In a moment, Ernest heard a rattling at the door, next to the boarded-up window. He stopped his pounding and waited. The door opened up a little; it was dark inside, and Ernest couldn’t see anything, but an angry voice began yelling at him.
“What do you think you’re trying to do?” screamed the voice from the building. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”
Ernest dropped the rock and nodded to Darlaine. He went to the door, which closed again quickly. Before the person on the inside could get it locked, however, Ernest threw his shoulder against it and forced it open. He stumbled into the dim room, and Darlaine followed nervously.
“I was right,” said Ernest, as he dusted off his clothing. “This place was a grocery a couple of days ago. I figured the old lady might still be here, but I didn’t count on the whole family.”
A thin middle-aged man with a trim gray beard faced Ernest. He held a heavy iron bar in his hands. “All right,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Are you figuring to hit me with that crowbar?” asked Ernest. “You know, to do anything mean with it, you’re going to have to heft it and whip it around, like a baseball bat. It’s got a lot of weight to it, doesn’t it? Well, by the time you got the thing moving, I’d duck under it and lay you out on the ground for the rest of the day. Look.” And Ernest took a few steps toward the other man, who raised the bar threateningly. Ernest shook his head, reached out, and grabbed the crowbar away easily. The bearded man didn’t even protest.
“So,” said the man dismally, “you and everybody else are happy being crooks today. It’s like a devil’s Christmas. What do you want?”
“We don’t want to bother you or anything,” said Darlaine. “We just thought you might give us something to eat.”
“You have enough stuff in this place, that’s for sure,” said Ernest.
“This is a store,” said the man. “This is our business, it’s what supports my family. I can’t just give everything away. If I give you food, then everybody else in that filthy mob will come in here and grab things. We’d be ruined in an hour. You’d cause a riot. The store would be wrecked. My family would be beaten, maybe killed.”
“You don’t have a clear idea of what’s happening,” said Ernest, tossing the iron bar in his hands. “In the first place, I have your crummy weapon now. And, as you could see from the demonstration a minute ago, I won’t mind using it. But let that go. I want you to understand that Darlaine and I are quite a bit different from the others out there.”
“Sure,” said the old woman, sitting in the shadowed rear of the store. “The others out there are leaving us alone.”
“That’s not what I mean, exactly,” said Ernest, smiling unpleasantly. “Everyone else has only one thought: ‘Get the token.’ Of course, that thought is uppermost in my mind, too. But there are other considerations. I have to eat. I have to rest. Otherwise, I won’t be able to keep up the search. Those other fools will kill themselves, the way they’re going. A little foresight here will give us an advantage in the long run, I think.”
“Very wise,” said the owner of the store. “I’ll be happy to sell you anything you want.”
“But you just won’t understand, will you?” said Ernest. “This token business just shot down free enterprise. The profit motive has lost its attraction—at least for normal, sane people. Where do you plan to spend your money? Going to the Catskills isn’t going to save you from the disaster.”
“You don’t even know what kind of trouble is coming,” said the old woman. “Don’t talk to me about disasters.”
“When is this disaster?” asked the bearded man. “Tonight? Tomorrow morning? Next week? Next year? If you get your token, how will you live until then?”
“I have a feeling that normal life will be hard to find after today,” said Darlaine.
“We will try,” said the man.
“What about your tokens?” asked Ernest. “You’re all sitting in here because you’ve got tokens? Where did you get them?”
“We have no tokens,” said the old woman. “We would never find them. We are too old or too weak. If it was meant for us to survive, we will. Meanwhile, we will protect what is ours.”
Ernest sighed. “The more I think about it, the better I like this thing of the Representatives. Whatever happened to plain old guts, for God’s sake? You’re just going to wait here for death to come flooding up under your door?”
“We’re happy,” said the old woman. “Just as we’ve always been. Are you?”
“Not yet,” said Ernest.
“Not until we get our tokens,” said Darlaine.
These people were just like Gretchen, hiding from the terrible reality only a few yards away in the street. Like her, they had found justification for their behavior—reasons that sounded to them like perfect logic. It was an insanity of some kind, an inability to face a crisis, even when such evasion meant certain death. It might have been amusing under different circumstances; here was this poor idiot, thought Ernest, defending his canned goods with much more vigor than he was protecting his life!
People’s values were quickly crumbling. What did this man care about his store? Nearly everyone was going to be dead soon. And what did Gretchen think that she was doing for Stevie? Shielding him in the nursery? She had only condemned him to die with her, when the big bang came.
“What’s your name?” asked Ernest.
“Capataz,” said the bearded man. “John-Peter Capataz. This is my store”
“I know,” said Ernest. “I come in here sometimes.”
” ‘Capataz’,” said Darlaine. “El Capataz, the boss.”
“The boss, eh?” said Ernest. “I’m sorry, boss, but I’m going to have to take over some of your authority. It’s time people like you realized that times are changing. You just can’t hoard things in a store like this while people like me are going hungry. That kind of thing just doesn’t work any more, boss.” He turned his back on Capataz and the old woman and began browsing among the shelves of food.
“All right,” said Capataz. “Take what you want. Take whatever I have. Just take it and go. Leave us alone.”
“You always have simple answers for things, don’t you, boss?” asked Ernest. “Just leave you in peace, huh? I don’t know how long I worked for you, never having a minute’s rest because you were sneaking around with that damned notebook of yours. Every time I stopped to take a breath, there you were, writing it down, spying on me. You tell me that Old Man Jennings never saw those reports. You expect me to believe that, to treat you like an old pal now. All of a sudden, without your magic notebook, you’re afraid, aren’t you?” he walked around the corner of an aisle, holding the iron bar in one hand and two cans of vegetable hash in the other. He slammed the cans down on the counter angrily and tried to grab Capataz. Darlaine cried out; Capataz hid behind a food freezer.
“Okay, Sokol,” said Ernest, laughing. “All right. I won’t have to do a thing. The Representative will take care of it all for me.” Darlaine was pulling on Ernest’s arm; he was still laughing. She led him out of the store, carrying the cans of food.
“Goodbye,” called the old woman. Her laughter was a dry cackle. “Good luck to you, and may God bless.”
“Are you all right, Ernest?” asked Darlaine.
“Sure,” he said. “I guess so. I think I’m just tired.”
They paused outside the Capatazes’ store, pressed against the side of the building, away from the still furiously moving crowd on Fulton Street. Each of them took a can of the vegetable hash and opened it, pressing the three plastic perforations and twisting the top of the can. They said nothing as they ate, scooping the bland brown stuff up with their fingers. When they finished, they tossed the cans to the ground. Ernest looked down Fulton in the direction of Flatbush. He wiped his fingers on his trousers as he thought.
“I don’t suppose it makes much difference,” he said.
“We were headed that way before,” said Darlaine. “It took u
s long enough to get this far. We might as well keep going.”
“There sure isn’t anything back the way we came. All right. Keep close.”
They moved back into the crowd. At once, Ernest had a feeling of disgust, both for the mob itself and for what it had so quickly forced him to do. He shrugged. He just had to get through the day one way or another, and then it would all be over. If he could only stop paying attention, it wouldn’t be so bad. He could do it. He knew he could; he just had to draw on a reserve of strength and will. He turned back to Darlaine.
“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to bash some people out of the way. Don’t get too close to me, or you’ll get hurt, too. And don’t drop back or I’ll lose you. Stay about where you are now, maybe a step and a half behind.” She nodded and waved. Curiously, Ernest wondered what Eileen was doing at that moment. Or the fuser, whatever her name was.
Meantime E
In 1920, Babe Ruth hit an astounding total of fifty-four home runs. Weintraub saw none of them, though he followed the Yankees’ season in the newspaper. His duties with the Communist Party never gave Weintraub the opportunity to see his baseball hero in person. With Gretchen as his companion and tutor, he traveled around the eastern states of America. New York City had amazed him, as it fascinates everyone who visits it for the first time, but there was far more to the country than merely that single giant city. Weintraub began to realize how large his assignment was: to sap the spiritual strength of such a nation seemed more than any person or any cause could hope to accomplish. He saw none of the festering decadence of Jermany, not even in the hearts of Ostamerika’s great cities. Gretchen, more experienced, was less chagrined. “We will have to proceed in small stages,” she said one day in late November. “You had the mistaken idea that we could move into a lower-class neighborhood, print up a few handbills and posters, give a speech in a local park, and thereby win over the capitalist minds of these people. You are still in Frachtdorf, dear Ernst. This is the wide world.”
She was right, of course. If their mission were to get anywhere, Weintraub would have to overcome both his affection for the American people and his awe at their creations. He had to begin thinking in terms of concrete details; the Party chiefs in Berlin and, before them, in the Soviet Union had often published guidelines for study groups and discussion meetings. Pamphlets entitled “The Communist Strategy” or “Conversion, Not Conquest” were common enough, even in Frachtdorf. Yet, when it came to actual methods, these tracts were sketchy and abstract. It was all well and good to program “a lessening of respect for traditional values.” But how does one actually put that into effect?
As the year waned, Weintraub and Gretchen decided on a base of operations, a small town called Springfield. They arrived shortly before the American holiday of Thanksgiving and rented a large, airy house near the center of the village. It did not take long for the residents of the town to spread the news that a young Jerman couple had moved in; soon, Weintraub and Gretchen were receiving visits from many new neighbors and curious strangers, wishing them luck and asking frequently impolite questions. The two Jermans bore it all patiently and with good humor, for the process of assimilation, unpleasant though it was, was the first step toward eventual victory.
“In these initial stages, at least,” said Gretchen, “you will observe how the uneducated masses give us their aid unknowingly. We may learn to depend on their innate honesty and generosity, the same qualities which have caused their unfortunate enslavement to their upper-class masters. When these same working people have become informed of our background and our aims, they will turn resentful, distrustful, and hostile. This period will last only as long as their education in our policies remains incomplete. As soon as they fully understand us, they will once again return to our sides as friends, neighbors, and political allies.”
“Have you experienced this pattern before, then, Gretchen?” asked Weintraub.
“You still have doubts, eh?” she said, smiling. “Your own education is unfinished, I would say. Then just wait and see if I am not accurate.”
“I do not doubt your estimate of the temper of these folk,” he said. “And I do not doubt the Party’s proven methods. I lack faith only in my own aptitude.”
“That is what I am for,” said Gretchen. “To improve your morale.”
“Is that what you’re doing here? I’ve been wondering.”
Gretchen kissed Weintraub on the cheek. “Do not speak to your Party boss in those tones,” she said softly. Then, for an hour, the two young Jermans forgot the urgency of their venture.
In February of 1921, Weintraub joined the Springfield Literary Association, a local book review club which met twice monthly at the small village library. This activity had been planned by Gretchen as the very first blow in the toppling of the American philosophy. Weintraub was unconvinced, but he withheld his opinion. At the first meeting, he was greeted warmly but somewhat nervously by the other members of the club.
“We have a new reader with us this month,” said Mrs. Royal Abcock Smith, the presiding officer of the club. “I’m sure you’ve all had the opportunity of meeting him, in the few months in which he and his lovely wife have resided in our community. I know that Mr. Weintraub will bring fresh insights with him, a distinctly European outlook from which we all may learn. I hope you will all help him along, as his English is not perfect as yet. It is my pleasure to welcome such a charming and educated representative of the Jerman nation. He can surely reassure us that Jermany is, after all, a country quite like our own, with its own vast heritage of art, music, and literature, and that it is time to forget our differences and build a life together in a true global community of peace and brotherhood.”
Weintraub was ill at ease, being suddenly the focus of the group’s attention. He smiled but declined to speak. Mrs. Smith faltered in her presentation for a moment, having planned to have Weintraub address the club and thereby carry the meeting at least another three-quarters of an hour. Instead, she turned to the first novel under consideration for that evening.
Later that night, at home, Weintraub described the course of the meeting for Gretchen’s benefit. “I do not know, dear,” he said wearily, “whether I can do that again. Even for the Party, even for the good of oppressed workers in all the world. That is asking too much of me. I am not a hero of the Party. I am only a small functionary from a southern province.”
“You are my hero,” said Gretchen. “And if you do not do just as I say, you will end up spitted on an ice ax, like the counter-revolutionary villain in a grade-school pageant. The Party wastes nothing, and leaves no loose ends. If Berlin decrees that you socialize with the Springfield grandmothers, well, you had the opportunity to resign your duties several times. It is now too late. I have you trapped.”
“Then I must read this book before two weeks,” he said. He held up a volume entitled This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“Don’t tell me how it ends.” said Gretchen.
On the first Thursday of March, 1921, Weintraub returned to the Springfield library, having read the Fitzgerald book and planned his strategy with Gretchen. He waited until the business portion of the meeting was completed; then, while the other members of the club were arguing the merits of the book, he introduced a controversial point. “I wonder,” he said, “if literature might not indicate alternatives which mankind seeks in the arena of politics and human relations.”
The literary association members turned to look at him blankly. For a moment he had the great fear that not only would he fail in planting the seeds of Communist thought, but he would succeed only in branding himself a total fool.
“Ah, Herr Weintraub,” said Mrs. Smith pleasantly. “I am glad that you are taking an active part in our discussion this week. I’m sure our fellow lovers of good books will be as interested as I am in hearing your thoughts. Would you care to elaborate?”
Weintraub took a deep breath. “In reading this excellent fiction,” he said slowly,
“I was troubled by one or two ideas. These things are not confined to the writing of Mr. Fitzgerald, you must understand. These are concepts which have been growing in my mind since the beginning of the recent conflict. I wonder if it is ever good to use force to further moral ends. This is the sort of topic which is avoided in most literature. Certainly, these goals which we all desire are achieved by violence in some books, or are not achieved in others. But the use or nonuse of violence is not called into question. It is employed or not as the situation demands, without critical evaluation. I think we, as civilized beings, must take the time to make just that decision.”
There was silence in the room. Finally, one elderly man spoke up. “I wonder what connection that has with Mr. Camberley’s remark about the smut in Fitzgerald’s writings,” he said.
“I think Mr. Weintraub is entirely correct,” said another voice. “I believe we ought to explore this in detail, and develop some sort of ethical program. Perhaps we could even send a copy of our conclusions to Washington.”
“Well, then,” said Mrs. Smith, “would Herr Weintraub wish to suggest any particular questions we might discuss?”
“Certainly,” he said. “Is it ever permissible to kill? Is it ever right to steal, to lie, to commit adultery under any imaginable circumstance?”
“No, of course not,” said a matronly woman in the front of the room.
“How about war?” asked the first elderly man. “Surely in wartime it is right to kill.”
“It may only be necessary to kill, or expected of one to kill,” said Weintraub. “It may not be right to kill.”
The discussion became more complex. Weintraub carefully changed from side to side, never taking an inflexible position, leading the arguments both pro and con, making each member of the group less certain of the absolutes of right and wrong. By the end of the evening, he had succeeded in confusing these concepts in the minds of everyone who listened to him. The achievement was a great deal simpler than he would have thought possible.
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