“Yes, but put a little Scotch in it, will you, like a good seducer?”
Harry Ames sat down across from the man. “Tell me about yourself, Mr. Ames.” The handshakes were over; it was time to get down to business. “I started your last book, but haven’t finished it. I’m about halfway through.”
Harry stared across at the man, Mr. Kittings, director of the Lykeion in Athens. Tell me about yourself. Something’s wrong, Harry thought, but he talked carefully, watching Kittings’ eyes. “I’ve not been a member of the Communist Party for almost ten years,” Harry said.
“We’re interested in your art, Mr. Ames, not your politics.” Kittings nodded affably and Harry continued, uneasily. Perhaps it was a look in Kittings’ eyes, perhaps in his tone of voice as he broke in to cover more fully some point in Harry’s monologue. Whatever it was, Harry felt suddenly and shockingly that he was in hostile territory. He stumbled for a moment, trying to find some reason for this judgment, but he could not. He went on until he had nothing more to say. Then he asked questions about Athens which Kittings answered with a reserve that was not communicated to his secretary. She said, “Oh, you’ll have a fine time there. We’ll make the best possible accommodations aboard ship for you and your family.” Why, Harry wondered, did he shoot his secretary such a sharp look?
The handshakes once more. “You’ll hear from us,” Kittings said.
“Hear from you?” Harry said in sudden alarm. “About what?”
“It is usually the practice for us to stay in touch with—people who—er—ah—come in for interviews.”
Outside, on the way home, Harry thought it all very strange. Kierzek had said that the interview was routine. No one selected by the panel of judges had ever been refused admission to the Lykeion. Well, then, who was this prick, Kittings, to tell him he would hear from him? The decision was made! Seven of the best writers in America (Harry considered himself the eighth, now) had chosen him, Harry Ames, to receive the Lykeion Fellowship for the year. What in the hell had Kittings to do with it?
I’m cracking up. Just routine, like Kierzek said. Maybe Max is right. I’m into this thing too goddamn far. What did he say, Kittings? Nothing really. Maybe it was what he didn’t say. But his eyes, his eyes? So? Maybe the bastard’s just got naturally shifty eyes. Harry, man, ease up, eeease on up. By the time he arrived home, most of the feeling of foreboding had gone. It was going to be all right. The thing was, you couldn’t distrust them all the time.
The sap of the earth began to run beneath the ground that Friday; spring teased the air. Windows that had been bolted against the winter were opened briefly. A few elderly people bundled themselves up and sat on the park benches, their pale faces lifted to the sun. Now the scarves of the students hung about the necks and coats and jackets were left unbuttoned. Charlotte went out and was a long time shopping, but Harry understood; it was the kind of day he would have liked to go walking in, but he couldn’t. There was too much to do: the inventory of the things in the apartment, finding a broker to handle the sublet, plus the writing. There had to be time for that.
When Charlotte came in, she handed Harry the square envelope marked, The American Lyceum of Letters. Harry took the letter without comment; he had not said anything to Charlotte about the interview except that it had gone all right. Charlotte went to the kitchen with the groceries. Little Max paused, wondering if he was going back out or was in to stay.
“Don’t open it until I come back,” Charlotte said. “Help him with his clothes. It’s pretty nice out, but too much of this uncertain weather isn’t good for him.”
“C’mere, Max. Let Dad help you out. Attaway.” Harry felt sad as he helped him out of his outer garments. He looked at the café-au-lait face and smiled. “Now come up here and kiss your old Dad. Big ones, now, Pow! How to go. Another. Pow! Pow!”
Charlotte was back, smiling expectantly. “All right, go into your room. Play. But go. Kiss first. Smack, smack. Bye-bye. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches coming up.” She watched him go. “Open it, open it,” she said, feigning extreme anxiety.
Harry passed a hand over his forehead and carefully broke open the flap of the envelope. His eyes raced down the short paragraph.
“We regret to inform you that another candidate, also recommended by the American Lyceum of Letters, was awarded the Fellowship in creative writing …”
There was more, but Harry’s eyes swept back to:
“We regret to inform you that …”
“We regret to …”
Charlotte had moved to him, was crouching, one hand on his knee, ready to sit on the floor, but seeing his face, she paused, became motionless, awkward, half down and half up, and read his face once more, suddenly gone lifeless, suddenly fulfilled, invertedly, and she struggled upward, taking the letter from his dead hands and screaming before she started to read it, “My God, Harry, they did it, didn’t they, they did it!”
Harry rolled his eyes up at her. How painful it was to move them; he hadn’t noticed that before. Charlotte’s eyes raced along the letter. They were cold, her eyes, and a blue growing darker. There was a vast silence between them. It took a couple of minutes before Harry could begin to think. Another candidate? How could that be? The first letter said he had been chosen, selected, preferred; there had been congratulations. He, Harry Ames had been the best. Now he was nothing. There was someone else. What a fool he had been! Of course, he had seen it in Kittings’ eyes as he had seen it in white eyes all his life. But why? They had had former Communists at the Lykeion. Clifford Jacobs, the composer, was Negro and had won a Fellowship in music there. Bolton Warren had been there as a Fellow in creative writing. Why? Charlotte, or rather, Charlotte and himself? Why? Did he have to be a faggot? Why, why, why? Would they ever tell him why? Could he find out why?
“Why?” his wife said.
Very carefully he said, “Charlotte, I don’t know why.”
“The Party?”
“I don’t know.”
“Us, you and I?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they said you’d been chosen!”
Harry didn’t want to look at her face. “I know, dear. That’s what they said.”
“Well what do they mean, ‘another candidate’?”
“Darling, really, I don’t know.”
Charlotte folded the letter along its original creases. “You said it wouldn’t be easy.”
“I guess I did. It’s the kind of thing you’d say in our situation. The important thing—look, Charlotte—let’s not hate each other …”
“But, Harry, I don’t,” she said with her eyes wide, her mouth held open. “Darling, I don’t.”
Harry nodded, but he didn’t believe her. Even he, thinking for her in times of crisis, thought how nice it would be to have married a white man. And why hadn’t he, Harry Ames, married a Negro woman?
“I don’t want you to hate either, Harry,” Charlotte said, for she knew that he too could think how much easier it would have been if he had married a Negro woman.
“No,” Harry said, reaching for the letter. “They offer some consolation money. Let’s take it and run.”
“Whatever you say.”
“It’s not much.”
“It would be hard, Harry. The baby.”
Harry sighed. “I have to think about it. Hard. The motherfuckers, the lousy, rotten cocksuckers, the bastards, the sonsofbitches, the faggots, the—”
“Harry,” Charlotte said, thinking of the child, for although he was not shouting, he was speaking slowly, distinctly and clearly and without anger, with rather a kind of helplessness, a resignation.
“—the shiteaters, cornholers, hermaphrodites, pricks, assholes, cunts and cunteaters—”
“The boy, Harry.”
“Let him learn it from me. He should learn it from me. Why can’t he learn something from me, like pain, Charlotte, pain!”
“Harry,” she said, “Harry!”
“What!” he flung at her.
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“It hurts us, too. It hurts like hell, you can’t imagine.”
Harry went to her and rubbed her shoulder. Goddamn it! They were almost out of it, almost. “Let me think about the other money. As soon as I can.” He smiled. “They kinda took old Harry by surprise.”
John Kierzek had had it, really had had it. Everyone in the office knew by now that Harry Ames had gotten the barbed shaft from the Lyceum, but all they said was, “How strange!” or “Gee, what happened?” or grimly said, “Those dirty bastards, how could they?” But no one came up with an answer. Now, Kierzek pounded down the carpeted floor to Donald Kenyon’s office. Kenyon was the president of the company.
“Isn’t that a goddamn shame about poor old Harry Ames?” Don Kenyon asked. He was blond, in his forties and liked being a publisher. Kierzek was fifty, bent, with a pot and too many jobs in too many New York publishing houses under his belt. Kierzek closed the door behind him and pulled up a chair.
“Don, we have to do something. We really can’t let that man go up there at that ceremonial or whatever the hell they call it, and take a thousand dollars when we know he should have been a Lykeion Fellow, we can’t let him do it!”
Don Kenyon blinked and pushed at his thick, waved hair. “You’re fuckin’ A right, John, but what the hell do we do? What can we do?”
“I’d like to suggest a few things. Okay?”
“Sure, John, anything we can do to help Harry out of this mess, goddamn it, we’ll do it!”
Kierzek waited until Kenyon finished cursing the Lyceum. He liked Kenyon all right, but the trouble with the business was that there were too many people in it who should have been elsewhere. Wall Street, for example. And Kenyon liked him or needed him. Well, that was all right. It kept Kierzek in books, and he liked books. He couldn’t be glib about them. His rejections were very readable; no fog, none of that overstocked or untimely business for him. That was really creeping into publishing these days. Snot-nosed editors, still jerking off on the sly, or half or whole faggots. Jesus! For two days Kierzek had watched and listened to them in the halls and at the conference tables before the conferences began. No guts in the business anymore. Everyone broke their balls looking for talent, but when they had it right in their semeny hands, it scared the crap out of them. Kierzek couldn’t understand it. During the war he had been an overaged navigator on first the B-24’s and then the B-29’s. He had made many a flight from Tinian to Japan and back. It was strange that in this world of desks and manuscripts, of spry, sexy little girls and homosexuals, of long lunch hours—a world so free of the direct approach of death stalking down the sky—fear ran rampant.
“First,” Kierzek said, “we’ll give him a three-thousand-dollar advance on his new book. His plans to go to Europe are made; he’s been set to go for months. It’ll kill him if he doesn’t go. If we can help him, it’ll be great for his ego—”
“Yeah, yeah, fuckin’ A,” Kenyon said, tapping at his hair.
“It won’t hurt us to help him,” Kierzek said. “We back up our authors.”
“Of course, we do,” Kenyon said.
“We’ll give him that much of an advance on one condition—”
“—that he won’t accept that fuckin’ Lyceum money, right, John?”
“Right.”
“Have you see the new book?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Kenyon waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter. If it’s Harry Ames, it’ll be good, right, John?”
“It should sell. Now, Don. It’s really very important that you write to the Lyceum and on Harry’s behalf, demand an explanation. I mean, the poor bastard’s wondering if he’s diseased, nuts or a few thousand other things.”
“John, do you think it’s because of his wife?”
“Who knows and so what, Don?”
“No, no, you know what I mean. You know how people are. Doesn’t make any difference to me—gee, she’s a nice-looking doll, isn’t she?”
“Yes. No, I don’t know why. His Party connections, being Negro, his marriage, I just don’t know. It could be just one of those things or all of them, but he should know what he’s being charged with or penalized for. Can you get the letter off today, Don?”
“You’re fuckin’ A. Mabel, baby,” he called to his secretary in an outside office. “C’mon, you gotta go to work, sweetie. Let’s hit it. Anything else, John?”
“Yes, we ought to get the publicity department in on this. Let Chris work full time on it. Maybe we can embarrass those bastards half to death; this is 1947, they can’t get away with things like this.”
Kenyon’s secretary had come in. “Make a note, sweetie. Call Anthony, and tell him I’ll be over at three for a haircut, will you? John, you fill Chris in and when she’s got things organized, we’ll get together. Four-thirty all right?”
Kierzek rose. “All right, Don. Just one more thing. Why don’t you give Harry a call? He’d appreciate it.”
“Have you called him?”
“Yes. Yesterday.”
“Yeah, okay. Mabel, after this letter, get me Harry Ames on the phone. Thanks, John. Great thinking. We’ll give those bastards hell. C’mon, Mabel.”
Kierzek left and returned to his office. Why in the hell did people have to be told to do the right thing, he wondered. It was all so simple.
Harry wrote to the Lyceum, refusing to accept the consolation award. He turned in his novel, as far as he had gone, when he received the advance from Kenyon; a deal was a deal, and it was an all right deal as far as he was concerned. The publicity director, Chris Lumpkin, had worked overtime preparing a dossier on the case, for letters continued to flow. One judge on the panel who had selected Ames now wrote and asked him to accept the consolation money. Another judge who had been out of town wrote asking Ames to forgive them all. For the rest, there was silence. If ever in his weakest moments Harry had thought artists to be a tightly knit group, ever ready to back each other up in times of trouble, he knew now that it was a dream. Why in the hell did he keep giving people credit for things that never even crossed their minds. That kind of shit was for someone else, not Harry Ames.
When Chris Lumpkin’s fact sheet on the Lyceum case turned up on Kermit Shea’s desk, he put his head in his hands, smoked two cigarettes and wished to hell that the paper had a book section. Then he called over a reporter and turned the sheet over to him. At his favorite bar he ordered a hot roast beef sandwich, his usual double of bourbon and two glasses of beer. He was worried. Suppose this sort of thing happened to every black man, woman and child in America every day? Suppose it had been happening, suppose it would continue to happen? There would be a reckoning; there always was, as history proved. That awful balancing out of things. Nature. But what did one do? Kermit Shea ordered another double of bourbon, drank it neat and caught a taxi. When he got out he hunted up a telephone book. Clutching the address in his hand, he walked swiftly until he came to the house, Harry Ames’ house. He rang the bell. When the door opened he took off his hat and moved slowly up the stairs. “My name’s Kermit Shea,” he said to the man at the head of the stairs he took to be Ames. Photographs were funny. “You’re Mr. Ames? We’ve spoken on the phone.”
“Yes, you’re from the Telegram?”
“Yes.” Shea had gained the top of the stairs. He stood puffing and he didn’t know whether it was from walking so fast, climbing the steps, emotion, or all three. They shook hands. Ames showed him in and offered him a drink which Shea refused. “I just came to say something, Mr. Ames. This morning we got some news from your publisher—about the Lyceum. I came to say that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for myself, I’m sorry for white people, I’m sorry for black people. I don’t want to be your enemy, and I sure don’t want you to be mine. I want peace for us, Mr. Ames, I want peace. I want to help make that peace, but I’ll be goddamned if I know how. I don’t know what to do or say, except what I’ve just done and said.” Shea put his hat back on. “I guess there are a l
ot of people like me. They just haven’t had four bourbons.” Shea turned. “Give Max Reddick my regards, will you?” He started out of the room and down the stairs. Harry rocked back on his heels and came forward. He watched Shea go down the stairs. “Mr. Shea,” he called softly. Shea turned around without stopping. “Thanks,” Harry said.
Harry returned to his dressing; he was going to lunch with Zutkin. He thought of Shea. What a strange, exhilarating and at the same time depressing land, he thought. Only in America. C’mon, Harry, he told himself. Put the Stars and Stripes back in the locker; you can always count on some of the bourgeoisie to join you, always.
Harry Ames and Bernard Zutkin were lunching on the East Side, of course. What they should have planned was lunch at the Algonquin in the center of the front dining room. The lunch was to be nothing special. Zutkin had already called the five judges who had not broken silence, since he knew each one personally, and asked if they were aware of what had happened to Ames. Yes, they had heard something. Didn’t it make them angry that Kittings had overridden their choice? Well, of course. What were they going to do? Nothing. Zutkin had suggested that the panel be reconvened and that the judges demand that Ames be sent to Athens, or resign. The suggestion fell on deaf ears. Now Ames was going to Paris instead of Athens and Zutkin was going to give him some names. And during lunch Zutkin would pick up some quotes to use in an article he was doing. It was, really, an observation of how an author’s private life seemed more important to the world at large than his craft. Ames fit very well into that observation. Zutkin did not think the piece would attract a great amount of attention, but he wanted to do it anyway.
A couple of days later badly written stories on the rejection began to appear in the New York papers. Three reporters from the Criterion called Ames at different times for his side of the contretemps, but no copy ever appeared. Well, the Russians had their iron curtain, the Americans had one that was velvet; you couldn’t hear it when it came down and you didn’t believe it was there when you brushed up against it. The outlandish stories began to filter through to him.
The Man Who Cried I Am Page 15