It would have been easy to demur with some sort of excuse—I had a new puppy and library loans that expired this weekend, after all—but I suddenly found Lee’s arm linked through mine and her cigarette in my hand. In mere moments, Vlad had been deposited in Laurel’s eager arms upstairs and I was choking on tobacco-flavored smoke while being swept back down the street the way I had just come.
Lee kept up a steady stream of rapid-fire chatter on the way to the subway: about the smart two-toned oxford heels she’d seen in the window of Macy’s that she couldn’t afford, that her boss at the garment factory was sleeping with his sister-in-law, that she had to remember to buy new silk stockings this weekend. It was only once we were on the crowded subway platform that I dared interrupt, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where we’re headed?”
Lee removed a tube of lipstick from her purse, touched up her Cinderella-pink lips, and made a perfect moue. “A meeting of the American League Against War and Fascism.”
Well, I’d be the first to admit that was not on my list of expected places for two young women to be on a Friday night. However, while it made me something of a crumb, an evening spent watching people discuss—and likely argue—politics actually sounded like good fodder for my journal.
Lee laughed, apparently misreading my expression. “Feel free to jump in front of the next train if you want.”
“Actually, I was interested in Fascism while I lived in Florence last year,” I said. “I even went to one of their meetings.”
“Really?” Lee frowned. “So, does that mean you’re a Fascist?”
I sensed that my answer was very important to her. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to lie. “No, I just wanted to hear what they were all about. Politics is interesting.”
“Even Communist politics?”
I shook my head. It had been nearly two decades since the Russian Revolution had broken out, but Communism was still a filthy word in America; I’d listened with my father to plenty of crackling broadcasts from our Zenith radio over the years that had espoused its litany of evils. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Well, are you coming?” Lee’s hands were on her hips. “Or heading back?”
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my quiet boarding room held some appeal, even with its stink of cabbage and beans. After all, Coriolanus and Vlad wouldn’t judge me if I didn’t understand a punch line or if I made awkward comments that stopped conversations in their tracks. There’s nothing wrong with meeting new people, no matter what they think of me. Who knows, I might even enjoy myself.
So, I squared my shoulders and attended my first League meeting that night. I was prepared to listen, fully expected the speakers to be the down-and-outers I often saw gathered around Union Square.
Instead, in a night filled with surprises, what I heard in that cramped and stuffy hall filled with nearly a hundred people astonished me.
“People, we are witnessing the final death throes of capitalism!” the first speaker—a League organizer whose tomato-stained white coveralls were explained when Lee whispered that he was a food worker—exclaimed as Lee took a long pull from a communal bottle of gin being passed around. I declined when she offered me a drink. “There’s no denying that there’s something wrong with capitalism,” he continued, “when my day begins by buying an apple from an unemployed architect shivering at the entrance to my building. Forty percent of New Yorkers are unemployed, and I’ve lost count of how many are sleeping in shacks made of oil barrels and cardboard along Riverside Drive.”
I was intrigued. Cautiously intrigued, at least. Still, it was the next speaker who really piqued my interest.
I thought Lee was going to visit the ladies’ room when she stood after the organizer’s speech, but I gaped when she assumed the center of the room and stubbed out another hand-rolled cigarette beneath her heel. I realized when she began to speak that my neighbor possessed a serene courage when it came to public speaking. “The plight of America’s women is a true travesty. Women should be liberated both in the workplace and in the bedroom, free to make their own destinies!” Her eyes were lit like an acolyte at the peak of religious thrall. “Instead, we remain shackled to the earnings of our husbands, with no options to earn equal pay. Our choices for work are limited—either a typist or secretary, or perhaps a nurse or teacher if we’re so inclined. Any woman seeking to work outside those accepted boxes is ridiculed and rejected.”
I found myself cheering with the rest of the League members once Lee finished her talk, answered a few questions, and resumed her place next to me. My fingers itched to pull out my journal, to make note of the various tics and behaviors around me, but instead I forced myself to commit it all to memory.
The best speakers—like Lee—make direct eye contact with their audience members.
Drop your shoulders and appear relaxed—people who squint while they talk seem tense and anxious.
A bit of self-deprecating humor never goes astray. (The tweedy college student who spoke after Lee had gotten a chuckle from the crowd when he joked that after graduation, he was looking forward to the perfect American life with a perfect job . . . but that anything was possible when you lied to yourself.)
“So, what do you think?” Lee asked when we left. I didn’t like many people, but I did find myself drawn to Lee’s enthusiasm and fervor. And I liked the fact that she chose me, of all people, to join her tonight. “Have I scared you off?”
“Far from it. I was impressed with everyone’s spirit, especially given the times we live in. And you were amazing.” I bit my lip. The League stated firmly that they were against war, but not exactly what they were for. Still, I’d liked what I’d heard, at least so far. “Truth be told, I’d like to go to more of those meetings.”
“Really?” Lee stopped mid-stride so I had to stop walking and turn to face her. “You mean it?”
“I do.” I liked the League’s enthusiasm and their purpose. It was as if they’d taken all my discontent about America and my own situation, explained why I felt that way, and then offered a clear philosophy for how to solve all our problems. If only it weren’t for a niggling suspicion that skittered around the dark corners of my mind . . .
(That whisper of conscience is one I’m only now admitting to for the first time, Catherine. In Out of Bondage I wrote myself the disguise of being a witless and dewy-eyed naïf who couldn’t decipher the writing on the wall. I’ve been a lot of things in my life—a spy, an adulterer, a liar—but I’ve never been that dim-witted a fool. Young and naive, yes. A total fool, no.)
However, I quashed that murmur of suspicion like a cockroach underfoot, the main reason being that I liked Lee. It had been a long time since I’d found another person I actually enjoyed spending time with more than I did reading a good book. In fact, I found myself wanting to linger longer with her, to soak up her energy and ideas, especially on women’s equality. To be seen. And heard. And so: “Is there anything I can do to help you? Or the League?”
Lee merely tapped her chin, a slow smile spreading across her face. “As a matter of fact, there is.”
* * *
* * *
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?
That was the $64,000 question that so many of us would be asked in later years. My answer, of course, was a resounding yes, but it didn’t start out that way. Communism was insidious in the way it snuck up on me.
(Just like the men in my life, but that story is yet to come.)
My offer of help was how Lee and I wound up knocking on the door of the League’s Manhattan headquarters the next morning. Whereas New York had once invigorated me, now each foray into the city’s streets seemed only to reinforce the idea that something had gone desperately wrong in our society. The reek of abject poverty clung to the unemployed beggar sleeping under a week-old newspaper he’d pul
led from the gutter, and the weight of homelessness bent the back of the old woman waiting for her daily ration from a Salvation Army soup kitchen.
After three flights up battered wooden stairs that moaned in protest and threatened to give way beneath my feet, I glanced at Lee. “Is this really the right place?”
“Just wait,” she said. “It gets better.” She pushed the door open to reveal bare light bulbs—half of which had gone out—and a stain of something brown across the ceiling. The only furniture of note was a couch with so much sawdust escaping from its cushions that I wondered how many rats had taken up residence inside.
“Don’t mind the mess—we don’t have the money to spend on fancy fronts.” I startled to see a wild-haired man with an open smile straighten from where he’d been crouched down digging through file boxes, his shirtsleeves rolled up.
Lee only smiled at him as she gestured to me. “This is Elizabeth, the new volunteer I told you about.”
Black ink stained the fingers of the friendly hand he thrust at me. “I’m Harold Patch, but everyone calls me Patch.”
Roughly my age, Harold Patch was more shabbily dressed than the office, but I liked how his ears stuck out ever so slightly in a way that reminded me of my father, even if he did have a ridiculous nickname. I accepted the hand he’d thrust in my direction, hardly flinching this time. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I’ve got my next League speech to write,” Lee announced before sauntering toward a mostly empty corner with a pencil and legal pad. “Holler if you need me.”
“I edit Fight,” Harold Patch informed me, “the League’s newspaper. It’s a battle to get every issue to print—pun intended—so I can use any help you’re willing to give.”
“Sure.” I set down my purse on the sorry excuse for a sofa and glanced at Lee’s back before noticing the Underwood portable typewriters set against the far wall. I’d come all this way; I might as well do something productive. “What can I do to help, Harold?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “It’s Patch, really. Only my grandmother calls me Harold. And she’s been dead almost five years.” Patch—I supposed it wouldn’t do to quibble with a grown man about his name—gestured to what might have been a desk had its entire surface not been covered in a multitude of leaning towers of folders. “Want to organize these files?”
Alphabetizing wasn’t high on my list of favorite things, but I was generally good at organizing things. So, I nodded.
Patch kept up a steady stream of chatter while we worked, informing me that he’d been a member of all manner of political organizations before he’d stumbled on the League: the Socialists and the Anarchists and even the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, which I’d never heard of.
(Sounds nefarious, doesn’t it? You’d be right to think that I should have run in the other direction, but again, I was young and naive and didn’t know any better.)
Patch glanced up at me with a half-cocked smile on his face, rubbed the back of his neck. “Hey, how’s your spelling and grammar?”
“Decent. It should be, after all the money I’ve spent on fancy degrees.”
Patch grinned, handed me an article and a freshly sharpened pencil. “Great. I’ve never been able to spell my way out of a box. Take a stab at this. It’s the lead article for our next issue.”
I found a spot on the sofa that seemed least likely to either swallow me or introduce me to a nest of rabies-riddled rats. Then I began to read.
A decent job. A decent education. A decent chance for all.
Patch’s article started out innocuous, then took a sharp left turn. As in to the far-fell-off-a-cliff left.
The Party understands the threat of Fascism, the equal threat of capitalism. Contrast the fall of the United States and the rise of Hitler and Mussolini with that of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s economy is booming, and its industrial output is higher than ever before. The Russians are living in a paradise compared to the hell America has become for most of its citizens.
There is only one logical answer to the problem set before us. And that answer is Communism.
I set the paper down, my suspicions entirely—and irrevocably—confirmed.
Damn it all to hell.
“So . . . the League . . . is Communist?” My voice sounded resigned even to my own ears, the silent cursing justified given that I could no longer ignore what was written in plain sight. Of course, the signs had all been there—the violent rants against capitalism, the cries for equality for the disenfranchised, the demands for liberation—I’d simply chosen to ignore them. The pencil that twirled through my fingers failed to soothe my nerves.
Patch frowned. “Lee didn’t tell you?”
Lee had stood, meandered her way back to us. “It must have slipped my mind.”
Because Lee knew that I—like any good American—should have run the other way as fast as my legs could carry me if I’d known I was entering a hotbed of Communism.
Entering it knowingly, anyway.
Ignorance, or at least the illusion of it—because yes, I’d been suspicious after that first League meeting—had indeed been bliss, but in volunteering to look for missing commas on some Communist rag, I no longer had the luxury of pretending I was on friendly terms with Communists. And only suspected ones at that.
Hell’s bells, but if I edited Patch’s article, I may as well paint myself Soviet-red and run naked through Times Square chanting Marxist slogans. The Red Scare following Lenin’s Russian Revolution had gone cold for nearly a decade, but Communists were as anti-American as they came. And I was a good, patriotic American, who wanted what was best for my country.
Lee’s voice followed after me when I grabbed my purse and headed to the door. “Do you mean to tell me, Elizabeth, that you don’t stand for what we stand for? Equality? An end to poverty? The downfall of Hitler and Mussolini and Fascism?”
“Of course I do.” Emotions would get me nowhere; cold hard facts would serve better to solve this equation. If Lee and Patch thought I should turn my coat red, then let them alleviate my worries. “But you do realize that the Communists fomented a bloody revolution in Russia and murdered people in cold blood when they seized power? They terrorized and brutalized and persecuted anyone who didn’t agree with them.”
“No one is suggesting we start up a secret police force in America or make indiscriminate arrests or persecute anyone for free speech.” Patch’s hands went to his hips, elbows spread wide in a display of pure confidence. “Do Lee or I look like revolutionaries to you?”
No, neither Lee nor Patch looked like my preconceived idea of Communists—no sickle and hammer banners or matching Party-issued overalls, no bearded terrorists with bombs in either pocket. They both looked wholesome and familiar. Heck, they looked like me.
Patch held up his hands. They were nice hands, strong looking, and somehow, I still found the ink stains on his fingertips rather endearing. “That was a different generation’s Communism,” he said, “in a different country. Trust me, I know the Communist label is an acquired taste. Think of it as a fine wine.”
I scowled. “I don’t drink.”
“More like Russian caviar, then,” Lee said. “Elizabeth, I swear that Patch and I are not the revolutionary Bolsheviks of old, looking to murder the czar and overthrow everything. We hate Fascists like Hitler and Mussolini, but we like FDR’s New Deal—we just want to see the government do more, give every single American a fair chance. I mean, look around . . . this country still has a long way to go, right?”
I thought of the beggar and the woman in the soup kitchen line I’d seen just that morning. And although I didn’t talk about it, during my time in Italy I’d witnessed the horrors of Mussolini’s Fascist regime, namely when his feared Blackshirts poured castor oil—Il Duce called it the golden nectar of nausea—down dissenters’ throats before publicly hanging them. From wh
at I could tell, Germany’s new dictator, Adolf Hitler, was even worse. Still, that didn’t mean I was ready to start singing Lenin’s praises.
But neither was I ready to turn my back on Lee’s friendship.
“You want me to become a Communist,” I said. And I want us to be friends. “That means you need to answer my questions. All of them.”
Patch grabbed his jacket from where it was slung on a chair. “I’ll let Lee answer your questions—she’s better at that sort of thing, and I’m about to miss the deadline to get this copy to our printer.” He paused as he passed me, his light touch on my arm obviously meant to soothe. “If it makes you feel any better,” he murmured, “I edit Fight, but I haven’t yet officially joined the Party. If you decide to join, I’ll submit my paperwork with you. All for one, and all that.”
Lee arched an eyebrow at his quiet exchange and waited until the door closed behind him. “Well,” she said to me, “what do you want to know?”
I spoke quickly, lest I lose my nerve. “I know you can’t speak for all Communists, but can you promise me that the Communists here in America aren’t violent? Because I’m not interested in assassinations or bloody revolutions.”
“Any movement on a mission has extreme branches, but no one here pays them much attention,” Lee responded. “Unless you count angry articles and fiery rhetoric.”
“All right, and what exactly is Communism’s mission here in America?” I bit my lip, plunged forward. “Because honestly, I’m having a hard time swallowing the idea that a patriotic American can also be a Communist. Aren’t those two things mutually exclusive?”
“That’s just what the government wants you to think. Communists are patriots, Elizabeth. We love America. We hate Fascism and are terrified that the likes of Mussolini and Hitler might spread here to the United States.”
A Most Clever Girl Page 3
