Authors: Gore Vidal
"I wish I could put it down like you do. I can only say it when people listen."
"You feel I've been accurate?"
He nodded solemnly. "Oh, yes . . . it's just as I've always said it, only written down." I realized that he'd already assumed full responsibility (and credit, should there be any) for my composition; I accepted his presumption with amusement. Only Stokharin seemed aware of the humor of the situation. I caught him staring at me with a shrewd expression; he looked quickly away and his mouth was rigid as he tried not to smile. I liked him at that moment: we were the only two, evidently, who had not been possessed by Cave. I felt like a conspirator.
For several days we talked, or rather Paul talked. He had brought with him charts and statements and statistics and, though Cave did not bother to disguise his boredom, he listened most of the time and his questions, when they did occur, were apposite. The rest of us were fascinated by the extent of what Paul referred to as the "first operational phase."
Various projects had already been undertaken; others were put up to the directors for discussion. The mood was, due to Paul's emphatic personality, more like that of a meeting of account-executives in an advertising firm than the pious foregathering of a messiah's apostles . . . and already that word had been used in the press by the curious as well as by the devout. Cave was the messiah to several million Americans, one not come with fire to judge the world, nor one armed with the instruction of a supernatural being whose presence was elsewhere but whose secret word had been given this favorite son . . . no, Cave was of another line: that of the prophets, of the instructors like Jesus before he became Christ, like Mohammed before he became Islam. Cave was the one in our age whose single task it was to speak out, to say the words all men waited for yet dared not speak nor even attend without the overpowering authority of another who had, plausibly, assumed the guise of master. I could not help but wonder as I watched Cave in those hectic conferences if the past had been like this.
Cave certainly had one advantage over his predecessors: modern communications. It took three centuries for Christianity to infest the world. It was to take Cave only three years to conquer Europe and the Americas.
But I did not have this foreknowledge in Florida. I only knew that Paul was handling an extraordinary business in a remarkable way. There was no plan so vast that he could not contemplate its execution with ease. He was exhausting in his energy and, though he did not possess much imagination, he was a splendid improviser, using whatever themes were at hand to create his own dazzling contrapuntal effects with.
We decided upon a weekly magazine to be distributed gratis to the Cavites (I was appointed editor though the real work, of which I was entirely ignorant, was to be done by a crew already at work on the first issue); we determined to send abroad certain films to be shown by Cavite lecturers; we approved the itinerary of Cave's national tour in the fall (Cave was most alive during this discussion; suggesting cities he wanted particularly to see, reveling in the euphony of such names as Tallahassee); we planned several dinners to be held in New York with newspaper editors and political figures and we discussed the advisability of Cave's accepting an invitation to be questioned by the Committee on National Morals and Americanism of the House of Representatives, a remarkably powerful Committee which had begun to show an interest in the progress of our Centers. It was decided that Cave delay meeting them until the time was propitious, or until he had received a subpoena. Paul, with his instinctive sense of the theatrical, did not want to have this crucial meeting take place without a most careful build-up. We discussed the various steps taken or about to be taken by certain state legislatures against the Centers. The states involved were those with either a predominantly Catholic or predominantly Baptist population. Since the Centers had been organized to conform with existing state and federal laws (the lawyers were earning their fees), Paul thought they would have a difficult time in closing any of them. The several laws which had been passed were all being appealed and he was confident of our vindication by the higher courts. Though the established churches were now fighting us with every possible weapon of law and propaganda, we were fully protected, Paul felt, by the Bill of Rights even in its currently abrogated state.
Late in the afternoon after one of the day's conferences had ended, Iris and I swam in the Gulf, the water as warm as blood and the sky soft with evening. We stayed in the water for an hour, not talking, not really swimming, merely a part of the sea and the sky, two lives on a curved horizon, quite alone (for the others never ventured out), only the bored bodyguard on the dock reminded us that the usual world had not slipped away in a sunny dream, leaving us isolated and content in that sea from which our life had come so long ago . . . water to water, I thought comfortably as we crawled up on the beach like new-lunged creatures.
Iris undid her bathing cap and her hair, streaked blonde by the sun (and a little gray as well), fell about her shoulders.
She sighed voluptuously. "If it would always be like this."
"If what?"
"Everything."
"Ah," I ran my hand along my legs and crystals of salt glittered and fell; we were both dusted with light. "You have your work," I added . . . with some malice though I was now under control . . . my crisis resolved after one sleepless night. I could now look at her without longing, without pain; regret was another matter but regret was only a distant relative to anguish.
"I have that, too," she said. "The work uses everything while this . . . is a narcotic. I float without a thought or a desire like . . . like an anemone."
"You don't know what an anemone is, do you?"
She laughed like a child. "How do you know I don't?"
"You said it like somebody reading a Latin inscription."
"What is it?"
I laughed, too. "I don't know. Perhaps something like a jellyfish. It has a lovely sound: sea anemone."
We were interrupted by a motorboat pulling into the dock.
"It's the mail," said Iris. "We'd better go back to the house now."
While we collected towels, the guard on the dock helped the boatman carry two large boxes of groceries and mail to the house.
Between a pair of palm trees, a yard from the door of the house, the bomb went off in a flash of light and gray smoke. A stinging spray of sand blinded Iris and me. The blast knocked me off balance and I fell backward onto the beach. For several minutes, my eyes filled with tears and burning from the coral sand, I was quite blind. When I was finally able to see again, Iris was already at the house trying to force open the door.
One of the palm trees looked as if it had been struck by lightning, all its fronds gone and its base smoldering. The windows of the house were broken and I recall wondering, foolishly, how the air-conditioning could possibly work if the house was not sealed. The door was splintered and most of its paint had been burned off: it was also jammed for Iris could not open it. Meanwhile, from a side door, the occupants of the house had begun to appear, pale and shaken.
I limped toward the house, rubbing my eyes, aware that my left knee had been hurt. I was careful not to look at either the boatman or the guard. Their remains inextricably strewn among tin cans and letters in the bushes.
Paul was the first to speak: a torrent of rage which jolted us all out of fear and shock. Iris, after one look at the dead men, fled into the house. I stood stupidly beside the door, rolling my eyes to dislodge the sand and listening to Paul. Then the other guards came with blankets and gathered up the pieces of the two men. I turned away, aware for the first time that Cave was standing slightly apart, nearest the house. He was very pale. He spoke only once, half to himself for Paul was still ranting: "Let it begin," said Cave softly. "Now, now."
Eight
1
It began indeed, like the first recorded shot of a war. The day after the explosion, we left the island and Cave was flown to another retreat, this time in the center of New York City where, unique in all the world, there can exist true privacy, even invisibility.
The Cavite history of the next two years is publicly known and the private aspects of it do not particularly reveal. It was a time of expansion and of battle.
The opposition closed its ranks. Several attempts were made on all our lives and, six months after our return from Florida, we were all, except the indomitable Clarissa, forced to move into the brand-new Cavite Center, a quickly built but handsome building of yellow glass on Park Avenue. Here on the top floor, in the penthouse which was itself a mansion surrounded by Babylonian gardens and a wall of glass through which the encompassing city rose like stalagmites, Cave and Paul, Stokharin and Iris and I all lived with our bodyguards, never venturing out of the building which resembled, during that time, a military headquarters with guards and adjutants and a maze of officials through whom both strangers and familiars were forced to pass before they could meet even myself, much less Cave.
In spite of the unnaturalness of the life, it was, I think, the happiest time of my life. Except for brief excursions to the Hudson, I spent the entire two years in that one building, knowing at last the sort of security and serenity which monks must have known in their monasteries, in their retreats. I think the others were also content, except for Cave who eventually grew so morose and bored by his confinement that Paul not only had to promise him a world tour but, for his vicarious pleasure, played, night after night in the Center's auditorium, travel films which Cave devoured with eager eyes, asking for certain films to be halted at various interesting parts so that he might examine some landscape or building (never a human being, no matter how quaint); favorite movies were played over and over again, long after the rest of us had gone off to bed, leaving Cave and the projectionist alone with the bright shadows of distant places . . . alone save for the ubiquitous guards.
There were a number of attacks upon the building itself but since all incoming mail and visitors were checked by machinery for hidden weapons there was never a repetition of that island disaster which had had such a chilling effect on all of us. Pickets of course marched daily for two years in front of the Center's door and, on four separate occasions, mobs attempted to storm the building: they were repulsed easily by our guards (the police, for the most Catholic, did not unduly exert themselves in our defense; fortunately, the building had been constructed with the idea of defense in mind).
The life in the Center was busy. In the penthouse each of us had an office and Cave had a large suite where he spent his days watching television and pondering journeys. He did not follow with much interest the doings of the organization though he had begun to enjoy reading the attacks which regularly appeared against him and us in the newspapers. Bishop Winston was the leader of the non-Catholic opposition and his apologias and anathemas inspired us with admiration.
He was, I think, conscious of being the last great spokesman of the Protestant churches and he fulfilled his historic function with wit and dignity and we admired him tremendously. By this time, of course, our victory was in sight and we could show magnanimity to those who remained loyal to ancient systems.
I was the one most concerned with answering the attacks since I was now an editor with an entire floor devoted to the
Cavite Journal
(we were not able to think up a better name). At first it was published weekly and given away free but after the first year it became a daily newspaper, fat with advertising, and sold on newsstands.
Besides my duties as editor, I was also the official apologist and I was kept busy composing dialogues on various ethical matters, ranging from the virtues of cremation to fair business practices. Needless to say, I had a good deal of help and some of my most resounding effects were contrived by others, by anonymous specialists. Each installment, however, of Cavite doctrine (or rationalization as I preferred to think of my work) was received as eagerly by the expanding ranks of the faithful as it was denounced by the Catholic Church and the new league of Protestant Churches under Bishop Winston's guidance.
We received our first serious setback when, in the autumn of our first year in the new building, we were banned from the television networks through a series of technicalities created by Congress for our benefit and invoked without warning. It took Paul's lawyers a year to get the case through the courts which finally reversed the government's ruling. Meanwhile, we counterattacked by creating hundreds of new Centers where films of Cave were shown regularly. Once a week he was televised for the Centers where huge crowds gathered to see and hear him and it was always Paul's claim that the government's spiteful action had, paradoxically, been responsible for the sudden victory of Cavesword: not being able to listen to their idol in their own homes the Cavites, and even the merely curious, were forced to visit the Centers where, in the general mood of camaraderie and delight in the same word, they were organized quite ruthlessly. Stokharin's clinics handled their personal problems. Other departments assumed the guidance and even the support, if necessary, of their children while free medical and educational facilities were made available to all who applied.
At the end of the second year, there were more enrolled Cavites than any other single religious denomination including the Roman Catholic. I published this fact and the accompanying statistics with a certain guilt which, needless to say, my fellow directors did not share. The result of this revelation was a special Congressional hearing.
In spite of the usual confusion attendant upon any of the vigorous old Congress's hearteningly incompetent investigations, this event was well-staged, preparing the way politically, to draw the obvious parallel, for a new Constantine. It took place in March and it was the only official journey any of us, excepting Paul, had made from our yellow citadel for two years. The entire proceedings were televised, a bit of unwisdom on the part of the hostile Congressmen who, in their understandable eagerness for publicity, overlooked their intended victim's complete mastery of that medium. I did not go to Washington but I saw Cave and Paul and Iris off from the roof of the Center. Because of the crowds which had formed in the streets, hoping for a glimpse of Cave, the original plan to fly to Washington aboard a chartered airplane was discarded at the last minute and two helicopters were ordered instead to pick up Cave and his party on the terrace in front of the penthouse, a mode of travel not then popular. Paul saw to it that the departure was filmed. A dozen of us who were not going stood about among the trees and bushes while the helicopters hovered a few feet above the roof, their ladders dangling. Then Cave appeared with Paul and Iris while a camera crew recorded their farewell and departure. Cave looked as serene as ever, quite pale in his dark blue suit and white shirt . . . a small austere figure with downcast eyes. Iris was bright-faced from the excitement and cold; there was a sharp wind on the roof which tangled her hair.