Boswell (54 page)

I walked faster. Soon I was running around the room from group to group, but I saw that this was no better and I resumed my normal pace, a long, impatient stalk like an angry cat’s.

At one table where Morty Perlmutter and Dr. Green, the noted gynecologist, were among the group, I made up my mind to stop. “Gentlemen,” I said, nodding to both. I sat down and a famous senator handed me a drink. I did not know the senator personally and Dr. Green introduced him to me as his son. Gordon Rail, the communications tycoon, whispered in my ear. “Our next President,” he said. “The man to watch. He has the support of all seven hundred and forty-three of my morning newspapers and of five of my TV and radio networks. Three hundred and twelve of my evening papers will say they’re against him, but that’s only to make it look good, you understand.”

“Fixing beyond fixing,” I said.

“What did you expect?” he asked.

“Dr. Green was just telling us something very interesting when you stopped by, Boswell,” Morty Perlmutter said. I glanced at Dr. Green, who seemed a little uneasy.

“Go on, Doctor,” I said.

“Well, it’s not really very much.”

“No, no, please go on,” I said. “I shall feel I’m intruding otherwise.”

“It’s just something about the Profession,” he said.

“Yes?” I said, waiting.

“Well, it’s rather personal, when you come right down to it.”

“Yes?”

“Well,” he said at last, “you know how we gynecologists are supposed to be able to look on the female anatomy just as if it were some kind of machine?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s just that I never could.”

“I see.”

“I get nervous,” he explained. “It’s damned hard to have to examine some of these girls. It drives me crazy.”

“I should have thought you’d be used to it by this time, Green,” Gordon Rail said.

“Not at all,” Morty said. “It’s our culture. It’s only where the weaving trade flourishes that you have prurience. Paris and Rome and New York are world centers of the garment industry. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on sex in those cities.”

“I never realized that,” the senator said.

“Well, of course,” Morty said. “Why do you think my tribes are so underpopulated? Where you have nakedness you don’t have much of your copulation.”

“That would suggest an interesting new interpretation of the Fall,” the Black Pope said.

“To this day I can enjoy making love to my wife only if she has a sheet over her head,” Dr. Green said glumly. His son the senator looked down shyly. “Once she almost smothered,” Dr. Green said.

“On the Isle of Pica the unmarried virgins all go around nude except for this bandage on their left knee,” Morty Perlmutter said. “It used to madden me to think about what was under that bandage. I mean, for God’s sake, I had the example of the right knee, but it didn’t make any difference.”

“It embarrasses me even to look at the equipment,” Dr. Green said. ‘“I’m a fetishist about gynecological supplies. I talk this way only because we’re behind closed doors.” He lowered his voice. “It’s good to be able to get it off my chest, but I don’t really deserve to be among you men at all.”

The other men demurred politely. “We’re all of of us corrupt, Green,” Gordon Rail said with kindness.

“Have any of you boys ever had a tube of vaginal jelly in your hands?” Dr. Green asked ardently.

“What do you think about the dissemination of birth- control information, Green?” Gordon Rail asked. “As a newspaperman I’d like to know.”

“Well, it’s good for business, of course,” Dr. Green said. “Excuse me, Your Reverence,” he said to the Black Pope. “Say,” he said to the rest of us, “how would you fellows like to hear an amusing story? Of course it’s off the record.”

“Well, of course,” Morty said.

“Naturally,” Gordon Rail said. He looked at the rest of us and we all agreed.

“It goes back to the day when I finished my internship. There was this guy I had gone through med school with, another gynecologist. A stiff bastard—he never saw the humor in what we were doing. Nothing ever bothered him. He was made out of stone, I think.”

“The Party Whip is like that,” the senator said.

“Really?” Gordon Rail said.

“Oh yes,” the senator said. “Thinks he’s a regular goddamn Thomas Jefferson. I never saw anyone like him for passing laws. No sense of humor at all.”

“When we finished our internship we both set up practices in the same city. Any of you boys ever see a gynecologist’s office?” Dr. Green asked.

“I have,” Morty said. “I’ve seen everything.”

“Then you know there are a lot of screens around, and sheets and special tables. We have to make it as impersonal as we can. We deal only with the specific thing, you see. Like a bank teller who only gets to know a depositor’s hand as he pushes the passbook under the cage.

“So anyway, this time I’m talking about I had a date to have dinner with my friend and I went over to pick him up at his office. He told me he’d be all through, but there was still one woman waiting to see him when I got there. Well, she must have been very nervous because when my friend came out and indicated that he was ready for her, and said to me, ‘Hello there, Green, I have one more appointment,’ and went back into his office, this woman just got up and went out the door. I looked at her, but she was tongue-tied with embarrassment—this happens sometimes—and just got the hell out of there as fast as she could. So I went on in to pick up my friend and tell him he’d just lost his patient, but his back was to me and he was stooped over examining some records. Before I could even open my mouth he said, ‘Go behind the screen and get undressed, Mrs. Davis.’ Well, when I saw all this equipment and everything, I figured here was a good chance to shake this bastard up for once, so I went back there and took off all my clothes. All the time he kept talking to me and reassuring me. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when you’re ready, what I want to establish in this preliminary examination is your general condition. Just get on the table, please, and cover everything but your legs with the sheet.’ So I did. I got on the table and pulled the sheet over my head, and this guy asked me if I was ready, and I grunted, and he started around behind the screen. ‘I just want to see what your trouble is, Mrs. Davis,’ he says. ‘Oh my God,’ he says, ‘Mrs. Davis!’”

“Say, that’s very amusing,” Gordon Rail said.

“A little irresponsible, I think,” the Black Pope said.

“Well, isn’t that exactly what’s so amusing about it?” I asked.

“Gordon Rail’s right,” the senator said. “We’re all corrupt.”

“Of course it wouldn’t do for them to find out,” Gordon Rail said. He pointed to the crowds still gathering outside the window.

“We’re behind closed doors,” Dr. Green said.

“Maybe you’d better pull the drapes as well, Boswell,” the Black Pope said.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about that.” It was a good chance to get away. I hadn’t forgotten that there were others to visit. I stood up and began again my counter-clockwise promenade about the room. It was Market Day, the opening of the Fair, the Easter Parade.

I still felt uneasy about not being everywhere and everyone at once. It was no longer, I think, that I feared to miss them doing their turns, seeing them at their most expansive and best. Almost without my being aware of it a new weight of maturity had settled upon me like dust, the old-shoe ease of compromise. I felt older, and I knew that I would have been content to share their boredom or know their bleakness—to have been, so to speak, a crumpled handkerchief in the torn pocket of their gray bathrobes. As I reflected on this I realized that I knew nothing of human beings really, nothing of their characters, nothing even of their experience. The desire to know what people thought was a torment, like gazing at heights in the night sky and wondering if there could be life on other planets and what it would be like if there were, always knowing that you would never know, that some day others might, but you, never. The weight of one’s solitary existence was overwhelming; one was pinned by it, caged by it like an animal. (Surely, I thought, love is only the effort weak men put forth to compromise their solitariness.) One could not be sure of others; one could not be sure they didn’t lie when they said they were solitary too. I was Moses brought so far and no further, my single knowledge the knowledge of the margin that separated me from all I had ever hoped for, that margin another desert, another complicated wilderness. To be teased with sight and hearing and speech and to have seen and heard only oneself, held conversation with only oneself—this was the sad extravagance of life. Sure, I was less badly off than many men—I was not a little blind boy, I was no one who was starving, I was not someone with a wife in the hospital or a man with no legs—but trouble was trouble.

I nodded to Robert Frost. “Provide, provide,” I said.

I saluted the Cabinet. “Who’s minding the store?” I said.

I spotted Harold Flesh by himself in a corner. “Stick ’em up, Harold,” I said.

“Mr. Boswell,” someone called. “Mr. Boswell.” It was W.H. Lome, Jr. He stuck out his hand.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I just thought of something,” he said. “If a man owned a tavern his friends would have to buy their liquor when they came to see him.” It was his way of greeting anyone who had known his father.

“The rich get richer,” I said, and nodded to a tall old man standing by the sweets table.

“Ah, Boswell,” he said.

“M’lord,” I said.

Nate was at the
table d’afrique.
“It’s marvelous,” he said. “It’s costing me a fortune but it’s marvelous.”

“Two hundred is too unwieldy a number,” I said. “They don’t even know each other.”

“No, it’s marvelous. I want to thank you for doing this for me.”

“Dope,” I said. Something occurred to me. “Here,” I said, taking off the mantle of Host the Queen had hung around my neck and handing it to him. “It’s restricting my progress.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Nate said.

“You will.”

“No, I really couldn’t.”

“Damn it, I said you will.” I grabbed him and held him with one arm while I slipped the mantle over his head.

“No, it’s yours,” he said shyly. “Really, Boswell.”

I twisted the mantle tightly and holding both reins pulled up on them sharply. Nate fell against me as I choked him. “We’ll hear no more about it,” I said. “You’re the Host.”

“Well, then,” he said, “thank you. I want to show Perry. Where’s Perry? He’ll have to see this.”

I felt a little better after strangling Nate. It was still necessary, however, to organize the two hundred—at least necessary to start with them if I ever hoped to do anything about the others outside, and the others elsewhere, all the people behind the Iron Curtain and the people in the Andes and Tierra del Fuego and the Australian outback and the handful in the Antarctic and people on tiny islands in the Pacific and the populations of Europe and Asia and Africa. A general call would have to go out in a language they all could understand. Of course there would be problems, but first things first.

I clapped my hands. With the shock of my palms coming together my vision darkened. The reds went deeper. It was as if I were looking now through blood, but I also felt a kind of boozy randiness. I clapped my hands again; four or five people looked around and grinned.

I clapped my hands a third time. “Your attention. Your attention, please,” I called.

“Shh. It’s the Host,” someone said.

“You’d better get up on something if you want them to hear you. Two hundred is an unwieldy number,” said General Manara. He had won two additional stars since I had first met him in the Gibbenjoy home in Philadelphia. One was his Korean Star and the other was for Miscellaneous Small Wars.

“Of course,” I said. I cleared away some of the food from the
table d’afrique:
a small zebra fillet (I was surprised to see that the stripes were carried through into the meat itself—Of course, I thought, light meat and dark meat) and a platter of lion livers. Climbing onto the table, I clapped my hands a final time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I called. Nate looked embarrassed. “For History,” I whispered hoarsely. I spotted Margaret across the room with Harold Flesh. “Where the hell have you been?” I yelled, but I was careful not to yell in exactly her direction so that no one else could hear me. I didn’t wait for her answer.

“Mr. President, Queen, Warlords, Chairmen of Boards, Leaders, Owners, Guests and Friends—Ladies and Gentlemen. May I have your attention for a moment?” Gradually people began to look up at me. With their eyes on me I noticed that I felt a little warm; excited as I was I made a mental note of this. (I had never before been aware of the sheer physical heat generated by attention.) I waited until they finished coughing. “All right,” I said, “now look. Two hundred is too unwieldy a number to work with if we’re going to get anything out of this. Now I’ll be perfectly frank with you. I don’t personally give a good goddamn if the rest of you get anything out of it at all. That’s your lookout. But I’m here for a good time. Let me hear it if you feel that way about it too.” They applauded brightly. They were a surprisingly tractable group to work with, I thought. It would probably be harder when I got everybody together. Already I was thinking tentatively of a suitable site, the Sahara perhaps, or a huge platform built out over the Atlantic. “All right then,” I said sharply, “let’s get organized. I want all of you Nobel Prize winners to stand up and go over to that wall.” I pointed to the small table of space foods Nate had set up. “That’s right, Morty, by the space pastes.” Morty was the only one who had moved. “Come on now, the rest of you as well. Follow Dr. Perlmutter, please.” I indicated the South American poet.
“Señor,”
I said,
“por favor,
if you please.” He smiled shyly but stayed where he was. “To get the hell to where I told you,” I shouted. “All right,” I said when he had started, “now Dr. Green.”

“I didn’t know Green had a Nobel Prize,” someone whispered.

“Peace Prize,” his son the senator said, giggling.

“Now where’s that team from Cal Tech?” I spotted two Chinese lounging near Harold and Margaret. They grinned good-naturedly and set off to join the others. “They go everywhere together,” I told the crowd. “Ying and Yang.” I looked around the room. “Where’s my chemist?” I demanded. “Where’s my authority on International Law?” I prodded the remaining Nobel Prize winners, and soon they made a sizable group by the table. I carefully arranged the rest of them around the room and smiled down at the group approvingly.