Silas Timberman

by Howard Fast

  With his first sight of Brannigan, Silas realized that photographs caught little of the man, a shell in repose; in motion, there was an animal that no photograph could do justice to, sleek, fleshy, poised, yet with the tension that the sight and smell of prey brings to the stalker. His breadth of shoulder suggested power; his head set squarely on a bull neck, his face large, his chin low and square, his thin hair combed carefully, his pale blue eyes veiled and lost and detached for the moment from reality—a detachment strangely at odds with his almost brutal masculinity. The net effect was an uncertain mixture which removed the man from the obvious. The body and face of a thug combined oddly with the eyes and attitude of a dreamer or a madman. He became the committee, he was the committee; all eyes were upon him, and the attitude of the other senators suggested a visible retreat into the background. Even when Effingham D’Marcy opened the proceedings by tapping with his gavel and calling the committee to order, the eyes of the audience were not upon him but upon Brannigan. Silas verified this by turning to look at them—and his guess was right. The old ladies and old men, the tourists and curiosity seekers—all of them were watching Brannigan.

  “Who will the first witness be, Mr. Counsel?” D’Marcy asked Dave Cann, who rose, swished his hips in a little gesture that was almost feminine, allowed his beady eyes to drift back and forth over the seven teachers, and said flatly,

  “Isaac Amsterdam.”

  His voice grated unpleasantly. He was pompous without charm, whereas old D’Marcy was both pompous and charming, his voice resonant and scaled by long years of practice to that rising and falling undulation of pitch and tone so often affected by preachers. As MacAllister and Amsterdam took their places at the end of the mahogany table, facing Dave Cann, his assistant and the stenographer, D’Marcy continued.

  “Mr. Amsterdam? Then will you raise your right hand, please? In this matter which is now in hearing before the committee, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do,” Ike Amsterdam nodded.

  Cann now began the interrogation, twisting his head after each question, so that he could watch the reaction of the senators above and behind him.

  “What is your full name, please?”

  “Isaac Aldington Van Dobberman Amsterdam,” smiling a little.

  “Would you repeat that, please?” asked the stenographer.

  He repeated it and then had to spell out most of it. Cann said,

  “Are you now employed at Clemington University, Mr. Amsterdam?”

  “I was until recently. I am now under suspension, as you no doubt know.”

  “Please answer the questions as they are asked.”

  “I’ll answer them as I see fit to answer them,” he said unexpectedly. “You ask them, young man, and tend to that.” The lights of the television cameras came on suddenly. The chairman tapped with his gavel.

  “Please answer the questions directly,” the chairman said.

  “Until you were suspended, in what capacity were you employed, Mr. Amsterdam?”

  “I was full professor of astro-physics, Mr. Cann—”

  “Would you spell that, please?” the stenographer said. Amsterdam spelled it out, and then there was a little interval of silence, and then Ike Amsterdam gravely added, “The study of the various phenomena and the physical properties of celestial bodies.”

  “And how long have you held that position—” Cann’s voice trailed off, caught in indecision concerning titles.

  “I have functioned in one position or another at Clemington for thirty-two years. Before that, young man, I spent three years at Antioch and seven years at the University of Chicago. I detail this because I want you to reflect on what it means to devote a long lifetime to the study of science and the teaching of youth—to have it knocked into a cocked hat by a pack of irresponsible—”

  The gavel hammered away. Dave Cann hammered on the table with his fist, like a child in a tantrum. The cameras hummed. Through it Brannigan spoke for the first time, his voice throaty, almost lazy, yet peculiarly penetrating,

  “This is not a soap box, Professor Amsterdam. If you came here prepared to make communist speeches, disabuse yourself of the idea!”

  “I came here because I was subpoenaed, Senator Brannigan.”

  “Then try to behave like a witness and a loyal citizen of this country—if you are one?”

  “More loyal than many who preach loyalty.”

  “And does that include membership in the Communist Party, Professor Amsterdam? Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

  “I won’t answer that question,” Amsterdam said. “It is no concern of this committee, no concern of yours, Senator Brannigan, what party I belong to!”

  “For God’s sake, cite the Constitution,” MacAllister whispered hoarsely.

  “You will either answer the question or be held in contempt,” Brannigan said.

  “I will not answer the question. I have certain rights specified by the Constitution, rights guaranteed in the First and Fifth Amendments.”

  “Then you’re claiming the privilege against self incrimination?”

  “I am,” Amsterdam answered, the words clogging his throat, his old, wrinkled face drawn and angry.

  “Witness dismissed,” Brannigan said, his interest gone, his unconcern with the rest of the committee painfully apparent.

  D’Marcy seemed to be taken by surprise, but the other senators found nothing strange or untoward in Brannigan’s summary action, and Cann proceeded to call Edna Crawford. Silas was amazed at her calm and self-possession. Unlike Amsterdam, she was neither angry nor hurried, and she answered all questions in a precise and matter-of-fact way. When she first cited the Fifth Amendment, D’Marcy said,

  “I must say that I’m surprised to find a woman like you in such a position, Miss Crawford.”

  “No more surprised than I am to find you in equally strange circumstances, Senator D’Marcy.”

  The audience laughed for the first time, and a trace of a smile flickered across D’Marcy’s face. Brannigan did not enter the interrogation until the circumstances of the peace petition were raised, and then he said.

  “Did it not occur to you last June, Miss Crawford, that this so-called peace petition was a communist device?”

  He was taken aback when she replied that it had occurred to her.

  “And yet you signed it?”

  “The more shame that people like myself didn’t think of it first,” she said quietly.

  “And yet you consider yourself a fit teacher for our youth?”

  “I don’t make a habit of passing judgment on myself, Senator Brannigan. Perhaps you do. I don’t. Long ago, the proper boards and authorities approved my fitness as a teacher—and my record seems to have confirmed their judgment.”

  “Some might disagree. Do you consider yourself a loyal American, Miss Crawford?”

  “I do.”

  “And yet you willingly lend aid and comfort to the Communist Party, an organization dedicated to the overthrow of our government by force and violence?”

  After a moment, she asked, “Is that a question?”

  “It is.”

  “Rather a loaded one, isn’t it?” she smiled.

  “Please answer it, Miss Crawford.”

  She thought for a moment; then leaned over to MacAllister and whispered, “What do you think?”

  “Just to be on the safe side, ask for your privilege. Cite the Fifth Amendment.”

  “I refuse to answer—basing my refusal on the right guaranteed to me by the Fifth Amendment.”

  “In other words, you refuse to incriminate yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you realize the implication of guilt contained in such a refusal?”

  She glanced at MacAllister, whose pudgy face was white with anger, and then she said, calmly, “I really have no idea of what you consider my guilt to be, Senator.”

  “Are you a m
ember of the Communist Party, Miss Crawford?”

  “I don’t think I’ll answer that either, Senator. I’ve thought a good deal about this sort of thing, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I would not answer, basing myself on the same grounds as before, the Fifth Amendment.”

  “Bravo!” MacAllister whispered.

  “I can’t force you to answer it,” Brannigan said, with simulated resignation. This time he looked at his colleagues for additional questions. “That is all, Miss Crawford. You will, of course, consider yourself still under subpoena.”

  “What on earth does he mean by that?” she asked MacAllister as they returned to their seats.

  “Only that he may want to call you again—this morning or this afternoon. Actually, you all remain under subpoena until the committee releases you or until this Congress adjourns. Don’t worry about it. You did very well, damn well.”

  “They didn’t ask much.”

  “Well, they’re developing some kind of a pattern. It will build up from here.”

  It did. Silas was the next witness called.

  Like Edna Crawford, Silas had been giving a good deal of thought to what he would do; unlike her, he had come to no set conclusions. His own need was not only to understand, but to find himself. As certain values by which he had lived dissolved, the more necessary it became for him to discover other values that were beyond destruction. The more he thought of Myra, his children, his home, his career—the less able he was to act in their cause, as he considered it; and back of his mind, somewhere, he understood that he and Myra had not been building and growing before this nightmare began, but rather moving apart from each other, the seeming tranquility and happiness of their home a shell over nothing, a shell which became thinner and thinner as the years passed. Now, suddenly, they had something precious and different, not because trouble had found him, but because in the process he had found something of himself and something of his wife. He was not fully aware of how this operated, yet he knew that he had to be whole. He was too simple and he knew too little to be anything else. Either he was a whole person, or nothing.

  So his thoughts went, and at times he was more in his thoughts than in the hearing room. It took him a little while to realize that his name had been called. MacAllister squeezed his arm as he rose. They went up to the witness table. “Is everyone afraid at this point?” he asked himself. Or was the world divided into two areas of life, the one without fear, the other saturated with it? He felt cold and weak, and the horse-shoe podium of the senators reared up above him, an Inquisition from which there was no escape. The lights came on, the cameras came on, and a part of his mind wondered whether Myra was watching, and then told him no, she had a lecture. Of course, she would be at the lecture. She had so little thought for what he was enduring now that she would not dismiss a lecture to share trouble with him.

  Then reason replaced his petulant reflection, and he took the oath and answered formal questions as to his name and work. His voice strengthened; his heart beat less swiftly. He observed Dave Cann at close range, tried to look into the man’s eyes, which were like uneasy pimples under the lids, and found that the eyes always avoided his—and indeed was able to contemplate philosophically the strange circumstances that had placed this ugly, truculent, capon-like young man in a position to punish and judge. He recalled that Myra had told him how, in the last generations of a dying Rome, the emperors had taken pimps, perverts, eunuchs, household procurers and had placed them in positions of enormous and pervading power, where they could wreak upon anyone they hated or envied, the full mercilessness of their sadistic and warped souls.

  When Brannigan asked his first question, reflection faded away. Silas began to hate, and hatred resolved many of the problems that had perplexed him. He looked at MacAllister, and suddenly he had a new and different feeling about the lawyer. MacAllister was kith and kin. Fat, red-faced little MacAllister was of him and because of him, and that thought made him turn and glance at the others and see how anxiously and intently they were watching him. His heart went out to them, and now fear had gone away.

  “Did you also sign this peace pledge, Professor Timberman?” Brannigan had asked.

  “You know that, don’t you? The FBI knows it—and you know it.”

  “I want your answer for the record.”

  “I did—and I would do it again, so that will settle any question of remorse.”

  “Thank you, Professor Timberman. And do you consider a man who holds such a position at a time when this great nation of ours is locked in mortal combat with a conscienceless, soulless enemy, who not only acts as a tool of communists, but boasts that he will repeat his action, given the opportunity—do you consider such a man fit to teach the youth of this nation?”

  Silas knew that MacAllister was trying desperately to catch his eye; he knew that he had only to glance at MacAllister, and the whole course of the interrogation would be altered, and he would respond wisely and sanely and cautiously. He had been wise and sane and cautious all his life, therefore he could not understand why it was so impossible for him to look at MacAllister now, to be temperate now, to be cautious now.

  “I’ve never been a tool of communists, Senator,” Silas said. “Further, that kind of cheap, demagogic question is more befitting a power-hungry hoodlum than a member of this country’s highest legislative body.”

  “This is not a soap box, Professor Timberman,” Brannigan remarked caustically. “This is not Union Square. This is not a classroom where you can make communist speeches as you please. We want no communist speeches. Unless you can answer the questions asked of you, we’ll hold you in contempt. Do you understand that, Professor Timberman?”

  Silas sat rigid and silent. “Will you read my question from the record?” Brannigan asked the stenographer. Still, Silas sat without replying. D’Marcy said, with a trace of sympathy in his voice, “You understand, Professor Timberman, that such a question is allowable, even though you may object to its formulation? To refuse to answer is to commit a contempt. You may consult your lawyer, if you wish.”

  Silas shrugged, but did not speak.

  “Very well,” said Brannigan. “How did you come to sign that petition, Professor Timberman?”

  “It was shown to me. I read it, thought about it for a while, and then decided to sign it.”

  “Would you tell us why you signed it, Professor Timberman?” Senator Patterson asked, a note of real curiosity in his voice. He was a tall, thin, tired-looking man who seemed to possess no partisanship, but acted like an intrigued spectator who had been awarded the favor of a special seat.

  “Yes—I suppose so. Here was an attempt to make heard the voices of many people who were horrified at the threat of atomic war and who felt that such war would destroy civilization as we know it. In my own small way, I am concerned with civilization and with people. Therefore, I signed it.”

  Brannigan said, “But apparently your concern with civilization did not extend to a group who are the avowed enemies of civilization and who are dedicated to the overthrow of this government by force and violence? Is that so, Professor Timberman?”

  “I would have preferred that such a petition had been circulated by the Daughters of the American Revolution,” Silas nodded.

  “Are you a member of the Communist Party, Professor Timberman?” Brannigan threw, at him, and then added, “There are some who choose to consider that a privileged question, within the scope of the Fifth Amendment.”

  “I understand that. I spent long hours yesterday studying the Constitution of the United States, Senator—”

  “I asked you a question, Professor Timberman. I don’t want an oration.”

  “I am answering your question,” Silas said evenly. “I know that it falls within what you choose to call a privilege. I would call it an inherent right to resist torture and intimidation, and some of my colleagues have seen fit to use it. I don’t disagree with their use of it—but I cannot. I am not a member of the Communist Party,
Senator. I am not, and I never have been.”

  “You understand that you are under oath, Professor Timberman?”

  Silas was conscious of MacAllister now, his hoarse breathing, his silent pleading, and he was able to wonder why a man like MacAllister should feel such desperate concern for him. Who was MacAllister, and what had made him the way he was, and why wasn’t he up there on the bench with the others, and what demarcated the accused from the accuser? All of these were questions of great importance to Silas; he was only beginning to ask them, and time would pass before he could answer them, and certainly this was no place to solve such problems; yet he could not help wondering, however fitfully, what kind of a fraternity there was of men of good will, of human decency, of brotherhood—and how he had entered it, and why he had not known of it for forty years of his life?

  Still, he was subject to a driving need to separate himself from MacAllister and find his own way. “I understand that,” he said.

  “Who gave you the petition to sign, Professor Timberman?”

  He thought about the question for a while, and then he looked at MacAllister for the first time since the interrogation had begun. “Well, here I am,” he said to the lawyer, softly.

  “I wish you could claim the privilege,” MacAllister whispered, without rancor and with a strange note of respect. “But you’ve knocked it out by answering the other question. You still have the first amendment, Silas,” calling him by his first name now. “Also, I don’t think it’s relevant to any function of theirs. Tell them that.”

  Silas leaned back and watched Brannigan, the bull neck, the pale eyes, the presence that was only partly here. Brannigan dreamed. What were Brannigan’s dreams? How did one look into Brannigan’s world? What was relevant there or irrelevant? He shook his head. He could say, “It pertains to no function of yours. It’s not relevant.” Then there would be other questions. It made no difference. They had found him.

  “No. No,” he said. “You understand, Senator, I won’t answer that question. Nor any question like it, nor any names. I won’t answer it,” he repeated querulously.