“Yes, I could do that. What…?”
“Eh… Greenleaf. Thomas Greenleaf.”
“Greenleaf. Like the poet…”
“That’s it.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll arrange it.”
On my way across the glass-domed concourse, I’d spotted a novelty shop, and it had occurred to me that maybe I ought to have a disguise, a beard maybe, like Greenleaf had in Bird-in-Hand. No beards in the shop, though — the best I’d been able to find was a cheap handlebar moustache. At the New York Central ticket window, the guy had asked me: “Sure you want on that train, bud? Just runnin’ it north to pick up the Albany crowd, wasn’t plannin’ to stop.” That’d be Tom Dewey and his lot — Jesus, what if I failed and had to suffer another one of these goddamn trainrides, and this time with Dewey’s bullyboys? Probably have that man-eating Great Dane with him, too. “Yes, hurry it up, I don’t want to miss it!” I sure as hell hoped I could pull this thing off.
Hustling toward the train, running all alone against the tide, I’d sniffed hastily at my armpits and wished this place was actually one of those Roman baths it’d been modeled after. It was hot and I’d felt sticky and ugly with sweat. Why do I always perspire so much? “Oh, you work hard at stirring up a good stew,” Uncle Sam once told me, “but people see you work, they see the sweat drop in the soup.” Well, couldn’t be helped, a man had to live with his liabilities. I needed a shave, too, a clean suit — I’d be playing out this hand looking more like Beetle Bailey than Steve Canyon, but it would have to do. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast, I’d realized. My stomach was churning, my mouth was dry, but I’d recognized these symptoms as the natural and healthy signs that my system was keyed up for battle. When a man has been through even a minor crisis, he learns not to worry when his muscles tense up, his breathing comes faster, his nerves tingle, his temper becomes short — in fact, far from worrying when this happens, he should worry when it does not. And I was also feeling an exhilaration, a sense of release and excitement. The worst, I’d reassured myself, was over. Making the decision to meet a crisis is far more difficult than the test itself. And I had made mine: I was changing trains for the future! I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I’d felt I’d found my form again. I understood the Rosenbergs as no one else in the world could understand them — not their families, their children, their co-conspirators, the FBI, not even each other. And out of that understanding I could provoke a truth for the world at large to gape at: namely, that nothing is predictable, anything can happen.
I’d reached the train and had stepped aboard, but I’d suddenly been shaken by a cold chill and had stepped back down: was I making a mistake? The train was completely empty, I’d be all alone. I could see others jumping down off the incoming trains and racing eagerly for the subways uptown, and I’d nearly lost heart. The American people are very volatile. They can be caught up emotionally with a big move, but if it fails, they can turn away just as fast. I always felt guilty whenever I deviated from the majority, and now I was bolting the executive party to boot. But what was the alternative? It was Hobson’s choice: certain failure, if perhaps less spectacular and final, up at Times Square — or a possible long-shot breakthrough up at Sing Sing, however hazardous. Maybe I should call Pat, I’d thought, maybe she could help me decide. But what would I say? Anyway, she’d probably left home already — for all I knew, she and the girls might be somewhere here in Penn Station right this minute! Couldn’t let her catch me like this, she’d never understand. Saint or no, she could be a real bitch at chewing people out, and right now I couldn’t take it, not in public anyway. She was like the good fairy who was all right in her place but wouldn’t leave you alone. Besides, the choice, the decision, I’d reminded myself, had already been taken. Had it not? Had it not? The whistle had screamed and I’d leapt aboard the empty train, thinking: Oh my God! they’ve left me alone to do it all!
Once we’d pulled out and started to roll north out of the city, I’d begun to feel better. It always helped to move. Connected me with time somehow, made me feel like things were in mesh. Like that time I came flying back from the Caribbean to find all those microfilms in Whittaker Chambers’s pumpkin patch. Or my wedding day when Pat and I struck off for Mexico City, the whole fantastic world out in front of us, timeless, borderless, ripe and golden as the unspecified fortune sought by all of the poor but honest boys of the fairy tales. Motion — even random movements — made me feel closer to reality, closer to God. Not that I ever thought much about God — but I knew what I was talking about. Ask the man in the street and he’ll tell you that God is a ‘“Supreme Being.” But “being” is only the common side of God — his transcendent side is motion. Monks on hilltops know nothing about contemplation, all that’s just idle daydreaming. I knew a lot about that, too, I’d spent a lot of time flat out in the back yard staring off into infinity, but I knew you had to keep moving if you wanted to find out who you really were and what the world was all about. It was the real reason I’d always loved trains — not to escape west or east or any other direction like that, but to pull back from the illusions of fixed places so as to make the vital contact. If I’d had time for theology, I might have revolutionized the goddamn field.
It had felt spooky being all alone on the train — the echoey emptiness had seemed to emphasize the essential loneliness of all critical decision-making, to set me apart in some awful way — but I’d been grateful for the chance to relax, take off my hat and sunglasses, my shoes, unbutton and stretch out a little, without having to worry about what other people might think. I’d tried the moustache on. It had felt funny. Stiff. Ticklish. I’d stuffed it in my pocket. It’s not enough to break the play open with one face, I’d thought, saving the other one to use later in case it didn’t work. If I was going to do this thing at all, I had to do it as Richard Nixon — and not even as Richard Nixon, which was already, even in my own mind, something other than myself, but as just…me. I’d realized that in some obscure way, through my contact with the Rosenbergs, even as remote and unintentional as it was, I had somehow become tainted myself — as though I’d had some ancient curse laid on me (though I didn’t believe in curses, I was getting carried away by those stories from my childhood, the ones our hired girl used to tell, and by this train, its lonesome whistle, the daydreaming — contemplation, I mean): in short, I was in a lot of trouble and I’d stay in trouble unless I could somehow absorb this contact, intensify it, and turn it finally to my own advantage. In a sense I was no more free than the Rosenbergs were, we’d both been drawn into dramas above and beyond those of ordinary mortals, the only real difference between us being the Rosenbergs’ rashness and general poor judgment — but then wait: if that was so, was my breaking out a part of the script, too? Oh shit! but then — I hadn’t wanted to think about this, I’d pushed it out of my mind, forcing myself to concentrate on the Rosenbergs instead, how I was going to approach them, what kind of strategy I might best use, what in the end I wanted out of them.
Julius was the weak one, I knew. I’d start with him, and if he cracked, Ethel would have no choice. This was the great thing about conspiracies: you punch a little hole and a whole flood of accusations and counter-accusations comes pouring out. It would probably break up their marriage, but that’d be their problem. They might be looking for a good excuse anyway. And at least they’d still be alive. When things had died down, they’d probably thank me for it. Not that it would be easy. Weak or no, Rosenberg had had two years to shore up his defenses — all those public declamations: he’d thrown up a real stone wall. Mere reason was useless in the face of it, as were threats or cajolery. He’d repel all frontal attacks, I had to sneak over that wall somehow, catch him by surprise from behind.