The Work Is Innocent (16 page)

He didn’t understand why the sudden shock of activity had started. The police ran up and down the block, stopping traffic at both ends of the street and lining up opposite the demonstrators. A big yellow school bus had pulled up in front of the pretentious steps to the building. A moment before there was a soft breeze, the quiet broken only by occasional bursts of laughter from the relaxed picnickers. Now, in a steady exhilarating roar, a jammed mass of people waving banners were chanting, “
Free Bobby! Free Ericka!”

Behind the barricades the police had put up to block traffic, Richard could see the respectable citizens of New Haven looking slightly bored. He couldn’t understand that. The chanting was strong and real, the whole mass raising fists in unison and roaring for Bobby’s and Ericka’s release.

“What’s going on?” he yelled at Louise in between shouts.

“We’re doing this for the jury when it goes out,” she said.

A group of people to their right began another chant. They named members of the jury, exhorted the blacks to support their brothers and sisters, and gave specific advice to the whites according to their professions. This caused a fuss. Leo and a few others were approached by a Panther leader, and after a brief conference they went over to that group and told them to stop. A few did but others kept it up. Then a voice boomed out over all the noise: “Listen! People! The lawyers have told us not to use the jury chant. It scares them. And it may have a bad effect.” Richard turned and saw a young black woman saying this over the loudspeaker system hooked up to the platform. The chant stopped and Richard heard Salvatore say to Louise, “Those fucking YAWF people.”

They had added rhythmic claps to the chants, and noise exploded into the air. Richard, his hands red and his throat sore, thought the New Haven citizens weren’t bored any more.

Over this one loud voice that the chant had become, Richard heard people yelling that Bobby and Ericka were leaving. He saw a whole wing of color and noise swing by, the blue shifting with them, and run down a street to the side of the courthouse. “Stay for the jury,” someone yelled. “No,” yelled a woman. “There’s time. They won’t bring the jury out until they’re gone.” Richard’s group was pushed forward toward the police, and he found himself running with others and for a moment he thought they would run right into the barricades.

The police seemed terrified by this shift until one young man was grabbed by a cop when he came too close to the barricade and was pushed. He hit the pavement hard and Richard felt cold and distant from the crowd, convinced that a riot was imminent. “Pigs!” Do I run? He was a foot away from the cop who had done it, and he understood from the crowd that something was going to happen. “Cool it, people!” A loudspeaker said this. “Just cool it. We’re here for Bobby and Ericka.” In the distance he heard people singing, “We love you, Bobby.” Everyone moved on slowly, the scene suddenly calm.

The police ordered them to the other side of the street, and Richard found his friends sitting on top of cars in order to get a good view. The chant had changed to a sweet sentimental song about how much they loved Bobby and Ericka. It embarrassed him but he forced himself to sing and finally he enjoyed the song.

The doors opened and several plain-clothes cops walked out, behind them Bobby Seale, in handcuffs.
“All power to the people!”
everybody shouted. There was applause and the song and raised fists all at once, and Bobby smiled intimately at them while he ducked into the car. He returned a clenched fist awkwardly because of his manacled hands: Richard had the illusion while Bobby’s car pulled out, preceded and followed by patrol cars, that Bobby was a good friend going off in triumph.

For the first time he realized Bobby might be electrocuted. The police no longer looked like foolish copies of tough movie cops: they meant to kill that sweet and graceful man.

Ericka’s departure was even more emotional. And when they returned to the front of the courthouse to see the jurors off, Richard honestly joined in the rage that everyone put into their chants.

He watched the jurors as they came out. He wanted to shake them by the lapels. The frustration of knowing that they looked like hundreds of people who would complain of blacks and whose prejudices he had ignored, hurt him—it meant he had done nothing to prevent Bobby’s and Ericka’s deaths.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The jury was out for a week before admitting they were hopelessly deadlocked. The case was dismissed and the charges dropped. The trial had cost the state more than a million dollars and along with other Panther trials throughout the United States had become almost the sole concern of the Left.

Richard was delighted. He had hated being there (sleeping in unheated houses and eating improvised meals depressed him) except for the ritual of seeing the jury off each afternoon. And it must have had an effect, he thought. He finally had concrete respect for the Movement, but, to his amazement, they didn’t give themselves credit or feel encouraged by the victory.

Two days after they returned to New York City his brother and Louise invited Richard and Joan over for dinner. The phone rang while they were having coffee and Louise announced, after a brief conversation, that Aaron was in New York and was coming over.

Joan gulped for air and Richard laughed when she exaggerated her nervousness by running to the nearest mirror and fluffing her hair. They were still joking when Richard’s father arrived, and Aaron listened to Leo’s telling of their hilarity with impatience.

Richard realized that Aaron was preoccupied. He hadn’t even bothered to charm Joan. “What’s up?” Richard asked. “What brings you to New York?”

“Well, it’s over the Padilla thing. I’ve come in to do an article for Henry Wilson to accompany the letter Sartre and everybody else has signed to Fidel.”

“It’s such a big deal you have to come into New York?”

“Well, they’re in a rush. They want it in this issue. And it is quite important. Whatever you may think, young man,” Aaron said, his eyes telegraphing the imminent sarcastic reproach, “your father is considered to have some influence.”

“What is it they want you to write?” Louise asked this question in a hushed voice. She held her head in her hands as if she were in pain.

“Uh, essentially background to their letter from the intelligentsia.” Aaron smiled to take the curse off his last word. “So that people know what has happened to Padilla.”

“What has happened to Padilla?” Richard asked.

“He has confessed to being a counterrevolutionary.” Aaron looked blank for a moment and then laughed scornfully. “It’s a terrible thing, but I can’t help laughing at the idea. Poor helpless Eduardo, who can’t make a cup of coffee for himself, was accused of being a CIA agent”

“By Fidel?” Leo asked.

“No, of course not. You think Fidel cares about a spoiled avant-garde poet? It’s infighting on the part of the Writers Union. Fidel has been put in an untenable position by them. They’re pro-Soviet and they’re in the process of pushing out the real leftists in the intellectual circles. Fidel’s hands are tied because he’s become utterly dependent on the Soviet Union. They’ve had ghastly crop failures and Fidel’s being pushed into taking a hard Stalinist line.”

“You mean he’s a patsie?” Richard asked.

“Fidel!” Aaron was shocked. “A patsie?”

“No, no,” Richard hurried to explain. “Padilla.”

“Oh yes. Exactly. They know this is the time to make their move. Fidel has been protecting all those elements in Cuba from Soviet pressure for years. Those old shits of the Communist Party are daring Fidel to intervene. They know he won’t risk the food the Cubans need from the Soviet Union to keep the arts out of the clutches of those old CP farts.”

“Are you going to say that in the article?” Louise asked. “About Soviet pressure?”

“Oh, my God, yes! I have to make that clear.”

Louise leaned forward and touched Aaron on the arm. “Good. I’m glad you’ll put that in, Aaron. You know, so that no one will think that Fidel is another Stalin.”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “And also so that it’s clear that the United States is responsible.”

Aaron looked at Leo, his face slightly puzzled. “You mean because of the embargo?” Leo said yes, and Aaron continued. “Well, you know it’s hopeless to try to prevent people from misunderstanding and believing that this is a betrayal of Cuba. From both sides. Fidel will be outraged. I expect to be attacked by leftists. Certainly nothing will prevent reactionaries from being delighted that Sartre and the intellectual world are attacking Fidel.”

“But, Aaron, don’t you think you should make it clear that, at least, you are not doing that?” Louise pleaded.

“Frankly,” Leo said, “I doubt the sincerity of the other people.”

“What are you talking about?” Aaron didn’t conceal his knowledge of what Leo meant by this statement, he merely used the words to invest his anger. “Are you talking about Sartre and the others who signed the petition?”

Richard wished that Leo would take the hint and back off, but Leo said that he did. “Are you crazy?” Aaron asked, searching the room with his eyes for support. “You can’t mean that. You’re talking about people who have been
active
in the left for longer than you’ve lived. Some of them”—and Aaron rattled off a series of Spanish names whose rhythm alone meant powerful Communism to Richard—“are responsible for the Revolution itself.”

Leo made a face and twisted in his chair. “Not most of them,” he said. “Not the ones who will attract American interest. All anybody is going to get out of it is that Sartre has rejected Fidel.”

“Leo!” Aaron snapped the word out as if it were a command. “Don’t fall into that old Communist Party bullshit.”

“It doesn’t matter what people will think,” Richard said. They looked at him as if surprised by his existence. He felt foolish suddenly. “I mean, nothing is going to convince people who are already reactionary that Fidel jailing poets is a noble act. It’s better to address reasonable people reasonably, right?”

Leo smiled with regret at having to restrain his sarcasm. “The point about being revolutionary, Richard,” he said gently, “is that you try to convince people of the correctness of one’s opinions.”

“Yeah. But not by lying.” Richard lost his timidity while Leo spoke. He smiled at Leo with unrestrained malice.

“Come on, man,” Leo said, disgusted. Louise reproved him, also, saying, “You know, Richard, that Leo wouldn’t suggest Aaron lie.”

“The
point,”
Aaron said, and waited for their attention, “is that I can’t temper my judgments in anticipation of how they may be interpreted. That leads to bad writing. I shall say what I think and if that’s misused, it’s unfortunate but unavoidable.”

Richard, of course, remembered and thought over only this aspect of his father’s problem. It was obvious to him that his family had always stood for writing the truth in clear, fearless prose, and Richard was surprised that Leo and Louise even attempted to get around that maxim. From every discussion of political tactics that Richard remembered the family having, the point was made over and over: the Rosenbergs should never have attempted to conceal that they were members of the Communist Party; indeed, no one during the McCarthy period should have adopted that defensive posture, no matter how terrifying and hysterical the country’s anti-Communism was. Only the Soviet Union inspired people to conceal their true ideology behind metaphors of patriotism, because they were ashamed of the mockery they had made of socialism. Richard remembered Leo arrogantly saying that movements must not blindly support other nations, that revolutionary movements depend on their own people and resources for truth and success. It was impossible for Richard to reconcile that with Leo saying Aaron shouldn’t publicly criticize Fidel for wrong acts.

He walked home with Joan, pleased that his brother had stumbled and crossed into the reactionary camp. “Well,” he said, with little explosions of nasty laughter, “my brother, the madcap student revolutionary, who used to ridicule the Old Left for its behaving like an old maid defending her virtue, has become a Stalinist at twenty-five. I should have thought he’d have lasted until his forties at least.”

Joan didn’t respond and Richard, guilty that he was enjoying this imagined score over his brother, was bothered by her silence. When they were home he said, his voice bluffing confidence, “Weren’t you amazed by Leo’s behavior?”

“No.” She glanced at him and then walked about nervously, straightening the room.

Richard said, “I take it that you agreed with him or something.”

“Richard,” she said with sudden urgency. “You’re feeling a little crazy about this, aren’t you?”

“Huh?” He was shocked. She looked meekly and hopefully at him and he sensed that it was important to say no more on the subject.

Joan told him that night that she felt it was bad for her to live off his money and that she was going to get a part-time job. He enjoyed a brief pretense of being manly and protective but was even more thrilled by her long speech that having her own money was healthier for their relationship. After it was settled, he said, “Well, we’re straight out of a New York
Times
article or something.”

“What?”

“You know. Front page of the second section. YOUNG COUPLES FOUND TO REJECT OLD WAYS.”

“We’re not doing anything special.”

“I know. I wasn’t being egotistical. That’s what I meant. We’re right in the cultural flow.”

“Don’t say that. That’s depressing.”

“But it’s true. You go off to women’s meetings while I wash the dishes.” What pleased him was the idea that
he
had secured love so early. He lay awake beside her telling himself he needn’t accomplish anything else. The world would shortly reward him for the smarts it took to survive feminism and the gross commercialism of publishing. I live with honor, he thought, conscious only of the words’ romantic glow.

Joan left the house early to look for work and Richard found himself playing over the political discussion of last night. He was filled with confident, contemptuous judgments of the political people he had met, all of whom he thought of as being summed up in his brother’s person. He admitted to himself that he was disappointed in them for no other reason than the surprise of learning that they were not only no smarter than he, but just as self-indulgent and bourgeois. He felt nasty thinking it, but he refused to shut up the undisciplined, irrational criticism: kids don’t make revolutions.