The Lacuna (48 page)

“I know that you were in Mexico,” he said. “We have this information. You worked for a painter in Mexico City, a very well-known Red. I can’t recall his name, but it’s in the files. I came here today to question you about this. In all of this mess, this kind of weather, in North Carolina. I don’t even have chains on the tires.” He sighed.

“To question me about working for a painter in Mexico?”

“That’s about the extent of it. You could deny it, most of them deny. To begin with. But I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t usually help.”

“Why would I deny it?”

“This information alone is reason for dismissing you from your government post. That’s what happens now, if you choose not to deny the associations. In time there may be more. I think you’re probably going to get a McFarland letter.”

“Who is McFarland?”

“McFarland is nobody. But this letter is bad news, it would contain the actual charges. The higher-ups have intimated they are accumulating some pretty shocking evidence against you.”

“I see. Who is supplying this shocking evidence?”

“Mr. Shepherd, be reasonable. You know we can’t tell you that. If we allowed all the accused to confront their accusers, we would have no informants left. It would infringe on our ability to investigate.”

“Your ability to investigate. That’s the important thing.”

“Correct. In this day and age, we have a duty to protect the citizen. It’s a precarious business. People have no idea, they should be very grateful. You should be grateful, Mr. Shepherd.”

“It’s a difficult point you make, Mr. Myers. I felt pretty cozy here today, before you came knocking.” I got up to put more wood on the fire, a piece of cedar shingle that sent a little shower of sparks onto the floor. I dusted up the ash, no harm done. But I seemed to have gotten up the dander of Myers, as far as it went.

“The mental world of the Communist is secretive,” he said. “The Soviet Fatherland has to be preserved at any cost, and its enemies confounded.” He seemed to be quoting a handbook, speaking in the general direction of the bookcase. Maybe he was trying to read titles:
Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Dreiser
, the suspect will alphabetize his books at any cost. Mrs. Brown, largely to blame.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. I stayed where I was, feet to the fire. This was some sort of Jacson Mornard who’d arrived at my door, hat in hand, blade beneath the coat. I had let him in, brought the coffee. As Lev always said, you won’t see it coming.

He shifted himself around to face me. “The thinking of the Communist is that no one who opposes him can possibly have any merit whatsoever. It’s a psychological illness. The Communist cannot adjust himself to logic.”

“That’s a point of view. But I was thinking of what you said about confronting my accuser. I thought the Constitution gave me the right to know the charges against me. And who was bringing them.”

Myers drained his coffee cup and leaned forward with a little grunt to set the cup on the table. We were nearly finished, I could tell.

“Whenever I hear this kind of thing,” he said, “a person speaking about constitutional rights, free speech, and so forth, I think, ‘How can he be such a sap? Now I can be
sure
that man is a Red.’ A word to the wise, Mr. Shepherd. We just do not hear a real American speaking in that manner.”

November 2

Mrs. Brown left early to go to the polls. She says the Elementary down the block would be my voting place, if I could be troubled to
use it. I have promised her I’ll get my voting card before the next go-round. Meanwhile the neighborhood children are having the day off, out fighting their snow wars, building forts and goggle-eyed men. The one in the next yard looks like Agent Myers, rotund and slump-shouldered, a potato for his nose, peering at my window wearing the old fedora I gave Romulus.

November 3

She came in at nine with the mail and daily papers, all claiming Dewey had won the presidency, in the largest typeface imaginable. Poor Tommy: that toothbrush moustache does loom large, above the fold. But Mrs. Brown’s eyes were ablaze. She did a little dance stomping the snow off her boots in the doorway, unwinding her scarf. I haven’t seen such fire in her since Mexico.

“You look like you’ve had the canary for breakfast.”

“Here it is, Mr. Shepherd. Dewey hasn’t won it. Turn on the radio.”

At first the news was about airlifts into Berlin, those desperate people now six months under siege. The American flyers are getting in more food than ever, thousands of tons, and now also coal so the Berliners won’t freeze. The interview was an air force man who said next month they plan to drop candy and toys from the planes, with little parachutes. “Those German kiddies will have Santa Claus, whether Joe Stalin wants them to or not,” he vowed.

“Mr. Shepherd, how be ye?” she asked suddenly. I must have looked unwell.

I blew my nose to preserve dignity. I’d been close to tears, for the most ridiculous reason. “I was thinking of my old boss, Lev Trotsky,” I confessed. “He would have loved that report. The triumph of compassion over Stalin’s iron fist. The people prevail, with candy and parachutes.”

“It’s our boys helping them do it,” she said, and I said yes, it is, and wanted to dance with Mrs. Brown, stomp my feet at the doorsill. My country ‘tis of thee.

At half past, the election news came back. Truman had been awakened and rolled out of bed in Missouri, informed he might not be on vacation yet. He didn’t stay up last night to listen to the returns; the Democratic campaign had not rented a suite or organized any party for that. They saw no need. While Dewey’s men popped the champagne in New York, Harry put on his pajamas, ate a ham sandwich, and went to bed early.

Now the race was neck and neck, with many states still counting. By mid-morning it was Harry ahead by a nose. We didn’t move from the radio.

Shortly before noon they called it. Harry Truman won.

“Oh, Mr. Shepherd, it’s a day to remember. Those news men could not make a thing true just by saying so. It’s only living makes life.”

I knew what she meant. The cold spell on us is deep, but however bitter the day might appear, winter will pass. I made a fire for us in the living room. A neighbor across the way has torn down his old carriage house and piled the scrap wood by the street.

Mrs. Brown rolled up the
Washington Post
like a log and waved it high, her eyes alight with mischief. “Here’s something to fuel the flames,” she suggested. Before long we’d cast in every one, the magazines too, warming our hands over those trumpeting false prophecies. The magazines with color in them curled in a blue-green blaze. By afternoon the house was so warm Mrs. Brown took off her gloves.

“You can’t give up,” she kept repeating. “You think you know it’s all hopeless but you do not, Mr. Shepherd. You know not.”

December 10

The United Nations have adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was all on the radio today, and even the howlers achieved a tone of deference. Eighteen articles, establishing every person on earth to be born free and equal, endowed with conscience to act toward every other in a spirit of brotherhood. Maybe Mrs. Brown is right, and we know not where a little raft of hope could carry us.
Article 18 states: All persons have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion or belief.

The Raleigh Spectator,
December 16, 1948

Communist Writer Fired for Misdeeds

The Associated Press

December 18

They seem so thrilled to pounce, these press men. Not before, when I was nobody of consequence, only now. Mrs. Brown says envy plays into it. “There are some who’d hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think’s been too lucky. They take it as duty, to equal out life’s misery.”

“They think I’ve been too
lucky?
”

She sighed. “Mr. Shepherd, it’s what you’ve said a hundred times, they don’t know a person’s whole story. They think you just sit in your little room making up tales and getting bags of money for it, while they have to go out rain or shine and talk to Mrs. Smith on Charlotte Street about a pie contest. They’re put out with you for having an easier life.”

“Mrs. Brown, who in this world has an easier life?”

“I wonder that too.”

January 26, 1949

An assignation. First of the new year. Tommy’s attention seems to be wearing thin. Lying on his back blowing smoke rings, his eyes kept going to the window like a bird trapped indoors, wanting out. Rather than gazing upon the spectacle of me, sitting in the Morris chair all bundled up in my long knitted scarf. Mrs. Brown’s Christmas present. If I can keep her long enough I shall be warm as a lamb, head to toe. I thought of getting out last year’s gloves and putting those on too; the little room was freezing.

Maybe I’m only imagining Tommy has gone cool. What do I know of hearts in winter? He’s tired, I know that much. And disappointed. No job in advertising yet, still a traveling salesman for Art, in Washington all last week before coming here. Something at the National Gallery.

“It must have been a hubbub in D.C., with the inauguration.”

“
Hubbub
” he said. “Cat, what language do you speak? My
grandmother
said ‘hubbub.’ Harry Truman says ‘hubbub.’ I believe it was the theme of his inaugural speech. ‘My fellow Americans, we face a great hubbub.’”

“Actually his theme was the false philosophy of communism. We will roll up our sleeves and defeat it.”

“That sounds like a variety of hubbub.”

“It’s not all that funny, Tommy. Not to me. I was hoping for a new theme.”

“Oh, cheer up. You’ll never get to move Winslow Homers for the Department again, poor you. Maybe this solid gold little writing hobby will pan out instead.”

“Because I still have money, I have no problems. Is that what you think?”

“It will get you through times with no friends, my friend.”

“So they say.”

Tommy was carefully studying the palm of his hand, for some reason.

“My motion-picture agreement is off, by the way. No reason given. They’re getting ever so touchy out there about the color red.”

“Stark! There goes my chance to meet Robert Taylor.”

“You could probably arrange it. If you wanted to help him testify against someone. The money’s fantastic, I hear.”

Cold was literally leaking into the room. I could feel it pour in like water around the edges of the window. I had a strange vision of the whole hotel sunk like a ship beneath the sea, entering the world of the fishes.

“Do you know what, Tommy? Next month we should get together at my house. Honestly, it would be nice. I’ll make a
lomo adobado
. You’ve never seen my house.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, but what will the neighbors think.”

“They’ll think I have a friend. One person knocking on my door who’s not in the pay of myself or the FBI. You hear about it all the time.”

He didn’t answer. Finished with the hand inspection, he wound his watch.

“Aren’t you sick of hotels?”

“Fed up to the blinkers, if you want to know. Let’s go down to the bar.”

“We should get dinner. Some nice oxtail soup and Horlick’s, that’s what you need. You’ve let yourself get run down.”

“Oxtail soup and Horlick’s. Cat, you are off the cob.”

“Corny, that would mean. Sorry. I guess I’ll go.”

He rolled himself upright, facing me, black socks on the floor. “Sorry me, chum, I’m just whammed. Sick of hotels, you said it. What is this furniture, all these bars on everything? It gives me the heebies, like I’m in the pen.”

“It’s a style. Mission.”

“
Mission
. Do they send up a preacher with the room service?” He lay back down on the bed, reached overhead to grasp the upright slats on the headboard, and briefly rattled them like a prisoner. “The hotel
in D.C. had a lousy bar, the place was gestanko in general. Did I tell you there was a big scene?”