By a strange coincidence, party comrades were to bring me this book right in the middle of our demonstration against the New York Times. Several of them observed for quite a while, even helping us hand out leaflets.
After that meeting, Carol invited us to her place; she lives in Brooklyn, six or eight other members of her party live in the same building – it's like a party cell. We went by subway, then on foot. Alexander, suspicious Alexander, hooked on Freudianism, dropped behind the rest of the company and said to me in a whisper, "Listen, why are they all so flawed, don't you see it? Look at those girls – there's something wrong with them. Carol herself is normal, but even at that, she seems to me to have some sexual problem."
"Listen, Alya, what do you want?" I said. "Revolutionaries have always been like this, in my observation. You can find flaws in Lenin or anyone you please. Does that matter to you and me? What we need is a clique; you know you have to belong to some clique in this world. Who else accepts you, who's interested in you? But they accept you and me, they need us, they invited us. We have one way out: go to them. Aren't we flawed, you and I? You must agree we are, to some extent."
I was right. We seemed to have every reason to be drifting, not necessarily toward the Workers Party, but toward the dissatisfied of this world. The satisfied had no fucking need of us. Why we would not go to them, to the satisfied, was another question.
We arrived at Carol's roomy apartment, which she shared with a girl friend. Her roommate was asleep somewhere in back. We settled in the living room, Carol made some sandwiches, we drank the beer we had bought, and talked. Later the orator came, Peter. They asked us a lot of questions, we asked a lot of questions, the evening dragged on till after two in the morning. I had some sexual hopes for Carol, as for every person at that time. Despite her sex, I found her agreeable for some reason. Roughly speaking, I wanted to make love with her, but people kept coming and going, all the neighbors were at Carol's, and I couldn't even get a word with her – except that she sat on her heels by the couch where I had found room, and sometimes translated what I didn't understand, without letting me yield my place on the couch to her. That was as intimate as we got.
Finally everyone left. Alexander and I were the last to leave. Why the last? She would not let us go with everyone else. "Don't all leave at once," she said. In company, with other people, she was gay and evidently very witty, since people laughed at her words from time to time – unfortunately, I understood almost none of her jokes. She crawled around on the floor, there weren't many chairs, all the guests preferred to sit on the floor, Carol preferred it too.
She came put and saw us to the subway. Outdoors it proved to be very chilly, ft had suddenly turned much colder. We got to the subway entrance; she was about to take leave of us, but I said to her, "Carol, excuse me, I need a word with you in private.
"Excuse me," I said to Alexander, "one moment."
"No problem," Alexander said.
We walked away. I took her by the arms and said, "Do you want me to stay with you, Carol?"
She put her arms around me and said, "You're so nice, but perhaps your friend wants to talk with you?"
I didn't quite understand her, we stood in the cold, I was practically shaking with cold, we kissed and stood with our arms around each other. She was thin all over, nothing to her, and yet she had a daughter thirteen years old. The daughter lived with her parents in Illinois.
"You're very nice," Carol said softly. "Tomorrow, on Sunday, I'll be in Manhattan, I have to stop by the office. I forgot my new hat there, I bought it yesterday. I'm leaving for three days to see my parents in Illinois, and I wanted to show them my hat. I'll call you tomorrow and we'll get together."
I was very cold and tired, and I didn't insist. Perhaps I should have. But I was freezing. We hugged again and kissed, and she left. "Go along," I told her, "you'll freeze."
While Alexander and I rode the subway we had a lively discussion of our new party comrades. Alexander said it was all clear to him. I called on him to abstain from conclusions for the time being; it was too early to decide, on the basis of one meeting, how we should view them. We got off at Broadway. Its sidewalks and pavements, as usual in the cold, were belching clouds of steam. Alexander turned left toward his Forty-fifth Street, I went up and to the right. In the all-night eateries people sat and chewed.
She did not call the next day; I waited for her call till two. This upset me greatly, I was already thinking of her as my beloved; such is my nature. I had much more in common with her than with any of the rest. In addition to being a revolutionary she was also a journalist, and quite recently the Worker – the organ of the American Communist Party – had come down hard on her for her article on Leonid Plyushch, a Ukrainian dissident.
She did not call, but that morning and the night before, I had accustomed myself to the thought that she would be my beloved, I had even thought how I would dress her – and now this. I don't like it when things fall through. I was very upset and did not immediately regain my composure that day.
She turned up several days later. She apologized. She hadn't come in for the hat on Sunday; first thing in the morning, she had headed straight to the airport and flown to Illinois; she hadn't had time to come in for the hat, the flight was very early, and she hadn't wanted to wake me. "After all, you went to bed very late the night before," she said. We arranged to go to lunch together. We met.
We sat across from each other and talked about what we were doing. Alexander and I were plotting our demonstration at the time, and I told her about our plans. Suddenly she said, "You know, I want to tell you that I have a friend. I feel very awkward, I like you, you're nice, but I've had this friend now for several years. He's not a member of our party, but he's a leftist and works in a leftist publishing house."
My face showed nothing. I was already so used to blows of fate that this wasn't even a blow. Never mind, I'll survive, I thought, although it's no fun when your dreams crumble to dust. In my imagination we had been living together and working jointly for the party.
"Okay," I said simply. That was the end of my romance with her, but our political relationship continues to this day, although I am disillusioned with the Workers Party as an effective party.
After lunch that day we walked along Fifth Avenue, heading for Madison; she had to buy coffee for the office. Across from St. Patrick's I asked her, "What do you think, Carol, will there be revolution in America in our lifetime?"
"Definitely," Carol said without a moment's thought. "Otherwise why would I work for the party?"
"I want to do some shooting, Carol," I told her. And I meant it.
"You will, Edward," she said, grinning.
You're thinking we were two bloodthirsty villains who dreamed of seeing America and the whole world bleed. Nothing of the kind: I was the son of a Communist officer – my father had served his whole life in the ranks of the NKVD; that's right, the secret police – and she was the daughter of a puritan Protestant from Illinois.
I repeat – what had I seen of this life? Eternal semistarvation, vodka, abominable little rooms. Why does a man who sells vodka, who has a liquor store, gain the acceptance of society, real acceptance, while a man who writes poetry comes all the way around the world simply to gain nothing, find nothing? And what's more they take away the last thing he clings to – love. Eddie has fantastic strength, how else would I hold on, with my constitution, how else?
Carol told me a lot about America and its system. She told me about the Boston racial conflicts – her party newspaper was writing about them at the time – about how the newspapers conceal information when whites attack blacks, or, vice versa, inflate it if blacks attack whites. She told me that it was mainly Latin-Americans and blacks who had fought in Vietnam. And there was lots more she told me.