Adler, Warren - Banquet Before Dawn

by Banquet Before Dawn [lit]

  "Won't you reconsider the benefits of reporting this?" Perlmutter asked, pleading now.

  "It's not important."

  "Not important?"

  He watched Marvin talking but could not comprehend him. He felt himself sliding somewhere, downward, slowly. From a distance he could hear unfamiliar sounds. He could not make out where he was. But the smell of old brick dust still lingering in his nostrils recalled a familiar point in space and time. He could not understand why he was not panicked as he looked, again, into the faces of the two black boys, menacing, yet frightened and unsure.

  "It's all right," he heard his own voice say. "You've found the right man." Then even that brittle image vanished, and he was sliding further down into oblivion. The next thing he comprehended was himself, heavy- headed, trying to rise from the lumpy bed. It was night.

  He felt a clearly localized twinge of pain in his back. Finally, after much effort, he managed to stand, felt dizziness engulf him, then dissipate. He reached for the robe that lay across the bed and struggled to put it over his pajamas.

  "For crying out loud, Sully," April said, coming into the room. She helped him into the robe. He smiled at her after he tied the belt,

  kissing her on the forehead.

  "Gave you all a bit of a scare, did I?" he said.

  He walked into the shabby living room and sat heavily in the wing chair. April had apparently been dozing on the couch, the television set on. He looked at the bottles on the side board.

  "Drink, Sully?"

  He held up his thumb and index finger in a half circle, meaning a short one. She poured, and handed him the glass. Sipping, he felt the heat against his throat and the reassuring taste of good booze, the good old booze. After a while the pain faded. He looked at April, explored her as he had not done for a long time now. He saw the purplish pockets under her wonderful light-blue eyes. _The end of youth,_ he thought. There were beginnings of jowls, too, and he knew that under the dyed brunet hair the gray had begun. She sat cross-legged on the floor at his feet, her hand in his. He wished he could see her as she had been, the flawless alabaster skin, the solid line of her chin, the trimness of her waist.

  He tried to understand why his eye was finding all those little flaws, nature's symbols of aging. He did not want to look at her in that way. He felt somehow ashamed, as if he had inadvertently me upon some private scene.

  He was conscious of some radical change in the way he was thinking, the way he observed things.

  Had the brush with terror taken the fight out of him, triggered some latent cowardice? But he was not frightened, not remotely. It was as if he had changed roles abruptly from participant to observer and were standing off in an obscure corner observing himself. Who are you kidding, old Sully? the observer seemed to say. We know all about you, you phony, you crud, you "muvvafucker."

  "Muvvafucker," he said aloud.

  April turned. "What?" She hadn't comprehended.

  All the old frames of reference were disappearing. New ones had simply occurred. _What matters?_ he asked himself, enjoying his indifference over the prospect of losing the election.

  "How good that is going to hurt," he mumbled.

  "What hurts?" she asked, just catching part of his statement.

  "I'm fine," he reassured her, squeezing her hand. "Just fine."

  He wanted to explain to her what he was feeling.

  "I don't really care if I lose, April," he said suddenly. "I truly welcome it. I just don't care." He liked hearing it, liked the sound of it as it moved from his lips, the liberation it portended. He finished his drink.

  "What matters?" April said.

  Hearing her say what he had just finished thinking startled him.

  "Well, for one thing you do. Have I let you down, kid?" He watched her as her face formed a puzzled frown. _Was this box better left closed?_ he thought.

  "Let me down? Never, Sully."

  "I've given you a pretty tough life so far."

  "Tough?"

  "Well, maybe that's not the right word." He was silent for a moment, his mind searching.

  "Deception," he said. "That's it. You kind of get conditioned by it. First you deceive yourself. Then the people you allegedly represent. There's your wife, your child, your staff, your friends." He looked at her. "Your girl. You wallow in it. And soon you lose, you really lose, sight of the truth about yourself. You really can't be two people at the same time. One of them gets scared by the other. Don't you see, April? The whole shooting match is a sordid elaborate deception."

  "Come on, Sully. It's politics, that's all it is."

  "That's it, April. Where does deception begin and where does it end?"

  "Well, you haven't deceived me, Sully. Not me."

  "Of course I have."

  "I don't feel deceived. Besides, I've been pretty adaptable."

  "What have you got to show for it? Good God, April, you're the aging other woman."

  "You're right about the aging." He watched a tear crawl out of her right eye. "But I'm not the other woman."

  But that wasn't what he meant at all. After all, what did he have to show for it? Twenty-four years in Congress, a broken marriage, a homosexual son, a constituency he wouldn't even recognize. How he had lied to all of them. He wondered whether they understood just how he had betrayed them all, deceived them.

  "Maybe you've deceived the others, Sully, but not me," April said. "Not me. Maybe all those people out there. Maybe Jean. Maybe Timmy. But not me, Sully." Tears cascaded over lower rims, running down her cheeks.

  "We never married, April."

  "Yes, we did, Sully. In our hearts. We did marry."

  "That's just another deception."

  "What would I have been without you, Sully? Some nondescript little secretary from Pennsylvania. You gave me more than I could ever have dreamed. You never deceived me for one minute, Sully. Not for one minute."

  He knew she could not convince him. But the mention of Timmy had somehow compounded his sense of disturbance. Tomorrow, he would call Timmy. He had to make it up to Timmy. Now there was a deception incarnate, a denial of his own flesh. That, indeed, was deception.

  "I'll be glad when I'm rid of it all," he said suddenly. "There's lots of jobs around for ex-Congressmen. Some of them make a fortune. We'll be out of debt at lastouldn't that be a laugh?" But he knew she did not truly understand what he had been talking about. The last words of his father returned to him now, clearly remembered, the voice and intonation intact: "This country. She's done me in." That, too, he knew, was a deception from the grave.

  ———— *15* "THE fact is, Congressman, you were attacked," Perlmutter was arguing again. "People should know about it. Here is something that can identify you with them."

  "Them?"

  "The put-upon, the terrorized, the intimidated. In its way it's a kind of bolt from the blue. The point is that it is compelling, interesting, and, above all, dramatic."

  "And painful."

  "Please understand, Congressman. You know I'm not that bloodless and indifferent. I'm just being practical and PR-minded."

  "I know."

  "In your own interest. I beg you to reconsider. Don't foreclose on it. Reconsider. We've always maximized our opportunities before."

  "Yes, we have."

  Perlmutter had been trying for nearly an hour to persuade Sully to tell the story of his attack, to get the word out to the press. On the coffee table in front of them was the long telegram sent by the Yomarian forces.

  "It's obvious," Perlmutter said, "that they see it as a plus for you. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent this … this …"

  "…crap," Fitz said. "Pure shit."

  "It's also an indication of the extent of their spies. They know everything. They've got fantastic intelligence. What the hell have we got to lose, Congressman? Hell, we're running out of options. We're losing, Congressman. We need a miracle, and this could be it. It would force the press and TV to cover you from another angle. Hell, in sympathy
alone it's worth its weight in gold. Everybody hates being victimized in the streets. It's the number one issue in the cities these

  days. Your experience could dramatize the problem, could win votes. I just don't understand your reluctance…."

  Sully listened patiently. He liked Perlmutter, understood him. He felt calm, although his back ached where the stitches strained at his flesh.

  "What have we got to lose?" Perlmutter repeated for the tenth time that morning.

  "The question is: What have we got to win?" Sully replied.

  "Well, for one thing, the election."

  Sully thought for a moment.

  "Yes, I guess there's some truth in that. The thing you win is the election."

  "And another two years," Fitz interjected.

  "Elected to represent people I just don't represent…."

  He had stoically resolved that he could not explain his position to any of them. He had no business representing this district. That was a fact of life. It might be called political morality, if words were necessary. Of course, if he said it that way they would think he had lost his mind. Yet he knew that sooner or later he must make them understand.

  "Maybe I'm missing something," Perlmutter said, exasperated.

  "It's dishonest," Sully said.

  "Dishonest?"

  "Yes. There is no way on earth that I can even remotely suggest a way to improve the lot of these people, no way at all. As for street crime, my own experience merely illustrates that it occurs. I have no solutions."

  "Neither does your opponent."

  "That's the point."

  "What point?"

  "No substance. Manipulation, that's all we know, all we've ever known. It's wrong, simply wrong."

  "In what context?" Perlmutter appeared baffled, and Sully knew he was. Sully couldn't even utter the lofty words that seemed jumbled in his head — "morality,"

  "conscience" — because, being brutally honest, there was the matter of guilt. It was guilt that persisted. He wondered how he might have felt if he had not been so heavily challenged, if he did not have this sense of foredoom, if they had not been so damned clever in their attack. Was this then only a rationalization of defeat?

  "You realize, Congressman, that your situation is desperate."

  "Yes, believe it is, in terms of the election."

  "There are no other terms for a politician."

  He ignored the remark, for his mind had suddenly fixed itself on another idea, seizing it with clamping talons, as a hawk reaches for and attacks its prey. _Of course,_ he thought. Enervated, he pointed to the sideboard. April poured him a drink and handed him the glass.

  "How much money exactly have we got left?" he asked, rolling the liquor around in the glass.

  "About twenty thousand dollars," Perlmutter replied.

  "That should be enough." Sully smiled.

  "Enough for what?"

  He sipped his drink and turned toward Fitz, who had slumped in a chair, glass in hand. He had already reached the glazed-look stage.

  "Hey, old Fitz. We're going to have a whip-de-do of an old-fashioned double-barreled political rally, a rally to beat all ralli es." Fitz looked up slowly, then slapped his thigh and stood up.

  "Goddamn, Sully. Goddamn."

  "Right here in the old Dutchman. Food, drink, posters … bands playing … the works."

  "And what will that accomplish?" Perlmutter seemed stunned.

  Again Sully ignored a question from Perlmutter. How could he say

  "expiation" or "public confession"? Yet it was important to explain it

  somehow.

  "It'll be a bash. We'll invite everybody we can."

  "Congressman, this ballroom hasn't been used for years. I doubt if we'll get approval to use the kitchens, not to mention permission of the owners."

  "Fuck the owners," Fitz said, pouring himself another drink.

  "We'll serve acres of fried chicken and beer. It'll be a real old- fashioned rally, a people happening, like the old days, heh, Fitz?" Fitz turned and saluted.

  "You bet your ass." But even through Fitz's enthusiasm Sully could detect hesitation.

  "I just can't go along with it, Congressman," Perlmutter said. "It's sheer folly. Irrational. We'll simply blow lots of money, and that will be that. And it won't do us much good at the polls."

  But Sully knew it was important to him. It was necessary. He had to tell the people. He had to make one last speech, one everlasting statement to these people, who had been victims of his ego, his selfishness, his ignorance, his lack of vision, his shortcomings, his trivial talents, his fraud.

  Fitz, normally pugnacious in his cups, seemed subdued. Sully watched his old friend searching his, Sully's, face for some element of explanation. When he apparently could not find it there, he reached again for the scotch bottle and poured himself a full tumbler. _Poor old Fitz,_ Sully thought. _Poor good old loyal Fitz_.

  Sully saw it so clearly in his mind, the crowded rooms, the people together, touching, being, breaking bread, and drinking together, the ultimate ritual of comradeship. And he would speak to them as they had never been spoken to before, certainly not in a political sense. The words had still not taken shape in his mind. But the piety of the idea had gripped him totally. He felt unburdened at last. _Free, at last,_ he told himself.

  "What have we got to lose?" Sully said, smiling benignly. April poured him another drink.

  "We've already lost," Perlmutter said gloomily, a statement that always triggered the knee-jerk reaction in Fitz.

  "The hell we have," he spluttered on schedule.

  "We're finished, old Fitz," Sully said.

  "If you say so," Perlmutter said, his lips quivering.

  "I want banners and bunting in red, white, and blue. And a band. Surely, we could get a marching band. And a good sound system…."

  "Congressman Sullivan," Perlmutter implored. With some effort, he had got himself under control. "I really don't understand," he said gently. "Have you written it all off, accepted defeat? Is this the last gasp? The last hurrah? If it is, so be it. I'm sure you know that each of us will do our damnedest to make the last gesture, your gesture, important. But don't make us do what we know is wrong from a campaign point of view. Wee all been through too much for that."

  Sully looked into the dark, strong semitic face. His gaze shifted to Fitz, the heavy, sweet Irish face, then to April, who was crying now, the tears brimming her eyes as she looked at him. And he knew at last that it was time, that the time was now, that perhaps now they might understand.

  "Who am I to represent these people?" he asked quietly. "I don't deserve their trust. I have used them basely. I have betrayed a whole generation of constituents. It's as simple as that. Frankly, I'm neither knowledgeable enough nor qualified to cure that disease out there. I saw it in the eyes of those kids who tried to do me in. I saw it lurking out there like a beast. And having seen it, I see now that another term, more power, more cushy years at their expense would be wrong. I could just resign, drop out, but I feel compelled to speak my piece. Maybe

  it's the nature of the beast."

  "If you can't help them, Sully, who will?" April asked.

  "No one will." He sighed. "That's the pity of it."

  "Why not simply resign then?" Perlmutter asked quietly. "Why go through this charade? It won't accomplish anything, except deplete our monies totally."

  "Defeat is important," Sully said smiling. "Hell, why can't you guys let me enjoy my own defeat?"

  "Will that help your constituents? Do you think Yomarian is the answer to their prayers? He is maybe the worst thing that can happen to them, from what I have observed of the ruthlessness of his campaign."

  "He's no more corrupt than the rest of us," Sully said.

  "I still say you can win," Fitz muttered, not yet comprehending what was happening.

  "I don't want to win," Sully said. "Try to understand, old Fitz. It's the end of the line." Fitz turned to the window. His shoulders trem
bled. Sully got up and embraced him. "The world will go on, old Fitz. Sully will still be around to bend a few with his old pal." Fitz gripped Sully's arm tightly.

  "Yeah," he grunted, still keeping his face turned away.

  "I still say it will apppear contrived," Perlmutter said. He was back to his politically pragmatic self. "People will perceive it as a grandstand play, the contrived noble act."