Messiah

by Gore Vidal

  I spent the afternoon gloomily walking up and down Fifth Avenue filled with doubt and foreboding, wishing now that I had never lent myself to the conspiracy, confident of its failure and of the rude laughter or, worse, the tactful silence of friends who would be astonished to find that after so many years of promise and reflection my first book should prove to be an apologia for an obscure evangelist whose only eminence was that of having mesmerized myself and an energetic publicist, among a number of others more likely perhaps than we, to take to a crank.

  The day did nothing to improve my mood and it was in a most depressed state that I went finally to Clarissa's baroque apartment on one of the better streets and dined with her quietly, infecting her, I was darkly pleased to note, with my own grim mood. By the time Cave was announced on the vast television screen, I had reduced Clarissa, for one of the few times in our acquaintance, to silence.

  Yet as the lights in the room mechanically dimmed, as the screen grew bright with color and an announcer came into focus, I was conscious of a quickening of my pulse, of a certain excitement. Here it was at last, the result of nearly a year's careful planning. Soon, in a matter of minutes, we would know.

  To my surprise Paul Himmell was introduced by the announcer who identified him perfunctorily, saying that the following half hour had been bought by Cavite, Inc.

  Paul spoke briefly, earnestly. He was nervous, I could see, and his eyes moved from left to right disconcertingly as he read his introduction from cards out of view of the camera. He described Cave briefly as a teacher, as a highly regarded figure in the West. He implied it was as a public service, the rarest of philantrophies, that a group of industrialists and businessmen were sponsoring Cave this evening.

  Then Paul walked out of range of the camera leaving, briefly, a view of a chair and a table behind which a handsome blue velvet curtain fell in rich graceful folds from the invisible ceiling to an imitation marble floor. An instant later, Cave walked into view.

  Both Clarissa and I leaned forward in our chairs tensely, eagerly, anxiously: we were there as well as he. This was our moment too. My hands grew cold and my throat dry. Cave was equal to the moment. He looked tall: the scale of the table, the chair was exactly right. He wore a dark suit and a dark unfigured tie with a white shirt that gave him an austereness which, in person, he lacked. I saw Paul's stage-managing in this.

  He moved easily into range, his eyes cast down. Not until he had placed himself in front of the table and the camera had squarely centered him, did he look up, look directly into the lens. Clarissa gasped and I felt suddenly pierced: the camera, the lights had magnified rather than diminished his power. It made no difference now what he said. The magic was working. Clarissa and I sat in the twilight of her drawing room, entirely concentrated on that vivid screen, on the dark figure upon rich blue, on the pale eyes and the hands which seldom moved. It was like some fascinating scene in a skillful play which, quite against one's wish and aesthetic judgment, pulled one to it, became, at least for that short time beyond real time, a part of one's own private drama of existence, all sharpened by artifice, by calculated magic.

  Not until Cave was nearly finished did those first words of his, spoken so easily, so quietly, begin to come back to me as he repeated them in his coda. His voice increasing a little in volume, yet still not hurrying, not forcing, not breaking the mood which his first glance had created and which voice and eyes together maintained without once letting go. The burden of his words was, as always, the same. Yet this time it seemed more awesome, more final, undeniable . . . in short, the truth. Though I'd always accepted his first premise, I had never been much impressed by the ways he found of stating it, even though I always responded to his particular power. This night, before the camera and in the sight of millions, he perfected his singular art of communication and the world was his.

  When he finished, Clarissa and I sat for a moment in complete silence, the chirping of a commercial the only sound in the room. At last she said: "The brandy is over there on the console. Get me some." Then she switched off the screen from her chair and the lights of the room brightened again.

  "I feel dragged through a wringer," she said after her first mouthful of brandy.

  "I had no idea it would work so well, like this, on television." I felt strangely empty, let down. There was hardly any doubt now of Cave's effectiveness yet I felt joyless and depleted, as though part of my life had gone, leaving an ache.

  "What a time we're going to have." Clarissa was beginning to recover. "I'll bet there are a million letters by morning and Paul will be doing a jig."

  "I hope this is the right thing, Clarissa. It would be terrible if it weren't."

  "Of course it's right . . . whatever that means: if it works it's right . . . perfectly simple. Such conceptions are all a matter of fashion anyway. One year women expose only their ankle; the next year their derrière. What's right one year is wrong the next. If Cave captures the popular imagination, he'll be right until someone better comes along."

  "A little cynical." But Clarissa was only repeating my own usual line. I was, or had been until that night on the Washington farm, a contented relativist. Cave, however, had jolted me into new ways and I was bewildered by the change, by the prospect ahead.

  2

  That evening was a time of triumph, at least for Cave's companions. They arrived noisily. Paul seemed drunk, manically exhilirated, while Iris glowed in a formal gown of green shot with gold. Two men accompanied them, one a doctor whose name I didn't catch at first and the other a man from the television network who looked wonderfully sleek and pleased and kept patting Cave on the arm every now and then, as if to assure himself he'd not vanished in smoke and fire. Cave, still dressed in his dark suit, was mute. He sat answering questions and replying to compliments with grave nods of his head. He sat in a high brocaded chair beside the fire and drank tea which Clarissa, knowing his habits, had ordered in advance for him.

  After our first burst of greetings at the door I did not speak to Cave again and soon the others left him alone and talked around him, about him yet through him, as though he had become invisible . . . which seemed the case when he was not speaking, when those extraordinary eyes were veiled or cast down, as they were now, moodily studying the teacup, the pattern in the Aubusson rug at his feet.

  I crossed the room to where Iris sat on the wide couch. The doctor, in the chair close to her, snuffled brandy and said, as I joined them: "Your little book, sir, is written in a complete ignorance of Jung and all those who have come after him."

  This was sudden but I answered, as graciously as possible, that I had not intended a treatise on psychoanalysis. "Not the point, sir, if you'll excuse me . . . I am a psychiatrist, a friend of Mr Himmell's" (so this was the analyst to whom Paul so often referred) "and I think it impossible for anyone today to write about the big things without a complete understanding of post-Jungian development . . ."

  Iris interrupted as politely as possible. "Doctor Stokharin is a zealot, Gene. You must listen to him but, first, did you see John tonight?"

  "I did, here with Clarissa: he was remarkable, even more so than in person."

  "It is the isolation," said Stokharin, nodding. Dandruff fell lightly like dry snow from his thick brows to his dark blue lapels. "The camera separates him from everyone else. He is projected like a dream into . . ."

  "He was so afraid at first," said Iris, glancing across the room at the silent Cave who sat, very small and still in the brocaded chair, the teacup still balanced on one knee. "I've never seen him disturbed by anything before. They tried to get him to do a rehearsal but he refused. He can't do rehearsals . . . only the actual thing."

  "Fear is natural when . . ." but Stokharin was in the presence of a master drawing-room tactician: Iris was, I saw at that moment, a born hostess. For all her ease and simplicity she was ruthlessly concerned with keeping order, establishing a rightness of tone which Doctor Stokharin, in his professional madness, would have completely
undone, reducing the drawing room to a seminar in mental therapy, receiving public confessions judiciously, and generalizing to a captive audience. I admired Iris's firmness, her devotion to the civilized.

  "At first we hardly knew what to do." Iris's voice rose serenely over the East European rumblings of the doctor. "He'd always made such a point of the audience. He needed actual people to excite him. Paul wanted to fill the studio with a friendly audience but John said no. He'd try it without. When the talk began there were only a half dozen of us there: Paul, myself, and the technicians. No one else."

  "How did he manage?"

  "It was the camera. He said when he walked out there he had no idea if anything would happen or not, if he could speak. Paul was nearly out of his mind with terror; we all were. Then John saw the lens of the camera. He said looking into it gave him a sudden shock, like a current of electricity passing through him, for there, in front of him, was the eye of the world and the microphone above his head was the ear into which at last he could speak. When he finished, he was transfigured. I've never seen him so excited. He couldn't recall what he had said but the elation remained until . . ."

  "Until he got here."

  "Well, nearly." Iris smiled. "He's been under a terrible strain these last two weeks."

  "It'll be nothing like the traumatizing shocks in store for him during the next few days," said Stokharin, rubbing the bole of a rich dark pipe against his nose to bring out its luster (the pipe's luster, for the nose, straight, thick, proud, already shone like a gross baroque pearl). "Mark my words, everyone will be eager to see this phenomenon. When Paul first told me about him, I said, ah, my friend, you have found that father image for which you've searched since your own father was run over by a bus in your ninth (the crucial) year. Poor Paul, I said, you will be doomed to disappointment. The wish for the father is the sign of your immaturity. For a time you find him here, there . . . in analysis you transfer to me. Now you meet a spellbinder and you turn to him, but it will not last. Exactly like that I talked to him. Believe me, I hold back nothing. Then I met this Cave. I watched him. Ah, what an analyst he would have made! What a manner, what power of communication: a natural healer. If only we could train him. Miss Mortimer, to you I appeal. Get him to study. The best people, the post-Jungians are all here in New York. They will train him. He would become only a lay analyst but, even so, what miracles he could perform, what therapy! We must not waste this native genius."

  "I'm afraid, Doctor, that he's going to be too busy wasting himself to study your . . . procedures," Iris smiled, engagingly, dislike apparent in her radiant eyes. Stokharin, however, was not sensitive to hostility . . . no doubt attributing such emotions to some sad deficiency in the other's adjustment. Iris turned to me. "Will you be in the city the whole time?"

  "The whole time Cave's here? Yes. I wouldn't miss it for anything."

  "I'm glad. I've so much I want to talk to you about. So many things are beginning to happen. Call me tomorrow. I'll be staying at my old place. It's in the book."

  "Cave?"

  "Is staying with Paul, out on Long Island at someone's house. We want to keep him away from pests as much as possible."

  "Manic depression, I should say," said Stokharin thoughtfully, his pipe now clenched between his teeth and his attention on Cave's still figure. "With latent schizoid tendencies which . . . Miss Mortimer, you must have an affair with him. You must marry him if necessary. Have children. Let him see what it is to give life to others, to live in a balanced . . ."

  "Doctor, you are quite mad," said Iris and she crossed the room, cool in her anger. I too got away from the doctor as quickly as I could: "False modesty, inhibited behavior, too early bowel training," and similar phrases ringing in my ears.

  Paul caught me at the door. I'd intended to slip away without saying good night, confident that Clarissa would understand, that the others would not notice. "Not going so soon, are you?" He was a little drunk, his face scarlet with excitement. "But you ought to stay and celebrate." I murmured something about having an early appointment the next day.

  "Well, see me tomorrow. We've taken temporary offices in the Empire State Building. The money has begun to roll in. If this thing tonight turns out the way I think it has, I'm going to be able to quit my other racket for good and devote all my time to Cave." Already the name Cave had begun to sound more like that of an institution than of a man.

  "By the way, I want to tell you what I think of the Introduction: superior piece of work. Tried it out on several highbrow friends of mine and they liked it."

  "I'm afraid . . ."

  "That, together with the talks on television, should put this thing over with the biggest bang in years. We'll probably need some more stuff from you, historical background, rules and regulations, that kind of thing, but Cave will tell you what he wants. We've hired a dozen people already to take care of the mail and inquiries. There's also a lecture tour being prepared, all the main cities, while . . ."

  "Paul, you're not trying to make a religion of this, are you?"

  I could hold it back no longer even though both time and occasion were all wrong for such an outburst.

  "Religion? Hell, no . . . but we've got to organize. We've got to get this to as many people as we can. People have started looking to us (to him, that is) for guidance. We can't let them down."

  Clarissa's maid ushered in a Western Union messenger, laden with telegrams. "Over three hundred," said the boy.

  "The station said to send them here." Paul paid him jubilantly and, in the excitement, I slipped away.

  3

  The results of the broadcast were formidable. My small book which until then had enjoyed the obscurity of being briefly noted among the recent books was taken up by excited editors who used it as a basis for hurried but exuberant accounts of the new marvel.

  One night a week for the rest of that winter Cave appeared before the shining glass eye of the world and on each occasion new millions in all parts of the country listened and saw and pondered this unexpected phenomenon, the creation of their own secret anxieties and doubts, a central man.

  The reactions were too numerous for me to recollect in any order or with any precise detail; but I do recall the first few months vividly: after that of course the work moved swiftly of its own and one lost track of events which tended to blur, the way casualties late in a large war do, not wringing the wearied heart as the death of one or a particular few might earlier have done.

  A few days after the first broadcast, I went to see Paul at the offices which he had taken in the Empire State Building . . . as high up as possible, I noted with amusement: always the maximum, the optimum.

  Halfway down a corridor, between lawyers and exporters, Cavite, Inc. was discreetly identified in black upon a frosted-glass door. I went inside.

  It appeared to me the way I'd always thought a newspaper office during a crisis might look. Four rooms opening in a row off one another, all with doors open, all crowded with harassed secretaries and clean-looking young men in blue serge suits carrying papers, talking in loud voices which together made the room sound like a hive at swarming time.

  Though none of them knew me, no one made any attempt to ask my business or to stop me as I moved from room to room in search of Paul. Everywhere there were placards with Cave's picture on them, calm and gloomy-looking, dressed in what was to be his official costume: a dark suit, an unfigured tie, a white shirt. I tried to overhear conversations as I passed the busy desks and groups of excited debaters, but their noise was too loud. Only one word was identifiable, sounding regularly, richly emphatic like a cello note: Cave, Cave, Cave.

  In each room I saw piles of my Introduction which pleased me even though I had come already to dislike it.

  The last room contained Paul, seated behind a desk with a dictaphone in one hand, three telephones on his desk (none fortunately ringing at this moment) and four male and female attendants with notebooks and pencils eagerly poised. Paul sprang from his chair
when he saw me. The attendants fell back. "Here he is!" He grabbed my hand and clung to it vise-like: I could almost feel the energy pulsing in his fingertips, vibrating through his body . . . his heartbeat was obviously two to my every one.

  "Team, this is Eugene Luther."

  The team was properly impressed and one of the girls, slovenly but intelligent-looking, said: "It was you who brought me here. First you I mean . . . and then of course Cave."

  I murmured vaguely and the others told me how clear I had made all philosophy in the light of Cavesword. (I believe it was that day, certainly that week, Cavesword was coined by Paul to denote the entire message of John Cave to the world). Paul then shooed the team out with instructions he was not to be bothered. The door, however, was left open.

  "Well, what do you think of them?" He leaned back, beaming at me from his chair.

  "They seem very . . . earnest," I said, wondering not only what I was supposed to think but, more to the point, what I did think of the whole business.

  "I'll say they are! I tell you, Gene, I've never seen anything like it. The thing's bigger even than that damned crooner I handled . . . you may remember the one. Everyone has been calling up and, look!" He pointed to several bushel baskets containing telegrams and letters. "This is only a fraction of the response since the telecast. From all over the world. I tell you, Gene, we're in."

  "What about Cave? Where is he?"

  "He's out on Long Island. The press is on my tail trying to interview him but I say no, no go, fellows, not yet; and does that excite them! We've had to hire guards at the place on Long Island just to keep them away."