The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  Archer was silent for a moment as they stared at each other. Then he shrugged. “All right,” he said wearily. “Read it if you want to. I don’t care.” He went over and sat down heavily in the easy chair, watching Kitty.

  Suspiciously, as though she still didn’t quite trust him not to leap up and reclaim the papers, Kitty began to read. “Oh, God,” she muttered, going through the first page rapidly and turning to the next one. “Oh, good God, you’re insane.”

  She didn’t go through all the papers. She glanced quickly at Archer, to make sure he was not prepared to move, then ripped the papers in half, then in half again, then into smaller and smaller pieces. Archer started out of his chair, then sank back, waiting for her to finish. She was panting and the bandage on her hand was giving her trouble and she looked clumsy tearing at the obstinate paper. Finally, she dropped the ragged shreds on the floor. Then she stared at Archer, fearful and defiant. “That’s what I think of it,” she said loudly. “That’s my candid opinion.”

  “All right,” Archer said patiently. “Now we don’t have to discuss it any further.”

  “You hate me,” Kitty said.

  “I don’t hate you at all.”

  “Yes, you do,” she said. “You want to destroy me.”

  “Oh, Kitty,” Archer said, “don’t be a fool.”

  “You want to destroy me,” Kitty chanted in a singsong, “and you want to destroy our home. And I won’t let you.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “They call me up and they call me a bitch and a whore,” Kitty said, “and words I couldn’t even repeat to you now, because of what you’ve been doing. What do you think they’ll call me if you get up and talk like that to all those Communists?”

  “They’re not all Communists,” Archer said wearily. “They’re everybody.”

  “Do you believe that? Are you simple enough to believe that? Why’re you so anxious to ruin yourself?” Kitty demanded. “What’s the secret? What’ve they got on you?”

  “There’s a certain principle at stake,” Archer began, unpleasantly aware that he was sounding like a professor, “and it’s just my bad luck that I’m involved in it …”

  “Isn’t there a principle about protecting your wife and your children, too?” Kitty asked shrilly. “Or is that too unimportant for noble artists like you? Artists,” she said sardonically. “God, you make me laugh with your artists! Actors who couldn’t get a job with the third road show of Tobacco Road. Writers who write advertisements for laxatives as long as they’re paid seventy-five dollars a week for it! Melville! Duse! Don’t you know how funny you sound? And that’s what you’re willing to throw away your whole life for! Come back to earth! Don’t you know we’ll be out in the street in six months if you make that speech? What’ll you pay the rent with—your principles? What’ll you feed the baby with—the approval of the Communist International? What’s the matter—are you bored with living like a decent human being, now that you’ve finally done it for a few years? Or do you think that you’re so handsome and brilliant and desirable that people will be dying to have you somewhere else after the radio industry is through with you?”

  “If you knew how ugly you looked,” Archer said, and regretting it as he said it and knowing that it was true, “when you talk like that, you’d stop right now and leave me alone.”

  “I don’t care how I look,” Kitty wailed. She moved forward to the desk and leaned on it, her face distorted. “I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care if you never talk to me again as long as I live. I’m not going to be poor again, I’m not going to start all over again at my age, wondering where I can find the money to have the baby’s tonsils out and how I can stall the butcher another month. I’ve had those pleasures! I’m too old for them now! And I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what idiotic, woolly principles you’ve cooked up in that crazy head of yours. I have one principle—Me. Me and Jane and the child. And I’m not going to have the child in the public ward at Bellevue, either. I want a private room and a decent doctor and the bills all paid on the fifth of the month and a feeling that there’s some sense to going through the agony again, that there’s some chance for me and the baby when it’s over …”

  She stopped, breathing heavily, momentarily exhausted.

  Why did she have to do that? Archer thought, exhausted himself. Why did she have to talk like that?

  “Are you through now?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not.” Kitty came around the desk and stood over him. “I know why you’re doing this. You don’t fool me for a minute.”

  “Why?” Archer was surprised to realize that he was honestly curious.

  “Your good friends Victor and Nancy Herres,” Kitty said loudly.

  “What?” Archer looked up at her puzzledly.

  “What? What?” Kitty mimicked him sardonically. “The man doesn’t know what his wife is talking about.”

  “Kitty,” Archer said warningly, “you’d better stop now. You’ve said enough.” He wanted to tell her that they had to live with each other for the rest of their lives and that she had to leave some foundations left, some remnants of affection and honor.

  But Kitty was rushing on. “That’s the whole reason. Don’t think I don’t see it. Vic got himself in trouble and naturally you had to get on your white horse and charge to his rescue.”

  “Supposing that were true,” Archer said, trying to be reasonable, “supposing that was the real reason—don’t you think I should go to his rescue?”

  “No.”

  “Kitty …”

  “He got into the trouble without your help. Let him get out the same way. Times’re tough,” Kitty said harshly. “Every man for himself.”

  “I hate that,” Archer said coldly. “I hate you for saying it.”

  “Of course you do,” Kitty said. “I knew you would. Because you’re in love with Vic Herres and you’re in love with Nancy Herres and you’re in love with Johnny Herres and with Clement Herres and the ground Vic Herres walks on and the chair he sits in and every random thought that goes through Vic Herres’ head.”

  “This is hopeless,” Archer said. He started to get up. Kitty leaned forward and pushed him sharply and he fell back into the chair, with her standing over him. He realized how silly this would look to anyone else, the small, frail, pregnant woman with the bandaged hand knocking a huge, wide-shouldered man back into a chair and looming over him threateningly. He almost laughed.

  “No, you don’t,” Kitty said wildly. “I want you to hear this. I’ve been thinking this a long time and you might as well hear it now. It’s sick. It’s psychopathic. A middle-aged man tagging after another man like a little puppy, calling him up all the time like a kid calling up his girl, running to him with your troubles, bringing gifts to his children, mooning over his wife …”

  “Kitty!” Archer said sharply.

  “I see you, I see you,” Kitty shouted. “Talking to her for hours in corners at parties, sharing God knows what secrets, kissing her every chance you get. You never kiss anybody else, you’re so fastidious. You haven’t kissed me on the mouth for years …”

  That’s true, Archer thought dully, that much is true. Is it possible?

  “When you’re home alone with me,” Kitty poured on, “you never say a word, you sit and read and mumble when I ask you a question. And when we go out with other people you’re bored and you expect them to consider themselves real lucky if you condescend to speak three sentences an evening to them. But when you’re with Vic or Nancy, you’re a torrent of wit, the smile never comes off your face, you never want to go home, you pull out all your tricks as though you were afraid if you didn’t keep charming them, they’d lock you out in the cold. And when their kid has measles you never give it a thought, you go plunging into the room, never thinking what would happen if you caught it or if you passed it on to me with the child inside me. No, you have to show the Herreses how brave and darling you are, how delightful, how faithful.” />
  Oh, that, Archer thought: That’s why she was so angry that day; she was saving up all this.

  “And you’re not satisfied just to adore,” Kitty swept on frantically, all barriers far behind her, “you have to be like your hero. You ape him, the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he wears his hat. I don’t have my own husband any more, I have a carbon copy of another man, and I’m disgusted with it. And now,” she said, “here’s your final great chance. The final identification. You can suffer for his sins. How could I expect you to pass up an opportunity like that?”

  “That’s enough,” Archer said thickly. “I can’t stand any more.” He got up. This time, Kitty stepped back without interfering.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” she said, suddenly calm and very cold. “I hate Vic Herres. And I hate that sly, secret little wife of his. He’s cold and conceited and he doesn’t care if you or anybody else lives or dies. You amuse him, because you pay him homage. He enjoys you because he can maneuver you. It’s a game for him. He said, ‘Come to New York,’ and you gave up a perfectly good job and a nice house and you came to New York. He said, ‘Write for the radio,’ so you wrote for the radio. He said, ‘Now is the time for all brave men to go to war,’ because he was young and they were going to take him anyway, so you tried to go to war. He said, ‘Now be a director,’ because that would make it easier for him, it meant he had a sure, easy job, with no trouble and no criticism as long as you worked, so you became a director. Now he’s in trouble and they’re attacking him, so he says to you, ‘Defend me, there’s a principle at stake.’ He and his wife have locked me away from you for ten years. I haven’t been a wife. I’ve been a witness to a sick mass love affair.”

  “Shut up!” Archer whispered.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” Kitty said. “When Vic Herres went off to war, I prayed he would be killed.” She said it calmly, standing in the middle of the room, crossing her arms in front of her, triumphant, desolate, lonely, discharged.

  Archer put his hand in front of his eyes. He couldn’t bear looking at Kitty. How did it happen, he thought confusedly, at what point did it begin to happen, how could that delightful, brave, loving girl turn into this? How do we live in the same house now?

  Blindly, he left the room. He picked up his hat and coat and plunged out into the street, leaving Kitty standing wearily near the desk, her face collapsed and passionless, picking absently at her bandaged hand, as though the blood were beginning to run again under the layers of gauze.

  23

  IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN WHEN HE GOT TO THE ST. REGIS AND HE WENT up in the elevator with two ruddy country types in evening clothes who sounded as if they had been graduated from Princeton in 1911, and who would never be accused of anything.

  The small banquet room was quite full, but the meeting hadn’t begun yet. People were standing together in little groups and the room was full of the nervous, intense bursts of conversation, punctuated with high, musical, woman’s laughter that you always heard when you got actors and actresses together. Most of them were standing up, or kneeling with one knee on the little gilt chairs, People in the theatre or its associated professions, Archer remembered, regarding the room, always sit down reluctantly, as though they feared to lose the precious mobility on which success or failure for life might at any one moment depend.

  Many of the women wore glasses. The frames were all colors, very thick, bright red and blue and gold-filigreed in the season’s style. There was a great variety of shapes, too, curious bows and flattened triangles and tilting harlequin designs. Somehow, Archer thought, displeased with the thick blue and red shadows the glasses threw on the pretty, cosmetic faces, it makes them look as though they are all suffering from an obscure nervous epidemic. Near-sightedness in 1950 has become over-fashionable. There must soon be a swing of the style pendulum toward normal sight.

  “Hi, soldier,” a voice said behind him. “I was waiting for you.”

  Archer turned and saw Burke coming toward him. He decided to tell Burke, very soon, to stop calling him soldier. Also, he remembered, to tell Barbante to stop calling him amigo. Except that Barbante would shortly be 3000 miles away. Well, he’d write him.

  “The speakers’re sitting on the platform.” Burke took his elbow and began guiding him down the side of the room. “We’re just about ready to begin. We’ve got a good house tonight.” Burke sounded like a complacent company manager with a hit. “You going to dazzle the folks with your oratory?”

  “I’m all prepared,” Archer said, unpleasantly conscious of the over-firm grasp on his elbow, “to recite the ‘Communist Manifesto’ from memory and selected excerpts from the writings of Leon Trotsky.”

  Burke laughed appreciatively. He had had his suit pressed, but it was still too small for him, and his face had the stiff, impatient expression of a man whose belt is too tight around his waist. He had just shaved, too closely, and there were little flecks of blood on his collar from the spots where he had nicked himself. There was a thick layer of talcum powder over his purplish beard and he looked like a man who expected to have his picture taken.

  Archer stepped up to the low dais. Lewis, a director who kept introducing motions in. praise of the Soviet Union at Guild meetings, was seated there, mumbling to himself as he thumbed through some notes on white cards. He looked up when Archer passed him. “Hello,” he said. His tone was unfriendly and he bent over his cards again immediately. A little thin man by the name of Kramer was seated just behind the lectern. He was an agent who called everybody honey and who wore checked tweed jackets that made him look like a midget pretending to be an Irish horse owner. The jackets were so warm that there was a constant thin film of sweat on Kramer’s forehead when he was indoors. He was always smiling because in this business you, never knew who was going to be famous next week. Along with the soft, horse-owner jackets he wore thick, gold, knobby cuff links. He had high blood pressure and he had eaten rice for a year. Just now he was putting two magnesia tablets in his mouth, because he had belched four times in the last ten minutes.

  Archer glanced around him uneasily.

  “Woodie,” he asked, “is this all you have?”

  Burke looked nervous. “We’re going to throw the meeting open to discussion from the floor,” he said. “We expect a lot of help from the floor when things warm up a little.”

  “Where’s O’Neill?” Archer asked. “I thought you said you’d asked O’Neill.”

  “O’Neill,” Burke said bitterly, “has retreated to previously prepared positions. That eighteen thousand dollars a year began to look awfully sweet to O’Neill as H Hour approached.”

  “I would be most grateful,” Archer said, “if you’d be good enough to translate.”

  Burke blinked angrily. “You know damn well what I mean. O’Neill fiddled for a while, then turned me down. He suddenly found out he was an agency man.”

  Archer was sorry for O’Neill, and disappointed.

  “I can’t blame him,” he said.

  “I can,” said Burke. He looked around the room. People were still standing in shrill little clusters and more people were coming in through the door. “I’ll give them another minute,” he said, “before blowing the whistle.”

  Archer sat down, leaving three empty chairs between Lewis and himself. He put on his glasses and stared out at the audience. He spotted Nancy near the door, off by herself, unprofessionally seated. At that distance she looked pale and haggard, but it may have been the lighting. Archer couldn’t find Vic. In the first row, Frances Motherwell was sitting reading a newspaper, not paying any attention to what was going on around her. In the next row two young radio writers sat down and stared longingly at her legs. Alice Weller was seated halfway back smiling tremulously up at him. He smiled falsely at her, noting that Atlas had not come and that Roberts, the columnist who had attacked him and whom he recognized from his photographs, was a grinning, soft-looking, plump little man with thick glasses.

  Slowly,
Archer let his eyes sweep over the room. There were many people whom he could identify. They had been on his programs or they had come up to O’Neill’s office about one thing or another when he was there or he had met them over a space of ten years in bars or at parties. There were many Communists there. I know I shouldn’t say that, or even think it, Archer thought. They’ve never told me and I really couldn’t swear that I know for sure. And until they admit it or it’s proven in a court of law, it’s dangerous and unfair to label them. And, officially, it was entirely possible that many of them really didn’t belong. But he’d listened to them argue, the long, pointless, boring, bitter, half-drunken arguments of the last five years, replete with the stock phrases—“imperialist aggression,” “Wall Street moneylenders,” “the people’s democracy of Czechoslovakia,” “Tito, the betrayer of the working class …” They might just as well wear buttons and wave the red flag, no matter what they belonged to. And some of them were very pleasant men, soft-spoken, witty, talented, friendly, with bright children and charming wives. And he’d gone to ball games with them and played tennis with them, had exchanged Christmas cards with them, and had dinner at their apartments, and had spent agreeable evenings with them when not one word had been spoken about politics for hours at a time. And, he recognized, there were puzzled people there, people who argued one way one day and another the next, because they had read a different magazine the day before, and there were people who had changed, in 1945 or 1946, or 1947, people who suddenly discovered they couldn’t stomach what had happened to Benes or what the secretary of the Communist Party had said at his trial. And there were the girls. There were the virtuous girls who had married idealistic young men who had drifted into Communism because they were so appalled by the behavior of the anti-Communists. And then the girls, married, like good wives who loyally interest themselves in their husband’s hobbies, had made out the invitation lists and prepared the canapés for the parties in which money was raised for the defense of indicted union leaders and at which petitions were drawn up criticizing decisions of the Supreme Court. And then there were the loose girls, on the hunt for men, who had found an exhilaratingly free and busy social life and an abundance of invitations to bed at the endless, happily confused functions that the Party and its sympathizers were always giving. And there were the lonely spinsters, of that special type which is to be found in the theatre, almost pretty, almost desirable, almost talented, but doomed to celibacy by the severity of the competition in this, their chosen field, who gladly gave themselves to good works instead of a man. And good works in this era, Archer thought sadly, are now shown to skirt the edge of treachery. But now, faced with this accusation and righteously conscious of their own virtue, how could these deprived, busy women be expected to admit that?