The City and the Pillar

by Gore Vidal

  For the rest of that day they swam, caught frogs, sunned themselves, wrestled. They talked little. Not until the light began to fail did they relax.

  “It’s sure nice here.” Bob stretched out full length. “I guess there isn’t any place as nice and peaceful as this place is.” He patted his flat stomach and yawned.

  Jim agreed, totally at peace; he noticed that Bob’s belly quivered with the regularity of a pulse. He looked at himself: the same phenomenon. Before he could comment on it, he saw a tick heading toward his pubic hair. He pinched it hard until it popped.

  “I got a tick.”

  Bob jumped to his feet. Ticks gave you a fever, so they examined themselves carefully, but found nothing. They got dressed.

  The air was gold. Even the gray walls of the cabin looked gold in the last light of the sun. Now they were hungry. Jim built a fire while Bob made hamburgers in an old frying pan. He did everything easily, expertly. At home he cooked for his father.

  They ate their supper, sitting on a log facing the river. The sun had gone. Fireflies darted like yellow sparks in the green shadow of the woods.

  “I’m going to miss this,” said Bob finally.

  Jim looked at him. In the stillness there was no sound but the rushing river. “My sister said Sally said you were going to leave right after graduation. I told her I didn’t know anything about it. Are you going?”

  Bob nodded and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Monday, on the Old Dominion Bus Line.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “To sea.”

  “Like we always talked about.”

  “Like we always talked about. Oh, I tell you I’m fed up with this town. The old man and I don’t get along at all and God knows there isn’t anything to do around here. So I’m going. You know I never been out of this county, except to go over to Washington. I want to see things.”

  Jim nodded. “So do I. But I thought we were going to go to college first and then we would…well, you would go off on this trip.”

  Bob caught a firefly in his hand and let it climb up his thumb, and fly away.

  “College is too much work,” he said at last. “I’d have to work my way through and that means a job, which means I’d never get a chance to play around. Besides, there isn’t a thing they could teach me that I want to know. All I want is to travel and to hell around.”

  “Me too.” Jim wished that he could say what he wanted to say. “But my father wants me to go to college and I suppose I got to. Only I’d hoped we could go together…well, team up in tennis doubles. We could be state champions. Everybody says so.”

  Bob shook his head and stretched out. “I got to get moving,” he said. “I don’t know why but I do.”

  “I feel the same way, sometimes.” Jim sat beside Bob on the ground and together they watched the river and the darkening sky.

  “I wonder what New York is like,” said Bob at last.

  “Big, I guess.”

  “Like Washington. That sure is a big town.” Bob rolled over on his side, facing Jim. “Hey, why don’t you come with me? We can ship out as cabin boys, maybe even deckhands.”

  Jim was grateful Bob had said this, but he was cautious by nature. “I think I ought to wait till next year when I get that high-school diploma, which is important to have. Of course my old man wants me to go to college. He says I should…”

  “Why do you pay any attention to that bastard?”

  Jim was shocked and delighted. “Well, I don’t really. In fact, I’d just as soon never see him again.” With surprising ease, he obliterated his father. “But even so, I’m scared, going off like that.”

  “Nothing to it.” Bob flexed the muscles of his right arm. “Why, a guy like you with brains and a good build, he can do most anything he wants. I knew these guys, they were sailors out of Norfolk, and they said there was nothing to it; easy work and when you’re onshore you have a good time all the time, which is what I want. Oh, I’m tired of hanging around this town, working in stores, going out with nice girls. Only they’re not really so damned nice, they’re just afraid of getting knocked up.” Fiercely he struck the ground with his fist. “Like Sally! Why, she’d do anything to you you want except the one thing you got to have. And that sure makes me mad. She makes me mad. All the girls around here make me mad!” Again he struck the dark earth.

  “I know how it is,” said Jim, who did not know how it was. “But aren’t you scared you’ll catch something from somebody you meet in New York?”

  Bob laughed. “Man, I’m careful!” He turned over on his back.

  Jim watched the fireflies rise from the nearby grass. It was already night. “You know,” he said, “I wish I could go with you up North. I’d like to see New York and do as I please for once.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Like I said, I’m afraid to leave home and the family, not that I like them all that much but…” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  “Well, you can come with me if you want to.”

  “Next year, after I graduate, I’ll come.”

  “If you can find me. I don’t know where I’ll be by then. I’m a rolling stone.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find you. Anyway, we’ll write.”

  Then they walked down to the narrow boulder-strewn beach. Bob scrambled onto a flat rock and Jim followed him. The river swirled about them as they sat side by side in the blue, deep night.

  One by one, great stars appeared. Jim was perfectly contented, loneliness no longer turning in the pit of his stomach, sharp as a knife. He always thought of unhappiness as the “tar sickness.” When tar roads melted in the summer, he used to chew the tar and get sick. In some obscure way he had always associated “tar sickness” with being alone. No longer.

  Bob took off his shoes and socks and let the river cool his feet. Jim did the same.

  “I’ll miss all this,” said Bob for the dozenth time, absently putting his arm around Jim’s shoulders.

  They were very still. Jim found the weight of Bob’s arm on his shoulders almost unbearable: wonderful but unbearable. Yet he did not dare move for fear the other would take his arm away. Suddenly Bob got to his feet. “Let’s make a fire.”

  In a burst of activity, they built a fire in front of the cabin. Then Bob brought the blankets outside and spread them on the ground.

  “There,” he said, looking into the yellow flames, “that’s done.” For a long moment both stared into the hypnotically quivering flames, each possessed by his own private daydream. Bob’s dream ended first. He turned to Jim. “Come on,” he said menacingly. “I’ll wrestle you.”

  They met, grappled, fell to the ground. Pushing and pulling, they fought for position; they were evenly matched, because Jim, though stronger, would not allow Bob to lose or to win. When at last they stopped, both were panting and sweating. They lay exhausted on the blanket.

  Then Bob took off his shirt and Jim did the same. That was better. Jim mopped the sweat from his face while Bob stretched out on the blanket, using his shirt for a pillow. Firelight gleamed on pale skin. Jim stretched out beside him. “Too hot,” he said. “Too hot to be wrestling.”

  Bob laughed and suddenly grabbed him. They clung to one another. Jim was overwhelmingly conscious of Bob’s body. For a moment they pretended to wrestle. Then both stopped. Yet each continued to cling to the other as though waiting for a signal to break or to begin again. For a long time neither moved. Smooth chests touching, sweat mingling, breathing fast in unison.

  Abruptly, Bob pulled away. For a bold moment their eyes met. Then, deliberately, gravely, Bob shut his eyes and Jim touched him, as he had so many times in dreams, without words, without thought, without fear. When the eyes are shut, the true world begins.

  As faces touched, Bob gave a shuddering sigh and gripped Jim tightly in his arms. Now they were complete,
each became the other, as their bodies collided with a primal violence, like to like, metal to magnet, half to half and the whole restored.

  So they met. Eyes tight shut against an irrelevant world. A wind warm and sudden shook all the trees, scattered the fire’s ashes, threw shadows to the ground.

  But then the wind stopped. The fire went to coals. The trees were silent. No comets marked the dark lovely sky, and the moment was gone. In the fast beat of a double heart, it died.

  The eyes opened again. Two bodies faced one another where only an instant before a universe had lived; the star burst and dwindled, spiraling them both down to the meager, to the separate, to the night and the trees and the firelight; all so much less than what had been.

  They separated, breathing hard. Jim could feel the fire on his feet and beneath the blanket he was now uncomfortably aware of small stones and sticks. He looked at Bob, not certain of what he would see.

  Bob was staring into the fire, face expressionless. But he grinned quickly when he saw Jim watching him. “This is a hell of a mess,” he said, and the moment fled.

  Jim looked down at himself and said as casually as he could, “It sure is.”

  Bob stood up, the firelight glittering on his body. “Let’s wash up.”

  Pale as ghosts in the dark night, they walked to the pond. Through the trees they could see the light from their fire, yellow and flickering, while frogs croaked, insects buzzed, river thundered. They dove into the still black water. Not until they had returned to the fire did Bob break the silence. He was abrupt.

  “You know, that was awful kid stuff we did.”

  “I suppose so.” Jim paused. “But I liked it.” He had great courage now that he had made his secret dream reality. “Did you?”

  Bob frowned into the yellow fire. “Well, it was different than with a girl. And I don’t think it’s right.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, guys aren’t supposed to do that with each other. It’s not natural.”

  “I guess not.” Jim looked at Bob’s fire-colored body, long-lined and muscular. With his newfound courage, he put his arm around Bob’s waist. Again excited, they embraced and fell back onto the blanket.

  * * *

  —

  Jim woke before dawn. The sky was gray and the stars were fading. The fire was almost out. He touched Bob’s arm and watched him wake up. They looked at one another. Then Bob grinned and Jim said, “You’re still going Monday?”

  Bob nodded.

  “You’ll write me, won’t you? I’d like to get on the same boat with you next year.”

  “Sure, I’ll write you.”

  “I wish you weren’t going…you know, after this.”

  Bob laughed and grabbed him by the neck. “Hell, we got all day Sunday.” And Jim was satisfied and happy to have all day Sunday with this conscious dream.

  CHAPTER

  3

  I

  BOB WROTE ONE LETTER from New York: things had been tough but now it looked as if he’d be shipping out on the American Export Line. Meanwhile, he was having a swell time and had met a lot of girls, ha-ha. Jim replied promptly, only to have his letter returned, “Addressee unknown.” There was no second letter. Jim was hurt but not entirely surprised. Bob was not much of a letter writer, particularly now that he was absorbed in that new life which they would soon share, for Jim had already made up his mind that once high school was done with, he would follow Bob to sea.

  On the greenest and the warmest day of the next June, Jim graduated from high school and began a two week’s battle with his father. Jim won. He would go to New York for the summer and work, with the understanding that in the fall he would return to Virginia and enter college. Naturally, he would have to work his way through the university, but it was not every father who was willing to offer his son that opportunity. And so, early one bright yellow morning, Jim kissed his mother, shook his father’s hand, said a casual good-bye to his brother and sister, and got on the bus to New York with seventy-five dollars in his pocket, more than enough, he reckoned, to keep him until he found Bob.

  * * *

  —

  New York was hot, gray, dirty. Jim found it astonishing (where did all those people come from? Where were they all hurrying to?) and oppressive in the summer heat. But then he was not a tourist. He was on a quest. After renting a room at a YMCA he went to the Seamen’s Bureau, where he learned that there was no record of a Bob Ford. For a moment he experienced panic. But then one of the old-timers explained to him that men often shipped out using other men’s papers. In any case, the best thing for him to do was to apply for a berth as a cabin boy. Sooner or later, he and Bob would meet. The sea was surprisingly small; paths always crossed. Jim was put on a list. There would be a wait, perhaps a long one. While his papers cleared, he visited bars, got drunk twice (and disliked it), saw dozens of movies, and became an interested spectator of the life of the street. Then, just as his money ran out, he was signed on a freighter as cabin boy.

  The sea was a startling experience. It took time to get used to the constant throb of engines beneath steel bulkheads, the slap and fall of a ship going full speed into the wind, the close confinement in the fo’c’sle with thirty strangers, foulmouthed but for the most part amiable. He ended by enjoying the life. In Panama he learned that a deckhand named Bob Ford had recently passed through the port, on his way to San Francisco. Jim’s luck was improving. He transferred to a cargo ship bound for Seattle by way of San Francisco. But the trail ended in San Francisco. He could find no trace of Bob. Disconsolately, he roamed the city and visited waterfront bars, hoping for a sudden glimpse of Bob. Once he thought he saw him at the far end of a bar, but when he approached, heart beating fast, the figure turned toward him and showed a stranger’s face.

  Jim signed on as cabin boy aboard the Alaska Line and spent the rest of the year at sea. Entirely absorbed in his new life, he no longer wrote to his parents. Only the absence of Bob shadowed the full days he spent aboard ship during that first snow-bright winter of his freedom.

  On Christmas Day the ship was off the coast of southeastern Alaska, headed for Seattle. Jagged mountains rose from black water. The sea was heavy, the wind rising. Those passengers who were not sick were having breakfast in the dining saloon. They sat at round tables and made brave jokes about the motion of the ship and their fallen comrades, while the messboys hurried back and forth between galley and saloon, carrying heavy china plates of food.

  Only one of Jim’s passengers had come to breakfast. She was a plump, thick woman with bad skin. She was very jovial. “Good morning, Jim,” she said brightly. “Nasty weather, isn’t it? I suppose all the landlubbers are sick.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He began to clear away the remains of her breakfast.

  “Me, I’ve never felt better.” She inhaled the close cabin air. “This weather agrees with me.” She patted herself and glanced at Jim as he picked up his tray. “When are you going to fix that porthole thing of mine, the thing that’s broken and keeps rattling all the time?”

  “I’ll try, when I make up your cabin.”

  “That’ll be fine,” said the plump woman and she left the table, swaying slightly as she walked, using what she called her “sea legs.”

  Jim took the tray back to the galley. Breakfast was over. The steward dismissed him. Whistling to himself, Jim walked down the companionway to a small cabin aft where he found Collins, a short, square young man of twenty with dark curly hair, blue eyes, and a love of himself which was surprisingly contagious. On his left arm he had an intricate vein-blue tattoo which pledged him forever to Anna, a girl belonging to the dim past, when he was sixteen and living in Oregon, not yet a seaman. Collins was sitting on an upright box, smoking.

  “Hello, boy,” said Collins.

  Jim grunted and sat down on another box. He took a cigarette out of Collins’s shirt pocket an
d then lit it with his own match.

  “Only two more days,” said Collins, “and then…” He rolled his eyes and made obscene designs in the air. “Can’t wait to get back to Seattle. Hey, what’ve they got planned for today? You know it’s Christmas.”

  “Sure, I got a calendar, too,” said Jim callously.

  “I wonder,” said Collins more specifically, “if we’ll get any liquor. This is the first time I ever been to sea at Christmas. Some ships, foreign ships mostly, serve liquor to the men.”

  Jim exhaled sadly. “I don’t think they will,” he said, watching the smoke fade. “But we ought to get some truck from the passengers.”

  “Hope so.” Collins yawned. “By the way, how you doin’ with the hog?” The messboys enjoyed kidding Jim about the plump woman at his table. Her interest in him was hardly secret.

  Jim laughed. “I keep her in deep suspense.”

  “Wonder if she’s got any money. You might pick up some extra change there.” Collins was serious, and Jim was disgusted, but he didn’t show it because Collins was his best friend aboard ship. Also, Jim was never sure if Collins really did the things he said he did or not.

  “I’m not that hungry,” said Jim.

  Collins shrugged. “I always need money. All the time I need it and now we’re going to Seattle I’ll need a lot more than I got. Well, maybe somebody rich’ll die and leave it to me.” Collins was essentially a thief, but it was good policy to appear to have illusions about shipmates. Besides, Collins was guide as well as friend. He had made Jim’s life easier aboard ship by showing him different ways to avoid work, as well as places like this cabin to hide in.

  Jim stretched. “I got to start making beds.”

  “Plenty of time. Steward won’t be looking for you for a while.” Collins stamped out his cigarette butt and quickly lit another. Jim finished his own cigarette. He disliked smoking. But aboard ship it was important to keep your hands busy when there was nothing to do, and in his months at sea there were days on end when there was little to do, except listen to the men talk of women and ships’ officers, of good ports and bad. And once each man had said what he had to say he would promptly repeat himself, until no one listened to anyone else. There were times when Jim could conduct an entire conversation with Collins and at the end not remember a word that either had said. It was a lonely time.