The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “Hello?”

  “Judy?”

  A pause. “I thought it might be you,” said Judy.

  “I suppose you saw the story,” Sherman said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, look—”

  “Unless you want me to hang up right now, don’t even talk about it. Don’t even begin.”

  He hesitated. “How is Campbell?”

  “She’s doing all right.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “She understands that there’s trouble. She knows something’s up. I don’t think she knows what. Fortunately, school is over, although it’ll be bad enough out here.”

  “Let me explain—”

  “Don’t. I don’t want to listen to your explanations. I’m sorry, Sherman, but I don’t feel like having my intelligence insulted. Not any more than it already has been.”

  “All right, but I ought to at least tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going back into custody tomorrow. Back into jail.”

  Softly: “Why?”

  Why? It doesn’t matter why! I cry out to you—to hold me! But I no longer have the right! So he merely explained to her the problem of the increased bail.

  “I see,” she said.

  He waited a moment, but that was it. “Judy, I just don’t know if I can do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was horrible the first time, and I was only inside for a few hours in a temporary detention pen. This time it’ll be in the Bronx House of Detention.”

  “But only until you post bail.”

  “But I don’t know if I can even take a day of it, Judy. After all this publicity, it’ll be full of people…who have it in for me…I mean, it’s bad enough even when they don’t know who you are. You can’t imagine what it’s like—” He stopped. I want to cry out to you! But he had lost the right.

  She picked up the agony in his voice. “I don’t know what to say to you, Sherman. If I could be with you in some way, I would. But you keep cutting the ground out from under me. We’ve had this same conversation before. What do I have left to give you? I just…feel so sorry for you, Sherman. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “Judy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell Campbell I love her very much. Tell her…tell her to think of her father as the person who was here before all this happened. Tell her that all this does something to you and that you can never be the same person again.”

  Desperately he wanted Judy to ask him what he meant. At even the most tentative invitation he was ready to pour out everything he felt. But all she said was:

  “I’m sure she’ll always love you, no matter what.”

  “Judy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember when we used to live in the Village, the way I used to go off to work?”

  “The way you used to go off to work?”

  “When I first started working for Pierce & Pierce? The way I used to give you the raised left fist when I left the apartment, the Black Power salute?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “You remember why?”

  “I guess so.”

  “It was supposed to say that yes, I was going to work on Wall Street, but my heart and soul would never belong to it. I would use it and rebel and break with it. You remember all that?”

  Judy said nothing.

  “I know it didn’t work out that way,” he went on, “but I remember what a lovely feeling it was. Don’t you?”

  Again silence.

  “Well, now I’ve broken with Wall Street. Or Wall Street’s broken with me. I know it’s not the same thing, but in an odd way I feel liberated.” He stopped, hoping to coax a comment.

  Finally Judy said, “Sherman?”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s a memory, Sherman, but it’s not alive.” Her voice broke. “All our memories of that time have been terribly abused. I know you want me to tell you something else, but I’ve been betrayed and I’ve been humiliated. I wish I could be something I was a long time ago and help you, but I can’t.” Snuffling back tears.

  “It would help if you could forgive me—if you would give me one last chance.”

  “You asked me that once before, Sherman. All right, I forgive you. And I’ll ask you again: What does that change?” She was crying softly.

  He had no answer, and that was that.

  Afterward, he sat in the brilliant blazing stillness of the library. He sank back into the swivel chair at his desk. He was aware of the pressure of the edge of the seat on the underside of his thighs. Ox-blood Moroccan leather; $1,100 just to cover the back and the seat of this one chair. The library door was open. He looked out into the entry gallery. There on the marble floor he could see the extravagantly curved legs of one of the Thomas Hope armchairs. Not a mahogany reproduction but one of the rosewood originals. Rosewood! The childish joy with which Judy had discovered her rosewood originals!

  The telephone rang. She was calling back! He picked up the receiver at once.

  “Hello?”

  “Ayyyyy, Sherman.” His heart sank again. It was Killian. “I want you to come on back down here. Got something to show you.”

  “You’re still at your office?”

  “Quigley’s here, too. We got something to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just as soon not talk about it”—tawkaboudit—“on the telephone. I want you to come on down here.”

  “All right…I’ll leave right now.”

  He wasn’t sure he could have remained in the apartment another minute, in any case.

  At the old building on Reade Street, the night watchman, who appeared to be Cypriot or Armenian, was listening to a country-music station on a huge portable radio. Sherman had to stop and write down his name and the time on a ledger. In a thick accent the watchman kept joining in the chorus of the song:

  My chin’s up,

  My smile’s on,

  My heart’s fee-

  lin’

  down…

  Which came out:

  My cheen’s op,

  Mice a mile’s on,

  My hut’s fee-

  leen

  doan…

  Sherman took the elevator up, walked through the dingy stillness of the corridor, and came to the door with the incised plastic sign that read DERSHKIN, BELLAVITA, FISHBEIN & SCHLOSSEL. For an instant he thought of his father. The door was locked. He rapped on it, and after five or ten seconds Ed Quigley opened it.

  “Ayyyyy! Come on in!” said Quigley. His dour face was all lit up. Beaming is the word. All of a sudden he was Sherman’s warmest pal. Half a chuckle bubbled out of him as he led Sherman toward Killian’s office.

  Killian was standing inside with the smile of the cat that ate the canary. On his desk was a large tape machine that was obviously from the higher and more sophisticated reaches of the Audio-Visual Kingdom.

  “Ayyyyyyyyyy!” said Killian. “Have a seat. Get a good grip on yourself. Wait’ll you hear this.”

  Sherman sat down beside the desk. “What is it?”

  “You tell me,” said Killian. Quigley stood next to Killian, looking at the machine and fidgeting like a schoolboy onstage to receive a prize. “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high over this thing,” said Killian, “because there’s a couple very serious problems with it, but you’ll find it interesting.”

  He pushed something on the machine, and a stream of low static began. Then a man’s voice:

  “I knew it. I knew it at the time. We should have reported it immediately.” For the first second or so he didn’t recognize it. then it sank in. My own voice! It continued: “I can’t believe I’m—I can’t believe we’re in this situation.”

  A woman’s voice: “Well, it’s too late now, Sherman.” Shuhmun. “That’s spilt milk.”

  The entire scene—the fear, the tension, the very atmosphere of it—flooded through Sherman’s nervous system…In her hideaway the evening
the first article about Henry Lamb appeared in The City Light…HONOR STUDENT’S MOM: COPS SIT ON HIT’N’RUN…He could see the headline itself on top of the oak pedestal table…

  His voice: “Just…tell what actually happened.”

  Her voice: “That’ll sound wonderful. Two boys stopped us and tried to rob us, but you threw a tire at one of them, and I drove outta there like a…a…hot-rodder, but I didn’t know I hit anybody.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what happened, Maria.”

  “And who’s gonna believe it?…”

  Sherman looked at Killian. Killian had a tight little smile on his face. He raised his right hand as if to caution Sherman to keep listening and not speak yet. Quigley kept his eyes fixed on the magical machine. His lips were pursed to hold back the broad grin he felt he was due.

  Soon the Giant arrived. “You live here?”

  His own voice: “I said we don’t have time for this.” He sounded terribly snooty and precious. All over again he felt the humiliation of that moment, the dreadful feeling that he was about to be forced into a masculine duel, very likely physical, that he could not possibly win.

  “You don’t live here, and she don’t live here. What you doing here?”

  The snooty fellow: “That’s not your concern! Now, be a good fellow and leave!”

  “You don’t belong here. Okay? We got a real problem.”

  Then Maria’s voice…the squabbling…a tremendous crack, as the chair breaks and the Giant hits the floor…his ignominious retreat…Maria’s whoops of laughter…

  Finally her voice saying: “Germaine pays only $331 a month, and I pay her $750. It’s rent-controlled. They’d love to get her out of here.”

  Soon the voices stopped…and Sherman remembered, felt, the fitful session on the bed…

  When the tape had played out, Sherman said to Killian, “My God, that’s astounding. Where did that come from?”

  Killian looked at Sherman but pointed his right index finger at Quigley. So Sherman looked at Quigley. It was the moment Quigley had been waiting for.

  “As soon as you told me where she told you about her rent scam, I knew it. I just fucking knew it. Those lunatics. This Hiellig Winter ain’t the first one. The voice-activated tapes. So I went straight over there. This character has microphones hidden in the intercom boxes inside the apartments. The recorder’s down in the cellar in a locked closet.”

  Sherman stared at the man’s suddenly radiant face. “But why would he even bother?”

  “To get the tenants out!” said Quigley. “Half the people in these rent-controlled apartments ain’t in there legally. Halfa them are scamming, just like your friend there. But proving it in court is another thing. So this lunatic’s taping every conversation in the joint with the voice-activated tape. Believe me, he ain’t the first one, either.”

  “But…isn’t that illegal?”

  “Illegal,” said Quigley with great joy, “it’s so fucking illegal it ain’t even funny! It’s so fucking illegal, if he walked in that door right now, I’d say, ‘Hi, I took your fucking tape. Whaddaya thinka that?’ And he’d say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and walk away like a nice boy. But I’m telling you, these maniacs are crazed.”

  “And you just took it? How did you even get in there?”

  Quigley shrugged with consummate smugness. “That’s no big deal.”

  Sherman looked at Killian. “Christ…then maybe…if that’s on tape, then maybe…Right after the thing happened, Maria and I went back to her apartment and we talked the whole thing over, everything that happened. If that’s on tape—that would be…fantastic!”

  “It ain’t there,” said Quigley. “I listened to miles a this stuff. It don’t go back that far. He must erase it every now and then and record right over it, so he don’t have to keep buying new tapes.”

  His spirits soaring, Sherman said to Killian, “Well, maybe this is enough!”

  Quigley said, “Incidentally, you ain’t the only visitor she receives in that joint.”

  Killian broke in: “Yeah, well, that’s of historical interest at this point. Now, here’s the thing, Sherman. I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high over this. We got two serious problems. The first one is that she don’t come right out and say she hit the kid and you didn’t. What she says is indirect. Half the time, it sounds like she might be going along with what you’re saying. Nevertheless, it’s a good weapon. It’s certainly enough to create doubt in a jury. She certainly seems to be concurring with your theory that this was a robbery attempt. But we got another problem, and to be honest with you, I don’t know what the hell we can do about it. There’s no way I can get this tape into evidence.”

  “You can’t? Why not?”

  “Like Ed says, this is a totally illegal tape. This crazy guy Winter could go to jail for doing this. There is absolutely no way that a surreptitious, illegal tape can be used as evidence in a court of law.”

  “Well then, why did you wire me? That’s a surreptitious tape. How could that be used?”

  “It’s surreptitious but not illegal. You’re entitled to record your own conversations, secretly or not. But if it’s somebody else’s conversation, it’s illegal. If this lunatic landlord Winter was recording his own conversations, there’d be no problem.”

  Sherman stared at Killian with his mouth open, his just-hatched hopes already crushed. “But that’s not right! Here’s…vital evidence! They can’t suppress vital evidence on a technicality!”

  “I got news for you, bro. They can. They would. What we gotta do is think of some way to use this tape to get somebody to give us some legitimate testimony. Like if there’s some way we can use this to make your friend Maria come clean. You got any bright ideas?”

  Sherman thought for a moment. Then he sighed and looked off past the two men. It was all too preposterous. “I don’t know how you’d even get her to listen to the goddamned thing.”

  Killian looked at Quigley. Quigley shook his head. The three of them were quiet.

  “Wait a minute,” said Sherman. “Let me see that tape.”

  “See it?” said Killian.

  “Yes. Give it to me.”

  “Take it off the machine?”

  “Yes.” Sherman held out his hand.

  Quigley rewound it and took it off the machine very gingerly, as if it were a precious piece of hand-blown glass. He gave it to Sherman.

  Sherman held it in both hands and stared at it. “I’ll be damned,” he said, looking up at Killian. “It’s mine.”

  “Whaddaya mean, it’s yours?”

  “This is my tape. I made it.”

  Killian looked at him quizzically, as if searching out a joke. “Whaddaya mean, you made it?”

  “I wired myself up that night, because this article in The City Light had just come out and I figured I might need some verification of what actually happened. What we just listened to—that’s the tape I made that night. This is my tape.”

  Killian’s mouth was open. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I made this tape. Who’s going to say I didn’t? This tape is in my possession. Right? Here it is. I made this tape in order to have an accurate record of my own conversation. Tell me, Counselor, would you say this tape is admissible in a court of law?”

  Killian looked at Quigley. “Jesus H. Fucking Christ.” Then he looked at Sherman. “Let me get this straight, Mr. McCoy. You’re telling me you wired yourself and made this tape of your conversation with Mrs. Ruskin?”

  “Exactly. Is it admissible?”

  Killian looked at Quigley, smiled, then looked back. “It’s entirely possible, Mr. McCoy, entirely possible. But you gotta tell me something. Just how did you make this tape? What kind of equipment did you use? How did you tape yourself? I think if you want the court to admit this evidence, you better be able to account for everything you did, from A to Z.”

  “Well,” said Sherman, “I’d like to hear Mr. Quigley here guess how I did i
t. He seems knowledgeable in this area. I’d like to hear him guess.”

  Quigley looked at Killian.

  “Go ahead, Ed,” said Killian, “take a guess.”

  “Well,” said Quigley, “if it was me, I’d get me a Nagra 2600, voice-activated, and I’d…” He proceeded to outline in great detail just how he would use the fabled Nagra machine and wire himself and make sure he secured the highest-quality recording of such a conversation.

  When he was through, Sherman said, “Mr. Quigley, you are truly knowledgeable in this area. Because you know what? That is exactly what I did. You didn’t leave out a single step.” Then he looked at Killian. “There you have it. What do you think?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Killian said slowly. “You surprise the hell outta me. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “I didn’t, either,” said Sherman. “But something’s gradually dawned on me over the past few days. I’m not Sherman McCoy anymore. I’m somebody else without a proper name. I’ve been that other person ever since the day I was arrested. I knew something…something fundamental had happened that day, but I didn’t know what it was at first. At first I thought I was still Sherman McCoy, and Sherman McCoy was going through a period of very bad luck. Over the last couple of days, though, I’ve begun to face up to the truth. I’m somebody else. I have nothing to do with Wall Street or Park Avenue or Yale or St. Paul’s or Buckley or the Lion of Dunning Sponget.”

  “The Lion of Dunning Sponget?” asked Killian.

  “That’s the way I’ve always thought of my father. He was a ruler, an aristocrat. And maybe he was, but I’m not related to him anymore. I’m not the person my wife married or the father my daughter knows. I’m a different human being. I exist down here now, if you won’t be offended by me putting it that way. I’m not an exceptional client of Dershkin, Bellavita, Fishbein & Schlossel. I’m standard issue. Every creature has its habitat, and I’m in mine right now. Reade Street and 161st Street and the pens—if I think I’m above it, I’m only kidding myself, and I’ve stopped kidding myself.”