The Return of Lanny Budd

by Upton Sinclair

  In this year of 1948 both conventions were held in Philadelphia. The Republicans met first and nominated Governor Dewey of New York; all the political fortune tellers were certain that he was destined to become the next President of the United States. The Republicans were in a glow of exultation, for Franklin Roosevelt was dead and his elegance and charm were a devastating memory—devastating to the Democrats, who had learned to live upon them and couldn’t live without them.

  What they had got in place of the Squire of Krum Elbow was a man who seemed small by comparison, and who looked like anybody you knew in any town of the Middle West. He didn’t know how to stick a cigarette in a long holder and cock it in his mouth at a jaunty angle; he had no golden voice over the radio, but on the contrary a Missouri twang with a slight rasp. He didn’t know how to emphasise his points but had a tendency to finish every sentence in a sudden gallop. In short, he was just plain Harry Truman, an every-day American, and people who were kindhearted were sorry for him and people who were malicious found him a shining mark.

  Two years ago the country had given him a reactionary Congress, and he had been fighting it with tongue and pen. The Eightieth Congress it was, and he said it was the worst of the lot. He was standing for the New Deal, inherited from his great predecessor, and this Congress had turned down one New Deal measure after another, and on several occasions had passed reactionary measures over the presidential veto. The American government was designed as a government of cheques and balances, but the Founding Fathers could hardly have contemplated the cat-and-dog fight it was being turned into by all the agencies of publicity in the land. Now the Republicans were going to take over, and there was going to be harmony at last and the end to what they called the ‘drift into socialism’.

  The Democrats met, and they had to nominate Truman; they had nobody else, and it had been a long time since a President had been unable to force his own renomination. The machine politicians had so little enthusiasm for Harry that when he went out to Los Angeles to make a speech they couldn’t find a hall for him—or maybe they didn’t try very hard. When he was nominated the convention was so busy with its routine affairs that it kept him waiting for several hours before hearing his acceptance speech. He had to sit outside with three friends on a fire escape, waiting for a summons which did not come until two o’clock in the morning.

  Everybody was bored and exhausted by then, but he gave them the surprise of their lives. He was full of fury against the combination of Republicans and reactionary Democrats from the South, and he leaped into them after the fashion of a wildcat. He made a fighting speech that took the convention by storm; everybody woke up, and there was a new birth of hope. The delegates went out with new determination, and later in the morning when the people read that speech the excitement spread throughout the land.

  Such was the beginning of a political campaign that lasted for three months and a half, through hot summer and cool and pleasant autumn. Lanny and Laurel and their staff read about it and heard about it continually; they tried hard not to take part in it, at least not over the air or in the paper. Their programme had to be non partisan; they had to confine themselves to one problem, which seemed enough for one small group—keeping peace in a world where an irresistible force called communism was meeting an immovable body called capitalism.

  II

  There came an airmail letter from Rose, telling them that Mr and Mrs Zinsenheimer were no more. The lawyer had insisted that they must live apart until the divorce was actually granted. It was a question of protecting the future of the two boys, for it was quite possible that Bess might hire detectives to watch Hansi. So they had rented separate apartments, quite expensive. Rose sat in hers all day and worked on her book about the movie industry; Hansi sat in his and fiddled and worked on a composition. The extent of their immorality was to have dinner together and go to a show. But it wasn’t to be long; the six-week period would be up in a few days.

  Lanny had no communication with Bess or her lawyers; he followed the case in the newspapers. The lawyers made their customary demand for a new trial, and the judge turned it down. The prisoners were brought up for sentence, and the judge read them a severe lecture, pointing out the gravity of the crime they had committed. He gave the accountant and the photographers eight years. He said that Bess’s case was even more serious, because she was an educated person and had had an upbringing which should have saved her from going astray; on this account he gave her ten years and hoped it would be a lesson to other Communist ‘intellectuals’; if it had been wartime he could have sentenced them all to death.

  The lawyers, of course, appealed the case, and the prisoners came out on bail—this time fifty thousand dollars. The lawyers pleaded that the sum was excessive, but the judge said no, for convicted Communists had established a reputation for disappearing. The lawyers appealed again, and the various front organisations of the Communist party proceeded to get out eloquent circulars denouncing the frame-up and requesting funds to carry on the expensive legal case. The money they would raise would be several times as much as needed, and the rest would go to party work.

  In an afternoon paper Lanny read the news that Hansi Robin, violin concert artist, had filed suit in Reno for divorce from his wife, Bessie Budd Robin, recently convicted of espionage on behalf of Russia. After the fashion of newspapers, the details of the case were repeated, and would be repeated again every time either of the persons was named. When Lanny got home he learned that Rose had telephoned, saying that Bess had consented to the divorce and to be represented by the lawyer whom Hansi’s lawyer had suggested. She consented to his receiving the custody of the children and would ask for no money.

  So once more the conscientious Lanny had to revise his judgments and realise that he hadn’t been accurate when he identified a Communist with a criminal. Bessie Remsen Budd was in truth what he had been calling her since long ago, a granddaughter of the Puritans. She was acting from what to her appeared to be the highest motives; she had convinced herself that the way to end poverty and war forever was for all the peoples of the earth to submit themselves to the dictatorship of the Politburo in the Kremlin. In exactly the same way Torquemada, chief of the Spanish Inquisition, had convinced himself that the way to save millions of souls from burning in the eternal fires of hell was to seize all teachers of heresy and torture them until they confessed and named their fellows, and then to hand all the lot over to the ‘secular arm’, to be burned at the stake with a fire that was soon over.

  III

  The Reno divorce mill grinds promptly. Those who can afford to travel across a continent to get free from a marriage are important people accustomed to having their own way. Lanny and Laurel listened frequently to the radio these days, because they never knew but that a world war might be starting in Berlin; instead of that they learned that Hansi Robin had got his divorce. Later in the newspapers they read how the judge had questioned the violinist on the subject of the custody of his children. The judge was hesitant to grant such custody to a Communist; but Hansi explained that he had been persuaded by his wife that communism was an American movement, democratic and constitutional; when he had discovered that the party was engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign government he had broken with her.

  Already there had come a second call from the Hansiroses, both laughing and both trying to talk over the telephone at the same time. They had stepped around the corner to a justice of the peace and been married. The fee was five dollars, but Hansi had given the J.P. a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Hansi was allowed to have money now and to transport Rose across state borders. They were heading for California and planning to spend the rest of the summer driving around, looking for the most beautiful ranch in the whole state. They said in chorus, ‘We are so happy’! Then, ‘Thank you, thank you’! to Lanny and Laurel, listening at the same telephone receiver.

  Next morning all the papers had the story; and of course they didn’t fail to put two and tw
o together and surmise that the romance had started in the New York courtroom where Rose Pippin, author of The Rabbit Race, had reported the conviction of the former Mrs Hansi Robin for espionage. ‘Romance’ was the polite term the newspapers used for what Rose had called ‘the habits of rabbits’. But Rose said she didn’t care what they called it, or what they called her: she had the man she wanted and she had the certificate of ownership in the glove compartment of her car. They were going to stay away from New York for a while and let the excitement die down. Hansi wasn’t going to undertake another tour until the public had had time to forget that he had been a member of the Communist party.

  That same evening Lanny heard the voice of his half-sister on the telephone. ‘Lanny, I want to see you’.

  He had rather expected it and couldn’t say no. He couldn’t think of anything to do that would soften the series of blows which had rained down upon her; but if it would help her to talk about them, all right. ‘Where shall it be?’ he asked.

  ‘Will you come to New York?’

  He answered, ‘If it’s easier for you I can just as well come to your house as to drive down into the city traffic’.

  ‘It is no longer my house’, she countered and could not keep the bitterness out of her tone. ‘I am getting out. But if you will come here I’ll wait’. She added, ‘I wish you would come alone’.

  He knew what that meant; Laurel was the enemy. He said, ‘I’ll come alone’.

  He told Laurel about it, and she cautioned him, ‘Don’t let her worm anything out of you about Rose; and don’t waste your time getting emotional. Remember, you are part of the world she is trying to destroy’.

  ‘I can’t help being sad about her’, he replied. ‘I doubt if talking to her will make me any more so’.

  He drove the roundabout route, across the great bridge and over to the Connecticut shore of the Sound. He turned into the familiar garden, which forever after would be known to the neighbourhood as the site of the boilerplate papers; he stopped in front of the villa which had been the scene of so many happy hours. Bess’s car stood in front of the door, and he could see that it was loaded up with her belongings.

  IV

  She was waiting for him, and there were no tears; if she had shed any she had wiped away the traces. He noticed that she kept her hands tightly clenched while she talked to him, and several times he thought she was near to losing her self-control, but she didn’t. She said, ‘I have been ordered out, and you can see I’m getting out. I’m in no position to contest it’.

  ‘Better so’, he said quietly. ‘There has been publicity enough. Where are you going?’

  ‘I have rented an apartment in the city’. She gave him the street address and the telephone number and then went on, ‘I was stunned by Hansi’s change of heart, and I don’t know what to make of it’.

  She waited for him to answer, but he had nothing to say; he had thought it over and decided that he would say as little as he could. Arguing for years had got them nowhere.

  ‘You have won, Lanny’, she said, ‘and I’m sure you enjoy your victory’.

  ‘You are mistaken, Bess. Hansi is a grown man. He knows his own mind and makes his own decisions’.

  ‘And I’m supposed to be satisfied with that? When you have loved a man as I have loved Hansi, you can take yourself out of his house but you can’t take him out of your mind so easily. Tell me what has happened to his mind?’

  ‘You must know what has happened, Bess. It has happened to tens of thousands of people who have joined the Communist party. They find that it isn’t what they hoped, they decide that they don’t like it, and they get out. I doubt if there is any other organisation in the country with so large a casualty rate’.

  ‘I was prepared to have all my non-party friends desert me when this hateful frame-up was successful, but I surely didn’t think Hansi would. Tell me, who is this woman who has got hold of him?’

  ‘She is the author of a book, and you can find out about her by reading it. The important thing is that she agrees with his ideas, Bess, and so he will not have to spend his time arguing’.

  ‘And that means you don’t want to tell me about her. You don’t have to worry, because I know I am helpless, and anyway I am much too proud to want a man who casts me off. I certainly don’t want a cent of his money, and I have no desire to punish him. But I am tormented by the thought that he may have been one of those who betrayed me’.

  Lanny knew that the more quickly he passed over that question the better it would be for all of them. ‘You have heard the old saying, Bess, that a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. That is the way it was with Hansi. I listened to you arguing and I knew what tremendous pressure you were putting on him. He is a sensitive man, as every artist must be, and such a man is at the mercy of the woman with whom he lives; she can destroy that serenity which is necessary to his work. She can bring him to a state of frenzy where he says, “Anything for peace! Anything to be let alone”! He says, “Oh, all right, have it your way”! He says with Matthew Arnold, “Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese”! That’s the way it was in Hansi’s life. So long as it was a question merely of opinions, he could stand to join the party; but when he discovered that it was a question of espionage and possible destruction of our government, then naturally he couldn’t stand it’.

  ‘So you believe I’m guilty, Lanny’!

  ‘I understand your position and why you have to talk as you do; but there’s no use expecting me to take part in it. I have read the Communist Manifesto; I have read one or two books by Lenin and one or two by Stalin. I know that communism is war and that it calls itself peace in order to be more effective. I played a game against Hitler and his National Socialism, and I know that you’re doing it against American capitalism. There is no reason for you to be frank with me, and on the other hand there is no reason why you should expect me to be a fool; so let’s just leave that out of our conversation’.

  That was one of the times Bess had to bite her lips and clench her hands until the knuckles showed white. ‘You are being cruel, Lanny’, she said.

  ‘I’m being honest with you, and, of course, under the circumstances honesty means cruelty; but I cannot forgo my convictions, any more than you can forgo yours. I did my best to keep you out of this trouble, and now there is nothing I can do except to tell you that I’m truly grieved and sorry. Any time you’re ready to tell me that you are through with a programme of force and fraud I’m ready to do my best to help you. I don’t suppose that time has come yet’.

  V

  She told him that it surely had not—and that was enough conversation along that line. ‘I don’t suppose you have invited me out here to make me into a Stalinist’, he said, ‘so tell me what I can do for you’.

  Her answer was, ‘I want to see my sons. I called up Mamma and she wouldn’t tell me where they are’.

  ‘I will tell you this much: they are in a summer camp and are happy with their companions, living an outdoor life and getting instruction half the day and play the other half. That is the ideal thing for boys; and surely you don’t want to go there and blast their happiness by pouring out your troubles’.

  ‘No, I don’t want that, Lanny. But I think I have the right to see them. Have they been told about my conviction?’

  ‘Of course they have been told, Bess. How could you imagine otherwise? Everyone of their playmates has heard about it in one way or another, and the boys have to know how to face the problem. They have to face it all the rest of their lives; and it’s you who have put that burden upon them’.

  ‘That means they have been told I’m a wicked woman’!

  ‘I don’t think anyone wants to tell them that, for it would make them unhappy. I have talked with both Mamma and Johannes about it—with the whole family. I was asked, and I agreed that they should be told that their mother helped the Soviet government because she believed it was a good government; the rest of us believ
ed she was mistaken and that it was an evil and cruel government. Obviously they have to be told that; there is a war going on, and although it is called a cold war it is plenty hot enough to burn up the peace of mind of two sensitive lads. It is a war for the minds and the souls of every human being on this earth, and more especially for the minds of the young. The Communists specialise in that; you know it, and you know that I know it. I can only tell you frankly that if ever Hansi asks my advice I’ll tell him that you should not be permitted to see the boys. You can do nothing but destroy their peace of mind and turn them into little bundles of neuroses’.

  ‘Even if I promise not to mention the subject to them?’

  ‘What other subject could you mention, Bess? You are an incarnation of the problem. Also, we know that promises mean nothing to a Communist. That is a matter of policy, which Lenin advised and which Stalin had made into a first principle for every Communist in the world. It is a terrible thing, because it destroys all honour between human beings, and it destroys all family life; it makes it impossible for a brother to trust a sister and compels him to tell her so frankly’.

  ‘Lanny, you have become absolutely implacable’!

  ‘I am facing an implacable man who has declared implacable war upon me and my country. Three years ago I was sent to call upon him by Franklin Roosevelt, and a year later I was sent by Harry Truman, both hoping to divert him from his implacable course. Both times he was breaking solemn agreements he had made in writing; he was breaking them systematically, whenever he thought it was to his advantage and that he could get away with it. I pointed out that our country wanted nothing but peace and that we had proved it in good faith by disbanding the greater part of our armies and decommissioning our airplanes and war vessels. He heard that news gladly, and renewed his promises blandly, and then went on breaking them, because that is his policy, his creed, his religion. He is a religious fanatic of a new sort. I certainly don’t want to fall into his power, and I don’t want my country to be enslaved by him’.