Carlos Fuentes - The Years With Laura Diaz

Then, in the Tepoztec night, under the light of the moon, as if in a final Group Theatre presentation (the last curtain before closing on an empty house), each one of the exiles said something over the grave of Harry Jaffe, the man admitted to the group but whom no one had looked at except Laura Díaz, who arrived one day, dove into the bougainvillea-framed pool, and surfaced opposite her poor, disgraced, sick love.

“You only named those who’d already been named.”

“Everyone you named was already on the blacklist.”

“Between betraying your friends and betraying your country, you chose your country.”

“You said to yourself that if you stayed in the Party, the fountains of your inspiration would dry up.”

“The Party told you how to write, how to think, and you rebelled.”

“First you rebelled against the Party.”

“It horrified you to think that Stalinism could govern in the U.S.A. as it governed in the U.S.S.R.”

“You went to speak before the committee, and you trembled with fear. Here in America, now, was the very thing you feared. Stalinism was interrogating you, but here it was called McCarthyism.”

“You gave not one name.”

“You faced up to McCarthy.”

“Why did you do it when you knew they already knew? To inform on the informers, Harry, to cast infamy on the infamous, Harry.”

“To go back to work, Harry. Until you realized that there was no difference between squealing and not squealing. The studios didn’t give work to reds, but they also didn’t give work to people who admitted being reds and informed on their comrades.”

“It didn’t work, Harry.”

“You knew that anti-Communism had become the refuge of the scum of America.”

“You didn’t name the living. But you also didn’t name the dead.”

“You didn’t name those who’d never been named. You also didn’t name only those who’d already been named.”

“You didn’t even name those who named you, Harry.”

“The Party demanded obedience of you. You said that even though you detested the Party, you weren’t going to submit to the committee. The Party in its best moment was always better than the committee at any moment.”

“My worst moment was not being able to tell my wife what was going on. Suspicion ruined our marriage.”

“My worst moment was living in hiding, in a house where we never turned on the lights so we wouldn’t be summoned by the agents of the committee.”

“My worst moment was knowing that my children were ostracized in school.”

“My worst moment was not telling my children what was happening, even though they already knew it all.”

“My worst moment was having to decide between my socialist ideal and Soviet reality.”

“My worst moment was having to choose between the literary quality of my writing and the dogmatic demands of the Party.”

“My worst moment was choosing between writing well and writing commercially, as the studio wanted.”

“My worst moment was looking into McCarthy’s face and knowing that American democracy was lost.”

“My worst moment was when Congressman John Rankin said to me, Your name isn’t Melvin Ross. Your real name is Emmanuel Rosenberg, and that proves that you’re a fake, a liar, a traitor, a shameful Jew.”

“My worst moment was running into the person who informed on me and seeing him cover his face with his hands in pure shame.”

“My worst moment was when my informer came crying to me to ask forgiveness.”

“My worst moment was being mentioned by those disgusting society columnists, Sokolsky, Winchell, and Hedda Hopper. Their mentioning me was worse than McCarthy. Their ink smelled of shit.”

“My worst moment came when I had to disguise my voice on the telephone to speak to my family and friends without getting them into trouble.”

“They said to my daughter, Your father is a traitor. Don’t have anything to do with him.”

“They said to friends of my son, Do you know who his father is?”

“They said to my neighbors, Stop talking to that family of reds.”

“What did you tell them, Harry Jaffe?”

“Harry Jaffe, rest in peace.”

They all went back to Cuernavaca. Laura Díaz — in consternation, agitated, perplexed — went to get her belongings from the little house in Tepoztlán. She also gathered up her own pain, and Harry’s. She gathered them up and gathered herself up. Alone with Harry’s spirit, she wondered if the pain she was feeling was appropriate, her intelligence told her it wasn’t, that one can only feel one’s own pain, that pain is not transferable. Even though I saw your pain, Harry, I couldn’t feel it as you felt it. Your pain had meaning only through mine. It’s my pain, Laura Díaz’s pain, that’s the only pain I feel. But I can speak in the name of your pain, that I can do. The imagined pain of a man named Harry Jaffe who died of emphysema, drowned in himself, mutilated by air, with fallen wings.

Aside from the three possible ways of responding to the committee — Fredric Bell came to tell her one afternoon, the same day she returned to Mexico City — there was the fourth. It was called Executive Testimony. Witnesses who made public denunciations went through a private rehearsal, and in that case the public event was merely a matter of protocol. What the committee wanted was names. Its thirst for names was insatiable, sed non satiata. Generally, the witness was summoned to a hotel room and there he or she informed in secret. So the committee already had the names, but that wasn’t enough. The witness had to repeat them in public for the glory of the committee but also in order to defame the informer. There were confusions. The committee would have the informer believe the secret confession was enough. The atmosphere of fear and persecution was such that the witness would delude himself and seize that life preserver, thinking, I’ll be the exception, they’ll keep my testimony secret. And sometimes there were exceptions, Laura. It’s inexplicable why certain persons who talked in executive session were immediately summoned to public sessions and others weren’t.

“But Harry was brave facing the Senate committee. He told McCarthy, You’re the real Communist, Senator.”

“Yes, he was brave facing the committee.”

“But he wasn’t brave in executive testimony? Did he inform first and recant later? Did he inform on friends first and then denounce the committee in public?”

“Laura, the victims of informers do not inform. All I can tell you is that there are men of good faith who thought, If I mention someone no one suspects, a person against whom they can’t prove anything, I’ll win the committee’s favor and save my own skin. And I won’t be hurting my friends.”

Bell stood up and shook hands with Laura Díaz.

“My friend, if you can take flowers to the graves of Mady Christians and John Garfield, please do it.”

The last thing Laura Díaz said to Harry Jaffe was: I’d rather touch your dead hand than the hand of any man living.

She doesn’t know if Harry heard her. She didn’t even know if Harry was dead or alive.

She’d always been tempted to say to him, I don’t know who your victims were, let me be one of them. She always knew he would have answered, I don’t want life preservers. But I’m your bitch.

Harry said that if there was blame, then he would take it, completely.

“Do I want to save myself?” he would ask with a distant air. “Do I want to save myself with you? We’ll have to find that out together.”

She admitted it was very hard to live reading his mind, without his ever telling her exactly what had happened. But she quickly repented of her own frankness. She’d understood for years now that Harry Jaffe’s truth would always be a fully endorsed check, undated and with no figure written on it. She loved an oblique man, chained to a double perception, the view of Harry held by the exile group and the view of the group held by Harry.