The Troubled Air (41 page)

“Still,” Archer said quietly, “I think you ought to go.”

“I’m not dressed for the occasion,” Vic said, touching his tie.

“We can stop in on the way downtown,” said Archer, “and buy you a black tie.”

Vic shook his head. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I could be dressed like an undertaker and I still wouldn’t go.”

“Out of respect for Pokorny,” Archer said stubbornly. “Out of respect to his friends.”

“Respect for what?” Vic asked derisively. “A hundred and sixty pounds of dead meat. And I don’t respect Pokorny. He was a gutless little man and he blew up the first time anybody took the trouble to poke him. As for his friends …” Vic laughed harshly. “They’re feeling mournful and guilty and they think going down and sitting for an hour while somebody moons over the corpse is going to give them back that bright, innocent, empty-boweled feeling. Well, I don’t feel guilty and I have too many other things to be mournful about. And when I die, I hope somebody has the sense to throw me into a wagon quietly and dump me somewhere with the other garbage.” He smiled mirthlessly at Archer. “Getting my message, Jack?” he asked.

“Sure,” Archer said, unpleasantly. He started to turn away to talk to Barbante, who was sitting three seats away, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his short legs stretched out in front of him. Barbante hadn’t said a word all morning. As usual, in the morning, he seemed sleepy.

“Did you see this?” Vic carelessly offered Archer the newspaper he was holding. It was a so-called liberal paper that wound back and forth across the Communist Party line on most issues. The paper was folded back to the. page on which the columnists held forth. “This feller,” Vic said, tapping a column with his finger, “is taking a bite out of your ass this fine morning.”

“What?” Archer took the paper and stared at the column. He saw his name several times scattered throughout the piece, but for the moment he somehow couldn’t start to read it.

“J. F. Roberts,” Vic said. “He does think pieces for unthinking readers. He doesn’t like you this morning at all. You’re the vanguard of Fascism, he says; you killed the musician. He’s been talking to Mrs. Pokorny, and she seems pretty peevish.”

Vic lit a cigarette and watched Archer closely as he read the column. The whole thing was in there. Mrs. Pokorny had obviously not held back anything. The column was written in harsh, newspaper prose and Archer and the Immigration Department shared honors in it for dogging Pokorny to death. Reading it, Archer could not help but feel how righteous the columnist made the piece sound. If it had been anyone but himself, he realized, he would have approved of the column completely. The columnist heaped scorn on the Immigration Department for wishing to exile a man who twenty-seven years ago in a foreign country had flirted with the Communists for only two months. The arguments, Archer realized, were exactly the ones that he himself had used to defend Pokorny. As for Archer, the columnist contemptuously dismissed him as a timid hack so eager to keep his job and do the bidding of his masters that he leaped at their slightest signal and committed artistic murder at a snap of the corporate fingers. The entire article, Archer realized dully, was written in exactly the same exasperated and belligerent tone as the articles in
Blueprint
on the other side of the question. Style, he thought, is interchangeable on political questions. Political articles these days, he decided, all sound as though they had been dictated by Mrs. Pokorny or an opposed twin.

Archer read slowly. It was difficult to go through the untruths that were impossible to contradict, the facts that were slightly and fatally twisted, the biting epithets that were attached to his name, the reasonable-sounding half-truths that were so false and so damning. Mrs. Pokorny, Archer saw, had also revealed that Archer had tried to persuade her to disguise the fact that Pokorny had killed himself and there was a literal and quite accurate account of his conversation with her about the pills and the robe. God, Archer thought, she must have a notebook on her at all times. In print this way, with the shadow of the dead man hovering over the page, Archer’s action, which he had attempted almost automatically and out of a protective instinct for the composer and his wife, now seemed like the most callous maneuvering and concealment. If it was about anyone else, Archer thought, I’d think he was the most despicable coward in the world.

His hands were shaking when he finished the article. The columnist promised to supply new and equally damning evidence the next day. Suddenly, staring at the page, Archer hated the sight of his name in print. Clement Archer, Clement Archer … The name had a tainted ring to it after its use ten times in ten paragraphs. Archer blinked, checking himself consciously from blurting out what he felt. He handed the paper back to Vic. He tried to smile. “This fellow,” he said, “really lays it on, doesn’t he?”

“Great little old circulation builder,” Vic said carelessly, taking the paper. “You still going to the funeral?”

Archer hesitated. Everybody at the funeral would probably have read the piece. They would be friends and relatives of the dead man and in the moment of grief and anger almost certainly would share Mrs. Pokorny’s estimate of Archer’s share in the tragedy. And there would undoubtedly be photographers there from the newspapers to catch the look of guilt on Archer’s face as he confronted the widow. I wish I was sick, Archer thought. I wish I was sick in bed with the doctor in the room telling me it would kill me to go out today.

“Yes,” Archer said to Vic. “Yes, I’m going to the funeral.”

“You don’t like to let yourself off anything, do you?” Vic said. Somehow he sounded cold and unfriendly and Archer wondered if he believed what was in the paper this morning, too. Vic stood up. “I’m going to get my hair cut,” he said. “See you at one. Do you want this?” He waved the newspaper a little.

“No, thanks.”

Vic nodded and tossed the paper onto a chair. Then he strolled out, a tall, youthful man in a fine tweed suit, heading for the barber who would clip his thick blond hair close around his well-shaped head, so that he would look like a gentleman who had been graduated not too long before from a good college, a man who was too lucky to have to attend funerals.

While the door was still open, Woodrow Burke came in. He saw Archer and waved and came over quickly. The ex-commentator was fatter than ever and his collar was too tight for him now, giving his face a pale, strangled look. In America, Archer thought, adversity adds weight. The highest standard of living in the world, operating to put double chins on the country’s failures. Burke had a copy of the newspaper under his arm and Archer thought that he could tell from the expression on Burke’s face that the commentator had read the column. But at least he wasn’t drunk.

“Good morning, soldier,” Burke said. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He just stood in front of Archer, fat, rumpled, pale, his hair thinning, pretending he wasn’t a failure, pretending he didn’t have a hangover, pretending his suit wasn’t too tight for him. “How’re things?”

“Great,” Archer said. “How’d they happen to let you in?”

“They told me there was going to be a break for a couple of hours and there’re still one or two of the guards around here who remember when I was a big shot, so they passed me in. Do you mind?”

Archer shook his head. “Delighted,” he said. “Always pleased to see old friends and debtors.”

“Oh.” Burke smiled fleshily. “I guess I had that coming. I never wrote and thanked you for the check, did I?”

“I don’t seem to recall that you did,” Archer said slowly. He wanted to get away from Burke. It made him nervous to talk to a man with that paper folded under his arm, with the name Clement Archer, Clement Archer, all over the inside page.

“Regrets,” Burke said. “I must mend my manners. I meant to. I really did. I even wrote myself a memorandum.” He dug in his pocket and got out a crumpled piece of paper. He smoothed the paper out, his hands shaking minutely, and peered at it. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at Archer. “See for yourself. My intentions were of the best.”

Archer took the paper. “Write Archer this week,” he read. “Bread and butter note.” Archer rolled the slip into a ball and flipped it at a wastebasket ten feet away. It didn’t go in. “Thanks,” Archer said. “I’ll file it away to remind me of you.”

“Look,” Burke said, “I didn’t come up here to talk about that. I forgot and I’m sorry and I apologize and I don’t want you to hold it against me. I’m working on something that’s very important for you and just because I forget things these days and you’re sore at me, I don’t want you to …”

“I’m not sore at you,” Archer said. “Forget it. I haven’t got much time now, Burke. This is burying day for radio musicians and I’ve got to go to the funeral. So if you’ll call me some other time, I’ll try to …”

“Don’t brush me off, Archer,” Burke said, his tone half-pleading, half-pugnacious. “I’ve read this little hymn of hate this morning …” He waved the newspaper. “And I happen to know that worse is coming from the other side, and you’d better start to worry about building character. Fast. And I want to help you. You’ve got to believe me, Clem.”

“What do you mean—worse is coming from the other side?” Archer tried to smile. “What’re they going to do—say that I murdered my mother with an axe?”

“Something along those lines,” Burke said. “I’ve got an advance copy here.” He dug in his inside pocket and brought forth a thick mess of papers, old envelopes, bills, newspaper clippings. He sorted through them with his thick, shaky hands. “Friend of mine who’s a press agent at a night club. Gets the dope early. They’re going to hang you with a nice, thick rope … God damn it,” he muttered petulantly, “I could have sworn I had it on me.” He went swiftly through the sheaf of papers again, not finding what he was looking for. “Well, I don’t have it,” he said, stuffing the papers back, making a big bulge in the front of his jacket. “But they have you listed as belonging to everything but the Sicilian national guard. Listen to me, Clem …” He stood close to Archer, holding onto his sleeve, peering earnestly at him, his eyes yellowed and opaque from ten years’ drinking. “Tomorrow it’s going out that you’re a Red, a Red sympathizer, a defender of Reds, and it’ll be all over town, and unless you do something about it, you won’t be able to get a job sweeping out the men’s room on the 22nd floor.”

Archer chuckled. He didn’t mean to, and it surprised him. “Don’t they read the newspapers?” he asked. “Don’t they read that I’m in the vanguard of Fascism and that I’m a tool of the big corporations?”

“They don’t read anything but old letterheads and inscribed copies of
Mein Kampf,”
Burke said bitterly. “Ask me. I’m the boy who knows. Nobody would listen to me a year ago, when they pinched me out of the line. Maybe they’ll listen now. People’ve been yellow and they’re paying for it now. They didn’t defend me or the others when we got the boot to the seat of the trousers. They just pretended it had nothing to do with them and prayed they wouldn’t get it next if they kept their mouths shut. Well, they got it next, and you’re getting it next, because those’re the tactics, soldier, defeat the buggers in detail, make them commit themselves piecemeal, never let them fight in mass.”

“Burke,” Archer said wearily, “will you forget for a moment that you were once a military commentator and talk in something that sounds like English? What’re you driving at?”

Burke looked offended. “Sorry if my vocabulary doesn’t please you,” he said stiffly. “What I’m trying to say is that this is the time for everybody to get together and fight for everybody’s life. Actors, writers, directors, commentators. And now is the time. Pokorny’s suicide makes a perfect peg for it. Poor little jerk of a man lying in a pool of blood because those bastards on
Blueprint
did a job on him. It’ll give a focus to the whole thing and people who wouldn’t lift a finger otherwise’ll be shocked enough for a day or two to rally round. What I came here to say, Clement,” Burke said, “is that there’s going to be a meeting tomorrow night after the theatre, so that actors who’re playing in shows can get to it. A protest meeting against the blacklist and everything it stands for. All shades of political opinion. Figure out some way of protecting artists and semi-artists like you and me—” Burke smiled bleakly “—from being pushed over the cliff. And we want you to make a speech.”

“Wait a minute,” said Archer. “Before you go on I want to make something clear to you. I’m absolutely opposed to the Communists. You still want me?”

“I have some interesting news for you,” Burke said. He was trying to smile, but his lips were trembling. “I’m not a Communist. That’s for your private information. And I hate the bastards. That’s for anyone’s information. And I don’t know whether you believe me or not and I don’t care. And you can say anything you want in your speech. Just be there. Present yourself. Just tell what happened to you. Tell what happened to the people on your program. If you don’t want to say anything else, just tell the group how competent or incompetent Vic Herres and Stanley Atlas and Alice Weller are, and what sweet music that poor dead jerk used to write before he took the pills.”

“Hold it,” Archer said sharply. “What’s this about Herres and Weller? Who brought their names into this?”

“Tomorrow, son,” Burke said. “In the same article in which they give you the low-level bombardment. It’s all-out now, and the shelters’re all full. Well?” Burke stepped back and cocked his head, narrowing his eyes to look at Archer.

“Who else is speaking,” Archer said, “from this program?”

“I asked O’Neill. He’s going to let me know tonight. Don’t worry,” Burke said. “You’ll have plenty of company. In the last year there’ve been two hundred people canned. Bank accounts’re dropping fast enough all around town so that people’re just about ready to open their mouths.”

“If I made a speech,” Archer said, “who’d have to approve it?”

“Nobody. You won’t have to show it to anyone. Well?”

Archer hesitated. He looked around the room. O’Neill had just come back and was standing against the far wall, watching Burke and himself. O’Neill looked like a detective in his dark-blue suit and his black tie.