The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  And on this particular Saturday afternoon there was also Peter Fallow.

  Fallow, by contrast, was fervor personified. Of the various cubicles around the edges of the city room, his was the only one in use. He was perched on the edge of his chair with the telephone at his ear and a Biro in his hand. He was so keyed up, his excitement cut through today’s hangover with something approaching clarity.

  On his desk was a telephone directory for Nassau County, which was on Long Island. A great hefty thing, it was, this directory. He had never heard of Nassau County, although he now reckoned he must have passed through it during the weekend when he had managed to inspire St. John’s superior at the museum, Virgil Gooch III—the Yanks loved to string Roman numerals after their sons’ names—to invite him to his ludicrously grand house by the ocean in East Hampton, Long Island. There was no second invitation, but…ah, well, ah, well…As for the town of Hewlett, which was in the county of Nassau, its existence on the face of the earth was news to him, but somewhere in the town of Hewlett a telephone was ringing, and he desperately wanted it to be answered. Finally, after seven rings, it was.

  “Hello?” Out of breath.

  “Mr. Rifkind?”

  “Yes…” Out of breath and wary.

  “This is Peter Fallow of the New York City Light.”

  “Don’t want any.”

  “Excuse me? I do hope you’ll forgive me for ringing you up on a Saturday afternoon.”

  “You hope wrong. I subscribed to the Times once. Actually got it about once a week.”

  “No, no, no, I’m not—”

  “Either somebody swiped it from the front door before I left the house or it was soaking wet or it was never delivered.”

  “No, I’m a journalist, Mr. Rifkind. I write for The City Light.”

  He finally managed to establish this fact to Mr. Rifkind’s satisfaction.

  “Well, okay,” said Mr. Rifkind, “go ahead. I was just out in the driveway having a few beers and making a FOR SALE sign to put up in the window of my car. You’re not by any chance in the market for a 1981 Thunderbird.”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Fallow with a chortle, as if Mr. Rifkind were one of the great Saturday-afternoon wits of his experience. “Actually, I’m calling to inquire about one of your students, a young Mr. Henry Lamb.”

  “Henry Lamb. Doesn’t ring a bell. What’s he done?”

  “Oh, he hasn’t done anything. He’s been seriously injured.” He proceeded to lay out the facts of the case, stacking them rather heavily toward the Albert Vogel-Reverend Bacon theory of the incident. “I was told he was a student in your English class.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “His mother. I had quite a long talk with her. She’s a very nice woman and very upset, as you can imagine.”

  “Henry Lamb…Oh yes, I know who you mean. Well, that’s too bad.”

  “What I would like to find out, Mr. Rifkind, is what kind of student Henry Lamb is.”

  “What kind?”

  “Well, would you say he was an outstanding student?”

  “Where are you from, Mr.—I’m sorry, tell me your name again?”

  “Fallow.”

  “Mr. Fallow. I gather you’re not from New York.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then there’s no reason why you should know anything about Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School in the Bronx. At Ruppert we use comparative terms, but outstanding isn’t one of them. The range runs more from cooperative to life-threatening.” Mr. Rifkind began to chuckle. “F’r Chrissake, don’t say I said that.”

  “Well, how would you describe Henry Lamb?”

  “Cooperative. He’s a nice fellow. Never gives me any trouble.”

  “Would you describe him as a good student?”

  “Good doesn’t work too well at Ruppert, either. It’s more ‘Does he attend class or doesn’t he?’ ”

  “Did Henry Lamb attend class?”

  “As I recall, yes. He’s usually there. He’s very dependable. He’s a nice kid, as nice as they come.”

  “Was there any part of the curriculum he was particularly good—or, let me say, adept at, anything he did better than anything else?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “No?”

  “It’s difficult to explain, Mr. Fallow. As the saying goes, ‘Ex nihilo ni-hil fit.’ There’s not a great range of activities in these classes, and so it’s hard to compare performances. These boys and girls—sometimes their minds are in the classroom, and sometimes they’re not.”

  “What about Henry Lamb?”

  “He’s a nice fellow. He’s polite, he pays attention, he doesn’t give me any trouble. He tries to learn.”

  “Well, he must have some abilities. His mother told me he was considering going to college.”

  “That may well be. She’s probably talking about C.C.N.Y. That’s the City College of New York.”

  “I believe Mrs. Lamb did mention that.”

  “City College has an open-admissions policy. If you live in New York City and you’re a high-school graduate and you want to go to City College, you can go.”

  “Will Henry Lamb graduate, or would he have?”

  “As far as I know. As I say, he has a very good attendance record.”

  “How do you think he would have fared as a college student?”

  A sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine what happens with these kids when they enter City College.”

  “Well, Mr. Rifkind, can you tell me anything at all about Henry Lamb’s performance or his aptitude, anything at all?”

  “You have to understand that they give me about sixty-five students in each class when the year starts, because they know it’ll be down to forty by mid-year and thirty by the end of the year. Even thirty’s too many, but that’s what I get. It’s not exactly what you’d call a tutorial system. Henry Lamb’s a nice young man who applies himself and wants an education. What more can I tell you?”

  “Let me ask you this. How does he do on his written work?”

  Mr. Rifkind let out a whoop. “Written work? There hasn’t been any written work at Ruppert High for fifteen years! Maybe twenty! They take multiple-choice tests. Reading comprehension, that’s the big thing. That’s all the Board of Education cares about.”

  “How was Henry Lamb’s reading comprehension?”

  “I’d have to look it up. Not bad, if I had to guess.”

  “Better than most? Or about average? Or what would you say?”

  “Well…I know it must be difficult for you to understand, Mr. Fallow, being from England. Am I right? You’re British?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Naturally—or I guess it’s natural—you’re used to levels of excellence and so forth. But these kids haven’t reached the level where it’s worth emphasizing the kind of comparisons you’re talking about. We’re just trying to get them up to a certain level and then keep them from falling back. You’re thinking about ‘honor students’ and ‘higher achievers’ and all that, and that’s natural enough, as I say. But at Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School, an honor student is somebody who attends class, isn’t disruptive, tries to learn, and does all right at reading and arithmetic.”

  “Well, let’s use that standard. By that standard, is Henry Lamb an honor student?”

  “By that standard, yes.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Rifkind.”

  “That’s okay. I’m sorry to hear about all this. Seems like a nice boy. We’re not supposed to call them boys, but that’s what they are, poor sad confused boys with a whole lotta problems. Don’t quote me, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll have a whole lotta problems. Hey, listen. You sure you couldn’t use a 1981 Thunderbird?”

  10. Saturday’s Saturnine Lunchtime

  At that moment, also on Long Island, but sixty miles to the east, on the south shore, the beach club had just opened for the season. The club owned a low, rambling stucco building athwart the dunes and about a hundred y
ards of beachfront, bounded by two dock ropes threaded through metal stanchions. The club facilities were spacious and comfortable but were maintained, devoutly, in the Brahmin Ascetic or Boarding School Scrubbed Wood mode that had been fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s. So it was that Sherman McCoy now sat on the deck at a perfectly plain wooden table under a large faded umbrella. With him were his father, his mother, Judy, and, intermittently, Campbell.

  You could step or, in Campbell’s case, run directly from the deck onto the sand that lay between the two ropes, and Campbell was just now somewhere out there with Rawlie Thorpe’s little girl, Eliza, and Garland Reed’s little girl, MacKenzie. Sherman was attentively not listening to his father tell Judy how Talbot, the club’s bartender, had made his martini, which was the color of pale tea.

  “…know why, but I’ve always preferred a martini made with sweet vermouth. Shaken until it foams. Talbot always gives me an argument…”

  His father’s thin lips were opening and closing, and his noble chin was going up and down, and his charming raconteur’s smile was wrinkling his cheeks. Once, when Sherman was Campbell’s age, his father and mother had taken him for a picnic out on the sand beyond the ropes. There was a spirit of adventure about this excursion. They were roughing it. The strangers out there on the sand, the handful who remained in the late afternoon, turned out to be harmless.

  Now Sherman let his eyes slide off his father’s face to explore the sand beyond the ropes again. It made him squint, because where the cluster of tables and umbrellas ended, the beach was sheer dazzling light. So he shortened his range and found himself focusing on a head at the table just behind his father. It was the unmistakable round head of Pollard Browning. Pollard was sitting there with Lewis Sanderson the elder, who had always been Ambassador Sanderson when Sherman was growing up, and Mrs. Sanderson and Coker Channing and his wife. How Channing had ever become a member was beyond Sherman, except that he made a career of ingratiating himself with people like Pollard. Pollard was president of the club. Christ, he was president of Sherman’s co-op board, too. That dense, round head…But given his current frame of mind, Sherman was reassured by the sight of it…dense as a rock, solid as a rock, rich as Croesus, immovable.

  His father’s lips stopped moving for an instant, and he heard his mother say, “Dear, don’t bore Judy with martinis. It makes you sound so old. Nobody but you drinks them any longer.”

  “Here at the beach they do. If you don’t believe me—”

  “It’s like talking about flappers or rumble seats or dining cars or—”

  “If you don’t believe me—”

  “—K rations or the Hit Parade.”

  “If you don’t believe me—”

  “Did you ever hear of a singer named Bonnie Baker?” She directed this at Judy, ignoring Sherman’s father. “Bonnie Baker was the star of the Hit Parade, on the radio. Wee Bonnie Baker she was called. The entire country used to listen to her. Totally forgotten now, I expect.”

  Sixty-five years old and still beautiful, thought Sherman. Tall, lean, erect, thick white hair—refused to color it—an aristocrat, much more of one than his father, with all his dedication to being one—and still chipping away at the base of the statue of the great Lion of Dunning Sponget.

  “Oh, you don’t have to go back that far,” said Judy. “I was talking to Garland’s son, Landrum. He’s a junior, I think he said, at Brown—”

  “Garland Reed has a son in college?”

  “Sally’s son.”

  “Oh dear. I’d totally forgotten about Sally. Isn’t that awful?”

  “Not awful. Up-to-date,” said Judy, without much of a smile.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Talbot,” said Sherman’s father.

  “Up-to-date!” said his mother, laughing and ignoring the Lion and his martinis and his Talbot.

  “Anyway,” said Judy, “I happened to say something to him about hippies, and he just stared at me. Never heard of them. Ancient history.”

  “Here at the beach—”

  “Like martinis,” Sherman’s mother said to Judy.

  “Here at the beach you’re still permitted to enjoy life’s simple pleasures,” said Sherman’s father, “or you were until a moment ago.”

  “Daddy and I went to that little restaurant in Wainscott last night, Sherman, the one Daddy likes so much, with Inez and Herbert Clark, and do you know what the owner said to me—you know the pretty little woman who owns it?”

  Sherman nodded yes.

  “I find her very jolly,” said his mother. “As we were leaving, she said to me—well, first I must mention that Inez and Herbert had two gin-and-tonics apiece, Daddy had his three martinis, and there was wine, and she said to me—”

  “Celeste, your nose is growing. I had one.”

  “Well, perhaps not three. Two.”

  “Celeste.”

  “Well, she thought it was a lot, the owner did. She said to me, ‘I like my older customers best of all. They’re the only ones who drink anymore.’ ‘My older customers’! I can’t imagine how she thought that was supposed to sound to me.”

  “She thought you were twenty-five,” said Sherman’s father. Then to Judy: “All of a sudden I’m married to a White Ribbon.”

  “A white ribbon?”

  “More ancient history,” he muttered. “Or else I’m married to Miss Trendy. You always have been up-to-date, Celeste.”

  “Only compared to you, darling.” She smiled and put her hand on his forearm. “I wouldn’t take away your martinis for the world. Talbot’s, either.”

  “I’m not worried about Talbot,” said the Lion.

  Sherman had heard his father talk about how he liked his martinis mixed at least a hundred times, and Judy must have heard it twenty, but that was all right. It got on his mother’s nerves, not his. It was comfortable; everything was the same as always. That was the way he wanted things this weekend; the same, the same, the same, and neatly bounded by the two ropes.

  Just getting out of the apartment, where May I speak to Maria still poisoned the air, had helped considerably. Judy had driven out early yesterday afternoon in the station wagon with Campbell, Bonita, and Miss Lyons, the nanny. He had driven out last night in the Mercedes. This morning, in the driveway outside the garage behind their big old house on Old Drover’s Mooring Lane, he had gone over the car in the sunlight. No evidence at all, that he could detect, of the fracas…Everything was brighter this morning, including Judy. She had chatted quite amiably at the breakfast table. Just now she was smiling at his father and mother. She looked relaxed…and really rather pretty, rather chic…in her polo shirt and pale yellow Shetland sweater and white slacks…She wasn’t young, but she did have the kind of fine features that would age well…Lovely hair…The dieting and the abominable Sports Training…and age…had taken their toll on her breasts, but she still had a trim little body…firm…He felt a mild tingle…Perhaps tonight…or the middle of the afternoon!…Why not?…That might give the thaw, the rebirth of spring, the return of the sun…a more solid foundation…If she would agree, then the…ugly business…would be over…Perhaps all the ugly business would be over. Four days had now passed and there had not been a shred of news about anything dreadful happening to a tall skinny boy on an expressway ramp in the Bronx. No one had come knocking at his door. Besides, she was driving. She had put it that way herself. And whatever happened, he was morally correct (Nothing to fear from God.) He had been fighting for his life and for hers…

  Maybe the whole thing was one of God’s warnings. Why didn’t he and Judy and Campbell get out of the madness of New York…and the megalomania of Wall Street? Who but an arrogant fool would want to be a Master of the Universe—and take the insane chances he had been taking? A close call!…Dear God, I swear to you that from now on…Why didn’t they sell the apartment and move out here to Southampton year round—or to Tennessee…Tennessee…His grandfather William Sherman McCoy had come to New York from Knoxville when he was thirty-one…a
hick in the eyes of the Brownings…Well, what was so wrong with good American hicks!…Sherman’s father had taken him to Knoxville. He had seen the perfectly adequate house where his grandfather had grown up…A lovely little city, a sober, reasonable little city, Knoxville…Why didn’t he go there and get a job in a brokerage house, a regular job, a sane, responsible job, not trying to spin the world on its head, a nine-to-five job, or whenever it is they work in places like Knoxville; $90,000 or $100,000 a year, a tenth or less of what he so foolishly thought he needed now, and it would be plenty…a Georgian house with a screen porch at one end…an acre or two of good green lawn, a Snapper lawn mower that he might operate himself occasionally, a garage with a door that opens with a Genie that you keep clipped onto the visor of your car, a kitchen with a magnetic bulletin board where you leave messages for each other, a cozy life, a loving life, Our Town…

  Judy was now smiling at something his father had said, and the Lion was smiling in pleasure at her appreciation of his wit, and his mother was smiling at both of them, and at the tables beyond, Pollard was smiling and Rawlie was smiling and Ambassador Sanderson, his lanky old legs and all, was smiling, and the sweet sun of early June by the sea warmed Sherman’s bones, and he relaxed for the first time in two weeks, and he smiled at Judy and his father and his mother, as if he had actually been paying attention to their banter.

  “Daddy!”

  Campbell came running toward him, from out of the sand and the dazzling light, onto the deck, between the tables.

  “Daddy!”

  She looked absolutely glorious. Now almost seven years old, she had lost her babyish features and was a little girl with slender arms and legs and firm muscles and not a blemish anywhere. She was wearing a pink bathing suit with the letters of the alphabet printed on it in black and white. Her skin glowed with sun and exercise. The very sight of her, of this…vision…brought smiles to the faces of his father and his mother and Judy. He pivoted his legs out from under the table and opened his arms. He wanted her to run straight into his embrace.