Authors: Gore Vidal
Miss Perrine showed Peter into James Burden Day’s office, whose great windows and long view of white marble and green lawn was visual proof of his seniority in the Senate. Over the fireplace hung a painting of Jefferson. One wall displayed the obligatory political photographs of the Senator with the likes of William Jennings Bryan as well as, unexpectedly, the late Huey Long. “I was always drawn to the larger-than-life losers.”
“So unlike the smaller-than-life winner in the White House.”
“Isn’t he a ring-tailed wonder!”
“A born leader.”
The Senator laughed and motioned for Peter to sit on the black leather sofa while he himself sat just opposite in a rocking chair. “On the other hand, Harry’s not so bad at following orders. I guess he learned that from Tom Prendergast. When Van told him last February that he’d have to scare the hell out of the country to get all that money for Europe, he did a bang-up job but, as old Mark Twain used to say, ‘There were things which he stretched.’ Anyway, we gave him everything he asked for. Twelve and a half billion dollars that we certainly could have used a lot better here at home.” The Senator stopped his rocking. “I hope you’ve kept my tactless unsigned memo locked up.”
“Only Aeneas and I have ever seen it. Of course its message has been shared with our shocked readers.”
“Funny how
un
shocked people are by what’s going on. Harry and Acheson have gone to war with our tax money and no one’s dared blow the whistle on them—at least in Congress, which includes me, I’m afraid, along with the rest of the stout hearts. You know, the other day Dean came up to the Hill to lecture us on the facts of life. We can never, he solemnly testified, sit down with the Russians and solve problems. In which case, I asked, why not fold the State Department? But what’s really so peculiar is that we’ve never been richer or more powerful,
yet all we do is wring our hands and tremble at the thought of the bankrupt Russians conquering Europe. Then us.”
“Do you think the President really believes this nonsense?”
The Senator was amused. “Never forget that politicians are not like other people. We don’t really believe in anything except getting reelected. The Red Menace is a wonderful way to scare the folks into voting for you. As for Harry …” He frowned. “He’s ignorant. He reads one history book and thinks he understands history. Everything’s like a cartoon to him. Stalin equals Hitler. We tried to deal with Hitler at Munich. Mistake. War. Treaty with the Russians equals Munich. No treaty. But, just in case, prepare for war. He hasn’t yet read a book that will tell him how history
never
repeats itself.”
Peter withdrew the National Security Act from his heat-crumpled seersucker jacket. The Senator duly noted Congress’s latest handiwork. “What line do you take?” he asked.
“I don’t know if we’re going to have a line or not, because …” Peter took a deep breath and plunged into what he took to be the heart of history. “It’s possible that for all the wrong reasons they—Truman, Acheson, Marshall—are right.”
The Senator’s smile was wintry for so bright a day in July. He rocked slowly in his chair. “Go on,” he said.
“If we’re not destroyed by the Russians or the Chinese or—who knows?—enraged Panamanians, then everyone will agree that the total militarizing of the country was a very good thing and history always marries the winner …”
“Because he is the only one left standing?”
“Because he’s the only one willing to pay her price. But the big question is: will this world empire end up bankrupting us, as it’s done the British? Or will it make us even richer, as it did the Spanish once upon a time?”
Burden opened his copy of the National Security Act. “What we have now in our wisdom done is create …” He rifled the pages. “What did we call it? Oh, yes. The National Military Establishment. We’re putting the Army, the Navy, and our newly independent and vainglorious air corps that won the war all alone to hear them tell it into a single department. We’re shutting down the War Department. Much too
provocative a word, ‘war.’ Henceforth, we shall speak only of our desperate need to defend ourselves against what’s rapidly turning out to be everyone on earth.”
Burden turned more pages. “We have also created a National Security Council. That’s the president, plus secretaries of state, defense, and so on. They will form a high command, no doubt on the Prussian model. To be kept informed by a new agency, dedicated to spying not only on our eternal enemy the Soviet but also, far more important, on our unreliable European allies …”
Peter was startled. “Is that in there? In the act?”
“Good Lord, no. That was in one of our closed-session briefings. Our security requires that we do everything possible to prevent a leftwing party from ever coming to power anywhere in Europe. This new agency with its bland name,” he glanced at the text, “Central Intelligence Agency, tells us that next spring the Italian communists are expected to win Italy’s first free election. The CIA has sworn that they can see to it that the communists will lose
if
they are adequately funded.”
“Who are they?”
“The old OSS. Cloak-and-dagger types from the war. Colonel Wild Bill Donovan and his merry men.”
“Is there no congressional control over them?”
“I believe a joint committee will be tolerated but, basically, this is a White House show. We are on the sidelines from now on. Vandenberg sold out the Republicans in order to get his name in the paper, while most Democrats around here believe there will be a Republican president next year so why not let Harry Truman go hang himself alone?”
“It’s easy enough to get rid of him.” Peter put the fateful document away. “But how do you get rid of this act?”
There was a long pause. Burden Day stared at a bust of Cicero, who was staring at another empire, being born, as it turned out, over
his
dead body. Since Burden Day could have no answer to this, Peter asked, abruptly, “Is Diana going to marry Clay?”
“What?” The Senator had been daydreaming. “Oh, Diana. Well, there was an understanding that after the ’46 election he would marry her. There was also an understanding that Enid be got rid of. Sorry. Your sister. I forget. I’m tactless.”
“That’s all right. She’s put away. For good, I suspect. But she won’t divorce him.”
“And Clay can’t divorce an invalid wife, which is how the state sees this matter. So Diana is in limbo.”
“She’s left the paper.”
“So I gather. I wish she would … go on with it. You are a good couple.”
“I thought so. Think so. She’s been seeing Billy Thorne in New York.” Peter attempted a smile. “Only professionally. He’s as interested as we are in what happened at Pearl Harbor.”
“You must all wait until—when was it? 1995—when the papers are unsealed. You’ll get to see them. I won’t. Though I reckon I might be available through Ouija board.” Suddenly, the Senator’s mood darkened. “What has gone wrong with the people that they can’t see what is happening to them?”
“What is wrong with
us
that we can’t get through to them?”
The old man stopped his rocking and sat up straight. “Perhaps they know something we don’t. Perhaps they really want something that we don’t.”
“High taxes? A peacetime military draft? Loyalty oaths? Censorship? And it’s only two years since the war was over.”
“But perhaps all this fits their mood even though it overthrows two centuries of rhetoric.” Burden Day got to his feet; the trousers of his white linen suit were stuck to the back of his thighs. He switched on a fan and cooled himself in front of it. “I confess that I, too, have sometimes thought that we were meant to govern the earth. Well, if
I
thought that—and I’m a populist, a mind-your-own-business sort of person who knows from experience whatever is good for the banks is bad for the people if … Where was I? Oh. If
I
often think that way, what must all the others think? Brought up on manifest destiny and TR’s nonsense about the glories of war. It is no accident that for three hundred years our people willingly, I believe—maybe even joyously—slaughtered their way across this continent, enslaved Negroes, drove out Mexicans, broke more Indian treaties than Hitler ever bothered to make. Then, for the last half century, we’ve made the countries of the Caribbean and Central America our property while occupying most of
the islands of the Pacific including, after due incineration, our only Asian rival, Japan. Who are we to say that this was the work of a few war-lovers like TR?”
“Say that in the Senate.”
“And return to private life in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary?” The Senator laughed. “Such a speech would not be considered loyal. Even so, three hundred years of bloody expansion cannot be accomplished entirely against the will of the people who do the fighting.”
“Are you suggesting there’s something demonic in our highly mixed race?”
Burden Day’s face was now as white as that of the marble Cicero. “I don’t know. How could I? Or anyone. But if at some deep level that’s what they truly want, I must stop short and confess that I am not representative.”
“They also wanted slavery.”
“Some did. Some did not.” Burden Day sighed. “But does anyone really want to give up so much freedom and so much money to allow an American general to play Mikado in Tokyo and another one play Kaiser in Berlin? I doubt it.”
“Probably not if it was explained to them. But the Few dominate the Many …”
The Senator completed Hume’s incontrovertible law. “… through Opinion. We have our work cut out for us.”
Peter prepared to go; shook Burden Day’s papery old hand. “Let’s hope it does some good.”
“It does us good, and that is all that matters. The end will be what it will be.”
With considerable fanfare, John Latouche got Peter and Aeneas tickets to New York’s most successful new play, which had opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on December 3, 1947: Aeneas was
unusually precise about such things when he was serious, and he was very serious, “because it’s time we took a close look at the American theater, to see what’s happening …”
“And why?” Peter added automatically.
Their cab had been obliged to park a block away from the theater because of the many cabs and limousines inching past the marquee, where, spelled out in white electric lightbulbs, were the names of director Elia Kazan, and of playwright Tennessee Williams. Of the two names, Kazan’s was the larger in lights. The play’s title had immediately intrigued the world:
A Streetcar Named Desire
. In the three weeks since the play had opened, radio comedians and newspaper columnists had made a thousand jokes about streetcars and lust.
The lobby was crowded. The aisles were crowded. Peter had not seen many plays in New York and he had never attended a recently opened “hit.” As a result, he was hardly prepared for the tension in the audience as he and Aeneas slowly moved towards their seats at the center of the third row. “It’s like what an audience must be for a public execution,” he muttered to Aeneas.
“Latouche is a friend of Irene Selznick, the producer.” Aeneas had not heard Peter. He was too busy with his notebook, pen, miniature flashlight, for which, he now discovered, he had forgotten to buy batteries. “Touche has invited us to a party after the show.…”
Curtain up. The play irradiated the theater. The color of everything beneath the proscenium arch was brown, either viewed starkly, head on, or dreamlike through a shadowy scrim; there was a murmur of New Orleans voices speaking Spanish (why not French?) in the street beyond the tenement where the characters Stanley and Stella lived. From left to right, a blank space for a sort of foyer, and an iron staircase spiraling up against a begauzed view of sidewalk. Then, in a row, living room, kitchen, bedroom, with a door to the bathroom. Mysteriously placed lights flared and dimmed, came and went. Enter Blanche Du Bois. Pale. Slender. Deliberately out of her place,
place
. In flight. From Belle Rêve. Her house. Stella’s house, too. Upriver. The home has been lost. Stella’s husband, a sweaty, muscular youth in a T-shirt, played by a young actor, literally famous overnight—Marlon Brando. Peter could see now what the fuss was about. Hear it, too. No
male had ever seemed quite so nude on the stage before. Nor quite so entirely at home with his sex not to mention that of the audience, too. A mild speech defect was used artfully. To hold attention—make suspense? Could he ever say an “R” properly? Did it matter? The audience looked only at him when he spoke. Stared even more intensely at him when he was silent. Peter felt sorry for the somewhat manic actress who played Blanche. She was being excluded from what, surely, was supposed to be her play.
When she was taken away at the end, barbarism—“the apes” as Blanche had called the Stanleys of this world—had triumphed. Was this a warning or a prophecy? What on earth was this most vivid play about?
“What is Chekhov about?” was Aeneas’s answer as they made their way up the aisle while the rest of the audience stood, shouting bravos, applauding the somewhat bewildered-looking cast. Brando tugged idly at his crotch. A signal? Or merely his way of saying “Until next time.”
Latouche met them in the lobby. “Don has his taxi across the street.”
As they drove to the party in East Thirty-sixth Street, Touche described the opening of the play. “Everyone knew that the theater was never going to be the same again. Brando’s changed the whole idea of what an actor is—the way Barrymore did before the war.”
“An
actor?
” Aeneas was scribbling fast as the cab rattled down Sixth Avenue. “Surely what he’s changed is the notion of what a man is.”
“You mean a sexual object?” This was very much Touche’s territory. Amateur anthropology.
“Object. Subject, too. A man’s not just a suit anymore.” Aeneas was talking as he wrote. “Dim background for the erotic woman. Dim partner to glittering ballerina. Black velvet foil for diamond.”
“Too much,” warned Peter, the austere editor.
But Aeneas and Touche were both excited by what each seemed to believe was a total realignment of the sexes as demonstrated onstage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre one winter’s night two years after the war, two years into a fermenting new world.