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.Gathering dust downstairs wehad scores of Paul Bunyans and John Henrys and Johnny Apple-seeds.When Browder fell, and Zhdanov, in Moscow, becameStalin s arbiter elegantiarum, all that bourgeois chauvinism wentdown with him.Much of this I learned at the cocktail parties that attended thegallery openings; regulars reminded each other that they had neverfallen for Bukharin and certainly never fallen for the unnameablearchfiend, the Zionist crypto-Nazi and agent of the mikado, forwhom the ice pick was too good.Jay Lovestone had never fooledthem for a minute, and they had never thought much of Browder.Khrushchev had given a secret speech, it was whispered, but thatmight have been disinformation.A few years before, some of thegallery artists and customers had left for the Soviet Union, Mexico,or Western Europe.A fascist coup from Washington was rumored,to be followed by a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union.Thisp r i m e g r e e n : r e m e m b e r i n g t h e s i x t i e s 167treacherous capitalist attack would fail; the agents of the people wereon guard for peace everywhere.America would suffer for its designs.I had always been interested in politics.Belief fascinated me, be-cause of my own experience of lost faith.But somehow, as I livedalong with the century, the more interested in politics I became, thefurther I moved from accepting any kind of transforming ideologyas an answer to my fundamental questions.I was never able to ad-vance (if that s the word) beyond the old boring liberalism of thetwo-cheers-for-democracy sort.Like most people, I never trustedanyone who offered a formula that transcended the instincts of ordi-nary decency.Ordinary decency, I thought, was about the best ofwhich I, and again most people, were capable.And it was not so easyat that, not so ordinary.During the sixties and seventies, many people close to my heart,people whom I deeply loved and respected, thought they recognizedtruth in different political formulas of the Left.Since people who be-lieve they have encountered Truth, no less, call failure to recognizetheir salvific doctrines  cynicism, I became sensitive to the charge.I insisted during that time that it wasn t true of me.Nor is it now.Religion was more the thing for me, if only I d had the sense ofhumor and good sportsmanship to believe in any.It s reported thatFlannery O Connor and Mary McCarthy once fell to talking abouttheir common background in Irish Catholicism.In fact, it was damnlittle these two shared.But they had both made their First HolyCommunions, receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord, at differ-ent extremities of America.So they discussed the Eucharist, whichMary McCarthy offered was a fine metaphor. If it s a metaphor, said Miss O Connor,  the hell with it.Blazing, blinding faith, that is.The faith itself had to be some-thing real; it could measurably inform O Connor stories such as  A168 r o b e r t s t o n eGood Man Is Hard to Find. But there was also something barrenabout it, something that reduced the infinite variety of the world toa spare grim narrative of human sacrifice.It was admirable in its hu-mility, most of all.But the other side of it, the corps of aggressiveknow-it-alls who alone had the right to give the orders, was repul-sive even at a distance.Later, encountering late-twentieth-centuryMarxism-Leninism, in the Socialist bloc, I knew it was not for me.Gatherings at openings drew a few progressive celebrities, butmost of the attendees were old-timers.The gallery in the sixties wasin a curious political and artistic backwater.But forces were stirringin the larger world, beyond Fifty-seventh Street, beyond Croton-on-Hudson.The intensity of the cold war was fading, and the  para-noia of the fifties was falling into disrepute among the youngereducated classes.Also, by the mid-sixties, the failures in Vietnamwere evident.The prestige of America was declining; its heroic roleas slayer of police states was being questioned.The other important empowering force that was restoring mili-tancy came from the civil rights demonstrations in the AmericanSouth.Our gallery was a little piece of time past.Some of the Partyold-timers were encouraged by what they saw as a rallying of theLeft on the horizon.Others found the new political activism uneasy-making, druggy, unproletarian, and generally nyekulturny.But it wasan interesting place to be in the mid-sixties.The gallery sometimes hired a part-timer for the big opening par-ties.It was always the same chap, a tweedy, sad Ivy League type.Hehad been young, gay, and substance abusive when all of these thingswere attached to penalties.At the openings, I was in charge of thebooze, and I usually managed to help myself to a few shots beforeserving the company.G., the temp, would sometimes take Antabuseand then drink alcohol behind it.This would make him sick, and wep r i m e g r e e n : r e m e m b e r i n g t h e s i x t i e s 169would make him space among the frames where he could reclinewith wet cloths full of ice.One time, out among the guests, I recognized an old acquain-tance.Our encounter partook of absurdity, even absurdism.Gettingthe next tray of drinks, I had to share this recognition with G. You know who s out there? Alger Hiss.G.was unsurprised. Yeah.He comes in a lot.He collects. Political art? No kidding. He likes political art.He was radicalized when he lost his job.Atleast that s what he says.Oh, and he s gay.I went back out with drinks.Mr.Hiss was holding forth, talkingto two salty old ladies, Party toughies from the days of Youngstownand Seattle.They were laughing at the things he said.I couldn thear them.He had a drink in his hand, and he looked not at all like Willy Lo-man or the American Dreyfus.His expression was what would becalled arch, or saturnine.He looked like a Quaker, I thought, old-stock American, purse-lipped, fluty-nosed, with cupid-bowed eye-brows supporting a righteous high forehead.Like a Quaker who wasvirtuous and sly. Do you know him? I asked G., back in the frame room.G.smiled and shook his head.He didn t know Alger Hiss totalk to.Later, I found out that Hiss had done some really good things inthe Agriculture Department, gotten the government to pay farmsubsidies directly to poor sharecroppers and not just to landownerswhose tenants they were.Next time I see him, I thought when I dis-covered that, I ll have something cool to say to him.But we nevermet again.170 r o b e r t s t o n eFOURTEENThe day A Hall of Mirrors was published in New York I put ina couple of hours at the gallery, signed for my last unemploy-ment check, and went to lunch at the Algonquin.CandidaDonadio, my sainted agent, was with me.Joyce Hartmanjoined us to represent Houghton Mifflin, my publisher.Thebook had generous reviews.One, in the Sunday New York Times,came from Ivan Gold, whose collection Nickel Miseries was thedefining fiction of the postwar occupation Army.Another fa-vorable notice was from Granville Hicks.I received an encour-aging letter from Joyce Carol Oates that put me on the moon.It was time for me to face the second book s necessities, althoughI had nothing quite as substantial as a second book in mind.GeorgeRhoads, a painter whose work I d managed to place in the galleryover the objections of some of the comrades, told me not to worry.I d written a book, George said.Maybe it was time for me to dosomething else [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]