by Howard Fast
“Delicious beef. Tender,” Heller said appreciatively.
“It’s not beef. It’s lamb.”
“I can’t believe that,” Frances said.
“It’s marinated and broiled, as you would do a steak.”
Frances would have gone on to the recipe and that might have kept her through the main dish, but the senator, realizing that she would have to monopolize Dolly across the length of the table, diverted her with questions about the Hellers’ recent trip to the Soviet Union. Frances responded with a story of a rash that Heller had contracted on his visit. “It itched so, I’m afraid it gave our relations with Russia a turn for the worst. Webster says it came of their having no comprehension of what we mean by clean. It spoiled everything.”
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,” the senator mused.
“Oh?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry?”
Jenny saved him with a compliment for Frances’s clothes. At sixty-nine, Jenny with her height, her great mop of white hair piled on her head, and her dress of ivory-colored silk faille, was doing her thing as a doyenne of snobs. She had the equipment for a role she assumed only when she felt that Augustus was threatened, and her method of operation was to destroy with faint praise. Indeed, it was the only weapon she had—since beneath her shield of class lived a soft and sentimental person—and she used it sparingly. Her praise, dropped upon the tasteless dress Frances wore, was devastating. Frances lowered her eyes, mumbled a word of thanks and then brought her lips together tightly. Jenny was enveloped in guilt.
At the other end of the table, Heller pressed Elizabeth. “About this meditation thing, if it does all you say it does, it sounds like a dangerous thing.”
“In what way?”
Heller studied her keenly. Was she playing a game with him, this slender pretty girl? He smiled and said that it might wreak havoc in the armed forces.
“But soldiers don’t meditate,” Elizabeth assured him. “So you have nothing to worry about.”
Both the senator and Dolly were listening, Richard straining to hear Elizabeth’s soft voice from where he sat at the other end of the table. Even MacKenzie, who was pouring the Lafite-Rothschild, paused to listen.
“How do you know that?” Justin demanded. Elizabeth was seated between Heller and Justin.
“It’s very simple. If they meditated seriously, they wouldn’t be soldiers, would they?”
“Vietnam is full of Buddhist pagodas, but they fought like devils.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t imagine the fighters came from the pagodas.”
“And I’ve heard that story about Helms and Ginsberg,” Justin said. “I don’t put any stock in it.”
Heller, who had tasted the wine, held up his glass. “Suppose we talk about something civilized—namely wine. It’s splendid, Richard. What is this red wine, if I may ask?”
MacKenzie exhibited the bottle, and Heller nodded. “Splendid.”
“You’re a connoisseur, Mr. Secretary,” Dolly said.
“Hardly. But it is part of the job.”
“I think it’s brilliant. I have only the vaguest sense of the difference between a good wine and a bad wine.”
“No need to apologize. It’s a matter of little importance. But tell me, Mrs. Cromwell, how do you feel about your children’s profession of Buddhist belief?”
“I never regarded it as belief. It’s the way they are. I have no complaints.” She glanced at Leonard, who had put on his plate a spoonful of flageolet and another spoonful of spinach.
“I’m not very hungry, Mom.”
“Please try to eat,” she whispered.
“Sure.”
Augustus lifted his glass and proposed a toast. “To our two eminent guests and the land they rule!”
“Come off it,” Justin growled.
“I drink to the land,” Heller said, and after he had tasted the wine, “not to an old friend’s sour sense of humor.”
Not funny by any means, the senator reflected, and what is the old devil up to tonight? He’s rehearsing for something.
For moments he had forgotten or put aside or shunted into the area of disbelief the fate of his son. His mind had done one of those curious tricks and directed his concentration toward the wit and poise of his children; thrust back into reality, he felt the tears beginning in his eyes. He hid for a moment behind his napkin, but when he looked up he realized that Dolly was staring at him and that she had missed nothing. He was transparent. He always had been. It was a rotten habit for a politician.
“What land would that be?” Augustus asked, grinning. “El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatamala? Trouble with my sour sense of humor is that it’s not shared by the fifty states. My sense of humor, I mean. If it were, Webster, you and your pals would be laughed out of existence.”
“That’s uncalled for,” Justin remarked, his tone treading the thin edge of anger.
Heller, older and wiser than William Justin, grinned back at Augustus and reminded Justin of the old movie called The Virginian. “Not when he says it with a smile, Bill. You remember the film? Was it Gary Cooper? I think so. The bad guy insults Cooper.” He glanced around the table inquiringly. Augustus’s speech had stopped all other conversation.
“‘When you say that, smile,’” Elizabeth said sweetly.
“Oh?”
“The late show. That horrible little box lets our generation live two lives.”
“And at the same time, young feller,” Augustus said to Justin, “it propounds the virtues of the Republican party. We can say our piece and never ripple the water. A Democrat wouldn’t dare come out and say we run and own Central America, body and soul. No, sir! He’d be denounced as a Communist, tuck his tail between his legs, and run like hell.”
The long moment of silence that followed was broken by Winifred Justin who said to Augustus, “But if that’s the case, Mr. Levi, and you are not teasing all of us, which I am sure you are, I mean teasing the lot of us, but if that is the case, where does virtue lie?”
“With a well-bred woman. Where else could you find it?”
Jenny, doyenne to the table, the enduring wife of Augustus Levi, shook her head to still the waters. “My dear Mrs. Justin,” she said, being one who saved first names for either servants or those she considered her equals, “you must not take my husband seriously. He enjoys shocking people.”
“But I must take him very seriously,” Heller said lightly. “I’ve known him a long time.” He turned to Leonard suddenly, “And don’t you take him seriously? How about that, Son?”
Leonard hesitated, and for a moment the senator thought he would make no response whatsoever. Then he said, smiling slightly, “Gramps and I had a different relationship. He used to carry me, or get down on his knees to play with me, and steal candy for me behind Mom’s back—but do you know, sir,” pausing, “we never talked about murder.”
“Murder?”
“Of course, it’s only my point of view,” Leonard said apologetically. He wanted to leave it there.
“Why would he talk to you about murder?” Frances Heller wondered. “Unless it’s another joke?”
“No, I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking.…” He faltered, as if he were confused.
“Go ahead, Lenny,” the senator said softly.
He bent his head for a moment, then looked at Heller and said, “I meant politics and war—I mean to me, the taking of a human life is an act of murder.”
THIRTY-THREE
In the kitchen, MacKenzie, sotto voce, was berating Nellie. “Serve left, remove right, serve left, remove right—can’t you understand, you silly girl? This is your right hand, this is your left hand.”
“I know. I know which is my right hand. But the corners—”
“I know about corners. I don’t give a spotted catfish about corners. You serve left, you remove right.”
“Oh, leave the poor child alone.” Ellen handed Nellie a silver boat of hot bread. “Check the bread.” A
nd when Nellie had departed, she said to her husband, “If you didn’t have such hot pants for that child, you wouldn’t be putting her down all the time.”
“She’s no child and my pants are cold as ice right now.”
“That’ll be the day. How is it going in there?”
“Interesting. Smooth so far.”
“Go check the wine again. Don’t just stand here with your teeth in your mouth.”
“The old man, Gus, he just put down the secretary of state like Mohammed Ali did it to all challengers in his good time.”
“Mac, get back in there. I’m not going to tell you again.”
The fourth bottle of Lafite-Rothschild had emptied itself through MacKenzie’s careful pouring, and Frances, unexpectedly, was allowing her knee to tip toward the senator. Knee to knee, she asked him what he had seen of the theater in New York. Richard was schooled in that diplomatic book of procedure that says that one never knows what one can do for whoever, or what whoever could do for one, and therefore one does not reject a knee. Ignore it, but don’t reject it; and meanwhile explain that you rarely get to New York.
“In London,” Jenny put in, “we do the theater with ferocity. But of course Gus does everything with ferocity. In New York, somehow, we don’t operate that way. New York is different.”
“And it does come to Washington sooner or later,” Frances said.
Richard Cromwell accepted the general condition at his end of the table with equanimity. There had been times when the senseless chatter would have irritated him; now it was meaningless. There were no more small irritations, only the dark horror that had overcast the day; and Jenny, who sat to his left, was never an irritation. Early in his marriage to Dolly, when Jenny had been in her forties, a great, strapping, high-breasted woman, he had engaged in sexual fantasies about her, and even though his delicious lusts were unrealized, they added to the charm he displayed toward her. Jenny loved him for this and would hear no word against him, possibly sensing his mood and finding a response in herself for the unthinkable. Jenny was pleased by his tolerance for Frances Heller; not that she liked Frances, but it did give Richard points in Jenny’s image of him.
Justin, on his fourth glass of wine, and finding Elizabeth unresponsive, stirred the little snakes that had taken residence in his mind so long ago, and asked Elizabeth whether, in the light of what had been said, Leonard had registered for the draft? He was not drunk. Justin did not become drunk in the usual manner, slow, funny, foolish. In fact, he did not become drunk at all, only more unpleasant.
“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” Elizabeth said. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Justin glanced at Heller, who pursed his lips and shook his head slightly.
“Question?” Leonard asked across the table.
Stepping in with the first thing that leaped to mind, Dolly said, “I was amazed the other day to hear the president quote poetry.”
“Did he?” Heller said.
“Well, hardly the greatest poet. Robert W. Service as a matter of fact. An odd little poem called The Cremation of Sam Magee. He had memorized it, for some reason.”
“Nothing wrong with his memory,” Augustus snorted. “He’d memorize the dictionary and read it as his State of the Union address if someone put it in front of him.”
Justin was set to react in anger, but the secretary laughed and reminded Augustus of the eleventh commandment.
“And what’s that?”
“Love thy fellow Republican. No low shots at the party. He’s ours and we love him.”
“You got me, Web. I love him too.”
“Augustus always loved cowboy films,” Jenny said sweetly.
Softly, half-singing, Elizabeth said, “‘But we are endowed with a mushroom-like cloud, and one happy day we’ll all blow away—’”
“That’s uncalled for,” Dolly said quietly.
“Yes, I apologize,” Elizabeth agreed.
“Yet,” Leonard said, pausing to search his memory, “there is this.” He recited slowly:
“When our children’s children shall talk of war
As a madness that may not be;
When we thank our God for our grief today,
and blazon from sea to sea
in the name of the dead the banner of peace
that will be victory.”
“Same poet who wrote the tidbit your president quoted. But after having served in World War One, he was no longer cute.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” Dolly said, troubled by the turn the conversation had taken.
“Something the president didn’t memorize. I think some things that he didn’t memorize are important,” Elizabeth said, smiling.
“I think this has gone far enough,” Dolly said. Heller smiled tolerantly. Anticipating Justin, Richard pointed out that this was another generation. “The thing is Bill,” he said to Justin, “that when twenty years goes by, which it does in ten minutes or so, you find yourself with a new generation, new notions, new ideas—and certainly a way of speaking up.”
“Don’t think we’re immune to that,” Frances said. “You know Sylvia Palmer, don’t you?” she asked of Jenny.
“I haven’t seen her for ages. We don’t get to Washington that much.”
“Well, her daughter, Claire—well, she just took off and married a black man. Well, a black man—in my day, we would have called him colored, but today you call them black. Not that he’s black, kind of light brown color and good looking. He has an important position in the general accounting office. Do you know that Sylvia came to me to see whether I could get Webster to do something for her new son-in-law. And when I asked her wasn’t she devastated, she said, no. Suppose she had married a Jew.”
Unfortunately, Frances had a voice that carried, one of those high, piping little-girl voices, and while the other end of the table had not been listening, the tail end of her remarks caught them.
The senator had a reputation for being imperturbable because in moments like this, he took refuge behind a blank, expressionless mask. Rather than exploding to the cause, this gave him time to consider what should be said, as opposed to what could be said.
Jenny was controlled. That suited her. Having been raised in a milieu where reactions were properly controlled, she said nothing and simply stiffened her face. So when Frances cried out, “For heaven’s sake, forgive me,” Jenny’s expression did not change, nor did she respond in words. Afterwards, Richard would recall her expression as withering, a word he had previously considered to be merely a literary device. It was sufficiently withering, and he decided to leave the ball with his mother-in-law and say nothing that would smooth these troubled waters.
At the other end of the table, Dolly went into a frantic tale of her difficulties in trying to recreate a Colonial herb garden. But she prefaced her remarks with, “It’s quite all right, Frances. It’s an understandable slip of the tongue.”
Winifred, leaning against Augustus, said, “Never thought the little old pigeon was that silly.” She was controllably drunk. The senator had wondered earlier why Justin had brought her. “Usually,” he had said to Dolly, “he doesn’t bring her.” But nothing was usual tonight, and the senator had the feeling that it was becoming more and more like Alice’s tea party. Augustus chuckled with pleasure, and Dolly, armed with years of political diplomacy, was in animated conversation with Heller and Justin. Leonard and Elizabeth had become spectators. And Frances was driven to compound her distress, mentioning that Jenny was not really Jewish, and therefore should not feel hurt.
“Of course, my dear,” Jenny said graciously. “That’s why my name is Levi.”
The lemon mousse was served. The senator realized that the dinner had come to its final moment. For this he was grateful.
THIRTY-FOUR
When the ladies rose to go into the library, leaving the men at the dinner table, Leonard whispered to his father, “I can’t stay here, Dad.”
“Yes, I can understand th
at.”
“I think I’ll step outside. I need a breath of fresh air.”
“Sure. I’ll see you later?”
Leonard nodded.
Dolly was preoccupied with three women in various degrees of annoyance, petulance, and alcohol. Leonard waited until the women had left the room, and then he slipped out through the living room and into the front hallway. As he came out of the house, he saw that the big limousine was still parked where it had been when it first pulled up. One of the Secret Service men got out of the car and faced him.
“Who are you?”
“Leonard Cromwell.”
“Do you have identification?”
“I live here.”
“I asked you, do you have identification?”
“I live here. We had a dinner party; I’m wearing black tie; and I’m at home, so I have no identification. If you’re so crazed on the subject, I’ll go inside and get some.” He turned toward the door.
“Hold on! You don’t go in the house!”
The other Secret Service man got out of the car and said, “For Christ’s sake, Hinton, that’s the senator’s kid.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know, how do I know—I know.” He said to Leonard. “Forget it, kid.”
Leonard started off toward the pool.
“He swallowed the book, kid. Forget it.”
Leonard walked on through the night without looking back. The moon was almost full, and a wonderful silver glow lit the grounds. He felt that he was walking in a dream. The guard was mad—obviously mad. The guard had taken him for a terrorist. They were all mad, caught up in a giant neurosis, a nation gone paranoid, and the disease Aids was a part of it. Out of a kettle of insanity an insane disease had been brewed, and where once simple, bony witches had danced, now there was a dance of driven clerics screaming that abortion was a sin, that Aids was a punishment from a God who burned souls in hell forever and who would cheerfully burn mankind to make a biblical prophesy come true. It was a nightmare. Only in a nightmare could madmen rule the world with thousands of atomic bombs—which in a spell of petulance or frustration could destroy mankind.