I Married a Communist

by Philip Roth

  "Now, I'm not sure that explains everything—though not because Grant was any less reckless in the use of power than the rest of Nixon's gang. Before he went to Congress, he wrote that column for the Journal-American, a gossip column three times a week about Broadway and Hollywood, with a dollop of Eleanor Roosevelt-defiling thrown in. That's how Grant's public service career began. That's what qualified him so highly for a seat on the Un-American Activities Committee. He was a gossip columnist before it became the big business it is today. He was in there at the start, in the heyday of the great pioneers. There was Cholly Knickerbocker and Winchell and Ed Sullivan and Earl Wilson. There was Damon Runyon, there was Bob Considine, there was Hedda Hopper—and Bryden Grant was the snob of the mob, not the street fighter, not the lowlife, not the fast-talking insider who hung out at Sardi's or the Brown Derby or Stillman's Gym, but the blueblood to the rabble who hung out at the Racquet Club.

  "Grant began with a column called 'Grant's Grapevine,' and, if you remember, he nearly ended as Nixon's White House chief of staff. Congressman Grant was a great favorite of Nixon's. Sat as Nixon did on the Un-American Activities Committee. Did a lot of President Nixon's arm-twisting in the House. I remember when the new Nixon administration floated Grant's name back in '68 for chief of staff. Too bad they let it drop. The worst decision Nixon ever made. If only Nixon had found the political advantage in appointing, instead of Haldeman, this Brahmin hack to head the Watergate cover-up operation, Grant's career might have ended behind bars. Bryden Grant in jail, in a cell between Mitchell's and Ehrlichman's. Grant's Tomb. But it was never to be.

  "You can hear Nixon singing Grant's praises on the White House tapes. It's there in the transcripts. 'Bryden's heart is in the right place,' the president tells Haldeman. And he's tough. He'll do anything. I mean anything.' He tells Haldeman Grant's motto for how to handle the administration's enemies: 'Destroy them in the press.' And then, admiringly—an epicurean of the perfect smear, of the vilification that burns with a hard, gemlike flame—the president adds: 'Bryden's got the killer instinct. Nobody does a more beautiful job.'

  "Congressman Grant died in his sleep, a rich and powerful old statesman, still greatly esteemed in Staatsburg, New York, where they named the high school football field after him.

  "During the hearing I watched Bryden Grant, trying to believe that there was more to him than a politician with a personal vendetta finding in the national obsession the means to settle a score. In the name of reason, you search for some higher motive, you look for some deeper meaning—it was still my wont in those days to try to be reasonable about the unreasonable and to look for complexity in simple things. I would make demands upon my intelligence where none were really necessary. I would think, He cannot be as petty and vapid as he seems. That can't be more than one-tenth of the story. There must be more to him than that.

  "But why? Pettiness and vapidity can come on the grand scale too. What could be more unwavering than pettiness and vapidity? Do pettiness and vapidity get in the way of being cunning and tough? Do pettiness and vapidity vitiate the aim of being an important personage? You don't need a developed view of life to be fond of power. You don't need a developed view of life to rise to power. A developed view of life may, in fact, be the worst impediment, while not having a developed view the most splendid advantage. You didn't have to summon up misfortunes from his patrician childhood to make sense of Congressman Grant. This is the guy, after all, who took over the congressional seat of Hamilton Fish, the original Roosevelt hater. A Hudson River aristocrat like FDR. Fish went to Harvard just after FDR. Envied him, hated him, and, because Fish's district included Hyde Park, wound up FDR's congressman. A terrific isolationist and stupid as they come. Fish, back in the thirties, was the first upper-crust ignoramus to serve as chairman of the precursor of that pernicious committee. The prototypical self-righteous, flag-waving, narrow-minded patrician son of a bitch—that was Hamilton Fish. And when they redistricted the old fool's district in '52, Bryden Grant was his boy.

  "After the hearing, Grant left the dais where the three committee members and their lawyer were seated and made a beeline for my chair. He was the one who'd said to me, 'I question your loyalty.' But now he smiled graciously—as only Bryden Grant could, as though he had invented the gracious smile—and he put out his hand and so, loathsome as it was to me, I shook it. The hand of unreason, and reasonably, civilly, the way fighters touch gloves before a fight, I shook it, and my daughter, Lorraine, was appalled with me for days afterward.

  "Grant said, 'Mr. Ringold, I traveled up here today to help you clear your name. I wish you could have been more cooperative. You don't make it easy, even for those of us who are sympathetic. I want you to know that I wasn't scheduled to represent the committee in Newark. But I knew you were to be a witness and so I asked to come because I didn't think it would be much help to you if my friend and colleague Donald Jackson were to show up instead.'

  "Jackson was the guy who had taken Nixon's seat on the committee. Donald L. Jackson of California. A dazzling thinker, given to public statements like, 'It seems to me that the time has come to be an American or not an American.' It was Jackson and Velde who led the manhunt to root out Communist subversives in the Protestant clergy. That was a pressing national issue for these guys. After Nixon's departure from the committee, Grant was considered the committee's intellectual spearhead who drew their profound conclusions for them—and, sad to say, more than likely he was.

  "He said to me, 'I thought that perhaps I could help you more than the honorable gentleman from California. Despite your performance here today, I still think I can. I want you to know that if, after a good night's sleep, you decide you want to clear your name—'

  "That was when Lorraine erupted. She was all of fourteen. She and Doris had been sitting behind me, and throughout the session Lorraine had been fuming even more audibly than her mother. Fuming and squirming, barely able to contain the agitation in her fourteen-year-old frame. 'Clear his name of what? Lorraine said to Congressman Grant. 'What did my father do? Grant smiled at her benignly. He was very good-looking, with all that silver hair, and he was fit, and his suits were the most expensive Tripler's made, and his manners couldn't have affronted anyone's mother. He had that nicely blended voice, respectful, at once soft and manly, and he said to Lorraine, 'You're a loyal daughter.' But Lorraine wouldn't quit. And neither Doris nor I tried to stop her right off. 'Clear his name? He doesn't have to clear his name—it's not dirty,' she told Grant. 'You're the one who's dirtying his name.' 'Miss Ringold, you are off the issue. Your father has a history,' Grant said. 'History?' Lorraine said. 'What history? What's his history?' Again he smiled. 'Miss Ringold,' he said, 'you're a very nice young lady—' 'Whether I'm nice has nothing to do with it. What is his history? What did he do? What is it that he has to clear? Tell me what my father did.' 'Your father will have to tell us what he did.' 'My father has already spoken,' she said, 'and you are twisting everything he says into a pack of lies just to make him look bad. His name is clean. He can go to bed at night. I don't know how you can, sir. My father served his country as well as the rest of them. He knows about loyalty and fighting and what's American. This is how you treat people who've served their country? Is that what he fought for—so you could sit here and try to blacken his name? Try to sling mud all over him? That's what America is? That's what you call loyalty? What have you done for America? Gossip columns? That's so American? My father has principles, and they're decent American principles, and you have no business trying to destroy him. He goes to school, he teaches children, he works as hard as he can. You should have a million teachers like him. Is that the problem? He's too good? Is that why you have to tell lies about him? Leave my father alone!'

  "When Grant still wouldn't reply, Lorraine cried, 'What's the matter? You had so much to say when you were up there on the stand—and now you're Mr. Dumbmouth? Your little lips sealed shut—' Right there I put my hand on hers and I said, 'That's enough.' And then she
got angry with me. 'No, it's not enough. It's not going to be enough until they stop treating you like this. Aren't you going to say anything, Mr. Grant? Is this what America is—nobody says anything in front of fourteen-year-olds? Just because I don't vote—is that the problem? Well, I'd certainly never vote for you or any of your lousy friends!' And she burst into tears, and that was when Grant said to me, 'You know where to reach me,' and he smiled at the three of us and left for Washington.

  "That's the way it goes. They fuck you and then they tell you, 'You were lucky you got fucked by me and not by the honorable gentleman from California.'

  "I never did get in touch with him. The fact was that my political beliefs were pretty localized. They were never inflated like Ira's. I was never interested like he was in the fate of the world. I was more interested, from a professional point of view, in the fate of the community. My concern was not even so much political as economic and I would say sociological, in terms of working conditions, in terms of the status of teachers in the city of Newark. The next day the mayor, Mayor Carlin, told the press that people like me should not be teaching our children, and the Board of Education put me on trial for conduct unbecoming a teacher. The superintendent saw this was his warrant for getting rid of me. I didn't answer the questions of a responsible government agency, so ipso facto I was unfit. I told the Board of Education that my political beliefs were not relevant to my being an English teacher in the Newark school system. There were only three grounds for dismissal: insubordination, incompetence, and moral turpitude. I argued that none of these applied. Former students came down to the board hearing to testify that I had never tried to indoctrinate anybody, in class or anywhere else. Nobody in the school system had ever heard me attempt to indoctrinate anyone into anything other than respect for the English language—none of the parents, none of the students, none of my colleagues. My former army captain, he testified for me. Came up from Fort Bragg. That was impressive.

  "I enjoyed selling vacuum cleaners. There were people who crossed the street when they saw me coming, even people who may have felt ashamed doing it but who didn't want to be contaminated, but that didn't bother me. I had a lot of support within the teachers' union and a lot of support outside. Contributions came in, we had Doris's salary, and I sold my vacuum cleaners. I met people in all lines of work and I made contact with the real world beyond teaching. You know, I was a professional, a schoolteacher, reading books, teaching Shakespeare, making you kids diagram sentences and memorize poetry and appreciate literature, and I thought no other kind of life was worth living. But I went out selling vacuum cleaners and I acquired a great deal of admiration for a lot of people I met, and I am still grateful for it. I think I have a better outlook on life because of it."

  "Suppose you hadn't been reinstated by the court. Would you still have a better outlook?"

  "If I had lost? I think I would have made a fair living. I think I would have survived intact. I might have had some regrets. But I don't think I would have been affected temperamentally. In an open society, as bad as it can get, there's an escape. To lose your job and have the newspapers calling you a traitor—these are very unpleasant things. But it's still not the situation that is total, which is totalitarianism. I wasn't put in jail and I wasn't tortured. My child wasn't denied anything. My livelihood was taken away from me and some people stopped talking to me, but other people admired me. My wife admired me. My daughter admired me. Many of my ex-students admired me. Openly said so. And I could put up a legal fight. I had free movement, I could give interviews, raise money, hire a lawyer, make courtroom challenges. Which I did. Of course you can become so depressed and miserable that you give yourself a heart attack. But you can find alternatives, which I also did.

  "Now, if the union had failed, that would have affected me. But we didn't. We fought and eventually we won. We equalized the pay of men and women. We equalized the pay of secondary and elementary school teachers. We made sure that all after-school activities were, first, voluntary and, then, paid for. We fought to get more sick leave. We argued for five days off for any purpose whatsoever that the individual chose. We achieved promotion by examination—as opposed to favoritism—which meant that all minorities had a fair chance. We attracted blacks to the union, and as they increased in numbers, they moved into leadership positions. But that was years ago. Now the union is a big disappointment to me. Just become a money-grubbing organization. Pay, that's all. What to do to educate the kids is the last thing on anybody's mind. Big disappointment."

  "How awful was it for those six years?" I asked him. "What did it take out of you?"

  "I don't think it took anything out of me. I really don't think so. You do a helluva lot of not sleeping at night, of course. Many nights I had a hard time sleeping. You're thinking of all kinds of things—how do you do this, and what are you going to do next, whom do you call on, and so forth. I was always redoing what had happened and projecting what would happen. But then the morning comes, and you get up and you do what you have to do."

  "And how did Ira take this happening to you?"

  "Oh, it distressed him. I'd go as far as to say it ruined him had he not already been ruined by everything else. I was confident all along that I was going to win, and I told this to him. They had no legal reasons for firing me. He kept saying, 'You're kiddin' yourself. They don't need legal reasons.' He knew of too many guys who had been fired, period. Eventually I won, but he felt responsible for what I went through. He carried it around with him for the rest of his life. About you, too, you know. About what happened to you."

  "Me?" I said. "Nothing happened to me. I was a kid."

  "Oh, something happened to you."

  Of course it should not be too surprising to find out that your life story has included an event, something important, that you have known nothing about—your life story is in and of itself something that you know very little about.

  "If you remember," Murray said, "when you graduated from college you didn't get a Fulbright. That was because of my brother."

  In 1953–54, my last year at Chicago, I'd applied for a Fulbright to do graduate work in literature at Oxford and been turned down. I had been near the top of my class, had enthusiastic recommendations, and, as I now remembered it—for the first time, probably, since it happened—was shocked not only at being turned down but because a Fulbright to study literature in England went to a fellow student who was well below me in class standing.

  "This true, Murray? I just thought it was screwy, unfair. The fickleness of fate. I didn't know what to think. I wuz robbed, I thought—and then I got drafted. How do you know this is so?"

  "The agent told Ira. The FBI. He was on Ira for years. Stopping around to visit him. Coming around to try to get him to name names. Told him that's how he could clear himself. They had you down for Ira's nephew."

  "His nephew? How come his nephew?"

  "Don't ask me. The FBI didn't always get everything right. Maybe they didn't always want to get everything right. The guy told Ira, 'You know your nephew who applied for a Fulbright? The kid in Chicago? He didn't get it because of your being a Communist.'"

  "You think that was true."

  "No doubt about it."

  All the while I was listening to Murray—and looking at the needle of a man he'd become and thinking of this physique as the materialization of all that coherence of his, as the consequence of a lifelong indifference to everything other than liberty in its most austere sense ... thinking that Murray was an essentialist, that his character wasn't contingent, that wherever he'd found himself, even selling vacuum cleaners, he'd managed to find his dignity ... think-ing that Murray (whom I didn't love or have to; with whom there was just the contract, teacher and student) was Ira (whom I did love) in a more mental, sensible, matter-of-fact version, Ira with a practical, clear, well-defined social goal, Ira without the heroically exaggerated ambitions, without that passionate, overheated relationship to everything, Ira unblurred by impulse and the argumen
t with everything—I had a picture in my mind of Murray's unclothed upper torso, still blessed (when he was already forty-one) with all the signs of youth and strength. The picture I had was of Murray Ringold as I had seen him late one Tuesday afternoon in the fall of 1948, leaning out the window and removing the screens from the second-floor apartment where he lived with his wife and daughter on Lehigh Avenue.

  Taking down the screens, putting up the screens, clearing the snow, salting the ice, sweeping the sidewalk, clipping the hedge, washing the car, collecting and burning the leaves, twice daily from October through March descending to the cellar and tending the furnace that heated your flat—stoking the fire, banking the fire, shoveling the ashes, lugging ashes up the stairs in buckets and out to the garbage: a tenant, a renter, had to be fit to get all his chores done before and after going to work, vigilant and diligent and fit, just as the wives had to be fit to lean from their open back windows while rooted to the floor of the apartment and, whatever the temperature—up there like seamen at work in the rigging—to hang the wet clothes out on the clothesline, to peg them with the clothespins an item at a time, feeding the line out until all the waterlogged family wash was hung and the line was full and flapping in the air of industrial Newark, and then to haul the line in again to remove the laundry item by item, remove it all and fold it into the laundry basket to carry into the kitchen when the clothes were dry and ready to be ironed. To keep a family going, there was primarily money to be made and food to be prepared and discipline to be imposed, but there were also these heavy, awkward, sailorlike activities, the climbing, the hoisting, the hauling, the dragging, the cranking in, the reeling out—all the stuff that would tick by me as, on my bicycle, I traversed the two miles from my house to the library: tick, tock, tick, the metronome of daily neighborhood life, the old American-city chain of being.