by Howard Fast
“You want some eggs, Sam?”
“Please, fry me two—sunnyside up.” He wanted to keep her doing things as long as he could, and he pulled a chair into the little kitchen and straddled it. “I eat a big breakfast, and the result is I’m getting fat and I’m beginning to look like a kewpie doll.” Lola was again on the verge of tears, and Feldberger watched her fight to control herself as she reminded him that such a reference dated both of them. Then suddenly, she said, “Talk about Gregg, for Christ’s sake, Sam!”
“Take it easy. Let me catch my breath, Lola. It’s a big world and it’s been going to pieces and patching itself up for a long time. It’s just our little bit that was rocked today. Today, there happened what is called a mass political round-up. They began arresting people at dawn, and they’re still at it—here, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit.”
“What for? What for? Not people like Gregg.”
“Why not people like Gregg? And you know what for. We’re fighting this insane war, and everyone knows what it is and that it’s the dirty war, the dirtiest we ever dipped our hands into, and everyone knows that and thinks that, but if anyone says it, it’s like saying the emperor has no clothes on. Well, the emperor is as naked as hell, and a few people at least pointed that out, people like Gregg—maybe not Gregg himself, but people like him, people who believe what he believes and are organizationally connected with him. Don’t think it makes sense; we’re not dealing with sensible people; we’re dealing with fools and provincialists who are drunk with power, juggling this damn bomb of theirs, psychopathic with their ghosts and nightmares, and deluding themselves into believing that by providing this particular circus they will solve something.”
“But Gregg—Gregg hasn’t done any organizational work in three years! Gregg is a machinist! Here, sit down at the table and eat your breakfast, Sam.” She balanced herself with the simple act of putting out food, kept her sanity—and slipped gently back to the normal. He was lecturing for her benefit, and she knew it and was over the terrible hump. She would be all right now; and they would go on explaining things to each other that needed no explanation at all. She would not cry any more. Since she was a little girl, she had made a credo out of doing what had to be done. She put bread in the toaster and watched Feldberger eat.
“You know who they arrested?” he said between mouthfuls. “Immelman—seventy-three years old, with a heart that’s ready to give out any moment, Shirley Drake, who kept the books at the party office—yes, they arrested others—valid people, too, valid from the government’s twisted point of view, but people like Immelman and Drake were mixed in, no rhyme, no reason. Well, Lola, who the devil knows what their stool pigeons tell them? They operate on the basis of informers, and an informer has to earn his pay. He has to put his finger on who the key man of the outfit is, and the more unlikely his choice, the more likely these damn fools are to believe him. Not that it applies wholly to Gregg. There aren’t too many men like Gregg, and whatever he is today, however inactive he is today, they could also be thinking of what he might be tomorrow. That’s why Gregg is important to them. That’s why they’ll move heaven and earth to lay hands on him.”
“But they didn’t arrest him yet——”
“Are you happy over that, Lola?” He filled his mouth with fried eggs, and Lola thought to herself, He’s hungry and he’s eating. My world’s gone, but he missed his breakfast today. Be fair to him, she tried to tell herself. At best, you understand only a little of man—you came so close and no closer, and you never questioned it because you lived in their world. Be fair to him, she told herself again, he’s not your enemy, and asked herself, Who is? Who is my enemy?
You lived in their world, watched their insane wars, their bloodfests, their crazy sexual twisting and turning, their strutting and posing, and you were endured because you performed some kind of a necessary service on one level or another. You were in it but never of it, in it but never of it. She felt a sudden savage disgust at the way he was eating, and told herself again, Be fair to him. Something’s happening to you. It’s not his fault.
“You didn’t answer me, Lola.”
Think about the way you feel, she said to herself. Force yourself to think about Gregg. You’re a grown woman, not a little girl any more. That’s gone for ever.
“Lola?”
“Yes—yes, I was glad at first, just for a minute, when they were here and they told me.”
“Who were here?”
“Two government agents.”
“When?”
“They left ten minutes before you came. They searched the house—they had a warrant for that. I didn’t know about Gregg, not until they came, and then they told me that Gregg escaped, and then while I was happy, for the twenty, thirty seconds I was happy and proud the way a little girl is that her brother is strong and brave, they began to tell me what it means to run away. I had never thought about what it means. I guess no one ever thought about it until it happened. They weren’t cruel, I don’t think. They were very polite, and one of them, his name was Mr. Cann, he did the talking. He told me what it would mean for Gregg now.”
“He told you?” Feldberger wasn’t eating now. He had pushed his chair back from the table, and he lit a cigarette and looked at Lola. “Smoke?” She didn’t smoke; he never remembered that. He looked at her out of his cherubic blue eyes, and whatever memories and thoughts they held were shaded. She sensed the depths of sadness that filled him, and she was sorry for him. Were she and Gregg lucky beyond reason, or was it only something like this that could bring out the profound and ultimate love a woman was capable of? It would be taking the word too lightly to say that Feldberger loved her; she was aware that for a long time now he had used her in his thoughts to try and manufacture some reason and sanity out of his own sick marriage; once, over a year ago, under the influence of a few drinks which he held badly, he had clumsily tried to kiss and paw her—and she wanted to cry then, it was so hopeless and ridiculous, making him a ridiculous little man all too easily; all of which he realized, because he was a man in his own way, brave and unconquerable, but for ever hidden in a mask and bound to a stupid woman who laughed at him and bedevilled him to earn the kind of money other lawyers did. She had never learned how to love; Feldberger had never learned—and who had in their time and their day?
She said to Feldberger, “He didn’t really threaten me, Sam. It wasn’t bad for them to be here. It was only bad to find out about Gregg—and I still haven’t really thought about it. All I know is today. I haven’t dared yet to think about tomorrow.”
“I’m glad you’re strong, Lola.”
“How do you know I’m strong? How does anyone know until they try to lift something too heavy?”
“You’ll lift it,” Feldberger nodded. “That’s all—I can’t bring you any words of comfort. What else did they say?”
“They think I know where Gregg is. You don’t think so, do you, Sam?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“And what do we do—what now?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m only beginning to think about this.”
“Why did Gregg run away?” she demanded.
“I don’t know that either. Strictly speaking, legally speaking—and it’s going to be important to be clear on this, Lola—we don’t either of us know that Gregg ran away. Maybe he took it into his head to go fishing. The point is, there’s no law says he has to report to those cookies every few hours and ask them if they want to arrest him. We tend to talk about him escaping, but that’s not in accord with the facts. To escape you have to be captured or arrested first. Gregg hasn’t escaped from anyone or anything—he simply can’t be found to be arrested. The law makes a vast difference and we have an obligation to understand that difference.”
“Sam, for God’s sake, talk sense I”
“I am talking sense, Lola. Our little world is different. When I came in, there was a plainclothes man across the street, and two agents parked in a car down t
he block. Those boys are the electronic wonders of the world. They could have a microphone in your telephone that picks up every whisper in this room. They could be in the apartment next door listening to us. Rumour has it that their tricks extend even to a mike across the street that could pick up our voices. If we have nothing to hide, let’s make it plain, and let’s write the record our way, not their way. That’s why, as a lawyer, I’m assuming that Gregg took a day off and went fishing. It’s his right to do so, and he doesn’t have to ask by your leave or anyone. Now, if you ask me why he did that, I don’t know. Perhaps he obeyed his first impulse. Perhaps it’s the quality of Gregg—you know about that better than I do.”
“And do you agree with him, Sam?”
“I don’t, flatly, Lola. I think he was ill advised. When you fish, you come back. There are no holes, no hiding-places, not for people like us. This particular tune is something the world is well familiar with—and here the last orchestra plays. We face that music, listen to it, dance to it. There are no islands or caves.”
“How easy to sit here and say that!”
“I have to say it, Lola. Do you know what the word outlaw means? Have you ever thought about it, considered it?”
“Do you know,” Lola whispered, “he said the same thing.”
“Who did?”
“Mr. Cann.”
“Then he was right. Lola—Lola, my dear, we have to play this cool and wise. We cannot lose our heads. I think Gregg did, for just a while—and we have to overcome that, somehow. Please, trust me, trust me with your life and Gregg’s—trust me I You have to.”
“I trust you, Sam.”
“All right. It’s not noon yet. We have a day ahead of us, and we’re going to work hard and thoughtfully and carefully. I’ll have to go back to my office for a little—soon, and then other places. I want you to stay here. This is a focus now. Do you have to leave the house?”
“Only to get Roger at three o’clock. But I can’t stay here, Sam, I can’t. I want to do something. I have to do something.”
“The only positive thing you can do is to remain right here,” Feldberger insisted. “You must. Sooner or later, Gregg is going to telephone you. Don’t ask me how I know that. I know it. I know Gregg. By now, every tap science knows about is on your phone, and they’re hanging over it like a pack of vultures. Gregg knows that as well as we do, and when he has figured out a way to do it, he’ll telephone. You must answer—no, not to tell him to give himself up. You can’t tell him that over the phone. There won’t be any time to explain the complexity of this, and if you plant one seed of doubt in his mind, you’ll destroy him. I only know one step at this moment—to hear what Gregg has to say. He’s leading this game, and no matter what we may think, we bow to his leadership until we know where it’s taking him and the rest of us. We’re going to save him, Lola, somehow—one way or another. He’s the best man I ever knew, and you love him. Is that reason enough?”
“It’s reason enough.”
“And you’ll stay here?”
“I’ll stay.”
“And trust me?”
“I trust you, Sam.”
“Now we fight—not today and tomorrow, but for the rest of our lives, perhaps. Hard and tiresome, the way war was, and sometimes a good moment. Can you, Lola?”
She nodded without speaking. She could not trust herself to speak.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE COUNTERMAN
PATTY called her; for Patty nothing had changed yet. One day, Patty would try to remember this time, and perhaps not remember it at all. Someone had once asked Lola whether it was annoying as well as commonplace to be so typical, to look the way she did, to have hair and eyes the colour they were, both of them off shades of plain brown, to be pretty so un-dramatically, to have a good figure that was nevertheless unexciting, to be neither very tall nor very short, and to have two children, one boy and one girl, just as statistics and cheap advertisements provided as the proper American way of life. It was a nasty, insulting question; but Lola remembered that she had not taken it as an insult. She said, no, it was not annoying—and thought of that now as Patty called. Patty’s needs continued; she remained a child and Lola remained her ordinary mother, and there Lola felt a certain stability beyond all else: so that the small need of Patty was by no means small. Patty was drawing and wanted her drawing admired, and she asked Lola whether there would be time to play with her.
“In a little while,” Lola answered.
“I like you,” Patty said gravely.
“I like you.” She looked at the drawing. “I like what you do. You’re a very talented little girl, Patty.” When she talked to her like that, she sometimes wondered whether it was wrong. She felt a pressing need for Patty to grow up and replace her own memories; she doubled her four years and tripled it, and then laughed at herself. Today she did it, and was unable to laugh at herself. Her retreat from the room was like a flight.
Feldberger, in his hat and coat, had just turned on the radio, and he faced Lola with the background of slow swing music behind him. “What is it, Lola?” The radio whined, “Maybe, my baby, I’m crazy for love—too lazy or crazy, my baby, for love.”
“Is Patty all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Why did you turn on the radio, Sam?”
“We’ll have the news on the hour. I want to hear it. Do you?”
She walked softly back to the bedroom, where Patty was once again absorbed in her play, and closed the door gently. The radio demanded, “What makes this toothpaste so different from all other toothpastes the world over? Do you brush your teeth twice a day or three times a day?” It was not possible that they would be talking about Gregg in a moment. She and Gregg were like a million other people; they lay in the bosom of a million other people, and as a matter of fact an accusation of likeness was not insulting at all, but quite to the contrary had made her feel just a bit superior to the one who made it. She didn’t immediately know why just at that moment she reflected on the fact that Feldberger was a Jew; did a Jew have some strange, subtle knowledge that the strong universe was like glass—shattered by one strong, sharp blow? Had they lived in that sort of world for more years than they could remember?
The radio said, “We bring you news on the hour from the Associated Press. Hard rain and decreased visibility on the Korean front have grounded all planes, both U.N. and North Korean. A lull in the fighting these past twenty-four hours has been broken only by patrol action and some mortar and artillery fire. Casualties on both sides have been extremely light.”
“According to reliable reports from Tokyo, President Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea has stiffened his position of unalterable opposition to any cease fire. Informed sources say that he will accept nothing short of unconditional surrender of all enemy troops.”
“Here at home, the F.B.I. continues its search for Roger Gregg. What was to be a routine round-up of top communist leadership has turned into a large-scale manhunt for Gregg, said to be key man in the party’s policy of infiltrating the trade union movement. The number of arrested communists has climbed to seventeen since dawn today. In every case except that of Gregg, the arrests proceeded smoothly and without violence. It is the government’s opinion that Gregg is still in the city, and the local police are co-operating with more than two hundred special agents, assigned to what is already called ‘operation security’. During the next few hours, all TV channels will carry Gregg’s picture. Anyone identifying him is urged to take no action, but to inform the police immediately. Gregg is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and also had combat experience in World War Two. He may be armed.”
Feldberger switched it off, and Lola shook her head dumbly. “He’s not armed?” Feldberger said. Lola stared at him, and he muttered, “I’m sorry, Lola.” “I know how it happens,” she said. “Gregg never had a gun—my God, Sam, don’t you know how he hates guns?”
“I know,” Feldberger nodded. “It’s like a bad dream to you, Lola—I’m not made of
iron, and I am only talking this way because I have to know everything. I have to, even if I already know. Don’t you understand?”
“How much do you want me to understand at once, Sam?” she whispered. “I’m trying to understand. To understand. To keep my sanity. To be a mother. To remember that Roger is in school right now. To remember that I have to cook supper tonight. To remember that Patty is inside, making a crayon drawing, and I will have to tell her whether I like it. To remember that I’m Lola Gregg, and that I’m married, and that Gregg is my husband——”
“I know,” Feldberger nodded.
Then the phone began to ring, and a moment later, the doorbell shrilled. As Feldberger went to the door, he heard Lola saying:
“Yes—I know. Of course I’m glad you called. Yes, yes, Ruth, I know the phone is tapped. You don’t have to speak. Yes, for the moment, I’m all right. Feldberger is here. No—not right now. Thank you. Yes, I heard the radio. I can’t talk about that now—yes, I am upset. I’ll call you back——” All the agony was in her voice. The phone would ring and ring, and each time the same agony would be in her voice.
A man with a paper bag in his hand stood at the door. He was a small man, jaundiced, with straw hair that lay off a balding skull. In his pinched, lined face, age had been lost, and he might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. He wore a stained, unpressed grey suit, a shirt that was just less than clean, and a wrinkled tie. Without a coat, he was cold, and he shivered as he stood there and looked suspiciously at Feldberger. “Gregg live here?” he asked.
“What do you want Gregg for?” Feldberger demanded.
“All I said was, does he live here?”
“I’m Mrs. Gregg,” Lola said, coming up behind Feldberger.
“Who’s he?”
“Suppose you tell us who you are.”
He clammed up and stood there for a few seconds. Then he shrugged. “The hell with it.”