The Transit of Venus

by Shirley Hazzard

  "Yes." This question, which she was more than entitled to ask, called for more than a frigid affirmative, yet would not bear enlargement. "Englishmen don't wear wedding-rings."

  "That's what I heard." She took his hand and felt the fingers, then unexpectedly put it to her lips. "You're nice. Know that?"

  "I don't think you've had much evidence of it."

  "No, you're nice." And mechanically, "Great." She laid his hand on her young and beautiful breast and after a while said, "Happily married, right?"

  "Yes," he said, feeling the absurdity of the answer in the circumstances but once more wishing to be let off. "This is very nice, but I don't do a lot of it." Everything he said was stale, sententious. He spoke to her from the lofty height of his all but continuous virtue.

  "Ever loved anyone besides your wife?"

  "Long ago. Before I was married." Caro had become the long ago, the legend.

  "Oh— That doesn't count."

  "Yes. It does count."

  "It counts?"

  "It counts." Inanely. How one shows one's weakness, I am like those people—not like, I am one of them—who must talk about what obsesses them, their lover, child, cat, dog, enemy, employer, servant, office—even while aware they are boring others and exposing themselves. The craving is compulsive in that respect, virtually erotic. "Perhaps it is the only thing that counts."

  "Wow."

  Possibly she felt her role too plainly signalled, for she soon got up and carried off some of her clothes. Water gushed in an uproar of plumbing, a tin cupboard clanged, there were twin puffs of a deodorant. When she came out of the bathroom, hands to her golden hair, Ted was half-dressed and thinking there was nothing more melancholy than doing up a zipper at one A.M.

  He knew she was going to say more about Caro. It was the only interesting thing that had passed between them.

  "Listen," she said. "We relate. We communicate. Wouldn't you say we communicate?"

  We also, then, are part of the floor-plan: two rooms with a connecting door, of lust or loneliness. Ted sat on the edge of the bed.

  "Come here."

  She stood with her palms on his shoulders, meeting his eyes in the half-dark. A good-natured dog that comes and puts its paws on you and looks with God knows what, if anything, in mind. But she said, "Do you ever see her?" with a rational, crucial lowering of tone, as if the jargon—which she had employed even in the act—

  was, for her too, an affectation to be set aside for the authentic.

  "About twice a year."

  "Still sleep with her?"

  "I have never slept with her." Proclaiming this with grotesque pride, for it gave the scale of his devotion. And the girl said,

  "Fantastic," and seemed properly awed—though perhaps thinking also, Some kind of a nut.

  "She'd be about your age, right?"

  "A few years younger."

  The girl signified that, by that stage, three or four years could scarcely matter. She said, "You should—"

  "Should what?"

  "Well— You only live once, for Christ's sake."

  This girl was assuming that Caro loved him. Ted put her away from him and stood up, saying "We'd better get you a taxi," before the truth could strike her.

  A d a m and Caro returned to New York from South America during a heat wave. There was a demonstration against war. At the end of their street a row of grey trestles was guarded by two policemen on reddish horses, and by other police on foot. There was the smell of blistering tar and the sweat of horse and man. The street was cracked, the gutters unkempt. Trees had been hacked at, or were diseased. The Vails' door, which now had a complex lock, could be relocked from the inside, then chained and bolted. All of this took time. When they put their bags down in the hallway, Vail turned on the radio, which said, "Nonferrous metals declined and cotton futures closed higher." They could hear the mounted police speaking by machine and, beyond the barrier, the neutral wail of an ambulance. In the locked house man and woman embraced, because a measure of safety can be attained under almost any circumstances.

  Letters were stacked on a table. A folded newspaper half-disclosed a presidential scandal: "It's an outrage," said a Harvard professor who asked not to be identified. Dora wrote from Palmerston North that she would never forgive Trish Bootle as long as she lived; and was seriously considering Ireland.

  "At her age," said Caro. "To go where nothing is familiar."

  Adam told her, "Seneca said of Hannibal—who in old age offered his services to any king at war with Rome — that he could live without a country but not without an enemy."

  Caro could see the epitaph tilting in Irish grass.

  In the mornings Caro sat at a table to translate the work of Ramon Tregear. These poems had been invented in a prison.

  When the poet wrote her, "But then I held it only in the head,'* she thought of Rex Ivory digging graves in Malaya thirty years before. As Rex Ivory in the death camp had celebrated Derbyshire, so Tregear in his prison hell had recalled the love of women.

  Tregear said he would soon send the remaining pages if things went well. And she wondered if she would ever see them. The volume would be called "Luz a Medianoche."

  After some months a publisher returned her sample pages, explaining about the market. He noted the Miltonian title; and made a literary joke on the translator's name: "C. Bell." Another publisher, who had issued an academic study of dissident literature, returned the manuscript with a comment on the Koestlerian title; adding, "We rather feel we've done our pro bono publico stint for this year."

  Adam Vail spoke in Spanish on the telephone. He went across town to be interviewed on television, and was introduced to the network's news chief, who said, "We think we're pretty gutsy, Adam, to be running this interview."

  Caro, who went with Adam to the studio, was shown to a darkened room where, it was said, the picture would be clear on a large screen. She sat waiting in a velvet seat, and three men came in and sat in front of her. She had seen them in the corridor, carefully dressed men with dyed dark hair and tinted contact lenses. Not knowing she was there, they remarked that altruists rarely gave good value.

  "You need only look at Stevenson."

  "Stevenson. He went into orbit the last years. Committed one day, uncommitted the next. Maybe he really believed there was this peace proposal, so he clung on."

  "I think he fell for it, that there was this peace proposal. I believe he died convinced. That if you could get Bundy and Rusk to a dacha outside Rangoon, Hanoi would deliver the goods."

  "He couldn't get through to the White House though. Rusk stopped him."

  "What was to stop him picking up the phone, Chrissake, dialling the White House? How long did he think this?"

  "Autumn of sixty-four."

  "No, I say June of sixty-five. And he was dead in July. One month then."

  "Sixty-four. Who knew from nothing in sixty-four? Least of all our news service."

  "I'll never forget, we did a programme on Stevenson. When he died. Embarrassing thing to replay now—not that it's gonna get replayed, like hell replayed. Jesus it was like nothing—some shots, the first convention, the second campaign. Speeches, puns, Stevenson conceding. Conceding, Jesus, conceding all right. A nothing programme. Not a word about Kennedy, about Vietnam."

  "What about the Bay of Pigs?"

  "I'm telling you, nothing. All right, I ran it, all right so I'm wearing a hair shirt. But we showed nothing. When the programme was over someone came in with the word, Washington on the line, the White House is very pleased. You bet they were pleased—God when I think of it now, the sigh of relief that must've gone up. Not a word about Kennedy, the war, nothing."

  "Kennedy, that's what we're talking about—Vietnam, the sixteen thousand. The Bay of Pigs. Face it. The Bay of Pigs. Any idea if this crackpot, this Vail's gonna bring up the Bay of Pigs?"

  "Remember the crackpots that used to borrow money from Ed.

  Remember they used to come round his office, Ed
I got this story, Ed lend me ten bucks. Well there was this one little guy, Ed said maybe there's something in it, Sam you go down to Florida with him. Sam came back, God Ed what a nut. This nut thinks Kennedy's gonna invade Cuba. This time you bought it Ed, Jesus what a nut."

  "He didn't believe it?"

  "Well he thought, God if this is true, so he couldn't believe it.

  Afterwards—"

  "But we couldnt've run that story anyway, it would've been treason."

  "Still I always wondered, why didn't the press, they had that story, the whole Bay of Pigs bit."

  "Theyd've been crucified, they couldnt've run it."

  "But you know what Kennedy told them later, If you'd run it."

  "Sure, if you'd run it you might have stopped me."

  "Saved me. You might've saved me. That's what he said, If you'd run it you might've saved me."

  "Kennedy, that's what we're talking about. Vietnam, the sixteen thousand."

  "More than that. The appointments. Dean Rusk, Mac Bundy, McNamara."

  "Lyndon Johnson"

  "Johnson thought it was Korea."

  "Johnson thought it was the Alamo."

  "Munich is what he kept saying. Christ Munich. Where they been."

  "We gonna teach them this lesson. Little brown men, this lesson.

  That's what they were saying, and that's why you'd never have got them to the dacha outside Rangoon. Mac Bundy at that dacha, don't make me laugh."

  "So who we gonna accuse? Who are they? The Pentagon? Would it be Westmoreland, Abrams, Walt?"

  "Christ Walt. He's the one who told me, you could find yourself shot in the back. That was Cam Ne, that wasn't even My Lai, it was Cam Ne and I said where are these people, a whole town disappeared, where are the people. They been relocated, he said looking in his milk, they're in refugee camps, been dispersed. It turned out the U.S. army didn't go in at all, it got handed over to the South Vietnamese, they had it on their list along with other hamlets that hadn't paid their dues, oh jesus oh god. Waste them, that was the terminology, waste them. So who you gonna accuse, finally would it be Rusk and Johnson, wouldn't it be them, wouldn't that be logical? Put them in the dock? Imagine."

  "At the end Rusk kept going on aspirins and alcohol."

  "I didn't know about the aspirins."

  "Cambodia Laos, they make Vietnam academic. Better face it.

  South Vietnam's got an eastern seacoast, that's the only reason they need it now. Once they surround it, once they're in Cambodia Laos, what do they care. You can't get a story on Laos.

  Well hell you get a lot of stories but it's a realm of myth situation. Who's gonna risk their neck, you can't ask correspondents to risk their neck, what American's gonna die there except a lot of pilots we're not allowed to mention. Aside from one or two of them those are second-string correspondents in Laos Cambodia anyway, there's an information gap, everyone knows it, you can't find out what goes on."

  "This is bouncing it off another cushion. Are we talking about what we can't get a lead on or about what we don't have the guts to report?"

  "Look I can put on thirty-three stories about a mail strike in Italy or Princess Margaret Jones easier than run one on Cambodia Laos.

  Then there's risk, what about risk, it's your word against theirs, Washington comes in strong, it didn't happen. Says it didn't happen, what you gonna do?"

  "Yeah look at San Jose. Nixon said worst violence he'd ever seen, holes in the car, rocks, people were throwing rocks, Agnew said it, they all said it. Worse than war. By Monday they were saying like it was mostly verbal violence. Then after the vote, maybe there wasn't any violence. No indictments, nothing. Supposing I ran a story that night, supposing I said election gimmick. Supposing I said the president is lying, is LYING, you want to imagine what they do to me. Nobody's gonna take that kind of risk."

  "Maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe that's why television."

  "Not just the government, not the government even. Can you imagine the calls, can you imagine. And not the viewers even. The calls from the ownership, from the brass."

  "I'm saying maybe that's what's—"

  "But if everyone ran it. Let me finish. If you got all the newscast-ers, if you got the lot. Hopefully."

  "Anyway what good would—a week later, so who'd care—he lied, so he lied. Teddy lied, Henry lied, Laird lied, Helms lied, Nixon lied his ass off, George Washington swore he didn't chop down the goddamn cherry tree, so who in hell cares one week later."

  "Care like hell in election year."

  "Not about war. War isn't an election issue. We gave them the longest chance, Nixon'll say. Winding it down, pulling it out, not our fault. Peace is at hand, okay? Look at the kids—the frenzy died with the draft card, with the risk to their own skins. The economy, the dollar, the buck. That's what election year's about, the buck."

  "Honor. If I can finish. Honor of the United States. You don't get me, I'm serious. Honor's as good a gimmick as any other. That's what Nixon could do. Put it in the lap of the public, I'm standing on principle, I'm stopping the war. Leaving. Now. Put it up to the world, you defend the gooks, okay? You rassle up that goddamn dacha outside Rangoon."

  "No one can propose that. No one has the influence."

  "The president. No one else has the influence."

  "What about the influence in this room. The collective influence."

  "We now pause for the underarm commercial."

  "I mean it. The collective influence."

  "Anyhow, here it comes, here's the picture. Altruists always have some axe to grind. Remember we needn't run this in full."

  The next morning an editorial appeared in a leading newspaper: Mr. Adam Vail did a clever job in his television interview last night of depicting "serious aggression" practiced by giant American corporations in Latin America with, as he claimed, the connivance and covert support of the United States Government. He will draw enthusiastic if automatic applause from irresponsible elements in our divided society.

  At times, Washington may have acted clumsily in Latin America, but Mr. Vail wielded his verbal brush far too broadly when he suggested that clandestine efforts from the United States Government would insure, as he put it, that at least one elected Latin leader would "not get through the crucial next six months." His worst distortion was his assertion that intimidation of voters had in some areas been carried out with funds from official United States sources. There was an element of dangerous misrepresentation in Mr. Vail's remarks, of which his television audience should be aware.

  Adam put the paper down and said, "I never like to see government spelt with a large G."

  Before his arrest, Ramon Tregear gave the remaining section of his manuscript ,to a friend who was leaving the country. When the pages were delivered to Caroline Vail, she found a note among them, addressed to herself: "If my death is spectacular, you will be able to publish these. People are inclined to rush to the scene of the crime, or accident." A young man who brought the envelope told them Tregear had been imprisoned on an island off the coast of South America, in conditions not conducive to survival. At the end of the year it was learned he had been brought back to the mainland in failing health, and had died at a prison in the capital.

  It was the freckled Vicente who wrote this news to them from Mexico, adding, "He led captivity captive."

  "And ascended," Adam said. "Having first descended into the lower parts of the earth."

  The story of Tregear's death, when disclosed, was atrocious.

  And, as he had predicted, resulted in a favourable reception for his work outside his native land, and its clandestine distribution in the city of his birth where, in former years, he had had few readers.

  "Are you glad to be home?"

  Margaret had never asked that question before. She stood at an open suitcase, sorting what should be hung from what must be washed, disposing of shirts and shoe-trees. She flung a dressing-gown on a bed. While Ted Tice, too, spread socks and ties about like regalia, saying,
"It's not a return, it's a resurrection."

  "I'm not even sure, this time, what countries you've been to."

  "Nor I, at this moment." But for the decorum of unpacking, which made things proceed by stages, he would have made love to her there and then. Had she been his mistress, he would have drawn her down on the bed. In its way, marriage imposes formalities.

  Ted Tice had driven through London early that morning on the top of an airport bus, skimming trees and chimneys and making top-heavy arcs round corner pubs. He had peered, like God, into backyards of hawthorn and clothes-lines; and through an attic window had glimpsed a tousled bed. At an open doorway, he had seen fresh sunlight on parquet and the tall, engrossed figure of an elderly woman reading her letters. A black cat crawled out between lace curtains to settle, loaf-shape, on a sill. A man with a cap on the back of his head and a gold watch on his wrist hosed a footpath in the Fulham Road. All this could be normality—unless what he had left, the featureless world of airports and installations, was normality now, while these rational human scenes dwindled to anachronism.

  The last segment of his journey was the best: he had never enjoyed a train trip so much, taking conscious pleasure in familiar irritations of grime and delay. His very fatigue gave sensations of well-being, for he would doze, and wake over and over to the luxury of reassurance. His present greeting to his homeland was excessive, for his having undervalued it before. A note of apology ran, too, through that morning's praise of his entire domestic district.

  "Listen, before I forget—"

  "These are for the children, can you put them somewhere?"

  "Oh yes, how sweet. Your letters are on the desk, I've done the bills."

  "Anything interesting?"

  "You'll have to see. I opened a telegram, but it was nothing.

  There are a few newspaper clippings about the ring-road. Did you see yesterday's paper, that man you knew in America died?"

  "Vendler, was it? I heard he was near the end."

  "Yes, I think that's the name. We can have tea in the garden."