The Fifth Column

by James Garcia Woods

  Lowenstein would walk home from work and see them there – whole families sitting on the sidewalk, surrounded by their few pathetic sticks of furniture. There were few variations in their expressions. The men all looked crushed – they had strived to support their families, and they had failed. The women gazed bleakly into the road, seeing not the houses across the street but the impossibility of the task which lay ahead of them.

  And the children?

  The children played, as children will, but their parents’ desperation was starting to infect them, too, and after a while, though they still ran and shouted, they were doing no more than going through the motions.

  “Do you have any idea what I’m talking about here, Inspector'?” Lowenstein asked.

  Paco nodded gravely. He remembered the evictions he had seen in his childhood, when poor peasant families were thrown off their handkerchief-sized pieces of property by the guardia civil, working at the behest of the village money lender, and he recalled how those families had been forced to wander the countryside looking for casual seasonal work and sleeping wherever they could find shelter.

  “It used to break my heart to see them like that,” Lowenstein said. “But what could I do? Maybe I could have gone short myself, and scraped the rent together for one family. But what about the rest? I couldn’t support them all.”

  Then the day had come which had changed his life forever. He had seen yet another poor family cast out onto the sidewalk. The mother had been clutching a baby – with huge eyes and a hacking cough – to her scrawny chest, like so many had done before her, yet in her eyes there were signs of hope. And the source of that was the young men and young women who were taking their furniture back up the stairs. Cheerful young men and women! Optimistic young men and women! Purposeful young men and women!

  “They were members of the local branch of the Young Communist League,” Lowenstein explained to Paco, “and, unlike me, they were not just feeling pity – they were doing something to help these poor, oppressed people.”

  “But what did they achieve in the long run?” Paco asked. “Wouldn’t the landlord just have the furniture taken out again?”

  “That’s exactly what they usually did. But the YCL would take it back into the house a second time! And a third! And a fourth if that was what it took! And eventually, the landlord would decide that, given the pitiful amount of rent he was losing, it wasn’t worth his effort to push things any further. This was a fine example of the unity through strength I’d always believed in actually working! I went straight down to the Party’s office and asked how I could join.”

  “How long had you been a member of the Communist Party before you were ordered to come to Spain?” Paco asked.

  “Ordered!” Dolores McBride repeated. “I told you, they weren’t ...”

  “Just ask the question,” Paco said firmly.

  “No one from the Party ordered us to come to Spain,” Lowenstein said. “It was a privilege that had to be won.”

  “Won?”

  “Sure. The Party’s not rich, and it simply couldn’t afford to pay the expenses of sending everybody who wanted to fight the fascists. So it had to weed out the ones who would be least effective. There was a pretty tough medical for openers. Then we all had to appear before the selection board and convince it that we’d have more to contribute than some of the other volunteers. Usefulness, not belief, was the key to being accepted – which is why some very good communists were turned down, and why some guys who would never have joined the Party in a million years are here now.”

  Men like Greg Cummings, Paco thought – liberals who the Party normally held in contempt, but who would probably do a good job of fighting against Franco’s army.

  “As a matter of fact, I met quite a few of my old friends while I was being examined by the board,” Lowenstein continued. “Kids I’d grown up with in the Brooklyn Jewish Orphans’ Asylum. They’d come pretty much to the same conclusion that I had – that we have to fight fascism now, before it was allowed to get any stronger. Several of those guys are serving on the front at this very moment – including three who are brothers – and not more than half of them are communists.”

  “Ask Señor Lowenstein why he didn’t join in the fiestas,” Paco told Dolores. “Ask him why he’s one of the few men in the battalion who can’t produce an alibi for the time Samuel Johnson was murdered.”

  Dolores translated the question, and Lowenstein shook his head as he gave his reply.

  “He says it’s a personal matter,” the journalist translated.

  “Tell him that there’s absolutely no such thing as ‘a personal matter’ in a murder investigation.”

  Another short exchange followed.

  “He says that he liked Sam Johnson – more than that, he admired him – and that he would never have killed him. But if you want to believe that’s what he did, then there’s nothing he can do about it.”

  “Ask him about the argument he had with Ted Donaldson,” Paco said.

  Lowenstein’s answer took two or three minutes. There was an earnest look on his face as he spoke, and several times he gestured with his hands.

  “He says that the argument with Donaldson was nothing but a mistake,” Dolores translated, when he’d finished.

  “That’s it?” Paco asked, wishing that he’d had Cindy, not Dolores, doing his translating for him. “All those words – all that explanation – and that's all he told you?”

  Dolores sighed.

  “You wanted to know what he said, and that’s the essence of the message.”

  “And what’s the full message?”

  “He says that we all acquire prejudices as we’re growing up, but hopefully, the longer we are members of the Party, the more we can learn to overcome them. We should tolerate our comrades’ efforts to shed their past lives, and not be over-critical while they are going through what is often a difficult process. He says that what Comrade Donaldson was saying about the Party’s attitude toward the Negroes was a perfectly accurate statement, and that he, himself, should not have clouded the issue by speaking about something else.”

  These people were almost like the Spanish clergy had been in the old days. Paco thought. They might argue furiously amongst themselves, but if anybody from the outside attacked one of them, they would soon close ranks and retreat behind a shield of dogmatism.

  “Is he now claiming that Ted Donaldson isn’t really anti-Semitic after all?” he asked.

  “He is saying that there are no faults which cannot be corrected with the proper application of Party discipline.”

  “What does he know about the Ku Klux Klan?”

  Dolores shot Paco an astonished look.

  “The Ku Klux Klan?” she said. “Why the hell do you want to know about the KKK? I’m surprised you’ve even heard the name.”

  Nor would I have, if it hadn’t been for Greg Cummings, Paco thought.

  “Ask him,” he said aloud.

  Reluctantly, Dolores posed the question.

  “Comrade Lowenstein says that the Klan is a hateful, hateful organization,” the journalist translated. “He said it just like that – repeating ‘hateful’ twice. He says that all the water in the world could not wash the blood from its hands.”

  “Was he using the present tense, as you are?” “Yes.”

  “So he thinks the Klan is still active?”

  “In January last year, a Negro called Jerome Wilson was lynched in Franklington, Kentucky,” Lowenstein said. “In March, Anderson Ward was lynched in Maringuoin, Louisiana; Abe Young in Slayden, Mississippi; Reverend Brookins’ daughter in Poinsett, Arkansas; the Reverend Allen in Hernando, Mississippi, and Mary Green in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Those are just a few of the names of the dead. I could produce many more. And though the Klan may deny it, its invisible hand was behind all those murders.”

  “And does it have an ‘invisible hand’ in the International Brigade?” Paco asked Dolores.

  “This isn’t just
crazy!” Dolores McBride exploded. “It’s also in incredibly bad taste.”

  “Most murders do tend to involve some degree of bad taste,” Paco countered. “Please ask him the question.”

  Lowenstein listened to the translation, then, shook his head.

  “That is impossible,” he said.

  “Es imposible,” Dolores translated.

  “I know what he said,” Paco replied.

  But he did not think that Lowenstein looked entirely convinced by his own answer.

  * * *

  “What was your impression of all that?” Paco asked Felipe, when they were alone again.

  The fat constable leant back in his chair, rubbed his more than ample stomach, and burped loudly.

  “I think that if you are questioning the chickens on the activities of the fox, it would be better to ask them about it yourself, rather than rely on another chicken to convey the information for you,” he said.

  Paco grinned briefly, then was serious again.

  “You’re saying that you don’t trust Dolores.”

  “I am sure that Señorita McBride is an honest woman as far as she is able to be,” Felipe replied. “But her interests are not the same as ours. Our duty is to catch the murderer. Her duty – as she sees it – is to protect the battalion.”

  Paco nodded. “And what she doesn’t see – what none of them see – is that the best way to protect the battalion is to tackle its problems head-on, rather than pretend they don’t exist. They all have their own suspicions – though they're not prepared to admit it – and the longer we take to solve the crime, the stronger their suspicions will grow, until, in the end, they tear the battalion apart.” He lit up a Celtas. “What did you make of Lowenstein’s reaction to my question about the Ku Klux Klan?”

  “He doesn’t seem to like it very much,” Felipe said. “No. he doesn’t.” Paco agreed. “But how much does he actually know about it?”

  “He seemed very well informed to me.”

  “He had the statistics at the tips of his fingers, but that proves nothing. You’re a city boy from Madrid, yet you talk glibly about foxes and chickens, when you’ve probably never seen a fox. And Lowenstein, who’s from New York City, talks just as glibly about the Ku Klux Klan – and he’s probably never seen one of those particular foxes, either. So what we need to do is talk to a real country boy.”

  “And where will we find one?”

  “Dolores is bringing Ted Donaldson to talk to us right this minute.”

  “But he’s a stevedore from New Jersey!” Felipe protested.

  “He is now,” Paco said. “But I don’t think he always was. I used to be a country boy myself, don’t forget – and however long it might be since we’ve all left the campo behind us, I can still pick other country boys out of the crowd.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Dolores McBride was not a small woman by any means, but framed in the cafeteria doorway next to Ted Donaldson, she seemed almost tiny. Yet it was clearly Dolores who was in charge, and as she took Donaldson’s arm and led him across to the table where Paco and Felipe were sitting, it seemed almost as if she were dragging him.

  The journalist took the chair she had been occupying earlier, and indicated to the stevedore he should take the one Mannie Lowenstein had been sitting on.

  “Señor Donaldson wishes to make a personal statement before the questioning begins,” she said.

  Paco sighed.

  These yanquis! he thought. They saw themselves as being informal – and in many ways they were – but in some respects they were more bureaucratic than the most pedantic official in the most procedure-bound government ministry in Madrid.

  “Let’s hear this statement, then,” he said.

  “Comrade Donaldson regrets the remarks which he made in the council chamber,” Dolores said. “He regards Leon Trotsky as a traitor to the world revolution, but the fact that he is of Jewish origin has no relevance to that fact. As Comrade Stalin has taught us, if a man or woman is prepared to dedicate himself or herself to the revolution, then background is immaterial.”

  To use Felipe’s phrase, it was like a chicken talking for a chicken, Paco thought – with neither of them prepared to admit that one of their fellow chickens might just be a fox in disguise. However much Dolores might despise Greg Cummings as the liberal – though she apparently had no complaints over him as a lover – the sandy-haired man at least seemed capable of examining possibilities the rest of the brigadistas would prefer to shrug off.

  “I’d like Señor Donaldson to tell us a little of his personal history, if he doesn’t mind,” Paco said.

  “Ted has been a shop steward in the stevedores union for several years,” Dolores said, without even looking at Donaldson. “He was one of the leaders of the last major dock strike. He’s been arrested several times, and beaten up on three occasions – once by federal marshals and twice by the Pinkertons. He was accepted almost immediately when he volunteered to fight in Spain.”

  “Let him speak for himself,” Paco said, irritatedly.

  Dolores shrugged in an attempt to mask her own irritation.

  “If that’s what you really want,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “It’s just that I know his history – he’s going to be one the people in my book – and I thought I’d save a little time by giving you the details myself.”

  “Ask him where he was born,” Paco said firmly. “Why should you want to know that?”

  “Because I do.”

  Dolores asked the question, listened to the answer, then said, “He was born in Moultrie, Georgia.”

  “That’s in the southern part of the United States, isn’t it?”

  “Sure it is. So what?”

  “Is his home town close to the sea?”

  The journalist laughed.

  “Hell, no. I’d guess it must be well over a hundred miles from the ocean.”

  “So ask him how he became a stevedore.”

  “There was no work in his home town,” Dolores said, when Donaldson had answered. “He drifted to New York. There was employment going on the docks, and they like to employ big guys like him. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Ask him what he knows about the Ku Klux ...”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, not that again,” Dolores interrupted, exasperatedly. “I don’t know who put that crazy idea into your head, but it’s going to lead you absolutely nowhere.”

  He was almost on the point of telling her that the information came from her lover, but at the last moment he held back. He needed Cummings’ cooperation again, and he was likely to lose it if Dolores – because she was furious with him – refused to let the sandy-haired man into her bed.

  “How do you know my questions won’t lead anywhere?” he asked Dolores. “Have you suddenly become some kind of detective?”

  “I know because I know the Party better than you do. We’re not the bunch of amateurs that you seem to think we are. The guys who selected the brigadistas in New York knew their job. They would never let some Negro-hating Klansman slip through their net.”

  “You wouldn’t have thought they’d have let anyone anti-Jewish slip through it, either,” Paco countered. “But we’re both well aware that Donaldson has said things against the Jews.”

  “And he regrets them.”

  “That won’t make the words – or the thoughts that were behind them – go away.”

  “You don’t understand us at all,” Dolores told him. “You’ll never understand us.”

  “You’re saying that before you even ask him the question, you’re sure he knows nothing about the Klan?”

  “We’re Americans! We all know something about the Klan,” Dolores said, getting angry. “We all know something about the Red Indians and the California Gold Rush, too. But so what?”

  “Did he talk to Luis Prieto about the Red Indians or the California Gold Rush, when he was at the Prieto house?” Paco demanded.

  “I don’t expec
t he did.”

  “Did he talk to Luis Prieto about the Klan?”

  It had been a shot in the dark, but from the look on Donaldson’s face when he heard the words ‘Klan’ and ‘Luis Prieto’ so close together, Paco knew that it had hit the target squarely in its center.

  The big stevedore spoke.

  “Comrade Donaldson says he did discuss the Klan with Luis Prieto – at least as far as was possible given the linguistic difficulties,” Dolores said, the surprise evident in her voice.

  “Why?”

  “He wanted to make Luis aware that there is evil in the world far beyond the confines of Spain.”

  If that had really been his intention, he didn’t seem to have had much success with Luis Prieto, Paco thought.

  “What made him choose the Klan as an example of evil?” he asked.

  “He saw it as a penance.”

  “A penance for what?”

  The big stevedore spoke for some time, his voice low and his eyes fixed on the table.

  When he had finished, Dolores said, “He wants to be honest with you, but first he wants your word that anything he tells you won’t go beyond this table. He especially wants your assurance that it won’t get back to the Party.”

  The Party! The Party! Wherever the journey started, it always ended up with the bloody Party!

  “How could I tell the Party anything?” Paco asked. “I don’t speak the language. So it’s up to you, isn’t it? If you’re prepared to keep this big secret of his, then it’s safe. If not, that’s your choice.”

  “I shall tell no one,” Dolores said somberly. “I shall keep it to myself because I’m prepared to believe that any man, especially a man who is being guided by the Party, can change.”

  “And what, exactly, has Señor Donaldson changed from?”

  Dolores pursed her brow.