The Houseguest Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrote on the paper before him, H OW A RE Y OU S LEEPING ? F IVE M ILLION J EWS R EMAIN IN H ITLER’S P ATH . “Sir,” he said, “There’s no reason to think that the fire is part of any systematic plan of persecution. And remember, unlike in Europe, when synagogues in America catch fire, we put them out.”
    The man sighed. “I took the train in to see it this morning. You can smell the smoke eight blocks away. I feel like I should do something.”
    â€œYou can,” Spiro said, “You can make a contribution to our committee.”
    The old man took a moment to mull this over. “Yes,” he said without conviction. “And what is it your committee does?”
    â€œWe are a political committee, sir. We are actively lobbying Congress to work with the British in forming a Jewish armed force to fight the Nazis alongside the Allies.” Spiro waited for a follow-up question that never came. The line went dead, but within a minute, it was ringing again.
    When Spiro had a second between comforting the worried and the appalled, he called his contacts at the papers. Nobody had any idea who set the fire, or if they did, they were keeping it to themselves.
    At 5:30, Dick Shoemaker, looking as though he’d just walked to the office from the Sinai, told Spiro that they had raised $3,000 in pledges. Spiro put down the phone and banged his fist against the wall.
    â€œLadies and gentlemen,” he said. “Recognizing that our natural state is one of impoverishment and that our families and loved ones are still in the jaws of a hideous beast, I’d like to take a moment to point out that in the past seven hours we’ve raised more money than in the previous seven months. It’s been a long day. If there’s ever been a day that should end at the Cafe Royal, I’d say this is it.”
    SPIRO ORDERED A bottle of cognac that cost nearly as much as his rent and smoked a stranger’s Turkish cigarettes. He listened to an Austrian cabaret singer in a white turban sing the blues, drank until the room went soft, and then whispered compliments into the ear of a woman (he was fairly certain she was a woman) who raved about his accent and insisted on calling him Nigel.
    At one point in the evening, he found Metzger at a dark table in the back of the cafe. There was a girl to his right, a girl to his left, one across from him. They were chorus girls but they looked like lazy cats, smoking languorously and whispering into each other’s ears. They made quite a picture, but it wasn’t the girls that struck him. It was the fact that, tucked away in this dark corner with them, Metzger seemed to hardly notice they were there. He wasn’t lighting their cigarettes or ordering their drinks or playing footsie with all three under the table. He was doodling Committee advertisement copy on a cocktail napkin, turning the napkin this way, then that way, then flipping it over, then scraping his pen against the table to draw the ink. It was both touching and pathetic, and Spiro understood completely. This was the essential problem of his existence over the past three years: the way the work invaded, the impossibility of tuning it out. When Metzger finally glanced up, Spiro raised his mostly empty glass of cognac to him, then swallowed it down.
    A few hours after midnight, he left to go home. When he stepped into his apartment, there were only a few hours remaining before dawn. He collapsed on the bed in the small, cold room. For a long time, he lay on top of the rumpled sheets in his undershirt, watching the slow rotation of the ceiling fan. He thought about the girl and he thought about the fire and he thought about his wife and children, how a few weeks earlier, after two and a half years of living on separate continents, his wife had sent him not a letter but a three-sentence telegram: H AVE MET SOMEONE ELSE —STOP—M OVING WITH CHILDREN TO H AIFA —STOP—F