Red Love

by David Evanier

  September 1975. Mrs. Poffnick is now taking 150 mg. of Synacon daily. She complains of weakness; at the same time the medication seems to have improved her appetite and feeling of well-being. She finds it difficult, for example, to climb onto a bus. She asked if this could be the result of depression. She also feels she can’t leave the house anymore and go to meetings because of incontinence.

  December 1976. Mrs. Poffnick has informed me that she has been diagnosed as having chronic leukemia. She feels that she may have to enter the home, if they will have her, but if so “I might as well be dead.”

  February 1977. Mrs. Poffnick seems to be very much improved. Taking 50 mg. of Elavil at bedtime, she says her fears of doing things, sleep problems, and difficulty getting up in the morning have been relieved. Today she dated the problem of fatigue and sleeplessness back to when she was in her mid-fifties. At that point she could no longer find work as a waitress or a restaurant worker. During this period she developed what she thought were allergies. She developed extreme sleeplessness, fatigue, and a dry mouth. At first she tried to sleep by drinking six to ten bottles of beer a night, and started taking barbiturates along with beer. At this point Mrs. Poffnick wondered if she had been depressed for the last twenty years, ever since she couldn’t find work that was suitable for her and began to feel a sense of uselessness. She said she had also been very depressed over the Rubell case, but would not explain her feelings to me.

  June 1978. Mrs. Poffnick’s declining health and diagnosis of chronic leukemia have made it a continuous struggle for her to manage within the community and to maintain the independence she so fiercely holds on to.

  Mrs. Poffnick’s relationship with the social worker has been a source of support to her. In order to reach Mrs. Poffnick, an unorthodox approach is required. The social worker does not have regular appointments with Mrs. Poffnick, who usually drops in the office every three or four days. When she does come, Mrs. Poffnick makes it clear that she does not expect the social worker necessarily to be available to her.

  December 1980. In recent weeks Mrs. Poffnick has shared more and more with the worker her fears regarding leukemia. Last week she was even more disturbed than usual. There was some incoherency; frequently she was unable to complete a sentence, because of a loss of thought process. She seemed to be overmedicated.

  October 1982. Mrs. Poffnick continues to feed the patients and take care of them at the home. She carries a cane but refuses to use it. She helps everyone in need. She has thirteen gallons of apple juice and eighteen boxes of matzoh in her apartment because someone needed to sell them.

  Mrs. Poffnick refuses to have a television set at home, although the worker indicated one could be made available to her. She considers many of the programs a waste of time, and has particularly strong negative reactions to daytime soap operas. She referred to them as “absolute bullshit.”

  January 1984. Mrs. Poffnick described at length the two children that she raised. They were orphaned when a nephew died fighting in the Korean War. She raised them with her late husband, a tailor. Mr. and Mrs. Poffnick cared for the children until they married and left home. Mrs. Poffnick was the children’s only support subsequent to Mr. Poffnick’s death. They never attempted to adopt the children since, in Mrs. Poffnick’s own words, “No one else wanted them.” Both children have turned out well, she reports, and are doctors. On the other hand, no one in the community who is close to Mrs. Poffnick recalls that she has ever had children or a husband living with her.

  Mrs. Poffnick told the worker that with her strong interest in peace, Mrs. Poffnick refuses whenever possible to pay any federal taxes, and has done so since the beginning of the Vietnam War. In order to avoid the federal tax, she withdraws all her money at the end of the year and starts a savings account in a new bank. She also refuses to pay the subway fare since it has been raised, and swings through the gate.

  June 5, 1984

  Hi miss Pastoff,

  Here is a check for whatever you want to use it.

  Dont wory about ho much. Its anywy yours.

  you are my beneficiary.

  you may as well use it now then when I’ll be in Heaven!!!

  Let me tell you the Banks.

  One is, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. located at 26st. &

  Columb ave there I have 500.00 I dont need it.

  The 2nd bank

  East River savings bank located at 96 & amsterdam.

  there I have now 200.00

  this is a bank I use

  3rd

  Citibank located at 111 st and Bway. there I have only a

  few dollars, that bank I use since I will not die any

  more very yong.

  you’ll have to buy 3 death certificates and present your

  Identification, plus a death certificate.

  mark down for yourself where my banks are

  Be Well—shoot first

  Yours

  Manya

  Manya was invited to speak at the annual Rubell memorial rally at Town Hall. She had not heard from that crowd for a long time. They knew she was dying. True, she was a deviationist, but she had been the only person to testify on behalf of the Rubells.

  Seated in the audience was the gang from Perry Street: Renée and Max Finger, Josh Moroze, Sophie Rich, Hermie Rich, a white-haired Maury Ballinzweig decked out in bell-bottoms.

  Manya’s beloved Lonnie Rose, who had been with the Panthers, was another guest speaker. Lonnie was one of the Morningside 3l/2, accused of a little mayhem. The Morningside 3 1/2 thought the 1/2 made them sound warmer, less threatening. The 1/2 was Elton MacRaw. Elton had only one arm—the other was a meat hook.

  The memorial meeting took place on the day the newspapers ran the photograph of Mrs. Klinghoffer being escorted off the Achille Lauro.

  On the stage they talked of 1954, Union Square, masses of people united. Lovely Danny Michelle, Henky Rubin’s successor, his moustache still black and red after all these years, stormed across the stage, his tenor voice booming, holding stacks of pages about the Rubell case that fell from his hands. He suddenly threw the whole batch of pages on the floor in a heap and stomped on them with his spurred boots. “They’re the wrong fucking pages!” he screamed.

  “For years we fought the F.B.I. for these pages under the Freedom of Information Act. Now we got ‘em, our offices are flooded with ‘em, you can’t move—and what do we get? F.B.I. plants telling us that Solly Rubell told an informer about the whole espionage operation! Now brothers and sisters, Solly Rubell was a very … careful … person. Would he have spilled the beans to a stranger in the House of Detention? In heaven’s name, give us the right pages, the ones that prove we were right all along. Take this so-called spy, Walker. Dig the setup. A member of the Ku Klux Klan! Imagine such a reactionary working for the USSR! My friends, they’re trying to do today what they did to the Rubells in the fifties. They don’t call you a Communist anymore. Oh no. You’re a—get this—now you’re a terrorist. They use that buzz word, K.G.B!” Michelle hopped on one foot in delight and the audience hooted. “A hijacker, a bomb-thrower. A threat to private property.”

  Michelle lowered his voice to a whisper, and wiped a tear from his eye. “Dolly and Solly.” A large picture of the Rubells was raised on the stage. “Hello Dolly. Take a bow, Solly. It’s so nice to see you back where you belong. You’re looking swell, Dolly. I can tell, Solly. You’re still growing, you’re still crowing, you’re still going strong. Dolly and Solly. Solly and Dolly. Dolly Solly, Solly Dolly,” he intoned as a procession of men and women walked down the aisle with red roses. They knelt in front of the picture.

  “Who were the Rubells? They were nobodies, for Christ’s sake. And boy, were they ever reliable. Simple little progressive folk who drank deeply from the fountain of pure advanced thought. They would do anything you told them to do. Manya Poffhick, a guest speaker tonight, is another nobody.” The audience applauded lustily.

  “You may rise,” Danny said to the kneeling g
roup. “The beauty of it is that any one of you out there could have replaced them and no one would have known the difference. Goodbye, Solly and Dolly … goodbye noble folk …” Michelle blew kisses to the audience as he exited.

  A Hollywood writer, his artistic career in ruins after being blacklisted for years, stepped to the podium. Bart London was best known for the brilliant “Bow Wow Goes to Hawaii” series at the peak of his creative powers, including the socially innovative “Bow Wow Goes to Leningrad.” He had been cut down in his prime.

  “I’d like to introduce the victims of a new frame-up, Lonnie Rose and Shirley Stirrup of the Morningside 3 1/2.” A tall, elegant man, a raincoat slung over his shoulder, holding a puppy by a leash and the Encyclopaedia Britannica in his other hand, walked dapperly to the microphone. He was accompanied by a plump woman with a snarl on her face. Shirley Stirrup spoke first. “This system been rapin’ Mom Nature,” she said, “gouging out the earth, mining, uprooting, butchering, robbin’ her minerals, factories that’s belchin’ out poison in our air, killin’ off the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky and breedin’ retardation, deformed babies. …”

  “Tell it, sister!” Manya called out.

  “We tell them to qualify, elabrofy,” Shirley Stirrup continued, “back up their credentials with the facts or stop lyin’, dupin’ folks… . We was dragged down the steps by the guards, thrown on our stomachs in the prison vans while handcuffed and shackled, heat blasting, stifling, driven by speeding, callous drunken guards… . We been raped of our blood on a hunger strike, helded down by three-hundred-pound guards while nurses raped us of our blood and injected drugs into our bodies. …”

  “What does she mean she was raped of her blood?” a prim young British woman said to Manya, but Manya had no time for bourgeois crap.

  “Forced to eat commissary junk food—cookies! Potato chips! Crackers! Pretzels! They refused to give us our natural raw-food diet. We still suffering problems with our teeth, bleeding, swollen gums, cracked teeth, teeth falling out, crumbling at the root. They so bent on hurting us, taking away our health that they won’t even give us a raw onion to help our gums—”

  “Thank you, beautiful sister,” said Lonnie, “and now perchance it’s time for me to elabrofy on your statements.” He gently moved her away from the microphone.

  “It is historically known,” he shouted, “that Reagan has decreed the death of all black babies. This is scientifically stated. Blacks are the targets because we’re the spark for the prairie fire.”

  Manya, who was sitting in the front row, finished her fourth beer and put the bottle down on the floor beside her chair.

  “We are 3 1/2 black revolutionaries sprung from the depths of the people’s struggle for freedom,” Lonnie said. “We’ve been organizing for housing, education, health care, mass enlightenment, you know, fighting pig brutality. And they call us ‘terrorists.’ Our real crime, which I am prone to admit, is our exposure of the system. Just like with the Rubells, they wanted to extract from us here the names of our associates, who we knew, where we knew them, where we went, like that. And like the Rubells, we refused. They want to crush the vanguard, so they can go on raping Central America and Africa of their blood with no damn interference.

  “Brothers and sisters, fascism is imminent, just as the beautiful Rubells realized over thirty years ago. Captured revolutionaries are buried in the camps, subject to isolation, harassment, physical abuse, electric-shock batons, murder, and loss of tranquility. Friends of the Rubells: the struggle is the same. Only the names have changed. Dolly and Solly, we are carrying on until victory.”

  There was ringing applause and a standing ovation.

  Manya was introduced as the heroine of the Rubell trial. She walked to the podium with her two canes.

  “When you invited me, I thought, my God, how did I get to the first act?” she said, peering nearsightedly across the hall. “But what the hell, I’ll tell you what I know.

  “When I think of the Rubells,” she said, her voice breaking, “ordinary people like you and me, to become such heroes. I cried so much. I didn’t cry for a very long time, but now that I speak of it, you see … parents of small children should do such a sacrifice, to show the world they were not guilty … it takes great courage. Great, great courage.” The crowd applauded, led by Danny Michelle on the side of the stage.

  “I was very active, but if I would have children, I would try to shield them. At one time we took small children on a hunger march, and the children were also beaten. At that time I thought to myself: I wouldn’t take my child. If the Party would tell me to take my child, I wouldn’t do it. A child is a child.” Two people clapped.

  “When I was in the Party, I was very critical about those who were trying to get away with murder doing nothing. I never bought new furniture. Instead I gave money to the Movement. For furniture, what I got, others gave away. For me it was enough. For Solly and Dolly Rubell, it was also enough. As little as it was, it was enough. To them their apartment on Catherine Street was a palace— steam heat. They felt kind of guilty that they knew so many people who needed apartments as badly as they did, and they had gotten this apartment. Not too many people in the Movement would feel that. They were real people.

  “Dolly and Solly were very devoted to the Party. They never went underground. Hours before they were arrested, they were at a club meeting. They had gotten new subscriptions for the Worker and the Morgen Freiheit. If I hadn’t been there, even I would wonder, because at one time I was for the Soviet Union more than a hundred percent, a thousand percent. Not now, but when it was a good Soviet Union, or when we didn’t know what Stalin was doing, one of the two, you see. … At that time, if the Soviet Union would ask me to do something, I would do. I would endanger my life, I would do everything and anything. Being that Solly and Dolly were Communists, a good many of our own people suspected that maybe there is something.” There was a loud stirring and rustling in the audience.

  “But the only thing is, I can’t understand why the Party murdered the Rubells. This I will take to the grave with me—why the Party officials crossed the street when the Rubell family came to plead for them, why the Daily Worker never mentioned the case, why Henky Rubin fucked up the defense—” Faces became foul and twisted, there were spitting and hissing noises, people turned to each other and began talking in loud voices about the weather and local restaurants.

  “I don’t understand it, Goddamnit—” Manya said, as the dashing, six-foot-eight Elton MacRaw came toward her smiling. He put his meat hook around Manya’s shoulder and toward her throat. She kicked him. He lifted her up and carried her, her legs kicking in the air, off the stage.

  In 1986 the reporter saw Manya for the last time. She had asked him to find an article, “A Cuban Lesson,” in the Times written in 1980 by a Cuban poet, Heberto Padilla, who was exiled from Cuba. She referred to him as “an honest man.” Manya had begun to refer to the United States with some surprise as a democracy. “You see, we live in a democracy,” she would say.

  Padilla wrote of his impressions on returning to New York City after living for twenty years in the Communist world: “In 1960, I wandered through the streets of New York, this city which exalted and fulfilled the self I was then. At that time, I couldn’t even imagine a freedom as invisible, dependable, and natural as the air … Perhaps no one in the United States will ever have to go through my kind of apprenticeship, and never have the need to learn the lesson I now know.”

  Manya put the article down and said, “As rotten as Brezhnev was, as rotten as Gus Hall was, there was just … nothing.”

  Manya stood up from the bed in the monastic room in the gathering dusk and walked over to her broad window looking out on the garden and the majestic sweep of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. “My life was very hard. Very hard.” The reporter felt that he wanted to put his arm around her, and that she wanted nothing as much in the world as that. But he sensed that it was too late for Manya to begin to allow others
to give to her.

  Three months later, at the memorial meeting for Manya in a room of the old-age home, her nephew said, “During the Vietnam protests in Washington, I was watching the TV news. Here’s the guard standing at the door to the Pentagon with the crowd of people as far back as you can see. And he’s arguing with someone. I look at her. It was Aunt Manya. She was telling the guard to get out of her way, she wanted to talk to the Chief of Staff.”

  An older woman, Alix Werner, whose forty-year-old retarded son stared at her with a blissful smile, finished her speech about Manya. She said, “What did Manya stand for?” She dramatically removed her trench coat, revealing a second coat festooned with buttons: big buttons, small buttons, colored and black and white. The buttons said, “Fight White Violence,” “Remember Allende,” “Support Cuba,” “Love Nicaragua,” “Vindicate the Rubells,” “People Before Profits,” and “Shoot First.”

  “This,” she said, pointing to each button, “is what Manya was.”

  Letters from Amerika

  Me for you, you for me.

  —G. L.

  February 8, 1951

  Solly darling,

  As advanced people deeply involved in history’s march, what have the Rubells done to deserve so much unhappiness? Torn asunder from their little ones, removed from the sunlight and laughter of the working class? I say to you, the Rubells are committed to virtue’s dominion, and for this they are being singled out.

  Only today, my friend, I chanced to be reading how a cross was burned in the Negro section of Suffolk, Virginia, and how the police escorted a motorcade of robed men bearing an electric cross and K.K.K. pennants in Tallahassee. And then too I perused a progressive daily that reported that a union leader was blinded after being beaten by police with blackjacks in Erie, Pennsylvania. I crieth, Fie!