Gore Vidal - Messiah

A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop Winston was outside.

"Now it starts," said Paul with a grimace.

The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office. He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb.

"He's too late," said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman's back.

"Professional con-men," said his companion with disgust. "They've had their day."

And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street, into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave's year.

I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them.

Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I'd taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled… the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Cavesword was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I'd obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself.

"What do you think about the guy?" the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he'd seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).

"It's hard to say," I said. "How did he strike you?"

"Boy, like lightning!" The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. "Of course I'm Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can't be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he's on. It's wild."

It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure… well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, not done.

Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris's apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. "Leave them alone," I said aloud. "It is enough to open the windows."

"Open the windows!" The driver snorted. "It's damn near forty in the street."

Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting cross-legged on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with strain. "It just doesn't work for me!" she said and stood up without embarrassment for, since I'd found the main door unlocked, I'd opened this one too, without knocking.

"I'm sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was…"

"Don't be silly." She rolled up the mat efficiently. "I was expecting you but I lost track of time… which means it must be working a little. I'll be right back." She went into the bedroom and I sat down, amused by this unexpected side to Iris: I wondered if perhaps she was a devotee of wheat germ and mint tea as well. She claimed not. "It's the only real exercise I get," she said, changed now to a heavy robe which completely swathed her figure as she sat curled up in a great armchair, drinking Scotch, as did I, the winter outside hid by drawn curtains, by warmth and light.

"Have you done it long?"

"Oh, off and on for years. I never get anywhere but it's very restful and I've felt so jittery lately that anything which relaxes me…" her voice trailed off idly. She seemed relaxed now.

"I've been to see Paul," I began importantly.

"Ah." But I could not, suddenly, generate sufficient anger to speak out with eloquence. I went around my anger stealthily, a murderer stalking his victim. "We disagreed."

"In what?"

"In everything, I should say."

"That's so easy with Paul." Iris stretched lazily; ice chattered in her glass; a car's horn melodious and foreign sounded in the street below. "We need him. If it wasn't Paul, it might be someone a great deal worse. At least he's intelligent and devoted. That makes up for a lot."

"I don't think so; Iris, he's establishing a sort of supermarket, short-order church for the masses."

She laughed delightedly. "I like that… and, in a way, you're right: that's what he would do left to himself."

"He seems in complete control."

"Only of the office. John makes all the decisions."

"I wish I could be sure of that."

"You'll see on Friday. You'll be at the meeting, won't you?"

I nodded. "I have a feeling that between Paul and Stokharin this thing is going to turn into a world-wide clinic for mental health."

"I expect worse things could happen, but Paul must still contend with me and you and of course the final word is with John."

"How is Cave, by the way? I haven't seen him since the night of the first telecast."

"Quite relaxed, unlike the rest of us. You should come out with me one day to Long Island and see him. I go nearly every day for a few hours. He's kept completely removed from everyone except the servants and Paul and me."

"Does he like that?"

"He doesn't seem to mind. He walks a good deal… it's a big place and he's used to the cold. He reads a little, mostly detective stories… and then of course there's the mail that Paul sends on. He works at that off and on all day. I help him and when we're stuck (you should see the questions!) we consult Stokharin who's very good on some things, on problems…"

"And a bore the rest of the time."

"That's right," Iris giggled. "I couldn't have been more furious the other night, but, since then, I've seen a good deal of him and he's not half bad. We've got him over the idea that John should become a lay analyst: the response to the telecast finally convinced Stokharin that here was a racial 'folk-father-figure'… his very own words. Now he's out to educate the father so that he will fulfill his children's needs on the best post-Jungian lines."

"Does Cave take him seriously?"

"He's bored to death with him. Stokharin's the only man who's ever had the bad sense to lecture John… who absolutely hates it; but he does feel that Stokharin's answers to some of the problems we're confronted with are ingenious. All that… hints to the lovelorn is too much for John, so we need the Stokharins to take care of details."

"I hope he's careful not to get too involved."

"John's incorruptible. Not because he is so noble or constant but because he can only think a certain way and other opinions, other evidence, can't touch him."

I paused, wondering if this was true; then: "I'm going to make a scene on Friday. I'm going to suggest that Paul is moving in a dangerous direction, toward organization and dogma and that if something is not done soon we'll all be ruined by that which we most detest: a militant absolutist doctrine."

Iris looked at me curiously. "Tell me, Gene, what do you want? Why are you still with Cave, with all of us when you so apparently suspect the general direction? You've always been perfectly clear about what you did not want (I can recall, I think, every word you said at the farm that night) but, to be specific, what would you like all this to become? How would you direct things if you could?"

I'd been preparing myself for such a question for several months yet I still had no single answer to make which would sharply express my own doubts and wishes. But I made an attempt. "I would not organize, for one thing. I'd have Cave speak regularly, all he likes, but there would be no Cavite, Inc., no Paul planting articles and propagandizing. I'd keep just Cave, nothing more. Let him do his work. Then, gradually, there will be effects, a gradual end to superstition…"