by Gore Vidal
We sat down in the deep armchairs. Mr. Hollister smiled, revealing a handsome upper plate. “I suspect,” he said, “that you’re wondering exactly why I engaged you.”
“I thought Senator Rhodes engaged me.”
“He did, he did, of course … I was speaking only as his … proxy, as it were.” He smiled again, plumply. I decided that I disliked him but then I usually dislike all men on first meeting: something to do, I suppose, with the natural killer instinct of the male. I tried to imagine Mr. Hollister and myself covered with the skins of wild beasts, doing battle in the jungle, but my imagination faltered: after all we were two Americans living in rooms centrally heated and eating hygienically prepared food got out of cans … the jungle was remote.
“In any case,” Hollister was saying, “I thought I should brief you a little before you meet the Senator.” He paused. Then he asked: “What, by the way, are your politics?”
Being venal, I said that I belonged to the same party as my employer; as a matter of fact, I have never voted so even if I did not entirely admire the party of Senator Rhodes I hadn’t perjured myself.
Mr. Hollister looked relieved. “I don’t suppose, in your business, that you’re much interested in politics.”
I said that, aside from my subscription to Time magazine, I was indeed cut off from the great world.
“You don’t have, then, any particular choice for the nominating convention?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
“You realize that what I tell you now is in the strictest, the very strictest confidence?”
“I do.” I wondered whether or not I should cross my heart; Mr. Hollister had grown strangely solemn and mysterious.
“Then, Mr. Sargeant, as you may already have guessed, The Senator’s Hat Is In The Ring.”
“The what?”
“Senator Rhodes will announce his candidacy for the nomination for President on Friday at a speech before the National Margarine Council.”
I took this awesome news calmly. “And I am to handle the publicity?”
“That’s right.” He looked at me sharply but my Irish, piggish features were impassive: I saw myself already as Press Secretary to President Rhodes: “Boys, I’ve got a big story for you. One hour ago the President laid the biggest egg.…” But I recalled myself quickly to reality. Mr. Hollister wanted to know my opinion of Leander Rhodes.
“I hardly have one,” I said. “He’s just another Senator as far as I’m concerned.”
“We, here in the office, regard this as something of a crusade,” said Mr. Hollister softly.
“Then I will, too,” I said sincerely. Before he could tell me why the country needed Lee Rhodes, I remarked that I happened to know his daughter, that, by chance, I had come down on the train with her. Was it my imagination, as they used to say in Victorian novels, or did a cloud cross Mr. Hollister’s serene countenance? As a matter of fact, it was worse than a cloud: it was a scowl.
“Is Miss Rhodes in Washington?”
“I believe so. Unless she decided to go back to New York.”
“A charming young lady,” said Mr. Hollister, without conviction. “I’ve known her since she was a tiny tot.” The idea of Ellen Rhodes as a tiny tot was ludicrous but I was not allowed to meditate on it. Instead I was whisked out of the office and into the reception room; then into a further office filled with gray women answering the Senator’s voluminous mail. I was introduced to all of them; next, I was shown an empty desk which I could call my own, close by one of the tall windows which overlooked the Capitol. I noticed that none of the typists was under fifty, a tribute, I decided, to Mrs. Senator Rhodes.
“Now if you like we’ll go over to the Senate.”
I had never been inside either the Senate Office Building or the Capitol before and so I am afraid that I gaped like a visitor from Talisman City at the private subway which whisked the Senators in little cars from the basement of their building to that of the Capitol.
After we got off a crowded elevator, Mr. Hollister led me down a long marble corridor to a green frosted double glass door beside which stood a uniformed guard. “That’s the floor of the Chamber,” said my escort, in a low reverent voice. “Now I’ll see if I can get you into the cloakroom.”
As I later discovered, this was the holy of holies of the Senate, almost as inaccessible to a non-Senatorial visitor as the floor itself. Some quick talk got us in, however.
The cloakroom was a long room with desks, couches and a painted ceiling, very ornate, a little like Versailles; swinging glass doors communicated directly with the Senate Chamber from which could be heard a loud monotonous voice.
“Senator Rhodes,” whispered Mr. Hollister proudly, pushing me back against the wall, out of the way of the statesmen who wandered in and out, some chatting together in small groups, others reading newspapers or writing letters. It was like a club, I thought, trying to summon up a little awe, trying to remember that these were the men who governed the most powerful country in the world.
Mr. Hollister pointed out several landmarks: Senator O’Mahoney, Senator Douglas, Senator Byrd … I stared at them all. Then the swinging door opened and Leander Rhodes, the Great Bear of the West as he liked to hear himself referred to, appeared in the cloakroom, his face red from speechmaking, his gray hair tangled above his bloodshot eyes, eyes like his daughter’s I thought, recalling irreverently her face on the pillow beside me that morning. But no time for that.
“Ah, Sargeant. Glad to see you. Glad to see you. Prompt. I like promptness. Secret of success, punctuality.” Since neither of us could either prove or disprove this statement, I murmured agreement.
“Been to the office yet? Yes? Good scout. Let’s go to lunch.”
It took us quite awhile to get from the cloakroom to the Senate Dining Room. Every few yards or so, the Senator would pause to shake hands with some other Senator or with some tourist who wanted to meet him. He was obviously quite popular with the voters; the other Senators were a bit cool with him, or so I thought, since he was, after all, by reputation anyway, a near-idiot with a perfect Senate record of obstruction. He regarded the administration of Chester A. Arthur as the high point of American history and he felt it his duty to check as much as possible the subsequent national decline from that high level. He was a devout isolationist although, according to legend, at the time of the First World War he had campaigned furiously for our entry into that war, on the side of the Kaiser.
I suppose I shouldn’t, in actual fact, accept jobs from men for whom I have so little respect but since it never occurred to me that Lee Rhodes had a chance in the world of getting nominated, much less elected, President, I saw no harm in spending a few months at a considerable salary to see that his name appeared in the newspaper, often and favorably.
The lunch was excellent, served in an old-fashioned dining room with tile floor where the Senators eat … there is a Pre-Civil War feeling about the Senate Dining Room … especially the menu, the remarkable cornbread, the legendary bean soup which I wolfed hungrily, trying not to stare too hard at Senator Taft, who sat demurely at the next table reading a newspaper as he lunched.
“Suppose Rufus here has briefed you?” said Senator Rhodes, when coffee arrived and all around the room cigars were lit, like Roman candles.
I nodded, holding my breath as a wreath of blue Senatorial smoke crossed the table and settled about my neck.
“Day after tomorrow, Friday, that’s the big day. Making announcement then. Want it well covered. Can you do that?”
I told him that all speeches by such a celebrated statesman were well-covered by the press. He took my remark quietly, adding that he wanted Life there, or else. I said that Life would be there.
“Get yourself located yet?” he asked, after we had exchanged a number of very businesslike remarks. I said that I hadn’t, that I’d only just arrived on the morning train.
“Stay with us then; for a few days,” said the Senator generously. “Got plenty of room. Gi
ve us a chance to talk strategy.”
“I’d appreciate that, sir. By the way I happen to know your daughter slightly. I came down on the train with her this morning.”
Was it my imagination … no, it wasn’t; the Senator sighed rather sadly. “A wonderful girl, Ellen,” he said mechanically.
“She seems very pleasant.”
“Like her mother … a wonderful woman.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The Senator rose. “I’ll see you this evening then, at the house. Got a committee meeting now. Rufus will show you around. Remember: this is a kind of crusade.”
3
A crusade was putting it lightly. It was an unscrupulous and desperate effort of one Leander Rhodes to organize the illiberal minority of the country into a party within his party … and, I suspect, if he’d been younger and a little more intelligent he might very well have got himself into the White House. As it was, from what little Rufus Hollister would tell me, the Senator had some impressive backing; he also had some very sinister backing. I disguised my alarm, though, and by the time I took a taxi to the Senator’s house on Massachusetts Avenue, Mr. Hollister was convinced that I too was a crusader for Good Government and True-Blue American Ideals.
The house on Massachusetts Avenue was an heroic imitation of an Italian villa, covered with yellow stucco and decorated with twisted columns and ironwork balconies. The Senator, I soon discovered, was a very wealthy man though the source of his income was not entirely clear to me. Mr. Hollister spoke vaguely of properties in Talisman City.
A butler showed me to my room on the third floor and, as I went up the marble staircase, I caught an occasional glimpse of ballrooms, of parquet floors, of potted palms, all very 1920 Grand Hotel chic. Dinner would be announced in an hour, I was told. Then I was left alone in a comfortable bedroom overlooking the Avenue.
I was dozing blissfully in a hot bath, when Ellen marched into the bathroom.
“I’ve come to scrub your back,” she said briskly.
“No, you don’t,” I said, modestly covering myself. “Go away.”
“That’s hardly the way for my fiancé to act,” she said, sitting down on the toilet seat.
“I haven’t been your fiancé for almost a year,” I said austerely. “Besides, the bride-to-be is not supposed to inspect her groom before the wedding.”
“You give me a pain,” said Ellen, lighting a cigarette. She wore a very dashing pair of evening pajamas, green with gold thread, quite oriental-looking … it made her look faintly exotic, not at all like a simple girl from Talisman City. “By the way, I told Mother we were engaged. I hope you don’t mind.”
I moaned. “What is this allergy you have to the truth?”
“Well, it was the truth a few months ago … I mean time’s relative and all that,” she beamed at me. “Anyway it should help you with my father.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, recalling the Senator’s look of pain at the mention of his only daughter.
“The house is full, by the way,” said Ellen, exhaling smoke. “Some of the dreariest political creatures these old eyes have seen in many a moon.”
“Constituents?”
“I suppose so. One’s rather sweet … a lovely boy from New York, a newspaperman. He’s doing a profile of Father for some magazine, very Left Wing I gather, and of course poor Father doesn’t have the remotest notion that he’s being taken for a ride. Did you ever see the piece the Nation did on him?”
I said that I hadn’t; I asked her the name of the lovely boy who was doing the profile. “Walter Langdon … a real dream. I had a quick drink with him in the drawing room, before I dashed off to make violent love to my prospective groom.”
“I have a feeling that our engagement isn’t going to last very long.”
“You may be right. Oh, and you’ll never guess who’s here … Verbena Pruitt.”
“My God!” I was alarmed. Anyone would be alarmed at meeting the incomparable Verbena, the President of the Daughters of the War of 1812 as well as National Committeewoman for her party, one of the most powerful lady politicos in the country.
“She’s from Daddy’s state, you know. She has the hairiest legs I’ve seen since that football game at Cambridge last week.”
“I had better get myself a hotel room quick,” I said, letting the bathwater out and standing up, my back turned modestly toward Ellen as I dried myself.
“How do you keep so slim?” asked the insatiable Ellen.
“No exercise is the secret,” I said flexing a muscle or two in an excess of male spirits.
“You’re really not bad at all,” she said thoughtfully. “I wonder why we ever fell out.” She rose and came toward me, a resolute expression on her face.
“None of that,” I said, making a dash for the bedroom. I had my trousers on before she could violate me further. She relaxed and we went on talking as though nothing had happened. I dressed more slowly.
“Then there’s an old buddy of Father’s staying here, Roger Pomeroy and his wife, a poisonous creature. I don’t know what they’re doing here. He’s an industrialist back in Talisman City, makes gunpowder or something like that.…”
“Sounds like a chummy gathering.”
“Grim … awfully grim. That tiresome Rufus Hollister, Father’s secretary, also lives in. I have often said that he was the reason I left home. Did you ever feel his hands? like an uncooked filet of sole … which reminds me I’m hungry, which also reminds me I desperately need a drink. Do hurry … here, let me tie your tie … I love tying a man’s tie: gives me such a sense of power when I think with just the slightest pressure I could choke him to death.”
“Darling, have you ever been analyzed?”
“Of course. Hasn’t everyone? I went every day for three years after my annulment … Mother insisted. When it was over I was completely normal; I had passed my course with flying colors: no more inhibitions, no frustrations, an easy conscience about alcohol as well as the slightly decrepit body of a middle-aged analyst named Breitbach added to my gallery of conquests.” She finished tying my tie with a flourish which made me jump. “There! You look such a lamb.”
4
The drawing room was a large draughty affair with French windows which looked out on a bleak garden of formal boxwood hedges and empty flower beds, black with winter. Several people were seated about the fire. Two men rose at our entrance. A woman in black lace rose, too, and approached us. It was Mrs. Leander Rhodes.
“Mother, I want you to meet my fiancé, Peter Sargeant.”
“I’m so happy to see you, Mr. Sargeant. I’ve heard such a great deal about you … such a coincidence, too … the Senator engaging you without knowing about you and Ellen.” She was an amiable-looking woman of fifty, thin and rather bent with, as far as I could tell through the swatches of black lace, no bosom and no waist. At her throat old-fashioned yellow diamonds gleamed. Her eyes were black; only her wide full mouth was like her daughter’s. “Let me introduce you around,” she said; and she did.
Verbena Pruitt was worse than I’d expected: a massive woman in mauve satin with henna-dyed hair, bobbed short over a red fat neck, large features, small pig eyes and a complexion not unlike the craters of the moon as seen through a telescope. She gave my hand a vigorous squeeze. So did Roger Pomeroy, a tall silver-haired man of distinction. His wife, Camilla, a fairly pretty dark woman, smiled at me winningly, one heavily veined hand at her smooth neck, fondling pearls. Ellen’s lovely boy Walter Langdon, a red-haired youth, mumbled something incoherent as we shook hands. He was obviously uncomfortable. And well he should be, I thought righteously, coming into a man’s house like this with every intention of axing him later in a magazine.
“The Senator and Rufus should be along soon,” said Mrs. Rhodes, as a maid brought Martinis. Ellen gulped one quickly, like a conjurer; then she took another off the tray and held it in one hand, occasionally sipping it in a most ladylike way. Whom was she trying to impress, I wondered. The lovel
y boy? or her mother? or the assorted politicos?
At first, I thought that possibly I was the one who was ill at ease but, by the time dinner was over and we were all seated in the drawing room having coffee beneath a virile painting of Senator Rhodes, I decided that something was obviously going all wrong and I surmised that it had to do with Ellen’s unexpected visit to Washington. Yet she was a perfect lady all evening. She was a trifle high by the time dinner was over but she spoke hardly at all … in fact, I’d never before seen her so restrained. The Senator was in good form but I had a feeling that the funny stories he told, and his loud rasping laughter were mechanical, a part of the paraphernalia of public office rather than sincere good spirits. He eyed Ellen and myself suspiciously all evening and I began to wonder just how long my job was going to last. I cursed Ellen to myself, fervently, furiously … her announcement that we were engaged had messed up everything.
The other guests seemed uneasy, except for Verbena Pruitt who matched the Senator laugh for laugh, joke for joke in a booming political voice.
Brandy was served with coffee and Senator Rhodes, turning to Roger Pomeroy whom he had ignored most of the evening, said, “Got some good cigars in the study. Want one?”
“No thank you, Lee,” said the other. “I’ve had to give up the habit … heart.”
“None of us are getting any younger!” snorted Miss Pruitt over her brandy, a hairpin falling softly to the carpet.… His eye is on the hairpin, I thought irreverently.
“I’m sound as a bell,” said the Senator striking his chest a careful blow. He did not look very sound, though. I noticed how pale he was, how one eyelid twitched, how his hands shook as he lighted a cigar for himself. He was an old man.
“The Senator has the stamina of ten men,” said little Sir Echo, Rufus Hollister, smugly.
“He’ll need it, too, if he’s going after that nomination,” said Miss Pruitt with a wink. “Won’t you, Lee?”
