An American Dream

by Norman Mailer

  “No.”

  “Because he was in a losing position with me. Italians are clever. They understand the amnesty which is possible when there’s a death in the family.”

  That was clear enough. “But do I choose to grant you amnesty?” I said.

  I had finally reached his anger. His eyes gave a hint of murderous bad weather. “Extraordinary,” Kelly said, “you never come to the end of knowing Italians. It took forever before I understood that when an Italian says somebody is crazy, he means the man has no sensitivity to fear, so he will have to be killed. Now if I were Italian, I would call you crazy.”

  “I’m too full of fear.”

  “You do odd things for a man with fear. What was that nonsense on the terrace?”

  “A private expedition.”

  “Something to do with my story, could it be?”

  “It could be.”

  “Yes, Deborah once explained how you would like to blow up poor old Freud by demonstrating that the root of neurosis is cowardice rather than brave old Oedipus. I always say it takes one Jew to do in another. Mother of God, were you doing field work on the balcony? Did the experiment check out a winner, Stephen? Are you now ready to take a stroll around the parapet?”

  I could hear Deborah’s tones in his voice: they pushed me to answer too quickly. “Yes, I could do it,” I said, and had said too much.

  “Could you?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’ve had a lot to drink.”

  “You wouldn’t do it?”

  “Not unless there was something at stake.”

  He held his brandy glass and looked down into it as if the quiver of light in the liquid were the entrails of a sacrifice.

  “What if there is something at stake?” he said.

  “There couldn’t be.”

  “I’m going to have more brandy,” he said.

  But as I turned my mouth to my own drink, the liquid leaped up with a lurch of my elbow off the arm of the chair, and a splash went on my cheek. It could have been blood, that small streak of Deborah’s blood left as I embraced her in a full false embrace as she was lying on the street, and the sensation of something wet on my face divided me now from reason. I had a horror of being forced to walk the parapet—there was no confidence I could do it at all; yet the room fixed me in a mood I did not dare to break as if there would be a toll on my flesh, some new penalty of nausea, waste, and disease if I shattered the force which lay on us now by getting to my feet, by leaving him. Besides I did not know where his power ended. Maybe he had only to pick up the phone and some automobile could cut me down at an intersection. Everything contained its possibility. I only knew that I was in some difficult all but inextricable situation in which he would succeed to push me further, and then further again, like a chess master nursing his victory, until I would be forced to admit the inevitable necessity of going out on the terrace. And that I could not do.

  “All right,” said Kelly, “let’s really talk, Rojack. Let’s put the pistols on the table. There’s one reason why you won’t go to the funeral, isn’t there?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s because you did kill Deborah?”

  “Yes.”

  The silence had no air left. Now the messenger arrived. It all came in at once. “Yes, I killed her,” I said, “but I didn’t seduce her when she was fifteen, and never leave her alone, and never end the affair,” and I leaned forward to attack him, as if finally he were mine and I was free of waste and guilt and gutting of the earth, and looking at him knew this was exactly what he had wanted me to discover, what he had spent this night in developing until even I could not miss it, and a smile came off him, a sweet smile, the loveliest smile he possessed, it twinkled about Kelly like a harbor light: come here, the mermaids were saying, you have taken our queen and we have captured your king, checkmate, dear boy, and I slipped off the lip of all sanity into a pit of electronic sirens and musical lyrics dictated by X-ray machines for a gout of the stench which comes from devotion to the goat came up from him and went over to me. I no longer knew what I was doing, nor why I did it, I was in some deep of waters and no recourse but to keep swimming and never stop. Disaster would be on my body when I came to rest. Something stirred in the room. Perhaps it was the vat of liquor in my gut, but I had the sensation something of me was passing through a corridor and a breath, an odium, came up over my face as if finally I had blundered through a barrier. Kelly was near to that violence Deborah used to give off, that hurricane rising from a swamp, that offer of carnage, of cannibals, the viscera of death came from him to me like suffocation. I was going to be dead in another minute; all Deborah’s wrath passed now through him, he was agent to her fury and death set about me like a ringing of echoes in ether, red light and green. I waited for Kelly to attack—he came that close—I had only to close my eyes and he would go to the fire, pick up a poker—his stopped-up violence fired the room. We could have been sitting in smoke. Then this suffocation passed, was replaced; on the beat of the silence, feeling his pulse as if it were my own, hearing his heart like the electronic wind in a microphone, I floated out on the liquor to a promise of power, some icy majesty of intelligence, a fired heat of lust. His body gave off the radiation of a fire, there was heat between us now the way there had been heat between Ruta and me in Deborah’s hall; suddenly I knew what it had been like with Cherry and him, not so far from Ruta and me, no, not so far, and knew what it had been like with Deborah and him, what a hot burning two-backed beast, and I could hear what he offered now: bring Ruta forth, three of us to pitch and tear and squat and lick, swill and grovel on that Lucchese bed, fuck until our eyes were out, bury the ghost of Deborah by gorging on her corpse, for this had been the bed, yes, this Lucchese had been the bed where he went out with Deborah to the tar pits of the moon. Now, he had a call to bury her raw. Desire came off Kelly to jump the murderer of his beast, and unfamiliar desire stirred in me, echo of that desire to eat with Ruta on Deborah’s corpse. “Come on,” Kelly murmured, sitting on his throne, “shall we get shitty?” and went on in a voice so low his tongue and teeth were almost in the speech, I was in that vacuum where silence is stored and the reek of murders still unconceived.

  Then the umbrella slipped from my knee and the near-empty echo of its drop to the carpet went past my ear like a beating of wings, a death passed between us like a beating of wings, and I was scored with a vision of Shago knocking on Cherry’s door, and she opening to receive him, opening her wrapper, opening the heart of her thighs, the lips, the hair, the picture as clear in my mind as the burning house Kelly had seen in the bath at Antibes. I would never forgive her for Kelly, and with that thought, dread came in, I was certain Shago was with her now, it was in the balance of things, he was there with her just so soon as I was here with Kelly. Or was a man being murdered in Harlem at this instant—the picture in my mind was broken with shock—did I feel a broken sawed-off bat go beating on a brain, was a man expiring, some cry (should it have been mine?) going out into an alley of the night, carrying across the miles to the thirty stories of this room—was a murderer running and caught in the patrols of the gods?

  Then I was caught. For I wanted to escape from that intelligence which let me know of murders in one direction and conceive of visits to Cherry from the other, I wanted to be free of magic, the tongue of the Devil, the dread of the Lord, I wanted to be some sort of rational man again, nailed tight to details, promiscuous, reasonable, blind to the reach of the seas. But I could not move.

  I bent to pick up the umbrella, and then the message came clear, “Walk the parapet,” it said. “Walk the parapet or Cherry is dead.” But I had more fear for myself than for Cherry. I did not want to walk that parapet. “Walk it,” said the voice, “or you are worse than dead.” And then I understood: I saw cockroaches following the line of their anxiety up the tenement wall.

  “All right,” I said to Kelly, “let’s go to the terrace.”


  I said this clearly, I must have expected Kelly to beg we remain in the room—I had never felt a sex so manacled to its desire as the desire which had passed across the table from him—but his discipline was steel: he had not won what he won for nothing. He nodded now, and managed to say in the clearest of voices, “By all means. Let’s go to the terrace.” And a confidence came off him that he would have what he wanted some other way. A fear broke loose in my body like the wobble which comes on a child when he is forced into a fight he does not want. It was a very bad fear. I looked at him—I do not know with what look—but it must have been some appeal for mercy, as if he had only to say, “Well, let’s stop the nonsense, it’s gone far enough,” and I would be reprieved. His eyes were neutral, however, and nothing came from him. I could not talk any more. Like a terminal patient whose faculties leave him one by one, so my voice went silent in my throat: I understood the final moments of a man condemned to a firing squad, and had envy for that man—his death was certain, he could prepare himself, but I had to get ready for I did not know what—that seemed worse than any certain knowledge of one’s end.

  We went through the French doors of the library out into the air. It was raining harder now, and the smell of wet grass came through the night, riding the wind from the Park. I did not know if I could get up on the parapet, I had no strength. The thought of using the deck chair was now ambitious beyond my means. I had rather begin at the wall, near the French windows. Neither of us said a word. Kelly came along modestly, like a chaplain accompanying a prisoner.

  But it was easier now, easier at least that we were moving. I had left my life behind me. Just as a man in dying might have a moment when he passes into the mantle of some great cloud, and helpless, full of fear, knows nonetheless that he is in death already and so can wait for it, so my force ceased, and again I felt death come up like the shadow which is waiting as one slips past the first sentinels of consciousness into the islands of sleep. “All right,” I thought, “I guess I am ready to die.”

  When Kelly saw I was going to get up on the parapet, he said, “You’d better give me your umbrella.”

  And I was annoyed, the way a dying man might be bothered in his last reverie by a doctor injecting him with a needle. I did not want Kelly near me, I wanted to be alone; it seemed desperately unfair in a way I could not name to give up the umbrella, but even worse to discuss it, as if I would use up something vital. So I handed the umbrella over. But that left a loss, and again I was afraid to get up on the parapet. Indeed, there was no easy way to mount. I would have to raise my foot uncomfortably high, bring my knee up almost to my shoulder, and then clinging with my right hand to the groove of mortar in the wall of the building I would have to take a quick vertical step up just as if I were springing into a high stirrup, and if I came up too hard, I might go over. But, at least, my voice came back. “Have you ever done this?” I asked.

  “No. Never tried,” said Kelly.

  “Yes, but Deborah tried,” I said suddenly.

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Was she able to go all the way around?”

  “She got off midway.”

  “Poor Deborah,” I said. Fear was back in my voice.

  “You’re not the one to pity her,” he said.

  That provided me with just enough to take the high step. My fingers scraped on the wall, one nail broke and came half off, and I was up, up on that parapet one foot wide, and almost broke in both directions, for a desire to dive right on over swayed me out over the drop, and I nearly fell back to the terrace from the panic of that. I stood there, pure cowardice again, my right hand shivering out of control as I took it from the wall, and stood naked, supported by nothing. It was impossible to take another step. My will slipped away from me, and I stood motionless, trembling and a blubber. I might have wept like a child if I were not afraid even of that. And then I felt some hard contemptuous disgust of my fear. “Every cockroach has the memory of a revolting failure,” muttered something, somewhere, whether in or without my mind I hardly knew, I was soaking wet, but I took one step, one full step, my foot like a forty-pound boot of lead, and brought my rear foot up to meet it, and took another step forward on the same heavy foot like a child climbing the stairs with the right leg always in advance; then I took a third step and stopped, and felt the huge sleeping bulk of the hotel, the tower behind me, and walls still rising to right and left across the chasm of the drop, and down below, walls falling down to ledges and other walls and falling again in a waterfall of stone. But I felt no longer so exposed—the act of balance seemed less precarious, as if the walls offered hints to my ear of a vertical line my body could obey. I took a step; and another step; and realized I had not taken a breath and now took one, and stole a look down the fall and pulled myself back from the impulse to go out like an airplane in a long glide. And my trembling came back. It took a minute before I could move but then I took a step, and took a breath; took a step, and took a breath: this way I took ten steps along the twelve-inch width of the parapet which extended before me like a long board.

  There were ten more steps to the point where the parapet made a right-angle turn to the left and went parallel to the street I made it by telling myself I would get down once I reached the angle. But when I came to the turn I could not get down—I had to go around all three sides of the terrace. So I had accomplished only the first part of three separate parts. Now I hung at the first turn. I had caught a glimpse of the street below, and the fall seemed twice as far, and then opened again like a crack in the earth, which deepened as I looked into it and fell away and opened out again bottomless.

  A gust blew up behind me, a slap of wind. As I swayed in it I took the turn and kept going two, three, four, five steps, I was almost halfway around. But the rain was icy cold—the temperature had dropped five degrees coming around that turn. I was somehow more exposed now. I took a step; and another step. I was no longer walking with one leg dragged behind the other, but now my body kept leaning toward the terrace—I had a panic of standing straight as though that might trick me into looking down the fall. It was exhausting. I had come a little more than halfway around and was as used up as a sailor who has been tied for hours in the rigging of a four-master beating through a storm. The rain came in sharp as pins. Then the wind started up suddenly with a long screech of pain, a crack in my ear, and buffeted me to right and to left, blew me back almost to the terrace and then caught me the other way, leaned me out, my foot slipped an inch at that instant, and I had a view again of the street. I just stood in place, knees quivering, and listened to the wind whose cry came in from every angle. Something in the air was lacerated to make that cry. Then I almost fell to one knee for a blow came at me from nowhere, a fist on my back, and yet Kelly was ten feet away. I had to keep moving, everything was getting worse the longer I stayed still, but my feet were bad again. I pushed one forward; then the worst gust of wind came—Deborah’s lone green eye flew into my eye. Hands came to pull me off, her hands, I smelled a breath—was it real?—it was gone. I took two more steps and reached the second angle. I was on the way back to the wall. But the wind came up again. My vision began to go—which is to say the narrow walk of the parapet began to shift—it swayed to the left, it swayed to the right, the stone was swaying, no it was me, I was swaying, my vision faded, came back again, faded, came back. I had a desire to leave the balcony and fly, I was certain I would succeed. I would fly out on some nerve, and out, and then my mind went out to a place on the edge, as close to going as an exhausted driver on a highway is close to sleep, and I said to myself, “Get off now. You can hardly see.”

  But something else said, “Look at the moon, look up at the moon.” A silvery whale, it slipped up from the clouds and was clear, coming to surface in a midnight sea, and I felt its pale call, princess of the dead, I would never be free of her, and then the most quiet of the voices saying, “You murdered. So you are in her cage. Now, earn your release. Go around the parapet again,” and this thought was
so clear that I kept going down the third leg; and the wall came nearer to me; my limbs came alive again; each step I took, something good was coming in, I could do this, I knew I could do it now. There was the hint of when I would finally be done—some bliss from infancy moved through the lock of my lungs. As I approached the wall, ten feet away, eight feet away, six feet away, Kelly came near, and I stopped.

  “It looks like you’ll make it,” he said, walking up to me.

  I did not care to tell him I must do it again, back the other way.

  “You know, I didn’t think you would make it,” Kelly said. “I thought you’d get down before.” Then the sweet smile came off him. “You’re not bad, Stephen,” he said, “it’s just”—his smile was pleasant—“I don’t know that I want you to get away with it,” and he lifted the tip of the umbrella to my ribs and gave a push to poke me off. But I turned as he pushed, and the tip was diverted, turned just enough to grip the umbrella as it went by, which brought me back from going off, and I jumped down to the terrace even as he let go, and struck him with the handle across the face so hard he went down in a heap. I almost struck him again, but if I had, it would have been again and again, I was in a rage I could not have stopped, and in relief, some relief, wrong or right, I did not know, I turned and hurled the umbrella over the parapet—Shago’s umbrella was gone—and went to the French doors, and through the library and through the bar and was almost at the door to the hall outside when I realized that I had not made the trip back along the parapet, and saw Deborah’s green eye again in my mind. “Oh, no, oh no,” I said to myself, “I’ve done enough. By God, I’ve done enough.”

  “It’s not enough. It goes for nothing if you don’t do it twice,” said the voice.

  “Damn you,” I thought, “I’ve lain with madness long enough.” And went through the door even as I caught a glimpse of Ruta coming out of a room. She had transferred herself to a negligee. But I was out and in the hall, and took the fire stairs this time, running down four flights, five, six, seven, and came up breathless at the eighth to switch to the elevator. I waited ten seconds, twenty seconds, at war with the impulse to go back to Kelly’s and take the parapet again, and knew that if the elevator did not soon arrive, I would be up the stairs. But the cage came, it took me down the flights in one long sigh, to the entrance on the street where the policemen had been. And there was a cab waiting. There was a cab. I gave Cherry’s address; we were off. The light, however, was red at Lexington, and dread came back again—against all my desire, like the return of disease, dread came back again. “The first trip was done for you,” said the voice, “but the second was for Cherry,” and I had a view of the parapet again and the rain going to ice, and was afraid to go back. “Let’s get on,” I said to the driver.