The Last Paradise Read online

  “No. Not at all. My father was a Jewish shoemaker, my mother was . . . well . . . she played the piano. They came to this country like thousands of others who immigrated, searching for the opportunity that Russia had denied them.” He paused. “But, it seems, things have changed now.” He looked at Walter, as if seeking approval.

  “Indeed. They have changed, a great deal. Very good. In that case, I will summarize the situation for you.” He stood to address the three applicants. “The Soviet Union is a generous nation that opens its arms to all oppressed peoples, regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Our struggle is that of the weak, of the poor, of the slaves of capitalism, of the world’s outcasts. Walter, whom I have known since he was a trade unionist, has told me of your plans, and I assure you that nothing would please me more than to be able to help you. However—”

  “However?” Walter broke in, removing his tortoiseshell glasses.

  “However, things are not so simple now,” he went on. “Hundreds of jobless citizens come to this office each day: cooks, clerks, electricians, pilots, salesmen, chemists, storekeepers, librarians, dentists, even undertakers, in search of work. Our staff can barely keep up with the workload. We’ve processed over a hundred thousand applications, and the number of vacancies is beginning to shrink.”

  “But wait a minute,” Walter cut in. “Last time we spoke—”

  “Last time we spoke, I explained that we were overrun with applications.” He took out a bundle of newspapers and spread them over the table. “Here: Roy Howard of Scripps Howard, Karl Bickel of United Press, the correspondents Eugene Lyons, William Chamberlin, Walter Duranty, Louis Fischer . . . everyone! They’re all talking about the Soviet Union as if it were Eden rediscovered. Even the US Chamber of Commerce has published a bulletin encouraging citizens to travel to Russia!”

  “Yes, but you promised me that you’d deal with our application personally.”

  “And I will, Mr. Scott. I give you my word that I will, but not with the haste that you are demanding of me. Right now, there just aren’t places for everyone.”

  “So, what about all those people waiting in the line?”

  “We can only accept specialized workers. The rest must wait their turn, just like you.”

  “How long are we talking about?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t know. Let me see . . .” The Amtorg boss studied the reports on his desk. “Five months. Maybe six. Certainly no sooner. The ships are full, and, to be frank, with all the publicity we’ve received, propaganda workers like you are a low priority. Of course, as soon as an offer that fits your profile comes up, I will bear you in mind.” He walked over to the door to invite them to leave.

  Walter and Sue got up, but Jack remained in his chair.

  “And what about the Avtozavod?” Jack inquired.

  “Pardon me?” Saul Bron fixed his eyes on Jack.

  “You know, the Ford Motor Company in Russia. This pamphlet of yours says that they urgently need workers for the production plant that Henry Ford is building in Gorky.”

  Saul Bron grumbled like a bear as he snatched the document that Jack held out to him and saw the news for himself.

  “That’s right. But I don’t know what this has to do with your application. This offer is for highly qualified automotive operatives and—”

  “Yes. I’ve read it. So it’s true that they need skilled workers urgently?”

  “True enough. Should we find them, they’d be setting sail tomorrow.”

  “In that case, you have your men right here,” Jack replied with his best smile.

  Back at the printer’s, Walter hugged Jack until his ribs creaked, and he let Sue give his friend an enthusiastic kiss on the cheek. Neither could believe what had happened. Jack had persuaded Saul Bron to have Intourist, the Soviet travel agency, process three last-minute tickets, and to promise them jobs when they arrived in the Soviet Union.

  “I don’t know how you wangled it, but that thing about me being the best student at the Brooklyn Tech must have sounded convincing,” said Walter. “Thank you, Jack. You’ve saved my life.”

  His friend shook his head. “If you spoke Russian, you would’ve persuaded the Soviet official yourself. After all, what I said was hardly a lie.” He raised an eyebrow. “I just forgot to mention that in the last two years, you’ve traded your mechanical engineering classes for canteen politics.”

  “Jack, I don’t know what they’re expecting of you in that Russian factory,” said an openmouthed Sue. “But to cough up dough just like that, they must really value your work. Free tickets!”

  “Well, not exactly free.” Walter took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses with his shirttail. “When I spoke to the administrators, they explained to me that, once in the Soviet Union, they’ll deduct the cost from our wages. Still, you can’t deny it’s a godsend.” He put his spectacles back on no cleaner than they were before, and gave a self-satisfied smile.

  “Oh! Of course, of course,” muttered Sue.

  “And it wouldn’t have been right if we had accepted a preferential deal. Would it, Jack?”

  “I suppose not,” he replied. For a moment he’d imagined that the Soviet Union might really be the paradise Sue and Walter had fallen in love with.

  Walter gave Jack a celebratory slap on the back.

  “And what about me? How can I thank my new husband?” Sue smiled mischievously as she approached Jack, swinging her hips.

  “Hey! That’s quite enough of that!” Walter laughed, and he moved Sue away with a kiss that did not prevent her from continuing to gaze at Jack. “For the record, I didn’t take kindly to that stunt. Why in hell’s name did you decide to say that Sue was your wife?”

  “Oh, give it a rest, Walter. I’ve already told you three times.”

  “Well, I do apologize, but since she’s my fiancée, you might have to tell me again!”

  “OK, OK.” He stood to dramatize the story. “That Soviet official who interviewed me, he was mighty suspicious. When I informed him in detail of my old position at Ford, he seemed persuaded, but with Walter, it was more difficult. In the end, he reluctantly approved his application, but he refused to allow Sue to come with us. I didn’t know what to do, so when she whispered to me to tell the man that she was my wife, I didn’t think twice.”

  “And, Sue, why exactly didn’t you whisper to him that it was you and I who were married?” Walter reproached her.

  “I don’t know. I was nervous. In the moment, it was the first thing that came to me. I guess I thought that, as the wife of the indispensable engineer, they’d be less likely to make it difficult for me. You didn’t say anything at the time. And anyway, what does it matter? Don’t the Soviets advocate free love?” She winked.

  “Huh? Well, the two of you can get divorced right now—we’re still in America!” Walter added, and they all roared with laughter.

  To celebrate their good fortune, they opened a bottle of soda they’d just bought and warmed a can of sausages over an improvised fire of posters and pamphlets. Jack was hypnotized by the scene. Walter and Sue were a model of happiness. He couldn’t see himself, but he knew that if disillusionment had a face, it must be much like his.

  “We won’t need these anymore,” Walter said, throwing another poster on the fire. “To the last paradise!” he toasted, raising the bottle.

  “To the last paradise!” repeated Sue, waving her sausage.

  After finishing his snack, Jack suggested making an inventory of their belongings, to compare it with the customs list provided by the Amtorg clerk, which cataloged the items that the trading company recommended taking, as well as those that would be confiscated by Soviet customs. The banned objects included everything from cameras, weapons, and musical instruments, to jewelry, toys of any kind, books in languages other than Russian, and medicine not prescribed by Soviet doctors. Walter noted with irony that the jewelry rule was unnecessary, for no wealthy capitalist would ever immigrate to the Soviet Union, while Jack wondered w
hat would happen to a sick person with no knowledge of Russian who needed urgent treatment and did not have “Soviet” medicine.

  As for the recommendations, the list advised immigrants, in addition to the relevant visa, to pack canned food, cookies, dry confectionery, nuts, warm clothing, winter footwear, fur hats, and tobacco. The Amtorg official who gave them the list also informed them that their US dollars would be exchanged for Soviet rubles at the border, which was of little concern to Jack, given that his cash reserves totaled little more than nothing.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do. Where will we get the money for our travel costs?” Sue slumped on the floor, suddenly deflated. Her pout reminded Jack of a little girl whose doll had just been stolen.

  “Oh, come on, Sue! There’s plenty of stuff we can sell here,” Walter reassured her as he rummaged through his belongings. “Let’s see. A nickel silver cigarette case, a wristwatch . . . Look! My Emerson wireless! We also have an old Underwood typewriter that works, I think, the pen you gave me when we got engaged, and my old bicycle. At home, there’s some furniture in good condition, and you have the vacuum cleaner that you bought when you worked at the diner. And you, Jack?”

  “Same as you. Trash,” he muttered.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Walter turned on his friend as if he’d been shoved. “Just the wireless cost seventy-five dollars! All right, it doesn’t work, but I bet you it just needs new valves. And the fucking bike cost seven dollars.” He gave Jack a kick. “She paid twenty for the vacuum cleaner. If you add everything together . . .”

  “Don’t waste your time, Walter. I’ve tried selling junk like this before, and I know what I’m talking about. Take my phonograph. When I went to sell it, they laughed in my face. We won’t get ten dollars for this heap of scrap. The only thing that has any value is the Studebaker, and it’s not ours.”

  “Then let’s sell it!” Sue blurted out.

  “What?” Walter couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  “You always said your neighbor was an exploitative capitalist, didn’t you? So let’s sell his car. I bet he just buys another.”

  “For pity’s sake! You can’t just put up an advertisement for a stolen car and sell it to the first sap that walks by,” Walter sputtered. “But it isn’t a bad idea. Shit! Maybe it ain’t! Let me think . . . Hang on a minute! Jack, you worked at a repair shop, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right, but I don’t see what—”

  “So you must know the right people: mechanics, taxi drivers, traveling salesmen . . . Maybe one of them will take it off our hands.”

  “And have the cops on our backs? Are you crazy?”

  In the absence of alternatives, Jack suggested they put aside financial matters and concentrate on organizing the journey. Walter and Sue agreed.

  When they came out of the Amtorg offices, Walter had called an old contact to make sure that Jack’s fake passport would be ready that night. To avoid unnecessary risks, they decided that Jack would stay hidden at the printer’s while Walter picked up the passport and returned the Studebaker. Then he would drop by his lodgings to collect his warm clothes, spend the night there, and head back to Amtorg early in the morning to have their visas stamped. Sue, who had handed her key back to her landlady, would stay at the printer’s to help Jack with the luggage. In the morning, the two of them would go to the docks, where they would buy as many supplies as they could afford. Finally, Walter would meet them at the port to exchange their Intourist vouchers for tickets.

  Having split up the tasks, Walter located the Linotype he would use to print a false marriage certificate, to which Jack thought he could give an air of authenticity if he stamped it with the Hebrew characters from the medallion that hung from his neck.

  “It was my mother’s,” he said in a low voice, squeezing it between his fingers. “I don’t know what it means, but we’ll tell the Russians it’s a rabbi’s seal.”

  Shortly after sundown, Walter cranked the Studebaker and lowered the window.

  “You behave now,” he joked to Sue before putting the car in reverse. “And you,” he said to Jack, “take care of her. I’ll see you both tomorrow at the docks.”

  Jack sighed with relief as the beat-up automobile clattered into the distance. His friend had done a good job, and the marriage certificate that traveled with him in the glove compartment looked as genuine as the old pay stubs that he had given Walter as proof of his time at the Ford Motor Company. He closed the shutter and got back to work. As he organized the rest of his documents, Sue packed their clothes and wondered how many supplies they’d be able to buy with the thirty dollars they’d designated for food. However, as time went by and Jack said nothing, she set the suitcases aside and began painting her nails, humming a tune. Then she walked up to Jack and placed her hands between his face and the papers he was working on.

  “What do you think?” She showed him her fingers tipped in bright red as if they were jewels. Though they were a handbreadth from his nose, Jack merely glanced at them.

  “I preferred the sausages,” he mumbled.

  “Oh!” Sue snatched her hands away, embarrassed, as if she’d just discovered they weren’t pretty. “What’re you doing?” she asked, trying to change the subject. She gave Jack a mock smile.

  “I’m doing my accounts,” he said with sarcasm, and pushed the papers aside.

  “Well, I’ve finished packing.” She stood and swiveled around in an improvised dance move, during which her smile regained its splendor. “Oh, Jack! Russia! This is all so exciting; I don’t know how I’m going to sleep! On the subject of sleeping, what’re we going to do?”

  Jack continued to stare impassively at the table.

  “I don’t know about you, but I reckon I’ll close my eyes and wait for dawn.”

  Sue’s joy froze over.

  “Why are you being so sharp? I’m only trying to be friendly.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just not in the mood for conversation.” He tensed up. “Going to Russia might be your dream, but it sure ain’t mine, so don’t expect me to get excited by the idea of rotting in a country where, no matter what I do, I’ll always be a nobody without a dime to my name.”

  “Oh!” Sue’s expression hardened. “And what exactly are you in America, if you don’t mind my asking? A world-famous down-and-out?”

  Jack looked at Sue as if she’d just slapped him.

  “I said I’m sorry,” was all he could say in response.

  “I don’t get you, Jack. There’s no future here. You were lucky and made some real money at Ford, but that time’s over. This awful depression’s never going to end. You should forget what you were and make do like the rest of us, rather than blind yourself with vain pretensions.”

  Jack turned away to shut her out. He’d have liked to have told her just what he thought, but he had enough to worry about, without having to justify himself to some obnoxious brat who would never understand. What did she know about life? Who was Sue to tell him to forget about the good fortune he once had? Perhaps moving to another country was the solution to all of her problems because her only aspiration was to marry Walter and produce children. But if that was so, then it was Sue’s ambition, not his. And anyway, his success at Ford had nothing to do with luck. No. The comfortable life he’d lived in Detroit was the kind of existence he had striven to achieve for as long as he could remember. He had worked like a dog for that life; he had turned his back on his family for it; he had sweated and suffered for it. All to create a future for himself that was cruelly and unjustly snatched from him.

  He finished spreading the blankets over the chairs and stopped to examine himself.

  He, who had once worn cologne, now had to put up with the stench that his body gave off because he did not even own a bar of soap with which to wash. He yearned to wear tailored suits again, and not the rags that covered his body, and he longed to taste a tender steak, even if just once more, at a restaurant with linen tablecloths. And Sue reproach
ed him for it? Why? What right did anyone have to fault him for dreaming that he might one day get back the little luxuries for which he’d fought so hard? Nobody had just handed them to him then, and no one would do so now. Delusions of grandeur . . . Maybe his dreams seemed frivolous compared to Sue’s, but was it so awful to want a good job again? To feel wanted and admired? What was so bad about that?

  The wail of a siren in the distance pulled him from his thoughts. Jack ran to the shutter to look through the cracks, fearing it was a police car, but beyond the light from the nearby streetlamps, all he could see was darkness. As he pressed his eyelids against the shutter, the sound gradually faded. Turning around, he found Sue in front of him.

  “Something worrying you?” she asked him.

  “No. Just looking.”

  “It’s not unusual to be woken by sirens in this neighborhood. There’re more backroom distilleries here than there are jobless folk.” She paused. “We should rest. We have a long day tomorrow.”

  Jack nodded. There weren’t many places to choose from, so he curled up in a corner and covered himself with his raincoat. From there, he saw Sue take the candle and head to the row of chairs that he’d put out for her. Then she blew it out, and the darkness swallowed her.

  Jack tried to sleep, but the night’s silence bellowed in his ears. He thought of his father. He remembered him when his hair was still dark; when he was still sober and enjoyed telling stories about the far-off country of his birth; when he hugged Jack as a boy and made toys for him from shoe scraps, or when they went together to synagogue. Deep sorrow washed over him as he reflected on his failure to help Solomon. When the memory faded away, he turned his thoughts to Walter and Sue. He was unsure why he found it so difficult to feel grateful toward them. After all, they were the only friends he had left. The only ones who’d helped him. They might not share his dreams, but theirs were pure and simple, whereas his were selfish. And though he knew it was wrong, he could not help envying his uncle, Gabriel Beilis, the only person who seemed immune to the Depression. He imagined him smoking a Havana cigar and laughing at the world from his Rockefeller Center office. Jack hated him for it, and hated that his uncle would never suffer hardship the way he and his father had. That was when he swore to himself that from that moment on, he would do everything within his power to pull himself up from the gutter.