Witness by Chambers Whittaker

Author:Chambers, Whittaker [Chambers, Whittaker]
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Perseus Distribution-A
Published: 1978-07-24T14:00:00+00:00

XXV

The last debris of Don’s Japanese apparatus drifted into New York. Keith arrived, trailing two or three others until then unknown to me. One of them was a former Italian naval officer, a Communist who had been training himself as a short-wave radio operator with the idea of joining Don in Tokyo. His wife had been studying photography so that she could also serve with Don. Vaguely I remember meeting the Italian, though I cannot recall his face or his wife’s. I should never have recollected him but for Keith’s testimony about him. It was Keith, too, who recollected that he had brought back the money belt which I had given him in San Francisco. In it was still two thousand dollars. He had counted it out, he said, in my presence in the apartment of an underground worker named Paul, a literary agent. The apartment was between Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the forties. Obviously, the literary agent was Maxim Lieber. But until then, I had no recollection of the return of the money and had even forgotten that Lieber’s underground pseudonym was Paul, though I recognized it as soon as I heard it.

I do not remember whether or not Bill was still in New York when Keith returned from the West Coast. In any case, he must have left soon after. Nor do I recollect the details of our parting, except that he assured me that we would soon meet again in London. I never saw Bill again.

It was the summer of 1936. Dr. Philip Rosenbliett left about the same time as Bill. His daughter had at last died of her lingering illness. In a few weeks, I saw The Doctor change from a robust man to a grief-stricken, gray-faced, almost voiceless, doddering skeleton from whom his clothes now hung in loose folds. The Doctor’s office equipment, including the chair where so many curious patients had sat without benefit of dentistry, was shipped to the Soviet Union.

A period began in which I was left alone, in touch chiefly with Peters and Keith, who remained in New York. My only instructions were to hold together the Washington group and wait for orders to proceed to England. By then, I had begun to suspect that the English apparatus would never be organized.

During that period of waiting, I brushed another man’s disaster.

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