The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  There was applause somewhere in the room, the first overt reaction since he had started speaking. The applause caught on and spread over the room. Archer stared soberly at the audience, wondering how much of the applause was ironic or window-dressing or relief.

  “Now things have changed,” Archer said. “Mr. Lewis will undoubtedly say that it is I who have changed, out of cowardice or a desire to be comfortable, or because I read the wrong newspapers. Others will say that the Communists have not really changed, they have only been more completely revealed. I suspect that all of these things are partially true. Still, we won’t solve the problem by imposing silence on all who oppose us or allowing ourselves to be silenced because our opinions happen to be unpopular. As matters are going now, I could not be surprised to see everyone in this room, myself included, clapped into jail within the next few years. I hope you will believe me,” Archer said, smiling for the first time, “when I tell you I do not think this country will be better off on that day. This would seem to put me in agreement with Mr. Lewis, who said that now we are all in the same boat and that we had better row together to save ourselves. Actually, we are not in a position to think of rowing at the moment. The best we can do is bail together and hope to keep afloat. When the time comes to row I have a notion Mr. Lewis and I will insist upon rowing in different directions. In talking of Mr. Burke, Mr. Lewis said that he will find himself in a concentration camp even if he says he is opposed to the Communists seven nights a week. Mr. Lewis obviously implied by that that Mr. Burke was wasting his breath and would be more useful if he kept his opinions to himself. I happen to disagree. If, along with Mr. Burke and Mr. Lewis, and whatever Communists, non-Communists, radicals, liberals and cranks are inaccurately collected in that doleful time, I am put behind wire, I will feel much better if I know I am there for my own reasons and not for anyone else’s. We are not in the same situation, regardless of how hard the Communists and their opponents try to include us. The sheriff who is caught in the same jail with a suspected murderer and who fights to defend him against a lynch mob is not of the suspect’s party. And even if the mob kills him on its way to the cell, or swings him up on the same tree they use for the alleged criminal, he must insist with his last breath on his separateness and on his difference in function … There is a reverse side to this proposition, too. At the risk of incurring Mr. Lewis’s further displeasure, I must say that I am opposed to the Communists, here and abroad. The great majority of Americans join with me in this opposition. Most of these people are, I am convinced, decent and honorable. There are some, though, the shrillest of all, who use their anti-Communism to cloak bigotry, a lust for war, an approval of dictatorship, a hatred of all liberalism, all progress, all freedom of expression. They are the lynch mob and it is as necessary for me to denounce them and disassociate myself from their principles as it is for me to disassociate myself from the principles of the accused man they are out to hang. As a law-abiding citizen, I am committed to defending the rights of the accused to a proper trial and a proper hanging if he is guilty and a proper exoneration if he is innocent. But I insist on believing that accusation is not evidence, criticism is not heresy, an advocacy of change is not treason, a search for peaceful settlement is not subversive. The courts are slowly making firm ground for us all to stand on in these matters and I will be content to abide by their decisions, even if I feel they are too strict or influenced unduly by the fearful temper of the times. We have a history in this country of righting wrongs and reversing immoral legal decisions and I refuse to be stampeded into premature punishment by cynical and disingenuous attacks on the reputations of people who may have campaigned at one time or another for the forty-hour week or the policy of flying the UN flag over public-school buildings or even for the outlawing of the atom bomb. It was just such attacks on people who worked on my program that have led me to appear here tonight. Partly out of curiosity and partly from a desire to keep a program that I had worked on for more than four years from disintegrating, I spent some time in investigating the politics of accused actors and musicians. Some spoke candidly, others properly told me to mind my own business. And regardless of my agreement or disagreement with any of them or my approval or disapproval of their politics, I came to the conclusion that none of them in their positions on University Town represented a threat to what we call the American system or had committed acts which merited punishment, especially the severe and vindictive punishment of being deprived forever of their means of livelihood.” Archer looked out over the blur of faces uncertainly. There were other things he wanted to say, but they were elusive, complicated, contradictory, and he couldn’t find words for them. He wanted to say that loyalty—loyalty to anyone or any cause should not be pushed to the extreme limits of its logical end. He wanted to say that he was baffled and that he mistrusted anyone who was not baffled. He wanted to say, Be merciful—merciful toward past malice and future errors. He wanted to warn against Lewis and his plan for a counter blacklist, first of all because it wouldn’t work, since people were not fanatics and trimmed to survive and also because there were many actors who certainly would not sacrifice themselves to salvage a known Communist’s job, even if it meant destroying their guilds in the process. And he wanted to warn against Lewis’ happy assumption of the opposition’s ugliest tactic, because regardless of their motives, they would all come out the uglier for it.

  But he didn’t say any of these things. He looked out wearily at the divided faces, the faces that were set against him, the faces that seemed to approve, the waiting, balancing faces, and said, “I told you in the beginning I didn’t have a plan, that I’m groping. I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful and many of you probably feel that I’ve been wasting your time. I think I’m clear by now about the way I feel, but I know I’m uncertain about what to do about it. I’m afraid I have to join with Mr. Lewis in saying that I don’t like any of the speeches I heard up here tonight, including his and probably including mine. I hope there will be better speeches and better plans brought forth from the floor and I shall sit down now and listen expectantly. Thank you.”

  He sat down, feeling tired and disappointed with his performance, although the applause was surprisingly warm. It was all so inconclusive, Archer thought. I’m too reasonable for oratory and my energy is too low. Fifteen years ago I might have conceivably made a fiery speech, full of emotion and stirring calls for action, on this subject. But, then, nobody asked me to debate this subject fifteen years ago.

  Frances Motherwell was standing at her seat in the front row, holding up her hand. At other points in the room, people were raising heir hands, too, asking for the floor.

  “Mr. Chairman,” Frances said loudly and clearly, “Mr. Chairman.”

  “Miss Frances Motherwell,” Burke said, motioning to her to come up to the dais. She walked swiftly toward the lectern, in her provocative, energetic way, her skirt swinging lightly around her legs. She stepped up gracefully, youthful, desirable, beautifully dressed, the lipstick bright on her mouth, her large eyes cleverly shadowed with a line of mascara on the lids. She carefully avoided looking at Archer as she stood a little to one side of the lectern, resting one hand on it, her other hand on her hip, her body athletic and full under the expensive dress, her legs long and shining rising from high-heeled black suede shoes. The room was very still, the women watching her warily and with despair, the men with obscure, unpolitical uneasiness. She stood silently for a moment, staring out, making her impression. She was hatless and her hair was very smooth, caught in back by a narrow black bow and she looked as girls in small towns hope they can one day look when they come to the city and conquer it.

  The comrades had chosen their opening speaker shrewdly, Archer guessed, getting sex, respectability, talent, wealth, and a gown from a French collection in one glittering and dangerous package. The monolithic approach toward life—in which all aspects, qualities, abilities were always turned into weapons for the cause. Archer stirred uncomfortably, looking a
t the tense, perfect profile.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Frances said finally, in her husky, disturbing voice, which carried easily to the back of the room without any effort on her part. “I have listened with great interest to what’s been said here tonight. Especially to the opinions of Mr. Archer, who was kind enough to vouch for my abilities as an actress, and who was also kind enough not to mention anything about my politics. Mr. Archer happens to know a great deal about my politics, because a little more than a month ago he asked me and I told him.”

  Archer watched her intently, feeling himself grow tense, conscious of the effort that was necessary to sit there quietly and without moving. This is going to be bad, he thought, staring at the handsome, wild face, this is going to be very bad.

  “What I told him was simple and explicit,” Frances went on evenly, her diction clear and professional, her voice vibrating with the curious overtone of excitement that had contributed so much to her success. “And I will repeat it here and now.”

  Suddenly Archer felt himself grow calm, because it was going to be much worse than he had ever imagined and there was nothing to be done about it any more.

  “What I said,” Frances continued, her long, fine hand dropping off her hip and slowly and lightly caressing her silk flank, “was that I joined the Communist Party in 1945.”

  She paused and Archer was conscious of the heavy, unnatural silence of two hundred people sitting in one room without movement, without a sigh, a whisper, a cough.

  “For your benefit,” Frances said huskily and quietly, staring out over the meeting, “I will say that I am still a member tonight, although when this is over, I am going home and writing in my resignation.” She threw back her head, and her hair, in its little bow, flicked on the back of her neck in a pretty, girlish movement. Her chin was up and her eyes were shining and she looked defiant and exalted. God, Archer thought, she must have turned religious. That was bound to be next on the list. And of course, she would pick an occasion like this, public, emotional and tense, for her announcement. Her hunger for drama and attention, her stage-center nerves, could never be satisfied by private renunciation. Archer remembered stories about Frances suddenly and without warning turning on the lover-of-the-moment at parties and breaking off with him for a real or fancied misdemeanor, humiliating him with savage intimacies and witty and vicious truths and half-truths while the other guests fell painfully silent around her and her stricken gallant. Now, in giving up a political party, she was keeping to the old compulsive pattern of the public tirade she had until now reserved only for the gentlemen who had rashly visited her bed.

  Curiously, Archer turned to look at the rows of people in front of him. Many of them, he realized, must be feeling their hearts sink within them as they waited for the revelations in the husky, quivering voice. But the faces were grave and thoughtful and there was no telling, at this distance, who expected to be cut down next.

  “The reason for my resigning is a simple one,” Frances was saying, “and Mr. Clement Archer is connected to it. After I told Mr. Archer that I was a member of the Party, I was called before the leader of my group and harangued. I was told that if I ever admitted membership again I would be dropped in the interests of Party discipline. If I was asked about what I had told Mr. Archer by any committee or any court of law, I was to deny everything, even if it meant being indicted for perjury. I was told point-blank that I was engaged in a conspiracy and that conspirators did not expose themselves and if I had ever thought anything else, it was now time for me to rid myself of such romantic, girlish notions. I was told that I had been under suspicion for a long time in the Party, that I was considered unstable, and that was why no work of any real importance had ever been entrusted to me.” Her voice was bitter and Archer could see that she was still suffering from the blows to her vanity that these revelations had dealt her. If she had been treated more tactfully, Archer thought idly, she’d never be up here tonight.

  “I walked away from that meeting,” Frances said, “thinking hard. I had never believed that I was a member of a conspiracy and I thought that the writers and politicians who said that were pimps and prostitutes of reaction …”

  Whatever else she has broken away from, Archer thought, she still carries the vocabulary with her.

  “Suddenly the blinders fell off,” Frances said. “The people whom I had admired, the men who I thought were working for freedom, justice, peace … Those words.” For the first time she turned and looked at Archer, and she smiled. He remembered her saying the same words about her dead young man in England. “That was all hogwash.” She turned back to her audience. “I saw what they were really like. I remembered how pleased they were when people got hurt on a picket line, when companies closed down and threw men out of work. They’re interested in trouble, in bloodshed, in unhappiness, that’s the only climate they can work in and they know it and if they don’t find it, they make it. They have to conspire, because they’re misfits, neurotics, lunatics, and if they had to work in the light of day, everyone would be able to tell in ten minutes how ridiculous and incompetent and dangerous they are.”

  We have now reached the point, Archer thought calmly, at which the mad call each other mad.

  “I’m a lot of things, I suppose,” Frances went on, her voice challenging and high and filled with the delight of talking about herself, “and many of you here probably have told each other some pretty sharp things about me. But there’s one thing I’m not and never could be. And that’s a conspirator. And certainly not a conspirator against my own country. I don’t do anything in secret.” She grinned, as though a vulgar joke about herself had fleetingly crossed her mind. Then her face grew grave and she spoke seriously, using her talent to sound sincere and repentant. “After I decided that,” she said, “I had to go on to the next step. Was I to keep quiet about what I had seen and heard, what I had learned? Was I going to stand off and watch the machinations, watch people being deluded and used and disillusioned, watch the country being weakened and divided, and never open my mouth? Or was I going to make up for my error and my stubbornness and do my share in repairing the damage to which I had contributed?” Swiftly, with the merest flicker of her eyes and re-arrangement of her position, she changed to a woman who had accepted martyrdom for a noble cause. “It would have been much more pleasant to keep quiet. And it would have been easy. No one demanded anything of me. Only my conscience …”

  Archer closed his eyes momentarily, embarrassed. Frances, darling, he thought, you should have gotten someone else to write your lines tonight…

  “I’ve stayed up night after night, wrestling with myself,” Frances said, looking like a woman who slept ten hours a night and who had her face massaged five times a week. “And finally, I knew what I had to do. I had to come here tonight and tell what I knew. As a warning, as an example. Now,” she said briskly, cleverly switching from the almost religious level on which she had been working to a conversational and friendly, almost gossipy tone, “now we can go on to more specific things. Mr. Archer, for example. I don’t know why Mr. Archer has chosen to be so discreet about my affiliations,” Frances said, “but I have my suspicions. Mr. Archer is quite a mysterious figure and it’s a little difficult to make a coherent pattern out of what he says and what he does. I used to think he was quite a simple-minded and rather bumbling fellow. But things I have learned about him in the last few weeks, plus the speech tonight in which he successfully said one thing while proposing another, have given me new respect for him. Respect for his cleverness if not for his candor. My politics were not the only thing Mr. Archer has taken pains to hide. He has also hidden the fact that the program for which he was responsible was written for four years by a man who is an avowed and militant atheist. A man whom he approved of so much that he permitted him to be seen in every night club in town with his eighteen-year-old daughter.”

  “Now, Frances.” Archer stood up, trying to keep his voice from being thick. “I think that’s enough o
f that.”

  “Mr. Chairman,” Frances said to Burke, “I understood the floor was mine.”

  “Sit down, Clem,” Burke whispered, pulling at his sleeve. “You’ll only make it worse if you argue with her.”

  Slowly Archer sat down. He hated Frances, mostly because she was so plainly enjoying herself.

  “Among other things that Mr. Archer conveniently neglected to mention,” Frances went on, the melodious nervous voice dominating the room, “was his curious generosity. Mr. Archer, because of certain activities, has for some time been under surveillance and investigation and several interesting items have come to light. For example, Mr. Archer not long ago gave as a loan or a disguised gift, a check for three hundred dollars to the chairman of this meeting, Mr. Woodrow Burke, and I have seen a photostat of that check. He also gave a check to Mrs. Alice Weller, who was a principal speaker at a congress which our own State Department condemned as subversive and opposed to the interests of our country. Whether he donated this money out of sympathy for the lady’s political views or out of gentlemanly tenderness, I have no way of judging.”