Public Burning (35 page)

“Yessir. I'll try to cut down to the Mall.”

But at Washington Circle on Pennsylvania, seven blocks from the White House, there was no movement at all: a solid mass of traffic, people, placards, and photographers. John swerved left, and left again, but all the cars were bumper to bumper, and people were running back and forth in the streets. I was nervous, so I decided to distract myself by working the
Times
crossword puzzle. I found it on a back page, nested among book ads. My eye fell on the first clue, I Across: That's easy, I thought with a shudder:
GOOF
. I suddenly saw the puzzle as a kind of matrix, a field of play which mirrored the structure of the newspaper and thus history itself, the paradigmatic range of “news” and possibility, crossed with real “time-arrow chain-of-events,” I felt like Alice lost on her chessboard. I read the clues: why all this business about plays, food, cartoonists, rats, God, women, and cosmetics, I wondered?
AHAB
was there,
SAN
ANTONIO,
NEGRO
, and
ROAMERS
. 23 Down:
HEAT
. I dragged my eyes away from the crossword puzzle to the book review: it was about an “atomic thriller,”
Atom at Spithead
. Even before I saw it, I knew it would be something like this. Adlai Stevenson's
Campaign Speeches
were being advertised, and a novel called
The Singer Not the Song:
“He could not resist using the girl as one last diabolic weapon….” From all over the page, words jumped out at me:
SOCIALISM
…
BUCHENWALD
…
EISENHOWER
…
FRANKENSTEIN
…
BLOOD
…
TENEMENT
…
REVOLUTION
…
CHECKMATE
—we were stopped dead. “I'll walk, John!” I cried. I ripped the crossword puzzle out and stuffed it in my pocket, jumped out of the limousine.

Once on foot, I found it much easier to keep moving. Not so many people as it had seemed inside the car. Just enough, together with the sightseers, to bottle up traffic at the intersections and make it seem worse than it was. It also helped that they were mostly moving in the same direction. At first, I supposed they were headed for the White House, and I decided to circle around behind them, past the Treasury and in by the East Wing, but once I reached the back side of Lafayette Square, I could see they were all moving on east. It look me a panicky moment to realize that their objective was not my Senate Office Building, but only the Supreme Court. But though I felt relieved by that, I had to recognize that the worst, nevertheless, was still before me: crossing the park and Pennsylvania Avenue through all this lawless rabble to the White House gates. I began to regret leaping out of the car so impulsively like that.

A mob, you see, does not act intelligently. Those who make up a mob do not think independently. They do not think rationally. They are likely to do irrational things, including even turning on their leaders. Individually, people in a mob are cowardly; only collectively, goaded on by a leader, will a mob appear to act courageously. A mob is bloodthirsty. A taste of blood will whet its appetite for more violence and for more blood. Nothing must be done which will tend to accentuate these characteristics. A mob has lost its temper collectively. An individual dealing with a mob must never lose his or he will be reduced to its level, and become easy prey for it. He must be as cold in his emotions as a mob is hot, as controlled as the mob is uncontrolled, concentrating entirely on the problem which faces him and forgetting about himself, keyed up for battle but not jittery. Since those who make up a mob are basically cowards, one must never show fear in the face of a mob, blocking out any thought of it by a conscious act of will. Since a mob is stupid, it's important to confront it with unexpected maneuvers: take the offensive, don't panic, do the unexpected, but do nothing rash. I knew all this. Nevertheless, I was scared shitless and could hardly think.

Intuitively, I just kept moving. I put the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at my back like a big brother and plunged straight ahead, into the park and toward the White House. I saw it, I knew it immediately: this crowd is all unfriendly—the Phantom has touched them, I thought, he's invaded them, they're all contaminated, we will have to liberate them all, as we've done with the Rosenbergs. I kept my head ducked and bulled hopefully ahead—so far they hadn't noticed me. Just a block, that damned square, but it seemed endless—I felt like I was crossing all of Gettysburg. I prayed to God to get me through safely. I prayed to Uncle Sam, I prayed to Pat. “In the name of Jesus Christ!” I whistled softly between my clenched teeth. What troubled me most was the complete unreasoning hate in their faces: this mob, I recognized, is a killer mob! I suspected some of them were even doped up, and I feared that, if they saw who I was, they'd get out of hand. They carried placards, shouted, and seemed to be picking up things they might throw. It made me almost physically ill to see the fanatical frenzy in the eyes of those teenagers; anyway, something was making me quite ill. I felt absolute hatred for the tough Communist agitators who were driving children to this irrational state, and I wanted to shout at them, or scream, or bite them or something, but somehow I kept a grip on myself, knowing that above all I had to control my emotions and think calmly. The test of leadership is whether one has the ability, as Kipling said, to keep his head while others are losing theirs. By this time, I was virtually running, shoulders hunched like a fullback, snorting desperately.

I slowed. I noticed I was drawing a lot of attention. I worried I might have a heart attack. Or some other kind of seizure, I could hardly breathe. The mob turned toward me and started to close in. It was essential, I knew, that I bust right through: if I turned back now, it would not be simply a case of their bluffing out Richard Nixon, but of the United States itself putting its tail between its legs and running away from a gang of Communist thugs. For an instant, the realization passed through my mind:
I might be killed!
—and then it was gone, mind and all. They were nearly on me. I stopped abruptly. Then I lurched forward. Everybody must have been surprised: as I plunged on, straight at them, amazed at my own impetus, the mob stumbled backwards. In a larger sense, I recognized, this was another round in a contest which has been waged from the beginning of time between those who believe in the right of free expression and those who advocate and practice mob rule to deny that right. I might have calmed myself with such a thought, but there was no time—one of the ringleaders, a typical case-hardened Communist operative, stepped into my path, blocking me off, a look of cold hatred in his eyes. And I realized then, as this was going on, that right here was the ruthlessness and the determination, the fanaticism of the enemy that we faced! That was what I saw in his face. This was Communism as it really is. He opened his mouth—I felt like I was back in the lion's cage with Sheba.
Oh my God—!

“Excuse me, Mr. Nixon,” he said, the rest closing up behind, forcing me to pull up short. “Could I have your autograph?”

“What?”
I shouted. This startled them and they fell back a step. I noticed then for the first time that the placards they were carrying read
DEATH
TO
THE
JEWISH
TRAITORS!
and
THE
HOT
SEAT
FOR
THE
ROSENBERGS—SIZZLE
‘EM
! It came to me then that this was my own constituency. The range and scope of this crisis began to fall into a pattern.
“Can you have my autograph?'”
I yelped, repeating his question to give myself time to think, and also, hopefully, to stop my hands from shaking. I groped for words, for a phrase, something tough and pungent I could exit on. I wanted to do more than simply mouth prepared platitudes, but my mind was completely locked up, like the traffic around Washington Circle. All I could think of was: everyone in politics knows a Vice President cannot chart his own course, it's not my fault! They stared at me, somewhat amazed. A young college boy with a friendly smile was carrying a big picture of the electric chair with the legend
HOME
COOKING,
KOSHER
STYLE
!, and I saw a priest with a sign that read
THE
ROSENBERGS
ARE
MORTAL
ENEMIES
OF
THE
ENTIRE
HUMAN
RACE
! I realized it was going to be another hot day. I was sweating like a stoat. “The issue is not whether or not I can give you my autograph,” I said at last, leaning toward them as a coach would lean toward his players in a huddle,
“but rather the survival of the nation itself!”
I gazed at them with a very heavy look, and the few who were still smiling went blank, their jaws dropping. For a fraction of a second there, I gave them all a sense of what it felt like to be at the center of things, drew them all in to the High Councils of Power, showed them a glimpse of the brink and its peril. Then I smiled, nodded, clapped a shoulder, waved to someone at the back as though recognizing him, and lunged on through. They parted in astonishment. This has been very successful, I thought.

Except for the mounted U.S. Park Police, some parked buses, and a couple of lonely Red Top cabs that had managed somehow to get through the traffic jam further up the street, Pennsylvania was empty as I crossed it. A long way across, and I felt very self-conscious. Then, off to my right, I saw them: the real demonstrators, marching toward me, seven abreast, down Pennsylvania, headed toward the Supreme Court. What now? I wondered, freezing in my tracks: should I stop and confront them?—and nearly got run down by a trolley car whistling up from behind. Jesus, I thought, picking myself up and scrambling on across the goddamn street, this is going to be one helluva day. At the White House gates, still hurrying forward, I looked back over my shoulder at the crowd in Lafayette Square, thinking: you've got to be careful in a situation like that, you have to think all those things through—and plowed into a child standing there on the sidewalk. I glanced around. Luckily, no photographers had seen this. I set the boy back on his feet, brushed him off, skinny little kid, about the age of my daughters, with big dark eyes and baggy pants. Like the waifs out of those Horatio Alger novels. Very intense and even, somehow, mysterious. I'd given him a thumping whack and he wasn't even crying. He looked up at me as though he were lost, as though looking for a friend or a father, and I thought: he's beautiful, this child! He reminded me of all those March of Dimes posters. I wanted to hug him to my breast, to protect him from all this, to kiss him, I wanted to reach into my pocket and give him something. “Don't be afraid, son,” I whispered. His nose was running. I wiped it with my own handkerchief. “It's all right.” He gazed up at me with those soulful eyes, parting his small lips—I
know
this child, I thought. As though from a dream, a beautiful dream. I seemed to recall green hills, a rippling brook, a rustic cabin, and inside—and then I realized who it was he looked like. I pushed him away in alarm, wiped my hands nervously on my pants, and, shuddering, hurried on through the White House gates. That haunting face: it belonged to Ethel Rosenberg!

12
.

A Roman Scandal of Roaring Spectacle

The special session of the Supreme Court is the tourist sensation of the summer. Thousands stand in line for the 350 available seats to watch the spectacle of the nation's highest court, called back to the bench from golf links and fishing boats, having to decide overnight whether or not to execute without further delay “the principals,” as Judge Kaufman has called them, “in this diabolical conspiracy to destroy a God-fearing nation.”

It has been a dramatic move. It's obvious that Uncle Sam and his government in Washington are determined, their Fourteenth Wedding Anniversary Celebration having been taken away from them, to exterminate Ethel and Julius Rosenberg now as quickly as possible. And not just out of spite: the anxious haste with which Uncle Sam has summoned the Elders back to National Headquarters suggests he might be fighting for his very life. There's the mounting world pressure of course, the military buildup on both sides, the threat of all-out nuclear exchange, but it's more than that—it's almost as though there is something critical about the electrocutions themselves, something down deep inside, a form, it's as though events have gone too far, as though there's an inner momentum now that can no longer be tampered with, the nation is too deeply committed to this ceremony, barriers have already come down, the ghosts have been sprung and there's a terror loose in the world, an excitement: if the spies don't die and die now, something awful might happen, the world's course might get bent—Look! Out in the world, the frontiers are crumbling—but as the people draw back toward the center to restore their strength, they find an appalling void right where the axis of the earth ought to be, a big black hole inviting them to fall in and be lost forever! There are actually a few who hold that the executions may not have been Uncle Sam's idea in the first place, but rather a devious and calculated maneuver by the Phantom, either to distract Uncle Sam from actions on the frontiers, or maybe…maybe to get everybody down to Times Square and then let them have it! Is this what is driving Uncle Sam? Is this why Herbert Brownell has acted so swiftly and with such transparent alarm? No wonder the Courthouse is packed!

Of course, some people scoff at this. They pretend not to see the black hole and they don't respond to the apocalyptic funk. What kind of a rube do these neo-latitudinarians take Sam Slick for? they ask. They even conjecture that the American Superhero may have coaxed Justice Douglas into this brief delay just to heighten the drama and draw a bigger crowd. After all, is Uncle Sam the maker and shaper of world history, or isn't he? Just as he might have engineered the border troubles, goaded the Phantom into exposing himself around the world, provoked the strikes and boycotts, and altered a few marquees and billboards himself just to ignite the occasion with a few titillating “Fee-Fie-Fo-Fums.” Some skeptics are dubious about all these anniversary patterns in the first place, and others argue that Uncle Sam simply needed this delay to finish getting the stage built. Or to negotiate an end to that “iron curtain” around the Statue of Liberty. Or to extract confessions from the Rosenbergs by making them live their last hours over and over again.