Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  The telephone rang at our table. An American girl across the room wanted to talk to Dix. She had dialed his number on the assumption that he was German. “Hello, honey,” he said. “You got it wrong. I’m an American, but that’s all right. We can still fuck.”

  “I’m coming over. I want to learn what kind of yo-yo talks like you.”

  She was big and fair, with large features and a rangy body. By any gross measure of animal husbandry—were the shades of Nazi nightlife dictating my thoughts?—she would have made an appropriate mate for him. Her name was Susan, Susan Blaylock Pierce, and she had gone to Wellesley and was working in the American Consulate. In addition to the beer-import enterprise, Dix had cover from State, but when he chose to speak of working there, Susan Pierce needed no more than five minutes to poke through his qualifications. “Well, Randy Huff, or whatever your name is, I will tell you, somebody over at the Consulate must be sick and tired by now of looking at your empty desk.”

  “I’m just a field hand, ma’am,” he said. I could see she was his choice for tonight. She had a horsey laugh and argued doggedly about the merits of English saddle over Western. “Who wants to look at some big slob slumped over a horse?” she said.

  “Some people need an animal for work, instead of to show off their ass, lady.”

  “You,” she said, “should have been a little ogre with warts.”

  He loved that. Marks of status rang in his mind like a cash register. I heard the bell sound for Wellesley, and for Susan Blaylock Pierce.

  He surprised me by his next gambit. “Would you care to hear a long story about me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Lady, cut some slack. This story is special.”

  “All right, but not too long,” she said.

  “At the age of fifteen,” Dix declared, “I was in excellent shape. I lied about my age to get into the Golden Gloves in Houston, and I won my weight division. Sub-novice. I hardly drank. I ran six miles a day. I could do one-arm chin-ups, one-arm push-ups. Susan, name me a feat, I could perform it. I could have run for president of my sophomore class in high school if I wasn’t from the wrong end of everything you ever saw. But I was happy. I was going with a blond girl who had blue eyes and fifteen-year-old plump little turn-up tits.” When Susan Pierce showed her annoyance, he said, “Don’t be offended. They were innocent, those tits. Weren’t even all sure what they were there for. I loved that girl, Cora Lee, and she loved me. It was beautiful.” He took a sip of his drink.

  “One night I broke training to take Cora Lee to our big dance hall, Laney’s, to show her off. She had to be the prettiest girl there. Laney’s was always jammed with the best riffraff. Funky place. You could no sooner leave your girl alone than put a piece of meat on a plate and ask somebody else’s dog not to look at it. But I didn’t mind if I had a fight, and I sure wanted a beer. I hadn’t had a drink in a month. Training. So I was thirsty. I placed Cora Lee on a bench and said, ‘Honey, don’t let any man sit down next to you. If they want to give trouble, tell them to watch out for Randy Huff.’ Then I left her and went to the bar and bought two cans of beer. Since I had my own church key, I told the bartender not to open them. I brought those cans back ice-cold. Hard as rocks. I was saving them until I could sit next to her, and feel her sweet little thigh nuzzling mine when the first sip of beer went down.

  “What did I see instead? A fellow with his arm around her. Cora Lee was looking at me in pure panic.

  “He was huge. I was big, but this old boy was huge. He had a face you could put up against the bumper of a flat-bed truck and the face alone could push the truck uphill.” Susan began to chuckle. “I was not demoralized, you understand. I was boss of my own equipment, thank you. So I said, ‘Fellow, I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but that happens to be your arm on my girl.’

  “‘Well,’ he said, ‘what are you planning to do about it?’

  “I smiled. I gave a dumb country-boy grin like I had nothing to do but get lost. Then I hit him in the face with the bottom end of the full beer can, him sitting down, me standing up. I hit him with the right arm that did those one-arm push-ups. The end of the beer can indented a circle from the top of his nostrils to the middle of his forehead. It broke his nose and laid vertical cuts over both eyebrows. He looked like a cross between a bat and a hog.”

  We were silent before this memory recollected in tranquility.

  “How do you think the fellow responded?” Butler asked.

  “How?” asked Susan.

  “He sat there. He didn’t blink particularly, and he didn’t move. He just smiled. Then he said, ‘You want to play? Let’s play.’ What do you think I said?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “I said, ‘Fellow, you can have her. You can have her.’ I started running.” Full pause. “I started running and I haven’t stopped since.”

  Susan Pierce laughed as if something very far within had just caught on fire. “Oh, golly,” she said, “oh, golly.” Then she kissed his cheek. “You’re cute. You’re such a fool, but, do you know, you’re cute.” Proprietary lust for him appeared in her face.

  After a few minutes, it was obvious there was nothing more for me to do than say good-night. On my way to bed I could find no explanation why his story had appealed so greatly to her. It impressed me, however, that he had told the same story once to a group of us at the Farm, and it had had a totally different ending. He had hardly run away. He had stayed in and taken the beating of his life against that huge old boy, but afterward he had made love to Cora Lee for all of July and August.

  I was depressed. I had had dates with girls like Susan Pierce all through college and we would drink beers together. Nothing much more. Now he was going to seduce her in one night. Was it Berlin? I did not believe girls like Susan would make love that quickly back in America. On such thoughts, I fell asleep.

  4

  AT 4:00 A.M. A GALLON OF GERMAN BEER TOOK THE RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES through my urinary tract. Awake, after two hours of unconsciousness, I felt marooned in a neon desert of the night—sober, cold, wholly electrified. The reality of my situation came down on me again, and the hours I had spent slogging away at beer with Huff-Butler lay on my heart like a mustard plaster. William Harvey was on the trail of KU/ CLOAKROOM.

  I did my best to calm this panic. Before I left for Berlin, Hugh Montague had succeeded in taking my cryptonym through its first, second, and third transmogrifications. In the course of sending me the length of the Reflecting Pool over to Intensive German, he had also managed to expunge any paper trace of Herrick Hubbard’s presence in the Snake Pit. My 201 now put me in Technical Services Staff for the same period, and Technical Services was mined, layered, and veneered with security. My immediate past had been effectively laundered.

  All this Harlot bestowed on me as a farewell present. Now, none of it seemed that substantial. I was suffering from the worst form of paranoia a man in my profession can undergo—I was suspicious of my protector. Why had Montague chosen such a convoluted path? What in Heaven was I escaping from? My inability to satisfy an impossible task in the Document Room could certainly have resulted in a disagreeable letter being put into my 201 from Chief of Base, Berlin, and that would have done my future advancement no good. How could such harm compare, however, to the damage of discovery now? Harlot could weather a flap—it would all go into the portfolio of his commodious achievements—but I, if not asked to resign, would certainly have to live under a professional shroud.

  I dressed and took the U-Bahn to the Department of Defense. I had clearance there to the key for a secure phone. Staring out upon the last of the night, the Department of Defense all deserted around me at that hour, I made a call to the secure phone that Harlot was authorized to keep at the canal house in Georgetown. It was midnight in Washington. Looking down the long hall of this empty office, I heard the sound of his voice, scrambled electronically, then reconstituted—which gave it the hollow timbre of words hear
d through a long speaking tube.

  Quickly I explained my new assignment. His reassurance was firm. “You, dear boy, hold the strings, not King William. It’s droll to be put on the trail of oneself. I wish that had happened to me when I was your age. You’ll use it in your memoirs, supposing we ever get permissive about memoirs, that is.”

  “Hugh, not to disagree, but Harvey is already starting to ask what I did for four weeks at Technical Services.”

  “The answer is that you did nothing. You have a sad story. Stick to it. You were never assigned. You never met anyone but the secretary who guards the first waiting room. Poor boy, you were on the edge of your seat waiting to be assigned. It happens all the time. Some of our best trainees expire in just that manner over at TSS. Say . . .” He paused. “Say that you spent your hours ducking out to the reading room at the Library of Congress.”

  “What did I do there?”

  “Anything. Anything at all. Specify something. Say you were reading Lautréamont in preparation for taking a good whack at Joyce. Harvey will pursue it no further. He is not interested in reminding himself how devoid he is of culture. He may bully you a bit, but in his heart he will know that people like Harry Hubbard do just such left-handed things as delve into Lautréamont while waiting for assignment at TSS.”

  “Dix Butler happens to know I was in the Snake Pit.”

  “Whoever this Dix Butler is, give him some definite impression that the Snake Pit was your cover. Don’t say it. Let him come onto the idea himself. But I promise, you are worrying needlessly. Harvey is much too busy to pursue your activities down into the drains. Merely furnish him a bit of progress each week on the search for CLOAKROOM.”

  He coughed. It made a barking sound over the hollow center of the secure phone. “Harry,” he said, “there are two choices in this Company. Worry yourself to death, or choose to enjoy a little uncertainty.” He seemed about to hang up.

  I must have laid one harsh note, however, on the empyrean of his calm, for next he said, “You remember our conversation concerning VQ/CATHETER?”

  “Yessir.”

  “That project is the most important thing in the world to Harvey. If he starts pressing you on CLOAKROOM, nudge him back to CATHETER.”

  “I’m supposed to know nothing about CATHETER but that it’s a cryptonym.”

  “Bill Harvey is broad-gauge paranoid. Such people think associationally. Speak of the Holland Tunnel, or of Dr. William Harvey. Bill must certainly know that the noble namesake charted the circulation of the blood back in 1620, but if by any chance our Base Chief is ignorant of the greater Harvey—never expect too much from an FBI man and you will never be disappointed—why, get him to think of blood vessels. Arteries. Before long his thought will slide back to the tunnel. You see, Harry, Bill Harvey believes that one day he will be running the Company, and VQ/CATHETER is his ticket to Top Desk. He won’t get there, of course. He will certainly self-destruct. His paranoia is too high octane. So just divert him.”

  “Well, thank you, Hugh.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. If you’re obliged to take a few chances before you’re ready, all the better. You’ll be twice as good on your next job.”

  I got through the day. I sent a cable to West Berlin Desk in Washington, notifying them that Chief of Base wished to readdress the cryptonym of KU/CLOAKROOM through Bridge-Archive:Control. I even wondered for the first time if Control was a person, an office, or a machine. Then I called Dix Butler and arranged to go out with him that night. So soon as we met, he told me in passing about Susan Pierce. “It was a wall-banger,” he said. “I figured she would go for my tale.”

  “Is that why you told it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Was that the real story? You told another version at the Farm.”

  “Don’t stare at me in judgment. I steer an anecdote to suit the scene.”

  “Why? Does it work? Is there a psychology of women?”

  “Your dick is sixteen years old.” He hooked my forearm with his first two fingers. “Hubbard, admit it. You don’t have a dose.”

  “I might.”

  “What if I conduct you to the men’s room for an examination?”

  “I won’t go.”

  He began to laugh. When he stopped, he said: “I wanted a piece of Susan Pierce. But I had to recognize that my initial approach was laden with error. I was presenting myself as too sure of myself. You don’t make it with that kind of girl unless she can feel some superiority to you. So I tried to make her feel sorry for this dude.”

  “How did you know she wouldn’t be disgusted?”

  “Because she’s arrogant. Shame is one emotion that girl never wants to feel. She has compassion for that. Like, if you fear blindness, you usually develop some feeling for blind people.”

  I had a closer question I wanted to ask: “How was she in bed?” The inhibiting hand of St. Matthew’s, however, was at my throat. The cost of continuing to see oneself as appropriately decent is that such inquiries are not permissible. I waited, all the same, for his account. On some nights, after listening to a slew of sexual particulars, all forthcoming from him to me, I would return to the apartment while he went off on one or another meeting. It was then I could not sleep. My loins were stuffed with his tales.

  On this night, Dix did not say any more about Susan. Was it because he felt close to her or because it had been unsatisfactory? I was discovering how much of an intelligence man I was becoming—curiosity leaned on my gut like undigested food.

  All the same, Dix stayed away from revelations. He was in a state of exceptional tension tonight and repeated more than once, “I need action, Herrick.” He rarely called me by my full first name, and when he did, the ironies were not attractive. I could hardly explain to him that an old family name was reinvigorated when given to you as a first name and could even prove fortifying when you filled out a signature. So I said nothing. While I would never have to suffer being grabbed by the upper lip like Rosen, there might be some other price. Tonight, he was drinking bourbon neat rather than beer.

  “I’m going to fill you in, Hubbard, about me,” he said, “but don’t you pass this on or you’ll be sorry. Fucking sorry.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, “if you don’t trust me.”

  He was sheepish. “You’re right.” He stuck out his hand to shake. Again, I felt as if I sat next to an animal whose code of behavior rested in no good balance on his instincts. “Yes,” he said, “I paid for running away from that dude with the beer can. I paid, and I paid. I used to wake up at night sweating. I stank. No beating is ever as bad as the depths you plumb in a nadir of shame.” He used the word like a new acquisition. “I have learned the resonance of verbal surprise,” I half expected him to add.

  “I felt so bad inside,” he said instead, “that I started to stand up to my father. And he was one man I had always been afraid of.”

  I nodded.

  “He wasn’t a big man. He was blind in one eye from an old fight, and he had a bad leg. But nobody could take him. He wouldn’t permit it. He was a bad old dog. He’d use a baseball bat or a shovel. Whatever it took. One night he got abusive to me and I laid him out with a punch. Then, I tied him to a chair, stole his handgun and a carton of ammo, put all I owned in one cardboard suitcase, and was out the door. I knew just as soon as he worked himself loose, he would come at me with a shotgun. I even took his car. I knew he wouldn’t report that. Just wait for me to come back.

  “Well, dig it, Herrick, I entered on a life of crime. Fifteen and a half years old, and I learned more in the next year than most people acquire in a life. The war was on. The soldiers were far from home. So I became the stuff women looked to. I could have passed for nineteen, and that helped. I would hit some new good-sized town in the morning, and drive around until I could pick the store to hit. Then I would choose the bar that was right for me. I’d hang in with all those good soaks drinking their lunch until I’d found the right girl or woman, depending on
my state of mind. Did I want to learn from a wise and greedy older person, or was I hankering to instruct young pussy in the art of lust? Depended on the day. Sometimes you just took what you could get, but I did leave a countless number of satisfied women behind me in Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois. I was mean and sweet, and that is a difficult combination to improve upon.

  “I couldn’t have enjoyed life more. I’d pick up a girl or a woman, and then I would park the car on a side street, ask the lady to wait while I visited a friend for some money, and I would walk around the corner, get into the first car whose door was unlocked, jump the ignition, drive over to the store I’d selected, slip a stocking on my face just as I walked in the door, and would hold up the proprietor and empty the cash register. The best time to do it was two o’clock. No lunchtime customers then, and the cash register full of the noontime sales ready to go to the bank. In one minute, I’d be back in my stolen car, face mask off, and two minutes later, I was depositing the stolen car back around still another corner from my own car, at which point I’d return to my daddy’s heap, get in, and tell the new friend, ‘We’re fixed for money now, honey.’ Sometimes we’d even hear the sirens going around the business district as we left town. ‘What’s that?’ she would ask. ‘Beats me, Mrs. Bones,’ I would tell her. I’d choose a tourist cabin camp before I was ten miles away, and I’d hole up with the female for twenty-four hours, or whatever interval she could manage. Six hours or forty-eight. We’d eat, drink, and fornicate. Those robberies were equal to injections of semen. You’re raking in the goodness from people when you stalk right over to their holding and take it from them.