U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [535]
A couple of weeks later Mary came home one icy winter evening to find Don busy packing his grip. She couldn't help letting out a cry, her nerves were getting harder and harder to control. "Oh, Don, it's not Pittsburgh yet?" Don shook his head and went on packing. When he had closed up his wicker suitcase he came over to her and put his arm round her shoulder. "I've got to go across to the other side with. . . you know who. . . essential party business."
"Oh, Don, I?d love to go too. I've never been to Russia or anywhere." "I'l only be gone a month. We're sailing at midnight. . . and Mary darling. . . if anybody asks after me I'm in Pittsburgh, see?" Mary started to cry. "I'l have to say I don't know where you are. . . I know I can't ever get away with a lie." "Mary dear, it'l just be a few days. . . don't be a little sil y." Mary smiled through her tears. "But I am. . . I'm an awful little sil y." He kissed her and patted her gently on the back. Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried out of the room with a big checked cap pul ed down over his eyes.
Mary walked up and down the narrow room with her
lips twitching, fighting to keep down the hysterical sobs. To give herself something to do she began to plan how she could fix up the apartment so that it wouldn't look so dreary when Don came back. She pul ed out the couch and pushed it across the window like a windowseat. Then she pul ed the table out in front of it and grouped the chairs round the table. She made up her mind she'd paint the woodwork white and get turkeyred for the curtains.
Next morning she was in the middle of drinking her
coffee out of a cracked cup without a saucer, feeling bit--538-terly lonely in the empty apartment when the telephone rang. At first she didn't recognize whose voice it was. She was confused and kept stammering, "Who is it, please?" into the receiver. "But, Mary," the voice was saying in an exasperated tone, "you must know who I am. It's Ben Compton. . . bee ee enn. . . Ben. I've got to see you about something. Where could I meet you? Not at your place." Mary tried to keep her voice from sounding stiff and chil y.
"I've got to be uptown today. I've got to have lunch with a woman who may give some money to the
miners. It's a horrible waste of time but I can't help it. She won't give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two thirty?"
"Better say inside. . . . It's about zero out today. I just got up out of bed from the flu." Mary hardly knew Ben he looked so much older. There was grey in the hair spil ing out untidily from under his cap. He stooped and peered into her face querulously through his thick glasses. He didn't shake hands. "Wel , I might as wel tel you. . . you'l know it soon enough if you don't know it already. . . I've been expel ed from the party. . . oppositionist . .
. exceptionalism. . . a lot of nonsense. . . . Wel , that doesn't matter, I'm stil a revolutionist
. . . I'l continue to work outside of the party."
"Oh, Ben, I'm so sorry," was al Mary could find to say.
"You know I don't know anything except what I read in the Daily. It al seems too terrible to me." "Let's go out, that guard's watching us." Outside Ben began to shiver from the cold. His wrists stuck out red from his frayed green overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long arms. "Oh, where can we go?" Mary kept saying. Final y they went down into a basement automat and
sat talking in low voices over a cup of coffee. "I didn't want to go to your place because I didn't want to meet Stevens. . . . Stevens and me have never been friends,
-539-you know that. . . . Now he's in with the comintern crowd. He'l make the centralcommittee when they've cleaned out al the brains."
"But, Ben, people can have differences of opinion and stil . . ."
"A party of yesmen . . . that'l be great. . . . But, Mary, I had to see you . . . I feel so lonely suddenly
. . . you know, cut off from everything. . . . You know if we hadn't been fools we'd have had that baby that time
. . . we'd stil love each other. . . . Mary, you were very lovely to me when I first got out of jail. . . . Say, where's your friend Ada, the musician who had that fancy apart-ment?