Gore Vidal - Messiah

"Not very gallant, are we today?" Clarissa looked at me over her cup. "I've had this gown for five hundred years. There used to be a wimple which went with it but I lost it somewhere."

"The material seems to be holding up quite well," and now that she had mentioned it, there was an archaic look to the texture of the gown, like those bits of cloth preserved under glass in museums.

"Silk lasts indefinitely, if one is tidy. I also don't wear this much, as you can see, but with the devalued state of the dollar (an ominous sign, my dear, the beginning of the end!) I've been forced to redo a lot of old odds-and-ends I've kept for sentimental reasons. This is one of them and I'm very fond of it." She spoke this last slowly, to forestall any further ungallantry.

"I just wondered if it was cool."

"It is cool. Ah, a letter from Iris." Like a magpie she had seen the letter beside my chair and, without asking permission, had seized it and read it through quickly. "I admire a girl who types," she said, letting fall the letter. "I suppose they all do now though it seems like only yesterday that, next to opening a tearoom, one typed, working for men, all of whom made advances. That was when we had to wear corsets and hatpins. One discouraged while the other quite protected."

Clarissa chuckled at some obscene memory.

"I wonder if Paul can keep Cave from wandering off to some impossible place."

"I shouldn't be surprised." She picked at the tea sandwiches suspiciously, curling back the top slices of bread to see what was underneath: tentatively, she bit into deviled ham; she chewed; she swallowed; she was not disappointed; she wolfed another sandwich, talking all the while. "Poor Cave is a captive now. His disciples are in full command. Even Mohammed, as strong-headed as he was, finally ended up a perfect pawn in the hands of Abu Bekr and the women, especially the women."

"I'm not so sure about Cave. He…"

"Does what they tell him, especially Iris."

"Iris? But I should have said she was the only one who never tried to influence him."

Clarissa laughed unpleasantly. A moth flew into her artificial auburn hair; unerringly, she found it with one capable hand and quickly snuffed out its life in a puff of gray dust from broken wings. She wiped her fingers on a paper napkin. The day was full of moths but, fortunately, none came near us again, preferring lawn and trees to us. "You are naive, Eugene," she said, her little murder done. "It's your nicest quality. In theory you are remarkably aware of human character; yet, when you're confronted with the most implausible appearance, you promptly take it for the reality."

I was irritated by this and also by the business of the sandwich, not to mention the murder of the moth; I looked at Clarissa with momentary dislike. "I was not aware…" I began in a chilled voice but she interrupted me with an airy wave of her hand.

"I forget no one likes to be called naive… calculating, dishonest, treacherous, people rather revel in those designations, but to be thought trusting…" She clapped her hands as though to punctuate her meaning; then, after a full stop, she went on more soberly. "Iris is the one to look out for. Our own sweet, self-effacing, dedicated Iris. I adore her; I always have, but she's up to no good."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You will. You would if you weren't entirely blind to what they used to call human nature. Iris is acquiring Cave."

"Acquiring?"

"Exactly the word. She loves him for all sorts of reasons but she cannot have him in the usual sense (I found out all about that, by the way). Therefore, the only thing left her to do is acquire him, to take his life in hers. You may think she may think that her slavish adoration is only humble love but actually it's something far more significant, and dangerous."

"I don't see the danger, even accepting your hypothesis."

"It's no hypothesis and the danger is real. Iris will have him and, through him, she'll have you all."

I did not begin to understand that day and Clarissa, in her pythoness way, was no help, muttering vague threats and imprecations with her mouth full of bread.

After my first jealousy at Iris's preference of Cave to me, a jealousy which I knew, even at the time, was unjustified and a little ludicrous, I had come to accept her devotion to Cave as a perfectly natural state of affairs; he was an extraordinary man and though he did not fulfill her in the usual sense, he gave her more than mere lover might: he gave her a whole life and I envied her for having been able to seize so shrewdly upon this unique way out of ordinary life and into something more grand, more strange, more engaging. Though I could not follow her, I was able to appreciate her choice and admire the completeness of her days. That she was obscurely using Cave for her own ends, subverting him, did not seem to me possible and I was annoyed by Clarissa's dark warnings. I directed the conversation into the other waters.

"The children. I haven't decided what to do with them."

Clarissa came to a full halt. For a moment she forgot to chew. Then, with a look of pain, she swallowed. " Your children?"

"Any children, all children," I pointed to the manuscript on the table.

She began to understand. "I'm quite sure you have abolished marriage."

"As a matter of fact, yes, this morning."

"And now you don't know what to do about the children."

"Precisely. I…"

"Perfectly simple." Clarissa was brisk: this, apparently, was a problem she had already solved. "The next step is controlled breeding. Only those whose blood lines seem promising should be allowed to procreate. Now that oral contraceptives are so popular no one will make babies by accident… in fact, it should be a serious crime if someone does."

"Quite neat, but I wonder whether, psychologically, it's simple. There's the whole business of instinct, of the natural desire of a woman to want her own child after bearing it."

"All habit… not innate. Children have been subordinate woman's ace in the hole for generations. They have had to develop certain traits which, in other circumstances, they would not have entertained. Rats, whom we closely resemble, though they suckle their young will, in moments of mild hunger or even exasperation, think nothing of eating an entire litter. You can condition human beings to accept any state of affairs as being perfectly natural."

"I don't doubt that. But how to break the habits of several thousand years."

"I suppose there are ways. Look what Cave is doing. Of course making death popular is not so difficult since, finally, people want it to be nice: they do the real work or, rather, their terror does. In place of superstition, which they've nearly outgrown, he offers them madness."

"Now really, Clarissa…"

"I don't disapprove. I'm all for him, as you know. To make death preferable to life is of course utter folly though a perfectly logical reaction for these poor bewildered savages who, having lost their old superstitions, are absolutely terrified at the prospect of nothing. They want to perpetuate their little personalities forever into space and time and now they've begun to realize the folly of that (who, after all, are they? are we? in creation?) they will follow desperately the first man who pulls the sting of death and Cave is that man, as I knew he would be."

"And after Cave?"

"I will not say what I see. I'm on the side of change, however, which makes me in perfect harmony with life." Clarissa chuckled. A fish leaped grayly in the still river; out in the channel a barge glided by, the muffled noise of its engines like slow heartbeats.

"But you think it good for people to follow Cave? you think what he says is right?"