The Red Thread Read online

  Q. What are the books that you’d say impressed you most of all?

  A. A brother gave me a copy of Engels’ Anti-Dühring.

  Q. About what year—how old would you have been then?

  A. It was in ’61. I struggled with that, it took me three months. The same brother gave me a copy of the Communist Manifesto. Then I went deep into such things as William J. Pomeroy—The Forest, On Resistance. And then Nkrumah. And do you know who I was really impressed with, although he isn’t a Socialist or a Communist? I was impressed with Henry George’s stuff. I’ve read all his stuff.

  Q. Oh, really? His theories of economics?

  A. Yes. His single-tax idea is not correct. But I like his presentation—I like the explanation he advanced explaining how the ruling class over the years managed through machinations to rob and despoil the people.

  Q. What particular books are you reading for your historical study?

  A. The Nature of Fascism, edited by Woolf; and then Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism. That’s a beautiful book. I think it should be required reading for all of us, and there’s one statement in there that appeals to me in a very, very, very significant way. It goes like this: “Man is biologically sick.”

  Q. What about black poetry, fiction, biography?

  A. Poetry is not my bag. Not my medium. I have no sense of poetry at all. You know, the formalistic meter-type poetry. But I like some of the Langston Hughes stuff. Nice old guy. I like some of his stuff. Of course, I read the outstanding poems—and I’ve quoted them, such as the one that arose out of the riot written by Claude McKay. I like such things as “Invictus.” But as a student of poetry—no.

  Q. What black biographies have you read?

  A. Malcolm’s, of course. And let me think. Several. I’ve had Wright’s stuff. And—what’s his name?—Little skinny guy. James Baldwin.

  Q. Now, since the book has been published, who do you feel you have reached with this book; what do you think the effect has been on readers?

  A. Well, I have mixed opinions, mixed emotions about the whole thing. But one strange thing has evolved out of the whole incident: it seems that parts of the book appeal to the right-wing blacks and parts appeal to the left. I’ve had letters of commendation from a hundred different sects that represent the whole black political spectrum from right to left. So there’s parts in there that the progressive left, black left, can relate to. I’ve gotten letters from black people eight feet tall, celebrities, entertainers, et cetera.

  Q. What were the prisoners’ reactions?

  A. Well, the prisoners accepted it, of course. They loved it, especially the sections near the end. Well, you know we’re all considered trapped in here, without voice, and they seem to be gratified that one of us had the opportunity to express himself. For one, you understand we’re an oppressed people. And that events like that, you know, a prisoner getting a book published, getting ideas across, speaking for them, speaking for us—all that’s appreciated.

  Q. Did the guards ever say anything to you about the book?

  A. Well, you have a difference of character, a character difference. Some laughed and said, “I’m reading, I’m learning about myself,” and then there are others that look at me with daggers in their eyes. And it’s pretty clear that what they’re saying is that “First chance I get, nigger, I’m going to kill you.” They’re saying, “Look, we have a mutual understanding.” When I use the word “pig,” one officer will take it as a terrible, terrible attack on him, whereas another will laugh.

  Q. When Greg Armstrong [senior editor at Bantam Books] presented you with the first copy of your book on the day it was published, it was immediately confiscated by a guard, is that true?

  A. True. Later on my lawyers raised a fuss and they finally let me have a hardback and softback copy. But without the fuss, I’d never have gotten them.

  Q. Is your book available in the prison library at the present time?

  A. No. The publisher sent a hundred copies to the prison library. The librarian distributed the books, but one month later, after the officials had read the book, they started confiscating it, so now it’s underground. It’s being picked up by the search-and-destroy squad. They invade the cells and look for contraband. It’s considered contraband, but there’s copies circulating around, underground. Now I’m locked up, but that’s the way I heard it.

  [I checked with Officer McHenry, librarian at San Quentin. He told me the prison had received thirty-five copies of Soledad Brother, they were checked out immediately to inmates who wanted to read them, there was never any censorship of the book so far as he knew. The mystery was further compounded by Jackson’s lawyer, John Thorne, who told me his copy of Soledad Brother was taken from his briefcase by a guard and held as contraband when he went to visit his client—what is the truth of the matter? With Jackson locked up, and me locked out, we can each but report what we are told.]

  Q. Now, at the time of publication Greg Armstrong flew out here for the customary publisher’s champagne party—which, in this case, was held at the gates of San Quentin. What did the prisoners think about that?

  A. They love that sort of thing. You know, after years of isolation, all of a sudden to find out that people really are interested in you and that people can relate to you in spite of the fact that sociology books call us antisocial and brand us as criminals, when actually the criminals are in the Social Register—well, we did relate to that, to the whole incident.

  COMMENT

  At the time of this interview I was deep in my book on prisons, Kind and Usual Punishment. The year before, I had published an article in the Atlantic about the California prison system, which had achieved a considerable underground circulation among the inmates. George Jackson, who for good reason had in general a deep mistrust of journalists and who thus far had rebuffed their efforts to interview him, had read the piece and sent word through his lawyer that he would welcome an interview by me.

  I knew something of the prison administrators’ opinion of Jackson from a confidential memorandum by L. H. Fudge, Associate Superintendent of a California prison camp, that was mailed to me in a plain envelope by—a convict trustee? A disaffected prison staff member? I shall never know. The memorandum might, I suppose, pass for what publishers’ advertising departments call “a selling review” of Soledad Brother: “This book provides remarkable insight into the personality makeup of a highly dangerous sociopath. . . . This type individual is not uncommon in several of our institutions. Because of his potential and the growing numbers, it is imperative that we in Corrections know as much as we can about his personality makeup and are able to correctly identify his kind. . . . This is one of the most self-revealing and insightful books I have ever read concerning a criminal personality.”

  Among the prison officials quoted at length in my Atlantic article was James Park, Associate Warden at San Quentin—he had not, I gathered, been pleased with the piece nor with my rendition of his conversation. It was to him that I was obliged to apply for permission to interview Jackson, refused until Jackson’s lawyer obtained a court order compelling Park to allow my visit.

  When the court order came through, I telephoned Park to make arrangements for the interview. I could hear him over the phone fussing away at his secretary: “Where’s that fucking court order for Jessica?” (Like Mortuary Management and Bennett Cerf, the Corrections crowd all called me “Jessica.”) “Mr. Park,” said I sternly, “don’t you know it’s a misdemeanor in California to use obscene language in the presence of women and children?” Which it is; a silly and sexist law that my husband is challenging in the courts, but that came in handy at that moment.

  This is one of the very few interviews in which I used a tape recorder. I am mistrustful of these gadgets, which might break down at any moment and which necessitate tedious hours of transcription. But somehow—while I am on the whole confident of my ability to scribble down accurate notes of conversations—in the case of a person behind bars, hel
pless to challenge any possible misquotation, it seemed important to get the interview on tape. Fortunately George Jackson knew how to work the recorder. He took charge and it went off without a hitch.

  When three months later Jackson was gunned down in the San Quentin shoot-out, his words, to which I had listened over and over again in the course of my laborious transcription of the interview, came back to me in his distinctive tone of voice: “And it’s pretty clear that what they’re saying is that ‘First chance I get, nigger, I’m going to kill you.’”

  June 1971

  *In January 1970, Jackson’s lawyers secured an injunction prohibiting the authorities from tampering with prisoners’ letters to them, which explains those letters in Soledad Brother described by Genêt as “a call to rebellion.”

  QUADRATURIN

  Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

  1

  FROM OUTSIDE there came a soft knock at the door: once. Pause. And again—a bit louder and bonier: twice.

  Sutulin, without rising from his bed, extended—as was his wont—a foot toward the knock, threaded a toe through the door handle, and pulled. The door swung open. On the threshold, head grazing the lintel, stood a tall, gray man the color of the dusk seeping in at the window.

  Before Sutulin could set his feet on the floor the visitor stepped inside, wedged the door quietly back into its frame, and jabbing first one wall, then another, with a briefcase dangling from an apishly long arm, said, “Yes: a matchbox.”

  “What?”

  “Your room, I say: it’s a matchbox. How many square feet?”

  “Eighty-six and a bit.”

  “Precisely. May I?”

  And before Sutulin could open his mouth, the visitor sat down on the edge of the bed and hurriedly unbuckled his bulging briefcase. Lowering his voice almost to a whisper, he went on. “I’m here on business. You see, I, that is, we, are conducting, how shall I put it . . . well, experiments, I suppose. Under wraps for now. I won’t hide the fact: a well-known foreign firm has an interest in our concern. You want the electric-light switch? No, don’t bother: I’ll only be a minute. So then: we have discovered—this is a secret now—an agent for biggerizing rooms. Well, won’t you try it?”

  The stranger’s hand popped out of the briefcase and proffered Sutulin a narrow dark tube, not unlike a tube of paint, with a tightly screwed cap and a leaden seal. Sutulin fidgeted bewilderedly with the slippery tube and, though it was nearly dark in the room, made out on the label the clearly printed word: QUADRATURIN. When he raised his eyes, they came up against the fixed, unblinking stare of his interlocutor.

  “So then, you’ll take it? The price? Goodness, it’s gratis. Just for advertising. Now if you’ll”—the guest began quickly leafing through a sort of ledger he had produced from the same briefcase—“just sign this book (a short testimonial, so to say). A pencil? Have mine. Where? Here: column three. That’s it.”

  His ledger clapped shut, the guest straightened up, wheeled around, stepped to the door . . . and a minute later Sutulin, having snapped on the light, was considering with puzzledly raised eyebrows the clearly embossed letters: QUADRATURIN.

  On closer inspection it turned out that this zinc packet was tightly fitted—as is often done by the makers of patented agents—with a thin transparent paper whose ends were expertly glued together. Sutulin removed the paper sheath from the Quadraturin, unfurled the rolled-up text, which showed through the paper’s transparent gloss, and read:

  DIRECTIONS

  Dissolve one teaspoon of the QUADRATURIN essence in one cup of water. Wet a piece of cotton wool or simply a clean rag with the solution; apply this to those of the room’s internal walls designated for proliferspansion. This mixture leaves no stains, will not damage wallpaper, and even contributes—incidentally—to the extermination of bedbugs.

  Thus far Sutulin had been only puzzled. Now his puzzlement was gradually overtaken by another feeling, strong and disturbing. He stood up and tried to pace from corner to corner, but the corners of this living cage were too close together: a walk amounted to almost nothing but turns, from toe to heel and back again. Sutulin stopped short, sat down, and closing his eyes, gave himself up to thoughts, which began: Why not . . . ? What if . . . ? Suppose . . . ? To his left, not three feet away from his ear, someone was driving an iron spike into the wall. The hammer kept slipping, banging, and aiming, it seemed, at Sutulin’s head. Rubbing his temples, he opened his eyes: the black tube lay in the middle of the narrow table, which had managed somehow to insinuate itself between the bed, the windowsill, and the wall. Sutulin tore away the leaden seal, and the cap spun off in a spiral. From out of the round aperture came a bitterish gingery smell. The smell made his nostrils flare pleasantly.

  “Hmm . . . Let’s try it. Although . . .”

  And, having removed his jacket, the possessor of Quadraturin proceeded to the experiment. Stool up against door, bed into middle of room, table on top of bed. Nudging across the floor a saucer of transparent liquid, its glassy surface gleaming with a slightly yellowish tinge, Sutulin crawled along after it, systematically dipping a handkerchief wound around a pencil into the Quadraturin and daubing the floorboards and patterned wallpaper. The room really was, as that man today had said, a matchbox. But Sutulin worked slowly and carefully, trying not to miss a single corner. This was rather difficult since the liquid really did evaporate in an instant or was absorbed (he couldn’t tell which) without leaving even the slightest film; there was only its smell, increasingly pungent and spicy, making his head spin, confounding his fingers, and causing his knees, pinned to the floor, to tremble slightly. When he had finished with the floorboards and the bottom of the walls, Sutulin rose to his strangely weak and heavy feet and continued to work standing up. Now and then he had to add a little more of the essence. The tube was gradually emptying. It was already night outside. In the kitchen, to the right, a bolt came crashing down. The apartment was readying for bed. Trying not to make any noise, the experimenter, clutching the last of the essence, climbed up onto the bed and from the bed up onto the tottering table: only the ceiling remained to be Quadraturin­ized. But just then someone banged on the wall with his fist. “What’s going on? People are trying to sleep, but he’s . . .”

  Turning around at the sound, Sutulin fumbled: the slippery tube spurted out of his hand and landed on the floor. Balancing carefully, Sutulin got down with his already drying brush, but it was too late. The tube was empty, and the rapidly fading spot around it smelled stupefyingly sweet. Grasping at the wall in his exhaustion (to fresh sounds of discontent from the left), he summoned his last bit of strength, put the furniture back where it belonged, and without undressing, fell into bed. A black sleep instantly descended on him from above: both tube and man were empty.

  2

  Two voices began in a whisper. Then by degrees of sonority—from piano to mf, from mf to fff—they cut into Sutulin’s sleep.

  “Outrageous. I don’t want any new tenants popping out from under that skirt of yours . . . Put up with all that racket?!”

  “Can’t just dump it in the garbage . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. You were told: no dogs, no cats, no children . . .” At which point there ensued such fff that Sutulin was ripped once and for all from his sleep; unable to part eyelids stitched together with exhaustion, he reached—as was his wont—for the edge of the table on which stood the clock. Then it began. His hand groped for a long time, grappling air: there was no clock and no table. Sutulin opened his eyes at once. In an instant he was sitting up, looking dazedly around the room. The table that usually stood right here, at the head of the bed, had moved off into the middle of a faintly familiar, large, but ungainly room.

  Everything was the same: the skimpy, threadbare rug that had trailed after the table somewhere up ahead of him, and the photographs, and the stool, and the yellow patterns on the wallpaper. But they were all strangely spread out inside the expanded room cube.

  “Quadraturin,” t
hought Sutulin, “is terrific!”

  And he immediately set about rearranging the furniture to fit the new space. But nothing worked: the abbreviated rug, when moved back beside the bed, exposed worn, bare floorboards; the table and the stool, pushed by habit against the head of the bed, had disencumbered an empty corner latticed with cobwebs and littered with shreds and tatters, once artfully masked by the corner’s own crowdedness and the shadow of the table. With a triumphant but slightly frightened smile, Sutulin went all around his new, practically squared square, scrutinizing every detail. He noted with displeasure that the room had grown more in some places than in others: an external corner, the angle of which was now obtuse, had made the wall askew; Quadraturin, apparently, did not work as well on internal corners; carefully as Sutulin had applied the essence, the experiment had produced somewhat uneven results.

  The apartment was beginning to stir. Out in the corridor, occupants shuffled to and fro. The bathroom door kept banging. Sutulin walked up to the threshold and turned the key to the right. Then, hands clasped behind his back, he tried pacing from corner to corner: it worked. Sutulin laughed with joy. How about that! At last! But then he thought: they may hear my footsteps—through the walls—on the right, on the left, at the back. For a minute he stood stock-still. Then he quickly bent down—his temples had suddenly begun to ache with yesterday’s sharp thin pain—and, having removed his boots, gave himself up to the pleasure of a stroll, moving soundlessly about in only his socks.

  “May I come in?”

  The voice of the landlady. He was on the point of going to the door and unlocking it when he suddenly remembered: he mustn’t. “I’m getting dressed. Wait a minute. I’ll be right out.”

  “It’s all very well, but it complicates things. Say I lock the door and take the key with me. What about the keyhole? And then there’s the window: I’ll have to get curtains. Today.” The pain in his temples had become thinner and more nagging. Sutulin gathered up his papers in haste. It was time to go to the office. He dressed. Pushed the pain under his cap. And listened at the door: no one there. He quickly opened it. Quickly slipped out. Quickly turned the key. Now.