Story of Lola Gregg

by Howard Fast

  “And will it be that way always?” Lola demanded. “Is that all life means?”

  “Always—yes, always. It’s been that way for five thousand years, and for five thousand years the kings have marched out to war, and God sat on each kingly scoundrel’s shoulders, and in the name of God, they killed and murdered and raped—and always your poor, stupid common man fought the battles and died from the spears and bullets of poor, stupid common men just like himself——”

  “But doesn’t there come a time when he’s not so poor, not so stupid, when he rids himself of the kings—yes, and a time when he even says, there shall be no war!”

  “Does he? And now the atom bomb—a gun wasn’t enough. Did you ever see a man shot through the belly, watch him, listen to him? Or a man with his gonads torn off? We’re a lousy and rotten species, Lola. That is why I am trying to understand what is in it for you!” His voice rose. Lola had never seen him so agitated before. “Yes, for you! I won’t argue communism with you. Five years ago, I might have, but so help me God, if there’s an honest, brave man in America today who isn’t a communist, I want to see him! I want to see him! I want to see him stand up and be counted! Not me—it’s not worth it, I tell you. What do you die for? What do you fight for? Your name has become an anathema in the land, the sound of it is a curse! Hunted like game, hounded, persecuted, railroaded to jail—lied about, made a mockery of by paid informers and stool pigeons, the bait of every stuffed shirt in congress, every crooked senator who wants to make a score for himself—and this my daughter, my own daughter, my girl who is the only pure and fine and decent thing I know in this lousy, corrupt life. You—you!” He pointed his pipe at her with a trembling hand. “You, they’re talking about, Lola. The one beautiful, good object I know of in this America of nineteen fifty, and for every pimp, crook, gangster, dope peddler or murderer, there is mercy, but no mercy for you——”

  “Daddy, Daddy, please don’t fight it that way,” Lola begged him. “I am not sorry for myself. I am not sorry for Gregg or for my children. We’re strong people. We’re not to be pitied.”

  “You’re my girl. Do you expect me to forget that?”

  She shook her head. “No—I’m a woman. I’m grown up—long ago. Understand me, Dad, I love you and honour you, but I’m a woman. I do what I do because I believe it’s right. I don’t believe it will be this way for ever. I believe that in half the world, the people have taken hold and said, no more! No more war! No more starvation and hunger and corruption—no more rich and poor I Do you expect the rulers here to like it, embrace it, tell the truth about it? They consider me and Gregg to be dangerous—we are I And so long as there is one like us, one who must call black black and white white, one who must say, this is, and I cannot live if I say it is not—so long as’ that is the case, they can never sleep easily. What else do you expect?”

  He lit his pipe again and rubbed his knuckles in his wet eyes. “All right—I’m sorry, Lola. I haven’t burst out like that in twenty years. Forgive me.”

  “Daddy—there’s nothing to forgive. Now tell me what happened at Robert’s.”

  “Are you sure you want me to? I came and I went. Wouldn’t it be better to leave it that way?”

  “No, I want to know.”

  “You loved Robert very much, remember, Lola?”

  “I didn’t love him, I worshipped him. Nothing Robert did could be wrong. You know why I became a nurse—the truth of it, or part of the truth or some part of it anyway? Because I dreamed that some day I would work with Robert. The last time he saw me, four years ago, he asked me not to come to his house again. Very politely, of course. He wanted to know why he couldn’t take Gregg and me to dinner, occasionally at a special restaurant he liked, downtown. But his wife was displeased when I came to the house.”

  “She would be,” Fremont nodded.

  “She liked me, you see, Dad. Robert made that plain. But the first time there was a Republican administration, her father would be minister to France or Italy or Turkey or some other place, and how could I ruin his chances? How could I? It doesn’t matter—I’m only sorry you were hurt. Anyway, I don’t think Robert makes eighty thousand a year. He’s still very young, and he has a very rich wife. What difference does it make? I don’t think, after all, that I want to hear what happened over there.”

  “You’re a remarkable woman, Lola.”

  “But about Robert—we’ll forget it, won’t we?”

  “I suppose so,” knowing he wouldn’t forget. You begin lightly, he thought to himself, but you go to your grave heavily burdened indeed. He would forget nothing of that night, for in a sense it was the climax as well as the accumulation of his whole life. What meaning did his life have? What sense? What reason? It might be said that he envied Lola, for there in her little kitchen, in her little, cramped shabby apartment, there seemed to be meaning and logic; even though he could not comprehend it.

  But what did he comprehend? When he came to his son that day and the uniformed maid opened the door of the Park Avenue Apartment, he was only a shabby and tired country doctor asking, pleading to see a rich young man. The rich young man, tall, good-looking, with a proper long, narrow Anglo-Saxon face, tried to inject a note of enthusiasm into the manner with which he said, “Father—you’re the last person I expected to see,” and when Fremont replied sourly, “Yes, it’s my birthday, and I come for your blessing, Robert,” it only made him feel foolish, silly in his contrived sarcasm. Through the white and gold foyer, he could see the large, deep-carpeted living-room, guests having cocktails, and hear the animated chatter of conversation. Robert must have known immediately why he was there, and he took him by the arm and said, “Come into my den, Dad. We’ll talk there.” How he hated the word den. At least, as a physician, he could call it his consulting-room, his office; but the sick male of his class retreated into dens. It came to Fremont’s mind to ask Robert, somewhat bitterly, whether he didn’t think he ought to introduce his father to his guests; but he put that childish resentment aside. He had not come there as a guest, and he did not feel like a guest.

  In the den, Robert came directly to the point, and said, “It’s that business of Lola and Gregg, isn’t it?” Doc Fremont admitted that it was, being taken a little off balance by Robert’s direct approach. “Well,” Robert went on, “it couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time. I’m up for consideration for a staff appointment at Mt. Senlee next week. It’s true that it’s a Jew hospital, but it’s a damn good hospital——” “Jew hospital—Robert, what in hell are you talking about?” And Robert said, “Please, please, Dad, don’t let’s get into a hassle about anti-Semitism now. I couldn’t bear it. I’ve got enough on my mind. If it comes out that Lola is my sister, think of what it will do to me. No, I admit that’s selfish. Think of what it would do to Andrea and her family—her father, for example.” “I really don’t give two damns about her father. Lola’s my daughter. I’m sure she would be glad to apologize for whatever prompted the F.B.I, to go after Gregg and make things so stinking inconvenient for you.” He said it, and he was sorry. He had just come there, and he was fouling the matter up beyond rescue. If he had come there to get money for Lola, then that was it; but now he was lost in the awful, tragic bitterness that comes sometimes between father and son, lost in his own lost years and hopes.

  “That isn’t what I meant at all,” Robert said evenly. “Of course Lola didn’t engineer what happened today, but you’ll admit that she laid the groundwork for it.” “I’ll admit nothing of the kind.” “I don’t see how you can escape it. She put us all into impossible circumstances, tying up with this insanity. She went ahead her own gay way; she dances, we pay the piper.” Old Doc Fremont held himself in and said in a controlled whisper, “Does it mean nothing, Robert, that a human being has ideals and practises them?” “Ideals? Really, Dad, we all have ideals. You have them, I have them. That’s why I became a surgeon. But I don’t think that membership in a dirty conspiracy that plots to overthrow the government
by force and violence can be considered very idealistic.” Doc Fremont stared at his son for a long, long moment, and then he said quietly, “This is your sister, Robert. You can’t have forgotten. How long is it since you have seen her?” “A long time, and I’m quite aware that she is my sister.” “Well, please, son, I didn’t come here to fight you. Lola is in terrible trouble. I’ve never asked you for anything in my life, but now I am. I want money for Lola.” “That’s not a very fair request to make,” Robert said. His father replied softly, “I still make it, fair or unfair.” “But you see what you ask. I become an accessory after the fact. I join hands with it. This, I cannot do.” “You mean you will not let me have money for Lola?” “For yourself, ask it. Not for Lola.” “Then I ask it for myself.” Robert smiled regretfully and said, “A poor trick, Father. This isn’t your need, but Lola’s, and my conscience would not permit it. I’m sorry you had to ask me.” “I’m sorry too,” Doc Fremont muttered, and then somehow felt his way out of the place, out of the house.

  Forget it now, because nothing can be put back into place, and the road down the years is a road one never travels twice; yet he could not help but put his plaintive question to Lola—what had he done wrong? How had this come out of his own flesh and blood? Was he so bad a father? Her mother so bad a mother?

  “I don’t know,” Lola murmured. “This is a strange world we live in, Dad. It’s nothing you did. The world is stronger than you think.”

  “And stronger than you think, Lola. I am the dollar thy god, and thou shalt have no other gods before me. I dreamed the other night that I was walking in a desert, a wasteland, myself alone and no one else, and everywhere it stretched off to infinity.”

  What could she tell him, Lola wondered. It was his tragedy and the tragedy of all like him that when their time was finished, they stood alone on the wasteland. What could she say? Poor old man, she could be neither his wife nor his mother. Later, she would ask him to stay overnight, but he would go home. Take the train and go home to the echoing emptiness of Hagertown. But she swore to herself that this was one dream she would never have—that she would never stand alone against the world and time and history. She was knit with millions, she said to herself, knit with them.

  “It’s tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll both feel better.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll work,” he nodded. “That’s the tonic men live by, but it’s also a swindle and a narcotic. We work to live and we live to die, and God help you if you try to find meaning in it. The universe provides sixty million degrees of temperature, and out of those sixty million, there’s a span of a hundred and fifty degrees that will support that foolish accident called life. Gregg’s punishment will be that he cannot work, and therefore he must think.”

  “Then let him think,” Lola answered, almost angrily. “How can you live with hatred and nothing else? When you see a man who’s sick, do you let him die? Or do you heal him? Don’t try to make me feel sorry for myself, Dad. It’s because Gregg and I could never feel sorry for ourselves that this happened. The whole world is turning over and changing and exploding, and all that you can think about is the hurt you got from Robert. He’s already a memory, something that belongs to the past—and twenty years from today, when people are building that brave new world they dreamed about and fought for so long, the Roberts will be pitiful to look at and remember. He’s my brother and your son, but do we weep for that? I don’t know about you, but my own tears are precious!”

  “Lola—Lola——”

  She went over to him and stood behind him, bent over and put her arms around him and said softly, “Daddy, what a treasure you gave me, to know and think and live——”

  “And the sorrow it brought.”

  “No sorrow, Daddy, believe me. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t want it any different. Daddy, I remember how, long ago, when Gregg and I were just kids, we used to argue endlessly with others for what we believed in. To be radicals, to believe in socialism—that was a bold, bright game of youth. Then it stopped being a game, and it was ho game Gregg played in Spain and on the Normandy Beachhead—and then we didn’t have to argue any more because life proved itself and did the arguing for us.”

  “I envy your faith,” the old man said wearily.

  “It’s riot faith—it’s knowing and understanding. You remember the game we played when we were kids—you used to propose a switch in history where Fremont actually did become President, and then what would have happened to our family and how maybe we wouldn’t have stayed in Hagertown a hundred years after all? Do you remember?”

  “I remember,” he nodded.

  “But you see, whatever did or didn’t happen, people do what they must do, and there are always enough who must walk ahead—always people like Gregg and you and me, and God only knows how many thousand more. There’s a man across the hall called Schwartz, works as an oiler in one of the power houses and fights, with his wife and looks like a thousand other men sunk in their own treadmill, and when this happened, he and his wife, both of them opened their arms and their hearts to me. I didn’t have to leave Hagertown. I used to sit in your office and watch the cannery workers come in, and they were only tired, sick people, without faces or names or dreams. It’s time we stopped thinking about dreams, isn’t it, Daddy? Did you ever truly talk to one of those cannery workers, not as patients, but as human beings. Did you?”

  He shook his head. “Would it have mattered if I did?”

  “Yes, it would have mattered.”

  “Well, it’s too late for an old man to try to understand you, Lola. It’s too late.”

  “No,” she smiled, “no, it isn’t. I sometimes wonder whether anything ever finishes. I know this—today has been a strange and frightening day. I think something begins on a day like this.”

  It was then that the doorbell rang. The day was not over.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE LONG NIGHT

  LOLA GREGG said to her father, “Go to the door, will you, Daddy. I’m too tired to move.” He was tired too, and she felt a twinge of conscience as she saw the old man move, his bowed shoulders not to be straight again, his feet dragging. Her thoughts followed him and came back to herself. She found herself looking at the back of her hand, outspread upon the table, the long fingers, the broad, competent palm. She thought nothing now but listened to her father’s progress. He opened the door. It was Sam Feldberger’s voice inquiring, yet the voice was strange. Lola thought, “He never met my father.” She got up as her father was explaining, and then Sam said he was an old friend of hers.

  She walked to the door as Sam entered and saw his face. Then the three of them stood still, because old Doc Fremont also saw the lawyer’s face now with his daughter’s eyes.

  “What happened?” Lola whispered.

  Sam stood there.

  “What happened?”

  Feldberger shook his head. He kept shaking his head. He stood there with his pink face, his eyes crinkled, his mouth trembling, and he kept shaking his head.

  “Sam!” she cried. “What happened to Gregg?”

  He stopped shaking his head now, and said, “Gregg’s dead.” His eyes became more crinkled, and tears ran from the corners of the tight lids. “Gregg’s dead,” he said.

  Lola heard him, but nothing registered. The words stopped short of her mind, and she stood there, asking herself, “What is he trying to tell me? What is he trying to tell me?” And then she said plaintively, “You told me Gregg would be all right. You told me nothing would happen to him. What happened to him?”

  “He’s dead,” Feldberger whispered.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lola said. “Sam, you don’t know what you’re talking about. What kind of a crazy joke are you playing on me? What a thing to say to me! I saw Gregg. He came out of the theatre with me. He’s my husband. He’s alive. All day long they’ve been trying to make me think that Gregg is dead. He isn’t dead. He’s alive.” Her father came over to her
and put his arms around her, and she looked into his face and demanded of him querulously, “Isn’t he alive? What is he trying to say to me? I told him Gregg’s alive. Tell him, Daddy.”

  “What happened?” Fremont asked hoarsely. “Don’t you see what she’s going through? Tell her what happened.”

  Lola nodded, and then pressed her face to her father’s jacket. She listened to Feldberger, and as she listened to him, she began to understand him. His voice sounded wrinkled, she thought to herself, but the whole world was wrinkled. If was a curious thought. Even as she listened, she told herself brokenly, What—a—curious—thought—to—have. Feldberger was talking to her, and at the same time, she was talking to herself. She heard Feldberger and then she told herself what she had heard. They had put Gregg into a cell with another man. The other man was a Croatian fascist who was wanted for trial for mass murder during the war in Yugoslavia. He was in prison awaiting deportation. They said he had unscrewed a piece of metal pipe from the washstand. That was not clear. No one knew how he had gotten the pipe, but he had it. When Gregg turned his back, the Croatian hit him. He hit him again after Gregg fell and fractured his skull. Then the guards got into the cell and took the pipe away from him and took Gregg to the hospital. Gregg died before he reached there. He never regained consciousness. Lola repeated it to herself. He never regained consciousness. He was living and breathing and thinking of her and Roger and Patty, and then there was a blow on the back of his head, and it ended. Darkness came, and it ended, and Gregg was no more. He had lived through Spain where no bullets could touch him and he had lived through the jungle war of the South Pacific and he had lived through Normandy, but now he was dead because a man had hit him with an iron pipe. His great, rangy, strong body was lying somewhere with a sheet pulled over his face, and he was gone. Over. Finished. Do you understand, Lola, she asked herself? Do you understand? Gregg is dead. That is why Sam is here. He came here to tell you that Gregg is dead. There’s no mistake about it, because you can hear Sam saying that he saw Gregg’s dead body. He looked into Gregg’s face.