Beautiful Twentysomethings

Chapter Five. Felix Dzerzhinsky and Bogart

C H A P T e R F I v e Felix Dzerzhinsky and Bogart Young man, contemplating life, Deciding how yours should be led, I say, don’t break your head, Live as Comrade Dzerzhinsky did. —Vladimir Mayakovsky Sure, it would be best to live like Felix Dzerzhinsky. But you can only live like Dzerzhinsky on the backs of the working class, and that’s not always possible. A person understands this sad truth only after he has requested political asylum, and when his sole personal property is an oilcloth suitcase containing gifts from the American people to refugees from behind the Iron Curtain: a toothbrush, a towel, and soap. You can sell the stuff for fifty cents, but you’ve got to get lucky finding an idiot who’s willing to buy it. But what to do when you want to keep on writing? You’ll be fine, so long as you were once a communist, a member of the Central Committee, a high functionary in the Department of Security, a spy, or a diplomat. A man who was a spy for the Kremlin behind the Iron Curtain, who tore out his compatriots’ fingernails or put a bullet in the back of their heads, will always find a good career. He’ll be used as a propaganda trump card and a pawn in the battle against communism. Beautiful Twentysomethings 98 An honest man who has never been a communist or a spy just becomes an unnecessary burden for the people of the West. As everybody knows, the people of Eastern Europe hate the commies, and it’s impossible to exploit them for propaganda purposes, since to say that evening is dark and morning is bright isn’t a revelation in the West. A person who hates commies is greeted by years of misery, humiliation, waiting on a visa: years of emptiness and despair. It’s no good to pretend to be a disillusioned communist writer, either. It had been a decent trick until 1956, but then Khrushchev fixed everything from the top down. Today a red intellectual can’t rend his garments and cry that he didn’t know about the millions of people tortured in concentration camps and prisons. He can’t express public surprise about the increasing impoverishment of his country and the growing despair of his brothers and loved ones. He can’t claim he didn’t know and didn’t hear the same things on the street that everybody heard, every worker and every passerby. Not much could ever be expected from these red intellectuals, and even less today . On the other hand, spies and high dignitaries will be welcomed warmly and safely. For a while. I Was Stalin’s Agent, the memoir of Walter Kryvitsky, a Soviet spy who defected to the West, ends with the words, “I was lucky one more time.” He was talking about surviving an assassination attempt. A half year later his body was found in a hotel in Washington. The commies don’t excel at much, but this is one area where they always succeed. But what can a writer do, especially one who’s never been a member of the party, never written hymns in honor of the political police, and whose work was never published in his own country because he was labeled a counterrevolutionary? That’s a tough question. Let’s consider what he can do in moments of hunger, when not a single publisher will give him an advance, and creditors lurk on the street corner, whip in hand. 1. Insanity Feigning insanity isn’t easy, but it can be done, provided one has the necessary courage and character. The easiest thing is to fake a Marek Hłasko 99 persecution complex, but that takes time. When you see you’ve just got enough money to live for two months, you get started. You turn up one day at the police station to request a gun license. When the officials ask what you need a fifteen-round FN pistol for, you tell them that for the past week you’ve been followed by some man in a leather coat and black glasses, carrying a cane. Furthermore, you suggest , inside the cane is a sword (from the movie Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford). Of course, the police officials will throw you out unceremoniously. A few days later you show up again...