The Pledge (17 page)

“As he told it.”

“And no name? He couldn't come up with a name?”

“Apparently not. The way he said he heard it, there was a private line and the man on the other end recognized Luce's voice.”

“Oh, Jesus be praised,” Molly said hopelessly, “that's no way to sleep better at night. Their own man in the Central Committee — sounds like a cheap spy novel. The Trotskyites say that Stalin was a czarist police spy. I'm getting too old for this, love.”

“Are you going to pass this up to them, to the Central Committee or National Committee? Both the same?”

“Same thing. No. There's enough junk floating around in the movement, and it won't help any if they don't know who he is, and how are they going to find out who he is? They'll want to know where I got it, and then if I name you, it will get thicker and thicker — oh, the hell with it, Bruce. I'm beginning to be frightened — a little. I was never frightened before.”

For the first time since he had met her, he said, “Molly, get out of it — please.”

She stared at him unhappily.

“I know I never raised this before. You never asked me to get into it. I never asked you to get out of it — until now.”

Her reply was unexpected. “Sure, Bruce, and what do I dream about then? Do I go back to the church? But, you know, this is a church, too. It's the only dream of the brotherhood of man. They call us atheists — which is nonsense. Why do you think we have so many Catholics and Jews? Because we're believers. And if I stop believing —”

“There are other things to believe in.” He was begging now.

“I wonder.” She put her arms around him and held him tight. “Ah, baby, we're not onto solving these strange mysteries. You know, as the poem says, It's Mary, the Mother of God, who brings the gentle sleep from heaven. That's enough. We'll go to bed.”

“But you'll think about it.”

He stayed the night with her and went back to his own apartment at ten in the morning of the following day. A man was waiting in front of his house, a dour, scruffy sort of man, brown hat, brown suit, tie full of food stains, and he said to Bruce, “You live here?”

“Yes. What's it to you?”

“Your name Bacon? Bruce Bacon?”

“Yes.”

“This is for you,” he said, offering Bruce an envelope.

Bruce stared at him.

“Damn it, it's for you. There's your name on it.”

His name was on it. Bruce reached out and took it. “What is it?” he asked.

“It's a subpoena. You accepted service.” The man turned on his heel and walked away.

A
WALL STREET
LAWYER

   

B
RUCE
went upstairs to his apartment, took off his jacket and tie, washed his face in cold water, and then looked at the subpoena, which summoned him to Washington, to the House Office Building, to appear in three weeks' time before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the same infamous HUAC that was driving a nation toward fear and silence. He dropped into a chair and closed his eyes and tried to think. Then he turned on his radio. He always thought better in the presence of music. Someone was singing the “Ballad for Americans,” popular since it had been chosen as the theme song for the Republican National Convention. Hadn't Molly mentioned that both the writers were communists? And “This Land Is My Land” and “The House I Live In” and the “Ballad of John Brown” — and how many more? The books, the plays, the songs, and the poems — all written by communists. The list was endless, and now, the clear soprano was singing, “Nobody who was anybody believed it, everybody who was anybody, they doubted it — and they are doubting still —” Doubting America; he switched off the radio and closed his eyes, and tried to recall what had happened to those who had already appeared before the House Committee. It was painful. He couldn't bear to think about it right now, and certainly not clearly, because it always returned to his own indifference. Why hadn't he rung bells from the church towers? Why hadn't his father, his friends, his newspaper associates, rung bells? Suddenly, he was totally alone, and he understood about others who received such subpoenas.

Well, what now? What's the next step? His immediate impulse was to call Molly; but he realized that this impulse had become all too frequent and he resisted it, allowing himself to think that a hell of a lot of it was her fault. No, that was crazy. Some of it, at least. How did Jerome Rogers get the notion that he was a communist? No. He would have to keep telling himself and remembering that it had started in India, before he ever met Molly. All right, then try to think. The lines of the “Ballad” kept jumping into his mind, and that did not help. He was a lost kid; he had no one in the world to turn to; he was filled with self-pity. If he went to his father, he would be scrutinized dubiously. Where there's smoke, there's fire. His mother, an otherwise sweet and reasonably gentle person, had a muted fear of “foreigners” who were debasing the country. A quiet fear, since her son's feelings were so very different, and by foreigners she meant anyone who was not white, who was not Protestant, and who was not what she referred to as “our kind.” Did he tell his father and his mother? But how could he tell them?

Finally, he used up his immediate response and returned to the more or less normal Bruce Bacon who had occupied his clothes before the subpoena arrived, and having returned there, he was deeply ashamed of his initial reaction. Nothing had happened, and he had nothing to hide, and if the bastards thought he did, they'd know better. This was the deliberate dissemination of terror, a reversal of the basis of the whole legal system of the country, a proposition that instead of being innocent until proven guilty, a man was now guilty until he could establish his innocence. And guilty of what? Of belonging to a perfectly legal party that ran candidates in every election. But now it came home to him that they really did not give a tinker's damn who was a communist or who was not. The weapon worked against anyone they chose to subpoena.

Silently, he apologized to Molly, with the addendum, You, Bacon, are a spineless shit. Then he called her.

“I'll be home early,” she replied. “About seven o'clock.”

“I'll be there.”

“I'll cook spaghetti. We'll eat at home.”

He bought twenty-five dollars' worth of white roses, and when she opened the door, he embraced her and kissed her passionately.

“What are you apologizing for?” Molly demanded.

“Some things I thought.”

“That I got you into all this? That's a legitimate thought. I don't think I did. I think you got you into it because you're Bruce Bacon, and let's eat before we talk about your subpoena.”

She piled his plate with spaghetti and butter and garlic and grated cheese, and he ate ravenously. “I forgot about lunch,” he explained.

“It's a plus and a minus from living alone. It keeps your weight down, but too much of it is dangerous. You know, Bacon, things are pretty much coming apart at the seams. Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Irène Curie's husband, is in New York, and I interviewed him today, and I asked him whether Russia has the atom bomb. It was an exclusive interview and he didn't hesitate to talk. He said that the Soviets have five atom bombs, and their present production rate is two a month. He said that will increase, and in six months they'll be making two hundred a month. I asked him whether it was a secret and whether he was talking to me off the record. He said absolutely not. We're printing in tomorrow's
Daily Worker.
Of course, the CIA is too damned stupid to believe us, but it gives me a queasy feeling. At the same time, it's leaking through that they're going to indict the Communist Party leadership, on the grounds of their attempting to overthrow the government by force and violence.”

“Come on, from what you've been telling me, you couldn't overthrow a baby carriage by force and violence.”

“That's the way it looks.”

“What happens to you?” he demanded anxiously.

“I'm OK. I'm not a communist leader, only a reporter on the
Daily Worker
, and they're going to think twice before they touch anyone on the paper. When you're working out the first step of a police state, you don't close down the press. That's First Amendment stuff.”

“And the stuff about the bomb. Do you believe it?”

“I think so,” Molly said. “I don't know just what it means, but I think it puts off war with Russia, which is what they're playing for. If they have the bomb and we have the bomb, it has to slow things down.”

He dried the dishes while she washed them. “We still haven't talked about the subpoena.”

“All in good time. I'm thinking about it.”

When the dishes were finished, she steered him to a chair and brought out a bottle of Irish Cream, poured for both of them, handed him the liqueur. “I didn't spring for it, love. It's a present from my sister Bernadette. She's the nun, and don't ask me how nuns handle finances. But drink it slowly. Did you say that on occasion you like a cigar? Well, here's a Romeo and Juliet, pure Cuban. They assured me it's the very best cigar in the world. I want you to smoke the cigar and sip that sweet Irish junk and we'll relax and talk about those sons of bitches in Washington and that lousy subpoena. But give it to me and let me read it first.”

“In my jacket on the chair. If you're going to spoil me rotten like this, I'm going to accept with glee. By the way, just to add to the increment, I got back my piece on the famine in Bengal. I have sent it to fourteen magazines to date. Not one of them will touch it.”

She was reading the subpoena. Still reading, she pulled up a chair and sat facing him.

Bruce bit the end of his cigar, lit it, and watched Molly through the curl of smoke. There was nothing set or fixed about her face. It was no beautiful lifeless icon that could make the cover of a magazine, but a living thing, plain one moment, beautiful the next, dour when she concentrated and then wonderful when she smiled. He found himself wishing that either of them had a fireplace, that he might look at her face and mass of red hair in the flickering light a fire cast. The set of her face changed now as she glanced up with a slight smile.

“Very worried?”

“Sort of.” He grinned sheepishly. “Not only have I never been in trouble with the law, but I'm the righteous type.”

“You had me fooled.”

“I get the feeling you're always sort of laughing at me,” Bruce said.

“Let's talk about this subpoena. I only laugh with love, but let's be cold and practical. This calls you to testify before a committee of the House of Representatives. Supposedly, congressional committees hear witnesses to aid in the framing of legislation, but this committee has turned itself into an instrument of terror. They call witnesses for two reasons, to terrify the witness and liberals in general and to gain publicity for themselves.”

“What can they do to me — I mean when all the chips are down?”

“Cite you for contempt. Indict you in a Federal court, try you, and give you a year in prison —”

“All for not being able to prove that you're not a communist?”

“Oh, no. No, they don't give a damn whether you're a communist or not. I told you that. Terror and fame. Think of the peculiar bastards on that committee: Dick Nixon — Tricky Dick they call him, congressman from California — John Rankin, wrapped in a Confederate flag, Parnell Thomas, stupid fat pig of a man. These are the dregs of Congress, the dregs of the nation, too. No, it's not communists they're looking for. If they want to know whether Bruce Bacon's a communist, all they have to do is telephone J. Edgar Hoover and ask him.”

Bruce puffed the cigar gently and tasted the Irish Cream again. “Do you know, Molly,” he said, “before one of Joe Louis's fights, a feller from the other fighter's camp came into Joe's dressing room and spelled out all the dreadful things that he was going to do to Joe. Joe listened calmly, and then Joe said to him, What will I be doing while he's doing all that to me? That's my position. What will I be doing and what can I do?”

“First thing, get a lawyer. You can't go into this armed only with integrity. Anyway, the word's been dropped from the language.”

“What kind of a lawyer? You must know lawyers who know their way down these dark alleys.”

“Oh, sure, Bruce. I know a few damned good left-wing lawyers. But I don't think you want one of them. I'd like to see you walk in there with a Wall Street lawyer, a good, solid, conservative house that has been in business for at least a century — south of Wall Street. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean. You mean Frank Britain of Lennox, Britain, Delloway, and Jones. Dad's lawyer. They don't touch criminal law.”

“How about white collar crime?”