Red Love (15 page)

“Two of the poems were to me. The others were to other people. This wasn’t generally known at the time.”

“It must have hurt you, about Linda,” the reporter said softly. Maury stiffened.

“That was our relationship. I was powerless. Under the circumstances any other way would have seemed more painful.”

“When did she tell you?”

“About a year into it. Haven’t you had extramarital affairs?”

“No.

Maury was striking his hand against the chair. “Look, I don’t believe in self-sacrifice. I was caught in a situation. I did not choose. They came to me with all these deals. They were not viable alternatives. She had alternatives, which would in no way take away from me. If I had faith in her, it would not take anything from me. If it hurt me, it was my own fault. It’s because I’m too damn bourgeois.”

“Did it hurt you?”

“Of course it hurt me.” Maury stood up and moved to a table. He took a framed picture from it and silently handed it to the reporter. It was Maury as a boy in Brooklyn, sitting on his father’s lap. His father was smiling. Maury took the picture back and placed it on the table.

“You don’t know where I’m coming from,” he said after a silence. “You’re too full of feeling—that’s what I get from you. Feeling just works off guilt,” he said with contempt.

“No one’s more full of feeling than you.”

“But I control it.” Maury stood up. “I think that’s it for today.”

The reporter put on his shoes and coat.

Maury ripped the reporter’s name off his bulletin board.

“Farfallen”
he said.

“What does that mean?”

“The opportunity is lost.”

Put Down Your Forks, Comrades

I’ll have a bite.

—G. L.

Solly was squashed into his seat at the Paramount Cafeteria on a Saturday night at eight-thirty beside the other comrades from his unit.

Leon Pepstein, who always wore a tweed scarf draped over his shoulder, was talking about the coming abolition of the army in the USSR: “Why waste time on military drills when you have close ties with the workers?” he shouted. No one disputed him. “None of this blind obedience to bullshit orders! No class distinction! As the masses become social beings, as the economic basis for crime and other antisocial acts is removed, police won’t even be necessary.”

Leon suddenly pounded on the table and they all sang out the City College song against President Robinson. Robinson had welcomed the fascist students from Italy and suspended student protesters who had objected, calling them “guttersnipes,” pointing his umbrella at them.

“We’re all fed up with Robinson’s rule

We’re sick of high-priced knowledge

To get the nineteen back in the school

Strike City College!”

Solly, in a mischievous mood, took his knife and fork and the silverware of the other comrades and stuck them in his jacket. “This place is already rich from the workers it exploits,” he declared.

“No, Comrade Solly,” a little voice piped up. It was the pretty new comrade who had recently joined the unit. The only girl at the table, she had been eating her food very carefully, her eyes glued to her plate. Solly couldn’t bring himself to look much at girls anyway She had looked at her plate, and he had looked at his.

Now he gazed directly at her.

“Remember,” she said, “what Lenin wrote: to steal less than the state is petty thievery. When the Bolsheviks took the Soviet Union, comrade, they took a state. If you fight, you fight for a country, for important things. For principles.” She took a deep breath. Everyone was silent.

Solly grinned. He dropped the silverware back on the table with a little crash and leaned toward her.

“My name, in case you’re wondering, comrade, is Dolly, Dolly Stern.”

The Komsomol Badge

Dreaming of Soviet justice.

—G. L.

Antonio Carelli’s father stood out in the Italian community in Buffalo. The other men were immigrants who spoke little English and dressed up only on Sundays when they went to church. Arturo Carelli had an accent, but he spoke English better than anyone in the neighborhood. He always carried books with him.

On Saturdays, father and son would put on their Sunday clothes and go to the movies—usually westerns starring William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Buck Jones, or Hoot Gibson. Antonio was a small boy. When his father held his hand and they walked down the street, he was in heaven. He would cuddle up to his father while they watched the movie. Afterwards, they would go to the five-and-dime store, and his father would treat Antonio to a glass of milk and pie.

His father forbade him to salute the American flag in school or to pray with the other kids in the morning. They already knew that he didn’t go to church on Sunday. But they didn’t know his family was Communist.

At the beginning he didn’t know the words to the prayer, but he clasped his hands and bowed his head. He didn’t want to be different. And he saluted the flag with everyone else.

He was afraid that his father might find out.

At first Antonio Carelli had been ashamed of his father’s politics. When he was three, his father, who was active in the hod-carriers union, was arrested in the Palmer raids. He called it his “revolutionary baptism.” When he was four, his father took Antonio to a silent movie about the Bolshevik revolution. There were scenes of trenches filled with dead Russian soldiers and the Women’s Death Battalion marching with rifles slung over their shoulders. His father and the whole audience cheered and shouted when Lenin and Trotsky stood beside a flag with the hammer and sickle.

His family celebrated May Day and attended meetings each year in November celebrating the revolution and marking the assassinations of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. His father once won a portrait of Lenin at a raffle and hung it in the parlor.

Arturo Carelli worked during the day as a laborer. But after work, he came home, washed, ate dinner, and left to carry on his Party assignments. Many comrades visited the house on the weekends. Antonio understood little of the conversation, but he was aware that his home was very different from his friends’ homes.

Antonio joined the Buffalo branch of the Young Pioneers. Wearing a white blouse and red kerchief tied under his chin, he sang with the other boys and girls, “Give a yell! Give a yell! Give a good substantial yell! And when we yell, we yell like hell and this is what we yell: Pioneers! Pioneers! Rah! Rah! Rah!” And “Two, four, six, eight: Who do we hate? Capitalists! Capitalists! Rah! Rah! Rah!” He read the Young Comrade page of the
Daily Worker:

Y
is for Youth who leaders shall be

0
is for Oil which capitalists own

U
is for Union with which we agree

N
is for Nonsense which into our minds is thrown

G
is for Groups which we organize

R
is for Russia, that country of ours

E
is for Ended which capitalism will be

B
is for Bunk which teachers tell for hours

E
is for Endeavor a workers’ world to create

L
is for Lenin whose ideas we follow

S
is for bosses’ Stuff which we will not swallow

Antonio attended a meeting at which Mush Snitkin, district organizer of the Young Communist League, spoke about the “treacherous role organized religion plays in the lives of the workers from the cradle to the grave.” At this meeting, held to replace bourgeois christenings, five newborn babies of Party members received their names and were enrolled in the Young Pioneers. There was a lot of howling and crying, but afterward there was a dance and what the Party called “general jollifications.”

Antonio Carelli’s father wanted him to learn how to speak to crowds the way he did. When Antonio was eleven, his father picked him up and put him on a soapbox at the park where the workers gathered on weekends. Antonio began his memorized speech, but in the middle he became confused and forgot his lines. To save the situation, he shouted, “In conclusion, comrades and fellow workers, don’t forget Patrick Henry’s words: ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’”

He noticed the smiles on the faces of the workers, and then he jumped off the soapbox into his father’s outstretched arms.

At the Young Pioneer school Antonio observed Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthday by learning what frauds they really were. The teacher was Mush Snitkin. The Y.C.L.’s district organizer, Mush, was from New York City. Antonio worshiped Mush, who was handsome and wore bell-bottoms like the sailors wore. Mush’s sister Clara was a legendary leader of the Gastonia textile workers’ strike in North Carolina.

Mush spoke under a banner that said SMASH THE BOY SCOUTS. “Washington was not the popular idol bourgeois historians now paint him to be,” Mush declared. “Not at all. Let’s look at the record, comrades. He commanded the revolutionary armies, spilling the blood of artisans and poor farmers so that his own class in the colonies could rule. Before, the British landowners and capitalists in America could exploit the workers, farmers, toilers, and Negroes. Now the rich merchants and planters could do it on their own. This bastard Washington was the richest land-and slave-owner in America. Can you compare such a bourgeois lackey with such working-class leaders as Stalin, Lenin, and Marx? Come on now!”

The kids laughed and applauded. They all wore the same flaming red mufflers. Antonio fingered his proudly.

“As president,” Mush said, “his policies were consistently for the benefit of the ruling class. The heavy taxes for the profits of the rich produced revolt among the masses, including the Whiskey Rebellion by the farmers in Pennsylvania against the whiskey tax. Washington sent troops against the farmers, just like Roosevelt is doing today.

“And Lincoln,” Mush continued, “he wasn’t even opposed to slavery, comrades. His aim was to save the capitalist union, not to free Negroes. The bastard used the slaves as a pawn to weaken the Southern landowners and strengthen the Northern capitalists.”

Mush then talked about how Stalin and Lenin led the fight for workers’ democratic rights, including the fight for land and the full equality of Negroes.

“The very fact,” Mush said, “that the children have to struggle in school for food and against discrimination proves that the American Revolution did not benefit the workers and that Lincoln didn’t free the Negroes.”

When he was twelve, Antonio traveled by train with his father to New York City to celebrate Revolutionary Christmas Day at Madison Square Garden. The Young Pioneers, Young Communist League, and the Communist Party were sponsoring the event.

Before the festivities began, the secretary of the Young Pioneers, George Winfield, walked out to a standing ovation. “Before the constructive fun begins, comrades, we must take note of that organization for capitalist war, the Boy Scouts. The Scouts glorify the wars of the bosses! Their real aim is to prepare the workers’ children to be good soldiers in the armies of the capitalists.

“Just what are the differences between the Boy Scouts and the Young Pioneers? Study them and you will clearly see your duty as workers’ children. We must smash the Boy Scouts, the organization of our class enemies, the capitalists.”

The audience chanted “Smash the Boy Scouts! Defend the Soviet Union!”

“And the Boy Scouts attack Workers’ Russia,” Winfield said. “The Soviet government is a government of and for the workers and toilers. The Soviet Union is the worst enemy of all the bosses the world over. So the bosses hate it and are plotting war against it. The workers and their children all over the world have only one fatherland—the Soviet Fatherland, Workers’ Russia! We know that in the Soviet Union there is no child labor. Workers’ children go to the best schools there are and have free vacations.”

Winfield concluded, “Comrades, we want a workers’ and farmers’ government where the workers will rule like they do in the Soviet Union!”

Winfield held his fist clenched while the chants continued:

“BURY THE BOY SCOUTS!”

“SIX FEET UNDER!”

“SOVIET JUSTICE FOR THE BOY SCOUTS!”

The chants were interrupted by a shouting voice. “Ooh, don’t you just hate the little fuckers?” a lone, screechy male voice called. “Smash the little cocksuckers,” it called again.

Heads turned. Winfield screened his eyes to get a better look. Adults in the crowd muttered, “Who approved those slogans? They seem a trifle much.”

“Shut up, fuckface,” the same voice called. A disheveled man in sneakers and an apron was laughing and pedaling his legs in the aisle. Two bodyguards reached him and rapidly carried him upside down to the back as he called, “Bury the little cunt-sniffers.”

Winfield held up his hand. “Your attention please, boys and girls. Now let’s get on with the fun part of our day: let the parade begin!”

From the back of the garden the musicians came down the aisle playing kazoos, paper and comb instruments, and drums. Winfield shouted, “And now, some of the products of the system!”

Young Pioneers dressed up as caricatures—with cigars and daisies in their mouths and roses and lilies in their ears—of priests, rabbis, soldiers, policemen, politicians, and Italian gangsters danced down the aisles, rubbing their private parts and farting at the delighted audience.

The curtains opened. A Revolutionary Christmas tree stood there on which was a cartoon likeness of Herbert Hoover with an apple instead of a head and placards against war, the police, and capitalism. A large dollar sign took the place of the star at the top of the tree.

A boxing match took place between Science and Religion. The referee was dressed in purple polka-dot tights. After seven rounds, during which the contestants punched the referee as well as each other, Science knocked out both Religion and the referee.

A poster showed a crystal gazer watching a large fire in her crystal ball. The fire singed and burned up an insect that fell in its way. Many other insects were also being consumed. The fire was labeled The Soviet Union and the insects were labeled The Capitalist Nations.

An animal trainer whipped beasts into submission. The beasts included a lion (“High Society”), tiger (“Capitalist Parties”), elephant (“The Boy Scouts and Militarism”), mongrel dog (“The Socialist Party and Social Democrats”) and a bear (“Religion”).

The Revolutionary Christmas tree was wheeled onto the center of the stage. God, dressed in a business suit flecked with cigar ashes and dripping blood, danced around the tree with a Harem of Angels, including priests, rabbis, capitalists, and other Dope Peddlers.

George Winfield grabbed the microphone and said, “Boys and girls, this is our answer to the bunk called religion and the capitalist Christmas. I wish you all a very revolutionary Christmas. We must all be in constant readiness to meet the opposition of our enemies.
Are you ready?”
Antonio and hundreds of other children in his section arose instantly and with raised, clenched fists shouted in perfect union,
“Always ready
.”

As the Depression deepened, the Party’s slogan, Work or Wages, made headway. The Unemployed Council was organized in Buffalo, with Arturo Carelli as district organizer. The Party rented a large hall above a Chinese restaurant. Unemployed men, sitting on benches or gathered around the potbellied stove, talked and spat into spittoons. Antonio listened to the World War I vets, Great Lakes sailors, and longshoremen talk for hours.

In the afternoons after school, Antonio went directly to the Party hall. He cut stencils for leaflets, painted signs, worked the mimeograph, and distributed Party literature house to house.

The Party was in motion. There was the Italian-American Workers’ Club on Seneca Street and the Russian Workers’ Club on the East Side. The Ukrainian, Hungarian, Polish-Lithuanian, and Latvian clubs were located in the Black Rock and Riverside sections.

Organizers came from New York and Chicago: the field Y.C.L. women, the Agitprop, the Marine Workers Industrial Union comrade, the Negro field organizer from Harlem, one of the Gastonia prisoners out on bail. On Sunday nights, Antonio’s father invited them for spaghetti dinners with homemade Italian wine and espresso. They discussed tactics, strategy, and theory. It was time to raise the level of the struggle.

The Party and the Unemployed Council called on the unemployed to congregate on the streets on March 6, 1930, and march on government buildings. Antonio distributed leaflets to the workers at the plants and factories: “Drop Your Tools! Solidarity With Your Unemployed Brothers!”

The organizers instructed the rank and file to fight the police. The comrades stuffed their hats with newspapers to soften the blows of billy clubs and blackjacks. Women were told to scream and claw at the police.

On March 6th, placards nailed to wooden sticks were handed out. A long column, four abreast, was formed and marched up Broadway chanting, “Starve or Fight.”

When they reached City Hall, the mounted police and riot squad charged. The police swung their clubs. The workers fought back, screaming and shouting, trying to keep from being trampled.

The demonstration made headlines. Arturo Carelli was arrested as a leader of the demonstration. At school, the kids stared at Antonio and whispered about him. He was no longer ashamed.

Arturo Carelli was released in two days. He was now a full-time functionary for the Party. Antonio proudly watched his father in his red velvet vest standing on a frail wooden platform near the steel factory. “Look at my hand!” Arturo boomed, holding his hand high above his head. “When a hand is like this, all five fingers separated, each finger can easily be broken by snapping it backward. All five fingers can be smashed, just like that. Why, fellow workers? Because they are alone, separated! Now—look—look—what happens when I make a fist? The fingers are united. You would need a sledgehammer to break them.