The Last Supper: And Other Stories (2 page)

“Harvey,” she said patiently, “we've been through all that, and there's no need to go through it again. You talk as if being poor were something to be proud of, and you always made me feel like an outsider because I had a decent bringing up. But you can see what being poor has gotten you into, writing all those plays about terrible people who hated everything and actually did want to overthrow the government with force and violence.”

“No—no, they were poor people. They didn't want to overthrow the government. They just wanted to have things better. That's perfectly natural, Jane. After all, it was in the worst part of the depression. Isn't it the American way of life to want to have a better standard of living?”

“That's just what I've been saying. And just consider your last four productions—they're about people who are content with the American way of life, and they've been very successful. As a matter of fact, Harvey, they prove that you are helping to strengthen the American way of life. Don't you suppose some of the congressmen on the committee have seen some of your plays during the past six years?”

“It's possible.”

“Well, there you are. Why should they be angry with you? All you have to do is explain that you were poor and misguided and were taken in by the lies and machinations of all those terrible people. You know whom I mean, the kind of people you used to have at the house who would always talk about how wonderful the Group Theatre was and how decadent the theatre is today, and after all, it's not as if you were Jewish.”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Harvey, please, you know I'm not anti-Semitic, and Alice Wolf is practically my best friend, but the truth is that they don't seem to like Jews. You can tell them that one of your ancestors came over here, in 1794. You remember how Martin Leland went before the committee and he was so deeply moved when he told them how the Communists had tricked him and lied to him and used him as a dupe that he actually began to cry right there in front of the television cameras——”

“God damn it, you don't want me to cry, do you? That's a contemptible thing——”

“I didn't say you should cry. But the point is that Martin was so unquestionably sincere that they just couldn't doubt him. And then when he told them his grandfather had been police commissioner in Cleveland or Toledo or some place, they really saw that he was a true American and not a subversive, and then when he took an oath that he would never sign anything or join anything again as long as he lived because he had no business in politics anyway—well, they understood how deeply American he felt.” Crane was silent, and she looked at him anxiously. “You do see what I mean?”

“There's still a question of dignity,” he said slowly.

“I don't see how it can be undignified to be patriotic.”

“It also depends upon the way you look at it.”

“You know, Harvey,” she said to him, so kindly that for a moment he regretted the whole business of separation and divorce, as necessary as it had been, “that's just the trouble with you. You're probably the most principled person I've ever known, and that's what makes you such a child in this world. Principles are, fine things, but how are you to know whether your principles are the right ones? I think you have to respect the principles of men who really have the good of the country at heart. You can't deny that America is the most principled nation in the world. Look at the way we are practically giving away our whole lives to all those foreign nations that couldn't exist for one week, if we didn't support them. It's fine to have principles, but sometimes they can be wrong. And I know you're big enough to have humility.”

“It's damned hard,” Crane said.

“But you have to be big enough. Of course it's hard. But people honor you more for having humility than for anything else.…”

After he had left her and was in a taxicab on his way down to his lawyer's office, Harvey Crane reflected on the fact that of all the women he had known—not a few—there was no one like Jane. She was a jewel. She was something that happened only to a very lucky man, and he—he was such a miserable neurotic fool that he had not been able to rest until he broke, up the marriage. Now he could face the truth. It was his doing, and entirely his doing, and he wasn't man enough to come face to face with happiness. How deeply profound were Jane's remarks about humility! And how few people possessed real humility! When he went through his friends, it was almost impossible to find one who was a truly humble man, and for some reason, that brought into his mind a line from the Bible—“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” He said the line over and over, and found it truly comforting. A new mood had come upon him, a benign, deeply-reflective, and philosophically satisfying mood. For a moment, anger and fear departed and he felt uplifted and ennobled.

He began to feel that there was something providential in what had happened to him. He had been too satisfied with himself, in spite of his inner conflicts, and even his daily sessions with his analyst had not wholly dispelled his arrogance and self-justification. Now, in his present glow of beneficence, he began to wonder whether he was not having what his analyst referred to as a
true passage of insight.
If he were a Catholic—and it was strange how often this possibility had occurred to him recently—he would have been certain that what moved him was a high form of religious experience, and even though he was not a Catholic, he played with the thought.

When his cab turned into lower Broadway, with its high buildings and narrow side streets and throngs of hurrying people, his feeling of assurance increased and he was filled with pity for all these hurrying, faceless, nameless people who lived out their lives in these high offices, wondering whether this wasn't material for a new play—but then thrusting the thought aside, as he recalled the difficulties and reprisals inherent in such material. He had paid a full and sufficient price, and who was to say that this was the role of an artist? He must remember what Jane had said concerning humility.

He maintained that feeling as he passed into the sumptuous waiting room of
Henderson, Hoke, Baily and Cohen
, and he greeted the girl at the reception desk with a smile as gentle as it was pure. And when Jack Henderson came bustling out, Crane greeted him with the same benign smile.

“Well, thank God you don't seem as worried as you sounded this morning,” Henderson said. Henderson was a stout, broad-shouldered man, with a fine thatch of prematurely white hair, and given to wearing gray tweeds and dark bow-ties. He had that thing as necessary to a successful attorney as a bedside manner is to a successful physician, an air of self-possession and calm assurance which never deserted him. Just looking at him reassured a client; but such was Crane's mood that he even felt superior to a need for reassurance, and was a little amused at what Henderson's reaction would be when he discovered that he, Crane, had already worked out the problem.

Henderson led Crane into his private office, a commodious and well-furnished room, the windows of which overlooked the mouth of the Hudson River and the Bay. Then he asked Crane to let him see the subpoena, which he read carefully while Crane made himself comfortable in the leather chair facing Henderson's desk.

“I guess you've given some thought to this, Harvey,” the lawyer said finally. “I'm glad you're less worried. I don't say this isn't a serious business, but I would call it more of a serious nuisance.”

“I was nervous for a while,” Crane admitted. “Then I got to thinking. Had lunch with a friend of mine, and we discussed it rather thoroughly.” He told Henderson the substance of the discussion at lunch. “And the fact is,” he finished, “that I think I'm man enough to confess that what I wrote in those years was wrong—yes, even subversive, the way we look at things today. I'm man enough to say that I'm sorry for what I wrote then—sorry and ready to disown it. In other words, I've found the humility that a creative artist must find at a certain point in his career, or stagnate. Humility. I'm not afraid of the word, Jack.”

“Harvey.”

“Yes?”

The lawyer shook his head and said, “Harvey,” again.

“You don't believe me?”

“Oh, hell, I believe you. Of course, I believe you. Only—Oh, Christ, Harvey, the truth of the matter is that they don't give a damn what you've written. They don't read books. They don't go to the theatre. This is a lot simpler and a lot more complicated. Yes, it's the sins of your youth, but not the way you think. The fact is that someone has tipped them off to your past—either that you were a member of the Communist Party at one time or you associated with people who were, or maybe they think you still are. What this subpoena says is, come down to Washington and be, prepared to talk or we'll ruin you. That's all it says, Harvey, no more, no less.”

“You mean, they think I'm a member of the party?” Crane said slowly. “That's fantastic.”

“I think it's fantastic, yes.”

“But how can you be so certain——”

“Because our firm has handled half a dozen of these cases. They run to form. We also are not without our own lines to Washington.”

“Then can't you fix it?” Crane demanded, his state of beatification beginning to dissolve. “If you have lines to Washington, can't you put a fix in? God damn it, Jack, I pay you a retainer of five thousand dollars a year. That ain't hay. If they think I'm a commie, that ought to be easy enough to disabuse them of. You know those politicians are crooked as hell. For a thousand dollars, you can buy a senator——”

“I know, I know, Harvey. Don't think I haven't thought of that. But the subpoena is already served, and it's no lead pipe cinch to fix it now. The point is, you have to be prepared to go down there and clear yourself, and, as I said this morning, to come out of this thing positively with your career unimpaired.”

“And isn't that what I was saying, Jack?”

“Not quite. It may help to tell them that you're sorry for what you wrote and that you were misled and misguided and even used as a tool. You can tell them how disillusioned you became with that whole commie crowd, and that will also help a little. But that's background material, if you follow me. They are going to want to know if and when you were a member of the party and who else is or was. In other words, Harvey, they want cooperation. They want names. That's how you wipe the slate clean. You name names.”

“You mean I become—an informer?”

Henderson shook his head reprovingly. “I don't even like the word, Harvey. We'll think of
cooperation
, from here on.”

“And if I refuse?” Crane asked, stiffening, head up, thinking to himself, God damn it, that's the trouble with men like Henderson: Nothing but expediency! Everything gives way to expediency! They can't understand that there's such a thing as human dignity.

“Well, if you refused—and I think we have to talk a good deal about this, Harvey—one of two things would happen. You could take a position on the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions, and then you're through, finished, your career over. No play of yours could ever be produced again. Your name would never be mentioned on a dramatic page again. But—let me put it bluntly, Harvey—you would have to find other attorneys. We don't represent Fifth Amendment Communists. Either we serve a client or we don't, and you can't serve a Fifth Amendment Communist. The second alternative would be to lie, and then you take your chances with a five-year perjury rap—again with other lawyers. We don't advise our clients to commit perjury.”

Suddenly, his voice changed; it became soft and warm and ingratiating. “Now isn't that a hell of a note, for me to talk to you like that, Harvey. The thing for us to do is to get down to cases and work our way out of this—and come out clean and proper. I'm your attorney, you understand? We're in a crisis now, and we have no secrets from each other. Suppose we get down to cases. Were you ever a member of the Communist Party?”

“Can he understand?” Crane asked himself. “Can anyone understand? There's no use getting sore at Jack Henderson. I should be proud and pleased that I have someone like Jack Henderson to stand by me. But how can he understand? Did he ever reel a knot of hunger in his belly? Did he ever know what it means to go for a week with never more than ten cents in your pocket? Did he ever stand on a soup line?” Such thoughts filled him with self-pity, which restored some of the pleasant state of ennoblement he had felt after talking to Jane. Once again, he felt a part of a certain elect, a man of unique sensitivity and experience, apart from other men.

He sensed that he was being seared now by deep and angry flames, and out of the chaotic flow of his thoughts, there emerged vague currents of creativity, a sense of wonderful things he would write in the future, the drama of hurt and inner suffering, not the, bald, vulgar pain of people who were poor, hungry and cold, but the deeper travail of those who struggled with their own souls and emerged in a victory composed of meekness and humility. And so he said to the lawyer, his voice low and compassionate,

“Jack, I'm not here only as a client, but also as a friend. If I seem headstrong, it's due to a lack of knowledge. Then it's up to you to put me straight.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that, Harvey. I'm damn glad to hear you say that. Now suppose we talk.”

Crane talked. He told how he had joined the Communist Party in 1934, of his poverty, his heartsickness and despair—of how suddenly he found friends, comrades, warmth, of how he became a part of a little group of actors and writers who were working for and dreaming of a new kind of theatre——

“In other words they used you as a dupe for their ends,” Henderson said understandingly. “How long did you remain a member?”