Messiah

by Gore Vidal

  "How is Cave taking it all?"

  "In his stride, absolute model of coolness which is more than I am. He agrees that it's better to keep him under wraps while the telecasts are going on. It means that curiosity about him will increase like nobody's business. Look at this." He showed me a proof sheet of a tabloid story: "Mystery Prophet Wows TV Audience," with a photograph of Cave taken from the telecast and another one showing Cave ducking into a taxi, his face turned away from the camera. The story seemed most provocative and, for that complacent tabloid, a little bewildered.

  "Coming out Sunday," said Paul with satisfaction. "There's also going to be coverage from the big circulation media. They're going to cover the next broadcast even though we said nobody'd be allowed on the set while Cave was speaking."

  He handed me a bundle of manuscript pages bearing the title "Who Is Cave?"

  "That's the story I planted in one of the slick magazines. Hired a name-writer, as you can see, to do it." The name-writer's name was not known to me but, presumably, it would be familiar to the mass audience.

  "And, biggest of all, we got a sponsor. We had eleven offers already and we've taken Dumaine Chemicals. They're paying us enough money to underwrite this whole setup here, and pay for Cave and me as well. It's terrific but dignified. Just a simple 'through the courtesy of' at the beginning and another at the end of each telecast. What do you think of that?"

  "Unprecedented!" I had chosen my word some minutes before . . . one which would have a cooling effect.

  "I'll say. By the way, we're getting a lot of stuff on that book of yours." He reached in a drawer and pulled out a manila folder which he pushed toward me. "Take them home if you like. Go over them carefully . . . might give you some ideas for the next one; you know: ground which needs covering."

  "Is there to be a next one?"

  "Man, a flock of next ones! We've got a lot to do, to explain. People want to know all kinds of things. I'm having the kids out in the front office do a breakdown on all the letters we've got: to get the general reaction . . . what it is people most want to hear; and, believe me, we've been getting more damned questions, and not just the main thing but family problems too, things like that: 'Please, Mr Cave, I'm married to two men and feel maybe it's a mistake since I have to work nights anyway.' Lord, some of them are crazier than that."

  "Are you answering all of them?"

  "Oh, yes, but in my name. All except a few of the most interesting which go to Cave for personal attention. I've been toying with the idea of setting up a counselor-service for people with problems."

  "But what can you tell them?" I was more and more appalled.

  "Everything in the light of Cavesword. You have no idea how many questions that does answer. Think about it and you'll see what I mean. But of course we follow standard psychiatric procedure only it's speeded up so that after a couple of visits there can be a practical and inspirational answer to their problems. Stokharin said he'd be happy to give it a try, but we haven't yet worked out all the details."

  I didn't want to hear anything more about this; I changed the subject. "What did you have in mind for me to do?"

  "Cavesword applied to everyday life." He spoke without hesitation; he had thought of everything. "We'll know more what people want to hear after a few more telecasts, after more letters and so on. Then supply Cavesword where you can and, where you can't, just use common sense and standard psychiatric procedure."

  "Even when they don't always coincide?"

  Paul roared with laughter. "Always the big knocker, Gene. That's what I like about you . . . the disapproving air . . . it's wonderful and I'm quite serious. People like myself . . . visionaries, you might say, continually get their feet off the ground and it's people like you who pull us back . . . make us think. Anyway, I hope you'll be able to get to it soon. We'll have our end taken care of by the time the telecasts are over."

  "Will you show Cave to the world then? I mean in person?"

  "I don't know. By the way, we're having a directors' meeting Friday morning. You'll get a notice in the mail. One of the things we're going to take up is just that problem, so you be thinking about it in the meantime. I have a hunch it may be smart to keep him away from interviewers for good."

  "That's impossible."

  "I'm not so sure. He's pretty retiring except when he speaks. I don't think he'd mind the isolation one bit. You see how dull he gets in company when he's not performing."

  "Would he consent, do you think?"

  "I think so. We could persuade him, I'm sure. Anyway, for now he's a mystery man. Millions see him once a week but no one knows him except ourselves. A perfect state of affairs, if you ask me."

  "You mean there's always a chance he might make a fool of himself if a tough interviewer got hold of him?"

  "Exactly, and believe me there's going to be a lot of them after his scalp."

  "Have they begun already?"

  "Not yet. We have you to thank for that, too, making it so clear that though what we said certainly conflicts with all the churches we're really not competing with them, that people listening to Cavesword can go right on being Baptists and so on."

  "I don't see how, if they accept Cave."

  "Neither do I, but for the time being that's our line."

  "Then there's to be a fight with the churches?"

  Paul nodded grimly. "And it's going to be a honey. People don't take all the supernatural junk seriously these days but they do go for the social idea of the church, the uplift kind of thing: that's where we'll have to meet them, where we'll have to lick them at their own game."

  I looked at him for one long moment: I had of course anticipated something like this from the moment that Cave had become an organization and not merely one man talking. I had realized that expansion was inevitable: the rule of life is more life and of organization more organization, increased dominion. Yet I had not suspected Paul of having grasped this so clearly, using it so promptly to his, to our advantage. The thought that not only was he cleverer than I had suspected but that he might, indeed, despite his unfortunate approach, be even cleverer than myself, disagreeably occurred to me. I had until then regarded myself as the unique intellectual of the Cavites, the one sane man among maniacs and opportunists: it seemed now that there were two of us with open eyes and, of the two, he alone possessed ambition and energy, qualities neither of which I possessed to any useful degree.

  "You mean this to be a religion, Paul?"

  He smiled, "Maybe, yes . . . something on that order perhaps. Something workable, though, for now: I've thought about what you said the other night."

  "Does Cave want this?"

  Paul shrugged. "Who can tell. I should think so but this is not really a problem for him to decide. He has happened. Now we respond. Stokharin feels that a practical faith, a belief in ways of behavior which the best modern analysts are agreed on as being closest to ideal, might perform absolute miracles. No more guilt-feeling about sex if Cave were to teach that all is proper when it does no harm to others . . . and the desire to do harm to others might even be partly removed if there were no false mysteries, no terrible warnings in childhood and so on. Just in that one area of behavior we could work wonders! Of course there would still be problems but the main ones could be solved if people take to Cave and to us. Cavesword is already known and it's a revelation to millions . . . we know that. Now they are looking to him for guidance in other fields. They know about death at last. Now we must tell them about living and we are lucky to have available so much first-rate scientific research in the human psyche. I suspect we can even strike on an ideal behavior pattern by which people can measure themselves."

  "And to which they will be made to conform?" Direction was becoming clear already.

  "How can we force anyone to do anything? Our whole power is that people come to us, to Cave voluntarily because they feel here, at last, is the answer." Paul might very well have been sincere: there is no way of determining, even now.
/>   "Well, remember, Paul, that you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new law imposed by enthusiasts."

  "Don't say 'you.' Say 'we.' You're as much a part of this as I am. After all you're a director. You've got a say-so in these matters. Just speak up Friday." Paul was suddenly genial and placating. "I don't pretend I've got all the answers. I'm just talking off the top of my head, like they say."

  A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop Winston was outside.

  "Now it starts," said Paul with a grimace.

  The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office. He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb.

  "He's too late," said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman's back.

  "Professional con-men," said his companion with disgust. "They've had their day."

  And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street, into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave's year.

  I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them.

  Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I'd taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled . . . the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Cavesword was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I'd obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself.

  "What do you think about the guy?" the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he'd seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).

  "It's hard to say," I said. "How did he strike you?"

  "Boy, like lightning!" The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. "Of course I'm Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can't be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he's on. It's wild."

  It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure . . . well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, not done.

  Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris's apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. "Leave them alone," I said aloud. "It is enough to open the windows."

  "Open the windows!" The driver snorted. "It's damn near forty in the street."

  4

  Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting cross-legged on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with strain. "It just doesn't work for me!" she said and stood up without embarrassment for, since I'd found the main door unlocked, I'd opened this one too, without knocking.

  "I'm sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was . . ."

  "Don't be silly." She rolled up the mat efficiently. "I was expecting you but I lost track of time . . . which means it must be working a little. I'll be right back." She went into the bedroom and I sat down, amused by this unexpected side to Iris: I wondered if perhaps she was a devotee of wheat germ and mint tea as well. She claimed not. "It's the only real exercise I get," she said, changed now to a heavy robe which completely swathed her figure as she sat curled up in a great armchair, drinking Scotch, as did I, the winter outside hid by drawn curtains, by warmth and light.

  "Have you done it long?"

  "Oh, off and on for years. I never get anywhere but it's very restful and I've felt so jittery lately that anything which relaxes me. . . ." her voice trailed off idly. She seemed relaxed now.

  "I've been to see Paul," I began importantly.

  "Ah." But I could not, suddenly, generate sufficient anger to speak out with eloquence. I went around my anger stealthily, a murderer stalking his victim. "We disagreed."

  "In what?"

  "In everything, I should say."

  "That's so easy with Paul." Iris stretched lazily; ice chattered in her glass; a car's horn melodious and foreign sounded in the street below. "We need him. If it wasn't Paul, it might be someone a great deal worse. At least he's intelligent and devoted. That makes up for a lot."

  "I don't think so; Iris, he's establishing a sort of supermarket, short-order church for the masses."

  She laughed delightedly. "I like that . . . and, in a way, you're right: that's what he would do left to himself."

  "He seems in complete control."

  "Only of the office. John makes all the decisions."

  "I wish I could be sure of that."

  "You'll see on Friday. You'll be at the meeting, won't you?"

  I nodded. "I have a feeling that between Paul and Stokharin this thing is going to turn into a world-wide clinic for mental health."

  "I expect worse things could happen, but Paul must still contend with me and you and of course the final word is with John."

  "How is Cave, by the way? I haven't seen him since the night of the first telecast."

  "Quite relaxed, unlike the rest of us. You should come out with me one day to Long Island and see him. I go nearly every day for a few hours. He's kept completely removed from everyone except the servants and Paul and me."

  "Does he like that?"

  "He doesn't seem to mind. He walks a good deal . . . it's a big place and he's used to the cold. He reads a little, mostly detective stories . . . and then of course there's the mail that Paul sends on. He works at that off and on all day. I help him and when we're stuck (you should see the questions!) we consult Stokharin who's very good on some things, on problems . . ."

  "And a bore the rest of the time."

  "That's right," Iris giggled. "I couldn't have been more furious the other night, but, since then, I've seen a good deal of him and he's not half bad. We've got him over the idea that John should become a lay analyst: the response to the telecast finally convinced Stokharin that here was a racial 'folk-father-figure'. . . his very own words. Now he's out to educate the father so that he will fulfill his children's needs on the best post-Jungian lines."

  "Does Cave take him seriously?"

  "He's bored to death with him. Stokharin's the only man who's ever had the bad sense to lecture John . . . who absolutely hates it; but he does feel that Stokharin's answers to some of the problems we're confronted with are ingenious. All that . . . hints to the lovelorn is too much for John, so we need the Stokharins to take care of details."

  "I hope he's careful not to get too involved."

  "John's incorruptible. Not because he is so noble or constant but because he can only think a certain way and other opinions, other evidence, can't touch him."

  I paused, wondering if this was true; then: "I'm going to make a scene on Friday. I'm going to suggest that Paul is moving in a dangerous direction, toward organization and dogma and that if something is not done soon we'll all be ruined by that which we most detest: a militant absolutist doctrine."

  Iris looked at me curiously. "Tell me, Gene, what do you want? Why are you still with Cave, with all of us when you so apparently suspect the general direction? You've always been perfectly clear about what you did not want (I can recall, I think, every word you said at the farm that night) but, to be specifi
c, what would you like all this to become? How would you direct things if you could?"

  I'd been preparing myself for such a question for several months yet I still had no single answer to make which would sharply express my own doubts and wishes. But I made an attempt. "I would not organize, for one thing. I'd have Cave speak regularly, all he likes, but there would be no Cavite, Inc., no Paul planting articles and propagandizing. I'd keep just Cave, nothing more. Let him do his work. Then, gradually, there will be effects, a gradual end to superstition. . . ."

  Iris looked at me intently. "If it were possible, I would say we should do what you suggest, even though it would be ruinous not only for us but for everyone . . ."

  "Why ruinous? A freedom to come to a decision on one's own without . . ."

  "That's it. No one can be allowed that freedom. One doesn't need much scholarship or even experience to see that. Everywhere people are held in check by stifling but familiar powers. People are used to tyranny: they expect governments to demand their souls, and they have given up decisions on many levels for love of security. What you suggest is impossible with this race at this time."

  "You're talking nonsense. After all, obeisance to established religions is the order of the day, yet look at the response to Cave who is undermining the whole Christian structure."

  "And wait until you see the fight they're going to put up!" said Iris grimly. "Fortunately, Cave's word is the mortal blow though Cave himself would be their certain victim if he was unprotected, if there was no organization to guard him, and the Word."

  "So Paul and his—his team, his proselytes are to become merely an equivalent power, combating the old superstitions with their own weapons."

  "More or less, yes. That's what it has come to."

  "Even though his talking to the people would be enough? Let them use him, not he them."

  "A good slogan," Iris smiled. "But I think I'm right. No one would have a chance to see or hear him if it weren't for Paul; you should read the threatening letters we've been getting."