Gore Vidal - Empire

“A good thing. We need one Democratic paper here.” Caroline noticed that the pattern of light hairs on the hand vanished at the wrist and then spread out on that part of the forearm that was just visible beneath his loose cuff. Marguerite had already warned her that if her virginity were to be kept for one more season, she would, simply, dry up. Significantly, Kitty entered the room, bearing a plate of small cakes, each adorned, most ominously, with a glazed bit of preserved fruit. “No, no.” She moved the plate away from her, mildly sickened. “No, thank you,” she added graciously, aware that she had been too vehement. “So delicious, your-angel food cake.”

Kitty looked suspiciously at the great gap in the cake, and Caroline realized that Kitty now thought that she had eaten it all herself, a devouring woman, no doubt of that. “Banked fires give off the most heat” was one of Marguerite’s folkloric observations, as she observed, with disapproving eyes, her virginal and, at twenty-five, aged mistress.

“Mr. Williams says that President Cleveland will run again, for a third time.” Unlike most Washington wives, Kitty was herself a politician, trained by her father.

“I should think that he’ll think twice, and stay home in Princeton.” Day was staring at Caroline’s chin. Was it dusted, lightly, with sugar from one of Kitty’s confections? “I’m sure Bryan can have it again. I’m for him. We’re all for him where I come from.”

“I’ve never seen a man eat so much,” said Kitty; and she left them. How, Caroline wondered, had food become the prosaic leitmotif for the-with relief, she shifted to music as compelling metaphor- Liebestod so soon to sound between them? She stared not at cake but at the lean face bent down toward hers; the lips curved upwards at the corners like a Praxiteles faun. But marble fauns were not patterned with coppery hairs, and she was not quite certain how she would respond to love’s unveiling. The theory of a man’s body and the fact of it must be as unlike as the theory of American government with all its airy platitudes and the sleazy, disagreeable, democratic practice. But whatever the surprises in store for her, he was not fat, like Del.

Faun-lips shaped for love now spoke, softly, of the recent coal strike. “You know, the country was close to shutting down before the election. There was real panic back home, let me tell you! There was winter coming and no coal. We should have taken the lead, but Roosevelt got to the owners and the miners first. He’s on the owners’ side, of course. But he made them give up a few pennies, which was easy for them to do if the miners would agree to a ten-hour day, which they had to. Oh, we’ll have our showdown one of these days…”

“The Democrats and the Republicans?”

“No. The owners of the country and the people who actually do the work.”

“Surely, the owners work, too. Overtime, in fact.”

Day grinned; the teeth were white, but one of the front teeth had a curious crack in it like-again, marble; no, alabaster. But since the effect was more Mars than faun, Caroline now willed herself to be the mate of Mars, Venus. Perhaps, miraculously, her breasts would double in size between now and the union of war and love. Marguerite had proposed exercises; and plenty of cream-to be drunk. But the exercises were boring, and the cream sickening; and the breasts remained more Diana, chaste goddess of the hunt, than Venus. Caroline began to chatter nervously. “How close it was last fall, to our having Mr. Hay for president…”

“Poor old man…”

“Oh, not too old, though much frailer since Del died.” Mistake to mention Del; must not pause for condolent phrases. “Anyway, he was most excited when word came from Pittsfield that a trolley-car had run into the President’s carriage, and the Secret Service man was killed, and Mr. Roosevelt was sent sailing through the air like… like a huge doughnut,” food yet again, and inappropriate at that, “and of course no one knew just how seriously hurt he was…”

“… is. They say his brain’s addled.”

“No more than usual. I saw a good deal of him at Jackson Place, where he had to move after they started tearing up the White House. He had-has-an abscess of the leg, the bone. But that’s all. He’s still full of energy, and Mr. Hay did not become president.”

“Worse luck. I ride on Sundays.” The faun lips at last shaped expected phrases. “Along the canal. To Chain Bridge. After Sunday dinner…”

Caroline stopped any further reference to food, forever, between them. “I’ll join you,” she said.

As it turned out, he-not she-said, “I’ve never done this before.” They lay side by side, entirely nude, not the modest way to couple in the United States, if the Tribune’s Ladies’ Page was to be trusted, or interpreted correctly, for all was euphemism when it came to matters so intimate.

“Surely, you and Kitty have at least tried to do what we’ve managed to do.” Caroline’s virginal fear of the male body had, at first, been confirmed by so much overpowering muscle, hair, size. The scale was much too heroic for a mere woman. She felt not like a doll, which might have had its enchanting helpless side, but like a midget, which was definitely unattractive. The yards of male sinew beside her seemed the god-like norm and her own white slender body so like-like a rib torn out of him. Perhaps the biblical story did contain a kind of truth. Happily, he was as fascinated by her as she was by him, and he kept caressing her, as if not certain that she was indeed real. She, on the other hand, was more chary of touching him; fearful of explosions that might be set off if she were to explore too closely the brown-rose surfaces of that huge, mysteriously animated body.

“No. I meant that I haven’t been with anyone since we…” The voice trailed off.

“Well, I have been with no one at all.” She broke the news, as his hand strayed toward her groin. The hand froze where it was; she thought of the petrified citizenry of Pompeii, each last act caught and preserved in lava. Druscilla, virgin, with Marius, gladiator: in her end was her beginning.

“ I’m the first?” He stared at her with unattractive amazement.

“Surely, it’s no martyrdom for you. One has to begin sometime, with someone…”

“But if I’m the first,” he repeated, eyes most unattractively fixed upon the source of all life, which Henry Adams never ceased, euphemistically, to celebrate.

“Why is there no blood?” Marguerite had explained all this to her; and she explained to him, with growing irritability, her years as a youthful equestrienne with its eventual reward not of trophies won but of hymen ruptured.

“I’ve never heard of that,” he said.

Although Caroline had not expected romance, neither had she expected so clinical a discussion after what had been, nearly, ecstasy. Firmly, she placed one hand over the faun-like mouth; with the other, she began experiments of her own, of an hydraulic nature; plainly, ecstasy was going to take a good deal of patience, not to mention hard manual work.

The second time was better than the first, and Caroline saw definite possibilities in the famous act. She was critical, however, of the Great Artificer who had designed both men and women with too little attention to detail, and too much left to chance. Nothing was quite angled right. Junctions, though possible, involved acrobatics of an undignified nature. Only childbirth, which she had witnessed, was less dignified, and, of course, exquisitely painful. Fortunately, there was no pain in all their maneuverings upon the bed; while pleasure, when it arrived, was sharp and unexpected and quite obliterated the sense of self, an unanticipated gift of Eros. Obviously, the Great Artificer intended that each be a conduit for the other, as well as for the race itself, which He had so haphazardly designed to go on and on, doing what they were doing in order to achieve pleasure, the small reward that the Artificer had thrown in, as they, doggedly, fulfilled what was the only perceivable purpose of the exercise: more, ever more, of the same until earth chilled or caught fire, and no one was left to couple.