Quartet for the End of Time (41 page)

That was the beginning of 1938; Europe was boiling. At any moment war might break out. Sutton was loath to spend it—if and when it did— editing the “Major Points of Interest” sections of New Jersey or Maryland.

With this in mind, she went back to Walker at the
Herald Tribune
and asked for a job.

A real job, she said. I want to report from London, or Paris—or Berlin.

Walker laughed appreciatively and shook his head. So long as I live, he said, I won't be sending any woman overseas; you have my word on that.

But he gave her back her old job.

S
O SHE RESIGNED FROM
the Writers' Project, and a month later was called up to testify for Martin Dies. She should have seen it coming. The Dies Committee had been investigating “un-American activities” in Federal One projects for over two years, and was famous for tracking down just the right witnesses—those who, for one reason or another, had a bone to pick with Federal One or the WPA. Having abruptly quit
the Writers' Project (where, indeed—having no Communist Party affiliation herself—she had found herself in the minority), she must have looked a likely candidate to Dies.

Just the year before, another former employee—the recently retired Edwin Banta—had aided Dies's personal crusade by testifying that thirteen of the fifteen supervisors of the New York section of the guidebook series were Communists. Lou Gody (Banta testified), who had been Sutton's supervisor, had never written a line of his own, and Mr. Kingman, of the Foreign Language Division, did not speak a single foreign language. All of this may have been true, as Sutton wrote to Alden— searching for advice on the issue—but as far as she was concerned, it spoke more than anything of the
dis
organization of the project than anything else. The thought that anyone in that office could have held a significant threat to the government—or anyone, for that matter—was laughable, she wrote.

Alden wrote back to say that, though he would be careful making any grand pronouncements (it was always impossible to know what you were looking at, after all, he said, when you really started looking at a thing), she should be just fine if she told them exactly what she knew. And who can tell—he added—perhaps she knew more than she thought; that her testimony would even do someone, somewhere, a little bit of good.

Despite this encouragement, Sutton wrote to the committee requesting she be excused from the hearing. It had only been a matter of months, she wrote, that she'd worked for the project: she knew of nothing untoward about either the project or the organization under question, and had nothing to report.

The idea of appearing in front of the committee frankly horrified her. The only employee whom she knew personally who had done so was Ralph De Sola—a former zookeeper from Miami. Unlike Banta, he had stayed on at the project even after his testimony—earning himself the nickname “Reptile” because of the way he continued to slink daily into his corner of the office in order to continue work on his pet projects:
Who's Who in the Zoo
, and
American Wildlife.
The last thing Sutton
wanted was to align herself with De Sola. She wasn't a party member, but she certainly wasn't a “reptile,” either.

D
ESPITE HER PERSONAL APPEAL
, however, Sutton appeared in front of the Dies Committee—which consisted of Dies himself and a nervouslooking girl of about twenty, charged with the task of typing up the transcript of their exchange—in September 1938.

Let's get straight to the point, Dies had said, after Sutton had been directed, opposite him, to a straight-backed chair, and the typist, her fingers poised above the keys, had indicated with a worried nod that she was ready to begin. Were there, in your work with the Writers' Project, Dies said, and in particular in your role as editor of the state guidebook to New Jersey, any
… particular guidelines
about what should be included and not included in the text?

Sutton had badly wanted to appear aloof, to answer calmly and coolly, but right off the bat she stalled.

How could there not be? she asked. It seemed like a trick question. We could hardly include everything.

Enlighten me, Dies said—a smile playing at the corners of his lips, which looked chapped and dry.

The guidebooks are … intended—Sutton began, hesitatingly slow—to convey only the most basic information, sir. They are intended, you see, as … objectively as possible, to show—

Ah! Dies said, raising a hand in the air.
As objectively as possible
, you say. May I perhaps here inquire after the limits against which this effort of yours—to be
as objective as possible—
may have been pressed?

Again, Sutton hesitated. I can't say I know what you are getting at, sir, she said.

Dies cleared his throat and shifted his attention to a folder in front of him. Very casually, he began leafing through the pages the folder contained, as though he had forgotten the question himself.

Finally, he found what he was looking for.

Were you, or were you not, he asked, peering over the top of the sheet of paper he now held between them, responsible for the sentence in
the New Jersey guide claiming that a certain factory—he glanced down, consulting the page—was, and I quote, “the biggest buyer of tear gas in the state”?

The chair felt suddenly very hard beneath her, and Sutton shifted uncomfortably. I can't quite recall, sir, she said.

Well, said Dies cheerfully, let's say for the moment that it is true— because I have it on record that it is so. Would you say that this was an …
objective
statement?

It was—Sutton said quietly, her voice tight in her throat—the information I was given.

What was that? Dies asked, though it was quite clear he'd heard.

Sutton cleared her throat and repeated her reply. Louder this time.

And did you—Dies shot back, satisfied—check that information against the facts available to you?

Now Sutton could feel her cheeks grow hot. They
were
the facts available to me, she said.

Dies sighed exaggeratedly. Miss Kelly, he said—as though all at once he had grown tired of the exercise. It is my duty to inform you that there is no record of the factory in question acquiring, let alone
using
, tear gas against strikers or anyone else. What, then, I wonder, was the purpose of including this claim in your “general interest” touristic guide to the state?

Sutton said nothing.

Let me stick a little closer to the point, continued Dies. We seem to be having a little difficulty understanding each other. Are you, or were you at any time, Miss Kelly, under the impression that the Federal Writers' Project, or the WPA more generally, had as its express purpose the intention to spread communism throughout the United States?

No, sir, Sutton said. It was hardly the express purpose—she began.

But a purpose, Dies said, leaning slightly forward in his chair, nevertheless?

Listen, Sutton said. She felt terribly impatient with the whole thing suddenly, and experienced a powerful urge to simply get up and walk out of the room. Would Dies follow her if she did? Would the girl? Her typewriter still rattling?

Listen, she said again. I don't see what the purpose of an inquiry is if you know exactly what you want to hear from the beginning.

Dies smiled. Ah, yes, he said. I do apologize. You were saying …

I was saying that … it was hardly the express purpose of the Writers' Project or any Federal One organization so far as I know to spread communism or any other political doctrine, in this country or abroad.

Dies nodded his head slowly. The typewriter rang. There was a slight pause then, as her inquisitor gazed upward, as though in deep contemplation of what she had just said. Then, in a changed tone, his voice suddenly bright, as though the two of them had just been introduced at a party by mutual friends, he asked: Have you, by chance, read—Miss Kelly—the essay by Mr. Richard Wright that was recently commissioned by your organization?

Sutton hadn't the slightest clue where this was leading. She had never had any association with the book
American Stuff
, in which Wright's essay had been included, and to which Dies now referred—it had gone to press before she'd landed the job. She knew of Wright only by reputation.

No, she said, I have not.

You are familiar, though, Dies said, with the writer and the collection in question?

Reluctantly, Sutton nodded. Dies nodded, too. Then, once more, he opened his folder, this time easily locating the page he sought.

I'd like to read you an excerpt, he said. I regret it very much, given the very particular …
quality
… of the piece, but I do think you'll understand, given the circumstances, and that it may indeed prove to … further our discussion. Here, now. He cleared his throat. Page forty-three.

When I was a bit slow in performing some duty
, Dies read
, I was called a lazy black son of a bitch.
All right. Dies glanced briefly over his eyeglasses, licked his thumb, and turned the page.

Page forty-four (skipping just little ahead, he said).
If yuh say yuh didn't I'll rip yo' gut-string loose with this fuckin' bar, you black granny dodger. Yuh can't call a white man a liar 'n' get away with it, you black son of a bitch.

Is that enough, Miss Kelly? Dies asked, snapping the folder shut. I'll say it is! Now I'm curious, Miss Kelly, if you actually find “literature” of this type to be in some way “rehabilitating”?

Sutton stared at him. What possible connection can my opinion, she asked after a heavy pause, of what you've read just now have to do with this discussion?

Oh, everything in the world! Dies said. Everything in the world! Are you—let me ask you this again—of the opinion that this sort of “literature”—the sort I've just read—holds some value for reader and listener? That it might enlighten us in some way? Enlarge our cultural tradition, or our minds?

I believe this discussion is over, Sutton said. I have nothing to report. Dies raised an eyebrow, scribbled something furiously on the cover of the folder in front of him, then let the subject drop.

S
UTTON DID NOT LET
the subject drop quite so easily. She was working first-string news at the time, but kept after Walker for a feature piece on Dies, and before long—to her surprise—he relented. A week later, she followed Dies to Washington, where—having been forced at last to extend his investigation beyond the Federal One employees who had openly broken with the project—he interviewed Henry Alsberg, the project's director.

The interview was far less intimate than her own had been. The press was wild for it, and—to mark the occasion, as well as deflect some attention—Dies had invited the rest of the committee to join him this time. More usually (as Sutton knew from her personal experience) he roved the country, aside from the typist, alone.

Alsberg played his cards right. Right off the bat he managed to win sympathy from even the toughest critics of Federal One, and even Dies himself, by admitting to a onetime radicalism he had since, he promised, been cured of—thanks to a stint as editor for a collection of letters sent surreptitiously from a Russian gulag.

This was just the sort of stuff Dies wanted to hear.

There are certain things, Alsberg said, that once you learn you just can't turn away from. They haunt you; you give up all your old ideals. Everything becomes treacherous and confused, and you don't know what to believe anymore. After this happened to me, and I became staunchly anti-Communist—as I remain to this day—I can tell you one thing for sure. I suffered for it in America. I was blacklisted. I couldn't get any of my articles printed any more. Even today, I am considered a reactionary. I hadn't known how far the influence stretched before because I had been a part of it: that's how it goes.

But after this promising initial outburst, Alsberg seemed to have nothing more to say; certainly nothing to hang a case on. It was a tremendous blow for Dies. Now, even according to America's self-professed “arch-anti-Communist,” as the newspapers had it, nothing was amiss with Federal One. Dies was heralded by the press—and even by some more outspoken members of the cabinet—as “the harbinger of American fascism”; it was recalled in editorials and government assemblies alike that Mussolini, too, had “risen to absolute and despotic power” after having organized a similar hunt for “Communists” in his own country. Same thing with Hitler. “We are deluding ourselves,” the newspapers chimed, “if we believe that it is out of the question in this country that, after just such a scare as was recently drummed up by Hitler in Germany and is currently being drummed up by Dies and the rest over here, some man on horseback might also rise up in order to ‘protect' us from the perceived danger.”

But Dies was not easily discouraged. After the Federal One hearings, he hit the road, holding hearings in Chicago and Detroit. The teachers' union was investigated, along with every student group (to his credit, most turned out—just as he'd suspected—to be verifiable fronts for the CPUSA). Finally, he homed in on Hollywood; but there, for some reason, he cut his investigation short. Later, it was rumored that Dies had been paid off by the head of Paramount Pictures, Y. Frank Freeman; that he had been so flattered by his treatment there—all the stops had been pulled, the red carpets rolled out—that he entirely forgot why he had come.

The investigation had initially been launched on the strength of the testimony of John Leech, who, a month prior, claimed to have served as a recruiter for the Communist Party in Hollywood since 1936. He rattled off a dozen names for Dies to follow up with, among them Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney. But—unusually—after only a few weeks, Dies reported with confidence from Hollywood that nothing was awry. His official take on the situation (in sharp contrast to every other investigation he had so far pursued) was that “no man can be held accountable for what someone says about him”; the case was abruptly put to rest.