Authors: Gore Vidal
“
Secret
agreement?” Burden shook his head. “He can’t make such an agreement. Only the Senate makes treaties.”
“Perhaps,” said Gore, “we’ve gone and made one without knowing it. One curious detail, Admiral. It’s plain that the President wants the Japanese to attack us first. But if he does, why is he allowing them to keep right on buying oil at this very moment from—if memory serves—the Associated Oil Company at Porta Costa, California?”
Burden frowned. “To postpone the attack on Java?”
Richardson shook his head. “Our Pacific Fleet won’t be ready for war until at least mid-December. Our Philippine air defenses won’t be ready until February or March, next year, thanks to MacArthur’s majestic slowness. It’s my theory that the Administration will go on selling them a minimum amount of oil so that they won’t attack us until we’re finally ready for them. When we are, we’ll deliver our ultimatum whatever it is. We want them to have sufficient fuel for a major strike but not for a major war. This leaves the timing up to the President.”
“You make it sound as if there is some sort of a … a …” Burden was, to Peter’s eye, unnaturally pale.
“A master plan. Yes, sir. I’m convinced of it. We’ve got some diabolically bright young officers.”
“Thank God for that.” Gore smiled. “Usually the enemy has all the clever devils and we have all the dim-witted angels.”
“There are a number of hidden-away offices at our Eighteenth and Constitution headquarters. Some are supposed to be highly restricted. But there is always a lot of leakage, this being Washington. Last October one of our brightest young devils came up with an eight-point plan, carefully designed to force Japan, in the most plausible way, to attack us. I don’t know the full details. But then as commander of the United States Fleet, I was not supposed to know anything at all. The young devil in question had assumed—remember this was almost a year ago—that the British were done for and that we should, at their request, put Singapore and so on under our protection. The same with the Dutch East Indies. Then we should beef up our Chinese warlord, Chiang Kai-shek. Send divisions of cruisers and submarines that we don’t yet have to the Asian mainland while keeping the bulk of our fleet in Hawaii. Finally, after first persuading the Dutch to stop selling oil to Japan, we will, together with the British, stop all trade, particularly oil, to Japan. And wait for them to attack.”
There was a long silence in the room. Gore rested his chin on the curve of his wooden cane. The Admiral sat as if at a Senate hearing, which, in a sense, he was.
Finally, Burden spoke. “How good is your intelligence?”
“Mine, sir? Or the Navy’s?”
“They were as one, until recently.”
“I should say that our intelligence is much further advanced than our fleet.”
“I understand,” said Burden. Peter wondered what it was that each did not need to say.
“Shortly before I was relieved of my command, our ambassador to Tokyo sent a message to the Secretary of State. This was late last January. I’ve read the message. The Peruvian minister to Japan warned our ambassador that in the event of ‘trouble’ with the United States, Japan would launch an all-out surprise attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor.”
“I don’t believe it.” Burden shook his head.
“The first duty of a naval commander is to see to the safety of his men, not to mention his fleet. Even the President, a naval genius in his own mind, knows that. Yet he’s deliberately setting our fleet in harm’s way. Since I objected, I had to be got rid of.”
Burden rubbed his eyes. “Do you really think they’d ever dare attack Hawaii?”
“Driven to the wall, as we are driving them, why not? But Pearl Harbor does seem to me to be a bit far afield, unlike Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong, Java. The obvious targets.”
“Once they attack, they will be destroyed just as we Southerners were destroyed when we attacked the Union.” Gore was grim.
“At least our common cousins, the Hawkinses, were Unionists, even in Mississippi.” Richardson’s starched collar was beginning to crumple in the heat.
“True,” said Gore, “but that didn’t stop us from fighting alongside our kin even though we knew we’d be on the losing side. Admiral, there is a peace party in Japan. In fact, Prime Minister Konoye is eager to sit down with our side and come to terms, or so he says.”
Richardson nodded. “Politically we have good intelligence out of Tokyo because Konoye is desperate to make a settlement in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the President does not want a settlement. He won’t meet him.”
“As simple as that?” Burden stared out the window.
“As simple as that, sir. The hawks in Tokyo—practically the entire military—are praying for Konoye to fail so that they can replace him with a military government.” Admiral Richardson rose; as did Senator Gore, who took his arm. “I’ve been speaking to you today for the future record. Originally, I was tempted to go before your subcommittee, but I’m afraid we are already in so deep that anything that I might say could jeopardize the fleet.”
“Mischief is afoot.” Gore sighed. “I saw this coming in 1916. I saw it coming, again, in 1936. I can think of no worse fate than being an unheeded ancestral voice.”
“A ghost,” said James Burden Day, “is probably worse.”
Peter slipped away, unnoticed. In the woods above the house, Diana was seated on a log beside a bright clear spring, bubbling out of fine brown sand. Here salamanders lived; this spot was always cool even on the hottest August day since thick-leaved trees met in a dark green canopy overhead. Peter sat next to her on the log. She smelled of lavender.
“I think I knew what was coming,” she said.
“Well, if they are right, it’s coming very fast. Scotty is enlisting in the Marines. This week.” Scotty and Peter had grown up together in Washington.
“Can he get a commission?”
“He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic. Whatever that is. Yes, I’m sure he can. And so can I.”
She looked him straight in the face, something she seldom did with anyone, eyes always aslant; Peter thought of Emily Dickinson’s odd word. “You’ll go in before they draft you?”
“I have a plan, too, which means using influence. Mercilessly. I’ve got to find out what’s actually going on.”
“Then go into intelligence. Safer.” She looked away. “I can’t see how this war is worth the life of any of us.”
“You mean you don’t get misty-eyed at Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms?”
“So like Mr. Wilson’s Twelve Commandments.”
“Points, wasn’t it? Anyway, who keeps score? What matters is that our leaders have always been so marvelously good.”
Diana nodded. “And, best of all, they truly love us. Love us so much that there are times when I feel wickedly unworthy of them.”
Peter put his arm around her, something he’d never done before with Billy Thorne’s wife. “Don’t worry. When we make the supreme sacrifice for them, they’ll know then that we were truly worthy of them. I can’t wait to get into my hole at Arlington.”
“I shall tend your grave.”
Then each burst out laughing and Peter said, “We shall be the first cynical … no, the first realistic generation of Americans ever to go to war because we know that if we don’t go our masters will either kill us or lock us up.”
“The American Idea … at its purest.” Then Diana kissed him, missing his lips and making contact with his earlobe. In an instant, each broke from the other, preparing, for now at least, laughter at the trap that had sprung.
Since the Mrs. Auchincloss who lived not far from Laurel House was divorcing her husband, Caroline had, through the subtle intricacies of the various servants’ halls of Washington and neighboring Virginia, got her hands on the departing Mrs. A’s personal maid, who came, as did the mythical Emma Traxler, from Alsace-Lorraine. Marie-Louise was fifty and preferred French to English as well as a small flat at Wardman Park to an airy mansion ever vibrant with the sounds of slamming doors, of sobbing—often masculine—and of numerous shrieking children being constantly packed off in different directions. Did they ever get them all back? Caroline sometimes wondered but never dared ask Marie-Louise.
Meanwhile, as Caroline worked on her grandfather’s memoir of the first national centennial, Marie-Louise was packing an overnight bag for her. The hotel was uncommonly silent. It was the last day of October and the end of what had proved to be an uncommonly anxious summer.
A new letter from Timothy described the start of his film in London. “I’m afraid we’re either too early or too late for anything interesting here. Hitler was supposed to be in Moscow last week or next week or whenever. But wherever it is he is going to be, he won’t be scaling the white cliffs of Dover. The invasion has been called off but the bombs still keep falling, presumably to depress the people, who seem to be having a pretty riotous time, particularly during the blackouts when couples couple in every doorway. Rumors are that we are already in the war but no one can mention it, least of all your friend Harry Hopkins, who is regarded as the Archangel Gabriel in these parts, the source of trumpet blasts and dispenser of Lend-lease. But until Congress declares war, everyone here is in limbo. Last week, L. B. Mayer asked me to screen-test a local songbird called Vera Lynn. I have done so. In a diabetic coma …”
Marie-Louise came into the living room from the hallway.
“A Mr. Elliott Macrae, Madame.”
Caroline was startled. “The front doorbell just rang?”
“Yes. And I just answered it. I hope I didn’t …”
“No. No. It’s just that I didn’t
hear
it ring. This means I am now quite deaf. Tell him to come in.”
Caroline fixed her hair in a console mirror; rubbed straight eyebrows that had been plucked for so long that only the shadow—the merest essence of eyebrow—was left.
Mr. Macrae was a short, bouncy gentleman. He had inherited from his father the old publishing house of E. P. Dutton in New York City. He had been preparing for some time the two books of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. “I was just passing through town …”
“Quite all right.” Caroline motioned for Marie-Louise to bring coffee.
Macrae sat down; opened a briefcase; withdrew a duplicate of the manuscript on Caroline’s desk. “We’ve been working simultaneously,” he said.
“Well, perhaps.” Then Caroline thanked him for a book that he had recently published by Van Wyck Brooks. “If I were not so French I should dare to say he’s perfectly captured the United States of the eighteen-seventies.”
“He returns the compliment about Mr. Schermerhorn’s work,
and
your editing. He plans to write a preface for us, about 1876, the centennial year.”
“But not about the other book?”
Macrae looked uncomfortable. “You know, Mrs. Sanford, I’m from Virginia originally.”
“That must be nice for you.” Caroline had yet to find a way of striking the right note with the noteless.
“Yes it is. Fact, I’m off to visit relatives this weekend. The problem is not the centennial year story.”
“Even American schools must admit that the Republicans stole the election. My grandfather and my mother witnessed the whole thing.”
“Oh, that’s perfectly all right. This is the age of debunking, you know.”
“A valuable word, ‘debunking.’ A valuable activity, I should think.
Of course, I’m basically so foreign.” Caroline realized that she was overdoing this particular number but she felt obliged to fill in notes—cadenzas—where he offered only resonant monotony. The dread Pearl of Alsace-Lorraine was suddenly beginning to fill up the Wardman Park Annex.
“Have you heard of Dumas Malone?”
“No. But I love the name. The wonderful juxtaposition
and
the possibilities. Goncourt O’Reilly, Maupassant Murphy.”
“Yes.” Macrae had missed the point. “You know, Mr. Malone is—well, no, you couldn’t know—but he is writing a five-volume life of Thomas Jefferson which I hope to publish one day.”
Caroline did her best to look both fascinated and benign. “Well, Jesus’s life appeared in only four volumes. So why not Mr. Jefferson’s in five?”
“I took the liberty of showing him your grandfather’s work on Aaron Burr. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Why not? This seems to be my answer to everything today. You see how agreeable I am, as a writer?” Caroline noted happily that Macrae was starting to sweat.
“The fact is, Mrs. Sanford, that Mr. Malone found your grandfather’s portrait of Jefferson—ah, well—the word he used was certainly extreme …”
“ ‘Judicious’?”
“No. ‘Treasonous.’ ”
“What nation is my grandfather supposed to have betrayed?”
“Well, his subject committed treason against the United States …”
“That was Mr. Jefferson’s invention. Aaron Burr was found not guilty in a trial presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall. Surely, Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler’s personal knowledge of Burr, not to mention years of research, can now set things straight even with a patriotic Virginian.”
Macrae shook his head, looking very miserable indeed. “Mr. Malone also objects to Burr’s observations that some of Jefferson’s slaves were his own children.”
“Who doesn’t object? Of course, Mr. Jefferson should have freed them. But my grandfather thought he needed the money.”
As Caroline spoke, Elliott Macrae seemed to be having trouble breathing. She paused. “Are you all right?”
“Well. I … As I told you, I’m a Virginian and we can’t … that is, accept as fact that Mr. Jefferson ever had a child by a slave girl.”
“I admit it was more like a brood. And why not? After all, he was disseminating his genius throughout what is thought of in some quarters as an inferior race.”
“Mrs. Sanford, Mr. Jefferson was a gentleman! No gentleman could ever have had relations with a slave.”
“If that is the case, Mr. Jefferson’s father-in-law was definitely no gentleman, since it was his black daughter, as my grandfather pointed out, who bore his son-in-law—the widower Jefferson—all those children.”
“What
he
was is not the point. What Mr. Jefferson was means a lot to us … and we reject this story.”
Caroline fixed him with a cold eye.