The Kindness of Strangers

by Salka Viertel

  I denied that my membership in the Hollywood Arts, Sciences and Professions, which had been accused of following the CP line, was the result of any “direction, domination or control” asserted over me by communists. And I admitted that “I have associated, because they were my friends, with persons who have subsequently been mentioned as alleged members of the Communist party or who have appeared before the Congressional committees . . . I assert that my desire to have a passport is entirely non-political. I want to visit with members of my family.”

  The State Department could not care less, and did not act “promptly and justly.” Meanwhile Edward and Clara had been in Salzburg and Grundelsee, had seen Berthold and Liesel, and their letters reassured me about his health, although the enclosed snapshots showed him terribly thin and aged. They were all appalled that I had been refused a passport. I hoped that at least Thomas would be able to travel. But Thomas had lost his birth certificate, necessary for the passport. As he had been born in Vienna, Liesel promised to send him a copy. Hans’s passport was issued in forty-eight hours.

  My dog became ill. He would not eat, refused to go for walks, nor would he any longer jump into the car after me. The veterinary surgeon said that there was no alternative to save him but an operation, as he suspected an ulcer or a tumor in the stomach. When Timmy woke up from the anaesthetic he tried to put his paw on my shoulder but couldn’t, and a few hours later he died. He had been my constant companion and my comfort for seven bad years. He understood everything and he truly loved me. Now no one seemed to need me any longer. The shackles of love were falling off.

  In September Hans had to enroll at the University of London. As I was driving him to the station he suddenly remembered that a writer, Mr. Seff, wanted his station wagon driven from Los Angeles to New York, and he suggested that I should get in touch with him. “You must get out of the doldrums,” Hans said. “You must go to New York where you have Edward and Clara, friends and theater and music. And when finally you get your passport, you will be three thousand miles closer to Europe.”

  When I get my passport! It sounded like a tale Hans was inventing so that I would not feel lost. But his advice sounded reasonable and I felt tempted.

  I wrote Mr. Seff, who answered that he would appreciate having his station wagon in New York and gave me the address of a gasoline station where it was garaged. He advised me to get someone to share the driving, as he thought it would be a strenuous trip for a woman alone. Thomas, Lynn and Carlton also insisted I have a co-driver. I chose as my passenger—he could not drive—the writer Jay Leyda, a former pupil of Sergei Eisenstein.

  Jay Leyda looked forty and had a pleasant American appearance, “clean cut” as they call it. He had written a book about Herman Melville, The Melville Log, and was at present working on a biography of Emily Dickinson. He intended to leave me somewhere near Colorado, because he had to look up an old lady who had letters from her.

  It was hard to leave Thomas. I had wished so much for him to see his father and to get a glimpse of Europe, which he did not remember.

  He came to see me off and we left Santa Monica in my old convertible to meet my traveling companion at the garage. The mechanic assured me that he had checked the oil and water and looked over the tires; the station wagon had been gone over thoroughly and would drive like a dream. Thomas transferred my suitcases and lifting the large one exclaimed: “For heaven’s sake, Mother! What’s in it?”

  “Letters,” I said, “nothing but letters . . .” and I embraced him with a heavy heart.

  •

  In Arizona an ominous noise in the engine made me slow down, and after a short, desperate choking and coughing the motor died. I let the car roll to the side of the road and Jay got out to signal for help. Cars whizzed by indifferent to our plight. Finally a small truck appeared and stopped. After a glance under the hood of our station wagon its driver said that all he could do was send a tow car from the next Automobile Association Garage.

  It took more than an hour before the A.A.A. car appeared, to tow us to the garage in Williams. After much head-shaking and whistling the two mechanics who examined the engine diagnosed it as beyond repair! The bearings were burnt out because of a leak in the oil-pump. But they could order a new engine from the nearest Chevrolet plant. It would only take three days and three hundred dollars to make the car like new. I called Mr. Seff in New York. I must say he took it extremely gallantly and was more concerned about me, stranded in Williams, than about his damaged car. Could I bear to wait for the engine?

  The mechanic drove us and our luggage to a motel. Not to desert me, Jay Leyda changed his original plan. Next morning he would take the bus to Colorado, and, as soon as I was able to leave, meet me in Albuquerque, so that we could continue the trip together.

  The motel was a new place, quite a distance from the town, and we were the only guests. The manager, a friendly lady, complained that the only people who asked for rooms were Negroes and, much as she would like to, she could not accommodate them.

  We sat in my room listening to the rain, and Jay asked why I was traveling with a trunk full of letters. I said that I was clinging to them as they contained so much of my life. I opened the trunk and right on top were the letters from Eisenstein, among them the long, desperate one from Mexico. I translated it for Jay, and he said that it was a very important letter.

  I had met Jay Leyda and his Chinese wife Si-lan only once, at a party, and we were merely introduced to each other. The journey across the U.S. gave me and Jay the chance to become friends. At its outset I had been dispirited and discouraged, but his interest, his understanding and kindness inspired such confidence that I could talk to him as I had not talked to anyone for a long time. He listened attentively, then concluded that I should use my solitary confinement in Williams and begin writing my memoirs immediately. I thought that he overestimated my egocentricity.

  Next day he left on his pursuit of Emily. I telephoned Edward, informed him about the unfortunate delay and that I was broke, because four days in Williams would exhaust my funds. He said he would wire me a hundred dollars, admonished me to drive carefully and call him every day to report my progress. I did not write my memoirs but listened instead to the life story of the motel manager. On the third day, as promised, the mechanic delivered the station wagon and I could proceed to my rendezvous with Jay. We continued along Route 66.

  It was amazing how much we had to discuss. And he still insisted I should write my memoirs. After Missouri in the autumn coloring, which I had not imagined would be so lovely, we said good-bye to each other. In two more days I would be in New York.

  Now came a long stretch of turnpike and straight road, across dreary country. I thought of Berthold back in Vienna, smoking his endless cigarettes and translating another Tennessee Williams play. I wanted to write to him that I was on my way, determined to get my passport. But there was no paper in the dismal motel at which I stayed overnight.

  Edward and Clara were to meet me in a café in Somerville, New Jersey, so that Clara would guide me to New York. I was exhausted. The traffic had been heavy and made me late. After the numbing hours behind the wheel the sight of the dear faces revived me.

  We sat down and had coffee and I told them about my plans: I wanted to stay with them for a few days, then go to Washington, because I was determined to get my passport. I had to go to Europe; I had to see Berthold. Clara remained silent, Edward had his eyes averted. Then he turned to me, took my hand and said almost brusquely: “Salomé, Berthold died last night.”

  I don’t think I took this blow very bravely.

  Then I thought of Thomas. Did he know? Yes, after the cable arrived Edward had called our friend Lucille and asked her to tell Thomas what had happened.

  It was night when we arrived at the apartment and immediately I phoned Thomas. He sounded stricken but controlled. He had been worried about me, as I was still on the road when the obituaries appeared in the Los Angeles and New York papers. Carlton and Lynn had
spent a lot of time with him. He did not want me to come back, but to stay in New York as I had planned.

  Liesel, deeply grieved, but still brave, sent me Berthold’s last letter, written the night before he died.

  He was buried next to Karl Kraus, Peter Altenberg, Theodor Loos—whom he had admired and loved—greatly honored and eulogized by representatives of the Austrian government, the Burgtheater and the city of Vienna. He died before Hans and Peter could reach his bedside . . . They carried him to his grave.

  45

  IT HELPED ME, IN THOSE BITTER DAYS, to be with Edward and Clara; however, I could not stay with them indefinitely. I did not know what I was going to do, and when Etta Hardt, who was working for a publishing house, invited me to share her apartment, I gratefully accepted. The apartment was on East 73rd Street on the ground floor of an old brownstone house, and had a tiny garden with a single tree in the middle of it. Each of us had a separate entrance and we respected each other’s privacy. Next door was an identical house, in which Eleonora Mendelssohn had lived, and had killed herself the year before. Francesco was in hospital suffering from deep depression, and not permitted to have visitors. I missed them and their friendship. But Greta was in New York—compassionate, unchanged, and very dear.

  Unexpectedly, someone I had completely lost touch with called me. It was Ursula Blanke, whom I had known when she was the bride of Henry Blanke, a nineteen-year-old German girl, bewildered by Hollywood and the movies, and only at ease with my three-year-old Tommy. She had divorced Henry and was now married to James Reynolds, Under Secretary to the Department of Labor during the Truman Administration.

  I don’t remember how Ursula found out that I was in New York, but she appeared in my room at Etta’s, still looking like a flapper of the twenties. Nostalgically she recalled Mabery Road. She and her husband lived in New Jersey, but she was sure that the next presidential election would get the Democrats and her Jim back to Washington, D.C. I had learned my lesson about “guilt by association,” and felt I must tell Ursula that I had been refused a passport. She thought I was joking. This only happened to communists. Although affected by Trumanism and the mentality of the Cold War, she was appalled by the activities of Senator Joe McCarthy. The whole nation had watched on television the investigations of communism in the Army and the Defense Department. Ursula had been planning a trip to Germany and thought it would be nice if we could go to Europe together. “You must get your passport!” was the steady refrain of her persuasion that I take steps in Washington; but I remained apathetic. Once Edward said to me: “It is easier to be unhappy in a hellish place like New York than in a lovely countryside or on the shores of the Pacific,” but this was not true for me.

  We were a very scattered family: Peter was in Paris, Hans in London, Thomas in Los Angeles, Jigee with Vicky and Christine in Klosters. Ilse Lahn was assuring me that the money for my T.V. script would be mailed any day. The film had been shot with Hedy Lamarr and could not be released until everyone was paid. (Those who had seen it reported that it was ghastly.) The November days became shorter and darker.

  Then Ursula rang me to say that she was in New York at the office of an attorney, Mr. Ernest C., to whom she had told my passport difficulties. I reminded her that she had promised not to tell anyone. “But you don’t know Ernest C.; he is wonderful! Don’t be foolish. Come and talk to him,” and she mentioned casually that Mr. C. was the attorney of a famous gossip columnist. I was horrified; I stuck the State Department’s letter and my affidavits in my coat pocket, ran out onto the street, hailed a taxi, and drove to a huge building on Times Square. Ursula was waiting for me on the top floor at the elevator door and quickly informed me that Mr. C. was brilliant, liberal and a great power in the Democratic Party. With that she dragged me into an office where a short, square man with a round head, who looked like a mixture of Peter Lorre and Fiorello La Guardia, greeted me. He was jovial and straightforward. I showed him the fatal letter, which was addressed with my full name. “Salomea Sara,” he asked solemnly, “are you or are you not a communist?”

  “I am not.”

  “Why not?”

  I confined my answer to one sentence: “Because I am not able to accept or to follow any party discipline.” This seemed to please him; he told me that he himself was a descendent of Italian anarchists. However, my affidavit would only irritate the authorities, because it did not say that I abhorred communism.

  “I abhor cruelty, I abhor confessions made under torture, I abhor the Moscow Trials, war, dictatorship, arrogant nationalism, secret police, racial discrimination, militarism—but I have friends, wonderful people, who are communists, and I don’t think this should deprive me of visiting my family.”

  “You are right, Salomea Sara,” said Mr. C. “But I am afraid they will ask you precise questions in Washington.”

  “I have not asked for a hearing.”

  “I will ask for one for you,” said Mr. C.

  I did not want that. He was a famous lawyer, getting enormous fees for “keeping people out of trouble,” as Ursula put it, and I could never afford to pay him.

  “Don’t talk rubbish, Salomea Sara!” he barked at me. “I like you. Ursula talks a lot about you, Salomea Sara.”

  “But I am a stranger to you.”

  “You are Ursula’s friend, Salomea Sara, and when you have your passport you may give me a hug.”

  I was moved to tears, partly because he seemed so fond of my embarrassing first name; but I doubted that he would succeed. Days went by and I did not hear from Mr. C. until, on the evening of December 8, I received a call from Washington. Somebody said: “Just a minute.” Then I heard Mr. C.’s voice: “Salomea Sara? Get on the first plane tomorrow morning, and meet me for breakfast at the. . . .” (It is irrelevant, but annoying, that I have forgotten the name of the hotel. The whole thing seems to lack authenticity!) However, next morning at nine A.M. I was in Washington sitting with Mr. C. in a sumptuous dining room with attentive waiters silently serving well-dressed, well-fed, well-shaven old men. Mr. C. and I had more than an hour for an elaborate breakfast and a full confession of my politics.

  At ten-thirty we entered a large room in an office building which, I assume, was the State Department’s Passport Division. It had a long table and a few chairs, but no other furniture. Two middle-aged gentlemen came in, one carrying a briefcase containing the list of my sins. It was as thick as the New York telephone book. I wanted to say, “What a waste of time and taxpayers’ money,” but I restrained myself.

  The first thing I had to explain was my “association” with Hanns Eisler “in its political implication.” The second: had I attended and sponsored the Civil Rights Congress in Chicago in November 1947? This was easy: at least fifty people could testify that I had not moved from Santa Monica. But I had signed an amicus curiae brief for the Hollywood Ten. Had any of them ever suggested my joining the Communist Party? No one ever had. Also I had signed “the so-called Stockholm Peace Petition,” and the appeal for clemency for the Rosenbergs, what about that? Yes, I had signed it. Here Mr. C. emphatically stated that I was against the death penalty but that I had never acted under the direction and discipline of the Communist Party. There were many lies in my dossier, and the incredible distortions of “alleged” (I hate this word!) conversations which had taken place in my house made me indignant. The interrogator was matter-of-fact, polite, but extremely thorough. A remark I had supposedly (allegedly!) made was especially on his mind. Had I said that I’d prefer any form of government to the one in the United States?

  “Any form?!” I repeated. “Do I give the impression of being a moron? And even had I said such a stupid thing, ‘any form’ could mean monarchy, feudalism or matriarchy, not necessarily communism!” He smiled and did not go further.

  The hearing was over, and I was asked to wait. The interrogator left the room to discuss my case with the head of the department, I suppose the much-feared Mrs. Shipley. He returned looking somewhat embarrassed! The State Depa
rtment could only give me a restricted passport for four months. Mr. C. was peeved, but as I was certain that if it had not been for him they would not have agreed even to that, I accepted the limited passport. After my return to the States I would insist upon a regular one.

  I wish I could praise Mr. C.’s name to the whole world, but I am afraid it would only embarrass him. Once more, gratefully, I accepted the kindness of strangers, capricious like fate itself, and undeserved.

  When my passport arrived, Edward, who had been full of misgivings, sighed with relief, and Clara took me immediately to Bloomingdale’s, because my California wardrobe was inadequate for a European winter. My sons were overjoyed even by the limited victory. Peter took care of my airplane ticket, and I was to leave on December 26. And, as if the black spell had broken at last, even the television producer paid up.

  Because of Christmas, changed plans and social commitments, Ursula had to postpone her trip. Also she intended to go by boat to Germany, while I was flying to meet Peter in Ireland.

  I was alone on Christmas Eve. I tried to call Thomas, but it was three hours earlier in California and he was not home yet. Then I heard a knock at the door. It was Greta; she also was alone. I quickly improvised a supper and lit the candles on a tiny Christmas tree. It had been a bitter year, but its days were numbered. I poured Vodka into our glasses and we said “skol” to each other.

  46

  A TAILWIND MADE THE PLANE ARRIVE in Shannon an hour earlier than scheduled and, of course there was no Peter at the airport. It was seven in the morning. He had told me that John Huston’s place was not far from Shannon but, as it turned out, it was near Dublin. When I finally got Peter on the phone he said he had not expected me so early. “Take a taxi,” he advised, grandly. Obediently I did as he said and indeed I greatly enjoyed my ride; but it took more than three hours. How green the country was, even at this time of the year. It was raining and my driver, a talkative old man, happy to have a passenger who was a stranger in Ireland, enumerated all the members of his family who had emigrated to the United States. Most of them lived in New York but no money in the world would make him live in that city. Enchanted with the lilting cadence of his speech, the hard rr’s and the clear vowels, I agreed with him.