The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  She asked him about the Piazza San Marco, and he told her that Ruskin, like Napoleon before him, had called it “the most beautiful room in Europe.” There beside them was the soaring needle of the Campanile, the bell tower begun in 912, which had buckled and collapsed without killing a soul in 1902, and was restored a decade later with the original bell, Venice’s oldest, once more hanging in its belfry. There, behind it, the golden basilica of St. Mark, a rainbow of mosaics, guarded on high by four Hellenic gilded bronze horses stolen from Constantinople by marauding Venetians, and from Venice by Bonaparte’s soldiers, and the comings and goings of these horses always signaled the downfall of an empire. There were, before them, the countless gray pigeons of the Piazza, ridiculously waddling, ridiculously fattened from the maize thrown them by three quarters of a million tourists annually, and twice a day, by municipal decree, they were also fed by the city at the expense of the natives.

  “Nothing is like it,” Brennan told Lisa, “nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world. That’s not me speaking. That’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Everyone who was anyone in history, he told her, had been here where they sat, and most had agreed with Mrs. Browning, and these included Goethe and Proust, Dickens and Longfellow, Shelley and Stendhal, Wagner and Whistler. Of the great cities on earth that he had seen, Brennan told her, Venice alone looked as it had looked two or three centuries ago. “Sometimes, sitting here, I imagine Lord Byron descending some heavenly staircase to return to Venice for one night,” Brennan said. “Except for thinking that the inhabitants are in masquerade, he might return to Florian’s and sit here just as he did in 1819, or ride a horse on the Lido beach, and not suspect that a thing had changed.”

  Carried away, Brennan went on. He was sorry for people who came abroad yet never visited Venice, warned off by fastidious and antiseptic friends who insisted that the stink of the canals on hot nights and the carnival of tourism were not to be endured. “Poor fools,” added Brennan, “it’s like refusing an affair with Madame du Barry because it was rumored that sometimes she might have bad breath.”

  Even more, Brennan went on, he resented the beautiful, empty guidebooks, because they stressed the doges, the Madonnas, the Titians, the gondolas, and missed the essence of the real Venice. “You can’t get it in a day or two, or a week or two, but maybe you could in a year or two. The essence of Venice is its lack of pressure on its visitors. If you stay here, there is no place to go, nothing to do,, except relax and learn that relaxation can be fulfillment. There’s not an auto to rush off in, a taxi or bus to catch, in the entire city. There’s not even a bicycle. What you can do is walk, and you can breathe, you can sit, you can think or dream, without being oppressed by the obligations of accomplishing, competing, progressing. I suppose that’s not for most people. Maybe it’s not for you, Lisa. But it is for me.”

  She replied quietly, “It could be for me, too, Matt. Though, not if I were by myself. I’d have to be with someone who—well—thinks the way you think, and the way I do underneath.”

  And so they had come to themselves, at last.

  Embarrassed by his long discourse and his enthusiasm, both things uncharacteristic of him in recent years, and by his flash of self-revelation, he temporized. “Of course, holing up like this is for your elders. You’re much too young. You’ve got too much to do and see.”

  “I’m glad you brought that up,” she said seriously. “When we met, you spoke of yourself as ‘middle-aged-old.’ You’re not that old. Anything but. And forgive me, but I’m not a child. I’m twenty-two.”

  “You could be my daughter, almost. I’m thirty-seven, soon thirty-eight. I’m old enough to give advice, and you’re young enough to take it. So take it now. Avoid depressing and decrepit men like myself.”

  “What’s bothering you? Why such a fix on age?” He was tempted to tell her, but he held his tongue, and Lisa went on. “I’ve been out with plenty of boys in their twenties. Maybe I’m a case for Freud, but I find them tiresome. I’ve never had one-tenth as good a time with any of them as I’ve been having with you. Does that frighten you?”

  He smiled wearily, yet was pleased. “It’s not me, Lisa, it’s Venice.”

  “Oh, you are difficult,” she said in mock exasperation.

  He knew that he was. He always was, these days. Yet, he was feeling better than he had felt for almost as long as he could remember. He was not ready to free her yet, and least of all was he ready to discuss his own difficult self. That would certainly drive her off. A defensive holding operation was wanted. “I’m sorry,” he said, “and I’m going to become even more difficult, because I’m going to pry. I’m curious about a twenty-two-year-old who feels older than young. You mentioned being in the fashion business. You mentioned Bridgeport and Manhattan. I’m interested in what came between. Do you mind?”

  She did not mind. She was thoughtful awhile, bemused, drinking her Fuiggi water, accepting a cigarette for her filtered holder, and smoking companionably while he smoked. There was really little to tell him, she said, because she hadn’t done much, and he would probably find her life dull and boring. She relaxed in the wicker chair, crossing her long sheathed legs, throwing her head back in profile to gaze up at the cloudless sky roof of the Piazza. His eyes had gone from her lips down to her exposed knees and the slender legs, and he decided that he would never find anything about her dull and boring. He felt excited by her presence, no longer lethargic, and the day had become curiously suspenseful.

  Elizabeth Collins had been born in Eugene, Oregon—“some people are, you know,” she had said—but she had grown up and attended high school in Bridgeport, where both her parents still lived, her father a dentist and her mother a hypochondriac. At the University of Connecticut, in Storrs, she had been popular on campus, had been elected Homecoming Queen, and had enjoyed seeing her picture in the newspapers. A promoter of one of those perennial beauty contests had enjoyed seeing her picture, too, and, overcoming the technicality of nonresidence, had arranged for her to compete, in evening gown and in two-piece swimming suit, for the title of Miss New York City. She had been judged the runner-up, which meant no contract for public appearances, only a plaque and more photographs in the newspapers. But as a result, because of her height, her symmetry, her bust which was just right at a size thirty-four, her lank boniness (“I was 117 pounds then, and my shoulder blades and ribs showed, which was considered chic, though I think I look better at 124, right now,” she said), she was offered a job by an advertising agency to pose in scanty underthings for photographers.

  She had left college, despite her mother’s hysteria and high blood pressure, to move to New York City and to work modeling underpinnings, as the fashion trade called undergarments. But she found that it embarrassed her to see herself in the advertisements, stretched out in a sheer nightgown or bra and panty girdle, and in her spare time she had sought something more proper. The second model agency she visited had taken her on, and soon this had led to a better-paying and more secure job as a model for a fashion salon, the House of Fernald, on Seventh Avenue. “I was great in chiffons, but best in one of those svelte decollete black dresses, a strand of baroque pearls, elbow-length white gloves, a fur. Really, Matt, you must see me like that one day.”

  But modeling the collections, whether in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel or in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel, was exhausting, uninspiring work, and promised no future, except becoming some wealthy businessman’s kept woman. Poking around the fashion house,

  Lisa had found herself growing fascinated by design. To a natural creativity she added the practical knowledge she’d acquired from showing clothes, and she began to ask questions, store away answers, play at designing during evenings in her apartment. One day she got up the courage to show her employer, Fernald, several of her crude originals. He had been immediately impressed, adapted one or two of her sketches, and encouraged her to do more designing on his time. Even more impressed by what she had subsequ
ently produced, he had entered her in the Parsons School of Design, only to withdraw her after a short time so that she would not be spoiled by conformity, and he had promoted her from fashion model to designer’s assistant. She had drawn, draped, pinned, cut, and last year she had been graduated to full-time designer and become a member of The Fashion Group, Inc.

  Her meteoric rise had been fantastic for a girl of twenty-two. And the tiara of success had resulted in an assignment, her first, to cover the collections of the French couturiers in Paris. Then, because she had not seen Europe, and because a vacation was long due her, she had been permitted two and a half weeks abroad, on her own, before joining up with the firm’s buyers in Paris.

  “And here I am,” she said. “Why did you let me carry on like that? I told you it would be dull.”

  “It’s all fascinating,” he said.

  “It’s all unfair,” she said. “Now you know about me, and I still don’t know a thing about you.”

  He had dreaded the inevitable moment of turnabout. He had anticipated her complaint, had tried to imagine what he could possibly tell her except the truth, yet he was reluctant to reveal himself and end their meeting. He tried to rationalize deceit. She had really told him little about herself except some interesting but tame facts. He need tell her nothing except some facts—but his facts, no matter how few, would be considerably more revealing, and they would shock her, or, at very least, dismay her. And then it would be over, this sweet meeting of strangers in the Piazza San Marco, each so new and unmarked for the other, until one was forced to disclose the mean scars and ugliness concealed beneath the garments of superficial chatter.

  “Cat got your tongue, Mr. Brennan?”

  “I was just thinking of what I could tell you.”

  “Well, don’t tell me you’re not interesting.”

  He tried to smile. “I’m interesting enough to a lot of people. But so is a cadaver to a dissecting surgeon.”

  “Now, what does that mean?”

  “It means that sometimes it’s better not to know all about another person.”

  Her brow contracted. “I don’t agree. When two people are together, and one disrobes, well, the other should, too. Otherwise, it’s indecent. When I give the truth, I like the truth back. What do I know about you? You’ve been in Venice for a long time. You love Venice. You don’t love yourself, or you pretend not to. You’re literate and educated. You pick up stray American girls and you intrigue them—and then what, Matt? How did you come here? I must know. From the beginning.”

  He nodded in resigned surrender, stared awhile at two pigeons waddling between the tables, and then, in a reticent monotone tinged with his usual cynicism, self-mockery, detachment, he told her what he could tell her.

  His parents had both been Philadelphia Main Line. His maternal grandfather had been the family mint. His father had devoted his life to preserving the inherited fortune. He himself had wanted a more challenging career, and after his older brother, Elia, whom he idolized, had been killed in Korea, Matt had known what that career would be. He would dedicate himself to politics, the hard politics of peace. At Georgetown his major had been economics. But his secondary specialty had been political science. In summary, his goal had been that of becoming an expert in the field of nuclear disarmament.

  Brennan had been a research economist at the Rand Corporation in California, and at the same time he had been active in a half-dozen peace movements and organizations. Then, because he had been considered solid, feet-on-the-ground, knowledgeable, dedicated, but practical, he had been appointed President of the Schweitzer World Peace Fund. From time to time this work had brought him into contact with the White House and the Department of State, and at last he had been sworn in as a United States delegate to the United Nations. After President Earnshaw’s inauguration, Brennan’s record had come to the attention of Earnshaw’s powerful aide, Simon Madlock, who had mentioned him to the Secretary of State, who in turn had recommended him to the Director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Brennan had then been appointed to the staff of 180 in the Agency which advised America’s peace negotiators.

  As an expert in developing national security through arms control, Matthew Brennan had achieved a lifelong ambition. No more was he a mere propaganda voice in overidealistic, ineffectual peace committees. Now, as an adviser and negotiator on the staff of a government agency that reported to the Secretary of State, and to the President himself, Brennan had become a force—a minor force, but a force nevertheless—in promoting international nuclear disarmament.

  He had been assigned to numerous disarmament meetings and conferences abroad—Warsaw, Bonn, Paris, Geneva—and then, four years and one month ago, at the recommendation of Simon Madlock, he had been named to participate in the most important peace meeting of all, the Zurich Parley—the most important because representatives of the People’s Republic of China had attended it so eagerly. The Swiss meeting had been a stalemate and a failure, and it had produced not international disarmament but international discord and fear, for as a result of Zurich, the Red Chinese had acquired the neutron bomb. And the repercussions had shattered Matthew Brennan’s career and his life.

  There it was, and here he was, stripped and exposed again. The afternoon’s idyll was ended. He hated to look up from the table and see her face.

  At last, after a strained silence, he looked up. He was surprised at the concentration in her face, as she busied herself with lighting a cigarette.

  “Well,” he said, “now you know.”

  She turned to him. “I never knew you were such a big shot. I could blush for the way I bothered you with my silly prattle.”

  “But I’m not—” He paused, confused. “Lisa, did you understand everything I told you?”

  “Of course. I could recite it word for word back to you.”

  “I mean, about the trouble I got into?”

  “Everyone gets into trouble.”

  “Lisa, you don’t remember reading about me?”

  “I’m ashamed. I hate to-seem so stupid. I guess I never was terribly interested in politics. I mean before this.”

  “But certainly you—you’ve heard of the Varney defection, the scandal, the Dexter committee hearings?”

  “It rings a bell, vaguely. Those were—were those the witch-hunters or something?”

  He sat back and considered this new insight into her. She did not know who he was, or how he had been disgraced. Gradually, it became understandable. He had nothing else in his life but the scandal. He had lived it and relived it through the months and years, magnified it because of his own hurt ego, until it crowded out everything else of life. But other people had no need to dwell on one episode like this. Their lives were filled with other episodes, newer, fresher, more contemporary. Of course. What was a total sum in his mind was a fraction in the minds of others. Besides, this girl was only twenty-two years old. She had been no more than eighteen during his trouble, probably as self-centered as any adolescent, serious and frivolous by turn, apolitical, concerned with happiness, advancement, and Life with that big young L. For her, at that time, his headlines would have been subordinate to the latest football scores, fashion crazes, want ads.

  Still, he must let her know.

  “Lisa, listen. The Joint Committee on Internal Security held a series of hearings. The members decided that I had once been a leftist, was still soft on Communism, a bleeding heart who wanted peace at any price. They decided that I had encouraged one of our key nuclear physicists to go over to Red China because I felt that this would strengthen China and preserve the delicate balance between war and peace. They could not prove it, but nevertheless that was their belief. As a result, I lost my security clearance, and I was asked to resign from the government agency, and I resigned. I was branded a traitor. Not legally, but a traitor none the less. And that’s what I’ve been considered ever since. You are too young to remember. But ask your father, he’ll know.”

  She wa
s solemn. “If I were to ask anyone, I’d prefer to ask you, Matt.”

  “You’d prefer to ask me?”

  “Yes. If you were guilty, that is. Frankly, whatever you say wouldn’t make any difference in how I felt about you, one way or the other. But if it makes you feel better—okay, I’ll ask it—were you guilty?”

  “No, Lisa, I was not guilty.”

  “Then that’s all I want to hear of that.” She paused, briefly thoughtful, and looked at him once more. “However, there is something I’d like to know, unless you consider it too personal. Are you married?”

  “I was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was married until the hearings began. The day they were over, she walked out.”

  “Maybe it’s not for me to say, but that doesn’t sound very loyal.”

  “No, but perfectly understandable, at least to me. I suppose these breakups always begin a good deal earlier. In any case, I know ours did. Looking back, I can see that Steffi and I were breaking up from the day we were married. We were married too young. I didn’t turn out to be the man she needed. I was too introspective, too intellectual, too withdrawn for her. I suppose, in her eyes, I lacked toughness, aggressiveness, ambition, so with the hearings—well, when I came out weak and suspect, the humiliation was more than she could bear. She got the divorce, as well as full custody of the children, and so good-bye. She’s remarried now.”

  “Her leaving you when she did, that must have been a bad blow.”