Part 40 (2/2)

”It isn't hysteria, it's rhymes, like Mrs. Karp. I'm acc.u.mulating character traits for the Amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p. My mother's money, Enoch's brains, the President's a.s.sistant's ear-”

”-and a host country that wants him. I suggest you hear me out finally. I suggest it very seriously.”

”Sure,” I said, mainly because it rhymed with pure, poor, and dour.

He did not trouble himself to finish the various adornments of his frown: he simply proceeded. ”The Foreign Office people over there are unmistakably after him-it's still another factor immensely in his favor that they want him, they are distinctly eager to get him. I have this from the Senator; it is undoubtedly true. And there has been, in addition, a hinting note from the Prime Minister actually, though usually he likes to keep hands off for fear of being misunderstood by the Senators. But the Senators are not fools,” he brought out for the second time, in a voice burdened by an unwilling urgency that filled eerily with echoes of itself. He had said all this already. It was as though he were insisting all over again, and more ominously than before, that the committee hearings were public. He had made it intensely and perilously plain that they were public. ”Not all the Senators are fools. If they are left alone they will pa.s.s over whatever needs to be pa.s.sed over,” he ended, but without the tone of ending.

I marveled at his repet.i.tions. ”If the Senators are left alone?” I asked. ”You mean by the Prime Minister?”

”I mean by Gustave Nicholas Tilbeck,” he said, and now at last I heard him carried down by the sound of ending, and he ended what he had set out to say, and gave me what I had come for.

But what I had come for was no more than what I had come with: my father's names. We were all at once cast back from the public to the private: notch by notch along the greedy wheel of things we had arrived once more at my father's names. Meanwhile I observed that the wheel was rigged, like a lottery disk at a cheating carnival, which brings the same number always to the member of the house: but the member of the house, though a conspirator, is masked like myself to represent an innocent, and summons not through luck but through artfulness.

William said: ”He wants to throw it all open.”

”All?”

”Absolutely everything.”

I began to enumerate: ”The Action Committees, New Oxford Street, Moscow-”

”That isn't quite everything.”

”But if the Senators know everything-”

”The public doesn't. He has made detailed promises to secure that the public will. Your stepfather has had a.s.surances from him.”

”There was a letter,” I said, ”and Enoch wouldn't let me see it. Was that the one?”

He ignored me. ”He has named three prominent newspapers in three cities. Each is a hostile and influential political force. Whatever the Senators are willing to overlook, you may be certain that figures connected with these newspapers will not What has been kept down for twenty years will emerge in an afternoon. In an hour.”

A scrub of enlightenment ascended in me: ”Because the committee hearings are public,” I said.

”Everything will become public. Nothing will be omitted. The public will eat Mr. and Mrs. Vand alive.”

”Mrs. Vand?” I said.

”They will lick her clean.”

”Mrs. Vand doesn't have any politics.”

”Neither does the public. You don't imagine the public has the remotest notion of how the Senate goes about qualifying Amba.s.sadors? Or cares?-Politics will be the least of it.”

”And what will the most be?” I said in bewilderment.

He gave a great heave. ”Even the Senators are not aware of it. We have evaded scandal ingeniously. About you the a.s.sumption has been the usual one: the child of a second marriage which terminated in divorce. Don't you see,” he pressed out, ”we have tried to keep you free, we have done everything for your safety, we have never permitted his breath on you, we have paid him and paid him-”

”Oh,” I said. ”You mean Brighton. He'll tell about Brighton.”

The criminal phrase disgraced the air.

”It might have been regularized. It might have been minimized,” said William, moving in his chair. The leather writhed and bleated. ”If Vand had adopted. From the start I recommended adoption. But he refused. He could not be persuaded. As a result the matter remains as it was. As it was. Yet something might have been salvaged. You would have had a name.”

”I have your name.”

”You have no name.”

His fierceness was that of a flagellant. He hoisted himself; he rose; he stood mortified, his arc of forehead s.h.i.+ning absurdly. A photographer would have powdered it; a painter would have made a still life of it: it seemed a purposefully barren bowl awaiting the stroke of a single leaf. Then I saw on the white flank of the temple an apparition of leaf: the fuzzy elm-like oval of a track of sweat He said: ”I think there is nothing left now. We are finished. You have it all.”

Seeing his fear I was afraid. ”He won't take money? Tilbeck? Can't he take money? Why not money?”

”He will always take money. This time money is insufficient. He wants you.”

”I know that I know, they've told me that But why there? In that place? Does he live there?”

”He squats there. He comes and goes, there is no one to stop him. It is an empty house. It has not been kept up. Perhaps it tumbles. He does as he likes.”

”He's the one who's free,” I said.

But William had pulled the chain of the lamp. The doork.n.o.b whined at the neck. ”He used the place often before we learned of it The first we knew was when he directed the money to be sent there. He has the caprice of a demon.” The darkness, though enlarging him, presented me with a pudding of William, wavering against a distant tiny light. The room beyond was vacant and warm and smelled spent. Paper cups lay glinting in the aisles between the desks like Viking debris in a deserted hall. The engagement party had dispersed itself: Cabbages, Onions, law clerks, all those young men who had once come down in vain from Cambridge to wish me bon voyage. ”What he wants,” William said dimly, ”is to hara.s.s. That's all he ever wanted: to hara.s.s. To a man who has no power hara.s.sment is power. He envies power. He works on whatever the occasion offers. I hear a sound. A tick.” Tick tick tick. A minuscule mammal chirp.

It was the sodden nap of the carpet, seeping.

I said in the doorway: ”Someone ought to hara.s.s him back.”

”Don't take it on yourself!” William answered.

”Oh, not me. I'm only barter,” I said. ”I'm ransom. I might as well be a sack of money.”

-”Is someone there?” someone called. ”Anybody left over? Who is it?”

At the mouth of a far cubicle, sharp as though inked there, a pair of tombs embraced.

”Now it's clear,” I pursued. ”They're sending me to save Enoch.”

”I bet it's a joke. I bet it's a trick. It must be a left-over Cabbage. They hide out for a surprise. Hey! We can't see you. You a Cabbage out there?” A metal dipper came whirling like a spoke down the corridor; it missed our pioneering shadows by half an inch and fell clattering against a desk. ”Go home!”

William's voice emerged from the reverberation: ”To save the Amba.s.sadors.h.i.+p.”

”To save my mother, if it comes to that.”

”Cabbages go home!” The tombs leaned apart, then joined in a single new shape: an uneven obelisk. ”Privacy's wanted!”

”It has come to that. It has come to that,” William said.

”Oh listen,” cried Miss Pettigrew, ”it's your father I think.”

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