“How so?”
“I grew up in Mexico, in the Revolution. Being a Communist was just an ordinary household thing. About like fish on Fridays.”
“I grew up in a country like that also. New York in the twenties. You ever hear of Eugene V. Debs?”
“I think so.”
“So. Grew up in Mexico, but you are a citizen of the United States, this much I know from working on your film contract. You were born here, moved to Mexico at the age of twelve as I recall, returning when exactly?”
“September of ’40. Before that, I was here two years to attend school.”
He was making notes. “Where and when?”
“Potomac Academy, Washington, D.C., ’32 and ’33.”
“District of Columbia in ’32. The summer of the Bonus Army riots.”
“I know. I was in them. I was sick a few weeks from the tear gas.”
He looked up. “You were in the Bonus Army riots?”
“By accident. I was trying to make a delivery from the A&P.”
“Holy smokes. I will not put this in your dossier.”
“I don’t think my dossier is going to be problematic.”
“Mr. Shepherd. Should I call you Harry?”
“No. Just Shepherd is fine. Without the Mr.”
“Shepherd. In seventy-five words or less, how would you describe your dossier?”
“Empty. That’s the whole truth. I spent almost all my life until now putting food on other people’s plates. Eating their leftovers, if any. So you could say my sentiments lodge in the proletarian quarter. The worker control of industry strikes me as a decent idea. But I’m not a member of anything. Is that seventy-five words?”
“Or less. You are concise.”
“I don’t even vote. My secretary needles me about that.”
“You believe in the class struggle, but you don’t vote?”
“This country is a puzzle. In Mexico even the conservatives grant the power of the syndicates. But here, during the strikes, the most liberal politicians called the Mine Workers president a coal-black son of Satan. The conservatives probably just thought he was Satan père. It’s a pretty watery broth. Republicans, Democrats.”
“This I will not deny.”
“In the war they were all friends with Stalin, but now he’s also joined the Satan family line. That one I agree with. This letter they’ve sent me, I only want to understand it. So I won’t step in something. I tend to do that, step in things.”
He sat staring, the ash end of his cigarette growing long and white. “I see. This letter worries you because you’re thinking you may get hit with somebody else’s gas on your way to the A&P.”
“This letter confounds me. I know what communism is. But a few weeks ago, my secretary was voted out of her Woman’s Club because she asked a girl from Russia to give a lecture. Just a schoolgirl.”
“Shepherd, my friend. This month, in certain quarters, people are burning the Graphic Survey magazine because it contains a picture story on life in Russia. Photographs of farms. Windmills, whatever they have on farms. Russian cows. This incites people to bonfires.”
“What do you think is frightening them?”
“Hearst news. If the paper says everyone this season will be wearing a Lilly Daché hat that resembles an armadillo, they will purchase the hat. If Hearst tells them to be afraid of Russia, they will buy that too.”
“If the hat is too ridiculous, not everyone buys it.”
Artie finally ashed his cigarette, then paused to light a new one from the old, which he left burning in the ashtray, presumably for ambiance. He reorganized his S-shaped body into a thoughtful pose against the desk. “Do you want to know my theory?”
“Of course.”
“I think it’s the bomb.”
“People are afraid of the bomb?”
“Yes, I believe that is the heart of the matter. When that bomb went off over Japan, when we saw that an entire city could be turned to fire and gas, it changed the psychology of this country. And when I say ‘psychology,’ I mean that very literally. It’s the radio, you see. The radio makes everyone feel the same thing at the same time. Instead of millions of various thoughts, one big psychological fixation. The radio commands our gut response. Are you following me?”
“Yes. I’ve seen that.”
“That bomb scared the holy Moses out of us. We became horrified in our hearts that we had used it. Okay, it ended the war, it saved American life and so on and so forth. But everyone feels guilty, deep inside. Little Japanese children turned into flaming gas, we know this. How could we not feel bad?”
“I’m sure we do.”
“Okay. We used the bomb. We convince ourselves we are very special people, to get to use this weapon. Ideal scenario, we would like to think it came to us from God, meant for our own use and no one else’s.” He leaned in, eyes and cigarette blazing. “You wrote a book about this topic, am I right?”
“You’ve read my books?”
“Of course I’ve read your books. You’re an important client, I’ve read your books. You of all people understand this. Suddenly we are God’s chosen, we have this bomb, and we better be pretty damn certain no one else is going to get this bomb. We must clean our house thoroughly. Can you imagine what would happen if England also had the bomb, France, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union all had this bomb? How could a person go to sleep at night?”
“Those countries hardly have standing armies now, they’re sacked. All but the Soviet Union.”
“Okay. The Soviet Union. You get it.”
“I thought we had nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“You see, this is what I’m saying. The radio. It creates for us a psychology. Here’s what happened to fear itself. Winston Churchill said, ‘iron curtain.’ Did you see how they all went crazy over that?”
“Of course.”
“Then Truman said, ‘Every nation must decide.’ You are standing on one side of that curtain, my friend, or else you are on the other. And John Edgar Hoover, my God, this man. John Edgar Hoover says this curtain is what separates us from Satan and perhaps also the disease of leprosy. Did you happen to hear his testimony to Congress?”
“I read some of it.”