Place in the City (26 page)

“Marion?” he said.

“I'm sending her a few dollars. She didn't ask for it, but I know she needs it. Just five dollars, Meyer.”

“And five dollars last week.”

Then he noticed something in her eyes, and thinking that he had seen it many times before, he just looked at her. If one person understands you, he thought, do you need more than that? He said something he hadn't ever said before; maybe he said it because he was an old man.

“I'd like to see the children,” he said.

But Bessie knew; it seemed to her that she had always known—that the only promise and meaning is in the children. Always in the children. Does it matter about you? The world goes on because of the children, like a promise.

“I know,” she said.

When Peter came home, Sasha was crying. They lived in the room where the poet had once lived. Ever since their mother died, they had lived there. That was three years ago, and now, it was almost eight since the poet had died. So you see, the legend was almost forgotten; and if Peter remembered the music master, he knew nothing of the poet, and about his death he had forgotten. But he remembered the music master. Nobody lived upstairs. When Peter played the piano, he would bend his head and listen for the scolding of Claus. But Sasha didn't believe in ghosts.

And now Sasha was crying. She looked up at Peter and shook her head, but she was too full with her tears to say anything. He crawled out of his coat, and said: “Tell me.”

She plunged into her story through her tears. She had been going home with a pound of sausage, when a dog began to follow her. She bent down to pet him, gave him one sausage, because he was a very thin dog, and he took all of them.

“All of them,” Sasha moaned. “I couldn't catch him, Pede, and I had no money. Oh, Pede, I could die—you work so hard.”

He came down to her chair, rocked back and forth with her, telling her: “Baby, I'm not hungry.”

“You work so hard,” she moaned.

“Do I?” He began to laugh, and she knew by his laugh that he was very happy; only she didn't know why he was always happy when she cried.

“I'm such a little fool,” she said. “Why did you marry me?” she demanded. “I'm such a little fool.”

“I smell something.”

“I cooked the potatoes,” she said.

“I cooked the potatoes,” he mimicked.

“You're making fun of me.”

“No, no.”

“You always make fun of me.”

“No—I love you.”

“Is that why you make fun of me? Don't you like potatoes?”

He crouched in front of her, nodding his head.

“You're making fun of me,” she said.

Afterwards, he played the piano. Sasha sat back and listened, watching him and watching his fingers. Then he played the Snow Song, which, he told Sasha, would make him famous some day; Sasha knew that if he said so, it would, but she didn't like the Snow Song.

There was one part where it broke to two lonely, aching chords.

“Why do you always look at the ceiling?” Sasha asked him.

“Ghosts—maybe.”

“I don't believe in ghosts. If you do become famous, Pede, you'll love me, won't you?”

He played on, laughing at her, glancing occasionally at the ceiling….

A BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD FAST

H
oward Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel,
Two Valleys
(1933). His next novels, including
Conceived in Liberty
(1939) and
Citizen Tom Paine
(1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in
The American
(1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write
Spartacus
(1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including
Silas Timberman
(1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of
Spartacus
inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published
April Morning
, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography
Being Red
(1990) and the
New York Times
bestseller
The Immigrants
(1977).

Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.

Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir
Being Red
, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the
Bronx Home News
. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."

A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM,
Esquire
, and
Coronet
. He also contributed scripts to
Voice of America
, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.

Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison."