Oil (filmed as There Will Be Blood) (59 page)

like most women where love is concerned. "Is it those reds you've been visiting?" He said, "Yes, dear, but let's not talk about it—it isn't going to make any difference to us." She answered, ominously, "It is going to make all the difference in the world to us!"

III

Back in Paris, and there were long letters from Verne; the government had filed suit for the return of its oil lands, and the Sunny-side tract was in the hands of a receiver, and all the development stopped. But they were not to worry—their organization would be put to work on the various foreign concessions, and as for the money, what they were getting out of Paradise would keep them in old age. Strange to say, Dad worried scarcely at all. Mrs. Olivier had discovered a new medium, even more wonderful than the others, and this Polish peasant woman with bad teeth and epilepsy had brought up from the depths of the universal consciousness the spirit of Dad's grandfather, who had crossed the continent in a covered wagon and perished in the Mohave desert; also there was the spirit of an Indian chief whom the old pioneer had killed during the journey. Most fascinating to listen while the two warriors told about this early war between the reds and the whites! Bertie was furious, of course; she didn't dare say much to Dad, for the old man was still the boss, and would tell her "where to get off." She took it out on Bunny, storming at him, because he was the one who might have saved Dad from this dangerous vamp. Bunny couldn't help laughing, because Mrs. Olivier was so far from the type which the Hollywood directors had taught him to recognize: a stoutish, elderly lady, sweet and sentimental, with a soft, caressing voice—it was too funny to listen to her coo to the fierce and surly Indian chief, "Now, Red Wolf in the Rain, are you going to be nice to us this evening? We are so glad to hear you again! Captain Ross's little grandson is here, and wants you to tell us if the faces of the redmen are white in your happy world." Bunny was taking Vee about to see Paris; a city which was exhibiting to the world the moral collapse of capitalist imperialism. In the theatres of this culture centre you might see a stage crowded with naked women, their bodies painted every color of the rainbow; some of them died of the poisoning which this treatment inflicted upon the system, but meantime the war for democracy was justified. While Bunny was there, the artists of the city took offense because the managers of the underground railway objected to an obscene advertisement; to express their scorn of censorship, some hundreds of men and women emerged at dawn, having torn off their clothing in drunken orgies, and invaded the subway cars entirely naked. These beauty-creators and guides of the future held a festival once every year, the Quatres Arts Ball, a famous event to which Vee, as a visiting artist, was welcome; and here, when the revels were at their height, you might stroll about a vast hall, and see, upon platforms set against the walls, the actual enactment of every variety of abnormal vice which human degeneracy had been able to conceive. With the time he had left from such diversions, Bunny was preparing for "The Young Student" a moving protest against the Roumanian White Terror. He left this nearly completed manuscript on the writing table in his hotel room, and when he came back it was gone, and inquiries among the hotel staff brought no information. Two days later Bertie came to him with another tantrum; she knew all the contents of his manuscript and what shame he was bringing upon their heads! "So Eldon's been setting spies on me!" exclaimed Bunny, ready to get hot himself; but Bertie, said rubbish, Eldon had nothing to do with it, it was the French secret service. Did he imagine for a moment the government was failing to keep track of Bolshevik propaganda? Or that they would let him use their country as a centre of plotting against the peace of Europe? Bunny wanted to know, were they so silly as to imagine they could keep him from writing home what he had learned in Vienna? He would do the article over, and find ways to get it to America in spite of all the spies. Then Bertie actually broke down and wept; of all countries for him to pick out—Roumania! Here she had been pulling wires to get Eldon appointed to a high diplomatic post, with the combined influence of Verne in Washington and Prince Marescu in Bucharest; and now Bunny came along and smeared them with his filth! And more than that! Blind fool, couldn't he see that Marescu was interested in Vee? Did he want to give her up to him? The prince would of course hear about this matter through the French government, which was arming Roumania against Russia. Suppose he were to come back to Paris and challenge Bunny to a duel? The young smart-aleck answered, "We'll fight with tennis rackets!"

IV

Matters came to a climax. A letter for Bunny, bearing a French stamp, but in a familiar handwriting that made his pulses jump. He tore it open and read: "Dear Son, I am in town for a few days and would you like to meet me? Yours for old times, Paul Watkins." Bunny was twenty-four years old now, but it was just the way it had been eleven years ago, there in Mrs. Groarty's back yard, when he had left his father and run shouting, "Paul! Paul! Where are you? Please don't go way!" Bunny had a date with Vee, but he got out of it—his sister would invite her to one of those diplomatic tea-parties where you met the Prince de This and the Duchesse de That. Then Bunny hurried off to the obscure hotel where his friend was staying. Paul was haggard; one does not take a trip to Moscow to get fat. But his sober face was shining with a light of fanaticism—the same thing which his brother Eli called the glory of the Lord! Dad would have said there were two of them, equally crazy; but it didn't seem that way to Bunny, who mocked at Eli's god, but believed in Paul's—at least enough to tremble in his presence. Paul had been living under a workers' government again—and this time not as a wage-slave, a strike-breaker in army uniform, but as a free man, and master of the future. So now in this dingy hotel room Bunny was sitting opposite an apostle; Paul, with his sombre, determined features and toil-accustomed figure, the very incarnation of the militant working class! And the miracles of which he had to tell were real. First of all a spiritual miracle—a hundred million people proclaiming their own sovereignty, and the downfall of masters and exploiters, kings, priests, capitalists, the whole rabble of parasites. It was a physical miracle, too, because these hundred million people controlled one-sixth of the earth's surface, and were building a new civilization, a model for the future. They were poor, of course; they had started with a country in wreck. But what were a few years, and a little hunger, compared with the ages of torment they had survived? Paul described the sights of Moscow. First of all, the youth movement; a whole new generation being taught to be clear-eyed and free, to face the facts of nature, and to serve the working-class, instead of climbing out upon its face and founding a line of parasites! You saw those young Communists in class-rooms, on athletic fields, in the streets—marching, singing, listening to speeches—Paul himself had talked to tens of thousands, in his little bit of Russian, and nothing had ever meant so much to him. He had but one interest for the rest of his life, to tell the young workers of America about the young workers of Russia. He began by telling Bunny! He talked about the councils he had attended, the international gatherings where the future of the parties all over the world was charted out. Bunny of course made his protest against this. Did Paul really think it was possible for an American political party to have its course determined in a foreign country? Paul smiled and said it was hard enough—the Russian leaders couldn't understand how far back in history America stood. But what else could you do? Either you meant to have world order, or you didn't. If you left the party in each country to determine its own course, you were right back where you were before the war, with men calling themselves Socialists, and holding power in the name of Socialism, who were in reality patriots, ready to back the exploiters of their own land in wars against the exploiters of other lands. That was the thing which threatened to destroy the human race; and the only way to end it was to do what the Third International was doing—have a world government and enforce its orders. The workers' world government was located in Moscow, because elsewhere the delegates would be thrown into prison, or assassinated, as in Geneva. But before many years the Third International would hold a Congress in Berlin, and then in Paris and London, and in the end in New York. The workers of the world would send their representatives, and that Congress would give its orders, and the nations would stop their fighting, just you bet! Thus Paul: and Bunny, as usual, was swept along upon a wave of enthusiasm.

V

There were so many things Bunny wanted to know about. He took Paul to dinner, in an outdoor cafe, and they spent a good part of the evening, French fashion, conversing there. Paul told about the schools; all the new educational discoveries that had been made in America, but could only be applied in Russia. And the papers and books—the modern, progressive writers being translated and spread over the half of two continents. And industry— the colossal labors of a people to build a modern world out of nothing, with no capital and no help from the outside. Paul described the oil industry under this Soviet system; a state trust, in which the workers' unions were recognized, and given a voice in labor affairs. The workers published papers, they had clubs and dramatic societies, a new culture, based upon industry instead of exploitation. Then, of course, Bunny wanted to know about Ruth, and about Paul's arrest and his trial, and what was he going to do now. He was on his way back to America, and would probably be put to organizing in California, because that was the place he knew best. He had been in Paradise and held secret meetings with the men; until at last he had been found out and put off the tract—the place where he had been born, and had lived nearly all his life! But that was all right, the party had a "nucleus," as it was called, in the field, and literature was being distributed and read. Bunny told what he had learned in Vienna, and how his article on Roumania had been stolen; Paul said that in every European capital there were more spies than there were lice. Very probably there was some agent sitting at one of these tables, trying to hear what they said. His baggage was rifled every few days. The imbecile governments, trying to crush the workers' movement—and at the same time piling up their munitions, getting ready for the next war, that would make Bolshevism as inevitable as the sunrise! "You really think there'll be another war, Paul?" The other laughed. "Ask your eminent brother-in-law! He'll know." "But he wouldn't tell me. We barely speak." Paul answered that armaments produce wars automatically; the capitalists who make the armaments have to see that they are used, in order to get to make more. Bunny said that the idea of another war seemed too horrible to think about; and Paul replied, "So you don't think about it, and that makes it easy for the business men to get it ready." He sat for a bit in thought, and then went on, "Since I've been travelling in Europe, I find myself remembering that night when you and I met for the first time. Do you recollect it, son?" When Bunny said that he did, Paul went on, "I wasn't in my aunt's living room, and I didn't see those people that had come to lease their lots; but I listened outside and heard the wrangling; and now, as I go about Europe I say to myself, that is world diplomacy. A wrangle over an oil lease! Every nation hating every other one, making combinations and promising to stick together—but they've sold each other out before night, and there's no lie that any one hasn't told, and no crime they haven't committed. You remember that row?" How well Bunny remembered! Miss Snypp—he hadn't known her name, but her face rose before him, brick-red with wrath. "Let me tell you, you'll never get me to put my signature on that paper—never in this world!" And Mr. Hank, the man with the hatchet-face, shouting, "Let me tell you, the law will make you sign it"—only there was no law in European diplomacy! And Mrs. Groarty, Paul's aunt, glaring at Mr. Hank and clenching her hands as if she had him by the throat. "And you the feller that was yellin' for the rights of the little lots! You was for sharin' and sharin' alike—you snake in the grass!" Said Paul: "Those people were so blind with greed, they were willing to throw away their own chances for the satisfaction of beating the others. They did that, I think you told me—threw away the lease with your father. And everybody in the field behaved the same way. I wonder if you happen to know, it's government statistics on that Prospect Hill field—more money was spent in drilling than ever was taken out in oil!" "Yes, of course," said Bunny. "I’ve seen derricks there with platforms actually touching." "Each one racing to get the oil, and spending more than he makes—isn't that a picture of capitalism? And then the war! You remember how we heard the racket, and ran to the window, and there was one fellow hitting the next fellow in the nose, and the whole roomful milling about, shouting and trying to stop the fight, or to get into it!" "One said, 'You dirty, lying yellow skunk!' And the other said, 'Take that, you white-livered puppy!'" "Son, that was a little oil war! And a year or two later the big one broke out, and if there's anything you don't understand about it, all you need is to think about what happened in my aunt's home. And remember, they were fighting for a chance to exploit the oil workers, to divide the wealth the oil workers were going to produce; in their crazy greed they killed or injured seventy-three per cent of all the men they put to work on Prospect Hill—that's government statistics also! And don't you see how that's the world war exactly? The workers doing the fighting, and the bankers getting the bonds!"

VI

So many things to talk about! Bunny told the story of Eli, concerning which Paul had heard no rumor. The latter said it was easy to understand, because Eli always had been a chaser after women. It was one reason Paul had been so repelled by his brother's preaching. "I wouldn't mind his having his girl," he said, "only he denies my right to my girl. He preaches a silly ideal of asceticism, and then goes off secretly and does what he pleases." Here was an opportunity for which Bunny had been seeking. He took a sudden plunge. "Paul, there's something I want to tell you. For the past three years I've been living with a moving picture actress." "I know," said Paul; "Ruth told me." "Ruth!" "Yes, she saw something about it in the papers." And then, reading his friend's thought, Paul added, "Ruth has had to learn that the world is the way it is, and not the way she'd like it to be." "What do you think about such things, Paul?" "Well, son, it's a question of how you feel about the girl. If you really love her, and she loves you, why, I suppose it's all right. Are you happy?" "We were at first; we still are, part of the time. The trouble is, she hates the radical movement. She doesn't really understand it, of course." Paul answered, "Some people hate the radical movement because they don't understand it, and some because they do." After Bunny had had time to digest that, he went on, "Either you'll have to change your ideas, or you'll have a break with the girl. That's something I'm sure about—you can't have happiness in love unless it's built on harmony of ideas. Otherwise you quarrel all the time—or at least, you're bored." "Have you ever lived with a woman, Paul?" "There was a girl I was very much attracted to in Angel City, and I could have had her, I guess. But it was a couple of years ago, when I saw that I was going Bolshevik, and I knew she wouldn't stand for it, so what was the use? You get yourself tangled up in a lot of emotions, and waste the time you need for work." "I've often wondered about you and such things. You used to think the way Eli talks, when we first met." Paul laughed. "I'd hardly keep my Christian superstitions when I became a Communist organizer. No, son; what I think is, find a woman you really love, and that wants to share your work, and that you mean to stick by; then you can love her, you don't need any priest to give you permission. Some day I suppose I'll meet a woman comrade—I think about it a good deal, of course—I'm no wooden post. But I'll have to wait and see what happens at my trial. I'd be little use to a girl if I've got to spend twenty years in Leavenworth or Atlanta!"