I Married a Communist by Philip Roth Read Free Book Online

could never again eat at that table if my father was present.
    One night at dinner my father tried another tack—to educate me further about the Republicans' contempt for every value of economic equality and political justice that I held dear—but I would have none of it: the two major political parties were equally without conscience when it came to the Negro's rights, equally indifferent to the injustices inherent to the capitalist system, equally blind to the catastrophic consequences for all of mankind of our country's deliberate provocation of the peace-loving Russian people. Close to tears, and meaning every word, I told my father, "I'm really surprised at you," as though it were he who was the uncompromising son.
    But a greater surprise was coming. Late on Saturday afternoon he told me that he would rather I didn't go down to the Mosque that evening to attend the Wallace rally. If I still wanted to after we had spoken, he wouldn't try to stop me, but he at least wanted me to hear him out before I made my decision final. When I'd come home on Tuesday from the library and triumphantly announced at dinner that I had been invited to be a guest of Iron Rinn, the radio actor, at the Wallace rally downtown, I was obviously so thrilled at meeting Rinn, so beside myself with the personal interest he'd shown in me, that my mother had simply forbidden my father from raising his reservations about the rally. But now he wanted me to listen to what he felt he had a duty, as a parent, to discuss, and without my flying off the handle.
    My father was taking me as seriously as the Ringolds were, but not with Ira's political fearlessness, with Murray's literary ingenuity, above all, with their seeming absence of concern for my decorum, for whether I would or would not be a good boy. The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the larger scale. The Ringolds compelled me to respond at a level of rigor that felt appropriate to who I now was. Be a good boy wasn't the issue with them. The sole issue was my convictions. But then, their responsibility wasn't a father's, which is to steer his son away from the pitfalls. The father has to worry about the pitfalls in a way the teacher doesn't. He has to worry about his son's conduct, he has to worry about socializing his little Tom Paine. But once little Tom Paine has been let into the company of men and the father is still educating him as a boy, the father is finished. Sure, he's worrying about the pitfalls—if he wasn't, it would be wrong. But he's finished anyway. Little Tom Paine has no choice but to write him off, to betray the father and go boldly forth to step straight into life's very first pit. And then, all on his own—providing real unity to his existence—to step from pit to pit for the rest of his days, until the grave, which, if it has nothing else to recommend it, is at least the last pit into which one can fall.
    "Hear me out," my father said, "and then you make up your own mind. I respect your independence, son. You want to wear a Wallace button to school? Wear it. It's a free country. But you have to have all the facts. You can't make an informed decision without facts."
    Why had Mrs. Roosevelt, the great president's revered widow, withheld her endorsement and turned against Henry Wallace? Why had Harold Ickes, Roosevelt's trusted and loyal secretary of interior, a great man in his own right, withheld his endorsement and turned against Henry Wallace? Why had the CIO, as ambitious a labor organization as this country had ever known, withdrawn its money and its support from Henry Wallace? Because of the Communist infiltration into the Wallace campaign. My father didn't want me to go to the rally because of the Communists who had all but taken over the Progressive Party. He told me that Henry Wallace was either too naive to know it or—what was, unfortunately,