by Marlene Lee
But the only people who took the letters seriously were investigators from the Department of Justice. Immigration authorities, military intelligence, and the Secret Service had been reading Salindranath’s mail for months. They descended on Agnes for interrogation, with no lawyer present. Lajpat Rai’s warning had not been frivolous. Only slightly daunted, feeling like a Bolshevik in Russia, on the righteous side of history, she was hauled off to the Tombs, then tried and indicted under the Espionage Act for fomenting revolution in India and falsely representing herself as a diplomat.
18
The Tombs, New York City 1918
Agnes did not cheer with the others when Kitty Marion came clattering down the corridor alongside the cells with her mop and pail.
“Three cheers for birth control!” Kitty shouted, and the women prisoners shouted back. But Agnes could not think of birth control or Socialism or the Russian Revolution or anything except one small black notebook. If she stared at the ceiling, the black notebook was there. If she stared at the wall, it was there, too.
Secret Service men had confiscated the notebook from her room. She had seen it in the pile of books and clothes in the office where they questioned her. No doubt they had already found the list of Indian names she and Salindranath had glued behind the binding the day he arrived in New York.
Her Indian friends would think she had informed on them.
“Three cheers for birth control!”
Agnes rolled her face into the thin straw mattress of her bench and breathed dust. She could hear the matron progressing down the corridor behind Kitty, unlocking cells. She got up and used the broken toilet in the corner where leakage still froze on the floor overnight, though it was already April. She wanted a pail of soapy water, wanted to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the floor, wished she could scrub floors and walls all day long. Anything was better than silence and inactivity. She bit her fingernails and tried, at the same time, to think, yet not think, of Salindranath, Lajpat Rai, the Ghadars, India.
“Every time I’m jailed I go in a spark and come out a flame,” Kitty had whispered to her once when they met in a corner on their hands and knees, a bucket of dirty water between them. For a moment Agnes caught fire from Kitty. “Every time!” Color came to her face and she scrubbed faster. But back in her cell, the camaraderie of prison life vanished and she relapsed into despair. No matter how hard she tried, she ended up at the bottom of the heap. Like Mother and Father. Worse. As far as she knew, no one in her family had ever been jailed, except her brother for stealing a horse.
She had been very hard on John. She spat out a bit of fingernail. How self-righteous she’d been.
Of course Father had occasionally been jailed overnight for public drunkenness, and at least she wasn’t in jail for stealing or being drunk. Yet, sitting in her cell, the reason didn’t seem to matter. She was still behind bars. Hearing Lajpat Rai talk about being jailed was quite different from being jailed yourself. What a fool she was. Her teacher had taught her about India and modern history, shared his ideals with her, and then she left him, as she had left her family. As she had left Ernest. Again and again she broke away, ripping out the seam that stitched her to others. She’d lost contact with Thorberg.
No one knew she was in jail. If it was up to her, no one ever would. She’d dropped all contact with Missouri and Colorado, and she hoped Sam, who’d enlisted in the Army to help his country, would never know that that same country had arrested his sister for treason.
Wasn’t it her own fabric she tore? She was made of doubtful cloth.
Ayahoo! Indians were not her people. Neither were Americans. Once she had had people of her own, but she’d left them behind. Father had left his people in Missouri for something dubious: mining in Colorado. Mother had left her people for something even more dubious: Father. Always leaving people behind and gaining nothing.
A forbidden memory pushed at the back door of her mind, tried the lock, and turned the knob. When it shouldered through, she sank to the floor, holding onto the bars as if they were consciousness itself. She had slept with a man who possessed the same dark power as Father. Not Ernest, kind and gentle. Not casual young men in Greenwich Village who meant nothing to her. This had been something illicit. Overwhelming. There had been the same animal sounds she’d grown up hearing in the night, but now the sounds had come from her own throat.
She drew her legs up and pressed her face against her knees. He was a Ghadar, this man. Not Salindranath. His name was Herambalal Gupta. He had visited Lajpat Rai and learned where Agnes lived. He was not courteous like the other Indians. He had knocked on her door at Waverly Place and told her he had a message for her. He came inside and she made him tea. But he had no message. Instead, he tried to learn where Salindranath was staying. Agnes would not tell him, for Salindranath had come to New York secretly and given her a list of key Indian nationalists and their addresses all over the world. Together they’d steamed open the back of her black notebook and inserted the thin paper into the space before sealing it up again.
Gupta was not well-liked by the other Ghadars; he was not well-liked by Lajpat Rai; he was not well-liked by Agnes. But in the late night, the light from her small fireplace dancing on the walls, he had kissed her and in her hunger, her unexpected misery after leaving Lajpat Rai, she’d kissed him, too. Lying on the narrow bed in her tiny room, he’d removed his turban and he’d pressed his bronze body against hers. His long, black hair swayed above her, and when they were finished, he told her not to tell anyone because looseness with a woman, particularly a woman in the movement, would ruin his reputation with the revolutionaries.
While she lay on the bed, horrified at her pleasure, woman’s pleasure that grips her and opens her, Gupta went through her books and papers without finding the secret list, and left.
Shamed by the sex act, shamed by her secret life and sexual desire, troubled by her future with men—for she saw that there would be trouble with men—she had turned on the jet under her hot plate. The landlady smelled the gas in time and turned it off.
Now she got up from the jail floor with an uncanny feeling that someone was with her. As if, while she’d been thinking of herself, she’d really been thinking of someone else. Someone unhappy. Someone mistreated. Mother, dead, endured.
Agnes lay down on the bench and slept. When morning came she no longer tried to avoid thought. America had put her in jail, not so much because she was helping India as because it appeared she was helping Germany. England and America were playing up the Hindu-German connection. It served their interests. She would be more careful about interests in the future.
Her head throbbed. She longed for a scrub brush and pail. She needed work. She needed pencil and paper. She would write about prison and the women prisoners she’d met. A sentence about Kitty came to mind. “When she had been forced to put on a striped dress of the convicted women, she looked at it and remarked, ‘Ah! blue and white stripes! Now if there were only a few red stripes and some white stars!”
But when the sentence ended, no other began. She could report Kitty’s words but she still had no words of her own.
19
New York City 1919
“Why work for the Indians?” Florence Tannenbaum asked the intense young woman standing in her doorway. “There are plenty of causes right here at home that need help. I mean, there’s birth control, Socialism, pacifism, feminism, labor. Why India?”
Agnes bristled. “England has no right to control India and no business meddling in America’s affairs. They think they blend in with the American Secret Service, but I know an English sausage when I see one!”
“English sausage!” Florence laughed. Even when she laughed she could not take her eyes off Agnes. The woman was thin and pale from eight months in prison. She had short hair, badly cut, and a haunted expression. They’d been introduced at the Liberal Club, but Florence, the daughter of a wealthy merchant family in New York City who lived a Bohemian life as far as she
was able, already knew Agnes Smedley from the newspapers. All of Greenwich Village knew about the coal miner’s daughter who had gone to prison for helping Indian nationalists.
Now the woman needed a place to live. Landlords didn’t want a political activist. But Florence needed adventure, and she could afford drama.
“Well,” said Agnes, still scowling, “do you want a roommate or not?”
“Yes,” said Florence. “For ten dollars a month you can sleep in the living room.”
So at 184 West Fourth Street, Agnes sewed a chintz curtain and hung it around the couch in the living room. Florence tried not to notice when Agnes didn’t come home some nights. She asked the psychiatrist whom her parents had been paying since she was eleven—she was twenty now—if she should pretend not to notice that sometimes Agnes didn’t come home.
“What do you think?” he asked. “What do you think about this roommate staying out all night?”
“Well, I don’t think she’s out all night,” Florence answered. She, herself, was still a virgin. She felt a red flush rise from her neck up into her face. “I think she’s in all night with someone.”
“And what do you think about that?”
“What do I think? I think I’ll go with her. Then we can both spend the night in.”
The psychiatrist removed his round eyeglasses. “And what will your parents think?”
“Oh, bugger my parents,” Florence Tannenbaum said, and got up from the couch twenty minutes before the hour ended.
“Were you working late at the Birth Control Review last night?” she asked Agnes the next morning over oatmeal.
Agnes sugared her cereal without comment.
“Do you need someone to help you?” Florence asked. “If you do, I volunteer.”
“Aren’t you too busy visiting your parents and going to your psychiatrist?”
“I may be inexperienced, sheltered, even pampered, but I am not stupid, Agnes. And this is the last time I volunteer to help you.” She picked up her oatmeal, took it to her bedroom, and slammed the door behind her. She set the bowl on the dresser and went to the closet where she ran through her dresses and jersey jumper suits at fierce speed. Finally she found what she wanted, a simple skirt and shirtwaist in the style that Agnes wore. She dressed, gobbled the rest of her cereal, and returned to the kitchen. Agnes stood at the sink washing the pan.
“That was fast.”
“There’s no point in wasting time when you have a busy day ahead of you,” Florence said mysteriously. She left her dish for Agnes to wash, threw on her cardigan coat, and hurried out of the apartment. She walked in the direction of Fifth Avenue, her heels tapping the frosty sidewalk, her breath a quick cloud that dissipated just before the next one formed. She turned left. Only then did she stop to ask herself where she was going.
She resisted the temptation to take the subway uptown to Mummy and Daddy. After all, she was an independent woman who had already achieved a mild success in her translation of Maria Montessori’s letters for The Call. The editorial staff knew her work. She had friends there.
“I have plenty to do,” she said to herself, and set off for the public library where she spent the day writing poetry. Walking home in the afternoon sunlight, she laughed at her earlier fit of pique. All about her, people smiled above their bright mufflers and scarves. The war was over, and since August the nation had been happy and proud and optimistic—Florence had written a poem on the subject just last week.
As she approached her apartment house she shook back her mass of dark hair. There was so much in life to enjoy, what was the point of killing yourself to help a country across the ocean? What was the point of going to jail for an idea? Her new roommate was a tortured woman who enjoyed being pinned to a cross. Florence must not allow herself to be thrown off course by someone who couldn’t even afford a room of her own.
“I’ve been asked out a lot,” Florence confided to Agnes as they rode the subway back to the Village from her parents’ home uptown where she’d introduced them to her new friend and tenant. “However, I am very choosy about men.”
Agnes made no response.
“As a matter of fact, I’d rather spend an evening alone than go out with a man who has nothing to offer.”
Agnes nodded.
“I think Mummy and Daddy were interested in your views,” said Florence.
“That’s one way to put it.”
“No, really. You fascinated them.”
“Your parents are very comfortable.”
Florence bristled. “What’s wrong with being comfortable?” But Agnes didn’t respond.
As the train slowed for the next stop, Florence reopened the conversation. “I think work is more important than love, don’t you?”
“I think they’re both important,” said Agnes. The subway stopped at Thirty-fourth Street. A group of men, a drinking party that smelled of liquor, entered the car.
“Have you ever been in love?” Florence asked.
“Probably not.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I’m not sure.”
A burst of laughter erupted from the back of the car.
“I’ve been married,” Agnes volunteered.
Florence looked surprised. “Who was he?”
“Someone in California.”
In the overheated car, Florence’s dark hair formed a glossy frame for her slightly flushed complexion. She unbuttoned her coat with the fur collar that set off her fine coloring and leaned toward Agnes.
“What’s it like being married?”
Agnes studied Florence with a cool eye. The men in the back of the car swayed with the train’s motion and began to sing.
“Have you ever slept with a man?” Agnes asked.
Florence drew back, shocked. “That’s very personal.”
“But you have no qualms asking me about my sex life.”
“I didn’t ask you about your sex life.”
“Yes, you did,” said Agnes. “It’s overrated. You both take your clothes off, only the man doesn’t like it if you just get undressed and hop into bed, which is what you’re both going to do in the end, anyway. No. You have to spend the evening going somewhere or talking about something he’s interested in because he’d be shocked if he knew you just wanted to sleep with him.”
She watched Florence’s face with amusement.
“But that’s—cheap,” said Florence. A woman in a brown hat who sat just ahead of them looked over her shoulder and frowned. Agnes made a face and continued louder than before.
“Men can do it with a prostitute. They pay money, get what they want, and leave. If I had money, I’d pay the man. Let him take the risk of getting pregnant. Let him clean up the bed afterwards. Let him raise the child for twenty years. Or get the abortion. I’ll poke around in his body.”
The woman got out of her seat and moved to the front of the car. Shocked, speechless, Florence tripped over Agnes’ feet getting to the aisle. The train stopped at Sheridan Square and they left the subway.
“You wanted a good story,” said Agnes as they walked toward West Fourth, “but you got the truth instead. Go to your psychiatrist to hear what you want to hear.”
“I believe in love,” Florence said tartly. “If I thought you were right, I’d kill myself.”
Agnes shrugged. They turned onto their street.
“Why do you want to be the man?” Florence asked.
“Because they have power. Everyone, especially women, gives them power. Women wait on men, clean up after men, raise the children for men, listen endlessly to men—”
“I’ll admit I sometimes wish I were a man,” Florence said. Her voice dropped to a near whisper. “That is one of the things I’ve been working through all these years with my psychiatrist.” She raised her voice again. “But then I ask myself if I could really run a business or make governmental decisions…” Her voice trailed off.
Agnes crossed to the inside of the sidewalk and looked directly into Flor
ence’s face. “Men are trained for it from birth. There’s no reason women can’t be trained. And what do men do? Get us all into wars again and again. Step on top of each other trying to get more money than the next person. Make sure there are plenty of poor people who will do the unpleasant work for low wages. Wealthy countries subjugate poor ones. Children go hungry while the rich spend money on trifles. Women could not do a worse job of running the world, Florence. It would be impossible to do a worse job.”
Florence looked away from Agnes’ intense gaze. In the street, cars and an occasional horse and wagon rolled by. Before daylight, smoke would be pouring out of factories on both horizons.
“This was once a pretty village,” Florence said.
Agnes snorted. “And this is what men call progress.” They began walking again.
“Women share the benefits, though,” Florence said.
“At what price? Don’t disagree with a man, or be disagreeable. Read the magazines and learn how to look, cook, talk to please a man. Blame yourself when you’re not happy. Blame yourself when your husband isn’t happy. Blame yourself when your children aren’t happy.” She gave Florence a penetrating look. “Spend thousands of dollars on a psychiatrist to learn what’s wrong with you.”
Florence flared. “Go to hell, Agnes.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suspect, of the two of us, you’ll be the one to fall hard for a man and be miserable, and I’ll be doing the world’s work, competent and contented.” Their eyes locked.
Agnes ended the contest by laughing. “Miss Tannenbaum, in spite of your rich mummy and daddy, there is something about you I like.”
Later, when they had both gotten into their nightclothes, Agnes lay on the living room couch. Florence sat in a wing back chair Mummy and Daddy had insisted she bring from home. “What do you think of my parents?” she said.
