You Gotta Have Friends ...

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country ... Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country...” (“What I Believe” E. M. Forster.)

“A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and The Great Betrayal” by Ben Macintyre is about an upper class Brit who was a respected official in their Secret Service until he defected to the Soviet Union and revealed that he had been a KGB agent for more than twenty years, including World War II and the Cold War. It soon became clear that he was one of at least five who had been college friends and had spied for the KGB. All were considered trusted friends with many others in the British and American governments of the period, who were shock at the disclosures.

How could Philby and the others betray their country and their friends? 
How could they have gotten away with it for so long? 

The subject of this book has fascinated me for a long time. 

I am not the only one. Graham Greene, who knew Philby when they both worked for the British Secret Service during World War II, was shocked when he found out about his friend’s treason. Greene turned the story into “The Third Man.” It is a story about a man who discovers that his boyhood friend who he idolized is really a villain. 

David Cornwell, who writes spy novels using the pen name John Le Carré worked for the Secret Service in the early 1950's when Philby and other spies were first exposed. He wrote the Afterward essay for this book, in which he notes that his “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” was based on the relationship between Philby and Philby’s college chum, Nicholas Elliot. Elliot was later to be a high ranking MI 6 officer and was one of the last to believe that his lifelong friend, who he admired to the point of idolatry, was and had been a Soviet spy who had deceived him completely.   

Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame, had also been recruited into Naval Intelligence and had known both Philby and Elliot very well, counted them as friends. His novels were in effect efforts to rehabilitate the image of British intelligence in the Cold War after the scandals involving Philby and the others.

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer...” 

My reference for this last bit of wisdom is, of course, “The Godfather.” The implication of the advice given by the elder Don to his heir, Michael Corleone, seemed obvious in the context of the devious chess master class being conducted by the father for his son. The warning seemed to be that friends might be as dangerous as enemies. The Don’s trusted inner circle consisted only of family, although eventually Michael sadly learns that he could not even trust his own brother.

Researching the phrase, I now find that there have been other interpretations. Some sources claim that Sun Tsu, the Chinese warrior / philosopher, wrote of the importance of knowing your enemy as well as you know your own self, and Machiavelli agreed with the advice when he wrote “The Prince,” for Italian Renaissance Dons. 

The sources put a slightly different spin on the interpretation of these words. Keep your friends close because they are the ones who can be trusted. Keep a close watch on your enemies so that you will always know what they are plotting. 

Whatever the twist, the ramifications of this philosophical detail are evident in the history of espionage. Friends, enemies, trust — these are the subjects of Macintyre’s book.

“A Spy Among Friends” analyzes the scandal that rocked the British and American spy communities in the 1950's when it was discovered that five high ranking officials in the British government were Soviet agents and had been turning over secrets to their KGB handlers since the 1930's. 

The so-called “Cambridge Five” had been college classmates during the Great Depression when a majority of students in Britain and America ardently advocated anti-fascist, anti-Nazi, leftist, socialist and in many cases communist ideals. Some even joined the Communist Party, attended meetings, shouted, enjoyed the free spirited Bohemian atmosphere that included open minded attitude toward eccentricity and sex, including the then criminalized (but often tolerated) practice of homosexual sex. 

That the radicalized students of Britain’s prestigious colleges were sons of the upper classes was not surprising. Rejection of one’s parents is a traditional part of the rebelliousness of growing independence. Every generation goes through the process of questioning and even trying to overturn the assumptions of the previous generation. 

Most leave college with some ideals intact but learn to adapt to the realities of life in “the real world.” A few “drop out” and a very few dedicate themselves to undermining the Establishment. Even fewer turn to active treason. In the Viet-Nam era, protesters were wrongly accused of treason — broadly characterized as ‘lending aid and comfort to the enemy’ — but this label has been rejected by law and most of society in a democracy — except for those very few who resorted to terrorism, violent acts of sabotage and rage. 

In the atmosphere of the 1930's, Soviet agents were able to recruit a few to not only espouse ideals, pay Party dues, but to become committed spies for a foreign power, to steal their government’s secrets and give them to Soviet Russia.  These young men were well-placed to do the deed.

Kim Philby’s father was a famously eccentric British diplomat who served in India, later converted to Islam and became an adviser to King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. He recommended his son to the British Secret Service. When asked about his son’s communist leanings, he downplayed it as a natural and normal student fling.

According to Nicholas Elliot, Philby was accepted into the Secret Service because he was “one of us.” That means he had the right family, the right education, the right name, the right friends.  


Donald Maclean’s father had been an important member of Parliament. After college, Maclean worked for the Foreign Office, eventually stationed in Paris, London, Washington, Cairo. All the time he was spying for Moscow, turning over secret documents and intelligence. He began this in the critical pre-World War period, including when the Soviet Union had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, and into the war era when they were our allies, and then the Cold War. 

Anthony Burgess also settled into the Foreign Office during the war. Son of a naval officer, he was recruited to be a Soviet agent as early as 1932. Having gained a position of trust, he was able to provide the KGB with secret documents relating to NATO and the Marshall Plan. He too served in the British Embassy in Washington during the Cold War, and was privy to American secrets, which he relayed to his handlers.

Anthony Blunt was a bit older than the other Cambridge spies. He was an upper class intellectual, an art history professor who later advised the Queen on matters of art. He was a distant cousin of the royal family. He was teaching French at Cambridge when the others were students, and is suspected of being a spotter for his Soviet spy contacts, pointing out potential recruits, including Burgess and Maclean. 

During the war, Blunt was one of many intellectuals brought into the British intelligence agencies. He worked in MI5, (Britain’s FBI) and was privy to secrets code-named “Ultra” which involved products from the ultra-secret Enigma machine that broke the German code. Blunt then relayed secrets to the Russians. 

The fifth member of the circle is said to be John Cairncross, who relayed Bletchley Park secrets to the Soviets during the war and later, NATO secrets. Actually, there were other members of the British upper classes who betrayed their country for what they deemed to be the higher ideal expressed by the Soviet Union. 

Kim Philby is the most notorious of the Cambridge spies because he was the most highly placed to do the most damage to his country. He went into MI 6, the British Secret Service, which preceded and influenced America’s OSS and later CIA. Philby befriended agents of the newly formed American spy agency while in London. These included James Jesus Angleton, who adored and tried to emulate Philby, in dress, style, alcoholism, eccentricities. Later, when Philby was sent to Washington as liaison to the CIA, Angleton was then high in the administration. Over long alcoholic lunches Angleton shared secrets, which Philby shared with the KGB. 

Philby turned over secrets to his KGB handlers which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, including many within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who had been spying for Britain and the United States. Once his treason was revealed, the harm was even greater because an extreme reaction set in, including Angleton’s obsessive and futile search for other “moles” which resulted in purging from the ranks of the CIA many experts on Russia, China, and other communist countries due to suspicion that their interest made them potential traitors. Combined with the McCarthy era paranoia, this purge left us without competent intel and analysis for a long time.    

The author spends a good deal of time trying to analyze Philby’s motives. He was a complex personality, full of contradictions and flaws, of which an enormous ego and a sense that he reveled in his secret life as a spy, that he kept from everyone who thought they knew him, seem to be the most psychologically significant. He fueled his sense of his superiority to everyone because he knew something they didn’t and he was fooling them all.  

But the author not only tries to answer how such a person could betray his country, his family and his friends. He is also interested in the corollary: How could he have gotten away with it, especially within a community of professional spies? After all, common sense would hold that spies would be the most cautious, most vigilant, most precise people when it comes to vetting agents, keeping secrets. 

In college, Philby and the others were known to have been, at the very least, admirers of communism and the Soviet experiment, if not outright members of the Party. How could this have been shrugged off as a disqualifying point? Burgess and Blunt were flamboyant homosexuals. Why didn’t this raise a red flag about their vulnerability for blackmail, at a time when it was a crime. (Alan Turing, the mathematics and computer genius credited with code-breaking at Bletchley Park during the war, was later prosecuted for homosexual acts and hounded into suicide).  

Ben Macintyre’s answer involves recounting the complex culture of the British class system, the “Old Boys Network” which valued breeding, family, and friendship. There was and still is a tradition of tolerant amusement at eccentricity and individual foibles within the upper classes of that highly structured society. Behavior, politics, and attitudes that the bourgeois would consider odd, immoral or bizarre are shrugged off as long as the person is deemed to be from an acceptable background. Homosexuality, alcoholism, infidelity, political extremism — no problem. 

Then there is also the context of the times.

The restlessness of “flaming youth” between the World Wars is well documented. Evelyn Waugh wrote about the “Bright Young Things,” the wittiest, best educated of their class whose hedonistic frolics became subject of amusement for readers of columns. The disillusionment brought on by the disaster of World War I included distrust of the Establishment and patriotic marches that led to the horrors their elders had wrought and suffered. For many, the Russian Revolution seemed to exemplify an ideology (and for a few the only essential one) that had merit and vitality, especially after the rise of fascism in Italy and then in Germany and in the face of the worldwide Depression. 

Now comes the looming crisis of a second war against Germany, this time fascist Germany. The best minds are needed. College radicals who have matured might be considered appropriate choices to fight this threat. And the fact is that they were competent, effective workers for the British government — as long as its interests didn’t interfere with their greater loyalty — to the Soviet Union.

Philby rose quickly in MI 6 because of his talent and brilliance. His anti-fascism was real and he fought the Germans whole-heartedly. The Soviet Union became an ally and then it was easy to justify sharing secrets with them, even if doing so violated overly strict policies of his own government. He and others even have argued that withholding secrets from an ally was “wrong.” After all, the Brits shared intel with the US, why not the USSR? 

But after Germany’s defeat, his spying continued and clearly benefitted the Soviets and harmed Britain. Having been made head of counter-intelligence, he knew the names of Russians who spied for Britain and were going to defect. He told the KGB who killed them and their families. In an operation that sounds like a prequel to the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the CIA, a group of armed anti-communists were sent into Albania to try to foment a revolt there. Philby informed the KGB and they were captured and shot as soon as they landed. Another time, he provided the KGB with a list of East German Catholics who wanted to see a post war democracy instead of communism in East Germany. They were eliminated. 

Eventually, defectors from the USSR and Eastern Bloc countries who were in the KGB disclosed the presence of “moles” in British secret services. Suspicion, investigation, and then the shock — Burgess and Maclean defected to Moscow. Their ties to Philby were clear and suspicion mounted. Still, he denied, withstood investigations and survived. His survival was due in no small measure to friends within MI 6, especially Nicholas Elliot, who was the strongest advocate of his innocence for years — until even he could no longer deny the obvious. 

In a climax suitable to a Le Carré spy novel, Macintyre recounts taped conversations between Elliot and Philby in a hotel suite in Istambul, in which Philby admits his deception although not fully detailing his crimes.  Philby is offered a deal: if he returns to England and admits his guilt fully, including a debriefing of all his actions, he will not be prosecuted. The offer is given because it would have been too embarrassing for the government to try him for his crimes. Elliot gives Philby a few days to think about it before deciding. 

Instead, Philby contacts his KGB handler, who arranges to smuggle him onto a Russian ship and he shows up in Moscow, along with Burgess and Maclean. They all lived there for years and died there.  

The book delves into issues about friendship that often come up in our lives, if not in the dramatic context of treason. A friend whose son passes the Bar Exam will ask if I will recommend his son or daughter to those of my friends who might hire ... or appoint ... or accelerate an application.... Why? Well I’ve known the family for ages. They’re good people....

“No man is a failure who has friends...” (Clarence, in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”)

THE CREATIVITY / MENTAL ILLNESS DEBATE

By Kay Redfield Jamison

Some years ago, I theorized — without much more than anecdotal surmise --- that there must be a connection between creativity and mental illness because so many artists, writers, performers, and other creative people have been found to suffer from suicidal depression, self-destructive obsessive addiction, or some other form of “abnormal" behavior. 

A book by by researcher Kay Redfield Jamison titled “Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament”, 1993, seemed to support the notion.

The author cited several studies which examined the lives of noted creative figures and argued that their experiences strongly suggested a connection between "creativity" and some forms of mental illness, particularly what used to be called "manic-depression." 

She also included in her list of candidates many who lived in the age before what we would consider modern psychiatric diagnoses, but who she deemed to be qualified because their biographers or contemporaries noted serious behaviors now associated with this disorder. Most had spent time in "asylums" or psychiatric hospitals, had tried to or succeeded in killing themselves. 

As evidence, she also offered evidence of their self-analysis in correspondence, fiction, poems, even painting. She concluded that a high percentage of creative writers reported "intense, highly productive and creative episodes," which they themselves described as "manic." Others reported severe mood swings affecting creativity. In sum, the experiences many of these creative people described fit in well with clinical criteria for major mood disorders.  

However, since then, other mental health researchers have taken pains to contradict these findings, pointing to flawed testing, contradictory evidence and exposing the reliance on anecdotal and unreliable observations by contemporaries. 

See for example: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/03/the-real-link-between-creativity-and-mental-illness/

The recent deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams have reinvigorated the debate with articles quoting experts on both sides. 

Eg: http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/08/13/robin-williams-is-there-a-link-between-genius-and-mental-illness/14016255/

My own genius son, Greg, has debunked the romantic notion of “mad genius,” pointing out that creativity demands discipline and concentration, both difficult for the mentally ill person who is in the throes of depression or psychosis, or under the influence of addictive drugs like cocaine, heroin, and the like. 

But I still think of someone like Sylvia Plath. Her poetry, which she certainly worked out with discipline and concentration, was also certainly at least an expression of her depression, which was the central issue of her life for many years and which ultimately killed her. 

Can we really ignore the knowledge that Robin Williams was a self-described self-medicating sufferer of bi-polar disorder when we watch his “manic” improvisational brilliantly observed raps. 

He was surely an artist who carefully honed his craft on many stages. He was born with an extraordinary gift, which he used to express his need for love and approval from audiences. He studied at Julliard and exhibited a sharp intellect. He worked hard for the laughs and the strong feelings he earned from his audiences. 

This is not to argue that mental illness is needed for creativity. 

It does not suggest that suffering from mental illness qualifies as a criteria for creativity. The ramblings or scribbling of severely ill people are most often sadly incoherent products of troubled minds, not defined as art except by the broadest standard. 

Neither does it rebut the truth that mental illness is far more often a hindrance to the productivity of the artist. 

It remains to be proven whether, as some artists believe, if deprived of their demons, whether by medication or therapy or something else, they will lose their gift.   

Certainly there are many artists who would not fit into a definition of any mental illness. Probably, most are merely nuts — like the rest of us. 

MY READING PROJECT PROGRESS

Some people look forward to retirement in order to travel or begin another career, to teach, or to accomplish some other long deferred dream. I have done all the traveling I wish to do and I would bore students by lecturing too much. I have been fulfilling a lifelong promise to myself – to read more, especially things I read or was supposed to read during my hurried and often wasted education that lasted for about twenty frustrating years. Now, I am reading those things — at least some of them, at least some parts of some of them to see if I should have paid more attention.

My bookcases are filled with paperbacks and hard covered books and I can’t afford the room to buy more. My brother still goes to the library. I don’t have the patience to wait for the ones I like to be returned. 

To be honest, I prefer the convenience of the Netflix model to the outmoded technology of lending, a la Blockbusters. With the benefit of modern technology — the e-book — I am able to continue my obsessive practice of reading several things at once, that is, jumping from one to another after a chapter or two of each. Since my preference is for non-fiction, this is feasible to do without forgetting the plot thread of my reading: history or biography books lose little in this manner. And there is an unexpected benefit — since my interests are fairly narrow — or at least conjoin in odd ways. I find that several things I read coincidentally make reference to happenings and characters in others. 
For instance, I am reading about Martha Gellhorn in a biography about her (“Gellhorn: An American Life” by Caroline Morehead) and also one about Lillian Hellman, (“Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life” by Dorothy Gallagher) which also mentions F. Scott Fitzgerald, as does a book about the writing of “The Great Gatsby,” which includes reference to “The Beautiful and Damned” and some events of 1927, which is the subject of “One Summer: America, 1927” by Bill Bryson. My fascination with the 1920's led me to Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies,” on which a movie, “Bright Young Things,” was based.

Even the fiction I am reading seems to correlate nicely with other reading: Eric Ambler’s classic, “A Coffin For Dimitrios” takes place in Turkey and the Balkans in the aftermath of World War I, also the setting of “A Peace To End All Peace,” by David Fromkin, a history of the fall of the Ottomans after World War I, which set the stage for the intrigues in the middle east. 

“Los Alamos” by Joseph Kanon is a mystery novel set during the Manhattan Project of World War II, also the subject of “Genius” Richard Feynman’s biography by James Glieck, and of course, “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes, which is more general and deeper about the same subject. 

Reading about Lincoln or, generally, about the Civil War, you have to come across some of the same anecdotes, characters, and sense of the man and the era. My latest reading includes a novel titled “I Am Abraham” by Jerome Charyn, which is in the first person as if written by Abe, admitting to us his human faults, fears, marital problems. It dovetails with the other recent book I found about him, “Lincoln the Lawyer” by Brian Dirck. Ever since I discovered that Lincoln had been a criminal trial lawyer who defended murderers, I have longed to discover more about that part of his career. My thesis is that his legal training and talent contributed largely to his rhetorical genius as well as his political and ethical ideas. I am finding support for that notion in my reading.

One of the first books I read during this search was James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil War era.” It led to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best seller (one of the few best sellers I was drawn to) “Team of Rivals.” It was then a short jump back in time to “Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War” by Steven E. Woodworth. In all of these sources I was hoping to find support for my suspicion that Lincoln’s obsession about keeping the union together was influenced by his hope for a continental nation as a guarantee of peace and prosperity. 

I thought that our founding fathers were conscious of Europe as an example of the fractious nationalism that they were desperate to escape and to avoid for the nation they called by the name of the continent: America.  “Napoleon: A Biography” by Frank McLynn and “Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914" by Geoffrey Wawro provided some evidence for this argument. 

What followed logically were a string of books about World War I. “The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War” by Peter Hall contains diary entries of many soldiers, generals and privates, relating the miseries of that war that was supposed to end war. The origins of that war are covered in “The Lost History of 1914" by Jack Beatty, which argues that there were many missed chances to avoid the war. It is a companion to my re-reading of Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” and “The Zimmermann Telegram.” An alternative story about the same era is “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918" in which the author, Adam Hochschild, documents that forgotten battles by conscientious objectors in England and Ireland who actively opposed the war. 

Reading the classics was also a goal. I began with Mark Twain, whose novels I have to confess were always difficult for me to get through in school. The dialect was part of it but mostly it was the mere fact that it was “assigned”. But now, I read “Huckleberry Finn” aloud to myself and loved it, laughed aloud many times and found the language to be subtle and appropriate to the often melancholy mood. 

On a roll, I decided to read “A Tale of Two Cities” and that worked, too. I always admired Sydney Carton as depicted by Ronald Colman in the movie. This character strikes me as a precursor of an anti-hero of later, noir type books of the Hammett and Chandler genre. I have “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens,” tentatively begun “Bleak House” but I am scared to death by the table of contents (thirty seven chapters?). 

Reading several Sherlock Holmes stories proved disappointing. Remembering the brilliant logic of the great detective that I enjoyed in my boyhood, I realized that the writing was of the dated “tell it don’t show it” school and the deductions were rather contrived.

Classics led me to Shakespeare’s complete works as well. I have always loved “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar” and that led me to “Merchant of Venice” “Richard III,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet.” I began “The Tempest” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” but haven’t yet been able to make much progress. I have learned that continuing this project demands some discipline, which in this context means abrupt detours from dead ends, maybe returning later (when the street is paved).

Movies have also influenced my reading. “Shakespeare in Love” inspired a look back at the play it plays with, and in reverse, re-reading “Macbeth” made me watch and enjoy Polanski’s movie. PBS presented the “Henry Trilogy: Henry IV, Part I & II, and Henry V” which led me back to better follow the plays. 

My enjoyment of history and movies got me into “Master and Commander” and “Post Captain” by Patrick O’Brien which reminded me of “Horatio Hornblower” which I loved when my mother took me to see it at Radio City Music Hall when I was ten. The movie “Troy” encouraged me to re-read “The Iliad” and a companion critique, “The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War” bu Caroline Alexander, which elucidated the classic poem as an anti-war epic rather than one which glorifies the idea of war.

The movie, “The Good German,” led me to the book on which it was based, written by Joseph Kanon. It’s “Casablanca”-like story about World War II and the search for Nazi scientists at the start of the Cold War re-stimulated my interest in that era. I read “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945" by Max Hastings, “The Nuremberg Trial” by John and Ann Tura. This led me to “The Brigade” by Howard Blum, which is about Jews who fought the Nazis. As I mentioned, another Kanon novel, “Los Alamos,” reminded me about Richard Feynman.   

On the subject of the holocaust, I read Deborah E. Lipstadt’s “The Eichmann Trial” (partly due to my nephew Max’s discussion about the book about her libel trial that he adapted for a possible movie). That led me recently to read a novel by Robert Harris, “An Officer and a Spy” which relates the story of Major Picquard’s exposure of the truth in the Dreyfus Affair (the overview of which I had read in Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower.” 

Jewishness led me to curiosity about the history of “Jerusalem” by Simon Sebag Montefiore and “Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. In something of a circular trip, I began “FDR and the Jews” by Richard Breitman and “Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939" by Thomas Doherty, all of which cover the general subject of the origins and effects of anti-Semitism. 

My fascination with films also tempted me to read biographies of “Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations” by Peter Evans; and “Jean Arthur: the actress nobody knew” by John Oller. Re-reading “Catch-22" led me to “Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here” a memoir by Joseph Heller of his childhood in my old neighborhood. Other biographies I have tried include “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets” by Curt Gentry and “A Perfect Spy: a novel” by John LeCarre, which is autobiographical. “Churchill” by Paul Johnson (as well as Churchill’s own “the Gathering Storm”).

One unique novel was “Jack 1939" by Francine Mathews, which imagines the college student Jack Kennedy as a spy for FDR in Hitler’s Germany. Another book on which a movie was based: “A Most Dangerous Method” by John Kerr, delves into the origins of psychiatry with Freud and Jung. “Lady At The O.K. Corral” by Ann Kirschner explores the lives of Wyatt Earp and his “wife / mistress” Josephine Marcus. “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” by Bingham & Wallace, covers the Supreme Court’s ruling in his draft problem. 

World War II also provided the fascinating story of three American generals: “Brothers, Rivals, Victors” by Jonathan W. Jordan. My interest in Paris and World War II and crime led me to a fascinating novel / memoir about the search for a murderer in occupied Paris, “Death In The City Of Light” by David King. That also led me to “Brave Genius: by Susan Carroll, which chronicles the story of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, two friends who worked for the resistance and later won Nobel Prizes in their fields. 

Crime and noir genre stories have always attracted my attention. I re-read favorites, “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” along with “Farewell, My Lovely.” I also discovered Jim Thompson, reading “A Swell Looking Babe,” “The Getaway,” :The Grifters” and “Pop. 1280" to which I added my Netflix access for the movies that were based on these novels. Another Eric Ambler thriller, “Journey Into Fear” was basis of a classic film (directed by Orson Welles, starring Joseph Cotten). I re-read “Casino Royale” by Ian Fleming to remind me about the pleasure of reading about 007 instead of watching a parade of CGI explosions.

      At Greg's urging, I began "Cryptonomicon" by Neil Stephenson, but find it tough sledding. Like some other contemporary writers, Michael Chabon being another, I have trouble with the style. I was reared spoiled by writers who stick to a far more economical narrative technique. But I will keep at it.  

LILLIAN HELLMAN: An Imperious Life by Dorothy Gallagher

Lillian Hellman is one of those legendary literary figures whose name pops up in so many interesting contexts that you feel you know her. Beware of stripping away the veneer of legend. What lies beneath may be disappointing, even ugly, depressing, shattering to your long held faith.
I first heard of her through my interest in movies and Dashiell Hammett. They were lovers for many years and it was said that he modeled Nora Charles on her. She wrote the courageous play, “The Children’s Hour,” (1934) about two teachers tragically accused by a student of being lesbians. The second movie version, with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn (1961) seemed to be an apt metaphor for the McCarthy era — like Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” which was about the Salem witch trials. 
I had heard that Miller, Hammett and Hellman were all victims of the HUAC witch hunts. Hammett went to jail, and Hellman bravely challenged the committee, famously writing: “I refuse to cut my conscience to fit the fashions of the day.” 
TV often showed the movie version of Hellman’s anti-fascist play, “Watch on the Rhine,” starring Bette Davis and Paul Lucas. Davis had starred in another adaptation of a Hellman play, “The Little Foxes.” Both were directed by William Wyler, Hellman’s good friend. She had written the screenplay for “Dead End” on of my favorite Depression era films, which starred Humphrey Bogart, also directed by Wyler. 
Hellman next came to my attention in the 1970's with her memoir, “Pentimento” which included a story called “Julia.” The movie starred Jason Robards as Hammett, Jane Fonda as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as her tragic and heroic childhood friend who was killed by the Nazis. The film won three Oscars.

This book claims that the image was almost all bullshit. 

It is refreshing to read a biography written by someone who is not an apologist or in awe of the subject. Dorothy Gallagher’s book has been called by reviewers bitchy, and a hatchet job. It is scathing in its criticism, nasty in its tone. Even her acknowledgments of Hellman’s achievements — her talent, her skill as a playwright, her wit, are often grudging, sarcastic, and conditional, accompanied by far more convincing  “Buts”. When she does relate Hellman’s version of an event or person, Gallagher conditions it with “maybe” or “possibly.”
Hellman’s life also touched other characters whose lives interested me:  Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Dorothy Parker. 
According to the author, Gellhorn and Hemingway both despised Hellman, denied her inflated claim of involvement in the Spanish Civil War cause. 
Parker, though a life-long friend who was helped financially by Hellman during her decline, was a posthumous victim of Hellman’s predatory greed when she became her executor and tried to negate Parker’s wish to leave her estate to Martin Luther King and the NAACP. Hellman made nasty remarks about both: “he’s just a southern preacher.” 
Hellman also became executor of Hammett’s estate, made vast sums exploiting his copyrights and tried to deny his daughters their share.

Although admitting Hellman’s talent as a writer, Gallagher asserts that Hammett gave her the plot of “The Children’s Hour” from a story he had heard about a trial in Scotland. She strongly implies that he deserves more credit for her work than Hellman was willing to admit. He was so much a part of Hellman’s writing, with advice, editing, revising this and all of her plays, that after his death, she wrote no more plays. 

Hellman’s anti-fascist, anti-McCarthy courage was not so courageous, nor very noble. She was not “right” about her steadfast support for Stalin, dishonestly and stupidly ignoring obvious facts contrary to her beliefs of the righteousness of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. 
Hellman was foolish in other respects as well. In what seems a bit mean-spirited gossip mongering, Gallagher points out that tor years Lillian Hellman paid for therapy with a psychiatrist who was little more than a charlatan. He gave celebrities advice about their health and sex lives, had sex with some patients, fleeced others. Gallagher claims that George Gershwin and his lover, Kate Swift, were both his clients. He had sex with Swift, told Gershwin, who had a brain tumor, that his headaches were from neuroses. Hellman took his advice regarding her many love affairs.  
In detail, Gallagher snipes at almost every aspect of Hellman’s life, exposing the meanness, self-deceiving, selfishness that Gallagher documents in Hellman’s work, her relations with lovers, friends, the public. 

It is ironic that Gallagher’s book is published as part of a Yale Press series called “Jewish Lives” because, according to the author, Hellman was a pretty bad Jew. She was born into a nominally Jewish but very secular family whose German ancestors landed in Georgia in the 1840's and thrived in business in the antebellum south.  Hellman’s father married into the wealthy family, but he was a failure in business, died leaving her mother a poor relative of a rich family, an obvious and traditional source of resentments. Two of her famous plays, “The Little Foxes” and “Another Part of the Forest,” were about southern families corrupted by greed. 
Her fictitious families (called the Hubbards) are not overtly Jewish, a fact which Gallagher sees as a noteworthy example of Hellman’s less than noble denial of her Jewish identity. I think this is a weak argument: if Hellman had made the family Jewish, it would have been dismissed as stereotypically (for the time) anti-semitic. Gallagher also quotes Hellman’s occasional negative quips about Jews as further evidence, but I have heard this stuff all my life, sometimes from members of my own family. Although Hellman readily acknowledged being Jewish, she denied any knowledge of the religion or identified with it as “race” or a “people.” This is not unusual, especially among that era’s long assimilated Jews, and especially those raised with no real sense of community. Hellman looked down her long nose at New York ghetto Jews. This too was not unusual for her time and society, even among liberals.  
Gallagher make a similar point about “Watch on the Rhine” which Hellman based on Otto Katz, an anti-Nazi German who was a communist and a Jew. Hellman amended both of those traits, creating her hero as a liberal generic anti-Nazi resistance leader. Gallagher also notes that Hellman’s friend was later “purged” by the Soviets, tried and executed for imagined crimes against the state, facts which Hellman ignored in her blind love of the Party. 
Hellman was also involved in the dramatization of Anne Frank’s diary into the play. She was offered the chance to write it, but turned it down, suggested Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, two non-Jewish screenwriters who had written the scripts for the “Thin Man” movies. She advised them to diminish the Jewishness of the story, deleting the girl’s ardent self-identification as a Jewish victim. 
Contrary to Gallagher’s implied criticism, I think both of these modifications are justifiable as commercially viable choices. I think that Hellman was no different from many Jewish artists of her generation, who suppressed their Jewishness to assimilate. Her friend George Gershwin knew it and did it too.  

Although Hellman was actively and vocally anti-Nazi from early in the 1930's, she was quoted as focusing more on the evils of fascism in general and against communists in particular than on the Jews, even after exposure of the holocaust. 
It is in Hellman’s life-long commitment to communism that Gallagher finds the richest paydirt. Gallagher indicts Hellman for many sins of deception, stupidity, immorality. 
She points out that both Hellman and Hammett had lauded Stalin and the USSR despite news of the brutal purges of Trotskyites and other opponents, the suppression of dissent including artists, writers, and intellectuals, the forced famine of the Ukraine. Their worst sin was  continuing blind approval of Stalin long after others had abandoned the Party in the face of the non-aggression pact with Hitler. For most this was a last straw. But Hammett and Hellman both hewed to the party line: now refusing to criticize their new “ally” Hitler and in fact bitterly attacking those who abandoned the Party line as weak liberals, until all was forgotten after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and eventually, the U.S. entered the war as Stalin’s ally. 
Hellman later in life dissembled, tried to revise her previous stances, claiming that she never wholly supported Stalin, etcetera, grudgingly acknowledged her ignorance of the true facts, while still keeping to her general leftish bent. Gallagher challenges even this, noting all the many chances Hellman had to learn the “true facts,” including several visits to the USSR during which she could have learned the truth of Stalin’s evil but chose to stay ignorant. 

Which brings me to Gallagher’s overall theme: that Hellman ignored the facts and hid the truth about almost everything in her work, politics, life. 
The crux of the thing occurs when “Julia” became famous. A woman named Muriel Gardiner wrote a letter to Hellman and then wrote her own book, noting the coincidence between her life and “Julia’s.” Gardiner had been raised in wealth and privilege, but in Europe had become an active anti-Nazi, had gone to Austria, worked for the resistance, and eventually returned. 
Critics began to question the sources of Hellman’s supposed memoir. No corroborative evidence existed to support Hellman’s claims. Eventually, Mary McCarthy, writer and critic, was asked by Dick Cavett on his T.V. show about overrated writers. She named one, Lillian Hellman. Pressed by Cavett to explain, McCarthy uttered one of the most quoted jibes ever: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
Hellman sued McCarthy for slander, and died before the suit came to trial. But the damage was done. Gallagher cites many sources to challenge the veracity of the Julia tale. It never happened, not to Hellman, or her childhood friend, if she ever really had one. 

After noting all of the discrepancies in the details of Hellman’s account of the “Julia” story, Gallagher poses the theme of her book this way:

“It was no secret to Hellman’s friends that she ‘didn’t know the boundary between fact and fiction’ as Norman Mailer said after she died. In her personal life this mattered only to her friends: they could take her with a grain of salt, or not at all. But Hellman had a public life, and she wrote about it. She wrote about herself as witness to the world — in Moscow, in Spain, in Vienna and Berlin . . . at the very time of crucial historical events. Her readers saw the world through her eyes. She wrote about her relations with celebrated people . . . and her readers saw them through her often unadmiring eyes.

“Does it matter if she was actually in all of those places, at those times, and if she saw what she said she did? Does it matter if one or many of the stories that make up her memoirs are invented? Readers enjoy them and, after all, every memoirist, everyone who tries to tell a true story for that matter, fails to some degree. It is not the truth that is tricky and unreliable, as Hellman would have it. Memory is the problem: the color of a dress, the arrangement of furniture in a room, the words of a conversation — these things can be lost or confused. Truth remains in the facts; facts can be verified, but only if the writer cares to do so. 

“Hellman either knew or did not know Julia. . . . She did or did not belong to the Communist Party.”

Gallagher quotes “historian and author Timothy Garton,” about the “‘frontier’ between ‘literature of fact’ and the ‘literature of fiction’”:

“Imagination is the sun that illuminates both countries. But this leads us into a temptation . . . ‘look just across the frontier there is a gorgeous flower — the one novelistic detail that will bring the whole story alive. Pop across and pick it. No one will notice.’ ... But if we claim to write the literature of fact, it must be resisted.

“Why? For moral reasons, above all. Words written about the real world have consequences in the real world. ... moral reasons are sufficient; but there are artistic ones too. Writers often cross this frontier because they think their work will be enhanced as a result. Reportage or history will become literature. Paragraph for paragraph that may be true. But as a whole, the work is diminished.
“... It is the one question was always ask of those who bring us news of the world. Did that really happen? Is it true?” 

In our time, other memoirists have been exposed as frauds; journalists have manufactured news, invented sources, imagined interviews. So what? Isn’t it all entertainment. “Infotainment?” the web, blogs, free lance agenda driven reporting is the new norm. 

These questions I’ve thought about with regard to the border of art and reality, the difference between fact and truth. Does the artist have any responsibility to tell the truth? Does the goal of entertainment always justify or excuse deception? 
Movies and novels are meant to entertain. Art aspires to some more: to express beauty, to tell at least a part of the truth about nature, humanity, life. Artists talk a lot about seeking truth. There is something called “poetic truth” which implies seeking a deeper reality than exists in “mere facts.” 
All art is a lie, we are told by modern and post-modern philosophers. Of course, this clever argument is a truism. Yes, a painting of a pipe is not a pipe. Yes, Ben Kingsley was not Gandhi. T.E. Lawrence looked nothing like Peter O’Toole and many of the events of “Lawrence of Arabia” did not happen. This was a fictional story, not a documentary, and even those make choices to include, omit, emphasize, dramatize facts about the subject, take a point of view. 
The greatest works of historic historians have all included biased reportage. 

And yet I have often been troubled by things I have read and watched about things I knew about, and knew to be false, deceptive, manipulative. As a lawyer, I groan at the misrepresentations of the law and the system I know. Acquaintances in other professions have similar complaints: doctors, teachers, ministers, even movie makers, moan about dramas about their professions.
But “it is only a show, or “only a movie” I am told. True, and I can ignore the dramas that don’t purport to be anything other than mere entertainment. No one can take seriously Perry Mason’s weekly ability to pluck the guilty from his courtroom audience, although I do remember when this show was popular, that we lawyers took the time to caution prospective jurors not to expect us to pull that rabbit from our hats. 

My problem comes in the kind of “docudrama” that is intended to do more than merely amuse or entertain: but to expose an issue or to send a message, to teach. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a good example of a courtroom drama that sends a message. I have never heard a southern lawyer complain about any lack of authenticity in its depiction of the rape trial and I have no qualms about it.

But what about other legal dramas or satires which are intended to reveal something about the law or lawyers or the justice system. “The Verdict” is one of those. Lawyers protested the implausible plot that had an incompetent alcoholic shyster suing a Catholic hospital for medical malpractice while the prestigious firm representing the Church planted a spy to have sex with the plaintiff’s lawyer. After the lawyer insults the judge, incompetently prepares and argues his case (which if real would have been settled), the jury returns a huge verdict in his favor, ignoring the judge’s instructions. This is the happy end of the movie, which every lawyer laughed at, knowing that any judge would have reversed the verdict, and any appeal would have left the client poor.
But it was a good movie. Paul Newman was great in it.

Al Pacino was terrific in “In Justice For All,” in which he is forced to defend a corrupt judge, but then exposed his guilty client in court. Friends mimicked his tag line: “No, judge, you’re out of order; this whole system is out of order!” wished they had the guts to shout it in their cases. But some took it as an indictment of defense lawyers and their corrupt complicity in an unjust system, a dangerous distortion of reality.

The most outrageous example is the oldest one: “Birth of a Nation” in 1915 depicted the rise of the KKK as a justifiable and even noble response to the asserted evils of the reconstruction era. With D.W. Griffith’s immense artistic skill taking full advantage of the new technology of the cinema: editing, musical score, close-ups, stirred emotions of the audience to a fever pitch. Race riots resulted in lynching of Negroes and supported the nationwide revival of the Klan, resulting in fifty more years of murder and repression. Yet President Wilson, the great intellectual and morally pious president, praised the movie as “writing history with lightning.” 

Defending

He was tired of arguing. He was tired of defending. He was tired of losing.

It seemed that he had been arguing all his life. Among his earliest memories were the arguments at the supper table which he had been encouraged to join. His father, grandfathers, brother, mother, all had reveled in lusty dispute. The subject matter hadn’t seemed to matter to any of them. They argued about the food, the weather, the Friday night fights, McCarthy, unions, anti-Semitism, Eisenhower. The feel and smell of the oil cloth on the kitchen table was still fresh in his memory, as vivid as the recall of the feeling of those arguments. He seemed to have lost most of his arguments even then. The feeling of losing an argument — the tightness in his throat, the tears that welled, the heavy chest that hurt so much — those feelings never left him.

He remembered little of his boyhood friends. Their faces, their voices, were lost to him. But he did remember the fights — which were just aggravated arguments — in which he always ended up with a humiliating nose bleed. He would wind up in a head lock. He would be fighting to hide blinding tears, but couldn’t stop the nose bleed. That had always stopped the fight, scared his enemies. They didn’t know that his nose bled easily. Sometimes it bled when he sneezed violently, or when he blew his nose with too much force during an allergy attack or one of his frequent colds. It was something he had gotten used to. It didn’t hurt. It was just something to be a little ashamed of. Eventually, he learned to use it to his advantage. When an argument escalated to pushing, then swinging and wrestling, he stood with blood dripping from his nose, his fists balled and cursed a dare to keep fighting. He spat blood and wiped it with his sleeve and tried to look crazy. That usually scared his enemy enough to back off, and others to respect and fear him a little bit. It even gained him the sympathy of a girl who wanted to nurse him with tissue plugs and ice wrapped in her hankie.

He liked to watch black and white movies, romantic ones about idealistic, naive losers. He believed the lines in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” about “lost causes” being the only ones worth fighting for. He liked “Twelve Angry Men” in which Henry Fonda stands alone against the ridicule of eleven jurors, and turns them around, to justice. Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird” inspired him. He liked Garfield and Bogart, read Hammett and Chandler and thought a lot about codes of honor and irony.

He remembered little of his classes in high school except the arguments with his teachers. He argued with passion about things he thought he knew more about than his teachers. He argued about “Hamlet” after he had read it for the fifth time, memorized the lines, watched Olivier’s film, and then seen Richard Burton on Broadway. He felt he was Hamlet, morose and defensive about his father. He saw himself as a tragic figure, alone and righteous, misunderstood and fighting for justice alone among people who thought him mad. He liked that idea back then. He thought it would make him attractive to girls, at least a certain type of girl, who would recognize his special sort of quality.

Later, he argued with college friends about ideas. Truffault vs Godard, Goldwater, The Beatles vs. The Stones, JFK, Civil Rights, Viet-Nam, Nixon, were all subjects of passionate arguments.

When he became a public defender, he though he had found a calling and a family. The other public defenders seemed to revel in argument as much as he did. Like habitual gamblers who would bet on rain dripping down a window pane, he found others who would argue about the merits of white vs. wheat bread with vicious abandon. For a long time he loved it. He would go to court, argue with judges and prosecutors and bailiffs for his clients. The more hopeless the cause the more ardently he fought. He lost often of course, but it wasn’t so bad then. Back in the office, he would tell his story and they all seemed to understand, to sympathize, to value the fight.

He even developed a philosophy about losing. Baseball was his metaphor for defending criminals. In baseball, a batter who hits .300 for a lifetime goes to the Hall of Fame. Batting .300 means failing in seven of every ten at bats. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs in ten thousand at bats,struck out many more times than he homered.

He had been raised in Brooklyn in the 1950's and rooting for the noble losers against the pinstriped rich was inbred. And he was Jewish. That added to his sense of separateness, and of righteousness against the majority.

That became a metaphor for his love life. He lost most of those arguments too, struck out looking most of the time. When he finally found a girl who laughed at his sad jokes, smiled at his sadness and kissed the hurt away, he fell so deeply in love and need for her that he waited a long time for her to come to him. When she did, he wondered why. Every time he caressed her, he felt surprise, at sensations he felt, and those he saw she was feeling. He kept waiting for her desire for him to drain away. He tested her with periods of feigned indifference. When time passed without love-making, he suspected every moment that she was lost. Then would come the inevitable argument. He would talk, she would cry and rant. She would angrily complain about his skillful use of words to win. Then they would clutch each other and he would feel the same amazement at how much he still wanted her and the same disbelief that she still wanted him. When she died, he felt as if he had known it would happen, had deserved to be left alone. He realized that he had lost all of the important arguments.

He couldn’t remember when the fatigue became overwhelming. He had been arguing now for clients for more than thirty years. His batting average was probably not Hall of Fame stature, but he had won his share. Yet, now it seemed that the highs of the wins were far less convincing than the lows of the losses.

The fear of losing had always been there, from the first. There had been retching, cramps, smoking, sleeplessness, the mental constipation that kept him rigid for long stretches. He had overcome the sweats and plowed through with gritted teeth. He had suffered embarrassment, survived terrors of incompetence. His inherent sense of his inadequacy was suppressed long enough for him to function on an acceptable level for periods of time, but over the long haul, he had not been able to conquer his suspicion of his worthlessness. Even when he won, deep down he knew that he had performed a mere trick. He had fooled some into believing he was confident and correct.

Now, the prospect of a loss had become almost unbearable. With each new case, he foresaw the inevitable. He pre-experienced all the arguments he could make, imagined the counter arguments which would be made by his opponents, the prosecutor and the judge who would deny most of his pitiful arguments. He could see the faces of jurors, see their eyes looking away in embarrassed pity as he argued, as he spent his remaining energy on another futile plea.

It was his special gift and curse as a lawyer to be able to see both sides of any issue with clarity. He could envision both his arguments and the best answers to them. Sometimes his opponents failed to make the best arguments. At such times, he smiled inwardly, knowing that his chances to win had increased. But the gift took its toll. It meant that he could never be completely committed to the righteousness of any argument he made. He had already weighed it with the opposing view and often had lost to himself already.

Now he was tired of arguing with himself. He lost most of those arguments and was depressed most of the time.

After his wife died, he argued with his son, who had inherited his passion for contrariness. He lost most of those arguments too, but with a sense of pride now mixed with the frustration of losing. Losing to his son, he knew, was healthy in a way. Every son, he had read or been told, goes through a period of challenge to his father. He flexes his manhood by knocking over the old man at his own game. But he felt a profound sense of sadness about the arguments. When they argued about “trivial” things, he took them as exercises, with little at stake but the competition of debate. He was often surprised and frightened by the passion his son brought to the arguments. There was rage in his conviction, viciousness in his assaults. There was pain and anger that he recognized as expressions of resentment and deep hurt. It depressed him even more and he conceded arguments, felt more fatigued and fearful that his arguments would at last force the only person whose understanding and respect he craved to hate him.

So he avoided arguing with his son as much as possible. His nature was such that it left him with little to say to his son. It was as if his only means of expression was stripped, and he felt a deep sadness. He now treated his son with detached superficial politeness. He felt utterly alone.

It was not only arguing that tired him. It was the fact that he was a defender. Although he had always been a vigorous and aggressive arguer, he had always felt more comfortable defending. When young, he could not have been a prosecutor. That was partly because he was Jewish. He identified with the minority view, distrusted the righteousness of the powerful State over the individual. He had even argued with friends that they were not true “conservatives” if they favored the State over the accused. He alienated his friends who had claimed to be “liberals,” claiming himself to be a “conservative.” He argued that a true “conservative” opposed the police power of the State over the individual. He playfully argued that he was the true “conservative” in defending accused criminals. He had won many of these tricky debates over his lesser acquaintances, reveling in these minor social victories.

In the 60's, he had been a hero to his friends and acquaintances as a defender of civil liberties. But as time passed, his social relations became murky. He found that people began to ask: “How can you defend such people?” They meant accused rapists, child molesters, street gang drive-by killers. His wife was a feminist and she had begun to apologize for him, to “explain” him to her friends: “Oh, he’s not like those lawyers who destroy women and children on the witness stand. He’s ethical. He defends the Constitution, not criminals.” The social arguments eventually became tedious to him, too, and he avoided explanations and temptations to defend himself, resorted usually to lame wit or off-putting gallows irony. By the 90's, he felt as if he were a member of an extinct quaint religion, the last New Dealer, the last pre-Israeli Jew. He avoided his old acquaintances and had few friends except those contemporaries who, like him were relics of the past public defender days. They were old men who had shared war experiences which could not be understood by anyone but the few who had survived them.

The Law changed too over the thirty plus years that he had spent defending. The pendulum had swung so violently that it now was all but futile to argue. The arguments had been whittled away over the years, so that little was left to say, little hope for the defense. Frightened voters and liberal governors and presidents and legislatures had eliminated the “technicalities” of civil liberties, streamlined procedures, increased sentences, to insure the prisons were filled with
his clients and their brothers and cousins.

He was now over sixty. In his youth he had seen such men as he was now, bent and shuffling the corridors, vowed he would never be one of them. He was one of those old sad men. He had no energy, no enthusiasm, no faith, no patience.

He felt that his professional life was a metaphor for his personal life. He was tired of defending himself to himself, and of losing the arguments. He saw the faces of the jurors as they filed into the courtroom and avoided his glance. He steeled himself for the verdict, clenched his teeth. His back and neck were sore. He had not slept for a long time. His mouth was dry. He thought about staring defiantly at the jury, but the anger passed. He sat passively as the judge asked if they had selected a foreperson and reached a verdict.

Despite his resignation at defeat, his heart thumped and he rocked in his chair.

Flies

Jonathan was a mild man. He enjoyed the scent of flowers, the sound of mellow music. He loved the poor, pets, most children, red sunsets, formations of geese. His heart was filled with these sorts of love. He had little patience for hate. He feared violence, anger, or any other extreme emotion.

Jonathan was a tolerant man. Except for the common house fly. He hated them. He could abide moths, mosquitos, roaches, or other pests. Flies were the only living things he truly hated. He had an irresistible impulse that led him to kill flies.

During his life, he had killed thousands of flies. He had begun as a small child. The first he had ever killed had buzzed around a light in his playroom. He had swatted it with a plastic stick, and it had fallen, helpless, at his feet. When another entered his bathroom as he bathed, he splashed, squealing with delight when the fly fell into the tub and drowned.

Killing flies soon became his favorite game, eventually his hobby, and quickly thereafter, his obsession. When he was fourteen, a steaming summer shower had forced him indoors. The rain herded scores of flies into his house through frayed window screens. He killed forty-two flies that day, a personal record up to that date.

The walls and ceiling of his room were dotted with spots that marked the moment of death for innumerable flies. He killed them in every conceivable way. He squashed them with comic books (his favorite weapon was a DC Batman Monthly, which had just the right sort of heft as well as a sort of poetic satisfaction). He batted them with commercial fly swatters - although he soon discarded them as less than sporting. He skillfully snapped towels intercepting their daring zagging flights. He shot them down with water pistols and drowned them when they spun wing heavy to a landing. He poisoned them with spray, trapped them in hot fudge the way that tar trapped the saber tooth tigers, suffocated them under overturned glass traps.

The obsession continued throughout Jonathan's life. He kept mental records of his scores. When the seasons changed and the numbers of flies became scarce, he became sullen and depressed. He walked around his apartment aimlessly, carrying a rolled up magazine, hunting with ears sharpened by a lifetime of experience.

One evening in the forty-second winter of Jonathan's life, he noticed a familiar buzzing in his otherwise silent room. Reaching for his ever close weapon, he searched the room for his quarry. He could see nothing, no movement, no shadow of movement. The buzzing continued, teasing.

The volume of the buzzing sound increased in his ears, becoming so apparent that he was unable to concentrate, or to sleep despite the fatigue the constant sound induced.

Jonathan sought medical help. A doctor found no injury or ailment to account for the buzzing. Still, it persisted, until Jonathan in desperation demanded futher tests. A series of expensive scans, imaging, using the latest machinery, failed to discover any cause. Medication was prescribed to deaden his senses. Jonathan toyed with the idea of detaching his auditory nerves, but could find no doctor willing to do it.

The buzzing worsened. Thinking became impossible. Jonathan had no choice; the blood flowed when he punctured his own eardrums, but the blessed silence made the pain tolerable.

Now, he could see flies darting in their crazy frantic patterns, could sometimes feel the tickle on the hairs of his arms as they landed, as they tasted his salty sweat, as they departed an instant before his slap could get them. It was worst during the long, restless nights. Summer and winter, Jonathan kept his air conditioner churning at full blast. He buried himself under blankets in the cold.

Still, he felt the teasing presence of the everpresent insects. He would switch on the light, search out his tormenters, and in the rare instance when he found prey, would smash them with a damning curse. Exhausted, he would return to bed, and more often than not, be awakened later with another sense of silken wings brushing his cheek. He would be compelled to resume the hunt again. And so the night would pass.

In time, he had used up all of his sick pay and was fired from his job. He locked himself in his darkened room, sealed the windows and doors, sprayed hourly with insecticides. The flies laughed at his efforts.

When they broke into Jonathan's room, his emaciated body was found in a praying position, arms thrown over his eyes. In his right hand was a rolled up newspaper. The room was airless, rank with chemical fumes. Dozens of spray cans were strewn about. Death was ascribed to suffocaation, poisoning from skin absorption, lung congestion. His body was an awful sight. The coroner refused to finish the examination. The biochemical hazard team carted his body away in leaded containers, buried him deep in the earth.

There was not a fly within miles.

Lieutenant Early's Pass

"Lieutenant Early's Pass" By Margaret Porter.
© 1945 by Margaret Porter

I was doing my toenails when Sally called me to say that her Joe had a 24 hour pass and that he and a buddy had taken a suite at the Mark. Joe had begged Sally to bring someone for his friend and so naturally Sally thought of me. I didn’t require too much persuasion; all she had to say was, “Maggie, do this for me, just drinks and steaks, on the boys of course.”
The bar was filled with feather merchants and with the scent of optimism and lime. I dodged my quota of lounge lizards before I found them in a corner, crowding a little table. Her Joe’s hand like a puppeteer’s was hidden, and Sally’s face was buried in his neck. When she saw me, she flushed and straightened her skirt.
“You’re early,” Joe said, standing with some difficulty.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” I said. “I was lucky to catch a cab waiting out front.” Sally pecked me on the cheek and Joe held a chair for me before he slid back into the banquette next to Sally. Joe asked me what I was drinking and went to get the drinks.
I lit my cigarette. Sally giggled. “Joe’s really nervous about tonight,” she said to her compact. “He’s hinting about something, but you know how that is.”
I didn’t really know how that was, but I guessed that Sally was dramatizing herself into a dither because I had seen her do that enough times. We were roommates and I was supposed to be her friend and was expected to say something big sister-like to her at that point, but I wasn’t much into the mood at the moment. So I smoked my cigarette and looked at my watch.
“I don’t know much about him, except that Joe says he’s cute.”
“Okay,” I said, although cute didn’t seem like a word Joe would use.
“Look, I know you’ve heard it before, but I tolerated that metals guy last month, didn’t I?”
He was not in metals; it was — well, something like that and it was three months ago, but I didn’t argue the point because basically Sally was right. So I just shrugged and listened to the buzz from the room, which was brain filling enough.
Joe got back to the table with four drinks and slid back into his seat before he gave me the rundown. “Paul told me to get a drink for him; he’s running a little late. He’s up in the suite. He’ll be down in a few minutes. You’ll like him.”
I sipped and smoked. Joe looked anxiously at Sally then at his drink. “I — there’s something you have to know about Paul.” Joe stopped there until he was sure he had registered, and the warning siren went off a few beats after he stopped talking. I looked at him and he gulped once, lowered his eyes along with his voice. “Paul was burned pretty badly about a year and a half ago in the Pacific. He’s okay now but he still has a few scars and he’s probably a little self-conscious about them. So ...”
Sally jumped in. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
“No? Well, it’s not something that I just throw out. I mean, hey, can you get a date for my buddy, he’s scarred up. Besides, it’s not that big a deal.”
“Then why did you mention it?” Sally was still pitching for me — and showing something to me I guess.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“I just didn’t want any awkwardness. He is a good guy, a really good flyer and he’s got plenty of guts.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “I don’t mind, really Joe. I’m sure he’s nice.”
The rest of the conversation was a little tense because Sally felt the need to continue to work at Joe on my behalf. I was pretty quiet for me, amusing myself with the drama probably. Joe did most of the talking, but he didn’t say much more about Paul except that he was the best instructor at the base, which didn’t help much.
I was finishing my Gimlet when a shadow appeared behind me, and Joe lit up at the same time. He stood and shook his buddy’s hand as if they hadn’t seen each other since Pearl Harbor.
“Margaret Porter, Sally Flynn, Lieutenant Paul Early, U.S. Army Air Force.” He grinned, grasped the man’s shoulder, pointed to his chest. “D.F.C., Air Medal, Good Conduct—”
”Cut your engine, Joe,” the shadow said. “How do you do, ladies?” The shadow shook my hand and reached over to shake Sally’s and from Sally’s smile I guessed it was going to be all right. Then he disappeared for a few seconds and came back with another chair and sat so that I could see his face and that Sally knew her onions.
She started chattering about how nice the hotel was, and Joe talked about the dinner reservations he made in the famous restaurant on the roof. Sally mentioned the name of the band, teasing Joe about the trumpeter and when he fell for that, she tossed in the drummer just for fun. Lieutenant Early didn’t say much and neither did I. He watched whoever was talking and so did I, but I could see that he wasn’t looking at me when I looked at him.
“I don’t know about music,” he said. “I’m not much of a dancer.”
“I am,” Sally said. “I’m so glad you like to, Joe.” Then, she felt compelled to add, “Maggie, you won one of those marathons, didn’t you?”
“In college, just a lark.”
Lieutenant Early spoke into his glass. “What college, Miss Porter?”
I named the school, told him that I had dropped out after two years to go to work. He asked what I did. Sally told him we were both at the newspaper, tried to inflate my job into more than what it was, to impress him with my intellect. It wasn’t a bad try; I already had the Lieutenant figured for a type who might want to know that.
I asked him where he went to school. He just said, “Stanford.”
“You’re from the Bay Area?”
“Yes.”
Joe interpreted. “Paul told me he never went more than fifty miles away from home until he joined up in ‘39.”
I took out another cigarette and Lieutenant Early brought out a lighter. It surprised me; he wasn’t smoking, and besides, I didn’t think he was noticing what I did. In the glow, I saw his hand shake and the first sign of a scar, a puffy red hairless patch near his uniform shirt cuff, about where his wristwatch band was. In the dim glow, I didn’t see any scars on his face or on the part of his neck above his collar or on the front of his neck above his black tie. He lit Sally’s cigarette but he didn’t light one for himself.
The Lieutenant left the table to get another round of drinks and while he was gone, Sally pumped Joe about him. “He’s a dream,” she said. “But he’s so quiet.”
“Well, he’s not dull, I can tell you that.”
“Maybe he’s the strong, silent type,” Sally suggested for my benefit. “He does sort of resemble Gary Cooper.”
“Well, in a way, but with more hair.” I must have been showing signs of flight to cause Sally to draw pictures for me. So I made up my mind to do some drawing of my own.
He returned without drinks. “The table’s ready,” he explained. “I told them to bring the cocktails to our table if that’s all right.”
It was more than all right for me. A good dinner was the whole point; I had run short of ration points and these dates were my main source of nutrition. He held my chair and took my arm as we wove through the crowd toward the elevators. I got a better look at the ribbons on his chest; I knew from my work on the newspaper what most of them meant.
The men must have tipped the maitre d’ pretty handsomely because our table was choice, and we fielded a few envious glances when we were seated. The cocktails were already there, and Sally grabbed Joe to hit the floor before they sat down.
Lieutenant Early sipped his drink and I sipped mine. He lit another cigarette for me before I came up with a question I thought might do the trick. “I’ve never been up here before. Have you dined here often?”
“Nope. First time for me.”
“They make good Gimlets.”
“That so?”
“Have you ever tasted them?”
“Uh-uh.”
“They’re pretty awful.”
“Have some Scotch.”
“Oh, don’t think so, not my taste. Gin or vodka are my speed. They seem to take on the taste of whatever you put in them, even the ice. But Scotch — like the lacquer from the inside of the casks or whatever they store it in.”
He swirled the Scotch in his mouth, made a face, said, “Maybe that’s what I like about it.”
If I was going to be a reporter, this was a challenge I couldn’t evade. “What do you fly, Lieutenant?”
He actually looked away from the dance floor while he answered me this time. “A desk mostly these days.”
I said, “Oh. Sorry.”
Then he surprised me; he smiled. “No, Miss Porter. I’m the one who’s sorry. Look, this was probably a rotten idea. I’m not usually this rude; I’m helping out a buddy.”
“Really? Me, too.” I told him how Sally had put it to me about the date.
He almost laughed, and I could see that his eyes were blue. “I guess we were both Shanghai’d under false pretenses.”
“I didn’t really mind,” I said. “I could use the protein.”
“Fair enough. I guess I could too.”
“You do look a little thin but I didn’t want to mention it.”
“Joe told you how I was — burned?”
“Not much. He just said you’d had it rough.”
“Okay,” he said, “that says it.”
That was it until the salad came.
The band stopped long enough for Joe and Sally to come skipping back. Sally kept up the chatter and Joe encouraged her so that Lieutenant Early heard all about our apartment and the cats and the neighbor lady who complained when we played the Victrola too loud. Joe complained about barracks life and the training flights they had been taking every dawn for the last two months. Lieutenant Early didn’t add much except to agree with Joe’s remark about the handling of the new P-38's.
“Paul went down to Lockheed and told them how to do it right,” Joe said with a sort of pride.
“Is that right, Lieutenant?” I wondered how Early would handle that kind of praise.
He picked at his salad. “Not really. They had a good notion about it before I stuck my nose in.”
Joe was into his third or fourth cocktail by the time the steaks arrived. He kept blabbing and I could see that Lieutenant Early was squirming. I said, “Joe, I’m not sure Sally and I really care too much about all that technical stuff.”
The Lieutenant gave Joe a look and it was enough to slow him down. Sally picked up on the tension and turned us over to the band, which was playing something that had been popular on the hit parade before the war. She shushed us so that we could listen to the trumpet solo. The band had a girl singer, and she crooned about moonlight for a few minutes, which allowed for the subject to change.
The steak was good and I concentrated on sawing, but noticed that Lieutenant Early didn’t eat very much. I said something about it and he looked at his plate as if he felt a bit guilty. He asked if I wanted it. I did but told him I didn’t. Sally piped up that we would take it home — for the cats.
Before the coffee, Sally dragged Joe to the floor, and to my surprise Lieutenant Early asked if I wanted to dance. More out of curiosity than anything, I nodded. He took my hand and stood us on the edge of the floor. When he held me, I felt that I had to support him, he was that fragile looking. It was the first good look I had of him, though he still looked past me as if I was incidental.
His shoulder felt skeletal; his blouse hung from it as from a hanger in a closet. Holding his hand was like holding a bird, like the bones were hollow. I had an image of him as a flyer, like some sort of bird, with fine feathers, insubstantial and weightless, graceful and comfortable only in the air.
It was a slow romantic dance and my hand wandered toward his neck, just to see if he would fly away. He didn’t, but let my hand stay there and I touched the blond hair above his collar. I felt the second hint of a scar at the hairline, a raised area coming from under his collar that was different from the smooth tense muscles in his neck. When I touched it he didn’t react but I sensed that he knew what I was doing. I imagined that he was wondering what it was doing to me. I tried to be casual about it, tried to look up and catch his eyes but they were unfocused, staring somewhere over my head. Then he closed them, swayed to the rhythm of the music, forcing me to do the same.
When the song ended, he dropped his arms and I began to walk back to the table without his prompting. He took my hand and followed me. I felt the gesture was progress; I was training some kind of wild and vulnerable forest creature to trust me. Sally and Joe came back and began to snuggle as the singer went into another romantic ballad.
The waiter brought brandy with the coffee and Joe offered a toast. “Paul, here’s hoping you can add to your score.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sally asked, with a giggle.
Joe laughed, said, “What a mind my girl has.” He pecked Sally’s cheek. “I only meant that my pal is an ace and we’re counting on him to show the rest of us out there how it’s done.”
Sally was very excited about this news. “No kidding, Paul. Are you really an ace?”
“Sally, you goose,” I said. “It means five kills, not that he’s a swell tennis player.”
Joe laughed and Sally felt compelled to say, “Gee, Mags, I know what it means. I’ve never met an ace before is all.”
“I don’t think the Lieutenant really wants to talk about that, Sal.”
“Why not? It’s something to be proud of,” Sally squealed.
“It was a long time ago,” Lieutenant Early said. I could feel him looking sideways at me as he sipped his brandy. But when I looked back, he looked away.
“Midway,” Joe said. “June, ‘42. Helluva show, wasn’t it, Paul?”
Lieutenant Early didn’t look very happy about it. “Would you like to get some fresh air, Lieutenant?” I asked.
“Say, there’s a balcony in the suite,” Joe said. “Great view of the bay. Why don’t we move the party, kids? I mean, we are paying plenty for it.”
Sally gave me a pleading look and before we knew it the check was paid and Lieutenant Early had my arm and we were headed for the elevators.

***

The Golden Gate Bridge was camouflaged under its cloud by the time we saw it from the balcony. Lieutenant Early brought me a glass of champagne and stood next to me, close enough for me to think he was going to hint at something. Before I could dope it out, Sally found the station she wanted and the radio squalled. She and Joe started singing “Mairzy Doats” and tried to get us to join in. I spent some time covering for the Lieutenant and eventually Sally and Joe got the point and drifted away from us. When they finally found an excuse to retreat to Joe’s bedroom, I was relieved. We wandered back out onto the balcony.
“Sally’s got it bad for Joe,” I said.
“He’s a good egg. I wouldn’t be too concerned.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Oh, flight training, early ‘40, I think it was. We were in the same class.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help stare at his ribbons. “You seem more ... experienced.”
“This?” He touched the D.F. C. ribbon. “I didn’t get that until this year.”
“They don’t just give those away, or the rest of fruit salad, either.”
“No, you have to outrun your pals when the bombs fall.”
“Is that what you did, Lieutenant?”
“It’s Paul.”
“Okay, Paul. I didn’t mean to pry. I’m training to be a reporter, remember.”
“It’s okay, Margaret. They tell me to talk about it; the docs at Lanterman. Therapy, they call it.”
I had been to Lanterman Hospital, seen the wards with broken men. If Paul Early had been there, it was not for a rest. He must have seen it in my eyes. He said, “They did a first rate job there. Spent the first three months flat on my stomach.”
“Not much of a view that way.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered. My eyes were bandaged the whole time.”
“Was your face burned?”
“Not a lick.”
I thought he was going to say more but when he didn’t, I spent the silence trying to decide whether to pursue the issue. I had almost begun to form a different question when he exhaled so deeply that I thought it might be his last one. I decided to keep throwing questions at him until he opened up a crack which he finally did — in spades.
“The fire started behind the cockpit,” he fnally said, like he was reciting someone’s report of the incident. “Flames came up from under the seat and back, but I was fighting the controls and grabbing for the extinguisher.” He put a hand in his pocket, leaned against the rail and looked out over the blacked out city. “I guess I kind of aimed it at my face a few times. The rubber and plexiglass sort of melted a bit and made toxic smoke. I breathed some of it.”
“How were you able to land?” I managed to ask.
“Didn’t exactly land,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. The gesture took something out of him. His voice was low when he said, “Hit the water a mile off shore.”
“I notice that you stay away from the light. Are your eyes still sensitive?”
“Sensitive? Not my eyes, no.” He seemed to think that was pretty funny. He laughed and even in the dim light of the balcony I could see what it did for his face.
We wandered back into the room and could hear the sounds from the bedroom. That got us both laughing. I don’t remember which of us suggested leaving but there were springs in our strides as we walked out the door. I let the Lieutenant navigate for us. He didn’t ask for advice, cruised past the bar and out the door onto the street. When a cable car slowed right in front of us, he swept me with him and lifted me onto the runner with an ease that shocked me.
We rode all the way down the hill to the turntable. On the way I told him how much I loved the town, that I’d moved from Los Angeles looking for a job and didn’t want to go back even after the first three fell through. I told him about the one I found and how I had hopes of turning it into something like a career. I told him all of that between Nob Hill and the Wharf and I don’t remember if he asked about any of it.
We strolled along the dock until the barricades stopped us. By the time we reached the end of the line, he knew as much about me as he wanted to hear. I wasn’t surprised when he stopped and held me or when he looked out over my head toward the bay and then closed his eyes while he touched my face with his fingertips. By the time he kissed me I understood things about him that his words hadn’t revealed. I whispered, “Let’s go back,” but it really wasn’t necessary to say it. He kissed me again on the cable car and he steadied me during the climb. I don’t remember the walk into the hotel or the ride up the elevator or anything else much until we were lying side by side.
With the blackout curtains, we were inside a cave a thousand feet down. The dizziness I felt had nothing to do with the drinks or the disorienting darkness. It was the way he touched me that did it. His fingertips knew more about me than his eyes did. I kissed his eyes and then his fingertips and he put them to work again. My fingers discovered that he kept his eyes closed all the time, just as he had done before.
In the dark I found everything else I had a right to know about him, but afterward he seemed to feel the need to explain what I already had guessed. He began to speak as if he was in the middle of a thought. “Just a lot of assumptions piled on top of one another,” he said.
“I don’t need to know, Paul,” I said..
“The third month she came to see me. I was pretty used to the dark by then. Her voice — and the silences in between gave me the answers.”
“Was it the burns?”
“I guess. Must have looked like a hot dog on the barbeque back then.”
“It’s not so bad now, Paul.” That was my first big lie to the Lieutenant. In reality, his back felt like a chenille robe with a frayed irregular pattern. The welts and hollows made an intaglio that I tried to interpret in the dark. When he touched my back, I fought the self-conscious sense that he was envious, until his fingers made me forget everything that didn’t matter.
Now he was saying, “They couldn’t find any skin to graft from. The fire cooked all the fat, I guess.”
The scars on the backs of his arms were merely roughened skin. The rest of his body seemed unscathed. I ran my fingers along the hairs on his arms and he let them stay on his chest so I rested my head there between my hands on his breast. His skin was smooth and hard; with my eyes closed, the rhythm of his breathing made me imagine I was on a raft on Lake Tahoe. My fingers tried to imitate the way he spoke and listened with his and I began to understand more.
When he next spoke, I noticed that his voice made vibrations that lent a meaning more profound than the sum of his words which came from the dark. I had to shiver to focus on the words and they didn’t make sense until I heard them again inside my head. “Funny thing,” he said, “it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.”
“No?”
“Arms more than the bad ones on my back.”
“I did a story at Lanterrman,” I told the dark. “Fingertips have all the nerve endings close together.” I held his fingers and put them to my lips. “They’re spaced far apart on your back, so it’s not as sensitive.” Even as I spoke the words I doubted them. Wherever he touched me I burned.
The sudden incongruous sound of a glass shattering spooked me. Reflexively, I clutched at Paul’s arm and his hand held my shoulder tightly to calm me. Then we heard shouting. “Oh, poor Sally’s gone and done it this time,” I said.
Paul shushed me and we both listened to the hubbub, like a radio drama playing in the next apartment, complete with sound effects: slamming doors, screamed promises, defensive explanations, whining. Paul began to laugh and I couldn’t help myself either. My best pal was miserably in love and it was so damned funny. Finally there was silence.
“You think it’s a peace conference?” Paul asked.
“Not likely, knowing Sal.” I shrugged, kissed his hand. “A truce maybe, a temporary cease fire.”
“Maybe we better reconnoiter.”
Paul tossed me a robe, slipped on his undershirt, put a towel around his waist, and we dared to go into no-man’s land. The radio was still grinding out swing from the roof of some other hotel. Paul found Joe smoking a cigarette on the balcony, steaming about “Goddamn dames.”
I found the “Goddam dame” in the bathroom. She was freshening her quivering lips while mascara dripped in black streams onto her glistening cheeks. I got most of the story eventually, enough to know how it was going to end. Paul came in after a while, put his arms around my waist and I stifled a giggle as I represented my side’s interests and he spoke for his. After a few more parlays we negotiated an exchange: Sally would let Joe take her home; I would stay — as a hostage until hostilities were over.
When they left we collapsed in a joyous heap and rolled around until I confessed that my stomach hurt. Paul asked if I was hungry and I didn’t have to stop laughing to enjoy that one. He called Room Service and between the two of us we picked the menu clean.
When he kissed me and carried me to the bedroom, he said, “Maybe I should have ordered for Joe.”
I threw back my head and laughed, almost hitting the doorframe. “I don’t think so, Paul. Ten to one he’s not coming back tonight.”
“You’re kidding. After that donnybrook—”
“You haven’t been on the loose very much, have you, Lieutenant darling?”
“No. I guess I haven’t.”
“Well, you’re not going to be, not if I have anything to say about it.”

***

The food arrived before the phone call from Joe. We ate on the bed, the lamp light muted by my black slip covering the shade. Finally I collapsed, stretched out, moaned. “God, if I eat another bite, I’m going to explode.”
Paul seemed to find that remark pretty stimulating, or maybe it was the way I stroked my belly while I said it. He raked the tray and all the dishes from the bed, shut the lamp, and began to work me over again in the pitch dark.
He raised his head, murmured, “Did you say something?”
I raised my arms over my head, murmured into my hair, “Never mind, Lieutenant, keep doing whatever that was.”
After a long while he rested his head on my belly. When I could speak without gasping, I stroked his hair, said, “That must be what it feels like when you’re pregnant.” I laughed but he didn’t seem to get the joke. “I only meant—”
”I know, Margaret, it’s pretty funny.” He plumped a pillow with a fist and lay stiffly across from me, held my legs against his chest. I could feel his eyes looking into the dark, at the ceiling, could almost see his forearm cover his face.
I decided to wait him out, but the silence and the dark got to me. I whined for a cigarette, reached for the light.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’ll find one.” He hopped off the bed and somehow found my package, lit one with his lighter. In the glow, I saw his stooped shoulders and then it was dark again when he exhaled a wracking, searing cough.
“Are you all right, Paul?”
“Yes.” He handed me the cigarette and turned away.
I told him I would put it out but he insisted that he was all right. I smoked it almost all the way down before he spoke again. His voice came from across the room. “The Zeros come out of the sun — to nail you on the first pass. Usually do.”
I waited for more. There seemed to be breathing and I imagined a shiver. I wanted to walk over to him, to kneel at his feet while he told his story, but I didn’t dare move or breathe.
“My third sortie of the day. Dog tired, slept some on the way out, I think. Almost swerved into Chuck McKenzie, ‘til he gunned his engine to wake me.”
I wanted another cigarette, chewed my polish instead.
“The training — don’t think of anything — anyone, especially not — not her. You’re not coming back, so forget about her. You’re dead, see?”
“I think I do,” I said.
“Yeah. So I did that, concentrated like hell, and after a long time it worked. Burned her out of my head. Then, once I did that, I was able to concentrate some more and I killed myself off.”
He laughed about it and I tried to smile, but of course he couldn’t see that. His eyes were boring into the dark and seeing something different.
“I figured if I’m dead already and she’s gone, I got nothing to lose, so I can go whole hog. That, I guess, that’s what saved me those first days when we were getting mugged pretty badly. Japs must’ve thought I was nuts. Maybe I was.”
I realized I was crying when I felt the saltiness tickle the corner of my lip. I brushed the traces away quickly as if he might see it, which was ridiculous in the dark, but it seemed to be very important that he not know.
“Then — that flight, the last one, when I was tired, maybe dreaming, I wasn’t ready for her to come back.”
I bit my lip to stop the quivering, covered my mouth with a fist. I was sure he couldn’t hear, couldn’t know.
“Just a second, maybe two; that was enough. Never saw the bastard, never heard the sound, no engine, no brrripp. No zing, no thump. Just the damn smoke.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, just smoke.”

***

I waited for him to go to the bathroom before I turned on the lamp and quickly collected my things. I switched it off before I fled the room, carried everything into the other bedroom, locked the door. I allowed myself a quick cry in the shower, toweled off and dressed quickly, stuffed my stockings and undies into my purse. No makeup or lipstick, avoided the mirror.
When I opened the door, he would be standing there, a rail thin shadow, hunched against the wall.
The conversation was going to go this way: I would say, thanks for a wonderful evening. I can’t remember when I’ve eaten more, it’ll hold me for a month. I’m grateful for that. And he’ll say, it was my pleasure, Margaret. And I’ll laugh at him, say, is that the name I gave you? No, it’s not Margaret. I lied about that, too, of course. You know, we working girls never give our right names to the men we entertain, especially the servicemen. I’ll tell him: they don’t give theirs either. Can’t even remember the guy from last night. I’ll say, got another date tomorrow night — a naval officer, I think. Nice fellow, I hear. I’m so awfully bad with names, it’s an embarrassment. And then he’ll try to remind me of his. But I’ll stop him and laugh about it, laugh at him, if I can manage it. That should do the trick.
I opened the door. He wasn’t standing there. I headed for the exit but the entry light switched on and he trapped to me under it. I covered my face from the light. “Thanks for the dinner. I gotta run.” He gripped my arms. “You better let me go, mister, or I’ll call the—”
”Stop it, Margaret,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not Margaret. I mean, that’s not my real name.”
He wrapped me up and I spoke to his dog tags. “I don’t want you to look at me. I must be a fright without make-up.”
His fingers were in my hair. “Doesn’t matter, I don’t have to look; I know your face well enough.”
“No, you mustn’t. I mean, you don’t mean anything to me.”
“Stop it, Margaret. Too late for that.”
“That’s absurd. You’re just a meal ticket.”
“Listen, I know what you’re trying to do, but—”
“I’m just trying to get out of here in one piece, Lieutenant.”
“It’s not the same,” holding me very tightly to his chest. “I’ll be okay this time,” the voice like a boy convincing his mom and himself he could be trusted to leave home.
That’s when I lost it. My legs weakened and he carried me. I faced his fragile chest, my hands gripping the back of his blouse. “Damn right, you’ll be okay,” I said. “‘Cause I’ll tell you right now, I won’t be here waiting for you. Not this dame, not me. I’ll be having a ball with the smart guys who make all the dough and spend it on bright, willing girls like me.”
“That’s a hell of a speech,” he said.
He was right, it was a damn good speech. The tears were an especially good touch and the tremor in my voice, very convincing, just the right tone of bitterness. When he put me down, he tilted my chin, held my face in his hands, and wiped away the tears with his lips. When he did that, the rest was all for nothing, the residue washed away in the dark.
When the light came, we breakfasted together and I smoked too much as he showered and dressed as I watched him. We didn’t say anything more to each other; it had all been said during the black night in the dark. Before he walked out, he took my face in his hands one more time and closed his eyes and smiled. I closed mine, and when I opened them, he was gone.

***

After another yellow dawn, following another black night six months later, I dragged myself up the stairs, careful as always to do it without waking Mrs. Costello. Sally was still in bed when I walked in, placed the milk bottle in the ice box, fed the squalling cats, put coffee up, began to read the newspaper. I slogged through the strange names that the new year had brought to everyone’s lips: Caen, Pelilu, Kwajelein, Saipan. My little story about sugar substitutes was buried, cut to ribbons of course and stashed under a used tire advertisement on page ten.
By the time I’d finished the second cup, Sally had dragged herself into the dinette. Fighting through a powerful yawn, she asked, “So how was the big night?”
“Not as big as I’d hoped.” The toaster popped.
“Serves you right for high expectations.”
I shrugged. “I’m going to stay away from newspapermen, I think. Too complicated. They’re either frustrated poets or unhappily married or both.”
“With frustrated wives and unhappy lovers,” Sally agreed.
As a reward, I gave her one of the slices of toast, then buttered my own. She was shaking a foot on the chair, resting her cheek on her knee. That meant she was itching about something.
“What more you want to know? No, I’m not getting the crime beat, ‘you’re too much woman,’ the bastard says. And yes, more ‘drives’ for me; strings, nylon...”
She wasn’t with me. I waited for her eyes to show before I asked, “Sal, what is it?”
“I got a letter from Joe.”
“What Joe?”
“Joe Donnelly.” The plate was full of crumbs. It went into the sink with the coffee cup.
“Lieutenant Donnelly, my Lieutenant Donnelly, my darling Joe.”
The percolator was full of chicory grounds, checked them for signs of life. “Like your Ensign Smith, your Sargent Jones.”
“That’s right, Maggie.”
“Hey, you know the grocer’s son, the good looking kid, Vince?”
“What about him?”
“He might be good for a pound of real beans if you play your cards right. He gave you the eye, remember?”
“Sure, Mags.”
“I better change out of this dress. It’s got to go to the cleaners and I think I tore a seam.”
She put a hand in the pocket of her robe as if she was going to pull a gun. “A lot of the letter’s censored.”
“Where’s the sewing kit, Sal?”
Sally pointed to the rattan basket near the radio. “Don’t know where he sent it from. It’s dated a month ago.” An envelope was in her hand; wartime onionskin, with “V-Mail” red and blue trim.
I unbuttoned and stepped out of the dress, examined it. There was a torn seam. I turned on the radio: Sunday noon, might catch “The Lone Ranger.”
“There’s something about Lieutenant Early.”
War News, opera, more news, settled for music. “Damn, just when I’m in the mood for a good serial, there’s not a damned thing. Isn’t that always the way.”
“Mags.”
“I heard you, Sal. Say, do we have any more black thread?”
“You used it to repair your slip the other night.”
“Yeah. That’s right. Some day I’m going to date a gent who cornered the market on silk, maybe go to Chinatown, get picked up by a Chink there. Oh, here it is.” There was just enough thread left to do the job, but it wasn’t going to be easy. “These damned needles, the holes are getting too small for me. Maybe I need glasses after all.”
“I’ll do it, Mags.” Sally’s arm was on my shoulder. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” She daubed my eyes with a tissue.
“Okay. My eyes are burning; I do need sleep, got a headache, too.”
“Sure, kid. Go ahead, take your time.”
“Yeah. It’s going to be a hell of a hangover, when it starts.”

***
In the dark, in the depths of the bottomless pit of the dark, I was now able to concentrate for long stretches of time. With perfect silence and blackness, I could force a crowd of blurred faces to appear. I could even discern specific vivid details of those faces — especially smiles, upturned mustaches, dimpled chins, heads tossed back in laughter. But if I let my thoughts drift, the fatal image returned to fill the vacuum; then, I would hold on too tight and had to bite my lip and squeeze my eyes to stop the dizziness and eventual nausea from taking over.
After hours in the darkness, I could force someone like Tom Jennings into my mind; he was blond too, though not so blond. And there was that boy, the one with the octopus arms in the rumble seat of Andy’s Chevy back when. What was his name? No matter, his face, that was the thing to remember — and the touches that weren’t the same but were some sort of touches after all. With some effort I could almost picture the sports columnist who made a pass at me the other day. He’s good looking, always liked a man with a pipe — got that outdoor squint too.
In the hours before dawn I could recover sounds but that was dangerous because those were harder to shut out. The foghorn would interfere with concentration and some music that rushed into my head without warning might set me off the track.
And then, finally, fatigue would overtake me if I was lucky and before the light crept under the curtains, while I was still enveloped in black, the darkness would win..