The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  Archer thought for a moment. “Joe,” he said gently, “I feel like crying.”

  “Didn’t you like it?” Kramer asked, hurt.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I just said I feel like crying.”

  “Thank you, Joe Kramer,” his client was saying over the lectern, “for being good enough to come here and give us your views.”

  The audience sat sullenly, not thankful for Joe Kramer’s tweedy views. They moved uneasily, thinking, no doubt, of all of the organizations they had ever belonged to and the difficulty of resigning from them.

  “Now,” Burke said, “we are going to hear from a man who has spent a good many years directing radio shows and who is most active in the Radio Directors’ Guild, on whose board of directors he has served for some time. Mr. Marvin Lewis.”

  Lewis stood up portentously, ignoring the applause. He had a surly, handsome, aggrieved face, and was known to use a heavy, sarcastic tongue on actors who displeased him. He was bulky and healthy and careless about his clothes, as befitted an artist. He walked slowly over to the lectern, staring pugnaciously down at the notes in his hand. He put the cards down on the lectern and took a heavy pair of glasses out of his pocket and held them in his hand like a weapon, while the room settled uneasily into silence. The door opened at the back and a woman came in hesitantly. Silently accusing her for her tardiness, Lewis waited until she had seated herself in the last row. Archer blinked his eyes as he realized that it was Kitty, slow-moving and clumsy, looking very large in front in the coat. Now, he wondered, why did she have to come here tonight?

  “I’m going to warn you people,” Lewis said, without preliminary, his voice loud and threatening, “that I am not going to be polite. The time is past for politeness.” He jammed his glasses on his head, as though he were pulling down the visor of a helmet before battle. “I’m not interested in good manners and if anybody here is touchy, I advise him to leave now.”

  He glared around the room, waiting for the touchy members of the audience to file out. Everyone sat very still.

  “We’re here to accomplish something tonight,” Lewis said loudly, “and the only way we’ll do it is by coming out with the truth. The truth is, I don’t like what I’ve heard on this platform tonight and I don’t like the people who are sitting up here with me.”

  The room was absolutely still and Archer could feel the embarrassment coming up from the audience toward the platform. An ingenious opening, he thought professionally, calculated to hold the audience and create suspense.

  “We are all in this together,” Lewis said, whipping off his glasses and shaking them threateningly, “and our only chance is if we all pull together and what I’ve heard up here is divisive and inflammatory propaganda and weak-kneed invitations to surrender completely to the enemy. If the other side had selected the speakers themselves, they couldn’t have picked more useful specimens.” He slammed on his glasses again, glaring disdainfully out across the room. “First you’ve heard a gentleman declare that he was not a Communist and that he opposed the Communists. And this from a man who by his own admission was the first sufferer for his so-called liberal activities. Who asked him for this indecent incantation? What purpose does he think he is serving by it? Does he think that he is defending the right of free speech this way, or the right of holding private political beliefs, or the right of artists to express opposing points of view to the public? Or does he think he can save his skin by sacrificing others and forcing others to join the diseased scramble to announce a timid and frightened loyalty? And loyalty to what? To the Constitution of the United States, to the concepts of individual conscience and the right to disagree or to the narrow and intolerant doctrine of hatred and fear which is sweeping the country today and which will lead us all into war and total silence? And does he really think he can save his skin by this shameful abnegation? Does he think that because of his confession on the rack tonight, his illustrious agent will be received with open arms tomorrow and told that his client will be taken back, at an increase in price, as a high priest of the true faith? You know and I know, even if he and his agent don’t, that he hasn’t got a chance. He has been disposed of because he dared to offend by dishing out a little mild pablum about individual liberty a year ago, and he will remain disposed of until there is such a sweeping, furious movement of revulsion against the reactionary masters of the industry that they have to take him back along with all the others. And if there is not this mass, sweeping revulsion, I say that the time will come, and damn soon at that, when Woodrow Burke will find himself in a concentration camp side by side with just the people he is so ready to sacrifice tonight. And he can say he is opposed to the Communists seven nights a week, and no one will listen to him and no one will care and he won’t get out one minute sooner.”

  Archer glanced over at Burke. The commentator was sitting on the edge of his chair, hunched over, his mouth open as though he were on the point of shouting, his fists opening and closing slowly.

  “And if anyone is thinking that this prophecy is the result of my disordered imagination,” Lewis was saying, “with no basis in fact, let him remember the fate of people like Woodrow Burke, the fine, self-serving, liberal gentlemen, just a few years ago in a country called Germany. Let Mr. Burke reflect for a moment on what happened to the gentlemen of his stripe there who made professions like his, who fought the Nazis’ battles for them on the pages of newspapers and on the air, who destroyed the unity of the forces opposing Hitler in 1931 and 32.”

  Germany, Germany, Archer thought, everybody uses Germany to prove everything.

  “We have all been put in this boat together by our enemies,” Lewis said with grim triumph, “whether we like it or not. Now we either row together or we go on the rocks. It is as simple as that. As for our commercial friend here …” Lewis bowed ironically in the direction of Kramer, who was sweating and looking unpopular. “I don’t think in a gathering like this it is necessary to spend too much time examining his arguments. Mr. Kramer, by his own proud admission, is interested only in the dollar …”

  “Now, Marvin, honey,” Kramer whispered faintly, using his handkerchief on his forehead.

  “Mr. Kramer,” Lewis went on, ignoring the agent, “will do anything for the dollar and in the privacy of his office advises his clients to do anything for the dollar—resign from everything, maintain total silence, shout the war cries obediently when they are called for, give up all the rights and opinions of American citizens. For his ten percent, Mr. Kramer would have all artists, whom he professes to love so dearly, eagerly enlist in a new disenfranchised slave class. If anyone here shares these feudal views on the function of the artist, I advise him to go home now. Nothing I have to say here will be of any interest to him.”

  Nobody in the audience moved, presumably because they were not concerned with money at all.

  “As for the other speaker on this platform,” Lewis went on, taking his glasses off again, “Mr. Clement Archer …”

  He speaks my name, Archer noted, almost amused, as if I were a newly discovered minor disease.

  “I asked to be allowed to address you,” Lewis said, without looking at Archer, “after he had spoken, but for reasons best known to the chairman of this meeting Mr. Archer was scheduled as the last speaker. Without mincing words, I have to say that I regard it as unfortunate, to put it politely, that Mr. Archer is here tonight and I invite him publicly, right now, to put on his hat and coat and leave this meeting, which he has clearly demonstrated he has not earned the right to address.”

  That man, Archer thought calmly, has by now invited a great number of people to leave in the interests of unity. Then he blinked. After a moment of hesitation, applause was breaking out in various portions of the room, heavy, disciplined, ominous-sounding. They decided, Archer realized painfully, they decided in advance to do this to me. He stared out across the room stubbornly, trying to distinguish and remember the people who were applauding. Why did Kitty come? he thought, why di
d she have to be here for this?

  Lewis put up his hand and the applause stopped dead. Archer rubbed the top of his head and made himself keep his eyes up.

  “No doubt,” Lewis was saying, “you have all read the excellent series of articles by that brilliant columnist, Mr. J. F. Roberts, on the subject of Mr. Clement Archer and I shall not go into the propriety of having as a speaker at a meeting like this a gentleman who, using the power of his position, has picked on Negro and Jewish artists as the first objects of his discrimination and who has been largely responsible for the suicide of a man of talent who was a friend of many in this room.”

  What I should do, Archer thought, making himself sit completely immobile, is get up and try to kill him with my bare hands.

  “I regret that these things had to be said tonight,” Lewis said severely and righteously, “but the ground had to be cleared and the issues had to be exposed before we could begin to do anything constructive. Now,” he said, lapsing gratefully into the jargon of political oratory, “we have to decide what must be done to defend ourselves, to defend the traditions of our crafts, and the traditions of our country. Whatever his private reasons for advancing it, Woodrow Burke’s plan, as far as it goes, has some solid merit to it.”

  Archer tried to recall what Burke’s plan had been and couldn’t remember. He felt fuzzy and was sorry he had drunk so much that day.

  “I think,” Lewis said, self-confidently, “that the idea of getting the various guilds to contribute to a war chest and hire investigators to find out just what sinister influences are behind the editors of Blueprint is an excellent one.”

  What happens, Archer thought stubbornly, if the investigators find nothing? Or find that all the influences behind the magazine are innocent, patriotic, above suspicion? Do we get our money back?

  “But that’s only part of what must be done,” Lewis went on. “And only a small part. We must conduct a triple campaign. By all means let us expose the forces lined up against us for what they are. But at the same time, let us present our case to the public, the case of free citizens and free artists who are fighting for everyone’s freedom. Let us take out full-page advertisements in the newspapers, let us turn out millions of pamphlets, let us buy radio time ourselves showing what the danger is, who the real enemies are, what the opposition against us consists of. And, practically, let us all call emergency meetings of our guilds and get the membership to announce that so long as any agency or network is guilty of using a blacklist, no writer or actor or director or musician or engineer will take the job of any person who has been dropped because of his political beliefs.”

  This time the applause was spontaneous and full. Lewis looked over the meeting, somberly gratified, allowing the applause to run itself out.

  “They need us,” he declared loudly, as if he were shouting to comrades on a barricade. “They won’t be able to stay on the air half an hour without us. Let’s give them a taste of how powerful we can be, united and unafraid, when we’re challenged, and I guarantee you that one month from today there will not be a single murmur about political blacklists. And to show you that I am in earnest and not just making a gesture, I hereby pledge five hundred dollars to a strike fund, if it comes to that, or any other fund that is necessary. And I also pledge that I will not take any offer, no matter how promising, from any agency or network against which there is any suspicion of blacklisting.”

  There was a great deal of applause at this, and from various portions of the room, voices called out, “I pledge a hundred,” and, “I pledge fifty.” Archer watched curiously, recognizing rehearsal, and wondered what Burke, as chairman of the meeting, was going to do to handle the cleverly stage-managed stampede.

  Lewis turned and sat down, putting his glasses in his pocket and tapping his little white cards neatly against the palm of his hand, for use, perhaps at other meetings.

  Burke walked slowly to the lectern. His face was white and angry and he was making an obvious effort to control himself with parliamentary dignity.

  “Thank you, Mr. Lewis,” he said coldly, when the commotion had subsided, “for your views. If you don’t mind, I’d like to reserve motions like that for the end of the meeting, when all the speakers have been heard from and there has been a chance for discussion from the floor.”

  Lewis shrugged, suggesting wearily that he had been prepared for just such cowardly hedging, but he didn’t protest.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Burke said to the audience, “I am not going to try to defend the next speaker, as he is known to most of you, and should need no defense.” He waited, but there was no demonstration of any kind from the audience. “Mr. Clement Archer.”

  Burke’s eyes were glittering as he shook Archer’s hand ostentatiously.

  Archer looked out over the room. The faces seemed blurred by hostility. Is it possible, he thought dully, that all these years, while I have worked with these people and traveled among them, they have been secretly hating me? Far off at the back of the room, Kitty’s face was a pale, withdrawn triangle.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Archer said. His throat was dry and his lips were twitching and it was difficult to speak. “I had a speech prepared for tonight, but …”

  There was a noise from the back of the room and Archer stopped, puzzled, until he realized that people were calling, “Louder. Louder. We can’t hear you.”

  “I said that I had a speech prepared,” Archer said, more clearly, “but I’m not going to make it. Everybody here seems to have a definite plan about what to do. I don’t. I’m groping. I’m not certain about how to proceed. I’m not certain even that anything we decide on here tonight,” he said, speaking more strongly now, “and anything we do after tonight will be of any value. I’m in doubt and maybe you don’t want to hear at this time from doubters. But I’m sure about one or two things and I’ll tell you what they are first. First of all, I want to tell you what I know about the people on my program who are under attack. Manfred Pokorny, Alice Weller, Stanley Atlas, Frances Motherwell, and Victor Herres.” As he spoke the names it seemed to Archer that he had been involved with them all his life, as though he were the prisoner of those names and he would never escape them. “Since they are all artists—” (Was a past tense necessary for Pokorny and would anyone check him on this?) “—the most important information about them concerns the quality of their work. And here I am on firm ground. I have worked with all of them over a period of years and I can say, unhesitatingly, that their work was good, and in some cases brilliant.” (Alice. Was he being absolutely candid about Alice and could he be challenged on that?) “As a man who is responsible for putting on a show every week, I naturally prefer to be able to choose performers, if only on the grounds of convenience, without having to inquire into anything but their talent. Until now, in this country at least, that has been the only basis on which artists have been judged and I am sure we are the better for it. Some of the greatest works of art have been produced by some of the greatest scoundrels of history. Artists in general are not the most stable citizens of any society and their behavior often does not conform to the accepted legal and moral codes of their times. Still, I hear no one campaigning to have the Sistine Chapel whitewashed because of the rumors about Michelangelo’s sexual behavior and there is no movement on foot to have Francois Villon’s poems burned because he wound up on the scaffold as a common thief. Nor are Dostoyevsky’s novels attacked because he confessed to raping a ten-year-old girl.” Archer closed his eyes momentarily and remembered the yellow pages on which he had written that afternoon, and remembered Kitty tearing them clumsily, with her bandaged hand, and shouting, “Artists! God, you make me laugh with your artists!” He wondered what Kitty was thinking now, listening to him in the back of the room. “Are we to be stricter with our contemporaries,” he asked, “merely because they are alive? Will it be a good bargain to shut down on future Dostoyevskys and Villons in exchange for political conformity? I know it must sound grandiose to use names like
that in addressing a meeting of people who write and act in soap operas and televised vaudeville performances. But the principle is the same and I’m afraid it’s indivisible. By accident, or by clever design, the dwarfs in the company of art are being forced to do the fighting to save the giants.”

  Archer was aware of hurt, angry, vain faces staring up at him at this unpleasant description, but he went on stubbornly, feeling himself grow less and less nervous. “It doesn’t make it any easier,” he said, “that among the people we have to defend are those who would mercilessly shut down any voice of which they did not approve, and who have, in a large measure, provoked this action against us and who have supplied ammunition and techniques to the censors and book-burners and who have done as much as anyone else to create the atmosphere in this country which tolerates repression. Many of you, I know, do not believe this and despise me for saying it. I myself did not believe it for a long time and I have to force myself to believe it now, because it makes me face up to a despairing, quarrelsome and perhaps violent future. Many of you think of yourselves as innocent and persecuted. Persecuted you may be, but you are not innocent.”

  Ostentatiously, a woman in a large-brimmed black hat stood up in the middle of the room, put on her fur coat and walked down the middle aisle toward the door, her heels making a loud tapping in the still room. Archer waited until she went out. Then he went on. “It may seem strange to you,” he said, “that a man like me, who is himself under attack, chooses to speak like this. From the material that has been published about me I see that a fairly good case could be made out for those gentlemen who prefer to call me a fellow-traveler. In the 1930s and during the war years, I joined several organizations and supported several causes which were also supported by the Communists. At the risk of damaging myself even more than I have up till now, I am going to confess that I knew perfectly well that I was allying myself at that time with them. But naively, or accurately, I believed that it was not I who was traveling with them, but they who were traveling with me. Today that does not seem terribly intelligent, but try to remember the different climate of that time, when Nazism was on the march, when there was no talk of world revolution or Russian aggression, when our Government not only tolerated but encouraged collaboration with Communism all over the world. What’s more, I make no apologies for what I did and thought in those days, and I suspect the rectitude of the men who would punish me now for those long-ago thoughts and actions. No matter how many lists are published, I refuse to believe that attempting to save the republican Government of Spain, for example, from Franco and Mussolini and Hitler was a subversive act or contrary to the best interests of the American people. And no matter what happens in the future I will never be convinced that sending old clothes or penicillin to Russia at the time of Stalingrad was anything but necessary and sensible behavior.”