Empire

by Gore Vidal

  Between court life and the rarefied world of the Hay-Adams house, Caroline was far removed, as Trimble accused, from those readers who were plain folk, and followers of Bryan. “But the Post is the Democratic paper. Why shouldn’t we be the Republican?” Caroline had thought Mr. Trimble unreasonable; but, of course, he was right in the sense that a newspaper that existed largely to entertain need not ally itself so exclusively with one faction. To please him, she had taken advantage of Mrs. Day’s invitation.

  The Days lived in one of a row of similar houses, with steep porches, Gothic windows, and a roof that sprouted unexpected crenellations. The overall effect was of a fortress built to dominate Rock Creek.

  Kitty sat behind her silver teapot, her silver coffeepot, and her regiment of cups. With the help of what looked to be an elder sister, she poured and greeted, and spoke of the weather. Caroline recognized a number of Democratic legislators, by face if not by name. Only the minority leader of the House, John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, was known to her from dinner-parties. A sardonic, dishevelled man, never entirely sober, he was feared for his wit. He collected her by, simply, putting his arm through hers, most indecorously, and guiding her toward the dining room, where a lonely decanter of whiskey had been placed, for his use. “I’m Jim Day’s boss, you know. He’s got to look after me.” While Williams poured himself whiskey, Caroline noted the nice pattern that a number of dark tea leaves made at the bottom of her cup, escapees from Kitty’s coarse strainer. “I didn’t know you knew Kitty, Miss Sanford.”

  “I don’t. I know her husband.” Caroline paused; then added, “Slightly, when he was at the comptroller’s office.”

  “He’ll go far, with Kitty’s father behind him.”

  “The Judge?”

  “The Judge. Oh, he’s a powerhouse, that man. He’s only got the one leg, you know. He got Jim the election.”

  “Is that why Mr. Day married the Judge’s daughter?” Caroline softened the bluntness of the question with what she hoped was a deprecatory laugh. “I am a working journalist, Congressman.”

  “Didn’t know the Tribune went in for that kind of story.” Williams’s round red face became solemn, a look that Caroline had come to know: the politician who has said to the press more than he intended to say, and fears the result.

  “We don’t. My ‘Society Lady’ might hint around if I let her. But I won’t. Marriage is sacred to us.”

  “Spoken like a true guardian of the morals of this republic, which you are, Miss. I make no bones about that.” Williams looked about the room. “Why, there’s the Speaker.”

  “Mr. Cannon?” Caroline looked about her, eager to see this august personage. But Williams was mistaken. Someone who bore a slight resemblance to the Speaker had entered the parlor. Caroline recognized the man, a Washington realtor whose specialty was getting members of Congress “settled.” “It’s not Mr. Cannon.” Williams seemed relieved. “But then, most everybody’s headed back home by now. I’m surprised so many of us are still lingering on…”

  “Potomac fever?”

  “That’s for when you’re defeated. Then you can’t leave the town, ever. But we still come and go, and the more we go-home, that is-the longer we can stay around here.”

  “I can’t wait until you all come back in November.”

  “That’s kind of you, Miss Sanford.” Williams beamed at her, and for an instant, Caroline felt a hand lightly brush against her hip. At least, she had been spared a pinch of the sort certain notorious senators were known to bestow on ladies whose contours pleased them, often leaving blue-black badges on delicate flesh.

  “I was not thinking of Congress in general,” said Caroline, deftly sliding a dining-room chair between them, “but the arrival of William Randolph Hearst.”

  Williams scowled. “He’s already sent me his first orders. He wants to be on the Ways and Means Committee and on Labor.”

  “You have obliged him?”

  “In hell, yes. That’s where he’ll get those committees, not from me. You know, that fool is getting himself up to run for president. He takes the cake, that one.”

  “Surely, he’s not the first fool to do that, or,” Caroline added, aware that Day was approaching her, “the first fool to be elected, if he is, of course.”

  Williams laughed a loud whiskey laugh. “That’s pretty funny, Miss Sanford. Yes. There have been fools galore in the White House, and there are times when I think we have a precious one there right now, with all that ‘Bully!’ nonsense, and double-dealing… Jim, I never knew you aspired to the higher social circles.”

  Day smiled, at Caroline; shook her hand. “We’re old friends, or so I like to think. I knew young Mr. Hay,” he said to Williams, who looked appropriately grave.

  “Struck down, as if by lightning, in his prime,” intoned John Sharp Williams; then, whiskey in hand, he left host with guest.

  “We’ve not done so well,” observed Day, neutrally, an angel food cake between them from which one large slice had been taken. Ladies hovered at the table’s other end, eating small pink shiny cakes, balancing teacups, gossiping.

  “You mean the election?”

  “That’s all we ever mean here.” He looked at her; the eyes were what the Society Lady had lately taken to referring to as “candid blue.” Lately, Caroline had rather hoped to encounter a pair of duplicitous blue eyes, which she could confound the Society Lady with. Meanwhile, the Society Lady herself, hugely incarnate, was working her way, methodically, through a plate of ladyfingers: it was her method to begin with the “fingernail,” a glossy blanched almond, and then, in two bites, to finish off the finger, and mourn the unbaked hand that she could not bite though it fed her, thought Caroline, rather wildly, head aswim with metaphors involving food, and all because the young man, towering beside her, was attractive, and made her think of-food. Was there a connection? Would she turn praying mantis, and devour him, as if he were angel food cake, or would she surrender to him, as all the romances-and the insistent Marguerite-required, her flesh mere cake to his sweet tooth? Perhaps, she decided, tiring of food metaphors, neither would devour the other; instead, they would resemble naked statuary in the gardens of Saint-Cloud-le-Duc, where, marble arms entwined, they would strike poses, in the rain-yes, she saw them both shining and wet in a heavy summer rain, a male and a female statue, side by side-no, stomach to stomach, Venus and Mars, dripping rainwater, face to face. On the back of the hand that held the teacup, she saw a pattern of sand-colored hairs and tried to picture the statue Mars entirely covered with interesting patterns of hair; but then the rain slicked down the hairs like a wet dog’s; yes, the hairy male most resembled a dog when he was not cake or marble but warm alien flesh, wet. Caroline was not certain that she would entirely enjoy the man’s real body, even if it were placed on offer, which he showed, newly married as he was, no sign of wanting to do.

  “Every day on my way to the Capitol, I watch your brother Blaise’s house going up. It’s going to be about the same size as the Capitol, I’d say.”

  “I can’t think what he wants a house here for.” Caroline’s victory in Washington was by means so total that she could bear fraternal competition. After all, Blaise still controlled the Sanford fortune; and Washington was for sale even to the lowest, or only, bidder. Once Blaise had taken a wife, she would be the Mrs. Sanford, and Miss Sanford, the spinster sister, publisher though she was, would fade. Who then would come to the small house in Georgetown when there was a marble palace in Connecticut Avenue, with a court always in session? She must marry. She must build a house. She must take to bed James Burden Day. “Of course, he wants to buy the Post, but Mr. Wilkins will never sell.”

  “A good thing. We need one Democratic paper here.” Caroline noticed that the pattern of light hairs on the hand vanished at the wrist and then spread out on that part of the forearm that was just visible beneath his loose cuff. Marguerite had already warned her that if her virginity were to be kept for one more season, she would, simply, dry u
p. Significantly, Kitty entered the room, bearing a plate of small cakes, each adorned, most ominously, with a glazed bit of preserved fruit. “No, no.” She moved the plate away from her, mildly sickened. “No, thank you,” she added graciously, aware that she had been too vehement. “So delicious, your-angel food cake.”

  Kitty looked suspiciously at the great gap in the cake, and Caroline realized that Kitty now thought that she had eaten it all herself, a devouring woman, no doubt of that. “Banked fires give off the most heat” was one of Marguerite’s folkloric observations, as she observed, with disapproving eyes, her virginal and, at twenty-five, aged mistress.

  “Mr. Williams says that President Cleveland will run again, for a third time.” Unlike most Washington wives, Kitty was herself a politician, trained by her father.

  “I should think that he’ll think twice, and stay home in Princeton.” Day was staring at Caroline’s chin. Was it dusted, lightly, with sugar from one of Kitty’s confections? “I’m sure Bryan can have it again. I’m for him. We’re all for him where I come from.”

  “I’ve never seen a man eat so much,” said Kitty; and she left them. How, Caroline wondered, had food become the prosaic leitmotif for the-with relief, she shifted to music as compelling metaphor-Liebestod so soon to sound between them? She stared not at cake but at the lean face bent down toward hers; the lips curved upwards at the corners like a Praxiteles faun. But marble fauns were not patterned with coppery hairs, and she was not quite certain how she would respond to love’s unveiling. The theory of a man’s body and the fact of it must be as unlike as the theory of American government with all its airy platitudes and the sleazy, disagreeable, democratic practice. But whatever the surprises in store for her, he was not fat, like Del.

  Faun-lips shaped for love now spoke, softly, of the recent coal strike. “You know, the country was close to shutting down before the election. There was real panic back home, let me tell you! There was winter coming and no coal. We should have taken the lead, but Roosevelt got to the owners and the miners first. He’s on the owners’ side, of course. But he made them give up a few pennies, which was easy for them to do if the miners would agree to a ten-hour day, which they had to. Oh, we’ll have our showdown one of these days…”

  “The Democrats and the Republicans?”

  “No. The owners of the country and the people who actually do the work.”

  “Surely, the owners work, too. Overtime, in fact.”

  Day grinned; the teeth were white, but one of the front teeth had a curious crack in it like-again, marble; no, alabaster. But since the effect was more Mars than faun, Caroline now willed herself to be the mate of Mars, Venus. Perhaps, miraculously, her breasts would double in size between now and the union of war and love. Marguerite had proposed exercises; and plenty of cream-to be drunk. But the exercises were boring, and the cream sickening; and the breasts remained more Diana, chaste goddess of the hunt, than Venus. Caroline began to chatter nervously. “How close it was last fall, to our having Mr. Hay for president…”

  “Poor old man…”

  “Oh, not too old, though much frailer since Del died.” Mistake to mention Del; must not pause for condolent phrases. “Anyway, he was most excited when word came from Pittsfield that a trolley-car had run into the President’s carriage, and the Secret Service man was killed, and Mr. Roosevelt was sent sailing through the air like… like a huge doughnut,” food yet again, and inappropriate at that, “and of course no one knew just how seriously hurt he was…”

  “… is. They say his brain’s addled.”

  “No more than usual. I saw a good deal of him at Jackson Place, where he had to move after they started tearing up the White House. He had-has-an abscess of the leg, the bone. But that’s all. He’s still full of energy, and Mr. Hay did not become president.”

  “Worse luck. I ride on Sundays.” The faun lips at last shaped expected phrases. “Along the canal. To Chain Bridge. After Sunday dinner…”

  Caroline stopped any further reference to food, forever, between them. “I’ll join you,” she said.

  As it turned out, he-not she-said, “I’ve never done this before.” They lay side by side, entirely nude, not the modest way to couple in the United States, if the Tribune’s Ladies’ Page was to be trusted, or interpreted correctly, for all was euphemism when it came to matters so intimate.

  “Surely, you and Kitty have at least tried to do what we’ve managed to do.” Caroline’s virginal fear of the male body had, at first, been confirmed by so much overpowering muscle, hair, size. The scale was much too heroic for a mere woman. She felt not like a doll, which might have had its enchanting helpless side, but like a midget, which was definitely unattractive. The yards of male sinew beside her seemed the god-like norm and her own white slender body so like-like a rib torn out of him. Perhaps the biblical story did contain a kind of truth. Happily, he was as fascinated by her as she was by him, and he kept caressing her, as if not certain that she was indeed real. She, on the other hand, was more chary of touching him; fearful of explosions that might be set off if she were to explore too closely the brown-rose surfaces of that huge, mysteriously animated body.

  “No. I meant that I haven’t been with anyone since we…” The voice trailed off.

  “Well, I have been with no one at all.” She broke the news, as his hand strayed toward her groin. The hand froze where it was; she thought of the petrified citizenry of Pompeii, each last act caught and preserved in lava. Druscilla, virgin, with Marius, gladiator: in her end was her beginning.

  “I’m the first?” He stared at her with unattractive amazement.

  “Surely, it’s no martyrdom for you. One has to begin sometime, with someone…”

  “But if I’m the first,” he repeated, eyes most unattractively fixed upon the source of all life, which Henry Adams never ceased, euphemistically, to celebrate.

  “Why is there no blood?” Marguerite had explained all this to her; and she explained to him, with growing irritability, her years as a youthful equestrienne with its eventual reward not of trophies won but of hymen ruptured.

  “I’ve never heard of that,” he said.

  Although Caroline had not expected romance, neither had she expected so clinical a discussion after what had been, nearly, ecstasy. Firmly, she placed one hand over the faun-like mouth; with the other, she began experiments of her own, of an hydraulic nature; plainly, ecstasy was going to take a good deal of patience, not to mention hard manual work.

  The second time was better than the first, and Caroline saw definite possibilities in the famous act. She was critical, however, of the Great Artificer who had designed both men and women with too little attention to detail, and too much left to chance. Nothing was quite angled right. Junctions, though possible, involved acrobatics of an undignified nature. Only childbirth, which she had witnessed, was less dignified, and, of course, exquisitely painful. Fortunately, there was no pain in all their maneuverings upon the bed; while pleasure, when it arrived, was sharp and unexpected and quite obliterated the sense of self, an unanticipated gift of Eros. Obviously, the Great Artificer intended that each be a conduit for the other, as well as for the race itself, which He had so haphazardly designed to go on and on, doing what they were doing in order to achieve pleasure, the small reward that the Artificer had thrown in, as they, doggedly, fulfilled what was the only perceivable purpose of the exercise: more, ever more, of the same until earth chilled or caught fire, and no one was left to couple.

  Later, Jim, as she now called him, lolled contentedly in the tub, while Caroline followed Marguerite’s instructions with an elaborate douching in a Lowestoft china basin, involving a cold tisane guaranteed to discourage any little stranger from assembling itself in her no longer virginal loins.

  Aware that Jim was watching her perhaps too expert handling of herself, she said, “Marguerite has given me full instructions. She’s also a midwife, though I pray we won’t ever need her for that.”

  “French
women know an awful lot, don’t they?”

  “Some know more awful things than others. But when it comes to the basic things, yes, they know a lot, and they tell one another, mother to daughter, for generations.”

  “Americans never talk about-those things.”

  “That is why newspapers are so necessary. We give people something to talk about. Politics, too,” she added, remembering her manners. Now, as she put on a silk peignoir, she wondered if she was going to be in love. She rather doubted it. After all, she lacked the first requisite: she was without jealousy, she had noted, watching him get into the tub. Kitty got to see this homely but also exciting spectacle every day while she could only attend the miracle play on Sundays; yet she did not envy Kitty. To have a man always with you, even one as well-proportioned and charming as Jim, was not a dream that she had ever wanted to come true. She had been a bachelor too long. Of course, she had ceased to be a virgin only an hour earlier, and who knew what fires hitherto banked-why did sex require so many similes, metaphors?-might flare up out of control, and devour her with lust, for that particular body, and no other? Je suis la fille de Minos, et de Pasiphaë, she murmured, and thought it curious that the great celebrators of woman’s lust had been men like Racine and Corneille. Nothing much was left of burning Sappho’s celebrations, while the other ladies who had written on the subject were careful not to give away the game, if indeed there was a game to be given away. Perhaps the whole thing was an invention of idle poets-of men with nothing better to do, unlike women, who had to bear and raise children and keep house, and rapidly lose their charms, leaving idle men free to invent love. But then Caroline thought of the various women that she had known who had been in love, and as she recalled their sufferings, she decided that they could not all have been acting. There had been pain or at least chagrin d’amour, which was probably worse. She wondered if she would ever suffer so much for any man, or woman-she must be honest with herself, as a pupil of Mlle. Souvestre. She doubted it; she was too used to being just herself, watchful, engrossed by others, amused by vanity, and was not jealousy simply vanity writ large? Yet when she saw Jim, fully clothed, the beautiful body that she was beginning to learn how to work for her own pleasure now covered up, she did feel a mild pang that she could not start all over again, and unveil the godhead, as she had come to think of that absurd-looking but entirely necessary organ. She would have to wait-impatiently?-until next Sunday.