From Time to Time

11

THROUGH THE REVOLVING DOORS of the Plaza, down the stone steps, and north to the Fifty-ninth Street corner, where I stopped to wait for the light. I was wearing gray pants and a navy-blue zipper jacket I’d bought a few days ago, no hat. The light changed, I crossed to Central Park, then turned onto a dirt-and-gravel path. On a bit, feeling a little excited, curious about what Rube might have. Off the path then, to walk across a dozen yards of weedy grass or something like grass toward a big outcropping of black rock.

Rube sat waiting, in tan army shirt and pants, tan shoes, an old leather jacket, and an odd-looking blue knitted cap with a fuzzy little tassel. He sat leaning back against the rock, eyes closed, face tipped up into the sun, a brown paper sack on his lap.

He heard me and opened his eyes, grinning, and gestured at the area around us as I sat down, the same place where he had first told me about the Project. “Symbolic, isn’t it? Meaningful.”

“Or something.”

“Well, you made a hard decision then, but the right one. Now do it again. But first . . .” He opened the paper sack, and took out a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich, and handed it to me. “What you ordered, I believe? The first time we sat here?” I smiled, knowing what was coming: a roast pork sandwich. “Also symbolic. Of the pig in the poke you bought then. Well, Si, I’m afraid it’s another one now. A bigger pig and a far worse poke. But first to the feast!” Rube brought out a pair of apples; they too, I remembered, were what we’d had here for lunch once before.

We ate, no hurry. Sitting back against the sun-warmed rock, it wasn’t too bad here. On the path a pair of more than usually nice-looking young women walked by, glancing over at us, then walking on with just a tiny bit of extra hip-sway, maybe three eighths of an inch. Rube said, “Those are called girls, I think. Or used to be. And someone once told me—but I’ve never believed it.”

“Good you’re in the Army, Rube: the outside world would only confuse you.”

“It does, it does. If only they’d let the Army run it.” He glanced at me. “But that’s not the right thing to say, is it? You already think I’m some kind of homegrown Hitler.”

“No, I don’t think that, Rube. Napoleon, maybe. Except for the hat.”

He reached up and touched it. “Comes to protecting my old bald head, I have no shame. A friend made it; I have to wear it occasionally.”

We finished our sandwiches, I dusted crumbs from my hands, took an apple, bit into it—it was tart—and said, “Okay, Rube, I’m all ears.”

He reached around to the side of the rock face we were sitting against, and picked up a tan leather carrying case. “What do you know,” he said, unzipping it, “about William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt?”

“Taft was fat, and Roosevelt wore funny glasses.”

“More than I knew. I wasn’t even sure which was which.” He brought out a blue-lined yellow sheet of penciled notes. “But apparently they were friends. Good ones. Roosevelt was President first, then he got the job for Taft. Naturally, after that they fought over who’d be President the next time around. In 1912. But here’s the thing: According to our U.S.A. specialists, there’s something they stuck together on. They both wanted peace. I mean really did, no political bullshit, or not too much anyway. Roosevelt had already won the Nobel Peace Prize. Taft’s father”—Rube tilted his yellow sheet of notes to read a line along the side—“had been minister to Austria-Hungary. And Ruman—no, Russia; can’t read my own scrawl. Taft himself had been Secretary of War. Roosevelt had brought Japan and Russia together to end their war. And so on. And they were both smart, they knew how things worked, they knew what other smart men all over the world knew, that things were beginning to shape up so that the world just might eventually trip and stumble into a war that made no sense.”

Rube folded his yellow sheet, shoved it back into the case, but didn’t withdraw his hand. Grinning at me, he said, “I’ve got something here that’s classified, Si. It’s army stuff: our people found this, it’s ours, and still secret. They think Roosevelt and Taft had an agreement. Whichever was elected in 1912 would implement something they’d already started together. And in the unlikely event that the Democrat was elected, they’d brief him on this, and hope for the best. Sometimes our people are pretty good, Si; take a look at this.” He brought out a letter-size sheet, and handed it to me.

It was a xeroxed copy of a smaller sheet, blackened all around the edges for a couple inches surrounding a slightly tilted memo-size rectangle of white. Printed at the top of the memo: The White House. Below that in three penciled lines of fairly good handwriting: Lunch D.S.; under that, wrp gft; below that, Detail Z on G, B, V.E.

“Cute, eh?” said Rube. “Our people tell me that Presidents save bales of stuff. And that it’s getting worse. Not much from George Washington, carloads from Gerald Ford.” He touched the paper in my hand. “So what does that thing mean?—it’s Taft’s handwriting. Probably nothing, and who cares. Except that anything a President writes is of some interest, so eventually somebody—I don’t know who, it was years ago—at least worked out the date. D.S. was probably Douglas Selbst, senator from Ohio, Taft’s state. So check out the senator’s journal in the Library of Congress, and yep, it mentions his lunch with the President all right, at some length. On August 14, 1911. So now the memo is dated, and our people note that fact. Not on the original memo, though. It’s our information, and to hell with anyone else—right? Don’t ever let the Navy find out that Taft had lunch with Senator Selbst in 1911.

“Twenty-five years later—I’m not fooling, Si—another one of our people, an ambitious young girl, if you’ll excuse the ugly word, a lieutenant, who hadn’t been born when the memo got dated, came across our file copy. And got interested in the other items. What was ‘rupp guft’? All she could think of was ‘wrap gift,’ so she checked out Taft’s wife’s birth date—not the easiest thing in the world to find out, incidentally. But sure enough, it was August fifteenth, so now the United States Army History Section knew that ‘rupp guft’ did indeed mean ‘wrap gift’—terrific! Apparently Taft did his own gift wrapping; those were leisurely days even for Presidents. That information, by the way, is also classified. Swear you’ll never tell.”

I crossed my heart.

“Okay. Our people earn their pensions. Eventually. And a lifetime after Taft scribbled his memo, one of our guys going through some stuff that included this glanced at the third item, and the initials translated themselves for him. On sight. That happens. ‘Detail Z,’ said the memo, and then—G for George, B for Briand, and V.E. for Victor Emmanuel. George Fifth of England; Briand, the premier of France; and the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel. Three heads of state! And so a lifetime after this thing was written, our people got interested. Sort of. And went to work. Also sort of. Who was Z? they wondered. That was three years ago, and at first—”

“Rube. In only five or six hours it’s going to get dark.”

“All right. I get carried away. Who was Z? Well, Z was a guy Taft and Roosevelt sent to Europe. To extend greetings from the President to various heads of state: that sort of thing. But also to—well, to chat. And reach a few informal agreements. Form a sort of unofficial alliance. Whoever was elected in 1912—and also including the Democrat, if possible—would commit himself to actively work, to do everything in his considerable power, to float the idea that we would enter any European war on the side of the Allies. And precede even that with Atlantic submarine patrol.”

“They couldn’t promise that, could they?”

“Of course not. Congress would have to declare war; this was back in the old-fashioned days when Presidents felt they had to honor their oath to abide by the Constitution. Only Congress could declare war then, and undoubtedly would not have done so. Everyone knew that. All over the world. But this is the point, Si: While I’m an ignoramus about U.S. history, we now move into a historical field I do understand. If there were even the slimmest possibility that America would come into a European war . . . that war immediately becomes impossible. Don’t need Congress, formal treaties, don’t need even the least certainty about it. Because no nation begins a war, Clausewitz tells us, that it does not believe it will win. And that’s true. That war, Si, unnecessary to anyone, would simply not have begun. No idiotic ultimatums, no declarations. Believe me, Si, it would have worked! The war would have been made impossible. Dig up Ludendorff and Hindenburg and ask them. They’ll tell you.”

“But Z didn’t get his agreements.”

“Oh, he got them. So our people believe. What he got was letters, informal exchanges. No acts of Parliament or anything like that. But signed. By heads of state. So they counted. They had power and magic.”

“And that’s how World War One never happened?”

“It happened.”

“How come?”

“Z never got home.”

“What?”

“No sign of it in anything our people came across. On his way back, all finished, had what he came for: they have cablegrams on that. But then . . . he just seems to vanish. Thin air. We know because there are references to it. Maybe they knew why at the time. Probably did. But we don’t.”

“Well, who was Z?”

Rube sat slowly shaking his head. “Our people don’t know. His actual name never shows up. He is always just ‘Z.’ And damn it, Si, our people here don’t really care. They’re not that interested. This stuff is all just a favor to me. Can’t blame them: it’s nothing they’re on, you see. To them this is just one more failed mission, and there are dozens and dozens of those in any country’s history. It happened a lifetime ago, is very little documented, so—it’s a case of so-what.”

“Can’t you tell your people why you—”

“No. I’ve been able to form a new unit on this. Very small, need-to-know. Esterhazy heads it, nominally; I’m second in line, and the rest of the unit is mostly the sergeant who brings us coffee.”

“Esterhazy.”

“Yep. Brigadier now. Si, you know we can’t tell people what we’re doing. Most of our people never even heard of the original Project in the first place. How could we explain what we hope to do? Show them the Project, a junk heap? I’ve had to accept what they’ve offered, which is mostly what they already had at hand. Anyway, I doubt that there’s much of anything else. We’re talking history of the U.S.A. well before 1914, hardly anyone even thinking about a coming war. Wasn’t like Europe; I’ve told you the kind of stuff I could give you for Europe. But here? I think what I’ve got is about all there is to get.” Rube grinned at me suddenly, reaching over to clap me on the forearm. “But an old dog doesn’t forget his old tricks! What do you do when a trail peters out? You run around in circles! Till you pick up the scent again. Look, let’s get us some coffee or something.” He hopped up, the old athlete, offered me a hand, and I let him help pull me up, and we turned to walk over to the path.

We reached it, turning south toward Fifty-ninth Street and the Plaza Hotel. Rube said, “You ever hear of Alice Longworth?”

“Yeah, I think so. Old lady? Dead now? The one who said Thomas Dewey looked like the little man on a wedding cake?”

“That’s her. She also said, ‘If you can’t speak well of someone, come sit by me.’ That last is the reason I thought of her. She was real bright. Clever, witty. Had a tongue in her head, as they say. A gossip. Married to a socialite congressman. And she wasn’t always an old lady. Once she was young, and very much the leader of the young Washington set. Knew everybody who was anybody in Washington. Did you know she was Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Well, I remembered, and began reading a little bit about her. Two, three books from the library. And I put together a list of her friends, many as I could. And, figuratively speaking, I began ringing doorbells. I wrote, I phoned, and in one case, in Washington, I actually did ring a doorbell. What I did, Si, was get in touch with people who’d had some connection with Alice; grandchildren of her friends, great-grandchildren, great-greats, anyone I could find who just might have some letters of hers. That’s something a family might save, a letter from Alice Longworth. I reached maybe one out of five on my list. Some of them didn’t even know who she was.” We came out onto the Fifth Avenue sidewalk beside the Park, walking on toward Fifty-ninth Street ahead. “It was tedious work, and I’d get bored, irritated. One day on the phone I said, ‘What! You never heard of Alice Longworth! Your life is a wasteland! Why, she’s the one they wrote the song about!’ What song? he wants to know, of course, so I sang it to him. Over the phone.” Rube began singing, softly and in not a bad voice, hitting the notes right: “In her sweet lid-ull Al-liss blue gown!” It’s a nice old song really; I’d always known it, but never knew the words referred to an actual Alice. I joined in, and we walked along Fifth toward the Plaza across the street, singing softly. I felt pretty good after that, walking into the little bar off the lobby, picking a table. I knew Rube hadn’t planned it; he could be devious, but also impulsive, even reckless, and I knew his singing had been spontaneous. But when the waitress arrived, Rube smiled up at her and said, “What the hell; I’ll have a martini. First in a million years.” And instead of the Coke I’d thought I was going to order, I said I’d have one too. And thought later that maybe Rube had recognized a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to get a little booze in me as an aid toward the right decision.

There were maybe twenty tables in here but only one other occupied, by a pair of Japanese men. Rube had picked a table well away from them, taking the chair by the wall where he could see the whole room.

Waiting for our drinks, still smiling a little at our singing, Rube unzipped his case, saying, “What I got for my efforts was a couple Alice Longworth letters mentioning Z. I thought people would send me xeroxes”—he brought them out—“but they both sent the actual letters.”

“Is that stationery ‘Alice Blue’?”

“I think so. And so does the Library of Congress. She was a little vain at having a color named for her.” He brought out two xeroxes. “The Library of Congress has some AL stuff in their Roosevelt file, which got me a pair of notes from Z to her.” Rube started to pass me a letter, but our drinks came and he waited, didn’t want anything spilled or dripped on them. We tasted our drinks; then I nodded at his letters. “These all say ‘Z’? Don’t mention his name?” Still trying his drink, Rube nodded. I said, “How come? Alice knew who he was, didn’t she?”

“Sure. He was a friend of the Longworths, but he still signed his notes ‘Z,’ and she said ‘Z.’ No secret to any of them, but here was a President edging into what was really congressional business, the way Presidents like to do. Those were pretty easy days though, long before C.I.A. time, so about all they did was keep their man’s name off paper. If Taft writes himself a memo, he can just say ‘Z,’ case anybody happens to see it. And Z briefs his friends: Call me Z! Which Alice loved, thought it was hilarious. Pretty jokey bunch. The smart young set of Washington.”

I put my hand out for a letter, and Rube handed me a blue sheet; the ink was blue too. In a slapdash but legible handwriting it was dated February 22, 1912, and began, Laurie, dear! Rube said, “You can skip most of that; pick up near the bottom.” I did, and it said, And of course Z—and we simply must say Z—isn’t it delicious?—will at last have his fill, and we shall hear of nothing but the two-a-day. At least he’ll see over the ladies’ hats! Nicky and I may just run up to see him, if only for a day. But I must tell you of Evie’s famous party, or shall I say soiree? Of course we arrived late. Nicky had a tiresome—I turned the page, but Rube said, “That’s all on Z in that one.”

I said, “Just what does this do for the cause, Rube?”

“Well. It tells us something. ‘Two-a-day’ means vaudeville; he must like vaudeville. And he can see over ladies’ hats in front of him, so he’s tall. It’s quite useful.”

“Sure. Beats ‘rupp guft.’ What else?”

He handed me the second letter in the vigorous blue handwriting, this with the numeral 2 at the top, and Rube said, “That’s all these people could find; first page is missing.” It began: insists she couldn’t possibly have known, yet she knew the name was Clara! And even his watch number! Which he actually gave me: 21877971. Doesn’t that beat the Dutch! Z is simply darling, and we shall miss him when he leaves. The next paragraph began describing a dance, and I looked up at Rube, but before I could speak he said quickly, “Here’s the envelope it came in,” and handed it to me.

It was addressed to Mrs. Robert O. Parsons in Wilmette, Illinois, and Rube said, “Look at the postmark.” I did, a slightly smudged black circle stamped at the left of a canceled two-cent red stamp with a profile of Washington; it read, March 6, 1912, at the top, Washington, D.C. at the bottom. I didn’t know what to say about that or the letter either, so I just nodded and passed it back to Rube.

“It’s true,” he said, as though I’d made some spoken criticism, “that those are just . . . small clues. But here’s the real find!” and he grinned with forced enthusiasm. “Here’s where we actually pick him up, as we say in the trade. I think. I heard it on television.” He brought out a folded white sheet. “They found the original of this in a book from AL’s library, probably tucked in as a place mark.”

I unfolded the little sheet, a xerox copy. Plaza Hotel, it said at the top in elaborate script, the P especially fancy. Beside it an old-style engraving of the hotel. Handwritten at the top, March 1. Then: From Z to A! Always and ever an enchanting city! And a splendid time of it thus far. Even my obligatory presence at Madam Israel’s Delmonico lecture an unexpected pleasure, for the ever-smiling, ever-nimble Al himself made a surprising and very welcome appearance. Missed Knabenshue yesterday. Immediately following The Greyhound, however, I saw—actually saw!—the Dove Lady herself! Would have followed but stood dumfounded instead, though I must say city-wise Broadwayites simply ignored her.

Tonight, my dear, something that should thrill your usually unthrillable soul, I am to meet that man whom of all the world I most admire, at—but no, I will not use so ugly and utilitarian a name. Too much like calling a lovely woman Tillie! Rather, her prow sharp and straight as that of the Mauretania herself, I say she is a ship! Of stone and steel, true, yet seated within her, a wheel and tiller in hand, I do believe one might sail her up Broadway or the Fifth Avenue to the delight of all. We meet tonight, not, I regret to inform you, at the stroke of midnight, but a drab hour earlier. And then, finally, I will have—The Papers!

Of course, dear girl, this is serious business, and I do assure you that in practice I am in deadly earnest. But not with you and Nickie; no fun in that! Wish me luck, my dear, wish very hard. Love, Z.

I handed his letter back to Rube, and sat nodding thoughtfully; I didn’t know what to say. “Did people really write that way?”

“Yeah. Talked that way too, I think. It was obligatory, everything light and jokey.”

“I don’t suppose ‘The Greyhound’ was a bus.”

“It was a play. By Wilson Mizner and somebody else. Opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre, Broadway and Thirty-eighth. I checked out the old theater ads.”

“And what’s the Dove Lady?”

“Don’t know.”

I sat forward toward Rube, and spoke very carefully; I knew he’d worked hard on this. “Rube,” I said quietly, “what would I do with this stuff? I get there, if I can—”

“You can, I know you can.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. I get there, go to this lecture, and he’s there, we know that. But how do I pick him out, Rube, how? And this other stuff—”

“Well, God damn it, Si, I’d give you his photograph if I could. In 3D and color. Plus his fingerprints and a letter of introduction. Si, it’s all we’ve got.”

“Okay. Not trying to give you a hard time, Rube.” I reached over and with a forefinger sort of stirred his pathetic little stack of letters around a little. “But these are nothing. They tell us nothing. The Dove Lady. Somebody in a large crowd sees her. Well, the whole crowd sees her, don’t they? And sees what? A lady in a dove-gray dress? Or who flaps her arms and coos like a dove? Or wears a dove on her head? And what is this building like a ship? Christ Almighty.”

“Oh, you’re right. Absolutely right. Face the facts, and this is hopeless. All you actually know is his goddamn watch number!” He reached out, and with a hooked forefinger began tapping his papers. “But Si, right now these things are dead. Connected to nothing anymore. The people who wrote and read them gone. The very buildings they were sent to gone. The mailman who delivered them and the clerk who sold this stamp, dead. Read these, and it’s like staring at an anonymous nineteenth-century sepia photograph you pick up in a junk store, wondering at the face looking out at you from under the funny hairdo. To ask who she was is hopeless now because all the connections, every friend, every relative, even every acquaintance is dead and gone. But when that face was alive and smiling at the camera, so were her friends alive, her relatives, her neighbors. And you just might find out who she was because the connections are still there. Well”—he tapped his letters again—“you and only you can return to the time when this ink was still wet. The people alive, the events happening, the connections all there!”

I nodded. “Okay, and if I found Z, what then?”

Rube just shook his head. “I don’t know. You’d . . . stick with him, I suppose. Try to—protect him, maybe. Hang on to him, get him back okay. I don’t know, Si! But I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone else in my life. I won a medal once. I was a kid in Vietnam. I don’t wear it, don’t show it. But I can tell you I value it. And I won it in a hopeless situation in which I acted anyway. And succeeded in the only way there was to succeed. By luck. That’s all. If something is truly hopeless, Si, then luck becomes your only hope. Because it exists. Luck happens. But you have to give it a chance to happen.”

“Is that true, Rube? About your medal?”

“No, hell no. I was never in Vietnam. But it’s basically true, and you know it! It’s the way I’d have thought and acted. It’s what I’d have done! If the situation had ever come up.”

I nodded. It was true.

“So I don’t know how you find a man in New York in 1912 or any other time, when you don’t know who he is or what he looks like. Or what you do if you find him. But you know what’s at stake. So you have to try. Give luck a chance.”

“Go in and win one for the Gipper.”

“Sure.”

“When I was a kid I thought it was pronounced gypper.”

“It often should be.”

“So I’ve got what—two, three days? In New York, 1912? If I can make it. If. In and out fast. Make or break. Find Z or not.”

“That’s about it.”

“Well, okay, no use blathering away about it, because we both know I’m going.”

He smiled, that fine Rube Prien smile you could not resist, and beckoned to the waitress. When she arrived with her little silver tray he said, “Keep ’em coming! Till you close!” Smiling to show he didn’t actually mean it. Then he nodded toward the two Japanese. “And see what the boys in the front room will have.”

She returned first to the Japanese table to unload two of her drinks, and when we had ours, all four of us lifted our glasses, smiling, nodding, bowing, Rube murmuring, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” And then to me: “They’re probably saying the very same thing.”