The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

O’Neill stared at him for a moment. To Archer it seemed as though O’Neill were begging for something with his eyes; and again Archer thought of the baffled bulldog.

  “We want to drop certain actors,” O’Neill said. “For the time being.” He waited for Archer to say something. But Archer remained silent. “Stanley Atlas …”

  “Now, Emmet,” Archer began.

  “Alice Weller,” O’Neill went on quickly. “Frances Motherwell.” He stopped and took a breath. Then, in a low voice, he said, “Vic Herres.”

  He took a long gulp of his whiskey.

  “You’re kidding,” Archer said. “Now tell me the joke.”

  “It’s not a joke, Clement,” O’Neill said, his voice troubled. “We’re dead serious.”

  “First of all,” Archer said, speaking slowly and with exaggerated reasonableness, “my arrangement with the agency is that I’m in complete control of hiring and firing. Right?”

  “It has been, Clement,” O’Neill said. “Up to now.”

  “You mean that’s changed,” Archer said. “As of today.”

  “Not really,” said O’Neill. “Only in the case of these five people.”

  “Also,” Archer looked squarely at O’Neill, who was opening and closing his mouth in a nervous half-yawn, “whoever made up that list happened, by luck, to include the most valuable people on the program.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” O’Neill said. “Maybe you’re a little too close to them and your judgment’s been influenced. Vic Herres is your best friend. And the truth is you’ve been carrying Alice Weller for a long time.” He stopped uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Clem,” he said.

  “All right,” Archer said. “Let’s leave Herres and Weller out of it for a moment, although you could ask anybody around radio for a list of the five best actors in the business and Herres would be named every time. As for Alice Weller,” Archer went on, evenly, “she’s no Duse, but she’s a good solid type and she does a decent, dependable job every time out. And you’ll never get anyone one-tenth as funny as Stanley Atlas, and you know it. A funny man, a really funny man like Atlas is a rare thing, Emmet, and I treasure him. I don’t like him, but he makes me laugh. And he makes everybody else laugh. A good proportion of the people who listen to your show turn on their radios to hear Stanley Atlas and taking him off is deliberate sabotage and I want to know who wants to sabotage the program and why you’re willing to let it happen.”

  O’Neill opened his mouth as though he wanted to say something. Then he closed it again and uneasily slid his hand along the table.

  “Now we consider the case of Frances Motherwell,” Archer went on, professorially. “As they say at the cocktail parties, Frances Motherwell is one of the most exciting young talents in the country.” He waited for O’Neill to oppose him, but O’Neill still didn’t say anything. “In two or three years she’s going to be one of the biggest stars in the country and you’ve told me that yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” O’Neill said miserably. “I did.”

  “And yet you want me to fire her?”

  “Yes,” O’Neill said. It was almost a whisper now.

  “You insist,” Archer went on, methodically, like a lawyer delivering a charge, “that I fire all five of the people.”

  “We insist,” O’Neill said.

  “In that case, Emmet,” Archer said pleasantly, “I fire myself too. See you in a bar somewhere.” He started to get up.

  “Clem!”

  Archer stopped.

  “Sit down, please.”

  Archer hesitated.

  “Sit down, sit down,” O’Neill said impatiently.

  Archer dropped slowly back into his chair.

  “Clement,” O’Neill said, “I think you’re going to be sorry you made me explain.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I expected you’d make me explain.” O’Neill smiled wanly. He rubbed his hand over the back of his head and the bristly hairs stood up aggressively. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re not asking you to get rid of those people because they’re bad performers.” He paused. “Clement,” he said soberly, “will you take my word for it that it’ll be better for your peace of mind to stop inquiring right here and let me handle it for you?”

  “I don’t know what the man is talking about,” Archer said.

  “OK,” O’Neill said. “Here it is. All of them are accused of being Communists. The sponsor wants them off the program. Immediately, if not yesterday.”

  Archer blinked and felt that he had been sitting with his mouth open. I must look stupid, he thought irritably. Then he turned to O’Neill. “Once more, please,” he said.

  “They have been accused of being Communists,” O’Neill said without expression, “and the sponsor wants them off the program.”

  “O’Neill concurring?”

  “Hutt concurring,” O’Neill said. “O’Neill just works here. He is not asked to concur or not concur.”

  “Still,” Archer persisted, “O’Neill must have an opinion.”

  “O’Neill has the opinion that he likes to collect his salary every Friday,” said O’Neill.

  “What would you say my position was?”

  “The same as mine.” O’Neill moved uneasily in his chair. “Exactly the same as mine.”

  “Thursday is a tough day,” Archer said pettishly. “I’m tired on Thursday. You might at least have waited till tomorrow.”

  O’Neill didn’t say anything and Archer knew he would have to collect himself, do something, immediately. He rubbed his hand across the top of his head, staring at O’Neill’s broad tweed shoulders and unruly hair.

  “Item one,” Archer said finally, thinking, That’s it, get it down in mathematical order, “Item one, who says they’re Communists?”

  “You ever hear of a magazine called Blueprint?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. He had seen copies of it several times lying in radio producers’ offices. It was a belligerent little magazine, financed mysteriously, dedicated to exposing radical activities in the radio and movie industries. “What about it? I haven’t seen anything about us in it.”

  “Not yet,” O’Neill said. “Come close.” He glowered suspiciously at the bartender across the room. “I don’t want to shout this.”

  Archer hitched his chair a little nearer O’Neill.

  “They sent a letter to the sponsor last week,” O’Neill said wearily, “saying that in their next issue, three weeks from now, they would expose the Communist connections of five people from our program. They also wrote that if before presstime they could have proof the five people had been released, they’d hold the story.”

  “That’s blackmail, you know,” Archer said, “in a very plain form.”

  “They don’t call it that,” O’Neill said. “They say they don’t wish to hurt the sponsor or the industry with bad publicity unless they’re forced to. Anyway, the editor once worked for Hutt and he did it as an act of friendship.”

  “Who appointed them to the job of referee in this game?” Archer asked. “Why don’t they mind their own business?”

  “People have a right to fight against Communism,” O’Neill said patiently. “In any profession. Maybe they’re fanatic about it, but it’s the temper of the time and maybe you can’t blame them too much.”

  “Did you see the letter?” Archer asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of connections did they say our people had?”

  “All of them are mixed up with the usual list of fellow-traveler organizations,” O’Neill said in a low, guarded voice. “You know. The Attorney-General’s list of subversive societies and committees and some California group’s separate little honor roll. Plus some that the magazine has given the red star on its own hook.”

  “They could be wrong, you know,” Archer said. “They’ve had to apologize before this.”

  “I know,” said O’Neill. “But they’ve been right an awful lot of the time, too. And they’re awf
ully strong. They’ve wrecked two or three programs already. And I don’t know whether you know this or not, but they’ve been responsible for getting about twenty-people quietly dropped from jobs throughout the business in the last year or so. Some pretty big people, too.”

  “Has anybody said that University Town is Communistic?” Archer asked. “The program itself?”

  “Not yet.” O’Neill lit a cigarette. He did not look as solid and as staunchly entrenched as he had earlier in the evening. “There’ve been a few letters. Cranks, I suppose. Too many stories about poor people, not enough religious feeling in some of the episodes …”

  “Oh, God, Emmet.”

  “I’m just telling you what we’ve already gotten,” O’Neill said. “But if the story comes out …” He shrugged. “They’ll need six extra mail carriers for the letters. And they’ll say everything. From telling us we buy our time with money direct from the Kremlin to accusing us of selling atomic secrets to the Russians.”

  “What a business we’re in!” Archer said.

  “Well, we’re in it.” O’Neill grinned palely. “So far.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think,” O’Neill said slowly, “that we’ve been a little close to the edge a couple of times. That Barbante’s such an irreverent bastard, and he makes fun of everything and who knows what little tricks and hints he slips in without our catching him?”

  “Now, Emmet …”

  “Now, Clement.” O’Neill imitated Archer’s tone, harshly. “You don’t know. You’re protected. You work at home, you come into the studio once a week and you pull out and nobody bothers you. I sit there eight hours a day and I get it all thrown at me.”

  “From now on,” Archer said coldly, “do me a favor. Stop protecting me. Let me know what’s happening.”

  “Anything you say.” O’Neill suddenly looked weary and he dug his fingers into his eyes. “But don’t think you’re going to be any happier when I do.”

  “Listen,” Archer said, “do you think we have the right to fire people from their jobs even if they are comrades?”

  O’Neill took a deep breath. “We have a right to fire any unpopular actor,” he said flatly.

  “Unpopularity,” Archer murmured. “New grounds for capital punishment.”

  “What do you want me to say to that?”

  “Nothing,” Archer said. “Not a thing.”

  “Don’t make me the heavy here,” O’Neill said. “I’m paid to sell a sponsor’s product. If I deliberately hurt the business, I’m out on my ear in a week. If the American people decide they don’t want to listen to a certain actor, all I can do is go along with them.”

  “The American people,” Archer said. “Who knows who they are and what they want? Do we take the word of one little magazine on the subject?”

  “This year, Clement,” O’Neill said, “I guess we do.”

  “And we take their word that whoever they call a Communist is a Communist?”

  “The sponsor says we do,” O’Neill said. “This year.”

  “The sponsor is willing to see the program crippled? This year?”

  “I suppose he is.”

  “And, later on,” Archer continued, “if somebody says I’m a Red or you’re a fellow-traveler, or Barbante, the sponsor will fire all of us, too?”

  “I guess so.”

  “What do you feel about that?”

  “It’s a tough world, Brother,” O’Neill said. “So put your money in the bank.”

  “And the people we fire won’t get any other jobs, either, will they?”

  “Probably not,” O’Neill said.

  “Conceivably, they’ll starve to death.”

  “Conceivably,” O’Neill nodded. His eyes were glazed now and he answered stubbornly and automatically.

  “And, even if we grant that Communists should not work on radio,” Archer went on evenly, “still, we do not permit the people who are accused to defend themselves?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t occur to you that that’s a little bit on the filthy side, does it?”

  “It occurs to me,” said O’Neill. “A lot of things occur to me.” O’Neill played with his glass. “I get paid $18,000 a year because I have such a fertile mind. Next year, they put my name on the door.”

  “If there’s still a door.”

  O’Neill nodded agreeably. “If there’s still a door.”

  “Now, as for the question of technique,” Archer said, pleased with the fact that he was doing this so calmly. “What am I supposed to say to the five people? Do I say, You’re Communists, or, We think you’re Communists, or, The editor of a throwaway magazine is of the opinion you’re Communists, kindly leave and starve in another section of the city?”

  “That’s up to you,” O’Neill said. “I suggest it would save trouble to do it as quietly as possible.”

  “Quietly.” Archer nodded reasonably. “Be so good as to walk, not run, to the nearest exit when you discover your throat is cut. Something along that order? Maybe Mimeograph will run off a form.”

  “It was felt,” O’Neill returned to his earlier oratorical style, “that the best way would be merely to say nothing. None of them has a contract. We don’t have to tell them anything.”

  “I see.” Archer pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Do you suggest that that’s the way I do it to Vic Herres, for example? Is that what you would do with your friend Herres, Emmet?”

  The plum surge of blood showed in O’Neill’s face again. “Please, Clement,” he said, “what do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know about you, Emmet,” said Archer, feeling his hands trembling, “but I can’t do it this way. Maybe I can’t do it any way, but this is out. So I’ll quit now, and you find somebody else who knows how to handle these things better.”

  “You can’t quit,” O’Neill said. “Your contract runs another sixteen weeks.”

  “Mr. Clement Archer,” said Archer, “the not very eminent radio director and producer, was last seen entering a private nursing home, suffering from a nervous breakdown due to overwork. Before he went in, he issued a statement regretting his inability to fulfill his obligations due to reasons of health. He was assured by his lawyers that this was sufficient legal justification for laying down his contractual burdens.”

  O’Neill listened unhappily. “All right,” he said, “what do you want? Within reason.”

  Archer thought for a moment. “First of all,” he said, “I want time. You sprang this on me without warning and you can’t expect me to make up my mind in fifteen minutes. Is that within reason?”

  “How much time do you want?”

  Archer considered. “Two weeks, anyway.”

  “You won’t help Herres in two weeks,” O’Neill said.

  “Maybe not.” Archer smiled. “But maybe I’ll help myself. I’m a slow thinker, and if I was smarter I wouldn’t be in radio, but in two weeks there’s a chance I can get one or two things settled, anyway. For one thing, I might even find out whether these people are Communists or not.”

  “How’ll you do that?”

  “In a very novel way. I’ll ask them.”

  O’Neill laughed harshly. “Do you think they’ll tell you?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they will,” Archer said. “The world is full of people with a sickly leaning toward the truth.”

  “What if Frances Motherwell tells you she’s not a Communist?”

  Archer considered for a moment. “I won’t believe her,” he said quietly.

  “What if Vic Herres says he’s not a Communist?”

  “I’ll believe him.”

  “Because he’s your friend.”

  “Because he’s my friend,” Archer said.

  “Then what’ll you do?” O’Neill demanded. “After the two weeks are up?”

  “I’ll tell you then.” Archer noticed that his hands had stopped trembling.

  “All right,” O’Neill said. “You have two weeks. I don’t k
now what I’ll say to Hutt, but I’ll stall him off.”

  “Thanks, Emmet,” Archer said, feeling pleased with O’Neill.

  “Yeah,” O’Neill said. “I’ll probably be on my ass by next Friday. Here …” He reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. It was a galley sheet. “Maybe you’d like to read this.” He put it on the table in front of Archer.

  Archer opened it and glanced down at it. It was the article from the magazine. It looked badly printed and harmless on the flimsy paper.

  “Do you mind if I read it?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” O’Neill said. He waved to the bartender for two more whiskies.

  “Of all the programs on the air at this time,” Archer read, “one of the most flagrant and cynical offenders against loyal and patriotic Americans is University Town, sponsored by the Sandler Drug Company, produced by the Hutt and Bookstaver Agency, and directed by Clement Archer.”

  “Water or soda?” the bartender asked, standing beside Archer’s chair. Archer folded the galley automatically.

  “Soda,” he said. He watched the bubbly water fill the glass. The bartender went away and Archer opened the galley again. He read hazily, not being able to focus very well without his glasses and too lazy to take them out for half a column of print.

  The article was written in the aggrieved prophetic style with which people air their views on Communism in the newspapers. There were some pugnacious metaphoric generalities about the necessity of clearing the American air of the termites who inveigled their way into the middle of the American home and then charges that Stanley Atlas, Frances Motherwell, Alice Weller, Manfred Pokorny and Victor Herres were either Communists or sympathizers. It offered some twenty organizations on the Attorney-General’s list in which the actors were alleged to hold membership, lumping them all together and making it sound as though all the people who were accused were equally culpable. Pokorny, according to the article, was soon to be brought before the Immigration authorities, with a view toward deportation. The article closed with a blunt hint that if the sponsors of the program did not take action, appropriate steps would be instituted by the American people.

  Archer sighed when he finished the article. Except for the names, it was so familiar, and by now, so boring. He was always surprised at the freshness and vigor with which the crusaders of the press could stir up the old names and the old charges. Even if a man felt that they were true and he was serving his country nobly by repeating them, it took a special imperviousness to boredom to roar them over and over again like that. Power, he glimpsed dimly, is finally in the hands of those who find a geometrically increasing pleasure in repetition. The equivalent among saints would be a man who merely said, “God, God, God,” ten thousand times a day. I am probably a weakling, he thought, because I demand novelty.