The Unwitting (11 page)

“You were the one who wanted me to ask him to help.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

I put my lips against the back of his neck, smooth from the haircut he’d gotten that afternoon to go down to Washington.

“Because we’re the only ones we can trust.”

“
HOW MANY SHIRTS
?” I called from our room to Abby’s, where Charlie was putting her to bed.

“Better put in four, just to be safe,” his voice came back.

I took four shirts from his drawer, two white, two blue, stood staring at them for a moment, put the two blues back, took out two more whites, hesitated again, exchanged one of the whites for a blue, and carried all of them to the suitcase on the bed. As if the colors of his shirts would implicate or clear him.

I went to the closet, chose four ties, laid them across the shirts, fastened the inside straps to keep them in place, and closed the suitcase. The brass fittings snapped smartly.

When he came into the bedroom a few minutes later, he was already
wearing his coat and carrying his hat. He lifted the suitcase in one hand and picked up his briefcase with the other, which was holding his hat. I followed him down the hallway to the front door.

He turned and bent to kiss me goodbye. I still wasn’t accustomed to his mouth without the mustache. He had shaved it off when he’d gotten the summons to Washington. He joked that he was trying to look all-American, but it wasn’t entirely a joke.

He started down the hall. I stood in the open doorway while he waited for the elevator. Only after he stepped into it and the doors closed did I realize he hadn’t put down his bag or his briefcase to kiss me goodbye. He had already left me behind.

He called when he got to his hotel that night, as I had asked him to, and every night for the next three that he was away. Each time, I sat on the side of the bed, imagining him sitting on the side of an unfamiliar bed in a strange hotel room, while I listened to his account of what had gone on that day. His voice throbbed with anger; his words echoed humiliation. He was a spurned lover, jilted by the country that had won his heart.

After we got off the phone each night, I wrote down everything he had told me, or as much as I could remember. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I thought it would come in handy if we had to see a lawyer. Possibly I thought someday, when it was all over, I would write about it. Or maybe I was just trying to hold on to a shred of sanity in a world turned upside down. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I did. Now that I’m trying to rewrite the story of my life, I need all the original sources I can get my hands on, even if they’re not entirely reliable.

This is the way Charlie told the story.

His appointment the first morning was for ten o’clock. He got there at nine forty-five. The waiting room was small, overheated, and empty, except for four straight-back chairs against one wall, another chair behind a desk, and a secretary. Her voice was nasal, with
a trace of a southern accent. Her mouth looked as if she had sucked a lemon for breakfast.

He took off his coat, put it and his hat on one of the chairs, and sat in the one beside it. The secretary went on typing. He took
The Washington Post
he had bought from the pocket of his coat. He had a feeling he was in for a long wait.

At ten after eleven, a buzzer went off on the secretary’s desk. Without looking up from her typing, she told him he could go in and tilted her head toward a door to an inner office.

It was as bare as the outer one: a scarred wooden table, a metal desk with a stenographic machine, a few chairs, and three men, two standing behind the table, one sitting at the desk with the stenographic machine.

The men behind the table introduced themselves. One was called Rider, the other Wilson. They did not give their first names, and they did not hold out their hands. Rider was half a head taller than Wilson and fleshier, but the god-awful uncanniness of it, Charlie said, was that they still managed to look like twins.

“Same cropped brown hair, same cheap shiny suits, same stony expressions, or lack thereof. Someone must have called central casting to find them.”

Rider and Wilson sat on one side of the table. Rider gestured Charlie to the chair on the other. That was when he noticed the folder. It was a good three inches thick. He hadn’t thought his life was that full. Then again, in government offices, paperwork had a way of begetting paperwork. He remembered that from the Navy.

Rider splayed a big hand on top of the folder. Wilson opened his mouth to speak. Their timing was perfect, born, Charlie suspected, of practice. They were a vaudeville team that performed daily.

“This is an investigation into your character, reputation, and loyalty,” Wilson began.

“Under whose auspices?” Charlie asked.

“We’ll ask the questions,” Rider said. He lifted his hand a fraction of an inch and lowered it again on the file. “We have spoken to your friends and associates, both present and past.”

“They have given us information that we would like you to verify,” Wilson went on.

“If I can remember.”

They stared at him for a long moment, then began.

They were thorough. He had to give them that. They had interviewed people he hadn’t thought of in years. They knew every club he had joined at City College, every activity he had pursued at Columbia, whom he had been friendly with in the Navy, even the references he had given for jobs. They cast a wide net, but they were interested in only a few of the fish they’d swept into it. Tucker, as he had expected, though he could not understand why they should care, since Tucker was already in prison. A librarian named Gloria Evans, whom he’d known when he first came home from the war. A professor whose trinity of crimes consisted of serving as a dollar-a-year man in the Roosevelt administration, sitting on the board of a cultural committee that Wilson assured Charlie was a communist front, and writing him a recommendation for the job at
Compass
. One of them would go off on a tangent about someone else from his past, then the other would circle back to those three. When had he met them? How had he met them? How often had he seen them? What had they talked about? Who were their other friends? What were their interests? Had he slept with Gloria Evans?

“You told them you did, right?”

“Come on, Red, this is serious.”

If he paused to frame an answer, they fired another question at him. By two o’clock he was sweating as if he’d been digging ditches in the hot sun, but he’d be damned if he’d give them the satisfaction of taking off his jacket or even loosening his tie. By four o’clock his stomach was rumbling. At seven Rider said they’d call it a day.

“I thought I was home free,” he said. “Then Wilson told me to be back tomorrow morning at nine.”

“Did they say why?”

“Why?” he snapped. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “The two Kafkas have gotten to me. I don’t know why. I don’t think they do either. It’s a fishing expedition.”

The next morning, Rider started the questioning. He asked Charlie what he had done the night before. His tone was almost pleasant, as if he were making polite conversation, until they got down to the business at hand.

Charlie told him he’d had dinner at the hotel and worked.

“Didn’t go out?” Wilson asked.

“Nope.”

“Married man on his own in a strange city,” Rider began.

“You’d think he’d want a good time,” Wilson finished.

“What did you say?” I asked Charlie.

“Nothing.”

They circled aimlessly for a while, going back to various names they’d asked him about the day before, then Rider got up, walked the length of the room, came back, and stood over Charlie’s chair.

“Are you a homosexual?”

“What!” I said.

“That was my reaction,” Charlie answered.

“Did you tell him about Abby and me?”

“They know about Abby and you. They probably know more about you than I do. They had a picture of you in front of the Republic Theatre, picketing the revival of
Birth of a Nation
, among other bits of information. Anyway, I told them I wasn’t a homosexual, but Wilson asked again.

“Now I was getting angry. I asked what made them think I was. Instead of answering, they began asking me about Elliot.”

“What about Elliot?”

“How long I’ve known him. How I met him. What I know about his life, his friends. I swear we were on the verge of his hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Then they went back to Tucker.”

After a while they switched gears and started on the people at
Compass
. How long had he known Wally Dryer? What did he know about Gus Kagin’s wife? Was he having an affair with Sonia Bingham?

“What did you say to that?” I asked.

“What do you think I said? I told them no, I was not having an affair with Sonia. Jesus, Nell, this is serious,” he repeated.

“Sorry. The Kafkas are getting to me too. What made them think you were having an affair with Sonia?”

“That’s what I asked them. They said I claimed I wasn’t a pansy. In their extremely limited minds, those are my options. I have to be a homosexual or screwing a girl in my office. Then Wilson stood—it was his turn—walked the length of the room, came back, stood over my chair, and said, no, shouted, ‘Drop your pants.’ ”

“What!” I screamed again.

“That’s what I said,” Charlie answered again.

“He said drop your pants,” Rider repeated.

Charlie asked what that would prove. Neither of them answered.

“Can you tell a homosexual by looking?” I was far from an authority on the subject.

“If you can, it’s news to me. But they wouldn’t let it go. Finally I told them I’d drop my pants if they dropped theirs. That made them back down. They find sex a lot less sexy than communist leanings.”

I was glad he could still joke about it.

The questioning went on that way for the rest of the afternoon. At seven thirty, they told him to be back the next morning at nine.

At six thirty on the third day, they told him he was free to go. He would not have to return the following morning.

“Then I’m cleared?” He fought to keep his voice even. Too much euphoria would make them suspect that he thought he was getting away with something.

“That will be determined,” Rider said.

“You’ll get a letter,” Wilson added.

“When?” Charlie asked.

“When your case is closed,” Rider said.

CHARLIE HAD NICKNAMED
them the two Kafkas, and for the next eleven weeks, we lived inside a Kafka novel. Nonetheless, I kept trying to make sense of it. Charlie was wiser. He didn’t even try. Or perhaps he knew more than I did and wasn’t saying.

“It’s insane,” I argued. “How can you clear yourself when you don’t know the charges?”

“We just have to wait,” he insisted.

“You don’t even know where their information comes from. The Sixth Amendment gives you the right to confront your accuser.”

“That’s only in criminal cases.”

“When this is over, you have to write a piece on it.”

“When this is over,” he agreed.

And then it was. The letter exonerating him was as brief as the one telling him he was under investigation.

Your case has been considered, and a favorable decision reached under the provisions of Executive Order 10450.

We did not have to look up Executive Order 10450. It had made headlines a little more than a year earlier, when Eisenhower had signed it. Until then, only affiliation with a suspect organization or a clear demonstration of disloyalty made an individual a security risk. Now the criteria were character, morality, and behavior. In other words, the government could destroy your life and put you in prison for drinking, gossiping, and screwing around, favorite pastimes of just about everyone we knew.

Eight

C
HARLIE DID NOT
write a piece on his interrogation. For all I knew it had never occurred. He could have been holed up somewhere here in town. He paid the bills, so I had no way of knowing if there really were long-distance telephone charges. I know I sound unhinged, but that’s what happens when you begin to doubt. Catch him in one lie, and from then on everything he says is propaganda. Actually, I never did catch him.

But first came the exuberant years. There were conferences in Paris and Venice, symposia in Warsaw and Morocco, goodwill tours to India and South America. The Soviets wooed us with vodka and caviar, at least when we were abroad. I didn’t see a grain of caviar in Russia, though the vodka flowed freely. Our government proselytized with whiskey and steak.
Expenses
was the magic word. Writers, artists, musicians, academics, and intellectuals who couldn’t afford the bus fare to Philadelphia were suddenly flying first class around the globe. We should have known it was too good to be trusted, but success rarely breeds self-doubt.
People appreciate my work because of its excellence. Arts organizations want to fly me to exotic places because I have important things to say
. Even when I recognized ulterior motives, I dismissed the dangers. As long as I could write what I wanted, I would not be co-opted.