Lonely Crusade (13 page)

“Realizing my ignorance I admitted that I would like to learn more about this international fascism and I am greeted with sneers and shouts. They all speak at once denouncing everything.

“They point out eagerly that I am a social worker trained for my job and have to accept work for a time as an industrial worker. They become very bitter and accuse me of trying to evade the issue. They ask me what I know of the Marxian Scientific Formula and want to know sarcastically if I am not aware of a great class struggle going on of which I am a part and parcel. They look quite wild and apoplectic.

“They point their fingers in my face and ask me, answering their own questions: ‘You are black, aren’t you?’ Sometimes, when I am worn out mentally and physically, I say facetiously: ‘I’m brown,’ and they pounce wildly on me with: ‘If you have one per cent black blood, you’re a nigger.’ They sit back triumphantly after such a statement as though to say: ‘There you are.’

“What they apparently can’t see is that I like being a Negro regardless of what color I am; that I like being an American even more so and that I wouldn’t exchange this democracy I live in for all the Utopias they can possibly picture—”

That was crazy, silly, contradictory! he thought. But so like her. For a moment he felt a smother of tenderness for her, remembering all the pleasant passionate things that had happened between them. All of a sudden from some passing woman he caught a faint essence of perfume that reminded him of her standing in her black lace nightgown on their wedding night, rubbing lotion over her face and arms and spraying perfume on her lips and ear lobes and over her firm young breasts and all down her round slender body so she would smell sweet when she came to him in bed. He filled with a compelling desire for her. His eyes clouded with a film of tears and he remained rigid for a long time, his hand grasping the empty glass in a death grip. His love for her was so intense he could feel it like a separate life throughout his body.

A voice in front of him said: “If we don’t get a second front the worst is yet to come.”

When Lee Gordon came out of it, he did not see the stubby, bald-headed man in front of him. He saw Ruth as he had left her, critical, cold, apart, a long way off. Still without seeing the man, he said evenly: “Goddamn a second front!”

And then he stepped over to the table and said: “Make it a double this time.”

A big white man in a dark gray suit, also buying a drink, braved Lee’s tight, black scowl. “I’m Ed Jones, I work for a newspaper.”

It required a moment for Lee to get the handle to his voice. “I’m Lee Gordon, I work for a union.” Then suddenly he grinned and felt better.

“Good. I belong to a union—and work for it, too.”

“Well, I—” He started to say that he was not a member of the union but said instead: “I am strictly for the union men.”

Ed looked at him curiously. “At least we don’t say grace to the wrong people.”

Now Lee looked at Ed curiously. But before he could reply, a pleasant-faced young man with a Boston accent and crew haircut, dressed as a college student, spoke up with a smile: “We don’t say grace—period.”

“Why?” Lee asked, yielding to the impulse to bait the both of them.

“There is no one to say grace to,” Ed replied seriously.

“We have not yet discarded the great god Money.”

“But we are discarding it.”

“And quickly at this moment,” Lee said, noting his empty glass.

The young man laughed and bought them drinks. “What is money but a means for its own discard?” he stated more than asked.

“I might point out that religion and materialism are much the same,” Lee said.

“How is that?”

“There is no proof for either unless one believes. I wonder how many of you Marxists realize that it is your belief, and not Marx’s proof, that has established the truth of materialism.”

“But Marx did not establish the truth of materialism, no more than did we,” a fourth voice said. “He merely employed the dialectical conception of it to demonstrate the cycle of capitalism.”

Lee looked down at the stubby, bald-headed Jew who had made the remark concerning the second front. “To me the two are the same—Marx and materialism,” he replied.

“To you, yes. But you will admit the danger of drawing any conclusion from a lack of information?” the stubby Jew asked equably.

“I admit nothing,” Lee snapped. “I said—”

“By the way, my name’s Don Cabot,” the young man with the Boston accent interrupted quickly.

“Lee Gordon,” Lee replied shortly.

“I’m Abe Rosenberg,” the stubby Jew said. “But they all call me Rosie.”

“Lee, dialectical materialism proves itself,” Ed argued doggedly. “Which religion does not do. We see the truth of dialectical materialism in our daily lives, in each step of progress we make. Man discovers nothing, learns nothing—he reflects. Matter changes, develops, progresses, but we think only of the change, the development, the progress of man. But every scientist knows that man could not develop if matter were unchangeable.

“While on the other hand, religion is static. We can not see the truth of religion; we can only believe it. And we can only believe it so long as it serves its purpose. Man is not embodied in religion—religion is embodied in man. There is no religion that man, in his reflection of materialistic progression, can not outgrow and overthrow—in fact, has not already outgrown.”

“You make it sound as logical as Lenin did, I admit,” Lee replied. “But you can not convince me that the masses in Russia are converted to the philosophy of dialectics, or that they know themselves to be reflections of materialistic change. I say the majority of the peasants in Russia have just swapped the Greek Orthodox faith for the Communist faith.”

“To be sure,” Rosie agreed, spreading his hands. “That only illustrates the truth of dialectical materialism. Are not the masses of Russia reflecting change? Do they have to know it? Or even believe it?”

“As long as they are it f eh?” Lee asked.

“What have you against the Soviet Union?” Rosie challenged.

“The people have no freedom.”

“The people have more freedom than any people in the world. Do you have freedom here?”

“We have more than they.”

“Pfui! There can be no such thing as freedom in a capitalistic society. They say we have a free press. Pfui! We have the most controlled press in the world today. First of all, it takes a million dollars to buy a small newspaper. Is that free?”

“It is freer than having a big newspaper and having what goes into it dictated to you.”

“Are you so naive as to believe that the contents of an American newspaper are not dictated by the overlords?”

“Not to the extent the contents of the Russian newspapers are dictated by Joe Stalin.”

“Pfui! There are no dictators in Russia. The people dictate—all the people. Do all the people in America vote?”

“Why ask me that?”

“Because you, of all people, should know. Freedom! What is freedom?”

“According to Martin Dies it is anti-people,” some one said.

“According to Father Coughlin it is anti-Semitism.”

“To Hitler, it is anti-everything.”

Several laughed.

Lee quoted with drunken memory: “According to Karl Marx, ‘Freedom is the appreciation of necessity.’”

There was a moment of startled silence.

“Hear! Hear!” a broad-shouldered man with coarse, lumpy features called from the center of the room. “May I have your attention, please.”

“Mike!…Mike!…” The name ran through the crowd.

“The young man is right,” Mike stated. “Freedom is the appreciation of necessity. That is why I am here. We must be informed of the necessities. The necessity of aiding our great ally Russia, who is now valiantly fighting our battles for us—”

From one side of the room came a spontaneous cheer.

“You don’t have to cheer me,” Mike declared. “All of you know what I am saying. You all know it is the truth. What I am talking about is the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of news from the battle fronts that is not falsified to serve imperialistic ends, the necessity of a free press bringing you true and correct information. I am referring to the
Daily World
. We need money to bring you news coverage of the world during this most important period in the history of mankind. You know that. We need money to compete with the imperalistic press. Our goal is to raise three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now I am going to ask for a collection of ten dollar bills. I want nothing but tens—” He smiled indulgently. “Last night I was to a party in Beverly Hills where” I collected nothing but hundreds. Now come on, folks. Don’t rush. Nothing but tens—”

Several people went forward with ingratiating smiles. Next Mike called for fives, then ones. Then he passed his hat around and took a silver collection.

No sooner had he departed than someone else appeared and took up a collection for a second front.

“I don’t mind so much being pressured out of my money,” Lee complained to Rosie, “but what good can it do? You can’t force the United States to open a second front.”

“But we can let the people know the necessity of it. And the people will know who are their enemies and who are their friends.”

“Well, what is the necessity of it? Let me know.”

“Our frontiers are no longer on the Atlantic Ocean. They are in Russia.”

Another Jew joined the conversation. “Russia must be saved!”

“For who? You Jews?” Lee asked harshly.

“You a Negro and you say that?”

“I say that because I am a Negro. Russia is no haven for me. Not even an ideological defense.”

“How is it any more an ideological defense to the Jew than to you. You are human too, aren’t you?”

“Not in this country. And this is where I have to live and die. I don’t see any collection being taken up to fight the Negro problem.”

“The Negro problem is indivisible from the problem of the masses. You have no special problem. And Russia is the only nation in the world where human rights are placed above property rights. As long as Russia stands the masses will have hope.”

“Not the Negro in America. Our only hope is here where Russian influence will never mean a thing.”

“You know nothing of the international implications of this war—”

“And I don’t care!”

“If it were not for Russia this would be an imperialistic war—”

“All I know is that now is the time to fight the Negro problem and what are you Communists doing but—” Lee broke off to stare at the label on the package of tobacco from which Rosie filled his pipe. “Nigger Hair,” it read.

“Good tobacco?” Lee asked.

Rosie’s expression did not change. “Cheap. We got the U. S. Tobacco Company to stop using this label, then we bought up the stock at a discount for personal use.”

“You shouldn’t feel badly about your hair,” consoled a woman who had noticed the label. “We can’t all have beautiful hair. And it doesn’t take a thing away from your character.”

“After all, it’s what dialectical materialism gave to me,” Lee said evenly.

“There’s a great deal of anti-Semitism going on right now too,” the woman continued.

“Well—yes. How many Jews were there lynched in America last year?”

“Why, I never heard of any Jew being lynched in America.”

“There were six Negroes lynched last year in the first year of this war against fascism.” He turned to Rosie. “And no Jews. Yet you say the problem is indivisible from the problem of the masses. Lynching alone would divide it.”

Rosie shook his head. “I’m worried about you, Lee.”

“Oh, sure,” Lee drawled. “Now I suppose I’m confused—which is the next charge you Communists make.”

“Confused, yes. But that’s not what worries me.”

“What worries you is that you don’t have the answer—”

Someone tugged at his arm. He turned and scowled down at a small, elderly Jewish man with a tired, seamed face and kindly eyes.

“I have something to show you,” the old man said.

“Some other time—”

“No, now,” the old man insisted. “You must see this now.”

“But what is it? I don’t want to read anything—”

“Come, let us go into the other room where—”

“No!”

“Yes, you must!” The old man gripped him by the sleeve.

Lee allowed himself to be ushered into the bedroom where he was forced gently but firmly into the chair while the old man extracted the small precious package from his inside pocket and began unwrapping it.

“Look!” he commanded.

It was a vague, blurred picture of a naked Negro but Lee’s drunken vision would not focus immediately upon it. “Look, Pops—Mister—”

“Goldman.”

“Look, Mr. Goldman, what is it? A Negro ballet dancer?” Was that what this old man wanted him to see.

Leaning close, the old man whispered in his ear, “It is the picture of a lynching.”

Shock went through Lee like veins of gall. He struggled to his feet, fighting down the taste of nausea. “No!” he shouted. “No, goddamnit! You goddamned fool!” He was moving toward the door. It was like escaping.

The discussion had now touched upon the double standard. Lee headed toward it with a sense of seeking cover. Someone was saying: “There are no such things as male and female personalities. There is only one personality—the human personality.”

He swerved toward the bar. But Don called him back: “What do you think, Lee?”

“What do I think about what?”

“The equality of sexes that exists today in the Soviet Union?”

“Where they have community nurseries with competent instructors for the children,” a woman supplemented.

“I like the home,” Lee said.

“We all like the home. The home still exists. But the old patriarchal institution of home life where it is regarded as the center of culture is outdated.”

“I like women who are women,” Lee went on. “I like to sleep with them and take care of them. I don’t want any woman taking care of me or even competing with me.” He realized suddenly that he was getting very drunk.

“My, my, such a big strong man,” the woman murmured.

“Let’s have some music, Luther!” some one called.

Lee found himself at the bar again. A jive record filled the room with a boogie beat and some of the younger Marxists began jitter-bugging. Soon an argument ensued as to the correct manner of executing the steps. A young man stated authoritatively that it was done by the entire body.