"Why should an editor be a beast? Anyway she doesn't look pretty there, she looks shocking. That picture's made me sick. What a trap, what a damnable foulup!"

  Honor said, "He's a fool. He should plead the fifth amendment and be done with it. Why talk to those old bastards in Congress at all?"

  Hawke threw his cigar into the shrubbery. "Shall we go for a drive?"

  "Of course. You seem terribly upset."

  "I like them both."

  "Was she ever a communist?"

  "Jeanne? No!"

  Honor wrinkled her nose at Jeanne's picture and put the paper aside. "Communism is coming, Arthur, and damned fast, everywhere in the world but here. And then how long can we hold out?"

  "Well, I think you're wrong, but I'm not up to that argument just now."

  When they were settled in Jablock's red Italian roadster, swooping down the deserted canyon road, Honor said, her voice pitched high over the wind, "How's Frieda Winter?"

  "All right, I guess. I hear she's in Jamaica."

  "You hear? Don't you write to each other?"

  "No."

  "Is it really over, then? That's what the talk's been."

  "Yes, it's over."

  "You had some bad luck, Arthur."

  "Frieda once told a son of hers, the little boy who died, that you make your own luck. I think it's true."

  "Did that boy really kill himself? I heard that, too."

  "No, it's a lie. He had pneumonia and they couldn't catch it in time. God damn people and their flapping mouths, can't they let a child of twelve lie quietly in his grave?"

  Honor stopped talking for a while.

  Hawke was going eighty miles an hour down a straight stretch at the bottom of bleak canyon walls. She put her hands to her streaming hair. "Ye gods, you drive like Manuel does back home, but there nobody will arrest him."

  "There's no one ever on this road."

  "Look, Arthur, if you want a peaceful place to work, for heaven's sake come down and stay at our place for a while. It's the most beautiful country in the world, you've never seen such mountains, and the air and the climate are heavenly. Believe me, there are no distractions! I speak with authority. There isn't a damned thing to do but ride horseback and read. You'd finish your book in half the time."

  "I doubt Manuel would like that."

  "Manuel!" She twisted her shoulders and flipped her hand in a sudden odd Latin gesture. "He's suggested it himself more than once. You should spend time in South America, Arthur, then you'd see why I say communism is coming. Manuel and his crowd! They roar up and down in their Cadillacs past villages where the Indians live in caves, real caves in the rock, thousands of them, eating nothing but corn meal and bitter roots, and they think that's the way things should be. I have spells of real horror sometimes, Arthur. Do you know we live behind an electrified fence? The Indians have brains, some of them are very wise, and it doesn't take much knowledge to shortcircuit an electric fence. I get visions of waking up and finding the throats of my children cut. The Indians are patient, wonderfully patient, and they're good. That's been the salvation of Manuel's crowd, but they don't understand. They think they're the natural lords of creation, born to drive Cadillacs and fly to Europe and guzzle champagne and whore around with models and ballet dancers and American divorcees."

  She sounded so bitter that Hawke glanced at her. She sat looking straight ahead, arms folded, hair flying, her plump face a mask of sulkiness. Seen in profile her heavy double chin made her seem almost forty, yet she was younger than Hawke. He said, "It was a drastic change for you, marrying a South American. Maybe you're not quite used to it yet."

  "Damn right I'm not. Come down and see. It's another planet, or rather the same planet in another century. Take away a few of those ghastly modernistic excrescences in Lima, those apartments and office buildings where they twist and arch the concrete like spun sugar, and believe me Pizzarro would be quite at home if he got out of his grave. He'd just exchange his horse for a Cadillac. You can't imagine what it's like to be a woman there. The richest woman in Peru has fewer rights and less freedom than the lowest male Indian shovelling manure in the stables, and what's more he knows it and looks down on her. I'm a pariah, of course. I behave and talk like an American woman and nothing and nobody can stop me. I was seen having dinner at a hotel in Lima with a harmless Italian ambassador when Manuel was in Paris. The fuss his family raised, and the talk that went around! All this time, mind you, Manuel was assumed to be sleeping with every available poule in Paris, on both banks of the Seine. They're not even aware of the inconsistency. Well, I could go on forever, but the thing is for you to come down and see for yourself. You'll get the material for your greatest novel."

  They drove down to the shore and out past the grand houses of Malibu to a deserted stretch of waterfront without a fence. Honor was peculiarly excited. "Stop the car!" She ran out on the coarse brown sand, kicked off her shoes, lifted her skirt and whipped down her wispy stockings. Then she bounded to the water's edge and went in to her ankles. "My God, how cold it is, it's so cold it burns," she cried, as he walked up to her. "Take your shoes off, you cream puff."

  "No, thanks."

  "Do you save all your romance for your books?"

  "Beaches have never struck me as romantic. Too gritty."

  Honor laughed, and strolled along the water, plopping her naked feet in the washing edge of the waves, making dark stains on her blue skirt. "You're wrong. I once became engaged on this beach, not too far from this very spot. It was hopeless, all he wanted was to get a job with my father, as papa pointed out to me rather cruelly—in fact that was the story of my youth, pretty much—but I'll never, never forget those moments on the beach, kissing in the sunset with the waves sloshing around our bare feet when I was seventeen. He was as tall as you, and he had bright blue eyes. He's in television now, a nobody. Do you understand why I married Manuel? He had no interest in movies and his family had more money than mine. And Peru seemed terribly romantic when I visited it with him. I wanted to escape from here, and I did, Heaven knows I did. . . . The question is whether I found a better 'ole . . . Arthur, what's the matter? You're a million miles from here. Is this boring you? I've had my paddle, let's go."

  He laughed guiltily. "Sorry, Honor. I'm worried about Karl and Jeanne. I'm wondering whether I could fly to Washington tonight and get there in time for the hearing tomorrow."

  Honor said, "There ought to be planes. Don't stew about it. Telephone and find out." She ran up the beach, retrieved her shoes and stockings, and walked barefoot to the car. "Thanks for letting me wade in my past," she said when he got in beside her. "It's not such a good idea. Terribly cold. And now that you mention it, quite gritty. If you do fly to Washington, can I come with you?"

  Hawke said uncertainly, starting up the car, "Of course, but why should you?"

  "Well, it's a chance to see one of these hearings. I'd never go alone."

  Hawke shrugged. Honor would be an encumbrance and an embarrassment, but how could he possibly tell her so? "By all means, if there's a plane, come along."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1

  JEANNE was awakened by the clatter of a typewriter. She started up in horror, finding herself in a strange bed in a strange room, with the frightful awareness that her baby was not there. It took her several moments—pulling herself out of a wild dream of being in an airplane which had lost a wing but was still flying in a groaning, shivering way—to recall that she was in Suite 913 of the Franklin Hotel in Washington, and that she was waking from a baseless bad dream into the real bad dream of Karl's predicament. She went to the door of the bedroom and opened it, blinking. "Karl, what in God's name are you doing? It's four o'clock."

  Karl sat in wrinkled gray pajamas, slouched over his portable typewriter at the writing desk. Scrawled sheets of hotel stationery lay all over the desk, the ashtrays overflowed with butts, and a bottle of vodka stood beside the typewriter. "Sorry, darling. I did close the door. I've got to type this up, the committee's rules are that you must file a copy of a statement with them before they'll let you read it."

  "But you and Gus prepared the statement yesterday. It's all done."

  "I know. It's a fine job, Gus is a hell of a lawyer, but it's not exactly what I want to say. All the chips are down. I may as well speak for myself."

  "Have you changed it much?"

  "I wrote a new one."

  "Good lord, how long have you been awake?"

  "I never went to sleep, Jeanie. Just played possum until you passed out. You look very fetching. French postcard effect."

  Jeanne moved away from the reading lamp that was illuminating her gown, and dropped in an armchair. "This isn't good, Karl. You have to get up again in a few hours."

  "It's amazing how spry I feel. I think I've struck off quite a piece of prose. It may go down with Vanzetti's letter from the death house."

  Jeanne passed a hand over her brow. "Maybe it's as well you got it off your chest, but I think you'll end up reading Gus's statement. Vanzetti's letter didn't help him much. How much longer before you come to sleep?"

  "I'll be in bed in half an hour."

  "See that you are. How much vodka have you had?"

  "Small nips for fuel. I'm totally sober." Indeed Fry seemed quite sober; weary, determined, yet placid. Many of the tension lines were out of his face. But he looked shrunken and frail. He offered the bottle to her.

  "No thanks. I'm quite in the mood to start on raw spirits, and then I'd never stop. Finish up and get some sleep, please."

  "I will, I promise."

  She lay in bed in the dark. The clattering went on and on, then stopped. In a few moments, much to her surprise, her husband slipped into the narrow twin bed beside her, a compliment that had all but vanished from their lives since the birth of Jim. "No evil intent," he said, putting his arms around her. "Just friendship. We're still friends, aren't we? Despite this bog I've got you into?"

  "Oh, for Pete's sake, Karl." She embraced and kissed him. He reeked of cigarette ashes.

  He said, "Jim is a cantankerous little beggar, but it's strange how I miss him tonight. I wish he were in the next room bellowing. I'd like to see him."

  "Well, we'll see him soon enough. One way or another it'll all be over tomorrow. I guess I mean today. There are streaks of pink in the sky. Look."

  "The dawn of a new day," Karl murmured, "with liberty and justice for all." He sank on the pillow and fell asleep almost at once. There was hardly room for both of them in the bed. Jeanne went into the sitting room, and read the new statement, three copies of which lay neatly clipped beside the typewriter. Then she reread Adam's statement. It was quite true that the new one sounded just like Karl, and the other did not. She sat in an armchair, smoking, staring, the tears standing in her eyes, while the sun came up gloriously over Washington.

  2

  Adam met them for breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. He looked ruddy as a farmboy, and his curly blond hair was in tangles. He had walked a mile and a half from his hotel, he said, the weather had turned brisk and windy, and he was feeling in great form. He ordered an extra large breakfast of meat, eggs and grits, and put the food away with dispatch. Over the coffee he read Karl's statement, his face falling into a severe cast. Once or twice his clownish eyebrows went up as high as they could go. "Well!" he said, handing the sheets back to Fry and lighting his pipe. "I don't think they're bargaining for that kind of thing." Jeanne and Karl were regarding him anxiously. He smoked for a while. "You know something? I'm half tempted to try it."

  Jeanne said, "Is it as strong as yours legally? I don't think so."

  Adam said, "Jeanie, the legalities here are cloudy and shaky on both sides. Legally I don't think the committee should be doing a lot of things it does. Legally Karl shouldn't balk, perhaps. American law hasn't digested communism yet, that's the long and short of it. The founding fathers didn't foresee people conspiring to destroy a free society because of some queer philosophical doctrine. They took it as a finality of history that men wanted above all to be free. It's a new constitutional problem. I like Karl's statement because it goes to those points. It gives Traynor a rather original reason for climbing down gracefully. It could work! They're not happy, you know. They've shifted to the big caucus room today because of the newspapers. Tom Breckinridge called me last night to press the idea of a closed-door session."

  Fry said, "To hell with closed doors. I'm not skulking behind any closed doors."

  Adam puffed meditatively, surrounding his face with a blue cloud. "Karl, if you prefer to make that statement, go ahead. We can always fall back on the legal ground."

  "You mean the Supreme Court fight."

  "Yes."

  Fry was turning a fork over and over. "I'm starting to wonder whether I'm up to being this year's Dred Scott."

  The lawyer smiled. "It's a long way to the Supreme Court. These things often kick around and get lost."

  "But once in it I've got to see it through. I talked to the legal staff at Hodge Hathaway, you know, before we came here, just to check. They said the tab might come to twenty-five thousand dollars."

  "If it goes all the way it might."

  "I can't afford it."

  Adam nodded, and kept nodding in silence. Then he said, "I've been thinking that over, too. Last night I phoned Abe Tulking. Our office is prepared to conduct this case without cost to you, Karl, from start to finish, if you stand on the first amendment."

  Jeanne and Fry looked at each other. Fry said, "That's most generous of you. I don't think I could accept it. Why should you do it?"

  "Well, Abe agrees with me that the situation needs clarifying. He's a hard-shell, gold standard Republican, but he thinks investigations like Traynor's may be weakening the fibre of the law. He compares the situation to prohibition. The whole country thought it wanted prohibition and then found out it didn't. He says the investigating power of Congress is very precious, and should be spelled out so that the whole country can be for it. Right now it's become an issue between the yahoos and the intellectuals. Abe thinks it's unhealthy that the intellectuals should be against Congress. So do I. Congressional investigation is the best tool we have for uncovering corruption in the executive branch, the armed forces, and the country itself. It seems a far cry from that to forcing you to name in public all the dismal wretches you saw at a Marxist parlor meeting twelve years ago. The thing should be straightened out. I'm ready to do it if you are. It's interesting. If it hadn't meant so much pain for you and Jeanne, I'd say I've been enjoying it."

  Jeanne got up abruptly. "It's unbelievably good of you, Gus, and don't try to put another face on it." Her tone was dry and rough. "Am I being too optimistic, or can I go up and pack?"

  Adam said, "Why, whatever happens, I should think we'd be going back tonight."

  Jeanne hurried away.

  Fry, who had eaten nothing, poured what was left of Jeanne's pot of coffee into his cup. "That's what troubles me, Gus. Jeanie. This kind of abominable ordeal going on and on—"

  "She's for it, isn't she?"

  "She once said she's for my keeping my self-respect. That's as far as she's gone. Jeanne has amazing powers of shutting up, for a woman."

  The lawyer said, "I think she's for the court fight, if you want it."

  Fry grinned in a crooked way at Adam. "Your gallant offer is to Jeanne, as much as to me."

  Adam said after a pause, "Yes. I admire Jeanne."

  "I don't blame you." Fry gave the lawyer a keen, long sidewise scrutiny. "Do you know that she married me on the rebound from Artie Hawke? I daresay you've surmised that long ago, what with your general clairvoyance."

  The lawyer cautiously nodded. "Well, of course, I barged into the middle of a situation, but it soon became clear that to you and Jeanne he was more than just a successful author."

  Fry said, "She got irked at his shenanigans with Frieda Winter and suddenly accepted my forlorn overtures. She and Artie were both a little young then. I grabbed her. Maybe I did her a disservice."

  The lawyer said, "Don't misunderstand me, but I think any man who'd pass up Jeanne on almost any terms would be an idiot."

  Fry grunted and drank coffee. "I don't know why I'm falling into this vein. The drowning man, I suppose."

  "We won't let you drown. I'm sorry we couldn't talk them out of making you testify, but that was a long shot."

  Fry lit a cigarette with the peculiar swift gesture, and the jet of smoke from his nose, that signalled a decision. "Gus, is Artie Hawke going to go bankrupt?"

  The lawyer blinked, and raised his eyebrows high. "That's an odd question."

  "I'm not asking idly. I know he's up to his neck in this Long Island shopping center, the goddamned fool, and from what I hear about Haworth House, that can go very sour unless Evelyn Biggers is a runaway best-seller. Jeanne and I don't think it will be."

  Adam said, "Well—in general, I'd say Hawke has put himself into a risky position. At the moment neither of his big ventures looks safe. He may be exposed to a very serious setback. His earning power is so enormous, however, that I don't think an actual bankruptcy's in the picture." He suddenly grinned and waved both hands upward. "And of course everything can turn rosy overnight and he can end up inside of a year with the million in hand tax-paid that he's always talked about."

  Fry twisted his lips. "A worthy aim for an artist, isn't it?"

  "Well, Karl, it's a general American aim."

  Fry said, "Sure. Not that I want to rehash our differences, but in the Soviet Union all these disgusting shifts and dodges he's gotten into would be both outlawed and meaningless. A writer of his talent would have an assured excellent living, all the luxury the country offers—which isn't too much for anybody, and I happen to think that's a good thing—and a place of high honor."

  "That's true," Adam said. "It's the city dog and the country dog. He'd wear a collar there. Hawke's the country dog, free to write and act as he pleases, and also free to make a thundering ass of himself, something artists have always been very good at, in any society. Why are you asking me about Hawke's affairs? Haven't you enough on your mind?"

 

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