Pavel Gets a Job

by ALICE BEREZOWSKY

1

LADISLAV LORSKY and Margaret, his very A young Kentuckian wife, are friends of ours. We sat down to a bridge game with them after dinner one Thursday night. Ladislav, who generally takes the game more seriously than the rest of us, didn’t seem to have his mind on it. I had already observed that he had not enjoyed his dinner as much as usual. We played two rubbers; then Ladislav suddenly rose from the table and walked over to the far end of the room.

“What’s the matter, Ladislav?” I asked. “You seem out of sorts.”

“Not out of sorts,” he said slowly. “I’m just uncomfortable.”

“Is there anything we can do for you?” I queried. “Don’t you feel well?”

“No, thanks. I’m not physically uncomfortable, I’m spiritually uncomfortable.” He came back, sat down, and began to toy nervously with the cards. “It’s about my brother,” he explained. “I have had a letter from my brother from France. He and his wife and baby are in a difficult situation and they are helpless and hungry. lie is an engineer by profession — was chief engineer at a big French factory. His wife is French and he has lived in France since he graduated from the University of Paris. When the Germans came they put him out of his job because he is a Pole. Then they tried to starve him into going back to Poland to work. He knew what that meant. The whole world knows the conditions in Poland. So somehow he finally escaped with his wife and child into the unoccupied zone.”

“Why don’t you bring them over here?” asked my husband. “Could they get out of France?”

“That is what troubles me,” answered Ladislav. “You know what my own situation is. I make a fair living, but with Laddy and with all our extra expenses, we have our hands full. My brother doesn’t speak a word of English, neither does his wife. Their baby was born during an air raid, has never had the proper nourishment, and is weak and sickly. I have sent them money, but what good is money to them if there is no food to buy? Now it is becoming increasingly difficult to get money to them. That’s what makes me so upset tonight. Here we are in this safe, wonderful country, having eaten enough to feed my brother and his family for a week, and I feel like a heel. Nobody has the right to so much when others have so little.”

“Look, Ladislav,” I said. “Think back to when you came to this country after the last war. You had no money and you couldn’t speak English, but once you were here you managed to get along — and ahead, if I may add. ”

“Yes, ” he said, “but I was alone. I didn’t have a wife and baby. If I had money enough to take care of them for a year or two after they got here, I would move heaven and earth to bring Pavel and Annette over.”

“How do you feel about it, Margaret?” I asked. “Would you like to have them come over?”

“I guess so,” said Margaret, after some hesitation and with her Kentucky drawl.

“I mean, I want to do all I can for Ladislav’s family, but the responsibility of it all frightens me a little. We are just about getting on our own feet now. Finding a job isn’t easy, much less finding one for someone who can’t even speak the language. It seems so much to take on our shoulders. But, of course,” and she gave Ladislav a somewhat forced but nevertheless genuine smile, “I want to do whatever Ladislav thinks best.”

Just then we were interrupted by the doorbell. Some friends who lived in our building stopped in to say hello and to have a drink, and we dropped the discussion.

2

Three months later, we telephoned Margaret and Ladislav one evening to ask if they cared to come over and play bridge.

“ We can’t come,” said Margaret. “ We’ve got to get up terribly early tomorrow morning to meet the boat.”

“What boat?” I asked.

“Why, Pavel and Annette’s boat. They get in in the morning,” she said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world and I were fully informed of the circumstances.

“They do!” I exclaimed with surprise. “When did you decide to bring them over?”

“Why, you know, the night we were at your house. We made up our minds on the way home. We felt we simply couldn’t eat another meal unless we did. I couldn’t bear to think of that poor starved baby over there with those horrible Germans while our Laddy gets his quart of milk a day and vitamins and things besides. We’ll all manage somehow, ” she announced with a conviction she did not possess. “ We sold the car to send them the passage money, and a friend of Ladislav’s put up the bond. Another friend in Washington helped us arrange about the quota and all that.”

The next evening I suggested to my husband that it would be nice to telephone the Lorskys and inquire for their newly arrived relatives. Margaret answered the telephone, but I had difficulty recognizing her voice. She spoke with the low bewildered tones of a person who has severe illness in the house or has just witnessed a calamity.

“What’s the trouble? Is anyone ill?” I asked at once.

“No-o, we’re all right, it’s just that —” She stopped and I knew she was crying.

“Need any help? Do you want us to come over?” I volunteered.

A white-faced Ladislav opened the door to let us in. We found Margaret sitting on the living-room sofa looking as though she had just seen a ghost. I noticed that her face had suddenly lost its babyish expression.

“I can’t believe it!” she greeted us. “I just can’t believe that such things can happen in the world. You should have seen them — everybody should see them!”

“See whom, Margaret dear? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“She means Pavel and Annette. We’ve been with them all day,” explained Ladislav.

“And the baby, that pitiful, miserable—” Margaret dissolved into tears. I went over and sat beside her.

“You see,” Margaret began again, “naturally we’d been reading about conditions in Europe; we’d been to the movies and we’d listened to the radio. Only I guess we didn’t realize anything until we saw Pavel and Annette and little Pierre. Oh, we were sorry about it all — that’s why we brought them over. But even though we used to feel bad for a while after we read Pavel’s letters, we went on in our usual way — work, movies, playing with Laddy, taking our meals and our home and our happiness for granted. I guess we should have realized — Roosevelt and all of them have been telling us enough. It’s got to stop!” She straightened her shoulders and bobbed her blonde head up and down for emphasis. “We can’t let them go on doing such things to people!”

“Please don’t get so excited, Margaret,” begged Ladislav and turned to us. “You see, it was such a shock to us,” he explained. “Pavel had written things were bad, but we didn’t expect that they would be in such a condition when they arrived. They are both half-starved, and the baby — well, they had ration stamps but there was no food. They had one egg every two weeks, no meat, no milk for the baby, no— Oh! what’s the use,” he wearily sighed, “it is impossible to describe the effects of hunger. The baby is all bloated stomach and blotched skin over scraggly bones. When I looked at that baby and thought of our Laddy—” He stopped again.

“Anyway,” he resumed, “they had a frightful trip. So many passengers came off that boat it reminded me of the comedies in the movies when a squad of policemen get out of one taxi. I heard a fellow telling what a hell-hole that boat was and how the food stank and everyone was sick. But Pavel and Annette wouldn’t say a word about the trip. Pavel just kept repeating ‘America, America’ the way a kid says ‘Gee whiz! Gee whiz!’ when he gets his first twowheeler. And Annette just held on to Pierre and hugged and kissed him and said, ‘Maman va te donner à manger, Maman va te donner à manger.”’

Ladislav’s voice grew husky and he cleared his throat. “And then, when we took them to the two furnished rooms with kitchenette we found for them, Annette said ‘ Charmant.’ You remember the pictures we showed you of their house and garden in Paris, don’t you? But when we took them into the kitchenette and opened the icebox to show them where everything was, Annette broke down. Margaret had bought them just a few things: some milk, a box of eggs, a little fruit, and things like that. My God! when Annette saw that one box of eggs, she tore off her hat and coat, and before we could show her where the bathroom was, she was cooking lunch for the baby. I never saw on anyone’s face an expression like hers when she poured out the milk and cut and buttered the bread. She wouldn’t let Margaret do a thing to help her get anything ready. And when she squeezed an orange and gave the baby his orange juice it was as though she were taking part in some kind of ceremony. She held up the glass to the baby’s mouth with one hand and kept feeling up and down the baby’s bony little arm with the other. When the baby had guzzled up everything he said ‘Maman manger, Maman manger’ over and over and then fell asleep with a piece of bread in his hand.

“When we left them they just looked at us, but looked so darn grateful I felt embarrassed. All the way home I kept thinking I heard Pavel saying ‘America, America,’ and then I thought: ‘This is my country the same as if I were born here, and it can be his country, too.’”

It was about three weeks later that Margaret and I made a date to take our children to the playground in the park. Once we were settled on a bench and the children had gone to dig in the sand pile, I turned to Margaret and inquired for her refugee in-laws.

“They’re getting along,” said Margaret. “Pavel can’t look for a job yet because of his English, but he is learning very quickly. He takes lessons from a retired schoolteacher six nights a week. Ladislav has taken some extra work, now that he has two families to look out for. It’s hard but it’s worth it.

“Pierre, the baby, isn’t well,” she continued. “We took him to our doctor. He said Pierre has rickets and ordered all kinds of things for the baby. Annette worries because they cost so much. But even if he has things wrong with him, the baby looks better and I can see a real improvement. Annette says he hardly finishes one meal before he starts in saying ‘Maman manger’ all over again.

“We got a big kick out of taking Pavel to see the George Washington bridge. I think Pavel would have stayed a whole day just staring at that bridge. ‘It isn’t going to run away, Pavel,’ I told him, but he said, ‘It might be bombed one day, and sooner than we expect.”’

Margaret and I talked of other things, and when it began to grow dark and cold we took the children and left the park.

3

The next time I saw Margaret, four months had passed and she was wearing a Red Cross uniform. We were at a first-aid class. The “sooner than we expect” day that Pavel had talked about had come and gone. We made a date for the next evening.

When they entered our door Ladislav seemed puffed up with pride and Margaret was beaming with happiness.

“What’s up, Ladislav?” I asked. “Areyou getting ready to act the part of the proud father?”

“Not proud father, proud brother,” he announced. “Damn proud brother!”

“Oh, it’s the most wonderful thing!” cried Margaret. “Just like a fairy tale. Wait till you hear.” And she sat down, so eager to tell the news, she had riot even taken off her hat and coat. “It’s about Pavel. He has found a job. He —”

“Let me tell,” interrupted Ladislav. “It is a man’s story. It’s true — Pavel has a job and he got it entirely on his own. It seems that a week ago Pavel’s teacher told him she had heard through a friend that the Eagle Construction Company needed some engineers on a defense project, and she gave him the address. He didn’t say a word to anyone, but took his papers and went to Church Street to see the foreman. How he got there without getting lost I don’t know! Pavel handed the foreman his papers, including his degree, passport, and all. The foreman said he’d have to check on the papers with the immigration authorities, and if they were O.K. he might have a job as draughtsman for Pavel. You should have heard Pavel tell me about it. You know he made a lot of money as chief engineer in Paris, but when he told me the man offered him a job as a draughtsman (only a draughtsman) it was as though he had told me someone had offered him the job of President of the United States.

“Well,” Ladislav went on, “the foreman said he’d let Pavel know in a couple of days. Sure enough, two days later Pavel received a letter saying he should report for work the next morning, and that his pay would be twenty-five dollars a week. He says he was so excited he couldn’t sleep all night.

“The next day he got there and the foreman introduced him to the chief engineer, who put Pavel at a draughting table. Pavel says that the minute he sat at the table his heart went down to his boots. He realized that it had been stupid of him, but he had forgotten that in America they use inches instead of centimeters. So he had to go to the foreman and ask to be excused till the next day so that he could learn inches. He stayed up all night studying inches.

“The next day he was all set. He was at his table about an hour, when the chief engineer came over to him and told him to stop draughting.

“‘Here, you said you used to be an engineer. Take these plans and check them,’ said the chief and handed Pavel some plans that a young engineer had made.

“Well, Pavel began to look over the plans, and the more he looked the more he thought he found some mistakes in them. Again his heart went down to his shoes and he was in a quandary. He thought that if he told them there were mistakes they would get mad and think that here was a damn foreigner trying to tell them how to do things. And then he thought that with those ‘funny inches’ perhaps it was he who was wrong. The young engineer who made the plans looked at Pavel inquiringly and nervously. So Pavel finally solved the problem by asking the chief if he could take the plans home to study. The chief said ‘O.K.’

“Once home, Pavel studied the plans again carefully and reached the definite conclusion that they were wrong. But he still feared that all concerned would resent it if he said so, and he desperately wanted to avoid getting the young engineer or himself into trouble.

“When Pavel’s English teacher arrived he made up his mind to ask her for advice. She must be a fine woman, that teacher. She advised Pavel to go straight the next morning to the fellow who made the plans. Then she spent the whole lesson teaching Pavel to say: ‘May I suggest that perhaps you have overlooked this?’ and Annette stayed up with him half the night while he rehearsed and mastered the phrase.

“Pavel went right to the young engineer the next day and made the speech. I tell you,” proclaimed Ladislav, “there’s no country like this in the world ! What do you think the young engineer did?”

Ladislav paused dramatically. We waited breathlessly for him to go on.

“This is what he did,” stated Ladislav. “He slapped my brother on the back and said: ‘You’re dead right, Buddy. Let’s go over and tell the chief. This is no time for mistakes. Hell! those Japs and Nazis don’t allow for mistakes!’ And he put his arm around my brother and took him to the chief.

“What do you think the chief did?” And Ladislav let us hang in mid-air again.

“Ladislav,” I protested, “if you stop again I’ll scream!”

“We-ell,” said Ladislav, drawing it out, “he slapped my brother on the back and said: ‘Listen, you Polak-Frog, you’re not a draughtsman, you’re an engineer. Don’t let me catch you sitting where you don’t belong! You get over there with the engineers damn quick. And just so you won’t pull any frog-faces at me, I want you to know your pay is fifty bucks a week — from now.’”

“And do you know what Pavel says?” said Margaret. “He says, ‘The money is nice. Now I can take care of my own family. But I would be just so happy with half so much money, for now yet perhaps I have no right, but this is how I feel: I am an American and I am helping America win the war!’”

“That is the end of the fairy story,” said Ladislav, “except this — that when Pavel and all of us have done the job for America, no matter what the handicaps, perhaps our children will all live happily ever after.”