Elena (39 page)

Sam was like a blowfish: When he wanted to, he could look extremely imposing, and it was clear from the expression on Joe's face that Sam had left no doubt that he meant exactly what he said. Some thirteen years later, when I sat, stunned, reading the wheedling testimony Sam had given before the House Un-American Activities Committee, I felt so insulted that I actually threw the paper across the room. I was still fuming silently when, two days later, a telegram arrived from Elena, who had read a similar account in Paris. The telegram read:
RE WATERMAN STOP MEN OF PROVEN GREATNESS NEED NOT ALWAYS CLEAN THEIR TIES STOP.
When I showed it to Sam, he sat down behind his desk and cried.

But on that September evening, he still had the courage of his youth, and no man ever looked more commanding as he swept Elena along beside him to the small waiting room that had been set up behind a makeshift stage.

People began showing up almost immediately. They filed in singly or in groups, muttering and shaking their heads, some of them looking glum and others staring toward the empty lectern with almost fiendish anticipation. They were dressed informally, of course, and some of them had brought umbrellas, since rain was predicted for later in the evening. A few came by to chat with Miriam and me, but for the most part they carefully avoided us. Of course, neither Miriam nor I looked very amiable, worried as we were about what might lie ahead for Elena. Sam, on the other hand, swept into the crowd, shaking hands and slapping backs. It would not have been hard to mistake him for a ward politician.

Within a few minutes, the loft was filled, all the chairs completely occupied and the space behind them and along the outer aisles crowded with people forced to stand. Cigarette smoke clouded the lights overhead and gave the entire room an eerie gray radiance. A few placards had been hoisted, most of them detailing coming events of note. Only one of them referred to Elena. It said,
ELENA FRANKLIN SOARS ABOVE PARTY STRIFE,
and beneath the words was a crude drawing of Elena seated on a cloud obliviously typing at her desk, while beneath her a huge urban mass writhed in agony. There was some laughter when it was first brought in, but for the most part it was ignored. A few people milled around handing out leaflets announcing upcoming unemployment rallies or promoting Party officials who were candidates for local office. One man wandered about with a small wooden box, requesting money for what he called “our efforts in the South.” After a while, Joe Tully asked him to explain who he was and with whom he was affiliated. When he could not, he was escorted to the door, and the crowd booed loudly as he left. “We got to be careful with these guys,” Joe shouted. “These bunko creeps are everywhere. Before you give any money to anybody, be sure they have the proper authority to receive it.”

“Probably collecting for the FBI,” someone called, and everyone laughed.

Joe elbowed his way through to the small stage, stepped up, and lifted his arms to request quiet. “Listen up, please. We're already getting a late start, and some of us have to get up early for a meeting in Washington tomorrow. So listen up, and let's get the meeting under way.”

Almost grudgingly, the crowd straightened itself and grew silent. In the back, the reporters chatted with each other, bored with everyone but themselves.

“Now, you all know we have Elena Franklin here tonight,” Joe said.

The comment was greeted with a restless murmer.

“Look here, now,” Joe said, “we don't want a riot. Elena has come to talk to us. As you know, there's been some debate over her book, over its treatment of the Depression. She's going to talk about that for a few minutes, I guess, and then maybe she'll take some questions.” He signalled to Elena, who was sitting quietly in the front row.

The crowd seemed to growl as she walked onto the platform. She was wearing a pair of dark blue slacks, with a white blouse and brown duffel coat. She kept her hands in the pockets of the coat as she stepped forward, firmly staring straight ahead. When she reached her position, she drew her hands up and held tightly to the lectern.

There was no applause, only the uneasy shuffling of bodies, but Elena waited until even this muffled noise subsided before beginning. Then in a clear, strong voice, she spoke. Dismissing preliminaries or a formal greeting, she got right to the point, reading from a statement she had been preparing for almost two weeks.

“Man is unique,” she said, “not simply because he is intelligent but also because he can imagine a destiny for himself. I have not come here to defend one book. Even if it were worthy of defense, it would remain only a small thing. But when it comes to the right of an individual to imagine the human destiny in any way he chooses, then that is a very important matter, and it deserves to be defended.”

There was some rustling, and a few people moaned wearily, but Elena continued as if she had not heard it, or was afraid to, keeping her eyes locked on the paper before her.

“It seems to me that political aims are, by their very nature, immediate and narrow. Their goal is a victory that can appear almost ready to hand: the next election, for example, or the winning of the sort of war that was lately lost in Spain. The aims of literature are, by their very different nature, not at all immediate, except in the sense that a single person may be immediately moved. This singularity of response is the sole ‘narrowness' to which literature aspires. It is narrow only in the sense that it can ‘win the world' only one person at a time.”

“Or lose it,” someone shouted, and there was a smattering of laughter and applause.

Elena continued to stare unflinchingly at her text, as she waited for the room to quiet down.

“Soar above party strife, Elena,” someone shouted near the back of the room. I looked back and saw it was the man holding the poster of Elena seated on a cloud. He waved it up and down and right and left while the crowd laughed and cheered.

Elena straightened herself, dropping her hands from the lectern and placing them at her sides. She raised her voice to be heard above the growing tumult.

“To expect literature to share the immediate goals of politics, no matter how worthy those goals might be, would be to expect it to rebel against its own nature.”

A woman jumped up from her seat and raised her hand in the air. “You talk about literature as if it were a living thing. It's not.”

The crowd burst into applause, and I noticed that the reporters were no longer slumped against the back wall but were listening attentively, their notebooks ready. One of them was loading a camera, while another began to move slowly toward the front.

“Raymond Finch is false,” someone shouted loudly, and the audience applauded once again.

“I'm not here to talk about Raymond Finch,” Elena said.

“You're not talking about anything,” someone cried, and derisive laughter swept the room.

As Elena began to speak, a news photographer darted down the center aisle, dropped to his knees, and shot a picture. The flash swept over Elena, slamming a black shadow against the wall behind her and briefly freezing her body in a silver light. For a moment she seemed to stagger, like a bull after it has received the first lance. I instantly leaned forward, but Miriam caught my arm. “Leave her alone,” she said.

I sat back. Elena had begun to read again, but this time more loudly, raising her voice over the noisy, shifting audience. “Each generation reimagines the possibilities of mankind, and in doing so, it contributes to the making of a destiny that the narrowness of political theory cannot begin to understand.”

The crowd roared its disapproval, but Elena continued, her voice still raised. “It is the task of art to sound the depths of our need, and it is the task of politics to teach the justice of a cause. They are related only in this: that it is from our need that the cry for justice comes.”

The audience hooted and jeered and a group of people near the back began stamping their feet. Elena realized that she could not be heard above the uproar and glanced helplessly at Joe Tully, who then joined her at the front of the room, raising his hands above his head to silence the crowd.

“Now listen, people,” he shouted, “listen up. This is not some goddamn Brown Shirt speaking here. This is Elena Franklin. She's been around for a long time, and I, for one, think we owe her a little more simple respect than she's gotten so far.”

“Tell 'em, Joe,” someone shouted.

There was a smattering of applause, and then Sam was on his feet, batting the smoke from his face and pointing toward the back of the room.

“You schmucks in the back, shut the hell up,” he shouted. Then he turned back to Joe. “Let's get on with it, now.”

“All right,” Joe said loudly, “now let's keep it respectful from here on out. Down South's where they have the lynchings.” He turned to Elena, who stood quietly behind him. “Go ahead, Elena.” he said.

Elena stepped back up to the lectern. Her voice was much lower as she began, but it could be heard without difficulty throughout the room. “All mankind could be fed and clothed and housed, made well in all their physical needs, and there would still remain those needs of the heart or soul or whatever you choose to call it, needs that it is the right of art to confront.” She looked up from her notes. “I don't deny the right of any writer to deal with nothing but politics, if he so chooses. But I also believe that other writers also have rights, and that they may exercise them in all conscience and without being guilty of either political or moral irresponsibility.”

She looked back down at her notes and began reading once again. “I do not believe that once we have provided for the physical needs of man, we will also have ended his distress, that once he has been fed and clothed, he will know no further poverty. I do not believe that the riddle of life is nothing more than the riddle of production. Nor do I believe that equality and justice are the same. The former may be addressed by the pettiest of bureaucrats, but the latter is a subject that would tax a god.” Her eyes ranged about the crowd. “But since there are no gods, it is up to art.”

She looked down again at her notes. “We may allow ourselves to be wrong about a thousand technical things, but we cannot allow ourselves to conceive of mankind as less demanding than it is. We may fool ourselves in a thousand ways, but about one thing we cannot permit ourselves to be deluded: we cannot think of man as more simple than he is, full when only his stomach is full, clothed when only his back is clothed, warm when only his house is warm. For an animal, perhaps, this is enough. But it is only the beginning for a man.”

There was actually a smattering of applause as Elena folded her speech and stepped down, joining Miriam and me at our seats at the front of the room. Miriam took her hand and squeezed it. “Good job, Elena,” she said.

Elena nodded quickly, her eyes darting around nervously. “I was scared to death,” she said.

“Didn't show,” Sam said as he patted her gently on the back.

On the small stage before us, Joe Tully was busily thanking my sister for her attendance, when someone shouted from the back of the room, “What about the goddamn questions?” Joe craned his neck to see the speaker. It was the man with the poster of Elena on a cloud. “I thought you said she'd take some questions,” he shouted.

I glanced at Elena. She had lowered her head, as if preparing to receive a blow.

Joe looked down at her. “What about it, Elena?”

Elena looked up at him and nodded. Then she stepped back up onto the stage. A few people applauded her, but mostly there was only shifting and mumbling.

“What you just said,” the same man shouted from the back of the room. “All that high-class stuff about art. It all just sounded like a bass drum to me.”

Elena said nothing. She merely stared back at him, her eyes directly upon his.

“I mean, what the hell is all this stuff about the needs of the soul, anyway?”

Elena cleared her throat slightly. Her voice was very soft as she replied, but there was great agitation in her face. She looked, as Miriam later said, like someone on trial for her life.

“I'm sorry we don't have low-class ways of talking about art and literature and things like that,” she said, “but I suppose we don't. So when you talk about these things, you sound very grand. Maybe that's because these things are in themselves so grand, that when we talk about them, we take on some of that grandeur, or at least our language does.”

She stopped and took a step forward, peering out toward the man who had called to her, squinting to bring his face into focus. “When I talk about the needs of the soul, I'm not talking about anything religious, about a soul that floats on a cloud, like you have me floating on that poster. I mean that part of our life which requires a special warmth or understanding or consciousness, something like that. I mean all the things that we would still need after we'd been fed and clothed and housed and all that. Surely you don't for one minute suggest that you don't have such needs.” She looked him up and down. “You look pretty well fed and clothed. You must have made that poster somewhere. Was it in your own apartment? Was the heat on in that place? Was there a roof to keep the rain out? I think there probably was.”

“Of course there was,” the man called to her. Then he laughed. “I don't live under a goddamn bridge.”

“So you have food and clothing and a warm place to live,” Elena said. “All your immediate needs fulfilled. So why are you here?”

“Because there's plenty of people in this country who don't have those things, Miss Franklin,” the man shouted back at her.

“Yes, that's right,” Elena said. “And you are here to help them get those things. You have a need for them to have those things. And that need is not in your belly. It is in your heart. One of those needs of the soul I spoke about.” She turned her attention to the entire audience before her. “The last thing I expected was that my book would offend anyone in this room. I still don't know why it did.” She stopped, waiting for the next question. There wasn't one, and after a moment she stepped off the stage, walked to her seat next to Miriam, and sat down.