Gore Vidal - Messiah

Iris was placed in charge of recruiting and training the proselytizers, while Paul handled the business end; obtaining property in different cities and managing the large sums of money which poured in from all over the world. Except for Cave's one encounter with the press that day in the Empire State Building (an occasion which, despite its ominous beginning, became a rare triumph: Cave's magic had worked even with the hostile), he was seen by no one except his intimates and the technicians of the television studio. Ways were found to disguise him so that he would not be noticed in the lobbies or elevators of the television network building. Later he spoke only from his Long Island retreat, his speeches being recorded on film in advance.

By the time summer had arrived, there were over three million registered Cavites in the United States as well as numerous, unorganized believers abroad. Paul was everywhere at once, flying from city to city (accompanied by two guards and a secretary); he personally broke ground in Dallas for what was to be the largest Cavite Center in the United States and although the inaugural ceremonies were nearly stopped by a group of Baptist ladies carrying banners and shouting "Onward Christian Soldiers," no one was hurt and the two oil millionaires who had financed the Center gave a great barbecue on the foundation site which was attended by many distinguished guests.

Iris was entirely changed by her responsibilities. She had become, in the space of a few months, brisk, energetic, as deeply involved in details as a housewife with a new home. I saw very little of her that spring. Her days were mostly spent in a rented loft in the Chelsea district where she lectured the candidates for field work and organized a makeshift system of indoctrination for these potential Residents, as the heads of the various centers were known.

She was extraordinarily well fitted for this work, to my surprise, and before the year ended she had what was in fact a kind of university where as many as three hundred men and women at a time were regularly transformed into Residents and Deputy Residents and so on down through an ever proliferating hierarchy. For the most part, the first men and women we sent out to the country were highly educated, thoughtful people, entirely devoted to Cavesword. They were, I think, the best of all, for later, when it became lucrative to be a Resident, the work was largely taken over by energetic careerists whose very activity and competence diminished their moral effectiveness. Iris used me unmercifully those first months. I lectured her students; I taught philosophy until, in exasperation at the absurdity of that , I told her to hire a professional teacher of philosophy which she did.

Yet I enjoyed these men and women. Their sincerity, their excitement communicated itself to me and I became aware of something I had only known before from reading, from hearsay: the religious sense which I so clearly lacked, as did both Paul and Stokharin. I don't think Cave really possessed it either because, although he believed entirely in himself and in the miraculous truth of his word, he did not possess that curious power to identify himself with creation, to transcend the self in contemplation of an abstraction, to sacrifice the personality to a mystical authority; none of us, save Iris in love, possessed this power which, as nearly as I can get at it, is the religious sense in man. I learned about it only from those who came to learn from us in that Chelsea loft. In a sense, I pitied them for I knew that much of what they evidently believed with such passion was wrong but, at the same time, I was invigorated by their enthusiasm, by the hunger with which they devoured Cavesword, by the dignity which their passion lent an enterprise that in Paul's busy hands resembled more often than not, a cynical commercial venture. And I recognized in them (oh, very early, perhaps in the first weeks of talking to them) that, in their goodness and their love they would, with Cavesword, smudge as it turned each bright new page of life; yet, suspecting this, I did not object nor did I withdraw. Instead, fascinated, I was borne by the tide to the shore ahead whose every rock I could imagine, sharp with disaster.

Once a week the directors met on Long Island in the walled estate where Cave now lived with his guards (his host had thoughtfully moved elsewhere until Cave chose for him to return).

The meetings soon demonstrated a division in our ranks between Paul and Stokharin on the one side and Iris, Clarissa and Cave on the other with myself as partisan, more often than not, to Cave. The division was amiable but significant. Paul and Stokharin wanted to place the Centers directly under the supervision of the analysts while the rest of us, led by Iris (Cave seldom intervened, but we had accepted already the fact that Iris spoke for him), preferred that the Centers be governed by the Residents. "It is certainly true that the therapists are an important part of each Center," said Iris briskly, at the end of a long wrangle with Stokharin. "But these are Cavite Centers and not clinics for the advancement of post-Jungian analysis. It is Cavesword which draws people to the Centers, not mental illness. Those who have problems are of course helped by Stokharin's people but, finally, it is Cave who has made it possible for them to face death. Something no one has done before." And thus the point was won in our council though Stokharin and Paul were still able at times, slyly, to insinuate their own creatures into important Residencies.

My own work went on fitfully. I composed an answer to Bishop Winston which brought down on my head a series of ecclesiastical thunderbolts, each louder than the one before. I wrote a short life of Cave in simple declarative sentences which enjoyed a considerable success for many years and, finally, seriously, my first attempt at a real counter-attack, I began the several dialogues in which Cave and I purportedly traversed the entire field of moral action.

I felt that in these dialogues I could quietly combat those absolutist tendencies which I detected in the disciples. Cave himself made no pretense of being final on any subject other than death where, even without his particular persuasiveness, he stood on firm, even traditional ground. The attacks he received he no longer noticed. It was as simple as that. He'd never enjoyed reading and to watch others make telecasts bored him, even when they spoke of him. After the fateful Empire State Building conference he ceased to attend the world; except for a few letters which Paul forwarded to him and his relations with us, he was completely cut off from ordinary life, and perfectly happy. For though human contacts had been reduced to a minimum, he still possessed the polished glass eye of the world before whose level gaze he appeared once a week and experienced what he called: "Everyone: all of them, listening and watching everywhere."

In one year he had come a long way from the ex-embalmer who had studied a book of newspaper clippings on a Washington farm and brooded about an old man in a hospital. Though Paul was never to refer again to the victim of Cave's driving, I was quite sure that he expected, sooner or later, it would return to haunt us all.

By midsummer, however, Cave had grown restless and bored and since the telecasts had been discontinued until the following November, he was eager to travel. He was never to lose his passion for places. It was finally decided that he spend the summer on one of the Florida keys, a tiny island owned by a Cavite who offered to place everything at Cave's disposal. And, though warned that the heat might be uncomfortable, Cave and his retinue left secretly one night by chartered seaplane from Long Island Sound and for at least a month the press did not know what had happened to him. I declined to accompany Cave and Iris. Paul remained in New York while Iris's work was temporarily turned over to various young enthusiasts, trained by her. I went back to the Hudson Valley, to my house and…