CHAPTER XVIII
The cast of characters in the Nuclear Revolution changed so swiftly that Dr. Cameron has long since been forgotten excepting for a few disorders he incited. A crucifix hung on the wall behind his desk. The figure of Christ was silver or leaden and it was the kind of thing tourists pick up in the back streets of Rome and carry to the Vatican for a Papal blessing. It had no value or beauty and its only usefulness was to state that the doctor was a convert, a sinful one perforce, since he was known to believe in neither the divine nor scientific ecology of nature, but the priest who had given him instruction had stressed the mercifulness of Our Lord and the old man believed passionately that there was some blessedness in the nature of things although his transgressions were repeated and spectacular. He believed, and said so publicly, that matrimony was not an adequate means of genetic selection. He had administered, for the Air Force, some experiments in the manipulation of chromosomal structures for the production of what we call courage. He believed in sperm banks and, for the immediate future, a clear command of the chemistry of personality. He loosely embraced his belief in blessedness, his science and his own unquiet nature by thinking of himself as a frontiersman, approaching a future in which he would be obsolete. He was a gourmet and knew the foolishness of stuffing himself with snails, beef filets, sauces and wines but he classed his interest in good food as a mark of obsolescence. He similarly classified as obsolete his own sexual drives—that nagging inquietude in his middle. His wife had been dead for twenty years and he had kept a series of mistresses and housekeepers, but the older and more powerful he grew, the more discretion was demanded of him and he had not been safely able to enjoy a relationship with anyone in the United States.
He was one of those blameless old men who had found that lasciviousness was his best means of clinging to life. In the act of love his heart sent up a percussive beating like a gallows drum in the street, but lewdness was his best sense of forgetfulness, his best way of grappling with the unhappy facts of time. With age his desires had grown more irresistible as his fear of death and corruption mounted. Once, lying in bed with Luciana, his mistress, a fly had come in at the window and buzzed around her white shoulders. The fly had, to his old man’s mind, seemed like a singular reminder of corruption and he had got out of bed, bare as a jay bird, and raced and jumped around the room with a rolled-up copy of La Corriere delta Sera trying, unsuccessfully, to kill the pest but when he got back to bed there was the fly, still buzzing around her breasts.
It was in the arms of his mistress that he felt the chill of death go off his bones; it was in the arms of his mistress that he felt himself invincible. She lived in Rome and he met her there about once a month. There was a legitimate side to these trips—the Vatican wanted a missile—and a side more clandestine than his erotic sport. It was in Rome that he met with those sheiks and maharajas who wanted a rocket of their own. The commands from one part of his body to another would begin with a ticklish sensation that in a day or two, depending upon how hard he drove himself, would become irresistible. Then he would take a jet to Italy and return a few days later in a most relaxed and magnanimous frame of mind. Thus he flew one afternoon from Talifer to New York and spent the night at the Plaza. His need for Luciana mounted hour by hour like some simple impulse of hunger and lying in his hotel bed he granted himself the privilege of putting her together—lips, breasts, arms and legs. Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love! He was suffering, as he would put it, from a common inflammation.
In the morning it was foggy and leaving the hotel he listened for the sound of planes to discover if the airport was closed but it was impossible to hear anything above the clash of traffic. He took a taxi to Idlewild and waited in turn to pick up his ticket. Some mistake had been made and he was booked on a tourist flight. “I would like this changed to first class,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the girl said, “but there is no first-class space.” She did not look at him and went on filing papers.
“I have made thirty-three flights on this line in the last year,” the doctor said, “and I think I am entitled to a little preferential treatment.”
“We do not give preferential treatment,” the girl said. “It is against the law.” She had obviously never seen him on television and was unimpressed by the bulk of his eyebrows.
“Now you listen to me, young lady . . .” His voice sawed, soared, made enemies for him everywhere within earshot. “I am Dr. Lemuel Cameron. I am traveling on government business and if I should report your attitude to your superiors—”
“I am very sorry, sir,” she said, “but things are backed up because of the fog. The only available first-class space we have is for the evening flight next Thursday if you wish to wait.”
Her imperviousness to his importance, her indifference or overt dislike flustered him and he remembered all the others who had looked at him with skepticism or even antagonism as if his whole brilliant career had been a fatuous self-delusion. It was especially her kind, the girls in uniform with overseas caps, their hair dyed, their skirts tight, who seemed as remote to him as a generation of leaves. Where did they go when the flight was over, the office shut? They seemed to bang down a shutter between himself and them, they seemed made of different ingredients than the men and women of his day, they seemed supremely indifferent to his appearance of wisdom and authority.
“I must explain,” he said, speaking softly, “that I have a top priority and that I can demand a seat if necessary.”
“Your flight is loading at gate eight,” she said. “If you wish to wait until Thursday evening I can get you first-class space.”
He went down a long corridor to where a shabby-looking huddle of men and women were waiting to board the plane. They were mostly Italians, mostly working class, waiters and maids going home for a month to see Mamma and show off their ready-made clothes. He liked to stretch his legs in first class, sip his first-class wine and admire the caves of heaven from a first-class port as they traveled swiftly toward Rome but the tourist flight was very different from what he was accustomed to and reminded him of the early days of aviation. When he found his seat he beckoned to the hostess, another impermeable young woman with a brilliant smile, a tight skirt and hair dyed silver and gold. “I’ve been promised first-class space if there’s a cancellation,” he said, partly to acquaint her with the facts, partly to make clear to this motley group around him that he was not one of them. “I’m very sorry, sir,” she said with a smile that was dazzling in its insincerity, “but there is no first-class space on this flight.” Then she kindly ushered into the seats beside him a sickly-looking Italian boy and his mother, who had a baby in her arms. He smiled at them fleetingly and asked if they were going to Rome. “Sí,” the woman said wearily, “ma non speaka the English.” As soon as they were seated she took a bottle of medicine out of a brown paper bag and offered it to her son. The boy didn’t want the medicine. He put his hands over his mouth and turned toward Cameron. “Si deve, si deve,” the mother said. “No, mamma, no, mamma,” the boy pleaded but she forced him to drink. A little of the medicine spilled onto his clothing and it had a vile and sulphurous smell. The stewardess closed the cabin door and the pilot announced in Italian and then in English that the ceiling was zero and that they had not received their clearance but that it was expected that the fog, the nebbia, would lift.
Cameron’s legs were cramped and to lift himself out of these unpleasant surroundings he thought about Luciana. He went over her points, her features, as if he were describing them to an acquaintance. He explained the fact that while she was Tuscan she was not heavy, not even in the buttocks, and that if it hadn’t been for her walk, that marvelous Roman walk, she could have passed for a Parisienne. She was fine, he pointed out to his acquaintance. She had a fineness that you seldom find in Italian beauties; fine wrists, fine hands, slim, round arms. Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love! That span of blood that leaps from the groin to the brain had made its passage and he was again committed to a painful inflammation. He recalled, in some detail, a piece of erotic slapstick that he had performed on his last visit. His inflammation mounted and mounting with it was a curb of self-disgust, a stubborn love of decency that kept abreast of his unruly flesh. That his body was a fool was well known to him; that it should demand instantaneous requital in a public airplane cabin with his nearest companions a sickly boy and his mother was a measure of its foolishness, but his conscience, clutching at its vision of decency, seemed even more foolish. Then the little boy on his left turned and vomited the medicine his mother had made him drink. The vomit had a bitter smell, bitter as flower water.
Cameron was shocked out of his venereal reverie by this ugly fact of life. The boy’s sickness instantly cooled the lewdness of his thinking. He helped the stewardess wipe up the mess with paper towels and courteously accepted the apologies of the mother. He was himself again, judicious, commanding, enlightened. Then the pilot announced in two languages that they were taking the plane into a hangar to wait for their clearance. The ceiling was still zero but they expected a change in the wind and a clearing within the hour.
They drove into a hangar, where there was nothing to watch. A few of the passengers stretched their legs in the aisle. No one complained, except laughingly, and most of them spoke in Italian. Cameron closed his eyes and tried to rest but Luciana stepped trippingly into his reveries. He urged her to go, to leave him in peace, but she only laughed and undid her clothing. He opened his eyes to clear his head with a view of the world. The baby was crying. The stewardess brought the baby a bottle and the captain announced that the fog was general. In a few minutes they would be transported by bus to a New York hotel and would wait for their clearance there. They would be served a courtesy meal by the airline and the flight was scheduled for four that afternoon.
The doctor groaned. Why couldn’t they be put up at the International Hotel? he asked the stewardess. She explained that all planes were grounded and the airport hotels were full. A bus drove into the hangar and they boarded it with perfect passivity and returned to the city, where they were received in what was very definitely a third-class hotel. It was nearly noon and Cameron went into the bar and ordered a drink and lunch. “Are you with flight seven?” the waitress asked. He said that he was. “Well, I’m very sorry,” she said, “but passengers for flight seven have to eat in the dining room where they serve the plat du jour.”
“I will pay for my lunch,” Cameron said. “And please bring me a drink.”
“The courtesy of cocktails is not extended to tourist passengers,” the waitress said.
“I will pay for my drink and I will pay for my lunch,” Cameron said.
“That won’t be necessary,” the waitress said, “if you go into the other dining room.”
“Does it look to you as if I couldn’t pay for my lunch?” Cameron asked.
“I am just trying to explain to you,” the waitress said, “that the airline is responsible for your meals.”
“I understand,” said Cameron. “Now please bring me what I have ordered.”
After lunch he watched a television play in his hotel room and rang for a bottle of whisky at four. At six the airline called to say that the flight was scheduled for midnight and that they would board the bus in front of the hotel at eight o’clock. He ate some supper in a restaurant around the corner and joined the other passengers, whom he had begun to detest. They boarded the plane at half-past eleven and were airborne on schedule but the plane was old and noisy and flew so low that he could clearly see the lights of Nantucket when they passed the island. He had his whisky bottle with him and he sipped at this until he fell asleep to suffer an excruciating dream about Luciana. When he woke it was dawn and they were coming in for a landing but it was not Rome; it was Shannon, where they made an unscheduled stop for motor repairs. He cabled Luciana from Shannon but it was five before they took off again and they didn’t reach Rome until a little after dawn the next day.
The airport bar and restaurant were shut. He telephoned Luciana. She was asleep, of course, and cross at being waked. She had not received his cable. She could not see him until evening. She would meet him at Quinterella’s at eight. He pleaded with her to let him see her sooner—to let him come to her then. “Please, my darling, please,” he groaned. She broke the connection. He took a cab into Rome and got a room at the Eden. It was still early in the morning and the people on the streets were dressed for work and hurrying, with that international sameness of people hurrying to work on a hot morning anywhere. He took a shower and lay down on his bed to rest, yearning for her and cursing her but his anger did nothing to palliate his need and the crudeness of his thinking seemed like one of the realities of hell. Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love!
There was the day to kill. He had never seen the Sistine Chapel or any of the other sights of the city and he thought he could do that. It might clear his head. He dressed and went out onto the street looking for one of those famous museums or churches about which one heard so much. Presently he came to a square where there were three churches that looked old. The doors of the first and the second were locked but the third was open and he stepped into a dark place that smelled heavily of spices. There were four women in a front pew and a priest in soiled lace was celebrating mass. He looked around him, anxious to appreciate the art treasures, but there seemed to be a roof leak above the chapel on his right and while he guessed that the painting there must be valuable and beautiful it was cracked and stained with water like the wall of any furnished room. The next chapel was decorated with naked men blowing on trumpets and the next was so dark that he could see nothing. There was a sign in English saying that if you put ten lire in the slot the lights would go on and he did this, revealing a large and bloody picture of a man in the death agonies of being crucified upside down. He did not ever like to be reminded of the susceptibilities of his flesh to pain and he quickly left the church for the smashing light and heat of the square. There was a café with an awning and he sat there and drank a campari. A young woman, crossing the street, reminded him of Luciana, but even if she was a tart it was Luciana and not her he wanted. Luciana was a tart but she was his tart and somewhere in the crudeness of his drives was a touching strain of romance. Luciana, he thought, was the kind of woman who could make the simple act of stepping into her pumps seem as if she had slammed a door on time.
Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love! Why should life seem so pitilessly to harry him, why should the only reality seem to be obscene? He thought of the quantum theory, of Mittledorf’s Constant, of the discovery of helium in the tetrasphere, but they had no bearing on his sorrow. Are we all unmercifully imbedded in time, insensate, purblind, vain, cold to the appeals of love and reason and stripped of our gifts for reflection and self-assessment? Had the time come for him, and was his only reminder of reasonableness, of the stalwart he had been, a smell of vomit? He had seen brilliant colleagues orbit off into impermeable foolishness and vanity, claiming discoveries they had not discovered, discarding useful men for sycophants, running for Congress, circulating petitions and uncovering international and imaginary networks of enemies. He was no less interested in cleanliness and decency than he had ever been, but he seemed less well equipped to honor these interests. His thinking had the disgusting crudeness of pornography. He seemed to see some image of himself, separate and distant like a figure in a movie, forlorn and unredeemable, going about some self-destructive business in the rainy back streets of a strange city. Where was his goodness, his excellence, his common sense? I used to be a good man, he thought piteously. He shut his eyes in pain and in that movie that played interminably across the fine skin of his eyelids he saw himself stumbling over wet cobblestones under old-fashioned street lamps, falling, falling, falling from usefulness into foolishness, from high spirits into crudeness. Then he was tormented by that cretinous and sordid cylinder in the head or mind on which are inscribed old hymns and dance tunes, that musical junkyard, that territory where campfire songs, singing commercials, marches and fox trots gather and fester in their idiotic repetitiousness and appear at will, their puerile verses and their vulgar melodies in a state of perfect preservation. “Got those racetrack blues,” sang this chamber of his mind. It was a tune he had heard forty years ago on a crank-up phonograph and yet he could not stop the singing:
Got those racetrack blues,
I’m feelin’ blue all the time.
Got those racetrack blues,
With all my dough on the line.
He left the café and started back to the Eden but his mind went on caroling:
But the track is muddy, and I don’t mean maybe,
And I’ll never get the money to buy shoes for baby.
He climbed up the Via Sistina and the song went on:
I’ve got those racetrack blues,
I’m feelin’ blue all the time. . . .
A young man was waiting for him in the lobby; one of those elegantly barbered youths who hang around the Pincio. He introduced himself at Luciana’s brother and said she must pay her dressmaker for the costume she would wear that evening. He took an envelope from his pocket and presented Cameron with a note in Luciana’s hand and a bill for a hundred thousand lire. Cameron returned it to the stranger and said he would pay the bill that evening. “Shesa no comea if you don’ta paya,” the youth said. “Tell her to call me,” Cameron said. He took the elevator up and the telephone was ringing when he entered his room. She was herself. He could imagine her twisting the telephone cord in her fingers. “You paya the bill,” she said, “or I no see you. You givea him the money.” For a second he thought of breaking the connection, breaking off the affair, but the noise of Roman traffic in the Roman streets reminded him of how far he was from home, that in fact he had no home, no friends, and that an ocean lay between him and his usefulness. He had come too far, he had come too far. Conduct and time were linear and serial; one was hurled through life with the bitch of remorse nipping at one’s hocks. No power of reason or justice or virtue could bring him to his senses.
There was a soft knock on the door and her soft-eyed agent stepped into the room. Cameron made him wait but the noises outside his window spelled his doom. After an hour with her he would be his high-minded and magnanimous self again but in order to achieve this he must be swindled, humiliated and gulled. She had jockeyed him into a position of helplessness. “All right,” he said, and they walked through the heat down to the Banco di Santo Spirito, where he cashed a draft for three hundred thousand lire and gave the boy his money. Then, and it was the only kind of disdain or self-expression left to him, he walked past the youth and out of the bank.
The day passed miserably. He took a shower at seven and went out to the Via Veneto for a campari. She was always late, he had never known a woman who wasn’t, and it would probably be nine before she got to Quinterella’s. She might, for once, play it safe; she might guess that his patience was not inexhaustible and that he had a mind of his own. But had he? If she asked him to drop to his knees and bark like a dog would he dare to refuse? He stayed at the café until eight and then started down the hill. His feelings were heavy —lustful and melancholy—and it dismayed him that in thinking of Luciana his mind could display such foulness. He started across the Piazza del Popolo. Somewhere a church bell rang. The discordant iron bells of Rome had always surprised him, carrying on, with their contemporaries the fountains, a losing battle against the noise of traffic. Then from the hills there was a peal of thunder. The explosion seemed to ring back from the excitements of his youth, and what a strong, fine youth he had been. A second later the air of Rome was filled with a dense, gray rain. It seemed to fall with a wicked vehemence.
He was stuck by the fountain in the middle of the square. By the time there was a halt in the traffic he was as wet as if he had plunged into the fountain; but he ran across the square to the shelter of a church porch. The porch was crowded with Romans and he had to push to find a place among them. There was no delicacy or shyness in the way in which the crowd jostled one another but he held himself with as much probity as he could muster. When the rain let up, and it let up as suddenly as it had fallen, he stepped back into the piazza and looked down at his clothes. His shirt clung to his skin, his tie had lost its shape, there was no press left in his pants and when he pulled the folds of his jacket away from his shoulders he saw that his pocket had been picked.
This was a blow. It stopped him short. What he felt was too violent for indignation. It was the enormous sadness of having lost some lights or vitals—six inches of intestine, a gall bladder or a group of back teeth—the melancholy and enfeebling shock of surgery. His wallet could be replaced, there was plenty of money where that had come from, but for a moment the loss seemed stinging and irreplaceable and he felt guilty. Neither absent-mindedness nor drunkenness nor any other fault of his had helped the thief and yet he felt gulled and foolish, an old idiot who had come into a time of life when he would begin to mislay his possessions, lose his tickets and money and become a burden to the world. Somewhere a bell struck the half-hour and the crude iron note reminded him of Luciana, of the crudeness and fitness of the bounding act of love. The thought of her overtook his feeling of loss, he straightened up in spite of his wet clothing. Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love! He stepped into a large pile of dog manure.
It took him nearly five minutes to scrape this off his shoe and like the boy’s sickness on the plane it had a tonic effect on his feelings; it aroused some momentary misgivings. It was the sum of obstacles—the delayed flight, the sick child, the thunderstorm—that might in the end cure his ardor. But the restaurant was only a step away and in a few minutes he would be with his swan, his swan who would lead him off to a paradise all laced with green and gold. He strode up to the door of the restaurant, but it was locked. Why were the windows dark? Why did the place seem abandoned? Then on the door he saw a photograph of Enrico Quinterella framed in a boxwood wreath with a bow, who, that very afternoon somewhere in Rome, surrounded by his wife and children had received extreme unction and departed this life.
Death had shut up the place; put out the light. Signore Quinterella was dead. Then he felt an exalting surge of deliverance, a return to himself; his mind seemed to fill with the astringency of all decent things. Luciana was a slut, her bed a pit and he was free to live sensibly, free to judge right from wrong. Here was a sense of pureness without the force of repression and his gratitude to the contingencies that had liberated him was pious. He walked back to the Eden like a new man, slept deeply and felt in the depths of sleep that he had been granted some bounty. He took a New York plane in the morning and was back in Talifer that afternoon, convinced that there was some blessedness in the nature of things.