As a security measure, the Outfit had given all its officers lie detector tests. Strapped to the machine—“fluttered,” in the argot—they were asked if they were enemy agents, if they had stolen money, if they were homosexuals.
“You can guess which questions gave Waddy trouble,” Patchen said. “They’ve given him a job in the Foreign Service. Nothing sensitive. I believe he’s in the protocol office. He’s good with wives.”
— 8 —
When, after the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher returned to the United States, he stayed with Elliott Hubbard at his house in New York. The house looked as if it had been burglarized. Half the paintings were missing, leaving patches of lighter paper along the walls. The pictures had gone with Alice when she divorced Elliott.
Elliott’s new wife, a dreamy woman about Christopher’s age, was a painter. Three or four of her muddy abstractions hung in the places where the Cézanne, the Seurat, the Cassatt, the Hicks had formerly been displayed.
The new wife’s name was Emily. She had turned the attic into a studio, and Christopher followed Elliott up the stairs to be introduced to her. She wore a smock smeared with paint; the brush she gripped in her teeth had left a streak of vermilion on her cheek. A big window had been built into the roof to admit the light and through it there was a view of Central Park. Emily seemed to be painting a landscape of the park, for she peered intently through the window as she worked.
“Oh,” she said, greeting Christopher. “I’ve dreaded meeting you. You’ve had such a sad life, and I can’t understand your poems. This is Julian.”
She led Christopher by the hand to a playpen where a child slept in a litter of educational toys made of unpainted blocks of wood.
“He looks like Elliott,” Christopher said, gazing at the sleeping baby.
“Yes. Elliott’s family has very strong genes. You’re the first relative I’ve met who doesn’t look exactly like them.”
Emily did not seem to expect him to answer. Even as she spoke, her attention slipped out of Christopher’s grasp like a trout and she turned without another word and strode across the room toward the huge unfinished painting that stood on her easel. The picture looked to Christopher like a gutter puddle on a gloomy day. Frowning in concentration, Emily added more red to what seemed to be a rainbow of motor oil in the lower left-hand corner. She was a serious painter, but not a very talented one.
Alice Hubbard agreed with this judgment. On Saturday morning, Christopher went to Alice’s new apartment, on the other side of Central Park, to fetch Horace, who spent weekends in his father’s house. Alice had obtained the missing Post-Impressionists as part of her property settlement, and these hung on her walls, illuminated by spotlights.
“You’re staying with Elliott?” Alice said. “How do you like the Hubbard abstractionist?”
“Emily? I’ve just met her. She’s very good-looking.”
“And so talented. I hear her paintings are hanging where these outmoded things used to be. We all get what we deserve. May one ask where you’ve been all this time?”
“Indochina.”
“Indochina? Did you run into Waddy out there?”
“Yes.”
“He never mentioned it. Don’t tell me you’re a spy now, too?”
Alice laid a hand on Christopher’s arm, apologizing for her remark. Divorce had changed her: the old headlong Alice would never have made such a humble gesture.
“No matter,” she said. “Maybe you can talk to Waddy about old times and cheer him up. He’s terribly depressed.”
“I don’t know if I’ll see him.”
“Of course you’ll see him. He’s staying with me, poor fellow. Join us for lunch. It’ll do Waddy a world of good. Me, too.”
Christopher took a breath, then smiled. Waddy Jessup was the last person in New York with whom he wanted to have lunch.
“All right,” he said.
Alice saw what was passing through his mind. “Trapped,” she said. “Too bad. But it can’t be worse than eating raw fish with that trollop who’s doing the new paintings for Elliott. At least Waddy doesn’t smell of turpentine.”
They could hear Horace running down the hall, calling Christopher’s name, and Waddy’s laughter, a wild tenor trill that ended in a fit of coughing, in the background.
After he had completed his greetings to Horace, now sixteen years old and taller than his mother, Christopher said hello to Waddy. His handshake, once so firm, was weak. He seemed to have a tremor, and this was transmitted through his limp hand. His eyes were rimmed in red. He needed a haircut. His clothes were rumpled. He had gin on his breath.
Alice shooed them into the dining room. The table was already laid for four. Waddy poured the wine, a yellowish Mosel. While Alice and Christopher ate their asparagus, each taking two or three sips of wine, Waddy finished off the bottle and went into the kitchen to open another.
“What’s wrong with Waddy?” Christopher asked.
“He’s being investigated.”
“Investigated?”
“By Congress. They think he’s a Communist.”
“He is a Communist.”
Waddy returned with a tall green bottle. With trembling hand, he poured more wine—droplets for Alice and Christopher, a brimming glassful for himself. He stared resentfully at Christopher.
“I was listening in the kitchen,” he said. “Why do you say I’m a Communist, Paul?” These were very nearly the first words he had spoken.
“You’ve always said you were.”
“Have I? I don’t recall that at all. It’s that lout of a Wolkowicz who’s spreading these lies about me.”
“Oh, Waddy, come off it,” Alice said. “It’s just us. You’ve always been a raving Red.”
“A progressive, maybe. A man with progressive friends, people with a little human feeling . . .”
“Then why did you call yourself a Communist? You drove Father to distraction with it. You came home from Yale spouting Marx.”
“That was meant to be a joke. You know that, Alice.”
Alice, taking away the plates, paused at Waddy’s shoulder. He handed her his untouched asparagus.
“Is that going to be your defense?” Alice said. “That you were just kidding? For fifteen years?”
“It happens to be the truth.”
“Really? You had me fooled.”
Alice went into the kitchen. Waddy poured himself more wine. The sweetish burnt aroma of a cooking omelet drifted into the dining room along with the noise of a pan being shaken on the stove. Waddy gazed out the window, saying nothing.
When Alice returned with a copper skillet in her hand, Waddy began talking again. Christopher wondered if he thought he should have a witness or if he simply needed the reassurance of his sister’s presence.
“You’ve been abroad, Paul,” Waddy said, “so you don’t know what’s been going on in this country. The Republicans have taken over Congress and they’re after the intellectuals. It’s a putsch.”
Alice held the omelet pan over Waddy’s plate.
“Are you going to have eggs?”
Waddy nodded. “A putsch,” he repeated.
Alice put a small portion of omelet onto his plate. “Eat it up, Waddy,” she said. “Your liver is going to kill you before the Republicans do.”
Waddy put a fragment of omelet into his mouth but did not swallow it. Horace, shoveling his own eggs into his mouth, watched in fascination. Waddy seemed to have forgotten how to eat.
“Chew, Waddy,” Alice said. “Swallow. I don’t understand why you want to deny that you’re a Red. Fight for the cause, that’s what you always said.”
Waddy gave her a furtive glance. “Not in front of Paul,” he said.
“Not in front of Paul? Do you think he’s an agent of the Republicans?”
“I’m not sure what Paul is. Paul has strange friends. Wolkowicz and Hubbard were close. What a joke! I sent that ape to Hubbard, and now look where he is.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alice said. “What can you say that Paul doesn’t already know? He’s been listening to you rave for years. So has everybody else. It’s not against the law to be a Communist. It’s stupid, but it’s not against the law. Stop being such a rabbit, Waddy. Go before that congressional committee and say, ‘You’re damn right I’m a Communist. Proud of it!’ I mean, really—what can they do?”
“They can send me to prison.”
Alice laughed. Waddy winced.
“It wouldn’t be a long sentence, Waddy,” Alice said. “Besides, think what a hero you’d be to all your revolutionary pals when you got out. ‘They couldn’t break old Waddy!’ That’s what they’d say.”
Christopher had been watching the play of amusement and mischief over Alice’s face. She had popped a morsel of bread into her mouth as she finished speaking, and was chewing rapidly.
“Besides,” she said, “prison might be very satisfying in certain ways. I hear the jailbirds go in for free love. That was always one of your revolutionary principles.”
Alice broke off more bread. Her eyes were on Waddy. She stopped chewing, her jaw to one side, her mouth slightly ajar. A look of alarm spread over her face.
“Waddy,” Alice said, her voice muffled by the food in her mouth.
Waddy seemed to be having a seizure. His eyes were wide open, his lips were pulled back from his teeth. His body shuddered, every jointed part quivering, as if some living thing were rushing through the passages of his belly and throat and would soon leap out of his mouth onto the table. He uttered a huge dry sob, then another, and with his eyes fixed on Christopher he went into hysterics.
“He’s having another crying jag,” Alice said. “Shake him, Paul.” She swallowed her bread and leaped to her feet.
Christopher pulled Waddy out of his chair and spoke his name, but Waddy continued to sob in a hoarse, heartbroken voice. Christopher shook him. It had no effect.
“Harder,” Alice said.
Christopher, who was younger and much larger than Waddy, shook him as hard as he dared. Waddy’s head rolled, his arms flapped, he continued to stare into nothingness. Christopher slapped him. The sobbing broke, then started again. Christopher slapped him again. Waddy stopped making noise.
Alice put an arm around Waddy’s waist and led him into a bedroom. In a moment she came back.
“I think he’d better have a talk with Elliott, don’t you?” she said. “Nobody else can reassure him. Waddy’s such a spineless fool. Forget I said that, Horace, but for God’s sake, you be a man, will you?”
Four
— 1 —
While Wadsworth Jessup was having hysterics in New York, Barney Wolkowicz, in Washington, was supervising the search of an apartment belonging to a government secretary named Jocelyn Frick. It was a fussy spinster’s flat, furnished with antiques that were too beautiful for the tiny rooms. There were stuffed animals on the bed. Wolkowicz watched while a federal agent, not a member of the Outfit, took apart a Teddy bear, searched the stuffing, and then, glasses perched on his nose, sewed it together again, using the original thread.
Jocelyn Frick was a Soviet agent. Wolkowicz, tracking another suspect, had found a faint sign that this might be true; he had followed it up, and now, six months later, a team of agents trained in surreptitious entry, the euphemism used to describe the burglary of the homes of suspected spies and traitors, had taken her apartment to pieces and put it back together again.
Jocelyn Frick was the youngest daughter of a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. His photograph, a Bachrach portrait of a white-maned man in judicial robes, stood beside her bed; her father had autographed the picture: To my darling “Cinders,” from her vy. affect Daddy, R. Beaulieu Frick. Her father had called her Cinders, short for Cinderella, because she had been a helpful child who had waited long to blossom into prettiness. Even then, her sisters considered her plump; men thought she was voluptuous. Like her beautiful sisters, she had gone to Sweet Briar and been presented to society at the Spring Cotillion, but she had not married. Instead, she had fallen in love with a gloomy Armenian named Mordecai Bashian. This was entirely unexpected. Three boys from good Tidewater families had proposed marriage to Jocelyn, but after graduating from college in the middle of the Great Depression, she had wanted to be a bachelor girl for a year or so. Her father, who had influence with the New Deal, had got Jocelyn a job in the Bureau of Labor Standards.
All this, and a good deal more, Wolkowicz knew. His full-field investigation of Jocelyn had turned up many facts. The microphones he had planted in her apartment gave him a glimpse of the inside of Jocelyn’s mind and heart, because she had the habit of talking to herself—or, rather, to an imaginary friend. When she was all alone in her apartment, especially if she had had a secret drink or two, Jocelyn would pour out her heart to the empty air, exactly as if she were confiding in an old and trusted friend. Wolkowicz’s listening devices heard everything she said.
The Armenian Jocelyn loved, Mordecai Bashian, was her supervisor at the Bureau of Labor Standards. Jocelyn’s jolly manner and her pretty clothes, when she reported for duty, did not impress Bashian. He seemed to take an immediate dislike to her, a new experience for Jocelyn, who had been teased and petted by males all her life. At twenty-one, she was flirtatious, but she was sexually innocent, unless you count, as Jocelyn did not, an occasional game of mousy-mousy. Mordecai Bashian seemed to be offended by her femininity. He loaded her with dull paperwork, document after document written in stuffy bureaucratic language she could hardly understand, and he made her stay in the office deep into the night, typing, so that whatever silly report he had demanded would be on his desk when he came in in the morning. Tears fell onto the spongy mimeograph paper as Jocelyn typed away in her little island of electric light with the dark hushed city all around her.
After months of this torture (her boss never seemed to read her work, certainly he never commented on it) Mordecai Bashian came into Jocelyn’s office one evening, took her camel’s-hair polo coat off its hanger, and threw it onto her desk, sending documents flying. “Come on, let’s go to dinner,” he said. Surprised into agreeing, Jocelyn got into a cab with him and went to an Italian restaurant in a cellar, way down on Maine Avenue, by the Potomac.
Jocelyn had never thought of Mordecai Bashian as being good-looking; he was swarthy and long-nosed and he slouched. He never smiled. He spoke in a hard monotone; there were no masculine ripples in his voice—no humor, no undertone of teasing. But in the smoky light of the Italian restaurant Bashian looked quite different. The waiters knew him. He laughed and joked with them and ordered veal parmigiana and a bottle of Chianti. Somebody was playing a concertina in the next room. Jocelyn had never eaten real Italian food before. The wine bottle in its basket, the crusty veal with its rubbery slab of strange white cheese covered with tomato sauce (Bashian even knew the name of the cheese), the waxy smell from all the candles guttering in the necks of bottles, the lilting notes of the concertina—the atmosphere hypnotized Jocelyn. Also, she drank a lot of sour red wine; Bashian kept filling her glass from the enormous bottle. All the while, he talked to her steadily, staring at her. His dark brown eyes were like the eyes of a Negro except that Bashian’s eyes were unkind.
Mordecai Bashian talked about Negroes. He seemed to know an entirely different type of darky from the ones Jocelyn had grown up with in Virginia. Her stories about her mammy and the pickaninny playmates of her childhood infuriated Bashian. “Pickaninnies?” he said. “Pickaninnies! Those pickaninnies are going to smear the blood of people like you all over the pages of history.” Bashian grinned sardonically, the first sign of humor she had ever detected on his face, when Jocelyn recoiled at these words. “Afraid?” he said. “You’d better be afraid.” But Jocelyn was not afraid of Negroes; she was shocked that Bashian could even imagine that the fine colored people she had known all her life could be capable of such horrors. She told him how much she loved her family’s Negroes and how much those Negroes loved
her family. “Don’t you smirk at me, Mordecai Bashian,” Jocelyn cried as another nasty smile twisted his lips. “I don’t know what a smart-mouth Jew from New York City thinks he knows about my mammy!”
At that, Bashian rose from his chair, the brownish skin of his face turning red. “So you’re a dirty little anti-Semite too,” he said. “It so happens I’m an Armenian. I don’t suppose you know what that is, do you?” He stamped out of the restaurant. Jocelyn, who had never known that a man could be insulted by anything a girl said to him, tried to run after Mordecai Bashian to apologize, but the waiters stopped her and made her pay the bill, which amounted to almost four dollars.
When Jocelyn did get outside, there was no sign of Mordecai Bashian. The street was empty. A fog had come in, hiding all but the masts of the boats that lay at anchor in the river. It was spooky: all was silence except the hulls of the boats squeaking as they rolled in the tide or the current or whatever made them move. Jocelyn drew on her gloves (she never felt fully dressed without gloves). There were no taxis in sight. Jocelyn had never been in a situation in which there was no one there to take care of her. Her bosom filled up with tears, as it always did when her feelings had been hurt really badly. She sniffled. Then, deciding to make the best of things, she walked bravely into the wall of fog.
Jocelyn didn’t know exactly where she was. She didn’t really know Washington very well; she was always getting turned around. This old street was paved with stones and her heel went into a crack and she turned her ankle. She remembered the wounding, nasty words Mordecai Bashian had spoken to her. She began to cry in earnest. The fog was thickening by the minute; she could barely make out the shapes of buildings only a few feet away. Presently Jocelyn arrived at the Fourteenth Street bridge. She thought she knew where she was and hurried on. Then, with a leap of the heart, she heard a man cough, a frightening noise distorted by the fog. Jocelyn quickened her step. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shape moving in the mist. She was sure it was the coughing man. He was following her. She could hear his cough.
The Last Supper Page 19