The Years with Laura Diaz

moment.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did you tell them, Harry Jaffe?”

“Harry Jaffe, rest in peace.”

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

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

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

“Yes, he was brave facing the committee.”

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

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

Bell stood up and shook hands with Laura Diaz.

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

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

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

2.

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

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

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

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

Laura Diaz went on wondering about the reason for the distance the exiles had kept from Harry, and why, at the same time, they had accepted him as part of the group. Laura wished he would tell her the truth, refusing to accept third-party versions, but he told her without smiling that if it was true that defeat is an orphan and victory has a hundred fathers, it was also the case that lies have many children but truth lacks progeny. Truth is solitary and celibate, which is why people prefer lies. Lies put us in touch with one another, make us happy, make us participants and accomplices. Truth isolates us and transforms us into islands surrounded by a sea of suspicion and envy. That’s why we play so many lying games. Then we won’t have to suffer the solitude of truth.

“Well, then, Harry, what do we know, you and I, about one another?”

“I respect you. You respect me. Together we’re enough.”

“But we’re not enough for the world.”

“That’s true.”

It was true that Harry was exiled in Mexico, like the Hollywood Ten and the others. Communists or not, it didn’t matter. There were some unique cases, like the old Jewish producer Theodore and his wife, Elsa, who hadn’t been accused of anything and who exiled themselves in solidarity; movies-they said-were made in collaboration, eyes wide open, and if someone was guilty of something or the victim of someone else, then all of them, without exception, had to be guilty.

“Fuenteovejuna, one for all and all for one.” Laura Diaz smiled, remembering Basilio Baltazar.

There were recalcitrant ones who were faithful to Stalin and the U.S.S.R. but disillusioned with Stalinism, who didn’t want to behave like Stalinists in their own land. “If we Communists were to take over in the United States, we too would slander, exile, and kill dissident writers,” said the man with the pompadour.

“Then we wouldn’t be real Communists. We’d be Russian Stalinists. They are products of a religious authoritarian culture that has nothing to do with Marx’s humanitarianism or Jefferson’s democracy,” answered his tall, nearsighted companion.

“Stalin has corrupted the Communist idea forever, don’t kid yourself.”

“I’m going to go on hoping for democratic socialism.”

Laura, who gave neither face nor name to these voices, blamed herself for not doing so. But she was right: similar arguments were repeated by different voices of different men and women who came and went, were there