"You got it from me," indignantly corrected Gold, who had lifted the quotation from an uncomplimentary assessment of the former Secretary of State in The New
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Republic that, in union with the wild surmise of his father, had prompted Gold's earliest suspicions and helped guide him toward the covert and remarkable hypothesis that Henry Kissinger was not a Jew.
" 'Our will to resist is waning while that of Russia is on the wax,'" Lieberman pressed on. "And here's another good one. 'If we are willing to go to war every time our vital interests are at stake, then / say we must go to war every time our vital interests are not at stake, to make sure that friend and foe alike understand we will.' After all," reasoned Lieberman in smiling paraphrase, his tiny eyes running appreciatively over his columns of type, "what's the point of building nuclear weapons and bombers if we're never going to use them? That's wasteful, and here—here's where I run out of patience for people without fiber enough for the many sacrifices we must stand ready to make and the casualties we might suffer. What's wrong?" Lieberman recoiled in frantic perplexity from the two stony gazes of which he unexpectedly discerned himself the repulsive object.
"If you don't stop talking that way," Pomoroy admonished softly, finishing his last slice of apple, "we won't let you hang around with us."
Tears were standing suddenly in Lieberman's eyes. "I'm sorry," he said and hung his head.
Lieberman's feelings were so sorely injured that he ordered cheesecake with strawberry topping for dessert with his coffee.
"Whom," asked Pomoroy, when the waiter had come and gone, "do you mean by we?" He looked at Lieberman through his large tortoiseshell glasses with eyes that were quietly incensed.
Lieberman took a long time making his guess. "The government."
"The government is a singular noun," said Pomoroy. "We is a plural pronoun. You've fallen into this disgusting, jingoistic habit of saying we, us, and our when talking about the country, the government, our
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forefathers. Your forefather was a chicken plucker in Russia."
"In Moravia/' Lieberman corrected.
"Who is this we that must stand ready to make the sacrifices and suffer casualties?"
"By we," said Gold, "he means them. That shit-blower."
"I can change!" Lieberman sought to assure them with a flourish of his hands. "I can be flexible if I have to."
"I know how flexible you can be," Pomoroy accused sardonically, and Lieberman colored. "I saw your name in the papers again at another one of your fucking fascist dinners. My imagination fails me," Pomoroy went on with as much wonder as reproof. "What goes through your mind when you sit there listening to those anti-Semitic speakers. What do you think of?"
Lieberman lowered his eyes. "I do my multiplication tables," he answered shyly.
"Do you applaud?" asked Gold.
"No," answered Lieberman. "I swear, I literally sit on my hands through the whole meal."
"How do you eat?" inquired Gold.
"I was speaking figuratively."
"Then why did you say literally?" said Pomoroy.
"Don't words mean anything to you?" said Gold.
"I have to go pee."
"There goes a man," said Gold, "without a single saving grace. He hasn't the dimmest idea he's a buffoon."
But Pomoroy was not so easily diverted. "So you're going to Washington," he said with a gaze Gold found difficult to meet. "What will that do to the book you owe me?"
"Enrich it immeasurably," Gold answered none too comfortably. "How often does a Jew from a poor immigrant family find himself in an important position in the federal government?"
"Too often," said Pomoroy, and began to cry. "My
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father's senile. He doesn't know who I am any more and says queer things when I visit him at the nursing home. He calls me Doc and Judge and doesn't know why I've come. A blind man beat him up with a cane last week, and he doesn't even know it. He's got diabetes and may have his legs cut off, and he won't understand what's happened. I can't leave him there and I can't bring him home. I don't want to break up my marriage because of him. I don't know why I even visit. I don't have any close relatives or friends, and I've got no one else I can talk to but you."
"I've got lots of close relatives and I have no one I can talk to either," said Gold. "My father's eighty-two now and won't go back to Florida. I don't want him to get sick here. I've been holding my breath now for fifteen years waiting for something to happen to him. I'm afraid it will and I'm afraid it won't. He picks on me, and I'm still afraid of him. He's picked on me all my life. Everyone in my family babies me. They treat me like a jerk. There's nothing I can do about it without being mean. Shit, I'm indebted to all of them, but guilt doesn't change anything. My older brother went to work while I went to college and gets more and more jealous of me. I can't shut him up unless I lose control of myself, and that's what he wants. My big sister Rose had a surprise party for her sixtieth birthday and it nearly broke my heart when I found out she'd never had a party before. I felt like crying when they sang 'Happy Birthday,' but I don't feel close to her. She's had the same office job for over forty years and has been scared every day she was going to lose it. Her husband boozes and is starting to get sick. Everything I do they have to be told about."
"Why do you put up with it?"
"I don't want them to think I'm stuck up. I'm glad my mother's gone now. I wouldn't want to have to watch her suffer. I don't love Belle. Family life is a bore. So is writing and teaching. My kid sister in California is forty-five and I think I may still be in love
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with her. I don't feel close to anyone in the world. Everything I do now is boring. I want to marry money. Wipe your eyes. Here comes the Moravian putz. I'm sorry about your father."
"Whose sad story is this?" Pomoroy covered his face with a large white handkerchief as though dabbing just his mouth. "Why don't you write a book about that if you're really looking for some unique and significant personal elements?" he said when he had recovered his composure.
"Everything came out all right," Lieberman reported waggishly, retaking his seat with the patrician comportment of one who fancies himself the cynosure of adulating regard.
"You mean an autobiography?" asked Gold. Through the corner of his eye Gold watched Lieberman turn stiff.
"No, not an autobiography," said Pomoroy. "But instead of a general approach to the Jewish experience in America I'm suggesting a work from your own vantage point. I like the idea of Luna Park, and Steeplechase, tailor shops, and beach peddlers. Was Steeplechase really such a funny place?"
"That was the subtitle. There wasn't even a steeplechase there."
"It must have been interesting to grow up in Coney Island. I'm willing to gamble the same advance on it. I can sell ten to fifteen thousand copies of any book you write. If we get lucky on this, we might sell fifty thousand."
"I'd need more money," said Gold, "for a second start."
"You'll get no money," said Pomoroy, "because you haven't made a first. Look, Bruce, I'm willing to pay to give you an opportunity to try for something true and honest with real merit and distinction."
"What's my incentive?" bantered Gold.
"Go fuck yourself."
For some moments Gold had been vibrantly conscious of a guttural noise droning inside Lieberman as
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though striving to press past his larynx. It tore from him now in a hoarse expulsion of breath.
"And what," seethed Lieberman, snapping off his terminal consonants as though they were aspirating lashes of a whip, "about me?" His face was gray with virulence and reminded Gold of a dented aluminum pot.
Gold could not decide if Pomoroy's look of surprise was feigned. "What about you?"
"I lived in Coney Island too, you know," said Lieberman. "You haven't even read the beginning of my newest autobiography yet, and you're already publishing his."
"Oh, Lieberman, Li
eberman, Lieberman," Pom-oroy chanted in dismay. "Yes, I've read your newest autobiography and it's no better than your others or those pretentious beginnings of novels you used to send around. Lieberman, Lieberman, a cat has nine lives. You have one. Lieberman, really—four autobiographies for this one little life of yours?"
"This one is different," insisted Lieberman. "I think the story of my life would be of widespread interest. This one is an affectionate memoir. I forgive a lot of people, even both of you. The critics will love it because I'm so forgiving. There are lots of warm memories of you and Gold when we were at college together."
"I have no warm memories of the period," Pomoroy told him.
"Be sure to include in your warm memories," said Gold, "how little interested we are in what you have to remember about us."
"Lieberman, what a dull four lives you've led," said Pomoroy. "Who in the world cares how you felt about the Spanish Civil War or the Hitler-Stalin pact? You were eight years old at the time."
"Eleven," said Lieberman, "at the time I broke with Stalin. And my opinions were no better and no worse than the opinions of some of the best thinkers of the time."
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"They were the opinions of the best thinkers of the time," Pomoroy retorted. "So who needs them now from you? You still have nothing new to write about."
"And if you did," said Gold, "you wouldn't know how to write about it."
"I still can't write?"
"No."
"So why do you try?"
"Why don't you stop?"
Lieberman's underlip came out trembling, a facial reflex to adversity he had brought with him through childhood.
"It took courage," Lieberman declared, sniffling. "It took courage on those boardwalks in Coney Island and Brighton to argue history and political theory with all those old Europeans."
"On which side?" asked Gold.
"On any side that would be to my advantage," Lieberman answered proudly. "That's something I wish you'd talk to Ralph about," he entreated, placing his hand on Gold's arm. "I don't think they appreciate how loyal I can be. I can switch positions overnight on any issue they want me to." Gold felt vaguely fastidious as he withdrew his sleeve from Lieberman with an ascetic frown and brushed away his touch.
"How can he talk to Ralph on your behalf," Pomoroy asked with mischief, "if you won't let him go to Washington?"
Lieberman was disconcerted. "Maybe I will."
"You won't devastate me?"
"I'll have to think about it." Lieberman arrived at a proposal. "If I let you go to Washington, will you promise to help me there?"
"I don't see why not," said Gold.
"I've come to believe," said Lieberman, "that government might be my true vocation. Frankly, running a leading little intellectual magazine isn't as good as it might sound. It doesn't bring in much money and has no prestige. And by now I'm getting tired of making up all those rhetorical questions. I would like,"
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he disclosed with a smile, "a position with the Administration of very great influence and authority."
"No-oo," said Gold with extravagant amazement, "shit."
"I know I would do very well."
Pomoroy was not so sure, he said, as he gathered in the separate checks. Lieberman took a hard roll from the breadbasket and exploded it between his hands with a report that made their jittery waiter leap and caused a number of people lunching nearby to start from their chairs in panic. Even as the last of the two sections were stuffed into his mouth, his stubby fingers were active as sightless slugs scavenging the four corners of the table for crumbs that he pasted to his lips like rhinestone spangles. Gravely he rubbed his nose with his wrist and said, "Why do you think I might not do well in Washington?"
"You've got no brains," said Pomoroy.
"Or ability," said Gold. "And of course, you've got no friends."
"But you're my friend," Lieberman remembered.
"Not really." Gold drew back from him with aversion.
Pomoroy said, "Bruce might be your only contact in Washington."
"If you don't devastate me."
"If I let you go," said Lieberman, "will you be my friend?"
"I could try."
"Will you help me get a secret CIA grant that I can use to publicize my magazine and build circulation?"
"Hitch your wagon to my star."
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SHOULD I try to keep count of the plots that are thickening, Gold marveled to himself as he drove toward Brooklyn with Belle, I surely must fail, for their sum increases even while I am busy totaling them. Like the President endeavoring to chronicle events of his office that unfold more swiftly than he is able to describe them, or like Tristram Shandy relating the helter-skelter circumstances of his birth and his life. Nearly four volumes must pass before he even can come from the womb, and he falls farther and farther behind. Gold was indifferent in his appreciation of Tristram Shandy as a literary work but had won high marks when a graduate student for his paper propounding innovative reasons for an enthralling admiration he had never been able to feel. At hand in Gold's future was an inspiring weekend meeting with Andrea's father, that celebrated diplomat and famous old country gentleman, and perhaps even a warm friendship with the President of the United States, who was struck with such wonder by Gold's words that he now kept a
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framed enlargement of Gold's maxim "Nothing Succeeds as Planned'' on the wall of his breakfast room beside a quotation from Pliny. If only the world could know. Gold intended to learn from Ralph whether it was Pliny the Elder or Pliny the Younger. Gold had trouble telling one Pliny from the other and, when drunk, mixed both up with Livy. He had rented an automobile for the afternoon.
Belle rode in silence beside him in an uncompromising attitude of indomitable submission that discomforted him tremendously. Her pudgy round face was expressionless and her head was high. To oblige him, she had worn some thick sweaters and a heavy coat. They were calling on his father again, but his hopes for soon excavating the stubborn despot from New York and exiling him to Florida were slim. They would have to rely on wind and respiratory infection rather than persuasion. Gold's overall displeasure with Belle was exacerbated by her passive compliance with everything he secretly schemed. He was dependent on her resistance to connive against her at his best and could not defend himself against such aggravating tolerance and resignation. The breakup of their marriage would have to be completely his own doing. He would carry himself away like a dead weight. Why would she never fight or say anything wrong at home or do anything wrong outside? Why was she always so fucking kind and practical and so good to the children and his family? He brooded upon this plight like the victim of something atrociously unfair.
On her lap with her purse was a double shopping bag holding scoured pans and glistening bowls from Rose's party that she was returning to Harriet and Esther.
"Why don't you put them in back?" he had suggested earlier.
"I'd rather hold them here."
Belle judged him the poorest of drivers, he knew, and she reminded him now of a hausfrau ready to abandon the car with all household goods in an instant should his incompetence bring them to collision.
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By the time he came out of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, almost all necessary conversation between them had been concluded. He made another attempt to be sociable.
"Should I take the Belt or go down Ocean Parkway?"
"Whatever you want."
He chose the Belt Parkway. He was in surly humor. Heavy, threatening clouds hung low in the air and the spectacle of their shadows darkening the choppy water flooded his heart with acidulous promise and contentment. Nothing pleased him more than the prospect of cold rain.
"What were those phone calls this morning?"
"Barry called from Choate," said Belle. "Noah phoned from Yale."
"Collect? Can't kids write letters any more?"
"They each want money."
; "Send it."
"Don't you want to know how much?"
"No."
"Or what for?"
"Not yet."
"Barry wants to go to Moscow for Christmas with a group from his school."
"Good. I can probably get him a travel grant if he'll promise to major in Russian when he grows up."
"Noah wants to take a share in a ski lodge."
"Skiing? I have to pay for his skiing?" Gold nearly disapproved. He had never gone skiing. For that matter, he had not gone to Yale.
"He says if we don't let him do it, he'll come home every weekend."
"We've got no room."
"We have the study and the library."
"I've got my work spread out in both. You know how busy I am these days."
"He could stay downtown in your studio."
"I don't want him in my studio. Send him the money."
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"Have we got it to spare?"
"I'll make it in Washington. If we ain't got it to spare we couldn't send it, could we? You interrupted me before, didn't you?" he pointed out primly.
"How?" Belle spoke with some surprise.
"You asked me if I wanted to know why they wanted the money and I said not yet. Then you told me anyway."
"How is that interrupting you?" Belle wanted to know. "You weren't talking."