The Great American Novel

by Philip Roth

  So, along with Mrs. Trust and General Oakhart and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the wife of the President of the United States sat that afternoon in a box behind the Tri-City dugout, there to pay tribute to the Ruppert team in behalf of America’s Chief Executive. The game, in fact, was delayed thirty minutes while Mrs. Roosevelt went down into the visitors’ dugout to shake the hands of the players and ask them what states they were from. Then she rejoined the other dignitaries in the box, and the Tycoons, weary from their season-long battle against the surging Butchers, and visibly unnerved by all the attention being heaped upon their adversaries, took the field. Though the day was breezy, and he had taken no more than a dozen warm-up pitches, Smoky Woden’s uniform was already gray with perspiration when Frenchy Astarte stepped up to the plate and the umpire cried, “Play ball!”

  No need to chronicle here the records compiled in a game about which tens of thousands of words were written during that fall and winter: the record number of times Hothead Ptah tripped on his mask going back for foul pop-ups, the record number of times that Mike Rama knocked himself unconscious against the left-field wall, the record number of times Specs Skirnir “lost” ground balls in the sun—every stupid and humiliating mishap of that afternoon was recounted by the sports columnists of the nation no less frequently than the third strike that Mickey Owen dropped in the ’41 World Series, or the error that earned Bonehead Merkle his nickname in 1908, and lost the Giants the pennant.

  With two out in the ninth and his team down by thirty-one runs, Nickname Damur got the fifth Mundy hit of the day—Agni had the other four—a clean shot up the alley in left center, and then was out when he tried to stretch the double into a three-bagger. The Tycoon fans, by reputation as sober and scholarly a crowd as you could find anywhere, were so busy laughing at the sheer idiocy of Nickname’s base-running, that it was a while before they even realized that their team had just won the ’43 flag. In the dugout, streaming tears, Nickname stood before Mister Fairsmith and tried to think of some sort of explanation for what he had just done.

  “I don’t know, sir,” he said, shrugging. “I guess you could say I gambled.”

  “Thirty-one runs behind in the ninth … and you say … you say you gambled? My God,” moaned Mister Fairsmith, “my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and rolling off his rocker, died on the floor of the visitors’ dugout.

  * * *

  “What happened, you son of a bitch!”

  “I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why, Roland, why couldn’t you?”

  “Don’t you know who all was eatin’ breakfast with us? General Oakhart! You know who all was in the box? Judge Landis, the Commissioner! And Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt! And you know who sent us a telegram? The President of the United States!”

  “And what do they have to do with anything?”

  “They just happen to be the most important people in the world, that’s all!”

  “Idiot! They are the most important people in the world just like the Wheaties they make in Minneapolis are the Breakfast of Champions!”

  “But they kept sending these telegrams. Everybody kept sayin’, ‘I just got this telegram,’ and it would get all hushed and everythin’, and then when they start in readin’ it, it would sound just like the Gettysburg Address or somethin’! It would give me the gooseflesh!”

  “And that’s why you couldn’t do it—because of the gooseflesh?”

  “But we had enough money anyway, Isaac! You said we had the quarter million to buy me already!”

  “Oh, we had it all right.”

  “What—what do you mean, Isaac! You said on the phone we had more—two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars—you told me that just last night!”

  “And just last night we did.”

  “But if you lost twenty-five today, you still have enough—well, don’t you? They didn’t go raise the price on me, on account of my goin’ four for four—did they?”

  “You know what the odds were today, Roland? 4–1. Two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars would get you a million and change, if the Mundys did it again.”

  “Yeah—so?”

  “So I thought, since the Mundys are going to win, why buy just Roland Agni? Why not a whole franchise while I’m at it?”

  “So?”

  “So I bet the wad, Rollie.”

  “You did?”

  “See, I didn’t figure on the league’s leading hitter getting gooseflesh from all those telegrams. I didn’t figure on being betrayed by a weakling and a coward!”

  “You bet it all?”

  “All.”

  “Then—there’s nothin’ left!”

  “Correct. I go back to splitting atoms, you go back to being a Ruppert Mundy for the rest of your life.”

  “But I can’t!”

  “Oh yes you can, you All-American asshole. Gooseflesh from telegrams!”

  “But it was just my respect comin’ out!”

  “Respect? For who, for what?”

  “For the President of the United States! For—for the whole country!”

  “But I’m the one you should respect, Roland. The one you should have gooseflesh over is me! Ah, go on back to the Mundys, Agni. That’s where you belong anyway.”

  “I don’t!”

  “You do, my cowardly, simple-minded, patriotic pal. Because that’s all you really are when it comes down to it—a Ruppert Mundy.”

  “And you—you’re a lousy loudmouth little kike! You’re a dirty greedy money-mad mocky! You’re a Shylock! You’re a sheeny! You killed Christ! I’d rather be a nigger than be one of you!”

  “Well, good, Roland. Because before this is over, you may get your chance.”

  * * *

  And so the ’43 season came to an end.

  Mister Fairsmith’s body was borne by train directly from Tri-City to Cooperstown, New York. The journey of less than three hundred miles lasted through a day and a night, for in every village and hamlet along the way the train would draw to a halt to allow those who had gathered together at the station to say goodbye to the great Mundy manager. The local high school team, with heads bowed and eyes closed, was invariably to be found at the siding with their coach, as were numerous children in baseball togs, some so small they had to be held in their mothers’ arms.

  In the village of Cooperstown, the flag-draped coffin was removed from the train by members of the Mundy team and placed upon a horse-drawn caisson. To the slow, mournful pace set by the corps of drummers from the service academies, and escorted by an honor guard drawn from every team in the three leagues, each wearing his gray “away” uniform, the Mundys walked behind the coffin down the main street of Cooperstown. At the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the coffin was unlashed and the pallbearers—Astarte, Damur, Baal, Ptah, Rama, Heket, Skirnir, and Agni—carried it through the gate and up the steps of the Museum and into the gallery of the Hall of Fame, a room nearly as long as the distance from home to first, and flanked by black marble columns hewn from the earth of Mister Fairsmith’s native Vermont.

  There, beneath the bronze plaques upon which are sculpted the faces of baseball’s immortals, brief eulogies were delivered by General Oakhart and Judge Landis. Each noted that Ulysses S. Fairsmith and the pillars came from the same state, and drew the appropriate conclusions. Judge Landis described him as “baseball’s ambassador to mankind,” and said that throughout the world, people of all races and nations would mourn the passing of the man known to many of them simply as “Mister Baseball.” Slowly, he read the “roll call” of the seven continents to which Mister Fairsmith had traveled as the ambassador of the national pastime. “Yes,” he said, in conclusion, “even Antarctica. That was the kind of human being that this man was.” Then the doors to the street were opened and throughout the afternoon the fans filed past the open coffin, made of hickory wood by Hillerich and Bradsby.

  They buried him on a hillside that looks down upon the spot where (legend has it) Abner Doubleday
invented the game in 1839. And if it is only legend? Does this make the shrine any less holy?

  “Oh God,” said the Reverend Billy Bun, “Thy servant, having played his nine innings upon this earth…”

  When the last prayer had been uttered by the last of the Billies, each of the Mundy regulars stepped up to the grave, and with a bat handed him by the minister, fungoed a high fly ball in the direction of the setting sun. Then a solitary bugle played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and the mourners turned and made their way back down into the town that is to baseball fans the Lourdes, the Canterbury, the Kyoto of America.

  7

  THE RETURN OF GIL GAMESH; OR, MISSION FROM MOSCOW

  7

  An extraordinary letter of reference. A project of Mrs. Trust’s, and her trip with General Oakhart to visit a penitent sinner. Gil Gamesh relates his history; his wanderings; student days at SHIT, and other adventures in Soviet Russia. The Soviet spy system revealed to the General. The author puts in a brief recorded appearance. In which the history leaps ahead seven months with an excerpt from General Oakhart’s testimony before a Congressional Committee. The press conference wherein Gamesh is reinstated; he relates a history appropriate to the occasion. America opens its heart—with a notable exception. A series of lectures on Hatred and Loathing. Roland returns to a vengeful team; his chagrin; the surprising discovery he makes in the locker room; his death. In which General Oakhart names names and Gil Gamesh pays tribute to a great American. The Patriot League cleans house and the Mundy Thirteen appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In which the author puts in an appearance before the Congressional Committee and expresses his opinion in no uncertain terms. Wherein the history draws to a conclusion, with a few last-minute disasters.

  MCWILEY’S GROCERY STORE

  141 KAKOOLA BLVD., KAKOOLA, WISCONSIN

  Wm. McWiley, Prop.

  March 1, 1944

  To Whom It May Concern:

  This is to affirm that Gil Gamesh was formerly employed under a variety of aliases by the Kakoola Citizens Action Committee for Americanism and the Kakoola Council to Keep America Free in doing investigative and research work.

  During the period of his employment, Mr. Gamesh’s services were entirely satisfactory and I have no hesitation in recommending him for any type work in which a thorough knowledge of Communism and Communist methods is necessary. He made an excellent witness in executive session of the statewide Citizens Action Committee for Americanism held here in Kakoola at McWiley’s Grocery Store for November 23–24, 1943, and his services were much in demand by the investigative units of both the Committee and the Council throughout the Middle West.

  His knowledge of Communism and Communist methods can be utilized in the fields of dissemination of information concerning Communism, as well as the field of investigation.

  Yours very truly,

  Wm. McWiley

  President, Kakoola CACA

  Legal Director, Kakoola KAF

  “Mrs. Trust,” said the General, returning the letter to the old lady of the league, “the Ruppert Mundys have just this afternoon lost their first exhibition game of the ’44 season by a score of 12–4 to Asbury Park High. I have just this moment learned by phone that they would not even have scored their four runs if the high school coach hadn’t put in his junior varsity for a couple of innings’ experience against a big league club, once he had the game sewed up. I have Roland Agni, the league’s leading hitter, out there in Michigan sulking in his bedroom, refusing to join the Mundys in New Jersey for spring training, or ever again, from what he tells his poor father—I have a league, in other words, that is just about coming apart at the seams, Mrs. Trust, and you arrive here with a letter for me to read from some greengrocer in Kakoola.”

  “This greengrocer happens also to be the President of the Kakoola Citizens Action Committee for Americanism and the Legal Director of the Kakoola Council to Keep America Free.”

  “Organizations unknown to me, I’m afraid.”

  “And I suppose the name Gil Gamesh is unknown to you as well?”

  Wearily he said, “It rings a bell, Madam.”

  “You banished him from baseball.”

  “And would again, for all that it appears to have cost us.”

  “And him.”

  “That a criminal should be stigmatized for his crime seems to me one of the few reassuring facts of this life; that the victim should be stigmatized, therein lies the tragedy. My dear lady, I long ago lost interest in the fate of Gil Gamesh. I assumed, as I think you did, that the man was dead. Nor did I grieve at the thought that he might have come to a violent end. At the risk of being indecorous, let me say that I understood how your feelings might have been otherwise. I would not have expected them to be my own. Nonetheless, ever since you assumed the ownership of the Tycoons, I have had every reason to believe that you joined in the opinion of baseball’s leaders that I had acted in the best interests of the game and the league, and the cause of decency and justice, when I expelled Gamesh in ’33. I can’t believe that with all that threatens the integrity and existence of our league at this moment, you would want now to divert my attention in any way from the serious work at hand.”

  “To the contrary,” said Angela Trust, hammering the floor with her cane, “I want you to see how much more serious it is than you may wish to know!”

  “Madam, we have had our conversations on the subject of Communism. Surely you know I am no friend of the Reds.”

  “Nor is Will Harridge! Nor is Ford Frick! Nor is that eminent jurist Kenesaw Mountain Landis! And yet all the while you four stalwarts are not befriending the Reds, the Reds continue making inroads into the Patriot League! General, you talk to me of stigmas, but there is no stigma—there is only subversion! There is only conspiracy and sabotage!”

  “Mrs. Trust, that is just so much foolishness.”

  “And is this?” she cried, rattling the letter in the air. “Would it still seem foolish if what I have been telling you for years were told to you now by a man who has consorted with the Communists for a decade? Would it be foolishness if you heard my own warnings from the mouth of a man who studied for four years in Moscow at the International Lenin School of Subversion, Hatred, Infiltration, and Terror? Who now takes his orders directly from the highest placed Communist agent in America?”

  “You mean this grocer, this McWiley?”

  “I mean Gil Gamesh.”

  “Gamesh? A Communist spy?”

  “As far as the Communists are concerned, yes. But I know otherwise. And now, General, so too do you: Gil Gamesh, who loathed America, loves it once again. He has defected back to us.”

  “How can you say these things seriously? Who told you all this?”

  Beneath the thousand wrinkles, she was suddenly as radiant as she had ever been. “Gil,” she answered.

  Mrs. Trust’s limousine carried them to the no-man’s land between Greenback Stadium and the waterfront, amidst the looming warehouses and grimy factories of what had been Tri-City’s “Docktown,” a workers’ quarter once as lively with petty intrigue, as squalid, as “colorful” as anything bordering the docks of Marseilles or Singapore. Here and there a dirt path still opened up through the weeds back of a trucking platform, and beside a heap of charred rubbish or the rusted-out bones of a dismantled car, stood one of those lean-to shacks that used to house Docktown families of five, six, and seven—a brawling immigrant couple, their ragged children, the toothless Old World parents. By 1944, of course, a few two-by-fours nailed together in Tri-City at the tail-end of the previous century hardly resembled any sort of human habitation, and, in fact, seemed to be home only to the barnswallows that swooped toward the General’s glittering Army insignia as he followed angrily along the rutted path behind the grande dame, who set a feverish pace, cane and all.

  * * *

  The General looked at him in disbelief. No yellow linen suit; no perforated two-tone shoes; no brilliantine making patent leather of t
he hair; no hair; no swagger either; no scowl; no crooked smile; no smile—no expression at all, other than a terrifying blankness fixed upon bones as prominent as the handles of a valise. The man appeared to have been stripped of hide, meat, and muscle, boiled down to bone, then wired together again like the extinct displayed in the biology lab—and finally covered over in a shroud of wax a size too small for his carcass. The clothes too looked like retreads, just such outfits as are issued to those corpses selected to rise from the dead to go and walk among the living in Automats and public library reading rooms: fraying gray cotton jacket, thread-worn tweed trousers thickly cuffed, narrow black knit tie, and dark shoes with a wedge of heel thin as a wafer and the leather worn membranous over the corns. The uniform, not of the dandy, but the “loner.”

  “General Oakhart,” said the ghost, gravely.

  “I am he. But who may I ask are you?”

  “Just who Angela says I am.”

  “I don’t believe it. You don’t look like the Gil Gamesh I knew. You don’t sound like that Gil Gamesh, either.”

  “Nor do I feel like that Gil Gamesh any longer. Nonetheless, that is the Gil Gamesh I am doomed to remain forever. I can never hope to unburden myself of his foolishness, his treachery, or his despair. My hair is gone. My arm is gone. My looks are gone. So what. I am what I have been. Can I now become what I would be? It seems once again, General, that my future is in your hands.”