Barbary Shore (32 page)

“You want me to answer?”

“I’ll go on, thank you. He feels very bad we can suppose. Here are all those terrible things he’s done, and how can he change all that? Well, first of all he goes to work for the people I represent, and that doesn’t pan out so well, now does it? He feels even worse, and so he has to take something to make up for it, and that he does, and then here he is now.”

“Except for his theoretical work.”

“Yes, I’m so glad you mentioned that. Except for his theoretical work.” Hollingsworth reached deftly into his brief case, and deposited a pile of mimeographed pamphlets on the table. “We have here the sum total of the said fellow’s work. I can enumerate all the categories of subjects treated, but why bore you with something you know already? The thing that’s more interesting is that out of all these articles and pamphlets we’ve made a list of the circulation, and the one that was read by the most people numbers five hundred readers.” He fanned them out upon the desk, and touched his finger to one and then another as though he were examining samples. “This one had a hundred and fifty readers; this one, two hundred twenty-five; this one, seventy-five; this one, fifty.” Hollingsworth yawned. “These figures are all in round numbers, of course.”

“What point do you make?” McLeod asked.

“Well, it’s very difficult for me to understand,” Hollingsworth began. Before he could continue, however, Lannie had clutched a page from one of the papers, and read the title. She put it down. “You didn’t write this,” she said to McLeod in a strangled voice.

He nodded.

“No, he didn’t write it,” Lannie was on her feet now. “It’s you he’s swindling, you!” she screeched at Hollingsworth.

“He wrote it,” Hollingsworth said quietly, studying her outburst.

“It’s impossible,” she cried, and now she was pleading for herself. “Contradictions and class relations in the land across the sea, as he puts it. Yes, he may have written it, his hand, his ink, and so you’re convinced, but all the while he was writing he laughed because he never believed a word of it.”

Hollingsworth merely stared at her, his silence weighing upon her speech until the effect cumulative, she was quiet at last. “I told you,” he said, clearing his throat, “that there would be twists and turns.”

“You’re wrong,” she managed to blurt out.

“Very well, then, I’m wrong,” he said, and unable to restrain himself, began to laugh at her. “Yes, I’m sure wrong.”

She was back in her seat, but the chair gave small comfort. Her body pressed against the wood, her stained fingers plucked cuticle from her ragged nails, and her poor soft lips fluttered one against the other. “I …” she started to say.

“Be quiet now,” Hollingsworth said. With evident distaste he rearranged the papers she had strewn and consulted his notes.

“Applying statistical methods,” he informed McLeod, “a fellow can see that the average circulation of these pamphlets is one hundred and ninety-eight point three people per unit of political propaganda.”

McLeod said wryly, “I’d often wondered what it was.”

“This is the point I’ve been trying to make,” Hollingsworth went on. “A fellow who has as many things to keep him up at night as the gentleman we’ve been discussing, seems to think that to balance it out, all he has to do is to write these articles. I suppose he’s trying to make the plus equal the minus. But one is forced to think this fellow in question has a very interesting arithmetic. Because the way I figure it is that he’s down about a million, and every one of these things is worth maybe ten off the score.”

“The difference between you and me,” McLeod said, “is
that I depend upon potentiality. Who are you to state that in a decade there will be no possibility for new revolutionary ferments?”

“Assess the plus and minus,” Hollingsworth intoned.

“There is still the future. And if there will be a revolutionary situation and revolutionaries of stature, then it is of the utmost importance the lessons of the last revolution be learned.” He sat there blinking his eyes slowly into the glare of the light bulb, while across the tight skin of his face, steadily, involuntarily, a tremor rippled through the flat muscle of his cheek. “Why do you insist?” he asked finally, querulously.

“Because you want to influence people,” Hollingsworth said shortly. “And when people want to influence people, then that falls into the area of my occupation.” He sighed heavily. “And I am obliged to question your qualifications. For example would you say that the gentleman mentioned was in complete possession of all faculties at the time he was so active in said and aforementioned Mediterranean country?”

“What do you mean by faculties?”

“There’s a better answer than that,” Hollingsworth suggested. “Take the time he goes with the revolver in his pocket to see his old political friend. Can you say he found no enjoyment at all in the events of the evening?”

“None.”

Hollingsworth made a deprecatory sound with his tongue. “You’re an intelligent fellow. Would anybody feel bad for all of four or five hours, talking to somebody, knowing he’s going to kill him?

“I don’t know any more.”

“No pleasure at all?”

McLeod raised a hand to his temple. “How can I remember?”

“In other words, some pleasure. That’s looked down upon,
isn’t it?” Hollingsworth nodded to answer his own question. “The fellow we’re considering has an unhealthy psychological part to him one is forced to conclude.”

“All right.”

“This unhealthy part affects all his actions. An eminent specialist in these matters told me so. We think we have an idea just cause it’s an idea, but the truth is we have such and such an idea because we want it so.”

“All right,” McLeod said tonelessly.

“One is forced to conclude politics is the bunk and so are opinions.”

“All right.”

“Then,” Hollingsworth continued rigorously, “how can a fellow pretend to act for the future?”

“All right, all right. All right,” McLeod said.

Hollingsworth adjusted the lamp so it shone equitably between them. In a gentle voice, he continued. “Now, unlike most people, I don’t look down on such a fellow. We all have our different characters, and that’s true. It’s just that we mustn’t be stubborn. You’ve been an unhappy man all your life, and you didn’t want to admit it was your own fault. So you blame it on society, as you call it. That isn’t necessary. You could have had a good time, you could still have a good time if you’d realize that everybody is like you, and so it’s pointless to work for the future.” His hand strayed over the desk. He might have been caressing the wood. “More modesty. We ain’t equipped to deal with big things. If this fellow came to me and asked my advice, I would take him aside and let him know that if he gives up the pursuits of vanity, and acts like everybody else, he’d get along better. Cause we never know what’s deep down inside us”—Hollingsworth tapped his chest—“and it plays tricks. I don’t give two cents for all your papers. A good-time Charley, that’s myself, and that’s why I’m smarter than the lot of you.” His pale face had
become flushed. “You can shove theory,” he said suddenly. “Respect your father and mother.”

“He’s absolutely right,” Lannie exclaimed. “But then he isn’t. I mean …” she finished lamely, jerkily, the outburst of her private thought amputated as she heard her voice. And flushing at her inability to express what she would say, she continued to stare at her hands, and in a morose energy pulled cuticle from her nail.

McLeod smiled wanly.

“Have you got a cigarette?” he asked. “It seems I’m out of them.”

“I’d be delighted,” Hollingsworth said, furnishing tobacco and flame in what was almost a single gesture.

“Would you call yourself a realist?” McLeod asked almost dreamily.

“That’s the word a fellow would employ for me.”

“Then, philosophically speaking, you believe in a real world.”

“More words,” Hollingsworth sighed. “I’ll say yes.”

“A world which exists separately from ourselves.”

“Oh, yes, that was what I wanted to say.”

“You didn’t,” McLeod told him. “I want to point out to you that no one may be disqualified from coming close to a knowledge of the relations of such a world. One’s psychological warp, upon which you harp so greedily, may be precisely the peculiar lens necessary to see those relations most clearly.”

“You’re trying to confuse me,” Hollingsworth said.

McLeod was silent for almost a minute, and as if the brief foray had encouraged him by its success, he looked up at last with a grin. “I would like to make a speech in my defense.”

“No.” Hollingsworth almost stood up. “We’ve gotten nowhere today, and none of the practical issues have been decided. You don’t need a speech.”

“I insist upon my right.”

“First you must fulfill conditions.”

The muscle quivering, the eye blinking, McLeod held up his hand and watched it tremble independently of himself. “I am prepared to,” he said. “But I want to know whether it goes to you directly or to your organization?”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Hollingsworth said, “but that shouldn’t affect you. You have to be willing to concede either way, or no speech.”

“Either way,” McLeod said with a shrug. “May I proceed?”

Hollingsworth nodded.

“You know,” McLeod said, “there was a time when I thought the last speech I might make would begin in quite another way. Once, I even composed it. ‘Citizen comrades,’ I began, ‘there seems small justification possible that a renegade like myself, a wrecking dog of the lowest litter should even open his mouth.’ ” McLeod’s mouth opened in a soundless laugh.

“One of the small benefits I can permit myself is to spend no time apologizing for my past. It is what it is, and in the time permitted me here, I should prefer to indulge in the only meaningful defense, to transmit the intellectual conclusions of my life, and thus give dignity to my experience. I shall not treat the past as personal history, and I will attempt to delineate what I believe to be the future, for it is only as ideas are transmitted to someone else that they attain existence.”

Hollingsworth interrupted him. “You talk like a fellow who doesn’t think he’s going to live long.”

“You misunderstand. I speak metaphorically.”

“All I care about is that you concede,” Hollingsworth said sullenly.

“I told you I would. Now, may I go ahead?”

“Who are you making this speech for?” Hollingsworth asked peevishly. “Me? Miss Madison?” His eyes met mine, and
he shrugged. “Well, if you think it’s worth your waste of time, go right ahead, but I don’t hold the high opinion of your friend that you seem to.” He looked away and tapped his fingers. “Go ahead, make your speech,” he said in what was almost a womanish voice.

“M
AY
I begin,” McLeod asked rhetorically, “by discussing the argument of the sophisticated apologist? When I discover myself in a mood of assessment, I’m often struck by the number of brothers I once had, and how different are the roads we’ve taken. Yet of them all, the apologist is the only one who flourishes today. You might even say he has a vogue.

“This gentleman admits everything. He will agree that state capitalism is not to be confused with socialism; he will even grant, although his language will differ, that the new society is not without privilege. But, look, McLeod, he is always in a rush to tell me, it is time to take an accounting. And he will shake his head wisely. The revolution has failed to come. The proletariat has never gained political consciousness in sufficient degree. It is very doubtful they ever will. What is important, says the apologist, is that civilization be saved and human life not cease. The problem of our generation is not to make a revolution, nor is it to bewail standardization, militarization, and all the trends which you and I have found distasteful. We must agree, if we are historians, that equality has not existed since primitive man, and freedom has occurred only in the context of wealth and leisure. Probably that is the only way it may ever appear. It is a luxury, and equality is a dream. What we must accept today is,
precisely, standardization, even the temporary abdication of the best in human potentiality. Periods like ours will pass. The problem for today is to end the crippling conflicts of the economic system. You see, McLeod, my mythical brother is always declaiming, you have never understood anything at all. Your problems are not the problems of the world. Bellies must be fed in Africa and for that production must follow a world plan. We have overestimated human nature. It is impossible for such a plan to provide the equality of socialism, but what matter? It’s the mass who must be fed and in an orderly fashion or the world is destroyed. Our problem is not to end exploitation but to resolve contradictions in the economic structure. Indeed, we may have been wrong all the time, and the bourgeoisie have been right. Man is only capable of founding societies based on privilege and inequality.

“As I have said,” McLeod went on, “the apologist admits everything. It is true, he tells me, there may be a war, but it is also true it may be avoided. You cannot know, McLeod. History is unpredictable. How can you say that war must come definitely? But even if it should come, there is no reason to suppose that everything is lost. We find moderation in everything, even in war, and after all, no matter what the cost, no matter how severe, one side finally will win and will control the world. Permanent peace will then be possible. The winners will administer the spoils of exploitation in a rational manner. Why shouldn’t they? All the contradictions will have been resolved.”

Hollingsworth seemed interested. “You know, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he interrupted, “I think that’s been very well put. I’m not a political fellow, although I’ve always considered myself sort of liberal, but it’s often occurred to me, if I think on those lines, that it’s real democracy if you can make the stupid people happy, cause if you’re not stupid you’re never happy anyway. Now, I know you’d say,” he murmured as
McLeod began to frown, “that the stupid can’t be happy because they’re, if I may use your word, swindled, but it seems to me that people don’t mind being swindled if only they’re told the opposite. It’s when you tell them they’re being swindled that they can’t stand it.” Hollingsworth giggled. “You know, I’ve been talking too much.” A quick look at his watch. “I wonder if your remarks could be more brief?”