Joseph Kanon - Stardust

Henderson seemed to have disappeared, now just another hat in the crowd, but Ostermann was there, standing alone by a window, looking out.

“It’s usually gone by this time,” he said, nodding to the fog. “Not today. No sun. Dark times, eh?”

“You haven’t been taking any notes. Are you really going to write about this?”

“If he calls Germans, then it’s something for Aufbau. Brecht, at least, I would think, wouldn’t you? He’d make an interesting witness.”

“It’s a farce.”

Ostermann nodded. “It always begins that way. Nothing to trouble about. Then each day a little more. Well, that’s not so serious, either. And then one day-”

“You’re writing your piece,” he said, one eye still looking for Henderson.

A short man with wire-rimmed glasses, surrounded by lawyers, was crossing the hall, drawing photographers away from Carol Hayes. Schaeffer, he guessed.

Ostermann smiled. “Just thinking out loud.” He looked at the crowd. “They don’t see it. It’s new to them. But it’s the same. A farce. So say nothing and then it’s too late. Like us.”

In the hearing room, Bunny was still talking to the lawyers at the witness table so Ben was forced to take the open seat next to Dick. Their shoulders touched as he sat down, a slight brush, then a quick drawing away, and suddenly Ben was aware of him as a body, the height of his shoulders, his bulk filling the suit, hands placed on his knees, waiting. His tanned face oblivious to any change in the air around him, Ben invisible.

What had it been like? Had Dick stood by the pool’s edge, watching her legs open and close? Or had that scene been just for him? The sounds, the way she clenched him. Ben turned, facing the long table. Something that only happened to you, what everybody felt, each time. Was it over? Someone else she hadn’t loved. Still Danny’s wife.

The sound of the newsreel cameras made him look up. Minot was calling Milton Schaeffer. The tone in his voice, with its hint of blood sport, almost gloating, had made everyone sit up. Carol Hayes, even Dick, had just been there to set the stage-Schaeffer was actually a Communist. But as the cameras followed him, Ben’s attention shifted to them, the familiar whirring sound suddenly distracting, like someone whispering in his ear. Newsreel cameras.

Minot shuffled through papers, a promise of evidence to come, as Schaeffer approached the long table and was sworn in. He seemed slighter than he had in the hall, wiry and pale. Minot kept putting his papers in place, letting a hush fall over the room before he pounced.

“Mr. Schaeffer, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

No one had expected a direct jab at the opening, and it might have worked, caused the excitement Minot had clearly been hoping for, if Schaeffer had been defiant or uncooperative or even evasive. Instead, he answered Minot’s questions with a resigned fatalism that seemed to diminish their importance. Yes, he had been a member of the Party. No, he had resigned in August 1939, after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact. No, he had not attended meetings since. He knew the names of the national Party officers (known to everyone) but not any of those in the local chapter.

“Don’t know or don’t want us to know?” Minot said.

“Names weren’t used.”

“No names. But they had faces? You’d recognize them if you saw them?”

“I suppose. It’s been six or seven years.”

“You didn’t stay friends?”

“It was a discussion group. Not-well, just a discussion group.”

“What did you discuss?”

“Political theory.”

He still believed in the plight of the underprivileged, but no longer felt the CP was an effective tool to help them. His testimony was listless and damp, like the fog outside, waiting to be burned off. Minot had clearly been expecting something else and finally he saw that Schaeffer’s answers, easily given, made him seem no more threatening than the bank clerk he resembled. The cameramen looked disappointed, not interested in the quieter drama, Schaeffer politely ending his career.

“He’s losing them,” Bunny said.

“Are you seriously suggesting to this committee that for five years- five years-you were part of an organization that owed its loyalty to a foreign power and this was a youthful indiscretion?”

“I have never been loyal to any country except the United States. I am an American. At no time during my association with the Party was there any question of disloyalty. When the Party adopted a position that I felt was not in our interests, I resigned.”

“And up until then they acted in our interests?”

“What I thought should be our interests, yes.”

“Should be. A rude awakening, then, when you found out what the Party’s interests really were. A smart fellow like you ought to have known, don’t you think? Or are you trying to say-it’s some defensethat you didn’t know what you were doing?”

“I thought I did. I thought I knew when I got married, too. Things change.”

People laughed, grateful for a light second. Minot used his gavel.

“Mr. Schaeffer, do you think these proceedings are a laughing matter?”

Schaeffer looked around. “Not yet.”

Just a gentle poke to the side, a tap, but this got a laugh, too.

“I can assure you, you won’t be laughing when we’re finished. This committee doesn’t think subversion is a joke. This country-”

The rest was lost, background noise as Ben stopped listening again. The laughter, small as it was, was taken by Minot as an affront and Ben saw that Bunny was right, he was losing the audience, confusing them, his confidence turning petulant. Even his staging was off. He had kept the other witnesses in the room, but that meant they were now only a few feet away from Schaeffer, avoiding eye contact, their testimony suddenly personal, everyone smaller.

One of the publicity assistants, hurrying in, squatted down next to Bunny, leaning over to whisper in his ear.

“What?” Bunny said out loud.

Minot looked up, then smiled to himself.

Bunny left, huddled with the assistant, half the room watching.

“What did he say?” Ben asked Dick.

Dick shrugged. “Something about Lasner.”

A summons from the studio, Bunny on call even here. But when he came back ten minutes later his face was grim, disturbed. Something more than a studio crisis. Ben looked at him, waiting.

“They’ve called Mr. L,” Bunny said.

Ben took a minute, thinking this through. “He can get it delayed,” he said.

Bunny shook his head. “They’ll tell the papers he asked. Which means he has something to hide.”

“Does he?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The only Reds he ever knew were fighting cowboys. Bastard,” Bunny said, looking toward Minot. “To drag him into this.”

Minot, noticing, smiled again.

Bunny left for another call, then two more, a small frenzy of activity, back and forth.

“I have to get to the studio,” he said. “The lawyers want to coach him. Hal, too.”

“Hal?” Ben said.

“He worked on Convoy. Bloody picture, we didn’t even make money on it.”

“We didn’t?” Dick said. “I thought-”

“In second release, yes.”

“The trades liked it. They said I-”

“Dick. Nobody could have done it better,” Bunny said, impatient, his tone weary, like rolling his eyes. “I have to get back.”

Before he could leave, however, Minot had called a break and they were trapped by the crowd in the hall.

“Bunny,” Schaeffer said, extending his hand. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s taking pictures.”

Bunny shook it. “I’m sorry, Milton. You know what it’s like.”

He looked around the hall. “I know what this is like anyway. How’s Sol?”