The Last Supper: And Other Stories

by Howard Fast

  “Do you think I was deliberately lying?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Newton, I really don’t know. I make it a habit not to leap to snap conclusions. I have to understand more clearly what motivates you. In our conversation before, you said something about doubt and proof; in other words, you suggested that first you began to doubt and that later, proof was added to confirm your doubts. By proof, I took you to mean proof that the Communist Party here is not what we would ordinarily think of as a bona fide political party, but rather a conspiracy—a conspiracy that stems from foreign sources, remains loyal to those sources, and intends to overthrow the government of the United States by force and violence. Do you follow me?”

  More than simply following him, Luther Newton had become as cold as ice. At this point, he was able to move a step or two ahead of Mr. Featherby; his confusion and difficulty lay in remembering where was the point of departure—what were the steps that had brought him to this place,

  One might say now that those steps were of no importance, that the destination took precedence over the road; but the two were not unconnected. Though the cold knowledge of where he was, of the name and location of his present destination, had spread all through Luther Newton, no memory remained of how he had arrived there. Here he sat now, facing a plump, smiling, self-contained agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and there was not a thing he could do, not a step he could make, no out, no doors to slip through, no bushes in which to hide, just the thin, knowing smile of the plump man, which said:

  “You came here out of your own free will, Mr. Newton.”

  “Yes, Mr. Featherby—yes, damn it—yes, I did, because my shoulders were always against the world’s buttocks, and the hell with that! Yes, I did!” This is what Luther thought, but when he spoke, he said something else entirely.

  “I follow you, Mr. Featherby,” answered Luther Newton.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” nodded Luther Newton.

  “You are a grown man, Mr. Newton, and you understand fully the circumstances of our visit?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Would you have any objections to my asking a stenographer in to take down our conversation?”

  “I’m a grown man, Mr. Featherby. What sort of guarantees do I get?”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes—yes, precisely.”

  “I’m not in the position to guarantee you any more than your safety.”

  “Not enough, Mr. Featherby.”

  Mr. Newton leaned back, a silent sigh of relief running through him; relief because it was done, and things were always better when the cards were spread out on the table, face up.

  “Not enough, Mr. Featherby,” he repeated.

  “Oh?”

  Mr. Newton drummed with his finger tips on the arm of his chair. “No—no indeed. It is not enough. We have each made a stab at the other. You say to me, stop fencing. I agree. Stop fencing.”

  “And have you stopped fencing, Mr. Newton?”

  “Ah—yes.”

  “So easily answered, Mr. Newton?”

  “Yes.”

  “To go back to guarantees, Mr. Newton. Just what sort of guarantees do you want?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t do to say that communists are vengeful people.”

  “Oh, no, not any more, Mr. Newton,” Mr. Featherby smiled. “We are on a different basis now. You may say that for publication, if you wish. You may say it at a press conference. You may say it to a Congressman and his committee—and I am sure that they will want to talk with you soon. And that would be a good idea, by the way. We will arrange it. A minimum of cooperation with Committees at the beginning makes matters much simpler with them later on. But to get back to the point you raised. Really, you do not want any guarantees against what the communists will do to you. You know as well as I do that they will do absolutely nothing to you, except say a lot of very nasty things about you in The Gazette and in the Daily Worker. They will not shoot you, or send you a bomb in the mail, or do anything of the sort. And for everything they say in The Gazette—and who reads The Gazette, Mr. Newton?—you will have your say in much larger and more powerful journals. So you don’t want any guarantees against communist violence, Mr. Newton. What sort of guarantees do you want? We did agree to stop fencing.”

  “Very well, Mr. Featherby. Now?”

  “I think before we have the stenographer in, Mr. Newton.” He smiled slightly. “That is fair, Mr. Newton. I said I would be fair.”

  “In Ohio, in 1939, I registered in a hotel under an assumed name. That is illegal, I think.”

  “Yes, I believe it is in Ohio. Were you alone?”

  “There was a woman with me.”

  “Once?”

  “Four times.”

  “Four times?” Mr. Featherby raised his brows, but he spoke as a man of the world. “These are not crimes, Mr. Newton. These are peccadilloes, which are understood among men. Give me notes on the hotel, dates and names, and we will take care of it. I believe I can guarantee no inconvenience will come to you as a result of it.”

  “San Francisco, 1929,” Mr. Newton said shortly. “Purse snatching. I was not guilty. I was falsely accused.”

  “Were you tried?”

  “No. I was out on three hundred dollars bail, and I jumped bail.”

  Mr. Featherby whistled. “Surprising how much the past of a very mild man will contain. At least that was my estimate of you. A mild man, Mr. Newton. Are you not?”

  “I’ve always thought of myself as a mild man,” Mr. Newton said sadly.

  “Did you steal the purse?”

  “I did not!”

  “It doesn’t matter, really. The whole thing is outlawed by the statute of limitations—that is, the charge of purse-snaching. I do wish you hadn’t jumped bail. It’s also outlawed after five years, but it leaves a bad taste. The Department doesn’t like it—never did—however—well, I’ll do what I can to get at the records to see that it doesn’t come out. What else?”

  “Two bad checks.”

  “Oh? How much?”

  “One for seven hundred. One for three hundred.”

  “What years?”

  “Thirty-one and ‘thirty-two.”

  “Any prosecution?”

  “No. I signed notes, however.”

  “Well, that’s nothing. It’s outlawed, even the grand larceny. What else?”

  “Nothing—except—”

  “Yes, Mr. Newton?”

  Luther swallowed and spoke very softly and evenly; he spoke with great humility and understanding of himself. He had no arrogance. “Money,” he said.

  “I don’t follow, Mr. Newton.”

  “You see, Mr. Featherby, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, for me to continue with my employment at The Gazette. It is true that I expect to obtain other employment. I shall not remain idle. I am not looking for charity. But—”

  “You are asking me for money, Mr. Newton—”

  “I have a wife and a child. I can knock around and make the most of any situation which may arise. But I do not relish poverty for them.”

  “You are asking me for money, Mr. Newton, but you have not yet done anything for which payment is deserved. You have rendered no service to the Department, to be perfectly frank.”

  “You haven’t even indicated what service you might desire,” Luther Newton said. “I was talking of the future.”

  “You’re right, Mr. Newton. As a matter of fact, we are talking off the record, so as to speak. I have not yet asked a stenographer to come in. But when you say that I have not indicated the nature of the service—well, then we are fencing again, Mr. Newton. We said we were going to stop fencing.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Featherby.”

  “Of course you do, Mr. Newton. There is only one service you can render us. Not secrets—there are no secrets in the Communist Party, just between the two of us, Mr. Newton. Agents? Espionage? Bombs? Plots? No, Mr. Newton. We talk to each other as t
wo intelligent men, and dispense with the fairy tales. There is only one thing we do not know about the Communist Party—who all of its members are. There is only one thing we need, names. Names, Mr. Newton. Names. There is your stock in trade—names and more names. Who are they? Where are they? Who is there in the C.I.O. who carries that card? Who is there in the American Federation of Labor, so close to the honorable and venerable Mr. Green—and carries that little card? Names, Mr. Newton—who is in the State Department—who was in contact with the White House? This is just the beginning of a discussion, Mr. Newton, but we must talk about names.”

  “And if we do?”

  “There is a fund for special consultants and experts, and the pay is reasonably good. We pay twenty-four dollars a day and expenses.”

  “Twenty-four dollars a day,” Mr. Newton repeated.

  “This is a service to your government, Mr. Newton. Don’t attempt to calculate the price in dollars alone. Hard times shall descend upon the Communist Party of the United States. There will be sorrow and suffering and fear for others, but not for you, Mr. Newton. Do you understand?”

  Mr. Newton nodded.

  “For you, the upraised pinion of the, eagle—the very best protection in the world. Do you understand, Mr. Newton?”

  “Will you put that in writing?” Luther Newton asked.

  “Come now, Mr. Newton—we are not children. Shall I have the stenographer in?”

  Luther Newton nodded.

  The Holy Child

  THE SUN WAS HOT; THE ROAD WAS DUSTY; AND THE DUST had been turned into a fine powder, made even softer and finer with the endless grinding and shuffling and dragging of feet. The road was an old road. No one in the whole country knew how old it was, nor was there any book or record or scroll written about that part of the country which spoke of a time when the road was not there.

  When a breath of wind broke the hot, still air, the fine white dust curled up and the people traveling along the road sneezed and coughed, and more than one said the dust would be the end of him.

  It seemed that everyone was on the road. Everyone was somewhere else, in the wrong place, because, as one of them put it, if you stayed in the right place you starved, and that was the long and short of it; and if you looked back along the road, the way it curled and curved and twisted, like a long white snake lying among the low, sun-dried hills, you saw a good two or three miles of the road and there wasn’t a piece of it but was crowded with people.

  At this part of the road, there was a hut of sun-dried mud, brick and reed and thatch, and on a bench in front of it an enterprising local citizen had set up to sell wine and water. He had a great ten gallon jug of white wine and another ten gallon jug of red wine, and on a heavy pole in the shade of the thatch he had a dozen leather bags of water, all damp and cool and sweating nice little drops of water on their outsides, so that even if a traveler had sipped at his own waterskin an hour before, the very sight of these made him dry all over again and made his mouth constrict with thirst.

  Whereupon, it is not surprising that a little group of thirsty travelers gathered in front of the wine stall, and what with the coming of new thirst and the going of those whose thirst had already been quenched, remained there all the hot sunny day long. That it was a varied and interesting group was to be expected, for everyone was on the road, donkey drivers and litter bearers and porters, olive pickers burned as brown as old leather, glass blowers and carpenters and masons, each one marked by his trade, the glass blowers big-chested with broken veins all over their faces, the carpenters carrying their wordly goods, hammer and adz and a pouch of precious nails, and the masons with misshapen hands, all bent and gnarled from stooping over the stone. There were shepherds who brought their sheep with them, and peasants who brought wife, and children, and water-carriers and weavers and bakers and vintners who growled about the wine as they drank it, and smiths and musicians with pipe and tambourine and long-bearded, ragged itinerant preachers who didn’t care what road they walked, so long as there were poor people to listen to the misdeed and sinfulness of the rich; and wherever people rested by the roadside, the, preachers preached, taking advantage of the fact that at any given place or moment, the poor people outnumbered the rich by twenty to one, that being the way it was in the land.

  And as a matter of fact, all of these people of so many trades and ages were remarkably alike, in a community of skinniness, hunger and thirst, as if none of them had eaten or drunk to his belly’s desire in as long as he could remember. And the wine merchant cursed the fact that of these people, for one who bought wine, there were twenty who bought water, and yet they crowded close to the wine jugs, sniffing and licking their lips, and at the same time making such a dirty, high-smelling knot of humanity that good customers with hard money could hardly be expected to break through to his wares.

  And there were good customers, for on the road were not only those who worked with their hands and endured the heat of the noonday sun, but stout merchants in covered litters, and priests in long white robes, whose full beards lay comfortably on round, fat stomachs, jogging along on curried and scented donkeys. There were rich landlords, affluent regional wardens, painted kept women, dancing girls who sold their charms at top prices and who lay comfortably among silken cushions on their litters, tax collectors, slave dealers—a full representation of the best, the most upright and the most vigorous souls in any community.

  They were the ones who took the most authoritative position in the discussion that went on all day in front of the wine stall. Even though they too were uncomfortable traveling in a land that had none of the simple necessities a man requires when traveling, they could understand the need for all this moving back and forth. Being men of property, they could understand that people were also a form of property, and a very valuable property indeed, and what is the use of a man having property if he can’t estimate it and know where it is and know what income it will bring?

  A heavy-shouldered blacksmith said that it seemed to him that he, brought the same income wherever he was, because wherever he was he ended up each week with just enough to keep from starving, and the, rest went for taxes, and how was he going to increase that by showing up at the place where he was born and hadn’t been for twenty years?

  That was it exactly, a merchant explained; a man who never had any property could hardly understand the tremendous complexity and responsibility of the, administration of property, and that was hard to answer because most of the listeners were carrying all their property on their backs; but a shepherd said he thought he knew about the administration of property, since he had a small flock of sheep and had to follow them around picking up their droppings, since everything else they produced went to the government. Most of the people there took this so matter of factly that it did not even produce a ripple of laughter, though a priest growled that this kind of talk did more harm to the true faith than out and out godlessness.

  “Trade is the life of the people,” a tax-collector said, ignoring a peasant’s remark that he would rather have a little bread now and then. “Look at me,” the tax collector said. “For twelve years I’ve collected taxes in the north. Now I’m bound for the south, where I was born, to collect the taxes there, while a man from the south goes up to the north and collects taxes there. It is not only proper, it is logical. I must be counted where I was born, regardless of where I am afterward—and if I am not counted, how can there, be a check on the taxes—which are unquestionably the life blood of the people?”

  An olive-picker asked whether trade wasn’t the life blood of the people?

  “Both—both, and as we move, trade flourishes. The country is shaken up and it is alive again. And we in the government finally have accurate facts at our fingertips, how many people, how much wealth, how much revenue.…”

  While this discussion was going on, two more travelers had reached the edge of the group around the wine stand. These were a man and a woman, and the man walked while the woman rode a small, unde
rnourished donkey. In some ways, they were a striking pair, for the man was very tall, with a great black beard falling over his chest, and the woman was very lovely, dust-stained as she was and so heavy with child that surely it was almost the moment of birth. She carried her head bent over, her mouth tight with pain, except when her husband spoke to her, and then she looked up at him and forced the pain-drawn mouth to smile her love and concern for him. At that moment, she seemed to be saying to the whole world, “Look at this man of mine, and how tall and strong and handsome he is!” But he was tired too, and lean, with the bones of his face protruding, and he seemed to be weighed down by the hammer and adz and bag of nails that hung at his waist.

  He looked anxiously at her, and asked her how she was. There was an olive tree nearby, and he thought it would be good for her if she sat in the shade for a little while and rested. Was she in pain now? She had pain before, but she said that it had stopped. In any case, he pointed out, they would be at the inn by nightfall, and she acknowledged that it was because of her that they had to move so slowly, and thereby the, journey was so drawn out and uncomfortable.

  There were a dozen people in the shade of the olive tree, but when they saw how heavy with child she was, they made room for her, and some of them spoke of the blessing of birth, and others said what a filthy shame it was that a woman in her condition should be dragged half across a land to satisfy an emperor’s insanity and greed. This started a political discussion, and immediately the dozen people took sides. The big bearded man, however, made his wife comfortable and then asked her whether she wouldn’t like a glass of wine, which would be good for her stomach and ease the pain if the pain returned.

  “Wine is expensive,” she protested.

  “We’ll see about that,” and then he went down to the crowd around the wine stand, moving with his slow, heavy steps, searching meanwhile in his pouch, until four tiny silver coins lay on his broad, callused palm. He was not an aggressive man, and he worked his way through the crowd gently and apologetically, until he was close enough to ask the price of a cup of wine. When he was told, his face fell, and he stared at the four little coins in his palm helplessly and hopelessly.