The Unpossessed

by Tess Slesinger

  “Fascinating, the different points of view,” Merle clasped her hands before her. “Are you a Freudian, Jeffrey?”

  “I am a Marxist intellectual,” said Jeffrey simply. “I am a gentleman farmer,” cried Miles in disgust; “I tell the hired man where to shovel the manure. If you’re a Marxist intellectual I’ll eat my shirt—last week you were in favor of something else, like nature it sounded to me. . . .” “I’m in pretty close contact with the left wing, Miles—” Jeffrey’s fingers wove self-consciously. “Why don’t you join the party and get in closer then,” said Firman irresistibly. “Because,” explained Jeffrey kindly to the Sheep, “my job is on the outside, I’ve got to keep my finger on the bourgeois pulse.” “I’m a little fed up with compromise,” Miles started coldly—and there was Norah standing sweetly by her husband, docile but persistent, pulling at his sleeve. Hold out your arm, dear, she was murmuring, stretching her knitting around Jeffrey’s wrist; and Bruno understood that she was saving him.

  “Comrades, a little autonomy!” said Bruno as the peaceful interlude closed and Norah with a reassuring nod resumed her seat. “Is this a united front?” He permitted himself to grow serious: “A little trust, a little tolerance . . .”

  “You sound like a Goddamn Christian Socialist,” cried Firman fervently.

  “It’s my Jewish inferiority complex,” said Bruno coldly; and looked his fellow-Jew ironically in the eye. “But look here, Firman, you are the strongest against my manifesto, suppose you tell us all how you would draw one up.”

  Firman had his way of commanding silence. He spoke like one admitting no doubts. “I’d cut out all the pseudo-claptrap. I’d take a definite stand, the only stand: Revolution; no more dialectic humbug. A Magazine’s for propaganda. A revolution is for a full belly. There isn’t anything else. You’ve got a full belly or you haven’t. You’re in favor of them for everybody or you’re not.” (He remembered Firman a spindly freshman, borrowing Veblen and borrowing Marx from Professor Leonard’s shelves. Something struck him now about the Black Sheep; it was not merely their youth that set them off, that blinded as it fired them, it was their poverty. Perhaps poverty, undercutting everything else, removed them a priori from the class of intellectuals.)

  “Man’s desires,” the Vambery stated with a complicated smile, “are unfortunately not so simple.” Say, did you have anything to eat tonight, Cornelia? you look damn white. “Man’s wishes have gone beyond the need for food alone. . . .”

  Certainly, thought Bruno, if one conceded the necessity of the full-belly fight to the exclusion of everything else (of philosophies, of tolerances, of poetry and concerts at Carnegie Hall) then argument of the kind they were indulging in was forever ended; then dispute, except in matters of strategy, of “tactics,” was ruled out; then the mind (like Firman’s) would narrow to a single course, pursue a single aim, ruthlessly shove overboard whatever interfered. It was unfortunate that all sides held truth, that sanity to him consisted in a constant balancing. For he agreed with Miles, agreed with Jeffrey, agreed with the Black Sheep; and weighing their opinions, he agreed with none of them. It was most unfortunate that at the moment he agreed with Vambery; and that his sentimental wartime notions of free speech compelled him now to admit it.

  “You heard the Herr Doktor, boys—man does not live by bread alone.” He grew reluctantly serious again. “But the fight for full bellies—that can’t mean everything to us; we come of a long and honorable line of full bellies—most of us,” he added; “and we know damn well it’s not enough; it’s not the final object of the game.” He thought with repugnance and pain of his father; reared in poverty and piety, his father had come to America to fight for a full belly for his family—and in the fight had dropped the piety along with poverty, in favor of a paunch: for himself, to pass on generously to his son. His father had turned from Jehovah to Mammon; and on his face for the rest of his life he wore the pitiful sign of his sacrifice—something left out, something wistful, defiant, something that undercut the growing ugliness of his fat and prosperous jeweller’s jaws. “The intellectual,” he continued, “is a scientist; whatever field he’s in, he’s looking for the truth—it’s the eternal values he’s after. The full belly—we’ve got our eye on something higher, granted the full belly must come first. . . .”

  “Those higher things,” interjected Firman, “are going to fall pretty flat if they fall on empty bellies” “or on half the world dead of starvation” said Cornelia.

  “I said the full belly must come first,” said Bruno impatiently. For that all bellies, being created equal, should be equally full, was an axiom; it needed no more thought. Someone should see to it—economists, efficiency experts, agriculturists; but it was a small and specialized, almost esoteric, realm of life. “Don’t you see,” he said confidently, “someone’s got to take the long view, someone’s got to keep his eye on what comes after . . . Once all the bellies are full, what then? We—the intellectuals—have to step in and show them what else there is; keep them from aiming at a fuller and fuller belly to the exclusion of everything else.” And he thought how he had turned in disgust from his father’s full-belly pursuits; had reached (dragging Elizabeth with him) for a world in which only the intangibles were goals. He grew strong again with the memory. “There’s danger in this war; there’s danger that the new god may become efficiency, that though the aim is different, the results may resemble a sort of belt system, even under communism. . . . The intellectual has to climb the sign-posts, ask himself at every step of the way, What is the object of the game? are we achieving the proper object? or are we being carried away, destroying, and forgetting what we mean to build. . . .”

  “Now that,” said Firman, “is a specious, bourgeois argument” “and sentimental” “because obviously your ‘higher things’ can’t happen” “until efficiency is so far along” “that the business of canning for instance is mechanical”

  Firman’s fight, he thought, was not (except in some inevitable underlying realm, some inescapable Freudian sphere), like Bruno’s father’s, for himself; not even restricted to the full bellies of his race; ostensibly it included all the world. Grant the necessity (he ruminated, while the talk burst out again around him). Grant the justice (which sometimes, in a mood of scepticism, one could doubt) of keeping a world alive, of nourishing every single individual in it, the underdog Chinese, the starving Armenian, the slaves in French Guiana; the living dead scattered now on the redlines, the deadlines, of America. Let us grant (he thought, observing the angry Firman, the pallid Cornelia, pressing their arguments upon their seniors’ ears) that all these aching bellies must be filled, blood pumped upward to the brain even if that brain be so much sterile gray stuff. And then suppose the feat to be accomplished. The world populated with fat people sitting on complacent backsides—the world with a paunch, in short, with a sad fat face like his father’s. He knew the dialectic rebuttals, that efficiency, materialism, were the means and not the end; recalled a paragraph that ended Trotzky’s book, in which the future’s average man, having mastered canning, building, mining, rose head and shoulders above the Goethes of the past. But (his mind as ever restless till it provided not only the rebuttal to itself, but furnished also the subsequent rebuttal to the rebuttal) had not his father promised as each year added to the lines in his face and the thousands in his bank, to retire next year and live, as he timidly put it, “the life of Riley”? And had he not been carried home at last, forced to retire (having grown too old to enjoy the life of Riley earned him by his bank account) by nothing short of death? Despite his careful reading of the communistic bibles, Bruno’s inevitable scepticism rose to point a world in which trees were torn down for bigger factories, other trees planted in organized rows for factories of the future. . . .

  “The point is,” Jeffrey said complacently stilling the Black Sheep, “that even though you’re right, we’ve got to step easy; you can’t knock the bourgeois intellectual on the head with a blackjack and expect him to like i
t; we’ve got to approach him warily. As a matter of tactics,” he said, and drew the fingers of one hand down the hand of the other as though he whittled the revolution into shape.

  “What a dinner with Comrade Fisher,” said Bruno. “Everything from soup to tactics. Go on.”

  “As a matter of tactics we don’t want to come out—in the beginning—too frankly as left-wingers; we’re sympathizers” “camouflage, sounds dangerous to me,” said Firmin. “compromise, sounds lousy to me,” said Miles. “Only for the beginning,” Jeffrey said; “we’ll be fellow-travellers.”

  “Fellow-trav-ell-ers,” said Merle ecstatically. “Oh I never knew that politics could be so beautiful” “P-p-please for God’s sake, Mother,” burst from Emmett.

  “Fellow-travellers,” continued Jeffrey calmly, “is what they call intellectuals, you know, who aren’t joined up exactly. . . .”

  “Yes, we’ve all been to dinner with party emissaries,” said Miles dryly. “And it’s nearly twelve o’clock,” said Bruno.

  “Anyway, I discussed our policy,” said Jeffrey patiently—

  “We had no policy at eight o’clock this evening,” said Miles. “And we still haven’t any,” Firman pointed out. God kid, can you hold out, are you terribly hungry? My stomach’s upset so badly by all this tripe, Cornelia said, it wouldn’t hold a meal—do you s’pose we’ll be like that when we’re old? We’ll never be old, baby, don’t be dumb. “Nor is it precisely,” Miles said crisply, “your place to discuss without consulting us.”

  “I acted,” said Jeffrey quietly, “under advisement.”

  “Visions from Moscow, comrade?” Miles asked him coldly.

  “There are circumstances,” Jeffrey said, “you may not be aware; currents; cross-currents; certain repercussions . . .”

  “Oh it all sounds like a play,” said Merle softly, “a fascinating Russian drama.”

  “Are you by any chance suffering from repercussions of the brain?” said Bruno wearily at last.

  “The party wants to establish relations with the intellectuals.” “A marriage of convenience,” Bruno said, “surely you won’t assist at such sordid opportunism?” “support them from the outside, don’t you see,” Jeffrey pleaded with the bored Black Sheep. “sounds like compromise to me,” said Miles uneasily. “sounds like flying buttresses,” said Bruno grimly—for his own tribe must not be seduced into alien territory.

  If this keeps up, Cornelia, I’m going to ask for something for my girl to eat. Ask them to borrow from the bird-cage, Cornelia whispered back, my legs are stronger than the Dickie-bird’s.

  “and don’t you see,” Jeffrey went on, nervous, his fingers interlacing, “the Magazine can be a useful weapon—”

  “A weapon,” said Bruno elaborately. “Ah yes. But what war are we fellow-travellers off to?” The thing was getting out of shape; he wished the triumvirate were as single-tracked on their own level as the young Black Sheep.

  Jeffrey’s hands went carefully over his sentence. “Why the class war, of course,” he said, puzzled with himself.

  “Ah yes, the class war.” Bruno scratched his head. “But it’s hardly our war,” he said calmly. “You don’t fancy yourself a capitalist, Jeffrey. And as for being a proletarian, I’ll bet your Norah changes your typewriter ribbons . . . No, I’m sorry, Jeffrey; it’s not our war; we’re not eligible. We’re neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. Just lousy intellectuals.” He was aware that he was sentimental, that he drew a gold line around the intellectuals and put them in some holy place beyond the economic; but each man for his class; each man for the preservation of his own kind, his own fraternity; and intellectuals engaged in a property war would lose their identity as intellectuals.

  “It’s everybody’s war,” burst from Firman.

  “Of course, of course,” said Bruno. “But the intellectual belongs on the sidelines—where he was born.”

  “That’s stalling,” said Firman angrily. “That’s sitting on the fence,” said Cornelia.

  “But what’s a better place to look on from? Doesn’t the world need an umpire?”

  “Consider the intellectual,” said Firman: “he toils not neither does he spin . . . to hell with that.” “Economic determinism,” said Cornelia, “has bitten the intellectual in the pants too.”

  The Vambery cleared his throat for action. “My dear young people: economics most surely plays a part. But it is not, you cannot believe it is, a basic human motivation. Not a fundamental. Investigate your earliest memories: they are not, surely, either of too much or too little money.”

  “My earliest memory,” said Cornelia dryly, “is my mother throwing a kettle at me.”

  “What?” cried Merle. “How terrible, you poor child!—was she—‘nervous’?”

  “Worse than that,” said Cornelia cheerfully; “she didn’t have anything to give me to eat. I’d come home from school and said I was hungry. So she threw the kettle at me.” “But why, why,” wailed Merle. “Because she was angry at the kettle for being empty,” said Firman shortly.

  “To get back to the subject,” said Bruno impatiently (these damn youngsters! they had such concrete illustrations of their simple point!) “Religions and civilizations, Firman—built if you will, on propaganda, and by those in the thick of the fight—have flourished and died; but the art depicting them has lasted. It seems to me quite right, quite just, inevitable in fact, that the intellectual stand on the sidelines, fiddling while Rome burns or what have you; our fiddling produces the records for posterity. . . .”

  “Unless, professor,” said Firman, “the intellectual happens to fall in the flames himself; and his worthless record with him.” “Your position, Doctor Leonard,” said Cornelia, “is an anomalous one.” “Anomalous,” Bruno nodded approvingly; “I thought one word was missing; now they’re all checked in.”

  “I want it born, inaugurated,” cried Merle, “in a burst of glory, the Magazine!”

  “What Magazine?” “Is there a Magazine?” “What is your mother talking about, Emmett?”

  “Defeatist talk!” cried Jeffrey. “And what in hell else have you contributed,” cried Miles—but Norah stood between them.

  “You’ll have to take your coat off, dear.” She stood like a very stupid woman (which Bruno was sure she was not) until Jeffrey swallowed his rage and rose with a sigh—more like a spoiled child than a plagued husband—and slipped on the sweater she was knitting him. The room was calmed; Jeffrey emerged from his fitting with spirits soothed and temper cool. (Bruno thought of Elizabeth.) “Go on, tell them, Merle,” said Jeffrey—and gave Norah a little pat as if acknowledging his debt to her.

  Merle faced them graciously. Bruno observed how Emmett writhed with filial embarrassment. “Jeffrey Blake and I,” she said, “have planned a party to inaugurate . . .”

  The room broke into discords. “A party?” “What has a party to do with a Magazine?” “A combined party, we thought—proceeds to be divided between the Magazine and the Winter Hunger Marchers.” “Hunger Marchers!” Bruno heard Miles, sounding his stern worry through the dissonant fugue: “It’s compromise, no good will come of it, a Magazine baptized in gin, will there ever be a Magazine?” Listen darling, for God’s sake, do you have to go back to the dormitory tonight? Dixon doesn’t mind sleeping on the floor at our place. If this meeting ever ends, Cornelia whispered back; darling, I am so tired. “A revolutionary Magazine,” said Miles, “inaugurated by a drunken party—I don’t like it . . .”

  “A Hunger March Party!” Al had come back and stood maliciously surveying them. “I’ll donate the buffet—nobody will go hungry at our Hunger March Party, shall they, my pet? Caviar, lobster, nothing’s too good . . .” Sit tight, Cornelia, if this meeting ever ends we’ll beat it over to Dixon’s. . . . “And how have you gotten along, my dear,” he said placing himself beside Norah; “did you turn the sleeve?”

  “Baptized in gin—” said Miles unhappily.

  “Hell, no, champagne,” Al interposed. “The refr
eshments are on me. I want ’em to cost more than the whole Hunger March expenses, otherwise I won’t play.”

  I want to go home Arnold, let’s beat it now, to Dixon’s, I feel as though I’d be sick any minute all over this carpet. Hang on kid, we can’t let them run themselves into the ground like this, can you stick it out? All right darling, but break it up if you can, I feel damn funny.

  “Of course you realize,” Firman broke out of a huddle with Cornelia, “that we haven’t settled on anything resembling a policy.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bruno, “we’ve settled on no less than six.” “Oh we can have a meeting to decide that,” said Jeffrey easily. “I thought this was supposed to be a meeting.” “I know, but we can have another.” “A drunken party,” Miles said bitterly; “I don’t like it.”

  “Not a drunken party at all,” cried Merle, “it will be beautiful, dignified, we will have speeches and banners, music . . . Run up like an angel, Vammie dear, and see if the Dickie-bird’s all right. . . .”

  “It will be,” stated Jeffrey firmly, “a party on the surface, and concealed strategy underneath. . . .”

  “Ah, spies in dinner jackets!” said Al Middleton with pleasure.

  “Dinner jackets!” burst from Miles. “In R-r-russia,” Emmett began. “but tactics,” said Jeffrey “selling out” said Miles “what the devil does it matter, it’s no costume party” said Bruno angrily “real democracy” said Merle ecstatically, “the perfect party” “when the R-r-russian ambassador attended the conference in Paris” “we will have posters, we will have speeches” “there’ll be a party, but there’ll be never be a Magazine” “dinner jackets and there’ll never be a revolution”

  “Anyway there’ll be caviar, sceptics,” Al shouted into their midst. “I guess you’ll have that sweater finished pretty soon,” he said to Norah. “Yes, I don’t like to waste my time,” she said, “I mean,” she added blushing, “I like to keep my fingers busy, I’m not clever like the rest.”