Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment Read Free Book Online Page A

first, he and Ruth read the files as if they were entries in a journal they’d forgotten they’d kept:
Cohen, Alex (b. 1928), New York City. Honorable Discharge from the army, 1946. Cohen née Kushner, Ruth (b. 1930). Graduated City College, 1952. Subjects married on April 22, 1953. Arrested November 15, 1954, disobeying court order: marching without a permit: Citizens Against the H-Bomb. November 26, 1955, at 1:55p.m., informant observed subject, Ruth Cohen, entering a teacher’s union meeting. On May 6, 1956, confidential informant of known reliability, turned over to the NYC
Office, The Nation, with information that the subject, Alex Cohen, was illustrating for the Communist organ. Informant told NYC Office, that subject, Ruth Cohen, assigned Anton Chekhov, a known Russian writer, to high school students
.
    When they finished the book on them, they reread it, this time trying to ferret out from the scant clues, who, exactly had betrayed them. “October 12 , 1967 , neighbor was interviewed telephonically She was most cooperative and expressed great admiration for the FBI. She told agent that subjects’ trash pail contained remnants of a banner for
The Lower East Side Women Against the Vietnam War”
Which neighbor? Mrs. Birukov, the old Ukrainian who practically lived on the stoop?
    Ruth eventually tired of the intrigue and went back to reading fiction, but not Alex. The beauty of the pages had captivated him. The sheets came blackened out, or partially obscured, the names of informants shrouded. What remained was sheer abstraction, the very shapes of subterfuge, the silhouettes of duplicity. The idea of illustrating the actual files came to him months later in a used-book shop. He saw a copy of the
Book of Hours
and knew instantly how he’d utilize those pages. In place of crosses and saints, martyrs, and angels, he’d paint A-bombs, Mouseketeers, two-tone refrigerators, Khrushchev, and portraits of him and Ruth. Instead of ornate, delicate gold-leaf borders, he’d stencil on the perforated patterns of vintage nineteen-fifties paper doilies. Instead of the Bible’s Psalms, he’d copy the FBI’s accusations.
    Alex sits down at his worktable, a door on two saw-horses. All he needs to complete page fifty-one is a Prussian blue line around the edge, and a final pattern ofcardinal red stenciled over the chrome green borders. He searches his worktable for just the right doily to use as the pattern, one with a little geometry, but all he finds are flower designs. Daisies aren’t what this composition needs. He’ll have to cut a stencil himself. He reaches for his X-Acto knife and a thin piece of cardboard. Holding the knife like a pen, he carves a perfect triangle, about the size of a sequin, in the board. He then stabs the freed shape with the knife’s point, and gently excises it. He repeats this cut thirty more times and thirty more specks are excised. His vision begins blurring, but he won’t allow himself to look away. If he looks away, he’ll break the laser point of concentration drilling out each design, and his attention will scatter.
    Everywhere.
    It will include not only the knifepoint, but also his old fingers gripping the knife’s silver waist. It will take in not only the manuscript page he is finishing, but all six hundred and ninety-nine pages still waiting to be illuminated, and his studio filled with a lifetime of work in the terrified city on the panicked island by the nervous continent.
    In such a wide worldview, Alex fears his ebbing hope that art might make a difference and Ruth’s crumbling belief that a difference can still be made, will surely get lost, and then what will they be left with?
    A sick little dog.

ALARMS BLARE. HUMANS RUN PAST EVERY which way. The nearest one, a male nurse, springs open the cage next to Dorothy’s and reaches inside. Still wrapped in a yellow towel, eyes milky, tongue lolling, the Chihuahua is carried past Dorothy’s cell and laid on a steel table. The