Lonely Crusade (22 page)

“Not so fine,” he muttered in reply. “And you?”

“What is the problem?” Rosie asked.

“Does there have to be a problem?”

“With you, yes.”

“Then how is the second front, Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and other friends of yours? I have no problem there.”

“Not so good the second front. Karl Marx okay. Joseph Stalin is still standing. He’ll still be standing, that fellow.” He tapped his pipe and began to fill it from a pouch. “The traitor Trotsky is no friend of mine. He is what happens to a man who hates the people.”

“Sure,” Lee agreed half laughingly. “He was a dirty, stinking, double-crossing rat.” He paused to watch Rosie fill his pipe. “Still smoking Nigger Hair?”

Rosie laughed, unabashed. “It’s good tobacco—and cheap. But now I carry it in a pouch, you observe.”

“I observe.”

“You think I shouldn’t smoke it?”

“No, I don’t think you shouldn’t smoke it. I think you ought to give up one of them, however—your Nigger Hair or your Communism.”

Rosie shook his head. “That shows how wrong you are. To be a Communist in a capitalistic nation you must use every resource of capitalism.”

“To fight capitalism?”

“How else? Communism is the acceptance of reality. We’re not dealing in religious mysticism.”

“Even to the Nigger Hair?”

“Why not? It’s cheap and I have it. Better for me, whom it can not indoctrinate with anti-Negro sentiment, to smoke it than for others whose prejudices it might feed.”

“You know, Rosie, you always have the answer. Is it the Jew in you or the Communist?”

“Of all the rotten results of racial prejudice,” Rosie said, “anti-Semitism in a Negro is the worst.”

“I think the same thing about anti-Negroism in a Jew,” Lee retorted. “With Jews being slaughtered in Europe by the hundreds of thousands, brutalized beyond comprehension, you Jews here in America are more prejudiced against Negroes than the gentiles.”

“That’s silly. Have you ever heard of a Jew in a lynch mob?”

“Only because the white lynchers discriminate against him. He does everything to the Negro short of lynching.”

“Now that we have exhausted our stupidity, let’s go to lunch.”

“I’m not going to lunch.”

“I came to take you to lunch—all of the way from Boyle’s Heights.”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re here. I suppose to boost Benny Stone for president of the local?”

“He’s the best man for the job, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

“But I came to take you to lunch.”

“Then why didn’t you come inside?”

“Inside is for the members of your union. I’m just a kibitzer from the clothing workers’ union.”

“And from the Communist Party.”

“Lee, I’m worried about you, boy.”

The edges of Lee’s face drew down in a sudden frown. “You’re not the only one. Every one is worried about me, it seems. Even my wife,” he added bitterly.

“So? And don’t you think you’re worth worrying about?”

“Not to the extent that it becomes obnoxious.”

“Come, let us eat then before we reach that point,” Rosie said, sliding from his seat. Noticing Lee hesitate, he added: “I’m paying for it.”

“Well, okay,” Lee had to laugh. “I’d better not miss this opportunity. It’ll probably be the only time a Jew will ever buy a lunch for me.”

“I don’t understand it,” Rosie said, turning along the pleasant street that went to San Fernando Valley. “A young man like you talking such stupidity. What’s happening to the Negro people?”

“We’re just getting tired, that’s all,” Lee replied as he shortened his steps to keep pace with Rosie. “Just getting tired.”

“That I can understand. But why take it out on the Jew? What has the Jew done to you?”

“What hasn’t the Jew done?—cornered us off into squalid ghettos and beat us out of our money—”

“Oh, stop it!” Rosie snapped. “Such nonsense should never be spoken.” Coming to a halt, he asked: “Where do you usually eat?”

Lee had gone a step ahead and turned to look at Rosie. “You’re taking me to lunch, I thought.”

Chuckling, Rosie walked on ahead. “Come on; at least you are consistent in not co-operating.”

Lee caught up, pacing his steps again. “If you could open your mind a little and see beyond that Communistic rote you would realize that what you call my lack of co-operation is consistency itself.”

“At least I know the place to eat,” Rosie said. “And it won’t be what you can call a Communist hash house, although most of the people you see there will be Communists.”

“You make it seem as if I am hypercritical of everything,” Lee said. “I don’t think I am.”

“No?”

“No.”

They walked the remaining block in silence and turned into the palm-shaded grounds of a roadhouse not far from a motion picture studio, where few but the officials from Comstock dared adventure.

“So this is where the big-shot Hollywood Communists come?” Lee asked interestedly.

“Why not? Communism is for everyone.”

Inside was a cool dim oasis filled with a well-dressed crowd. Only Rosie, because of his slack suit, and Lee, because of his color, seemed out of place. But Rosie gave no indication that he was aware of this. In his bright-eyed look furtively recording the reactions of this tall, thin Negro youth was the wisdom of five thousand years and his hard insouciance was eternal. And by his studied refusal to acknowledge their obvious difference, he helped put Lee at ease.

Unable to obtain seats immediately, Rosie squeezed Lee into the bar and ordered Martinis. And for once Lee did not feel the tearing microscopy of white eyes or the sexual calculations of white women, whether because the people gathered there were Communists, he could not determine. But he felt grateful for it, and a strange sense of detachment from his former self came over him.

“This is a nice place, Rosie.”

“I like the Martinis here,” Rosie replied.

Shortly the headwaiter beckoned and they followed him to a table in the corner near the pantry door. When the waiter had taken their orders, Lee remarked: “My customary seat in a white restaurant.”

“You don’t like it?” Rosie questioned.

“Oh, it’s fine. But I look forward to eating in a white restaurant and sitting up front.”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with you,” Rosie declared. “It’s on account of my having on a slack suit.”

“You keep your answers ready, don’t you?”

“Lee, doesn’t it ever occur to you that all the people in the world are not trying to humiliate you? People have other things to think of. Most of the time they’re not even thinking about you.”

“Rosie, I wish I could believe that. But in America, it is not so. People give more thought to ways and means of humiliating the Negro than to any other single endeavor—white people, I mean.”

“No! No!” Rosie objected.

The waiter appeared with their soup and Rosie ordered Martinis again. Then to Lee he said: “You disconcert me, Lee. You don’t act like a Southern Negro, but you have the Southern Negro’s basic animosity for all things white, it seems.”

“Well, frankly, Rosie, you don’t act like the average Jew, either,” Lee replied. “You don’t have the Jewish allergy to being a Jew. When we came in, the average Jew would have tried to establish the impression that I was a servant or the like.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you call yourself an average Jew?”

“There is no such thing as an average anybody, or a typical anybody. Those are terms employed to hide reality. As to myself, I am a Communist besides being a Jew. Therefore I can accept the fact that it is not the accident of birth, but the mark of history that makes me a Jew. But don’t forget that as a group Jews are also oppressed, and to accept the fact of being Jewish in a society dominated by gentiles is not an easy thing to do.”

“Maybe not, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deny it. And that’s what gets me down with Jews. It seems to me like the Jew should be the first to help the Negro for the simple reason that he too is oppressed.”

“That is logic but not reality. In a bourgeois society all groups make an effort to be identified with the dominant group. Naturally there are Jews who seek to disidentify themselves from their people. And in so doing they must rationalize this action. By escaping Jewish life and culture they feel they can become integrated into the rest of society and solve their own problem, so what better way than to absorb or emulate the national prejudices? And there are other Jews, many among the progressives, cardholders in the Communist Party, who regard acceptance of their identity as Jews as a narrow nationalism—”

“Now you’re talking as a Communist,” Lee cut in.

“And also as a Jew,” Rosie said, but after a moment’s thought added: “Perhaps more as a Communist, after all; for the progressive Jews are the ones with whom I am personally concerned—and with whom you’ve probably had most of your contacts. They are the ones who feel that to be a Jew might subtract something from their stature as Communists. As concerned as they are, and genuinely so, with minority group problems, even their own, they still retain many of the prejudices of the land—perhaps as some sort of defense. But for all the faults that Jews might have, you will have to admit that they do more to help the Negro than any other group.”

“Help the Negro be a nigger, I would say,” Lee muttered.

Their lunch was served but they barely noticed.

“Lee, let me put it like this. In this nation Jews are usually the first to give Negroes a chance to progress—that’s a fact. Perhaps what you object to is their motive. They are not afraid to tap the great reservoir of Negro potentiality—but they make a profit by it. Is that what you object to?”

“What I object to this moment,” Lee replied, “is your Communist trick of trying to disconcert me with the loaded question. Why not talk about some Jewish faults?”

“Okay, I will proceed without question. Jews are the first to open up new housing for the Negro. I’ll admit that what they do is turn over their ghettos to make Negro ghettos—yes, and at a profit. But if they didn’t do that, where would the Negroes go? Jews have opened, and still own and operate, most business establishments in Negro communities all over the country. Many exploit Negroes, I’ll grant that. But the gentiles wouldn’t even open the businesses. They didn’t even want the Negroes’ money. At least Jewish business serves the Negro community. And Jewish business people don’t exploit Negroes any more than Negroes exploit each other. Just what is back of all this growing anti-Semitism among the Negro people, anyway? It worries me.”

“Now I can answer you,” Lee replied, “and frankly, Rosie, just two things—contact and attitude. Most of the Negro contact with the business world is with the Jew. He buys from the Jew, rents from the Jew, most of his earnings wind up, it seems, in the Jew’s pocket. He doesn’t see where he’s getting value in return. He pays too much rent, too much for food, and in return can’t do anything for the Jew but work as a domestic or the like.”

“That is only in cities and—”

“That is only where anti-Semitism exists among Negroes, also.”

“And it’s not true,” Rosie continued. “Only the brashly uninformed would make such a statement. Jews have opened practically every field of endeavor, in which they themselves are engaged, to worthy Negroes.”

“Rosie, it might not be true, but most Negroes think that it’s true.”

“Do they object to Jews making profit? The Jew is going to make a profit like anyone else.”

“And the Negro is going to hate him for it.”

“Do they think gentiles would give them more?”

“No, but they do not expect any more from gentiles. Look, we accept the fact that gentiles hate us; we’ve always thought they hated us ever since they brought us over here as slaves. We expect them to exploit us and segregate us. We don’t like it, no, but we expect it. That’s the picture we have of them—”

“And your picture of the Jew?”

“We don’t expect it from the Jew. We see the Jew as oppressed also—despised and restricted and segregated by the gentiles who do the same to us. So we expect him to be the first to give us a square deal.”

“Is that what you mean by ‘attitude’?”

“No, by ‘attitude’ I mean that most Negroes feel that most Jews are anti-Negro.”

“Anti-Negro in what way?”

“Well, whatever the Jew might do to help the Negro—as you contend he does—it appears that he is also the first to oppose Negro equality. It seems that he can’t bear the thought of Negroes being considered equal by the gentiles. Then, too, the average—well, not average, but many Jews treat Negroes with contempt and condescension. It seems that they often go out of their way to humiliate Negroes. I can’t exactly explain it, but Negroes feel that the Jew will hold them up for ridicule by the gentile—that in instances where the gentile is not thinking of the Negro, the Jew will call his attention to the Negro as to an object of scorn.”

“Do you know this to be so?”

“Well—”

“Is this what you dislike about the Jew?”

“Well—I dislike many things about the Jew—manners and personal habits—”

“Be specific.”

“Well—for one thing, I dislike the manner in which Jews bring up their children, the repulsive manner in which Jewish mothers worship sons, making little beasts of them. I’ve sat on a streetcar and seen Jewish tots beat their mothers in the face until—”

“Many people dislike the color of black skin; they find the formation of Negro features personally abhorrent—would you consider this a valid reason for them to be anti-Negro?”

Well, no, but there are certain customs in a land—”

“Must we acquire them to keep from being hated? Isn’t it the best society that provides cultural autonomy for all the racial and religious groups?”

“That’s not what I mean. There is a certain repulsiveness in the Jew’s basic approach toward life—”

“In what way, Lee, in what way?”

“Well, take money, for instance. It seems that Jews put the value of money above all the common courtesies of life. I won’t say Jews are all for themselves as many people think, but Jews can do some pretty harsh things where money is concerned. Look, one time my wife and I were invited to a Jewish doctor’s home to see some moving pictures his wife had taken of the family at a summer resort. It was during the winter and there was an epidemic of colds in the city. After they had finished showing the picture the doctor called all of his guests into the kitchen and gave us cold shots. I thought at the time it was just a favor he was doing us, and although I didn’t want to take the shot, I didn’t see how I could refuse without appearing boorish. But a couple of weeks later we received a bill for the shots.”