Agent 6 ld-3

by Tom Rob Smith

  The driver – a white man – turned around, looking at her with concern.

  – You sure you want to be here?

  Elena’s English was competent. But the phrase confused her. She repeated the address.

  – West 145th Street.

  The driver nodded:

  – This is the place for sure. Not the place for a girl like you.

  Elena didn’t understand. She asked:

  – How much?

  The driver pointed to the meter. She took out the money given to her by Mikael.

  – Can you wait?

  – How long?

  – Twenty minutes.

  The driver looked uncertain. Elena paid him five dollars. She noted that the driver seemed pleased with the money. It must be a significant amount.

  – There is more if you wait.

  He nodded, his entire aspect changed by the money. Elena felt disgust for him, a man in love with money, whose character would change at the sight of a dollar bill.

  – I’ll wait. But only twenty minutes, if you’re late, I’m gone.

  Elena stepped out the cab, shutting the door.

  In front of the taxicab was an old-fashioned wood wagon with a cloth-top screen for shade from the sun. The surface was loaded with heaps of ice, edges rendered smooth by the heat, melting fast. Among the ice, there were clams, some in their pale shells, many scooped out, cooked in spices, spitting in the heat, sold in cones of newspaper. Along the dusty street, instead of a mass of cars, there were children playing ball or jumping games or begging for shards of ice from the clam-selling man who struck out with his fist, shooing them away. At a glance the houses seemed nice to Elena, they weren’t too tall and they weren’t ugly concrete like the slums where she lived. They were handsome brick, framed by metal fire escapes. In one window there was a sign: Absolutely no loitering

  On the stairs

  Elena didn’t understand all the words. But she understood it was asking people not to sit on the front stairs, a comical request considering almost every set of steps hosted groups of men.

  The apartment was a little further on. She walked past the vendor, past the children sucking on uneven chunks of ice, ice they must have stolen when the vendor wasn’t looking. She had never felt so foreign in her entire life. Self-conscious, it took an effort to continue walking and not run back to the cab. She didn’t have far to go. The building was directly ahead.

  There was a man on the steps, a tall white man, dressed in a suit, smoking a cigarette. Elena had been warned that Mr Austin was under pressure from the American secret police. She didn’t know if this man was an agent but he didn’t belong hre, that was obvious, almost as obvious as the fact that she didn’t belong here either. Her eyes darted about, searching for somewhere to hide. But it was too late. He’d seen her. She had no choice. She increased her pace, pretending to be in a hurry. At the same time he descended the steps to intercept her. As he drew closer Elena kept her eyes down, towards the ground, holding her breath.

  They passed each other on the sidewalk. She continued walking, missing Mr Austin’s address as if there was somewhere else she was heading for. Once she’d turned the corner, she pressed her back against the wall. There was no way into Mr Austin’s apartment. And no way back to the cab.

  Same Day

  For a man who considered himself an optimist, it was a strange sensation for Jesse Austin to feel despair stalking them, glimpsed from time to time out of the corner of his eye. Even as his wife walked across the apartment her body expressed profound weariness, a heavy sway instead of her once characteristic brisk pace, exhaustion that went deeper than working too hard or fretting about money, exhaustion sunk into her bones making them as heavy as lead. She’d been worn down. Constant worrying had matted her hair, dulled her eyes, squeezed the blood from her lips and even altered the way she spoke. Her words had lost their playfulness, no longer singing with mischievous intelligence. They dropped out of her mouth as if a burden sat on the shoulder of each syllable, revealing tiredness that couldn’t be remedied by a good night’s sleep, or even a couple of days off work. In recent years he’d wondered if Anna’s strength and resilience had been a curse rather than a gift. Anyone else would’ve left him, broken by the strain. Colleagues and friends had cut him loose. A few had even testified against him, stood before a HUAC hearing, pointing at him with trembling outrage as though he’d been guilty of murder. Not Anna, not for a second, and not a day went by that Jesse didn’t feel humbled by her love.

  Anna had been right. She’d prophesied that the men he was making enemies of were vengeful and absolutely did not forget. Jesse had joked that the authorities could take anything but they could never take away his voice and as long as he had his voice he had a career. He’d been wrong. In the 1930s he performed to audiences of up to twenty thousand. On tour in 1937 the combined audiences around the world totalled over a million. Today no venue would book him, not the grand concert halls, not even the smallest, smokiest bars, places where the sound of bottles clanking was louder than the singing. It wasn’t enough that Jesse signed a contract promising not to launch into one of his polemics, vowing merely to sing songs that had been vetted and cleared as inoffensive. The day after his performance the venue would inevitably receive an inspection from health and safety officials, or from the police regarding an alleged disorder, a fight on the street. In every case the venue would be shut down for several weeks. No matter how outraged they were by the principle, no one could afford to make the same mistake twice. If they did, their licence was revoked. The managers of venues, men who’d once shook Jesse’s hand after one of his concerts with eyes filled with tears and a cash register brimming with dollars, didn’t even have the decency to admit the truth. He couldn’t blame them for looking after their interests but did they have to lie? They’d tell him he was too old, or that his kind of music was no longer fashionable. They’d rather insult him than admit that they were scared.

  It was a cruel joke that Jesse’s appearance at the House Committee on Un-American Activities in July 1956 would prove to be his last performance on a major stage. Questioning Jesse, the congressmen quoted words he’d spoken in favour of Communism and run them up against the words he’d spoken in criticism of America. Had he claimed that he felt more at home in the Soviet Union than in the United States? Jesse tried to explain the meaning of his statements: that the notion of home referred to the way in which he was respected abroad and abused domestically, his people Jim-Crowed and kept down. Footage was shown of him speaking in Moscow in 1950, in the Serp i Molot factory, while in subtitles, incorrect translation ran along the bottom of the screen: JESSE AUSTIN: The Statue of Liberty belongs here, in

  Moscow, not in New York.

  He’d listened to the gasps of the congressional audience, the scratching of pens against notepads by the journalists. He’d spent vast sums on counsel only to realize that there was no defence against insinuation. Quotes, stripped of their context, were tossed about the room. The issue of his refusal to sign a non-Communist affidavit had been debated. Photographs of his visits to Moscow were passed from side to side with circles drawn around some of the men he’d stood beside. They were described as KGB agents, decried as monsters that had murdered and enslaved the civilian population. Jesse had protested: the committee had no evidence to support those accusations. They’d shouted back that the men circled were secret-police officers and the secret police was proven as an instrument of terror. Did he deny there were slave-labour camps in the USSR, labour camps that made a mockery of his talk of equality and fairness? He’d retorted that draconian measures, if they existed at all, were only ever used against a Fascist element, an element that when left unchecked in Germany had brought about many millions of deaths. He wasn’t about to weep over a few dead Fascists.

  Though no court had found him guilty of any crimes, his passport had been taken away. He was no longer able to visit the Soviet Union or to accept invitations from non-Communist countries
such as the United Kingdom, France and Canada. He was no longer booked for public performances. His recording career was starved of oxygen. No radio station would play his music. No record company would release his songs. No store would stock his albums, his back catalogue was removed from sale – his achievements made invisible. Royalties stopped. Although he was a taxpayer since the age of sixteen, a man who’d brought in thousands of dollars from other countries, the State had his livelihood, cutting off their own source of taxes. His income dropped to less than four hundred dollars a year. His savings had been drained by legal costs, including pursuing his record label for breach of contract. No court ever ruled in his favour. It had taken twelve years, but finally he was destitute. They had what they wanted. He was penniless, just as he had been when he’d started out. Forced to sell his apartment near Central Park, he’d been certain that the FBI informed all prospective buyers of his financial straits. The sale price was half its true market value and didn’t cover the debts.

  Anna opened the window, perching on the ledge, looking out at the street below. Strands of her hair hung around her face, waiting for a breeze that wasn’t coming any time soon. Jesse joined her, putting s arm around her slim waist, resting his head on her shoulder, wanting to say sorry a thousand times over. The words dried up in his throat.

  At the knock on the door they turned at the same time. Jesse could feel the tension in Anna’s body. The difference between an agent’s knock and the knock of someone who lived in the building was the silence that followed. A friend would call out. There’d be the normal bustle around the landing. An agent would silence the building – the stairwells fell quiet, everyone would stop and stare and wait. Jesse stepped towards the door, reminding himself that Yates was looking for the slightest provocation. Taking hold of the handle, bracing himself, he opened the door.

  It wasn’t Yates but Tom Fluker, a cantankerous man in his sixties who ran a small hardware store at the corner of the block. Beside him was a young white woman with long dark hair. He didn’t recognize her. Before Jesse could speak Tom launched into a tirade:

  – I found this girl trying to sneak around the back, skulking like a thief. She says she’s looking for you. I ask why she can’t use your front door like everyone else. She gets confused, like she doesn’t understand. First I think she’s playing dumb then I realize she doesn’t understand English too good. Got an accent too. So I listen a little more. She’s a Russian! What’s a Russian girl doing round here, looking for you? We don’t need any more problems than we’ve already got, and we’ve already got plenty.

  Jesse looked at the young woman, and then at Tom, his face scrunched up in anger. The FBI had tried to isolate Jesse among the local community. Friends and strangers, ministers and businessmen, went on record repudiating his Communist views and claiming that he was a disgrace, entirely unrepresentative of their desire to work hard and build a more integrated America. There were some who wouldn’t speak out against him on record but who thought the adverse attention Jesse generated was senseless. While they were trying to improve conditions for their communities and gain rights for their people, he was dragging them back. Tom was one such man. He’d worked hard. He owned a store. Jesse was an obstacle to his dream of success, of passing on money to his children, of getting them ahead in the world. He didn’t have time for ideology. He counted the dollars in his cash register at the end of the week, and people like Jesse were bad for business. Jesse had no time for this way of thinking. The fact that he’d been subjected to injustice had never made him reconsider his beliefs. That mindset was the worst kind of subjugation, to be fearful of doing what is right in case you upset those who were in the wrong.

  Tom turned to the young woman, saying:

  – You’re a Russian. Tell him.

  She stepped forward.

  – My name is Elena. Mr Austin, please may I talk to you? I don’t have much time.

  She spoke English though it was obviously not her mother tongue.

  – Thank you, Thomas. I’ll deal with this.

  Tom was unsure whether to say something more. Though Jesse knew that Tom was tempted to call the FBI and distance himself from this event, he was sure that Tom – no matter how much he disagreed with Jesse – would never rat him out. He wasn’t that kind of man.

  Tom turned, hurrying d of theirhe stairs and not looking back, shaking his head in disbelief, in disgust, and repeating aloud, as if it were an ancient, wicked curse:

  – A Russian in Harlem!

  Same Day

  Anna dropped her head, knowing that this would end badly. They had lied to Agent Yates – they were aware of the concert at the United Nations tonight. Four separate attempts to persuade Jesse to turn up had been made by members of the CPUSA. They’d wanted him to address the crowds that were expected to gather outside the gates, a pro-Communist demonstration. With each attempt they’d used a different technique: they’d sent a wise old man who could quote just about anything Marx had ever written, they’d sent a beautiful young woman to flatter Jesse with her attention, they’d sent a young militant Communist who’d aggressively demanded solidarity, they’d sent a middle-aged married couple who’d also suffered at the hands of the FBI, or so they’d claimed. But Jesse had rebuffed all of them, saying that he was retired, he was old and he’d given more than enough speeches for the cause. The fight needed to be made by someone else, someone new. When they’d accused him of being beaten he hadn’t denied it, waving them out of the door and ordering them not to bother a beaten man any more.

  Earnest and wide-eyed, sugar-dusted with innocence and idealism, this girl was surely their last attempt at persuasion. She was a much smarter choice. This girl wasn’t stuffed full of theory and quotes. She was bright with hopes and dreams; she believed in something. Careful calculations had been made in choosing her and they had nothing to do with sex. Her husband had no sexual feelings towards the girl. It wasn’t that Anna was blind, believing in her husband’s fidelity while he cheated on her every chance he got. That was the lurid picture painted by the FBI. In nearly forty years of marriage Jesse had never cheated on her and there’d been countless opportunities. He was a handsome man with a voice that made women weep in admiration. In his early years, when he’d been touring, there were fans lining up outside his dressing room who would’ve stripped off every stitch if he’d so much as given them a suggestive look. Many called her a fool and him an expert liar, with a honey-sweet tongue and a siren’s voice that could make her believe anything he wanted. Anna knew better. Fidelity was his problem, not promiscuity. He was loyal to a fault – loyal to his mistress Communism even when she’d cost him his livelihood.

  Anna had never blamed Jesse for the hardship that his beliefs had brought them. Her friends had pleaded with her to make him shut up, to retract his statements and apologize even if he didn’t mean it, just to alleviate the pressure. She’d refused to countenance the idea. He was outspoken and passionate – the characteristics of the man she’d fallen in love with. His music was an extension of his beliefs – they couldn’t be pulled apart, his personality couldn’t be unravelled or tampered with. He couldn’t be made more palatable or less provocative. However much she held by this view, and held it today, in truth, there had been times when bitterness rose through her veins like a tidal surge. She’d been his manager. She’d developed his career: all that work, all those achievements washed away like marks on a sandy beach. When she thought about everything they’d gained and everything they’d lost, sometimes her strength left her, her spirit crumbled and she imagined thei life without Communism. In those moments she hated the very sound of the word, despised each syllable, but she never loved Jesse less.

  Anna noted her husband’s quick step as he hurried their young visitor inside and shut the door. His despondency after speaking to Yates evaporated like morning mist burnt off by a new day’s sun. The girl was nervous and trying hard to control it; far from making her less persuasive, her stuttering and awkward behaviou
r was beguiling. She spoke in English, stumbling over her words.

  – My name is Elena. I am a student from the Soviet Union, visiting the United States as part of a tour. We are performing a series of concerts in New York and Washington DC. Tonight we perform in the United Nations.

  Agent Yates, repulsive as he was, was no fool. He’d been correct – the Soviets hadn’t given up. They’d made contact. Jesse had always been disillusioned with the CPUSA, but he’d never been able to say no to anything the Soviets had asked of him. The young Russian seemed uncertain whom she should address, perhaps not expecting Anna to be at home.

  – Mr Austin, and Mrs Austin, I volunteered to act as a messenger. My spoken English is not good. I was informed that you speak Russian, Mr Austin. May I speak in Russian? I am sorry, Mrs Austin. Please forgive me. There would be no mistakes if we could speak Russian.

  Jesse glanced at Anna. He said:

  – I will translate.

  Anna nodded her consent. The young woman switched to Russian. Her husband’s face brightened with the sound of that language – a language Anna had never understood.

  *

  Jesse’s Russian came back to him in a rush and he was amazed at his fluency after so many years. It didn’t feel like a language he’d taught himself, it felt like a mother tongue.

  – I thought maybe I was no longer of any use to you.

  He’d not meant to sound self-pitying. The young Russian girl shook her head.

  – There was a school programme only two years ago to write to you when we heard of your difficulties with the authorities. Thousands of students composed letters of support. I myself wrote you a letter three pages long. They were posted to you. Surely some came through?