sandy when he stepped from the train onto the platform, some ten pounds heavier than when he'd left and his brown hair blondish from his working in the fields under the summer sun. He'd grown a couple of inches as well, so that his pants were now nowhere near his shoe tops, and altogether my impression was of my

brother in disguise.

"Hey, farmer," Aunt Evelyn called, "over here!" and Sandy came loping in our direction, swinging his bags at his sides and sporting an outdoorsy new walk to go with the new physique.

"Welcome home, stranger," my mother said, and, with the air of a young girl, happily threw her arms around his neck, and the words she murmured into his ear ("Was there ever a boy so handsome?") caused him to complain, "Ma! Cut it out!" which, of course, handed the rest of the family a big laugh. We all hugged him, and, standing beside the train he'd boarded seven hundred fifty miles away, he flexed his biceps so I could feel them. In the car, when he began answering our questions, we heard how husky his voice had become, and we heard for the first time the drawl and the twang.

Aunt Evelyn was triumphant. Sandy talked about the last job he'd had out in the fields—going around with Orin, one of the Mawhinneys' sons, picking up the tobacco leaves broken off during harvesting. They were usually the lowest on the plant, Sandy said, they were called "flyings," and it so happened they were top-grade tobacco and fetched the highest price at the market. But the men doing the cutting on a tobacco patch of twenty-five acres can't bother about the leaves on the ground, he told us, as they have to cut some three thousand sticks of tobacco a day in order to get everything housed in the curing barn in two weeks. "Whoa, whoa—what's a 'stick,' dear?" Aunt Evelyn asked, and gladly he obliged her with the lengthiest possible explanation. And so what's a curing barn, she asked, what's topping, what's suckering, what's worming—and the more questions Aunt Evelyn came up with, the more authoritative Sandy became, so that even when we got to Summit Avenue and my father pulled the car into the alleyway, he was still going on about raising tobacco as though expecting us all to head right for the backyard and start preparing the weedy patch of dirt next to the garbage cans for Newark's first crop ever of white burley. "It's the sweetened burley in Luckys," he informed us, "that gives 'em the taste," and meanwhile I was itching to feel his biceps again, which to me were no less extraordinary than the regional accent, if that's what it was— he said "cain't" for "can't" and "rimember" for "remember" and "fahr" for "fire" and "agin" for "again" and "awalkin'" and "atalkin'" for "walking" and "talking," and whatever you wanted to call that concoction of English, it wasn't what we natives of New Jersey spoke.

Aunt Evelyn was triumphant but my father was stymied, said almost nothing, and at the dinner table that evening looked especially glum when Sandy got around to reporting on what a paragon Mr. Mawhinney was. First off, Mr. Mawhinney had graduated from the College of Agriculture at the University of

Kentucky, while my father, like most other Newark slum children before the World War, hadn't been educated beyond the eighth grade. Mr. Mawhinney owned not just one farm but three—the lesser two rented to tenants—land that had been in his family going back nearly to the days of Daniel Boone, and my father owned nothing more impressive than a six-year-old car. Mr. Mawhinney could saddle a horse, drive a tractor, operate a thresher, ride a fertilizer drill, work a field as easily with a team of mules as with a team of oxen; he could rotate crops and manage hired men, both white and Negro; he could repair tools, sharpen plow points and mowers, put up fences, string barbed wire, raise chickens, dip sheep, dehorn cattle, slaughter pigs, smoke bacon, sugar-cure ham

—and he raised watermelons that were the sweetest and juiciest Sandy had ever eaten. By cultivating tobacco, corn, and potatoes, Mr. Mawhinney was able to make a living right out of the earth and then, at Sunday dinner (where the six- foot-three-inch, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound farmer consumed more fried chicken with cream gravy than everyone else at the table combined), eat only food that he himself had raised, and all my father could do was sell insurance. It went without saying that Mr. Mawhinney was a Christian, a long-standing member of the great overpowering majority that fought the Revolution and founded the nation and conquered the wilderness and subjugated the Indian and enslaved the Negro and emancipated the Negro and segregated the Negro, one of the good, clean, hard-working Christian millions who settled the frontier, tilled the farms, built the cities, governed the states, sat in Congress, occupied the White House, amassed the wealth, possessed the land, owned the steel mills and the ball clubs and the railroads and the banks, even owned and oversaw the language, one of those unassailable Nordic and Anglo-Saxon Protestants who ran America and would always run it—generals, dignitaries, magnates, tycoons, the men who laid down the law and called the shots and read the riot act when they chose to—while my father, of course, was only a Jew.

Sandy got the news about Alvin once Aunt Evelyn had gone home. My father was at the kitchen table working on his account books preparatory to going out to make his evening collections and my mother was in the cellar with Sandy sorting through the clothes he'd brought back from Kentucky, deciding what to repair and what to throw out before putting everything else in the washtub. My mother always did immediately whatever had to be done, and she was set on disposing of his dirty clothes before she went to bed. I was down there with them, unable to let my brother out of my sight. He'd always known everything I didn't know, and he'd come back from Kentucky knowing still more.

"I have to tell you about Alvin," my mother said to him. "I didn't want to write because. . .well, I didn't want to shock you, dear." Here, having gathered herself together to make certain she wouldn't cry, she said in a low voice, "Alvin was wounded. He's in a hospital in England. He's there recovering from his wounds."

Astonished, Sandy asked, "Who wounded him?" as though she were reporting an occurrence in our neighborhood rather than in Nazi-occupied Europe, where people were being maimed, wounded, and killed all the time.

"We don't know any details," my mother said. "But it wasn't a superficial wound. I have to tell you something very sad, Sanford." And despite her attempt to keep everyone's courage up, her voice began to waver when she said, "Alvin's lost a leg."

"A leg?" There aren't many words less abstruse than "leg," but it took some doing for him to comprehend it.

"Yes. According to a letter we got from one of his nurses, his left leg below the knee." As if it might somehow soothe him, she added, "If you'd like to read it, the letter's upstairs."

"But—how will he walk?"

"They're going to fit him with an artificial leg."

"But I don't understand who wounded him. How did he get

wounded?"

"Well, they were there to fight the Germans," she said, "so it must

have been one of them."

Still half staving off what was half sinking in, Sandy asked, "Which

leg?"

the knee."

As tenderly as she could, she repeated, "The left." "The whole leg? The whole thing?"

"No, no, no," she rushed to reassure him. "I told you, dear—below

Suddenly Sandy began to cry, and because he was so much bigger

across the shoulders and through the chest and around the wrists than he'd been just last spring, because his arms were now brawny like a man's rather than stringy like a child's, I was so startled to see tears running down his deeply tanned face that I started crying too.

"Dear, it's awful," my mother said. "But Alvin is not dead. He is still alive, and now at least he's out of the war."

"What?" Sandy erupted. "Did you hear what you just said to me?" "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Didn't you hear yourself? You said, 'He's out of the war.'"

"And he is. Absolutely. And because he is, he'll now come home before anything more can possibly happen."

"But why was he even in the war, Ma?" "Because—"

"Because of Dad!" Sandy shouted.

"Dear, no, this isn't true," and her hand flew up to cover her mouth as though it were she who had spoken those unpardonable words. "That is not so," she objected. "Alvin went off to Canada without telling us. He ran away on that Friday night. You remember how terrible it was. Nobody wanted Alvin to go to war—he just went, on his own."

"But Dad wants the whole country to go to war. Well, doesn't he?

Isn't that why he voted for Roosevelt?"

"Lower your voice, please."

"First you say thank God that Alvin is out of the war—"

"Lower your voice!" and the tension of the day now so overwhelmed her that she lost her temper, and to the boy she had so painfully missed all summer long, she snapped, "You don't know what you're talking about!"

"But you won't listen," he shouted. "If it wasn't for President Lindbergh—"

That name again! I would rather have heard a bomb go off than to have to hear one more time the name that was tormenting us all.

Just then my father appeared in the dim light of the landing at the top of the cellar stairs. It was probably a good thing that from where we were standing by the deep laundry sink, all we could see of him were trousers and shoes.

"He's upset about Alvin," my mother said, looking up to explain what the shouting was about. "I made a mistake." To Sandy she said, "I should never have told you tonight. It's not easy for a boy to come home from a big experience like that. . .it's never easy to go from one place to another. . .and anyway you're so tired. . .," and then, helpless, giving herself up to her own exhaustion, she said, "The two of you, both of you, go upstairs now so I can do the wash."

And so we turned to mount the stairs and found, fortunately, that my father had already disappeared from the landing and was off in the car to make his evening collections.

In bed, one hour later. The lights are out all over the house. We whisper.

Did you really have a good time? I had a great time.

What made it so great?

Being on a farm is great. You get to get up early in the morning, and you're outside all day, and there are all these animals. I drew a lot of animals, I'll show you my drawings. And we had ice cream every night. Mrs. Mawhinney makes it herself. There's fresh milk there.

All milk is fresh.

No, we got it right from the cow. It was still warm. We put it on the stove and we'd boil it and just take the cream off the top, and then we'd drink it.

You couldn't get sick from it? That's why you boil it.

But you don't just drink it right out of the cow.

I tried that once but it doesn't taste so good. It's so creamy. Did you milk a cow?

Orin showed me how to do it. It's hard to do. Orin would squirt it, and the cats

would come around, and they'd try to catch the milk. Did you have any friends?

Well, Orin's my best friend. Orin Mawhinney?

Yeah. He's my age. He goes to school there. He works on the farm. He gets up at four o'clock in the morning. He does chores. It's not like us. He goes to school on the bus. It's about forty-five minutes on the bus, and then he comes back in the evening, and he does some more chores, and he does his homework, and he goes to bed. He gets up at four o'clock the next morning. It's hard work to be a farmer's son.

But they're rich, aren't they? They're pretty rich.

How come you talk like that now?

Why shouldn't I? That's the way they talk in Kentucky. You should hear Mrs. Mawhinney. She's from Georgia. She makes pancakes for breakfast every morning. With bacon. Mr. Mawhinney smokes his own bacon. In a smokehouse. He knows how to.

You ate bacon every morning?

Every morning. It's delicious. And on Sundays when we got up we had pancakes and bacon and eggs. From their own chickens. The eggs—they're almost red in

the middle, they're so fresh. You go and take 'em from the chickens and bring 'em in and you eat 'em right there.

Did you eat ham?

We had ham for dinner about two times a week. Mr. Mawhinney makes his own ham. He has a special family recipe. He says if a ham isn't hung up to be aged for a year he doesn't want to eat it.

Did you eat sausage?

Yeah. He makes the sausage, too. They grind it in a sausage grinder. We had sausage sometimes instead of bacon. It's good. Pork chops. They're good too. They're great. I don't really know why we don't eat it.

Because it's stuff from a pig.

So what? Why do you think farmers raise pigs? For people to look at 'em? It's like anything else you eat. You just eat it, and it's really good.

You going to keep eating it now? Sure.

It was really hot there, though, huh?

During the day. But we'd come in at lunchtime, and we'd have tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches. With lemonade—with lots of lemonade. We'd rest inside and then we'd go back out into the fields and do whatever we had to. Weeding. Weed all afternoon. Weed the corn. Weed the tobacco. We had a

vegetable garden, me and Orin, and we'd weed that. We'd work with the hired hands, and there were some Negroes, day laborers. And there's one Negro, Randolph, who is a tenant, and he rose from hired hand. He's a grade-A farmer, Mr. Mawhinney says.

Can you understand when the Negroes talk? Sure.

Can you imitate one?

They say "'bacca" for tobacco. They say "I 'clare." I 'clare this and I 'clare that. But they don't talk much. Mostly they work. At hog-killing time, Mr. Mawhinney has Clete and Old Henry who gut the hogs. They're Negroes, they're brothers, and they take the intestines home and eat 'em fried. Chitterlings.

Would you eat that?

Do I look like a Negro? Mr. Mawhinney says Negroes are starting to move away from the farm because they think they can earn more money in the city. Sometimes Old Henry got arrested on Saturday nights. For drinking. Mr. Mawhinney pays the fine to get him out because he needs him on Monday.

Do they have shoes?

Some. The kids are barefoot. The Mawhinneys give them their clothes when they're done with them. But they were happy.

Anybody say anything about anti-Semitism?

They don't even think about it, Philip. I was the first Jew they ever met. They told me that. But they never said anything mean. It's Kentucky. People there are really friendly.

So, are you glad to be home? Sort of. I don't know.

You going to go back next year? Sure.

What if Mom and Dad won't let you? I'll go anyway.

Seemingly as a direct consequence of Sandy's having eaten bacon, ham, pork chops, and sausage, there was no containing the transformation of our lives. Rabbi Bengelsdorf was coming to dinner. Aunt Evelyn was bringing him.

"Why us?" my father said to my mother. Dinner was over, Sandy was on his bed writing to Orin Mawhinney, and I was alone with them in the living room, intent on seeing how my father was going to take the news now that everything around us was moving at once.

"She is my sister," said my mother, a touch belligerently, "he is her boss—I can't tell her no."

"I can," he said.

"You will do nothing of the sort."

"Then explain again why we deserve this great honor? The big shot has nothing more pressing than to come here?"

"Evelyn wants him to meet your son."

"That's ridiculous. Your sister has always been ridiculous. My son is in the eighth grade at Chancellor Avenue School. He spent the summer pulling weeds. This is all ridiculous."

"Herman, they're coming on Thursday night, and we're going to make them welcome. You may hate him, but he's not nobody."

"I know that," he said impatiently. "That's why I hate him."

When he walked about the house now a copy of PM was constantly in his hands, either rolled up like a weapon—as though he were preparing, if called upon, to go to war himself—or turned back to a page where there was something he wanted to read aloud to my mother. He was perplexed on this particular evening as to why the Germans continued to advance so easily into Russia, and so, rattling the paper in exasperation, he all at once exclaimed, "Why don't those Russians fight? They have planes—why don't they use them? Why doesn't anybody over there put up a fight? Hitler walks into a country, crosses the border and walks right in, and bingo, it's his. England," he announced, "is the only country in Europe to stand up to that dog. He pounds away at those English cities every single night, and they just come back and keep on fighting him with the RAF. Thank God for the men of the RAF."

"When is Hitler going to invade England?" I asked him. "Why doesn't he invade England now?"

"That was part of the deal he made with Mr. Lindbergh up in Iceland. Lindbergh wants to be the savior of mankind," my father explained to me, "and negotiate the peace that ends the war, and so after Hitler takes Russia, and after he takes the Middle East, and after he takes everything else he could possibly want, Lindbergh will call a phony peace conference—the kind that's right up the Germans' alley. The Germans will be there, and the price for world peace and no German invasion of Great Britain will be installing in England an English fascist government. Putting a fascist prime minister in Downing Street. And when the English say no, then Hitler will invade, and all with the consent of our president the peacemaker."

"Is that what Walter Winchell says?" I asked, thinking that all he had explained to me was just too smart for him.

"That's what I say," he told me, and probably that was true. The pressure of what was happening was accelerating everyone's education, my own included. "But thank God for Walter Winchell. Without him we'd be lost. He's the last person left on the radio to speak out against these dirty dogs. It's disgusting. It's worse than disgusting. Slowly but surely, there's nobody in America willing to speak out against Lindbergh's kissing Hitler's behind."

"What about the Democrats?" I asked.

"Son, don't ask me about the Democrats. I'm angry enough as it is." My mother had me help her set the table in the dining room on

Thursday evening, and then sent me to my bedroom to change into my good

clothes. Aunt Evelyn and Rabbi Bengelsdorf were to arrive at seven, forty-five minutes later than we would ordinarily have finished eating in the kitchen, but seven was the earliest the rabbi could manage to get to our house because of all his official duties. This was the very traitor whom my father, usually so respectful of the Jewish clergy, had accused aloud of making "a stupid, lying speech" in behalf of Lindbergh at Madison Square Garden, the "Jewish fake," according to Alvin, who'd guaranteed Roosevelt's defeat by "koshering Lindbergh for the goyim," and so it was puzzling to witness the lengths to which we were going to feed him. I was myself instructed beforehand not to use the fresh towels in the bathroom or to go anywhere near my father's armchair, which was for the rabbi to occupy before we ate dinner.

First we all sat stiffly in the living room while my father offered the rabbi a highball or, if he preferred, a shot of schnapps, both of which Bengelsdorf declined in favor of a glass of tap water. "Newark has the best drinking water in the world," the rabbi said, and said it as he would say everything, with deep consideration. Graciously he received the glass, on a coaster, from my mother, whom I could still recall back in October running from the radio in order not to have to hear him praise Lindbergh. "You have a most agreeable house," he said to her. "Everything in its place and everything placed perfectly. It bespeaks the love of order which I myself share. I see you have a penchant for the color green."

"Forest green," said my mother, trying to smile and trying to please but speaking with difficulty and unable as yet to look his way.

"You should take great pride in your lovely home. I am honored to be a guest here."

The rabbi was quite tall, built on the order of Lindbergh, a thin, bald-headed man in a dark three-piece suit and gleaming black shoes; his erect posture alone seemed to me to express an allegiance to mankind's highest ideals. From the mellifluous southern accent I'd heard on the radio I had envisioned somebody looking far less severe, but just his eyeglasses were intimidating, in part because they were the owlish oval spectacles that pinched the nose to stay on the face, like the ones that Roosevelt wore, and in part because the very fact that he wore them—and examined you through them microscopically—made it clear that he was not a man with whom to disagree. Yet when he spoke his tone was warm, friendly, even confiding. I kept waiting for him to treat us with contempt or order us around, but all he did was to talk in that accent (which wasn't at all like Sandy's), and so softly that at times you had to hold your breath to hear how learned he was.

"And you must be the boy," he said to Sandy, "who's made us all so

proud."

"I'm Sandy, sir," Sandy replied, flushing furiously. It was, to my

mind, a brilliant retort to a question that another successful boy, trying to meet the sanctioned standard of modesty, might not have been able to handle with such dispatch. No, nothing could now undo Sandy, not with those muscles and that sun-bleached hair and the abundance of pig he'd stashed away without asking permission of anyone.

"And what was it like," the rabbi asked, "to work there in the Kentucky fields under the burning sun?" He said "wuhk" for "work" and "buhning" for "burning" and "theyuh" for "there," and pronounced "Kentucky" as it was spelled and not, as Sandy now did, as though the first three letters were K-i-n.

"I learned a lot, sir. I learned a lot about my country."

Aunt Evelyn visibly approved, as well she might have, since on the phone the evening before she'd fitted him out with the answer to just such a question. Since she had always to be superior to my father, there could be no greater delight than to shape the existence of his older son right in front of his nose.

"You were on a tobacco farm, your aunt Evelyn tells me." "Yes, sir. White burley tobacco."

"Did you know, Sandy, that tobacco was the economic foundation of the first permanent English settlement in America, at Jamestown in Virginia?"

"I didn't," he admitted, but added, "Though I'm not surprised to hear it," and, in a flash, the worst was over.

"Many mishaps beset the Jamestown pioneers," the rabbi told him. "But what saved them from starvation and saved the settlement from extinction was the cultivation of tobacco. Think of it. Without tobacco, the first representative government in the New World would never have met at Jamestown, as it did in 1619. Without tobacco, the Jamestown colony would have collapsed, the colonization of Virginia would have failed, and the First Families of Virginia, whose wealth derived from their tobacco plantations, would themselves have never come to prominence. And when you remember that the First Families of Virginia were the forebears of the Virginia statesmen who were our country's Founding Fathers, you appreciate tobacco's vital importance to the history of our republic."

"You do," Sandy answered.

"I myself," said the rabbi, "was born in the American South. I was born fourteen years after the tragedy of the Civil War. My father as a young man fought for the Confederacy. His father came from Germany to settle in South

Carolina in 1850. He was a peddler. He had a horse with a wagon and he wore a long beard and he sold to the Negroes and to the white people both. Did you ever hear of Judah Benjamin?" the rabbi asked Sandy.

"No, sir." But again he quickly righted himself, this time by replying, "May I ask who he was?"

"Well, he was a Jew and second only to Jefferson Davis in the government of the Confederacy. He was a Jewish lawyer who served Davis as attorney general, as secretary of war, and as secretary of state. Prior to the secession of the South he had served in the U.S. Senate as one of South Carolina's two senators. The cause for which the South went to war was neither legal nor moral in my judgment, yet I have always held Judah Benjamin in the highest regard. A Jew was a rarity in America in those days, in the North no less than the South, but don't think there wasn't anti-Semitism to contend with back then. Nonetheless Judah Benjamin came close to the very pinnacle of political success in the Confederate government. After the war was lost, he moved abroad to become a distinguished lawyer in England."

Here my mother removed herself to the kitchen—purportedly to check on the dinner—and Aunt Evelyn said to Sandy, "Maybe this is a good time for the rabbi to see the drawings you made on the farm."

Sandy got up and carried over to the rabbi's chair the several sketchbooks that he'd filled with drawings during the summer and that he'd been holding in his lap since we'd all gathered in the living room.

The rabbi took one of the books and began slowly turning the pages. "Tell the rabbi a little something about each picture," Aunt Evelyn

suggested.

"That's the barn," Sandy said. "That's where they hang the tobacco

to cure after they harvest it."

"Well, that is a barn, all right, and a beautifully drawn barn. I very much like the pattern of light and dark. You're very talented, Sanford."

"And that's a tobacco plant growing. That's what they look like. See, it's shaped like a triangle. They're big. That one's still got the blossom on top. It's before they top it."

"And this tobacco plant," the rabbi said, turning to a new page, "with the bag on the top—that is something I've never seen before."

"That's how they get the seed. That's a seed plant. They cover the blossom with a paper bag and tie it tight. It keeps the blossom the way they want it."

"Very, very good," the rabbi said. "It isn't easy to draw a plant accurately and still make it into a work of art. Look how you've shadowed the

undersides of the leaves. Very good indeed."

"And that's a plow, of course," Sandy said, "and that's a hoe. That's a hand hoe. To do your weeding with. Though you can also use just your hands."

"And did you weed much?" the rabbi asked teasingly.

"Oh, boy," Sandy said, and Rabbi Bengelsdorf smiled, looking not at all now like a frightening figure. "And that's just the dog," Sandy went on, "Orin's dog. She's sleeping. And that's one of the Negroes, Old Henry, and those are his hands. I thought they had character."

"And who is this?"

"That's Old Henry's brother. That's Clete."

"I like the way you've rendered him. How weary the man looks, slouching like that. I know those Negroes—I grew up with them, and I respect them. And this? Just what would this be?" the rabbi asked. "Here, with the bellows."

"Well, a person's inside. That's how he sprays against tobacco worms. He has to dress like that from head to foot with big gloves and heavy clothes all buttoned up so he doesn't get burned. When he squirts the insecticide out through the bellows he can burn himself with it. It's green, the dust, and when he's finished his clothes are covered with it. I tried to get the look of the dust, I tried to make it lighter where the dust is, but I don't think it came out right."

"Well, I'm sure," said the rabbi, "that it's hard to draw dust," and began to progress a little more rapidly through the remaining pages until he came to the end and closed the book. "Kentucky was an experience that wasn't wasted on you, was it, young man?"

"I loved it," Sandy replied, and my father, who had been silent and unmoving on the sofa since yielding the rabbi his favorite chair, got up and said, "I have to help Bess," the way he might have said, "I'm now going to jump out the window and kill myself."

"The Jews of America," the rabbi told us at dinner, "are unlike any other community of Jews in the history of the world. They have the greatest opportunity accorded to our people in modern times. The Jews of America can participate fully in the national life of their country. They need no longer dwell apart, a pariah community separated from the rest. All that is required is the courage that your son Sandy displayed by going on his own into the unknown of Kentucky to work for the summer as a farm hand there. I believe that Sandy and the other Jewish boys like him in the Just Folks program should serve as models not only for every Jewish child growing up in this country but for every Jewish adult. And this is not merely a dream of mine; it is the dream of President

Lindbergh."

Our ordeal had suddenly taken the worst possible turn. I'd not

forgotten how in Washington my father had stood up to the hotel manager and the bullying policeman, and so now that Lindbergh's name had been spoken with deference in his house I thought the moment had come when he would stand up to Bengelsdorf.

But a rabbi was a rabbi, and he didn't.

My mother and Aunt Evelyn served the meal, three courses followed by a marble cake freshly baked in our oven that afternoon. We ate off the "good" dishes with the "good" silverware, and in the dining room no less, where we had our best rug and our best furniture and our best linens and where we ourselves ate only on special occasions. From my side of the table you could see the photographic portraits of the family dead arranged atop the breakfront that was our memorial shrine. Framed there were two grandfathers, our maternal grandmother, a maternal aunt, and two uncles, one of them Uncle Jack, Alvin's father and my father's beloved older brother. In the aftermath of Rabbi Bengelsdorf's invoking Lindbergh's name, I was more confused than ever. A rabbi was a rabbi, but Alvin meanwhile was in a Canadian army hospital in Montreal learning to walk on an artificial left leg after having lost his own left leg battling Hitler, and in my own house—where I was supposed to wear anything except my good clothes—I had to put on my one tie and my one jacket to impress the very rabbi who helped to elect the president whose friend was Hitler. How could I not be confused, when our disgrace and our glory were one and the same? Something essential had been destroyed and lost, we were being coerced to be other than the Americans we were, and yet, by the light of the cut- glass chandelier, amid the weighty, dark-stained suite of dining room furniture, we were eating my mother's pot roast in the company of the first famous visitor we had ever entertained.

To further confound me and make me pay the full price for my thoughts, Bengelsdorf began, all at once, to speak about Alvin, whom he'd learned about from Aunt Evelyn. "I am saddened by the casualty in your family. My heart goes out to all of you. Evelyn tells me that when your nephew is released from the hospital he will come to convalesce with you all. I'm sure you know the mental anguish that such a wound can provoke in someone still in the flower of his youth. It will require all the love and patience you can muster to bring him to where he can again resume a useful life. His story is particularly tragic because there was no necessity whatsoever for his having crossed over to Canada to join their armed forces. Alvin Roth was born a citizen of the United States, and the United States is not at war with anyone, has no intention of going

to war with anyone, and doesn't require the sacrifice of life or limb in warfare from a single one of its young men. Some of us have gone to great lengths to make this so. I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign. But I have been sustained by my abhorrence of war. It is terrible enough that young Alvin should have lost his leg in a battle on the European continent having nothing to do with the security of America or the well-being of Americans. . ."

On he went, more or less repeating what he'd said at Madison Square Garden in support of America's remaining neutral, but my focus now was only on Alvin. He was coming to stay with us? I looked at my mother. She'd told us nothing about it. When would he arrive? Where would he sleep? It was bad enough, as my mother had said in Washington, that we weren't living in a normal country; now we would never again be living in a normal house. A life of even more suffering was taking shape around me, and I wanted to scream "No! Alvin can't stay here—he has only one leg!"

I was so upset that it was a while before I realized that the dining room reign of decorum had ended and my father was no longer allowing himself to be shoved aside. Somehow he had managed at last to overturn the obstacles posed by Bengelsdorf's credentials and by his own insufficiencies; he had ceased being intimidated by the rabbinical grandeur, and, urged on by his irrepressible sense of an impending disaster—and violently irritated by the condescension— he was letting Bengelsdorf have it, pince-nez and all.

"Hitler," I heard him saying, "Hitler is not business as usual, Rabbi! This madman is not making a war from a thousand years ago. He is making a war such as no one has ever seen on this planet. He has conquered Europe. He is at war with Russia. Every night he bombs London into rubble and kills hundreds of innocent British civilians. He is the worst anti-Semite in history. And yet his great friend our president takes him at his word when Hitler tells him that they have an 'understanding.' Hitler had an understanding with the Russians. Did he keep it? He had an understanding with Chamberlain. Did he keep it? Hitler's goal is to conquer the world, and that includes the United States of America. And since everywhere he goes he shoots the Jews, when the time is right he will come and shoot the Jews here. And what will our president do then? Protect us? Defend us? Our president will not lift a finger. That is the understanding that they reached at Iceland, and any adult who thinks otherwise is crazy."

Rabbi Bengelsdorf showed no impatience with my father but listened respectfully, as if in sympathy with at least some of what he was hearing. Only Sandy seemed to be having trouble keeping his feelings to

himself, and when our father referred scornfully to Lindbergh as "our president," he turned to me and made a face that revealed how far he'd spun out of the family orbit merely by making the ordinary American's adjustment to the new administration. My mother was seated to my father's right and, when he had finished, gripped his hand in hers, though to communicate how proud she was of him or to signal him to be still wasn't clear. As for Aunt Evelyn, she took all her cues from the rabbi, concealing her thoughts behind a mask of benign sufferance while her shallow brother-in-law dared to oppose with his piddling vocabulary a scholar who could talk in ten languages.

Bengelsdorf did not immediately respond but instead created a portentous interval in which quietly to insert his rejoinder: "I was at the White House talking to the president just yesterday morning." Here he sipped from his glass of water, allowing time for us to regain self-possession. "I was congratulating him," he continued, "on the significant inroad he had made into allaying the Jewish suspiciousness that dated back to his trips to Germany in the late thirties, when he was secretly taking the measure of the German air force for the U.S. government. I informed him that any number of my own congregants who had voted for Roosevelt were now his strong supporters, grateful that he had established our neutrality and spared our country the agonies of yet another great war. I told him that Just Folks and programs like it were beginning to convince the Jews of America that he is anything but their enemy. Admittedly, before his becoming president he at times made public statements grounded in anti-Semitic cliches. But he spoke from ignorance then, and admits as much today. I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America. This is not an evil man, not in any way. This is a man of enormous native intelligence and great probity who is rightly celebrated for his personal courage and who wants now to enlist my aid to help him raze those barriers of ignorance that continue to separate Christian from Jew and Jew from Christian. Because there is ignorance as well among Jews, unfortunately, many of whom persist in thinking of President Lindbergh as an American Hitler when they know full well that he is not a dictator who attained power in a putsch but a democratic leader who came to office through a landslide victory in a fair and free election and who has exhibited not a single inclination toward authoritarian rule. He does not glorify the state at the expense of the individual but, to the contrary, encourages entrepreneurial individualism and a free enterprise system unencumbered by interference from the federal government. Where is the fascist statism? Where is the fascist thuggery? Where are the Nazi Brown Shirts and the secret police?

When have you observed a single manifestation of fascist anti-Semitism emanating from our government? What Hitler perpetrated on Germany's Jews with the passage in 1935 of the Nuremberg Laws is the absolute antithesis of what President Lindbergh has undertaken to do for America's Jews through the establishment of the Office of American Absorption. The Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of their civil rights and did everything to exclude them from membership in their nation. What I have encouraged President Lindbergh to do is to initiate programs inviting Jews to enter as far into the national life as they like—a national life that I'm sure you would agree is no less ours to enjoy than anyone else's."

A pouring forth of sentences as informed as these had never before occurred at our dining table or probably anywhere on our block, and it was startling then—when the rabbi concluded by inquiring rather gently, even intimately, "Tell me, Herman, does what I've explained begin to address your fears?"—to hear my father respond flatly, "No. No. Not for a moment." And then, heedless of rendering an affront that would not only arouse the rabbi's displeasure but insult his dignity and provoke his vindictive contempt, my father added, "Hearing a person like you talk like that—frankly, it alarms me even more."

The following evening Aunt Evelyn phoned and bubblingly informed us that out of the one hundred New Jersey boys who'd gone west that summer under the sponsorship of Just Folks, Sandy had been selected as the statewide "recruiting officer" to speak as a veteran to eligible Jewish youngsters and their families about the OAA program's many benefits and to encourage them to apply. Thus did the rabbi extract his revenge. Our father's older son was now an honorary member of the new administration.

It was shortly after Sandy began spending his afternoons downtown at Aunt Evelyn's OAA office that my mother put on her best suit—the tailored gray jacket and skirt with the pale pinstripe that she wore to preside over PTA meetings and as a poll watcher in the school basement at election time—and went off to look for a job. At dinner she announced that she had found work selling ladies' dresses at Hahne's, a big downtown department store. She had been hired early as holiday help to work six days a week and Wednesday evenings, but as she was an experienced office secretary she harbored the hope that over the coming weeks a job might open up on the store's administrative floor and she would be retained after Christmas as a permanent employee. She explained to Sandy and me that her paycheck would contribute toward meeting

the larger household bills occasioned by Alvin's return while her real intention (known to no one other than her husband) was to deposit her paychecks by mail into a Montreal bank account in case we had to flee and start from scratch in Canada.

My mother was gone, my brother was gone, and Alvin would soon be on his way home. My father had driven to Montreal to visit him in the army hospital there. One Friday morning, hours before Sandy and I got up for school, my mother made his breakfast, filled his thermos, packed food—three paper bags marked with Sandy's shading crayon, L for lunch, S for snack, D for dinner

—and away he headed for the international border three hundred and fifty miles to the north. Since his boss could give him only the Friday off, he'd have to drive all that day to see Alvin on Saturday and then drive all day Sunday to be back for the morning staff meeting on Monday. He had a flat tire going and two more coming home and to make it to his meeting had to bypass us and drive from the highway directly downtown. By the time we saw him at dinner he'd been sleepless for over a day and without a proper wash for longer than that. Alvin, he told us, looked like a corpse, his weight down to something around a hundred pounds. Hearing this, I wondered how much the leg weighed that he'd lost, and that evening, without success, tried to weigh mine on the bathroom scale. "He's got no appetite," my father said. "They put food in front of him and he pushes it away. That boy, tough as he is, doesn't want to live, doesn't want anything except to lie there emaciated with that terrible grim face. I said, 'Alvin, I've known you since you were born. You're a fighter. You don't give up. You've got your father's strength. Your father could take the hardest blow and still keep going. So could your mother.' I told him, 'When your father died, the woman had to bounce back

—she had no choice, she had you.' But I don't know what sunk in. I hope something," he said, his voice growing husky, "because while I was there, with all those sick boys in those beds all around me, while I was sitting beside his bed in that hospital—" and that was as far as he got. It was the first time I saw my father cry. A childhood milestone, when another's tears are more unbearable than one's own.

"It's because you're so tired," my mother said to him. She got up from her chair and, trying to calm him, came around and began to stroke his head. "When you finish eating," she said, "you'll take a shower and go right to bed."

Pressing his skull firmly back into the grip of her hand, he started to

sob uncontrollably. "They blew his leg off," he told her, and here my mother motioned for Sandy and me to leave her to comfort him alone.

A new life began for me. I'd watched my father fall apart, and I

would never return to the same childhood. The mother at home was now away all day working for Hahne's, the brother on call was now off after school working for Lindbergh, and the father who'd defiantly serenaded all those callow cafeteria anti-Semites in Washington was crying aloud with his mouth wide open

—crying like both a baby abandoned and a man being tortured—because he was powerless to stop the unforeseen. And as Lindbergh's election couldn't have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as "History," harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.

As I was on my own, I began to spend all my after-school hours with Earl Axman, my stamp mentor, and not just to pore over his collection with my magnifying glass or to look through his mother's bureau at her puzzling array of undergarments. Since my homework took no time and my only other chore was setting the table for dinner, I was now wholly available for mischief. And since, in the afternoons, Earl's mother seemed always to be off at the beauty parlor or over in New York shopping, Earl was free to provide it. He was nearly two years older than I, and because his glamorous parents were divorced—and because they were glamorous—he seemed never to have bothered being a model child. Of late, increasingly irritated by being one myself, I'd taken to mumbling in my bed, "Now let's do something awful," the suggestion with which Earl alternately thrilled and unnerved me whenever he got tired of what we were up to. Adventurousness was bound to assert its appeal sooner or later, but disillusioned by a sense that my family was slipping away from me right along with my country, I was ready to learn of the liberties a boy from an exemplary household could take when he stopped working to please everyone with his juvenile purity and discovered the guilty enjoyment of secretly acting on his own.

What I fell into with Earl was following people. He'd been doing it a couple of times a week for months now—traveling downtown alone after school and hanging around bus stops looking for men on their way home from work. When the one he settled on boarded his bus, Earl climbed aboard too, unobtrusively rode with him until he got off, got off right after him, and then from a safe distance followed him home. "Why?" I asked. "To see where they live." "But that's all? That's it?" "That's a lot. I go all over. I even leave Newark. I go anyplace I want. People live everywhere," Earl explained. "How do you get home before your mother?" "That's the trick—to go as far as I can and get back

before she does." The money for the bus fares he readily confessed to stealing from his mother's handbags and then, as gleefully as if he were springing the lock on the vault at Fort Knox, opened wide a bedroom drawer where all kinds of handbags were piled haphazardly atop one another. On the weekends when he went to stay with his father in New York, he stole from the pockets of the suits hanging in his father's closet, and when four or five musicians from the Casa Loma Orchestra came over to his father's apartment to play poker on Sundays, he helpfully piled their overcoats on the bed, then went through their pockets and hid the change in a dirty sock at the bottom of his suitcase. Then he'd nonchalantly saunter into the living room to watch the card game all afternoon and listen to the funny stories they told about playing at the Paramount and the Essex House and the Glen Island Casino. In 1941 the band had just come back from Hollywood, where they'd been in a movie, and so between hands they talked about the stars and what they were like, inside information that Earl passed on to me and that I then repeated to Sandy, who invariably said, "That's bullshit," and warned me not to hang around with Earl Axman. "Your friend," he told me, "knows too much for a little kid." "He's got a great stamp collection." "Yeah, and he's got a mother," Sandy said, "who'll go out with anybody. She goes out with men who aren't even her age." "How do you know?" "Everybody on Summit Avenue knows." "I don't," I said. "Well," he told me, "that's not all you don't know," and, greatly pleased with myself, I thought, "Maybe there's something that you don't know either," but I nervously had to wonder if my best friend's mother wasn't what the older boys called "a whore."

It turned out to be far easier than I could have believed getting used to stealing from my mother and father, and easier than I would have thought following people, even though the first few times there wasn't a moment that didn't stun me, beginning with being downtown unwatched at three-thirty in the afternoon. Sometimes we'd go all the way to Penn Station to find someone, sometimes to Broad and Market, sometimes up Market to the courthouse to wait at the bus stop and catch our prey there. We never followed women. They didn't interest us, Earl said. We never followed anybody we thought was Jewish. They didn't interest us. Our curiosity was directed at men, the adult Christian men who worked all day in downtown Newark. Where did they go when they went home?

My apprehension was at its worst when we stepped up into the bus and paid. The fare money was stolen, we were where we shouldn't be, and where we were headed we had no idea—and by the time we got to wherever that was, I was too dizzy with emotion to understand what Earl told me when he whispered the name of the neighborhood into my ear. I was lost, a lost boy—that's what I pretended. What will I eat? Where will I sleep? Will dogs attack me? Will I be

arrested and thrown in jail? Will some Christian take me in and adopt me? Or will I wind up being kidnapped like the Lindbergh child? I pretended either that I was lost in some far-off region unknown to me or that, with Lindbergh's connivance, Hitler had invaded America and Earl and I were fleeing the Nazis.

And all the while I assailed myself with my fears, we were surreptitiously turning corners and crossing streets and crouching behind trees to stay out of sight until the climactic moment when the man we were following reached his home and we watched him open the door and go in. Then we would stand off at a distance and look at the house—its door once again shut—and Earl would say something like, "That lawn's really big," or "Summer's over—why are there screens up?" or "See in the garage? That's the new Pontiac." And then, because trying to sneak up to the windows to peer in unobserved exceeded even Earl Axman's Peeping Jewism, he'd lead us back to the bus that would return us to Penn Station. Often at that hour, with everyone busy leaving work, the bus headed back downtown would be empty of passengers other than us, and so it was as though the driver were a chauffeur and the Public Service bus our private limousine and the two of us the most daring two boys alive. Earl was an extremely well-fed, white-skinned ten-year-old, already a bit of a vat, with full babyish cheeks and long dark lashes and tight black ringlets perfumed with his father's hair oil, and if the bus was empty, he would stretch himself out on the long rear seat in a pashalike posture perfectly embodying his swaggering mood, while sitting up beside him, lean and bony, I sported the half-ashamed little sidekick's smile of sublimity.

From Penn Station we'd catch the 14 home, taking our fourth bold bus ride of the afternoon. At dinner I'd think, "I followed a Christian, and nobody knows. I could have been kidnapped, and nobody knows. Using the money we've got between us, we could've, if we'd wanted. . ." and would sometimes all but give myself away to my sharp-eyed mother because beneath the kitchen table (and exactly like Earl when he was cooking up something) I couldn't stop jiggling my knee. And night after night I went to sleep under the exciting spell of the great new aim I'd unearthed for my eight-year-old life: to escape it. When at school I heard a bus through the open window climbing the Chancellor Avenue hill, all I could think about was being on board; the whole of the outside world had become a bus the way for a boy in South Dakota it was a pony—the pony that carries him to the limits of permissible flight.

I joined Earl as apprentice liar and thief in late October and, with no dwindling of the sense of momentousness, our secret jaunts continued as the weather grew colder in November and then on into December, when the Christmas decorations went up downtown and there was an excess of men to

choose from at just about every bus stop. Christmas trees were for sale right on the downtown sidewalks, something I'd never seen before, and selling the trees for a buck apiece were kids who looked to be either hardship cases or toughs recently released from reform school. Money changing hands like that out in the open struck me at first as against the law and yet nobody appeared concerned with concealing the transaction. There were cops in profusion, cops with nightsticks walking the beat in their large blue overcoats, but they looked happy enough and seemed to be in on it—in on Christmas, that is. Big wind-driven blizzards had been whipping in twice a week since just after Thanksgiving, and so to either side of the freshly cleared streets grimy hillocks of snow were already banked as high as a car.

Unimpeded by the late-afternoon throngs, the vendors wrested one tree free from the others, carried it a ways onto the busy sidewalk, and propped it on its sawed-off trunk to be sized up by the customer. It was strange to see trees grown by some tree farmer miles from the city massed along the wrought-iron railings out front of the city's oldest churches and leaning in piles against the facades of the imposing banks and insurance buildings, and strange too, on a downtown street, to breathe in their rustic tang. There were no trees for sale in our neighborhood—because there was no one to buy them—and so the month of December, if it smelled at all, smelled of something a hissing alley cat had tugged from an overturned garbage can in somebody's yard, and of supper heating on the stove of a flat whose steamy kitchen window was open a crack to let in air from the alleyway, and of the bursts of noxious coal gas spewed from the furnace chimneys, and of the pail of ashes dragged up from the cellar to be emptied outdoors over slippery patches of sidewalk. Compared with the fragrances of North Jersey's damp spring and swampy summer and unsettled, moody fall, the smells of a bitter-cold winter were almost unnoticeable—or so I was convinced until I traveled downtown with Earl and saw the trees and took a whiff and discovered that, as with many things, for Christians December was otherwise. What with all of downtown strung with thousands of bulbs and the carolers singing and the Salvation Army band reveling and on every street corner another Santa Claus laughing, it was the month of the year when the heart of my birthplace was sublimely theirs and theirs alone. In Military Park there was a decorated Christmas tree forty feet tall, and from the face of the Public Service building hung a giant metal Christmas tree, illuminated by floodlights, that the Newark News said was eighty feet tall, while I was barely four and a half feet tall.

My final trip with Earl occurred one afternoon a few days before our

Christmas vacation when we boarded the Linden bus behind a man who was

carrying in either hand a department store shopping bag stuffed with gifts and decorated for the season in red and green; just ten days later Mrs. Axman would suffer a nervous breakdown and be taken away in an ambulance in the middle of the night, and soon after that, on New Year's Day 1942, Earl would be whisked off by his father, stamp collection and all. A mover's truck showed up later in January and, while I watched, took all the household furnishings away, including the bureau with Earl's mother's underwear, and no one on Summit Avenue saw the Axmans again.

Because the cold winter twilight now descended so quickly, following people home from the bus made us feel all the more satisfied with ourselves, as though we were about our business long after midnight, when other kids had been asleep for hours. The man with the shopping bags stayed on the bus past the Hillside line and over into Elizabeth and got off just past the big cemetery, not far from the corner where my mother had grown up, above her father's grocery store. We got off after him quietly enough, the two of us looking indistinguishable from a thousand other local schoolkids in the standard-issue winter camouflage of hooded mackinaw and thick woolen mittens and shapeless corduroy trousers tucked into ill-fitting rubber galoshes with half of their maddening toggles undone. But because we imagined ourselves more concealed than we were by the deepening shadows, or because our adroitness was losing its power to time, we must have tailed him less skillfully than we were practiced at doing, and thus compromised "the invincible duo," as Earl had vaingloriously dubbed the pair of Christian-trackers we'd become.

There were two long blocks to traverse, both of them lined with stately brick houses bright with Christmas lights that Earl identified in a whisper as "millionaires' mansions"; then there were two shorter blocks of much smaller, modest frame houses of the kind that by then we'd seen by the hundreds on the streets that we'd traveled, each with a Christmas wreath on the door. On the second of the two blocks the man turned onto a narrow brick pathway that curved up to a low shoebox of a shingled house that poked up prettily out of the banked snow like the edible adornment on a big frosted cake. Lamps were burning dimly upstairs and down, and the Christmas tree could be seen twinkling through one of the windows to the side of the front door. While the man set down his shopping bags to get his key out, we drew closer and closer to the undulating white lawn until, through the window, we were able to discern the ornaments decorating the tree.

"Look," Earl whispered. "See the top? At the very top of the tree— see that? It's Jesus!"

"No, it's an angel."

"What do you think Jesus is?"

I whispered back, "I thought he was their God." "And chief of the angels—and there he is!"

This then was the culmination of our quest—Jesus Christ, who by their reasoning was everything and who by my reasoning had fucked everything up: because if it weren't for Christ there wouldn't be Christians, and if it weren't for Christians there wouldn't be anti-Semitism, and if it weren't for anti- Semitism there wouldn't be Hitler, and if it weren't for Hitler Lindbergh would never be president, and if Lindbergh weren't president. . .

Suddenly the man we'd followed, standing now in the open doorway with his shopping bags, twirled around and softly, as though exhaling a smoke ring, called, "Boys."

So flabbergasted were we by being caught that I, for one, felt summoned to step forward onto the path leading up to the house and, like the model child I'd been two months before, clear my conscience by telling him my name. Only Earl's arm held me back.

"Boys, don't hide. You don't have to," the man said. "What now?" I whispered to Earl.

"Shhhhhh," he whispered back.

"Boys, I know you're there. Boys, it's getting awfully dark," he warned in a friendly voice. "Aren't you freezing out there? Wouldn't you like a nice cup of cocoa? Inside now, children, quickly inside now before it snows. There's hot cocoa, and I have spice cake and I have seed cake and gingerbread men, I have animal crackers frosted in all different colors, and there are marshmallows—there are marshmallows, boys, marshmallows in the cupboard that we can toast over a fire."

When I again looked at Earl to find out what to do, he was already on his way back to Newark. "Run for it," he shouted at me over his shoulder, "beat it, Phil—it's a fairy!"

4

January 1942–February 1942

The Stump

ALVIN WAS DISCHARGED in January 1942, after forsaking first the wheelchair and then the crutches and, over the course of a long hospital rehabilitation, having been trained by the Canadian army nurses to walk unassisted on his artificial limb. He would be receiving a monthly disability pension from the Canadian government of a hundred and twenty-five dollars, a little more than half of what my father earned each month from the Metropolitan, and an additional three hundred dollars in separation pay. As a handicapped veteran he was eligible for further benefits should he choose to remain in Canada, where foreign volunteers into the Canadian armed forces, if they wished, were granted citizenship immediately upon discharge. And why didn't he become a Canuck? asked Uncle Monty. Since he couldn't stand America anyway, why didn't he just stay up there and cash in?

Monty was the most overbearing of my uncles, which probably accounted for why he was also the richest. He'd made his fortune wholesaling fruit and vegetables down near the railroad tracks at the Miller Street market. Alvin's father, Uncle Jack, had begun the business and taken in Monty, and after Uncle Jack died Monty had taken in his youngest brother, my uncle Herbie; when he invited my father in as well—back when my parents were penniless newlyweds—my father said no, having already been sufficiently bullied by Monty while they were growing up. My father could keep pace with Monty's prodigious expenditure of energy, and his capacity to endure all manner of hardship was no less remarkable than Monty's, but he knew from the clashes of boyhood that he was no match for the innovator who'd first gambled on bringing ripe tomatoes to Newark in the wintertime by buying up carloads of green tomatoes from Cuba and ripening them in specially heated rooms on the creaky second floor of his Miller Street warehouse. When they were ready, Monty packed them four to a box, got top dollar, and was known thereafter as the Tomato King.

While we remained rent-paying tenants in a five-room second-story flat in Newark the uncles in the wholesale produce business lived in the Jewish section of suburban Maplewood, where each owned a large, white, shuttered Colonial with a green lawn out front and a polished Cadillac in the garage. For

good or bad, the exalted egoism of an Abe Steinheim or an Uncle Monty or a Rabbi Bengelsdorf—conspicuously dynamic Jews all seemingly propelled by their embattled status as the offspring of greenhorns to play the biggest role that they could commandeer as American men—was not in the makeup of my father, nor was there the slightest longing for supremacy, and so though personal pride was a driving force and his blend of fortitude and combativeness was heavily fueled, like theirs, by the grievances attending his origins as an impoverished kid other kids called a kike, it was enough for him to make something (rather than everything) of himself and to do so without wrecking the lives around him. My father was born to contend but also to protect, and to inflict damage on an enemy didn't make his spirits soar as it did his older brother's (not to mention all the rest of the brutal entrepreneurial machers). There were the bosses and there were the bossed, and the bosses usually were bosses for a reason—and in business for themselves for a reason, whether the business was construction or produce or the rabbinate or the rackets. It was the best they could come up with to remain unobstructed—and, in their own eyes, unhumiliated—not least by the discrimination of the Protestant hierarchy that kept ninety-nine percent of the Jews employed by the dominant corporations uncomplainingly in their place.

"If Jack was alive," Monty said, "the kid wouldn't have got out the front door. You should never have let him go, Herm. He runs away to Canada to become a war hero and this is where it lands him, a goddamn gimp for the rest of his life." It was the Sunday before the Saturday of Alvin's return, and Uncle Monty, wearing clean clothes instead of the badly stained windbreaker and splattered old pants and filthy cloth cap that were his usual market attire, was leaning against our kitchen sink, a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. My mother was not present. She had excused herself, as she generally did when Monty was around, but I was a small boy and mesmerized by him, as though he were indeed the gorilla that she privately called him when her exasperation with his coarseness got the upper hand.

"Alvin can't bear your president," my father replied, "that's why he went to Canada. Not so long ago you couldn't bear the man either. But now this anti-Semite is your friend. The Depression is over, all you rich Jews tell me, and thanks not to Roosevelt but to Mr. Lindbergh. The stock market is up, profits are up, business is booming—and why? Because we have Lindbergh's peace instead of Roosevelt's war. And what else matters, what besides money counts with you people?" "You sound like Alvin, Herman. You sound like a kid. What counts besides money? Your two boys count. You want Sandy to come home one day like Alvin? You want Phil," he said, looking over to where I sat listening at the kitchen table, "to come home one day like Alvin? We're out of the war, and we're

staying out of the war. Lindbergh's done me no harm that I can see." I expected my father to respond "Just you wait," but probably because I was there and frightened enough already, he didn't.

As soon as Monty left, my father told me, "Your uncle doesn't use his head. Coming home like Alvin—that's not something that's going to happen." "But what if Roosevelt is president again? Then there would be a war," I said. "Maybe and maybe not," my father replied, "nobody can predict that in advance." "But if there was a war," I said, "and if Sandy was old enough, then he would be drafted to fight in the war. And if he fought in the war, then what happened to Alvin could happen to him." "Son, anything can happen to anyone," my father told me, "but it usually doesn't." "Except when it does," I thought, but I didn't dare to say as much because he was already upset by my questions and might not even know how to answer if I kept on going. Since what Uncle Monty said to him about Lindbergh was exactly what Rabbi Bengelsdorf had told him

—and also what Sandy was secretly saying to me—I began to wonder if my father knew what he was talking about.

It was close to a year after Lindbergh took office that Alvin returned to Newark on an overnight train from Montreal, accompanied by a Canadian Red Cross nurse and missing half of one of the legs that he'd left with. We drove downtown to Penn Station to meet him as we did to meet Sandy the summer before, only this time Sandy was with us. A few weeks earlier, in the interest of family harmony, I had been allowed to go off with Aunt Evelyn and him to sit in the audience and listen as he impressed the congregation of a synagogue some forty miles south of Newark, in New Brunswick, encouraging them to enroll their children in Just Folks with stories of his Kentucky adventure and an exhibition of his drawings. My parents had made it clear to me that Sandy's job with Just Folks was something I needn't mention to Alvin; they'd themselves explain everything, but only after Alvin had a chance to get used to being home and could better understand how America had changed since he'd gone to Canada. It was a matter not of hiding anything from Alvin or of lying to him but of protecting him from whatever could interfere with his recovery.

The Montreal train was late that morning, and to pass the time—and because the political situation was with him now every moment of the day—my father had bought a copy of the Daily News. Seated on a bench at Penn Station, he scanned the paper, a right-wing New York tabloid that he unfailingly referred to as a "rag," while the rest of us paced the platform, anxiously waiting for the next phase of our new life to begin. When the PA system announced that the

Montreal train would be arriving even later than expected, my mother, linking arms with Sandy and me, walked us back to the bench to wait there together. My father had meanwhile finished as much of the Daily News as he could bear and thrown it into a trash basket. Since ours was a household where nickels and dimes mattered, I was as perplexed to see him discard the paper only minutes after buying it as I'd been to see him reading it in the first place. "Can you believe these people?" he said. "This fascist dog is still their hero." What he didn't say was that by making good on his campaign promise to keep America out of the worldwide war, the fascist dog had by now become the hero of virtually every paper in the country with the exception of PM.

"Well," said my mother as the train finally entered the station and began to pull to a stop, "here comes your cousin."

"What should we do?" I asked her, as she prompted us onto our feet and the four of us stepped toward the platform's edge.

"Say hello. It's Alvin. Welcome him home." "What about his leg?" I whispered.

"What about it, dear?" I shrugged.

Here my father took me by the shoulders. "Don't be afraid," he said to me. "Don't be afraid of Alvin and don't be afraid of his leg. Let him see how you've grown up."

It was Sandy who broke away from us and went racing toward the car that had come to a halt a couple of hundred feet down the track. Alvin was being pushed from the train in a wheelchair by a woman in a Red Cross uniform while the person who was barreling down on him shouting his name was the only one of us who'd been won over to the other side. I didn't know any longer what to make of my brother, but then I didn't know what to make of myself, so busy was I trying to remember to conceal everyone's secrets while doing my best to suppress my fears and trying not to stop believing in my father as well as in the Democrats and FDR and whoever else could keep me from teaming up with the rest of the country in adoring President Lindbergh.

"You're back!" Sandy cried. "You're home!" And then I watched as my brother, who'd only just turned fourteen but was as strong now as a young man of twenty, dropped to his knees on the platform's concrete floor, the better to be able to throw his arms around Alvin's neck. My mother began crying then, and my father quickly took me by the hand, either to try to prevent me from going to pieces or to protect himself from his own chaos of feelings.

I thought it must be my job to run to Alvin next, and so I pulled away from my parents and broke for the wheelchair and, once there, imitating

Sandy, threw my arms around him, only to discover how rotten he smelled. I thought at first that the smell must be coming from his leg, but it was coming from his mouth. I held my breath and shut my eyes and only released my hold on Alvin when I felt him lean forward in the chair to shake my father's hand. I noticed then the wooden crutches strapped to one side of the wheelchair, and for the first time dared to look straight at him. I'd never before seen anyone so skeletal or so dejected. His eyes showed no fear, however, or any trace of weeping, and they surveyed my father with ferocity, as though it were the guardian who had committed the unpardonable act that had rendered the ward a cripple.

home."

"Herman," he said, but that was all.

"You're here," my father said, "you're home. We're taking you

Then my mother bent forward to kiss him. "Aunt Bess," Alvin said.

The left trouser leg dropped straight down from the knee, a sight

generally familiar to adults but one that startled me, even though I already knew of a man with no legs at all, a man who began at the hips and was himself no more than a stump. I had seen him before, begging on the sidewalk outside my father's downtown office, but overwhelmed as I was by the colossal freakishness, I'd never had to think much about it since there was never any danger of his coming to live in our house. He did best with his begging in baseball season when, as the men working there left the building at the end of the day, he would run through the afternoon's final scores in his incongruously deep, declamatory voice, and each of them would drop a couple of coins into the battered laundry pail that was his alms box. He moved about on—appeared, in fact, to live on—a small platform of plywood fitted beneath with roller skates. Aside from my remembering the heavy, weatherbeaten work gloves he wore all year round—to protect the hands that were his means of ambulation—I'm unable to describe the rest of his outfit because the fear of gaping merged with the terror of seeing to prevent me from ever looking long enough to register what he wore. That he dressed at all seemed as miraculous as that he was somehow able to urinate and defecate, let alone remember the ball scores. Whenever I came along to the empty insurance office on a Saturday morning with my father—largely for the delight of twirling in his desk chair while he attended to the week's mail—he and the stump of a man would always greet each other with a friendly nod. I discovered then that the grotesque injustice of a man's being halved had not merely happened, which was incomprehensible enough, but happened to someone called Robert, as commonplace as a male name could be and six letters

long, like my own. "How you doin', Little Robert?" my father said as we two passed together into the building. "How you, Herman?" Little Robert would reply. Eventually I asked my father, "Does he have a last name?" "Do you?" my father asked me. "Yes." "Well, so does he." "What is it? Little Robert what?" I asked. My father thought a moment, then laughed and said, "To tell you the truth, son, I don't know."

From the moment I found out that Alvin was returning to Newark to convalesce in our house, I would involuntarily envision Robert on his platform and wearing his work gloves whenever I lay stiffly in the dark trying to force myself asleep: first my stamps covered with swastikas, then Little Robert, the living stump.

"I thought you'd be up on the leg they gave you. I thought they couldn't discharge you otherwise," I heard my father saying to Alvin. "What's happened?"

down."

Without bothering to look at him, Alvin snapped, "Stump broke

"What's that mean?" my father asked. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"Does he have luggage?" my father asked the nurse.

But before she could answer, Alvin said, "Sure I got luggage. Where

do you think my leg is?"

Sandy and I were headed for the baggage counter on the main concourse with Alvin and his nurse while my father hurried off to get the car from the Raymond Boulevard lot, accompanied by my mother, who went along with him at the last minute, more than likely to talk over all they hadn't anticipated about Alvin's mental state. Out on the platform, the nurse had summoned a redcap, and together they helped Alvin to a standing position and then the redcap took charge of the wheelchair while the nurse walked at Alvin's side as he hopped to the head of the escalator. There she took up her place as a human shield, and he hopped after her, clutching the moving banister as the escalator descended. Sandy and I stood at Alvin's back, out of range at last of his unfragrant breath—and where Sandy instinctively braced himself to catch him should Alvin lose his balance. The redcap, carrying upside down and over his head the wheelchair with the crutches still strapped to one side, took the stairs parallel to the escalator and was already on the main concourse to greet us when Alvin hopped from the escalator and we stepped off behind him. The redcap placed the wheelchair right side up on the concourse floor and firmly positioned it for Alvin to sit back down, but

Alvin turned on his one foot and began to hop vigorously away, leaving his nurse—to whom he'd said neither thank you nor goodbye—to watch him speed off along the crowded marble floor in the direction of the baggage room.

"Can't he fall?" Sandy asked the nurse. "He's going so fast. What if he slips and falls?"

"Him?" the nurse replied. "That boy can hop anywhere. That boy can hop a very long way. He won't fall. He's the world-champion hopper. He'd have been happier to hop from Montreal than to have me helping him down here by train." She then confided to us, two protected children entirely ignorant of the bitterness of loss, "I've seen 'em angry before," she said, "I've seen the ones without any limbs angry, but nobody before ever angry like him."

"Angry at what?" Sandy asked anxiously.

She was a strapping woman with stern gray eyes and hair short as a soldier's under her gray Red Cross cap, but it was in the softest maternal tones, with a gentleness that came as yet another of the day's surprises, as though Sandy were one of her very own charges, that she explained, "At what people get angry at—at how things turn out."

My mother and I had to take the bus home because there wasn't enough room in the little family Studebaker. Alvin's wheelchair went into the trunk, though as it was the old unwieldy uncollapsible type, the lid of the trunk had to be tied shut with heavy twine to accommodate it. His canvas overseas bag (with the artificial leg somewhere inside) was stuffed so full that Sandy was unable to lift it even with my help, and we had to drag it across the concourse floor and through the door to the street; there my father took charge and he and Sandy laid it flat out across the back seat. Practically doubled over at the waist, Sandy was perched atop the bag for the ride home, Alvin's crutches straddling his lap. The crutches' rubber-capped tips protruded from one of the rear side-windows, and my father tied his pocket handkerchief around the ends to warn off other drivers. My father and Alvin rode up front, and I was unhappily preparing to squeeze between them just to the right of the floor shift when my mother said she wanted my company on the ride home. What she wanted, it turned out, was to prevent me from having to witness any more of the misery.

"It's okay," she said as we headed around the corner for the underpass where the line formed for the 14 bus. "It's perfectly natural to be upset. We all are."

I denied being in any way upset but found myself looking around the bus stop for somebody to follow. Easily a dozen different routes started out

from this one Penn Station stop, and it happened that a Vailsburg bus bound for distant North Newark was taking on passengers at the very moment that my mother and I stood at the curbside of the underpass waiting for a 14 to show up. I spotted just the man to follow, a businessman with a briefcase who seemed to me

—with my admittedly imperfect grasp of the telling characteristics that Earl was so masterfully attuned to—not to be Jewish. Yet I could only look with longing as the bus door closed behind him and he rode off without my spying on him from a nearby seat.

Once we were alone together on the bus, my mother said, "Tell me what's bothering you."

When I didn't reply she began to explain Alvin's behavior at the train station. "Alvin is ashamed. He feels ashamed for us to be seeing him in a wheelchair. When he left he was strong and independent. Now he wants to hide and he wants to scream and he wants to lash out, and it's terrible for him. And it's terrible too for a boy like you to have to see your big cousin like this. But that's all going to change. Just as soon as he understands that there's nothing about the way he looks or about what happened for him to be ashamed of, he's going to gain back the weight he lost, and he'll start to walk everywhere on his artificial leg, and he's going to look just as you remember him before he left for Canada. .

.Does that help any? Does what I'm telling you reassure you at all?"

"I don't need to be reassured," I said, but what I wanted to ask was: "His stump—what does it mean that it's broken down? Do I have to look at it? Will I ever have to touch it? Are they going to fix it?"

On a Saturday a couple of weeks earlier I'd gone into the cellar with my mother and helped her empty the cartons full of Alvin's belongings, rescued by my father from the Wright Street room after Alvin had run off to join the Canadian army. Everything washable my mother scrubbed on the washboard in the divided cellar tub, soaping in one sink, rinsing in the other, and then feeding a piece at a time into the wringer while I cranked the handle to force out the rinse water. I hated that wringer; each piece of wash emerged flattened out from between its two rollers, looking as if it had been run over by a truck, and whenever I was down in the cellar for whatever reason, I was always afraid to turn my back on the thing. But now I steeled myself to drop each wet, deformed item of mangled laundry into the laundry basket and carry the basket upstairs so that my mother could dry everything on the backyard clothesline. I fed her the clothespins as she leaned from the window to hang out the wash, and while she stood in the kitchen after dinner that evening ironing the shirts and pajamas that I had just helped her to reel in, I sat at the kitchen table folding Alvin's underwear and rolling each pair of socks into a ball, determined to make everything turn out

right by being the best little boy imaginable, much, much better than Sandy and better even than myself.

After school the next day, it required two trips for me to carry Alvin's good clothes around the corner to the tailor shop where they did our dry cleaning. Later in the week I picked them up and at home placed everything— topcoat, suit, sport jacket, and two pairs of his pants—on wooden hangers in the half I'd apportioned him of my bedroom closet and stacked the rest of the clean apparel in the top two drawers that had formerly been Sandy's. Since Alvin was going to be sleeping in our bedroom—to provide him with the easiest possible access to the bathroom—Sandy had already gotten himself ready to move to the sun parlor at the front of the flat by arranging his own belongings in the breakfront in the dining room, beside the linen tablecloth and napkins. One evening a few days before Alvin's scheduled return I shined his pair of brown shoes and his pair of black shoes, ignoring as best I could any uncertainty I had as to whether shining all four of them was still necessary. To make those shoes gleam, to get his good clothes clean, to neatly pile the dresser drawers with his freshly washed things—and all of it simply a prayer, an improvised prayer imploring the household gods to protect our humble five rooms and all they contained from the vengeful fury of the missing leg.

I tried to gauge from what I saw beyond the bus window how much time remained before we got to Summit Avenue and it was too late to unseal my fate. We were on Clinton Avenue just passing the Riviera Hotel, where, as I never failed to remember, my mother and father had spent their wedding night. We were clear of downtown, about halfway home, and directly ahead was Temple B'nai Abraham, the great oval fortress built to serve the city's Jewish rich and no less foreign to me than if it had been the Vatican.

"I could move into your bed," my mother said, "if that's what's bothering you. For now, until everybody gets used to everybody else again, I could sleep in your bed next to Alvin's bed and you could go in and sleep with Daddy in our bed. Would that be better?"

I said that I'd rather sleep alone in my own bed.

"What if Sandy moved back from the sun parlor to his bed," my mother suggested, "and Alvin slept in yours and you slept where Sandy was going to sleep, on the daybed in the sun parlor? Would you be lonely up at the front of the house, or is that what you would really prefer?"

Would I prefer it? I'd have loved it. But how possibly could Sandy, who was now working for Lindbergh, share a room with someone who had lost his leg going to war against Lindbergh's Nazi friends?

We were turning onto Clinton Place from the Clinton Avenue stop,

the familiar residential corner where—back before Sandy deserted me for Aunt Evelyn on Saturday afternoons—he and I used to disembark for the double feature at the Roosevelt Theater, whose black-lettered marquee was a block away. Soon the bus would be sailing past the narrow alleyways and the two-and- a-half-family houses lining the level length of Clinton Place—streets that looked much like our own but whose red-brick bank of gabled front stoops aroused not a one of the basic boyhood emotions that ours did—before arriving at the big final turn onto Chancellor Avenue. There the grinding pull up the hill would begin, past the elegant fluted piers of the spiffy new high school, on to the sturdy flagpole out front of my grade school, and through to the crest of the hill, where a band of Lenni Lenapes were said by our third-grade teacher to have lived in a tiny village, cooking their food over hot stones and drawing designs on their pots. This was our destination, the Summit Avenue stop, diagonally across from the platters of freshly dipped chocolates profligately displayed in the lace- trimmed windows of Anna Mae's, the sweetshop that had succeeded the Indians' tepees and whose tantalizing scent honeyed the air less than a two-minute walk from our house.

In other words, the time left to say yes to the sun parlor was precisely measurable and running out, movie theater by movie theater, candy store by candy store, stoop by stoop, and yet all I could say was no, no, I'll be fine where I am, until my mother had nothing soothing left to suggest and, despite herself, went gloomily silent in a very ominous, undisguised way, as though the eventfulness of the morning was at last working her over the way it had me. Meanwhile, since I didn't know how long I could go on concealing that I couldn't bear Alvin because of his missing limb and his empty trouser leg and his awful smell and his wheelchair and his crutches and the way he wouldn't look up at any of us when he talked, I began to pretend that I was following somebody on our bus who didn't look Jewish. It was then that I realized—employing all the criteria imparted to me by Earl—that my mother looked Jewish. Her hair, her nose, her eyes—my mother looked unmistakably Jewish. But then so must I, who so strongly resembled her. I hadn't known.

What made Alvin smell bad was all the decay in his mouth. "You lose your teeth when you've got problems," Dr. Lieberfarb explained after looking around with his little mirror and saying "Uhoh" nineteen times, and that very afternoon he started drilling. He was going to do all that work for nothing because Alvin had volunteered to fight the fascists and because, unlike "the rich Jews" who astonished my father by imagining themselves secure in Lindbergh's America,

Lieberfarb remained undeluded about what "the many Hitlers of this world" might yet have in store for us. Nineteen gold inlays was a big deal, but that's how he showed solidarity with my father, my mother, me, and the Democrats, as opposed to Uncle Monty, Aunt Evelyn, Sandy, and all the Republicans currently enjoying their countrymen's love. Nineteen inlays also took a long time, particularly for a dentist who'd trained in night school while working days packing cargo crates at Port Newark, and whose touch was never that light. Lieberfarb was drilling away for months, but within the first few weeks enough of the rot had been removed so that it was no longer such a trial to be sleeping more or less next to Alvin's mouth. The stump was something else. "Broken down" means that the end of the stump goes bad: it opens up, it cracks, it gets infected. There are boils, sores, edema, and you can't walk on it with the prosthesis and so have to be without it and resort to crutches until it heals and can take the pressure without breaking down again. At fault was the fit of the artificial leg. The doctors would tell him, "You've lost your fit," but he hadn't lost his fit, he never had a fit, Alvin said, because the legmaker hadn't got the measurements right to begin with.

"How long does it take to heal?" I asked him the night he finally told me what "broken down" meant. Sandy up at the front of the house and my parents in their bedroom had already been asleep for hours, and so too were Alvin and I when he began to shout "Dance! Dance!" and, with a frightening gasp, shot upright in his bed, wide awake. When I flipped on the night lamp and saw him covered with sweat, I got up and opened the bedroom door, and though suddenly covered in sweat myself, I tiptoed across the little back foyer, not to my parents' room, however, to report what had happened, but into the bathroom to get Alvin a towel. He used it to mop his face and his neck, then pulled off his pajama shirt to wipe his chest and his underarms, and now at last I saw what had become of the upper man since the lower man had been blown apart. No wounds, stitches, or disfiguring scars, but no strength either, just the pale skin of a sickly boy adhering to the knobs and ridges of bone.

This was our fourth night together. On the first three nights Alvin had been careful to change into his pajamas in the bathroom and then to hop back to hang his clothes in the closet, and since he used the bathroom again to dress in the mornings, I hadn't as yet had to look at the stump and could pretend I didn't know it was there. At night I turned to the wall and, fatigued by all my worries, fell right off to sleep and remained asleep until sometime in the early hours when Alvin got up and hopped to the bathroom and back to bed. He did all this without turning on the light and I lay there afraid he was going to bang into something and crash to the floor. At night, his every move made me want to run

away, and not merely from the stump. It was on this fourth night, when Alvin had finished drying himself off with the towel and was lying there in just his pajama bottoms, that he pulled up the pajamas' left leg to take a look at the stump. I supposed this was a hopeful sign—that he was starting to be less crazily agitated, at least with me—but I still didn't want to look his way. . .and so I did, trying to be a soldier in my bed. What I saw extending down from his knee joint was something five or six inches long that resembled the elongated head of a featureless animal, something on which Sandy, with just a few well-placed strokes, could have crayoned eyes, a nose, a mouth, teeth, and ears, and turned it into the likeness of a rat. What I saw was what the word "stump" describes: the blunt remnant of something whole that belonged there and once had been there. If you didn't know what a leg looked like, this one might have seemed normal to you, given how the hairless skin was rounded off softly at the abbreviated end as though it were nature's handiwork and not the result of a trying sequence of medical amputations.

"Is it healed?" I asked him. "Not yet."

"How long will it take?" "Forever," he replied.

I was stunned. Then this is endless! I thought.

"Extremely frustrating," Alvin said. "You get on the leg they make for you and the stump breaks down. You get on crutches and it starts to swell up. The stump goes bad whatever you do. Get my bandages from the dresser."

I did as he told me. I was going to have to handle the beige elasticized wrappings he used to prevent his stump from swelling when the artificial leg was off. They were coiled up in a corner of the drawer beside his socks. Each was about three inches wide and had a large safety pin stuck through the end to keep it from unrolling. I no more wanted to plunge my hand into that drawer than to go down to the cellar and stick it into the wringer, but I did, and when I delivered the bandages to the bed, one in each fist, he said, "Good boy," and was able to make me laugh by petting my head like a dog's.

Afraid to see what came next, I sat on my bed and watched.

"You put this bandage on," he explained, "to keep it from blowing up." He held the stump in one hand and with the other undid the safety pin and began to unroll one of the bandages in a crisscrossing pattern over the stump and on up to the knee joint and then several inches beyond that. "You put this bandage on to keep it from blowing up"—he repeated the words wearily, with exaggerated patience—"but you don't want bandages over the breakdown because that won't let the breakdown heal. So you're just going back and forth

until you're nuts." When he finished unrolling the bandage and inserted the safety pin to fasten the end, he showed me the results. "You have to pull it tight, you see?" He began a similar routine with the second bandage. The stump— when he was through with it—again reminded me of a small animal, this time one whose head had to be muzzled extra carefully to prevent it from sinking its razor-sharp teeth into the hand of its captor.

"How do you learn that?" I asked him.

"You don't have to learn. You just put it on. Except," he suddenly announced, "it's too goddamn tight. Maybe you do have to learn. Goddamn son of a bitch! It's either too fucking loose or too fucking tight. It makes you nuts— the whole goddamn thing." He removed the safety pin that fastened the second bandage and then undid both bandages in order to start again. "You can see," he told me, struggling now to suppress disgust with the futility of everything, "how good at doing this you get," and resumed the rewrapping, which, like the healing, appeared destined to go on in our bedroom forever.

The next day when school was over, I ran straight home to a house that I knew would be empty—Alvin was at the dentist, Sandy was off somewhere with Aunt Evelyn, the two of them inexplicably helping Lindbergh achieve his ends, and my parents wouldn't be back from work until suppertime. As Alvin had settled on using the daytime hours to allow the breakdown to heal unbandaged and the nights to wrap the stump to prevent the swelling, I readily found the two bandages in the corner of the top dresser drawer where he'd returned them rolled up that morning. I sat on the edge of my bed, turned up my left trouser leg, and, shocked to realize that what remained of Alvin's leg was not much bigger around than my own, set out to bandage myself. I'd spent the day at school mentally running through what I'd watched him do the night before, but at three-twenty, when I got home, I'd only just started to wrap the first bandage around an imaginary stump of my own when, against the flesh below my knee, I felt what turned out to be a ragged scab from the ulcerated underside of Alvin's stump. The scab must have come loose during the night—Alvin had either ignored it or failed to notice it—and now it was stuck to me and I was out way beyond what I could deal with. Though the heaves began in the bedroom, by racing for the back door and then down the back stairway to the cellar, I managed to position my head over the double sink seconds before the real puking began.

To find myself alone in the dank cavern of the cellar was an ordeal under any circumstances, and not only because of the wringer. With its smudged frieze of mold and mildew running along the cracking whitewashed walls— stains in every hue of the excremental rainbow and seepage blotches that looked

as if they'd leaked from a corpse—the cellar was a ghoulish realm apart, extending beneath the whole of the house and deriving no light at all from the half-dozen slits of grime-clouded glass that looked onto the cement of the alleyways and the weedy front yard. There were several saucer-sized drains sunk into the bottom of a sloping concavity at the middle of the concrete floor. Secured in the mouth of each was a heavy black disc pierced by the concentric dime-sized perforations from which, with no difficulty, I imagined vaporous creatures spiraling malevolently up from the earth's innards into my life. The cellar was a place bereft not just of a sunny window but of every human assurance, and when I came to study Greek and Roman mythology in a freshman high school class and read in the textbook about Hades, Cerberus, and the River Styx, it was always our cellar that I was reminded of. One 30-watt bulb hung over the washtub into which I'd vomited, a second hung in the vicinity of the coal furnaces—ablaze and bulkily aligned together like the three-personed Pluto of our underworld—and another, almost always burned out, was suspended from an electrical cord inside each of the storage bins.

I could never accept that the wintertime responsibility would fall to me for shoveling coal into our family's furnace first thing each morning, then banking the fire before going to bed, and once a day carrying a pailful of cold ashes out to the ashcan in the backyard. Sandy had by now grown strong enough to take over from my father, and in a few more years, when he went off like every other eighteen-year-old American boy to receive his twenty-four months of military training in President Lindbergh's new citizen Army, I would inherit the job and relinquish it only when I too was conscripted. Imagining a future when I'd be in the cellar manning the furnace all alone was, at nine, as upsetting as thinking about the inevitability of dying, which had also begun tormenting me in bed every night.

But I mainly feared the cellar because of those who were already dead—my two grandfathers, my mother's mother, and the aunt and uncle who once constituted Alvin's family. Their bodies may have been interred just off Route 1 on the Newark-Elizabeth line, but in order to patrol our affairs and scrutinize our conduct their ghosts resided two stories beneath our flat. I had little or no recollection of any of them other than of the grandmother who'd died when I was six, and yet whenever I was headed for the cellar by myself, I took care to warn each in turn that I was on my way and to beg them to keep their distance and not to besiege me once I was in their midst. When Sandy was my age he used to arm himself against his brand of fear by barreling down the cellar stairs shouting, "Bad guys, I know you're down there—I've got a gun," while I would descend whispering, "I'm sorry for whatever I did that was wrong."

There was the wringer, the drains, the dead—the ghosts of the dead watching and judging and condemning as I vomited into the double sink where my mother and I had washed Alvin's clothes—and there were the alley cats who would disappear into the cellar when the outside back door was left ajar and then yowl from wherever in the dark they were crouched, and there was the agonized cough of our downstairs neighbor Mr. Wishnow, a cough that sounded from the cellar as though he were being ripped apart by the teeth of a two-man saw. Like my father, Mr. Wishnow was an insurance agent with the Metropolitan, but for over a year he had been on disability pay, too ill with cancer of the mouth and the throat to do anything but stay at home and listen to the daytime radio serials when he wasn't asleep or uncontrollably coughing. With the blessing of the home office, his wife had taken over for him—the first female insurance agent in the history of the Newark district—and now kept the same long hours as my father, who generally had to go back out after dinner to make his collections and canvassed for prospective customers most every Saturday or Sunday, weekends being the only time when he could hope to find a breadwinner at home to listen to his spiel. Before my mother had herself begun to work as a saleslady at Hahne's, she would stop downstairs a couple of times a day to see how Mr. Wishnow was doing; and now, when Mrs. Wishnow called to say she couldn't be home in time to cook a proper dinner, my mother would prepare a little more of whatever we were eating and Sandy and I, before we were allowed to sit down to our own meal, each carried a warm plateful of food to the first floor on a tray, one for Mr. Wishnow and one for Seldon, the Wishnows' only child. Seldon would open the door for us and we would maneuver our trays through the foyer and into the kitchen, absorbed in trying not to spill anything as we set them on the table where Mr. Wishnow was already waiting, a paper napkin tucked into the top of his pajamas but looking in no way able to feed himself, however desperately in need of nutrition. "You boys all right?" he would ask us in the shredded rag of a voice that was left to him. "How about a joke for me, Phillie? I could use a good joke," he allowed, but without bitterness, without sadness, merely demonstrating the soft, defensive joviality of someone still hanging on for no seeming reason. Seldon must have told his father that I could make the kids laugh at school, and so I would teasingly be asked to tell him a joke when just by his proximity he'd have obliterated my capacity to speak. The best I could do was to try to look at somebody whom I knew to be dying—and, worse, resigned to dying—without allowing my eyes to see in his the gruesome evidence of the bodily misery he was being made to pass through on the way to a spectral life in our cellar with all the other dead. Sometimes, when Mr. Wishnow's supply of medicine had to be refilled at the drugstore, Seldon would

hurry up the stairs to ask if I wanted to go with him, and because I had learned from my parents that Seldon's father was doomed—and because Seldon himself acted as if he knew nothing about it—there was no way I could think of to refuse him, even though I'd never liked being with anyone so nakedly eager to be befriended. Seldon was a child transparently under the sway of his loneliness, undeservedly rich with sorrow and working much too hard to achieve the permanent smile, one of those skinny, pallid, gentle-faced boys who embarrass everyone by throwing a ball like a girl but also the smartest kid in our class and the schoolwide whiz at arithmetic. Oddly, there was nobody in gym class better than Seldon at scrambling up and down the ropes that dangled from the gymnasium's high ceiling, his aerial nimbleness integrally related—according to one of our teachers—to his unchallengeable adroitness with numbers. He was already a little champ at chess, which his father had taught him, and so whenever I accompanied him to the drugstore I knew there was no way to prevent my winding up later at the chessboard in his family's darkened living room—dark to save electricity and dark because the drapes were now drawn all the time to keep the neighborhood's morbidly curious from peering in at Seldon's step-by-step descent into fatherlessness. Undeterred by my stern resistance, Solitary Seldon (as he'd been nicknamed by Earl Axman, whose mother's overnight mental collapse had been a startling parental catastrophe of another order) would try to teach me for the millionth time how to move the pieces and play the game while, behind the back bedroom door, his father coughed so frequently and with so much force that there seemed to be not one father but four, five, six fathers in there coughing themselves to death.

In less than a week it was I and not Alvin who was bandaging his stump, and by then I'd practiced enough on myself—and without again throwing up—that he hadn't once to complain of the bandages being too loose or too tight. I did this nightly—even after the stump had healed and he was walking regularly on the artificial leg—to stave off a resurgence of the swelling. All the while the stump was healing, the artificial leg had been at the back of the clothes closet, largely hidden from sight by the shoes on the floor and by the trousers hanging down from the crossrod. It still took some doing not to notice it, but I was determined and didn't know what it was made of till the day Alvin took it out to put on. Except for its eerily replicating the shape of the lower half of a real lower limb, everything about it was horrible, but horrible and a wonder both, beginning with what Alvin called his harness: the dark leather thigh-corset that laced up the front and extended from just below the buttock to the top of the kneecap and that

was attached to the prosthesis by hinged steel joints on either side of the knee. The stump, with a long white woolen sock pulled over it, fit snugly into a cushioned socket carved into the top of the prosthesis, which was fashioned of hollowed-out wood with air holes punched into it and not, as I'd been imagining, of a length of black rubber resembling a comic-book bludgeon. At the end of the leg was an artificial foot that flexed only a few degrees and was cushioned with a sponge sole. It screwed neatly into the leg without any of the hardware showing, and though it looked more like a wooden shoetree than a living foot with five separate toes, when Alvin slipped into his socks and shoes—the socks washed by my mother, the shoes shined by me—you'd have thought that the feet were both his own.

The first day back on his artificial leg Alvin exercised in the alleyway by walking back and forth from the garage at the far end to the scrawny hedge enclosing the tiny front yard, but never a step farther, to where he could be seen by someone out on the street. The second day he again exercised alone in the morning, but when I got home from school he took me outdoors with him for another session, this time not just concentrating on his walking but pretending that the soundness of his stump and the fit of his prosthesis—and the long future ahead as a one-legged man—weren't weighing on his mind. The following week Alvin was wearing the leg around the house all day, and the week after that, he said to me, "Go get the football." Only we didn't own a football—owning a football was as big a deal as owning cleats or shoulder pads, and no kid had one who wasn't "rich." And I couldn't just go and sign one out from the playground back of the school unless we were going to use it right there, so what I did—I who'd not stolen anything so far other than some change from my parents' pockets—what I did without a moment's hesitation was to stroll down Keer Avenue to where there were one-family houses with front and back lawns and case every driveway until I saw what I was after—a football to steal, a real leather Wilson football, scuffed from the pavement, with worn leather lacing and a bladder you inflated, that some kid with money had left unattended. I tucked it under my arm and took off, tearing all the way up the hill to Summit Avenue as if I were returning a kickoff for old Notre Dame.

That afternoon we practiced pass plays in the alleyway for close to an hour, and at night, when we examined the stump together behind our bedroom's closed door, we saw not one sign of its breaking down, even though while tossing me his perfect left-handed spirals Alvin had been taking practically the whole of his weight on the artificial limb. "I didn't have a choice" is the defense I would have formulated had I been caught in the act on Keer Avenue that day. My cousin Alvin wanted a football, Your Honor. He lost his leg fighting

Hitler and now he's home and he wanted a football. What else could I possibly do?

By then a month had passed since the awful homecoming at Penn Station and, though it wasn't necessarily pleasant, I'd feel no revulsion to speak of when, while going for my shoes in the morning, I reached to the back of the closet for Alvin's prosthesis and handed it across to where he was seated on the bed in his under-shorts, waiting his turn in the bathroom. The grimness was fading and he'd begun gaining weight, gorging himself between meals on fistfuls of whatever was in the refrigerator, and his eyes didn't look so enormous, and his hair had grown thick again, wavy hair so black it had a waxen sheen, and as he sat there semihelpless with his stump exposed, there was more each morning for a boy who worshiped him to worship, and what there was to pity was a little less impossible to bear.

Soon Alvin was no longer confining himself to the alleyway, and without having to rely on the crutches or the cane that it humiliated him to use in public, he was all over the place on his artificial leg, shopping for my mother at the butcher's, the bakery, and the vegetable store, buying a hotdog for himself down at the corner, taking the bus not only to the dentist on Clinton Avenue but all the way on to Market Street to buy a new shirt at Larkey's—and also, as I didn't yet know, dropping by the playing fields back of the high school with his separation pay in his pocket to see who might be hanging around wanting to play poker or shoot craps. After school one day, the two of us made room in the storage bin for the wheelchair, and that night after dinner I reported to my mother something that had dawned on me at school. Wherever I was and no matter what I was supposed to be doing, I found myself thinking about Alvin and how I could get him to forget about his prosthesis—and so I said to my mother, "If Alvin had a zipper on the side of his pant leg, it would be easier for him, wouldn't it, to get in and out of his pants when he's got his leg on?" The next morning, on her way to work, my mother dropped off a pair of Alvin's army trousers with a neighborhood seamstress who worked out of her house, and the seamstress was able to open the side seam and sew in a zipper that extended some six inches up the uncuffed left pant leg. That night when Alvin pulled on the trousers after having undone the zipper, the pant leg passed easily up over the prosthesis without his having to curse everyone on earth just because he was getting dressed. And when he closed the zipper, you couldn't see it. "You don't even know it's there!" I cried. In the morning, we put all his other trousers in a paper bag for my mother to take to the seamstress to fix. "I couldn't live without you," Alvin said to me when we went to bed that night. "I couldn't put my pants on without you," and he gave me to keep forever the Canadian medal that he'd

been awarded "for performance under exceptional circumstances." It was a circular silver medal, on one side King George VI in profile and on the other a triumphant lion standing on the body of a dragon. I of course cherished it and began to wear it regularly, but with the narrow green ribbon from which it hung pinned to my undershirt so no one would see it and question my loyalty to the United States. I left it in my drawer at home only on days I had gym and we had to strip off our outer shirts to exercise.

And where did this leave Sandy? Because he was himself so busy, he seemed at first not to notice my breakneck transformation into personal valet to a decorated Canadian war hero who'd now gone ahead and decorated me; and when he did—and was made miserable at first not so much because of Alvin's involvement with me, which was bound to follow from our new sleeping arrangement, but because of the hostile indifference Alvin evinced toward him— it was too late to oust me from the great supporting role (with its nauseating duties) that I'd virtually been forced to undertake and that, to Sandy's surprise, had elicited such sublime recognition in the waning years of my long career as his little brother.

And all of this had been achieved without my once alluding to Sandy's affiliation, by way of Aunt Evelyn and Rabbi Bengelsdorf, with our present hateful administration. Everyone, including my brother, had avoided speaking of the OAA and Just Folks anywhere near Alvin, convinced that until he came to understand how the enormous popularity of Lindbergh's isolationist policies had begun to win even the support of many Jews—and how it was far less traitorous than it might appear for a Jewish boy Sandy's age to have been drawn to the adventure that Just Folks offered—there'd be nothing to mitigate the outrage of the most self-sacrificing and staunchest Lindbergh-hater of us all. But Alvin seemed already to have sensed that Sandy had let him down and, being Alvin, didn't bother disguising his feelings. I'd said nothing, my parents had said nothing, certainly Sandy hadn't said anything to incriminate himself in Alvin's eyes, and yet Alvin had come to know (or to behave as though he knew) that the first one to welcome him home at the train station had also been first to sign on with the fascists.

Nobody was sure what Alvin was going to do next. There would be problems finding a job because not everyone was going to hire somebody who was considered a cripple, a traitor, or both. However, it was essential, my parents said, to thwart any inclination Alvin might have to do nothing and just sulk and feel sorry for himself for the rest of his life while squeaking by on his pension.

My mother wanted him to use his monthly disability check to put himself through college. She had asked around and been told that if he spent a year at Newark Academy, earning B's for the courses he'd got D's and F's in at Weequahic, more than likely he'd be able to get into the University of Newark the following year. But my father couldn't imagine Alvin voluntarily going back to the twelfth grade, even at a downtown private school; at twenty-two and after all he'd been through, he needed as quickly as possible to get a job with a future, and for this my father proposed Alvin's contacting Billy Steinheim. Billy was the son who'd befriended Alvin back when he was Abe's driver, and if Billy was willing to make the case to his father for giving Alvin a second chance, maybe they would agree to find a place for him in the firm, a lowly job for now but one in which he could redeem himself in Abe Steinheim's eyes. If need be, and only if need be, Alvin could get a start with Uncle Monty, who'd already come around to offer his nephew work at the produce market; that had been in those bad early days when Alvin's stump was seriously broken down and he was still in bed most of the time and wouldn't allow the shades to be raised in our room out of his dread of catching so much as a glimpse of the little world in which he'd once been whole. Driving home from Penn Station in the car with my father and Sandy, he'd shut his eyes once the high school came into view rather than be reminded of the innumerable times he'd come bounding out of that building at the end of the day unimpeded by bodily torment and equipped to pursue whatever he wanted.

It was on the very afternoon before Uncle Monty's visit that I was a little late returning from school—it had been my turn to stay to clean the blackboards—and got home to discover that Alvin was gone. I couldn't find him in his bed or in the bathroom or anywhere else in the flat, and so I ran outside to look for him in the backyard and then, bewildered, raced back into the house where, from the foot of the stairwell, I heard faint moaning sounds rising from below—ghosts, the suffering ghosts of Alvin's mother and father! When I edged down the cellar stairs to see if they could be seen there as well as heard, what I saw instead, up by the front wall of the cellar, was Alvin himself peering out of the horizontal little glass slit that looked at street level onto Summit Avenue. He was in his bathrobe, a hand to help him maintain his balance clutching the narrow sill. The other hand I couldn't see. He was using it for something that I was too young to know anything about. Through a little circle of window that had been cleared of grime, he was watching the high school girls who lived on Keer Avenue walk home from Weequahic along our street. Their legs scooting by the front hedge was about all that he could have possibly seen, but seeing that much was enough and caused him to moan with what I took to be anguish at his

no longer himself having two legs to walk on. I retreated silently up the stairs and out the back door and squatted in the farthest corner of our garage, plotting to run away to New York to live with Earl Axman. Only because it was getting dark and I had homework to do, did I return to the house, stopping first to peek into the cellar to see if Alvin was still there. He wasn't, and so I dared to descend the stairs, dashing quickly past the wringer and around the drains, and once at the window and up on my toes—intending only to look out at the street the way he did—I discovered the whitewashed wall beneath the window slick and syrupy with an abundance of goo. Since I didn't know what masturbation was, I of course didn't know what ejaculate was. I thought it was pus. I thought it was phlegm. I didn't know what to think, except that it was something terrible. In the presence of a species of discharge as yet mysterious to me, I imagined it was something that festered in a man's body and then came spurting from his mouth when he was completely consumed by grief.

The afternoon Uncle Monty stopped by to see Alvin, he was on his way downtown to Miller Street, where, since he was fourteen years old, he'd been working all night long at the market, arriving at around five and getting home only at nine the next morning to eat his big meal and go to sleep for the day. That was the life lived by the richest member of our family. His two children fared better. Linda and Annette, who were a little older than Sandy and exhibited the painful shyness of girls who tiptoe around a tyrannical father, had lots of clothes and attended suburban Columbia High School in Maplewood, where there were more Jewish kids who had lots of clothes and whose fathers, like Monty, each owned a Caddy for themselves and had a second car in the garage for the convenience of the wife and the grown children. Living with them all in the big Maplewood house was my grandmother, who also had a lot of clothes, all bought for her by her most successful son and none of which she wore other than on the High Holidays and when Monty made her get dressed up to go out to eat with the family on Sundays. The restaurants weren't sufficiently kosher to meet her standards, so all she ever ordered was the a la carte prisoner's meal of bread and water, and then she never knew how to act in a restaurant anyway. Once when she saw a busboy carrying a staggering load of dishes back to the kitchen, she'd gotten up to go over and help him. Uncle Monty cried, "Ma! No! Loz im tsu ru! Let the boy be!" and when she slapped his hand away had to be pulled back to the table by the sleeve of her ridiculously sequined dress. There was a black woman, known as "the girl," who came by bus from Newark to clean two days a week, but that didn't stop Grandma from going down on her knees when no one

was around to scrub the kitchen and bathroom floors or from doing her own wash on a washboard despite the presence in Monty's finished basement of a brand-new $ 99 Bendix Home Laundry. My aunt Tillie, Monty's wife, was endlessly complaining because her husband slept all day and was never home at night, though everyone else in the family considered that—far more than her own new Oldsmobile—to be her good luck.

Alvin was lying in bed and still in pajamas at four in the afternoon on that January day when Monty first dropped by to see him and to dare ask the question whose answer none of us exactly knew—"How the hell did you manage to lose a leg?" Since Alvin had been so uncompanionable when I got home from school, responding with a grunt of disgust to whatever I offered to cheer him up, I hardly expected our least lovable relative to elicit any response at all.

But the intimidating presence of Uncle Monty, with the ever-present cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, was such that not even Alvin, in those early days, could tell him to shut up and go away. On that particular afternoon Alvin couldn't begin to mimic the brash defiance that had enabled him to hop like a marvel across the Penn Station concourse upon arriving back home as an amputee.

"France," Alvin hollowly replied to the big question.

"Worst country in the world," Monty told him, and with no lack of certainty. As a twenty-one-year-old in the summer of 1918, Monty had himself fought in France against the Germans in the second bloody Battle of the Marne, and then in the Argonne Forest when the Allies broke through on the Germans' western front, and so, of course, he knew everything about France.

"I'm not asking you where," Monty said, "I'm asking you how." "How," repeated Alvin.

"Spit it out, kid. It'll do you good."

He knew that too—what would do Alvin good.

"Where were you," he asked, "when you got hit? And don't tell me 'the wrong place.' All your life you been in the wrong place."

"We were waiting for the boat to get us out."

Here he closed his eyes as though hoping never to open them again. But instead of stopping right there, as I was praying for him to do—"Shot a German," he suddenly said.

"And?" said Monty.

"He was out there screaming for the rest of the night." "So? So? Go on. So he was screaming. So what?"

"So near dawn, before the boat's due in, I crawled over to where he was. Maybe fifty yards away. By then he was already dead. But I crawled around

to the top of him and I shot him twice in the head. Then I spit on the son of a bitch. And in that second they threw the grenade. I got it in both legs. On one of my legs the foot was twisted around. Broken and twisted. That one they could fix. They operated and fixed it. They put a cast on it. They straightened it out. But the other was gone. I looked down and I saw one foot backwards and one leg dangling. The left leg just about amputated already."

There it was, and nothing like the heroic reality that I had so shallowly imagined.

"Out in no man's land all alone," Monty told him, "could be you were hit by one of your own. It's not yet light, it's half-light, a guy hears gunfire, he panics—bingo, he yanks the pin."

As for that surmise, Alvin had nothing to say.

Anyone else might have understood and relented, if only because of the perspiration beading Alvin's forehead and the droplets pooled in the hollow of his throat and the fact that he still wouldn't open his eyes. But not my uncle— he understands and doesn't relent. "And how come you didn't get left there? After pulling that stunt, how come they didn't just leave you to die?"

"There was mud everywhere" was Alvin's vacant reply. "The ground was mud. All I remember is that there was mud."

"Who saved you, misfit?"

"They took me. I must have been out of it. Came and took me."

"I'm trying to picture your brain, Alvin, and I can't. Spits. He spits.

And that's the story of how he loses a leg."

"Some things you don't know why you do them." It was I who was speaking. What did I know? But I was telling my uncle, "You just do them, Uncle Monty. You can't not."

"You can't not, Phillie, when you're a professional misfit." To Alvin he said, "So now what? You going to lay there living off disability checks? You going to live like a sharpie off your luck? Or would you maybe consider supporting yourself like the rest of us dumb mortals do? There's a job at the market for you when you're up out of bed. You start at the bottom, hosing down the floor and grading tomatoes, you start at the bottom with the buggy-luggers and the schleppers, but there's a job there working for me, and a paycheck every week. You pocket half the take at the Esso station, but I'll go with you anyway because you're still Jack's kid, and for my brother Jack I do anything. I wouldn't be where I am without Jack. Jack taught me the produce business and then he died. Just like Steinheim wanted to teach you the building business. But nobody can teach you, misfit. Throws the keys in Steinheim's face. Too big for Abe Steinheim. Only Hitler is big enough for Alvin Roth."

In the kitchen, in a drawer with the potholders and the oven thermometer, my mother kept a long stiff needle and heavy thread to truss up the Thanksgiving turkey after it was stuffed. It was the only instrument of torture, aside from the wringer, that I could think of that we owned, and I wanted to go in and get it and use it to shut my uncle's mouth.

At the bedroom door, before leaving for the market, Monty turned back to summarize. Bullies love to summarize. The redundant upbraiding summary—nothing to equal it outside the old-fashioned flogging. "Your buddies risked everything to save you. Went in and dragged you out under fire. Didn't they? And for what? So you could spend the rest of your life shooting craps with Margulis? So you can play seven-card stud up at the schoolyard? So you can go back and pump gas and steal Simkowitz blind? You make every mistake in the book. Everything you do you do wrong. Even shooting Germans you do wrong. Why is that? Why do you throw keys at people? Why do you spit? Someone who is already dead—and you spit? Why? Because life wasn't handed to you on a silver platter like it was handed to the rest of the Roths? If it wasn't for Jack, Alvin, I wouldn't be standing here wasting my breath. There is nothing you have earned. Let's be clear about that. Nothing. For twenty-two years you have remained a disaster. I'm doing this for your father, sonny, not for you. I'm doing it for your grandmother. 'Help the boy,' she tells me, so I'm helping you. Once you figure out how you want to make your fortune, come around on your pegleg and we'll talk."

Alvin didn't cry, didn't curse, didn't holler, even after Monty was out the back door and into his car and he could have unleashed his every evil thought. He was too far gone to roar that day. Or even to crack. Only I did, after he refused to open his eyes and look at me when I begged him to; only I cracked, alone later in the one place in our house where I knew I could go to be apart from the living and all that they cannot not do.

5

March 1942–June 1942

Never Before

HERE'S HOW Alvin came to have it in for Sandy.

Before leaving him alone on the morning of his first Monday back, my mother had made Alvin promise to use his crutches to get around on until one of us was home to fetch for him. But Alvin so despised being on crutches that he refused even by himself to submit to the stability they provided. At night, when we were in our beds and the lights were out, Alvin would get me laughing by explaining why crutching wasn't so simple as my mother thought. "You go to the bathroom," Alvin said, "and they're always falling. They're always clattering. They're always making a fucking noise. You go to the bathroom, you've got these crutches, you try to get your cock, and you can't get your cock because your crutches are in the way. You gotta get rid of the crutches. Then you're standing on one leg. That's not so good. You lean one way or another, you splatter all over the place. Your father tells me to sit down to piss. Know what I say? 'I'll sit when you do, Herman.' Fucking crutches. Standing on one leg. Taking your dick out. Jesus. Pissing is hard enough to do as it is." I'm laughing uncontrollably now not only because the story is especially funny as he half whispers it in the darkened room, but because never before has a man revealed himself to me this way, using the prohibited words so freely and openly cracking toilet jokes. "Come on," Alvin says, "own up to it, kiddo—pissing's not something that's as easy as it looks."

So it happened that on that first Monday morning alone, when the amputation was still a limitless loss that he assumed would impede and torment him forever, he took the fall that no one in the family knew about other than me. He was standing braced against the kitchen sink, where, without the aid of his crutches, he'd gone for a glass of water. When he turned to start back to the bedroom he forgot (for all possible reasons) that he had just the one leg and, instead of hopping, did what everyone else did in our house—began to walk and of course toppled over. The pain shooting up from the butt end of his stump was worse than the pain in the missing segment of his leg—pain, Alvin explained to me after I first watched him succumb to a siege in the bed beside me, "that grabs you and won't let you go," though no limb is left to cause it. "There's pain where you are," Alvin said when the time had come to reassure me with some kind of

comical remark, "and there's pain where you ain't. I wonder who thought that up."

The English hospital gave the amputees morphine to control the pain. "You're always calling for it," Alvin told me. "And whenever you do they give it to you. You push a button for the nurse and when she gets to you, you tell her, 'Morphine, morphine,' and then you're pretty much out of it." "How much did it hurt in the hospital?" I asked him. "It was no fun, kiddo." "Was that the worst pain you ever had?" "Worst pain I ever had," he replied, "was when my father closed the door of the car on my finger when I was six years old." He laughed, and so I laughed. "My father said—when he saw me crying like hell, this little stinker about that high—my father said, 'Stop crying, that doesn't do any good.'" Quietly laughing again, Alvin said, "And that was probably worse than the pain. My last memory of him, too. Later that day he keeled over and died."

Writhing on the kitchen linoleum, Alvin had no one to call for help, let alone for a shot of morphine; everybody was off either at school or at work, and so, in time, it was necessary to grope his way across the kitchen and the foyer to his bed. But just as he was positioning himself to push up from the floor, he spotted Sandy's art portfolio. Sandy still used the portfolio to preserve his large pencil and charcoal drawings between tracing paper and to carry them with him when he had to take the drawings somewhere to show. It was too large to store in the sun parlor, and so he'd left it behind in our room. Mere curiosity impelled Alvin to fish the portfolio out a ways from beneath the bed, but because he was unable right off to determine its purpose—and because all he really wanted was to be back under the covers—he was ready to forget about it when he noticed the ribbon that held the two halves together. Existence was worthless, living was unendurable, he still throbbed with pain from the mindless accident at the kitchen sink, and so for no reason other than that he felt himself powerless to carry off a physical task any more formidable, he fiddled with the ribbons until he undid the bow.

What he found inside were the three portraits of Charles A. Lindbergh as an aviator that Sandy had told my parents he'd destroyed two years back as well as those that he'd drawn at the behest of Aunt Evelyn once Lindbergh became president. I'd only seen the new ones myself when Aunt Evelyn took me along to New Brunswick to hear Sandy give his Just Folks recruitment speech in the synagogue basement. "This shows President Lindbergh signing into law the Universal Conscription Act, designed to keep America at peace by teaching our youth the skills necessary to protect and defend the nation. This one shows the president at a draftsman's drawing board, adding his

aeronautical suggestions to the design for the nation's newest fighter-bomber. Here I show President Lindbergh relaxing at the White House with the family dog."

Each of the new Lindbergh portraits exhibited as a prelude to Sandy's New Brunswick talk Alvin examined on the bedroom floor. Then, despite the destructive urge aroused by his registering the skill so meticulously expended on these beautiful likenesses, he placed them between the leaves of tracing paper and shoved the portfolio back under the bed.

Once Alvin was out and around in the neighborhood, he hadn't to rely only on Sandy's Lindbergh drawings to realize that, while he'd been making raids on ammo depots in France, Roosevelt's Republican successor had come to be, if not entirely trusted by the Jews, accepted as tolerable for the time being even among those of our neighbors who had started out hating him as passionately as my father did. Walter Winchell persisted in attacking the president on his Sunday- night radio show, and everybody on the block devotedly tuned him in to give credence, while they listened, to his alarming interpretations of the president's policies, but as nothing that they feared had come to pass since the inauguration, our neighbors slowly began putting more faith in Rabbi Bengelsdorf's optimistic assurances than in Winchell's dire prophecies. And not just the neighbors but Jewish leaders all over the country began openly to acknowledge that Newark's Lionel Bengelsdorf, far from having betrayed them by endorsing Lindy in the 1940 election, had been prescient enough to see where the nation was headed and that his elevation to the directorship of the Office of American Absorption— and the administration's foremost adviser on Jewish affairs—was the direct result of his having cleverly gained Lindbergh's confidence as an early supporter. If the president's anti-Semitism had somehow been neutralized (or, more remarkably, eradicated), Jews were willing to attribute the miracle to the influence of the venerable rabbi who was soon to become—another miracle—an uncle by marriage to Sandy and me.

One day early in March I wandered over, uninvited, to the dead-end street backing onto the school playground where Alvin had begun shooting craps and playing stud poker if the afternoon was warm enough and it wasn't raining. He was rarely in the house anymore when I got home after school, and though generally he made it back by five-thirty for dinner, after dessert he'd head out to the hotdog hangout a block from our house to meet up with his old high school

friends, a few of whom used to pump gas at the Esso station owned by Simkowitz and had been fired along with him for stealing from the boss. I'd be asleep by the time he got in for the night, and only when he removed his leg and began hopping to and from the bathroom did I open my eyes and mumble his name before falling back to sleep. Some seven weeks after he'd moved into the bed beside mine, I ceased to be indispensable and abruptly found myself bereft of the mesmeric surrogate he'd been for Sandy, vanished now from my side into the stardom masterminded for him by Aunt Evelyn. The maimed and suffering American pariah who had come to loom larger for me than any man I'd ever known, including my father, whose passionate struggles had become my own, whose future I fretted over when I should have been listening to the teacher in class, had begun to buddy up with the same good-for-nothings who'd helped turn him into a petty thief at sixteen. What he appeared to have lost in combat, along with his leg, was every decent habit inculcated in him when he was living as my parents' ward. Nor did he display any interest in the fight against fascism, which, two years earlier, no one could restrain him from joining. In fact, why he went scooting out of the house on his artificial leg every night was, at the beginning anyway, largely to avoid having to sit in the living room while my father read the war news aloud from the paper.

There was no campaign against the Axis powers that my father didn't agonize about, particularly when things went badly for the Soviet Union and Great Britain and it was clear how urgently they needed the U.S. arms embargoed by Lindbergh and the Republican Congress. By this time my father could deploy the terminology of a war strategist quite proficiently when he expatiated on the need for the British, Australians, and Dutch to prevent the Japanese—who, in sweeping across Southeast Asia, exhibited all the righteous cruelty of the racially superior—from proceeding westward into India and southward into New Zealand and on to Australia. In the early months of 1942 the Pacific war news that he read to us was uniformly bad: there was the successful Japanese drive into Burma, the Japanese capture of Malaya, the Japanese bombing of New Guinea, and, after devastating attacks from the sea and air and the capturing of tens of thousands of British and Dutch troops on the ground, the fall of Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, and Java. But it was the progress of the Russian campaign that upset my father most. The year before, when the Germans appeared to be on the verge of overrunning every major city in the western half of the Soviet Union (including Kiev, from whose environs my maternal grandparents had emigrated to America in the 1890s), the names of even lesser Russian cities, like Petrozavodsk, Novgorod, Dnepropetrovsk, and Taganrog, had become as familiar to me as the capitals of the forty-eight states.

In the winter of 1941–42 the Russians had staged the impossible counterattacks that broke the sieges of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad, but by March the Germans had regrouped from their winter catastrophe and, as demonstrated by the troop movements mapped out in the Newark News, were reinforcing for a spring offensive to conquer the Caucasus. My father explained that what made the prospect of a Russian collapse so awful was that it would represent to the world the invincibility of the German war machine. The vast natural resources of the Soviet Union would fall into German hands and the Russian people would be forced to serve the Third Reich. Worst of all "for us" was that with Germany's eastward advance millions and millions of Russian Jews would come under the control of an occupying army equipped in every way to implement Hitler's messianic program to deliver humanity from the clutches of the Jews.

According to my father, the brutal triumph of antidemocratic militarism was imminent just about everywhere, the massacre of Russian Jewry, including members of my mother's extended family, was all but at hand, and Alvin didn't care one bit. No longer was he burdened by concern for anyone's suffering other than his own.

I found Alvin down on the good knee of the real leg, dice in hand and the pile of bills beside him secured by a jagged chunk of cement. With the prosthetic leg jutting straight out in front of him, he looked like a squatting Russian dancing one of those crazy Slavic jigs. There were six other gamblers tightly encircling him, three still in the game, clutching what was left of their dough, two who were broke and just standing around—whom I vaguely recognized as ex- Weequahic washouts now in their twenties—and the long-legged guy hovering over him, Alvin's "partner," as it turned out, Shushy Margulis, a skinny zoot- suiter with a sinewy build and a gliding gait, the hanger-on from Alvin's gas station days whom my father most despised. Shushy was known to us kids as the Pinball King because a racketeer uncle whom he boasted about was the pinball king—and king as well of all illegal slots down in Philadelphia, where he reigned—and also because of the hours he spent racking up scores by banging away at the pinball machines in the neighborhood candy stores, shoving the machine, cursing it, violently shaking it from side to side until play was terminated either by the colored lights flashing "Tilt" or by the store owner chasing him out. Shushy was the famous comedian who entertained his admirers by gleefully tossing lit matches into the mouth of the big green mailbox across from the high school, and who had once eaten a live praying mantis on a bet, and who, during his short-lived academic career, liked to hand the crowd a laugh

outside the hotdog hangout by limping across Chancellor Avenue with one hand raised to stop the oncoming traffic—limping badly, tragically, though nothing was wrong with him. By this time he was already into his thirties and still living with his seamstress mother in one of the little flats at the top of a two-and-a-half- family house next door to the synagogue on Wainwright Street. It was to Shushy's mother, known sympathetically to one and all as "poor Mrs. Margulis," that my mother had taken Alvin's pants to have the zippers sewn in—poor Mrs. Margulis not merely because she survived as a widow by doing piecework at slave wages for a Down Neck dress manufacturer but because her sharpie son seemed never to have held a job other than as a runner for the bookie who worked out of the poolroom around the corner from their house and just down the street from the Catholic orphanage on Lyons Avenue.

The orphanage stood within the fenced-off grounds of St. Peter's, the parish church that oddly monopolized some three square blocks at the very heart of our unredeemable neighborhood. The church itself was topped by a tall bell tower and an even taller steeple that was capped by a cross that rose divinely above the telephone wires. Locally there was no building that high to be seen until you proceeded nearly a mile down the Lyons Avenue hill to my birthplace, the Beth Israel Hospital, where every boy I knew had been born as well and, at the age of eight days, ritually circumcised in the hospital's sanctuary. Flanking the bell tower of the church were two smaller steeples that I never cared to examine because the faces of Christian saints were said to be carved into the stone, and the church's high, narrow stained-glass windows told a story that I didn't want to know. Near the church was a small rectory; like most everything else situated within the black iron palings of this alien world it had been built during the latter part of the previous century, several decades before the first of our houses went up and the western edge of the Weequahic neighborhood took shape as Newark's Jewish frontier. Behind the church was the grammar school serving the orphans—there were about a hundred of them—and a smaller number of local Catholic kids. The school and the orphanage were run by an order of nuns, German nuns, I remember being told. Jewish children raised even in tolerant households like mine would generally cross the street on the rare occasions we saw them swishing our way in their witchy attire, and family lore had it that when my brother, as a small child sitting alone on our front stoop one afternoon, spotted a pair of them approaching from Chancellor Avenue, he had called excitedly to my mother, "Look, Ma—the nuts."

A convent stood next to the orphans' residence. Both were simple red-brick buildings, and at the end of a summer's day you'd sometimes catch a glimpse of the orphans—white children, girls and boys, aged from about six to

fourteen—sitting outdoors on the fire escape. I have no memory of seeing the orphans in a group anywhere else, certainly not running freely about the streets the way we did. A swarm of them would have discomfited me no less than did the unsettling appearance of the nuns, primarily because they were orphaned but also because they were said to be both "neglected" and "indigent."

Back of the residence hall, and unlike anything to be seen in our neighborhood—or anywhere else in an industrial city of close to half a million— was a truck farm of the kind that made New Jersey "the Garden State," back when compact family vegetable farms able to turn a small profit dotted the undeveloped rural reaches of the state. The food grown and harvested at St. Peter's went to feed the orphans, the dozen or so nuns, the old monsignor in charge, and the younger priest who was his assistant. With the help of the orphans, the land was worked by a resident German farmer called Thimmes— unless I'm remembering incorrectly and that was the name of St. Peter's monsignor, who'd been running the place for years.

At our public elementary school less than a mile away it was rumored that the nuns who instructed the orphans in class routinely smacked the stupidest of them across the hands with wooden rulers and that when a boy's offense was so gross as to be intolerable the monsignor's assistant was called in to beat him across the buttocks with the same whip the farmer used on the swaybacked pair of lumbering workhorses that pulled the plow for the spring planting. These horses we all knew and recognized because from time to time they'd wander together across the farm to the little wooded meadow at the southern boundary of St. Peter's domain and stick their heads inquisitively out above the gate that backed onto Goldsmith Avenue, where the crap game I'd come upon was taking place.

There was a chain-link fence about seven feet high at the edge of the playground on the near side of Goldsmith Avenue and a wire fence set in posts at the wooded edge of the truck farm on the far side, and since no houses had as yet gone up anywhere nearby and there was never much foot or automobile traffic to speak of, an almost sylvan seclusion was conveniently provided there for the neighborhood's tiny handful of losers to pursue their pleasures out of harm's way. The closest I'd ever come to one of these sinister conclaves before was when, during some playground game, I'd had to chase a ball that had rolled to where they all huddled together just beyond the fence, uttering imprecations at one another and saving their sweet talk for the dice.

Now, I was no righteous little foe of crapshooting, and I had begged

Alvin to teach me how to play one afternoon when he was still on crutches and my mother had instructed me to accompany him to his dentist appointment and do things like drop his fare into the fare box and hold his crutches for him while he hopped onto the street from the bus's back door. That night, when everyone else had gone to sleep and we'd switched off the table lamp on the stand between our beds, he watched with a smile as, by the beam of my flashlight, I whispered, "Dice be nice," and soundlessly rolled three consecutive sevens across my sheets. Yet as I watched him now in the clutches of his inferiors, and remembered all that my family had sacrificed to prevent him from turning himself into a replica of Shushy, every obscenity I'd learned as his roommate flooded foully into my mind. I cursed him in behalf of my father, my mother, and especially my ostracized brother—was it for this that all of us had agreed to endure Alvin's objectionable behavior toward Sandy? Was it for this that he'd run off to fight in the war? I thought, "Take your fucking medal, gimp, and shove it!" If only he would learn his lesson by losing every last penny of his disability pension, but in fact he couldn't stop himself from winning, any more than he could stop himself from abandoning the desire to ever again be anyone's hero, and, having already raked in a big wad of bills, he held the dice to my lips and, in a gravelly voice with which he intended to be funny for his friends, he instructed me, "Blow on 'em—baby." I blew, he rolled and won yet again. "Six and one—making what?" he asked. "Seven," I obediently answered, "the hard way."

Shushy reached down to muss my hair and began calling me Alvin's mascot, as though "mascot" could encompass what I'd resolved to be for Alvin since he'd come home, as though a word so hollow and childish could account for why Alvin's King George medal was pinned to my undershirt. Shushy was dressed in a chocolate-colored double-breasted gabardine suit, with pegged trousers and wide, padded shoulders and flamboyant lapels, his favored getup whenever he went bopping around the neighborhood snapping his fingers—and, in my mother's words, "wasting his life"—while back in their tiny attic flat his mother hemmed a hundred dresses a day to meet the family's bills.

When he missed his point, Alvin drew all his winnings together and ostentatiously stuffed the bundle into his pocket—the man who broke the bank behind the high school. Then, by grasping the chain-link fence, he pulled himself to his feet. I knew (and not just from observing the tortured way he began limping about to get himself going) that a big boil had erupted on his stump the night before and that he wasn't in the best of shape that day. But he refused any longer to be seen on crutches by anyone outside the family, and before going off to team up with sleazy Shushy—and spend another day blatantly repudiating all

the ideals that had made him a cripple—he harnessed the stump into the prosthesis however much it hurt.

"Goddamn legmaker" was all he said by way of complaint as he came up to put his hand on my shoulder.

"Can I go home now?" I whispered.

"Sure, why not?" and then he took two ten-dollar bills out of his pocket—nearly half my father's weekly paycheck—and flattened them against the palm of my hand. Never before had money seemed like something alive.

Instead of heading back across the playground, I took a slightly longer route home, proceeding down the Goldsmith Avenue hill to Hobson Street so that I could look up close at the orphanage horses. I had never dared to reach over and touch them, and before that day I'd never spoken to them the way other kids did, satirically calling these mud-spattered beasts drooling gooey saliva "Omaha" and "Whirlaway," which were the names of two of the greatest Kentucky Derby winners of our day.

I stopped a safe distance back from where the darkly gleaming high- relief eyes peered out above the orphanage fence, impassively monitoring through their long lashes the no man's land separating the stronghold of St. Peter's from the neighborhood of Jews beyond the pale. The chain was unlooped and hanging down off the gate. I had only to yank up on the latch and swing the gate open and the horses would be free to gallop away. The temptation was enormous—as was the spite.

"Fucking Lindbergh," I said to the horses, "Nazi fucking bastard Lindbergh!" and then, for fear that if I did fling open the gate, instead of the horses running free they'd use their big teeth to drag me into the orphanage, I darted down the street and, turning on Hobson, raced past the block-long row of four-family houses and out to the corner of Chancellor Avenue, where housewives I recognized were in and out of the grocery and the bakery and the butcher shop, and older boys whose names I knew were riding their bikes, and the tailor's son was carrying over either shoulder a load of newly pressed clothes for delivery, and where Italian singing issued onto the street through the shoemaker's doorway, his radio tuned as always to WEVD—the EVD to honor the persecuted socialist hero Eugene V. Debs—and where I was safe from Alvin, Shushy, the horses, the orphans, the priests, the nuns, and the parochial-school whip.

When I turned back up the hill toward home a man neatly dressed in a business suit fell in step beside me. It was still too early for the local

workingmen to be getting home for dinner, and so I knew right off to be suspicious.

"Master Philip?" he inquired with a broad smile. "Do you ever listen to Gangbusters on the radio, Master Philip? About J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI?"

"Yes."

"Well, I work for Mr. Hoover. He's my boss. I'm an agent from the FBI. Here," he said, and he removed a billfold from an inside coat pocket and flipped it open to show me his badge. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask a few little questions."

"I don't mind, but I'm on my way home. I have to get home."

Immediately I thought about the two ten-dollar bills. If he searched me, if he had a warrant to search me, wasn't he going to find all that money and assume it was stolen? Wouldn't anybody? And until ten minutes earlier, for an entire lifetime, I'd been walking around with my pockets empty, out on the street without a penny to my name! My allowance of five cents a week I saved in a jelly jar with a slit Sandy chiseled into the lid with the can opener blade of his Boy Scout knife. Now I was walking around like a bank robber.

"Don't be frightened. Calm down, Master Philip. You've heard Gangbusters. We're on your side. We protect you. I just want to ask a few questions about your cousin Alvin. How's he doing?"

"He's fine."

"How's his leg coming along?" "Good."

"He's able to walk okay?" "Yes."

"Wasn't that him I saw over where you just came from? Wasn't that Alvin behind the playground? Out on the sidewalk, wasn't that Alvin with Shushy Margulis?"

I didn't reply, and so he said, "It's okay if they're shooting craps. That's no crime. That's just part of being a big man. Alvin must have shot craps a lot in the army hospital up in Montreal."

When I still wouldn't speak, he asked, "What were the fellas talking

about?"

"Nothing."

"All afternoon they're out there, and they're talking about nothing?" "They were just saying how much they were losing."

"Nothing else? Nothing about the president? You know who the

president is, don't you?"

"Charles A. Lindbergh."

"Nothing about President Lindbergh, Master Philip?" "Not that I heard," I answered truthfully.

But might he not have overheard me saying what I'd said to the horses? Impossible—and yet by now I was sure that he knew every move I'd made since Alvin came home from the war and gave me his medal. It was indisputable that he knew that I was wearing the medal. Why else was he looking me over from head to toe?

"Did they talk about Canada?" he asked. "About going to Canada?" "No, sir."

"Call me Don, why don't you? And I'll call you Phil. You know what a fascist is, don't you, Phil?"

"I think so."

"Did they call anybody a fascist that you remember?" "No."

"Don't rush yourself. Don't rush to answer. Take all the time you need. Try hard to remember. It's important. Did they call anybody a fascist? Did they say anything about Hitler? You know who Hitler is."

"Everybody does."

"He's a bad man, isn't he?" "Yes," I said.

"He's against the Jews, isn't he?" "Yes."

"Who else is against the Jews?" "The Bund."

"Anyone else?" he asked.

I knew enough not to mention Henry Ford, America First, the southern Democrats, or the isolationist Republicans, let alone Lindbergh. Over the past few years, the list I heard at home of prominent Americans who hated Jews was far longer than that, and then there were the ordinary Americans, tens of thousands of them, maybe millions of them, like the beer drinkers we didn't want to live beside in Union and the owner of the hotel in Washington and the mustached diner who'd insulted us in the cafeteria near Union Station. "Don't talk," I told myself, as though a protected boy of nine were mixed up with criminals and had something to hide. But I must already have begun to think of myself as a little criminal because I was a Jew.

"And who else?" he repeated. "Mr. Hoover wants to know who else.

Come clean, Phil."

"I am," I insisted.

"How's your aunt Evelyn doing?" "She's fine."

"She's getting married. Isn't that right, that she's getting married?

You can at least answer that."

"Yes."

"And do you know who she's marrying?" "Yes."

"You're a smart boy. I think you know more—a lot more. But you're too smart to tell me, aren't you?"

"She's marrying Rabbi Bengelsdorf," I said. "He's head of the

OAA."

My saying that made him laugh. "Okay," he told me, "you go on

home. Go home and eat your matzohs. Isn't that what makes you so smart? Eating the matzohs?"

We were now at the corner of Chancellor and Summit, and I could see the stoop of our house down at the end of the block. "Bye!" I cried, and didn't wait for the light to change but ran for home before I fell into his trap, if I hadn't fallen into it already.

There were three police cars parked on the street in front of our house, our alleyway was blocked off by an ambulance, and a couple of cops stood on the stoop talking together while another was posted beside the back door. The women on the block, most of them still in their aprons, were on their front stoops trying to figure out what was going on, and all the kids were huddled on the sidewalk across the street from our house, peering out at the cops and the ambulance from between the row of parked cars. Never before could I remember them silently gathered together like that, looking so apprehensive.

Our downstairs neighbor was dead. Mr. Wishnow had committed suicide. That was why everything I could never have expected to see was now right outside the door of our house. Weighing barely eighty pounds, he had been able to strangulate himself by stringing the living room curtain cords over the wooden rod in the back-foyer coat closet, then looping them around his neck and falling forward off the edge of the kitchen chair where he'd seated himself inside the closet. When Seldon, home from school, went to put his coat away, he found his father, in his pajamas, hanging facedown on the closet floor amid the family's rubbers and galoshes. My first thought on learning the news was that I no longer had to be fearful of hearing a coughing fit emanating from the dying man in the first-floor flat whenever I was alone in the cellar, or of hearing him in my bed on

the floor above when I was trying to fall asleep. But then I realized that the ghost of Mr. Wishnow would now join the circle of ghosts already inhabiting the cellar and that, just because I was relieved he was dead, he would go out of his way to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Since I didn't know what else to do, I at first kneeled at the side of the parked cars, hiding there with the other kids. None of them had a conception any larger than my own of the cataclysm that had befallen the Wishnows, but it was from their whisperings that I pieced together how Mr. Wishnow had died and how he'd been found and learned that Seldon and his mother were inside with one of the policemen and the medics. And with the corpse. The corpse was what the kids were all waiting to see. I waited with them rather than wind up entering the back hallway just as they were carrying Mr. Wishnow down the stairs. Nor did I want to get home and have to sit there alone until my mother, my father, or Sandy appeared. As for Alvin, I wanted never to see him again or to be questioned about him by anyone.

The woman who emerged from the house accompanying the medics wasn't Mrs. Wishnow but my mother. I couldn't understand why she was home from work until it dawned on me that the dead father they were carrying away was my own. Yes, of course--my father had committed suicide. He couldn't take any more of Lindbergh and what Lindbergh was letting the Nazis do to the Jews of Russia and what Lindbergh had done to our family right here and so it was he who had hanged himself—in our closet.

I didn't have hundreds of memories of him then, I had just one, and it did not seem to me at all important enough to be the memory I ought to be having. Alvin's last memory of his father was of him closing the car door on his little boy's finger—mine of my father was of him greeting the stump of a man who begged every day outside his office building. "How you doin', Little Robert?" my father said, and the stump of a man replied, "How you, Herman?"

It was here that I edged myself between the closely parked cars and darted out across the street.

When I saw that the sheet covering my father's body and face couldn't possibly allow him to breathe, I began to wail.

"Don't, don't, darling," my mother said. "There's nothing to be frightened of." She put her arms around my head, held me to her, and repeated, "There's nothing to be frightened of. He was sick and he was suffering and he died. Now he's not suffering anymore."

"He was in the closet," I said.

"No, he wasn't. He was in his bed. He died in his bed. He was very, very sick. You knew that. That was why he coughed all the time."

By now the ambulance doors were swung open to receive the stretcher. The medics carefully maneuvered it inside and pulled the doors shut behind them. My mother stood next to me on the street, holding my hand in hers and to my amazement looking perfectly composed. Only when I made a move to break away from her and run after the ambulance, only when I cried, "He can't breathe!" did she finally realize what was torturing me.

"It's Mr. Wishnow—it's Mr. Wishnow who is dead." She shook me, gently shook me back and forth to bring me to my senses. "It's Seldon's father, dear—he died from his illness this afternoon."

I couldn't tell if she was lying to keep me from becoming more hysterical or if she was telling the wonderful truth.

"Seldon found him in the closet?"

"No. I told you—no. Seldon found his father in his bed. Seldon's mother wasn't home so he called the police. I came because Mrs. Wishnow called me at the store and asked me to help her. Do you understand? Daddy's at work. Daddy's working. Oh, what on earth have you been thinking? Daddy will be home for dinner very soon. So will Sandy. There's nothing to be afraid of. Everybody will be home, everybody is coming home, we'll have our dinner," she said reassuringly, "and everything is going to be fine."

But nothing was "fine." The FBI agent who'd grilled me about Alvin on Chancellor Avenue had earlier stopped by Hahne's dress department to question my mother, then by the Metropolitan's Newark office to question my father, and, just after Sandy left Aunt Evelyn's office for home, he had boarded my brother's bus and, from the seat alongside him, conducted yet another interrogation. Alvin wasn't at dinner to hear about any of this—just as we were sitting down to eat, he'd phoned and told my mother not to save anything for him. It seemed that every time he'd made a killing at poker or craps, Alvin took Shushy downtown with him to the Hickory Grill for a charcoal-broiled steak dinner. "Alvin's partner in crime," my father called Shushy. What he called Alvin that evening was ungrateful, stupid, reckless, ignorant, and incorrigible.

"And bitter," said my mother, sadly, "so bitter because of his leg." "Well, I'm sick and tired of his leg," said my father. "He went to war.

Who sent him? I didn't. You didn't. Abe Steinheim didn't. Abe Steinheim wanted to send him to college. He went to war on his own, and he's lucky he wasn't killed. He's lucky it was just his leg. This is it, Bess. I've had it with that boy. The FBI questions my children? Bad enough they harass you and me—and in my office, mind you, in front of the Boss! No," he told her. "This has to stop and

stop now. This is a home. We are a family. He has dinner downtown with Shushy? Let him go live with Shushy."

"If only he would go to school," my mother said. "If only he would

take a job."

"He has a job," my father replied. "Bum."

After we'd finished eating, my mother put a meal together for

Seldon and Mrs. Wishnow, and my father helped her carry the plates downstairs while Sandy and I were left with the dinner dishes. We set to work at the sink as we did most nights, except that I couldn't shut up. I told him about the crap game. I told him about the FBI agent. I told him about Mr. Wishnow. "He didn't die in his bed," I said. "Mother's not telling us the truth. He committed suicide, only she doesn't want to say it. Seldon found him in the closet when he got home from school. He hung himself. That's why the police came."

"Did he turn colors?" my brother asked me.

"I only saw him under the sheet. Maybe it was colors—I don't know. I don't want to know. It was bad enough when they jiggled the stretcher that you could see him move." That I had thought at first it was my father under the sheet I didn't say aloud for fear that if I did it would turn out to be true. The fact that my father was alive, vividly alive—angry at Alvin and threatening to throw him out of the house—had no impact on my thinking.

"How do you know he was in the closet?" Sandy asked. "That's what all the kids said."

"And you believe them?" Because of his fame, he was becoming a very hard boy whose tremendous confidence now sounded more and more like lordly arrogance whenever he spoke about me or my friends.

"Well, why were all the police here? Just because he died? People die all the time," I said, trying, however, not to believe it. "He killed himself. He had to."

"And is that against the law, killing yourself?" my brother asked me. "What were they going to do, put him in jail for killing himself?"

I didn't know. I didn't know any longer what the law was and so I didn't know what might or might not be against it. I didn't seem to know whether my own father—who'd just headed downstairs with my mother—was really alive or pretending to be alive or being driven around dead in the back of that ambulance. I didn't know anything. I didn't know why Alvin was bad now instead of good. I didn't know if I had dreamed that an FBI agent had questioned me on Chancellor Avenue. It had to be a dream and yet couldn't be if everybody else said they'd been questioned too. Unless that was the dream. I felt woozy and thought I was going to faint. I'd never before seen anyone faint, other than in a

movie, and I'd never before fainted myself. I'd never before looked at my house from a hiding place across the street and wished that it was somebody else's. I'd never before had twenty dollars in my pocket. I'd never before known anyone who'd seen his father hanging in a closet. I'd never before had to grow up at a pace like this.

Never before—the great refrain of 1942.

"You better call Mom," I told my brother. "Call her—tell her to come home right away!" But before Sandy could reach the back door to rush down to the Wishnows, I was vomiting into the dishtowel still in my hand, and when I collapsed it was because my leg had been blown off and my blood was everywhere.

I remained in bed with a high fever for six days, so weak and lifeless that the family doctor stopped by every evening to check on the progress of my disease, that not uncommon childhood ailment called why-can't-it-be-the- way-it-was.

The next day for me was Sunday. It was late afternoon, and Uncle Monty was visiting. Alvin was there too, and from what I could overhear from my bed of what was being said in the kitchen, he hadn't been seen anywhere around since Mr. Wishnow had committed suicide on Friday and he'd walked away from that crap game with his bundle of fives, tens, and twenties. But since dinnertime Friday I'd been away myself, off with the horses and their hooves, enveloped by kaleidoscopic hallucinations of the orphanage workhorses pursuing me to the edge of the earth.

And now Uncle Monty again, again Uncle Monty attacking Alvin, and with words I could not believe were being spoken in our house in the presence of my mother. But then, Uncle Monty knew how to subdue Alvin in ways that my father just couldn't employ.

By nightfall, after all the shouting had subsided into lamentations for my late uncle Jack and Monty's booming voice had gone hoarse, Alvin accepted the job at the produce market that he'd refused to consider when Monty had offered it first. As unmanned as he'd been by his mutilation on the morning he arrived at Penn Station in the care of that hulking Canadian nurse, as overridden by defeat as when, from his wheelchair, he wouldn't dare to look a one of us in the eye, Alvin consented to dissolve his partnership with Shushy and to give up gambling on the neighborhood streets. A hater no less of subservience than of weeping, he astonished everyone by breaking into guilty tears and begging forgiveness and agreeing to stop being a brute to my brother, an ingrate

to my mother and father, and a bad influence on me, and to treat us with the appreciation we were due. Uncle Monty warned Alvin that if he didn't abide by his promises and continued instead to sabotage Herman's household, the Roths would be finished with him for good.

Though Alvin appeared to be trying hard to make a go of the menial donkeywork that was his first job, he didn't last long enough at the market to rise even a notch above sweeping and fetching. One day, when he'd been there little more than a week, the FBI came around to inquire about him, the same agent using the same menacingly innocuous questions he'd asked my family and me, only insinuating now to the other produce workers that Alvin was a self-declared traitor plotting with anti-American malcontents like himself to assassinate President Lindbergh. The charges were ludicrous, and yet tame as Alvin had been all that week—tame as he'd sworn and dedicated himself to remaining—he was fired on the spot and, on the way out, instructed by one of the goons in charge never to come anywhere near the market again. When my father got on the phone to his brother demanding to know what had happened, Monty replied that he'd had no choice—he'd been ordered to get rid of his nephew by Longy's boys. Newark's Longy Zwillman, who'd grown up like my father and his brothers a son of immigrants in the old Jewish slums, ran the Jersey rackets back then, the ruthless potentate of everything from bookmaking and strikebreaking to the trucking and hauling services foisted on merchants like Belmont Roth. Because the feds were the last people Longy needed snooping around, Alvin lost the job, cleared out of our house, and left the city in under twenty-four hours, this time not across the international border for Montreal and the Canadian commandos but just over the Delaware for Philadelphia and a job with Shushy's uncle the gambling-machine king, a racketeer seemingly more tolerant of traitors than his peerless counterpart up in North Jersey.

In the spring of 1942, to celebrate the success of the Iceland Understanding, a state dinner was given at the White House by President and Mrs. Lindbergh to honor Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was known to have touted Lindbergh to his Nazi colleagues as Germany's ideal American presidential candidate long before the Republican Party drafted Lindbergh at its 1940 convention. Von Ribbentrop was the negotiator seated at Hitler's side throughout the Iceland meetings and the first Nazi leader to be invited to America by any government official or agency since the fascists had come to power nearly ten years before. No sooner was the announcement of the von Ribbentrop dinner made public than strong criticism was voiced by the liberal press, and rallies and

demonstrations were staged all across the country protesting the White House decision. For the first time since he left office, former president Roosevelt emerged from seclusion to make a brief nationwide address from Hyde Park urging President Lindbergh to rescind the invitation "for the sake of all freedom- loving Americans, and particularly the tens of millions of Americans of European stock whose ancestral countries must live beneath the Nazis' crushing yoke."

Roosevelt was immediately attacked by Vice President Wheeler for "playing politics" with a sitting president's conduct of foreign affairs. It wasn't merely cynical, said the vice president, but utterly irresponsible of him to argue for the same dangerous policies that had all but dragged America into a bloody European war while the New Deal Democrats were running the country. Wheeler was himself a Democrat, a former three-term senator from Montana and the first and only member of the opposition party to be chosen to share a ticket with a presidential candidate since Lincoln picked Andrew Johnson as his second-term running mate in 1864. Early in his political career, Wheeler was so far to the left that he'd been the voice of Butte's radical labor leaders, the enemy of Anaconda Copper—the mining company that ran Montana pretty much like a company store—and, as an early supporter of FDR's, had been suggested as his vice presidential candidate in 1932. He'd first departed the Democratic Party in 1924 to team up with Wisconsin's reformist senator Robert La Follette on the union-supported Progressive Party presidential ticket, and then, after abandoning La Follette and his supporters in the non-Communist American left, he joined Lindbergh and the right-wing isolationists in helping to found America First, attacking Roosevelt with antiwar statements so extreme that they prompted the president to label his criticism "the most untruthful, dastardly, unpatriotic thing that has been said in public life in my generation." Wheeler had been chosen by the Republicans to be Lindbergh's running mate in part because his own political machine in Montana had helped to elect Republicans to Congress throughout the late thirties but mainly to persuade the American people of the strength of the bipartisan support for isolationism and to have on the ticket a combative, un- Lindbergh-like candidate whose job would be to attack and revile his own political party at every opportunity, as he did in the press conference from the vice president's office when he predicted that if the reckless "war-minded" rhetoric in Roosevelt's message from Hyde Park was any indication of the campaign the Democrats intended to wage in the forthcoming elections, they would suffer even greater congressional losses than they had in the 1940 Republican landslide.

The very next weekend, the German-American Bund filled Madison

Square Garden with a near-capacity crowd, some twenty-five thousand people who had turned out to support President Lindbergh's invitation to the German foreign minister and to denounce the Democrats for their renewed "warmongering." During Roosevelt's second term, the FBI and congressional committees investigating the Bund's activities had immobilized the organization, designating it a Nazi front and bringing criminal charges against leaders in its high command. But under Lindbergh, government efforts at harassing or intimidating Bund members ceased and they were able to regain their strength by identifying themselves not only as American patriots of German extraction opposed to America's intervention in foreign wars but as staunch enemies of the Soviet Union. The deep fascist fellowship uniting the Bund was now masked by vociferous patriotic declamations on the peril of a worldwide Communist revolution.

As an anti-Communist rather than a pro-Nazi organization, the Bund was as anti-Semitic as before, openly equating Bolshevism with Judaism in propaganda handouts and harping on the number of "prowar" Jews—like Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and financier Bernard Baruch, who'd been Roosevelt confidants—and, of course, holding fast to the purposes enunciated in their official declaration on first organizing in 1936: "to combat the Moscow- directed madness of the Red world menace and its Jewish bacillus-carriers" and to promote "a free Gentile-ruled United States." Gone, however, from the 1942 Madison Square Garden rally were the Nazi flags, the swastika armbands, the straight-armed Hitler salute, the storm trooper uniforms, and the giant picture of the Führer that had been on display for the first rally, on February 20, 1939, an event promoted by the Bund as "George Washington Day Birthday Exercises." Gone were the wall banners proclaiming "Wake up America—Smash Jewish Communists!" and the references by speechmakers to Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Franklin D. Rosenfeld" and the big white buttons with the black lettering that had been distributed to Bund members to stick into their lapels, the buttons that read:

KEEP AMERICA OUT OF THE JEWISH WAR

Meanwhile, Walter Winchell continued to refer to the Bundists as "Bundits," and Dorothy Thompson, the prominent journalist and wife of novelist Sinclair Lewis, who'd been expelled from the 1939 Bund rally for exercising what she called her "constitutional right to laugh at ridiculous statements in a

public hall," went on denouncing their propaganda in the same spirit she'd demonstrated three years earlier when she'd exited the rally shouting, "Bunk, bunk, bunk! Mein Kampf, word for word!" And on his Sunday-night program following the Bund rally, Winchell contended, with his usual cocksureness, that growing hostility to the von Ribbentrop state dinner marked the end of America's honeymoon with Charles A. Lindbergh. "The presidential blunder of the century," Winchell called it, "the blunder of blunders for which the reactionary Republican henchmen of our fascist-loving president will pay with their political lives in the November elections."

The White House, accustomed to nearly universal deification of Lindbergh, seemed stymied by the strong disapproval that the opposition was so rapidly able to muster against him, and though the administration sought to distance itself from the Bund's New York rally, the Democrats—determined to associate Lindbergh with the organization's ignominious reputation—held a Madison Square Garden rally of their own. Speaker after speaker scathingly denounced "the Lindbergh Bundists," until to everyone's astonished delight, FDR himself appeared on the platform. The ten-minute ovation his presence elicited would have gone on even longer had not the former president called out forcefully, above the roar, "My fellow Americans, my fellow Americans—I have a message for both Mr. Lindbergh and Mr. Hitler. The moment compels my stating with a candor they cannot misunderstand that it is we, and not they, who are the masters of America's destiny," words so stirring and dramatic that every human being in that crowd (and in our living room and in the living rooms up and down our street) was swept away by the joyous illusion that the nation's redemption was at hand.

"The only thing we have to fear," FDR told his audience—recalling the opening seven words of a sentence as renowned as any ever spoken at a first inaugural—"is the obsequious yielding to his Nazi friends by Charles A. Lindbergh, the shameless courting by the president of the world's greatest democracy of a despot responsible for innumerable criminal deeds and acts of savagery, a cruel and barbaric tyrant unparalleled in the chronicle of man's misdeeds. But we Americans will not accept a Hitler-dominated America. We Americans will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. Today the entire globe is divided between human slavery and human freedom. We—choose—freedom! We accept only an America consecrated to freedom! If there is a plot being hatched by antidemocratic forces here at home harboring a Quisling blueprint for a fascist America, or by foreign nations greedy for power and supremacy—a plot to suppress the great upsurge of human liberty of which the American Bill of Rights is the fundamental document, a plot to replace American democracy with

the absolute authority of a despotic rule such as enslaves the conquered people of Europe—let those who would dare in secret to conspire against our freedom understand that Americans will not, under any threat or in the face of any danger, surrender the guarantees of liberty framed for us by our forefathers in the Constitution of the United States."

Lindbergh's response came a few days afterward—he donned his Lone Eagle flying gear and early one morning took off from Washington in his two-engine Lockheed Interceptor to meet with the American people face to face and reassure them that every decision he made was designed solely to increase their security and guarantee their well-being. That's what he did when the smallest crisis loomed, flew to cities in every region of the country, this time to as many as four and five in a single day owing to the Interceptor's phenomenal speed, and everywhere his plane set down the cluster of radio microphones was waiting for him as were the local bigwigs, the wire-service stringers, the city's reporters, and the thousands of citizens who had gathered to catch sight of their young president in his famous aviator's windbreaker and leather cap. And each time he landed, he made it clear that he was flying the country unescorted, without either Secret Service or Air Corps protection. This was how safe he considered the American skies to be; this was how secure the country was now that his administration, in little more than a year, had dispelled all threat of war. He reminded his audiences that the life of not a single American boy had been put at risk since he'd come to office and would not be put at risk so long as he remained in office. Americans had invested their faith in his leadership, and every promise he had made to them he had kept.

That was all he said or had to say. He never mentioned von Ribbentrop's name or FDR's or made reference to the German-American Bund or the Iceland Understanding. He said nothing in support of the Nazis, nothing to reveal an affinity with their leader and his aims, not even to note with approval that the German army had recovered from its winter losses and that all along the Russian front, the Soviet Communists were being pushed farther eastward toward their ultimate defeat. But then everyone in America knew that it was an unshakable conviction of the president's, as it was of his party's dominant right wing, that the best protection against the spread of Communism across Europe, into Asia and the Middle East, and as far as to our own hemisphere was the total destruction of Stalin's Soviet Union by the military might of the Third Reich.

In his low-key, taciturn, winning way, Lindbergh told the airfield crowds and the radio listeners who he was and what he'd done, and by the time he climbed back aboard his plane to take off for his next stop, he could have announced that, following the von Ribbentrop White House dinner, the First

Lady would be inviting Adolf Hitler and his girlfriend to spend the Fourth of July weekend as vacation guests in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House and still have been cheered by his countrymen as democracy's savior.

My father's boyhood friend Shepsie Tirschwell had been one of several projectionist-editors at the Newsreel Theater on Broad Street since its opening in 1935 as the city's only all-news movie house. The Newsreel's one-hour show comprised news clips, shorts, and "The March of Time," and it ran daily from early morning until midnight. Every Thursday, out of thousands of feet of news film supplied by companies like Pathe and Paramount, Mr. Tirschwell and the three other editors selected stories and spliced together an up-to-the-minute show so that regular customers like my father—whose office on Clinton Street was only a few blocks away—could keep pace with national news, important happenings worldwide, and exciting moments from championship sports matches that, back in the radio era, could be seen on film nowhere but at a movie theater. My father would try to find an hour each week to catch a complete show, and when he did, he'd recount over dinner what he'd seen and whom. Tojo. Petain. Batista. De Valera. Arias. Quezon. Camacho. Litvinov. Zhukov. Hull. Welles. Harriman. Dies. Heydrich. Blum. Quisling. Gandhi. Rommel. Mountbatten. King George. La Guardia. Franco. Pope Pius. And that was but an abbreviated list of the tremendous cast of newsreel characters prominent in events that my father told us we would one day remember as history worthy of passing on to our own children.

"Because what's history?" he asked rhetorically when he was in his expansive dinnertime instructional mode. "History is everything that happens everywhere. Even here in Newark. Even here on Summit Avenue. Even what happens in his house to an ordinary man—that'll be history too someday."

On the weekends when Mr. Tirschwell was working, my father would take Sandy and me to be further educated at the Newsreel Theater. Mr. Tirschwell would leave free passes at the box office for us, and each time my father brought us up to the projection booth after the show would give the same civics lecture. He'd tell us that in a democracy, keeping abreast of current events was a citizen's most important duty and that you could never start too early to be informed about the news of the day. We'd gather close to the film projector, each of whose parts he'd name for us, and then we'd look at the framed photographs on the walls that had been taken at the theater's black-tie opening night, when Newark's first and only Jewish mayor, Meyer Ellenstein, had cut the ribbon strung across the lobby and welcomed the famous guests, among whom, as Mr.

Tirschwell told us, pointing to their pictures, was the former U.S. ambassador to Spain and the founder of Bamberger's department store.

What I liked best about the Newsreel Theater was that the seats were constructed so that even an adult didn't have to get up to let others by, that the projection booth was said to be soundproof, and that on the carpet in the lobby was a design of motion picture reels that you could step on when you went in and out. Not until I think back to those consecutive Saturdays in 1942, when Sandy was fourteen and I was nine and we were taken by my father specifically to see the Bund rally one week and FDR addressing the anti-Ribbentrop Garden rally the next, am I able to remember anything much other than the narrating voice of Lowell Thomas, who introduced most of the political news, and of Bill Stern, who enthusiastically reported on sports. But the Bund rally I've not forgotten because of the hatred instilled in me by the Bundists up on their feet chanting von Ribbentrop's name as though it were he who was now president of the United States, and FDR's speech I've not forgotten because when he proclaimed to the anti-Ribbentrop rally, "The only thing we have to fear is the obsequious yielding to his Nazi friends by Charles A. Lindbergh," a good half of the movie audience booed and hissed while the rest, including my father, clapped as loudly as they could, and I wondered if a war might not break out right there on Broad Street in the middle of the day and if, when we left the darkened theater, we'd find downtown Newark a rubble heap of smoking ruins and fires burning everywhere.

It wasn't easy for Sandy to sit through those two Saturday-afternoon shows at the Newsreel Theater, and since he'd already understood beforehand that it wasn't going to be, he at first refused my father's invitation and agreed to come along with us only when he was ordered to do so. By the spring of 1942, Sandy was a few months from beginning high school, a lean, tall, good-looking boy whose attire was neat, whose hair was combed, and whose posture, standing or sitting, was as perfect as a West Point cadet's. His experience as a leading young spokesman for Just Folks had endowed him, in addition, with an air of authority seldom seen in one so young. That Sandy should prove himself so adept at influencing adults and that he should have developed a reverential following among the younger neighborhood kids who were eager to emulate him and qualify for the Office of American Absorption's summer farm program had surprised my parents and made their older child more intimidating to have around the house than he was back when everyone thought of him as an affable, fairly ordinary boy with a gift for drawing people's likenesses. To me he'd always been the mighty one because of his seniority; now he seemed mightier than ever and easily aroused my admiration despite my having turned away from

him because of what Alvin had described as his opportunism—though even the opportunism (if Alvin was correct and that was the word for it) seemed another remarkable attainment, the emblem of a calm, self-aware maturity knowingly wedded to the ways of the world.

Of course, the concept of opportunism was barely familiar to me at the age of nine, yet its ethical status Alvin communicated clearly enough by the disgust with which he'd pronounced his indictment and what he added by way of amplification. He was still fresh from the hospital then and far too miserable to show much restraint.

"Your brother's nothing," he informed me from his bed one night. "He's less than nothing." And that was when he labeled Sandy opportunistic.

"Is he? Why?"

"Because people are, because they look for the advantage for themselves and the hell with everything else. Sandy's a fucking opportunist. So's your bitch aunt with the big pointy tits. So's the great rabbi. Aunt Bess and Uncle Herman are honest people. But Sandy—selling out to these bastards right off the bat? At his age? With his talent? A real fucking doozy, this brother of yours."

Selling out. Language also new to me, but now no more difficult to understand than "opportunist."

"He just drew some pictures," I explained.

But Alvin was in no mood to have me try to downplay the existence of those pictures, especially as he'd somehow come to know about Sandy's affiliation with Lindbergh's Just Folks. I didn't have the courage to ask how he'd found out what I'd determined never to tell him, though what I figured was that, after accidentally uncovering the artwork beneath the bed, he must have gone ahead to scavenge the drawers of the dining room breakfront, where Sandy stored his school notebooks and his writing paper, and found there all the evidence necessary to hate Sandy forever.

"It doesn't mean what you think," I said, but immediately I had to think what else it could mean. "He's doing it to protect us," I announced. "So we don't get in trouble."

"Because of me," Alvin said. "No!" I protested.

"But that's what he told you. So the family won't get in trouble because of Alvin. That's how he justifies this shit he's up to."

"But why else would he be doing it?" I asked this as guilelessly as a child could and with all of a child's cunning—and with no idea of how to begin to extricate myself from a conflict I had only intensified by lying idiotically in my brother's defense. "What's wrong with what he's doing if he's trying to help?"

He merely replied, "I don't believe you, ace," and, because I was no match for Alvin, I gave up trying to believe myself. Though if only Sandy had told me he was leading a double existence! If only he was making the best of a terrible situation and masquerading as a Lindbergh loyalist to protect us! But having seen him lecturing an audience of Jewish adults in that New Brunswick synagogue basement, I knew how convinced he was of what he was saying and how he gorged on the attention it brought him. My brother had discovered in himself the uncommon gift to be somebody, and so while making speeches praising President Lindbergh and while exhibiting his drawings of him and while publicly extolling (in words written by Aunt Evelyn) the enriching benefits of his eight weeks as a Jewish farm hand in the Gentile heartland—while doing, if the truth be known, what I wouldn't have minded doing myself, by doing what was normal and patriotic all over America and aberrant and freakish only in his home—Sandy was having the time of his life.

Then came history's next outsized intrusion: an engraved invitation from President and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh for Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf and Miss Evelyn Finkel to attend a state dinner in honor of the German foreign minister on the evening of Saturday, April 4, 1942. The cross-country solo flying tour of thirty cities had raised Lindbergh's reputation as a no-nonsense realist and plain- talking man of the people higher even than it had been before Winchell had labeled the von Ribbentrop dinner "the political blunder of the century." Soon the editorial pages of the country's largely Republican press were crowing that it was FDR and the Democrats whose blunder it had been to deliberately misrepresent as a sinister conspiracy what was no more than a cordial White House dinner for a foreign dignitary.

Stunned as my parents were to learn of the invitation, there was nothing much for them to do about it. Months earlier they had registered with Evelyn their disappointment in her for having become another of the small band of misguided Jews to serve as underlings to those now in power. It made no sense to challenge yet again her remote administrative connection to the president of the United States, especially since they knew that it wasn't ideological conviction that animated her, as it appeared to have back in her union days, or just craven political ambition, but the exhilaration of having been rescued by Rabbi Bengelsdorf from her life as a substitute teacher living in an attic flat on Dewey Street and removed to a life at court as miraculously as Cinderella. However, when she phoned unexpectedly one evening to tell my mother that she and the rabbi had arranged for my brother to accompany them to

the von Ribbentrop dinner. . .well, at first no one was willing to believe her. It was still barely possible to accept that Evelyn could herself have stepped overnight from our local little society into "March of Time" celebrity, but now Sandy as well? His preaching for Lindbergh in synagogue basements wasn't improbable enough? This simply could not be so, my father insisted—meaning that it mustn't be so, that, credibility aside, it was too repellent to be so. "It only proves," he told my brother, "that your aunt is nuts."

And maybe she was—driven temporarily nuts by an exaggerated sense of her newfound importance. How else could she have mustered the audacity to seek an invitation to such a great event for her fourteen-year-old nephew? How else could she have prevailed on Rabbi Bengelsdorf to make so outlandish a request of the White House other than by insisting with the uncompromising tenacity of a self-absorbed screwball on the way up? Over the phone my father spoke to her as calmly as he could. "Enough of this foolishness, Evelyn. We're not important people. Leave us alone, please. There's too much for an ordinary person to put up with as it is." But my aunt's commitment to liberating an exceptional nephew from the confines of an ignorant brother-in- law's insignificance (so that he could play a leading role in the world like her) was by now unassailable. Sandy was to attend the dinner as a testament to the success of Just Folks, he was to attend as nothing less than the nationwide representative of Just Folks, and no ghetto father was going to stop him—or her. She got in her car, and fifteen minutes later the reckoning came.

After he hung up, my father did nothing to conceal his outrage, and his voice rose and rose as if he were Uncle Monty. "In Germany Hitler has the decency at least to bar the Jews from the Nazi Party. That and the armbands, that and the concentration camps, and at least it's clear that dirty Jews aren't welcome. But here the Nazis pretend to invite the Jews in. And why? To lull them to sleep. To lull them to sleep with the ridiculous dream that everything in America is hunky-dory. But this?" he cried. "This? Inviting them to shake the blood-stained hand of a Nazi criminal? Unbelievable! Their lying and their scheming do not stop for a minute! They find the best boy, the most talented boy, the hardest-working, most grownup boy. . .No! They have mocked us enough with what they are doing to Sandy! He is not going anywhere! They have already stolen my country—they are not stealing my son!"

"But nobody," Sandy shouted, "is mocking anybody. This is a great

opportunity." "For an opportunist," I thought, but kept my mouth shut.

"Be still," my father told him, just that, and the quiet sternness was more effective than the anger in causing Sandy to understand that he was on the brink of the worst hour of his life.

Aunt Evelyn was knocking and my mother got up to open the back door. "What is this woman doing now?" my father called after her. "I tell her to leave us alone—and so here she comes, crazy as a coot!"

My mother was by no means at odds with my father's resolve, but she did manage to look imploringly at him as she left the kitchen, hoping she might dispose him to be somewhat merciful however little mercy Evelyn deserved for the reckless stupidity with which she had exploited Sandy's zeal.

Aunt Evelyn was astonished (or pretended to be) by my parents' inability to grasp what it meant for a boy Sandy's age to be invited to the White House, what it would mean for his future to have been a dinner guest at the White House. . ."I am not impressed by the White House!" my father cried, hammering on the table to shut her up after she'd said "the White House" for the fifteenth time. "I am only impressed by who lives there. And the person who lives there is a Nazi." "He is not!" Evelyn insisted. "And do you want to tell me that Herr von Ribbentrop isn't a Nazi either?" In response, she called my father a frightened, provincial, uncultivated, narrow-minded. . .and he called her an unthinking, gullible, social-climbing. . .and the quarrel raged across the table, each hotly spitting out indictments to increase the fury of the other, until something Aunt Evelyn said—something relatively mild, as it turned out, about all the strings Rabbi Bengelsdorf had pulled for Sandy—was one absurdity too many for him, and he got up from the table and told her to leave. He walked out of the kitchen and into the rear foyer, where he opened the door to the stairwell, and from there he called to her, "Get out. Go. And don't come back. I never want to see you in this house again."

She couldn't believe it any more than the rest of us. It seemed to me to be a joke, a line tossed off in an Abbott and Costello movie. Get out, Costello. If you're going to carry on like that, leave this house and never come back.

My mother got up from where the three adults had been sitting with their tea and followed him out into the foyer.

"The woman is an idiot, Bess," my father said to her, "a childish idiot who understands nothing. A dangerous idiot."

"Close the door, please," my mother said to him. "Evelyn," he called. "Now. Immediately. Leave." "Don't do this," my mother whispered.

"I am waiting for your sister to get out of my house," he replied. "Our house," my mother said, and she came back into the kitchen.

"Ev, go home," she said softly, "so everything can quiet down." Aunt Evelyn's face was on the table, hidden in her hands. My mother took her by the arm and lifted her to her feet and walked her to the back door and out of the house, our

assertive, effervescent aunt looking as though she had been hit by a bullet and was being carried off to die. Then we heard my father slam the door.

"The woman thinks it's a party," he said to Sandy and me when we stepped out into the foyer to view the aftermath of the battle. "She thinks it's a game. You've been to the Newsreel Theater. I took you boys. You know what you saw there."

"Yes," I said. I felt I had to say something since my brother was now refusing to speak. He had stoically endured Alvin's remorseless ostracism and he had stoically endured the Newsreel Theater and now he was stoically enduring the banishment of his favorite aunt—at fourteen already at one with the family's obstinate men, determined to stand up to anything.

"Well," my father said, "it's not a game. It's a fight. Remember that:

a fight!"

Again I said yes.

"Outside in the world. . ." But here he stopped. My mother hadn't

returned. I was nine and thought that she would never return. And it may have been that my father, at forty-one, thought so too: my father, who had been freed by hardship of many fears, was not free of the fear of losing his precious wife. Catastrophe was no longer far from anyone's mind, and he was looking at his children as though we were suddenly as bereft of a mother as Earl Axman was on the night of Mrs. Axman's nervous breakdown. When my father went to the living room to look out the front windows, Sandy and I trailed closely behind. Aunt Evelyn's car was no longer at the curb. And my mother wasn't standing on the sidewalk or on the stoop or out in the alleyway or even across the street—nor was she in the cellar when my father ran down the cellar stairs calling her name. Nor was she with Seldon and his mother. They were eating in their kitchen when my father knocked and the three of us were let in.

My father said to Mrs. Wishnow, "Did you see Bess?"

Mrs. Wishnow was a beefy woman, tall and ungainly, who walked around with her fists clenched and who, amazingly to me, was said to have been a laughing, lighthearted girl when my father knew her and her family down in the Third Ward before the Great War. Now that she was both mother and family breadwinner, my parents were constantly extolling her unstinting exertions in behalf of Seldon. That her life was a fight was indisputable: you had only to look at her fists.

"What's wrong?" she asked him. "Isn't Bess here?"

Seldon left the kitchen table to come out and say hello to us. Since his father's suicide, my aversion to him had grown stronger, and at the end of the

day I hid back of the school when I knew he was out front waiting to walk me home. And though we lived just one short block from the school, in the morning I'd tiptoe down the stairs and leave the house fifteen minutes before I had to in order to beat him out the door. But then late in the afternoon I would invariably run into him, even if I was at the other end of the Chancellor Avenue hill. I'd be on a household errand and there would be Seldon at my heels, acting as if he'd turned up by accident. And whenever he came by to try to teach me to play chess, I would pretend I wasn't home and not answer the door. If my mother was around she would try to persuade me to play with him by reminding me of the very thing that I wanted to forget. "His father was a wonderful chess player. Years ago he was champion at the Y. He taught Seldon, and now Seldon has no one to play with, and he wants to play with you." I'd tell her that I didn't like or understand the game or know how to play it, but finally there'd be no choice and Seldon would show up with the chess board and his chessmen and I'd sit down across from him at the kitchen table where he'd immediately begin to remind me how his father had made the board and found the chess pieces. "He went into New York, and he knew just the places to go to, and he found just the right pieces—aren't they beautiful? They're made of special wood. And he made this board. He found the wood, and he cut it—you see how the different colors are?" and the only way I found to stop him from perpetually going on about his terrifyingly dead father was to bombard him with the latest toilet jokes I'd heard at school.

When we were headed upstairs again I realized that my father was now going to marry Mrs. Wishnow, and that one evening soon the three of us would carry our belongings down the back stairway and move in with her and Seldon, and that on the way to school as on the way home there would be no way ever again of avoiding Seldon and his unceasing need to draw sustenance from me. And once back in the house, I would have to put my coat away in the closet where Seldon's father had hanged himself. Sandy would sleep in the Wishnow sun parlor, as he had in ours when Alvin lived with us, I'd sleep in the back bedroom beside Seldon, while in the other bedroom my father would sleep where Seldon's father used to sleep, alongside Seldon's mother and her clenched fists.

I wanted to go to the corner and get on a bus and disappear. I still had Alvin's twenty dollars hidden in the tip of a shoe at the bottom of my closet. I'd take the money and get on a bus and down at Penn Station buy a one-way ticket for the train to Philadelphia. There I would find Alvin, and never live with my family again. Instead I would stay with Alvin and look after his stump.

My mother called home after she had put Aunt Evelyn to bed. Rabbi

Bengelsdorf was in Washington, but he had talked with Evelyn on the phone and afterward spoke to my mother, assuring her that he knew better than her dunce of a husband what was and was not in the interest of the Jews. How Herman had treated Evelyn would not be forgotten, he said, especially after all he himself had gone out of his way to do for her nephew at Evelyn's request. The rabbi concluded by telling my mother that appropriate action would be taken when the time came.

Around ten, my father went to pick my mother up and drive her home. Sandy and I were already in pajamas when she came into the room and sat down on my bed and took my hand. I'd never seen her so exhausted—not completely depleted like Mrs. Wishnow but hardly the untiring mother full of contentment who used to live so energetically inside her skin back when her worries were merely the ones of making do for her family on a husband's take- home pay of less than fifty dollars a week. A downtown job, a house to run, a tempestuous sister, a determined husband, a headstrong fourteen-year-old, an apprehensive nine-year-old—not even the simultaneous inundation of all these concerns with all their exacting demands need have been overly burdensome for a woman so resourceful, if only there weren't Lindbergh, too.

"Sandy," she said, "what shall we do? Should I explain to you why Daddy doesn't think you should go? Can we do that together quietly? At some point we have to talk everything through. Just you and me off by ourselves. Sometimes Daddy can fly off the handle, but I don't—you know that. You can trust me to listen to you. But we have to get some perspective on what is going on. Because maybe it really isn't a good thing for you to be drawn any further into something like this. Maybe Aunt Evelyn made a mistake. She's overexcited, darling. She's been like that all her life. Something out of the ordinary happens and she loses all perspective. Daddy thinks. . .Shall I continue, dear, or do you want to go to sleep?"

"Do what you want," Sandy said flatly. "Continue," I said.

My mother smiled at me. "Why? What do you want to know?" "What everyone's yelling for."

"Because everybody sees things differently." Kissing me goodnight, she said, "Because there's a lot on everyone's mind," but when she leaned toward Sandy's bed to kiss him, he turned his face into the pillow.

Usually my father was off to work before Sandy and I were awake, and my mother would be up early to eat breakfast with him and to make our lunch

sandwiches and wrap them in wax paper and put them in the refrigerator and then would herself leave for work after seeing that we two were ready for school. The following day, however, my father didn't leave for his office until he'd had a chance to clarify for Sandy why he was not going to the White House and why he was no longer to participate in any of the programs sponsored by the OAA.

"These friends of von Ribbentrop," he explained to Sandy, "are no friends of ours. Every dirty scheme that Hitler has foisted on Europe, every filthy lie he has told other countries, has come through the mouth of Mr. von Ribbentrop. Someday you'll study what happened at Munich. You'll study the role that Mr. von Ribbentrop played in tricking Mr. Chamberlain into signing a treaty that wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Read PM about this man. Listen to Winchell about this man. Foreign Minister von Ribbensnob, Winchell calls him. You know what he did for a living before the war? Sold champagne. A liquor salesman, Sandy. A fake—a plutocrat and a thief and a fake. Even the 'von' in his name is a fake. But you know none of this. You know nothing about von Ribbentrop, you know nothing about Göring, you know nothing about Goebbels and Himmler and Hess—but I do know. Did you ever hear about the castle in Austria where Herr von Ribbentrop wines and dines the rest of the Nazi criminals? Know how he got it? He stole it. The nobleman who owned it Himmler threw into a concentration camp, and now it is the property of the liquor salesman! Do you know where Danzig is, Sandy, and what happened to it? Do you know what the Treaty of Versailles is? Did you hear of Mein Kampf? Ask Mr. von Ribbentrop—he'll tell you. And I will tell you too, though not from the Nazi point of view. I follow things, and I read things, and I know who these criminals are, son. And I am not allowing you anywhere near them."

"I'll never forgive you for this," Sandy replied.

"But you will," my mother said to him. "One day you'll understand that what Daddy wants for you is only what's in your best interest. He's right, dear, believe me—you have no business with such people. They are only making you their tool."

"Aunt Evelyn?" Sandy asked. "Aunt Evelyn is making me into a 'tool'? Getting me invited to the White House—that's making me into a 'tool'?"

"Yes," my mother said sadly.

"No! That isn't true!" he said. "I'm sorry but I can't let Aunt Evelyn

down."

"Your aunt Evelyn," my father told him, "is the one who let us

down. Just Folks," he said contemptuously. "The only purpose of this so-called Just Folks is to make Jewish children into a fifth column and turn them against

their parents."

"Bullshit!" Sandy said.

"Stop that!" my mother said. "Stop that right now. Do you realize that we're the only family on the block going through anything like this? The only family in this entire neighborhood. Everybody else knows by now just to continue living as they were living before the election and to forget who the president is. And that's what we're doing too. Bad things have happened, but now they're over. Alvin is gone and now Aunt Evelyn is gone, and everything is going to get back to normal."

"And when are we moving to Canada," Sandy asked her, "because of your persecution complex?"

Pointing his finger, my father said, "Don't mimic your stupid aunt.

Don't talk back like that ever again."

"You're a dictator," Sandy said to him, "you're a dictator worse than

Hitler."

Because my parents had each been raised in a household where an

old-country father had not hesitated to discipline his children in accordance with traditional methods of coercion, they were themselves incapable of ever hitting Sandy or me and disapproved of corporal punishment for anyone. Consequently, all my father did in response to being told by a child of his that he was worse than Hitler was to turn away in disgust and leave for work. But he was hardly out the back door when my mother raised her hand and, to my astonishment, smacked Sandy across the face. "Do you know what your father has just done for you?" she shouted at him. "Don't you understand yet what you were about to do to yourself? Finish your breakfast and go to school. And you be home when school is over. Your father laid down the law—you better obey it."

He didn't flinch when she hit him, and now, all resistance, he undertook to enlarge his heroism by brazenly telling her, "I'm going to the White House with Aunt Evelyn. I don't care whether you ghetto Jews like it or not."

To add to the morning's ugliness, to add to the nerve-shattering implausibility of all our disorder, she made him pay in full for his filial defiance by dealing him a second blow, and this time he burst into tears. And had he not, this prudent mother of ours would have raised her gentle, kindly mothering hand and hit him a third, a fourth, and a fifth time. "She doesn't know what she's doing," I thought, "she's somebody else--everybody is," and I grabbed my schoolbooks and ran down the back stairs to the alleyway and out to the street, and, as if the day weren't already gruesome enough, there was Seldon waiting on the front stoop to walk me to school.

On the way home from work a couple of weeks later my father stopped off at the Newsreel Theater to catch the filmed coverage of the von Ribbentrop dinner. It was then that he learned from Shepsie Tirschwell, whom he visited up in his booth after the show, that on the first of June his old boyhood friend was leaving for Winnipeg with his wife, his three children, his mother, and his wife's elderly parents. Representatives of Winnipeg's small Jewish community had helped Mr. Tirschwell to find work as a projectionist at a neighborhood movie house there and had located apartments for the entire family in a modest Jewish neighborhood much like our own. The Canadians had also arranged a low- interest loan to pay for the Tirschwells' move from America and to assist with the support of the in-laws until Mrs. Tirschwell found a job in Winnipeg that would enable her to cover her parents' living expenses. Mr. Tirschwell told my father that he hated parting from his native city and his dear old friends and that of course he regretted leaving his one-of-a-kind job at Newark's most important theater. There was much to leave and much to lose, but he was convinced by all the raw unedited film he'd been watching for the past several years from newsreel crews working around the world that the secret side of the pact reached in Iceland between Lindbergh and Hitler in 1941 provided for Hitler first to defeat the Soviet Union, then to invade and conquer England, and only after that (and after the Japanese had overrun China, India, and Australia, thus completing the creation of their "New Order in Greater East Asia") for America's president to establish the "American Fascist New Order," a totalitarian dictatorship modeled on Hitler's that would set the stage for the last great continental struggle

—the German invasion, conquest, and Nazification of South America. Two years down the line, with Hitler's swastika flying from London's houses of Parliament, the Rising Sun flying over Sydney, New Delhi, and Peking, and Lindbergh having been elected to the presidency for another four years, the U.S. border with Canada would be closed, diplomatic relations between the two countries would be severed, and, so as to focus Americans on the grave internal danger that necessitated the curtailment of their constitutional rights, the onslaught would begin en masse against America's four and a half million Jews.

In the wake of von Ribbentrop's Washington visit—and the triumph it represented for the most dangerous of Lindbergh's American supporters—this was Mr. Tirschwell's forecast, and it was so much more pessimistic than anything my father was predicting that he decided not to repeat it to us or, when he got home from the Newsreel Theater for dinner early that evening, to say anything about the Tirschwells' imminent departure, certain that the news would terrify me, rile Sandy, and set my mother clamoring to emigrate at once. Since Lindbergh's inauguration a year and a half earlier, there were estimated to be

only two to three hundred Jewish families who had taken up permanent residence in the haven of Canada; the Tirschwells were the first such fugitives that my father knew personally, and learning of their decision had left him shaken.

And then there was the shock of seeing on film the Nazi von Ribbentrop and his wife warmly greeted on the White House portico by the president and Mrs. Lindbergh. And the shock of seeing all the prominent guests stepping from their limousines and smiling with anticipation at the prospect of dining and dancing in von Ribbentrop's presence—and among the guests, seemingly no less thrilled than the others by the disgusting occasion, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf and Miss Evelyn Finkel. "I could not believe it," my father said. "The smile on her face is a mile wide. And the husband-to-be? He looks like he thinks the dinner is for him. You should see this man—nodding at everyone as if he actually mattered!" "But why did you go," my mother asked him, "when it was bound to upset you like this?" "I went," he told her, "because every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I'd think I was having a hallucination."

Though we had only just begun dinner, Sandy set down his silverware, mumbled "But nothing is happening in America, nothing," and left the table—and not for the first time since the morning my mother had smacked him across the face. At meals now, should the smallest reference be made to the news, Sandy would get up and without explanation or apology disappear into our room, pulling the door shut behind him. The first few times my mother got up after him and went in to talk with him and to invite him back to the table, but Sandy would sit at his desk sharpening a charcoal pencil or doodling with it on his drawing pad until she let him be. My brother wouldn't even speak to me when, merely out of loneliness, I dared to ask how much longer he was going to act like this. I began to wonder if he might not pick up and leave home, and not for Aunt Evelyn's but to live with the Mawhinneys on their Kentucky farm. He'd change his name to Sandy Mawhinney and we'd never see him again, just as we were never going to see Alvin. And nobody need bother to kidnap him—he'd do it himself, hand himself over to the Christians so as never again to have anything to do with Jews. Nobody needed to kidnap him because Lindbergh had kidnapped him already, along with everyone else!

Sandy's behavior so unsettled me that, in the evenings, I took to doing my homework out of sight of him at the kitchen table. That was how I came to overhear my father—who was in the living room with my mother, reading the evening paper there while Sandy remained in contemptuous

seclusion at the back of the flat—reminding her that our private turmoil was exactly the sort of dissension that the Lindbergh anti-Semites had hoped to stir up between Jewish parents and their children with programs like Just Folks. Understanding this, however, had only hardened his resolve not to follow Shepsie Tirschwell's lead and leave.

"What are you talking about?" said my mother. "Are you telling me that the Tirschwells are going to Canada?" "In June, yes," he replied. "Why? Why June? What's happening in June? When did you find out? Why didn't you say something?" "Because I knew it would upset you." "And it has—why shouldn't it? Why," she demanded to know, "why, Herman, are they leaving in June?" "Because in Shepsie's judgment the time has come. Let's not discuss it," my father said softly. "The little one is in the kitchen, and he's frightened enough. If Shepsie feels it's time, that is his decision for himself and his family, and good luck to him. Shepsie sits and watches the latest news hour after hour. The news is Shepsie's life, and the news is terrible, and so it affects how he thinks, and this is the decision he came up with." "The man came up with the decision," my mother said, "because he is informed." "I am also informed," he said sharply. "I am no less informed—I have just reached a different conclusion. Don't you understand that these anti-Semitic bastards want us to run away? They want to get the Jews so fed up with everything," he told her, "that they leave for good, and then the goyim will have this wonderful country all to themselves. Well, I have a better idea. Why don't they leave? The whole bunch of them— why don't they all go live under their Führer in Nazi Germany? Then we will have a wonderful country! Look, Shepsie can do whatever he thinks is right, but we aren't going anywhere. There is still a Supreme Court in this country. Thanks to Franklin Roosevelt, it is a liberal Supreme Court, and it is there to look after our rights. There is Justice Douglas. There is Justice Frankfurter. There is Justice Murphy and Justice Black. They are there to uphold the law. There are still good men in this country. There is Roosevelt, there is Ickes, there is Mayor La Guardia. In November there is a congressional election. There is still the ballot box and people can still vote without anybody telling them what to do." "And what will they vote for?" my mother asked, and immediately answered herself. "The American people will vote," she said, "and the Republicans will be even stronger." "Quiet. Try to keep your voice down, will you? When November comes," he told her, "we'll find out the results, and there'll be time then to decide what to do." "And if there isn't time?" "There will be. Please, Bess," he said, "this cannot go on every night." And his was the last word, though it was probably only because of me doing my homework in the kitchen that my mother forced herself to say no more.

The next day, right after school, I walked down Chancellor Avenue and around to Clinton Place and then beyond the high school to where I figured chances were slight that anybody would recognize me and waited there for a bus downtown to the Newsreel Theater. I'd checked the newspaper timetable the night before. There was an hour-long show beginning at five minutes to four, which meant that I could catch a five o'clock 14 at the Broad Street stop across from the theater and be safely back in time for dinner, or even earlier, depending on when von Ribbentrop was slotted into the program. One way or another, I had to see Aunt Evelyn at the White House, and not because, like my parents, I was appalled and outraged by what she was doing but because her having gone there at all seemed to me more remarkable than anything that could possibly befall a member of our family—except for what had befallen Alvin.

NAZI BIGWIG WHITE HOUSE GUEST—that was the black-lettered headline spelled out across either side of the theater's triangular marquee, and along with my being downtown without my brother or Earl Axman or one of my parents, it made me feel powerfully delinquent when I stepped up to the box- office window and asked for a ticket.

"Unaccompanied by an adult? No, sir," the woman selling tickets told me. "I'm an orphan," I told her. "I live at the orphanage on Lyons Avenue. The sister sent me to do a report on President Lindbergh." "Where's her note?" I'd carefully written one out on the bus, using a blank page from my notebook, and handed it through the money slot. It was modeled after the notes of permission my mother wrote for school trips, only it was signed "Sister Mary Catherine, St. Peter's Orphanage." The woman looked at it without reading it, then beckoned for me to push my money over. I gave her one of Alvin's tens—a huge bill for a kid my size, let alone an orphan from St. Peter's—but she was busy and gave back nine-fifty in change and slipped me a ticket without any fuss. She failed, however, to return the note. "I need that," I said. "Let's go, sonny," she said impatiently, and motioned for me to make room for the people still lining up for the next show.

I got inside just as the lights went out and the martial music came on and the film began to roll. Because seemingly every man in Newark (the theater drew only a very few women) wanted to get a look at the unlikely White House guest, the place was filled to capacity for this late-Friday-afternoon show and the only empty seat I could find was in the far reaches of the balcony—anyone entering now would have to stand at the back of the orchestra's last row. A great excitement came over me, not only because of my having pulled off something that was not expected of me, but because enveloped by the fumes of the hundreds of cigarettes and the extravagant odor of the five-cent cigars, I felt

deep in the virile magic of a boy masquerading as a man among men.

British land on Madagascar to take over French naval base.

Pierre Laval, chief of Vichy French government, denounces British move as "act of aggression."

RAF bombs Stuttgart third consecutive night. British fighter planes in savage air battle over Malta.

German army resumes assault on USSR in the Kerch Peninsula. Mandalay falls to Japanese army in Burma.

Japanese army launches new drive in jungles of New Guinea. Japanese army marches into Yunnan province of China from Burma. Chinese guerrillas raid city of Canton, killing five hundred Japanese

troops.

A multitude of helmets, uniforms, weapons, buildings, harbors,

beaches, flora, fauna—human faces of every race—but otherwise the same inferno again and again, the unsurpassable evil from whose horrors the United States, of all the great nations, was alone in being spared. Picture after picture of misery without end: the mortars bursting, the infantrymen doubled over and running, marines with raised rifles wading ashore, airplanes dropping bombs, airplanes blown apart and spiraling to earth, the mass graves, the kneeling chaplains, the improvised crosses, the sinking ships, the drowning sailors, the sea in flames, the shattered bridges, the tank bombardment, the targeted hospitals sheared in two, pillars of fire coiling upward from bombed-out oil tanks, prisoners corralled in a sea of mud, stretchers bearing living torsos, bayoneted civilians, dead babies, beheaded bodies bubbling blood. . .

And then the White House. A twilit spring evening. Shadows falling across the sprawl of lawn. Blooming bushes. Flowering trees. Limousines driven by liveried chauffeurs and everyone exiting them in formal attire. From the marble hallway beyond the open portico doors, a string ensemble playing last year's number one hit song, "Intermezzo," popularized from a theme in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Gracious smiles. Quiet laughter. The lean, beloved, handsome president. Beside him the talented poetess, daring aviatrix, and decorous socialite who is the mother of their murdered child. The loquacious, silver-haired honored guest. The elegant Nazi spouse in her long satin gown. Welcoming words, witticisms, and the Old World gallant, steeped in the theatrics of the royal court and looking in his evening clothes like a million bucks, charmingly kissing the First Lady's hand.

Had it not been for the Iron Cross, awarded to the foreign minister by his Führer and embellishing the pocket just inches below the impeccably arranged silk handkerchief, as persuasively civilized a sham as human cunning

could devise.

And there! Aunt Evelyn, Rabbi Bengelsdorf—past the marine guards, through the doorway, and gone!

They couldn't have been on the screen for as long as three seconds, and yet the rest of the national news and the closing sports clips were incomprehensible to me and I kept hoping for the film to spin back to the moment where my aunt materialized asparkle with the gems previously the property of the rabbi's late wife. Among the many improbabilities that the cameras established as irrefutably real, Aunt Evelyn's disgraceful triumph was for me the least real of all.

When the show was over and the lights went up, a uniformed usher was standing in the aisle motioning with his flashlight. "You," he said. "You come with me."

He led me into the crowd that was emptying out of the lobby and through a door he unlocked with a key and then up a narrow stairway that I recognized from when Sandy and I had been brought here to see the Madison Square Garden von Ribbentrop rallies. "How old are you?" the usher asked me.

"Sixteen."

"That's a good one. Keep it up, kid. Get yourself in more hot water." "I have to go home now," I told him. "I'm going to miss my bus." "You're going to miss a lot more than that."

He rapped sharply on the famous soundproof door to the Newsreel's projection booth and Mr. Tirschwell let us in.

He was holding the note from Sister Mary Catherine.

"I don't see how I cannot show this to your parents," he told me. "It was just a joke," I said.

"Your father's coming to pick you up. I telephoned his office to tell him you were here."

"Thank you," I said as politely as I had been taught to say it. "Please sit down."

"But it was a joke," I repeated.

Mr. Tirschwell was preparing the reels for the new show. I saw when I got to looking around that many of the signed photos of the theater's renowned patrons had been removed from the walls, and realized that Mr. Tirschwell had begun to gather together the mementos he was taking to Winnipeg. And I realized too that the gravity of such a move might alone have been enough to account for the sternness with which he was treating me. Yet he also struck me as the exacting sort of adult whose sense of responsibility often extends to what is none of his business. It would have been hard to tell from

either his looks or his speech that he'd grown up in a Newark tenement with my father. He was an understated, distinctly more polished and prideful version than my father of the scantily educated slum child who'd lifted himself out of his parents' immigrant poverty almost entirely by virtue of a vigilant, programmatic industriousness. Ardor, for these men, was all they had to go on. What their Gentile betters called pushiness was generally just this—the ardor that was everything.

for dinner."

"If I go outside," I said, "I can still get the bus and be home in time

"Stay where you are, please."

"But what did I do wrong? I wanted to see my aunt. This isn't fair," I

said, dangerously close to crying. "I wanted to see my aunt at the White House, that's all."

"Your aunt," he said, and he gritted his teeth so as to say no more. Of all things, his disdain for Aunt Evelyn triggered my tears. Here

Mr. Tirschwell lost his patience. "Are you suffering?" he asked sardonically. "What, what are you suffering? Do you have any idea what people are going through all over the world? Did you understand nothing of what you just saw? I only hope that in the future you're spared any real reason to cry. I hope and pray that in the days ahead your family—" He stopped abruptly, clearly unaccustomed to an undignified eruption of irrational emotion, particularly in the handling of an insignificant child. Even I could understand that his argument was with something other than me, but that didn't lessen the shock of my having to bear the brunt of it.

"What's going to happen in June?" I asked him. It was the unanswered question that I'd overheard my mother ask my father the night before.

Mr. Tirschwell continued scanning my face as though trying to determine how lacking in intelligence I was. "Pull yourself together," he finally said. "Here," and handed me his handkerchief. "Dry your eyes."

I did as he told me, but when I repeated, "What's going to happen? Why are you going to Canada?" the exasperation all at once disappeared from his voice and something emerged both stronger and milder--his intelligence.

"I have a new job there," he replied.

That he was sparing me terrified me, and I was again in tears.

My father arrived some twenty minutes later. Mr. Tirschwell handed him the note I'd written to get myself into the theater, but my father didn't take the time to read it until he had steered me by the elbow out of the theater and into the street. That's when he hit me. First my mother hits my brother, now my

father reads the words of Sister Mary Catherine and, for the first time ever, wallops me, without restraint, across the face. As I am already overwrought— and nothing like as stoical as Sandy—I break down uncontrollably alongside the ticket booth, in plain view of all the Gentiles hurrying home from their downtown offices for a carefree spring weekend in Lindbergh's peacetime America, the autonomous fortress oceans away from the world's war zones where no one is in jeopardy except us.

6

May 1942–June 1942

Their Country

May 22, 1942

Dear Mr. Roth:

In compliance with a request from Homestead 42, Office of American Absorption, U.S. Department of the Interior, our company is offering relocation opportunities to senior employees like yourself, deemed qualified for inclusion in the OAA's bold new nationwide initiative.

It was exactly eighty years ago that the U.S. Congress passed the Homestead Act of 1862, the famous legislation, unique to America, which granted 160 acres of unoccupied public land virtually free to farmers willing to pull up stakes and settle the new American West. Nothing comparable has been undertaken since then to provide adventurous Americans with exciting new opportunities to expand their horizons and to strengthen their country.

Metropolitan Life is proud to be among the very first group of major American corporations and financial institutions selected to be participants in the new Homestead program, which is designed to give emerging American families a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move their households, at government expense, in order to strike roots in an inspiring region of America previously inaccessible to them. Homestead 42 will provide a challenging environment steeped in our country's oldest traditions where parents and children can enrich their Americanness over the generations. Upon receipt of this announcement you should immediately contact Mr. Wilfred Kurth, the Homestead 42 representative in our Madison Avenue office. He will personally answer all your questions and his staff will

courteously assist you in every way they can.

Congratulations to you and your family for having been chosen from among numerous deserving

candidates at Metropolitan Life to be among the company's first pioneering "homesteaders" of 1942.

Sincerely yours, Homer L. Kasson

Vice President for Employee Affairs

Several days had to pass before my father could summon the composure to show the company's letter to my mother and to break the news that as of September 1, 1942, he was being transferred from the Metropolitan's Newark district to a district office opening in Danville, Kentucky. On a map of Kentucky that had been included in the Homestead 42 packet presented to him by Mr. Kurth, he located Danville for us. Then he read aloud from a page in a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet entitled The Blue Grass State. "'Danville is the county seat of rural Boyle County. It sits in beautiful Kentucky countryside about sixty miles south of Lexington, the state's second-biggest city after Louisville.'" He began flipping through the pamphlet to find still more interesting facts to read aloud that would somehow mitigate the senselessness of this turn of events. "'Daniel Boone helped to blaze "the Wilderness Road," which opened the way to the settlement of Kentucky. . .In 1792, Kentucky became the first state west of the Appalachians to join the Union. . .The population of Kentucky in 1940 was 2, 845, 627.' The population of Danville—let me get it here—Danville's population was 6, 700."

"And how many Jews in Danville," my mother asked, "of the six thousand and seven hundred? How many in the whole state?"

"You already know, Bess. There are very few. All I can tell you is that it could be worse. It could be Montana, where the Gellers are going. It could be Kansas, where the Schwartzes are going. It could be Oklahoma, where the Brodys are going. Seven men are leaving from our office, and I am the luckiest, believe me. Kentucky is a beautiful place with a beautiful climate. It is not the end of the world. We will wind up living out there just about the way we live here. Maybe better, given that everything is cheaper and the climate's so nice. There's going to be school for the boys, there's going to be the job for me, there's going to be the house for you. Chances are we'll be able to afford to buy a place of our own where the boys can each have a separate room and a yard out back to play in."

"And just where do they get the gall to do this to people?" my mother asked. "I am dumbfounded, Herman. Our families are here. Our lifelong friends are here. The children's friends are here. We have lived in peace and harmony here all of our lives. We are only a block from the best elementary

school in Newark. We are a block from the best high school in New Jersey. Our boys have been raised among Jews. They go to school with other Jewish children. There is no friction with the other children. There is no name-calling. There are no fights. They have never had to feel left out and lonely the way I did as a child. I cannot believe the company is doing this to you. The way you have worked for those people, the hours that you put in, the effort—and this," she said angrily, "is the reward."

"Boys," my father said, "ask me what you want to know. Mother is right. This is a big surprise for all of us. We are all a little dumbfounded. So ask whatever is on your mind. I don't want anybody to be confused about anything."

But Sandy wasn't confused, nor did he look dumbfounded in any way. Sandy was thrilled and barely able to hide his glee, and all because he knew exactly where to find Danville, Kentucky, on the map—fourteen miles from the Mawhinneys' tobacco farm. It could have been that he'd also known we would be moving there long before any of the rest of us did. My father and mother may not have said as much, but then, precisely because of what no one was saying, even I could understand that my father's being selected as one of his district's seven Jewish "homesteaders" was no more fortuitous than his assignment to the company's new Danville office. Once he'd opened the back door to our flat and told Aunt Evelyn to leave the house and never come back, our fate could have played out no other way.

It was after dinner and we were in the living room. Serenely unperturbed, Sandy was drawing something and had no questions to ask, and I— looking outside with my face pressed to the screen of the open window—I had no questions to ask either, and so my father, grimly absorbed in his thoughts, and knowing he'd been defeated, began to pace the floor, and my mother, on the sofa, murmured something under her breath, refusing to resign herself to what awaited us. In the drama of confrontation, in the struggle against we knew not what, each had taken on the role that the other had played in the lobby of the Washington hotel. I realized how far things had gone and how terribly confusing everything now was and how calamity, when it comes, comes in a rush.

Since about three it had been squalling steadily, but abruptly the wind-driven downpour stopped and the sun came blazing out as though the clocks had been turned ahead and, over in the west, tomorrow morning was now set to begin at six P.M. today. How could a street as modest as ours induce such rapture just because it glittered with rain? How could the sidewalk's impassable leaf-strewn lagoons and the grassy little yards oozing from the flood of the downspouts exude a smell that roused my delight as if I'd been born in a tropical rain forest? Tinged with the bright after-storm light, Summit Avenue was as

agleam with life as a pet, my own silky, pulsating pet, washed clean by sheets of falling water and now stretched its full length to bask in the bliss.

Nothing would ever get me to leave here.

"And who will the boys play with?" my mother asked.

"There are plenty of children in Kentucky to play with," he assured

her.

"And who will I talk to?" she asked. "Who will I have there like the

friends I've had my whole life?"

"There are women there, too."

"Gentile women," she said. Ordinarily my mother drew no strength from scorn, but she spoke scornfully now—that's how perplexed she was and how endangered she felt. "Good Christian women," she said, "who will fall all over themselves to make me feel at home. They have no right to do this!" she proclaimed.

"Bess, please—this is what it is like to work for a big company. Big companies transfer people all the time. And when they do, you have to pick up and go."

"I'm talking about the government. The government cannot do this. They cannot force people to pick up and go—that is not in any constitution that I ever heard of."

"They aren't forcing us."

"Then why are we going?" she asked. "Of course they are forcing us. This is illegal. You cannot just take Jews because they're Jews and force them to live where you want them to. You cannot take a city and just do what you want with it. To get rid of Newark as it is, with Jews living here like everyone else? What business is it of theirs? This is against the law. Everyone knows it is against the law."

"Yeah," said Sandy without bothering to look up from what he was sketching, "why don't we sue the United States of America?"

"You can sue," I told him. "In the Supreme Court."

"Ignore him," my mother told me. "Until your brother learns to be civil, we just continue to ignore him."

Here Sandy got up and took his drawing materials into our bedroom. Unable any longer to witness the spectacle of my father's defenselessness and my mother's anguish, I unlocked the front door and raced down the front stairs and out into the street where the kids who'd finished their dinner were already dropping Popsicle sticks into the gutters and watching them cascade over the iron grate into the gurgling sewer along with the natural detritus shaken by the storm from the locust trees and the swirl of candy wrappers, beetles, bottle caps,

earthworms, cigarette butts, and, mysteriously, inexplicably, predictably, the single mucilaginous rubber. Everybody was out having one last good time before they had to turn in for bed—and all of them still capable of having a good time because none had a parent working for any of the corporations collaborating with Homestead 42. Their fathers were men who worked for themselves or with a partner who was a brother or an in-law and so they weren't going to have to go anywhere. But I wasn't going anywhere either. I would not be driven by the United States government from a street whose very gutters gushed with the elixir of life.

Alvin was in the rackets in Philadelphia, Sandy lived in exile in our house, and my father's authority as a protector had been drastically compromised if not destroyed. Two years earlier, to preserve our chosen way of life, he had mustered his strength to drive over to the home office and, face to face with the big boss, to decline the promotion that would have advanced his career and increased his earnings but at the price of taking us to live in heavily Bundist New Jersey. Now he no longer had it in him to challenge an uprooting potentially no less hazardous, having concluded that confrontation was futile and our fate out of his hands. Shockingly enough, my father had been rendered impotent by his company's having obediently joined hands with the state. There was nobody left to protect us except me.

After school the next day, I covertly headed off again for the downtown bus, this time for the number 7 line, whose route ran some three-quarters of a mile from Summit Avenue, on the far side of the farmed acreage of the orphan asylum, out where St. Peter's Church fronted the thoroughfare of Lyons Avenue and where, in the shadow of its cross-capped steeple, I was even less likely to be spotted by a neighbor or a schoolmate or a family friend than when I made it my business to walk past the high school and down to Clinton Place to take the 14.

I waited at the bus stop outside the church beside two nuns identically buried within the coarse heavy cloth of those voluminous black habits that I'd never had a chance to study as I did that day. Back then, a nun's habit reached to her shoes, and that, along with the brilliant white, starched arc of cloth that starkly framed her facial features and obliterated all lateral vision—the stiffened wimple that hid scalp, ears, chin, and neck and was itself enfolded in an extensive white headcloth—made of the traditionally dressed Catholic nuns the most archaic-looking creatures I had ever seen, far more startling to behold in our neighborhood than even the creepily morticianlike priests. No buttons or pockets were visible, and thus there was no way to figure out how that sheath of

thickly gathered curtaining got hooked up or how it was taken off or whether it ever was taken off, given that overlaying everything was a large metal cross suspended from a long cord necklace, and strung beads, big and shiny as "killer" marbles, that dangled several feet down from the front of a black leather belt, and, secured to the headcloth, a black veil that broadened at the back and fell straight to the waist. Other than within the naked little region that was the wimpled, plain, unornamented face, no nap, no softness, no fuzziness anywhere.

I assumed these were two of the nuns who supervised the lives of the orphans and taught in the parochial school. Neither looked my way and, on my own, without a wisecracking sidekick like Earl Axman, I didn't dare to look at them other than in stolen glances, though even while I stared at my own two feet, the clever child's capacity for self-censorship deserted me and I confronted the mysteries again and again, all the questions concerning their female bodies and its lowliest functions, and all tending toward depravity. Despite the seriousness of the afternoon's secret mission and everything that rode on its outcome, I couldn't manage to be anywhere near a nun, let alone a pair of them, without a mind awash in my none-too-pure Jewish thoughts.

The nuns took the two seats behind the driver and, though most of the seats farther to the rear were empty, I sat down across the narrow aisle from the two of them, in the seat just back from the turnstile and the fare box. I'd had no intention of sitting there, didn't understand why I was doing so, but instead of moving off to where I could be out from under the sway of unfettered curiosity, I opened my notebook to pretend to do my schoolwork, simultaneously hoping and dreading that I'd overhear them say something in Catholic. Alas, they were silent, praying I supposed, and no less spellbinding for doing it on a bus.

Some five minutes from downtown, there was a musical clacking of rosary beads as together they rose to disembark at the wide intersection of High Street and Clinton Avenue. On one side of the junction there was an auto dealer's lot and on the other the Hotel Riviera. As they passed, the taller of the nuns smiled down at me from the aisle and, with a vague sadness in her quiet voice— perhaps because the Messiah had come and gone without my knowing it— commented to her companion, "What a well-scrubbed, cute little boy."

She should have known what I'd been thinking. Then again, maybe

she did.

A few minutes later, before the bus took the big final turn off Broad

Street and started down Raymond Boulevard for its last stop outside Penn Station, I too got off and began running toward the Federal Office Building on Washington Street, where Aunt Evelyn had her office. Inside the lobby I was told by an elevator operator that the OAA was on the top floor, and when I got

there I asked for Evelyn Finkel. "You're Sandy's brother," the receptionist announced. "You could be his little twin," she added appreciatively. "Sandy's five years older," I told her. "Sandy's a wonderful, wonderful boy," she said, "everybody loved having him around," and then she buzzed Aunt Evelyn's office. "Nephew Philip's here, Miss F.," she announced, and within seconds, Aunt Evelyn had swept me past the desks of some half-dozen men and women working at their typewriters and into her office overlooking the public library and the Newark Museum. She was kissing me and hugging me and telling me how much she had missed me, and, despite all my apprehensions—beginning, of course, with the fear that my meeting with our estranged aunt would be discovered by my parents—I proceeded as I had planned by confiding in Aunt Evelyn how I had secretly gone alone to the Newsreel Theater to see her at the White House. I sat in the chair at the side of her desk—a desk easily twice the size of my father's just over on Clinton Street—and asked her to tell me what it had been like to eat dinner with the president and Mrs. Lindbergh. When she began to answer in elaborate detail—and with an eagerness to impress that didn't quite make sense to a mere child already overwhelmed by the magnitude of her betrayal—I couldn't believe I was so easily tricking her into thinking that this was why I was here.

There were two big maps pierced with clumps of colored pins and fixed to an enormous cork bulletin board on the wall back of her desk. The larger map was of the forty-eight states and the smaller of just New Jersey, whose long inland river boundary with neighboring Pennsylvania we had been taught in school to identify as the uncanny outline of an Indian chief's profile, the brow up by Phillipsburg, the nostrils down by Stockton, and the chin narrowing into the neck in the vicinity of Trenton. The state's densely populated easternmost corner, encompassing Jersey City, Newark, Passaic, and Paterson, and extending northward to the ruler-straight border with the southernmost counties of the state of New York, denoted the upper back end of the Indian's feathered headdress. That was how I saw it then, and how I continue to see it; along with the five senses, a child of my background had a sixth sense in those days, the geographic sense, the sharp sense of where he lived and who and what surrounded him.

On Aunt Evelyn's spacious desktop, beside separately framed pictures of my dead grandmother and of Rabbi Bengelsdorf, there was a large autographed photo of President and Mrs. Lindbergh standing together in the Oval Office and a smaller photo of Aunt Evelyn in her evening gown shaking the president's hand. "That's the reception line," she explained. "On the way into the state dining room, the guests each file past the president and the First Lady and the evening's honored guest. You're introduced by name and they take a

photograph and the White House sends it to you." "Did the president say anything?" "He said, 'Nice to have you here.'"

"Are you allowed to say anything back?" I asked.

"I said, 'I'm honored, Mr. President.'" She made no effort to disguise how important that exchange had been to her and perhaps to the president of the United States. As always with Aunt Evelyn, there was something very winning about her enthusiasm, though in the context of my household's confusion, I couldn't miss what was diabolical about it as well. Never in my life had I so harshly judged any adult—not my parents, not even Alvin or Uncle Monty—nor had I understood till then how the shameless vanity of utter fools can so strongly determine the fate of others.

"Did you meet Mr. von Ribbentrop?"

Now almost girlishly bashful, she replied, "I danced with Mr. von Ribbentrop."

"Where?"

"There was dancing after dinner in a big tent on the White House lawn. It was a beautiful night. An orchestra and dancing, and Lionel and I were introduced to the foreign minister and his wife, and we got to talking, and then he just bowed and asked me to dance. He's known to be an excellent dancer, and he is, it's true—a perfectly magical ballroom dancer. And his English is faultless. He studied at the University of London and then lived for four years as a young man in Canada. His great youthful adventure, he calls it. I found him a very charming gentleman and highly intelligent."

"What'd he say?" I asked.

"Oh, we talked about the president, about the OAA, about our lives

—we talked about everything. He plays the violin, you know. He's like Lionel, a man of the world who can talk knowledgeably about anything. Here, look, darling—look at what I was wearing. Do you see the bag I was carrying? It's gold mesh. See this? See the scarabs? Gold, enamel, and turquoise scarabs."

"What's a scarab?"

"It's a beetle. It's a gem that's cut to resemble a beetle. And it was made right here in Newark by the family of the first Mrs. Bengelsdorf. Their workshop was world famous. They made jewelry for the kings and queens of Europe and all of the wealthiest people in America. Look at my engagement ring," she said, placing her perfumed little hand so close to my face I felt like a dog suddenly and wanted to lick it. "See the stone? That is an emerald, my dearest dear child."

"A real one?"

She kissed me. "A real one! And in the photo, here—that's a link bracelet. It's gold with sapphires and pearls. Real ones!" she said, kissing me again. "The foreign minister said he'd never seen a bracelet more beautiful anywhere. And what do you think that is around my neck?"

"A necklace?"

"A festoon necklace." "What's 'festoon'?"

"A chain of flowers, a garland of flowers. You know the word 'festival.' You know 'festivities.' And you know 'feast,' too, don't you? Well, they're all related. And look, the two brooches, see them? They're sapphires, darling—Montana sapphires set in gold. And do you see who is wearing them? Who? Who is that? It's Aunt Evelyn! It's Evelyn Finkel of Dewey Street! At the White House! Isn't it unbelievable?"

"I guess so," I said.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said, drawing me to her and kissing me now all over my face, "I guess so too. I'm so glad you came to see me. I've missed you so," and she stroked me then as if to find out if my pockets were stuffed with stolen goods. Only years later did I come to understand that her skillful way with her groping hands may well have been what accounted for the rapid renovation of Aunt Evelyn's life by a figure of the stature of Lionel Bengelsdorf. Brilliant and erudite though the rabbi was, superior to everyone even in his egoism, Aunt Evelyn must never have been at a loss with him.

The paradise of envelopment that followed was, of course, unidentifiable at the time. Wherever I put my own two hands, there was the soft surface of her body. Wherever I moved my face, there was the thickness of her scent. Wherever I looked, there was her clothing, new spring wrappings so light and gauzy that they didn't even veil the sheen of her slip. And there were the eyes of another human being as I'd never quite seen them before. I had not reached the age of desire, was blinded, of course, by the word "aunt," still found the random little stiffening of my acorn of a penis the puzzling nuisance it had always been, and so the delight that I took nestling into the curvaceousness of my mother's thirty-one-year-old sister, a tiny, lively Thumbelina seemingly timid in no way and formed after the model of hills and apples, was a lifeless feeling of frenzy and nothing more, as though a rare, imperfectly printed treasure of a stamp that I knew to be priceless had accidentally turned up on an ordinary letter dropped by the postman into our Summit Avenue mailbox.

"Aunt Evelyn?" "My darling."

"Do you know that we're moving to Kentucky?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want to go, Aunt Evelyn. I want to stay at my school."

She stepped sharply back from me, and with the air now of anything but a paramour, asked, "Who sent you here, Philip?"

"Sent me? Nobody."

"Who sent you to see me? Tell the truth." "It is the truth. Nobody."

She returned to the chair behind the desk, and the look in her eyes made it necessary for me to do everything I could not to get up and run. But I wanted what I wanted too much to run.

"There's nothing to be afraid of in Kentucky," she said. "I'm not afraid. I just don't want to have to move."

Even her silence was all-embracing and, if I had indeed been lying, would have forced from me the confession she wanted. Her life, poor woman, was a perpetual state of intensity.

"Can't Seldon and his mother go instead of us?" I asked. "Who is Seldon?"

"The boy downstairs whose father died. His mother works for the Metropolitan now. How come we have to go and they don't?"

"Wasn't it your father who put you up to this, dear?" "No. No. Nobody even knows I'm here."

But I saw she still didn't believe me—her aversion to my father was too precious to be dislodged by the obvious truth.

"Does Seldon want to go with you to Kentucky?" she asked me.

"I didn't ask him. I don't know. I just thought I'd ask you if they could go instead."

"My dear little boy, do you see the New Jersey map? Do you see these pins in the map? Each one represents a family chosen for relocation. Now look at the map of the whole country. See all the pins there? Those represent the location to which each New Jersey family has been assigned. Making these assignments involves the cooperation of many, many people, in this office, in the Washington headquarters, and in the state to which each family is moving. The biggest and most important corporations in New Jersey are relocating employees in a partnership with Homestead 42, and so much more planning, much, much more than you can begin to imagine, has gone into all of this. And, of course, no decision is made by any one person. But even if it was, and I were that person, and I could do something to keep you near your friends and your school, I would continue to think that you for one are going to benefit enormously by becoming something more than another Jewish child whose parents have made him too

frightened ever to leave the ghetto. Look what your family has done to Sandy. You saw your brother in New Brunswick that night. You saw him talking to all those people about his adventure on the tobacco farm. Do you remember that night?" she asked me. "Weren't you proud of him?"

"Yes."

"And did it sound as though living in Kentucky was frightening and that Sandy was ever, for a moment, afraid?"

"No."

Here, having reached into her desk for something, she got up and came around again to where I was sitting. Her pretty face, with its large features and thickly applied makeup, suddenly looked to me preposterous—the carnal face of the ravenous mania to which, in my mother's judgment, her emotional younger sister had helplessly fallen prey. To be sure, for a child in the court of Louis XIV the ambitions and satisfactions of such a relative would never have attained the same intimidating aura of significance that Aunt Evelyn's did for me, nor would the worldly advancement of a cleric like Rabbi Bengelsdorf have seemed the least bit scandalous to my parents were they themselves raised at court as a marquis and a marchioness. Probably I couldn't have done any worse

—I might well have done a lot better—seeking solace from the two nuns on the Lyons Avenue bus than from someone reveling in the pleasures of the standard, petty corruptions that proliferate wherever people compete for even the tiniest advantages of rank.

"Be brave, darling. Be a brave boy. Do you want to sit on the front stoop of Summit Avenue for the rest of your life, or do you want to go out into the world like Sandy did and prove that you are as good as anyone? Suppose I'd been afraid to go to the White House and meet the president because people like your father say things about him and call him names. Suppose I'd been afraid to meet the foreign minister because they call him names. You cannot go around being afraid of everything that isn't familiar to you. You cannot grow up to be frightened like your parents. Promise me you won't."

"I promise."

"Here," she said, "I have a treat for you." And she handed me one of two little cardboard packets that she had been holding in her hand. "I got this for you at the White House. I love you, sweetheart, and I want you to have it."

"What is it?"

"An after-dinner chocolate. It's a chocolate wrapped in gold paper. And you know what's embossed right on the chocolate? The presidential seal. Here's one for you, and if I give you Sandy's, will you bring it to him for me?"

"Okay."

"This is what's on your table at the White House at the end of the meal. Chocolates in a silver dish. And the moment I saw them there I thought of the two boys in the world I most want to make happy."

I got up, clutching the chocolates in my hand, and Aunt Evelyn put her arm tightly around my shoulder and walked me out past all the people working for her and into the corridor, where she pressed the button for the elevator.

"What is Seldon's last name?" she asked me. "Wishnow."

"And he's your best friend."

How could I explain that I couldn't bear him? And so at last I lied and said, "Yes, he is," and, since my aunt did indeed love me and was not herself lying when she said she wanted to make me happy, only a few days later, after I'd finally disposed of the White House chocolates by waiting until no one was around and throwing them over the orphanage fence, Mrs. Wishnow received a letter from the Metropolitan informing her that she and her family were fortunate enough to have been chosen to move to Kentucky as well.

On a Sunday afternoon at the end of May, a confidential meeting was convened in our living room for the Jewish insurance agents who, along with my father, were being relocated from the Metropolitan's Newark office under the auspices of Homestead 42. They all came with just their wives, having agreed that it would be best to leave the children at home. Earlier in the afternoon Sandy and I, joined by Seldon Wishnow, had arranged the chairs for the meeting, including a set of bridge chairs we'd carried upstairs from the Wishnows'. Afterward Mrs. Wishnow drove the three of us to the Mayfair Theater in Hillside, where we would catch a double feature and then be picked up by my father when the meeting was over.

The other guests were Shepsie and Estelle Tirschwell, who were only days from moving their family to Winnipeg, and Monroe Silverman, a distant cousin who'd recently opened a law office in Irvington, just above the haberdashery store owned by my father's second-older brother, Lenny, the uncle who supplied Sandy and me with new school clothes "at cost." When my mother suggested—out of her enduring respect for everything that one is taught to respect—that Hyman Resnick, our local rabbi, should be invited to attend the meeting, nobody else among the organizers who'd assembled in our kitchen the week before showed much enthusiasm for the idea and, after a deferential few minutes of discussion (during which my father said diplomatically what he

always said diplomatically about Rabbi Resnick, "I like the man, like his wife, no doubt in my mind he does an excellent job, but he's really not very brilliant, you know"), my mother's proposal was tabled. Even though, to the delight of a small child, these intimate friends of our family spoke in as wide and entertaining a range of voices as the characters on The Fred Allen Show and were each as distinctively different-looking as the comic-strip figures in the evening paper—this was back when evolution's sly wit was still rampantly apparent, long before the youthful renovation of face and figure became a serious adult aspiration—they were very similar people at the core: they raised their families, budgeted their money, attended to their elderly parents, and cared for their modest homes alike, on most every public issue thought alike, in political elections voted alike. Rabbi Resnick presided over an unimposing yellow-brick synagogue at the edge of the neighborhood where everyone showed up in their High Holiday best for the three days each year of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur observances but otherwise returned there for little else, except, when necessary, to dutifully recite the daily prayer for the dead during the period prescribed. A rabbi was to officiate at weddings and funerals, to bar mitzvah their sons, to visit the ill in the hospital, and to console the bereft at the shiva; beyond that he did not play a role of any importance in their day-today lives, nor did any of them—including my respectful mother—expect him to, and not just because Resnick wasn't that brilliant. Their being Jews didn't issue from the rabbinate or the synagogue or from their few formal religious practices, though over the years, largely for the sake of living parents who came once a week to visit and eat, several of the households, ours among them, were kosher. Their being Jews didn't even issue from on high. To be sure, each Friday at sundown, when my mother ritually (and touchingly, with the devotional delicacy she'd absorbed as a child from watching her own mother) lit the Sabbath candles, she invoked the Almighty by his Hebrew title but otherwise no one ever made mention of "Adonoy." These were Jews who needed no large terms of reference, no profession of faith or doctrinal creed, in order to be Jews, and they certainly needed no other language—they had one, their native tongue, whose vernacular expressiveness they wielded effortlessly and, whether at the card table or while making a sales pitch, with the easygoing command of the indigenous population. Neither was their being Jews a mishap or a misfortune or an achievement to be "proud" of. What they were was what they couldn't get rid of—what they couldn't even begin to want to get rid of. Their being Jews issued from their being themselves, as did their being American. It was as it was, in the nature of things, as fundamental as having arteries and veins, and they never manifested the slightest desire to change it or deny it, regardless of the consequences.

I'd known these people all my life. The women were close and reliable friends who exchanged confidences and swapped recipes, who commiserated with one another on the phone and looked after one another's children and regularly celebrated one another's birthdays by traveling the twelve miles to Manhattan to see a Broadway show. The men had not only worked for years in the same district office but met to play pinochle on the two evenings a month the women had their mahjong game, and from time to time, on a Sunday morning, a group of them went off to the old sweatbaths on Mercer Street with their young sons in tow—the offspring of this set happened all to be boys somewhere between Sandy's age and mine. On Decoration Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day the families would usually organize a picnic some ten miles west of our neighborhood at the bucolic South Mountain Reservation, where the fathers and the sons tossed horseshoes and chose up sides for softball and listened to a ball game on somebody's static-ridden portable radio, the most magical technology known to our world. The boys weren't necessarily the best of friends but we felt connected through our fathers' affiliation. Of us all, Seldon was the least robust, least confident, and, most painfully for him, least lucky, and yet it was to Seldon that I had managed to contract myself for the remainder of boyhood and probably beyond. He'd begun to shadow me more doggedly since he and his mother had learned of their relocation, and I could only think that because we two were going to be the sole Jewish pupils in the Danville elementary school system, I'd be expected—by the Danville Gentiles no less than by our parents—to be his natural ally and closest companion. Seldon's omnipresence might not be the worst that was awaiting me in Kentucky, but to the imagination of a nine-year-old it registered as an unendurable ordeal and accelerated the urge to rebel.

How? I didn't know yet. All I'd felt so far was the pre-mutinous roiling, and all I'd done about it was to find a small, water-stained cardboard suitcase forgotten beneath the usable luggage in our cellar storage bin and, after cleaning it of mildew inside and out, hidden the clothing there that I surreptitiously took, piece by piece, from Seldon's room whenever my mother dragooned me into enduring my hour downstairs as a peevish student of chess. I would have taken my own clothes to stow away in the suitcase except that I knew my mother would discover what was missing and one day soon I'd have to come up with an explanation. She still did the wash on the weekends and put the laundered clothes back—as well as the dry cleaning that it was my job to collect from the tailor shop on Saturdays—and so mapped out in her head was an inventory of everyone's wardrobe that was complete down to the location of the last pair of socks. On the other hand, stealing clothes from Seldon was a snap,

and—what with his having latched on to me as his other self—vengefully irresistible. Underclothes and socks were easy enough to get out of the Wishnow apartment—and down the cellar stairs to the suitcase—tucked beneath my undershirt. Stealing and hiding a pair of his trousers, a sport shirt, and a pair of his shoes posed a more difficult problem, but suffice it to say that Seldon was distractible enough for the theft to be accomplished and, for a time, to go unnoticed.

Once having gathered together everything of his I needed, I couldn't have said what I planned to do next. He and I were about the same size, and on the afternoon when I dared to secrete myself in the bin and change out of my clothes and into Seldon's, all I did was to stand there and whisper, "Hello. My name is Seldon Wishnow," and feel like a freak, and not just because Seldon had become such a freak to me and I was being him but because it was clear from all my transgressive sneaking around Newark—and culminating in this costume party in the dark cellar—that I had become a far bigger freak myself. A freak with a trousseau.

The $ 19. 50 left from Alvin's $ 20 also went into the suitcase, under the clothes. I then hurriedly got back into my own clothes, shoved the cardboard suitcase beneath the other luggage, and, before the angry ghost of Seldon's father could strangle me to death with a hangman's rope, ran for the alleyway and the outdoors. Over the next few days I was able to forget what I'd hidden and the unspecified purpose it was meant to serve. I could even count this latest little escapade as nothing seriously aberrant and as harmless as following Christians with Earl, until the evening when my mother had to rush downstairs to sit and hold Mrs. Wishnow's hand and make her a cup of tea and put her to bed, so wretched and distraught was Seldon's overworked mother because of her son's inexplicably "losing his clothes."

Seldon meanwhile was up in our flat, where he'd been sent to do his homework with me. He was plenty distraught himself. "I didn't lose them," he said through his tears. "How could I lose a pair of shoes? How could I lose a pair of pants?"

"She'll get over it," I said.

"No, not her—she doesn't get over anything. 'You're going to send us to the poorhouse,' she told me. Everything to my mother is 'the last straw.'"

"Maybe you left them at gym class," I suggested.

"How could I? How could I get out of gym class without any clothes

on?"

"Seldon, you had to leave them somewhere. Think."

The next morning, before I headed for school and my mother left for

work, she suggested my making a gift to Seldon of a set of my own clothes to replace his that had disappeared. "There's the shirt that you never wear—the one from Uncle Lenny's that you say is too green. And the pair of Sandy's corduroy trousers, the brown ones that never fit you right—I'm sure they would fit Seldon just fine. Mrs. Wishnow is beside herself, and it would be such a thoughtful gesture on your part," she said.

"And underwear? Do you want to give him my underwear too?

Should I take it off now, Ma?"

"That's not necessary," she said, smiling to soothe my irritation. "But the green shirt and the brown corduroys and maybe one of your old belts that you don't use. It's entirely up to you, but it would mean a lot to Mrs. Wishnow, and to Seldon it would mean the world. Seldon worships you. You know that."

I immediately thought, "She knows. She knows what I did. She knows everything."

"But I don't want him walking around in my clothes," I said. "I don't want him telling everyone in Kentucky, 'Look at me, I'm wearing Roth's clothes.'"

Kentucky."

"Why don't you worry about Kentucky when and if we go to

"He'll wear them to school here, Ma."

"What is the matter with you?" she replied. "What is going on with

you? You're turning into—"

"So are you!" and I ran off with my books to school, and when I got home for lunch at noon I pulled from the bedroom closet the green shirt I hated and the brown corduroy pants that never fit and brought them downstairs to Seldon, who was in his kitchen eating the sandwich his mother had left for him and playing chess with himself.

"Here," I said, throwing the clothes on the table. "I'm giving you these," and then I told him, for all the good it did in rerouting the direction of either of our lives, "Only stop following me around!"

There were leftover delicatessen sandwiches for our supper when Sandy, Seldon, and I got back from the movies. The adults, who'd eaten in the living room when their meeting was through, had by now all left for home, except for Mrs. Wishnow, who sat at the kitchen table with her fists clenched, still embattled, still grappling day in and day out with everything determined to crush her and her fatherless son. She listened, along with the three of us, to the Sunday-night

comedy shows and, while we ate, watched Seldon the way an animal watches over her newborn when she's caught a whiff of something stealthily creeping their way. Mrs. Wishnow had washed and dried the dishes and put them away in the pantry cupboard, my mother was in the living room pushing the carpet sweeper over the rug, and my father had collected and put out the garbage and carried the Wishnows' set of bridge chairs downstairs to return them to the back of the closet where Mr. Wishnow had killed himself. The reek of tobacco smoke pervaded the house despite every window having been thrown open and the ashes and butts flushed down the toilet and the glass ashtrays rinsed clean and stacked away in the breakfront's liquor cabinet (from which not a bottle had been removed that afternoon nor—in keeping with the matter-of-fact temperance practiced in the bulk of the homes of that first industrious American-born generation—a drop requested by a single guest).

For the moment, our lives were intact, our households were in place, and the comfort of habitual rituals was almost powerful enough to preserve a child's peacetime illusion of an eternal, unhounded now. We had the radio going with our favorite programs, we had dripping corned beef sandwiches for supper and rich coffee cake for dessert, we had the resumption of the routines of the school week before us and a double feature under our belts. But because we had no idea what our parents had decided about the future—had as yet no way of telling whether Shepsie Tirschwell had persuaded them to immigrate to Canada, whether cousin Monroe had come through with an affordable legal maneuver to challenge the relocation plan without getting everyone fired, or whether, after poring over the ins and outs of their government-ordained displacement as unemotionally as it was in them to do, they'd found no alternative but to accept that the guarantees of citizenship no longer fully extended to them—the embrace of the totally familiar wasn't the Sunday-night debauch it would ordinarily have been.

Seldon had got mustard all over his face when he hungrily attacked his sandwich, and it surprised me to see his mother reach over to wipe it off with a paper napkin. His letting her do it surprised me even more. I thought, "It is because he has no father," and though by now I believed that about everything that concerned him, probably this time I was right. I thought, "This is the way it's going to be in Kentucky." The Roth family against the world, and Seldon and his mother for dinner forever.

Our voice of belligerent protest, Walter Winchell, came on at nine. Everyone had been waiting on successive Sunday evenings for Winchell to lay into Homestead 42, and when he failed to, my father attempted to rid himself of his agitation by sitting down to compose a letter to the one man aside from

Roosevelt whom he considered America's last best hope. "This is an experiment, Mr. Winchell. This is the way Hitler did it. The Nazi criminals start with something small, and if they get away with it," he wrote, "if no one like you raises a cry of alarm. . ." but he never proceeded to list the horrors that could ensue, because my mother was sure that the letter would wind up in the office of the FBI. It is mailed to Walter Winchell, she reasoned, but it never reaches Walter Winchell—at the post office it's diverted to the FBI and placed in a folder labeled "Roth, Herman," to be filed beside the existing folder labeled "Roth, Alvin."

My father argued, "Never. Not the U.S. Mail," but my mother's commonsensical reply stripped him on the spot of what little remained of his certainty. "You're sitting there writing Winchell," she said, "you're predicting to him how these people will stop at nothing once they know what they can get away with. And now you're trying to tell me that they can't do what they want to the postal system? Let someone else write to Walter Winchell. Our children have been questioned by the FBI already. The FBI is already watching like a hawk because of what Alvin did." "But that," he told her, "is why I'm writing him. What else should I do? What more can I do? If you know, advise me. Should I just sit here waiting for the worst to happen?"

In his helpless bewilderment she saw her opportunity, and, not because she was callous but because she was desperate, she seized it and thereby humbled him further. "You don't see Shepsie sitting around writing letters and waiting for the worst to happen," she said. "No," he replied, "not Canada again!" as though Canada were the name of the disease insidiously debilitating us all. "I don't want to hear it. Canada," he told her firmly, "is not a solution." "It's the only solution," she pleaded. "I am not running away!" he shouted, startling everyone. "This is our country!" "No," my mother said sadly, "not anymore. It's Lindbergh's. It's the goyim's. It's their country," she said, and her breaking voice and the shocking words and the nightmare immediacy of what was mercilessly real forced my father, in the prime of his manhood, fit, focused, and undiscourageable as any forty-one-year-old could possibly be, to see himself with mortifying clarity: a devoted father of titanic energy no more capable of protecting his family from harm than was Mr. Wishnow hanging dead in the closet.

To Sandy—still silently enraged by the injustice of having been stripped of his precocious importance—neither of them sounded anything but stupid, and alone with me he didn't hesitate to speak of them in the language he'd picked up from Aunt Evelyn. "Ghetto Jews," Sandy told me, "frightened, paranoid ghetto Jews." At home he sneered at just about everything they said, on

any subject, and then sneered at me when I appeared to be skeptical of his bitterness. He might anyway have begun by now to seriously enjoy sneering, and perhaps even in ordinary times our mother and father might have found themselves having to tolerate as best they could a restless adolescent's contemptuous derision, but back in 1942 what made it more than merely exasperating was the ambiguously menacing predicament throughout whose duration he would continue disparaging them right to their faces.

"What's 'paranoid'?" I asked him.

"Somebody afraid of his shadow. Somebody who thinks the whole world's against him. Somebody who thinks Kentucky is in Germany and that the president of the United States is a storm trooper. These people," he said, mimicking our captious aunt whenever she would superciliously distinguish herself from the Jewish rabble. "You offer to pay their moving expenses, you offer to throw open the gates for their children. . .Know what paranoid is?" Sandy said. "Paranoid is nuts. The two of them are bats—they're crazy. And you know what's made them crazy?"

The answer was Lindbergh, but I didn't dare say it to him. "What?" I

asked.

"Living like a bunch of greenhorns in a goddamn ghetto. You know

what Aunt Evelyn says Rabbi Bengelsdorf calls it?" "Calls what?"

"The way these people live. He calls it 'Keeping faith with the certainty of Jewish travail.'"

"And what's that supposed to mean? I don't understand. Translate, please. What's 'travail'?"

"Travail? Travail is what you Jews call tsuris."

The Wishnows had gone back downstairs and Sandy had settled into the kitchen to finish his homework when my parents, at the front of the house, tuned the living room radio to Walter Winchell. I was in bed with the lights out: I didn't want to hear another panic-stricken word from anyone about Lindbergh, von Ribbentrop, or Danville, Kentucky, and I didn't want to think about my future with Seldon. I wanted only to disappear into forgetful sleep and to wake up in the morning somewhere else. But because it was a warm night and the windows were wide open, I couldn't help, at the stroke of nine, but be beset from virtually every quarter by the renowned Winchell radio trademark—the clatter of dots and dashes sounding over the telegraph ticker and signaling in Morse code (which Sandy had taught me) absolutely nothing. And then, above the ticker's dimming

clatter, the red-hot blast of Winchell himself issuing from all the houses on the block. "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. . ." followed by the staccato barrage of the long-hoped-for words—at last the purgative Winchell scourge that would change everything. In normal times, when it was generally within the power of my mother and father to set things right and explain away enough of the unknown to make existence appear to be rational, it wasn't at all like this, but because of the maddening here and now, Winchell, even to me, had become an out-and-out god and more important by far than Adonoy.

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press! Flash! To the glee of rat-faced Joe Goebbels and his boss, the Berlin Butcher, the targeting of America's Jews by the Lindbergh fascists is officially under way. The phony moniker for phase one of organized Jewish persecution in the land of the free is 'Homestead 42.' Homestead 42 is being aided and abetted by the most respectable of America's robber barons—but don't worry, they'll be rewarded in giveaway tax breaks by Lindbergh's Republican henchmen in the next progreed Congress.

"Item: Whether the Homestead 42 Jews end up in concentration camps a la Hitler's Buchenwald has yet to be decided by Lindbergh's two top swastinkers, Vice President Wheeler and Secretary of the Interior Henry Ford. Did I say 'whether'? Pardon my German. I meant when.

"Item: Two hundred and twenty-five Jewish families have already been told to vacate the cities of America's northeast in order to be shipped thousands of miles from family and friends. This first shipment has been kept strategically small in order to escape national attention. Why? Because it marks the beginning of the end for the four and a half million American citizens of Jewish descent. The Jews will be scattered far and wide to wherever Hitlerite America Firsters flourish. There the right-wing saboteurs of democracy—the so- called patriots and the so-called Christians—can be turned against these isolated Jewish families overnight.

"And who's next, Mr. and Mrs. America, now that the Bill of Rights is no longer the law of the land and the racial haters are running the show? Who's next under the Wheeler-Ford pogrom-plan for government-funded persecution? The long-suffering Negroes? The hard-working Italians? The last of the Mohicans? Who else among us is no longer welcome in Adolf Lindbergh's Aryan America?

"Scoop! This reporter has learned that Homestead 42 was in the works on January 20, 1941, the day the American Fascist New Order moved its mob into the White House, and was signed into the Iceland sellout between the American Führer and his Nazi partner in crime.

"Scoop! This reporter has learned that only in return for the gradual relocation—and eventual mass imprisonment—of America's Jews by the Lindbergh Aryans would Hitler agree to spare the British Isles from a massive armed invasion across the English Channel. The two beloved Führers agreed in Iceland that massacring blue-eyed, blond-haired bona fide Aryans didn't make sense unless you definitely had to. And it comes as no surprise that Hitler will most definitely have to if Oswald Mosley's British fascist party fails to take dictatorial control of 10 Downing Street before 1944. That's when the master race plans to wrap up the Nazi enslavement of three hundred million Russians and to raise the swastika over the Moscow Kremlin.

"And how long will the American people stand for this treachery perpetrated by their elected president? How long will Americans remain asleep while their cherished Constitution is torn to shreds by the fascist fifth column of the Republican right marching under the sign of the cross and the flag? Stay with me, your New York correspondent Walter Winchell, for my next big bombshell about Lindbergh's treasonous lies.

"I'll be back in a flash with a flash!"

Three things then happened at once: the calming voice of announcer Ben Grauer started hawking hand lotion for the program's sponsor; the phone began to ring in the hallway outside my bedroom as it never did after nine in the evening; and Sandy exploded. Addressing only the radio (but so passionately that my father was instantly roused from his living room chair), he began to shout, "You filthy liar! You lying prick!"

"Whoa," said my father, rushing into the kitchen. "Not in this house.

Not that language. That is enough."

"But how can you listen to this crap? What concentration camps? There are no concentration camps! Every word is a lie—bullshit and more bullshit to get you people to tune in! The whole country knows Winchell's full of hot air—it's only you people who don't."

"And which people exactly is that?" I heard my father say.

"I lived in Kentucky! Kentucky is one of the forty-eight states! Human beings live there like they do everywhere else! It is not a concentration camp! This guy makes millions selling his shitty hand lotion—and you people believe him!"

"I told you already about the dirty words, and now I'm telling you about this 'you people' business. 'You people' one more time, son, and I am going to ask you to leave the house. If you want to go live in Kentucky instead of here, I'll drive you down to Penn Station and you can catch the next train out. Because I know very well what 'you people' means. And so do you. So does everyone.

Don't you use those two words in this house ever again." "Well, in my opinion Walter Winchell is full of it."

"Fine," he said. "That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. But other Americans hold a different opinion. It so happens that millions and millions of Americans listen to Walter Winchell every single Sunday night—and they are not just what you and your brilliant aunt call 'you people.' His program is still the highest-rated news show on the air. Franklin Roosevelt confided to Walter Winchell things he would never tell another newspaperman. And listen to me, will you—these are facts."

"But I can't listen to you. How can I listen to you when you tell me about 'millions' of people? Millions of people are nothing but idiots!"

Meanwhile my mother had answered the phone in the hall, and from my bed I could now hear her speaking as well. Yes, she said, of course they had Winchell on. Yes, it was terrible, it was worse than they thought, but at least now it was out in the open. Yes, Herman would call as soon as the Winchell show was over.

Four consecutive times she had this conversation, but when the phone rang a fifth time, she didn't jump to answer, even though the caller had to have been another of their friends shaken by Winchell's rapid-fire disclosures— she didn't answer because the commercial was finished and she and my father were back beside the radio in the living room. And Sandy was now in the bedroom, where I pretended to be asleep while he got himself ready for bed by the night light, the small lamp with the pump-handle switch that he had made from scratch in shop class back when he was merely an artistic boy engrossed by what he could fashion with his own skillful hands and blessedly uncontaminated by ideological battling.

Our phone hadn't been used so incessantly so late at night since the death of my grandmother a couple of years back. It was close to eleven before my father had returned everyone's call, and another hour before my parents left the kitchen, where they'd been quietly conversing together, and themselves went to bed. And it was another two hours after that before I could assure myself that they were sound asleep and that, in the bed beside mine, my brother was no longer glaring at the ceiling but was also asleep, and that I could safely get up without being discovered and make my way to the back door and undo the lock and slip out of the flat and pad down the stairs into the cellar and, in the dark, steer myself barefoot across the dank floor to our storage bin.

There was nothing impulsive or hysterical driving me, nothing

melodramatic about my decision, nothing reckless that I could see. People said afterward that they'd had no idea that beneath the fourth-grade patina of obedience and good manners I could be such a surprisingly irresponsible, daydreaming child. But this was no shallow daydream. I wasn't playing at make- believe, and I wasn't making mischief for mischief's sake. As it turned out, the mischief-making with Earl Axman had been valuable training but undertaken for a purpose entirely different. I surely didn't feel as though I were rushing headlong into insanity, not even when I stood in the dark bin removing my pajamas and stepping into Seldon's pants while at the same time mentally warding off the ghost of his father and trying not to be terrified by Alvin's empty wheelchair. I wasn't being swallowed up by anything other than the determination to resist a disaster our family and our friends could no longer elude and might not survive. Later my parents said, "He didn't know what he was doing," and "sleepwalking" became the official explanation. But I was fully awake and my motivation never obscure to me. All that was obscure was whether I would succeed. One of my teachers suggested that I had been suffering from "delusions of grandeur" inspired by what I was learning in school about the Underground Railroad, organized before the Civil War to assist the slaves in making their way north to freedom. Not so. I wasn't at all like Sandy, in whom opportunity had quickened the desire to be a boy on the grand scale, riding the crest of history. I wanted nothing to do with history. I wanted to be a boy on the smallest scale possible. I wanted to be an orphan.

There was only one thing I couldn't leave behind—my stamp album. Perhaps if I could have been sure that it would be preserved undisturbed after I was gone, I wouldn't, at the last moment, on the way out of my bedroom, have stopped to open my dresser drawer and, as quietly as I could, lifted it from where it was stored beneath my socks and my underclothes. But it was intolerable to think of my album ever being broken up or thrown out or, worst of all, given away wholly intact to another boy, and so I took it under my arm, and along with it the musket-shaped letter opener I'd bought at Mount Vernon whose beak of a bayonet I used to neatly slice open the only mail ever addressed to me, other than birthday cards—the packets of "approvals" sent regularly from Boston 17, Massachusetts, by "the world's largest stamp firm," H. E. Harris & Co.

I remember nothing between my stealing out of the house and starting down the empty street toward the orphanage grounds and my waking up the next day to see my grim-faced parents at the foot of my bed and to be told by a doctor busily extracting some kind of tube from my nose that I was a patient in Beth Israel

Hospital and that though I probably had a terrible headache, I was going to be all right. My head did hurt, excruciatingly, but it wasn't from a blood clot's putting pressure on the brain—a possibility they feared when I was found bleeding and unconscious—and not because there was brain damage. X-rays ruled out a skull fracture and the neurological examination showed no damage to the nerves. Other than a three-inch-long laceration requiring eighteen stitches that were removed the following week, and the fact that I had no memory of the blow itself, nothing serious was wrong with me. A routine concussion, the doctor said

—that's all that was causing the pain as well as the amnesia. I'd probably never remember being kicked by the horse—or the series of events leading to that collision—but the doctor said that was routine, too. Otherwise my memory was intact. Luckily. He used that word several times and it sounded like ridicule in my aching head.

They kept me for observation all that day and overnight—rousing me just about every hour to be sure I didn't slip into unconsciousness again—and the next morning I was discharged and instructed only to go easy with physical activities for a week or two. My mother had taken off from work to be with me at the hospital and she was there to take me home on the bus. Because my head didn't stop hurting for some ten days, and because there was nothing to be done about it, I was kept home from school, but otherwise I was said to be fine, and fine thanks primarily to Seldon, who, from a distance, had witnessed almost everything that I was unable to remember. If Seldon hadn't sneaked out of bed when he heard me coming down the back stairs, hadn't followed me in the dark along Summit Avenue and across the high school playing field to the Goldsmith Avenue side of the orphanage and through the unlatched gate and into the orphanage woods, I probably would have lain there unconscious in his clothes until I bled to death. Seldon ran all the way back to our house, woke my parents, who immediately dialed the operator for help, and got in our car with them and directed them to the very spot where I was. It was by then close to three in the morning and pitch black; kneeling beside me on the damp ground, my mother pressed a towel she'd brought with her against my head to stanch the bleeding while my father covered me with an old picnic blanket that was in the trunk of the car and kept me warm until the ambulance arrived. My parents organized my rescue, but Seldon Wishnow saved my life.

I had apparently startled the two horses when, disoriented, I began stumbling about in the dark where the woods opened out into the farming field, and when I turned to try to escape the horses and make it back to the street through the woods one of them reared up, I tripped and fell, and the other horse, in fleeing, nicked me with a hoof high on the back of my skull. For weeks

Seldon recounted excitedly to me (and, of course, to the entire school) every detail of my nocturnal attempt to run away from home and be taken in by the nuns as a familyless child—in his telling, savoring particularly the mishap with the workhorses as well as the fact that, outdoors in the middle of the night, barefoot and in just his pajamas, he had twice traversed the mile of abrasive terrain between the orphanage woods and our house.

Unlike his mother and my parents, Seldon couldn't get over the thrill of discovering that it wasn't he who had inexplicably "lost" his clothes but I who had stolen them to use for my getaway. This utter improbability established, as never before, a value to his own existence that had previously escaped his attention. Telling the story with all the prestige of savior and co-conspirator both

—and showing everyone who'd look at them his scraped feet—seemed to make Seldon significant at last even in his own eyes, a daredevil of a boy able to compel a hero's attention for the first time in his life, while I was devastated, not only by the shame of it all, which was more unbearable and longer lasting than the headache, but because my stamp album, my greatest treasure, that which I could not live without, was gone. I didn't remember having taken it with me until the day after I got home from the hospital and got up in the morning to get dressed and saw that it was missing from beneath my socks and my underwear. The reason I stored it there in the first place was so as to see it first thing every morning when I dressed for school. And now the first thing I saw on my first morning home was that the biggest thing I had ever owned was gone. Gone and irreplaceable. Like—and utterly unlike—losing a leg.

"Ma!" I shouted. "Ma! Something terrible happened!"

"What is it?" she cried, and came running from the kitchen into my room. "What's wrong?"

She thought, of course, that I'd begun to bleed from my stitches or that I was about to faint or that the headache was more than I could stand.

"My stamps!" That was all I could say, and she was able to figure

out the rest.

What she did then was to go looking for them. All alone she went

into the orphanage woods and searched the ground where I'd been discovered, but she was unable to find the album anywhere—found not so much as a single stamp.

stamps!"

"Are you sure you had them?" she asked when she got home.

"Yes! Yes! They're there! They have to be there! I can't lose my

"But I looked and looked. I looked everywhere."

"But who could have taken them? Where could they be? They're

mine! We've got to find them! They're my stamps!"

I was inconsolable. I envisioned a horde of orphans spotting the album in the woods and tearing it apart with their filthy hands. I saw them pulling out the stamps and eating them and stomping on them and flushing them by the handful down the toilet in their terrible bathroom. They hated the album because it wasn't theirs—they hated the album because nothing was theirs.

Because I asked her to, my mother told neither my father nor my brother what had become of my stamps or about the money in Seldon's pants. "In the pocket, when we found you, there were nineteen dollars and fifty cents. I don't know where it came from and I don't want to know. That episode is over and done with. I opened a savings account for you at the Howard Savings Bank. I deposited it for you there for your future." Here she handed me a little bankbook with my name written inside it and "$19.50" the first and only item stamped in black on the deposit page. "Thank you," I said. And then she made the judgment of her second son that I believed she carried with her to her grave. "You are the strangest child," she told me. "I had no idea," she said. "I didn't begin to know." And then she handed me my letter opener, the miniaturized pewter musket from Mount Vernon. The stock was scratched and dirty and the bayonet bent slightly out of shape. She had found it that afternoon when, unknown to me, she had raced back from work at lunch hour and returned for a second time to comb through the soil of the orphanage woods in search of the tiniest remnant of the stamp collection that had dissolved into thin air.

7

June 1942–October 1942

The Winchell Riots

THE DAY BEFORE I discovered that my stamps were gone, I'd learned of my father's decision to quit his job. Only minutes after I got home from the hospital on Tuesday morning, he drove up to our house and into the alley in Uncle Monty's truck with the slatted-wood sides and parked it there behind Mrs. Wishnow's car, having just finished his first night of work at the Miller Street market. From then on, Sunday night through Friday morning, he'd come home at nine, ten A.M., wash up, eat his big meal, go to bed and be asleep by eleven, and when I returned from school I had to be careful not to slam the back door and wake him. A little before five in the afternoon he'd be up and gone, because by about six or seven the farmers began arriving at the market with their produce, and then anywhere from ten P.M. to four in the morning the retail grocers would be coming in to buy, along with the restaurant owners and the hotelkeepers and the last of the city's horse-and-wagon peddlers. He'd survive through the long night on the thermos of coffee and the couple of sandwiches my mother had prepared for him to take to work. On Sunday mornings he'd visit his mother at Uncle Monty's or Monty would bring her to the house to see us, and he'd spend the rest of Sunday sleeping, and again we'd have to be quiet so as not to disturb him. It was a hard life, especially since on occasion he had to drive out well before dawn to farmers in Passaic and Union counties and bring their produce in all by himself if Uncle Monty could get a better deal that way.

I knew it was a hard life because when he got home in the morning he'd have a drink. Ordinarily in our house a bottle of Four Roses lasted for years. My mother, a caricature of a teetotaler, couldn't stand the look of a foaming glass of beer, let alone the smell of straight whiskey, and when did my father ever take a drink, other than on their anniversary or when his boss came for dinner and he served him Four Roses on the rocks? But now he would get home from the market and, before he changed out of his dirty clothes and took his shower, he'd pour the whiskey into a shot glass, tilt back his head, and take it down in one gulp, making the face of a man who'd just bit into a light bulb. "Good!" he'd say aloud. "Good!" Only then could he ease up enough to eat a full meal without getting indigestion.

I was dumbfounded, and not only by the abrupt decline in my

father's vocational status—not only by the truck in the alleyway and the thick- soled boots on the feet of a man who had previously gone off to work in a suit and a tie and polished black shoes, not only by the preposterousness of his slugging down his shot and having his dinner alone at ten in the morning—but by my brother as well, by his unforeseen transformation.

Sandy wasn't angry any longer. He wasn't contemptuous. He wasn't superior-acting in any way. It was as though he too had taken a blow to the head, but one that, instead of bringing on amnesia, had rejuvenated the quiet, conscientious boy whose satisfactions emanated not from his being a precocious big shot full of contrary opinions but from that strong, even current of an interior life that carried him steadily along from morning to night and that, in my eyes, had always made him genuinely superior to the other kids his age. Or perhaps it was that the passion for stardom—along with the capacity for conflict—had been spent; perhaps he had never possessed the necessary egoism, and was secretly relieved no longer having to be publicly stupendous. Or perhaps he'd just never believed in what he was supposed to be promulgating. Or perhaps, while I lay unconscious in the hospital with a possibly life-threatening hematoma, my father had given him the talking-to that had done the trick. Or perhaps, in the wake of the crisis I'd precipitated, he was merely concealing the stupendous self behind the old Sandy, masquerading, calculating, cleverly waiting in hiding until. . .until who knew what befell us next. At any rate, for now the shock of circumstances had steered my brother back into the family fold.

And my mother was no longer a working woman. There wasn't nearly what she'd hoped to accumulate in the Montreal savings account, but enough to get us across the border and started in Canada if we should have to flee at a moment's notice. She'd left her job at Hahne's no less expeditiously than my father had jettisoned the security of his twelve-year affiliation with the Metropolitan to foil the government's plans for our transfer to Kentucky and safeguard us against the anti-Semitic subterfuge that he, along with Winchell, understood Homestead 42 to be. She was back running the household full time and would once again be there when we came home for lunch and got home from school, and during the summer vacation she'd be there to monitor Sandy and me so that we didn't again spin out of control owing to lack of supervision.

A father remodeled, a brother restored, a mother recovered, eighteen black silk sutures stitched in my head and my greatest treasure irretrievably lost, and all with a wondrous fairy-tale swiftness. A family both declassed and rerooted overnight, facing neither exile nor expulsion but entrenched still on Summit Avenue, whereas in three short months, Seldon—to whom I was

helplessly yoked now that he was going around the neighborhood reveling in having prevented me from bleeding to death while disguised in his clothes— Seldon was shipping out. As of September 1, Seldon would be off living with his mother, the only Jewish kid in Danville, Kentucky.

My "sleepwalking" would likely have caused an even more humiliating scandal than it did in our immediate locale had not Walter Winchell been fired by Jergens Lotion only hours after coming off the air on the Sunday night that I'd run away. There was the truly shocking news that nobody could believe and that Winchell wasn't about to let the country forget. After ten years as America's leading radio reporter, he was replaced at nine P.M. the following Sunday by yet another dance band broadcasting from yet another sophisticated supper club on the terrace of a midtown Manhattan hotel. Jergens's first charge against him was that a broadcaster with a weekly nationwide audience of more than twenty-five million had essentially "cried fire in a crowded theater"; the second was that he had slandered a president of the United States with malicious accusations "that only the most outrageous demagogue would contrive to arouse the passions of the mob."

Even the moderate New York Times, a paper founded and owned by Jews—and highly esteemed for that reason by my father—and by no means uncritical of Lindbergh's policy toward Hitler's Germany, announced its unqualified support of the action taken by Jergens Lotion in an editorial entitled "A Professional Disgrace." "A competition has been in progress for some time," wrote the Times,

among anti-Lindbergh entrepreneurs to determine who can produce the most outrageous accounts of the motives of the Lindbergh administration. With one bombastic stride, Walter Winchell has moved to the head of the pack. The borderline scruples and questionable taste of Mr. Winchell have tumbled over into an outburst of vitriol that is as unpardonable as it is unethical. With accusations so far- fetched that even a lifelong Democrat may find himself feeling unexpected sympathy for the president, Winchell has disgraced himself irredeemably. Jergens Lotion is to be commended for the speed with which it has removed him from the airwaves. Journalism as it is practiced by the Walter Winchells of this country is an insult as much to our

enlightened citizenry as to the journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness, and responsibility, toward which Mr. Winchell, his cynical tabloid cohorts, and their money- hungry publishers have always displayed the utmost contempt.

In a subsequent attack delivered in behalf of the Lindbergh administration and published by the Times as the first and lengthiest of the letters elicited by its editorial, one eminent correspondent, after alluding gratefully to the editorial and reinforcing its argument by further examples of Winchell's ostentatious abuse of the First Amendment, concluded: "The attempt to inflame and frighten his fellow Jews is no less detestable than the disregard for the norms of decency that your paper so forcefully condemns. Certainly nothing is so heinous as preying upon the historical fears of a persecuted people, particularly when full participation in an open society free of oppression is precisely what the present administration is working to achieve for this same group through the efforts of the Office of American Absorption. For Walter Winchell to characterize Homestead 42, a program designed to broaden and enrich the involvement of America's proud Jewish citizens in the national life, as a fascistic strategy to isolate Jews and exclude them from the national life is the height of journalistic recklessness and an illustration of the Big Lie technique that is today the greatest threat to democratic freedom everywhere."

The letter was signed "Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, Director, Office of American Absorption, Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C."

Winchell's response came in the column he wrote for the Daily Mirror, the New York paper belonging to America's wealthiest publisher, William Randolph Hearst, who owned a chain of some thirty right-wing papers and half a dozen popular magazines as well as King Features, where Winchell was syndicated and read by many millions more. Hearst despised Winchell's political allegiances, particularly his glorification of FDR, and would have fired him years earlier had it not been that the very New Yorkers for whose nickels the Mirror competed against the Daily News found irresistible the gutter charm of the columnist's singular concoction of muckraking contentiousness and cloying patriotism. According to Winchell, why Hearst finally did fire him had less to do with the long-standing animosity between the columnist and his publisher than with pressure from the White House that even a ruthless old tycoon as powerful as Hearst could not dare to resist for fear of the consequences.

"The Lindbergh fascists"—so began the characteristically brazen, unregenerate Winchell column published just days after he'd lost his radio

contract—"have openly begun their Nazi assault on freedom of expression. Today Winchell's the enemy to be silenced. . .Winchell 'the warmonger,' 'the liar,' 'the alarmist,' 'the Commie,' 'the kike.' Today yours truly, tomorrow every newscaster and reporter who dares to tell the truth about the fascist plot to destroy American democracy. Honorary Aryans like the rabid rabbi Lyin' Lionel

and the snooty Park Avenue proprietors of the gutless New York Times aren't the first ultracivilized Jewish Quislings to grovel before an anti-Semitic master because they're just too, too refined to fight like Winchell. . .and they won't be the last. The jerks at Jergens aren't the first corporate cowards to play ball with the dictatorial lying machine that is now ruining this country. . .and they won't be the last, either."

And that column—which proceeded to list some fifteen more of his personal enemies who qualified as America's leading fascist collaborators—was, in fact, to be his last.

Three days later, after visiting Hyde Park to make certain that FDR was still determined not to come out of political retirement to run for a third term, Winchell announced his candidacy for president of the United States in the next general election. Until then, those considered in the running were Roosevelt's secretary of state, Cordell Hull; the former secretary of agriculture and the vice presidential candidate on the 1940 ticket, Henry Wallace; Roosevelt's postmaster general and the chairman of the Democratic Party, James Farley; Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas; and two middle-of-the-road Democrats, neither of them New Dealers, former Indiana governor Paul V. McNutt and Senator Scott

Lucas of Illinois. There was also an unconfirmed report (circulated and perhaps originated by Winchell back when he was still making $ 800, 000 a year circulating unconfirmed reports) that should the convention wind up deadlocked, as could easily happen with so unexciting a slate of candidates, Eleanor Roosevelt, a forceful political and diplomatic presence during her husband's two terms—and still a popular figure whose blend of outspokenness and aristocratic reserve had gained her an enormous following among the party's liberal constituency as well as numerous mocking enemies in the right-wing press— would appear on the convention floor the way Lindbergh did at the 1940 Republican Convention and sweep the nomination by acclamation. But once Walter Winchell became the first Democratic candidate to enter the race, and to do so almost thirty months in advance of the ' 44 election, in advance even of the midterm congressional elections—and to do so immediately after the noisy fracas that resulted from his having been "purged" from his profession by "the

strong-arm putsch tactics of the fascist gang in the White House" (as Winchell described his enemies and their methods in announcing his candidacy)—the one- time gossip columnist became the man to beat, the only Democrat with a name known to everyone and audacious enough to assault with ferocity an incumbent as beloved as Lindy.

Republican leaders didn't deign to take Winchell seriously, assuming either that the irrepressible performer was putting on a self-glorifying sideshow to sucker funds out of a handful of rich diehard Democrats or that he was a flamboyant stalking horse for FDR (or perhaps for Roosevelt's ambitious wife), at once stirring up and measuring whatever underground anti-Lindbergh sentiment might possibly exist in a nation where polls showed that Lindbergh continued to be supported by a record eighty to ninety percent of every classification and category of voter, except the Jews. Winchell, in short, was the candidate of the Jews, and himself a Jew of the coarsest type, in no way resembling the inner circle of well-bred, dignified Jewish Democrats like Roosevelt's wealthy friend Bernard Baruch or the banker and New York governor Herbert Lehman or the recently retired Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. And as if being a Jew of no background who embodied just about every vulgar trait that made Jews less than welcome in the better strata of American social and business society weren't enough to render him an irrelevant impertinence on the political scene anywhere other than the heavily Jewish precincts of New York City, there was his reputation as an adulterous philanderer with a penchant for seducing long-legged showgirls and his profligate nightlife among the loose-living Hollywood and Broadway celebrities who drank to all hours at New York's Stork Club to make him anathema to the straitlaced multitude. His candidacy was a joke and the Republicans treated it as nothing more.

But on our street that week, in the immediate aftermath of the firing of Winchell and his instantaneous resurrection as a presidential candidate, the significance of the two events was almost all that neighbors could talk about among themselves. After nearly two years of never knowing whether to believe the worst, of trying to focus on the demands of their day-to-day lives and then helplessly absorbing every rumor about what the government had in store for them, of never being able to justify either their alarm or their composure with hard fact—after so much perplexity, they were so ripe for delusion that, when the parents gathered on their beach chairs to chat together in the alleyways at night, the guessing game that invariably started up could go on without letup for hours: Who would be vice president on the Winchell ticket? Whom would he appoint to his cabinet? Whom would he appoint to the Supreme Court? Who would turn

out to be the greater leader, FDR or Walter Winchell? They plunged headlong into a thousand fantasies, and the very small children also caught the spirit and went skipping and dancing about, chanting, "Windshield for pres-i-dent. .

.Windshield for pres-i-dent." Of course, that no Jew could ever be elected to the presidency—least of all a Jew with a mouth as unstoppable as Winchell's—even a kid as young as I was already accepted, as if the proscription were laid out in so many words in the U.S. Constitution. Yet not even that ironclad certainty could stop the adults from abandoning common sense and, for a night or two, imagining themselves and their children as native-born citizens of Paradise.

The wedding of Rabbi Bengelsdorf and Aunt Evelyn took place on a Sunday in the middle of June. My parents were not invited, nor did they expect or want to be, and yet nothing could be done to ease my mother's distress. I'd overheard her crying from behind her bedroom door before, and though it wasn't a usual occurrence or one I liked, in all the months during which my parents struggled to assess the menace posed by the Lindbergh administration and to determine the response sensible for a Jewish family to take, I'd never known her to be so inconsolable. "Why does this have to happen too?" she asked my father. "They're only getting married," he told her. "It isn't the end of the world." "But I can't stop thinking about my father," she said. "Your father died," he said, "my father died. They weren't young men, they got sick and they died." It would have been hard to imagine a tone any more sympathetic than his, but her misery was such that the gentler his voice, the worse she suffered. "And I think," she said, "about my mother, how Momma wouldn't know what to make of anything anymore." "Honey, it could all be a lot more terrible—you know that." "And it will be," my mother said. "Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe everything is starting to change. Winchell—" "Oh, please, Walter Winchell won't—" "Shhh, shhh," he said to her, "the little one."

And so I understood that Walter Winchell wasn't, in fact, the candidate of the Jews—he was the candidate of the children of the Jews, something we were being given to clutch at, the way not too many years before we'd been given the breast not merely for nutrients but for the alleviation of babyhood's fears.

The wedding ceremony was held at the rabbi's temple and the reception afterward in the ballroom of the Essex House, Newark's most luxurious hotel. The notables who attended, each accompanied by a wife or a husband, were

listed inside a box separate from the wedding story itself and directly beside photographs of the bride and groom that appeared in the Newark Sunday Call. The list was surprisingly long and impressive, and I present it here to explain why I, for one, had to wonder if my parents and their Metropolitan friends weren't completely out of touch with reality to imagine that any harm could befall them because of a government program being administered by a luminary of the stature of Rabbi Bengelsdorf.

To begin with, there were Jews in abundance at the wedding ceremony, among them family and friends, congregants from Rabbi Bengelsdorf's temple, admirers and colleagues from around New Jersey, and others who had traveled from all over the country to be present. And many Christians were there as well. And, according to the article in the Sunday Call— which took up one and a half of the two society pages that day—among the several invited guests who were unable to attend but who sent their best wishes through Western Union, was the wife of the president, the First Lady, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, identified as a close friend of the rabbi's, "a fellow New Jerseyite and a fellow poet" with whom he shared "cultural and intellectual interests" and met frequently "over afternoon tea for a White House tête-a-tête to discuss philosophy, literature, religion, and ethics."

Representing the city were the two highest-ranking Jews ever in Newark's government, the two-term ex-mayor, Meyer Ellenstein, and the city clerk, Harry S. Reichenstein, and five of the slew of Irishmen currently most prominent in the city, the director of Public Safety, the director of the Department of Revenue and Finance, the director of Parks and Public Property, the city's chief engineer, and the corporation counsel. Newark's federal postmaster was there, and the head librarian of the Newark Public Library as well as the president of the library's board of trustees. Among the distinguished educators attending the wedding were the president of the University of Newark, the president of Newark College of Engineering, the superintendent of schools, and the headmaster of St. Benedict's Prep. And an array of distinguished clergymen—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—were also among those present. From the First Baptist Peddie Memorial Church, the city's largest Negro congregation, there was Reverend George E. Dawkins; from Trinity Cathedral, Reverend Arthur Dumper; from Grace Episcopal Church, Reverend Charles L. Gomph; from St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, on High Street, Reverend George E. Spyridakis; and from St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Very Reverend John Delaney.

Absent—and glaringly so to my parents, though nowhere alluded to

in the newspaper story—was Rabbi Bengelsdorf's antagonist and the foremost of

Newark's rabbis, Joachim Prinz of Congregation B'nai Abraham. Before Rabbi Bengelsdorf's rise to national prominence, Rabbi Prinz's authority among Jews throughout the city, in the wider Jewish community, and among scholars and theologians of every religion had far exceeded his elder colleague's, and it was he alone of the Conservative rabbis leading the city's three wealthiest congregations who had never flinched in his opposition to Lindbergh. The other two, Charles I. Hoffman of Oheb Shalom and Solomon Foster of B'nai Jeshurun, were in attendance, however, and Rabbi Foster presided over the wedding ceremony.

Present as well were the presidents of Newark's four major banks, the presidents of two of its largest insurance companies, the president of its biggest architecture firm, the two founding partners of its most prestigious law firm, the president of the Newark Athletic Club, the owner of three of the big downtown movie houses, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, the president of New Jersey Bell Telephone, the editors in chief of the two daily papers, and the president of P. Ballantine, Newark's most famous brewery. From the Essex County government there was the supervisor of the Board of Freeholders and three members of the board, and from the New Jersey judiciary were the vice chancellor of the Court of Chancery and an associate justice from the state's Supreme Court. From the State Assembly there was the majority speaker and three of the four assemblymen from Essex County, and from the State Senate a representative from Essex County. The ranking state official was a Jew, Attorney General David T. Wilentz, who had successfully led the prosecution of Bruno Hauptmann, but the state official whose presence most impressed me was Abe J. Greene, another Jew but more importantly New Jersey's boxing commissioner. One of Jersey's two U.S. senators was there, the Republican W. Warren Barbour, as was our congressman Robert W. Kean. From the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey there was a circuit judge, two district judges, and the district attorney (whose name I recognized from listening to Gangbusters), John J. Quinn.

A number of close associates of the rabbi at the national headquarters of the OAA and several officials representing the Department of the Interior had come up from Washington, and though there was nobody at the wedding from the very highest echelons of the federal government, there was an eloquent proxy representing no less a personage than the president himself: the telegram from the First Lady that was read aloud by Rabbi Foster at the reception, after which reading the wedding guests rose spontaneously to applaud the First Lady's sentiments and were then asked by the groom to remain standing and to join with him and his bride in singing the National Anthem.

The lengthy text of the telegram was carried in full by the Sunday Call. It went as follows:

My dear Rabbi Bengelsdorf and Evelyn:

My husband and I send you our heartfelt best wishes, and we join in wishing you the most blissful happiness.

We were delighted to have an opportunity to meet Evelyn at the White House State Dinner for the German Foreign Minister. She is an enchanting, energetic young woman, clearly a most worthy and upright person, and it took no more than the few moments I spent chatting with her for me to recognize the gifts of personality and intellect that won her the devotion of a man as extraordinary as Lionel Bengelsdorf.

I recall today the splendidly succinct lines of poetry my meeting with Evelyn brought to mind that evening. The poet is Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the words with which she begins the fourteenth of her Sonnets from the Portuguese embody just such womanly wisdom as I saw emanating from Evelyn's astonishingly dark and beautiful eyes. "If thou must love me," wrote Mrs. Browning, "let it be for naught/Except for love's sake only. .

Rabbi Bengelsdorf, you have been more than a friend since we met here in the White House after the ceremony establishing the Office of American Absorption; since your moving to Washington to become the OAA director, you have been an invaluable mentor. Our engrossing conversations, along with the enlightening books you have generously given me to read, have taught me much, not just about the Jewish faith but about the tribulations of the Jewish people and the sources of the great spiritual strength which has been the mainspring of their survival for three thousand years. I am all the richer for having discovered through you how profoundly rooted my own religious heritage is in yours.

Our greatest mission as Americans is to live in harmony and brotherhood as a united people. I know from

the excellent work you are both doing for the OAA how dedicated the two of you are to helping us achieve this precious goal. Of the many blessings bestowed upon our nation by God, none is more valuable than our having among us citizens like yourselves, proud, vital champions of an indomitable race whose ancient concepts of justice and freedom have sustained our American democracy since 1776.

With every best wish, Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The second time the FBI entered our lives, it was my father who was under surveillance. The same agent who'd stopped to question me about Alvin, on the day that Mr. Wishnow hanged himself (and who'd questioned Sandy on the bus, my mother at the store, and my father at the office), showed up at the produce market and hung around the diner where the men would go to eat and get coffee in the middle of the night and, behaving as he'd done when Alvin began working for Uncle Monty, started asking around now about Alvin's uncle Herman and what he was saying to people about America and our president. Word got back to Uncle Monty through one of Longy Zwillman's henchmen, who passed on to Uncle Monty what Agent McCorkle had reported to him—namely, that after having housed and fed a traitor who'd fought for a foreign country, my father had now quit a good job with Metropolitan Life rather than participate in a government program designed to unify and strengthen the American people. Uncle Monty told Longy's guy that his brother was a poor schnook with no education who had two kids and a wife to support and couldn't do much harm to America by schlepping produce crates six nights a week. And Longy's guy listened sympathetically, according to Uncle Monty, who, with none of the decorum ordinarily practiced in our house, told us the whole story in our kitchen one Saturday afternoon—"and still the guy says to me, 'Your brother's gotta go.' So I told him, 'This is all bullshit. Tell Longy this is all part of the bullshit against Jews.' And the guy is himself a Jew, Niggy Apfelbaum, but what I say does not make a dent. Niggy goes back to Longy, and he tells him Roth don't do as he's told. What happens next? The Long One himself shows up, right there in my stinky little office and wearing a silk handmade suit. Tall, soft-spoken, dressed to kill—you see how he gets the movie stars. I said to him, 'I remember you from grade school, Longy. I could see even then you were going places.' So Longy says to me, 'I remember you, too. I could see even then you were going nowhere.' We started to laugh, and I told him, 'My brother needs a job, Longy.

Can I not give my own brother a job?' 'And can I not have the FBI snooping around?' he asks me. 'I know all this,' I say, 'and didn't I get rid of my nephew Alvin because of the FBI? But with my own brother, it's not the same, is it? Look,' I tell him, 'twenty-four hours and I'll fix everything. If I don't, if I can't, Herman goes.' So I wait till after we close up the next morning, and I walk over to Sammy Eagle's, and sitting at the bar is the mick shmegeggy from the FBI. 'Let me buy your breakfast,' I tell him, and I order him a boilermaker, and I sit down next to him and I say, 'What do you got against Jews, McCorkle?' 'Nothing,' he says. 'Then why are you after my brother like this? What did he do to anybody?' 'Look, if I had something against Jews, would I be sitting here in Eagle's, would Sammy Eagle be my friend if I did?' He calls down the bar for Eagle to come over. 'Tell him,' McCorkle says, 'do I have anything against Jews?' 'Not that I know,' Eagle says. 'When your boy had the bar mitzvah, didn't I come and give him a tie clasp?' 'He still wears it,' Eagle tells me. 'See?' McCorkle says. 'I'm just doing my job, the way Sammy does his and you do yours.' 'And that's all my brother is doing,' I tell him. 'Fine. Good. So don't say I'm against the Jews.' 'My error,' I tell him, 'I apologize.' And meantime I slip him the envelope, the little brown envelope, and that's that."

Here my uncle turned to me and said, "I understand you're a horse thief. I understand you stole a horse from the church. Smart boy. Let me see." I leaned over and showed him where the horse's hoof had opened up my head. He laughed when he ran his finger lightly over the length of the scar and around the shaved patch where the hair was just growing in. "May you have many more," he told me—and then, as he'd been doing for as long as I could remember, he lifted me roughly onto one of his knees so that I could straddle it like, of all things, a horse. "You been to a bris, ain't you?" he asked, and began to give me the up-and-down ride by raising and lowering his thigh. "You know when they circumcise the baby at the bris, you know what they do, don't you?" "They cut off the foreskin," I said. "And what do they do with the little foreskin? After it's off—do you know what they do?" "No," I told him. "Well," said Uncle Monty, "they save them up, and when they got enough they give them to the FBI to make agents out of." I couldn't help myself, and even though I knew I wasn't supposed to—and even though last time he'd told me the joke, he'd said, "They send them to Ireland to make priests out of"—I began to laugh. "What was in the envelope?" I asked him. "Take a guess," he said. "I don't know. Money?" "Money is right. You're a bright little horse thief. The money that makes all trouble go away."

Only later did I learn from my brother, who'd overheard my parents talking in their bedroom, that the full amount of the bribe given to McCorkle

was to be repaid to Uncle Monty, out of my father's already paltry paycheck, at the rate of ten dollars per week over the next six months. And my father could do nothing about it. About the laboriousness of the work, about the mortifications attendant upon serving his brother, all he ever said was "He's been this way since he's ten years old, he'll be this way till he dies."

Aside from Saturdays and Sunday mornings, my father was hardly to be seen that summer. My mother, on the other hand, was now around all the time, and since Sandy and I had to be home at noon for lunch and again in the midafternoon to check in with her and be accounted for, neither of us could stray very far, and in the evenings we were forbidden to go anywhere beyond the school playing field a block from the house. Either my mother was keeping a very strict vigil over herself or she'd managed temporarily to make peace with all her chagrin, because though my father had taken a steep pay cut and the household budget required some difficult trimming, she showed no disabling signs of the improbabilities she'd confronted over the past year. Her resilience had a lot to do with her being back at a job whose compensations mattered more to her than those derived from selling dresses, work she hadn't shrunk from doing but that seemed to her meaningless measured against her normal pursuits. Just how troubling her worries continued to be would only be clear to me when a letter arrived from Estelle Tirschwell, reporting on the family's progress in Winnipeg. Every lunchtime I brought the mail upstairs with me from our mailbox in the front entryway, and if there was an envelope bearing Canadian postage, she immediately sat down at the kitchen table and, while Sandy and I ate our sandwiches, read the letter to herself twice over, then folded it up to carry around in her apron pocket to look at another ten times before passing it on to my father to read when he got up to go to the market—the letter for my father, the canceled Canadian stamps for me, to help get me started on a new collection.

Sandy's friends were suddenly the girls his age, the teenage girls whom he knew from school but had never examined so covetously before. He went to find them at the playground where the organized summer activities took place all day and into the early evening. I was there too, accompanied regularly now by Seldon. I'd watch Sandy with fluctuating feelings of trepidation and delight, as though my own brother had become a pickpocket or a professional shill. He'd park himself on a bench near the ping-pong table, where the girls tended to congregate, and he'd start making pencil drawings in his sketchpad of the cutest around; invariably they'd want to see the drawings, and so before the day was over, chances were good he'd be walking dreamily out of the

playground hand in hand with one of them. Sandy's strong proclivity for infatuation was no longer galvanized by propagandizing for Just Folks or topping tobacco for the Mawhinneys but fomented by these girls. Either the fresh excitement of desire had transformed his existence with the same incredible swiftness that Kentucky had and, at fourteen and a half, he'd been recast anew in a single hormonal blast or, as I believed—with my own proclivity to grant him omnipotence—getting girls to go off with him was simply an amusing ruse, how he was biding his time until. . .Always with Sandy I thought there must be a great deal more going on than I could begin to understand, when in fact, despite the handsome boy's air of self-assurance, he had no more idea than anyone else why he took the bait. Lindbergh's Jewish tobacco farmer discovers breasts, and suddenly he turns up as just another teenager.

My parents ascribed the girl-craziness to defiance, to "rebelliousness," to a compensatory display of independence following his forced retirement from the Lindbergh cause, and seemed willing to consider it relatively harmless. One of the girls' mothers felt otherwise evidently, and called to say so. When my father got home from work, there was a long conversation between my mother and father behind their bedroom door, and then another between my brother and my father behind the bedroom door, and for the rest of the week Sandy was not allowed to leave the vicinity of the house. But they couldn't, of course, keep him cooped up on Summit Avenue for the whole of the summer, and soon he was back at the playground confidently drawing pictures of the pretty ones, and whatever these girls allowed him to do with his hands when they went off by themselves—which couldn't have been much for eighth-graders as ignorant of sex as kids that young were back in those years—they didn't rush home to report, and so there were no more excited phone calls for my parents to contend with in the midst of all their other troubles.

Seldon. Seldon was my summer. Seldon's muzzle in my face like a dog's, and kids I'd known all my life laughing and calling me Sleepy, kids with their arms raised stiffly out in front of them and walking with slow, clumpy, zombie steps, supposedly in imitation of me lurching toward the orphanage in my sleep, and the team in the field all chanting "Hi ho Silver!" whenever I came to bat in a choose-up game.

There would be no big end-of-summer picnic up at the South Mountain Reservation on Labor Day that year because all of my parents' Metropolitan friends had left Newark with their boys by September to settle in around the country before the start of the school year. One by one, throughout that summer,

each of the families drove up on a Saturday to visit and say goodbye. It was awful for my parents, who alone of the group from the local Metropolitan district designated for relocation by Homestead 42 had chosen to stay where we were. These were their dearest friends, and the hot Saturday afternoons with the tearful adults embracing out on the street while all the children forlornly looked on— afternoons that ended with the four of us who were remaining behind waving goodbye from the curb as my mother called after the departing car, "Don't forget to write!"—were the most harrowing moments so far, when our defenselessness became real to me and I sensed the beginning of the destruction of our world. And when I realized that my father, of all these men, was the most obstinate, helplessly bonded to his better instincts and their excessive demands. I only then understood that he had quit his job not merely because he was fearful of what awaited us down the line should we agree like the others to be relocated but because, for better or worse, when he was bullied by superior forces that he deemed corrupt it was his nature not to yield—in this instance, to resist either running away to Canada, as my mother urged our doing, or bowing to a government directive that was patently unjust. There were two types of strong men: those like Uncle Monty and Abe Steinheim, remorseless about their making money, and those like my father, ruthlessly obedient to their idea of fair play.

"Come," my father said, trying to perk us up on the Saturday when the last of the six homesteading families had seemingly vanished forever. "Come on, boys. We're going out for ice cream." The four of us walked down Chancellor to the drugstore, where the pharmacist was one of his oldest insurance customers and where in summertime it was generally more pleasant than it was out on the street, what with the awnings unfurled to prevent the sun's rays from piercing the plate glass window and the paddle blades of the three ceiling fans creaking softly as they revolved overhead. We slipped into a booth and ordered sundaes, and though my mother could not bring herself to eat despite my father's prompting, she was able eventually to stop the tears from running down her face. We, after all, were no less enjoined to an unknowable future than were our exiled friends, and so we sat spooning our sundaes in the awninged semidarkness of the cool pharmacy, everyone speechless and completely spent, until my mother at last looked up from the paper napkin she was neatly shredding and, with that wry, stripped-down smile that comes when one is entirely cried out, said to my father, "Well, like it or not, Lindbergh is teaching us what it is to be Jews." Then she added, "We only think we're Americans." "Nonsense. No!" my father replied. "They think we only think we're Americans. It is not up for discussion, Bess. It is not up for negotiation. These

people are not understanding that I take this for granted, goddamnit! Others? He dares to call us others? He's the other. The one who looks most American—and he's the one who is least American! The man is unfit. He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't be there, and it's as simple as that!"

For me the hardest departure to stomach was Seldon's. Of course I was delighted to see him go. All summer long I'd been counting the days. Yet that early morning in the last week of August when the Wishnows drove off with two mattresses strapped to the car roof (lifted there and tied down beneath a tarp the night before by my father and Sandy) and clothing jammed to the top of the old Plymouth's back seat (stacks of clothing, including several items of my own, that my mother and I had helped them to carry from the house), I was the one, grotesquely enough, who couldn't stop crying. I was remembering an afternoon when Seldon and I were just six years old, and Mr. Wishnow was alive and seemingly well and still working every day for the Metropolitan, and Mrs. Wishnow was still a housewife like my mother, absorbed by her family's everyday needs and even, on occasion, looking after me if my mother had to be off doing her PTA work and Sandy wasn't around and I was home by myself after school. I was remembering the generic maternalism that she shared with my mother—the succoring warmth I wallowed in as a matter of course—and that I experienced so strikingly on the afternoon that I got stuck in their bathroom and couldn't get out. I was remembering how kind she'd been to me while I repeatedly tried and failed to open the door, spontaneously caring for me as though, regardless of differences in appearance and temperament and immediate circumstance, the four of us—Seldon and Selma, Philip and Bess—were all one and the same. I was remembering Mrs. Wishnow when what was uppermost in her mind was what was uppermost in my mother's mind—back when she was just another watchful member of the local matriarchy whose overriding task was to establish a domestic way of life for the next generation. I was remembering Mrs. Wishnow unperturbed, when her fists weren't clenched and her face full of pain.

It was a small bathroom, exactly like ours, quite confining, the door next to a toilet and the toilet abutting a sink and a bathtub squeezed in beside that. I pulled on the door but it didn't open. At home I would just have closed it behind me, but at the Wishnows' I locked it—something I'd never done before in my life. I locked it and I peed and I flushed and I washed my hands and, because I didn't want to touch their towel, wiped them dry on the back of the legs of my corduroys—everything was fine, and then I went to exit the bathroom, and I couldn't undo the lock above the doorknob. I could turn it a little ways but then it would catch and stop. I didn't bang on the door or rattle the doorknob, I just kept

trying to turn the lock as quietly as I could. But it wouldn't go, and so I sat back down on the toilet and I thought that maybe it would somehow work itself out. I sat there for a while but then I got lonesome and stood up and tried the lock again. It still wouldn't uncatch, and I started to knock lightly on the door, and Mrs. Wishnow came and said, "Oh, the lock on the door does that sometimes. You have to turn it like this." She explained how to do it, but I still couldn't get it open, and so very calmly she said, "No, Philip, while you're turning it you have to pull it back," and though I tried to do as she told me it still didn't work. "Dear," she said, "turn and back simultaneously—turn and back at the same time." "Which way is back?" I said. "Back. Back towards the wall." "Oh, the wall. Okay," I said, but I couldn't get it right no matter what I did. "It won't work," I said, and I began to sweat, and then I heard Seldon. "Philip? It's Seldon. Why did you lock it? We weren't going to come in." "I didn't say you were," I said. "Then why did you lock it?" "I don't know," I said. "Do you think we should call the fire department, Mom? They can get him out with a ladder." "No, no, no," Mrs. Wishnow said. "Come on, Philip," Seldon said, "it's not that hard." "But it is. It's stuck." "How's he gonna get out, Ma?" "Seldon, be still. Philip?" "Yes." "Are you all right?" "Well, it's hot in here. It's getting hot." "Take a glass of cold water, dear. There's a glass in the medicine cabinet. Take a glass of water and slowly drink it and you'll be fine." "Okay." But the glass had something slimy at the bottom, and though I took it out, I only pretended to drink from it and drank instead from my cupped hands. "Ma," Seldon said, "what's he doing wrong? Philip, what are you doing wrong?" "How do I know?" I said. "Mrs. Wishnow? Mrs. Wishnow?" "Yes, dear." "It's getting too hot in here. I'm really starting to sweat." "Then open the window. Open the little window in the shower. Are you tall enough to do that?" "I think so." I took off my shoes and stepped into the shower in just my socks, and standing on my tiptoes I was able to reach the window—a smallish window of pebbled glass that looked onto the alleyway—but when I tried to open it, it was stuck too. "It won't go," I said. "Bang it a little, dear. Bang the frame at the bottom, but not too hard, and I'm sure it will open." I did as she told me but couldn't get it to budge. By now my shirt was saturated with sweat, and so I angled myself to be able to give the window a good strong shove upwards, but in turning I must have struck the shower handle with my elbow because suddenly the water was on. "Oh, no!" I said, and ice-cold water was pouring over my head and down the back of my shirt, and I jumped out of the shower and onto the tile floor. "What happened, dear?" "The shower started." "How?" Seldon said. "How could the shower start?" "I don't know!" "Are you very wet?" she asked me. "Sort of." "Get a towel," she told me. "Get a towel out of the closet. The towels are in the closet."

We had the same narrow little bathroom closet directly upstairs over the Wishnows' bathroom closet, and we used it for towels too, but when I went to open theirs, I couldn't—the door was stuck. I yanked but it wouldn't open. "What is it now, Philip?" "Nothing." I couldn't tell her. "Did you take a towel?" "Yes." "Then dry yourself off. And you must stay calm. There's nothing to worry about." "I am calm." "Sit down. Sit down and dry yourself off." I was soaking wet, and now the floor was getting wet, and I sat on the toilet seat, and that's when I saw a bathroom for what it is—the upper end of a sewer—and that's when I felt the tears begin to well up. "Don't worry," Seldon called in to me, "your mother and father will be home soon." "But how will I get out?" And all at once the door was open—and there was Seldon and behind him his mother. "How'd you do that?" I said. "I opened the door," he said. "But how?" He shrugged. "I pushed. I just pushed. It was open all the time." And that was when I began to bawl and Mrs. Wishnow took me in her arms and said, "That's okay. Things like this happen. They can happen to anyone." "It was open, Ma," Seldon said to her. "Shhh," she told him. "Shhh. It doesn't matter," and then she came into the bathroom and turned off the cold water—which was still streaming into the tub—and, without any problem she opened the closet door and took out a fresh towel and began to dry my hair and my face and my neck, all the while gently telling me that it didn't matter and that these things happened to people all the time.

But that was long before everything else went wrong.

The congressional campaign began at eight A.M. the Tuesday after Labor Day, with Walter Winchell up on a soapbox at Broadway and 42nd Street—the celebrated crossroads where he'd announced his presidential candidacy from atop the very same genuine wooden soapbox—and looking in broad daylight exactly as press photos pictured him broadcasting from the NBC studio Sunday nights at nine: jacketless, in his shirtsleeves, with the cuffs rolled up and his tie yanked down and, pushed back from his forehead, the hardboiled newsman's fedora. Within only minutes some half-dozen mounted New York City policemen were already needed to divert traffic away from the eager stream of working people charging onto the street to hear and see him in the flesh. And once word spread that the orator with the bullhorn wasn't just another Bible bore prophesying doom for sinful America but the Stork Club habitue only recently the country's most influential radio broadcaster and the city's most nefarious tabloid journalist, the number of onlookers grew from the hundreds to the thousands—nearly ten thousand people all told, said the papers, up from the

subways and emptying out of the buses, drawn by the maverick and his immoderation.

"The broadcasting cowards," he told them, "and the billionaire publishing hooligans controlled from the White House by the Lindbergh gang say Winchell was canned for crying 'Fire!' in a crowded theater. Mr. and Mrs. New York City, the word wasn't 'fire.' It was 'fascism' Winchell cried—and it still is. Fascism! Fascism! And I will continue crying 'fascism' to every crowd of Americans I can find until Herr Lindbergh's pro-Hitler party of treason is driven from the Congress on Election Day. The Hitlerites can take away my radio microphone, and they've done just that, as you know. They can take away my newspaper column, and they have done that, as you know. And when, God forbid, America goes fascist, Lindbergh's storm troopers can lock me away in a concentration camp to shut me up—and they will do that too, as you know. They can even lock you away in a concentration camp to shut you up. And I hope by now that you damn well know that. But what our homegrown Hitlerites cannot take away is my love for America and yours. My love for democracy and yours. My love for freedom and yours. What they cannot take away—unless the gullible and the sheepish and the terrified are patsies enough to return them to Washington one more time—is the power of the ballot box. The Hitlerite plot against America must be stopped—and stopped by you! By you, Mr. and Mrs. New York! By the voting power of the freedom-loving people of this great city on Tuesday, November 3, nineteen hundred and forty-two!"

All that day—September 8, 1942—and into the evening, Winchell climbed atop his soapbox in every neighborhood in Manhattan, from Wall Street, where he was largely ignored, to Little Italy, where he was shouted down, to Greenwich Village, where he was ridiculed, to the Garment District, where he was intermittently cheered, to the Upper West Side, where he was welcomed as their savior by the Roosevelt Jews, and eventually north to Harlem, where, in the crowd of several hundred Negroes who gathered at dusk to hear him speak at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, a few laughed and a handful applauded but most remained respectfully dissatisfied, as though to work his way into their antipathies would require his delivering a very different spiel.

It was difficult to ascertain the impact Winchell made on the voting public that day. To Winchell's former paper, Hearst's Daily Mirror, the ostensible effort to gather local grass-roots support for routing the Republican Party from Congress nationwide looked more like a publicity stunt than anything else—a predictably egomaniacal publicity stunt by an unemployed gossip columnist who could not bear being out of the spotlight—and especially so since not a single Democratic congressional candidate running for election in Manhattan chose to

appear anywhere within hearing distance of the Winchell bullhorn. If any candidates were out campaigning, they stayed far from wherever Winchell repeatedly committed the political blunder of associating the name of Adolf Hitler with that of an American president whose heroics the world still idolized, whose achievement even the Führer respected, and whom an overwhelming majority of his countrymen continued to adore as their nation's godlike catalyst of peace and prosperity. In a brief, sardonic editorial, "At It Again," the New York Times was able to reach but one conclusion about the latest of Winchell's "self-serving shenanigans": "There is nothing Walter Winchell has more talent for," wrote the Times, "than himself."

Winchell spent a full day in each of the other four boroughs of the city, and the following week headed north to Connecticut. Though still in want of a Democratic candidate willing to wed a fledgling congressional campaign to his inflammatory rhetoric, Winchell went ahead to set up his soapbox outside the gates to the factories of Bridgeport and at the entrance to the shipyards in New London, where he pushed back his fedora, pulled down his tie, and cried "Fascism! Fascism!" into the face of the crowd. From Connecticut's industrial coast he traveled north again to the working-class enclaves of Providence and then crossed from Rhode Island into the factory towns of southeastern Massachusetts, addressing tiny street-corner gatherings in Fall River, Brockton, and Quincy with no less fervor than he'd expended in his maiden speech in Times Square. From Quincy he went on to Boston, where he planned to spend three days moving through Irish Dorchester and South Boston into the Italian North End. However, on his first afternoon at South Boston's busy Perkins Square the few jeering hecklers who'd been baiting him as a Jew ever since his departing his native New York—and his leaving behind there the police protection guaranteed him by Fiorello La Guardia, the city's anti-Lindbergh Republican mayor—burgeoned into a mob waving handmade placards reminiscent of the banners and signs beautifying the Bund rallies in Madison Square Garden. And the moment Winchell opened his mouth to speak, somebody brandishing a burning cross rushed toward the soapbox to set him aflame and a gun was fired twice into the air, either as a signal from the organizers to the rioters or as a warning to the marked man from "Jew York," or as both. There in the old brick cityscape of little family-run shops and streetcars and shade trees and small houses, each topped back then, before TV, only by the appendage of a towering chimney, in the Boston where the Depression had never ended, amid the storefronts sacred to the American main street—the ice cream parlor, the barber shop, the pharmacy—and just up the way from the dark, spiky outline of St. Augustine's Church, thugs with clubs surged forward screaming

"Kill him!" and, two weeks from its inception in New York's five boroughs, the Winchell campaign, as Winchell had imagined it, was under way. He had at last brought the Lindbergh grotesquery to the surface, the underside of Lindbergh's affable blandness, raw and undisguised.

Though the Boston police did nothing to restrain the rioters—the gunshots had sounded a full hour before a squad car drove up to survey the scene

—the plainclothes team of armed professional bodyguards who'd been stationed at Winchell's side throughout the trip managed to douse the flames consuming one of his trouser legs and, having freed him from the first wave of the crowd after only a few blows had fallen, to lift him into a car parked just yards from the soapbox and drive him to Carney Hospital on Telegraph Hill, where he was treated for facial wounds and minor burns.

His first visitor at the hospital wasn't the mayor, Maurice Tobin, or Tobin's defeated mayoral rival, ex-governor James M. Curley (another FDR Democrat who, like the Democrat Tobin, wanted no part of Walter Winchell). Nor was it the local congressman, John W. McCormack, whose roughneck brother, a bartender known as Knocko, presided over the neighborhood with as much authority as the popular Democratic representative. To everyone's surprise, beginning with Winchell himself, his first visitor was a patrician Republican of distinguished New England lineage, the two-term Massachusetts governor, Leverett Saltonstall. On hearing of Winchell's hospitalization, Governor Saltonstall had left his State House office to communicate his concern directly to Winchell (whom privately he could only have despised), and to promise a thorough investigation into the well-plotted, obviously premeditated pandemonium that, by a mere fluke, had produced no fatalities. He also assured Winchell of protection by the state police—and, if need be, by the National Guard—for as long as Winchell campaigned in Massachusetts. And before the governor left the hospital, he saw to it that two armed troopers were stationed at the door only feet from Winchell's bed.

The Boston Herald interpreted Saltonstall's intervention as a political maneuver to gain him recognition as a courageous, honorable, fair- minded conservative who could serve his party as a dignified replacement in 1944 for the Democratic vice president, Burton K. Wheeler, who'd done the job required in the 1940 campaign but whose imprudence as an orator many Republicans now believed might compromise their president the second time around. In a hospital press conference where Winchell appeared before the photographers in his robe, with surgical dressings half covering his face and a heavily bandaged left foot, he welcomed Governor Saltonstall's offer but declined assistance in a message (cast, now that he was under assault, in

language more statesmanlike than his standard feverish patter) that was distributed to the two dozen reporters from the radio and the press who had converged on his room. The statement began, "On the day when a candidate for the presidency of the United States requires a phalanx of armed police officers and National Guardsmen to protect his right to free speech, this great country will have passed over into fascist barbarism. I cannot accept that the religious intolerance emanating from the White House has already so corrupted the ordinary citizen that he has lost all respect for fellow Americans of a creed or faith different from his own. I cannot accept that the abhorrence for my religion shared by Adolf Hitler and Charles A. Lindbergh can already have corroded. . ."

From then on, anti-Semitic agitators hunted Winchell down at every crossing, though without success in Boston, where Saltonstall had ignored Winchell's grandstanding and directed his troops to impose order, employing force if need be, and to carry the violent off to jail, a command that they undertook to execute, however reluctantly. Meanwhile—using a cane to support himself because of his burned foot and with his jaw and forehead still bandaged

—Winchell proceeded to draw an angry mob chanting "Kike go home!" in every single parish where he displayed his stigmata to the faithful, from Gate of Heaven Church in South Boston to St. Gabriel's Monastery in Brighton. Beyond Massachusetts, in communities in upper New York State, in Pennsylvania, and throughout the Midwest that were already notorious for their bigotry—and to which Winchell's explosive strategy inevitably pointed him—most of the local authorities did not share Saltonstall's unwillingness to tolerate civil unrest, and so, despite the doubling of his entourage of plainclothes bodyguards, the candidate came close to getting himself mauled each time he stepped onto the soapbox to denounce "the fascist in the White House" and to assign responsibility directly to the president's "religious hatred" for "fostering unheard- of Nazi barbarism in the American streets."

The worst and most widespread violence occurred in Detroit, the midwestern headquarters of the "Radio Priest" Father Coughlin and his Jew- hating Christian Front and of the crowd-pleasing minister known as "the dean of anti-Semites," Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, who preached that "Christian character is the true basis of real Americanism." Detroit, of course, was also home to the American automobile industry and to Lindbergh's elderly secretary of the interior, Henry Ford, whose avowedly anti-Semitic newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, published in the 1920s, addressed itself to "an investigation of the Jewish Question" that Ford ultimately reprinted in four volumes, totaling nearly one thousand pages, entitled The International Jew, in which he directed that in the cleansing of America "the International Jew and his

satellites, as the conscious enemies of all that Anglo-Saxons mean by civilization, are not spared."

It was to be expected that organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and eminent liberal journalists like John Gunther and Dorothy Thompson would be outraged by the Detroit riots and immediately make public their disgust, but so too were many conventional middle-class Americans, who, even if they found Walter Winchell and his rhetoric repugnant and understood him to be "asking for trouble," were also appalled by the eyewitness reports of how the rioting that had begun at Winchell's first stop in Hamtramck (the residential section inhabited chiefly by auto workers and their families and said to contain the world's largest Polish population outside Warsaw) had suspiciously spread within minutes to 12th Street, to Linwood and then to Dexter Boulevard. There, in the city's biggest Jewish neighborhoods, shops were looted and windows broken, Jews trapped outdoors were set upon and beaten, and kerosene-soaked crosses were ignited on the lawns of the fancy houses along Chicago Boulevard and out front of the modest two-family dwellings of the housepainters, plumbers, butchers, bakers, junk dealers, and grocers who lived on Webb and Tuxedo and in the little dirt yards of the poorest Jews on Pingry and Euclid. In midafternoon, only moments before the school day ended, a firebomb was thrown into the front foyer of Winterhalter Elementary School, where half the students were Jewish, another into the foyer of Central High, whose student body was ninety-five percent Jewish, another through a window at the Sholem Aleichem Institute—a cultural organization Coughlin had ridiculously identified as Communist—and a fourth outside another of Couglin's "Communist" targets, the Jewish Workers' Alliance. Next came the attack on houses of worship. Not only were windows broken and walls defaced on some half of the city's thirty-odd Orthodox synagogues, but as evening services were scheduled to begin an explosion went off on the steps of the prestigious Chicago Boulevard temple Shaarey Zedek. The explosion there caused extensive damage to the exotic centerpiece of architect Albert Kahn's Moorish design—the three massive arched doorways that conspicuously exhibited to a working-class populace a distinctively un-American style. Five passersby, none of whom happened to be Jews, were injured by flying debris from the facade, but no casualties were otherwise reported.

By nightfall, several hundred of the city's thirty thousand Jews had fled and taken refuge across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario, and American history had recorded its first large-scale pogrom, one clearly modeled on the "spontaneous demonstrations" against Germany's Jews known as Kristallnacht, "the Night of Broken Glass," whose atrocities had been planned

and perpetrated by the Nazis four years earlier and which Father Coughlin in his weekly tabloid, Social Justice, had defended at the time as a reaction by the Germans against "Jewish-inspired Communism." Detroit's Kristallnacht was similarly justified on the editorial page of the Detroit Times as the unfortunate but inevitable and altogether understandable backlash to the activities of the troublemaking interloper the paper identified as "the Jewish demagogue whose aim from the outset had been to incite the rage of patriotic Americans with his treasonous rabble-rousing."

The week after the September assault on Detroit's Jews—which was addressed with dispatch by neither Michigan's governor nor the city's mayor— new violence was directed at homes, shops, and synagogues in Jewish neighborhoods in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, violence that Winchell's enemies attributed to his deliberately challenging appearances in those cities after the cataclysm that he'd instigated in Detroit, and that Winchell himself—who, in Indianapolis, barely escaped being crushed by a paving stone hurled from a rooftop that had broken the neck of the bodyguard stationed beside him—explained by the "climate of hate" emanating from the White House.

Our own street in Newark was many hundreds of miles from Dexter Boulevard in Detroit, nobody around had ever been to Detroit, and before September 1942 all that the boys on the block knew about Detroit was that organized baseball's only Jewish player was the Tigers' star first baseman, Hank Greenberg. But then came the Winchell riots, and suddenly even the children could recite the names of the Detroit neighborhoods that had been shaken by violence. Parroting what they heard from their parents, they would argue back and forth as to whether Walter Winchell was courageous or foolish, self- sacrificing or self-serving, and whether or not he was playing right into Lindbergh's hands by allowing the Gentiles to tell themselves that the Jews had brought their misery on themselves. They argued over whether it would be better if—before Winchell set off a nationwide pogrom—he desisted and allowed "normal" relations to be restored between the Jews and their fellow Americans or whether in the long run it would be better for him to continue to raise the alarm among the country's more complacent Jews—and to arouse the conscience of Christians—by exposing the menace of anti-Semitism from one end of America to the other. On the way to school, on the playground after school, between classes in the school corridors, you would see the smartest kids standing toe to toe, kids Sandy's age as well as a few no older than me, heatedly debating whether Walter Winchell's crisscrossing the country with his soapbox to flush into the open the German-American Bundists and the Coughlinites and the Ku Klux Klanners and the Silver Shirts and the America Firsters and the Black

Legion and the American Nazi Party, whether getting these organized anti- Semites and their thousands of unseen sympathizers to reveal themselves for what they were—and to reveal the president for what he was, a chief executive and commander in chief who hadn't yet bothered to acknowledge that anything like a state of emergency existed, let alone called in federal troops to prevent further rioting—was good for the Jews or bad for the Jews.

After Detroit, the Jews of Newark—numbering some fifty thousand in a city of well over half a million—began to ready themselves for serious violence erupting on their own streets, either because of a Winchell visit to New Jersey when he swung back east or because of the riots inevitably spilling over into cities where, as in Newark, there was a heavily Jewish neighborhood abutting large communities of working-class Irish, Italians, Germans, and Slavs that were already home to a goodly number of bigots. The assumption was that these people wouldn't require much encouragement to be molded into a mindless, destructive mob by the pro-Nazi conspiracy that had successfully plotted the riot in Detroit.

Almost overnight, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, along with five other eminent Newark Jews—including Meyer Ellenstein—established the Newark Committee of Concerned Jewish Citizens. Quickly the group became a model for similar ad hoc Jewish citizens' groups in other big cities that were determined to ensure their communities' safety by enlisting the authorities to draw up contingency plans to prepare for the worst possibility. The Newark committee arranged first for a City Hall meeting—presided over by Mayor Murphy, whose election had ended Ellenstein's eight-year tenure—with Newark's police chief, fire chief, and director of the Department of Public Safety. The next day the committee met at the State House in Trenton with Democratic governor Charles Edison, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, and the commanding officer of the New Jersey National Guard. Attorney General Wilentz, an acquaintance of all six committee members, also attended, and, in the bulletin the Newark committee issued to the Jersey papers, he was reported to have assured Rabbi Prinz that anyone attempting an assault on the Jews of Newark would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The committee next telegrammed Rabbi Bengelsdorf, requesting a meeting with him in Washington, but was informed that theirs was a local and not a federal issue and advised to address their concern, as they were doing, to state and city officials.

Partisans of Rabbi Bengelsdorf lauded him for keeping himself aloof from the sordid Walter Winchell affair while quietly, in private White House conversations with Mrs. Lindbergh, urging assistance to those innocent Jews throughout the country who were tragically paying for the iniquitous

conduct of the renegade candidate, a provocateur cynically encouraging American citizens who needed in no way to feel besieged to cling to their oldest, most crippling anxieties. The Bengelsdorf supporters constituted an influential clique drawn from the highly assimilated upper echelon of German Jewish society. A good many of them had been born to wealth and were among the first Jewish generation to attend elite secondary schools and Ivy League colleges, where, because their numbers were minute, they had mingled with the non-Jews, whom they subsequently associated with in communal, political, and business endeavors and who sometimes appeared to accept them as equals. To these privileged Jews there was nothing suspicious about the programs designed by Rabbi Bengelsdorf's agency to assist poorer, less cultivated Jews in learning to live in closer harmony with the nation's Christians. What was unfortunate, in their opinion, was that Jews like us continued to huddle together in cities like Newark out of a xenophobia fostered by historical pressures that no longer existed. The status conferred by economic and vocational advantage inclined them to believe that those who lacked their prestige were rebuffed by the larger society more because of insular clannishness than because of any pronounced taste for exclusiveness on the part of the Christian majority, and that neighborhoods like ours were less the result of discrimination than its breeding grounds. They recognized, of course, that there were pockets of backward people in America among whom virulent anti-Semitism was still their strongest, most obsessive passion, but that seemed only another reason for the director of the OAA to encourage Jews handicapped by the limitations of a segregated existence to at least permit their children to enter the American mainstream and show themselves there to be nothing like the caricature of the Jew disseminated by our enemies. Why these wealthy, urbane, self-assured Jews particularly abhorred the self-caricaturing Winchell was because he so deliberately reinforced the very hostility that they imagined themselves to have propitiated by their exemplary behavior toward their Christian colleagues and friends.

Aside from Rabbi Prinz and ex-mayor Ellenstein, the four remaining members of the Newark committee were the elderly civic leader responsible for the success of the Americanization programs for immigrant children in the Newark school system—and the wife of Beth Israel Hospital's leading surgeon— Jenny Danzis; the department store executive and son of the founder of S. Plaut & Co., as well as ten-time president of the Broad Street Association, Moses Plaut; the prominent city property owner and past president of the Newark Conference of Jewish Charities, community leader Michael Stavitsky; and the chief of Beth Israel's medical staff, Dr. Eugene Parsonette. That Newark's leading mobster, Longy Zwillman, hadn't been enlisted to join a group of local

Jews as distinguished as this was no surprise to anyone, even though Longy was a wealthy man of enormous influence and hardly less distressed than Rabbi Prinz by the menace posed by the anti-Semites who, under the pretext of being provoked by Walter Winchell, had ushered in what looked to many like stage one of the resolution of Henry Ford's "Jewish Question."

Longy set out separately, apart from the many civil authorities who had promised Rabbi Prinz their fullest cooperation, to ensure that if and when the Newark cops and the New Jersey state troopers failed to respond any more vigorously than the police had to the disorder in Boston and Detroit, the city's Jews would not be left unprotected. Bullet Apfelbaum, the close associate known throughout the city as Longy's chief enforcer—and the older brother of Niggy Apfelbaum—was assigned by Longy to supplement the good work of the Newark Committee of Concerned Jewish Citizens by recruiting that scattering of incorrigible Jewish kids who had failed to graduate from high school and training them as cadre for a hastily assembled volunteer corps to be called the Provisional Jewish Police. These were the local boys without any of the ideals that were embedded in the rest of us, who'd already begun to emanate an aura of lawlessness as far back as the fifth grade, inflating condoms in the school toilet and breaking into fistfights on the 14 bus and wrestling till they bled onto the concrete sidewalk outside the movies, the ones who, during their years in school, parents directed their children to have nothing to do with and who were now in their twenties and occupied running numbers and shooting pool and washing dishes in the kitchens of one or another of the neighborhood's delicatessen restaurants. To most of us they were known, if at all, only by the hoodlum magic of their supercharged nicknames—Leo "the Lion" Nusbaum, Knuckles Kimmelman, Big Gerry Schwartz, Dummy Breitbart, Duke "Duke-it-out" Glick

—and by their double-digit IQ scores.

And now they were stationed on every second street corner, our neighborhood's handful of flops, spitting expertly into the gutter from between their teeth and signaling back and forth by whistling with their fingers angled deep in their mouths. Here they were, the callous and the obtuse and the mentally deficient, the Jews' very own deviants strolling the streets like sailors on shore leave looking for a fight. Here they were, the brainless few we had been raised to pity and fear, the Stone Age oafs and the seething runts and the ominous, swaggering weightlifters, buttonholing kids like me out on Chancellor Avenue and telling us to keep our baseball bats at the ready in case we were called in the night to take to the streets and going around to the Y in the evenings and to the ball fields on Sundays and to the local stores during the week, shanghaiing the able-bodied from among the neighborhood's grown men so as to

bring to a total of three on each block a squad they could count on in an emergency. They embodied everything crude and despicable that our parents had hoped to leave behind, along with their childhood pennilessness, in the Third Ward slums, and yet here were our demons got up as our guardians, each with a loaded revolver strapped to his calf, a gun on loan from the collection of Bullet Apfelbaum, who was known by everyone to have devoted his existence to loyally intimidating folks on Longy's behalf, threatening them, beating them, torturing them, and—despite the fact that, in imitation of a boss easily thirty pounds leaner and a foot taller, Bullet was never to be seen other than in a three- piece suit adorned with a neatly folded silk pocket handkerchief the color of his tie and wearing an expensive Borsalino debonairly angled only inches above what was admittedly the ungenerous glower of an extremely severe judge of human nature—ending their lives for them, should that be the boss's pleasure.

What made the death of Walter Winchell worthy of instantaneous nationwide coverage wasn't only that his unorthodox campaign had touched off the century's worst anti-Semitic rioting outside Nazi Germany, but that the murder of a mere candidate for the presidency was unprecedented in America. Though Presidents Lincoln and Garfield had been shot and killed in the second half of the nineteenth century and McKinley at the start of the twentieth, and though in 1933 FDR had survived an assassination attempt that had instead taken the life of his Democratic supporter Chicago's Mayor Cermak, it wasn't until twenty-six years after Winchell's assassination that a second presidential candidate would be gunned down—that was New York's Democratic senator Robert Kennedy, fatally shot in the head after winning his party's California primary on Tuesday, June 4, 1968.

On Monday, October 5, 1942, I was home alone after school listening on our living room radio to the final innings of the fifth game of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Yankees, when, in the top of the ninth, with the Cardinals coming to bat in a 2–2 tie—and leading the Series three games to one—the play-by-play broadcast was halted by a voice with that finely articulated, faintly Anglicized diction prized in a network news announcer back in radio's earlier days: "We interrupt this program to bring you an important bulletin. Presidential candidate Walter Winchell has been shot and killed. We repeat: Walter Winchell is dead. He has been assassinated in Louisville, Kentucky, while addressing an open-air political rally. That is all that is known at this time of the Louisville assassination of Democratic presidential candidate Walter Winchell. We return to our regularly scheduled program."

It wasn't quite five P.M. My father had just left for the market in Uncle Monty's truck, my mother had gone out to Chancellor Avenue a few minutes earlier to buy something for dinner, and my single-minded brother was off in search of a trysting place to resume importuning one of his after-school girls to grant him access to her chest. I heard shouting in the street, then a scream from a nearby house, but the game had come back on and the suspense was tremendous: Red Ruffing pitching to the Cardinals' rookie third baseman Whitey Kurowski, Cardinals catcher Walker Cooper on first base with his sixth hit in five games, and the Cardinals needing only this victory to take the Series. Rizzuto had homered for the Yankees, the portentously surnamed Enos Slaughter had homered for the Cardinals, and, as histrionic little fans like to tell one another, I "knew" before Ruffing had even fired his first pitch that Kurowski was about to hit a second Cardinal home run and give the Cards their fourth straight victory after an opening-day loss. I couldn't wait to run outside crying, "I knew it! I called it! Kurowski was due!" But when Kurowski homered and the game was over and I was out the door and headed at top speed down our alleyway, I saw two members of the Jewish police—Big Gerry and Duke Glick—running from one side of the street to the other to bang on doors and shout into hallways, "They shot Winchell! Winchell is dead!"

Meanwhile more kids were rushing out of their houses, delirious with World Series excitement. But no sooner did they hit the street howling Kurowski's name than Big Gerry began barking at them, "Go get your bats! The war is on!" And he didn't mean the war against Germany.

By evening there wasn't a Jewish family on our street that wasn't barricaded behind double-locked doors, their radios playing nonstop to catch the latest bulletin and everyone phoning to tell everyone else that Winchell had said nothing remotely inflammatory to the Louisville crowd, that he had, in fact, begun his speech in what could only have been intended as an open appeal to civic self-esteem—"Mr. and Mrs. Louisville, Kentucky, proud citizens of the unique American city that is home to the greatest horse race in the world and birthplace of the very first Jewish justice of the United States Supreme Court—" and yet before he could speak aloud the name of Louis D. Brandeis, he'd been brought down by three bullets to the back of the head. A second report, aired just moments later, identified the spot where the murder occurred as only a few yards from one of the most elegant municipal buildings constructed in the Greek Revival style in the whole of Kentucky, the Jefferson County Courthouse, with its commanding statue of Thomas Jefferson facing the street and a long, wide staircase leading up to the grandly columned portico. The shots that killed Winchell appeared to have been fired from one of the courthouse's large, austere,

beautifully proportioned front windows.

My mother began making her first calls immediately upon coming in from shopping. I had stationed myself just inside the door to tell her about Walter Winchell the instant she got home, but by then she already knew the little there was to be known, first because the butcher's wife had phoned the store to repeat the news bulletin to her husband just as he was wrapping my mother's order, and then because of the bewilderment apparent among the people out on the street, who were already scurrying for the safety of their homes. Failing to reach my father, whose truck hadn't yet pulled up at the market, she of course began to worry about my brother, who was cutting it close once again and probably wouldn't come rushing up the back stairs until seconds before he was due at the kitchen table with his hands washed of the day's dirt and his face scrubbed clean of lipstick. It was the worst moment imaginable for either of them to be away and their precise whereabouts unknown, but without taking time to unbag the groceries or to register her alarm, my mother said to me, "Get me the map. Get your map of America."

There was a large folding map of the North American continent squared away in a pocket inside volume one of the encyclopedia set sold to us by a door-to-door salesman the year I started school. I rushed into the sun parlor, where, shelved between the brass George Washington bookends bought at Mount Vernon by my father, was the whole of our library: the six-volume encyclopedia, a leather-bound copy of the United States Constitution awarded by Metropolitan Life, and the unabridged Webster's dictionary that Aunt Evelyn had given Sandy for his tenth birthday. I opened the map and spread it across the kitchen table's oilcloth covering, whereupon my mother—using the magnifying glass that I'd received from my parents for a seventh-birthday gift along with my irreplaceable, unforgotten stamp album—searched for the speck in north-central Kentucky that was the city of Danville.

In only seconds the two of us were back at the telephone table in the foyer, above which hung yet another of my father's awards for selling insurance, a framed copper engraving replicating the Declaration of Independence. Local dial service within Essex County was barely ten years old and probably a good third of the people in Newark didn't as yet have any phone service at all—and most who did were, like us, on a party line—and so the long-distance call was still a wondrous phenomenon, not only because making one was far from an ordinary household experience for a family of our means but because no technological explanation, however basic, could remove it entirely from the realm of magic.

My mother spoke to the operator very precisely to be sure that

nothing went wrong and we weren't charged by mistake for anything extra. "I want to make a long-distance person-to-person call, operator. To Danville, Kentucky. Person-to-person to Mrs. Selma Wishnow. And please, operator, when my three minutes are up, don't forget to tell me."

There was a long pause while the operator got the number from the directory operator. When my mother finally heard the call being placed, she signaled for me to put my ear beside hers but not to speak.

"Hello!" Answering enthusiastically is Seldon.

Operator: "This is long distance. I have a person-to-person call for Mrs. Selma Wistful."

"Uh-uh," Seldon mumbles. "Is this Mrs. Wistful?"

"Hello? My mother's not home right now." Operator: "I'm calling for Mrs. Selma Wistful—" "Wishnow," my mother shouts. "Wishnow." "Who's that?" Seldon says. "Who's calling?" Operator: "Young lady, is your mother home?"

"I'm a boy," Seldon says. Taken aback. Another blow. They won't stop coming. Yet he does sound girlish, his voice higher-pitched even than when he'd been living downstairs. "My mother's not home from work yet," Seldon says.

Operator: "Mrs. Wishnow is not at home, madam."

My mother looks at me and says, "What could have happened? The boy is alone. Where could she be? He's all by himself. Operator, I'll talk to anyone."

mother?"

Operator: "Go ahead, sir." "Who's this?" Seldon asks.

"Seldon, it's Mrs. Roth. From Newark." "Mrs. Roth?"

"Yes. I'm calling long distance to speak to your mother." "From Newark?"

"You know who I am."

"But it sounds like you're just down the street."

"Well, I'm not. This is a long-distance call. Seldon, where's your

"I'm just having a snack. I'm waiting for her to come home from

work. I'm having some Fig Newtons. And some milk." "Seldon—"

"I'm waiting for her to come home from work—she works late. She

always works late. I just sit here. Sometimes I have a snack—" "Seldon, stop right there. Be still a moment."

"And then she comes home and she makes dinner. But she's late every night."

Here my mother turns to me and makes to hand me the phone. "Talk to him. He won't listen when I speak."

"Talk to him about what?" I say, waving the phone away. "Is Philip there?" Seldon asks.

"Just a moment, Seldon," my mother says. "Is Philip there?" Seldon repeats.

To me, my mother says, "Take the phone, please." "But what am I supposed to say?" I ask.

"Just get on the phone," and she places the receiver in my one hand and lifts the speaker for me to hold in the other.

"Hello, Seldon?" I say.

Softly tentative, unbelieving, he replies, "Philip?" "Yes. Hi, Seldon."

"Hey, you know, I don't have any friends in school." I tell him, "We want to speak to your mother."

"My mother's at work. She works late every night. I'm having a snack. I'm having some Fig Newtons and a glass of milk. It's going to be my birthday in about a week and my mother said I could have a party—"

"Seldon, wait a minute."

"But I don't have any friends."

"Seldon, I have to ask my mother a question. Just wait." I muzzle the speaker and whisper to her, "What am I supposed to say to him?"

My mother whispers, "Ask him if he knows what happened today in

Louisville."

"Seldon, my mother wants to know if you know what happened

today in Louisville."

"I live in Danville. I live in Danville, Kentucky. I'm just waiting for my mom to come home. I'm having a snack. Did something happen in Louisville?"

"Just a minute, Seldon," I say. "Now what?" I whisper to my mother. "Just talk to him, please. Keep talking to him. And if the operator

says the three minutes are up, you tell me."

"Why are you calling?" Seldon asks. "Are you going to come visit?" "No."

"Remember when I saved your life?" he says.

Avenue?"

"Yes, I do. I remember."

"Hey, what time is it there? Are you in Newark? Are you on Summit

"We told you we were. Yes."

"It's really clear, isn't it? It sounds like you're just down the block. I

wish you could come over and have a snack with me, and then you could be here for my birthday party next week. I don't have any friends to invite to my birthday party. I don't have anybody to play chess with. I'm sitting here now practicing my opening move. Remember my opening move? I move out the pawn that's just in front of the king. Remember when I tried to teach you? I move out the king's pawn, remember? Then I put out the bishop, then I move the knight, and then the other knight—and remember the move when there's no pieces between the king and one of the rooks? When I move my king over two spaces to protect him?"

"Seldon—"

My mother whispers, "Tell him you miss him." "Ma!" I say to her.

"Tell him, Philip."

"I miss you, Seldon."

"Do you want to come over for a snack then? I mean it sounds like

—are you really just down the street?"

"No, this is a long-distance phone call." "What time is it there?"

"It's, uh—about ten to six."

"Oh, it's ten to six here. My mom should already be home around five. Five-thirty the latest. One night she came home at nine."

"Seldon," I say, "do you know that Walter Winchell was killed?" "Who's that?" he asks.

"Let me finish. Walter Winchell was killed in Louisville, Kentucky.

In your state. Today."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Who is that?" Operator: "Your three minutes are up, sir."

"Is that your uncle?" Seldon asks. "Is that your uncle who came to see you? Is he dead?"

"No, no," I say, and I'm thinking that, alone now out in Kentucky, he sounds as though he were the one who was kicked in the head. He sounds stunned. Stunted. He sounds stopped. And yet he was the smartest kid in our class.

My mother takes the phone. "Seldon, this is Mrs. Roth. I want you to write something down."

"Okay. I have to go find a piece of paper. And a pencil." Waiting. Waiting. "Seldon?" my mother says.

More waiting. "Okay," he says.

"Seldon, write this down. This is now costing a lot of money."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Roth. I just couldn't find a pencil in the house. I was at the kitchen table. I was having a snack."

"Seldon, write down that Mrs. Roth—" "Okay."

"—called from Newark."

"From Newark. Gosh. I wish I was still in Newark, living downstairs. You know, I saved Philip's life."

"Mrs. Roth called from Newark to be sure—" "Just a minute. I'm writing."

"—to be sure everything is okay."

"Is something supposed to not be okay? I mean Philip's all right.

And you're okay. Is Mr. Roth okay?"

"Yes, thank you for asking, Seldon. Tell your mother that's why I called. There's nothing to worry about here."

"Should I be worried about something?" "No. Just eat your snack—"

"I think I've had enough Fig Newtons now, but thanks anyway." "Goodbye, Seldon."

"I like Fig Newtons, though." "Goodbye, Seldon."

"Mrs. Roth?"

"Yes?"

"Is Philip going to come visit me? It's my birthday next week and I don't have anybody to invite for my birthday party. I don't have any friends in Danville. The kids here call me Saltine. I have to play chess with a kid who's six years old. He lives next door. He's the only one I can play with. One kid. I taught him chess. Sometimes he makes moves you can't do. Or he moves his queen and I have to tell him not to. I win all the time but it's really no fun. But I have nobody else to play with."

"Seldon, it's hard for everyone. It's hard for everyone now. Goodbye, Seldon." And she placed the receiver onto the hook and began to sob.

Only days before, on October first, the two Summit Avenue flats vacated in

September by the "homesteaders of 1942"—the one beneath ours and another across the street, three doors down—were occupied by Italian families up from the First Ward. Essentially their new living quarters had been assigned to them by outright government edict, though with the sweetening incentive of a rent discount of fifteen percent (or $ 6. 37 on their monthly $ 42. 50) over a five-year period, that money to be paid directly to the landlord by the Department of the Interior over the life of the initial three-year lease and for the first two years of a lease's three-year renewal. Such arrangements derived from a previously unpublicized section of the homesteading plan called the Good Neighbor Project, designed to introduce a steadily increasing number of non-Jewish residents into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and in this way "enrich" the "Americanness" of everyone involved. What one heard at home, however—and sometimes even at school from our teachers—was that the underlying goal of the Good Neighbor Project, like that of Just Folks, was to weaken the solidarity of the Jewish social structure as well as to diminish whatever electoral strength a Jewish community might have in local and congressional elections. If the displacing of Jewish families and their replacement by the conscripting of Gentile families followed the timetable of the agency's master plan, a Christian majority might well be dominant in at least half of America's twenty most heavily populated Jewish neighborhoods as early as the start of Lindbergh's second term and a resolution of America's Jewish Question close at hand, by one means or another.

The family conscripted to move in downstairs from us—a mother, a father, a son, and a grandmother—were the Cucuzzas. Because of my father's years of canvassing the First Ward, where the customers whose tiny premiums he collected each month were by and large Italians, he was already familiar with the new tenants, and consequently, when he got home from work on the morning after Mr. Cucuzza, a night watchman, had trucked the family's possessions up from their cold-water flat in a tenement building on a side street not far from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, my father stopped off first at the downstairs door to see if, despite his appearing there without a coat and a tie and with dirty hands, the elderly grandmother would recognize him as the insurance man who'd sold her husband the policy that had provided the family with the means to bury him.

The "other" Cucuzzas (relatives of "our" Cucuzzas, who'd moved from their own First Ward cold-water flat to the house three doors away) were a much larger family—three sons, a daughter, the two parents, and a grandfather— and potentially noisier, more disruptive neighbors. They were associated through the grandfather and the father with Ritchie "the Boot" Boiardo, the mobster who ruled Newark's Italian precincts and constituted the city's only serious

competitor to Longy's underworld monopoly. To be sure, the father, Tommy, was but one of a bevy of underlings and, like his own retired father, doubled as a waiter at Boiardo's popular restaurant, the Vittorio Castle, when he wasn't making the rounds of the taverns, barber shops, brothels, schoolyards, and candy stores of the Third Ward slums to extract their pocket change from the Negroes who faithfully played the daily numbers game. Regardless of religion, the other Cucuzzas were hardly the sort of neighbors my parents wanted anywhere near their impressionable young sons, and to comfort us at breakfast on Sunday morning my father explained how much worse off we would have been if we'd gotten the numbers runner and his three boys instead of the night watchman and his son, Joey, an eleven-year-old recently enrolled at St. Peter's and, by my father's report, a good-natured kid with a hearing problem who had little in common with his roughneck cousins. Whereas down in the First Ward all four of Tommy Cucuzza's kids had gone to the local public school, here they'd been enrolled along with Joey at St. Peter's rather than at a public school like ours, brimming with brainy little Jews.

Since my father had left work only a few hours after the Winchell assassination and, over Uncle Monty's angry objections, driven back home to spend the remainder of that tense evening beside his wife and his children, the four of us were seated together at the kitchen table waiting for the radio to bring fresh news when Mr. Cucuzza and Joey came up the back stairway to pay a visit. They knocked on the door and then had to wait on the landing until my father was sure who was there.

Mr. Cucuzza was a bald, hulking man, six and a half feet tall, weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, and he was dressed for work in his night watchman's uniform, a dark blue shirt, freshly pressed dark blue trousers, and a wide black belt that along with holding up his trousers supported several pounds of the most extraordinary collection of equipment I'd ever been close enough to reach out and touch. There were keys in bunches each the size of a hand grenade hanging to the side of either pants pocket, there was a set of real handcuffs, and a night watchman's clock in its black case dangled by a strap from the polished belt buckle. At first glance, I took the clock for a bomb, but there was no mistaking for other than what it was the pistol in a holster at his waist. A longish flashlight that had to have doubled as a blackjack was stuck lamp upward into his back pocket, and high on one sleeve of his starched workshirt was a triangular white patch whose blue lettering read "Special Guard."

Joey was also big—only two years my senior and already twice my weight—and to me the equipment he sported was nearly as intriguing as his father's. Looking like a wad of molded bubble gum plugging the hole of his right ear was a hearing aid attached by a thin wire to a round black case with a dial on the front that he wore clipped to his shirt pocket; another wire attached to a battery about the size of a large cigarette lighter that he carried around in his pants pocket. And in his hands he carried a cake, a gift from his mother to mine.

Joey's gift was the cake, Mr. Cucuzza's was a pistol. He owned two, one that he wore for work and the other that he kept hidden away at home. He'd come to offer my father the spare.

"Nice of you," my father said to him, "but I really don't know how

to shoot."

"You pulla the trig'." Mr. Cucuzza had a surprisingly soft voice for

someone so enormous, though with a raspy edge to it, as if it had been exposed too long to the weather during his hours of walking the watchman's beat. And his accent was so enjoyable to hear that when I was alone I sometimes pretended that the way he talked was the way I talked too. How many times did I entertain myself by saying aloud "You pulla the trig'"? With the exception of Joey's American-born mother, our Cucuzzas all had oddish voices, the bewhiskered grandmother's being oddest of all, odder even than Joey's, which sounded less like a voice than like the uninflected echo of a voice. And odd not just because she went around speaking only Italian, whether to others (including me) or to herself while she swept the back stairway or kneeled in the dirt planting her vegetables in our minute backyard or just stood muttering in the dark doorway. Hers was oddest because it sounded like a man's—she looked like a tiny old man in a long black dress and she sounded like one too, particularly when barking the commands and decrees and injunctions that Joey never dared disobey. The playful half of him, the soul that the nuns and the priests never saw enough of to save, was virtually all that I ever encountered when we two were alone. Why it was hard to feel too sorry about his hearing was because Joey was himself a very jolly, prankish boy with his own brand of hooting laughter, a talkative, curious, monumentally gullible boy whose mind moved quickly if unpredictably. It was hard to feel sorry for him, yet when he was around his family Joey's obedience was so painstakingly thorough that I found it almost as astonishing to contemplate as the painstakingly thorough lawlessness of a Shushy Margulis. There couldn't have been a better son in all of Italian Newark, which was why my own mother soon found him irresistible—his faultless filial devotion and his long dark eyelashes, the way he imploringly looked at adults, waiting to be told what to do, allowed her to set aside the uneasy aloofness that was her inbuilt

defense against Gentiles. The old-country grandmother, however, gave her—and me—the willies.

"You aim," Mr. Cucuzza explained to my father, using a finger and a thumb to demonstrate, "and uhyou shoot. You aim and uhyou shoot and that's it."

"I don't need it," my father said.

"But ifuh they come roun'," Mr. Cucuzza said, "how you gonna

protect?"

"Cucuzza, I was born in the city of Newark in the year nineteen

hundred and one," my father told him. "All my life I have paid my rent on time, I have paid my taxes on time, and I have paid my bills on time. I've never cheated on an employer for as much as a dime. I have never tried to cheat the United States government. I believe in this country. I love this country."

"Me too," said our massive new downstairs neighbor, whose wide black belt might have been hung with shrunken heads, given the enchantment that it continued to cast over me. "I come-uh here I was uhten. Best country anyplace. No Mussolini here."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Cucuzza. It's a tragedy for Italy, it's a human tragedy for people like you."

"Mussolini, Hitler—make-uh me sick."

"You know what I love, Cucuzza? Election Day," my father told him. "I love to vote. Since I was old enough, I have not missed an election. In 1924 I voted against Mr. Coolidge and for Mr. Davis, and Mr. Coolidge won. And we all know what Mr. Coolidge did for the poor people of this country. In 1928 I voted against Mr. Hoover and for Mr. Smith, and Mr. Hoover won. And we know what he did for the poor people of this country. In 1932 I voted against Mr. Hoover for the second time and for Mr. Roosevelt for the first time, and, thank God, Mr. Roosevelt won, and he put America back on its feet. He took this country out of the Depression and he gave the people what he promised—a new deal. In 1936 I voted against Mr. Landon and for Mr. Roosevelt, and again Mr. Roosevelt won—two states, Maine and Vermont, that is all Mr. Landon is able to carry. Can't even carry Kansas. Mr. Roosevelt sweeps the country by the biggest presidential vote there has ever been, and once again he keeps every promise to the working people that he made in that campaign. And so what do the voters up and do in nineteen hundred and forty? They elect a fascist instead. Not just an idiot like Coolidge, not just a fool like Hoover, but an out-and-out fascist with a medal to prove it. They put in a fascist and a fascist rabble-rouser, Mr. Wheeler, as his sidekick, and they put Mr. Ford into the cabinet, not only an anti-Semite right up there with Hitler but a slave driver who has turned the workingman into a human machine. And so tonight you come to me, sir, in my own home, and

you offer me a pistol. In America in the year nineteen hundred and forty-two, a brand-new neighbor, a man I do not even know yet, has to come here and offer me a pistol in order for me to protect my family from Mr. Lindbergh's anti- Semitic mob. Well, don't you think I'm not grateful, Cucuzza. I will never forget your concern. But I am a citizen of the United States of America, and so is my wife, and so are my children, and so," he said, his voice catching, "and so was Mr. Walter Winchell—"

But now, suddenly, there is a radio bulletin about Walter Winchell. "Shhh!" my father says. "Shhh!" as though in the kitchen someone other than himself had been the orator holding forth. We all listen—even Joey appears to listen—the way birds flock to migrate and fish swim in a school.

The body of Walter Winchell, slain that day at a political rally in Louisville, Kentucky, by a suspected American Nazi Party assassin working in collaboration with the Ku Klux Klan, will be carried overnight by train from Louisville to Pennsylvania Station in New York City. There, by order of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and under the protection of the New York City police, the body will lie in state in the great hall of the train station throughout the morning. According to Jewish custom, a funeral service will be held that same day, at two

P.M. in Temple Emanu-El, New York's largest synagogue. A public-address system will broadcast the proceedings beyond the temple to a gathering of mourners on Fifth Avenue expected to number in the tens of thousands. Along with Mayor La Guardia, speakers will include Democratic senator James Mead, New York's Jewish governor, Herbert Lehman, and the former president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"It's happening!" my father cries. "He's back! FDR is back!" "We need him bad," Mr. Cucuzza says.

"Boys," he asks, "do you understand what is happening?" and here he throws his arms around Sandy and me. "It's the beginning of the end of fascism in America! No Mussolini here, Cucuzza—no more Mussolini here!"

8

October 1942

Bad Days

ALVIN APPEARED at our house the next night, driving a brand-new green Buick and with a fiancee named Minna Schapp. "Fiancee" always got me when I heard the word spoken as a kid. It made whoever she was sound like somebody special

—then she showed up and she was just some girl who, when she met the family, was afraid to say the wrong thing. The special one here wasn't the intended wife anyway but the intended father-in-law, a masterful deal-maker prepared to deliver Alvin from the game-machine business—where, assisted by two strong- arm thugs who lifted the freight and fended off evildoers, my cousin was employed trucking and setting up the illegal machines—and into a hand-tailored Hong Kong silk suit and a white-on-white monogrammed shirt as an Atlantic City restaurateur. Though Mr. Schapp had himself started out in the twenties as Pinball Billy Schapiro, a two-bit hustler associated with the worst hoods from the most rundown row houses on the most violent streets of the South Philly badlands—among them the uncle of Shushy Margulis—by 1942 the return on the pinballs and the slots amounted to upward of fifteen thousand unreported dollars each week, and Pinball Billy had been regenerated as William F. Schapp II, highly esteemed member of the Green Valley Country Club, of the Jewish fraternal organization Brith Achim (where on Saturday nights he took his dynamic wife in her gigantic jewels to dance to the music of Jackie Jacobs and his Jolly Jazzers), and of Har Zion Synagogue (through whose burial society he purchased a family plot in a beautifully landscaped corner of the synagogue's cemetery), as well as the maharajah of an eighteen-room mansion in suburban Merion and wintertime occupant of a poor boy's dream of a penthouse suite annually reserved for him at the Miami Beach Eden Roc.

At thirty-one, Minna was eight years Alvin's senior, a buttery- complexioned woman with a browbeaten look who, when she even dared to speak in her babyish voice, enunciated each word as though she had only just learned to tell time. She was every inch the child of overbearing parents, but because the father owned, in addition to the Intercity Carting Company—the public face of the gaming-machine operation—half an acre of lobster house across from the Steel Pier where people lined up twice around the block to get in on weekends, and because back in the early thirties, when Prohibition ended and

Pinball Billy's lucrative side interest in Waxey Gordon's interstate bootlegging syndicate suddenly dried up, he'd established Philadelphia's "Original Schapp's"—the steak house popular with what in Philly they called the Jew Mob

—Pinball Billy figured strongly with Alvin as Minna's advocate. "The contract goes like this," Schapp told him when he handed Alvin the cash to buy his daughter's engagement ring. "Minna takes care of your leg, you take care of Minna, and I take care of you."

That's how my cousin came to don the hand-tailored suits and to arrogate to himself the glamorous responsibility for ushering to their tables big- name customers such as Jersey City's crooked mayor, Frank Hague; New Jersey's light-heavyweight champion, Gus Lesnevich; and racket tycoons like Cleveland's Moe Dalitz, Boston's King Solomon, L.A.'s Mickey Cohen, and even "the Brain" himself, Meyer Lansky, when they were in town for a gangland convention. And regularly, every September, to welcome fresh from her pageant triumph, the newly crowned Miss America with all her befuddled relatives in tow. Once everyone was lavishly complimented and into their silly lobster bibs, it was Alvin's pleasure to signal to the waiter, by a snap of his fingers, that the house would pick up the tab.

Pinball Billy's one-legged future son-in-law soon gained a nickname of his own, Showy, bestowed on him, as Alvin told everyone, by Allie Stolz, the contender for the world lightweight title. Alvin was up from Philly to visit with Stolz—like Gus Lesnevich, a Newark boy—the day he and Minna wound up at our house for dinner. Stolz had fought and lost a fifteen-round decision against the lightweight champion in Madison Square Garden the previous May and was training that fall at Marsillo's Market Street gym for a November fight against Beau Jack that would gain him a shot at Tippy Larkin if he won. "Once Allie gets past Beau Jack," Alvin said, "there's just Larkin between him and the title, and Larkin's got a glass jaw."

Glass jaw. Phony-baloney. A going-over. A hard guy. What's his beef? I'll take the grunt. The oldest dodge in the world. Alvin had a new vocabulary and a whole new ostentatious way of talking that it clearly pained my parents to hear. Yet when he said adoringly of Stolz's generosity, "Allie's a guy who is rapid with the dollar," I couldn't wait to sound like a hard guy myself by repeating the amazing expression at school along with the extensive medley of slang that Alvin now used just for the word "money."

Minna was silent during the meal—though my mother tried mightily to draw her out—I was overcome by shyness, and my father could think of nothing but the synagogue bombing that had taken place in Cincinnati the previous night and the looting of Jewish-owned stores in American cities

scattered across two time zones. This was the second night in a row that he'd walked out on Uncle Monty rather than leave the family alone on Summit Avenue, but he couldn't worry about his brother's wrath at a time like this, and instead all through dinner kept getting up to go into the living room to turn on the radio and hear what news there was in the aftermath of the Winchell funeral. Alvin, meanwhile, was able to talk only about "Allie" and his quest for the world boxing crown as though the lightweight contender native to Newark embodied Alvin's profoundest conception of the human race. Could the abandonment have been any more complete of the moral code that had cost him his leg? He had disposed of whatever once stood between him and the aspirations of a Shushy Margulis—he had disposed of us.

I wondered, when I met her, if Alvin had even told Minna that he was an amputee. It didn't occur to me that her subjugated personality was precisely what made her the first and only woman Alvin could tell, nor did I understand that Minna was the evidence of his incapacity with women. His stump, in fact, constituted Alvin's greatest success with Minna, particularly after Schapp died in 1960 and Minna's worthless brother took over the slots, while Alvin was content just to acquire the restaurants and to begin running with the best-looking hookers in two states. Whenever the stump cracked and got sore and bloody and infected—which it did as a result of his many follies—Minna immediately stepped in and wouldn't allow him to wear his prosthesis. Alvin would say to her, "For Christ's sake, don't worry about it, it'll be all right," but here alone Minna prevailed. "You can't put a load on that leg," she'd tell him, "till you get it fixed"—meaning the artificial leg, which was always, in the legmaker's phrase that Alvin had taught me back when I, not yet nine, was the mothering Minna, "losing its fit." When Alvin got older and his stump broke down all the time from bearing all the weight he'd gained, when he had to be without the prosthesis for weeks on end until it healed, Minna would drive him to the public beach in the summertime and watch fully clothed from under a big umbrella while he played for hours in the all-healing surf, bobbing in the waves and floating on his back and spouting saltwater geysers into the air and then, to throw a scare into the tourists crowding the beach, emerging from the water screaming "Shark! Shark!" while pointing in horror at his stump.

Alvin showed up with Minna for dinner after phoning that morning to tell my mother that he was going to be in North Jersey and wanted to stop by to thank his aunt and uncle for all they had done for him when he'd come home from the commandos and given everyone a hard time. He had a lot to be grateful for, he said, and he wanted to make peace with the two of them and to see the two boys, and to introduce his fiancee. That's what he said and that may even

have been what he had in mind before he came face to face with my father and the memory of my father's reforming instincts—and the fact of their innate antipathy, the antipathy as human types that was really there from the start—and it was why, when I got home from school and heard the news, I dug down into my drawer and found his medal and, for the first time since he'd left for Philly, pinned it back on my undershirt.

Of course it was hardly an ideal day for a conciliatory visit from the family's black sheep. There'd been no anti-Semitic violence reported in Newark or in the other major New Jersey cities during the night, but the firebombing of the synagogue that subsequently burned to the ground some hundred miles up the Ohio River from Louisville, in Cincinnati, and the random window-smashing and looting of Jewish-owned stores in eight other cities (St. Louis, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh the three largest) did nothing to diminish fear that the spectacle of Walter Winchell's Jewish funeral just across the Hudson in New York—and the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations coinciding with all the solemn observances—could easily provoke an outbreak of violence a lot closer to home. At school, first thing in the morning, a special half-hour assembly program had been called for grades four through eight. Along with a representative from the Board of Education, a deputy from Mayor Murphy's office, and the current president of the PTA, the principal spelled out the measures being taken to ensure our safety during the day and offered ten rules that would protect us from harm on our way to and from school. While no mention was made of Bullet Apfelbaum's Jewish police—who'd been on the streets all night long and were still there in the morning, drinking hot coffee out of thermoses and eating powdered doughnuts donated by Lehrhoff's bakery when Sandy and I started off for school—we were assured by the mayor's deputy that "until normal conditions are restored," extra details of city police would be patrolling the neighborhood and we were instructed not to be alarmed if we found a uniformed policeman stationed at each of the school doors and a policeman in the corridors. Two mimeographed sheets were then distributed to every pupil, one listing the rules to obey on the street, which our teachers would go over with us when we returned to our homerooms, and the other to take to our parents to advise them of the new safety procedures. If there were questions, our parents should direct them to Mrs. Sisselman, the PTA president who'd succeeded my mother.

We ate in the dining room, where we last had a meal when Aunt Evelyn had brought Rabbi Bengelsdorf to meet us. After Alvin's call, my mother (whose inability to hold a personal grudge Alvin would have known he could count on

the moment he heard her answer the phone) went off to buy food for a dinner that would especially please him, and this despite the anxiety aroused in her each time she had to unlock the door and go back out on the street. That armed Newark cops were now walking the beat and cruising the local streets in squad cars gave her only slightly more assurance than did the glimpses of Bullet Apfelbaum's Jewish police, and so, like anyone else shopping in a city under siege, she wound up all but running back and forth to Chancellor Avenue to pick up everything she needed. In the kitchen she proceeded to bake the chocolate layer cake with chocolate icing and chopped walnuts that had been Alvin's favorite and to peel the potatoes and chop the onions for the latkes that Alvin could devour by the batch, and the house still smelled of the baking and frying and broiling that had been touched off by the unexpected homecoming when Alvin drove his new Buick into the alleyway. There (where we'd run pass plays together with the football I stole) Alvin pulled up behind the little Ford pickup that Mr. Cucuzza used to move people's furniture as a second job and that happened to be parked in the garage because it was the night watchman's day off, and on his day off he slept round the clock.

Alvin arrived wearing a pearl-gray sharkskin suit padded heavily at the shoulders, perforated two-tone wingtip shoes with taps on the toes, and bearing gifts for all: Aunt Bess's was a white apron decorated with red roses, Sandy's a sketchpad, mine a Phillies cap, and Uncle Herman's a certificate entitling a family of four to a free lobster dinner at the Atlantic City restaurant. His giving us all presents reassured me that just because he'd run off to Philadelphia, he hadn't forgotten all the good stuff he'd found in our house in the years preceding his losing his leg. It certainly did not look then and there as though we were a divided family or that when dinner was over—and Minna already in the kitchen taking a lesson in latke-making from my mother—a battle royal could possibly break out between my father and Alvin. Perhaps if Alvin hadn't shown up in his flashy clothes and his snazzy car all but seething with the raw carnality of Marsillo's gym and exuberant with the imminent acquisition of undreamed-of wealth. . .perhaps if Winchell hadn't been assassinated twenty- four hours earlier and the worst that had been feared when Lindbergh first took office hadn't seemed closer to befalling us than ever before. . .perhaps then the two grown men who mattered most to me throughout my childhood might never have come so close to murdering each other.

Before that night, I'd had no idea my father was so well suited for wreaking havoc or equipped to make that lightning-quick transformation from sanity to lunacy that is indispensable in enacting the unbridled urge to destroy. Unlike Uncle Monty he preferred never to speak of the ordeal of a Jewish

tenement kid on Runyon Street before World War One, when the Irish, armed with sticks and rocks and iron pipes, regularly came streaming up through the viaduct underpasses of the Ironbound section seeking vengeance against the Christ-killers of the Jewish Third Ward, and much as he enjoyed taking Sandy and me to Laurel Garden on Springfield Avenue when tickets to a good match came his way, men fighting each other outside a boxing ring appalled him. That he'd always had a muscular physique I knew from a snapshot taken when he was eighteen and pasted by my mother into the family photo album alongside the only other photograph surviving from his youth, a picture of him at the age of six standing next to Uncle Monty, three years older and close to a foot and a half taller—two ragtag kids stiffly posing in their ancient overalls and their dirty shirts and with their caps pushed back just far enough to reveal the cruelty of their haircuts. In that sepia photo of him at eighteen he's already a million miles from childhood, a full-fledged force of nature standing cross-armed in his bathing suit on the sunny beach at Spring Lake, New Jersey, the immovable keystone at the base of a human pyramid of six raffish hotel waiters enjoying their afternoon off. As evidenced in that 1919 photo, he'd been powerful through the chest right from the start, and the yoke-bearing shoulders and brawny arms he had somehow retained even through his years knocking on doors for Metropolitan Life, so that now, at forty-one, after having worked hauling heavy crates and lifting hundred-pound sacks six nights a week all through September, there was probably more explosive strength stored up in that body than ever before in his life.

Prior to that night, it would have been as impossible for me to envision him beating somebody up—let alone battering bloody his beloved older brother's fatherless son—as to imagine him atop my mother, especially as there was no taboo stronger among Jews with our impoverished European origins and our tenaciously held American ambitions than the pervasive, unwritten prohibition against settling disputes by force. In that era, the common Jewish propensity was by and large nonviolent as well as nonalcoholic, a virtue whose shortcoming was the failure to educate the bulk of the young of my generation in the combative aggression that was the first law of other ethnic educations and indisputably of great practical value when you couldn't negotiate your way out of violence or manage to run away. Among, say, the several hundred boys in my elementary school between the ages of five and fourteen who were not chromosomally preordained to be top-flight lightweights like Allie Stolz or successful racketeers like Longy Zwillman, surely far fewer fistfights broke out than in any of the other neighborhood schools in industrial Newark, where the ethical obligations of a child were differently defined and schoolmates

demonstrated their belligerence by means not readily available to us.

So then, for every reason imaginable it was a devastating night. I didn't have the capacity in 1942 to begin to decipher all the awful implications, but just the sight of my father's and Alvin's blood was stunning enough. Blood spattered the length and breadth of our imitation Oriental rug, blood dripping from the splintered remains of our coffee table, blood smeared like a sign across my father's forehead, blood spurting from my cousin's nose—and the two of them not so much fistfighting, not so much wrestling as caroming, with a terrible bony thwack colliding, rearing back and charging in like men with antlers branching from their brows, fantastical, cross-species creatures sprung from mythology into our living room and pulping each other's flesh with their massive, snaggletoothed horns. Inside a house you usually scale down your movements, you scale down your speed, but here the scale of things was reversed and terrifying to behold. The South Boston riots, the Detroit riots, the Louisville assassination, the Cincinnati firebombing, the mayhem in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Akron, Youngstown, Peoria, Scranton, and Syracuse. . .and now this: in an ordinary family living room—traditionally the staging area for the collective effort to hold the line against the intrusions of a hostile world—the anti-Semites were about to be abetted in their exhilarating solution to America's worst problem by our taking up the cudgels and hysterically destroying ourselves.

The horror ended with Mr. Cucuzza, in his nightshirt and his nightcap (attire I'd never before seen on anyone, man or boy, other than in a funny movie), crashing into our flat with his pistol drawn. A frantic wail rose from Joey's Old World grandmother, appropriately swathed like the Calabrian Queen of the Shades at the foot of our landing—and from within our own flat came a noise equally hair-raising the instant the splintered back door flew open and my mother saw that the nightshirted intruder was armed. Minna began bringing up into her hands everything she'd just swallowed at dinner, I couldn't help myself and promptly urinated, while Sandy, who alone among us was able to find the right words and the vocal strength to utter them, cried, "Don't shoot! It's Alvin!" But Mr. Cucuzza was a professional guardian of private property trained to act now and draw distinctions later and—without pausing to ask "Who's Alvin?"—immobilized my father's assailant in a strangulating half nelson with one arm while holding the pistol to his head with the hand of the other.

Alvin's prosthesis had cracked in two, his stump was torn to shreds, and one of his wrists was broken. Three of my father's front teeth were shattered, two ribs were fractured, a gash was opened along his right cheekbone that had to

be sutured with almost twice as many stitches as were needed to close the wound inflicted on me by the orphanage horse, and his neck was so badly wrenched that he had to go around in a high steel collar for months afterward. The glass-topped coffee table with the dark mahogany frame that my mother had saved over the years to buy at Bam's (and where, at the conclusion of a pleasant hour of evening reading, she would set down, with its ribboned bookmark in place, the new novel by Pearl Buck or Fannie Hurst or Edna Ferber borrowed from the local pharmacy's tiny rental library) lay in fragments all across the room, and microscopic crumbs of glass were embedded in my father's hands. The rug, the walls, and the furniture were speckled with chocolate icing (from the slices of layer cake they had been eating when they sat down over dessert to talk together in the living room) as well as with their blood, and then there was the smell of it

—the airless, gag-inducing slaughterhouse smell.

It's so heartbreaking, violence, when it's in a house—like seeing the clothes in a tree after an explosion. You may be prepared to see death but not the clothes in the tree.

And all of it the result of my father's failing to understand that Alvin's nature was never really reformable, despite the lecturing and the hectoring love—all of it the result of having taken him in to save him from what it was simply in his nature to become. All of it the result of my father's looking Alvin over and remembering the tragically evanescent life of Alvin's late father, and, in his despair, sadly shaking his head and saying, "A Buick automobile, a sharpie's suits, the scum of the earth for your friends—but do you know, do you care, does it bother you at all, Alvin, what's happening in this country tonight? It did years ago, damn it. I can remember clear as day when it did. But now no. Now it's big cigars and motor cars. But do you have any idea at all what is happening to the Jews even while we sit here?"

And Alvin, whose lot had finally come to something, whose prospects never before had been so hopeful, could not bear and would not endure being informed by the custodian whose tutelage had once meant everything—by the relative who, when no one else would have him, had twice taken him to live in a homey little Weequahic flat amid a kindly family and their benign concerns

—that he had come to nothing. His voice husky with the grievance of the injured party, his delivery staccato and without a single caesura to let anything in that wasn't retaliatory, all calumny, all castigation, all coercion and fatuous bluff, Alvin shouted at my father, "The Jews? I wrecked my life for the Jews! I lost my fuckin' leg for the Jews! I lost my fuckin' leg for you! What did I give a shit either way about Lindbergh? But you send me to go fuckin' fight him, and the stupid fuckin' kid I am, I go. And look, look, Uncle Fucking Disaster--I have no

fucking leg!"

Here he hiked up a handful of the pearl-gray fabric in which he was so lustrously clad to reveal where there was indeed no longer a lower limb of flesh and blood and muscle and bone. And then, insulted, negated, inwardly once again the unmanned man (and the bum kid), he added his final heroic touch by spitting into my father's face. A family, my father liked to say, is both peace and war, but this was family war as I could never have imagined it. Spitting into my father's face the way he'd spit into the face of that dead German soldier!

If only he had been allowed to go along unrehabilitated, on his own stinking trajectory, but that hadn't happened, and so this was how the great menace undid us and the abomination of violence entered our house, and I saw how bitterness blinds a man and the defilement it spawns.

And why, why did he go to fight in the first place? Why did he fight and why did he fall? Because there is a war going on, he chooses that way—the raging, rebellious instinct historically trapped! If only the times were different, if only he had been smarter. . .But he wants to fight. He's like the very fathers he wants to be rid of. That's the tyranny of the problem. Trying to be faithful to what he's trying to be rid of. Trying to be faithful and to get rid of what he's faithful to at the same time. And that's why he went to fight in the first place, as best I can figure it out.

Later that night, after a pair of Alvin's buddies had pulled up in a Caddy with Pennsylvania plates (one of them to get Alvin and Minna over to Allie Stolz's doctor's office on Elizabeth Avenue, the other to drive their Buick back to Philly); after my father was home from the Beth Israel emergency room (where they'd plucked the glass out of his hands and stitched up his face and x-rayed his neck and taped his ribcage and, on his way out, handed him codeine tablets to take for the pain); after Mr. Cucuzza, who'd rushed my father to the hospital in his pickup, had returned him safely to the befouled and littered battlefield that was now our flat, the gunshots erupted on Chancellor Avenue. Shots, screaming, shouting, sirens—the pogrom had begun, and it was only seconds before Mr. Cucuzza charged back up the stairs he'd only just descended and banged once on our broken back door before rushing in.

Desperate for sleep, I was dragged from bed by my brother, but when my legs wouldn't work and kept collapsing from uncontrollable fear, I had to be carried off in his arms by my father. My mother—who instead of going to bed and trying to sleep had donned her apron and a pair of rubber gloves and set about to purge the house of its filth with a bucket and a broom and a mop—my

meticulous mother, weeping amid the wreckage of her living room, was guided to the door by Mr. Cucuzza, and the four of us were herded down the stairs and into the Wishnows' old flat to take cover there.

This time when Mr. Cucuzza offered a pistol, my father accepted it. His poor human body was black-and-blue and bandaged just about everywhere, his mouth was full of broken teeth, and still he sat with us on the floor in the Cucuzzas' windowless back foyer, regarding the weapon in his hands with all his concentration, as though it were no longer just a weapon but the most serious thing entrusted to him since he'd first been given his infant babies to hold. My mother sat straight up between Sandy's self-conscious stoicism and my stupefied inertness, gripping us each by the arm closest to her and doing all she could to keep a thin layer of courage from revealing her terror to the children. Meanwhile the biggest man I'd ever seen moved with a pistol through the darkened flat, stealthily advancing from window to window to ascertain with the eagle-eyed thoroughness of the veteran night watchman whether anyone lurked anywhere nearby with an ax, a gun, a rope, or a can of kerosene.

Joey, his mother, and his grandmother had been directed by Mr. Cucuzza to remain in their beds, though the old lady could not resist the magnetism of all that turbulence and the picture we four presented of sheer plight. Snarling in tiny bursts of raw Italian that could not have been complimentary to her guests, she peered out from the doorway of the dark kitchen—where she customarily slept in her clothes on a cot next to the stove— fixing us in the crosshairs of her madness (because mad she was) as if she were the patron saint of anti-Semitism whose silver crucifix had engendered it all.

The firing went on for less than an hour but we didn't head back upstairs until dawn, and didn't learn, until after Mr. Cucuzza bravely ventured forth as a scout to where Chancellor Avenue was cordoned off, that the gun battle had been not between the city police and the anti-Semites but between the city police and the Jewish police. There'd been no pogrom in Newark that night, just a shootout, extraordinary for having occurred within earshot of our house but otherwise not much different from the disorder that could erupt in any large city after dark. And though three Jews had been killed—Duke Glick, Big Gerry, and Bullet himself—it wasn't necessarily because they were Jews ("though it didn't hurt," my Uncle Monty said) but because they were exactly the sort of thugs that the new mayor wanted off the streets, primarily to signal to Longy that he was no longer an honorary member of the city's Board of Commissioners (a position he was rumored—by Meyer Ellenstein's enemies—to have held under Murphy's Jewish predecessor). Nobody bothered taking the police commissioner too seriously when he explained to the Newark News that it was the "trigger-

happy vigilantes" who, without provocation, had opened fire a little before midnight on two foot patrolmen walking their beat, nor, among our neighbors, was there any noticeable expression of grief because of how the three— dangerous people in their own right whose protection nobody decent would have dreamed of requesting—had been unceremoniously mowed down. Of course, it was awful that the blood of violent men should stain the pavement where the neighborhood children wended their way to school every day, but at least it wasn't blood shed in a clash with the Klan or the Silver Shirts or the Bund.

No pogrom, and yet at seven that morning my father was on the phone long-distance to Winnipeg to admit to Shepsie Tirschwell that the Jews were so frightened and the anti-Semites so emboldened that it was no longer possible in Newark—where fortunately the prestige of Rabbi Prinz had continued to exert an influence over the powers that be and nothing worse than relocation had as yet been forced on a single Jewish family—to live as normal people. Whether outright government-sanctioned persecution was inevitable, nobody could say for sure, but the fear of persecution was such that not even a practical man grounded in his everyday tasks, a person who tried his best to contain the uncertainty and the anxiety and the anger and operate according to the dictates of reason, could hope to preserve his equilibrium any longer.

Yes, my father admitted, he had been wrong all along and Bess and the Tirschwells had been right—and then, as best he could, he shook off his abashment over everything he'd mismanaged and badly misjudged, including the improbable violence that had smashed to bits, along with our coffee table, that lifelong barrier of rigid rectitude that had stood between his harsh upbringing and his mature ideals. "That's it," he told Shepsie Tirschwell, "I can't live any longer not knowing what will happen tomorrow," and their phone conversation moved on to emigration and the steps to be taken and the arrangements to be made, so that by the time Sandy and I left the house, there was no misunderstanding that, quite incredibly, we'd been overpowered by the forces arrayed against us and were about to flee and become foreigners. I wept all the way to school. Our incomparable American childhood was ended. Soon my homeland would be nothing more than my birthplace. Even Seldon in Kentucky was better off now.

But then it was over. The nightmare was over. Lindbergh was gone and we were safe, though never would I be able to revive that unfazed sense of security first fostered in a little child by a big, protective republic and his ferociously responsible parents.

Drawn from the Archives of Newark's Newsreel Theater

Tuesday, October 6, 1942

Thirty thousand mourners stream through the great hall of Pennsylvania Station to view Walter Winchell's flag-draped coffin. The turnout exceeds even the expectations of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, whose decision it was to transform the assassination into the occasion for a citywide day of mourning for "American victims of Nazi violence," culminating in a funeral oration to be delivered by FDR. Outside the station (as at numerous other locations throughout the city), silent men and women dressed in somber clothing distribute half-dollar-sized black buttons whose white lettering poses the question "Where is Lindbergh?" Just before noon, Mayor La Guardia arrives at the studio of the city radio station, where he removes his wide-brimmed black Stetson (a memento of his boyhood roots in the Arizona Territory as the son of a

U.S. Army bandmaster) to recite the Lord's Prayer; then he puts the hat back on to read aloud, in Hebrew, the Jewish prayer for the dead. At the stroke of noon, by decree of the City Council, a minute of silence is observed in the five boroughs. The New York police are in evidence everywhere, chiefly to oversee the protest demonstrations organized by the array of right-wing groups located in preponderantly German Yorkville—the Manhattan neighborhood north of the Upper East Side and south of Harlem that is the main headquarters for the American Nazi movement—and that militantly endorse the president and his policies. At one P.M. an honor guard of motorcycles manned by policemen wearing black armbands aligns itself with the funeral cortege forming outside Penn Station and, with the mayor leading the way from a motorcycle sidecar, escorts the cortege slowly northward up Eighth Avenue, eastward along 57th Street, northward again on Fifth Avenue to 65th Street and Temple Emanu-El. There, among the dignitaries summoned by La Guardia to fill the temple's every last seat, are the ten members of Roosevelt's 1940 cabinet, Roosevelt's four Supreme Court appointees, President Philip Murray of the CIO, President William Green of the AFL, President John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as past and current Democratic governors, senators, and congressmen from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, among them the Democrats' defeated 1928 presidential aspirant, former New York governor Al Smith. Loudspeakers installed overnight by municipal laborers and wired to telephone poles and barber poles and door lintels throughout the city carry the memorial service to the New Yorkers who've assembled on the streets of every Manhattan

neighborhood (except Yorkville) and to the thousands of out-of-towners who have congregated alongside them—all those Mr. and Mrs. Americas who'd been listening to Walter Winchell weekly since he first came on the air and who have journeyed to his hometown to pay their respects. And virtually every man, woman, and child among them wears that now ubiquitous badge of defiant solidarity, the black-and-white "Where is Lindbergh?" button.

Fiorello H. La Guardia—the down-to-earth idol of the city's working people; the flamboyant ex-congressman who'd belligerently represented a congested East Harlem district of poor Italians and Jews for five terms, who as early as 1933 described Hitler as a "perverted maniac" and called for a boycott of German goods; the tenacious spokesman for the unions, the needy, and the unemployed who'd battled almost single-handedly against Hoover's do-nothing congressional Republicans during the first dark year of the Depression and, to the dismay of his own party, called for taxation to "soak the rich"; the liberal anti-Tammany reform Republican who has been the three-term Fusion mayor of the country's most populous city, the metropolis that is home to the largest concentration of Jews in the hemisphere—La Guardia is alone among the members of his party in displaying his contempt for Lindbergh and for the Nazi dogma of Aryan superiority that he (himself the son of an unobservant Jewish mother from Austrian Trieste and a freethinker Italian father who came to America as a ship's musician) has identified as the precept at the heart of Lindbergh's credo and of the huge American cult that worships the president.

La Guardia stands beside the coffin and addresses the dignitaries with that same excitable, high-pitched voice in which he famously narrated the Sunday comic strips over the city's radio station to the city's children every Sunday morning during a New York newspaper strike, like the best of uncles proceeding patiently, panel by panel, balloon by balloon, from Dick Tracy to Little Orphan Annie and on through the rest of the serialized funnies.

"We can dispense with the cant at the start," says the mayor. "Everybody knows that Walter was not a lovely human being. Walter was not the strong, silent type who hides everything but the muckraker who hates everything hidden. As anybody who ever turned up in his column can tell you, Walter was not always as accurate as he might have been. He was not shy, he was not modest, he was not decorous, discreet, kindly, et cetera. My friends, if I were to list for you everything lovely that W.W. was not, we'd be here till next Yom Kippur. I'm afraid that the late Walter Winchell was just one more doozy of a specimen of the imperfect man. In declaring himself a candidate for the presidency of the United States were his motives pure as Ivory soap? Walter Winchell's motives? Was his preposterous candidacy uncontaminated by a raving

ego? My friends, only a Charles A. Lindbergh has motives pure as Ivory soap when he runs for the American presidency. Only a Charles A. Lindbergh is decorous, discreet, et cetera—oh, and accurate too, wholly accurate always when every few months he summons up the gregariousness to address his ten favorite platitudes to the nation. Only a Charles A. Lindbergh is a selfless ruler and a strong, silent saint. Walter, on the other hand, was Mr. Gossip Columnist. Walter, on the other hand, was Mr. Broadway: liked the ponies, liked the late hours, liked Sherman Billingsley—somebody once told me that he even liked the girls. And the repeal of that 'noble experiment,' as Mr. Herbert Hoover called it, the repeal of the hypocritical, expensive, stupid, unenforceable Eighteenth Amendment, was no more ignoble to Walter Winchell than it was to the rest of us here in New York. In short, Walter lacked every gleaming virtue demonstrated daily by the incorruptible test pilot ensconced in the White House.

"Oh yes, several more differences that are perhaps worth noting between fallible Walter and infallible Lindy. Our president is a fascist sympathizer, more than likely an outright fascist—and Walter Winchell was the enemy of the fascist. Our president is no lover of Jews and more than likely a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semite while Walter Winchell was a Jew and the unwavering, vociferous enemy of the anti-Semite. Our president is an admirer of Adolf Hitler and more than likely a Nazi himself—and Walter Winchell was Hitler's first American enemy and his worst American enemy. There's where our imperfect Walter was incorruptible—where it mattered. Walter is too loud, Walter talks too fast, Walter says too much, and yet, by comparison, Walter's vulgarity is something great, and Lindbergh's decorum is hideous. Walter Winchell, my friends, was the enemy of Nazis everywhere, not excluding the Dieses and the Bilbos and the Parnell Thomases who serve their Führer in the United States Congress, not excluding the Hitlerites who write for the New York Journal-American and the New York Daily News, not excluding those who royally fete Nazi murderers in our American White House at the taxpayer's expense. And it was because he was Hitler's enemy and it was because he was the Nazis' enemy that Walter Winchell was gunned down yesterday in the shadow of the statue of Thomas Jefferson in gracious old Louisville's most historic and beautiful public square. For speaking his mind in the state of Kentucky, W.W. was assassinated by the Nazis of America, who, thanks to the silence of our strong, silent, selfless president, today run rampant throughout this great land. It can't happen here? My friends, it is happening here—and where is Lindbergh? Where is Lindbergh?"

Out in the streets, those listening together around the loudspeakers take up the mayor's cry, and soon their chant is cascading eerily across the entire

city—"Where is Lind-bergh? Where is Lind-bergh?"—while inside the synagogue the mayor repeats and repeats his four irate syllables, angrily banging the pulpit not like an orator theatrically emphasizing a point but like an outraged citizen demanding the truth. "Where is Lindbergh?" This is the snarling peroration with which the red-faced La Guardia readies the assembled mourners for the climactic appearance of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who stuns even his closest political cronies (Hopkins, Morgenthau, Farley, Berle, Baruch, all sitting behatted only feet from the coffin of the martyred candidate, whose brand of megalomania was never to the taste of the White House inner circle, however useful a mouthpiece he may have been to their boss) by ordaining as Winchell's successor the cunning, contemptuous, short-tempered, bullheaded, roly-poly politico standing five feet two inches tall and known affectionately to his devoted constituents as the Little Flower. From the pulpit of Temple Emanu-El, the nominal head of the Democratic Party pledges his support to New York's Republican mayor as a "national unity" candidate to oppose Lindbergh's quest for a second term in 1944.

Wednesday, October 7, 1942

Piloted by President Lindbergh, the Spirit of St. Louis departs from Long Island in the morning, lifting off from the runway that served as the point of embarkation for the transatlantic solo flight of May 20, 1927. With no protective escort, the plane speeds through a cloudless autumn sky across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and down to Kentucky. Only an hour before he is to set down in the midday sunshine at the Louisville commercial airport is the White House notified by the president of his destination. His timing allows just enough notice for Louisville mayor Wilson Wyatt and the city and its citizens to prepare for the president's arrival. A mechanic is at the ready on the ground to check over the plane and tune and equip it for the return flight.

Of Louisville's 320, 000 residents, the police estimate that at least a third have made the five-mile trek out from the city and are already packing the fields and the roads adjacent to Bowman Field when the president lands and smoothly taxies his plane to a platform where a microphone has been hooked up for him to address the vast crowd. When finally the great din of their greeting begins to diminish and his voice can be heard, the president makes no mention of Walter Winchell, does not allude to the assassination two days earlier or to the funeral the day before or to the speech made by Mayor La Guardia on the occasion of his anointment as Winchell's successor by Franklin Roosevelt in a New York synagogue. He does not have to. That La Guardia is, like Winchell

before him, no more than a stalking horse for FDR in his dictatorial quest for an unprecedented third presidential term, and that those behind the "vicious La Guardia libel of our president" are the very same people who would have forced America to go to war in 1940, has already been colorfully explained to the nation by Vice President Wheeler in an impromptu Washington speech before the American Legion convention the previous evening.

All that the president says to the crowd is "Our country is at peace. Our people are at work. Our children are at school. I flew down here to remind you of that. Now I'm going back to Washington so as to keep things that way." An innocuous enough string of sentences, but to these tens of thousands of Kentuckians who've been the subject of national interest for two full days it is as though he has announced the end of all hardship on earth. Pandemonium once again, while the president, as laconic as ever and bidding farewell with just a single wave, squeezes his lanky frame back into the plane's cockpit, and from the airstrip a smiling mechanic signals with his wrench that everything's checked out and ready to go. The engine turns, the Lone Eagle waves a final goodbye, and with a rush and a roar the Spirit of St. Louis lifts free of Daniel Boone's gorgeous wilderness state, inch by inch, foot by foot, until at last (like the barnstorming, skydiving, wing-walking stunt pilot he'd been as a kid, flying low over the farming towns of the West—and to the delight of the delirious crowd) Lindy clears by no more than a hairsbreadth the telephone wires strung from the poles along Route 58. Rising steadily into the stream of a warm, gentle tailwind, the most famous small plane in aviation history—the modern-day counterpart of Columbus's Santa María and the Pilgrims' May-flower—disappears eastward, never to be seen again.

Thursday, October 8, 1942

Ground searches of the regular flight path between Louisville and Washington yield no evidence of wreckage despite the perfect fall weather that makes it possible for local search parties to penetrate deep into the rugged mountains of West Virginia and to range over the harvested farmlands of Maryland and for state authorities to dispatch police launches up and down the Maryland and Delaware coastlines throughout the daylight hours. In the afternoon the Army, Coast Guard, and Navy join the search, along with hundreds of men and boys in every county from every state east of the Mississippi who have volunteered to assist the National Guard units called out by the state governors. Yet by dinnertime in Washington there is still no reported sighting of the plane or its wreckage, and so at eight P.M. the cabinet is summoned to an

emergency meeting at the vice president's home. There Burton K. Wheeler announces that, after consulting with the First Lady and the majority leaders of the House and the Senate and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, he has deemed it in the country's best interest to assume the duties of acting president in accordance with Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

In dozens of newspapers, the evening headline, printed in the boldest, blackest type seen on America's front pages since the stock market crash of 1929 (and intended to shame Fiorello La Guardia), somberly reads: WHERE IS LINDBERGH?

Friday, October 9, 1942

By the time Americans awaken to begin their day, martial law has been imposed throughout the continental United States and in the territories and possessions. At noon Acting President Wheeler travels under military guard to the Capitol, where he announces to an emergency closed-door session of Congress that the FBI has received information establishing that the president has been kidnapped and is being held by parties unknown at a location somewhere in North America. The acting president assures the Congress that all steps are being taken to secure the president's release and to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice. In the meantime the country's borders with Canada and Mexico have been sealed, airports and seaports have been shut down, and law and order, says the acting president, is to be maintained in the District of Columbia by the U.S. armed forces and elsewhere by the National Guard in cooperation with the FBI and local police authorities.

AGAIN!

So reads the one-word headline carried on every Hearst paper in the country and printed above pictures of the little Lindbergh baby, last photographed alive in 1932, only days before his kidnapping at the age of twenty months.

Saturday, October 10, 1942

German state radio announces that the kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh, thirty-third president of the United States and signatory to America's

historic Iceland Understanding with the Third Reich, has been discovered to have been perpetrated by a conspiracy of "Jewish interests." Top-secret Wehrmacht intelligence data are cited to corroborate initial reports from the Ministry of State that the plot was masterminded by the warmonger Roosevelt— in collusion with his Jewish Treasury secretary, Morgenthau, his Jewish Supreme Court justice, Frankfurter, and the Jewish investment banker Baruch—and that it is being financed by the international Jewish usurers Warburg and Rothschild and carried out under the command of Roosevelt's mongrel henchman, the half- Jew gangster La Guardia, mayor of Jewish New York City, along with the powerful Jewish governor of New York State, the financier Lehman, in order to return Roosevelt to the White House and launch of an all-out Jewish war against the non-Jewish world. The intelligence data, which have been turned over to the FBI by the German embassy in Washington, allege that the assassination of Walter Winchell was planned and executed by the same cabal of Roosevelt Jews

—and responsibility for the crime predictably attributed by them to Americans of German descent—so as to foster the vicious "Where is Lindbergh?" campaign, which in turn moved the president to take to the air and fly to the scene of the assassination to reassure the citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, who were justifiably fearful of organized Jewish retaliation. But there—according to the Wehrmacht reports—as the president addressed the crowd, an airport mechanic bribed by the Jewish conspiracy (who has himself vanished and is believed to have been murdered by order of La Guardia) rendered the aircraft's radio inoperative. No sooner had the president taken off for Washington than he was unable to make contact with the ground or with other aircraft and had no choice but to capitulate when the Spirit of St. Louis was corralled by highflying British fighter planes, which forced him to deviate from his course and to land, some hours later, at an airstrip secretly maintained by international Jewish interests across the Canadian border from Lehman's state of New York.

In America, the German announcement prompts Mayor La Guardia to tell City Hall reporters, "Any American who can believe that lollapalooza of a Nazi lie has sunk to the lowest possible level." Nonetheless, both the mayor and the governor are said by informed sources to have been interviewed at length by agents of the FBI, and Secretary of the Interior Ford is demanding that Mackenzie King, prime minister of Canada, conduct an intensive search on Canadian soil for President Lindbergh and his captors. Acting President Wheeler is reported to be examining the German documentation with White House aides but will make no comment about the allegations until the search for the president's plane has been completed. Navy destroyers along with Coast Guard PT boats are now looking for signs of an air crash as far north as Cape May,

New Jersey, and as far south as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, while ground units of the Army, Marine Corps, and National Guard continue to search in twenty states for clues to the missing plane's whereabouts.

The National Guard units enforcing the nationwide curfew report no incidents of violence prompted by the president's disappearance. Under martial law, America remains calm, though the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and the leader of the American Nazi Party have jointly called upon the acting president "to implement extreme measures to protect America from a Jewish coup d'etat."

Meanwhile a committee of American Jewish clergymen led by Rabbi Stephen Wise of New York telegrams the First Lady expressing their deepest sympathy in her family's hour of need. Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf is seen entering the White House in the early evening, reportedly there at Mrs. Lindbergh's request to offer spiritual guidance to the family during what is now the third day of their vigil. The White House invitation to Rabbi Bengelsdorf is widely interpreted to indicate the First Lady's refusal to accept that "Jewish interests" have had anything to do with her husband's disappearance.

Sunday, October 1 , 1942

At church services around the country, prayers are offered in behalf of the Lindbergh family. The three major radio networks cancel regularly scheduled programs to broadcast the services conducted at Washington's National Cathedral, where the First Lady and her children are in attendance, and for the remainder of the day and into the evening, programming is devoted exclusively to inspirational music. At eight P.M. Acting President Wheeler addresses the nation, assuring his fellow Americans that he has no plans to abandon the search. He reports that at the invitation of the Canadian prime minister representatives from American law enforcement agencies will assist the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in scouring the eastern half of the U.S.-Canada border and the southernmost counties of the easterly Canadian provinces.

Having emerged as official spokesman for the First Lady, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf tells a large group of reporters waiting on the White House portico that Mrs. Lindbergh urges the American people to ignore speculation emanating from any foreign government concerning the circumstances of her husband's disappearance. She would remind the public, the rabbi says, that in 1926, as an airmail pilot on the St. Louis–Chicago run, the president twice survived, without injury, crashes that demolished his aircraft, and that as of the moment it is the First Lady's belief that the president will once again be found to

have survived should there have been another crash. The First Lady remains unconvinced, says the rabbi, by the evidence of a kidnapping that has been presented to her by the acting president. When Rabbi Bengelsdorf is asked why Mrs. Lindbergh cannot speak for herself and why the press is being prevented from questioning her directly, he replies, "Bear in mind that this is not the first time in her thirty-six years that Mrs. Lindbergh has been required to deal with inquiries from the press while enduring the gravest of family crises. I would think that Americans are altogether willing to accept whatever arrangement the First Lady decides will best protect her and her children's privacy for however long the search continues." When he is asked if there is any truth to rumors that Mrs. Lindbergh is too distraught to make her own decisions and that it is Lionel Bengelsdorf who is reaching her decisions for her, the rabbi replies, "Anyone who observed the demeanor of the First Lady at the cathedral this morning is able to see for himself that she is wholly competent intellectually, in complete possession of all her faculties, and that, despite the magnitude of the situation, neither her reason nor her judgment has been in any way impaired."

Despite the rabbi's assurances, stories go out over the wire services reporting on suspicions voiced by a "highly placed government official"— believed to be Secretary Ford—that the First Lady has become the captive of "Rabbi Rasputin," the Jewish spokesman considered comparable in his influence over the president's wife to the lunatic Siberian peasant monk who insidiously controlled the minds of the czar and czarina of Russia and all but ruled the imperial palace in the days leading up to the Russian Revolution and whose mad reign ended only when he was murdered by a conspiracy of patriotic Russian aristocrats.

Monday, October 12, 1942

The London morning papers report that British intelligence has forwarded to the FBI German coded communications proving beyond a doubt that President Lindbergh is alive and in Berlin. British intelligence ascertains that on October 7, in keeping with a long-standing plan conceived by Air Marshal Hermann Göring, the president of the United States succeeded in ditching the Spirit of St. Louis at predetermined coordinates in the Atlantic approximately three hundred miles east of Washington. There he reconnoitered with a waiting German U-boat whose crew transferred him to a German naval vessel waiting off the coast of Portugal to take him to Italian-occupied Cotor in Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea. The wreckage of the president's plane was commandeered and taken on board by a German military freighter, dismantled,

crated, and transported to a Gestapo warehouse in Bremen. The president himself was flown from a Cotor airstrip to Germany in a camouflaged Luftwaffe plane, accompanied by Air Marshal Göring, and upon his arrival at a Luftwaffe airbase was driven to Hitler's Berchtesgaden hideaway to confer with the Führer.

Serbian resistance groups in Yugoslavia confirm the British intelligence reports on the basis of information supplied by sources within the German-instituted Belgrade government of General Milan Nedich, whose interior ministry directed the naval operation at the port of Cotor.

In New York, Mayor La Guardia tells reporters, "If it is true that our president has voluntarily fled to Nazi Germany, if it is true that, since his taking the oath of office, he has been working from the White House as a Nazi agent, if it is true that our domestic and foreign policies have been dictated to the president by the Nazi regime that today tyrannizes the entire European continent, then I lack the words to describe a treason whose wickedness is without equal in human history."

Despite the imposition of martial law and a nationwide curfew, and despite the presence of heavily armed National Guard troops patrolling the streets of every major American city, anti-Semitic riots begin just after sundown in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, and continue throughout the night and into the early morning. Not until approximately eight A.M. are federal troops— dispatched by Acting President Wheeler to support the National Guard units— able to quell these disturbances and to bring under control the worst of the fires the rioters have set. By then 122 American citizens have lost their lives.

Tuesday, October 13, 1942

In a noontime radio address, Acting President Wheeler places responsibility for the riots on "the British government and their warmongering American supporters."

"Having falsely disseminated the vilest charges that could possibly be leveled against a patriot of the stature of Charles A. Lindbergh, just what did these people expect from a nation already grieving over the disappearance of a beloved leader? To advance their own economic and racial interests," says the acting president, "these people choose to try to the limit the conscience of a heartsick nation, and just what do they then expect will occur? I can report that order has been restored to our ravaged cities throughout the South and the Midwest, but at what cost to the equanimity of our nation?"

A statement from the president's wife is subsequently delivered by

Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf. Once again the First Lady counsels her countrymen to ignore all unverifiable hypotheses about her husband's disappearance emanating from foreign capitals, and she requests of the U.S. government the immediate termination of the weeklong search for her husband's plane. The First Lady wishes the country to recall the tragic plight of Amelia Earhart, the greatest of woman aviators, who, following the lead of President Lindbergh, made her heralded solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932, only to disappear without a trace in 1937 while attempting a solo flight across the Pacific. "As an experienced aviator in her own right," Rabbi Bengelsdorf tells the press, "the First Lady has concluded that something very like what happened to Amelia Earhart appears now to have overtaken the president. Life is not without risk, and aviation, of course, is not without risk, particularly for those like Amelia Earhart and Charles

Lindbergh, whose daring and courage as solo aviators launched the aeronautical age in which we now live."

Requests by reporters to meet with the First Lady are once again politely declined by her official spokesman, prompting Secretary Ford to demand the arrest of Rabbi Rasputin.

Wednesday, October 14, 1942

In the early evening Mayor La Guardia calls a press conference to point in particular to three manifestations of the "sheer derangement that is threatening the nation's sanity."

First, a front-page Chicago Tribune article, datelined Berlin, reports that the twelve-year-old son of President and Mrs. Lindbergh—the child believed to have been kidnapped and murdered in New Jersey in 1932—has been reunited with his father at Berchtesgaden after having been rescued by the Nazis from a dungeon in Kraków, Poland, where he had been held prisoner in the city's Jewish ghetto ever since his disappearance and where, each year, blood was drawn from the captive boy to be used in the ritual preparation of the community's Passover matzohs.

Second, House Republicans introduce a bill calling for a declaration of war against the Commonwealth of Canada should Prime Minister King fail to reveal the whereabouts of America's missing president within forty-eight hours.

Third, law enforcement agencies in the South and the Midwest report that the "so-called anti-Semitic riots" of October 12 were instigated by "local Jewish elements" working as part of "a far-reaching Jewish conspiracy intent on undermining the country's morale." Of the 122 killed in the rioting, 97 have already been identified as "Jewish provocateurs" seeking to deflect

suspicion from the very group responsible for the disorder and plotting to take control of the federal government.

Mayor La Guardia says, "There's a plot afoot all right, and I'll gladly name the forces propelling it—hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off. Now we read in the Chicago Tribune that all these years clever Jewish bakers have been using the blood of the kidnapped Lindbergh child for making Passover matzohs in Poland—a story just as nutty today as when it was first concocted by anti-Semitic maniacs five hundred years ago. How it must please the Führer to be poisoning our country with this sinister nonsense. Jewish interests. Jewish elements. Jewish usurers. Jewish retaliation. Jewish conspiracies. A Jewish war against the world. To have enslaved America with this hocuspocus! To have captured the mind of the world's greatest nation without uttering a single word of truth! Oh, the pleasure we must be affording the most malevolent man on earth!"

Thursday, October 15, 1942

Just before dawn Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf is taken into custody by the FBI under suspicion of being "among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America." At the same time the First Lady, said to be suffering from "extreme nervous exhaustion," is transferred by ambulance from the White House to Walter Reed Army Hospital. Others arrested in the early- morning roundup include Governor Lehman, Bernard Baruch, Justice Frankfurter, Frankfurter protege and Roosevelt administrator David Lilienthal, New Deal advisers Adolf Berle and Sam Rosenman, labor leaders David Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman, economist Isador Lubin, leftist journalists I. F. Stone and James Wechsler, and socialist Louis Waldman. More arrests are said to be imminent, but the FBI has not disclosed whether the charge of conspiring to kidnap the president will be brought against any or all of the suspects.

Tank and infantry units of the U.S. Army enter New York to assist the National Guard in putting down sporadic antigovernment street violence. In Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston attempts to mount protest demonstrations against the FBI—demonstrations in violation of martial law—result only in minor injuries, though arrests numbering in the hundreds are reported by police.

In Congress, leading Republicans praise the FBI for thwarting the conspirators' plot. In New York, Mayor La Guardia is joined at a press conference by Eleanor Roosevelt and Roger Baldwin of the ACLU. They

demand the immediate release of Governor Lehman along with his alleged co- conspirators. La Guardia is subsequently arrested at the mayor's mansion.

To address an emergency protest rally convened by a New York citizens' committee, former president Roosevelt travels from his home at Hyde Park to New York; "for his own protection" he is promptly taken into custody by the police. The U.S. Army shuts down all newspaper offices and radio stations in New York, where the after-dark martial-law curfew will be enforced round the clock until further notice. Tanks close off all bridges and tunnels into the city.

In Buffalo the mayor announces his intention to distribute gas masks to the city's citizens, and the mayor of nearby Rochester initiates a bomb shelter program "to protect our residents in the event of a surprise Canadian attack." An exchange of small-arms fire is reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Company on the border between Maine and the province of New Brunswick, not far from Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island in the Bay of Fundy. From London, Prime Minister Churchill warns of an imminent German invasion of Mexico, purportedly to protect America's southern flank while the United States sets about to wrest control of Canada from the British. "It is no longer a matter," says Churchill, "of the great American democracy taking military action to save us. The time has come for American citizens to take civil action to save themselves. There are not two isolated historical dramas, the American and the British, and there never were. There is only one ordeal, and now as in the past we face it in common."

Friday, October 16, 1942

Beginning at nine A.M., a radio transmitter secreted somewhere in the nation's capital broadcasts the voice of the First Lady, who, with the assistance of Lindbergh loyalists inside the Secret Service, has managed to escape from Walter Reed, where—alleged by authorities to be a mental patient in the care of Army psychiatrists—she has been straitjacketed and held prisoner for nearly twenty-four hours. The tone is appealingly gentle, the words uttered without a trace of harshness or righteous contempt—altogether the evenly paced voice of someone entirely respectable who is educated to face down sorrow and disappointment without ever losing her self-restraint. She is no cyclone, yet the undertaking is extraordinary and she shows no fear.

"My fellow Americans, unlawfulness on the part of America's law enforcement agencies cannot and will not be allowed to prevail. In my husband's name, I ask all National Guard units to disarm and disband and for our guardsmen to return to civilian life. I ask all members of the United States armed

forces to leave our cities and to regroup at their home bases under the command of their authorized senior officers. I ask the FBI to release all of those arrested on charges of conspiring to harm my husband and to restore immediately their full rights as citizens. I ask law enforcement authorities throughout the nation to do the same with those who have been detained in local and state jails. There is not a shred of evidence that a single detainee is in any way responsible for whatever befell my husband and his plane on or after Wednesday, October 7, 1942. I ask the New York City police to vacate the illegally occupied premises of government-sequestered newspapers, magazines, and radio stations and that these facilities resume their normal activities as guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution. I ask the Congress of the United States to initiate proceedings to remove from office the current acting president of the United States and to appoint a new president in accordance with the Presidential Succession Act of 1886, which designates the secretary of state as next in line for the presidency should the vice presidency be vacant. The Succession Act of 1886 also states that, under the circumstances described, Congress shall decide whether to call a special presidential election, and so I ask the Congress to do just that and to authorize a presidential election that will coincide with the congressional election scheduled for the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November."

Her morning broadcast is repeated by the First Lady every half hour until, at noon, she announces that, in defiance of the acting president—whom she charges by name with having ordered her illegal abduction and confinement

—she is returning to take up residence with her children at the White House. Deliberately appropriating for her peroration echoes of American democracy's most revered text, she concludes, "I will not yield to or be intimidated by the illegal representatives of a seditious administration, and I ask no more of the American people than that they follow my example and refuse to accept or support government conduct that is indefensible. The history of the present administration is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. This government has been deaf to the voice of justice and has extended over us an unwarrantable jurisdiction. Consequently, in defense of those same inalienable rights claimed in July of 1776 by Jefferson of Virginia and Franklin of Pennsylvania and Adams of Massachusetts Bay, and by the authority of the same good people of these United States, and appealing to the same supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, I, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a native of the state of New Jersey, a resident of the District of Columbia, and the spouse of the thirty-third president of the United States, declare that injurious history of

usurpation to be ended. Our enemies' plot has failed, liberty and justice are restored, and those who have violated the Constitution of the United States shall now be addressed by the judicial branch of government, in strict keeping with the law of the land."

"Our Lady of the White House"—as Harold Ickes grudgingly christens Mrs. Lindbergh—returns to the presidential living quarters early that evening, and from there, marshaling the power of her mystique as sorrowing mother of the martyred infant and resolute widow of the vanished god, engineers the speedy dismantling by Congress and the courts of the unconstitutional Wheeler administration, whose criminality, in a mere eight days in office, has far exceeded that of Warren Harding's Republican administration twenty years earlier.

The restoration of orderly democratic procedures initiated by Mrs. Lindbergh culminates two and a half weeks later, on Tuesday, November 3, 1942, in a sweep by the Democrats of the House and the Senate and the landslide victory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a third presidential term.

The next month—following the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and, four days later, the declaration of war on the United States by Germany and Italy—America enters the global conflict that had begun in Europe some three years earlier with the German invasion of Poland and had since expanded to encompass two-thirds of the world's population. Disgraced by their collusion with the acting president and demoralized by their colossal electoral defeat, the few Republicans remaining in Congress pledge their support to the Democratic president and his fight to the finish against the Axis powers. The House and the Senate approve America's going to war without a dissenting vote in either chamber, and the day following his inauguration, President Roosevelt issues Proclamation No. 2568, "Granting a Pardon to Burton Wheeler." In part it reads:

As a result of certain acts occurring before his removal from the Office of Acting President, Burton K. Wheeler has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. To spare the country the ordeal of such a criminal prosecution against a former Acting President of the United States and to protect against the disruptive distraction of such a spectacle during a time of war, I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, have granted and by

these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Burton Wheeler for all offenses against the United States which he, Burton Wheeler, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from October 8, 1942, through October 16, 1942.

As everyone knows, President Lindbergh was not found or heard from again, though stories circulated throughout the war and for a decade afterward, along with the rumors about other prominent missing persons of that turbulent era, like Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, who was thought to have eluded the Allied armies by escaping to Juan Peron's Argentina—but who more likely perished during the last days of Nazi Berlin—and Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat whose distribution of Swedish passports saved some twenty thousand Hungarian Jews from extermination by the Nazis, although he himself disappeared, probably into a Soviet jail, when the Russians occupied Budapest in 1945. Among the dwindling number of Lindbergh conspiracy scholars, reports on clues and sightings have continued to appear in intermittently published newsletters devoted to speculation on the unexplained fate of America's thirty- third president.

The most elaborate story, the most unbelievable story—though not necessarily the least convincing—was first made known to our family by Aunt Evelyn after Rabbi Bengelsdorf's arrest, her source none other than Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who allegedly confided the details to the rabbi just days before she was removed from the White House against her will and held prisoner in the psychiatric wing of Walter Reed.

Mrs. Lindbergh, reported Rabbi Bengelsdorf, traced everything to the 1932 kidnapping of her infant son Charles, secretly plotted and financed, she maintained, by the Nazi Party shortly before Hitler came to power. According to the rabbi's recapitulation of the First Lady's story, the baby had been passed on for safekeeping by Bruno Hauptmann to a friend living near him in the Bronx— a fellow German immigrant who in actuality was a Nazi espionage agent—and only hours after having been lifted from the Hopewell, New Jersey, crib and carried down the makeshift ladder in Hauptmann's arms, Charles Jr. had already been smuggled out of the country and was en route to Germany. The corpse found and identified as the Lindbergh baby ten weeks later was another child, selected by the Nazis to be murdered because of its resemblance to the Lindbergh baby and then, when the body was already decomposing, planted in the woods near the Lindbergh home to ensure Hauptmann's conviction and execution and to keep secret the true circumstances of the kidnapping from

everyone but the Lindberghs themselves. Through a Nazi spy stationed as a foreign newspaper correspondent in New York, the couple had been informed early on of Charles's arrival, healthy and unharmed, on German soil and assured that the best of care would be given him by a specially selected team of Nazi doctors, nurses, teachers, and military personnel—care merited by his status as firstborn son of the world's greatest aviator—provided that the Lindberghs cooperated fully with Berlin.

As a result of this threat, for the next ten years the lot of the Lindberghs and their kidnapped child—and, gradually, the destiny of the United States of America—was determined by Adolf Hitler. Through the skill and efficiency of his agents in New York and Washington—and in London and Paris after the celebrated couple, complying with orders, "fled" to live as expatriates in Europe, where Lindbergh began regularly to visit Nazi Germany and extol the achievements of its military machine—the Nazis set about to exploit Lindbergh's fame in behalf of the Third Reich and at the expense of America, dictating where the couple would reside, whom they would befriend, and, above all, what opinions they would espouse in their public utterances and published writings. In 1938, as a reward for Lindbergh's graciously accepting a prestigious medal from Hermann Göring at a Berlin dinner in the aviator's honor, and after numerous pleading letters that were secretly channeled from Anne Morrow Lindbergh to the Führer himself, the Lindberghs were at last allowed to visit their child, by then a handsome fair-haired boy of almost eight who, from the day he'd arrived in Germany, had been raised as a model Hitler youth. The German-speaking cadet did not understand, nor was he told, that the famous Americans to whom he and his classmates were introduced following parade exercises at their elite military academy were his mother and father, nor were the Lindberghs permitted to speak to him or to be photographed with him. The visit came at just the moment when Anne Morrow Lindbergh had concluded that the Nazis' kidnapping story was an unspeakably cruel hoax and that the time was long overdue for the Lindberghs to free themselves from their bondage to Adolf Hitler. Instead, after seeing Charles alive for the first time since his disappearance in 1932, the Lindberghs left Germany irreversibly in thrall to their country's worst enemy.

They were ordered to end their expatriation and return to America, where Colonel Lindbergh was to take up the cause of America First. Speeches were provided, written in English, denouncing the British, Roosevelt, and the Jews and supporting America's neutrality in the European war; detailed instructions specified where and when speeches were to be delivered, even the type of apparel to be donned for each public appearance. Every political

stratagem originating in Berlin Lindbergh enacted with the same meticulous perfectionism that distinguished his aeronautical pursuits, right down to the night that he arrived in aviator attire at the Republican Convention and accepted the nomination for the presidency with words written for the occasion by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis plotted every maneuver of the election campaign that followed, and once Lindbergh had defeated FDR, it was Hitler himself who took charge, proceeding to prepare—in weekly meetings with Göring, his designated successor and director of the German economy, and Heinrich Himmler, overlord of Germany's internal affairs and chief of the Gestapo, the police agency charged with Charles Lindbergh Jr.'s custody—a foreign policy for the United States that would best serve Germany's wartime objectives and his grand imperial design.

Soon Himmler began to interfere directly in U.S. domestic affairs by bringing pressure on President Lindbergh—humorously belittled in the Gestapo chief's memos as "our American Gauleiter"—to institute repressive measures against the four and a half million American Jews, and it was here, according to Mrs. Lindbergh, that the president undertook, if only passively at the start, to assert his resistance. To begin with, he ordered the establishment of the Office of American Absorption, in his judgment an agency inconsequential enough to leave the Jews essentially unharmed while seemingly meeting—with token programs like Just Folks and Homestead 42—Himmler's directive "to inaugurate in America a systematic process of marginalization that will lead in the foreseeable future to the confiscation of all Jewish wealth and the total disappearance of the Jewish population, their appurtenances, and their property."

Heinrich Himmler was hardly one to be misled by such a transparent deception or to bother to disguise his disappointment when Lindbergh dared to justify himself—through von Ribbentrop, whom Himmler dispatched to Washington, supposedly on a ceremonial state visit, to assist the president in formulating more stringent anti-Jewish measures—by explaining to the supreme commandant of Hitler's concentration camps that guarantees embedded in the U.S. Constitution, combined with long-standing American democratic traditions, made it impossible for a final solution to the Jewish problem to be executed in America as rapidly or efficiently as on a continent where there was a thousand-year history of anti-Semitism deeply rooted in the common people and where Nazi rule was absolute. During the state dinner given in von Ribbentrop's honor, the president was taken aside by his esteemed guest and handed a cablegram, decoded moments earlier at the German embassy, that constituted in its entirety Himmler's reply. "Think of the child," the cablegram read, "before you again respond with such poppycock. Think of brave young

Charles, an outstanding German military cadet who already at the age of twelve knows better than his celebrated father the value assigned by our Führer to constitutional guarantees and democratic traditions, especially where the rights of parasites are concerned."

The dressing-down by Himmler of "the Lone Eagle with the chicken heart" (as Lindbergh was described in Himmler's internal memo) marked the beginning of Lindbergh's repudiation as a minion useful to the Third Reich. By defeating Roosevelt and the anti-Nazi interventionists in Roosevelt's party he had provided the German army with additional time to quell the continuing and unexpected resistance from the Soviet Union without Germany's running the risk of having simultaneously to confront the industrial and military might of the United States. Even more important, Lindbergh's presidency furnished German industry and the German scientific establishment—already secretly developing a bomb of unparalleled explosive force powered by atomic fission, as well as a rocket engine capable of conveying this weapon across the Atlantic—with a further two years in which to complete preparation for the apocalyptic struggle with the United States whose outcome, as envisioned by Hitler, would determine the course of Western civilization and the progress of mankind for the next millennium. Had Himmler found in Lindbergh the visionary Jew-hater the German high command had been led to expect from intelligence reports, rather than what Himmler contemptuously dubbed "a dinner-party anti-Semite," perhaps the president would have been permitted to complete his term in office and to serve a second four years before retiring and ceding the government to Henry Ford, whom Hitler had already settled on as Lindbergh's successor, despite Ford's advanced age. Had Himmler been able to rely on an American president of unimpeachable American credentials to implement the final solution to America's Jewish problem, it would, of course, have been preferable to the employment at a later date of German resources and personnel to fulfill that mission in North America, and Lindbergh's plane would not have had to disappear from the skies, as was deemed necessary by Berlin, on Wednesday, October 7, 1942—nor would Acting President Wheeler have assumed power the following evening and, to the astonished delight of those who'd considered him till then nothing more than a buffoon, proved himself a genuine leader in a matter of days by spontaneously implementing the very measures that von Ribbentrop had proposed to Lindbergh and that, as Himmler believed, the American hero had failed to carry out because of the puerile moral objections of his wife.

Within an hour of Lindbergh's disappearance, Mrs. Lindbergh had

been informed by the German embassy that responsibility for her child's well-

being was now hers alone and that, should she do anything other than vacate the White House and withdraw in silence from public life, Charles Jr. would be removed from his military academy and dispatched to the Russian front for the November offensive on Stalingrad and remain on duty there as the Third Reich's youngest combat infantryman until he valiantly expired on the field of battle for the greater glory of the German people.

This is the story whose gist Aunt Evelyn conveyed to my mother when she appeared at our house in the hours after Rabbi Bengelsdorf was taken in handcuffs from their Washington hotel by agents of the FBI. More fully elaborated, it is the story told in My Life Under Lindbergh, the 550-page apologia published as an insider's diary just after the war by Rabbi Bengelsdorf and dismissed then in a press statement by a spokesman for the Lindbergh family as "a reprehensible calumny with no basis in fact, motivated by vengeance and greed, sustained by egomaniacal delusion, invented for the sake of crass commercial exploitation, and one that Mrs. Lindbergh will not dignify with a further response." When my mother first heard the story it seemed to her conclusive evidence that the shock of witnessing Rabbi Bengelsdorf's arrest had temporarily caused her sister to lose her mind.

The day after Aunt Evelyn's surprise visit was Friday, October 16, 1942, when Mrs. Lindbergh, before returning to the White House, went on the air from a secret Washington location and, based solely on her authority as "spouse of the thirty-third president of the United States," pronounced the "injurious history of usurpation" implemented by the administration of the acting president "to be ended." Whether any harm befell her kidnapped child as a consequence of the First Lady's bravery, whether Charles Jr. had ever even survived his infancy to suffer the dreadful fate that Himmler had promised, let alone to endure the childhood of a privileged ward and treasured hostage of the German state, whether Himmler, Göring, and Hitler had anything of importance to do with fostering Lindbergh's rise to political eminence as an America Firster or shaping U.S. policy during the twenty-two-month Lindbergh presidency or implementing Lindbergh's mysterious disappearance—have been matters of controversy for over half a century, though by now a far less impassioned and widespread controversy than when, for some thirty-odd weeks in 1946 (and despite its oft-quoted characterization by Westbrook Pegler, the dean of America's Roosevelt-hating right-wing journalists, as "the crackpot diary of a certifiable mythomaniac"), My Life Under Lindbergh remained at the top of the American bestseller lists along with two personal biographies of FDR, who had

died in office the previous year, only weeks before the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies marked the end of World War Two in Europe.

9

October 1942

Perpetual Fear

THE CALL FROM Seldon came when my mother, Sandy, and I were already in bed. This was Monday, the twelfth of October, and at dinnertime we had heard the reports on the radio of the rioting that had broken out in the Midwest and the South following the announcement by British intelligence that President Lindbergh had deliberately ditched his plane three hundred miles out to sea and from there had been whisked by the navy and air corps of Nazi Germany to a secret rendezvous with Hitler. Not until the next day were the morning papers able to furnish details of the riots sparked by this dispatch, though barely minutes after the news had reached us at our kitchen table, my mother had guessed correctly whom the rioters had targeted and why. It was by then three days since the border to Canada had been closed, and even to me, who found leaving America an unbearable prospect, it was clear that my father's refusal to listen to my mother and get us out of the country months before was the gravest mistake he'd ever made. He was now back working nights at the market, my mother went into the streets every day to shop for groceries—quixotically, she had attended a meeting at school one afternoon for the prospective poll watchers in the November election—Sandy and I went off to school each morning with our friends, but nonetheless, by the beginning of the second week of Acting President Wheeler's administration, the fear was everywhere, and this despite Mrs. Lindbergh's advising Americans to dismiss the reports emanating from foreign countries about the president's whereabouts, despite the ascendancy as a newsworthy figure of Rabbi Bengelsdorf, a member now of our family, an uncle by marriage who'd even eaten dinner once in our house but who couldn't do a thing to help us and wouldn't if he could because of the contempt he and my father harbored each for the other. The fear was everywhere, the look was everywhere, in the eyes of our protectors especially, the look that comes in the split second after you have locked the door and realize you don't have the key. We had never before observed the adults all helplessly thinking the same thoughts. The strongest among them did their best to be calm and brave and to sound realistic when they told us that our worries would soon be over and the regular round of life restored, but when they turned on the news they were devastated by the speed with which everything dreadful was happening.

Then, on the evening of the twelfth—while each of us lay in bed unable to sleep—the phone rang: Seldon calling collect from Kentucky. It was ten at night and his mother still wasn't home, and since he knew our number by heart (and didn't know whom else to call), he cranked the phone, got the operator, and, in a rush, trying to articulate all the necessary words before the power of speech deserted him, said to her, "Collect, please. Newark, New Jersey. 81 Summit Avenue. Waverley 3–4827. My name is Sheldon Wishnow. I want to speak person-to-person to Mr. or Mrs. Roth. Or Philip. Or Sandy. Anyone, operator. My mother's not home. I'm ten. I haven't eaten and she's not here. Operator, please—Waverley 3–4827! I'll talk to anybody!"

That morning Mrs. Wishnow had driven to Louisville, to the Metropolitan regional office, to report at the company's request to her district supervisor. Louisville was more than a hundred miles from Danville, and the roads were so bad most of the way that it was going to take practically all day just to get there and back. Why the district supervisor couldn't have written a letter or picked up the phone to tell her what he had to say nobody ever understood, nor was the man himself ever asked to explain. My father's guess was that the company intended to fire her that day—to have her turn in her ledger with its handwritten record of collections and then to send her on her way, unemployed after a mere six weeks on the job and seven hundred miles from home. She'd done no business to speak of in those first weeks out in the rural reaches of Boyle County, though not for lack of hard work—primarily it was because there wasn't the business there to do. In fact, every last one of the transfers made by the Metropolitan under the auspices of Homestead 42 were turning into catastrophes for the agents formerly from the Newark district. In the barely inhabited corners of those distant states to which they and their families had been relocated, none of them were ever going to be able to earn a quarter of the amount of commissions they were accustomed to making in metropolitan North Jersey—and so, if only for that reason, my father had been wonderfully prescient in quitting his job and going to work instead for Uncle Monty. He hadn't been quite so prescient about getting us over the Canadian border before it closed down and martial law was declared.

"If she was alive. . ." Seldon told my mother, after she'd accepted the charges and taken his call, "if she was alive. . ." In the beginning, because of his crying, that was all he was able to say, and even those four words were barely comprehensible.

"Seldon, that's enough of that. You're doing this to yourself. You're making yourself hysterical. Of course your mother's alive. She's just late getting home—that's all that has happened."

"But if she was alive she would call!"

"Seldon, what if she's only caught in traffic? What if something happened to the car and she's had to pull over to get it fixed? Didn't that happen before, when you were here in Newark? Remember that night when it was raining and she had a flat and you came upstairs to stay with us? It's probably nothing more than a flat tire, so please, dear, calm down. You must stop crying. Your mother is fine. It only upsets you to say what you're saying, and it is not true, so please, please, right now, just make an effort and try to calm down."

"But she's dead, Mrs. Roth! Just like my father! Now both my parents are dead!" And, of course, he was right. Seldon knew nothing about the riots way off in Louisville and little about what was going on in the rest of America. Since there was no room left in Mrs. Wishnow's life for anything other than the child and the job, there was never a newspaper to read in the Danville house, and when the two of them sat down to dinner in Danville they didn't have the news on the way we did in Newark. More than likely she was too exhausted in Danville to listen to it, by now too benumbed to register any misfortune other than her own.

But Seldon had it perfectly right: Mrs. Wishnow was dead, though no one would know until the following day, when the burnt-out car containing his mother's remains was found smoldering in a drainage ditch alongside a potato field in the flat country just south of Louisville. Apparently she had been beaten and robbed and the car set ablaze within the first minutes of the evening's violence, which had not been restricted to the downtown Louisville streets where there were Jewish-owned shops or to the residential streets where the handful of Louisville's Jewish citizens lived. The Klansmen knew that once the torches were lit and the crosses burning, the vermin were going to try to get out, and so they were ready for them, not only on the main road leading north to Ohio but along the narrow country roads heading south, which was where Mrs. Wishnow paid with her life for the slander of Lindbergh's good name, first by the late Walter Winchell and now by the Jewish-controlled propaganda machine of Prime Minister Churchill and King George VI.

My mother said, "Seldon, you must take something to eat. That will help calm you down. Go to the refrigerator and get something to eat."

"I ate the Fig Newtons. There's none left."

"Seldon, I'm talking about your eating a meal. Your mother will be home very soon, but meanwhile you can't sit there waiting for her to feed you— you have to feed yourself, and not on cookies. Put the phone down and go look in the refrigerator and then come back and tell me what's in there that you could eat."

"But it's long distance." "Seldon, do as I say."

To Sandy and me, gathered closely around her in the back foyer, my mother said, "She's very late, and he hasn't eaten, and he's all alone, and she hasn't phoned, and the poor child is frantic and starving to death."

"Mrs. Roth?"

"Yes, Seldon."

"There's pot cheese. It's old, though. It doesn't look too good." "What else is in there?"

"Beets. In a bowl. Leftovers. They're cold." "And anything else?"

"I'll look again—just a minute."

This time when Seldon put down the phone, my mother said to Sandy, "How far from Danville are the Mawhinneys?"

"With the truck about twenty minutes."

"In my dresser," my mother said to my brother, "in the top, in my change purse—their number is there. It's on a piece of paper in my little brown change purse. Get it for me, please."

"Mrs. Roth?" Seldon said. "Yes. I'm here."

"There's butter."

"That's all? Isn't there any milk? Isn't there juice?" "But that's breakfast. That's not dinner."

"Are there Rice Krispies, Seldon? Are there Corn Flakes?" "Sure," he said.

"Then get whichever cereal you like best." "Rice Krispies."

"Get the Rice Krispies, take out the milk and the juice, and I want you to make yourself breakfast."

"Now?"

"Do as I say, please," she told him. "I want you to eat breakfast." "Is Philip there?"

"He's here, but you cannot talk to him. You have to eat first. I'm going to call you back in half an hour, after you've eaten. It's ten after ten, Seldon."

"In Newark it's ten after ten?"

"In Newark and Danville both. It's exactly the same time in both places. I'm going to call you back at quarter to eleven," she told him.

"Can I talk to Philip then?"

"Yes, but I want you to sit down first with everything you need at the kitchen table. I want you to use a spoon and a fork and a napkin and a knife. Eat slowly. Use dishes. Use a bowl. Is there any bread?"

"It's stale. It's just a couple of slices." "Do you have a toaster?"

"Sure. We brought it here in the car. Remember the morning when we all packed the car?"

"Listen to me, Seldon. Concentrate. Make yourself some toast, with the cereal. And use the butter. Butter it. And pour yourself a big glass of milk. I want you to eat a good breakfast, and when your mother comes in, I want you to tell her to call us immediately. She can call here collect. Tell her not to worry about the charges. It's important for us to know when she's home. But either way, in half an hour I'm calling you back, so don't you go anywhere."

"It's dark out. Where would I go?" "Seldon, eat your breakfast." "Okay."

"Goodbye," she said. "Goodbye, for now. I'll call you back at quarter to eleven. You stay where you are."

Next she phoned the Mawhinneys. My brother handed her the piece of paper with the number and she asked the operator to put through the call and when somebody answered at the other end, she said, "Is this Mrs. Mawhinney? This is Mrs. Roth. I'm Sandy Roth's mother. I'm calling you from Newark, New Jersey, Mrs. Mawhinney. I'm sorry if I woke you up, but we need you to help us with a little boy who's alone in Danville. What? Yes, of course, yes."

To us she said, "She's getting her husband." "Oh, no," my brother moaned.

"Sanford, this is not the time for that. I don't like what I'm doing either. I realize I don't know these people. I realize they're not like us. I know farmers go to bed early and get up early and that they work very hard. But you tell me what else I should do. That little boy is going to go crazy if he's left alone any longer. He doesn't know where his mother is. Somebody has to be there. He's had too many shocks for someone his age already. He lost his father. Now his mother is missing. Can't you understand what this means?"

"Sure I can," said my brother indignantly. "Sure I understand." "Good. Then you understand that somebody has to go to him.

Somebody—" but then Mr. Mawhinney got on the phone, and my mother explained to him why she was calling, and he immediately agreed to do all she asked. When she hung up she said, "At least there's some decency left in this country. At least there's some decency somewhere."

"I told you," my brother whispered.

Never would she seem more remarkable to me than she did that night, and not merely for the abandon with which she was accepting and making phone calls to and from Kentucky. There was more, much more. There was, to begin with, Alvin's assault on my father the week before. There was my father's explosive response. There was the wreckage of our living room. There was my father's broken teeth and broken ribs, the stitches in his face and the brace on his neck. There was the shootout on Chancellor Avenue. There was our certainty that it was a pogrom. There were the sirens all night long. There was the screaming and the shouting in the streets all night long. There was our hiding in the Cucuzzas' foyer, the loaded pistol in my father's lap, the loaded pistol in Mr. Cucuzza's fist—and that was just the week before. There was also the month before, the year before, and the year before that—all those blows, insults, and surprises intent on weakening and frightening the Jews that still hadn't managed to shatter my mother's strength. Before I heard her telling Seldon, from more than seven hundred miles away, to make himself something to eat and to sit down and eat it, before I heard her calling the Mawhinneys—churchgoing Gentiles whom she'd never laid eyes on—to enlist them in saving Seldon from going mad, before I heard her asking to speak to Mr. Mawhinney and then telling him that if something serious had happened to Mrs. Wishnow the Mawhinneys needn't worry they'd be stuck with Seldon, that my father was prepared to get in the car and drive to Kentucky to bring Seldon back to Newark (and promising Mr. Mawhinney this even while no one knew just how far the Wheelers and the Fords intended to allow the American mob to go), I hadn't understood anything of the story that was her life in those years. Till Seldon's frantic phone call from Kentucky, I'd never totted up the cost to my mother and father of the Lindbergh presidency—till that moment, I'd been unable to add that high.

When my mother phoned Seldon at quarter to eleven she explained the plan worked out with the Mawhinneys. He was to put his toothbrush, pajamas, underwear, and a pair of clean socks into a paper bag, and he was to get on a heavy sweater and his warm coat and his flannel cap, and he was to wait in the house for Mr. Mawhinney to come for him in his truck. Mr. Mawhinney was a very kind man, my mother told Seldon, a kind, generous man with a nice wife and four children whom Sandy knew from the summer he lived at the Mawhinney farm.

"Then she is dead!" Seldon screamed.

No, no, no, absolutely not—his mother would be coming to pick him up at the Mawhinneys' the next morning and to drive him from there to school. Mr. and Mrs. Mawhinney would arrange all that for him and he wasn't to

worry about a thing. But meanwhile there was work to do: in his best handwriting Seldon was to write a note for his mother and leave it on the kitchen table, a note telling her that he was going to be at the Mawhinneys' for the night and leaving the Mawhinneys' phone number for her. He was also to tell her in the note to call Mrs. Roth collect in Newark the moment that she got in. Then Seldon was to sit in the living room and wait there until he heard Mr. Mawhinney outside blowing the horn, then he was to turn off all the lights in the house. . .

She took him through each stage of his departure and then, at what financial expense I couldn't begin to calculate, she continued to stay on the line until he'd done what she'd directed him to do and had come back to the phone to tell her that he'd done it, and still she didn't hang up or stop reassuring him about everything until at last Seldon shouted, "It's him, Mrs. Roth! He's blowing the horn!" and my mother said, "Okay, good, but calmly now, Seldon, calmly—take your bag, turn out the lights, don't forget to lock the door on the way out, and tomorrow morning, bright and early, you're going to see your mother. Now, good luck, dear, and don't run, and—Seldon? Seldon, hang up the phone!" But this he neglected to do. In his hurry to flee as fast as he could that frightening, lonely, parentless house, he left the phone dangling, though it hardly mattered. The house could have burned to the ground and it wouldn't have mattered because Seldon was never to set foot inside it again.

On Sunday, October 19, he arrived back on Summit Avenue. My father, accompanied by Sandy, drove out to Kentucky to get him. The casket containing Mrs. Wishnow's remains followed after them by train. I knew that in her car she had been burned beyond recognition, yet I kept envisioning her inside the casket with her fists still clenched. And alternately envisioning myself locked in their bathroom with Mrs. Wishnow just outside telling me how to open the door. How patient she'd been! How like my own mother! And now she was inside a casket, and I was the one who had put her there.

That was all I could think on the night that my mother, like a combat officer, led Seldon to organize his dinner and to organize his departure and to get himself safely into the Mawhinneys' hands. I did it. That was all I could think then and all I can think now. I did this to Seldon and I did this to her. Rabbi Bengelsdorf had done what he had done, Aunt Evelyn had done what she had done, but I was the one who had started it off—this devastation had been done by me.

On Thursday, October 15—the day the Wheeler putsch reached the

heights of illegality—our phone rang at quarter to six in the morning. My mother thought it was my father and Sandy calling with bad news from Kentucky, or

worse, someone calling about the two of them, but for now the bad news was from my aunt. Only minutes earlier FBI agents had knocked at the door of the Washington hotel room where Rabbi Bengelsdorf was living. Aunt Evelyn had traveled down just the day before from Newark and so happened to be there for the night—otherwise she might not have known the circumstances of his disappearance. The agents didn't bother to wait for anyone inside to open the door; the hotel manager's master key obligingly opened it for them, and after presenting a warrant for Rabbi Bengelsdorf's arrest and waiting silently while he dressed, they escorted him in handcuffs from the room without a word of explanation to Aunt Evelyn, who immediately after watching them drive off with him in an unmarked car called my mother to ask for help. But this was hardly the time when my mother was going to leave me in somebody else's care to travel for five hours by train so as to assist a sister from whom she'd been estranged now for months. A hundred and twenty-two Jews had been murdered three days earlier—among them, as we had only just learned, Mrs. Wishnow—my father and Sandy were still off on their perilous journey to rescue Seldon, and nobody knew what was in store even for those of us at home on Summit Avenue. The shootout with the city police that had resulted in the deaths of three local thugs was the worst that had happened in Newark so far; nonetheless, its having happened around the corner on Chancellor Avenue had left everyone on the street feeling as though a wall had been pulled down that previously protected their families—not the wall of the ghetto (which had protected no one, certainly not from fear and the pathologies of exclusion), not a wall intended to shut them out or to seal them in, but a sheltering wall of legal assurances standing between them and the derangements of a ghetto.

At five that afternoon, Aunt Evelyn showed up at our door, more crazed than she'd been on the phone in the wake of Rabbi Bengelsdorf's arrest. No one in Washington was either willing or able to tell her where her husband was being held, or if he was even alive any longer, and then when she heard of the arrests of seemingly impregnable figures like Mayor La Guardia, Governor Lehman, and Justice Frankfurter, she had succumbed to her panic and taken the train up from Washington. Fearful of returning alone to the rabbi's Elizabeth Avenue mansion—fearful too that if she called first she'd be told by my mother that she was to stay away—she'd taken a taxi from Penn Station directly to Summit Avenue to beg to be let in. Only a couple of hours earlier a shocking bulletin had come over the air—the news that President Roosevelt, upon entering New York to attend an evening protest rally at Madison Square Garden, had been "detained" by the New York police—and it was this that had prompted my mother to leave the house and, for the first time since I'd started kindergarten in

1938, to come pick me up at the end of the school day. Till then she had been as willing as everyone else on the street to abide by Rabbi Prinz's instructions for the community to carry on as usual and to leave security matters to his committee, but that afternoon she decided that events had now overtaken the rabbi's wisdom, and alongside a hundred other mothers who had reached a similar conclusion, she had turned up looking to retrieve her child when the last bell sounded and kids began pouring out of the exit doors for home.

"They're after me, Bess! I have to hide—you have to hide me!"

As if enough of our world hadn't been turned upside down in little over a week, there was my vibrant, haughty aunt, the wife (or perhaps by now the widow) of the most significant personage any of us had ever laid eyes on— there was tiny Aunt Evelyn, without her makeup, her hair in disarray, an ogress suddenly, made as ugly and vulnerable-looking by disaster as by her own theatricality. And there was my mother blocking our doorway and looking angrier than I could ever have imagined her. Never had I seen her in such a fury, nor had I heard her utter a curse word. I didn't even know she knew how to.

"Why don't you go to the von Ribbentrops' to hide?" my mother said. "Why don't you go to your friend Herr von Ribbentrop for protection? Stupid girl! What about my family? Don't you think that we're afraid too? Don't you think that we're in danger too? Selfish little bitch—we're all afraid!"

"But they're going to arrest me! They'll torture me, Bessie, because I know the truth!"

"You cannot stay here! That's out of the question!" my mother said. "You have a house, money, servants—you have everything to protect you. We have nothing like that, nothing at all like that. Leave, Evelyn! Go! Get out of this house!"

Astonishingly, my aunt turned to me to plead for sanctuary. "Darling boy, sweetheart—"

"How dare you!" my mother shouted, and slammed the door shut, barely missing the hand that Aunt Evelyn had helplessly extended toward mine.

The next moment she threw her arms so tightly around me that against my forehead I could feel her heart thump.

"How will she get home?" I asked.

"The bus. It's not our concern. She'll take the bus like everyone

else."

"But what did she mean about the truth, Ma?"

"Nothing. Forget what she meant. Your aunt is not our concern

anymore."

Back in the kitchen, she buried her face in her hands and was all at

once convulsed with weeping. The responsible parental scruples gave way, and with it the strength she rigorously employed to hide her weaknesses and hold things together.

"How can Selma Wishnow be dead?" she asked. "How can they arrest President Roosevelt? How can any of this be happening?"

"Because Lindbergh disappeared?" I asked.

"Because he appeared," she replied. "Because he appeared in the first place, a goyisch idiot flying a stupid plane! Oh, I should never have let them go to get Seldon! Where is your brother? Where is your father?" Where too, she seemed to be asking, is that orderly existence once so full of purpose, where is the great, great enterprise of our being the four of us? "We don't even know where they are," she said, but sounding as though it were she who was lost. "To send them off like that. . .What was I thinking? To let them go when the entire country. . .when. . ."

Deliberately she stopped herself there, but the trend of her thought was clear enough: when the goyim are killing Jews in the street.

There was nothing for me to do except watch until the weeping had drained her to the dregs, whereupon my whole idea of her underwent a startling change: my mother was a fellow creature. I was shocked by the revelation, and too young to comprehend that there was the strongest attachment of all.

"How could I turn her away?" she said. "Oh, darling, what, oh what, would Grandma say now?"

Remorse, predictably, was the form taken by her distress, the merciless whipping that is self-condemnation, as if in times as bizarre as these there were a right way and a wrong way that would have been clear to somebody else, as if in confronting such predicaments the hand of stupidity is ever far from guiding anyone. Yet she reproached herself for errors of judgment that were not only natural when there was no longer a logical explanation for anything but generated by emotions she had no reason to doubt. The worst of it was how convinced she was of her catastrophic blunder, though, had she gone against her instincts, she would have had no less reason to deplore what she'd done. What it came down to for the child who was watching her being battered about by the most anguishing confusion (and who was himself quaking with fear) was the discovery that one could do nothing right without also doing something wrong, so wrong, in fact, that especially where chaos reigned and everything was at stake, one might be better off to wait and do nothing—except that to do nothing was also to do something. . .in such circumstances to do nothing was to do quite

a lot—and that even for the mother who performed each day in methodical opposition to life's unruly flux, there was no system for managing so sinister a mess.

In light of the day's drastic developments (which not even passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, not even what Jefferson called the Federalist "reign of witches," remotely equaled for tyrannical intolerance or treachery) there were emergency meetings called for that evening at the four local schools that together enrolled nearly all the Jewish pupils in Newark's elementary education system. Each meeting was to be presided over by a member of the Committee of Concerned Jewish Citizens. A sound truck had come by late in the afternoon asking everyone to spread word of the meeting among their neighbors. People were invited to bring their children if they did not wish to leave them home alone, and they were assured that a full-scale police mobilization throughout the South Ward—police protection extending as far east as Frelinghuysen Avenue and as far north as Springfield Avenue—had been promised to Rabbi Prinz by Mayor Murphy. The department's entire complement of mounted police—two platoons of twelve divided up and stabled in four different precincts—was to be called out specifically to patrol the streets to the west of the Weequahic section bordering Irvington (where, the previous night, a Jewish-owned liquor store on the main shopping street had been burned to the ground after being broken into and looted) and the streets to the south bordering Union County and the towns of Hillside (in my eyes renowned for the sizable Bristol-Myers plant along Route 22 that manufactured the Ipana tooth powder we used, where, the day before, a synagogue's windows had been smashed) and Elizabeth (where my mother's immigrant parents had settled at the turn of the century—where, most intriguingly to a nine-year-old, the New Jersey Pretzel Factory on Livingston Street was said to hire deaf-mutes from the state to do the pretzel bending—and where graves had been desecrated in the Temple B'nai Jeshurun cemetery, just a few blocks from the Weequahic Park golf course).

Shortly before six-thirty, my mother headed quickly down the street for the emergency meeting at Chancellor Avenue School. I remained at home, delegated by her to answer the phone and to accept the charges should my father call from the road. The Cucuzzas had promised her that they would look after me until she returned home, and, indeed, even as she was descending the stairs, Joey was climbing them, three at a time, dispatched by Mrs. Cucuzza to keep me company while I waited—in vain, as it turned out—for the long-distance call informing us that my father and my brother were both all right and would soon

be arriving home with Seldon. Because under martial law the Army had commandeered the facilities of Bell Telephone for military use, the long-distance services still open to civilians were jammed, and forty-eight hours had passed since we'd last heard anything from my father.

As the Newark–Hillside line ran only a couple of hundred yards south of our house, it was possible that night, even with the windows closed, to find reassurance of sorts in the loud clattering of the police horses as they paraded up and down the Keer Avenue hill just around the corner. And when I threw open my bedroom window and leaned out over the darkening alleyway to listen, I could manage to hear them, if only faintly, when they sauntered on a ways to where Summit Avenue petered out and became Hillside's Liberty Avenue. Liberty ran through Hillside to Route 22, which proceeded westward into Union and from there swept southward into the vast Christian unknown of those authentically Anglo-Saxon-sounding towns of Kenilworth, Middlesex, and Scotch Plains.

These weren't the suburbs of Louisville, but they were farther west than I'd ever been, and though you had to traverse another three New Jersey counties just to reach the eastern border of Pennsylvania, on the night of October 15 I was able to alarm myself with a nightmarish vision of America's anti- Semitic fury roaring eastward through the pipeline of 22 and surging from 22 into Liberty Avenue and pouring from Liberty Avenue straight into our Summit Avenue alleyway and on up our back stairs like the waters of a flood had it not been for the sturdy barrier presented by the gleaming bay haunches of the horses of the Newark police force, whose strength and speed and beauty Newark's preeminent rabbi, the nobly named Prinz, had caused to materialize at the end of our street.

As was to be expected, Joey could hear next to nothing of what was going on outdoors, and so took to running from room to room, peering out of windows at either end of the house to try to get a glimpse of the anatomy of at least one of the horses—horses of a bloodline with limbs much longer, muscled torsos much slimmer, skulls elongated and much more exquisite than those of the inelegant orphanage plowhorse that had kicked my head in—and also to catch sight of the uniformed cops, each with two rows of brass buttons shining down the length of his double-breasted, snug-fitting tunic and a holstered pistol riding one hip.

Several years earlier my father had taken Sandy and me to Weequahic Park one Sunday morning to toss horseshoes at the public pitch, and a mounted policeman went racing across the park in pursuit of somebody who'd snatched a woman's purse—a moment in Newark out of the court of King

Arthur. It was days before the thrill wore off and I could stop being stirred up by the gallantry of it all. They recruited the most supple and athletic of the cops to train as mounted policemen, and a small kid could be mesmerized just watching one who'd been lazing majestically down the street stop to write a parking ticket and then lean way over in the saddle so as to place the ticket under the car's windshield wiper, a physical gesture, if ever there was one, of magnificent condescension to the machine age. At the city's famous Four Corners there were mounted patrol posts each facing a different point of the compass, and on a Saturday lots of kids were taken downtown to see the horses on duty there and to pet their noseless noses and to feed them sugar cubes and to learn that each policeman up on a horse was worth four men on foot and, of course, to ask the usual questions of the mounted cops, such as "What's his name?" and "Is the horse real?" and "What's his foot made out of?" Sometimes you might see a police horse tied up at the side of a busy downtown street, undisturbed and calm as could be beneath the blue and white saddlecloth marked with the insignia NP, a gelding well over six feet high and weighing a thousand pounds, with a menacingly long nightstick belted to his flank and looking as blase as the most gorgeous movie star while the policeman who had just dismounted stood nearby in his deep blue jodhpurs and high black boots, his pornographic leather holster molded perfectly in the engorged shape of the male genitalia, indifferent to injury amid the pandemonium of honking cars and trucks and buses and smartly signaling with his arms so as to restore a smooth flow of traffic to the city. These were the cops with a talent for everything—even, to my father's chagrin, for galloping into a strike crowd and sending picketers flying—and that they were so very close by looking so glamorously heroic helped to shore up my nerves for the calamity to come.

In the living room Joey took off his hearing aid and presented it to me, gave it to me, incomprehensibly shoved it at me—the earpiece along with the black microphone case, the battery, and all its wires. I didn't know why he thought I should want it, particularly on a night like this, but there the whole contraption was, cradled in the palms of my two hands and, if possible, looking more gruesome than it did when he wore it. I didn't know whether he expected me now to interrogate him about it or to admire it or to try to disassemble and fix it. It turned out that he wanted me to wear it.

"Put it on," he told me in his hollow, honking voice. "Why?" I shouted. "It's not going to fit me."

"It don't fit nobody," he said. "Put it on."

"I don't know how," I complained in my loudest voice, and so Joey clipped the microphone case to my shirt and dropped the battery into my pants

pocket and, after he checked all the wiring, left it to me to insert the molded earpiece. I did so by closing my eyes and pretending it was a seashell and that we were down the shore and he wanted me to listen to the roar of the ocean. .

.but I had to suppress the heaves when I managed to jiggle it into place, still stickily warm from the interior of his ear.

"Okay, now what?"

Whereupon he reached over and, as though it were the switch to the electric chair he was throwing and I were Public Enemy Number One, he gleefully turned the dial at the center of the microphone case.

"I don't hear anything," I told him. "Wait'll I louden it."

"Is wearing this thing going to make me deaf?" and I saw myself made both deaf and dumb, and trapped in Elizabeth for the rest of my life bending pretzels in the New Jersey Pretzel Factory.

He laughed heartily at my saying that, though I hadn't meant it as a

joke.

"Look," I said, "I don't want to do this. Not now. There's a lot going

on outside that's not so great, you know."

But he was oblivious of what was not so great, either because he was Catholic and had nothing to worry about or simply because he was irrepressible Joey.

"You know what the crook said who sold it? He ain't even a doctor," Joey told me, "but he gives me the bullshit test anyway. He takes his pocket watch out and he holds it right up to my ear and he says to me, 'Can you hear the watch tick, Joey?' and I can hear a little, and so he starts backing away, and he says, 'Can you hear it now, Joey?' and I can't, I can't hear nothing, and so he writes some numbers down on a piece of paper. Then he takes two half-dollars out of his pocket and it's the same thing. He clicks them by my ear, clicks them together, and he says, 'Can you hear the coins click, Joey?' and then he starts walking away again, and I see him clicking them, but I can't hear nothing no more. 'The same,' I tell him—and so he writes that down. Then he looks at what he wrote down, looks real real hard, then he takes this tin piece of shit out of a drawer. He puts it on me, all the pieces, and he tells my father, 'Your boy is going to hear the grass growing, that's how good this model is,'" and with that Joey began to turn the dial again until what I heard was water running into a bathtub

—and I was the bathtub. Then he spun it vigorously—and there was thunder. "Cut it out!" I cried. "That's enough!" but Joey was joyfully leaping

about, and so I reached up and yanked the earpiece out of my ear and was derailed for the moment thinking that, on top of Mayor La Guardia's being under

arrest and President Roosevelt's being under arrest and even Rabbi Bengelsdorf's being under arrest, the new boy downstairs wasn't going to be any more of a picnic than the one before him had been, and this was when I determined to run away again. I was still too much of a fledgling with people to understand that, in the long run, nobody is a picnic and that I was no picnic myself. First I couldn't stand Seldon downstairs and now I couldn't stand Joey downstairs, and I determined then and there to run away from both of them. I would run away before Seldon got here, I would run away before the anti-Semites got here, I would run away before Mrs. Wishnow's body got here and there was a funeral that I had to go to. Under the protection of the mounted police, I would run away that very night from everything that was after me and everything that hated me and wanted to kill me. I would run away from everything I'd done and everything I hadn't done, and start out fresh as a boy nobody knew. And I realized, all at once, where to run away to—to Elizabeth, to the pretzel factory. I'd tell them in writing that I was a deaf-mute. They'd give me a job making pretzels, and I'd never speak and I'd pretend not to hear, and nobody would find out who I was.

Joey said, "You know about the kid who drank the horse's blood?" "What horse's blood?"

"St. Peter's horse. This kid, he got in at night, into the farm, and drank the horse's blood. They're looking for him."

"Who is?"

"The guys. Nick. Those guys. The older guys." "Who's Nick?"

"One of the orphans. He's eighteen. The kid that did it's a Jew like you. They know for sure he's a Jew, and they're going to find him."

"How come he drank the horse's blood?" "Jews drink blood."

"You don't know what you're talking about. I don't drink blood. Sandy doesn't drink blood. My parents don't drink blood. Nobody I know drinks blood."

"This kid does."

"Yeah? And what's his name?"

"Nick don't know yet. But they're looking for him. Don't worry, they'll get him."

"And what will they do then, Joey? Drink his blood? Jews don't drink blood. Saying that is crazy." I handed his hearing aid back to him— thinking that I could now add Nick to everything else I was having to flee—and soon Joey began racing from window to window again, trying to get a look at the

horses, until, when he could no longer bear being out of range of a spectacle comparable in his mind to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show coming to town and raising the big top in front of our house, he upped and flew out the door and that was the last I saw of him that night. There was rumored to be a police horse in Newark who munched on chewing tobacco, like the cop who rode him, and who was able to add numbers by tapping his right front hoof, and Joey later claimed that he'd seen him there on our block, a horse from the Eighth Precinct called Ned, who let kids swing from his tail without kicking out at them with his hind legs. And maybe he did meet the fabled Ned, and maybe that had made it all worth it. Nonetheless, for deserting me that night, for never returning, for succumbing to his love of excitement rather than obeying his mother's orders, Joey was soundly punished when his father got home from work the following morning, his horselike haunches thrashed mercilessly with the black strap off the night watchman's time clock.

Once Joey had disappeared, I double-locked the door behind him and would have turned on the radio to distract me from my worries if I hadn't been afraid of yet another bulletin interrupting a regularly scheduled program and relaying to me, all by myself, even more horrible news than had been coming at us throughout the day. It wasn't long before I started thinking again about running away to the pretzel factory. I remembered the article about the factory that had appeared in the Sunday Call about a year before and that I'd cut out to bring to school for a report I had to make on a New Jersey industry. In the article the owner, a Mr. Kuenze, had been quoted as debunking the idea, prevalent apparently throughout the world, that it took years to teach somebody to become a pretzel maker. "I can teach them overnight," he said, "if they can be taught." A lot of the article had been about a controversy over the need for salt on a pretzel. Mr. Kuenze claimed that salt on the outside was unnecessary and that he put it on only "to satisfy the trade." The important thing, he said, was to put salt in the dough, which he alone did, of all the pretzel makers in the state. The article said that Mr. Kuenze had one hundred employees, a good many deaf- mutes among them but also "boys and girls who work after school."

I knew which bus went by the pretzel factory—it was the same one that Earl and I had taken on the afternoon we'd followed home to Elizabeth the Christian who Earl had spotted as a fairy just in the nick of time. I'd have to pray that the fairy wouldn't be on the same bus—if by chance he was, I'd get off and take the next one. What I'd have to have with me was a note, a note this time not from Sister Mary Catherine but from a deaf-mute. "Dear Mr. Kuenze. I read about you in the Sunday Call. I want to learn to make pretzels. I'm sure I can be taught overnight. I am deaf and dumb. I am an orphan. Will you give me a job?"

And I signed it "Seldon Wishnow." I couldn't for the life of me think of another name.

I needed a note, and I needed clothes. I had to look to Mr. Kuenze like a kid he could trust, and I couldn't turn up without clothes. And this time I needed a plan, what my father called "a long-range plan." It came to me immediately: my long-range plan would be to save enough of the money I earned at the pretzel factory to buy a one-way train ticket to Omaha, Nebraska, where Father Flanagan ran Boys Town. I knew about Boys Town and Father Flanagan—as did every boy in America—from the movie with Spencer Tracy, who won an Academy Award for playing the famous priest and then donated his Oscar to the real Boys Town. I was five when I saw it at the Roosevelt with Sandy on a Saturday afternoon. Father Flanagan took in boys from the street, some of them already thieves and little gangsters, and brought them out to his farm, where they were fed and clothed and received an education and where they played baseball and sang in a choir and learned to become good citizens. Father Flanagan was father to all of them, regardless of race or creed. Most of the boys were Catholic, some Protestant, but a few needy Jewish boys lived on the farm as well—this I knew from my parents, who, like thousands of other American families who'd seen the movie and wept, made an annual ecumenical contribution to Boys Town. Not that I'd identify myself as Jewish once I reached Omaha. I'd say—speaking aloud at long last—that I didn't know what I was or who. That I was nothing and nobody—just a boy and nothing more, and hardly the person responsible for the death of Mrs. Wishnow and the orphaning of her son. Let my family raise her son as their son from here on out. He could have my bed. He could have my brother. He could have my future. I'd make my life with Father Flanagan in Nebraska, which was even farther from Newark than Kentucky.

Suddenly I thought of another name and rewrote the note, signing it "Philip Flanagan." Then I started for the cellar to get the cardboard suitcase in which I'd hidden Seldon's stolen clothes before running away the first time. This time I'd pack the suitcase with my own clothes and in my pocket carry the miniature pewter musket that I had bought at Mount Vernon and used to slice open the envelopes from the stamp company back when I still owned a serious collection and was getting mail. Its bayonet measured barely an inch in length, but leaving home for good I would need something for protection, and a letter opener was all I had.

Minutes later, descending the stairs with a flashlight, I was able to derive the strength to keep my legs from collapsing by realizing that this was the last occasion I'd ever have to go down into that cellar and confront the wringer

or the alley cats or the drains or the dead. Or that dank, befouled wall facing the street on which one-legged Alvin had once spattered his grief.

It wasn't cold enough yet for us to start burning coal, and when, from the foot of the cellar stairs, I turned my flashlight on the ash-colored hulk of the fireless furnaces they looked to me like those ostentatious burial vaults where, for all the good it does them, the rich and mighty inter themselves. I stood there hoping that the ghost of Seldon's father would have gone off to Kentucky (perhaps unseen in the trunk of my father's car) to fetch his dead wife but understanding full well that he hadn't, that his business as a ghost was here with me—that his spectral heart seethed with curses, and all of them for me. "I didn't mean for them to move," I whispered. "That was a mistake. I'm not who's really responsible. I didn't mean to make Seldon the target."

I was prepared, of course, for the silence that inevitably surrounded my pleading utterances to the merciless dead, and instead heard my name pronounced in response—and by a woman! From beyond the furnaces, a woman moaning my name! Dead only hours and already back to begin haunting me for the rest of my life!

"I know the truth," she said, and there, emerging like an oracular priestess out of the Delphi of our storage bin, came my aunt. "They're after me, Philip," Aunt Evelyn said. "I know the truth, and they're going to kill me!"

Because she had to use the toilet and to eat something—because I didn't know what I could do other than to give my aunt whatever she needed—I had no choice but to bring her back upstairs with me. I sliced a piece of bread from the half a loaf that was left from dinner, buttered it, poured her a glass of milk, and, after she'd gone to the bathroom—and I'd pulled the kitchen shades so that nobody could see in from across the way—she came into the kitchen and feverishly gobbled everything down. Her coat and her purse were in her lap and she was still wearing her hat, and I hoped that as soon as she'd had enough to eat, she'd get up and go home so that I could go down and get the suitcase, pack it, and run away before my mother returned from the meeting. But once she'd eaten she began to babble, repeating again and again that she knew the truth and because of that they were going to kill her. They'd called out the mounted police, she informed me, to find where she was hiding.

In the silence that followed that startling remark—which, in those circumstances, when suddenly there were no longer any predictable happenings, I was enough of a child to almost believe—we followed the audible progress of a single horse prancing up the block toward Chancellor Avenue. "They know I'm

here," she said.

"They don't, Aunt Evelyn," but the words had no hold on me as I spoke them. "I didn't know you were here."

"Then why did you come looking for me?"

"I didn't. I was looking for something else. The police are outside," I told her, convinced that I was deliberately lying even while speaking as earnestly as I could, "the police are outside because of the anti-Semitism. They're patrolling the streets to protect us."

She smiled the smile reserved for trusting souls. "Tell me another

one, Philip."

Now nothing that I knew coincided with anything either of us was

saying. The shadow of her madness had crept over me without my as yet understanding that while hiding in our storage bin—or perhaps earlier than that, while watching the FBI take the rabbi away in handcuffs—she had indeed lost her mind. Unless, of course, she'd already begun hopelessly slipping into insanity the night at the White House when she danced with von Ribbentrop. That was to be my father's theory—that long before the rabbi's arrest, when Bengelsdorf was astonishing all of Jewish Newark with the unseemliness of how high he had climbed in the president's esteem, she'd abandoned herself to the same credulity that had transformed the entire country into a madhouse: the worship of Lindbergh and his conception of the world.

"Do you want to lie down?" I asked, dreading that she would say yes. "Do you need to rest? Do you want me to call the doctor?"

Here she took my hand so firmly that her fingernails bit into my flesh. "Philip dearest, I know everything."

"Do you know what happened to President Lindbergh? Is that what

you mean?"

me."

"Where is your mother?" "At school. At a meeting."

"You'll bring me food and water, darling boy." "I will? Sure. Where?"

"To the cellar. I can't drink from the laundry sink. Someone will find

"You don't want that," I said, thinking immediately of Joey's

grandmother and the fiery breath of madness that wafted from her. "I'll bring everything." But having promised her that, I couldn't possibly run away.

"Would you happen to have an apple?" asked Aunt Evelyn.

I opened the refrigerator. "No, no apple. We're out of apples. My mother hasn't been able to do much shopping. But there's a pear, Aunt Evelyn.

You want that?"

"Yes. And another piece of bread. Make another piece of bread."

Her voice kept changing. Now she sounded as though we were doing nothing more than getting ready for a picnic, making the best of what we had on hand to take to Weequahic Park to eat by the lake under a tree, as though the events of the day were as unimportant to us as probably they were to everybody else in America: a minor nuisance to the Christians, if that. As there were more than thirty million Christian families in America and only about a million Jewish families, why, really, should it bother them?

I cut a second slice from the loaf for her to take down to the cellar and smeared it extra heavily with butter. If asked later about the bread missing from the loaf, I'd say that Joey ate it, that and the pear, before he ran off to see the horses.

When she got home to learn that my father hadn't called, my mother was unable to hide her response. Forlornly she looked at the kitchen clock, remembering perhaps the time that it used to be at this hour: bedtime, when all that was required was for the children to wash their faces and brush their teeth for the day dense with fulfillable duties to be rounded off to the satisfaction of all. Now that was nine o'clock—or so we'd been led to believe by that wholly convincing, immutable lifelikeness that now turned out to have been a sham.

And the day in, day out routine of school—was that a sham too, a cunning deception perpetrated to soften us up with rational expectations and foster nonsensical feelings of trust? "Why no school?" I asked when she told me that tomorrow we'd have the day off. "Because," my mother replied, making recourse to the colorless formulation suggested to the parents in order for them to be truthful without frightening the children unduly, "the situation has further deteriorated." "What situation?" I asked. "Our situation." "Why? What happened now?" "Nothing happened. It's just better that you children stay home tomorrow. Where is Joey? Where is your friend?" "He ate some bread, and he took the pear, and he left. He took the pear out of the refrigerator and ran outside. He went to see the horses." "And you're sure that no one phoned?" she asked, simply too exhausted to be angry with Joey for letting her down at a moment like this. "I want to know why there's no school, Ma." "Must you know tonight?" "Yes. Why can't I go to school?" "Well. . .it's because there may be a war with Canada." "With Canada? When?" "No one knows. But it's best if you all stay home until we see what's going on." "But why are we going to war with Canada?" "Please, Philip, I can't take much more tonight. I've told you everything I know. You

insisted and I told you. Now we just have to wait. We have to wait and see like everyone else." And then, as if the unknown whereabouts of my father and brother hadn't given rein to her worst imaginings—which was that we two were now, like the Wishnows, just a widow and her son—she said (trying doggedly to follow the protocol of the old nine o'clock), "I want you to wash up and go to bed."

Bed—as though as a place of warmth and comfort, rather than an incubator for dread, bed still existed.

War with Canada was far less of an enigma to me than what Aunt Evelyn was going to use for a toilet during the night. As best I could understand, the United States was at last entering into the worldwide war, not on the side of England and the British Commonwealth, whom everyone had expected we would support while FDR was president, but on the side of Hitler and Hitler's allies, Italy and Japan. Moreover, two full days had passed since we had heard from my father and Sandy, and for all we knew they had been killed as horribly as Seldon's mother by the rioting anti-Semites; there was, in addition, to be no school tomorrow, suggesting to me that there might never be school again if President Wheeler was now to inflict on us the laws we knew to have been imposed by the Nazis on the Jewish children of Germany. A political catastrophe of unimaginable proportions was transforming a free society into a police state, but a child is a child, and all I could think about in my bed was that when the time came to move her bowels, Aunt Evelyn would have to do it on our storage bin floor. This was the uncontrollable event that weighed on me in lieu of everything else, that loomed over me like the embodiment of everything else, and that blotted out everything else. The most negligible danger of all, and it came to assume such momentous significance that around midnight I tiptoed into the bathroom and at the back of the bottom shelf of the towel closet I found the bedpan we had bought for Alvin to use in an emergency when he first got home from Canada. I was already at the back door and ready to carry the bedpan down to Aunt Evelyn when my mother confronted me in her nightgown, aghast at the picture I presented of a small boy so overwhelmed he was going out of his mind.

Minutes later Aunt Evelyn was being led by my mother up the stairwell and into our apartment. There's no need to describe the disturbance this caused in the Cucuzza household or the antagonistic response to the frightful figure of my aunt by that frightful figure who was Joey's grandmother—the farcical edge of suffering is familiar to everyone. I was sent to sleep in my parents' bed, and my mother and Aunt Evelyn took over my room, where my mother's next great task was to prevent her sister from getting up out of Sandy's bed and stealing into the kitchen to turn on the gas and kill us all.

The round trip of fifteen hundred miles was the adventure of Sandy's lifetime. It was something more fateful for my father. His Guadalcanal, I suppose, his Battle of the Bulge. At forty-one he was too old to be drafted when, that December, with Lindbergh's policies discredited and Wheeler disgraced and Roosevelt back in the White House, America finally went to war against the Axis powers, so this was as close as he would ever come to the fear, fatigue, and physical suffering of the frontline soldier. Wearing his high steel neck brace and nursing two broken ribs and a sutured facial wound and exhibiting a mouthful of broken teeth—and carrying Mr. Cucuzza's extra pistol in the glove compartment for protection against the people who'd already murdered 122 Jews in those very regions of the country toward which the car was headed—he drove the seven hundred and fifty miles to Kentucky stopping only to get gas and go to the toilet. And after sleeping at the Mawhinneys' for five hours and eating something, turned around and started back, though now with a painful infection simmering along the length of his suture and with Seldon, sick to his stomach and feverish in the back seat, hallucinating about his mother and all but performing feats of magic to do what he could to bring her back.

The trip out had taken just over twenty-four hours, but the one back took three times as long because of the many times they had to stop for Seldon to vomit by the side of the road or to pull down his pants and squat in a ditch, and because, in just a twenty-mile radius of Charleston, West Virginia (where they went round in circles, hopelessly lost, instead of proceeding east and north toward Maryland), the car broke down on six separate occasions in little over a day: once in the midst of the railroad tracks, power lines, and massive conveyors of Alloy, a town of two hundred where enormous mounds of ore and silica surrounded the factory buildings of the Electro-Metallurgical Company plant; once in the nearby little town of Boomer, where flames from the coke ovens reached so high my father, standing after sundown in the middle of the unlighted street, could read (or misread) the road map by the incandescence; once in Belle, yet another of those tiny, hellish industrial hamlets, where the fumes from the Du Pont ammonia plant almost knocked them flat when they got out of the car to lift the hood and try to figure out what was wrong; again in South Charleston, the city that looked to Seldon like "a monster" because of the steam and the smoke wreathing the freight yards and the warehouses and the long dark roofs of the soot-blackened factories; and twice on the very outskirts of the state capital, Charleston. There, around midnight, in order to call a tow truck, my father had to cross a railroad embankment on foot and then descend a hill of junk to a bridge

that spanned a river lined with coal barges and dredging barges and tugboats to go looking for a riverfront dive with a pay phone, meanwhile leaving the two boys alone together in the car just across the river road from an endless jumble of a plant—sheds and shanties, sheet-iron buildings and open coal cars, cranes and loading booms and steel-frame towers, electric ovens and roaring forges, squat storage tanks and high cyclone fences—a plant that was, if you believed the sign the size of a billboard, "The World's Biggest Manufacturer of Axes, Hatchets, and Scythes."

That factory brimming with sharpened blades dealt the final blow to the little that was left of Seldon's equilibrium—by morning he was screaming that he was going to be scalped by the Indians. And oddly he was on to something: an analogy could be made, even if one weren't delirious, to the uninvited white settlers who first poured through the Appalachian barrier into the favorite hunting grounds of the Delaware and Algonquin tribes, except that instead of alien, strange-looking whites affronting the local inhabitants with their rapaciousness, these were alien, strange-looking Jews provocative merely by their presence. This time around, though, those violently defending their lands from usurpation and their way of life from destruction weren't Indians led by the great Tecumseh but upright American Christians unleashed by the acting president of the United States.

It was by then October 15—the very Thursday when Mayor La Guardia was arrested in New York, when the First Lady was incarcerated at Walter Reed, when FDR was "detained" along with the "Roosevelt Jews" alleged to have masterminded the kidnapping of Lindbergh père, when Rabbi Bengelsdorf was arrested in Washington and Aunt Evelyn went to pieces in our storage bin. On that same day my father and Sandy were searching the West Virginia mountains for the county's one licensed physician (as opposed to the licensed barber, who'd already offered his services), to try to get him to give Seldon something to quiet him down. The man they found on a rural dirt road was over seventy and reeking of whiskey, a good, kind, spry old "Doc" who ran a country clinic out of a little frame house where the patients who lined up waiting their turn on the front porch were, as Sandy later described them to me, the raggediest-looking bunch of white people he had ever seen. The doc figured Seldon's delirium stemmed mainly from dehydration and directed Seldon to spend an hour taking down ladle after ladle of water from the well out near the creekbed behind the house. He also drained the pus from my father's infected face to prevent blood poisoning, which in those days, when antibiotics were just discovered and not widely available, would probably have spread through his system and killed him before he made it home. The old guy displayed less talent

stitching the wound back up than he had in diagnosing the incipient septicemia, with the result that for the rest of his life my father looked as though he'd sustained a dueling scar while a student at Heidelberg. Afterward it seemed not simply a sign of the contingencies of that trip but, to me, the imprint of his insane stoicism. When finally he reached Newark he was so depleted by fever and chills—and a racking cough no less alarming than Mr. Wishnow's—that Mr. Cucuzza took him straight from our kitchen, where he'd fainted at the dinner table, and once again to the Beth Israel Hospital, where he very nearly died from pneumonia. But there was no way of stopping him until Seldon was saved. My father was a rescuer and orphans were his specialty. A displacement even greater than having to move to Union or to leave for Kentucky was to lose one's parents and be orphaned. Witness, he would tell you, what had happened to Alvin. Witness what had happened to his sister-in-law after Grandma had died. No one should be motherless and fatherless. Motherless and fatherless you are vulnerable to manipulation, to influences—you are rootless and you are vulnerable to everything.

Sandy in the meantime perched on the railing of the clinic's front porch sketching the patients, one of them a thirteen-year-old girl named Cecile. These were the years when my precocious brother was three different boys in the course of twenty-four months, the years when, for all his unflappability, he could seem to do nothing satisfactory even by excelling: my parents didn't like it when he went to work for Lindbergh and became Aunt Evelyn's oratorical boy wonder and New Jersey's leading authority on tobacco farming, they didn't like it when he left Lindbergh for the girls and overnight became the neighborhood's youngest Don Juan, and now, having volunteered to guide my father a quarter of the way across the continent to the Mawhinney farm—and hoping by an exhibition of genuine bravery to recapture his prestige as the older son and reenter the family from which he'd been torn away—he virtually subverted his cause by an amusement that must have seemed to him wholly harmless for being "artistic": drawing nubile Cecile. When my father—with a new bandage covering his cheek—came out of the doctor's office and saw what Sandy was up to, he took him by the belt of his trousers and dragged him, sketchpad and all, clear off the side of the porch and out to the road and into the car. "Are you crazy," my father whispered, peering furiously down at him over his neck brace, "are you nuts, drawing her?" "It's only her face," Sandy tried to explain, holding the sketchpad to his chest—and lying. "I don't care what it is! You never heard of Leo Frank? You never heard of the Jew they lynched in Georgia because of that little factory girl? Stop drawing her, damn it! Stop drawing any of them! These people don't like being drawn—can't you see that? We came out to Kentucky to

get this boy because they have burned his mother to death in her car! For Christ's sake, put those drawing things away, and don't draw any more girls!"

Finally back on the road again, they had no idea that Philadelphia (which my father was hoping to reach by dawn of the seventeenth) had been occupied by tanks and troops of the U.S. Army, nor did my father know that Uncle Monty, indifferent to my mother's pleading and impervious to any hardship not his own, had fired him for not showing up at work a second week in a row. My father chooses resistance, Rabbi Bengelsdorf chooses collaboration, and Uncle Monty chooses himself.

To get to Boyle County and the Mawhinneys' they had traveled diagonally south across New Jersey to Camden, across the Delaware to Philadelphia, south from there to Baltimore, west and south across the length of West Virginia, and then into Kentucky until, a hundred or so miles on, they reached Lexington and, near a place called Versailles, turned south again for Boyle County's rolling hills. My mother tracked their trip on my encyclopedia's foldout map of the forty-eight states and the ten Canadian provinces, which she spread across the dining room table to look at whenever her anxiety overtook her, while out on the road Sandy, armed with a flashlight for the dark hours, charted their course on an Esso road map and kept an eye out for suspicious- looking characters, especially when they were passing through some grim one- street town whose name he couldn't even find on the map. Excluding the six times that the car broke down on the way back, Sandy counted at least another six in West Virginia when my father—who didn't like the look of a battered truck that was following behind them or of the pickups parked haphazardly by some roadside saloon or of the overalled kid in the gas station who'd pumped their gas and checked the car's front end and then spat on the ground when he took their money—had asked Sandy to open the glove compartment and pass him Mr. Cucuzza's spare pistol to hold in his lap while he drove, and each time sounding as though he, who'd never fired a shot in his life, wouldn't hesitate, if he had to, to pulla the trig'.

Sandy, who once he got home drew from memory his boyhood masterpiece—the illustrated history of their great descent into the hard American world—admitted to having been frightened just about all the time: frightened when they passed through cities where Ku Klux Klansmen had to be lying in wait for any Jew foolhardy enough to be driving through, but no less frightened when they were out beyond the ominous cities, beyond the faded billboards and the tiny filling stations and the last of the shacks where the poorest of people in their threadbare clothes lived—dilapidated timber shacks that Sandy rendered meticulously, underpinned at the four corners by rickety stone piles, with cutout

holes for windows and a crudely built chimney crumbling at one end and, on the weather-worn roof, a few scattered rocks holding down the loose shingles—and into what my father called "the wilds." Frightened, said Sandy, speeding past the cows and the horses and the barns and the silos without another car in sight, frightened making hairpin turns up in the mountains without either a shoulder or a guardrail at the side of the road, and frightened when the paved road turned to gravel and the forest closed around them as though they were Lewis and Clark. And especially frightened because our car had no radio, and they didn't know whether the killing of Jews had stopped or whether they might be driving right into the thick of the country's murderous rage against people like us.

Seemingly the sole interlude that hadn't frightened my brother was what had so scared my father out front of the doctor's house: Sandy's drawing a picture of the West Virginia mountain girl whose looks had clearly gotten him all worked up. As it turned out, she'd been exactly the age of "the little factory girl" (as the whole country came to know her) murdered in Atlanta some thirty years earlier by her Jewish supervisor, a married businessman of twenty-nine named Leo Frank. The famous 1913 case of poor Mary Phagan—found dead with a noose around her neck on the floor of the pencil factory basement after going to Frank's office on the day of the murder to collect her pay envelope—had been all over the front pages, North and South, at about the time my father, an impressionable boy of twelve who'd only recently left school to help support the family, was at work in an East Orange hat factory, obtaining a first-class education there in the commonplace libel that linked him inextricably to the crucifiers of Christ. After Frank's conviction (on not entirely reliable circumstantial evidence that is all but discredited today), a fellow prison inmate became a statewide hero by slashing his throat and nearly killing him. One month later, a lynch mob of respectable citizens finished the job by abducting Frank from his jail cell and—much to the satisfaction of my father's co-workers on the factory floor—hanging "the sodomite" from a tree in Marietta, Georgia (Mary Phagan's hometown), as public warning to other "Jewish libertines" to stay the hell out of the South and away from their women.

To be sure, the Frank case was only a part of the history that fed my father's sense of danger in rural West Virginia on the afternoon of October 15, 1942. It all goes further back than that.

This was how Seldon came to live with us. After their safe return to Newark from Kentucky, Sandy moved into the sun parlor and Seldon took over where Alvin and Aunt Evelyn had left off—as the person in the twin bed next to mine

shattered by the malicious indignities of Lindbergh's America. There was no stump for me to care for this time. The boy himself was the stump, and until he was taken to live with his mother's married sister in Brooklyn ten months later, I was the prosthesis.

Postscript

Note to the Reader

A True Chronology of the Major Figures Other Historical Figures in the Work

Some Documentation

Note to the Reader

The Plot Against America is a work of fiction. This postscript is intended as a reference for readers interested in tracking where historical fact ends and historical imagining begins. The facts presented below are drawn from the following sources: John Thomas Anderson, Senator Burton K. Wheeler and United States Foreign Relations (dissertation presented to the graduate faculty, University of Virginia), 1982; Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate, 2001; A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh, 1998; Biography Resource Center, Newark Evening News and Newark Star-Ledger; Allen Bodner, When Boxing Was a Jewish Sport, 1997; William Bridgwater and Seymour Kurtz, eds., The Columbia Encyclopedia, 1963; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 1970, and Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1984; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41, 1953; Sander A. Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941, 1974; John Drexel, ed., The Facts on File Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century, 1991; Henry Ford, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, vol. 3, Jewish Influences in American Life, 1920–1922; Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity, 1994; Gale Group Publishing, Contemporary Authors, vol. 182, 2000; John A. Garraty and Mark

Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999; Susan Hertog, Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life, 1999; Richard Hofstadter and Beatrice K. Hofstadter, eds., Great Issues in American History: From Reconstruction to the Present Day, 1864–1981, vol. 3, 1982; Joseph G. E. Hopkins, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, supplements 3–9, 1974–1994; Joseph K. Howard, "The Decline and Fall of Burton K. Wheeler," Harper's Magazine, March 1947; Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, 1939–1941, 1974; Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York, 1989; Herman Klurfeld, Winchell: His Life and Times, 1976; Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith, 1940; Albert S. Lindemann, The Jew Accused: Three Anti-Semitic Affairs (Dreyfus, Beilis, Frank), 1894–1915, 1991; Arthur Mann, La Guardia: A Fighter Against His Times, 1882–1933, 1959; Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, vol. 2, 1962; Charles Moritz, ed., Current Biography Yearbook, 1988, 1988; John Morrison and Catherine Wright Morrison, Mavericks: The Lives and Battles of Montana's Political Legends, 1997; Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 1983; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal, 1933–1935, 1958, and The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936, 1960 (vols. 2 and 3 of The Age of Roosevelt); Peter Teed, A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century History, 1914–1990, 1992; Walter Yust, ed., Britannica Book of the Year Omnibus, 1937–1942, and Britannica Book of the Year, 1943; Ben D. Zevin, ed., Nothing to Fear: The Selected Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932–1945, 1961.

A True Chronology of the Major Figures

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT 1882–1945

NOVEMBER 1920. After serving as assistant secretary of the navy under Wilson, Roosevelt runs as vice president on Democratic ticket with Governor James M. Cox of Ohio; Democrats defeated in Harding landslide.

AUGUST 1921. Stricken with polio, which leaves him badly crippled

for life.

NOVEMBER 1928. Elected to first of two two-year terms as

Democratic governor of New York, while national ticket, headed by ex-governor Alfred E. Smith, loses to Herbert Hoover. As governor, Roosevelt strongly establishes himself as a progressive liberal, an advocate of government relief for Depression victims, including unemployment insurance, and a foe of Prohibition. After landslide 1930 gubernatorial victory, becomes Democratic presidential front-runner.

JULY–NOVEMBER 1932. Selected as presidential candidate by Democrats at July convention; in November, defeats President Hoover with 57. 4

percent of vote, and Democrats sweep both houses of Congress.

MARCH 1933. Inaugurated as president March 4; with nation paralyzed by Depression, proclaims in inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Quickly proposes New Deal recovery legislation for agriculture, industry, labor, and business, and relief programs for mortgage holders and the unemployed. Cabinet includes Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior; Henry A. Wallace, secretary of agriculture; Frances Perkins—first ever woman cabinet appointee—secretary of labor; and Henry Morgenthau, Jr.—the country's second Jew ever to be a cabinet member—secretary of the Treasury (to replace the ill secretary, William Woodin, on November 17, 1933). Begins brief national radio broadcasts from White House, known as fireside chats, and engages reporters in informative press conferences.

NOVEMBER 1933–DECEMBER 1934. Recognizes Soviet Union and soon starts rebuilding the U.S. fleet, in part owing to Japanese activities in Far East. By ' 34 black voters have shifted political loyalty from Lincoln's Republican Party to Roosevelt's Democratic Party in response to president's programs for the underprivileged.

Burst of reform initiatives, referred to as "second New Deal," results in the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, as well as the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which employs two million workers a month. Signs first of several neutrality measures in response to unsettled European situation.

NOVEMBER 1936. Defeats Kansas Republican governor Alfred M. Landon, winning every state except Maine and Vermont; Democrats enlarge congressional lead. In inaugural address asserts, "Here is a challenge to our democracy. . .I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." By 1937, economic recovery well under way, but economic crisis follows and, along with labor unrest, leads to Republican congressional victories in 1938.

SEPTEMBER–NOVEMBER 1938. Apprehensive over Hitler's intentions in Europe, appeals to Nazi leader to accept negotiated settlement in dispute with Czechoslovakia. At September 30 Munich conference, Britain and France capitulate to German demand for Czech Sudetenland and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia; German troops, led by Hitler, enter in October (and, five months later, conquer the entire country, granting Slovakia independence as a German-backed fascist republic). In November Roosevelt orders enormous increase in production of combat airplanes.

APRIL 1939. Asks Hitler and Mussolini to agree for a period of ten years to refrain from attacking weaker European nations; Hitler replies in a Reichstag speech by heaping scorn on Roosevelt and boasting of German

military might.

AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1939. Telegrams Hitler asking him to negotiate settlement with Poland over territorial dispute; Hitler responds by invading Poland on September 1. England and France declare war on Hitler, and World War Two begins.

SEPTEMBER 1939. European war prompts Roosevelt to seek changes in Neutrality Act to allow Britain and France to obtain arms from U.S. When Hitler invades Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France in first half of 1940, Roosevelt significantly increases U.S. arms production.

MAY 1940. Establishes Council of National Defense and, later, Office of Production Management, to prepare industry and armed forces for possible war.

SEPTEMBER 1940. Japan, at war with China and having invaded French Indochina (and having already annexed Korea in 1910 and occupied Manchuria in 1931), signs triple alliance with Italy and Germany in Berlin. At Roosevelt's urging, Congress passes first peacetime conscription bill in U.S. history, requiring all men between twenty-one and thirty-five to register for the draft and arranging for the induction into armed services of 800, 000 draftees.

NOVEMBER 1940. Denounced by right-wing Republicans as a "warmonger," and campaigning as an avowed enemy of Hitler and fascism pledged to do everything possible to keep America out of the European war, Roosevelt wins unprecedented third term, by 449 to 82 electoral votes, defeating the Republican Wendell L. Willkie in an election in which national defense and

U.S. relationship to the war are major issues; Willkie carries only Maine, Vermont, and the isolationist Midwest.

JANUARY–MARCH 1941. Inaugurated January 20. In March Congress passes his Lend-Lease Act, authorizing president to "sell, transfer, lend, lease" armaments, foodstuffs, and services to countries whose defense he deems vital to the defense of the U.S.

APRIL–JUNE 1941. After German army invades Yugoslavia and then Greece, Hitler breaks joint non-aggression pact and invades Russia. In April

U.S. takes Greenland under protection; in June Roosevelt authorizes landing of

U.S. forces in Iceland and extends Lend-Lease to Russia.

AUGUST 1941. Meeting at sea, Roosevelt and Churchill draw up Atlantic Charter of "common principles," containing eight-point declaration of peace aims.

SEPTEMBER 1941. Announces that Navy has been ordered to destroy any German or Italian submarines entering U.S. waters and threatening U.S. defense; asks Japan to begin military evacuation of China and Indochina, but

war minister, General Tojo, refuses.

OCTOBER 1941. Asks Congress to amend Neutrality Act to allow arming of U.S. merchant ships and to permit them to enter combat zones.

NOVEMBER 1941. Massive Japanese striking force secretly assembles in Pacific while negotiations with U.S. on military and economic issues appear to continue with arrival in U.S. of Japanese envoys for "peace talks."

DECEMBER 1941. Japan launches surprise attack on U.S. possessions in the Pacific and far eastern possessions of Great Britain; after emergency address by president, Congress unanimously declares war on Japan the next day. On December 11 Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S.; Congress, in response, declares war on Germany and Italy. (Casualty figures for Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: 2, 403 American sailors, soldiers, marines, and civilians killed; 1, 178 wounded.)

Directing the war effort occupies president almost entirely. In his annual message to Congress he stresses increased war production, declares that "our objectives are clear—smashing the militarism imposed by the warlords on their enslaved peoples." Proposes record $ 58, 927, 000, 000 budget to accommodate war expenses. With Churchill, announces creation of unified military command in Southeast Asia. Strategy conference with Churchill in June results in November invasion of French North Africa by Allied troops under command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (German army driven from Africa seven months later); president assures France, Portugal, and Spain that Allies have no designs on their territories. In June asks Congress to recognize existence of state of war against fascist regimes of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, allied with Axis powers. In July appoints commission to try eight Nazi saboteurs arrested by federal agents after landing on U.S. shores from enemy submarine; following secret trial, two are imprisoned and six are executed in Washington. In September, president's emissary Wendell Willkie received by Stalin in Moscow, where he urges second military front in Western Europe. In October president makes secret two-week tour of war production facilities and announces objectives are being met. Asks Congress to expand draft to eighteen-and nineteen-year-olds.

JANUARY 1943–AUGUST 1945. European war (and Hitler's concurrent massacre of Europe's Jews and the expropriation of their property) lasts until 1945. In April Mussolini executed by Italian partisans, and Italy surrenders. Germany surrenders unconditionally on May 7, a week after the suicide of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker and less than a month after the sudden death, from a cerebral hemorrhage, of President Roosevelt—then in the first year of a fourth presidential term—and the swearing in of his successor, Vice President Harry S.

Truman. War ends in Far East when Japan surrenders unconditionally on August

World War Two is over.

CHARLES A. LINDBERGH 1902–1974

MAY 1927. Charles A. Lindbergh, a twenty-five-year-old Minnesota- born stunt flier and airmail pilot, flies the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris in thirty-three hours and thirty minutes; his completing first nonstop transatlantic solo flight makes him a celebrity around the globe. President Coolidge awards Lindbergh Distinguished Flying Cross and commissions him colonel in U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve.

MAY 1929. Lindbergh marries Anne Morrow, the twenty-three-year- old daughter of U.S. ambassador to Mexico.

JUNE 1930. Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., born to Charles and Anne Lindbergh in New Jersey.

MARCH–MAY 1932. Charles Jr. kidnapped from family's secluded new house on 435 acres in rural Hopewell, New Jersey; some ten weeks later, decomposing corpse of baby discovered by chance in nearby woods.

SEPTEMBER 1934–MARCH 1935. A poor German immigrant carpenter and ex-convict, Bruno R. Hauptmann, arrested in Bronx, New York, for kidnap and murder of Lindbergh baby. Six-week trial in Flemington, New Jersey, characterized by press as "trial of the century." Hauptmann found guilty and executed in electric chair April 1936.

APRIL 1935. Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes first book, North to the Orient, an account of her 1931 air adventures with Lindbergh; becomes a top bestseller and receives the National Booksellers Award as the most distinguished nonfiction book of the year.

DECEMBER 1935–DECEMBER 1936. Seeking privacy, Lindberghs leave America with their two small children and, until their return in spring 1939, reside mainly in small village in Kent, England. At the invitation of U.S. military, Lindbergh travels to Germany to report on Nazi aircraft development; makes repeated visits for this purpose over the next three years. Attends 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Hitler is in attendance, and later writes of Hitler to a friend, "He is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe has done much for the German people." Anne Morrow Lindbergh accompanies her husband to Germany and afterward writes critically of the "strictly puritanical view at home that dictatorships are of necessity wrong, evil, unstable and no good can come of

them—combined with our funny-paper view of Hitler as a clown—combined with the very strong (naturally) Jewish propaganda in the Jewish-owned papers."

OCTOBER 1938. Service Cross of the German Eagle—a gold medallion with four small swastikas, conferred on foreigners for service to the Reich—presented to Lindbergh, "by order of the Führer," by Air Marshal Hermann Göring at American embassy dinner in Berlin. Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes second account of her flying adventures, Listen! the Wind, a nonfiction bestseller despite her husband's growing unpopularity among American antifascists and the refusal by some Jewish booksellers to stock the book.

APRIL 1939. After Hitler invades Czechoslovakia, Lindbergh writes in his journal, "Much as I disapprove of many things Germany has done, I believe she has pursued the only consistent policy in Europe in recent years." At request of Air Corps chief, General "Hap" Arnold, and with approval of President Roosevelt—who dislikes and distrusts him—goes on active duty as colonel in U.S. Army Air Corps.

SEPTEMBER 1939. In journal entries after Germany invades Poland on September 1, Lindbergh notes the need to "guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races. . .and the infiltration of inferior blood." Aviation, he writes, is "one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown." Earlier in year he notes, of a private conversation with a high-ranking member of the Republican National Committee and the conservative newsman Fulton Lewis, Jr., "We are disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures. . .It is too bad because a few Jews of the right type are, I believe, an asset to any country." In an April 1939 diary entry (omitted in 1970 from his published Wartime Journals) he writes, "There are too many Jews in places like New York already. A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many." In April 1940, speaking over the Columbia Broadcasting System, he says, "The only reason that we are in danger of becoming involved in this war is because there are powerful elements in America who desire us to take part. They represent a small minority of the American people, but they control much of the machinery of influence and propaganda. They seize every opportunity to push us closer to the edge." When Idaho Republican senator William E. Borah encourages Lindbergh to run for president, Lindbergh says he prefers to take political positions as a private citizen.

OCTOBER 1940. In spring America First Committee founded at Yale University Law School to oppose FDR's interventionist policies and promote

American isolationism; in October Lindbergh addresses meeting of three thousand at Yale, advocating that America recognize "the new powers in Europe." Anne Morrow Lindbergh publishes third book, The Wave of the Future, a brief anti-interventionist tract subtitled "A Confession of Faith," which arouses enormous controversy and immediately becomes top nonfiction bestseller despite denunciation by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes as "the Bible of every American Nazi."

APRIL–AUGUST 1941. Addresses ten thousand at America First Committee rally in Chicago, another ten thousand at New York rally, prompting his bitter enemy Secretary Ickes to call him "the No. 1 United States Nazi fellow traveler." When Lindbergh writes to President Roosevelt complaining about Ickes's attacks on him, particularly for accepting the German medal, Ickes writes, "If Mr. Lindbergh feels like cringing when he is correctly referred to as a knight of the German Eagle, why doesn't he send back the disgraceful decoration and be done with it?" (Earlier, Lindbergh had declined returning the medal on grounds that it would constitute "an unnecessary insult" to the Nazi leadership.) President openly questions Lindbergh's loyalty, prompting Lindbergh to tender his resignation as Army colonel to Roosevelt's secretary of war. Ickes notes that while Lindbergh is swift in renouncing his Army commission, he remains adamant in refusing to return the medal received from Nazi Germany. In May, along with Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who is seated on the platform beside Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Lindbergh addresses twenty-five thousand at America First rally at Madison Square Garden; his appearance greeted with cries from the audience of "Our next president!" and his speech followed by a four-minute ovation. Speaks against American intervention in European war to large audiences across the country throughout spring and summer.

SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1941. Delivers his "Who Are the War Agitators?" radio speech to an America First rally in Des Moines on September 11; audience of eight thousand cheers when he names "the Jewish race" as among those most powerful and effective in pushing the U.S.—"for reasons which are not American"—toward involvement in the war. Adds that "we cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction." Des Moines speech is attacked the next day by both Democrats and Republicans, but Senator Gerald P. Nye, Republican from North Dakota and staunch America Firster, defends Lindbergh from critics and reiterates charge against the Jews, as do other supporters. December 10 address, scheduled for Boston America First

rally, canceled by Lindbergh after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and U.S. declaration of war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. Activities of America First Committee terminated by leadership, and organization disbands.

JANUARY–DECEMBER 1942. Travels to Washington to seek reinstatement in Air Corps, but key Roosevelt cabinet members strongly oppose, as does much of the press, and Roosevelt says no. Repeated attempts to find position in aviation industry also fail, despite a lucrative association during the late twenties and early thirties with Transcontinental Air Transport ("the Lindbergh Line") and as highly paid consultant with Pan American Airways. In spring finally finds work, with government approval, as consultant to Ford's bomber development program, outside Detroit at Willow Run, and family moves to Detroit suburb. (The September afternoon President Roosevelt visits Willow Run to inspect war production projects, Lindbergh makes it his business to be away.) Participates in experiments at Mayo Clinic aeromedical laboratory to decrease physical dangers of high-altitude flying; later participates as test pilot in experiments with oxygen equipment at high altitudes.

DECEMBER 1942–JULY 1943. Takes active role in training pilots for Navy/Marine Corps Corsair, fighter plane that he helps develop for United Aircraft in Connecticut.

AUGUST 1943. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, now mother of four children, publishes The Steep Ascent, a novella about a dangerous flying adventure; her first publishing failure, largely owing to hostility of reviewers and readers toward the prewar politics of the Lindbergh family.

JANUARY–SEPTEMBER 1944. After stint in Florida testing a variety of warplanes, including Boeing's new B-29 bomber, receives government permission to go to South Pacific to study Corsairs in action; once there, begins to fly combat and bombing runs against Japanese targets from New Guinea base, at first as observer but soon, with great success, as enthusiastic participant. Teaches pilots how to increase combat range by conserving fuel in flight. Having flown fifty missions—and downed a Japanese fighter plane—returns to America in September to resume work with United Aircraft's fighter program, and family moves from Michigan to Westport, Connecticut.

FIORELLO H. LA GUARDIA 1882–1947

NOVEMBER 1922. Having served congressional terms representing Lower East Side of Manhattan just before and after World War One, La Guardia

is returned to Congress and serves five consecutive terms as Republican representative for the Italian and Jewish constituency of East Harlem. Leads House in opposing President Hoover's sales tax and denouncing his failure to address Depression suffering; also opposes Prohibition.

NOVEMBER 1924. In presidential election, outspokenly supports Progressive Party candidate Robert M. La Follette rather than the Republican, President Coolidge.

JANUARY 1931. New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt calls governors' conference to deal with Depression problems of unemployment; La Guardia praises him for promoting inquiry leading to labor and unemployment legislation that he himself had urged unsuccessfully on President Hoover.

As a maverick Republican—and defeated lame-duck congressman—is chosen by president-elect Roosevelt to introduce New Deal legislation in lame-duck Seventy-second Congress after Democrats' 1932 landslide victory.

NOVEMBER 1933. Running as anti-Tammany candidate, elected Republican-Fusion (and later, in addition, American Labor Party) mayor of New York for first of three consecutive terms; sets out as activist mayor to bring economic recovery to Depression New York by fostering public works projects and establishing and increasing public services. Denounces fascism and American Nazis; in response to Nazis labeling him "Jew Mayor of New York," quips, "I never thought I had enough Jewish blood in my veins to justify boasting of it."

SEPTEMBER 1938. After Hitler dismembers Czechoslovakia, La Guardia attacks Republican isolationists and takes side of FDR in growing interventionist controversy.

SEPTEMBER 1940. Though Wendell Willkie is said to be considering him for vice presidential running mate, La Guardia again deserts Republicans, as he did in 1924; with Senator George Norris forms Independents for Roosevelt and openly campaigns for Roosevelt third term.

AUGUST–NOVEMBER 1940. With war looming, Roosevelt favors La Guardia for secretary of war but chooses Republican Henry Stimson instead, appointing La Guardia chairman of the American side of the U.S.-Canadian Defense Board.

APRIL 1941. Accepts unpaid position as FDR's director of civilian defense while continuing to hold office as mayor of New York.

FEBRUARY–APRIL 1943. Presses Roosevelt to return him to active Army duty as brigadier general, but Roosevelt, having failed to grant him a cabinet position or consider him for a running mate, declines, on advice of

intimates who consider La Guardia too provocative; the disappointed mayor returns to his "street-cleaner's uniform."

AUGUST 1943. Wartime racial strife that previously struck Beaumont, Mobile, Los Angeles, and Detroit—where there are thirty-four deaths in June 21 riots—erupts in New York's Harlem. After nearly three days of vandalism, looting, and bloodshed, La Guardia praised by black leaders for strong, compassionate leadership during riots that leave 6 dead, 185 injured, and $ 5 million in property damage.

MAY 1945. A month after FDR's death, announces he will not run for a fourth term; famously, before his retirement, he reads the funnies over the radio to New York youngsters during a newspaper strike. After leaving office, accepts directorship of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration).

WALTER WINCHELL 1897–1972

Ex-vaudevillian Walter Winchell hired by New York Evening Graphic and soon gains popularity as Broadway reporter and columnist.

JUNE 1929. Goes to work as columnist for William Randolph Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, a job he will keep for over thirty years. Hearst's King Features syndicates Winchell column nationwide; it eventually appears in more than two thousand papers. Inventor of modern gossip column naturally becomes regular at New York celebrity night spot the Stork Club.

MAY 1930. Makes radio debut as Broadway gossip newscaster; moves on to great popularity with Lucky Strike Dance Hour program and, in December 1932, on Sundays at nine P.M., the program for Jergens Lotion on the NBC Blue Network. Weekly Winchell quarter hour of insider gossip and general news soon claims radio's largest audience, and his opening gambit—"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, let's go to press!"— becomes part of American parlance.

MARCH 1932. Begins covering Lindbergh kidnapping case, aided in his coverage by tips from FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover; continues to cover the case through the arrest of Bruno Hauptmann in 1934 and the trial in 1935.

FEBRUARY 1933. Almost alone among public commentators and among well-known Jews, begins public attack on Hitler and American Nazis, including Bund leader Fritz Kuhn; continues attack on radio and in column until outbreak of World War Two; coins neologisms "razis" and "swastinkers" to

ridicule the Nazi movement.

JANUARY–MARCH 1935. Lauded for his work covering Hauptmann trial by J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover and Winchell subsequently trade information about American Nazis that winds up in Winchell's column.

Support in column for Roosevelt and New Deal leads to May White House invitation and regular communication between the president and Winchell. Feud grows between Hearst and Winchell over Winchell's public support of FDR. Friendship develops between Winchell and New York neighbor, mobster Frank Costello.
Winchell's combined audience for column and newscast estimated at fifty million, more than a third of America's population; his annual salary of $ 800, 000 places him among highest-paid Americans. Winchell steps up attack on pro-Nazi activities with features in his column such as "The Winchell Column vs. The Fifth Column." Strongly endorses FDR for unprecedented third term; writes pseudonymous columns for PM attacking Republican candidate Willkie after Hearst censors Winchell's criticism of Willkie in Daily Mirror.

APRIL–MAY 1941. Attacks Lindbergh for isolationist and pro-German statements; warns Nazi foreign minister von Ribbentrop that America has the will to fight, and is then attacked by Senator Burton K. Wheeler for "blitzkrieging the American people into this war."

SEPTEMBER 1941. After Lindbergh's Des Moines speech charging Jews with pushing America toward war, writes that Lindbergh's "halo has become his noose" and repeatedly attacks Lindbergh as well as Senators Wheeler, Nye, Rankin, and others he identifies as pro-Nazi.

DECEMBER 1941–FEBRUARY 1972. After America's entrance into World War Two, Winchell's newscasts and columns deal predominantly with war news; as lieutenant commander in naval reserve, presses FDR for assignment and is called to active duty in November 1942. With end of war, turns to far right; becomes fierce foe of Soviet Union and anti-Communist supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Fades into near obscurity in mid-1950s; at his death in 1972, funeral attended only by his daughter.

BURTON K. WHEELER 1882–1975

NOVEMBER 1920–NOVEMBER 1922. After defying Montana's powerful giant, Anaconda Copper Mining Company, as Montana state legislator and after

opposing human rights violations committed during postwar Red Scare, Wheeler is badly defeated in 1920 run for governor, but in 1922 elected as Democrat to

U.S. Senate for the first of four terms with the strong backing of farmers and labor. Over the years, converts Montana state government into bipartisan Wheeler machine.

FEBRUARY–NOVEMBER 1924. Chosen to head Senate inquiry into Teapot Dome graft scandal, which leads to resignation of President Coolidge's attorney general, Harry M. Dougherty, and humiliation of Coolidge's Justice Department. Abandons Democrats—and Democratic ticket headed by John W. Davis—to run for vice president on Progressive Party ticket with Wisconsin senator Robert M. La Follette. Coolidge overwhelmingly defeats both Democrats and Progressives, though latter party polls six million votes nationwide and nearly forty percent of vote in Montana.

1932–1937. Prior to Democratic Convention in 1932, visits sixteen states to promote Roosevelt nomination. Despite being the first national figure to endorse Democratic candidate and by and large sympathetic to New Deal social reform, in 1937 Wheeler bitterly opposes the president over his legislative proposal to enlarge Supreme Court and "pack" it with New Deal supporters; Wheeler's leadership leads to controversial bill's defeat, and aggravates personal enmity between him and the president.

Wheeler's Montana machine works to undermine his Democratic rival, Congressman Jerry O'Connell, aiding election to the House of Jacob Thorkelson, a right-wing Republican labeled by Walter Winchell the "mouthpiece of the Nazi movement in Congress." Thorkelson calls Winchell a "Jewish vilifier" and files suit against him after Winchell includes Thorkelson in Liberty magazine series of articles called "Americans We Can Do Without." Congressman O'Connell, commenting on electoral activities of Wheeler Democrats, describes Wheeler as a "Benedict Arnold to his party and a traitor to his president."

1940–1941. Wheeler for President club formed in Montana by influential Democrats; in his home state and elsewhere, considered a formidable contender for Democratic nomination until Roosevelt announces his candidacy for a third term. In Senate, Wheeler increasingly aligned with Republicans and southern Democrats against liberal Roosevelt wing of Democratic Party. Vociferously opposes American intervention in European war. In June 1940 threatens to bolt Democratic Party "if it is going to be a war party." Meets that month to make plans "for countering war agitation and propaganda" with Charles A. Lindbergh and a group of isolationist senators; on Senate floor, defends Lindbergh against accusations of being pro-Nazi, and some months

later, after Roosevelt publicly compares Lindbergh to a Civil War "Copperhead" (a northerner who sympathized with the South), calls the remark "shocking and appalling to every right-thinking American." Speaking over NBC radio network, proposes an eight-point peace proposal for negotiating with Hitler and receives congratulatory telegram from Lindbergh. Meets with Yale students planning to organize America First Committee and assumes role of unofficial adviser; along with Lindbergh, becomes most popular speaker at AFC rallies. Speaks out against draft, calling Roosevelt's peacetime conscription proposal "a step toward totalitarianism." On Senate floor, arguing against Lend-Lease bill, says, "If the American people want a dictatorship—if they want a totalitarian form of government and if they want war—this bill should be steam-rollered through Congress, as is the wont of President Roosevelt." Claims Lend-Lease, if passed, "will plow under every fourth American boy," prompting Roosevelt to label Wheeler's remark "the most untruthful. . .most dastardly, unpatriotic thing. . .that has been said in public life in my generation." Publicly—and prematurely— reveals that U.S. is sending troops to Iceland; White House, along with Prime Minister Churchill, accuses Wheeler of endangering American and British lives. Again charged with compromising military secrecy when, in November 1941, he leaks to isolationist Chicago Tribune a classified War Department document disclosing U.S. strategy in the event of war.

DECEMBER 1941–DECEMBER 1946. Following Pearl Harbor, supports war effort, arguing, however, that America's alliance with Soviet Union aids survival of Communist government. In 1944, claiming "Communists are behind MVA," sides against liberals and with Montana Power Company and Anaconda Copper Company in helping defeat Missouri Valley counterpart to Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Subsequently loses last of Montana Democratic support and is defeated in 1946 Senate primary campaign by young Montana liberal Leif Erickson.

1950S. Practices law in Washington, D.C. Allies himself ideologically and politically with Senator Joseph McCarthy.

HENRY FORD 1863–1947

1903–1905. First Ford automobile, the two-cylinder, eight- horsepower Model A, designed by Henry Ford and manufactured by his newly incorporated Ford Motor Company, appears in 1903, selling for $ 850. Higher- priced models appear over next few years.

Designed for rural America, Model T Ford is introduced and, until 1927, is the only model built by the company. Makes Ford the country's premier auto manufacturer, fulfilling his plan to "build a motorcar for the great multitude."

1910–1916. With his automotive associates, establishes a manufacturing process of sequential production and division of labor that evolves into the continuously moving assembly line—considered the greatest industrial advance since the advent of the Industrial Revolution—which leads to mass production of Model T. In 1914 Ford announces a basic wage of $ 5 for an eight-hour day; offer extends, in fact, to only a portion of Ford work force. Nonetheless his advocating the "Five Dollar Day" brings Ford much praise and fame as an enlightened businessman, if not as an enlightened thinker. "I don't like to read books," he explains. "They muss up my mind." "History," he declares, "is more or less bunk."

1916–1919. Name put into nomination for presidency at Republican National Convention and gains thirty-two first-ballot votes. Moves successfully to wield absolute power over all Ford enterprises. By 1916, company producing two thousand cars a day, with a production total to date of one million Model T's. At outbreak of World War One becomes active as pacifist opponent of war and attacks war profiteering. Announces to meeting of Ford officials, "I know who caused the war. The German-Jewish bankers. I have the evidence here. Facts. The German-Jewish bankers caused the war." With American entry into war, pledges to "operate without one cent of profit" in fulfilling government contracts, but neglects to do so. At urging of President Wilson, runs for Senate as a Democrat—though formerly identified as a Republican—and is defeated in close election. Attributes his losing to Wall Street "interests" and "the Jews."

In May, Dearborn Independent—local weekly bought by Ford in 1918—prints first of ninety-one detailed articles devoted to exposing "The International Jew: The World's Problem"; in ensuing issues, serializes the text of the fraudulent Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion while claiming the document—and its revelation of a Jewish plan for world domination—to be authentic. Circulation rises to close to 300, 000 by second year of publication; subscriptions to paper are forced upon Ford dealers as a company product, and the strongly anti-Semitic articles are collected in a four-volume edition, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.

1920S. Five millionth Ford car produced in 1921; more than half of cars sold in America are Model T's. Develops huge River Rouge plant and industrial city in Dearborn. Acquires forests, iron mines, and coal mines to supply auto company with raw materials. Diversifies Ford line of cars. His 1922

autobiography, My Life and Work, is a nonfiction bestseller, and the Ford name and legend are known throughout the world. Polls show him running ahead of President Harding in popularity, and is spoken of as potential Republican presidential candidate; in the fall of 1922 considers presidential run. Adolf Hitler, in 1923 interview, says, "We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing fascist movement in America." In mid-twenties, a suit for defamation filed against him by a Chicago Jewish lawyer is settled out of court, and in 1927, he retracts his attacks on Jews, agrees to discontinue anti-Semitic publications, and shuts down Dearborn Independent, a deficit enterprise that had cost him close to $ 5 million. When Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis to Detroit in August 1927, he meets Ford at Ford Airport and takes him in the famous plane for his first flight. Lindbergh interests Ford in aviation manufacturing. The two meet afterward numerous times, and in a 1940 Detroit interview Ford explains, "When Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews."

1931–1937. Competition from Chevrolet and Plymouth and impact of Depression produce large company losses despite innovation of Ford V-8 engine. Poor labor relations at River Rouge plant caused by speedup, job insecurity, and labor espionage. Efforts by United Auto Workers to organize Ford, along with General Motors and Chrysler, meet with violence and intimidation by Ford; Detroit vigilante group beats up labor organizers at River Rouge. Ford Company's labor policies condemned by National Labor Relations Board and considered worst in auto industry.

In July, on his seventy-fifth birthday, accepts Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government at a birthday dinner in Detroit for fifteen hundred prominent citizens. (Same medal awarded to Lindbergh in October ceremony in Germany, causing Interior Secretary Ickes to tell a December meeting of the Cleveland Zionist Society, "Henry Ford and Charles A. Lindbergh are the only two free citizens of a free country who obsequiously have accepted tokens of contemptuous distinction at a time when the bestower of them counts that day lost when he can commit no new crimes against humanity.") Suffers first of two strokes.

1939–1940. With outbreak of World War Two joins his friend Lindbergh in supporting isolationism and America First Committee. Shortly after Ford is appointed to America First executive committee, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Jewish director of Sears, Roebuck and Company, resigns because of Ford's anti-Semitic reputation. For a while meets regularly with anti-Semitic radio priest Father Coughlin, whose activities Roosevelt and Ickes believe Ford is financing. Lends financial support to the anti-Semitic demagogue Gerald L.K. Smith for his weekly radio broadcast and his living expenses. (Some years later,

Smith reprints Ford's International Jew in a new edition and maintains into the 1960s that Ford "never changed his opinion of Jews.")

1941–1947. Suffers second stroke. Company converts to defense production as war approaches; during war, produces B-24 bomber at huge Willow Run facility, where Lindbergh is hired as consulting adviser. Because of illness, Ford no longer able to run company and resigns in 1945. Dies April 1947, and 100, 000 mourners view the body. Vast fortune in company stock goes mainly to Ford Foundation, soon the world's wealthiest private foundation.

Other Historical Figures in the Work

BERNARD BARUCH (1870–1965) Financier and government adviser. As director of War Industries Board under Woodrow Wilson, mobilized nation's industrial resources for World War One. Member of the White House circle during Roosevelt administrations. Appointed by Truman as U.S. representative to U.N. Atomic Energy Commission in 1946.

RUGGIERO "RITCHIE THE BOOT" BOIARDO (1890–1984) Newark crime figure and local rival to racketeer Longy Zwillman; his influence strongest in the city's Italian First Ward, where he owned a popular restaurant.

LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (1856–1941) Born in Louisville, Kentucky, to cultivated immigrant Jewish family from Prague. Public interest and labor attorney in Boston. Early organizer of Zionist movement in America. Appointed by President Wilson as associate justice of Supreme Court, but only after intense four-month controversy in Senate Judiciary Committee and around the country, which Brandeis attributed to his being first Jew nominated to the court. Served twenty-three years, until 1939.

CHARLES E. COUGHLIN (1891–1979) Roman Catholic priest and pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan. Regarded Roosevelt as a

Communist and fervently admired Lindbergh. In the 1930s, disseminated strongly anti-Semitic ideas in a weekly nationwide radio broadcast and his periodical Social Justice, which was barred from the U.S. Mail during the war for violating the Espionage Act and ceased publication in 1942.

AMELIA EARHART (1897–1937) In 1932, set transatlantic record of fourteen hours and fifty-six minutes for flight from Newfoundland to Ireland; first woman to make unaccompanied flights across Atlantic and across Pacific from Honolulu to California. Her plane lost somewhere over the Pacific in 1937 attempt to fly around the world with navigator Frederick J. Noonan.

MEYER ELLENSTEIN (1885–1963) After careers as a dentist and a lawyer, chosen by fellow Newark city commissioners in 1933 to be mayor of Newark. The city's first and only Jewish mayor, served two terms, 1933–1941.

EDWARD FLANAGAN (1886–1948) In 1904, emigrated from Ireland to the U.S., where he began studies for priesthood; ordained 1912. In 1917, to provide for the welfare of homeless boys of all races and religions, founded Father Flanagan's Home for Boys in Omaha. Became national figure in 1938 because of popular film about Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan.

LEO FRANK (1884–1915) Manager of Atlanta pencil factory, found guilty of murdering Mary Phagan, a thirteen-year-old employee, on April 26, 1913; assaulted with a knife while prisoner and later forcibly removed from jail by local citizens and lynched, August 1915. Anti-Semitism believed to have played important part in dubious conviction.

FELIX FRANKFURTER (1882–1965) Roosevelt-appointed associate justice of U.S. Supreme Court, 1939–1962.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS (1897–1945) An early member of the Nazi Party, in 1933 became Hitler's propaganda minister and culture czar, responsible for overseeing the press, radio, movies, and theater, and mounting public spectacles such as

parades and mass rallies. Among the most devoted and brutal of Hitler's associates. In April 1945, with Germany destroyed and the Russians entering Berlin, he and his wife killed their six young children and together committed suicide.

HERMANN GÖRING (1893–1946) Founder and first head of the Gestapo, or secret police, and responsible for creation of the German air force. In 1940 Hitler named him as his successor, but dismissed him near war's end. Convicted at Nuremberg for war crimes and sentenced to death, he committed suicide two hours before execution.

HENRY (HANK) GREENBERG (1911–1986) Slugging first baseman for Detroit Tigers in 1930s and 1940s; fell two home runs short of Babe Ruth's record in 1938. Hero to Jewish baseball fans, he was first of two Jewish players elected to baseball's Hall of Fame.

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST (1863–1951) American publisher, considered the foremost proponent of the sensational, jingoistic "yellow journalism" addressed to a mass audience; his newspaper empire flourished into the 1930s. Originally aligned with Democratic populists, became increasingly right wing and a bitter enemy of FDR's.

HEINRICH HIMMLER (1900–1945) Nazi leader, commander of the SS, which controlled concentration camps, and chief of the Gestapo; in charge of racial "purification" programs, and second in power only to Hitler. Poisoned himself and died after being captured by British troops in May 1945.

J(OHN) EDGAR HOOVER (1895–1972) Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (originally the Bureau of Investigation, a subsidiary of the Department of Justice), 1924–1972.

HAROLD L. ICKES (1874–1952) A progressive Republican turned Democrat, served nearly thirteen years as Roosevelt's secretary of the interior, making his the

second-longest tenure of any Roosevelt cabinet member. A dedicated conservationist and an active foe of fascism.

FRITZ KUHN (1886–1951) German-born veteran of World War One, emigrated to America in 1927, and by 1938, as Bundesleiter who considered himself the American Führer, had established the German-American Bund as most powerful, most active, and richest Nazi group in U.S., with membership of twenty-five thousand. Convicted of larceny in 1939, denaturalized in 1943, deported to Germany in 1945. In 1948, convicted by German denazification court of attempting to transplant Nazism to U.S. and of having close ties to Hitler; sentenced to ten years at hard labor.

HERBERT H. LEHMAN (1878–1963) A partner in Lehman Brothers, banking house founded by his family. Lieutenant governor of New York under Governor Roosevelt; succeeded Roosevelt as governor, 1932–1942. New Deal supporter and strong interventionist. As Democratic senator from New York (1949–1957), early opponent of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

JOHN L. LEWIS (1880–1969) American labor leader. In 1935, as president of the United Mine Workers, broke with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to form the new Committee for Industrial Organization, which became the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1938. Initially a supporter of Roosevelt's, backed Republican Willkie in 1940 election and resigned CIO presidency after Willkie's defeat. Strikes by UMW during the war led to further enmity between Lewis and the administration.

ANNE SPENCER MORROW LINDBERGH (1906–2001) American author and aviator. Born to wealth and privilege in Englewood, New Jersey; her father, Dwight Morrow, a partner in the investment firm of J. P. Morgan and Co., the U.S. ambassador to Mexico during the Hoover administration, and a Republican senator from New Jersey; and her mother, Elizabeth Reeve Cutter Morrow, a writer, an educator, and, briefly, the acting president of Smith College, where Morrow received an A.B. in literature in 1928. Introduced to Charles Lindbergh the year before, while visiting her family at the ambassador's residence in Mexico City. For details of Morrow's life after that meeting, see True

Chronology, Charles A. Lindbergh.

HENRY MORGENTHAU, JR.(1891–1967) Roosevelt-appointed secretary of the Treasury, 1934–1945.

VINCENT MURPHY (1888–1976) Meyer Ellenstein's successor as mayor of Newark, 1941–1949. Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey in 1943 and dominant figure in New Jersey labor for thirty-five years after his 1933 election as secretary-treasurer of state Federation of Labor.

GERALD P. NYE (1892–1971) Ardently isolationist Republican senator from North Dakota, 1925–1945.

WESTBROOK PEGLER (1894–1969) Right-wing journalist whose column "As Pegler Sees It" appeared in Hearst newspapers from 1944 to 1962. In 1941 won Pulitzer Prize for expose of labor racketeering. Fierce critic of the Roosevelts and the New Deal, which he characterized as Communist-inspired, and openly hostile toward the Jews. Close supporter and friend of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and adviser to McCarthy's investigating committee.

JOACHIM PRINZ (1902–1988) Rabbi, author, and civil rights activist, served as rabbi of Temple B'nai Abraham, Newark, 1939–1977.

JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP (1893–1946) Hitler's chief foreign policy adviser in 1933 and minister for foreign affairs, 1938–1945. With Soviet foreign minister Molotov signed 1939 non-aggression pact that included secret agreement to partition Poland. Pact opened way for World War Two. Found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and, on October 16, 1946, became first of condemned Nazis to be hanged.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT (1884–1962) Niece of Theodore Roosevelt, wife of her distant cousin FDR, and mother of their daughter and five sons. As First Lady, made speeches for liberal social causes, lectured on the status of minorities, the

underprivileged, and women, spoke out against fascism, wrote daily syndicated column for sixty newspapers, and during World War Two was cochair of the Office of Civilian Defense. As U.N. delegate appointed by President Truman, supported establishment of a Jewish state, and in 1952 and 1956 campaigned for Adlai Stevenson for president. Appointed again as delegate to U.N. by President Kennedy, whose Bay of Pigs invasion she opposed.

LEVERETT SALTONSTALL (1892–1979) Descendant of Sir Richard Saltonstall, an original member of the Massachusetts Bay Company who arrived in America in 1630. Republican governor of Massachusetts, 1939–1944; Republican senator, 1944–1967.

GERALD L. K. SMITH (1898–1976) Minister and famous orator, allied first with Huey Long and later with Father Coughlin and Henry Ford, both of whom supported him in his unrelenting hatred of Jews. His anti-Semitic magazine, The Cross and the Flag, blamed the Jews for causing the Depression and World War Two. In 1942, polled 100, 000 votes in Michigan as Republican nominee for Senate. Maintained that Roosevelt was a Jew, that The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion was an authentic document, and, after the war, that the Holocaust had never taken place.

ALLIE STOLZ (1918–2000) Lightweight boxer from Jewish Newark. Won 73 of 85 fights, losing two title fights in the 1940s; the first, a controversial fifteen-round decision, to champion Sammy Angott; the second—leading to his retirement in 1946—a thirteenth-round knockout, to champion Bob Montgomery.

DOROTHY THOMPSON (1893–1961) Journalist, political activist, and columnist syndicated in 170 newspapers during the 1930s. Early foe of Nazism and Hitler and bitter critic of Lindbergh's politics. Married to novelist Sinclair Lewis in 1928 and divorced in 1942. Opposed Zionism and supported Palestinian Arabs in 1940s and 1950s.

DAVID T. WILENTZ (1894–1988) New Jersey attorney general (1934–1944) whose prosecution of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case led to the conviction and

execution of Bruno Hauptmann. Later, influential in New Jersey Democratic organization and adviser to three Democratic governors of the state.

ABNER "LONGY" ZWILLMAN (1904–1959) Newark-born Prohibition era bootlegger who was leading New Jersey mobster from 1920s to 1940s. Member of East Coast racketeering's "Big Six," among them Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello. Extensive criminal activities exposed by Senate Crime Committee's televised hearings in 1951. Committed suicide eight years later.

Some Documentation

Speech by Charles Lindbergh, "Who Are the War Agitators?," delivered at the America First Committee's rally in Des Moines on September 1 , 1941. The text that follows appears at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/filmmore/reference/primary/desmoinesspeech

It is now two years since this latest European war began. From that day in September, 1939, until the present moment, there has been an ever-increasing effort to force the United States into the conflict.

That effort has been carried on by foreign interests, and by a small minority of our own people; but it has been so successful that, today, our country stands on the verge of war.

At this time, as the war is about to enter its third winter, it seems appropriate to review the circumstances that have led us to our present position. Why are we on the verge of war? Was it necessary for us to become so deeply involved? Who is responsible for changing our national policy from one of neutrality and independence to one of entanglement in European affairs?

Personally, I believe there is no better argument against our intervention than a study of the causes and developments of the present war. I have often said that if the true facts and issues were placed before the American people, there would be no danger of our involvement.

Here, I would like to point out to you a fundamental difference

between the groups who advocate foreign war, and those who believe in an independent destiny for America.

If you will look back over the record, you will find that those of us who oppose intervention have constantly tried to clarify facts and issues; while the interventionists have tried to hide facts and confuse issues.

We ask you to read what we said last month, last year, and even before the war began. Our record is open and clear, and we are proud of it.

We have not led you on by subterfuge and propaganda. We have not resorted to steps short of anything, in order to take the American people where they did not want to go.

What we said before the elections, we say again and again, and again today. And we will not tell you tomorrow that it was just campaign oratory. Have you ever heard an interventionist, or a British agent, or a member of the administration in Washington ask you to go back and study a record of what they have said since the war started? Are their self-styled defenders of democracy willing to put the issue of war to a vote of our people? Do you find these crusaders for foreign freedom of speech, or the removal of censorship here in our own country?

The subterfuge and propaganda that exists in our country is obvious on every side. Tonight, I shall try to pierce through a portion of it, to the naked facts which lie beneath.

When this war started in Europe, it was clear that the American people were solidly opposed to entering it. Why shouldn't we be? We had the best defensive position in the world; we had a tradition of independence from Europe; and the one time we did take part in a European war left European problems unsolved, and debts to America unpaid.

National polls showed that when England and France declared war on Germany, in 1939, less than 10 percent of our population favored a similar course for America.

But there were various groups of people, here and abroad, whose interests and beliefs necessitated the involvement of the United States in the war. I shall point out some of these groups tonight, and outline their methods of procedure. In doing this, I must speak with the utmost frankness, for in order to counteract their efforts, we must know exactly who they are.

The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.

Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the

Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.

I am speaking here only of war agitators, not of those sincere but misguided men and women who, confused by misinformation and frightened by propaganda, follow the lead of the war agitators.

As I have said, these war agitators comprise only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.

Let us consider these groups, one at a time.

First, the British: It is obvious and perfectly understandable that Great Britain wants the United States in the war on her side. England is now in a desperate position. Her population is not large enough and her armies are not strong enough to invade the continent of Europe and win the war she declared against Germany.

Her geographical position is such that she cannot win the war by the use of aviation alone, regardless of how many planes we send her. Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.

As you all know, we were left with the debts of the last European war; and unless we are more cautious in the future than we have been in the past, we will be left with the debts of the present case. If it were not for her hope that she can make us responsible for the war financially, as well as militarily, I believe England would have negotiated a peace in Europe many months ago, and be better off for doing so.

England has devoted, and will continue to devote every effort to get us into the war. We know that she spent huge sums of money in this country during the last war in order to involve us. Englishmen have written books about the cleverness of its use.

We know that England is spending great sums of money for propaganda in America during the present war. If we were Englishmen, we would do the same. But our interest is first in America; and as Americans, it is essential for us to realize the effort that British interests are making to draw us into their war.

The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would

be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.

We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.

The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. Its members have used the war emergency to obtain a third presidential term for the first time in American history. They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.

The power of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the maintenance of a wartime emergency. The prestige of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the success of Great Britain to whom the president attached his political future at a time when most people thought that England and France would easily win the war. The danger of the Roosevelt administration lies in its subterfuge. While its members have promised us peace, they have led us to war heedless of the platform upon which they were elected.

In selecting these three groups as the major agitators for war, I have included only those whose support is essential to the war party. If any one of these groups—the British, the Jewish, or the administration—stops agitating for

war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement.

I do not believe that any two of them are powerful enough to carry this country to war without the support of the third. And to these three, as I have said, all other war groups are of secondary importance.

When hostilities commenced in Europe, in 1939, it was realized by these groups that the American people had no intention of entering the war. They knew it would be worse than useless to ask us for a declaration of war at that time. But they believed that this country could be entered into the war in very much the same way we were entered into the last one.

They planned: first, to prepare the United States for foreign war under the guise of American defense; second, to involve us in the war, step by step, without our realization; third, to create a series of incidents which would force us into the actual conflict. These plans were, of course, to be covered and assisted by the full power of their propaganda.

Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried antiwar articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly antiwar. Many others dared no longer speak.

Before long, lecture halls that were open to the advocates of war were closed to speakers who opposed it. A fear campaign was inaugurated. We were told that aviation, which has held the British fleet off the continent of Europe, made America more vulnerable than ever before to invasion. Propaganda was in full swing.

There was no difficulty in obtaining billions of dollars for arms under the guise of defending America. Our people stood united on a program of defense. Congress passed appropriation after appropriation for guns and planes and battleships, with the approval of the overwhelming majority of our citizens. That a large portion of these appropriations was to be used to build arms for Europe, we did not learn until later. That was another step.

To use a specific example; in 1939, we were told that we should increase our air corps to a total of 5, 000 planes. Congress passed the necessary legislation. A few months later, the administration told us that the United States should have at least 50, 000 planes for our national safety. But almost as fast as fighting planes were turned out from our factories, they were sent abroad, although our own air corps was in the utmost need of new equipment; so that

today, two years after the start of war, the American army has a few hundred thoroughly modern bombers and fighters—less in fact, than Germany is able to produce in a single month.

Ever since its inception, our arms program has been laid out for the purpose of carrying on the war in Europe, far more than for the purpose of building an adequate defense for America.

Now at the same time we were being prepared for a foreign war, it was necessary, as I have said, to involve us in the war. This was accomplished under that now famous phrase "steps short of war."

England and France would win if the United States would only repeal its arms embargo and sell munitions for cash, we were told. And then a familiar refrain began, a refrain that marked every step we took toward war for many months—"the best way to defend America and keep out of war," we were told, was "by aiding the Allies."

First, we agreed to sell arms to Europe; next, we agreed to loan arms to Europe; then we agreed to patrol the ocean for Europe; then we occupied a European island in the war zone. Now, we have reached the verge of war.

The war groups have succeeded in the first two of their three major steps into war. The greatest armament program in our history is under way.

We have become involved in the war from practically every standpoint except actual shooting. Only the creation of sufficient "incidents" yet remains; and you see the first of these already taking place, according to plan—a plan that was never laid before the American people for their approval.

Men and women of Iowa: only one thing holds this country from war today. That is the rising opposition of the American people. Our system of democracy and representative government is on test today as it has never been before. We are on the verge of a war in which the only victor would be chaos and prostration.

We are on the verge of a war for which we are still unprepared, and for which no one has offered a feasible plan for victory—a war which cannot be won without sending our soldiers across the ocean to force a landing on a hostile coast against armies stronger than our own.

We are on the verge of war, but it is not yet too late to stay out. It is not too late to show that no amount of money, or propaganda, or patronage can force a free and independent people into war against its will. It is not yet too late to retrieve and to maintain the independent American destiny that our forefathers established in this new world.

The entire future rests upon our shoulders. It depends upon our action, our courage, and our intelligence. If you oppose our intervention in the

war, now is the time to make your voice heard.

Help us to organize these meetings; and write to your representatives in Washington. I tell you that the last stronghold of democracy and representative government in this country is in our house of representatives and our senate.

There, we can still make our will known. And if we, the American people, do that, independence and freedom will continue to live among us, and there will be no foreign war.

From Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg, 1998

Peace, Lindbergh felt, could exist only so long as "we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races." He viewed aviation as "a gift from heaven to those Western nations who were already the leaders of their era. . .a tool specially shaped for Western hands, a scientific art which others only copy in a mediocre fashion, another barrier between the teeming millions of Asia and the Grecian inheritance of Europe— one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown."

Lindbergh believed the Soviet Union had become the most evil empire on earth and that Western civilization depended on repelling it and the Asiatic powers that lay beyond its borders—the "Mongol and Persian and Moor." He wrote that it also depended on "a united strength among ourselves; on a strength too great for foreign armies to challenge; on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or an infiltration of inferior blood. . ."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1997 Philip Roth won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral. In 1998 he received the National Medal of Arts at the White House, and in 2002 received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, previously awarded to John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow, among others. He has twice won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

In 2005 Roth will become the third living American writer to have his work published in a comprehensive, definitive edition by the Library of America. The last of the eight volumes is scheduled for publication in 2013.

Table of Contents

1 June 1940–October 1940 Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War 2 November 1940–June 1941 Loudmouth Jew

3 June 1941–December 1941 Following Christians 4 January 1942–February 1942 The Stump

5 March 1942–June 1942 Never Before 6 May 1942–June 1942 Their Country

7 June 1942–October 1942 The Winchell Riots 8 October 1942 Bad Days

9 October 1942 Perpetual Fear Postscript

Note to the Reader

A True Chronology of the Major Figures Other Historical Figures in the Work Some Documentation

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A Clockwork orange by anthony burgess

ANTHONY BURGESS

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Introduction

Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917

and is a graduate of the University there. After six years in the Army he worked as an instructor for the Central Advisory Council for Forces Education, as a lecturer in Phonetics and as a grammar school master. From 1954 till 1960 he was an education officer in the Colonial Service, stationed in Malaya and Brunei.

He became a full-time writer in 1960, though his first novel had been published four years earlier. A late starter in the art of fiction, he had spent his creative energy previously on music, and he has composed many full-scale works for orchestra and other media.

Anthony Burgess maintains his old interest in music and in linguistics, and these have conditioned the style and content of the novels he writes. Though he and his wife no longer live abroad, foreign travel remains a great source of inspiration. He has, to date, published many novels, a book on linguistics, and various critical works.

His other books in Penguin are 'Inside Mr Enderby' , 'Tremor of Intent' and 'Nothing Like the Sun', a story of Shakespeare's love-life.

INTRODUCTION

A Clockwork Orange Resucked

I FIRST PUBLISHED the novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, which ought to be far enough in the past for it to be erased from the world's literary memory. It refuses to be erased, however, and for this the film version of the book made by Stanley Kubrick may be held chiefly responsible. I should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons, but this is not permitted. I receive mail from students who try to write theses about it, or requests from Japanese dramaturges to turn it into a sort of Noh play. It seems likely to survive, while other works of mine that I value more bite the dust. This is not an unusual experience for an artist. Rachmaninoff used to groan because he was known mainly for a Prelude in C Sharp Minor which he wrote as a boy, while the works of his maturity never got into the programmes. Kids cut their pianistic teeth on a Minuet in G which Beethoven composed only so that he could detest it. I have to go on living with A Clockwork Orange, and this means I have a sort of authorial duty to it. I have a very special duty to it in the United States, and I had better now explain what that duty is.

Let me put the situation baldly. A Clockwork Orange has never been published entire in America. The book I wrote is divided into three sections of seven chapters each. Take out your pocket calculator and you will find that these add up to a total of twenty- one chapters. 21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at 21 you got the vote and assumed adult responsibility.

Whatever its symbology, the number 21 was the number I started out with. Novelists of my stamp are interested in what is called arithmology, meaning that [a] number has to mean something in human terms when they handle it. The number of chapters is never entirely arbitrary. Just as a musical composer starts off with a vague image of bulk and duration, so a novelist begins with an

image of length, and this image is expressed in the number of sections and the number of chapters into which the work will be disposed. Those twenty one chapters were important to me.

But they were not important to my New York publisher. The book he brought out had only twenty chapters. He insisted on cutting out the twenty-first. I could, of course, have demurred at this and taken my book elsewhere, but it was considered that he was being charitable in accepting the work at all, and that all other New York, or Boston, publishers would kick out the manuscript on its dog-ear. I needed money back in 1961, even the pittance I was being offered as an advance, and if the condition of the book's acceptance was also its truncation - well, so be it. So there is a profound difference between A Clockwork Orange as Great Britain knows it and the somewhat slimmer volume that bears the same name in the United States of America.

Let us go further. The rest of the world was sold the book out of Great Britain, and so most versions... have the original twenty-one chapters. Now when Stanley Kubrick made his film - though he made it in Englad - he followed the American version and, so it seemed to his audiences outside America, ended the story somewhat prematurely. People wrote to me about this - indeed much of my later life has been expended on Xeroxing statements of intention and the frustration of intention - while both Kubrick and my New York publisher coolly bask in the rewards of their misdemeanor. Life is, of course, terrible.

Burgess goes on to discuss the merits of the 21st chapter and the meaning of the title (and the loss thereof in translation), which I'll type up after dosing up on more Coke. He ends with:

Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgegment may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their

own best critics, nor are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the King of the Jews. 'What I have written I have Written.' We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it. I leave what I wrote with what Dr.

Johnson called frigid indifference to the judgement of that

.00000001 of the American population which cares about such things. Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.

Anthony Burgess, November 1986

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

THIS NEW, American edition of A Clockwork Orange, as the author so forcefully puts it in his Introduction, is longer by one chapter - the last. This chapter was included in the original, British edition but dropped from the American edition and therefore from Stanley Kubrick's film version. The author and his American publisher - who is delighted to give this fascinating book a new and larger life - differ in their memories as to whether or not the dropping of the last chapter, which changed the book's impact dramatically, was a condition of publication or merely a suggestion made for conceptual reasons. Whichever is true, the larger truth is that A Clockwork Orange is a modern classic which must, indeed, be made available to Anthony Burgess's American readers precisely in the form he wishes it to be. It is so done.

Eric Swenson, December 1986

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Part 1

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.

Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used

to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vel- locet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other vesh- ches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen

minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in

your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this even- ing I'm starting off the story with.

Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to

tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his

blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired

ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts. But, as they say, money isn't everything.

The four of us were dressed in the height of fashion,

which in those days was a pair of black very tight tights with the old jelly mould, as we called it, fitting on the crotch underneath the tights, this being to protect and also a sort of a design you could viddy clear enough in a certain light, so

that I had one in the shape of a spider, Pete had a rooker (a hand, that is), Georgie had a very fancy one of a flower, and poor old Dim had a very hound-and-horny one of a clown's litso (face, that is). Dim not ever having much of an idea of things and being, beyond all shadow of a doubting thomas, the dimmest of we four. Then we wore waisty jackets without lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders ('pletchoes'

we called them) which were a kind of a mockery of having real shoulders like that. Then, my brothers, we had these off-white cravats which looked like whipped-up kartoffel or spud with a sort of a design made on it with a fork. We wore our hair not too long and we had flip horrorshow boots for kicking.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There were three devotchkas sitting at the counter all together, but there were four of us malchicks and it was usually like one for all and all for one. These sharps were dressed in the heighth of fashion too, with purple and green and orange wigs on their gullivers, each one not costing less than three or four weeks of those sharps' wages, I should reckon, and make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies, that is, and the rot painted very wide). Then they had long black very straight dresses, and on the groody part of them they had little badges of like silver with different malchicks' names on them - Joe and Mike and suchlike. These were sup- posed to be the names of the different malchicks they'd spatted with before they were fourteen. They kept looking our way and I nearly felt like saying the three of us (out of the corner of my rot, that is) should go off for a bit of pol and leave poor old Dim behind, because it would be just a matter of kupetting Dim a demi-litre of white but this time with a dollop of synthemesc in it, but that wouldn't really have been playing like the game. Dim was very very ugly and like his name, but he was a horrorshow filthy fighter and very handy with the boot.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

The chelloveck sitting next to me, there being this long big plushy seat that ran round three walls, was well away with his glazzies glazed and sort of burbling slovos like "Aristotle wishy washy works outing cyclamen get forficulate smartish". He was in the land all right, well away, in orbit, and I knew what it was like, having tried it like everybody else had done, but at this time I'd got to thinking it was a cowardly sort of a veshch, O my brothers. You'd lay there after you'd drunk the old moloko and then you got the messel that everything all round you was sort of in the past. You could viddy it all right, all of it, very clear - tables, the stereo, the lights, the sharps and the malchicks - but it was like some veshch that used to be there but was not there not no more. And you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be, and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like you might be a cat. You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care, and you waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow, then

yellower and yellower all the time. Then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or, as it might be, a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a big big big mesto, bigger than the whole world, and you were just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over. You came back to here and now whimpering sort of, with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo. Now that's very nice but very cowardly. You were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God. That sort of thing could sap all the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

The stereo was on and you got the idea that the singer's goloss was moving from one part of the bar to another, flying up to the ceiling and then swooping down again and whizzing from wall to wall. It was Berti Laski rasping a real starry oldie called 'You Blister My Paint'. One of the three

ptitsas at the counter, the one with the green wig, kept push- ing her belly out and pulling it in in time to what they called the music. I could feel the knives in the old moloko starting to prick, and now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one. So I yelped: "Out out out out!" like a doggie, and then I cracked this veck who was sitting next to me and well away and burbling a horrorshow crack on the ooko or earhole, but he didn't feel it and went on with his "Telephonic hardware and when the farfarculule gets rubadubdub". He'd feel it all right when he came to, out of the land.

"Where out?" said Georgie.

"Oh, just to keep walking," I said, "and viddy what turns up, O my little brothers."

So we scatted out into the big winter nochy and walked down Marghanita Boulevard and then turned into Boothby

Avenue, and there we found what we were pretty well looking for, a malenky jest to start off the evening with. There was a doddery starry schoolmaster type veck, glasses on and his rot open to the cold nochy air. He had books under his arm and a crappy umbrella and was coming round the corner from the Public Biblio, which not many lewdies used these days. You never really saw many of the older bourgeois type out after nightfall those days, what with the shortage of police and we fine young malchickiwicks about, and this prof type chello- veck was the only one walking in the whole of the street. So we goolied up to him, very polite, and I said: "Pardon me, brother."

He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four

of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but he said: "Yes? What is it?" in a very loud teacher-type goloss, as if he was trying to show us he wasn't poogly. I said:

"I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still reads, brother."

"Oh," he said, all shaky. "Is it? Oh, I see." And he kept look-

ing from one to the other of we four, finding himself now like in the middle of a very smiling and polite square.

"Yes," I said. "It would interest me greatly, brother, if you

would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you have under your arm. I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother."

"Clean," he said. "Clean, eh?" And then Pete skvatted these three books from him and handed them round real skorry.

Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim.

The one I had was called 'Elementary Crystallography', so I opened it up and said: "Excellent, really first-class," keeping turning the pages. Then I said in a very shocked type goloss: "But what is this here? What is this filthy slovo? I blush to look at this word. You disappoint me, brother, you do really."

"But," he tried, "but, but."

"Now," said Georgie, "here is what I should call real dirt. There's one slovo beginning with an f and another with a c." He had a book called 'The Miracle of the Snowflake.'

"Oh," said poor old Dim, smotting over Pete's shoulder and going too far, like he always did, "it says here what he done to her, and there's a picture and all. Why," he said, "you're nothing but a filthy-minded old skitebird."

"An old man of your age, brother," I said, and I started to

rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the ones they had. Dim and Pete doing a tug-of-war with 'The Rhombohedral System'. The starry prof type began to creech: "But those are not mine, those are the property of the mu- nicipality, this is sheer wantonness and vandal work," or some such slovos. And he tried to sort of wrest the books back off of us, which was like pathetic. "You deserve to be taught a lesson, brother," I said, "that you do." This crystal book I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like, but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls

of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim

just dancing about like the clown he was. "There you are," said

Pete. "There's the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness."

"You naughty old veck, you," I said, and then we began to filly about with him. Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush, though they were hard bastards like, being made of some new horrorshow plastic stuff. The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms - "wuf waf wof" - so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful. So all we did then was to pull his outer platties off, stripping him down to his vest and long underpants (very starry; Dim smecked his head off near), and then Pete kicks him lovely in his pot, and we let him go. He went sort of staggering off, it not having been too hard of a tolchock really, going "Oh oh oh", not knowing where or what was what really, and we had a snigger at him and then riffled through his pockets, Dim dancing round with his crappy umbrella meanwhile, but there wasn't much in them.

There were a few starry letters, some of them dating right back to 1960 with "My dearest dearest" in them and all that

chepooka, and a keyring and a starry leaky pen. Old Dim gave

up his umbrella dance and of course had to start reading one of the letters out loud, like to show the empty street he could read. "My darling one," he recited, in this very high type goloss, "I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out

at night." Then he let out a very shoomny smeck - "Ho ho ho"

- pretending to start wiping his yahma with it. "All right," I

said. "Let it go, O my brothers." In the trousers of this starry veck there was only a malenky bit of cutter (money, that is) - not more than three gollies - so we gave all his messy little coin the scatter treatment, it being hen-korm to the amount

of pretty polly we had on us already. Then we smashed the

umbrella and razrezzed his platties and gave them to the blowing winds, my brothers, and then we'd finished with the starry teacher type veck. We hadn't done much, I know, but that was only like the start of the evening and I make no appy polly loggies to thee or thine for that. The knives in the milk plus were stabbing away nice and horrorshow now.

The next thing was to do the sammy act, which was one way to unload some of our cutter so we'd have more of an

incentive like for some shop-crasting, as well as it being a way of buying an alibi in advance, so we went into the Duke of New York on Amis Avenue and sure enough in the snug there were three or four old baboochkas peeting their black and

suds on SA (State Aid). Now we were the very good mal-

chicks, smiling good evensong to one and all, though these wrinkled old lighters started to get all shook, their veiny old rookers all trembling round their glasses, and making the suds spill on the table. "Leave us be, lads," said one of them, her face all mappy with being a thousand years old, "we're only poor old women." But we just made with the zoobies, flash flash flash, sat down, rang the bell, and waited for the boy to come. When he came, all nervous and rubbing his rookers on his grazzy apron, we ordered us four veterans - a veteran being rum and cherry brandy mixed, which was popular just then, some liking a dash of lime in it, that being the Canadian variation. Then I said to the boy:

"Give these poor old baboochkas over there a nourishing something. Large Scotchmen all round and something to take away." And I poured my pocket of deng all over the table, and the other three did likewise, O my brothers. So double firegolds were bought in for the scared starry lighters, and

they knew not what to do or say. One of them got out "Thanks, lads," but you could see they thought there was something dirty like coming. Anyway, they were each given a bottle of Yank General, cognac that is, to take away, and I gave money for them to be delivered each a dozen of black and suds that following morning, they to leave their stinking old cheenas' addresses at the counter. Then with the cutter that was left over we did purchase, my brothers, all the meat pies, pretzels, cheese-snacks, crisps and chocbars in that mesto, and those too were for the old sharps. Then we said: "Back in a minoota," and the old ptitsas were still saying: "Thanks, lads," and "God bless you, boys," and we were going out without one cent of cutter in our carmans.

"Makes you feel real dobby, that does," said Pete. You could viddy that poor old Dim the dim didn't quite pony all that, but he said nothing for fear of being called gloopy and a domeless wonderboy. Well, we went off now round the

corner to Attlee Avenue, and there was this sweets and cancers

shop still open. We'd left them alone near three months now and the whole district had been very quiet on the whole, so the armed millicents or rozz patrols weren't round there much, being more north of the river these days. We put our maskies on - new jobs these were, real horrorshow, wonder- fully done really; they were like faces of historical per- sonalities (they gave you the names when you bought) and I had Disraeli, Pete had Elvis Presley, Georgie had Henry VIII and poor old Dim had a poet veck called Peebee Shelley; they

were a real like disguise, hair and all, and they were some very special plastic veshch so you could roll it up when you'd done with it and hide it in your boot - then three of us went in.

Pete keeping chasso without, not that there was anything to worry about out there. As soon as we launched on the shop we went for Slouse who ran it, a big portwine jelly of a veck who viddied at once what was coming and made straight for the inside where the telephone was and perhaps his well-oiled

pooshka, complete with six dirty rounds. Dim was round that counter skorry as a bird, sending packets of snoutie flying and cracking over a big cut-out showing a sharp with all her zoobies going flash at the customers and her groodies near hanging out to advertise some new brand of cancers. What you could viddy then was a sort of a big ball rolling into the inside of the shop behind the curtain, this being old Dim and Slouse sort of locked in a death struggle. Then you could slooshy panting and snoring and kicking behind the curtain and veshches falling over and swearing and then glass going smash smash smash. Mother Slouse, the wife, was sort of froze behind the counter. We could tell she would creech murder given one chance, so I was round that counter very skorry and had a hold of her, and a horrorshow big lump she was too, all nuking of scent and with flipflop big bobbing groodies on her. I'd got my rooker round her rot to stop her belting out death and destruction to the four winds of

heaven, but this lady doggie gave me a large foul big bite on it and it was me that did the creeching, and then she opened up beautiful with a flip yell for the millicents. Well, then she had to be tolchocked proper with one of the weights for the

scales, and then a fair tap with a crowbar they had for opening

cases, and that brought the red out like an old friend. So we had her down on the floor and a rip of her platties for fun and a gentle bit of the boot to stop her moaning. And, viddying her lying there with her groodies on show, I wondered should I or not, but that was for later on in the evening. Then we cleaned the till, and there was flip horrorshow takings that nochy, and we had a few packs of the very best top cancers apiece, then off we went, my brothers.

"A real big heavy great bastard he was," Dim kept saying. I didn't like the look of Dim: he looked dirty and untidy, like a veck who'd been in a fight, which he had been, of course, but you should never look as though you have been. His cravat was like someone had trampled on it, his maskie had been

pulled off and he had floor-dirt on his litso, so we got him in an alleyway and tidied him up a malenky bit, soaking our tashtooks in spit to cheest the dirt off. The things we did for old Dim. We were back in the Duke of New York very skorry and I reckoned by my watch we hadn't been more than ten minutes away. The starry old baboochkas were still there on the black and suds and Scotchmen we'd bought them, and we said: "Hallo there, girlies, what's it going to be?" They started on the old "Very kind, lads, God bless you, boys," and so we rang the collocol and brought a different waiter in this time and we ordered beers with rum in, being sore athirst, my brothers, and whatever the old ptitsas wanted. Then I said to the old baboochkas: "We haven't been out of here, have we?

Been here all the time, haven't we?" They all caught on real skorry and said:

"That's right, lads. Not been out of our sight, you haven't. God bless you, boys," drinking.

Not that it mattered much, really. About half an hour went

by before there was any sign of life among the millicents, and then it was only two very young rozzes that came in, very pink under their big copper's shlemmies. One said:

"You lot know anything about the happenings at Slouse's shop this night?"

"Us?" I said, innocent. "Why, what happened?"

"Stealing and roughing. Two hospitalizations. Where've you lot been this evening?"

"I don't go for that nasty tone," I said. "I don't care much

for these nasty insinuations. A very suspicious nature all this betokeneth, my little brothers."

"They've been in here all night, lads," the old sharps started

to creech out. "God bless them, there's no better lot of boys living for kindness and generosity. Been here all the time they have. Not seen them move we haven't."

"We're only asking," said the other young millicent. "We've got our job to do like anyone else." But they gave us the nasty

warning look before they went out. As they were going out

we handed them a bit of lip-music: brrrrzzzzrrrr. But, myself, I couldn't help a bit of disappointment at things as they were those days. Nothing to fight against really. Everything as easy as kiss-my-sharries. Still, the night was still very young.

When we got outside of the Duke of New York we viddied by the main bar's long lighted window, a burbling old pyahnitsa or drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp blerp in between as though it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. One veshch I could never stand was that. I could never stand to see a moodge all filthy and rolling and burping and drunk, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real starry like this one was. He was sort of flattened to the wall and his platties were a disgrace, all creased and untidy and covered in cal and mud and filth and stuff. So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchoks, but he still went on singing. The song went:

And I will go back to my darling, my darling, When you, my darling, are gone.

But when Dim fisted him a few times on his filthy drunkard's rot he shut up singing and started to creech: "Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one." I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: "Oh. And what's stinking about it?"

He cried out: "It's a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no more." He was creeching out loud and waving his rookers and making real horrorshow with the slovos, only the odd blurp blurp coming from his keeshkas, like something was orbiting within, or like some very rude interrupting sort of a moodge making a shoom, so that this old veck kept sort of threatening it with his fists, shouting: "It's no world for any old man any longer, and that means that I'm not one bit

scared of you, my boyos, because I'm too drunk to feel the pain if you hit me, and if you kill me I'll be glad to be dead." We smecked and then grinned but said nothing, and then he said: "What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not more attention paid to earthly law nor order no more. So your worst you may do, you filthy cow- ardly hooligans." Then he gave us some lip-music - "Prrrrzzzzrrrr" - like we'd done to those young millicents, and then he started singing again:

Oh dear dear land, I fought for thee And brought thee peace and victory -

So we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos, but he still went on singing. Then we tripped him so he laid down flat and heavy and a bucketload of beer-vomit came whooshing out. That was disgusting so we gave him the boot, one go each, and then it was blood, not song nor vomit, that came out of his filthy old rot. Then we went on our way.

It was round by the Municipal Power Plant that we came across Billyboy and his five droogs. Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours or fives, these being like auto-teams, four being a comfy number for an

auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big night-war, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers. Billyboy was something that made me want to sick just to viddy his fat grinning litso, and he always had this von of very stale oil that's been used for frying over and over, even when he was dressed in his best platties, like now. They viddied us just as we viddied them, and there was like a very quit kind of watching each other now. This would be real,

this would be proper, this would be the nozh, the oozy, the britva, not just fisties and boots. Billyboy and his droogs

stopped what they were doing, which was just getting ready to perform something on a weepy young devotchka they had there, not more than ten, she creeching away but with her platties still on. Billyboy holding her by one rooker and his number-one, Leo, holding the other. They' d probably just been doing the dirty slovo part of the act before getting down to a malenky bit of ultra-violence. When they viddied us a- coming they let go of this boo-hooing little ptitsa, there

being plenty more where she came from, and she ran with her thin white legs flashing through the dark, still going "Oh oh oh". I said, smiling very wide and droogie: "Well, if it isn't fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou." And then we started.

There were four of us to six of them, like I have already indicated, but poor old Dim, for all his dimness, was worth three of the others in sheer madness and dirty fighting. Dim had a real horrorshow length of oozy or chain round his waist, twice wound round, and he unwound this and began to

swing it beautiful in the eyes or glazzies. Pete and Georgie had good sharp nozhes, but I for my own part had a fine starry horrorshow cut-throat britva which, at that time, I could flash and shine artistic. So there we were dratsing away in the dark, the old Luna with men on it just coming up, the stars stabbing away as it might be knives anxious to join in the dratsing.

With my britva I managed to slit right down the front of one of Billyboy's droog's platties, very very neat and not even touching the plott under the cloth. Then in the dratsing this droog of Billyboy's suddenly found himself all opened up like a peapod, with his belly bare and his poor old yarbles show- ing, and then he got very razdraz, waving and screaming</

and losing his guard and letting in old Dim with his chain snaking whisssssshhhhhhhhh, so that old Dim chained him right in the glazzies, and this droog of Billyboy's went totter-

ing off and howling his heart out. We were doing very hor- rorshow, and soon we had Billyboy's number-one down underfoot, blinded with old Dim's chain and crawling and howling about like an animal, but with one fair boot on the gulliver he was out and out and out.

Of the four of us Dim, as usual, came out the worst in point of looks, that is to say his litso was all bloodied and his platties a dirty mess, but the others of us were still cool and

whole. It was stinking fatty Billyboy I wanted now, and there I was dancing about with my britva like I might be a barber on board a ship on a very rough sea, trying to get in at him with a few fair slashes on his unclean oily litso. Billyboy had a nozh, a long flick-type, but he was a malenky bit too slow and heavy in his movements to vred anyone really bad. And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz - left two

three, right two three - and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight. Down this blood poured in like red curtains, but you could viddy Billyboy felt not a thing, and he went lumbering on like a filthy fatty bear, poking at me with his nozh.

Then we slooshied the sirens and knew the millicents were coming with pooshkas pushing out of the police-auto- windows at the ready. That weepy little devotchka had told them, no doubt, there being a box for calling the rozzes not too far behind the Muni Power Plant. "Get you soon, fear not," I called, "stinking billygoat. I'll have your yarbles off lovely." Then off they ran, slow and panting, except for Number One Leo out snoring on the ground, away north towards the river, and we went the other way. Just round the next turning was an alley, dark and empty and open at both ends, and we rested there, panting fast then slower, then breathing like normal. It was like resting between the feet of two terrific and very enormous mountains, these being the

flatblocks, and in the windows of all the flats you could

viddy like blue dancing light. This would be the telly. Tonight was what thy called a worldcast, meaning that the same pro- gramme was being viddied by everybody in the world that wanted to, that being mostly the middle-aged middle-class lewdies. There would be some big famous stupid comic chelloveck or black singer, and it was all being bounced off

the special telly satellites in outer space, my brothers. We waited panting, and we could slooshy the sirening millicents going east, so we knew we were all right now. But poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such things before, and he said:

"What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?"

I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing. And now, with the nochy still molodoy, let us be on our way, O my brothers." The others smecked at this, but poor old Dim looked at me serious, then up again at the stars

and the Luna. So we went on our way down the alley, with the

worldcast blueing on on either side. What we needed now was an auto, so we turned left coming out of the alley, knowing right away we were in Priestly Place as soon as we viddied the big bronze statue of some starry poet with an apey upper lip and a pipe stuck in a droopy old rot. Going north we came to the filthy old Filmdrome, peeling and dropping to bits

through nobody going there much except malchicks like me and my droogs, and then only for a yell or a razrez or a bit of in-out-in-out in the dark. We could viddy from the poster on the Filmdrome's face, a couple of fly-dirtied spots trained on it, that there was the usual cowboy riot, with the archangels on the side of the US marshal six-shooting at the rustlers out of hell's fighting legions, the kind of hound-and-horny veshch

put out by Statefilm in those days. The autos parked by the sinny weren't all that horrorshow, crappy starry veshches most of them, but there was a newish Durango 95 that I thought might do. Georgie had one of these polyclefs, as they called them, on his keyring, so we were soon aboard - Dim

and Pete at the back, puffing away lordly at their cancers - and I turned on the ignition and started her up and she grumbled away real horrorshow, a nice warm vibraty feeling grumbling all through your guttiwuts. Then I made with the noga,

and we backed out lovely, and nobody viddied us take off. We fillied round what was called the backtown for a bit, scaring old vecks and cheenas that were crossing the roads and zigzagging after cats and that. Then we took the road west. There wasn't much traffic about, so I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti. Soon it was winter trees and

dark, my brothers, with a country dark, and at one place I ran over something big with a snarling toothy rot in the head- lamps, then it screamed and squelched under and old Dim at the back near laughed his gulliver off - "Ho ho ho" - at that.

Then we saw one young malchick with his sharp, lubbilubbing

under a tree, so we stopped and cheered at them, then we bashed into them both with a couple of half-hearted tol- chocks, making them cry, and on we went. What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for smecks and lashings of the ultra-violent. We came at last to a sort of village, and just outside this village was a small

sort of a cottage on its own with a bit of garden. The Luna

was well up now, and we could viddy this cottage fine and clear as I eased up and put the brake on, the other three giggling like bezoomny, and we could viddy the name on the gate of this cottage veshch was HOME, a gloomy sort of a name. I got out of the auto, ordering my droogs to shush their giggles and act like serious, and I opened this malenky gate and walked up to

the front door. I knocked nice and gentle and nobody came, so I knocked a bit more and this time I could slooshy some- body coming, then a bolt drawn, then the door inched open an inch or so, then I could viddy this one glazz looking out at me and the door was on a chain. "Yes? Who is it?" It was a sharp's goloss, a youngish devotchka by her sound, so I said in a very refined manner of speech, a real gentleman's goloss:

"Pardon, madam, most sorry to disturb you, but my friend

and me were out for a walk, and my friend has taken bad all of a sudden with a very troublesome turn, and he is out there on the road dead out and groaning. Would you have the good- ness to let me use your telephone to telephone for an am- bulance?"

"We haven't a telephone," said this devotchka. "I'm sorry, but we haven't. You'll have to go somewhere else." From inside this malenky cottage I could slooshy the clack clack clacky clack clack clackity clackclack of some veck typing away, and then the typing stopped and there was this chelloveck's goloss calling: "What is it, dear?"

"Well," I said, "could you of your goodness please let him have a cup of water? It's like a faint, you see. It seems as though he's passed out in a sort of a fainting fit."

The devotchka sort of hesitated and then said: "Wait." Then she went off, and my three droogs had got out of the auto quiet and crept up horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now, then I put mine on, then it was only a matter of me putting in the old rooker and undoing the chain, me having softened up this devotchka with my gent's goloss, so that she hadn't shut the door like she should have done, us being strangers of the night. The four of us then went roaring in, old Dim playing the shoot as usual with his jumping up and down and singing out dirty slovos, and it was a nice malenky cottage, I'll say that. We all went smecking into the room with a light on, and there was this devotchka sort of cower-

ing, a young pretty bit of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her, and with her was this chelloveck who was her moodge, youngish too with horn-rimmed otchkies on him, and on a table was a typewriter and all papers scattered everywhere, but there was one little pile of paper like that must have been what he'd already typed, so here was another intelligent type bookman type like that we'd fillied with some

hours back, but this one was a writer not a reader. Anyway, he said:

"What is this? Who are you? How dare you enter my house without permission." And all the time his goloss was trem- bling and his rookers too. So I said:

"Never fear. If fear thou hast in thy heart, O brother, pray banish it forthwith." Then Georgie and Pete went out to find the kitchen, while old Dim waited for orders, standing next to me with his rot wide open. "What is this, then?" I said, picking up the pile like of typing from off of the table, and the horn- rimmed moodge said, dithering:

"That's just what I want to know. What is this? What do you want? Get out at once before I throw you out." So poor

old Dim, masked like Peebee Shelley, had a good loud smeck at that, roaring like some animal.

"It's a book," I said. "It's a book what you are writing." I

made the old goloss very coarse. "I have always had the strong- est admiration for them as can write books." Then I looked

at its top sheet, and there was the name - A C L O C K W O R K O R A N G E - and I said: "That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?" Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: " - The

attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this

I raise my sword-pen - " Dim made the old lip-music at that and

I had to smeck myself. Then I started to tear up the sheets and scatter the bits over the floor, and this writer moodge went sort of bezoomny and made for me with his zoobies clenched and showing yellow and his nails ready for me like claws. So that was old Dim's cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for this veck's dithering rot, crack crack, first left fistie then right, so that our dear old droog the red - red vino on tap and the same in all places, like it's put out by the same big firm - started to pour and spot the nice clean carpet and the bits of this book that I was still ripping away at, razrez razrez. All this time this devotchka, his loving and faithful wife, just stood like froze by the fireplace, and then she started letting out little malenky creeches, like in time to the like music of old Dim's fisty work. Then Georgie and Pete came in from the kitchen, both munching away, though with their maskies on, you could do that with them on and no trouble. Georgie with like a cold leg of something in one rooker and half a loaf of kleb with a big dollop of maslo on it in the other, and Pete with a bottle of beer frothing its gulli- ver off and a horrorshow rookerful of like plum cake. They went haw haw haw, viddying old Dim dancing round and fisting the writer veck so that the writer veck started to platch like his life's work was ruined, going boo hoo hoo with a

very square bloody rot, but it was haw haw haw in a muffled eater's way and you could see bits of what they were eating. I didn't like that, it being dirty and slobbery, so I said:

"Drop that mounch. I gave no permission. Grab hold of this veck here so he can viddy all and not get away." So they put down their fatty pishcha on the table among all the flying paper and they clopped over to the writer veck whose horn- rimmed otchkies were cracked but still hanging on, with old Dim still dancing round and making ornaments shake on the mantelpiece (I swept them all off then and they couldn't shake no more, little brothers) while he fillied with the author of 'A Clockwork Orange', making his litso all purple and dripping

away like some very special sort of a juicy fruit. "All right, Dim," I said. "Now for the other veshch, Bog help us all." So he did the strong-man on the devotchka, who was still creech

creech creeching away in very horrorshow four-in-a-bar, locking her rookers from the back, while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies they were that then exhi- bited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge. Plunging, I could slooshy cries of

agony and this writer bleeding veck that Georgie and Pete held on to nearly got loose howling bezoomny with the filthiest

of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up. Then after me it was right old Dim should have his turn, which he did in a beasty snorty howly sort of a way with his Peebee Shelley maskie taking no notice, while I held on to her. Then there was a changeover, Dim and me grabbing the slobbering writer veck who was past struggling really, only just coming out with slack sort of slovos like he was in the land in a milk- plus bar, and Pete and Georgie had theirs. Then there was like quiet and we were full of like hate, so smashed what was left to be smashed - typewriter, lamp, chairs - and Dim, it was typical of old Dim, watered the fire out and was going to dung on the carpet, there being plenty of paper, but I said no. "Out out out out," I howled. The writer veck and his zheena were not really there, bloody and torn and making noises. But they'd live.

So we got into the waiting auto and I left it to Georgie to take the wheel, me feeling that malenky bit shagged, and we went back to town, running over odd squealing things on the way.

We yeckated back townwards, my brothers, but just outside, not far from what they called the Industrial Canal, we viddied the fuel needle had like collapsed, like our own ha ha ha needles had, and the auto was coughing kashl kashl kashl. Not to worry overmuch, though, because a rail station kept

flashing blue - on off on off - just near. The point was whether to leave the auto to be sobiratted by the rozzes or, us feeling like in a hate and murder mood, to give it a fair tolchock into the starry watersfor a nice heavy loud plesk

before the death of the evening. This latter we decided on, so we got out and, the brakes off, all four tolchocked it to the

edge of the filthy water that was like treacle mixed with human hole products, then one good horrorshow tolchock and in she went. We had to dash back for fear of the filth splashing on our platties, but splussshhhh and glolp she went, down and lovely. "Farewell, old droog," called Georgie, and Dim obliged with a clowny great guff - "Huh huh huh huh." Then we made for the station to ride the one stop to Center, as the middle of the town was called. We paid our fares nice and polite and waited gentlemanly and quiet on the platform,

old Dim fillying with the slot machines, his carmans being full

of small malenky coin, and ready if need be to distribute chocbars to the poor and starving, though there was none such about, and then the old espresso rapido came lumbering in and we climbed aboard, the train looking to be near empty. To pass the three-minute ride we fillied about with what they called the upholstery, doing some nice horrorshow tearing- out of the seats' guts and old Dim chaining the okno till the glass cracked and sparkled in the winter air, but we were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure, my brothers, only Dim, like the clowny animal he was, full of the joys-of,

but looking all dirtied over and too much von of sweat on him, which was one thing I had against old Dim.

We got out at Center and walked slow back to the

Korova Milkbar, all going yawwwww a malenky bit and exhi- biting to moon and star and lamplight our back fillings, be- cause we were still only growing malchicks and had school in the daytime, and when we got into the Korova we found it fuller than when we'd left earlier on. But the chelloveck that had been burbling away, in the land, on white and synthemesc or whatever, was still on at it, going: "Urchins of deadcast in the way-ho-hay glill platonic time weatherborn." It was prob- able that this was his third or fourth lot that evening, for he had that pale inhuman look, like he'd become a 'thing', and like

his litso was really a piece of chalk carved. Really, if he wanted to spend so long in the land, he should have gone into one of the private cubies at the back and not stayed in the big mesto, because here some of the malchickies would filly about with him a malenky bit, though not too much because there were powerful bruiseboys hidden away in the old Korova who

could stop any riot. Anyway, Dim squeezed in next to this

veck and, with his big clown's yawp that showed his hanging grape, he stabbed this veck's foot with his own large filthy sabog. But the veck, my brothers, heard nought, being now all above the body.

It was nadsats milking and coking and fillying around (nadsats were what we used to call the teens), but there were a few of the more starry ones, vecks and cheenas alike (but not of the bourgeois, never them) laughing and govoreeting at the

bar. You could tell them from their barberings and loose platties (big stringy sweaters mostly) that they'd been on rehearsals at the TV studios around the corner. The devotchkas among them had these very lively litsos and wide big rots, very red, show- ing a lot of teeth, and smecking away and not caring about

the wicked world one whit. And then the disc on the stereo twanged off and out (it was Johnny Zhivago, a Russky

koshka, singing 'Only Every Other Day'), and in the like inter- val, the short silence before the next one came on, one of these devotchkas - very fair and with a big smiling red rot and in her late thirties I'd say - suddenly came with a burst of

singing, only a bar and a half and as though she was like giving

an example of something they'd all been govoreeting about, and it was like for a moment, O my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milkbar, and I felt all the little malenky hairs on my plott standing endwise and the shivers crawling up like slow malenky lizards and then down again. Because I knew what she sang. It was from an opera by Friedrich Gitter- fenster called 'Das Bettzeug', and it was the bit where she's snuffing it with her throat cut, and the slovos are 'Better like this maybe'. Anyway, I shivered.

But old Dim, as soon as he'd slooshied this dollop of song like a lomtick of redhot meat plonked on your plate, let off one of his vulgarities, which in this case was a lip-trump fol- lowed by a dog-howl followed by two fingers pronging twice at the air followed by a clowny guffaw. I felt myself all of a fever and like drowning in redhot blood, slooshying and

viddying Dim's vulgarity, and I said: "Bastard. Filthy drooling mannerless bastard." Then I leaned across Georgie, who was between me and horrible Dim, and fisted Dim skorry on the rot. Dim looked very surprised, his rot open, wiping the krovvy off of his goober with his rook and in turn looking surprised at the red flowing krovvy and at me. "What for did you do that for?" he said in his ignorant way. Not many viddied what I'd done, and those that viddied cared not. The stereo was on again and was playing a very sick electronic guitar veshch. I said:

"For being a bastard with no manners and not the dook of an idea how to comport yourself publicwise, O my brother."

Dim put on a hound-and-horny look of evil, saying: "I don't like you should do what you done then. And I'm not

your brother no more and wouldn't want to be." He'd taken a big snotty tashtook from his pocket and was mopping the red flow puzzled, keeping on looking at it frowning as if he thought that blood was for other vecks and not for him. It was like he was singing blood to make up for his vulgarity when that devotchka was singing music. But that devotchka was smecking away ha ha ha now with her droogs at the bar, her red rot working and her zoobies ashine, not having no- ticed Dim's filthy vulgarity. It was me really Dim had done wrong to. I said:

"if you don't like this and you wouldn't want that, then you know what to do, little brother." Georgie said, in a sharp way that made me look:

"All right. Let's not be starting."

"That's clean up to Dim," I said. "Dim can't go on all his jeezny being as a little child." And I looked sharp at Georgie. Dim said, and the red krovvy was easing its flow now:

"What natural right does he have to think he can give the

orders and tolchock me whenever he likes? Yarbles is what I say to him, and I'd chain his glazzies out as soon as look." "Watch that," I said, as quiet as I could with the stereo bouncing all over the walls and ceiling and the in-the-land veck beyond Dim getting loud now with his "Spark nearer, ultoptimate", I said: "Do watch that, O Dim, if to continue to be on live thou dost wish."

"Yarbles," said Dim, sneering, "great bolshy yarblockos to you. What you done then you had no right. I'll meet you with chain or nozh or britva any time, not having you aiming tol- chocks at me reasonless, it stands to reason I won't have

it."

"A nozh scrap any time you say," I snarled back. Pete said: "Oh now, don't, both of you malchicks. Droogs, aren't we? It isn't right droogs should behave thiswise. See, there are some loose-lipped malchicks over there smecking at us, leer- ing like. We mustn't let ourselves down."

"Dim," I said, "has got to learn his place. Right?"

"Wait," said Georgie. "What is all this about place? This is the first I ever hear about lewdies learning their place."

Pete said: "If the truth is known, Alex, you shouldn't have given old Dim that uncalled-for tolchock. I'll say it once and no more. I say it with all respect, but if it had been me you'd given it to you'd have to answer. I say no more." And he drowned his litso in his milk-glass.

I could feel myself getting all razdraz inside, but I tried to cover it, saying calm: "There has to be a leader. Discipline there has to be. Right?" None of them skazatted a word or nodded even. I got more razdraz inside, calmer out. "I," I said, "have been in charge long now. We are all droogs, but some-

body has to be in charge. Right? Right?" They all like nodded, wary like. Dim was osooshing the last of the krovvy off. It

was Dim who said now:

"Right, right. Doobidoob. A bit tired, maybe, everybody is. Best not to say more." I was surprised and just that malenky bit poogly to sloosh Dim govoreeting that wise. Dim said:

"Bedways is rightways now, so best we go homeways. Right?" I was very surprised. The other two nodded, going right right right. I said:

"You understand about that tolchock on the rot, Dim.

It was the music, see. I get all bezoomny when any veck interferes with a ptitsa singing, as it might be. Like that then."

"Best we go off homeways and get a bit of spatchka," said

Dim. "A long night for growing malchicks. Right?" Right right nodded the other two. I said:

"I think it best we go home now. Dim has made a real

horrorshow suggestion. If we don't meet day-wise, O my brothers, well then - same time same place tomorrow?" "Oh yes," said Georgie. "I think that can be arranged."

"I might," said Dim, "be just that malenky bit late. But same place and near same time tomorrow surely." He was still

wiping at his goober, though no krovvy flowed any longer now. "And," he said, "it is to be hoped there won't be no more

of them singing ptitsas in here." Then he gave his old Dim guff,

a clowny big hohohohoho. It seemed like he was too dim to take much offence.

So off we went our several ways, me belching arrrrgh on

the cold coke I'd peeted. I had my cut-throat britva handy in case any of Billyboy's droogs should be around near the flat- block waiting, or for that matter any of the other bandas or gruppas or shaikas that from time to time were at war with one. Where I lived was with my dadda and mum in the flats of Municipal Flatblock 18A, between Kingsley Avenue and Wil- sonsway. I got to the big main door with no trouble, though I did pass one young malchick sprawling and creeching and moaning in the gutter, all cut about lovely, and saw in the lamplight also streaks of blood here and there like signatures, my brothers, of the night's fillying. And too I saw just by 18A a pair of devotchka's neezhnies doubtless rudely wrenched off in the heat of the moment, O my brothers. And so in. In the hallway was the good old municipal painting on the walls - vecks and ptitsas very well developed, stern in the dignity of labour, at workbench and machine with not one stitch of platties on their well-developed plotts. But of course some of the malchicks living in 18A had, as was to be expected, em- bellished and decorated the said big painting with handy pencil and ballpoint, adding hair and stiff rods and dirty bal- looning slovos out of the dignified rots of these nagoy (bare, that is) cheenas and vecks. I went to the lift, but there was no need to press the electric knopka to see if it was working or not, because it had been tolchocked real horrorshow this

night, the metal doors all buckled, some feat of rare strength indeed, so I had to walk the ten floors up. I cursed and panted climbing, being tired in plott if not so much in brain. I wanted music very bad this evening, that singing devotchka in the Korova having perhaps started me off. I wanted like a big feast

of it before getting my passport stamped, my brothers, at sleep's frontier and the stripy shest lifted to let me through.

I opened the door of 10-8 with my own little klootch, and

inside our malenky quarters all was quiet, the pee and em both being in sleepland, and mum had laid out on the table on malenky bit of supper - a couple of lomticks of tinned sponge- meat with a shive or so of kleb and butter, a glass of the old cold moloko. Hohoho, the old moloko, with no knives or synthemesc or drencrom in it. How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now. Still I drank and ate growling, being more hungry than I thought at first, and I got fruit-pie from the larder and tore chunks off it to stuff

into my greedy rot. Then I tooth-cleaned and clicked, cleaning out the old rot with my yahzick or tongue, then I went into

my own little room or den, easing off my platties as I did so.

Here was my bed and my stereo, pride of my jeezny, and my discs in their cupboard, and banners and flags on the wall, these being like remembrances of my corrective school life since I was eleven, O my brothers, each one shining and blaz- oned with name or number: SOUTH 4; METRO COR- SKOL BLUE DIVISION; THE BOYS OF ALPHA.

The little speakers of my stereo were all arranged round the

room, on ceiling, walls, floor, so, lying on my bed slooshying the music, I was like netted and meshed in the orchestra. Now what I fancied first tonight was this new violin concerto by

the American Geoffrey Plautus, played by Odysseus Choerilos with the Macon (Georgia) Philharmonic, so I slid it from where it was neatly filed and switched on and waited.

Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out

again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and

those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute

and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers. Pee and em in their bedroom next door had learnt now not to knock on the wall with complaints of what they called noise. I had taught them. Now they would take sleep-pills. Perhaps, knowing the joy I had in my night music, they had already taken them. As I slooshied, my glazzies tight shut to shut in the bliss that was better than any synthemesc Bog or God, I

knew such lovely pictures. There were vecks and ptitsas, both young and starry, lying on the ground screaming for mercy, and I was smecking all over my rot and grinding my boot in their litsos. And there were devotchkas ripped and creeching against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them, and indeed when the music, which was one movement only, rose to the top of its big highest tower, then, lying there on my

bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it.

And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.

After that I had lovely Mozart, the Jupiter, and there were new pictures of different litsos to be ground and splashed, and it was after this that I thought I would have just one last disc only before crossing the border, and I wanted something starry and strong and very firm, so it was J. S. Bach I had, the

Brandenburg Concerto just for middle and lower strings. And,

slooshying with different bliss than before, I viddied again this name on the paper I'd razrezzed that night, a long time ago it seemed, in that cottage called HOME. The name was about a clockwork orange. Listening to the J. S. Bach, I began to pony

better what that meant now, and I thought, slooshying away to the brown gorgeousness of the starry German master, that I would like to have tolchecked them both harder and ripped them to ribbons on their own floor.

The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school. I thought how I would have a malenky bit longer in the bed, an hour or two say, and then get dressed nice and easy, perhaps even having a splosh about in the bath, make toast for myself and slooshy the radio or read the gazetta, all on my oddy knocky. And then in the afterlunch I might perhaps, if I still felt like it, itty off to the old skolliwoll and see what was vareeting in

the great seat of gloopy useless learning, O my brothers. I heard my papapa grumbling and trampling and then ittying off to the dyeworks where he rabbited, and then my mum called in in a very respectful goloss as she did now I was growing up big and strong:

"It's gone eight, son. You don't want to be late again."

So I called back: "A bit of pain in my gulliver. Leave us be and I'll try to sleep it off and then I'll be right as dodgers for this after." I slooshied her give a sort of a sigh and she said: "I'll put your breakfast in the oven then, son. I've got to be off myself now." Which was true, there being this law for everybody not a child nor with child nor ill to go out rab- biting. My mum worked at one of the Statemarts, as they called them, filling up the shelves with tinned soup and beans and all that cal. So I slooshied her clank a plate in the gas- oven like and then she was putting her shoes on and then getting her coat from behind the door and then sighing again, then she said: "I'm off now, son." But I let on to be back in sleepland and then I did doze off real horrorshow, and I had a queer and very real like sneety, dreaming for some reason of my droog Georgie. In this sneety he'd got like very much older and very sharp and hard and was govoreeting about discipline and obedience and how all the malchicks under his

control had to jump hard at it and throw up the old salute like being in the army, and there was me in line like the rest saying yes sir and no sir, and the I viddied clear that Georgie

had these stars on his pletchoes and he was like a general. And then he brought in old Dim with a whip, and Dim was a lot more starry and grey and had a few zoobies missing as you could see when he let out a smeck, viddying me, and then my droog Georgie said, pointing like at me: "That man has filth and cal all over his platties," and it was true. Then I creeched: "Don't hit, please don't, brothers," and started to run. And I was running in like circles and Dim was after me, smecking his gulliver off, cracking with the old whip, and each time I got a real horrorshow tolchock with this whip there was like a very loud electric bell ringringring, and this bell was like a sort

of a pain too.

Then I woke up real skorry, my heart going bap bap bap, and of course there was really a bell going brrrrr, and it was our front-door bell. I let on that nobody was at home, but this brrrrr still ittied on, and then I heard a goloss shouting through the door: "Come on then, get out of it, I know

you're in bed." I recognized the goloss right away. It was the goloss of P. R. Deltoid (a real gloopy nazz, that one) what they called my Post-Corrective Adviser, an overworked veck with hundreds on his books. I shouted right right right, in a goloss of like pain, and I got out of bed and attired myself, O my brothers, in a very lovely over-gown of like silk, with designs of like great cities all over this over-gown. Then I put my nogas into very comfy wooly toofles, combed my luscious glory, and was ready for P. R. Deltoid. When I opened up he came shambling in looking shagged, a battered old shlapa on his gulliver, his raincoat filthy. "Ah, Alex boy," he said to me. "I met your mother, yes. She said something about a pain somewhere. Hence not at schol, yes."

"A rather intolerable pain in the head, brother, sir," I said in my gentleman's goloss. "I think it should clear by this after-

noon."

"Or certainly by this evening, yes," said P. R. Deltoid. "The evening is the great time, isn't it, Alex boy? Sit," he said, "sit, sit," as though this was his domy and me his guest. And he sat in this starry rocking-chair of my dad's and began rocking, as if that was all he had come for. I said:

"A cup of the old chai, sir? Tea, I mean."

"No time," he said. And he rocked, giving me the old glint under frowning brows, as if with all the time in the world. "No time, yes," he said, gloopy. So I put the kettle on. Then I

said:

"To what do I owe the extreme pleasure? Is anything wrong, sir?"

"Wrong?" he said, very skorry and sly, sort of hunched looking at me but still rocking away. Then he caught sight of an advert in the gazetta, which was on the table - a lovely smecking young ptitsa with her groodies hanging out to ad- vertise, my brothers, the Glories of the Jugoslav Beaches.

Then, after sort of eating her up in two swallows, he said: "Why should you think in terms of there being anything wrong? Have you been doing something you shouldn't, yes?"

"Just a manner of speech," I said, "sir."

"Well," said P. R. Deltoid, "it's just a manner of speech from me to you that you watch out, little Alex, because next time, as you very well know, it's not going to be the corrective school any more. Next time it's going to be the barry place and all my work ruined. If you have no consideration for your horrible self you at least might have some for me, who have sweated over you. A big black mark, I tell you in confidence, for every one we don't reclaim, a confession of failure for every one of you that ends up in the stripy hole."

"I've been doing nothing I shouldn't, sir," I said. "The mil- licents have nothing on me, brother, sir I mean."

"Cut out this clever talk about millicents," said P. R. Deltoid

very weary, but still rocking. "Just because the police have not picked you up lately doesn't, as you very well know, mean you've not been up to some nastiness. There was a bit of a fight last night, wasn't there? There was a bit of shuffling with nozhes and bike-chains and the like. One of a certain fat boy's friends was ambulanced off late from near the Power Plant

and hospitalized, cut about very unpleasantly, yes. Your name

was mentioned. The word has got through to me by the usual channels. Certain friends of yours were named also. There seems to have been a fair amount of assorted nastiness last night. Oh, nobody can prove anything about anybody, as usual. But I'm warning you, little Alex, being a good friend to you as always, the one man in this sick and sore community who wants to save you from yourself."

"I appreciate all that, sir," I said, "very sincerely."

"Yes, you do, don't you?" he sort of sneered. "Just watch it, that's all, yes. We know more than you think, little Alex." Then he said, in a goloss of great suffering, but still rocking away: "What gets into you all? We study the problem and we've been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You've got a good home here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside you?"

"Nobody's got anything on me, sir," I said. "I've been out of the rookers of the millicents for a long time now."

"That's just what worries me," sighed P. R. Deltoid. "A bit

too long of a time to be healthy. You're about due now by my reckoning. That's why I'm warning you, little Alex, to keep your handsome young proboscis out of the dirt, yes. Do I make myself clear?"

"As an unmuddied lake, sir," I said. "Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, sir." And I gave him a nice zooby smile.

But when he'd ookadeeted and I was making this very strong pot of chai, I grinned to myself over this veshch that

R. Deltoid and his droogs worried about. All right, I do bad, what with crasting and tolchocks and carves with the britva and the old in-out-in-out, and if I get loveted, well, too bad for me, O my little brothers, and you can't run a country with every chelloveck comporting himself in my manner of the night. So if I get loveted and it's three months in this mesto and another six in that, and the, as P. R. Deltoid so kindly warns, next time, in spite of the great tenderness of my summers, brothers, it's the great unearthly zoo itself, well, I say: "Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot bear to be shut in. My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted metal and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get loveted again." Which is fair speeching. But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns

me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into the cause of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good

that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patron- izing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.

So now, this smiling winter morning, I drink this very strong chai with moloko and spoon after spoon after spoon of sugar, me having a sladky tooth, and I dragged out of the oven the breakfast my poor old mum had cooked for me. It was an egg fried, that and no more, but I made toast and ate egg and toast and jam, smacking away at it while I read the

gazetta. The gazetta was the usual about ultra-violence and bank robberies and strikes and footballers making everybody paralytic with fright by threatening to not play next Saturday if they did not get higher wages, naughty malchickiwicks as they were. Also there were more space-trips and bigger stereo TV screens and offers of free packets of soapflakes in ex- change for the labels on soup-tins, amazing offer for one

week only, which made me smeck. And there was a bolshy big article on Modern Youth (meaning me, so I gave the old bow, grinning like bezoomny) by some very clever bald chelloveck. I read this with care, my brothers, slurping away at the old chai, cup after tass after chasha, crunching my lomticks of black toast dipped in jammiwam and eggiweg. This learned veck said the usual veshches, about no parental discipline, as he called it, and the shortage of real horrorshow teachers

who would lambast bloody beggary out of their innocent poops and make them go boohoohoo for mercy. All this was gloopy and made me smeck, but it was like nice to go on knowing one was making the news all the time, O my brothers. Every day there was something about Modern Youth, but the best veshch they ever had in the old gazetta was by some starry pop in a doggy collar who said that in his considered opinion and he was govoreeting as a man of Bog IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT WAS ABROAD and was

like ferreting his way into like young innocent flesh, and it was the adult world that could take the responsibility for this with their wars and bombs and nonsense. So that was all right. So he knew what he talked of, being a Godman. So we young innocent malchicks could take no blame. Right right right.

When I'd gone erk erk a couple of razzes on my full inno- cent stomach, I started to get out day platties from my ward- robe, turning the radio on. There was music playing, a very nice malenky string quartet, my brothers, by Claudius Bird- man, one that I knew well. I had to have a smeck, though, thinking of what I'd viddied once in one of these like articles

on Modern Youth, about how Modern Youth would be better off if A Lively Appreciation Of The Arts could be like en- couraged. Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more

Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of

sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me feel like

old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blit- zen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha power. And when I'd cheested up my litso and rookers a bit and done dressing (my day platties were like student-wear: the old blue pantalonies with sweater with A for Alex) I thought here at last was time to itty off to the disc-bootick (and

cutter too, my pockets being full of pretty polly) to see about

this long-promised and long-ordered stereo Beethoven Number Nine (the Choral Symphony, that is), recorded on

Masterstroke by the Esh Sham Sinfonia under L. Muhaiwir. So out I went, brothers.

The day was very different from the night. The night be-

longed to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats, and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors drinking in the gloopy worldcasts, but the day was for the starry ones, and there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents about during the day, too. I got the autobus from the corner and rode to Center, and then I walked back to Taylor Place, and there was the disc-bootick I favoured with my inestimable custom, O my brothers. It had the gloopy name of MEL- ODIA, but it was a real horrorshow mesto and skorry, most times, at getting the new recordings. I walked in and the only other customers were two young ptitsas sucking away at ice- sticks (and this, mark, was dead cold winter and sort of shuffling through the new pop-discs - Johnny Burnaway, Stash Kroh, The Mixers, Lay Quit Awhile With Ed And Id Molotov, and all the rest of that cal). These two ptitsas couldn't have been more than ten, and they too, like me, it seemed, evidently, had decided to take the morning off from

the old skolliwoll. They saw themselves, you could see, as real grown-up devotchkas already, what with the old hip-swing when they saw your Faithful Narrator, brothers, and padded groodies and red all ploshed on their goobers. I went up to

the counter, making with the polite zooby smile at old Andy

behind it (always polite himself, always helpful, a real hor- rorshow type of a veck, though bald and very very thin). He said:

"Aha. I know what you want, I think. Good news, good news. It has arrived." And with like big conductor's rookers beating time he went to get it. The two young ptitsas started giggling, as they will at that age, and I gave them a like cold glazzy. Andy was back real skorry, waving the great shiny white sleeve of the Ninth, which had on it, brothers, the frowning beetled like thunderbolted litso of Ludwig van him-

self. "Here," said Andy. "Shall we give it the trial spin?" But I wanted it back home on my stereo to slooshy on my oddy knocky, greedy as hell. I fumbled out the deng to pay and one of the little ptitsas said:

"Who you getten, bratty? What biggy, what only?" These

young devotchkas had their own like way of govoreeting.

"The Heaven Seventeen? Luke Sterne? Goggly Gogol?" And both giggled, rocking and hippy. Then an idea hit me and made me near fall over with the anguish and ecstasy of it, O my brothers, so I could not breathe for near ten seconds. I recovered and made with my new-clean zoobies and said: "What you got back home, little sisters, to play your fuzzy warbles on?" Because I could viddy the discs they were buying were these teeny pop veshches. "I bet you got little save tiny portable like picnic spinners." And they sort of pushed their lower lips out at that. "Come with uncle," I said, "and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited." And I like bowed. They giggled again and one said: "Oh, but we're so hungry. Oh, but we could so eat." The

other said: "Yah, she can say that, can't she just." So I said:

"Eat with uncle. Name your place."

Then they viddied themselves as real sophistoes, which was like pathetic, and started talking in big-lady golosses about the Ritz and the Bristol and the Hilton and Il Ristorante Gran- turco. But I stopped that with "Follow uncle," and I led them to the Pasta Parlour just round the corner and let them fill their innocent young litsos on spaghetti and sausages and cream-puffs and banana-splits and hot choc-sauce, till I near

sicked with the sight of it, I, brothers, lunching but frugally off a cold ham-slice and a growling dollop of chilli. These two young ptitsas were much alike, though not sisters. They had the same ideas or lack of, and the same colour hair - a like dyed strawy. Well, they would grow up real today. Today I would make a day of it. No school this afterlunch, but edu- cation certain, Alex as teacher. Their names, they said, were Marty and Sonietta, bezoomny enough and in the heighth of their childish fashion, so I said:

"Righty right, Marty and Sonietta. Time for the big spin.

Come." When we were outside on the cold street they thought they would not go by autobus, oh no, but by taxi, so I gave them the humour, though with a real horrorshow in-

grin, and I called a taxi from the rank near Center. The driver, a starry whiskery veck in very stained platties, said:

"No tearing up, now. No nonsense with them seats. Just re-

upholstered they are." I quieted his gloopy fears and off we spun to Municipal Flatblock 18A, these two bold little ptitsas giggling and whispering. So, to cut all short, we arrived, O my brothers, and I led the way up to 10-8, and they panted and smecked away the way up, and then they were thirsty, they said, so I unlocked the treasure-chest in my room and gave these ten-year-young devotchkas a real horrorshow Scotch- man apiece, though well filled with sneezy pins-and-needles soda. They sat on my bed (yet unmade) and leg-swung, smeck- ing and peeting their highballs, while I spun their like pathetic malenky discs through my stereo. Like peeting some sweet

scented kid's drink, that was, in like very beautiful and lovely and costly gold goblets. But they went oh oh oh and said, "Swoony" and "Hilly" and other weird slovos that were the heighth of fashion in that youth group. While I spun this cal for them I encouraged them to drink and have another, and they were nothing loath, O my brothers. So by the time their pathetic pop-discs had been twice spun each (there were two: 'Honey Nose', sung by Ike Yard, and 'Night After Day After Night', moaned by two horrible yarbleless like eunuchs whose names I forget) they were getting near the pitch of like young ptitsa's hysterics, what with jumping all over my bed and me in the room with them.

What was actually done that afternoon there is no need to describe, brothers, as you may easily guess all. Those two were unplattied and smecking fit to crack in no time at all, and they thought it the bolshiest fun to viddy old Uncle Alex standing there all nagoy and pan-handled, squirting the hypo- dermic like some bare doctor, then giving myself the old jab of growling jungle-cat secretion in the rooker. Then I pulled the lovely Ninth out of its sleeve, so that Ludwig van was now nagoy too, and I set the needle hissing on to the last move- ment, which was all bliss. There it was then, the bass strings like govoreeting away from under my bed at the rest of the orchestra, and then the male human goloss coming in and telling them all to be joyful, and then the lovely blissful tune all about Joy being a glorious spark like of heaven, and then I felt the old tigers leap in me and then I leapt on these two young ptitsas. This time they thought nothing fun and stopped creeching with high mirth, and had to submit to the strange and weird desires of Alexander the Large which, what with the Ninth and the hypo jab, were choodessny and zam- mechat and very demanding, O my brothers. But they were both very very drunken and could hardly feel very much.

When the last movement had gone round for the second time with all the banging and creeching about Joy Joy Joy

Joy, then these two young ptitsas were not acting the big lady sophisto no more. They were like waking up to what was being done to their malenky persons and saying that they wanted to go home and like I was a wild beast. They looked like they had been in some big bitva, as indeed they had, and were all bruised and pouty. Well, if they would not go to school they must stil have their education. And education they had had. They were creeching and going ow ow ow as they put their platties on, and they were like punchipunching me with their teeny fists as I lay there dirty and nagoy and fair shagged and fagged on the bed. This young Sonietta was cre-

eching: "Beast and hateful animal. Filthy horror." So I let them get their things together and get out, which they did, talking about how the rozzes should be got on to me and all that cal.

Then they were going down the stairs and I dropped off to

sleep, still with the old Joy Joy Joy Joy crashing and howling away.

What happened, though, was that I woke up late (near seven- thirty by my watch) and, as it turned out, that was not so clever. You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right. My stereo was no longer on about Joy and I Embrace Ye O Ye Millions, so some veck had dealt it the off, and that would be either pee or em, both of them now being quite clear to the slooshying in the living-room and, from the clink clink of plates and slurp slurp of peeting tea from cups, at their tired meal after the day's rabbiting in factory the one, store the other. The poor old. The pitiable starry. I put on my over-gown and looked out, in guise of loving only son, to

say:

"Hi hi hi, there. A lot better after the day's rest. Ready now for evening work to earn that little bit." For that's what they said they believed I did these days. "Yum, yum, mum. Any of that for me?" It was like some frozen pie that she'd unfroze and then warmed up and it looked not so very appetitish, but

I had to say what I said. Dad looked at me with a not-so- pleased suspicious like look but said nothing, knowing he dared not, and mum gave me a tired like little smeck, to thee fruit of my womb my only son sort of. I danced to the bath- room and had a real skorry cheest all over, feeling dirty and gluey, then back to my den for the evening's platties. Then, shining, combed, brushed and gorgeous, I sat to my lomtick of pie. Papapa said:

"Not that I want to pry, son, but where exactly is it you go to work of evenings?"

"Oh," I chewed, "it's mostly odd things, helping like. Here

and there, as it might be." I gave him a straight dirty glazzy, as to say to mind his own and I'd mind mine. "I never ask for money, do I? Not money for clothes or for pleasures? All right, then, why ask?"

My dad was like humble mumble chumble. "Sorry, son," he said. "But I get worried sometimes. Sometimes I have dreams. You can laugh if you like, but there's a lot in dreams. Last night I had this dream with you in it and I didn't like it one

bit."

"Oh?" He had gotten me interessovatted now, dreaming of me like that. I had like a feeling I had had a dream, too, but I could not remember proper what. "Yes?" I said, stopping chewing my gluey pie.

"It was vivid," said my dad. "I saw you lying on the street and you had been beaten by other boys. These boys were like the boys you used to go around with before you were sent to

that last Corrective School."

"Oh?" I had an in-grin at that, papapa believing I had really reformed or believing he believed. And then I remembered my own dream, which was a dream of that morning, of Georgie giving his general's orders and old Dim smecking around toothless as he wielded the whip. But dreams go by opposites I was once told. "Never worry about thine only son and heir,

O my father," I said. "Fear not. He canst taketh care of himself,

verily."

"And," said my dad, "you were like helpless in your blood

and you couldn't fight back." That was real opposites, so I had another quiet malenky grin within and then I took all the deng out of my carmans and tinkled it on the saucy table-cloth. I said:

"Here, dad, it's not much. It's what I earned last night. But perhaps for the odd peet of Scotchman in the snug some- where for you and mum."

"Thanks, son," he said. "But we don't go out much now. We daren't go out much, the streets being what they are. Young hooligans and so on. Still, thanks. I'll bring her home a bottle of something tomorrow." And he scooped this ill-gotten pretty into his trouser carmans, mum being at the cheesting of

the dishes in the kitchen. And I went out with loving smiles all

round.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs of the flatblock I

was somewhat surprised. I was more than that. I opened my rot like wide in the old stony gapes. They had come to meet me. They were waiting by the all scrawled-over municipal wall-painting of the nagoy dignity of labour, bare vecks and cheenas stern at the wheels of industry, like I said, with all this dirt pencilled from their rots by naughty malchicks. Dim had a big thick stick of black greasepaint and was tracing filthy slovos real big over our municipal painting and doing the old Dim guff - wuh huh huh - while he did it. But he turned round when Georgie and Pete gave me the well hello, showing their shining droogy zoobies, and he horned out: "He are here, he have arrived, hooray," and did a clumsy turnitoe bit of danc- ing.

"We got worried," said Georgie. "There we were awaiting and peeting away at the old knify moloko, and you might have been like offended by some veshch or other, so round we come to your abode. That's right, Pete, right?"

"Oh, yes, right," said Pete.

"Appy polly loggies," I said careful. "I had something of a pain in the gulliver so had to sleep. I was not wakened when I gave orders for wakening. Still, here we all are, ready for what

the old nochy offers, yes?" I seemed to have picked up that yes? from P. R. Deltoid, my Post-Corrective Adviser. Very strange.

"Sorry about the pain," said Georgie, like very concerned. "Using the gulliver too much like, maybe. Giving orders and discipline and such, perhaps. Sure the pain is gone? Sure you'll not be happier going back to the bed?" And they all had a bit

of a malenky grin.

"Wait," I said. "Let's get things nice and sparkling clear. This sarcasm, if I may call it such, does not become you, O my little friends. Perhaps you have been having a bit of a quiet govoreet behind my back, making your own little jokes and

such-like. As I am your droog and leader, surely I am entitled to know what goes on, eh? Now then, Dim, what does that great big horsy gape of a grin portend?" For Dim had his rot open in a sort of bezoomny soundless smeck. Georgie got in very skorry with:

"All right, no more picking on Dim, brother. That's part of the new way."

"New way?" I said. "What's this about a new way? There's been some very large talk behind my sleeping back and no error. Let me slooshy more." And I sort of folded my rookers and leaned comfortable to listen against the broken banister- rail, me being still higher than them, droogs as they called themselves, on the third stair.

"No offence, Alex," said Pete, "but we wanted to have things more democratic like. Not like you like saying what to do and what not all the time. But no offence."

George said: "Offence is neither here nor elsewhere. It's the matter of who has ideas. What ideas has he had?" And he kept his very bold glazzies turned full on me. "It's all the small stuff, malenky veshches like last night. We're growing up, brothers." "More," I said, not moving. "Let me slooshy more."

"Well," said Georgie, "if you must have it, have it then. We itty round, shop-crasting and the like, coming out with a piti- ful rookerful of cutter each. And there's Will the English in the Muscleman coffee mesto saying he can fence anything that any malchick cares to try to crast. The shiny stuff, the ice," he said, still with these like cold glazzies on me. "The big big big money is available is what Will the English says."

"So," I said, very comfortable out but real razdraz within. "Since when have you been consorting and comporting with Will the English?"

"Now and again," said Georgie, "I get around all on my oddy knocky. Like last Sabbath for instance. I can live my own jeezny, droogy, right?"

I didn't care for any of this, my brothers. "And what will

you do," I said, "with the big big big deng or money as you so highfaluting call it? Have you not every veshch you need? If you need an auto you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty polly you take it. Yes? Why this sudden shilarny for being the big bloated capitalist?"

"Ah," said Georgie, "you think and govoreet sometimes like

a little child." Dim went huh huh huh at that. "Tonight," said Georgie, "we pull a mansize crast."

So my dream had told truth, then. Georgie the general

saying what we should do and what not do, Dim with the whip as mindless grinning bulldog. But I played with care, with great care, the greatest, saying, smiling: "Good. Real horrorshow.

Initiative comes to them as wait. I have taught you much, little droogie. Now tell me what you have in mind, Georgie- boy."

"Oh," said Georgie, cunning and crafty in his grin, "the old

moloko-plus first, would you not say? Something to sharpen us up, boy, but you especially, we having the start on you." "You have govoreeted my thoughts for me," I smiled away. "I was about to suggest the dear old Korova. Good good

good. Lead, little Georgie." And I made with a like deep bow,

smiling like bezoomny but thinking all the time. But when we got into the street I viddied that thinking is for the gloopy

ones and that the oomny ones use like inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid. There was an auto ittying by and it had its radio on, and I could just slooshy a bar or so of Ludwig van (it was the Violin Concerto, last movement), and I viddied right at once what to do. I said, in like a thick deep goloss: "Right, Georgie, now," and I whisked out my cut-throat britva. Georgie said: "Uh?" but he was skorry enough with his nozh, the blade coming sloosh out of the handle, and we were on to each other. Old Dim said: "Oh no, not right that isn't, and made to uncoil the chain round his tally, but Pete said, putting his rooker firm on

old Dim: "Leave them. It's right like that." So then Georgie and Your Humble did the old quiet cat-stalk, looking for openings, knowing each other's style a bit too horrorshow really. Georgie now and then going lurch lurch with his shining nozh but not

no wise connecting. And all the time lewdies passed by and

viddied all this but minded their own, it being perhaps a common street-sight. But then I counted odin dva tree and went ak ak ak with the britva, though not at litso or glazzies but at Georgie's nozh-holding rooker and, my little brothers, he dropped. He did. He dropped his nozh with a tinkle tankle

on the hard winter sidewalk. I had just ticklewickled his fingers with my britva, and there he was looking at the malenky

dribble of krovvy that was redding out in the lamplight. "Now,"

I said, and it was me that was starting, because Pete had given old Dim the soviet not to uncoil the oozy from round his

tally and Dim had taken it, "now, Dim, let's thou and me have all this now, shall us?" Dim went, "Aaaaaaarhgh," like some bolshy bezoomny animal, and snaked out the chain from his waist real horrorshow and skorry, so you had to admire. Now the right style for me here was to keep low like in frog-dancing to protect litso and glazzies, and this I did, brothers, so that poor old Dim was a malenky bit surprised, him being accus- tomed to the straight face-on lash lash lash. Now I will say that he whished me horrible on the back so that it stung like bezoomny, but that pain told me to dig in skorry once and for all and be done with old Dim. So I swished with the britva at his left noga in its very tight tight and I slashed two inches of cloth and drew a malenky drop of krovvy to make Dim real bezoomny. Then while he went hauwwww hauwww hauwww like a doggie I tried the same style as for Georgie, banking all on one move - up, cross, cut - and I felt the britva go just deep enough in the meat of old Dim's wrist and he dropped his snaking oozy yelping like a little child. Then he tried to drink in all the blood from his wrist and howl at the same time, and there was too much krovvy to drink and he went bubble

bubble bubble, the red like fountaining out lovely, but not for very long. I said:

"Right, my droogies, now we should know. Yes, Pete?"

"I never said anything," said Pete. "I never govoreeted one slovo. Look, old Dim's bleeding to death."

"Never," I said. "One can die but once. Dim died before he was born. That red red krovvy will soon stop." Because I had not cut into the like main cables. And I myself took a clean tashtook from my carman to wrap round poor old dying

Dim's rooker, howling and moaning as he was, and the krovvy stopped like I said it would, O my brothers. So they knew now who was master and leader, sheep, thought I.

It did not take long to quieten these two wounded soldiers down in the snug of the Duke of New York, what with large brandies (bought with their own cutter, me having given all to my dad, and a wipe with tashtooks dipped in the water-jug.

The old ptitsas we'd been so horrorshow to last night were there again, going, "Thanks, lads" and "God bless you, boys" like they couldn't stop, though we had not repeated the old sammy act with them. But Pete said: "What's it to be, girls?" and bought black and suds for them, him seeming to have a fair amount of pretty polly in his carmans, so they were on louder than ever with their "God bless and keep you all,lads" and "We'd never split on you, boys" and "The best lads breath- ing, that's what you are." At last I said to Georgie:

"Now we're back to where we were, yes? Just like before and all forgotten, right?"

"Right right right," said Georgie. But old Dim still looked a

bit dazed and he even said: "I could have got that big bastard, see, with my oozy, only some veck got in the way," as though he'd been dratsing not with me but with some other malchick. I said:

"Well, Georgieboy, what did you have in mind?"

"Oh," said Georgie, "not tonight. Not this nochy, please." "You're a big strong chelloveck," I said, "like us all. We're

not little children, are we, Georgieboy? What, then, didst thou in thy mind have?"

"I could have chained his glazzies real horrorshow," said

Dim, and the old baboochkas were stil on with their "Thanks, lads."

"It was this house, see," said Georgie. "The one with the two lamps outside. The one with the gloopy name like."

"What gloopy name?"

"The Mansion or the Manse or some such piece of gloop. Where this very starry ptitsa lives with her cats and all these very starry valuable veshches."

"Such as?"

"Gold and silver and like jewels. It was Will the English who like said."

"I viddy," I said. "I viddy horrorshow." I knew where he

meant - Oldtown, just beyond Victoria Flatblock. Well, the real horrorshow leader knows always when like to give and show generous to his like unders. "Very good, Georgie," I said. "A good thought, and one to be followed. Let us at once itty." And as we were going out the old baboochkas said: "We'll say nothing, lads. Been here all the time you have, boys." So I said: "Good old girls. Back to buy more in ten minutes." And so I led my three droogs out to my doom.

Just past the Duke of New York going east was offices and then there was the starry beat-up biblio and then was the bolshy flatblock called Victoria Flatblock after some victory or other, and then you came to the like starry type houses of the town in what was called Oldtown. You got some of the real horrorshow ancient domies here, my brothers, with starry lewdies living in them, thin old barking like colonels with sticks and old ptitsas who were widows and deaf starry damas with cats who, my brothers, had felt not the touch of any chelloveck in the whole of their pure like jeeznies. And here, true, there were starry veshches that would fetch their share of cutter on the tourist market - like pictures and jewels and other starry pre-plastic cal of that type. So we came nice

and quiet to this domy called the Manse, and there were globe lights outside on iron stalks, like guarding the front door on each side, and there was a light like dim on in one of the rooms on the ground level, and we went to a nice patch of street dark to watch through the window what was ittying on. This window had iron bars in front of it, like the house was a prison, but we could viddy nice and clear what was ittying on. What was ittying on was that this starry ptitsa, very grey in the voloss and with a very liny like litso, was pouring the old moloko from a milk-bottle into saucers and then setting

these saucers down on the floor, so you could tell there were plenty of mewing kots and koshkas writhing about down there. And we could viddy one or two, great fat scoteenas, jumping up on to the table with their rots open going mare mare mare. And you could viddy this old baboochka talking back to them, govoreeting in like scoldy language to her pussies. In the room you could viddy a lot of old pictures on the walls and starry very elaborate clocks, also some like vases and ornaments that looked starry and dorogoy. Georgie whispered: "Real horrorshow deng to be gotten for them,

brothers. Will the English is real anxious." Pete said: "How in?"

Now it was up to me, and skorry, before Georgie started

telling us how. "First veshch," I whispered, "is to try the regular way, the front. I will go very polite and say that one of my droogs has had a like funny fainting turn on the street. Georgie can be ready to show, when she opens, thatwise. Then to

ask for water or to phone the doc. Then in easy." Georgie

said:

"She may not open." I said:

"We'll try it, yes?" And he sort of shrugged his pletchoes, making with a frog's rot. So I said to Pete and old Dim: "You two droogies get either side of the door. Right?" They nodded in the dark right right right. "So," I said to Georgie, and I made bold straight for the front door. There was a bellpush and I pushed, and brrrrrrr brrrrr sounded down the hall inside. Alike sense of slooshying followed, as though the ptitsa and her koshkas all had their ears back at the brrrrrr brrrrrr, wondering. So I pushed the old zvonock a malenky bit more urgent. I then bent down to the letter-slit and called through in a refined like goloss: "Help, madam, please. My friend has just had a funny turn on the street. Let me phone a doctor, please." Then I could viddy a light being put on in the hall, and then I could hear the old baboochka's nogas

going flip flap in flip-flap slippers to nearer the front door, and I got the idea, I don't know why, that she had a big fat pussycat under each arm. Then she called out in a very sur- prising deep like goloss:

"Go away. Go away or I shoot." Georgie heard that and

wanted to giggle. I said, with like suffering and urgency in my gentleman's goloss:

"Oh, please help, madam. My friend's very ill."

"Go away," she called. "I know your dirty tricks, making me open the door and then buy things I don't want. Go away. I

tell you." That was real lovely innocence, that was. "Go away," she said again, "or I'll set my cats on to you." A malenky bit

bezoomny she was, you could tell that, through spending her jeezny all on her oddy knocky. Then I looked up and I viddied that there was a sash-window above the front door and that

it would be a lot more skorry to just do the old pletcho climb and get in that way. Else there'd be this argument all the long nochy. So I said:

"Very well, madam. If you won't help I must take my

suffering friend elsewhere." And I winked my droogies all away quiet, only me crying out: "All right, old friend, you will surely meet some good samaritan some place other. This old lady perhaps cannot be blamed for being suspicious with so many scoundrels and rogues of the night about. No, indeed not."

Then we waited again in the dark and I whispered: "Right. Return to the door. Me stand on Dim's pletchoes. Open that window and me enter, droogies. Then to shut up that old

ptitsa and open up for all. No trouble." For I was like showing who was leader and the chelloveck with the ideas. "See," I said. "Real horrorshow bit of stonework over that door, a nice

hold for my nogas." They viddied all that, admiring perhaps I thought, and said and nodded Right right right in the dark.

So back tiptoe to the door. Dim was our heavy strong malchick and Pete and Georgie like heaved me up on to Dim's bolshy manly pletchoes. All this time, O thanks to worldcasts on the gloopy TV and, more, lewdies' night-fear through lack of night-police, dead lay the street. Up there on Dim's plet- choes I viddied that this stonework above the door would

take my boots lovely. I kneed up, brothers, and there I was. The window, as I had expected, was closed, but I outed with my britva and cracked the glass of the window smart with the bony handle thereof. All the time below my droogies were hard breathing. So I put in my rooker through the crack and made the lower half of the window sail up open silver- smooth and lovely. And I was, like getting into the bath, in.

And there were my sheep down below, their rots open as they looked up, O brothers.

I was in bumpy darkness, with beds and cupboards and bolshy heavy stoolies and piles of boxes and books about. But I strode manful towards the door of the room I was in, seeing a like crack of light under it. The door went squeeeeeeeeeeak and then I was on a dusty corridor with other doors. All this waste, brothers, meaning all these rooms and but one starry sharp and her pussies, but perhaps the kots and koshkas had like separate bedrooms, living on cream and fish-heads like royal queens and princes. I could hear the like muffled goloss of this old ptitsa down below

saying: "Yes yes yes, that's it," but she would be govoreeting to these mewing sidlers going maaaaaaa for more moloko.

Then I saw the stairs going down to the hall and I thought to

myself that I would show these fickle and worthless droogs of mine that I was worth the whole three of them and more. I would do all on my oddy knocky. I would perform the old ultra-violence on the starry ptitsa and on her pusspots if need be, then I would take fair rookerfuls of what looked like real polezny stuff and go waltzing to the front door and open up showering gold and silver on my waiting droogs. They must learn all about leadership.

So down I ittied, slow and gentle, admiring in the stairwell grahzny pictures of old time - devotchkas with long hair and high collars, the like country with trees and horses, the holy bearded veck all nagoy hanging on a cross. There was a real musty von of pussies and pussy-fish and starry dust in this domy, different from the flatblocks. And then I was down- stairs and I could viddy the light in this front room where she had been doling moloko to the kots and koshkas. More, I could viddy these great overstuffed scoteenas going in and out with their tails waving and like rubbing themselves on the door-bottom. On a like big wooden chest in the dark hall I could viddy a nice malenky statue that shone in the light of the room, so I crasted this for my own self, it being like a young thin devotchka standing on one noga with her rookers

out, and I could see this was made of silver. So I had this when I ittied into the lit-up room, saying: "Hi hi hi. At last we meet. Our brief govoreet through the letter-hole was not,

shall we say, satisfactory, yes? Let us admit not, oh verily not, you stinking starry old sharp." And I like blinked in the light at this room and the old ptitsa in it. It was full of kots and koshkas all crawling to and fro over the carpet, with bits of

fur floating in the lower air, and these fat scoteenas were all different shapes and colours, black, white, tabby, ginger, tor- toise-shell, and of all ages, too, so that there were kittens fillying about with each other and there were pussies full- grown and there were real dribbling starry ones very bad- tempered. Their mistress, this old ptitsa, looked at me fierce like a man and said:

"How did you get in? Keep your distance, you villainous young toad, or I shall be forced to strike you."

I had a real horrorshow smeck at that, viddying that she had in her veiny rooker a crappy wood walking-stick which she raised at me threatening. So, making with my shiny

zoobies, I ittied a bit nearer to her, taking my time, and on the way I saw on a like sideboard a lovely little veshch, the love- liest malenky veshch any malchick fond of music like myself could ever hope to viddy with his own two glazzies, for it was like the gulliver and pletchoes of Ludwig van himself, what they call a bust, a like stone veshch with stone long hair and blind glazzies and the big flowing cravat. I was off for that right away, saying: "Well, how lovely and all for me." But ittying towards it with my glazzies like full on it and my greedy rooker held out, I did not see the milk saucers on the floor and into one I went and sort of lost balance. "Whoops," I said, trying to steady, but this old ptitsa had come up behind me very sly and with great skorriness for her age and then she went crack crack on my gulliver with her bit of a stick. So I found myself on my rookers and knees trying to get up and saying: "Naughty, naughty naughty." And then she was going

crack crack crack again, saying: "Wretched little slummy bedbug, breaking into real people's houses." I didn't like this crack crack eegra, so I grasped hold of one end of her stick as it came down again and then she lost her balance and was trying to steady herself against the table, but then the table- cloth came off with a milk-jug and a milk-bottle going all drunk then scattering white splosh in all directions, then she was down on the floor, grunting, going: "Blast you, boy, you

shall suffer." Now all the cats were getting spoogy and running and jumping in a like cat-panic, and some were blaming each other, hitting out cat-tolchocks with the old lapa and ptaaaaa and grrrrr and kraaaaark. I got up on to my nogas, and there was this nasty vindictive starry forella with her wattles ashake and grunting as she like tried to lever herself up from the

floor, so I gave her a malenky fair kick in the litso, and she

didn't like that, crying: "Waaaaah," and you could viddy her veiny mottled litso going purplewurple where I'd landed the old noga.

As I stepped back from the kick I must have like trod on the tail of one of these dratsing creeching pusspots, because I slooshied a gromky yauuuuuuuuw and found that like fur and teeth and claws had like fastened themselves around my leg, and there I was cursing away and trying to shake it off holding

this silver malenky statue in one rooker and trying to climb over this old ptitsa on the floor to reach lovely Ludwig van in frowning like stone. And then I was into another saucer brim- ful of creamy moloko and near went flying again, the whole veshch really a very humorous one if you could imagine it sloochatting to some other veck and not to Your Humble Narrator. And then the starry ptitsa on the floor reached over all the dratsing yowling pusscats and grabbed at my noga, still going "Waaaaah" at me, and, my balance being a bit gone, I went really crash this time, on to sploshing moloko and skriking koshkas, and the old forella started to fist me on the

litso, both of us being on the floor, creeching: "Thrash him, beat him, pull out his finger-nails, the poisonous young beetle," addressing her pusscats only, and then, as if like obey- ing the starry old ptitsa, a couple of koshkas got on to me

and started scratching like bezoomny. So then I got real be-

zoomny myself, brothers, and hit out at them, but this bab- oochka said: "Toad, don't touch my kitties," and like scratched my litso. So then I screeched: "You filthy old soomka", and upped with the little malenky like silver statue and cracked her a fine fair tolchock on the gulliver and that shut her up real horrorshow and lovely.

Now as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots and koshkas what should I slooshy but the shoom of the old police-auto siren in the distance, and it dawned on me skorry that the old forella of the pusscats had been on the phone to the millicents when I thought she'd been govoreeting to the mewlers and mowlers, her having got her suspicions skorry on the boil when I'd rung the old zvonock pretending for help. So now, slooshying this fearful shoom of the rozz- van, I belted for the front door and had a rabbiting time un- doing all the locks and chains and bolts and other protective

veshches. Then I got it open, and who should be on the door- step but old Dim, me just being able to viddy the other two of my so-called droogs belting off. "Away," I creeched to Dim. "The rozzes are coming." Dim said: "You stay to meet them huh huh huh," and then I viddied that he had his oozy out, and then he upped with it and it snaked whishhh and he chained me gentle and artistic like on the glazlids, me just closing them up in time. Then I was howling around trying to viddy with this howling great pain, and Dim said: "I don't like you should do what you done, old droogy. Not right it wasn't to get on to me like the way you done, brat." And then I could slooshy his bolshy lumpy boots beating off, him going huh huh huh into the darkmans, and it was only about seven seconds after that I slooshied the millicent-van draw up with a

filthy great dropping siren-howl, like some bezoomny animal snuffing it. I was howling too and like yawing about and I banged my gulliver smack on the hall-wall, my glazzies being tight shut and the juice astream from them, very agonizing. So there I was like groping in the hallway as the millicents ar- rived. I couldn't viddy them, of course, but I could slooshy and damn near smell the von of the bastards, and soon I could feel the bastards as they got rough and did the old twist-arm act, carrying me out. I could also slooshy one millicent goloss saying from like the room I'd come out of with all the kots

and koshkas in it: "She's been nastily knocked but she's breathing," and there was loud mewing all the time.

"A real pleasure this is," I heard another millicent goloss say

as I was tolchocked very rough and skorry into the auto. "Little Alex all to our own selves." I creeched out:

"I'm blind, Bog bust and bleed you, you grahzny bastards." "Language, language," like smecked a goloss, and then I got a like backhand tolchock with some ringy rooker or other full on the rot. I said:

"Bog murder you, you vonny stinking bratchnies. Where are

the others? Where are my stinking traitorous droogs? One of my cursed grahzny bratties chained me on the glazzies. Get them before they get away. It was all their idea, brothers.

They like forced me to do it. I'm innocent, Bog butcher you." By this time they were all having like a good smeck at me with the heighth of like callousness, and they'd tolchocked me into the back of the auto, but I still kept on about these so-called droogs of mine and then I viddied it would be no good, be- cause they'd all be back now in the snug of the Duke of New York forcing black and suds and double Scotchmen down the unprotesting gorloes of those stinking starry ptitsas and

they saying: "Thanks, lads. God bless you, boys. Been here all the time you have, lads. Not been out of our sight you haven't."

All the time we were sirening off to the rozz-shop, me being

wedged between two millicents and being given the odd

thump and malenky tolchock by these smecking bullies. Then I found I could open up my glazlids a malenky bit and viddy

like through all tears a kind of steamy city going by, all the lights like having run into one another. I could viddy now through smarting glazzies these two smecking millicents at the back with me and the thin-necked driver and the fat-necked bastard next to him, this one having a sarky like govoreet at me, saying: "Well, Alex boy, we all look forward to a pleasant evening together, don't we not?" I said:

"How do you know my name, you stinking vonny bully? May Bog blast you to hell, grahzny bratchny as you are, you sod." So they all had a smeck at that and I had my ooko like twisted by one of these stinking millicents at the back with me. The fat-necked not-driver said:

"Everybody knows little Alex and his droogs. Quite a famous young boy our Alex has become."

"It's those others," I creeched. "Georgie and Dim and Pete.

No droogs of mine, the bastards."

"Well," said the fat-neck, "you've got the evening in front of you to tell the whole story of the daring exploits of those young gentlemen and how they led poor little innocent Alex astray." Then there was the shoom of another like police siren passing this auto but going the other way.

"Is that for those bastards?" I said. "Are they being picked up by you bastards?"

"That," said fat-neck, "is an ambulance. Doubtless for your old lady victim, you ghastly wretched scoundrel."

"It was all their fault," I creeched, blinking my smarting glaz- zies. "The bastards will be peeting away in the Duke of New York. Pick them up blast you, you vonny sods." And then there was more smecking and another malenky tolchock, O my brothers, on my poor smarting rot. And then we arrived at the stinking rozz-shop and they helped me get out of the auto with kicks and pulls and they tolchocked me up the steps and I

knew I was going to get nothing like fair play from these stinky grahzny bratchnies, Bog blast them.

They dragged me into this very bright-lit whitewashed can- tora, and it had a strong von that was a mixture of like sick and lavatories and beery rots and disinfectant, all coming from the barry places near by. You could hear some of the

plennies in their cells cursing and singing and I fancied I could

slooshy one belting out:

'And I will go back to my darling, my darling, When you, my darling, are gone.'

But there were the golosses of millicents telling them to shut it and you could even slooshy the zvook of like somebody being tolchocked real horrorshow and going owwwwwwwww, and it was like the goloss of a drunken starry ptitsa, not a man. With me in this cantora were four millicents, all having a good loud peet of chai, a big pot of it being on the table and they sucking and belching away over

their dirty bolshy mugs. They didn't offer me any. All that they

gave me, my brothers, was a crappy starry mirror to look into, and indeed I was not your handsome young Narrator any longer but a real strack of a sight, my rot swollen and my

glazzies all red and my nose bumped a bit also. They all had a real horrorshow smeck when they viddied my like dismay, and one of them said: "Love's young nightmare like." And then a top millicent came in with like stars on his pletchoes to show he was high high high, and he viddied me and said: "Hm." So then they started. I said:

"I won't say one single solitary slovo unless I have my

lawyer here. I know the law, you bastards." Of course they all had a good gromky smeck at that and then the stellar top millicent said:

"Righty right, boys, we'll start off by showing him that we know the law, too, but that knowing the law isn't everything."

He had a like gentleman's goloss and spoke in a very weary sort of a way, and he nodded with a like droogy smile at one very big fat bastard. This big fat bastard took off his tunic and you could viddy he had a real big starry pot on him, then he came up to me not too skorry and I could get the von of the milky chai he'd been peeting when he opened his rot in a like very tired leery grin at me. He was not too well shaved for a rozz and you could viddy like patches of dried sweat on his shirt under the arms, and you could get this von of like

earwax from him as he came close. Then he clenched his stink- ing red rooker and let me have it right in the belly, which was unfair, and all the other millicents smecked their gullivers off

at that, except the top one and he kept on with this weary like bored grin. I had to lean against the white-washed wall so that all the white got on to my platties, trying to drag the old breath back and in great agony, and then I wanted to sick up the gluey pie I'd had before the start of the evening. But I couldn't stand that sort of veshch, sicking all over the floor, so I held it back. Then I saw that this fatty bruiseboy was turning to his millicent droogs to have a real horrorshow smeck at what he'd done, so I raised my right noga and before they could creech at him to watch out I'd kicked him smart and lovely on the shin. And he creeched murder, hopping around.

But after that they all had a turn, bouncing me from one to the other like some very weary bloody ball, O my brothers, and fisting me in the yarbles and the rot and the belly and dealing out kicks, and then at last I had to sick up on the floor and, like some real bezoomny veck, I evan said: "Sorry, brothers, that was not the right thing at all. Sorry sorry

sorry." But they handed me starry bits of gazetta and made me wipe it, and then they made me make with the sawdust. And then they said, almost like dear old droogs, that I was to sit down

and we'd all have a quiet like govoreet. And then P. R. Deltoid came in to have a viddy, his office being in the same building,

looking very tired and grahzny, to say: "So it's happened, Alex boy, yes? Just as I thought it would. Dear dear dear, yes." Then he turned to the millicents to say: "Evening, inspector.

Evening, sergeant. Evening, evening, all. Well, this is the end of the line for me, yes. Dear dear, this boy does look messy,

doesn't he? Just look at the state of him."

"Violence makes violence," said the top millicent in a very holy type goloss. "He resisted his lawful arresters."

"End of the line, yes," said P. R. Deltoid again. He looked at

me with very cold glazzies like I had become a thing and was no more a bleeding very tired battered chelloveck. "I suppose I'll have to be in court tomorrow."

"It wasn't me, brother, sir," I said, a malenky bit weepy. "Speak up for me, sir, for I'm not so bad. I was led on by the treachery of the others,sir."

"Sings like a linnet," said the top rozz, sneery. "Sings the roof off lovely, he does that."

"I'll speak," said cold P. R. Deltoid. "I'll be there tomorrow,

don't worry."

"If you'd like to give him a bash in the chops, sir," said the top millicent, "don't mind us. We'll hold him down. He must be another great disappointment to you."

R. Deltoid then did something I never thought any man like him who was supposed to turn us baddiwads into real horrorshow malchicks would do, especially with all those

rozzes around. He came a bit nearer and he spat. He spat. He spat full in my litso and then wiped his wet spitty rot with the back of his rooker. And I wiped and wiped and wiped my spat- on litso with my bloody tashtook, saying "Thank you, sir,

thank you very much, sir, that was very kind of you, sir, thank

you." And then P. R. Deltoid walked out without another slovo.

The millicents now got down to making this long state- ment for me to sign, and I thought to myself, Hell and blast you all, if all you bastards are on the side of the Good then

I'm glad I belong to the other shop. "All right," I said to them, "you grahzny bratchnies as you are, you vonny sods. Take it, take the lot. I'm not going to crawl around on my brooko

any more, you merzky gets. Where do you want it taking from, you cally vonning animals? From my last corrective? Horrorshow, horrorshow, here it is, then." So I gave it to them, and I had this shorthand milicent, a very quiet and scared type chelloveck, no real rozz at all, covering page after page after page after. I gave them the ultra-violence, the crast- ing, the dratsing, the old in-out-in-out, the lot, right up to

this night's veshch with the bugatty starry ptitsa with the mewing kots and koshkas. And I made sure my so-called droogs were in it, right up to the shiyah. When I'd got through the lot the shorthand millicent looked a bit faint,

poor old veck. The top rozz said to him, in a kind type goloss:

"Right, son, you go off and get a nice cup of chai for your- self and then type all that filth and rottenness out with a clothes-peg on your nose, three copies. Then they can be brought to our handsome young friend here for signature. And you," he said to me, "can now be shown to your bridal suite with running water and all conveniences. All right," in this weary goloss to two of the real tough rozzes, "take him away."

So I was kicked and punched and bullied off to the cells and put in with about ten or twelve other plennies, a lot of them drunk. There were real oozhassny animal type vecks among them, one with his nose all ate away and his rot open like a big black hole, one that was lying on the floor snoring away and all like slime dribbling all the time out of his rot, and one that had like done all cal in his pantalonies. Then there were two like queer ones who both took a fancy to me, and one of them made a jump onto my back, and I had a real nasty bit of dratsing with him and the von on him, like of meth and cheap scent, made me want to sick again, only my belly was empty now, O my brothers. Then the other queer one started putting

his rookers on to me, and then there was a snarling bit of dratsing between these two, both of them wanting to get at my plott. The shoom became very loud, so that a couple of millicents came along and cracked into these two with like truncheons, so that both sat quiet then, looking like into space, and there was the old krovvy going drip drip drip down the litso of one of them. There were bunks in this cell, but all filled. I climbed up to the top one of one tier of bunks, there being four in a tier, and there was a starry drunken veck snor- ing away, most probably heaved up there to the top by the millicents. Anyway, I heaved him down again, him not being all that heavy, and he collapsed on top of a fat drunk chello- veck on the floor, and both woke and started creeching and punching pathetic at each other. So I lay down on this vonny bed, my brothers, and went to very tired and exhausted and hurt sleep. But it was not really like sleep, it was like passing out to another better world. And in this other better world, O

my brothers, I was in like a big field with all flowers and trees, and there was a like goat with a man's litso playing away on a like flute. And there rose like the sun Ludwig van himself with thundery litso and cravat and wild windy voloss, and

then I heard the Ninth, last movement, with the slovos all a

bit mixed-up like they knew themselves they had to be mixed- up, this being a dream:

Boy, thou uproarious shark of heaven, Slaughter of Elysium,

Hearts on fire, aroused, enraptured,

We will tolchock you on the rot and kick your grahzny vonny bum.

But the tune was right, as I knew when I was being woke up two or ten minutes or twenty hours or days or years later, my watch having been taken away. There was a millicent like miles and miles down below and he was prodding at me with a long

stick with a spike on the end, saying:

"Wake up, son. Wake up, my beauty. Wake to real trouble." I said:

"Why? Who? Where? What is it?" And the tune of the Joy ode in the Ninth was singing away real lovely and horrorshow within, The millicent said:

"Come down and find out. There's some real lovely news

for you, my son." So I scrambled down, very stiff and sore and not like real awake, and this rozz, who had a strong von of cheese and onions on him, pushed me out of the filthy snor- ing cell, and then along corridors, and all the time the old

tune Joy Thou Glorious Spark Of Heaven was sparking away within. Then we came to a very neat like cantora with type- writers and flowers on the desks, and at the like chief desk the top millicent was sitting, looking very serious and fixing a like very cold glazzy on my sleepy litso. I said:

"Well well well. What makes, bratty. What gives, this fine bright middle of the nochy?" He said:

"I'll give you just ten seconds to wipe that stupid grin off of your face. Then I want you to listen."

"Well, what?" I said, smecking. "Are you not satisfied with beating me near to death and having me spat upon and making me confess to crimes for hours on end and then shoving me among bezoomnies and vonny perverts in that grahzny cell?

Have you some new torture for me, you bratchny?"

"It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness."

And then, before he told me, I knew what it was. The old

ptitsa who had all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world in one of the city hospitals. I'd cracked her a bit too hard, like. Well, well, that was everything. I thought of all those kots and koshkas mewling for moloko and getting

none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress. That was everything. I'd done the lot, now. and me still only fifteen.

Part Two

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

I take it up now, and this is the real weepy and like tragic part of the story beginning, my brothers and only friends, in Staja (State Jail, that is) Number 84F. You will have little desire to slooshy all the cally and horrible raskazz of the

shock that sent my dad beating his bruised and krovvy rockers against unfair like Bog in his Heaven, and my mum squaring her rot for owwwww owwwww owwwww in her mother's grief at her only child and son of her bosom like letting every-

body down real horrorshow. Then there was the starry very grim magistrate in the lower court govoreeting some very hard slovos against your Friend and Humble Narrator, after all the cally and grahzny slander spat forth by P. R. Deltoid and the rozzes, Bog blast them. Then there was being rem- anded in filthy custody among vonny perverts and pre- stoopnicks. Then there was the trial in the higher court with judges and a jury, and some very very nasty slovos indeed

govoreeted in a very like solemn way, and then Guilty and my mum boohoohooing when they said Fourteen Years, O my brothers. So here I was now, two years just to the day of

being kicked and clanged into Staja 84F, dressed in the heighth of prison fashion, which was a one-piece suit of a very filthy like cal colour, and the number sewn on the groody part just above the old tick-tocker and on the back as well, so that

going and coming I was 6655321 and not your little droog Alex not no longer.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

It had not been like edifying, indeed it had not, being in this grahzny hellhole and like human zoo for two years, being kicked and tolchocked by brutal bully warders and meeting vonny leering like criminals, some of them real perverts and ready to dribble all over a luscious young malchick like your story-teller. And there was having to rabbit in the workshop

at making matchboxes and itty round and round and round

the yard for like exercise, and in the evenings sometimes some starry prof type veck would give a talk on beetles or the Milky Way or the Glorious Wonders of the Snowflake, and I had a good smeck at this last one, because it reminded me of that time of the tolchocking and Sheer Vandalism with that ded coming from the public biblio on a winter's night when my droogs were stil not traitors and I was like happy and free. Of those droogs I had slooshied but one thing, and that was one day when my pee and em came to visit and I was told that Georgie was dead. Yes, dead, my brothers. Dead as a bit of dog-cal on the road. Georgie had led the other two into a like very rich chelloveck's house, and there they had kicked and tolchocked the owner on the floor, and then Georgie had started to razrez the cushions and curtains, and then old Dim had cracked at some very precious ornaments, like statues

and so on, and this rich beat-up chelloveck had raged like real bezoomny and gone for them all with a very heavy iron bar.

His being all razdraz had given him some gigantic strength, and Dim and Pete had got out through the window, but Georgie had tripped on the carpet and then brought this terrible swinging iron bar crack and splodge on the gulliver, and that was the end of traitorous Georgie. The starry murderer had

got off with Self Defence, as was really right and proper. Georgie being killed, though it was more than one year after me being caught by the millicents, it all seemed right and proper and like Fate.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

I was in the Wing Chapel, it being Sunday morning, and the prison charlie was govoreeting the Word of the Lord. It was my rabbit to play the starry stereo, putting on solemn music before and after and in the middle too when hymns were sung. I was at the back of the Wing Chapel (there were four along here in Staja 84F) near where the warders or chassos were standing with their rifles and their dirty bolshy blue brutal

jowls, and I could viddy all the plennies sitting down slooshy- ing the Slovo of the Lord in their horrible cal-coloured

prison platties, and a sort of filthy von rose from them, not

like real unwashed, not grazzy, but like a special real stinking von which you only got with the criminal types, my brothers,

a like dusty, greasy, hopeless sort of a von. And I was thinking that perhaps I had this von too, having become a real plenny myself, though still very young. So it was important to

me, O my brothers, to get out of this stinking grahzny zoo as soon as I could. And, as you will viddy if you keep reading on, it was not long before I did.

"What's it going to be then, eh?" said the prison charlie for the third raz. "Is it going to be in and out and in and out of institutions, like this, though more in than out for most of you, or are you going to attend to the Divine Word and realize the punishments that await the unrepentant sinner in the next world, as well as in this? A lot of blasted idiots you

are, most of you, selling your birthright for a saucer of cold por-

ridge. The thrill of theft, or violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes yes, incon- trovertible evidence that hell exists? I know, I know, my friends, I have been informed in visions that there is a place, darker than any prison, hotter than any flame of human fire, where souls of unrepentant criminal sinners like yourselves - and don't leer at me, damn you, don't laugh - like yourselves, I say, scream in endless and intolerable agony, their noses choked with the smell of filth, their mouths crammed with burning ordure, their skin peeling and rotting, a fireball spin- ning in their screaming guts. Yes, yes, yes, I know"

At this point, brothers, a plenny somewhere or other near the back row let out a shoom of lip-music - 'Prrrrrp' - and then the brutal chassos were on the job right away, rushing real skorry to what they thought was the scene of the schoom, then hitting out nasty and delivering tolchocks, left

and right. Then they picked out one poor trembling plenny, very thin and malenky and starry too, and dragged him off, but all the time he kept creeching: "It wasn't me, it was him, see," but that made no difference. He was tolchocked real nasty and then dragged out of the Wing Chapel creeching his gulliver off.

"Now," said the prison charlie, "listen to the Word of the

Lord." Then he picked up the big book and flipped over the pages, keeping on wetting his fingers to do this by licking them splurge splurge. He was a bolshy great burly bastard with a very red litso, but he was very fond of myself, me being young and also now very interested in the big book. It had been arranged as part of my like further education to read in the book and even have music on the chapel stereo while I was reading, O my brothers. And that was real horrorshow.

They would like lock me in and let me slooshy holy music by

S. Bach and G. F. Handel, and I would read of these starry yahoodies tolchocking each other and then peeting their Hebrew vino and getting on to the bed with their wives' like hand-maidens, real horrorshow. That kept me going, brothers. I didn't so much kopat the later part of the book, which is more like all preachy govoreeting than fighting and the old in-out. But one day the charles said to me, squeezing me like tight with his bolshy beefy rooker: "Ah, 6655321,

think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy." And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and then he went off to his little cantora to peet some more. So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns

and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion. So being in Staja 84F was not all that wasted, and the Governor himself was very pleased to hear that I had taken to

like Religion, and that was where I had my hopes.

This Sunday morning the charlie read out from the book about chellovecks who slooshied the slovo and didn't take a blind bit being like a domy built upon sand, and then the rain came splash and the old boomaboom cracked the sky and that was the end of that domy. But I thought that only a very

dim veck would have built his domy upon sand, and a right lot of real sneering droogs and nasty neighbours a veck like that

would have, them not telling him how dim he was doing that

sort of building. Then the charles creeched: "Right, you lot. We'll end with Hymn Number 435 in the Prisoners' Hymnal." Then there was a crash and plop and a whish whish while the plennies picked up and dropped and lickturned the pages of their grazzy malenky hymnbooks, and the bully fierce warders creeched: "Stop talking there, bastards. I'm watching you, 920537." Of course I had the disc ready on the stereo, and then I let the simple music for organ only come belting out with a growwwwowwwwowwww. Then the plennies started to sing real horrible:

Weak tea are we, new brewed But stirring make all strong.

We eat no angel's food, Our times of trial are long.

They sort of howled and wept these stupid slovos with the charlie like whipping them on with "Louder, damn you, sing up," and the warders creeching: "Just you wait, 7749222", and "One on the turnip coming up for you, filth." Then it was all over and the charlie said: "May the Holy Trinity keep you always and make you good, amen," and the shamble out began to a nice choice bit of Symphony No. 2 by Adrian Schweigsel- ber, chosen by your Humble Narrator, O my brothers. What a lot they were, I thought, as I stood there by the starry chapel stereo, viddying them all shuffle out going marrrrre and

baaaaaa like animals and up-your-piping with their grahzny fingers at me, because it looked like I was very special favoured. When the last one had slouched out, his rookers hanging like an ape and the one warder left giving him a fair loud tolchock on the back of the gulliver, and when I had turned off the stereo, the charlie came up to me, puffing away at a cancer, still in his starry bogman's platties, all lacy and white like a devotchka's. He said:

"Thank you as always, little 6655321. And what news have you got for me today?" The idea was, I knew, that this charlie was after becoming a very great holy chelloveck in the world of Prison Religion, and he wanted a real horrorshow tes- timonial from the Governor, so he would go and govoreet quietly to the Governor now and then about what dark plots were brewing among the plennies, and he would get a lot of this cal from me. A lot of it would be all like made up, but some of it would be true, like for instance the time it had come through to our cell on the waterpipes knock knock knockiknockiknock knockiknock that big Harriman was going to break. He was going to tolchock the warder at

slop-time and get out in the warder's platties. Then there was going to be a big throwing about of the horrible pishcha we got in the dining-hall, and I knew about that and told. Then the charlie passed it on and was complimented like by the Governor for his Public Spirit and Keen Ear. So this time I said, and this was not true:

"Well, sir, it has come through on the pipes that a con- signment of cocaine has arrived by irregular means and that a cell somewhere along Tier 5 is to be the centre of dis- tribution." I made all that up as I went along, like I made

up so many of these stories, but the prison charlie was very grateful, saying: "Good, good, good. I shall pass that on

to Himself," this being what he called the Governor. Then I said:

"Sir, I have done my best, have I not?" I always used my very

polite gentleman's goloss govoreeting with those at the top. "I've tried, sir, haven't I?"

"I think," said the charlie, "that on the whole you have,

You've been very helpful and, I consider, shown a genuine desire to reform. You will, if you continue in this manner, earn your remission with no trouble at all."

"But sir," I said, "how about this new thing they're talking about? How about this new like treatment that gets you out of prison in no time at all and makes sure that you never get back in again?"

"Oh," he said, very like wary. "Where did you hear this?

Who's been telling you these things?"

"These things get around, sir," I said. "Two warders talk, as it might be, and somebody can't help hearing what they say. And then somebody picks up a scrap of newspaper in the work- shops and the newspaper says all about it. How about you putting me in for this thing, sir, if I may make so bold as to make the suggestion?"

You could viddy him thinking about that while he puffed away at his cancer, wondering how much to say to me about what he knew about this veshch I'd mentioned. Then he said: "I take it you're referring to Ludovico's Technique." He was still very wary.

"I don't know what it's called, sir," I said. "All I know is that it gets you out quickly and makes sure that you don't get in again."

"That is so," he said, his eyebrows like all beetling while he looked down at me. "That is quite so, 6655321. Of course, it's only in the experimental stage at the moment. It's very simple but very drastic."

"But it's being used here, isn't it, sir?" I said. "Those new like white buildings by the South wall, sir. We've watched those being built, sir, when we've been doing our exercise."

"It's not been used yet," he said, "not in this prison,

Himself has grave doubts about it. I must confess I

share those doubts. The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man." He would have gone on with a lot more of this cal, but we could slooshy the next lot of plennies marching clank clank down the iron stairs to come

for their bit of Religion. He said: "We'll have a little chat

about this some other time. Now you'd better start the vol- untary." So I went over to the starry stereo and put on

S. Bach's 'Wachet Auf' Choral Prelude and in these grahzny vonny bastard criminals and perverts came shambling like a lot of broke-down apes, the warders or chassos like barking

at them and lashing them. And soon the prison charlie was asking them: "What's it going to be then, eh?" And that's where you came in.

We had four of these lomticks of like Prison Religion that morning, but the charles said no more to me about this Lu- dovico's Technique, whatever it was, O my brothers. When I'd finished my rabbit with the stereo he just govoreeted a few slovos of thanks and then I was privodeeted back to the cell

on Tier 6 which was my very vonny and crammed home. The chasso was not really too bad of a veck and he did not tol- chock or kick me in when he'd opened up, he just said: "Here we are, sonny, back to the old waterhole." And there I was with my new type droogs, all very criminal but, Bog be praised, not given to perversions of the body. There was Zophar on his bunk, a very thin and brown veck who went on and on and on in his like cancery goloss, so that nobody bothered to slooshy. What he was saying now like to nobody was "And at that time you couldn't get hold of a poggy" (what- ever that was, brothers), "not if you was to hand over ten million archibalds, so what do I do, eh, I goes down to Turkey's and says I've got this sproog on that morrow, see,

and what can he do?" It was all this very old-time real crimi- nal's slang he spoke. Also there was Wall, who had only one

glazzy, and he was tearing bits of his toe-nails off in honour of Sunday. Also there was Big Jew, a very fat sweaty veck lying flat on his bunk like dead. In addition there was Jojohn and The Doctor. Jojohn was very mean and keen and wiry and had specialized in like Sexual Assault, and The Doctor had pre- tended to be able to cure syph and gon and gleet but he had only injected water, also he had killed off two devotchkas instead, like he had promised, of getting rid of their unwanted loads for them. They were a terrible grahzny lot really, and I didn't enjoy being with them, O my brothers, any more than you do now, but it won't be for much longer.

Now what I want you to know is that this cell was intended for only three when it was built, but there were six of us there, all jammed together sweaty and tight. And that was the state of all the cells in all the prisons in those days, brothers, and a dirty cally disgrace it was, there not being decent room for a chelloveck to stretch his limbs. And you will hardly believe what I say now, which is that on this Sunday they brosatted in another plenny. Yes, we had had our horrible pishcha of dumplings and vonny stew and were smoking a quiet cancer each on our bunks when this veck was thrown into our midst. He was a chinny starry veck and it was him who started cree- ching complaints before we even had a chance to viddy the position. He tried to like shake the bars, creeching: "I demand my sodding rights, this one's full-up, it's a bleeding im- position, that's what it is." But one of the chassos came back to say that he had to make the best of it and share a bunk

with whoever would let him, otherwise it would have to be the floor. "And," said the warder, "it's going to get worse, not better. A right dirty criminal world you lot are trying to build."

Well, it was the letting-in of this new chelloveck that was really the start of my getting out of the old Staja, for he was such a nasty quarrelsome type of plenny, with a very dirty mind and filthy intentions, that trouble nachinatted that very same day. He was also very boastful and started to make with a very sneery litso at us all and a loud proud goloss. He made out that he was the only real horrorshow prestoopnick in the whole zoo, going on that he'd done this and done the other and killed ten rozzes with one crack of his rooker and all that cal. But nobody was very impressed, O my brothers. So then he started on me, me being the youngest there, trying to say that as the youngest I ought to be the one to zasnoot on the floor and not him. But all the others were for me, creeching: "Leave him alone, you grahzny bratchny," and then he began the old whine about how nobody loved him. So that same nochy I woke up to find this horrible plenny actually lying with me on my bunk, which was on the bottom of the three- tier and also very narrow, and he was govoreeting dirty like love-slovos and stroke stroke stroking away. So then I got real bezoomny and lashed out, though I could not viddy all that horrorshow, there being only this malenky little red light outside on the landing. But I knew it was this one, the vonny bastard, and then when the trouble really got under way and the lights were turned on I could viddy his horrible litso with all krovvy dripping from his rot where I'd hit out with my clawing rooker.

What sloochatted then, of course, was that me cell-mates woke up and started to join in, tolchocking a bit wild in the near-dark, and the shoom seemed to wake up the whole tier, so that you could slooshy a lot of creeching and banging about with tin mugs on the wall, as though all the plennies in all the cells thought a big break was about to commence, O my brothers. So then the lights came on and the chassos came

along in their shirts and trousers and caps, waving big sticks. We could viddy each other's flushed litsos and the shaking of fisty rookers, and there was a lot of creeching and cursing.

Then I put in my complaint and every chasso said it was prob- ably your Humble Narrator, brothers, that started it all anyway, me having no mark of a scratch on me but this hor- rible plenny dipping red red krovvy from the rot where I'd

got him with my clawing rooker. That made me real be- zoomny. I said I would not sleep another nochy in that cell if the Prison Authorities were going to allow horrible vonny stinking perverted prestoopnicks to leap on my plott when I was in no position to defend myself, being asleep. "Wait till the morning," they said. "Is it a private room with bath and television that your honour requires? Well, all that will be seen to in the morning. But for the present, little droog, get your bleeding gulliver down on your straw-filled podooshka and let's have no more trouble from anyone. Right right right?" Then off they went with stern warnings for all, then soon after the lights went out, and then I said I would sit up all the rest of the nochy, saying first to this horrible pre-

stoopnick: "Go on, get on my bunk if you wish it. I fancy it no longer. You have made it filthy and cally with your horrible vonny plott lying on it already." But then the others joined in. Big Jew said, still sweating from the bit of a bitva we'd had in the dark:

"Not having that we're not, brotherth. Don't give in to the thquirt." So this new one said:

"Crash your dermott, yid," meaning to shut up, but it was

very insulting. So then Big Jew got ready to launch a tol- chock. The Doctor said:

"Come on, gentlemen, we don't want any trouble, do we?" in his very high-class goloss, but this new prestoopnick was

really asking for it. You could viddy that he thought he was a very big bolshy veck and it was beneath his dignity to be sharing a cell with six and having to sleep on the floor till I

made this gesture at him. In his sneery way he tried to take off The Doctor, saying:

"Owwww, yew wahnt noo moor trouble, is that it, Archi-

balls?" So Jojohn, mean and keen and wiry, said:

"If we can't have sleep let's have some education. Our new friend here had better be taught a lesson." Although he like specialized in Sexual Assault he had a nice way of govoreeting, quiet and like precise. So the new plenny sneered:

"Kish and kosh and koosh, you little terror." So then it all

really started, but in a queer like gentle way, with nobody raising his goloss much. The new plenny creeched a malenky bit at first, but the Wall fisted his rot while Big Jew held him up against the bars so that he could be viddied in the malenky red light from the landing, and he just went oh oh oh. He was not a very strong type of veck, being very feeble in his trying to tolchock back, and I suppose he made up for this by being shoomny in the goloss and very boastful. Anyway, seeing the old krovvy flow red in the red light, I felt the old joy like rising up in my keeshkas and I said:

"Leave him to me, go on, let me have him now, brothers." So Big Jew said:

"Yeth, yeth, boyth, that'th fair. Thlosh him then, Alekth." So

they all stood around while I cracked at this prestoopnick in the near dark. I fisted him all over, dancing about with my boots on though unlaced, and then I tripped him and he went crash crash on to the floor. I gave him one real horrorshow kick on the gulliver and he went ohhhh, then he sort of snorted off to like sleep, and The Doctor said:

"Very well, I think that wil be enough of a lesson," squinting to viddy this downed and beaten-up veck on the floor. "Let him dream perhaps about being a better boy in the future." So we all climbed back into our bunks, being very tired now.

What I dreamt of, O my brothers, was of being in some very big orchestra, hundreds and hundreds strong, and the con- ductor was a like mixture of Ludwig van and G. F. Handel,

looking very deaf and blind and weary of the world. I was with the wind instruments, but what I was playing was like a white pinky bassoon made of flesh and growing out of my plott, right in the middle of my belly, and when I blew into it I had to smeck ha ha ha very loud because it like tickled, and then Ludwig van G. F. got very razdraz and bezoomny. Then he came right up to my litso and creeched loud in my ooko, and then I woke up like sweating. Of course, what the loud shoom really was was the prison buzzer going brrrrr brrrrr brrrrr. It was wint er morning and my glazzies were all cally with sleepglue, and when I opened up they were very sore in the electric light that had been switched on all over the zoo.

Then I looked down and viddied this new prestoopnick lying on the floor, very bloody and bruisy and still out out out.

Then I remembered about last night and that made me smeck

a bit.

But when I got off the bunk and moved him with my bare noga, there was a feel of like stiff coldness, so I went over to The Doctor's bunk and shook him, him always being very slow at waking up in the morning. But he was off his bunk skorry enough this time, and so were the others, except for Wall who slept like dead meat. "Very unfortunate," The Doctor said. "A heart attack, that's what it must have been." Then he said, looking round at us all: "You really shouldn't have gone for him like that. It was most ill-advised really." Jojohn said:

"Come come, doc, you weren't all that backward yourself in giving him a sly bit of fist." Then Big Jew turned on me, saying:

"Alekth, you were too impetuouth. That latht kick wath a very very nathty one." I began to get razdraz about this and said:

"Who started it, eh? I only got in at the end, didn't I?" I pointed at Jojohn and said: "It was your idea." Wall snored a bit loud, so I said: "Wake that vonny bratchny up. It was him

that kept on at his rot while Big Jew here had him up against the bars." The Doctor said:

"Nobody will deny having a little hit at the man, to teach

him a lesson so to speak, but it's apparent that you, my dear boy, with the forcefulness and, shall I say, heedlessness of youth, dealt him the coo de gras. It's a great pity." "Traitors," I said. "Traitors and liars," because I could viddy it was all like before, two years before, when my so-called droogs had left me to the brutal rookers of the millicents.

There was no trust anywhere in the world, O my brothers, the way I could see it. And Jojohn went and woke up Wall, and

Wall was only too ready to swear that it was Your Humble Narrator that had done the real dirty tolchocking and brut- ality. When the chassos came along, and then the Chief Chasso, and then the Governor himself, all these cell-droogs of mine were very shoomny with tales of what I'd done to oobivat this worthless pervert whose krovvy-covered plott lay sacklike on the floor.

That was a very queer day, O my brothers. The dead plott

was carried off, and then everybody in the whole prison had

to stay locked up until further orders, and there was no pishcha given out, not even a mug of hot chai. We just all sat there, and the warders or chassos sort of strode up and down the

tier, now and then creeching "Shut it" or "Close that hole" whenever they slooshied even a whisper from any of the cells. Then about eleven o'clock in the morning there was a sort of like stiffening and excitement and like the von of fear spread- ing from outside the cell, and then we could viddy the Governor and the Chief Chasso and some very bolshy im- portant-looking chellovecks walking by real skorry, govoreet- ing like bezoomny. They seemed to walk right to the end

of the tier, then they could be slooshied walking back again, more slow this time, and you could slooshy the Governor, a

very sweaty fatty fair-haired veck, saying slovos like "But, sir - "

and "Well, what can be done, sir?" and so on. Then the whole lot stopped at our cell and the Chief Chasso opened up. You could viddy who was the real important veck right away, very tall and with blue glazzies and with real horrorshow platties on him, the most lovely suit, brothers, I have ever viddied, absolutely in the heighth of fashion. He just sort of looked right through us poor plennies, saying, in a very beautiful real educated goloss: "The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penological theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens. You get concentrated crimi- nality, crime in the midst of punishment. Soon we may be

needing all our prison space for political offenders." I didn't pony this at all, brothers, but after all he was not govoreeting to me. Then he said: "Common criminals like this unsavoury crowd" - (that meant me, brothers, as well as the others, who

were real prestoopnicks and treacherous with it) - "can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that's all. Full implementation in a year's time. Pun- ishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment. They start murdering each other." And he turned his stern blue glazzies on me. So I said, bold: "With respect, sir, I object very strongly to what you said then. I am not a common criminal, sir, and I am not un- savoury. The others may be unsavoury but I am not." The Chief Chasso went all purple and creeched:

"You shut your bleeding hole, you. Don't you know who this is?"

"All right, all right," said this big veck. Then he turned to the

Governor and said: "You can use him as a trail-blazer. He's young, bold, vicious. Brodsky will deal with him tomorrow and you can sit in and watch Brodsky. It works all right, don't worry about that. This vicious young hoodlum will be trans- formed out of all recognition."

And those hard slovos, brothers, were like the beginning of my freedom.

That very same evening I was dragged down nice and gentle by brutal tolchocking chassos to viddy the Governor in his holy

of holies holy office. The Governor looked very weary at me

and said: "I don't suppose you know who that was this morn- ing, do you, 6655321?" And without waiting for me to say no he said: "That was no less a personage than the Minister of the Interior, the new Minister of the Interior and what they call a very new broom. Well, these new ridiculous ideas have come at last and orders are orders, though I may say to you in confidence that I do not approve. I most emphatically do not approve. An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit

back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust. Hm?" So I said, trying to be like respectful and accomodating:

"Sir." And then the Chief Chasso, who was standing all red and burly behind the Governor's chair, creeched:

"Shut your filthy hole, you scum."

"All right, all right," said the like tired and fagged-out Governor. "You, 6655321, are to be reformed. Tomorrow you go to this man Brodsky. It is believed that you will be able to leave State Custody in a little over a fortnight. In a little over a fortnight you will be out again in the big free world, no longer a number. I suppose," and he snorted a bit here, "that prospect pleases you?" I said nothing so the Chief Chasso creeched:

"Answer, you filthy young swine, when the Governor asks

you a question." So I said:

"Oh, yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I've done my best here, really I have. I'm very grateful to all concerned." "Don't be," like sighed the Governor. "This is not a reward. This is far from being a reward. Now, there is a form here to be signed. It says that you are wiling to have the residue of your sentence commuted to submission to what is called

here, ridiculous expression, Reclamation Treatment. Will you sign?"

"Most certainly I will sign," I said, "sir. And very many

thanks." So I was given an ink-pencil and I signed my name nice and flowy. The Governor said:

"Right. That's the lot, I think." The Chief Chasso said:

"The Prison Chaplain would like a word with him, sir." So I was marched out and off down the corridor towards the Wing Chapel, tolchocked on the back and the gulliver all the

way by one of the chassos, but in a very like yawny and bored manner. And I was marched across the Wing Chapel to the little cantora of the charles and then made to go in. The charles was sitting at his desk, smelling loud and clear of a fine manny von of expensive cancers and Scotch. He said:

"Ah, little 6655321, be seated." And to the chassos: "Wait outside, eh?" Which they did. Then he spoke in a very like earnest way to me, saying: "One thing I want you to under- stand, boy, is that this is nothing to do with me. Were it expedient, I would protest about it, but it is not expedient.

There is the question of my own career, there is the question of the weakness of my own voice when set against the shout of certain more powerful elements in the polity. Do I make myself clear?" He didn't, brothers, but I nodded that he did. "Very hard ethical questions are involved," he went on. "You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321. Never again will you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend

in any way whatsoever against the State's Peace. I hope you take all that in. I hope you are absolutely clear in your own

mind about that." I said:

"Oh, it will be nice to be good, sir." But I had a real hor- rorshow smeck at that inside, brothers. He said:

"It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321. But all I want to say to you now is this: if at any time in the future you look back to these times and re- member me, the lowest and humblest of all God's servitors, do not, I pray, think evil of me in your heart, thinking me in

any way involved in what is now about to happen to you. And now, talking of praying, I realize sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer. A terrible terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprive of the ability to make an ethical

choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think. So, God help us all, 6655321, I shall like to think." And then he began to cry. But I didn't really take much notice of that, brothers only having a bit of a quiet smeck inside, because you could viddy that he had been peeting away at the old whisky, and now he took a bottle from a cupboard

in his desk and started to pour himself a real horrorshow bolshy slog into a very greasy and grahzny glass. He downed it and the said: "All may be well, who knows? God works in a mysterious way." Then he began to sing away at a hymn in a real loud rich goloss. Then the door opened and the chassos came in to tolchock me back to my vonny cell, but the old charles still went on singing this hymn.

Well, the next morning I had to say good-bye to the old

Staja, and I felt a malenky bit sad as you always will when you

have to leave a place you've like got used to. But I didn't go very far, O my brothers. I was punched and kicked along to the new white building just beyond the yard where we used to do our bit of exercise. This was a very new building and it had

a new cold like sizy smell which gave you a bit of the shivers. I

stood there in the horrible bolshy bare hall and I got new

vons, sniffing away there with my like very sensitive morder or sniffer. These were like hospital vons, and the chelloveck the chassos handed me over to had a white coat on, as he might

be a hospital man. He signed for me, and one of the brutal chassos who had brought nme said: "You watch this one, sir. A right brutal bastard he has been and will be again, in spite of

all his sucking up to the Prison Chaplain and reading the Bible." But this new chelloveck had real horrorshow blue glaz- zies which like smiled when he govoreeted. He said:

"Oh, we don't anticipate any trouble. We're going to be

friends, aren't we?" And he smiled with his glazzies and his fine big rot which was full of shining white zoobies and I sort of

took to this veck right away. Anyway, he passed me on to a like lesser veck in a white coat, and this one was very nice too, and I was led off to a very nice white clean bedroom with curtains and a bedside lamp, and just the one bed in it, all for Your Humble Narrator. So I had a real horrorshow inner smeck at that, thinking I was really a very lucky young mal- chickiwick. I was told to take off my horrible prison platties and I was given a really beautiful set of pyjamas, O my

brothers, in plain green, the heighth of bedwear fashion. And I was given a nice warm dressing-gown too and lovely toofles

to put my bare nogas in, and I thought: "Well, Alex boy, little 6655321 as was, you have copped it lucky and no mistake.

You are really going to enjoy it here."

After I had been given a nice chasha of real horrorshow coffee and some old gazettas and mags to look at while peet- ing it, this first veck in white came in, the one who had like signed for me, and he said: "Aha, there you are," a silly sort of

a veshch to say but it didn't sound silly, this veck being so like nice. "My name," he said, "is Dr. Branom. I'm Dr. Brodsky's assistant. With your permission, I'll just give you the usual brief overall examination." And he took the old stetho out of his right carman. "We must make sure you're quite fit, mustn't

we? Yes indeed, we must." So while I lay there with my pyjama top off and he did this, that and the other, I said:

"What exactly is it, sir, that you're going to do?"

"Oh," said Dr. Branom, his cold stetho going all down my back, "it's quite simple, really. We just show you some films." "Films?" I said. I could hardly believe my ookos, brothers,

as you may well understand. "You mean," I said, "it will be just like going to the pictures?"

"They'll be special films," said Dr. Branom. "Very special films. You'll be having the first session this afternoon. Yes," he said, getting up from bending over me, "you seem to be quite a fit young boy. A bit under-nourished perhaps. That will be the fault of the prison food. Put your pyjama top back on. After every meal," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, "we shall be giving you a shot in the arm. That should help." I felt really grateful to this very nice Dr. Branom. I said:

"Vitamins, sir, will it be?"

"Something like that," he said, smiling real horrorshow and friendly, "just a jab in the arm after every meal." Then he went

out. I lay on the bed thinking this was like real heaven, and I read some of the mags they'd given me - 'Worldsport', 'Sinny' (this being a film mag) and 'Goal'. Then I lay back on the bed and shut my glazzies and thought how nice it was going to be

out there again, Alex with perhaps a nice easy job during the day, me being now too old for the old skolliwoll, and then perhaps getting a new like gang together for the nochy, and the first rabbit would be to get old Dim and Pete, if they had not been got already by the millicents. This time I would be

very careful not to get loveted. They were giving another like chance, me having done murder and all, and it would not be like fair to get loveted again, after going to all this trouble to show me films that were going to make me a real good mal- chick. I had a real horrorshow smeck at everybody's like innocence, and I was smecking my gulliver off when they brought in my lunch on a tray. The veck who brought it was the one who'd led me to this malenky bedroom when I came into the mesto, and he said:

"It's nice to know somebody's happy." It was really a very nice appetizing bit of pishcha they'd laid out on the tray - two or three lomticks of like hot roastbeef with mashed kartoffel and vedge, then there was also ice-cream and a nice hot chasha of chai. And there was even a cancer to smoke and a matchbox with one match in. So this looked like it was the life, O my brothers. Then, about half an hour after while I was lying a bit sleepy on the bed, a woman nurse came in, a real nice young devotchka with real horrorshow groodies (I had not seen such for two years) and she had a tray and a hypo- dermic. I said:

"Ah, the old vitamins, eh?" And I clickclicked at her but she took no notice. All she did was to slam the needle into my

left arm, and then swishhhh in went the vitamin stuff. Then she went out again, clack clack on her high-heeled nogas. Then

the white-coated veck who was like a male nurse came in with a wheelchair. I was a malenky bit surprised to viddy that. I said:

"What giveth then, brother? I can walk, surely, to wherever we have to itty to." But he said:

"Best I push you there." And indeed, O my brothers, when I

got off the bed I found myself a malenky biy weak. It was the under-nourishment like Dr. Branom had said, all that horrible prison pishcha. But the vitamins in the after-meal injection would put me right. No doubt at all about that, I thought.

Where I was wheeled to, brothers, was like no sinny I had ever viddied before. True enough, one wall was all covered with silver screen, and direct opposite was a wall with square holes in for the projector to project through, and there were stereo speakers stuck all over the mesto. But against the right-hand one of the other walls was a bank of all like little meters, and in the middle of the floor facing the screen was like a dentist's chair with all lengths of wire running from it, and I had to like crawl from the wheelchair to this, being given some help by another like male nurse veck in a white coat. Then I noticed that underneath the projection holes was like all frosted glass and I thought I viddied shadows of like people moving behind it and I thought I slooshied somebody cough kashl kashl

kashl. But then all I could like notice was how weak I seemed to be, and I put that down to changing over from prison pishcha to this new rich pishcha and the vitamins injected into

"Right," said the wheelchair-wheeling veck, "now I'll leave you. The show will commence as soon as Dr. Brodsky arrives. Hope you enjoy it." To be truthful, brothers, I did not really feel that I wanted to viddy any film-show this afternoon. I was just not in the mood. I would have liked much better to have

a nice quiet spatchka on the bed, nice and quiet and all on my oddy knocky. I felt very limp.

What happened now was that one white-coated veck

strapped my gulliver to a like head-rest, singing to himself all the time some vonny cally pop-song. "What's this for?" I said. And this veck replied, interrupting his like song an instant, that it was to keep my gulliver still and make me look at the screen. "But," I said, "I want to look at the screen. I've been brought here to viddy films and viddy films I shall." And then the other white-coat veck (there were three altogether, one

of them a devotchka who was like sitting at the bank of meters and twiddling with knobs) had a bit of a smeck at that.

He said:

"You never know. Oh, you never know. Trust us, friend. It's better this way." And then I found they were strapping my rookers to the chair-arms and my nogas were like stuck to a foot-rest. It seemed a bit bezoomny to me but I let them get on with what they wanted to get on with. If I was to be a free young malchick again in a fortnight's time I would put up with much in the meantime, O my brothers. One veshch I did not like, though, was when they put like clips on the skin of my forehead, so that my top glazz-lids were pulled up and up and up and I could not shut my glazzies no matter how I tried. I tried to smeck and said: "This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it." And one of the white- coat vecks said, smecking:

"Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors." And then I had like a cap stuck on my gulliver and I could viddy all wires running away from it, and they stuck a like suction pad on my belly and one on the old tick-tocker, and I could just about viddy wires running away from those. Then there was the shoom of a door opening and you could tell some very important chelloveck was coming in by the way the

white-coated under-vecks went all stiff. And then I viddied this

Dr. Brodsky. He was a malenky veck, very fat, with all curly hair curling all over his gulliver, and on his spuddy nose he had very thick ochkies. I could just viddy that he had a real horrorshow suit on, absolutely the heighth of fashion, and he had a like very delicate and subtle von of operating-theatres

coming from him. With him was Dr. Branom, all smiling like as though to give me confidence. "Everything ready?" said Dr.

Brodsky in a very breathy goloss. Then I could slooshy voices

saying Right right right from like a distance, then nearer to, then there was a quiet like humming shoom as though things had been switched on. And then the lights went out and there was Your Humble Narrator And Friend sitting alone in the dark, all on his frightened oddy knocky, not able to move nor

shut his glazzies nor anything. And then, O my brothers, the film-show started off with some very gromky atmosphere music coming from the speakers, very fierce and full of dis- cord. And then on the screen the picture came on, but there was no title and no credits. What came on was a street, as it might have been any street in any town, and it was a real dark nochy and the lamps were lit. It was a very good like pro- fessional piece of sinny, and there were none of these flickers and blobs you get, say, when you viddy one of these dirty films in somebody's house in a back street. All the time the music bumped out, very like sinister. And then you could viddy an old man coming down the street, very starry, and then there leaped out on this starry veck two malchicks dressed in the heighth of fashion, as it was at this time (still thin trousers but no like cravat any more, more of a real tie), and then they started to filly with him. You could slooshy the screams and moans, very realistic, and you could even get the like heavy breathing and panting of the two tolchocking mal-

chicks. They made a real pudding out of this starry veck, going crack crack crack at him with the fisty rookers, tearing his platties off and then finishing up by booting his nagoy plott (this lay all krovvy-red in the grahzny mud of the gutter) and then running off very skorry. Then there was the close-up gulliver of this beaten-up starry veck, and the krovvy flowed beautiful red. It's funny how the colours of the like real

world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.

Now all the time I was watching this I was beginning to get

very aware of a like not feeling all that well, and this I put down to the under-nourishment and my stomach not quite ready for tthe rich pishcha and vitamins I was getting here. But I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film which

came on at once, brothers, without any break at all. This time the film jumped right away on a young devotchka who was being given the old in-out by first one malchick then

another then another then another, she creeching away very gromky through the speakers and like very pathetic and tragic music going on at the same time. This was real, very real, though if you thought about it properly you couldn't imagine lewdies actually agreeing to having all this done to them in a film, and if these films were made by the Good or the State you couldn't imagine them being allowed to take these films without like interfering with what was going on. So it must have been very clever what they call cutting or editing or some such veshch. For it was very real. And when it came to the sixth or seventh malchick leering and smecking and then going into it and the devotchka creeching on the sound-track like bezoomny, then I began to feel sick. I had like pains all over and felt I could sick up and at the same time not sick up, and I began to feel like in distress, O my brothers, being fixed rigid too on this chair. When this bit of film was over I could slooshy the goloss of this Dr. Brodsky from over by the

switchboard saying: "Reaction about twelve point five? Prom- ising, promising."

Then we shot straight into another lomtick of film, and this

time it was of just a human litso, a very like pale human face held still and having different nasty veshches done to it. I was sweating a malenky bit with the pain in my guts and a horrible thirst and my gulliver going throb throb throb, and it seemed to me that if I could not viddy this bit of film I would perhaps be not so sick. But I could not shut my glazzies, and even if I tried to move my glaz-balls about I still could not get like out of the line of fire of this picture. So I had to go on viddying what was being done and hearing the most ghastly creechings coming from this litso. I knew it could not really be real, but that made no difference. I was heaving away but could not sick, viddying first a britva cut out an eye, then slice down the cheek, then go rip rip rip all over, while red krovvy shot on to the camera lens. Then all the teeth were like wrenched out with a pair of pliers, and the creeching and the blood were

terrific. Then I slooshied this very pleased goloss of Dr. Brodsky going: "Excellent, excellent, excellent."

The next lomtick of film was of an old woman who kept a

shop being kicked about amid very gromky laughter by a lot of malchicks, and these malchicks broke up the shop and then set fire to it. You could viddy this poor starry ptitsa trying to crawl out of the flames, screaming and creeching, but having had her leg broke by these malchicks kicking her she could not move. So then all the flames went roaring round her, and you could viddy her agonized litso like appealing through the flames and the disappearing in the flames, and then you

could slooshy the most gromky and agonized and agonizing screams that ever came from a human goloss. So this time I knew I had to sick up, so I creeched:

"I want to be sick. Please let me be sick. Please bring some- thing for me to be sick into." But this Dr. Brodsky called back: "Imagination only. You've nothing to worry about. Next

film coming up." That was perhaps meant to be a joke, for I

heard a like smeck coming from the dark. And then I was forced to viddy a most nasty film about Japanese torture. It was the 1939-45 War, and there were soldiers being fixed to trees with nails and having fires lit under them and having their yarbles cut off, and you even viddied a gulliver being sliced off a soldier with a sword, and then with his head rolling about and the rot and glazzies looking alive still, the plott of this soldier actually ran about, krovvying like a fountain out of

the neck, and then it dropped, and all the time there was very very loud laughter from the Japanese. The pains I felt now in my belly and the headache and the thirst were terrible, and they all seemed to be coming out of the screen. So I creeched:

"Stop the film! Please, please stop it! I can't stand any more." And then the goloss of this Dr. Brodsky said:

"Stop it? Stop it, did you say? Why, we've hardly started." And he and the others smecked quite loud.

I do not wish to describe, brothers, what other horrible vesh- ches I was like forced to viddy that afternoon. The like minds of this Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom and the others in white coats, and remember there was this devotchka twid- dling with the knobs and watching the meters, they must have been more cally and filthy than any prestoopnick in the Staja itself. Because I did not think it was possible for any veck to even think of making films of what I was forced to viddy, all tied to this chair and my glazzies made to be wide open. All I could do was to creech very gromky for them to turn it off, turn it off, and that like part drowned the noise of dratsing and fillying and also the music that went with it all. You can

imagine it was like a terrible relief when I'd viddied the last bit of film, and this Dr. Brodsky said, in a very yawny and bored like goloss: "I think that should be enough for Day One, don't you, Branom?" And there I was with the lights switched on, my gulliver throbbing like a bolshy big engine that makes pain, and my rot all dry and cally inside, and feeling I could like sick up every bit of pishcha I had ever eaten, O my brothers, since the day I was like weaned. "All right," said this Dr. Brodsky, "he can be taken back to his bed." Then he like patted me on the pletcho and said: "Good, good. A very promising start," grinning all over his litso, then he like waddled out, Dr. Branom after him, but Dr. Branom gave me a like very droogy and sympathetic type smile as though he had nothing to do with all this veshch but was like forced into it

as I was.

Anyhow, they freed my plott from the chair and they let go the skin above my glazzies so that I could open and shut them again, and I shut them, O my brothers, with the pain and throb in my gulliver, and then I was like carried to the old wheel-

chair and taken back to my malenky bedroom, the under-veck who wheeled me singing away at some hound-and-horny popsong so that I like snarled: "Shut it, thou," but he only smecked and said: "Never mind, friend," and then sang louder. So I was put into the bed and still felt bolnoy but could not sleep, but soon I started to feel that soon I might start to feel that I might soon start feeling just a malenky bit better, and then I was brought some nice hot chai with plenty of moloko and sakar and, peeting that, I knew that that like horrible nightmare was in the past and all over. And then Dr. Branom came in, all nice and smiling. He said:

"Well, by my calculations you should be starting to feel all right again. Yes?"

"Sir," I said, like wary. I did not quite kopat what he was getting at govoreeting about calculations, seeing that getting better from feeling bolnoy is like your own affair and nothing to do with calculations. He sat down, all nice and droogy, on the bed's edge and said:

"Dr. Brodsky is pleased with you. You had a very positive response. Tomorrow, of course, there'll be two sessions, morning and afternoon, and I should imagine that you'll be feeling a bit limp at the end of the day. But we have to be hard on you, you have to be cured." I said:

"You mean I have to sit through - ? You mean I have to look at - ? Oh, no," I said. "It was horrible."

"Of course it was horrible," smiled Dr. Branom. "Violence is a

very horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it."

"But," I said, "I don't understand. I don't understand about feeling sick like I did. I never used to feel sick before. I used to feel like very the opposite. I mean, doing it or watching it I used to feel real horrorshow. I just don't understand why or how or what - "

"Life is a very wonderful thing," said Dr. Branom in a like very holy goloss. "The processes of life, the make-up of the

human organism, who can fully understand these miracles? Dr.

Brodsky is, of course, a remarkable man. What is happening to you now is what should happen to any normal healthy human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil, the workings of the principle of destruction. You are being made sane, you are being made healthy."

"That I will not have," I said, "nor can understand at all. What you've been doing is to make me feel very ill." "Do you feel ill now?" he said, still with the old droogy

smile on his litso. "Drinking tea, resting, having a quiet chat with a friend - surely you're not feeling anything but well?" I like listened and felt for pain and sickness in my gulliver and plott, in a like cautious way, but it was true, brothers, that I felt real horrorshow and even wanting my dinner. "I don't get it," I said. "You must be doing something to me to

make me feel ill." And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. "You felt ill this afternoon," he said, "because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all. You'll be healthier still this time tomorrow." Then he patted me on the noga and went out, and I tried to puzzle the whole veshch out as best I could. What it seemed to me was that the wire and other veshches that were fixed to my plott perhaps were making me feel ill, and that it was all a trick really. I was still puzzling out all this and wondering whether I should refuse to be strapped down to this chair tomorrow

and start a real bit of dratsing with them all, because I had my rights, when another chelloveck came in to see me. He was a like smiling starry veck who said he was what he called the Discharge Officer, and he carried a lot of bits of paper with him. He said:

"Where will you go when you leave here?" I hadn't really thought about that sort of veshch at all, and it only now really began to dawn on me that I'd be a fine free malchick very soon, and then I viddied that would only be if I played it

everybody's way and did not start any dratsing and creeching and refusing and so on. I said:

"Oh, I shall go home. Back to my pee and em."

"Your - ?" He didn't get nadsat-talk at all, so I said: "To my parents in the dear old flatblock."

"I see," he said. "And when did you last have a visit from your parents?"

"A month," I said, "very near. They like suspended visiting- day for a bit because of one prestoopnick getting some blast- ing-powder smuggled in across the wires from his ptitsa. A real cally trick to play on the innocent, like punishing them as well. So it's near a month since I had a visit."

"I see," said this veck. "And have your parents been informed of your transfer and impending release?" That had a real lovely zvook that did, that slovo 'release'. I said:

"No." Then I said: "It will be a nice surprise for them, that, won't it? Me just walking in through the door and saying: 'Here I am, back, a free veck again.' Yes, real horrorshow." "Right," said the Discharge Officer veck, "we'll leave it at that. So long as you have somewhere to live. Now, there's the question of your having a job, isn't there?" And he showed me this long list of jobs I could have, but I thought, well, there would be time enough for that. A nice malenky holiday first. I could do a crasting job soon as I got out and fill the old carmans with pretty polly, but I would have to be very careful and I would have to do the job all on my oddy knocky. I did not trust so-called droogs any more. So I told this veck to leave it a bit and we would govoreet about it again. He said right right right, then got ready to leave. He showed himself

to be a very queer sort of a veck, because what he did now was to like giggle and then say: "Would you like to punch me in the face before I go?" I did not think I could possibly have slooshied that right, so I said:

"Eh?"

"Would you," he giggled, "like to punch me in the face

before I go?" I frowned like at that, very puzzled, and said: "Why?"

"Oh," he said, "just to see how you're getting on." And he

brought his litso real near, a fat grin all over his rot. So I fisted up and went smack at this litso, but he pulled himself away real skorry, grinning still, and my rooker just punched

air. Very puzzling, this was, and I frowned as he left, smecking his gulliver off. And then, my brothers, I felt real sick again, just like in the afternoon, just for a couple of minootas. It

then passed off skorry, and when they brought my dinner in I found I had a fair appetite and was ready to crunk away at the roast chicken. But it was funny that starry chelloveck

asking for a tolchock in the litso. And it was funny feeling sick like that.

What was even funnier was when I went to sleep that night,

O my brothers, I had a nightmare, and, as you might expect, it was one of those bits of film I'd viddied in the afternoon. A dream or nightmare is really only like a film inside your gulli- ver, except that it is as though you could walk into it and be part of it. And this is what happened to me. It was a nightmare of one of the bits of film they showed me near the end of the afternoon like session, all of smecking malchicks doing the ultra-violent on a young ptitsa who was creeching away in her red red krovvy, her platties all razrezzed real horrorshow. I was in this fillying about, smecking away and being like the ring-leader, dressed in the heighth of nadsat fashion. And then at the heighth of all this dratsing and tolchocking I felt like paralysed and wanting to be very sick, and all the other mal- chicks had a real gromky smeck at me. Then I was dratsing my way back to being awake all through my own krovvy, pints

and quarts and gallons of it, and then I found myself in my bed in this room. I wanted to be sick, so I got out of the bed all trembly so as to go off down the corridor to the old vaysay.

But, behold, brothers, the door was locked. And turning round I viddied for like the first raz that there were bars on

the window. And so, as I reached for the like pot in the mal- enky cupboard beside the bed, I viddied that there would be no escaping from any of all this. Worse, I did not dare to go back into my own sleeping gulliver. I soon found I did not want to be sick after all, but then I was poogly of getting back into bed to sleep. But soon I fell smack into sleep and did not dream any more.

"Stop it, stop it, stop it," I kept on creeching out. "Turn it off you grahzny bastards, for I can stand no more." It was the next day, brothers, and I had truly done my best morning and afternoon to play it their way and sit like a horrorshow smil- ing cooperative malchick in their chair of torture while they flashed nasty bits of ultra-violence on the screen, my glazzies clipped open to viddy all, my plott and rookers and nogas fixed to the chair so I could not get away. What I was being made to viddy now was not really a veshch I would have thought to be too bad before, it being only three or four malchicks crasting in a shop and filling their carmans with cutter, at the same time fillying about with the creeching starry ptitsa running the shop, tolchocking her and letting the red red krovvy flow. But the throb and like crash crash crash in my gulliver and the wanting to be sick and the terrible dry rasping thirstiness in my rot, all were worse than yesterday. "Oh. I've had enough" I cried. "It's not fair, you vonny sods," and I tried to struggle out of the chair but it was not possible me being as good as stuck to it.

"First-class," creeched out this Dr. Brodsky. "You're doing really well. Just one more and then we're finished."

What it was now was the starry 1939-45 War again, and it

was a very blobby and liny and crackly film you could viddy had been made by the Germans. It opened with German eagles and the Nazi flag with that like crooked cross that all mal- chicks at school love to draw, and then there were very haughty and nadmenny like German officers walking through streets that were all dust and bomb-holes and broken build- ings. Then you were allowed to viddy lewdies being shot against walls, officers giving the orders, and also horrible nagoy plotts left lying in gutters, all like cages of bare ribs and white thin nogas. Then there were lewdies being dragged off creeching though not on the sound-track, my brothers, the

only sound being music, and being tolchocked while they were dragged off. Then I noticed, in all my pain and sickness, what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the

sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, and I creeched like bezoomny at that. "Stop!" I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It's a sin, that's what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!" They didn't stop right away, because there was only a minute or

two more to go - lewdies being beaten up and all krovvy, then more firing squads, then the old Nazi flag and THE END. But when the lights came on this Dr. Brodsky and also Dr. Branom were standing in front of me, and Dr. Brodsky said:

"What's all this about sin, eh?"

"That," I said, very sick. "Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music." And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.

"Music," said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. "So you're keen on

music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?"

"It can't be helped," said Dr. Branom. "Each man kills the thing he loves, as the poet-prisoner said. Here's the pun- ishment element, perhaps. The Governor ought to be pleased."

"Give me a drink," I said, "for Bog's sake."

"Loosen him," ordered Dr. Brodsky. "Fetch him a carafe of ice-cold water." So then these under-vecks got to work and soon I was peeting gallons and gallons of water and it was like heaven, O my brothers. Dr. Brodsky said:

"You seem a sufficiently intelligent young man. You seem, too, to be not without taste. You've just got this violence thing, haven't you? Violence and theft, theft being an aspect of violence." I didn't govoreet a single slovo, brothers, I was still feeling sick, though getting a malenky bit better now. But

it had been a terrible day. "Now then," said Dr. Brodsky, "how do you think this is done? Tell me, what do you think we're doing to you?"

"You're making me feel ill. I'm ill when I look at those filthy pervert films of yours. But it's not really the films that's doing it. But I feel that if you'll stop these films I'll stop feeling ill." "Right," said Dr. Brodsky. "It's association, the oldest edu- cational method in the world. And what really causes you to feel ill?"

"These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulli- ver and my plott," I said, "that's what it is."

"Quaint," said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, "the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?" "Odd bits of old rhyming slang," said Dr. Branom, who did not look quite so much like a friend any more. "A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Sub- liminal penetration."

"All right, all right, all right," said Dr. Brodsky, like impatient

and not interested any more. "Well," he said to me, "it isn't the wires. It's nothing to do with what's fastened to you. Those are just for measuring your reactions. What is it, then?"

I viddied then, of course, what a bezoomny shoot I was not to notice that it was the hypodermic shots in the rooker. "Oh," I creeched, "oh, I viddy all now. A filthy cally vonny trick. An act of treachery, sod you, and you won't do it again."

"I'm glad you've raised your objections now," said Dr. Brodsky. "Now we can be perfectly clear about it. We can get this stuff of Ludovico's into your system in many different ways. Orally, for instance. But the subcutaneous method is the best. Don't fight against it, please. There's no point in your fighting. You can't get the better of us."

"Grahzny bratchnies," I said, like snivelling. Then I said: "I don't mind about the ultra-violence and all that cal. I put up with that. But it's not fair on the music. It's not fair I should

feel ill when I'm slooshying lovely Ludwig van and G. F. Handel and others. All that shows you're an evil lot of bastards and I shall never forgive you, sods."

They both looked a bit like thoughtful. Then Dr. Brodsky said: "Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The

choice has been all yours." I didn't understand all these slovos, but now I said:

"You needn't take it any further, sir." I'd changed my tune a

malenky bit in my cunning way. "You've proved to me that all this dratsing and ultra-violence and killing is wrong wrong

and terribly wrong. I've learned my lesson, sirs. I see now what I've never seen before. I'm cured, praise God." And I raised my glazzies in a like holy way to the ceiling. But both these doctors shook their gullivers like sadly and Dr. Brodsky said:

"You're not cured yet. There's still a lot to be done. Only when your body reacts promptly and violently to violence, as to a snake, without further help from us, without medication, only then - " I said:

"But, sir, sirs, I see that it's wrong. It's wrong because it's against like society, it's wrong because every veck on earth has the right to live and be happy without being beaten and tolchocked and knifed. I've learned a lot, oh really I have." But Dr. Brodsky had a loud long smeck at that, showing all his white zoobies, and said:

"The heresy of an age of reason," or some such slovos. "I

see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong. No, no, my boy, you must leave it all to us. But be cheerful about it. It will soon be all over. In less than a fortnight now you'll be a free man." Then he patted me on the pletcho.

Less than a fortnight, O my brothers and friends, it was like an age. It was like from the beginning of the world to the end

of it. To finish the fourteen years without remission in the Staja would have been nothing to it. Every day it was the same. When the devotchka with the hypodermic came round, though, four days after this govoreeting with Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom, I said: "Oh, no you won't," and tolchocked her on the rooker, and the syringe went tinkle clatter on to the

floor. That was like to viddy what they would do. What they

did was to get four or five real bolshy white-coated bastards of under-vecks to hold me down on the bed, tolchocking me with grinny litsos close to mine, and then this nurse ptitsa said: "You wicked naughty little devil, you," while she jabbed my rooker with another syringe and squirted this stuff in real

brutal and nasty. And then I was wheeled off exhausted to this like hell sinny as before.

Every day, my brothers, these films were like the same, all

kicking and tolchocking and red red krovvy dripping off of litsos and plotts and spattering all over the camera lenses. It was usually grinning and smecking malchicks in the heighth of nadsat fashion, or else teeheeheeing Jap torturers or brutal Nazi kickers and shooters. And each day the feeling of want- ing to die with the sickness and gulliver pains and aches in the zoobies and horrible horrible thirst grew really worse. Until one morning I tried to defeat the bastards by crash crash crashing my gulliver against the wall so that I should tolchock myself unconscious, but all that happened was I felt sick with viddying that this kind of violence was like the violence in the films, so I was just exhausted and was given the injection and was wheeled off like before.

And then there came a morning when I woke up and had my breakfast of eggs and toast and jam and very hot milky chai, and then I thought: "It can't be much longer now. Now must be very near the end of the time. I have suffered to the heighths and cannot suffer any more." And I waited and waited, brothers, for this nurse ptitsa to bring in the syringe, but she did not come. And then the white-coated under-veck

came and said:

"Today, old friend, we are letting you walk." "Walk?" I said. "Where?"

"To the usual place," he said. "Yes, yes, look not so aston- ished. You are to walk to the films, me with you of course. You are no longer to be carried in a wheelchair."

"But," I said, "how about my horrible morning injection?"

For I was really surprised at this, brothers, they being so keen on pushing this Ludovico veshch into me, as they said. "Don't I get that horrible sicky stuff rammed into my poor suffering rooker any more?"

"All over," like smecked this veck. "For ever and ever amen. You're on your own now, boy. Walking and all to the chamber of horrors. But you're still to be strapped down and made to see. Come on then, my little tiger." And I had to put my over-gown and toofles on and walk down the corridor to the like sinny mesto.

Now this time, O my brothers, I was not only very sick but

very puzzled. There it was again, all the old ultra-violence and vecks with their gullivers smashed and torn krovvy-dripping ptitsas creeching for mercy, the like private and individual fillying and nastiness. Then there were the prison-camps and the Jews and the grey like foreign streets full of tanks and uniforms and vecks going down in withering rifle-fire, this being the public side of it. And this time I could blame nothing for me feeling sick and thirsty and full of aches except what I was forced to viddy, my glazzies still being clipped open and my nogas and plott fixed to the chair but this set of wires and other veshches no longer coming out of my plott and gulli-

ver. So what could it be but the films I was viddying that were doing this to me? Except, of course, brothers, that this Lu- dovico stuff was like a vaccination and there it was cruising about in my krovvy, so that I would be sick always for ever and ever amen whenever I viddied any of this ultra-violence.

So now I squared my rot and went boo hoo hoo, and the

tears like blotted out what I was forced to viddy in like all blessed runny silvery dewdrops. But these white-coat bratchnies were skorry with their tashtooks to wipe the tears away, saying: "There there, wazzums all weepy-weepy den." And there it was again all clear before my glazzies, these Germans prodding like beseeching and weeping Jews - vecks and cheenas and malchicks and devotchkas - into mestos where they would all snuff it of poison gas. Boo hoo hoo I had to go again, and along they came to wipe the tears off, very skorry, so I should not miss one solitary veshch of what they were showing. It was a terrible and horrible day, O my brothers and only friends.

I was lying on the bed all alone that nochy after my dinner of fat thick mutton stew and fruit-pie and ice-cream, and I

thought to myself: "Hell hell hell, there might be a chance for

me if I get out now." I had no weapon, though. I was allowed no britva here, and I had been shaved every other day by a fat bald-headed veck who came to my bed before breakfast, two white-coated bratchnies standing by to viddy I was a good

non-violent malchick. The nails on my rookers had been scis-

sored and filed real short so I could not scratch. But I was still skorry on the attack, though they had weakened me down, brothers, to a like shadow of what I had been in the old free days. So now I got off the bed and went to the locked door and began to fist it real horrorshow and hard, creeching at the same time: "Oh, help help. I'm sick, I'm dying. Doctor doctor

doctor, quick. Please. Oh, I'll die, I shall. Help." My gorlo was real dry and sore before anyone came. Then I heard nogas coming down the corridor and a like grumbling goloss, and

then I recognized the goloss of the white-coated veck who brought me pishcha and like escorted me to my daily doom. He like grumbled:

"What is it? What goes on? What's your little nasty game in there?"

"Oh, I'm dying," I like moaned. "Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh."

"Appendy shitehouse," grumbled this veck, and then to my

joy, brothers, I could slooshy the like clank of keys. "If you're trying it little friend, my friends and me will beat and kick you all through the night." Then he opened up and brought in like the sweet air of the promise of my freedom. Now I was like behind the door when he pushed it open, and I could viddy him in the corridor light looking round for me puzzled. Then I raised my two fisties to tolchock him on the neck nasty, and then, I swear, as I viddied him in advance lying moan-

ing or out out out and felt the like joy rise in my guts, it was then that this sickness rose in me as it might be a wave and I felt a horrible fear as if I was really going to die. I like tottered over to the bed going urgh urgh urgh, and the veck, who was not in his white coat but an over-gown, viddied clear enough what I had in mind for he said:

"Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time,

as you could say. Come on, little friend, get up from that bed and hit me. I want you to, yes, really. A real good crack across the jaw. Oh, I'm dying for it, really I am." But all I could do, brothers, was to just lay there sobbing boo hoo hoo. "Scum," like sneered this veck now. "Filth." And he pulled me up by like the scruff of my pyjama-top, me being very weak and limp,

and he raised and swung his right rooker so that I got a fair old tolchock clean on the litso. "That," he said, "is for getting me out of my bed, you young dirt." And he wiped his rookers against each other swish swish and went out. Crunch crunch went the key in the lock.

And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get

the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have

like presented the other cheek.

I could not believe, brothers, what I was told. It seemed that I had been in that vonny mesto for near ever and would be there for near ever more. But it had always been a fortnight and now they said the fortnight was near up. They said: "Tomorrow, little friend, out out out." And they made with the old thumb, like pointing to freedom. And then the white- coated veck who had tolchocked me and who had still brought me my trays of pishcha and like escorted me to my everyday torture said: "But you still have one real big day in front of you. It's to be your passing-out day," and he had a leery smeck at that.

I expected this morning that I would be ittying as usual to the sinny mesto in my pyjamas and toofles and over-gown.

But no. This morning I was given my shirt and underveshches and my platties of the night and my horrorshow kick-boots,

all lovely and washed or ironed and polished. And I was even

given my cut-throat britva that I had used in those old happy days for fillying and dratsing. So I gave with the puzzled frown at this as I got dressed, but the white-coated under-veck just like grinned and would govoreet nothing, O my brothers.

I was led quite kindly to the same old mesto, but there were changes there. Curtains had been drawn in front of the sinny screen and the frosted glass under the projection holes was no longer there, it having perhaps been pushed up or folded to the sides like blinds or shutters. And where there had been just the noise of coughing kashl kashl kashl and like shadows of the lewdies was now a real audience, and in this audience there were litsos I knew. There was the Staja Governor and the holy man, the charlie or charles as he was called, and the

Chief Chasso and this very important and well-dressed chello- veck who was the Minister of the Interior or Inferior. All the rest I did not know. Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom were there, though not now white-coated, instead they were dressed as

doctors would dress who were big enough to want to dress in the heighth of fashion. Dr. Branom just stood, but Dr. Brodsky stood and govoreeted in a like learned manner to all the lewdies assembled. When he viddied me coming in he said: "Aha. At this stage, gentlemen, we introduce the subject him- self. He is, as you will percieve, fit and well nourished. He comes straight from a night's sleep and a good breakfast, undrugged, unhypnotized. Tomorrow we send him with confidence out into the world again, as decent a lad as you would meet on a May morning, inclined to the kindly word and the helpful act. What a change is here, gentlemen, from the wretched hoodlum the State committed to unprofitable punishment some two years ago, unchanged after two years.

Unchanged, do I say? Not quite. Prison taught him the false smile, the rubbed hands of hypocrisy, the fawning greased obsequious leer. Other vices it taught him, as well as confirming him in those he had long practised before. But gentlemen, enough of words. Actions speak louder than.

Action now. Observe, all."

I was a bit dazed by all this govoreeting and I was trying to grasp in my mind that like all this was about me. Then all the lights went out and then there came on two like spotlights shining from the projection-squares, and one of them was full on Your Humble and Suffering Narrator. And into the other spotlight there walked a bolshy big chelloveck I had never viddied before. He had a lardy like litso and a moustache and like strips of hair pasted over his near-bald gulliver. He was about thirty or forty or fifty, some old age like that, starry.

He ittied up to me and the spotlight ittied with him, and soon the two spotlights had made like one big pool. He said to me, very sneery: "Hello, heap of dirt. Pooh, you don't wash much, judging from the horrible smell." Then, as if he was like danc- ing, he stamped on my nogas, left, right, then he gave me a finger-nail flick on the nose that hurt like bezoomny and brought the old tears to my glazzies then he twisted at my left

ooko like it was a radio dial. I could slooshy titters and a couple of real horrorshow hawhawhaws coming from like the audience. My nose and nogas and ear-hole stung and pained like bezoomny, so I said:

"What do you do that to me for? I've never done wrong to

you, brother."

"Oh," this veck said, "I do this" - flickedflicked nose again - "and that" - twisted smarting ear-hole - "and the other" - stamped nasty on right noga - "because I don't care for your horrible type. And if you want to do anything about it, start, start, please do." Now I knew that I'd have to be real skorry and get my cut-throat britva out before this horrible killing sickness whooshed up and turned the like joy of battle into feeling I was going to snuff it. But, O brothers, as my rooker reached for the britva in my inside carman I got this like picture in my mind's glazzy of this insulting chelloveck how- ling for mercy with the red red krovvy all streaming out of his rot, and hot after this picture the sickness and dryness and pains were rushing to overtake, and I viddied that I'd have to change the way I felt about this rotten veck very very skorry indeed, so I felt in my carmans for cigarettes or for pretty polly, and, O my brothers, there was not either of these veshches, I said, like all howly and blubbery:

"I'd like to give you a cigarette, brother, but I don't seem to have any." This veck went:

"Wah wah. Boohoohoo. Cry, baby." Then he flick-

flickflicked with his bolshy horny nail at my nose again, and I could slooshy very loud smecks of like mirth coming from the dark audience. I said, real desperate, trying to be nice to this insulting and hurtful veck to stop the pains and sickness coming up:

"Please let me do something for you, please." And I felt in my carmans but could find only my cut-throat britva, so I took this out and handed it to him and said: "Please take this, please. A little present. Please have it." But he said:

"Keep your stinking bribes to yourself. You can't get round me that way." And he banged at my rooker and my cut-throat britva fell on the floor. So I said:

"Please, I must do something. Shall I clean your boots? Look, I'll get down and lick them." And, my brothers, believe it or kiss my sharries, I got down on my knees and pushed my red yahzick out a mile and half to lick his grahzny vonny boots.

But all this veck did was to kick me not too hard on the rot. So then it seemed to me that it would not bring on the sick- ness and pain if I just gripped his ankles with my rookers tight round them and brought this grashzny bratchny down to the floor. So I did this and he got a real bolshy surprise, coming down crack amid loud laughter from the vonny audience. But viddying him on the floor I could feel the whole horrible feel- ing coming over me, so I gave him my rooker to lift him up skorry and up he came. Then just as he was going to give me a real nasty and earnest tolchock on the litso Dr. Brodsky said: "All right, that will do very well." Then this horrible veck sort of bowed and danced off like an actor while the lights came up on me blinking and with my rot square for howling.

Dr. Brodsky said to the audience: "Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the sub- ject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. Any questions?"

"Choice," rumbled a rich deep goloss. I viddied it belonged to the prison charlie. "He has no real choice, has he? Self- interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice."

"These are subtleties," like smiled Dr. Brodsky. "We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are con- cerned only with cutting down crime - "

"And," chipped in this bolshy well-dressed Minister, "with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons."

"Hear hear," said somebody.

There was a lot of govoreeting and arguing then and I just stood there, brothers, like completely ignored by all these ignorant bratchnies, so I creeched out:

"Me, me, me. How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I just some animal or dog?" And that started

them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So

I creeched louder, still creeching: "Am I just to be like a clock- work orange?" I didn't know what made me use those slovos, brothers, which just came like without asking into my gulli- ver. And that shut all those vecks up for some reason for a minoota or two. Then one very thin starry professor type chelloveck stood up, his neck like all cables carrying like power from his gulliver to his plott, and he said:

"You have no cause to grumble, boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen." And the prison charlie creeched out:

"Oh, if only I could believe that." And you could viddy the Governor give him a look like meaning that he would not climb so high in like Prison Religion as he thought he would. Then loud arguing started again, and then I could slooshy the slovo Love being thrown around, the prison charles himself creeching as loud as any about Perfect Love Casteth Out Fear and all that cal. And now Dr. Brodsky said, smiling all over his litso:

"I am glad, gentlemen, this question of Love has been

raised. Now we shall see in action a manner of Love that was thought to be dead with the Middle Ages." And then the lights went down and the spotlights came on again, one on your

poor and suffering Friend and Narrator, and into the other there like rolled or sidled the most lovely young devotchka you could ever hope in all your jeezny, O my brothers, to

viddy. That is to say, she had real horrorshow groodies all of which you could like viddy, she having on platties which came down down down off her pletchoes. And her nogas were like Bog in His Heaven, and she walked like to make you groan in your keeshkas, and yet her litso was a sweet smiling young like innocent litso. She came up towards me with the light like it was the like light of heavenly grace and all that cal coming with her, and the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I would like to have her right down there on the floor

with the old in-out real savage, but skorry as a shot came the sickness, like a like detective that had been watching round a corner and now followed to make his grahzny arrest. And now the von of lovely perfume that came off her made me want to think of starting to heave in my keeshkas, so I

knew I had to think of some new like way of thinking about her before all the pain and thirstiness and horrible sickness come over me real horrorshow and proper. So I creeched out: "O most beautiful and beauteous of devotchkas, I throw

like my heart at your feet for you to like trample all over. If I had a rose I would give it to you. If it was all rainy and cally now on the ground you could have my platties to walk on so as not to cover your dainty nogas with filth and cal." And as I was saying all this, O my brothers, I could feel the sickness like slinking back. "Let me," I creeched out, "worship you and be like your helper and protector from the wicked like world." Then I thought of the right slovo and felt better for it, saying: "Let me be like your true knight," and down I went again on the old knees, bowing and like scraping.

And then I felt real shooty and dim, it having been like an act again, for this devotchka smiled and bowed to the audi- ence and like danced off, the lights coming up to a bit of

applause. And the glazzies of some of these starry vecks in the audience were like popping out at this young devotchka with dirty and like unholy desire, O my brothers.

"He will be your true Christian," Dr. Brodsky was creeching

out, "ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even

of killing a fly." And that was right, brothers, because when he

said that I thought of killing a fly and felt just that tiny bit

sick, but I pushed the sickness and pain back by thinking of the fly being fed with bits of sugar and looked after like a bleeding pet and all that cal. "Reclamation," he creeched. "Joy before the Angels of God."

"The point is," this Minister of the Inferior was saying real

gromky, "that it works."

"Oh," the prison charlie said, like sighing, "it works all right, God help the lot of us."

Part Three

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

That, my brothers, was me asking myself the next morning, standing outside this white building that was like tacked on to the old Staja, in my platties of the night of two years back in the grey light of dawn, with a malenky bit of a bag with my few personal veshches in and a bit of cutter kindly donated by the vonny Authorities to like start me off in my new life.

The rest of the day before had been very tiring, what with interviews to go on tape for the telenews and photographs being took flash flash flash and more like demonstrations of me folding up in the face of ultra-violence and all that embar- rassing cal. And then I had like fallen into the bed and then,as it looked to me, been waked up to be told to get off out, to

itty off home, they did not want to viddy Your Humble Nar- rator never not no more, O my brothers. So there I was, very very early in the morning, with just this bit of pretty polly in my left carman, jingle-jangling it and wondering:

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

Some breakfast some mesto, I thought, me not having eaten at all that morning, every veck being so anxious to

tolchock me off out to freedom. A chasha of chai only I had peeted. This Staja was in a very like gloomy part of the town, but there were malenky workers' caffs all around and I soon found one of these, my brothers. It was very cally and vonny, with one bulb in the ceiling with fly-dirt like obscuring its bit of light, and there were early rabbiters slurping away at chai and horrible-looking sausages and slices of kleb which they like wolfed, going wolf wolf wolf and then creeching for more. They were served by a very cally devotchka but with very bolshy groodies on her, and some of the eating vecks tried to grab her, going haw haw haw while she went he he he, and the sight of them near made me want to sick, brothers.

But I asked for some toast and jam and chai very politely and

with my gentleman's goloss, then I sat in a dark corner to eat and peet.

While I was doing this, a malenky little dwarf of a veck

ittied in, selling the morning's gazettas, a twisted and grahzny prestoopnick type with thick glasses on with steel rims, his platties like the colour of very starry decaying currant pudding. I kupetted a gazetta, my idea being to get ready for plunging back into normal jeezny again by viddying what was ittying on in the world. This gazetta I had seemed to be like a Govern- ment gazetta, for the only news that was on the front page

was about the need for every veck to make sure he put the Government back in again on the next General Election, which seemed to be about two or three weeks off. There were very boastful slovos about what the Government had done, brothers, in the last year or so, what with increased exports and a real horrorshow foreign policy and improved social services and all that cal. But what the Government was really most boastful about was the way in which they reckoned the streets had been made safer for all peace-loving night-walking lewdies in the last six months, what with better pay for the police and the police getting like tougher with young hooli- gans and perverts and burglars and all that cal. Which inter- essovatted Your Humble Narrator some deal. And on the second page of the gazetta there was a blurry like photograph of somebody who looked very familiar, and it turned out to

be none other than me me me. I looked very gloomy and like scared, but that was really with the flashbulbs going pop pop all the time. What it said undrneath my picture was that here was the first graduate from the new State Institute for Rec- lamation of Criminal Types, cured of his criminal instincts in a fortnight only, now a good law-fearing citizen and all that cal. Then I viddied there was a very boastful article about this Ludovico's Technique and how clever the Government was and all that cal. Then there was another picture of some veck I thought I knew, and it was this Minister of the Inferior or

Interior. It seemed that he had been doing a bit of boasting, looking forward to a nice crime-free era in which there would be no more fear of cowardly attacks from young hooligans and perverts and burglars and all that cal. So I went arghhhhhh and threw this gazetta on the floor, so that it covered up stains of spilled chai and horrible spat gobs from the cally animals that used thus caff.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

What it was going to be now, brothers, was homeways and a nice surprise for dadada and mum, their only son and heir

back in the family bosom. Then I could lay back on the bed in

my own malenky den and slooshy some lovely music, and at the same time I could think over what to do now with my jeezny. The Discharge Officer had given me a long list the day before of jobs I could try for, and he had telephoned to different vecks about me, but I had no intention, my brothers, of going off to rabbit right away. A malenky bit of a rest first, yes, and a quiet think on the bed to the sound of lovely

music.

And so the autobus to Center, and then the autobus to Kingsley Avenue, the flats of Flatblock 18A being just near.

You will believe me, my brothers, when I say that my heart

was going clopclopclop with the like excitement. All was very quiet, it still being early winter morning, and when I ittied into the vestibule of the flatblock there was no veck about, only

the nagoy vecks and cheenas of the Dignity of Labour. What surprised me, brothers, was the way that had been cleaned up, there being no longer any dirty ballooning slovos from the rots of the Dignified Labourers, not any dirty parts of the body added to their naked plotts by dirty-minded pencilling malchicks. And what also surprised me was that the lift was working. It came purring down when I pressed the electric knopka, and when I got in I was surprised again to viddy all was clean inside the like cage.

So up I went to the tenth floor, and there I saw 10-8 as it

had been before, and my rooker trembled and shook as I took out of my carman the little klootch I had for opening

But I very firmly fitted the klootch in the lock and turned,

then opened up then went in, and there I met three pairs of surprised and almost frightened glazzies looking at me, and it was pee and em having their breakfast, but it was also another veck that I had never viddied in my jeezny before, a bolshy thick veck in his shirt and braces, quite at home, brothers, slurping away at the milky chai and munchmunching at his eggiweg and toast. And it was this stranger veck who spoke first, saying:

"Who are you, friend? Where did you get hold of a key? Out, before I push your face in. Get out there and knock. Explain your business, quick."

My dad and mum sat like petrified, and I could viddy they had not yet read the gazetta, then I remembered that the ga- zetta did not arrive till papapa had gone off to his work. But then mum said: "Oh, you've broken out. You've escaped.

Whatever shall we do? We shall have the police here, oh oh oh. Oh, you bad and wicked boy, disgracing us all like this." And, believe it or kiss my sharries, she started to go boo hoo. So I started to try and explain, they could ring up the Staja if they wanted, and all the time this stranger veck sat there like frowning and looking as if he could push my litso in with his hairy bolshy beefy fist. So I said:

"How about you answering a few, brother? What are you doing here and for how long? I didn't like the tone of what you said just then. Watch it. Come on, speak up." He was a working-man type veck, very ugly, about thirty or forty, and he sat now with his rot open at me, not govoreeting one single slovo. Then my dad said:

"This is all a bit bewildering, son. You should have let us

know you were coming. We thought it would be at least another five or six years before they let you out. Not," he

said, and he said it very like gloomy, "that we're not very pleased to see you again and a free man, too."

"Who is this?" I said. "Why can't he speak up? What's going

on in here?"

"This is Joe," said my mum. "He lives here now. The lodger, that's what he is. Oh, dear dear dear," she went.

"You," said this Joe. "I've heard all about you, boy. I know

what you've done, breaking the hearts of your poor grieving parents. So you're back, eh? Back to make life a misery for them once more, is that it? Over my dead corpse you will, because they've let me be more like a son to them than like a lodger." I could nearly have smecked loud at that if the old razdraz within me hadn't started to wake up the feeling of wanting to sick, because this veck looked about the same age as my pee and em, and there he was like trying to put a son's protecting rooker round my crying mum, O my brothers. "So," I said, and I near felt like collapsing in all tears myself.

"So that's it, then. Well, I give you five large minootas to clear all your horrible cally veshches out of my room." And I made for this room, this veck being a malenky bit too slow to stop me. When I opened the door my heart cracked to the carpet, because I viddied it was no longer like my room at all, brothers. All my flags had gone off the walls and this veck had put up pictures of boxers, also like a team sitting smug with folded rookers and silver like shield in front. And then I vid- died what else was missing. My stereo and my disc-cupboard were no longer there, nor was my locked treasure-chest that contained bottles and drugs and two shining clean syringes.

"There's been some filthy vonny work going on here," I creeched. "What have you done with my own personal veshches, you horrible bastard?" This was to this Joe, but it was my dad that answered, saying:

"That was all took away, son, by the police. This new regu- lation, see, about compensation for the victims."

I found it very hard not to be very ill, but my gulliver was aching shocking and my rot was so dry that I had to take a skorry swig from the milk-bottle on the table, so that this Joe said: "Filthy piggish manners." I said:

"But she died. That one died."

"It was the cats, son," said my dad like sorrowful, "that were left with nobody to look after them till the will was read, so they had to have somebody in to feed them. So the police sold your things, clothes and all, to help with the looking after of them. That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law."

I had to sit down then, and this Joe said: "Ask permission before you sit, you mannerless young swine," so I cracked back skorry with a "Shut your dirty big fat hole, you," feeling sick. Then I tried to be all reasonable and smiling for my health's sake like, so I said: "Well, that's my room, there's no denying that. This is my home also. What suggestions have you, my pee and em, to make?" But they just looked very glum, my mum shaking a bit, her litso all lines and wet with like tears, and then my dad said:

"All this needs thinking about, son. We can't very well just kick Joe out, not just like that, can we? I mean, Joe's here doing a job, a contract it is, two years, and we made like an arrangement, didn't we, Joe? I mean son, thinking you were going to stay in prison a long time and that room going beg- ging." He was a bit ashamed, you could viddy that from his litso. So I just smiled and like nodded, saying:

"I viddy all. You got used to a bit of peace and you got used to a bit of extra pretty polly. That's the way it goes. And your son has just been nothing but a terrible nuisance." And then, my brothers, believe me or kiss my sharries, I started to like cry, feeling very like sorry for myself. So my dad said:

"Well, you see, son, Joe's paid next month's rent already. I mean, whatever we do in the future we can't say to Joe to get

out, can we, Joe?" This Joe said:

"It's you two I've got to think of, who've been like a father and mother to me. Would it be right or fair to go off and leave you to the tender mercies of this young monster who has been like no real son at all? He's weeping now, but that's his craft and artfulness. Let him go off and find a room some- where. Let him learn the error of his ways and that a bad boy like he's been doesn't deserve such a good mum and dad as what he's had."

"All right," I said, standing up in all like tears still. "I know how things are now. Nobody wants or loves me. I've suffered and suffered and suffered and everybody wants me to go on suffering. I know."

"You've made others suffer," said this Joe. "It's only right you should suffer proper. I've been told everything that you've done, sitting here at night round the family table, and pretty shocking it was to listen to. Made me real sick a lot of it did."

"I wish," I said, "I was back in the prison. Dear old Staja as it was. I'm ittying off now," I said. "You won't ever viddy me no more. I'll make my own way, thank you very much. Let it lie heavy on your consciences." My dad said:

"Don't take it like that, son," and my mum just went boo hoo hoo, her litso all screwed up real ugly, and this Joe put his rooker round her again, patting her and going there there there like bezoomny. And so I just sort of staggered to the

door and went out, leaving them to their horrible guilt, O my brothers.

Ittying down the street in a like aimless sort of a way brothers, in these night platties which lewdies like stared at as I went by, cold too, it being a bastard cold winter day, all I felt I wanted was to be away from all this and not have to

think any more about any sort of veshch at all. So I got the

autobus to Center, then walked back to Taylor Place, and there was the disc-bootick 'MELODIA' - I had used to favour with my inestimable custom, O my brothers, and it looked

much the same sort of mesto as it always had, and walking in I expected to viddy old Andy there, that bald and very very thin helpful little veck from whom I had kupetted discs in the old days. But there was no Andy there now, brothers, only a scream and a creech of nadsat (teenage, that is) malchicks and ptitsas slooshying some new horrible popsong and dancing

to it as well, and the veck behind the counter not much more than a nadsat himself, clicking his rooker-bones and smecking like bezoomny. So I went up and waited till he like deigned to notice me, then I said:

"I'd like to hear a disc of the Mozart Number Forty." I don't know why that should have come into my gulliver, but it did. The counter-veck said:

"Forty what, friend?"

I said: "Symphony. Symphony Number Forty in G Minor." "Ooooh," went one of the dancing nadsats, a malchick with his hair all over his glazzies, "seemfunnah. Don't it seem funny? He wants a seemfunnah."

I could feel myself growing all razdraz within, but I had to watch that, so I like smiled at the veck who had taken over Andy's place and at all the dancing and creeching nadsats. This counter-veck said: "You go into that listen-booth over there, friend, and I'll pipe something through."

So I went over to the malenky box where you could sloo- shy the discs you wanted to buy, and then this veck put a disc

on for me, but it wasn't the Mozart Forty, it was the Mozart 'Prague' - he seemingly having just picked up any Mozart he could find on the shelf - and that should have started making me real razdraz and I had to watch that for fear of the pain and sickness, but what I'd forgotten was something I shouldn't have forgotten and now made me want to snuff it.

It was that these doctor bratchnies had so fixed things that

any music that was like for the emotions would make me sick just like viddying or wanting to do violence. It was because all those violence films had music with them. And I remembered especially that horrible Nazi film with the Beethoven Fifth, last movement. And now here was lovely Mozart made hor- rible. I dashed out of the shop with these nadsats smecking after me and the counter-veck creeching: "Eh eh eh!" But I took no notice and went staggering almost like blind across

the road and round the corner to the Korova Milkbar. I knew what I wanted.

The mesto was near empty, it being still morning. It looked

strange too, having been painted with all red mooing cows, and behind the counter was no veck I knew. But when I said: "Milk plus, large," the veck with a like lean litso very newly shaved knew what I wanted. I took the large moloko plus to one of the little cubies that were all around this mesto, there being like curtains to shut them off from the main mesto, and there I sat down in the plushy chair and sipped and sipped.

When I'd finished the whole lot I began to feel that things were happening. I had my glazzies like fixed on a malenky bit of silver paper from a cancer packet that was on the floor, the sweeping-up of this mesto not being all that horrorshow, brothers. This scrap of silver began to grow and grow and grow and it was so like bright and fiery that I had to squint my glazzies at it. It got so big that it became not only this whole cubie I was lolling in but like the whole Korova, the whole street, the whole city. Then it was the whole world, then it was the whole everything, brothers, and it was like a sea

washing over every veshch that had ever been made or thought of even. I could sort of slooshy myself making special sort of shooms and govoreeting slovos like 'Dear dead idlewilds, rot not in variform guises' and all that cal. Then I could like feel the vision beating up in all this silver, and then there were colours like nobody had ever viddied before, and then I could viddy like a group of statues a long long long way off that was like being pushed nearer and nearer and nearer, all lit up by very bright light from below and above alike, O my brothers. This group of statues was of

God or Bog and all His Holy Angels and Saints, all very bright like bronze, with beards and bolshy great wings that waved about in a kind of wind, so that they could not really be of stone or bronze, really, and the eyes or glazzies like moved and were alive. These bolshy big figures came nearer and nearer and nearer till they were like going to crush me down, and I could slooshy my goloss going 'Eeeeee'. And I felt I had got rid of everything - platties, body, brain, name, the lot -

and felt real horrorshow, like in heaven. Then there was the shoom of like crumbling and crumpling, and Bog and the Angels and Saints sort of shook their gullivers at me, as though to govoreet that there wasn't quite time now but I must try again, and then everything like leered and smecked and collapsed and the big warm light grew like cold, and then there I was as I was before, the empty glass on the table and wanting to cry and feeling like death was the only answer to everything.

And that was it, that was what I viddied quite clear was the thing to do, but how to do it I did not properly know, never having thought of that before, O my brothers. In my little bag of personal veshches I had my cut-throat britva, but I at once felt very sick as I thought of myself going swishhhh at myself and all my own red red krovvy flowing. What I wanted was not something violent but something that would make me

like just go off gentle to sleep and that be the end of Your

Humble Narrator, no more trouble to anybody any more. Perhaps, i thought, if I ittied off to the Public Biblio around the corner I might find some book on the best way of snuffing it with no pain. I thought of myself dead and how sorry every- body was going to be, pee and em and that cally vonny Joe who was a like usurper, and also Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom

and that Inferior Interior Minister and every veck else. And the

boastful vonny Government too. So out I scatted into the winter, and it was afternoon now, near two o'clock, as I could viddy from the bolshy Center timepiece, so that me being in the land with the old moloko plus must have took

like longer than I thought. I walked down Marghanita Boule- vard and then turned into Boothby Avenue, then round the corner again, and there was the Public Biblio.

It was a starry cally sort of a mesto that I could not re- member going into since I was a very very malenky malchick, no more than about six years old, and there were two parts of it - one part to borrow books and one part to read in, full of gazettas and mags and like the von of very starry old men with their plotts stinking of like old age and poverty. These were standing at the gazetta stands all round the room, sniffling and belching and govoreeting to themselves and turning over the pages to read the news very sadly, or else they were sitting at the tables looking at the mags or pre- tending to, some of them asleep and one or two of them snoring real gromky. I couldn't remember what it was I wanted at first, then I remembered with a bit of a shock that

I had ittied here to find out how to snuff it without pain, so I goolied over to the shelf full of reference veshches. There were a lot of books, but there was none with a title, brothers, that would really do. There was a medical book that I took down, but when I opened it it was full of drawings and photographs

of horrible wounds and diseases, and that made me want to sick just a bit. So I put that back and took down the big book or Bible, as it was called, thinking that might give me

like comfort as it had done in the old Staja days (not so old really, but it seemed a very very long time ago), and I staggered over to a chair to read in it. But all I found was about smiting seventy times seven and a lot of Jews cursing and tolchocking each other, and that made me want to sick, too. So then I

near cried, so that a very starry ragged moodge opposite me said:

"What is it, son? What's the trouble?"

"I want to snuff it," I said. "I've had it, that's what it is. Life's become too much for me."

A starry reading veck next to me said: "Shhhh," without

looking up from some bezoomny mag he had full of drawings of like bolshy geometrical veshches. That rang a bell some- how. This other moodge said:

"You're too young for that, son. Why, you've got every- thing in front of you."

"Yes," I said, bitter. "Like a pair of false groodies." This mag- reading veck said: "Shhhh" again, looking up this time, and something clocked for both of us. I viddied who it was. He said, real gromky:

"I never forget a shape, by God. I never forget the shape of anything. By God, you young swine, I've got you now." Crys- tallography, that was it. That was what he'd been taking away from the Biblio that time. False teeth crunched up real hor- rorshow. Platties torn off. His books razrezzed, all about Crystallography. I thought I had best get out of here real skorry, brothers. But this starry old moodge was on his feet, creeching like bezoomny to all the starry old coughers at the gazettas round the walls and to them dozing over mags at the tables. "We have him," he creeched. "The poisonous young swine who ruined the books on Crystallography, rare books, books not to be obtained ever again, anywhere." This had a terrible mad shoom about it, as though this old veck was

really off his gulliver. "A prize specimen of the cowardly brutal young," he creeched. "Here in our midst and at our mercy. He

and his friends beat me and kicked me and thumped me. They stripped me and tore out my teeth. They laughed at my blood and my moans. They kicked me off home, dazed and naked."

All this wasn't quite true, as you know, brothers. He had some platties on, he hadn't been completely nagoy.

I creeched back: "That was over two years ago. I've been punished since then. I've learned my lesson. See over there - my picture's in the papers."

"Punishment, eh?" said one starry like ex-soldier type. "You lot should be exterminated. Like so many noisome pests. Pun- ishment indeed."

"All right, all right," I said. "Everybody's entitled to his opinion. Forgive me, all. I must go now." And I started to itty out of this mesto of bezoomny old men. Aspirin, that was it.

You could snuff it on a hundred aspirin. Aspirin from the old drugstore. But the crystallography veck creeched:

"Don't let him go. We'll teach him all about punishment,

the murderous young pig. Get him." And, believe it, brothers, or do the other veshch, two or three starry dodderers, about ninety years old apiece, grabbed me with their trembly old rookers, and I was like made sick by the von of old age and disease which came from these near-dead moodges. The crys- tal veck was on to me now, starting to deal me malenky weak tolchocks on my litso, and I tried to get away and itty out,

but these starry rookers that held me were stronger than I had thought. Then other starry vecks came hobbling from the gazettas to have a go at Your Humble Narrator. They were creeching veshches like: "Kill him, stamp on him, murder him, kick his teeth in," and all that cal, and I could viddy what it was clear enough. It was old age having a go at youth, that's what it was. But some of them were saying: "Poor old Jack, near killed poor old Jack he did, this is the young swine" and so on, as though it had all happened yesterday. Which to them I suppose it had. There was now like a sea of vonny runny dirty old men trying to get at me with their like feeble rookers and

horny old claws, creeching and panting on to me, but our crystal droog was there in front, dealing out tolchock after tolchock. And I daren't do a solitary single veshch, O my brothers, it being better to be hit at like that than to want to sick and feel that horrible pain, but of course the fact that there was violence going on made me feel that the sickness was peeping round the corner to viddy whether to come out into the open and roar away.

Then an attendant veck came along, a youngish veck,and he creeched: "What goes on here? Stop it at once. This is a read- ing room." But nobody took any notice. So the attendant

veck said: "Right, I shall phone the police." So I creeched, and I never thought I would ever do that in all my jeezny:

"Yes yes yes, do that, protect me from these old madmen." I noticed that the attendant veck was not too anxious to join

in the dratsing and rescue me from the rage and madness of these starry vecks' claws; he just scatted off to his like office or wherever the telephone was. Now these old men were pan- ting a lot now, and I felt I could just flick at them and they would all fall over, but I just let myself be held, very patient, by these starry rookers, my glazzies closed, and feel the feeble tolchocks on my litso, also slooshy the panting breathy old golosses creeching: "Young swine, young murderer, hooligan, thug, kill him." Then I got such a real painful tolchock on the nose that I said to myself to hell to hell, and I opened my glazzies up and started to struggle to get free, which was not hard, brothers, and I tore off creeching to the sort of hallway outside the reading-room. But these starry avengers still came after me, panting like dying, with their animal claws all trem- bling to get at your friend and Humble Narrator. Then I was tripped up and was on the floor and was being kicked at, then I slooshied golosses of young vecks creeching: "All right, all right, stop it now," and I knew the police had arrived.

I was like dazed, O my brothers, and could not viddy very clear, but I was sure I had met these millicents some mesto before. The one who had hold of me, going: "There there there," just by the front door of the Public Biblio, him I did not know at all, but it seemed to me he was like very young to be a rozz. But the other two had backs that I was sure I had viddied before. They were lashing into these starry old vecks with great bolshy glee and joy, swishing away with malenky whips, creeching: "There, you naughty boys. That should teach you to stop rioting and breaking the State's Peace, you wicked villains, you." So they drove these panting and wheez- ing and near dying starry avengers back into the reading- room, then they turned round, smecking with the fun they'd had, to viddy me. The older one of the two said:

"Well well well well well well well. If it isn't little Alex. Very long time no viddy, droog. How goes?" I was like dazed, the uniform and the shlem or helmet making it hard to viddy who this was, though litso and goloss were very familiar. Then I looked at the other one, and about him, with his grinning bezoomny litso, there was no doubt. Then, all numb and growing number, I looked back at the well well welling one.

This one was then fatty old Billyboy, my old enemy. The other was, of course, Dim, who had used to be my droog and also the enemy of stinking fatty goaty Billyboy, but was now a millicent with uniform and shlem and whip to keep order. I said:

"Oh no."

"Surprise, eh?" And old Dim came out with the old guff I remembered so horrorshow: "Huh huh huh."

"It's impossible," I said. "It can't be so. I don't believe

it."

"Evidence of the old glazzies," grinned Billyboy. "Nothing up our sleeves. No magic, droog. A job for two who are now of

job-age. The police."

"You're too young," I said. "Much too young. They don't make rozzes of malchicks of your age."

"Was young," went old millicent Dim. I could not get over it, brothers, I really could not. "That's what we was, young droogie. And you it was that was always the youngest. And here now we are."

"I still can't believe it," I said. Then Billyboy, rozz Billyboy that I couldn't get over, said to this young millicent that was like holding on to me and that I did not know:

"More good would be done, I think, Rex, if we doled out a

bit of the old summary. Boys will be boys, as always was. No need to go through the old station routine. This one here has been up to his old tricks, as we can well remember though you, of course, can't. He has been attacking the aged and defenceless, and they have properly been retaliating. But we must have our say in the State's name."

"What is all this?" I said, not able hardly to believe my

ookos. "It was them that went for me, brothers. You're not on their side and can't be. You can't be, Dim. It was a veck we fillied with once in the old days trying to get his own malenky bit of revenge after all this long time."

"Long time is right," said Dim. "I don't remember them days too horrorshow. Don't call me Dim no more, either. Officer call me."

"Enough is remembered, though," Billyboy kept nodding.

He was not so fatty as he had been. "Naughty little malchicks handy with cut-throat britvas - these must be kept under."

And they took me in a real strong grip and like walked me out of the Biblio. There was a millicent patrol-car waiting outside, and this veck they called Rex was the driver. They like tol- chocked me into the back of this auto, and I couldn't help feeling it was all really like a joke, and that Dim anyway would pull his shlem off his gulliver and go haw haw haw. But he didn't. I said, trying to fight the strack inside me:

"And old Pete, what happened to old Pete? It was sad about Georgie," I said. "I slooshied all about that."

"Pete, oh yes, Pete," said Dim. "I seem to remember like the

name." I could viddy we were driving out of town. I said: "Where are we supposed to be going?"

Billyboy turned round from the front to say: "It's light still. A little drive into the country, all winter-bare but lonely and lovely. It is not right, not always, for lewdies in the town to

viddy too much of our summary punishments. Streets must be kept clean in more than one way." And he turned to the front again.

"Come," I said. "I just don't get this at all. The old days are dead and gone days. For what I did in the past I have been punished. I have been cured."

"That was read out to us," said Dim. "The Super read all that out to us. He said it was a very good way."

"Read to you," I said, a malenky bit nasty. "You still too dim to read for yourself, O brother?"

"Ah, no," said Dim, very like gentle and like regretful. "Not to speak like that. Not no more, droogie." And he launched a bolshy tolchock right on my cluve, so that all red red nose- krovvy started to drip drip drip.

"There was never any trust," I said, bitter, wiping off the krovvy with my rooker. "I was always on my oddy knocky." "This will do," said Billyboy. We were now in the country and it was all bare trees and a few odd distant like twitters, and in the distance there was some like farm machine making a whirring shoom. It was getting all dusk now, this being the height of winter. There were no lewdies about, nor no animals. There was just the four. "Get out, Alex boy," said Dim. "Just a malenky bit of summary."

All through what they did this driver veck just sat at the wheel of the auto, smoking a cancer, reading a malenky bit of a book. He had the light on in the auto to viddy by. He took no notice of what Billyboy and Dim did to your Humble

Narrator. I will not go into what they did, but it was all like panting and thudding against this like background of whirring farm engines and the twittwittwittering in the bare or nagoy branches. You could viddy a bit of smoky breath in the auto light, this driver turning the pages over quite calm. And they were on to me all the time, O my brothers. Then Billyboy or Dim, I couldn't say which one, said: "About enough, droogie. I should think, shouldn't you?" Then they gave me one final tolchock on the litso each and I fell over and just laid there

on the grass. It was cold but I was not feeling the cold. Then they dusted their rookers and put back on their shlems and tunics which they had taken off, and then they got back into the auto. "Be viddying you some more sometime, Alex," said Billyboy, and Dim just gave one of his old clowny guffs. The driver finished the page he was reading and put his book away, then he started the auto and they were off townwards, my ex- droog and ex-enemy waving. But I just laid there, fagged and shagged.

After a bit I was hurting bad, and then the rain started, all

icy. I could viddy no lewdies in sight, nor no lights of houses. Where was I to go, who had no home and not much cutter in my carmans? I cried for myself boo hoo hoo. Then I got up and started walking.

Home, home, home, it was home I was wanting, and it was HOME I came to, brothers. I walked through the dark and followed not the town way but the way where the shoom of a like farm machine had been coming from. This brought me to a sort of village I felt I had viddied before, but was perhaps because all villages look the same, in the dark especially. Here were houses and there was a like drinking mesto, and right at the end of the village there was a malenky cottage on its oddy knocky, and I could viddy its name shining on the gate.

HOME, it said. I was all dripping wet with this icy rain, so that my platties were no longer in the heighth of fashion but real miserable and like pathetic, and my luscious glory was a wet tangle cally mess all spread over my gulliver, and I was sure there were cuts and bruises all over my litso, and a couple of my zoobies sort of joggled loose when I touched them

with my tongue or yahzick. And I was sore all over my plott

and very thirsty, so that I kept opening my rot to the cold rain, and my stomach growled grrrrr all the time with not having had any pishcha since morning and then not very much, O my brothers.

HOME, it said, and perhaps here would be some veck to help. I opened the gate and sort of slithered down the path, the rain like turning to ice, and then I knocked gentle and pathetic on the door. No veck came, so I knocked a malenky bit longer and louder, and then I heard the shoom of nogas coming to the door. Then the door opened and a male goloss said: "Yes, what is it?"

"Oh," I said, "please help. I've been beaten up by the police and just left to die on the road. Oh, please give me a drink of something and a sit by the fire, please, sir."

The door opened full then, and I could viddy like warm

light and a fire going crackle crackle within. "Come in," said this veck, "whoever you are. God help you, you poor victim,

come in and let's have a look at you." So I like staggered in, and it was no big act I was putting on, brothers, I really felt done and finished. This kind veck put his rookers round my pletchoes and pulled me into this room where the fire was, and of course I knew right away now where it was and why HOME on the gate looked so familiar. I looked at this veck and he looked at me in a kind sort of way, and I remembered him well now. Of course he would not remember me, for in those carefree days I and my so-called droogs did all our

bolshy dratsing and fillying and crasting in maskies which were real horrorshow disguises. He was a shortish veck in middle age, thirty, forty, fifty, and he had otchkies on. "Sit down by the fire," he said, "and I'll get you some whisky and warm water. Dear dear dear, somebody has been beating you up." And he gave a like tender look at my gulliver and litso.

"The police," I said. "The horrible ghastly police." "Another victim," he said, like sighing. "A victim of the modern age. I'll go and get you that whisky and then I must

clean up your wounds a little." And off he went. I had a look round this malenky comfortable room. It was nearly all books now and a fire and a couple of chairs, and you could viddy somehow that there wasn't a woman living there. On the table was a typewriter and a lot of like tumbled papers, and I remembered that this veck was a writer veck. 'A Clock- work Orange', that had been it. It was funny that that stuck in my mind. I must not let on, though, for I needed help and kindness now. Those horrible grahzny bratchnies in that ter- rible white mesto had done that to me, making me need help and kindness now and forcing me to want to give help and kindness myself, if anybody would take it.

"Here we are, then," said this veck returning. He gave me this hot stimulating glassful to peet, and it made me feel better, and then he cleaned up these cuts on my litso. Then he said: "You have a nice hot bath, I'll draw it for you, and then you can tell me all about it over a nice hot supper which I'll get

ready while you're having the bath." O my brothers, I could have wept at his kindness, and I think he must have viddied the old tears in my glazzies, for he said: "There there there," pat- ting me on the pletcho.

Anyway, I went up and had this hot bath, and he brought in

pyjamas and an over-gown for me to put on, all warmed by the fire, also a very worn pair of toofles. And now, brothers, though I was aching and full of pains all over, I felt I would soon feel a lot better. I ittied downstairs and viddied that in the kitchen he had set the table with knives and forks and a fine big loaf of kleb, also a bottle of PRIMA SAUCE, and soon he served out a nice fry of eggiwegs and lomticks of ham and bursting sausages and big bolshy mugs of hot sweet milky chai. It was nice sitting there in the warm, eating, and I found I was very hungry, so that after the fry I had to eat lomtick after lomtick of kleb and butter spread with straw-

berry jam out of a bolshy great pot. "A lot better," I said. "How can I ever repay?"

"I think I know who you are," he said. "If you are who I think you are, then you've come, my friend, to the right place. Wasn't that your picture in the papers this morning? Are you the poor victim of this horrible new technique? If so, then you have been sent here by Providence. Tortured in prison, then thrown out to be tortured by the police. My heart goes out to you, poor poor boy." Brothers, I could not get a slovo in, though I had my rot wide open to answer his questions. "You are not the first to come here in distress," he said. "The police are fond of bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village. But it is providential that you, who are also another kind of victim, should come here. Perhaps, then, you have heard of me?"

I had to be very careful, brothers. I said: "I have heard of 'A Clockwork Orange'. I have not read it, but I have heard of it."

"Ah," he said, and his litso shone like the sun in its flaming

morning glory. "Now tell me about yourself."

"Little enough to tell, sir," I said, all humble. "There was a foolish and boyish prank, my so-called friends persuading or rather forcing me to break into the house of an old ptitsa - lady, I mean. There was no real harm meant. Unfortunately the lady strained her good old heart in trying to throw me out, though I was quite ready to go of my own accord, and then she died. I was accused of being the cause of her death. So I was sent to prison,sir."

"Yes yes yes, go on."

"Then I was picked out by the Minister of the Inferior or Interior to have this Ludovico's veshch tried out on me." "Tell me all about it," he said, leaning forward eager, his pullover elbows with all strawberry jam on them from the plate I'd pushed to one side. So I told him all about it. I told

him the lot, all, my brothers. He was very eager to hear all, his glazzies like shining and his goobers apart, while the grease

on the plates grew harder harder harder. When I had finished

he got up from the table, nodding a lot and going hm hm hm, picking up the plates and other veshches from the table and taking them to the sink for washing up. I said:

"I will do that, sir, and gladly."

"Rest, rest, poor lad," he said, turning the tap on so that all steam came burping out. "You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about the marginal condition- ings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain."

"That's right, sir," I said, smoking one of this kind man's cork-tipped cancers.

"They always bite off too much," he said, drying a plate like absent-mindedly. "But the essential intention is the real sin. A

man who cannot choose ceases to be a man."

"That's what the charles said, sir," I said. "The prison chap- lain, I mean."

"Did he, did he? Of course he did. He'd have to, wouldn't

he, being a Christian? Well, now then," he said, still wiping the same plate he'd been wiping ten minutes ago, "we shall have a few people in to see you tomorrow. I think you can be used, poor boy. I think that you can help dislodge this overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness." He was still wiping this same plate. I said:

"Sir, you're still wiping that same plate, I agree with you, sir, about boasting. This Government seems to be very boast- ful."

"Oh," he said, like viddying this plate for the first time and then putting it down. "I'm still not too handy," he said, "with domestic chores. My wife used to do them all and leave me to my writing."

"Your wife, sir?" I said. "Has she gone and left you?" I really

wanted to know about his wife, remembering very well. "Yes, left me," he said, in a like loud and bitter goloss. "She died, you see. She was brutally raped and beaten. The shock was very great. It was in this house," his rookers were trem- bling, holding a wiping-up cloth, "in that room next door. I have had to steel myself to continue to live here, but she would have wished me to stay where her fragrant memory

still lingers. Yes yes yes. Poor little girl." I viddied all clearly, my brothers, what had happened that far-off nochy, and vid- dying myself on that job, I began to feel I wanted to sick and the pain started up in my gulliver. This veck viddied this, be- cause my litso felt it was all drained of red red krovvy, very pale, and he would be able to viddy this. "You go to bed now," he said kindly. "I've got the spare room ready. Poor poor boy, you must have had a terrible time. A victim of the modern

age, just as she was. Poor poor poor girl."

I had a real horrorshow night's sleep, brothers, with no dreams at all, and the morning was very clear and like frosty, and there was the very pleasant like von of breakfast frying away down below. It took me some little time to remember where I was, as it always does, but it soon came back to me and then I felt like warmed and protected. But, as I laid there in the bed, waiting to be called down to breakfast, it struck me that I ought to get to know the name of this kind pro- tecting and like motherly veck, so I had a pad round in my nagoy nogas looking for 'A Clockwork Orange', which would

be bound to have his eemya in, he being the author. There was nothing in my bedroom except a bed and a chair and a light,

so I ittied next door to this veck's own room, and there I

viddied his wife on the wall, a bolshy blown-up photo, so I felt a malenky bit sick remembering. But there were two or three shelves of books there too, and there was, as I thought there must be, a copy of 'A Clockwork Orange', and on the back of the book, like on the spine, was the author's eemya -

Alexander. Good Bog, I thought, he is another Alex. Then I leafed through, standing in his pyjamas and bare nogas but

not feeling one malenky bit cold, the cottage being warm all through, and I could not viddy what the book was about. It seemed written in a very bezoomny like style, full of Ah and Oh and all that cal, but what seemed to come out of it was that all lewdies nowadays were being turned into machines and that they were really - you and me and him and kiss-my- sharries - more like a natural growth like a fruit. F. Alexander seemed to think that we all like grow on what he called the world-tree in the world-orchard that like Bog or God

planted, and we were there because Bog or God had need of us to quench his thirsty love, or some such cal. I didn't like the shoom of this at all, O my brothers, and wondered how bezoomny this F. Alexander really was, perhaps driven be-

zoomny by his wife's snuffing it. But then he called me down in a like sane veck's goloss, full of joy and love and all that cal, so down Your Humble Narrator went.

'You've slept long," he said, ladling out boiled eggs and pulling black toast from under the grill. "It's nearly ten already. I've been up hours, working."

"Writing another book, sir?" I said.

"No no, not that now," he said, and we sat down nice and droogy to the old crack crack crack of eggs and crackle crunch crunch of this black toast, very milky chai standing by in bolshy great morning mugs. "No, I've been on the phone to various people."

"I thought you didn't have a phone," I said, spooning egg in and not watching out what I was saying.

"Why?" he said, very alert like some skorry animal with an

egg-spoon in its rooker. "Why shouldn't you think I have a phone?"

"Nothing," I said, "nothing, nothing." And I wondered,

brothers, how much he remembered of the earlier part of that distant nochy, me coming to the door with the old tale and saying to phone the doctor and she saying no phone. He took a very close smot at me but then went back to being like

kind and cheerful and spooning up the old eggiweg. Munching away, he said:

"Yes, I've rung up various people who will be interested in your case. You can be a very potent weapon, you see, in en- suring that this present evil and wicked Government is not returned in the forthcoming election. The Government's big boast, you see, is the way it has dealt with crime these last months." He looked at me very close again over his steaming egg, and I wondered again if he was viddying what part I had so far played in his jeezny. But he said: "Recruiting brutal young roughs for the police. Proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning." All these long slovos, brothers, and a like mad or bezoomny look in his glazzies. "We've seen

it all before," he said, "in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism." "Dear dear dear," I thought, egging away and toast-crunching. I said:

"Where do I come into all this, sir?"

"You," he said, still with this bezoomny look, "are a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know, must see." He got up from his breakfast and started to walk up and down the kitchen, from the sink to the like larder, saying very gromky: "Would they like their sons to become what you, poor victim, have become? Will not the Government itself now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the life and guts and will

of whoever sees fit to displeasure the Government? He became quieter but did not go back to his egg. "I've written an article," he said, "this morning, while you were sleeping. That will be out in a day or so, together with your unhappy picture. You shall sign it, poor boy, a record of what they have done to

you." I said:

"And what do you get out of all this, sir? I mean, besides the pretty polly you'll get for the article, as you call it? I mean, why are you so hot and strong against this Govern- ment, if I may make like so bold as to ask?"

He gripped the edge of the table and said, gritting his

zoobies, which were very cally and all stained with cancer- smoke: "Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tra- dition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go,

oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded - " And here, brothers, he picked

up a fork and stuck it two or three razzes into the wall, so

that it got all bent. Then he threw it on the floor. Very kindly he said: "Eat well, poor boy, poor victim of the modern world," and I could viddy quite clear he was going off his

gulliver. "Eat, eat. Eat my egg as well." But I said:

"And what do I get out of this? Do I get cured of the way I am? Do I find myself able to slooshy the old Choral Sym- phony without being sick once more? Can I live like a normal jeezny again? What, sir, happens to me?"

He looked at me, brothers, as if he hadn't thought of that before and, anyway, it didn't matter compared with Liberty and all that cal, and he had a look of surprise at me saying

what I said, as though I was being like selfish in wanting some- thing for myself. Then he said: "Oh, as I say, you're a living witness, poor boy. Eat up all your breakfast and then come and see what I've written, for it's going into 'The Weekly Trumpet' under your name, you unfortunate victim."

Well, brothers, what he had written was a very long and very weepy piece of writing, and as I read it I felt very sorry for the poor malchick who was govoreeting about his sufferings and how the Government had sapped his will and how it was up to all lewdies to not let such a rotten and evil Government rule them again, and then of course I realized

that the poor suffering malchick was none other than Y. H. N.

"Very good," I said. "Real horrorshow. Written well thou hast, O sir." And then he looked at me very narrow and said:

"What?" It was like he had not slooshied me before.

"Oh, that," I said, "is what we call nadsat talk. All the teens use that, sir." So then he ittied off to the kitchen to wash up the dishes, and I was left in these borrowed night platties and toofles, waiting to have done to me what was going to be done to me, because I had no plans for myself, O my brothers.

While the great F. Alexander was in the kitchen a ding- alingaling came at the door. "Ah," he creeched, coming out wiping his rookers, "it will be these people. I'll go." So he went and let them in, a kind of rumbling hahaha of talk and hallo

and filthy weather and how are things in the hallway, then

they ittied into the room with the fire and the book and the article about how I had suffered, viddying me and going Aaaaah as they did it. There were three lewdies, and F. Alex gave me their eemyas. Z.Dolin was a very wheezy smoky kind of a veck, coughing kashl kashl kashl with the end of a cancer in his rot, spilling ash all down his platties and then brushing

it away with like very impatient rookers. He was a malenky

round veck, fat, with big thick-framed otchkies on. Then there was Something Something Rubinstein, a very tall and polite chelloveck with a real gentleman's goloss, very starry with a like eggy beard. And lastly there was D. B. da Silva who was like skorry in his movements and had this strong von of scent coming from him. They all had a real horrorshow look at me and seemed like overjoyed with what they viddied. Z. Dolin said:

"All right, all right, eh? What a superb device he can be, this boy. If anything, of course, he could for preference look even iller and more zombyish than he does. Anything for the cause. No doubt we can think of something."

I did not like that crack about zombyish, brothers, and so I

said: "What goes on, bratties? What dost thou in mind for thy little droog have?" And the F. Alexander swooshed in

with:

"Strange, strange, that manner of voice pricks me. We've come into contact before, I'm sure we have." And he brooded, like frowning. I would have to watch this, O my brothers.

B. da Silva said:

"Public meetings, mainly. To exhibit you at public meetings will be a tremendous help. And, of course, the newspaper angle is all tied up. A ruined life is the approach. We must inflame all hearts." He showed his thirty-odd zoobies, very white against his dark-coloured litso, he looking a malenky bit like some foreigner. I said:

"Nobody will tell me what I get out of all this. Tortured in jail, thrown out of my home by my own parents and their

filthy overbearing lodger, beaten by old men and near-killed by the millicents - what is to become of me?" The Rubinstein veck came in with:

"You will see, boy, that the Party will not be ungrateful. Oh, no. At the end of it all there will be some very acceptable little surprise for you. Just you wait and see."

"There's only one veshch I require," I creeched out, "and that's to be normal and healthy as I was in the starry days, having my malenky bit of fun with real droogs and not those who just call themselves that and are really more like traitors. Can you do that, eh? Can any veck restore me to what I was? That's what I want and that's what I want to know."

Kashl kashl kashl, coughed this Z. Dolin. "A martyr to the

cause of Liberty." he said. "You have your part to play and don't forget it. Meanwhile, we shall look after you." And he began to stroke my left rooker as if I was like an idiot, grin- ning in a bezoomny way. I creeched:

"Stop treating me like a thing that's like got to be just used.

I'm not an idiot you can impose on, you stupid bratchnies. Ordinary prestoopnicks are stupid, but I'm not ordinary and nor am I dim. Do you slooshy?"

"Dim," said F. Alexander, like musing. "Dim. That was a name somewhere. Dim."

"Eh?" I said. "What's Dim got to do with it? What do you

know about Dim?" And then I said: "Oh, Bog help us." I didn't like the look in F. Alexander's glazzies. I made for the

door, wanting to go upstairs and get my platties and then itty off.

"I could almost believe," said F. Alexander, showing his stained zoobies, his glazzies mad. "But such things are impos- sible. For, by Christ, if he were I'd tear him. I'd split him, by God, yes yes, so I would."

"There," said D. B. da Silva, stroking his chest like he was a doggie to calm him down. "It's all in the past. It was other people altogether. We must help this poor victim. That's what

we must do now, remembering the Future and our Cause." "I'll just get my platties," I said, at the stair-foot, "that is to say clothes, and then I'll be ittying off all on my oddy knocky.

I mean, my gratitude for all, but I have my own jeezny to live." Because, brothers, I wanted to get out of here real skorry. But

Dolin said:

"Ah, no. We have you, friend, and we keep yo u. You come with us. Everything will be all right, you'll see." And he came up to me like to grab hold of my rooker again. Then,

brothers, I thought of fight, but thinking of fight made me like want to collapse and sick, so I just stood. And then I saw this like madness in F. Alexander's glazzies and said:

"Whatever you say. I am in your rookers. But let's get it started and all over, brothers." Because what I wanted now was to get out of this mesto called HOME. I was beginning not to like the look of the glazzies of F. Alexander one malenky bit.

"Good," said this Rubinstein. "Get dressed and let's get started."

"Dim dim dim," F. Alexander kept saying in a like low

mutter. "What or who was this Dim?" I ittied upstairs real skorry and dressed in near two seconds flat. Then I was out with these three and into an auto, Rubinstein one side of me and Z. Dolin coughing kashl kashl kashl the other side. D. B. da Silva doing the driving, into the town and to a flatblock not really all that distant from what had used to be my own flatblock or home. "Come, boy, out," said Z. Dolin, coughing to make the cancer-end in his rot glow red like some malenky

furnace. "This is where you shall be installed." So we ittied in, and there was like another of these Dignity of Labour vesh- ches on the wall of the vestibule, and we upped in the lift, brothers, and then went into a flat like all the flats of all the flatblocks of the town. Very very malenky, with two bed- rooms and one live-eat-work-room, the table of this all

covered with books and papers and ink and bottles and all

that cal. "Here is your new home," said D. B. da Silva. "Settle here, boy. Food is in the food-cupboard. Pyjamas are in a drawer. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit."

"Eh?" I said, not quite ponying that.

"All right," said Rubinstein, with his starry goloss. "We are now leaving you. Work has to be done. We'll be with you later. Occupy yourself as best you can."

"One thing," coughed Z. Dolin kashl kashl kashl. "You saw what stirred in the tortured memory of our friend F. Alexan- der. Was it, by chance - ? That is to say, did you - ? I think you know what I mean. We won't let it go any further." "I've paid," I said. "Bog knows I've paid for what I did. I've paid not only for like myself but for those bratchnies too

that called themselves my droogs." I felt violent so then I felt a bit sick. "I'll lay down a bit," I said. "I've been through terrible terrible times."

"You have," said D. B. da Silva, showing all his thirty zoobies. "You do that."

So they left me, brothers. They ittied off about their business, which I took to be about politics and all that cal, and I was on the bed, all on my oddy knocky with everything

very very quiet. I just laid there with my sabogs kicked off my nogas and my tie loose, like all bewildered and not knowing what sort of a jeezny I was going to live now. And all sorts of like pictures kept like passing through my gulliver, of the different chellovecks I'd met at school and in the Staja, and

the different veshches that had happened to me, and how there was not one veck you could trust in the whole bolshy world. And then I like dozed off, brothers.

When I woke up I could hear slooshy music coming out of the wall, real gromky, and it was that that had dragged me out of my bit of like sleep. It was a symphony that I knew real horrorshow but had not slooshied for many a year, namely the Symphony Number Three of the Danish veck Otto Skade- lig, a very gromky and violent piece, especially in the first

movement, which was what was playing now. I slooshied for two seconds in like interest and joy, but then it all came over me, the start of the pain and the sickness, and I began to groan deep down in my keeshkas. And then there I was, me

who had loved music so much, crawling off the bed and going

oh oh oh to myself and then bang bang banging on the wall creching: "Stop, stop it, turn it off!" But it went on and it seemed to be like louder. So I crashed at the wall till my knuckles were all red red krovvy and torn skin, creeching and creeching, but the music did not stop. Then I thought I had to get away from it, so I lurched out of the malenky bedroom and ittied skorry to the front door of the flat, but this had been locked from the outside and I could not get out. And all the time the music got more and more gromky, like it was all

a deliberate torture, O my brothers. So I stuck my little fingers real deep in my ookos, but the trombones and kettledrums blasted through gromky enough. So I creeched again for them to stop and went hammer hammer hammer on the wall, but it made not one malenky bit of difference. "Oh, what am I to do?" I boohooed to myself. "Oh, Bog in Heaven help me." I was like wandering all over the flat in pain and sickness, trying to shut out the music and like groaning deep out of my guts, and then on top of the pile of books and papers and all that

cal that was on the tablein the living room I viddied what I

had to do and what I had wanted to do until those old men in the Public Biblio and then Dim and Billyboy disguised as rozzes stopped me, and that was to do myself in, to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked and cruel world. What I viddied was the slovo DEATH on the cover of a like pam- phlet, even though it was only DEATH to THE GOVERN- MENT. And like it was Fate there was another malenky booklet which had an open window on the cover, and it said: "Open the window to fresh air, fresh ideas, a new way of

living." And so I knew that was like telling me to finish it all off by jumping out. One moment of pain, perhaps, and then sleep

for ever and ever and ever.

The music was still pouring in all brass and drums and the violins miles up through the wall. The window in the room where I had laid down was open. I ittied to it and viddied a fair drop to the autos and buses and waiting chellovecks below. I creeched out to the world: "Good-bye, good-bye, may Bog forgive you for a ruined life." Then I got on to the sill, the music blasting away to my left, and I shut my glazzies and felt the cold wind on my litso, then I jumped.

I jumped, O my brothers, and I fell on the sidewalk hard, but I did not snuff it, oh no. If I had snuffed it I would not be here to write what I written have. It seems that the jump was not from a big enough heighth to kill. But I cracked my back and my wrists and nogas and felt very bolshy pain before I passed out, brothers, with astonished and surprised litsos of chello- vecks in the streets looking at me from above. And just before I passed out I viddied clear that not one chelloveck in the whole horrid world was for me and that that music through the wall had all been like arranged by those who were sup- posed to be my like new droogs and that it was some veshch like this that they wanted for their horrible selfish and boast- ful politics. All that was in like a million millionth part of one minoota before I threw over the world and the sky and the litsos of the staring chellovecks that were above me.

Where I was when I came back to jeezny after a long black black gap of it might have been a million years was a hospital, all white and with this von of hospitals you get, all like sour and smug and clean. These antiseptic veshches you get in hos- pitals should have a real horrorshow von of like frying

onions or of flowers. I came very slow back to knowing who I was and I was all bound up in white and I could not feel anything in my plott, pain nor sensation nor any veshch at all. All round my gulliver was a bandage and there were bits of stuff like stuck to my litso, and my rookers were all in

bandages and like bits of stick were like fixed to my fingers like on it might be flowers to make them grow straight, and my

poor old nogas were all straightened out too, and it was all

bandages and wire cages and into my right rooker, near the pletcho, was red red krovvy dripping from a jar upside down. But I could not feel anything, O my brothers. There was a nurse sitting by my bed and she was reading some book that was all very dim print and you could viddy it was a story

because of a lot of inverted commas, and she was like breath- ing hard uh uh uh over it, so it must have been a story about the old in-out in-out. She was a real horrorshow devotchka, this nurse, with a very red rot and like long lashes over her glazzies, and under her like very stiff uniform you could viddy she had very horrorshow groodies. So I said to her: "What gives, O my little sister? Come thou and have a nice lay-down with your malenky droog in this bed." But the slovos didn't come out horrorshow at all, it being as though my rot was all stiffened up, and I could feel with my yahzick that some of my zoobies were no longer there. But this nurse like jumped and dropped her book on the floor and said:

"Oh, you've recovered consciousness."

That was like a big rotful for a malenky ptitsa like her, and I tried to say so, but the slovos came out only like er er er. She ittied off and left me on my oddy knocky, and I could viddy now that I was in a malenky room of my own, not in one of these long wards like I had been in as a very little malchick, full of coughing dying starry vecks all around to make you want to get well and fit again. It had been like diphtheria I had had then, O my brothers.

It was like now as though I could not hold to being con- scious all that long, because I was like asleep again almost right away, very skorry, but in a minoota or two I was sure that this nurse ptitsa had come back and had brought chello- vecks in white coats with her and they were viddying me very

frowning and going hm hm hm at Your Humble Narrator. And with them I was sure there was the old charles from the Staja govoreeting: "Oh my son, my son," breathing a like very stale von of whisky on to me and then saying: "But I would not

stay, oh no. I could not in no wise subscribe to what those bratchnies are going to do to other poor prestoopnicks. O I got out and am preaching sermons now about it all, my little beloved son in J. C."

I woke up again later on and who should I viddy there

round the bed but the three from whose flat I had jumped out, namely D. B. da Silva and Something Something Rubinstein and Z. Dolin. "Friend," one of these vecks was saying, but I could not viddy, or slooshy horrorshow which one, "friend, little friend," this goloss was saying, "the people are on fire with indignation. You have killed those horrible boastful villains' chances of re-election. They will go and will go

for ever and ever. You have served Liberty well." I tried to say:

"If I had died it would have been even better for you politi- cal bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are." But all that came out was er er er. Then one of these three seemed to hold out a lot of bits cut from gazettas and what I could viddy was a horrible picture of me all krovvy on a stretcher being carried off and I seemed to like remember a kind of a popping of lights which must have been photographer vecks. Out of one glazz I could read like head- lines which were sort of trembling in the rooker of the

chelloveck that held them, like BOY VICTIM OF CRIMINAL REFORM SCHEME and GOVERNMENT AS MUR-

DERER and there was like a picture of a veck that

looked familiar to me and it said OUT OUT OUT, and that would be the Minister of the Inferior or Interior. Then the nurse ptitsa said:

"You shouldn't be exciting him like that. You shouldn't be doing anything that will make him upset. Now come on, let's have you out." I tried to say:

"Out out out," but it was er er er again. Anyway, these three political vecks went. And I went, too, only back to the land, back to all blackness lit up by like odd dreams which I didn't know whether they were dreams or not, O my brothers. Like for instance I had this idea of my whole plott or body being like emptied of as it might be dirty water and then filled up again with clean. And then there were really lovely and horror-

show dreams of being in some veck's auto that had been crasted

by me and driving up and down the world all on my oddy knocky running lewdies down and hearing them creech they were dying, and in me no pain and no sickness. And also there were dreams of doing the old in-out in-out with devotchkas, forcing like them down on the ground and making them have it and everybody standing around claping their rookers and cheering like bezoomny. And then I woke up again and it was my pee and em come to viddy their ill son, my em boohooing

real horrorshow. I could govoreet a lot better now and could say: "Well well well well well, what gives? What makes you think you are like welcome?" My papapa said, in a like ashamed

way:

"You were in the papers, son. It said they had done great wrong to you. It said how the Government drove you to try and do yourself in. And it was our fault too, in a way, son. Your home's your home, when all's said and done, son." And my mum kept on going boohoohoo and looking ugly as kiss- my-sharries. So I said:

"And how beeth the new son Joe? Well and healthy and prosperous, I trust and pray?" My mum said:

"Oh, Alex Alex. Owwwwwwww." My papapa said:

"A very awkward thing, son. He got into a bit of trouble with the police and was done by the police."

"Really?" I said. "Really? Such a good sort of chelloveck and

all. Amazed proper I am, honest."

"Minding his own business he was," said my pee. "And the police told him to move on. Waiting at a corner he was, son, to see a girl he was going to meet. And they told him to move on and he said he had rights like everybody else, and then they sort of fell on top of him and hit him about cruel."

"Terrible," I said. "Really terrible. And where is the poor boy now?"

"Owwwww," boohooed my mum. "Gone back owww- wwwme."

"Yes," said dad. "He's gone back to his own home town to

get better. They've had to give his job here to somebody else."

"So now," I said, "You're willing for me to move back in

again and things be like they were before." "Yes, son," said my papapa. "Please, son."

"I'll consider it," I said. "I'll think about it real careful." "Owwwww," went my mum.

"Ah, shut it," I said, "or I'll give you something proper to yowl and creech about. Kick your zoobies in I will." And, O my brothers, saying that made me feel a malenky bit better, as if all like fresh red red krovvy was flowing all through my plott. That was something I had to think about. It was like as though to get better I had had to get worse.

"That's no way to speak to your mother, son," said my papapa. "After all, she brought you into the world."

"Yes," I said. "And a right grahzny vonny world too." I shut my glazzies tight in like pain and said: "Go away now. I'll think about coming back. But things will have to be very

different."

"Yes, son," said my pee. "Anything you say."

"You'll have to make up your mind," I said, "who's to be boss."

"Owwwwww," my mum went on.

"Very good, son," said my papapa. "Things will be as you like. Only get well."

When they had gone I laid and thought a bit about different

veshches, like all different pictures passing through my gulliver, and when the nurse ptitsa came back in and like straightened the sheets on the bed I said to her:

"How long is it I've been in here?" "A week or so," she said.

"And what have they been doing to me?"

"Well," she said, "you were all broken up and bruised and had sustained severe concussion and had lost a lot of blood. They've had to put all that right, haven't they?"

"But," I said, "has anyone been doing anything with my gulli- ver? What I mean is, have they been playing around with inside like my brain?"

"Whatever they've done," she said, "it'll all be for the best."

But a couple of days later a couple of like doctor vecks came in, both youngish vecks with these very sladky smiles,

and they had like a picture book with them. One of them said: "We want you to have a look at these and to tell us what you think about them. All right?"

"What giveth, O little droogies?" I said. "What new be- zoomny idea dost thou in mind have?" So they both had a like embarrassed smeck at that and then they sat down either side of the bed and opened up this book. On the first page there was like a photograph of a bird-nest full of eggs. "Yes?" one of these doctor vecks said.

"A bird-nest," I said, "full of like eggs. Very very nice." "And what would you like to do about it?" the other one said.

"Oh," I said, "smash them. Pick up the lot and like throw them against a wall or a cliff or something and then viddy them all smash up real horrorshow."

"Good good," they both said, and then the page was turned. It was like a picture of one of these bolshy great birds called peacocks with all its tail spread out in all colours in a very boastful way. "Yes?" said one of these vecks.

"I would like," I said, "to pull out like all those feathers in its tail and slooshy it creech blue murder. For being so like boastful."

"Good," they both said, "good good good." And they went on turning the pages. There were like pictures of real hor- rorshow devotchkas, and I said I would like to give them the old in-out in-out with lots of ultra-violence. There were like pictures of chellovecks being given the boot straight in the

litso and all red red krovvy everywhere and I said I would like

to be in on that. And there was a picture of the old nagoy droog of the prison charlie's carrying his cross up a hill, and I said I would like to have the old hammer and nails. Good good good, I said:

"What is all this?"

"Deep hypnopaedia," or some such slovo, said one of these two vecks. "You seem to be cured."

"Cured?" I said. "Me tied down to this bed like this and you say cured? Kiss my sharries is what I say."

So I waited and, O my brothers, I got a lot better, munching away at eggiwegs and lomticks of toast and peeting bolshy great mugs of milky chai, and then one day they said I was going to have a very very very special visitor.

"Who?" I said, while they straightened the bed and combed my luscious glory for me, me having the bandage off now from my gulliver and the hair growing again.

"You'll see, you'll see," they said. And I viddied all right. At two-thirty of the afternoon there were like all photographers and men from gazettas with noteboks and pencils and all

that cal. And, brothers, they near trumpeted a bolshy fanfare for this great and important veck who was coming to viddy Your Humble Narrator. And in he came, and of course it was none other than the Minister of the Interior or Inferior, dressed in the heighth of fashion and with this very upper- class haw haw goloss. Flash flash bang went the cameras when he put out his rooker to me to shake it. I said:

"Well well well well well. What giveth then, old droogie?" Nobody seemed to quite pony that, but somebody said in a like harsh goloss:

"Be more respectful, boy, in addressing the Minister." "Yarbles," I said, like snarling like a doggie. "Bolshy great yarblockos to thee and thine."

"All right, all right," said the Interior Inferior one very skorry. "He speaks to me as a friend, don't you, son?"

"I am everyone's friend," I said. "Except to my enemies."

"Well," said the Int Inf Min, sitting down by my bed. "I and the Government of which I am a member want you to regard

us as friends. Yes, friends. We have put you right, yes? You are

getting the best of treatment. We never wished you harm, but there are some who did and do. And I think you know who those are."

"Yes yes yes," he said. "There are certain men who wanted to use you, yes, use you for political ends. They would have been glad, yes, glad for you to be dead, for they thought they could then blame it all on the Government. I think you know who those men are."

"There is a man," said the Intinfmin, "called F. Alexander, a writer of subversive literature, who has been howling for your blood. He has been mad with desire to stick a knife in you.

But you're safe from him now. We put him away." "He was supposed to be like a droogie," I said. "Like a mother to me was what he was."

"He found out that you had done wrong to him. At least,"

said the Min very very skorry, "he believed you had done wrong. He formed this idea in his mind that you had been responsible for the death of someone near and dear to him."

"What you mean," I said, "is that he was told."

"He had this idea," said the Min. "He was a menace. We put him away for his own protection. And also," he said, "for yours."

"Kind," I said. "Most kind of thou."

"When you leave here," said the Min, "you will have no worries. We shall see to everything. A good job on a good salary. Because you are helping us."

"Am I?" I said.

"We always help our friends, don't we?" And then he took my rooker and some veck creeched: "Smile!" and I smiled

like bezoomny without thinking, and then flash flash crack flash bang there were pictures being taken of me and the Intinfmin

all droogy together. "Good boy," said this great chelloveck. "Good good boy. And now, see, a present."

What was brought in now, brothers, was a big shiny box, and I viddied clear what sort of a veshch it was. It was a stereo. It was put down next to the bed and opened up and

some veck plugged its lead into the wall-socket. "What shall it be?" asked a veck with otchkies on his nose, and he had in his rookers lovely shiny sleeves full of music. "Mozart? Beet- hoven? Schoenberg? Carl Orff?"

"The Ninth," I said. "The glorious Ninth."

And the Ninth it was, O my brothers. Everybody began to leave nice and quiet while I laid there with my glazzies closed, slooshying the lovely music. The Min said: "Good good boy," patting me on the pletcho, then he ittied off. Only one veck

was left, saying: "Sign here, please." I opened my glazzies up to sign, not knowing what I was signing and not, O my brothers, caring either. Then I was left alone with the glorious Ninth of Ludwig van.

Oh it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to

the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and run- ning on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva. And there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement still to come. I was cured all right.

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

There was me, Your Humble Narrator, and my three droogs, that is Len, Rick, and Bully, Bully being called Bully because of his bolshy big neck and very gromky goloss which was just like some bolshy great bull bellowing auuuuuuuuh. We were sitting in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. All round were chellovecks well away on milk plus vellocet and synthemesc and drencrom and other veshches which take you far far far away from this wicked and real world into the land to viddy Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left sabog with lights bursting and spurting all over your mozg. What we were peeting was the old moloko with knives in it, as we used to say, to sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, but I've told you all that before.

We were dressed in the heighth of fashion, which in those days was these very wide trousers and a very loose black shiny leather like jerkin over an open-necked shirt with a like scarf tucked in. At this time too it was the heighth of fashion to use the old britva on the gulliver, so that most of the gulliver was like bald and there was hair only on the sides. But it was always the same on the old nogas - real horrorshow bolshy big boots for kicking litsos it.

'What's it going to be then, eh?'

I was like the oldest of we four, and they all looked up to me as their leader, but I got the idea sometimes that Bully had the thought in his gulliver that he would like to take over, this being because of his gibness and the gromky goloss that bellowed out of him when he was on the warpath. But all the ideas came from Your Humble, O my brothers, and also there was the veshch that I had been famous and had had my picture and articles and all that cal in the gazettas. Also I had by far the best job of all we four, being in the National Gramodisc Archives on the music side with a real horrorshow carman full of pretty polly at the week's end and a lot of nice free discs for my own malenky self on the side.

This evening in the Korova there was a fair number of vecks and ptitsas and devotchkas and malchicks smecking and peeting away, and cutting through their govoreeting and the burbling of the in-the-landers with their 'Gorgor fallatuke and the worm sprays in filltip slaughterballs' and all that cal you could slooshy a popdisc on the stereo, this being Ned Achimota singing 'That Day, Yeah, That Day'. At the counter were three devotchkas dressed in the heighth of nadsat fashion, that is to say long uncombed hair dyed white and false groodies sticking out a metre or more and very very tight short skirts with all like frothy white underneath, and Bully kept saying: 'Hey, get in there we could, three of us. Old Len is not like interested. Leave old Len alone with his God.' And Len kept saying: 'Yarbles yarbles. Where is the spirit of all for one and one for all, eh boy?' Suddenly I felt both very very tired and also full of tingly energy, and I said:

'Out out out out out.'

'Where to?' said Rick, who had a litso like a frog's.

'Oh, just to viddy what's doing in the great outside,' I said. But somehow, my brothers, I felt very bored and a bit hopeless, and I had been feeling that a lot these days. So I turned to the chelloveck nearest me on the big plush seat that ran right round the whole messto, a chelloveck, that is, who was burbling away under the influence, and I fisted him real skorry ack ack ack in the belly. But he felt it not, brothers, only burbling away with his 'Cart cart virtue, where in toptails lieth the poppoppicorns?' So we scatted out into the big winter nochy.

We walked down Marghanita Boulevard and there were no millicents patrolling that way, so when we met a starry veck coming away from a news-kiosk where he had been kupetting a gazetta I said to Bully: 'All right, Bully boy, thou canst if thou like wishest.' More and more these days I had been just giving the orders and standing back to viddy them being carried out. So Bully cracked into him er er er, and the other two tripped him and kicked at him, smecking away, while he was down and then let him crawl off to where he lived, like simpering to himself. Bully said:

'How about a nice yummy glass of something to keep out the cold, O Alex?' For we were not too far from the Duke of New York. The other two nodded yes yes yes but all looked at me to viddy whether that was all right. I nodded too and so off we

ittied. Inside the snug there were these starry ptitsas or sharps or baboochkas you will remember from the beginning and they all started on their: 'Evening, lads, God bless you, boys, best lads living, that's what you are,' waiting for us to say: 'What's it going to be, girls?' Bully rang the collocoll and a waiter came in rubbing his rookers on his grazzy apron. 'Cutter on the table, droogies,' said Bully, pulling out his own rattling and chinking mound of deng. 'Scotchmen for us and the same for the old baboochkas, eh?' And then I said:

'Ah, to hell. Let them buy their own.' I didn't know what it was, but these last days I had become like mean. There had come into my gulliver a like desire to keep all my pretty polly to myself, to like hoard it all up for some reason. Bully said:

'What gives, bratty? What's coming over old Alex?'

'Ah, to hell,' I said. 'I don't know. I don't know. What it is is I don't like just throwing away my hard-earned pretty polly, that's what it is.'

'Earned?' said Rick. 'Earned? It doesn't have to be earned, as well thou knowest, old droogie. Took, that's all, just took, like.' And he smecked real gromky and I viddied one or two of his zoobies weren't all that horrorshow.

'Ah,' I said, 'I've got some thinking to do.' But viddying these baboochkas looking all eager like for some free alc, I like shrugged my pletchoes and pulled out my own cutter from my trouser carman, notes and coin all mixed together, and plonked it tinkle crackle on the table.

'Scotchmen all round, right,' said the waiter. But for some reason I said: 'No, boy, for me make it one small beer, right.' Len said:

'This I do not much go for,' and he began to put his rooker on my gulliver, like kidding I must have fever, but I like snarled doggy-wise for him to give over skorry. 'All right, all right, droog,' he said. 'As thou like sayest.' But Bully was having a smot with his rot open at something that had come out of my carman with the pretty polly I'd put on the table. He said:

'Well well well. And we never knew.'

'Give me that,' I snarled and grabbed it skorry. I couldn't explain how it had got there, brothers, but it was a photograph I had scissored out of the old gazetta and it was of a baby. It was of a baby gurgling goo goo goo with all like moloko dribbling from its rot and looking up and like smecking at everybody, and it was all nagoy and its flesh was like in all folds with being a very fat baby. There was then like a bit of haw haw haw struggling to get hold of this bit of paper from me, so I had to snarl again at them and I grabbed the photo and tore it up into tiny teeny pieces and let it fall like a bit of snow on to the floor. The whisky came in then and the starry baboochkas said: 'Good health, lads, God bless you, boys, the best lads living, that's what you are,' and all that cal. And one of them who was all lines and wrinkles and no zoobies in her shrunken old rot said: 'Don't tear up money, son. If you don't need it give it them as does,' which was very bold and forward of her. But Rick said:

'Money that was not, O baboochka. It was a picture of a dear little itsy witsy bitsy bit of a baby.' I said:

'I'm getting just that bit tired, that I am. It's you who's the babies, you lot. Scoffing and grinning and all you can do is smeck and give people bolshy cowardly tolchocks when they can't give them back.' Bully said:

'Well now, we always thought it was you who was the king of that and also the teacher. Not well, that's the trouble with thou, old droogie.'

I viddied this sloppy glass of beer I had on the table in front of me and felt like all vomity within, so I went 'Aaaaah' and poured all the frothy vonny cal all over the floor. One of the starry pitsas said:

'Waste not want not.' I said:

'Look, droogies. Listen. Tonight I am somehow just not in the mood. I know not why or how it is, but there it is. You three go your own ways this nightwise, leaving me out. Tomorrow we shall meet same place same time, me hoping to be like a lot better.'

'Oh,' said Bully, 'right sorry I am.' But you could viddy a like gleam in his glazzies, because now he would be taking over for this nochy. Power power, everybody like

wants power. 'We can postpone till tomorrow,' said Bully, 'what we in mind had. Namely, that bit of shop-crasting in Gagarin Street. Flip horrorshow takings there, droog, for the having.'

'No,' I said. 'You postpone nothing. You just carry on in your own like style. Now,' I said, 'I itty off.' And I got up from my chair.

'Where to, then?' asked Rick.

'That know I not,' I said. 'Just to be on like my own and sort things out.' You could viddy the old baboochkas were real puzzled at me going out like that and like all morose and not the bright and smecking malchickiwick you will remember. But I said: 'Ah, to hell, to hell,' and scatted out all on my oddy knocky into the street.

It was dark and there was a wind sharp as a nozh getting up, and there were very very few lewdies about. There were these patrol cars with brutal rozzes inside them like cruising about, and now and then on the corner you would viddy a couple of very young millicents stamping against the bitchy cold and letting out steam breath on the winter air, O my brothers. I suppose really a lot of the old ultra-violence and crasting was dying out now, the rozzes being so brutal with who they caught, though it had become like a fight between naughty nadsats and the rozzes who could be more skorry with the nozh and the britva and the stick and even the gun.

But what was the matter with me these days was that I didn't like care much. It was like something soft getting into me and I could not pony why. What I wanted these days I did not know. Even the music I liked to slooshy in my own malenky den was what I would have smecked at before, brothers. I was slooshying more like malenky romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras and me lying on the bed between the violins and the trombones and kettledrums. There was something happening inside me, and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me that time upsetting my gulliver and perhaps going to make me real bezoomny.

So thinking like this with my gulliver bent and my rookers stuck in my trouser carmans I walked the town, brothers, and at last I began to feel very tired and also in great need of a nice bolshy chasha of milky chai. Thinking about this chai, I got a

sudden like picture of me sitting before a bolshy fire in an armchair peeting away at this chai, and what was funny and very very strange was that I seemed to have turned into a very starry chelloveck, about seventy years old, because I could viddy my own voloss, which was very grey, and I also had whiskers, and these were very grey too. I could viddy myself as an old man, sitting by a fire, and then the like picture vanished. But it was very like strange.

I came to one of these tea-and-coffee mestos, brothers, and I could viddy through the long long window that it was full of very dull lewdies, like ordinary, who had these very patient and expressionless litsos and would do no harm to no one, all sitting there and govoreeting like quietly and peeting away at their nice harmless chai and coffee. I ittied inside and went up to the counter and bought me a nice hot chai with plenty of moloko, then I ittied to one of these tables and sat down to peet it. There was a like young couple at this table, peeting and smoking filter-tip cancers, and govoreeting and smecking very quietly between themselves, but I took no notice of them and just went on peeting away and like dreaming and wondering what was going to happen to me. But I viddied that the devotchka at this table who was with this chelloveck was real horrorshow, not the sort you would want to like throw down and give the old in-out in-out to, but with a horrorshow plott and litso and a smiling rot and very very fair voloss and all that cal. And then the veck with her, who had a hat on his gulliver and had his litso like turned away from me, swivelled round to viddy the boshy big clock they had on the wall in this mesto, and then I viddied who he was and then he viddied who I was. It was Pete, one of my three droogs from those days when it was Georgie and Dim and him and me. It was Pete like looking older though he could not now be more than nineteen and a bit, and he had a bit of a moustache and an ordinary day-suit and this hat on. I said:

'Well well well, droogie, what gives? Very very long time no viddy.' He said: 'It's little Alex, isn't it?'

'None other,' I said. 'A long long long time since those dead and gone good days. And now poor Georgie, they told me, is underground and old Dim is a brutal millicent, and here is thou and here is I, and what news hast thou, old droogie?'

'He talks funny, doesn't he?' said the devotchka, like giggling.

'This,' said Pete to the devotchka, 'is an old friend. His name is Alex. May I,' he said to me, 'introduce my wife?'

My rot fell wide open then. 'Wife?' I like gasped. 'Wife wife wife? Ah no, that cannot be. Too young art thou to be married, old droog. Impossible impossible.'

This devotchka who was like Pete's wife (impossible impossible) giggled again and said to Pete: 'Did you used to talk like that too?'

'Well,' said Pete, and he like smiled. 'I'm nearly twenty. Old enough to be hitched, and it's been two months already. You were very young and very forward, remember.'

'Well,' I like gaped still. 'Over this get can I not, old droogie. Pete married. Well well well.'

'We have a small flat,' said Pete. 'I am earning very small money at State Marine Insurance, but things will get better, that I know. And Georgina here-'

'What again is that name?' I said, rot still open like bezoomny. Pete's wife (wife, brothers) like giggled again.

'Georgina,' said Pete. 'Georgina works too. Typing, you know. We manage, we manage.' I could not, brothers, take my glazzies off him, really. He was like grown up now, with a grown-up goloss and all. 'You must,' said Pete, 'come and see us sometime. You still,' he said, 'look very young, despite all your terrible experiences. Yes yes yes, we've read all about them. But, of course, you are very young still.'

'Eighteen,' I said, 'just gone.'

'Eighteen, eh?' said Pete. 'As old as that. Well well well. Now,' he said, 'we have to be going.' And he like gave this Georgina of his a like loving look and pressed one of her rookers between his and she gave him one of these looks back, O my brothers. 'Yes,' said Pete, turning back to me, 'we're off to a little party at Greg's.'

'Greg?' I said.

'Oh, of course,' said Pete, 'you wouldn't know Greg, would you? Greg is after your time. While you were away Greg came into the picture. He runs little parties, you know. Mostly wine-cup and word-games. But very nice, very pleasant, you know. Harmless, if you see what I mean.'

'Yes,' I said. 'Harmless. Yes yes, I viddy that real horrorshow.' And this Georgina devotchka giggled again at my slovos. And then these two ittied off to their vonny word-games at this Greg's, whoever he was. I was left all on my oddy knocky with my milky chai, which was getting cold now, like thinking and wondering.

Perhaps that was it, I kept thinking. Perhaps I was getting too old for the sort of jeezny I had been leading, brothers. I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his Midsummer Night's Dream Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, his first name. Eighteen was not all that young an age, then. But what was I going to do?

Walking the dark chill bastards of winter streets after ittying off from this chai and coffee mesto, I kept viddying like visions, like these cartoons in the gazettas. There was Your Humble Narrator Alex coming home from work to a good hot plate of dinner, and there was this ptitsa all welcoming and greeting like loving. But I could not viddy her all that horrorshow, brothers, I could not think who it might be. But I had this sudden very strong idea that if I walked into the room next to this room where the fire was burning away and my hot dinner laid on the table, there I should find what I really wanted, and now it all tied up, that picture scissored out of the gazetta and meeting old Pete like that. For in that other room in a cot was laying gurgling goo goo goo my son. Yes yes yes, brothers, my son. And now I felt this bolshy big hollow inside my plott, feeling very surprised too at myself. I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.

Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside

and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.

My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning a vonny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers.

But first of all, brothers, there was this veshch of finding some devotchka or other who would be a mother to this son. I would have to start on that tomorrow, I kept thinking. That was something like new to do. That was something I would have to get started on, a new like chapter beginning.

That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes.

But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip-music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.

Glossary of Nadsat Language

Words that do not appear to be of Russian origin are distinguished by asterisks. (For help with the Russian, I am indebted to the kind- ness of my colleague Nora Montesinos and a number of correspon- dents.)

*appy polly loggy - apology choodesny - wonderful baboochka - old woman *chumble - to mumble

*baddiwad - bad clop - to knock banda - band cluve - beak bezoomny - mad collocoll - bell

biblio - library *crack - to break up or 'bust'

bitva - battle *crark - to yowl?

Bog - God crast - to steal or rob; bolnoy - sick robbery

bolshy - big, great creech - to shout or scream

brat, bratty - brother *cutter - money

bratchny - bastard dama - lady britva - razor ded - old man

brooko - belly deng - money

brosay - to throw devotchka - girl bugatty - rich dobby - good

cal - feces *dook - trace, ghost

*cancer - cigarette domy - house

cantora - office dorogoy - dear, valuable

carman - pocket dratsing - fighting chai - tea *drencrom - drug

*charles, charlie - chaplain droog - friend chasha - cup *dung - to defecate

chasso - guard dva - two cheena - woman eegra - game

cheest - to wash eemya - name chelloveck - person, man, *eggiweg - egg

fellow *filly - to play or fool with

chepooka - nonsense *firegold - drink

*fist - to punch loveted - caught

*flip - wild? lubbilubbing - making love

forella - 'trout' *luscious glory - hair gazetta - newspaper malchick - boy glazz - eye malenky - little, tiny gloopy - stupid maslo - butter

*golly - unit of money merzky - filthy goloss - voice messel - thought, fancy

goober - lip mesto - place

gooly - to walk millicent - policeman

gorlo - throat minoota - minute govoreet - to speak or talk molodoy - young grahzny - dirty moloko - milk

grazzy - soiled moodge - man

gromky - loud morder - snout

groody - breast *mounch - snack

gruppa - group mozg - brain

*guff - guffaw nachinat - to begin

gulliver - head nadmenny - arrogant

*guttiwuts - guts nadsat - teenage

*hen-korm - chickenfeed nagoy - naked

*horn - to cry out *nazz - fool

horrorshow - good, well neezhnies - underpants

*in-out in-out - copulation nochy - night interessovat - to interest hoga - foot, leg itty - to go nozh - knife

*jammiwam - jam nuking - smelling jeezny - life oddy knocky - lonesome kartoffel - potato odin - one

keeshkas - guts okno - window

kleb - bread oobivat - to kill

klootch - key ookadeet - to leave

knopka - button ooko - ear kopat - to 'dig' oomny - brainy

koshka - cat oozhassny - terrible

kot - tomcat oozy - chain krovvy - blood osoosh - to wipe

kupet - to buy otchkies - eyeglasses lapa - paw *pan-handle - erection lewdies - people *pee and em - parents

*lighter - crone? peet - to drink litso - face pishcha - food lomtick, piece, bit platch - to cry

platties - clothes *shlaga - club pletcho - shoulder shlapa - hat

plenny - prisoner shoom - noise plesk - splash shoot - fool

*plosh - to splash *sinny - cinema

plott - body skazat - to say podooshka - pillow *skolliwoll - school pol - sex skorry - quick, quickly polezny - useful *skriking - scratching

*polyclef - skeleton key skvat - to grab

pony - to understand sladky - sweet

poogly - frightened sloochat - to happen

pooshka - 'cannon' sloosh, slooshy - to hear, to prestoopnick - criminal listen privodeet - to lead slovo - word

somewhere smeck - laugh

*pretty polly - money smot - to look prod - to produce sneety - dream ptitsa - 'chick' *snoutie - tobacco? pyahnitsa - drunk *snuff it - to die

rabbit - work, job sobirat - to pick up

radosty - joy *sod - to fornicate, fornicator

raskazz - story soomka - 'bag' rassoodock - mind soviet - advice, order raz - time spat - to sleep

razdraz - upset *splodge, splosh - splash razrez - to rip, ripping *spoogy - terrified rook, rooker - hand, arm *Staja - State Jail

rot - mouth starry - ancient rozz - policeman strack - horror sabog - shoe *synthemesc - drug

sakar - sugar tally - waist

sammy - generous *tashtook - handkerchief

*sarky - sarcastic *tass - cup

scoteena - 'cow' tolchock - to hit or push; blow, shaika - gang beating

*sharp - female toofles - slippers

sharries - buttocks tree - three

shest - barrier vareet - to 'cook up'

*shilarny - concern *vaysay - washroom

*shive - slice veck - (see chelloveck)

shiyah - neck *vellocet - drug

shlem - helmet veshch - thing

viddy - to see or look yeckate - to drive voloss - hair *warble - song

von - smell zammechat - remarkable

vred - to harm or damage zasnoot - sleep yahma - hole zheena - wife

*yahoodies - Jews zoobies - teeth

yahzick - tongue zvonock - bellpull

*yarbles - testicles zvook - sound

A Clockwork Orange

Versions

A Clockwork Orange started life as a novella by the late Anthony Burgess in 1962, very early in his literary career. Although Burgess always considered it one of his poorer works, it was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, with Malcolm McDowell as Alex.

Ignoring (temporarily) the differing versions of the film, versions are as follows:

A Clockwork Orange

The (unpublished) pre-Nadsat original manuscript, mentioned occasionally by Burgess. Written over 1960 and 1961 in the argot of the Teddyboys, Mods and Rockers of the time.

A Clockwork Orange

William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1962.

The original UK publication, with 21 chapters intact. The definitive version...

A Clockwork Orange

W.W. Norton Inc, 1962.

The subsequent American publication, with the 21st chapter ommitted. Includes a glossary of Nadsat.

A Clockwork Orange

Warner Bros., 1971.

Developed from (or, reportedly, improvised from) the Norton edition.

Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

Abelard-Schuman, New York, 1972.
ISBN 0-200-00003-9.

The much-sought-after Film Book. Abelard-Schuman are located at 257 Park Ave. So., NY, NY 10010.

A Clockwork Orange

W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986.
ISBN 0-393-31283-6

A reprint of the original novella, restoring the 21st chapter and including a brief essay by Burgess titled A Clockwork Orange Resucked as well as Eric Swenson's explanation of the original Norton edition.

A Clockwork Orange: A play with music

Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.
ISBN 0-09-168381-5

There may or may not be an implicit pun in the subtitle. Given that the structure of the play seems looser than that of the novella, it's presumably purely coincedental.

Not only the worst version of all of these listed, quite possibly the worst material Burgess ever published.

A Clockwork Orange: A Prefatory Note

From A Clockwork Orange: A play with music, Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.

Points of interest

∙

The novel, properly novella, entitled A Clockwork Orange first appeared in the spring of 1962. I had written its first version in late 1960, when I was coming to the end of what the neurological specialists had assured my late wife would be my terminal year. My late wife broke the secret in time for me to work hard at providing some posthumous royalties for her. In the period in which I was supposed to be dying from an inoperable cerebral tumour, I produced the novels entitled The Doctor is Sick, Inside Mr Enderby, The Worm and the Ring (a reworking of an earlier draft), One Hand Clapping, The Eve of Saint Venus (an expansion in novella form of a discarded opera libretto) and A Clockwork Orange in a much less fantastic version than the one that was eventually published. This first version presented the world of adolescent violence and governmental retribution in the slang that was current at the time among the hooligan groups known as the Teddyboys and the Mods and Rockers. I had the sense to realise that, by the time the book came to be out, that slang would already be outdated, but I did not see clearly how to solve the problem of an appropriate idiolect for the narration. When, in early 1961, it seemed to me likely that I was not going to die just yet, I thought hard about the book and decided that its story properly belonged to the future, in which it was conceivable that even the easy- going British state might employ aversion therapy to cure the growing disease of youthful aggression. My late wife and I spent part of the summer of 1961 in Soviet Russia, where it was evident that the authorities had problems with turbulent youth not much different from our own. The stilyagi, or style-boys, were smashing faces and windows, and the police, apparently obsessed with ideological and fiscal crimes, seemed powerless to keep them under. It struck me that it might be a good idea to create a kind of young hooligan who bestrode the iron curtain and spoke an argot compounded of the two most powerful political languages in the world - Anglo-American and Russian. The irony of the style would lie in the hero-narrator's being totally unpolitical.

There was what must seem, to us who are living in a more permissive age, an unaccountable delay in getting the work accepted for publication. My literary agent was even dubious about submitting it to a publisher, alleging that its pornography of violence would be certain to make it unacceptable. I, or rather my late wife, whose Welsh blood forced her into postures of aggression on her husband's behalf, reminded the agent that it was his primary job not to make social or literary judgements on the work he handled but to sell it. So the novella was sold to William Heinemann Ltd in London. In New York it was sold to W.W. Norton Inc, though with the last chapter missing. To lop the final section of the story, in which the protagonist gives up his youthful violence in order to

become a man with a man's responsibilities, seemed to me to be very harmful: it reduced the work from a genuine novel (whose main characteristic must always be a demonstration of the capacity of human nature to change) to a mere fable. Moreover, though this was perhaps a minor point, it ruined the arithmology of the book. The book was written in twenty-one chapters (21 being the symbol of human maturity) divided into three sections of exactly equal size. The American reduction looks lopsided. But the American publisher's argument for truncation was based on a conviction that the original version, showing as it does a capacity for regeneration in even the most depraved soul, was a kind of capitulation to the British Pelagian spirit, whereas the Augustinian Americans were tough enough to accept an image of unregenerable man. I was in no position to protest, except feebly and in the expectation of being overborne: I needed the couple of hundred dollars that comprised the advance on the work.

... The reviews it received not only failed to whet an appetite among prospective book- buyers: they were for the most part facetious and uncomprehending. What I had tried to write was, as well as a novella, a sort of allegory of Christian free will. Man is defined by his capacity to choose courses of moral action. If he chooses good, he must have the possibility of choosing evil instead: evil is a theological necessity. I was also saying that it is more acceptable for us to perform evil acts than to be conditioned artificially into an ability only to perform what is socially acceptable. The Times Literary Supplement reviewer (anonymous in those days) saw the book only as a 'nasty little shocker', which was rather unfair, while the down- market newspapers thought the Anglo-Russian slang was a silly little joke that didn't come off.

But the nasty little shocker was gaining an audience, especially among the American young. Rock groups called 'Clockwork Orange' began to spring up in New York and Los Angeles. These juveniles were primarily intrigued by the language of the book, which became a genuine teenage argot, and they liked the title. They did not realise that it was an old Cockney expression used to describe anything queer, not necessarily sexually so, and they hit on the secondary meaning of an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton. The youth of Malaysia, where I had lived for nearly six years, saw that orange contained orang, meaning in Malay a human being. In Italy, where the book became Arancia all' Orologeria, it was assumed that the title referred to a grenade, an alternative to the ticking pineapple. The small fame of the novella did not noticeably enrich me, but it led to a proposal that it be filmed. It was in, I think, 1965, that the rock-group known as the Rolling Stones expressed an interest in the buying of the property and an acting participation in a film version which I myself should write. There was not much money in the project, because the permissive age in which crude sex and cruder violence could be frankly presented had not yet begun. If the film was to be made at all, it would have to be in a cheap underground version leased out to clubs. But it was not made. Not yet.

It was the dawn of the age of candid pornography that enabled Stanley Kubrick to exploit, to a serious artistic end, those elements in the story which were meant to shock morally rather than merely titillate. These elements are, to some extent, hidden from the reader by the language used: to tolchock a chelloveck in the kishkas does not sound so

bad as booting a man in the guts, and the old in-out in-out, even if it reduces the sexual act to a mechanical action, does not sicken quite as much as a Harold Robbins description of cold rape. But in a film little can be implied; everything has to be shown. Language ceases to be an opaque protection against being appalled and takes a very secondary place. I was bound to have misgivings about the film, and one of the banes of my later life has been the public assumption that I had something to do with it. I did not. I wrote a script, like nearly everybody else in the script-writing world, but nobody's script was used. The book itself, as in a literary seminar, was taken on to the film set, discussed, sectionally dramatised with much free improvisation, and then, as film, stowed in the can. All that I provided was a book, but I had provided it ten years previously. The British state had ignored it, but it was not so ready to ignore the film. It was considered to be an open invitation to the violent young, and inevitably I was regarded as an antisocial writer. The imputation that I had something to do with the punk cult, whose stepfather I was deemed to be by Time magazine, has more to do with the gorgeous technicolor of Kubrick's film than with my own subfusc literary experiment.

I am disclosing a certain gloom about visual adaptation of my little book, and the reader has now the right to ask why I have contrived a stage version of it. The answer is very simple: it is to stem the flow of amateur adaptations that I have heard about though never seen. It is to provide a definitive actable version which has auctorial authority. And, moreover, it is a version which, unlike Kubrick's cinema adaptation, draws on the entirety of the book, presenting at the end a hooligan hero who is now growing up, falling in love, proposing a decent bourgeois life with a wife and family, and consoling us with the doctrine that aggression is an aspect of adolescence which maturity rejects. Alex the

hero speaks for me when he says in effect that destruction is a substitute for creation, and that the energy of youth has to be expressed through aggression because it has not yet been able to subdue itself through creation. Alex's aggressive instincts have been stimulated by classical music, but the music has been forewarning him of what he must some day become: a man who recognises the Dicnysiac in, say, Beetho ven but appreciates the Apollonian as well.

... One final point. I toyed, when first publishing the book, with the notion of affixing an epigraph from Shakespeare. This was considered to be a dangerously literary proposal: the book had to stand naked with no chaperonage from the Bard. But perhaps I may now conclude with it. In Act III Scene 3 of The Winter's Tale the shepherd who finds the child Perdita says: 'I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting -.' It sounds like an exceptionally long adolescence, but perhaps Shakespeare was thinking of his own. It is the adolescence, somewhat briefer, that I present in A Clockwork Orange.

Cacotopia and Clockwork Oranges

From 1985, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, 1978..

Following are extracts from the Cacotopia, Bakunin's Children and Clockwork Oranges chapters of 1985, part novel, part critique of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Recommended, though it desparately needs an index.

Cacotopia

"The term utopia, which [Sir Thomas] More invented, has always had a connotation of ease and comfort, Lotus Land, but it merely means any imaginary society, good or bad... I prefer to call Orwell's imaginary society a cacotopia - on the lines of cacophony or cacodemon.

"Most visions of the future are cacotopian."

(Although not mentioned by Burgess, one of my favourite quotes along these lines is Ray Bradbury's comment that science fiction writers don't try to predict the future, they try to prevent it.)

Orwell's chief influence was We, by E.I. Zamyatin, reviewed by Orwell in Tribune on 4 January, 1946. Burgess links the title to a slogan of Bakunin, the father of anarchism: 'I do not want to be I, I want to be We.'... We's utopia is one "whose citizens have so thoroughly lost their individuality that they are known only by their numbers... The Single State, as it is called, is ruled by a personage as remote and vague as Big Brother; he is known as the Benefactor.

"... There have been utopians - H.G. Wells, for one - who believed that the just society could be built. The Wellsian future is derided in Nineteen Eighty Four... Had Orwell really been an Anglican rector... he would have said that the rational society, with scientific socialism triumphant, was 'Pelagian'.

"The terms Pelagian and Augustinian, though theological, are useful for describing the poles of man's belief as to his own nature... The view of man which [Pelagianism] opposes appears, to most people, monstrously implausible, even though it is part of traditional Christian doctrine. [Augustianism] states that man enters the world in a state of 'original sin' which he is powerless to overcome by his own efforts alone: he needs Christ's redemption and God's grace. Original sin relates a certain human predisposition to evil to the crime of disobedience committed by Adam in the Garden of Eden. As Zamyatin reminds us, Adam did not wish to be happy; he wished to be 'free'. He desired free will, meaning the right to choose between courses of action... He did not realise that, once free, he was more likely to choose the wrong than the right...

"Pelagius denied this terrible endowment. Man was free to choose salvation as much as damnation: he was not predisposed to evil, there was no original sin. Nor was he necessarily predisposed to good: the fact of total freedom of choice rendered him neutral. But he certainly possessed the capability, with no hindrance from unregenerate forces within, to live the good life and, by his own efforts, to achieve salvation at the end. St Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, reaffirming the orthodox doctrine of original sin and the need to pray for grace, loudly condemned Pelagius. But Pelagius has, in more than fifteen hundred years, refused to be silent.

"In secularizing these views of man, we tend to forget about sin and concentrate on what is good for society and what is not... But, if there are secular Pelagians... there seem to be no secular Augustinians...

"The polarity is, however, not all that rigid. We are all both Pelagian and Augustinian, either in cyclical phases, or, through a kind of doublethink, at one and the same time... Free will is of the essence of Pelagianism; determinism (original sin makes us not altogether responsible for our actions) of Augustinianism..."

Burgess then goes on to consider the meaning of "terms like good and evil", and ultimately their implications for the State.

Bakunin's Children

After measuring Orwell's predictions against modern understandings of the concept of 'State', in a chapter titled State and superstate: a conversation, Burgess discusses expressions of distrust of the State (anarchism and Marxism, mainly), noting that:

"The pundits of predestination [as per Augustine] affirm that, since God is omniscient, he knows everything that a man can ever do, that a man's every future act has already been determined for him, and therefore he cannot be free. The opposition gets over this problem by stating that God validates the gift of free will by deliberately refusing to foresee the future. When a man performs an act that God has refused to foresee, God switches on the memory of his foreknowledge. God, in other words, is omniscient by definition, but he will not take advantage of his omniscience."

I think that this particular view comes from Augustine; if it appears disingenuous, well, I'd agree. I certainly wouldn't attempt to defend it from the Bible, mainly as I suspect it can't be done. Someone (C.S. Lewis probably) once observed that the Creation was not so much an experiment - God knew full well what the consequences of it would be - as an enterprise. This is a distinction that unites the doctrine that God's will is that none should perish (as either Peter or Paul wrote) with the warning (from prophet after prophet, and finally from Jesus himself) that many will; God gives life, knowing that it will be lost, but is determined to do everything possible - includ ing dying - to prevent that.

There has been occasional debate among theologians as to when Christ died only for the elect (those who are predestined to be saved), or for all. The first view is part of, I think, Jansenism; the second would obviously involve the 'enterprise' doctrine outlined above. I'll look into it.

And Calvinism? Oddly, Burgess doesn't seem to mention it (an orthodox, though extreme, doctrine of predestination) anywhere. If there's a reason in this, it's probably due more to his Catholic background and the specifically Reformation history of Calvinism than anything else.

Clockwork Oranges

After examining the "victory of the state over Winston Smith", Burgess observes that "Bakunin believed that men were already good; Pavlov believed that man could be made good [and that the brain was] a machine dedicated to the improvement of its owner's functioning as a human organism. This was the ultimate Pelagianism."

He then discusses Skinner's behaviouralism, appalled at the loss of individual liberty, and Arthur Koestler's pessimistic view of humanity, concluding that both see "man as a diseased creature", but that they are presupposing their own ability to diagnose this. In effect, "though all men are ill, some are less ill than others..."

"It was the sense of this division between well us and sick them that led me to write, in 1960, a short novel called A Clockwork Orange. It is not, in my view, a very good novel... but it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the view that some people were criminal and others not. A denial of the universal inheritance of sin is characteristic of Pelagian societies like that of Britain, and it was in Britain, about 1960, that respectable people bega n to murmur about the growth of juvenile delinquency and suggest [that the young criminals] were a somehow inhuman breed and required inhuman treatment...

There were irresponsible people who spoke of aversion therapy... Society, as ever, was

put first. The delinquents were, of course, not quite human beings: they were minors, and they had no vote; they were very much them as opposed to us, who represented society."

Burgess notes that certain rapists and homosexuals had been voluntarily treated through various forms of aversion therapy (the latter group including, I think, Alan Turing), and imagined a generic delinquent undergoing similar treatment "and rendered incapable of contemplating, let alone perpetrating, an anti-social act without a sensation of profound nausea.

"The book was called A Clockwork Orange for various reasons. I had always loved the Cockney phrase 'queer as a clockwork orange', that being the queerest thing imaginable, and I had saved up the expression for years, hoping some day to use it as a title. When I began to write the book, I saw that this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was

capable of colour and sweetness. But I had also served in Malaya, where the word for a human being is orang. The name of the antihero is Alex, short for Alexander, which means 'defender of men'. Alex has other connotations - a lex: a law (unto himself); a lex(is): a vocabulary (of his own); a (Greek) lex: without a law. Novelists tend to give close attention to the names they attach to their characters. Alex is a rich and noble name, and I intended its possessor to be sympathetic, pitiable, and insidiously identifiable with us, as opposed to them. But, in a manner, I digress.

"Alex is not only deprived of the capacity to choose to commit evil. A lover of music, he has responded to the music, used as a heightener of emotion, which has accompanied the violent films he has been made to see. A chemical substance injected into his blood induces nausea while he is watching the films, but the nausea is also associated with the music. It was not the intention of his State manipulators to induce this bonus or malus: it is purely an accident that, from now own, he will automatic ally react to Mozart or Beethoven as he will to rape or murder. The State has succeeded in its primary aim: to deny Alex free moral choice, which, to the State, means choice of evil. But it has added an unforseen punishment: the gates of heaven are closed to the boy, since music is a figure of celestial bliss. The State has committed a double sin: it has destroyed a human being, since humanity is defined by freedom of moral choice; it has also destroyed an angel.

"The novel has not been well understood. Readers, and viewers of the film made from the book, have assumed that I, a most unviolent man, am in love with violence. I am not, but I am committed to freedom of choice, which means that if I cannot choose to do evil nor can I choose to do good. It is better to have our streets infested with murderous young hoodlums that to deny individual freedom of choice. This is a hard thing to say, but the saying of it was imposed on me by the moral tradition which, as a member of western civilization, I inherit. Whatever the conditions needful for the sustention of society, the basic human endowment must not be denied. The evil, or merely wrong, products of free will may be punished or held off with deterrents, but the faculty itself may not be removed. The unintended destruction of Alex's capacity for enjoying music sumbolizes the State's imperfect understanding (or volitional ignorance) of the whole nature of man, and of the consequences of its own decisions. We may not be able to trust man - meaning ourselves - very far, but we must trust the State far less.

"It is disturbing to note that it is in the democracies, founded on the premise of the inviolabilityh of free will, that the principles of the manipulation of the mind may come to be generally accepted... the eventual democratic response to crime may well be what could be represented as the most human, or humane, or compassionate approach of all: to regard man's mad division, which renders him both gloriously creative and bestially destructive, as a genuine disease, to treat his schizophrenia with drugs or shocks or Skinnerian conditioning. Juvenile delinquents destroy the State's peace; mature delinquents threaten to destroy the human race. The principle is the same for both: burn out the disease.

"... What I have in general is a view of man which I may call Hebreo-Helleno-Christian- humanist. It is the view [of] the Savage is Brave New World... 'I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.' The World Controller, Mustapha Mond, sums it up for him: 'In fact, you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' Or the right, perhaps, not to find life dull. Perhaps the kind of humanity that can produce Hamlet, Don Giovanni, the Choral Symphony, the Theory of Relativity, Gaudi, Schoenberg and Picasso must, as a necessary corollary, also be able to scare hell out of itself with nuclear weapons.

"What I have in particular is a kind of residual Christianity that oscillates between Augustine and Pelagius. Whoever or whatever Jesus Christ was, people marvelled at him because he 'taught with authority'. There have been very few authoritative teachers in the world, though there have been plenty of authoritarian demagogues. It is possible, just possible, that by attempting the techniques of self-control that Christ taught something can be done about our schizophrenia - the recognition of which goes back to the Book of Genesis. I believe that the ethics of the Gospels can be given a secular application. I am sure too that this has never seriously been tried."

Burgess then goes on to consider the implications and practicality of this, closing the chapter with "Man was put together by God, though it took him a long time. What God has joined together, even though it be an unholy trinity of a human brain, let no man put asunder. Pray for Dr Skinner. May Pavlov rest in peace. Amen. "

Filming Clockwork Orange

Extracted from You've Had Your Time: Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1990.

"THERE had been an attempt, in the middle sixties, to put A Clockwork Orange on the screen, with a singing group known as the Rolling Stones playing the violent quartet led by the hero Alex, a rôle to be given to Mick Jagger. I admired the intelligence, if not the art, of this young man and considered that he looked the quintessence of delinquency.

The film rights of the book were sold for very little to a small production company headed by a Californian lawyer. If the film were to be made at all, it could only be in some economical form leasable to clubs: the times were not ripe for the screening of rape and continual mayhem before good family audiences. When the times did become ripe, the option was sold to Warner Brothers for a very large sum: I saw none of the profit...

Script-writing can be a relief from the plod of fiction: it is nearly all dialogue, with the récit left to the camera. But it is a mandatory condition of script-writing that one script is never enough. There can sometimes be as many as twenty, with the twentieth usually a reversion to the first. In any event, scripts tend to change radically once they get on the studio floor."

- p. 142

A Clockwork Orange

"I KNEW now that A Clockwork Orange was definitely being filmed - Stanley Kubrick was sending urgent cables about the need to see me in London on some matter of the script - and I feared, justly as it turned out, that there would be frontal nudity and overt rape.

- p. 217

"I KNEW Kubrick's work well and admired it. Paths of Glory, not at that time admissible in France, was a laconic metaphor of the barbarity of war, with the French showing more barbarity than the Germans. Dr Strangelove was a very acerbic satire on the nuclear destruction we were all awaiting. Kubrick caught in a kind of one-act play, trimmed with shots of mushroom clouds, the masochistic reality of dreading a thing while secretly longing for it... Lolita could not work well, not solely because James Mason and Sellers were miscast, but because Kubrick had found no cinematic equivalent to Nabokov's literary extravagence. Nabokov's script, I knew, had been rejected; all the scripts for A Clockwork Orange, above all my own, had been rejected too, and I feared that the cutting to the narrative bone which harmed the filmed Lolita would turn the filmed A Clockwork Orange into a complementary pornograph - the seduction of a minor for the one, for the other brutal mayhem. The writer's aim in both books had been to put language, not sex or violence, into the foreground; a film, on the other hand, was not

made out of words. What I hoped for, having seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, was an expert attempt at visual futurism. A Clockwork Orange, the book, had been set in a vague future which was already probably past; Kubrick had the opportunity to create a fantastic new future which, being realised in décor, could influence the present.

"...Liana, Deborah Rogers and I went to a Soho viewing-room and, with Kubrick standing at the back, heard Walter Carlos's electronic version of Henry Purcell's funeral music for Queen Mary and watched the film unroll... We watched the film to the end, but it was not the end of the book I had published in London in 1962: Kubrick had followed the American truncation and finished with a brilliantly realised fantasy drawn from the ultimate chapter of the one, penultimate chapter of the other... Alex's voice-over gloats: 'I

was cured all right.' A vindication of free will had become an exaltation of the urge to sin. I was worried. The British version of the book shows Alex growing up and putting violence by as a childish toy; Kubrick confessed that he did not know this version: an American, though settled in England, he had followed the only version that Americans were permitted to know. I cursed Eric Swenson of W.W. Norton.

"The film was now shown to the public and was regarded by the reactionary as the more dangerous for being so brilliant. Its brilliance nobody could deny, and some of the brilliance was a film director's response to the wordplay of the novel. The camera played, slowing down, speeding up; when Alex hurled himself out of a window a camera enacted his attempted suicide by being itself hurled - a thousand-pound machine ruined at one throw. As for the terrible theme - the violence of the individual preferable to the violence of the state - questions were asked in parliament and the banning of the film urged. It was left to me, while the fulfilled artist Kubrick pared his nails in his house at Borehamwood, to explain to the press what the film, and for that matter the almost forgotten book, was really about, to preach a little sermon about liberum arbitrium, and to affirm the Catholic content. The Catholic press was not pleased. I told the Evening Standard that the germ of the book was the fourfold attack on my first wife by American deserters, and this was summarised on news- vendors' posters as CLOCKWORK ORANGE GANG ATTACKED MY WIFE. Maurice Edelman MP, my old friend, attacked the film in the same newspaper and I had to telephone through a reply. I was not quite sure what I was defending - the book that had been called 'a nasty little shocker' or the film about which Kubrick remained silent. I realised, not for the first time, how little impact even a shocking book can make in comparison with a film. Kubrick's achievement swallowed mine whole, and yet I was responsible for what some called its malign influence on the young."

Burgess then defends the music of novel and film, describing it as "a character in its own right", balancing the benefits of introducing the "pop- loving young" to emotionally stimulating and artistically uplifting music against the denial (more the film's than the novel's) of "the Victorian association of great music with lofty morality." Dining at Kubrick's home, Burgess meets his family and his "concern with music":

"After Alex North had crippled himself with the rushed writing of a score for A Space Odyssey, Kubrick had decided to draw his music out of the existing concert repertory. He

set a bad example to some of his followers. John Boorman's Excalibur, for instance, uses music from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, whose non-Arthurian associations are blatant. But Kubrick has usually chosen right. I showed him, on his piano, that the Ode to Joy and 'Singin' in the Rain'... go in acceptable counterpoint. I could see the gleam in his eye of a commercial exploitation, but he let it go. What he gave me of value was the idea of my next novel. This was all to do with music.

"I had for some time past toyed with the notion of writing a Regency novel, a kind of Jane Austen parody, which should follow the pattern of a Mozart symphony... I mentioned this to kubrick in a discussion of narrative techniques, and he suggested what I should have already thought of - namely, the imitation of a symphony which already had narrative associations and, for plot, the filling out of the theme which had inspired the symphony. He meant Beethoven's Symphony Number 3 in E Flat, the 'Eroica', which began by being about Napoleon...

"Kubrick was not presenting this idea in a generous void. He wanted to make a film on Napoleon, using techniques denied to Abel Gance, and he wished Napoleon's career to be contained in a film of moderate length. He needed a script, but the script must be preceeded by a novel. The musicalisation of Napoleon's life, from the first Italian campaigns to the exile on St Helena, would be an act of compression, and it would suggest compressive techniques in the film. Thus, if the battle of Waterloo came with Beethoven's scherzo, then the cinematic narrative would be justified in speeding up the action to an almost comic degree. Exile and death on St Helena would have to follow Beethoven's technique of theme and variations - perhaps recapitulated film styles from Eisenstein on - and Napoleon' s death would have to be followed by his mythic resurrection, since Beethoven says so. The financing of such a film - with helicopter shots of the major battles, all reproduced in pedantic detail - would run into more millions than A Clockwork Orange had cost, but the film had to be made some day and Kubrick was clearly the man to make it. Meanwhile, the writing of a novel called Napoleon Symphony (the only possible title) would cost only time." - pp. 244-8

"In the film the hero is named Alex Burgess, but only after he has been named Alex DeLarge (a reference to his calling himself, though only in the book, Alex the Large, or Alexander the Great). The cinema gets away with inconsistencies which no copy-editor would stomach in a novel...

"Before embarking with Malcolm [McDowell] on a publicity programme which, since Kubrick went on paring his nails in Borehamwood, seemed designed to glorify an invisible divinity, I went to a public showing of A Clockwork Orange to learn about audience response. The audience was all young people, and at first I was not allowed in, being too old, pop. The violence of the action moved them deeply, especially the blacks, who stood up to shout 'Right on, man,' but the theology passed over their coiffures. A very beautiful intervie w chaperon, easing me through a session with a French television team, prophesied rightly that the French would 'intellectualise like mad over the thing', but to the Americans the thing looked like an incentive to youthful violence. It was not long before a report came in about four boys, dressed in droog style copied from the film,

gang-raping a nun in Poughkeepsie. The couture was later denied - the boys had not yet seen the film - but the rape was a fact, and it was blamed upon Malcolm McDowell and myself. Kubrick went on paring his nails, even when it was announced that he was to be given two New York Critics' awards. I had to collect those at Sardi's restaurant and deliver a speech of thanks. Kubrick telephoned to say what I was to say. I said something rather different."

- p. 253

26-7 37 59-61 62 297 355

Nadsat Dictionary

Anthony Burgess made up a teenage argot he calls Nadsat. It is English with a polyglot of slang terms and jargon thrown in. The main sources for these additional terms is Russian. Although there are also contributions from, Gypsy, French, Cockney/English slang and other miscellaneous sources such as Malay and Dutch (possibly via the Dutch influence on Malay) and his own imagination. The large number of Russian words in Nadsat is explained in the book as being due to propaganda and subliminal penetration techniques. This is probably because of the cold war (which was still quite "warm" when Burgess wrote ACO) which, in Burgess's ACO world, has apparently shifted into overdrive. If a meaning can be confused, eg Lomtick (slice) is a noun (as in "a slice of toast"), not a verb, the meaning is clarified by use of an (n.) or (v.) etc.

Word Meaning Origins

Appypolly loggy Apology School boy speak Baboochka Old woman Russian: babooshka/grandmother

Baddiwad Bad School boy speak

Banda Band Russian: banda/band, gang

Bezoomy Mad Russian: byezoomiyi/mad, insane

Biblio Library Russian: biblioteka/library

Bitva Battle Russian: bitva/battle

Bog God Russian: Bog/God

Bolnoy Sick Russian: bolnoy/sick

Bolshy Big Russian: bolshoy/big

Bratchny Bastard Russian: vnyebrachnyi/illegitimate

Bratty	Brother	Russian:	brat/brother
Britva	Razor	Russian:	britva/razor
Brooko	Belly	Russian:	bryukho/abdomen
Brosay	Throw	Russian:	brosat/to throw
Bugatty	Rich	Russian:	bogaty/wealthy
Cal	Shit	Russian:	kal/excrement, faeces
Cancer	Cigarette	Standard	slang term: ie. cancer
stick Cantora	Office	Russian:	kontora/office
Carman	Pocket	Russian:	karman/pocket
Chai	Tea	Russian: chai/tea c.f. English Slang: cha/tea
Charlie Chaplain Chasha	Chaplain/Priest Cup	Rhyming slang: Charlie Chaplin -> Russian: chashka/cup
Chasso	Guard	Russian: chasovoy/sentry
Cheena	Woman	Russian: zhenshcheena/woman
Cheest	Wash	Russian: cheestit/to clean
Chelloveck	Fellow	Russian: chelovyek/person, man
Chepooka	Nonsense	Russian: chyepookha/nonsense
Choodessny	Wonderful	Russian: choodesniyi/miraculous
Chumble (?)	Mumble	Invented slang: chatter + mumble

Clop Knock German: klop/hit Dutch/Malay: kloppen/to hit

Cluve Beak Russian: klyuv/beak

Collocol Bell Russian: kolokol/bell

Crark Yowl Unknown

Crast Steal Russian: krast/steal

Creech Scream Russian: kreechat/scream

Cutter Money Unknown

Dama Lady Russian: dama/lady

Ded Old Man Russian: ded/grandfather

Deng Money Russian: dengi/money

Devotchka Girl Russian: devochka/girl

Dobby Good Russian: dobro/good

Domy House Russian: dom/house

Dook Ghost Gypsy: dook/magic

Russian: dukh: spirit/shost

Dorogoy Valuable Russian: dorogoi/expensive, dear

Drat Fight Russian: drat/to tear to pieces, to kill

drat'sya/to fight

Drencrom A drug Invented slang: adrenochrome?

Droog Friend Russian: droog/friend

Dva Two Russian: dva/two

Eegra Game Russian: igra/game

Eemya Name Russian: imya/name

Eggiweg Egg School boy speak

Em Mum Invented slang: 'M' from "Mama"

Fagged Tired English slang: tired

Filly Play Unknown

Firegold A particular drink Invented slang: Unknown Forella Trout Russian: forel/trout

Gazetta Newspaper Russian: gazeta/newspaper

Glazz Eye Russian: glaz/eye

Gloopy Stupid Russian: glupiyi/foolish, stupid

Godman Priest Invented slang: 'man of God' Golly Unit of Money Invented slang: related to 'lolly' (money)

Goloss Voice Russian: golos/voice

Goober Lip Russian: guba/lip

Gooly To Walk Russian: gulyat/to walk, stroll

Gorlo Throat Russian: gorlo/throat

Govoreet To speak or talk Russian: govorit/to speak, talk Grazhny Dirty Russian: gryuzniyi/dirty

Grazzy Soiled Russian: gryuzniyi/dirty

Gromky Loud Russian: gromkii/loud

Groody Breast Russian: grud/breast

Gruppa Group Russian: gruppa/group

Guff Laugh Invented slang: short "guffaw"

Gulliver Head Russian: golova/head

Guttiwuts Guts School boy speak

Hen-korm Chickenfeed Invented slang: hen-corn

Possibly Russian: korm/animal

feed

Horn To Cry Out Invented slang: sound a horn Horrorshow Good, well Russian: khorosho/good

Hound-and-Horny corny Rhyming Slang: corny

In-out-in-out Sex Invented slang: obvious

Interessovat To interest Russian: interesovat/ to interest Itty To go Russian: idti/to go

Jammiwam Jam School boy speak

Jeezny Life Russian: zhizn/life

Kartoffel Potatoes Russian: kartofel/potatoes

Keeshkas Guts Russian: kishka/intestines

Kleb Bread Russian: kleb/bread

Klootch Key Russian: klyuch/key

Knopka Button Russian: knopka/push-button Kopat To Dig (Eng. idiom) Russian: kopat/to dig (a hole, ditch, etc)

Koshka Cat Russian: koshka/cat

Kot Tomcat Russian: kot/cat

Krovvy Blood Russian: krov/blood

Kupet To Buy Russian: kupit/to buy

Lapa Paw Russian: lapa/paw

Lewdies People Russian: lyudi/people

Lighter Crone (?) Invented slang: related to"blighter"?

Litso Face Russian: litso/face

Lomtick Slice Russian: lomtik/slice (of bread)

Loveted Caught Russian: lovit/to catch

Lubbilubbing Making love Russian: lyublyu/love

Luscious Glory Hair Rhyming Slang: upper story/hair

Malchick Boy Russian: malchik/boy

Malenky Little Russian: malyenkiyi/small

Maslo Butter Russian: maslo/butter

Merzky Filthy Russian: merzkiyi/loathsome, vile

Messel Thought Russian: misl/thought

Mesto Place Russian: mesto/place

Millicent Policeman Russian: militsiya/policeman

Minoota Minute Russian: minuta/minute

Molodoy Young Russian: molodoy/young

Moloko Milk Russian: moloko/milk

Moodge Man Russian: muzhchina/male human being

Morder Snout Russian: morda/snout

Mounch Snack Invented slang: munch?

Mozg Brain Russian: mozg/brain

Nachinat To Begin Russian: nachinat/to begin

Nadmenny Arrogant Russian: nadmenniyi/arrogant

Nadsat Teenage Russian: ending for numbers 11-19

Nagoy Naked Russian: nagoi/naked

Nazz Fool Russian: nazad/literally backwards (adv.)

Neezhnies Underpants Russian: nizhniyi/lower (adj.)

Nochy Night Russian: noch/night

Noga Foot Russian: noga/foot

Nozh Knife Russian: nozh/knife

Nuking (scent) Smelling (of perfume) Russian: nyukhat/to smell, take a whiff

Oddy-knocky Lonesome Russian: odinok/lonesome

Odin One Russian: odin/one

Okno Window Russian: okno/window

Oobivat To Kill Russian: ubivat/to kill

Ookadeet To leave Russian: ukhodit/to leave

Ooko Ear Russian: ukho/ear

Oomny Clever Russian: umniyi/clever

Oozhassny Terrible Russian: ukhasniyi/terrible

Oozy Chain Russian: uzh/snake (?)

Orange Man Malay: Orang/Man (c.f. the Orang Utan ape)

Osoosh To Dry Russian: osushat/to dry

Otchkies Eyeglasses Russian: otchki/glasses

Pan-handle Erection Invented slang:

Pee Father Invented slang: 'P' from "Papa"

Peet To Drink Russian: pit/to drink

Pishcha Food Russian: pisha/food

Platch To Cry Russian: plakat/to cry

Platties Clothes Russian: platye/clothes

Plenny Prisoner Russian: plenniyi/prisoner

Plesk Splash Russian: pleskat/to splash

Pletcho Shoulder Russian: plecho/shoulder

Plott Flesh Russian: plot/flesh

Podooshka Pillow Russian: podushka/pillow

Pol Sex Russian: pol/sex (gender)

Polezny Useful Russian: polezniyi/useful Polyclef Skeleton key English: poly/many + clef/key Pony To understand Russian: ponimat/to understand Poogly Scared Russian: pugat/ to frighten

Pooshka Gun Russian: pushka/cannon Pop-disk Pop-music disc Invented slang

Prestoopnik Criminal Russian: prestupnik/criminal

Pretty Polly Money Rhyming slang: Derived from 'lolly' (money)

Privodeet To lead somewhere Russian: privodit/to lead (somewhere)

Prod To produce English slang: shortening of 'produce'

Ptitsa Girl Russian: ptitsa/bird

Pyahnitsa Drunk Russian: pyanitsa/a drunkard

Rabbit Work Russian: rabota/work

Radosty Joy Russian: radost/joy

Raskazz Story Russian: rasskaz/story

Rasoodock Mind Russian: rassudok/sanity, common sense

Raz Time Russian: raz/occasion

Razdrez Upset Russian: razdrazhat/to irritate

Razrez To Rip Russian: razrvat/to rip

Rooker Hand Russian: ruka/hand

Rot Mouth Russian: rot/mouth

Rozz Policeman Russian: rozha/ugly face or grimace

Sabog Shoe French: sabot/a type of shoe (?) Possibly Russian: sapog/a tall

shoe

Sakar Sugar Russian: sakhar/sugar

Sammy Generous Russian: samoye/ the most

Sarky Sarcastic English slang: shortening of 'sarcastic'

Scoteena "Cow" Russian: skotina/colloquial: brute or beast

Shaika Gang Russian: shaika/band (as of thieves)

Sharp	Female	Invented	slang: Unknown
Sharries	Balls	Russian:	shariki/marbles
Shest	Pole	Russian:	pole
Shilarny	Concern	Unknown

Shive Slice, cut English slang: shiv-a knife Shiyah Neck Russian: shyeya/neck

Shlaga Club German: Schlager/club or bat

(more exactly,

slaag/hit

something you use to hit with) Possibly Dutch/Malay origin:

Shlapa Hat Russian: shlyupa/hat

Shlem Helmet Russian: shlem/helmet

Shoom Noise Russian: shum/noise

Shoot Fool (v.) Russian: shutit/to fool Sinny Movies, film Invented slang: from cinema Skazat To say Russian: skazat/to say

Skolliwoll School School boy speak Skorry Quick, quickly Russian: skori/quick

Skriking Scratching Invented slang: strike + scratch Skvat To Grab Russian: khvatat/to grab, snatch

Sladky Sweet Russian: sladkiyi/sweet

Sloochat To happen Russian: sluchatsya/to happen Slooshy To listen, hear Russian: slushat/to hear Slovo Word Russian: slovo/word

Smeck Laugh (n.) Russian: smekh/a laugh

Smot To look Russian: smotret/to look

Sneety Dream Russian: snitsya/to dream

Snoutie Tobacco, snuff Invented slang: related to snout? Snuff It To Die English slang: to snuff is to kill

Sobirat To Pick Up Russian: sobirat/to gather (people)

Sod Bastard (idiom) English slang: from sodomite Sodding Fucking (idiom) English slang: from sodomy Soomka Woman Russian: sumka/bag

Soviet Advice, order Russian: sovyet/advice, council Spat, spatchka Sleep Russian: spat/to sleep

Spoogy Terrified Russian: spugivat/to frighten Staja State Jail Invented Slang: State + Jail Starry Old, ancient Russian: stariyi/old

Strack Horror Russian: strakh/fear Synthmesc A particular drug Invented slang: synthetic mescaline

Tally Waist Russian: taliya/waist

Tashtook Handkerchief German: Taschentuch/Hankerchief Tass Cup French: tasse/cup

Tolchock To hit Russian: tolchok/a push, shove

Toofles Slippers Russian: tuflya/slipper

Tree Three Russian: tri/three

Vareet To "cook up" Russian: varit/to cook up Vaysay Washroom, toilet French: W.C. (pron. vey- sey)/watercloset

Veck Guy Russian: chelovyek/person, man Vellocet A particular drug Invented slang: Amphetamine (Speed)/Cocaine?

Veshch Thing Russian: vesh/thing

Viddy To see Russian: vidyet/to see

Voloss Hair Russian: volos/hair

Von Smell (n.) Russian: von/stench

Vred To Harm Russian: vred/to harm

Warble Song English: sing, a bird's song

Yahma Hole Russian: yama/hole, pit

Yahoody Jew Arabic

Yahzick Tongue Russian: yazik/tongue Yarbles Balls, testicles Russian: yarblicka/apples Yeckate To Drive Russian: echatz (pron: "yekatz")/to go

Zammechat Remarkable Russian: zamechatelniyi/remarkable

Zasnoot	To Sleep	Russian:	zasnut/to fall asleep
Zheena	Wife	Russian:	zhena/wife
Zoobies	Teeth	Russian:	zubi/teeth
Zvonock	Doorbell/Bellpull	Russian:	zvonok/doorbell
Zvook	Sound	Russian:	zvuk/sound

A Clockwork Orange

Based on the novel by Anthony Burgess Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick Produced by Stanley Kubrick

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Cast List:

Malcolm McDowell Alex Patrick Magee Mr. Alexander Michael Bates Chief Guard Warren Clarke Dim

John Clive Stage Actor Carl Duering Dr. Brodsky Paul Farrell Tramp

Clive Francis Lodger

Michael Gover Prison Governor

Miriam Karlin Catlady James Marcus Georgie Philip Stone Dad Sheila Raynor Mum

FADE IN:

INT. KOROVA MILKBAR ? NIGHT

Tables, chairs made of nude fibreglass figures. Hypnotic atmosphere.

Alex, Pete, Georgie and Dim, teenagers stoned on their milk-plus, their feetresting on faces, crotches, lips of the sculptured furniture.

ALEX (V.O.)

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim andwe sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with theevening. The Korova Milk Bar sold milkplus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencromwhich is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready fora bit of the old ultra- violence. Our pockets were full of money so there was no needon that score, but, as they say, money isn't everything.

INT. PEDESTRIAN UNDERPASS TUNNEL ? NIGHT

A Tramp lying in tunnel, singing.

TRAMP

In Dublin's fair city

Where the girls are so pretty

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone As she wheeled her wheelbarrow Through streets wide and narrow...

Shadows of the boys approaching fall across Tramp.

TRAMP

Crying cockless and mussels alive, Alive O...

Alive, alive O... Alive, alive O... Crying cockless and mussels alive, Alive O...

ALEX (V.O.)

One thing I could never stand is to see a filthy, dirty old drunkie, howling awayat the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp, blerp in between as it mightbe a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to seeanyone like that, whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was realold like this one was.

The boys stop and applaud him.

TRAMP

Can you... can you spare some cutter, me brothers?

Alex rams his stick into the Tramp's stomach. The boys laugh.

TRAMP

Oh-hhh!!! Go on, do me in you bastard cowards. I don't want to live anyway, not ina stinking world like this.

ALEX

Oh ? and what's so stinking about it?

TRAMP

It's a stinking world because there's no law and order any more. It's a stinkingworld because it lets the young get onto the old like you done. It's no world foran old man any more. What sort of a world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinningaround the earth and there's not no attention paid to earthly law and order no more.

The Tramp starts singing again.

TRAMP

Oh dear land, I fought for thee and brought you peace and victory.

Alex and gang move in and start beating up on old Tramp.

INT. DERELICT CASINO ? NIGHT

Billyboy gang on stage tearing clothes off ascreaming Girl.

ALEX (V.O.)

It was around by the derelict casino that we came across Billyboy and his four droogs.They were getting ready to perform a little of the old in-out, in - out on a weepyyoung devotchka they had there.

Alex and gang step out of the shadows.

ALEX

Ho, Ho, Ho... Well, if it isn't stinking Billygoat Billyboy in poison. How are thou,thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, ifyou have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.

Billyboy snaps open a switchblade knife.

BILLY BOY

Let's get 'em boys.

The fight begins, chains, knives, kicking boots. Police siren.

ALEX

The Police... come on, let's go... come on.

Alex and the boys rush out of casino.

EXT. / INT. CAR ? NIGHT ? FAST DRIVING SHOTS

Swerving car, forcing other cars off the road,trying to hit pedestrians, etc.

ALEX (V.O.)

The Durango-95 purred away real horrorshow ? a nice, warm vibraty feeling all throughyour guttiwuts. Soon it was trees and dark, my brothers, with real country dark.We fillied around for a while with other travelers of the night, playing hogs ofthe road. Then we headed west, what we were after now was the old surprise visit,that was a real kick and good for laughs and lashing of the ultra-violent.

EXT. "HOME" ? NIGHT

A cottage on its own, on outskirts of a village. Bright moonlight. Cheery light inside.

Car pulls to stop.

Alex shushes his giggling boys and gets out of the car.

INT. "HOME" ? NIGHT

Mr. Alexander typing. Bell rings.

ALEXANDER

Who on earth could that be?

MRS. ALEXANDER

I'll see.

Mrs. Alexander, a good-looking red head in a red jumper suit.

MRS. ALEXANDER

Yes? Who is it?

ALEX

Excuse me, Mrs... will you please help, there's been a terrible accident.

She opens the door on the chain and peeps out.

ALEX

My friend's lying in the middle of the road bleeding to death. Could I please useyour telephone for an ambulance?

MRS. ALEXANDER

I'm sorry, but we don't have a telephone. You'll have to go somewhere else.

ALEX

But Mrs... it's a matter of life and death.

From inside the sound of clack clacky clack clack clackity clackclack of Alexandertyping stops.

ALEXANDER

Who is it, dear?

MRS. ALEXANDER

There's a young man here. He says there's been an accident. He wants to use the telephone.

ALEXANDER

Then you'd better let him in.

MRS. ALEXANDER

Wait a minute.

ALEX

Thank you, Mrs.

Mrs. Alexander opens door, saying...

MRS. ALEXANDER

I'm sorry, we don't usually let people in the middle of the night.

Alex and boys have put on their masks and rush into house, carrying and draggingMrs. Alexander along with them.

INT. HOME ? NIGHT

They go roaring in.

Mr. Alexander is kicked in the face and goes down. Georgie leaps on him. Petejumps up and down and the settee. Dim grabs hold of Mrs. Alexander. Alex whistlespiercingly.

ALEX

Right, Pete. Check the rest of the house.

Alex turns to Dim who holds the struggling Mrs. Alexander.

ALEX

Dim...

Dim sets her down but holds her firmly. Alex starts to sing ? "Singin'in the Rain", accompanying it with a kind of tap dance.

ALEX

(singing)

I'm singing in the rain...

He kicks Mr. Alexander accenting the lyrics.

ALEX

(singing)

Just singing in the rain...

He clubs Mr. Alexander with stick, in the time to the music.

ALEX

(singing)

What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again.

He pushes a rubber ball into Mrs. Alexander's mouth and binds it with sellotape.

ALEX

(singing)

I'm laughing at clouds so dark up above. The sun's in my heart and I'm ready for love. Let the stormy clouds chase...

He kicks Mr. Alexander again.

ALEX

(singing)

... everyone from the place. Come on with the rain...

He puts ball in Mr. Alexander's mouth and sellotapes it.

ALEX

(singing)

... I've a smile on my face.

I'll walk down the lane... to a happy refrain. I'm singing... just singin' in the rain.

He knocks down the book cases and moves to Mrs. Alexander being held by

Dim.Starts to repeat on song as he cuts slowly up each leg of her cat suit, until sheis naked. This coincidences with the song finishing.

He turns to Mr. Alexander.

ALEX

Viddy well, my little Brother. Viddy well. INT. KOROVA MILKBAR ? NIGHT

The boys enter yawning..

ALEX (V.O.)

We were all feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an eveningof some small energy expenditure, O my brothers, so we got rid of the auto and stoppedoff at the Korova for a nightcap.

Dim moves over to milk machine and speaks to the statue of the nude girl.

DIM

Hello Lucy, had a busy night?

Puts money in machine.

DIM

We've been working hard too.

Takes glass.

DIM

Pardon me. Luce.

He raises glass to breast, pulls red handle between her legs. Milk spurtsinto glass.

Dim joins the others. Alex looks at a party of tourists.

ALEX (V.O.)

There was some sophistos from the TV studios around the corner, laughing an govoreeting.The Devotchka was smecking away, and not caring about the wicked world one bit. Thenthe disc on the stereo twanged off and out, and in the short silence before the nextone came on, she suddenly came with a burst of singing, and it was like for a moment,O my brothers, some great bird had flown into the milkbar and I felt all the malenkylittle hairs on my plott standing endwise, and the shivers crawling up like slowmalenky lizards and then down again. Because I knew what she

sang. It was a bit fromthe glorious 9th, by Ludwig van.

Dim makes a lip-trump followed by a dog howl, followed by two fingers prongingtwice in the air, followed by a clowny guffaw.

Alex brings his stick down smartly on Dim's legs.

DIM

What did you do that for?

ALEX

For being a bastard with no manners and not a dook of an idea how to comport yourselfpublicwise, O my Brother.

DIM

I don't like you should do what you done. And I'm not your brother no more and wouldn'twant to be.

ALEX

Watch that... Do watch that, O Dim, if to continue to be on live thou dost wish.

DIM

Yarbles, great bolshy yarblockos to you I'll meet you with chain, or nozh or britva,any time, not having you aiming tolchocks at me reasonless. It stands to reason,I won't have it.

ALEX

A nozh scrap any time you say.

Dim weakens.

DIM

Doobidoob... a bit tired maybe, everybody is. A long night for growing malchicks...best not to say more. Bedways is rigthways now, so best we go homeways and get abit of spatchka. Right, right.

INT. ALEX'S FLATBLOCK ? MAIN LOBBY ENTRANCE ?NIGHT

Alex passes a mural in the hall. Nude men andwomen. Their massive stylised bodies embellished and decorated by handy pencil andballpoint.

The elevator door is buckled.

INT. ALEX'S FLAT ? NIGHT

Alex pees in toilet.

Alex goes into his room. Tosses his loot into a drawer, full of money, wristwatches,cameras, etc.

Fifty small loudspeakers cover one wall.

He puts his pet boa constrictor on tree branch mounted on the wall, abovefour Christ figures who have their arms intertwined like a chorus line.

He puts a cassette into the tape player.

A heavy shockwave of sound ? Beethoven's 9th.

ALEX (V.O.)

It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now to give it the perfect endingwas a bit of the old Ludwig van.

Music starts.

ALEX (V.O.)

Then, brothers, it came. O bliss, bliss and heaven, oh it was gorgeousness and georgeositymade flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver thetrumpets three-wise, silver-flamed and there by the door the timps rolling throughmy guts and out again, crunched like candy thunder. It was like a bird of rarestspun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a space ship, gravity all nonsensenow. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures. There were veeks and ptitsas layingon the ground screaming for mercy and I was smecking all over my rot and grindingmy boot into their tortured litsos and there were naked devotchkas ripped and creechingagainst walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them.

INT. ALEX'S FLAT ? DAY

He is asleep. The boa curled up at his feet.There is a knock on the door.

ALEX

What d'you want?

It's past eight, Alex, you don't want to be late for school, son.

ALEX

Bit of pain in the gulliver, Mum. Leave us be and I'll try to sleep it off... thenI'll be as right as dodgers for this after.

You've not been to school all week, son.

ALEX

I've got to rest, Mum... got to get fit, otherwise I'm liable to miss a lot moreschool.

Eeee... I'll put your breakfast in the oven. I've got to be off myself now.

ALEX

Alright, Mum... have a nice day at the factory. INT. KITCHEN ? DAY

Pee sitting at breakfast table. Em enters.

He's not feeling too good again this morning, Dad.

PEE

Yes, I heard. D'you know what time he got in last night?

No I don't know, luv, I'd taken my sleepers.

PEE

I wonder where exactly is it he goes to work of evenings.

Well, like he says, it's mostly odd things he does, helping like... here and there,as it might be.

INT. EM'S BEDROOM ? DAY

Alex comes out of his room and finds P.R. Deltoidsitting on bed in parent's room.

ALEX

Hi, hi, hi there, Mr. Deltoid, funny surprise to see you here.

DELTOID

Ah, Alex boy, awake at last, yes? I met your mother on the way to work, yes? Shegave me the key. She said something about a pain somewhere...

hence not at school, yes?

ALEX

A rather intolerable pain in the head, brother, sir. I think it should be clear bythis afterlunch.

DELTOID

Oh, or certainly by this evening, yes? The evening's a great time, isn't it, Alexboy?

ALEX

A cup of the old chai, sir?

DELTOID

No time, no time, yes. Sit, sit, sit.

Alex sits next to him.

ALEX

To what do I owe this extreme pleasure, sir? Anything wrong, sir?

Deltoid "playfully" grabs Alex's hair.

DELTOID

Wrong? Why should you think of anything being wrong, have you been doing somethingyou shouldn't. Yes?

He shakes Alex's hair.

ALEX

Just a manner of speech, sir.

DELTOID

Well, yes, it's just a manner of speech from your Post Corrective Advisor to youthat you watch out, little Alex.

He puts his arm round Alex's shoulder.

DELTOID

Because next time it's going to be the barry place and all my work ruined. If you'veno respect for your horrible self, you at least might have some for me who'se sweatedover you.

He slaps Alex on the knee.

DELTOID

A big black mark I tell you for every one we don't reclaim. A confession of failurefor every one of you who ends up in the stripy hole.

ALEX

I've been doing nothing I shouldn't, sir. The millicents have nothing on me, brother,sir, I mean.

Deltoid pulls Alex down on the bed.

DELTOID

Cut out all this clever talk about milicents. Just because the Police haven't pickedyou up lately doesn't, as you very well know, mean that you've not been up to somenastiness. There was a bit of a nastiness last night, yes. Some very extreme nastiness,yes. A few of a certain Billyboy's friends were ambluenced off late last night, yes.Your name was mentioned, the word's got thru to me by the usual channels. Certainfriends of yours were named also. Oh, nobody can prove anything about anybody asusual, but I'm warning you, little Alex, being a good friend to you as always, theone man in this sore and sick community who wants to save you from yourself.

Deltoid makes a grab for Alex's joint but finds his hand instead. Alex laughs.Derisively and rises. Deltoid distractedly reaches for a glass of water on the nighttable, and fails to notice a set of false teeth soaking in them. He drinks from theglass. The clink of the teeth sounding like ice-cubes.

DELTOID

What gets into you all? We study the problem. We've been studying it for damn wellnear a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies.

You've got a good homehere, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil thatcrawls inside of you?

ALEX

Nobody's got anything on me, brother, sir. I've been out of the rookers of the milicentsfor a long time now.

DELTOID

That's just worries me. A bit too long to long to be reasonable. You're about duenow by my reckoning, that's why I'm warning you, little Alex, to keep your handsomeyoung proboscis out of the dirt. Do I make myself clear?

ALEX

As an unmuddied lake, sir. Clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can relyon me, sir.

Deltoid drinks again but this time sees the teeth in the glass. He groansand retches.

INT. MUSIC BOOTICK ? DAY

Alex enters. Two pretty micro-boppers, Martyand Sonietta, sucking phallic ice sticks.

ALEX

Pardon me, brother. I ordered this two weeks ago. Could you see if it's arrived.

CLERK

I'll see if it's in.

Clerk exits. Alex turns to the girls.

ALEX

Pardon me, ladies

He steps in between them and goes through the motions, looking through.

ALEX

Enjoying it then, my darling?... A bit cold and pointless isn't it, my lovely...What's happened to yours, my little sister?

Marty giggles.

MARTY

Who you getten bratty, Goggly Gogol? Johnny Zhivago? The Heaven Seventeen?

ALEX

What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you gotlittle save pitiful portable picnic players. Come with Uncle and hear all proper.Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited.

INT. ALEX'S BEDROOM ? DAY

The two girls, naked, jumping up and down onAlex's still unmade bed zonked by the booming, all engulfing sound of Alex's incredibleHi-Fi.

INT. ALEX'S FLATBLOCK ? LOBBY HALL ? DAY

Alex finds the gang waiting for him.

ALEX

Hi, hi, hi, there

ALL THREE

Well, hello.

DIM

He are here! He have arrived! Hooray!

ALEX

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasureof this surprising visit?

Georgie rises.

GEORGIE

We got worried. There we were waiting and drinking away at the old knify Moloko andyou had not turned up and we thought you might have been like offended by somethingor other, so around we come to your abode.

ALEX

Appy polly loggies. I had something of a pain in the gulliver so had to sleep. Iwas not awakened when I gave orders for awakening.

DIM

Sorry about the pain. Using the gulliver to much like, eh? Giving orders and discipliningand that perhaps, eh? You sure the pain's gone? You sure you'll not be happier backup in bed.

ALEX

Lets get things nice and sparkling clear. This sarcasm, if I may call it such, doesnot become you, O my brothers. As I am your droog and leader, I am entitled to knowwhat goes on, eh? Now then, Dim, what does that great big horsy gape of a grin portend?

GEORGIE

All right, no more picking on Dim, brother. That's part of the new way.

ALEX

New way? What's this about a new way? There's been some very large talk behind mysleeping back, and no error. Let me hear more.

GEORGIE

Well, we go round shop crasting and the like, coming out with a pitiful rookerfulof money each.

DIM

Pitiful rookerful...

GEORGIE

And there's Will the English in the Muscleman coffee mesto saying he can fence anythingthat anything that any malchick tries to crast.

DIM

Yeah... Pete the English.

GEORGIE

The shiny stuff. The Ice. The big, big, big money is available's what Will the Englishsays.

DIM

Big, big money.

ALEX

And what will you do with the big, big, money? Have you not everything you need?If you need a motor-car, you pluck it from the trees. If you need pretty polly, youtake it.

GEORGIE

Brother, you think and talk sometimes like a little child. Tonight we pull a mansizecrast.

ALEX

Good. Real horrorshow. Initiative comes to them as waits. I've taught you much, mylittle droogies. Now tell me what you have in mind, Georgie Boy.

GEORGIE

Oh, the old moloko-plus first, would you not say

DIM

Moloko-plus.

GEORGIE

Something to sharpen us up, you especially. We have the start. EXT. FLATBLOCK MARINE ? DAY

The gang come out of the flatblock and walk alongthe marina.

ALEX (V.O.)

As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside but thinking allthe time, so now it was to be Georgie the General, saying what we should do and whatnot to do, and Dim as his mindless, grinning bulldog. But, suddenly, I viddied thatthinking was for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use like inspiration andwhat Bog sends, for now it

was lovely music that came to my aid and I viddied atonce what to do. There was a window open with the stereo on.

IN SLOW MOTION

Alex clubs Georgie into water with his stick.Dim swings chain. Alex ducks. Dim goes into water.

Alex kneels, hands behind back, takes knife from sword stick, offers handto help Dim, and slashes Dim when he gets it.

Dim falls back into the water. Alex laughs.

INT. DUKE OF NEW YORK PUB

The four boys sit round table.

ALEX (V.O.)

I had not put into any of Dim's main cables and so, with the help of a clean tashtook,the red, red kroovy stopped, and it did not take long to quieten the two woundedsoldiers, down in the snug in the Duke of New York. Now they knew who was Masterand Leader. Sheep, thought I, but a real leader knows always when like to give andshow generous to his unders.

ALEX

Well, now we're back to where we were. Yes? Just like before and all forgotten? Right,right, right.

ALL BOYS

Right. Right. Right.

ALEX

Well, Georgie Boy. This idea you've got for tonight. Well, tell us all about it then.

GEORGIE

Not tonight ? not this nochy.

ALEX

Come, come, come, Georgie Boy. You're a big strong chelloveck like us all. We'renot little children, are we, Georgie Boy? What, then, didst thou in thy mind have?

Confrontation. Georgie backs down.

GEORGIE

It's this Health Farm. A bit out of the town. Isolated. It's owned by this like veryrich ptitsa who lives there with her cats. The place is shut down for a week andshe's completely on her own, and it's full up with like gold and silver and likejewels.

ALEX

Tell me more, Georgie Boy. INT. CATLADY'S HOUSE

Catlady doing yoga exercises. Room is full of cats. Doorbell rings.

CATLADY

(softly to herself)

Oh shit.

She goes to the door.

EXT. CATLADY'S HOUSE CATLADY

Who's there?

ALEX

Excuse me, missus, can you please help? There's been a terrible accident. Can I pleaseuse your telephone for an ambulance?

CATLADY

I'm frightfully sorry. There is a telephone in the Public House about a mile downthe road. I suggest you use that.

ALEX

But, missus, this is an emergency. It's a matter of life and death. Me friend's lyingin the middle of the road bleeding to death.

CATLADY

I... I'm very sorry, but I never open. I'm very sorry but I never open the door tostrangers after dark.

ALEX

Very well, madam. I suppose you can't be blamed for being suspicious with so manyscoundrels and rouges of the night about.

Alex walks away from door, then ducks into the bushes where the others arehiding. They put on their maskies and follow Alex round to the rear of the house.

ALEX

Dim, bend down.

(Alex points to an upstairs window)

I'm gonna get in that window and open the front door.

He climbs up drain-pipe to the bathroom window.

INT. CADLADY'S HOUSE

The Catlady enters and dials a number.

CATLADY

Hullo, Radlett Police Station. Good evening. It's Miss Weathers at Woodmere HealthFarm. Look, I'm frightfully sorry to bother you but something rather odd has justhappened... Well, it's probably nothing at all, but you never know... Well, a youngman rang the bell asking to use the telephone... He said there had been some kindof accident. The thing that caught my attention was what he said ? the words he used,sounded exactly like what was quoted in the papers this morning in connection withthe writer and his wife who were assaulted last night... Well, just a few minutesago... Well, if you think that's necessary, but, well, I'm quite sure he's gone awaynow. Oh... alright. Fine. Thank you very much. Thank you.

She puts phone down, turns and nearly jumps out of her leotard when she seesAlex in the doorway.

ALEX

Hi, hi, hi there, at last we meet.

CATLADY

What the bloody hell d'you think you're doing?

ALEX

Our brief govereet thru the letter hole was not, shall we say, satisfactory, yes?

CATLADY

Now listen here, you little bastard, just you turn around and walk out of here thesame way as you came in.

Alex eyes a giant white, fibreglass phallic sculpture on the table besidehim.

ALEX

Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomaka.

CATLADY

No! No! Don't touch it. That's a very important work of art. What the bloody helldo you want?

ALEX

You see, madam, I am part of an international student's contest to see who can getthe most points for selling magazines.

CATLADY

Cut the shit, sonny, and get out of here before you get yourself in some very serioustrouble.

He rocks the giant phallus which has a special weight swinging inside causingit to swing up and down an eccentric motion.

CATLADY

I told you to leave it alone. Now get out of here before I throw you out, wretchedslummy bedbug. I'll teach you breaking into real people's houses. Get out!

She grabs up a bust of Beethoven and rushes at Alex. He grabs the giant phallicsculpture.

Circling, Alex fends off her mad rushes with skilful jabs of the giant phallus. She ducks under and clobbers him with the heavy bust of Beethoven.

He goes down, pulling her off balance and they both wind up the floor. In the struggle, Alex bashes her with the phallus.

Distant Police sirens.

He exits.

EXT. CATLDAY'S HOUSE ? NIGHT

Alex rushes out. Dim and the others are waiting.

ALEX

Come on. Let's go, the police are coming.

DIM

One minoota, droogie.

Dim smashes Alex in the face with a full milk bottle. He goes down. The othersrun away, laughing.

ALEX

(screaming)

You bastards... bastards. INT. POLICE HQ ? NIGHT

Inspector takes out cigarette and lights up.

INSPECTOR

Right. Right , Tom, we'll have to our little friend, Alex, here that we know thelaw, too, but that knowing the law isn't everything.

He nods to Fatneck.

FATNECK

That's a nasty cut you've got there, little Alex. Spoils... all your beauty. Whogave you that then... eh... eh...

He presses Alex's nose, inflicting great pain. Alex sinks to his knees.

ALEX

Ow... what's that for, you bastard?

FATNECK

That was for your lady victim. You ghastly wretched scoundrel.

Alex grabs his balls.

Alex is beaten by the other Cop.

Inspector exits to outside office where Sergeant sits, sipping a cup of tea. Deltoid has just entered.

INSPECTOR

Sergeant.

SERGEANT

Sir.

INSPECTOR

Ah, good evening, Mr. Deltoid.

DELTOID

Evening, Inspector.

SERGEANT

Would you like your tea now, sir?

INSPECTOR

No, thank you, Sergeant. We'll have it later. May I have some paper towels, please.

SERGEANT

Yes, sir.

INSPECTOR

We're interrogating the prisoner now. Perhaps you'd care to come inside.

DELTOID

Thank you very much

They move into Interrogation Room.

Alex is on the floor in the corner covered with blood.

DELTOID

Evening, Sergeant. Evening, all. Dear, dear, this boy does look a mess, doesn't he?Just look at the state of him.

FATNECK

Love's young nightmare like.

INSPECTOR

Violence makes violence. He resisted h is lawful arrestors.

DELTOID

Well, it's happened, Alex boy, yes. Just as I thought it would, yes. Dear, dear,dear. Well, this is the end of the line for me... the end of the line, yes.

ALEX

It wasn't me, brother, sir. Speak up for me, sir, for I'm not so bad. I was led onby the treachery of others, sir.

INSPECTOR

Sings the roof off lovely, he does that.

ALEX

And where are my stinking traitorous droogs. Get them before the get away. It wasall their idea, brothers. They forced me to do it. I'm innocent.

DELTOID

You are now a murderer, little Alex. A murderer, yes.

ALEX

Not true, sir. It was only a slight tolchock. She was breathing, I swear it.

DELTOID

I've just come back from the hospital. Your victim has died.

ALEX

You try to frighten me, sir, admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture. Sayit, brother, sir.

DELTOID

It will be your own torture. I hope to God it will torture you to madness.

FATNECK

If you'd care to give him a bash in the chops, sir. Don't mind us. We'll hold himdown. He must be a great disappointment to you, sir.

Deltoid spits in Alex's face.

HELICOPTER VIEWS OF PRISON ALEX (V.O.)

This is the real weepy and like tragic part of the story beginning, O my

brothersand only friends. After a trial with judges and a jury, and some very hard wordsspoken against your friend and humble narrator, he was sentenced to 14 years in StajaNo. 84F among smelly perverts and hardened prestoopnicks, the shock sending my daddabeating his bruised and kroovy rookas against unfair Bog in his Heaven, and my mom,boohoohooing in her mother's grief as her only child and son of her bosom, like lettingeverybody down real horrorshow.

INT. PRISON CHECK-IN ROOM ? DAY

A bell rings and a Warder goes and unlocks firsta wooden door and then a barred door.

GUARD

Morning. One up from Thames, Mister.

WARDER

One in from Thames, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. Open up, Mister.

WARDER

Yes, sir.

He opens door and steps back. Alex and another Warden move to Reception desk.

WARDER

Good morning, sir. Committal sheet.

CHIEF GUARD

(who shouts everything)

Thank you, Mister.

He signs sheet.

GUARD

Name?

ALEX

Alexander de Large.

CHIEF GUARD

You are now in H.M. Prison Parkmoor and from this moment you will address all prisonofficers as sir! Name?

ALEX

Alexander de Large, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Crime?

ALEX

Murder, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. Take the cuffs off him, Mister.

The cuffs are removed.

CHIEF GUARD

You are now 655321 and it is your duty to memorise that number.

He hands clipboard back to Warder.

CHIEF GUARD

Thank you Mister. Well done.

WARDER

Thank you, chief.

CHIEF GUARD

Let the officer out.

Officer exits.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. Empty your pockets!

Alex moves to desk and leans forward.

CHIEF GUARD

Are you able to see that white line painted on the floor directly behind you, 655321?

ALEX

Yes, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Then your toes belong on the other side of it!!!

ALEX

Yes sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right carry on.

Alex tosses a bar of chocolate on the desk.

CHIEF GUARD

Pick that up and put it down properly.

Alex does so, and continues to empty his pockets.

CHIEF GUARD

One half bar of chocolate. One bunch of keys on white metal ring. One

packet of cigarettes.Two plastic ball pens ? one black, one red. One pocket comb ? black plastic. Oneaddress book ? imitation red leather. One ten penny piece. One white metal wristletwatch, "Timawrist" on a white metal expanding bracelet. Anything else inyour pockets?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. Sign here for your valuable property.

Alex signs.

CHIEF GUARD

The chocolate and cigarettes you brought in ? you lose that as you are now convicted.Now go over to the table and get undressed.

Alex walks to table and undresses. Chief Guard moves to table with his clipboard.

CHIEF GUARD

Now then, were you in Police custody this morning?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One jacket ? blue pinstripe.

CHIEF GUARD

Prison custody?

ALEX

Yes, sir On remand, sir.

CHECK-IN

One neck tie ? blue.

CHIEF GUARD

Religion?

ALEX

C of E, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Do you mean Church of England?

ALEX

Yes, sir, Church of England, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Brown hair, is it?

ALEX

Fair hair, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Blue eyes?

ALEX

Blue eyes, yes, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Do you wear eye glasses or contact lenses?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One shirt ? blue, collar attached.

CHIEF GUARD

Have you been receiving medical treatment for any serious illness?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One pair of boots ? black leather, zippered, worn.

CHIEF GUARD

Have you ever had any mental illness?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Do you wear any false teeth or false limbs?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One pair of trousers ? blue pinstriped.

CHIEF GUARD

Have you ever had any attacks of fainting or dizziness?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One pair of socks ? black.

CHIEF GUARD

Are you an Epileptic?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHECK-IN

One pair of underpants ? white with blue waistband.

CHIEF GUARD

Are you now, or ever have been, a homosexual?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. The mothballs, Mister.

CHECK-IN

Mothballs, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Now then. Face the wall. Bend over and touch your toes.

Chief Guard inspects Alex's anus with a penlight.

CHIEF GUARD

Mmmmmmm... any venereal disease?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Crabs?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Lice?

ALEX

No, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Through there for a bath.

ALEX

Yes, sir.

INT. PRISON CHAPEL ? DAY

Priest in pulpit big rough state-proper type. Convict audience.

Alex sits apart tending an overhead projector.

PRIEST

I ask you friends. What's it going to be then? Is it going to be in and out of institutionslike this? Or more in then out for most of you? Or are you going to attend the divineword and realise the punishment that awaits unrepentant sinners in the next worldas well as this. A lot of Idiots you are, selling your birthright for a saucer ofcold porridge. The urge to live easy. I ask you friends, is it worth it? When wehave undeniable proof ? yes, my friends, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists.I know, I know, my friends. I have been informed in visions that there is a placedarker than any prison, hotter than any human flame of fire, where unrepentant criminals,sinners like yourselves...

A convict burps.

All laugh.

PRIEST

Don't you laugh, damn you, don't you laugh. I say like yourselves ? scream in endlessand unendurable agony. Their nostrils choked with the smell of filth, their mouthscrammed with burning ordure. Their skins rotting and peeling. A fireball spinningin their screaming guts. I know... oh yes, I know.

A convict lets rip some lip music ? prrrrrrrp. There is laughter. Chief Guardmoves forward ? points.

CHIEF GUARD

I saw you, 920537. I saw you.

CONVICT

Up yours, mate.

CHIEF GUARD

Just you wait, 744678. One on the turnip coming up for you.

PRIEST

Quiet, my friends. Quiet. Quiet, I say. We will now sing Hymn 258 in the Prisoner'sHymnal.

Piano starts up and Alex starts up overhead projector which displays the wordsof the hymn.

CHIEF GUARD

Show a little reverence, you bastards. Quiet!

Convicts and all start to sing.

SINGING

I was a wandering sheep. I did not love...

CHIEF GUARD

Sing up damn you. Louder, sing up.

SINGING

... the fold

I did not love my shepherd's voice. I would not be controlled.

CHIEF GUARD

Come on, sing up, damn you.

SINGING

I was a wayward child

I did not love my home

I did not love my father's voice I loved afar to roam.

ALEX (V.O.)

It had not been edifying, indeed not, being in this hell hole and human zoo for twoyears now, being kicked and tolchocked by brutal warders, and meeting leering criminalsand perverts ready to dribble all over a lucious young malchick like your story-teller.

INT. PRIEST'S LIBRARY ? D AY

Alex reading the Bible.

ALEX (V.O.)

It was my rabbit to help the prison charlie with the Sunday service. He was a bolshygreat burly bastard, but he was very fond of myself, me being very young, and alsonow very interested in the big book.

Priest walks by and nods pleasantly.

ALEX (V.O.)

It had been arranged by the prison charlie, as part of my further education to readhim the Bible. I didn't so much like the latter part of the book which is more likeall preachy talking, than fighting and the old in-out. I liked the parts where theseold yahoodies tolchock each other and then drink their Hebrew vino and, then gettingon to the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going.

BIBLE FANTASY ? FIGHTING ? DAY

Biblical fighting shot. Alex slashing away. Bloodspurting.

HANDMAIDEN FANTASY IN TENT ? DAY

Alex lying with three semi-nude handmaidens.

EXT. BIBLICAL STREET

Christ being whipped on by Alex, dressed as aLegionary.

ALEX

Move on there. Move on.

ALEX (V.O.)

I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and all that, and I couldviddy myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailingin, being dressed in the height of Roman fashion.

BACK TO THE LIBRARY

Alex sits with his eyes closed.

Priest comes over and squeezes his shoulder. Alex looks up at him and smiles.

PRIEST

(reading from Alex's Bible)

Seek not to be like evil men, neither desire to be with them, because theirminds studieth robberies and their lips speak deceits.

ALEX

If thou lose hope being weary in the days of distress, thy strength shall be diminished.

PRIEST

Fine, my boy, fine, fine.

ALEX

Father, I have tried, have I not?

PRIEST

You have, my son.

ALEX

I've done my best, have I not?

PRIEST

Indeed.

ALEX

And, Father, I've never been guilty of any institutional infractions, have I?

PRIEST

You certainly have not, 655321. You've been very helpful, and you've shown a genuinedesire to reform.

ALEX

Father ? may I ask you a question in private?

PRIEST

Certainly, my son, certainly. Is there something troubling you, my son? Don't beshy to speak up. Remember, I know all the urges that can trouble young men deprivedof the society of women.

ALEX

No Father. It's nothing like that, Father. It's about this new thing they're alltalking about. About this new treatment that you out of prison in no time at alland makes sure you never get back in again.

PRIEST

Where did you hear about this? Whose been talking about these things?

ALEX

These things get around, Father. Two Warders talk as it might be, and somebody can'thelp overhearing what they say. Then somebody picks up a scrap of newspaper in theworkshops and the newspaper tells all about it.

How about putting me in for thisnew treatment, Father?

PRIEST

I take it you are referring to the Ludovico Technique?

ALEX

I don't know what it's called, Father, all I know is that it gets you out quicklyand makes sure that you never get in again.

PRIEST

That's not proven, 655321. In fact, it is only in the experimental stage at thismoment.

ALEX

But it is being used, isn't it, Father?

PRIEST

It has not been used yet in this prison. The Governor has grave doubts about it andI have heard that there are very serious dangers involved.

ALEX

I don't care about the danger, Father. I just want to be good. I want for the restof my life to be one act of goodness.

PRIEST

The question is weather or not this technique really makes a man good. Goodness comesfrom within. Goodness is chosen. When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.

ALEX

I don't understand about the whys and wherefores, Father. I only know I want to begood.

PRIEST

Be patient, my son, and put your trust in the Lord.

ALEX

Instruct thy son and he shall refresh thee and shall give delight to thy soul.

PRIEST

Amen.

They cross themselves.

EXT. PRISON YARD ? DAY

Prisoners walking in circles.

INT. PRISON CORRIDOR

Guards stand either side of cell doors.

Chief Guard with Governor, Minister and entourage.

CHIEF GUARD

Mister.

GUARD

All present and correct, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Right. All present and correct, sir.

GOVERNOR

Very good, Chief.

They inspect cells.

CHIEF GUARD

Leave to carry on, sir, please?

GOVERNOR

Carry on, Chief.

CHIEF GUARD

Sir.

EXT. PRISON YARD

Chief Guard comes out of door.

CHIEF GUARD

Right, pay attention. I want you in two lines. Up against that wall facing this way.Go on move! Hurry up about it and stop talking.

The men line up. Chief Guard moves back to door and comes to attention.

CHIEF GUARD

Ready for inspection, sir.

He stands back and salutes as Governor, Minister and entourage enter and walkalong line of men.

MINISTER

How many to a cell?

GOVERNOR

Four in this block, sir.

MINISTER

Cram criminals together and what do you get ? concentrated criminality... crime inthe midst of punishment.

GOVERNOR

I agree, sir. What we need are larger prisons. More money.

MINISTER

Not a chance, my dear fellow. The Ggovernment can't be concerned any longer withoutmoded penological theories. Soon we may be needing all of out prison space forpolitical offenders. Common criminals like these are best dealt with on a purelycurative basis. Kill the criminal reflex that's all. Full implementation in a year'stime. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that... they enjoy their so-calledpunishment.

Alex seizes his chance as they pass by.

ALEX

You're absolutely right, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

Shut your bleedin' hole!!!

MINISTER

Who said that?

ALEX

I did, sir.

MINISTER

What crime did you commit.

ALEX

The accidental killing of a person, sir.

CHIEF GUARD

He brutally murdered a woman, sir, in furtherence of theft. 14 years... sir!

MINISTER

Excellent. He's enterprising, aggressive, outgoing. Young. Bold. Viscous. He'll do.

GOVERNOR

Well, fine... we could still look at C-Block.

MINISTER

No, no, no. That's enough. He's perfect. I want his records sent to me. This viciousyoung hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition.

ALEX

Thank you very much for this chance, sir.

MINISTER

Let's hope you make the most of it, my boy.

GOVERNOR

Shall we go to my office?

MINISTER

Thank you.

INT. GOVERNOR'S OFFICE ? DAY

Governor seated at his desk. There is a knockon the door.

GOVERNOR

Come in.

Door opens. Chief Guard enters with Alex.

CHIEF GUARD

Sir, 655321, sir.

GOVERNOR

Very good, Chief.

Chief Guard turns to Alex.

CHIEF GUARD

Forward to the white line, toes behind it. Full name and number to the Governor.

Chief Guard closes door.

ALEX

Alexander de Large, sir. 655321, sir.

The Governor takes off his glasses.

GOVERNOR

I don't suppose you know who that was this morning, do you? That was no less a personagethan the Minister of the Interior and what they call a very new broom. Well, thesenew ridiculous ideas have come at last, and orders are orders, though I may say toyou in confidence that I do not approve. An eye for an eye, I say, if someone hitsyou, you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State very severely hit byyou brutal offenders not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new viewis that we turn the bad into good. All of which seems to be grossly unjust. Hmmmmmm.

ALEX

Sir...

CHIEF GUARD

Shut your filthy hole, you scum!!!

GOVERNOR

You are to be reformed. Tomorrow you go to this man, Brodsky. You will be leavinghere. You will be transferred to the Ludovico Medical Facility. It is believed thatyou will be able to leave State custody in a little over a fortnight. I suppose thatprospect pleases you?

CHIEF GUARD

Answer when the Governor asks you a question you filthy young swine!

ALEX

Oh yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I've done my best here I really have, sir.I'm very grateful to all concerned.

GOVERNOR

Sign this ? where it's marked.

Alex turns the paper to read it.

CHIEF GUARD

Don't read it ? sign it!

GOVERNOR

It says that you are willing to have the residue of your sentence commuted to theLudovico treatment.

Alex signs. Governor gathers up papers. Alex dots the last "i" and smiles.

INT. LUDOVICO CENTRE RECEPTION DESK ? DAY

ALEX (V.O.)

The next morning I was taken to the Ludovico Medical Facility, outside the town centre,and I felt a malenky bit sad having to say goodbye to the old Staja, as you alwayswill when you leave a place you've like gotten used to.

Chief Guard briskly leads the way for Alex and escort. They move into receptionhall where the Doctor stands.

CHIEF GUARD

(shouting like an RSM)

Right. Halt the prisoner. Good morning, sir, I'm Chief Officer Barnes. I'vegot 655321 on a transfer from Parkmoor to the Ludovico Centre, sir!

DOCTOR

Good morning, we've been expecting you. I'm Dr. Alcott.

Chief Guard checks the name from his clipboard.

CHIEF GUARD

Yes, Dr. Alcott. Are you prepared to accept the prisoner, sir?

DOCTOR

Yes, of course.

CHIEF GUARD

Well, I wonder if you'd mind signing these transfer documents, sir.

Doctor signs.

CHIEF GUARD

Thank you, sir. There, sir... there, and there, sir... and there. Thank you, sir.Prison escort move forward. Halt. Excuse me, sir. Is that the officer that is totake charge of the prisoner, sir?

Doctor nods. Officer steps forward.

CHIEF GUARD

If I might offer a word of advice, Doc. You'll have to watch this one. A right brutalbastard he has been, and will be again. In spite all his sucking up to the prisonChaplain and reading the Bible.

DOCTOR

Oh, I think we can manage things. Charlie, will you show the young man to his roomnow.

CHARLIE

Right, sir. Come this way, please.

Alex exits with Officer.

INT. ALEX'S ROOM ? LUDOVICO CENTRE ? DAY

Alex finishing breakfast tray in bed. Room bright and cheery.

Dr. Branom, a tall woman in her fifties, enters with nurse carrying a steriletray.

BRANOM

(very briskly)

Good morning, Alex, my name is Dr. Branom. I'm Doctor Brodsky's assistant.

ALEX

Good Morning, Missus. Lovely day, isn't it?

BRANOM

Indeed it is. May I take this

She removes his tray.

BRANOM

How're you feeling this morning? ALEX

Fine... fine.

BRANOM

Good. In a few minutes, you'll meeting Dr. Brodsky and we'll begin your treatment.You're a very lucky boy to have been chosen.

ALEX

I realise all that, Missus, and I'm very grateful to all concerned.

BRANOM

We're going to friends now, sir.

ALEX

I hope so, Missus.

She inserts a needle into the medicine vial.

ALEX (CONT'D)

What's the hypo for then? Going to send me to sleep?

BRANOM

Oh no, nothing of the sort.

ALEX

Vitamins will it be then?

BRANOM

Something like that. You are a little undernourished, so after each meal were goingto give you a shot. Roll over on your right side please, loosen your pyjama pantsand pull them half-way down.

He does, somewhat reluctantly. She gives him a shot in the bum.

ALEX

What exactly is the treatment here going to be then?

BRANOM

It's quite simple really. Were just going to show you some films.

ALEX

You mean like going to the pictures?

BRANOM

Something like that.

ALEX

Well, that's good. I like to viddy the old films now and again. INT. AUDIO VISUAL LUDOVICO CENTRE ? DAY

Auditorium setting. Alex is bound in a examinationchair in front of a large video screen. A white-coated Technician is strapping Alex'shead to a medical device.

He then carefully attaches the eyelid locking to Alex's eyes.

ALEX (V.O.)

And viddy films I would. Where I was taken to, brothers, was like no cine I'd beenin before. I was bound up in a straight-jacket and my gulliver was strapped to aheadrest with like wires running away from it. Then they clamped like lidlocks onmy eyes so I could not shut them no matter how hard I tried. It seemed a bit crazyto me, but I let them get on with what they wanted to get on with. If I was to bea free young malchick in a fortnight's time, I would put up with much in the meantime,my brothers.

At the back of the auditorium are ten or fifteen solemn medical Professionalsin white coats watching the proceedings and occasionally taking notes. A film beginsshowing on the screen.

The Technician drops eyedrops into Alex's eyes.

VIOLENCE FILM

Man being beaten by four toughs wearing white. Punches, kicks, grunts, blood.

ALEX (V.O.)

So far the first film was a very good professional piece of cine, looked like itwas done in Hollywood.

Screams, moans, kicks, punches.

ALEX (V.O.)

The sounds were real horroshow. You could slooshy the screams and moans very realisticand you could even get the heavy breathing and panting of the tolchocking malchicksat the same time. And then, what do you know, soon our dear old friend, the red,red vino on tap. The same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm, beganto flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colours of the real world only seemreally real when you viddy them on a screen.

More kicks, punches, groans, thumps. Girl being beaten, raped by six toughs.

Screams, music, laughing, grunts, heavy breathing.

ALEX (V.O.)

Now all the time I was watching this, I was beginning to get very aware of like notfeeling all that well, but I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film,which jumped right away on a young devotchka, who was being given the old in-out,in-out, first by one malchick, then another, then another. This seemed real, veryreal, though if you thought about it properly you couldn't imagine lewdies actuallyagreeing to having all this done to them in a film, and if these films were madeby the good, or the State, you couldn't imagine them being allowed to take thesefilms, without like interfering with what was going on.

Girl being raped.

ALEX (V.O.)

When it came to the sixth or seventh malchick, leering and smecking and then goinginto it, I began to feel really sick. But I could not shut my glazzies and even ifI tried to move my glazballs about I still not get out of the line of fire of thispicture.

Alex squirming and retching.

Dr. Brodsky clears his throat and quietly addresses his colleagues seatedin the back of the room.

BRODSKY

Very soon now the drug will cause the subject to experience a death-like paralysistogether with deep feelings of terror and helplessness. One of our earlier test subjectsdescribed it as being like death, a sense of stifling and drowning, and it is duringthis period we have found the subject will make his most rewarding associations betweenhis catastrophic experience and environment and the violence he sees.

Alex retching violently and struggling against his strait jacket.

ALEX

Let me be sick... I want to get up. Get me something to be sick in... Stop the film...Please stop it... I can't stand it any more. Stop it please... please.

INT. ALEX'S ROOM ? LUDOVICO ? DAY

BRANOM

Well, that was a very promising start. By my calculations, you should be startingto feel alright again. Yes? Dr. Brodsky's pleased with you. Now tomorrow there'llbe two sessions, of course, morning and afternoon.

ALEX

You mean, I have to viddy two sessions in one day?

BRANOM

I imagine you'll be feeling a little bit limp by the end of the day. But we haveto be hard on you. You have to be cured.

ALEX

But it was horrible.

BRANOM

Well, of course, it was horrible. Violence is a very horrible thing. That's whatyou're learning now. Your body is learning it.

ALEX

I just don't understand about feeling sick the way I did. I never used to feel sickbefore. I used to feel like the very opposite. I mean, doing it or watching it, Iused to feel real horrorshow. I just don't understand why, how or what.

BRANOM

You felt ill this afternoon because you're getting better. You see, when we're healthywe respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthythat's all. By this time tomorrow you'll be healthier still.

INT. AUDIO VISUAL LUDOVICO CENTRE ? DAY

Alex retching and screaming ? restrained againby a straight-jacket.

ALEX (V.O.)

It was the next day, brothers, and I had truly done my best, morning and afternoon,to play it their way and sit like a horrorshow co-operative malchick in the chairof torture, while they flashed nasty bits of ultra- violence on the screen.; thoughnot on the soundtrack, my brothers. The only sound being music. Then I noticed inall my pain and sickness what music it was that like cracked and boomed. It was Ludwigvan ? 9th symphony, 4th movement.

ALEX

Stop it... stop it, please!!! I beg of you!!! It's a sin!!! It's a sin!!! It's asin, please!!!

Brodsky leans forward and turns down the sound.

BRODSKY

What's all this about sin?

ALEX

That!... Using Ludwig van like that! He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrotemusic.

BRANOM

Are you referring to the background score?

ALEX

Yes!!!

BRANOM

You've heard Beethoven before?

ALEX

Yes!!!

BRODSKY

You're keen on music?

ALEX

Yes!!!

BRANOM

(quietly)

What do you think about that, Dr. Brodsky?

BRODSKY

(softly)

It can't be helped. Here's your punishment element perhaps. The Governor oughtto be pleased... I'm sorry, Alex, this is for your own good, you'll have to bearwith us for a while.

ALEX

You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultra- violenceand killing is wrong and terribly wrong. I've learned my lesson, sir. I see now whatI've never seen before I'm cured, praise Bog!

BRODSKY

You're not cured yet, my boy.

BRODSKY

You must take your chance boy. The choice has been all yours.

ALEX

But, Sir... Missus... I see that it's wrong! It's wrong because it's like againstlike society. It's wrong because everybody has the right to live and be happy withoutbeing tolchocked and knifed.

BRODSKY

No, no, boy. You really must leave it to us, but be cheerful about it. In less thana fortnight now, you'll be a free man.

INT. AUDITORIUM ? DAY

VIP audience including Minister, Junior Minister,Prison Governor, Priest, Dr. Branom, Dr. Brodsky.

Dressed in street clothes Alex enters led by a white-coated Technician. He is led onto stage and left standing there, blinking into lights.

The Minister rises and walks to the front of the auditorium.

MINISTER

Ladies and Gentlemen, at this point, we introduce the subject himself. He is, asyou will perceive, fit and well nourished. He comes straight from as night's sleepand a good breakfast, undrugged, unhypnotized. Tomorrow, we send him with confidenceout into the world again, as decent a lad as you would meet on a May morning. Whata change is here, Ladies and Gentlemen, from the wretched hoodlum the state committedto unprofitable punishment some two years ago, unchanged after two years.

Unchanged,do I say - not quite. Prison taught him a false smile, the rubbed hands of hypocrisy,the fawning, greased, obsequious leer. Other vices prison taught him as well as confirminghim in those he had long practised before. Our party promised to restore law andorder and to make the streets safe for the ordinary peace loving citizen. This pledgeis now about to become a reality. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is an historic moment.The problem of criminal violence is soon to be a thing of the past. But enough ofwords ? actions speak louder than. Action now. Observe all.

He returns to his seat and leans close to his Junior Minister.

JUNIOR MINISTER

Our necks are out a long way on this, Minister. MINISTER

I have complete faith in Brodsky. If the polls are right, we have nothing to lose.

Lights are dimmed. Enter Lardface, an elegantly dressed fag.

LARDFACE

Hello, heap of dirt. Pooh, you don't wash much do you, judging by the horrible smell.

ALEX

Why do you say that, brother? I had a shower this morning.

LARDFACE

Oh, he had a shower this morning. You trying to call me a liar?

ALEX

No, brother. What d'you want?

LARDFACE

What do I want?

ALEX

Sorry, brother. I didn't mean any offence.

LARDFACE

Oh. Oh, you're sorry are you, well you must think I'm awfully stupid.

He slaps Alex in the face.

ALEX

Why did you do that, brother? I've never done wrong to you.

LARDFACE

You want to know why I did that, well you see ? I do that...

He stamps on Alex's foot.

LARDFACE

... and this...

He pulls Alex's nose.

LARDFACE

... and that...

He pulls Alex's ear, pushes him off balance and plants his foot on his chest.

LARDFACE

... because I don't like you horrible type, do I, and if you want to start something...if you want to start... go on... well, you just start. Please do.

Alex retching.

ALEX

I'm gonna be sick.

LARDFACE

You're gonna be sick are you?

ALEX

I wanna be sick.

LARDFACE

You wanna be sick?

ALEX

Let me get up.

LARDFACE

You wanna get up? Well, you've gotta you see... well I want you to lick it. Go on...Lick it.

Alex, gagging and coughing, licks the sole of his shoe.

LARDFACE

... And again... Go on!!! Again! There's a good boy.

ALEX (V.O.)

And, O my brothers, would you believe your faithful friend and long suffering narratorpushed out his red yahzik a mile and a half to lick the grahzny, vonny boots. Thehorrible killing sickness had wooshed up and turned the like joy of battle into afeeling I was going to snuff it.

Minister rises.

MINISTER

Enough! That will do very well. Thank you.

Lardface does leading-man-bows. A smattering of applause.

LARDFACE

Thank you very much, Ladies and Gentlemen... Thank you.

Alex on floor ? still retching. A beautiful nude Girl enters. Alex looks up slowly.

ALEX (V.O.)

She came towards me with the light like it was the like light of heavenly grace,and the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I would like to have herright down there on the floor with the old in-out, real savage. But quick as a shotcame the sickness, like a detective that had been watching around the corner andnow followed to make his arrest.

Alex retching. Minister rises.

MINISTER

Thank you very much. Thank you my dear.

Girl bows and exits to loud applause.

MINISTER

Not feeling too bad now are you?

ALEX

(pulling himself together)

No, sir, I feel really great.

MINISTER

Good.

ALEX

Was I alright, sir? Did I do well, sir?

MINISTER

Fine. Absolutely fine. You see, Ladies and Gentlemen our subject is, you see, impelledtowards good by paradoxically being impelled toward evil. The intention to act violentlyis accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these, the subjecthas to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. Any questions?

Priest rises and moves to Alex.

PRIEST

Choice! The boy has no real choice, has he? Self interest, fear of physical paindrove him to that grotesque act of self abasement. Its insincerity was

clearly tobe seen. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

MINISTER

Padre, these are subtleties. We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics;we are concerned only with cutting down crime. And with relieving the ghastly congestionin our prisons... He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek.Ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thoughteven of killing a fly.

Reclamation, joy before the angels of God. The point is thatit works!

Applause.

EXT. FLATBLOCK

Alex walking carrying his prison parcel wrappedin brown paper.

INT. ALEX'S FLAT

Ma, Pa and Joe the Lodger reading newspapers.Headlines ? all Alex.

Alex enters quietly. Loud radio music from sitting room prevents anyone fromhearing him. He enters his won room which is the first off the hall.

ALEX

Hi. Hi. Hi, there my Pee and Em.

All three look up startled.

Alex.

ALEX

(to his mother)

Hullo love, how are you?

(kisses her)

Nice to see you, Dad.

PEE

Hullo lad. What a surprise, good to see you.

ALEX

Keeping fit then?

PEE

(very ill at ease)

Fine, fine.

ALEX

Well, how are you then?

PEE

Oh fine, fine. Keeping out of trouble, you know.

ALEX

Well ? I'm back.

PEE

(with feigned enthusiasm)

Aye. Glad to see you back, lad.

Why didn't you let us know what was happening, son?

ALEX

Sorry, Em, I wanted it to be like... a big surprise for you and pee.

PEE

Well, it's a surprise all right, a bit bewildering too.

We've only just read about it in the morning papers.

PEE

Aye. You should have let us know, lad, not that we're not very pleased to see youagain. All cured too, eh?

ALEX

That's right, Dad they did a great job on my gulliver, I'm completely reformed.

PEE

Aye.

ALEX

(looks in the kitchen)

Well, still the same old place then, eh?

PEE

Oh, aye, aye.

ALEX

(fake whisper)

Hey, Dad, there's a strange fella sitting on the sofa there munchy- wunchinglomticks of toast.

PEE

Aye, that's Joe. He... ummmm, lives here now. The lodger. That's what he is... he...he rents your room.

Alex confronts Joe.

ALEX

How do you do, Joe? Find the room comfortable, do you? No complaints?

JOE

I've heard about you. I know what you've done. Breaking the hearts of your poor grievingparents. So you're back? You're back to make a life of misery for your lovely parents,is that it? Well, over my dead corpse you will, because you see, they've let me bemore like a son to them than like a lodger.

Alex cocks his fist and starts to retch violently, almost at the same momentJoe drops back on the couch next to Em.

Joe! Joe! Don't fight here boys!

Alex burps and retches.

JOE

Oh, please. Do put your hand over your mouth, it's bloody revolting.

Alex violently ill.

PEE

Well, what's the matter lad, are you feeling alright?

Dad... It's the treatment.

More retching.

JOE

Well, it's disgusting. It puts you off your food.

Leave him be, Joe. It's the treatment.

PEE

D'you think we should do something?

Would you like me to make you a nice cup of tea, son?

ALEX

No thanks, Mum. It'll pass in a minute...

(after a pause)

... What have you done with all my own personal things?

PEE

Well. That was all took away, son, by the Police. New regulation about compensationfor the victim.

ALEX

What about Basil? Where's my snake?

PEE

Oh well, he met with like an accident. He passed away.

Alex becomes a bit weepy.

ALEX

What's gonna happen to me then? I mean that's my room he's in ? there's no denyingthat. This is my home also. What suggestions have you, my Pee and Em, to make?

PEE

Well, all this needs thinking about, son. I mean we can't very well just kick Joeout... Not just like that, can we? I mean Joe is here doing a job. A contract itis, two years. Well, we made like an arrangement, didn't we Joe? You see, son, Joe'spaid next month's rent already so, well, whatever we do in the future, we cant justsay to Joe to get out, now can we?

JOE

No, there's much more than that, though. I mean I've got you two to think of. I meanyou're more like a mother and father to me. Well, it wouldn't be fair now, wouldit, for me to go off and leave you two to the tender mercies of this young monsterwho's been like no real son at all. Look, let him go off and find a room somewhere.Let him learn the errors of his way, and that a bad boy like he's been don't deservesuch a good mum and dad as he's had.

ALEX

Alright. I see how things are now. I've suffered and I've suffered, and I've sufferedand everybody wants me to go on suffering.

JOE

You've made others suffer. It's only fair that you should suffer proper. You knowI've been told everything you've done, sitting here at night round the family table,pretty shocking it was to listen to. It made me real sick, a lot of it did. Now lookwhat you've gone and done to your mother.

Em bursts into tears.

ALEX

So that's the way it is then, eh? That's the way it is. Right, I'm leaving now, youwon't ever viddy me no more. I'll make my own way. Thank you very much. Let it lieheavy on your consciences.

Alex exits.

PEE

(shouting after him)

Now don't take it like that son. Em boohoohoos, Joe comforts her. EXT. AMBANKMENT ? DAY

Alex walks along the Thames embankment stillholding his paper parcel. Tramp enters. The same man beaten by Alex and his gang earlier in the film.

TRAMP

Can you spare me some cutter, me brother? Can you spare some cutter, me brother?

Alex, without looking at him, reaches in his pocket and gives him some money.

TRAMP

Oh, thankyou, your honour.

The Tramp takes a second look at Alex.

TRAMP

Jamey Mack! Be the hokey fly! Holy Mother of God! All the Holy Angels and blessedsaints in Heaven preserve us.

Alex breaks away but the Tramp toddles alongside him.

TRAMP

I never forget a face! I never forget any face, be God!

ALEX

Leave me alone, brother. I've never seen you before.

Tramp shouts to other Meths drinkers and Tramps.

TRAMP

This is the poisonous young swine that near done me in. Him and his friends beatme and kicked me and thumped me.

Alex breaks away again.

TRAMP

Stop him! Stop him!

A leg is stuck out and Alex goes down. The tramp swarm all over him.

TRAMP

They laughed at me blood and me moans. This murderous young pig is a prize specimenof the cowardly brutal young. He is in our midst and at our mercy. Give it to him.That's it.

Old Tramps begin to beat at Alex.

ALEX (V.O.)

Then there was like a sea of dirty, smelly old men trying to get at your humble Narrator,with their feeble rookers and horny old claws. It was Old Age having a go at Youthand I daren't do a single solitary thing, O my brothers, it being better to be hitat like that, than want to be sick and feel that horrible pain.

The Tramp crowd round Alex, shouting.

TRAMPS

Young hooligan... Vagabound... Kill him... Villain... Toad... Bastard... Kick histeeth in... Near killed poor old Jack, he did.

Police move in and push off crowd.

FIRST POLICEMAN

Alright, stop it now.

SECOND POLICEMAN

Alright, stop it now. Alright! Come on. Stop breaking the State peace. You naughtyboys. Alright, that's enough.

Alex looks up.

ALEX

Oh, no.

DIM

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, if it isn't little Alex. Long time no viddy,droog. How goes? Surprised are you?

ALEX

Impossible... I don't believe it.

GEORGIE

Evidence of the old glazzies. Nothing up our sleeves. No magic, little Alex? A jobfor two, who are now of job age. The police.

EXT. COUNTRY ROAD ? DAY

Police Landrover drives up.

Alex is pulled out by Georgie and Dim and hustled up a deserted lane.

DIM

Come on, Alex. Come for walkies. Hahahahaha.

ALEX

Come, come, my little droogies. I just don't get this at all. The old days are deadand gone. For what I did in the past I've been punished.

DIM

Been punished, yeah?

ALEX

I've been cured.

DIM

Been cured, yeah, that was read out to us. The Inspector read all that out to us.He said it was a very good way.

ALEX

I just don't get this all. It was them that went for me, brothers. You're not ontheir side and can't be. You can't be Dim. It was someone we fillied with back inthe old days... Trying to get his own malenky bit of revenge after all this time.You remember, Dim?

DIM

Long time, is right. I don't remember them days too horrorshow. Don't call me Dimno more, either. Officer, call me.

GEORGIE

Enough is remembered though, little Alex.

Dim and Georgie laugh.

They drag Alex to a low water through.

DIM

This is to make sure you stay cured.

Georgie hits Alex in the stomach with his blackjack. Then, they push his headunder the water and methodically start to beat him with their blackjacks.

After a full minute of this, they drag him out, halt-drowned,

DIM

(laughing)

Be viddying you some more, some time Alex. EXT. "HOME" ? NIGHT ? HEAVY RAIN

Alex stumbles up the road to the entrance gate.

ALEX (V.O.)

Where was I to go, who had no home and no money. I cried for meself, Home, Home,Home. It was Home I was wanting and it was Home I came to, brothers, not realisingin the state I was in, where I was and had been before.

Alex stumbles and crawls to the door.

INT. "HOME" ? NIGHT

Mr. Alexander at his typewriter.

Julian a 6'4" ? heavyweight weight-lifter lies across an exercise benchworking with bar-bells.

The door bell rings.

ALEXANDER

Who on earth could that be?

JULIAN

I'll see who it is.

He goes to the door.

JULIAN

Yes, what is it?

No reply. He opens the door. Alex falls into the hall.

ALEX

(barely audible)

Help. Help me... Help me... Police.

Julian picks him up like a child and carries him into the living room.

INT. "HOME" ? LIVING ROOM ? NIGHT ALEX (V.O.)

And would you believe it, O my brothers and only friends, there was your

faithfulNarrator being held helpless, like a babe in arms, and suddenly realising where Iwas and why HOME on the gate had looked so familiar. But I knew I was safe. I knewhe would not remember me for, in those carefree days, I and my so-called droogs woreour maskies which were like real horrorshow disguises.

JULIAN

Frank, I think this young man needs help.

ALEXANDER

Dear, dear, dear. Whatever happened to you, my boy?

Mr. Alexander, now confined to a wheelchair, pushes himself away from hisdesk, and rolls up to Julian. The water drips off Alex's clothes. They look at eachother.

ALEX

The police... The horrible ghastly Police. They beat me up, sir. The Police beatme up, sir.

Mr. Alexander stares at him. It becomes apparent he is insane.

ALEXANDER

I know who you are! Isn't it your picture in the newspapers? Didn't I see you thismorning on the video? Are you not the poor victim of this horrible new technique?

ALEX

Yes, sir, that's exactly who I am, sir... and what I am... a victim, sir.

Mr. Alexander becomes frenzied as the speech progresses.

ALEXANDER

Then, by God, you have been sent here by providence. Tortured in prison, then thrownout to be tortured by the Police. My heart goes out to you, poor, poor boy. Oh, youare not the first to come here in distress. The Police are fond of bringing theirvictims to the outskirts of this village. But it is providential that you, who arealso another k ind of victim, should come here. But you're cold and shivering. Julian,draw a bath for this young man.

JULIAN

Certainly, Frank.

He carries Alex off.

ALEX

Thank you very much, sir. God bless you, sir.

Alexander bites his hand.

INT. "HOME" ? BATHROOM

Alex soaks, eyes closed, in a hot tub.

After a while he begins softly singing to himself: "Singin' in the Rain".

INT. "HOME" ? LIVING ROOM ? DAY

Mr. Alexander is hunched over the phone, talkingin hoarse whipsers. The door to the bathroom is right behind him. While he speaksMr. Alexander throws nervous glances over his shoulder.

ALEXANDER

I tell you, sir, they have turned this young man into something other than a humanbeing. He has no power of choice any more. He's committed to socially acceptableacts, a little machine capable only of good... He can be the most potent weapon imaginableto ensure that the Government is not returned at the next election. The Government'sgreat boast, as you know sir, is the way they have dealt with crime in the last fewmonths. Recruiting brutal young roughs into the police, proposing debilitation andwill-sapping techniques of conditioning. Oh, we've seen it all before in other countriesThe thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall

have the full apparatusof totalitarianism. This young boy is a living witness to these diabolical proposals.The people ? the common people ? must know... must see! There are rare traditionsof liberty to defend. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people willlet it go! Oh, yes ? they will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why theymust be led, sir, driven... pushed!!! Thank you very much, sir. He'll be here.

Trembling with excitement and madness, Mr. Alexander hangs up the phone. Hiseyes, shiny with anticipation. Then, suddenly, he becomes aware of Alex's voice comingfrom the other side of the door.

INT. "HOME" ? BATHROOM

Alex in bath, singing.

ALEX

I'm singing in the rain, Just singing in the rain...

ALEXANDER

His face horribly distorted in a Homeric rage.

INT. "HOME" ? NIGHT

Alex, alone, in complete silence. Eating a largeplate of spaghetti. The giant, Julian, appears, carrying Mr. Alexander in his wheelchair.He deposits him at the table.

ALEX

Good evening, sir.

ALEXANDER

(very weird)

Good evening.

ALEX

It was very kind of you to leave this out for me, sir. There was no-one around whenI finished my bath, so I started. I hope that's alright, sir.

ALEXANDER

(too loud ? voice out of control)

Of course. Food alright?

ALEX

Great, sir. Great.

ALEXANDER

Try the wine!

ALEX

Thank you very much, sir. Cheers

Suddenly the thought occurs to Alex that the wine may be drugged or poisoned.

ALEX

Won't you join me, sir?

ALEXANDER

No, my health doesn't allow it.

ALEX

(to Julian)

And you, sir?

JULIAN

No thank you.

Alex, stalling for time, reaches for bottle and reads the label.

ALEX

1960, Chateau, Saint Estephe, Medoc, very good brand, sir.

He doesn't get a penny's change for his remarks from Alexander and Julian. He holds the glass up to the light.

ALEX

Very good colour, sir. Smells mice, too.Very good number, sir. Very good. Here'sto it.

He downs the glass.

ALEX

Very refreshing, sir, very refreshing.

ALEXANDER

(very arch)

I'm so pleased you appreciate good wine. Have another glass!

ALEX

Thank you, sir.

ALEXANDER

My wife...

Alex freezes.

ALEXANDER

... used to do everything for me and leave me to my writing.

ALEX

Your wife, sir? Has she gone away?

ALEXANDER

No. She's dead!

ALEX

I'm sorry to hear about that, sir.

His face contorted in rage.

ALEXANDER

She was very badly raped, you see. We were assaulted by a gang of vicious young hooligansin this house, in this very room you're sitting in now. I was left a helpless cripple.The doctors said it was Pneumonia, because it happened some months later during the'flu epidemic. The doctors told me it was Pneumonia, but I knew what it was. A victimof the modern age, poor, poor girl.

Suddenly his mood changes. He wheels right up to Alex.

ALEXANDER

And now you, another victim of the modern age. But you can be helped. I phoned somefriends while you were having a bath.

ALEX

Phoned some friends, sir?

ALEXANDER

Yes. They want to help.

ALEX

Help me, sir?

ALEXANDER

Help you.

ALEX

Who are they, sir?

ALEXANDER

They're very, very important people and they're interested in you.

Bell rings. Julian rises,

ALEXANDER

Julian. This will be these people now.

Alex gets up.

ALEX

Look, sir. I'm sorry to have troubled you. I think I ought to be going, sir.

Julian bars the way.

ALEXANDER

No, no my boy. No trouble at all.

Alex slowly sits.

ALEXANDER

Have another glass of wine.

He pours. Alex picks up glass and takes a drink.

INT. "HOME" ? NIGHT

Dolin and Rubinstein enter with Julian.

DOLIN

(genial)

Hullo, Frank.

ALEXANDER

Good evening, sir.

RUBINSTEIN

Frank.

DOLIN

So this is the young man? ALEX

How do you do, sir?

DOLIN

Hullo.

ALEX

Missus. Very pleased to meet you.

RUBINSTEIN

Hullo.

DOLIN

I hope you forgive us for coming over at this ungodly hour, but we heard from Frankthat you were in some trouble so we came over to see if we could be of any help.

ALEX

Very kind of you, sir. Thank you very much.

DOLIN

I understand that you had a rather unfortunate encounter with the Police tonight.

ALEX

Yes, sir. I suppose you might call it that, sir.

DOLIN

Hahaha, and how are you feeling now?

ALEX

Much better, thank you, sir.

DOLIN

Feel like talking to us. Answering a few questions?

ALEX

Fine, sir, fine.

DOLIN

Well, as I've said, we've heard about you. We are interested in your case. We wantto help you.

ALEX

Thank you very much, sir. DOLIN

But first we'd like to find out a few things about you.

ALEX

What would you like to know, sir?

DOLIN

Well, shall we get down to it?

ALEX

Yes, sir.

Rubinstein takes out a notebook.

RUBINSTEIN

The newspapers mentioned that in addition to your being conditioned against actsof sex and violence, you've inadvertently been conditioned against music.

ALEX

Well, er, I think that was something that they hadn't planned for, you see, Missus,I'm very fond of music and always have been, especially Beethoven, Ludwig van...Beethoven. B... E... E...

He leans over and looks at her writing in notebook.

RUBINSTEIN

It's alright, thank you.

ALEX

And it just so happened that while they were showing me a particularly bad film,of like a concentration camp, the background music was playing Beethoven.

RUBINSTEIN

So now you have the same reaction to music as you do to sex and violence?

ALEX

Oh well, it's... it's not all music you see, Missus. It's just the 9th.

RUBINSTEIN

You mean Beethoven's 9th Symphony?

ALEX

That's right. Er... I can't listen to the 9th any more at all. When I hear the 9th,I get like this funny feeling.

RUBINSTEIN

When you say this funny feeling, you mean the state of mind brought on by the treatmentthey gave you?

ALEX

That is correct, sir. And then all I can think about is like trying to snuff it.

RUBINSTEIN

I beg your pardon?

ALEX

Snuff it, sir... um... death, I mean, missus... Er... I just want to die peacefullylike with no... pain.

RUBINSTEIN

Do you feel that way now?

ALEX

Um... oh no, sir, not exactly, I still feel very miserable, very much down in spirits.

RUBINSTEIN

Do you still feel suicidal?

ALEX

Um... well, put it this way... I feel very low in myself. I can't see much in thefuture, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me.

He pitches forward, face into the plate of spaghetti.

RUBINSTEIN

Well done, Frank. Julian, get the car, will you please? INT. HI-FI ROOM ? DAWN

Alexander sits looking up. Rubinstein, Julianand Dolin also listening to Beethoven played loudly on tape recorder.

INT. DOLIN'S HOUSE ? PRISONER BEDROOM ? DAY

The 9th Symphony booming up through the floor. Alex slowly regains consciousness.

ALEX (V.O.)

I woke up. The pain and sickness all over me like an animal. Then I realised whatit was. The music coming up from the floor was our old friend, Ludwig van and thedreaded 9th Symphony.

He staggers to the door. It is locked. He kicks and tugs the door.

ALEX

Open the door... turn it off... turn it off. CUT TO:

THE BILLIARD ROOM BELOW

Hi-Fi gear laid out on the table. Large speakersfacing upwards. Mr. Alexander trembles and twitches. He is now completely mad. Theothers merely wait, coolly.

INT. DOLIN'S HOUSE ? PRISONER BEDROOM ? DAY

Alex on his knees. His hands cupped over hisears, banging his head on the floor. Then he stops and slowly straightens up, staring at the window.

ALEX (V.O.)

Suddenly I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do ? and that was todo myself in, to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked cruel world. Onemoment of pain perhaps and then sleep ? forever and ever and ever.

EXT. WINDOW ? DAWC

Alex leaps out of the window.

INT. HOSPITAL WARD

Alex in bed. Camera slowly tracks along lengthof his body. Everything is bandages and plaster splints, wire cages, blood drips.

ALEX (V.O.)

I jumped, O my brothers, and I fell hard but I did not snuff it, oh no. if I hadsnuffed it, I would not be here to tell what I have told. I came back to life, aftera long, black, black gap of what might have been a million years.

We hear Alex moan, and then another moan. Alex and the other ? a few times. Suddenly, some curtains which have been drawn around another bed in the

wardare parted, and a nurse hurries to Alex, hastily buttoning up her uniform. She istrailed by a young Intern fumbling with his trousers.

NURSE

Oh, he's recovered conscienceness, Doctor. INT. HOSPITAL ? DAY

Em and Pee sitting around the bed.

PEE

Hullo, lad.

Hullo, son, how are you?

PEE

Are you feeling better?

ALEX

What gives, O my Pee and Em, what makes you think you are welcome?

Em sobs. Pee comforts her.

PEE

There, there mother, it's alright. He doesn't mean it. You were in the papers again,son. It said they had done great wrong to you. It said how the Government drove youto try and do yourself in... and when you think about it, son... maybe it was ourfault too in a way... your home's your home when it's all said and done, son.

Em sobs.

INT. HOSPITAL

Psychiatrist wheels trolley to Alex's bed. Heis sitting up.

ALEX

Good morning, Missus.

TAYLOR

How are you feeling today?

ALEX

Fine. Fine.

TAYLOR

Good. I'm doctor Taylor.

ALEX

I haven't seen you before.

TAYLOR

I'm your Psychiatrist.

ALEX

Psychiatrist? Huh, do I need one?

TAYLOR

Just part of hospital routine.

ALEX

What are we going to do? Talk about me sex life?

TAYLOR

No... I'm going to show you some slides and you are going to tell me what you thinkabout them Alright?

ALEX

Ohhh... jolly good. Perhaps you can explain me something to me first.

TAYLOR

Yes?

ALEX

Well, when I was all like ashamed up and half awake and unconscious like, I kepthaving this dream like all these doctors were playing around with me gulliver. Youknow... like the inside of me brain. I seemed to have this dream over and over again.D'you think it means anything?

TAYLOR

Patients who've sustained the kind of injuries you have often have dreams of thissort. It's all part of the recovery process.

ALEX

Oh.

TAYLOR

Now then, each of these slides needs a reply from one of the people in the picture.You'll tell me what you think the person would say. Alright?

ALEX

Righty, right.

The doctor reads aloud the dialogue printed in the cartoon balloon ? a peacock.

TAYLOR

Isn't the plumage beautiful?

ALEX

I just say what the other person would say?

TAYLOR

Yes. Yes, well don't think about it too long, just say the first thing that popsinto your mind.

ALEX

Right... Knickers... Cabbages... It doesn't have a beak.

Alex laughs. Slide of woman speaking to boy.

TAYLOR

Good. The boy you always quarrelled with is seriously ill.

ALEX

That's right and I'll smash your face for you, yarblockos.

Slide of watch shop.

TAYLOR

Good. It wa your fault... you sold me a crummy watch. I want my money back.

ALEX

Bollocks. You know what you can do with that watch? You can stick it up your arse.

Slide of nude woman in bed, a man at the window.

TAYLOR

Good. What do you want?

ALEX

Excuse me, missus. No time for the old in-out, I've just come to read the meter.

Slide of bird's nest with eggs.

TAYLOR

Good. You can do whatever you like with these.

ALEX

Eggiwegs. I would like to smash 'em. Pick up th elot and f... owww...

He slams his hand down and cries out with pain.

ALEX

Fucking hell...

TAYLOR

Fine. Well, that's all there is to it. Are you alright?

ALEX

I hope so. Is that the end then?

TAYLOR

Yes.

ALEX

I was quite enjoying that.

TAYLOR

Good. I'm glad

ALEX

How many did I get right?

TAYLOR

It's not that kind of a test. But you seem well on the way to a complete recovery.

ALEX

And when do I get out of here then?

TAYLOR

I'm sure it won't be long now. INT. HOSPITAL ? DAY

Alex sitting up, being fed by Nurse.

ALEX (V.O.)

So I waited and, O my brothers, I got a lot better munching away at eggiwegs, andlomticks of toast and lovely steakiweaks and then, one day,

they said I was goingto have a very special visitor.

Doctor enters followed by Minister and Matron.

MINISTER

Good evening, my boy.

ALEX

Hi, hi, hi there, my little droogies.

DOCTOR

Well, how are you getting on today, young man?

ALEX

Great, sir. Great.

DOCTOR

Can I do anything more for you , Minister?

MINISTER

I don't think so, Sir Leslie. Thank you very much.

TAYLOR

Then I'll leave you to it. Nurse.

They exit. Minister moves to Alex.

MINISTER

You seem to have a whole ward to yourself, my boy.

ALEX

Yes, sir, and a very lovely place it is too, sir, when I wake up in the middle ofthe night with my pain.

MINISTER

Yes... well good to see you on the mend. I've kept in constant touch with the hospital,of course, and now I've come to see you personally to see how you're getting along.

ALEX

I've suffered the tortures of the damned. The tortures of the damned, sir.

MINISTER

Yes I can... Oh look, let me do that for you, shall I? ALEX

Thank you, sir.

MINISTER

I can tell you that I... and the Government of which I am a member are deeply sorryabout this, my boy. Deeply sorry. We tried to help you. We followed recommendationshad been made to us that turned out to be wrong. An enquiry will place the responsibilitywhere it belongs. We want you to regard us as friends. We've put you right, you'regetting the best of treatments. We never wished you harm, but there are some thatdid and do, and I think you know who those are. There are certain people who wantedto use you for political ends. People who would have been glad to have you dead becausethen they would have been able to blame it all on the Government. I think you knowwho those are. There is also a certain man ? a writer of subversive literature ?who has been howling for your blood.

He's been mad with desire to stick a knife intoyou, but you're safe from him now, we've put him away. He found out that you haddone wrong to him ? at least he believed you had done wrong. He had formed this ideain his head that you had been responsible for the death of someone near and dearto him. We put him away for his own protection... I'm sorry, I thought you were ready.

ALEX

Where is he now, sir?

MINISTER

We put him away where he can do you no harm. You see we are looking after your interests.We are interested in you, and when you leave here you will have no further worries.We shall see to everything... a good job on a good salary.

ALEX

What job and how much?

MINISTER

You must have an interesting job at a salary which you would regard as adequate.Not only for the job which you are going to do and in compensation for what you believeyou have suffered, but also because you are helping us.

ALEX

Helping you, sir?

MINISTER

We always help our friends, don't we?

(smiles)

It is no secret that the Government has lost a lot of popularity because

ofyou, my boy. There are some that think that at the next election we shall be out.The press has chosen to take a very unfavourable view of what we tried to do.

ALEX

Well, who can blame them, sir?

MINISTER

Mmmm, possibly. Yes. But public opinion has a way of changing and you, Alex, if Imay call you, Alex?

ALEX

Certainly, sir. What do they call you at home?

MINISTER

ument Error^^^My name is Frederick. As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumentalin changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?

ALEX

As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can relyon me, Fred.

MINISTER

Good... good boy. Oh yes, I understand you're fond of music. I have arranged a littlesurprise for you.

ALEX

Surprise?

MINISTER

One I think you will like... as a, how shall I put it, as a symbol of our new understanding.An understanding between two friends.

ALEX

Thank you, Fred. Thank you.

Minister turns and signals.

Door opens and a crowd of cameramen and reporters rush in. Aides push two 6-foot loudspeakers and a Hi-Fi on a trolley.

ALEX (V.O.)

And what do you know, my brothers and only friends, it was the 9th, the

glorious9th of Ludwig van. Oh, it was gorgeosity and yummy yum yum. I was cured.

CLOSE SHOT ALEX ALEX (V.O.)

As the music came to its climax, I could viddy myself very clear, running

and runningon like very light and mysterious feet, carving the whole face of the creeching worldwith my cut throat britva. I was cured all right.

THE END

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993)

Anthony Burgess was a diversely talented Englishman whose reputation, lamentably, rests almost exclusively on his best-known (and his least favorite) work, the novel A Clockwork Orange. The 1962 futuristic novel, an impassioned yet even- handed plea for the necessity of human free will, stirred up controversy with its ultra- violent content narrated largely through a Russian- influenced slang of Burgess's invention, "nadsat." The 1971 film version by Stanley Kubrick provoked enough "copycat" crimes - a great irony, considering both the book and film decry unconscious, deterministic acts, yet tolerate evil so long as it is willfully chosen - that Kubrick banned the showing of it in the United Kingdom in 1973 (only recently was the ban repealed).

But Burgess was a far more complete artist than A Clockwork Orange suggests. Born John Anthony Burgess Wilson on Feb. 25, 1917, in Manchester, England, to Catholic parents, his mother died of the flu when he was two, and he was brought up by his aunt and later his stepmother. He studied English at Xaverian College and Manchester University and, after graduation in 1940, served in the British Army Education Corps during World War II as the musical director of a special services unit, entertaining troops in Europe. He was an education officer in Malaya and Brunei from 1954 to 1959, adding to the eventual total of nine languages in which he was fluent.

By the time he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in 1959, Burgess had already published his Malayan trilogy of Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959). Burgess returned to England and, with the prospect of only one year left of life, industriously rattled off five books in 1960 and eleven between 1960 and 1964. He outlived the doctors' prognosis by 33 years but continued his prolific pace. A lapsed Catholic whose early religious views maintained some influence over him, Burgess wrote over fifty books, numerous critical studies (notably of Shakespeare and James Joyce) and journal articles, and screenplays and teleplays (he was even called upon to devise a prehistoric language for the film "Quest for Fire"). But his preferred field was classical music, and he wrote several accomplished symphonies (Burgess also integrated music with his prose writing; his 1974 novel The Napoleon Symphony structurally mirrors Beethoven's Eroica Symphony). Burgess held distinguished academic posts and lived in places as far- flung as Malta throughout the 1970s, and he maintained a steady literary output until his death from lung cancer in London on Nov. 26, 1993.

About A Clockwork Orange:

Easily Anthony Burgess's most famous book - and his personal least favorite - A Clockwork Orange would have become a controversial work in the 20th-century canon even if not for Stanley Kubrick's stylized 1971 film adaptation. The futuristic novel relates the adventures of fifteen-year-old Alex, leader of a teenage gang who delights in stealing, beating, and raping London's helpless citizens - all this rendered in the teenage slang of "nadsat," a Russian- influenced vocabulary Burgess invented. Alex's lawless freedom is eventually curbed by a new scientific technique, Ludovico's Technique, that renders Alex physically ill when he sees, or even thinks of, violence. Turned into a "clockwork orange," the novel's central image of humanity made mechanical, he loses his free will. Burgess ultimately argues that even evil, so long as it is chosen, is better and more human than the forced, deterministic goodness Alex endures under Ludovico's Technique.

Burgess also examines the totalitarian aspects of socialism - especially its subliminal use of mass media for mind-control - and disturbingly parodies the immaturity of British youth culture. These two themes combined with the central question of free will in an ironic way after the film's release. "Copycat" crimes based on those in the film sprang up around the United Kingdom, and Kubrick eventually decided to ban the film in the U.K. (only recently, after his death, has it been re-released). Though Burgess understandably doubted that his work could be the sole influence on the criminals, the incident does point to the unconscious, deterministic capacity for evil in man (the perpetrators mechanically copied the crimes), the immaturity of youth, and the influence of mass media.

Perhaps the ban could have been avoided had Kubrick used the British, and not American, edition of the book for his film. Burgess, needing money badly, allowed W.

Norton to omit the final, 21st chapter of his novel for American publication in 1963. Without the final chapter's examination of Alex's maturation and redemption, the novel and film pessimistically seem to endorse violence. Burgess regretted permitting the excision, as well as the inclusion of a nadsat glossary in the American edition.

Character List:

Alex: Alex, the teenage anti-heroic protagonist and narrator of the novel, is addicted to two things: violence and classical music. He runs rampant over London with his gang of Dim, Pete, and Georgie, his name containing three relevant meanings: the allusion to Alexander the Great (Alex is the gang's leader), the Latinate meaning of "without law" ("A- lex"), and the allusion to Alex's creative use of nadsat-based slang (a "lexicon" is a dictionary). The central question in the novel - whether forced goodness is better than chosen evil - pivots around Alex's behavior when he undergoes Ludovico's Technique in Part Two. He becomes, in the novel's central image, a "clockwork orange," a human deprived of free will and reduced to a deterministic mechanism. Even his capacity to enjoy classical music is gone. His goodness is inauthentic, and only in the final chapter of the novel does he outgrow his immature tendencies toward violence and decide to join the world of adulthood.

Minister of the Interior: The most pervasive antagonist in a novel filled with them, the Minister of the Interior symbolizes the repressive, totalitarian influence of the socialist government, or the Government, as it is called in the novel. He orders Alex undergo Ludivico's Technique, believing prisoners need to be cured of their reflex. The solution is a purely pragmatic one designed to rid the streets of criminals and free up prison space for political prisoners; he ignores the loss of free will on the part of the criminals.

Likewise, he and the Government use mass media to penetrate subliminally the minds of London's working population.

Prison chaplain: The chaplain is a mouthpiece for many of Burgess's ideas on free will, namely that "'goodness is something chosen'" and that without it, man ceases to be human. The chaplain takes Alex under his wing after Alex shows an interest in the Bible, and tries to convince Alex not to undergo Ludovico's Technique. Though he is worried that speaking up may hurt his career, the chaplain finally does take a stand against the treatment after seeing the demonstration of Alex's aversion to violence.

Alexander: The author of the manuscript "A Clockwork Orange," which gives the novel its central image of man turned into a deterministic mechanism, Alex's gang rapes and kills F. Alexander's wife at the start of the novel. In Part Three, F. Alexander enlists Alex in his party's crusade against the totalitarian government. While foremost being another mouthpiece for Burgess to express his views on free will, F. Alexander also becomes a father figure to Alex. Complicating this status are the Freudian tensions that arise when F. Alexander realizes Alex is the one who raped and killed his wife. F. Alexander's attempt to kill Alex (ostensibly to help the cause against the Government) reflects not only these confusing Oedipal issues, but the capacity for violence in anyone, even those most opposed to it.

Dr. Brodsky: The overseer of Ludovico's Technique, Brodsky is portrayed as a sadistic doctor who revels in torturing Alex. He and the other doctors, including Dr. Branom, have just as natural inclinations toward violence as Alex does.

Dim: Though the stupidest member of Alex's gang, Dim is perhaps the most important. Alex's hitting Dim incites the group's eventual betrayal of their leader, and a great irony occurs when Dim shows up in Part Three as a member of the new, brutal police force.

Pete: The most subdued member of Alex's gang, Pete eventually becomes middle-class and inspires Alex to join him in the march to maturity.

Georgie: Georgie, the member of Alex's gang most dissatisfied with Alex's dictatorship, dies while Alex is in prison.

Alex's parents: Well- intentioned, Alex's mild- mannered middle-class mother and father are too intimidated by their son to notice his violent ways or put a stop to them. They embrace Joe in Alex's absence, but beg forgiveness at Alex's bedside once Joe leaves.

P.R. Deltoid: Alex's Post-Corrective Adviser, Deltoid has a farcical way of speaking and does not understand why London's youth is running wild.

Governor: The Governor of the prison oversees Alex's reformation. He believes in eye- for-an-eye justice and is not a supporter of Ludovico's Technique; he wants the prisoners to be punished, not cured.

Billybob: A rival gang member, Billybob joins Dim on the police force while Alex is in prison.

Joe: A burly lodger who displaces Alex in his bedroom and parents' hearts, Joe resents Alex and encourages Alex's parents to reject him when he returns.

Dr. Branom: Dr. Brodsky's assistant in the hospital.

Rich old woman with cats: Alex's murder victim (though his second, as he learns later), her death lands Alex in jail.

Man with the science books: Alex and his gang beat him up in Part One, Chapter 1; Alex is beaten up by him and his old friends in the library in Part Three, Chapter 2.

Old homeless man: Alex's gang beats up an old homeless man who rails out against the anarchy of the modern world.

Dolin, Rubinstein, and D. B. da Silva: F. Alexander's friends in his liberal party.

Bully, Rick, and Len: Alex's new gang in Part Three, Chapter 7.

Major Themes:

The necessity of free will for humanity: The primary and most controversial idea in A Clockwork Orange is voiced repeatedly by F. Alexander and the prison chaplain: without choice and free will, man is no longer human but a "clockwork orange," a deterministic mechanism. Free will, Burgess and his liberal mouthpieces argue, is necessary to maintain our humanity, both individually and communally; revolutions are built on free will, as Alex points out.

However, free will becomes problematic in other ways when we extend it to the community. Alex's unhindered free will violates what philosopher John Stuart Mill termed the "harm principle," that any action is permissible so long as it does not harm anyone else. Burgess presents unequivocal evidence that Alex's immoral acts do harm others, so the question for A Clockwork Orange is whether it is better to allow harmful free will, or safely curb it. Burgess still maintains we should permit harmful free will, since goodness is authentic only if it is chosen; if goodness is forced, as is done to Alex through Ludovico's Technique, it is inhuman and mechanical.

Burgess also refutes the argument that ethical goodness has any relationship to aesthetic goodness. Alex comments on a newspaper article that proposes moralizing London's youth through the fine arts. Alex has refined taste in classical music, especially when compared to his pop song- loving teenage counterparts, but the gorgeous, sophisticated music only riles him up for violence and sex. When music becomes associated with immorality for Alex through Ludovico's Technique, Burgess demonstrates the utter malleability of aesthetics and ethics.

Burgess complicates matters more by suggesting that Alex's inclination toward evil is somewhat mechanistic as well. While Alex does gain satisfaction from committing violent acts, he does so in as reflexive a manner as he avoids violence after Ludovico's Technique. Burgess subscribes to the Biblical idea that man has Original Sin (see Original Sin over environmental behaviorism, below), and that condition implies a lack of choice. We see the mark of Original Sin everywhere in A Clockwork Orange, notably in the form of the Government - the doctors and other state officials have just as much sadism and evil intentions as Alex's gang of thugs. Nevertheless, a person with Original Sin certainly retains more free will than a subject of Ludovico's Technique, and Burgess also believes in redemption; Alex can choose goodness in Part Three, Chapter 7 on his own, once he has matured beyond the impetuosity of youth.

Original Sin over environmental behaviorism: P.R. Deltoid and the rest of society believe that the environment is somehow responsible for the immorality of London's youth. They believe that with proper parental and academic discipline, not to mention a bulked-up police force, youth will comport itself more appropriately.

This form of deterministic thinking ignores the Christian idea, embraced particularly by Catholicism (Burgess was a lapsed Catholic), that Adam and Eve's fall has blemished man with Original Sin. Just as there exists an impulse to do good, there exists an equally powerful impulse to do bad that cannot be reasoned away; as Alex says, "what I do I do because I like to do." He does not blame his evil-doing on the environment; rather, evil- doing like his has created London's quasi-apocalyptic environment.

At the end of the novel, Alex states his opinion in more overtly religious terms: as long as God keeps spinning the earth around, young men will continue to act immorally. By equating Original Sin with God's control over the earth, Burgess points out that Original Sin implies a certain lack of free will: we do not choose to act immorally, it has chosen us. However, Alex's maturation in Part Three, Chapter 7 provides hope for Christian redemption: over time, we can erase the effects of Original Sin by choosing goodness.

The oppression of Socialism: The government in A Clockwork Orange, or "Government," as it is called, is socialistic in many forms. While Burgess critiques capitalism at times, overall he seems to value the ostensible abundance of free will in an ostensibly free market; conversely, he abhors the lack of freedom in government- controlled societies. The Government owns all property; every able-bodied citizen is forced to work; jails are brutal and expanding; and the Government controls the media.

Burgess focuses most on this last element. Alex me ntions "Statefilm," the Government- produced cinema, and briefly describes his disdain for television and its numbing effect on the masses. The Government uses mass media as propaganda and to sedate the populace, and Burgess draws analogies between mass media and Ludovico's Technique. Both exercise a form of mind-control over their helpless victims, either outright (in Alex's case) or subliminally forced (as with the populace) to watch Government- produced films that make them obey the state (again, much more obviously in Alex's case).

The novel ends pessimistically when we learn that F. Alexander and his group has been shut down and that the increasingly totalitarian Government will win re-election.

However, Alex's newfound desire to join the middle-class suggests that perhaps his generation will come to understand how oppressive the Government is and overthrow it.

Immaturity of youth culture: Burgess parodies his contemporary British youth culture of the 1950s and 60s through a terrifying projection of them. In lieu of conventional youth slang, the teens have adapted an almost entirely new language with which Alex narrates the novel, nadsat. While influenced by Russian, which complements the socialistic world of A Clockwork Orange (see The oppression of Socialism, above), nadsat is also at times infantile; the words "appy polly loggy" (for "apology"), "eggiweg" (for "egg"), and "moloko" (for "milk") sound like they issued from the mouths of babes.

Burgess's decisions for which words become nadsat words are rarely incidental. These three examples, for instance, pertain directly to youth and free will. Eggs and milk are symbolic of birth and infancy (note, too, that the teenage hoodlums drink milk laced with

drugs, and Alex, especially, seems fascinated by breasts). Moreover, Alex never delivers a heartfelt, willful apology throughout the novel; since he never fully chooses his actions, but immaturely and rashly heads into them, he does not have the adult capacity for remorse.

Alex matures in Part Three, Chapter 7, the 21st chapter of the novel and one symbolic of maturity (at the time, the voting age in England was 21, and is considered a rite of passage into adulthood). He also overcomes the Oedipal tensions in the novel: F. Alexander temporarily becomes Alex' s father figure, and since Alex raped (and killed) F. Alexander's wife, it is as though he had sex with his own mother. In the 21st chapter, Alex decides he wants to have his own son, a sign that he is through with his Oedipal fascination with violence, breasts, and milk.

Structural symmetry: Burgess was a great lover of classical music and a composer. He sought to integrate more completely musical techniques into literature, and his main contribution to musical literature in A Clockwork Orange, aside from Alex's great love for Beethoven and other composers, is the symmetrical arrangement of chapters. The three parts of the novel each contain seven chapters, and the descending chapters of the third part usually reverse the ascending chapters of the first part. The effect of these reversals is highly musical and discordant, and follows a symphonic rise and fall. For instance, Alex delights in a beautiful opera piece about suicide in the Korova Milkbar in Part One, Chapter 3, while he is so tortured by classical music in Part Three, Chapter 5 that he tries to commit suicide. Burgess uses other musical techniques, such as peppering the novel with verbal leitmotifs (i.e. "'What's it going to be then, eh?'"), to complement his musical, nadsat-based prose. The philosophical point of the symmetry is to underscore the change Ludovico's Technique, comprising the middle Part Two, has wrought in

Alex's life. He goes from being the victimizer to victim, willful agent of evil to deterministic subject of good.

Short Summary:

The narrator, 15-year-old Alex, and his gang - Dim, Pete, and Georgie - run amok in futuristic London. When the foursome isn't downing drug- laced milk in the Korova Milkbar and speaking in the Slavic-influenced slang of nadsat, they are robbing, beating, and raping socialist London's citizens. On this particular night, they beat up an old man with science books and a homeless man, get into a fight with a rival gang led by Billybob, and steal a car and take it for a joyride to the country. At a cottage labeled "HOME," they beat up the author of "A Clockwork Orange" - a manuscript celebrating human free will and denouncing any infringement upon it - and rape his wife. Back at the Korova Milkbar, Alex hits Dim for interrupting a woman singing a piece from an opera - Alex is a great lover of classical music, especially Beethoven, and he always imagines himself engaging in violent and sexual acts while listening to it.

Alex's parents are ineffectual, and his farcical Post-Corrective Adviser, P.R. Deltoid, cannot fathom why London's youth has turned to criminality. The next night, Alex gets into a fight with Dim and Georgie to assert his leadership. The gang proposes they rob a rich old woman's house. After an unsuccessful attempt to get the woman to open the door, Alex sneaks into the house while his friends wait outside. He gets into a fight with the woman and her cats, but the police soon arrive. His friends betray him, temporarily blinding him while they flee, and Alex is arrested. The police brutalize Alex and are elated to have caught him. Alex soon discovers the woman has died, and he is sentenced to 14 years of jail for murder.

Alex, now known as number "6655321," spends two years in State jail, dealing with brutal wardens, homosexual prisoners, and mindless labor. He relates that Georgie has died. His one supporter in prison is the chaplain, who has taken Alex under his wing since Alex got interested in the Bible - little does he know that Alex entertains violent fantasies when reading the book. Alex asks about a new treatment - Ludovico's Technique - which frees the prisoner and ensures he remains free. The chaplain is skeptical about the treatment, as it eliminates the subject's power to choose. A cell scuffle results in Alex's killing a new prisoner, and the powerful Minister of the Interior asks the prison Governor to use Alex as a guinea pig for the new treatment.

Alex shrugs off the chaplain's concerns about the treatment and signs up. He is transferred to a new hospital, where he is given a shot after each filling meal. The treatment, under Dr. Brodsky, consists of being forced to watch violent films (his eyelids are propped open) while strapped in a chair. The films are violent, and Alex has a terrible physical reaction to their violent content, feeling sick and begging the doctors to stop.

The doctors have a sadistic streak in them, however, and happily continue the treatment. Alex soon finds even the thought of violence, not to mention the demonstration of it in reality, makes him ill. Classical music, used as a soundtrack for some of the films, also makes him sick by association. After two weeks, Alex's treatment is over and he is trotted

out to demonstrate the effects for an audience. Even without the shot, any semblance of violence or sex debilitates him, and he is pronounced cured by the Minister.

Alex, now a free man, is also a celebrity, his case touted by the Government as a major step in turning back rampant crime. He finds London is a less violent place now. He is no longer welcome in his home, as a lodger named Joe has displaced him in his parents' home. Alex no longer enjoys classical music, either, and contemplates suicide. The old man with the science books and other elderly people beat Alex up in the library, only for the police - now including Dim and Billybob - to take Alex into the country and further brutalize him. They leave him for dead, and he seeks shelter in the "HOME" cottage.

The man there, F. Alexander, knows Alex from the newspapers and takes him in. A liberal, he wants to use Alex to overthrow the totalitarian Government. He mentions that his wife was raped and killed, victimized in much the same way Alex has been. Alex is careful not to let the man know he was the rapist, but his use of nadsat slowly establishes that fact in the F. Alexander's mind. He and his friends go to work on Alex's case, and in the meantime put him in an apartment in the city. However, they set it up so Alex must listen to sickness- inducing classical music near an open window. Alex jumps out to commit suicide, realizing the men have betrayed him so his suicide can help their cause against the Government.

Alex survives and is put in a hospital. When he comes to, F. Alexander's friends tell him he has destroyed the Government's chances for re-election. He drifts out of consciousness again and when he next comes to, his parents beg him to return to their home; Joe has left after some trouble with the police. Alex is regaining his tolerance for violence, and after a few days he is back to where he started, the effects of Ludovico's Technique apparently reversed by doctors in his sleep. The Minister of the Interior stage s a photo opportunity in which he gets Alex to denounce F. Alexander - who has been put away after learning Alex raped and killed his wife - and befriend the Government.

Alex forms a new gang and, with his cushy new Government-supplied job, seems to be renewing his former life. But he finds that drugs and violence no longer excite him, and he has even developed a taste for romantic, as opposed to violent, classical pieces. When he sees that his old friend Pete has become a middle-class husband, it seals the deal: Alex wants to settle down, marry, and have a son. He believes he has simply outgrown his violent past. It was youth, above all, that made him, and all the sons in the world, act impetuously.

Part One, Chapter 1 Summary:

In futuristic London, fifteen-year-old Alex narrates in "nadsat" slang from the Korova Milkbar, where he drinks drug- laced milk with his three friends, Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Three girls down the bar catch Alex's attention, as does a drugged-out man near him. An old popular song on the stereo gains Alex's disfavor, and he hits the drugged- man before they leave the bar.

The boys see an elderly professorial man outside, a rarity since the police shortage and preponderance of gangs has made the streets unsafe. They feign disgust at the supposedly lewd material contained in the man's inoffensive science books, rip up the books, strip him and beat him up before letting him go. The booty from his plundered pants - love letters and a little bit of money - is inconsequential, and they move on.

They decide to do something generous with their money so they have an incentive for more shop- lifting and so they have an alibi for future need. At a bar they spend all their money on drinks and food for some poor old women. They go to a candy and cigarettes store and, with masks of popular figures on, rob and beat up the owner and his wife. They check back in with the old women and make them confirm their alibi. Two cops come in later and the women vouch for the boys.

Analysis:

The opening line of the novel - "'What's it going to be then, eh?'" - is repeated four times in this chapter and starts each part of the novel. Though in different contexts, each use stresses free will, the ability to choose for oneself how "it" will turn out "to be."

The importance of free will for the individual is the major theme of A Clockwork Orange, but Burgess immediately treats the reader to an array of events that suggest why free will is dangerous. Unhampered by law-enforcement, Alex and his friends are free to do what they will - which notably involves harming others.

Just as Burgess will explore this theme in much greater depth throughout the novel, Alex is a much more complicated character than his bare actions suggest. While he is lawless (indeed, his name can be read as A- lex, or a Latin-derived "without law"), he is almost respectful of the professor's privacy when Dim reads out loud the love letters, not to mention his feelings of goodwill when he buys drinks for the old women. Moreover, he expresses disdain for the pop music he hears at the Korova Milkbar, indicating he has more sophisticated interests than his teenage friends. (His name is also an allusion to Alexander the Great, indicating his leadership abilities.)

Burgess spends much of the novel parodying 1950s and 60s British youth through a frightening projection of them. Aside from their penchant for violence and drugs, the teenagers in the novel wear ridiculous fashions and speak in the odd Russian- influenced slang nadsat ("nadsat" is similar to "teen" in Russian, and it means "teens" in the novel). Alex is not a mere parrot, however; he uses nadsat in more creative and eve n poetic combinations than his friends do (yet another meaning in his name is "lex" for "lexicon," or dictionary). Their mixer of choice, milk, speaks volumes about their infantile behavior and lends Freudian connotations to their sex drives, while the childish tinge of nadsat - "appy polly loggies" for "apologies" - reinforces their immaturity.

Part One, Chapter 2 Summary:

Alex and his friends leave the bar and beat up an old, dirty man who sings old songs. They pause to let him condemn a world that allows young men to do harm lawlessly, and tells them to kill him, as he'll be better off that way. They beat him until he bleeds badly. They come across a rival gang, led by Billybob, in the middle of raping a young girl.

They fight with chains and razors, and despite being outnumbered six to four, Alex's gang prevails with Dim's strength. The cops come, probably alerted by the raped girl, and both gangs scurry away. Alex and his friends hide in an alley lit up by the glow of televisions in apartments. Dim wo nders about life on the moon and stars.

They steal a car and joyride into the country, terrorizing pedestrians along the way. They drive up to a cottage labeled "HOME" and Alex convinces the woman inside that he needs to call an ambulance for his sick friend. When she opens the door, he and his masked friends run inside. The attractive woman's writer husband is also inside, and Alex inspects his manuscript titled "A Clockwork Orange." Alex rips up the manuscript while the others beat up the man and eat the food in the house. The boys take turns raping the woman while making the man watch. They smash up the objects in the house and leave the occupants moaning on the ground.

Analysis:

The manuscript of "A Clockwork Orange" states the main thesis of the novel: that any restriction of free will turns humans into machines - or, in the imagery of the title, it makes the fleshy, sweet, orange-ness of humans into a deterministic clockwork mechanism. The title also suggests an orangutan, a near-human that does not have our degree of free will. Still, Burgess presents great evidence for the contrary view that unfettered free will is destructive, here in the old man's howls against the lawlessness of the world and in the boys' continuing horrific actions.

Alex's thirst for violence is not as thuggish as his friends' is - far from it, in fact, since he reprimands them for their sloppy eating in the "HOME" cottage. He has an aesthetic thrill for violence, and this aesthetic purity is far divorced from any ethical purity, as we will see more of in Chapter 3.

Burgess also outlines the seemingly socialist state of futuristic London. The landscape is grim and government-owned (everything is "Municipal"), movies are produced by "Statefilm," and television is a numbing medium that sedates the masses. These features are only minor exaggerations of capitalist society, and Burgess demonstrates - notably in the television example - how they insidiously curb the free will of the citizenry.

The boys' forcing the man to watch his wife's rape foreshadows what will happen to Alex in Part Two. In both cases, the person forced to watch has his free will restricted and must experience something unpleasing to his nature.

Part One, Chapter 3 Summary:

The boys' car runs out of gas and, feeling hateful, they push it into a nearby body of water. They take the train back to the center of town and cause some damage on the ride. They return to the Korova Milkbar, where the drugged man still babbles away. Teens pack the place. In a pause between songs, a woman sings a piece of an opera Alex knows, and it affects him deeply. Dim mocks her and Alex hits him. Dim threatens to beat him up, and Georgie and Pete affirm Dim's right to be upset. They plan to meet up tomorrow. They go home separately.

Alex goes to his parents' flat in Municipal Flatblock 18A. He eats the dinner his mother has left out for him, then retires to his room. He blissfully listens to a violin concerto on his stereo, imagining himself raping young girls as he listens. He ejaculates at the piece's climax. After, he listens to Mozart and then his favorite, Bach. He thinks more about the people at the "HOME" cottage and wishes he had beaten them harder.

Analysis:

Alex's love for music takes center stage here in his defense of the woman in the bar and in his blissful experience in his room. In both cases, his appreciation for art is matched only by his desire for violence. In the former, he is woken from his dreamy respect for the pure beauty of the woman's voice only by smacking Dim. In the latter, his genuine aesthetic appreciation for the music is quickly overtaken by his lust for violence and sex.

Though Alex is a thug, he is a sophisticated one. He is not a mechanical clockwork orange, since he has the potential for great humanity and sensitivity, but the question remains if it would be better to turn him into a clockwork orange and restrain his free will. The drugged man in the Milkbar has turned himself into a clockwork orange by rendering himself insensible, but even this was a free choice.

Burgess explores free will in other subtle ways, as in his description of the municipal painting of workers in the hallway of Alex's flat. The painting resembles Soviet Communist artworks that depict healthy, proud state workers, further evidence that the world of A Clockwork Orange is socialist. This type of government, Burgess implies, also turns its citizens into clockwork oranges, mindless tools of the state. And while teens have disfigured the painting in their typical obscene ways, there is something rebelliously creative about the act; they refuse to be turned into clockwork oranges and lose their free will.

Part One, Chapter 4 Summary:

Alex wakes up the next morning tired and not wanting to go to school. His parents go off to work, as is required by the government, and he dreams that Georgie and Dim are ordering him around in the army. He wakes up to answer the door for P.R. Deltoid, his "Post-Corrective Adviser." Deltoid warns him that his name is being connected to the fight with Billybob's gang last night and that the next time he gets in trouble, he will be sent to jail. Alex placates him but privately justifies his actions, bad though they may be.

Alone, Alex reads a typical newspaper article about "Modern Youth" which blames youth's wildness on lack of parental and academic discipline. The only article Alex has read on this subject with which he agreed instead religiously condemned adults for creating such a violent world. He turns on the radio and listens to some classical music, and remembers reading another article that argued that an appreciation of the arts would domesticate youth; Alex finds that classical music always riles him up for violence.

Alex takes the bus to his favorite record store, where two young girls browse through the pop records. The clerk sells Alex the Beethoven's Ninth Symphony recording he has been waiting for, and Alex invites the two girls, Marty and Sonietta, back to his place to listen to music. After treating them to lunch, he takes them back, listens to their pop records, gives himself an aphrodisiac shot with a needle, and has sex while listening to the Beethoven. At first the girls are drunk and do not mind, but when they sober up they call Alex a beast and leave in a huff. Alex goes to sleep.

Analysis:

Alex states his belief in Original Sin, the Biblical idea that evil is natural in man and is not a product of the environment: "...badness is of the self...and that self is made by old Bog or God." His assertion jibes with the article condemning adults and pointing to Original Sin: "IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT WAS ABROAD and was like ferreting his way into like young innocent flesh." While Original Sin implies a certain lack of free will, since God has sown the seeds of sin and the individual has not chosen it, it has a far greater degree of free will than in the belief that the environment has determined one's behavior, as the farcical Deltoid and the typical newspaper article believe.

Moreover, Alex time and aga in insists that he does evil because "what I do I do because I like to do" - he is in full charge of his actions. He also claims that modern history is the "story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines" of repressive society, furthering his and Burgess's argument that free will at all costs is necessary, even if not always productive.

Still, there is faulty logic in Alex's reasoning. Bad behavior violates what philosopher John Stuart Mill called the "harm principle" in his work On Liberty. In it, Mill argues that any action is allowable so long as it does not cause harm to anyone else. Alex says he would not interfere with the actions of those who do good, and he expects the same in return; the difference, of course, is that bad behavior harms others, while good behavior benefits others.

Part One, Chapter 5 Summary:

Alex wakes up at night and tells his parents, who have come home, that he is feeling better and ready to work this evening, since they believe that is how he spends his nights. His father politely inquires into what he does, but Alex is evasive. His father relates a dream he had last night about Alex's being beaten by the kind of boys he used to be friends with before Corrective School. Alex reassures him he will be all right and gives him all his money.

Alex leaves the flat and finds his gang waiting for him near the entrance. They claim they were worried they had offended him, but they also sarcastically refer to his ordering them around. When Alex asserts his authority, they int roduce a new, more democratic way of running things. They also want to pull off bigger robberies, and are prepared for one tonight. Alex is against the idea, but he acquiesces.

Georgie wants to drink first. On the way over, Alex hears some Beethoven and it inspires him to pull his razor on Georgie, who uses his knife in defense. Alex slashes Georgie, who drops his knife, and Dim attacks Alex with his chain. Alex slashes him deeply and reasserts his leadership. He wraps one of his handkerchiefs around Dim's bleeding wrist and they go to the same bar as last night. Pete buys drinks for the old women from before. Alex presses Georgie for his plan for the evening, which is to go to a rich woman's home in Oldtown. They leave.

Analysis:

Alex's justification to his father about the nature of his "work" - that since Alex never hassles him for money, his father should not inquire into his business - also confirms the problematic idea that free will should always be upheld. Since Alex does not bother his father for the profits of work (money), his father should allow Alex the freedom to do what he wants and maintain his privacy. However, his father does not know that Alex's money is "ill- gotten." Therefore, by not infringing upon Alex's free will and privacy, he allows Alex's evil acts to continue. While this non- infringement associatively violates Mill's "harm principle" (see analysis of Part One, Chapter 4) since his father allows Alex to continue harming others, it is still necessary, Burgess would maintain.

The vocabulary of the book also reflects ideas of free will. Deltoid's habit of ending sentences with "Yes?" - which Alex notes he has picked up - seems almost like an invitation to exercise free will. Deltoid is asking for affirmation, just as the "'eh'" from the opening lines of each part - "'What's it going to be then, eh?'" - is an offer for Alex to make his own choices. However, when Alex uses it with his friends, his tone of "yes?" is more commanding; he does not want his friends to exercise as much free will as he does.

Nadsat more saliently demonstrates these ideas. For instance, we learn from the sentence "Pete had given old Dim the soviet not to uncoil the oozy" that "soviet" means "order." Ironically, the boys had just expressed their desire for the gang to become more democratic, yet orders are still given. Moreover, the word "soviet" alludes to Soviet Communism and the rigid hierarchies of power that corrupt system had behind its façade of equality. While Burgess criticizes capitalism as well, often through the mouth of Alex, it is clear he despises the oppression of Communism far more.

The weapons of each character are representative. Alex uses a razor, a tool whose conventional use is for the face and neck, appropriate for someone whose mental and speaking powers are superior to the rest of the gangs'. Dim uses a brutal chain as one might expect from such a lumbering tank. Georgie wields a knife, a more conventional weapon but one appropriate for a betrayal, which it appears he is mounting. Pete, notably, refrains from fighting here - perhaps he is the most mature.

Part One, Chapter 6 Summary:

The gang travels to the rich neighborhood of Oldtown. They reach the house they plan to rob. They see an old woman inside pouring milk for her cats. Alex rings the door and gives his usual routine through the mail-slot about his friend needing help. The woman is resistant, and Alex pretends to leave. He has Dim lift him up to the second-floor window.

Alex climbs through and goes downstairs to greet the woman and her many cats. Alex slips on a milk saucer and she uses the opportunity to hit him, but he regains his composure and knocks her down. The cats attack him as he goes for a bust of Beethoven. When the woman scratches his face, he knocks her on the head with a silver statue he had previously taken.

Hearing sirens and realizing the woman may have called the police after he first came to the door, Alex quickly opens the front door to warn his friends to leave. Dim is standing there; the other two are running away. Dim tells Alex he can meet the police when they come, then hits Alex's eyes with his chain. Alex cannot see, and the police arrive immediately and arrest him. He tells them to get his traitorous friends, but realizes it will do no good. The police drive him away, happy to have bagged Alex, a well-known criminal. An ambulance drives the other way for the old woman. The cops continue to hurt Alex as they arrive at the police station.

Analysis:

Alex's inability to see at the end of the chapter ironically foreshadows Ludovico's Technique in Part Two, in which his eyes are kept open. However, here it symbolizes his blindness in the whole chapter. He does not recognize the warning signs that his friends are planning to betray him, and he commits two noticeable mistakes that lead to his being caught. First, he believes that he overhears the woman talking insanely to her cats rather than to the police. Second, he goes for the bust of Beethoven and allows the cats and the woman to attack him. The greater irony here is that his love for music now victimizes him violently, as opposed to allowing him to victimize others. This, too, foreshadows Part Two.

Burgess continues to expose the corruptness of the state Alex lives in. The police are just as fond of violence as he is, and they happily beat their victim in retribution for his own crimes.

Milk has previously been used as a symbol of youth's sexual immaturity; they lap it up childishly with drugs at the Korova Milkbar, and Alex has a somewhat obsessive relationship with women's breasts. The old woman here provides milk for her cats. In a sense, this episode plays out as revenge for Alex's sexualized violence. The old woman, completely devoid of any sexuality, attacks him with her army of cats, conventionally feminine creatures.

Part One, Chapter 7 Summary:

Alex is taken to an office with four policemen at the jail. He hears the police beating the prisoners in nearby cells. When Alex refuses to speak without a lawyer, the top policeman punches him in the stomach. Alex retaliates with a kick to the shin, which provokes a beating at the hands of all the policemen until he vomits. Deltoid comes in and promises to be at his trial tomorrow. Before he leaves, he unexpectedly spits in Alex's face.

Alex gives a long statement of his violent past for the police. He is taken to a cell where he fends off the other criminals. He finally falls asleep and dreams of being in a big field and listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He is woken and taken to the top policeman again, whose stern demeanor makes Alex realizes the old woman he beat has died.

Analysis:

The top policeman justifies the brutal treatment of Alex by saying "'Violence makes violenceŠHe resisted his lawful arrest.'" However, Alex has proven that violence can spring out of the self and not the environment. The police act much the same way; they have just as violent tendencies as Alex and, being powered by the state, their tendency toward corruption is greater.

Deltoid, too, has some shadows under his seemingly sympathetic exterior. While his spitting in Alex's face appears to be out of angry disappointment, perhaps he finally feels free to harm Alex in a way he could not before.

Alex's dream, in which he mixes up the words to Beethoven's Nint h with words relating to his recent beatings, foreshadows the mind-control experiments in Part Two. Even the beatings have seeped into Alex's brain and made music less pleasurable for him - an effect that will soon become much more prominent.

Part Two, Chapter 1 Summary:

Alex is now in State Jail Number 84F, where he is identified as "6655321." He skims over the events two years ago that led to this - his parents' grief, his lower court meeting, his time in custody, and his trial, where he was sentenced for 14 years. In prison, he has had to deal with brutal wardens, homosexual prisoners, and mindless labor. He has learned from his parents that Georgie was killed during a robbery.

Alex plays solemn music on the stereo for the chaplain in the Wing Chapel on Sunday morning. The chaplain asks the prisoners if they will continue to remain criminals and end up in Hell, or if they will repent and become religious. A minor disturbance provokes the guards to beat up some prisoners. Alex relates that the chaplain took him under his wing when Alex got interested in the Bible. As part of his education, he is allowed to listen to classical music on the chapel stereo while he reads the Bible. The sex and violence in the Bible appeals to him most.

The prisoners end the sermon by singing a hymn. After they leave, the chaplain asks Alex for news from the prisoners; he uses this information to gain the good graces of the Governor for career advancement. Alex lies about a cocaine shipment and asks to be given the new treatment he has heard about that quickly frees the prisoner and ensures he remains free. The chaplain says that the treatment - Ludovico's Technique - is still in the experimental stage, and he doubts whether a technique can make a man good, since goodness is chosen. Alex is sent back to his cramped cell with an assortment of despicable prisoners.

Analysis:

"'What's it going to be, eh?'" is asked at the start of Part Two, as it was in Part One. In Part One, Alex asked his gang what crimes they would commit that night; here the chaplain asks the prisoners what they will make of their lives. The question invites the listener to exercise his free will, since it gives him the power to decide what his future will be. However, in this case the chaplain asks and does not expect a response, nor does he even want one, as evidenced by the guards' action at the first sound of noise. Despite this question, the prisoners' free will remains severely limited.

Nevertheless, the chaplain does have some profound philosophical thoughts, and he spells out the major theme of the novel: "'Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.'" Burgess shares his doubts that forced goodness is equal to chosen goodness. Without free will, whatever goodness humans have is inauthentic and inhuman.

We also see further evidence of depersonalization in the novel. Alex is given number 6655321 for his identity and his address is no longer flatblock number 18A but State Jail Number 84F. The last three digits of his identity number add up to 6, while the number of digits, seven, is equal to the number of chapters per part; this lends some symmetry to the number as a whole, and reinforces the structural symmetry of the novel that will reveal itself in Part Three.

Part Two, Chapter 2 Summary:

A new prisoner's homosexual advances on Alex provoke a fight, and his cellmates back him up. They beat up the prisoner, then hold him while Alex beats him into unconsciousness. Alex has a nightmare of playing in an orchestra. In the morning, he finds that the prisoner is dead. The prisoners blame each other, but they put most of the accountability on Alex's shoulders. They tell this to the guards, and later the Governor and the Minister of the Interior visit Alex. The Governor says "'Common criminals'" such as Alex need to be cured of their criminal reflexes, and the Minister of the Interior says the Governor can use Alex as a "'trailblazer.'" Tomorrow, he says, a man Brodsky will deal with him.

Analysis:

The Minister of the Interior refers to the criminal impulse as a "'reflex'" that needs curing. The word "reflex" implies his belief that prisoners do not exercise free will in choosing immorality; they do it unconsciously, reflexively, in a way that seems predetermined.

Hence, it makes sense that "'Punishment means nothing to them'"; if the prisoner has exercised evil unconsciously, then the threat of punishment is not a valuable deterrent. Only if the prisoner has consciously balanced the gains and costs of exercising immorality and receiving punishment can punishment act as a deterrent, since he may decide that the punishment is not worth the satisfaction of the criminal act.

He has a point, much as it conflicts wit h Burgess's views. Alex shows little remorse for the prisoner's murder, much as he shrugged off his murder of the old woman (caring more, instead, about his prison sentence). While Alex has expressed his free choice to do evil, there does seem to be something mechanical about his actions. Nevertheless, he exercises some free will in his immorality regardless of his lack of reflection after the fact, and this is what is important. Perhaps the retrospective contemplation of why one has done good or bad is more a sign of maturity rather than an absolute indicator of free will.

Part Two, Chapter 3 Summary:

Alex is taken to the Governor's office at night. The Governor admits he does not like the new orders for Alex; he believes in eye- for-an-eye justice, and thinks the State should "'hit back'" at criminals rather than try and convert them from "'the bad into the good.'" He informs Alex that he is to be "'reformed'" by a man named Brodsky tomorrow, and should be out of jail in two weeks. Alex signs a paper for his "Reclamation Treatment."

Alex is sent to the chaplain, who confidentially tells him he is against the treatment, which will eliminate Alex's desire to "'commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against the State's Peace.'" Alex claims it will be nice to be good, though he does not really believe this. The chaplain warns him that it may not be, since perhaps choice is more important than goodness. Still, he hopes that by choosing to be deprived of the ability to make ethical choices, Alex has somewhat chosen goodness. The chaplain, worried about Alex, cries and pours himself a drink.

The next morning, Alex is sent to a new building nearby that resembles a hospital. Dr. Branom, assistant to Dr. Brodsky, signs Alex in, and sends him off to a clean bedroom, where he changes into new pajamas. As Dr. Branom examines Alex, he explains that they will show Alex "'special films,'" and that after every meal he will receive a shot in the arm. After he leaves, Alex thinks about getting a gang together after he is freed to hunt down Pete and Dim; he will be careful not to get caught again, since the State has gone to so much trouble to reform him. He is fed a good meal, and later a pretty nurse gives him

a shot. He finds himself weak afterward, and a male nurse pushes him off in a wheelchair.

Analysis:

The chaplain continues to spell out the major theme of the novel: that the ability to choose, even if the choice is evil, is more important than forced goodness. He does bring up the infinitely cycling possibility that choosing to not choose somehow overrides the eventual lack of free will. However, the human still chooses to lose his humanity and become a clockwork orange in this case, so the initial choice is lost, as is the humanity associated with it.

Alex makes an unintentional pun when he says that the vitamins "would put me right." While he thinks the vitamins will help his health, he does not realize that they will be instrumental in literally putting him in the right - making him good. Burgess ominously foreshadows the treatment for the reader and Alex - a combination of the "'special films'" and the shots - but Alex, who is now the unknowing innocent, does not understand what exactly Ludovico's Technique comprises.

Moreover, he has not understood what his punishment has meant. He promises to be careful not to get caught for crimes after he is freed, since the State has done so much to make him good. Of course, not getting caught is not the point of rehabilitation; not wanting to commit any more crimes is. This is Burgess's counterpoint to his argument; with incorrigible criminals, perhaps the only pragmatic solution is to force them to become good.

Part Two, Chapter 4 Summary:

Alex is wheeled to the unconventional movie theater; a bank of little meters is on one of the walls, and a dentist's-style chair with protruding wires faces the screen in the middle of the floor. Still weak, Alex is helped into the chair. He thinks he sees and hears people behind the film projection holes in the back. One of the three doctors straps Alex's head to the chair to keep his head still and force him to watch the screen; Alex does not understand, since he wants to look at the films. The doctors also clip Alex's eyelids to keep them open. The doctors say the film will be "'A real show of horrors'" and stick wire- laden suction pads on Alex's head, stomach, and heart.

Dr. Brodsky enters, and the lights go out and the film starts. The film graphically depicts two young men beating up an old man. As Alex watches this, he feels physically unwell, and attributes this to his malnourishment. The next film displays a brutal gang rape. Alex feels much worse despite knowing the films cannot be real, and when the film finishes, Dr. Brodsky makes a statistical note of Alex's reaction. A third film shows brutal violence done to a human face. Alex feels even worse, especially since he cannot vomit for some reason and cannot avert his propped-open eyes. The fourth film is of an old woman beating beaten and burned alive. Alex begs the doctors to allow him to vomit, but they assure him the films are not real. He watches the next film about Japanse torture in World War II, and begs the doctors to stop the film. They laugh and tell him they have hardly started.

Analysis:

Ludovico's Technique is finally exposed in the exact midpoint of the novel (note that the original British edition has 21 chapters as opposed to 20 in the American edition; this is the 13th chapter and therefore the midpoint). The reader understands that the "vitamins" Alex believes he has received have something to do with his intense negative reaction to the films. It appears that the doctors are conditioning Alex to equate violence and criminality with displeasure. Alex's free will to watch the films at the beginning is quickly undermined and, by the end of the chapter, he has no free will over either his reactions or the doctors' actions.

The choice of a war torture film is not incidental on Burgess's part; the doctors are sadistic torturers themselves, reveling in their violent experimentation on Alex. Their sarcastic remarks to the helpless victim are reminiscent of the sarcasm Alex and his gang used on their victims. Moreover, their act of forcing Alex's eyes open is similar to Alex's forcing the man from the "HOME" cottage to watch the rape of his wife. (Note that in that scene, the man's glasses "were cracked but still hanging on," ensuring he could still see the action.)

A few ironic puns shed more light on this chapter. One of the doctors calls the films "'A real show of horrors'" in response to Alex's slang usage of "'horrorshow.'" Alex's long- standing association of goodness ("horrorshow" means "good" or "well") with horror and with sight comes back to hurt him. In addition, the slang for cinema, "sinny," alludes to the sin prevalent in the films. That the doctors' method of mind-control is film (and government-produced film, at that) reminds us of Alex's disdain for television and Statefilm as methods of mass media mind-control.

Part Two, Chapter 5 Summary:

Alex endures more violent films as the doctors monitor his reactions. Finally, they stop for the day and send the sickly Alex back to his room. Dr. Branom visits and correctly predicts that Alex has recovered physically. He informs Alex that he will undergo two more sessions tomorrow, a prospect that horrifies Alex. The doctor explains that Alex's body is learning to dislike violence, which is what any "'normal healthy human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil'" should feel. Alex believes the doctors are doing something to make him feel ill, not healthy, but Dr. Branom assures him otherwise.

Alex considers refusing treatment tomorrow when a Discharge Officer enters and asks Alex where he will go when he is freed. Alex says he will go back to his parents, who have not been informed of his impending release. The officer shows Alex a list of jobs he can take when released, but Alex thinks he will pull a robbery by himself. Before he leaves, the officer asks Alex if he would like to punch him in the face, "'just to see how you're getting on.'" Confused, Alex punches, but the officer ducks and smiles. Alex briefly feels sick, and considers the entire experience odd.

That night, Alex has a nightmare that repeats one of the films he saw about gang rape. In the dream he leads the rapists, but soon feels sick and travels through gallons of his own blood back to being awake in the bedroom. Alex wants to vomit, but finds the door locked and windows barred. He sees there is no escape from this situation. Afraid to go to sleep, he finds he is soon no longer sick. Still, he soon drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

Analysis:

Dr. Branom's statement that Alex is learning to feel what any "'normal healthy human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil'" should feel is inaccurate. Alex never contemplates, but only reacts. He still has a reflex to violence; only instead of it automatically giving him pleasure, it now causes agony. There is no free will in his conditioning. Though he still has enough free will to try to punch the officer, he soon feels sick; one can imagine that after some more treatment, he will not even attempt to punch anymore. He is becoming a clockwork orange whose feelings can be quantified, as the doctors' measurements suggest.

But the treatment goes beyond physical influence - it is starting to creep into Alex's mind. Alex says that "'A dream or nightmare is really only like a film inside your gulliver,'" and the connection brings us back to the socialist use of mass media as mind-control.

Burgess's second greatest fear after the government's overt restriction of free will through Ludovico's Technique is its covert restriction through the media.

Alex's irritation over a nurse's singing a pop song foreshadows his ill reaction to classical music in the next chapter.

Part Two, Chapter 6 Summary:

The next day, Alex wails for the doctors to stop the film of a robbery and beating; his sickness is even worse than it was yesterday. However, the doctors show him a World War II Nazi film depicting death in many forms. The soundtrack plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and Alex calls it a "'sin'" to mix Beethoven up with such violent films. When the film is over, the doctors are interested to see Alex has a love for music. They ask Alex what he thinks they are doing to him; he correctly believes the shots they give him make him ill, and he associates that illness with the films. Alex pleads with them to keep the music out of the technique, but Dr. Brodsky believes that many activities, even heavenly ones like music, contain some degree of violence. They say he has made his choice, and despite his protestations, insist he is not yet cured.

Alex says the remainder of the two weeks is horrible. When he tries to prevent the administration of the shot at one point, the staff hits him and forces him to accept the shot. Another time he tries to knock himself against the wall unconscious, but the violent act only makes him sick.

One morning, a doctor tells Alex that he can walk, rather than be wheeled, to the films, and that his injections are finished. He is still strapped to the chair to watch the films and, curiously, he still feels sick. He cries at the thought that Ludovico's Technique will affect him forever. The doctors make sarcastic remarks and wipe away his tears so he can continue watching the Nazi films.

At night, Alex thinks of ways to get out. He bangs on his door and pretends to be sick. A doctor opens the door and Alex prepares to strike him. Before he can, he sees an image of the doctor hurt, and after the initial feeling of joy, he feels horribly sick. He falls down into bed, and the doctor tells him to give him a hit. When Alex cannot, the doctor hits him. Alex goes to sleep with the "horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it."

Analysis:

Alex's free will is now completely gone; his body will no longer let him perform violent actions, even against himself. Worse yet, he now negatively associates classical music with violence. Although music has no ethical connotations, as Burgess demonstrates amply throughout Part One, it has deep aesthetic meaning for Alex. No longer, however, thanks to the sadistic efforts of Dr. Brodsky, who seems to relish the destruction of Alex's only "heavenly" love.

The continuing sadism of the staff is now associated with that of Nazism, most specifically when they make Alex cry while he watches film of weeping Jews. A further association comes when nadsat is described as "Propaganda. Subliminal penetration." While this may be true, the government is penetrating minds through far more overt means - not only Ludovico's Technique, but its other forms of mind-control through mass media.

Part Two, Chapter 7 Summary:

Alex must go through one more big day of treatment before his release. Instead of the hospital pajamas, he is given his old street clothes to wear, and they give him his old razor. An audience of important men, including the State Governor, the chapla in, Chief Guard, and Minister of the Interior, sit in the cinema. Dr. Brodsky introduces Alex as a violent hoodlum who has been converted into a peaceful, decent young man over the past two weeks, whereas two years of prison only made him worse.

The demonstration begins. A spotlight shines on Alex as a big man comes over and insults him. The man flicks Alex with his fingers and causes pain in other ways as the audience laughs. Alex reaches for his razor, but the mental image of the man in pain makes him sick. He roots around for cigarettes or money to give to the man instead. The man continues insulting and flicking him, and Alex tries to give him the razor as a present. The man rejects it, and Alex licks the man's boots. He receives a kick for his efforts, and Alex hopes merely hugging the man's ankles will stop the sickness. But the man falls from it, and Alex gets sick again. Alex helps him up.

Before the man can hit Alex again, Dr. Brodsky stops the demonstration. He lauds the experiment, but the chaplain objects that it removes moral choice. Dr. Brodsky and the Minister of the Interior justify it on the grounds that it cuts down crime and frees up the congested prisons. Alex yells out that he has been turned into a clockwork orange, though he is not sure why he used those words. A professorial type in the audience says Alex has made his choice, and the chaplain argues against this, using the word "Love" frequently.

Dr. Brodsky segues from the discussion of love to the next demonstration. A scantily clad, beautiful young lady accompanies Alex on stage. Alex's first thought is of having violent sex with her, and he immediately gets sick. To remedy the sickness, he throws himself at her feet and makes a worshipful speech. The woman bows to the audience and leaves, and Alex feels foolish. He notices how the men ogle the woman. Dr. Brodsky and the Minister of the Interior proclaim the experiment an unqualified success. The chaplain says "'it works all right, God help the lot of us.'"

Analysis:

As the chaplain explains, Alex's choice to do good is not a choice at all, but a reaction to the pain his original immoral desires cause. It is still a reflex and has turned him, as Alex himself says, into a clockwork orange, half- machine and half- man. Moreover, the chaplain denies that Alex's original choice to lose his free will justifies the treatment; Alex did not know what he was getting into, and now he has no way out.

The State is less interested in rehabilitating Alex for moral reasons than it is in using Ludovico's Technique for pragmatic measures. The Minister of the Interior's comment about relieving the congestion of prisons echoes his previous statement about needing more space for political prisoners. The State seems to be hatching even more insidious plans to deny the free will of the populace.

We are treated to more evidence that the State is just as immoral as Alex was. They enjoy the violence on display as if it were a show, and ogle the attractive woman "with dirty and like unholy desire." Whether they do so with the same violent mindset Alex once had is unclear, but they seem almost more like clockwork oranges than he is; the professor whose "neck [has] like all cables carrying like power from his gulliver to his plott" resembles Alex whe n he was strapped into the chair.

The sole bright spot in the chapter is the chaplain's boldness in speaking his mind. After refraining previously for fear of hurting his career, someone with something at stake has finally taken a moral stand against the State.

Part Three, Chapter 1 Summary:

After interviews and more demonstrations and a night of sleep, Alex is a free man. He asks himself "'What's it going to be then, eh?'" and decides to get some breakfast. He eats at a workers' joint nearby, and the sight of the workers groping the waitress makes him sick. He buys what appears to be a Government newspaper, which boasts of having made the streets safe the last six months with a bulked-up police force. He sees a picture of himself and a laudatory article about Ludovico's Technique.

He plans to go home, listen to music, and plan what to do with his life. He is surprised to find the flat is cleaned up, functional, and the painting of workers no longer has any obscene graffiti. He unlocks his door and finds his parents eating breakfast with a burly man. The man tells Alex to leave, while his mother cries and fears Alex has escaped from jail. The man is introduced as Joe, a lodger, but he claims he is more of a son to Alex's parents than Alex is.

Alex tells Joe to clear his stuff out of his room, but he finds his room is completely changed - the police took away his possessions in compensation for the victims, the victims being the cats. His father explains that they have a contract with Joe for two years and they cannot kick him out. Alex cries, but Joe urges the parents to remain tough. Alex says no one loves him and that they all want him to keep on suffering; Joe says Alex has made others suffer and deserves to suffer himself. Alex leaves, making them feel guilty and claiming they will never see him again.

Analysis:

The structural symmetry in the novel commences; each chapter in Part Three has something in common with its mirror-image chapter from Part One, such that Chapter 1 here connects with Chapter 7 from Part One, Chapter 2 goes with Chapter 6, and so on. In Chapter 7 of Part One, Alex was taken to the police station where he was beaten the police, notably a big, fat policeman, spat upon by P.R. Deltoid, put in a terrible cell, and told he had committed murder. Here, he is released from his murder sentence, finds his home is no longer his home, is rejected by his parents (in lieu of P.R. Deltoid, a semi- parental figure), and emotionally beaten by the big, burly Joe. The symmetry of the novel acts like the classical musical pieces Alex loves, with repeating motifs and juxtapositions, and magnifies the huge reversal in Alex's life. The "'What's it going to be then, eh?'" at the start of the chapter solidifies Alex's alienation; this time he asks only himself the question, but the reader knows Alex's loss of free will means he has little power to

change his life.

In addition, there has been tighter State control in Alex's absence. The streets are safer, everything is more functional, and the police have greater control. Just as Alex's free will has been cut, so has that of the everyday citizen; but while the citizens live in a physical police state, Alex's police state is mental.

The use of a lodger to displace the rightful son is perhaps an allusion to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, in which three lodgers dominate the house of Gregor Samsa. That Gregor has metamorphosed into a cockroach augments the allusion; Alex, too, has lost part of his humanity.

Part Three, Chapter 2 Summary:

Alex goes to his favorite record store in the cold winter morning. The place is swarming with teenagers, including one at the counter. Alex asks for a Mozart symphony but the counterman plays him the wrong one in the listening-booth. Regardless, the music makes him sick from its association with Ludovico's Technique, and Alex runs out of the store to the Korova Milkbar.

Alex orders a laced milk drink. After he drinks it, he has strange visions and babbles odd words. He has a vision of statues of God and angels and saints and feels heavenly for a moment before he feels suicidal. But the thought of slitting his throat with his razor makes him sick, so he decides to go to the public library and find other ways to kill himself. He relishes the thought of making everybody - his parents, the doctors, Joe, and the government - feel sorry for his death.

At the library, Alex finds that a medical book full of drawings of diseases makes him sick. The Bible, with its stories of violence, also makes him sick. He tells a man nearby that he wants to end his life. The man comforts him at first until he realizes who Alex is, and Alex realizes who he is: the man with the science books his gang beat up more than two years ago. The man tells the other old people in the library that Alex is the one who ruined the rare Crystallography books and beat him up. Alex says he has been punished and cured, but before he can go, several old men grab him. Alex gets sick as they hit him. An attendant tries to stop them but cannot, so he goes to call the police, a measure Alex never thought he would support. After more thrashing, the police finally arrive and break up the fight.

Analysis:

Just as he could not knock himself unconscious in the hospital, Alex lacks the free will even to commit suicide, as thoughts of violence make him ill. Likewise, violence done to him makes him sick beyond the physical pain of the beating. Ending his life now requires the same sort of creativity needed from his formerly violent ways.

The structural symmetry between Parts One and Three continues in this chapter to demonstrate how much Alex's life has inverted. In Part One, Chapter 6, Alex beat up and eventually killed an old woman before the police arrived. Here, old people take their revenge on him until the police come; in fact, the old people resemble the woman's cats as they swarm and claw at Alex. There are more opposites: Alex drinks the laced milk, whereas in the other chapter he tripped over the saucers of milk the old woman had left out for her cats. He also babbles like the incoherent drug addict he saw in Part One. The statue of God he sees is reminiscent of the silver statue with which he bashed the old woman's head, as well as of the bust of Beethoven he wanted.

His vision of God and the angels seemingly denying him entrance into heaven - "Bog and the Angels and Saints sort of shook their gullivers at me, as though to govoreet that there wasn't quite time now but I must try again" - indicates that for Alex to get into Heaven, he cannot rely solely on his reflexive goodness, since it is not true goodness. Somehow he must choose goodness for full redemption.

Part Three, Chapter 3 Summary:

The police beat back the old people, then address Alex. They turn out to be his old nemesis, Billybob, and his old friend, Dim. They accuse Alex of starting trouble with the old people and put him in their car. Dim refuses to acknowledge his past with Alex. They drive him off into the country, pound him mercilessly, and leave him on the ground. Alex has little money and nowhere to go. He cries and begins walking.

Analysis:

Alex's victimization again turns ironically and symmetrically. In Part One, Chapter 5, he fought and defeated Dim for his insubordination. Now, Dim takes his revenge, along with Billybob. That both have become policemen should come as no surprise: the State has consistently proven itself as corrupt as the purported hooligans who roam the streets, and now it truly is comprised of said hooligans.

Part Three, Chapter 4 Summary:

Alex walks through the rain to the "HOME" cottage. He knocks on the door and asks the man inside to help him, as the police have beaten him and left him to die. The kindly man takes Alex in, and Alex remembers he is the writer of the manuscript for "A Clockwork Orange." He feels safe knowing the man will not know him, since Alex used to wear a mask during his crimes. The man, F. Alexander, lets Alex take a hot bath and gives him food. F. Alexander says he read about Alex in the newspaper, and he feels it was providential that he came to him.

Careful not to reveal his past identity, Alex allows that he has heard of "A Clockwork Orange," though he has not read it. He relates his story, starting from the murder - though he fabricates telling details - through his treatment. F. Alexander is sympathetic to Alex and outraged that he has been turned into a "'piece of clockwork.'" He wants to use Alex to dislodge the "'overbearing Government.'" He also mentions that his wife died from a brutal rape and beating. Alex gets sick thinking about the episode, and F. Alexander sends him to bed.

Analysis:

The ironies pile up in this chapter. The story Alex uses about being in danger is now true.

Alexander's comment about Alex's being a "'victim of the modern age,'" just like his dead wife, is packed with obvious irony, as well.

The symmetry continues. Instead of being fed by his parents, as he was in Part One, Chapter 4, Alex now receives a bountiful meal thanks to F. Alexander. And in lieu of

P.R. Deltoid's visit, Alex visits the home of F. Alexander and gets far more kindly treatment and guidance.

Yet F. Alexander still wants, in his own words, to "'use'" Alex in his battle against the State. Even with those who trumpet the necessity of free will seem intent on co-opting whatever remains of Alex's freedom for their own agendas.

Despite these immense ironies and kind reception, Alex is clearly not reformed. He only cares about having killed F. Alexander's wife because the image makes him sick; he has no emotional remorse, only a physical reflex.

Part Three, Chapter 5 Summary:

Alex wakes from a peaceful, dreamless sleep. He finds a copy of "A Clockwork Orange" and sees the name of the author and his caretaker: F. Alexander. He reads some and makes out the main idea, which is that people are being turned into machines. The other idea about humans resembling fruit in God's orchard makes Alex wonder if the writer is crazy.

Alexander calls Alex down and tells him he has been on the phone with various people for hours. Alex says he thought the house did not have a phone, remembering the writer's wife saying that. F. Alexander is suspicious for a moment, then resumes telling Alex about his work. He says Alex can be a weapon in helping throw the present Government out of office in the next election. The Government's major victory, in its opinion, has been reducing crime through a brutal police force and Ludovico's Technique. He fears totalitarianism is on the horizon. He wants Alex to sign an article he has written about Alex's record.

Alex asks if he will be able to reverse Ludovico's Technique. F. Alexander sidesteps the question and shows Alex the article. It is a sad account of Alex's suffering and a proposal to defy the Government, and Alex compliments it with the word "'horrorshow.'" F. Alexander asks about the word, Alex explains it is nadsat, and the writer finishes up the dishes in the kitchen.

The door rings and F. Alexander lets in three men, Z. Dolin, Rubinstein, and D. B. da Silva. They observe Alex and discuss their plans for him as if he is not there. Alex speaks in more nadsat, and F. Alexander says he feels he has come into contact with him before. Speaking more carefully, Alex asks what will become of him. They assure him that "'the Party will not be ungrateful,'" and that he will receive a surprise. Alex wants to return to how he used to be, but they ignore his pleas. Alex screams that he is not dim, and F. Alexander wonders if Alex could be connected to the gang that raped and killed his wife. His friends try to calm him down. When Alex tries to leave, they restrain him.

The men, without F. Alexander, drive him to a flat in the city, his new home. They ask Alex if he was in the gang that raped and killed F. Alexander's wife. He admits he was, but says he has paid for his actions. They go to another room to do work. Alex lies on the bed for a while, feeling bad about his life and the world, before drifting off to sleep. He awakens hearing a classical music piece and feels sick. He yells for them to turn it off and bangs against the wall in agony, but the music stays on. Running around the apartment, he sees the word "DEATH" on the cover of an anti-government pamphlet. Another pamphlet has a picture of an open window on it, and both inspire Alex to commit suicide by jumping out of the window. He climbs out the open window in his room and jumps.

Analysis:

Alexander and his friends are not much better than the Government. They, too, want to restrict Alex's free will and use him to prove a point; they, too, turn him into a clockwork orange. Having him sign the article is similar to the confession he signs for the police; at least with the police he got to tell the story in his own words. Making the liberal freedom- fighters somewhat totalitarian characters themselves allows Burgess to counter his own argument and balance out A Clockwork Orange.

The symmetrical pairing between this chapter and Part One, Chapter 3 centers around music. In the latter, Alex listened to the woman sing beautifully in the Korova Milkbar. She seemed like "some great bird [that] had flown into the milkbar," an ironic contrast to Alex's jumping out the window here. Moreover, she sang a part from an opera that connects with Alex's own suicide attempt: "she's snuffing it with her throat cut, and the slovos are ŒBetter like this maybe.'" But the most ingenious mirror- image comes with the pairing of his jump and his ejaculation at the end of Part One, Chapter 3. The ejaculation: "Šwhen the music...rose to the top of its big highest tower, then, lying on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it." The jump: Alex climbs "on to the sill, the music blasting away to my left, and I shut my glazzies and felt the cold wind on my litso, then I jumped," presumably to spatter on the sidewalk.

It is interesting to note that we do not learn F. Alexander's first name, much as we never learn Alex's last name. Alex starts referring to him as F. Alex, and their nominal connection makes them seem like a father-son pair. (Alex even refers to him as a "motherly veck," confusing the genders.) Burgess invites a Freudian reading here, since Alex, as the son, seemingly satisfied his Oedipal urges by having sex with F. Alex's wife, or Alex's "mother."

Part Three, Chapter 6 Summary:

Alex hits the sidewalk from his jump and, before he passes out, realizes that F. Alexander's friends had set it up for him to commit suicide so they could blame it on the Government. He comes to in a hospital. Bandaged considerably, he does not feel any sensation. A pretty nurse by his bed. Alex tries to tell her to sleep with him, but he cannot speak correctly because some teeth are missing. She leaves and Alex quickly falls asleep again, though he is sure the nurse has brought back doctors to look at him.

Alex wakes up later to find F. Alexander's friends in his room. They inform Alex that he has destroyed the Government's chances for re-election. Alex tries to tell them off for using him, but he cannot speak the words. They show him newspaper clippings that depict Alex as a victim and the Government as a murderer. The nurse ushers the men out so they will not excite Alex.

Alex falls asleep and has several dreams about violence and sex, but he does not feel sick. He wakes up and finds his parents there. They apologize for helping drive him to suicide, and tell him Joe got beaten up by the police and went home. They ask him to live at home again, and when he says he will consider it, his mother cries. Alex threatens to hurt her if she does not stop, and he feels better saying so. He tells his father that if he lives at home, he will be the boss; his father agrees, and his parents leave. Alex asks the nurse if the doctors have been tinkering with his head, but he receives an elusive answer.

A few days later, doctors test Alex by showing him pictures and asking him what he thinks. He has violent and sexual reactions, and the doctors tell him he is cured. It appears that they have reconditioned him and reversed the effects of Ludovico's Technique while he was unconscious.

He recuperates for a while. One day, the Minister of the Interior visits, accompanied by the press. He shakes Alex's hand. The Minister encourages Alex to call F. Alexander's group his enemies. The Minister informs Alex that after F. Alexander "'formed this idea'" that Alex had raped and killed his wife, he became a menace and was put away for his and Alex's protection. He says Alex will be rewarded for "'helping us.'" The reporters take pictures of the two smiling, and the Minister gives Alex a stereo as a present. Alex asks for them to play Beethoven's Ninth, and everyone clears out while he listens. He signs something without knowing or caring what it is, and imagines cutting the face of the whole world with his razor while he listens. "'I was cured all right,'" he thinks.

Analysis:

Alex's free will is returned to him - or so Burgess would have the reader believe. It is true that Alex is "cured" and can again enjoy violence, not to mention Beethoven. His dream of his body's being drained of dirty water and refilled with clean water represents this curative transformation (an ironic one, of course, since Alex has lost his "clean" feelings and is back to his "dirty," violent ways).

However, Alex does not have complete free will. The Government uses him as a pawn, just as F. Alexander's group did. The setup even resembles the Government's previous treatment of Alex through Ludovico's Technique; he is helplessly confined to a bed, just as he was helplessly confined to the chair in the other hospital. Moreover, Alex continues to do things without thinking. He "smile[s] like bezoomny without thinking" for the camerawith the Minister - another sinister use of mass media - and carelessly signs something for the Government.

In a broader sense, Alex never thinks about any of his actions. In much the same way that he never expresses remorse for his violent past, he hardly considers why he performs violent acts - he knows only that it gives him pleasure. The major idea behind A Clockwork Orange is that the ability to choose makes one human, and that goodness is not authentic without free will. But Alex did not choose evil; he was born with it, like Original Sin. Only by dint of the Government's actions has he regained his reflexive taste for evil, suggesting his desires will remain mechanical.

The chapter ends on a pessimistic note as we learn that F. Alexander has been imprisoned, and the oppressive Government remains in power. Much to Burgess's chagrin, the American edition of his novel, and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of it, omitted the final 21st chapter, leaving readers and viewers with this most un-horrorshow of endings.

Part Three, Chapter 7 Summary:

Alex sits in the Korova Milkbar and asks his three friends, Len, Rick, and Bully, "'What's it going to be then, eh?'" Alex is the leader of the gang, being famous, the oldest, and having the best job in the National Gramodisc Archives. Alex is bored, as he often is now, and wants to go. He punches a babbling addict before they go.

Outside, Alex gives the others permission to beat up an old man. They go to a bar and are about to buy drinks for the old women there, but Alex does not want to; he feels more like keeping his money these days for himself. Still, he puts in his money, and when he does he accidentally puts in a picture of a baby he clipped from a newspaper. The others laugh and he rips up the photograph. Alex calls them babies for spending all their time beating up others. He feels sick when he sees his beer and pours it out, then says he is going home. Bully, trying to take over as leader, says they will postpone their scheduled robbery; Alex tells them to carry on without him.

Alex leaves and walks through the streets alone. He reflects on the fighting between hooligans and the police, and wonders why he does not care about it so much anymore. His recent appreciation for more romantic, and less violent, classical pieces also confuses him. He wants some tea, and has an image of himself as an old man. At a coffee shop filled with harmless people, he sees a well-dressed Pete with, Alex is shocked to discover, his wife. He describes their middle-class life and invites Alex to see them sometime. They leave for a party.

Alex thinks that, at 18, perhaps he has gotten too old for crime, and compares himself to artists who were accomplished by his age. He imagines himself coming home from work to a woman and a baby boy. He thinks that youth must eventually go, since youth is like being a wind-up toy of sorts. He will explain this to his son, but he knows his son will not understand and will do what he did; and so it will go, round and round, like God turning an orange in his hands.

Alex resolves to find a wife. He blames his actions on his youth. He bids adieu to his audience.

Analysis:

Alex finally comes of age. He casts off his violent, immature past and embraces a peaceful, mature, middle-class lifestyle. The most important thing about this transition, as opposed to his previous two reversals, is that he willfully chooses to change. The thematic mantra of the novel is that the ability to choose defines humanity, but perhaps a more accurate definition is that the ability to choose defines adulthood. Youth, as Alex's images describe, is mechanical and deterministic. Youth functions like a mechanical, clockwork wind-up toy, and acts according to the determinism of God, who spins the orange that is earth. Only those who have seen enough of life to make informed choices can claim free will and escape from the fate of being a clockwork orange. Burgess chose Alex's maturation to come in the 21st chapter, since 21 used to be the voting age in Britain and is otherwise considered the rite of passage into adulthood. With it comes the title of adulthood and, though Alex is only 18 as A Clockwork Orange ends, his experience-packed life has sped him to that destination - a destination reached only through his own free will.

It is fitting that the crowning achievement of Alex's maturation is his desire to have a son. He is now ready to break free from the Oedipal relationship he had with F. Alexander, a substitute father-figure for his own effete father. However, Alex notes that his son will probably act rashly as a youth, as well; Burgess reminds us that Original Sin never goes away, but free will can be stronger.

The Character of Alex in A Clockwork Orange: What's He Going to Be Then, Eh?

by Dan Reimold June 29, 2002

As both the protagonist and narrator of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, the character of Alex is an intriguing study from start to finish. Specifically, in comparing part one and part three of the novel, Alex's world, internally and externally, his characterization and travails are shown to be mirror images of each other, both identical and reversed. Where Alex was the soulless victimizer in part one, he finds himself repeatedly a victim in part three. Where he was once welcome at the story's start, he is cast out at the close. What gives him pleasure at the beginning, in part three gives him pain. This neat symmetrical structure clearly and symbolically portrays how much Alex has changed and what Ludovico's Technique has done to him.

In Part I, Alex, as the extremely vicious leader of a gang, is a 15- year-old arrogant hooligan without a grain of sympathy for his victims. He doesn't appear to rape, rob, beat or murder for money, valuables, sexual satisfaction or other tangible things. As we see early on in the Korova Milkbar, he is willing to spend every penny he has on drinks and snacks for old women, just ìso we'd have more of an incentiveÖfor some shop-crasting [thieving]î (8). Alex is depicted as being violent and sadistically evil simply for the experience of it, for the joy of it and not as a means to an end. He seems to gain some measure of aesthetic satisfaction out of involving himself in evil for evil's sake. He even sees his violence as a kind of art, which we see through his description of a favorite weapon. ìI for my own part had a fine starry horrorshow cut-throat britva [razor] which, at that time, I could flash and shine artisticî (16). Overall, there is nothing in his background that can explain why he is so cruel and nasty, why his penchant for violence is so high. As his state-appointed guidance councilor, P.R. Deltoid, says to him, ìYou've got a good home here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside you?î (39). While leaving that question unanswered, we do see that Alex's commitment to evil is so pure that he fantasizes about nailing Jesus to a cross.

Along with his violent tendencies in part one, Alex is also portrayed as immature and irresponsible. He holds down no job and seems to have no responsibilities of any kind. He stays out all night, without letting his parents know, sleeps all day and still expects to be fed, clothed and taken care of. At the Korova Milkbar, Alex and his buddies communicate in a teenage lingo that sounds distinctly like baby talk. They use words such as ìappy polly loggiesî for apologies, ìeggiwegsî for eggs, ìskolliwollî for school, ìboohooedî for cried and ìfistieî for fist. These language choices hint at their infantilism and, in light of their lawlessness, their perverse childish nature.

Furthermore, in part one Alex is described as very arrogant, self-absorbed, autocratic and too firmly convinced of his superiority over everyone he encounters. His haughty attitude toward his fellow gang members ultimately causes them to betray him. After losing some

measure of standing in his group, Alex vainly assumes that taking on a robbery job alone will prove once and for all his dominance over them. ìI thoughtÖthat I would show these fickle and worthless droogs of mine that I was worth the whole three of them and more. I would do all on my oddy knocky [alone]î (61). He consistently underestimates everyone, characteristically seeing any attempt to counter him as ìreal lovely innocence,î and laughable, because he sees himself as so clever that any such attempt is doomed from the beginning.

This characteristic is also evident in how he acts toward the old woman he attempts to rob. When she calls the police, he relates that all he hears is a batty old woman, who is no match for him, talking to her many cats. ìI could hear the like muffled goloss [voice] of this old ptitsa down below saying: ëYes yes yes, that's it,' but she would be govoreeting [talking] to these mewing sidlers going maaaaaaah for more molokoî (60-61). His consistent underestimation of those around him, of his droogs and of the old lady, leads his gang to mutiny and leads to his imprisonment and ultimate transformation at the book's end.

As a mirror image of the first part, part three in A Clockwork Orange shows Alex as almost exactly opposite of his old self. He is humbled where he once was arrogant, victimized where he once was the perpetrator of violence and where he once acted childish there is evidence of a newfound maturity.

Ludovicio's Technique has also taken away, for the most part, Alex's proclivity for random acts of violence. Even as leader of a new gang, he rarely engages himself in any untoward activity, instead sending his underlings to carry out the tasks. He encounters many of the same characters he faced and consorted with at the beginning of the novel, but is now bullied and beaten by the same people he once roughed up himself.

Most notably, in part one, Alex and his droogs had humiliated, beaten and mugged a helpless old man who'd ventured into the hooligans' territory. In part three, Alex runs into this same gentleman and is, humiliatingly, beaten up by him and his elderly cronies in the old man's territory, the reading room at the public library. The exactness of this reversal makes the scene absurd and biting and shows how completely opposite Alex and his life have become.

Alex has also matured and toned down his arrogance a great deal in the last part of the novel. He feels himself changed, though he's not quite sure why. He relates to himself that, ìIt was like something soft getting into meî (186). A few years removed from his initial lawlessness, an older, seemingly wiser Alex is now able to reflect on what made him tick. Being young, he explains, was like being a tiny wind-up toy that ìitties [goes] in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doingî (190). Self-awareness is a critical step in the maturation process and Alex's newfound ability to travel outside himself, and provide an accurate assessment of what he was like, speaks volumes about his inner attempts to stabilize his life and become a decent citizen. Where in part one, he saw his violent outbursts as a kind of affirmation of his individuality, he now begins to realize how truly impulsive and irresponsible they were.

At the close of the novel, Alex has unequivocally decided it is time to grow up, to end his violent, thieving ways and settle down.

Instead of the teenage hangout Korova, he wanders into a little café, filled with very harmless, boring people, and drinks tea instead of drug- laced milk. He is shocked and envious to find an old friend, Pete, settled down, married and speaking without the childish slang Alex had always employed. Alex later has a strange vision of himself as an old man, in a comfortable armchair, drinking a nice cup of tea. He also pictures himself with a wife, even holding a newspaper picture of a baby in his pocket as an outward sign of his hopes for a family.

Overall, Alex ends the book as the complete opposite of the character portrayed in part one. He is mature, calm, law-abiding and eager to begin living a normal life, all of his own free will.

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Anne McCaffrey's a life with dragons

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Illustrations courtesy of Anne McCaffrey unless otherwise noted

Manufactured in the United States of America

First edition 2007

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Robin, 1957–

Anne McCaffrey : a life with dragons / Robin Roberts. — 1st ed.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57806-998-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-57806-998-X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. McCaffrey, Anne. 2. Novelists, American—20th century—Biography.

Title. PS3563.A255Z846 2007

813′.54—dc22

2007003696

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

To my mother, Shirley Moore Roberts— without her unwavering support and encouragement, this book would never have been written or published

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Chapter 1. An Irish Family Heritage 16

Chapter 2. Adolescence and a Time of War 44

Chapter 3. College Days and Marriage 66

Chapter 4. Annie and Virginia 96

Chapter 5. Emigration and a Best-Seller 119

Chapter 6. Struggling with Success 152

Chapter 7. Being a Fairy Godmother 174

Chapter 8. The Grand Master 204

Source Notes 219

Works Cited 233

Index 237

vii

AC K N O W LED G M EN T S

I am grateful to Anne McCaffrey for opening her papers and her circle of family and friends to me. Her three children, Alec Johnson, Georgeanne Kennedy, and Todd McCaffrey, were very open and helpful. All of those I interviewed were forthcoming and enthusiastic about the project: Susan Allison, Marilyn and Harry Alm, Maureen Beirne, Jean Bigelow, Derval Diamond, Annett Francis, Vaughne Hansen, H. Wright Johnson, Virginia K idd, Kevin and Marcia McCaffrey, Andi McCaffrey, Pota Meier, Antoinette O’Connell, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Shelly Sha- piro, Richard Woods, Betty Ballantine, Jody Lynn Nye, Pamela Melroy, and Elizabeth Moon.

I thank Pat Dyer and Rachel Albert from the Radcliffe Insti- tute for their help in obtaining Anne McCaffrey’s college records, Stuart Hall in Staunton, Virginia, for sending me Anne McCaf- frey’s file, Mrs. Nancy Brown at Montclair High School for help in obtaining high school records, the New York Public Library for sending me a copy of Anne McCaffrey’s undergraduate thesis, and Princeton University for sending me H. Wright Johnson’s thesis. Keith Stokes supplied the photographs from the Grand Master Ceremony. At University Press of Mississippi, Seetha Srini- vasan provided much needed enthusiasm and commitment to this project. Walter Biggins, Anne Stascavage, and Karen John- son were also extremely helpful and professional in the editing

Acknowledgments

process. My thanks to a very generous and insightful Jane Dona- werth who made a number of useful suggestions.

The work of many years, this biography has benefited from the critical insights of a number of colleagues in my writing groups. Angeletta Gourdine has been a mainstay, and her own work and standards continue to provide me with inspiration. Rosan Jordan, Frank de Caro, Carolyn Ware, Sharon Weltman, Jennifer Jones, and Susannah Monta all read portions of the book and supplied helpful advice. Geoff Clayton, Rachel Kahn-Fogel, and Joe Ross have been good friends and stalwart supporters of this project. Keith Kelleman bought me a trilogy of Anne McCaffrey novels in 1983, thus starting the journey to this biography.

My two Louisiana State University Chancellor’s Future Lead- ers in Research, Erin Jackson and Daniel Devillier, provided in- valuable research assistance. Erin was there at the beginning, and Daniel at the very end. My grateful thanks to both of them. A sab- batical in 2002 enabled me to begin the research for this biog- raphy, and a travel grant from the English Department provided funds for a research trip to Washington. The LSU Office of Re- search supported a crucial data-gathering trip to Ireland. I am grateful to the university, college, and department for their sup- port. My colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Of- fice have been supportive in ways they don’t even realize: I am par- ticularly grateful to Dean Guillermo Ferreyra and Russell B. Long Professor of Political Science Wayne Parent. Rebecca Caire, Lois Edmonds, Tina Fos, Mark Hovey, Brian Landry, Carolyn Landry, Bronwyn Lawrence, Brenda Macon, Ginger Martinez, Margaret Parker, Michelle Perrine, Tianna Powers, and Ann Whitmer have made administrative work easier and this book possible.

Finally, but most importantly, I want to acknowledge the love

and support of my family. My mother, Shirley Moore Roberts, in- sisted that we journey to meet Anne McCaffrey in 1996, and the rest is history. My sister Linda Roberts-Drake provided invalu- able help when I interviewed Virginia Kidd. My father, David Roberts, and sisters and brothers Gayle Roberts and Greg, Jenny, and Bryan Pisklo, Kim Roberts, David, Russell, and Leni Rob- erts, Richard, Laura, and Alison Roberts, Roger and Mary Ellen

Acknowledgments

Roberts and Jonathan Kohanim, Scott Roberts, Ian Drake, and Rev. Bill and Laura Ellen Wade also provided support. Dylan and Chelsea Wade and Darcy, Bobcat, and Blackjack offered a respite from work when needed. Brooke and Kiva Pierce com- pleted a bigger job than this book when they welcomed Amelia into the world. I look forward to Amelia’s reading Anne McCaf- frey’s works. My sister-in-law Marylane Koch, herself a writer, sup- plied endless encouragement, as did her husband, Robert Koch, and daughter, Meredith Koch. My thanks to Lottie Nash Wade, an educator for five decades and a wonderful role model. My hus- band, Leslie Wade, supplied a firm belief in the biography’s merit and completion. I owe him more than I can express.

Anne McCaffrey

Introduction

To millions of readers and her legion of fans, Anne McCaffrey is an icon, a magical presence, a writer whose books they devour, whose appearance at conventions they treasure, and whose fic- tion, Web site, and fan clubs dominate their lives. Literary critics know Anne McCaffrey as a member of a ground-breaking group of women science fiction writers who forever changed the field, humanizing it through their emphasis on women’s issues and plots. Librarians and book sellers know Anne McCaffrey as an extremely popular writer, one who is “review proof,” and whose name alone is enough to sell her latest book. Anne’s struggles and triumphs as a woman writer reveal much about women’s lives, particularly how to balance work and children, career and romance, and how to find meaning in a world that still values women more for their appearance than for their creativity. This biography will trace her development into a tremendously suc- cessful science fiction writer, and her impact on a genre that had, up to the mid-1970s, been dominated by men. The emphasis here is on this remarkable woman’s life, rather than on literary analysis of her works. And while this book would not have been possible without Anne McCaffrey’s full cooperation, and that of her family and friends, it is not an authorized biography; she neither asked for nor received any advance notice of the book’s contents. Based

on years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews, this bi- ography charts the life of a remarkable woman writer.

Although she writes about other worlds, Anne is very much grounded in a particular place, Dragonhold-Underhill, the estate she built in rural Ireland. Dragonhold-Underhill’s rural setting gives it a quality of timelessness and separation, and its many fea- tures reflect the essence of what the writer has created in her fic- tions and in her life. The forty-seven-acre estate is set in County Wicklow, known as “the Garden of Ireland” for its gently roll- ing hills and lush gardens. Dragonhold-Underhill is a comfort- able contemporary home, built in 1990 with every modern con- venience. The estate is secluded on a tiny, narrow country road crowded with dense, towering green shrubbery. The house blends into the landscape and appears deceptively small from the road; its two chimneys are the only clue to its extensive layout. Two large wrought-iron gates display the relief of a large bronze dragon. On one side, a white plaster wall topped with black wrought- iron spikes contains a wooden plaque announcing “Dragonhold- Underhill” in black letters.

To anyone familiar with her books, Dragonhold-Underhill

seems a modern version of the “Hold,” the central social and geo- graphical unit in Pern society. The Holds are communities orga- nized around a lord and his family, and based primarily on agri- culture or another practical activity. Just like the lord of a Hold in one of her Dragonriders of Pern books, Anne is the center of all the activity at Dragonhold. The estate exists because of her, and fans journey from all over the world to visit her there. The center of this activity is Anne herself. Paradoxically, the very quiet and private act of writing has lead to the hustle and bustle of a large enterprise, including a working horse stables, extensive gardens, and staff, friends, and family. Yet, for all that focus, she seems re- luctant to talk about herself. Only by persistent questioning can an interviewer succeed in getting Anne to finally talk about her- self. Despite the very tangible signs of her success as a writer, she downplays her own importance.

Anne’s modesty may be a pose of self-abnegation, but it seems

genuine. It is an attitude sharply at odds with her children and

friends, who are protective of her. They warn visitors (and this biographer) not to tire Anne out or ask troubling questions. To family and friends, Anne is a writer whose work and time must be shielded from those who would distract her or waste her time. In the local pub in K ilpedder, just a few miles from Dragonhold- Underhill, the local men pretend not to know who I am talking about when I ask if they know Anne. “Ian McCaffrey?” one asks. When I correct him, and explain where she lives, he says, “Oh, that crazy American with all the horses.”

Anne’s insularity is more than that of a landowner in rural Ire- land; it is also another way that she has re-created the isolation and sense of being an outsider that shapes so much of her fiction. As the middle-aged and now older woman who refuses to play by traditional gender roles, as, for example, the “crazy” American who built the first heated barn for horses in the area, Anne has remained outside the society where she lives. As a consequence, she has faced some hostility, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. At one point, there were even rumors that Anne was running a coven, so she bought a traditional witch’s broom to display out- side her home. She still owns that broom, displays it in her liv- ing room, and proudly tells visitors the story. But the surround- ing community has long since accepted her, and she has made many friends who make Dragonhold-Underhill a warm and wel- coming place.

Anne’s writing allowed her to escape a confining life, and she

has created a comfortable, extended, but very self-contained household in Ireland. The house shows that, despite Anne’s suc- cess, she is very practical, designing her home for use rather than for conspicuous display. Its open layout, large rooms, and high ceilings suggest an openness, as do the animals who wander freely about the house. Anne clearly cares a great deal for the animals who share her home. They go where they please, moving through the bustle of visitors and of kitchen work. When I ask to take her photograph, Anne takes her aptly named orange Maine Coon cat, Pumpkin, in her arms, unwilling to have her photo taken by herself. The only portrait of her in the house is an oil study that depicts her with her favorite horse, Mr. Ed. Her study opens up

with a large picture window to a horse pasture. No longer able to ride, she can still enjoy seeing her favorite creatures gambol in the fields. Her desk is positioned against a wall—if she looks to her right, she sees the outdoors, to the left is her study door, rarely shut, so she can see and hear what is going on in the rest of the house.

Although, when my mother and I visited Anne in June 1996, she could hardly walk because her arthritic hip (replaced only a month later) was giving her trouble, she swept into the hall- way, beaming a large delighted smile, as though we were long- lost friends whom she was eager to see. With a wave of her hand, she directed us to the dining room, offering us tea or coffee. Her speech is characteristically American, with only a few words or in- flections to remind you that she has lived in Ireland now for over thirty years. She has the immediate warmth that many Americans notice in the Irish: she puts you at ease. A friend and collaborator, Elizabeth Moon, recollected her first impression of Anne: “A blaz- ing fire in a big fireplace. Gracious, warm, kindly—and the loveli- est smile and laugh. I felt like I found another aunt. Oh, and that upright elegant look, too.”

During one of our interviews, Anne reminds me that while

writing is her life, it is not her only life. While every day is filled with mail or visits from fans, and she appreciates the contact, she does not expect or court adulation. Sitting in her dining room in rural Ireland, I am aware that after she made her for- tune in the 1980s, she could afford to live any where. Her choice to live far away from the hustle, bustle, and pressure of New York City, or any other major publishing venue, has helped her to stay grounded. As dragons provide a leavening sense of the corporeal for their riders in McCaffrey’s fiction, so horses have given Anne a grounding in the everyday world. In her words, “Horses help you keep your perspective. You have a lot of hard work keeping a horse, and there’s nothing like shoveling shit every morning, or getting tossed, to keep you slightly humble.”

As we sat down with drinks at her table, she showed me with delight a globe of Pern. As pleased as a child with a new toy, she pointed out the scientific detail of this representation, created by

astronomer Steven Beard, who often helps her with the science in her books. It had been an unexpected present from him, and she repeated a few times, “It was such a surprise!” Holding the globe in front of her, she beamed at me across her dining-room table, her green eyes reflecting the green of the land masses on the globe. “A whole world in my hands,” she said with a chuckle. The oddly shaped continents and the much larger expanse of blue sea reveal that it is an imaginary world she holds and controls and in which she is most comfortable. Where it echoes elements of Pern, Dragonhold-Underhill is another imaginary or dream world.

Like all writers, Anne transmutes the features of her life into art. Charting her life course reveals the frame from which she built her art. In many ways, her family’s story is the story of an American family: Irish immigrants to America make good. But her story twists and turns, with Anne herself ending up an im- migrant back to Ireland. In the motif of a journey, grounded in the story of her great-grandparents’ immigration and her own repatriation to Ireland, Anne found the fodder not only of her science fiction novels, but also of her Gothic novels. From her great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents, she also learned a family tradition of honesty and even rebellion in service of jus- tice. Anne’s passionate nature, as well as her desire to impress a high-achieving father from whom she was separated due to World War II, amplified the usual traumas of adolescence; she has never forgotten the emotions of this time, and one of the hallmarks of her novels is her ability to evoke in the reader the intense long- ings of adolescence. These longings are often satisfied by love by and for animals. Anne transformed this affection for animals into fictional creatures who have egalitarian relationships with humans: for example, the Dragonriders of Pern benefit from their dragons’ unconditional love and acceptance and telepathic communication. Anne’s very basic need for love and connection, as well as respect, shapes her fictional worlds. At the same time, her innate instinct to perform, perhaps also a part of her Irish heritage, but also very much a part of her nature, appears in her literary creation of “Talents.” Many of her characters have spe- cial skills, such as singing or second sight, that she develops in

her fictions into scientifically plausible qualities. In this regard, Anne can be said to have performed the quintessentially science fiction act of extrapolation, taking an idea—of an animal friend or the power of a singer’s voice—and developing it along a con- tinuum.

Her success as a writer can be measured not only by her sales, but also by her fans’ devotion to her and to the worlds she has cre- ated. While the stereotype of a best-selling author might be the egotistical, solitary creature, isolating herself from human contact to write imaginary worlds, Anne’s life challenges this idea: she seems to thrive on a large, dependent household. This arrange- ment repeats her family life as a child, with a housekeeper and a grandmother, and her sharing a large mansion on Long Island with another couple and their children and pets in the late 1960s. Like most women, Anne defines herself in relation to others: in her unpublished autobiography, a sketch of about fifty pages, she begins by listing all the people who have influenced her, in- cluding her parents, teachers, other science fiction writers, and her agents. She even gives credit to her ex-husband, despite an ac- rimonious divorce: “He didn’t believe what I wrote had any merit: I had to prove it all to him. Often that sort of negative response is even more instrumental to success than positive support.” It is worth noting here that even decades after their divorce Anne still wants to give her ex-husband some credit.

There is much truth to what Anne says—that a writer’s career

is shaped by the people she encounters, especially those whose ap- proval she seeks. Paradoxically, in seeking to gain approval from a demanding father and an unsupportive husband, Anne ended up instead with the uncritical affection of millions of readers. Shadowing Anne at Dragoncon (a science fiction convention) a few years ago, I witnessed her interactions with fans. Waiting in line for hours, hoping to get their books (or stuffed dragons, programs, or badges) signed by their favorite author, were a thin twelve-year-old girl in gold-rimmed granny glasses and a large, burly man with a shaved head, his big muscles encased in black leather pants and vest. Holding out a silver chain-mail bracelet, the man placed the bracelet on Anne’s wrist saying, “I made this

for you.” A young woman with long, dark hair, black jeans, and numerous body piercings bounded up to Anne and cried, “I loved dragons so much I had one tattooed on my back. That’s how much you have influenced me.” With tears in her eyes, another woman writer, Laura Curtis, stopped signing her own books to come over and give Anne a big hug. “Thank you for writing Dragon- flight. I started writing because of your books,” she declared. This kind of devotion has fueled Anne’s tremendously successful writ- ing career, and along the way she has affected not only innumer- able readers, but also the genre.

This adoration, too, comes with a cost, as Anne’s son, Todd, and daughter, Georgeanne (Gigi to family and friends), also writ- ers, struggle to protect their mother at conventions and other public events. Anne herself acknowledges how draining such ad- miration can be, and she wears a protective crystal under her shirt when she makes public appearances, “to absorb the energy” of her fans’ demands. The tremendous pressure on her to write more books, especially more books set on Pern, weighs on her. In addition to the fans’ hunger for more stories, Anne still has prac- tical considerations for writing: no longer worried about surviv- ing, she now has hefty bills and many people dependent on her. Generous to a fault, she supports her children, friends who have fallen on hard times, a niece, staff people, even friends from New Orleans who had to evacuate due to Hurricane Katrina.

One of the twentieth century’s best-loved and most widely

read writers, Anne has made immense contributions to fiction. In 1968, she was the first woman to win both the Hugo (an award bestowed annually at the World Science Fiction Convention) and the Nebula (awarded annually by the Science Fiction Writers of America), the genre’s most prestigious awards. In 1978, she be- came the first science fiction writer to have a book on the New York Times best-seller list. In 1999, the American Library Association recognized her work with the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Anne has also collected the Dit- mar Award (Australia), the Gandalf Award, and the Streza (the European Science Fiction Convention Award). In 2005, she was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writ-

ers of America, an honor bestowed only on twenty-two other writ- ers, of whom just two are women. In 2006, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Her books have been translated into fourteen languages and have sold more than twelve million copies. These distinctions and statistics are important because she was a leader in the feminist revolution in science fiction, and she also focused on female protagonists and women’s issues—child rearing, for example—at a time when strong women were largely absent from the genre. Sarah Lefanu, the author of one of the first books on women and science fiction, Feminism and Science Fic- tion, praises Anne’s contributions: “It is great to have Anne’s girls and women with their skills and strengths and emotions.”

One of the most popular writers of a group of women who began publishing science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, Anne came to writing later than her peers and was older than many of the other famous science fiction writers who began publishing in those decades: Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ, among oth- ers. And also unlike those writers, Anne faced the struggle of try- ing to support herself and three children by her writing. Yet like them, Anne became an award-winning writer who helped femi- nize the genre. Anne brought great emotional depth to her writ- ing. While not as overtly political as Russ or Le Guin, Anne never- theless challenged traditional ideas about women and science and women as heroes. Her novels’ strong emotional appeal can be traced to Anne’s own preoccupations and concerns as a member of a generation who came of age during World War II. Disap- pointed by the opportunities available to her as a highly educated and intelligent young woman, she gravitated to science fiction for the alternatives it offered to an unsatisfactory real world. But she found limited roles for women in the pulp magazines she read, and she consciously wrote her first novel, Restoree, “as a tongue-in- cheek protest, utilizing as many of the standard ‘thud and blun- der’ clichés as possible with one new twist—the heroine was the viewpoint character and she is always Johanna on the spot.”

Like that of other women science fiction writers, Anne’s work

champions strong female characters, and she positions women in worlds where they have greater opportunities than in the real

world. As literary critic Jane Donawerth notes, these women, in- cluding Anne, moved the figure of woman as alien in science fic- tion “from margin to center.” At the time Anne began writing, feminist anthropologist Sherry Ortner, in a famous essay, “Is Fe- male to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” (1972), analyzed how women’s association with nature was presented as a reason for women’s subordination. Taking women’s stereotypical associa- tion with the natural world, Anne and a number of other women science fiction writers inverted this association, making it into something positive, a strength for their female characters. Anne’s dragons, for example, are genetically engineered, telepathic crea- tures that bond with their humans. The dragons enable humans to live on Pern, providing an alternative to machine transporta- tion and a way for the colonists to fight a life-threatening spore. In making dragons, that had heretofore been featured primarily as evil beasts, into attractive companions, Anne reshaped our cultural image of them. Significantly, she did so in a structure in which queen dragons were the species’ leaders. Bonding with female humans, the dragons enable women on Pern to assume positions of leadership; and, as Jane Donawerth explains, “the dragons offer an alternative model for relationship,” one that is more positive than traditional masculine domination of women. Similarly, Vonda McIntyre’s eponymous character Dreamsnake, for example, is a natural healer who uses genetically altered snakes to cure illness. There are many other instances of femi- nist science fiction writers who reclaim animals as special partners with women, from Joan Slonczewski to Octavia Butler, but Anne was one of the first, and her Dragonriders of Pern are surely one of the most enduring and most popular of such creations.

A number of women science fiction writers use strong female

protagonists whose position as outsiders enables them to connect not only with other beings, but also with other humans. Again Donawerth describes a pattern central to Anne’s novels: “the hero intuits the intelligence of another life form” and “establish[es] communication with the aliens before ‘developers’ destroy them and their planets.” Donawerth cites Dinosaur Planet Survivors as a prime example.

In Anne’s case, her sense of her family as being different, and herself more so, contributed to her sense of sympathy for out- siders and a strong desire that such characters should eventually be appreciated and rewarded for their difference. Her parents, for example, stood out in her suburban New Jersey hometown by their level of education and by their odd habits. Anne’s fa- ther marched the children in military formations, keeping in practice for the second world war he knew would come, and her mother took the children out of school to see movies. Both par- ents believed in second sight, or premonitions, and they have family stories of such experiences. So it is no wonder that Anne helped popularize the mental powers, such as telepathy or teleki- nesis, known as psionic powers, that have become one of science fiction’s mainstays. Anne’s creation of characters with psionic talents in her Tower and Hive series, or powerful voices, as in the Crystal Singer series, depicts misfits who become valuable to their societies and who find self-worth in their usefulness through their special powers. The short story that later developed into the Tower and Hive series reveals Anne’s view on such qualities: it is entitled “A Womanly Talent.”

Her first novel, Restoree, was a space gothic romance, a new

hybrid that few reviewers recognized. Anne wrote the novel be- cause, she said, “After seven years of voracious reading in the field, I’d had it up to the eyeteeth with vapid women.” Anne’s willingness to write about love, sex, and emotion became her fic- tion’s identifying characteristic. As she later explained, “Emo- tional content and personal involvement are expected in stories by me. In fact, I have had stories returned to me by editors because they lacked these elements.” Anne sees these elements as essen- tial to the transformation of the genre during her writing ca- reer: “With the injection of emotional involvement, a sexual jolt to the Romance and Glamour, science fiction rose out of pulp and into literature.” While there may be other formulations of science fiction’s rise to respectability, Anne and other women sci- ence fiction writers undoubtedly helped the genre achieve more acclaim through their insistence on characterization and atten- tion to writing style. In the early twenty-first century, we may

minimize the extent of this transformation of science fiction, but Justine Larbalestier, who has written an in-depth study of early twentieth-century science fiction, comments that, after read- ing through fifty years of pulp science fiction, “it became much easier to understand what it was that Russ and Wood and McCaf- frey were reacting to.” Larbalestier found the misogyny of maga- zine science fiction overwhelming.

Women science fiction writers often depict the integration and acceptance of feminine values in other societies with a very strong, if implicit, message about the relevance of the feminine in the real world. Dismissed as “diaper copy” in the 1960s, the fiction that Anne and other writers published brought feminine values such as mothering into science fiction. Judith Merril, a strong supporter of Anne’s work and an influential editor as well as a writer, in 1947 published a famous story, “That Only a Mother,” about a father’s and mother’s very different reactions to a child’s radiation-induced deformities. But Anne’s work moves beyond conventional gender roles (there are very few diapers in her fic- tions) to deal with the emotional needs of girls and women. Ex- cluded herself from any active role in World War II, while her brothers and father were off fighting, Anne depicts female char- acters who are successful combatants and strategists in her Dragon- riders of Pern series, where male and female Dragonriders battle the dreaded Thread, and in the Tower and Hive series, where hu- mans with special psionic talents combat an utterly alien species who threatens the existence of humanity, among many other ex- amples.

Anne repeatedly depicts outcast characters who radically change

their circumstances by discovering they have a special skill. Com- municating with dragons, singing crystal, or having psionic pow- ers, all may function as stand-ins for what really happened in her life: she felt abandoned as an outsider as a young girl at camp and as a young woman exiled to a southern boarding school, and she lived through a desperate and depressing life of dependency on an abusive husband. Just as Mary Shelley’s miscarriages in- fluenced her creation of the novel Frankenstein, so Anne McCaf- frey’s relationships affected what she depicts in her science fiction

worlds. Like all writers, I suspected, and this biography confirms, that Anne lived a life that shaped her writing, though Anne’s traumas were transformed in her writing.

As soon as I met Anne, I knew I wanted to write her biography. The biographical chapter I had written for my critical study, pub- lished in1996, only made me want to know more; the bare out- lines of her life hinted at a depth that just could not be covered in one brief chapter. Though her son Todd had published a brief memoir of his mother, Dragonholder, when I pointed out that it would be well augmented by a traditional biography, she granted me permission. Serious setbacks with her health, including a heart attack and a minor stroke, made McCaffrey realize her own writing time might be limited. She wanted to spend her time with fiction, not the more painful subjects that would emerge from dealing with her life history. Finally, in 2000, Anne gave permis- sion for the first extended interview for this biography. She did not ask to see the manuscript before its publication or put any person or subject off limits. Her full cooperation in opening her records and papers to me made this biography possible, and I am grateful to her for her understanding the importance of full ac- cess to write a proper biography.

Licensed by my role as biographer, then, I plied her with ques-

tions about her life. She deflected the questions from her life to that of her daughter and brother, who had both faced and con- quered serious, life-altering illnesses. Anne’s unwillingness to talk about herself reveals her unease with her fame and her subscrip- tion, even as a very successful writer, to the convention of femi- ninity that requires women to minimize their own struggles to focus on people who have really suffered. She told me that she hasn’t even read the Young Adult biography of her, Anne McCaf- frey: Science Fiction Storyteller, written by Martha Trachtenberg, be- cause, in her words, “I bore myself.” But her life has been any- thing but boring.

A strong and determined woman herself, Anne creates and re- creates her fictions in part by drawing on her own life, and even in a brief sketch her biography reveals a fascinating and complex figure: a beautiful young girl too smart to fit into a traditional

gender role in high school; a restless young mother who wanted to write; an American and an expatriate writer who became an Irish citizen; an equestrian and animal lover who dreamed of fantasy worlds with perfect relationships between humans and beasts; a wife trapped in an unhappy marriage just as the wom- en’s movement took hold.

After I met Anne, I began to see in her the qualities of her many heroines: Helva’s passion, Lessa’s autonomy and fearless- ness, Nimisha’s intrepidity, the Rowan’s housemotherliness, Master- harper Robinton’s skill with people and love of life. In a 1999 visit to New Orleans, the author’s regal side emerged, a startling con- trast to her Dragonhold persona. My mother and I met her at the elegant Antoine’s Restaurant in the French Quarter for dinner, and Anne was every inch a grande dame, charming and elegant. Then a few years later at Dragoncon, a science fiction conven- tion, I saw her use all these skills to charm, negotiate, and sur- vive a four-day event in which she was bombarded by fans, par- ticipated in panel discussions, and generally was on display. What I gradually began to see was the complex, contradictory, and en- gaging personality that had generated the many diverse charac- ters she created.

Anne had been the guest of honor at Dragoncon in 1989, and

her presence was a major reason the attendance doubled to over three thousand. She also attended the convention in 1999, trav- eling there briefly from New Orleans, where she had received the lifetime literary achievement award from the American Library Association. In the intervening years, Dragoncon had exploded into a media con, emphasizing comics, gaming, and film more than print and expanding to over twenty thousand attendees. Yet a “Pern Track,” named for McCaffrey’s most popular world, con- tinued to be a mainstay and an annual event for many members of the more than two hundred McCaffrey fan clubs. Anne’s deci- sion to appear at Dragoncon 2003 was her public statement that, despite her heart attack, stroke, and a number of debilitating falls, she was still very much alive and kicking. She also wanted to promote her first new Pern book in three years, Dragon’s Kin, which she coauthored with her son Todd. In 2002, she had sent

Todd to Dragoncon to represent her; in 2003, they were there as a team, with Anne loudly proclaiming Todd and her daughter, Gigi, who was back in Ireland, the heirs to her fictional worlds. It was an emotional handing over of the kingdom (or rather, kingdoms, since Anne has created a number of worlds besides Pern).

As Todd was explaining the changes they had made in the first draft of Dragon’s Kin, a dedicated fan and helper, Lea Day, came in with a cart stacked with books for Anne and Todd to sign. Todd grabbed a handful and began signing the ones his mother had already signed. Lea complimented Anne but explained that she thought Anne was too nice. McCaffrey admitted, “I feel like I am fraudulent and I don’t think what I do is all that great.” Todd burst in, “That’s because you had a shit father.” And McCaffrey agreed, saying, “That’s a part of it,” but she then turned the conversation to the book she was signing for a coffee expert who had helped her with the Freedom series. While the private Anne is open, she also clearly has subjects she would prefer not to discuss.

The wide-ranging discussion and bustling room reminded me of the kitchen table at Dragonhold-Underhill, where similar con- versations had taken place during each of my visits. I suddenly realized that it wasn’t the place, but Anne herself who created an exciting environment wherever she was. Dragonhold, then, wasn’t so much a physical place, but a world that Anne carried with her. It is this world view that she creates in her books—a place where ideas matter, where women and men are equal, where hard work can lead to success, worlds, in short, that are better than what we have today. Yet, there are shortcomings even in McCaffrey’s imagi- nary worlds, where heroines like Moreta die saving others, where loss of life, due to the lack of technology and the harsh conditions on Pern, is common. Anne’s own deep feelings of loss when her father and then mother died, when her marriage ended, when a love affair concluded, all fuel her fictions, which many readers unashamedly admit make them cry.

As she lived her own life, Anne also imagined alternatives to

her difficult times and wrote her joys and pleasures into her char- acters’ lives. She drew on her family history and her ethnic heri- tage to create alien worlds. When she lost a family member, when

her marriage disintegrated, she drew on the same creative pow- ers to “rewrite” her own life. Yet she has never lost sight of the “dragons” of earlier years, her feelings of insecurity as an adoles- cent, her frustrations at not being able to sing as she wanted or write as she wanted, the end of her marriage, her emigration, her tumultuous love affairs.

Though she has tamed them—as Lessa Impressed tamed her queen dragon or Menolly tamed a clutch of fire lizards—Anne’s emotions, passion, and energy remain near the surface. Her cour- age in beginning her own life again, in wrestling with her own private dragons, helped her imagine and create characters who could do the same. The only formidable dragons in evidence at Dragonhold-Underhill are artistic representations on her gates and interior walls. Just as Anne turned dragons from feared mon- sters into humans’ best and most intimate friends, she has taken the joys and travails of her life and turned them into art. It is this transformation that this biography will explore, beginning with her family heritage and following her to the Grand Master Award Ceremony in 2005.

chapter 1

An Irish Family Heritage

A family trait—bucking the system.

—Anne McCaffrey, e-mail

From a family cauldron of Irish heritage and a tradition of iconoclastic beliefs and behavior emerged a wild child who was a loner. Anne McCaffrey’s family background, explored in this chap- ter, provided much of the raw material that would, decades later, be transformed into science fiction. Like most families, Anne’s provided contradictory experiences for her, but she always had a sense of being loved and being special. Even as a very young child, Anne was aware that she had family qualities and traditions against which she would be measured.

Her Irish family heritage, her unusual parents, and her broth- ers provided her with a strong sense of identity. The qualities that were needed to produce her writing began in her family traditions. Anne’s Irish heritage encouraged storytelling and a trust in psychic power. As a middle child and the only daughter, she struggled to create an identity that would impress her father. She learned about military discipline and structure from her fa- ther and about using writing to deal with her emotions from her mother, while her grandparents’ and her parents’ distrust of con- formity and their belief in “bucking the system” allowed her to create heroines who did the same. Anne felt that she was differ- ent in some way, but when she was a child, this sense of difference did not present the problems that it would for her in adolescence. A happy and well-loved child, she acquired a sturdy sense of self

from her family. That self-image incorporated the freedom to be different, the importance of excelling at something, and the de- termination to succeed, even at a cost. These qualities, along with boisterousness and a belief in psychic phenomena, would at first cause Anne trouble, but those same traits would also enable her, years later, to become a successful author.

Anne’s sense of her Irish American heritage came mainly from her grandfather McCaffrey and her grandmother McElroy (née McCann), her other grandparents having died before she had a chance to know them. Three of her four grandparents were Irish American in a time and place, nineteenth-century Boston, when bias against the Irish was common. In the middle of the nineteenth century, job ads placed in the newspapers often read “Help Wanted: Irish need not apply.” Requests for domestic ser- vants advised that only “Protestant foreigners” would be consid- ered. Anne’s grandparents and parents lived through the NINA (no Irish need apply) times, and they were bitter about the ram- pant prejudice. While the blatant discrimination would disappear later in the twentieth century, at the beginning of it, the Irish in Boston were “still concentrated in low-status, blue-collar jobs.” As they struggled to survive economically amidst virulent anti- Irish prejudice, her grandparents displayed patient resistance, determination, and hope. Anne’s grandfathers were typical Irish Americans, one working as a policeman and a boat purser, the other as a journeyman engraver. However, they wanted more for their children than secure but dead-end jobs. Most Irish Ameri- cans remained a part of the working class usually for a second and third generation, but Anne’s grandparents succeeded in pushing her parents into the upper middle class by means of education.

The one exception to the family Irishness was grandfather

McCaffrey’s wife, but Anne never knew her. Selina died before Anne McCaffrey was born in 1926, but she has pictures of her; each one has her tall grandfather seated to minimize her grand- mother’s shortness. They had three daughters and a son, George Herbert, who became Anne McCaffrey’s father. A photographic portrait of Anne’s grandfather George Hugh, dated 1882, was the first picture he ever had taken. The print shows him in his State

of Massachusetts military uniform, tall and thin with large hands, standing erect and unsmiling. A picture of him as an elderly man reveals a shock of white hair, big bushy eyebrows, a large unruly mustache, and a severe expression. There are no photographs of him holding his grandchildren, and Anne doesn’t remember ever playing with him.

She was afraid of him. He towered over her, his large bristly mustache protruding toward her, and he was gruff. His house was scary, with enormous dark furniture. It smelled funny. He was her grandfather and a cop. Anne knew that everyone walked carefully around her grandfather McCaffrey: “My grandfather McCaffrey was an imposing man—I was scared stiff of him.” While he was not particularly prosperous, he kept a home that seemed large and spacious to young Anne: “The old house in Boston, Roxbury, was not far from where my cousins, Rita and Junni, lived. It was what was known as a railroad house, one room leading into the next. Two stories, clapboard and quite spacious, though dark with huge heavy furniture which scared me for some reason. It had been a farmhouse before the city closed around it.” When Anne was a young girl, until she was eleven, she spent a lot of time at her grandfather’s. Because her father was doing doctoral research in Boston, the family frequently visited Grandfather McCaffrey in a nearby Boston enclave, 285 Thornton Street, West Roxbury. Her grandfather’s home was a place where children were to be seen, not heard, but Anne and her wild cousin Tony McElroy would run madly around the house, playing hide-and-seek and other games while the adults sat and talked. Anne enjoyed playing with her cousins and traveling with her father, but she dreaded encounters with her formidable grandfather.

While young Anne found her grandfather remote and unaffec-

tionate, she also learned to respect him for his toughness and his uncompromising honesty. Family stories about her grandfather’s integrity taught her values that she internalized, values that in later years informed her creative work. Over the years, Anne re- peatedly heard stories of her grandfather’s struggles with au- thority. He didn’t relate these to his granddaughter himself, but her father would talk to her about the family on the long drive

from New Jersey to Boston. From these stories, Anne learned the importance of showing tolerance toward others, even when there was a price to pay. Her grandfather never advanced in the Boston police force because he refused to misuse his power. In those days many Irish Americans stuck together, reinforcing their group identity by harassing newer immigrants of other nationali- ties and showing favoritism toward other Irish Americans, no mat- ter their conduct. George Hugh abhorred such discrimination.

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Bostonians saw a wave of increased hostility be- tween the older immigrants, the Irish, and the newer Jewish refu- gees. Historian Dennis Ryan documents that in Boston, “Irish po- licemen in the early 1900s harassed Jewish peddlers and grocers, charging them with violation of the blue laws, and disrupted their weddings on the pretext that unionized musicians violated city or- dinances prohibiting work on Sunday.” In answer to this pattern of persecution, Anne’s grandfather not only enforced the laws equally on his beat on Salem Street, but also objected to the racial and cultural bias at the core of such discrimination. By treating the Jewish merchants as equals under the law, George Hugh broke with most of his colleagues and countrymen, a truly extraordinary and brave action. “No one persecuted anyone on George McCaf- frey’s beat,” Anne boasts today, echoing her father’s words many years ago. She also learned that virtue often reaps unexpected re- wards. As a show of gratitude for George Hugh McCaffrey’s fair treatment, Jewish merchants (among them prominent shoemak- ers named Wolf and Sandler and a few tailors) endowed a scholar- ship to send Anne’s father, George Herbert McCaffrey, to the elite Roxbury Latin Grammar School. He took full advantage of the opportunity, applying himself and excelling academically, even- tually obtaining a scholarship to Harvard. George Hugh’s “buck- ing the system,” then, worked to his son’s advantage in ways no one could have anticipated.

From the stories told about Grandfather McCaffrey, Anne also

learned the virtue of being confident and assertive, of standing up for what she believed in, even against overwhelming odds. She remembers, “Grandfather, as a police officer, had a high integrity,

and got under the skin of some of the politicians with various of his complaints.” Another story she often heard at her grand- father’s house was the one about how he arrested Honey Fitz- gerald, an influential Irish American politician, for electioneering. Honey Fitzgerald later founded an influential Irish American po- litical dynasty through his daughter Rose, who married Joseph P. Kennedy. Fitzgerald had been lobbying hard too close to a poll- ing booth in violation of election laws, and George Hugh ar- rested him. That George Hugh had the evidence and made the charge stick made the experience all the more galling for Fitz- gerald, and likewise gratifying to Anne’s grandfather. The McCaf- freys often told the story. It’s “a family trait—bucking the system,” she says. “My father did it as well, so did my brother and so has my older son.” Certainly it is a trait that Anne shares and values enough to recreate in many of her fictional characters: Lessa in Dragonflight and Killashandra in Crystal Singer, for example. And as happened in her family, these characters usually find an un- expected reward.

Her grandfather, as she recalls, “had also been a purser on the

Boston-Providence ferry boat, and I remember being taken on that ride with my brothers and my cousin. There is still, I think, a photo of us, taken while in a lifeboat.” In the photograph, all four children look delighted to be in the lifeboat, attached to the side of the ferry. Only three years old, Anne adventurously leans over the side, an enormous smile lighting her face.

After her father finished his doctorate, the family traveled less often to Boston, especially after 1938, the year her grandfather died. Although he had not been ill, George Herbert McCaffrey decided he knew without a doubt the day he was dying. He sum- moned a priest to give him the last rites and promptly expired. His dominant personality, even in death, impressed Anne tre- mendously. Grandfather McCaffrey’s prescience about his death gave impetus to a family belief in second sight or mental powers, a belief common in Ireland and among Irish Americans. Grand- father’s foreknowledge of his own death became the marker for a special gift running in Anne’s family.

Anne’s maternal grandmother and her stories and beliefs also

had a profound impact on Anne’s life. Like her paternal grand- mother, her maternal grandfather died before Anne was born, and Grandmother McElroy spent summers with her son John in Winthrop, Massachusetts, but she lived the rest of the year with Anne’s family. Perhaps because she was financially dependent on her children (and resented it), Grandmother McElroy was fiercely independent in her social and political views.

Her grandmother McElroy knew how to make wonderful taffy—if she was in a good mood and inclined to make it. Anne was supposed to help her in the kitchen, but when she did, grand- mother McElroy would criticize her father, and, just as bad, she would scold Anne for her character flaws. Anne thought she was a witch. A short woman, she had a long oval face, promi- nent nose, determined chin, and the beautiful white hair that she passed on to her daughter and granddaughter. Despite Grand- mother McElroy’s reputation for being stern, family photographs show her smiling at her grandchildren. Grandmother McElroy stressed her family’s reputation and accomplishments to her grand- children. Katie McCann McElroy was full of stories about the McCann family’s romantic and impressive past. Katie’s grand- mother (Anne’s great-great grandmother) had been educated at a private convent school in County Wexford, Ireland. An educa- tion like that in early nineteenth-century Ireland signals that the McCann family had once been Irish gentry. While she and her husband had even less money than the McCaffreys, her grand- mother’s social standards were high, due in large part to her family’s past. Not only had Anne’s great-great-grandmother at- tended private school in Ireland, but also her great-grandfather had attended college. So while Anne’s father was not only a col- lege graduate but eventually received a doctorate, Anne’s grand- mother was not much impressed.

Because of her grandmother, Anne McCaffrey learned to value

education and once again, independence. Katie McCann had been a grade-school teacher, and she was proud of it, but she was even prouder of her parents and grandparents. She talked a lot about her father, who had been “a hedgerow teacher, a Black- rock College student who escaped being jailed by the British for

teaching Catholics” during the Protestant ascendancy in the early nineteenth century. Barred from government and military em- ployment and from careers in the law, Irish Catholics of that era were also forbidden to educate their children, except in religious schools that promoted Anglicanism. Like the priests who surrep- titiously offered Mass, however, many teachers educated Catho- lics outside the law, though they faced imprisonment for doing so. Catholic Irish Americans of her grandmother’s age valued education so highly because it was a privilege that had been de- nied them. After his Irish “school” was discovered, Anne’s mater- nal great-grandfather traveled first to Roseneath, Scotland, and from there emigrated to the United States. His McCann brothers, Anne’s great-uncles, were also rebels, union organizers working in the Pennsylvania coal fields. In an unpublished essay, she de- scribes them with pride as “Molly Malloys,” as Irish American la- bor organizers were known. Risking their lives to organize work- ers to fight for better conditions and pay, her great-uncles were heroes to young Anne. The exploits of her great-grandfather and his brothers find new expression in her characters, those who fre- quently resist occupying forces (as in the Doona and Freedom se- ries). In Anne’s novels, too, emigration often appears as a road to a better life, except that in her fiction, her characters emigrate to other planets, not countries. The positive side of hearing about immigration in her youth affected her imagination. It also un- doubtedly made it easier for Anne herself to immigrate back to her family’s original homeland decades later.

This is not to say that she admired everything about her grand-

mother. Anne’s great-grandfather McCann’s staunch Catholicism mutated to something less admirable in Katie McCann McElroy’s beliefs. Judgmental and critical, she listened to the radio broad- casts of Father Coughlin, an ultraconservative and anti-Semitic priest. Coughlin opposed the involvement of the United States in European affairs, including World War II, while Anne’s father was convinced that the United States would have to enter the war. Anne rejected Grandmother’s McElroy’s religious and political beliefs, choosing to side with her beloved father. If this wasn’t enough to alienate her from her grandmother, Grandmother McEl-

roy would commandeer the radio to listen to Coughlin when Anne and her brothers wanted to listen to the Lone Ranger.

While Anne rejected her grandmother’s political beliefs and dogmatism, she did learn from her the joys of cooking. A cos- seted youngest daughter, Katie McCann had not been allowed to cook before she married. She and her husband were never pros- perous enough to hire kitchen help. Katie found not knowing cooking such a handicap she was determined that her daughter and granddaughter would never suffer. Like her mother, Anne grew up learning how to make meals. She says, “I cannot remem- ber NOT knowing how to cook. Grandmother made Irish potato pancakes (from leftover mashed ones) and also was a dab hand [with] molasses taffy, the making of which appealed to all us kids when we could talk grandmother into concocting it. Lamb stew was also a favorite of hers which I learned to make early in my life. I think those two Irish dishes were the last Irish in her ca- pacity. She always made jellies and preserves which I had to help her with. An atavistic sense of providing for the bad season which still plagues me.” A fear of imminent catastrophe is understand- able in the daughter of an Irish family driven to the New World by the Famine. One of Anne’s most famous creations, the mycor- rhizoid spore, called Thread, that falls periodically on Pern, dis- locates populations and destroys all organic life. Thread surely draws on Anne’s awareness of the “late blight disease” that caused potato famine and an Irish diaspora. Making and preserving food in her life and fiction reflects a need to prepare for difficult times, but all who have eaten at Anne’s table agree she has turned this drive into art.

Mary T. Brizzi was one of the first critics to note the emphasis

on food in her fiction, explaining that in McCaffrey’s novels, “Bad food is a disgrace or a warning. . . . Good food is evidence of thrift, good deeds, and industry.” Anne has edited two cookbooks, Cooking Out of This World and Serve It Forth, and is known for her own excellent cooking, especially her pies. Anne believes that her grandmother passed on not only her cooking skills, but also a tendency to second sight, which ran in Anne’s father’s family. Katie’s dead sister (also named Anne) appeared to her, and when

a somewhat frightened Grandmother McElroy asked her sister what heaven was like, her sister replied that “it would do.” Unfor- tunately, second sight did not protect Anne’s grandmother from financial misfortune and bitterness. Her husband, Anne’s grand- father, had saved five thousand dollars, an impressive sum in the year he proposed to Katie McCann, Anne’s grandmother. She re- fused him, and James McElroy then spent a year on Mississippi River steamboats, gambling away his savings. He returned home and proposed again. This time he was accepted, but told no one he’d lost his fortune. This legend of financial disappointment, which had lifelong consequences for the McElroys, may explain some of Katie McElroy’s bitter temper. As for Anne, the way she reacted to her grandmother’s sharpness was with the determina- tion not to be so unpleasant. Indeed, a bad temper is often a sign of an evil character in Anne’s novels.

Grandfather McElroy died before Anne could remember him,

but she respects him as the source of the family’s artistic talent. According to family accounts, Anne’s mother and brother inher- ited their ability to draw from him; he was a journeyman printer and an engraver in New York and Pennsylvania. Both Anne and her brother Kevin’s widow, Marcia, still own copies of an engrav- ing of his, of a ship in a storm-tossed sea. She also treasures a spoon and small bronze pitcher he crafted. More significantly, Anne’s musical interests and talent, which are repeatedly reflected in her books, seem to be descended from Grandfather McElroy’s other art, skill with a fiddle. He was a characteristically Irish mu- sical performer.

Although they were another generation removed from Ire- land, Anne’s parents, too, manifested the passion, dramatic flair, love of storytelling, and respect for extrasensory powers that are often associated with the Irish. Anne loved both her parents, but she was always aware that her family wasn’t quite normal. Her parents, she says, failed to fit in suburban America not because of their Irish ethnicity, but because of their idiosyncrasies. Her mother scribbled stories; her father maintained his military sta- tus after the war ended; neither parent attended church, and they

traveled all over the world when few other middle-class couples went for extensive international travel.

Anne McCaffrey’s parents were remarkable people and crucial influences on her writing. She has said: “If I were asked to choose which influence was the most important in my life, I’d have to an- swer that it was my parents. Neither fit the patterns of style and behavior in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s for our middle-class status.” Her father, who had fought during World War I, kept up his army reserve commission. He would call his children using his “pa- rade ground voice,” and after 1938 he practiced his command voice by having his children march up and down their driveway. It is a measure of her love for her father and her own quirkiness that after recounting this story of her father having his children march, she is still unsure why her family was seen as strange. Anne remembers that the neighbor children thought that her parents were “different though I never sussed out [sic] why. Except that Dad was a Harvard graduate [and PhD] and mother was taking courses at the local Teacher’s College which struck a lot of kids as ‘odd.’”

In the 1930s and 1940s, the McCaffreys’ educational interests

and attainments were unusual. In 1936, according to the 1939 Sta- tistical Abstract, only 2,768 doctoral degrees were awarded in the United States, when the country’s total adult population was ap- proximately 75 million. Only 270,000 women attended college in that year, out of an adult female population of approximately 37 million. Yet perhaps Anne’s parents’ most distinguishing quality was a willingness to embrace difference. In her words, “My par- ents insisted on our tolerance for others and were exception- ally broad-minded about race, creed AND color.” Although they considered themselves Catholic, her parents did not attend Mass regularly. At their grandmother’s insistence, Anne says that she and her brothers “were sent off for Mass every Sunday and holy day but [she] never attended with [her] parents.” Her parents’ behavior and what the Catholic Church taught were at variance, so she chose to follow her parents’ example: “I learned more of tolerance and understanding from my parents’ attitudes toward

things than I did from church teaching which . . . I could ignore.” Her parents had other distinctive qualities. For example, Anne’s father was a fanatical gardener, and she remembers with fondness the family’s annual neighborhood Tulip Party, after which each lady left with a dozen tulips from their thousands of tulips. She remembers that, after her brother Hugh broke his arm, her father encouraged them all to play cards every Sunday and included the neighborhood children in their games. The exercise of hand and eye in a card game called Multiple Canfield improved Hugh’s co- ordination, but playing cards on a Sunday in suburban New Jersey in the 1930s caused comment among the neighbors.

Anne has modeled many of her characters’ relationships on her parents—two extraordinary, feisty, and original individuals. From their marriage she had an example of a realistic, working long-term relationship. She notes: “Once we were grown up . . . I know they had a very good time together Tolerance I think

and great intelligence worked where other things might not.” “Dad and Mother were well matched,” Anne said. “He had the 90% perspiration to make a genius, [and] she had the 1% in- spiration. They respected each other.” At one point, when Anne was fourteen, her mother was quite exasperated by her husband’s oddities and complained to a family friend, a doctor. The friend pointed out that perhaps she herself wasn’t so easy to live with. She repeated this story to Anne, explaining that married people had to accommodate each other’s peculiarities. Most often in Anne’s fiction, her characters develop compatibility and mutual respect over the course of an entire novel. Her characters above all seem to have to learn to respect one another’s opinions and work, just as her parents did.

Both parents cared deeply about literature and one or both of them read aloud to Anne every night. McCaffrey’s mother tended toward Rudyard K ipling’s novels and short stories and the sci- ence fiction of A. Merrit; her father declaimed poetry by Kipling and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Anne recalled that her father “had a marvelous voice in which to roll out those phrases.” Those literary preferences had an effect on their daughter’s work, for Anne’s writing has the epic range and exotic settings of K ipling’s,

the magical science of Merrit’s, and the storytelling and lyricism characteristic of both Kipling and Longfellow.

Anne’s father, George Herbert McCaffrey, was a command- ing presence, both in the army during both World Wars and as the head of his household. His determination to be colorful and unique can be seen in his nickname, reflecting his title, but spelled phonetically, “the Kernel.” He loved his children, but he also treated them as if they were his minions. Anne remem- bered that “he had a series of cussings . . . Damn it, Goddamnit, and Goddamnitall to hellingone . . . the severity of which indi- cated to us [his children] when to make ourselves scarce.” She re- called him as “a precise and neat man, as an officer often is, and he hated confusion and disorder.”

A hard taskmaster who never took a holiday, he nevertheless devoted time to his children, reading to them, supervising their schoolwork, assigning them chores. But he also took his daugh- ter on trips, not only to his family in Boston but also to his job in New York. She acknowledges, “As the only daughter, I was some- times my father’s pet.” While she and her father were more dis- tant when she was teenager, as a young girl, she could be spoiled and included on his journeys. Anne remembers, “Dad worked in the Battery area and it was great fun to take the train to Jersey City, the ferry across the Hudson [River] and walk up to his build- ing. Dad would often take me to his office and his secretary,

Mary Duggan, would keep an eye on me. Then we’d have lunch at Schrafft’s where I would have chocolate fudge for dessert. That usually was my birthday treat from my father, going to the office with him.” Anne experienced Take Your Daughter to Work Day long before it was commonplace. Being taken to work by a par- ent encourages a girl to take herself seriously and to think about having a career. Of course, in the 1930s, the idea of taking one’s daughter to work and, further, encouraging her to think of a ca- reer was almost unheard of. Nor was it just any job Anne con- ceived. When she applied for jobs after college, she would seek to follow her father’s path by applying for work, whether in the gov- ernment or a corporation, that would take her abroad.

Tough and feisty himself, the Kernel expected his children,

including Anne, to be aggressive. G. H. taught all his children to swim by throwing them in the pool—literally “sink or swim.” Anne, whose father called her “Puss,” wasn’t frightened when she learned to swim this way because the “lesson” took place at the Montclair Athletic Club in an indoor pool. She remem- bers floundering over to the side and grabbing the side wall. As tough as he was with his children, G. H. was tougher with him- self. Anne’s brother Kevin remembered his father hiking in a Montclair Park, toting a forty-pound pack at age fifty, preparing himself for what he saw as the next war, which he saw as inevi- table. “He pushed himself hard,” Kevin recalled. And the chil- dren responded, though the boys were more able to achieve in ways their father could appreciate. Both Kevin and Hugh earned more achievement points than any other Boy Scouts in their re- spective troops, but Anne had to try to find other ways to impress her father. She did so in part by playing games with her broth- ers and being a tomboy. This made sense because Anne’s father taught her the same skills he taught his sons: “how to set a screw or drive a nail, saw wood, run properly, even [to] clean weapons. He expected much of his children.” He did not, however, praise them, an absence Anne attributes to generational differences: “He was of the generation which felt the younger one should do its duty without the need of praise.” Anne desperately wanted her father’s approval, as did her brothers, but none of them felt they achieved the high standards he had set for them. G. H. McCaffrey often quoted a phrase that exemplified his standard; it was sup- posed to explain the difference between Harvard graduates and the graduates of other, inferior universities: Harvard graduates had “the ineffable consciousness of effortless superiority.” Unfor- tunately, and perhaps understandably, with such a domineering father, the McCaffrey children never developed that strong sense of self-assurance that their father had.

H. McCaffrey himself made a good job of living up to his

rather overbearing creed of superior achievement, but at least he did so with a sense of humor. His grandson Todd, Anne’s second son, describes him this way: “Gruff, stern and insistent were the qualities most remembered by his children. GH or the ‘Kernel,’

(for Colonel), as he was now [during World War II] signing his letters, was a disciplinarian of the old school. He ha[d] a dry

sense of humor.” He liked puns, and his correspondence with his family is peppered with witticisms. One his grandson Todd quotes in Dragonholder is his alliterative response to a similarly worded telegram Anne sent him (about post-surgery recovery): “paternal parent positively purring pleasure past perfor- mance presently peeing perfectly.”

Only one of George Herbert McCaffrey’s photo portraits shows him smiling. Taken sometime during his graduate school days, the picture shows a handsome and self-assured young man in a suit. Another, from a campaign card, shows him in a starched col- lar with gold-rimmed glasses like a young H. G. Wells. In almost every other family photo, he is in uniform and stares directly at the camera. Trim and fit throughout his life, G. H. himself exer- cised the self-discipline and control he demanded of his children. Intense and hard working, he throve on challenges. Though he taught for three years at Harvard, he found he needed a more active career. Managerial and organizational skills were his forte, and it was a point of pride for him to make substantial improve- ments whenever he was in charge. His more notable achievements include revising the New York State tax code, overseeing a bridge being built in Italy (Ponte Caffreo is named after him), and intro- ducing new farming methods in the American zone around Vi- enna after World War II.

Anne’s father was a person of importance in the larger world.

“My Dad was the famous one,” she says. He graduated from Har- vard with high honors, and he expected high achievement from his children, though none of his offspring equaled his formal educational accomplishments. Although he moved well beyond his father’s standing in society, G. H. retained from his upbring- ing an interest in and respect for the police and the military. After earning a master’s degree in government in 1913, he received a fellowship to study police systems in Ireland and elsewhere in Eu- rope. Continuing his graduate study, he was awarded a Harvard University doctorate in 1937. His dissertation was titled “The Inte- gration and Disintegration of Metropolitan Boston.” His interest

in urban planning demonstrated a commitment to organization and structure, and how their design could be used to benefit people. Anne’s creation of fictional societies and worlds can be seen as achievements paralleling his accomplishments.

H. McCaffrey held a reserve commission in the army while he was employed by the Commerce and Industry Association of New York. Then, during World War II, he served in a number of prominent positions. On December 7, 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, he had volunteered to serve his country in any capacity, so in January 1942 he was posted to Georgia at his reserve rank of lieutenant colonel. Because he had been trained in a Military Governor’s course at the University of Virginia, he was sent overseas in May 1943. Anne remembered, “Whatever bonding might have occurred later [between her and her father] was scotched by the war because Dad was away from the time I was fifteen until the year I graduated from college. I wrote him often and he would find time to write back. Every letter from him was much treasured by me.” Having a successful father who was a public figure affected Anne in many ways: she admired the values he stood for, and she wanted to live up to his accomplishments. She also realized that his commitment to the military took prece- dence over his family’s needs.

During World War II, G. H. McCaffrey had a distinguished ca-

reer in the army, where his courage and independence served him well. He “was the first man off the first LCT to land at Licata, Sicily,” Anne says. “There were only kids on that LCT, scared of their first sight of combat with planes trying to strafe the stone wharf . . . so Dad walked up and down like a Sunday stroller, smoking a cigarette and encouraging the orderly landing of troops.” While Anne’s proud recounting of this story reveals her admiration for her father, she was nonetheless jealous of his mili- tary affiliation and his devotion to his garden. He “was a gruff, undemonstrative man, with rigid standards requiring excellence and obedience. I used to complain that he cared more about his (damned) Army and his wretched garden than his kids,” she re- calls. His final assignment was as military governor of Agrigento, Italy. There he displayed some characteristically Irish intuition

when one dark night he suddenly ordered his driver to stop, sens- ing trouble. Sure enough, just ahead a bridge had been destroyed.

H. was also involved in the rescue of the Lipizzaner mares from the Soviets as they advanced on Czechoslovakia. All through his military career, G. H. had hidden his heart attacks and diabetes from his superiors. Eventually, however, his hard work and stress resulted in a bout of illness that could not be ignored, and, un- happily, he returned to his old job at the Commerce and Industry Association. He did better after the war, welcoming a chance to help the Japanese with their tax system, and he and his wife lived in Japan from 1950 to 1952. G. H. also volunteered to work for the United Nations in Korea but was forced back to a stateside hospital by a prostate operation and, later, tuberculosis.

As a teenager and a young woman, then, Anne was separated both physically and emotionally from her adored father. This left her desperately wanting to prove herself to him. Because becom- ing a published writer was an accomplishment she thought he would respect, she went to tell him when she got her first pay- check (a hundred dollar check from Sam Moskowitz for her first story, “Freedom of the Race”). Arriving at her parents’ house, she found him doing yard work. When she told him her good news, she says, “I think my father grunted. He was, at the time, busy try- ing to fix a bare spot in the front lawn. Being him, he wanted to have a perfect front lawn. So, when he discovered that a huge

boulder was protruding up out of the ground, too big for him to dig up, he got a blow-torch and heated the top of the rock, then poured cold water on it, causing the stone to crack. He continued these exercises until he reduced the upthrust some eight inches, which would allow grass to grow and flourish on the spot.” Her fa- ther’s faint acknowledgment of what was, to Anne, an important moment—the publication of her first story—was typical of their relationship. She wanted encouragement and praise, and her fa- ther was incapable of giving them.

The Kernel died on January 25, 1954, when Anne was twenty- seven and not yet a famous writer. His stature was evident in his New York Times obituary, which filled a twelve-inch column. “G. H. McCaffrey, 63, officer in two wars,” runs the headline of a

piece detailing his many achievements. Anne McCaffrey’s father is very clearly her hero and, as she would admit years later, “I got a father fixation.” Anne dedicated what she describes as her fa- vorite book, The Ship Who Sang, to her father. Words in the novel’s dedication to him, “soldier, citizen, patriot,” appear to be a model for many of her heroic male characters, from F’Lar to Master Robinton. G. H. did not live to see Anne McCaffrey become one of the most popular writers of her time, yet it may be his very ab- sence that influenced her creation of male characters and her use of military conflicts in plots. With her real-life hero gone, she re- created her father in her fictional heroes.

His death, quite early on in her writing career, might also have enabled it emotionally. Like Leslie Stephens, the father of an- other remarkable female writer, Virginia Woolf, McCaffrey domi- nated his daughter. Of her father, Leslie Stephens, Woolf writes, “His life would entirely have ended mine. What would have hap- pened? No writing, no books; —inconceivable.” Anne does not describe her father in such harsh terms, and, indeed, he may not have been quite so forbidding, but his death did mean she could never prove herself to him. As she says: “My father’s death was a catastrophe for me. . . . I now know why We had different stan-

dards and principles and he never allowed me to have mine. He had very high ones and I wobbled.” Yet her father’s death meant also that Anne would not be burdened by his lack of support. She would still live up to his high standards by working very hard on every book, but she would do it with her mother’s enthusiastic encouragement, and without her father’s characteristic indiffer- ence. Nor was indifference G. H.’s worst fault. He was judgmental. His will provides a salient example. After college, Anne had bor- rowed some money from her father when it appeared she would go abroad for a job. When he died, she had not yet repaid the money, and she was therefore cut out of his will. Outraged by her husband’s provision, Anne’s mother blacked out those sections of the will, sparing Anne’s feelings. She used her own money to make sure Anne received her just inheritance.

Despite his exacting nature, she loved her father very much,

and her loss affected her stories. Losing a father figure or a male

mentor is a pattern that often appears in her fiction. For example, in The Ship Who Sang, Helva, the human who is the “Brain” of a spaceship, must cope with the devastating loss of her male part- ner. She watches him die, unable to save him. The loss is the substance of the first of the collection’s tales, while the subse- quent stories detail Helva’s healing and, eventually, learning to love again. So, too, has Anne healed from the loss of her father by finding other individuals to love and admire.

While Anne McCaffrey’s father endured great hardship and performed heroically in the line of duty, Anne McCaffrey’s mother modeled another type of bravery, a feminine strength that would appear in all of Anne’s heroines. She recounts her mother’s bravery during World War II, when she coped with hav- ing her husband and son Hugh overseas while her son Kevin was seriously ill. Even before World War II, Anne’s mother often ran the household. In the late 1930s, her husband was working on the New York City Building Code and often had to stay over in Albany, the state capital. Anne’s mother was stalwart and inde- pendent, and she encouraged her daughter’s fortitude. Of Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey’s example, Anne writes, “Is it any wonder I write about strong women?”

Throughout Anne’s life her mother was more supportive than her father. The children called their father the Kernel, while their mother was Mum. Yet Mum was no more conventional than their father. Anne’s mother had beautiful hair that turned a bright white while she was in her thirties. She modeled a wild and free femininity, due in part, her son Kevin thinks, in reaction to her own mother’s school-teacherly primness. It is perhaps not surpris- ing that the neighbors called her “the white-haired witch.” Anne would depict independent and wild female characters over and over in her fictions, and she also modeled her mother’s behavior in her own life. Unlike her father, who is almost always stern in family photos, her mother fairly scintillates in family photos. Her hair charmingly tousled, she beams at the camera. She seems well aware of her reputation for beauty. She welcomes the camera’s gaze. A natural charmer, she exudes self-confidence. Tall and full- figured, Anne’s mother was a lively presence. She laughed more

often than her husband, telling jokes to break family tension. When her mother caught Anne and her brother sneaking her un- usual Puerto Rican cigarettes, she used reverse psychology. She told Anne and Kevin that they were welcome to smoke. After this invitation, smoking cigarettes no longer seemed as much fun to them. A strong but very feminine woman, she liked Blue Grass, a perfume by Helena Rubinstein, and usually wore a well-cut suit or skirt and sweater combination—often the sweater was one she had knitted herself. Her mother doted on Anne but found her tomboyish proclivities a bit frustrating. While her father would raise his voice and swear when he was angry, her mother had sub- tler but even more compelling ways of showing her children she was angry. Tightened lips and a certain tense expression let her children know they were in trouble. Yet even when she reproved them, they knew she loved them.

Anne’s mother had a tremendous amount of energy and in-

tellectual curiosity. She studied French at a nearby college and tried unsuccessfully to teach the language to her children. Active in the League of Women Voters, she had a wide range of friends and usually went out in the afternoon, often with others to see movies. A devoted movie-goer, she pulled Anne and Kevin out of school to go see Gone with the Wind. Her mother’s endorsement of popular culture helped Anne see the value of science fiction at a time when it was still dismissed as “pulp fiction.” Her mother believed that popular culture was important. Though Anne’s mother had her mother to assist her, she also had hired house- hold help. There was still a lot of housework to be done, with three children and a big house. But Anne’s mother always found time to read for pleasure and often scribbled ideas in a notebook. A voracious reader of mystery novels, she devoured books by Jose- phine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Agatha Christie, and even wanted to write mysteries herself. Her mother’s love of mystery novels gave Anne familiarity with that genre, and, indeed, many of her books have a puzzle or a mystery at their centers. Her mother also en- couraged her to write, in Anne’s words, “because it kept me busy and out of trouble, and also because she knew that writing things down that bothered me would get them out.” Thus encouraged,

Anne found therapeutic or cathartic writing a strategy she would employ throughout her life.

Anne’s mother, Anne McElroy McCaffrey, was energetic and positive, qualities thrown into sharp relief by the fortitude with which she managed the consequences of an accident she sus- tained. While Anne’s mother was unconscious under anesthe- sia in a dentist’s office, her foot slipped into a heating vent, and she badly burnt two of her toes. The injury was serious; one toe had to be amputated, and, in Anne’s words, Mum “was in pain a great deal of the time after that but learned to walk again and take up her life.” Because of this injury, she always had to wear special shoes and couldn’t walk or run very well. Watching her mother uncomplainingly deal with an injury made a big impres- sion on Anne—and on her brother Kevin, who for years coped bravely with a life-threatening illness. Not surprisingly, courage, perseverance, and the ability to face physical hardship are distin- guishing qualities among many of Anne’s heroines. This is espe- cially true of Helva in The Ship Who Sang.

While her grandfather and father occasionally experienced

second sight or precognition, it was her mother in whom “the sight” manifested itself most strongly and strikingly. In fact, Mum’s precognition was, perhaps, directly responsible for the family’s ability to hang onto its middle-class lifestyle during the Depression. As Todd J. McCaffrey explains, “The Depression was not the major trauma to the McCaffreys that it was to so many oth- ers in that era. Mrs. McCaffrey had ‘had a feeling’ about the stock market a few days before the crash and had pulled all her money out. For the next few days GH had chided her foolishness—but he got very quiet when the market crashed.” According to family lore, the gift of the sight appears primarily in her female line. Her mother’s confidence in second sight fueled her daughter’s belief in the power of her own intuitions. As a teenager Anne herself had a psychic experience: the phone rang, and though her mother assumed something had happened to her husband, young Anne McCaffrey somehow knew that it was her grandfather Hugh who was ill. On another occasion, when she was at board- ing school during World War II, Anne woke up in the middle of

the night, worried to death. Her mother telephoned to report a similar feeling the next day, and six months later they found out that George Herbert’s ship had been attacked and that he had spent an hour and a half in a lifeboat on that very night, at that very time. These experiences, then, are the personal back- ground underlying the scientifically explained telepathy appear- ing in many of Anne’s series. From Dragonflight’s Lessa to The Tower and the Hive’s Rowan and Damia, her heroines rely on their psionic powers to save not only their families, but even entire planets or planetary systems. Anne has taken a family legacy of second sight and, by putting it into science fiction settings, trans- formed it into psionics: mental powers accepted and powerful in their worlds.

Her mother, in fact, gave her daughter many gifts. Mum was a lifesaver to her, always there when Anne needed help. Indeed, after her daughter’s divorce, Mum helped Anne and her family cope by splitting expenses with them. As Anne describes it, “Mother paid half the rent and money towards the food since Dublin was more expensive to live in than I realized. I couldn’t have survived those early years without the financial support.” Fortunately, unlike Anne’s father, her mother lived to see her daughter’s writing career blossom. She acknowledged her moth- er’s importance to her in the dedication of Dragonquest to Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey.

Anne’s girlhood was also strongly shaped by her two broth- ers: Hugh, called “Mac” by his family, and Kevin. Anne was born on April 1, 1926. Hugh “Mac” McCaffrey, born on August 17, 1922, was almost four years her senior. Her brother Kevin, born September 8, 1927, was her baby brother. Anne McCaffrey oc- casionally experienced the classic fate of a middle child, feeling lost and neglected between two other siblings. She describes her childhood as being defined in part by having “two brothers on either side to knock me about.” Anne was molded by her birth order and by her sex, both factors that had an impact on her up- bringing. According to studies, middle children are “the most likely to be neglected.” Almost the very words Anne uses appear in articles about birth order: “middle children often feel kicked

around.” A psychologist describes the middle child in terms that fit Anne McCaffrey: “They’re not the fighters that the first ones are, and they’re not the babies who need to be taken care of.” Mac was a fighter in a number of ways; sent off to military school for discipline, he later joined the CIA. And Kevin’s severe illness re- inforced his birth order as youngest—he required special care for years. Anne’s response to being one of a few women writing sci- ence fiction in the 1950s and 1960s is characteristic of the middle child, as described by a psychologist: “ ‘I always felt like I had to do it better,’ says a middle child, ‘because that’s the only way I was going to be seen. I had to be different, so I am different.’”

Something of a tomboy, Anne enjoyed playing traditionally masculine games. She played with her brothers as much as they would let her. For example, she was “allowed to kick goals for her brothers’ team.” While her brothers were making and painting lead soldiers, she was occasionally permitted “to melt lead and pour them [the soldiers] in the molds. Keve was good at pains- takingly painting them [the soldiers], but the boys didn’t like me homing in on ‘their’ toys,” she explains. Kevin and Hugh were quite fond of each other, and their games were much rougher and more physical than the games girls were supposed to play. Hugh was very fond of Kevin, especially as he never ratted on Hugh, even when Hugh nearly blew his brother’s leg off when the boys were playing with their father’s .38. The bullet went off inches from Kevin’s leg, as Kevin sat at the old teak desk in the boys’ room. The family regularly played Canfield (a Solitaire-like card game with multiple players) and Monopoly together, games that stress competition and aggression. The family was fond of chess, but Anne didn’t do as well at it as her brothers did. When she teamed up with her mother, however, they would beat her father and brother Kevin, even though Kevin was the best chess player of the family. This is one example of how Anne would learn the importance of women working together, a lesson emphasized in her novels. As most girls do, she learned traditionally feminine games; she played with paper dolls and doll clothes, a popular girls’ activity in the 1930s. As she dressed her dolls, McCaffrey created stories for them. She also enjoyed dressing up the family

cat, Thomas, and wheeling him around in a baby carriage. While many children treat their pets as dolls, in Anne’s case we can see the beginning of a lifelong treatment of animals as part of the family. This enduring attitude results in the creation of fictional dragons that are part of intimate relationships in the world of Pern.

She was always closer to the brother she calls Keve. When I asked her what it was like growing up with two brothers, she re- plied, “I’ll give you an example of that problem. When I got to Radcliffe, Hugh wouldn’t introduce me to friends because he didn’t think I was good enough. Keve, on the other hand, didn’t think his friends were good enough to associate with me.” (The boys attended Harvard while Anne went to college at Radcliffe, which at that time was a separate women’s school). Hugh and Anne had a tumultuous relationship until both were adults. She understands it as classic sibling rivalry: “I think it was pure sib- ling rivalry [H]e was the elder and had been displaced by the

girl.” As is often the case, Hugh, older than Anne by four years and older than Kevin by five, lorded over the younger two. Anne remembers, “Hugh would skite off to stay with friends across the street and Kevin and I knew it, but never would have dared peach on him.” Kevin was more willing to play with his older sister, whom he admired. When they were in their early twenties, he and Anne even had first- and third-floor apartments in a building owned by their mother in their hometown of Montclair. Proud of his sister’s writing, in 2002 Kevin had a whole wall in his home devoted to leather-bound copies of his sister’s books. Though it took a number of years, Anne and Hugh eventually reached an amicable understanding. Anne helped her brother Hugh with his first and only book, Khmer Gold, published posthumously in 1988. In his dedication of the book, his words typify a family tendency toward blunt speaking: “To my sister, Anne McCaffrey, who kicked me in the ass until I started to write.”

In one childhood photo, Anne looks like she is squealing with

happiness. She has a huge grin on her face and has her arms crossed out and forward. In another picture, a somber Anne

stares straight at the camera, her arms straight down at her side. When I asked her which pose was more characteristic of her early childhood, she replied, “I was definitely a volatile temperament so both were characteristic, depending on the circumstances.” This self-characterization fits almost all her heroines, from Helva in The Ship Who Sang to the Dragonrider Moreta. Like their creator, these characters can be temperamental, but they are always good- hearted and generous. Anne’s earliest memory reveals her dar- ing and exuberance. The memory, she acknowledges, was prob- ably reinforced by her parents retelling the tale, but that it was retold so often means the story reflects how her parents saw and reinforced her identity as a hell-raiser. She says, “I remember the lighting in the back room of our first house on Bellevue Avenue, so some of it has to come from me. The sun coming in, all

the lights on in the room and the smell of wall-paper paste. I re-

member facing the windows, with a dark loom to one side and my mother’s hands on my shoulders as I say, ‘Oh, I am a bad girl!’ With my own hands shielding my buttocks. I had evidently fallen into the tub of wall-paper paste and my father was trying to finish repapering the room. It was on a Sunday so the paste I had drip- ping on me might have made the difference of him finishing the job or having to hold it over.” This anecdote suggests that Anne was a much-loved child because her antics were considered amus- ing, if not encouraged.

Another early memory concerns a more serious escapade. Anne’s grandmother was watching the children play at the beach while Anne’s parents were at a party. Rambunctious Anne ran up a seawall and fell off it and into the water, breaking her arm and fracturing her skull. She was only five years old, but she vividly remembers her grandmother being angry at her, pulling her up the long walk to the hotel, and calling her parents to come get their injured daughter. Her parents drove her to Children’s Hos- pital in Boston, where Anne received seven stitches. On the long drive to the hospital, her mother held her tightly, not realizing that her daughter’s arm was broken and that she was crying from the pain of the tight embrace. Anne was also a bit of a rapscallion

in other, less dangerous matters. Her brother Kevin remembered how much she despised liver and that she “devised a scheme to hide it in the joints of the table” during dinner.

Anne fondly recalls her childhood as a happy and healthy one. She remembers having mastoiditis (a swelling in the lower re- gion of her skull), but no other serious childhood ailments. Her brother Kevin recalled that she sucked two fingers on her left hand into childhood, and her “parents tried to do everything to break the habit. [H]er fingers actually developed ridges and

they were afraid that she would cause her teeth to protrude. . . .

They even had some metal caps with sleeves tied onto her wrists.” Indomitable, however, Anne escaped this contrivance and stopped sucking her fingers only when she was ready to stop. She describes her younger self as “a godawful, ego-centric extrovert,” and adds that at school, “I made a career of bucking the system and spent a good deal of my time either in the corridor, for talking too much, or at the principal’s office waiting to have an ‘interview.’ I probably would have been considered hyperactive in today’s psy- chological profiles.” Anne’s best friend was Virginia Hamilton, the daughter of a principal and a former teacher. Virginia “had a room over an attic, a sort of eyrie, and she was strong enough of will that I would compromise with her. There were other girls, but they only ‘tolerated’ me and I knew it.” McCaffrey’s solitude is typical of middle children, who in one study were found to be “the least popular.” Anne’s description of her childhood also fits her heroines, such as Menolly from Dragonsinger or the Rowan from the Tower and Hive series. Gifted and precocious, these pro- tagonists have few friends until they discover their place in life and how to use their great talents constructively.

Children who are advanced for their age often look to adult

role models, in part because they are ahead of their peer group. Like other such children, Anne had significant relationships with adults. She admired her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Butler, who was notable for being a Quaker, a nonconformist, and tolerant. She once made a quilt using pieces of clothes from all the children in her class. Her other close childhood confidante (besides her best friend, Virginia Hamilton) was a housekeeper. While there were a

number employed during Anne’s childhood (one she recalls only as Fat Catherine), Ella Patella lasted the longest. While Anne’s mother did the cooking, Ella would prepare food, and young Anne would help her peel potatoes or scrape carrots. There was a semi-private space, a landing up a few stairs from the kitchen, where Ella would iron. While she was ironing, Ella, who had no children, would listen as Anne confided in her. In Anne’s words, “[I] would talk my heart out to her because I really was such a difficult child . . . [and] she was always kind and supportive. She was a significant personality in my young life.” Like many a pre- cocious child, Anne found that supportive adults understood her better than her peers could.

While Anne loved to read, she also had many other childhood activities or adventures that shaped her love of science fiction. When Anne and her brothers had done their garden work prop- erly, they were allowed to go to children’s matinees. She was in- fluenced by the texts that shaped many science fiction direc- tors and writers: “I remember The Lone Ranger serial and Buster Crabbe in Flash Gordon--also Roy Rogers. I used to listen to the radio serials of the Lone Ranger, lying on the floor, head under the desk in which the radio was housed, because the speaker was underneath it, and we had to keep the volume low not to bother Grandmother.” Anne McCaffrey didn’t just listen to ex- citing adventures—she also created her own. She recalls “skiv- ving out of the house to go climb in the quarry—it wasn’t some- thing I was allowed to do, but could pass a lot of time for me. I was as popular with my peer group as pimples so playing by my- self was frequent. I did love climbing on old granite faces. Dan- gerous, but then, fun!” Again, her heroines never shy away from physical danger, but relish it as young Anne did.

In addition to being physically active, Anne began writing ad-

venture stories. At age nine, she wrote a Western novel called Flame, Chief of Herd and Track, the eponymous character being a horse. Unfortunately, no copy of this juvenile fiction exists, but the title and genre reveal her interest in adventure fiction and horses. She had already begun taking horseback riding lessons at the South Orange Arsenal, and she kept up her riding at Girl

Scout camp in the summers. The thrill of being in charge of a large, powerful animal and the affection she received from horses would later develop into her most popular creation, the dragons of Pern that humans could ride. Anne’s dramatic and storytelling impulses merged in her habit of telling herself stories, out loud, to put herself to sleep. Sometimes, as she acted out her story, she got quite loud, and her father, whose bedroom was next to hers, “would thump on the wall” to shut her up. As she grew older, the stories became more romantic and less action oriented, but she remembered, “It was such fun that I’d go back and retell the story over and over and eventually fall asleep. It was one

reason I hated to sleep with anyone because I couldn’t ‘think’ the stories: they had to be acted out, out loud, with me playing all the parts and sound effects. It was, however, a habit that

marriage eliminated completely.” But this habit marked her writ- ing. As her editor Shelly Shapiro explained, even today, “When Anne writes it, she lives it.”

While she knew that she could not follow her father’s footsteps into the military, Anne was also aware of the threat of war. More than other children her age, she understood how politics could influence what a person could do in this world. As a child growing up in the 1930s and 1940s, with politically astute parents, Anne McCaffrey was knowledgeable about the problems in Europe. Her beloved father “was always aware of [political] affairs and [he]

deplored the German movement, especially after my Uncle John, going in the capacity of a cotton-mill superintendent, came back from Germany and said that all the machinery he had seen could be retooled for munitions.” Despite his age, her father began pre- paring himself for war, surely affecting his children’s view of the world. She says, “I remember that, after that, Dad started long hikes to get himself fit and went to all of the meetings of his re- serve officer group.” McCaffrey says also that she “remember[s] him and Mother arguing about Chamberlain’s compromise and the fears they had for the future.” Anxiety about war dominated the adolescence of Anne’s generation, but with her father’s early awareness of war and his determination to be prepared, she surely was affected more strongly than other girls her age. While con-

flict and external threats have been staples of science fiction for decades, their appearance in McCaffrey’s fiction can also be ex- plained by the political conflicts during her childhood and ado- lescence. In her fiction she depicts the pain and suffering caused by violent conflict, yet her protagonists always rise to meet its chal- lenges, just as Anne and her family did.

But Anne’s ability to convey emotion stemmed not just from the anxiety of pre–World War II tensions, but also from how this backdrop shaped her adolescence. A girl of great passion and in- tensity, Anne struggled to find an outlet for her feelings in a time when world war made individual angst seem petty. Although she tried to do so, Anne couldn’t deny her need for attention and her need to be loved. Her intelligence and her unorthodox family made it likely she would have trouble fitting in. Throughout her adolescence, she found solace in horseback riding, singing, and, most importantly, reading and writing.

chapter 2

Adolescence and a Time of War

That McCaffrey girl, she’s a brat. I am sick of her and I don’t know how Claudia stands her. Let Claudia keep her under control.

—Overheard by young Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey’s writing celebrates adolescence. Her award- winning Young Adult series, the Harper Hall Trilogy, explores the trials of youth, but her adult fictions also convey the intensity of emotion special to the teenage years. Inspired in part by her own experiences as a young woman, she captures and re-creates the powerful longing, confusion, and desire of adolescence. Her editor Susan Allison explained that Anne “writes movingly and well about people who feel themselves different from others in the world, who feel like they don’t fit in.” Anne’s ability to give life to such characters derives from her own adolescence. Like many young girls, she had to navigate the perils of thinking she was unattractive, feeling herself to be an outsider, trying to de- velop a talent to make herself stand out from the crowd, looking for adventure, and finally discovering ways to find love and ac- ceptance. As a teenager, Anne McCaffrey desperately wanted to be loved. Her adolescence was marked by separation from family members, worry about the health of her beloved younger brother, the looming threat and then reality of world war, and the much more common adolescent anxieties about appearance and iden- tity. These experiences marked her life and her writing.

At fourteen years old, she was sent to Girl Scout camp when her

younger brother, Kevin, was recovering from the first of many op- erations to cure his potentially fatal bone disease, osteomyelitis.

Meanwhile, her older brother, Hugh, was off at Boy Scout camp. She loved camp; it gave her the opportunity to ride horses, and for the first time she found an audience for her creative endeav- ors. Selected by the counselors to direct the camp play, Anne wrote a piece based on a Rudyard Kipling story, “The Butterfly That Stamped.” One of Kipling’s Just-So Stories, the tale depicts King Solomon and his wife, who overhear a male and a female butterfly arguing. Through clever manipulation, the queen uses the butterflies’ marital conflict to correct the king’s 999 other wives, who have also been quarreling. The title refers to the male butterfly’s boast that if he stamps, the palace and garden will dis- appear. She dramatized the story’s message about the importance of not showing off, a moral close to her heart. Because it was a rainy summer, the play got more time and attention than it would have otherwise. At camp, she discovered a love of performance and theater that would only grow in years to come.

At Girl Scout camp, Anne admired one of the counselors tre-

mendously, twenty-eight-year-old Claudia Capps. An athlete and a superb rider, loved by all the campers, Claudia was someone Anne wanted to emulate. It is often said that eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves, and for Anne this was decidedly the case. While she was in the infirmary with an infected mosquito bite that needed tending, she overheard another counselor in a nearby room explain that the rest of the staff counted on Claudia to “keep the McCaffrey girl under control.” Chastened, Anne re- alized she needed to tone down her self-centeredness. Desper- ately seeking her role-model’s approval, she tried to be more like Claudia in temperament, more considerate of others and less clamorous. Her gratitude to Claudia persisted for decades. In a letter to a young student years later, Anne would recall, “I know I became easier to deal with after that. B.C. (Before Claudia), you wouldn’t believe what a mess I was.” In a 1985 interview she gave while she toured Colorado, Claudia’s home state, Anne cred- ited the camp counselor with mentoring her and helping her become a more considerate, self-aware individual. The newspa- per located Claudia Capps, then seventy-three, who confirmed that she was tapped to bring the McCaffrey girl “ ‘under control.’”

This humbling camp incident affected Anne’s self-image for years. Fortunately for her readers, Anne’s self-depreciation did not per- manently change her character. Not long afterwards, her col- lege professors and dorm staff would also describe her as too boisterous and enthusiastic. Like many very intelligent, talented young women, she had difficulty finding her place. And growing up in a time when young women were supposed to be decorous and decorative didn’t make the task any easier.

Anne’s successful play at summer camp brought a moment of triumph to an otherwise typically turbulent adolescence. Despite her adventurous spirit and independence, she also experienced the classic “crisis of confidence.” At or around puberty, many American girls lose their pre-pubescent confidence. They begin to believe that they are unattractive and unintelligent, realizing that they must conform to gender stereotypes to be considered feminine and desirable. They doubt themselves, losing their tom- boyish energy and zest. Her brother Kevin explained that she was critical of her girlhood self: “she gives herself the worst press.” He also recalled that as a teenager she was “upset that she didn’t have more girlfriends.” Always at home with books, Anne was less comfortable in a crowded high school cafeteria. She vividly re- members not being invited to eat with people during lunch pe- riod at Montclair High School. Anne’s friends were also outsid- ers both in appearance and attitude. Her two close high school friends, Barbara Currie and Gladys Gravitz, were “also not inter- ested in following the ‘crowd.’” Anne explains, “None of us was pretty in a conventional way. Gladys was blond and Barbara’s hair I admired, dark, and it was always so nice in a pageboy. Mine still wasn’t much.” The standard of feminine beauty at that time in- volved thick hair curled in pageboy haircuts. Anne’s hair (like most women’s) would conform only after a lot of effort on her part. Her dramatic features were not conventionally pretty in the 1940s, which favored petite women like the actress Veronica Lake. Feeling unattractive diminished Anne’s self-worth.

Anne’s memories reveal how appearance and perception about

appearance shaped her self-image. The correlation between an adolescent girl’s appearance and her feelings of inadequacy about

herself are classic. As Mary Pipher and others have documented, “adolescent girls focus on their changing bodies. . . . Girls feel an enormous pressure to be beautiful and are aware of constant evaluations of their appearance.” A self-help book, Let’s Talk About You, written for girls in 1943 and reprinted frequently during that decade, reveals that girls experienced feelings of inadequacy and were expected to define themselves by their appearance and at- tractiveness to men. The book advises, “With your own brother overseas it seems as if you shouldn’t think of yourself so much as you do. But you can’t keep your mind on the risks of battle all the time.” The book offers a great deal of practical advice, including a suggestion that its readers date younger boys since the older ones are off at war! Another similar book, The Girls’ Daily Life, pub- lished in 1944, is a school text that has a chapter entitled “The First Impression,” and the penultimate chapter is “Marriage: A Career.” The concluding chapter reveals that in the 1940s espe- cially, young women were socialized to see their worth residing in marriage. Young women during the war were reminded (as young women are today) that most of their value resides in their looks and their malleability. In her novels and stories, Anne cre- ates characters who must learn that having a Talent (emphasized with capitals in her novels), such as the ability to cut rare crystal by singing or controlling mental powers, is more valuable than society’s idea of conventional physical beauty.

Anne describes her adolescent self as “not a pretty girl,” a sur-

prising revelation to anyone who knows what Anne McCaffrey looks like. Pictures of her from 1940 to 1948 show a dramatically attractive young woman, with green eyes, full lips, and lovely hair. Her brother Kevin explained that “one of Anne’s problems was that she wasn’t as beautiful as Mother,” but again photos reveal a different perspective—a strong resemblance between Anne and her extremely beautiful mother. But sometimes, especially in the teenage years, perception is more compelling than reality. Named for her mother, Anne was called Annette by her family until ju- nior high. Then, because there were nine other Annes in high school, she asked to be called Lee Ann both at school and at home, because she thought it sounded “much nicer.” Of course, a

name change involves more than aesthetics, as she acknowledges: “I wished even then to be distinctive.” She admits, “I think that I disliked me [more] than the name and felt that a change of name might help. It didn’t but it seemed a good idea at the time.” Anne changed her name at a time when she really desired to change her identity and to control her own destiny—a need shared by many of her heroines, who likewise take new names as they struggle to find their identities.

Her brother Kevin recalled that Anne spent a lot of time read- ing; his most vivid image is of her coming home from the li- brary loaded down with books. Like her fictional heroines, Anne was a bit of a loner. She would escape her adolescent anxieties by reading. Her favorite writers took her to strange new worlds where unusual people had exciting adventures and found pur- pose and meaning in their lives. Anne especially enjoyed fiction set in ancient Rome and Greece; one particularly favorite writer was Caroline Dale Snedeker, whom Anne describes today as be- ing “a good, accurate writer.” Snedeker’s novels contain some of the elements that characterize Anne’s own writing: strong female characters who resist forces that try to oppress them, innovative use of mythology, history brought to life, belief in the power of music, and romance. The Forgotten Daughter (1929), for example, so affected Anne that she bought a copy in a used bookstore three decades after she first read it. Snedeker’s main characters are two women abducted from the Isle of Lesbos—one an adult, one a young girl—who declaim, “We are Lesbians—no man shall be our master.” The narrator proclaims a philosophy that defines Anne’s books and her life: “Unselfishness, insight into the rights of others, was and is the only cure” for resolving conflicts.

She also learned from Snedeker’s novels that romantic rela-

tionships were not the only thing that could be important, that art could have redemptive powers, and that love could take many forms. All were liberating ideas for young Anne, who struggled with pressures to conform to traditional roles for girls. Snede- ker’s novel The White Isle (1940), for example, features a young heroine, Lavinia, who is jilted; but she travels with her family to Britain, in Roman times the equivalent of traveling to another

planet. In Britain, Lavinia finds a new life and discovers that she has telepathic powers, an artistic gift that compensates her for the loss of her first love. In another Snedeker novel, The Spartan (1936), music bridges cultural difference. Through music, char- acters communicate across linguistic and cultural barriers. Sne- deker’s depiction of music as a powerful force resonated with Anne’s own talent and love of music, themes that would appear in Anne’s Harpers of Pern and Crystal Singers. In The Spartan, Sne- deker openly portrays the love of men for men, and the author’s sympathy for homoerotic relations between men undoubtedly af- fected Anne. Years later, she would see and depict homosexuality on a continuum of acceptable sexual behavior.

Her first novel was inspired by Snedeker’s work. Written in a black school notebook when she was fifteen, the novel, appropri- ately enough, was written during Latin class. Unfortunately, no copy of it exists today; it did not survive Anne’s many moves. Her focus on her novel may explain the slip in her Latin grade from C in 1941 to D in 1942. She describes the novel, titled “Eleuthe- ria, the Dancing Slave Girl,” as being “about a very pretty (natch) [naturally] talented (natch) girl whose Patrician father had fallen into debt and all his belongings, including his children, were sold. Eleuetheria dances and meets a young Roman and falls in love and he buys her freedom. Typical early teenage transference. But it started me enjoying the practice of writing and that’s when my addiction started.” She didn’t share the novel with her parents: “It was sort of my ‘private’ thing, daydreaming in another time and place.”

A voracious reader, she also devoured Rudyard K ipling’s work.

A Nobel prize winner who wrote of exotic adventures in other lands, Kipling embodied many values that Anne would later em- phasize in her own work. He frequently championed an under- dog, an outsider (as he did in Anne’s favorite K ipling work, Kim). Although he did so in a way that can appear offensive and pa- tronizing to modern readers, K ipling did advocate the mingling of different cultures, an attitude Anne witnessed in her parents. K ipling’s belief in technology colored her own faith in science, and his use of poetry and ballads provided a model for her use

of ballads in Dragonflight and the inclusion of songs throughout the Dragonriders of Pern series.

Kipling’s vision of benevolent colonialism, adventure, and hero- ism is one present in the works of another of Anne’s favorite writ- ers, Zane Grey. Many people prejudge Grey’s novels as merely potboiler Westerns, filled with clichés and racism. While Grey certainly trades on the racist stereotypes of his time (especially the stereotype of the noble but savage Indian), there are some elements of his work that nonetheless appealed to the nascently feminist Anne McCaffrey. Grey was an innovator because “he wrote Western stories—particularly The Light of the Western Stars— from a woman’s point of view.” In his most famous novel, Riders of the Purple Sage, a Mormon woman of wealth and privilege battles the sexist and xenophobic Mormon hierarchy, aided by her rid- ers. She declares, “I’ll die before I ever bend my knees.” This Zane Grey character, Jane Withersteen, could easily be the model for Lessa or Killashandra. Both Jane and another female character dress in men’s clothes and rebel against traditional female roles. In a pattern typical of Grey’s fiction, the women in this novel re- nounce their power for the love of a man. It remained for the adult Anne to re-imagine these endings, taking Grey’s strong fe- male characters and allowing them to hold onto the power they have gained. Horses play an important role in Grey’s books, en- abling life in the West even as Anne’s dragons enable the settle- ment of her fictional world, Pern. In Grey, Anne found a writer who shared her love of horses and who appeared sympathetic to her adolescent sense of being an outsider. His novels deal with loners who reluctantly make connections with other people and enthusiastically bond with animals, elements that define most of McCaffrey’s novels.

While she read widely, if one novel can be said to have had an

effect on her, it was the cult classic Islandia (1942). In interviews, she frequently credits this book by Austin Tappan Wright for mak- ing a strong impact on her. She remembers reading and reread- ing Islandia when she was fourteen—no mean accomplishment, as the novel runs over one thousand pages. While Anne’s other favorite novelists wrote historical fiction, Austin Tappan Wright’s

book is pure fantasy. Islandia is a fictional country set on an imagi- nary continent. His work has been compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for its rich and vividly detailed description of an imaginary society and place. Part of the power of Islandia stems from its detailed realism, an approach that Anne would take in creating Pern and other fictional worlds. Islandia’s frontispiece is a fold-out map, and Wright explains in detail what the Island- ians wear, eat, and plant. Their world, like Pern, is isolated, feudal, and pre-industrial. A book of fables helps chart the Islandians’ course, as ballads are crucial to Pern society. Pern’s open and tol- erant sexuality has its antecedents in Islandian sexual freedom. Islandians’ love of music and dependence on horses appears not only in Pern, but also in Anne’s other fictions, where animals and music (and other arts) are highly esteemed.

Islandia’s plot focuses on an American who tries to open Is-

landia up to foreign trade, but when he fails, he decides to be- come an Islandian. In the course of a year spent on the island, he learns that foreign trade would be as damaging and as oppres- sive as the physical invasion threatened by the Germans (Wright was prescient in his choice of invaders). The protagonist, John Land, is a loner (as Anne was during adolescence). His gradual integration into another society suggests that it is not that he is defective, but that Americans lead miserable and distorted lives because of our society’s emphasis on capitalism. Like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Islandia depicts the gradual acclima- tion of an American man to a more agrarian, sexually liberated, and gender-balanced society. Anne was drawn to the narrator John, who learns to see women as human beings entitled to sexual desire and who, like men, need a purpose or career. This radical and innovative world view delighted and entranced Anne, who al- ready felt that the world she lived in was greatly flawed. The flight of the protagonist John from his country foreshadows her own exile to Ireland decades later.

Islandia’s frank discussion of human relationships made it an

appealing book to Anne, who at fourteen was trying to figure out sexuality, especially since the contradictory and restrictive dictates directed at girls in the 1940s were confusing at best.

Through the Islandians, Wright presents radical and powerful arguments against corporations and business, in favor of environ- mentalism, sexual freedom, and feminism (though he does not call the Islandian philosophy “feminism” per se). Wright’s novel deals frankly with male and female characters’ sexual desires. He depicts an Islandian house of “prostitution” without condemning the practice or the women involved. His social vision is progres- sive and radical, and it had a strong influence on Anne’s similarly utopian creation of alternative societies. That Anne would read a book with such adult themes at fourteen reveals her maturity compared with other girls of the 1940s. (Significantly, another prominent feminist science fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, also cites Islandia as an important influence.) While the book contains a few romantic subplots, these are well subordinated to the almost anthropological creation of an alternative society. Almost every aspect of American society is questioned and found wanting. Is- landia’s radical challenge to America showed Anne that alterna- tives to the real world could exist in fiction. Immersing herself in the world of Islandia, she could escape the contemporary world in favor of a better place, one where she could finally fit in, as the book’s narrator discovers he does.

Both Wright’s and Grey’s novels, however, contain overtly racist

elements. In addition, Islandia is also a classist society. While they mostly remain in the background, an evil “black” race threatens the Islandians. In the opening pages, the protagonist, a Harvard freshman, quickly abandons a conversation with another fresh- man when he discovers the boy attended a local (public) high school. Islandia’s feudal society is based on nobility, a concept the American narrator quickly adopts. Fourteen-year-old Anne, however, with a father from Harvard and destined for Radcliffe herself, would not recognize the elements of class bias. While her experiences at school in the South and with Ella Patella, her par- ents’ African American housekeeper, would enable her to reject racism, classism would remain an unexamined element in her life and work.

In her reply to a sophomore questionnaire at Radcliffe, Anne describes her hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, as “a normal

suburb with all of the advantages of a progressive community and lack of financial worry, a stimulating group of people to as- sociate with.” Quite surprisingly for 1940, Montclair High School, where she began and finished high school, was integrated. Anne and her brother easily accepted their integrated school. As Kevin McCaffrey wryly pointed out, he didn’t attend any other high school, so he didn’t realize his school was unusual. Kevin McCaf- frey ascribed the integration to the fact that the town didn’t have enough students to have two separate high schools, but as we all know, scarcity of resources has never prevented segrega- tion. Of her integrated high school, Anne has this to say: “The school could not—nor would it afford—two high schools. No one thought anything about it. They had a different color skin. So what? We all had different colored eyes. I was aware of rac- ism and such biases but I was very firmly taught that they should make no difference.”

The Interracial Committee of the New Jersey Conference of

Social Work published a 1932 report, The Negro in New Jersey, that sheds some light on the racial situation that surrounded Anne in her adolescence. That three members of the committee came from Montclair suggests the town’s involvement with and con- cern for racial equity. New Jersey had provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in 1804, but the state certainly followed the nation in racist legislation thereafter. During the 1930s, the Af- rican American population in Montclair was above the state av- erage, at 15 percent versus 5 to 10 percent throughout Northern New Jersey. The McCaffrey’s African American housekeeper, Ella Patella, typified black women’s employment in New Jersey at the time, as “eighty-six out of every 100 [black women were] engaged in personal and domestic service compared to 16 out of 100 white women.” While Montclair followed many national trends of dis- crimination, the report demonstrates a more favorable climate for blacks there than in other New Jersey towns. Montclair is one of five towns singled out for favorable mention for having an in- tegrated community center. African Americans’ rent there was the second highest paid by African Americans in the state; this statistic reveals Montclair’s affluence and also its attraction for

African Americans, who were willing to pay higher rent to live there. Other statistics, such as the numbers of books about Af- rican Americans available in the town’s library, rank Montclair fifth in the state.

The McCaffreys’ lack of overt racism can be traced to their parents. Kevin recalled that his mother was appalled by the re- strictions that racism placed on Ella, who was college educated. Anne’s mother encouraged Ella Patella to take the civil service exam, telling her that she was too smart to stay in domestic ser- vice. She took the exam, did extremely well, and worked for the postal service as a supervisor until she retired. Anne recalls, “Ella had gone to college and had far more brains than many white people mother had to work with.” Having a relationship with Ella forced Anne to face racism early in life. Perhaps most shocking to Anne, who always wanted to have children, was Ella’s determi- nation not to have children because they would be second-class citizens in racist America. Ella’s husband “also had a college edu- cation . . . but they did not have any children. Said they wouldn’t bring up any black children to struggle the way they had.” Even Montclair, which a statistical report suggests was relatively more progressive in terms of race, did not alter Ella’s opinion about American racism. Through Ella’s eyes, Anne was able to see the oppressiveness of racism. A few years later, Anne would observe her father’s distaste for racism, which he saw as parallel to his negative experiences as an Irish American in Boston. When he managed an army base in Georgia, her father “decided there would be no racism problems where he was the ranking officer— and there weren’t.” Anne’s exposure to race bias, which began with her relationship to Ella, reinforced her sympathy for people treated by the world at large as outsiders.

Anne’s family had a sense of the forthcoming war, and while

other American girls from 1940 to 1942 might have been oblivi- ous of looming political conflict, her family kept the subject alive in their home. More than other girls her age, she was aware of the possibility of war. Although she lost no family members in the conflict, both her older brother and her father served overseas— her brother as a soldier and her father as a military governor

in Italy. Anne picked up on her parents’ keen interest in inter- national politics and could not help being aware of the military buildup in Germany. While her brothers played with toy soldiers, the McCaffreys realized that the boys might have to become real soldiers, as their father had during World War I. For a girl, the im- plications of war were very different. Although Anne wanted to play with her brothers’ toy soldiers, she was not allowed to be fully a part of their war games, just as women were not fully a part of the U.S. Army. Her brother Hugh went off to war, and she stayed home and baked tollhouse cookies for his care packages. While she claims she never wanted to be in combat, she gives her fe- male characters more central roles than the one she played dur- ing World War II. In her novels, women often engage in guerrilla warfare, use their psychic powers to battle enemies, or both, per- haps a fictional compensation for Anne’s real-life exclusion.

Despite being barred from combat, women played a key sup-

porting role during World War II, and many historians identify the war years as a time of upheaval and change for American women. Anne identifies women’s work during wartime as cru- cial to her understanding that “women could do more than their conventional roles of marriage and children.” In July 1944, just after Anne began college, women’s labor force participation ex- panded to an all-time high, with 19 million women employed, a 47 percent increase from March 1940, when Anne was a fresh- man in high school. Even more remarkable was the increase in married women’s workforce participation, which accounted for over 70 percent of the increase in working women. Many of these jobs were in the high-paying manufacturing sector. Anne also had the example of her mother, who held a number of profes- sional jobs before and during the war, making her a minority, es- pecially among middle-class women. But the war meant that more mothers from all socioeconomic groups were working outside the home, many of them in factories. The war years were marked by women joining the workforce in record numbers and by the ab- sence of men, a combination that resulted in less surveillance and control of children. While Anne’s mother did not engage in war-related work, she was completely absorbed by her son Kevin’s

illness and was less available to her daughter. Anne remembers that all her friends had relatives in the army, but few had fathers in the war. Most of her friends’ fathers (like Anne’s father) were exempt because of their age.

But her father volunteered. Anne’s father was away from home during her adolescence, a critical time in her development. Like her heroines Lessa, Rowan, and K illashandra, among others, she may have felt orphaned, or at the very least abandoned, by her parents, a natural response, no matter how unavoidable her broth- er’s life-threatening illness and world war were. During Anne’s adolescence, everyday life was prosaic and marked by wartime economies. Because they were comparatively well off, the McCaf- frey family had to deal more with separation and illness than with financial deprivation. For example, wartime rationing meant that the McCaffreys had to conserve gasoline, but the fact that they had a car separated them from many American families at that time. According to a 1941 World Motor Census map, there were only 31 million cars registered in the United States when the adult population was close to 84 million people. Anne recalls wartime shortages, but because of Kevin’s illness, her family re- ceived extra gas and meat coupons. Her mother wrangled a pair of real silk stockings for her to wear to her dancing lessons, an- other rarity in wartime America. While she never felt deprived, Anne remembers the restrictions on items like shoes and sugar. Their family always preserved a lot of summer fruit from the McCaffrey garden, including peaches, pears, tomatoes, and even concord grapes from which they made jelly. In this way, Anne’s chores were characteristic of most American women’s during the war years. To conserve resources, almost every family had a “vic- tory garden” (so-called because they meant more food could be sent to the troops, ensuring victory) and canned and preserved their own fruits and vegetables.

Before the war, the McCaffreys were famous for an annual gar-

den party, from which every woman in attendance would exit with an armful of tulips. There were over five thousand tulips in their garden, a number that gives some idea of the garden’s size and splendor. Their father and the children did all the work.

In Anne’s words, “we just manicured the ants’ toenails on the weekends,” referring to her father’s meticulousness. The garden was a tribute to their father’s military mentality, practiced on his children before he was a postwar administrator, in charge of re- constructing European societies. Before the war, such a large and beautiful garden marked a difference between the McCaffreys and their neighbors. Once World War II got underway, though, even affluent families made their yards into valuable resources— for those at home and abroad. In addition to the garden, Anne’s father had reconstructed a courtyard patio on their property, di- recting his sons to dig out old stones and create new paths. Anne was involved in the gardening, too, and she remembers that she would be relieved from gardening duty on cold days when she was menstruating. While she didn’t enjoy the subordinate status of girls, she found pleasure when her feminine qualities provided an excuse to escape yard work. But at a southern girls’ boarding school, she found the restrictions of femininity more irksome.

During Anne’s high school years, her mother was occupied

full-time with Kevin, staying in a rented room and spending all her time at the hospital. A niece of her mother’s friend Mab Beckwith had gone to Stuart Hall, a prestigious girls’ boarding school in Virginia, so Anne’s mother “sort of waved the flag (dad was back in service) and leaned on their honor to take [Anne] in.” It wasn’t Anne’s decision; she would have preferred to live with family friends, as she ended up doing the next year. Then she could have graduated on time with her high school class. But Anne accepted the disruptive change with good grace. She didn’t particularly like Stuart Hall, but she understood the cir- cumstances that had sent her there. Part of her adolescence was spent coping with all the attention that her brother Kevin re- quired from her mother. Anne says, “I wasn’t as nice to my mother as I should have been, considering what a good mother I now know she was.” Her flexibility in the face of a difficult situation is a quality that would serve her well in coming years. She drew on her independent spirit when she was sent from New Jersey to Vir- ginia by herself. Her father and older brother were already serv- ing in the army, and Kevin was too ill to be left alone, so Anne’s

mother packed her off on the all-day train trip. Although she was only sixteen, she says she was “pretty self-reliant and the trip was an adventure. I remember the Dean of Women for Stuart Hall met me at the train station and did not think much of a girl my age . . . being allowed to make such a long trip by herself. But I did fine.”

It was hard for Anne to make friends because most girls had been there since freshman year. Her forward-looking ideas about race were one reason she didn’t fit in at Stuart Hall. Her creation of the annoying Kylara in Dragonquest, whom Brizzi describes as “a ‘southern belle’ from Southern Weyr,” owes a great deal to her experience with southern young ladies at Stuart Hall. She says, “It was difficult but I wasn’t as bad a kid then as I was earlier. And I had my own room as well [and I] did a lot of creative writing in study hall when I’d finished my assignments.” Because the school was already fully enrolled, Anne’s room was a converted music room, apart from the other girls’ rooms. Except for Christmas va- cation, she spent school holidays at Stuart Hall. Her mother was still intensively nursing Kevin, so Anne stayed at Stuart Hall with a couple of other girls whose families were also far away.

Her courage in facing a traumatic relocation is admirable,

but her fiction reveals that the move also entailed emotional up- heaval. Her experience at boarding school explains a pattern in her writing, that of the orphaned protagonist. Lessa, Rowan, Helva, to name just a few characters, struggle with abandonment, with parents who have either died or abandoned them. Through these characters, Anne recaptures her own alienation and pain- ful adjustment to being alone in a strange place, without family. She confronted racism again at Stuart Hall. The school was all white when she attended, in contrast to her integrated public high school in Montclair, New Jersey. She explained “When our history class [at Stuart Hall] dealt with the Late Great Unpleas- antness all those Southern girls of good family hied them to the infirmary with a variety of ailments so they wouldn’t have to use his name (Abraham Lincoln’s) in class.” Despite cultural differ- ences, she reveled in the intellectual challenges at Stuart Hall. Be- cause of excellent teachers, she especially enjoyed history, French,

and Spanish. While Anne didn’t fit in because she was a Yankee and “not an Old Family,” she enjoyed dining with Mademoiselle or Senorita (according to which language the teacher was speak- ing) and conversing in the languages she was studying. Anne also shocked her peers and teachers by wanting to go see the latest Tarzan movie. That form of popular culture was not supposed to appeal to the young ladies of Stuart Hall. Here her insistence on seeing the movie foreshadowed her “insistence” on writing sci- ence fiction, both considered “outside the pale.” Anne’s deter- mination to see a popular film harked back to her mother’s in- fluence. Anne’s mother, after all, had taken her children out of school so that they could see Gone with the Wind, which she con- sidered an important cultural event.

Anne had high test scores, and her grades at both schools run the gamut from A to one F. Otherwise, she received mostly B’s with the occasional C and A in a time well before grade inflation. Anne’s academic difficulties were brief; for example, after a first report of F she finished with a solid A in a Bible course. In the end, she didn’t have the mandatory two years of Bible courses to graduate from Stuart Hall. Her Stuart Hall records reflect an at- mosphere of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice. The school principal, Ophelia A. Carr, writes of Anne, “In a group as small as a private school, a single Roman Catholic is accepted very natu- rally by the others unless she makes herself conspicuous. Lee Ann boasted a good deal about her Irish ancestry, and about her faith, and while she has not antagonized the students, she has made herself a little ridiculous by doing so.” Those comments are from Stuart Hall’s files, but more damaging and revealing are the prin- cipal’s comments in a report to Radcliffe. In an otherwise positive report, Carr writes of Anne, “She has some of the racial pugnacity which might be expected.” Fortunately, Carr also recognizes and compliments Anne’s considerable gifts: “She is gifted musically and writes very well. Like most embryo writers, she undertakes very ambitious sorts of literary work, and loses interest before she completes them. However, she has been the Pres. of the Writing Club this year, and has made many creditable contributions to the club publication, mostly short stories and poems.” It seems clear

that at Stuart Hall Anne was able to develop her writing, while at Montclair the year before and after her energies were not so di- rected or fulfilled. To Carr’s credit, she appears to have captured Anne’s character. “She is a very cheerful, forgiving girl, and has entered whole-heartedly into the life of the school with no evi- dence of resentment.”

While Anne experienced dislocation in her move to Stuart Hall, she did have a fairy godmother of sorts to make up for it. Her aunt, Gladys McElroy, helped her cope at Stuart Hall. Aunt Gladys paid for piano instruction and horseback-riding lessons, both of which Anne loved. She was “very much a tomboy and rode horseback whenever there was money available.” Piano les- sons and riding went far to compensate for Stuart Hall’s lack of field hockey, a sport she had enjoyed at Montclair High School. Anne was a good dancer, a capable horseback rider, and a com- petent field-hockey player. She says that field hockey was “a sport where my aggressiveness was useful and I was a pretty good player.” She recalls, “We were young ladies [at Stuart Hall] and restricted in what rough sports we could play.” Anne, the tomboy, had other, more conventional loves of dancing and music. In the 1940s, women’s physicality was class based: working-class women were encouraged to direct their physical energies toward factory work; middle-class girls like Anne, especially at private boarding schools, were being turned into “ladies,” women whose primary object was to be ornamental and charming. She resisted this con- ditioning, and in an era long before girls were encouraged to be physically active, Anne McCaffrey gained poise and physical self- confidence. Atop a horse, she felt strong and powerful. And her fictional heroines invariably exhibit physical prowess, confidence, and mastery.

While her brothers battled war and illness, respectively, Anne

struggled to earn enough credits so she could graduate from high school on time. To matriculate from high school with the rest of her peer group, she signed up for summer school at Montclair High School. Her Montclair High School transcript shows a more consistent pattern of achievement and an interest in languages.

(She studied Latin and French.) During her senior “year,” an ac- celerated program, she received all A’s except a C in typing. At Montclair she participated in Glee Club, the Riding Club, and the Dramatic Club. Her senior yearbook portrait appears over the name Lee A. I. McCaffrey and this couplet: “The Army calls her ducky! But she’s really just a quack.”

Anne had many classmates who were young men, boys finish- ing their high school work before they went off to fight in the war. She remembers, “I knew quite a lot of boys who went to war and did not return, . . . John Huntley and Jerry Pangborn, both of whom were killed on D-Day, from shell concussion rather than a direct hit. John was an only son and his parents never really

recovered from his death. Mabel Pangborn had her son’s body brought home and I remember going to his funeral. She, too, was devastated though she had one remaining son who survived the war and the Army totally unscathed.” She was fortunate not to lose her brother or father in World War II, but she lived with the fear for the duration, anticipating their deaths, and she saw first- hand the cost of war to others. In McCaffrey’s novels, the hero- ines never shirk from combat—emotional or physical. The strong presence of war or the threat of war shapes many of her plots, providing a backdrop of crisis for her characters. In addition, when Anne kills off a major character (such as the eponymous protagonist Moreta), the character dies heroically, saving others, embodying the legend of World War II soldiers.

Her brother Kevin’s struggles with a life-threatening illness made an indelible impression on her. One night, Kevin’s leg had to be secured so that he couldn’t injure it; and as he tossed and turned, Anne, who had relieved her mother, struggled to stay awake. Yet when he became still, she somehow knew that he would recover from the crisis, and he did so. Once when Kevin had to be moved from one hospital to another, the ambulance men tried to keep him from seeing a hearse drive up; Kevin then bravely quipped, “Never mind, I’ll be there soon enough.” What finally saved Kevin’s life was a then new and unproven drug, peni- cillin. “The Smallest Dragonboy,” one of Anne’s most popular

short stories, is a tribute to Kevin’s bravery. Anne’s belief in the power of science was bolstered by Kevin’s eventual recovery due to emerging medical research.

Mrs. McCaffrey insisted that young Anne have a good social education, despite the pressures of Kevin’s illness and the loom- ing war. She was sent to “dancing school in Upper Montclair, ball- room dancing . . . and while I was good dancer, I was not a popular partner and sat out a great many hours. Mother made my clothes which were comparable to what the other girls had but ‘I’ knew they were homemade. Still, it was fun to design a new dress with mother.” Anne says her mother was “a good seamstress and we were limited to how many formal gowns could be bought for me [because of] Kevin’s illness.” She never had to wear the same dress more than once, and she enjoyed the rare time spent with her mother. Sewing was one of the few traditionally feminine ac- tivities that she enjoyed. Because Kevin needed so much of their mother’s attention, Anne was grateful for any opportunity to be with her. Sewing, while enjoyable, was something done out of ne- cessity rather than a loved hobby. Cooking, a practical activity, was also something she shared with her mother (and grandmother), and at this activity Anne excelled.

Anne remembers sitting out many dances at her weekly ball-

room cotillion, but she was by no means a wallflower. It was at those dances that she encountered the stirrings of romance. Her first crush was on a boy from Glen Ridge named Bobby Dunne. They met at her dancing class, and he danced with her frequently. “He was the captain of his school’s football team, and he was the first boy to kiss me.” She remembers, “It was nice, but I kept think- ing there should be more. We were good friends so maybe the necessary hormones weren’t exercised.” “I was 14, and he was al- lowed to take me out to the movies.” Her father didn’t think that she was old enough to date, “whereas every girl [she] knew had at least one date—how could he be so antediluvian!” Anne’s fa- ther was very protective of and strict with his daughter. “I don’t think Dad ever went to bed unless he knew I was safely at home,” she remembers, but after 1942 he wasn’t home to watch over her anymore. Her father’s position in the army in the 1940s also en-

abled her to be the belle of the ball—literally. Her father’s status guaranteed male attention, but her own maturity and friendli- ness, as well as her attractiveness, would have secured a full dance card, too. She visited him at his army base in Moultrie, Georgia, for Christmas 1944, and while his rank as colonel kept her from having to worry about sexual advances, it also ensured that every dance would be claimed by an attentive soldier. Anne said, “I had a wonderful time at Moultrie because everyone would dance with the colonel’s daughter. I learned a great deal about how to carry on without being a simp at Moultrie.”

Anne’s talent for singing and acting developed. She wrote, “[I] enjoyed High School Choir most—but that gave me a chance to show-off. My voice was loud, even penetrating {grin} so I was a useful soprano. (I did try out and got the part of Margot in the Vagabond King in the Montclair Opera Society.)” Her remarkably strong singing voice, like her aptitude for dancing, created oppor- tunities for socializing. Music also provided her with relaxation and confidence; she remembers all forms of music being fun and good for her. When she was at Stuart Hall, she again sang in choir, in addition to the piano lessons paid for by her Aunt Gladdie. At the time, she wanted to become a concert pianist; she had “strong hands and a wide reach [and] played something by Scriabin for [her] spring concert.” With her talent as her entree, Anne was able to mix with adults of many ages. Not surprisingly, her charac- ters, especially in the Rowan series, use “Talent” (psychic power) to found new communities. Like Anne, these characters see them- selves as outsiders until their Talent is discovered, and then they become sought after by the members of another society. In her books, she always depicts music as an important career. For her characters, music provides a sense of identity, purpose, and even a tool with which to save lives (as when Helva sings to deafen her kidnapper in The Ship Who Sang). In the Dragonriders of Pern, her most famous series, music is the main form of communica- tion and it captures the history of the planet Pern, where harp- ers are among the planet’s most respected and powerful inhabi- tants.

Anne remembers “lunch time in the cafeteria where no one

would invite [her] to join them,” but that nightmare was bal- anced by her pleasure in the high school choir. The choir master, Mr. Arthur Ward, was extremely popular with everyone, and to Anne’s delight, he chose her to be the choir librarian. During Anne’s last full year at Montclair (1941), the very popular annual Christmas concert was canceled because of a flu outbreak. The highlight of the concert was always the Hallelujah Chorus. As the choir librarian, she was able to get hold of copies of the music, and she arranged for as many of her fellow students as possible to join her in front of Mr. Ward’s house; there they performed an impromptu Hallelujah Chorus. The motivation may have been that it was going to be Mr. Ward’s last concert, but she recalls that she felt it was “imperative that we show him how much we appre- ciated his direction.” She remembers the event as “the brightest spot of my high school career,” but we can easily imagine that it was also the brightest spot of Mr. Ward’s career. Whatever her doubts about her high school popularity, her organization of an impromptu concert demonstrates that she could be a leader and that her peers responded to her generous nature.

Anne’s adolescence was both typically and atypically traumatic.

She struggled with self-acceptance, a girl’s complicated coming- of-age, and the typical adolescent feelings of inadequacy. But she also had to deal with a father and brother away at war, a brother with a deadly illness, and leaving home herself to go away to a boarding school in which she didn’t fit. But where most people choose to forget the struggles of adolescence, Anne McCaffrey still draws on them, in all their intensity and pain. Anne re-creates the passion of youth through her characters. In her young adult novels, like the Harper Hall Trilogy, the main character is an adolescent. That award-winning series has been much acclaimed for its accurate and compelling depiction of young adults. In- deed, Vaughne Hansen, one of her literary agents, declares that its main character, Menolly, “is Annie.” However, one of Anne’s signal achievements as a writer is her ability to communicate a similar intensity of emotion even in mature characters like Master- harper Robinton in the Dragonriders of Pern series and Yana Maddock in the Powers series. Her high school years were filled

with tumultuous events, but she coped well, and she brings her hard-earned adaptability and optimism to her novels. While she tried to “keep under control,” her enthusiasm and passion shone through even her own efforts to subdue herself. Transmuted in a science fiction setting, her teenage years provide a source for the great heart and fundamental optimism that create the appeal of the fictions.

chapte r 3

College Days and Marriage

Anne has calmed down from the most hoydenish days. She seems better adjusted here this year and better liked. There is with all her loudness a great delicacy in her understanding of others, in artistic matters and a sensitiveness of recognition. She is warm and deep.

—Radcliffe college file

If as an adolescent Anne struggled to fit in, at college she fi- nally came into her own. At Radcliffe College, she made lasting friendships, satisfied her intellectual curiosity, and fulfilled her desire to perform. Radcliffe offered her a challenging intellec- tual environment, and during and following the war, it had an Ivy League coeducational easiness. She was able to pursue her academic interests, and she developed a social life that can only be described as hectic. Thus, her move to Cambridge for college was a crucial step in her journey to personal and professional happiness.

Like most young women at that time, Anne was expected and pressured to marry soon after college, and marry she did, in 1950—not as quickly as a number of her own friends but still less than three years after graduation. Beginning well, her mar- riage was a partnership that flourished in the vibrant life of New York City. Then, as the children began coming, she moved to the suburbs. Even though Anne’s life then came to look like that of other American homemakers, the strictures supplied by the era could not suppress her drive to express herself, to perform. She found outlets in singing and in musical theater. Later she began to develop as a writer. Eventually, her writing became her refuge from a controlling and sometimes abusive husband.

If her adolescence gave her much of the emotional experience

she was to translate so effectively in her books, her college years opened her to broader vistas, taught her much about research, and developed in her the self-confidence she would need to take her writing seriously, to believe in it, and stick to it in the face of what would be active and ongoing discouragement from her hus- band. (But, then, life with her father must have taught her some- thing about getting on with things even without support or ap- proval). Radcliffe was one of America’s best women’s colleges as well as the sister college to Harvard, America’s oldest institution of higher learning and a men’s school. Because of her father’s association with Harvard, the McCaffreys never considered any school other than Radcliffe College for Anne or Harvard Univer- sity for her brothers. Anne describes Radcliffe as “the right col- lege for me,” but she also acknowledges Harvard might not have been a good fit for her brother Kevin. Her sympathy for Kevin may stem from her own experience at Stuart Hall, which was not exactly the right school for her. However, the McCaffrey children did as they were told, even as young adults. Anne’s application for admission to Radcliffe indicates that she applied to no other schools and that her educational goal was “to have knowledge usable in postwar abroad.” Even at seventeen, she was already looking to travel overseas. However, it would be years before she could go abroad.

It was in February 1944 when she graduated from high school.

She had only a month to wait before beginning college, but, with typical industry, she kept busy. Though she had received only C’s in typing in high school, she could type quite fast, and she spent a month working for the local board of education, typing and mimeographing their list of supplies. This may have improved her accuracy, which wasn’t exactly perfect. At any rate, whatever skill she developed in typing, she certainly has had the opportu- nity, as a prolific writer, to use it.

Anne entered Radcliffe in March of 1944. The war was still in full swing, and it was an exciting place to be. Her classmate Pota Lewis Meier recalled that Radcliffe students were encouraged to be independent thinkers. For that time, Radcliffe was a progres- sive institution, operating on an honor code. After a semester of

passing grades, students were allowed to stay out past the dorm curfew of 10 p.m. The young women felt they were quite sophis- ticated, studying hard, partying hard, and socializing with each other by playing bridge and smoking and conversing. Anne en- joyed being at Radcliffe because there her intelligence and writ- ing skills were appreciated. As she says, “I really enjoyed cam- pus life and the challenge of studying.” She made the dean’s list every semester except her first. One of her classmates, Freddie Brennerman, described their experience:

We landed, that summer and fall, squarely on top of the wall di- viding Radcliffe As-It-Was from its beginning to Radcliffe As-It- Was-To-Become. Some of our organizations were still single sex (Idler), some became integrated even as we watched (Radio Rad- cliffe into the Crimson Network). Our freshman classes were all women and all in Radcliffe Yard on Garden Street. Some of us took courses in our third semester just in order to sample inte- grated classes in Harvard Hall, and by the time we were juniors, nearly all of our classes were integrated. We bowed to strict pari- etal rules that freshman year, but they were relaxed as we became upperclasspersons.

In Anne’s years there, Radcliffe and Harvard were bustling. Dorms were crowded with refugees and WAV ES, and like Anne’s high school, Radcliffe offered an accelerated program so students could take classes without a summer break. She took advantage of this option in order to graduate in three years and finish with her class, the class of 1947.

Reports by Radcliffe residence hall heads describe Anne’s en- ergy and vitality in these years. These official reports depict an attractive and lively young woman, perhaps a bit too lively to fit a 1940s idea of a “lady.” A pamphlet distributed to the class of 1947 reveals the college’s traditional expectations: “Poise is do- ing and saying the right thing at the right time without being ob- vious. All girls need it.” The pamphlet advises students, “Don’t sit like an octopus,” and informs them about regulations governing the wearing of hats (required for teas) and pants (“In public . . .

slacks, shorts, blue jeans are tabu”). The Anne McCaffrey her ad- visors describe did not fit that model of decorum. She had too much energy and high spirits and describes herself as breaking most of the rules, “especially the dress code. One rainy day, for example, she took a barefoot stroll down Brattle Street and was caught by the dean of women, who was not amused. McCaffrey shrugged it off; she had only one pair of shoes and did not want to ruin them.”

At college, Anne was still known as Lee Ann or Lee. Miss Rose Cabot, head of her first residence hall, commented on her: “She seems better adjusted here this year and better liked. There is with all her loudness a great delicacy in her understanding of oth- ers, in artistic matters and a sensitiveness of recognition.” As in the reports from Stuart Hall, this perceptive analysis highlights Anne’s empathy and artistic sensibility. Her junior year hall head, Miss Florence Gerrish, is perhaps a little bit less understanding, but she describes a woman still identifiably Anne McCaffrey: “still too boisterous and self-assertive. K ind-hearted and conscientious.” In a letter of reference, Miss Gerrish is kinder, but she still char- acterizes her as being out of the bounds of propriety. She writes that Anne is “too show-off & noisy to be very popular—tries too hard to be funny and clever—If her great vitality & good spirits could be toned down she could go far—At present she is an irre- pressible St. Bernard puppy—but a nice one.” In his notes, her sophomore tutor, Professor Cross, says something similar to Ger- rish: “A little bumptious and flashy, with less performance than good-will. No serious deficiencies.” These descriptions provide some insight into the writer-in-training, and they also outline the obstacles that an unconventional young woman would face. In the mid-1940s, the expectation, hardly unique to Radcliffe, was that a young woman should be quiet and demure. These comments of those entrusted with her well-being show that even as Anne challenged traditional gender roles that decreed women should be quiet and unassuming, she earned her instructor’s grudg- ing respect. Furthermore, Miss Gerrish’s last letter, written a few months before Anne graduated, shows that Radcliffe did not suc- ceed, in Gerrish’s words, at “trimming her down.” But the note

of caution about her boisterousness shows that she could not, or more likely would not, conform. (This is the kind of behavior that Anne endorses in almost all her main characters, from Lessa in Dragonflight to Nimisha of Nimisha’s Ship).

The academic choices she made also reveal her inclination toward the unconventional. She took a wide range of courses, including Russian, Slavic, Celtic, and French language courses, Political Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy, Cartography, History, Geography, and Government. You might expect that a young woman who wrote “novelist” as her first choice of a vocation would have selected literature and writing courses, but, charac- teristically, Anne McCaffrey chose an untraditional path. She en- countered some resistance to her major, as Radcliffe’s head of the college did not think Anne could handle such a difficult course load. But Anne persevered, obtaining the department head’s approval. This professor, Sam Cross, had known her father at Harvard, and when he granted her approval to major in Slavic languages, he commented, “Of course you can! You’re George McCaffrey’s daughter; where is the bastard—oh, I can’t say that to you, can I?!” In her course work, Anne “bucked the system,” following a family tradition. Despite the warnings about difficul- ties, she persisted and graduated with honors. From this experi- ence she learned the importance of following her own instincts. She also developed the foundations of a broad world view, as well as the perspective and skills to create believable alien cultures and worlds.

Her decision to major in Slavic languages was dictated in part

by her second vocational choice; after novelist she listed “diplo- matic service.” Her ambitions are further defined by a side note to these two, “preferably combined.” Her third choice, almost ob- ligatory for a young middle-class woman in the 1940s, is listed as “housewife.” Anne would manage to do all three, first becoming a housewife, then a writer. Her middle choice, the diplomatic ser- vice, she accomplished vicariously through characters in her fic- tions. Her interest in other languages and cultures was ostensibly about preparing herself to do graduate work abroad or to work in the diplomatic corps, but it would pay off years later, in ways

that she could not imagine during college. Quite without know- ing it, at Radcliffe she was gathering skills that would make her an accomplished and successful writer.

Organized religion is not a feature in Anne’s fictional worlds, except when she occasionally depicts oppressive religious insti- tutions that must be opposed or destroyed. Though she person- ally believes “in God/The Force or whatever you want to call it” (and was, years after college, to associate herself with Presbyteri- anism), the lack of organized religion on her most famous world, Pern, is often discussed by critics. Living in the travails of war, and enduring her brother’s long and dangerous illness and her own adolescent angst, she found the Catholic Church of little help to her, and she associated her grandmother’s Catholicism with a controlling, censorious piety. Thus, in college she rejected “the trappings and the rituals” of religion and stopped attend- ing Mass. She remembers thinking, “God did not like hypocrisy and my continuing to observe Mass etc. was hypocritical.” The grandmother who had been so insistent on her children’s and grandchildren’s Catholicism was gone; she had died in 1939. As for her parents, they accepted her rejection of Catholicism with equanimity, as they themselves had philosophical differences with church doctrine. Unfortunately, Anne’s godmother, Inez McCaf- frey (who, despite her last name, was no relation, but a college friend of Anne’s father), was hurt that Anne did not come to her with questions about her faith. Inez had invited her to attend Mass, and after she refused, Inez and Anne never met again, even though Anne wrote to her and apologized. It was a sad loss; Anne took her middle name from her godmother, and Inez had recom- mended her to Radcliffe.

Ever going her own way, Anne also synthesized her own liter-

ary canon in college. She did not read contemporary American or English novelists, nor did she read American or English sci- ence fiction writers. She continued to read Rudyard K ipling and Zane Grey and studied Russian writers, most notably, Eugene Iva- novich Zamiatin, whose utopian novel We was the central focus of Anne’s undergraduate honors thesis, “The Utopian Novel with Special Emphasis on Eugene Ivanovich Zamiatin and His Novel

W E.” Now considered a classic, but still rarely taught in literature departments, in 1947 WE did not fit into any of the conventional literary categories. In working with this novel and topic, Anne re- searched several science fiction writers and, quite unknowingly, took another step in the direction of her own career as a science fiction writer. Indeed, Anne’s own work is far better known and read than that of Zamiatin or the other writers she discusses. (Further, the thesis is quite critical of Huxley’s Brave New World, finding it inferior to Zamiatin’s W E. Here again we see her resis- tance to authority and her faith in her own judgment. Brave New World’s pessimism had no appeal for her).

The thesis, a respectable fifty-eight pages, exhibits Anne’s keen intellect and interest in unorthodox literature and—with its de- tailed description of Russia in 1920—her ability to convey set- ting and ambience. It was a work of which she could justifiably be proud, and it was the thesis that earned her the distinction of graduating cum laude. (It is a little sad, then, that one of its acknowledgments cites her father “for his criticism and cor- rections,” and not, alas, for his “support and encouragement”). The thesis is well written and researched, especially the first sec- tion, a survey on utopian thought and literature. In the light of Anne’s subsequent career in science fiction, it is interesting that her analysis of various utopias divides them into two camps: es- capist or reconstructionist. Her own fiction rather avoids these two extremes; there are always elements of redemption and hope in the relations of the characters, but there are always dangers to be faced as well, such as the invasion of Thread on Pern or the hostile alien Hivers in the Tower and the Hive series. The ele- ments she admired in Zamiatin’s work she would later produce in her own writing: a strong female character, the celebration of pas- sion and deep feeling, and an upbeat attitude toward change. Yet Anne was not uncritical of Zamiatin, faulting the paucity of his work, remarking that, “unfortunately,” Zamiatin was not prolific, “because of the pains he took with his work.” In her own writing, she would err rather to the other extreme, to the extent that her literary agent, Virginia Kidd, would beg her to slow down!

All in all, Radcliffe gave Anne the tools and the rigor that

would enable her to create the novels that she would later write. Anne did not study science—in fact, in her reply to the Radcliffe College jobs-placement questionnaire, under “subjects disliked” she answered “science.” But Anne did learn the importance of re- search, and she did acquire the skills to do it. (This same training also taught her to respect and value librarians. Later, she would consider getting a degree in library science herself.) When she finally settled into her career as a writer, she found that the skills she learned at Radcliffe would help her locate the information she would need to know, whatever the subject.

In 1944 and especially 1945, men who had been released from military service started to return to Harvard, changing the atmo- sphere at Radcliffe considerably. She began to meet and date men who had working-class backgrounds. Because of the GI Bill, many men were able to attend Harvard who otherwise could not have afforded the university’s steep tuition. Anne felt that some of the men would have been happier elsewhere: “To be frank, some of them . . . would have achieved more if they’d gone to their own lo- cal universities. Harvard could be overpowering with its traditions and requirements. I knew two boys who suicided—[from] loss of self-esteem and/or the pressures of their war experience.” This blunt assessment of class difference has no suggestion that the in- stitution should change, reflecting her upper-middle-class bias. Anne had not dated much her first three semesters, but “once the lads started coming home, I’d beg off a date so I [could] stay in and wash my hair or my clothes. Too much of a good thing.” She brags, “I was also known for being able to drink even the ‘fly’ boys under the table. It was usually I who walked them back to their dorms to be sure they got there safely. However, Cambridge was a reasonably secure town so walking the mile back home was never a problem. I’d meet up with other girls.” The rigid dorm rules that had marked her freshman year were gone, and the men who returned from war felt entitled to a new sexual freedom, which the Radcliffe students enjoyed, too. But of course, for the women there was the worry of an unplanned pregnancy. More than one of her classmates married during college, but for many others, there was a huge sense of relief when a menstrual period arrived.

About such matters, Anne was more open and direct than some of her classmates. Her mother’s honesty about sex had condi- tioned Anne to see sexuality as nothing to be ashamed of or hid- den. One day, she even raced through the hall, rejoicing rather loudly that she had gotten her period. But her classmates admired her frankness, even if many of them couldn’t quite emulate it.

Among the men who returned to Harvard were her two broth- ers. She recalls picking up their laundry and doing it for them, thinking nothing of it at the time. This experience may have been unconsciously resented, as it appears on Pern, when drudges have to do housework for others, or in Anne’s first novel, Restoree, where the main character, Sara, resentfully does her family’s housework. Anne still didn’t get along as well with Hugh as she did with Kevin, and she didn’t rely on her brothers to get her dates.

One man Anne met reinforced her lifelong idealism. She often saw Bobby Kennedy, who went to one of the college coffee shops, Hazen’s. Bobby would hang out there with his fellow football team players: “He would drift among us ‘Cliffies’ to see if we had some spare government paper that could be redrafted and submitted by the football team. They had to maintain a decent grade or they couldn’t play football and with Bobby as captain of the team, it was sort of up to him to help. He was the best of the Kennedy lads as far as I was concerned.” Bobby Kennedy’s charm and enthusiasm overshadowed for Anne the casual appro- priation of women’s work and the specter of cheating. A positive attitude toward “helping” other writers or collaborating would appear much later in Anne’s extensive work with other writers, discussed in chapters 6, 7, and 8. Not only Kennedy’s charm, but also the liberal attitudes of classmates and professors opened Anne’s political views. Already tolerant and a free-thinker, Anne’s experiences in college confirmed her lifelong liberalism and ide- alism. In this regard, she began to develop independence from her family, who were all Republicans.

At Radcliffe, she participated in a number of extracurricular

activities that bolstered her self-confidence and poise. Cabot Hall, a new dorm at the time, was a lively place, with sixty students who made the atmosphere rather clubby, calling each other by their

last names as men did in the army, so that Anne was “McCaffrey.” With her friend Pota Lewis, Anne belonged to the French Club, which had both Radcliffe and Harvard students. She lists the Rad- cliffe Entertainment Unit as one of the activities in college that gave her the greatest pleasure. A musical performance group, the Radcliffe Entertainment Unit was a high-prestige club. The group sang at the army camps in the area, working up a show. One of the girls danced, and Anne usually sang two songs, one of which was the romantic ballad “Chloe.” She wore a nightclub- style black dress and “plenty of makeup,” thus reinforcing her ad- visors’ image of her as too boisterous. Being in the Radcliffe En- tertainment Unit was her favorite activity, she says today, because before the war ended “[she] had a chance to show off and get to the army bases. Most of the male student population was pretty 4-F or underage, so we tried to meet more suitable dates when we could. Nothing ever came of it but it was fun.” The Radcliffe Entertainment Unit was, however, excellent preparation for the musical theater work she would devote herself to until turning primarily to writing in 1965. The musical theater work was not merely a sideline, but an integral part of her desire to create and perform. Another outlet for her, these entertainments provided practice for seeing group dynamics, especially leadership, devel- opment. But she reveled in the performative aspect. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Anne played the comic role of the butler (as a maid). She remembered, “I was always go- ing to be a writer. It was just that I wanted also to be a film star or a singer in an opera—or you know, a lot of other things. The writing was always there.”

Anne also worked on the school newspaper, the Idler, and the

Harvard Radio Workshop, both activities that polished her so- cial skills more than her writing skills. She did little writing for either group, although she remembers writing some poetry, in- cluding an ode to drinking coffee. Not surprisingly, coffee (or its alien equivalent) appears often in her novels. Anne wrote an op- eretta based on the Dream of Angus, which she had studied in a Celtic course she had taken. Included was a whacky song, “Chick- ory, chiggory chill / There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.” In

an upper-level composition course, she was required to write two thousand words a week, and it was in this course she began a story that decades later she turned into Mark of Merlin. She had taken riding lessons to complete a gym requirement at Radcliffe, so the heroine in this early version had a horse rather than a dog as the character of Merlin. But the genesis of a workable plot was there from her college days. Significantly, it was the idea for the book rather than the actual writing that she gained from the ex- perience.

One of the most valuable parts of her Radcliffe years was the socializing; she learned how to express herself publicly. In Cabot Hall, Anne spent a good bit of time in the smoking room, play- ing bridge with her friends Jean Davis and Pota Lewis. She didn’t spend all her spare time in the smoker, though. She spent time with her Russian roommate, K ira Kalachevsky, practicing her conversational Russian. Like other Radcliffe students, the young women talked about their hope and fears, cute boys, their classes. To Pota, who was four feet and eleven inches, Anne was “an im- posing presence, very fun-loving . . . a bit of a character.” Jean, who was in the Radcliffe Choral Society, remembers Anne sing- ing as others played the piano in their dorm. In addition to a com- mon interest in music, Jean and Anne both had extraordinary mothers who expected their daughters to excel. But as Jean ex- plains today, none of the women in Cabot Hall were “expected to go to graduate school the way our daughters did.” So performers like Anne struggled to find acceptable outlets for their energy and ideas.

Some of her energy continued to be directed toward public

singing performances while she was on dates. Jean Davis in- troduced her to some men from MIT; Jean and Anne double- dated occasionally, and Jean had a serious boyfriend (Bob Bige- low, whom she later married). Anne danced with Bob Ennis, who was six feet four inches, and Austin Fish, who was putting him- self through college by being an instructor at Arthur Murray Dancing School. Anne and her friends were somewhat wild, and they considered themselves adventurous. Jean’s boyfriend and his MIT buddies frequented a bar/strip joint, Jack’s Lighthouse, in

a shady part of Boston known as Scollay Square. After Jean and Bob’s wedding in May 1948, a whole group of their friends went back to Jack’s Lighthouse, and Anne got up on stage and belted out a tune, to the delight of her friends and the rest of the au- dience.

While she was at Radcliffe, she met her first serious boyfriend, Don Bassist. Don was a year behind her in his studies; he had been in the air force. She was attracted to him not only because of his war experience, but also because “he didn’t drink as much as other fly-boys, and [he was] smart.” Her father liked Don; Anne remembers, “My father found a kindred spirit in him.” But Anne’s girlfriends didn’t think he was right for her. More important, she was troubled by his lack of vision: “He didn’t seem to know what to do with his life after college was over.” He had proposed to her, but they both realized that they were too young to marry. Anne did not attend Radcliffe to receive a “Mrs.” degree. She had am- bitions of her own. However, in post–World War II America, she would find it difficult to find a career suited to her talents. Her search for meaningful work would reappear in many of her novels, as female characters like Killashandra in the Crystal Singer series or the Talents in the Tower and Hive series wrestle with finding suitable jobs for their remarkable abilities.

By attending Radcliffe and graduating with honors, Anne fol-

lowed in her father’s footsteps. She would have liked, also, to fol- low him in finding work abroad. She had always been strongly interested in working outside the United States, as he had, and her pursuit of this goal is reflected many times in the file that the Radcliffe Appointments Bureau kept on her. But even with her father’s name to assist her, she was not able to find a job in dip- lomatic service. Her difficulties in so doing may have been, in part, the result of gender discrimination, because her lively be- havior defied the social norms of the day. The very first entry in her Radcliffe job file describes her as “an extremely articulate and buoyant person . . . she is noisy, energetic, and rather insensitive. Would make herself in any group conspicuous.”

After graduation she did apply for a posting in the Foreign Service as well as a job with Aramco (Arabian American Oil

Company). During the war and immediate postwar period, it was considered patriotic to work for oil companies, as their im- portance to the nation and to military maneuvers was clear. She was accepted by Aramco, which was willing to let her return to the States if her father became seriously ill. (Already in 1947, Anne was concerned about his failing health.) Unfortunately, the happy arrangement fell through; the secretarial posting to Bahrain had to be canceled because there weren’t quarters suitable for women. Once more she experienced firsthand the limitations placed on women, but she wasn’t surprised. A note in the Radcliffe job file, written two years later, explains, “She seems more nearly able to take care of herself in a foreign country than most girls her age,” and reports that she has “a very realistic view of the whole [job] situation, and knows that any job a woman gets is going to be below the salt.”

On the other hand, Aramco did pay Anne some severance

money, which she used to take some time off to visit her col- lege friend Pota Lewis in West Palm Beach. She worked as a wait- ress when she returned, then held secretarial jobs for the Inter- national Council of Nurses and for World Trade Intelligence, a company that she described as “ahead of its time” in establishing relationships between American and similar business interests abroad. Working various jobs in New York City, Anne first lived at home because city rents were so expensive. Finally, she found a job she enjoyed. She was hired as an advertising copy layout artist at Liberty Music Shops. She was, to an extent, following her moth- er’s footsteps; her mother had worked for many years in advertis- ing, an industry more open to women than most. Liberty Music Shops had a number of famous customers, including Rita Hay- worth, Raymond Massey, Merle Oberon, and Tallulah Bankhead. New York City was an exciting place to work and live for a young single woman, and rubbing shoulders with the famous gave glam- our to her position.

She was also fortunate in her roommate, Betty Wragge; she was

a radio actress who wrote commercials. They had an apartment diagonally across from Carnegie Hall. Betty was a helpful room- mate. She had a long-term contract with Pepper Young’s Family, a

radio soap opera, but more important, she knew Lila Schaefer, who was an editor for Ziff-Davis, a publishing firm specializing in science fiction. Lila, who was to become Betty’s roommate later on, had lunch with Anne several times, reading her fiction and offering suggestions and encouragement. Anne remains grate- ful today for Lila’s help, though she never sold Ziff-Davis a story. “Her discussions gave me parameters even for a fiction that has none.” It was important, too, that when she left Liberty Music for a better paying job at Helena Rubenstein, Anne met a woman who read Galaxy magazine. Because she had written her thesis on a Russian science fiction writer, her coworker shared her copies of the magazine. It was a thrill for Anne when she “actually found someone who enjoyed the stories and s-f as much as [she] did.”

She also dated a concert pianist named Ronnie Hughes. “But I knew even then that concert performers led difficult lives, and I like regular paychecks,” she says, explaining that it was this prac- tical streak that kept her from pursuing the advantage of know- ing Wilbur Evans and Susannah Foster, though in the summer of 1949, she “helped them and played some minor roles in the Lambertsville Musical Circus.” In addition to assisting Evans and Foster, Anne played the role of Margot, a tavern and brothel keeper in The Vagabond King. Anne enjoyed the thrill of perform- ing in musical theater and the fact that her powerful voice earned her a place in such a fun and glamorous activity. She was active in church choirs, where her voice was strong enough to surmount even the church organ at full strength. She joined the Breck Mills Cronies, a group that produced operetta and opera.

In 1949, when friends of a friend arranged a blind date for

Anne with Wright Johnson, it would be a joint love of music that drew them together. At this time, in the postwar world, there was tremendous pressure on American women to marry and have children, and Anne certainly felt it. She says, “I was nervous that I wouldn’t get a chance to marry, as children had always been a part of my future.” She says, “I got a little nervous about my lack of choices until I met Wright. We had a lot in common, our love of music, theater and ballet.” Meeting Wright was a relief for her; she had “met a lot of guys with common interests but no passion.”

Until she was introduced to Wright, Anne had decided that she “was crazy or far too picky.” Wright offered common interests and passion. He courted her with songs from the Beggar’s Opera.

Photographs of Horace Wright Johnson (he went by his middle name) capture a thin, handsome young man with an eager ex- pression. The youngest of four children, Wright’s background was quite different from Anne’s. Her Irish people were city folk from Boston, while his father had grown up on a farm in Okla- homa and, ingeniously, started a business selling offal (butcher’s waste) in New York City. Then, in 1936, Wright’s mother inher- ited a small farm in Kissimmee, Florida. The farm had a small orange grove and chickens, and “Mother Johnson raised florist quality roses,” which she sold. While the McCaffreys were having garden parties and distributing a dozen tulips to their guests, the Johnsons were raising roses to make a living. Still, in spite of the urban-rural split, differences in financial circumstances, and apparent disparity of class, there were important similarities in the ways the McCaffreys and Johnsons raised their children. Just as Anne’s parents had introduced their children to literature, so Wright’s mother subscribed to editions of the classics, had read them to her children and encouraged them to read. Further, Anne remembers Wright’s father with special fondness, noting, “I did not meet them in person until I went down to Florida to recover from Dad’s death, we were on very good terms, especially Dad Johnson who was a hearty optimist and a very warm, caring person.” Wright’s father worked in an airplane factory as a storage manager, and Anne remembers him as a man “who could turn his hand to about everything.” A man of such resourcefulness evoked for Anne her own father.

Wright knew early on that his life would have to take him away

from K issimmee, which at the time was a rural backwater. (It is perhaps significant that Anne’s brother Kevin remembered that when Wright was living on “Normal Street,” he so disliked the name that he would not give people his street address.) As it turned out for him and his brother Phil, as for many others of his generation, the war and the GI Bill provided a way out. His brother Phil was a bombardier who attended the University of Il-

linois, earning a law degree. As for Wright, it was the savings be- queathed to him by his oldest brother, Dick, who had been a pilot in the Pacific, that along with the GI Bill enabled him to go to col- lege. (It was a sad story. On his way home Dick’s plane was lost at sea.) Wright had been thinking of attending Yale University when Van Varner, an army buddy who had attended Princeton, encour- aged him to apply there. Wright did and was accepted, but he was so ignorant of university life that he arrived weeks early and had to find a job in New York City operating a drill press until classes began at Princeton.

These were tumultuous times at Ivy League campuses, which had to adjust to a new type of student—older, wiser, and often from backgrounds less comfortable than those of their usual stu- dents. Wright Johnson was one of these pioneering students who found many faculty biased against them. “Robert Goheen, Dean at the time, last year disclosed that he found great faculty resis- tance and contempt for G.I. Bill students.” Yet unlike the men Anne says would have done better at local universities than Har- vard, Wright throve on the challenge of Princeton, an institution with traditions and requirements very like those of Harvard. He did well, finding it difficult but managing, with summer classes, to graduate in three calendar years. That three years included the time applied to writing the thesis required of students majoring in the humanities. Wright’s thesis runs 234 pages (Anne’s was 58 pages) and reads more like a dissertation than an undergraduate work. Unlike Anne’s thesis, Wright’s has no acknowledgments page, perhaps revealing something about his character, or class— he typed the manuscript himself while she had her father’s sec- retary type hers. Entitled Harley Granville-Barker 1877–1946: A Critical Biography, the work focuses on the English playwright, ac- tor, and producer who is best known for his innovative staging of Shakespeare and his support of George Bernard Shaw and other modern dramatists. Wright’s prose is polished and confi- dent and his careful and persuasive analysis of Granville-Barker’s plays holds up to scrutiny, even after more than fifty years. His sense of humor appears in the thesis in numerous witty phrasings. For example, he wrote, “Granville-Barker was never an extremely

facile writer; the large waste-basket was a prominent piece of his equipment throughout.” Wright obviously admired Granville- Barker and, like Anne in her thesis, used his to champion a man’s art that he thought had been unfairly neglected. Still, his treat- ment of Granville-Barker’s marriages and divorce merits a men- tion, as he scathingly denounces the second wife’s novel writing, seeing it as inferior to Granville-Barker’s plays. Wright’s attitude hints at misogyny in the assumption which was then widespread, that great art is produced by men, not women.

Wright had a passionate and personal interest in theater. He belonged to “a small group that revived the Theatre Intime with Ibsen and Shakespeare—the administration never acknowledged us; I doubt we figure in Princeton history.” He also recalls that he “shook up the English Dep’t with a paper, drawing on her [Dorothy Wordsworth’s] diary, positing that Wordsworth & his sister were lovers, now accepted as factual.” His description of his time at Princeton suggests a nonconformist streak something like Anne’s. Wright also had a keen interest in music; he sang in the choir at Princeton and at church. Anne continued the sing- ing that she had done at Radcliffe, working with the Lambertville Music Theatre in summers. Wright had courted her by singing to her, and they enjoyed singing duets, Anne’s soprano to Wright’s bass. Like Anne, Wright had a flare for the dramatic. He eventu- ally wrote a musical.

Wright and Anne shared an interest not only in music and

theater, but also in literature, and she still recalls an anecdote about Wright’s thesis research that reveals something of his char- acter and influenced her own behavior as an author. Pursuing his study of Granville-Barker, Johnson drew on his subject’s cor- respondence with George Bernard Shaw. Johnson also wrote to Shaw. When he received no reply, he wrote again, taking the Great Man to task for not responding to the first letter; this time, Shaw replied with a helpful letter. Anne seems to share her for- mer husband’s long-ago indignation that a writer (even an el- derly, extremely famous writer) should ignore an inquiry. While it is true that science fiction writers are famous for being respon- sive to their readers, this exchange between Johnson and Shaw,

remembered and retold over fifty years later, appears to be some- thing of a touchstone for Anne, who goes to extreme lengths to be available to her fans.

While she undoubtedly felt the pressure to marry that was a central feature of the postwar years, Anne also experienced a strong attraction to Wright Johnson. He was a journalist for Wom- en’s Wear Daily, the standard industry journal for fashion, and like her, he loved the arts, especially opera, ballet, and music. She re- members him as “good looking, self-assured . . . [and] there was a definite sexual attraction.” He was sophisticated, “hav[ing] mar- tini lunches because he couldn’t afford a Martini and lunch” and insisting on designer colors for his apartment. After several months of dating, he proposed to Anne in September 1949; they married on January 14, 1950. Anne was twenty-three and Wright was twenty-five.

The wedding posed a bit of difficulty. Because Anne was no longer affiliated with the Catholic Church, she had to find a min- ister. Because Wright had been raised Presbyterian, a Presbyte- rian minister was the logical choice, especially as her brother Hugh had married in the Presbyterian Church two years ear- lier. The wedding service was held at Montclair Women’s Club, with about a hundred guests in attendance. She had chosen the Montclair Women’s Club for convenience, because the reception as well as the service could be held there. Betty Wragge was her maid of honor and her college friends Pota Lewis Meier and Jean Bigelow were her bridesmaids. Anne wore a silk dress made from fabric that she bought from Pongee Corporation, the Swiss tex- tile company where she worked in 1949. She designed the dress, which was simple and elegant. It had long fitted sleeves and a scoop neck; her veil of net was hip length, held in place with a band of silk. Pota and Jean wore maroon velvet gowns with bustles, and the men wore morning suits. In short, it was a tradi- tional formal wedding. Anne’s mother ran the show. In Anne’s words, “Mother had the ideas. I agreed or disagreed.” Her in-laws did not attend, citing the cold weather and the expense of the trip. Instead, they sent a generous wedding gift of one hundred dollars. Anne recalls that she understood and “felt no hurt or

rejection” in their absence. Wright’s brother Phil, the lawyer, did, however, come to meet her. The McCaffrey family played bridge with him, and they passed what Anne felt had been an inspec- tion. Her mother-in-law later admitted to her that she was afraid that Anne would have “one of those Bronx or Brooklyn accents.” This anxiety, which is about class, is mirrored in Wright’s anxiety about living on “Normal Street.”

One of her friends remembered Wright as the opposite of Anne, who was always very warm and trusting. Wright, this friend says, was very cynical and critical of other people, whereas she says of Anne, “I never heard her bad-mouth anybody.” Hyper- criticalness and sensitivity, not to mention a sense of elitism, are qualities that would eventually lead to the breakdown of Anne and Wright’s marriage. There were, however, a number of busy, happy years first.

Curiously, it was in 1950, only a few months after her wed- ding, that Anne discovered the lasting interest that eventually would come to fill her life. Sick with her usual spring attack of bronchitis, she turned to the stacks of pulp science fiction maga- zines that a previous tenant had left in the Johnson apartment. She picked up The Star Kings by Edmund Hamilton and “got so involved in the yarn that [she] even forgot to cough.” She read copies of Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy, and Fantastic S-F. “I couldn’t read fast enough or get enough of this marvelous reading,” Anne says, “and I was hooked.”

In the late 1940s, New York City was an exciting place to be. World-class theater and art events abounded, and while Anne and Wright didn’t have a great deal of extra money, they saw all the important and influential plays of that time. Because Wright had interviewed such celebrated actors as Laurence Olivier and Jessica Tandy for his thesis, he knew his way around city stages. Since Anne’s former roommate was an actress and both Anne and Wright participated in musical and theatrical circles, they knew insider’s ways to see great art at no cost. For example, they would “second act,” which meant that they would mingle with the crowds at intermission and take empty seats. Wright recalled with a chuckle seeing Balanchine in a “second act” when the famous

dancer performed. Wright and Anne knew how to have fun in the city, and surely seeing a great swath of America’s greatest theater, ballet, and opera inspired Anne in many ways. And through it all, even after seeing the enchanting Kiss Me Kate, their favorite show remained John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, the one whose music Wright used to woo Anne. Not only did Wright sing from the opera when they were courting, but a couple of years after they married, the two of them performed Beggar’s Opera in their home to an audi- ence of friends and neighbors. This performance, in fact, marks a great change in their lives. Anne became pregnant in 1951. She says, “I wouldn’t have a baby in NY City,” and the couple moved to the New Jersey suburbs.

Undoubtedly, 1950s ideas about mothering played a large role in this move, and Wright remembers the move to Montclair some- what bitterly, seeing it as a move away from a life of independence to one under his mother-in-law’s sway. At any rate, the home pro- duction marked the beginning of a new life: if they weren’t go- ing out to shows, they could presumably entertain themselves. They could sing and perform. For Anne and Wright, as for most couples, the arrival of children heralded a new way of life. In their case, it eventually meant increasing separation and alien- ation.

Once Anne recovered from morning sickness, the commuting was fine, but the summer of 1952 was exceptionally hot, and preg- nant Anne felt it intensely. She once asked the local movie the- ater manager if she could stay in the building between shows be- cause it felt so good to be cool! In her fifth month of pregnancy, she had some spotting. So, at the advice of her doctor, she quit her job and stayed home. Actually, she was relieved to have a good reason to leave her job because office politics had taken a turn for the worse: the outspoken Anne had inadvertently gotten herself in the middle of a fight between two of the bosses. So when her doctor advised her to quit her job, she left gladly. Then for three weeks she was on bed rest, lying with her legs elevated.

Wright had taken a new job at the Wool Bureau. Both there and at Women’s Wear Daily his work was primarily writing, often under very tight deadlines. He had regular raises, but Anne had

planned to keep working because with New York’s high rents they had needed her salary to manage. Now, however, moving to her mother’s building on Valley Road in Montclair meant they would have a reasonable rent. Wright and Anne had the second floor of an old Victorian house, with much more room than they had in New York. Their previous apartment, in fact, had been a small coldwater flat sublet from a conductor, and Anne and Wright had to vacate when he returned to New York.

In contrast, in New Jersey, they had two bedrooms and a nice, wide living room. Anne’s favorite brother, Kevin, and his wife lived upstairs, and the downstairs apartment was occupied by a family friend, Mae Pangborn, recently widowed. (Anne had gone to high school with Mae’s son Jerry, who had been killed in World War II.)

Not only was Anne living in her mother’s rental house, but she also kept very much in mind her mother’s precepts. Like many daughters, she says, “[I] did what I had seen my mother do— although I hated housework as much as she did, but basically it in- volved appreciating the guy who had to continue working with a good dinner, clean clothes when he needed [them], a neat house and friends for drinks and dinner which was something we always did. I was a good and clever cook so there was always more in the Friday and Saturday pots so we could have people in to eat—and drink.” Without much money to decorate, she did the best she could to settle into the apartment, using the sewing and cooking skills she had learned from her mother.

Though she wanted to be a good wife, Anne knew that brains didn’t end when motherhood began. Her mother’s constant ques- tion, “You’ll go to college, marry, have children, but what will you do with the rest of your life?” remained in her mind. After her hectic life in the city, living in Montclair again was a change. She doesn’t remember being bored, but acknowledges feeling “alone, and perhaps lonely after having had so many people around me at work.” Anne describes the situation, so powerfully criticized by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, of “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning” by the suburban wife, “afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—‘Is this all?’” Like

Anne, Friedan was the graduate of a prestigious Seven Sisters college (Smith) and a suburban mother. Not surprisingly, con- sidering their proximity and similar background, the two met when Anne attended one of Friedan’s weekend cocktail par- ties. While Anne didn’t particularly care for Friedan, she did see the relevance of her message, agreeing that feminism explained why women did not get full credit for their work. Anne, however, had an equally feminist but perhaps more pragmatic view of the world. “I knew perfectly well that I wrote all the radio commer- cials and did all the copy for the Liberty Music Shop advertising which my boss got credit for.”

Anne was encouraged to continue to look for a career by her mother’s example of working and by her close friend Jean Ge- browski. Jean, the mother of two children, had continued to work at her job in fashion publicity in New York City. Anne explains, “She encouraged me all the time just by her own activity.” Jean was her first friend who had a career and who was also a mother. Anne remembers admiring Jean tremendously: “She was all I would have liked to have been—suave, clever, and managing the volatility of Gebb [her husband] deftly. She was also friends with his two former wives . . . She was all a feminist should be.” Both Anne and Betty Friedan went on to have successful writing ca- reers, each exemplifying their feminist beliefs in their writing— Friedan in nonfiction and Anne in fiction. For Friedan and Anne, and for many educated women, writing has been the obvious choice of a career. While Anne demonstrated the compulsion to write even as a young girl, she also found a calling that could fit with being a wife and mother. In Anne’s words, “I was going to give it [writing] a good try because writing was something I could do anytime I had a free moment.” As any mother knows, with chil- dren, those moments occur infrequently. Here Anne’s determina- tion and even stubbornness served her well.

Ever the brave nonconformist, Anne had decided to have natu-

ral childbirth, which was quite uncommon at the time, and she had done it when her mother, half a world away in Japan, sent loving and encouraging letters. Then, when the time came, Au- gust 29, a week after the due date, she went into labor just as

Wright was leaving to catch his train to the city. Forsaking their 1937 Chrysler, they took a taxi to the hospital. It saved time and Wright could attend to Anne. He rubbed her aching back until she went into the delivery room. Because no fathers were allowed in delivery rooms in 1952, and she was not anaesthetized, she was able to yell the news to him. They had a son! The birth went smoothly, but when Anne was taken to her room, there was a feather pillow on her bed. She is allergic to feathers and started sneezing violently, in her words, “a very painful thing to do when you have just delivered.” She alerted a nurse, was given antihista- mines, and all was well.

A devoted and loving mother, Anne always wanted children, but she certainly acknowledges their effect on romance: “Having Alec sort of brought us both down to a level of reality with scant romance. But then, it can. Having babies is a messy, tiring, and re- petitive business but now that I’m on the other side of it, [I am] glad I did.” In 1956 Todd arrived a month late, and his was a me- conium birth, where the fetus has already had a bowel movement in the womb. Because such children sometimes have lung diffi- culty, Anne was drugged—or, as she describes it, “knocked out.” She actually woke up with a bruised eyebrow, from the anesthesi- ologist’s forcefully checking of her eye. Then, in 1959, Anne had her last baby. Convinced that he was going to have a third son, Wright fell asleep in the waiting room, but Anne’s second sight had come to the fore. She had intuited that she was going to have a daughter from the peculiar hot flashes she’d had all summer. While seven-year-old Todd wasn’t happy that his sister’s arrival caused his mother to miss his birthday party, Gigi was “a beau- tiful baby from the moment of her birth . . . pink and blond, and very dainty.”

Nor was biology quite the whole story when it came to kids and

the Johnson family. There was also the foster child, Josef Kaldi, a teenage Hungarian refugee, who at fifteen had swum across the Danube River to freedom, one of thousands who fled after the failed revolt against Communist rule in 1956. Josef’s adventure may have inspired the flights of some of Anne’s characters, such

as Menolly’s running away from her Hold in Dragonsong.) Anne says, “Clearly, I knew I couldn’t cope with another baby. So we ended up with Josef as the fourth child.” She also says that her relationship with Josef “had hiccups—mainly because he didn’t trust anything a woman said.” When he arrived and joined their family, he spoke no English, so that meant Anne had to learn enough Hungarian to teach him English. She was thankful for her Radcliffe training in languages. The family called the boy “Joe,” and he called Anne and Wright “Mother” and “Father.” Joe got along well with Alec and Todd, and although he wanted the new baby to be a boy, he adored Gigi when she joined the family. He lived with them until he joined the U.S. army in 1962.

The fascination with fostering in Anne’s novels must have started with Joe. From Lessa to the Rowan and Cita, she depicts orphans who struggle but who eventually form new families. De- spite her own positive and very close ties with her children and her own parents, Anne repeatedly valorizes families of choice, as, for example, when the psychic Talents in the Tower and Hive series bond with other Talents when their own biological fami- lies reject them or are dead. Similarly, in the Brain Ship series, the “Brains,” deformed humans who are abandoned by their bio- logical families, must find new families with their “Brawns,” nor- mally bodied humans, or other Brain Ships. In every instance, the new families of choice are presented as positive alternatives to the biological family. Anne admits, “I try to [depict fostering positively] mainly because I think ‘fostering’ is generally a good idea, especially if the birth parents are antagonistic to the per- sonality of their child.” At any rate, with four children to manage, suburban Mrs. Johnson had to work very, very hard to be a good mother and a writer as well. By all accounts she managed, but she did so by going without enough sleep for years.

Her music helped keep her occupied; she had a very positive

experience with Frederic Robinson, with whom she studied op- era direction and singing. According to Michael Hargreaves, he was the model for Masterharper Robinton in the Dragonriders of Pern series. Anne’s musical career and her writing overlapped,

but as her writing career blossomed she began to have to make choices. After 1965, her musical activities subsided to singing oc- casionally. Yet she remained proud of her many responsibilities in musical theater, as stage director for The Devil and Daniel Webster and Kiss Me Kate and as costume designer for Guys and Dolls. She played a number of character roles, including that of the Queen in Once upon a Mattress, a loud and talkative character who really rules the kingdom, and the Old Lady, who sings a duet with an- other female character, “We Are Women,” in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. She considered her biggest success that of the Witch in a Christmas play, Carl Orff’s Ludus De Nato Infante Mirificus in its American premiere. Anne’s role as a character actress in musical theater and a stage director provided an outlet for her desire to perform and create. But Michael Hargreaves explains that Anne eventually “found she was fed up with amateur personalities, tem- peraments, and backstage antics.” It was easier to direct charac- ters in fiction than on stage. Yet Anne always retained her love of music, singing whenever she could and also giving music a promi- nent place not only in her Dragonriders of Pern series, but also, most notably, in the Crystal Singer series.

Anne saw herself as a bit of an orphan as a writer, needing to be

fostered and encouraged. In her first published story, “Freedom of the Race,” in 1953, Anne drew on her own experience with pregnancy with her first child, Alec, to craft a story about aliens using human females as reproductive surrogates. She continued to write but had difficulty placing another manuscript. The re- jections were discouraging, but she kept writing, despite the ar- rival of her second child, Todd, in 1956. Busy with her children, it wasn’t until 1959 that her second story, “Lady in a Tower,” ap- peared. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Anne struggled with doubt about her ability. She wanted to write, but lacked the self-confidence and knowledge about how to polish her writ- ing and how and where to send it to editors. In 1961, her break- through story, “The Ship Who Sang,” was published, but even after the influential editor Judy Merril chose it for a “Year’s Best Science Fiction” anthology, Anne still doubted herself.

Finally, Anne was invited by Judith Merril to attend a week-

end science fiction writers’ conference in Milford, Pennsylvania. These were invitation-only conferences that drew many writers who became leaders in the field. There she met many of the writ- ers who became her friends: James Blish, Ted Cogswell, Damon K night, Gordon Dickson, and Avram Davidson. There she also met Virginia K idd, who would become her agent, though that re- lationship was still years away. The conference opened up a com- munity to Anne of like-minded individuals, writers who loved and believed in science fiction as she did. While, like most writ- ers, Anne was independent, also, like most beginning writers, she needed encouragement and support. A second pivotal event was her attendance at Worldcon ’63, in Washington, D.C. Already ac- quainted with many of the writers from the Milford conference, at Worldcon she met Isaac Asimov, Randall Garrett, and H. Beam Piper. Ev vy Del Rey, at that time the wife of Lester Del Rey, an im- portant editor and publisher, was at the bar, and she invited Anne over to sit by her. James Blish was sitting there drinking, too, and he said to her, “Anne, what has happened? You’ve published two lovely stories—what’s happened? Why haven’t you written any- more?” She replied, “Well, I’m trying to,” and he insisted, “Well, you should continue.” Inspired, on the long drive back to Dela- ware she kept thinking to herself, “Jim Blish says I can write. Jim Blish says I can write. Jim Blish says I can write.”

Anxious and insecure, running a full household, it was a

struggle for her to write. As she says, “I never let anyone read my stuff because I couldn’t have stood the ridicule—especially once I started writing s-f.” She says today, “I don’t know as I asked for much encouragement—just to be let alone at the typewriter.” Writing provided a perfect complement to being a mother. But to write Anne had to have, as most working mothers do, a split existence. She was “ ‘just mommy’ for a little while and [then] someone grown-up doing Other things.” Writing allowed Anne to have another identity, another self; it provided an answer to her internalization of her mother’s question, “What else will you be?” She was working to be a writer and that would fulfill one of her mother’s ambitions. While Anne would eventually become well known for her writing for young adults as well as her adult science

fiction, when she began to write seriously, her children were too young and “wriggly” to provide an audience. Unlike her broth- ers, her children would not sit or lie still long enough to be read even Kipling’s short Jungle Tales, the stories she loved that her fa- ther had read to his children. Todd loved a story called “Crunch, Crunch, What’s for Lunch?” which Anne would read to him while feeding him, but this was a far cry from the intense, complicated, and very adult fictional worlds she was creating.

Todd remembers very fondly vacations they took. They were family vacations, and Anne wasn’t able to get much work done. On the other hand, she was at least able to socialize with Virginia Kidd and other writers. In the summers of 1964 and 1966, Anne and Wright, with Wright’s colleague Jack Isbell and his wife, Peggy, rented the main building of what had been a boys’ summer camp in Twin Lakes in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. Anne re- calls that “the facility slept nine and had a good kitchen.” She did the shopping and the cooking for the evening meal. The Isbells and Johnsons got along very well, leading to their home-sharing later when the men were transferred to the New York area. Todd McCaffrey remembers those summers fondly, especially the lake, which on their side was for non-motor boats only, and the abun- dance of blueberries, with which Anne used to make delicious pies. What she liked best was the cool weather and the parties she was able to throw, inviting her friends from New York and Virginia K idd from Milford. Before her death, Virginia told of many wonderful evenings marked by Anne’s wonderful cooking and camaraderie. Wright helped make one evening magical by placing candles in a number of small boats, lighting the candles, and then “sending the little boats out into the lake. Then they sailed and shone all night. It was a pretty sight to see, the lake be- spangled with what he called Viking funeral ships.” Wright’s sense of the dramatic and love of words could have made him a help- ful reader of his wife’s work.

Wright could have been an appropriate reader, an English ma-

jor who himself wrote professionally (though nonfiction), but, unfortunately, Wright’s response to Anne’s writing drove them

apart. He remembers reading “The Ship Who Sang,” the moving account of a Brain Ship who mourns the loss of her partner in a tragic adventure, and describing it to her as “perfect.” He admits, however, that he found the science fiction setting and vocabu- lary off-putting. He did not read science fiction and had no ap- preciation for the genre. When she showed Wright other stories from what would eventually become the collection, The Ship Who Sang, she found his criticisms unhelpful. Like many readers, he had ideas for another story that should be told. Anne felt he was trying to control her writing, as he controlled so many other as- pects of their lives. “ ‘That’s not the story I wanted to tell,’” she remembers telling him, surely a classic feminist response. While Wright’s response to her writing was not supportive, his criticism may very well have helped her develop her own voice. She looked to see more clearly what she had to say. His wanting to control her showed her how important it was for her to speak strongly and to write her own vision. In a sense, her extraordinary ca- reer may be due in part to proving Wright Johnson wrong. In a number of letters to her agent, Virginia K idd, Anne expressed the desire to prove Wright’s assessment of her writing wrong. After describing Wright’s hounding her about housekeeping, she writes, “How I would love to dangle a signed advance check in that bastard’s face. He was singularly unimpressed by the Gal- axy sale, . . . Whatinell [sic] does the man want?” The contuma- ciousness that runs in the McCaffrey family was here put to very good use.

There was a way, though, in which Wright did support Anne’s

writing. He provided the income and space that enabled her to write. It was, after all, while she was married to him that she began writing professionally. One summer, she hired a babysitter, Annie Phillips, to take care of the children for three hours a day. Anne acknowledges Wright’s financial support of her—but this support came with the idea that she should write as he thought she should: “something ‘significant’ and ‘meaningful.’ Time has kindly proved that I was, if not on the level he hoped for.” That so accomplished, feted, and successful a writer as Anne McCaf-

frey can still write such words, three decades after her marriage to Wright ended, provides testimony to his impact upon her as a person and as a writer. Her contrariness not only helped her withstand a hostile husband, but is also very evident in her liter- ary taste and the genre in which she chose to write. In the 1950s and 1960s, women were not supposed to read science fiction, let alone write it. Most women writing science fiction, such as Andre Norton or C. L. Moore, hid their gender behind pseudonyms and initials. This practice continues in the twenty-first century: J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, became “J. K.” at the insistence of her publisher, who said, “Boys don’t read books written by women.”

As a child, Anne had loved reading fantasy and science fic- tion, so when she rediscovered the genre in Galaxy magazine in the 1950s, she was hooked. She especially enjoyed reading Andre Norton, Isaac Asimov, Murray Leinster, Gordon Dickson, and Jim Blish. She enjoyed science fiction for the breadth of it away from the standard literary classics that she was supposed to read. “I thought I could write sf, too,” she says. Anne, after all, was not an English major. Her major was in Slavic languages, and her thesis had been written on the Russian science fiction classic W E. But perhaps most important to her attraction to science fiction was the context of World War II and the emerging Cold War: she found optimism in science fiction and the hope of escaping from the world she knew. “We would get off our own planet,” she hoped, “and away from poor war-torn Earth.” In her thesis, a few years earlier, Anne had put it more histrionically, but it is worth quoting for its passion: “With the disruption of the world’s order, first by war and then by the dreadful realization of the results of atomic energy, Fate has indeed conspired to shatter the existing scheme of things.”

Anne’s college classmate Freddie Brennerman says that Rad-

cliffe students of that era showed “a strong undercurrent in our thinking of social responsibility, the desire to become bet- ter informed . . . and then to go out and do something about it.” Like Alice Adams, another writer from the class of 1947, Anne “wish[ed] that the world were a better place.” In Montclair, with

Mae Pangburn, bereft of her son through war, living down- stairs, Anne had a daily reminder of pain and suffering in the real world. Being trapped herself in a suffocating marriage re- inforced her desire to travel to other worlds and to create other, better societies.

chapter 4

Annie and Virginia

Hell, my association with Virginia lasted a whole lot longer than my marriage did.

—Anne McCaffrey, e-mail

Like most writers, Anne has been a writer since she was a child, but she became not just a successful writer, but a good writer through her long relationship with her agent and editor, Virginia K idd. Their relationship began when a mutual friend, writer and editor Judith Merril, suggested that Virginia consider being Anne’s agent. ( Judith had included Anne’s story, “The Ship Who Sang,” in a collection of the year’s best science fiction.) Judith and Virginia were close friends who had been roommates in New York City during the 1940s, and in 1961 in Milford, while Judith and Anne were in a grocery store, they ran into Virginia. Anne imme- diately liked Virginia’s friendly and open nature and thought she was very pretty. Anne recalls that Virginia “had much the same sense of humor” as she did. Virginia also had a lovely speaking voice that impressed Anne, who remembers, “She could use [her voice] most effectively, from a purr of approval to a near-snarl of dislike.” In 1961, both Virginia and Anne had a few professional sales, but neither could imagine the heights to which their rela- tionship would take them. While other colleagues and friends would be critical to Anne’s success (especially Betty Ballantine of Ballantine Books), Virginia was the one who really made it all possible. Anne grew as a writer from having a demanding reader who not only asked but insisted that she write her best; her unwav- ering belief sustained Anne.

While she might criticize aspects of Anne’s writing, Virginia never deviated from her consistent praise of Anne as a powerful and effective writer. Virginia provided Anne with emotional sup- port, practical advice, and unwavering acceptance. Anne’s grati- tude was unbounded; she responded (as one of her college super- visors described her) like a giant St. Bernard puppy. Where she found love, she gave love in return, and her relationship with Vir- ginia stood the test of time and physical separation. Significantly, both Anne and Virginia referred to their long-standing personal and professional relationship as a marriage. These two women, whose own marriages had ended unhappily, found in each other the emotional support that their husbands had failed to provide. Anne and Virginia both entertained male lovers and other sig- nificant relationships, but for more than a decade, they were each other’s emotional bedrock. Though Virginia K idd would also work with a number of other important writers, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, and Alan Dean Foster, Virginia had her greatest impact on the career (and life) of Anne McCaf- frey. This chapter covers a critical five years for Anne, 1965–1970, during which her life and work were influenced by her relation- ship with Virginia.

Nineteen sixty-five through 1970 were also critical years for

the genre of science fiction, as it continued the transition from cheap magazines to the more respectable (and expensive) paper- back and hardcover book format (that had begun in the 1950s). As science fiction began taking itself seriously, its writers met in organized workshops and formed a writers’ association, Science Fiction Writers of America. Anne participated in one of the most famous workshops, the Milford conference, and became an of- ficer in the national science fiction writers’ group. One sign of the genre’s increased respectability was the emergence of sci- ence fiction courses at universities. Anne’s strengths in character- ization and prose fit in well with science fiction’s new, more am- bitious, artistic posture. Through their respective roles as writer and agent, Anne and Virginia helped define and shape the devel- opment of American science fiction.

Five years older than Anne, Virginia was born in 1921, the

youngest of three children. Virginia contracted polio when she was two and a half, and was crippled until she had major correc- tive surgery at fourteen. Like Anne, Virginia was smart and pre- cocious; popular and a leader, she recalls, “Boys walked me home from school . . . and I did much of their homework. I learned to read at four, and have never taken a writing class. I just wrote, ev- ery time I got a chance.” At age nine she became a science fiction fan when her older brother gave her his science fiction magazines to read. She married James Blish, a well-known and respected sci- ence fiction writer, in 1947, the day her divorce from her first hus- band, Jacob Emden, was official. Like Anne, Virginia had three children, and also like Anne, Virginia divorced her husband after almost two decades of marriage and had to find a means of sup- porting herself and her children.

Virginia’s science fiction credentials were impeccable. She had

originally wanted to be “a famous writer” herself and was one of the founding members of the Futurians, a seminal science fic- tion society that included (before they became famous) writers and editors such as Isaac Asimov, Judith Merril, Frederick Pohl, Damon Knight, and Donald Wollheim. While Virginia sold a few stories and poems, she eventually discovered her true calling as an agent. Virginia was already informally acting as an agent to her many writer friends when Judith Merril told her she should be a professional agent and make her living at it. Being a success- ful agent, however, is as difficult as being a successful writer. Many of the same skills are required: you have to have talent, be hard working, persistent, have a tough skin, and be able to negotiate. Virginia’s rare ability, however, was not only to recognize writing talent, but also to nurture it. In this regard, especially, Anne was very fortunate because Virginia really cared about the quality of a writer’s work. When she saw potential, as she did in Anne’s writ- ing, she could be very supportive or critical, as the case required. Anne never took creative writing classes, but reading Virginia and Anne’s correspondence reveals that Anne received graduate-level training in writing from Virginia K idd. Anne recalls that Virginia was “a purely golden instructor of young and outrageous writers (which I was then—though others are [now] the genre’s new

outrageous ones).” While much of their exchanges took place on paper, they had frequent phone calls, too. Anne explains that she called Virginia “especially when I needed direction for some of my notions.” Once, they were on a shared phone line, and as Anne was explaining about the Pern dragons, an exasperated male voice cut in, “What are you two dames talking about?” Anne responded that it was none of his business, but Virginia never wasted an opportunity to promote Anne, telling their listener to read the book when it was published.

Virginia lived at the center of science fiction’s critical devel- opment, Milford, Pennsylvania. Conveniently near New York City, the town drew many famous science fiction writers to its summer conferences. A beautiful and historic place, Milford’s attractions persuaded some of those writers to settle there, most notably Judith Merril. Anne’s positive experience at her first Milford writ- ers’ workshop in 1959 inclined her toward Virginia. The Milford Science Fiction Conference was a prestigious gathering of science fiction veterans and beginning writers; it began in 1956. It was an honor to be invited to participate by the conference directors, and its sessions involved sharing unpublished work and receiving comments from the other writers. The participants were gener- ally envied because they not only received help with their writ- ing, but were also able to meet editors of important anthology se- ries. Attending a Milford conference meant that publishers would pay more attention to your submissions. This favoritism was oc- casionally resented, leading to participants being called the “Mil- ford Mafia.” The group’s esprit de corps led to the founding of the Science Fiction Writers of America, the important writers’ group that bestows the prestigious Nebula Awards, and Anne’s involvement in Milford conferences led to her two-year position as secretary-treasurer of the group in 1968.

While Anne benefited from a couple of Milford workshops, the

decades of attention she and her writing received from Virginia were even more critical to her continued development as a writer. Their relationship bears some resemblance to the agent-writer relationship of Maxwell Perkins and Ernest Hemingway, a type of relationship heralded as part of literature’s past, in which the

editor molds the writer, becoming more of a collaborator than business agent. And perhaps in the twenty-first century, such re- lationships are even rarer than they were then. But Virginia and Anne’s relationship provides compelling testimony that even the best writers need and require constructive criticism and scrupu- lous editing. What is especially encouraging about this relation- ship is that it provides vindication of Virginia’s philosophy of aiming for quality, believing that financial reward would then fol- low. Perhaps because they were women, they understood that the boundaries between the professional and the personal could not and should not be maintained. In a way, their relationship em- bodied that 1960s feminist motto, “The Personal Is Political.” Vir- ginia not only was deeply involved with Anne’s writing but also was her confidante. Their gender is essential to understanding their relationship. Virginia was a bit older, but she shared with Anne the experience of being a mother and a writer and hav- ing a difficult marriage with an alcoholic husband (in Virginia’s case, it was her second husband who had a drinking problem). Like Anne’s husband, Virginia’s first husband was not supportive of her writing. In addition, Virginia had already experienced the difficulty of juggling writing and motherhood. As her roommate in the mid 1940s, Judith Merril explains, “Virginia not only un- derstood but shared . . . all the dilemmas posed by our commit- ment to being both good mothers and great writers.” Virginia’s and Anne’s frank letters reveal that they shared details about home life, financial problems, cooking, weight, and appearance, along with the main emphasis on writing and business matters. In some ways, Virginia became the older sister Anne never had. She advised Anne on how to deal with friends, children, and hus- band in the same letters that she discussed publishers, fan letters, and other writers.

Both women were well aware of the difficulties they faced in

science fiction. Most of the genre’s writers and editors were men who operated under the assumption that the readership was male. Women writers faced the derisive dismissal of their work as “diaper copy.” The all-important Milford workshop included few women, and Virginia had trouble being admitted because Damon

K night considered her collaborative work with her husband, Jim Blish, to have been written all by Blish. While Virginia recounted stories of discrimination, she rejected any identification of her- self as feminist, a label the younger Anne accepted more readily. Yet even this significant distinction did not cause trouble between the two women. Virginia praised and admired Anne’s feminist heroines and lobbied hard for Anne’s work. Their first real bond- ing took place when Virginia made a trip to Anne’s home in Dela- ware in early 1963. Virginia remembers being struck by Anne’s Irish appearance and her adorable daughter, Gigi. Wright, she says, was polite, but she really had very little conversation with him. Anne enjoyed Virginia’s weekend visit, and she recalls, “We drank a lot of white wine I had inadvertently made . . . a rough white but you could drink a lot of it without a hangover She

was very kind to me. She pointed the way and I followed.” But

due to their busy lives and straitened finances, the women com- municated most often by letter. Anne has long acknowledged her debt to Virginia, explaining, “My relationship with Virginia was unusual because it was so rewarding for me and I matured in

my skills under her guidance. I was exceedingly lucky because Vir- ginia has a very deft touch in bringing promising writers on and ensuring their maturity.” Anne and Virginia’s correspondence corroborates Anne’s assessment, though in typical fashion Anne minimizes what she brought to the relationship. Anne had a back- log of fiction that she was eager to rework for publication, and she listened attentively to Virginia’s every suggestion. And Vir- ginia had suggestions, pages and pages, sometimes, of construc- tive criticism. In their exchanges, we can see a writer emerging.

At first, much of Virginia’s advice, repeated over and over, is practical: how to prepare a manuscript, the importance of keep- ing a copy, proofreading. It is clear that Anne is delighted to have found a sympathetic reader, and she is rushing her work out. Repeatedly, Virginia cautioned Anne against haste and listed a number of common grammatical errors. She asked Anne to “post a little list of pitfalls somewhere near your typewriter, just to keep my proofreader’s brow from wrinkling? Here are several candi- dates for the list, and to engrave the distinctions in your mind,

you ought to look them up for yourself: disparate-desperate.” She continued somewhat pedantically, “I think once you really no- tice the difference, you will probably use them with respect for their entymological [sic] differences.” Many of Virginia’s letters to Anne contain mini-grammar lessons, all of which Anne ap- pears to have followed.

Virginia’s comments went well beyond the importance of clean and accurate presentation of the manuscript. In letter after let- ter, she criticized not only word choice, but plot, characterization, and even concepts. She continually challenged Anne to produce good work, and chastened her when the writing seemed sloppy. Virginia didn’t hesitate to edit when it seemed necessary to her, though she always let Anne know. For example, “Horse from a Different Sea” prompted Virginia to do some serious editing. She referred to “the blanket permission you [Anne] gave me a while back to meddle” and announced, “I rewrote the beginning entire, and retyped the last page to out some of the verbiage and to in- clude my one (ineffably gruesome) new idea. I have sent it out, so changed, but if you are outraged I can always yank it and restore it to the version you wrote. The thing is, it was too good, to have such weak spots left intact! Possibly you’ll like the changes?” The changes stayed; Anne respected Virginia’s extensive editing and readily conceded that Virginia improved her writing. This exten- sion of editing into rewriting was unusual, but the fact that Vir- ginia would make an addition and Anne would accept it shows the degree to which they trusted each other. This practice reflects a feminist form of collaboration, rather than a masculinist model of individual achievement. To this day, Anne continues to work with other women writers in “shared universe” books, a practice that has its antecedents in her early collaboration with Virginia. One or two other times, usually with short stories, Virginia made similar interpolations, but as Anne’s writing skills developed, Vir- ginia restricted her editing to making suggestions rather than making changes.

In their exchanges, Virginia and Anne revealed their dedica-

tion to the work of writing and editing. Virginia explained her standard for being an editor/agent: “I decided when I first started

out in this business that one reason Ken White was as respected and trusted on both sides of the desk was because he never let anything go out of his office unread, no matter how good the au- thor or how big a name. The one day to one week delay this nor- mally entails is (in the long run) well worth it to the client as it is to the editors.” Virginia’s commitment and passion for meticu- lous editing is equaled by Anne’s devotion to her writing. Anne described her transformation in 1965, facilitated by Gigi’s enter- ing first grade: “It was like ‘who pulled out the plug’ for novel- writing.” Describing her passion for writing, Anne wrote, com- menting on “that old saw so-and-so wishes to ‘devote’ more time to writing. Devotion is not quite the word. Obsession, I believe, is better. Because I have been like one obsessed, sitting down at this hot typewriter hour after hour and even sleeping with the mss clutched in my hot little ink-splattered hand. It has become

increasingly difficult to leave Lothar [setting of her first novel, Re-

storee] and trek all the way back to earth, dinners to be got and kids to be shoved schoolwards et al.” Anne writes of her “Muse” “driving, driving, driving me.” In Virginia, Anne found someone who appreciated and understood her intense desire to write sci- ence fiction. Their passion for the work was powerful, and each thrived on the work produced by the other.

In the very first exchanges, Anne seemed tentative, asking Vir- ginia not to be her agent, but to collaborate with her. Virginia, after all, is already a respected and published writer, both as a poet and as a fiction writer with her husband, Jim Blish, while Anne lacked complete confidence in her own writing. But Vir- ginia’s enthusiastic responses soon had Anne feeling good about her skills. Virginia did not try to impose a certain style of writing or type of idea on Anne’s fiction. Unlike the famous editor John Campbell, who directed writers to rewrite according to his ideas, Virginia tried to help writers do their own best work. For this reason, she was a successful editor not only with Anne, but also with a number of the genre’s other famous writers. Despite her own strong opinions, Virginia never took advantage of Anne’s in- security. Virginia’s response to early versions of “The Ship Who Wept” and “The Lady” demonstrated Virginia’s confidence in

Anne’s writing ability. “My dear girl! You don’t need a collabo- rator! A poke here, a prod there, maybe. But your talent is your own. Let us (and I am serious) nourish it.” Virginia described herself crying over these stories, moved by their characters’ situa- tions: “Imagine yourself a lifesize picture of me in tears, three times, and entitle it the Agent That Wept. Hardened Old Me!” Virginia presented herself as older and wiser, as an older sister, perhaps, but also as a dear friend and a professional advisor.

While Virginia was extremely supportive and doled out praise generously, she was also frequently blunt and always honest. If Vir- ginia believed the premise or articulation of an idea was weak, she said so. Virginia’s literary standards were exacting; she dis- liked pedestrian or pulp fiction, written without care for lan- guage. In March 1967, for example, she sent Anne a letter that begins, “the gold ruling just isn’t up to my standards, and I’d rather not market it. It covers a wide range of too crude and

obvious—the names are too obvious, and the style is your worst.” She continued in this vein with quite specifically damning analysis and concluded: “I guess that’s enough flaying. But in short I think your version of the Goldin’ Rule stinks. In spades and ofays [sic].” And Virginia, despite her words, was not through. She elabo- rated, “The style is that of a drunken Sybil, a hophead for-

tune teller.” With some balm, Virginia told Anne, “Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You are not the first (nor will you be the last) to whom a manuscript has been returned as unsaleable by his/her agent.”

Over the years, Virginia continued to operate as Anne’s con- science, warning her to slow down, to work more carefully, and to consider the aesthetics involved. She told Anne to burn the first version of Dragonquest, and, agreeing with Virginia’s trenchant critique, Anne did. In a second version of the novel, Virginia complained about “innumerable carelessnesses” and warned her, “you really must have peace and freedom of mind enough to do your best on a manuscript if your reputation is not to slip, my dear girl.” The caps suggest that Virginia is yelling at Anne, but she softened the adjuration with the reminder, “I do not say that condescendingly, but with much love and concern.”

In an earlier letter, Virginia admonished Anne again, “When you are too prolific, you get prolix and that means much re-writing, so better go a little slower.” To a second version of Dragonquest, Vir- ginia wrote a twelve-page, single-spaced, closely argued response. A letter such as that reveals a dedication and commitment to Anne’s work that is quite remarkable, but quite characteristic of Virginia’s attention to detail and her willingness to express her opinions bluntly. For a version of The Rowan, for example, she analyzed the story under headings, including “Art,” “Craft,” and “Clinically.” Virginia’s reading in this case was characteristi- cally sympathetic and perceptive, revealing that the job of a good editor is to be part coach, part teacher, part literary critic, and even a bit of a psychologist. Under “Art” she cited James Joyce and praised Anne’s creation of “a valid basic situation, some very good writing.” Under the heading of “Craft,” Virginia pointed to some problems created by the need to convey information. In this version, Anne had the protagonist, the Rowan, provide cru- cial facts, but Virginia argued that this was “out of character” and proposed remedies. She suggested that Anne was writing out some episodes in her own life: “Anne has a clash or clashes with own children, also with her own mother Anne is a roman-

tic, troubled obscurely by who knows what.” Most significantly, in

terms of their relationship, Virginia experienced a shock of rec- ognition that she argued is a part of all great art: “An artist who elicits a real twang in his reader is likely to have reached someone who shares his preconceptions, in some part.” She acknowledged, “This story hit me so hard, because this is where some part of my own experience matches some part of yours, if only vaguely.”

This resonance and the ability to convey deep emotion is one of Anne McCaffrey’s signal achievements as a writer. Part of Anne’s power as a writer stems from her ability to make the reader feel as if she is experiencing the character’s feelings. Virginia’s un- derstanding that this skill was Anne’s greatest strength as a writer made Virginia the perfect agent/editor for Anne’s work. Vir- ginia’s ability to resonate, just as later K illashandra would reso- nate with crystal in The Crystal Singer, is what made their relation- ship so powerful and successful. As Killashandra can separate

crystal from surrounding rock, so Virginia could sense the rare and beautiful in Anne’s writing and separate it from the mundane and everyday. Killashandra almost becomes one with the crystal; so too did Virginia seem to become Anne as she was editing.

At first the salutations in their letters were formal, but as the writers’ honesty and trust grew over time, the headings changed. From “Dear Anne” and “Dear Virginia,” the openings shifted to “Anne, dear,” “Dear, dear Virginia,” and to “Dearest Annie,” “Dearest Virginia dear,” and even “Annie-panny pudding and pie.” (In the mid-1960s Anne began to be known to all her friends as “Annie,” the name she stills uses.) The shifts to endearments re- flected a growing bond between the two women, as they shared everyday annoyances, financial worries, and intimate details of personal relationships. Since both women are accomplished writ- ers, their correspondence is rich and lively, reflecting each wom- an’s strong and vibrant personality. As might be expected, the older and wiser woman, Virginia is more often in the position of giving Anne advice than vice versa. Anne acknowledges this as- pect of their relationship when she writes, “I tried to find a card entitled ‘you are my shot in the arm’ or considering all the Nun pictures lately ‘you are my mother confessor’ but none presented themselves. However, you are performing such func- tions, above and beyond, I am sure, the duties of an agent . . . long-suffering, etc.” A few months later, Anne reiterated her ap- preciation of Virginia in these words, “Have I told you recently, in so many words, how much I appreciate you? How invaluable you are to me? A sustaining comfort . . . And one day, I sincerely hope, a source of income.” Anne’s wit and humor helped keep the intersection of business and friendship from being a source of trouble. Many of her letters to Virginia contained humorous asides about their business dealings. Anne’s opinion of Virginia’s place in her life is revealed in her reply to Virginia’s thank you for a gift of stationary, an appropriate present when so much of their relationship took place via letters. Anne wrote, “I, too, rarely give outside the family. But what else are you, spiritually?”

Virginia’s sympathies with Anne were direct and concrete. Be-

cause they share intimate details of everyday life, Virginia can

understand why Anne’s writing is often imperfect and rushed. She wrote, “I have never known anybody with as many outside interests (the drayma [sic] and all those charitable activities), as heavy a family burden (your well-cared for kids, your beautiful house that you paint miles and miles of wall of, the various per- sonality problems with Wright and Alec & Todd & Gigi with which you cope instead of just saying ‘Mama’s writing, go away, dear!’), the shared household [with Jack and Peg Isbell] (which inevitably means you are nurse when Peg’s sick and have more coffee breaks than not). I don’t see how you get anything at all written, and yet you write fast, and good.” The “drayma” Virginia referred to was Anne’s active musical career, which by 1965 was winding down. Occasionally, Anne would write with pleasure of a production she was working on, but after 1966, the letters focus primarily on Anne’s pleasure in writing fiction. Virginia insisted on, and Anne wanted, more time devoted to Anne’s writing. Because both women write repeatedly about difficult finances, overdrafts, cars that break down, and children’s medical expenses, the gift of sta- tionery must be considered generous, and symbolic—a nice way of Anne saying to Virginia, “Keep writing me!” In the same let- ter, Anne confessed, “We have just trudged upward from the val- ley of payment to bare solvency . . . thanks to restoree [her first novel], I might add.” Despite her straitened circumstances, Anne is repeatedly generous in her business dealings with Virginia. For example, she insisted Virginia take 50 percent of one payment of fourteen dollars, instead of the customary 10 percent. In this let- ter, Anne revealed her growing confidence in her writing due to her tax status: “I discovered, after sweating the evening out with the tax man, that Anne McCaffrey is a business. This also restores my spirits. No news to you but fun for me.”

Some of Anne’s concern about money and independence ap-

pear in her interest, first expressed in a letter to Virginia dated August 13, 1965, about getting a degree in library science. The American Library Association, which awarded Anne the Margaret

Edwards Award for Literary Lifetime Achievement, would prob- ably be pleased to know that their honoree once considered their line of work. Of course, Anne would have been following the

example of another famous science fiction writer she greatly ad- mired, Andre Norton, who worked as a librarian for years. Ironi- cally, it seems to have been the cost of tuition for one course,

$132, as much as Virginia’s discouragement, that kept Anne from a degree in library science. Her friend Peg Isbell, with whom the McCaffreys shared a Long Island mansion, also discouraged graduate school. Peg also was an aspiring writer, and, in Anne’s words (in a letter to Virginia), “Peg insists I devote myself to the Muse for a while and if all else falls through and I cannot sell (I do not sell, rather) then try for other means of putting the family rocking finances back on their feet.” Virginia was quite relieved by Anne’s decision, writing, “Peg said what I felt,” adding that since she made money from Anne’s writing, she did not feel free to be as blunt as Peg. But with the decision made, she concurred with Peg and added, “But I hope you will be making good money writing, not too long from now,” a prescient, if not timely predic- tion. It would be at least three years before Anne would see sub- stantial income from her writing, and she herself feels that she was not financially stable “until the mid 70s when [her] books began to earn their advance and bring in royalties.” In those lean years, Virginia provided vitally needed encouragement, practical support, and, perhaps most importantly, an unshakeable belief in Anne’s writing ability.

Virginia’s support and encouragement were backed up not

only by Peg, but also by Anne’s favorite aunt, Gladys. Anne de- scribed Aunt Gladys as “my biggest rooter and staunchest ally,” and the effect of her visits as “extremely drunk-making as well as ego-inflating.” Significantly, Anne compared Aunt Gladys and Virginia, explaining to Virginia, “Until I met you, she was the only one who had complete faith in my ability to be a writer. She is outrageously enthusiastic and approving to the point of red- faced embarrassment.” Anne is grateful for “her apt remarks and direct analysis,” comments which would certainly apply to Vir- ginia, as well. Anne later wrote to Virginia about her aunt’s “con- version” to science fiction, a conversion that she no doubt wished Wright would make: “My aunt, for whom restoree was dedicated, wrote to say she’s been hooked on s-f, . . . having read the Dragon

stories and loved them.” Her aunt’s conversion foreshadowed that of many, many other readers whom Anne has similarly converted through the Dragonriders of Pern series. But it was to Virginia, not to her aunt, that Anne turned for advice on the worries and domestic difficulties that inhibited her writing, as well as her marital problems. The biggest obstacle to Anne’s work, repeat- edly mentioned in her correspondence with Virginia, was her hus- band. Initially, called “Wright” in the correspondence, he quickly became “Johnson.” Virginia provided Anne with the support that she did not receive from her husband, but Anne also craved her husband’s support and approval. She is delighted when she can write Virginia with the name of an editor at McGraw-Hill, cour- tesy of Wright. She crowed over not only the coup of the contact, but also how she got the name—her husband mentioned that his wife wrote science fiction to a friend of his college roommate, Van Varner. When Wright told Anne that “The Ship Who Sang,” “was perfect,” Anne was pleased.

As her letters to Virginia document, Wright’s praise for “The

Ship Who Sang” was a rare exception in a long list of sorry in- cidents, in which he was unable to give Anne the support she wanted and deserved. Now, three decades later, he can grudg- ingly acknowledge her excellence as a writer, but in the 1960s he could not or would not. In a way, Wright probably influenced Anne’s growing feminism because his complaints to her are the stuff of classic feminist narrative. In Matthew Hargreaves’s anno- tated bibliography of McCaffrey, he reproduces an article pub- lished about Anne’s first story. The local reporter explained, “Be- ing a Princeton man, Mr. Johnson takes a somewhat dim view of his wife’s flights into outer space.” In Anne’s words to Virginia, “Johnson informed me that I am the world’s filthiest, dirtiest, lousiest housekeeper, that he gives me all his money (implying I spend it all on me) and that he simply isn’t getting his money’s worth. And he isn’t the least bit interested, pleased, etc. about my writing which he doesn’t consider of moment at all anyway.” Anne’s anger was clear, and she responded by calculating the worth of her labor: “I have also been totaling up the hours I put in at the local rate of $1.25 per hr for housework and $5.00 non

union rates for painting and the amount of money I could make in the market for the amount of work I do around this house makes it almost practical for me to take a lousy housekeeper’s job and the hell with him.” Anne vividly painted a picture of a home- maker trying futilely to keep a place clean with a husband and three children: “If all of them did not tend to leave peanut but- ter and jelly smears on the kitchen table and mop up juice from refrig and floor when spilled and not leave sugar underfoot when Johnson comes up early for breakfast. And/or mess up his room when watching tv . . .” Surely this description reveals in part how Anne was able to write convincingly about her heroines Sara (Re- storee) and Lessa (Dragonflight) having to clean up after brothers and other men. Lessa is literally a servant, a “drudge,” ignored and unappreciated except by the Hold Watchdragon. Her “ship who sang,” Helva, with her tremendous powers, was a vicarious fantasy for Anne. As Anne later acknowledged, “Helva was my alter ego in the days when I suspected my marriage was failing. It would be easy to see that parallel in ‘The Ship Who Disappeared’ (which was written in 1968) with Helva’s high decibel ousting of an unsatisfactory brawn. I did enjoy writing that scene!”

After venting, Anne thanked Virginia for her support and con-

cluded, “I’m going to have to wait Johnson out on this house- keeping binge which cuts seriously into my writing time, unfor- tunately. However, I will persevere . . . as if my inner compulsion gave me any other choice in this matter.” This account appears again and again: Wright’s lack of emotional support, which even- tually becomes verbal abuse, and Anne’s determination to survive and to write in spite of his efforts to sabotage her. As Anne’s con- fidence in writing emerged, she was able to write more cheerfully: “Johnson’s been making neglected noises: screamed at me for running such a pig-pen. Actually he has not been as neglected

as he thinks he is! What’s been neglected has been Pern #2.” To Anne’s description of her husband’s complaints, Virginia imme- diately wrote back a long letter of encouragement, including prac- tical as well as emotional advice. She joked, “It’s a pity Wright could not spend a week or two in the domestic, if not the con- nubial situation with me! then he would see what Bad House-

keeping consists of.” She addressed Anne as “Sister Anne” and explained (years before John Gray’s and Deborah Tannen’s schol- arship that reached the same conclusion) that men and women speak two different languages. She commiserated, explaining that her husband also complained about her housekeeping when, of course, “a good three-quarters of the always current clutter was his projects, rather than mine.” She responded to the econom- ics of the situation by asserting that “if he were buying you, he has the world’s Best Bargain, dear girl—who else would put up with him?” Virginia’s support for Anne as a person and a writer helped her continue, despite the incessant belittling she received from Wright.

The summer of 1968, with the country in an unacknowledged war in Vietnam and internally convulsed with students’ antiwar protests, proved epochal for Anne. That summer she took two im- portant trips, one with her Aunt Gladys to the country that would become her home, Ireland, and another to the World Science Fic- tion Convention in Berkeley, California. The letters reveal that Anne concentrated her energy on her fictional worlds, show- ing little trace in her correspondence of the Vietnam War, stu- dent protests, or changing social mores. Aware of Anne’s marital troubles, Aunt Gladys took Anne on a trip with her to Scotland, Ireland, and England. With Peggy Isbell and Wright taking care of the children, Anne was able to travel abroad with her aunt for eighteen days. Because Aunt Gladys was older, she welcomed Anne’s assistance in making such a long trip, and Aunt Gladys also wanted to show Anne her family homeland. Anne had al- ways been proud of being Irish, even presciently signing a letter to Virginia in green ink, “Irish Annie.” Anne and her aunt began in Roseneath, the town from which Gladys’s grandparents had emigrated to America. Then they visited Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, before journeying to Ireland for a coastal tour of Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Shannon. They stayed at Dromo- land Castle their last night in Ireland. Anne had particularly en- joyed the Dublin Horse Show (with the exception of a tragic acci- dent that resulted in a horse being put down). Anne remembers being sorry to leave Ireland because she “loved Ireland and the

easy way of the Irish folk to tourists and the weather, which is much cooler in the summer than NY.” She had no idea then that she would be able to return, to live in Ireland permanently in just two years, but she knew that in returning to Long Island that she “was going back to trouble.” The glow of that magical visit would linger, calling to her when she divorced and wanted to start a new life. Then Ireland would seem a logical choice for a new home.

While traveling to Ireland introduced Anne to the country that would become her new home, the 1968 World Science Fic- tion Convention (held over Labor Day weekend at the end of that summer) provided both inspiration and confirmation of Anne’s choice to focus on her writing. She had just been elected secretary-treasurer of the Science Fiction Writers of America “and wanted to meet the other officers.” Her decision to attend was propitious because an address by Ray Bradbury gave her the idea for one of her most-praised stories (and popular series), “The Ship Who Sang.” Bradbury explained that he had written his story “The Snows of K ilimanjaro” in response to Hemingway’s suicide. Unable to accept his hero’s death, he rewrote the story to have his hero killed by a tiger. Anne admiringly described Brad- bury’s revision as “wishful thinking” and began to do some think- ing about her father’s death. She wrote “The Ship Who Sang” as “a therapeutic way to cure the shock” she had at her father’s death. This revelation by Anne explains how some writers get their ideas—from conventions, from other writers—and also how they apply ideas and transform them into art. But this World Con did more than provide Anne with a concept she could rework. “Weyr Search,” the first story in what would become Anne’s most successful series, the Dragonriders of Pern, had been nominated for a Hugo, the award bestowed annually at the world convention. Anne became the first woman to win the Hugo. She was elated and said of the trip home, “I don’t think I needed the plane’s wings to get me home.” The publishers, Ian and Betty Ballantine, were so pleased for Anne that they paid for her upgrade to first class, so that she could fly with them. The trip was a foretaste of the good things that would eventually come from Anne’s writing. But in 1968, she was still struggling financially.

Anne McCaffrey’s statement of earnings for 1968 reveals just how successful she had become—almost enough to support her- self and her three children. While Anne’s earnings were impres- sive, they still amounted to less than her parents’ income in 1944 (as reported in a financial statement to Radcliffe College). In 1968 she earned almost six thousand dollars from her writing, of which Virginia received 10 percent (5 percent on two United Kingdom sales). In a note Virginia writes, “You’re still my top money-maker, and I’m proud of you.” Significantly, she adds par- enthetically, “(what hath God wrought, Wright?)” Her career was firmly established as “Anne McCaffrey” because Johnson didn’t want his name associated with science fiction. In this earnings statement, “Johnson” appears as an afterthought, in parenthesis. At this time, Wright was spending more and more time in New York City, with the excuse that he was working so hard that he didn’t have time to commute home to Long Island. At the end of 1968, Anne told Virginia that she had announced to her old- est son, Alec, “that his father and I are estranged. I even went

so far as to check into a divorce [in] NY state and, while it’s pos-

sible, it is also one of the dirtiest states in which to get a divorce.” This is one of the first letters Anne writes with her new station- ary, headed with her name, “Anne McCaffrey,” and underneath, “Member SFWA” (Science Fiction Writers of America). Anne’s new, independent identity now appears not only on her publica- tions, but also on her personal stationary.

But Anne was still not completely separated from Wright. De- spite Wright’s heavy drinking and criticism of her, Anne still con- tinued to want his approval. As her son Todd’s account of the re- lationship reveals, Wright could be physically abusive not only to Anne but to Todd as well. “I remember,” Todd writes, “one night when we were all at the kitchen table after dinner, drinking cof- fee. Dad and Mum were bickering back and forth. Wright

threw the empty cup at her face. It was Alec who told Dad

he had better leave.” Anne worried about the effect of Wright’s abuse on the children. She remembers, “It got so bad that none of the children would dare talk at dinner and that annoyed Wright even more. A no-win situation. But Todd took the worst of these

encounters. The day that Todd told me that he knew why his daddy had to beat him, because he left marks on Gigi’s face and Alec was too big. That’s when I realized I had to tell my husband I wanted a divorce.” Understandably, Anne’s brother Kevin and other family members have little positive to say about Wright. But their negative comments pale in comparison to Virginia’s. Anne can hardly say a negative word about anyone, but Virginia, her friend, was as harsh about Wright as she was about Anne’s less- than-standard writing. “Wright,” Virginia told me bluntly, “was a monster.” Vaughne Hansen, who had worked for Virginia Kidd for twelve years, corroborates Virginia’s dislike of Wright, telling me that when she first came to work for Virginia, almost the first story she heard was “the Wright Johnson story” of his abuse.

At age nine, Gigi, of course, didn’t understand the situation, but she suggested to her mother that if she would give up writing, things would be okay. Anne knew that it wasn’t that simple—not only could she not give up her writing, but that would not solve their marital problems. Anne saw another source of Wright’s dif- ficulties, “the corporate mind.” She further explained, “Wright was forced to expedients which went against his upbringing and his own ethical code: firing an associate who was also a close per- sonal friend and other corporate exigencies. He was also away a good deal, covering the fashion scene in Europe. I was no match for the elegant folk he met there, nor could I compete with such luminaries. I didn’t try. In 1960, seeing how such corporate ne- cessities were altering the man I had married, I begged him to leave and find another job that was not so stressful or demanding. But he really did enjoy the fashion work he was doing. He also

liked the salary and prestige of being with a major U.S. firm. He

wouldn’t even consider resigning.” Years of living with an abusive man had deepened Anne’s feelings of insecurity. She blamed her- self for the change in their relationship: “I tried harder to salvage our earlier rapport but I wasn’t clever enough.” Anne even began to doubt her capability to be a good mother and imagined leav- ing the children, too: “I had come to see myself as an ineffective mother and began to believe that the children would be better off with their father. I’d just leave and go someplace I wasn’t known

and start over. I could find a job as a cook, or a waitress or a typ- ist. I wouldn’t be fussy.” Despite her burgeoning career as a writer, Anne was demoralized and devastated by her marriage. She could not see beyond the divorce as a failure and herself as worthless. That is what years of verbal abuse had done to her.

As Anne’s independent identity emerged and her marriage deteriorated, she turned to someone who was also experienc- ing the end of a marriage, the well-known science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Anne and Isaac had met in 1963 at a science fic- tion conference in Washington, D.C., and they had remained friends. Anne liked his writing and told him so, a compliment every writer likes to hear, especially from another writer. She re- members him as “good company and his puns were fabulous.” As Todd, Anne’s son, recounts, it was to Isaac that Anne turned when she needed to find someone to present her with her first major award, the Nebula that Anne received from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Usually the secretary-treasurer presented the awards, but in 1968 Anne was the secretary-treasurer, and she could hardly present the award to herself. In a long and hu- morous speech, Isaac picked many science fiction writers’ names and put them to popular songs. He concluded by belting out a version of “San Francisco” to these lyrics: “Anne Mc-Caf-frey / Open your golden gates! / I can no longer wait!” Anne joked in response, “Never trust a tenor,” and promised to pay him back for the joke. They met a few weeks later at Boskone, the Boston science fiction convention. Isaac had been asked to present the

E. Doc Smith Award. Somewhat maudlin, he addressed the

crowd, saying, “Right now, among all my societies, it is you—and science fiction—whose good opinion I require. I want you to love me, love me, love me, or I will die.” Loudly, from the back of the room, Anne yelled, “Live, Tinker Bell!” to the crowd’s laughter. To even more laughter, Isaac replied, “Five minutes alone with you and I’ll prove that I’m no Tinker Bell!” Their rather public flirtation, did, however, have a basis in reality. It was at this Bos- kone that Isaac got his rather more than five minutes and satis- factorily proved himself to be “no Tinker Bell.”

Like Anne, Isaac had a keen sense of humor; and, despite his

writing success, he, too, wrestled with feelings of insecurity in- tensified by his troubled marriage. They also shared a talent for singing, livening many a convention with their duet of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” While their relationship provided con- solation in difficult emotional times, neither felt that they wanted or were able to consider a permanent tie. This attitude disap- pointed the editor Judy Lynn Del Rey, who tried to encourage both of them to make a permanent relationship of their affair. But as Anne explains, “He was going through a messy divorce and needed someone sympathetic to talk to. Me.” While Anne pro- vided Isaac with support, he also made her feel wanted and ap- preciated, something she had not felt for a long time. Profession- ally, Anne felt appreciated: her work had been recognized both by the fans, with the Hugo Award, and her peers, with the Nebula. She had achieved three firsts, being the first woman to win each award and the first woman to win both. And her relationship with Isaac made her realize that she needed and wanted a dras- tic change in her life. This time, however, she did not confide in Virginia.

Anne and Wright’s divorce plans became firmer when Wright

moved out completely in the spring of 1970. By this time, his de- parture was a relief for Anne. Unfortunately, as often is the case, the divorce also cost Anne a dear friend, Peggy Isbell, who or- dered Anne out of her half of the large mansion the two fami- lies had shared. Her friend Peggy’s dismissal of her, however, was unexpected and painful. They had been close friends for years, sharing writing ambitions, gossip, child-rearing ideas. Many after- noons they took a martini break, and Anne nursed Peggy through a number of minor illnesses. But after Wright moved out and the divorce was final, Peggy dumped her. A heartbroken Anne wrote to Virginia, “Peggy socked me into Coventry about three weeks ago which makes the atmosphere of this house dismal if not down- right godawful.” Virginia called later that summer, on the after- noon when Anne and Peggy parted for the last time. From the Toronto science fiction convention, Anne wrote to Virginia to ex- plain that she couldn’t do “much thinking when you called me that afternoon. I went and took two stiff drinks and still had a

tremendous reaction to the ‘Scene’—there are disadvantages to being an empath. Fortunately she got out of the house Wed-

nesday, leaving a message with Todd ‘that I was to leave all keys to the house on the hall table’--my table says she with an amused chuckle. So I did!” Anne further related the unusual behavior of Peggy’s cats, who uncharacteristically rubbed up against her, as though they were saying that they would miss her. Anne confessed that she would miss the cats, but surely between these lines is the palpable regret for her lost friendship with Peggy. Alec was about to start college in New York, so Anne took only Todd and Gigi to the North American Science Fiction convention in Toronto. There she and Isaac Asimov, who were co-guests of honor, “had a roaringly funny time but no big sense of separation. I knew we’d meet again. No heartbreak.” After the convention, Anne flew

with the children from Toronto directly to Ireland.

Poignantly, Anne had earlier written to Virginia about Todd’s desire to run away, a common childhood fantasy. Facing a bully at school, Todd told his mother he wanted to run away. Anne told him they would run away together. And after Todd was tested and found to have a genius-level intellect, Anne says she told him, “Maybe we better not run away quite yet.” Four years later, Anne found that it was time. She felt that “it was going to be an adven- ture but I was sure I would manage . . . though part of me won- dered how.” She explains, “Like many of my heroines, I was ner- vous, but it was a step that had to be taken to break a pattern.”

Anne had not wanted to get divorced, but not because of reli- gious reasons; in fact, when her brother Kevin had divorced be- fore 1970, she tried to talk him out of it. Their parents had raised them to follow through on their commitments, and no one in their parents’ generation had been divorced. But undoubtedly Kevin’s divorce, the first in their family, made it easier for Anne herself to end her marriage. In her letters to Virginia, Anne dis- cussed the difficult nature of New York State divorce laws. At first it seemed that Wright’s employer, Dupont, would send Wright to Mexico on business and that, while there, he would file for the di- vorce. Finally, Anne had to make the trip herself in August 1970. Although every divorce is a lonely, unique experience, Anne and

Wright were part of a trend in American culture. In 1970, di- vorces increased 13 percent from the previous year, to an all-time high of 715,000.

Of Anne’s move to Ireland, Virginia says, “It surprised me tre- mendously, but it was the best thing she could do [to get] far away from Wright.” She remembers Wright as “handsome, talented, and nasty.” Her interpretation of their difficulties is that Wright thought he was a better writer and that he was jealous of Anne’s success. The letters corroborate Virginia’s understanding of the situation, for a couple of times Anne mentions that Wright had submitted a manuscript to a publisher, but the outcome is never mentioned; Anne never explained what happened, but presum- ably the manuscripts were rejected. Like Anne’s mother, Wright wrote but never published any of his creative writing. While Wright’s jealousy of Anne’s success undoubtedly contributed to the demise of their marriage, Anne’s sudden move across an ocean suggested something more ominous in Wright’s behavior. Yet, even after the move to Ireland, Anne still expressed concern for Wright in her letters to Virginia, even going so far as to dedi- cate one of her novels to him. But once in Ireland, Anne became a free woman, reveling in horseback-riding, fulfilling relationships with men, and, most importantly, her writing.

chapte r 5

Emigration and a Best-Seller

It was her father who betrayed her ambition to be a Harper, who thwarted her love of music. Menolly had no choice but to run away. She came upon a group of fire lizards . . . [and] her music swirled about them; she taught nine to sing, suddenly Menolly was no longer alone.

—Anne McCaffrey, Dragonsinger

Now we were back! Reverse immigration. . . .

And thus began the Irish adventure.

—Anne McCaffrey, letter to Virginia K idd

Although it certainly surprised her family and friends, Anne McCaffrey’s sudden removal to Ireland heralded her new life. Eight years after her emigration she would appear on the best- seller’s list. Her immigration to her great-grandparents’ home country led to the pinnacle of Anne’s writing career. Match- ing moves as bold as those of her heroines—from Menolly to Killashandra to Nimisha—Anne boldly relocated, taking herself away from the people who emotionally supported her, espe- cially Virginia Kidd. Betrayed by a male figure (her husband) who thwarted her love of writing, Anne felt like Menolly, that she had no choice but to run away, even with few resources. Di- vorced with two children dependent on her, no money, and an un- certain financial future, Anne landed in Ireland at age forty-two. Her migration and her transformation into a world-renowned author is the focus of this chapter, which connects her indepen- dence and her fictional and real-life romances to her develop- ment as a writer.

Confronted with the many difficulties of adapting to a new

country, Anne threw her frustrations and worries into her fic- tions. Her adjustment to Ireland took creative shape in the books

she wrote during this decade, reflecting her desire for romance, her passion for animals, and her rage against injustice in many forms. Already an award-wining author when she relocated her family to Ireland in August 1970, Anne gained much more free- dom to write, but also felt much more financial pressure to do so. For the first time in twenty years, Anne McCaffrey was the main breadwinner for her family, which included her mother. Even with her mother’s contributions and her former husband’s oc- casional child-support checks, this role meant she had to make the transition from being a respected part-time writer to a full- time writer. Now, she had to consider not only what she wanted to write, but also what would sell. This pressure seemed a positive catalyst for her productivity: she published thirteen books, in- cluding her highly acclaimed Harper Hall Trilogy--Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums—and The White Dragon. She also garnered many awards, becoming, in 1978, the first science fic- tion writer to appear on the New York Times Bestseller List (for The White Dragon). Most importantly, however, she began earning a substantial income.

Anne not only created imaginary worlds, but also saw her-

self in them, too. Her imagination proved an advantage as she struggled to cope with emigration. Her editor, Shelly Shapiro, suggests, “The fact that Anne McCaffrey lived in Pern helped her make the transition to living in another country. It’s hard to take on another culture, but she’d practiced.” The Dragonriders of Pern, the series that Anne began developing in the 1970s, owes a great deal to her residence in Ireland. Her agent, Virginia K idd, claimed that Pern changed after Anne moved to Ireland, that the move “deepened” Anne’s writing and that “Pern became a real country after Anne moved there.” She has written eighteen novels (and two with her son, Todd) set on Pern; this world and series are her most thoroughly developed and most popular.

In their first three years, the family lived in three different homes and had to adjust to Irish accommodations and also had to navigate a new cultural system. For example, Anne was shocked to discover that in Ireland you had to own property to have a library card. Like the rest of Europe, Ireland featured much smaller,

older houses with what, to American tastes, seemed like impossi- bly tiny kitchens. The change was all the more dramatic to Anne because her last home in Sea Cliff, New Jersey, had been half of an enormous mansion (with ten bathrooms). It wasn’t until 1973 that Anne settled in a larger home with a long-term lease of six years.

Moving across an ocean and thousands of miles from what had always been home, Anne had to create a new identity for her- self. Part of this self-creation meant becoming “Anne” instead of Mrs. Johnson, and in doing so she was letting go of Wright. As was true in America also, in Ireland a woman without a husband faced prejudice and obstacles to her independence; Anne had to cope with these sexist attitudes. Getting her name put on her bank (credit) card proved difficult; she had to insist that she had no husband and that she was the only person who would use the bank account. Anne’s eventual success in obtaining a card in her own name was a tribute to her dogged persistence, a quality that sustained her writing. Antoinette O’Connell, a family friend, re- members with awe what an impact Anne’s independence had on her as a young girl. Anne was a role model for Antoinette, who ad- mired her as “the first divorced, independent woman [she] met.” The relatively backward position of women in Ireland at the time steeled Anne’s feminism, making her all the more determined to be recognized as a breadwinner and head of her household. The adversities she faced as a woman appear in her fiction, as her char- acters face down sexist male characters and societies.

While she and Wright had always had money problems, now

Anne was on her own financially. One incentive for moving to Ireland had been the Haughey’s Artists Exemption Act, which exempted creative artists, such as writers, from paying tax on their earnings. This financial recognition of her position as writer was important to Anne, who wrote, “On the strength of four published novels, contracts for four more, I was accepted as a resident under the Artists’ Exemption, promulgated by Charles Haughey.” But exemption from taxes alone would not pay bills, so, not surprisingly, McCaffrey’s letters to her agent contained a new urgency and a frantic tone about payments due to her from

publishers. It wasn’t until months after her move that she received payment from her work as editor of a collection of short stories, Alchemy and Academe; only then was she able to retrieve her family’s belongings from the sea-freight storage in Dublin. Anne’s moti- vation for writing short fiction was in part financial; she needed money, and short stories provided the quickest payments. The immense financial pressure Anne experienced actually created a writing process that has stood the test of three decades: she tries out ideas and characters in short fiction, and then later (often decades later) develops the short stories into a series of novels. Not having had the time to write in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s meant, too, that Anne had “a backlog of ideas and notions.” It was only after her move that she would have the time to develop them.

Financial problems and worries continued throughout 1972,

and it is no accident that 1972 was the only year that Anne failed to publish any books. Another Gothic novel, The Year of the Lucy, had been rejected by an editor at Dell. This slowdown in pub- lication affected Anne’s finances, and the problem was exacer- bated by the disappearance of Wright’s child-support checks. For example, Anne and Wright fought a battle over orthodontia for Todd and Gigi. Wright expected Anne to foot the bill alone— over $500. But while he claimed he had no money, he and his new wife, Annett, took a three-week tour of France. Anne found Wright’s trip upsetting because she could not afford to travel, even for professional conferences. Invited to the Los Angeles Sci- ence Fiction Convention, she had to decline. Wright’s check for

$500 finally arrived, but Anne had to borrow 126 punts (about

$100) from an Irish friend to get her car running.

Compounding the financial woes was the separation from a supportive network of family and old friends. Anne’s separation from her agent and confidante, Virginia Kidd, was harder on Anne than on Virginia. Anne very obviously missed Virginia, as Anne’s repeated, often plaintive, invitations for Virginia to visit her reveal. Although she was thousands of miles away, Anne kept in regular touch with Virginia. The time it took for mail to travel

from Ireland to the United States meant that the response time between letters was much longer, so their communication lost some of its immediacy. Both missed the intimacy and impact of their previous relationship. Her plaintive appeals for Virginia to visit reveal Anne’s need of her friend. In December 1970, four months after she moved to Ireland, Anne wrote, “In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, I love you, dearest Virginia dear, and I am always deeply sensible of how skillfully you have steered the bark of my ambition. One of these here now days, you’ll come to Ire- land . . . and never leave it.” In February 1971, she insisted, “You must come to see me in Ireland.” But because of a disinclination to fly, lack of money, and her business, Virginia never made the trip. Fortunately, both women enjoyed writing letters, and their business relationship meant that they would still need to write each other frequently. Their letters consistently combine busi- ness and highly revealing personal information. While Anne al- ways showed her determination and strength to other people, with Virginia she could display her emotional vulnerability, and, in the first few years in Ireland, her always pressing anxiety about money.

Difficulties with the mail and banks made Anne’s life as a pro-

fessional writer more difficult. Postal delays added to her finan- cial woes, because checks mailed from the States would often take weeks to reach her. Anne found the banking system in Ire- land both frustrating and (occasionally) helpful to her in her im- pecunious state. The bank manager would provide overdrafts, but then the bank would refuse to cash a check if it was not certi- fied, or take a long time to credit the funds to her account. Anne used letters from Virginia and publishers to assure the bank man- ager that funds would soon be deposited, but until the mid 1970s, Anne worried constantly about how she would pay her bills. As she acknowledged to Virginia, “I do seem to keep harping on money.” A ledger of Anne’s earnings reveals that from 1969 to September 1971, she made $9,750, hardly a princely sum, espe- cially considering that these payments were for six novels and an edited book. She wrote to Virginia, “the [publishers’] delays

have been excessive and beginning with [her husband] John- son’s delinquency last June, my financial position has been pre- carious indeed, despite the prospect of improvement which never arrives.”

Establishing herself as a writer took most of the 1970s. A dis- couraged Anne wrote somewhat bitterly to Virginia, “Mucking out Edward’s [her horse’s] stall this morning, I was of a mind to chuck writing completely and take the job of a stable manager. I am very good at mucking out horses, cleaning tack and groom- ing coats. It takes little brain, only physical effort, and one gets paid on time.” While her rant may be mere venting, the family’s financial hardships were real; Anne even had to sell all the family furniture and belongings she had left in storage on Long Island, as she didn’t have the funds to pay for their continued storage. Despite financial pressures, however, when one of her stories was rejected by a magazine, Anne held firm, refusing to change her narrative. She explained to Virginia, “In my financial position, I shouldn’t let any opportunity to make money slip me by, but damnit, I write the story I’m telling and if it doesn’t fit maga- zines, well, tant pis!!!! [too bad] again!!!!”

Despite her willingness to separate from Wright geographically,

Anne had trouble completely separating from her ex-husband emotionally. Although Wright had been abusive, and they now lived thousands of miles apart, Anne still worried about him, as her letters to Virginia reveal. She clearly felt responsible for him, referring to a suicidal depression of his and his failed attempts at non-business writing. Angered by his unreliable payment of child support, she nevertheless dedicated a book to him. While Anne was ready to move on to other relationships, she still sought Wright’s approval, as her dedication of the 1971 novel, The Mark of Merlin, to him showed. Significantly, this novel is one of a hand- ful of Anne’s novels that are not science fiction, the genre that Wright despised. The dedication (written before they were di- vorced) reads, “To my husband, who is more often Wright than rong [sic].” Poignantly, the dedication suggests not only Anne’s desire to placate Wright, but also a playful sense of fun that char- acterized their happier days.

His remarriage (ironically, to a woman named Annett, who was also a writer/editor) allowed Anne to detach further. She wrote the news twice to Virginia within a few weeks. In the first letter, she discussed reassuring her son Alec about the new wife, tell- ing him that “he was a stepson most women would be proud of,” but she revealed in the second missive her own reaction: “I am deeply relieved that Wright is remarrying , , , [sic] particularly someone in his own field [writing and editing] who, presumably, understands his drives and talents. I’ve been asked recently if I weren’t still in love with him, and the answer is emphatically no. I’ve felt a responsibility for him because he seemed so close to sui- cide again this summer and that would be hard to adjust to for me. But ‘love’—no, no, no.” Anne found, however, that breaking free of a twenty-year marriage was not quick or painless. Simi- larly, her characters find they must make radical breaks—run away or move to another Hold or planet—to escape confining re- lationships.

In May 1971, Wright made a brief trip to Ireland to see his

children; though he would be there only four days, the prospect of seeing him troubled Anne. She wrote Virginia, “I’ll show him the book dedicated to him and see what happens. Maybe it’s as well he has another woman now. I met him with Gigi and Todd at the airport today and he was reasonably mild. It might continue in that vein, I hope . . . because I am rather fragile otherwise.” Her vulnerability, painful though it was, allowed her to see and create characters who suffered, but coped. Many of her charac- ters, like Menolly, struggle for the approval of a male figure; but, like Anne herself, these characters usually have to find validation from new sources. Her comment also shows the strain of relocat- ing to a new country and beginning a new life as a single woman. New companions in Ireland helped her to rediscover a stronger, fun-loving side of herself shortly after relocating. Of that time, she acknowledges, “I developed a disastrous tendency to meet charming men and fall under their spell.” She met one such man, Michael O’Shea, in a furniture store; and when the six-foot, red- haired, handsome man promptly invited her for a drink, Anne said, “Yes.” She recalls, “Through him, I met other charming men

and learned about the sanctity of the Irish pub. That is to say, if I had a problem and didn’t know the answer, if I went to my local pub and chatted up the publican, I’d very soon have others lis- tening in—attracted by the Yank accent—and then there’d be a discussion as to how I could solve my problem. It was a great

way to learn the customs of the country I was living in.” At the pub, Anne found another version of the support and encourage- ment she experienced at the Milford writers’ workshops and sci- ence fiction conventions.

Her son Todd describes her friends in Ireland as a “wild gang” and recalls his mother, as was the custom in Ireland, going over to a pub to socialize with Bernard Shattuck (an Irish sea cap- tain), O’Shea’s girlfriend, and O’Shea, described by her oldest son Alec as “a real Irish character, a teller (and embellisher) of tales.” As her fiction suggests, Anne had a healthy sexual appetite, and once freed from her marriage she was ready to enjoy life and all its pleasures. After being unappreciated by Wright, Anne told Virginia, “It is so reassuring to be considered bright, intelligent, fascinating, stimulating and all that jazz.” A single mother, Anne faced the difficulties of juggling children and lovers. She learned that the Irish word for hangover is “ ‘fluttered.’” In December 1970, Anne wrote to Virginia describing the Thanksgiving feast she threw to the appreciation of several Irishmen, but she com- plained, “If Todd doesn’t stop chaperoning me I am going to

beat his ears in.” As a divorced mother, Virginia empathized and

responded, “Do I ever understand what you mean about Todd’s chaperoning you!!! Ben [her son] too—when I know he has other things he has to do, wants to do, but no. If I have male company, he sacrifices all.” Despite her son’s shadowing her, Anne found time for lovers. Her very human need for love appears in her books as characters like the young woman Lessa in Dragonflight or the older woman Clodagh in the Powers series; these characters and others find love even in inhospitable circumstances.

In February 1971, Anne described to Virginia another beau, Bernard Shattuck, whom she said looked exactly like the por- trait of F’nor on the cover of Dragonquest. She mentioned both the resemblance and Bernard in a number of letters. The reader

can judge for herself the degree to which Bernard resembled F’nor by examining Bernard Shattuck’s photo in Todd McCaf- frey’s memoir, Dragonholder. Eventually, she reveals that she and the young Englishman, twenty-two, have become lovers. A fisher- man, a first mate, Anne described him as “true to type,” and ex- claimed, “Gawd, it’s awful to see a facsimile of a character you in- vented alive and well in Dun Laoghaire.” This inversion reflects a power reversal in their relationship. Anne created a character, but now he is alive and out of her control. The relationship was a pleasurable one, however, and Anne confided in Virginia, “I shall enjoy the experience while I can.” Bernard took Anne’s old- est son, Alec, under his wing, getting him a job on a fishing ves- sel. By May, however, their affair ended, leaving Anne poignantly regretful. She wrote admiringly of Bernard, how he had managed to change their relationship—“without leaving me bitter or us unfriendly.” But she complained to Virginia how difficult it was, especially because “Alec keeps trying to get me and Bernard out on dates with him. Bernard merely grins and asks me if I want to go and we go. Crazeee world.” Bernard remained a family friend, helping Anne with what little money he had. Anne writes, “I got over the mad-pash for him, but I still love him muchly.”

Anne would also find another character-image come to life in

Jan Regan, who appeared to Anne as “Jan-who-is-Lessa.” Jan Re- gan was David Gerrold’s landlady, and, according to Todd, Ger- rold phoned Anne with the news that “Lessa is my landlord.” Mar- ried to an abusive husband, Jan turned to Anne for help. Anne offered Jan a place to stay; Jan stayed with Anne, nursing her through a virus and taking care of the kids. Eventually, when Anne founded Dragonhold Stables, Jan managed them for her. In 1971, Anne wrote to Virginia, “My Jan-Lessa descended on me Sunday after her husband beat her up seriously (my gowd [sic] the bruises on her and she’s no flesh to speak spare).” Domestic vio- lence was much in the news just then, in both America and Ire- land, and Anne knew a woman named Mary Banotti “who helped abused women.” Anne would later draw on both women’s lives for aspects of characters in a Gothic novel (discussed in greater detail later in this chapter). Anne clearly likes the fictional characters

she creates. Seeing her characters in real people she met in Ire- land was one way she could explain her attraction to new people and make Ireland more familiar. Implicitly, she put herself in a superior position by being, even imaginatively, their creator. This relationship provides another clue to the imaginary or dream- world character of Anne’s life in Ireland. Because of her strong connection to her fictional worlds, she saw connections between characters she loved and people she loved. The parallels between fictional and real people enabled her both to feel a stronger con- nection to people and to make her characters more believable, three-dimensional. She imagined them before they ever knew her. A few years later, she would meet and befriend Derval Dia- mond, “who is the epitome of Menolly [protagonist of the Harper Hall Trilogy], in looks and manner.” In the cases of Bernard, Jan, and Derval, these people who seemed to parallel her characters developed into life-long friends.

By November 1971, she had fallen in love again, this time more

seriously. The object of her affection was Derek Waters, a forty- two-year-old Irishman and successful television producer in Canada and America. Derek had moved home to Ireland with his sons, and he was in the process of getting a divorce from his wife of fourteen years, Mabel. Derek couldn’t have appeared at a better time because Anne was at a low spot in her life. Short of funds, she was waiting to hear from Dell about publishing The Year of the Lucy when the clutch on her car seized up and she didn’t have the money to replace it. Although her story “Dramatic Mission” had been nominated for a Hugo, she had to decline the offer to be toast-mistress at the Los Angeles Worldcon because she couldn’t afford the trip. Nevertheless, she still enjoyed the prestige of be- ing a professional writer, and she picked Derek Waters up “in a pub just after my first PEN Writers Club meeting.”

Despite her financial woes, Anne raved to Virginia that her

“excellent frame of mind [was] due to having met a cookie.” Less than two weeks later, she wrote, “My new boyfriend continues at- tentive.” Anne was truly in love, and in December 1971 she wrote to Virginia to announce her engagement: “You may have heard me mention that I’d never marry an Irishman? Well, I’m going

to . . . unfortunately not until his divorce comes through from Canada and we haven’t a clue when that will be.” Derek was fight- ing for the custody of his two sons, ages eleven and eight, who were living with him. His boys liked her, and Anne described them as “considerably better behaved than mine ever were at that age,” and they “seem to get along well with me.” Her chil- dren liked Derek, too, and Anne hoped that they could find “a big roomy house similar to this one in which our combined fami- lies can spread out.” She wrote a glowing description of Derek’s physical appearance: “I call him my Jewish Leprechaun because, although he is pure Irish, he has that black Irish look (with silver sideburns) and a slightly semitic nose.” Anne gushed, “I’ve never gotten along so well with another human being in my life.” She explained, “We’ve been trying out the living together bit to see how we would get on. He admires my brains and beauty, and I find his shrewdness and leprechaunishness a decided relief.” They planned a future together in Ireland, for neither wanted to leave. Derek worked a few projects for RTE, the Irish national radio and television service, and he had dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins nearby. Looking back on the past year, Anne told Virginia she was sorry that she had not been more productive as a writer, and she promised Virginia she would be so in the fu- ture. She explained that she and Derek were “setting up a strict schedule to do work in and still have time for play.” She reported to Virginia that Derek had lost his job with RTE for not being Catholic. Anne began to write a movie scenario featuring horses, and she planned for Derek to direct it.

Anne included Derek in her science fiction life when, flush

with funds from the sales of short stories that would later become the novel Crystal Singer, she traveled to Chesmacon, the science fiction convention in Chester, England, with Derek, his two sons, and Todd and Gigi. Derek’s sons were thrilled by the science fic- tion movie screenings. Anne was pleased that “everyone seemed to like Derek and Derek really enjoyed himself.” She exclaimed, “I do adore that man so much.” Anne was also rather pleased to find Harry Harrison, a popular science fiction writer, jealous. She wrote to Virginia that he “was annoyed to find [she] had an

escort—tough titty!” But in her customary good-natured form, Anne also told Virginia, “He was in rare form with his new book, however.” A gregarious and social woman, Anne enjoyed the at- tention and the new version of herself as a woman with a lover. In love herself, Anne was generous and interested in the love af- fairs of others, especially her good friend Virginia. Being in love fit her need of male approval and validation. Both the strength and the weakness of Anne’s fiction is their great emotionality and an emphasis on romance—the same can also be said of Anne’s own life.

When Virginia wrote to Anne that she and Roger Elwood, who had been publishing Anne’s work, had become lovers, Anne re- sponded by congratulating her. Anne seemed to have been in- terested in Roger, too, for she wrote, “I shall miss the challenges of his letters, and bank down the fires of anticipation of his ar- rival [in Ireland]. But I am pleased about the Roger Lovin-

man arrangement. Jealous, too. . . . I am very pleased that he took the road to you. enjoy! enjoy!” She described with mea-

sured tones her relationship with Derek and the comfort and sup- port he provided: “I do believe I am very helpful to Derek and I need to be helpful. There is much in the Derek-Anne relation- ship which is very good and worthwhile—not the least of which is the security I give his eldest son—and no relationship is without some defects. I have a lot to give Derek and he gives me much in return. We shall see how the whole matter resolves itself once he is, indeed, free to remarry—if remarriage is in his mind at that time.” In October of that year she wrote about a misunder- standing that she and Derek had, but she said that it “has made for more deeper understanding. Despite his flaws, I really want that guy and no one else. In fact, we are probably going to com- bine households in the very near future.” Anne’s need to be help- ful came at a time when she could not help her aging mother cope with tinnitus and aging, and later in her life Anne would channel her need to be helpful to a large, extended family and commu- nity. Her heroines, too, are self-sacrificing, one Moreta, Dragon- lady of Pern, to the point of death. In this character, whose death

caused even the somewhat cynical Virginia Kidd to cry, Anne put all her longings and struggles and exhaustion. Significantly, it is when she goes between, too tired from flying life-saving vaccine across Pern, that Moreta dies. So Anne could depict the dangers of being needed and giving too much, but at the same time she romanticized and validated such extreme self-sacrifice.

Anne’s relationship was adversely affected by Derek’s es- tranged wife’s presence in Ireland. Presciently, in her response to Anne’s letters, Virginia worried that Mabel would harass Annie and Derek. Indeed, in early 1973, Mabel acted up when she re- turned the boys to Derek, refusing to leave. The police had to be called, for Mabel threw the phone at Derek and broke the front hall window. Derek’s father had to chastise her in front of the police before she left, threatening to offer assault charges against Derek because he grabbed her arm. Despite the unpleas- antness with Mabel, Anne and Derek continued to have fun to- gether, one time even getting involved in an attempt to expose an international drug conspiracy. She wrote to Virginia that she and Derek “gave Interpol the information that led them to crack a L2 million pound [sic] drug smuggling chain. If I wrote it, no one would believe me! We still don’t. What a fluke!” In her files, Anne still has the article from the Irish Times, with the headline, “drug haul may have been weeks at airport.” Derek had hired an Australian girl to look after his two boys, and, unfortunately, she turned out to be a drug courier. Because of his difficulties with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Derek could not have the babysitter’s drug connection made public. Mabel would have used the fact to try to wrest custody from him. So Derek fired her, after informing Inter- pol, who then followed the girl. She escaped their surveillance, however, and nothing more came of it. But the excitement and turmoil of Mabel as villain, added to a case of smuggling, rather appealed to Anne’s sense of adventure. In addition, she was de- termined not to be run off by Mabel’s crazy actions. In her fic- tions, characters always persist when they know they are right, es- pecially in the Gothic novels, where Anne seems to write through the experience with Mabel.

Derek’s estranged wife continued to cause trouble, however. Her appeal that Derek should have to pay her support was de- nied, and she had to pay her own court costs. She pitched a fit in the court, calling the judge a liar, and was removed by two po- lice officers. Anne wrote to Virginia that Mabel “mentioned my name in an uncomplimentary fashion in Court and I am asking for an injunction to stop her talking about me, I am not a floozie and I have not been posing as Mrs. Waters and I was not living with Derek in Courtown. No one would believe what that one has tried!” When Anne moved, she had to have an unlisted phone number because “Mabel started another of her phoning cam- paigns.” In December 1973, Anne made an appearance on be- half of Derek in his custody suit. A notebook from the 1974 En- glish Milford Workshop reveals that Anne’s focus was not entirely on the proceedings; she headed a list, “Nov 1971–Oct 1974,” ap- parently a list of her own good qualities and a chronicling or jus- tification of her relationship with Derek, perhaps in response to Mabel’s accusations. The list reads thus:

raised 4 children, fostered 2 one summer
3 years of Cub Scouts
Headstart Program
functioning children
lock on room door [justification of her spending the night?]
legitimate reasons for being there babysitting

film production [she and Derek formed a film corpo- ration that never produced any films]

business

black ice [a dangerous road condition, common in Ireland]

child illness

car malfunction

The focus on Anne’s excellence as a mother reveals what Anne thought was important in justifying her relationship with a man

who had two sons. It also reveals a side of Anne conspicuously ab- sent from the novels: she does not write about mothering. Even in the Tower and Hive series, which is about generations of a family, Anne’s fictional children require little assistance from their par- ents. This entry is followed by one that details Mabel’s failings and explanations of why and how Anne and Derek spent time to- gether:

her immorality in deserting the children with no justification [and then it returns to Anne and Derek]
met through mutual friends, David Gerrold in tv film industry Dec 15—Todd was sick Aug 13 Todd with me

caravan instability April Derek detained

I had key because of business. He kept change and stocks in the house.

These notes suggest how the ups and downs of the relationship with Derek affected Anne and how she justified their relation- ship to herself and others. Her letters to Virginia show how much Derek meant to her at the time. The trouble with Mabel, though, weakened Anne and Derek’s relationship. Their difficulties were exacerbated by her children’s attitude. Faced with the prospect of their mother remarrying, her children, Todd and Gigi, rebelled, both telling their mother they would never accept the marriage. Todd remembers telling his mother she could marry Derek and he hoped she’d be happy, but he would leave home as soon as he turned sixteen.

The year 1974 saw the end of Anne’s relationship with Derek. Anne recalls their breakup with candor, remembering that she “had always said he’d go after a younger woman.” After he began a relationship with a younger woman, however, he called Anne up, invited her out for a drink, and propositioned her. A sadder and wiser Anne turned him down, and Derek moved back shortly thereafter to Canada. Although she remembers it now with equa- nimity, at the time, the end of her relationship with Derek was

traumatic for Anne. She now says of that time, “I didn’t socialize a lot. I had very little confidence in myself . . . [and] my energy and emotion went into my books.” The role of men in Anne’s life, at least those with whom she had physical relationships, ap- pears to have been a negative defining force that turned her to- ward fiction. Recently, Anne reminisced about Derek, recalling that he had asked her to marry him, “but that I realized I couldn’t marry because I needed to devote more time to my work.” She re- calls Derek as “another Aries,” fundamentally incompatible with her, and remembers that he was “occasionally macho” and un- able to understand her perspective. As an example, she cites his finding a house for her to rent, and at a good price, but he was angry when she refused to sign the lease. “He didn’t understand I couldn’t live there,” she said. “All the houses exactly alike—I need to be different.” Anne’s mother, whose health was failing, followed her own mother’s judgmental streak, disapproving of Derek because she thought Anne could do better. Anne remem- bers that although “Derek was gone by the time mother died. I could have used his comfort.” Both losses affected Anne deeply, but neither stopped her from writing.

Throughout her relationship with Derek, Anne kept writing at

a furious pace. Her busy life coincided with her final revision of Dragonquest, an earlier draft of which Virginia had told Anne to burn. Published in 1971, the revised novel represented an impor- tant turning point in Anne’s career. In radically revising this text, Anne would demonstrate again her ability to respond positively to criticism, this time from her publisher Betty Ballantine. Anne had gotten bogged down in writing the novel, until Betty invited her and the children to visit over the 1970 New Year’s holiday. She and Betty went over the draft together, and, telling Anne she was emphasizing the wrong plot, Betty pointed out to Anne that “ ‘this story isn’t about F’lar and Lessa [the protagonists of Dragon- flight, Anne’s first Pern novel]: it has more to do with F’nor and Jaxom.’” Betty’s analysis freed Anne to write the rest of the novel quickly. Anne described Betty fondly in a letter to Virginia: “She is such a magnificent person, . . . she reminds me that you can be tempered to a warm, giving person by frustrations and disap-

pointments: you don’t have to be cynical or bitter.” This was an example that Anne and her characters would follow.

Unlike Virginia, Betty did come to visit, stopping in Ireland twice on the way to visit her brother on the Isle of Jersey. Like Virginia K idd, Betty was an early and voracious reader of science fiction. She and her husband, Ian, founded an important pub- lishing firm in 1952, Ballantine Books, and soon became known for the quality of their writers, including Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Theodore Sturgeon, among many others. Like Virginia, Betty had the attitude that an editor’s first “job is to help the author say what he wants to say in the way he wants to say it” and that “the second editorial role is that of psycholo- gist.” She describes Anne as “a feminist—very obvious from her spunky heroine, and several later works—in fact, all later works.” Of working with Anne, Betty writes: “I loved working on her stuff. Its quality was always very personal (the best kind to grab reader interest and identification), exciting action, memorable characters—the stuff of bestsellers as the Dragon series proved. Her interest in opera (she has a marvelous singing voice) evi- denced itself in her stories about the singing ship—in fact, a lot of Annie is in her work and since she herself is a lively, courageous and interesting person, so are her books.”

Betty Ballantine’s description of Anne reveals her admiration

for her Pern series. Dragonquest (1974), the second in her Dragon- riders of Pern series, put Anne on the path to becoming a world- famous author. It is significant, surely, that this second novel was so difficult to write. But Anne persevered, demonstrating a deter- mination that would see her through similar writing blocks later in her career. Because she was able to re-write Dragonquest success- fully, even in her darkest moments, Anne knew that if she shared her work with others and continued to write, she would eventu- ally find a way to finish her novels. Dragonquest’s success set the stage for all the other Pern novels, turning one successful book into a prize-winning series. In addition, Anne taught herself how to expand a concept beyond one book into several. Developing and re-articulating the characters and setting from one novel be- came a pattern that Anne would use not only in Dragonriders of

Pern, but also in her other series. In part, Anne’s confidence in her writing grew because it had to—she was far away from Vir- ginia and other writer friends. She had escaped the negative in- fluence of Wright, who had belittled her writing and her choice of genre. One sign of the change in her status was her key role in the creation of “English Milford” in 1971, a science fiction writ- ers’ workshop comparable to the Milford conferences that Anne, then a novice writer, had attended in the 1960s. Anne was the co- founder (with Judy Lawrence Blish) of the English conference. There was a familial connection of sorts with Judy since she was Jim Blish’s second wife and Virginia had been his first wife.

Re-creating Milford in England re-created the heady excitement of the first Milford conferences. She described Milford as “a state of mind,” one conducive to writing, networking, and critiquing by peers. In the English Milfords, the writers work-shopped five stories a day. In fall 1972, Anne’s K illashandra stories were rig- orously critiqued, but she seems to have enjoyed the process and found the response of other professional writers stimulating and encouraging. Other writers in attendance included Brian Aldiss, Jim Blish, John Brunner, Josephine Saxton, Samuel Delany, and Christopher Priest. Anne not only was running the show, but also found her writing had improved so much that “everyone liked and approved of [her writing] so that I felt I could rest on my lau- rels after that.” Her success at the English Milfords demonstrated her achievement and provided her with confidence in her talent. At the same time, Anne was also developing increased confidence in herself as an independent woman and as a lover. It was in this guise that she turned to writing Gothic romances.

In the 1970s, Anne experimented with the romance genre,

what she calls “her Gothics,” novels that are part mystery, part realist, part romance. In contrast to the science fiction settings of her other novels, these Gothics contain realistic settings. Be- cause the realistic novels’ settings and characters draw more di- rectly on Anne’s own experiences, these books contain a wealth of biographical details. Her son Todd describes one of her Goth- ics, The Kilternan Legacy, as “an autobiography” and explains, “A lot of what occurred in that story had definite shadows in the real

world.” Moreover, her realistic novels provide confirmation of Anne’s feminism and her interest in art as a means of fulfillment and escape, especially for women. Her Gothic characters’ abilities to read and interpret correctly are key to their survival and hap- piness. The emphasis on reading in these books valorizes the act of interpretation—it literally saves her characters’ lives, as read- ing metaphorically saved Anne’s. Anne’s Gothic novels acknowl- edge the importance of women as readers of culture. Here Anne put her own experience of self-discovery and knowledge into her writing. At the same time that the novels point toward the female characters’ salvation, through “reading,” the suspenseful aspects of the novels indirectly reflect the ups and downs and anxieties of Anne’s everyday life, especially financial troubles.

A self-described “voracious reader,” Anne has always “liked his- toricals [and she] still rereads Georgette Heyer with delight for her inimitable style.” Heyer was and is one of the biggest names in the field of historical romance, just as Anne became one of the biggest names in science fiction. But she and Heyer shared many other qualities, in addition to the success that made Anne iden- tify with Heyer. Heyer had to deal with a “ravening fan public,” in her biographer’s words, including fan clubs and fans who dressed up and acted out scenes from her novels. Like Anne’s father, Heyer’s father was away fighting a war (World War I) during her adolescence. Like Anne, Heyer wrote “not only because she was a compulsive writer, but because she needed money.” Like Anne, in both real life and in her novels, and according to her biographer Hodge, for Heyer, “religion, as a mainspring of human behavior, simply did not exist.” Like Anne, Heyer enjoyed cooking meals in her home for others and, most saliently, according to Hodge, Heyer “created her private world, perhaps, because she needed something nearer to her heart’s desire, and because of this it pro- vides an escape for her readers, too.”

In the 1970s, the Gothic field was a larger one than science fic-

tion (and, indeed, romance is still the best-selling fiction genre). The Gothic novel, popular at the end of the eighteenth century, featured a medieval-like setting (such as a castle), a plot of mys- tery, fear for a female protagonist, and often language that is

inflated and melodramatic. Anne admits, “The gothics were quasi- mystery which was also the rule while I was writing them.” But like many other writers, Anne wrote beyond the formula, stretching and developing the eighteenth-century romance plot. Her Goth- ics provide an example of what Rachel Blau DuPlessis describes as “the project of twentieth-century women writers to solve the con- tradiction between love and quest . . . by offering a different set of choices” than those allowed by male-dominated culture. Here, then, is a description of what Anne contributed to the genre, and to her readers. Jane Donawerth suggests that Anne’s dragons and Dragonriders offer a compelling alternative to traditional mas- ochistic heterosexual relationships based on male dominance; in her Gothics, too, Anne created supportive, egalitarian rela- tionships. She wrestled with being an over-forty female writer with children and a lover. In her novels, the heroines find resolu- tions that are difficult to achieve in the real world. In her Goth- ics, as in her science fiction novels, Anne creates likeable young female heroines who narrate their own tales of adventure and ro- mance. While Anne did not make her reputation writing Gothic romances, it was a genre she admired. More practically, the Goth- ics sold well, especially in France. In the 1970s, particularly, they created much-needed income. These novels deserve attention not only for what they might show about her life, but also about the real-life issues that concern her.

Whereas Anne can only put touches of her knowledge of the

Irish and horses in her science fiction (such as the character Niall in The Ship Who Sang, for example), the Gothic novels draw di- rectly on these experiences. While Anne depicts intimate rela- tionships between people and dragons in the Dragonriders of Pern series, in her realistic fiction, she creates special and believ- able relationships between a woman and her horses and her cat in Ring of Fear and between a woman and her dog in The Mark of Merlin. In her Gothic novels, Anne develops themes that also ap- pear in her science fiction, but the realistic settings limit the op- timism that characterizes her science fiction. The Gothic novels reveal that her dragons and other science fiction creations are based on relationships with actual animals. Anne’s depiction of

animals can be described as ecofeminist; that is, she draws on the premise that women and nature “share a subordinate and in- strumental relationship to men; both are subject to patterns, atti- tudes, and institutions of male domination and control; both are gendered as ‘feminine’ as one means of control.” Anne’s Goth- ics resist the reduction of the heroine to an object. In addition, Anne’s Gothics reflect a nascent ecofeminist rejection of animals being treated as objects. In this way, her Gothics make explicit the lifelong love and commitment to animals that lead Anne to adopt her own horse, work at a horse stable, and, as soon as she could afford it, own a stable herself.

In her science fiction, Anne’s devotion to animals appears in her portrait of dragons and other alien beings; but in her re- alistic fiction, she depicts relationships to animals that parallel her own life. Anne has always lived in a full and lively house- hold, and her households have always contained cats, dogs, and, in Ireland, horses. Her current study has a large picture window that looks out on a horse pasture, so that even when she is writ- ing, Anne can be surrounded by her beloved horses. The room is so designed that, sitting at her computer, Anne can almost feel she is outdoors. Her cats, too, have a proprietary interest in her study; large and imposing Maine Coons, they exude personality. One named Echo sat on her printer as she gave me a tour. Anne’s animal companions expect attention and respect. She has strong ties with her pets, and she believes that animals and humans can have sympathetic, even telepathic relationships, explaining, “Ed [her first horse] and I had a terrific rapport. [H]e used to let

me cry on his broad shoulders when things went wrong—that

is, if he didn’t step on my toes.” In a biography of his mother, Dragonholder, Todd details their family love of animals; his family history is at least partially a history of their pets.

Anne’s interest, work, and knowledge of horse shows appears in Ring of Fear. The novel’s heroine, Nialla, has formidable rid- ing skills and a special relationship with one extraordinary horse. Anne detested the exploitation of animals, and in Ring of Fear she criticizes the exploitation of horses and the emphasis on com- mercialism, implicitly paralleling it to the exploitation of women.

Like sex, jumping horses is supposed to be a pleasure and a joy, rather than an event undertaken to assert dominance and con- trol. Anne asserts that animals should be respected and treated as companions rather than as property. The novel is remarkable also for its sensitive and believable depiction of rape, years before feminist critics such as Susan Brownmiller documented women’s unfair treatment in law and culture. Nialla, the protagonist, had been sexually exploited and raped by her father’s employer; and as she begins a new relationship, Nialla worries about how she will feel about sex and how to tell her new boyfriend what happened to her. Anne’s description of the rape is vivid, and she makes the protagonist’s recovery believable by providing insights into her feelings of mistrust and gradual recovery from the trauma of rape. Like a horse that has been physically abused, a rape survi- vor must and can learn to trust again.

The depiction of horse shows and jumping draws on Anne’s

love for these activities from childhood, and they point to her adult participation in the horse world, first as a worker and later as an owner/manager. Today she explains that she wrote the novel before she had the extensive experience in Ireland with horses, commenting that it was a “cart before the horse thing.” One of Anne’s most serious relationships, mentioned in many interviews and all biographical material, is her relationship with Mr. Ed, whom she acquired in February 1971. Ed’s owner, Hilda Whitton (to whom Anne dedicated The Kilternan Legacy), raised him, but after a fall, she realized he needed a younger rider. She and Anne came to an arrangement where Anne could pay for the horse in installments, and Ed, a dapple-gray over sixteen hands, went home with Anne. He had to be stabled elsewhere, and Anne worked at the stable until 1976 to help pay for his upkeep there. While Anne only hunted with Ed four times, she rode him al- most every day. Ed provided much needed comfort and stress re- lease for Anne. An accomplished and enthusiastic rider herself, Anne drew on personal experience to depict the horse world in Ring of Fear.

Anne actually owned a German shepherd dog, called Merlin,

who turns up as the title character in The Mark of Merlin (1971).

The novel’s autobiographical elements include a protagonist who is the daughter of an army colonel in the years after World War II. But while in real life Anne worshiped her father, in the novel, the military father is killed off, leaving the young woman to find her way in the world by herself. Orphaned by her father’s death, the heroine uncovers a smuggling plot (as Anne would in real life, a couple of years later) and exposes the military’s paternalism and ineptitude exclaiming, “Ha! Have you men done so well with the world?” The backdrop of World War II and the issue of smug- gling valuables out of conquered and allied countries emphasizes that, despite male heroism, male dominance has not resulted in an ideal world. War and smuggling activities are contrasted to the heroine’s idyllic relationship with her dog.

The early 1970s were a very productive time for Anne. In 1973, Anne wrote a number of short stories for Roger Elwood, the editor who was romantically involved with Virginia K idd. Through these short fictions, Anne laid the groundwork for many of her later series. They include the Pern stories “Dull Drums,” “The Great- est Love,” “Milekey Mountain,” “A Proper Santa Claus,” “The Res- cued Girls of Refugee,” and “Rabble-Dowser”; three stories that would later become part of Crystal Singer, “Killashandra-Coda and Finale,” “Killashandra-Crystal Singer,” “Prelude to a Crys- tal Song”; and “The Smallest Dragonboy.” This last story, Anne’s most reprinted, is based on her brother Kevin’s battle with osteo- myelitis in his legs. In “The Smallest Dragonboy,” the protagonist, Keevan, overcomes a leg injury and the taunts of bullies to drag himself to the dragon-hatching ground to Impress a dragon. The story appeared in 1973, and in August of that year, Anne’s be- loved brother Kevin visited her, bringing his wife, Marcia. Also in 1973, To Ride Pegasus and the long-overdue cookbook, Cook- ing out of This World, appeared. In contrast to the other-world set- tings of the Pern novels, To Ride Pegasus is set on a near-future Earth in which human beings begin to develop their psychic pow- ers. The setting draws on Anne’s own family history of precogni- tion as well as on her sense of animals’ empathic abilities. Mary Brizzi analyses this book at some length, suggesting that the psy- chic abilities can also be read as metaphors for artistic ability.

The cookbook had been designed in 1970 by Anne’s good friend and editor, Betty Ballantine, as a going-away present for Anne— a contract with an advance to help her out of her financial diffi- culties. Unfortunately, the book ended up costing Anne a great deal of time and effort, as edited works often do, and it took two years to finish.

While Anne kept busy writing, she also suffered family prob- lems typical of women her age. Many women in their forties and fifties find they must take responsibility for two generations— their children and their aging parents. Anne worried about her children’s adolescence and her oldest son’s need to find a career, for in 1970 Alec was eighteen. But in addition to caring for her children, Anne was concerned about her mother’s unreasonable behavior and health. Always a loving woman, her mother became irascible, yelling at Todd and Gigi. Anne’s mother had tinnitus, or ringing in her ears, and she was “no longer competent enough, memory-wise, to be on her own.” Anne insisted, “Mother or no, she is not interfering in my life or with my friends.” Nevertheless, caring for her mother did affect Anne’s life and her friends. In December 1970, Anne’s friend David Gerrold, also a science fic- tion writer, came to visit when he was considering moving to Ire- land permanently. Anne’s mother, who had become increasingly difficult to live with, took an instant dislike to David; and Anne, greatly embarrassed, had to find another place for David to stay. Anne had a close relationship with her mother throughout her life, and she dedicated her second Pern novel, Dragonquest, to her. In June 1971, Anne’s mother was diagnosed with arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), but she had manifested some of the symptoms before the diagnosis. Anne wrote to Virginia about the time it took to drive her mother to the doctors, the library, the store: “Mother has taken quite a toll on my nerves already ac- erbated and roughened by the onset of menopause . . . I think.”

Anne and her mother’s relationship improved after her mother

moved to a nearby apartment. As Anne described it, “Between the noise my kids made (mostly normal) and the traffic on the main road in front of the house, Mother was terribly uncomfort- able. . . . [T]he generation gap showed badly, with me caught

in the middle. . . . Having taken the children from their own friends and homeland, the least I could do was allow them friends and certain freedoms in Ireland that were inconsistent with my mother’s requirements. She decided to move out. And, God love her, she decided it was all her own idea. I, however, have never forgiven myself.” With her characteristic sense of responsibility, Anne was, indeed, caught in the middle between her children and mother and unable to express her needs or feelings in such a situation. In April 1974, Anne wrote to Virginia that her mother had read the draft of what would become The Kilternan Legacy, Anne’s third Gothic novel, and approved of the book. In June 1974, Anne’s mother suffered a catastrophic stroke. Anne was devastated and stayed by her mother’s bedside. She described her mother’s condition: “The woman in that bed was not the vibrant, humorous, steadfast person I had known for forty-eight years but a motionless hulk.” Anne’s mother had a second stroke July 12 and died. Like many middle-aged adults, Anne found herself or- phaned emotionally when her mother died, leaving her on her own. She found she couldn’t cry until she called the Samaritans (a counseling group in the United Kingdom). Her mother had wanted to be buried with her husband, so when Anne received the burial urn with her mother’s ashes, she placed it on a shelf with her father’s PhD thesis until she could travel to the United States, to her father’s grave.

Gigi had been ill after a vacation that same summer to France,

and Anne ascribed the illness to the stress of losing her grand- mother and traveling. However, as Gigi’s symptoms continued, Anne realized that Gigi had a serious illness, which was eventu- ally diagnosed as Crohn’s disease. Gigi was only fourteen when the symptoms first appeared, and Anne took her to specialists in London and the United States, but to no avail. An incurable in- flammation of the intestines, Crohn’s disease can be quite de- bilitating and very painful. Anne had experienced what seemed to be incurable disease before, and when her brother Kevin was then almost miraculously cured by the then-experimental drug penicillin, she retained her faith in medicine. Like her mother with Kevin, Anne persisted in trying new doctors and treatments,

fighting for Gigi’s health. Gigi tried a number of new drugs, none of which worked, and had to endure several exploratory surger- ies. Anne spent time with Gigi whenever she was in the hospital, and took her to doctors, but this illness provided even more im- petus for Anne to keep writing. She wanted the best medical treatment for her daughter, and that was expensive. The system of Irish socialized medicine meant basics like medicine and ban- dages were free. But Gigi’s travel to see specialists was not cov- ered, and Anne had to borrow money from her friends Harry and Joan Harrison to pay one of Gigi’s first hospital bills. Wright’s second wife, Annett, included Gigi in her health insurance plan, but there were still many uncovered expenses. But more than the additional financial stress, Gigi and Anne just had to accept the illness. Anne wondered, “[Why] my own child, my own very pretty daughter?” Anne blamed herself, as mothers of very ill chil- dren often do, irrationally thinking the illness was the result of “something [she’d] omitted doing at a crucial time—Gigi was not breastfed as her brothers were.” As it did after her father’s and mother’s deaths, writing provided an escape for Anne from the grim realities of death and illness. Anne explains that Gigi is “somewhat Moreta in her indomitable approach to her personal problem,” but “I didn’t write in the illness, only the character.” Moreta didn’t appear until 1983; it took Anne that long to process Gigi’s illness. Much more quickly, however, Anne drew on her ro- mance with Derek to write another Gothic novel.

The last of Anne’s realistic novels in this decade appeared in

In her last Gothic set in Ireland, the plot is a thinly veiled autobiography. Ironically, or perhaps significantly, Anne says that The Kilternan Legacy “is probably the least autobiographical of my books.” But she goes on to acknowledge that “some of the shenanigans were based on the antics of a friend of mine whose estranged wife was trying to make him look so bad to the Irish courts that they’d give custody of the sons to her.” Elsewhere she comments, “Such antics were much too good to waste. You will note that my hero vaguely resembles Michael O’Shea but his character was far more ethical. The novel also uses some of my early experiences in Irish family homes as well as the differences

in culture.” The heroine of The Kilternan Legacy, an American, moves to Ireland after inheriting money and an estate from a great-aunt. The heroine struggles to adapt to Irish culture but eventually finds a new identity there as a “queen,” establishing an estate where she supports other women who live in cottages on her holding. While Rene, the fictional character, creates her queendom through inheritance, Anne would create her fiefdom through her writing. The idea of a “queendom” certainly owes something to Pern’s fictional Holds, communities that are ruled by a lord. When I wrote Anne to ask if she thought her estate, Dragonhold-Underhill, was like a Pern Hold, she replied, “I have created a hold of my own . . . though it’s more like the ‘queen- dom’ in Kilternan Legacy.” Anne’s queendom, though, was not the result of an inheritance, but of her own very hard work and skill as a writer. And Anne’s largesse extends not just to women, but to her two sons and male family friends—even to her ex-husband.

Anne wrote to Virginia that Gigi (aged sixteen), thinking the

book was autobiography, had objected, saying, “I’m not at all like that. When did this happen to us?” Her brother Todd, older and wiser at nineteen, said patronizingly of Gigi that she “hasn’t a clue [about fiction writing],” but he “didn’t mind appearing as Simon.” The parallels to Anne’s own life are astonishing: the char- acter of Simon is fourteen, as Todd was when they moved to Ire- land; the protagonist, Rene, is recently divorced and falls in love, and she discovers that the laws in Ireland do not protect battered women. Rene describes the situation of a battered wife in Ire- land as “in the Dark ages.” Rene’s ex-husband reflects Anne’s de- scriptions of her own ex-husband, who was verbally abusive. As an American, protected by greater legal rights for women, Rene has a position of privilege that enables her to see the misogyny in Irish women’s subordination. Anne wrote to Virginia, “I hope that kilternan does get published over here, since it is so imme- diate to the problems under discussion.” The book was sold in Ire- land by a British publisher, Transworld, but it wasn’t until 1995 that divorce was legalized in Ireland.

The Kilternan Legacy was to be Anne’s last non–science fiction

novel for nine years. She would turn from cathartically dealing

with her relationship with Derek, and her adjustment to Ireland, to writing some of her most successful and critically acclaimed science fiction novels, beginning with Dragonsong, the first novel in the Harper Hall Trilogy. Anne wrote to Virginia about Todd, explaining “on the strength of [the contract] for dragonwings? song? son he can go to college next year.” These novels are some- times classified as young adult novels because the protagonist is a pubescent girl named Menolly, but while the novels are shorter than some of Anne’s other novels, they are also enjoyed by adults. As she had done earlier, Anne tapped not only into her own ex- periences as an adolescent, but also into her own emotional in- tensity, honed by her relationships with Bernard and Derek and her mother’s death. The books expand our factual knowledge of Pern, introducing a new kind of dragon, the diminutive fire lizard. In this series, Anne further develops the world of Pern. A misunderstood and unappreciated child, the main character, Menolly, has musical gifts but is denied the opportunity to use them because she is a girl; and on Pern (at this time) only men can be Harpers, the planet’s performing historians and educa- tors. Ireland’s own legacy of bards can be seen in the Harpers. Menolly has to run away from home and, in the process, Im- presses nine fire lizards and, eventually, finds training and recog- nition for her work. Although Menolly is a much younger char- acter, there are certainly parallels in Anne’s own “running away” to Ireland, where she was able to develop her talent, writing, and eventually receive recognition and achieve independence.

Vaughne Hansen, who works with Virginia Kidd, says that

“Annie is Menolly,” meaning that this character contains Anne’s personality. But the novel provides a good example of how an au- thor works many elements of her life into her work. Anne recalled and represented her own adolescent angst and her sense of being an outsider. Menolly’s musical gifts parallel Anne’s own musical talents. Anne’s father was not the tyrant poor Menolly’s father is, but Anne has channeled into this patriarch her anger at the sex- ism she encountered, not only in jobs, but also in the science fic- tion world and as a single mother. Anne’s bonds with animals— cats, dogs, and horses—appear in the relationship Menolly has

with her fire lizards, who respond to her emotions and to whom she can cry, as Anne did with her horse Ed. The fire lizards and, indeed, even the larger dragon can be seen as stand-ins for chil- dren, for a Dragonrider or fire lizard owner must feed and care for the creatures as though they were infants. Even her son Alec’s experience with fishing boats emerged in the book, since the fish- ing world that Menolly grows up in is depicted as harsh and dan- gerous. Throwing herself back into Pern proved salubrious for Anne. Menolly’s problems were more solvable than Anne’s own losses of her mother and her lover, and as the writer, in a science fiction world, Anne could create bonds with loveable fire lizards and full-size dragons that were more intimate and rewarding than those with real people. In the real world, your family, friends, and lovers could die or abandon you; fire lizards and dragons are tele- pathic and, in the case of dragons, when you die, they die, and vice versa. No nasty living on without your loved ones.

While Anne wrestled with loss in the first part of the 1970s,

from 1975 on she began to realize more professional and per- sonal triumphs. In March 1975, Anne received the prestigious

E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction. As the guest of honor for the New England Science Fiction Association, she was invited to write a short novel, published in a limited edi- tion of eight hundred, for the conference. Anne wrote A Time When, a novella that deals with the dragon that is featured in The White Dragon. The novella was well-received and, despite its lim- ited printing, was nominated for a Nebula Award. Her writing continued to flourish at the end of the 1970s. In 1977, Anne fol- lowed Dragonsong with Dragonsinger and published a collection of stories, Get Off the Unicorn. The short-story collection has one of the most infamous typos in science fiction; it was to have been called Get “of” the Unicorn (the product of the unicorn, rather than a riding unicorn). Including stories from 1959 to 1977, the collection demonstrates Anne’s status, since to sell a collection of your reprinted stories shows the power and appeal of your repu- tation as an author. Such a book demonstrates the power of her name to sell books.

In Dragonsinger Anne appears to have drawn on elements of her

experience at Stuart Hall, the exclusive boarding school she had attended for one year. Anne, a northerner at a southern school, was as much out of place as Menolly, a Fishing Hold girl, is at the Harper Hall school. She endures taunts and feels very lonely and out of place. What saves Menolly is her music and her fire liz- ards. Of course, Anne uses creative license, in that she extrapo- lates, the classic science fiction quality of taking something that is real—relationships with pets, a difficult school experience— and developing and extending it logically beyond what is known. Anne’s lesson in real life, to be flexible and to develop your Tal- ent, worked for her as it does for her characters.

In 1978, Dinosaur Planet appeared, the first of a trilogy that deals with dinosaur life on another planet. The contract for these novels with a British publisher, Futura, had been sent Anne’s way by Harry Harrison. The publisher had approached him to write the series, but he was too busy with other novels. Harrison, how- ever, knew that Anne would appreciate the work and payment. Anne’s flexibility in writing to a publisher’s suggestion worked out well, for the series was a big success.

In the late 1970s, Anne’s work continued to receive recogni- tion, both financial and literary. In 1978 The White Dragon, the third in the Dragonriders of Pern series, appeared, and it im- mediately landed on the New York Times best-seller list. The other Dragonriders of Pern books had sold steadily and were out of print, and Ballantine re-issued Dragonflight and Dragonquest, with new covers by the renowned science fiction artist Michael Whelan. Anne received three prestigious awards for The White Dragon: the Ditmar Award (Australia), the Gandalf Award, and the Streza Award (Eurocon).

On April 2, 1976, Anne’s friends in Dublin gave her a surprise birthday party. Her friend Joan Harrison tricked her into leaving her house and then brought her back. Anne wrote to Virginia, “I have never been more astonished in my life! I wept! No one has ever given me a surprise party and it was so nice of everyone— because I don’t mind being 50 but sometimes it bothers—like at Texas A & M [convention where she felt old and undesirable and had trouble getting into a space ship cockpit].” The party re-

vealed how much Ireland had become home to Anne—a home where she had close friends and a community.

Anne had had a wonderful time in Chicago, where Del Rey threw a big party for the launch of the hardback edition of The White Dragon in 1978. Her wild cousin Tony McElroy attended, and he made a big impression when he went around asking all the guests if they thought The White Dragon was any good at all. Flush with the success of the hardcover, Anne agreed to tour when the paperback was released. In spring 1979, Del Rey booked Anne on a whirlwind tour of the United States: twenty-two cities in thirty- two days. Excited as she was about her new status, Anne did not think about herself or her health—she let the publisher make the arrangements, and they were exhausting. She had two or three interviews for radio and television, as well as two book signings in most cities. The tour had begun with a science fiction conven- tion in Antwerp, Belgium, and Anne flew directly from there to the United States. While Anne was treated like a star, with lim- ousines and the best hotels, nothing could make up for the ex- hausting pace and emotional demands of such a tour. Traveling by herself, Anne was soon overwhelmed, a feeling that was com- pounded by worry over her son Todd. He was in the army and had told a friend he’d received a concussion. Ever the concerned mother, Anne tried to reach him repeatedly, but with no success. Finally, Anne’s oldest son, Alec, called his U.S. Senator; and after days, Anne found out that his unit had been called out on ma- neuvers. In Anne’s words, “The tour went on. And on, and on.” Suffering badly from insomnia, Anne found a doctor through the hotel who prescribed Valium, but it did nothing to help her sleep. Her hands shook so badly that she spilled a glass of milk trying to drink it. At one book signing, she actually had to ask what city she was in, covering up the question with a laugh, as though she were joking. But at that moment, Anne was not sure where she was. In typical Anne fashion, she worried about her handler, real- izing it was “not much fun for him shepherding someone on the brink of nervous collapse.”

When she visited St. Louis, her brother Kevin was quite wor-

ried about the stress she was experiencing. It was a turning point

for Anne, as she realized, “I had honestly thought myself able for most things—especially the hit of being so popular. But that sort of hit brings a downer all its own. I could then appreciate why rock’n’roll groups go for ‘illegal substances.’” By the end of the tour, Anne had come to rely on Seconal and Serac. She got a prescription for these drugs in Minneapolis when she went to the hospital in the middle of the night. In a curtained alcove, she heard a nurse whisper to the doctor, “Don’t you know who she is?” Anne commented wryly, “A fan when I needed one.” After she showed them her schedule, she got the prescriptions, being warned she should only use the drugs for a short time. Of course, in between the exhaustion and tension, Anne had some pleasur- able experiences. A handsome fan whisked her off to lunch, a man she described as “salvation . . . in the form of a tall, dark- haired man, mid to late twenties, in work shirt and jeans, wear- ing the heavy sort of boots outdoor men require. He wore a belt of tools around his waist with a Bell Telephone icon. He also car- ried the old-fashioned round-topped, black lunch pail.” Anne also met her old friend Gordy Dickson in Minneapolis and was able to vent her frustration with the tour to him. She met George Takei, a treat because Anne had always enjoyed Star Trek. She even got to go a YES concert in Los Angeles in her limousine.

Anne concluded the decade with the publication of the last of

the Harper Hall Trilogy, Dragondrums. In this novel, Anne drew on Todd’s difficulties in elementary school with a bully. She also evoked her brother Kevin’s and her daughter’s experiences with serious illness, bravely confronted. By writing about Gigi’s illness in a fictional setting, Anne was herself able to confront her pain at her daughter’s suffering.

In the late 1970s, Anne’s household began to resemble the Holds of her Pern novels. A variety of people came to stay and work for her, including Antoinette O’Connell, who took care of Gigi, and Mare Laban, who was studying for a British Horse So- ciety instructorship and who also managed the household while Anne was on book tours or at conventions. With a string of tri- umphs, Anne entered the 1980s with a new sense of purpose and the awareness, wrought from the experience of that tour, that she

would have to make decisions about what was best for her and not be quite so trusting of the publishers and others. She also had the raw material that she would later transform into her ro- mance novel, Stitch in Snow. The 1970s saw her dramatic move across an ocean and new experiences with love. But the most dramatic transformation was from being a writer to becoming a world-famous writer.

chapter 6

Struggling with Success

I dearly wish I could have been a mouse in the woodwork of the bank manager’s office when you marched in, clad in your manly jeans and oldest sweater with a check for $50,000. I love it.

—Win Catherwood, letter to Anne McCaffrey

Becoming the first science fiction writer to reach the New York Times best-seller list and signing her first million-dollar con- tract undeniably marked Anne McCaffrey’s success as a writer. As award after award showered upon her in the 1980s, she also faced the difficulties of success. Yes, it was wonderful to be appreciated and to finally, finally, not have to worry about money. Yet the old worries were replaced by new ones: the effect of money and fame on relationships. She had the opportunity to rest on her profes- sional laurels but continued instead to be driven to write. Even when she experienced insomnia and depression, Anne wrote through her pain. In the 1980s, Anne was in her fifties, confront- ing a midlife crisis compounded by society’s negative attitude to- ward aging women. A classic romantic, Anne faced the challenges of love and romance as a middle-aged woman. With characteristic verve and humor, she insisted on being in love, even if platoni- cally, with a younger man. Now a successful writer, she wrestled with fanships and friendships, worked to make her children in- dependent, began adjusting to an empty nest. She developed strength and wisdom; she built relationships that supported her intellectual and emotional growth.

An intermittent physical problem became serious just as Anne

reached the point when she might relax and enjoy her achieve- ments. Anne had dealt with insomnia off and on throughout her

life, but in the first few months of 1980, she had a case severe enough to cause extreme exhaustion and depression. She attrib- utes the illness in part to the effects of her demanding 1979 U.S. book tour, compounded by jet lag. The depression forced her to consult a psychiatrist, who prescribed anti-depressants that actu- ally made her feel worse. After taking the pills, she felt “discon- nected from her imagination” and even less able to write. Investi- gating the medication, she discovered one woman had died from the drug’s side effects, so she promptly discontinued its use. She decided to work through her depression on her own. On a trip to London, she met a dietician who recommended Anne try B- 12 injections to restore her energy. At this point, willing to try anything, and remembering that her mother had taken B-12, Anne began taking vitamins. They restored her energy, stamina, and health, leaving Anne with a lifelong faith in alternative thera- pies. Her belief in alternative science, depicted in her fiction, emerged as practice in her life. But it was not only vitamin therapy that helped Anne; she also found great consolation in reading science fiction. Unable to concentrate on writing because of her insomnia, Anne continued to read science fiction; some nights she could only manage a few pages, but she found that read- ing helped her, as it had so many years ago when, suffering from bronchitis, she first turned to science fiction for solace.

Reading science fiction had helped Anne through many a dif-

ficult time; the book she turned to now was Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle, an ingenious series of connected tales by one of Anne’s contemporaries. The main character, Lord Valen- tine, is burdened with immense responsibility for an entire world and various species. His trouble, like Anne’s, is how to deal with power and success. Lord Valentine suffers from amnesia and so anonymously travels through his world. He is about to be ap- pointed coronal, a potentate who rules over billions of people and “keeps the world from collapsing into chaos.” Valentine has trouble sleeping, for he has disturbing dreams that he cannot properly interpret. On his planet, the K ing of Dreams is feared as a figure of terror—a folk rhyme declares, “He’s never asleep.” Val- entine struggles on his journey, finding friends and love before he

discovers his identity. Valentine’s powers, then, are like those of a science fiction novelist, who has the responsibility of maintain- ing a fictional world and of keeping thousands of its fans content. As Valentine finds comfort by traveling as a commoner instead of the royal personage he is, Anne found comfort in being a science fiction reader rather than a science fiction writer.

While Anne enjoyed aspects of her fame and, indeed, had al- ways wanted to be famous, being rich and famous also brought burdens. Though Anne did not control the fate of billions of people, she had now created and ruled not only Pern but other fictional worlds. She felt a responsibility to her fans, who mobbed her at conventions. Anne enjoyed conventions or “cons,” as they are called by participants, but they were also exhausting; for Anne, cons were performances. By 1983, two of Anne’s closest fans who later became friends, Marilyn and Harry Alm, remem- ber that she “had stage presence” at conventions and that “she had the theatre training for it.” They report at conventions that Anne “said that she’s scared out of her mind but she puts on her persona.” A signal sign of her fame, success, and influence was the first Pern-based con, Istacon, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 1984. (The organizers chose that date to coincide with her birthday.) Some fans didn’t seem to realize Anne was human, ex- pecting, for example, that Anne would sign all their copies of her books, even though she had been signing books for hours. And some fans would come up to Anne and react emotionally, bursting into tears or becoming speechless. Anne felt her power acutely, and while she always behaved graciously and warmly to all her fans, she dreaded intense encounters. She worried that some of her fans lived too much in her fictional worlds and not enough in the real world. Like Valentine, she longed for an es- cape. Where Lord Valentine found escape in amnesia and trav- eling, Anne found respite in Ireland, with her family, friends, and animals, especially her horses. But in the 1980s, she still spent a tremendous amount of time at conventions, which compounded her sleep troubles.

Anne’s continuing delight in reading science fiction provided

not only knowledge of her field—she frequently advises aspiring

writers to read science fiction so they know what is being done in the genre—but also common ground with her fans. That is to say, Anne knows what it is like to lose yourself in a book, to have fa- vorite characters and authors. When she is feeling low, books pro- vide comfort and an escape.

As if running a stable and writing at least two novels a year weren’t enough, Anne also threw herself wholeheartedly back into touring by 1983. She has always believed that extensive tour- ing is what lifted her out of the mid-list writers into best-seller sta- tus. Her list of con appearances and book tours is daunting; by 1985, she had traveled to all the United States except the Dako- tas. An example of her travels in 1983 is typical of her frenetic pace in the 1980s. She flew to the United States to attend Lu- nacon in April 1983 and participated in Star Trek Con in Bir- mingham, England, in July 1983. At the end of 1983, she was back in the United States, with speaking engagements in Texas and New Mexico during November and December. As she did with so many activities, Anne threw herself into touring, not thinking about her own physical and emotional needs. That meant that when she encountered crises, she was already stretched thin.

In the world of Pern, Anne could create and end life, but in

the real world, she had to confront unpredictable and inevitable loss through death. Nineteen eighty-one brought both great sad- ness and great joy. Ed, Anne’s beloved horse, had been a part of her life since 1971. Although she no longer rode him much be- cause he had become arthritic, Anne spent time with Ed every day. In their new home, Anne could step out the kitchen door and call “Horseface,” and he would run over to greet her. Her lovers had left, her children had grown up and moved out, but Ed remained her faithful companion. Eventually, his arthritis be- came so bad that he had difficulty walking, and in September 1981, Anne had Ed put to sleep. It was a bitter loss, ameliorated when that same day Anne received a call from son Alec that Eliza Oriana, her first grandchild, had been born. The simultaneity of death and life appeared two years later in one of Anne’s most powerful novels, Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, in which the title char- acter and her dragon die, just as another queen dragon, Moreta’s

dragon’s daughter, hatches. The novel’s dedication obliquely re- fers to Gigi’s struggle with Crohn’s disease: “This book is dedi- cated to my daughter Georgeanne Johnson with great affection and respect for her courage.” Anne’s characteristic sentimen- tality was affected by Gigi’s devastating and apparently incurable disease. Moreta’s extremely moving death comes at least in part from Anne’s mourning for her daughter’s lost health. The title character also reflects Anne herself. Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern is a powerful and compelling story of a strong-minded heroine who dies after saving Pern from an epidemic. The title character pushes herself and her dragon to exhaustion to get lifesaving vac- cine to all the communities on Pern. Moreta’s endless traveling surely owes something to Anne’s own rigorous schedule of ap- pearances. In the novel, Moreta succeeds in saving the popula- tion, but dies herself when her exhausted dragon goes “between” and they don’t return. Set back in Pern’s past, before the events of Dragonflight, the first Pern novel, Moreta demonstrates the use of a prequel setting that Anne would use to great advantage in later years—developing the history of Pern.

As Gigi and Anne dealt with Gigi’s illness, Anne struggled,

writing to her ex-husband, Wright, who returned her letters un- opened. Wright was living with Alec and his family in Ohio. Yet in early 1985, after Annett divorced him in June 1984, Wright volunteered to move to Ireland to help Anne care for Gigi—or so Anne wrote to her friend Win Catherwood, who had always detested Wright. Anne’s friend Win felt that Wright was a nega- tive influence on Anne, telling her, “I always felt he was violently jealous of your smallest success in writing.” Win thought the idea of Wright moving in with Anne was ludicrous: “W. [Wright] as a companion indeed! I’d prefer the plastic-bag-over-the head or the slit-wrists in the bathtub.” Perhaps Anne in part agreed, for she wrote to Win: “Wright moved out of Alec’s house just shortly before Kate was going to insist on his removing. He got drunk in front of [granddaughter] Eliza once too often. It’s a shame be- cause she adores him . . . and once suggested that I would like grandpa. I assured her that I did.” Even though they had been di- vorced for fifteen years, Anne still felt a connection with Wright.

In part, this attachment reveals her capacity to feel. Once gained, Anne’s love was hard to destroy. She kept many friends for years, even when she was separated by an ocean from them (her con- tinuing devotion to Virginia was just one example of Anne’s loy- alty transcending distance).

Perhaps because of her daughter’s illness and the feelings about Wright that it stirred up, Anne had some trouble with the manuscript of Moreta. The book was overdue, so she sent it di- rectly to Judy-Lynn Del Rey, the editor at Del Rey Books, with some anxiety on her part. Anne was quite relieved when Judy- Lynn’s response to the manuscript was enthusiastic. In reply to Judy, Anne wrote, “One never knows when one is bombing and I really sweat out these new books, fearing that somehow I will have lost the ‘touch’ between books.” Originally annoyed that Anne had sent the manuscript directly to Judy-Lynn, her agent and friend Virginia Kidd nevertheless was moved by the novel. Dis- cussing the death scene, Virginia wrote to Judy-Lynn, “I thought I was enough of an old hand so that I could read just about any- thing objectively, but by golly, by the time I finished page 2 of this there were tears standing in my eyes. Annie has surely not lost her touch!” Her ability to move even so experienced a reader as Vir- ginia shows Anne’s mastery of the art of transforming her own real-life pain at Gigi’s ill health into powerful fiction. In part, too, however, Anne’s novel reflects her own sense of depletion. Like Moreta, Anne had pushed herself past the point of exhaus- tion, not only on her 1979 book tour, but also in her search for a cure for Gigi’s debilitating illness. No wonder Anne could write so movingly about exhaustion and loss, for she had experienced so much of these in her own life. A caretaker by nature, Anne gave and gave of herself—to her fans, her children, her friends— until she collapsed. It was easier for her to take care of others than to take care of herself. That energy seems to have been ex- pended in heroines like K illashandra, who were the antithesis of Anne, around whom people congregated. Where the Crystal Singer lived alone with her art (until she found love), Anne lived in a Hold, in which she was the lord holder, responsible emotion- ally and financially for many others.

Not all of her books focused directly on her own and her family’s pain; Anne also continued to write novels that were set on other worlds besides Pern, such as The Coelura. In The Coelura (published in 1983, the same year as Moreta), Anne deals with environmentalism, but she also criticizes Western culture’s ob- session with appearance, especially for women. A young woman crashes her space car and discovers the coelura, a life-form that spins beautiful rainbows that can be used to create spectacular clothing that beautifies whoever wears the material. The novel’s heroine works with a young man to save the coelura from exploi- tation and threatened extinction. Reworking the idea of transfor- mation that shaped her first novel, Restoree, Anne reiterates the theme of inner beauty, one she would repeat in a variety of set- tings and plots. The novel follows a basic romance plot, in that the heroine is aided by a young man with whom she falls in love. Through the couple’s rejection of the beautifying power of the coelura, Anne wrestled with her own feelings of aging and ap- pearance. In science fiction, at least, she could make the exter- nal less important.

Anne’s success as a writer occurred at the same time as she had

to cope with being an older woman in a society that overvalues youth. She stopped hormone replacement therapy and began gaining weight, an occurrence of some concern to her. “Fat and fifty has no chance of snagging a man, not that I’ve been at it, but as you well know,” she writes to Joanne Forman, “hope glim- mers occasionally even though I know no man who would put up with the life I lead.” Anne’s Gothic novels reveal her working out of her own issues about men and romance. In November 1987, she wrote to her dear friend Win, “I gave up on men for another reason. The ones my age were interested in my daughter and in no way [would I] be in competition with her generation. Still the romantic is very much a part of me.” Anne’s innate optimism and interest in romance were, in part, channeled into her fiction.

In a realistic novel, Anne deals very explicitly with personal issues of love and sex. In 1984 Anne published a Gothic novel (part mystery, part romance) entitled Stitch in Snow, which, like

The Kilternan Legacy, contains a character similar to Anne: a ma- ture woman and a successful writer, with a son in college, who lives in Ireland but who travels to the States on book tours. She even meets with two friends in Boston, named Jean and Pota, the names of two of Anne’s college friends. Anne admits that the book’s title is based on a real encounter: trapped by a blizzard in an airport, she drops a ball of yarn that a handsome man picks up and returns to her. In the novel, the main character, Dana, does the same and so begins a love affair; in real life, Anne says she and the man both caught their separate planes shortly after the encounter. Nevertheless, the novel is quite revealing in other, less literal ways. Anne’s deft and sensitive handling of an older wom- an’s concerns as she has a sexual relationship separates this novel from a conventional formula. Dana, the novel’s heroine, worries about her aging and her appearance, but resolves to enjoy life fully. The book’s opening pages reveal that Dana has had an af- fair with a man younger than she, but that it wasn’t a permanent solution for her. In the novel Anne rewrites her relationship with Bernard Shattuck so that it is the older woman who ends the re- lationship, rather than the younger man.

When Dana sends a sweater to Dan, with whom she has fallen

in love, he correctly reads the significance of the sweater and fol- lows her to ask her to marry him. Stitch in Snow suggests a parallel between knitting and writing and the feminine image of a woven, intertwined life. The main character’s knitting provides a clue to her need for companionship, and it also functions as a sign of her affection for a lover. The similarity between their names, Dana and Dan, also suggests the romantic ideal figured in Plato’s Symposium—that lovers are two halves who meet to form an an- drogynous whole. Anne’s innate romanticism shines through in this lovely fantasy romance. In depicting an older woman as a ro- mantic heroine, Anne challenges our culture’s celebration of only youthful sexuality. Through Dana’s passionate love affair, Anne reminds her readers that humans are sexual beings throughout our lives. Her portrait of a healthy and pleasurable sexual life for mature adults also appears in later novels, such as the Powers

series. Like that series’ heroine, Yanaba, Dana in Stitch in Snow demonstrates that older women have sexual desires and needs that can and should be met.

In addition to expressing liberating ideas about sexuality, Stitch in Snow also describes the delight and stress of book tours, which were beginning to dominate Anne’s life. Dana’s frustration with impossible questions and her delight in meeting her readers seems to reflect Anne’s own experience. For example, at one book sign- ing Dana has to deal with all sorts of bizarre questions from people. One reader even asks Dana whether her stories are drug- induced. She shudders at the thought of being asked to look at unedited manuscripts of aspiring writers. In a hotel, she must en- dure the unwanted advances of men who assume that, because she’s dining alone, she’s easy prey. Giving lectures, signing books, and traveling frenetically leaves Dana “utterly, completely and thoroughly drained,” an experience Anne certainly shared.

While Anne did not have the fictional love affair depicted in Stitch in Snow, she did have a romantic flirtation with one of her son Todd’s friends, John Greene. He became a family friend, par- ticularly enjoying banter and surprises with Anne. Todd says, “I don’t know why she didn’t marry him,” remembering “the things that they said to each other—they genuinely loved each other.” He recalls that Johnny said, “If I could I would be in front of your mother’s door and die to protect her.” Gigi remembered, “Mum and Johnny often commented that they hadn’t been born to the same generation but should have been; they seemed to spark well together, in my opinion.” Anne said that she and Johnny had “great rapport.” Handsome and jocular, he would surprise Anne by appearing at the store when he knew she would be shop- ping and carry her groceries home. Anne remembers that he was known as “the Fist of Bray [a nearby town]” because he delighted in punching out bullies. She admired his sense of justice and his bravado. John had no serious girlfriend, and Anne seems to have functioned as his confidante and closest female friend. In 1988, however, while serving with the French Foreign Legion in Or- ange, France, he was found shot in the head, and no murderer or motive was ever discovered. Renegades of Pern, published in 1989,

is dedicated to John Greene, and the hero of that novel is based on him. Anne mourns John to this day; she has a large photo of him in her study, and she has placed a character based on John in every novel she has written since 1988—to give him the life he so tragically lost.

Anne also dealt with her former lover Derek in fiction, address- ing a situation very like his marital disaster in The Carradyne Touch. In November 1986, Anne finished work on The Carradyne Touch (published in the United States as The Lady), an autobiographical romance set in Ireland in 1970. In this novel, Anne again tackles the oppression of women, but here it is the laws in Ireland that she exposes, along with the damaging and misogynistic attitudes promoted by the Catholic Church. While Anne’s other Gothic novels are short (at or less than 250 pages), The Carradyne Touch weighs in with the heft of her science fiction novels. Over 450 pages, and a family saga, the novel evokes Anne’s science fiction Tower and the Hive series with its development of a special family. Instead of psionic powers, however, the Carradyne family is spe- cial because of their gift for raising horses. The novel focuses on the youngest member of the family, a girl named Catriona. Like the Gothic Ring of Fear, The Carradyne Touch develops the impor- tance of human-animal relationships. But the novel also explores Catriona’s development into a woman and the negative example of her mother’s sexual frigidity, caused by her unhealthy religious fervor. The issues of battering and the inadequacy of Irish law to protect women are developed through Catriona’s sister, who is a feminist activist, and through the plight of a battered woman Catriona knows.

In her portrait of Catriona’s mother, Isabel, Anne returns to

the importance of a healthy sexual life to a woman’s psyche. Isabel is the flip side of Dana—what an older woman could be- come if she represses her sexuality. Through Isabel, Anne shows how a denial of sexuality and physicality leads to unhappiness. Increasingly neurotic, Isabel is addicted to Valium and tries to dominate her daughter, squelching her interest in horses and art. Isabel also interferes in Catriona’s relationship with her father, forbidding him to hug or kiss Catriona. Eventually, Isabel dies,

her heart weakened by her addiction and presumably also by her unhappiness. In Isabel’s death we may see Anne’s fantasy wish for her former lover Derek’s estranged wife, Mabel, to disappear, if not die. The novel also contains a real-life strategy that did work for Anne—throwing herself into her love for horses and devel- oping female friendships.

A neighbor, Selina, also becomes important to Catriona, who learns from Selina’s experience how few rights Irish women have under the law. As Selina examines her options to leave an abusive marriage, she is “appalled at how little protection she received under the law. In essence she was no more than a man’s chattel.” She complains to Michael, “You men really have it all your own way here in Ireland, a fact I never previously appreciated.” Even after the beating, Selina must obtain three witnesses who saw her husband attack her—a requirement that helps the batterer get away with his crimes. As in The Kilternan Legacy, published a de- cade earlier, this novel exposes the differences not only between American and Irish law, but also between English and Irish law.

The subordinate position of women in Ireland is an issue close to Anne’s heart, in part because of what she suffered in her mar- riage and also because of what she saw her friend Jan Regan en- dure. Happily, like Selina, Jan Regan escaped and leads a ful- filling life in Scotland. She is just one of many female friends whom Anne has helped over the years. The problems faced by battered women couldn’t be explored in Anne’s science fiction because, optimistically, she creates a future in which laws are far more just to women. But even the Gothics contain Anne’s char- acteristic optimism, as Catriona’s sister explains, “Some are go- ing to find . . . that the worm is turning in Ireland.” Anne didn’t just write about the worm turning—she lived it. She directly chal- lenged Irish ideas about the subordination of women. For ex- ample, in 1984, when Anne decided to purchase another bigger farm, Ballyvolan Farm, she had trouble getting an Irish banker to approve a mortgage for her. Even today she remembers with anger her difficulty in obtaining approval, for she had substan- tial and impressive earnings by then. The difficulty wasn’t only that she earned money in an unorthodox way, as a writer, but that

she was a single woman. Eventually, she had Seamus McGraw, a famous horsebreeder, sign on as a guarantor, but it irked Anne to no end to have to have a man vouch for her. She wrote to Win Catherwood about the situation, and he wrote back, “I dearly wish I could have been a mouse in the woodwork of the bank manager’s office when you marched in, clad in your manly jeans and oldest sweater with a check for $50,000. I love it.”

Win was just one of Anne’s many friends who helped her de- velop tolerance and understanding of sexual orientation. Anne had real-life platonic relationships not only with female friends, but also with gay men. One especially fulfilling relationship for Anne was with her homosexual friend Win Catherwood. Win was devoted to Anne, often telling her she was the one woman he could imagine marrying. His letters are filled with admiration for her writing and her verve. In one letter, Win marvels at Anne’s tre- mendous productivity as a writer: “How the hell can you work on three books at once?” Indeed, while there are other people and influences that explain Anne’s sympathetic treatment of homo- sexuality in her fiction, Win was undoubtedly the largest factor. Anne herself credits Win with opening her eyes: “I understand the male version [of homosexuality] better because of Win.” In one missive, Anne brags to Win about the response to her depic- tion of homosexual characters: “I’m sort of real chuffed [Irish expression meaning pleased or gratified] because I got a charm- ing letter from a self-proclaimed gay, living in Georgia, thank- ing me for my treatment of green and blue riders in Moreta, and complimenting me on my portrayal of useful homosexuals with a valid status in a complex society It’s nice to know that I’ve

done it right in that quarter!” Anne insists that “young men and

women who have not a sexual identity need to see good examples of sexuality.” She notes wryly that she has received criticism for her openness from people who tell her they are never going to read another book of hers again. This kind of reaction is painful to Anne, but she takes great comfort in the support she receives from other fans and, even more importantly, from friends whose expertise she values.

Anne has often been commended for her depiction of male

homosexuality as an integral part of society, but she has done less with lesbians. Anne’s homosexual friends have helped her under- stand male homosexuality, but she has no close lesbian friends. She also found herself upon occasion approached by lesbians, whose advances were unwelcome. With her generous nature, Anne found it unpleasant to rebuff these women, but lesbian sex held no interest for her. Some were even famous writers, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley. To Joanne Forman, Anne wrote, “She made a pass at me. I sorted out the matter but I have great re-

spect for her as a writer.” Due in part to her still anomalous un- married status and her frequent female visitors and house guests, Anne had to confront local rumors that she was a witch with a co- ven of lesbians. Characteristically defiant and humorous, Anne re- sponded by conspicuously lining up a series of twig broomsticks outside Dragonhold. If the village wanted to say she was a witch, she would show them her collection of magical brooms! One of the brooms still has a place of honor in her living room. The ru- mors about Anne’s sexuality and an association with witchcraft demonstrate one way societies try to control women who defy the limited roles available to them. Anne responded to this pressure not only by creating alternative worlds, but also through gestures, such as the brooms, that show her sense of humor and defiance. Anne’s good friend Maureen Beirne showed how persistent and troubling such attempts at control are; when I interviewed her, practically the first words out of her mouth were, “Annie McCaf- frey is not a lesbian.”

Richard Woods, a Catholic priest who has extensive counseling

experience and works with young people, is one person who sup- ports and reinforces Anne’s views on tolerance. Anne has a long- standing close relationship with Richard Woods, with whom she published A Diversity of Dragons, a large-format, illustrated book about dragons. Anne’s family and friends see him as a very posi- tive influence in her life. A critic of fantasy and science fiction, he met Anne in 1981 when he interviewed her, and then he vis- ited her in Ireland. A Dominican, Richard teaches and works in counseling, so he has been able to support and encourage Anne in her fictional representation of outsiders, including homosexu-

als. Anne’s and Richard’s personalities resonated: they both loved horses and science fiction, and Richard provided a lively, sup- portive, and engaging male presence for Anne. They met when he was forty and she was fifty-five. Shelly Shapiro, Anne’s friend and editor, says that “he has a sense of rightness in the world and he’s a calming person. I’m sure that he’s helping her.” They shared a dream of creating a writer’s community in Ireland, re- alized in part when Anne bought a cottage where writers and friends of hers and Richard’s could go to have peace to be able to write. The cottage was completely renovated and called Dragon- thorn. Unfortunately, due to financial reversals, Anne had to sell the cottage; but to her delight, Richard’s family trust bought the property, meaning that Richard is often nearby. He reads her novels, occasionally makes suggestions, and helps with the edit- ing of Anne’s manuscripts. Richard is also the family chaplain, having officiated at the weddings of two of Anne’s children. He embodies the tolerance that Anne values and is also a charming, handsome man who might feature in one of her romances.

Everyone I interviewed agrees about one aspect of Anne

McCaffrey: she is extremely generous. She herself has described her tendency to be “a fairy godmother.” Although she vehemently denies that any of her heroines are Cinderellas, in real life Anne has created many Cinderellas. In the 1980s, freed from her own formerly pressing poverty, Anne found herself able to help oth- ers. And she did, mostly with money, but also with an equally valuable commodity, her name and time. For example, Joanne Forman had written a number of Pern songs, an endeavor that Anne, so musical herself, endorsed. Her correspondence with Joanne reveals that they became friends, as occasionally happens with Anne’s readers. In Joanne’s case, Anne became involved in the marketing of Joanne’s cassette tape, even selling it at some conventions. Selling the tapes was just one of the many ways that Anne has helped friends. Win Catherwood in 1983 was already a very ill man, and he was another of the uncounted dozens for whom Anne has been a lifesaver. Win came from an established society family and, under the pseudonym David Telfair, wrote a handful of arch English-style novels in a Georgette Heyer style.

Like many writers, Win had no health insurance. He suffered from a rare blood ailment, and Anne sent him several thousand dol- lars so he could get proper treatment, a wheelchair, and other ne- cessities. He and Anne had been good friends since they met in Delaware, when both were aspiring novelists. His letters reveal Anne’s extensive generosity to him at a time when he was quite desperate.

Anne could also be generous to people she did not know very well. She enjoyed playing hostess at cons—often to large groups. In 1983, for example, during the U.S. tour in support of Moreta, Anne enjoyed the company of Houston area fans and Texas A & M fans. A large group went out for dinner at a Chinese res- taurant. It was a typically lively, raucous event, with much laughter and noise. At the end, Anne picked up the check, with the result that a bewildered waiter asked, “Are these all your children?” Anne replied, “Yes, but by different fathers,” to a peal of laughter from the group. In at least one spectacular instance, in October 1984, she rushed in to save the day by paying a six-thousand- dollar dinner bill for a convention, Western Recon II, using her gold American Express card. After the salad had been served, the hotel was refusing to serve the meal unless the hotel fee was paid immediately. She was never reimbursed for the cost.

Anne also gives generously to people who help her. Fortu-

nately, Anne’s friendship with Marilyn and Harry Alm provided some comfort at cons; they traveled to be with her, and it was a relief to Anne to have friends there with whom she could re- lax and in whom she could trust. By the end of the decade, the Alms would assist Anne with the world of Pern, creating maps and checking facts for her. In their devotion to Pern, the Alms acquired a clearer sense of Pern’s details and history than Anne herself. Parceling out some of the responsibility for Pern’s conti- nuity problems to the Alms gave Anne a measure of relief. Never a meticulous or obsessive fact-checker, Anne instead continued to develop Pern from her heart rather than from diagrams or time- lines. For Dragonsdawn, Anne gave Marilyn and Harry 1 percent of her paperback royalties as an indication of her respect and appreciation for their work. Anne’s editors said that such gener-

osity was quite unprecedented, as map-makers or fact-checkers customarily receive a flat fee for their work. By creating their pay as a royalty, Anne was showing the Alms how much their dedica- tion to Pern meant to her.

In her brother Hugh’s oldest daughter, Karin, however, Anne acquired another dependent. Because Anne so loved her brother and because of her loyalty, caretaking propensities, and wealth, Karin became Anne’s responsibility rather than anyone else’s in the family. Karin herself had intuited this, for she gravitated to Anne in Ireland. Karin had visited Anne in the 1970s, and even then Anne commented on Karin’s princess behavior—she expected to be waited on. Yet this might have been just typical youthful self-centeredness. Tragically, Karin developed a mental illness, schizophrenia. Suffering from such a life-shattering dis- ease, Karin soon became a trial to Anne. At first, Anne blamed Karin’s addiction to drugs for her mental illness, but Karin has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to the local psychiatric hospital for treatment. Karin got marginally involved with the IR A, pretended to be Lady McHughes or Lady Sean McAvoy, and quickly ran through her inheritance of seventy-five thousand dollars from her mother’s estate. Valerie, Karin’s sister and Kitti Ping, Karin’s stepmother, both tried to help Karin, but to no avail. She lived in Bray, a nearby village, and Anne paid half her rent. But even with money, Anne could not cure her niece’s mental illness.

In one case Anne’s generosity paid off when she gained a sup-

portive companion. In 1985 Anne invited Sara Virginia Brooks, her former sister-in-law, to come visit. As she often did, Anne paid for her guest’s trip. After a second visit, Anne invited Sara to move to Dragonhold to manage the house and gardens. In her brother Kevin’s words, Anne lost the husband but kept the sister. Sis, as she was known, had had a difficult life. Anne first met Sis when she came north to help with Anne’s firstborn, Alec. Sis al- ready had a child, Dick, whom she brought with her, but more importantly, she brought emotional support and practical advice. Sis had been a nurse before her marriage and later worked in public relations. A beautiful woman with blond hair and striking

features, Sis had trained as a nurse, worked as a floral judge, and done public relations work. Her adopted son, Dickie, never settled into a job and relied on her for funds until the day she died. He left his daughter, Melissa, for Sis to raise. Moreover, Sis’s husband turned out to have been a bigamist. In the 1980s, Sis had been having a difficult time financially and emotionally. Like many women, Sis had devoted herself to her parents, nursing them through their final illnesses. She only had Social Security income, and that wasn’t enough for her to maintain her parents’ home. Anne suggested a way out: Sis could move to Ireland, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about rent or other expenses. At the first Dragonhold, Anne generously turned two stables and a large spare room into an apartment for her. It was a good ar- rangement, since Sis felt useful running the house and special- ized in creating beautiful gardens. The gardens that Sis created at Dragonhold-Underhill in the early 1990s are still magnificent. Anne, of course, paid for the gardeners. But while Anne loved beautiful gardens and they reminded her of the gardens her fa- ther had cultivated, she had no desire to work in or manage a garden.

The two got along famously, enjoying each other’s company,

and Anne found it “nice to have someone of [her] own genera- tion, remembering the same things” she did. Like Anne, who was enjoying knitting, Sis was a handicraft person, but she ex- ceeded Anne, “doing beautiful embroidery and sewing.” Their friendship was a great comfort to Anne, who took Sis on several overseas trips with her, to Paris, to Madrid, even a cruise on the Queen Elizabeth Two. Anne remembers, “We had a grand time, spiffing it up on the QE-2.” With Sis, Anne was able to share her worries and concerns about her children and her household. Sis would travel to Florida each year to visit friends. She would take an empty suitcase, filling it with the foods and delicacies that she couldn’t find in Ireland: “She used to get by the air- lines by affecting her Charleston accent and acting an ineffectual but charming southern lady. . . dithering.” She was able to get all the cake mixes and spices she wanted into Ireland that way. Sis loved Mexican food and hot spices, which Anne’s digestion

wouldn’t accommodate, but Sis and Derval, who ran the stables, would have an occasional Mexican meal while Anne had an egg. Unfortunately, Sis did bring an emotional problem with her— depression and a concomitant abuse of alcohol. She would binge and go on lost weekends. Sis’s reaction to alcohol differed from Anne’s. Anne preferred wine to hard liquor and would go to sleep when drunk. In fact, Sis’s alcohol abuse was uncomfortably like her brother Wright’s. Characteristically direct, Anne confronted Sis, explaining that Sis’s behavior terrified her. Subsequently, Sis reduced her intake and there were no more binges. Sis, then, was an important addition to Anne’s household, the sister she never had. While Sis read all of Anne’s books as she wrote them, she never commented or made suggestions. Sis was supportive, but she helped Anne write by giving her emotional support and companionship. Sis provided much-needed breaks from writing rather than being a part of it, as Anne’s good friend and agent Virginia Kidd had done. But Sis’s gift was equally valuable; she freed Anne from the daily running of the household, allowing Anne to devote more energy to her writing.

People tended either to love or hate Sis, depending on her re-

action to them. Anne’s son Alec found her horribly self-centered, but Elizabeth Moon, a co-author of Anne’s, thought Sis was won- derful and explained, “She reminded me of one of those small old-fashioned apples that is tart and juicy and crisp all at once.” Sis’s most important quality, at least in terms of her relationship with Anne, was her loyalty and protectiveness. Sis jealously de- fended Anne against those whom she saw as exploiting Anne’s generosity. And, indeed, Anne finds it difficult to say no to people. Sis would be unpleasant to people—workers, family, fans, friends of Anne’s—whom she thought were taking advantage of Anne. For example, if someone was taking money from Anne, Sis would be downright rude to them, making Dragonhold so unpleasant that they would leave without getting more money from Anne. She had no scruples about telling people who had overstayed their welcome to leave.

In addition to ridding Dragonhold of unwelcome hangers-on,

Sis also ran the household, overseeing the purchase of groceries,

the preparation of most meals, and the maintenance of the gar- dens. Richard Woods says Sis was “a keen and ruthless judge of character” who alleviated the responsibility of running the house- hold for Anne. Of Sis, Derval Diamond, whom Anne has de- scribed as her “adopted daughter,” says, “She was a wicked old bitch but I liked her. She really protected Anne. Nobody could pull a fast one on her. Sis could see them coming and she was nearly always right.” Sis and Anne shopped together, which Anne says they both enjoyed. Sis “enjoyed playing lady of the manor,” according to Anne, whose evaluation of Sis is appreciative: she “was a very valuable asset to the house. She sometimes agitated me which can be good.” Sis also agitated others. Maureen Beirne, Anne’s best friend, says that, unlike Anne, “Sis was always an American.” Sis used to treat the Irish gardeners as if they were poor white trash; born and raised in Oklahoma, she was passion- ate about American Indian culture, and she would often rail at the Irish ignorance of Native American issues. Occasionally, she would pretend to outsiders that Dragonhold was her home, owned and maintained by her rather than Anne. But Anne didn’t mind Sis’s playacting and seemed flattered rather than aggravated by Sis’s behavior. Anne knew Sis loved her and appreciated all she had done for her. Anne appreciated Sis’s very dry sense of hu- mor. Sis, Win, and Richard, as well as Derval and Maureen, pro- vided important emotional support and relief for Anne as she continued her extensive writing schedule.

Anne also found a friend and confidante in Kitti Ping, her

older brother Hugh’s second wife. Somewhat enviously, Anne has remarked that both her brothers made good second marriages. But, of course, it is easier for men to remarry, and they do so at a higher rate than divorced or widowed women. Anne admired Kitti Ping and enjoyed her company, basing the character of a biogeneticist in Dragonsdawn on her. Anne was at NOLA Con when she received the news that her brother Mac had died of a heart attack. She immediately flew to Los Angeles, met Todd, and from there flew to Hawaii to attend her brother’s funeral. She cried the whole way from LA to Hawaii. It consoled Anne that all the flags on the military base there flew at half-mast, to honor

her brother. Anne was as proud of Mac’s military and government service as she was of her father’s. Since Mac’s death, Anne and Kitti have remained in touch, with Kitti remembered at Dragon- hold as lively and fun. Derval Diamond, Anne’s friend and man- ager of Dragonhold Stables, recalled one evening when the whole entourage went out to a local Chinese restaurant, where Kitti en- couraged Derval’s daughter Jen-Jen to dance. Kitti spoke Chinese to the restaurant owners, getting the whole group a custom Chi- nese meal, the best Derval had ever had.

Anne’s friends and family provide an important context in which to understand her work. We often think of writers as work- ing in isolation, but, in fact, writers often depend on a network of family and friends to foster their writing. Famous and success- ful writers like Anne often have entourages (see Brian Herbert’s biography of his father, Frank Herbert, for another example). At the beginning of the 1980s, Anne wrestled with fame and felt iso- lated, but by the end of the decade she had used her vision and money to create a version of a Pern Hold, a unit that provided support for many people. Yet a television documentary that aired in 1988, focusing on Anne, completely neglects them, fostering the illusion that a writer lives in isolation. Anne’s art, in contrast, has always been created in the midst of a full life with family and friends. For example, in November 1988, Anne became a grand- mother for the second time when Alec’s daughter Amelia was born, an event that delighted her. But there is no sense of Anne as grandmother, mother, or friend in the 1988 television show on Anne (part of a series featuring women writers); they undoubt- edly provided an important, if unseen, backdrop to her life in Ire- land. The documentary, entitled Women Writers: Anne McCaffrey, is a vivid and engaging profile, featuring Anne in her Irish home and in the Irish countryside. The film shows Anne reading, some- what stiffly, from her books. Her reading is illustrated by views of the Wicklow Mountains and some rather inadequate animated versions of dragons and their riders. From Dragonflight, Anne reads a lurid sex scene, when the dragons mate, and their riders feel and act on the dragons’ passion with other humans. Anne ob- tained permission for the television crew to film her walking the

grounds of Spring Hill Farm, the farm she had tried unsuccess- fully to buy. Although another couple outbid her, Anne set her novel The Carradyne Touch on its grounds. Some of the documen- tary consists of Anne walking around the farm grounds, pointing out settings for important events in that novel.

But the film’s real charm comes when Anne speaks to the camera about why she writes and when the filmmakers follow her to the 1987 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, En- gland. There we see some of her fans, one with a stuffed fire liz- ard perched on her shoulder. The fans ask questions and Anne signs their copies of her books and laughs and jokes with them. With her characteristic humor and charm, Anne entrances the fans. Asked about why she uses music as a theme in her books, she responds, “Because I am a failed singer,” and then she breaks into a ribald song, demonstrating her impressive vocal skills and her ability to capture a crowd. The filmmakers asked Anne to ex- plain in her own words her contributions to science fiction and to describe her writing. Anne repeats themes she has iterated in published interviews, but in this television documentary we can see her vehemence, as when, for example, she declares, “There is not a Cinderella theme. Cinderella was a wimp. My heroines are victims—strong people—who become survivors.” She explains, “What I have achieved for women in science fiction is science fiction that is women-oriented, that they can read with a great deal of enjoyment because my viewpoint characters are women, strong women–role models.” Discussing her first novel, Restoree, Anne describes it as a corrective to all the passive female charac- ters in science fiction who sat by screaming when something bad happened. “I wouldn’t have been standing there in the corner screaming,” Anne reveals, “I’d be in there with something. . . .

[SF in the 1950s] was totally unrealistic as far as women were con-

cerned.” “I put romance in science fiction, put emotion in science fiction and used it as a tool of the trade,” she explains.

But the relationships that she depicts between human and dragon are, she acknowledges, idealistic. In words that evoke Anne herself as well as her fans, she describes the effect of dragons on humans in her books. Using the pronoun “we,” Anne shows that,

like her fans, she, too, would appreciate the kind of love that dragons offer: “If we had someone who knew exactly what we felt and who supported us even when we were wrong, if we had that kind of support, someone standing behind us, we’d be a lot happier, we’d feel a lot more adequate.” At the end of the pro- gram, she comments again about romance, this time from her own perspective as a fifty-year-old woman, with a wry sense of humor and awareness of ageism and sexism: “I would like a tall handsome man to sweep me off my feet, except he’s more likely to be looking at my daughter.” “Romance is as much a part of the human condition as anything else,” Anne says, somewhat de- fensively, “particularly for females.” The concluding frames show Anne listening to music in her living room, her cats meandering to and fro, with Anne’s final question, “Why write if you’re not fulfilling some need or dream of your own?” Anne’s question was rhetorical; in her writing she fulfilled many needs of her own, and in so doing fulfilled her many readers’ needs as well.

In the 1980s, Anne learned to live with success. She found joy

and comfort in creating an extended family around her with her Irish friends Maureen Beirne, Johnny Greene, the Callahan family, Derval Diamond, and her former sister-in-law, Sara Brooks. She turned fans like the Alms into friends and settled into the life of a successful author, writing and then traveling to cons. The chal- lenge of the next decade would be how to continue to write and to find new challenges. In her development of relationships with younger writers, Anne would find the way to continue to write and expand her real and fictional worlds.

chapter 7

Being a Fairy Godmother

A house that looks like the house in which an internationally famous writer resides.

—Anne McCaffrey, letter to Annett Francis

Anne McCaffrey is bigger than the one person.

—Gigi Kennedy

Annie loves to believe the best of people.

—Richard Woods

Her reward for a decade of hard work writing, Anne’s new home would carry the name of her last, “Dragonhold,” but she would add “Underhill” to commemorate her determination in building this house and its specific placement. While Anne was pleased with the builder’s progress, Sis often spoke harshly to the builder, whom she mistrusted. Always more optimistic than Sis, Anne was pleased with each step that brought the house nearer to completion. As the weeks and months passed, the large white stucco house gradually took shape, transforming what had been an uneven field into a dramatic setting for Anne’s dream house: it was set down into the hillside, and another mountain loomed behind, covered in iridescent green. After thirteen other relo- cations, Anne knew she would not move again. With her 35-mm camera, Anne smiled as she took another roll of photos to send to Annett, her ex-husband’s ex-wife and executive editor of House and Garden. Five years ago, Anne had written Annett, humor- ously claiming that after renovations she would have “a house that looks like the house in which an internationally famous writer re- sides.”

With the completion of Dragonhold-Underhill, Anne became her own fairy godmother, creating a beautiful home, built near her beloved stables, with a commodious study and plenty of room for the many guests who came to visit her. The house was quite modern in design and atmosphere. With its large windows, contemporary kitchen, a large Jacuzzi in her bathroom, open floor plan, oak cabinets, and furnishings, Anne added heraldic touches—three teak-wood medallions based on animals from the Book of Kells (the medieval illuminated book at Trinity College in Dublin) for the outside walls, and two beautiful bronze dragons, one for each of her black wrought-iron gates. In addition, Anne bought new furnishings: new beds, chests, blanket chests, tables. She spared no expense: a slate roof, maple flooring, a green- house section connecting the pool to the rest of the house. The extensive gardens all around the house were Sis’s creation. The planning commission objected to a second kitchen because they worried she was building a hotel and not a single-family home. Nevertheless, Anne also had a small separate apartment created for Sis, including a tiny kitchen (to mollify the planning com- mission) and access to the outside. If the 1980s were marked by Anne’s solidification of her success, she was able to rest on her laurels in the 1990s and begin to appreciate what it meant to be a well-established and highly regarded author.

The eleven years from 1990 to 2001 also saw additions and

losses in her family. Her daughter Gigi married and adopted a son, her son Todd married and had a daughter, and her son Alec moved to Ireland and divorced. Anne not only gave two weddings, but also threw a huge party for her own seventy-fifth birthday, flying in family and friends from the United States, including her ex-husband, Wright. This triumph and reconciliation of sorts was, however, soon followed by the loss of her dear companion, Wright’s sister, Sis. Throughout the decade, Anne wrestled with her own illnesses, having a knee replaced in 1991, then surgery in 1996, a mild heart attack in 2000, and a mild stroke in January 2001. Yet these setbacks had little perceptible effect on her writ- ing, and she continued to publish at the rate of two books a

year. At this point in her career, the awards rolled in. As the de- cade ended, Anne received news that she had won the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, given by the American Library As- sociation and presented for Lifetime Literary Achievement. (She was also the first science fiction writer to receive the award.) This time period, then, was marked by professional success and family milestones and tempered by health issues and family worries.

As an extremely successful author, Anne faced unique prob- lems, compounded by her generosity. When I asked her how she rewarded herself, Anne replied, with a twinkle, “By playing fairy godmother.” Then she said with a sigh, “It’s very expensive.” How much money her books made was an important index of achieve- ment for Anne, who wrote to Virginia, “It is a point of pride in me that over the past fourteen years, every book I have written has paid back its original advance in the first six months.” That Anne’s first priority was not money, however, is revealed by the terms of her million-dollar contract, which specified that she would re- ceive a $300,000 advance for a Pern book and only a $250,000 ad- vance for other titles. An author motivated only by money would have only written Pern books, whereas Anne has steadily alter- nated between Pern and non-Pern titles. Finally wealthy (she re- ceived her first million-dollar contract in 1993), Anne was able to indulge herself by indulging others. Her editor Shelly Shapiro commented that “taking care of people is very important to her.” Anne’s collaborator, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, dedicated her novel The Godmother to Anne with these words: “This is dedicated with admiration, gratitude and affection to Anne McCaffrey, who manages very nicely without the benefit of a wand.” Felicity, the godmother of the title, is Irish, and The Godmother’s Apprentice, the sequel, is based on people in Anne’s household. Anne soon found that there was an endless line of people who wanted to be Cin- derella to her fairy godmother. One fax to Virginia, her agent, is revealing, “Dearest Virginia dear, My Gawd, how the money rolls in. Thank Gawd the money rolls in!” Despite her large income, Anne indulged herself very little, buying semi-precious jewelry only occasionally, treating herself to clothes from Harrod’s, hav- ing her books bound in leather, traveling first class. Her “adopted

daughter” Derval said Anne never took a trip for sheer pleasure, and son Todd said that Anne’s 2001 trip to Sicily was the first va- cation she ever took. Building herself a deluxe home, however, was a large and public admission of how far she had come since her early poverty-stricken days in Ireland. Always a willing host- ess, she became more so when she had the space to accommo- date more people.

Her daughter, Gigi, described Anne’s open-door policy: “Mum likes having a lot of people around. She enjoys the coming and going.” When I commented on the commotion in the house, with at least eight people bustling in and out, Gigi said, “It’s just been another Dragonhold day.” Gigi described her mother as “a univer- sal Mum” and explained, “She collects people or they gravitate to her.” While she had become an Irish citizen in 1984, Anne’s ver- sion of the ideal home was still decidedly American—so much so that the first plans were rejected by the planning commission for not fitting in with the land and the other Irish farmhouses. They stated that the two-story design with dormers “did not look like an Irish farmhouse.” The planning commission asked Anne if she was going to start a bed-and-breakfast (four of the six bedrooms have their own bathrooms). Pithily, Anne explained to them that she and her sister-in-law “were elderly and needed access to a bathroom then, not when someone else had finished.” The house design and the conflict with the planning commission revealed not only that Anne was still somewhat American in her outlook and values, but also that she was accustomed to having her own way. Anne was afraid that the planning commission would balk at her swimming pool, but other than requiring a certain kind of drainage, she had no problem with her enormous eighteen-by- thirty-foot indoor pool. The neighbors did, however, complain that she would take all their electricity to run her computer. This was in 1989, and there were not very many computers in rural Ire- land. The complaint suggests something of Anne’s relationship with her neighbors and the degree to which she was seen as dif- ferent. The Hogans, owners of a nearby bed-and-breakfast, who house many of Anne’s guests, hold her in high esteem, but they thought she was still an American citizen. One fellow in a pub

described her as “horse-mad,” and, indeed, building yourself a home only after you built beautiful stables, including a heated barn, might strike some people as unusual.

Irish planning commissions have power unimaginable in the United States, where simply owning property usually means you can develop it any way you choose. In Ireland, zoning laws are strictly enforced, and even in the twenty-first century, when land values have risen astronomically, landowners are forbidden to develop or subdivide, with the exception of building homes for family members. Even these houses (and Anne built one on her property for her oldest son, Alec) are subject to stringent over- sight. After her first proposal for an American-style house with dormers was rejected, Anne modified her plans and agreed to nestle her house in the hillside, so it would be less obtrusive—hence Dragonhold’s hyphenated suffix of “Underhill.” Irish homes, even modest ones, have names, and Anne wanted to keep the name Dragonhold for its reference to the books that built the house. But she also wanted to distinguish her new home from the earlier, far more modest house she had inhabited for fifteen years. The tangible fruit of her labors, Dragonhold-Underhill represented Anne’s settling into her success. With Anne’s burgeoning income, investing money in a larger home seemed a good idea. Typically, though, Anne had first put her money into her stables, and her new home was to be situated on six of the less usable acres of the forty-seven that comprised Dragonhold Stables.

She and her entourage (Sis, various young people who stayed

with her, workers, and many visitors) had long since outgrown Dragonhold-K ilquade, which had just one bathroom. Even with the apartment added on for Sis, and a kitchen expansion, the first Dragonhold was too small. Anne designed the floor plan to suit her needs, with her office next to her bedroom at the back of the house. The kitchen is the front room, an enormous nine- teen by twenty-one feet, with a window seat, a fireplace, a large table for guests, bookshelves, and innumerable cabinets. Anne reports that the house is “as near to perfect (for me) as it could get.” She is very pleased with her house (though she’s still a bit miffed that when the finishing touches were being put in, the

wrong tiles were put in one of the bathrooms). Each time I vis- ited Anne at Dragonhold-Underhill, she pointed with pride to the house’s unique features and its splendid gardens. Ironically, the child who deeply resented her father’s devotion to his gar- dens and his conscription of his children to work in those gar- dens grew up to be an adult who cherishes her own beautiful formal gardens—on a site far larger than her father’s. Sis handled much of the day-to-day work with the builder, who turned out to be something of a scoundrel. (He did some of the work with sub- stitute materials and did not complete all the work as contracted, especially the heating elements.) She also supervised the laying out of the many gardens and elaborate beds. Sis bought a sign that Anne enjoyed and that may have typified their bantering re- lationship: “kwitchurbeliakin!” Despite feeling overwhelmed Anne continued to write. She wrote to Virginia, “I doubt I could take a year off writing—I still can’t not write—but a break is ob- viously now a necessity.” With her talk of a break, Anne did not take one.

Success, it turned out, could be exhausting. Anne wrote to

thank Virginia for having negotiated a good contract with Del Rey for a series of books. Anne was grateful for the advance, chortling, “What a marvelous contract you have managed to carve out of the collective Del Rey hyde [sic]!” Anne reported her pleasure in her series with Annie S. (Elizabeth Anne Scarborough). The Powers series reached several best-seller lists, the first collaborative effort of Anne’s to do so well. Nevertheless, the rest of the letter is filled with less glee and a more plaintive tone. “Well, I always intended to spend the rest of my life writing so it looks as if I will. I wish I could honestly yell and cheer. I know I should. It’s just that I

keep waiting for the next problems to develop (some are clearly in the offing) or maybe I’m just tired!” Anne acknowledged that “the writing of novels is now an unremitting exercise of discipline something I believe you mentioned not long ago but the total ef- fect had not then caught up with me as it may well have done so now.” Anne continued to write, creating a new series with Pegasus in Flight and The Rowan, the first volumes in what would later be called the Tower and the Hive series. This series demonstrated

that Anne did not need co-authors; her fertile imagination took root in stories she had written decades earlier, and this new se- ries, featuring psychically gifted humans, did very well. A family saga spanning three generations, the first novel, The Rowan, draws on the concepts she first developed in a short-story collection published the early 1970s, To Ride Pegasus. In this book a clair- voyant character suffers a head injury, and as the doctors exam- ine him, they discover electrical impulses in his brain. McCaffrey thus cleverly skirts a classic division between fantasy and science fiction by making magical powers scientifically verifiable. While this first book deals with male characters, in her new series, Anne draws on her own life and matriarchal status. By now the head of a family that included not only her three children and grand- children but also her former sister-in-law, staff who had been with her for years, young people who had grown up and were now in her employ, and numerous visitors, Anne depicts a character, the Rowan, who develops and cares for a large, extended family. The Rowan has the dramatic silver hair that is Anne’s signature (like her mother, Anne had hair that turned silver before she was thirty). Orphaned, the Rowan has to start a new life alone on a new planet. All she has going for her is her “Talent,” or psychic powers, rather parallel to Anne’s emigration to Ireland, where she relied only on her “talent” of writing. In this series, Talents are ranked in order of their skills and success in psion- ics or mental powers, from a high of T-1 to T-10. The more adept Talents often work with lesser Talents, combining their powers. Writing about the possibilities of psychic collaboration presaged Anne’s own real-world partnerships with other writers. Although she continued her prodigious solo writing, Anne developed a new outlet, co-authorship. Anne, a “T-1” in terms of her fictional uni- verse, was a first-tier writer, and the authors she would help were analogous to lesser-ranked Talents in her series.

A well-established publishing convention, especially in science

fiction, co-authorship can take many forms. Usually, the more fa- mous co-author allows another lesser-known writer to create a novel based on the first author’s world. The famous author may write none or only a little bit of the novel, but it will still bla-

zon the more famous author’s name on the cover. Anne had a number of reasons for considering co-authorship in the 1990s. Co-authorship provided Anne with a mini-version of the Milford conferences that had enriched her career. Always a reader as well as a writer, Anne enjoyed the intellectual exchange with other writers. In previous years, Anne had found this intellectual stimu- lation at conventions, where she would meet other authors and discuss literary issues with them. But as Anne’s popularity grew, she was no longer just one author among others. As Guest of Honor at conventions, she had no time to herself, nor the time to be on panels with other writers. Instead, fans and the conven- tion organizers monopolized her time, and when she spoke, it was usually by herself. The huge turnout for her book signings also exhausted her, so she had neither the energy nor time for intel- lectual exchanges. Todd continued to read and comment on his mother’s work, but he was in the United States, and then he mar- ried and had a child. At the same time, Anne’s trouble with jet lag and arthritis meant that she could travel less frequently. Ironically, at the height of her success, Anne found herself intellectually iso- lated and lonely. Having a writer come to live and write with her, in her new spacious home, seemed the perfect solution.

After she built her new home, there was an explosion of books

Anne wrote with other authors. These “shared universe” books demonstrated the staying power of Anne’s fictional worlds and the selling power of her name. Four books about Anne McCaffrey were published, another sign of her growing reputation. Anne had already co-authored two books, done primarily by mail and long-distance phone conversations. In 1990, she published two co-authored books: The Death of Sleep, with Jody Lynn Nye, and Sassinak, with Elizabeth Moon. These collaborations can be inter- preted in two fashions, either as “shared universe,” a positive term that gives credit to the original author’s concepts that she “shares” with other authors, or, more negatively, as “share-cropping,” the term Anne McCaffrey’s agents use. Share-cropping obviously car- ries the connotations of exploitation that the original farm term does, one person working another person’s land, but with the in- version here that the original author, the landowner, is the one

being taken advantage of! To Anne’s agents, these collaborations meant that the lesser-known authors were trading on the value of the name “Anne McCaffrey.” In the agents’ opinion, the collabo- rations also diluted the value of Anne’s name.

Anne’s tremendous success as a writer meant that she not only was a writer, but also had become a commodity. As a result, there were power struggles over who would control her output. Anne herself had already employed a divide-and-conquer strategy, find- ing a new publisher in Putnam for her Tower and Hive series. That meant no one publisher controlled her work. Fortunately for Anne, she had an editor at each firm who was willing to work cooperatively, Shelly Shapiro at Del Rey and Susan Allison at Put- nam. Both editors, too, respected Anne and were committed to her best interests; for example, they carefully coordinated the publication of her books to make sure they did not release two books too close together.

The collaborations began after Anne had been cornered at a cocktail party back in 1988 by Bill Fawcett, an aggressive editor who happens to be married to Jody Lynn Nye, a writer with whom Anne had co-written a nonfiction guide to Pern. Bill told a sym- pathetic Anne how many mid-list writers were getting the short end of the shelf-space stick—that is, booksellers didn’t want to give their books shelf space. If they co-authored a book with the famous Anne McCaffrey, however, these writers would have much better sales. Anne keenly remembered her own hard days as a writer, struggling financially, so when Bill suggested a way that Anne could help these writers, she readily agreed. But Fawcett was preempting Anne’s agents and the publishers. Anne resented that “publishing had gotten very difficult because of bean coun- ters and the bottom line.” She remembered how much she had been helped by Virginia K idd and Betty Ballantine but realized that those days of generosity were over. “Many of our editors are tied by merchandising considerations,” she lamented. So in char- acteristic Anne fashion, she leapt in to help. “Taking advantage of Annie’s niceness” is how Vaughne Hansen, who works for Virginia Kidd, saw it. Of course, the Virginia Kidd Agency was not a part of the negotiation, so the agents didn’t receive any

money, nor were they able to help Anne secure an advantageous contract. Anne explained that Bill Fawcett “suggested the names of published authors and I picked those whose books I already liked.” Anne explained, “I got talked into writing outlines by Bill Fawcett, but it seemed a very logical thing to do at the time.” Un- fortunately, writing an outline that another author would then flesh out did not always work out well. Anne described the pro- cess as “forcing some poor person to write against their best in- clinations and follow the damned outline.” She soon found that this sort of collaboration was not emotionally or artistically suc- cessful.

Her collaborations with some writers were more successful aes- thetically and commercially than others. Her series with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, the Powers series and the Acorna series, have done better than her other collaborations. Anne said that “it’s good to have another writer to lob ideas off to.” Another older writer whom Anne had always admired, Andre Norton, had done a number of successful collaborations, and Anne explained that Andre had not run out of ideas, but out of energy. Ruefully, Anne said, “It takes an awful lot of energy to write a book.” She was glad to have her energy sparked by other writers, and as Susan Allison, Anne’s Putnam editor, explained, “It’s flattering when people want to write in your universe.” Unfortunately, despite Anne’s best intentions, the collaborations were not always successful— in one case, it was singularly problematic. To her dismay, Anne found that she and Jody Lynn Nye were not “on the same wave length—the way Annie Scarborough and I fortunately are.” One letter that Virginia had forwarded to Anne read, “Ms. Nye may be a capable writer in some ways, but she’s fouling up the McCaf- frey waters.” To Virginia, Anne replied: “Well, honey, I got myself into this and I’ll just hope I can weather the storm it’s caused. You warned me and I had the gall to think I could ‘fix’ any- thing up to scratch. Would that I could unmuddy the waters! I haven’t had that many really scathing letters but I’ve received a few [from editors] . . . mainly for collaborating with anyone. . . .

I shan’t work on anymore of these efforts—once I’ve finished

the PTB trilogy [Powers That Be series, written with Elizabeth

Anne Scarborough].” Fortunately, Anne did not keep strictly to this resolution, co-writing Acorna books with Annie S. and later collaborating with two of her children, Gigi and Todd. It was the positive experiences with Annie S., and later with Elizabeth Moon, that kept Anne from totally abandoning co-authorship.

Anne had always admired the work of Elizabeth Ann Scarbor- ough, winner of a Nebula award (a prestigious award, presented by the Science Fiction Writers of America, that Anne had won in 1967) for The Healer’s War. Anne had spent a good deal of time with Annie S. when Anne was writer-in-residence in Alaska for ten days in April 1982 and Annie S. lived in Alaska. Annie S. took Anne to parties and to see the Aurora Borealis, a bear show, and dog-sledding. It was the last activity, which Anne truly en- joyed, that would years later turn into the inspiration for their Petaybee, the ice world that is the setting for their Powers That Be series. Though Anne only spent several weeks in Alaska, the two stayed in touch ever afterward. As Anne commented when I sent her a recent picture of Annie S., “That’s a great photo of Annie, looking mischievous . . . which she often does. She can

also be quite wicked, when she wants to.” Annie S. explains their

friendship by pointing out how many similarities they share: Both have an odd connection to the military, in that they both love and hate the military. While Anne’s fathers and brothers served in the army, Annie S. served in the army as a nurse (she drew on these experiences for her Nebula Award–winning book, The Healer’s War). Both women are Aries, “much more independent and action-oriented than other women”; in addition to sharing a name, they both love music, and Rudyard Kipling was an im- portant influence on both of them. Moreover, both are divorced writers who love science fiction. These similarities allowed them to work together effectively. Living in Alaska had given Anne the idea of writing about an ice world, and she liked the idea of developing a new series with Annie S. As usual, however, the impetus came from Anne’s good nature. At that time, Annie S. was having difficulty with her publisher, Bantam, and when she called Anne up for advice, Anne immediately asked, “Why don’t you come write a book with me?” When Annie S. asked what they

would write about, Anne replied, “Dog-sleds and the Irish!” Anne went to the States for a convention, and in January 1991, Annie S. came back to Ireland with her. Anne even paid Annie S.’s air- fare and she put in a modem and desk in the guest room. The first guest to the new Dragonhold, Annie S. stayed for almost five months. Anne remembers that “it was great having her there as lunches usually included plotting sessions.” Both women would get up early, discuss ideas over breakfast, and then write the rest of the day in their respective studies. Each had favorite charac- ters in the first book in the series, and they divided the work by writing the scenes that featured their favorite characters. Not sur- prisingly, Anne focused on Yana, the older heroine, and Annie S. focused on Clodagh and Cita, the latter a teenaged character. All three characters followed the writers’ example of female soli- darity, working and living together. Anne and Annie wrote sepa- rately in the morning, met for lunch, and then composed scenes together in the afternoon. In Anne’s words, “It sort of grew from tossing the bull across the table to, ‘OK, here’s the disk, it’s your turn. I can’t go any further.’ We both knew who the characters were and what we wanted to do.” The schedule made for a busy but fulfilling time for both writers. Anne described it as “true col- laboration.”

Unfortunately, jealousy reared its ugly head, as Sis took a strong

dislike to Annie S., which surprised Anne. Because both Sis and Annie S. had worked as nurses and did handicrafts, Anne imag- ined that they would get along. After all, Anne liked them both! With her characteristic optimism, Anne did not see that Sis felt displaced by Annie S., who literally moved into their new home, and did so before Sis herself did. Sis was not satisfied with some aspects of the building, so she refused to move in until the prob- lems were fixed. It was not Anne, after all, who was nicknamed “Queen of Dragonhold,” but Sis. The tension was palpable. Sis had always protected Anne from those who she thought were ex- ploiting Anne, but Anne saw Annie S. as a dear friend. Annie S. reciprocated; she truly felt at home in Dragonhold-Underhill, and she would take a dish and leave it, dirty, in another room. Or she would drop her sweater on a sofa and leave it there. Sis followed

around, resentfully picking up after Annie S. and glowering. At lunch Anne and Annie chattered away about what each character should do and what would happen next in their book. Sis sat lis- tening, feeling left out. Finally Sis exploded, accusing Annie S. of being a freeloader and calling her “a hippopotamus.” Annie S. yelled right back, saying she wasn’t going to put up with such abuse, she was leaving right now, and she stormed out to her room. Thoroughly upset, Anne spoke quite sternly to Sis, tell- ing her that Annie was Anne’s guest and Sis should treat her po- litely. Reluctantly, Sis agreed but was never more than stiffly po- lite. Annie S. returned the next year and the year after that to finish two more books, and each time Sis was remote but civil. They even had a reconciliation of sorts, when Annie S. presented Sis with a flag that she flew next to the Irish flag.

Sis took much less a dislike to Margaret Ball, who then fit into

a pattern of writers who spent time at Dragonhold. Anne and Margaret were less intense, and Margaret was easier to get along with, picking up after herself more than Annie S. had been in- clined to do and giving more consideration to Sis. Anne was much easier to please, not knowing or caring whether guests were tidy. Margaret practiced her flute in the living room, a soothing be- ginning to every day she was there. In contrast to Annie S., who stayed for months, Margaret only stayed for six weeks; she and Anne had a fruitful collaboration with Partnership and the first two Acorna books, which are now being written by Anne and Annie S. Margaret was less able to travel, due to her teenaged children; and Annie S. was willing to continue the Acorna books, which have developed a strong following.

Co-author Elizabeth Moon is another collaborator who has turned into a close friend. Anne told Bill Fawcett that she admired Moon’s work, especially her Serrano series, so Fawcett approached Jim Baen, Elizabeth’s publisher. When Jim called Elizabeth with the invitation to co-write Sassinak with Anne, Elizabeth replied, “ ‘Does water run downhill? Of course, I want to—I’m honored to be asked.’” While she was very conscious of working in Anne’s universe, and “the need to make everything conform to her vi- sion of her characters and their setting,” Elizabeth described

Anne as “the perfect mix of strong creator and thoughtful col- laborator [I]t’s her universe and you can’t forget it, but she’s

very generous in encouraging the co-author to be creative within the framework.” Elizabeth learned a great deal from Anne, who told her, “in one memorable letter, to ‘just have fun’ with the aliens.” She also appreciated the opportunities “to learn some of the technical bits I hadn’t yet tried on my own, like multiple viewpoints much easier to handle if you have an experienced

co-author to lean on and to help with the inevitable difficulties.” Elizabeth concluded, “What I found exciting, stimulating and just plain fun was being that close to a superb storyteller, someone who not only had the gift, but also the experience.”

Richard Woods’s experience in co-writing A Diversity of Dragons, a large-format nonfiction work, was similarly positive, perhaps be- cause he and Anne were already such good friends before they collaborated. Anne also co-authored books with Jody-Lynn Nye, Crisis in Doona; with Margaret Ball, PartnerShip; with Mercedes Lackey, The Ship Who Searched; and with S. M. Stirling, The City Who Fought. Anne especially regretted never meeting Mercedes Lackey in person because she greatly admired Mercedes’s writ- ing, but not every one of her co-authors could or would travel to Ireland. In addition to the intellectual stimulation, the books were profitable. Anne’s collaborative efforts explain, in part, her extraordinary productivity in the 1990s. Yet Anne was keenly aware that some of the collaborations were both artistically and commercially more successful than others. She wrote to Virginia, “The collabs are at least making money for both sets of folks [writers], though it’s interesting to note which sets of us did bet- ter than which other.”

In November 1990, before Dragonhold-Underhill was finished,

Gigi returned home to Ireland, to live there permanently. She found a job and took classes as her health permitted. And per- haps most importantly, especially to her mother, who wanted Gigi to be happy, Gigi fell in love with Geoff Kennedy. The middle child of seven, from a large Catholic family, Geoff was a welder- artisan, attractive and attentive. Anne’s letters reveal her delight in her daughter’s happiness. In a letter to Annett, Anne mentioned

that Gigi has “a boyfriend . . . who is quite faithful.” In addi- tion to boasting about her daughter’s deft handling of her new job, Anne also lamented Gigi’s illness and praised her strength: “As usual, and from some deep inner well of strength, [Gigi] man- aged to put her act together once more! I don’t know where she gets such inner fortitude from! She’s amazing in that and I’m so very proud of her.” In a later missive to Annett, Anne reports, “Todd has already met—and approved of—Geoffrey. I most cer- tainly do. Mind you, I’m not saying a bloody thing but he has been making her quite happy for 14 months now.” He continued to make Gigi happy, proposing marriage in August 1992. Plan- ning Gigi’s wedding enthralled Anne, not only because she loved playing fairy godmother, but also because she hoped the perfect wedding would somehow compensate Gigi for all her physical suf- fering. To Virginia, Anne confided her fears about the wedding: “Gigi has been so ill again. That alone is enough to drive me to tears when we can’t be sure she’ll be well enough to walk down the aisle a radiant bride. My local Tarot card reader has assured me she will.” (The tarot card reader was right.)

Her son’s and daughter’s engagements made Anne reflect on

her own marriage. As she wrote to Virginia, “Dearest Virginia dear, Today I would have been married 43 years. Glad I’m not. How time does fly! . . . (We’ve [Virginia and Anne] been ‘mar- ried’ at least 30 years now!)” Like her mother had done for her, Anne fussed, wanting her daughter’s wedding to be spectacular, and it was. In August 1993, Gigi married in a gala wedding, with her attendants wearing designer dresses. Anne wore a red- flowered dress with a long, matching jacket, pearls, and pearl ear- rings. Two hundred thirty-seven guests enjoyed a sit-down meal. Richard Woods, Anne’s good friend and co-author, officiated with a local priest, Father John Jacob. Gigi, beaming and beautiful in an off-the-shoulder, long-sleeved white gown of silk chiffon, car- ried an enormous bouquet of pink and white roses, stephanotis, and white freesia, lovingly arranged by her aunt Sis. Gigi said that she felt “like a million dollars in that dress.” Her hair in an ele- gant chignon, Gigi’s sheer voile veil was hidden in her hair by a clear comb, and the elegance of her outfit was completed by the

gown’s short train. When Gigi walked down the aisle on the arm of her brother Alec, Anne was so happy she thought her “heart would burst.”

In 1993, Anne bought a Farrier’s School, a setup with three barns where her future son-in-law, Geoff, could make horseshoes and shoe horses. It was a natural extension to Anne’s extensive stables, and she enjoyed watching Geoff teach young people how to work iron for horses. This experience inspired Anne to write Black Horses for the King (1996), a short tale set in King Arthur’s England. Unfortunately, this project, like Anne’s dream for a writ- ers’ cottage named Dragonthorn, lasted only five years. But it was a sign of Anne’s empire building, and her financial success, that she was willing and interested in setting up more projects to help two groups she favored—young people and writers.

The day after Christmas 1993, Todd married Jenna Scott in a smaller but no less festive wedding presided over by Richard Woods. One of Todd’s Irish friends arranged for River Dance dancers to perform, and at the reception there were folk musi- cians rather than the rock group Gigi had preferred. Jenna and Todd had met at a Magicon in Orlando, Florida, when Todd had accompanied his mother and Jenna was the writer Lois Bujold’s roommate. They had decided that instead of Jenna changing her last name, they would choose a common marital name. Jenna, who was enamored of being part of Anne McCaffrey’s family, suggested they both adopt the McCaffrey name. Anne was flat- tered. Todd explained that changing his last name to McCaffrey was more than heeding his friend Scott McMillan’s warning that it would mess up lineage to create a new surname. It was also to honor all his mother had done for him. There was another reason Todd changed his surname: he had been mistaken several times for a criminal named Todd Johnson, and once he was even de- tained at the Dallas airport. But, of course, his name change also signaled Todd’s rejection of his father and Todd’s desire to be a writer. He had published a few stories as Todd Johnson, but after 1993 he would write as Todd J. McCaffrey. Shelly Shapiro, Anne’s and now Todd’s editor, noted that his name change also meant his books would be shelved by his mother’s—a huge boost for sales.

With the two weddings to pay for—and that included not only the meals but also the airfare and other expenses of all people in attendance—Anne needed her still-expanding advances and roy- alties. She had not only those expenses, but also back U.S. taxes to pay. “Gracious royalties this year. I can pay my horrendous tax bill,” she wrote to her editor at Ballantine, Shelly Shapiro.

The year 1994 was memorable for the birth of Todd’s daugh- ter, Ceara Rose, and for a Worldcon in Canada for which Anne was GOH, guest of honor. The Worldcon always holds a party to honor its guest of honor; there were over a thousand people at Anne’s party, which was run as a Pern “gather,” based on the large social gatherings set on her fictional world of Pern. To a con organizer Anne wrote, “People have the weirdest ideas of what can/should/did happen on Pern and only I, the Dragonlady, can give definitive answers.” As Dragonlady, she continued to receive awards. Shelly Shapiro wrote, “Congratulations! You’ve done it again! They might as well just call it [the SF Book Club Book of the Year Award] the Annual McCaffrey Award!” What didn’t work out well was attempt after attempt to get the Dragonriders of Pern to film or television, in part because Anne wanted to be the one with “definitive answers.” Although Anne had always wanted to see a film version of Dragonriders, and her books have been op- tioned seven times, including by Warner Brothers for a television series, she has turned down offers of a million dollars for the rights to Dragonflight because the contracts did not give her com- plete control. ( Just recently, however, the rights to the Dragon- riders of Pern were sold to an Oscar Award–winning firm, Copper- heart Entertainment.) And while Anne is a heavyweight in the publishing world, in Hollywood her name carries no weight. For what are perhaps legitimate reasons, Holly wood is leery of au- thors who want to retain control over their novels. Novels, after all, are a very different form from film, and the collaborative pro- cess in filmmaking involves dozens of people, from the script- writers to the director, the producer, and the editor. Anne’s desire to see a film version of Dragonriders remains a frustrated desire, but perhaps this latest option will satisfy her at last.

Also problematic was Anne’s health. In March 1991, Anne ex- perienced arthritis in her knee; in May, she endured surgery when her knee was replaced. She was pleased with the results and her improved mobility and lack of pain, but then she began to have hip trouble only a few years later. In April 1996, Anne began to rely on a wheelchair, and she was ordered to lose weight before the surgeons would operate on her hip. In September 1996, she had successful hip surgery, but she developed another physical problem, tinnitus, an inner-ear ailment that had plagued her mother. These signs of aging slowed Anne down slightly, but not her writing. Instead, she cut back on her traveling even more.

After 1990, Anne relied more on the computer to stay in touch with her friends and family. A consummate letter writer, Anne actually finds it easy to have e-mail friends. As you might expect from a science fiction writer, Anne was an early adopter of com- puter technology, encouraged by her two sons. She wrote with pleasure about how much faster electronic mail was, and she had obtained a “compuserv” account in the mid-1980s. In the 1990s, however, Alec set up an electronic chat room for his mother’s fans, called “Kitchen Table Live” (KTL), in homage to her much- used kitchen table at Dragonhold-Underhill. The very first room on your right, as you enter Anne’s house, is her sunny kitchen with its large table. It is there that most of her visitors settle in to talk to her. Anne’s best friend, Maureen Beirne, who doesn’t use the Internet herself, worries that Anne spends too much time with her electronic friends, but for a writer, especially a science fiction writer who has often written about transcending the limi- tations of the human body (especially in the Brain Ship series), the electronic world is just as real and compelling as the embod- ied world. In the electronic world, Anne is ageless and her skill at spinning words makes her a mistress of this venue. Not surpris- ingly, she often spent many hours a day or more online. It was becoming, in Anne’s words, “addictive.” To do a real-time chat, Anne would get on line at 4 p.m., so that it was early morning in America, late night in Australia. But she found the “adulation was too much of a good thing” and decided it was distracting her

from her writing. After cutting back on KTL, Anne still devoted at least two hours online every day; she received more than twenty e-mails a day, and those just to her private mailbox.

Many people, of course, made a pilgrimage to see Anne, among them her co-author Elizabeth Moon. Like Anne, Elizabeth is horse crazy, and Anne arranged for Elizabeth to ride at Dragon- hold Stables. Elizabeth raved about Irish horses, “Something to make any horse-lover go into a daze . . . silk and marshmallows and power underneath”; and Derval, who runs the stables, was “a force of nature, the good kind.” In a later visit, Derval and Anne encouraged Elizabeth so much that after a lesson with Derval, Elizabeth felt prepared for a hunt she was to do in England. Anne was still riding herself then, and she reveled in sharing with an- other writer her superb horses.

Despite her disinclination to travel, especially long transatlantic trips, in May 1997 Anne gave a speech at her fiftieth college re- union. Anne followed Jessye Norman, whom she described as “a hard act to follow.” Anne focused on a question germane to her own life: she asked her classmates, “What are we going to do with the rest of our lives?” Anne’s life would be complicated by changes in children’s lives. In 1998, Alec moved to Dragonhold- Underhill and divorced, but his wife and two children also moved to Ireland, living in Bray, a nearby town. In 1998, with a great deal of assistance from Anne, Geoff and Gigi adopted a child. Because of Gigi’s health and her interfaith marriage (Geoff was Catholic), Gigi and Geoff had little chance of adopting a child in Ireland. However, just as Anne was lamenting her daughter’s prospects of being a mother, two of Anne’s friends in the United States knew someone whose daughter was dealing with an un- planned pregnancy. With a great deal of effort, an arrangement was made that allowed Gigi to be in the delivery room when her son was born, February 22, 1998. Anne’s gratitude to the birth mother appears in the dedication to Nimisha’s Ship: “To a coura- geous and generous young woman / For the greatest gift / One woman can give another.” Anne had written to a friend, “For all that I have achieved I am helpless to give my daughter the one thing she wants, a child of her own.” But as it turned out, Anne’s

money and, more importantly, her connections did provide the much-wanted child.

On January 30, 1999, Anne received the very welcome news that she would be the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, presented by the American Li- brary Association. Whenever Anne is asked about her many ac- complishments and awards, she always singles out this award as the most meaningful to her. Receiving a significant award from a major literary association provided Anne with satisfaction that, despite her previous successes, she still craved. She noted that it proved her ex-husband, Wright, wrong on many accounts— she not only had made more than enough money to pay the tele- phone bill, but also had been recognized for her literary merit. Near the end of her career, Anne now looked to her literary repu- tation. Todd and Gigi were there to see their mother receive the award. During his visit, Todd explained his outline for a new Pern novel, Dragonsblood, to the two people in the world whose opinion was crucial—his mother and Gigi. They both liked it. During the trip, Gigi had a rather more hectic time than Todd because she was the designated “Mother Minder,” as the kids named the role of protecting their mother at cons, intercepting fans and keep- ing their mother from getting exhausted. However, the American Library Association, while an enormous convention of ten thou- sand, seemed at first to be less frenetic and have fewer fanatics. But just when Gigi relaxed, a longtime fan approached Anne and became very emotional, to the point of tears, at being able to talk to her idol. Todd explained that “apparently this person had only survived her adolescence only by reading Anne McCaf- frey.” Very empathic, Anne has a hard time with inarticulate, crying fans, and Gigi had to come “peel her off Mum.” Fortu- nately, Anne’s acceptance speech went smoothly, with Gigi hav- ing some of the same feelings that her mother had had when Gigi married—“feeling as if my heart had just increased substan- tially in size.”

While in New Orleans for the award, Anne celebrated, stay-

ing at the Windsor Court, the city’s only four-star hotel. She and Gigi had dinner with me and my mother at Antoine’s, an elegant

French Quarter restaurant she selected. Anne also took her friends Marilyn and Harry Alm out to dinner at Commander’s Palace, an- other of New Orleans’ world-famous (and very expensive) restau- rants. The Alms not only were fans who had become friends, but also had become a part of Anne’s writing world. Anne then went to visit her brother and his wife, Marcia, in St. Louis, finally end- ing up at Dragoncon in Atlanta in August. At Dragoncon Anne received two more awards, a Dragoncon dragon and the Julie Award for lifetime achievement in the field of the Fantastic Arts. While these awards might have suggested Anne could rest on her laurels, 1999 also saw the publication of a book with a new set- ting and heroine, Nimisha’s Ship, and another novel in the Tower and Hive series, entitled (appropriately enough) The Tower and the Hive. Nineteen ninety-nine was the culmination of a very produc- tive decade for Anne: She expanded her most famous series, the Dragonriders of Pern, with volumes entitled The Masterharper of Pern (1998) and Dragonseye (1996). She added to her Powers se- ries, written with Elizabeth Scarborough, with Power Play (1995). In addition, she began a new series, the Freedom series, with the books Freedom’s Landing (1995), Freedom’s Choice (1997), and Free- dom’s Challenge (1998). This series follows up on themes charac- teristic of her work, but does so with a completely new cast of characters and setting, including an alien species of feline.

For Anne’s fans, the only development more exciting than a

new Dragonriders of Pern novel is the prospect of a new series. Nimisha’s Ship draws on a concept from McCaffrey’s other well- loved series, the Brain Ship series. The ship in the title is an ex- perimental AI (artificial intelligence) vessel that has a person- ality. Nimisha, the human protagonist, shares many qualities of Anne’s other heroines, such as K illashandra, being brave, tal- ented, loyal, and a natural leader. Nimisha’s Ship follows the life of a very young child through mature adulthood. Because Nimisha has inherited engineering and technological interests from her father, Lord Tionel, she has a somewhat difficult relationship with her mother, Lady Rezalla, who, despite her financial acumen, fa- vors traditional views of femininity. Watching Nimisha negotiate this chasm between her masculine interests and her mother’s in-

sistence on the feminine is part of the pleasure of reading Nimi- sha’s life story. While Anne did not write her autobiography, she created fictional biographies that reveal the tensions that marked her own life.

The next year or so was very stressful for Anne, and the stresses eventually told on her health. Always concerned about the quality of her work, Anne struggled, with Gigi’s editorial help, to get the manuscript that would be Skies of Pern into shape. In a way, her Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Asso- ciation increased the pressure on her, as did concerns about her health. She worried, as she always did, whether she could still pro- duce excellent fiction. Working very hard with Dr. Stephen Beard and Dr. Scott Manley, two astronomers, Anne also struggled to get the science right in this ambitious new Pern novel. She and Shelly and Gigi argued over aspects of the plot, with Gigi and Shelly wanting Anne to drop a subplot and simplify the narrative. Gigi eventually took post-it notes and placed them throughout the manuscript, directing her mother to what Gigi saw as the plot line. She finally persuaded her mother to streamline the novel, dropping a subplot about a census on Pern. The result was one of Anne’s most successful novels in years, but at more of an emo- tional and physical cost than in previous years.

With thirty-nine of her books available for downloading, some

without proper formatting, Anne was becoming more and more concerned about Internet piracy, With Alec’s help she pursued and closed down some sites; but, for a woman who had always been generous and open to fans, this was a difficult proceeding. The downloading meant Anne had to recognize that she was be- ing taken advantage of. Money again was tight (due to Anne’s sup- porting her sons and their children’s schooling), meaning that these pirated copies were especially aggravating. Anne identified the stress of the copyright violations as one factor that led to her heart attack. Being fairy godmother became a burden, too. Anne said of those years, 2000–2001, “Money was tight and slow to ap- pear and I had so many people for whom I felt responsibility. There were other factors which resolved themselves later but nevertheless added to the pile so it was small wonder that I had a

heart attack. In fact, I had two before the second one convinced even me that I should see a doctor [I]f you are stewing about

a whole mess of things, it’s difficult to find proportions prop- erly especially with my personality which has convinced me

that only ‘I’ can solve these personal problems my way!” Shelly Shapiro, Anne’s editor, remarked that authors who are extremely successful, like Anne or Terry Brooks or Anne Rice, often have entourages of people they support. Being a personality and a suc- cessful writer and a wealthy individual can lead, as it did for Anne, to having tremendous financial responsibilities.

In 2000, Todd’s marriage with Jenna was ending with a pain- ful struggle, and Alec was trying to find ways to make himself useful to his mother. Anne supported not only Alec, but also his new partner and her children, one of whom Anne sent to an ex- pensive private school. Anne also had to fight with the planning commission about building Alec a house. The film version of Pern seemed likely; then the negotiations bogged down, worry- ing and frustrating Anne immensely. Considering the stress she was under, with financial worries, Sis very ill, and a family his- tory of heart trouble, it is not surprising that in September 2000 Anne was taken to the hospital with chest pains. In the emergency room, as she was hooked up to a heart monitor, a gentleman in a brown clerical robe came by. “I’m Father X,” he said. “May I pray for you?” “Yes,” Anne replied, “pray for a room for me.” At that instant, she was rushed to ICU, as the monitor showed her suffer- ing a heart attack. When the priest returned later, asking whether he could pray for her, Anne told him, “Yes, please give me an- other prayer—yours are so effective!” Anne had denied her heart symptoms in part because she had a trip planned to Florida that she did not want to cancel for any reason. “I was furious about the timing of this,” she confided, “because I had been invited by Colonel Pamela Melroy to attend the launch of the [space shuttle] Discovery.” Despite her disappointment, Anne found consolation in watching the shuttle pass over Ireland: “I got lucky, though, the nights in October in Ireland were amazingly clear so I could see, without benefit of binoculars, the blazing star of the Discov- ery as she made her orbits around Ireland each night. I could also

see her disengage and pull away from the International Space Station.” A regime of watching her diet and walking (which she hated) helped Anne gradually recover. The hardest part was giv- ing up butter; she loved Irish butter.

On what would have been her fiftieth wedding anniversary in January 2001, in an irony that she noted, Anne suffered a small stroke. Although she had been put on medication after the heart attack to reduce the possibility of a stroke, she had “a TIA on the right side, which is motor control, but it [was] mild and I recov- ered after several days in hospital. I was assiduous in doing cross- word puzzles to be sure the stroke had not affected language and memory.” Anne recovered well enough to throw the party of her dreams in April. April 1, 2001, was Anne’s seventy-fifth birthday gala. She was determined to have a spectacular event, and she did. She invited one hundred guests (fifty more than her for seven- tieth birthday party) and paid for many of them to fly over from the United States, including her ex-husband, Wright Johnson, and Vaughne Hansen, who worked with her agent Virginia Kidd. The enormous living room at Dragonhold-Underhill was emptied of furniture and filled with tables and chairs for a catered meal. Wearing “a very swanky red dinner gown from Harrod’s,” Anne was the belle of the ball. Tania Opland and Mike Freeman, who composed and performed music inspired by Pern’s Harper Hall, flew over from the United States, bringing their instruments. The pianist Anne had hired was greatly impressed by Tania, who, in addition to having a magnificent voice, plays a hammered dulci- mer and a violin. Tania set up the dulcimer so that she and Anne could sing together “Bells of Norwich,” Anne’s favorite song from the performers’ latest CD.

Sis’s gradually deteriorating health was one of the reasons that

Anne invited Wright to visit. Until 1991, Sis had cooked for Anne, but as she grew weaker from osteoporosis, arthritis, angina, and pancreatic cancer, Sis herself could barely eat, and Anne fixed small meals for her. It was a role reversal that was keenly painful for Anne. Sis had a horror of hospitals and nursing homes, and Anne promised to keep her at Dragonhold in her own apart- ment. Sis began falling and would forget that she wore a medical

pendant. At this time, Anne had Mary McCarthy, a local girl, move in to help with Sis. Maureen Beirne, Anne’s good friend, visited daily. When Maureen went in to see Sis on June 27, 2001, she held her hand and said, “If you want to go, dear, today would be a good day.” That Sis went so peacefully, with Maureen hold- ing her hand, meant a lot to Anne, who still tears up at the recol- lection of Sis’s death. The next year Anne tried to come to terms with this loss. Part of aging is dealing with the loss of friends and peers. The limited reconciliation with her ex-husband, Wright, continued, and Anne invited him to come over for Thanksgiving and this time he actually stayed at Dragonhold-Underhill in the guest room. While Anne still suffered tremendously without Sis at the first major holiday, Wright’s visit kept her occupied and dis- tracted from her grief. As Anne confronted the loss of Sis, she also faced and accepted her own mortality. Anne told me, not glumly, but cheerfully, “They’ll probably find me slumped over my key- board [dead].” In her brief stab at autobiography, Anne had writ- ten, “I shall continue to write—I can’t not write anyhow—until I am too frail to touch the keys of my word-processor.” By the next summer, Anne regained some of her characteristic good humor and optimism. Although she still missed Sis dreadfully, Anne was pleased that I was writing her biography. The loss of her dear friend Sis and two brushes with her own mortality (a heart attack and stroke) had left her focused in part on her literary reputa- tion. When I had first asked to write her biography in 1996, she had turned me down, saying that Todd was going to write a bi- ography (Dragonholder, 1999) and that she was going to write her own autobiography. Her fifty-page autobiographical essay was a start, but she soon found she simply didn’t have the energy or in- terest. As she told me, “I bore myself.” She welcomed me to her home, opened her files, and informed her friends and entourage to cooperate.

Uncharacteristically, in April Anne took a trip by herself to Sicily, a sort of therapeutic solace. She found a cab driver who drove her to all the places her father had been during his World War II stay in the town. She took a number of pictures, and the

beautiful vistas seem to have provided comfort. In addition, just being away from all the demands of Dragonhold-Underhill, es- pecially the financial pressures, was a relief. Anne needed to be away from the needs of others, and for once she wanted peace and quiet. She was also escaping family conflict, for, alerted by Gigi, Todd was flying over to confront his mother about her will. Gigi, who managed her mother’s correspondence, had found a copy of a will that left more to Alec than to the other siblings. Part of aging and being wealthy is dealing with the dispersal of your wealth.

Being a world-famous writer means dealing with the dispersal of your ideas, your worlds. Gigi and Todd are the only two people Anne will allow to write in the world of Pern (her oldest son, Alec, has shown no inclination to be a writer). Gigi had collabo- rated with her mother in writing three stories, “Zeus: The Howl- ing,” “Bound by Hoof and Nail,” and “Devil’s Glen,” and was cen- trally involved in editing the very successful Skies of Pern (2000). Derval, the family friend who runs Dragonhold Stables, admired Gigi’s writing, praised her “incredible mind for detail,” and ex- plained, “She has a good way of telling things.” Derval’s opinion is corroborated by Shelly Shapiro, Anne’s editor, who praised Gigi’s work with the novel, saying, “She has talent as an editor.” Although she is worried that “Mum would be a very hard act to follow,” Gigi herself has said that she would “like to write more in the Harper Hall series.” Todd had published short stories and a novel in David Drake’s universe, Slammers Down. With Anne, he co-authored two young adult novels, Dragon’s Kin and Dragon’s Fire, and has published Dragonsblood (discussed in the next chap- ter). Todd described the novel as a “passing the torch story.” The “torch passing” works in two ways: first, literally, because the book is set in time between two passes in Pern. In Todd’s words, the novel is “a story about ancestors and their gifts to their descen- dants.” But, of course, the other torch being passed, from Anne to Todd, is the gift of her fictional world of Pern.

I met with Todd at Dragon 2002 to interview him about his

work and his mother. Like his mother, Todd is a charmer, and, like

his mother, Todd enjoys telling stories. I attended three panels where he engaged fans with his wit and lively descriptions of his mom, her work, and his own work. As Prince of Pern, Todd has been groomed by his many appearances at cons with his mother. Whether he and/or Gigi will add to Pern remains to be seen. But Shelly Shapiro perhaps has it right when she says, “Pern will go on in, if nothing else, fan fiction.” She further explains that Pern “will go on because it speaks to people’s hearts. [T]he market

will tell if it [Todd’s or Gigi’s version of Pern] works or not.” Although Anne is prepared to hand Pern over to Todd, en-

trusting her legacy to him, or to Gigi if she so chooses, Anne still remains the Dragonlady in charge. Having built Alec and his part- ner, Trish, a house just up the hill (to which Trish contributed), Anne felt comfortable enough to tell Alec not to come down to Dragonhold-Underhill and raid the larder or expect meals. Todd arrived for a visit with Ceara Rose, and Anne enjoyed taking her to Dunn’s, a leading Irish department store, and buying her a pair of stylish, fringed jeans and other clothes. (Being the fairy godmother to Ceara Rose that Aunt Gladys had been to her, Anne also paid for a week of horseback-riding camp.) Later, as Todd and his mother sat down to a dinner of pizza and wine at the fa- mous kitchen table with Marianne McCarthy, an employee, and me and my husband, Les, their love and affection for each other was clear. Her bright green eyes gleaming, Anne bragged about her father’s courage during World War II, landing in Italy as the wharf was being strafed and calmly smoking a cigarette to inspire courage in his men. Todd interrupted, saying, “Your father did a number on you. He cut you out of his will because you hadn’t paid him back.” As Anne and Todd reminisced about the early years in the States, Anne’s enormous orange Maine Coon cat Pumpkin jumped on the table, sat, sneezed, and began to clean his face. Anne petted Pumpkin carefully as she spoke about Sis’s dying and her own heart attack and stroke. As she poured her fourth glass of wine, Todd gently said, “Mum, isn’t that enough?” Anne ignored him and continued to enjoy her wine. A close family friend explained that Anne is closest to Todd, an assess-

ment corroborated by Todd, who explained, “Mum sympathizes and empathizes with me because I’m the middle child, the emo- tional barometer. Sometimes she gets angry with me because I’m male.” Todd and his mother have a very affectionate, bantering relationship. For example, over pizza that first night, Todd said, “I was a spoiled teenager but I haven’t changed much.” With a smile, Anne replied, “Yes, you have—you’re older!”

As we ate pizza and listened, Ceara Rose came in, curious about the visitor. A very pretty young girl, Ceara Rose was wearing a ma- roon sweater with sparkles and new jeans that her grandmother had bought her. With a wide sweep of her arms, she accidentally knocked a basket of apples off the counter, and Anne smiled at Ceara as she picked them up. In the other room, Jen Jen, Derval Diamond’s daughter and Anne’s godchild, watched a video with Ceara Rose, and she ran into the kitchen to give Anne a big hug on her way home. Then Trish, Alec’s partner, an attractive Irish- woman with red hair, came by with her small dog, Zephyr, and Anne’s grandson Owen Thomas. Trish and Alec were babysit- ting Owen while Gigi and Geoff spent the night out, seeing Paul Simon perform. Owen and Ceara were getting to know each other the way cousins do after a long absence, with Ceara being four years older and thus in charge. They went into another room to play, but Owen, clearly devoted to Anne, called her “Nanny” on his way out. Not only Owen but those who work at Dragonhold- Underhill dote on Anne. When asked to describe her work at Dragonhold-Underhill, Cyra O’Connor replied that her twenty- two years with Anne had been “a pleasure.” Cyra’s attitude seems typical of those who work at Dragonhold-Underhill, and certainly the large number of people who appeared during my most re- cent visit there gave me the sense that there was a magical draw to Anne McCaffrey’s Hold. Janine O’Connor, a student and Anne’s cook, twenty-six years old, with red hair and a big smile, was also in the kitchen. Barbara Callahan, a costume designer (who re- cently worked on the film Reign of Fire), popped in to say hi to Anne. Barbara’s sister, Annie, lives in the cottage and maintains the gardens with her husband, Kohmang, so she came in to get

their pay. Annie Callahan also has a business in crystal essences, but she specializes in essences for children. Anne told me that she had a “rescue kit” for kids and that Anne had sent one to Ceara Rose to help her get through her parents’ divorce. I was bombarded not only with people, but also with a variety of ideas and experiences at Dragonhold-Underhill. As I prepared to leave, Anne walked me to the front door, picking up the bird feathers that were lying in the hall, one of Pumpkin’s catches, and then stooped to pinch off the dead flowers in the big clay pots by the front door. It was a touching synecdoche for her care for all the people in her home.

On the second day of my visit, Todd was snuffling with a bad cold, and as Todd, Anne and I talked around the famous kitchen table, Todd asked, “What’s that ringing?” I heard a faint sound, a “ding.” Gradually the sound grew louder, and finally Antoinette O’Connell, Anne’s homeopath, entered the room, ringing a small Balinese bell and spraying her own creation, crystal essences, to clear the air and to eliminate the possibility of infection. Antoinette said determinedly, “I am not going to get Todd’s cold.” Anne and Todd were nonplused, but I had the distinct feeling it was more than germs that Antoinette was trying to banish, a feel- ing that was confirmed a few days later when Antoinette told me in no uncertain terms that I was tiring Anne out. “She just gives and gives until she collapses,” Antoinette said, warning me that I should not bother Anne. I realized this exchange must be typical of many that take place almost daily at Dragonhold-Underhill, with people vying for control of Anne’s time, money, and energy. As Sis resented Annie, Antoinette resented me. I had repeatedly asked Anne if we should take a break, and took breaks myself to read the files. But except for one morning, Anne was always up waiting for me at the kitchen table, ready to talk. And her indomi- table will prevailed. Later in the morning, with a whole group of us sitting at the enormous oak kitchen table, Gigi came in and gave her mother a kiss. She produced a few letters for Anne to sign. Todd, Todd’s friend Bob, Gigi, and Anne sat companionably and opened the mail. Gigi told her mother a joke she heard at the Paul Simon concert exemplifying Dragonhold-Underhill’s open

conviviality. “What has ninety balls and screws old ladies? Bingo!” Everyone laughed, and by the glint in Anne McCaffrey’s eye, I saw her pleasure in the magic of being in a circle of good friends and family, among whom she felt treasured, valued, and alive. This is the magic that she re-creates for her readers in her books.

chapter 8

The Grand Master

My feet have yet to return to earth.

—Anne McCaffrey, Web page

A time of great achievement and satisfaction for Anne, the 1990s were marked by the honors she received and her enjoy- ment of financial success. Yet more triumphs remained for the twenty-first century. Each represents an important milestone for Anne personally, as well as signifying her importance as a writer. The dream of many a science fiction writer or reader, seeing a space shuttle launch as an invited guest, came true for Anne. This event held special significance, for in her own life she enacted the plot of many of her novels: overcoming physical adversity to reach a desired goal. The permanence and power of Anne’s fic- tional world Pern was solidified as she handed over the keys to Pern to her literary heir, her son Todd. As she has aged, Anne has worried about her ability to continue to take care of others and about the continuation of the fictional worlds she created. Todd’s collaborations with his mother and his own Pern novel re- assured her that Pern would continue to develop and that her lit- erary creations would continue to provide support for her family. Finally, like so many of her heroines, Anne broke through barri- ers to receive a signal honor, one rarely awarded to women: she was named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writ- ers of America. All these events demonstrate the depth of Anne’s literary accomplishments.

In October 2002, finally, Anne would get to experience some- thing she had dreamed and written about, space travel. She had made arrangements to see a launch before, but had been bitterly disappointed when events made her trip impossible. Three years earlier, in 1999, she had been invited by pilot-astronaut Pamela Ann Melroy to see the STS (space transport shuttle) launch from the VIP pad. Such arrangements are always made well in advance of a launch date. Anne had planned to go to the United States for the fall 2000 mission takeoff, but a heart attack intervened. As a science fiction writer who had always written about space travel, Anne had always wanted to see a space mission up close. Now she could not only see a launch, but feel a part of it. Anne herself was increasingly “grounded” by her ill health, and her mind had al- ways been able to travel farther than her body. As a girl during World War II, she could dream about worlds of great possibility, worlds in which women could be in space, women who had au- thority and power. Now Anne would be part of an exclusive club able to see a space shuttle launch up close. To Anne, the launch was more than a spectacle; this moment exemplified all that she had lived and dreamed and written. The experience had a per- sonal dimension, too, for the space shuttle pilot, Pam Melroy, was a fan and friend.

A female pilot, a woman who achieved the rank of colonel, an

intrepid spirit leading the way to humanity’s future, Pam embod- ied the spirit of Anne’s protagonists. A graduate of Wellesley, a sister college to Anne’s alma mater, Radcliffe, Pam had been a fan of Anne McCaffrey’s since graduate school. Pam explains, “It was when I read The White Dragon that I knew I had to have every- thing Anne had written!” Anne’s depiction of “strong, talented women” has helped Pam “feel a sense of validation about being a strong woman (or at least a strong-willed one!). I feel like they are friends and try to emulate the best qualities in them. The fact that they are portrayed in a way that also stimulates my thoughts about science and technology is also really important.” Her friendship with Pam confirmed Anne’s faith in science and the world view she created in her fictions. In a letter to her, Pam praises Anne’s

writing, especially her depictions of women characters, which she described as “not sweet do-gooders or evil temptresses like you see in so much science fiction.” Pam explained that she invited Anne to the launch in October 2000 in gratitude for “so much enjoyment for so many years.”

When she returned to Houston after her successful mission, Pam found a letter from Anne saying that “she was sorry she didn’t come to the launch, she decided to have a heart attack instead.” Pam immediately wrote Anne, sending four photos of Anne’s novel Crystal Singer in space. The photos show the book in Pam’s hands in the International Space Station, floating in the air in front of Pam, her reading the book as she exercises in the shuttle and as she is settling into her sleeping bag. In the last pic- ture, Anne’s book has a Velcro patch so Pam can keep the book from floating away! In the accompanying letter, Pam explained, “Our storage is really limited in the Shuttle, and we can’t carry up many personal items. However, room is made for one or

two personal items that the individual feels would be important to have. For me, I knew what that item would be long before I was even assigned. It would be a book.” Like Anne, Pam would read to unwind before going to sleep. Like Anne, who also reads and re-reads her favorite books, Pam said, “When I am especially busy or stressed, I prefer to go back to books I have read before and re-read a favorite part. I knew I simply had to have an old fa-

vorite to help me relax in that strange, busy environment so that I could sleep and be fresh for the next day. As you can tell from the pictures, it was my battered copy of Crystal Singer.” Pam wrote about how hard it was to describe the feeling of being in space and concluded, “I guess we need to send a writer up, right?” But in Anne’s description of crystal thrall, the trance-like experience of being one with crystal resonance, Pam found the perfect de- scription of what she experienced, back on Earth, trying to de- scribe space. She praised Anne’s power as a writer to capture what Anne dreamed and Pam experienced: “Anne, I wish I could ade- quately thank you for the enjoyment that you have brought me as a master storyteller.” Pam’s words are a fine tribute, but her actions speak even more loudly: astronauts are only allowed to

bring two personal items into space, and both times Pam chose to bring one of Anne’s books (Crystal Singer in 2000; The White Dragon in 2002).

In March 2001, Alec sent Pam a note that his mother had had a stroke and invited her to come to Dragonhold-Underhill. Pam then planned to visit Anne in Ireland in the fall of 2001, but when she was chosen for her second shuttle mission, she had to move her visit to Dragonhold-Underhill forward to August 5–7, 2001. On Anne’s Web page, you can see the pictures she has posted of Pam’s visit to Dragonhold-Underhill. Anne wrote, “My feet have yet to return to earth after Pam Melroy’s recent visit. Hav-

ing her as a fan is flattering indeed, but being able to honestly call her my friend is the far greater joy.” The photos show Pam in Anne’s office, in front of the photos Pam sent to Anne, in her study, clinking wine glasses at Anne’s kitchen table, and talking at the table with Anne’s good friend and co-author Richard Woods. Pam enjoyed her visit, describing Dragonhold-Underhill as “an incredible household. When I got there I realized that Anne

loves people and life and proceeds to encourage it in every way all around her [T]he sense I got was that Anne protects and

cares for her family and friends and they reciprocate beautifully. Anne should install a revolving door on the front of her house be- cause people are always coming and going!” Pam’s appreciation of Dragonhold-Underhill marks her transition from fan to friend, a friend whom Anne treasures. Anne put the photos of Pam and her book on her Web site; the originals appear in a prominent place on her study wall. Befriending an astronaut was a thrill for Anne as well as a tribute to her work, but for Anne the culminat- ing experience was to witness a launch herself.

At the Legible Leftovers bookstore in Longwood, Florida, Anne signed 170 books for fans. She stopped only briefly to pet the store’s very large, friendly, all-black cat, regally ensconced in a large wicker baby basket. Wearing a white Crystal Singer T-shirt, Anne tucked her large sunglasses at the top of the shirt. Wearing only a little lipstick, with her hair pulled back, she was at ease and energized by the large group. Still adjusting to the heat, she had a small circulating fan nearby. Despite the huge crowd, Grainne

Sullivan, a fan, saw that Anne enjoyed the home-baked goods, in- cluding a delicious and not-too-sweet pecan pie, and that she was supplied with plenty of root beer to get her through the long lines of fans wanting Anne’s autograph. She and Antoinette (Anto) O’Connell, the family friend who accompanied her to Florida, then had lunch with over a dozen fans.

The space shuttle was all set to go and the weather forecast for Florida was perfect. But Hurricane Lili intervened. For the first time ever, a space shuttle launch was postponed because of a hur- ricane headed toward Houston, where Mission Control was shut down. Anne and Antoinette were at a party thrown by Pamela Melroy’s parents. The Melroy family was having a reunion, and they included Anne in their “gather.” As usual, Anne found her- self part of another family. She had to wait five more days until Atlantis finally took off. Anne spent part of the time at a Per- nese Gather in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Anne had invited Elizabeth Moon, a favorite co-author of hers, who would also be going to the shuttle launch, to the luncheon. Anne wore a black T-shirt that bore the legend, “Anne McCaffrey/Elizabeth Moon, Sassinak,” the first novel they wrote together. The T-shirt depicts a space-suited warrior. Anne was surrounded by her fans, some holding small stuffed fire-lizards, based on the small dragon-related creatures so important on Pern. The paraphernalia signified the impor- tance of Anne’s words, turned into icons by her devoted readers. At the gather, one of her fans, Robin (aka MasterHarper57, his Web-site name), presented Anne with a plaque in appreciation for her help with a post 9-11 fund-raising event. Robin wanted to raise money for a large American flag, and Anne had sent him au- tographed copies of some of her books for the auction. As a fan and observer of the space shuttle launch, Anne would purchase souvenirs and mementos, but she was constantly reminded that to her readers her presence was just as rare and engrossing.

Although she is a workaholic, Anne actually found it “kind of

fun, not to have any things we had to do.” As it had for Pam when the first shuttle was given extra time in space, Anne found her- self suspended in time. For once, Anne was a member of a cap- tive audience, waiting for the shuttle launch to be finalized. With

Anto, Anne went shopping, and she bought herself some lighter- weight clothes to help her cope with the Florida heat. She bought everyone at Dragonhold-Underhill T-shirts from the Space Sta- tion store; some listed this mission, “STS 121,” and others pro- claimed a motto that might be Anne’s own: “Failure is not an op- tion!” At the health store, Anne, who has sworn by vitamins ever since they helped her cope with insomnia and depression, fru- gally stocked up on vitamins that are cheaper in the States than in Ireland. After she shopped, Anne and Anto toured the NASA museum with its impressive display of rockets, including a shuttle. The line of people waiting to sit in the model cockpit was too long, and since Anne had already had the pleasure of sitting in a space shuttle cockpit in Houston in the 1980s, she skipped that part of the museum. With her avid interest in food, Anne par- ticularly enjoyed the display of food that the astronauts would eat. Pam had told her that all astronauts bring Tabasco sauce “to spark up the rather bland prepackaged food.” As enjoyable as all these activities were, they were all just marking time until the big event, the actual launch. After the delay of five days due to Hurri- cane Lili, on October 7, 2002, the launch was finally ready to go. The usual crowds of tens of thousands of spectators gathered for a several-mile radius. A lucky couple of hundred, including Anne, would watch the launch more closely, from the VIP stands.

From their hotel in Cocoa Beach, Anne and Anto drove over

to the Space Center, whose immense parking lots seem enormous enough for a shuttle to land on. At the protocol office, Anne stood in line to sign in, get her hand stamped, and receive the ticket for the bus ride to the launch site. In an enormous, air- conditioned building, there were food, rest rooms, and displays for those waiting until the launch was imminent. The day’s beau- tiful 84 degrees was far too hot for Anne, used to Ireland’s cool and misty weather. Across a lagoon, on the Banana River bleach- ers of Pad B, Ann, Anto, and a large crowd gathered to watch the launch. The national anthem was played, which got Anne in a festive mood, except she found she had forgotten some of the words, a sign both of the momentousness of the occasion and her Irish citizenship. It had been a long time since Anne had

sung the national anthem or even heard it. With Anne’s journey back to the United States, the McCaffreys had come full circle. A large timer lit up and all eyes watched the countdown and the shuttle, in place and ready to be launched. When the countdown reached 10, the huge crowd counted along with the timer. “10, 9, 8 . . . , Liftoff!” At 3:46 p.m., the shuttle took off. Clouds blos- somed from the end of shuttle, then flames appeared, and slowly Atlantis glided from the launch pad, with the crowd cheering wildly. Shock waves appeared in the lagoon, and the noise of the engines, while not deafening, filled the air. Close to tears, Anne controlled herself, not wanting to cry: “It was so incredible to be there, seeing it happen, hearing the noise and feeling the burst of pride and achievement as the Atlantis continued happily upward, swirling the clouds at its tail and gradually veering westward to get in line for its orbital adventure.” As the Atlantis rose into the skies, Anne’s book was along on the journey. The shuttle rose and then rolled on its back as it must to continue its flight. The sky was so clear that Anne saw the booster shell as it separated and turned end over end and fell into the sea. From her tour, Anne knew they would send a ship out to retrieve it, and her practical mind approved and noted the recycling. Far too quickly, though, Atlantis was out of sight and the space launch was over. Back at the hotel, Anne turned on the in-house NASA channel, watching the replay of the launch constantly over the next few days. She had originally scheduled her trip so that she would be able to see the Atlantis land as well as take off. But because of the delays, Anne decided to return home as scheduled. The Atlantis would arrive back in Florida after she was back in Ireland. At home in Ireland, she would relive the launch in her heart and imagination.

And she would return to her computer to write, creating worlds

in which space travel is routine and peaceful, sharing her elation at the space launch in fictional worlds even more powerful than the real thing. She would do so in concert with her son Todd, produc- ing their first joint novel, Dragon’s Kin, in 2003, and Dragon’s Fire in 2006. Dedicated to Anne’s brother Kevin and Todd’s daugh- ter Ceara Rose, the first novel bears all the hallmarks of Anne’s fiction, but its publication marked a very public passing of the

torch to her son. Dragon’s Kin reads very much like Anne’s much- acclaimed Harper Hall Trilogy and, like that series, features very young protagonists (ten years old at the book’s beginning). With a very accessible prose style, the novel could easily be character- ized as young adult fiction. Yet the messages and patterns are de- monstrably part of Anne’s fictive universe. The novel employs epi- graphs from Pern ballads, as Anne’s first Dragonriders of Pern novel, Dragonflight, did. The protagonists are juvenile outsiders, struggling to find a place in their society and, in the process, re- sisting authority figures. Characteristic elements of physical disas- ters, the traumatic loss of family members, the saving grace of a dragon’s love, political infighting, and the centrality of music as a redemptive element appear in this novel, as they do not only in Anne’s Pern series, but in her other series as well.

Anne and Todd have developed a new twist on Pern society

(rather impressively so, for this is the sixteenth book in the Dragonriders of Pern). Where other books have focused either on dragons or fire-lizards, here Anne turns to a creation present in the first Dragonriders of Pern novel, Dragonflight, the Watch- whers, dragon-like creatures that are telepathic to a degree, can fly, go between, and, perhaps most importantly, bond with human beings. While not as awe-inspiring as dragons or as beautiful as fire-lizards, Watch-whers have an important role to fulfill. Focusing on Watch-whers’ ability to sense heat, young miners’ children save their families during a mine disaster. In her other Dragon- riders of Pern novels, Anne focused on guilds and activities near to her heart: Dragonriders (like equestrians) and Harpers (sing- ers and musicians). This book bears the impress of Todd’s engi- neering training in the focus on mines, barely mentioned in any other book. Family allusions also pepper the book, including, most notably, the appearance of a character nicknamed “Sis.” Sis, of course, is the name of Anne’s sister-in-law, who lived with her for many years, dying in 1996. Terregar, the smith who marries the main character’s sister, seems a likely parallel to Geoff Ken- nedy, who married Gigi, Anne’s daughter (to whom this book is dedicated). And it is perhaps not too farfetched to see in a brief reference to a man who drank and beat his children a sign of

Todd’s lingering bitterness at his own father. But the fun of spot- ting family references or inside allusions pales beside the plea- sure, for most readers, of entering another Pern community. If this novel seems a bit sketchy in terms of the great emotion that Anne’s characters usually evoke, it may be ascribed to the diffi- culties of co-authorship, also noted in some of Anne’s other col- laborations. The plot, mise-en-scène, and features, though, are all palpably Pern.

Dragon’s Kin, the most recent collaboration of Anne and Todd, was crowned with the signal success of being on the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks. Focusing on a wide range of characters from childhood to adulthood, this novel contains many deaths of sympathetic characters, far more than in other Pern novels. Taking place in Pern history when Thread is soon to appear, the narrative wrestles with the plight of the “Shunned,” characters exiled from Holds and society, and hence starving and in great danger of perishing when Thread finally does arrive. A young orphan who cannot speak, Pellar, provides narrative focus, another typical McCaffrey feature, focusing on a character with a difference. Pellar’s other skills more than compensate for his in- ability to speak. This novel expands the Pern base of knowledge, as a new form of firestone is discovered and the Watch-whers’ importance is understood. The events of this 2006 novel bear the guiding hand of Todd, as many of the characters and plot elements are drawn from his own, single-authored Pern novel, Dragonsblood. Todd’s Dragonsblood, appeared in fall 2005, and it is dedicated to his sister, Georgeanne Kennedy. Dragonsblood is a four-hundred-page-plus adult novel, including references to sexu- ality, complex and violent conflicts, and many deaths, both of dragons and people. It is easy to see how Dragonsblood evolved from Todd’s collaboration with his mother. Many of the same characters appear in both Dragonsblood and Dragon’s Kin, most notably Kindan and Dragonrider J’Trel and his dragon, Talith, among others. The plot follows that of Anne’s first Dragonriders of Pern novel, Dragonflight, including the focus on an orphaned young woman with special Talents, a queen dragon, a mystery solved by attention to Pernese ballads, and chapters with epi-

graphs from Pernese ballads and books. But while he relies on his mother’s framework, Todd creates a Pern novel that is more integrated, less romantic, and more conflict based. His complex alternating structure, taking two narrative strands, one follow- ing events four hundred years in the past as the Pernese begin losing their technology and one set in a future where medical and technical knowledge has been lost, allows the reader to ex- perience the span of the planet’s history. The intense yearning of characters for connection appears in the novel, but Todd’s in- terest seems to lie more with the science than with the characters. Though he develops a couple of romances, they seem almost per- functory. And while especially in recent years, Anne has been re- luctant to kill characters off, Todd covers the events of the Plague years, killing off a large percentage of the population, and then follows that up with an epidemic among the dragons that deci- mates both the animals and their riders.

It is tempting, too, to see, in Todd’s portrait of an older female

scientist, a version of his relationship with his own aging mother. While their relationship is more positive than the one depicted between Wind Blossom and her daughter Emorra, the depiction of aging is heartfelt and compelling, especially of Wind Blossom’s awareness of the aging process. Of course, it is just as likely that Todd is recalling his grandmother McCaffrey’s difficulties as she aged. But that he includes an older woman as a heroine, key to solving problems not only in her own time, but even four hundred years in the future, suggests the degree to which he loves and ad- mires his mother. After all, she has been a heroic figure, creat- ing and solving problems on Pern and her other fictional worlds and in her real world, helping friends and family and fellow writ- ers. Perhaps the most important aspect of Dragon’ s Kin, Dragon’s Fire, and Dragonsblood is whether they meet the readers’ test of ac- ceptability. As Anne and Todd’s editor, Shelly Shapiro, told me, “the marketplace will decide” whether Todd is a worthy heir to his mother’s worlds. Both books have sold well. Certainly anyone who saw Todd clutching his mother’s Grand Master Award could see that he liked the feeling, and no doubt yearns for a Nebula Award of his own. After all, as a young boy, he helped his mother

create the first trophies, so a Nebula Award for Todd McCaffrey would certainly seem to be not only in his blood, but also in his history.

In February 2005, Anne McCaffrey learned she received the only major award that had still eluded her grasp—the coveted Grand Master Award, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for lifetime achievement. The award brought Anne McCaffrey to the United States again—this time to Chi- cago, where the presentation of the Grand Master Award was the highlight of the Nebula Award weekend. In the announcement of her selection, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America praised Anne McCaffrey for having “done much to bring new readers into the genre” and also for having “nurtured the careers of many writers.” “Her groundbreaking literature and service to SFFWA” were also cited. Only the twenty-second writer to be rec- ognized by the SFFWA as a Grand Master, Anne McCaffrey is only the third woman writer to be so honored (the others are Andre Norton and Ursula K. Le Guin). In concert with the SFFWA meet- ing, at a Border’s bookstore, along with many other authors, Anne autographed books. In her new, shorter haircut and a peasant In- dian blouse, Anne was surrounded by friends. Her good friend Marilyn Alm literally covered Anne’s back, standing behind her and keeping a hand on Anne’s chair to block out fans. To Anne’s right, her co-author and friend Elizabeth Scarborough looked on as Anne chatted with Lois McMaster Bujold. In addition to Bujold, who had won a Nebula for best novel, Anne also got to see her old friend Frederick Pohl. As they posed for a group photo- graph, Anne again let Todd hold her Grand Master Award as she leaned over to talk to a handsome young Neil Gaiman, the cere- mony’s toastmaster.

At the Grand Master reception, Anne was toasted by a number

of writers, and she was presented with a large cake with a screened Michael Whelan design of her dragons. The cake read, “Con- gratulations Anne McCaffrey Grand Master 2005,” and like a wed- ding or birthday celebration, Anne did the honors of cutting the cake. A large poster board of Dragon’s Kin stood to the right of the cake. Of all her many books, Anne chose to feature her

last, written with Todd. Anne was resplendent in a purple shell and a bright, multicolored, sequined jacket with matching pants. The Grand Master Award provided a fitting tribute to Anne, and one that meant a great deal to her. As one of the early officers in the Science Fiction Writers of America, Anne had been the first woman to win both the Hugo and the Nebula (for “Weyr Search”). As Neil Gaiman explained, “People who make up sf are still a family and fundamentally supportive. [T]he Nebu-

las are our way of saying ‘thank you’ to those who produce ster- ling work.”

Throughout the SFFWA meeting, this theme was repeated. But the evening presentation of the Nebula Awards was more formal. Catherine Asaro, herself a Nebula award winner and the presi- dent of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, came to the podium; she praised Anne, saying, “For most of my life I have admired Anne McCaffrey. I have loved her work unabash- edly. . . . Miss McCaffrey has offered untold readers the joy of her work.” As Catherine announced that Anne was the 2005 Sci- ence Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association Grand Master, the assembled ballroom rose and gave a standing ovation. Catherine presented the Lucite award containing images of the earth, a nebula, and stars to Anne, and the two hugged. Todd reached over to take the award, saying to his mother, “Can we hold it so it doesn’t drop?” and commenting, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody willingly hand over a Nebula or Hugo.”

Diana Tyler, Anne’s longtime agent, rose to speak next. She

had flown over from England and in her clipped British accent praised Anne as a person and as a writer: “There is little to say about her writing that this distinguished gathering doesn’t al- ready know: brilliant, imaginative, and sensitive are just three words that come to mind. But I know Anne not just as a writer but as kind, generous, and warm-hearted, and someone who ex- tends a helping hand to those in difficulties.” Diana cited Anne’s legions of fans as evidence of her good-heartedness, explaining, “Many a time I have watched her sign bag-fulls of books with real pleasure.” She concluded, “Anne is a wonderful person who has created worlds from words and gives such pleasure to so many

people. Thank you, Anne. You richly deserve the distinction of Grand Master. We all love you.” After Diana’s accolade, Anne moved to the podium and, in a characteristically self-effacing fashion, praised another Grand Master, Andre Norton, who had recently died. Holding up the jade bead necklace she was wear- ing, Anne told the crowd, “Andre Norton made this necklace for me after she heard I had been named a Grand Master. It was prob- ably the last thing she made. As you know, she was responsible for my writing The White Dragon. We all miss her—she was a marvel- ous person.” Anne broke off and, seemingly at a loss for words, held up the necklace again, nodded, and stepped aside.

Then Todd moved over to the podium and said, “We here in SFFWA have a history of helping each other. I’ve had the honor of knowing Anne McCaffrey from inside and out for forty-nine years,” which produced titters. He continued, “I would like to re- member those who helped raise Mum up.” As he named each person, he explained how each had contributed to Anne’s success: Andre Norton, A. J. Budrys, Ed Firman, Judith Merril, Virginia Kidd, Damon Knight, everybody at Milford, John Campbell, Frank Kelly Freas, Judy Lynn Benjamin Del Rey, Gordie Dickson, Ian Ballantine, Betty Ballantine, Isaac Asimov. At Asimov’s name, Todd stopped and smiled; demurring, “I am a baritone,” Todd pro- ceeded to sing the words Isaac had sung to Anne so many years ago at a Worldcon: “Anne McCaffrey, Open your golden gates.” The audience, familiar with this science fiction anecdote, began to chuckle, anticipating the punch line, Todd repeating Anne’s words to Isaac: “Ten minutes alone in a room with me, and you’ll know I’m no Tinkerbell!” Anne and the crowd laughed together. Then Todd turned more serious and announced that he also wanted to remember people who weren’t in science fic- tion and said that he would do his best to give them voice: he named John Greene; Colonel Hugh McCaffrey; Sis, Anne’s be- loved sister-in-law; and Anne’s father, G. H. McCaffrey. At each name, Anne covered her face with her hands, somewhat over- come, and wept gently. Todd gave his mum a hug and kiss and handed her the Grand Master Nebula Award (a Lucite block), announcing, “There’s one final ceremony to commemorate [this

occasion]. In your honor, and in honor of Pern—there was a mo- ment of silence as Todd and the three granddaughters shook cans of silly string--threadfall!!” And they showered Ann with the silly string, festooning her hair, the award, and the general area, to the audience’s applause and laughter. It was very clearly Anne’s crowd and Anne’s night.

The future of Pern seems set; Anne and Todd have three col- laborations, and Todd has two more solo novels under contract. Having sold the rights to the Dragonriders of Pern to Copper- heart Entertainment, Anne hopes to have a dear wish fulfilled: to see Dragonflight on the big screen. Her eightieth birthday, April 1, 2006, was a gala affair with eighty people at a large, catered affair at Dragonhold-Underhill. A few days later, she had another knee replaced: as she herself repeatedly says, “I can’t recommend aging for the faint-hearted.” Yet as she deals with aging and its stresses, she has the consolation and reward of her life’s work. In June 2006, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame—significantly, she was the only inductee present (two of the other inductees were deceased, and the third, George Lucas, sent in a video acceptance speech). As Anne’s own fiction offers alternative endings for her characters’ lives, so her own life de- fies a conventional conclusion. Engaged and active, she knows that her hopes, fears, and dreams will remain alive in her books and her son’s books.

In her eighth decade, Anne McCaffrey can look back on a

life well lived, a life that has had an impact far beyond her circle of family and friends. Anne brought emotion and heart to sci- ence fiction, and she exerted a powerful influence on more than one generation of readers and writers. Any convention appear- ance by Anne provides overwhelming evidence of her impact on the lives of her readers, who thank her for providing them with support and hope, often when they were going through difficult times in their lives. The extensive fan community and fan groups testify to the passion and dedication of her readers to her fic- tional worlds. As Anto O’Connell describes, “She opened so many young people’s minds to limitless possibilities.” Not only for young people, but also for adults, especially women, Anne has provided

alternative narratives. Her collaborator Annie Scarborough con- curs, explaining, “I believe in dragons more than Prince Charm- ing.” Jody Lynn Nye praises her as “one of the first women since Mary Shelley . . . to use her own name to write science fiction [and create] strong and effective women heroes.” In 2006, we take for granted the world that women like the ground-breaking, “bucking the system” Anne McCaffrey helped make possible. As- tronaut and pilot and soon-to-be shuttle commander Pamela Mel- roy may be one of the most famous of Anne’s readers to give her credit, but many of the rest of us, less heralded, acknowledge the meaning and inspiration her books have provided. Anne’s life bears testimony to Carolyn Heilbrun’s assertion that “women come to writing . . . simultaneously with self-creation.” As I hope this biography has shown, Anne’s life reflects the passion and commitment so evident in her books, and she herself remains as effective and compelling a model as any of heroines.

SOU RC E NOT ES

Anne McCaffrey’s personal papers at Dragonhold-Underhill, her first literary agent Virginia Kidd’s collection of correspondence and papers, and numerous interviews provide the major sources for this biography. In- cluded are interviews with Susan Allison, Marilyn and Harry Alm, Maureen Beirne, Jean Bigelow (by phone), Derval Diamond, Annett Francis, Vaughne Hansen, Alec Johnson, H. Wright Johnson, Georgeanne Kennedy, Virginia K idd, Anne McCaffrey, Kevin and Marci McCaffrey, Andi McCaffrey, Todd J. McCaffrey, Pota Meier (by phone), Antoinette O’Connell, Elizabeth Anne Scarborough, Shelly Shapiro, Richard Woods; and mail or e-mail interviews with Betty Ballantine, Jody Lynn Nye, Pamela Melroy, and Elizabeth Moon. For literary analysis of her work, see my previous book, Anne McCaffrey: A Critical Companion, and its CD updates.

in t r o d u ctio n

Quotations

“A blazing fire . . . too.” Elizabeth Moon, e-mail, 1-28-03.

“Horses help you . . . slightly humble.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 3-5-02 “It was such a surprise . . . in my hands.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey,

7-14-01.

“He didn’t believe . . . support.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 1. “I made this . . . your books” Comments at signings at Dragoncon, 8-30-03

and 8-31-03.

“It is great . . . emotions.” Lefanu, 24.

“as a tongue-in-cheek . . . on the spot.” A. McCaffrey, “Hitch Your Dragon to a Star,” 282.

“from margin to center.” Donawerth, 45.

“The dragons offer . . . relationship.” Ibid., 55. “The hero . . . planets.” Ibid., 27.

Source Notes for Pages 10–23

“After seven . . . women.” A. McCaffrey, “Hitch,” 283. “Emotional content . . . elements.” Ibid.,” 283.

“With the . . . literature.” Ibid., 287. “It became . . . to.” Larbalestier, 179.

“I bore myself.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-24-02. “I feel like . . . part of it.” Dragoncon, 8-31-03.

c h a pt er 1:

an i r i s h f a mil y h er it a ge

Selina Perkins is remembered in a way that suggests that she was domi- nated by her husband, who was an imposing presence. While Grandfather McCaffrey was both large and tall, his wife was a petite four feet high. While Selina herself was a native Bostonian, her family had emigrated from En- gland in 1632. This date is recorded in McCaffrey family lore, but Selina’s English heritage and Pilgrim status appear to have had little effect on the McCaffrey family. The Statistical Abstract of the United States provided the in- formation about educational degrees in 1936.

In Dragonholder, Todd McCaffrey tells a wonderful story of his grandfather, the Kernel, defying George Patton, who made an unreasonable request that the Italians not use the main road into Agrigento because their water carts were slowing down military traffic. G. H. countermanded the order, hence ensuring he would remain only a colonel for the rest of his career, but doing right by the Italian people. In so doing, he followed the pattern his father had set of challenging authority for a good cause. According to Todd, the reporter John Hersey created his famous Colonel Joppolo in A Bell for Adona based in part on G. H. McCaffrey. Dragonholder is also the source for other examples of McCaffrey premonitions.

In her famous study, Helen L. Koch found that “birth order interacted most frequently with the factor of sex. When a child and his or her sibling were of the same sex, there were few differences in characteristics that could be attributed to birth order; when they were opposite in sex, there were many differences” (see Yahraes, 2). Martha Trachtenberg describes Anne’s dressing up her cat in clothes.

Quotations

“Help Wanted: . . . apply.” Ryan, 14. “Protestant foreigners.” Ryan, 42. “still . . . jobs.” Ryan, 14.

“My grandfather . . . him.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-26-01. “The old house . . . around it.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-26-01. “Irish policemen . . . Sunday.” Ryan, 137.

“No one . . . beat.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-26-01. “Grandfather . . . complaints.” Ibid.

“a family trait . . . son.” Ibid. “had also . . . lifeboat.” Ibid.

“a hedgerow . . . Catholics.” Ibid. “I cannot . . . plagues me.” Ibid.

“Bad food . . . industry.” Brizzi, 48.

“it would do.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 6-20-02. “If I . . . status.” A. McCaffrey, “Retrospection,” 20.

“parade ground voice” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-20-01. “different . . . ‘odd.’” Ibid.

“My parents . . . color.” Ibid.

“were sent . . . ignore.” Ibid., 9-5-01.

“Once we . . . might not.” Ibid., 8-28-01.

“Dad and . . . other.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey to Todd, 2-5-98. “had a . . . phrases.” Ibid.

“he had. . .scarce.” Ibid.

“A precise. . .disorder.” Ibid.

“As the . . . pet.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 2. “Dad . . . him.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01.

“He pushed himself hard.” Interview with Kevin McCaffrey, 6-18-03. “how . . . superiority.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 2. “Gruff . . . humor.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 26.

“paternal . . . perfectly.” Ibid., 39.

“My Dad was the famous one” Letter to Virginia Kidd, 6-22-67.

“Whatever bonding . . . by me.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey to Todd, 2-5-98.

“was the first . . . troops” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 12. “was a . . . his kids.” Ibid., 4.

“I think . . . on the spot.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-5-02. “I got . . . fixation.” Letter to Virginia Kidd, 6-22-67.

“His life . . . inconceivable.” Woolf, 208.

“My father’s death . . . wobbled.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-28-01. “Is it . . . women?” A. McCaffrey, “Retrospection,” 22.

“because . . . them out.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-02-01. “Was in . . . life.” Ibid., 10-14-03.

“The Depression . . . crashed.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 22. “Mother paid . . . support.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-28-01. “two . . . me about.” Ibid., 8-28-01.

“The most . . . neglected.” Yahraes, 4. “middle . . . around.” Hall, 25.

“They’re . . . care of.” Ibid.

“ ‘I . . . different.’” Ibid.

“allowed . . . team.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01. “to melt . . . toys.” Ibid.

“I’ll . . . with me.” Ibid., 8-29-01. “I think . . . the girl.” Ibid. “Hugh . . . on him.” Ibid., 9-5-01.

“To my . . . write.” H. McCaffrey, v.

“I was . . . circumstances.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01. “I remember . . . it over.” Ibid.

“devised . . . table.” E-mail from Kevin McCaffrey to Todd, 3-10-98. “parents . . . her wrists.” Ibid.

“a godawful, ego-centric extrovert” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01.

“I made . . . profiles.” Ibid., 8-29-01.

“had a . . . knew it.” Ibid., 9-5-01. “the least popular.” Yahraes, 6.

“[I] would talk . . . young life.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01. “I remember . . . Grandmother.” Ibid.

“skivving . . . fun.” Ibid.

“would thump on the wall.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey to Todd, 3-28-98. “It was . . . completely.” Ibid.

“When . . . lives it.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26-02.

“was always . . . munitions.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01. “I remember . . . group.” Ibid.

“remember[s] . . . future.” Ibid.

c h a pt er 2:

ado l escence and a t im e of w ar

Many of Anne McCaffrey’s characters, such as G-D, who reclaims her given name of Cita in Powerlines, and Helva, the Brain Ship who changes her designation when she partners a new brawn or partner, rename themselves The Negro in New Jersey (by the Interracial Committee of the New Jersey Conference of Social Work) singles out Montclair, Anne’s hometown, for

having an integrated community center.

Anderson’s Wartime Women provides the context to understand women’s workforce participation during World War II (4).

In Dragonsong, for example, the main character is a strong runner. Her speed saves her as she sprints to safety from the life-destroying Thread. In Damia, the title character saves her brother from being struck on the head by a rock. This second example may be a fantasy on Anne’s part, to be able physically to protect her brothers—one deathly ill, the other at war.

Quotations

“writes . . . fit in.” Interview with Susan Allison, 9-26-02. “I . . . I was.” Anne McCaffrey letter to Hutson, 4-21-93. “ ‘under control.’” Pueblo Chieftain, 4-27-85.

“She . . . girlfriends.” Interview with Kevin McCaffrey, 6-18-03. “also not . . . much.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-02-01. “adolescent girls . . . appearance.” Pipher, 55.

“With . . . time.” Bro, 3.

“not a pretty girl.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-02-01. “one of . . . Mother.” Interview with Kevin McCaffrey, 6-18-03. “much nicer.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 12-17-01.

“I wished . . . distinctive.” Ibid.

“I think . . . time.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 12-19-01. “a good . . . writer.” Ibid.

“We are . . . master.” Snedeker, Forgotten Daughter, 18. “Unselfishness . . . cure.” Ibid., 123.

“about a very . . . place.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-02-01.

“he wrote . . . view.” Contemporary Authors Online. “ ‘I’ll die . . . knees.” Grey, 77.

“a normal . . . associate with.” Radcliffe sophomore questionnaire. “The school . . . no difference.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-22-01.

“eighty-six . . . white women.” Interracial Committee of the New Jersey Con- ference of Social Work, 25.

“Ella . . . work with.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-22-01. “also had . . . they had.” Ibid.

“decided . . . weren’t.” Ibid., 10-17-01. “women could . . . children.” Ibid., 4-11-02. “we just . . . weekends.” Ibid., 2-26-02.

“sort of . . . me in.” Ibid., 10-22-01.

“I wasn’t . . . she was.” Ibid.

“pretty self-reliant . . . did fine.” Ibid. “ ‘a southern . . . Weyr.” Brizzi, 48.

“It was difficult . . . assignments.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-2-01. “When our history . . . class.” Ibid., 11-27-01.

“not an Old Family.” Ibid., 1-7-02.

“In a group . . . by doing so.” Stuart Hall file. “She has some . . . poems.” Ibid.

“She is . . . resentment.” Ibid.

“very much . . . available.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-2-01. “a sport . . . player.” Ibid.

“We were . . . could play.” Ibid., 10-16-01.

“The Army . . . quack.” Montclair High School Yearbook.

“I knew . . . unscathed.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-16-01. “Never . . . enough.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 25–26.

“dancing . . . with mother.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-2-01. “a good . . . illness.” Ibid., 10-16-01.

“He was . . . movies.” Ibid. “whereas . . . antediluvian!” Ibid. “I don’t . . . home.” Ibid.

“I had a . . . Moultrie.” Ibid.

“[I] enjoyed . . . Society.)” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-2-01. “strong hands . . . concert.” Ibid.

“lunch . . . them.” Ibid. “imperative . . . career,” Ibid.

“is Annie.” Interview with Vaughne Hansen, 2-18-02.

c h a pt er 3:

co ll ege d ay s and m a rr i a ge

Quotations

“the right college for me.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-22-01. “to have . . . abroad.” Radcliffe college file.

“I . . . studying.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 11-27-01.

“We landed . . . upperclasspersons.” Radcliffe 1947 50th Reunion, 1997, 3.

“Poise . . . tabu.” “Do You Know the Answer? Public Appearance and Poise at Radcliffe,” reprinted in Radcliffe 1947 50th Reunion, 1997.

“especially . . . them.” Radcliffe college file. “Lee . . . deep.” Ibid.

“still . . . conscientious.” Ibid.

“Too show-off . . . nice one.” Ibid., 1-6-47. “A little . . . deficiencies.” Ibid.

“trimming her down.” Ibid., Appointments Bureau, 3-18-47. “Of course . . . can I?!” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 5-7-97. “in God . . . call it” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-14-02.

“the trappings and the rituals.” Ibid. “God did . . . hypocritical.” Ibid., 1-13-02.

“for his . . . corrections.” A. McCaffrey, “The Utopian Novel,” i. “unfortunately . . . work” Ibid., 19.

“To be frank . . . experience.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 11-27-01. “once . . . other girls.” Ibid.

“He would . . . was concerned.” Ibid. “plenty of makeup.” Ibid.

“[she] had . . . fun.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-6-02.

“I was . . . there.” Anne McCaffrey, interview by Todd McCaffrey, 5-7-97. “Chickory . . . Brazil.” Ibid.

“an imposing . . . character.” Phone interview with Jean Bigelow, 1-3-03. “expected . . . did.” Phone interview with Jean Bigelow, 6-25-03.

“he didn’t . . . over.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 12-17-01.

“an extremely . . . conspicuous.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 5-7-97. “She seems . . . the salt.” Radcliffe college file.

“ahead of its time.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 5-7-97.

“Her discussions . . . as [she] did.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 10-16-02. “But I . . . Circus.” Ibid.

“I was . . . ballet.” Ibid.

“met . . . picky.” Ibid., 12-17-01. “Mother . . . roses.” Ibid.

“I did . . . everything.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-14-02. “Robert Goheen . . . students.” Letter from Wright Johnson, 1-11-02. “Granville-Barker . . . throughout.” Johnson, 22.

“a small group . . . history.” Letter from Wright Johnson, 1-11-02. “shook up . . . factual.” Ibid.

“good-looking . . . attraction.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 12-19-01. “hav[ing] . . . lunch.” Ibid.

“Mother . . . disagreed.” Ibid., 1-8-02. “felt no hurt or rejection.” Ibid., 1-14-02. “one of . . . accents.” Ibid., 1-8-02.

“I never . . . anybody.” Interview with Pota Lewis Meier, 1-30-03. “got so . . . hooked.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 3. “I . . . City.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-3-02.

“[I] did . . . drink.” Ibid.

“You’ll go . . . your life?” A. McCaffrey, “Retrospection,” 22. “alone . . . work.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-8-02.

“a strange . . . all?’” Friedan, 11.

“I knew . . . credit for.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-3-02. “She . . . activity.” Ibid.

“She . . . be.” Ibid., 12-18-02.

“I was . . . moment.” Ibid., 2-3-02. “a very . . . delivered.” Ibid. “Having . . . did.” Ibid.

“knocked out.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 3-5-02. “a beautiful . . . dainty.” Ibid.

“Clearly, . . . child.” Ibid.

“dad . . . said.” Ibid., 4-12-02. “I try . . . child.” Ibid.

“found she . . . antics.” Hargreaves, 4.

“Anne, . . . write.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 5-7-97.

“I never . . . typewriter.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-4-02. “ ‘just . . . things.” Ibid.

“wriggly.” Ibid.

“the facility . . . kitchen.” Ibid., 4-9-02.

“sending . . . ships.” Letter from Virginia K idd, [2-30-02]. “perfect.” Letter from Wright Johnson, 1-5-02.

“ ‘That’s . . . tell.’” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-4-02. “How I . . . man want?” Letter to Virginia Kidd, 5-16-02

“something . . . hoped for.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-4-02 “Boys . . . by women.” 60 Minutes, 2-3-02.

“I thought . . . sf, too,” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-4-02. “We would . . . Earth.” Ibid.

“With . . . of things.” A. McCaffrey, “The Utopian Novel,” 1. “a strong . . . about it.” Radcliffe 1947 50th Reunion, 3. “wish[ed] . . . better place.” Ibid., 28.

c h a pt er 4: ann i e and v i rg ini a

See the letter quoted in Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary’s Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (56), where Merril describes a similarly unsupportive situation An interview with Virginia K idd (2-17-02) informed much of this chapter. The term “Milford Mafia” is cited in Clute and Nich- olls’s The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (807). The 1970 divorce statistics are from Jones, 157.

Quotations

“had . . . humor.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-12-04. “she . . . dislike.” Ibid., 1-26-04.

“Boys . . . chance.” Letter from Virginia K idd, [2-30-02].

“purely . . . outrageous ones)” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-10-02. “especially . . . talking about.” Ibid., 1-26-04.

“Virginia . . . great writers.” Merril and Pohl-Weary, 57. “diaper copy.” Interview with Virginia Kidd, 2-17-02. “we . . . followed.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-26-04.

Source Notes for Pages 101–16

“my relationship . . . maturity.” Ibid., 2-21-02.

“post . . . differences.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 10-1-65. “the blanket . . . the changes.” Ibid., 10-15-65.

“I decided . . . editors.” Ibid., 9-14-65.

“It was . . . novel-writing.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 10. “that old . . . driving me.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 9-

20-65.

“My dear . . . Old Me.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 3-2-65. “the gold . . . his/her agent.” Ibid., 3-28-67.

“innumerable . . . concern.” Ibid., no date. “when . . . slower.” Ibid., 12-5-67.

“Art . . . vaguely.” Ibid., 9-6-65.

“I tried . . . long-suffering, etc.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 1-6-67.

“Have I . . . income.” Ibid., 8-18-66.

“I, too, . . . spiritually?” Ibid., 1-6-67.

“I have . . . good.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 12-5-67. “we have . . . add.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 1-6-67. “I discovered . . . for me.” Ibid., 3-22-67.

“Peg . . . feet.” Ibid., marked “received,” 9-13-65.

“Peg . . . from now.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 9-14-65. “until . . . royalties.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 8-28-02.

“my biggest . . . analysis.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 5-22-67.

“My aunt . . . loved them.” Ibid., 12-6-67.

“was perfect.” Ibid., 1-5-02. “Being . . . space.” Hargreaves, 6.

“Johnson . . . watching tv . . .” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 5-16-66.

“Helva . . . that scene.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 8.

“I’m going . . . this matter.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 5- 16-66.

“Johnson’s . . . Pern #2.” Ibid., 1-31-68.

“It’s a . . . with him?” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 5-19-66. “Irish Annie.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 6-22-67. “loved . . . other officers.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 2-5-02.

“wishful . . . me home.” Ibid.

“You’re . . . Wright)?” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 1-27-69. “that his . . . SFWA.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 12-20-68. “I remember . . . leave.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 67.

“It got . . . divorce.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 18. “Wright . . . monster.” Interview with Virginia Kidd, 2-17-02.

“The Wright Johnson story.” Interview with Vaughne Hansen, 2-18-02. “the corporate. . . fussy.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 19. “good company . . . fabulous.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-12-04. “Anne . . . Tinker Bell.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder 66.

“he was . . . Me.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-10-04.

“Peggy . . . godawful.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 5-25-70.

“much . . . I did!” Ibid., 8-20-70.

“had a . . . heartbreak.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-10-04.

“maybe . . . quite yet.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 5-16-66. “it was . . . pattern.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-10-04.

“It surprised . . . nasty.” Interview with Virginia Kidd, 2-17-02.

c h a pt er 5 : e mi gr at io n an d a b es t- s ell er

That there were two Anne L. McCaffreys in Dublin led to some confusion—they received each other’s mail. In addition to the hassles of relocating, Anne had to fulfill a contract with Doubleday for a cookbook of recipes by science fiction writers. Anne was the editor; being an editor is always difficult, but doing so across the ocean meant the job involved more than the usual difficulties.

Significantly, Anne’s publicity photo of herself after moving to Ireland was a picture of her with her horse, Mr. Ed. In the hall of her home is a large portrait of Anne with Mr. Ed. It is an engaging portrait in which Mr. Ed ap- pears as an equal. Anne holds his reins in her hands, and both Mr. Ed and Anne lean over a white picket fence. Mr. Ed’s white coat and Anne’s silver hair makes them a matched pair.

Quotations

“The fact . . . practiced.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26- 02. “deepened . . . there.” Interview with Virginia K idd, 2-19-02.

“the first . . . [she] met.” Interview with Antoinette O’Connell, 7-28-02.

“on the strength . . . Haughey.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 19. “a backlog . . . notions.” Letter from Anne McCaffrey, 4-21-02.

“In case . . . leave it.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 12-27-70. “You . . . Ireland.” Ibid., 2-21-71.

“I do . . . money.” Ibid., 5-27-71.

“the [publishers’] . . . never arrives.” Ibid., 10-21-71. “Mucking out . . . on time.” Ibid., 10-28-71.

“In my . . . again!!!!” Ibid., 11-10-71.

“he was . . . no, no.” Ibid., 1-6-71.

“I’ll show . . . otherwise.” Ibid., 5-27-71.

“I developed . . . living in.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 21. “wild gang” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 76.

“a real . . . tales.” Interview with Alec Johnson.

“It is . . . jazz.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 12-2-70. “fluttered” Ibid.

“If Todd . . . ears in.” Ibid.

“Do I ever . . . all.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 12-8-70. “true to . . . Dun Laoghaire.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd,

3-12-71.

“I shall . . . can.” Ibid.

“without leaving me . . . unfriendly.” Ibid., 5-11-71. “Alec . . . muchly.” Ibid.

“Jan-who-is-Lessa.” Ibid., 9-3-71.

“Lessa is my landlord.” T. McCaffrey, Dragonholder, 76.

“My Jan-Lessa . . . spare).” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 12- 6-71.

“who helped abused women.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-17-02. “who is . . . manner.” Ibid., 4-6-02.

“in a . . . meeting.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 23.

“excellent frame . . . cookie.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 11-10-71.

“My new . . . attentive.” Ibid., 11-23-71.

“You may . . . for play.” Ibid., 12-28-71.

“everyone . . . book, however.” Ibid., 4-6-72.

“I shall . . . at that time.” Ibid., 8-14-72.

“has made . . . future.” Ibid., 10-19-72. “gave Interpol . . . a fluke! ” Ibid., 10-19-72. “mentioned my . . . has tried!” Ibid., 5-7-73.

“Mabel started . . . campaigns.” Ibid., 12-16-73.

“had always . . . younger woman.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 8-2-02. “another Aries . . . occasionally macho.” Ibid.

“I didn’t . . . another Aries.” Ibid.

“He didn’t . . . different.” Ibid., 7-29-02. “Derek was . . . comfort.” Ibid.

“ ‘this story . . . Jaxom.’” Letter from Betty Ballantine, 4-21-02. “She is . . . bitter.” E-mails from Anne McCaffrey, 4-17-02, 3-12-71. “job is . . . her books.” Letter from Betty Ballantine, 5-17-02.

“a state of mind,” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 10-19-72. “everyone liked . . . after that.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-22-02.

“an autobiography . . . real world.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 8-31-02. “voracious reader . . . style.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-22-02. “ravening fan public.” Hodge, 7.

“not only . . . needed money.” Ibid., 23. “religion . . . exist,” Ibid., 32.

“created her . . . readers, too.” Ibid., 132–133.

“The gothics . . . writing them.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-12-02. “the project . . . of choices.” DuPlessis, 4.

“share a . . . of control.” Longnecker, 1.

“Ed . . . toes.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-17-02. “cart before the horse thing.” Ibid., 4-15-02.

“Ha! . . . world!” A. McCaffrey, The Mark of Merlin.

“is no . . . my friends.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 1-6-71. “Mother . . . I think.” Ibid., 8-14-72.

“Between the noise . . . myself.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 24. “The woman . . . hulk.” Ibid.

“[Why] my own . . . only the character.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 5-22-02.

“is probably . . . to her.” Ibid., 4-17-02.

“Such antics . . . in culture.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 24. “I have . . . Kilternan Legacy.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-17-02.

“I’m not . . . as Simon.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 11-22-75.

“in the Dark ages.” A. McCaffrey, Kilternan Legacy, 512.

“I hope . . . under discussion.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 11-22-75.

“on the strength. . . next year.” Ibid., 5-3-74. “I have never . . . Texas A & M.” Ibid., 4-7-76.

“The tour . . . on.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man,” 36. “not much . . . who she is?” Ibid., 38.

“a fan . . . needed one.” Ibid., 39. “salvation . . . lunch pail.” Ibid., 38.

c h a pt er 6: s tr u ggl in g with s u cc ess

Anne’s sales hit their high of around 100,000 hardcover, 125,000 paper- back. Her preferred title for the book is its British title, The Carradyne Touch, which she describes as “a much more informative title.” “The Lady” is a more traditional phrase, whereas “The Carradyne Touch” evokes the physi- cal connection to animals that is so central to Anne’s fiction and her life. “Carradyne” is the name of a character and the “touch” skill with horses. The story of Anne’s paying the dinner bill at a convention appears in Locus #287, vol. 17, no. 12, December 1984.

Quotations

“disconnected from her imagination.” Trachtenberg, 62. “keeps the . . . chaos.” Silverberg, 4.

“he’s never asleep.” Ibid., 22.

“had stage . . . persona.” Interview with Harry and Marilyn Alm, 8-17-02. “I always . . . writing.” Letter of Win Catherwood to Anne McCaffrey,

5-13-84.

“W bathtub.” Ibid., 7-31-84.

“Wright moved I did.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Win Catherwood,

10-5-85.

“One never books.” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey and Lynn

Del Rey, 2-17-83.

“I thought . . . her touch!” Letter of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 4- 25-83.

“Fat and . . . I lead.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Joanne Forman, 7-16-83. “I gave . . . of me.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Win Catherwood, 11-16-87. “utterly, completely and thoroughly drained.” A. McCaffrey, Stitch in Snow,

137.

“I don’t . . . protect her.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey. 9-1-02.

“Mum and . . . my opinion.” Email from Georgeanne Kennedy, 1-28-03. “great rapport Fist of Bray” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-8-02.

“appalled at . . . man’s chattel.” A. McCaffrey, The Lady, 408. “You men . . . previously appreciated.” Ibid., 418.

“Some are . . . in Ireland.” Ibid., 237.

“I dearly love it” Letter of Win Catherwood to Anne McCaffrey, 7-23-84.

“How the . . . at once?” Ibid., 11-5-82.

“I understand . . . of Win.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-30-02.

“I’m sort . . . that quarter!” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Win Catherwood, 2-24-84.

“young men . . . of sexuality.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-28-02. “She made . . . a writer.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Joanne Forman,

5-19-83.

“Annie McCaffrey . . . lesbian.” Interview with Maureen Beirne, 8-4-02. “he has . . . helping her.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26-02.

“Are these all . . . fathers.” Interview with Marilyn and Harry Alms. “nice to . . . dithering.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-5-01.

“She reminded . . . at once.” E-mail from Elizabeth Moon, 2–11-03. “a keen . . . character.” Interview with Richard Woods, 8-1-02.

“she was . . . always right.” Interview with Derval Diamond, 7-31-02. “enjoyed playing . . . be good.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-31-02. “Sis was . . . an American.” Interview with Maureen Beirne, 8-4-02. “Because I . . . the trade.” Women Writers: Anne McCaffrey, Thames Television,

1988.

“If we . . . your own?” Ibid.

ch a pt er 7: b e in g a f a i r y go d m oth er

In the 1990s, four books on Anne McCaffrey were published: Mary T. Brizzi’s Anne McCaffrey, Matthew Hargreaves’s Anne Inez McCaffrey: Forty Years of Publishing, an International Bibliography, Robin Roberts’s Anne McCaf- frey: A Critical Companion, and Todd J. McCaffrey’s Dragonholder: The Life and Dreams (So Far) of Anne McCaffrey.

Quotations

“a house . . . writer resides.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Annett Francis, 7-28-86.

“By playing . . . very expensive.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 8-3-02. “It is . . . six months.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 6-13-93. “taking care . . . to her.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26-02.

“Dearest Virginia . . . rolls in!” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 2-25-93.

“Mom likes . . . to her.” Interview with Georgeanne Kennedy, 8-2-02. “did not . . . had finished.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-5-03.

“as near . . . could get.” Ibid.

“kwitchurbeliakin . . . a necessity.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 6-17-93.

“What a . . . so now.” Ibid.

“publishing had . . . merchandising considerations.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-28-03.

“Taking . . . niceness.” Interview with Vaughne Hansen, 2-18-02. “suggested the . . . already liked.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 6-18-02. “I got . . . damned outline.” “Anne McCaffrey: Life with Dragons,” 5. “it’s good . . . a book.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-27-02.

“It’s flattering . . . your universe.” Interview with Susan Allison, 9-26-02. “on the . . fortunately are.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia Kidd, 2-9-93.

“ ‘Ms. Nye . . . McCaffrey waters.” Fax of Virginia K idd to Anne McCaffrey, 2-12-92.

“Well, honey . . . PTB trilogy.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 2–12-92.

“That’s a . . . wants to.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 6-13-03.

“much more . . . Irish!” Interview with Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, 5-25-03. “it was . . . true collaboration.” “Anne McCaffrey: Life with Dragons,” 5.

“ ‘Does water . . . the experience.” E-mail from Elizabeth Moon, 2-9-03. “The collabs which other.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd,

6-1-93.

“a boyfriend months now.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Annett Francis,

1-20-91.

“Gigi has . . . she will.” Fax of Anne McCaffrey to Virginia K idd, 6-17-93. “Dearest Virginia . . . now!)” Ibid., 1-14-93.

“like a . . . that dress.” E-mail from Georgeanne Kennedy, 1-3-03. “heart would burst.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-28-02.

“Gracious royalties tax bill.” Letter from Anne McCaffrey to Shelly Sha-

piro, 2-3-93.

“People have definitive answers.” Letter of Anne McCaffrey to Veronica

Yaworski, 2-8-93.

“Congratulations! . . . McCaffrey Award!” Fax of Shelly Shapiro to Anne McCaffrey, 7-1-93.

“addictive . . . good thing.” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7- 28-02. “Something to . . . the good kind.” E-mail from Elizabeth Moon, 2-11-03. “a hard act to follow.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 1-14-03.

“What are our lives?” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7-28-02.

“for all . . . her own.” Ibid., 8-2-02.

“apparently this . . . Anne McCaffrey.” E-mail from Todd McCaffrey, 2-10-03. “peel her . . . in size.” E-mail from Georgeanne Kennedy, 2-11-03.

“Money was . . . my way!” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 9-10-01. “I’m Father X, so effective.” Ibid.

“I was Space Station.” Ibid.

“A TIA and memory.” Ibid.

“a very . . . Harrod’s” Ibid., 1-22-03.

“If you . . . good day.” Interview with Maureen Beirne, 8-4-02.

“They’ll probably . . . keyboard [dead].” Interview with Anne McCaffrey, 7- 28-02.

“I shall . . . my word-processor.” A. McCaffrey, “The Self-Made (Wo)man, 42. “I bore myself.” E-mail from Anne McCaffrey, 4-25-02.

“incredible mind . . . telling things.” Interview with Derval Diamond, 7-31-02. “she has . . . an editor.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26-02.

“Mum would . . . Hall series.” E-mail from Georgeanne Kennedy, 1-30-03. “passing the torch story.” Interview with Todd McCaffrey, 8-31-02

“a story about descendants.” outline for Dragonsblood.

“Pern will . . . works or not.” Interview with Shelly Shapiro, 9-26-02. “Your father . . . him back.” Todd McCaffrey, 7-27-02

“Mum sympathizes . . . older.” Todd and Anne McCaffrey, 7-27-02. “I was older!” Anne McCaffrey, 7-27-02.

“a pleasure.” Interview with Cyra O’Connor, 7-30-02.

“I am not . . . collapses.” Interview with Antoinette O’Connell, 7-29-02. “What has . . . Bingo!” Anne McCaffrey, 7-28-02.

ch a pt er 8: t h e gr and m a s t er

Anne’s witnessing of a space shuttle launch was delayed first by her heart attack, then by technical problems with the shuttle. Originally scheduled for August 22, 2002, this flight was postponed when, in late June, cracks were discovered in propellant lines in all the shuttles. The shuttle Atlantis’s launch was rescheduled for September 26, then September 28, when cracked bear- ings in the crawlers that carried the shuttle to the launch pad were found, it was delayed again until October 2. For Anne, the wait seemed interminable. In summer 2002, Anne eagerly counted down the weeks until her trip. Al- though she had taken a bad tumble in July, she wasn’t going to let a little thing like a broken arm derail her.

The 2005 Nebula Awards Cermony is available on DV D from www. alphavideoproduction.com. All quotations from the ceremony are from this DVD.

Quotations

“It was . . . really important.” E-mail from Pamela Melroy, 3-17-03.

“not sweet . . . science fiction.” Letter from Pamela Melroy to Anne McCaf- frey, 12-11-00.

“so much . . . many years.” quoted on www.destinationspace.net/escape/ evtests/launch.asp, 9-12-00.

“she was . . . attack instead.” E-mail from Pamela Melroy, 3-17-03.

“Our storage . . . master storyteller.” Letter from Pamela Melroy to Anne McCaffrey, 12-11-00.

“My feet . . . greater joy.” www.annemccaffrey.net/index.html 10-15-01. “an incredible . . . and going!” E-mail from Pamela Melroy, 3-17-03. “kind of . . . to do.” Ibid., 1-23-03.

“to spark . . . prepackaged food.” Ibid., 1-28-03. “It was . . . orbital adventure.” Ibid., 10-23-02.

“She opened . . . limitless possibilities.” Interview with Antoinette O’Connell, 8-2-02.

“I believe . . . Prince Charming.” Interview with Elizabeth Anne Scarbor- ough, 5-25-03.

“one of . . . her heroes.” E-mail from Jody Lynn Nye, 5-11-2004. “women come . . . self-creation.” Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life, 117.

W O R K S C I T E D

Interviews (2000–2003’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

Works Cited

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I N DEX

Adams, Alice, 94

aging and sexuality, 158–60 Aldiss, Brian, 136

Allison, Susan, 44, 182, 183

Alm, Harry, 154, 166–67, 173, 194

Alm, Marilyn, 154, 166–67, 173,

194, 214

Amazing magazine, 84

American Library Association, 7, 107,

176, 193, 195

animals, 3, 9, 139, 146–47

Aramco, 77–78

Asaro, Catherine, 215

Asimov, Isaac, 94, 98, 115–16, 117, 216

Atlantis, 208–10

awards: Ditmar Award, 7, 148; Dragon- con dragon, 194; E. E. Smith Memo- rial Award for Imaginative Fiction, 115, 147; Gandalf Award, 7, 148;

Grand Master Award, 7–8, 15, 204,

213–17; Hugo Award, 7, 112, 116,

128, 215; Julie Award, 194; Margaret

Edwards Award for Literary Life- time Achievement, 7, 107, 176, 193, 195; Nebula Award, 7, 99, 115, 116, 147, 184, 213–15; Science Fiction Hall of Fame, 8, 217; SF Book Club Book of the Year Award, 190; Streza Award, 7, 148

Baen, Jim, 186

Balanchine, 84–85

Ball, Margaret, 186, 187

Ballantine, Betty, 96, 112, 134–35, 142,

182, 216

Ballantine, Ian, 112, 135, 216

Ballantine Books, 135, 148 Ballyvolan Farm, 162 Bankhead, Tallulah, 78

Banotti, Mary, 127

Bantam Books, 184

Bassist, Don, 77

Beard, Steven, 5, 195

Beckwith, Mab, 57

Beirne, Maureen, 164, 170, 173,

191, 198

“Bells of Norwich,” 197 Bernstein, Leonard, 90

Bigelow, Bob, 76–77

Bigelow, Jean Davis, 76–77, 83

Blish, James, 94, 98, 101, 103, 136

Blish, Judy Lawrence, 136 Book of Kells, 175 Boskone, 115

Boston, 77

Bradbury, Ray, 112, 135; “The Snows of K ilimanjaro,” 112

Bradley, Marion Zimmer, 164 Breck Mills Cronies, 79

Brennerman, Freddie, 68, 94

Brizzi, Mary T., 23, 141

Brooks, Dick, 167

Brooks, Melissa, 168

Brooks, Sara “Sis,” 167–70, 173, 174,

175, 178–79, 185–86, 188, 196, 197–

98, 200, 202, 211, 216

Brooks, Terry, 196

Brownmiller, Susan, 140

Brunner, John, 136 Budrys, A. J., 216

Bujold, Lois McMaster, 189, 214 Butler, Mrs. (teacher), 40 Butler, Octavia, 9

Cabot, Rose, 69

Callahan, Annie, 202

Callahan, Barbara, 201

Callahan family, 173

Campbell, John, 103, 216

Candide, 90

Capps, Claudia, 45 Carr, Ophelia A., 59–60

Catherwood, Win, 152, 156, 158, 163,

165–66, 170

Catholicism, 22, 25, 71, 161

Christie, Agatha, 34 Clarke, Arthur C., 135 co-authorship, 180–87

Cold War, 94

conventions, 154, 181; Chesmacon, 129;

Dragoncon, 6, 13–14, 194, 199; En-

glish Milford, 136; Istacon, 154; Los Angeles Science Fiction Convention, 122; Lunacon, 155; Magicon, 189; Milford Science Fiction Conference, 99, 181, 216; New England Science Fiction Association, 147; NOLA Con, 170; North American Science Fiction Convention, 117; Star Trek Con, 155; Western Recon II, 166; World Science Fiction Convention, 7, 111, 112, 128,

172, 190, 216

Copperheart Entertainment, 190, 217

Coughlin, Father, 22–23

Crabbe, Buster, 41

Cross, Sam, 69, 70

Currie, Barbara, 46

Curtis, Laura, 7

Day, Lea, 14

Del Rey, Judy-Lynn, 16, 157, 216

Del Rey Books, 149, 157, 179, 182

Delany, Samuel, 136

Depression, 35

Devil and Daniel Webster, The, 90 Diamond, Derval, 128, 169, 170–71,

173, 177, 192, 199

Diamond, Jen-Jen, 171, 201

Dickson, Gordon, 94, 150, 216

Discovery, 196–97

Donawerth, Jane, 9, 138

Dragonhold Stables, 2–3, 127, 171, 178,

192, 199

Dragonhold-Kilquade, 164, 167, 168–70

Dragonhold-Underhill, 2–3, 14, 15, 145,

174–75, 177–79, 185, 200–2, 207

Dragonthorn, 165, 189

Duggan, Mary, 27

Dunne, Bobby, 62 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, 138

Elwood, Roger, 130, 141

Emden, Jacob, 98

England, 111

Ennis, Bob, 76

Evans, Wilbur, 79

Fantastic magazine, 84 Fantastic S-F magazine, 84 Fawcett, Bill, 182–83, 186

Firman, Ed, 216

Fish, Austin, 76

Fitzgerald, Honey, 20

Flash Gordon, 41

Forman, Joanne, 158, 164, 165 Foster, Alan Dean, 97

Foster, Susannah, 79

Francis, Annett, 122, 125, 144, 156, 174,

187–88

Freas, Frank Kelly, 216 Freeman, Mike, 197

Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique, 86–87

Futura, 148

Futurians, 98

Gaiman, Neil, 214–15

Galaxy magazine, 79, 84, 93, 94

Gay, John, Beggar’s Opera, 85 Gebrowski, Jean, 87

gender bias, 8–9, 11, 100–1, 121,

152, 162

Gerrish, Florence, 69

Gerrold, David, 127, 133, 142 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Herland, 51 Girl Scout camp, 44–46

Girls’ Daily Life, The, 47 Goheen, Robert, 81

Gone with the Wind, 34, 59

Gothic novels, 136–39, 158–62

Granville-Barker, Harley, 81–82

Gravitz, Gladys, 46

Greene, John, 160–61, 173, 216

Grey, Zane, 50, 52, 71; The Light of the Western Stars, 50; Riders of the Purple Sage, 50

Guys and Dolls, 90

Hamilton, Edmund, The Star Kings, 84 Hamilton, Virginia, 40

Hansen, Vaughne, 64, 114, 146, 182, 197

Hargreaves, Michael, 89–90, 109

Harrison, Harry, 129–30, 144, 148

Harrison, Joan, 144, 148

Harvard University, 19, 28, 29, 38, 52,

67–68, 73, 75

Haughey, Charles, 121

Haughey’s Artists Exemption Act, 121 Hayworth, Rita, 78

Heilbrun, Carolyn, 218

Hemingway, Ernest, 99, 112

Herbert, Brian, 171

Herbert, Frank, 171

Heyer, Georgette, 137 Hodge, Jane Aiken, 137 Hogan family, 177

homosexuality, 163–65

horses, 4, 41–42, 50, 51, 60, 118, 124,

139–40, 155, 178, 192

House and Garden, 174 Hughes, Ronnie, 79

Huntley, John, 61

Hurricane Lili, 208, 209

Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World, 72

Idler, 75

International Council of Nurses, 78

International Space Station, 206 Internet piracies, 195

IR A, 167

Ireland, 2–3, 111–12, 117, 118, 119–21,

123, 125–26, 128, 145, 161–62; Dub-

lin, 36

Irish Americans, 17, 19, 54

Irish diaspora, 23

Isbell, Jack, 92, 107

Isbell, Peggy, 92, 107, 108, 111, 116–17

Italy, 29, 30

Jacob, John, 188

Japan, 31

Jewish Americans, 19

Johnson, Alec (son), 88–89, 90, 107,

113–14, 117, 125, 126, 127, 142, 147,

149, 155, 156, 167, 169, 171, 175,

178, 189, 191, 192, 195, 196, 199,

200, 207

Johnson, Amelia (granddaughter), 171 Johnson, Dick, 81

Johnson, Eliza Oriana (granddaughter), 155, 156

Johnson, Horace Wright (husband), 6, 101, 107, 108, 110, 113, 121, 122, 124,

156–57, 169, 175, 197–98; abusive be-

havior, 112–14, 211–12; courtship and

wedding, 79–80, 83–84; college expe-

rience, 81–82; divorce, 116, 117–18; family background, 80; fatherhood, 88–89, 113–14, 122; musical inter-

ests, 82; remarriage, 125; response to

Anne McCaffrey’s writing, 6, 92–94,

109–11, 118, 193

Johnson, Phil, 80–81, 84

Johnson, Todd. See McCaffrey, Todd J. Joyce, James, 105

Kalachevsky, Kira, 76 Kaldi, Josef, 88–89

Kennedy, Geoff, 187–89, 192, 201, 211 Kennedy, Georgeanne “Gigi” (daugh-

ter), 7, 14, 88–89, 90, 101, 103, 107,

114, 117, 122, 125, 129, 133, 142,

143–44, 145, 150, 156–57, 160, 174,

175, 177, 184, 187–89, 192–93, 195,

199–200, 201, 202, 211, 212

Kennedy, Joseph P., 20

Kennedy, Owen Thomas, 201 Kennedy, Robert, 74 Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald, 20

Kidd, Virginia, 72, 92, 93, 96–114, 116–

18, 119, 120, 122–24, 126, 130–31,

135, 157, 169, 176, 182, 188, 197, 216

Kipling, Rudyard, 26–27, 49–50, 71, 184; “The Butterfly That Stamped,” 45; Jungle Tales, 92; Just-So Stories, 45;

Kim, 49

Kiss Me Kate, 85, 90

Kissimmee, Florida, 80

Knight, Damon, 98, 100–1, 216

Korea, 31

Laban, Mare, 150

Lackey, Mercedes, 187

Lambertsville Musical Circus, 79, 82

Larbalestier, Justine, 11

Le Guin, Ursula K., 8, 52, 97, 214 League of Women Voters, 34 Lefanu, Sarah, 8

Legible Leftovers bookstore, 207 Leinster, Murray, 94

Let’s Talk About You, 47

Lewis, Pota, 67, 75, 76, 78, 83

Liberty Music Shops, 78–79, 87

Lone Ranger, The, 41

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 26–27 Lucas, George, 217

Ludus De Nato Infante Mirificus, 90

Manley, Scott, 195

Marsh, Ngaio, 34

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 76

Massey, Raymond, 78

McCaffrey, Anne: adolescent self-image, 46–48, 64, 146; book tours, 149–50,

155, 160; chat room, 191–92; child-

hood, 36–43; collaborators, 13, 180–

87, 199, 204, 210–13, 217; cooking

and food, 23, 62; courtship and

wedding, 83–84; dancing, 62–63,

76; depression, 142–53; divorce,

116, 117–18, 121; earnings and fi-

nances, 113, 120–24, 152, 162, 176,

178, 190, 195–96; education, 57–61,

62, 66–68, 70; emigration, 118–21; extracurricular activities in college,

74–76; generosity, 7, 165–67, 215;

illnesses, 12, 175, 191, 195–97, 205;

influence of agent/editor, 96–97, 99–102, 104–6; influence of father,

24–27, 30, 31–33, 72, 146; influence

of mother, 24–26, 32, 33–36, 59, 86;

influences, literary, 48–52, 71–72,

94; Irish heritage, 5, 16–24; jobs

after college, 78–79; lovers, 126–33,

161; marital problems, 109–11,

113–16, 124; middle age, 152, 158;

as middle child, 36–37, 40; mother-

hood, 88–89, 91–92, 93, 114; musical

interest, 24, 49, 60, 63–64, 75, 76–

77, 79, 82, 85, 89–90, 116, 135, 146,

172, 184; political interests, 54–55,

74; pregnancy and childbirth, 85, 87–88; religion, 71; social life in col- lege, 73–74, 76–77; at space shuttle

launch, 207–10; sports, 60; tolerance,

163–65; as tomboy, 37, 41, 60; Char-

acters: Brains, 89; Brawns, 89; Brizzi,

58; Catriona, 161–62; Cita, 89, 185;

Clodagh, 126, 160, 185; Damia, 36;

Dan, 159; Dana, 159–60; dragons,

9, 38, 42, 146–47, 172–73; Emorra,

213; F’lar, 32, 134; F’nor, 126–27,

134; Helva, 13, 33, 35, 39, 58, 63,

110; Hivers, 72; Isabel, 161–62;

Jaxom, 134; J’Trel, 212; Keevan, 141;

Killashandra, 20, 50, 56, 77, 105–6,

119, 157, 194; Kindan, 212; Kylara,

58; Lady Rezalla, 194; Lessa, 13, 15,

20, 36, 50, 56, 58, 70, 89, 110, 126,

127, 134; Lord Tionel, 194; Menolly,

15, 40, 64, 89, 119, 125, 128, 146–47,

148; Moreta, 14, 39, 61, 130–31, 144,

155–57; Niall, 138; Nialla, 139–40;

Nimisha, 13, 70, 119, 194–95; Pellar,

212; Rene, 145; Robinton, 13, 32, 64,

89; the Rowan, 13, 36, 40, 56, 58,

89, 105, 180; Sara, 110; Selina, 162;

Simon, 145; Sis, 211; Talith, 212; Ter-

regar, 211; Thread, 11, 23, 72, 212;

Watch-whers, 211, 212; Wind Blossom,

213; Yana Maddock, 64, 185; Works:

Acorna series, 183–84, 186; Alchemy and Academe, 122; Black Horses for the King, 189; “Bound by Hoof and

Nail,” 199; Brain Ship series, 89, 191,

194; The Carradyne Touch, 161–62, 172; The City Who Fought, 187; The Coelura, 158; Cooking Out of This World, 23, 141–42; Crisis in Doona, 187; The

Crystal Singer, 20, 105–6, 129, 141,

206–7; Crystal Singer series, 10, 77, 90; The Death of Sleep, 181; “Devil’s Glen,” 199; Dinosaur Planet Survivors, 9, 148; A Diversity of Dragons, 164,

187; Dragondrums, 120, 150; Dragon-

flight, 7, 20, 36, 50, 70, 110, 126, 134,

148, 156, 171, 190, 211, 212, 217;

Dragonquest, 36, 58, 104–5, 126, 134,

135, 142, 148; Dragonriders of Pern

series, 2, 5, 9, 11, 50, 51, 63, 64, 71,

72, 74, 89, 90, 99, 109–10, 112, 120,

135–36, 138, 145, 148, 190, 194,

211–13, 217; Dragon’s Fire, 199, 210,

213; Dragon’s Kin, 13, 199, 210–13,

214–15; Dragonsdawn, 166, 170; Drag-

onseye, 194; Dragonsinger, 40, 119, 120,

147–48; Dragonsong, 89, 120, 146,

147; “Dramatic Mission,” 128; “Dull Drums,” 141; “Eleutheria, the Danc- ing Slave Girl,” 49; Flame, Chief of Herd and Track, 41; “Freedom of the Race,” 31, 90; Freedom series, 14,

194; Freedom’s Challenge, 194; Freedom’s

Choice, 194; Freedom’s Landing, 194; Get Off the Unicorn, 147; “The Great- est Love,” 141; Harper Hall Trilogy, 44, 64, 120, 128, 146, 150, 199, 211;

“Horse from a Different Sea,” 102; “Killashandra-Coda and Finale,” 141; “Killashandra-Crystal Singer,” 141; The Kilternan Legacy, 136–37,

140, 143, 144–45, 159, 162; The Lady

(novel), 161–62; “The Lady” (short story), 103; “Lady in a Tower,” 90; The Mark of Merlin, 76, 124, 138, 140–41; The Masterharper of Pern, 194; “Milekey Mountain,” 141; Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, 144, 155–57, 163, 166; Nimisha’s

Ship, 70, 192, 194; PartnerShip, 186, 187; Pegasus in Flight, 179; Power Play, 194; Powers That Be series, 64, 126,

159–60, 179, 183–84, 194; “Prelude

to a Crystal Song,” 141; “A Proper Santa Claus,” 141; “Rabble-Dowser,” 141; Renegades of Pern, 160–61; “The

Rescued Girls of Refugee,” 141; Re- storee, 8, 10, 74, 103, 107, 108, 110,

158, 172; The Rowan, 105, 179–80;

Ring of Fear, 138, 139–40, 161; Rowan

series, 63; Sassinak, 181, 186, 208;

Serve It Forth, 23; “The Ship Who Dis- appeared,” 110; The Ship Who Sang (collection), 32, 33, 35, 39, 63, 138; “The Ship Who Sang” (story), 90, 93, 96, 109, 112; The Ship Who Searched,

187; “The Ship Who Wept,” 103–4; Skies of Pern, 195, 199; “The Small- est Dragonboy,” 61–62, 141; Stitch in

Snow, 151, 158–60; A Time When, 147; To Ride Pegasus, 141, 180; The Tower and the Hive (novel), 194; The Tower and the Hive series, 10, 11, 36, 40, 72,

77, 89, 133, 161, 179–80, 182, 194;

“Weyr Search,” 112, 215; The White Dragon, 120, 147, 148–49, 205, 207,

216; The Year of the Lucy, 122, 128; “Zeus: The Howling,” 199

McCaffrey, Anne Dorothy McElroy (mother), 24–26, 32–36, 37, 39, 47,

54–56, 62, 86, 120, 130, 134, 142–

43, 213

McCaffrey, Ceara Rose (granddaughter), 190, 200–2, 210

McCaffrey, George Herbert (father), 10, 17, 18–20, 24–33, 35–36, 37, 39,

42, 54, 56–57, 62–63, 70, 72, 146,

200, 216

McCaffrey, George Hugh (grandfather), 17–20, 35

McCaffrey, Hugh “Mac” (brother), 26, 28, 33, 36–38, 45, 54–55, 57, 74, 83,

167, 170–71, 216; Khmer Gold, 38

McCaffrey, Inez (godmother), 71 McCaffrey, Jenna Scott, 189, 196

McCaffrey, Karin, 167

McCaffrey, Kevin (brother), 28, 33,

34, 35, 36–38, 40, 44, 46, 47, 48,

53, 54, 55–57, 61–62, 67, 74, 80, 86,

114, 117, 141, 143, 149, 150, 167,

194, 210

McCaffrey, Marcia, 24, 141, 194 McCaffrey, Selina (grandmother), 17 McCaffrey, Todd J. (son), 7, 13–14, 28–

29, 35, 88–89, 90, 92, 107, 113–14,

115, 117, 120, 122, 125, 126, 129, 133,

136, 142, 145–46, 149, 150, 160, 170,

175, 177, 181, 184, 188, 189–90, 193,

196, 199–202, 204, 210–17; Dragon-

holder, 12, 29, 127, 139; Dragonsblood,

193, 198, 199, 212, 213; Slammers

Down, 199

McCaffrey, Valerie, 167

McCarthy, Marianne, 200

McCarthy, Mary, 198

McElroy, Gladys (aunt), 60, 63, 108–9,

111, 200

McElroy, James, 24

McElroy, John, 21

McElroy, Katie McCann (grandmother), 20–24, 33, 39, 71

McElroy, Tony, 18, 149

McGraw, Seamus, 163

McGraw-Hill, 109

McIntyre, Vonda, 9

McMillan, Scott, 189

Melroy, Pamela Ann, 196, 205–8, 218

mental powers, 20, 23–24, 30–31,

35–36, 55, 141

Merril, Judy, 11, 90–91, 96, 98, 99,

100, 216

Merrit, A., 26–27

Milford, Pennsylvania, 91, 96, 97, 99

Montclair, New Jersey, 52–54, 60–61,

85–86, 94–95

Moon, Elizabeth, 4, 169, 181, 184, 186–

87, 192, 208; Serrano series, 186 Moore, C. L., 94

Moskowitz, Sam, 31

Moultrie, Georgia, 63

Mr. Ed (horse), 3, 140, 155

music, 5, 15, 24, 43, 49–50, 51, 60,

63–64, 66, 75, 76–77, 79, 82, 85,

89–90, 105–6, 115, 116, 135, 146,

172, 184, 197

musical theater, 75, 79, 82, 92, 107

Negro in New Jersey, The, 53 New Orleans, 13, 193–94

New York: Commerce and Industry As- sociation of, 30, 31; State tax code, 29

New York City, 33, 78, 84

New York Times, 7, 120, 148, 152, 212

Norman, Jessye, 192

Norton, Andre, 94, 108, 183, 214, 216

Nye, Jody Lynn, 181, 182–83, 187, 218

Oberon, Merle, 78

O’Connell, Antoinette, 121, 150, 202,

208–9, 217–18

O’Connor, Cyra, 201

O’Connor, Janine, 201

Olivier, Laurence, 84 Once upon a Mattress, 90 Opland, Tania, 197

Orff, Carl, 90

Ortner, Sherry, 9

O’Shea, Michael, 125–26, 144

Pangborn, Jerry, 61, 86

Pangborn, Mae, 61, 86, 95

Patella, Ella, 41, 52, 53–54

Pearl Harbor, 30

PEN Writers Club, 128 Pepper Young’s Family, 78–79 Perkins, Maxwell, 99

Phillips, Annie, 93

Ping, Kitti, 167, 170–71

Pipher, Mary, 47

Plato, Symposium, 159

Pocono Mountains, 92

Pohl, Frederick, 98, 214

Ponte Caffreo, 29

potato famine, 23

Priest, Christopher, 136

Princeton University, 81

Pumpkin (cat), 3, 200, 202

Putnam, 182

Queen Elizabeth Two, 168

race relations, in New Jersey, 53–54 Radcliffe, 38, 52, 59, 66–77, 94

Regan, Jan, 127–28, 162

Reign of Fire, 201 Rice, Anne, 196

Robinson, Frederic, 89

Roger, Roy, 41 Rowling, J. K., 94 Rubenstein, Helena, 79

Russ, Joanna, 8, 11

Ryan, Dennis, 19

Saxton, Josephine, 136

Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann, 176, 179,

183–86, 194, 202, 214, 218; The God-

mother, 176; The Godmother’s Apprentice, 176; The Healer’s War, 184

Schaefer, Lila, 79

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 7, 204, 214–15

Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame, 8, 217

Science Fiction Writers of America, 97, 99, 112, 115

Scotland, 111

second sight, 5–6, 20, 23–24, 35–36,

88, 141

Shapiro, Shelly, 42, 120, 165, 176, 182,

189–90, 195, 196, 199, 200, 213

Shattuck, Bernard, 126–27, 128, 146, 159 Shaw, George Bernard, 82–83

Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 11 Sicily, 198–99

Silverberg, Robert, Lord Valentine’s Castle, 153–54

Slonczewski, Joan, 9

Snedeker, Caroline Dale, 48; The Forgot- ten Daughter, 48; The Spartan, 49; The White Isle, 48–49

South Orange Arsenal, 41

space shuttle, 196–97, 205, 208–10 Spring Hill Farm, 172

Star Trek, 150

Stephens, Leslie, 32 Stirling, S. M., 187

Stuart Hall, 57–60, 63, 67, 148

Sturgeon, Theodore, 135

Takei, George, 150

Tandy, Jessica, 84

television, 171–72

Tey, Josephine, 34

Tolkien, J. R. R., Lord of the Rings, 51 Trachtenberg, Martha, Anne McCaffrey:

Science Fiction Storyteller, 12 Tulip Party, 26, 56

Twin Lakes, Pennsylvania, 92 Tyler, Diana, 215–16

United Nations, 31

Vagabond King, The, 63, 79

Varner, Van, 81, 109

Vienna, 29

Vietnam War, 111

Ward, Arthur, 64

Warner Brothers, 190

Waters, Derek, 128–34, 144, 146,

161, 162

Waters, Mabel, 128, 131–33, 162

Whelan, Michael, 148, 214

“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” 116 White, Ken, 103

Whitton, Hilda, 140

Wicklow Mountains, 171

Wilde, Oscar, The Importance of Being Earnest, 75

Wolfe, Gene, 97

Wollheim, Donald, 98

Women Writers: Anne McCaffrey, 171–73

Women’s Wear Daily, 83, 85

Woods, Richard, 164–65, 170, 174,

187, 188, 189, 207

Wool Bureau, 85

Woolf, Virginia, 32

World Trade Intelligence, 78 World War I, 25, 27

World War II, 22, 27, 29–31, 33, 35–

36, 42–43, 54–57, 61, 94, 198; vic-

tory gardens, 56–57; women’s labor force, 55

Wragge, Betty, 78–79, 83 Wright, Austin Tappan, Islandia,

50–52

YES, 150

Zamiatin, Eugene Ivanovich, WE, 71–72, 94

Ziff-Davis, 79

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The plot against america by phillip roth

The Plot Against America

The Plot Against America

CONTENTS

1

Vote for Lindbergh or Vote for War

2

Loudmouth Jew

3

Following Christians

4

The Stump

5

Never Before

6

Their Country

7

The Winchell Riots

8

Bad Days

9

Perpetual Fear

Postscript

A Clockwork orange by anthony burgess

Part 1

Part Two

Part Three

A Clockwork Orange

Versions

A Clockwork Orange: A Prefatory Note

Cacotopia

Bakunin's Children

Clockwork Oranges

Filming Clockwork Orange

Nadsat Dictionary

A Clockwork Orange

Anne McCaffrey's a life with dragons

Introduction

An Irish Family Heritage

Adolescence and a Time of War

College Days and Marriage

Annie and Virginia

Emigration and a Best-Seller

Struggling with Success

Being a Fairy Godmother

The Grand Master

Author

Archives

Categories