The Pledge (16 page)

“I'm Bruce Bacon,” Bruce said to Collins. “I interviewed you in Domfront, August of 'forty-four.”

“Yes — yes, of course, we were both covered with mud. You must forgive me for not recognizing you.”

Collins obviously did not care to talk about it, although he was pressed with questions, particularly by Kinholt. “There's a story there,” Kinholt said, and the professor replied that there was a story everywhere, and it was time for everyone to sit down to dinner. In the European manner, he served no drinks before dinner, but there was wine and beer on the big table. Bruce managed to whisper to Molly, “I'll tell you later. He was a lieutenant in the infantry. He won a field commission for distinguished bravery. Not too common.”

The food was German food, pot-roasted brisket of beef, roast potatoes, a dumpling loaf, and, almost apologetically, spinach. The food was delicious, heavy and old-fashioned, and Bruce loved it, washing it down with sweet dark beer. Bruce learned that Frank Collins, who taught trigonometry at Stuyvesant High, attended a small evening group at Professor Goland's apartment, where Goland lectured on nuclear mechanics. Thus their connection. Betty Anderson was an old friend and one-time patient of Nell Goland's, and Kinholt was an old friend of the family. Bruce knew his magazine, but not too well, having never done more than glance at an issue, and he was enough of a movie fan to be in awe of Betty Anderson, who was talking about the situation in Hollywood.

“The sad thing is,” she was saying, “that people are so terrified.”

“With reason,” Kinholt said.

“Oh, no, no,” Betty Anderson protested. “Everyone keeps comparing the situation to Nazi Germany before the war. But I can't make sense of such a comparison. Do you think it's valid, Professor?” she asked Goland.

A plump, short man, his head surrounded by a halo of fluffy white hair, his blue eyes eager and alert behind gold-rimmed spectacles, Professor Goland responded to a question by pursing his lips for a long moment and nodding, whether his answer was in the affirmative or the negative. This time he agreed with Betty Anderson. “No — not a valid comparison at all. Mr. Truman does not want a fascist country. But he does want an absolute and deep break with the Soviet Union. They're not afraid of communism here, where the Party is so small and fragile, but he is very afraid indeed of the communist parties of France and of Italy. Because the communists led the resistance, they have become great mass parties, and Mr. Truman's nightmare is that these parties could take over the European Continent. They cannot, of course, and they will not, but can you tell that to Truman?”

“But the terror is real,” Miss Anderson insisted. “I went into a restaurant in Beverly Hills last week, and there were two people I've known over twenty years, and they looked the other way the moment they saw me, and then pretended not to have seen me or noticed that I was there. And this isn't the first time.”

“And you don't think it began this way in Germany?” Kinholt said.

“No way. No. The conditions are too different.”

“Then what becomes of the Communist Party here?”

When no one leaped at that, Molly said, “They'll destroy us. Ten years ago, we were rooted in the trade unions. Not today. We made too many mistakes, and that wretched little bastard J. Edgar Hoover has become too smart. Our membership is down to thirty thousand at the most, and maybe a thousand of them are FBI agents.”

“That bad?” Betty Anderson asked. “I saw the May Day parade here in nineteen forty-six. We had thirteen thousand men in uniform marching under the Party's banners. And just in New York.”

“It changes quickly,” the professor said.

“We never joined the Party here,” his wife said. “Of course, we suffered all the torment of being communists without joining the Party, and now who knows whether I'll be able to cling to my operating privileges. But we were in the Party in Germany, and we thought we had support. But the support became quiet with fear, and in one night, Hitler put a hundred thousand communists to death. Nobody remembers that or wants to remember it.”

“We're all being so bleak,” Frank Collins said softly. “I search everywhere for dark beer and never find it. Yet when I come here, there is always dark beer.”

“That is positive,” Molly said.

“And we won't have fascism here,” Collins continued. “Even if they wipe out the Party. We're not Germans. With all the fear that's going around, it's still only a handful — and when it gets large enough, the people will fight back, believe me. It may take time, but we won't have fascism.”

“No, they're not putting us in jail, not yet,” Betty Anderson said. “But they take away our jobs, our careers. I know at least twenty people who can't work in film. They are blacklisted.”

“The same in the schools. We're holding our breath.”

“You're taking it lying down,” Kinholt said.

“You want barricades?”

“Abe is a literary leftist,” the professor said.

“Molly's the lucky one. They can't fire her.”

“Just don't you believe that. Communism's like Christianity — as Mark Twain put it, Christianity's a fine religion that's never been tried. So be it with communism. I used to think that Russia would give it a shot, but like the Pope, Stalin doesn't understand the religion he preaches and doesn't dare to give it a chance to work. Lenin said you build socialism with the bricks of capitalism. Paraphrase,” Molly said, smiling wanly, “you try to build it with the pricks of capitalism. So don't think they can't fire me. They bring me up on charges every couple of weeks for what I write.”

“Too bitter, Molly,” the professor said. “You're the best thing they have on that paper. They won't expel you from the Party. No, couldn't be.”

Kinholt said to Bruce, “We haven't heard a word from you, Bacon. You're the odd man out, since I never remember you standing left of center, and here you are in this den of reds. I remember reading your stuff and thinking what a joy it would be to have you write for me. I know what brings you here. I'd join the Republican Party for one of the looks your redheaded friend casts on you. But is it beauty alone?”

“Oh, don't be such an oaf, Kinholt,” Betty Anderson said.

Bruce did not like the man, but he smiled and said, “If you're asking whether I'm a communist — the answer is no. And I don't expect to be one in the future.”

“You know, Abe,” the professor said, “you do put your foot in your mouth, if that's the expression. When I testified on the bomb, a senator asked me whether I was Jewish. I said yes, even though I was born Jewish. He asked me why I said that? I told him because, although from your name and looks you were apparently born a Christian, nothing you have said lends any credence to it.” And, turning to Bruce, “Forgive him. He's a good man.” His manner was so gentle that Kinholt couldn't take offense, and Collins leaped into the gap.

“Mr. Bacon is no stranger to me. I don't think he'd be a stranger anywhere good people come together. I met him in Europe after a nasty battle, and we both sat in the mud while he interviewed me with a pencil stub and a tiny notebook that was damp.”

“The notebook's a sort of badge or something,” Bruce said. “I have a good memory. I remember that one particularly, because when you were done — well, do you remember what you said to me?”

“I remember very well. I said to you, ‘I'm finished. I'll never fire a gun again.' Yes, that's more or less what I said.”

“And did you?”

They were all listening now. The silence lengthened, and then Collins said, “Did I fire my gun again? No. Never. I had killed twelve men, God help me. I became a pacifist at that moment, although it doesn't heal anything. If there's a God, He can't forgive me, and if there isn't one, I can never forgive myself. I didn't have enough guts to refuse the field commission they gave me. I like to feel I was still in shock, but it was the guts I lacked.”

“I don't understand,” Bruce said. “You can't be a communist.”

“I can't be anything else. Who else is fighting for peace?”

“And the force and violence?”

“That's the press's whipping boy. The only force and violence I know about have been directed toward me.”

Walking slowly with Molly toward the subway station, asked how he felt about the evening, Bruce replied, “Confused — and I ate too much.”

“You ate like a poor, hungry child.”

“I know. The food and the beer were marvelous.”

“What confused you?”

“You're supposed to be atheists?”

“Well, they don't expel us for believing in God.”

“Do you? I never asked you that before.”

“Only if She's a woman,” Molly said.

“I'm serious.”

“So am I. What else confused you?”

“You know,” Bruce said, “we never have a real argument. I know, I do get pissed off when you start throwing your brains and information around, but I mean a real argument. I expected one tonight. I said to myself, Here she's bringing me into — well, into —”

“Den of reds.”

“Right. And I was going to face the lot of you and fight you on your own grounds, and then, damn it, there was nothing to fight about.”

“We can try again. I'll change the crowd.”

“Go soak your head.”

“You call that nice?” Molly asked. “That's hoodlum talk. The fact that I'm a little smarter than you doesn't make me want to be treated like less than a lady. Six months ago, you wouldn't have dared. I was so pleased to find an actual, living, breathing gentleman, just like in the books of Richard Harding Davis.”

“Good God, you read Richard Harding Davis?”

“I read everything, sonny, and don't you ever forget that.”

Then they went into the subway and rode downtown to her place and drank Alka-Seltzer and went to bed.

A week later, Bruce received a telephone call from an old associate at the
Tribune.
They had been copy boys together, and today this man, Jerome Rogers, was a highly paid staff writer on
Life.
Bruce had not seen him since before the war. He had found Bruce's number in the phone book, and now he asked Bruce to meet him at the St. Regis bar on a matter of great importance. He was waiting for Bruce in front of the big Maxfield Parrish King Cole panel, and after they shook hands, he sounded off on what a great piece of folk painting the King Cole panel was. Bruce thought otherwise, but was in no mood to argue aesthetics. He resented being summoned like this and then greeted as if they were no different from the two kids of seven years ago. He had never been very fond of Rogers, and he had no great admiration for the costume of sneakers, flannels, and leather-patched jacket that Rogers wore.

After initial praise — “Hey, great stuff, great writing — you
were
in that war. I was in England, but you
were
in it right up to the neck” — he ordered drinks. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. Bruce had a beer, Rogers a martini.

“I felt I could do you a favor,” Rogers said. “I owe it.”

“You don't owe me.”

“I owe myself. I watch this crazy anticommunist crusade, and I keep saying to myself, Nazi Germany all over again.” He dropped his voice. “I was in Henry Luce's office yesterday, and J. Edgar Hoover came in. J. Edgar himself. Luce doesn't ask me to go, so I just sit there. Hoover is there only a few minutes. He hands a fat brown paper envelope to Luce, and then he says, ‘I still haven't found out whether Simpson works for them. He's got to be a commie, but we can't get a trace on it.' And then Luce says, ‘I have my own man on their National Committee. Just hold on.' Then Luce dials a number direct, and he says, ‘Hello?' He listens. Then he says, ‘About Buckingham Simpson, is he in the Party?' Then he listens. Then he puts down the telephone, turns to Hoover, and says to him, ‘No. He's not a member.' ‘Can you trust this man?' Hoover wants to know, and Luce says, ‘He's on their National Committee and he's been on my payroll for years.'”

Bruce listened quietly until Rogers had finished, and then he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Call it an act of conscience. I don't agree with you guys about anything, but this is no way to do it.”

“Who are
you guys
?”

“Come on, Bruce, you know what I mean.”

“Please tell me.”

“What are you sore at? What in hell did I do to make you sore at me? You're the only communist I know. I bring you this to save you some grief.”

“So I'm a communist? Where did that come from?”

“It's around. If I knew anyone else in the Party, I wouldn't have come to you.”

“I'm sorry,” Bruce said. “I guess I'm on a short fuse these days. I'm trying to finish a book, and anything that takes me away from it provokes me. I'm not a communist, Jerry, never have been one.”

“I'm sorry as hell, my turn now,” Rogers said. “I feel like a horse's ass of the first water.”

“Forget it.”

“Do you know anyone? Can you pass it on?”

“Maybe. Why don't you forget about it. I don't think it means a damned thing anyway.”

But thinking about it, Bruce decided that possibly it did mean something of importance in Molly's world, and he told her the gist of it that same night.

“I don't know why he decided I was a communist,” Bruce said.

“Well, you date me, and that gets around, and then there's the blacklist at the networks. If one has it, they all have it. But do you think this Rogers guy was telling the truth?”

“If he could invent that story of J. Edgar Hoover in Henry Luce's office, my hat goes off to him. About the National Committee — what is the National Committee?”

“That's the top leadership of the C.P. It's supposed to go up and down, starting with neighborhood or factory units, then the county, then the state, and then the top, the National Committee. But mostly it just goes down from the top, and that's most of what's wrong with us. You're sure he said this guy Luce is paying off is in the National Committee?”