The Troubled Air (9 page)

“I
AM NOT GOING TO BE ANGRY,” HUTT WAS WHISPERING. “IT IS NOT MY
intention to be arbitrary. I believe O’Neill exceeded his authority in telling you you could have two weeks, but it has always been my policy to allow my account executives to make their own decisions. If, finally, I do not approve of those decisions, I do not reverse them. I fire the executive.”

Hutt smiled bleakly. He had a face like a wedge, sharp, pale and formidable, and had a tendency to talk in sonorous and legal-sounding paragraphs. He always whispered. Whether it was because he mistrusted his larynx or whether he had discovered that it made people pay more attention to him, Archer didn’t know. But you always had to sit on the edge of your chair and strain forward when you had any dealings with Hutt. He was a man of about fifty, slender and short, in an expensive suit. His graying hair was always brushed tightly around his head and looked, in some lights, like a clipped fur cap. He had been an important figure in the Office of War Information during the war, and he had many contacts high in the Government and in the Army, whom he was always mysteriously calling, in whispers, on long distance. He got drunk on week-ends, but always appeared on Monday mornings clear-eyed and straight-backed, carrying himself like a divisional commander. He was a man who clearly had confidence in himself and his own opinions and who gave orders naturally and was accustomed to being obeyed. Archer saw him only on rare occasions and always felt uncomfortable with him, although Hutt’s manners were correct and friendly and he sometimes took Archer to lunch. His office was cold and unadorned and reminded Archer of surgery.

Just now, O’Neill was sitting glumly in a corner in a leather chair, almost lost in the blunt shadows of the winter afternoon. Archer sat on a padded chair close to Hutt’s desk, listening silently.

“Only on the question of Pokorny,” Hutt went on, “I must beg your indulgence and depart from my usual routine. I must insist that he go immediately. That isn’t really too bad, is it? One out of five?” He smiled frostily. “You couldn’t call me overbearing and meddlesome for that, could you, O’Neill?”

“No, sir,” O’Neill said from the shadows.

“I have very good information,” Hutt said, “that Pokorny perjured himself when he applied for entry into this country in 1939 and that the Government is certain to deport him. Also, some rather important people in the music world vouched for him at that time and their names will give the story notoriety in the newspapers, so that there would be no possibility of its being done quietly.”

“What if Pokorny proves he didn’t perjure himself?” Archer asked. “At his trial or hearing or whatever he’s going to have? What do we do then?”

“Then, of course,” Hutt smiled gently at Archer, “I would be delighted to take him back.”

“Then why can’t we wait until the Government decides?” Archer asked. “Why do we have to deport him in advance?”

“I’m going to say something ugly,” Hutt whispered; smiling again, the wedge momentarily splintering, “and I hope you don’t hold it against me. We can’t afford it. Radio, as you two gentlemen know, is not at the moment in a strong position. In fact, it is not putting it too vigorously to say that the medium is fighting for its life. A new form of entertainment, television, is gaining enormous momentum, capturing our clients and our audience; the economic situation of the country is uncertain and advertisers are retrenching everywhere—the old days when we could do anything and get away with everything are gone, perhaps forever. We are teetering on the edge of the cliff, gentlemen—and it might take only the slightest push to send us off into space. Mr. Pokorny and his particular problem might prove to be just that push. He is not a citizen and I think it will be proved shortly that he violated the laws of the country to get in here. He is not famous enough to be forgiven his lapses by the public—and perhaps in these days no one is—and, personally, he is not a completely attractive figure at best …” Hutt smiled apologetically. In the wan light, his face looked as though it were planed out of bleached wood. “I’m afraid, as far as Mr. Pokorny is concerned, the decision, is, as of this time, final.”

Hutt fell silent for a moment. Archer watched him light a cigarette. He used a long black holder that had been given to him by an admiring lieutenant-general during the war. He looked fragile, aristocratic and dangerous behind his bare desk. Poor Pokorny, Archer thought, matched out of his class this winter.

“As for the others,” Hutt went on, in his low, soft voice, speaking through the smoke of his cigarette, “I will, as I told you, respect O’Neill’s promise to you. I will not hide the fact that I, myself, would have made no such promise. Also, practically, I don’t really see what you hope to gain by delay …”

“I told O’Neill,” Archer began.

“I know,” said Hutt. “O’Neill has explained it to me. I hope you won’t take offense, Archer, but I think you’re being naive.”

Why don’t I just stand up and get out of here? Archer thought.

“I’m afraid,” Hutt was saying, his voice even and hard to follow across the desk, “that you haven’t really looked into the background of this affair, Archer. As you know, I’m acquainted with quite a few people in Washington …”

“I know,” Archer said.

“And,” Hutt said, measuring Archer’s voice for irony, “as a man who deals in the molding of public opinion, I have been called in from time to time to make suggestions and also—and this is important—to receive suggestions. Democracy,” he said, allowing more volume into his voice for the first time, “is not completely a one-way arrangement.”

Ah, thought Archer, his training in the OWI is paying off—he can now generalize on Democracy.

“It is not enough,” Hutt said, “merely to pass on instructions to our political leaders. We must from time to time expect our leaders to pass on instructions to us. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Yes,” Archer said, grudgingly. “That’s reasonable enough.”

“Also, if I’m not mistaken,” Hutt continued, “you voted for the Administration. Or, at least,” he nodded pleasantly, “during the elections you voiced your approval, quite strongly, of Mr. Truman.”

“Yes,” Archer said, puzzled, wondering what Hutt was driving at and whether it would mean a trap, and also how Hutt knew what his sympathies had been. “What has that got to do with us now?”

“So, in effect, the Administration is partly your doing and represents you quite accurately. Am I fair in saying that?”

“Roughly, yes.”

“Now, if I were to tell you that quite recently, last week, to be exact, it was hinted to me by someone high in the Government that the time had come to clear out Communists and Communist sympathizers from all fields of communication and public opinion, it would not be too far-fetched to say that that particular hint was actually an expression of
your
will.”

“I am with you,” Archer said sourly, feeling clumsy and unprepared. “Part of the way.”

“I, myself,” Hutt said, smiling, “happened to vote Republican. So, actually, it is you who are telling me what to do in this matter, rather than the other way around.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary to go into the freakishness of representative government,” Archer said, knowing he was coming off badly. “Just now.”

“Quite the opposite,” Hutt said, waving his cigarette gaily. He was clearly enjoying himself. “This is just the time. We have a problem. We are opposed. We are co-workers and we are necessary to each other. We are both, I hope, reasonable men. Even O’Neill,” he said with a fatherly chuckle, “may be supposed, for the purpose of discussion, to be a reasonable man.”

“I’m nothing,” O’Neill said from the corner. “Leave me out of this. I’m a primitive idiot. I’m going into the business of handmade arrowheads.”

“As reasonable men we try to reach some ground for agreement. To do that we have to advance our arguments, listen to each other, weigh, as honestly as we can, the other man’s position. And we must see the whole matter in the round.” This was one of Hutt’s pet phrases. He was always talking about seeing matters in the round, even when it was just a question of launching a campaign for a new washing machine.

“In the round, what is the situation?” Hutt asked, Socratically. “If we get away from our particular small sphere of activities, from our little problem of four or five unimportant artists, what do we find? We find a divided world. We find that this country is threatened by an enormous and expanding power—Russia. Are you with me up to now?”

This, too, was another pet punctuation of Hutt’s speech. It made him sound gracious and reasonable and he used it as a kind of packaging device for certain portions of his argument, wrapping up one section in his listener’s approval and going on neatly to the next. The only trouble was that Archer, for one, had never heard anyone tell Hutt, when asked, that he was not with him up to now.

“I am with you,” Archer said, “up to now.”

“We are engaged in what the newspapers have turned into a cliché,” Hutt said, “the cold war. That doesn’t make it less dangerous. It is possible to be destroyed by a cliché, even if it bores us. And I assure you, Archer, I am bored by the whole matter. But that doesn’t relieve me or you, for that matter, or any citizen of this country, from responsibility to the agencies in the Government who are fighting this particular phase of the war, just as the fact that we might have been bored in 1942 and 43 and 44 did not relieve any one of us from responsibility to the Army in its war against the Germans and the Japanese. I hope I make myself clear.”

“I am with you,” Archer said. “Up to now.”

Hutt stared at him coldly, fractionally. Then he went on, without emotion. “The Russians,” he said, “are using a variety of means to defeat us. Military action in China, strikes in Italy and France, speeches in the United Nations, subversive activities in our own country by deluded or treasonable Americans. As the military analysts used to say during the war, they are trying to impose their will upon the enemy. And the enemy is us, although until now they have not fired a shot at us. So far, this is a fair estimate of the situation, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Archer said, thinking, one thing I never imagined was going to happen this afternoon was that I was going to get a lecture on international affairs.

“Now,” Hutt went on, “I think of myself as a loyal American. My family arrived here in 1710. Ancestors of mine have been in Congress from three states.”

“My grandfather,” Archer said, absurdly, “fought in the Civil War.” As he said it he was ashamed of bringing the dead old man into the conversation.

“Good,” Hutt said generously, posthumously decorating the hero of Cold Spring Harbor with his approval. “So I take it, you are as devoted to preserving this country as I am.”

No, Archer thought, I am not going to keep yessing him, parading my patriotism and the patriotism of my grandfather to please him.

“The Secretary of State,” Hutt said, “has invented a phrase to describe our defensive activities in this period. Total diplomacy,” Hutt licked his lower lip, relishing the words. “Total diplomacy means exactly what it says—it means all the powers of this country, all the strength of its citizens, are combined in this single effort. Nothing,” Hutt said slowly and gravely, “and nobody is left out or exempt. Not you or me or O’Neill or the five ladies and gentlemen we are being forced to release. In total diplomacy, Archer, as in total war, we must be ready to discipline all citizens who give aid and comfort to the enemy … or,” he took the cigarette holder out of his mouth, with a definite, emphasizing gesture, “any citizen who
potentially
might give aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Here, Archer thought, we reach the crucial ground. “I am not convinced,” he said, “that Pokorny or Herres or any of the others are giving or will give aid and comfort to Russia.”

“You are making an individual judgment,” Hutt said pleasantly, “that does not coincide with the stated policy of the Government of the United States. These people all belong to organizations which the Attorney-General has declared to be subversive.”

“I may disagree with the Attorney-General,” Archer said.

“I do not,” said Hutt crisply. “And what’s more—if I may say so without offense—your agreement or disagreement is not of very great importance. During the war, when the Army ruled that a certain area of a town was out of bounds—say the Casbah in Algiers—the fact that the individual soldier saw no harm in the Casbah did not prevent him from being picked up by the MP’s and punished if he was found there. Even in the freest society, Archer, the opinions of the individual are finally limited by the decisions of authority.”

“You’re talking about a wartime situation,” Archer said, “when certain rights have to be put in abeyance …”

“We live in a curious age,” Hutt said, smiling warmly, “when grown, sensible, well-educated men and women cannot agree whether they are at war or not. Once more, forgive me if I look to authority in this matter. The Government, and remember, again, Archer, it is a government which you helped put in power, the Government says we are at war. In 1941, when the Government said we were at war, you believed it, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Before December 7, 1941, you would not have dreamed of firing a shot at a Japanese soldier, would you? And, after August 14, 1945, you would again refrain from firing at such a soldier. But in between, if you happened to be where it was possible to do so, you would have killed as many soldiers of the Japanese Army as you could, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Archer said helplessly, thinking, this gentleman must have gone to Harvard Law School.

“So, as you agreed,” Hutt said, lighting another cigarette, “in this field you forego the right to make personal decisions. What was true in 1941 cannot be any less true in 1950.”

“Let’s drop that angle for the time being,” Archer said, feeling cornered, “and let’s look at the people themselves.”

“If you insist,” Hutt said regretfully.

“I insist,” Archer said. He stood up and started to walk around the office, trying to break out of the grip of Hutt’s logic. “For one thing—we don’t even know whether they belong to those organizations you mention.”