The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  “Do you still think so?”

  “Of course.”

  “You should have written it, sir.”

  “I am no poet. And there is still no poem by anyone—yet.”

  2

  Senator James Burden Day was standing in a leafy homemade pergola, pruning grape vines. Even in shirtsleeves the old man looked distinguished, thought Peter, who had known him all his life. “It is my theory,” said Burden Day, “that grapes pruned in August turn out to be the best. No one agrees with me, of course.”

  “That should not stop you, Senator.”

  “It never seems to, does it? Diana’s in the house. Billy is not.” The Senator’s dislike of his son-in-law was simply taken for granted by everyone, and never remarked upon.

  Peter entered the house through a door just back of the pergola. The stone house was cool even on the hottest of days. In the shadowy living room, Kitty Day was bandaging what looked to be a large brown rat; on closer inspection, it was a wounded squirrel. “I found him in a hydrangea bush. Shot. He’s all right now. The bleeding’s stopped. Filthy bastards.” It was Kitty’s peculiarity to say exactly what she was thinking while remaining blissfully unaware that she was often surprisingly, certainly bluntly, informative.

  Diana appeared in the doorway. “Mother, are you sure that thing isn’t rabid?”

  “Of course I’m not sure. But then you went and married him of all people.” Kitty bore the wounded squirrel away.

  “Mother.” Diana was aware that Peter knew the family’s secret.

  “Why did you marry him, of all people?”

  “The American Idea.” She stammered slightly on the “m” in “American.” “He now thinks Irene Bloch will come up with the money if she gets an invitation to dinner at Laurel House.” Irene was married to the owner of Washington’s largest department store. Since she lusted for social dominance, Billy had made Peter an associate editor of the review with the understanding that he would work on Irene. “Invite her to lunch at Laurel House. Impress her.” Peter had done as asked, Irene proved to be quick-witted, and Frederika now tolerated her. When Peter explained the plot to his father, Blaise was perversely amused. “We’ll ask Sam next time.” Samuel I. Bloch of Bloch’s Department Store was a major Tribune advertiser. “Then you can sell him some more space.”

  “Oh, Billy’s clever.” Diana sounded almost disapproving. “But then he has to be.”

  “He really is if he’s hooked Irene. She’ll never interfere with the magazine.” Peter sat on a comfortably frayed sofa. “I think I’ll write a defense of Herbert Hoover. If Billy would print it.”

  Diana was absently straightening cushions. “Why not? You’re one of the editors.” She stopped. “Did you say Herbert Hoover?”

  Peter described his encounter with the former president. Diana agreed that the bit about the poem was nice.

  Burden came into the room just as a car moved up to the house.

  “Shall we go?” Diana was on her feet.

  “Stay. Senator Gore’s bringing over a cousin.”

  “I think I’d better go,” said Peter. “I told Irene I’d take her to Cissy Patterson’s.”

  “This might be more interesting. The cousin is Admiral Richardson.” There had been a good deal of conjecture in Washington’s whispering gallery about the summary dismissal by the President of the commander in chief of the United States Fleet. Burden Day’s Subcommittee on Naval Affairs had wanted to investigate but party unity had suddenly been invoked. Now Peter wondered what the cousins were up to. Senator Gore had lost his seat in the Senate after a falling-out with Roosevelt. Now Admiral Richardson had been abruptly retired. Although Burden Day was usually an ally of the President, he had very much wanted to be the Democratic candidate for president in 1940 until Roosevelt had chosen to succeed himself. Even though Burden was looking ahead to the 1944 elections he was quite aware of the ticking of that clock which would, more soon than late, erase any hope of the presidency. But a clash with the President might revive a fading career. “It is like some incurable disease,” Diana had suddenly said one day over ice cream at Huyler’s. “This passion to be president has ruined Father’s life.”

  “Well,” Peter was mild, “it has done wonders for Roosevelt. Saved his life you might say.”

  Blind Senator Gore arrived on the arm of the Admiral, who wore civilian clothes; each stood very straight, otherwise there was no family resemblance. As always, the blind Senator said to Peter, “Nice to see you again.”

  Diana went for iced tea. The visitors did not appear to mind the presence of the young.

  “Mr. Day.” Senator Gore was always formal, even with friends. “We felt in need of your wisdom this afternoon.”

  “What there is isn’t much, Mr. Gore, but I’m always ready to lend an ear.”

  “Admiral Richardson, as you know, left his command of our fleet last February …”

  The Admiral chuckled. “I was fired by the President himself. Quite an honor.”

  “This means that you dared to disagree with him.” Burden was to the point.

  Senator Gore turned to the Admiral as if he could see him. “Didn’t I tell you? Mr. Day is the wisest man in the Senate, now that I’m gone.”

  “Because you also disagreed with him,” said Richardson.

  “The family resemblance,” intoned Senator Gore, “grows closer and closer.”

  “I assume, Admiral,” Burden’s pale blue eyes were concentrated now on Richardson, “that your disagreement wasn’t over the gold standard.”

  “Nothing so mysterious, sir. We disagreed about life and death.”

  Diana returned with iced tea. Kitty waved at them through the window; a scarlet bird, perching on her shoulder, pecked at her hair. Diana served tea; and left them.

  “Last October, just before the election, I was asked for lunch at the White House. The President was his usual happy self. We discussed the recent maneuvers of the Pacific Fleet.”

  “Was Harry Hopkins at lunch?” Burden stirred ice with his forefinger.

  “No, sir. Just the two of us. Upstairs. It soon became apparent to me that the President has a plan, even some sort of timetable. ‘Sooner or later,’ he said, ‘the Japanese will commit an overt act against the United States and the nation will then be willing to enter the war.’ ”

  Burden put down his glass hard. “He said that? In those words?”

  “Yes, sir. He also said he was convinced that sooner or later they would make a mistake—he used that word, too—and then we would be in the war because Germany and Italy would have to honor their military treaty with Japan.”

  “He’s like a magician,” said Gore. “He keeps us occupied with England and the Atlantic and Lend-lease and then while he’s doing tricks with his European hand, the other is provoking Japan into attacking us so he can live up to his campaign promise that, if elected, no sons of yours will ever fight in a foreign war—unless, of course, we are attacked.”

  Peter was alarmed and excited. Were these three men just ordinary Roosevelt-haters who tended to say anything? Or was the Admiral’s story true? And if it was true, and if Japan were to make a “mistake,” couldn’t Roosevelt be impeached and removed from office?

  “Specifically, Admiral …” Burden began.

  “Specifically,” Richardson answered, “the President wanted to put one of our cruisers in Japanese waters, to just ‘pop up,’ as he put it, to intimidate them. He was willing, he said, to lose one or two cruisers but not five or six.”

  “Dear God!” Burden shook his head.

  “And then you said …” Gore prompted Richardson.

  “I was angry enough to tell him the truth. I said, ‘I should warn you, Mr. President, that the senior officers of the Navy do not have the trust and confidence in the civilian leadership of this country that is essential for the successful prosecution of a war in the Pacific.’ ” Richardson laughed. “Yes. I memorized what I said in case, one day, I am invited to repeat it for the recor
d.”

  “That could be soon.” Burden looked grim.

  “Let’s hope not,” said Richardson. “For now, I’m officially silent. But, privately, I’ve told a number of my fellow officers, and now I’ve let you gentlemen in on this dangerous game that Mr. Roosevelt is playing.”

  Peter did his best to appear invisible. Plainly he was not one of the gentlemen that the Admiral intended to warn.

  “It’s a very clever game.” Gore’s one glass eye had strayed northward while the blind eye was half shut. “Eighty percent of our people don’t want us to go back to Europe for a second world war and nothing will ever persuade them, no matter how many of our ships the Germans sink. So we at least learned that lesson from last time. But to get the Japanese to strike first is true genius—wicked genius.”

  “Certainly, it’s the way Hitler works. Accuse your victim of aggression. Then,” Burden struck the arm of his chair, “attack him.”

  “Secretary of the Navy Knox tells me that the President’s been considering a naval blockade of Japan. He wants two lines of light ships. One from Hawaii to the Philippines. The other from Samoa to Singapore. The President collects stamps, you know, and he loves looking at maps, and daydreaming. I said it would never work even if our fleet was in first-class condition, which it isn’t. Mr. Knox told me, very sadly, that my bluntness had hurt the President’s feelings. So now you know how I earned my gold watch, and Admiral Stark got promoted.”

  They discussed the politics of the matter. The secretaries of war and treasury, Stimson and Morgenthau, were eager for a showdown with Japan. Two weeks earlier, Morgenthau had responded to the Japanese move into Indochina by freezing Japan’s assets in the United States as well as cutting back on oil sales even though the Navy, perhaps due to the influence of Admiral Richardson, had warned him that with the United States engaged in the Altantic supplying Britain with arms and in the Pacific with preparations for war, the newly inaugurated two-fleet Navy needed time to make itself battleworthy. Certainly, the day the Japanese could not buy oil from the United States, they would go to war with the Dutch and seize the oil fields at Java. “Then,” said Richardson, “according to some sort of agreement Roosevelt made with Churchill on one of their yachting trips in the North Atlantic, the British, the Dutch, and the United States will go to war with Japan.”

  “Secret agreement?” Burden shook his head. “He can’t make such an agreement. Only the Senate makes treaties.”

  “Perhaps,” said Gore, “we’ve gone and made one without knowing it. One curious detail, Admiral. It’s plain that the President wants the Japanese to attack us first. But if he does, why is he allowing them to keep right on buying oil at this very moment from—if memory serves—the Associated Oil Company at Porta Costa, California?”

  Burden frowned. “To postpone the attack on Java?”

  Richardson shook his head. “Our Pacific Fleet won’t be ready for war until at least mid-December. Our Philippine air defenses won’t be ready until February or March, next year, thanks to MacArthur’s majestic slowness. It’s my theory that the Administration will go on selling them a minimum amount of oil so that they won’t attack us until we’re finally ready for them. When we are, we’ll deliver our ultimatum whatever it is. We want them to have sufficient fuel for a major strike but not for a major war. This leaves the timing up to the President.”

  “You make it sound as if there is some sort of a … a …” Burden was, to Peter’s eye, unnaturally pale.

  “A master plan. Yes, sir. I’m convinced of it. We’ve got some diabolically bright young officers.”

  “Thank God for that.” Gore smiled. “Usually the enemy has all the clever devils and we have all the dim-witted angels.”

  “There are a number of hidden-away offices at our Eighteenth and Constitution headquarters. Some are supposed to be highly restricted. But there is always a lot of leakage, this being Washington. Last October one of our brightest young devils came up with an eight-point plan, carefully designed to force Japan, in the most plausible way, to attack us. I don’t know the full details. But then as commander of the United States Fleet, I was not supposed to know anything at all. The young devil in question had assumed—remember this was almost a year ago—that the British were done for and that we should, at their request, put Singapore and so on under our protection. The same with the Dutch East Indies. Then we should beef up our Chinese warlord, Chiang Kai-shek. Send divisions of cruisers and submarines that we don’t yet have to the Asian mainland while keeping the bulk of our fleet in Hawaii. Finally, after first persuading the Dutch to stop selling oil to Japan, we will, together with the British, stop all trade, particularly oil, to Japan. And wait for them to attack.”

  There was a long silence in the room. Gore rested his chin on the curve of his wooden cane. The Admiral sat as if at a Senate hearing, which, in a sense, he was.

  Finally, Burden spoke. “How good is your intelligence?”

  “Mine, sir? Or the Navy’s?”

  “They were as one, until recently.”

  “I should say that our intelligence is much further advanced than our fleet.”

  “I understand,” said Burden. Peter wondered what it was that each did not need to say.

  “Shortly before I was relieved of my command, our ambassador to Tokyo sent a message to the Secretary of State. This was late last January. I’ve read the message. The Peruvian minister to Japan warned our ambassador that in the event of ‘trouble’ with the United States, Japan would launch an all-out surprise attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Burden shook his head.

  “The first duty of a naval commander is to see to the safety of his men, not to mention his fleet. Even the President, a naval genius in his own mind, knows that. Yet he’s deliberately setting our fleet in harm’s way. Since I objected, I had to be got rid of.”

  Burden rubbed his eyes. “Do you really think they’d ever dare attack Hawaii?”

  “Driven to the wall, as we are driving them, why not? But Pearl Harbor does seem to me to be a bit far afield, unlike Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong, Java. The obvious targets.”

  “Once they attack, they will be destroyed just as we Southerners were destroyed when we attacked the Union.” Gore was grim.

  “At least our common cousins, the Hawkinses, were Unionists, even in Mississippi.” Richardson’s starched collar was beginning to crumple in the heat.

  “True,” said Gore, “but that didn’t stop us from fighting alongside our kin even though we knew we’d be on the losing side. Admiral, there is a peace party in Japan. In fact, Prime Minister Konoye is eager to sit down with our side and come to terms, or so he says.”

  Richardson nodded. “Politically we have good intelligence out of Tokyo because Konoye is desperate to make a settlement in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the President does not want a settlement. He won’t meet him.”

  “As simple as that?” Burden stared out the window.

  “As simple as that, sir. The hawks in Tokyo—practically the entire military—are praying for Konoye to fail so that they can replace him with a military government.” Admiral Richardson rose; as did Senator Gore, who took his arm. “I’ve been speaking to you today for the future record. Originally, I was tempted to go before your subcommittee, but I’m afraid we are already in so deep that anything that I might say could jeopardize the fleet.”

  “Mischief is afoot.” Gore sighed. “I saw this coming in 1916. I saw it coming, again, in 1936. I can think of no worse fate than being an unheeded ancestral voice.”

  “A ghost,” said James Burden Day, “is probably worse.”

  Peter slipped away, unnoticed. In the woods above the house, Diana was seated on a log beside a bright clear spring, bubbling out of fine brown sand. Here salamanders lived; this spot was always cool even on the hottest August day since thick-leaved trees met in a dark green canopy overhead. Peter sat next to her on the log. She smelled of lavender.

 
“I think I knew what was coming,” she said.

  “Well, if they are right, it’s coming very fast. Scotty is enlisting in the Marines. This week.” Scotty and Peter had grown up together in Washington.

  “Can he get a commission?”

  “He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic. Whatever that is. Yes, I’m sure he can. And so can I.”

  She looked him straight in the face, something she seldom did with anyone, eyes always aslant; Peter thought of Emily Dickinson’s odd word. “You’ll go in before they draft you?”

  “I have a plan, too, which means using influence. Mercilessly. I’ve got to find out what’s actually going on.”

  “Then go into intelligence. Safer.” She looked away. “I can’t see how this war is worth the life of any of us.”

  “You mean you don’t get misty-eyed at Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms?”

  “So like Mr. Wilson’s Twelve Commandments.”

  “Points, wasn’t it? Anyway, who keeps score? What matters is that our leaders have always been so marvelously good.”

  Diana nodded. “And, best of all, they truly love us. Love us so much that there are times when I feel wickedly unworthy of them.”

  Peter put his arm around her, something he’d never done before with Billy Thorne’s wife. “Don’t worry. When we make the supreme sacrifice for them, they’ll know then that we were truly worthy of them. I can’t wait to get into my hole at Arlington.”

  “I shall tend your grave.”

  Then each burst out laughing and Peter said, “We shall be the first cynical … no, the first realistic generation of Americans ever to go to war because we know that if we don’t go our masters will either kill us or lock us up.”

  “The American Idea … at its purest.” Then Diana kissed him, missing his lips and making contact with his earlobe. In an instant, each broke from the other, preparing, for now at least, laughter at the trap that had sprung.

  3