Authors: Gore Vidal
"The work will be done whether he lives or not, as you certainly know. He's given it the first impetus. The rest is up to the others, to the ambitious, the inspired . . . we've met enough of
them
these last few years: they're quite capable of finishing the work without us."
"But it's nothing without Cave."
I shrugged. I was suddenly relieved as the restraint of three furious years went in a rush. "I am as devoted to Cave as anyone," I said (and I was, I think, honest). "I don't want him to die but all of you in your madness have made it impossible for him to live. He's gone now to the limit, to the last boundary: he is the son of death and each of you supports him. I don't, for it was only my wish to make life better, not death desirable. I never really believed it would come to this: that you, Cave, would speak out for death, against life." I raised my eyes to his. To my astonishment he had lowered his lids as though to hide from me, to shut me out. His head was shaking oddly from left to right and his lips were pressed tight together.
I struck again, without mercy. "But don't stop now. You've got your wish. By all means, build palaces if you like for those who choose to die in your name. But remember that you will be their victim, too. The victim of their passionate trust. They will force you to lead the way and you must be death's lover, Cave."
He opened his eyes and I was shocked to see them full of tears. "I'm not afraid," he said.
Nine
1
A few days after our disastrous dinner, Clarissa came to me in my office. It was our first real meeting since her return from Europe. It was also my first meeting with any one of the directors for, since the scene on the penthouse terrace, none had come near me, not even Paul whom I usually saw at least once a day.
Clarissa seemed tired but fashionable in summer lace. She sat down heavily in the chair beside my desk and looked at me oddly. "Recriminations?" I asked cheerfully: the recent outburst had restored me to perfect health and equanimity. I was prepared for anything, especially battle.
"You're an absolute fool and you know it," she said at last. "I suppose there are wires in here, recording everything we say."
"I shouldn't be surprised. Fortunately, I have no secrets."
"There's no doubt of that," she glared at me. "There was no need to rush things."
"You mean you anticipated this?"
"What else? Where else could it lead? The same thing happened to Christ, you know. They kept pushing him to claim the kingdom. Finally, they pushed too hard and he was killed. It was the killing which perpetuated the legend."
"And a number of other things."
"In any case, it's all gone too far. Also, I don't think you even begin to see what you've done."
"Done? I've merely brought the whole thing into the open . . . as well as put myself on record as being opposed to this . . . this passion for death."
"That of course is nonsense. Just because a few nitwits . . ."
"A few? Have you seen the statistics? Every month there are a few hundred more and as soon as Stokharin gets his damned roadhouses for would-be suicides going we may find that . . ."
"I always assumed Paul made up the statistics. But even if they
are
true, even if a few hundred thousand people decide to slip away every year, I am in favor of it. There are too many people as it is and most of them aren't worth the room they take up. I suspect all this is just one of nature's little devices to reduce the population . . . like pederasty on those Greek islands."
"You're outrageous."
"I'm perfectly rational which is more than I can say for you. Anyway, the reason I've come to see you today is, first, to warn you and, second, to say good-by."
"Good-by? You're not . . ."
"Going to kill myself?" she laughed. "Not in a hundred years . . . though I must say lately I've begun to feel old. No, I'm going away. I've told Paul that I've had my fun, that you're all on your own and that I want no part of what's to come."
"Where will you go?"
"Who knows? Now for the warning: Paul of course is furious at you and so is Iris."
"Perfectly understandable. What did he say?"
"Nothing good. I talked to him this morning. I won't enrage you by repeating all the expletives; it's enough to say he's eager to get you out of the way. He feels you've been a malcontent all along."
"He'll have trouble getting me to take Stokharin's magic pill."
"He may not leave it up to you," said Clarissa significantly, and, inadvertently, I shuddered. I had of course wondered if they would dare go so far. I had doubted it but the matter-of-fact Clarissa enlightened me. "Watch out for him, especially if he becomes friendly. You must remember that with the country Cavite and with Paul in charge of the organization you haven't much chance."
"I'll take what I have."
Clarissa looked at me without, I could see, much hope; it was disagreeable. "What you don't know, and this is my last good deed for in a sense I'm responsible for getting you into this, is that you accidentally gave the game away."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that Paul has been planning for over a year to do away with Cave. He feels that Cave's usefulness is over; he's also uneasy about letting him loose in the world. Paul wants full control of the establishment and he can't have it while Cave lives. Paul also realizes . . . he's much cleverer than you've ever thought, by the way . . . that the Cavites need a symbol, some great sacrifice and obviously Cave's suicide is the answer. It is Paul's intention either to get Cave to kill himself or else to do it for him and then announce that Cave, of his own free will, chose to die."
I had the brief sensation of a man drowning. "How do you know all this?"
"I have two eyes; also, Iris told me."
"She knows too?"
"Of course she knows! Why else do you think she's so anxious to get Cave away from this place? She knows Paul can have him killed at any time and no one would be the wiser."
I grunted with amazement: I understood now what it was that had happened on the terrace. I felt a perfect fool. Of them all I alone had been unaware of what was going on beneath the surface and, in my folly, I had detonated the situation without knowing it. "
He
knows too?" I asked weakly.
"Of course he does; he's on his guard every minute against Paul."
"Why has no one ever told me this?"
Clarissa shrugged. "They had no idea which side you'd take. They still don't know. Paul believes that you are with him and though he curses you for an impetuous fool, he's decided that perhaps it's a good idea now to bring all this into the open, at least among ourselves. He hopes for a majority vote in the directors' meeting to force Cave to kill himself."
"And Cave?"
"Has no wish to die . . . sensible man."
"I am a fool."
"What I've always told you, dear." Clarissa smiled at me. "I will say, though, that you are the only one of the lot who has acted for an impersonal reason, and certainly none of them understands you except me. I am on your side, in a way. Voluntary deaths don't alarm me the way they do you but this obsession which Cave has of death being preferable to life may have ghastly consequences."
"What can I do?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. It's enough that you were warned in advance."
"What would
you
do?"
"Exactly what I'm going to do: pull out for good and take a long trip."
"I mean if you were I."
She sighed. "Save your life, if possible; that's all you can do."
"I have a few weapons, you know. I have the
Journal
and I'm a director. I have friends in every Center." This was almost true. I had made a point of knowing as many Residents as possible. "I also have Iris and Cave on my side since I'm willing to do all I can to keep him alive, that he not become a supreme symbol."
"I wish you luck," Clarissa was most cynical. She rose "Now that I've done my bit of informing, I'm off."
"Europe?"
"None of your business. But I
will
tell you I won't go back there: they've gone quite mad too. In Madrid I pretended to be a Catholic and I watched them put Cavites up before firing squads. Of course our people, despite persecution, are having a wonderfully
exciting
time with passwords and peculiar college fraternity handclasps and so on." She collected her gloves and handbag from the floor where, as usual, she had strewn them.
"Well, now good-by." She gave me a kiss; then she was gone. I never saw her again.
2
Events moved rapidly. I took to bolting my bedroom door at night and, during the day, I was careful always to have one or another of my assistants near me. It was a strange sensation to be living in a modem city with all its police and courts and yet to fear that, in a crisis, there would be no succor, no one to turn to for aid and protection. We were a separate government within the nation and the laws did not reach us.
The day after Clarissa had said good-by, Paul appeared in my office. I was surrounded by editors but at a look from him and a gesture from me they withdrew. We had each kept our secret, evidently, for none of those close to us in that building suspected that there had been a fatal division.
"I seem to be in disgrace," I said, my forefinger delicately caressing the buzzer which I had built into the arm of my chair so that I might summon aid in the event that a visitor proved to be either a bore or a maniac, two types curiously drawn to enterprises such as ours.
"I wouldn't say that." Paul sat in a chair close to my own; I recall thinking, a little madly, that elephants are supposed to be at their most dangerous when they are quite still. Paul was noticeably controlled. Usually he managed to cross the room at least once for every full sentence; now he sat looking at me, his face without expression.
"I've seen no one since our dinner except Clarissa," I explained; then I added, earnestly: "I wonder where she plans to go. She didn't . . ."
"You've almost wrecked everything," he said, his voice tight, unfamiliar in its tension.
"I didn't want to," I said, inaccurately. I was at the moment more terrified than I'd ever been, either before or since. I could get no real grip on him: the surface he presented me was as formidable, as granitic as a prison wall.
"Who told you? Iris? Cave? or were you spying?" Each question was fired at me like a bullet.
"Spying on whom?"
"On me, damn you!" Then it broke. The taut line of control which had held in check his anger and his fear broke all at once and the torrent flowed, reckless and overpowering: "You meddling idiot! You spied on me; you found out; you thought you'd be able to stall things by springing it like that. Well, you failed." I recall thinking, quite calmly, how much I preferred his face in the congested ugliness of rage to its ordinary banality of expression. I was relieved, too, by the storm. I could handle him when he was out of control. I considered my counteroffensive while he shouted at me, accused me of hostility to him, of deviationism from Cavesword and of numerous other crimes. He stopped, finally, for lack of breath.
"I gather," I said, my voice shaking a little from excitement, "that at some point recently you decided that Cave should apply Cavesword to himself and die, providing us with a splendid example, an undying (I mean no pun) symbol."
"You know you found out and decided to get in on the act, to force my hand. Now he'll never do it."
That was it then. I was relieved to be no longer in the dark. "Cave has refused to kill himself?"
"You bet your sweet life he has." Paul was beginning to recover his usual poise. "Your little scene gave him the excuse he needed: 'Gene's right.'" Paul imitated Cave's voice with startling accuracy and malice. " 'Gene's right. I never did mean for everybody to kill themselves off . . . where'd the world be if that happened? Just a few people. That's all.' And he's damned if he's going to be one of them. 'Hate to set that sort of example.'"
"Well, you'll have to try something else then."
"Why did you do it?" Paul's voice became petulant. "Did Iris put you up to it?"
"Nobody put me up to it."
"You mean to sit there and try to make me believe that it just occurred to you, like that, to suggest Cave would have to kill himself if he encouraged suicide?"
"I mean that it occurred to me exactly like that." I looked at Paul with vivid loathing. "Can't you understand even the obvious relationship between cause and effect? With this plan of Stokharin's you'll make it impossible for Cave not to commit suicide and, when he does, you will have an international death cult which I shall do my best to combat."
Paul's hands began nervously to play with his tie, his lapels: I wondered if he'd come armed. I placed my finger lightly upon the buzzer. Implacably, we faced one another.
"You are not truly Cavesword," was all that he said.
"We won't argue about that. I'm merely explaining to you why I said what I did and why I intend to keep Cave alive as long as possible. Alive and hostile to you, to your peculiar interpretation of his word."
Paul looked suddenly disconsolate. "I've done what I thought best. I feel Cave should show us all the way. I feel it's both logical and necessary to the Establishment that he give back his life publicly."
"But he doesn't want to."
"That is the part I can't understand. Cavesword is that death is not to be feared but embraced yet he, the man who has really changed the world, refuses to die."
"Perhaps he feels he has more work to do. More places to see. Perhaps, Paul, he doesn't trust you . . . doesn't want to leave you in control of the Establishment."
"I'm willing to get out if that's all that's stopping him." But the insincerity of this protestation was too apparent for either of us to contemplate for long.
"I don't care what his motives are. I don't care if he himself is terrified of dying (and I have a hunch that that is the real reason for his hesitancy) but I
do
know that I don't want him dead by his own hand."