Gore Vidal - Messiah

I tried to telephone Iris and then Clarissa but both telephones were reported busy; I called the office but was told by a mechanical voice that if I left my name and address and business Mr. Himmell would call me as soon as possible. The siege had begun.

I arrived at the Empire State Building half an hour before the meeting was to begin, hoping to find out in advance from Paul what was happening and what we were supposed to do about it.

A picket line marched up and down before the entrance, waving banners, denouncing Cave and all his works in the names of various religious groups. A crowd was beginning to gather and the police, at least a score, moved frantically about, not knowing how to keep the mob out of the building. When I stepped off the elevator at Cave's floor, I found myself a part of a loud and confused mass of men and women all shoving toward the door which was marked Cavite, Inc. Policemen barred their way.

Long before I'd got to the door, a woman's shoe went hurtling through the air, smashing a hole in the frosted glass. One policeman cocked his revolver menacingly. Another shouted, "Get the riot squad!" But still the crowd raved and shouted and quarreled. Some wanted to lynch Cave in the name of the Lamb, while others begged to be allowed to touch him, just once. I got to the door at last, thanks to a sudden shove which landed me with a crash into a policeman. He gasped and then, snarling, raised his club. "Business!" I shouted with what breath was left me. "Got business here. Director."

I was not believed but, after some talk with a pale secretary through the shattered glass door, I was admitted. The crowd roared when they saw this and moved in closer. The door slammed shut behind me.

"It's been like this since nine o'clock," said the secretary, looking at me with frightened eyes.

"You mean after two hours the police still can't do anything?"

"We didn't call them right away. When we did it was too late. We're barricaded in here."

The team sat about at their desks pretending to work, pretending not to notice the noise from the corridor.

Paul, however, was not in the least disturbed. He was standing by the window in his office looking out. Clarissa, her hat and her hair together awry: a confusion of straw and veil and bolts of reddish hair apparently not all her own, was making-up in a pocket mirror.

"Ravenous, wild beasts!" she hailed me. "I've seen their likes before."

"Gene, good fellow! Got through the mob all right? Here, have a bit of brandy. No? Perhaps some Scotch?"

I said it was too early for me to drink. Shakily, I sat down. Paul laughed at the sight of us. "You both look like the end of the world has come."

"I'd always pictured the end as being quite orderly…" I began stuffily but Doctor Stokharin's loud entrance interrupted me. His spectacles were dangling from one ear and his tie had been pulled around from front to back quite neatly.

"No authority!" he bellowed, ignoring all of us. "The absence of a traditional patriarch, the center of the tribe, has made them insecure. Only together do they feel warmth in great swarming hives!" His voice rose sharply and broke on the word "hives" into a squeak. He took the proffered brandy and sat down, his clothes still disarranged.

"My hair," said Clarissa grimly, "may never come out right again today." She put the mirror back into her purse which she closed with a loud snap. "I don't see, Paul, why you didn't have the foresight to call the police in advance and demand protection."

"I had no idea it would be like this. Believe me, Clarissa, it's not deliberate." But from his excited chuckling, I could see that he was delighted with the confusion. The triumph of the publicist's dark art. I wondered if he might not have had a hand in it: it was a little reminiscent of the crowds of screaming women which in earlier decades, goaded by publicists, had howled and, as Stokharin would say, swarmed about singers and other theatrical idols.

Paul anticipated my suspicions. "Didn't have a thing to do with it, I swear. Doctor, your tie is hanging down your back."

"I don't mind," said Stokharin disagreeably, but he did adjust his glasses.

"I'd a feeling we'd have a few people in to see us but no idea it would be like this." He turned to me as the quietest, the least dangerous of the three. "You wouldn't believe the response to last night's telecast if I told you."

"Why don't you tell me?" The comic aspects were becoming apparent: Stokharin's assaulted dignity and the ruin of Clarissa's ingenious hair both seemed to me suddenly funny; I cleared my throat to obscure the tickling of a smile.

Paul named some stupendous figures with an air of triumph. "And there are more coming all the time. Think of that!"

"Are they favorable?"

"Favorable? Who cares?" Paul was pacing the floor quickly, keyed to the breaking-point had he possessed the metabolism of a normal man. "We'll have a breakdown over the weekend. Hired more people already. Whole lot working all the time. By the way, we're moving."

"Not a moment too soon," said Clarissa balefully. "I suggest, in fact, we move now while there are even these few police to protect us. When they go home for lunch (they all eat enormous lunches, one can tell), that crowd is going to come in here and throw us out the window."

"Or suffocate us with love," said Paul.

Stokharin looked at Clarissa thoughtfully; with his turned-around necktie he had a sacerdotal look. "Do you often think of falling from high places? of being pushed from windows or perhaps high trees?"

"Only when I'm on the top floor of the world's highest building surrounded by raving maniacs do such forebodings occur to me, doctor. Had you a greater sense of reality you might be experiencing the same apprehension."

Stokharin clapped his hands happily. "Classic, classic. To believe she alone knows reality. Madam, I suggest that you…"

There was a roar of sound from the hallway; a noise of glass shattering; a revolver went off with a sharp report and, frozen with alarm, I waited for its echo: there was none; only shouts of: Cave! Cave! Cave!

Surrounded by police, Cave and Iris were escorted into the office. More police held the door, aided by the office crew who, suddenly inspired, were throwing paper cups full of water into the crowd. Flash bulbs like an electric storm flared in all directions as the newspaper men invaded the office, let in by the police who could not hold them back.

Iris looked frightened and even Cave seemed alarmed by the rioting.

Once the police lieutenant had got Cave and Iris into the office, he sent his men back to hold the corridor. Before he joined them he said sternly, breathing hard from the struggle, "We're going to clear the hall in the next hour. When we do we'll come and get you people out of here. You got to leave whether you want to or not. This is an emergency."

"An hour is all we need, officer." Paul was smooth. "And may I tell you that my old friend, the Commissioner, is going to hear some extremely nice things about the efficiency and good sense of his men." Before the lieutenant had got around to framing a suitably warm answer, Paul had maneuvered him out of the inner office; he locked the door behind him.

"There," he said, turning to us, very businesslike. "It was a mistake meeting here after last night. I'm sorry, John."

"It's not your fault." Cave, having found himself an uncomfortable straight chair in a corner of the room, sat very erect, like a child in serious attendance upon adults. "I had a hunch we should hold the meeting out on Long Island."

Paul scowled. "I hate the idea of the press getting a look at you. Spoils the mystery effect; guess it was bound to happen, though. You won't have to talk to them."

"Oh, but I will," said Cave easily, showing who was master here, this day.