I sucked his cock, but what he really wanted was to suck mine. I tried to tell him I didn’t do that, I didn’t care about my cock, but I could see that it meant so much to him. But what he really needed came later, when I held him in my arms like a little boy, and he told me about the men--boys, really-he had killed. Described their faces to me. Every one of them. This tough, tough sergeant. I’d never heard him talk in anything except four-letter words. But he was almost poetic when he was describing their faces. And he remembered every one.
Men have it so hard. With all the heartache, I’m glad I am what I am.
Love, Christine
Special to the
New York Herald Tribune
April 16, 1953
MOSSADEGH VICTORY ANNOUNCED
TEHERAN --The Ministry of the Interior announced tonight that the Government had won the plebiscite on Premier Mohammed Mossadegh’s appeal for authority to dissolve the Majlis (Parliament) by 2,043,389 votes to 1,207. The official announcement cleared the way for the President to dissolve the chamber, which he may do in a nationwide broadcast tomorrow.
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/16)
FROM: IRVING KRISTOL
TO: LARRY DARRELL
WHAT THE HELL? WE WERE SUPPOSED TO RIG THE MAJLIS TO THROW MOSSADEGH OUT! WHAT’S GOING WRONG? KRISTOL
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/16)
FROM: LARRY DARRELL
TO: IRVING KRISTOL
DON’T WORRY. WE HAVE THE MILITARY.
DARRELL
FROM THE DESK OF:
Jake Barnes
By Messenger
April 16, 1953
Dear Nick--
What the hell, Nick, what the hell.
Writing doesn’t have to be like that. Jesus, we’d all shoot ourselves. You’re a good man, but you work too hard. Just remember what I keep telling you--find that one true sentence, write it down, and the rest followeth like a pack of mangy dogs after a bitch in heat.
As for seducing grown women and turning boys into men, these are adventures that can exist outside the written page. It can all be fuckingly complicated, but maybe worth the while.
Meanwhile, here’s your chance to get your feet wet again. After I finish tomorrow’s column, I’m heading up to Denmark for a couple of weeks. I’m going to ask you to fill in for me for one of those weeks. I’ve got that kid Buchwald from the copy desk set for the other. I’ll fill you in when I can.
Yours,
Jake
PS. Thanks for minding the store.
New York Herald Tribune
Paris Edition, April 17, 1953
THE BARNES DOOR
PARIS--When I was ten years old, my old man took me to the Tercentenary Exposition in Jamestown, Virginia. I ate Jell-O, and I saw moving pictures, and I watched a carriage move along a street without a horse attached to it. My father told me “Son, America is the greatest country in the world.” I believed it then, and I believe it now.
The difference is that then I thought it was an eternal truth, as infinite as the air we breathe. Now I know it’s something we have to work at to keep it that way. Work hard. Every day of our lives.
You see, it doesn’t take much to let a beautiful dream go sour. All it takes is a few bad people getting busy, and a few good people getting lazy. At the end of the war I saw an America that was looked to as a beacon of hope and a bastion of liberty throughout the world, if not always by the governments, then certainly by the people. I’m talking about the guys who worked in the fields and the factories and the offices, who prayed in churches and synagogues, who dreamed of one day being able to raise their families in freedom, and who believed that America would be their champion. That’s the way America looked to them then, and I thought that would last my lifetime.
Now I’m getting uneasy. I’m not saying it’s gone, not by a long shot. But Americans who fought for freedom are being told today that freedom has its limits. There’s a frenzy loose in Washington, where a man I know was hounded out of his job and robbed of his good name with nobody bothering to give a reason. “They don’t need reasons,” he told me. “Reason just slows them down. It’s more like the fascism we fought than the principles we fought it with.” The thugs in Washington are riding roughshod over the rights that looked so inalienable just a few short years ago, and if the real Americans don’t speak up, those rights won’t be there when we go to look for them.
I hear the people who run things may not be content to trample American constitutional rights. There’s a certain popular government in the Middle East, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, that is in very real danger of perishing from this earth. It could happen because there are shadowy, cold-faced men in the air-conditioned halls of Washington who think it suits their purposes, and don’t believe there’s anything that can stop them.
And it’s starting to happen right now. There are forces at work in that certain country right now, buying the cooperation of newspapers, fermenting military unrest, coordinating street demonstrations --hiring thugs to break windows and rough up storekeepers while carrying signs denouncing the government, then hiring more thugs to do the same while carrying signs praising the government.
When we start protecting America by denying freedom at home and imposing our will abroad, it may not matter anymore how many movies and automobiles we have, or even how much Jell-O. If we want to go on being the greatest country in the world, we need to think hard about what made us that in the first place.
Note: Jake Barnes will be on vacation for the next two weeks. In this space, enjoy columns by Art Buchwald next week, and Nicholas Carraway the following week.
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/17)
FROM: NICHOLAS CARRAWAY
TO: ALLEN DULLES
BARNES LEAK NOT FROM ME. BARNES MUST HAVE HAD COLUMN IN BEFORE I HEARD FROM YOU. I REMAIN A PATRIOT, WOULD NEVER REVEAL CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO TO HELP TURN THIS SITUATION AROUND.
CARRAWAY
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/17)
FROM: LARRY DARRELL
TO: ALLEN DULLES
GOT AN OPERATIVE I NEED YOU TO INSTALL IN EMBASSY IN TEHRAN. MAKE HIM CHARGé D’AFFAIRES OR WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT TO CALL HIM TO GIVE HIM STANDING. NAME: ALDEN CARRAWAY. FILE BEING DELIVERED BY HAND. CRUCIAL.
DARRELL
Special to the
New York Herald Tribune
April 17, 1953
MOSSADEGH CHARGES DISTORTION ON IRAN
TEHERAN--Premier Mohammed Mossadegh broadcast his thanks today to the Iranian people for their plebiscite vote dissolving the Majlis, then accused “some world statesmen” of misinterpreting and distorting events in Iran.
“Some foreigners endeavor to misinterpret and distort any step the Iranian nation takes to realize its aspirations because the Iranian people have forged a bond of unity and are resolved to cut off the hands that foreigners have extended into their country, which is the very thing of which a particular group is afraid.”
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/18)
FROM: IRVING KRISTOL
TO: LARRY DARRELL
WHOSE HANDS IS HE TALKING ABOUT? STRONGLY SUGGEST ABORTING MISSION. KRISTOL
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/18)
FROM: LARRY DARRELL
TO: IRVING KRISTOL
DON’T WORRY. HE DOESN’T MEAN US. MOSSY FIGURES IT’S THE BRITISH. HE WON’T KNOW WHAT HIT HIM.
DARRELL
Hotel D’Angleterre
KONGENS NYTORV 34
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
April 19
Dear Chris,
Trip was swell. Sat across the aisle from a young Danish wench who kept looking at me with contemplative gravity. Like she was sizing up a bull at auction. Displayed my return ticket prominently in my lap. As if to say catch me on the way back, honey, when I’m better prepared. Did I mention she was a nun?<
br />
Your Dr. Hamburger met me at the station. Eager sonofabitch, ain’t he? Thought he was going to perform the surgery in the goddam cab. Positively effervescent after examination--I’m a textbook candidate-of course, it’s his fucking textbook--he’s having the operating theater enlarged and inviting camera crews from Pathé News--and Louella Parsons and Dorothy Kilgallen will be on hand to broadcast the operation live over Mutual Radio. All contingent naturally on my okay.
Ah, there’s the $64 question. Do I speak now, or forever hold my piece? I feel like you’re the only person in the world who might understand my dilemma, and then I reflect that you went the other way and have no idea what the fuck I’m talking about. Don’t mind me, Chris--we writing chaps have words by the thousands--dozens, anyway-to choose from, and I have but to make my choice from two:
Yes or No?
Or there’s Maybe ...
Love always,
Jake
Hotel de l’Odeon
Paris
April 19, 1953
Dear Ronnie,
I asked Jake if he had ever heard of Ruth Brown, and he hadn’t, but he knows this little tiny shop where they have the latest American records, and he went and bought some of hers.
Then he went back to the shop a few hours later and bought every record on your friend Jerry’s label.
I think Jake is really starting to miss the USA. I’m not so sure I am. Except for one person.
With much affection,
Nick
Special to the
New York Herald Tribune
April 19, 1953
SHAH FLEES IRAN AFTER MOVE TO DISMISS MOSSADEGH FAILS
TEHERAN -- Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi and his Queen fled Baghdad, Iraq, today after a coup attempt to oust Premier Mohammed Mossadegh had failed. Dr. Mossadegh appeared to be in complete control tonight, with the bulk of the Army apparently supporting him.
The attempt to remove the Premier was made at midnight. By dawn, Government forces had freed arrested officials, and had in their turn arrested Colonel Nasiri, commander of the palace guard, and scores of other persons, including military officers. The stroke and counterstroke were carried out without bloodshed.
The 72-year-old Premier clearly was master of the situation, at least for the time being, but the details of just what happened are confused.
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/19)
FROM: IRVING KRISTOL
TO: LARRY DARRELL
MISSION HAS FAILED. IMPERATIVE YOU GET OUT OF IRAN AT ONCE.
KRISTOL
Hotel de l’Odeon
Paris
April 19, 1953
Dear Ronnie,
I received a cryptic note from Jake, who has hied himself off to Denmark for reasons unstated. So I’m alone with a bottle of aquavit and my thoughts.
I’m glad you liked Trimalchio in West Egg. I feel so damned distant from it now, and yet in a way it feels like the only decent thing I’ve ever done with my life.
After Jimmy Gatz died, when I sat down to write about him, I didn’t know I was going to write a novel, or even what writing a novel meant. Hell, I didn’t even know I was going to write. I just knew that before I could get on with my life, I had to figure out what had just happened.
The notes that became Trimalchio were the beginnings of me trying to figure out not just who Gatz was, but why he was so damned important to me. The more I wrote, the more the writing itself started to matter. I found that I didn’t simply want to understand what was important; I wanted to find the words to express it.
As the days slipped into weeks, and the weeks into months--well, a few months-the emphasis started to shift. I was still trying to figure out Gatz, but I found myself more and more loving the process of writing. I was going back over the stuff I’d written, not just to make sure I’d gotten it right, but to make sure I’d written it well ... and I didn’t really even know what good writing was. I just knew that I was starting to hear words differently, and that suddenly I cared more than I could say about how words sounded, and how they looked when they started grouping together on a page.
I finished the writing, and I sent it to a publisher, and wonder of wonders, it came out as a book. It’s like babies, or spinning gold from straw, I have no idea how it works. The book got a few good reviews, and a few bad ones, and was otherwise massively ignored by the incognoscenti. I suspect that the title didn’t help. No one knew what the hell “Trimalchio” meant. It’s a literary allusion, which is the kiss of death-the original Trimalchio was a character in Petronius’s The Satyricon, a coarse parvenu who is respected by no one, and whose only entrée into polite society is his money. (Over here in France, observing Americans throwing their weight and money around, I wonder if our country may be the Gatsby, the Trimalchio, of the postwar era.)
So the book sank beneath the swells of public notice, and after Margery and I got engaged, it was understood that my little writing aberration was at an end. In years to come, my mother would refer to it as “that time when you had the flu.”
Now ... it’s probably too late. It’s probably too late for a lot of things, and maybe I never had the equipment to start with. And I still don’t know what good writing is. It’s not too late for you, though. I remember when we hired you for Snicklepoo and the Baby Sitter. You were what ... nineteen? We were looking for someone who could relate to children, but could also project on television. To me, that meant someone who could sing a song. To our director, Jimmie Dodd, it meant, “It doesn’t matter how old they are. The only thing that sells on television is sex. What I’d really like is to find a girl who’s just starting to develop, and let the audience tune in to see how much her titties have grown every week.”
Oh, lord. I shouldn’t have said that. But I’m trying not to edit myself with you anymore. Something’s been growing in this correspondence, something every bit as mysterious and wonderful as the process Jimmie Dodd referred to, and I think we need to see each other one of these fine days to figure out just what it is. Your side of the Atlantic, or mine?
I listened to the singers you mentioned in your letter. Jake had a few of them, and I bought the rest from that little record store I told you about. I’d really never heard any of them, except Ella Fitzgerald. I liked all of them--especially Chris Connor. That smoky voice of hers reminds me of the youth I wish I’d had. It sounds like the way the Jazz Age should have been.
Love,
Nick
PS. Jake left his Trib column in my custody while he’s on his Denmark retreat. I’m to split the duties with a young fellow named Buchwald. I’m making him go first. What the hell am I going to write about?
Special to the
New York Herald Tribune
April 19, 1953
SHAH TO GO ON TO PARIS
BAGHDAD -- Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi arrived here unexpectedly in his private plane after Iran’s Premier Mossadegh had crushed an attempted military coup by officers of the Shah’s Imperial Guard. With the Shah were his queen, Soraya, an aide and a pilot.
Neither had any luggage; piles of clothes belonging to the royal couple were strewn inside the twin-engined Beechcraft plane.
The Shah, 33, and his wife, 21, planned to travel from Baghdad to Paris. After high-level government consultations, they were escorted to the government’s guest house.
The Shah’s aide emphasized that he has not abdicated and did not intend to abdicate.
Meanwhile in Teheran, pro-Mossadegh mobs threw down from their pedestals statues of Shah Mohammed Reza. As crowds began battering the statue in Parliament Square, the Communists were driven off by police, but Nationalist, Paniranist, and Socialist bands were allowed to continue the destruction unmolested.
For two hours, men sawed at the ankles of the bronze statue, while others chanted songs written overnight on the flight of the Shah. Finally, a motorized crane was brought into action and the statue was toppled with a great clank amid loud cheers.
Similar
anti-Shah sentiment was shown by the removal of virtually all his pictures from homes, restaurants, offices, and even Government Ministries.
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/20)
FROM: ALLEN DULLES
TO: LARRY DARRELL
OUR REPORTS SAY MOBS IN STREET HEAVILY PROMOSSADEGH. YOU’VE BOTCHED IT.
DULLES
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/20)
FROM: LARRY DARRELL
TO: ALLEN DULLES
DOESN’T MATTER, AS LONG AS THEY’RE IN THE STREETS. SITUATION JUST WHERE I WANT IT.
DARRELL
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/20)
FROM: ALLEN DULLES
TO: LARRY DARRELL
MISSION IS ABORTED. REPEAT, ABORTED. GET OUT OF TEHERAN AT ONCE. TOO DANGEROUS. WE ARE NO LONGER IN THE COUP BUSINESS.
DULLES
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/20)
FROM: LARRY DARRELL
TO: ALLEN DULLES
ARE YOU KIDDING? I’VE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT! CARRAWAY CARD READY TO PLAY. DO YOU REALIZE WE HAVE A CHANCE TO OVERTHROW A REAL GOVERNMENT? THIS IS BETTER THAN TANTRIC SEX!
DARRELL
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/21)
FROM: ALLEN DULLES
TO: LARRY DARRELL
WHERE ARE YOU? REPORT IN AT ONCE. I REPEAT-WE ARE NO LONGER IN THE COUP BUSINESS. SHAH PLANNING TO ANNOUNCE ABDICATION AFTER WE DEBRIEF HIM. WE NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU RIGHT AWAY.
DULLES
(ENCRYPTED AND DECODED)
(4/21)
FROM: P. RADCLIFFE JONES
TO: ALLEN DULLES
UNABLE TO LOCATE MR. DARRELL TO DELIVER YOUR LAST CABLE. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.
P. RADCLIFFE JONES, DEPUTY COUNSELOR OF
Nick and Jake Page 9