Part 61 (1/2)
”Well what's it to you? Hypocrite. Don't start telling me you've lost a father, you never had a father. What was he to you? Not a father. Don't be a hypocrite. And for G.o.d's sake get up off the floor. Don't tell me in two measly days you found yourself a father.”
”Not a father.”
”Then don't talk about turning-points! You don't realize.”
”You have it,” I said. ”I realize. Now you have it.”
”I don't have it. And don't say Enoch again. n.o.body has it.”
”n.o.body has what?”
”Idiot!”
”But if they confirmed it,” I protested.
”They confirmed it, I just said so, didn't I? Blue in the face trying to get through to you. They confirmed it yesterday.”
”Yesterday William's son came in the boat A thousand years ago it feels like.”
”Two thousand. Well then you know, he told you, you saw the papers.”
”No papers up there. He said the hearings were moved up and all of a sudden Enoch had to go to Was.h.i.+ngton.”
”What do you mean, no papers? I suppose he burned up the whole library too? A Vandal coming down on Rome. A Visigoth. That library's not intact, is it?”
”Mostly.” And for honesty: ”Not intact.”
”See? Sacked I bet. Pilfered.”
”William's son took The Law of the Sea.” Her surprise was limpid; she had never heard of that law, and did not think it was for the taking. ”One of those old books up there,” I explained.
”Stole it? Took it? Didn't ask? Well, who should he ask, after all.” She considered. ”That makes it worse. If there was no one to ask he should have left it. Sarah Jean and all that holiness, and what the whole thing adds up to is just another-little-crook.”
”He has ambitions as to size,” I said. ”Wait till he gets into the firm.”
She jumped on this. ”I despise the tale-bearers. Is that what he told you not to tell me? That he swiped a piece of museum? You didn't have to tell me, what do I care about that fish-house? Well at least the sea has a law apparently. Land doesn't Land's always up for grabs, you know that? With a gun you can get practically anything you want in this world, especially a country. First he calls me up-”
”Who?”
”You are dumb. Enoch. From Was.h.i.+ngton, and says get ready right away if I want to go with him, I had to start out that minute. Well I said how could I, I had to have clothes didn't I, I had to choose what to pack, and he said let Janet and the others do it, it didn't matter, or else I could have a dressmaker from over there do me up quick after we got there. Any old dressmaker! Didn't matter! I've got a dozen closets full of Paris and I'm suppose to march into the Emba.s.sy looking like Macy's. I told him that. Not that he listened, he said he'd wait for me only until the seven P.M. plane, otherwise go himself, even though the Vice President said it would be better if I went too, from out of Was.h.i.+ngton not New York. The idea would be the two of us making an entrance.” She released a small snort of homage. ”The Vice President's been there, he knows what impresses those people.”
”Wasn't that the time they threw guavas at him?”
”Cuc.u.mbers. Guavas was a different country. And two hours later he calls back. Well I had to take something. I was getting my underwear together after all, I had the maids running in circles as it was, Janet even crying-anyhow I was sure what he was mad at was I hadn't started out yet, he sounded mad all right, too d.a.m.n calm. You know the way Enoch gets,” in her old habit of pretending an intimacy between her husband and me. ”And that was it. The end, finis.”
I did not comprehend.
”Ignorance, that's just plain ignorance!” she tossed out. ”Don't you understand anything about prestige? If a government wants power it has to have prestige. Well where does prestige come from? From us. Enoch explained the whole thing. When one of those governments over there's in trouble all the United States has to do is go right over and pat it on its head in public and that does the trick, all the revolutionaries run back into their holes. That's how it operates. It's what an Amba.s.sador's for-diplomatic notes and keeping communications open and all that, but mostly to show everyone we're friends with whoever's in power. And that keeps them in power. That's why Enoch was supposed to hurry and get there. For G.o.d's sake.” She lowered herself to the carpet beside me with a squeal of hopelessness. ”O.K., so Jet us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of queens. That doesn't sound right.”
”Of kings.”
”Poor Enoch. The whole District of Columbia's in st.i.tches. You know what they're calling him? It's humiliating, I can't repeat it. The Two-Hour Amba.s.sador. Actually he was Amba.s.sador for exactly two hours and forty minutes, if you want to be perfectly accurate about it.”
Bang against her wrists an emulative laughter spiralled up obediently, as though a hypnotist had directed her to withhold it until she should sense his accessible sign (what was that mark or sign?)-this silently coerced noise of hers rattled like bangles: her forearms trembled but were bare. She was unadorned. She wore a flat black beret to cover her few poor thistles just beginning to spring out with an aberrant kink altogether new (mutation? an underemployed understudy gene suddenly given its chance?); and below this un-comical cap the left-over pinch of her reading gla.s.ses whitened.
On the other side of her body, halfway under a chair, I saw something brown.
”You mean they changed their mind? The committee?” Supine I reached over her and pulled on the thing. A wiggle of dust came with it. My mother's gla.s.ses fell out of a leather folder pouring loose typed slips. ”What's this?”
”Confetti. I'm saving it for your wedding. Well they had a junta down there, that's what,” she supplied loudly. And retained the jugular j. For a moment she scratched at the floor. ”A notebook, what does it look like? Don't be a fool, they don't withdraw confirmations just like that”
”Hoonta,” I said.
”I don't give a d.a.m.n what you want to call it, the point is it's as Red as this rug. They held up the presidential palace about five P.M. our time-look, this is only last night I'm talking about-and who do they put in but a General who's as Red as a ruby. Surprise surprise. They're all Reds, the whole bunch. The Minister of State's a Red, the Minister of the Interior's a Red, the Prime Minister's a Red, and the Cardinal's as Red as a monkey's b.u.t.tock. (That's the Vice President verbatim my dear.) Well hand that stuff over, will you? It's Enoch's business what he writes down and none of your own.”
I said, ”It looks like a list.”
”Not my list. He keeps his own lists. Bits and pieces. Drop by drop, like blood. Poor poor Enoch, he's absolutely dead politically. n.o.body'll touch him. Pariah. Taboo. Look, the first thing the President did was break off relations down there and the second thing was fire Enoch. I mean they're not even recognizing that ditch, so how can they send an Amba.s.sador? It stands to reason. For G.o.d's sake.”
Meanwhile in the fan of slips I read a word. It was Enoch's and a private one and was not ”child”-how near now the private visitor's first note reverberated! how distantly his briny last! Babies did not inhabit Enoch's vows and views. He would never have smelled divinity through the diaper. He said: sentimentality is a limitation of the intellect; so the letters that joined my eye were unlyrical. ”Is it poems? No,” I decided, arranging the slips corner to corner. The lines were uneven. I handled prose. The word was ”sinner.” I asked, ”Can't they give him something else instead?”
”Now what would you suggest?”-Scorn.
”a.s.sign him to another country, why not?”
”Why not, why not? Who, the Two-Hour- Amba.s.sador? You should've seen the cartoons in this morning's papers, that's all. One had this picture of Enoch in the shape of this very fat mouse running down this time-clock, you know, and out of it comes a hand with a scissors that's supposed to be cutting off the mouse's tail, and the caption says 'Hickory, d.i.c.kory, Docked.' The face was Enoch exactly. And another one had him sort of riding astride this big rocket, only backwards, and looking scared and holding tight to his briefcase, and the rocket has 'Boomerang' written on it and it's headed right for the Capitol dome, and underneath it says 'Fired.' Oh, and that's another thing, by the way-the Russians actually put up a satellite today, a G.o.dd.a.m.n little moon, I mean it's really come to that, they did it actually. Gangsters. Robbers, Karp won't get anywhere with 'em, now they'll be c.o.c.kier than ever. And besides, all those cartoons make Enoch look so fat, that was the meanest part, he's not that fat. Well he's had it. Look, n.o.body's going to make an Amba.s.sador out of Mickey Mouse, he's finished, can't you follow that?”
-Not Death but deflection was her grief.
The bird of the world fell to a sandy place, and no arrow in his breast. No arrow could have entered. He had no c.h.i.n.k or plaiting; he was made of iron painted trompe-d'oeil, in an illusion of translucent membrane. He fell gaudily and with a clank: his works had run down.
My mother's finger rasped at the leg of a chair.
”What will he do now?”
The finger rasped. She did not answer. She did not know.
I said: ”Not that he has to do anything.”
”h.e.l.l do something,” she called to the ceiling.