Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  Dean Rusk was somewhat more cautious. A transcript of his morning press conference is now passing around the Newsroom. It is incredible how many cigarettes are being smoked, how many ashtrays not emptied, how many mimeographed papers of every description end up on the floor. We Agency hands are normally the neatest people in America, but the tension of these last few days has extorted a species of excretion from our nerves. A gray excretion, be it said. All is gray—the news itself, the cigarette ash, the smoke, the detritus on the floor, the gray footprints on the fallen paper. Yes, we exude information as fast as we receive it.

  Q: There is a very puzzling case of this pilot who landed in Miami after saying he had defected from the Cuban Air Force. Castro has challenged us to produce him. Why do we not allow the press to see this man? Is the Immigration Service making policy for the State Department?

  RUSK: I think this is a question which started as one on the Immigration Service and became one on Cuba. I would not wish to answer that question this morning.

  Q: If the rebels succeed in establishing a solid foothold in Cuba, would we be prepared to consider or to grant diplomatic recognition?

  RUSK: That is a question for the future into which I can’t go this morning.

  Q: Mr. Secretary, I will get off Cuba.

  RUSK: Thank you. (laughter)

  Others, however, are not obliging the matter so quickly. Crowds, rocks, and smashed windows at the U.S. Information Agency in Bogota; tear gas employed in Caracas against an unruly demonstration. Izvestia reports “alarming news.” I skim statements by foreign ministers in London, Paris, Rome, Bonn, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Peking, New Delhi, Kinshasa. More mimeos for the floor. Outside on Ohio Drive one can see the Monday-afternoon traffic going by. Motor launch passengers pass on the Potomac. At this moment, we might be the most important office in Washington, yet we are relatively idle. I feel hollow, exalted, twisted by caffeine, angry, and full of a most peculiar, even an alienated sentiment—I am a participant in history as it is being made, but only as a spear carrier playing his own small anxious part in the opera.

  I cannot rid myself of a small sense of outrage as I read early editions of the evening newspapers. They are not responsible! The rumors printed in small type leap out at me like headlines:

  CUBAN NAVY IN REVOLT

  INVADERS HIT BEACHES IN FOUR OF CUBA’S SIX PROVINCES

  RAUL CASTRO CAPTURED

  THOUSANDS OF POLITICAL PRISONERS FREED

  CASTRO READY TO FLEE CUBA

  Outrageous rumors daring to appear virtually as facts. I feel righteous that I am in Intelligence. At least we lie with some finesse. Then I think of our bulletins for the Cuban Revolutionary Council. That is not Intelligence. I hate Hunt for a moment, as if he is responsible for traducing me into propaganda. I realize that my nerves are living in two places at once. I had thought I would be in Opa-Locka by now and on the beachhead tomorrow; I am still in a consortium of stale armpits. Is anything so stale as exhausted deodorant? The gray excreta of our nerves spews onto the trays and the floor.

  3:30 A.M., April 18, 1961

  Battles at Playa Larga and San Blas go on through the night. Castro’s troops reached the front at 3:00 P.M., twelve hours ago, and heavy action ensued. Reports seem to confirm that his men were mangled in the first attacks. Now the Brigade is under heavy artillery and tank fire and is answering with its own tanks, 4.2-inch mortars, and white phosphorus shells. The claim is that massive casualties are being inflicted. I cannot sleep. The battle sounds epic.

  3:44 A.M., April 18, 1961

  Unable to sleep, I listen to Radio Swan. An hour later, a transcript comes in of their broadcast to the Cuban underground. It may be worth entering in this journal. What the hell; Hunt, Phillips, and I worked on it hoping to inspire fear in all the Fidelistas who might be listening.

  “Now is the precise moment for you to take up strategic positions that control roads and railroads. Take prisoners or shoot those who refuse to obey your orders! Comrades of the Navy, . . . secure your post in the Navy of Free Cuba. Comrades of the Air Force, listen closely! All planes must stay on the ground. See that no Fidelist plane takes off. Destroy its radios; destroy its tail; break its instruments; puncture its fuel tanks! Freedom and honor await those who join us. Death will overtake the traitors who do not!”

  6:31 A.M., April 18, 1961

  More from Radio Swan:

  “People of Havana, attention, people of Havana. Help the brave soldiers of the liberation army . . .. Today at 7:45 A.M., when we give the signal on this station, all the lights in your house should be turned on; all electrical appliances should be connected. Increase the load on the generators of the electric company! But do not worry, people of Havana, the liberation forces will recover the electrical plants and they can be placed in operation rapidly.”

  7:00 A.M., April 18, 1961

  The Brigade won the battle at Playa Larga, yet lost the ground. By all our reports, Castro’s casualties were high. His troops were obliged to attack along a road surrounded by swamp on either side. It sounds like an operation where one wounded human inches forward behind another, dead flesh a shield for bleeding flesh.

  As I write the above sentence, I recognize that my senses are not wholly under control. I see myself in the wounded man pushing the dead man. I feel the dirty, intimate stickiness of blood.

  Castro’s troops could not break through. In turn, Oliva’s Second Battalion has run out of ammunition. The Fifth Battalion, dragged ashore from the stove-in Houston, are without weapons. They never did join up with Second Battalion. A retreat has been ordered from Playa Larga to Girón. The fifty-mile-long beachhead is falling backward into a five-mile perimeter.

  The worst news is that no new supplies came in last night from the sea. I must have gotten up four times during the night to read the cable traffic from Girón. It is confounding. The crews of the Caribe and the Atlántico must have been berserk with panic. The first ship is now 218 miles south of the Bay of Pigs and shows no sign of returning for supply operations. The Atlántico, a mere 110 miles south, is asking to be off-loaded into LCUs fifty miles from shore.

  It seems the explosion of the Río Escondido was the local equivalent of an atom bomb going off. Huge mushroom of smoke. An end of the world boom heard thirty miles away. While much of the crew was rescued by the Blagar, that same demoralized crew is now paralyzing all action. While the Brigade lost most of its ammunition and communications when the Escondido went down, the Blagar has enough supplies to keep our Cubans fighting for another two days. If it can get them in. But the Blagar is crawling back to Girón. It will not reach the shore by dawn, and that means it will not be able to unload again today. The survivors of the Escondido have so infected the Blagar that its crew now threatens to stop the ship’s motors unless they are given American destroyer escort to shore. Since this is in negotiation (with the White House, I assume) they do permit the ship to return slowly.

  I try not to sit in judgment. If I had been blown into the water, perhaps I could no longer control my will. The root of the problem with these mutinous crews goes right back, Phillips explains, to the way we obtained the boats. The García Line who rented them to us (offices in Havana, New York, and Houston) was not only a bona fide shipping firm but indeed the largest in Cuba. The owners’ decision to defect from Castro was doubtless not passed on to the crew who thought they were signing on for routine voyages.

  later

  The situation has become so acutely intolerable for Pepe San Román that he took off in one of his battered launches to scour the seas, looking to find a supply ship. Of course, from six miles out, which is as far as the launch, given its asthmatic motor, dared to go, he could do nothing but transmit code-name cries by radio: DOLORES, THIS IS BEACH, NEED YOU. AM TRYING TO FIND YOU. DOLORES, PLEASE ANSWER BEACH.

  I couldn’t help observing that the text was as desperate as the notices in a personals classified.

  By dawn it seems evident that we will not be able
to supply the beachhead until tonight. In compensation, President Kennedy did agree during the night to allow six of the B-26s in Nicaragua to try a strike against the remaining planes in Castro’s air force.

  We are, however, cursed. This morning, black, low-lying tropical clouds cover Havana’s airfields.

  Of course, the fact that this flight was authorized after the same mission was vetoed on Sunday has put everyone in an ugly mood. “Irish Hamlet” may be the one epithet applied to Kennedy that is not too vicious to memorialize, and Cabell has hardly been seen on these premises since he paid that catastrophic visit on Sunday morning in golfing clothes. There is also some resentment of Bissell. The story, as it is coming out (and I have heard two virtually congruent versions from Cal and from David Phillips) is that when Bissell and Cabell went to Rusk’s office in the State Department on Sunday afternoon to argue for the need to reinstate the bombing raid, Rusk, obviously more concerned with our compromised situation at the UN, proceeded to call President Kennedy at Glen Ora. Over the telephone, he did give a fair presentation of Cabell and Bissell’s arguments on the need for a second air strike, but then told the President that he did not agree. Whereupon Kennedy said he would go along with Rusk, who now relayed this message to our officers, and pointed to the phone. Did they wish to speak to the President? They did not. Three days later, you can still hear the muttering at Quarters Eye. Of Cabell it was to be expected, but why had Bissell been silent?

  I asked my father. He put a quick end to that subject. “Dickie was afraid,” said Cal, “that if he pushed too hard on the absolute necessity of a second air strike, Kennedy might reply, ‘If it hangs on that thin a thread, call it off.’” Cal gave me one wild look. “Every now and then in a man’s life,” he said, “one can have a little trouble with an erection. What’s the advised procedure? Get it in, boy, even if it’s only the tip. Then, pray to God for reinforcements. Please, God, just let an elephant step on my ass.”

  How my father, son of the greatest headmaster St. Matthew’s ever had, developed his sexual view of the universe is to me, after eight years of living with the idea, the best single proof of the existence of Alpha and Omega.

  3:00 P.M., April 18, 1961

  Roberto Alejos’ brother, Carlos, the Guatemalan Ambassador, has just made a speech to the UN in answer to Cuba’s charges. As I watch on TV, Carlos Alejos says, most forcefully, that the troops who landed in Cuba, were not trained in Guatemala. His country, he solemnly states, is not about to allow its territory to be used for aggressive acts against fellow American republics.

  I am overcome. In part, I must admit, it is with admiration. Large lies do have their own excitement. I much prefer a major mistruth in the name of a real purpose than all that pandering to Mothers of Miami and Caravans of Sorrow.

  4:00 P.M., April 18, 1961

  The front is relatively quiet this afternoon. Castro’s forces, a little more respectful after their mauling last night, are moving cautiously down the road from Playa Larga to Girón. At San Blas, on the eastern front, where equally heavy fighting took place yesterday, there has been some realignment of our troops. The Third Battalion, which went ashore with Pepe San Román at Girón and has seen no action so far, is moving over to the eastern front to relieve the paratroopers at San Blas. The Fourth Battalion, dispatched to Playa Larga yesterday in lieu of the half-drowned Fifth Battalion, has now been pulled back to cross over to the eastern flank. The Sixth Battalion, playing musical chairs with the Fourth, has shifted to the western end. It occurs to me that I have not accounted for the First Battalion. Then I realize they are the paratroopers. Yes, they are back taking a well-earned rest in Girón for a few hours. I think of beer bottles in cantinas, and men diving under tables when Castro’s planes come over. I have no idea if the image has any validity.

  At TRAX, Pepe San Román impressed me as lean and lithe, with a small, pinched, totally consecrated face, utterly humorless. Whole determination to win. It was obvious he was altogether capable of sending men out to die since he had no doubt of his own ability to do so. Now he is at the edge of his temper.

  BLAGAR: This is Task Force Commander. How are you, Pepe?

  PEPE: Son of a bitch. Where have you been, you son of a bitch? You have abandoned us.

  BLAGAR: I know you have your problems. I’ve had mine.

  GRAY: (an Agency man on the Blagar): Pepe, we will never abandon you. If things are very rough there, we will go in and evacuate you.

  PEPE: I will not be evacuated. We will fight to the end here.

  GRAY: What do you need?

  PEPE: Weapons, bullets, communications, medicine, food.

  GRAY: We will get you all these things tonight.

  PEPE: That’s what you said yesterday and you did not come.

  5:02 P.M., Tuesday, April 18, 1961

  Cal tells me, via his State Department leads, that Khrushchev sent a strong note to Kennedy. He has part of the text and shows it to me.

  Written at an hour of anxiety fraught with danger to world peace: It is not a secret to anyone that the armed bands which invaded Cuba have been trained, equipped, and armed in the United States of America. There should be no misunderstanding of our position: We shall render the Cuban people and their government all necessary assistance in beating back the armed attack on Cuba. Sincerely interested in a relaxation of international tension, we shall, if others aggravate it, reply in full measure.

  Kennedy’s answer is available to us. He is going to say that in case of outside intervention, the U.S. will feel obliged to honor immediately its hemispherical treaty obligations.

  The fish is red!

  8:00 P.M., APRIL 18, 1961

  A message from the Blagar: PROCEEDING BLUE BEACH WITH 3 LCUS. IF LOW JET COVER NOT FURNISHED AT FIRST LIGHT BELIEVE WE WILL LOSE ALL SHIPS. REQUEST IMMEDIATE REPLY.

  12:30 A.M., April 19, 1961

  The Blagar waits for an answer even as we have been waiting all night. It has taken this long for Bissell, General Lemnitzer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Burke, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara to get a meeting underway with the President. Very much in the way was a formal reception at the White House tonight. The President and First Lady have to greet his Cabinet, members of Congress, and guests.

  No sooner has the President left the party for the meeting, however, than one of my father’s contacts, a Congressman present at the White House reception, reaches Cal to tell him about it. I have always known that my father is, by half, a gregarious man, but I had never realized until the last two weeks of bunking with him how many tips, leads, sources, feeds, ties, and links he has to Congress and Departments of the Government. Where Hugh Montague is devious and full of pressure points he can tap, my father treats it all as a social matter. He is full of friendly curiosity, or so, at least, he presents himself, and given his personal force, which always leaves you feeling as if you’re setting more weight on one foot than the other (for he is certainly capable of tilting you), people do come forward with answers to his inquiries. Tonight, from the mouth of this minor Congressman, who is delighted to be able to get through to a senior officer in CIA, Cal has learned the following: The President, immaculate in white tie and tails, and Jackie Kennedy on his arm in a pink evening gown, came down the main stairs to the ballroom at 10:15 P.M. while the Marine band in dress red uniforms played nothing less than “Mr. Wonderful.” The President and the First Lady had a dance looking “elegant as champagne,” then mixed with the guests until close to midnight, whereupon apologies were made, and the President left the party, went to his office, and now is closeted with the high officials who are going to help him to decide the fate of the Brigade. Cal informs me that Bissell has some daring and wholehearted goals to shoot for at this point. My guess is that Bissell has been in contact with Allen Dulles in Puerto Rico. According to Cal, Admiral Burke and General Lemnitzer in company with Bissell will ask Kennedy for the following: (1) Complete air support from the U.S. Navy carrier Essex, now twenty miles off the coast
of Girón; and (2) Bite the bullet! Put ashore the 1500-man Marine battalion stationed on the Essex. In short, the tip is in; reinforce it. Bissell and Company will argue that this is the only way for the U.S. to save face.

  I can’t get over the picture I hold of the President coming down the main stairway of the White House with his wife (who in my mind now looks more and more like you, Kittredge). It might as well be a film by George Cukor, or Rouben Mamoulian. High intrigue cum white tie and tails. Of course, I haven’t really slept in two and a half nights. My mind leaps like a fly with one wing.

  2:30 A.M., April 19, 1961

  About a quarter of an hour ago, Bissell came back to Quarters Eye. Needless to say, we all gathered about him. He looked tired to me, but spoke as if much has been gained. The President, he said, had authorized six jet fighters from the Essex to provide air cover over the beach from 6:30 A.M. to 7:30 A.M. They would be there to protect the B-26s from Castro’s fighters. While our jet fighters were under orders not to be the first to fire, they were now authorized to reply. With such protection, the Brigade’s B-26s ought to be able to cause serious damage to Castro’s troops and tanks at the battlefront. During that hour, the Barbara J., the Blagar, and the LCUs can also unload their supplies at Girón.

  I, knowing how much military aid was asked for, and how little has been granted, am surprised at the enthusiasm with which the news is received. Perhaps it is no more than the power to be electrified by some kind of positive response when fatigue and despair have hollowed one out, but you can feel the difference. Even Cal is not without enthusiasm. “We asked for a lot, and didn’t get it, but those were bargaining chips. When Admiral Burke spoke of sending in the Marines, Kennedy had to offer something.”

  “Is it enough?”