Mary McCarthy

by Thomas Mallon

  Mulcahy made his way back to his table, where the small scoop of chocolate ice-cream he had ordered was melting into the plastic and waxed paper chalice. He was, in fact, waiting for Domna, who had promised to fetch him for lunch some fifteen minutes ago and who had neither come nor telephoned. Yet he felt no particular apprehension; the fat was in the fire, and he had only to wait on the outcome; his fate and he had separated. Furness’ telephone call assured him, at any rate, that all was going according to schedule: six empty chairs in the faculty dining-room must be testifying, like a vacant jury-box, to a discussion of his peers still in progress. Here, in the near-empty shop, with Mrs. Tryk and her assistant engorging their noonday sandwiches at the table in the corner and Bill Fraenkel correcting some papers for an afternoon class, he had a sense of having crossed a Rubicon and of belonging no longer to himself but to history, a strange and yet restful experience, as though one part of him sat in a stage-box, watching with folded arms for the rise of the curtain, oblivious to the groundlings and their noise.

  What interested him retrospectively, and just precisely, he thought, as an onlooker, was the question of how and when the risky inspiration had come to him. That Maynard considered him a Communist must have been a strong factor from the outset, yet as he had paused in the hall outside Domna’s door, listening thoughtfully to her and her student, he had not yet (he was certain) felt the metonymic urge that would prompt him, once in her office, to substitute the effect for the cause, the sign for the thing signified, the container for the thing contained. It was the artist in him, he presumed, that had taken control and fashioned from newspaper stories and the usual disjunct fragments of personal experience a persuasive whole which had a figurative truth more impressive than the data of reality, and hence, he thought, with satisfaction, truer in the final analysis, more universal in Aristotle’s sense. Evidently so, to judge by first results; there could be no doubt that Domna, just now, had experienced an instant recognition: of himself as the embodiment of a universal, the eidos, as it were, of the Communist, Lazarus to their Dives, the underground man appointed to rise from the mold and confront society in his cerements. That he had never, as it happened, chanced to join the Communist Party organizationally did not diminish the truth of this revelation.

  Sitting here in the soda-shop, licking his little wooden spoon, he tried deliberately to re-imagine himself as a Communist, as the man he had just described to Domna, and perceived that, just as he had thought, very little adaptation was required. To them, he opined, glancing at the manageress and her assistant, who were conversing sotto voce over their pot of tea, he was a Communist already or worse, just as to Maynard Hoar he was a Communist or worse, i.e., an honest doubter who went to what meetings he chose, irrespective of the Attorney General’s list and the hue and cry in the colleges. And if they in their own minds and deeds equated him with a Communist, what more had he done just now than appropriate the label they dared not attach to him in their public pronouncements? By a faultless instinct, it would seem, he had been led to obey the eternal law of the artist, Objectify, or as James had put it and he himself was always urging his students, Dramatize, dramatize! Contemplating what he had done he felt a justified workman’s pride, which became tinctured, as he waited, with a drop or two of bitterness: he could imagine the hostile critics, the derogators, and detractors, finding flaws, carping, correcting, and above all minimizing, cutting him down to scale. Easy enough, he assured them, by hindsight to demonstrate the logic of the process, which was that of a simple reversal or transfer; anybody, having been shown, could do it a second time; yet the fact remained that he was the first, the very first, so far as he knew, in all history to expose the existence of a frame-up by framing himself first.

  Naturally, he acknowledged, shrugging, there were holes in the story. Maynard, he dared say, would pretend to have had no previous knowledge of this “alleged” membership; trust dear Maynard to feign bewilderment, innocence, injury. But in the adage of the martyred President, which he heartily recommended to Maynard, you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The gullible public, he promised Maynard, would find that denial a mite hard to swallow when it put it together with the F.B.I.’s visit, the swift, peremptory dismissal, the victim’s open confession. . . .

  A little, secure smile glinted from his eyes and faded as, inadvertently, he caught sight of the clock. Fear suddenly reduced him; they had had time, and more than time, to come to a decision. Supposing they were asking for some piece of tangible evidence? He had not thought of this. Was it likely, he swiftly countered, that he would have kept his Party card in his desk at home for a student-sitter to discover? Or in a bank vault rented for the purpose? Nonsense, he remarked, crisply, turning his impatience on himself. What was proof in these days that anybody dreamed of looking for it? Who asked Miss Bentley for proof in a far more weighty context? In these days, it would be a work of supererogation to show that one had been a Communist; the rub was to show one had not been.

  The idea that a man in his right mind would run the risk of proclaiming himself a Communist when the facts were the other way would simply occur to no one. That he could safely vouch for; the ordinary liberal imagination, he affirmed with a side glance at young Fraenkel, busy as a bee with his papers, could not encompass such a possibility. And it was of course a fantastic hazard—to that extent one should not blame Fraenkel and the others—one that few men alive would take and that he himself would not have risked this morning at many colleges outside of Jocelyn. In the present state of public opinion, all his advisers would tell him, he was inviting an academic lynching bee by such a gratuitous admission; if news of it percolated out West, thanks to some indiscretion of Domna’s, he would be open to prosecution for perjury. But this prospect, he observed with interest, did not daunt him; the choice he had just made in accepting himself as a Communist was having, he discovered, an extraordinary effect on his prejudices, as of liberation, such as a man might have in accepting himself as a homosexual. In fact, he could trace in himself a certain detached interest in the experience of being imprisoned, so that he felt rather defrauded by a vague recollection of having heard somewhere that perjury was not an extraditable offense.

  On the other hand, he assured himself, the risk was not really so great as lesser minds would assume. He was gambling, as he had already pointed out to himself, on Maynard’s reputation as a liberal, which meant something to Maynard that the worldly would not understand, but, over and above this, on the element of fantasy in Jocelyn, which nobody would understand who had not witnessed the freakish character of its tides of opinion, the anomalies of its personnel, the madness of its methodology which had produced here a world like a child’s idea of China, with everything upside down. And as if to illustrate the point, the door now slowly opened to admit a blast of wind and Mr. Mahmoud Ali Jones in galoshes and turban. “Good morning,” intoned Mr. Jones, inclining his long body from the hips, like an idol being bowed in a parade. “Are these ladies serving us, dear colleague?” he inquired in a deep, “cultured” voice, rhythmically unwrapping the turban, which proved to be an Argyle scarf. He made his way stiffly to the counter; the manageress paid him no heed. “May I implore a western sandwich?” he asked in a sonorous tone, addressing the room at large; his elongated, hanging-Christ profile was turned toward Mulcahy; one drooping brown eye slowly winked. “The kitchen’s closed,” shot out the manageress, addressing no one, in her turn, but stating this as a generalization. Henry bit his lips. “By whose authority?” he quietly challenged. Fraenkel’s Ever-sharp suddenly paused in its scribbling; there was a pregnant silence, till the manageress slammed down the teapot and pounded over to the counter. “I can give you ham-on-rye, Swiss-on-rye,” she cannonaded. “Swiss, if you please. A thousand thanks,” said Mr. Jones, bowing to Henry. “I was perishing for a bite to eat. May I join you?”

  He took the plate which the managere
ss pushed toward him and balanced it on a cup of coffee. “This is a pleasure,” he announced, in that curious, careful voice that appeared to have an echo in it, like a double entendre. “May I tell you how much I enjoyed your performance at last Tuesday’s faculty meeting?” The notion that this Byzantine lay-figure was capable of factional feeling alerted Henry’s interest and made him conscious of a moral law behind the smallest actions, as though a stone had spoken up or a fish in a German fairy-tale. “What points especially struck you?” he queried, in a disengaged and considerate tone, which nevertheless had a little feeler behind it. “The scrambled eggs, my dear fellow. Delicious!” Jones uttered a two-note musical laugh. “I am very fond of a pun, though my friends tell me it is the lowest form of wit. Do you agree with that?” Henry was aware of a great disappointment. “Our two greatest writers, Shakespeare and Joyce, were accomplished punsters,” he said shortly. Mr. Jones took a bite of his sandwich. “Domestic, of course,” he sighed. “My wife tells me that our President would be more sympathetic with your protest if he were obliged to eat, like ourselves, from the commissary. My wife is a Corsican, you know; from Ajaccio.” He offered these credentials in a definitive tone, quite bewildering to Mulcahy, who did not understand what they were supposed to signify—that his wife was an expert on cookery or a woman of implacable passions? Nevertheless, Henry’s interest cautiously revived; strange bedfellows, he reflected; and yet an unexpected ally, discovered thus casually, deserved, he thought, generosity, like the prodigal son returning. “We are both under medical orders,” pursued Mr. Jones. “We neither smoke nor drink nor permit ourselves any gassy foods—hot breads, of course, foods fried in deep fat, fatty meats, commercial cakes made with baking powder. . . . Quite a hardship, we’ve found it, dining in commons. In our apartment, of course, there is a little hot plate, but my wife does not think it economical to purchase for two in your stores here. But if you will do us the honor . . . ?” Henry’s pale eyes shifted; he felt his integrity compromised; yet he did not wish to offend. “My wife is not well,” he explained in a lowered voice. The idea of binding Mr. Jones to him privately, without yielding the social quid pro quo that Mr. Jones was angling for, gained a foothold in his mind, though experience bade him dislodge it: nothing in life was free, as he had learned to his bitter cost; the Joneses of this world, foiled of their pound of flesh, could become the most dangerous enemies. “It’s a heart and kidney condition brought about by the birth of our boy,” he quickly amplified, lest Jones begin to execute a withdrawal. “Nothing she won’t recover from, given complete rest. These extra-curricular activities required by the college have put too much of a strain on her; there’s low blood pressure too and a retroverted uterus. Our doctor privately tells me that those Saturday night dances might have killed her.” He was tempted now to go on, go the whole hog, but the door opened again, and it was Domna. He got up in haste from his chair and began to tie his muffler. “It’s been good to have this talk with you,” he murmured. “Let’s see each other again.” “By all means,” declared Mr. Mahmoud Ali Jones, still seated. “I’ve been wanting such a time to ask you—do you know that delicious little thing of Maurice Baring’s . . . ?” Domna was faintly smiling and dancing a little on her toes. “Ah, good morning, Miss Rejnev!” Mr. Jones began slowly to rise, like a fountain in the gardens of Allah. Henry turned up his overcoat collar and hurriedly took Domna’s arm; he had gone pale and his lips were bluish, as though he were already out of doors. “Another time,” he muttered. “An appointment. . . .” His mittened hand agitated the door. “Your check, Mr. Mulcahy,” called the manageress, an accusing finger pointing to the table where the evidence, the ice-cream calyx, still remained. Trembling, he began to search his pockets; Domna paid, from her purse.

  “It is all right,” she called to him, as they ran through the wind, arms interlocked, to her car, a blustering old Buick touring model, unpainted, without a muffler, and buttoned up now, with torn celluloid and canvas curtains in the old-fashioned style. She turned on the ignition, threw a robe over him, and began to work the choke. “It’s all right,” she reiterated, maternally, over the throbbing of the juggernaut. “They’ve voted to support you. You wish to go to Gus’s or to town?” “Town,” said Henry faintly. The car started off down the hill, with bravura; behind the curtains, in the deafening noise, he had a sense of being kidnapped; even the snowy landscape looked unfamiliar. This captive feeling was intensified by the fact that he could hear what she said only in snatches; she did not turn her head; the car roared; the wind whistled; he shivered, forlorn, in the rug. The names, Alma, John, Ivy, and so on, came to him from a distance, repeated in a tone of authority, as if, he glumly felt, they belonged to her; she knew them now better than he. Nevertheless, he endeavored to feel grateful for what she had apparently done for him; he gave her full credit in advance. A certain feeling of jealousy, brought about by the repetition of those names, made him prefer, for the moment, to depreciate the others and think of it all as her doing, her spontaneous mediation, as though she were a divine goddess; his eyes moistened obediently, as he choked out his formula of thanks; humility made gratitude more fulsome, as he had discovered in the past.

  Yet she, on her side, seemed girlishly determined that he should appreciate them all. Alma, he heard, was “wonderful,” Milton Kantorowitz was “wonderful”; even Aristide was “wonderful, so unexpectedly staunch,” as though, Mulcahy thought, grimly, the simple performance of one’s duty deserved a medal for heroism. Van Tour was “absolutely amazing.” “Who would have thought,” she cried gaily, “that the young man had so much blood in him?” It was clear, reflected Henry, watching her assured profile, that a meeting of the mutual admiration society had just concluded its business. And he could not help being nettled by the knowledge that they were all exploiting him, making him a pretext for the discovery of each other’s virtues: in this business, he remarked to himself sourly, he seemed to be the forgotten man. Every one of them had his own ax to grind here, a thing Domna made abundantly clear, but joyously, as though self-interest were a newly discovered cardinal virtue. “It means that each one has a real stake in it,” she cried, like some Hobbesian Miranda. “Only a really interested act is worth anything.” “Your view has the merit of paradox, at any rate,” commented Henry, non-committal. And he was the more resentful of Domna’s shining eyes, wind-whipped bright cheeks, with their flags of pride and accomplishment, when he discovered, toward the end of the ride, that the glorious little group had decided nothing whatsoever, so far as he could see.

  They had decided to use “the existing machinery”—the very phrase set his teeth on edge. “It’s Aristide’s counsel we’re following,” she elected to inform him, while backing into the parking-space before the red-brick restaurant. “Just look behind and see if I am too close,” she interposed, as he started to protest, a typically feminine maneuver, he thought bitterly, seeing that it was as he had thought, his instinct had not misled him: he had been taken for a ride. He obeyed, however, with a shrug—“All right here.” “Aristide thinks it best,” she calmly pursued, shifting into first and letting out the clutch, “that we leave the political thing dormant for the moment.” “Look out!” shouted Henry involuntarily, as she hit the bumper of the car ahead. “Oh, how stupid of me! He thinks it best that we handle it departmentally and simply, as I say, get the department to accord you a vote of confidence which he, as head of the division, will carry to Maynard as a protest. Would you pass me my pocketbook, please?” “Domna!” His cry finally arrested this “normative” flow of words. “You must be mad! Don’t you see that that means working through Furness?” He gripped her arm to restrain her, lest she evade the issue by getting out of the car. “My dear girl, this is serious business. Furness, as you ought to know, is the classic type of informer, an academic police-spy. He’s already got the wind up; he called up the store just now, spying out the land. I told him nothing, naturally, but he’s got the bee in his bonnet. We shall have to work fast to circu
mvent him.” Domna’s face wore an expression of childish, crestfallen disappointment; she looked ready to cry from sheer defeated altruism, the vanity of good intentions. “We thought . . .” she jerked out, “Aristide . . . Milton . . . we all thought. . . .” Henry stretched his legs. “You thought,” he told her calmly, “of your own skins, procedural safeguards, and all the rest of it.” Domna’s lips quivered; tears stood on her thick lashes. “Not you, Domna,” he said, more kindly. “I exempt you from such intentions. At worst, you have been thoughtless. Didn’t it occur to you, after all we have said together about Furness, that you might, just possibly might, be endangering Cathy’s life if you followed the method you approve of? What a temptation to malice to let her know, by a slip of the tongue, what was happening to her husband!” She stiffened, as if in disagreement, and stole a look at her watch. “I must hurry,” she muttered. “I have a class.” “Or an anonymous denunciation, posted to the F.B.I.?” He smiled to see that she was shocked by these possibilities he was suggesting, shocked, of course, more by him than by Furness, and, truth to tell, he enjoyed shocking her: it reinstated him at the tiller of his fate.

  Actually, after his first revulsion, he was inclined to let them have their way, but not without unsettling them a little, for future policy’s sake. If he yielded now, as he proposed to do in a few moments, and Furness proved obdurate to their entreaties (as he almost certainly would), then the next step in the dance, he could promise himself, would be called by Henry Mulcahy. He himself, through a natural impatience, common in quick minds, tended to prefer the short cut, but he had sufficient experience with faculty parliamentarians to know that, in every instance, it was necessary to exhaust legal means first, “employ the existing machinery,” etcetera, before they could be brought to an action that common sense would have dictated in the first place.