“I wish little girls were all Jews from the slums,
And I were the Judge, I’d blister their bums!
Oh roll your leg over…!”
Yes, and a bum, too, one of my best roles, in George M. Cohan’s Tavern, our senior play — and a prosecuting attorney: when I laid my case before the American people and asked them to judge me, yea or nay, during the fund crisis last fall, I was in effect presenting them with the climax of Night of January 16th. But the important one — right now, anyway — was my lead in Bird-in-Hand! That play was about the conflict between political parties, and how love bridged the gap between ideologies. I hadn’t played the lover, of course, that role was long behind me, I’d been old Thomas Greenleaf, the girl’s father who stood in the way: “But look here, my girl, class is class, we’ve always known who was who and which hat fitted which head!” But as the villain, I was also the hero, the bridging took place in me, and I had ever since been the healer of rifts, the party unifier, the fundamentalist who could perceive the Flux, the hardliner who knew how to cry…
“I wish little girls were all free-loving Commies,
And I were Joe Stalin, I’d make them all mommies!
Oh roll your leg over, oh roll your leg over,
Oh roll your leg over, the man in the moon!”
And then I’d realized what it was that had been bothering me: that sense that everything happening was somehow inevitable, as though it had all been scripted out in advance. But bullshit! There were no scripts, no necessary patterns, no final scenes, there was just action, and then more action! Maybe in Russia History had a plot because one was being laid on, but not here—that was what freedom was all about! It was what Uncle Sam had been trying to tell me: Act — act in the living present! I’d been sitting around waiting for the sudden inspiration, the stroke of luck, the chance encounter, forgetting everything that life had taught me! Like that night I gave myself to Jesus in Los Angeles, I had to get up off my ass and move, I had to walk down that aisle — not this aisle, of course (I cautioned myself and sat back down), it was too full of crazy people — but the point was I had to make a commitment and act on it! Deeds, not words: that was Ike’s hewgag, but now, unless I wanted to break my back on the railroad track, I had to make it mine!
This, then, was my crisis: to accept what I already knew. That there was no author, no director, and the audience had no memories — they got reinvented every day! I’d thought: perhaps there is not even a War between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness! Perhaps we are all pretending! I’d been rather amazed at myself, having thoughts like these. Years of debate and adversary politics had schooled me toward a faith in denouement, and so in cause and consequence. The case history, the unfolding pattern, the rewards and punishments, the directed life. Yet what was History to me? I was never one to keep diaries or save old letters, school notes, or even old legal briefs, and I had won both sides of a debating question too often not to know what emptiness lay behind the so-called issues. It all served to confirm an old belief of mine: that all men contain all views, right and left, theistic and atheistic, legalistic and anarchical, monadic and pluralistic; and only an artificial — call it political — commitment to consistency makes them hold steadfast to singular positions. Yet why be consistent if the universe wasn’t? In a lawless universe, there was a certain power in consistency, of course—but there was also power in disruption! I’d let go of the armrests and, farting liberally, had begun to feel a lot better — though troubled at the same time with the uneasy feeling of having learned something truly dangerous, like the secret of the atom bomb — which was not a physical diagram or a chemical formula, but something like a hole in the spirit. The motive vacuum. And I’d understood at last the real meaning of the struggle against the Phantom: it was a war against the lie of purpose!
A secretary had staggered through the aisle on her way to the toilet, and three guys and a woman, shouting, “PANTY RAID!”, had tackled her and commenced to rip her skirt off. She’d tumbled hard into the empty seat next to me, giving me a jarring thump, but I’d hardly noticed — I could have been hurt, but I’d given little thought to the possibility of personal injury to myself, not because I was “being brave” but because such considerations just were not important in view of the larger issues involved. The whole nation is falling on its ass, I’d thought, my own career is atrophying, only a wild and utterly unprecedented action will save it, will save them, get things going again! But what?
And then, as they’d dragged the dazed woman out of the seat and spread-eagled her down at one end of the car, it had suddenly come to me what I had to do! I had to step in and change the script! It was dangerous, I knew, politically it could be the kiss of death, but it was an opportunity as well as a risk, and my philosophy had always been: don’t lean with the wind, don’t do what is politically expedient, do what your instinct tells you is right! As Uncle Sam had once lectured me, if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him — and my instincts now told me, as down at the far end the secretary screamed, the crowd roared, and the Look Ahead, Neighbor Special shot underground and began to decelerate: You must go on up to Sing Sing! You’ve got to reach them! Promise them anything — first-class passage to Moscow, free time on TV, box seats at Ebbetts Field, a Cabinet post, anything! But get those confessions! Stop these executions! Don’t let that show go on tonight! Hurry!
In Penn Station, the others — hastily combing their hair, wiping away the blood and vomit — had jumped down off the train and rushed to follow the signs to the Times Square subway trains, but I’d ducked away, found a phone booth, called the Warden up at Sing Sing Prison: “Hello, Warden? This is Vice President, uh, Richard Nixon calling. Are the, the atom spies still up there?”
“Yes, sir. We’re keeping them here under guard until the last possible moment.”
“Good. I will, ah, be coming up to talk to them.”
“You will—?”
“I’m catching the next train.”
“I see…uh…is it clemency, Mr. Nixon?” he’d asked hopefully.
“A new offer,” I’d said.
“Boy, you fellows are really keeping the pressure on them, aren’t you?”
“Pressure?”
“Well, I mean, since you sent Bennett here a couple of weeks ago, you’ve hardly let up.”
“Bennett—?”
“The Bureau of Prisons Director—”
“Ah.” I didn’t know about this. “Well, we’ve, uh, got some new information. Listen, will it be difficult for me to get in?”
“It’s all cordoned off, but you should have no trouble passing through.”
“No, that’s true, but, uh, it’s important that I draw as little attention to myself as possible. You know, in case it, ah, all falls through…”
“Oh yes…”
“Could you arrange to pass me through under some other name?”