The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough,” Archer said, hating the man. “You’re on the verge of being fired from every program you’ve ever played on. You won’t get another job. You’ll be finished. You won’t earn a cent. Now, for God’s sake, stop joking!”

  “Money ain’t my primary interest in life,” Atlas said lazily, “so I can afford to joke. I been working a long time and I don’t go in for fast motor cars or fast ladies and there’s a standing rule around this house that my wife don’t buy ermine more than once a year. So I got a cushion. A nice, fat cushion. Just for occasions like this. I own two buildings on Lenox Avenue and I’m silent partner in a very nice bar and I got some bonds that’d look sugar-sweet in anybody’s bank vault. So I got what you might call a steady income, Clem, and I don’t have to take guff at all. Nobody’s guff. No guff from the sponsor, no guff from any white magazine writers, no guff, excusin’ the expression, from you. If people get nasty, maybe I’ll just pack up with the old lady and take off to France. Spend those francs. I was there during the war with the USO and I was attracted. I even got a running start on the language. Cherie,” he said, grinning “je cherche du cognac, s’il vous plait. Let them yell all they want about me back here, I’ll be reading the Frog newspapers.”

  “If you run away,” Archer said, “without defending yourself people’re bound to believe the worst about you, Stanley. Eventually you’ll want to come back and work. An actor lives on his reputation, and he’s more vulnerable than other people; he’s got to be more careful …”

  “Is that what you believe?” Atlas peered bleakly out of his chair.

  “I don’t want to believe it,” Archer said wearily. “I’m forced to.”

  “I get the same story from some of my friends,” Atlas said quietly. “Only not about being an actor. They’re colored and they say a colored man has to be more careful than anybody else. Maybe you’re thinking a little of the same thing yourself, Clem?”

  “No,” Archer said, wondering if he was telling the truth. “I’m not.”

  “That’s good. I don’t like people who think colored folks ought to make sure to act like angels at all times, just because we’re what you might call unpopular in certain quarters. First of all, it ain’t possible. It ain’t possible for actors and it ain’t possible for blacks. And if it was possible that’d be the worst thing of all, because then people’d have a real grievance against the race, if they went around behaving better than everybody else. They’d be so holy they’d be swinging from every lamppost. And then, as a voting citizen, I’d be against it because it’s un-American.” He grinned coldly, confident and unmoved, taking his time, lazily enjoying playing with Archer. “In the United States of America, the man says here, everybody’s born free and equal. Don’t say nothing about black men or actors on the radio or anybody. It just says everybody. That means we all got the equal right to be mean or dirty or obstreperous with everybody else. We got the same license to get into trouble as anyone else. I don’t notice no quota system in the jails. Folks who run the jails, they’re firm believers in the Constitution, they say, Sinner, you broke the law, we got a spot for you, we don’t care who you are.”

  “Stanley,” Archer said impatiently, “we could talk like this all day and never get anywhere.”

  “I was just lettin’ my mind ramble around among the possibilities,” Atlas drawled. “I feel playful today. Now, I suppose what you really want to know is—am I or ain’t I.”

  “If you want to tell me,” Archer said.

  “First, let’s us look at the reasons why a colored man might decide it’d be a smart idea to be a Communist,” Atlas said, crossing his legs comfortably with a flicker of his yellow socks. “Give us a understanding of the subject,” he said gravely, “in case we get asked about it some time.”

  I’ll never get anything out of him, Archer thought; he’s got color on the brain; he never thinks about anything else.

  “Right off,” Atlas said, “the Reds come to you and they say, You’re as good as anyone else, we don’t notice what shade you are. Comes the Revolution, you’ll be just like everybody else. They’re happy, you’re happy. They’re miserable, you’re miserable.”

  “That’s very likely the way it would work out,” Archer said. “You’d be permitted to share in the general misery.”

  Atlas nodded vigorously, as though Archer had just said something enormously clever.

  “Right. I don’t doubt for a minute but that you’re right, Mr. Archer,” he said. “And that’s mighty attractive doctrine. We’re all in trouble, but it’s the same trouble. That’s real promising, just to begin with. So then, they set out and prove they ain’t just talkin’ to stir the wind. They make a big fuss to get colored folks to live in white neighborhoods, they make up committees to see the mayor, they send down nice white girls to explain it to us at cocktail parties, they invite us in to join what they call cells and we can all go out and get our heads knocked in together by cops on picket lines. They send a candidate to the city council and he turns out to be a colored Boy, and he’s on the National Committee besides. They’re not kiddin’ at all there, are they?”

  “No,” Archer said. “They’re not.”

  “Very attractive,” Atlas said. “You got to admit that.”

  “There’re a lot of other organizations,” Archer said, “that have Negro members and are trying for the same thing.”

  “Uhuh.” Atlas nodded again. “But they’re all just a little polite. They sign things, they make nice speeches—but, when it gets tough, they don’t really kick up any trouble. And one thing you got to hand the Reds, Clem …” Atlas chuckled. “They sure do kick up trouble.”

  “I hand it to them,” Archer said grimly. “They know how to do that.”

  “For example,” Atlas said, “me. I ain’t doing bad. At least,” he smiled softly, “till today I wasn’t doing bad. The dough was coming in; people laughed at my jokes as though they was paid by the company; I got a nice enough house.” He looked around at his possessions consideringly. “In the summertime you can look out and see a tree.” He indicated the window. “Free enterprise. I got more dough than you and Vic Herres, say, put together …”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Archer said.

  Atlas shook his head warningly. “You white boys just too rash with yo’ dollar bills,” he said. “Still, Herres, he lives on Park Avenue; he can walk to the studio if he wants. You live down in the Village, a real agreeable neighborhood. Can you imagine what would happen if I went to the renting man at Vic Herres’ house and I said, I work around here, this is real convenient, give me a nice apartment with southern exposure, never mind the rent because I’m loaded.” Atlas looked at Archer mockingly. “Can you imagine the reception? And on your block, Clem,” Atlas inquired innocently, “you got a lot of colored families as neighbors?”

  “There’s no answer to that, Stanley,” Archer said, “and I’m not going to pretend there is.”

  “The Reds,” Atlas said slyly, provoking Archer, “they say they got an answer.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you’re a Communist, then?”

  “I ain’t trying to tell you anything, Clem,” Atlas said. “I’m just rustling around among my souvenirs. Anyway, it might be a little hard for me to be a Communist. I’m a capitalist, like I told you. Two tenement buildings and a half interest in a bar. And gilt-edged securities piled up like snow drifts in the vault. You look at my income-tax return some day, Clem, and you’ll see how hard it’d be for me to be a Communist. Not impossible, of course,” Atlas said tantalizingly. “But hard. And many ways, I’m not so fond of everything they do. They ain’t 99 and 44/100ths percent pure themselves. They’re out for something of their own and they latch onto us because we got our troubles and they can score some runs off of that particular pitching. They pretend to be a lot more interested in us colored folk than they really are. We are what you might call incidental income on their original investment. Some
times we get to looking real hard at each other and wondering whether we’re using them or they’re using us. It ain’t as easy to tell as a person might think, looking at it from the outside.”

  “Stanley,” Archer said, “there’s more to it than the Negro problem and you know it. They stand for a lot of things and do a lot of things that have no connection with Harlem.”

  “Foreign policy?” Atlas shrugged carelessly. “Labor unions? I’m too busy to bother. My foreign policy is maybe I’ll move to France and take up blowing a trumpet again, like in the old days. And maybe I’ll spend a couple of nights at home and have a kid or two. I ain’t in the mood for no more colored kids in this country. It don’t fit in with my principles.”

  “Listen, Stanley,” Archer said desperately, feeling that he was adrift, “practically, what do you intend to do? Do you want to fight? Do you want to defend yourself?”

  “How do you do that?” For a moment Atlas seemed absolutely serious.

  “Maybe one thing you do,” Archer said, “is bring a libel suit against the editors of the magazine. Maybe you join with the others who’ve been accused and do it together.”

  Atlas grinned. “What is it, Clem?” he said. “You got friends in the legal profession you anxious to make rich? When I was a little boy at my mother’s knee, she told me, ‘There’s only one rule I want you to follow, Son. You can drink corn liquor and you can snuff cocaine and you can sleep with the parson’s wife, but never sue a white man.’ My old gray-haired Mammy down South. And the way things’re going today, half of any jury you could pick’d call you a Red if they found out you voted for Theodore Roosevelt.”

  “Whom did you vote for?” Archer asked. “What organizations do you belong to? Maybe the time will come when we have to go to the newspapers and fight it out there. Have they got anything on you? What can you prove?”

  Atlas grinned. “Ain’t you nosey, Clem?” he said. “Let them go and find out for themselves. They ain’t getting any help from me. Those’re white-folks questions. Let the white folks get the answers. Would you feel better if I told you I voted Republican and I belong to the National Association of Manufacturers? Though I ain’t guaranteeing any of this is the gospel fact. Would it be bad for me if I told you there was a time I was a runner for a policy racket, or don’t that make any difference? You think it’d hurt my fair name if I told them I used to hang around a night club when I first came up from Tampa and go to bed with white ladies for ten bucks a throw? Harlem was lively in those days and there was a surprising amount of traffic in that line of goods.”

  Archer stood up, defeated. “OK, Stan,” he said flatly, “have it your own way. I thought maybe if I got the straight dope from everyone we’d all be able to help each other.”

  “I ain’t interested in helping anyone,” Atlas said. “Not even myself.”

  He sat easily in the deep leather chair, stretching his legs, his bare arms wiry and thick, his eyes steady and baleful, resigned to everything, hating everything.

  “All right,” Archer said. “I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “No need to bother,” Atlas said without moving. He didn’t show Archer to the door.

  Outside, in the hall, waiting for the elevator, Archer sniffed. There was a stale, sour smell of cooking. He was annoyed with himself for noticing it.

  10

  ALICE WELLER LIVED HIGH UP ON CENTRAL PARK WEST, IN A BUILDING that had at one time been luxurious and genteel. By now it was only genteel. The carpets were threadbare and greenish, if they were any color, and the walls of the lobby were a dim olive stucco. The elevator clanked and groaned as it rattled up the shaft and the operator wheezed as he worked the lever.

  “Mrs. Weller,” Archer said.

  “Fourth floor,” the elevator man said. “Does she expect you?”

  “Yes.” Archer sniffed the mingled odors of oil, dust and age, and it brought back the memory of the pleasant evenings he had spent a long time ago in this house, when Alice’s husband, who had been Archer’s friend, was alive. Since his death, Archer had visited Alice less and less frequently, salving his conscience with the knowledge that he had found work for her more or less steadily ever since he had become a director, even though there had been times when he had to fight the producers of his shows to do it.

  Alice opened the door herself. She was dressed in a ruinously youthful cotton dress that made her look older than she was. Her hair, just out of curlers, was too tightly bunched over her forehead. She smiled softly when Archer kissed her. “It’s nice to see you here again,” she said, without reproach. “It’s been so long.”

  Her hands, Archer noticed, as she hung up his coat, were cracked and red, as though she had done a great many dishes very recently. She led the way into the living room, seeming, in the incongruous dress, not matronly but exhausted.

  “Take that chair,” she said, pointing. “The one you used to like has a broken spring.”

  Archer sat down obediently, feeling guilty that Alice remembered that he had liked a particular chair. He didn’t remember any of the chairs.

  “I think I’ll sit me down here,” Alice said, folding into the sofa, which gave off several grinding squeaks as her weight settled. It was her one affectation, Archer remembered. She said, I must sit me down, and I must wake me up and I must take me home. Probably it had charmed some man a long time ago and she had dimly clung to the trick, feeling momentarily younger each time she used it. Archer had always been uneasy when he heard her talk like that and he realized it still left him uneasy. She sat stiffly on the stiff couch, as though she had somehow lost the knack of grace.

  “Ralph will be so glad to see you again,” Alice was saying. “He’s asked for you often.”

  “How is he?” Archer asked politely, wondering how long he would have decently to wait before telling Alice what he was here for.

  “He’s grown so tall you won’t recognize him,” Alice said, like a mother. “He wants to be a physicist now, he says. You know, the papers’re so full of science these days, and they have professors down to talk to them all the time.” She laughed softly. If you closed your eyes and just listened to the gentle melody of her voice, you would imagine a young, delightful, hesitant girl in the room with you. “I don’t know what’s happened to firemen and jockeys any more,” Alice said. “The things the boys wanted to be when I was a young girl.”

  Ralph was her only child. Her husband had been an architect who had just begun to have his initial successes after years of struggle when he had been killed in an automobile accident in 1942. He had been something of a political thinker and had not believed in insurance. Looking around him at the meager room, with its worn furniture and mended curtains, and its air of being fragile and desperate, as though it was inhabited by people who could not bear another shock from life, Archer thought that it would have been better if the architect had not had such original notions and had taken out a policy or two in his wife’s name before he took that automobile ride.

  “So many problems come up,” Alice was saying. “Just last week I was offered the role of the mother in the road company of Breakwater. It’s a good part and the money was good and they wanted to give me a year’s contract. But it would have meant leaving Ralph alone—sending him to a boarding school. I talked to him about it—he’s amazingly grownup, you can discuss anything with him—and he was very brave about it. But at the last minute I told them no.” She laughed sadly. “I don’t know what I’ll do when he grows up and decides to go off and get married. I’ll probably behave terribly and get drunk and insult the bride.” She waved her hands vaguely, apologizing. “I must shut me up,” she said nervously. “I mustn’t babble on about my family. What about you? You look very well these days, Very distinguished looking. I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said, with a painful, dim echo of coquetry.

  “I’m fine,” Archer said, because that described it as well as any other one word. “The program keeps me alive.”

  Alice chuc
kled self-consciously. “It also keeps me alive,” she said shyly. “And Ralph.”

  That was an unfortunate way for me to put it, Archer thought. The phrase went too deep when you examined it seriously, as Alice was doing.

  “You’re on it this week, too,” Archer said, grateful that he could say that much. One hundred dollars more for the complicated process of keeping Ralph and his mother alive. “Quite a nice part. Not very long, but juicy.”

  “Thanks, Clement.” Alice’s hands waved in front of her. Her gratitude, Archer thought, is always uncomfortably naked. “Mr. O’Neill called me this morning and told me.”

  Archer phoned in a list of people he was going to use each week and O’Neill made the necessary calls each Monday morning. There were going to be some bad Monday mornings for Alice from now on, sitting by the silent telephone, if Hutt had his way. Well, Archer thought, the longer I wait the harder it’s going to be.

  “Alice,” he said, rubbing the top of his head nervously, “I’m in trouble.”

  “Oh.” Alice took in her breath sharply. An expression of concern washed tremblingly over her face. “Can I help?” she asked.

  “Something queer has come up,” Archer said. “About you.”

  “About me?” Alice looked surprised, then frightened.

  “You know,” Archer said, “for the last year or so, agencies have been dropping people from programs because they’ve been …” He hesitated, searching for the least harmful word. “Because they’ve been accused of being Communists or fellow travelers, whatever that is.”