The Pledge (27 page)

“You can't get under my skin tonight. I have been told by at least one person that I've written a great book.”

“Two persons. I am number one. Williams is number two.”

It was a fine night, one that Bruce would remember for a good while to come, and his ecstasy survived for exactly eighteen days. During that time, he outlined the second book he intended to write.

On the eighteenth day after his talk with Douglas Williams, he received a call from Williams's secretary, asking him to come down to the offices of Harley-Cummings.

Williams's face and tone were full of despair as he looked at Bruce and told him that he couldn't bring himself to send the manuscript back with a letter. “No, I had to see you and talk to you. I have been witness to a despicable action, shameful, cowardly —”

“What are you trying to say to me? That you won't publish my book?”

“Two people on the board read it. Their opinion matched mine, although they were a little uneasy about certain parts. Then we got word of Mel Bronson's discussion with J. Edgar Hoover. The publishing business is a comparatively small and tight affair, and the story of the dictum laid down by J. Edgar to Bronson is all over the industry —”

“And you're telling me,” Bruce said slowly, “that this dirty little man in Washington can tear up the Constitution and throw the fear of God into the whole publishing community?”

“I'm afraid so. I stormed, shouted, threatened to resign, but all of it to no end. If I thought it would make one iota of difference, I would resign.”

“Then that's it. You won't publish the book?”

“I'm afraid so. It sickens me to have to tell you that, but I don't own this house. I work here, that's all.”

Bruce had the book copied, retyped with carbons, and he thus circulated four copies. Over the following three months, he sent the book to eleven publishing houses. All of them rejected it. One house, one of the most distinguished publishers in New York and a house that specialized in beautifully designed and crafted books of quality, and that had a reputation for publishing the best of European literature, sent the manuscript back to him unopened, with an abusive letter from the publisher. The letter announced that the publisher, a loyal American, would not deign to look at the writing of a man like Bruce Bacon.

A CURIOUS
COURTROOM

   

S
ITTING
facing him in her office, Sylvia Kline said to Bruce, “I wanted you to hear this from me, and I just got the news from Washington. You've been indicted.”

“When did this happen?”

“Early today.”

“It's a relief in a way,” Bruce admitted. “I kept waiting for it to happen. Now it's happened. What do we do?”

“The first thing we do is to shake it all out and see where we stand. When you committed your contempt of Congress, you had committed a misdemeanor, and as I told you, a misdemeanor is punishable by one year in prison at most, specifically, one day less than a year, and that is not a statutory punishment but the limit. Many contempt cases are dealt with only with fines, and others with thirty or sixty days in the slammer. Your case is something else. It's a building block in this structure of fear that they're creating — and a very important building block, if I may say so.”

“Why me? Why on God's earth do they want to put me in jail?”

“Think about it,” Sylvia Kline said, “and see the pattern. They've arrested twelve leaders of the Communist Party, and now they're on trial. But they are communists — no question of whether they are or are not Party members. They're moving against a list of college and public school teachers — suspicion of being communists. The Hollywood people, writers, actors, a few stars, also very left and maybe some communists. But in your case, they take another very important step because you are not a communist and never have been one, and they know it. Prior to the war, nothing. You weren't a left-winger, you had no visible trade union sympathies, except the Newspaper Guild, and yet they got you — and if they can get Bacon, they can get anyone. That puts a whole new face on this business. It's not just lunatics on the Un-American Committee, but there's this totally besotted and very dangerous Senator McCarthy charging that the whole State Department is saturated with communists. So you become a step in that, Bruce, and we must see it clearly, the way it is.”

“I'll have a trial?”

“No question about that.”

“When?”

“They'll probably set a date in a few weeks. No reason to postpone.”

“Well,” Bruce said, “we'll have a trial and we'll win. No jury would convict me on the basis of that absurd hearing.”

“Wrong,” Sylvia said, “because the trial will take place in Washington, and if we find a jury there that won't convict you, it will be a miracle. Washington is the core of this lunacy, and it's a company town, and no government worker in today's climate would dare to vote to acquit in a case like this.”

“If that's true, what hope is there?”

“Some hope. Maybe even a Washington jury can be moved, and then on appeal we don't have to deal with a jury. So we'll play all our best shots, and we'll try to work out a proper game plan. That is, if you still want me to represent you?”

“I think I do,” Bruce said. “I wouldn't want to bring this to anyone else now. I think you understand my situation and you know how I stand with Molly. Let me try to clarify my own position since the war, which adds up to the main reason why I could not be a communist. You haven't read my book, but I'll get a copy to you before we go on trial. My book is a commentary upon war, and what threads through it is my deep personal belief that there is no just war. I begin my book with World War One and its fruits, but a reading of the book would make it plain to anyone that the author is a pacifist. I am a pacifist — totally, and this is the position from which I write of the demented slaughter of World War One, and how it led to the even more demented slaughter of World War Two. I've seen good, decent, and brave people who were communists, but whatever the cause or need, I cannot engage in acts of violence and I cannot justify them. I don't regard the accusation of communism as slanderous or degrading; it is simply not my way of thinking or life.”

There was a stretch of silence after that, and then Sylvia nodded and said, “I'm glad you shared that with me, and now there are certain questions.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever know anyone in British Intelligence?”

“I don't think so, but I can't be sure. On and off, I met up with a good many British correspondents, but who could say? At the various press clubs overseas, you'd see a good many Limey officers who'd come in to cadge drinks and tell you how great they were, but I don't know that I could spot one as Intelligence. Do you think they have a finger in this pot?”

“Maybe. What about American Intelligence?”

“That would be Army Intelligence — harder to tell. They don't advertise either.”

“Do you have scrapbooks of all your dispatches?”

“I have some. My father has all of them. I'm sure he'd let you see them whenever you like.”

“I'll make a note of that. Give me his address and telephone number. His name —?”

“Dr. William Bacon.”

“Good. Now, I would like to use Molly as my chief witness. Do you have any quarrel with that?”

“I wouldn't want to see her put to pain or embarrassment.”

“She won't be. Is your father a Mason?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“And you?”

“No.”

“I wish one of you were. It helps. I want dates, prep school — you went to Choate and Williams. Right?”

“Right.”

“Born April twenty-seventh, nineteen fifteen?”

“Right again.”

“What about distinguished family or ancestors? Molly said something about Nathaniel Bacon?”

“You're kidding.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Everything counts. You see, we're not dealing with a crime here. We're dealing with an attitude, and we have to approach it in a very special way.”

“OK, I'll go along with you. We claim the relationship, but who knows? My folks were born in the Middle West — ah, the hell with it. They can't check any more than we can, so use it for whatever it's worth. You know, Sylvia, I get the feeling that we're doing a charade and that no matter what we do, I will end up in the slammer. That's predestined, isn't it?”

She thought about it for a moment or two, and then she said, “Bruce, you're a nice guy, and I could give you all kinds of hopes and say that we'll go in there and face those morons and beat the stuffing out of them, but that's not what the handwriting on the wall says. You'd go in there full of hope and righteousness, and you'd come out of it heartbroken and bitter. I don't want that. I want you to know the score in advance. If a miracle happens, we might win. If we lose, a fearless and incorruptible judge might demand a token fine or thirty days in jail, as he would if it were one of their own boys. But I've never met a fearless and incorruptible judge. Of course, I'm young. Who knows what lies down the road?”

Bruce was laughing. She was a delightful, incisive person, and he had the feeling that, in her own way, she would do a good job of it.

On his part, Bruce felt a little proper publicity might help his case, and with that in mind, he wrote the story of the progress of his manuscript since he first gave it to Mel Bronson. The piece was six typewritten pages, and he took it down to Jack Garland, who was one of the editors at the
Tribune
book section, a gentle, white-haired man who had developed a fondness for Bruce when Bruce was a cub reporter. He greeted Bruce with pleasure and commiserated with him about his problems. Would he read the piece? Of course he would, and he told Bruce to have the single chair in a little office piled with books and manuscripts while he sat behind his desk and read what Bruce had written. He finished, stuffed an old pipe with tobacco, and expressed anger and disgust.

“It's hard to believe how low we've sunk.”

“Will you use it, Jack?”

“I can take it to the board,” he said, “and of course I will, but there's not a chance they'll use it, either here or in the news section. My word, Bruce, you name names, too many names. Putting aside slander, the names you name advertise here. Of course they'll all deny it. They'll say your piece is worthless. You know the line — Bacon's a brilliant reporter, but when it comes to organizing his material for a full-length article, he just is not with it. We would have to call everyone you mention for confirmation, including that little bastard J. Edgar Hoover. You know that.”

“I'm afraid I do.”

“You might try a piece on the general beating they're giving you, without naming publishers and editors.”

“It's old hat already. We have an impatient public, Jack, and these are things they're not happy to know about. Last week's news is a hundred years old, and the Hollywood cases are a lot more glamorous and interesting. But thanks for reading this and listening to me.”

“It's a privilege.”

That night, Molly said to him, “It's not that we don't have decent people, Bruce. This feller Garland sounds like a perfect darling, and there are thousands like him — as I suppose there were in Nazi Germany. What scares me is how easily they're intimidated, how quick they are to give up and say, Well, if this is the way it must be, then this is the way it must be.”

The trial date was set for the following November, and in the interim Molly left the
Daily Worker.
She had become increasingly uncomfortable in her job, stubbornly resisting the clerical inhibitions that were a part of the paper. When she wrote with great sympathy of the creation of Israel, she was accused of succumbing to Zionist propaganda. When she refused to do away with the use of
boy
or
girl
in writing about blacks, she was accused of white chauvinism. When she wrote of the stupidity of Soviet propaganda, particularly in their attack on baseball, her story was scrapped, and when she did a special piece on Bruce, it came to a showdown.

The Party's position was that Bruce had invited his situation, that far from being a hapless victim of a grotesque turn his country had taken, he, as a totally nonpolitical creature, had invited his fate and, along with many thousands like him, would invite fascism to happen in America. Molly rejected this. She could not accept the inevitable victory of the collection of madmen who, with Senator McCarthy at the helm, were trying so desperately to remake the country according to their image. Bruce was not a political innocent or failure, and it was precisely because of his delving into the mystery of the Bengal famine that he had become a target for the committee. Rather than give in and rewrite her story, Molly tore it up and walked out.