But later, when the planes had waked them both, and they had gone to the window to look up at the play of searchlights, her excitement at this event—it was unprecedented, those tiny planes pinned between earth and the night sky—had illuminated a momentarily unguarded side of her nature. Yet afterward, listening to the radio news bulletins which insistently proclaimed the planes to have been Japanese, she had assumed her usual postures, scolding imperialism, “pointing out” the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the contradictions of her own nature left abandoned by the window where the curtains had fallen back into place.

“Max! Are you deaf? I asked you if it’s true that Ethel is sick? I heard she wasn’t coming.”

“Ethel?” he asked wonderingly. He had forgotten where he was, where he was going. She poked him with that hand so quick to poke. He looked resentfully at her hand, then at her. She nodded briefly toward the back seat. No names, Max realized, that was what she meant. He was a little amused, mostly irritated. Who did she think that poor stray was? An FBI plant? A Trotskyite infiltrator?

“She’s had a recurrence of the old trouble,” he answered, annoyed at being circumspect, and conscious of the self-importance that tends to swell a voice that brings bad news. The old trouble —eleven knife wounds. Ethel Schaeffer, who in 1911 had taken part in the mass strikes which had organized the needle-trades industry in New York, who, in the twenties, along with other comrades, almost succeeded in taking over the union from Dubinsky, who nearly died, a real heroine. She was the only comrade he’d ever known who could speak of “the bosses” without making him flinch. A very small woman with silver hair and gray eyes, she had a single-mindedness of purpose that invested the most banal political slogan with the exaltation of her own commitment. Her voice was a caress; the students who clustered around her after her classes at the L.A. party school seemed, by contrast, oafish, inauthentic. A clean little mother from Eastern Europe, scarred like a saint, undefiled by secret irresolutions. He loved her for the unity of her being; he envied her for it. And she was a kind of monster—like all saints.

He wasn’t a good Communist; he knew that.

“I love her,” Fern said vehemently. “She’s a great woman!”

“She is unique,” he said dryly.

“That’s the kind of compliment she would detest.”

“Could I trouble you for another cigarette?” asked the girl. Max handed her his pack. He glanced at the handbag on the seat next to her. The catch was broken, the bag gaped open. He saw a half-empty pack of Camels. He felt bad at her inept chiseling. Was there any money in the bag? His curiosity to see what was in it was so intense, he had to turn away.