Robert Coover - Public Burning

Me, lose my zeal? Zeal is my charisma! Coolidge liked to say that “four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still”—but I could never understand why anybody would want them to disappear. I‘m like Teddy Roosevelt, I like to be down in the arena. They used to say of Roosevelt that “when Theodore attends a wedding he wants to be a bride; when he attends a funeral he wants to be the corpse.” I‘m like that. And what’s most important, I have the faith: I believe in the American dream, I believe in it because I have seen it come true in my own life. TIME has said that I‘ve had “a Horatio Alger-like career,” but not even Horatio Alger could have dreamed up a life so American — in the best sense — as mine.

Boy, just thinking about this got me all fired up. As soon as the girls had vacated the place, I locked the door, switched off the airconditioner, threw open the windows, emptied the pockets of my jacket and hung it neatly up, put the cigar in the fridge, loosened my tie, removed my cufflinks and folded up my shirtsleeves, unbuckled my belt, retrieved the notes and letters from the wastebasket, spread everything around me again, and sat back to contemplate it all. Outside, I knew, the tensions were building. The streets were filling up fast, Inspiration House was leaking demonstrators like some kind of insidious spore, the city was becoming a thicket of angry placards, a forest of diatribe — reaching the center today had been like negotiating some terrible free-fire zone, and my own home out in Spring Valley now seemed far away across an impassable no-man’s-land. Vengeance Valley. The Badlands. Which existed, I knew, not here in the Capital alone, but wound its serpentine way through the whole world, coiling about our periphery, dripping poison as it slithered through the more vulnerable points in the Free World, threatening now to strike at the very heart. Uncle Sam’s countermoves had been dramatic and effective, momentous even, but the Phantom was still dangerous — maybe, backed up like this, more dangerous than ever. This was bigger than anyone had anticipated, perhaps even a tactical mistake, but we were committed now, there was no turning back. It was exactly the kind of desperate situation I was best suited for. I began to understand that Uncle Sam had until the last few weeks protected me from this case so as to maneuver me first into this key role, but that now he needed me, needed my skills and talents, my rhetoric — there was something he wanted from me up there tonight that only I could provide.

A cold chill passed through me: was Eisenhower’s life in danger? Was the Incarnation to come to me even sooner than I had expected? I sat there for a moment in a kind of mindless shock, staring blankly into space, unable to think of anything but the Inauguration ceremonies, Pat at my side, Mom in the front row, my hand on the family Bible, the blinding light…and then slowly I calmed down. I realized that this was not the best way to get started. I recalled that I was fatalistic about politics, I made myself remember that. I brought my attention carefully back to the Rosenberg papers, my speech for the ceremonies. I picked up a letter from Julius to Ethel. I read: “Somewhere in the long ago I had a normal life with a sweet wife and two fine children and now all is gone and we’re facing death….”

I stood, stretched, went to gaze out the open window, get my thoughts in order. I knew better than to try to psyche out Uncle Sam. The important thing was to do my duty here, be prepared, know the facts, find the phrases. I recalled my high-school paper on the Constitution: “There are those who, under the pretense of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, have incited riots, assailed our patriotism, and denounced the Constitution….” Yes, I should look that up, get back to the origins — and I should read the Rosenberg letters again, more seriously this time, also the FBI dossiers, the news clippings. Some mosaic out of all that, a succinct rebuttal, something on brainwashing maybe (I was watching the demonstrators down below), “the deadly danger of the propaganda that warps the mind…destroys the will of a people to resist tyranny….” Needed to rethink the trial through from some fresh angle, too, assimilate more of the background material, examine the Death House years, get an overview. Why, for example, was the campaign to save the Rosenbergs so designed by the Phantom’s agents as virtually to ensure their deaths? What was the Phantom up to? Was this some kind of trap?

The people down below seemed to be having a picnic, listening to popular songs on their portable radios, eating ice cream and box lunches, playing checkers, sunbathing. Some of them had placards protesting the executions. Were they all dupes? And the Rosenbergs? Who was behind them? Were they really as transparent as they seemed? Or were there strange patterns of depravity concealed behind the middle-class clichés of their trial testimony, secret messages buried in the banalities of their Death House letters? How had their son managed to get elected president of his fifth-grade class in the middle of all this, and what did this signify? Was he on his way to a Horatio Alger-like career, too? All these questions: why did I feel I had to ask them? Why did I have to keep going back over this material, starting over, driving myself? I felt caught up in some endless quest, a martyr to duty…but duty to what? My self perhaps, its creation and improvement, the need to show I had what it takes, that I deserved , no matter what I got….

This dogged sense of purpose, this conviction that easy wins are tainted, lay behind most of my difficulties with girls, I realized. The problem was, all the girls I met when I was young seemed to be living lives that were out of mesh with my own. Out of sync, I think they say in the movies. They seemed to be on some other plane, moving at some other angle. Not that I understood much about where I was going, I admit. I never thought about national politics, for example, didn’t even vote when I was old enough, in spite of all the preaching I used to do in high-school essays about it, had no idea I’d be where I am today, nor even had any specific ambition to be here. Yet I knew instinctively that those girls weren’t going where I was going. I was driving toward the center, they were spinning around on some merry-go-round out at the edges. And because of that, I was afraid of too much intimacy with them, more afraid than they were, afraid of getting lost in some maze of emotions, of surrendering my self-control, afraid of…afraid of exile. From myself. Even though I craved that surrender, ached for release from my inordinate sense of mission. Those long lonely nights up in the bell tower, dreams deep and dangerous…

My weakness, I knew, was an extreme susceptibility to love, to passion. This is not obvious, but it is true. A politician cannot display his emotions in public, this is part of the job. Nor can you enjoy the luxury of intimate personal friendships. You can’t confide absolutely in anyone. You can’t talk too much about your personal plans, your personal feelings. I believe in keeping my own counsel. It’s something like wearing clothing — if you let your hair down, you feel too naked. Yet, I longed for this nakedness. My testing ground was Ola, the only steady girlfriend I had before Pat. She was pretty, lively, exciting, she brought out my more reckless side, in fact I loved her, but she wouldn’t get off the merry-go-round, and I couldn’t get on it. It took me six years to realize that — we went together, off and on, all through my senior year in high school, four years of college, and my first year at Duke — or maybe I realized it all the time, maybe the six years was for something else….