The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “Here come Hymie!”

  “Unnh! Unnnh! Unnnhh!”

  “Chew my willie, Yo’ Honor.”

  Kovitsky stared at the window, still trying to make out his enemy through the heavy mesh. Then he took a deep breath, and there was a tremendous snuffling sound in his nose and a deep rumbling in his chest and throat. It seemed incredible that such a volcanic sound could come from out of such a small thin body. And then he spit. He propelled a prodigious gob of spit toward the window of the van. It hit the wire mesh and hung there, a huge runny yellow oyster, part of which began to sag like some hideous virulent strand of gum or taffy with a glob on the bottom of it. And there it remained, gleaming in the sun for those inside, whoever they might be, to contemplate at their leisure.

  It stunned them. The whole chorus stopped. For one strange feverish moment there was nothing in the world, in the solar system, in the universe, in all of astronomy, but the cage and this one gleaming, oozing, pendulous sunlit gob of spit.

  Then, keeping his right hand close to his chest so that no one on the sidewalk could see it, the judge shot them the finger and turned on his heels and walked toward the entrance to the building.

  He was halfway to the door before they got their breath back.

  “Yeggghhh, fuck you, too, man!”

  “You wanna…sheeeeuh…you try that…”

  But their hearts weren’t in it anymore. The grisly esprit of the prison-van uprising had fizzled in the face of this furious blazing little steel rod of a man.

  Kramer hurried after Kovitsky and caught up with him as he was going in the Walton Street entrance. He had to catch up with him. He had to show him that he was with him all along. It was the two of them out there taking that insidious abuse.

  The guard had reappeared at the door. “Good morning, Judge,” he said, as if it were just another day at the island fortress of Gibraltar.

  Kovitsky barely looked at him. He was preoccupied. His head was down.

  Kramer touched his shoulder. “Hey, Judge, you’re too much!” Kramer beamed, as if the two of them had just been through a great battle, shoulder to shoulder. “They shut up! I couldn’t believe it! They shut up!”

  Kovitsky stopped and looked Kramer up and down, as if looking at someone he had never seen before.

  “Fucking useless,” said the judge.

  He’s blaming me for doing nothing, for not helping him—but in the next instant Kramer realized that Kovitsky was in fact talking about the driver of the van.

  “Well, the poor sonofabitch,” said Kovitsky, “he’s terrified. I’d be ashamed to have a job like that if I was that fucking terrified.”

  He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Kramer. He kept on talking about this fucking whatever and that fucking whatever. The profanity scarcely even registered on Kramer. The courthouse was like the army. From the judges on down to the guards there was one all-purpose adjective or participle or whatever it should be called, and after a while it was as natural as breathing. No, Kramer’s mind was racing ahead. He was afraid the next words out of Kovitsky’s mouth were going to be “Why did you just fucking stand there, doing nothing?” He was already inventing excuses. “I couldn’t tell where it was coming from…I didn’t know if it was from the van or…”

  The fluorescent lighting gave the hallway the dim toxic haze of an X-ray clinic.

  “…this Hymie business,” Kovitsky was saying. Then he gave Kramer a look that clearly required a response.

  Kramer didn’t know what the hell he had been talking about.

  “Hymie?”

  “Yeah, ‘Here comes Hymie,’ ” said Kovitsky. “ ‘Wormdick.’ What difference does that make, ‘wormdick.’ ” He laughed, genuinely amused by the thought. “ ‘Wormdick’…But ‘Hymie.’ That’s fucking poison. That’s hate! That’s anti-Semitic. And for what? Without the Yiddishe, they’d still be laying asphalt and looking up shotgun barrels in South Carolina, is what the fuck they’d be doing, the poor bastards.”

  An alarm went off. A frantic ring filled the hall. It pounded Kramer’s ears in waves. Judge Kovitsky had to raise his voice to be heard, but he didn’t even look around. Kramer didn’t bat an eye. The alarm meant a prisoner had escaped or some skinny little thug’s brother had pulled out a revolver in a courtroom, or some gargantuan tenant had grabbed a 130-pound hearing officer in a hammerlock. Or maybe it was only a fire. The first few times Kramer heard the alarm on the island fortress of Gibraltar, his eyes jumped around and he braced himself for the clatter of a herd of guards wearing military-box-toed leather shoes and waving .38s, running along the marble floors trying to catch some nutball in supergraphic sneakers who, jacked up by fear, does the hundred in 8.4. But after a while he ignored it. It was the normal state of red alert, panic, and disarray in the Bronx County Building. All around Kramer and the judge, people were swiveling their heads in every direction. Such sad faces…They were entering Gibraltar for the first time, on Christ knows what sad missions.

  All at once Kovitsky was motioning toward the floor and saying, “…is this, Kramer?”

  “This?” said Kramer, desperately trying to figure out what the judge was talking about.

  “These fucking shoes,” said Kovitsky.

  “Ah! Shoes,” said Kramer. “They’re running shoes, Judge.”

  “Is that something Weiss thought up?”

  “Noooo,” said Kramer, chuckling as if moved by the judge’s wit.

  “Jogging for Justice? Is that what Abe has you guys doing, jogging for Justice?”

  “No, no, no, no.” More chuckles and a big grin, since Kovitsky obviously loved this line, jogging for Justice.

  “Christ, every kid who sticks up a Red Apple’s in my courtroom wearing these goddamned things, and now you guys?”

  “Nooo-ho-ho.”

  “You think you’re gonna come in my part looking like this?”

  “Nooooooo-ho-ho-ho! Wouldn’t think of it, Judge.”

  The alarm kept ringing. The new people, the new sad faces who had never been inside this citadel before, looked all about with their eyes wide and their mouths open, and they saw a bald-headed old white man in a gray suit and a white shirt and a necktie and a balding young white man in a gray suit and a white shirt and a necktie just standing there talking, smiling, yakking, shooting the breeze, and so if these two white people, so obviously a part of the Power, were just standing there, without so much as lifting an eyebrow, how bad could it be?

  As the alarm rang in his head, Kramer grew still more depressed.

  Right then and there he made up his mind. He was going to do something—something startling, something rash, something desperate, whatever it took. He was going to break out of here. He was going to rise up from this muck. He was going to light up the sky, seize the Life for himself—

  He could see the girl with brown lipstick again, just as surely as if she were standing right next to him in this sad grim place.

  3. From the Fiftieth Floor

  Sherman McCoy walked out of his apartment building holding his daughter Campbell’s hand. Misty days like this created a peculiar ashy-blue light on Park Avenue. But once they stepped out from under the awning over the entrance…such radiance! The median strip on Park was a swath of yellow tulips. There were thousands of them, thanks to the dues apartment owners like Sherman paid to the Park Avenue Association and the thousands of dollars the association paid to a gardening service called Wiltshire Country Gardens, run by three Koreans from Maspeth, Long Island. There was something heavenly about the yellow glow of all the tulips. That was appropriate. So long as Sherman held his daughter’s hand in his and walked her to her bus stop, he felt himself a part of God’s grace. A sublime state, it was, and it didn’t cost much. The bus stop was only across the street. There was scarcely a chance for his impatience over Campbell’s tiny step to spoil this refreshing nip of fatherhood he took each morning.

  Campbell was in the first grade at Taliaferro, which, as everybody, tout le mond
e, knew, was pronounced Toliver. Each morning the Taliaferro school dispatched its own bus, bus driver, and children’s chaper-one up Park Avenue. Few, indeed, were the girls at Taliaferro who did not live within walking distance of that bus route.

  To Sherman, as he headed out onto the sidewalk holding Campbell’s hand, she was a vision. She was a vision anew each morning. Her hair was a luxuriance of soft waves like her mother’s, but lighter and more golden. Her little face—perfection! Not even the gawky years of adolescence would alter it. He was sure of that. In her burgundy school jumper, her white blouse with its buttercup collar, her little nylon backpack, her white knee-high socks, she was an angel. Sherman found the very sight touching beyond belief.

  The morning-shift doorman was an old Irishman named Tony. After opening the door for them, he stepped outside under the awning and watched them depart. That was fine…fine! Sherman liked to have his fatherhood observed. This morning he was a serious individual, representing Park Avenue and Wall Street. He wore a blue-gray nailhead worsted suit, custom-tailored in England for $1,800, two-button, single-breasted, with ordinary notched lapels. On Wall Street double-breasted suits and peaked lapels were considered a bit sharp, a bit too Garment District. His thick brown hair was combed straight back. He squared his shoulders and carried his long nose and wonderful chin up high.

  “Sweetheart, let me button your sweater. It’s a little chilly.”

  “No way, José,” said Campbell.

  “Come on, sweetie, I don’t want you to catch cold.”

  “N O, Séjo, N O.” She jerked her shoulders away from him. Séjo was José backward. “N-n-n-n Ohhhhh.” So Sherman sighed and abandoned his plan to save his daughter from the elements. They walked on a bit.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Daddy, what if there isn’t any God?”

  Sherman was startled, bowled over. Campbell was looking up at him with a perfectly ordinary expression, as if she had just asked what those yellow flowers were called.

  “Who said there isn’t any God?”

  “But what if there isn’t?”

  “What makes you think—did somebody tell you there wasn’t any God?”

  What insidious little troublemaker in her class had been spreading this poison? So far as Sherman knew, Campbell still believed in Santa Claus, and here she was, beginning to question the existence of God! And yet…it was a precocious question for a six-year-old, wasn’t it? No two ways about that. To think that such a speculation—

  “But what if there isn’t!” She was annoyed. Asking her about the history of the question was no answer.

  “But there is a God, sweetie. So I can’t tell you about ‘if there isn’t.’ ” Sherman tried never to lie to her. But this time he felt it the prudent course. He had hoped he would never have to discuss religion with her. They had begun sending her to Sunday school at St. James’ Episcopal Church, at Madison and Seventy-first. That was the way you took care of religion. You enrolled them at St. James’, and you avoided talking or thinking about religion again.

  “Oh,” said Campbell. She stared out into the distance. Sherman felt guilty. She had brought up a difficult question, and he had ducked it. And here she was, at the age of six, trying to piece together the greatest puzzle of life.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, darling?” He held his breath.

  “You know Mrs. Winston’s bicycle?”

  Mrs. Winston’s bicycle? Then he remembered. Two years ago, at Campbell’s nursery school, there had been a teacher named Mrs. Winston who braved the traffic and rode a bicycle to school every day. All the children had thought this was wonderful, a teacher who rode a bicycle to school. He had never heard Campbell mention the woman since then.

  “Oh yes, I remember.” An anxious pause.

  “MacKenzie has one just like it.”

  MacKenzie? MacKenzie Reed was a little girl in Campbell’s class.

  “She does?”

  “Yes. Only it’s smaller.”

  Sherman waited…for the leap of logic…but it never came. That was it. God lives! God is dead! Mrs. Winston’s bicycle! No way, José! N O, Séjo! They all came out of the same heap in the toy box. Sherman was relieved for a moment, but then he felt cheated. The thought that his daughter might actually have questioned the existence of God at the age of six—this he had taken as a sign of superior intelligence. Over the past ten years, on the Upper East Side, for the first time, intelligence had become socially correct for girls.

  Several little girls in burgundy jumpers, and their parents or nannies, were assembled at the Taliaferro bus stop, on the other side of Park Avenue. As soon as Campbell saw them, she tried to remove her hand from Sherman’s. She had reached that age. But he wouldn’t let her. He held her hand tightly and led her across the street. He was her protector. He glowered at a taxi as it came to a noisy stop at the light. He would gladly throw himself in front of it, if that was what it would take to save Campbell’s life. As they crossed Park Avenue, he had a mental picture of what an ideal pair they made. Campbell, the perfect angel in a private-school uniform; himself, with his noble head, his Yale chin, his big frame, and his $1,800 British suit, the angel’s father, a man of parts; he visualized the admiring stares, the envious stares, of the drivers, the pedestrians, of one and all.

  As soon as they reached the bus stop, Campbell pulled free. The parents who brought their girls to the Taliaferro bus stop in the morning were a cheery bunch. What a chipper mood they were always in! Sherman began saying his good mornings. Edith Tompkins, John Channing, MacKenzie Reed’s mother, Kirby Coleman’s nanny, Leonard Schorske, Mrs. Lueger. When he got to Mrs. Lueger—he had never known her first name—he did a double take. She was a thin pale blond woman who never wore makeup. This morning she must have rushed down to the bus stop with her daughter at the last minute. She was wearing a man’s blue button-down shirt with the top two buttons unbuttoned. She had on a pair of old blue jeans and some ballet slippers. The jeans were very tight. She had a terrific little body. He had never noticed that before. Really quite terrific! She looked so…pale and half-awake and vulnerable. You know, what you need is a cup of coffee, Mrs. Lueger. Come on, I’m going over to that coffee shop on Lexington. Oh, that’s silly, Mr. McCoy. Come on up to the apartment. I have some coffee already made. He stared at her for a good two seconds longer than he should have, and then…pop…the bus arrived, a big solid Greyhound-size vehicle, and the children bounded up the steps.

  Sherman turned away, then looked back at Mrs. Lueger. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was walking toward her apartment building. The back seam of her jeans practically clove her in two. There were whitish spots on either side of the seat. They were like highlights for the flesh that welled up underneath. What a marvelous bottom she had! And he had always thought of these women as moms. Who knew what hot little fires burned within these moms?

  Sherman started walking east, toward the taxi stand at First Avenue and Seventy-ninth Street. He felt buoyant. Just why, he couldn’t have explained. The discovery of the lovely little Mrs. Lueger…yes, but in fact he always left the bus stop in a good mood. The Best School, the Best Girls, the Best Families, the Best Section of the capital of the Western world in the late twentieth century—but the only part that stuck in his mind was the sensation of Campbell’s little hand holding his. That was why he felt so good. The touch of her trusting, utterly dependent little hand was life itself!

  Then his spirits sank. He was walking along at a good clip, his eyes idly panning the façades of the brownstone houses. On this gray morning they looked old and depressing. Shapeless polyethylene bags of trash, in shades of Dogshit Brown and Turd Green, were deposited in front of them, out by the curbs. The bags had a slimy-looking surface. How could people live this way? Just two blocks away was Maria’s apartment…Ralston Thorpe’s was around here somewhere…Sherman and Rawlie had gone to Buckley, St. Paul’s, and Yale together, and now they both worked at Pierce & Pie
rce. Rawlie had moved from a sixteen-room apartment on Fifth Avenue to the top two floors of a brownstone somewhere along here after his divorce. Very depressing. Sherman had taken a nice big step toward a divorce last night, hadn’t he? Not only had Judy caught him, in flagrante telephone, as it were, but then he, abject creature of lust that he was, had gone ahead and gotten laid—right! nothing more than that!—laid!—and not returned home for forty-five minutes…What would it do to Campbell if he and Judy ever broke up? He couldn’t imagine his life after such a thing. Weekend visitation rights with his own daughter? What was that phrase they used? “Quality time”? So tawdry, so tawdry…Campbell’s soul hardening, month by month, into a brittle little shell…

  By the time he had gone half a block, he hated himself. He felt like turning around and heading back to the apartment and begging forgiveness and swearing never again. He felt like it, but he knew he wouldn’t do it. That would make him late getting to the office, which was much frowned upon at Pierce & Pierce. No one ever said anything openly, but you were supposed to get there early and start making money…and master the universe. A surge of adrenaline—the Giscard! He was closing in on the biggest deal of his life, the Giscard, the gold-backed bond—Master of the Universe!—then he sank again. Judy had slept on the daybed in the dressing room of their bedroom suite. She was still asleep, or pretending to be, when he got up. Well, thank God for that. He hadn’t relished another round with her this morning, especially with Campbell or Bonita listening in. Bonita was one of those South American servants with perfectly pleasant but nonetheless formal demeanors. To display temper or anguish in front of her would be a gaffe. No wonder marriages used to hold up better. Sherman’s parents and their friends had all had plenty of servants, and the servants had worked long hours and lived in. If you were unwilling to argue in front of the servants, then there wasn’t much opportunity to argue at all.