The Dinner Party

by Howard Fast

  He dropped down cross-legged on the warm stone terrace of the pool. The house was beneath him, down the slope, and in the moonlight it was lovely. Yet this was no nightmare. There was the black stretch Cadillac, and leaning against it one of the Secret Service men smoking a cigarette whose tiny glow was a firefly—up with a puff and then down.

  The thought that he, Leonard, was to leave this place, nightmare or not, step out of it forever into cold eternity, still clutched at his heart and awoke the inner pleading that it should not be so. There was enough beauty to soften the nightmare, the silver world below and all around him, the lights from the house, a doll house with a candle flickering inside, the faint smell of wood smoke on the wind, and the icy moon, dominating the wild array of stars, billions of stars and billions of planets, and billions of cultures and here, a dust mote called the earth, where madmen proclaimed themselves the vicars of God. Beauty and the beast, or was it that only what the beast touched lacked beauty? It had all been beautiful once; whatever else the Maker was, the Maker was an artist.

  He took a pallet from one of the lounge chairs, folded one end of it, kicked off his shoes and positioned himself to meditate. No guru had taught him meditation, but a small Japanese gentleman who taught philosophy at Harvard. A student had come to a rashi, who was a teacher of meditation, and asked him why one should sit and meditate, and the rashi had answered, so that you will not be afraid to die. A story very old, as old as the fear of death.

  A chill had come into the summer night. Leonard let the cool air caress him. The air was inside of him and outside of him, without separation. He watched his breath rise and fall, and gradually his mind cleared and his fear went away.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The women had left the room, and the four men, the senator, Augustus Levi, Webster Heller, and William Justin, sat at one end of the dining room table. MacKenzie had poured the drinks, brandy for Heller and Augustus, Baileys for Justin, and port for the senator; and now he was offering the large humidor of cigars.

  “I see no Cuban,” Justin complained.

  “No, I don’t use them.”

  “By golly,” Heller said, “you must be the only member of Congress who is a cigar smoker and doesn’t come up with Cubans.”

  The senator was troubled; it took all the effort he could muster to focus on the matter at hand, working out his own fantasy that Leonard was mistaken, that the boy had invented the story, that he simply used it for its dramatic effect. He had not been shaken by the news that his son was a homosexual; it was something he had sensed for many years. But the news about Aids—that couldn’t be true, it must not be true—

  “Senator?”

  “I am not a smuggler,” he said harshly.

  “Oh—oh, come on, sir. Those are harsh words.”

  Augustus had come to realize, during the dinner, that something was deeply wrong. He knew the senator, but this man tonight was not the man he knew. MacKenzie was at his side now, and Augustus chose a Flaminco panatela. “These damn things,” he said, “are pretty near as good as the Cubans. I don’t have the virtues that the senator has, but I think it’s just too fucken stupid to pass a law and then have every rich cigar smoker and half of the Washington crowd breaking it. You have Flamincos and Don Diegos here, and I’d like to see the Cubans that are any better.”

  “I hardly think you have to lecture us, Gus,” Justin said.

  “No? Well I’m not the host and you’re not in my house, so I can break some rules. I know old Web here for twenty-five years, but I never met you before tonight, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit here and listen to you call me ‘Gus.’ It’s Mr. Levi. Levi. You call me that, and you can get your jollies by saying to yourself that this old Jew has to be humored, and what more can you expect from a lousy Jew?”

  “Oh, hold on,” the senator said. “Please, Gus, that’s not called for, and if you don’t apologize, I certainly will.”

  Justin, on his feet, exclaimed, “I don’t have to hear this.”

  “Sit down,” Heller said. “We’re family. Gus was in our party before you were born. He’s the nastiest sour old long-horn bull in the crowd, but that’s the way he is.”

  “My apologies, Mr. Justin,” Augustus said lazily, lighting his cigar and grinning. “Webster is right. I call them as they fall. You should sit in the House of Commons in London for a few hours and hear those Brits go at each other. They pull no punches. When a man’s their enemy, they specify.”

  “Gus, we’re none of us enemies here.”

  “On the other hand,” Augustus said, “when I listen to our Congress, it turns my stomach. ‘My esteemed colleague.’ ‘My learned opponent.’ ‘My old friend.’ Bowing and scraping to some of the worst, brainless, ignorant bastards that ever polluted Washington—and nobody willing to open his mouth and call a son of a bitch a son of a bitch.”

  “I think,” Richard said coldly, “that no one here is an enemy.”

  “He’s right,” Heller agreed. “Don’t divest us of the few trappings of civilization we still retain.”

  Justin was pulling himself together over his Baileys and cigar. Now he looked up at Augustus, his eyes narrowed and angry, his voice controlled. “I understand your position, Mr. Levi. You are an old man and entitled to your perquisites. I have erred.”

  “Good boy.” Gus nodded.

  “And I think,” Justin added, “that we should get down to the business of this evening, the matter of the road.” He was good, the senator realized, very controlled, very calculating.

  “I’m sure,” Justin said, “that you have guessed the purpose of this dinner, which your daughter was gracious enough to provide.”

  “I’d be a horse’s ass not to. How often do you think I am summoned to take counsel with two of the gentlemen who rule my country.”

  “We don’t rule your country,” Justin said.

  Heller sighed. “Relax, Bill,” he said to Justin. “These are good cigars and this is damn good brandy and even that Irish swill you’re drinking is potable. We’ve had an excellent dinner, as good as any I’ve ever tasted—and that meat, Richard, succulent, succulent. Hell, we’re as comfortable as a chigger in a lady’s tit, so just ease up and let a couple of old-time Republicans shoot the breeze.”

  The senator had never heard this kind of country boy talk from the secretary, nor did it have the feel of validity. It sounded like a little from here and a little from there, not to mention a few words from the television screen.

  “Before we get down to the road,” Augustus said, “I’d like to argue a little piece for my son-in-law here. Do you mind, Richard?” he asked the senator.

  “You have the floor,” the senator said.

  Augustus took a deep drag on the cigar, and then let smoke drift slowly around the chandelier. “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke. Nothing a politician dares say these days, with the women’s organization at your throat, and it never made much sense anyway. A good cigar is a consolation; it makes you believe, if only for a moment, that love and compassion abound—but we know better. My son-in-law, Senator Cromwell, is what we call a damn liberal. But he’s a little more than that; he’s an honest liberal who doesn’t give an inch, and he’s been a pain in our backsides for years. He’s a man of principle, and nothing makes fellers like us as nervous as a man of principle.”

  “Is this going somewhere?” Justin asked.

  “I think so, if you’re patient and give me a chance to pull a few loose ends together. You see, Richard figured out that the only thing that could bring you fellows here for an off-the-record meeting with me was the road, and that you were going to ask me to dump it, and since you’d be asking for a big chunk of something, he’d ask a little bit of an off-the-record favor for himself. Now I don’t want it to hang on what I do or don’t do, so I’d like to have Richard present his case before we get down to the business of mine.”

  “I have no objections,” Heller said. “It’s Richard’s house. He’s our host.”
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  The senator had to fight to put his fractured thoughts together again. He wished he had thought to see whether Leonard had returned, either to his room or to the library, but it was too late for that now. Augustus had given him the best shot he could have had. “I want to begin,” he said, “by admitting that I could have brought this up in the Senate. But we’re not in session now, and even in session, it could be months or never. Since you were coming, I thought perhaps we could do this quietly and quickly. I’m talking about the Sanctuary Movement, about the hundreds of churches and synagogues that have formed an underground railroad to help and shelter and give sanctuary to the poor devils, men, women, and children, who are fleeing from the murder squads of El Salvador.”

  “We don’t know that they’re fleeing what you call the murder squads,” Justin said.

  “I won’t argue that,” Richard replied. “You both know the facts of the case better than I do, and we’re four of us, alone in this room, no bugs, no press, no media.”

  “He’s right,” Heller said. “We’re not convincing a crowd. We’ll say our pieces, straight on.”

  “All right,” Justin said. “I grant it.”

  “Almost fifty thousand murdered already.”

  “Your figure is high,” Justin said. “Forty thousand at most. They’re Marxists.”

  “They don’t know Marx from Santa Claus. Six-year-old peasant kids are not Marxists.”

  “That can be argued.”

  “And if they’re sent back, it’s to the death squads, armed and kept in business by us.”

  “That too can be argued,” Justin said. “What is your point, Senator?”

  “Simply this. In arresting the eleven people who are on trial, we did something that never happened before in the history of this nation.”

  “Richard,” Heller said, “we do lots of things that never happened before in the history of this nation.”

  “Do you know how the evidence was gathered for their arrest?”

  “Of course I know. We did what we had to do. We wired up a couple of these refugees and sent them into the churches. They recorded what went on. What went on was a conspiracy to evade and break the immigration laws of the United States.”

  “Spies for the federal government to record prayers in churches for evidence to send people to prison. Doesn’t that chill your blood, Mr. Secretary? Can you think of another incident as disgraceful, as obscene, in all the history of this country?”

  “Can you think of another country as obscene as the Soviet Union?”

  “Which doesn’t justify anything. We have faced enemies before and fought wars—with the British, with the Confederacy, and twice with the Germans, but never did it require that we sneak into the churches and bring their prayers into court as evidence against them. My God, what have we done to ourselves? What have we become?”

  “All right, Richard,” Heller said. “We’ve heard you out. What do you propose? What are you asking for?”

  “I’m asking you to stop it, to end it. All you have to do is say a word to the attorney general, and the judge throws the case out of court and it’s over.”

  “Suborn a judge—a federal judge?” Justin was smiling. “Really, Senator, suppose I were to publish that to the four winds. Senator Richard Cromwell asks conspiracy in the suborning of a federal judge.”

  “I’m serious,” the senator said. “I am deadly serious about a tragic and important situation. I don’t enjoy seeing it turned into a joke.”

  “I am serious too.”

  “I told him,” Augustus boomed, “that there wasn’t a chance of a snowball in hell for you two buzzards to bite on that compassion line. Hell, Richard, compassion has no business in politics, and nobody ever got rich pushing compassion. They want El Salvador and they want Nicaragua, and you can line up every church in America and they’ll bulldoze the lot of them, and that includes your precious moral majority too, the moment they stop dancing to the right tune.”

  “Is that it?” Richard asked.

  “Senator,” Heller said, his voice quiet with reason now, “the case is in court. I can see your argument, and I don’t for a minute agree with that cynical old coot you have for a father-in-law. I admire your pain when you contemplate this, but we are a country of law. That’s all we can cling to when you come down to the final line. Law. It’s the cement that holds us together and makes us different from any other country on earth. I can’t abrogate the law. You know that, and neither can Bill here. They will be tried by a jury of their peers. Let it rest there.”

  “I thought we had agreed to cut the bullshit,” Richard said slowly and deliberately. “Don’t give me that shit about the law, sir. Say ‘no’ with some dignity. Tell me to fuck off—but do it with honesty and dignity. They’re your filthy death squads, and that’s why you’re running that farce in a courtroom in Tucson, Arizona. Now I asked you here, and you’re my guests and you have business to discuss. You don’t need me.” And with that, the senator stood up and left the room.

  Like his son, the senator avoided the library and left the house by the front door, where, like his son, he encountered the two watchdogs that had arrived with his guests. When one of them asked him to identify himself, he burst out, furiously, “You dumb bastard, I’m Senator Cromwell and this is my home and who the hell are you to ask me to identify myself?”

  As before, the other apologized with, “Senator, I’m sorry. We’re given orders—”

  “I don’t give a damn what your orders are. You’re parked in front of my house and you knew whose house you were coming to, and if common sense doesn’t tell you that if someone comes out of this house in dinner clothes, he likely enough belongs there, then turn in your badges and get yourselves jobs sheep herding—”

  “Senator—”

  “No! You’ve both said enough. Now which way did my son go?”

  One of them pointed, and Cromwell strode off in that direction. His anger was like a coiled snake, not directed toward two stupid men with government jobs, but mainly toward himself and his naiveté and also toward the men sitting in his dining room, drinking his brandy, and smoking his cigars, men who ruled America for a cardboard-cutout leader and sniggered at a silly ass who whined about compassion. The senator was not enjoying a pretty picture of himself; in fact, since he had awakened some sixteen or seventeen hours ago, his self-image had steadily deteriorated, enlarged only during those moments when he held his wife in his arms. He was entirely within himself, unaware of the beauties of the night, unaware even that he was walking so freely at night because the extraordinary moonlight lit the earth and his way, and even unaware of the path he had taken. His mind was filled with fear and pity, pity for his son and pity for himself, and almost as an afterthought, pity for his wife, Dolly. But the reality of his pity eluded him; he was too imaginative; as he was unable to face his son’s death, so did he see Dolly as being even less able to face the death of her son. Out of this, he extrapolated a situation in which Leonard, unable to deal with any more of it, had decided to kill himself and spare his mother the knowledge of either his Aids or his homosexuality.

  As his imagined situation superseded reality in his mind, so did the senator respond in grief, grief for the son whose life he had truly shared only this night, grief for Leonard’s suffering during the months ahead, and grief for the lost love that could have been. Now the senator returned part of himself to reality, running toward the swimming pool where he half expected to see his son’s dead body floating on the surface.

  So intent was he on the awful fulfillment of his fears that for a long moment, as he stared at the still surface of the swimming pool, he failed to notice Leonard, sitting cross-legged in meditation. When he saw him and realized he was alive, a shiver of relief went through the senator. He didn’t move, standing absolutely still and watching Leonard for perhaps a whole minute—until Leonard turned his head and murmured, “Dad?”

  “I don’t want to disturb you.”

  “It’s al
l right.” He got to his feet.

  Suddenly, the senator felt the cold and he shivered and asked his son whether he was cold.

  “No, not really. Are they gone?”

  “No. They’re still here. I walked out on them. I blew it.”

  “The Sanctuary thing?”

  “You know about it?”

  “Yes—sort of. Is it very important to you?”

  “I don’t know anymore. Things have changed, orders of importance, the whole process of wanting.…” The senator dropped into a chair. “Sit down, Leonard, or do you want to go back?”

  “No, I’m in no hurry to go back.” He sat down next to his father. “How long will they stay?”

  The senator looked at his watch. He was cold, but he was determined to sit here and talk to his son. “It’s almost half past ten. They can’t be staying much longer. We should get down there before they go. It leaves Dolly in a rough spot.”

  “Mom can handle it. If she can’t,” Leonard said, smiling, “there’s Grandma Jenny. She’ll look down her nose at them until they gratefully crawl away.”

  “She could do that,” the senator admitted. “Still, I’ve made two bad enemies tonight.”

  “What can they do to you, Dad? They were the enemy to begin with.”

  “Well, yes and no. They had a certain attitude toward me, but they had the same attitude toward lots of other people. Now it’s special for me.”

  “Do you mind terribly?”

  “No, Lenny. Not so much—not so much at all.” He hesitated, groping for words. “That thing you do. Meditation. What is it, actually, I mean other than what I see? I see a person sitting cross-legged.” He peered at his son. “You don’t mind my asking?”

  “No. No, I don’t mind at all; I’m glad you asked me. I suppose part of it is what you see, someone sitting cross-legged in a certain way. It’s a natural position, the way kids sit. We forget how to sit that way, we become wedded to chairs. Then things go on inside you. You try to be aware of your whole body, you watch the rise and fall of your breath, and then, after a time, you stop being afraid to die.”