Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  There was a formal round of applause as if Helms, by his choice of words, had lifted the carriage of discourse out of the ditch and up on the road again.

  “In that case, let us return for a brief spell to fundamentals,” said Harlot. He had managed not to appear too uncomfortable during the altercation, but now that the situation was his to control once more, the full timbre of his voice returned. “Taken from an historical perspective, the gathering of information used to precede operations: The intelligence obtained would direct the venture. These days, however, large operations are initiated in order to acquire intelligence. This is a reversal of the original order, and can prove highly disruptive. Last winter, when the Berlin tunnel was still in operation, hundreds of translators labored over the prodigious output of telephone and cable traffic between East Berlin and Moscow. The effort was analogous to extracting a gram of radium from a mountain of uranium.” There were sounds of acknowledgment from his audience.

  “Now, suddenly, our gigantic operation collapses. We don’t know how. One fine day this past April, Soviet military vehicles converge on the working tip of the tunnel in East Berlin, and in short order are shoveling their way down to the precise place where we have tapped into their cable. The Russians are going out of their way to make the point that they have been tipped off. They know our next two questions have to be: ‘By whom?’ and ‘When?’ Frightful questions when one does not know the answers. The careful disciplines of espionage, counterespionage, and counterintelligence have all been buried under the sheer earth-moving vigor of CATHETER. Still, we must pick a route through the wreckage. For whom, we do have choices. Given the size of the operation, security had to be stretched thin; someone in the KGB, or the SSD, could have obtained information from one of our technicians. Counterintelligence explores this possibility in the hope that more damaging suppositions will not have to be faced. For the next stage down in our choices is abominable. Is it a mole in MI6? In the BND? Or, someone among us? If these paths have to be pursued, the analysts will be on it for years and are likely to collect half-founded suspicions concerning hitherto reliable officers. Whom, therefore, is a nightmare.

  “When is even worse. When poses this dire question: For how long have the Russians known about the existence of the tunnel before they decided to discover it? If they only knew for a week, or a month, no great harm has been done—any attempt to feed us tainted information via their tapped phone lines had to be put together hastily. If we knew this was so, then we could afford to ignore the input of the last week, or the last month. The tunnel, however, took more than a year to build. After which, it was in operation for eleven months and eleven days. If the Russians had this considerable period of lead time, they would certainly have had the opportunity to create an immense work of disinformation. That is precisely the Soviet genius. We are posed, therefore, with an outright dilemma. While our Russian emigrés labor away in translation mills at a job that will take at least another two years merely to process the back material on hand, we still do not know whether such intelligence is to be trusted. If we could at least calculate the likely date on which disinformation was introduced, we might be able to interpret what the Russians wish us to believe. Instead, we are obliged to stare at open entrails and make divinations.”

  “Come now, Hugh,” said Dulles, “once again, it is not so bad as that.”

  “Well, sir, it is from my point of view.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Dulles. “Do you know, I prefer to look on the bright side. We have been given a bonanza in the newspapers and in the magazines. Time magazine termed it ‘The Wonderful Tunnel.’ Some headline writer over at the Washington Post classified it as ‘The Tunnel of Love.’”

  Some of the invited began to laugh. Dulles joined in with a hearty “Ho, ho, ho.” In the pause, he dug into his vest pocket for a clipping. “Let me offer an item,” he said, “out of the New York Herald Tribune. I quoted from it to the President just this morning. ‘A venture of extraordinary audacity. If it was dug by American intelligence forces—and that is the general assumption’ ”—our Director waited to pick up his full complement of hearty, happy roars of laughter—“‘this tunnel is a striking example of a capacity for daring undertakings. Seldom has an intelligence operation executed a more skillful and difficult operation.’” He put the clipping away to the sounds of “Hear, hear.”

  “What,” asked Dulles, “is the balance sheet of the tunnel? Tremendous information, formidable headaches. Our business, the business of suspicion, goes on as usual. Nonetheless, we have won an overwhelming victory with the German people, West and East. We’re fighting for the hearts of Europe, Hugh, and the fact of the matter is that everybody over there in East Germany is tickled with our tunnel, even the Russian bear, malgré lui. Why, my God, half of East Berlin is going over to Altglienicke for a visit. The Soviets have had to put up a snack bar right on the site.”

  An ambiguous response now rose from the nabobs, curious in the unevenness of its volume. Not all of them found Dulles’ riposte equally amusing, but others couldn’t stop laughing. Those of us who came to seminar every Thursday hardly dared to smile. Indeed, some of us, myself most certainly included, were bewildered by the intensity of the disrespect. I could feel a passion in the room to run the flag up the pole. We had scored in East Germany!

  Montague waited for the laughter to cease. “Allen,” he said, “in the face of such victories as you describe, those of us who work in counterespionage feel properly subservient to good propaganda.”

  “Now, Hugh; now, Hugh; you know me better than that,” said Dulles, and gave an avuncular wave of his hand.

  Harlot resumed his lecture, but I, for one, was more ready to study the division of feeling in the room. The most hostile of the officers had jobs in the Agency that you could deduce from their faces. More intelligent than the instructors we had had at the Farm, they, like Hunt, still shared that no-nonsense paramilitary glint of the eye which was so often a substitute, even an effective substitute, for intelligence itself. I began to wonder at their presence on this High Thursday. Why had Dulles invited them to Harlot’s dinner later tonight? Would they come as friends, or to study Hugh Montague, their future foe?

  A few days later, I had the small but firm pleasure of discovering that I was not off by much. “It got a bit political,” Harlot said. “Your new Chief of Station is, I fear, one of them. You must not become infected by him with cheap patriotism. It’s as bad as cheap Christianity, and it is running like a virus through the Company.”

  “Yessir,” I said, “you are going to have, I fear, one hard time.”

  “Bet on me.”

  “Was,” I asked, “Mr. Dulles the least bit on your side about the tunnel? I didn’t receive that impression.”

  “Well, Allen does like good public relations. He’ll even decorate Harvey before he’s done. But, in fact, he is awfully worried about the tunnel. What if one of us did hand CATHETER over to the Russians?”

  “A mole?”

  “Hell, no. Somebody responsible. Done for good high patriotic reasons.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Can you come near to what I’m thinking?” he replied.

  “Oh,” I said, “I think I remember that conversation. The tunnel was letting us know that the Russians were weaker than we expected.”

  “Yes, exactly. Go on.”

  “But once the tunnel is blown, all such intelligence is tainted. It can’t be relied on for military policy. Certainly doesn’t allow us to slow things down. We have to keep arming just as we have been doing.”

  “You are learning how to think,” he said.

  Thoughts like this, however, kept one on a wicked edge. “Doesn’t such a premise implicate you?” I asked. “At least from Mr. Dulles’ point of view?”

  It was the closest he ever came to looking at me with love. “Oh, I like you, boy, I’m really getting to like you. Allen, yes, Allen is worried stiff. He is indebted to me up to his armpit, but now he h
as to fear that I’m the one who made what is, from his point of view, a dreadful end run.”

  “And did you?”

  The gleam came back. I had the feeling that no man would ever see such exaltation in his eye unless he had climbed with him to the top of Annapurna. “Dear Harry, I didn’t,” he said, “but, I confess, it was tempting. We had gone so far down the wrong path with that tunnel.”

  “Well, what was holding you back?”

  “As I once told you: In faith, the simple subtends the complex. Patriotism—pure, noble patriotism—means dedication to one’s vows. Patriotism has to remain superior to one’s will.” He nodded. “I am a loyal soldier. So I resist temptation. All the same, Allen can never trust me completely. Which is proper. Of course, he was worried. That was why I chose to talk about Berlin in front of so inauspicious an audience. If I was the author of the end run, why would I advertise the drear results?” He made a face, as if reflecting on the cost of the mockery visited on him. “I must say,” he added, “I was startled at how self-important these operations people are becoming. One has to tip one’s hat to your future Chief of Station. He knows enough to parade himself as a bang-and-boomer. However, I looked up his record. He’s more a propagandist than a paramilitary. Getting to be Chief of Station is a plum for him. Although, give him credit, he does mix his bullshit with pluck.”

  We sipped our drinks, we smoked our Churchills. Kittredge, sitting directly in back of him, had been looking intently at me all through this talk, and now began to make faces behind Hugh’s back. I did not know how she could bear to do it to her fine features, but she succeeded in flaring her nose and twisting her mouth until she looked like one of those demons who hover behind our closed eyes as we part the curtains of sleep. Pregnancy was no small force of disruption in her.

  “Yes,” I said to Harlot, “you were good in what you said on counterespionage.”

  “Well,” he smiled, “wait till we get to Dzerzhinsky.”

  5

  THAT EVENING, AFTER DINNER, WE WENT TO A NIGHTCLUB. IT WAS AT KITTREDGE’S suggestion, and much against Hugh’s inclination, but she was insistent. Pregnant, she was insistent. There was an entertainer named Lenny Bruce performing at a new bar and coffeehouse called Mary Jane’s, and she wanted to see him.

  Montague said, “Bar and coffeehouse? One or the other ought to be enough.”

  “Hugh, I don’t care what it’s called. I want to go.”

  An old roommate at college had described this comedian in a letter as “devastating.” Kittredge was curious. “She never said devastating once in four years at Radcliffe.”

  “Why do I know this evening will not work?” asked Hugh.

  The lighting was harsh, the sound system had squalls, and a small black-painted dais served for a stage at Mary Jane’s. The drinks were expensive, and we sat on folding chairs. I remember Montague complaining at the expenditure of a dollar fifty for Scotch and soda against the two-dollar minimum. “Outrageous,” he declared in no small voice.

  Since we had come in before the second show, there was opportunity to look about. While most of the couples in the room appeared to be office workers in D.C., I estimated that none of them could be employed at the Agency. No, as if I were a personnel officer, I could see they would not do. They were—I thought of a new word making the rounds—permissive. There was some sly secret they seemed to share.

  The lights went down. Against a black backdrop, a spotlight focused on a microphone and stand. Out strolled a slim young man with short curly hair, dungarees, and a dungaree jacket. If not for protruding eyes and a wan face, he might have been pleasant in appearance. The applause was fevered.

  “Good evening,” he said. “That’s a nice hand. Thank you. I appreciate it. Am I getting all this because my first show was good? Yes, I guess the first one tonight did take off. Yes. A few of you seem to have stayed for the second, haven’t you? Yes, you, over there,” he said, pointing to a man in the audience, “you were here for the first show and so was your girl.” They both nodded vehemently. “And you, too,” he said, pointing to another couple, “and you. Yes, there are quite a few people back.” He stopped. He seemed low in energy, and surprisingly sad for an entertainer. His voice was mild and colorless. “Yes,” he said, “that first show was terrific. In fact, if I say so myself, it was so good that I came.” He stood looking out at us with his wan face.

  A gasp of delight, half full of pure public terror, came forth from the audience. The most incredible sound issued unexpectedly from Kittredge. She could have been a horse who had just seen another horse trot by with a dead man in the saddle.

  “Yes,” said Lenny Bruce, “I came, and now I feel out of it. Ah, fellows, I have to get it up for the second time.”

  I had never heard laughter like this in a nightclub. It was as if the plumbing in the building were breaking up. Laughs slithered out of people like snakes, tore out of them, barked forth, wheezed forth, screamed out. “Yeek,” yelled a woman.

  “Yes,” said Lenny Bruce, “I got to face it. It’s no real fun to get it up for the second time. I’ll let you girls in on a secret. Men don’t always want that second helping. Yes, I can see some of you fellows nodding your heads. Honest people. You agree. It’s tough, isn’t it? I mean, let’s face facts, getting it up again is the ego bit.”

  There was pandemonium. It was followed by applause. I had found my own fever. He was talking in public to strangers about matters that I knew little enough about but still, on my night with Ingrid, had there not been some hint from her for more? The fire and ice of that Berlin hotel room came back to me, and the dread I felt of staying any longer in that rented chamber. Now I did not know if I wished to remain in this club. Where could it all end? Kittredge’s eyes, reflecting the spotlight, glowed; Harlot’s expression seemed set in stone. And Lenny Bruce had emerged from his fatigue. He seemed to be offering full proof of the proposition that he who gives life to an audience receives life back. “Yes,” he said, as if everyone present were either a close friend or a dear adviser, “that second time is for your rep. You women, watch your guy next time he finds some reason not to go for the second shot, oh, he’ll lie—he’ll say anything—‘Honey,’ he’ll tell you, ‘I can’t, because of the atabrine.’ ‘The atabrine?’ you’ll ask. ‘Yes,’ he’ll tell you, ‘they gave us atabrine in the South Pacific to hold off malaria but the Army never told us. It discolors the semen. That shows up when you do it the second time. Yellow! Yellow semen. It looks like pus!’ A guy will tell any lie to excuse himself for not producing it that second time. Anything to keep his wife from getting wise to him. Believe me, isn’t that what it’s all about? Lying to your wife? Isn’t that what all the bullshitters mean when they talk about marriage as a sacrament? We know better. Marriage is the advanced course in lying your ass off, right?”

  Harlot reached into his pocket to pay the bill, and Kittredge put a hand on his arm. Their eyes locked. “I will not make a spectacle of us,” she whispered, “by leaving.”

  “Maybe we’re on to a working principle, fellows,” Lenny Bruce went on. “Never tell your wife the truth. Because biologically it has been proven. Women’s ears are not constructed to hear the truth. They will slaughter you if you tell it like it is. So, lie your ass off. No matter the circumstances. Suppose you’ve gone to bed with a new girl in your own house in your own double bed because your wife is away for the day, and you are giving this girl one hell of a shtup. Whew!—can you believe it?—in walks your wife . . .”

  “What is that word, shtup?” whispered Kittredge.

  “Yiddish,” said Harlot.

  “Oh,” said Kittredge.

  “There you are, lathered up, banging away, zoom, you’re trapped! In your wife’s own bed. What do you do?” He took a full pause. “Why,” he said, “you deny it.”

  He paused again for the laughter. “Yes,” he said, “deny it. Tell your wife any cockamamie story. Tell her you just got home, and here was this naked girl in our bed, honey. There
she was, honey, shivering with acute malaria. Believe me, she was turning blue with cold. She was dying. The only way to save a life in such circumstances is to warm her naked body with my body. That’s the only way, honey, to bring a human being back from fatal chill. Yes, tell her anything. Because in marriage you have to lie your ass off.”

  “Do you know,” said Harlot in a clear voice that obviously did not care how far it might carry, “I understand for the first time what Joe McCarthy was afraid of.”

  “Hush,” said Kittredge, but one small splotch on each cheek had appeared, and I did not know if she was angered more by Harlot or the comedian.

  “Of course,” said Lenny Bruce, “you can make the case that we were taught to lie by the apostles. They agreed to sell the story that Jesus gave them the wafer and the wine. ‘Hey,’ they said, ‘We ate His flesh. We drank His blood. So, be a good Christian, will you?’” Lenny Bruce whistled. “Hey, hey! That had to be a pretty heavy line back then. You don’t think everybody was jumping up to buy it, do you? Why, the first guy who heard it must have said, ‘Give me a shovel—I got to dig my way out of this. I mean, what the fuck are they saying, “Drink my blood, eat my flesh.” Come on, man. I’m no cannibal!’”

  The audience laughed, although uneasily. It was happening too fast, and Bruce’s voice was harsh. Two women got up and left the room. A man followed in their wake.

  “Sir,” said Lenny Bruce, “when you come back from the men’s room, don’t forget to tip the shvartzer. So he’ll know you’re not a tightfisted prick!”

  The door slammed. “Jerk-off artist,” said Bruce. The man walked out of the club to the sound of laughter behind him.

  “You know, I think a lot about this sacrament business. The wafer and the wine. They go together like ham and eggs. I start to wonder. Would it work with substitutions? Like give me a piece of that pie, man, I need a little more taste with the flesh. Or, keep that coffee hot, I can’t drink wine, I’m in A.A., dig?” He shook his head. “Now that we’re on the subject, let’s get to the Big Lie. ‘What! You never shtupped a guy? Come on, Mary, not even one stud? Not one leaky drop got in? It was a what-do-you-call-it? A what? An immaculate conception?’ Well, knock off, Mary. I’m not blind and dumb. I don’t buy stories that stupid.”