Gore Vidal - Empire

“Swiss,” said Hay, deciding that he would take his chances with broiled Potomac shad and its roe.

“You were born on this river, John, and now it’s stranger to you than the Danube. When Theodore goes on and on about the true American, his grit, his sense of fairness, his institutions, he doesn’t realize that that American is as rare as one of those buffalos he helped to kill off.”

“We shall,” said Hay, mouth filled with roe, “transform those Germans and Slavs into… buffalos. All in due course.”

“No,” said Adams, revelling as always in darkness, “they will transform us. When I was writing about Aaron Burr…”

“Whatever became of that book?” asked Clara, addressing herself to what looked like a side of buffalo.

“I have burned it, of course. Publish in total secrecy, or burn…”

“In secret, too?” Hay remembered that Clover had said that her husband’s life of Burr was far superior to his published life of John Randolph. Hay had always thought Burr an ideal scamp to write about. But something in Burr’s character or life had made Henry uneasy; he had decided that Burr was not a “safe” scoundrel to deal with, and if he were let out of the history books where he had been entombed alongside Benedict Arnold, he might cheat the world all over again. Hay rather suspected that Adams had not destroyed the book but used parts of it for his study of Jefferson.

“In his old age, Burr was walking down Fifth Avenue with a group of young lawyers, and one of them asked him how he thought some aspect of the Constitution should be interpreted. Burr stopped in front of a building site, and pointed to some newly arrived Irish laborers, and he said, ‘In due course, they will decide what the Constitution is-and is not.’ He understood, wicked creature, that the immigrants would eventually crowd us out and re-create the republic in their own image.”

Abigail looked at her uncle, who had, happily, run out of breath, and said, “But the country’s not all Catholic yet. That’s something.”

“Everyone in the Swiss Indiana village of Heidegg was Catholic…”

“Lutheran,” said Hay, who was quick to learn essentials whenever votes were involved.

“Anyway, I incline now to Catholicism, too,” said Adams perversely.

“Mariolatry.” Hay’s heart fluttered disagreeably. He had a vision of himself addressing twenty thousand people at the fair; and dropping dead.

“Catholic maids are always pregnant. I can’t think why,” said Clara.

“Luckily, steam-power, like this train, is going to make all these different races into one. The way the idea of the Virgin-hardly Mariolatry-united the Europeans of the twelfth century.”

Abigail interrupted her uncle. Hay silently commended her bravery. “Why St. Louis for a world’s fair?”

Hay, as the Nation’s Second Personage, answered: “It is the fourth-largest city in the country. It is centrally located. The new Union Station is the world’s largest, or so they claim. Finally, the late revered William McKinley, whenever he was in doubt as to what the people of this great nation wanted him to do, would say, ‘I must go to St. Louis.’ The city is our heartland. Now the city fathers, to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase- illegal purchase by Mr. Jefferson,” Hay added for Adams’s pleasure, “are holding the largest fair of its kind in the history of the world. There will be,” he added ominously, “innumerable dynamos and other pieces of dull machinery.”

“Oh, dear,” said Abigail.

“Oh, joy,” said Adams.

“Oh, waiter,” said Clara, “more beef.”

“Everyone,” Hay sighed, “will be there.”

MR. AND MRS. JOHN APGAR SANFORD occupied a small suite of the Blair-Benton Hotel in Market Street, the main street of St. Louis, not far from the stone-paved Front Street, locally known as the levee, since that is exactly what it was, some four miles of river-front which was used not only as a river-port but, also, as a promenade.

“We were lucky to get even this,” said Sanford, indicating the bedroom with its single four-poster bed; he had duly noted Caroline’s displeasure. They did not, except in emergencies, ever share the same bed. When Sanford had told her that a number of his inventors and their business sponsors would be at the fair, and that he, as their patent attorney, was expected to be on hand to examine all the exhibitions and determine whose patent was being infringed, Caroline had told him that she thought he should go. There was a chance, after all, of additional fees for tea-kettles that were silent, for electrical sockets that did not shock, for engines that would-what was Langley’s phrase?-“free man from earth.” When the Tribune’s best reporter took ill, Mr. Trimble had convinced Caroline that she should herself describe the Exposition, at least the inaugural ceremonies. And though Clara Hay had proposed that the Sanfords join them in their private car, Caroline had spared the Hays and the Adamses the experience of John, who had grown more and more glum, no bad thing, but more and more apologetic for his life, a very bad thing indeed.

They had been shown to the suite by the manager himself. “Everyone,” said the manager, “is in St. Louis this week.”

“I don’t mind,” said Caroline, sweetly, and thanked him for his courtesy.

As John unpacked, Caroline made dutiful notes. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, as it was properly called, covered one thousand two hundred forty acres, of which two hundred fifty were roofed over-pavilions, halls, restaurants. They had caught a glimpse of the Secretary of State and Clara riding through the brightly decorated city. As Caroline worked at an octagonal table of the shiniest black walnut, John went through a file of papers, with a worried frown. “This should be,” said Caroline, by now an expert at making marital conversation, “a paradise for a patent lawyer.”

“I certainly hope so. Except,” John was already defeated, she could tell, “there is no longer a way of really winning a patent suit. Every inventor takes out a dozen patents for the same invention. If you threaten to sue, he’ll drop three patents but keep nine others in order to confuse the courts and his rival inventors.”

“What an excellent opportunity for the lawyer, endless litigation.”

“They,” said John, at wit’s end plainly, “always settle. Is there any news?”

“Yes. I went to the Jews, as Mr. Adams would say. These particular Jews are a Yankee firm by the name of Whittaker. They are devoted Presbyterians. I asked, as you requested, for half a million dollars, at the going rate.”

“Why did they say no?” John had now been a husband long enough to be able to finish Caroline’s sentences, if not enter, as it were, her bed. A single attempt to fulfill their conjugal duties had failed. Each had been apologetic. Caroline had given what she thought was a convincing performance of a devoted wife. She had even, against her by now better judgment, followed Marguerite’s advice, which was to shut her eyes and imagine that the large body on top of her was that of James Burden Day. But the smell was wrong; the texture odd; the attack askew. She had always known that she was deficient in imagination, as their first and last attempt demonstrated; and she envied those women who could go from one new body to another, like an explorer loose in an endless archipelago of men-women, too, in Paris at least-enjoying this island for its luxuriant trees, and that for its silvery springs. She was no explorer; she was a contented land-lubber, in a familiar satisfying landscape. The attempt to leave home, as represented by James Burden Day, for John was like abandoning a perfect oasis for the surrounding Sahara. John, in no position to complain, complained. Caroline, in no position to moralize, moralized. In time, the matter was dropped. John’s sexuality was soon subdued by the financial ruin which had overtaken him. He could think of nothing else, and, lately, neither could Caroline.