Red Love (28 page)

“But the only thing is, I can’t understand why the Party murdered the Rubells. This I will take to the grave with me—why the Party officials crossed the street when the Rubell family came to plead for them, why the
Daily Worker
never mentioned the case, why Henky Rubin fucked up the defense—” Faces became foul and twisted, there were spitting and hissing noises, people turned to each other and began talking in loud voices about the weather and local restaurants.

“I don’t understand it, Goddamnit—” Manya said, as the dashing, six-foot-eight Elton MacRaw came toward her smiling. He put his meat hook around Manya’s shoulder and toward her throat. She kicked him. He lifted her up and carried her, her legs kicking in the air, off the stage.

In 1986 the reporter saw Manya for the last time. She had asked him to find an article, “A Cuban Lesson,” in the
Times
written in 1980 by a Cuban poet, Heberto Padilla, who was exiled from Cuba. She referred to him as “an honest man.” Manya had begun to refer to the United States with some surprise as a democracy. “You see, we live in a democracy,” she would say.

Padilla wrote of his impressions on returning to New York City after living for twenty years in the Communist world: “In 1960, I wandered through the streets of New York, this city which exalted and fulfilled the self I was then. At that time, I couldn’t even imagine a freedom as invisible, dependable, and natural as the air … Perhaps no one in the United States will ever have to go through my kind of apprenticeship, and never have the need to learn the lesson I now know.”

Manya put the article down and said, “As rotten as Brezhnev was, as rotten as Gus Hall was, there was just …
nothing.”

Manya stood up from the bed in the monastic room in the gathering dusk and walked over to her broad window looking out on the garden and the majestic sweep of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. “My life was very hard. Very hard.” The reporter felt that he wanted to put his arm around her, and that she wanted nothing as much in the world as that. But he sensed that it was too late for Manya to begin to allow others to give to her.

Three months later, at the memorial meeting for Manya in a room of the old-age home, her nephew said, “During the Vietnam protests in Washington, I was watching the TV news. Here’s the guard standing at the door to the Pentagon with the crowd of people as far back as you can see. And he’s arguing with someone. I look at her. It was Aunt Manya. She was telling the guard to get out of her way, she wanted to talk to the Chief of Staff.”

An older woman, Alix Werner, whose forty-year-old retarded son stared at her with a blissful smile, finished her speech about Manya. She said, “What did Manya stand for?” She dramatically removed her trench coat, revealing a second coat festooned with buttons: big buttons, small buttons, colored and black and white. The buttons said, “Fight White Violence,” “Remember Allende,” “Support Cuba,” “Love Nicaragua,” “Vindicate the Rubells,” “People Before Profits,” and “Shoot First.”

“This,” she said, pointing to each button, “is what Manya was.”

Letters from Amerika

Me for you, you for me.

—G. L.

February 8, 1951

Solly darling,

As advanced people deeply involved in history’s march, what have the Rubells done to deserve so much unhappiness? Torn asunder from their little ones, removed from the sunlight and laughter of the working class? I say to you, the Rubells are committed to virtue’s dominion, and for this they are being singled out.

Only today, my friend, I chanced to be reading how a cross was burned in the Negro section of Suffolk, Virginia, and how the police escorted a motorcade of robed men bearing an electric cross and K.K.K. pennants in Tallahassee. And then too I perused a progressive daily that reported that a union leader was blinded after being beaten by police with blackjacks in Erie, Pennsylvania. I crieth, Fie!

Perhaps the persecution of a valiant Jewish couple like the Rubells will alert the world to the reality of conditions in “the home of the brave and the land of the free.”

I wait with considerable interest for your wise thoughts on these subjects, hubby of mine.

Dolly

February 11, 1951

My sexy vixen,

You ring my bell with your passionate utterances of unity with the people. You are a woman truly worthy of the sweat of the masses. Let me only state that it’s a privilege to know you. That’s how deeply you ring my chime, Miss Sublime! I am of the incontrovertible opinion that it is because we are informed people who have drunk deeply from the well of Those In the Know that we have the grit to stand up and be counted.

Just read
War and Peace.
Good book.

Those less informed and more backward may puzzle at our determination. Little do they understand how we have mingled our devotion to the People’s Struggle for peace and pie with a healthy slice of our Jewish underdog background for a perfect blendship.

Salud and Go In Peace,

Solly

February 13, 1951

My friend,

I am so hot for you! Hot hot hot!

Do you like this frivolous tone, honey boy? Your Dolly has many tricks up her sleeve once we are united again.

Went to synagogue yesterday and really impressed at how wise our cultural heritage is and how relevant to us, fighting for our freedom, and oppressed as we are by latter-day pharoahs.

I am reading
A Lantern for Jeremy
by the noted advanced thinker, V.J. Jerome. A real contribution from the cultural front. Also the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, and Corliss Lamont’s guide to a secular humanist funeral.

Nutritious reading!

Dolly

October 8, 1951

My Beloved Colleague,

The days darken early here in Sing Sing and I am compelled to render naught all intimations of negativity by thinking with a correct perspective. As the great Irish progressive Sean O’Connor has declared, “let hail the bright brambling children of Stalingrad, fresh bubbling stream of thistlebrook, so lush the leaves of red earth fulfilled, as I sing my comrades to fruitful hurrahs!”

The pit of degradation and horror lies in wait, but I shall summon forth within myself both perspective and confidence, knowing that the fresh greenery of proper thinking is enveloping the international working class, who will bury the braying jackals of hate who suck blood from the poor and the oppressed.

So your little Doll merrily laughs and hopes to dance on their graves.

Your progressive moll,

Doll

October 12,1951

Dollface,

I just got your letter. Wow! What a woman! What a dame! Your political perspective ripens like a fresh peach! Holy cow, doll, what an animal you are! Frankly, you have a real working-class perspective and you can be in my shock brigade anytime.

Light of my life, the incarceration of Dolores Rubell in Sing Sing is a mean and destructive action. All America cries out at the torture of this progressive heroine, and I can only add my own cavil.

My wife, you humble me with your righteous anger and fortitude. Soon the people will wake up and the facts will reach them.

Just hold the fort, Dolly. I am your loving

Solly

December 3, 1951

Dear Dolores,

I was thinking today of the execution of Willie McGee in May. McGee, as you may recall, was the victim of a frame-up on a rape charge in Mississippi. The legal lynchings of Negroes were not enough for our “leaders”—now they are attempting to do the same thing to political prisoners. Surely the Rubells are sterling examples.

I am enclosing some recent pictures of lynchings for your files, my dear wife—and would like to also point out that bigotry in the good ole U.S.A. is not restricted to the South. A five-foot cross was burned recently in front of a school in New Jersey, where a meeting was held to protest the death sentence of the Trenton Six.

It is impossible to give tongue to all the frightful injustices that are going on in the gruesome new home of the swastika. If they succeed in burning us, they will paralyze other outspoken progressives who criticize the drive toward war. Therefore, my friend, our plight is of utmost importance and linked to the overall peace movement.

In friendly solidarity,

Sol

December 18, 1951

Hubby of mine,

How’s this for a reply to all those smart alecks who tell us we should up and confess? I say to them the train of history doesn’t go backward. The day the Hungarian People’s Republic abandons socialism; the day the German Democratic Republic abandons socialism; the day the Polish People’s Republic jettisons socialism—on that day the Rubells will say they’re guilty!

Dolly

January 3, 1952

Dear Dolly,

You will be interested in a letter I received in the mail today from a rather backward and ignorant mine worker. He wrote: “You people talk with marbles in your mouths. Why don’t you come out with it and tell people what you stand for and what you believe in?”

I was abashed to think of how dumb this poor lout really was. Have the Rubells not stated over and over again their unwavering faith in courage, confidence, and perspective? Have they not stated their belief in the ultimate triumph of decency and justice? Have they not said they stand with the sweet breaths of children, the rosy laughter of the workers, the fight for peace, bread, and roses? Have the Rubells not declared their hatred of the war profiteers, the munitions makers, the Southern Bourbons, the oligarchies and monopolies? Have we not written of how we found the answers to all of the complex riddles which a cold and exploitational society engendered? The answers we found are absolutely correct for all time. They have been proven by experience itself. Anyone who has the guts to explore and examine as we did will come up with exactly the same answers, and, surprisingly, in exactly the same language. Even the punctuation and grammar will be the same.
That’s
the kind of people we are.

That is why we are indestructible, and why we are in prison today. When the people learn the truth, they too shall hearken and join the common clarion call.

Well, heck, Doll, if that isn’t clear, this guy’s some kind of an idiot, what say?

Golly!—

Solly

(The following letters stay in the vault.—Henky Rubin)

May 23, 1954

Dear Friend,

In sooth, the Rubell case fascinates me. Here is an ordinary couple, their days filled with the little tasks common to their kind. When the time came, and vile disgusting lice spewed their filtheth uponest them, they stood up to be counted.

Lo, when Judgment Day cometh, these poisonous snakes will be ground into the dust where they belongeth.

Thou, my husband, share my profoundeth interest in this case.

Hy Briské laid his unclean hands upon our sacred family. My sister Americans by their inertia let his foul deeds go unchallenged. That little kike bastard, he had a field day with me. There is no creep on the face of the earth like Hy Briské.

Shall my heart forever be fraught with mute, abysmal anguish? What about yours, my husband? Well, it’s almost over for us.

We have shared the best kind of love. I will say it aloud. Red love. The color of history, sex, blood, and revenge. We were not bound by the past, shackled by religious shit and superstition. Those fur traps on the rich bitches in the synagogues didn’t interest us. The big
mochers
in the front rows in their jewelry and gold stolen from the workers.

There is only one Soviet Union in the world.

There—I’ve said it.

And one Communist Party, the true enemy of genocide and Nazism.

I enjoyed it. I die with glee at what I accomplished.

And you damn well better doeth the same.

Love,

Dolly

May 25, 1954

My dear children,

The system of thought that Mommy and I believe in teaches us that there are two ways of thinking: the subjective and the objective. It is the objective that allows us to see beyond our own narrow, petty concerns to the condition of all our fellow men and women.

And while at a time like this, I can well understand what my dearest children are feeling, I hope you, Joey, and you, Amy, will see the value of what I am trying to tell you.

You children must know that the sight of you, the feel and smell of you, having you on my lap asking me questions (like yours, Joey: “Where did your moustache go, Daddy?”) are the dearest things I have ever experienced in my life.

Those are my subjective feelings. And I know very well that you love me as your Daddy every bit as much. If there was anything I could do—without sacrificing many other good people to stay with you—I would do it gladly.

But I do not have that choice. My objective thoughts are that what I am doing will benefit millions and millions of little boys and girls. We live in a period of history—and I hope with all my heart that you will someday study and learn this for yourselves—when for the very first time people will no longer live as slaves. They will control their own destinies. The system that has brought this about is the Soviet system. Don’t ever let anyone try to bluff you into doubting this. Up to the very last minute liars have tried to convince Mommy and me that the Soviet Union is a bad place. But we
know
it is tops. Remember always: there is nothing more cunning than anti-Communism. It is the refuge of haters, scoundrels, and Nazis.

I could have lied and confessed to having done something evil, and betrayed everything that I believed in with all my heart. So could have Mommy. Many other people would have been arrested, and the Soviet Union would have been tarnished in the eyes of the world. The hyenas would have been unleashed.

Just know that your Daddy and Mommy were innocent. We helped the hungry, the downtrodden, the helpless, all over the world by our silence. You will live to see singing tomorrows. In all modesty, your Daddy and Mommy are part of those tomorrows.

Do not forget us. Do not forget why we died. And some day you will understand this as well:

It was for you, my children. For you.

Your loving father,

Solomon