Without warning all the lights went out and the commissary fell quiet before someone trumpeted a fart and people began laughing and the laughter soon turned to accusations of bad manners in polite company and what about the presence of children and how could such an outrage be tolerated! The vulgarity! The grossness! The tastelessness! Waitresses opened the curtains wider to let in the light and the manager of the commissary came rushing in from the lobby to apologize. Jason d’Estes was on his feet pointing a finger at Walter Simon, shouting, You’re a filthy…
Go ahead, Jason. Simon’s voice was deep, resonant with dignity. We all know what you want to call me. It wouldn’t be the first time.
You’re a dirty… RED, d’Estes shouted, hurling himself at Walter and carrying both their bodies into the fountain in the center of the room. Those of us still sitting at the writers’ table stood to get a better view. D’Estes was one of the fanatics who went riding and shooting out in the foothills every weekend, preparing for the Red invasion; he was built like a linebacker and it took half a dozen studio cops to claw the two men apart.
The frog and the mouse, Margaret groaned, fighting it out as the hawks snag them both.
As I watched my fellow writers struggling in the arms of studio enforcers I had a vision of myself handcuffed and transported to federal prison, jostled and jeered by cops and convicts, a whole legion of men more easily man than me, recognizing vulnerability in my face and knowing they could do whatever they wished to me. I felt the nape of my neck prickle, hairs twisting with fear. If I stayed in America, I knew that one day when I opened the door the Feds would be there, and I would have to admit to being myself.
Across the room I caught Helen’s eye as the lights came back on. There was such an expression of disquiet on her face that I wanted to scoop her up and go find you, carry you both to safety, start a new life on another continent. Perhaps Europe was not the answer, or only for a while, and then we would have to find somewhere even farther away to start all over once more. A nomadic life unrolled in my mind and I could see the span of my remaining decades as I sometimes glimpsed a book or a script just at the beginning of the work, perceived the whole thing in a flash, all the detail suggested in streaks of color, snatches of dialogue, a perfect shape imagined, and then, when I tried to look closer, the details blurred and the work of creation revealed itself. Life and the future might be the same: a general trajectory observed in a passing instant, the hard details left to be carved through labor and time.
Raymond Cann, a twerp with wine-barrel stomach and natural tonsure, skin waxed and buffed to a roadster shine, raised his head. The day was only half finished and he already looked defeated in his silver suit and kidney tie. What hair remained hung over his eyes, which watered with allergies and cast a glitter of tears across his cheeks. Every time he spoke he squirmed, arms and legs twisting as if his mid-section had been nailed to the chair.
I speak only for myself, of course, but I would never do anything to betray my country, Cann said. I might have been a…well, as some of you may recall, I used to be involved in certain ways…
You were a seasoned member of the Party when I first met you, Margaret said under her breath. You recruited me.
That’s as may be, Maggie, but since then I have seen the light, I have re-embraced my faith, and as a man of the left and a good American I cannot now understand how any of you can continue to truck with Communists working for the destruction of this nation.
With his mincing voice, it occurred to me that if there was another male lover of men at the table it might in fact be Cann, and the thought so disturbed me I choked on a mouthful of fish. Margaret rapped me on the back and after a few soft blows the knock of her fist turned flat and soothing, rubbing the space between my shoulder blades. Maybe our barbed exchanges were always more amicable than I had assumed.
As Walter said, Cann continued, a truly democratic movement would come out in the open and declare itself. Stop taking orders from Moscow. Can any of you honestly say you think Joseph Stalin is anything other than the embodiment of evil, perhaps even the face of Satan upon the earth? I am no Republican and no conservative, but we have a duty as good Americans to expose those trying to overthrow our democratically elected government.
Margaret slapped the edge of the table and all the cutlery clattered. How can you be so brainwashed? They’ll still come and get you, and you’ll still have to testify, and from the sound of it you won’t have any qualms about telling those hoodlums in Congress the names of everyone you ever knew to be a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. Is that about the shape of it, Cann?
I’ll do what my conscience and my faith dictates. I have access to all the membership logs from 1930 to 1945. Thousands of people, my dears, and I feel it is my duty to turn them over if no one else will.
Margaret’s face flushed and she pointed furiously towards the door. Leave this table, Raymond. You don’t belong here. Go join d’Estes and Lane and make a bed for yourself with the Feds.
Cann smirked but continued eating his tuna salad. I have every right to stay where I am.
Take your lunch and go, Margaret said, her voice straining with anger. I don’t want you here.
And just like Stalin you’ll purge whoever disagrees with you, is that the way it is? I’m not going anywhere, Margaret. This is still a democracy and a free country and I am an American citizen, a taxpayer, a man of faith, and a contracted employee of this motion picture studio.
You’re a hypocrite! If you insist on staying then at least keep your mouth shut. I don’t want any Red-baiting bullshit at my table.
I’m not Red-baiting, I’m calling a spade—
Shut up already, Cann. Stuart Carmichael wrapped his arms around the back of his own chair, plump chest straining against his striped shirt, armpits damp. You paint yourself so white but that hasn’t stopped you stealing credit from me half a dozen times. My scripts with your name on them!
I felt myself blush. I was guilty of this, too. It had never been my choice to take credit from Carmichael but I nonetheless allowed it to happen on several occasions.
Now, now, Stuart, you know how these things work. We were both on the same project, and it just happened that they liked my version better.
Your dialogue, maybe, but it was my plot, my story, my characters. You’re a thief! And you’ve been thieving from me since I arrived on this lot fifteen years ago.
If there’s an issue you should take it up with the Guild.
Cann placed a slice of avocado on his tongue. I knew that Carmichael himself had done exactly what he accused Raymond of doing to several junior writers at the adjacent tables, using their ideas and putting no more than a final gloss of dialogue on the stories they believed to be their own. It was, as Raymond said, the way the system worked: a team of writers and only one got the credit, so not quite like the Bible in the end, where at least the apostles and evangelists who managed to get their chapters in the book still received billing, although there’s no telling how many others might have been standing in the shadow of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all trying to tell that particular bildungsroman in as heart-stopping a way as possible, and never mind all the other believers whose versions were pushed out at the final cut, thrown aside as mere fictions, as if the whole story was a document of absolute truth and not the textual equivalent of a well-staged docu-fiction, Nail-driver of Nazareth instead of Nanook of the North. People had been stealing stories since stories first passed human lips and no one seemed to mind until someone realized audiences would pay for them. Money, money, money, always at the bottom of every problem! Stuart would not be so mad about his credit if the credit did not matter. The pictures he had written which had Raymond’s name on them were all smashes at the box office, but it was Raymond’s fee that increased, not Stuart’s.
The Writers’ Guild is gutless and useless and gave up what little power it had to the studios when it agreed never to strike except in the middle of negotiations, Carmichael said.
Never satisfied with the systems we have, are you, Stu? You always have to foment revolution.
At the far end of the table, Ulysses A. Fox, who claimed to be a direct descendant of General Grant, sat up straighter in his chair. He had seen active service in the Pacific, come out a major, and wrote nothing but war pictures, modern and historical.
If any of you chumps had any sense whatsoever you’d be on the phone right now to the FBI, Fox said.
Margaret gasped. It took more than ordinary outrage to make her speechless but she sat there gaping in silence because Fox had always presented himself as a fellow traveler if not a full member of the Party.
Make a clean breast of it. Turn yourselves over to the Feds. That’s what I’ve done. Two nice young fellows came and sat down in my living room and we talked for half an hour yesterday. That’s all it took. I haven’t felt this light since my wrestling days. You tell them you were mistaken, misled by the witchcraft of Stalinism, that you failed to see clearly, and you regret everything you might have done, intentionally or not, to work against the Constitution of these United States. Tell them you were beguiled by that sorcerer witch, that he made pigs of us all, turned us into swine who could not tell the difference between the nourishment of democracy and the excrement of totalitarianism. Tell them Moscow has been directing us to work against this government, to struggle for its overthrow and ouster.
But it isn’t true, Fox! Margaret hit the table again and this time as the cutlery rattled the room fell silent. Everyone was staring at us.
Be quiet, Brookes. You must be contrite. Apologize for what you have said. Apologize for how you have allowed your names to be used by organizations that are fundamentally anti-democratic. You must show that you regret all you have done against America.
Margaret slapped her cheeks so hard she made herself wince. How can you repent of something you’re still doing and have every intention of doing for the rest of your life? I’m not working against this country. I’m working for it! I’m trying to make it a better place, and people like you, Fox, and you, Cann, and people like Walter, you’re making our position untenable. If the Left fractures, we’ll be out of the game for generations. It means ceding all our authority to the Right, just like the Writers’ Guild. It’s like saying, ‘No, we were entirely wrong, for the whole history of the progressive movement,’ and then this country will fall straight into the hands of the fascists! If the Left vilifies and dissociates itself from socialism and labor organization and progressive reform, there won’t be any Left remaining! Is that what you want? You let Joe McCarthy pretend a vast conspiracy that simply doesn’t exist and then go along with the charade to placate him and all the other idiots who are motivated not by noble principles of freedom and democracy but by greed! They want to enrich themselves and their supporters, they want to make this a nation where the robber barons control everything at the expense of the ordinary person on the street, and if you tell them you were wrong, that, Oh my dear, I made such a mistake, I was a tool of the Soviets, I was a patsy and pawn and oh so deceived, then you give them license to shit all over this democracy and turn it into something else!
Fox shook his head, rose from the table, and left. Cann glowered, shifting his gaze from me to Bert Scully, to Margaret and Stuart Carmichael. Ninos Johns, who sat at the opposite end, had said nothing so far. Cann finished his tuna salad, folded his napkin, and, in his milquetoast voice, said, Good day to you all. Most enlightening.
When Ninos pushed his uneaten bowl of chocolate tapioca pudding towards the center of the table Stuart raised his eyebrows to ask permission to take it. Ninos nodded and groaned.
All this is so dispiriting. I never think myself so serious as this. I come here nineteen-thirty-three, thinking, okay, maybe this place is better. At first maybe so. I learn English, people seem nice, weather good. I live well. They pay me too much money to do almost nothing. No one is interested in plays I write before I come, plays that make me come because government back home thinks them so dangerous. Here, they look at my plays and say they can’t read them because they are not in English and instead hand me script of some good picture another studio made, and tell me write like this only different. I am, what would you say? Legitimate counterfeiter. I watch a movie that makes money, and think how to tell it different. Instead of ‘boy loses inheritance and struggles’, my story is ‘father decides to see if disinheriting son makes boy better, more moral’. Turn one story around, tell it from another direction. I learnt this from Maupassant, and nothing is wrong with doing it like that, but I think there is no real creation in it. Of course, what is real creation anyway? Only five, six, maybe one dozen plots in the whole history of mankind. Now I find someone to translate my plays, serious work, and when I show them to Cherry you know what he says? Too dark, too weird, not American. Write me a serious American story, very realistic, and maybe we try, this is what he says.
Johns folded his napkin and wiped the sweat blistering his forehead. His whole body was limp, as if wrung out by the conversation.
At first it seems okay for me here. I think, good, in America at least I can be political. I fight fascism and do not worry that someone bashes my head or sets my house on fire because I have different beliefs. But now I do not know. People like this – he gestured across the room as Jason d’Estes reappeared, dried and dressed in a clean suit – they remind me too much of Blackshirts and Brownshirts and everyone who does not care what shirt they wear so long as he gets to say which color good, which shape of head the right one, which art good, which books bad, who go here, who cannot go there. They make rules on backs of their hands and call this decree by divine right. But come on, my friends, this is ungodly dictatorship. Not dictatorship of proletariat, but dictatorship of bullies, of thugs. Do not misunderstand. I hate Stalin. He is a bully, too. Bullies are everywhere. I turn one way and see it through clean glass, turn another and is only dense fog. Maybe best would be to disappear, go be farmer far away, where nobody bothers. Stop trying to be artist because all bullies think artists are dangerous. Maybe we are dangerous. Free radicals.
The hour for lunch was up and it was time to turn myself over to Krug and Cherry. After saying goodbye to Stuart and Bert and Ninos, Margaret drew me aside.
I wanted to warn you, Desmond. I hear you need a visa or visitor’s card for Mexico now and such things are not Tenderloin girls, neither fast nor easy.
But people go to Tijuana all the time.
She shook her head. I have it on reliable authority the southern border is no longer good for a quick exit.
I smiled disingenuously. That might be true if you’re going on business, or trying to settle permanently, but I’d be presenting myself as a tourist.
I wouldn’t bank on it, sweetie. It’ll take a plane to leap.
Forced by Fate…expelled and exiled.
I always thought you should be writing melodramas. Who said it anyway?
Take it to Research. They’ll have it on a card.
What a schmuck you can be.
Love you, too, Maggie.
Oh blow off. That doesn’t happen until the final reel.
Unlike a number of my more political friends, I still had a valid passport, which meant unless the Feds thought I was a genuine threat to the republic I could put myself on a plane to Paris without being stopped. But I knew that you had no passport, Myles. You’d never even been to Canada. If I was going to leave quickly I would be doing it alone.
Preoccupied by this, I walked back to the Executive Building just as you were coming out, and for the first time in the years I had known you, you looked afraid in a way I could see was no performance. Your face was pale, eyes cast down, and if I had not greeted you I doubt you would have noticed me there on the steps. Even after I had spoken your name you would not look directly at me, almost acting as if we did not know each other, making an impatient, dismissive gesture with your hand, not quite shooing, I think, but giving me warning. Myles, I said again, but you were w
alking quickly, back towards the soundstages, and I knew I should not follow or raise my voice. Something had happened and I began to guess what it might be, although even my ugliest fantasies fell short.
Behind you, in his oily shirt and panama hat, the man who called himself Hank stepped from the revolving door and spat on the pavement at my feet.
Gave you a chance, Mr. Frank. You can say that much.
As I entered the lobby the three receptionists looked up at me in a single synchronized movement. None of them smiled.
Kay
Because the water from the faucet smelled she washed her hair at most once a week and never washed her face, only used cold cream, as Mother recommended, and most days took a birdbath because of bills and money being unpredictable, which is to say whether there would be enough or not at the end of the month, and sometimes well before that. Kay’s hair was so fine it would take no curl – even with hot rollers it fell slack after a few hours. Mother would shake her head, her daughter’s hair being so unpresentable, and Ruth, who went to the beauty parlor twice a week, would have been incandescent, because of the family’s appearance and their standing in the community being so important for the store and Kay always letting them down. At least here there was no one to let down but herself. The boy didn’t care. Hank certainly did not care. There were women in neighboring towns as far as care goes, where Hank was concerned.
That morning in the mail there was a letter, which Mrs. Smith put under the door without knocking and then tiptoed down the stairs as if she had been trying to catch Kay in whatever it was she imagined Kay did. The gall of it. Another letter from Mother, postmark and handwriting unmistakable – grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation more so. Surely a greater shame than flat hair.
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