The Phoneless Friends

          Shortly after we returned to Paris from our trip to Amsterdam, someone who identified himself as Pastor Rangoon telephoned me to ask if I would come to a meeting at 270 rue Marcadet in Montmartre, concerning “our mutual friends.”  Eight o’clock that night.  I asked Max who they were and he said, “They mean the babies,” but I wanted to know who the people giving the meeting were, and he said, “Oh, Rangoon, he’s part of a group of French people interested in the babies.”

          My brother was in Paris from New York, and I was having dinner with him and then taking him to Orly to his plane.  I thought I would just drop by the meeting afterwards; so at eight-fifteen I was driving back to Paris along the auto route from the airport.  I had looked up the rue Marcadet on the Metro map.  I wondered if I should take the exterior boulevards or go down the Avenue d’Italie and out through Paris.  I decided to cut through Paris, turned down the Avenue d'Italie, took the Avenue des Gobelins and went up the rue Monge over the Boulevard Saint Germain and crossed the Seine at Notre Dame.

          Bonjour, the voice on the telephone had said. Rangoon.  Je suis le Pasteur Rangoon.

          Smooth.  Ingratiating?  Like my money changer in the days of the parallel market.  Agent de change.  That was how long ago?  Over ten years now.  Before De Gaulle.  The franc was officially 350 to the dollar, and he gave me over 400;  thus, on 400 dollars, for example, the profit was about--say 50 cents to the dollar, or 250 old francs--no, that couldn’t be--he had a numbered account in Switzerland...I wonder how much he made...ten percent?

          Red light stop.  Fortunately.  My notions of simple arithmetic...

          Green light go.  Left up the rue de Rivoli.  Tour Saint Jacques.  Where Gerald de Nerval hung out --from a lamp post.

          Bonjour, this is Pastor Rangoon.  Will you come to a meeting tonight to discuss certain recent arrivals concerning us all?   Pretty enigmatic.  Why didn’t Max go? 

          --Because you are a respectable upper middle class woman with Paris Americans to Stopwar.  Wear your fur coat.

          --But you are the one running the baby business.

          --We’re all working together.  Besides, they didn’t ask me.

          The rue Marcadet began at the Metro Marx-Demoy and ascended geographically and numerically from number 139-35.  What happened to nos. 1-134?  Who cares?  Pre-34 does not concern me.  I was only seven at the time.

          The road was blocked by a one-way sign the wrong way for me.  A red circle with a white line through it.  In China, it is said, that red is to go, green is to stop.  Not here.  Go on anyway?  Deserted street.  No, too risky.  But what a stupid idea to change the direction of a street right in the middle.  Where am I?  Too dark.

          I got out of the car.  High up to the right of a double door, the number 155 was picked up by the reflection of a street lamp.  Too low.  I got back in the car and turned north on the rue de Rousseau.  Or ruisseau.  Socialist or stream?  Too dark to see.  Stronger glasses?  Next left and another left and I should arrive at...but in Paris it doesn’t work that way.  In New York, yes.  Gridiron plan.  You turn right, right, right, right, and you are back where you started.  Left, left, left, left, too.  Except those who begin left and end up right.  Like Dos Passos and Steinbeck. The contrary?  Not so frequent.  And in France you think you are going left and you find yourself in an impasse.

          Unlit white letters on blue circle say Impasse.

          I switched  on the low inside light and took out my Hermes Agenda to verify the address:  270 rue Marcadet at 20h.  21h was the last number on the page.  In Hermes world, life stops at 21h.  Strange.  After all le tout Paris buy their agendas at Hermes and their lives don’t stop at 21h.

          Closing the agenda, I checked in my Plan de Paris par Arrondissement , but the little map did not indicate which streets were one way which way.  Backing out of the Impasse, I took the first street down to the rue Martinet which brought me back, as I had planned, higher up on the rue Marcadet.  But even higher up it was hard to rejoin the party at no. 270.  I was only at 200, and the rue Marcadet was still plummeting downward the opposite way, all upward progress stopped by a large stop sign.  Shit.

          Rather than trying again, and annoyed at the obscure dark streets and lack of people to ask, I parked the Thunderbird in front of no. 200 and started walking up the rue Marcadet.  These sudden reversals certainly slowed you down.

          270 was a large modern apartment building on cement stilts with the elevators grounded in a concrete base.  Pastor Rangoon had been imprecise about the actual location of the meeting and I had not thought of asking.  I could see how the deserters would have problems.  Also, perhaps on the telephone you weren’t supposed--but he had given me the address on the telephone.  My watch said 21h.  The time at which all life stopped.  The wind blew through the cement stilts.  Hurricane?  Shivering, I turned my nutria collar up around my ears.  Then I saw a light in the cellar.  Underground.  Brightly lit.  Wooden tables were arranged in a large square with--how many? Twenty people.  “They broke the British square.”  I was the fuzzi wuzzi.  Kipling…I found the entrance and entered. They looked around at me, but the man who was speaking did not stop speaking, and I found a free place and sat down.

          Heavyset, silver-grey hair, wearing a business suit and tie, sixty years old or so, the speaker leant forward on the table, his arms forming barriers on either side of his notes from which, only rarely, he raised his eyes.

          --and on their trip to Canada, they found a great need to cultivate various groups and individuals there susceptible of supporting us in our work.  It is imperative that funds be found to further this endeavor.

          I felt let down.  From the bright lights of Orly and the Western World to the dark streets of the rue Marcadet in the North.  Northeast.  Brrrr.  Which was Pastor Rangoon?  Many silver-haired graying men seemed to be sitting around the table.  Communists?

          --We have waited until everyone got here to talk about the two American deserters, continued the speaker.  I suggest we pass to this phase immediately.  Arthur is handling this.  Three deserters at present.

          --Unless you know of any others?

          Me?

          --Are there any new deserters?

          It was me.

          --Oh yes, I said.  Hundreds.

          They all looked at me.  I had the attention of the entire table. Which I did not at all want.  Arthur, who had first looked surprised, assumed an amused, bemused air.

          --Really?  he said.  To our knowledge, there are only Manfred and Buster actually in Paris.  The first one has been sent elsewhere.

          --Where are they?  asked the voice that had asked me to the meeting.

          Pastor Rangoon, I presume. A thin, graying man.  I decided I did not like him.  He reminded me of the rabbi who had converted me to Judaism for my marriage in 1948.  Foundation of the State of Israel.  What a great idea that was.

          --Have you personally been in touch with them?

          Arthur again.  Another one I could do without.  Abrasive.

          --Who me?

          --Come now, said Arthur, who seemed to have given the wink to the others that he was the one who could handle this.  I know Max keeps saying there are over a hundred deserters, continued Arthur, but all anyone has ever seen are three.  So if there are any new ones, I assume Max has them.

          --There are hundreds, I repeated.

          Max had told me always to say there were over a hundred deserters.  Give people the idea it was a movement.  Since he had not told me to make an exception for these people, I didn’t.  If they were working with Max, why wasn’t he here instead of me, and if they were not working with him, why was I here?

          --The number is immaterial, intervened the fifty year old business man.  At present we are specifically interested in the two we know for a certainty to be in Paris.  Arthur?

          --We don’t think any of them should be in Paris, said Arthur.  I have told Max that.  We also don’t approve of you giving them ten francs a day to live on.

          --It’s not very much, I said, for Paris.

          Since they knew about the ten francs, they were working with Max but had disagreements.  A general air of disapproval seemed to me to be invading the British Square, and so I added something about the high cost of living.  I personally did not see how anyone could live on ten francs a day in Paris, but I wanted to get off the subject of money for fear of being asked to contribute to the Canadian venture.

          --Exactly why they should be out of Paris, repeated Arthur.

          Neither did I mention I had bought Manfred a hamster he called PACSY after the Paris Americans to Stopwar.  I knew they wouldn’t approve of that.  Another mouth to feed.  I just made the point that Manfred and Buster had been sent out of Paris once and had come back.

          --Yes, said Arthur.  I had found a place for them in the country with sympathizers, but Max had already sent them to the Compagnons Batisseurs.

          --We were lucky to get them that far away, I said.  Joubain wanted to keep them in Paris.

          --Who is Joubain?  asked Rangoon.

          --He is an anthropologist, explained a hitherto silent figure.  Bororo and Bambara.  Specially regarding initiation ceremonies.  He actually had himself initiated and--

          --We are not here, interrupted the businessman, to discuss African initiating ceremonies.

          --Actually it is relevant, I said.  Manfred kept bringing a lot of other blacks over ­to sleep in the apartment and to have meals with Joubain, and Joubain said it was a tribal reflex.  He was very happy about it, in the beginning.

          --What happened?  asked the Hitherto Silent Figure.

          --One of Manfred’s friends took the concierge’s radio and sold it.  Then Joubain noticed things were missing from his place too, and since he has quite a valuable collection of African art, he threw them all out.

          --Were those deserters too?  asked Arthur.

          Eagerly, I thought.  Shows they have not much direct contact.

          --No.  They were just guys Manfred picked up in the Latin Quarter.  One is still around.  He says he’s a Puerto Rican draft resister because he thinks then he can get five francs a day from us.

          --You see, said Arthur, and turned to the table with a smile.  I told you it was wrong to give them money.

          --We knew the others weren’t GI’s, I said. We didn’t fund them.  But I think Joubain did.

          --Then he threw them out?  asked the businessman.

          I nodded.

          --What happened to Manfred?  asked Arthur.

          --Seule le sait notre mere Afrique, I quoted. Only Mother Africa knows.

          The line is from a play about King Cristophe of Haiti.  No one seemed to know what I was talking about, not even the HSF.  His field seemed to be anthropology but not literature.  Arthur asked me again where Manfred was?

          --He went off.

          --Off?

          --Actually I think he is now living with Buster again in Joubain’s family apartment.  Joubain told him not to go back there, but I think that’s where he is.

          The businessman sighed and turned to the others.

          --As soon as the Valence Project is underway, he said, they must go down there.

          I asked what should be done with them in the meantime.

          --Let them stay where they are, he said.  But it is unwise to continue to give them money.

          I would have argued the point with Arthur, but not with this gentleman but I wished he’d propose an alternate solution.  How are they supposed to eat without money?  And no one seemed to care about Joubain and his dwindling collection of African art.

          --Do you think PACS will give their support to American deserters?  asked Rangoon. 

          Ah.  That’s how.

          --Officially I don’t know, I said.  Mostly they are worried because they are foreigners themselves, and they don’t want to be closed down by the prefecture.  Or expelled from France.

          --After all, said the businessman.  The deserters are Americans.  It is only normal that the various problems concerning them should be solved by other Americans.  The linguistic problem, social contacts--

          --I’ll ask at the next PACS meeting.  But until the deserters are legal, I doubt I’ll get anywhere.  PACS is very conservative, you know.  They won’t even go to the big Vietnam demonstrations as a group because they are scared of being dissolved.

          --If asylum is granted, the question must be posed to them.

          I really wondered who these people were, telling me what to do with the deserters, with PACS, with Max.  They weren’t providing anything except a lot of advice.  Ask them about money?

          --As long as they do have to stay in Paris for the moment, it would be a help if we could get some contributions for their upkeep, I said.

          --The ten francs a day was Max’s idea, said Arthur.  I don’t think we are the ones to find funds for them.

                   If they think I am going to contribute to their Canadian trip, I thought, they can think again.

          The HSF left the room as the businessman began talking about a follow-up trip to the United States.

          If I hadn’t gotten here so late, I would leave too.

          But the follow-up trip to the States ended it.  The men and the one woman, who hadn’t said a word, got up.  I got up too.  I went over to speak to Rangoon and asked if he was the one who called me.  Yes.  The businessman became charming.  I felt I could be at a literary cocktail party at Gallimard.  I wondered if he was Kurilla.

          On the stairs going up to the ground floor, I met the other woman, a girl.  I asked her if she wasn’t there the night we lost Manfred and Buster? She nodded, unhappily I thought, yes. So did the young man who joined her climbing the cement steps.

          --These people seem to have a weird idea about how to work with deserters, I said, my old chit-chat reflexes surfacing as we climbed.  Can you imagine keeping Manfred and Buster down in Valence?

          --We don’t work with deserters anymore, said the girl, looking at the boy.  He has too much work studying for his exams.

          --Why did you come tonight?

          --We were asked.

          Boy and girl disappeared into the Montmartre darkness.  Reserved.  Or working exclusively with the people here?

          Out of the Montmartre darkness came Arthur.

          --You arrived late, he said.

          --I’m surprised I arrived at all.  It’s not easy to find.

          I stopped in front of the Thunderbird and asked if I could take him anywhere.  Arthur eyed it coldly.

          --You came here in this?

          --Sure.  Shouldn’t I have?

          --We always go to meetings in the metro.  You can walk me down to Marx-Demoy.  It would be just as well to be seen by as few people as possible getting into that car.

          --Why?

          --It stands out.

          Just as enigmatic as the other two.  Why did you come to the meeting?  We were asked.  Why shouldn’t I take my car?  It stands out.  After all, if the operation is underground, why not say so at the meeting and tell people why and how to act?  As long as the deserters are running around telling everyone they are deserters, why are we being so careful?

          --We are not pleased about the interview with the deserters in the Saturday Evening Post, said Arthur.

          --Why not?

          --Only a few interviews with friendly journalists in a few selected publications are advisable.  We know which ones.

          --But how is anyone in America to know there are deserters in France if we don’t give interviews?

          --The bourgeois press, began Arthur and stopped at the mouth of the bourgeois subway, alight, looming up before us at Marx-Demoy where the Hitherto Silent Figure stood waiting.

          --I think there should be lots of interviews, I said.  The more people that know about deserters and hear their point of view, the more people will support them.  And more people read the bourgeois press than the Nouvel Observateur. Or Evénément.

          --A sympathetic story for a few people is better than a warped version for millions, said Arthur.

          --It depends on how it is warped.  If it shows them lurking in doorways looking for cigarette butts, no.  But if it says they are living it up in Paris with French girl friends, it could encourage others to join them.

          --We can’t talk here, said Arthur.  Besides, there is nothing to talk about, the decision has been made.  Tell Max no more interviews.

          The younger went underground with the older.

          His wild wet father?  He hadn’t introduced me.  Probably so we wouldn’t stand out.  Not so wild.  But if it rains, I’ll be the one to get wet;  they’re underground.

          --Of course, that’s it, said Max half an hour later in a cafe at the rainy Porte d’Orleans.  Their network of secrecy goes towards protecting themselves.  What was the reaction to the Thunderbird?

          --Arthur said I should have taken the metro.

          --Who is Arthur?

          --He’s hard to describe.  Sort of young and anonymous with a silent father.  I think that was his father.

          --Did you meet Kurilla?

          --Maybe.  Someone in a business suit said we should not give Manfred and Buster ten francs a day.

          --What did he look like”

          --Thin, white-haired, quite tall.  Middle fifties or sixty.  Charming--once the meeting was over.

          --Did he charm you?

          --Put it that he was the only one I didn’t dislike on sight.

          I suddenly remembered Maria of PACS telling me, “If you’re going to go on with this, June, you’ll have to get used to working with the Sco’s and the Janowitzes and--” the Rangoons and the Kurillas--and the Maxes too, I guess.

          --I only started disliking him after he said he wasn’t going to give us any contributions for their living costs.

          --Probably it was Kurilla.  The description fits.  He has always wanted to send them out of  Paris, and he doesn’t take it seriously that they won’t stay out.             

          --But who are the phoneless friends anyway?  Are they Communists? They know you and you know them.  I still don’t see why you didn’t go.

          --I told you, you’re respectable and have a fur coat.

          --Look, I went.  Now I want to know what I went to.

          --It’s very complicated.  I’m not sure you’re capable of understanding.

          --Now you’re treating me like they treat the deserters.  Give orders and don’t explain.

           --All right.  I’ll try to make it clear to you.  We’ll begin at the beginning with Baby A. 

          --You don’t need to do that. Remember, we were in Amsterdam together.  The provos brought him into Paris, dropped him with a French group, the French group contacted us, or some of us, PACS anyway, who didn’t want him.  Then what?

          --There are provos, that is correct, but not “the” provos.  It is a non-centralized group.

          --Yes.

          --Good girl.  OK.  It is important to get things straight from the beginning.  Remember, the anti-atomic people, mostly students, had first called the Quakers about Baby A, and the Quakers had called PACS.  They, or Tony Clay who is the head of the Center, and the only Quaker there, along with his wife, had called PACS because Sandy was also an American.  And you people have a meeting there every Friday night about the Vietnam War.  When Sandy was bounced back by PACS, I doubt very much that Tony was equally irresponsible.  The Quakers are very professional peace people, and I believe their religion is very strong against abandoning the poor and forsaken--which Sandy certainly was.  Tony probably called a French semi-religious 0rganization that was also against the Vietnam War like Pasteur Rangoon's Protestants for Peace or whatever it’s called.  After all, Tony was the official Quaker representative in Paris; they wouldn’t have just sent him here without connections.  So whether by chance or choice, Pasteur Rangoon's group was called and took over Baby A. Who wasn’t Baby A yet--that was Max’s invention--but Sandy Garvin from Waco, Texas, unloved and unwanted by everyone he met.

          --So how do you fit in?

          --Not yet.  Everything in due time. The French group--for want of a better name--had no idea what to do with Sandy.  Well, they had an idea but Sandy did not fit into it.  First they sent him to a cow farm where the Protestant farmer was willing to take him on without working papers.  I mention he was Protestant because there is a whole tradition of Protestant involvement in politics, stemming from the Huguenots in the 17th century.  Do you know about it?

          --In general. But don’t get off Baby A.

          --I never know what they taught you at Harvard. Anyway, Sandy did a real job at the farm.  He overslept, developed chronic hay fever, and told the farmer that his methods were very inferior to those in the States.  He still found himself milking at five o’clock in the morning, for the Protestant farmer believed in God and the Vietnamese.  However, when Sandy--clandestine, you must remember, and uninsured--ran into a Citroen with the farmer’s tractor, the farmer felt he had to choose between Baby A and his farm.  Did I mention he had an abandon syndrome?  When I took him on, I took him to a psychiatrist.  She said he had an abandon syndrome; he deliberately created conditions which would cause people to abandon him, plus he had a “will to be sick.”  Actually, Rangoon or someone got him a job in a mental asylum.  I don’t know whether he was an unpaid employee or an unpaying inmate.  It was a very nice asylum--I guess they’re called clinics nowadays--and Sandy did odd jobs and slept in a doctor’s office.  He was really well-adapted there and became engaged to one of the nurses, but the girl’s parents objected.  The broken engagement added itself to the pattern of rejection and abandon, and he knocked up a patient--maybe out of pure compensation.  But that was the end of the psychiatric clinic.

          ---And then you come in?

          --Not yet.  They found a few more slots for him, with the same success--or lack of it.  d

          --So Kurilla turned Baby A or Sandy over to you and what did you do with him?

          --I took him home and let him sleep on my couch while I thought about the situation.  I even took him to see Doctor Jivago which he said was Communist propaganda.  But mainly I went around looking for help.  The Kurilla people’s efforts to keep him clandestine had failed miserably.  And besides I was the only one who foresaw that the deserters, so far only Babies A, B, and C, but eventually there are going to be more and more, the longer the war goes on.  Not only in Paris, but all over the place.    Canada has over 600 draft resisters, and a lot of them must be deserters.  But Paris is my business and we need an organization here to help with it.  “It” being the future movement.  And the organization had to be French, obviously.  Since they are illegal, we just can’t go to the government and say, Please take care of these American deserters.  The French may be delighted that the Americans are casséing their gueules in Vietnam, but they obey the NATO agreement that American deserters must be sent back to the Army.

          --I thought De Gaulle pulled out of NATO.

          --Everybody thinks that.  De Gaulle just said he didn’t want any US bases on French soil, but France is still part of NATO.  I told you it was complicated.

          --Okay, get on with it.

          --Well, the logical Party, the Party with the funds and the job opportunities and lodging possibilities to take care of deserters was the Communist Party.

          --Are you a Communist?

          --Not here.  The nearest I got was when I was with the AYD as a kid in New York.  Do you remember what that stands for?

          --American Youth for Democracy.  Was that communist?

          --A communist youth organization.  Do you want to hear about it or should I go back to Baby A?

          --What happened to the Communist Party and its funds and job possibilities and all?

          --Well, I knew the Party Deputy from Ville Juif, where I live sometimes with my wife, and so I went to the Party Deputy.  She is a very capable and hardworking woman and always gets re-elected.  Her husband had been a heroic Resistance leader who had maintained an interest in military matters.  The ideal place for me to begin, or so I thought.  They were very friendly, offered tea and cookies, but, of course, they wouldn’t commit themselves.  They represented “The Party.”  Still, Max hoped the Party would turn out to be helpful.  It didn’t.

          He paused dramatically.

          --The Communist Party’s participation in the baby business has been a bitter disappointment.  I myself got Baby A a job as an electrician in the Ville Juif theatre, but when the Communist Party mayor found out about it, he had Baby A thrown out.  Americans were comparatively new for them, and as for the problem of the deserters, the French Communist Party has a long tradition of being unhappy with that aspect of antiwar movements.  In the Algerian War, for example.  Too individualistic. You see, you mustn’t forget the lourdeur of a Party apparatus run by people who are almost all over fifty.  On top of that, established CP-er have an almost psychotic--no, I’ll take that back, it’s rational all right but has become compulsive--fear about doing anything that might be considered illegal.  Illegal by the bourgeois system in which they operate.  They are always worried that some action will be used to outlaw the Party with its multifarious municipal administrations and what have you.  Anyway, although the results were not what Max had hoped for, two concrete things did come out of it.  My lady Communist deputy told me to go see Nicole Dreyfus. No relation to the Captain, but maybe.  She’s in the CP too, but a big enough lawyer so that she can take individual initiatives which do not necessarily implicate the Party.  Nicole lives in a very conservative apartment building in the most exclusive arrondissement of Paris.  Its very number implies a certain status and standing.  She agreed to defend deserters legally, and for free, if ever they got in trouble with the authorities, or if any deserter turned out to be politically formed enough to become a test case.  As far as lodging and jobs went, this was not her business.  There was no question of a legal job anyway because the deserters are illegal in France and can’t get working papers.

          --I know.

          --I am never sure what people know and what they don’t.  But it doesn’t hurt to repeat that the question of legality is paramount when dealing with the French Communist Party.  Which I assume you know nothing about.

          --I tried to read Humanité  for awhile but found it very boring.

          --Of course it’s boring.  That’s beside the point.  At any rate, I think Kurilla's group was, or is, the Communist Party’s way of showing an interest in the deserter movement.  At that time, Max was the only one who realized the deserters were going to turn into a movement; I mean among the PACS members.  Kurilla certainly realised it and that is why his group got involved.  A lot of them have very definite ties to the Party.

          --You mean, Pasteur Rangoon's a Communist?

          --Not so fast.  I told you it was complicated.  They are an underground Communist Front organization, if such an animal exists.  Above ground, there is the Movement de la Paix, which is the garden variety run-of-the-mill Communist Front organization everyone knows about.  Except you, probably.

          --And which is Pasteur Rangoon?

          --He’s one of the heads of Movement de la Paix.  Now the problem was Kurilla's group--and I dislike calling it that because I do not know to what extent he took responsibility for it.

          --The phoneless friends.

          --What?

          --Call them the Phoneless Friends.  They are just like you--they never give out their phone numbers, but they knew mine.  I wonder how as a matter of fact.  Did you give it to them?

          --They have all the PACS numbers.  That’s no secret.  But secrecy was their problem. It’s a hangover from the Algerian War.  Someone like Arthur tells a deserter to be at a certain cafe at a certain time, stay fifteen minutes and then leave if no one turns up.  And also remember that if the rendezvous if given for three o’clock over the phone, it really means two o’clock.  All that might even be all right, supposed the guy gets to the right cafe an hour early, which is already quite a supposition, but what is he to do if he makes a mistake and doesn’t get there, or no one turns up?

          --Call us.  Or rather me.  You don’t have a telephone either.

          --Don’t forget I broke all my rules and put up Sandy at my own house.  Which is more than Pastor Rangoon would do.  He is usually the one who takes care of them.  He is what is known as a “working pastor.”  That means he works with workers.  Your phoneless friends probably thought he would be ideal to work with American deserters since most of them are working class.  But, of course, the difference between a responsible French worker and the average American deserter, lost, in a foreign country...

          Max lapsed into silent reflection, an unusual state for him.

          --So Rangoon's Movement de la Paix is a garden-variety CP front organization?

          --Give the lady a banana.  Yes.  And to continue your education, the Party established this type of organization about the time of the Korean War.  Remember the Stockholm Peace Petition, which, in the late 40’s and early 50’s, had collected a million signatures against atomic war?  No, you probably don’t.  I really don’t know what you learned at Harvard.  All right, the idea was that the first government using atomic weapons was to be denounced throughout the world as a war criminal.  Both the Stockholm Petition and the French Movement for Peace resembled each other in being coalitions built up around CP leadership, and they were a big deal in the post-war, cold war period when US foreign policy was assumed to be based on atomic weapons.  But when Yugoslavia became independent in June 1948, the homogeneity of the Moscow-dominated communist countries throughout the world was put in question, and after the Korean War started, it became hard to get signatures.  Coalition organizations like the Stockholm and French ones eventually lost most of their political punch.

          --That’s why I never heard of them.

          --What were you doing in 1948?

          --I think I got married.

          --Didn’t your husband know anything about politics?

          --He was an actor.

          --Silent 50’s. eh?  It was a bad time for political actors.  Where was I?  I was contacted, not by Rangoon, but by Kurilla himself.  He’s a fifty year old or so Iraqi Jew.

          --Rangoon called me.

          --Rangoon calls lady liberals, Kurilla calls Maxes.  He is supposedly a paid functionary of the Party.  Later one rumor had it that he was not being paid by the French CP at all, but by the Soviet Embassy.  He had been effectively operating an underground network during the French resistance in the Second World War, and then during the Algerian War.  Part of his legend.  He always seemed to me to have anti-Semitic tendencies--maybe not, but he was up on statistics of charts published in the Figaro, of all places, showing how many Jews went to universities as opposed to non-Jews.  Proportionally, the Jews won hands down.

          I wondered why that was anti-Semitic, but I didn’t want to get Max off the deserters.

          --When Manfred and Buster came in, Kurilla seemed to assume I would go on taking charge of deserters.  He even called and told me his people would cooperate, and I was very pleased.  But it never occurred to me I was supposed to consult him first.  So when Joubain said he would take Manfred and Buster off our hands--I was only too glad to let him have them, particularly after the near catastrophe of Irene’s death. 

          --That’s where they are now, right?

          --I hope so.  But the phoneless friends had arranged something else for them, and were not at all happy I had not called them first.

          --Where did Joubain come from?

          --I’d bullied the PACS people into finding a French person to put up the babies.  If PACS was afraid of being expelled from France if they handled deserters, then it was up to them to find someone to do their work.  I agree with Kurilla that Americans should look after other Americans.  Even PACS realized by the time Manfred and Buster got here that the deserters were not going to disappear--handout or no handout.  Where were they to disappear to?

          --I think they thought they’d go to Canada.

          --On a twenty buck handout?  Without a passport?  Anyway, they found Joubain, and he called first and took the babies off to an apartment his family had vacant near the Champ de Mars.  Appropriate name.  I was going to say “two grateful babies,” but the babies were not particularly grateful, though, of course, we were.  It seems Joubain’s books on tribalism are highly thought of.

          --One of the phoneless friends knew all about them.

          --I think Joubain had more than enough of tribalism by the time Manfred got through with him.  But Max had not understood that our co-operation with Kurilla was an exclusive, and it seems they had, and from thence came their coolness towards me and their non-inviting me to meetings.

          --But they must know I work with you?

          --They probably think they can get you away from me.  That’s not important--you can work with both of us.  What is important is that they haven’t the faintest idea how to relate to American deserters.  Manfred and Buster went to the country once to please us, but they came back, and it will be hard to get them to leave Paris again.  Deserters won’t starve in attics, and your phone friends refuse to realize this.  I wonder what would have happened if Kurilla’s people  had called first?  We would have, grateful as usual, unloaded Manfred and Buster off on them and might have worked happily together for the rest of our lives.  If Columbus father had turned right instead of left, would he have met another girl, married her, and never had a little Columbus?  Would America have been discovered anyway?  Of course.  History is an elastic band that, even if pushed aside, snaps back--

          --All this calling, of course, took place on my telephone.  Lucky I don’t care.  And, by the way, they asked me if there were any new deserters?

          --You’re not interested in my historical comparisons?

          --I didn’t want to forget to tell you.

          --What did you tell them?

          --Oh, I said there were hundreds.  And I almost forgot, Arthur said to tell you, no more deserter interviews.

          --Who’s Arthur?

          --I told you. Young and abrasive.  Unprepossessing.

          --Well, we’re making a movie with Manfred and Buster next week.

          --We are?  Are you going to tell the phoneless friends?

          --I don’t think they’d approve.

          --They wouldn’t.  I don’t think they approve of anything but what they do themselves.  They are the most enigmatic bunch I’ve ever met.  Except I think they want money from me, or PACS, or someone.  They weren’t too enigmatic about that.

          --All of your money should go to the deserters, said Max.  By the way, did your brother give anything?

          --Forty dollars.  What was left of his French money when he got to Orly.

          --Well, I mean to say...for a Wall Street magnate...

          --He’s not a magnate. He just works on the Street.

          --Nebbish, said Max.

To be continued...