Empire: A Novel

by Gore Vidal

  “Mr. Whittaker was evasive.” At first, Caroline had been puzzled; then angry. “I gave the date, next March, when I am twenty-seven. I said there was no way that I could not get my share. He said, ‘There are complications.’ I said, ‘What?’ He wouldn’t answer.”

  “Of course not.” John was bitter. “The Whittakers often retain, as counsel, our friend Houghteling.”

  Caroline experienced a sudden spasm of purest hatred for her brother. “Blaise is making it appear that the estate is in trouble …”

  “Or nonexistent, or that there are obscure liens, or your rights unclear.” John the lawyer was far better company than John the husband. “I’m joining some of my clients for lunch. I may be able …” He did not finish the sentence. He would try to borrow money; so would she.

  “I must join the Hays. He speaks this afternoon at the Exposition. Perhaps …” She did not finish her sentence either.

  But Caroline had plans which did not include the Hays. Instead, she walked in the warm sunlight along the levee, crowded with visitors from out of town. By and large the natives ignored the river; all the houses, she noted, turned their backs on what was, after all, a phenomenal if not beautiful sight, a wide expanse of yellowish swift water, no uglier than the Tiber, say, and infinitely larger.

  At a waterfront saloon called the Anchor she paused. As far as she could see along the levee, black men were loading and unloading cargo from barges, ships. Caroline thought of Marseilles, turned African.

  John Burden Day, in statesman’s black, approached her from the saloon. “What a surprise,” he said, and looked at his watch. “You’re exactly on time.”

  “I’m always on time.” She took his arm; and they walked along the levee like a contentedly married couple, which, in effect, they were. Caroline had long since accepted as an unalloyed bit of golden good fortune the fact that they were not obliged to live together, day after day, night after night, in the same conjugal bed, listening to the midnight cries of many children, the usual marital fate in this country. Occasionally, she needed him on days other than Sunday; but that was a small price to pay for Sunday itself; and now St. Louis. “Where is Kitty?”

  “She chairs the Democratic Ladies’ Committee on Suffrage all morning. She will go with them to hear Mr. Hay at the Exposition. I shall go with you.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not.”

  They made love in Caroline’s suite at the Blair-Benton Hotel. Jim was nervous that he might be recognized. But the lobby was so crowded that no one could actually see anyone. Also, Caroline was now something of an expert on the use of hotels. Whenever she planned to meet Jim, she insisted on a first-floor suite in a hotel with at least two separate stairways from ground to first floor. Jim thought that had she been a man, she would have been a natural general. Caroline had disagreed. “But I might have succeeded at business,” she answered. “I would have cornered something like wheat, and brought on a highly satisfying financial crisis.”

  Caroline watched Jim dress, a sight almost as pleasing as the reverse. He watched her, watching him; divined her mood. “You’re thinking about money,” he said.

  “Its lack,” she said. “John has got himself—us, that is—in the deepest water. And Blaise has seen to it that I can’t borrow.”

  Jim frowned, as a tooth of Caroline’s comb broke in his wiry coppery hair. “I broke your comb. Sorry. Why can’t you borrow? Next March it’s all yours, anyway. Bankers love that sort of short-term loan. How can Blaise stop them from lending?”

  “By lying. Through his lawyers. Pretending the estate is compromised.”

  “That’s easily investigated.” Jim sat in a rocking chair, and rested his head on a spotless new antimacassar. All St. Louis had been cleaned up for the world’s delight.

  Caroline got out of bed; began to dress. “In time, I could straighten all this out. But there’s no time. Blaise has been putting pressure on John’s debtors. If he does not pay up now, he will be ruined.” Although Caroline rather liked the sound of “he will be ruined,” the reality was impossible to grasp. What was financial ruin? In her own life, there had been so many financial crises, so many friends or acquaintances “ruined,” and yet they went right on eating breakfast, and seeing one another. Ruin, as such, did not mean much to her. But the thought of a forced sale of the Tribune was like a knife at her throat, a most disagreeable sensation.

  “You will have to sell to Blaise.” Jim was flat.

  “I would rather die.”

  “What else?”

  “Other than death?”

  “Other than a sale. You should follow Mr. Adams’s advice, and keep control …”

  “If he will let me.”

  Jim stared at her in the mirror, where she was now repairing the damage that Eros does to even the simplest coiffeur. “Why not,” said Jim, “let John go under? He’s the one at fault, not you.”

  “Because, my darling, he knows who the father of my child is.” Caroline looked at Jim’s face, next to hers in the mirror, smaller than hers, thanks to perspective, so ably taught by the drawing mistress at Mlle. Souvestre’s. Caroline enjoyed Jim’s look of astonishment.

  “But he’s the father, isn’t he?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  There was a long silence, broken by Jim’s sudden laughter. He sprang to his feet, like a boy, and embraced Caroline from behind, kissed the nape of her neck, causing the hair, controlled at last, to come crashing down. “Oh, damn,” said Caroline, for the first time in her life. “My hair.”

  “My child! Emma’s mine, too!”

  “You sound like a horse-breeder.”

  “Why not? I am the acknowledged stud. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you. Now if you come near my hair again, I shall … do something drastic.” Caroline again pinned up the mountain of cleverly coiled hair, all hers, as Marguerite used to gloat, when she did the arranging.

  Jim retreated to his chair. He seemed delighted; and Caroline wondered why. Men were very odd, certainly. Jim had two children now by Kitty; and one by her. “Are there any others?” she asked.

  “Other what?”

  “Children of yours that I should know about? When little Emma grows up, she will want to know all her half-brothers and -sisters.”

  Jim shook his head. “None that I know of.” He frowned. “How does John know it’s me?”

  “He doesn’t. I was just being dramatic. All he knows is that Emma’s not his. When I discovered I was pregnant, I told him, and he married me. It was my money for his—for my respectability.”

  “Why didn’t you just pretend it was his?”

  “Because I’ve never really been to bed with him.”

  Jim whistled, an engaging rustic sound. “You really are French,” he said at last.

  Caroline was not amused. “You would be surprised just how American I am, particularly in a situation like this. I am not about to lose …” But this, she knew, even as she spoke, was hollow boasting. She was about to lose the Tribune. She had considered, seriously, allowing John to fail; but honor forbade such a course, not to mention common sense. If she did not keep her side of their bargain, he would be free to divorce her or, worse, annul the unconsummated marriage, and tell the press why.

  “Shall I work on Blaise? He seems to like me.”

  “More than that is my impression.”

  Jim’s head suddenly filled with blood; the face became scarlet. The hydraulic system that produced a blush was, Caroline observed, with a certain wonder, the same as that which produced a man’s sex. “I don’t,” he stammered, “know what you mean.”

  “Which means you know exactly what I mean. He is like a schoolgirl around you.” Caroline rose from her dressing table, armored for the day. “Seduce him.”

  “That is definitely French,” said Jim, himself again.

  “No. It’s English, actually. Le vice anglais, we call it, and not unknown in these parts, either.”

&nbs
p; “Would you really want me to …?” Jim could not say what, after all, was unsayable in American City.

  “You might like it. After all, Blaise is much better-looking than me.”

  “I don’t think I could, even for you.” Jim held her, carefully, about the waist, as they walked to the door. “But I guess I could sort of flirt with him, maybe.”

  “You American boys!” Caroline was now entirely amused.

  “Well, it’s the least I could do, for you giving me Emma.”

  In the lobby, they found themselves face to face with Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge, a lady both censorious and serene.

  “Caroline,” said Mrs. Lodge, looking at Jim.

  “Sister Anne. You know Congressman Day, don’t you? And Mrs. Day,” Caroline was inspired to add. Then Caroline turned to Jim, and said, “Where’s Kitty? She was here just a minute ago.”

  “She left her purse upstairs.”

  Sister Anne was duly taken in. “Are you going to hear Mr. Hay?” she asked.

  “Hear—and record it all, for the Tribune.”

  “Theodore is wicked, forcing him to come here like this. He should be home in bed at Sunapee.” Sister Anne bade them farewell; and moved on.

  “You would also make a good politician,” said Jim, as they crossed over to Olive Street, where a special car would take them to the Exposition.

  “Because I lie so easily?” Caroline frowned. “It’s odd, though. I never used to lie, ever. But then—you.”

  “The apple in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Yes. Since the serpent tempted me, I’ve not been the same. I have sinned …”

  Caroline was not prepared for the astonishing beauty of the Exposition at night. Great airy palaces were lit by a million electrical candles whose light turned the prosaic Missouri sky into a spectacle like nothing that she had ever seen before. In the course of the evening, partners had been deftly switched. She was now with John, dining at the French restaurant with Henry Adams and his niece, Abigail. Representative and Mrs. James Burden Day were dining at the German restaurant in the company of the two senators from Jim’s state, of whom one was very elderly indeed, and might do the proper thing and retire or die, leaving the place to Kitty’s husband, as Caroline tended to think of Jim in his official capacity. He was entirely the creation, so people thought, of the legendary Judge, his father-in-law. Caroline suspected that the truth might prove to be otherwise, but no one was about to put the matter to the test.

  “I have never seen anything so beautiful …” Adams was ecstatic; Abigail was bored. Caroline was sexually satisfied. John was in despair—his clients had been of no use to him.

  “Surely, Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres …” Caroline began.

  “They are different. They evolved over centuries. But this is like the Arabian nights. Someone rubbed a lantern and said, a city of light on the banks of the Mississippi. And here it is, all round us.” Actually, all around them were huge contented-looking Americans of the heartland, gorging on French cuisine. Each contributing country had its own restaurant, with France, as always, in the lead.

  “The question is, are we looking at the future, all this power, humming away, or is this a last celebration of the American past?” Adams was, for him, aglow.

  “The future,” said John, a subject that Caroline knew put him in a dark mood, ruin. “We’ve never achieved anything like this.”

  “We’ve imagined it, which is almost the same. But will our cities in 1950 be like this one?”

  “Don’t cities—like cathedrals—evolve?” Caroline nodded to Marguerite Cassini, who had just made what was intended to be—and indeed was—a dazzling entrance, on the arm of an elderly French diplomat. “And if they do, then they are bound to be hideous …”

  “Like Chartres?” Adams was uncharacteristically cheerful. “Anyway, I have a mania for expositions. If only real life were constantly on display like this, always at its very best.” Then Henry Adams spoke of dynamos, and Caroline thought of money; and despaired.

  THIRTEEN

  – 1 –

  BENEATH a revolving fan, Hay studied the file which Adee had brought him. Adee tried, almost successfully, to look as if he were not in the room. The heat was intolerable, and all that Hay could think of was New Hampshire, which now seemed beyond his reach, forever. He had been ordered to speak at Jackson, Michigan, on July 6. Now June was nearly over, and Washington was more than ever equatorial. But Hay was obliged to stay at his desk, because the President was experiencing a sort of nervous breakdown. Would he really be nominated? If nominated, could he, ever, be elected president in his own right? To the extent that Hay found anyone interesting any more, Theodore’s sudden failure of nerve was fascinating. He wished that he could talk to Adams about this highly pleasurable state of affairs; but the Porcupine had fled to France, stopping off in Washington just long enough to visit the White House—after first making certain that Theodore was not home—in order to urge Mrs. Roosevelt to go to St. Louis, and experience the transcendent beauty of the World’s Fair.

  “Well, this is a proper mess,” said Hay; but as he had not remembered to look up, Adee was not able to read his lips. Hay struck the desk with his right hand, a signal to Adee that Hay was about to speak. Adee’s eyes focussed on Hay’s lips. “Plainly,” said Hay, “he’s not an American citizen.”

  “Plainly. So what happens to him is none of our business.”

  “But the press …”

  “And the President.”

  Both sighed. In May, a Moroccan bandit named Raisuli had abducted from something called the Palace of the Nightingales one Ion H. Perdicaris, son of a South Carolinian lady and a Greek, who had become an American citizen. The kidnapping was an affront to the entire American press. Hearst was particularly apoplectic: what sort of administration allowed American citizens to be held for ransom, particularly in a part of the world where once, for a moment or two, the proud fleet of Thomas Jefferson had reigned supreme? Already in a state of hysteria over the coming election, Theodore had quite lost his mind. He raged to Hay and to Taft: war, war, war! The fleet was put on alert. Hay was ordered to exert pressure on the Moroccan government. Hay had done so; he had, also, privately ordered an investigation of I. H. Perdicaris. Now the proof was in hand. Mr. Perdicaris was not an American citizen. In order to avoid military service in the Civil War, he had fled to his father’s place of origin, Athens, where he had himself duly registered as a Greek subject; he was no longer an American citizen. The head of the Citizenship Bureau of the State Department, Gaillard Hunt, was now in Hay’s outer office, with further proofs. Meanwhile, the President had, the day before, June 21, ordered Hay to demand the immediate release of Perdicaris; otherwise, war. Since June 21 was the first day of the Republican Convention in Chicago, the frantic President felt a loud trumpet note was in order.

  “Send Mr. Hunt over to the White House. Have him explain …” But Hay knew that the mild Mr. Hunt would be no match for Theodore in his most Rexish mood. “Telephone the President’s office. I am on my way.”

  “Yes, sir. You’ll drive, I hope.”

  “I’d hoped to walk. But not in this heat.” Lately not only had walking become painful in the always uncomfortable lumbar region but any exertion was apt to bring on an attack of angina. He doubted if he would live through this hellish summer; he rather hoped that he would not.

  Theodore was ominously still as Hay entered the presidential office, unwelcome documents in hand. The vast Secretary of War started to go, but Theodore motioned for him to stay. “You have the telegram ready, John?”

  “No, Mr. President.” Hay was formal in address but not in action: he sat down, unbidden, suddenly weary.

  “You realize that as we sit here, the convention is going on?” The famous teeth began to snap, nervously. “We’re following it all on the telephone, in the Cabinet room. There’s apt to be real trouble over this Moroccan business. We look weak, indecisive …”

  “Mr. President, Perdicaris is n
ot an American citizen. He is a Greek subject. He’s no concern of ours.”

  Taft beamed; and chuckled, just the way fat jovial men were supposed to. Actually, whatever Taft was, jovial he was not. He was ambitious, petulant, suspicious. But his glorious fatness made him adorable in the eyes of the nation. “We’re off the hook,” he said. “Tell the press to go after the Greek government, and leave us alone.”

  As the President studied the documents that Hunt had assembled, he looked, to Hay’s amazement, furious. “This ruins everything,” he said at last. “Everything! I had counted on a powerful telegram to wake up the convention, the country, the world to the fact that no American citizen anywhere on earth can be harmed without a bloody reprisal, and now some fool clerk in your office comes up with this … this nonsense! No!” The high voice rose to a shriek. “He was born in America. His parents were American. Those are facts. How do we know any of this is true?” The President shoved the papers at Hay. “We don’t. We’ll have to verify. That means our legation in Athens will have to go through the records to see if he really gave up his nationality. That will take time. Too much time. I want a telegram sent today, to the American consul general at Tangier. Is that understood?”

  “It’s understood, of course.” Hay got to his feet.

  “Legally …” Taft began.

  “I’m not a lawyer, Judge Taft. I’m a man of action, and this calls for action. Make it good, John—the telegram.”

  “I shall be classically brief, as befits a director of Western Union.”

  Hay was at the door when Theodore called out. “Put that whole file under lock and key, while we investigate the truth of the matter.”

  “But …” Taft began.

  “Take care of yourself, John,” shrieked the President from behind his desk.

  “I think I’ve already done that, Theodore,” said Hay; and left the presence. He had already thought up a message which would fit, neatly, into even a Hearst headline.