Trust (90 page)

"It means they like him, doesn't it, if it went like that?"

"It means they were in a hurry. It's made him a fool."

"What's the difference
what
it's made him if it's made him Ambassador? That's the main thing, isn't it?" I watched the cautious point of her tongue. I said: "Now you have it."

"No I don't have it."

"All right"—I thought her pedantic—"Enoch has it."

"I'm in the middle of re-figuring out my whole life, I told you, can't you follow that? My life is changed. The whole basis of my life from now on, can't you follow?"

"You'll have to do something about your geography," I agreed. "And go to Berlitz for irregular verbs."

"Is that what you think's involved in changing a life? Is that what you think a turning-point is? Look, I'm at a turning-point, can't you understand that?"

"So am I," I said.

"You?" She was blank.

"Someone died."

"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 God'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. Nobody has it."

"Nobody 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 Washington."

"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 Washington, 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 Embassy 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 Washington 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?"

"Cucumbers. 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 damn 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 Ambassador'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 God'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 stitches. You know what they're calling him? It's humiliating, I can't repeat it. The Two-Hour Ambassador. Actually he was Ambassador 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 glasses 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 glasses 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 damn
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 buttock. (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. Nobody'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 Ambassador? It stands to reason. For God'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.

"Assign him to another country, why not?"

"Why not, why
not?
Who, the Two-Hour- Ambassador? 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, Dickory, 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 Goddamn 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 cockier 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, nobody's going to make an Ambassador 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 chink 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."

"Hell do something," she called to the ceiling.

I lifted myself and watched her. She lay flattened and nearly breathingless.

"Something political?"

"I
said
taboo, didn't I? Pariah. Dead." The finger rasped. "Nothing public. Something personal. Something with me left out of it."

"If it leaves you out it can't be personal," I said.

"Oh shut up. Once and for all shut up. I hate a logician. You talk like a Goddamn little Jew. How do / know what he'll do?" But she appended with authority: "Hell write history."

"But he might be good at that—"

"Might be good at that," she drilled out singsong. "Of course he won't be good at it. If you're meant to live it you can't write it. And don't give me Julius Caesar.
One
Latin rebuttal out of you, just one, and I swear I'm fit for gore and murder. Lady Macbeth, I mean it this time. Besides, there's nothing
in
history any more. Nothing"—she hurtled to her last effect—"for me."

"Nobody ever got into history by being an Ambassador's wife," I said.

"Oh didn't they! Well you don't know
me,
I don't give up like that, I don't want to just get
into
history, that's what I call burial, I want to climb up
out
of it, I want to survive!" My mother teetered in a crouch; then with hands forward and heavy she thrust herself into the chair. "It's
Madame
de'Sévigné not Mademoiselle you hear about, and Medea was somebody important's wife, ditto the aforementioned Lady Macbeth so don't tell me position doesn't count, in the sands of time spinsters don't leave tracks. And don't give me Emily Dickinson either, I'm not talking about mystic types and so forth, I mean people like myself who panteth after the world as the hart panteth after the brook or something. Is that Enoch coming in down there? I thought I heard—" She blinked. "Look, I have to feel I'm somebody more than just, just, I don't know, you think I want to be nobody? You think I could stand getting submerged in a century? Or a generation? That's bad enough, already you hear people matching me up with the Radical Thirties so-called, you should see William's ears get red at that. Or even a Goddamn
country.
" She was all at once tearing at her neck. "Hives, damn it, I've got these hives again. You know I thought that was Enoch down there. Well the fact is 111 die if he just crawls home into a corner and starts writing like Immanuel Kant or somebody. Basically all he's got are these ideas, you know what idea Enoch has, I mean about me? I'm an American, that's what he thinks. He thinks I'm an American! What he always wanted was an American. Well I'll fix him, he'd be a fool to go just on that. Oh God how I itch. I want to be more than the best heating plant in the whole world. Not just hum awhile and then die like the Great American Refrigerator—"

It was, plainly, her great speech of capitulation. She recognized she had gone down, and irretrievably. It was her mourning song—protracted, like the mourning songs of the Chorus of Women in the old old plays. Mockery remained. "You can't be an ancient Greek," I noted.

"Oh bla bla bla. I know where you got that Same old corrupted conniving blather, Nick all over again. Well I never
wanted
to be Greeky, you follow? His idea not mine. All I'm saying is I want something more than just my exact home address on my death certificate. A person should mean something. That's right, go stick your head in the rug, just like Enoch, you don't think I can think. I don't care who said it first, I say it for myself, only louder. You take alt these feelings in the world, who knows how many feelings, you see my point?"