Comrades
a novel by Earl Coleman
Chapter 8
Joel was squeezed onto a square makeshift plank platform outside a factory in the fur district. He had never faced so large an audience. It was one month after his sixteenth birthday on an icy February streetcorner on a Saturday in 1933. Mottel stood guard below, his eyes hot, mouth sullen, the toothpick that jutted from between his lips his only weapon, part of a ring of comrades surrounding and defending the stand, faces to the swelling mob. Four comrades crowded onto the platform with Joel, jostling each other, stamping their feet.
The bone-biting wind blew fiercely about them but the throng remained in place, clapping hands for them to begin, shifting to keep warm, growing in number. It was noon, lunch hour, and there were hundreds hunched against the blast, or moving their bodies inside their clothes for ease or protection from the cold. Some ate sandwiches from flimsy paper wrappings which the wind blew flapping back at them. Their faces looked to Joel like Mottel's, seamed, somber, angry, waiting.
A small American flag flew from one corner of the stand. A banner, snapping madly in the gusts, saying Young People's Socialist League in red paint, was nailed to the front of the platform.
Joel was first. He spoke without notes. Papa, Joel thought, I dedicate this to you. His voice fought the wind to reach the furthest edges of the crowd.
"Last month in Germany Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. He is a fascist even though he calls his party the National Socialists. I am a Socialist. Hitler is a fascist. What does that mean?
"Under Capitalism," he intensified his delivery, adjusting for the street noise, "the laws are written so that the rich get richer. The working class tries to organize. They try to form a union. They're beaten up by the cops. They march on Washington to demand the bonus they were promised for fighting in a profiteer's war. They get shot down like dogs. When the working class finds a way to pose a substantial threat, as they did in Germany, that's when the ruling class arms itself, establishes a dictatorship, and that is called fascism. It is the opposite of Socialism."
His dark eyes were rooted in the crowd, on the lookout for cops, lumpen proletarians, home-grown fascists, bullies. His voice was strong and clear and as he spoke his breath hung and then dissipated in the air. So far, so good.
"Fascism has a weapon," he continued. "They did not invent this weapon. It is called anti-Semitism but it goes by other names. When we are taught to hate people for being Jewish, Indian, Irish, Chinese, Negro, then we are taught to be fascists. No one is less equal than his brother!"
He could feel he held them. He pictured himself in his knickers and his heavy jacket, a cap on his head and a wool plaid scarf around his throat, not more than five foot six. He knew from his mirror that his face was not yet mature. Even his voice was not yet the voice of a man. But he knew he held them. The mass of people grew. He could see no policemen. He felt a raw power like the Indian chief on the crest of the hill. Papa, papa, this battlefield is ours!
"We -- we have a weapon against fascism. We did not invent this weapon. It is called solidarity. When we join in a group, when we struggle together against our oppressors, then we win. When we unionize, we win. When we force the bosses to give us an eight-hour day, no work on Saturday and Sunday, we win! When we stretch our hands out to our brother in trouble, then we win! When we refuse to let them grind us into the dust, when we reject their empty promises of prosperity to come, and recognize that only we have the power to make their trains run and their wheels turn, then we will win!"
The words came from the outermost ragged edge of the crowd, " . . . Nigger-lover," a disembodied voice gusting with the wind to reach the platform. Joel tried to see who had yelled but couldn't. He hadn't planned to continue but he did. "Fascists can be anywhere, even here among us. Fascists are our enemies, the enemies of our class, the working class. Only when we know our enemies can we win. And we will win! Never doubt it -- the working class will win! Organize against the enemies of the working class. Join us. We will be your comrades."
Another comrade took his place as Joel went to the edge of the platform and looked down for Mottel who had turned his head to meet Joel's eyes. Joel felt like a giant. Mottel grinned at him, his whole face lighting up, his grim tension remaining.
The speeches ended without incident when the lunch hour ended. The chill intensified as the crowd thinned. A handful stayed to talk on. A tall, handsome young man approached Joel. He wore a workingman's jacket and a cloth cap was cocked on his curly red head. His cheeks flamed with the cold. He wore a nubbly sweater under his jacket that bulked him, gave him a commanding weight. He looked to be in his middle twenties but his eyes were old, a pale, faded green, calm but purposeful, sure, resolute. "Do you have some time, comrade?" he asked.
"Yes. I do." They appraised each other.
"Time for coffee or here in the cold?" He grinned widely, open, straightforward.
Joel's eyes flicked over the area for danger signals, returned to the man before him, his heart racing, sensing something that was more than casual, on guard as he hadn't been even when he was speaking. He thought of asking Mottel -- what? He rejected the idea. "What will we talk about over coffee?"
"Your speech, comrade, the deepest meaning of your speech. I'm Tim," he put out his powerful hand and Joel could feel his force. "I'm Joel," he answered. He made up his mind. "Just give me a few minutes."
Joel said goodbye to all his comrades, pumping cold hands, saving Mottel for last. They embraced, Joel hugging the skinny body to him, feeling the rough weave of the cloth of Mottel's jacket, harsh against his cold fingers. Mottel said nothing, hugging him and clapping him on the back, always as though it was for the last time, took his face in his hands, kissed him with cold lips.
"How about the Automat on 28th?" Joel asked, as he and Tim moved off.
The cavernous restaurant was warm and crowded. The sound of nickels hitting the marble was brittle. Joel fed two coins to a window for a brown cup of baked beans and one coin for a glass of milk from a spigot. Tim had black coffee. Tim's hair was tousled, curly, uncombed with his cap off and it lent his strong face a heroic cast like a Greek athlete, a red-haired discus thrower.
"You speak often?"
Joel grinned broadly, pleased with himself. "It was my first to a general audience," he confided, unable to keep the boast out of his voice. He felt at ease.
"I remember my first," Tim said ruefully. His voice, his manner said he was sharing himself.
"You sound like you had trouble."
"It was a different time, comrade. The world is in chaos today and people will listen. I began speaking in '26. They weren't ready. You're speaking as a Yipsil, a little to the left of center. I was speaking as a revolutionary. I scared them -- and let me tell you, they scared me." He drank his coffee, both hands around the cup.
Joel looked at Tim surprised, bridling at the implicit slight. "Hold on, Tim. I don't think of myself as a bourgeois liberal, if that's what you mean. I have a lot to learn but I think of myself and my comrades as radicals. Didn't my speech say that?" Joel spoke earnestly, voice low, trying to make a statement about his politics to a stranger.
Tim nodded appreciatively. "I'll come straight to the point, comrade." He ran his big hand through his thick red hair as if to calm his curls. "I think you are substantially to the left of the YPSL, of the Second International. Your positions are radical, as you say. Theirs are not." He swallowed the rest of his coffee, the cup almost lost in his large hands.
He looked deep into Joel's eyes. "The Socialist Party has never adopted policy positions like yours. I don't say, comrade, that every single thought has to match some cardboard profile. I disagree, for instance, with the view of my own comrades, that the individual counts for little or nothing and that the people create their own leaders . . . "
"Tolstoi says that..."
"Yes, in War and Peace. And so does Plekhanov. I have violent arguments about it. I believe, Joel, that the individual counts for everything! But I know that to be effective, and that's what we have to try for, to be effective we have to join an effective Party."
Joel tried to assess the man opposite him. Could he be a spy? Red Squad? A traitor like the one who betrayed his father? He realized that Tim was assessing him! Instinctively he decided Tim was OK, trustworthy.
Joel didn't answer, eating so he didn't have to speak. He looked at Tim levelly, measuring him, caught up in the passionate words and the calm of the pale, knowing, green eyes. Tim's thoughts weren't altogether foreign to Joel. He himself had espoused similar ideas arguing with comrades. He nodded, waiting.
"Look. I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't or haven't discovered for yourself. Just that you're wasting your time in the YPSL -- and time, comrade, is what we don't have." Tim's hands were balled into fists, set on either side of the saucer, his muscular body leaning forward just slightly, lending weight to his urgency. His face was serious but not grim.
What he said about time matched Joel's deepest anxiety. "You," Joel stated, "you are to the left of the Socialist Party."
"Yes, comrade. I'm a Communist."
Joel glanced about him involuntarily. Even though they were speaking softly across a table in a noisy restaurant this seemed a dangerous thing to say aloud. A Communist? People looked for bombs.
"I admired your speech. That's why we're talking. I think you have the makings of a communist leader. The Socialist Party is a party of petit bourgeois thinkers whose classic role has been to betray the working class. I think you already know this, comrade. Your speech tells me so. Your speech also tells me you're not a dilettante, that you want to be effective. And here we are."
"Where?" Joel asked. "Where are we?"
Tim cocked his head and pursed his lips, his eyes wide as though he was seeing the future and yet locked to Joel's eyes. "We are on the brink of a cataclysmic moment of history. The working class needs leaders. Capable leaders. Communist leaders. A man who speaks your thoughts should join us. The masses need us. The masses need you. And you will reach the masses best through the Communist Party. I'm trying to recruit you, Joel, to the work. The work that waits for us."
When they parted at the subway station hours later Joel was overwhelmed by the urgency of the decision Tim had thrust upon him. Time raced by, pell-mell, books piled up waiting to be read, history cried out to be understood and changed. This was the very time! A time for action. Speeches couldn't make the change alone. He nodded his head, accepting what he had to do.
They grinned at each other in parting, friends who had shared the most secret of thoughts. Comrades.
Mottel stood stock still, his mouth working a toothpick. "The Young Communist League? You've joined the Communists?" They were about to eat together in their favorite Automat. He stared up at Joel, not outraged, not even disapproving, but in genuine puzzlement, as though the very idea was alien to him. Then they rose and clutched each other tightly, the two men, Joel acutely aware of the skinniness of the fragile frame he held in his arms, a man his mother's age, a man who carried with him the memory of his father, beaten up by the same cops. Joel cradled Mottel as though protecting him from the world.
"Your father, Joel, wanted, wanted for all of us -- but a Communist?" Mottel murmured, shaking his head, peering into his face.
"The world is burning, Mottel, and the Socialist Party has some responsibility for that. Not papa, not you, Mottel. Two good men! The Party! The Party supported Wilson. Many of the leaders supported the war, Mottel, a war for markets, for money. Why should the working class trust us? The money was made out of their bodies."
Mottel held Joel's face in his bony hands. "I tell you Joel, they scare me -- the Communists. Stalin." He hugged him tightly. "I agree the Socialist Party, all of us, have some responsibility for the war but I, I have some responsibility for you Joel. You'll be OK? We'll be friends? We'll still talk? You won't be mad I stay a Socialist?"
Joel hugged him. "Mottel. Except for my father, I learned politics from you. Everything. I will never forget it, that you shared it with me, what you knew, made me understand it." He kissed him on both cheeks. "Of course we're friends."
Joel had come to recognize the way Tim carried himself no matter how packed the street. When the crowds were thick Joel knew him from his braced-back shoulders, rough brown jacket and gray cap. He watched for him now on the corner of 28th and 7th, excited because an assignment was on its way. Excited and just the least bit apprehensive.
Tim approached from downtown. He always walked as if he were either being propelled by the wind at his back or with his red head thrust forward to angle himself into the teeth of an attacking gale. He wore his natural grin now but Joel had seen the grin change in electric moments of danger. It wasn't until he was nearly upon him that Joel saw the abrasions over his eyes.
They took their trays to a table far from the door and the sound of the nickels clashing on the marble. "What happened, Tim?" Tim shook his red hair disdainfully. "Some goons busted up our meeting last night. Fordham Road. Coughlin's having a big effect. I think we've got our work cut out for us."
"But what happened to you, Tim?"
"They didn't get them a cherry, comrade." He laughed. "Not hurt bad. You ought to see them!" He pursed his lips. "Never did get the damn thing going." He locked his green eyes to Joel's. "Lesson of survival is all. We fucking survived. Saw them coming and survived. Hell of a lesson."
Joel flashed back to his father and the raided meeting. "How do you learn that Tim? Survival?"
Tim bit into his sandwich and swallowed half his glass of milk. "If there are Ten Commandments, Joel, survival is the first and the last. And the ones in between. Survival. Not because it's your body that's surviving, but because you're needed, your comrades need you, the working class needs you. Make a plan for an escape route wherever you are, here in the Automat or at a fucking Sunday picnic in Van Cortlandt Park." He thinned his lips. "You watch for them." He smacked his belly with his fist. "You learn to feel it here."
"Then what do you do about Fordham Road?"
Tim grinned. "Go back. Maybe with more comrades. Shit, my father was born a Catholic. No law says working-class Catholics can't be organized to fight their real enemies."
"Can I volunteer comrade? For when you go back?"
"No, Joel." Tim bit off a chunk of his sandwich and wolfed it down. "Got an assignment for you. You're a damn good speaker but you're going to be more effective speaking to people your own age. Party wants you to do youth work, with people you know, students at your high school. We've got a permit for you, for outside De Witt Clinton. We think you're good enough to build an audience that'll show up regularly and grow. The permit's for once a week. Friday afternoon, four till six in case it goes that long. Important assignment, whole area needs organizing. I told them you could do it." He paused and stared straight into Joel's eyes. "Can you?"
Could he? He looked at the scars around Tim's eyes, his heart pounding. He dug his fork in and returned Tim's stare. "Yes. I can."
"Good." Tim finished eating and drank his milk. "I'll set you up. I know the area well. Used to live there. I'll stick around the first few times, make sure there's no trouble."
Joel swallowed hard. Of course he could.
Joel gave himself an extra minute to stay with the Indian maiden behind his eyes. He thought of her as his unearthly companion with whom he shared his body and his passion, as the other part of him, the she who knew him as intimately as she did her own dark skin, as she did her own straight black hair that fell to her waist, her own long, supple fingers, her quiet strength. She looked at him now with her eyes like those of a gentle forest creature. She was the female Other. There was no time for dating, parties, picnics in the park. It took all his discipline to get out of bed. It was six.
The morning air was cold this day in late winter as he stood at his open window in his striped pajamas looking down in wonder as always at the calm of the tree-lined street below, the sun not yet risen. The world was being rocked by massive forces and there was an untroubled Arcadia beneath his window! The street was so pretty! Factories had armed guards patrolling their closed gates day and night, soup kitchens were everywhere, Workers Alliances opened in every city, thousands turned up at rallies, but this blissful street at any hour might have been on Mount Olympus.
He showered and shaved although he didn't really need to shave. He took stock of himself in the mirror, lathered as he was and naked -- about five foot seven. His ribs didn't show any more. He stopped with the razor poised, looking at himself from widely-spaced serious dark eyes below a very high forehead, straight slim nose, strong chin. He knew he didn't look like a kid even though he often still felt like one. As he wiped the lather from his face he wondered what it would be like to live like his classmates, and he thought of Mikey. Then he grinned ruefully, his white, even teeth shining back at him in the mirror. He knew the question had no meaning. He lived the way he lived. He had no choice.
He worked through the opening passages of the Second Gallic War, making notes on words and constructions that he needed to memorize. He had built shelves for his reference books, jammed together but orderly, covering every wall except the one where he had pinned a picture of his father in a bathing suit looking out to sea, taken at the beach years ago. Above the picture were his bow and quiver of arrows. When his mother called him to breakfast it was almost eight o'clock and he had just finished his homework.
"Good morning, my genius son." She kissed his cheek, standing on tip-toe to do so.
"Good morning, mom." He embraced her in the new way he had, arms around her, picking her up, hugging her to him, her feet off the ground. He kissed her on both cheeks before putting her down. Rachel blushed and they both laughed. He turned to Leonard. "Good morning, Leonard."
"Good morning, Joel." Leonard was agitated, and without a word handed his New York Times to Joel who read the headline: "Hitler Given Wide Power by Reichstag."
"Catastrophic. A maniac anti-Semite as the leader of the 'New Germany.'"
Rachel set the table, her happiness with life evident again, anomalous, with the world falling apart, but Leonard continued troubled as they sat around the table in the corner of the spacious kitchen with its sun-yellow wallpaper. "You're the political person, Joel. What will this mean?"
Nothing made Leonard political. But Leonard made his mother happy. "It means the old order is changing faster than we can keep up, Leonard. But it's already after eight and you know what happens when we get into it. Mom -- I love this coffee."
"I make it a little stronger now for my two strong men. Not too strong, Joel?"
"No, no."
"It will keep you awake in school? You got in at what -- two in the morning?" She was chiding him, but her eyes said how much she loved him.
"Mom. We have a pact, remember? I do all my work and get A's and you don't worry about when I come home at night. Right? I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds, mom. We could ask a doctor if that's OK -- Doc? Is a hundred and twenty OK for me?"
Leonard smiled weakly. "Yes, Joel. It's OK. But I think your mother has more on her mind than that."
"No rings under my eyes, mom -- see?"
"Joel, Joel. Are you careful Joel?" She took his hand.
"Mom! You know I'm careful."
"The Communist Party!" Leonard said indignantly.
"Socialists are now respectable, so you become a Communist -- that's careful?" Underlying her gently admonishing voice there was an edge of fright.
"Mom! Leonard. I'll be late." He embraced both of them, ran upstairs for his school satchel and dashed off in his red and black lumberjacket, his tan wool cap, a red scarf wrapped around his throat. The bus stop was only three blocks away.
The assignment for his English class had been Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent." Joel had read the poem so often he had memorized almost all of it. Mr. Sedaka called on him to analyze the lines "and that one talent which it's death to hide,/ lodged with me useless . . . " and he felt confident speaking to the class, almost as though he was speaking in a forum, confident in himself and his reading. When he had finished he was surprised when Renata, a studious girl in the rear of the room, continued the analysis.
"I think Joel has missed the metaphor," she said. "Milton is clearly referring here to the Bible, to Matthew 25 and the parable of the talent, a valuable coin in those times. A landlord, I guess he was, gave talents to his servants because he was going away -- but I don't think they were servants the way we mean it today -- I think they were foremen or people who had charge of his business. He gave five to one, two to another, and one to the last. Then he went on his voyage. When he returned he asked what they had done with the talents he'd given them."
"You're right, Renata," Mr. Sedaka said. "Tell us what happened."
"Well, the first two servants had doubled his money, maybe by getting interest on it. But the last, who'd been given one talent, had buried it in the ground and had not made use of it. Perhaps afraid to use it at all. It's a very strange story because he sounds almost angry at his master. He says, 'You reap where you have sown not, and gather where you haven't strawed,' referring I suppose to usury and interest. Then he says, 'I'm returning to you the one you gave me. That is yours.'"
"Good, Renata. What did the master do?"
"Flew into a rage and cast his servant into 'outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"
"And Milton means . . . ?"
"I'm not sure. He's using the word 'talent' as a pun on his writing, of course, but the reason he says 'it's death to hide' refers us to the parable. So he's saying that maybe God will punish him, if he can't write, if he can't put his talent to work because of his blindness."
"Excellent, Renata. Now -- did he not write? He dictated to his daughter. Was he really afraid that he wouldn't use his talent and that it was really lodged with him useless? I doubt it since he wrote so much after he went blind. So -- is he really afraid that he'll be punished by God for not using his talent, or was this just a wonderful metaphor that he couldn't let go? Let's remember that he goes on in the poem to say that it doesn't matter to God whether he uses his talent or doesn't use it since 'they also serve who only stand and wait.' In my opinion he is making an unclear statement here, beautifully written, but not unambiguous."
The exchange had a great impact on Joel. At lunch right after his English class, he sat alone over his sandwich trying to understand what he had just learned.
As he chewed his eyes closed. Had Milton been blind to the ambiguity of his own idea at the same time as he was writing about blindness? What did it mean to bury your talent? If politics made you bury all your other talents, was there some punishment for that? The world was in chaos and those who only "stood and waited" were going to be flattened by the approaching tanks. He thought of the newsreel showing Japanese machines, crawling like beetles, crushing Mongolian houses with people still in them. The words, the words of the poem still reverberated in his head. A mystery!
He heard a low female voice close to his ear saying "A penny." He reacted to the closeness viscerally, as he always did. He turned, startled. It was Renata with a tray in her hands.
He smiled at her, still stirred. "It'll have to be a talent, no other coin will do," he responded, and cleared his books away, offering her a seat.
She sat across from him with her sandwich of peanut butter and jelly and glass of milk, her eyes cast down. She was small-boned, about his mother's height, and her thick glasses gave her a look of great seriousness which was in contrast to her lips which were full, her mouth generous. She held herself as though she was quite willing to be open to life even if somewhat fearful of it. Joel realized he had never paid attention to her before and he saw instantly that he was paying attention to little except politics. "Sedaka's good, isn't he," she said. He could see she was blushing and he continued smiling, thinking of the way his mother blushed -- at nothing.
"Not Sedaka," he said, "you. How do you know the parables? Are you religious?" He realized her eyes were quite pretty behind the glasses, bright, brown, large pupils.
"Not really," she answered. "I've read the Bible and the Apocrypha, just because a lot of it's quite beautiful." When she smiled she had a dimple in her left cheek.
"You were a mind reader when you came over behind me. I was all wrapped up in that class. I was thinking of blindness, my own blindness. That class today, and you and Sedaka had a lot of meaning for me, especially about words, the deepest meaning of words. I speak sometimes . . . "
"Yes. I've heard you." She was blushing.
"You have?"
"Yes. Outside De Witt. On a -- soapbox, I guess."
"Hah. I've never focused on you there -- I've got to pay more attention." He nodded his head. "Then you know my politics." He smiled at her, his head cocked slightly to one side like Tim. "But I don't know yours."
She blushed again but did look directly at him, her brown eyes large, her cheeks tapered, giving her face a wistful expression, perhaps like Janet Gaynor or Lillian Gish, unequal to the struggle but game to try. "Oh, I don't have any. But you. You're very- - persuasive. And so serious. I think I was rude to you in class. I didn't mean it the way it came out. Actually -- I shouldn't really tell you this -- you're something of a hero of mine," her face was scarlet.
"Why?" he asked, suddenly acutely aware of her, of her bobbed brown hair, of her blouse under her sweater which reached whitely around her throat, of the memory of her voice low against his ear.
"I just think you're so brave. I'm always sure they're going to come and arrest you and I always breathe a sigh of relief when they don't and you get down safely. Aren't you afraid?"
"All the time." He pursed his lips and nodded his head to accent the thought.
She looked at him with an admiring grin that brightened her whole face. "I'll bet that's the truth."
He studied her pensively, half-smiling. "How come we haven't spoken to each other before? I think I'm asking myself that question."
She blushed. "You're always . . . you know -- thinking. And I couldn't . . . I mean . . . it might not seem like a lot to you but just speaking to you like I did before . . . " she hid her face by finishing off her glass of milk.
"What are you doing after school today?"
"Just . . . well, nothing special."
"I'm going to be speaking -- you know, on my soapbox -- same place, about halfway down the block, same time, but this evening there's going to be a party at Mikey Toledo's . . . "
"Oh -- I know him . . . "
"Would you like to go?" He paused, waiting for her response. She blushed and nodded her head. "Good. After I speak I have to prepare for a class tomorrow morning at the Jefferson School so -- here -- I'll write down Mikey's address and I'll meet you there at eight o'clock even if they raid my meeting" -- he laughed -- "even if I have to break out of jail. Eight o'clock. OK? Will you mind if I don't come and pick you up -- I just don't know if . . . "
Her face shone with her delight. "I'll be there." Her eyes grew clouded and she shook her head. "Will I be able to be home by ten?"
"It's Friday. Maybe your mother will give you till eleven."
"It's not my mother, it's my father. He's so strict. I hate to sound like . . . "
"Renata. You have my promise. Whenever you need to be home I'll get you there. You're sure it'll be OK with your father if I don't pick you up?"
She smiled at him broadly. Even her eyes smiled behind the glasses. "That's nice about you Joel. It's like when you speak -- you're so real. You call me Renata when everybody else calls me Reenee -- I don't know why that means so much to me, but it does. I mean -- if you say it you'll do it. I just trust you."
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
back to top
Would you like to receive notification of the posting of Chapter 9 and subsequent chapters of Comrades? Just click here, and we'll do the rest.
