The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Upton had no choice but to sit beside London, who pulled him down into the chair beside him; his face was hot with embarrassment, and a wild sort of elation, as if he, too, were drunk. Yet more surprising than London’s welcome was Miss Charmian’s—the perky little woman, not to be upstaged by her lover, leaned across London’s stocky grizzled chest to kiss Upton on the cheek!—warmly, wetly—tickling him with one of the curled macaw feathers that adorned her bosom, to the amusement of the table of revelers.

  “Wel-come! Wel-come to—wherever this is! If you are Jack’s brother, you are Miss Charmian’s brother. Sit.”

  There followed then a confusing interlude during which, though Upton protested that he didn’t drink, he had vowed never to drink following his father’s tragic experience with alcoholism, London tried to press on him any number of highly potent beverages, including what he called his post-performance libation, a blend of Champagne, whiskey, and dark beer; even more strenuously, London tried to press on him the remaining half of his cannibal sandwich, a pound of raw beefsteak topped with onions, pickles, and catsup, on a kaiser roll, which lay on a nearby plate, the hard-crusted roll showing the imprint of London’s teeth. He’d had a sixteen-ounce plank steak, London said, as well as two of the cannibal sandwiches, and had not been able to finish the second, though it was delicious. “Comrade Sinc’ler—you are looking so undernourished and anemic, as if the women had been uncommonly rough on you, you’d best gobble down this sandwich at once, and bring a little color to your cheeks.”

  “But—I think I may have mentioned to you, Jack—in one of my letters—I am a vegetarian . . .”

  At the mere utterance of the word vegetarian the table erupted in laughter—even Miss Charmian, who’d been so welcoming to Upton, laughed derisively. Upton laughed too, or tried to laugh—he was a good sport, in such situations—as a Socialist he’d learned to parry and thrust when baited, teased, even threatened; apologetically, he tried to explain that his “digestion” wouldn’t accommodate such rich food, for he had some sort of stomach condition—“colitis”; yet, at this, the table again erupted in laughter, as if Upton had said something even wittier than before.

  It was a relief when, laying his arm across Upton’s shoulders, London regaled the table with an account of his favorite delicacies of the moment—number one wasn’t beef, in fact, but “two large male mallards—cooked for no more than eight minutes to assure the fowl sufficiently underdone.”

  This ushered in a protracted discussion of favorite delicacies, from around the table, which gave Upton some respite. He’d managed to order, from a harassed waiter, a bottle of mineral water, which he drank as unobtrusively as he could manage, not wanting his vociferous companion to notice; sitting beside London, as in the vicinity of a blast furnace, he felt both warmed and over-warmed, dazzled, wary. Naively he’d hoped for some time with London during which they might have talked frankly together of politics, literature, the future of Socialism, possibly even the vicissitudes of married life, and love; naively he’d hoped that London might have sequestered a private room at the restaurant, and rebuffed the invitations of admirers to treat him and Miss Charmian to drinks and dinner. For Upton was surprised, London didn’t appear to be acquainted with even the gentleman in the tuxedo, who’d been seated beside him before Upton arrived; and Upton was surprised to learn that, far from journeying to New York City principally to address the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, London had come here on the first leg of a trans-Atlantic journey—his Yukon books had become runaway best sellers in Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia, and his publishers in these countries were eager to host him—“It seems that I have quite eclipsed old ‘Mark Twain’—the Germans especially despise Twain, y’know—the old fool has mouthed some crude sort of criticism of them—in defense of Jewry—he is in defense of Jewry—the Germans will not forgive him”—London burst into laughter, as if he’d never heard anything so amusing—“and caricature him now, in the public press, with a Jew-nose.”

  This crude remark initiated a round of Jew-talk, and Jew-jokes, which were offensive to Upton Sinclair, as well as shocking—for wasn’t Socialism a wholly nonsectarian movement, vigorously led and supported by Jews?—as a Socialist, Jack London would know this fact, surely. What would Moses Leithauser think, if he could hear . . .

  Yet more disappointing, London seemed to have forgotten Upton Sinclair. After the initial fuss, London turned his back to him, addressing others at the table in the hale, hearty tone in which he’d addressed Upton; nor did Miss Charmian give Upton a second glance. London had moved now from his Champagne concoction to straight Kentucky bourbon, in shot glasses.

  Sprawling in his chair like a pasha, his heavy chin several times brought to rest on Miss Charmian’s plump shoulder in a way to make the excitable woman emit little cries of laughter, London entertained the table, and patrons of MacDougal’s who’d gathered in a semi-circle, with a rambling and disconnected monologue—his “Life Philosophy”—about which, evidently, there was enormous interest across the States.

  “In interviews it is always inquired—‘Where does Jack London’s stamina derive from’—where, his ability to compose never less than one thousand words a day, and often near ten thousand; and how does he hold an audience in the palm of his hand—as I did just now in Carnegie Hall—for more than two hours, without slackening? Where, in short, Jack London’s particular ‘genius’? Where, indeed.” London chuckled deep in his throat, like a stirring beast; he pressed his chin downward on Miss Charmian’s shoulder, in a way to make her squeal, and glanced about the restaurant in shivering delight. “Such questions,” London continued, in a graver voice, “strike deep to the heart of primeval Being itself, and can’t be answered, except, perhaps, in terms of racial ancestry. That is, to speak bluntly—the superiority of certain races, and the inheritance of these superior traits by ‘superior’ specimens within these races.”

  Now, to Upton’s extreme discomfort, London began to speak with drunken animation of Nordic supremacy—the uncontested superiority of the Beast-man—descended from the great icy wastes of the Polar region and “taking the sickly little dagos of the Southern Hemisphere by storm.” Upton dared to interrupt, objecting that such a belief was in violation of the Socialist brotherhood—“Are not all men equal?—men of all races, skin-colors, and classes?—that is, men and women alike, in the Socialist fold? No race can claim superiority—no skin-color—though, at this perilous point in history, the proletarian is undoubtedly superior, morally . . .” But London rudely puffed on his cigar, releasing a virulent cloud of smoke; swallowed down another shot-glass of bourbon; and snapped his finger to summon a waiter, to order more bourbon. It was uncanny, London behaved not only as if Upton had said nothing but also as if Upton wasn’t seated in the chair beside him; London merely continued his monologue as if he hadn’t been interrupted. Nor did Miss Charmian, or anyone else at the table, take note of his rudeness to his friend.

  “The dominant races of the Earth came down, you see, from the North. From the great ice-fields and snowy wastes, the tundras, of the North. From the forest primeval—the abode of silent tragedy. Yes, it is ever so: noisy comedy, silent tragedy. Once, we were forged of iron, and much that is greater than iron, in the blast-furnace of the soul. For there, y’see, in the pitiless North, the struggle for survival continues as always—as if it were not 1906 but the very beginning of history; and our feeble, effeminate ‘civilized’ notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, social welfare and social outrage, never conceived.” London sighed loudly, stubbing out his cigar in the remains of his beefsteak sandwich, and signaling for a waiter to carry it away.

  With surprising boldness, for one so temperamentally quiet, and loath to quarrel, Upton dared to raise an objection: “I don’t doubt the ‘pitilessness’ of the North any more than I would doubt the ‘pitilessness’ of the Sahara, or the Amazon rain forest—but I contest its application to human history. Doesn’t this lead to the very ‘soc
ial Darwinism’ advanced by our enemies? Think of the criminal Rockefeller publicly congratulating himself that God had given him his money—or daring to compare the fruits of his criminal trust to the ‘exquisite flowering of the American Beauty rose.’ ”

  Again, London failed to reply to Upton. It might have been that he was preoccupied in searching through his pockets for another cigar—(which Miss Charmian gaily provided him out of a glaringly sequined purse); or, London simply didn’t hear his comrade’s remarks in the din of MacDougal’s. In any case he scarcely altered his frowning gaze, or modified the condescending tone of his argument, proceeding as if uninterrupted: “ . . . never conceived. And, indeed, mere jests upon the wind! For in the land of the midnight sun, where the wolf pack trots at the flank of the caribou herd, singling out the weak, and the aged, and the great with calf, and pulling them down to devour with not a flicker of remorse, it’s a foolish fancy to prattle of such effeminate notions. The Nordic soul is a man’s soul from time immemorial. Wolf knew, and Death knew—predator-brothers of The Sea Wolf—but all know, in our hearts—even the slant-eyed, the Jews, and the dagos. For that, my friends, is the caldron out of which Jack London has been forged and it would be false modesty to claim otherwise.” London cocked his railway cap at an aggressive angle on his thick disheveled hair, as if to dare anyone to knock it off.

  But no one at the table contested his words or, except for Upton Sinclair, seemed upset by them. Jocose toasts were drunk to the “Nordic soul”—to Jack London’s “Nordic soul” in particular—while Upton, blushing and nettled, refused to drink even his mineral water, unnoticed.

  It was now nearing 1 a.m., and the din of hilarity in MacDougal’s showed no sign of abating. How lurid, this nocturnal life!—this under-belly sort of city-life, of which Upton Sinclair had had no notion, in his monastic seclusion outside Princeton, New Jersey; and in his fervent dealings with immigrant Socialists of the Lower East Side, who rose early to work fourteen-hour days, and collapsed into bed most nights immediately after their evening meal. Jack London, tireless, continued his slurred monologue, while Upton berated himself—what a fool he’d been, how naïve, to have imagined that Jack London expected him here tonight; to have entered of his own volition a fashionable “gin-mill” like MacDougal’s. If his mother could see him, in such a place! If Meta could see him!

  Upton could have wept, he’d been so naïve. So—hopeful. Since they’d begun their correspondence in the summer, Upton had been anticipating an intimate meeting with his brother-hero; he had so many things to discuss with him—the “anarchist-intellectual” C. L. James’s A History of the French Revolution—Benjamin Tucker’s Instead of a Book; the reformer William Travers Jerome’s revelations of prostitution in New York City, aided and abetted by Tammany Hall; and future plans for the Intercollegiate Socialist Society—how were they to draw more undergraduates into the organization, apart from Jewish boys, and a smattering of Jewish girls, from the Lower East Side? Yet more naively Upton had hoped to bare his soul to another man—a married man—of his own generation; he’d hoped to speak frankly of his predicament. Not that Meta had said that her departure would be permanent; not that Meta had hinted of divorce; but—in their marital relations, she had sometimes . . . she had frequently . . . expressed dissatisfaction with him, and impatience. And since the birth of little David, she had not liked him to touch her at all . . .

  And there was the matter, mysterious and unresolved, of Upton’s having sighted Meta with strangers, in Princeton . . . and Meta’s denial.

  How would Jack London respond to a woman of his being sighted with other men? Upton shuddered.

  He’d known that something was seriously wrong when, just recently, Meta had expressed only the most perfunctory interest in the rumor that President Roosevelt had been reading The Jungle and intended to invite the young author to Washington one day soon . . .

  Meta, I hope you will come with me! It will be an historic occasion.

  But where had Meta gone? Drifted off somewhere, in the tall grasses behind the farmhouse, amid trees, and a tangle of wild rose, where Upton, who suffered from mysterious pollen- and plant-allergies, could not follow . . .

  “ . . . Korean valet, we have trained—Miss Charmian has trained!—to call his master ‘God.’ So very funny!”

  Upton was becoming ever more repelled by his comrade-brother—the fleshy, flushed face, the air of bellicose complacency—the way London swilled his bourbon, and had made a shocking mess of his white silk blouse, unapologetically; he was wondering whether, frankly, London could be only thirty years old?—had he falsified his birth-date, as he’d falsified so many other things about himself, like his Socialist convictions? Here was the heralded Socialist warrior who had emerged from the West only a few years ago, in a blaze of glory: early photographs of the author of The Call of the Wild, which Upton had kept, in secret, in a drawer in his study where Meta was not likely to find them, showed a dreamy young man of unusual handsomeness; rugged and masculine, yet touched by a poetic delicacy suggestive of Percy Shelley in certain of the portraits. Where had the Boy Socialist gone? Was it simply to be ascribed to an excess of alcohol and rich foods and the adulation of the public? Though he’d been—perhaps!—just slightly envious of London’s audience at Carnegie Hall, Upton had seen how seductive it is to entertain such large, rowdy audiences; how hard to resist, to stir belly laughs, if one can do it; how much more difficult to hew to a prescribed line of persuasion, and the rhetoric of logic; to uphold one’s ideals, not to stoop to the level of vaudeville and burlesque . . . A sort of terror gripped Upton at the thought—the absurd thought—primitive, superstitious!—that the noble Jack London was the victim of an impostor; somehow, the Socialist hero had been transformed into the brutish drunken clown in stained clothes and railway cap, a travesty of his former self; an assassin of the true Jack London; possibly—a demon . . .

  But this was ridiculous of course. As it was ridiculous to believe, as some did, in Princeton, that there were “demons” loosed among them.

  Upton thought primly: There are no “demons.” Even when I was a Christian, I did not believe in “demons.” There are only men—human beings—individuals not so very different from myself, though behaving in ways I find difficult to understand.

  Yet it was tempting to think that the enemies of Socialism had somehow conspired with a malevolent force, to pervert a Socialist hero, and sabotage the Revolution . . .

  Now the table and the semi-circle of admirers, that had grown to include as many as thirty individuals of both sexes in diverse stages of festive drunkenness, erupted in another sort of laughter, as the berouged and bejeweled Miss Charmian told hilarious anecdotes of her Nordic lover. It might interest them all to know—indeed, Miss Charmian had told the New York Post in an exclusive interview—that it was true, Jack London had a Korean valet who called him “God”—and she, Miss Charmian, had indeed trained him. What was so very charming was that the valet, a sinister but “devilishly handsome” boy named “Manyoungi,” was very willing to call London God—“ ‘For ’tis like God my master behaves,’ the little heathen says.” Miss Charmian laughed. Also, at a recent party in San Francisco hosted by her Jack, at which hashish and opium were distributed to the guests, along with all the liquor they could hold, her Jack had been so wicked as to play one of his famed practical jokes on his guests: he had barbecued a diamondback rattler and served it to them, with Hollandaise sauce, under the pretense it was Pacific salmon and, when he revealed what he’d done, a number of the guests became nauseated, and several were sick to their stomachs—Miss Charmian erupted in high-pitched giggles. “Oh, the Sea Wolf is cruel—but he is very funny also. And Jack never does unto others what he would not happily do unto himself—for diamondback rattler is one of his favorite meats, barbecued or rare.”

  Hearing his mistress speak so warmly of him, as if he were on display, London grinned, and set his railway cap backward on his head; and, conspicuously, reached over to pinch
her plump rouged cheek, leaving a red imprint in the somewhat flaccid flesh.

  DURING HER COQUETTISH recitation Miss Charmian had been glancing about the brightly lit restaurant, noting how other diners were enviously watching her and Jack London; how they were fascinated by the rogue lovers, in such defiance of the bourgeoisie—for of course the couple was recognized immediately. And now, Miss Charmian gripped her lover’s massive wrist, to alert him that a “particularly interesting” admirer of his, a handsome youth at a nearby table, had been watching them closely for at least an hour; and what a gracious gesture it would be, the very sort of thing for which Jack London was becoming famous, if he invited the young man to their table, and made him welcome? “For he seems to be alone here, and must be lonely amid such festivity,” Miss Charmian whispered into Jack London’s ear, “and you can see from his features that he is of noble Nordic descent.”