Gore Vidal - Messiah

Iris looked at me intently. " If it were possible, I would say we should do what you suggest, even though it would be ruinous not only for us but for everyone…"

"Why ruinous? A freedom to come to a decision on one's own without…"

"That's it. No one can be allowed that freedom. One doesn't need much scholarship or even experience to see that. Everywhere people are held in check by stifling but familiar powers. People are used to tyranny: they expect governments to demand their souls, and they have given up decisions on many levels for love of security. What you suggest is impossible with this race at this time."

"You're talking nonsense. After all, obeisance to established religions is the order of the day, yet look at the response to Cave who is undermining the whole Christian structure."

"And wait until you see the fight they're going to put up!" said Iris grimly. "Fortunately, Cave's word is the mortal blow though Cave himself would be their certain victim if he was unprotected, if there was no organization to guard him, and the Word."

"So Paul and his-his team, his proselytes are to become merely an equivalent power, combating the old superstitions with their own weapons."

"More or less, yes. That's what it has come to."

"Even though his talking to the people would be enough? Let them use him, not he them."

"A good slogan," Iris smiled. "But I think I'm right. No one would have a chance to see or hear him if it weren't for Paul; you should read the threatening letters we've been getting."

"I thought all the mail was most admiring?"

"All that came from people who've actually heard him but there's a lot coming in now from religious fanatics. They are very extreme. And of course the churches, one by one, are starting to take notice."

"I saw Bishop Winston in Paul's office today."

"He's been trying to see John all week. He finally settled for Paul, I gather. In any case, after the next telecast there will really be a storm."

"The next? What's going to happen then?"

"John will tell them that there's no need for the churches, that their power derives from superstition and bloody deeds."

I was startled. "When did this hit him? I thought he intended to go on as he was, without ever coming out openly against them."

"I was surprised too. He told me yesterday; he'd been brooding all day and, suddenly, he started to attack them. It's going to be murderous."

"I hope not for him."

"Oh, he'll convince, I'm sure of that: but their revenge…" She gave a troubled sigh. "Anyway, Gene, you do see why we can't, for our own safety, dispense with Paul and his financiers and press agents and all the squalid but necessary crew."

"It may be too late," I agreed. "But I fear the end."

"No one can tell; besides, as long as you and I are there with John it will be all right."

I felt her confidence was not entirely justified but I determined, for the moment, to defer my attack on Paul's methods until a safer time.

We argued about the wisdom of the coming telecast: was it really necessary to confront the enemy explicitly? and in his own country, so to speak? Iris was not sure, but she felt Cave's instinct was right even though he had, perhaps, been goaded into action sooner than we'd anticipated by the harsh letters of Christian zealots.

And then by slow degrees, by careful circling, the conversation grew personal.

"I've never told anyone else," said Iris, looking at me speculatively.

"Don't worry; I haven't repeated any of it." And, as always at such times, I felt a warm flood of guilt: any direct statement of personal innocence has always made me feel completely criminal.

"But since I've told you, I… it's a relief to have someone I can talk to about John. I don't dare mention his name to my family, to my old friends… I don't think they even know yet that I've met him."

"I thought it has all been in the papers."

"I haven't been mentioned but, after Friday, everyone will know. Paul says there's no way for us to duck inquiries. After the directors' meeting he'll issue a statement naming directors, stockholders and so on."

"But even then, why should anyone suspect you were interested in Cave or he in you? It's possible merely to be a director, isn't it?"

Iris shrugged. "You know how people are. Clarissa keeps wanting to have what she calls a comfy chat about everything and I keep putting her off. Stokharin now takes it for granted that John and I sleep together, that he is the father-image to me and I the mother to him."

It had an odd ring to it and I laughed. "Do you think that's a sound post-Jungian analysis?"

Iris smiled faintly. "Whatever it is, the feeling, such as it it, is all on my side."

"And he shows no sign of returning your affection?"

"None at all. He's devoted to me, I think. He relies on my judgment. He trusts me, which is more than he does anyone else I know of…"

"Even me?" Always the "I" coming between me and what I wished to know: that insatiable, distressing "I."

"Yes, even you, dear, and Paul too. He's on guard against everyone, but not in a nasty or suspicious way. He… what is the phrase? he keeps his own counsel."

"And you are the counsel?"

"In a sense, and nothing more."

"Perhaps you should give up. It would seem that… love was not possible for him. If so, it's unwise for you to put yourself in such a position… harmful, too."

"But there's still the other Cave. I love him as well and the two are, finally, the same."

"A metaphysique ?"

"No, or at least I don't see a paradox. It's something else; it's like coming out of an illness with no past at all, only a memory of pain and dullness which soon goes in the wonderful present."

"It?"

"My love is it ." Her voice grew strong. "I've learned that in loving him I love life, which I never did before. Why, I can even value others now, value all those faceless creatures whom I knew without ever bothering to see , to bring in focus the dim blurs of all that world alive. I lived asleep. Now I am awake."

"He does not love you."

"Why should he? It's gone beyond that. I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate imponderables. I give myself and what I take is life, the knowledge that there is another creature in the world whose wonder, to me at least, is all-satisfying by merely being."

"Is it so terrible to be alive?"

"Beyond all expectation, my poor friend." And then I left her to return to winter, to the snow-filled streets and my old pain.

The second telecast had the anticipated effect. The day after, Friday, nearly a hundred thousand letters and telegrams had been received, and Cave's life had been threatened four times over the telephone.

I was awakened at five o'clock on Friday morning by a newspaper man begging an interview. Half-asleep, irritably, I told him to go to hell and hung up though not before I'd heard the jeer: "Thought you fellows did away with hell." This woke me up and I made coffee, still keeping my eyes half-shut in the dim winter light, hoping sleep might return to its accustomed perch; but more telephone calls demoralized my fragile ally and I was left wide awake, unshaven, with fast-beating heart beside the telephone, drinking coffee.

Every few minutes there was a call from some newspaper man or editor requesting information: they had all been shocked by the telecast. When I told them they should get in touch with Cave himself, or at least with Paul's office, they only laughed: thousands were trying to get to speak to Paul, tens of thousands to Cave; the result was chaos. Shakily, I took the phone off its hook and got dressed. When I opened my door to get the morning paper, a thin young man leaped past me into my living room and anchored himself to a heavy chair.