The City and the Pillar

by Gore Vidal

“Calla Petra. Hungarian actress. Kept by the head of the studio, lost a hundred thousand dollars one night gambling at Vegas. A real tramp. But I won’t give her a penny. He’ll have to. We’ve signed a prenuptial agreement, ironclad. No money from me. She’s a dyke, anyway, and she needs the publicity as much as I do.”

  “Sounds real cozy.”

  “Sounds awful.” Shaw groaned.

  They saw each other often during the summer. The day Shaw’s play opened, he announced that he was retiring from the screen; a week later the play closed, and Shaw went back to Hollywood. His wedding to Calla Petra was the most glittering of the season.

  * * *

  —

  After Shaw left New York, Jim returned to the bar life. He particularly liked one Eighth Avenue bar where both men and women gathered and some of the men were available and some were not, which gave a certain excitement to negotiations. He most liked the innocents who would say the next morning, “Gee, I was sure drunk last night!” and pretend not to remember what had happened.

  One heavy summer night, Jim stood at the bar nursing a beer, examining the inmates. He had almost settled on a young Marine with blue eyes and buck teeth when a voice behind him said, “Ain’t you Willard?”

  Jim looked around and saw a fat bald young sailor. “That’s right, and you’re…?” He couldn’t recall.

  “Collins, Alaska. Remember?”

  “Sure. Come on. Have a drink.”

  Collins squeezed in beside him at the bar. “I’m Navy now. I was a petty officer but I got busted.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got pissed and told a commander off. My usual trouble. Were you in the service?”

  “Army. I been out a year.”

  “What’re you doing now?”

  Jim told him.

  “Coining money.”

  “Fair. You in town long?”

  “No, we’re sailing soon. This is my last liberty. Boy, you got a good deal, living here, with your own business. I wish I was in your shoes.”

  “What’re you going to do when you get out?”

  “Me? I’m a sailor. What else? I don’t know anything else. Once I tried to work in this machine shop, but I couldn’t stand being in one place so long, so I quit, left my wife, went back to sea.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Divorced. I knew her since I was a kid in school and she always wanted to marry me but I wouldn’t until I got drunk one night and knocked her up and she said I’d have to marry her and so I did. We got a kid who lives with her, that’s in Eugene, Oregon.”

  “Too bad.” Jim tried to sound sympathetic.

  “I guess some guys just aren’t meant to be family men and I’m one of them. I got this chick in Seattle now who’s panting to be married but I told her, I been stung once and I’m not going to get stung again. You married yet?”

  “No,” said Jim. “Not yet.”

  “You’re smarter than me. But I’ll bet you got a girl in New York?”

  “Kind of.” Jim was noncommittal.

  Collins took a long swallow of his drink and said, “You know any girls around town?”

  Jim shook his head. “Just one. You see, I’ve been working pretty hard and…”

  “I know how it is. Say, where did you go after you skipped ship?”

  “L.A.”

  “Man, that’s my town! Wide open. Where all the chicks want a good time, like us, and no talk about marrying or any of that shit. You ever see any movie stars?”

  “Some.”

  “Like who?”

  “Calla Petra.”

  “No kidding! She must be something the way she’s stacked. You get to talk to her?”

  “Oh, lots of times.”

  “No kidding! You bang her?”

  “No, I just played tennis with her.”

  “I’d sure like to play tennis with her.” Collins leered. “And that ain’t all I’d like to play with her.”

  Jim ordered another beer. Usually he could keep the same beer going for an hour, but Collins made him nervous and he found himself actually drinking the beer, an unusual gesture.

  “You like the Navy?”

  Collins shrugged. “They don’t know nothing about the sea, that’s for sure. Wished I was back in the Merchant Marine.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “I was on land with my wife and I was going to be drafted. So to get out of the draft, I joined the Navy, because I didn’t want to be in no Army where I had to walk.”

  As they drank together, Jim looked about the bar. The Marine had gone. There was no one else who appealed to him. At the opposite end of the bar an old man was trying to make a sailor who in turn was trying to make a soldier. It was very funny. Collins, perfectly unaware of the comedy, suddenly asked, “Hey, why did you leave the ship in such a hurry?”

  It was a question Jim had been waiting for. He spoke slowly, simulating ease. “I wanted to see California and I didn’t want to have to argue with the steward, so I just skipped out.”

  “I figured it was something like that.” Collins finished his drink. “How come you left those girls in that apartment? That was one thing I never been able to figure out.”

  Jim shrugged. “I didn’t like the one I had, that’s all.”

  “Well, she was madder than hell, but you was smart to leave when you did.”

  “Why?”

  “They both had clap. And I caught it and had a hell of a time getting cured.” They both laughed and Collins told Jim about the man who had had clap twenty times and been cured every time except the first. At last they parted and Jim was relieved that Collins’s liberty was almost over and they would not meet again.

  II

  ONE COLD DAY WHEN the winter sky was bitter orange and gray and a chill haze hung over the city, Jim went home for Christmas.

  Mrs. Willard stood on the porch as her son came up the path to the house. He was startled at her appearance. White hair, untidy as always, face pale and lined; she had grown old while he was away. They embraced and she clung to him, holding him tight, saying nothing, only holding him. Then they went into the house, where, at least, nothing had changed. The parlor was as depressing as ever, despite a Christmas tree, glittering with small buzzing lights. Jim felt oddly displaced in time. He turned to his mother and they looked at one another without speaking, two strangers with a common memory.

  “You’ve grown up, Jim,” his mother said at last. “You’ve changed.”

  “We all do, I guess.” He was inadequate.

  “You look more like my side of the family. You don’t look like your father anymore. You used to.”

  Jim saw in his mother’s face his own features grown old and he was frightened at the thought of age and death.

  “You haven’t changed much,” he lied.

  She chuckled. “Oh, yes, I have. I’m an old woman now. But I don’t mind. If you haven’t got beauty in the first place, age makes you better-looking, they say, gives you character.”

  He looked at her face in the light of the Christmas tree and he agreed with her. She had improved with time. She had achieved a face of her own, something she had lacked before.

  “Are you going to get married, son?” It was strange to be called son again.

  “Someday.”

  “The older I get the more I think people should be married early. I sometimes think that the reason your father and I never got along as well as we should was because we married so late. You’re just the right age to settle down.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “There’re some nice girls growing up here. They’d make fine wives. You’ll meet them while you’re home. You should marry a nice girl here rather than one of those New York girls, not that it’s any of my business.” Jim smiled: New York people were not very well thought
of in the South.

  She asked him about his work and he told her about it. She was pleased. “I’m glad you’re making money. Nobody in this family ever has before and it’s about time somebody did. But money’s not everything, is it? I mean sometimes marriage and settling down and enjoying life are more important, don’t you think so?” Sooner or later she would suggest that he stay home for good.

  “I don’t know, Mother. I really haven’t thought much about settling down yet. I’ve got a good business in New York and as long as it’s good I better stay with it.”

  Sensing resistance, she changed the subject. “Your brother is a second lieutenant now. He’s in the Air Force and he’s going overseas any day. Why, I don’t know, since the war’s almost over, or so the papers say.”

  “Will he be here for Christmas?”

  She nodded. “He’s got a few days’ leave. He’s a very bright young man.” Jim wondered if perhaps she disliked her younger son. His mother was definitely changed. Anything was possible.

  “You’re taking in boarders now?”

  She had written him this news. “Just a couple, a man and wife. You’ll meet them at dinner. Carrie and her husband are coming to dinner, too.”

  “How’s my nephew?”

  “Nice and fat.” She paused. “I can’t get over how you’ve changed,” she said finally. They were silent. Jim idly kicked his suitcase and his mother said, “You’d better take your things up to your room.”

  “Which one?”

  “Your old room.”

  “Does John stay there when he’s on leave?”

  “Yes. Nothing’s changed. I try not to change anything if I can help it. I know that’s maybe living too much in the past but I think the past was pretty nice, in some ways. I think maybe the future can be even nicer.”

  “You mean since Father died.” Jim was blunt.

  She nodded placidly. “Yes, since your father died. I always believed if you make a bad bargain, you just have to keep it. But when it’s over, there’s no use pretending that it was the best thing that ever happened.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “Lord, son, why does anyone marry anybody? If I ever knew why I married him, I’ve forgotten. Probably because he asked me. I wasn’t in much demand. Now take your bag up and get ready for dinner.”

  Everyone was at table when Jim came into the dining room. His mother introduced him to the boarders; then he shook hands with his brother-in-law and kissed his sister. Carrie had grown stout. Her breasts and hips seemed ready to burst her clothes. Without makeup, she looked tired but good-humored, and obviously she was pleased with her husband, an amiable sort who did whatever she asked him to.

  “Well, Mother, he’s as beautiful as ever.” Carrie looked at her brother admiringly. “He sure got all the looks in this family.” Her laugh was like an explosion and only stopped when her husband told her what she wanted to hear: that she was beautiful, too.

  During dinner, they spoke of Jim’s work and whether or not it was profitable, and if he came home, as they all desired, could he do as well as he had done in New York? And of course Carrie asked the inevitable: “When are you going to get married, Jim?”

  He shrugged. “When some girl asks me.” Everyone laughed at that.

  “You were always shy with the girls,” said his sister, her mouth full. “You really ought to settle down. There’s nothing like it, is there, dear?” Her husband agreed that there was nothing like it. Jim found the masquerade depressing. He tried to change the subject and failed.

  “Jim will marry when he’s ready to settle down,” said his mother tranquilly. “I think he’s been wise not to have gotten married while he was traipsing around the world.”

  They talked of marriage, secure people whose lives followed a familiar pattern, the experience of one very much like that of the other. But when they tried to advise Jim, none suspected that their collective wisdom was of no use to him, that the pattern of his life was different from theirs. This fact made him sad, as well as annoyed at the never-ending masquerade. He was bored by his own necessary lies. How he longed to tell them exactly what he was! He wondered suddenly what would happen if every man like himself were to be natural and honest. Life would certainly be better for everyone in a world where sex was thought of as something natural and not fearsome, and men could love men naturally, in the way they were meant to, as well as to love women naturally, in the way they were meant to. But even as he sat at the table, pondering freedom, he knew that it was a dangerous thing to be an honest man; finally, he lacked the courage.

  “By the way,” said Carrie, “you knew Bob Ford married Sally Mergendahl, didn’t you?”

  “Mother wrote me. Where is he…where are they now?”

  “She’s living here with her family, and he’s at sea, but I think he’s due back in a few days. He’ll be here for the Christmas party the Mergendahls are giving. You’re invited. And they have the cutest baby girl, with dark red hair just like Bob’s.”

  * * *

  —

  “Why, Jim, I would never have recognized you, so grown up and everything! Isn’t he, dear?” Mrs. Mergendahl turned to Mr. Mergendahl and got his agreement. She continued, secure in her audience. “Well, he’s a grown man now. They all are. Seems like only yesterday when you played in all those tennis tournaments at school. Now look at you! And all the other boys in the Army, married, and our own little girl a mother!”

  Mr. Mergendahl winked at Jim. “You better let him go, Mother, so he can meet the young girls who are dying to meet him. Got a whole new crop of ’em, too.” Jim excused himself and went into the crowded, old-fashioned living room. Carrie took him by the arm. “I’ll introduce you around.”

  Many of the people he recognized; some he had known in school, others from the town. Everyone remembered him and they seemed genuinely glad he was back, recalling events that he had forgotten. As in a dream, he moved from group to group, toward a central point where he knew Bob must be.

  Then he saw Sally Mergendahl—now Sally Ford—and he broke away from Carrie to talk to her. Sally was now a tall graceful woman with dark hair braided about her head. They shook hands warmly, each scrutinizing the other, looking for signs of change.

  “Congratulations!” said Jim.

  “On the baby? Or marrying Bob?”

  “Both.” Jim sounded blithe; yet she was his rival.

  “That’s sweet of you, Jim. Here, let’s sit down. There’s so much we have to catch up on.” They sat on a horsehair sofa, their conversation broken regularly by newcomers who wanted to say hello to Jim.

  “See how popular you are? Oh, you really ought to settle down here with the rest of us.”

  “You heard I wasn’t going to?”

  “Well, not exactly, but you know how everybody knows everybody else’s business around here. We spend all our time prying, even though there’s never anything very interesting going on. We all know each other too well.”

  “Where’s Bob?”

  She frowned. “Newport News, with his ship. He won’t be in until tomorrow. When he does get here, why don’t you have dinner with us, just the three of us?”

  “I’d like to. Bob’s a first mate now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. But he’s quitting when the war’s over.”

  “How come? He loves the sea.”

  “But Daddy needs him in the insurance business, and everybody thinks Bob will make a wonderful salesman, and Daddy says that when he retires Bob can have the company.”

  “That’ll be nice for him.” Jim saw the kindly noose being dropped over Bob’s unwilling shoulders. But were they unwilling? Could he have changed? It was possible.

  “He’s roamed around long enough. After all, there’s just so much world to see and then where are you? Anyway, all his friends are here and he can have a good job. I think everyt
hing will be just grand for us. I can’t wait for you to see the baby.”

  “Is Bob a good…father?”

  “Well, he hasn’t had much practice. At the moment he thinks a baby is something to play with until it starts to cry, when he wants to wring its neck. Then he says that I care more about the baby than I do about him, so I tell him that, after all, the baby is him, which it is.”

  “Does he understand that?”

  “Well…yes, at times. You know how he is.”

  “I don’t know if I do anymore.”

  “It has been a long time, hasn’t it? And he is different. Of course he looks about the same. But he laughs a lot more than he used to. He was rather grim when he was a boy. And of course he was girl crazy then. He still gets letters from girls all over the world. He lets me read them and they’re really pathetic. But I’m not jealous. I don’t know why. I guess it’s because he came back to me, when he didn’t have to.”

  As she talked, Jim wondered if Bob had ever been attracted to men. From what she said—and what he suspected—it seemed unlikely, which meant that their experience had been unique. And that meant Bob had made love with him not out of a lust for the male but from affection. The fact that he now preferred women to men could only make their relationship all the more unusual and binding.

  Jim did not deceive himself that his return would mean an end to Bob’s marriage. Their boyhood dream of going to sea together was no longer practical. Too much had happened. Each was now part of the world. Yet there was no reason why the affair could not continue, particularly if he returned to Virginia and took the job at the high school. Proximity would do the rest. He wondered about the old slave cabin by the river. Was it still there?

  Sally was still talking. “I don’t like to be old-fashioned. And I really don’t think I am. I believe a man should have lots of affairs with women before he settles down with one. I told my mother that and I thought she would explode. She says she never will be able to understand the younger generation.”

  “When do you think Bob will be out of the Merchant Marine?”

  “When the war with Germany’s over. So they say. Daddy has a friend in Washington who can fix it if there’s any problem. Jim, would you get me some punch? I’m parched.”