But if the United States win this war and we're seen as opposing it, we won't win an election anywhere in the country for the next twenty years. People will vote for the Republicans before they vote for us.'
'I don't know about that,' Flora said. 'I don't know about that at all. With so many dead, with so many maimed, even winning this war won't be enough to make anyone glad we fought it.'
'Write that down!' Bruck exclaimed. 'It's a good propaganda point, and I haven't seen it anywhere else.' He swung from suitor to political animal like a weathervane in a shifting wind.
Flora preferred him as political animal. There his instincts were good, which she would not have said about him as a suitor. She did write down the idea. 'We should let it come from someone who isn't operating out of New York City,' she said. 'The Roosevelt propaganda machine has made New York Socialists pariahs, as far as the rest of the country is concerned.'
'That's not right,' Bruck said. 'It's not fair.' He calmed down. 'But it is real, no doubt about that. We'll manage. Roosevelt can't censor everything we do, no matter how much he wishes he could.'
Figuring ways to do that kept Bruck happily occupied till quitting time. Indeed, Flora was able to slip out the door and down the stairs while he was still shouting into a telephone. When she could, she preferred to deal with annoying men peacefully and indirectly, rather than whipping out a hat pin. When peaceful, indirect means didn't work
'Speak softly and carry a sharp pin,' she murmured, laughing at the way she'd twisted TR's slogan. But the laughter did not last long. Roosevelt's stick had not been big enough to knock over either the Confederacy or Canada at the first onslaught, which meant casualties by the tens, by the hundreds of thousands over chunks of land hardly large enough to serve as burying grounds for the dead.
Soldiers' Circle men still prowled through the Lower East Side, but fewer of them than in the days just after the Remembrance Day riots. They weren't so likely to break heads as they had been then, either. She'd even heard a story that one of them had put aside his truncheon after falling in love with a pretty Jewish girl. She didn't know whether it was a true story; no one seemed to have details. That people were telling it was interesting, though. True or not, they wanted to believe it.
When she got back to her family's apartment, her sister Esther was helping their mother get supper ready. Her brother Isaac had his nose in a book. Her other brother, David, walked in a few minutes after she did, looking tired. He'd got a sewing job, and was putting in long hours at it.
Her father came in next. He'd worked the same hours as his son, more or less, but bore them better, or at least more easily: he'd been putting in a back-breaking day for many years, and was used — or resigned-to it. His pipe smoke, though harsher than it had been in the days before the war started, still blended nicely with the odor of the stewing chicken in the pot on the stove.
Sophie dragged herself in last of all. She was very close to her time of confinement, but that didn't keep her from putting in a full day's work. If you couldn't do the job, the boss would find someone who could. Once she'd recovered from having the baby, she'd have to find a new position, too; no one would hold the old one for her. It wasn't right, it wasn't just, but, as Herman Bruck had said, it was real.
'Did I get a letter from Yossel today?' she asked as soon as she walked into the apartment. A framed photograph of Yossel Reisen, looking stern in his U.S. Army uniform, stood on the table next to the divan-sofa where he'd slept so many nights.
'Not today, Sophie,' Esther answered.
Sophie looked disappointed. 'That's three days now with nothing,' she said, setting both hands on her swollen belly as if to say the baby expected to hear from its father, too. Her fingers had got too swollen to let her wear the wedding band Yossel had bought for her, but she had worn it and, more to the point, had the right to wear it.
'He hasn't been writing every day,' Flora said, and then quickly added, 'But he has been very good about sending you letters.' For one thing, that was true. For another, now that Yossel had made Sophie his wife, she defended him like a tigress defending its young. Flora didn't want her thinking she had to do that now.
'Supper's ready,' their mother said, another way of defusing a situation that could get sticky.
Over chicken stew, Benjamin Hamburger said, 'I saw in the papers today that we are making good progress in the Roanoke valley, that we are pushing the Confederates back there. Soon, alevai, we will clear them out of the land between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.'
'You sound like a general, Papa,' David Hamburger said with a smile. 'Did you know where these places were before we went to war?'
'I didn't know where these places were before I had a son-in-law fighting there,' his father answered. He snapped his fingers. 'And I didn't care that much, either. You care about what touches you. Everything else is not so important.'
'That's shortsighted, Papa,' Flora said, respectfully but firmly. 'That's how the bosses keep the workers under their control: by mystifying them about what really is important to their well-being.'
'Politics at the supper table we can do without,' Benjamin Hamburger said. 'I wasn't talking about politics. I was talking about this family.'
'You can't separate them like that,' Flora said. Her father started to raise a hand. She got in one last shot before he could: 'If it weren't for politics, would Yossel be in Virginia now?'
'That's different,' he said. A moment later, he looked sheepish. 'If you ask me to explain exactly how it's different, I may have a little trouble.' Flora smiled at him, liking him very much right then. Not many people had the intellectual honesty to admit something like that. Because he had admitted it, she didn't push him any further. The rest of the meal passed in peace.
Afterwards, Sophie sat and rested while her mother and Esther and Flora washed the dishes. The kitchen was crowded with the three of them in it, but they made short work of plates and glasses and pots and silverware.
Someone knocked on the door. Someone was always knocking on the door: neighbors wanting to borrow something, neighbors giving something back, young men coming to talk or play chess or cards with David and Isaac, young men coming to call on Esther, older men coming to talk and smoke with Benjamin, women coming to gossip, delivery boys …
Flora was closest to the door, so she opened it. The young man who stood in the hall was a few years too young for a military uniform, but the Western Union uniform he had on was of similar color and cut, even if its brass buttons were shinier and more aggressively visible than a soldier would have liked.
'Telegram for Mrs. Sophie, uh' — he looked down at the yellow envelope he was carrying-'Sophie Reisen.'
'Sophie!' Flora called, and started to give him a nickel for delivering the wire. She was, for a moment, puzzled: who would send Sophie a telegram?
Then the Western Union boy said, 'No, ma'am, I never take money for delivering these.' He took off his hat when Sophie came to the door, handed her the envelope, and hurried away.
'Who is sending me a telegram?' Sophie asked: the same question Flora had put to herself. Suddenly, Flora knew a dreadful certainty. God forbid, she thought, and bit her tongue to keep from saying anything while Sophie opened the thin, flimsy envelope. 'It's from Philadelphia,' Sophie said, 'from the Secretary of War.' Her voice got weaker and more full of fear with every word she spoke. ' 'It is my sorrowful duty to inform you that — ' '
She didn't go on, not with words. Instead, she let out a great, full-throated wail of grief that had doors flying open up and down the hallway. Flora took the telegram from her limp fingers and read through it. Yossel had died in Virginia, 'heroically defending the United States and the restoration of their proper place among the nations of the continent and of the world and the cause of liberty.' Flora wanted to crumple up the telegram and throw it away, but didn't because she thought her sister might want to keep it. The only truth in it, she thought, was that Yossel was dead. Everything else was patriotic claptrap.
Sophie hugged her belly and moaned, 'What am I going to do? What are we going to do? I'm a widow, and I never even had a husband!' That wasn't quite true, but it wasn't far wrong, either.
People came flooding into the apartment. The building had heard that kind of anguished cry more than once before. Everyone knew what it meant. Women began bringing food. Everyone who'd ever met Yossel Reisen had a good word for him, as did a good many people who hadn't.
In the midst of the gathering, Esther asked Flora, 'Are we going to sit shiva for Yossel?'
'Sophie will,' Flora answered, but that went almost without saying. Would the rest of the family sit in mourning with torn clothes and pray for a solid week? Everything American in Flora — and, evidently, in Esther, too-
