The Chelsea Girls(70)
He stood over me, panting, both hands on his hips. “You do deserve it. Traitor.”
“We love each other.” The words made me sick but I said them anyway, anything to buy some time. “You can’t let them tear us apart like this. We’re more than the Party. Let’s break away, together.”
“You’re saying you want out? Is that what kind of a comrade you are? What about everyone who supported you on your way up to the top? Do you think you would have attained your success without us backing you? You belong to us, to me. Don’t forget it.”
I didn’t care. I’d saved Hazel, that was all that mattered. “It’s no good anymore. The Party’s not the same, we’re all under fire.”
Arthur knelt down on one knee, like he was about to propose. “You’ve lost your way, Magnild. You have been pretending all this time, haven’t you?”
“No. But we don’t know what it’s really like in Russia. I don’t want to go there. I want my freedom.”
In response, he grabbed me by the neck and choked me. I tried to punch him but he was too big, too strong. I grabbed at the hands around my neck and tried in vain to pull them off. Finally, I let go and stared up at the stars beyond his red face, at the way the trees gently brushed the dark sky with their leaves, until the sound of the wind was replaced by the pounding of blood in my ears, and I passed out.
* * *
Arthur left me on that rock in the middle of the night. I came to, briefly, and then fell asleep, too sore to move. I let the humid air, which smelled of rotting wood and wet dirt, drift over me like a ghost. Moving in and out of dreams and the sleep of the exhausted, I woke just as orange streaks began to burnish the sky.
I tested my bones for damage. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Nothing broken. After making my way down to the side of the lake, I splashed water on my face like a vagrant. Two ducks watched me from a distance, curious but wary.
I caught a cab at Fifth Avenue and told the driver to take me back to the Chelsea Hotel. Luckily, I still had my purse and my wallet. The driver eyed me in the rearview window. I probably looked like a whore who’d been tumbled hard. Which pretty much summed me up. I’d whored myself out to Arthur, to the Party. They’d groomed me from when I was a teenager and didn’t know how to say no, or how to assess what was being asked of me. As I grew older, and realized the world wasn’t as black-and-white as they depicted it, I tried hard to justify my role in their master plan to spread communism to the States, but it became more and more difficult. All capitalists weren’t awful, nor were all communists morally superior. Working on Broadway with Hazel had opened my eyes to another choice, a world where I could simply act, stripped of any ulterior motives, and deepen my focus on my craft. Because that’s where my sympathies lay now, with the artists, the ones who struggled to make sense of the world. That’s what I wanted to be.
What to do now? I could turn myself in. Tell the Feds everything I knew. Which wasn’t much. As an underground operative, I was only told bits and pieces of the puzzle, never the entire thing. I didn’t even know the names of the couple I’d met up in Croton. It would make news, sure. The Feds would parade me about just like they did Julius. In handcuffs, on the front page.
I thought of my grandmother. In her letters, she’d told me how my fame had brought with it not only the check I sent along each month, which she said made her cry whenever she received it, but also the approbation of the people who’d once reviled her. She’d found acceptance, having a well-known actress as a granddaughter, but they would turn on her like a pack of dogs if I outed myself. She’d be persecuted, isolated, and shunned once again.
I concealed the fingerprints around my neck with makeup and made it to the theater for the matinee. Before the curtain went up, we were informed that tomorrow’s matinee would be the final performance, to no one’s surprise. Onstage, it was obvious the bad reviews had infected the audience’s response, which was remarkably different from previews. Where there had once been guffaws, now there was silence. Hardly a sniff during the big scene where Matthew and I reunite. They’d been told what to think and weren’t going to let anything going on onstage change their puny minds. While we started with great gusto, the lack of energy from the people staring back at us couldn’t help but dampen the performance. Where two days ago, bolts of emotional electricity sizzled, this afternoon’s show felt more like a funeral for a distant aunt who hadn’t left you any money. A muffled misery that’s soon forgotten.
Back at the hotel after the evening’s performance, I crawled into bed and fell into a deep sleep. The phone woke me up Sunday morning.
“It’s me.”
Arthur. His baritone brought all the aches and fears racing back.
“Yes?” I wasn’t sure why he’d called here, knowing that the phones were tapped. It had to be important.
He spoke carefully, measuring out each word. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am.”
“That’s good to know. We’re going forward, as planned, creating a diversion for our friend. Let us know a good time and place for a rendezvous.”
Meaning a time when I’d know that Charlie and Hazel would be together, in a compromising position. They were going forward with the plan anyway.
“No.” I scrambled for the right words. “There’s no point. No point in doing that.”