As though a spell had been cast, every single man and woman and child in the clearing looked up into the trees at exactly the same time. Jesse looked up too, hoping to see a firework, a burst of brilliant stars. Instead, he saw what they had gathered to watch – it was a dance, two legs dancing in the sky; a jerky dance, not like one he’d ever seen before, a dance where the two black, shoeless feet didn’t touch the ground, a dance without rhythm and without music, a silent dance that lasted no more than a minute or two.
By the time those legs were done with their dance, Jesse had crushed all the twigs in his arms and his shoes were covered in ground-up bark. A man in the audience lifted up a bulky box camera and a bulb flashed, burning bright for an instant and exposing everything hidden by the night. To this day Jesse wondered why the man waited till the end to take his photograph. Maybe he didn’t want to miss a moment of that entertaining dance.
When the young Russian girl had asked him earlier why he’d sacrificed so much for Communism, when strangers and friends and families had asked him why he couldn’t shut his mouth about politics and enjoy the money, he’d never told them the truth. What had turned him into a Communist? It wasn’t the hatred his family encountered when they’d moved to New York, or the insulting things that anyone had ever said to him. It wasn’t the poverty, or the struggle his parents had faced just to make ends meet. On the opening night of his first major concert, onstage in a crowded auditorium, looking out at the well-heeled white people clapping as he danced and sang, he knew that they loved him only while his legs moved to a rhythm and only while his lips made song and not speech. Once the show was over, once his legs no longer danced, they wanted nothing to do with him.
Being loved onstage wasn’t enough. Singing wasn’t nearly enough.
Manhattan
United Nations Headquarters
The General Assembly Hall
1st Avenue & East 44th Street
Same Day
It was an audience of the most important diplomats in the world – every United Nations envoy had been invited. The assembly hall was full. The concert was due to start. Like a child before a school play, Raisa stole a glance from backstage, wondering if her nervousness about tonight’s performance had manifested itself as paranoia. Her imagination had run away with her, drawing inspiration from her past when every ord was loaded with danger and intrigue. It was not her clothes that had revealed her as provincial but the way in which she’d panicked, unsettled at being given such a grand platform. She was embarrassed at the way she’d behaved. The successful dress rehearsal had steadied her, calmed her down, given her a sense of proportion and made her earlier outburst feel ridiculous.
She regarded the Soviet students: they’d lined up and were ready to walk out onto the stage. Her job was to reassure them, not to be flustered. Passing each one with a smile and words of encouragement, she approached Elena. Raisa had reluctantly relented, allowing Elena to sing, fearing that if she did not, Elena would blame Leo and hate him. However, they’d barely spoken since the argument and a sense of awkwardness remained. Raisa crouched down, whispering:
— This is new for me too. The pressure became a little too much. I’m sorry. I know you’re going to be amazing. I hope you can enjoy the evening. I hope I haven’t spoiled this for you – that was never my intention.
Elena was crying. Raisa hastily wiped away her daughter’s tears.
— Don’t cry. Please, or I’ll start.
Raisa smiled, to cover the fact that she was close to tears, adding:
— It’s my fault. Not Leo’s, don’t be angry with him. Just concentrate on the performance. Have fun. Enjoy tonight.
Raisa was about to return to the front of the students when Elena took her hand, saying:
— Mother, I would never be involved in anything that wouldn’t make you proud of me.
The use of the word mother had been deliberate. Fearful that she would not be able to control her emotions, Raisa uttered a quick response:
— I know.
Raisa hurried back into position, composing herself, ready to lead her students onto the stage. She breathed deeply, determined to succeed. This was a remarkable event. Many years ago, in the Great Patriotic War, a refugee, her only thought had been to survive. As a teacher in Moscow during Stalin’s reign, her only ambition had been to avoid arrest. Were she to go back in time and show that fearful young woman a glimpse of her future – a prestigious international audience in this remarkable hall with two beautiful daughters by her side – it would be impossible to believe. Her only wish was that Leo could be here with her, not because of any plot or treachery – she bitterly regretted putting the idea into his head – but because no other person understood the journey she’d made.
The musical cue was given. The orchestra was ready. The audience fell silent. Side by side with the American head teacher, Raisa led her students out. The applause was polite and she sensed not without an undercurrent of uncertainty. No one was quite sure how this unprecedented performance was going to turn out.
*
Walking onto the stage, Elena reassured herself that she hadn’t lied: her mother was certain to be proud when she understood what she was trying to achieve – a much-needed show of love and admiration for Jesse Austin, a man wrongly persecuted for his convictions, a brilliant man beaten down by state oppression because of his belief in fairness and love. Of course, Raisa would be angry at first, furious by the fact that it had remained a secret. She would be angry that she’d not been told. Once that anger faded, then surely she would understand, perhaps she would even admire Elena’s courage.
Regarding the hall, the decorations, the flags and the elitist audience, the political aristocracy dressed in fine clothes, Elena considered the spectacle artificial, disconnected from any real problems or issues. The concert carried no promise of social change or progress, sterilized, stripped of any anger or outrage to avoid offending their hosts. The protests on the street were not against one government or another, they would be universal, against intolerance and hatred, against inequity and an approach to human life that was inhumane. The world needed a second Revolution, a revolution of civil rights. Communism was the best vehicle for that Revolution. How could Raisa not be proud of what she and Jesse Austin were about to achieve? The applause came to a stop.
Harlem
Bradhurst
8th Avenue & West 139th Street
Nelson’s Restaurant
Same Day
Reasonably priced and always busy, the restaurant was named after its owner, Nelson, a man much loved by those who lived in the area. He was fair to his staff and always knew whether to trade jokes with the customers or listen to their problems. Anna had never met a man with a more highly developed sense of what people were looking for. When she’d been desperate for money, searching for work, he’d helped her out. He didn’t need to hire a woman her age with no experience when there were younger, prettier girls who could flirt with the customers and bring in extra business. Anna paid back the favour by never letting him down, never being late or slipping off early. She told everyone that he’d taken a chance on her, fearless of the repercussions. Customers liked the fact Nelson had given her a job, maybe he’d known that too. In the end, the FBI never kicked up a fuss, not like they did with Jesse. Anna suspected that they liked the idea of her washing dishes and scraping trays clean. If they thought hard work was a humiliation, then they were wrong.
As she stepped inside the restaurant, getting ready for her shift, she understood with sudden clarity that Jesse was going to accept the young girl’s invitation to speak tonight. No matter how many shrewd reasons there were for not talking outside the United Nations, standing on the street in a hubbub of protestors sounded more like a Jesse Austin gig than any she could think of. She couldn’t allow him to be there alone.
Anna hurried over to Nelson, taking him by the arm.
— You know I’ve never done this before and I’ll never do it again. But I
have to go back home. I can’t work tonight. I have to be with my husband.
Nelson looked her in the eyes, saw her expression, registered her tone and nodded.
— Is there something wrong?
— No, nothing’s wrong. There’s something my husband has to do and I have to be there with him.
— All right, Anna: do whatever you have to do. Don’t worry about this place, I’ll serve the food myself if I have to.
At his kindness, Anna kissed him on the cheek.
— Thank youquo;d p>
She turned around, taking off her apron, leaving the restaurant and heading back as fast as she could. She ran all the way home, across the street, through the men playing cards, through the haze of cigarette smoke, reaching the stairs up to her apartment building. On her way up, striding up two steps at a time, she felt the eyes of her neighbours. They pitied her, imagining that she’d suffered because of Jesse. They were wrong. She was the luckiest woman alive to have shared her life with him.
She threw open the apartment door. Jesse was standing on the bed, addressing the open window as though it were an audience of ten thousand. Around his feet were the handwritten pages of all the speeches he’d ever performed.
Manhattan
United Nations Headquarters
The General Assembly Hall
1st Avenue & East 44th Street
Same Day
Jim Yates slipped into the back of the hall and watched the performance. Communists mingled with American students, dressed identically: boys in white shirts and black pants, girls in white shirts and black skirts, nothing distinguishing one nationality from the other. According to the programme, framed with a multitude of international flags, the songs had been composed by musicians from around the world. Not even the liberal organizers of this event could allow Communist propaganda songs, Soviet hymns about being the strongest nation ready to crush all enemies including the United States. The Communists would save them for when they got home, as soon as they stepped off the plane in Moscow. As the Russians weren’t able to sing their songs, neither were the Americans for fear of offending their guests. Not allowed to sing their own songs in their own country! Of course, this wasn’t his country – the United Nations Headquarters did not fall under the authority of the United States, even though it was in New York. Without a shot being fired the land had been handed over to an international organization. Yates wasn’t even an FBI agent here. He was a guest.
As the song came to an end and the audience applauded, Yates regarded the diplomats. White people seemed to be a minority. Several envoys stood up to applaud. Yates couldn’t make them out clearly from where he was standing – probably Cubans or South Americans. The truth was that while the students sang on stage, arm in arm, their nations planned the other’s annihilation. The charade was grotesque. He was appalled that there were American parents who’d agreed to put their children into this concert. Those mothers and fathers warranted further investigation.
Yates checked his watch, fingernail tapping the dial face. The real performance was about to take place outside.
Manhattan
Outside the United Nations Headquarters
1st Avenue & East 44th Street
Same Day
Jesse Austin was carrying an apple crate that he’d taken from Nelson’s restaurant kitchen. He’d spoken on street corners before and without elevation of some kind he didn’t stand a chance of being heard, even as a tall man and a practised orator. Every performer needed a stage and though an apple crate wasn’t much of one, it was better than a sidewalk. Arriving from the subway, he saw that part of 1st Avenue was closed to traffic. Instead of subduing the atmosphere, the absence of cars heighteed the sense that the demonstration was out of the ordinary. Surveying the scene before him, set against the backdrop of the United Nations building, he saw hundreds of people gathered, far more than he’d expected. Anna took hold of his free hand. She was nervous.
The police were positioned in a perimeter formation: some were wearing full riot gear, several were on horseback, patrolling the front line of the protest, their horses snorting as if disgusted by the rabble. The protestors were barricaded in, like cattle, garish homemade banners rising up among the crowd: bed sheets stretched tight over wooden posts, brilliant colours – a tapestry of different material. Letters had been cut out individually, unevenly, giving them a childlike naivety. Reading the slogans, Jesse deduced the protestors were a muddle of different groups. There was something he’d never seen before in New York, anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators with guitars and drums side by side with clean-cut men and women in starched shirts attacking the Communist Party, some with placards demanding that Hungary be liberated from Soviet rule, others using the tired phrase:
THE ONLY GOOD RED
IS A DEAD RED
It was reproduced so many times that Jesse wondered why they couldn’t think of something else to say – it made him want to speak even more. The more they threatened him, the stronger he became: that’s what he’d always believed.
He was too late for the most prominent locations in the demonstration, and he wouldn’t be able to plant himself near the gate as Elena had requested. He and Anna would have to make do with the far side, down towards the scraggly end of the crowd. It was less than ideal and he was annoyed with himself for not getting there earlier. As they began to walk down the length of the demonstration, a voice called out:
— Jesse Austin!
Turning around, he saw a man near the gate gesturing for him to come over. They obeyed, despite having no idea who the man was. He was young, with a pleasant smile.
— This spot is for you! I saved it!
The space was beside the main entrance, as Elena had requested. He took hold of Jesse’s crate, lifting it over the barricade. He tested it to see that it was stable, before looking up at Jesse.
— Climb over!
Jesse laughed.
— Thirty years ago maybe!
Holding Anna’s hand, he moved into the crowd, slowly working his way through the people until he reached the crate. The man was protecting the makeshift stage from other protestors, several of whom were trying to push their way onto it. Seeing Jesse, he put a hand on his shoulder.
— This is your time. Give them everything! Don’t hold back!
Jesse shook his hand.
— Who are you?
— A friend. You have a lot more of them than you know.
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Same Day
Yates left the United Nation’s premises before the concert finished. Normally a demonstration wouldn’t have been allowed so close to the headquarters, but redirected to Ralph Bunche Park or Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at 47th Street and 1st Avenue, one block away from the visitors’ entrance, four blocks away from the entrance used by top-level diplomats. The decision to allow the demonstration unprecedented proximity to the United Nations was symbolic, the idea being that unlike the Soviet Union, America had nothing to fear in the face of open criticism. And there he was – Jesse Austin, making full use of the liberties granted by this nation, freedom of speech, a freedom that didn’t exist in the nation he so extolled.
Exiting onto the street, Yates saw a uniformed cop approaching Jesse, interrupting his speech and pointing at the crate he was standing on. Yates hurried forward, grabbing the supervising officer by the arm and shouting over the din:
— Tell your officer to pull back! No one moves Jesse Austin!
— Who is Jesse Austin?
The name meant nothing to this police officer. Yates was pleased.
— The tall man, the Negro standing on the box! He stays where he is!
— He’s not allowed to be so high, not so close to the main entrance.
Yates lost his temper.
— I don’t care about your rules. You listen to me! That man is not to be moved. The Soviets have invited him here hoping that we’ll force him to leave. If we do, he’ll resist and we’ll end up on the front page of ev
ery newspaper dragging him away. That’s what he wants! That’s why he’s here! He’s a famous Communist sympathizer, a popular Negro figurehead. Five white police officers manhandling an old Negro singer is not the kind of image we want. We’re in the middle of a propaganda war. I don’t want any displays of force tonight. I don’t care what the provocation is. Do you understand? No one moves that man!
Same Day
Jesse couldn’t believe that the police officer was backing down, walking away, allowing him to remain on the crate. He glanced at Anna. She seemed equally puzzled, but with the press here, their orders must be to show restraint, not to interfere, to allow the demonstration free rein, a tactical decision to show off the notion of American free speech, a cynical decision: but if free speech was being granted, even if it was a one-night-only show, he intended to exploit it.
From the apple crate he could see over the entire demonstration, hundreds of faces, some painted like flowers, others contorted with anger and outrage. Jesse began to speak. Timid at first, no one apart from his wife was listening to him, not even those closest to his crate. It was less like a speech and more like a crazy old man talking to himself.
— I’m here tonight . . .
A faltering start, unsure whether to read his material or to improvise. Deciding to use the material he’d written in his apartment, he tried to ignore the fact that no one seemed to care and concentrated on a fixed point in the crowd, pretending that he was back on the big stage with an audience of thousands of paying guests. However, his rhythm was thrown out of kilter by the incessant banging of the war protestors’ drums. His words were jumbled: he stopped midway through one point and began making another. He stopped again, returning to his first point only to wonder whether it mattered if he spoke Russian or English since no one was listening anyway. Despondent, he felt Anna take his hand. He looked down at her. She squeezed his palm and advised him: