But to build his cadre, to make his mark, he needed to hand out a thousand pamphlets a day, and crowds like this — in the CityPlace or on the slidewalks at rush hour — were the only way to do it.
“Take this, brother. Thank you.” He said it over and over. “Salaam, brother, may I offer you this?”
He had to keep moving, couldn’t linger anywhere, kept his eye out for the telltale stare of an Eye of the Brains. When he had first started this business, he had sought out only men who looked like himself. But that approach proved too slow. He’d since learned to size up a crowd with a single glance and mentally mark the receptive. That tall, black-skinned man with the blue kerchief, the skinny little freckled guy in the ragged work clothes, the grubby fellow with the wisp of a beard and red suspenders. All men, and mostly young. He let his female compatriots deal with the women. Didn’t want any misunderstandings.
The guy with the kerchief first. Eye contact, querying glance, non-sexual affect, tentative offer of pamphlet. He takes it! Eye contact, brief nod, on to the little guy. Guy looks away. Abort. Don’t offer pamphlet. On to the third guy —
“What’s this, then?” Flatfoot! An Eye? Surely not a Fist? Best to hoof it.
Rudy feinted to one side of the copper and ran past him on the other, swivel-hipping through the crowd like Jim Thorpe in search of a touchdown. He didn’t look back, but if the cop was an Eye, he’d have backup pronto. Around the big guy with the orange wig, past the scared-looking lady with the clutch of kids — yikes! — almost overturned the baby carriage. What’s that on the ground? No time to think about it! Up and over, down the alleyway, and into the door that’s cracked open a slot. Close it, latch it, jam the lock. SOP.
Rudy turned away from the fire door. It was almost lightless in here. He was in an old, run-down kinescope parlor, surrounded by benches full of kinescope devotees, their eyes glued to the tiny screens wired to the backs of the pews in front of them. On each screen the same blurry movie twitched: Modern Times, with the Marx Brothers.
He took a seat and put a nickel in the slot.
He was just a regular Joe at the movies now. An anonymous unit of the masses, no different from anybody else. Except that he didn’t have his girlfriend with him. Or a girlfriend at all. Or any real interest in having a girlfriend. Or in anything so historically blinkered as going to the kinescope parlor.
Rudy had heard about this particular kinescope in a Know the Foe session. It was supposed to be funny, but its humor originated in a profound class bias. The scene that was playing was one in which Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo were working on an assembly line while their supervisor (Groucho) flirted with the visiting efficiency inspector (Margaret Dumont). Zeppo and Chico worked methodically with wrenches, tightening bolts on the bombs that glided remorselessly into view on the conveyor belt. Harpo, equipped with a little handheld pneumatic drill, worked regularly and efficiently at first, drilling a hole in a bomb fin which Zeppo promptly unbolted and Chico replaced with a new fin. That his work was meaningless appeared to bother him not at all. But then, without noticing it, Groucho leaned against a long lever, increasing the belt’s speed. As the pace increased, Harpo realized that the drill could be made to go faster and faster, just like the assembly line. He became fascinated by the drill and then obsessed with it, filling the bombs’ fins with so many holes that they looked like slices of Swiss cheese.
Chico and Zeppo, meanwhile, kept working faster and faster as the line sped up. For them, this was grim business. To keep from falling behind, they had to employ two wrenches, one per hand. Sweat poured off them. They shed their hats, then their jackets, then their shirts and pants, leaving them clad only in voluminous underwear. Harpo, on the other hand, was feeling no pressure at all. He began drilling holes in his hat, then his jacket, then his shirt and pants.
Groucho urged Dumont into his office, then doffed his hat, clasped it to his chest, and tossed it aside. He chased her around the desk. Dumont projected both affronted dignity and matronly sexual curiosity. A parody of authority, Groucho backed Dumont up against the wall and, unexpectedly, plucked a rose from a nearby vase and, bowing deeply, offered it to her.
Charmed, Dumont smiled and bent down to accept it.
But then, in a single complex and weirdly graceful action, Groucho spun Dumont around, bending her over backwards in his arms, parallel to the floor. Margaret Dumont’s eyes darted wildly about as she realized how perilously close she was to falling. Meanwhile, Harpo had started to drill holes from the other side of the wall, the drill bit coming through the plaster, each time missing Groucho by a whisker. His desperate gyrations as he tried to avoid the incoming drill were misunderstood by the efficiency expert, who made to slap him. Each time she tried, however, she almost fell and was forced to clutch him tighter to herself. Groucho waggled his eyebrows, obviously pleased with his romantic prowess.
Just then, however, Harpo drilled Dumont in the butt. She lurched forward, mouth an outraged O, losing balance and dignity simultaneously, and overtoppling Groucho as well. The two of them fell to the floor, struggling. It was at that instant that Chico and Zeppo, still in their underwear and with Harpo in tow, appeared in the doorway to report the problem and saw the couple on the floor thrashing about and yelling soundlessly at one another. Without hesitation, all three leaped joyously into the air on top of the pile. Behind them, the runaway assembly line was flooding the factory with bombs, which now crested into the office in a great wave. The screen went white and a single card read: BANG!
The audience was laughing uproariously. But Rudy was not amused. None of these characters had a shred of common sense. Furthermore, it was clear that appropriate measures to protect the workers’ health and safety had not been implemented. Harpo should never have been given that drill in the first place. And Margaret Dumont! What was she thinking? How could she have accepted such a demeaning role?
Rudy stood up on his chair. “Comrades!” he yelled. “Why are you laughing?”
A few viewers looked up briefly, then shrugged and returned to their kinescopes. “We’re laughin’ because it’s funny, you halfwit,” muttered a surly-looking young man.
“You there, brother,” Rudy addressed him directly. After all, he, of everyone there, was Rudy’s constituency. “Do you think it’s funny that the Brains work people beyond endurance? That they speed up assembly lines without regard for the workers’ natural pace, and without increasing their compensation? Do you think it’s funny that a human man and woman would take the side of the Brains against their own kind? Think about this: What if Charles Chaplin — a man who respects the worker’s dignity — had made this kinescope? There would be nothing funny about it: You’d weep for the poor fellows on the Brains’ assembly line. As you should weep for Chico and Zeppo, whose dream of a life of honest labor and just reward has been cruelly exploited.”
“Aw, shut yer yap!” It wasn’t the young man that Rudy had addressed. This was the voice of an older man, embittered by many years of disappointment and penury.
“I apologize, sir,” said Rudy. “You have every right to be angry. You have earned your leisure and have paid dearly for the right to sit here in the darkness and be assaulted by the self-serving garbage of the entertainment industry. Please return to your kinescope. But, I beg of you, do not swallow the tissue of lies that it offers you. Argue with it. Fight back! Resist!”