ET: Almanac

 It is on. The Rosenbergs are to die at last. Television networks interrupt programs with the announcement: "President Eisenhower and the Supreme Court of the United States of America have refused to spare the lives of atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg." At the Bernard Bach home in Toms River, New Jersey, a small ten-year-old boy is watching the baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Detoit Tigers on channel 11 when the announcement is made. The score is 0-0, but Yankee first baseman Joe Collins has just beat out a drag bunt in the bottom of the fourth. It is a sunny day and the boy is thinking about going out to play baseball with friends in the neighborhood. That's what Sonia Bach wants him to do. But he's fascinated by the television and can't pry himself away from it. The announcer says the executions are scheduled to take place tonight. He looks very intent and serious. The boy tries to see past him to the ballgame again, but the announcer won't go away. "My Mommy and Daddy," the boy whispers, feeling that someone or something is watching him. But he doesn't know what to add. A prayer? A seventh-inning stretch? At the ballgame, nobody seems to have noticed that the announcement has been made. Yankee outfielder Gene Woodling has come to the plate during the interruption, and he now watches a ball go by. There's something magical about TV, everything seems to happen at once on it, the near and far, the funny and sad, the real and the unreal. Tonight! Collins, taking a big lead off first base, is not thinking about this. He doesn't care. The boy hates Collins for his cheap hit. Just like the Yankees. His Mom and Dad like the Brooklyn Dodgers; the New York Yankees are Judge Kaufman's team. Judge Kaufman is rich and lives on Park Avenue and takes his sons to see them play. The boy feels that awful lump growing in his stomach again. His little brother is out on the front porch with Leo painting a homemade Father's Day card with watercolors. Father's Day is Sunday, a long time away. "That was their last chance," the boy tells himself, trying to picture this new finality in the same way he sees the Tiger pitcher stretch, study Collins at first, then whip the ball toward the plate: ball two! Are the other guys in the neighborhood watching the game, did they hear the announcement? His mom and dad have told him it's not manly to be afraid, but he is afraid, he can't help it. He feels like there are two of himself loose in this world, one who likes to play baseball with friends and come home to Mom and Dad and sometimes push his little brother around, and another one on television and in the newspapers who is threatening to eat the other one up. Both of them, the one eating and the one getting eaten, are frightened, because they both believe the world is not crazy, how could it be? and yet why is it doing these maniac things? why is it killing his Mom and Dad like this, and why is everybody so excited about it, and what is it they want with him, a plain ten-year-old boy who's still learning his fractions and doesn't even know how to fix a television or throw a curve ball yet. "Why don't you go and play catch with Steve?" says Sonia gently. She is being too nice to him. Like everybody else of late. Even Mr. Bloch. Sometimes he feels like shouting at them: damn you all! Woodling slams a one-strike, two-balls pitch clean out of the ballpark, and the Yankees lead, 2-0. The television camera shows people cheering and waving and having a terrific time. If people really loved one another, he wonders, would the world be like this? His poor Mom! What is she thinking? How does it feel? What is love in a world where people behave like this as if it were normal. Woodling circles the bases. His little brother comes in, wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt all smeared with paint, and asks Sonia for a glass of milk. "That's it. That's it," the boy says, "Good-bye." "Good-bye." Nobody's listening. 

His folks lawyer Manny Bloch is having the same experience: he and his defense team are flinging themselves frenetically at any judge they can find at home or in chambers, but they all seem to have vanished or gone deaf. A stone wall. Manny fires off a telegram to President Eisenhower, raising the Hugo Black point that the case has not been reviewed by the Supreme Court, but this wire is short-circuited by Special Counsel Bernie Shanley and "transmitted to the Justice Department": Eisenhower never sees it, Bloch, who has fallen unprofessionally in love with the entire family, is beginning to lose his forensic cool and is having flashes of self-destructive temper, as the doors slam shut in his face. He and others plead for a stay of eleven-p.m. executions tonight because of the Jewish Sabbath which begins at sundown. Kaufman, playing it close to the chest, says he has already spoken with Attorney General Brownell about that: the executions will not be carried out during the Sabbath. The lawyers take this to mean a delay is in the offing, past the weekend at least, and relax a moment: at Justice, they exchange knowing winks. 

The Rosenbergs themselves, locked away in the stillness of Sing Sing Death House, are remote from all this noisy maneuvering, but they are not unaware of it. One thing they know: they are not alone in this world. Julius even clings to the mad hope that justice will be done, that they will be vindicated, these walls will come crashing down, and they will ride out of here on the shoulders of their friends, the people, but Ethel, though never more strong and serene, shares her son's mood of grim resignation: that's it, good-bye, good-bye. She sits with Julie, separated from him by a wire-mesh screen, composing a farewell letter to the two boys. What she wants above all is to save them from cynicism and despair, so she speaks of the fellowship of grief and struggle and the price that must be paid to create a life on earth worth living. Julie, watching her, nods in agreement, awed by her radiant tranquility . . . 

. . . Your Daddy who is with me in the last momentous hours, sends his heart and all the love that is in it for his dearest boys. Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience. We press you close and kiss you with all our strength.

Lovingly,

Daddy Julie and Mommy Ethel

Julius's mother, Sophie Rosenberg, turns up meanwhile at the gates of the White House asking to see the President, but they don't even let her get close--her emotional behavior is notorious, and besides, she's not in good health, and people near the end are capable of anything--so she has to do her scene in the streets. Much is happening out there. Demonstrations are building up in Washington, New York, around the world. Riots are expected and police everywhere are put on special alert. Bloch blames Judge Kaufman for stirring up all this trouble through his merciless intransigence: "Tens upon tens of millions of people in this country, in Europe, in Asia, know about this case!" The Boy Judge is not taken in: "I have been frankly hounded, pounded by vilification and by pressurists--I think it is not a mere accident that people have been aroused in these countries. I think it has been by design!" On a crepe-paper banner strung out above the Republic Chop Suey eatery in Times Square, Senator Frank Brandigee's immortal rejoinder to Woody Wilson: 

I AM NOT GOING TO BE BUNCOED BY ANY OLEAGENOUS LINGO 

                   ABOUT "HUMANITY" OR "MEN EVERYWHERE" 

 

 

 

 

Robert Coover: The Public Burning - Beginning of Chapter 16, will try to copy the whole chapter later.