The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “ ‘No Compromise’ is the essence of the Proletarian movement . . . Capitalism is the Sole Enemy . . . If one Socialist comrade will bring another into the fold, and he yet another, the entire United States will be won by the year 1912 . . . We are witnessing the death-struggle between the two great forces of Greed, the chiefs of the Beef Trust and the chiefs of the Standard Oil Trust, for ownership of the United States of America . . . ‘Big Bill’ Haywood’s motto ‘Good Pay or Bum Work’ will soon replace ‘In God We Trust’ as the motto of the United States . . .” London spoke in a loud, incantatory manner, like one repeating memorized phrases, yet with great effect. Though his words were familiar ones—at least, to Upton Sinclair and other Socialists in the hall—they were greeted with applause, as if they were highly original, and daring. Upton sat in the first row of seats, below the podium, gazing up at his hero with the unstinting admiration of a kicked dog for his master, who has left off kicking him for the moment and is being kind to him, capriciously, yet wonderfully.

  When London’s flushed face crinkled with schoolboy slyness, you could see that he was about to make a joke—“Far be it from yours truly the much-derided ‘Boy Socialist’—as my detractors have called me, in an effort to discredit the noble cause for which I stand—to deny that Socialism is a menace; why, our stated purpose is to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic enterprises of present-day society”—and all erupted with laughter, including Upton; when London’s face grew sober, or seemingly sober—“our cry is a simple appeal to the downtrodden exploited working-man of America and of the world—Organize! Organize! Organize!”—the hall became hushed, as if London were uttering a prayer. Like the refrain of a ballad, these few words of London’s returned, each time with more vehemence: “Organize! Organize! And again I say unto ye—Organize! And the world will be ours! And human destiny will be ours! Revolution now! Revolution now! Revolution now!”

  In his fatigued and excited state Upton sat limp, like one basking in another’s warmth. It had been said of Upton Sinclair as a public speaker that he was “earnest”—“inspiring”—but there was no comparing Sinclair and London, the one delivering prepared speeches in a dogged monotone, often dropping his gaze to his typescript, the other flamboyant, animated, gesturing with his hands and arms, interrupting his own words with shouts of laughter—“This’ll stick-em! This’ll stick-em!” —zestfully rubbing his hands together. London’s astonishing charisma could carry all of New York City, if the city’s residents had turned out to hear him; it could carry all of the United States . . . Such a Juggernaut of a performance deserved a stadium full of cheering spectators, not the mere twelve or fifteen hundred who had turned out this evening in Carnegie Hall.

  Upton could not comprehend how Jack London had done so poorly in his campaign for mayor of Oakland several years before. Had his Socialist message been premature? Had his personality not yet ripened?

  Yet, as the speech continued, and London began to repeat his words, and even his seemingly spontaneous gesticulations, Upton began to notice that, in the unsparing spotlight of Carnegie Hall, the handsome “Boy Socialist” did in fact look older than his dust jacket photos. And was he—shorter? Shorter than one would have expected? His romantic-masculine features had coarsened, his muscled body had grown perceptibly thick, and oddly clumsy. His speaking manner was to simulate a kind of confiding intimacy with his audience—as if he were sharing secrets with them; at the same time, his rhetorical habit was to raise his voice suddenly, and dramatically—so that, if you were leaning forward in your seat, listening avidly, you were likely to rear back, as if you’d been struck a playful blow to the face. And there was the hearty, bellowing laughter with its edge of—mockery? Or was this simply—Upton wanted to believe—the expression of a sort of brimming masculinity, that could scarcely be contained behind a podium, on a conventional stage?

  Upton had not wanted to think that the first president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society had arrived at Carnegie Hall in a drunken, or semi-drunken state, but this did seem to be the case. At the start of his speech London had taken large swallows of water from a glass placed on the podium, but after some twenty minutes he’d begun to sip openly from a flask he carried inside his coat, to the merriment and approval of the more vociferous members of the audience. The more London sipped, the more flushed his face became, the louder his voice and the more sweeping his gestures. Of course—it was known that Jack London was a drinker; Jack London was hardly a teetotaler, like Upton Sinclair. Yet somehow, Upton had not thought that London’s drinking would impinge upon this rally, and this evening; Upton had not thought of this possibility at all. He didn’t dare glance around at the lively, mesmerized audience but it wouldn’t have surprised him if many of these individuals, too, were sipping from flasks. (Any consumption of alcoholic beverages was expressly forbidden in Carnegie Hall! The Socialists had been warned.)

  Upton was also dismayed by London’s clothing. How peculiar it was—how unexpected—Jack London was wearing not the rough seaman’s clothing in which he was usually photographed, nor even work-clothes, but an alarmingly “dandyish” costume—an English-style herringbone suit with a vest and a white—silken?—blouse and a flowing silk tie in polka dot design. When you caught a glimpse of his footwear, you could see that he wore elegantly styled shoe-boots of gleaming black leather. And, on his thick fingers, gleaming rings.

  The herringbone vest fit London very tightly, like a sausage casing, and was becoming, as the minutes lurched past, increasingly stained from spillage from the flask. London’s hair looked now more disheveled than windblown, threaded with a coarse sort of gray. More openly London now sipped from his silver flask, and smacking his lips with relish—drawing a ribald response from his audience.

  Upton chided himself—As I am a “teetotaler”—often derided for my “old-maid sentiments”—as by Jack London, for my deficient “sex-attitude”—I am the last person to pass judgment.

  It was clear by now that London had no prepared speech to deliver to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and seemed loftily indifferent to the fact that there were young university students in the audience; his remarks, like his increasingly ribald humor, were directed toward those who reacted with laughter, applause, foot-stampings. It was clear too that London had forgotten, if he’d ever known, that his “presidential address” was but one of several speeches scheduled for the rally: he continued to speak past 9 p.m.—past 9:30 p.m.—and now nearing 10 p.m., without a hint of fatigue. Of the speakers who were to follow, Moses Leithauser, the martyr of the recent Garment Workers’ strike, still on crutches after his ordeal at the hands of Pinkerton’s strike-breaking “detectives,” had come at Upton Sinclair’s express invitation, and was becoming impatient, and annoyed; but there was nothing anyone could do, certainly not Upton Sinclair, for the audience would have been furious if their hero had been interrupted, and indeed London was very funny, at times uproariously: “The working-man of the world needs to take a lesson from yours truly in that, if he wishes to ‘make ends meet,’ he should not lower his standard of living but—like yours truly—raise his income. There you have it, comrades: Revol’shun Now!”

  Even Upton had to laugh. This was very witty—worthy of Oscar Wilde—as, when you thought of it, London’s playful/parodistic manner and dandyish costume were reminiscent of the notorious, lately disgraced and deceased Wilde. Yet, how different the effeminate Wilde, from the hyper-masculine London!

  Upton was uneasily conscious of the eccentric little woman seated beside him, who applauded Jack London as vociferously as anyone in the hall. He didn’t want to seem—he didn’t want to be—puritanical; he was sure that, like any radical-minded Socialist in the first, thrilling years of the twentieth century, he had overcome the outmoded strictures of the bourgeoisie; yet he couldn’t help but regret that London so brazenly flaunted the conventions of the bourgeoisie, which overlapped with those of the proletariat in matters of morality and “decent” conduct. It
was unfortunate that the Hearst papers had luridly latched upon “immorality” and “free love” as charges against the Socialist movement; yet more, that Jack London had “repudiated” his wife Bess for her failure to provide him with a male heir, and spoke in interviews of his new attachment to a “temptress of exotic breeding and beauty,” known only as Charmian. Upton had been shocked to have seen, a week before, in one of the gutter tabloids, a front-page, blurred photograph of the turbaned, broadly smiling “Miss Charmian”—“Jack London’s Other Wife”; now, seated beside her, close-up, he could not imagine how the squat little female was any sort of “temptress,” let alone an “exotic” beauty.

  Charmian must have been older than her lover by some years, Upton thought, judging from the harsh bracketing lines framing her rouged mouth, and the sunken though glittering nature of her small eyes: more than forty, surely! (London wasn’t yet thirty, though he looked at least forty.) Maybe the gas-jets in the hall were unflattering to the gnome-like little woman who, flamboyantly costumed in a magenta silk turban pinned with a jeweled scarab, and a flowing “kimono”-style gown of crimson and black stripes, sat in a rigidly self-conscious pose, as if she were onstage herself; knowing herself watched by many in the audience, she made a show of gazing adoringly at the speaker above her, lifting her hands to clap fervently, and glancing from time to time, with queenly condescension, at the audience.

  Must not judge her, and their love—“free love.” As I am so conspicuous a failure along these lines myself.

  For so it seemed to Upton Sinclair, what should have been obvious at the time of his honeymoon with Meta, spent at a Socialist campground at Bayhead, New Jersey: he had not a clue what manliness, masculinity, any sort of “sex-attitude” meant. It seemed almost accidental—or incidental—that Upton did in fact have a “male heir”; for he felt very little connection with the baby, as the baby felt little connection with him.

  Now he understood why Meta had ceased laughing at his jokes—why Meta had so little patience for him, and seemed always to be too busy, too distracted, to have time even to listen to him, as she’d had before they were married. She did not appeal to him to come to bed with her any longer—she did not mind how late Upton stayed up working, or how many hours he worked through the day.

  Initially, it was Upton’s belief that marriage could be studied as a science, from a rationalist perspective; he thought he’d made the effort—yes, he had made the effort—but Meta had not seemed to know how to cooperate.

  There was something thrilling—“primitive”—in the way that Charmian stared rapturously at her lover, and London, from time to time, paused in his speechifying to wink down at his beloved, and smile a secret sort of smile, wet teeth gleaming. For this was a radically liberated couple—an heroic couple, you might say—unashamed of the “illicit” nature of their passion, in defiance of the hypocritical disapproval of the bourgeoisie. It was known that Charmian—“Miss Charmian” as London called her—was no middle-class female but a courageous rebel, for whom the role of the “other woman” was a challenge to be met with zest, and with “dash”; as for Jack London, he’d lately advocated natural passion as the cure for most of society’s ills, along with the Socialist Revolution.

  Upton was roused from his reverie by a renewed uproar in the hall as Jack London, glowering-red with exuberance, brought the audience to their feet chanting lines from “La Marseillaise”—in loud, mangled French incomprehensible to most, though, to Upton, chilling in its robust brutality—

  Aux armes, citoyens!

  Formez vos bataillons!

  Marchons! Marchons!

  Qu’un sang impur

  Abreuve nos sillons!

  Upton’s sensitive nerves were such, the very thought of human blood “watering” soil left him weak, faint; as he was repelled by the finale of Jack London’s Juggernaut performance—striding about the stage, lurching as if about to fall, striking the palm of one hand with the doughy fist of the other while shouting furiously—“Revolution now! Revolution now! Revolution Now!”

  TRULY NOW, Upton Sinclair was surprised.

  For, before the storm of riotous applause and foot-stamping had halfway abated in the hall, Jack London strode backstage, waving aside congratulations and offers of handshakes from Socialist comrades, declaring to Upton that he was “both ravenously hungry and uncommonly thirsty—for beer; and bored to high hell by the brain-addled sheep out front.” His broad smile had vanished, as if it had never been; his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin sallow. He’d torn open his herringbone vest, which had too tightly constrained his torso and belly, and was freely perspiring. In vain Upton and the others urged him to stay for the remainder of the program, or at least to hear the revered Moses Leithauser, who had waited so patiently for London to finish; London refused even to meet Leithauser, and brushed rudely past several well-to-do Socialists who’d come considerable distances to hear him, and who were much valued as donors to the Cause.

  “I too have come a long distance, all the way from California, and must now refresh myself—Miss Charmian, come!—we are going to MacDougal’s, should any comrades wish to join us—but do not attempt to restrain me now,” the stocky man laughingly warned, “—for I want meat, and I want drink, and I want my woman—and there it is! Miss Charmian, come: the hackney cab awaits, and we are off.”

  Upton tried to plead with London not to leave so abruptly—but to no avail. Miss Charmian in her glittering silk turban had joined her lover backstage, marveling at his performance—“Magnifique!”—and clamping her arm tightly into the crook of his arm. Together the two made their way out onto the street, through the stage door.

  Of course, Upton couldn’t follow them. Not only did he feel an obligation to hear Moses Leithauser speak, and several others, but there were responsibilities he couldn’t shirk after the rally ended: skirmishes between Socialists and New York City police officers on Fifty-seventh Street, and a quarrel among several of the organizers over who had misplaced a packet of valuable receipts.

  When Upton returned to the hall, he saw to his dismay that more than half the audience had rudely left in the wake of their idol Jack London. Those who remained were scattered about the rows of seats and most of these appeared to be young men of university age—neatly dressed, with glasses—of whom a number uncannily resembled Upton Sinclair.

  At last, at 10:20 p.m., Moses Leithauser was to speak! The delay had been unconscionable and humiliating—Upton could barely bring himself to look at the revered union man waiting backstage with pages of a speech clutched in his hand, his face a mask of wounded pride, indignation, and fury. Upton hurried to the podium to introduce Leithauser, and to urge the remaining audience—“Come forward, please! There are many empty seats at the front.”

  SO LATE! It was nearing midnight when Upton Sinclair and the more reliable of his Society comrades were free to leave Carnegie Hall, parting from one another in exhausted silence. Upton was staying with friends in a sparely furnished flat on the Lower East Side.

  Upton thought I will go back there now—of course.

  Yet, though he was exhausted, his nerves were strung-tight; he was light-headed, and famished; he could not stop thinking of Jack London’s Juggernaut performance, and of the remainder of the rally—a succession of doggedly earnest Socialist speakers, lecturing to a gradually diminishing audience until, at the very end, only a few isolated individuals remained in the hall, of whom several were deeply asleep and could barely be wakened by ushers.

  I will go back to the flat, to sleep. And tomorrow—I will go to Staten Island, to claim my woman and my “heir.”

  Somehow, as in a trance, he was walking south—on Seventh Avenue—in the direction of Times Square. Though he hadn’t ever patronized the notorious MacDougal’s, nor even would have thought he knew its location, Upton found himself drawn in that direction—for hadn’t Jack London invited him to drop by MacDougal’s after the rally?—it would be rude for him not to accept London’s invitatio
n, under the circumstances. For he, Upton Sinclair, had invited London to accept the presidency of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and to speak at its inaugural rally—very likely, he was Jack London’s closest friend in Manhattan, and the Socialist comrade closest to him in ideology, zeal, and temperament.

  “It would be rude, certainly. After the sacrifice London has made, coming here . . .”

  When Upton arrived at MacDougal’s he had no difficulty locating Jack London and Miss Charmian in its crowded, deafening, and sulfurous-smoky interior—there, at a table at the very center of the bustling restaurant, was the conspicuous couple, surrounded by a pack of admirers.

  Hesitantly Upton approached—he’d been jostled by departing revelers, at the front of the restaurant—feeling as if he were stepping into something like a blast furnace—by the indraft sucked inside, shyly excited, intimidated, yet helpless to resist. He saw that London’s table was strewn with glasses, Champagne and beer bottles, dirtied plates and cutlery; on a platter in front of London were the remains of what appeared to be a raw hunk of meat, only the curving, tusk-like bone and shreds of bloody gristle remaining. Upton would have thought that, after his energetic performance at Carnegie Hall, Jack London would be in a subdued if not exhausted mood, but, to the contrary, here was the famous man laughing loudly, sprawled in his chair, a railway cap perched cockily on his head, and the stump of a thick-ashed cigar clamped between his big bared teeth. His jaws gleamed with grease, his canine teeth looked particularly pointed. The elegant herringbone coat had been removed, the herringbone vest had been torn open, the white silk blouse was splattered with food- and drink-stains, pulled open also at the throat to show a broad, fatty, grizzle-haired upper torso.

  Yet more astonishing to Upton that London, sighting him as he hesitantly approached, squinting at him through wafting clouds of smoke, reacted so suddenly, and so warmly: “Here he is! Here! We’ve all been waiting for—who’s-it—Comrade Sinc’ler—hope of the twentieth century—author of the greatest novel since Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Jungle! The Jungle!—that’s it, ain’t it?—God-dam Jungle!—truer words were never uttered—this damn-cursed cap’list nation is a jungle—never mind Wolf, and Death—predators of the deep—here is where the cesspool lies, in these United States.” Upton paused a few feet from the table, stricken with self-consciousness as everyone at the table turned to stare at him, and London lurched to his feet as if he were greeting a long-lost friend, or indeed a comrade-brother. The fierce-faced man staggered toward Upton as if to embrace him, colliding with a waiter, and with a gentleman in a tuxedo seated at his table—“Make way, make way, damn you—this is Comrade Sinc’ler—make way and let the skinny fella in—runt of the litter—shy!—‘the meek shall enter first’—or—is it ‘last’?—no matter, if you enter—better last, if the first is trompled over—‘survival of the fittest’—sit!—here, my friend!—beside Jack, sit—there is plenty of room—my woman on my left-hand, my brother Sinc’ler on my right—now, we are all meant where we are to be, or—we are all where we are meant to be; and the hour is still young.”