The Troubled Air Part 32

"Grow up," Kitty said harshly. "Come out of the nursery. For once in your life, look at things realistically. What do you think is going to happen to you after you stand up in public tonight and defend Communists? Do you think the National Broadcasting Company will pin a medal on you and sign you to a ninety-nine-year contract?"

Kitty was holding tightly onto his arms now. He pulled away gently and she released him. He turned and walked back into his study. He couldn't stand the disordered living room any more, with the piled chairs and the pale spots showing on the carpet and the broken lamp all over the floor. He hoped Kitty wouldn't follow him. For her sake, he didn't want to hear what she was thinking. All during their married life she had taken chances with him unhesitatingly and he had always congratulated himself on having a wife with that kind of trust and blind courage. He despised timid women who drained the courage out of their husbands, and he'd told it to her again and again. In the study, he went over to the desk and picked up the pages on which he had been writing his speech. His hands shook a little as he tried to read them, and he didn't turn around when he heard Kitty follow him into the room.

"Oh, no, you don't," Kitty said, close behind him. "You can't hide this time." She came around to the other side of the desk and faced him. "What's that you're so interested in-the speech you're going to make? Do you want to make sure that you're making it strong enough, so that if there's the slightest chance for us now, you can ruin it?"

"Kitty," Archer said, with a firmness he didn't feel, "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave me alone today. I ..."

With a sudden, fierce movement, Kitty leaned over and ripped the pages out of his hand.

"I want to read this," she said.

"Give it back to me, Kitty!"

"I'm interested in my husband's literary production," Kitty said, backing off a little, as though she were afraid Archer would wrestle with her for the sheets of paper. "That's reasonable enough, isn't it? You were always after me to read those miserable plays of yours and tell you what I thought of them. Why do you want to change now?"

Archer was silent for a moment as they stared at each other. Then he shrugged. "All right," he said wearily. "Read it if you want to. I don't care." He went over and sat down heavily in the easy chair, watching Kitty.

Suspiciously, as though she still didn't quite trust him not to leap up and reclaim the papers, Kitty began to read. "Oh, G.o.d," she muttered, going through the first page rapidly and turning to the next one. "Oh, good G.o.d, you're insane."

She didn't go through all the papers. She glanced quickly at Archer, to make sure he was not prepared to move, then ripped the papers in half, then in half again, then into smaller and smaller pieces. Archer started out of his chair, then sank back, waiting for her to finish. She was panting and the bandage on her hand was giving her trouble and she looked clumsy tearing at the obstinate paper. Finally, she dropped the ragged shreds on the floor. Then she stared at Archer, fearful and defiant. "That's what I think of it," she said loudly. "That's my candid opinion."

"All right," Archer said patiently. "Now we don't have to discuss it any further."

"You hate me," Kitty said.

"I don't hate you at all."

"Yes, you do," she said. "You want to destroy me."

"Oh, Kitty," Archer said, "don't be a fool."

"You want to destroy me," Kitty chanted in a singsong, "and you want to destroy our home. And I won't let you."

"That's nonsense."

"They call me up and they call me a b.i.t.c.h and a wh.o.r.e," Kitty said, "and words I couldn't even repeat to you now, because of what you've been doing. What do you think they'll call me if you get up and talk like that to all those Communists?"

"They're not all Communists," Archer said wearily. "They're everybody."

"Do you believe that? Are you simple enough to believe that? Why're you so anxious to ruin yourself?" Kitty demanded. "What's the secret? What've they got on you?"

"There's a certain principle at stake," Archer began, unpleasantly aware that he was sounding like a professor, "and it's just my bad luck that I'm involved in it ..."

"Isn't there a principle about protecting your wife and your children, too?" Kitty asked shrilly. "Or is that too unimportant for n.o.ble artists like you? Artists," she said sardonically. "G.o.d, you make me laugh with your artists! Actors who couldn't get a job with the third road show of Tobacco Road. Writers who write advertis.e.m.e.nts for laxatives as long as they're paid seventy-five dollars a week for it! Melville! Duse! Don't you know how funny you sound? And that's what you're willing to throw away your whole life for! Come back to earth! Don't you know we'll be out in the street in six months if you make that speech? What'll you pay the rent with-your principles? What'll you feed the baby with-the approval of the Communist International? What's the matter-are you bored with living like a decent human being, now that you've finally done it for a few years? Or do you think that you're so handsome and brilliant and desirable that people will be dying to have you somewhere else after the radio industry is through with you?"

"If you knew how ugly you looked," Archer said, and regretting it as he said it and knowing that it was true, "when you talk like that, you'd stop right now and leave me alone."

"I don't care how I look," Kitty wailed. She moved forward to the desk and leaned on it, her face distorted. "I don't care what you think of me. I don't care if you never talk to me again as long as I live. I'm not going to be poor again, I'm not going to start all over again at my age, wondering where I can find the money to have the baby's tonsils out and how I can stall the butcher another month. I've had those pleasures! I'm too old for them now! And I don't care what you think. I don't care what idiotic, woolly principles you've cooked up in that crazy head of yours. I have one principle-Me. Me and Jane and the child. And I'm not going to have the child in the public ward at Bellevue, either. I want a private room and a decent doctor and the bills all paid on the fifth of the month and a feeling that there's some sense to going through the agony again, that there's some chance for me and the baby when it's over ..."

She stopped, breathing heavily, momentarily exhausted.

Why did she have to do that? Archer thought, exhausted himself. Why did she have to talk like that?

"Are you through now?" he asked.

"No, I'm not." Kitty came around the desk and stood over him. "I know why you're doing this. You don't fool me for a minute."

"Why?" Archer was surprised to realize that he was honestly curious.

"Your good friends Victor and Nancy Herres," Kitty said loudly.

"What?" Archer looked up at her puzzledly.

"What? What?" Kitty mimicked him sardonically. "The man doesn't know what his wife is talking about."

"Kitty," Archer said warningly, "you'd better stop now. You've said enough." He wanted to tell her that they had to live with each other for the rest of their lives and that she had to leave some foundations left, some remnants of affection and honor.

But Kitty was rus.h.i.+ng on. "That's the whole reason. Don't think I don't see it. Vic got himself in trouble and naturally you had to get on your white horse and charge to his rescue."

"Supposing that were true," Archer said, trying to be reasonable, "supposing that was the real reason-don't you think I should go to his rescue?"

"No."

"Kitty ..."

"He got into the trouble without your help. Let him get out the same way. Times're tough," Kitty said harshly. "Every man for himself."

"I hate that," Archer said coldly. "I hate you for saying it."

"Of course you do," Kitty said. "I knew you would. Because you're in love with Vic Herres and you're in love with Nancy Herres and you're in love with Johnny Herres and with Clement Herres and the ground Vic Herres walks on and the chair he sits in and every random thought that goes through Vic Herres' head."

"This is hopeless," Archer said. He started to get up. Kitty leaned forward and pushed him sharply and he fell back into the chair, with her standing over him. He realized how silly this would look to anyone else, the small, frail, pregnant woman with the bandaged hand knocking a huge, wide-shouldered man back into a chair and looming over him threateningly. He almost laughed.

"No, you don't," Kitty said wildly. "I want you to hear this. I've been thinking this a long time and you might as well hear it now. It's sick. It's psychopathic. A middle-aged man tagging after another man like a little puppy, calling him up all the time like a kid calling up his girl, running to him with your troubles, bringing gifts to his children, mooning over his wife ..."

"Kitty!" Archer said sharply.

"I see you, I see you," Kitty shouted. "Talking to her for hours in corners at parties, sharing G.o.d knows what secrets, kissing her every chance you get. You never kiss anybody else, you're so fastidious. You haven't kissed me on the mouth for years ..."

That's true, Archer thought dully, that much is true. Is it possible?

"When you're home alone with me," Kitty poured on, "you never say a word, you sit and read and mumble when I ask you a question. And when we go out with other people you're bored and you expect them to consider themselves real lucky if you condescend to speak three sentences an evening to them. But when you're with Vic or Nancy, you're a torrent of wit, the smile never comes off your face, you never want to go home, you pull out all your tricks as though you were afraid if you didn't keep charming them, they'd lock you out in the cold. And when their kid has measles you never give it a thought, you go plunging into the room, never thinking what would happen if you caught it or if you pa.s.sed it on to me with the child inside me. No, you have to show the Herreses how brave and darling you are, how delightful, how faithful."

Oh, that, Archer thought: That's why she was so angry that day; she was saving up all this.

"And you're not satisfied just to adore," Kitty swept on frantically, all barriers far behind her, "you have to be like your hero. You ape him, the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he wears his hat. I don't have my own husband any more, I have a carbon copy of another man, and I'm disgusted with it. And now," she said, "here's your final great chance. The final identification. You can suffer for his sins. How could I expect you to pa.s.s up an opportunity like that?"

"That's enough," Archer said thickly. "I can't stand any more." He got up. This time, Kitty stepped back without interfering.

"I'm going to tell you something," she said, suddenly calm and very cold. "I hate Vic Herres. And I hate that sly, secret little wife of his. He's cold and conceited and he doesn't care if you or anybody else lives or dies. You amuse him, because you pay him homage. He enjoys you because he can maneuver you. It's a game for him. He said, 'Come to New York,' and you gave up a perfectly good job and a nice house and you came to New York. He said, 'Write for the radio,' so you wrote for the radio. He said, 'Now is the time for all brave men to go to war,' because he was young and they were going to take him anyway, so you tried to go to war. He said, 'Now be a director,' because that would make it easier for him, it meant he had a sure, easy job, with no trouble and no criticism as long as you worked, so you became a director. Now he's in trouble and they're attacking him, so he says to you, 'Defend me, there's a principle at stake.' He and his wife have locked me away from you for ten years. I haven't been a wife. I've been a witness to a sick ma.s.s love affair."

"Shut up!" Archer whispered.

"I'm going to tell you something," Kitty said. "When Vic Herres went off to war, I prayed he would be killed." She said it calmly, standing in the middle of the room, crossing her arms in front of her, triumphant, desolate, lonely, discharged.

Archer put his hand in front of his eyes. He couldn't bear looking at Kitty. How did it happen, he thought confusedly, at what point did it begin to happen, how could that delightful, brave, loving girl turn into this? How do we live in the same house now?

Blindly, he left the room. He picked up his hat and coat and plunged out into the street, leaving Kitty standing wearily near the desk, her face collapsed and pa.s.sionless, picking absently at her bandaged hand, as though the blood were beginning to run again under the layers of gauze.

23.

IT WAS AFTER ELEVEN WHEN HE GOT TO THE ST. REGIS AND HE WENT up in the elevator with two ruddy country types in evening clothes who sounded as if they had been graduated from Princeton in 1911, and who would never be accused of anything.

The small banquet room was quite full, but the meeting hadn't begun yet. People were standing together in little groups and the room was full of the nervous, intense bursts of conversation, punctuated with high, musical, woman's laughter that you always heard when you got actors and actresses together. Most of them were standing up, or kneeling with one knee on the little gilt chairs, People in the theatre or its a.s.sociated professions, Archer remembered, regarding the room, always sit down reluctantly, as though they feared to lose the precious mobility on which success or failure for life might at any one moment depend.

Many of the women wore gla.s.ses. The frames were all colors, very thick, bright red and blue and gold-filigreed in the season's style. There was a great variety of shapes, too, curious bows and flattened triangles and tilting harlequin designs. Somehow, Archer thought, displeased with the thick blue and red shadows the gla.s.ses threw on the pretty, cosmetic faces, it makes them look as though they are all suffering from an obscure nervous epidemic. Near-sightedness in 1950 has become over-fas.h.i.+onable. There must soon be a swing of the style pendulum toward normal sight.

"Hi, soldier," a voice said behind him. "I was waiting for you."

Archer turned and saw Burke coming toward him. He decided to tell Burke, very soon, to stop calling him soldier. Also, he remembered, to tell Barbante to stop calling him amigo. Except that Barbante would shortly be 3000 miles away. Well, he'd write him.

"The speakers're sitting on the platform." Burke took his elbow and began guiding him down the side of the room. "We're just about ready to begin. We've got a good house tonight." Burke sounded like a complacent company manager with a hit. "You going to dazzle the folks with your oratory?"

"I'm all prepared," Archer said, unpleasantly conscious of the over-firm grasp on his elbow, "to recite the 'Communist Manifesto' from memory and selected excerpts from the writings of Leon Trotsky."

Burke laughed appreciatively. He had had his suit pressed, but it was still too small for him, and his face had the stiff, impatient expression of a man whose belt is too tight around his waist. He had just shaved, too closely, and there were little flecks of blood on his collar from the spots where he had nicked himself. There was a thick layer of talc.u.m powder over his purplish beard and he looked like a man who expected to have his picture taken.

Archer stepped up to the low dais. Lewis, a director who kept introducing motions in. praise of the Soviet Union at Guild meetings, was seated there, mumbling to himself as he thumbed through some notes on white cards. He looked up when Archer pa.s.sed him. "h.e.l.lo," he said. His tone was unfriendly and he bent over his cards again immediately. A little thin man by the name of Kramer was seated just behind the lectern. He was an agent who called everybody honey and who wore checked tweed jackets that made him look like a midget pretending to be an Irish horse owner. The jackets were so warm that there was a constant thin film of sweat on Kramer's forehead when he was indoors. He was always smiling because in this business you, never knew who was going to be famous next week. Along with the soft, horse-owner jackets he wore thick, gold, k.n.o.bby cuff links. He had high blood pressure and he had eaten rice for a year. Just now he was putting two magnesia tablets in his mouth, because he had belched four times in the last ten minutes.

Archer glanced around him uneasily.

"Woodie," he asked, "is this all you have?"

Burke looked nervous. "We're going to throw the meeting open to discussion from the floor," he said. "We expect a lot of help from the floor when things warm up a little."

"Where's O'Neill?" Archer asked. "I thought you said you'd asked O'Neill."

"O'Neill," Burke said bitterly, "has retreated to previously prepared positions. That eighteen thousand dollars a year began to look awfully sweet to O'Neill as H Hour approached."

"I would be most grateful," Archer said, "if you'd be good enough to translate."

Burke blinked angrily. "You know d.a.m.n well what I mean. O'Neill fiddled for a while, then turned me down. He suddenly found out he was an agency man."

Archer was sorry for O'Neill, and disappointed.

"I can't blame him," he said.

"I can," said Burke. He looked around the room. People were still standing in shrill little cl.u.s.ters and more people were coming in through the door. "I'll give them another minute," he said, "before blowing the whistle."

Archer sat down, leaving three empty chairs between Lewis and himself. He put on his gla.s.ses and stared out at the audience. He spotted Nancy near the door, off by herself, unprofessionally seated. At that distance she looked pale and haggard, but it may have been the lighting. Archer couldn't find Vic. In the first row, Frances Motherwell was sitting reading a newspaper, not paying any attention to what was going on around her. In the next row two young radio writers sat down and stared longingly at her legs. Alice Weller was seated halfway back smiling tremulously up at him. He smiled falsely at her, noting that Atlas had not come and that Roberts, the columnist who had attacked him and whom he recognized from his photographs, was a grinning, soft-looking, plump little man with thick gla.s.ses.

Slowly, Archer let his eyes sweep over the room. There were many people whom he could identify. They had been on his programs or they had come up to O'Neill's office about one thing or another when he was there or he had met them over a s.p.a.ce of ten years in bars or at parties. There were many Communists there. I know I shouldn't say that, or even think it, Archer thought. They've never told me and I really couldn't swear that I know for sure. And until they admit it or it's proven in a court of law, it's dangerous and unfair to label them. And, officially, it was entirely possible that many of them really didn't belong. But he'd listened to them argue, the long, pointless, boring, bitter, half-drunken arguments of the last five years, replete with the stock phrases-"imperialist aggression," "Wall Street moneylenders," "the people's democracy of Czechoslovakia," "t.i.to, the betrayer of the working cla.s.s ..." They might just as well wear b.u.t.tons and wave the red flag, no matter what they belonged to. And some of them were very pleasant men, soft-spoken, witty, talented, friendly, with bright children and charming wives. And he'd gone to ball games with them and played tennis with them, had exchanged Christmas cards with them, and had dinner at their apartments, and had spent agreeable evenings with them when not one word had been spoken about politics for hours at a time. And, he recognized, there were puzzled people there, people who argued one way one day and another the next, because they had read a different magazine the day before, and there were people who had changed, in 1945 or 1946, or 1947, people who suddenly discovered they couldn't stomach what had happened to Benes or what the secretary of the Communist Party had said at his trial. And there were the girls. There were the virtuous girls who had married idealistic young men who had drifted into Communism because they were so appalled by the behavior of the anti-Communists. And then the girls, married, like good wives who loyally interest themselves in their husband's hobbies, had made out the invitation lists and prepared the canapes for the parties in which money was raised for the defense of indicted union leaders and at which pet.i.tions were drawn up criticizing decisions of the Supreme Court. And then there were the loose girls, on the hunt for men, who had found an exhilaratingly free and busy social life and an abundance of invitations to bed at the endless, happily confused functions that the Party and its sympathizers were always giving. And there were the lonely spinsters, of that special type which is to be found in the theatre, almost pretty, almost desirable, almost talented, but doomed to celibacy by the severity of the compet.i.tion in this, their chosen field, who gladly gave themselves to good works instead of a man. And good works in this era, Archer thought sadly, are now shown to skirt the edge of treachery. But now, faced with this accusation and righteously conscious of their own virtue, how could these deprived, busy women be expected to admit that?

What do you do with the women who signed pet.i.tions and raised money for refugees who later turned out to be Russian spies, the women who had aimlessly advanced the Revolution because they were afraid of having dinner alone that night?

"Ladies and gentlemen," Burke was saying, standing at the lectern and banging on it with a gavel, "ladies and gentlemen. ..."

Reluctantly, people began to sit down, their conversation dying slowly, with little new waves of last-minute noise, as though everyone there was certain that what they would hear from the platform would be less interesting and amusing than what he himself was saying to his neighbor.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Burke said, when the hum had almost subsided, "I want to thank you for coming tonight. And I want to thank you for this magnificent turnout in defense of a free press, a free theatre, a free radio. ..."

The room was three-quarters full. Perhaps two hundred people, Archer figured roughly. How many people were there who made their living out of the theatre and the radio? Five thousand? Ten thousand? And in the room how many were FBI agents, investigators, reporters? Did 200 out of 10,000 really seem magnificent to Burke for this particular cause?

Burke's tone, as usual, was pugnacious and threatening, in his well-known commentator manner. If he were to recite the "Ode to a Nightingale," Archer thought idly, he would make it sound like the summation of the district attorney in a murder case.

"I have been chosen to be chairman of this meeting," Burke was saying, "because I have the dubious distinction of being the first victim of the latter-day Thuggees of Madison Avenue. I've been out of work for a year," Burke said accusingly, making everybody feel vaguely guilty, "and I've had time to reflect on the issues and the strategy. They used me as a test case and when they saw it worked so easily they had a little celebration and raised the black flag and moved in on the main body of the fleet."

Now, Archer thought wearily, we have moved out of the trenches and engaged in a naval action.

"The main body of the fleet," Burke said harshly, "is you. Everyone of you sitting here. And everyone who writes or acts for a living who is too lazy or too pleasure-loving or too gutless to show up here tonight and fight for himself." He peered furiously over the lectern, making his audience move uncomfortably in their chairs, as though somehow they were responsible for the sloth and luxury and cowardice of the absent artists. "I've been warning you people for a year now," Burke went on, "every chance I've had. ..."

That's no lie, Archer thought, remembering Burke's tireless alcoholic tirades. Cato, over a thousand double Scotches, saying that Carthage must be destroyed.

"And none of you listened," Burke said scornfully. "You were doing OK. You thought, The h.e.l.l with Burke. What's one commentator more or less? So you let them move their big guns up without firing a shot at them, and now they're spraying the rear positions with HE and stink bombs and you're all getting it now and you finally're yelling for support. Well, now it may be too late," Burke said with glum satisfaction, "but maybe we can put up enough of a show to force them to negotiate for terms. Right now, they're calling for unconditional surrender. They've got us on the run and they're pouring it onto us on land, sea and air, and they're advancing at will because so far they haven't even been annoyed by snipers anywhere they've gone. They've got the zones of occupation all marked out, and the gauleiters've all been picked and are ready to go to work."

Burke was enjoying himself, Archer realized, as he painted this dire picture. He had suffered alone so long that he was greeting the new legion of recruits to misery with shouts of hoa.r.s.e and mournful delight.

"Before I go any further," Burke said, glaring out at the brightly lit room, "I want to say something personal." He paused for effect, rocking a little, both hands gripping the lectern dramatically. "I am not a Communist," he said slowly, "and I never have been a Communist and I never expect to be a Communist."

Lord, Archer thought wearily, the formula has reached the status of a set art form now, like a sonnet, from long use and repet.i.tion.

There was silence in the room. Archer looked over at Lewis, on the other side of Burke. Lewis had his hand up over his face and was making a disgusted grimace.

"What's more," Burke said, "I am unalterably opposed to the Communists."

Somebody applauded in the back of the room. The single, persistent clapping sounded theatrical and embarra.s.sing. Then, from different sections of the room, there came a curious little noise. Archer frowned, trying to place it. Then he recognized what it was. People were hissing softly.

"OK, OK," Burke said. "I knew this was going to make me unpopular. But that's the way I feel and you might as well know it. I've been registering as a Democrat since 1936, and that's what I am, and I see no reason for pretending to hide it. And if all the Communists in this country felt the same way about what they believed in and came right out and said it publicly, we'd be a d.a.m.n sight better off right now."

What a strange man, Archer thought, half-admiringly, he enjoys the process of getting people to dislike him.