Silas Timberman (38 page)

“Yes,” he said to the judge, “I think I must say something. I don't know what sentence you have decided on, or whether anything I say can influence that. It doesn't matter. I have something to say, and I must say it. I always felt that I was not a very important person, no more important than millions of Americans who live quietly and the quietly. And it always seemed to me that was all I wanted in the world, to live quietly and decently and to raise my children. I love my wife, and I love my children a great deal—and I tried to give them a kind of happiness and security I never knew myself when I was a child. I suppose a lot of people try to do that, and I think we made a good home. I wasn't very ambitious. I tried to be a good teacher, and perhaps I was a good one, if only because I like to teach and I like what happens to people who learn and who come to know things that they did not know before. I say all this and perhaps bore you a little with the commonplace of it, because this is all that I was. I think that I am more than that now.

“I kept thinking that things were happening to me and to my family, cruel, senseless things—but I see now that these things did not just happen, nor were they without meaning. I signed a peace petition to outlaw the atom bomb. I am glad I signed it. I hate war, and I hate people who make war and death. I am an American. This is not something I willed. This is what I am and must be—and I must live according to this. Two atom bombs were dropped, and thousands of innocent people, people not too unlike myself and my family, were burned and blown to death—and I share part of the responsibility for that. I will never be a part of such a thing again. I thought it was just a whim on my part that I would not indulge a thing called civil defense—but it was not a whim, and there is only one defense, to do away with war and the men who make war.

“I did not lie. I did not perjure myself. I have committed no crime in our legal code—but I did commit a crime in the eyes of the men who rule this nation. My crime was that I would not accept a tyranny over the minds of men—that I would not scream and howl for a mad and senseless war, that I would not traduce my own mind, my reason, my learning, and my heritage—for which many men have died. I would not and I will not.

“I don't want to go to prison. I want to go back to my family—who need me as much as I need them. But if I must go to prison to fight this unholy horror that has settled down upon my land, then I will. I am not unimportant. I used to think that I was. But no man is unimportant, Your Honor. You can laugh at me later and send me to prison and tell your friends how easy it was to convict one rather simple school teacher; but that will not change what was done in this courtroom or make it any less a burden for you and every other man in this city to bear. You are letting loose a horror that will destroy you as surely as you attempted to destroy me—with one difference. I am indestructable. That is not egotism. I am a humble man, perhaps too humble; but I am on the side of life, and you are on the side of death.

“Now I want—to thank you for listening to me. In a calmer moment, I might not have said all this in just this way. But I am not very calm, and I had to say it.”

The judge had listened patiently. He nodded when Silas had finished. In the whole courtroom, there were only the marshals, the judge's attendant, the clerk, Myra and MacAllister. He did not mind what Silas had said. He felt magnanimous as he told Silas,

“Since this was a first offense and in the light of your war record, I have decided to sentence you to three years in a federal prison, a year and a half for each count on which you were found guilty, the sentences to run consecutively.…”

They let Myra come over to him as they handcuffed him, and they let her kiss him. There were no words they had to say to each other now; for what had been, the words had been said. For what would be, there were no words yet—only the knowledge that wherever they were, they would be more and more closely knit together. In that way, for them, it was not an end, but another beginning.

New York City

April 1954

A BIOGRAPHY OF

HOWARD FAST

Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel,
Two Valleys
(1933). His next novels, including
Conceived in Liberty
(1939) and
Citizen Tom Paine
(1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in
The American
(1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write
Spartacus
(1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including
Silas Timberman
(1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of
Spartacus
inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published
April Morning
, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography
Being Red
(1990) and the
New York Times
bestseller
The Immigrants
(1977).

Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.

Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir
Being Red
, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the
Bronx Home News
. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."

A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM,
Esquire
, and
Coronet
. He also contributed scripts to
Voice of America
, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.

Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison."