The Pledge (31 page)

“No. That's not true.”

“Do you know when the Broadway Forum was organized, Mr. Gregory?”

“No, I don't.”

“Then let me inform you that it was organized in March of nineteen forty-six. That was after you left the Communist Party, was it not?” And when there was no response from Gregory, she snapped, “Answer my question, Mr. Gregory!”

“Yes, after I left the Communist Party.”

Sylvia walked to her table, spreading the pile of notes and selecting a single sheet; and staring at it, without looking at Gregory, she said, “You are a professional witness, aren't you, Mr. Gregory?”

“I don't know what you mean by that.”

“I mean that during the last two years, you have appeared as a witness eleven times — five times in contempt of Congress cases, four times in the trial of the Communist Party leaders and two other similar trials, and once in a perjury trial. Do you get paid for these appearances?”

“I get my expenses.”

“And that's all?”

“Sometimes other payments.”

Sylvia nodded. “You work hard at betrayal. Are you being paid in this case?”

Button rose to object to Sylvia's characterization of the witness. The judge upheld him. Sylvia rescinded the characterization, and asked Gregory whether he had ever attended a meeting of the Broadway Forum.

“No. I don't go to communist meetings. I have no interest in them.”

“But you are an expert witness on their content. How can that be if you never attend any of them?”

“Because I know how the Party works.”

“Without being there? That's remarkable. Did you know that Eugene O'Neill and Sinclair Lewis and Robert Frost all spoke at the Broadway Forum?”

“I didn't know that,” Gregory replied, his confidence increasing. “I don't keep track of every speaker.”

“And Father Le Grand, a Paulist priest? Are these people communists?”

“If they spoke at the Broadway Forum, they have a relationship to communism.”

“And what exactly is a relationship? I am a little uneasy in the assumption, but it would appear that you are a human being, and since I am also a human being —”

Button rose to object.

“— we have a relationship, although I am not proud of it.”

Button objected to Miss Kline's constant demeaning of the witness. The judge had not been listening intently, and he called both attorneys to the bench.

“She constantly insults the witness. The witness is an honorable man, a former minister of the Gospel.”

“Enlighten me,” the judge said.

“She calls him nonhuman.”

“I simply said,” Sylvia protested, “that he appeared to be a human being. That's hardly an insult.”

“Let it pass,” the judge said. He wanted to get the day over.

“The objection, Your Honor?” the stenographer asked.

“Overruled,” the judge said. It made a better record if some of the government's objections were overruled.

“I asked you before and I ask you again, what precisely is this relationship you speak of?”

“A connection with the Communist Party.”

“You've heard Senator McCarthy characterize the Secretary of State as a communist. Does he have the same connection with the Communist Party?”

Button was on his feet, objecting.

“He introduced the Broadway Forum!” Sylvia protested. “Mr. Button opened the door.”

“Senator McCarthy has no connection with the Broadway Forum,” Button said.

“I suggest you save it for your closing remarks, Miss Kline,” the judge said. “I'll allow the objection.”

Sylvia turned to Gregory and said, “Do you have any proof of your assertion that Mr. Bacon is a member of the Communist Party?”

“My experience tells me that he is.”

There was no rebuttal. The government finished its case, and left Bruce dumbfounded. “Is that it? Is that all?”

“Apparently,” Sylvia said.

“And that's what they're putting out to convict me?”

“I'm afraid it's all they need.”

At dinner that evening, Sylvia sat depressed and silent as Bruce reported to Molly on their day in court.

“What do you make of it?” Molly asked Sylvia.

“It's perfunctory,” Sylvia replied. “It's a charade. The law says that there must be a trial, and so we are having a trial. The verdict is in, but we are having a trial. I'm not earning the five hundred dollars a day that I'm charging you, and when you come right down to it, you don't need a lawyer.”

“Of course I need a lawyer.”

“I'll ask for a dismissal tomorrow,” Sylvia said. “They have no case and they've presented no case. In any court that dealt in proper law, the judge would throw out the case. Judge Harwood Wilson will not. What gets to me is not that they're playing dirty; I expected that; but their moves are so stupid and obvious that I anticipate each one. That's what gets to me.”

Bruce couldn't make love that night. Rigid, he drew back from Molly's hands. Each rejection of her was, as Molly realized full well, a matter of blame that left him cold and filled with an anger he couldn't express. He would deny that he held her in any way responsible for the position he was in; he would deny that he had any fear of prison; but both denials were unreal, and underneath his claim to total objectivity was fear and blame, both very real — and both capable of immersing him in guilt; and it was not guilt alone but a terror that, unable to conceal the fact that he blamed her, he would lose her. It was the thought of losing her that put things in proper order. It was not Molly but Greenberg who had brought him to the Broadway Forum, and it was not Molly but Legerman who had made the connection with the Bengali communists.

Unable to sleep, he lay in silence for more than an hour, and then softly and tentatively asked Molly whether she was asleep.

“No.”

He rolled over to embrace her, and she welcomed him, wrapping her arms around him.

“I love you so much,” he said. “There's no way I can tell you how much I love you.”

“And you blame me.”

“No, I don't blame you. Maybe sometimes for a little, and I know how crazy that is, and then I am terrified that I might drive you away.”

“You'll never drive me away,” Molly said.

“You know how much danger I've seen. I told you about the time I was trapped in a foxhole, interviewing a GI, and a counterattack rolled past us. I spent the whole night in that hole, and God Almighty, I was so scared, but not this way. I've never been frightened this way before. They take away my rights, my strength, my belief, my whole lifelong faith in this beloved country of mine. I know you grew up in poverty and bitterness, and I understand completely why you're a red, but I grew up with my belief in this country never tested, not even during the war. Oh, I know we produced bastards during the war, men like Patton, but they were part of the need to win; America, the golden God-anointed power that destroyed Hitler. And now, a few years later, I'm here in this lunatic courtroom, being tried in a scene out of Lewis Carroll. I don't know how to deal with it, Molly. Your Party leaders accepted it as the logic of their lives. I suppose for years you've all been preaching the corruption of our system, and now it confirms what you believe. But I can't stop believing the other way.”

“Then believe your way, darling, and this is a filthy, momentary aberration. We'll live through it, believe me.”

In the morning, at breakfast, Sylvia told them that the way the judge was pushing it along, they might very well wind up today. “I have only one real witness, Bruce, and that's Molly. What about our character witnesses?”

“I called Dad last night. He'll take a very early train and be here before the noon break. On the other hand, I called my one-time editor, and he said that the board felt it would be an improper position for the press to take — almost a matter of a conflict of interest. I spent four years in college to learn less than I've learned in a few days in the capital of my country.”

“Don't sweat over it,” Sylvia said. “We'll give it our best shot, which is just about all we can do.”

But with Molly in the witness stand and Sylvia facing her, Bruce felt that he would have been better off if he had come down without a lawyer, dispensed with the jury, and told the judge to do whatever he had been instructed to do. Quickly, no fuss, no expense. Well, he had missed that, and here he was, clinging with a very thin thread to the efforts of two women.

Molly wore her sober gray flannel full skirt, a white cotton blouse, and her hair gathered in a bun at the back of her neck. Her lips were red, but modestly so against the milk-white of her skin. Usually, she wore no makeup, but in this case Sylvia persuaded her that one of the points held against communists was that the women tended to go without makeup. While Molly protested that this was apocryphal, she agreed to lip rouge. Noticing the way both men and women in the jury stared at her, Bruce wondered whether she might shorten the odds.

Sylvia began with name, origin, and religion. “Please tell us what is your religion?”

“I'm a Catholic,” Molly said.

“And what church do you belong to?”

“Our family,” Molly said, choosing the words carefully, “are in the parish of Father John Boyle's Church of the Sacred Heart in South Boston.”

“And do you attend that church?” Sylvia asked.

“When I'm in Boston.”

“And what is your occupation, Miss Maguire?”

“I am a journalist,” Molly replied, relieved that she had limited her evasions — not lies, she told herself — about matters of religion. Sylvia had talked her into that, but Molly did not believe for a moment that such religious definitions would mean a thing to the blank-faced jurors. “I work for the
New York Daily Worker.”

“And that is a communist paper, is it not?”

“It is.”

“And you are a member of the Communist Party.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How long have you been a member of the Communist Party?”

“Twelve years or so.”

“Do you know the defendant, Miss Maguire?”

“I know him very well.”

“Would you point to him?”

She pointed, unable to repress a smile. Bruce grinned back. The torpor and depression of the previous day had gone.

“Let the record show that Miss Maguire pointed to the defendant, Bruce Bacon.”

Molly began to giggle. Bruce stifled his laughter, and the judge chided Sylvia.

“What is your relationship to the defendant?”

“He is a dear friend.”

“And how did you meet the defendant, Miss Maguire?”

“I met him the evening he spoke at the Broadway Forum.”

“Was he at that time a communist?”

“No. Not only was he not a communist, but he had only the vaguest notion about what communism was.”

“Did you ever try to convert him to your point of view?”

“No. For one thing, he is stubborn. For another, he was so immersed in his devotion to his native land that he refused even to begin any such discussion. Whereupon, we avoided it.”

“Have you any opinion as to why your friend, Mr. Bacon, was called before the House Committee?”

“Yes, I have. I believe they are using their power to intimidate liberals who have no connection with the Communist Party —”

Button stopped her with his shouted objection: “The House Committee on Un-American Activities is not on trial here!”

Both attorneys went up to the bench. Bruce's father entered the courtroom, and Bruce motioned to him to sit beside him for a moment. “Dad, good to see you. You'll have to wait outside in the witness room until you're called.”

“How's it going?”

Bruce shrugged. “We'll talk about it.” He nodded to the attendant, who led his father to the witness room. Sylvia was saying to Molly, “Why do you suppose Bruce Bacon refused to answer any questions concerning you?”

“I think he loves me — I hope he does. He considers that to inform on me in any way would be dishonorable and leave him in a position where he could not live with himself. There is a long tradition, especially in Ireland, the country my parents came from, about informers being beneath contempt —”

Button objected, and the judge said with annoyance, “Why don't you leave the rhetoric to your lawyer's closing remarks, Miss Maguire?”

“I was trying to answer the question.”

“The question itself is improper,” Button held.

The answer was stricken from the record, and Sylvia asked Molly whether she had any scruples about answering questions about herself.

“None whatsoever.”

“Then if the House Committee had subpoenaed you instead of Mr. Bacon, all their questions would have been answered.”

Again Button objected. The judge motioned them to the bench, and Sylvia said hoarsely, “A man is on trial because he will not inform on a woman he loves. The House Committee's purpose is obtaining information. That is the purpose of every congressional committee. Your Honor, I am making the point that such information was readily available. Miss Maguire would and will testify and answer all questions.”

“Your presumption. The House Committee is one thing, the evidence presented at this trial is something else. If the House Committee desires to hear from Miss Maguire, they have the right to subpoena her. You should know, Miss Kline, what the rules are in this court. You are permitted to practice law in the District of Columbia on the basis of knowing those rules. Now let's get on with it.”

Sylvia Kline went on, trying to prove the innocence of Bruce where communism was concerned and the decency of Bruce where informing was concerned. But neither innocence nor decency was effective in that courtroom.

In his cross-examination, Button asked one question: “Do you and Mr. Bacon share the same apartment?”