50
PARTISAN REVIEW
outside of its atmosphere, to see, not alone experience, themselveSi as work–
ers reaching out to workers for help. The hands they were taught to
clasp were those of prospective employers, when they condescended to it,
by proxy. Yet, watch ing Tommy, I learned a few significant things. He
walked the streets and became intrigued with the bafflement of this other
aura of unemployment, just as he had once been baffled and intrigued by
the "class" of his wife. And that although the immediate fact was still
the
fact tor him.
He told me one day, as though were telling me he had played a
game of handball, that he had put back some evicted people's furniture.
"Alone?" I asked, trying to look blank. "No, with some other guys."
"Wasn't that against the law?" I asked. "Sure, but what's the law."
I
realized then that of course Tommy and h:s kind never had believed in
The Law, they believed in laws that worked. We walked along saying
nothing, which usually is the thing to do with Tommy, he doesn't like
talk. "You know," he said, "I enjoyed myself. Some of these guys got
class to them." "\Vho," I said. " do you realize that you were probably
helping a bunch ,of Communiits ?" "Sure, they told me they were. They
weren't ashamed to tell me."
"\Vell," I said, blinking, "would you do
it again?" He thought for a long time.
"If
it came up," he said.
It
was as though Tommy had found himself a temporary job. The
fact that he hadn't been paid only made it seem clean, these days. But
is was only the particular group that had asked him for a hand as he was
passing by, that had "class" for him. He didn't think all Communists had
class or that Communism was worthwhile because some had it. Tommy
wasn't interested in minds, ideas or ideals. Realms like these were "deep"
and deserved only a gentle grin. He went on reading the
Daily Sun
and the
Saturday Evening Post,
saying that a lot of it, in the magazine,
was the bunk, but he liked it anyway, he like a good story. As to the
newspapers, it never occured to him to question their news: News was
news. But he thought maybe the
Daily Sun
was. leaving out a lot.
She had a cousin in the city who was "left" and articulate. Tommy
called him "one of the Red-haired boys." Her cousin would come up
once in a while and, eventually, talk economics to Tommy. Tommy
would listen and grin. A "talker" was a marvel to him, though suspect.
Radicali5m was prophecy to her, and hence anathema. Her cousin gave
Tommy a "left" magazine without telling him what it was and saying it
wasn't "deep" at all. Tammy read it through, handed it back, and said:
"They talk too much.
It
don't get them anywhere talking like that."
Asked how, Tommy objected to the language, specifically to the language
of a certain story and more specifically to a phrase "police pup" in that
