Forgiving the Angel by Jay Cantor Page B

Bertolt Brecht; the party’spetty internal politics provided Lusk’s family’s table talk. But those squabbles, Lusk knew, were like a play of foam above waves; the ocean was the proletariat, and Lenin, who his mother called the party’s “animating and protecting spirit,” was, he supposed, none other than the Man in the Moon, who guided the ocean’s tides.
    Lusk wholeheartedly shared his mother’s admiration for Lenin; he’d learned Russian at sixteen to read him in his original language, and to make himself someone the party might choose for membership. And in the story Lusk narrated to himself this suburban night, “Lusk Lask, a thin wiry, long-legged fellow, whose coat wasn’t warm enough for a late fall night, walked with strong, confident strides through the suburban streets of Zehlendorf because he was being used by the leadership of the Leninist Party, the only force that could defeat fascism and make a world of brotherhood.” Still, his faith in the party might have been still greater if someone in the office had given him the real name of the woman who rented the apartment where he was to teach.
    Fortunately, when he got to the building, he found he could see through the street-level windows to a flat where people had spread out on couches, on folding seats, and on the floor. They spoke loudly, and made broad—yes, theatrical—gestures. Lusk compared them to the workers he usually taught, comrades who had a sincere, determined air made up of both confidence and resignation; they made clear that they might not like what was thrown at them by the bosses, but they would do whatever was necessary tosurvive and move forward. After all, what choice did they have?
    He stepped behind a table set up for him at the front of the room and began the course by describing the one class that, if it didn’t receive the party’s correctives, was most likely to produce work that they might think revolutionary, but that would really serve the rulers. This was, of course, the class into which he, and probably many of the people here, had been born, the petit bourgeoisie. Lenin, fortunately, had given all of them a way to guard against this self-deception; cadre must accept party discipline and let the party ruthlessly unmask and correct them when they found themselves clinging to imaginary distinctions, such as a degree in philosophy, a place in the theater, a small shop, or whatever.
    The workers in his classes had been attentive, like prisoners who believed Marx knew the way out of their jail. The actors, on the other hand, looked mocking. As always when he doubted himself, Lusk began to feel hollow, like a papier-mâché figure which might tip over at any time. To steady himself, his gaze returned to a small, attractive, full-breasted woman with a light blue shawl around her shoulders. She had large, sympathetic eyes that told him she both believed he’d something valuable to say and was sorry for the difficulty her comrades had made for him in saying it. But she looked so sad to him, he found he wanted to comfort
her
, tell her things weren’t really that bad.
    As soon as he finished, he moved toward her and stumbled over a thick white cast on a man’s leg, making himself lookboth foolish and inconsiderate. The woman, it turned out, was the Dora Diamant whose name had been on the front door, and she was also the party’s
Maira Jalens
. And the large-eared man he’d tripped over to get to her was, she said proudly, not only an actor but a brave Yiddish playwright. Three Brownshirts had followed him home after their last performance; two had held him while the third had swung a bat that broke his left leg, below the knee.
    Lusk winced. Six feet tall, he himself had long, sinewy legs of which he was a little proud, and just before he’d stumbled, he’d been hoping that Dora would notice them when he came toward her.
    Soon others came up to talk to Dora, some of them, Lusk saw now, also bruised. Dora had the same