The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  A uniformed man from the Pennsylvania Railroad opened an iron-grill gate to the shed where all tracks began and ended. The Secret Service men led them to Track 15, which the police had blocked off. Back of them, Secret Service men guarded the cars of the now legendary campaign train whose name, Ferdinand Magellan, was printed in gold on Pullman dark green.

  The police let them through. Peter was surprised at the number of people who were also making the journey west aboard the Magellan.

  One of the Secret Service men observed, “This time we’ve got a whole car for the Signal Corps. We’re tapped in to everywhere on earth.” The man’s breath hung in the cold air like smoke.

  “Is there much press?” asked Peter.

  “Just the wire services, sir. And some television.”

  Then Peter and Diana were handed over to a Pullman car porter, who put their suitcases into the first car beside the gate; then he helped them aboard. Although Peter had never seen a private car as elaborate as the Magellan, the familiar Pullman car smell was as comforting as always: a combination of the toy Lionel trains of his boyhood, an acrid battery smell, combined with whatever the porters used to clean carpets and the dark green curtains that at night were drawn to cover upper and lower berths. But there were no berths in this car, only staterooms, like a ship; and an oak-paneled dining room with half a dozen chairs around a mahogany table. Through a swinging door, they could see the galley, where two chefs in white were setting up. Diana indicated the dining-room chairs, covered in green and gold damask stripes. “Dorothy Draper has been here. What would your mother say?”

  A butler offered them something to drink. Peter asked for bourbon.

  After the dining room, there were four staterooms, A, B, C, and D. Apparently, B was “hers,” C was “his.” D was theirs. D proved to be a comfortable bedroom with a double bed and a telephone “which only works when we’re in a station,” said the porter, stowing their baggage on racks. He pointed to the rear of the train, just past their stateroom. “That’s the observation lounge. You can sit there if you like.”

  Once they were alone, Diana promptly went to the bathroom while Peter partially unpacked. They would be getting off at American City the next morning; then the train would go on to California. “I suppose,” said Diana, coming out of the bathroom, “that this is what marriage is all about.”

  “One stateroom instead of two?”

  “One Ferdinand Magellan instead of none.” Then they went into the observation lounge, where the chairs and sofa were done in blues and browns and a smiling butler served Peter his drink.

  “Can I take this before he comes aboard?” Peter was worried about protocol.

  The butler smiled. “He’ll probably be joining you. The Missus isn’t coming so things are pretty relaxed.”

  Through the window of the car, Peter could see more and more people, many in military uniform, hurrying to get aboard the various cars up ahead. It was like the war, come back.

  “What must his mood be like?” Diana’s mood was quite apparent to Peter. She was pale; eyes dark-circled.

  “I shouldn’t think too happy,” she said. “China’s in the war, and there are so many more of them than us.”

  “ ‘A mere peasant’s army,’ as Harold Griffiths says. Easily defeated by our superior forces led by Colonel Overbury. I wonder who he’ll rescue this time.”

  “General MacArthur. From a flaming pagoda.” Diana looked about the observation car. “I can’t say I like the combination of blue and brown.”

  “That’s because it reminds you of your ex-husband’s treacherous gaze.”

  Diana laughed for the first time since Burden’s death. “You do know how to cheer me up.”

  “This is our honeymoon.”

  “A very peculiar one. Because …” A commotion on the siding below distracted her. A long black limousine, surrounded by motorcycle police, had stopped beside their car. Police opened the back door and then led the occupants, quite invisible behind a row of massive policemen, to the front of the car, where flashbulbs went off. The engineer of the train gave a warning hoot: all aboard.

  A tall, heavy-fleshed man in an overcoat came into the observation car. He was chewing on an unlit cigar. “I’m Harry Vaughan from Battery D. The Chief’s on his way. Make yourselves comfortable. Sorry, Mrs. Sanford, about the news.” Then he went down the narrow corridor to the stateroom next to the President’s.

  Not quite knowing what to do, Peter and Diana remained standing, as several Secret Service men did a perfunctory search of the car. Then the President, wearing an overcoat and, respectfully, holding his hat, entered. “Mr. and Mrs. Sanford. I’d hoped to see you under less sad circumstances.” A valet relieved him of coat and hat and vanished into Cabin C.

  Harry Truman gravely shook their hands. The President paid especial attention to Diana. “Your father was always very kind to me when I was new to the Senate. You don’t forget that.”

  “He admired you very much, sir.”

  “Oh, we had our differences. But that’s politics.” A secretary stood in the doorway. Truman said, “Tell the Korea group I’ll meet them in the dining room after we start.” The secretary vanished. “No rest for the weary,” said Truman, making himself a drink from the sideboard. “Sit down. Sit down, please.”

  The President placed himself in the middle of the blue sofa while Peter and Diana sat opposite him in brown chairs. With a lamp beside him, Peter could see how pale and drawn Truman’s face was, so unlike the recent newspaper photographs of a smiling jaunty president on top of the world. “I must say I’m never so happy as when I’m on this train leaving Washington. Roosevelt loved it, too, only he had the engineer just creep along, afraid for his balance, I suppose, while I have him tearing along full speed ahead. Someone said I covered thirty-two thousand miles in this train, during the campaign.” He smiled at the memory of his triumph of only two years before. Since then the Korean War had begun while, two weeks earlier, on November 1, a group of Puerto Rican nationalists had tried to kill the President at Blair House.

  A series of blasts from the engineer; with a jolt, the train began to move. Truman drank; then gave a contented sigh. “I feel like Jean Valjean must’ve felt like when he got out of that dungeon.” The President’s reading was known to be wide; its depth was a matter of conjecture. Peter knew that Truman liked giving lectures on American history which, according to the journalist Richard Rovere, who would later check them out, were almost always a bit off.

  Once the train was smoothly free of the station, a steward drew down the window shades. Truman sighed. “That’s the sight I most like, speeding across the country at night. Through all the little electric-light towns, seeing how large the whole thing is. But …”

  “The Secret Service?” Peter could see that since the assassination attempt, security was intense.

  Truman nodded. “Pair of precious damn fools, those Puerto Ricans.”

  “Because, sir, we’ve always been willing to turn over Puerto Rico to the Puerto Ricans?”

  “No. Because if they’d only waited twenty minutes more, they could’ve got me coming out of the door of Blair House. It was in the papers, for heaven’s sake, that I was going to be speaking at Arlington that afternoon. If they’d had any sense, they could have sent me there in a box.” He shook his head at Puerto Rican incompetence. Then the secretary placed a pile of papers on the coffee table in front of him. Truman picked up a fountain pen. “Hope you’ll forgive me but I’ve got seven thousand letters to sign. From well-wishers. You know? After the shooting. I said I’d sign each letter personally.”

  This was exactly what he was doing, expertly and quickly, dropping each signed sheet onto the sofa to dry.

  “Roosevelt always called this doing the laundry. Poor man. For a long time he had to sign every officer’s commission and then all the promotions, but when we got up to thirteen million in the military, they let him use a stamp or something.”

  There were a thousand
questions Peter wanted to ask but did not know how. What was protocol? They were the President’s guests. As soon as the story had broken in the press that Senator James Burden Day had been found dead in the shallows of the Potomac River, Truman himself had called Kitty and invited her and the family to return to American City, aboard his private train. Kitty, all serene dignity, had declined for herself and accepted for Diana and Peter. She would fly to American City.

  It was generally assumed that the story of Burden’s driver was accurate: the Senator had taken a walk beside the river, where he’d fainted and fallen in. Although there was no suggestion in the press of suicide or foul play, the whispering gallery had read Harold Griffiths’ recent eulogy of Senator-elect Clay Overbury, “the fighting Solon,” now a colonel in Korea with no immediate plan to leave the war for the marble halls of Congress. According to Harold, Clay had been obliged to run in place of Senator Day, who was under investigation for his part in the “giveaway” of oil-rich Indian land. Prompt denials of any such investigation from both Justice and Interior Departments, not to mention from the Senate itself, did not undo Harold’s original charge. Peter was quite sure that Burden had killed himself. Diana disagreed: she believed her father had had one of his fainting spells at river’s edge and drowned. But, bitterly, she acknowledged Harold’s contribution. Peter wondered how much of this the President had worked out. True, he was due to address the military on the West Coast and American City was on his way, but he had no obligation to show presidential favor to anyone accused of corruption. On the other hand, when his onetime sponsor Boss Prendergast of Kansas City died after a time in prison, the new vice president had gone, defiantly, to his funeral.

  “Also,” Truman’s thoughts were plainly running parallel to theirs, “Burden was the last founder of one of the forty-eight states.” Impatiently, he waved a letter back and forth to force the ink to dry more quickly. “As you know, I’m not one to complain about the press.” Peter dared not look at Diana. Truman’s hatred of the press was often pun-gently expressed; although he was kindness itself to the regular journalists assigned to him, the columnists, from Drew Pearson to the Sop Sisters to Harold Griffiths, were a subject of constant savage diatribe. “I was disturbed to read that swipe at Burden in your father’s paper. I can’t say I take it seriously, any more than I do what’s-his-name who wrote it, but since he’s syndicated that does make it serious, to the public.” Truman put away his pen and drank bourbon. The ever-watchful butler, hidden nearby, came to fill his glass. But Truman waved him away. “Work to do tonight.” He took off his thick glasses and the eyes, unmagnified, were the dreamy blue of acute myopia, the whole impression quite at odds with his—affected?—usual sharp staccato performance. “What happened?”

  Peter told the President as much as he thought safe; once or twice he turned to Diana, but she was silent. Truman listened, eyes half shut. Then: “Well, that’s pretty much the way I put it together. I figured that Indian land sale business was a lot of hooey. Too much out of character for the Burden I knew.” In the chair next to Peter, Diana gave a small strangled gasp which the President seemed not to hear. He turned to Peter, “I still can’t see how your father could let what’s-his-name publish what he did in his paper. But then that’s his business, not mine.” There was silence as Truman neatly stacked the signed letters on top of the unsigned ones. “Mr. Clay Overbury,” he said finally, thoughtfully. “He’s in too big a hurry, I’d say. He’s got the bug.” Truman looked at Diana, who smiled wanly.

  “Well, we have a majority of two in the Senate and Mr. Overbury’s half of our plurality.” Truman was all business. “So he’s important to us, particularly since, thanks to MacArthur, we nearly lost both houses of Congress.”

  “You mean McCarthy, sir.”

  Truman put on his glasses. “Did I say MacArthur? Well, I do have him on my mind tonight. And, of course, MacArthur did harm us in the election with all his letters to those Republican leaders, saying how he should be allowed to cross the Yalu River and invade Manchuria and China when he isn’t even able to stop the Chinese already in Korea. Now they’re biding their time. Waiting for some kind of settlement, I’d say. But we’re not going to settle. If we did, that would be Munich all over again. Stalin’s just the same as Hitler. He’s using one of his satellite states to test us. Actually, two satellite states, now that China’s come in.” Truman finished his bourbon, face slightly flushed. “History taught us all quite a lesson back in the thirties. You can’t deal with totalitarian countries because they only believe in force. Ends justify the means. That’s their religion. Well, we’re responding with more force than they ever dreamed of. Last thing I ever wanted to do was set off those atom bombs on Japan. But if I hadn’t we would have had to invade Japan—a minimum of a million men—on both sides—would’ve died. Now we got us a different problem. We have to show force right now, show we’ve got the will to win, which is why Joe McCarthy’s basically a traitor to his country, because he’s made a lot of our people doubt the loyalty of their own government at a time when we could lose all Asia to Stalin, maybe the whole world, too.”

  Peter found it hard to discern any logic to the curious template that the President seemed to be carrying around in his head. Munich. Make no deal with Hitler because he will break it as he is a dictator who wants to conquer the world. Stalin is just like Hitler: so make no deal with him either because … Yet Peter saw no compelling analogy between the two. It was Truman, euphoric with his new atomic weapons, who had decided at Potsdam that the United States need never live up to the terms of the Yalta agreement or, indeed, any other agreements, since it was now, Peter knew, American policy to conduct no meetings, ever, with the Russians on the ground that, like Nazis, the Soviets would cheat. This was fair enough propaganda at election time, to keep the people frightened so that they would keep on paying for the ever-expanding military buildup. But Peter was alarmed at the apparent rigidity of Truman’s mind unless—a vain hope?—Truman was acting a part. Nevertheless, even if he was, there had been quiet exultation at the State and Defense Departments when the North Koreans had invaded the South: now Congress would be obliged to appropriate the many billions of dollars needed to build hydrogen bombs as well as planes and ships and military bases all around the world so that “trouble spots” could be quickly tended to. Had Henry Wallace been right? Was the nation now embarked on an endless war?

  “This is all off the record,” said the President, “though none of it’s hardly secret. Anyway, history teaches us that things go in cycles. Look at Mesopotamia.”

  Since neither Peter nor Diana had a Mesopotamia at hand to contemplate, Truman helpfully explained. “If you don’t resist with force the Egyptians, let’s say, they are going to conquer you and take you into slavery, real quick. Well, now we’ve got the United Nations, something new, just begging us to come to their aid. To stop Stalin. At least in Korea. But thanks to McCarthy and some other traitors, no other word, we couldn’t ask Congress to declare war. So we’re doing this at the request of the whole free world. That’s our job, like it or not. To keep the peace everywhere, even if we have to fight to do it. Vandenberg just wrote me about this so-called Russian peace feeler we got. I wrote him back—he’s pretty sick, sad to say—that this whole thing is just an exact imitation of Japan when it was in Manchuria and Hitler was in the Rhineland and Mussolini was in Ethiopia. All totalitarian societies are alike and once they start getting together, get ready for war.”

  The secretary was in the doorway. “Mr. President, the group is ready if you are, sir.”

  Truman handed the stack of letters to the secretary and rose; Peter and Diana did the same.

  “I’m glad we had this little chat and I’m sorry your honeymoon had to be like this. I’m afraid history has a tendency to tie us in knots when we least expect it. You know, if I hadn’t got into politics after the war, I’d have wanted to be a history teacher.”

  “Surely, sir,” said Peter, “it’s more fun making h
istory than teaching it.”

  Truman smiled. “Well, from what I’ve seen of history-making up close, an awful lot of it is really history-teaching, if you try to do it right. We seem to have—the human race has—a kind of built-in amnesia. So we go through the same trials and tribulations over and over again. Good night.” Truman vanished into the corridor.

  Peter poured himself some more bourbon.

  Diana made herself a drink. “I am no longer temperance,” she said.

  “Does he believe what he’s saying?” Peter was uncertain.

  “I’m afraid,” said Diana, “he does believe every word and he has no doubts, of any kind.”

  2

  The ceremony at the state capitol was solemn but brief, since the President was due to leave before noon. Peter and Diana were led through the surprisingly large crowd by the Governor, along with a number of other officials, many of them surviving witnesses to the birth of their lively state. A north wind blew steadily across American City, so called because the Indian tribes had finally objected to the promiscuous use by white usurpers of their languages as well as land, nations, oil. So the blank adjective “American” had been proposed by Burden. “It has an Italianate ring to it,” he used to say, to the puzzlement of the descendants of the original Scots-Irish settlers of the nation.