Authors: Gore Vidal
"You think I'm right to propose it?"
"Of course. It will happen anyway."
"Yet I'm disturbed at the thought of all that power in the hands of the state: they can make the children believe anything; they can impose the most terrible tyranny; they can blind at birth so that none might ever see anything again but what a few rulers, as ignorant as they, finally, will want them to see. There'll be a time when all people are nearly alike."
"Which is precisely the ideal society. No mysteries, no romantics, no discussions, no persecutions because there's no one to persecute. When all have received the same conditioning, it will be like . . ."
"Insects."
"Who have existed longer than ourselves and will outlast our race by many comfortable millennia."
"Is existence everything?"
"There is nothing else."
"Then likeness is the aim of human society?"
"Call it harmony. You think of yourself only as you are now dropped into the midst of a society of dull conformists. That's where you make your mistake. You'll not live to see it for, if you did, you would be someone else, a part of it. No one of your disposition could possibly happen in such a society. There would be no rebellion against sameness because difference would not, in any important sense, exist, even as a proposition. You think: how terrible! but think again how wonderful it would be to belong to the pack, to the tribe, to the race, without guilt or anxiety or division."
"I cannot imagine it."
"No more can they imagine you."
"This will happen?"
"Yes, and you will have been a part of it."
"Through Cave?"
"Partly, yes. There will be others after him. His work in the future will be distorted by others, but that's to be expected."
"I don't like your future, Clarissa."
"Nor does it like you, my dear. The idea of someone who is gloomy and at odds with society, bitter and angry, separate from others . . . I shouldn't wonder but that you yourself might really be used as a perfect example of the old evil days."
"Virtue dies?"
"Virtue becomes the property of the race."
"Imagination is forbidden?"
"No, only channeled for the good of all."
"And this is a desirable world? the future you describe?"
"Desirable for whom? For you, no. For me, not really. For the people in it? Well, yes and no. They will not question their estate but they will suffer from a collective boredom which . . . but my lips are sealed. Your tea was delicious though the bread was not quite fresh; but then bachelors never keep house properly. I've gone on much too long; do forget everything I've said. I'm indiscreet. I can't help it."
She rose, a cloud of gray suspended above the porch. I walked her across the lawn to the driveway where her car was parked. The breeze had, for the moment, died and the heat prickled me unpleasantly; my temples itched as the sweat started.
"Go on with it," she said as she got into her car. "You may as well be on the side of the future as against it. Not that it much matters anyway. When your adorable President Jefferson was in Paris he said . . ." But the noise of the car starting drowned the body of her anecdote. I caught only the end: "That harmony was preferable. We were all amused; I was the only one who realized that he was serious."
Dust swirled and Clarissa was gone down the drive at a great speed, keeping, I noticed, to the wrong side of the road. I hoped this was an omen.
5
I got through an unusually sultry July without much interference from either Cave or the world. Paul paid me a quick visit to get the manuscript of the dialogues and I was reminded of those accounts of the progresses made by monarchs in other days, or rather of great ministers, for his party occupied four large cars which gleamed side by side in my driveway like glossy beasts while their contents, Paul and fourteen assistants, all strange to me save Stokharin, wandered disconsolately about the lawn until their departure.
Paul, though brisk, was cordial. "Trouble all over the map but b-i-g t-r-o-u-b-l-e," he spelled it out with relish, size was important, I knew, to a publicist, even to one turned evangelist.
"Is Cave disturbed by it?"
"Doesn't pay any attention. Haven't seen him but Iris keeps me posted. By the way, we're hiring a plane the first week in August to go see him, Stokharin and me. Want to come along?"
I didn't but I said I would. I had no intention of being left out of anything: there was
my
work still to do.
"I'll let you know details. This is hot stuff?" He waved the sheaf of papers I'd given him.
"Real hot," I said but my irony was too pale, only primary colors caught Paul's eye.
"I hope so. Got any new stunts?"
I told him, briefly, about my thoughts on marriage or rather Cave's thoughts. The literary device was for me to ask him certain questions and for him to answer them or, at least, to ask pointed questions in his turn. Cheerfully, I had committed Cave to my own point of view and I was somewhat nervous about his reaction, not to mention the others. So far, only Clarissa knew and her approval was pleasant but perhaps frivolous: it carried little weight, I knew, with the rest.
Paul whistled. "You got us a tall order. I'm not sure we'll be able to handle that problem yet, if ever."
"I've done it carefully," I began.
Stokharin, who had been listening with interest, came to my aid. "In the Centers we, how you say, Paul? soft-pedal the family. We advise young boys to make love to the young girls without marrying or having babies. We speak of the family as a social unit, and society changes. I am most eager to study Mr Luther's approach. Perhaps a little aid from those of us in clinical work . . ."
But then the dark sedans began to purr; nervous attendants whispered to Paul and I was soon left alone with the fragments of our brief conversation to examine and interpret at my leisure. I was surprised and pleased at Stokharin's unexpected alliance. I had thought of him as my chief antagonist. But then, my work finished, I tended roses and read Cassius Dio until the summons in August came.
6
The plane landed on a glare of blue water, more blinding even than the vivid sky about the sun itself which made
both
elements seem to be a quivering blue fire in which was destroyed all of earth save a tiny smear of dusty faded green, the island of our destination.
The pilot maneuvered the plane against a bone-gray dock where, all alone, Iris stood, her hair tangled from the propellers' wind and her eyes hidden by dark glasses. Like explorers in a new country, Paul, Stokharin and I scrambled onto the dock, the heat closing in about us like blue canvas, stifling, palpable. I gasped and dropped my suitcase. Iris laughed and ran forward to greet us; she came first to me which, even in my dazzled, shocked state, I realized and valued.
"Gene, you must get out of that suit this minute! and get some dark glasses or you'll go blind. Paul, how are you? It's good to see you, Doctor." And, in the chatter of greetings, she escorted us off the dock and across a narrow white beach to a grove of palm trees where the cottage stood.
To our delight, the interior was cooled by machinery. I sank into a wicker chair even while Cave was pumping my hand. Iris laughed, "Leave him alone, John. He's smothered by the heat."
"No hat," said Cave solemnly after the first greeting which, in my relief, I'd not heard. "You'll get sunstroke."
Paul was now in charge. The heat which had enervated both Stokharin and me filled him with manic energy, like one of those reptiles which absorb vitality from the sun.
"What a great little place, John! Had no idea there were all the comforts of home down here, none at all. Don't suppose you go out much?"
Cave, unlike Iris, was not tanned though he had, for him, a good color, a ruddiness of tone unlike his usual sallowness.
"I don't get too much sun," he admitted. "We go fishing sometimes, early in the morning. Most of the time I just hang around the house and look at the letters, and read some." I noticed on the table beside me an enormous pile of travel magazines, tourist folders and atlases: this had obviously been Cave's reading. I anticipated trouble.
Paul prowled restlessly about the modern living room with its shuttered sealed windows. Stokharin and I, like fish back in their own element after a brief excursion on land, gasped softly in our chairs while Iris told us of the keys, of their fishing trips. She was at her best here as she had been that other time in Spokane . . . being out of doors, in Cave's exclusive company, brought her to life in a way the exciting busyness of New York did not. In New York she seemed like an object through which an electric current passed; here on this island, in the sun's glare, she had unfolded, petal after petal until the secret interior seemed almost exposed. I was conscious of her as a lovely woman and, without warning, I experienced desire: that sharp rare longing which, in me, can reach no climax. Always before she had been a friend, a companion whose company I had jealously valued: her attention alone had been enough to satisfy me, but on this day I saw her as a man entire might and I plummeted into despair while talking of Plato.
"The Symposium was the model, yes. There are other ways of casting dialogues such as introducing the celebrated dead brought together for a chat in Limbo. I thought, though, that I should keep the talk to only two. Cave and myself . . . Socrates and Alcibiades." Alcibiades was precisely the wrong parallel but I left it uncorrected, noticing how delicately the hollow at the base of her throat quivered with life's blood and although I attempted, as I often had before with bitter success, to think of her as so much mortal flesh, the body and its beauty only pulp and bone, only beautiful to a human eye . . . hideous, no doubt, to the eye of a geometric progression . . . that afternoon I was lost and I could not become, even for a moment, an abstract intelligence again: I saw the bone; I saw the dust, yet I saw her existing, despite her nature and her fate, triumphant in the present. I cursed the flaw in my own flesh and hated life.
"We liked it very much," she said, not divining my mood, unaware of my sudden passion and its attendant despair.
"You don't think it's too strong, do you? All morality, not to mention the churches, will be aligned against us."
"John was worried at first . . . not that opposition frightens him and it is his idea; I mean you wrote the dialogue but it reflects exactly what he's always thought." Though in love's agony, I looked at her sharply to make certain she was perfectly serious: she was; this helped soothe the pain. She had been hypnotized by Cave. I wondered how Clarissa could ever have thought it was the other way around.
"In a way we're already on record," Iris looked thoughtfully across the room at Cave who was showing Paul and Stokharin a large map of some strange country. "The Centers have helped a good many couples to adjust to one another without marriage and without guilt."
"But then there's the problem of what to do with the children when the family breaks up."
Iris sighed. "I'm afraid that's already a problem. Our Centers are taking care of a good many children already. A number, of course, go out for adoption to bored couples who need something to amuse them. I suppose we'll have to establish nurseries as a part of each Center until, finally, the government assumes the responsibility."
"
If
it becomes Cavite."
"When it becomes Cavite." She was powerful in her casualness.
"Meanwhile there are laws of adoption which vary from state to state and, if we're not careful, we're apt to come up against the law."
"Paul looks after us," she smiled. "Did you know that he has nearly a hundred lawyers on our pay roll? All protecting us."
"From what?" I had not kept track of this.
"Lawsuits . . . mostly attempts by state legislatures to outlaw the Centers on the grounds of immorality and so on. The lawyers are kept busy all the time."
"Why haven't I read about any of this in the papers?"
"We've been able to keep things fairly quiet. Paul is marvelous with the editors . . . several have even joined us, by the way . . . secretly, of course."
"What's the membership now?"
Iris gestured. "No one knows. We have thirty Centers in the United States and each day they receive hundreds of new Cavites. I suspect there are at least four million by now."
I gasped, beginning to recover at last from the heat, from my unexpected crisis of love. "I had no idea things were going so fast."
"Too fast. We haven't enough trained people to look after the Centers and on top of that we've got to set up new Centers. Paul has broken the country up into districts, all very methodical: so many Centers per district each with a Resident in charge. Stokharin is taking care of the clinical work."
"Where's the money coming from?"
"In bushels from heaven," Iris smiled. "We leave all that up to Paul. I shouldn't be surprised if he counterfeits it. One thing I know, though, I
must
get back to New York soon, to the school. I shouldn't really have gone off in the middle of everything but I was tired and John wanted company so I came."
"How is he?"
"As you see: calm. I don't believe he ever thinks of any of our problems. He never talks about them; never reads the reports Paul sends him. He seldom reads the attacks from the churches and we get several a day, not to mention threatening mail. It's got so bad that we now have full-time bodyguards."
"You think people are
seriously
threatening him?"
"I don't know how serious they are but we can't take chances. Fortunately, almost no one knows we're here and, so far, no cranks have got through from the mainland. We get our groceries and mail brought in by boat every other day from Key Largo. Otherwise, we're marooned here."
I looked about me for some sign of the guards but they were elsewhere: a Cuban woman glumly vacuuming in the next room was the only visible stranger.
Cave abandoned his maps and atlases long enough to tell me how much the dialogues pleased him.