When We Argued All Night (2 page)

—Bossy! Bossy! Artie flung his arms out, reaching toward the walls. Those guys are totalitarian. They're like Franco.

—Well, I wouldn't go that far! Harold said. The point is, time and again, time—he erected with his right hand a barrier between one time and another time—and again—he erected a second barrier—the C.P. has been the only organization to step in (Harold's hand cut through his barrier) and speak up (the same hand came down on the other imaginary barrier, smashed it to bits). Nobody else has the guts, nobody else has the drive. Harold's blue eyes bulged more than usual.

—Maybe nobody else cares as much about being the center of attention.

—The Scottsboro Boys. The strikes. The . . . I know, I admit, they're not perfect, of course they want attention, they want members. But we have to choose. We have to make a choice, Artie.

—Oh, don't give me that.

—I don't think—Harold stood—that it's truly principled to watch everything that happens and not take a position.

Artie stood and picked up his suitcase again. You and your fancy principles! All my life I've been hearing about your principles! He turned his back. Then something occurred to him, and he couldn't keep his mouth from smiling. Not just your goddamned principles! Your goddamned assistant principles! I'm going to bed!

—All right, all right, came Harold's voice behind him. Harold's suitcase was already open on the bottom bunk. Some of his clothes and books had been taken out. Son of a gun, said Artie. Son of a gun. Was he surprised? He was not surprised. He opened his suitcase on the floor in front of Harold's bunk, took out his pajamas, and remembered the outhouse. Better to visit it in his clothes, and then figure out how to get into the top bunk. It might be necessary to step on the possessions of the guy in the bottom bunk. Too bad.

—Do we have a searchlight? he called.

—No.

H
arold Abramovitz's father sewed linings into women's jackets. On the streetcar or in the street he might point and whisper, asking Harold to notice the faulty construction of a woman's coat, how the lining sagged.

—Pop! Harold would say, For God's sake!

—You should know. Harold would turn his head, as reluctant to be seen staring at a woman as he was determined not to be instructed about the garment trades when he'd decided to become a philosopher.

But even as he shrugged away his father's hand on his shoulder (Look! The sleeve—bunched up, there at the shoulder. Never you should do like that! Rip it out!) Harold felt guilty, because the father's life (how proud he had been when he was promoted to linings, how his eyes hurt at night) moved and troubled the son. His father, a stalwart union member, a socialist, was intelligent. Harold knew that if they hadn't lived in New York—City College was free—he might end up sewing linings too—if he was good enough. He honored those who labored, whom he pictured with stubby bodies, round haircuts, and billowing pants, like Brueghel's harvesters, and he tried to honor his parents, but he couldn't seem to perceive his parents' nobility as clearly as their foolishness and errors. He didn't want to feel superior to people who worked with their hands, but he did feel superior. Nights, he enumerated in his mind his rude remarks and instances of disrespect, but the next day he was again rude and disrespectful.

Then his friend Artie—this was when they were in high school—somehow acquired a used camera. He loved photographing Harold's father, who had sad eyes and a wide, bare forehead. Artie showed up at their apartment on weekends, slouching in doorways and declining Harold's mother's offers of seltzer or a sandwich, until he had the nerve to ask Mr. Abramovitz to move closer to the window. Harold's father was unself-conscious, and posed without altering his expression, as patient as if all the history of Eastern Europe resided in his body.

After high school, Artie took business classes at night and worked in a camera store, getting in trouble for telling customers more than they wanted to know. Harold studied English literature at City College's main branch, uptown. English turned out to consist of what he'd imagined philosophy to be. He made only a little money, delivering parcels for a drugstore, but his parents believed their only child would distinguish himself. Reading Wordsworth's
Michael
, about a shepherd whose son runs off to the wicked city and never returns to help his father finish the sheepfold they had been wholesomely building together, Harold felt guilty, but by this time he'd learned to enjoy feeling guilty, and he envied the great Catholic saints their excruciating and yet welcome sense of sin.

The Depression began during Harold's junior year in college. Artie lost his job and began taking pictures of labor union meetings and political rallies, occasionally selling photographs to a newspaper. One or another of his brothers always had a job, so his family had food. The first time Harold went with Artie to a political rally he was doing his friend a favor by keeping him company, but he got interested. The rhetoric made sense. It had the right mixture of the abstract and the specific for Harold's taste. He liked hearing that all who labored were equal, were comrades. It was what he had tried and failed to believe before, but put this way, it was easy to take into his head and expound sincerely. He was not being asked simply to feel bad that he didn't work with his hands and didn't want to. He could look forward to a future in which those who did that labor were not deprived of their dignity or of just compensation.

A
rtie stumbled from the back door to the outhouse by means of the light from the cabin. On his way back, he heard something familiar: that car again. At least this time he wasn't naked.

—Hungry? Myra said as she came in. The scarf was gone and her hair tumbled about her face. Thirsty? She was smiling, but she looked worn out, exasperated.

Harold had stood to meet them. We thought you weren't coming.

—Don't tell me you ate! Myra said. Never mind. You're eating again.

—Fine, Harold said. We didn't have much of a dinner. I'm Harold Abramovitz.

Virginia smiled blandly. Maybe, Artie decided, coming up next to Harold, she was slow. What took you so long? he said. Where were you?

—He wants to know where we were, Virginia said to Myra, shrugging in Artie's direction.

—So I hear, Myra said. We had to go all the way to Lake George.

—You know your way around, Harold said. Artie had no idea how far away Lake George was. Far. Harold, who seemed to have changed his mind about the desirability of visitors, made gestures suggesting hospitality.

—I guess you could say that, Virginia said. I guess you could say we know our way around, right, My? Then she laughed. The truth is, we got lost.

Ignoring her, Myra unpacked a paper bag: four steaks, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of bourbon. You provide the vegetable, she said. If you want a vegetable. And where's the fire? You should have had a fire ready.

—She's cranky when she's hungry, Virginia said. Then she added, Well, that sounds nice, which made Artie realize he had begun to whistle, which meant he was feeling unsure of himself. Beethoven. Harold and Myra got the fire going again. Myra yanked open a drawer, took out a knife, and began trimming the steaks.

—You knew where the knife was, Harold said.

—I remembered, said Myra. She didn't just glance at him over her shoulder. She turned so that their shoulders were facing, as if she were playing tennis with him.

—It's true you've been here before.

—I told your suspicious pal. Gus is my daddy.

—Gus never mentioned you, Harold said, and Myra looked at him sharply.

Virginia giggled again. Her sugar daddy, more like, she said.

Harold looked from one to the other of them, startled. He looked at Artie, as if to explain the quick look. I've met his wife. I've seen his kids.

Artie couldn't help it. Isn't monogamy a bourgeois capitalist idea it's high time we threw out? he said, with more nastiness in his voice than he had expected. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, isn't that how you fellas put it? Break up some marriages too.

Harold was silent, eyeing the steaks, which Myra now laid across the grate, her back to Artie. Then he said in a low voice, Gus isn't in the party.

—I didn't say he was, Artie continued, the roughness and loudness of his voice still surprising him. I'm talking about your principles, your goddamn principles and your goddamn . . . He stopped. The
assistant principles
joke was not funny enough to repeat.

Myra scurried around, elaborately hearing nothing, and found jelly glasses into which she put generous servings of bourbon and water. They ate the steaks rare. Those frankfurters certainly hadn't been enough. Before the food was quite gone, Harold stood. We're giving you girls the bunk beds, he said.

Artie was partly relieved, partly annoyed. He'd have tried a little something with Virginia, he now decided, if he'd had the chance. Just enough friendliness to make it possible to share a bunk, end to end. But now the girls brought in a couple of bags and shrieked their way to the outhouse, then waved goodnight and went into the bedroom.

Harold gave Artie the sofa, insisting he didn't mind sleeping on the floor. He'd found some blankets. The sofa was bad enough. In his clothes, his pants unbuttoned for comfort, Artie lay down and closed his eyes. His shoulder was cramped. He sensed Harold's wakefulness on the floor below him. At last he began to sing.

One-four-nine is the school for me,

Drives away all adversity.

Steady and true, we'll be to you,

Loyal all to one-four-nine rah! rah! rah!

Harold listened silently. As kids, they'd both gone to P.S. 149 in East New York, but as Harold often pointed out, they weren't kids anymore. Eventually his deeper voice joined Artie's.

Raise on high the red and white.

Cheer it with all your might.

Good old one-four-nine.

Hurrah for one-four-nine rah rah rah!

They fell silent, Harold before the last syllables. Some time later—knowing they were both still awake—Artie thought again of his limerick.

At a mountain lake, as day was dimming,

Two bare-assed Jews thought they'd go swimming.

Then they pissed in the lake

A colossal mistake

For a shark came and gave them a trimming.

—A new low, even for you, Harold said.

O
n a chilly March afternoon in 1930, when they were nineteen, Harold had skipped a class he considered pointless—the professor's ideas about poetry were jejune—to go with Artie to Union Square, so Artie could photograph a Communist rally on unemployment. Artie liked photographing excited, angry people, and he told himself that one of these days he'd produce a photograph of an important event so impressive that a newspaper would not only buy it but put him on staff. At the rally, the crowd was larger than they'd seen before. Artie and Harold leaned on a tree, not far from the speakers but off to the side. More people arrived, and now they were in the middle of the crowd.

—Would you look at those cops? Artie said. Jesus Christ. He took off his glasses and replaced them, then slapped his head—a habit. He had lank black hair that looked untidy the week after a haircut. Then Artie began slapping his own leg rhythmically, and Harold knew something was going to happen. The speakers began urging the assemblage to march on City Hall and demand to see Mayor Walker. Whistling, Artie went to photograph the nervous cops who massed near the front of the crowd, and Harold watched him make his way through the throng and slip sideways up to them, crouch to get the angle he wanted, and shoot. Nobody seemed to notice. Since their childhood, Artie had known how to deny his presence with his slouch and shrug, his skinniness, the flat hair on his narrow skull, as if he was invisible or the color of leaves and shadows. Harold knew that he himself gave just the opposite impression. Strangers in the street sometimes seemed confused, as if they thought he was approaching them specifically. In school, teachers called on him when he hadn't raised his hand, or they looked at him expectantly. Question, Mr. Abramovitz? a professor might say, though Harold was just listening.

Artie returned. He said, They've got people from City Hall up there, maybe the chief of police. He moved away again, into the crowd. Harold watched three women near him cheering lustily, then laughing as if they were pleased simply to be making this noise. The next time he saw Artie, he was photographing three men who looked confused, maybe arguing about whether to stay or leave. Artie seemed interested in the trees near these men, maybe the look of the ridged bark with these gesturing arms and open mouths superimposed on it.

The mood of the crowd changed. The leaders asked everyone to march to City Hall, and there were cheers. Harold was afraid, but he wanted to march. He was tired of being an observer. There was sudden movement, shouting: the police were charging, and some of the crowd surged against them, while others tried to run away. All at once it was impossible to go in any direction, and Harold saw a man knocked down by a policeman's baton. Others tried to help him or keep from stepping on him, and batons hit them. Harold, shocked, found himself walking
toward
the police, inserting himself between people as if he had business in that direction. Right in front of him, a cop kicked a young woman in a long dark coat. She seemed stunned. Given no time for thought or fear, Harold reached his arms and big hands toward the woman, seized her by the shoulder, unceremoniously pulled her to his chest, then pushed her behind him as the cop charged.

To his own astonishment, Harold waved his arms in the air, his hands gyrating of their own accord, and he began to scream and shriek, high-pitched oohs and ays he had never heard himself emit before. The policeman swatted at his hands with his stick, and Harold felt a strange pain outline his right hand and arm. Behind him, the woman cursed the cop. Putting one hand on Harold's arm for support, she hiked up her skirt and kicked the policeman. She kicked again and he staggered backward. Harold pushed her ahead of him into a space in the crowd. Soon they were crying and shuffling, holding hands. The part of the crowd they were in was not trying to make its way south toward City Hall but east along Fifteenth Street. He and the woman came to a street in which the crowd was sparse enough that they could set their own pace. Her hat was gone and her hair blew over her face. His overcoat was open and torn, and his face was covered with mucus. He was crying. He touched his cheek and felt blood. They stopped, became self-conscious, looked at each other, and stopped holding hands.