Уолтер Тевис - The Steps of the Sun

“Goddamn it!” I said. “That ‘delicate balance’ means the military gets the oil, the Mafia gets most of the coal, and people like you and me get rich off the leftover coal and wood. It means that what little uranium there is is being saved for bombs. People are freezing out there and it may get worse. What if the temperature drops again next winter?” I puffed my cigar furiously for a moment, staring into Baynes’s grandfatherly look, into his pose of bemused patience. “You charlatans in Congress have campaigned on the word ‘crisis’ for so long you think it’s only meaningful in TV spots.”

“Your concern for the ordinary citizen is touching.”

“Oh, come off it!” I said. “That uranium out there is a gift from the heavens. Everybody can profit from it. It’ll run the elevators in New York and heat houses in Omaha, enrich the U. S. Treasury and give me a lot of money. What in hell’s wrong with that, L’Ouverture?”

“You make it sound idyllic,” Baynes said. “A TV spot in its own right. You’re ignoring some things, Benjamin, in your polemic. There is currently a forty percent surplus of wood in the country. Talk of an ice age is premature. There is enough coal in Wyoming alone to run all the elevators in the world, continuously, until the good Lord sees fit to blink this planet back into chaos. The U.S. has tidal engines, windmills and solar plants. And uranium has a bad reputation. Very bad. Consider what the conservationists did to your country home in Georgia.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “The conservationists are being paid by the Mafia; everybody knows that. Uranium’s unsafe, but so is coal. Look at the Chinese. They run their whole industrial plant on U235. The U.S. was trying to find safe uranium in space, just like me, back when I was a kid. You can’t have elevators and fast cars on solar power, L’Ouverture.”

“ Benjamin ,” he said, in his gravelly, soothing way. “Benjamin, who needs cars? They had all that in the twentieth century, and all they did was kill and maim one another on the highways.”

“In the twenty-first century they stay home and watch TV,” I said, “and freeze in winter. There’s a price for everything. The Chinese have big bank accounts and their cuisine’s deteriorated; you can’t buy a Peking duck in Peking. Soyaburgers and fries. They have to come to New York to spend all that money. What kind of civilization is that?”

“The Chinese are known the world over for the quality of their family life.”

“Hogwash, L’Ouverture. They watch TV together and send their kids to business colleges. There’s more revolutionary zeal in Aberdeen than in all of China.” I thought of Isabel, of her sad capitalist love for communism. We should join the Communist Party together and start a revolution somewhere. I’d finance it and she’d write the slogans.

Just then Morton came back in the room with a tray. “Let’s have our coffee now,” Baynes said. He nodded toward a permoplastic table by the marble fireplace and Morton set the tray there. “Why don’t you put the children back to bed, Morton?”

“Shit!” one of the kids said, sotto voce .

“Go to bed ,” Baynes said wearily. That seemed to work, and they followed Morton upstairs like lambs. Baynes turned his attention back to me. He was still smiling but clearly tired. It was about four in the morning. “I don’t really care about the Chinese,” he said. “They’re admirable in their way, but East is East…”

I leaned forward. It was time to make my pitch. I could feel the intensity in my voice. “L’Ouverture,” I said, “there’s more safe uranium where that came from.” I gestured toward the general direction of Aynsley Field. “A billion tons of it. We can beat those Chinese hustlers at their own game. We can be the richest nation on Earth again, L’Ouverture.” I leaned back and chewed my cigar a minute. “And this time we’re mellower. We’ll do it right. We won’t kill ourselves in our cars anymore. No more big horsepower. We won’t bully the little countries.” I paused a moment, overwhelmed myself by what I was going to say. “We can build a great civilization, L’Ouverture, a great, humane, and beautiful civilization. We can be an electronic Byzantium, a holy city. We can be the Age of Pericles and light up the world. Think of the talent in this country! Think of the architecture we can build with cheap power!”

I sat back, moved by my own words. I really believed it. America is a magnificent, fertile place, and in decline it has lost much of its grossness. What a comeback we could have, with all that power from Juno!

Baynes walked over to the table. “The coffee is ready,” he said coolly.

I stared at him, miffed at his ignoring my rhetoric. “Come on ,” I said. “Where’s your patriotism, for Christ’s sake?”

He began pouring the coffee with a steady hand. “My daddy used to say to me at Fourth of July parades in Louisville, ‘Whitey talks pretty, but listen to him closely.’”

I stared at him and almost screamed, Bullshit . But I didn’t. I remembered the black guys in prison. The U.S. has had two black presidents and a dozen black justices in the Supreme Court; a third of Congress is black—mostly women. But the black prisoners at Leavenworth still had to fight to get shoes that fit, had to pay bigger bribes to get the easy jobs in the prison factory. I shrugged and seated myself at the coffee table.

“Your father made ten times the money my father made,” I said.

His face became arctic, just for a second. “What in hell was your father good for?”

There was one final ploy to try, a pretty drastic one, to give myself some operating room. I must at all costs get time and money and stay out of jail. The months on Belson, self-willed though they were, were jail enough. I needed action.

Wouldn’t you know the coffee cups were plastic? Here was a man who could afford anything and he used coffee cups like these. I took a deep breath, tried to dismiss things like that from my mind, and said, “L’Ouverture, I’ll give you half my share of that uranium outright if you’ll get me back my citizenship and my money and drop those charges.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “A bribe?”

“What else?” I said. “Draw up papers and I’ll sign them around noon, right after I get back my citizenship and the courts cancel that mumbo-jumbo.”

He went on sipping his coffee in silence. I leaned back in the little plastic chair by the mantelpiece, feeling at last relaxed. L’Ouverture looked thoughtful and grandfatherly. I felt a part of me yielding to his spell and I didn’t mind, now that I’d played my cards. I knew Baynes: he would rather make a quiet deal like this than fool around. I looked at his contemplative, intelligent old face; this was turning out to be a pleasant welcome home. It was as good in its way as finding Isabel would have been. Maybe better, because with Baynes I wouldn’t be breaking crockery or screaming at cats. Yet I knew well enough that he could be an authentic blacksnake and a threat to life and limb. He who sups with the devil must eat with a long spoon. Oh yes. This man could have me clapped in irons. Still, I let myself love him a bit, dangerously, for his charm. Christ, do I ever want a father! And at my age! What a charming old son of a bitch, with his shiny black head and yellowing teeth and steady hands—so manicured, so well manicured. I wanted to lean across the table and hug him.

He was looking at me. “Have some coffee, Ben,” he said.

That reminded me of where I was. I took a sip of the coffee and almost spit it out. Instant coffee. Garbage! What kind of a father was he anyway? Somewhere in his soul was the demon that had dominated my real father: Low Rent. If Western Civilization dies it will drown in instant coffee, processed cheese and TV specials. Men and women in America have been born, lived, and gone to quickly dug graves without ever tasting real coffee, a real hamburger, or a real glass of lemonade. What right did this billionaire, the sharpest man in the Senate, have to drink powdered coffee out of plastic cups? Genghis Khan would have known better.