The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space Read online

  ‘Charles, it was precisely your performance that made me realise what I can do at HUAC to undermine it! The way you constantly add more to my – to our words through your acting and gestures, you have rounded out Galileo from words to deeds.’

  Laughton smiles, a bit thinly. ‘Have you checked this out with your lawyers?’

  A pause. ‘Well, the lawyers have advised me to appear anyway. It seems I may not be protected by the Constitution.’

  ‘Ah, so there is more than one motivation for this action,’ but to Brecht’s relief, Laughton continues to smile.

  ‘And I must be extremely careful in the meantime before the hearing. So that is why I am going to have to turn down that very lovely and very persistent Japanese girl who keeps asking me to attend her demonstration against Oppenheimer. Besides, I am afraid Helene would be jealous if I said yes.’

  ‘I thought you two didn’t get jealous… and wasn’t Helene the “other woman” once?’ Laughton leans on his rake.

  ‘Exactly, that’s why she is worried. But I am too old now and I already have too many children to provide for. You are lucky, your extra-marital activities will never produce any children.’

  ‘That’s the only luck in it as far as I can see,’ Laughton starts to rake again, but slower now. They don’t speak for some time as Brecht watches him work.

  ‘Charles, why don’t you come to Germany with us? You know these activities used to be quite well tolerated there, at least in Berlin. I’m sure they will be again, soon.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Bertie. And besides, I like my routines here. I’m used to them.’

  ‘But it’s all so fake. You and your… friends, you’re all married.’

  ‘Well we are actors, after all. How do you know we don’t mind being fakes in our private lives too?’

  On Saturday the sun is so sharp it makes the campus look like a film set. White wooden chairs are set out in rows on the green grass facing a podium decked in red, white and blue ribbons. To one side a brass band are slowly assembling and tuning their shiny instruments. The audience are taking their seats, they look like the sort of people who would come to college award ceremonies and degree ceremonies. Not that I have ever been to either.

  But I am thinking it all looks rather nice and am almost forgetting why I am here when Hiroko rushes up to me. For some reason she is wearing a raincoat and when she kisses me I can feel something sharp and angular press against me and intrude on our intimacy. She opens one button of the coat as if doing a striptease, so I can see the corner of a cardboard sign. For the demonstration, and my heart sinks. I scan the crowd but I can’t see anyone obvious from the bureau. I never can.

  She gestures behind her, ‘The others,’ she whispers theatrically. They look like typical students to me, round faces, shiny hair, shiny teeth. It’s amazing to me that so soon after the war has finished there are already young kids like these, who’ve seen nothing, and who don’t know what it all comes to, in the end.

  We take our seats near the back and wait. One of the students giggles and Hiroko puts a finger to her lips, ‘Sshhh!’ I stroke her arm. It’s quivering slightly, the way a bird quivers when you trap it in your cupped hands. ‘Remember, we’re going to be silent. This is a dignified protest, on behalf of the victims of the nuclear bombs who will never speak again.’ She looks so dignified herself as she whispers these instructions to us, so dignified and serious. My Hiroko.

  Things are beginning to happen. A rather tubby man climbs onto the stage, followed by Oppenheimer who’s so slight that he’s barely more than a dark crease in the air. He’s wearing sunglasses as well as his trademark hat, the one that’s in all the photographs of him, and although it’s set at its usual jaunty angle, his face does not match the jauntiness.

  ‘Right!’ Hiroko hisses at us and we stand up and unfurl our banners. We stand there silently, the banners making the only noise as they snap in the breeze. Most of the audience doesn’t even notice us, and I think only Oppenheimer and the college principal can really see what the banners say. The sun is fierce now and Oppenheimer shields his face from it, as the college principal gives a speech, droning on about how we have all been saved from tyranny.

  When Oppenheimer starts to talk, his sunglasses reflect the sun directly at us so that all I can see are twin images of the sun, dazzling circles of light on the dark plastic, ‘As I stand before you I feel very privileged and honoured. Honoured to be invited here today, and privileged to be alive. Privileged to be American. Which is, of course, a simple accident of birth. My family was German, and if we’d stayed there instead of coming to America, would you now think me a hero? If I’d built the bomb for the Germans, as Heisenberg tried to do, would you be honouring me? But I would have only been doing my job. Like I did for the USA.’

  The audience is silent. Very silent.

  ‘We live in the afterglow of the Bomb now. Nothing can ever take it away. But I ask you all, each and every one of you, to do what you can to ensure that it is never used again. Thank you.’

  As he sits down again, the students’ placards and banners slide onto the grass. The students look thoroughly deflated, they’ve been expecting a comic book monster and he’s let them down by being human.

  The college principal has struggled to his feet again, ‘Thank you Professor Oppenheimer for that… interesting speech. Please allow me to present you with this medal.’

  As Oppenheimer lets the medal be hung around his scrawny neck, Hiroko jumps up, ‘Mr Oppenheimer!’

  Both the college principal and Oppenheimer freeze.

  ‘Mr Oppenheimer! Are you sorry for what you did?’ She didn’t tell me she was going to do this.

  He seems to think about her question before he answers it, ‘Sorry? No, I can’t say that I am.’

  And she dodges past us in our seats and runs up to the stage and lunges at him, clawing at his face so his glasses tumble off and we see his eyes for the first time. They look like burnt holes. One of the male students is right behind her and I am momentarily jealous, thinking that she has planned this with him, but then he grabs her and pins her arms back and I realise it is a boy from the bureau. One of Walter’s boys.

  ‘Sorry Professor Oppenheimer,’ this boy is saying. ‘Don’t worry, I got her. We knew there’d be trouble.’

  The audience are all turning to each other and saying can you believe it? and fancy that. But I cannot move, I’m stuck in my seat. I can’t go to her because then she will know I’m one of them and that I’ve been lying to her. But then, she has lied to me, too. I feel heavy with the knowledge of all this lying, and I struggle to stand up.

  ‘Ok, Stan?’ the boy calls to me, ‘Walter told me you were seeing this oriental piece.’ Hiroko struggles against him but she is caught too firmly.

  ‘Where are you taking her?’ I ask.

  ‘Just to the bureau. You can pick her up later, after she’s cooled her heels.’

  ‘Hiroko…’ I say, not knowing what to say next, but she saves me the trouble.

  ‘You bastard!’

  So now she hates me.

  For some reason Brecht did not expect the HUAC hearings to be filmed, and as he takes his seat in the witness stand he tries not to look self-consciously at the large camera whirring away in the corner. This is very good, even more people will be able to see his performance this afternoon. He smoothes down his blue boiler suit and winks at Helene, sitting in the public gallery. He has not worn this old worker’s boiler suit for several years and it is a bit tight around his middle. There is too much food in America.

  The congressmen are all smoking so he lights up a cigar. It will be a good stage prop.

  The main interrogator is a man called Stripling, ‘You were a member of the Communist Party in Germany, Mr Brecht?’

  ‘No, I was not.’

  ‘Have you ever made an application to join the Communist Party?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no, never. I was an independent writer. I think it was best for me not to j
oin any party whatever,’ and he puffs some smoke towards the camera.

  ‘Mr Brecht, since you have been in the United States, have you attended any Communist Party meetings?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you certain?’ Stripling looks exasperated.

  ‘No – I am certain, yes.’ There is some quiet laughter from the public gallery and he smiles at them.

  ‘You are certain you have never been to Communist Party meetings?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. I do not think so. I do not think that I attended political meetings.’ He is taking care to speak very slowly and with a much stronger German accent than usual.

  ‘No, never mind the political meetings, but have you attended any Communist meetings in the United States?’

  ‘I do not think so, no.’

  ‘You are certain?’

  ‘I think I am certain.’ This is easier than he thought it would be. These people are idiots, why should anyone be afraid of them?

  ‘You think you are certain?’ The laughter is louder this time, and Stripling glares at the public gallery before continuing, ‘I would like to ask Mr Brecht whether or not he wrote a poem – a song, rather – entitled, “Forward, We’ve Not Forgotten.”

  ‘Forward, we’ve not forgotten our strength in the fights we’ve won.

  Forward. March on to the power, through the city, the land the world;

  Forward. Advance the hour. Just whose city is the city? Just whose world is the world?

  Forward, we’ve not forgotten our union in hunger and pain, no matter what may threaten, forward, we’ve not forgotten

  We have a world to gain. We shall free the world of shadow;

  every shop and every room, every road and every meadow,

  All the world will be our own.’

  Did you write that, Mr. Brecht?’ He is clearly embarrassed at having to read poetry aloud.

  ‘No. I wrote a German poem, but that is very different from this.’ The laughter is quite loud now, and Stripling sits down abruptly.

  The Chairman turns to the man on his left-hand side and says, ‘He is doing all right. He is doing much better than many other witnesses you have brought here.’ He then says in a much louder and slower voice, as if Brecht is a halfwit, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Brecht. You are a good example.’

  I go over to the bureau to get Hiroko. They let me into the little dusty office where she’s being kept, an office I know is used solely for such purposes, having used it myself a few times. I figure if I don’t go and get her out, she won’t ever speak to me again. She probably won’t anyway. But I need to try.

  She’s sitting on the desk, her arms wrapped around herself. She looks cold, even though the day is still hot, ‘You asshole! You were a spook all that time? You were just using me to check up on Mr Brecht!’

  ‘That’s not true. Anyway I don’t think you ever believed my journalist cover, did you?’

  She’s silent so I carry on, ‘You were suspicious anyway. But you went along with it.’

  ‘Because I liked you! You were gentle.’

  ‘Because you figured you could use me!’ I’ve had a few hours to think about this, and it seems as true as any other reason.

  ‘How dare you turn this around! You’re the one who’s a fully paid up stooge for the Government! You should be apologising to me!’

  ‘It’s my job, Hiroko. It’s only listening. Nothing more. It pays for gardenias and hot chocolate,’ and I try to smile but she is still furious.

  ‘You don’t know, do you. You’re so naïve. You think you give this information to your Government and it just reads it and files it away. What you do affects people! Look at Mr Brecht, having to give evidence to that stupid committee on his beliefs!’

  Aside from all the anger there is something odd about what she has just said, ‘What do you mean, my Government? It’s yours too.’

  ‘No it’s not. My Government wouldn’t spy on people. My Government wouldn’t pick American people who had Japanese parents and lock them away for years on end and forget about them. My Government wouldn’t put children into camps. My Government would act fairly for all people, regardless of their colour or race. So, no, it’s not my Government.’

  ‘It was a war. Lots of terrible things happened,’ I try not to think about some of those things, the bodies of my fellow soldiers twisting in the sea off Okinawa.

  ‘They didn’t have to do it. It didn’t help the war, did it? Locking up thousands of civilians. There wasn’t any evidence whatsoever that any of them were in touch with the Japanese Government.’

  I could say many things now but I know I have lost, so I remain silent.

  ‘You don’t know, Stan, do you? What it’s like to be locked up for years and years. That dreadful burning sun, rising over the flat brown earth day after day. There was no shade out there in the desert. Nothing to do except walk from one end of the huts to the other, and back. We used to play in the dirt, draw patterns in it. Sometimes we’d have lessons in one of the huts, the parents would take it in turns to teach us. Someone would tell us about American history, the civil war, the constitution, and I’d stare out at the endless land and wonder why we were there.’

  I wonder who she’s talking to. It certainly isn’t me.

  ‘Once, I remember looking out of the window and I thought I could see two suns. Of course, it was just a reflection in the glass. But it seemed to me that nothing was normal in a place where there could be two suns.

  ‘Even after I was let out of the camp with the other kids to go to college, it didn’t end. Those days in August ’45 when the Bombs were dropped, the people around me were nervous, afraid of my reaction. But you could tell they were excited by it as well. That was the disgusting part. They were excited by the – extremeness of it. It was like they’d been mesmerised by the blasts.

  ‘Why did they drop two bombs, and not just one? It’s like a murderer shooting his dead victim over and over again, peppering the body with bullets. It was unjust.’

  The room feels very empty and silent, and I have to wait a moment before daring to speak, ‘Did I mean anything to you?’

  Her head snaps back so that she can glare at me, ‘You have no right to ask me that. No right at all.’

  Back in the café where it all began. And Walter is there with me.

  ‘We need to talk, Stan.’

  ‘What about?’ I am weary, I haven’t been sleeping so well.

  ‘Your little friend. You didn’t tell me about everything she had planned for that demonstration.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well then, she didn’t tell you,’ he pauses so I can remind myself just how little Hiroko did tell me. ‘You see Stan, none of this set-up worked very well. We let you carry on seeing her because we figured it would be useful. But – you got too involved, didn’t you? You didn’t really want to screw information out of her, because you were too busy trying to screw her.’

  I can’t be bothered to say anything to him. I think about turning round to look at the waitress’s legs but it seems like too much effort.

  Perhaps Walter realises just how tired I am and how sad, because he changes the subject, with obvious tact, ‘The hearings are going pretty well. All your information was very useful.’

  ‘Really? Seems Brecht made a laughing stock out of us.’

  ‘Oh no, he did very well indeed.’

  ‘But I heard it on the news reports. He was mocking it all. The way he spoke…’

  ‘Doesn’t matter how he sounded. If you look at the transcript it reads as though he showed up, and he answered the questions. Means the other guys have to do the same now. And that means we’ve got plenty more work on the go, Stan. No one’s going to have to take any trains home to Chicago.’

  ‘Milwaukee. I’m from Milwaukee.’ I catch sight of the waitress’s legs. Shapely, definitely shapely. But still they don’t cheer
me up.

  ‘Whatever. Anyway. We’ve got another nice little job for you. You know that guy Oppenheimer? He’s got a file as long as your arm, but there are a few loose ends. Ideal for you. And we won’t need you to translate any German poetry this time!’

  Back in my room, I chew a lukewarm frankfurter. I could move from this place now, I’m earning enough for a better room, maybe even one with a kitchenette. But this place kind of suits me. I can imagine the waitress here. She wouldn’t need to take off her grubby apron, I wouldn’t mind.

  I should be out there, working, gathering information. But after I’d had to translate some of Brecht’s poetry for the hearing I’d got into the habit of reading it. I pick up my notebook and thumb through it until I reach the poem that keeps singing in my head:

  Just whose city is the city?

  Just whose world is the world?

  The search for dark matter

  I used to fly apart all the time. There was nothing at my centre and everything around me was so attractive that I could not stay still and quiet. I was always moving around from the last place to the next. It was exhausting but I could not stop.

  I remember once getting on a train, running down the platform and clambering through the last open door just as the whistle was being blown. I didn’t know or care where it was going, I just needed to feel that jolt of acceleration pushing against my bones. And when we arrived and the train seized to a halt inches from the buffers, I just waited a little bit before it turned around and I came home again.

  But ‘home’ didn’t really exist for me. I had a house with stairs I could run up and down. A garden full of trees that waved their branches at the sky. And a husband. At first he knew how to anchor me with his kisses, but that didn’t work for long and I started running. On Sunday mornings I would fling back the blankets and leap out, before he could come at me with the cups of tea and try to drag me over to his half of the bed.

  At night, the sky was either bright with the Moon the colour of my wedding dress and more moth-eaten each month, or dark with cloud and unmet desires. At night, I pushed him out so I could escape the wrestling, his knees and elbows always in the wrong places. I gave him a telescope and sent him out to measure the sky and count it all up. He had a double entry book where I taught him to write down the stars.