The Hanging on Union Square
Page 14
XXXIII:
UNTIE THE TIE
“There is heat in the sun.
Vertically at any time,
Horizontally, in any space,
Things must be done.”
A Negro, selling newspapers, came towards him, yelling:
“Daily Worker!3 The Only English Worker’s Daily in America! Three cents a copy!”
Nut took a look at the headlines and asked the Negro: “What do you think of Zangara?”
“Because of him, capitalists tried to frame communists! We do not approve of individual terror! One capitalist is assassinated and another takes his place. We have to change the whole system!” the Negro answered Nut, and then walked on, to attend to his business of selling communist papers.
Nut began to worry about his plan.
“I don’t care about my own life,” said Nut to himself. “But if I give the capitalists the opportunity to frame communists, well . . . am I the communists’ friend or enemy?”
Nut began blaming that leather-jacket girl, Stubborn. If he hadn’t met her twice in the communist cafeteria, three months ago, once last night in the cafeteria and another time this morning in the eviction, Nut might not have been in the demonstration and therefore he might not be suspected by others of being a communist. Then he would be free to do whatever he liked. But now . . .
Nut had to give up the idea of assassination.
* * *
—
He was sitting on a park-bench. He took out his remaining pretzel and began biting it.
While biting the pretzel, he felt physically better.
But mentally, because plans were no longer occupying his mind, he felt restless.
Nut was again lovesick!
No.
He was not going to get into more trouble.
He thought how he could get rid of the trouble he already had.
He was trying to untie the tie.
He was trying to “de-hypnotize” the hypnotized.
For love was pain. At least to him. At least to him at this time.
This was the first stage of the situation.
* * *
—
A few moments later, he began to ask himself whether that leather-jacket girl, Stubborn, was worthy of his love.
He had greatly worshipped Stubborn for her heroism. But now he could not understand why it was that at the demonstration at City Hall, she had just stood on the platform and had not spoken—though she had not wept.
Had not her mother and father both been killed by the capitalist, Mr. System? Then why didn’t she take advantage of the occasion and call upon the workers to revenge them?
Would it help any to stand tragically and poetically on a platform?
Nut was disappointed in Stubborn. He had found that Stubborn was not stubborn at all and was just “so-so.” She was just one of those girls.
This was the second stage of the situation.
* * *
—
A few moments later he began to worry about the meaning of love.
If Stubborn had spoken at City Hall and had been heroic through and through, would it have been necessary for him to love her?
“Love is a nuisance,” he thought.
Hadn’t he once loved a certain girl and hadn’t he, in the process of feeling mysteriously, thought that if the girl would not love him, he would kill himself? And hadn’t he—because he met another girl later, gradually forgot about the first girl—and still kept on living?
“God is love,” he had often heard.
“Love is God,” he now believed.
“God and Love are the same nuisance and both are the inventions of the ruling class!” he concluded.
This was the third stage of his inward situation.
* * *
—
“Baloney, Nut, you don’t really think that,” he argued—with himself—a few moments later. “Love is something Nature has given us in order that the species may not be destroyed—that it may exist forever.”
“God is no sense at all; Love has some sense!” Nut re-defined.
This was the fourth stage in the situation.
* * *
—
A few moments later he got mad with himself. He felt that the hesitation and lukewarmness of that leather-jacket girl, Stubborn, toward him, were evidences that she was not the least in love with him. And this one-sided, make-believe on his part was stupid. “There is more than one fish in a brook!” Nut reminded himself. This was the fifth stage in the situation.
* * *
—
While thinking, he looked at the other girls who were passing by on the Square. (Fishing?)
He could not appreciate them.
He felt that the leather-jacket girl, Stubborn, was still the only one.
And now he began to think that maybe Stubborn had been too bashful to say what she wanted to say.
He decided that he would ask her about this when he met her next time.
But he did not know where to find her.
And the question he wanted to ask her would be hard to ask even when he did see her again.
So he was rather miserable.
This was the sixth stage in the situation.
* * *
—
Then all the stages got mixed up.
Even as scientific a person as Nut couldn’t be scientific any longer.
* * *
—
“Stop your self-hypnotism,” Nut warned himself.
“Untie the tie!” Nut advised himself.
* * *
—
“De-hypnotizing” got him more hypnotized.
Untying tied the tie tighter.
XXXIV:
IT AND SHE
“There is heat in the sun.
Vertically, at any time,
Horizontally, in any space,
Things must be done.”
The reason that Stubborn had not spoken at the City Hall demonstration was not a psychological one. It was physical.
She had fainted.
She was carried to the City Hospital and she could not even see the bodies of her parents buried.
“This girl is a Red,” complained the Lady-Superintendent. “If she doesn’t like this country, why doesn’t she go to Russia? Now the city has to take care of her and it costs money.”
“It will not cost her money, the old hag!” whispered one young nurse to another.
While Stubborn, semi-conscious, was lying on the hospital bed, her problems ran through her mind.
The landlord had killed her mother.
But her father was a suicide.
The father of a communist—a suicide!
She had not been able to convert her own father to Communism; how was she going to convert others?
Yet she thought she had convinced someone who was outside her family.
Even in her present very sad mood she could still remember that Nut had been at the demonstration.
* * *
—
In the midst of all these tragic and sorrowful events she felt, nevertheless, that there was at least one person who had been added to the communist ranks. And he would avenge her family in a definite way and work for the working class movement as a whole.
The demonstration had given many, many workers a chance to have their eyes opened.
And Nut was one of these workers!
* * *
—
Although Nut was only one of them, Nut was one.
A mighty river can grow from one drop of water and a mountainous building be started with one brick.
Because of the significance of the Whole, she had to give attention to this very One.
She had t
o be glad that Nut was in the demonstration.
* * *
—
Since Nut was only one of many, why was she bothered—even at this moment—when she thought about him?
She now recognized such an unreasonable feeling as Love.
* * *
—
Was there to be love in this world?
No. Since this world, she thought, was filled with hate as a whole, how was it that she, one atom of the whole, had the feeling opposite to hate for another atom?
* * *
—
Was there to be love in this world?
Yes. If love were banished altogether, when the new world arrived, where would the future love find its seed? And why should one worker die now for another, and what are revolutions made for?
* * *
—
As a revolutionist, and as a communist, Stubborn was of the opinion that there was love for the biological reason, for the artistic reason and for the political (revolutionary) reason.
* * *
—
As she was now in such a sad and tragic state, Stubborn had no mind to analyze clearly the reasons why she loved Nut. But she was sure of the fact that among all the reasons there was not, in the least, any buying and selling business.
* * *
—
Stubborn went back to when she had met Nut that morning, and found the cause of her uneasiness.
It was because of the tradition that made a woman “It” and not “She.” As an “It,” a girl had to be passive.
As a revolutionist and as a communist, Stubborn felt she must overthrow this tradition and stand up and become “She.”
Being able to stand up and become “She” was a joy, a privilege and a human right.
To love whom she wanted to love and to express her love—express it openly—that was a revolution.
And to express what she did not love, and to express it openly, was also a revolution.
* * *
—
Stubborn decided that when she saw Nut the next time, she was going to tell him she loved him.
* * *
—
No.
She was not going to tell him.
* * *
—
Why–
Strategy?
No.
Since it was not a business transaction, strategy was not necessary.
* * *
—
No.
She was not going to tell him.
* * *
—
Why—
Time? (They had known each other only a short while.)
No.
Love was just a kind of experiment and time mattered very little.
* * *
—
No.
She was not going to tell him.
* * *
—
Because if the capitalists knew about it, they would say: “The communists use women to make men become Reds!”
* * *
—
Yes.
She was going to tell him.
* * *
—
For when Stubborn thought the matter over, she felt that if a girl was not governed by the ideas of a cheap movie and was not dreaming of marrying the boss for money, she was not so bad. Let the capitalists say whatever they liked right now. The workers would argue with them, after the revolution, if they could still be found.
XXXV:
“MASSES ARE ASSES!”
“There is heat in the sun.
Vertically, at any time,
Horizontally, in any space,
Things must be done.”
Nut slowly and aimlessly circled the Square many times.
The night was getting on: it was growing deeper and quieter.
And the people on the Square were becoming fewer and fewer.
And because the night was silent now, he could hear clearly the talk of the few persons who remained on the Square.
Nut heard talk about the Masses. He heard many words, many phrases. Out of it all, his mind made this:
“Masses! Masses! New Masses; Old Masses!
“Nothing can be said that is new. Nothing can be said that is old. Masses are Asses in all ages.
“Stupid! Selfish! Contented! Short-sighted!
“One burden is taken away; another is put in its place.
“They are always expecting to be saved. But they can never be saved.
“There must be something on their backs.
“If there is nothing on their backs, there must be something around their necks.
“Those fakers know what the Masses are—the Asses. The fakers use beautiful phrases with which to crown them—‘average man’—‘forgotten man’—names used to get something from the Masses.
“The Communists know too, very well what the Masses really are; and yet they have to say everything good in their defense.
“Make the story short—there is no need to go back to long ago.
“Make the story short—there is no need to say anything about others.
“Just take myself—Nut—as an example.
“As a worker did I join the union? No. For I thought the union was a violation of my individual freedom.
“As a worker did I vote the Communist ticket in the last election? No. For I thought then that Communists were all Russians.
“As a worker did I read and support a worker’s daily? No. Every day I spent money to buy capitalist papers and, by giving myself poison, help those papers’ circulation and help the owners become Czars!
“If the workers had small cars or radios in their homes, then everything was O.K., and the world could go to hell!
“Mean. Cheap.
“Now these Asses cannot even have the little things they once had.
“With so many workers out of work, how many votes did the Communists get in the last elections?
“In one word, Masses are Asses!
“And I, Nut, as one of them, know it.”
* * *
—
As Nut went around the Square, he was nervous, lonesome and miserable. He had lost all the enthusiasm, courage and hope he had possessed while at the City Hall demonstration.
* * *
—
He was so nervous, lonesome and miserable that he slapped his face several times with his own hand. The Square was then so quiet and the slaps he gave himself were so vigorous, that the sound of every one of his strokes was sharply echoed back from the walls of the surrounding buildings.
Nut was not slapping at Nut himself. He was slapping at the Ass. He was slapping at the Asses!
Slapping at one. Slapping at many!
* * *
—
Since, during the last thirty-four hours, his face had been hit so often it did not feel pain any more.
So he stopped slapping and instead he started pulling his hair.
He could not see the blood coming out from his head, but he saw the red dew at the root of every hair pulled out.
Now he was full of pain.
Yet he was happy!
And was laughing.
* * *
—
“You Ass! You Asses! You Nuts!” Nut murmured, “This is a punishment for your stupidity. This is your punishment for not being class-conscious!”
* * *
—
Nut noticed the Flagpost in the center of the Square.
Silent.
Still.
Two ropes came down from the very top of the Flagpost to the ground.
At the bottom of the Flagpost was a brass tablet with the Declaration of Independence inscribed
on it.4
A brisk wind rattled the ropes of the Flagpost and the ropes called: “Come to me, you Nut! You would be a better Flag to hang up on me. You would be the Flag of Starvation Amid Plenty! You would be the Flag of So-Called Civilization.”
* * *
—
Nut answered the call.
He crossed the iron wire-fence.
He held one rope in his hand.
He pulled the rope and made a test of it.
He made a knot.
He made a noose.
He took off his hat, put the noose over his head and measured the size of it.
He took the noose off his neck and examined it to see whether it would work properly.
* * *
—
He walked away from the Flagpost, for he had to find something to stand on. And something he could kick away and so have a free swing.
He picked up some stones from off the Square. He basketed the stones in his overcoat.
With the stones he re-crossed the iron fence.
He piled up the stones and made a stand.
He made the noose of the rope higher.
He tested the noose again.
Everything was ready.
No. Not quite ready.
He had read in the newspaper that when a person was alive he might be penniless, but that after his death, he would have twenty-five dollars, for a hospital would pay that much for the anatomical use of his body.
How should he dispose of the twenty-five dollars?