When they came to 213 they knocked. A voice sounded inside, muffled and indistinct. They opened the door and went in.
Cromwell was sitting by the window. He had a light blue blanket over his shoulders. He was smoking a cigar. Clara was sitting on the window seat with a robe over her knees.
"Hello," Cromwell said.
The four of them looked quietly at one another for a long moment. Cromwell blinked. Then he smiled and gestured.
"Sit down," he said.
The room was crowded. Along one wall was a line of old filing cabinets. The opposite wall was lined with stacks of books which were piled up carelessly on one another. Objects spilled into the center of the room: a drying starfish, an abalone iron, a bag of pencils, scratch paper, an old Dictaphone set with two containers of wax cylinders, a box of paper clips that glittered brightly on the carpet.
In the back of the room was a crude kitchen arrangement. There was a small icebox and a hot plate on a table. Waxed milk cartons, cans of pork and beans, ends of bread, a knife with a rusty edge and a cup of spoons were also on the table.
The smell of cigar smoke impregnated the room, as if it had been blended into the paint, soaked up by the books and debris. The ashtrays overflowed with cigar butts; the older ones dried and hard, the top ones still wet and soft.
Cromwell puffed quietly as he watched them.
"Sit down on the window seat," Cromwell said. "We're watching the tide come in. We watch it wash over the rocks."
They sat down and looked out the window. The beach was covered with smooth rounded rocks. Green water surged in among the rocks, reached up toward the hotel. Far down the beach two children ran across the rocks, back and forth, with the fall and rise of the waves. At that hour they were featureless, angular, somehow antic; like crabs shaken loose of their shells.
"Pretty soon the waves hit the pilings under the hotel," Clara said. "The whole place shakes and shivers. But you get used to it. We hardly notice it anymore. Sort of like it."
She turned and smiled at Georgia. For a moment Georgia was confused. Then she realized it was the first time Clara had ever looked at her directly, without attempting to shield the birthmark. Clara held her hands in her lap and the birthmark was turned toward the room. Georgia smiled back at Clara.
They watched the tide rise. The waves broke higher on the rocks. When the first wave reached the pilings the hotel shivered. The planks in the floor creaked and the doors rasped. A book slid sideways and coIlapsed in a small cloud of cigar ash.
"The hotel is really well built," Cromwell said. "The shaking doesn't mean that it's weak. It really rolls with the waves. It's been through dozens of storms. Stood up through all of them."
In a few moments Hank and Georgia were used to the shivering impact of the waves. Hank glanced at Cromwell and saw that he had a notebook in his lap. "I'm revising my book on Hobbes," he said, holding up the notebook. "The publishers say it finally sold out the first printing and they think maybe a new edition would go. So I'm working on that."
"How about a drink?" Clara said. "I'll make martinis. We don't drink a lot anymore, but we always have something around."
She went to one of the tables and began to pour gin and vermouth into a teapot. She opened the old wooden icebox and chipped off slivers of ice.
"I hear they buried Mike in the Veterans' Cemetery," Cromwell said. "The one out by Santa Monica."
"That's right," Hank said. "He asked for that in his will."
"How many people were there?"
"Two. Georgia and me."
"Just two?" Cromwell said and his voice was calm and steady. "That's funny. He almost had the state in his hand and when he died two people went to his funeral. He was just a little way, just the tiniest slice, from being the most powerful man in the state. Was his wife there?"
"No," Hank said. "She'd taken the kids and gone back to St. Helena. I drove her to the air terminal. She was wearing black and had a veil, but you could see she was relieved. She smiled under her veil when she thought I wasn't looking."
"I should have gone to the funeral," Cromwell said broodingly.
"It didn't matter," Hank said. Hank paused. "John, tell me why you made the speech about Moon just three days after Mike died? I still can't figure it out."
They were all silent. The only sound was the sharp tinkle of the ice splinters being destroyed in the teapot. Clara poured the martinis into water tumblers and passed them around. Cromwell took his glass, sniffed the martinls.
"It was funny having Mike die," Cromwell said softly. His voice was exploring, tentative, as if this were the first time he had formulated the thought in words. "The minute I heard about it, something started to go out of me. It was like a knife slit in one of those big circus balloons. Those big red and white and blue balloons with pictures and advertisements on the side. They float by a cable above the circus. The gas just started to hiss out. I could feel myself shrink. I couldn't believe it was happening. I believed all the wonderful words and pictures on the sides of the balloon. And then they all started to crumple; get wrinkled and crumple. At first I was scared. More than I'd ever been before in my life. For three days I sat in a hotel room and felt the pressure going out of me. I was emptied, crumpled, baggy. Then it was all over. All that was left was a hulk. The bright words and the wonderful pictures were all tiny and twisted. The hulk was drab and ugly. But I knew it was me."
Cromwell paused. He watched a wave foam in around the rocks. He lifted the glass and drank. Carelessly he pulled the blanket over his head so that it formed a cowl. He peered out at them.
"Go on, John," Clara said. "Tell us the rest"
"The three days were terrible," Cromwell said softly. "I kept trying to patch up the leak, to hold in the pressure. Actually I held my hand over my groin as if I had been ruptured; trying to hold everything together. And then at the end of three days it was all over. The pressure was gone. I was back to normal. I was a carcass that Mike had taken and blown up. Oh, he didn't do it against my will. I went along. I asked to have all the wrinkles taken out; to be blown up so tight. I wanted to sail up above the state and see all the faces looking up at me and their mouths gaping as they read the words and saw the pictures. I loved it. I didn't know what all the words were or just exactly what the people saw, but it was me. Do you understand that? It was me: John Cromwell. They could paint anything they wanted on the side. I didn't care. I was just grateful that I could free-float; that everybody could see me. Except it wasn't really me. It was Mike's balloon they were seeing."
"Part of it was you, John," Clara said. "Really it was."
"Maybe so, maybe so," Cromwell said. "Maybe a few of the words and a few of the pictures. But nobody would have seen them if it hadn't been for Mike Freesmith. He put the pressure in; he took the wrinkles out; he made me free floating. When the whole thing was collapsed I could see that. What was left after the pressure leaked out was old and familiar. Old, familiar, half-drunk John Cromwell. A kind of bum. A bum who had a trick: he could orate. A bum who had an itch to see people change when they listened to him. And when they changed, the itch became a great glorious sensation. The itch was just a minor affliction; without Mike the itch wouldn't have bothered more than a few hundred people in the state. But Mike made the itch something big."
"But why did you make the speech about Moon?" Hank asked again.
"Because when the three days was over, I was me again," Cromwell said. "I shrugged back into the old rubbery carcass and the wrinkles all fell in place. And I knew that one of the first things I had to do was to take Professor Moon off the hook. So I had the State Central Committee buy television time and I made the speech. I didn't consult anybody. I just made the speech and admitted that at Fresno I had been wrong about Moon and I apologized. You should have seen the State Committee. They were sitting in the broadcasting studio and they thought I'd gone crazy. They waved their hands, turned red, gave me body English, scribbled notes; anything to get me to stop."
&nb
sp; "They think it lost the election for you," Hank said. "They think you might have won if you hadn't made that speech."
"That isn't why he lost," Clara said. "He lost because he didn't follow Mike's plan. John went down and fired all of Mike's research staff the day after he made the Moon speech. They thought he was crazy. They told him they could still win the election for him. But he fired them anyway. God, was I proud."
"She's right," Cromwell said. "The Moon speech didn't make any difference. I still got forty-five per cent d the vote. Just like Mike said I would . . . just by being a Democrat But I didn't pick up any of the undecided vote. For that you have to do something special. And I wouldn't do what Mike had planned."
"And Mike was right again," Georgia whispered. "He said if you were the Democrat you'd get forty-five per cent of the votes. Without doing a thing. And you didn't do a thing and you got just forty-five per cent."
No one spoke.
The tide passed high water. Its grip on the pilings was weaker. Over the ocean the clouds parted for a moment and a long narrow band of light fell on the water. The light caught a huge shifting clot of kelp. The kelp was blood red and delicate. It writhed as it was washed by the undertow and great swirls of the kelp boiled to the sudace and then were pulled down again. The rest of the ocean was smooth and gray, like poured lead.
"Mike was right about a lot of things," Hank said. He watched Cromwell. "He was right about the people being stupid and irrational. He was right about their being afraid."
Cromwell drank his glass empty. He held the glass up to the window, and watched the bluish film of gin gather into tendrils and slowly form a large drop in the bottom of the glass. He drank off the drop.
"Mike was right about that and lots more," Cromwell said. "They're stupid, frightened, panic-stricken. But they're also wise, courageous, steady. Sometimes they're vicious, sometimes they're generous. They're everything . . . and so they have to be what Mike said they were too. Play a tune well enough, Hank, and someone always comes forward to dance."
"But why did they always act one way for Mike?"
Hank asked. "Always the same. Always scared. Always fearful."
"Because he was certain," Cromwell said. "It's the one thing you can't fake. You have it or you don't. The people look up, sniff around . . . " His hands moved, formed and impressed the idea. "They smell out the man with certainty. And if you have it they'll believe you. They'll behave as you tell them."
"Because their own uncertainty is so great," Hank said bitterly. "They're so unsure."
"That's right. They'll believe because they don't have anything else. Or they believe in themselves too little."
"How did they ever protect themselves from the Mikes?" Hank asked.
His voice, thin with strain, asked for something.
"Because there are always some who disbelieve. At some point the disbelievers come together and fight the believer," Cromwell paused. He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and instantly he looked very old. His voice came softly. "Sometimes the disbelievers fight alone. A lonely disbeliever who disbelieves so much . . . so much that you drowned him."
It was loose in the room. Georgia looked up sharply; Hank curled his fingers together into a large double fist and crushed it between his knees. He looked up slowly.
"You knew?" Hank asked.
"Yes. I knew," and from the shadow of the cloth Cromwell's lips hardly moved. "I knew when I read the story in the papers. When I read about you and Georgia waiting on the beach and about the surfboards coming in all broken up. And I knew when I read that you arried Mike up the cliff path. I knew then."
Outside the sea and sky reshaped. The band of light retreated across the ocean, flashed over the great sweep of water, caught an island for a moment and then was gone. The sea was gray and flat.
"Was I right, John?" Hank asked.
"I don't know, Hank," Cromwell said. "I'm not the one to judge."
"I had to do it," Hank said. "No one else was doing anything. So I had to."
"I can't judge it," Cromwell said again.
There was a moment of simple quiet No one breathed. And then they were all aware of the same thing. It was among them; strange and foreign, although they had made it. It was a curiously solid fragment; almost palpable: Hank would never be judged.
Cromwell and Georgia and Clara were aware of an unwelcome smugness, a relief from judgment. Hank looked at them and saw it. His eyes burned and sunk deeper into his skull. He looked, finally, at Georgia.
"We have to go, Hank," Georgia said. "It's late."
They shook hands with Cromwell and Clara. They walked back down the salt-smelling, moist, ancient hall. They climbed the steps to the roads. They looked at the abandoned tract; at the richness of the street lamps. They looked down the street as if the Ford were an impossible distance. In the sites across the street old tattered flags began to flutter as the wind rose.
Georgia took his hand. She looked at him. His eyes were narrowed, in the middle were thin blue crystals of sparkling agony.
"I'll help, Hank." Georgia whispered. "I'll help you."
"big scope
. . . SCHOOL, COLLEGE,POLITICS, MEDICINE
WAR AND PEACE . . . AND ALWAYS THE HOT,
BRIGHT, HECTIC CALIFORNIA SCENE . . . "
-- Saturday Review
Fear + hate = power was Mike Freesmith's formula
for success. He first tested it in high school
when he seduced his English teacher and drove a
harmless drunk to suicide. He used it on the
woman who paid his way through college. He used
it to put his candidate in the governor's chair,
and to make himself the most ruthless, powerful
kingmaker in American politics.
"authority and distinction"
-- The New York Times
The Ninth Wave Page 42
