The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  “I know. In fact, I wrote a piece saying how if the communists are already in charge of the White House and Congress, not to mention Harvard and Yale, they’ve already won on points, so why not just go along with them?”

  “Irony is un-American. But then everything is un-American now. I thought we’d lived through the worst of it back in 1917 when sauerkraut became ‘liberty cabbage’ and no orchestra could play Beethoven or any other German music, but this is far worse, more insidious, more …”

  “Calculated?”

  “Calculated. Yes. But by whom? Cui bono? Harry Truman wanted to scare the American people so he could start his buildup, but he certainly has nothing to do with that drunken buffoon going on about how Harry and Acheson lost China, never ours to have much less lose. No, there’s always been a streak of madness in our folks. And there have always been demagogues who know just how to press all the right buttons to scare them out of what wits they have and turn them against their own government.…”

  Peter knew the litany; he, too, recited it, in different voices, in different places. “What you just said, Senator, is what we all say, but listening to you now, I started to hear something else. McCarthy’s babbling about communists in the State Department or the Army or wherever is nonsense, of course, and we know it because we know how Washington works, but what I’m now hearing is something else, something really serious. The people’s fear of the government because they are starting to believe it’s no longer by them or for them.”

  “Well, that’s been the Republicans’ line since ’35. You know, when we first presented social security to Congress, they said it was just plain communism and they warned the people that if our bill passed everyone’s name would be replaced by a government-assigned number.” Burden chuckled. “That’s your classic plutocratic smear. Big business never wants to pay any tax of any kind or be regulated for any reason or allow a penny of their profits to go to anyone at all, even if they’re starving. That’s an ancient battle with pretty clear rules for both sides. But now McCarthy’s gone and broken every rule and Harry Truman’s too weak to know how to put things back on track.”

  But Peter was sensing something entirely new in this familiar equation. “The fact is that, starting with Acheson’s briefing, which, thank God, sir, you so usefully recorded …”

  “Usefully and secretly.” Burden was still uneasy about his memo.

  “Top secretly. Something strange was set in motion. Part of the famous scaring hell out of the people has been our own government’s prompt interference in everyone’s life. Loyalty oaths. A peacetime military draft. Deciding who can or can’t go abroad. A nonconvertible dollar. Increased income taxes. Then, in the interest of Americanism, all sorts of independent publications like Counterattack and now Red Channels are deciding who can work in film, television, theater.”

  “Well, those vigilante efforts are hardly government-sponsored.”

  “They couldn’t exist if they weren’t government-inspired and -sanctioned. I mean, how could they be allowed to deny others free speech, assembly, right to work, due process?” Latouche had been sending Peter a good deal of information about a professional blacklist which was getting ever longer and ever blacker. “Several pages,” he had written, no doubt with a winsome smile, “are devoted to my own treasonous activities.”

  Burden had pulled himself up straight in his chair; the cane was now placed across his knees, like a weapon. “Do you really believe that our government has become our enemy?”

  Peter evaded a direct answer. “I believe that it has come to enjoy so much … un-American.” Peter smiled: at last a correct use for the word, “power over us that it will never ever let go.”

  “Never? No. Nothing lasts forever.”

  “We certainly don’t. But, for now, American Idea is on the Attorney General’s list of—what was their latest category?—‘subversive’ periodicals.”

  Diana entered the loggia.

  Condolences duly expressed, Peter said goodbye to the Senator, who remained seated. But, Peter was happy to note, his cheeks were now a healthy pink and his eyes bright.

  “You missed it,” said Aeneas, switching off the television set as Peter entered the office.

  “Missed what?” Peter sat on his side of the partners’ desk. Diana had her own office on the floor above where she dealt with their youthful staff.

  “Representative Clay Overbury has just made an announcement from the Caucus Room at the Old House Office Building. All the press was there.”

  What Peter had feared would happen had finally happened. “He’s declared for the Senate.”

  Aeneas twirled his wedding ring round and round. “Were you really so certain that he’d do this?”

  “Yes.” Peter was thinking hard. “Did anyone question him about his promise never to run against his mentor—I believe that’s the word he likes to use—Burden Day?”

  “Harold Griffiths did.”

  “A setup. Go on.”

  “Harold asked the question and Clay was all boyish charm—he’s even starting to look like Audie Murphy. He did say one thing interesting. He would never be declaring had it not been clear to him that Senator Day’s health problems would make it impossible for the founder of their state to make the sort of powerful race that people expected of so great a statesman, and so forth and so on.”

  Peter frowned. “There’s a missing piece here. Either Clay knows something about old Burden’s health that no one else knows or he’s …”

  Peter rang Diana in her office. Told her the news. “Go home. Tell your father. Find out why Clay’s so sure Burden isn’t running when, just now, he was all set to stump the state …”

  Aeneas interrupted. “Clay did say that if the Senator was really willing to risk his health in what was bound to be a long hard election, he—Clay—would stand aside, of course.”

  “Of course.” Peter repeated the message to Diana. Then he put down the receiver. “Well,” he said to Aeneas and to himself, “we are at the brink, as Harold Griffiths would write.”

  “Who falls in?”

  “I won’t,” said Peter, awash in uncharacteristic anger.

  Clay’s office was a reasonably modest shrine to its hero occupant. Only one Fire over Luzon poster was visible in a corner. Next to it there were several decorations under glass. Peter noticed that the Silver Star for heroism was not one of them, despite Harold Griffths claim; but a Bronze Star for marginally less heroism was on display.

  The usual politician’s photographs. One with President Truman, one with General MacArthur … plainly a statesman-hero president was impatiently serving time in this rather dingy office. Peter could see why members of the House of Representatives were so eager to move up to the Senate with its spacious offices, wide corridors, marble fireplaces, and, as someone had once noted, comforting air of serene megalomania.

  Clay came out from behind his desk and shook Peter’s reluctant hand. The blue eyes glittered in the light of what was, so far, a perfect spring day. “Well, this is an honor.” Clay’s charm could never seem forced because it was never not on display.

  They sat in black leather armchairs, a table between them on which was a photograph of Elizabeth Watress. Next to it was a photograph of Clay holding up his daughter, whose eyes, eerily like Enid’s, made contact with Peter’s.

  “Yes,” said Clay, as always getting the unstated point. “She’s very like her mother. She’s still with Blaise and Frederika. But Elizabeth and I hope to have our own house by this winter. She’ll have a proper home at last.”

  “You’re marrying Elizabeth?”

  “That’s the plan. After the election, of course.”

  “That was the exact same plan with Diana.” Peter could not resist. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.” Clay’s smile was intimate, even boyish. “But then I figured out it was really you she was interested in.”

  Peter was struck by the boldness, not to mention aptness, of the lie. How could h
e now, once again with Diana, acknowledge that she had always preferred Clay to him and that only after Clay had dropped her did she return to him? Meanwhile Clay had moved on to the heiress that everyone knew he would need to finance his rise once he was rid at last of Blaise, the surrogate father and paymaster and, if Enid was to be believed, lover. This last, if true, must have been a distasteful business to Clay, but business was business.

  Clay picked up a folder. “Your old friend Billy Thorne’s a wonderful writer. He’s been …”

  “Writing a book for you.”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it, though we’re supposed to tell everyone how I slaved over the text, plumbing the depths of our political system. Unfortunately, he couldn’t finish my testament.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s been giving secret testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’s naming names. Thousands of names. He’s now home—free. But I can’t have an ex-communist, no matter how patriotic, writing … I mean doing research for me. Can I?”

  “Why not?” Peter shrugged. “It’s very much the thing nowadays. Look at Whittaker Chambers.”

  “I’ve got someone else. But Billy was certainly bright. I don’t think Diana ever appreciated him.”

  “Well, he’s found a home at the CIA.”

  Clay affected puzzlement. “He’s at the Treasury, isn’t he? When he’s not writing for the Wall Street Journal.”

  “That’s the cover story.”

  Clay smiled: the old charm had been polished to high gloss. “Better cool it, Peter. That’s becoming too much your style. Conspiracies everywhere. You’re getting like poor old Joe McCarthy.”

  This was Peter’s lead. “But there are conspiracies. Thousands of them. Everywhere. Particularly in Washington. Look at you. Conspiring to be a senator. Then president. You never stop … whispering to this one and that one.”

  “I’m not so partial,” said Clay easily, “to that word ‘whispering.’ I tend to speak out. The way I did in the Old House Caucus Room the other day. Everything’s in the open.” The blue eyes turned unblinkingly on Peter, who turned away. Clay was uncommonly hard but then so was he himself, at least when engaged in such work as this.

  “But you lied to the press, once again, when you said that you were in the race because Burden wasn’t going to run, due to … what was it? Ill health?”

  Clay’s smile was close to a baring of teeth. “That’s the truth. I also said if he wanted to run again I’d pull out, of course.”

  “But has he pulled out?”

  Clay looked at his watch. “He’ll have a statement by five o’clock. In time for tomorrow morning’s papers. I guess we got our wires crossed the other day. I must have misunderstood him. Anyway, we had a nice meeting, yesterday. After all, I do owe him everything, practically.”

  “You owe him at least whatever it is that you don’t owe my father.”

  Clay laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

  Peter’s face was hot. Mustn’t get angry. Easy does it. “No. You’ve certainly given Father a great deal of pleasure. You and … your career. I’ve given him none and nothing for nothing is the law of relationships while something for something is the absolute law.”

  Clay chose to bypass this potentially dangerous line of argument. “What did you mean when you said I’d lied to the press ‘once again’?”

  “There it is, your truly great lie.” Peter pointed to the silhouetted man carrying a marine from a fiery inferno.

  Clay laughed. “Well, to start with, that’s not me, that’s Audie Murphy!”

  Peter opened his briefcase and removed the photograph that he’d got from United Press. “Here’s a new print from the original negative. I got it from the photographer who was there—when you were not there.”

  Clay took the photograph; he was still smiling. “The problem is,” he finally said, “you can’t really tell who it is.”

  “Luckily for you.”

  “What are you up to?” The smile was gone. He dropped the photo to the floor, to show he was done with it. But Peter retrieved the print and put it back in his briefcase.

  “I want you to ring Burden and tell him he won’t have to make any statement, that you’ve changed your mind about running.”

  “No. I’m going for it. So …” A long pause. Then, Clay picked up Fire over Luzon by the GI’s Homer. He opened to several pages of glossy stills from the Lingayen Gulf airfield. “How do you explain these? Pictures of me at the airfield. Me with the wounded. Me with a Jap bomb going off. All taken that same day.”

  “Taken the next day. Someone has even airbrushed out your bandaged foot.” Peter shut the book. “I’ve found your doctor. I’ve found the photographer. I’ve unmasked your conspiracy.” Peter smiled at his own neatness. “Why don’t you just wait another two years as originally planned? I’m sure Blaise isn’t in all that much of a rush. He’s certainly enjoying things the way they are, now that Enid’s dead.”

  Clay sat back in his chair, legs stretched out. He yawned. Then he said, “You know about Ed Nillson?”

  “Yes. I also know he’s not eager to be mixed up in this.”

  “He has no choice if Burden runs. I won’t give him any choice. I won’t give either of them any choice.” Clay stared at the photograph of himself and Truman. “Why now and not in two years? Because after Truman we’re going to have at least eight years of a Republican president. Probably Eisenhower or MacArthur. Then a Democrat. Someone new. Born in this century, not one of these old folks, these holdovers from the coach-and-buggy era. It’s all going to change. Well, for me to be ready in 1960, I’ll need at least eight years of national exposure in the Senate. So that’s what I mean to have.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is all this necessary? Why must you be president?”

  “Some people are meant to be. Some are not. Obviously you’re not.”

  “Obviously. It’s the last thing I’d ever want. My sort of work is more apt to be useful.”

  “Like Dr. Schweitzer in the African jungle?” Clay was on his feet. He stretched. For an instant, Peter thought that Clay had actually arched his back. “Everything’s now in order for me to start the long march. There’s also no one else, which is a help.”

  “Hubert Humphrey?”

  “Too far to the left. The South won’t take him.”

  “Lyndon Johnson?”

  “Texas? A bribe-taker? Never.”

  “Your fellow congressman Jack Kennedy? His father can outspend my father any day.”

  “He’ll be dead by 1960. He’s got no adrenal function. ‘Yellow Jack,’ they call him. Just look at him. He’s a skeleton. No, the field is clear for me.”

  “Ten years is a long time to keep any field clear.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ve got a lot to do. That’s why I suggest you … lay off.”

  Peter rose. “Perhaps you’ll rethink your position once I write about what really happened at the Lingayen Gulf airfield.”

  “Why bother? Burden’s taking himself out of the race.”

  “But if he doesn’t?”

  “Ed Nillson will suddenly be a very famous man and Burden may go to jail.”

  “So what about you? The phony hero. The invention of Harold Griffiths.”

  “And of your father. It takes at least two to give birth to a national hero.” Clay was unexpectedly droll. “I am one and there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

  “Let’s see what I can do.”

  “Do you really want to never see your father again?”

  Peter laughed. “What a weird thing to say! I hardly see him now. Anyway, he’s yours. A present from me to you. A funeral present, you might say. From Enid’s funeral. After all, it took the two of you to give birth to that.”

  Peter left Clay standing in the middle of his office, still smiling.

  Billy Thorne was seated at the partners’ desk.

  “Aen
eas had to go up to the Hill, so I said I’d wait for you here.”

  “Reading our next issue.”

  “Well, trying to.”

  Peter sat opposite Billy, who did not move. “Actually, I came to see Diana but apparently she’s in Rock Creek Park, commiserating with her father. So I certainly don’t want to go there. But I have some business with her. Marital nonsense …”

  “She’s commiserating?”

  “Yes. He’s pulled out of the race. An hour ago. It’ll be on the news.”

  Peter rang the Burden Day house. A weary Diana answered. “Yes,” she said. “It’s all over. The statement’s gone to the press.”

  “But I told him he wouldn’t have to. That …” Peter looked straight across the desk into the ill-matching eyes of Billy Thorne. “That it wouldn’t be necessary. That Clay was bound to change his mind.”

  “Mr. Nillson came by after lunch. He said the only way to keep things quiet was to …”

  Then Peter interrupted her. “Billy Thorne’s in the office.”

  “How lucky for you,” she said.

  Billy handed Peter an envelope. “Tell her I’m giving her this joint insurance policy we had. There were two of them. I’m keeping one. I’m giving her the other.”

  Peter said, “I’ll tell her.” Then into the receiver he said, “I’ll be working late.” He hung up; turned to Billy. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No.” Billy pulled himself to his feet. “I assume you won’t be blackmailing Clay now.”

  A spasm of anger caused Peter to shudder. “Surely that’s more Clay’s line of work. And yours.”

  “Not according to Clay. We were going to touch on it in his book, in a general sort of way. But then I had to quit, as you know. We had no choice after my testimony to the House committee.” Billy paused at the door. “Do you still have that coat of mine?”

  Peter indicated a closet. Billy retrieved his coat as well as a Borsalino hat. “Don’t forget to give that insurance policy to Diana.”