The Charlotte News
Monday, June 30, 1941
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page of the newspaper of this day was impressive. On the one hand things looked bad in Russia. The Nazis had reportedly taken Minsk and moved half the 450-mile distance between the border and Moscow, all in just a week. Leningrad in the north was under siege. Finland, having been taken by the Soviets in March, 1940, was now being bombed and would soon be overrun by Nazis. As Raymond Clapper pointed out in his column, the object was to ensnare the Red Army; the cities, the roads, the terrain itself, were only incidental to this purpose, to foil the supply lines and industrial base which fed and armed the army. Clapper's last paragraph points ominously to the importance of Russia winning the campaign; for if it lost, the oceans would become the battleground--and of course Britain would be in far worse shape with a much better fed and fueled German military with which to contend. American military advisors suggested a fall-back strategy, similar to that employed by the Union against Lee in the Civil War, shore up defenses, prepare for siege on home ground, hope for early rains--the October blessing. Everyone now understood that quick victory in no more than three months was essential for Hitler--before the Russian winter.
On the other hand, the bleakness of the Russian front was offset by continued and largely unopposed RAF bombing raids into France and Germany, with Bremen and Oldenburg being hit the night before in the latter. The first squadron of American pilots, in training since the previous fall, were reported flying missions now for the RAF, adding to Allied strength, preparing America for the inevitable.
As the newspaper columns were now proclaiming, just as the President's son Elliott had said from north Africa in April, America was essentially at war in all but formal declaration and wholesale troop commitment. The attack on Pearl Harbor only formalized the matter.
On the domestic front, the report appeared for the first time of the Nazi spy arrest in New York during the weekend. The report indicated 25 being arraigned, seven of whom took the nearly unheard of step of pleading guilty on their initial appearance in court. Two of them had been stealing bombsight secrets at two plants, Norden and Sperry. The quality of the American bombsight over the Axis was crucial. The Axis had little or no control over its bombs in 1941. It was one decided advantage held by the Allies.
"Pay-Off", the News editorial of this date on the round-up, penned the number of arrested at 29, based on early reports. Subsequently, the number would be revised to include 32. The editorial explores briefly the timing of the arrest and assumes that since the Bureau had delayed arresting the spies to avoid the prospect of the known spies under surveillance being replaced by unknown spies, the balance had in some unknown manner shifted such that it was more important to risk such a replacement than continue to put in jeopardy the nation's military secrets. The overriding reason for the timing, in all likelihood, was to add to the urgency of the problem in the public mind, to increase the understanding of the national emergency declared by the President on May 27.
The piece on Congressman Tinkham of Massachusetts, seeking Congressional investigation as to what extent Federal funds were being used to aid Communism and whether the Federal government was infiltrated by Communists, while merely echoing the Dies Committee's work of the previous four years, was more of the harbinger which would, while belayed shortly pending the outcome of the war, be picked up again after the war by McCarthy, Nixon and others to form the Red Scare of the late forties, early fifties, culminating in the notorious McCarthy Army hearings to ferret out Communists in the armed forces and State Department. The real object of such machinations is equally made plain by the piece: every bit as much to support fascism, even its extreme incarnation, Nazism, as any genuine effort at getting at Communists posing a genuine national security risk. Curiously, just as with Dies, as many times pointed out by Cash, the smearing, the outrage, the vitriol reserved for alleged Communists, usually no more than political enemies, strangely subsided into silent tolerance or only mild, token expression of resentment when it came time to investigate Nazis involved in sabotage or spying.
And Hugh Johnson's column heralds in a passive way what could not be known at the time, that which was to be a sea change in the manner of collecting foreign intelligence, the coming announcement, to be made official on July 11, that "Wild Bill" Donovan would be named by FDR to a new position, Coordinator of Information, the forerunner of the OSS, also under his leadership, to be established in spring, 1942. It was the first time in the country's history that there was any office established solely for the collection, labeled in this initial incarnation as "coordination", of intelligence. Prior to the time, only the Office of Naval Intelligence, a small Army intelligence division, and a small FBI division had official charge of such matters. But none of these official organs did more than receive information and analyze it, the FBI occasionally, as in the bust of the spy network, assigning agents to shadow and infiltrate when espionage and thus criminal conduct were actually involved. Much of the collection of general intelligence until this time had been performed informally, often through journalists.
As we suggested, these few days in history, often unnoticed as forgotten because of what transpired in December to overshadow them and sweep them behind the door of history, saw a transformation of the country, beginning with FDR's May 27 fireside chat, accelerated further by the invasion of Russia June 22, which was every bit as dramatic, if not more so, than the aftermath of December 7. America's participation in World War II, in truth, began with the May 27 speech and its declaration of a national emergency; there had been steady movement toward such an announcement during the months before, especially with the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill in March. The editorials of the previous month echoing that shift in attention to war industry and national mobilization of the military effort reflect that sea change.
To place all of American society on a war footing was an evil thing. To inaugurate official organs of government which spied not only on foreign citizens, but its own citizens, both at home and abroad, was an evil thing. But they were evil things which FDR resisted as long as humanly possible until the alternative clearly and plainly was to give up and lay down before the juggernaut of Nazism, the Will to enslave others, inimical to freedom and democracy everywhere--and with real spies and saboteurs at work among the citizenry of the United States in far more than mere propaganda activity, busy at actual collection of military secrets and sabotage of port facilities, of defense contractors. It was an evil thing, one for which we have Adolf Hitler and his minions to thank.
A march on Washington was planned, incidentally, for July 1, orchestrated by A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Pullman Porters, to attempt to obtain from FDR an executive order to end racial discrimination against African-Americans in the armed forces, in defense industries which contracted with the government, and in the Federal government hiring practices generally. The march flopped. Twenty-two years later, however, times would, albeit with all deliberate speed, change.
In installment 25 of Out of the Night, Jan takes us through the various strengths and weaknesses he discovered in the Communist Parties of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In the latter he found profligate libertinism which told him Norway was the bad boy in the neighborhood, giving Norwegian wood a whole new meaning. In late January, 1933, he suddenly receives a telegram in Norway from Firelei, asking him to return to Germany at once. Upon his arrival he learns simultaneously of the death of his mother and that Hitler has just been named Chancellor. (Incidentally, to read a Trotskyite Communist review of Out of the Night written in June, 1941, go here. The Trotskyites apparently didn't care much for Jan or his work, found him bourgeois, with too much emotional commitment, too willing to do the bidding of the GPU, too equating of Communism with Stalinism, and not enough dedication to political principle, to be a true Bolshie, a child of the October Revolution of 1917 but never an adult of it.)
Thus were things around the globe as seen by readers of The News this Noche Triste, June 30--in Mexican history the night in 1520 when Aztec followers of Montezuma rose up against the abuses of Cortez's men left under the charge of Pedro de Alvarado in Tenochtitlán, both sides, especially the Spanish, suffering severe losses. Montezuma numbered among the Aztecs hacked to death.
Having enough of the picture, he slapped the newspaper closed again with
a triumphant snap and threw it to the coffee table in front of the plush
couch where he sat. The dimly lit hall was large and ornate, designed in a
somewhat rococo fashion, with Spanish influence.
The Embassy was usually quiet in the mornings and Josephus Daniels had,
on a couple of occasions, wandered into the lounge, having been told by an
attaché that Wilbur was present. He was consistently gracious and helpful.
Wilbur had told him that he and Mary continued periodically to suffer
from the incantation of Montezuma, and Daniels assured him that they would
extricate themselves from its coil in a few weeks when the system finally
began to adapt.
But on this day, the Embassy was abuzz with people moving from one
office to another, apparently set off by the German movement. Daniels was
not to be seen or heard.
Wilbur, feeling suddenly nauseated, stood to leave and noticed a man he
had never seen in the Embassy lounge before. He was a man of medium stature
with thinning blonde hair, an aquiline nose, and azure eyes. He made
momentary eye contact with Wilbur over the top pinkage of his paper, but continued
closely huddled behind its veil.
Wilbur, for some reason, was struck by him. He could not figure out why.
It was some minute flash of awareness of something awkward about the man's
demeanor which stood inapposite to the basically congenial and unthreatening
surroundings. Why would the man come to the Embassy and stay if he were
uncomfortable? After the brief reflection, Wilbur dismissed it and went on
about his way back to the apartment.
He stopped in one of the many plazas erected across the
City and dedicated to various Mexican war heroes. The statue here was of
Bolivar. Its weathered green copper was adequately shielded from the sun by
pigeon guano. Wilbur sat on a bench, propped one leg on it to rest his chin
upon his knee, and looked at the parade of people.
He saw Indians in polychromatic dress, scurrying, intermingling with
businessmen in Brooks Brothers, Mexican style. It was like a place, he
thought, trying very hard to become as cosmopolitan as Manhattan,
but struggling to overcome a basically provincial, agrarian actuality and a
kindred pace, not a place really that much unlike Charlotte or Atlanta,
in different accents. The men in business suits moved not quite with the
insistence of need to return to a beckoning press of work which consistently
characterized most of their emulated counterparts in New York.
But here amid the typical urban morass and hurly-burly of traffic and
horns glaring and people milling about, queuing here, wandering willy-nilly
there, there was the curiosity of mature men in fine charcoal suits, slipped
off the Paseo de la Reforma, playing pinball in open parlors, populated by
every stripe of the culture--except, of course, the Indians. The Indians had
not the pesos, nor, apparently, the social élan to be acceptable in pinball
arcades.
The Indians, Wilbur observed, were the victims of de facto segregation by
economic deprivation. He had, however, heard from Daniels that former President Lazaro
Cardenas deserved credit for the reform programs being initiated. Wilbur had
not offered the gall to comment on his having heard of the deal between the
Texan Davis, Cardenas, and Hit-fit for the delivery of oil to run the Panzer
divisions which had overrun two-thirds of Europe in less than two years and
threatened now to take the other third.
But, Daniels had informed, Cardenas had created a new sense of great
national pride in Mexico. He reapportioned lands, though not in equal
distribution, under what was called the ejido system by expropriating
holdings of wealthy landowners, including many very conservative and
Republican American landowners, in the wheat rich Yaqui Valley. He had given
support to labor reform brought about by the confederation of workers, the
C.T.M., when they struck the American and British oil companies in 1936. He
nationalized railroads; though judging by the trip down from Nuevo Laredo,
reform in that area was somewhat less than imbued with Amazing Grace.
Despite his guarantees to Daniels to the contrary, after extensive
negotiations over a proposed 15 percent royalty on mineral rights fell
through, Cardenas, on March 18, 1938, had also expropriated foreign holdings
of oil and lands, a program undertaken to the extreme consternation of both
the British and American oil magnates with holdings in Mexico. The
conservative American well owners in Mexico spoke not dispassionately in
favor of revolution or U.S. intervention to stop the confiscation.
And the U.S. State Department pressed for immediate repayment for all
expropriated agrarian lands, full knowing the Mexicans incapable of doing so,
as a wedge to undo the oil expropriation. Meanwhile, as Daniels knew and
wrote his son in July, 1938, the Mexicans traded oil not only to Germany but
to Italy and Japan as well, in return for manufacturing equipment.
The assertive Presidente had been pressured by the British Government
and the companies to pay for the expropriation and finally had agreed, with
the assistance of the United States in creating a plan, to limited pay back to the
oil companies, based on an undervaluation of the holdings. The simmering
issue, however, had not cooled yet.
In the wake of a call by Cardenas for strong nationalism, the campesinos
from all the countryside came to Mexico City to supply the Government
with their last pesos from the last paltry sale of fragile crops to help
remit, ever so slowly, the vast national debt resulting from the
expropriation.
Daniels had gone on about the apparent fact that illiteracy had been
reduced and health care, improved, during Cardenas's tenure which had begun
in 1934 and concluded the year before. Plans had also been laid for
reclamation and hydroelectric development.
All of this, to Wilbur's ears, began to sound more and more like New
Dealism with chili peppers, and Wilbur suspected Daniels's, and thus F.D.R.'s,
considerable enforcement in the process of reform. He figured, too, that the
continuing peasant uprisings by the revolutionary juntas had played no small
influence on the eventual establishment of at least perfunctory reform.
Judging by the outward appearances, however, Wilbur could little see
that such programs had served to remove much, if any, of the basically abject
conditions of the people. There was little middle class evident and a small
rich elite. The rest were poor, and if getting richer, it had to be a peso
at a time.
As Wilbur sat contemplating the sociological observations which he had
thus far accumulated, he overheard a man with a Spanish accent lecturing a
small group of young people, standing on the ellipse around a monument to
the Revolution:
"This last year was the crowning glory of the Mexican Revolution
with all its blood of a half million spilled from the shaky incipient
strikes led by Francisco Madero in 1910, precipitating the overthrow in 1911
of the thirty-four year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, to Madero's
assassination by his ally, turned successor, General Victoriano Huerta to
the United States-aided overthrow of Huerta by Venustiano Carranza to
Carranza's battles with the armies of his former comrades in coup de main,
Villa and Zapata, ultimately to the latter's death in 1919, to the
assassination of Carranza by his former compañero de armas, General Alvaro
Obregon, who had Villa killed in 1923, to the rise of 'Strongman' Plutarco
Elias Calles in 1924, the re-election of Obregon in 1928 and his immediate
assassination, the re-emergence of Calles, culminating finally in Cardenas's
grand reservoir of power, divested of Calles--ironically, the most ever
reposited in a Mexican leader--all finally to produce La Victoria de
Revolución. The Revolution for democracy was over. The Revolutionaries had
won; the revolutionaries were all dead.
"Through all the twists and turned alliances, back stabs, coups and
coups manques, the United States was as hard to pin to consistency of
allegiance as the Revolutionaries. After a brief fling at backing Villa, the
reports of his cruelties shifted President Wilson to continuing support for
Carranza against the militaristic forces of Huerta and the peasant armies
of Villa and Zapata. Despite the Pershing affair, Carranza, in turn,
refused an economically attractive offer by the Germans to form an alliance
in World War I to recoup territory in the United States lost in the Mexican
War. Nevertheless, there was support for Obregon when he overthrew and
killed Carranza a mere three years later."
Wilbur's mind wandered from this lecture to his own readings about the
current President, Manuel Avila Camacho, elected in the bloody voting booths
of July, 1940 as Cardenas's handpicked successor with no little measure of
fraud at the polls. Though Camacho was much more conservative than Cardenas,
the alternative, General Juan Andreu Almazán, was supported strongly and
actively by the Right, the Axis powers, as well as by the less ideologically
motivated detractors of Cardenas' "Second Revolution". There had been
concern that the Almazán supporters, believing the election stolen from them
by selective tabulation of votes, would not allow Camacho to assume power in
December, 1940. With repressive security measures initiated, he did, with
little further incident--at least, in the streets.
Camacho had been a brigadier general in the army and served as minister
of national defense under Cardenas. A military man to the hilt, he was
continuing the reforms of Cardenas but with far less vigor and decisively
tempered by authoritarian reverence to the elitist classes.
Like his predecessor, this anointed Prince also seemed determined to
walk the tightrope between the Axis and Allied powers, awaiting the entry or
non-entry of the United States to determine Mexico's more economically
viable choice of loyalty. Outwardly, in any event, he remained faithful to
the Good Neighbor policy.
****
As Wilbur pondered, at ease on this little green plaza, his thoughts
were suddenly disheveled by the appearance across Paseo de la Reforma of
a man facing away from him. He squinted through the glints of the sun
reflecting off of the passing cars and buses to catch a better glimpse. He
thought he had seen the distinctive blonde hair of the man whom he had just
found a bit too uneasy back at the Embassy.
The traffic moved at a maddening pace around this little ellipse.
Wilbur was sitting essentially in the middle of a huge grassy rotary. He saw
the man and then a stream of several buses and cars flooded past, apparently
having been held back somewhere by one of the few traffic lights. When the
traffic finally cleared momentarily again, the man was gone. But Wilbur was
sure it was the same thinning blonde hair, something which tended to
stand out amid the dark-haired Mexicans.
Wilbur began gnawing at his fist and wondered to himself whether the
man was following. He got up and moved at a brisker pace, trying valiantly to
fix his footsteps to the pavement with a degree of legerity, but inevitably losing
the battle against the heat of the day and the ever increasing tightening knots
within.
He suddenly realized that, absent mindedly, he had carried away part of
the newspaper from the Embassy. He became aware of the side of his arm
brushing against the top of the front section sticking from his side jacket
pocket.
The Embassy personnel were lackadaisical at times about putting the
papers on the pinch sticks and today all of them had been loose.
Why had he been so distracted? He would now have to walk back the
several blocks to return it. These Yankee newspapers were precious down
here, especially with such a fateful day at hand. He felt momentary shame.
He stopped a moment. No, with this man over there, his
nausea, he should just continue back to the apartment. He would have Mary
bring it back or return it himself, later in the day. He felt even worse,
now. It was only a portion of one paper. Readers would have to make do with
what they had. He could not help them right now. More important matters were
pressing in.
He pulled the paper out of his pocket to make sure it was the same
paper he had been reading at the Embassy. As he did so, a piece of paper
fell to the ground. Wilbur picked up the small white note, creased in
half, unfolded it and saw written in pencil several phrases:
"Greet thy friends by name, soon. Constant Velocity Joint, Reindeer Flow Per Henrik
Ring, Rang Her Man, Minimal Empty Shell, Open-Pit You, Adam Screamer
Carroll, Wilbur Julius Steep, Painful Baptist Door, Leviticus 16, Luke 23,
Acts 13. Join us. We are Jap Endowed."
For the first time since leaving North Carolina, he now precipitously
felt a sense that the ugliness of Key-enough and his associates had trailed him
to Mexico.
Maybe this man over there was no one in particular, just some sort of
signal to his sub-conscious mind. It was true that he had been trying to
forget the brief conversation with Billy Davis in Austin, the subsequent dream,
the image of the Confederate on the train, something still sticking in his
mind from Delilah.
Where had this note come from? It was not in the curiously small type.
Nor did it bear the name of Key-enough or anyone else familiar. There was no
date. The only connection to earlier notes was this strange citation to Bible verses.
So what? Anyone could have done that. It was ridiculous. It was nothing.
Besides, even if it was one of these silly notes from Key-enough, it may
have been in his jacket pocket for weeks, months. That often happened. He
would find dollar bills in his jacket pocket left there for ages. He was at times
a walking library receptacle of trivial receipts, notes and incidentals.
It was probably nothing, but he kept mulling it occasionally. He could
not get fully separated from it. There was something about that blonde man,
the way he had made eye contact; and then to see him again. He sensed
strongly there was a connection somewhere.
There had been, anyway, for several days something bothering him
periodically after each dusk, just below the surface in the nighttime roars
of this whirling city's gelatin turf, upon which there was exhibited a
strangely insistent amount of construction activity. It was just an immanent
feeling that something was being transmitted, aimed at him like a pistol
from the hip of the crazed, cracked merciless, smoking Cloud-usurped
imagination out of Dixieland, around Shelby maybe, Atlanta or from God knows
who or where.
Suddenly, from nowhere, a loud, thunderous European cathedral organ
chord of Bach bass notes hit him full blown. He covered his ears before
realizing it was just something in his mind to blot out the incessant
cacophony of traffic besieging his nerves.
As he experienced this very thought, he felt suddenly ill, as if
strangling for a moment, just a moment, for breath. The organ prelude
continued its blasting crack to his cranium.
The levee seemed ready to burst in his brain with a tide of thoughts.
He felt a rush of blood to his head and he believed for a moment that he
might be having a stroke. He felt faint and sweaty. He looked to the sky and
saw it turning. Vertigo was not something he often had, but now everything
was awhirl, like a mad carnival ride for which he hadn't sought or paid the
admission.
He looked back to the ground. It was swelling in waves. He
looked at passersby. They looked at him. Some children pointed in mock
derision, cupping their hands to their mouths, laughing and whispering to
each other about what they apparently perceived as a strange gringo
slugging forth before them.
As he continued to walk, now ready, with any new step, to vomit, he
managed to focus his attention on his right heel which had developed a
blister from the ill-fitment of some new shoes Mary had made him purchase to
replace the Darrow-esque holey-soled wing tips, turned practically to
moccasins over the course of two years worth of treading around Charlotte.
The infringed nerves beneath the blister began to pierce his sense patterns
so frequently that he could barely stand now the excruciating rubbing.
It did the trick, however, to rush his adrenaline and remove his mind
from thoughts of an incipient stroke or worse, the chase of an unknown force
from out the smoking mirror.
The organ was displaced by a slow muffle of traffic and footsteps.
Something suddenly hit him which had been rolling around now inside him for
weeks. He quickened his pace more to feel the sore the greater.
He had to tell someone what was in his head now and that someone had to
be Mary for there was no other someone anywhere nearby who he could trust.
6.
Arriving back at the "midget apartment", as he had come to call it, he
met Mary in a rush of emotion and told her of the episode and the invasion
of Russia. He presented an admixture of verbiage concerning, first, surreal
images regarding his dreams and, then, the geopolitical theories of Hitler,
how the whole thing was coming true and exploding apart: Hitler could
have the whole Heartland within his grasp within months. Where was our
country in all of this? Why was F.D.R., after the election, still cowtowing
to the neutralists, the "shilpit, shilly-shallying" America Firsters?
What about the dream before he left Shelby of the church and the coffin
and fascists presiding over his funeral? What about the recurring image of
the old Confederate? What about Delilah? What about? What about...?
****
III.
OF THE SMOKING MIRROR
Have I not reasons, beldams as you are,
Saucy and overbold? How did you dare
To trade and traffic with Macbeth
In riddles and affairs of death;
And I, the mistress of your charms,
The close contriver of all harms,
Was never call'd to bear my part,
Or show the glory of our art?
And which is worse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves for his own ends, not for you.
But make amends now: get you gone,
And at the pit of Acheron
Meet me i' the morning: thither he
Will come to know his destiny:
Your vessels and your spells provide,
Your charms and every thing beside,
I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end:
Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vaporous drop profound;
I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
And that distill'd by magic sleights
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion:
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hope 'bove wisdom, grace and fear:
And you know, security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy.
--Macbeth, Act III, Scene V.
1.
Wilbur ventured forth that Monday morning to the Embassy and read the
daily regimen of newspaper stories. He first examined the Sunday Times and
his attention, in flipping through, was drawn to a picture of a smiling
Lyndon Baines Johnson, the apparent Senator-elect from the State of Texas.
The article indicated that at the end of election day on Saturday, his lead
over Pappy O'Daniel was approximately 5,000 votes. The later returns had
reduced the lead to a slender and ever-decreasing margin and, while victory
was yet uncertain by early Sunday, Johnson was clinging to a narrow lead. It
looked as if the ever more powerful conservative anti-F.D.R. forces in
Texas had fallen a wee bit short of putting putty-faced Pappy into the
Senate. The Liberal Johnson seemed the heir apparent to the seat.
Wilbur smiled to himself at this good bit of news. Perhaps the
prospects for the doubtful state of egalitarian democracy within the State
which he and Mary had just traversed were not to be endured indefinitely. He
thought to himself that, with such a narrow victory margin at hand, who
knows, maybe he had in some small way with his salutatory address three
weeks earlier in Austin, been the salutary force needed to boost Johnson's
ballots enough to be the difference between more Southern demagoguery and
modernism in the making.
Wilbur felt suddenly potentially influential. George would be pleased
that, despite his friend having foregone the attempt to interview his
supposed alter-ego of disposition and "humble beginnings," he would
nevertheless be able forever to gloat a small bit, by implication at least,
that he may have helped the man make it.
Wilbur then thought better of his unguarded optimism and bridled it
with the self-admonition that he had better wait until this burly Texan, former
English teacher made his mark before purchasing banners, bunting and fireworks.
Johnson might, after all, turn out to be just another opportunistic Princely bum,
grasping for votes on the coattails of Liberalism while secretly intending to ride
whatever politically expedient wind which came blowing along. Tuck that away for
further, future analysis.
Wilbur now ambled from the Embassy, heading back to the apartment,
content to try to begin the novel--content that maybe he could affect
matters, laying the mines in place in its pages to blow the old
misconceptions from the brainwaves of the restive refugees from reality. He
would give it a go.
If it did not begin to work out soon, however, he would switch to a
non-fiction work by summer's end and possibly consult with Mary further,
calmly, about packing their scant belongings and utilizing the other end of
their roundtrip passage back to the States.
As he walked down Paseo de la Reforma, he was struck by the thought
that this was the day the mysterious note found in his drawer back in Shelby
had appointed for the rendezvous with Mr. X.
He scoffed at its silliness at this point. Maybe Delilah was for
real. But these silly coded people, cloaked in self-anointed mystery were
not. They had only been trying some sort of intimidation or attempting to
twist his thoughts backwards to run him into some monolithic wall of
lies and thereby spoil his credibility as an author. Essentially Kukus--the
same thing anyway. There was no need to listen or attend it further.
Everything was bound to be under control in the proper places.
He double-checked the continued presence of the little note in his
wallet, laying dormant there since the wee hours of May 29 when he had found
it in his desk mysteriously arriving there by unseen hands. It was real and
still there. The "La Reforma" of the note, he knew now, was the
Hotel de la Reforma where he had received the excellent haircut on Saturday.
He stopped a moment on the crowded sidewalk and examined this crumpled
piece of paper. He felt anxiety welling in his chest. Something said
"don't," but he was compelled not to listen. He was, after all, a writer. If
there were nothing of which to be afraid, why not investigate and write about
these creepers?
He thought another moment of Delilah. He suddenly felt a warm
complacency. Goodrich, no doubt, had done the same sort of
participant-observation in the research for his writing somewhere along the
line and come to this thing--this intuitive impulse expressed in those
pages about something, maybe something yet to happen.
He now had a new idea for his novel. He could even utilize the same
characters, the same Civil War scenery, the Reconstruction era, the whole
business he had outlined to the Foundation and use these jackals for the
fodder to connect the past paradigmatically to the present. It would accomplish
the more interesting task of writing about the now, the tumult of the extant now,
but would make it safer for all concerned. Sure. That is what Goodrich must
have done to get there.
He could use his anonymous poem as the fulcrum--have it
found by his Old Irish great-grandfather, touch some chord of
remorse and rebirth over a lost family member. That would cinch everything
together and communicate the thing from the Civil War to the present. It could
be accomplished quickly and he could likely have a first draft in the mail to
to New York by year's end, maybe sooner.
He had the time. He must remember mama and papa and share their abiding
faith. In four weeks since the speech, nothing had happened to him or the
world except the expected--regardless of its cruelty. Nevertheless, Hitler
and the boys could not conquer the whole thing in a few months. There was
that precious time within which to do his bit to prevent it. That was all he
could do. But he must be about it and now.
He would simply study these silly would-be malefactors right at his
doorstep in Mexico, combined with what he already knew of them from his
Southern roots, and cloak them as the worst mongers of regional and racial
division--the Princes, Hectors, a Buchanan or two, drunken Silenus, the
cunning--though eternally hell-bound to rock-pushing in Tartarus--Sisyphus,
the Napoleonic Apollo, some Disney gnomes--including, maybe, Oswald, the
Rabbit--and all sorts of grafters of corruption of the ante-bellum, bellum
and post-bellum South.
They would not plant in him some silly idea of curse--that he was or
could well become the likes of Hamlet, Dr. Faust, Tantalus, Ajax,
Prometheus, or the servant with an appointment in Samarra. They loved to
think about Fate and their Destiny with themselves and their goats of Aaron
properly posited within the framed canvas. Oh, were they not so wonderfully
original and cute? They were not looking for the "scapegoat," no more than
Herod, Pilate or Jeff Davis. No, just as their progenitors, they were
looking for the "Lord's goat"! Okay, he would oblige them. And he would
simply hold up a mirror--obscuring in his hands, perhaps, a cross and a
wooden stake--and show them where Aaron's lots fell.
Just then, a thought struck him. What was July 10? It was significant.
He knew it. He must remember to check that. It fit their perverted absurdity
of prosaism all too well to be ignored. Maybe time was running more quickly
than he imagined.
Regardless, now, right now, was the moment, then, to take advantage of
this unique opportunity to come face-to-face for the first time in
foreign territory with one of these rattlers and perhaps thereby glimpse a
more microscopic and socio-anthropologic view of their serpentine motives
and, moreover, methods and actions. So close, eyeball glimmering close,
he could glean from their countenances the urgency or not of their task and
thus the urgency or not of his own and, thereby, the most suitable course of
action. He would have his sub rosa joke all the while in their presence. Very
satisfying, indeed.
The time for meeting had been set for noon. It was now 11:10. He
wrestled with his conscience over the promise he had made to Mary, but
finally opted to cheat forth into this unknown alone. Curiosity
killed the cat, he knew. Mama had echoed the old expression hundreds of
times. But curiosity had him now, irrevocably. And there was no way out of it.
Besides, collateral to his curiosity and need for novel food, he decided it
would not hurt to follow up a little bit and maybe, once and for all, put
his mind to rest that all of this was but poppycock, meant somehow only to
instill anxiety for some reason--maybe simply to withdraw his attention from
his work and delay or prevent the novel from being written.
Would not the Agrarians, possibly, have had ample motive to undertake
just such tactics to prevent the writing of a work, bound to reach a larger
audience than the succès d'estime of The Mind of the South? Maybe they had
done something similar to Crane in a different context and that is what
happened down here a decade back.
By the same token, would the prospect of a novel out of the subject
matter of The Mind not be the malediction to the Kite wallowers and white
puritans, always seemingly in need of some B-movie style cloak-and-rope,
pyrotechnic spectacular accomplished in stealth to whet their appetites for
fantasy, increasing in the offing their self-delusion of omnipotence over their little
disappearing world of yesterday? Would they not be made significantly more
comfortable by the belief that they had somehow frightened him into
compliance by his omission to fulfill his publicly announced intention to
write the thing?
He would not so easily be cajoled, intimidated, or marched away from
the task. He would ease his mind, now, by strolling calmly to La Reforma and
making it well-known to any who might be observing that he was not afraid of
them in the least.
He approached the distinctively tall white building for the second time
in two days and strode into the lobby, past the desk. He sat down on a velvet couch
encircling a support column--some Doric thing. He waited and read some local
newspaper written in English, aimed at American tourists. It had perfunctory
news on very few matters of any interest to him, even had it been written in
depth as it wasn't.
He waited.
Finally, it was 12:15. The appointed hour had passed and nothing had
occurred.
"See? The silly anxiety was all for naught." He could hear Mary's
soothing voice practically verbalizing the words to him as he thought them.
As he stood to leave, he heard a voice: "Mr. Cash, I am happy to
meet you. I am sorry to be a few minutes late. That's what I get for making
my appointments so far in advance, yes? I have waited a long time for the
pleasure of meeting you."
Wilbur turned, stunned by the realization of instant familiarity. He
did not recognize the man standing before him. He had already convinced
himself of the silliness of the whole matter and now, subito, it had taken
the form of substance--just what substance was yet to be unveiled. The man
was short, with thick eyeglasses. He introduced himself as Joe K. He had a
noticeable German accent.
Wilbur did not know whether to laugh or cry. "Joe K.": Is that a joke?
He did not dare utter the thought, for somehow this man or someone
associated with him may have found a way surreptitiously to slip a note into
his desk drawer in his parents' home on Morgan Street. The man had to be
considered dangerous. He stood shuffling his feet, with a queer grin of
self-satisfaction as he seemed to analyze every nuance of Wilbur's expression,
as a doctor might size up a patient on first meeting him. But this individual was
no doctor. He hadn't the gleam of intelligence in his eyes. There was madness,
slithering madness, a clear blithe alienation to the world, calm, but betrayed
by everything through time.
Wilbur said nothing. Silence was the best advocate to maintain the coign
of vantage.
The man continued: "I haven't much time so I will get right to the point,
yes? You are a man of letters, I know. I assume you like Shakespeare."
Wilbur issued no response.
"Well, Mr. Cash, you are here and I am here. Let us not be absurd now
and cause some scene. The least you can do is talk."
Wilbur continued in silence.
"Alright. Well, I assume you have read Shakespeare's Merchant of
Venice. Your father is a merchant, I understand. So you will appreciate a
good bargain when you hear it. Your sister and her husband live not far from
Fort Bragg, I understand. They will very definitely appreciate you listening
to my offer. You would want all of them to have a nice, safe Christmas this
year, yes?"
The voice tremulously issued the anxiety and insistence of threat.
Wilbur's actively obdurate silence suddenly turned to seething anger at this
boiled-over nut's temerarious suggestion of some Hobson's choice with regard
to his family. His emotions welled to the breaking point:
"How the hell do you know about my family? Who the hell are you?"
"Come now, Mr. Cash, Sleepy is it? Let uss not play games? You talked
to Malcolm? You read my note. You are here. Let us do business now. You are
a journalist with some very good reputation. We need you within our cause.
We do not wish to see war. We only wish to see what is rightful in the
world of nations. You could be instrumental in insuring peace for all.
"I wish to take out a loan, shall we say, as did the merchant, Antonio.
I am prepared to pay ample interest, so to speak. All you need to do is take
a trip with your wife to Hawaii and do a certain story on certain things
there. I'm sure some pecuniary remuneration and a few weeks out of this
terrible heat would be of interest to the both of you, no? Better there
than, say, Guadalajara, yes? This time of year, it is a boiling cauldron,
there. Do you know Guadalajara?
"In truth, you might not even have to leave here. The next few
days will determine the scope of our needs.
"No matter--when you get back from Hawaii, you simply give me your
notes--all of your notes, especially the things that would be, shall we say,
indiscreet of you to offer for print? I think you have ample understanding
of the rest of my meaning. A smart man like you knows much that people do
not tell him, yes?
"As I say, I have not much time, now. Think it over until tomorrow.
I will see you again, here, tomorrow afternoon at 3:30, in the bar
next door. Do not bother alerting your friend Daniels or La Policia. Those
gendarmes will do nothing. Your friend Daniels already thinks, how shall we
say, being generous, that you have a bit of an overactive imagination, that
perhaps you are a bit paranoid, yes? You are trapped. Best go along
with the plan. Good for health, no? It will inure to your great
benefit. Oh, and, of course, to that of your family members, too.
"Remember The Merchant. Do not be the Jew, Shylock.
Exact too much interest and... How do the French say? 'J'accuse'? You see
my drift? The man who exacts the pound of flesh from the Christian,
well... Let us not discuss this nastiness further. We have of late lost all
our mirth, no? You might say, after all, that this is just some more
lend-lease--you lend to us some of your time for a new lease on life. What
is it the British say, 'Honi sois qui mal y pense'? We are, after all, all
crusaders in the same cause. You are now learning much of crusades and
crusaders and the strength of real crusades, yes? Let us not be the fool as,
say, Macbeth? Remember his ignoring his duties to be the serpent 'neath it?
Or Hamlet? I know you have the photograph accurately now.
"By the way, do you know of Noche Triste?
"...Well, back to silence, yes? Anyway, this is La Noche Triste. Be
careful. We would not wish any accidents. As they say here, hasta mañana,
la cucaracha."
The ass turned and walked out of the hotel.
Wilbur stood for a moment in angry silence, unable to think for the
redness abounding. He followed suit out of the hotel and immediately walked
back to the apartment, wishing he had never stepped into this maelstrom.
How could it have happened? He had never acquiesced to anything of any
sort, nor transmitted any information for or to anyone, Key-enough or anyone
else. But the ass didn't mention Key-enough, did he? But the note--he knew of
the note in Shelby. That must have been Key-enough's doing. But no. Don't know.
His mind turned now back to the speech in Austin. The man had said
nothing of it, but clearly Pearl Harbor was the issue--but to what end? How could
the book...? Was it simply bizarre coincidence?
He arrived home at 1:30. Mary was out. He went to the typewriter and
wrote out what had happened. He considered Merchant of Venice and
Shylock's fate to be judged as a Jew by Christians for his usury and the
initially adjudicated requirement that the liquidated damages clause of the
contract between Shylock and Antonio be executed, that is, a pound of
flesh be exacted as interest for Antonio's impecunity to repay the loan.
Shylock is ordered by Portia, masquerading as a judge, to cut from Antonio
exactly one pound of flesh, no more, no less. If he should slip and shed a
single drop of Antonio's blood or take more than his exactment, the court
admonishes that he would lose all his property. And, in the end, Shylock,
to avoid the sanction of the law, relents from his lusting advance for
Antonio's flesh. Shylock, nevertheless, incurs the penalty of the court for
having attempted to take the life of a Venetian citizen. He is ordered to
forfeit all his worldly goods, half to Antonio, half to the state. That
penalty is then remitted by the charity of Antonio to half of Shylock's
goods, provided Shylock becomes a Christian. He does.
Only a Nazi, Wilbur thought, could employ such a metaphorical
scene from a work of literature and pervert it so to their own use as this
creature had.
As he heard someone approaching the door to the apartment, he quickly
placed the unfinished stream of consciousness, consisting of eighteen pages,
in the middle of a box of blank typewriter paper.
No sooner than he had done so, Mary unlocked the door and entered with
a small bag of groceries in hand. She first asked him why he had locked the
door. He shrugged with uncertainty.
It was shortly after 6:00. The sun was starting to set. It would soon
be the beginning of the 421st anniversary of Noche Triste.
2.
Wilbur spent the next two hours telling Mary that they were in very
grave peril for their lives. She made dinner, pretending not to be
concerned, listening only casually. He seemed quite annoyed by her disinterest.
He was insistent.
She put dinner out on the table and grabbed his hand, gently beckoning
him over to the table.
He obliged, still talking incessantly of the danger and the immediate
threat by "Nazis or God knows who. They are after us. They will kill us.
You must listen."
She urged him to eat, complimenting herself on her fabulous baked
chicken. "You will like it. It's your mother's recipe. I spent half
the afternoon rounding up the ingredients for this meal. Southern cooking is
hard to come by down here without the addition of chili peppers. Go on, now, eat.
Mama's home cooking. Yum-yum."
The little distraction served nothing to dissociate his ideation from
the perceived terror at hand. He nibbled at the chicken and rice and yams.
But there was no appetite. Suddenly, he bolted from the table.
He lowered his voice to a whisper and crouched as if hiding: "Do you
hear them? They are there, in the hallway. They mean to kill us. Hear that?"
She listened and heard nothing and told him so. "For once, in fact,"
she said, "that hallway is quiet this time of night."
"No, you can't hear? They are saying they mean to kill me. Please
listen, Mary. Please, for God's sakes, these are our lives we are talking
about. I know. I have seen them. They have followed me all week, for a long
time. They read the book, some book. They do not want me to finish another
one. They want something from me, something I will not do."
She insisted there was nothing there. "Let me open the door.
There's nothing, no one at all."
"No, by no means of Jupiter open that door."
He crept to the window, trying not to make any sounds. He reached out
with one hand, cautiously keeping his body out of full view through the
window, and closed the double casements tight.
"Wilbur, we will roast in this heat. For goodness sake. They can't get
in those high windows. Calm down."
He then ran to the kitchen area and grabbed the large, jagged butcher
knife she had used to cut the chicken. He began wildly slicing the air.
"I'm ready. Let them try to take it from us now."
"Take what? What's wrong? Let's get some rest."
Beneath the calm self-awareness, Mary was now terrified, but of Wilbur,
not of some unseen, potential intruder. Without a phone in the apartment,
she felt helpless. She had known this man for over three years, had lived
with him for over six months, had spent practically every moment of their
existence with him during the previous month. He had never exhibited such
abject terror before. To the contrary, he was normally calm, except for
momentary fits of temper on occasion over world events. He was slow to blow, quick to release
steam when the kettle whistled and just as quick to turn off the heat. Not
now. This was an aberrant event never seen.
She thought about the moment on the street in New Orleans when she had
shamed him into his better fettle. She tried again in the same vein.
"You're yelling at me. Put down that knife. You're frightening me,
Attila."
She now knew of nothing else to do but laugh, seeing no instantaneous
change in demeanor, as had been the previous result.
She borrowed leaves:
"Woh, well lookee here. If it isn't Wild Bill Hickok taming the wild frontier like
Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, himself. Plan to go back to fight at the Alamo, Davy? Oooh,
or maybe you've become the Terrible Turk, is that it? A jerked Turk in Mexico, huh?
Gobble, gobble. Just a little early for Thanksgiving carving, there, Turkey boy, isn't it?"
She put her hands to her hips, mocking a gunslinger, closed her eyes to
a slit, and rocked backward slightly.
The silliness struck a chord. He put the knife back on the counter, released
the grip of his hand turned red from balled tension, and noticeably calmed.
"You're sure you don't hear anything? I haven't been drinking, you
know. I'm sure I heard something out there, Mary. They were talking."
"Not a thing, Bill, not one blasted gunshot or rebel yell."
He faintly smiled as he seemingly returned to some semblance of
self-awareness. He put down the knife and said that he feared he was losing
his mind under the strain.
"If you only knew, Mary. I wish I could tell you, but I am afraid for
you to know anything. They know a lot, more than I thought possible. It might
endanger you."
"Alright, so don't tell me, Wild Billy Bob."
"No, really, this is not cute stuff. I know you don't understand, but we
are in danger. I think we should leave here, tomorrow. Maybe, we should go
back home--maybe tonight."
"Wilbur, that's absurd. We just got here. It's just the sickness. Like
Daniels said, it will pass. Just be patient. You'll conquer the novel."
"Mary, please, don't trivialize this. It's not the novel. It's the Nazis or
someone very like them. They have been following me, maybe you, too. I wish
you would be serious and listen for awhile. It happened today. I know it sounds
unreal, but these nut-buggies thrive on just that sort of dependency on others not
believing in their outrages. How the hell do you think they conquered two-thirds
of Europe in less than three years?"
After a bit more of his insistence and her counter-insistence at the precarious
nature of their plight, she offered to read from the Bible. He indicated his agreement.
It was an atypical suggestion and an even more atypical acquiescence. He wished her
to read from Ecclesiastes. She proceeded to read the whole book of "The Preacher",
the one whose Hebrew name was Koheleth. By the last of it, he was sound asleep.
Noche triste was over. No blood had been shed.