‘I was very prejudiced against him,’ said Jake in an ironic echo of Cornelius. ‘How could I not be prejudiced against a long-haired
youth who looked like a Seventh Avenue messenger boy and talked like a bad satirical joke? But after all, one must try to
make allowances. We can’t all be born with silver spoons in our mouths … Why are you smiling?’
‘I was just thinking that Marx was right after all. It’s not race that ultimately divides men, and it’s not religion either;
it’s class.’
[7]
‘Hiya, Scott, I’m just calling to say a big thank you for all your help. I thought Jake Reischman was just a swell guy. I
could relate to him, you know, we got along real good. Hey, can I buy you lunch some time next week in token of my appreciation?’
‘Thanks, Don, but I’m about to go on vacation. Can I take a raincheck?’
‘Sure! Where are you going? Europe?’
‘The Caribbean.’
‘I’m jealous! Well, have a great time around all those schmaltzy palm trees, and we’ll get together later. Oh, and Scott –
give my regards to that sonofabitch Van Zale and tell him I’ll wipe the floor with him some day,’ said Donald Shine, and laughed
not altogether good-naturedly as he hung up the phone.
[8]
Conversations.
Words spoken through Scott’s mouth. Scenes watched by Scott’s eyes. But Scott doesn’t exist except in the minds of other people,
for Scott is a mere shadow projected by the power of the will, the will that belongs to me, the individual behind the shadow
– and the individual, as the medieval philosopher William of Ockham wrote long ago, is the sole reality.
Scott told everyone he was going on vacation, but that was a lie. Scott never left New York. It was always
I
who left the city, just as it was always
I
who relaxed in his apartment after Scott had arrived home each day from work.
Scott came home on that November day in 1963 and as usual when the front door closed he ceased to exist, and
I
was the one who went into the bedroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Then I took off Scott’s clothes, the dark suit,
the white shirt and the plain tie, emblems of a life I despised, and showered to remove the slime of his life from my body,
and when I was clean again I put on
my
clothes, the white slacks, the silver-buckled belt and the brilliant blue shirt which I left unbuttoned, but in the kitchen
I fixed myself not the drink I was always tempted to try when I was myself, but Scott’s drink which I knew would never harm
me, the tall dark Coke with a dash of lemon juice added to kill the sweetness as the liquid foamed noisily over the ice.
With my drink in my hand I sat down in the recliner, swung my feet up on to the ottoman and expelled my breath slowly in relief.
The mountaineer had made it back to base camp again after yet another gruelling climb on the mountain. Two weeks of rest and
recuperation stretched enticingly before me in my mind’s eye.
I glanced around my apartment. I lived opposite Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side, but I worked such long hours at the
bank that I seldom saw the view of the East River in daylight. But at weekends I would watch the sunlight sparkling on the
water while I drank my breakfast of black coffee. The river was filthy but in the morning sunlight it looked beautiful, reminding
me of the seascape where I longed to live in peace once my quest had been completed. I had never found this perfect seascape
although I could see the scene so clearly in my mind’s eye, the beautiful deserted shore bordering a dark and glassy sea.
The sands were clean and white and pure, and I thought there were mountains in the background, although it was hard to be
sure.
I never entertained visitors in my apartment since I needed every
moment of my leisure hours to recuperate from the strain of being Scott, and so I had never bothered to acquire more than
the essential items of furniture. The recliner and ottoman stood alone on the carpet. The walls were lined with books, and
in one corner wider shelves supported my stereo and record collection. There was no television. As I spent most of my days
with the trivial and the meaningless I hardly wanted to recreate that environment in my leisure hours. Instead of watching
television I read a great deal, not following, as everyone believed, an unrelieved diet of medieval literature, but selecting
novels, history, some psychology, anthropology and philosophy. At weekends I played squash and took long walks, but sometimes
when the gap between vacations seemed uncomfortably long I’d take a plane somewhere – to Bermuda or Canada or even merely
to another big American city – and spend the weekend in the pursuit of an alternative physical activity.
After the war when I had given up alcohol I had soon realized I needed another escape-route when stress made life intolerable,
and although I regarded all escape-routes as potential threats to my self-discipline I had worked out a set of rules to ensure
the risk of trouble was minimal. My aim was always to cut short an involvement before it had the chance to develop into an
unfortunate obsession, so I kept my affairs brief and made sure they only took place a long way from home.
This recipe for self-indulgence might have seemed unsatisfactory to many people, but the truth was I never enjoyed sex much.
If I merely wanted to relieve sexual tension I preferred to seek relief by myself since if there was no other person involved
I could safely set aside my fear of losing control for a few minutes, but I sought more than a physical release when I took
my trips to those distant cities. I liked the fun of the chase and the contact, no matter how brief, with another human being;
it was the mental, not the physical, release which meant so much to me, the chance to escape temporarily from the burden of
my isolation.
Even before the post-war decision which had altered my life I had never managed to sustain an affair beyond the first few
dates. The idea of falling in love horrified me. I had been fourteen years old when my father had walked out on Emily in 1933
to pursue his obsession for Dinah Slade, and I saw all too clearly that such obsessions caused nothing but suffering and unhappiness
to the innocent people left behind. After the catastrophe of my father’s desertion I trusted no women but my beloved Emily,
and for many years I lied regularly to Cornelius when he made discreet paternal inquiries about my private
life, but in the navy I was afraid to be the odd one out in case I was labelled homosexual so I got drunk one night during
a shore-leave and finally managed to conform to the normal pattern of masculine behaviour. After that incident I at least
never worried that I was a homosexual although I knew that Cornelius, who firmly believed that every normal man should have
intercourse at least three times a week in order to conform to the Kinsey Report, often worried that I showed no interest
in marriage.
The idea of marriage had always seemed remote to me, but after the war, when I decided what I was going to do with my life,
the idea seemed not merely remote but inconceivable. In fact I was so opposed to any long-term relationship either in or out
of wedlock that I was hardly surprised when women sensed this revulsion and reacted accordingly. With my ambitions shrouded
in secrecy and a veil drawn over the unhappy past I presented an enigma which they found both baffling and ultimately, when
my reserve proved impenetrable, repellant. I knew very well that if I ever made the mistake of trying to prolong a relationship
the woman would soon make some excuse to walk away.
Yet the big irony of my situation was that despite the fact I had so little to offer I was never short of partners. Once I
had been amazed that women should be anxious to go to bed with me, for I was neither as good-looking nor as personable as
my brother Tony, but eventually I had come to accept that there was no accounting for feminine taste and that I might as well
make the most of this unexpected advantage. So when I periodically travelled my escape-route I always tried to have as many
women as possible, but this led to yet another irony in my off-beat private life: I couldn’t take full advantage of my good
fortune. I was much too afraid of losing control.
I’d been all right in the navy. With my fear of involvement anaesthetized by alcohol I had had no trouble producing a sexual
performance which even the great Kinsey would have certified as normal, but after the war when I had abandoned alcohol and
had become steadily more absorbed in the need for self-discipline, matters had changed. For years now I had suffered from
a chronic inability to complete the sexual act in the normal manner, although fortunately – and this was the crowning irony
of my ironic private life – most women never realized the extent of my limitation and assumed with profound gratitude that
I was prolonging the act for their sake.
Sometimes I used to get upset, but not often. There are worse sexual problems. Why complain when most women think one’s some
kind of supremely considerate stud? I had enough common sense to
realize I must see the humorous side of the situation so whenever I found myself getting upset I’d smile to myself and shrug
my shoulders and pretend the failure was very unimportant. So long as I kept up the appearance that I was successful with
women, what did the reality matter?
But reality was waking up alone in a hotel room in a city far from home. Reality was touching people yet making no contact.
Reality was a chase which never ended and a longing which no one satisfied and a freedom from fear which was always beyond
my reach. Reality was isolation, a lifeless life or, as Emily had said before she died, a living death.
I sat in the dark thinking of Emily for a long time but eventually I stood up and moved back into the kitchen to open another
bottle of Coca-Cola. I was determined not to be depressed that night. Later when my vacation was over I could allow myself
a few minutes of self-indulgent gloom, but not now when my vacation lay ahead of me and I had the chance of travelling a two-week
escape-route from Scott’s life at Willow and Wall.
Thinking of the bank reminded me of Cornelius, and I looked up at the picture on the wall. I had only one picture in the apartment
and I kept it above the kitchen sink because it would have been an intrusion in the bedroom or living-room. It was the detail
from ‘The Tribute Money’, an enlargement of Masaccio’s sinister portrait of St John. I wondered if Cornelius would have seen
himself in that picture, but I thought not. We never see ourselves as others see us.
Switching on the goose-neck lamp in the living-room I picked up my copy of
J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth
, but Victor Lasky’s critical assessment of Kennedy irritated me and I soon put the book aside. It was fashionable nowadays
to knock Kennedy, but I was determined to have no part of it. We were almost the same age, Jack Kennedy and I, and sometimes
I thought his courage and his glamour and his supreme fulfilment of all his father’s dreams gave me the will to go on with
my quest. He was the living proof that all the sacrifices were worthwhile; he proved that if one had enough ambition one could
go on and on and on to the very end of one’s dreams.
I put on a record, soft jazz by Dave Brubeck, and thought about my dreams.
I was satisfied with my progress. My position was excellent. Of course there was no possibility that I would accept Jake’s
offer, but it would be politic to flatter him by taking a long time to turn the offer down. Later I would tell Cornelius about
it and we would laugh together. That would make Cornelius happy and his confidence in me
would reach new heights. Jake had the situation summed up entirely wrong, but that was hardly surprising since he was only
an outsider, trying to decipher a complicated situation from a long way away.
Unless I either went mad or made some incredible mistake I was going to get that bank. Cornelius’ guilt, which I had exploited
so carefully for so long, would never let him rest until he had conceded more power to me than he could afford, and once that
happened I could wrap up my quest in double-quick time. 1968, the year he had promised to retire in my favour, was still five
years away, but I often wondered if he would last that long. He was fifty-five years old now and his asthma was becoming an
increasing burden. He had already outlived my father by three years.
I thought about my father for a while. I did not consciously think of him often but he was with me always, a shadow on the
mind, a weight on the soul, a memory burnt on the brain, and so completely had I absorbed all essence of him into my personality
that usually I
was
him although sometimes I could stand apart and view him dispassionately as a separate entity. I wished I could have understood
more clearly what he had seen in Dinah Slade. I could now accept that he had been out of his mind as the result of a sexual
obsession, but the irrationality of his action still upset me. ‘Dinah was the love of his life,’ my brother Tony had written
in his famous letter which had given Cornelius such a fright, but I had read those words and felt more baffled than ever.
Dinah Slade
? I remembered a large plain woman with an irritating English accent. I had forgiven my father, but even now I was still a
long way from understanding him.
I meditated again on the extraordinary phenomenon of sexual attraction, and the next moment I was remembering Sebastian, wrecking
his career by pursuing his irrational obsession with Vicky.
Vicky
? I couldn’t think what he saw in her. It was true she was pretty but her mind was as limited as her father’s and her frivolous
personality should have been far too shallow to attract a man of Sebastian’s calibre. His infatuation with her was as incredible
as my father’s infatuation with Dinah, and made me wonder again how any sane person could believe that falling in love was
a romantic dream. Falling in love was no romantic dream. Falling in love was a nightmare.
I sighed as I thought of Sebastian. I missed him. I thought: if Sebastian were here we could talk about the Greek concept
of ‘Eros’ and contrast it with the medieval convention of chivalrous love, and Sebastian would say chivalry was all a myth,
and then we would debate whether myth was superior to reality; I would argue in favour of myth, citing the legends of Finn
McCool and Cuchullainn, but because
Sebastian thought Celtic legends were incomprehensible he would dredge up all his Anglo-Saxon heroes to argue that reality
was always superior; he would exclaim: ‘Give me Alfred any day – or Edwin – or Oswald carrying his great cross into battle
– they were
real
people!’ and we would laugh together and be the friends we were meant to be instead of rivals becoming gradually more divided
by our ambition.