E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

His father laughed again. The man who spoke sat in the big chair with the edges that came out; so that if you sat back your face couldn’t be seen from the side. He sat with his arms folded across his chest and his feet crossed at the ankles. Daniel had never seen him before.

“The fact is,” the man said, “the politicians are quite aware that the Mundt-Nixon bill is unconstitutional. Furthermore, they know it will not go to a vote in the Senate before the end of the legislative session. Their intent is not to pass a simple bill making the American Communist an outlaw; they are not in a position to do that — yet. Their intent is to stifle and intimidate the forces of progressivism in this country, to turn back the tide of history, which is, of course, futile. But things will get worse before they get better — the deportations, the contempt proceedings, the blacklists, the jailings — it is all part of the Wall Street conspiracy, it is the reflex of capitalist imperialism trying to shore up its rotting foundations. That is the whole purpose of the so-called “cold war.” That is the whole purpose of our foreign policy since the death of Roosevelt. American capitalism conceives, quite correctly, that it can only survive in opposition to socialist democracy; that is the real meaning of the Truman Doctrine. That is why we ring our socialist ally who won the war in the East and thereby prevented Fascism from engulfing the West — that is why we ring her borders with military bases. That is what you do to a man who does you a favor. You cannot admit your debt, so you find a way to hate him. We made love with Soviet Russia during the war because we needed her. Now we jilt her once again and resume the great conspiracy that has gone on since the very days of the Revolution when American troops occupied Siberia in hopes of restoring Czarist tyranny.”

“A drink?” his father said. “Some coffee?”

“Nothing, thank you. But you see, the domestic aspects of the cold war, all the counterrevolutionary harassment, will have just the opposite effect of what they want. It will only unify and strengthen and broaden the progressive movement in this country. It will open the eyes and politically develop all those who may have otherwise believed that imperialist capitalism is reasonable, and that there are other less radical answers than Marxism-Leninism for the social transformation of America,”

“He speaks so well,” a voice whispered behind Daniel. This was not a judgment he would have made himself. He didn’t like the man. The man was show-offy. He thought he was a big shot. Yet looking at his father, Daniel could tell that his father would agree with the whisper behind him. His father had looked around proudly while the man talked, glad to show the man off to the people in the room. His father sucked on the cigar, his eyes glittering behind the glasses that enlarged them. His face was red under the heavy beard-shadow. He really liked this show-off man.

“Tell me, Isaacson. Surely this is nothing you don’t already know.”

“Yes, in my mind. Of course, I understand what the issues are. But I cannot help being shocked by Fascistic insanity in this country. It bothers me, I cannot help it. Whenever it exhibits itself, it shocks me.”

“And you find it unbelievable … You are still a young man, Isaacson. You are not fully matured. You have a good heart, but it deceives you. If you cannot recognize the forces of reaction and their dialectical inevitability, they become twice as dangerous. It is a terrible mistake to expect any enlightenment from them. Of such errors was the Browder heresy composed. One forgets how young you are.”

His father was blushing wildly. “He only looks old,” said Dr. Mindish, the dentist, who always thought he was so funny. Everyone laughed.

Daniel went outside. He stood on the narrow porch and played his ship game. He was the captain on the bridge of his sailing ship — the house was the ship — and a great storm blew. He held onto the porch railing and squinted his eyes, and swayed slowly as the great storm attacked the ship. He made the sound effect, marvelously real in his own ears, of the mainmast cracking, splintering, and crashing to the deck in a tangle of lines and torn sheets.

It was Sunday afternoon, and the street was empty. He walked down the front steps. At the curb he stepped between two parked cars and looked both ways and then ran across the street to the schoolyard fence. At this end, Weeks Avenue, there was a drop of thirty to forty feet from the street to the schoolyard. The schoolyard was built into the hill that rose from Eastburn Avenue to Weeks Avenue. It was a full city block long, and half a block wide. At the other end, Eastburn Avenue, the schoolyard was level with the street. Once, playing on the porch he had seen a woman walking along the fence right here, coming home past the school. In her arms she had two bags with groceries. As he looked up and saw her, a car skidded up on the sidewalk and smashed her right through the schoolyard fence, and she disappeared. The front end of the car was stuck through the fence, and the wheels turned in the air. The police came, and there were a lot of people, and when he went across the street to look, the woman was lying down in the schoolyard; she had been carrying bottles of milk in her grocery bags, and the bottles had broken and the milk was mixed with her blood, and glass was in it. She was dead and they carried her to the Eastburn Avenue end in a stretcher, with a blanket over her, and her arm hung over the edge of the stretcher, bobbing up and down as if she was still alive.

His mother said she knew the woman’s daughter. That had been a long time ago. Then they had pulled the car out and washed the schoolyard down below with hoses. A policeman stood by the hole. Then, a few days later, they came and put in a new section of fence that even now was brighter and shinier and more silvery than the rest of the fence. Although not as much as when it was new.

The schoolyard was empty. There had been a grownup softball game this morning, but now in the afternoon, it was so hot no one wanted to be in the sun. There was a long flight of stone steps going up from the yard to the school. That was the entrance for kindergarten to second grade. The school was like a castle. It was purple. It had rows and rows of long windows. It was the largest building he had ever seen. Standing where he was, he could see his classroom which looked over the schoolyard. Sometimes in class he leaned over the big radiator, if it wasn’t hot, and hoisted himself up to the window when the teacher wasn’t looking, so he could see his house.

He turned around. On the porch his mother and father were saying goodbye to the man who was such a big shot. The man shook his father’s hand, tipped his hat to his mother, and went down the steps. His parents watched the man until he disappeared around the corner.

He wondered where the man lived. The man talked the way his father talked, but he was no friend of his father’s. Fathers talked to each other in big words. Of course, he understood that it was about ways of making things better for working people. But what did the talk do to all the houses — it seemed to him that the talk should do something to the houses, but it never did. The houses remained unmoved. The apartment houses rising like steps along 173rd Street from Eastburn Avenue up to Weeks. The private red-brick houses along Eastburn. The hills of houses all around. Only the schoolyard, like a big square pit, had no houses.

Daniel waited for his mother and father to see him and call to him. His father’s sleeves were rolled up and his mother was in her stocking feet. They turned, and went back in, his hand on her shoulder.

Daniel climbed the fence as high as he could, which wasn’t very high. Not even a jump from the ground. It was a chain link fence, and the mesh made diamond-shaped holes. In these holes you had to place the toes of your shoes — he knew the technique all right, but he couldn’t do it yet. Hanging on the fence, he looked back across the street. He had an odd house. It was the only house on the whole street unattached to any other. There was an apartment house on one side, and a row of private houses on the other. All the other houses were made of brick, but his was dark green asphalt siding, notched in squares to make it look like brick, but which fooled nobody. You could pick at it and pieces would snap off like linoleum. At the corners of the house it curled up.