“Yes, sir.”
“Would you say that you and Miss Lafitte were close?”
“Close?”
“Were you on friendly terms?”
You think about the phone call from a hospital administrator, telling you that Mary had died, and that they were burying her on the hospital grounds. There was something unspeakably sad about her being buried in the grounds of a hospital, but you apologised in advance for your absence.
“I suppose so,” you reply.
“And before her admittance to the Camarillo State Hospital you spoke with her often?”
“Fairly often, yes.”
“And did she ever mention her involvement with an organisation called Bundles for Britain?”
“She did.”
“Mr Conrad, were you aware that Bundles for Britain was a front for the Communist Party?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you aware that Miss Lafitte was a member of any communist organisation?”
A deep breath. This is the beginning of a descent.
“I had my suspicions.”
“Suspicions?”
“From certain things Mary said. I thought she may, at some point, have been involved in communist activity. But I never knew for certain. She didn’t say as much to me.”
“And did she ever name any friends or acquaintances of hers who were Communists?”
“No, sir.”
A chorus of whispers passes over the room. You’re pretty sure ‘audience’ isn’t the proper word, ‘spectators’ or ‘observers’ being preferred, but it’s difficult not to see or think of them as an audience, or this hearing as theatre.
“And when was the last time you saw Miss Lafitte?”
“November of last year.”
“And that was at the Camarillo State Hospital?”
“Yes, sir.”
An afternoon visit. The hospital’s white stucco walls reminded you of the Alamo. Mary was catatonic, saliva dribbling from the corner of her mouth, staring out through the barred windows as if she was the witness to something terrible.
Tavenner puts his glasses back on, adjusts them. Makes a face as he reads his notes again. “I’d like to turn now to your time in New York, Mr Conrad, when you were a student at Juilliard. While in New York did you know a person by the name of Ronald Bernard?”
You spit out your reply: “You know I did.”
“Mr Conrad, I am asking not for my benefit but the committee’s. Would you like me to ask the question again?”
“I knew Ronald Bernard.”
“And what was your relationship with him?”
“He was my teacher and my friend.”
“And is it correct that you lived with Mr Bernard?”
This is it. He’s about to ask how many bedrooms there were, how often the bedding was changed in each room. How big were the beds? How often was Mrs Bernard present? What kind of books did Mr Bernard read? What kind of artworks did he have on the walls?
You reply: “That is correct.”
“And how long did you live with him?”
“Six years. Until his death.”
“Six years. Isn’t that somewhat unusual? For a teacher and pupil, I mean.”
“By then I’d graduated from Juilliard.”
“I see. And as well as being his pupil and his friend, you were professionally close, yes?”
“Meaning?”
“Mr Conrad. Only last week you conducted a concert of Mr Bernard’s work at Carnegie Hall, yes?”
A collective chuckle passes across the room.
“Yes, I did.”
“And were you aware, while Mr Bernard was still with us, that he had visited the Soviet Union?”
“Yes. I was aware of that.”
Tavenner studies his notes again.
“April of 1938,” he says. “He visited both Leningrad and Moscow.”
“If you say so.”
That was unwise. Tavenner eyeballs you over the frames of his glasses. Another cursory glance at his notes.
“And did Mr Bernard ever discuss the trip with you, at all?”
“He mentioned it.”
“And what did he say? Was he approving of what he saw in the Soviet Union?”
“I don’t recall. It was my understanding he went over there to review ballet. I don’t remember him talking about anything else.”
Walter’s turn to lean forward again. He scratches at the top of his head, straightening out a few errant strands of hair, and he speaks into the microphone.
“Now, you say he went there to review Russian ballet. Would you consider Mr Bernard’s own music to be in any way influenced by Soviet composers?”
“I’d say he was influenced by Russian composers.”
“The difference being…?”
You resist the urge to sigh.
“He liked Mussorgsky and Stravinsky. Both Russian, but I’d call neither of them Soviet.”
“But Ronald Bernard visited the country in 1938, did he not? The music he listened to during his visit would have been Soviet, yes?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so. And Mr Bernard was still your tutor at that time?”
“He was.”
“Would you say your own work is influenced by his?”
“I suppose it must be.”
“Mr Conrad. Is it possible that some of Mr Bernard’s Soviet influences could have found their way into your music?”
“Soviet influences?”
“Themes. A certain style the Soviet composer has.”
“Mr Walter. I am a film composer. I write music for Westerns. Can you imagine what the producers would say if I wrote music for a John Wayne flick that sounded like a Cossack dance?”
Another ripple of laughter from the spectators and the press, but not the committee.
“Order,” says Wood, gavel at the ready. “Mr Conrad. This is not an audition for The Ed Wynn Show. Just answer the question.”
“No,” you say. “I don’t believe any Soviet influences have crept into my own work.”
Tavenner sticks his thumb down into his collar, as if letting out steam. He smiles at Wood and Walter before asking his next question.
“And have you, yourself, ever visited the Soviet Union?”
A fork in the road, like something from a cartoon. A gnarled old wooden signpost with arrows pointing off in each direction. You feel as if you’ve been standing here forever.
**
It was a good half hour before Ron spoke.
When the broadcast was over – a performance of Shostakovich’s Leningrad symphony – he simply crossed the room, turned off the radio, and sat back down in perfect silence. You knew then not to speak to him, that you should allow him some time to gather his thoughts, for remembered passages of it to settle like autumn leaves. Ron wasn’t given to first impressions or gut reactions. No good, he maintained, could come from a world in which people are no longer allowed the time to think.
The story behind the symphony was remarkable in itself. Composed in a warzone, a city under siege, smuggled out on microfilm. That night was the first time it had been performed outside Russia.
Only when Ron had poured you both a drink and you were seated on his couch did you pluck up the nerve to ask what he thought of it.
“It’s excellent,” he said. “So much dignity. I’m sure people will say it’s trite, that it’s propaganda and so on, but can you imagine writing a piece like that in those conditions?”
You told him you couldn’t.
“Such a tragedy,” said Ron. “Such a beautiful city. And those poor people.”
He lit a cigarette, the smoke drifting in a bluish-grey ribbon before settling, blanket-like, in the middle of the room. Earlier that day, you’d visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at illustrations from the Inferno by Blake and Dore, and later you took lunch at the Tavern on the Green. You and Ron spoke of many things, about the sketches, the food you ate, how oppressive New York
summers can be, but you discussed nothing of importance. Now that you were both thinking of serious things, Ron took the opportunity to ask about another.
“How is everything at home?”
“I can’t stay there,” you said. “You don’t know what it’s like. My Dad… He can barely bring himself to speak to me. And Mom just cries all the time.”
It was a betrayal, telling him this, as if you’d invited him into the apartment to snoop on them.
“But your family,” said Ron. “They need you now, yes?”
What family? Thinking of what your brother left behind as a family was like describing a half-demolished house as a home.
“Need me?” you said. “They hardly know I’m there. My Dad just sees me as another pair of hands in the store, and my Mom, well… She’s half-crazy with it.”
“They lost their son.”
“You say that as if I didn’t know. As if they don’t remind me of it every goddamn day. And now I’ve got my Mom telling me to run away some place, so I won’t get called up. I said to her, I said, ‘Mom. Where the hell am I gonna go?’”
“She’s frightened. And can you blame her?”
“Of course not. I’m frightened too. I keep having these dreams…”
“You were restless again last night.”
“I know. I lay awake at night, scared that when I fall asleep I’ll have the same dream. I keep having the same dream.”
You wanted to tell him about it. The metal room tipped on its side, seawater gushing in around the edges of its only door. The stench of smoke and engine oil. The groan of metal being bent out of shape and the sound, from other decks, of men screaming.
“It’s just a dream,” Ron said.
“It’s more than that,” you tell him. “And Zack’s out there now, somewhere, at the bottom of the sea. And if I’m not dreaming about that, I’m thinking about it, wondering how many miles down he is, how dark and cold it must be. And I keep imagining myself down there with him in the dark. What happens if I get drafted?”
“It won’t come to that.”
“You can’t know that for certain.”
Ron took a final draw on his cigarette and stubbed it out. He paused, gazing at his shoes, lost in a thought. In moments like this he could seem so academic, so detached. It would always be a source of tension between you. Ron was born at just the right time; too young to get drafted in the last war, too old to get drafted in this one. Wealthy, and with the kind of old money that wasn’t tied up in anything risky. The Great Depression had meant little more than one less member of staff.
Men like him were on a conveyor belt of good fortune. You had friends like him at Juilliard. Kids who found it fascinating that your father was a butcher on the Lower East Side, that you still lived with your parents, that you could, if necessary, walk home after a day in school. You doubted any of them were worried about the draft, and they certainly weren’t wrapping veal cutlets and chicken livers to earn their allowance.
“There is one way you could avoid the draft,” said Ron.
Here it was. He was going to say exactly what your mother had been saying for weeks. Run away to some place in Latin America, somewhere the war will never touch, and stay there till it’s over. He’d probably have some friend, some Argentinian or Brazilian academic, who could find you a job, help set you up.
You asked him what he meant.
“If you were medically unfit,” he said. “They couldn’t draft you then.”
You laughed. “Medically unfit? Ron, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“But if there was paperwork. A doctor’s report.”
“Doctor Lowe’s known me since the day I was born. And he may be a friend of the family and all, but there’s no way he’d sign something saying I was unfit for duty. He just wouldn’t.”
“I’m not talking about him. I have a friend, in Florida. He runs a hospital for those suffering from tuberculosis. He and I go back many years. He would do this for me, I know he would.”
“But, Ron. This is serious. I mean…”
“Please, Sol. Think of your parents. Think of me. Some of us are old enough to remember the last war and everything it left behind. I couldn’t bear it if that were to happen to you.”
“We’re talking about draft evasion. You know what the penalty is for that? And if they found out it was your idea…”
“They would send me to prison. But what’s prison? How could prison be any worse than the alternative, for either of us? I’ve thought about this, Sol. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. We tell them you had TB back in ’38 and spent three or four months in hospital. You were out of New York for some of that time, so it’s perfect.”
You started to speak, but he cut you off.
“The way things are going, a trip like that, going to Russia, could ruin your career before it’s even started. It may still ruin mine. But if we tell them you were in Florida, no-one will ever know and you’ll escape the draft. It’s perfect.”
“But there’ll be paperwork, documents…”
“We can make them disappear. There are favours I can call in. That’s one of the few benefits of this lifestyle.”
“And he’d do all this, your friend?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Another secret, another lie. Was this all life ever amounted to? A steady accumulation of untruths, the sculpting of separate lives, public and private? Nobody would ever truly know who you were. Even Ron, sitting there and looking at you with such affection, didn’t know everything. And from now on there’d be a noble, perfectly reasonable explanation as to why, unlike your brother, you didn’t become another name etched into marble.
“If we do this,” Ron said, “Leningrad didn’t happen. Do you understand?”
There was now something different in his expression; something harder, almost cruel.
“It didn’t happen,” he said. “None of it. It’s all gone.”
You knew exactly what he meant.
**
Tavenner, his thumb still jammed under his collar, asks, “And have you ever visited the Soviet Union yourself, Mr Conrad?”
And you reply, “No. I have not.”
“I would remind you that you are under oath.” Tavenner glances briefly at Wood with the suggestion of a smile.
You tell him you are very aware of that.
“You see, while we were compiling information for this hearing, one of our investigators spoke with a Mrs Edna Stowe. Do you know Mrs Stowe?”
“I do.”
“And could you explain, again for the benefit of the committee, who she is?”
“She was Ronald Bernard’s secretary at Juilliard.”
“Now,” says Tavenner. “Our investigators spoke to Mrs Stowe and she recalled that when Mr Bernard travelled to the Soviet Union he took one of his students along with him.”
“Really?”
“Sadly, the passenger records for the flight were unavailable and Mrs Stowe is getting on in years. She could not remember the student’s name. Were you that student, Mr Conrad?”
“No I was not.”
“Do you know the name of the student Mr Bernard took with him?”
“No.”
“In that case, are you able to confirm your whereabouts in the April of 1938?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have a very good memory. Where were you at that time?”
“I was in hospital. Fort Lauderdale. I’d contracted TB… uh… that is to say tuberculosis in the February, and I was sent away to convalesce.”
“I see. And where was this exactly?”
“Sunny Glade Tuberculosis Hospital. Umm, that’s Oakland Park Boulevard, sir.”
“And who was your physician, while you were staying at this hospital?”
“Dr Clarence Buckley.”
“And if we were to contact Dr Buckley he would vouch for your being at the Sunny Glade Hospital in the April of 1938.”
“He would, sir.”<
br />
Tavenner chews on a thought as bitter as sherbet lemons, and Walter takes the lead.
“Going back to Ronald Bernard,” he says. “Was Mr Bernard ever a member of the Communist Party, or any affiliated organisation?”
And you reply: “Yes, sir.”
“And can you name any friends or colleagues of Mr Bernard’s who were also communists.”
“Yes, sir.”
The audience breathes in as one, loud enough for it to echo. Ronald Bernard might not have been a Hollywood star, but his name is famous enough for this to matter. You imagine – you hope – that somewhere in the Hamptons or on the Upper West Side, Margaret and her friends, the Dorises and Charlises of this world, are listening to it on the radio.
Fuck them. All of them. The past is the past and the dead are dead and this is your life, so fuck every last one of them. If this is what it takes, burn every last fucking bridge.
Chapter 31:
MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 2001
She was on hold for what felt like an age. Sol was waiting outside the phone booth, gazing up to where the sunlight and shadows met on an apartment block. A troupe of Hare Krishnas in saffron gowns went by on Fifth Avenue, singing and dancing and hitting tambourines. Sol saw them and laughed, and he waved at Natalie to get her attention. Natalie nodded and smiled. Yes. I see them too.
Thirty seconds of Mozart’s Flute Concerto on a loop, crackly and punctuated with thanks for her patience. As if they wanted people to hate this music. Just background noise. Something to fill the silence.
Finally, someone answered. She paused a moment before speaking. She could just hang up. Hang up and walk away. What difference would it make?
Outside the phone booth, Sol was getting restless. The Hare Krishnas had gone, but he could still hear them, and he was beginning to wander off towards Fifth Avenue. He looked lost, helpless. Natalie hit her hand against the glass until she had his attention and she waved, signalling that she would only be a moment. She couldn’t tell if he understood.
“Hello…?”
“Yes, I…”
Sol began wandering off again, and Natalie beat the glass until he stopped. She mouthed the words: One minute. I’ll be with you in a minute.
“Hello, ma’am?”
Deep breath. She began.
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