Girl of My Dreams (48 page)

The bulky Altschuler and the string bean Wilsey were a kind of Mutt and Jeff act. “How'd you get here tonight,
Tovaritch
?” Mitch Altschuler asked.

“Steamed out Sunset
Bulvar
,” Gifford Wilsey said. “You?”

“Took the direct route straight down Wilshire
Prospekt
,” Mitch said.

“So boys,” Sylvia said, “tell us about the promised land.”

“Giff finally lost God in the Soviet Union,” Mitch said.

“Russia was like our old silent pictures,” Gifford said, “because all you could understand were the gestures people made. Nothing prepared me for Red Square and the clash of cultures there. Saint Basil's with the onion domes and the elegance slays you with its beauty until you reflect on your bourgeois concept of what is beautiful. The purpose of Saint Basil's was oppression, convincing serfs they belonged where they were, on their knees, while the high priests and ignoble nobles kept control of them. Then you turn around and see the Kremlin itself, Lenin's tomb with lines of ordinary citizens patiently, reverently waiting hours to pay tribute. Lenin liberated them from the bishops and the Czar who worked hand in glove to oppress them. A solemn recognition in the majesty of Red Square. When you finally see Lenin you see the implacable face of wisdom itself.”

“Our silent movie tour,” Mitch said, “then took us to the Soviet Union of today.”

“Sure, we saw what they wanted us to see,” Gifford said, “but there was no faking the new experiments with production and distribution, no acting when workers told us that at last they're making things for themselves. Hopeful, productive patriots.”

“Including,” Mitch said, “a farmer's daughter Giff fell for on a collective where they grow some awful wheat they call bulgur. I couldn't wait to get back to Moscow, but Giff didn't care what they fed us as long as he could make the daughter. I got him out of there just before the farmer stuck a pitchfork in him. That's when he really gave up God.”

“It's just this,” Gifford said, shrugging off Mitch. “No God I can imagine would let a great country like Russia suffer as it did under the czars, no more than he would let a great country like ours suffer as it does in the Depression and our rotten system with all the war profiteers who sent us off to France in 1917 while they raked it in over here. Not to mention how a God can leave Hitler alone with what he plans to do to the Jews.”

That was too much for Mitch Altschuler. “Let's not overdo it,” he said.

“No, Hitler means it, Mitch,” said Gifford.

“Half a million Jews in Germany, for Christ's sake, Giff. Some are my relatives. Five hundred thousand Jews. You think he thinks he can kill them all? Don't be silly.”

No one said anything to that.

“What about Jews in the Soviet Union?” Sylvia asked.

“Stalin loves Jews,” Mitch said.

“Loves?” Sylvia repeated.

“He takes Jews into his high councils. Look at Lazar Kaganovich, Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev. His most trusted foreign policy adviser, Maxim Litvinov, is a Jew.”

I ventured a meek question. “Even if you liked it there, admired the Soviet Union and its new society, why should American Communists take orders from Moscow?”

“Why do Catholics take orders from Rome?” Mitch answered, followed by a long laugh from this short man. “'Nuff said.”

“No, it's a good question,” Gifford said. “We don't take orders, we do take guidance—the USSR is the most advanced in both thinking and development. There has to be a solid front against the capitalists and their greed.”

“We're among friends, Giff,” Mitch said, “So I think I can tell them.”

“We're not supposed to,” said Gifford, “but okay, if you like.”

“One of us,” Mitch said conspiratorially, dropping his voice, “may be selected for full time P work, which will be terribly S and we may have to disappear. For a while.”

“Pardon me,” Sylvia said, “but it seems to me your initials may succeed in puzzling your friends yet will be as loud and clear as a star's ego to any Red Squad detective. Want to tell us what the hell you're talking about?”

“Suppleness is crucial,” Mitch said, “so if the P line changes we change with it.”

Gifford Wilsey nodded, but I didn't understand how his completely inelastic, rigid friend could be talking about suppleness. “Excuse me,” I said, “I don't get it.”

“We may be going underground to do P for
Party
work,” Mitch said, “which will be highly S for
secret
in nature. Which means don't ask. P work, which will be called subversive by capitalist toadies, is probably the most patriotic thing an American can do right now. I'll be doing whatever I can to turn fascistic America toward Communism.”

“I would like to tell you gently,” Sylvia said, “you're being a silly ass with your cloak-and-dagger dialogue out of a B, which stands for
bad
, movie I hope any of us would be ashamed to write. I'm for the Communists because I think they describe us so accurately, but doing secret work for them is coming close to treason.”

“Are you sure?” Mitch said earnestly, stunned because he respected Sylvia, who had been his mentor when he first came West. “I don't think so, Sylvia.”

“The thing is,” said Gifford, more modest than Mitch Altschuler but also more convinced since he had essentially traded in one faith for another, “the powers-that-be in our society know perfectly well what is happening and what is going to happen.”

“And what's that?” Sylvia asked.

“FDR knows it,” Gifford said. “The smarter men around him like Tugwell and Baruch know it, quite obviously Wall Street shivers over it. Simply put: the dispossessed of the world are about to embrace socialism. Hitler and Mussolini are the death throes of extreme capitalism, and when they're gone, the world will make way for the means of production to be controlled by those who work them.”

Bertrand the butler came by bearing his silver tray in the center of which was now heaped at least two pounds of fresh caviar. Toast points surrounded the caviar and we all liberally mounded it on them. Mitch took more. “Ah good,” he said as he crunched the tiny black eggs. “Not exactly what we had in Moscow, eggs not quite gray enough, a touch too small, but damn good.” Turning to the uniformed Bertrand, he said, “
Spasibo, Tovaritch.
Know what that means? No, of course not. Thank you, Comrade. And now,
do svidania, Tovaritch
. Goodbye. Say, wait a minute.”

“Sir?” said Bertrand. Ever since the Scottsboro Boys had been falsely—it soon developed—accused of rape and then convicted by an all-white jury, the Party had been eager to promote black membership. Though Gloriana's gathering was nominally to support the Scottsboro Boys' legal appeal—surely an inoffensive cause anywhere outside the old Confederacy—all the guests knew this was actually a Party party.

“What's your last name?” Mitch asked the butler.

“Munson, sir.”

“Bertrand Munson, you're who we need, you're who all our organizing is for.”

The butler looked puzzled, possibly nervous.

“It's all right, Bertrand,” said Sylvia, who knew him from previous occasions.

“Your people stand to gain the most from the victory of socialism on our American shores,” Mitch said. “Believe me, the serfs in Russia were as badly treated as slaves, and they weren't free until about the same time you colored folks were. Now they're rising to the top. Will you give us a try?”

“Give you a try, sir?” Bertrand Munson, resplendent in his formal butler's uniform, watched Mitch Altschuler help himself to a sizable dollop of caviar.

“Join us, Bertrand, join the Communist Party. I'm sure Gloriana would be proud to have one of her serv—or rather a member of her househo—someone who works for her become a Communist, come to our meetings, join the struggle. Legal slavery was ended but we have to end economic slavery. I know Gloriana would be happy to give you evenings off for our meetings. Occasionally. The Party is for the Negro, I promise you.”

Bertrand Munson appeared to be relieved to have a tray in his hands, obligations besides listening to Mitch Altschuler. “I have to refill my serving platter, sir.”

“
Do svidania
, Bertrand Munson,” Mitch said.

“More shrimp, Bertrand,” Gloriana called from across the room.

And he was off to the kitchen.

Old ABC, using her pompadour as a pointer, was herding a splinter group of her loyalists into the dining room, exhorting and shoving, until she had what she considered a quorum of perhaps a dozen. I came along to see what she was doing. A brawny knuckle of a man was already in the dining room, looking uncomfortable in an easy chair alongside Gloriana's mahogany buffet. A schism was afoot, the dowager Caramanlios's counterparty within the larger Party party. “If our hostess won't call us together,” ABC said to her rump delegates, “I want at least my dearest allies in our battle to hear from a real man of the people. I should have said he
is
the people. He comes to us from the Teamsters strike in Minneapolis and the strike against Buick—the colossus of General Motors no less—in Detroit. Will everyone welcome Comrade Al Sill.”

A few people said welcome to the stranger but no one clapped. Mitch Altschuler and Sylvia were curious enough to look in on the dining room faction. I was interested, too, and almost bumped into Edward G. Robinson as I crowded into the dining room. “Please excuse me,” he said, genial though not without his trademark scowl, “I thought something less Hollywood might be happening in here.”

It was. Al Sill was a working class legend. Born Arvin Sillenborgen to immigrant Swedish farmers, he left high school to roam the country as an itinerant worker. Angry at how he and his fellow laborers were treated, he became a union organizer after the World War and at the end of the Twenties a Communist. He was sent to the Lenin Institute in Moscow and when he came home found the country deep in the Depression. This made Party recruiting easier but fomenting strikes harder since those who still did have jobs were desperate to keep them. Now, as he arose awkwardly from his chair, Sill looked like a barrel, with the hands of a lumberjack and biceps of a steelworker.

“The fight we're in,” rock-jawed Al Sill said, leaning on Gloriana's buffet, “is the fight between those whose labor creates the wealth and those who own the wealth. This contradiction is the flaw at the heart of capitalism that will help us build socialism.”

“Oh Jesus,” Mitch Altschuler whispered to Sylvia and me, “either this guy takes us all for idiots or he's dumber than the dumbest producer.”

“Maybe,” Edward G. Robinson whispered to Mitch, “but he's real.”

Al Sill had little more to say. He could tell he was in an alien environment. “Those who control the wealth aren't those who make it with their hands and backs,” he went on huskily. “Out here it's with your typewriters. That's why this country needs a revolution. The janitors in Philadelphia know it, the men on the assembly lines in Detroit know it, the fruit pickers right here in the Imperial Valley are finding it out. Those who resist us the fiercest are those who stand to lose, and that's just a few people, my friends, just the bosses and their stooges. What I hear, studio heads like Louis Mayer and Mossy Zangwill, treating you like canaries in your gold cages, they make Reds a lot better than I do. We mobilize to let them know our numbers have more strength than their dollars. Numbers beat dollars. I don't have anything more to say except Solidarity Forever.”

Sill sat down again, still looking uncomfortable, to scattered clapping that died almost before he could hear it. In these surroundings, Augusta Byron Caramanlios surely might have warned him there would be far more dollars than numbers. At the rallies he normally addressed, songs were sung and slogans were chanted, but in Gloriana's dining room Al Sill wasn't even the night's main event. The room emptied fast.

Back in the living room two strangers moved toward Yancey Ballard, who was in the process of deciding on Party membership. They looked as unsavory as they were unfamiliar. Greta Kimple and Mort Leech were Party functionaries who handled new recruits, cross-examining them. The compact Kimple asked Yancey why Communism was necessary, while Leech, a bully as red in the face as in his politics, taunted him. “Why would you want to give up your independence of thought, you an intellectual, to take orders from Moscow?”

Sensing he was being tested, Yancey said, “The Party isn't a debating society. When my friends say I'd sacrifice intellectual freedom by joining, I tell them if you're going to have an organization that gets anything done, whether it's a factory or a studio, you need discipline. Mossy Zangwill doesn't have votes on whether to make a picture or fire an actor, does he? You're not back at Princeton making a gentlemanly choice on what to spike the punch with on Saturday night, no sir, you have to have someone in charge who makes a decision and everyone else, like in the Army, carries it out.”

“Do you agree with Communist policy then?” Mort Leech asked.

“Look, dammit, I don't even know what every Party policy is.” Yeatsman was on a tear. “Did we agree with orders to charge at Neuve Chapelle when we knew the Germans had artillery cover and more troops? Hell no! But we charged into that goddam forest and made kindling of a lot of it, and when we captured some of the Germans they said we must be drunk or crazy to fight the way we did. Maybe all we were was more scared than they were of dying, and maybe we believed just a little more than they did in what we were fighting for. We got control of the sector. That's what we're going to need here. The world isn't going to color itself red because Uncle Joe Stalin tells it to. All of us will have to pull and keep pulling until this town and this country understand that workers have to control what they work on, bankers can't kick people out of their homes and off their farms, industrialists can't act like slave-drivers. We have to do it because we know it's right and it can return justice to America.”