"Old truths are the best truths, Mr. Finegold. I think you'll always find that so."
"My name, sir, is Gold," Gold corrected a little less tolerantly.
"Fine." Conover nodded weightily and looked up at him with a smile. He resumed after a moment in his quiet mellow voice in which the rounded vowels of the South were euphoniously interblended with the distinct consonants of the best English tutors and preparatory schools. "I hope you will not allow an occasional extra syllable from an aging mind to be the cause of any serious misunderstanding between us."
"Certainly not, sir!" Gold assured him with candid fervor and stepped back a pace to feast his eyes again upon his host. More than ever, Pugh Biddle Conover appeared the quintessential gentleman-statesman of his maudlin ideal. Pomposity was absent. A keen and cultivated intelligence presided. He was good as gold.
Conover asked: "Would you like to geld some horses?"
It was a decision Gold had not in his lifetime been forced to make. "Why," he gulped, "would I wish to do that?"
"For the pure thrill," Conover answered exuberantly. "It's sexual, you know. I can place some lively colts
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at your service if you like. 1*11 have my niggers whet a sterile blade."
"I think not," said Gold, with faltering confidence, "if I can demur without offending you."
"The choice is yours," said Conover with disappointment "although I think you're missing a rare chance. Some of them have such big balls. You seem surprised. I can tell by your gasp."
"I think I will have that drink, sir."
"I'll have another spot too, if you'll be so good. Oh, a much larger spot than that, Mr. Goldstaub. You pour so sparingly, Mr. Goldsmith, one might think it were your own. You people don't drink much, do you?"
Gold raised his eyebrows. "We people?" A monstrous notion that had been with Gold nearly every day of his adult life was now bulking in his thoughts. "What do you mean, sir, by we people?"
Conover answered amiably with no loss of equanimity, as though blankly unmindful of any uncomplimentary nuance. "I mean you people who don't drink much. There are people who do, Goldstein, and people who don't—"
"Gold, sir."
"—and those who don't, don't, do they? I swear on my life I intended nothing less innocent than that. Your health, you dog," toasted Conover with a sudden surge of vitality. "You have questions in mind. I can tell by your twitching."
A knowing light in Conover's small, sharp eyes was adding to Gold's uneasiness, and he felt the ground shifting beneath him in a way one sometimes experiences in dreams. He longed again for Andrea's return. "I was under the impression," he said nervously with a careless veneer he hoped might be misconstrued for insouciance, "that you always had a great many friends here on weekends."
"They're not my friends," said Conover with charm, "but they're the best I can do. They come when I want them to and they stay away when I want to be alone."
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"If I'd known you wanted to be alone this weekend," Gold offered debonairly, "we would not have come."
"If you hadn't come," said Conover, looking squarely at him, "I would not have wanted to be alone. I'm a great admirer of your work, Mr. Gold," Conover continued unpredictably in a way that was keeping Gold off balance, "although I've been much too feeble to read any. I hear only praise."
"Thank you, sir," said Gold with heartiness and elation, freed from much of the strain cast upon him intermittently by what he now perceived to be an endearing instability in the mental state of his prospective father-in-law. "And I, sir," he ventured, "have always admired you."
"I said I admired your work," the spruce little man stressed waspishly, "not you. The truth is I don't like you at all. If you wish to know, I find you pushy."
"Pushy?" Gold's voice was cracking.
"Yes."
There was little room left for circumlocution. "Are you saying that," he asked with a sickly feeling, "because I'm Jewish?"
"I'm saying it," said Conover, "because you seem pushy. But since you raise the point, I don't like Jews and I never have. I hope I am not offending you."
"No, no, not at all," said Gold, feeling miserable. "These things are better brought into the open."
"Especially," said Conover, "when they cannot be concealed. You'll be marrying far above you, you know."
Here was a topic for which Gold had prepared. "Lots of people marry above them," he began articulately, "although that may not be the reason they marry. They often marry for ..."
"Yes?"
"Love." The word caught like a barb in his palate and emerged through his nostrils with the timbre of a higk note from a clarinet.
"Is love your reason?" asked Conover acidly. "Or
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are you choosing a wife appropriate for the new career in Washington toward which you presently think you are directed?"
"I couldn't love a woman who wasn't appropriate." "Then love is not exactly blind, is it?" "It shouldn't be at my age. Should it?" "I don't really care," Conover conceded with a sigh. "Andrea can take care of herself and always has. Ten or fifteen years ago I would have been too busy with my own pleasures to notice. Thirty years ago I would not have allowed it. Forty or fifty years ago when I had no daughter and still possessed some democratic ideals, I would have championed her marriage to an inferior. Now I'm beyond all prejudice and it's merely a nuisance. A middle-age Jew is better than a nigger, I guess, and not much worse than a wop or a mick. Or somebody bald! Oh, I think that's what I dreaded all my life more than anything else," Conover went on shrilly with a manic volubility that began to take Gold's breath away. "I don't think I'd be able to stand it if Andrea came to me with a husband who was bald. I feel ill. Ill, do you hear? Ill, you idiot!" As Gold, struck dumb with amazement, stared helplessly, Conover allowed himself to be racked with a perfunctory cough and then studied Gold as though expecting to learn something from him. "Oh, God!" he cried in a tone of repugnance and began to beat the side of one fist lightly against his chest. "My medicine. Oh, oh! I must have my medicine. Quick, you gaping fool. You Jew nincompoop—can't you get me my medicine?" Gold cast his eyes about the room frantically in a manner famished for illumination. "Never mind!" Conover screamed at him. "Bring me a whiskey, whiskey, in the tumbler—the large one, you miser. Fill it up, up, goddammit—it's my whiskey, not yours. To the top, the top. Ah, that's better. Hey-hey. Ikey-kikey, where's your bikey? I'll survive, I think. You've saved my life, my bravo," he exclaimed with regenerated conviviality, "and I'll drink to your health. Sit on the
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tack of ambition and you will surely rise. You have something in mind. I can tell by your pallor."
"You aren't being very courteous to me," said Gold with an affected air of urbanity, "as you people are supposed to be. After all, I am a guest."
"But not of mine, Goldfine," Conover responded merrily. "And I'm not a host. You're part of a formality here today, and so am I. Andrea will do what she wants no matter what I say. She has money of her own and much more coming and she has no need to fear my displeasure."
"I have money of my own," Gold said.
"I do doubt it compares to ours," said Conover with sarcastic politeness.
"I really don't care much about Andrea's money," argued Gold, "although I'm sure you won't believe that."
"/ don't care about it at all," said Conover, with a laugh, "since none of it is mine. All of it descends to her from grandparents and great-grandparents, too many to count. There was a time, I'll admit, when I entertained great expectations of inheriting all of hers in the event she predeceased me, but now that I've aged, she might as well live. My sentiments shock you. I can tell by your nausea. But I do love money, Mr. Finestein, more than anything else in the world. I doubt there's a creature walking the earth who loves money more than I do. I don't crave it greedily, because I've always had plenty, but I value money much more than health. I am ailing and I'm old, no matter what lies I tell. Let the Fates
propose, Take perfect health for many more years, but we'll give you nothing,' I would turn it down in the blinking of an eye. If an angel appeared on my deathbed to beg, 'Forsake your wealth while you still have time and you can live for decades as a pauper and in eternal Paradise afterward,' I would answer, 'Be off, you feathery fool. Spend at least a million on my tomb and each of my cenotaphs.' I'd much rather die in splendor. After all, Mr. Goldfedder,
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health won't buy money, will it? Philosophizing drains me of energy," Conover said and replenished his strength by emptying his glass. "But I do treasure the company of someone like you with whom I can engage in intellectual discourse as an equal."
Nothing but the malice in Conover's eye suggested he was intending anything different from a compliment.
"My name, sir, is Gold," Gold reminded him once more with an exasperated sigh. "And I do wish you would remember it."
"I remember it," Conover countered with a smile, smoothing with a pinky his trim mustache, the flush shining higher in his neatly formed cheeks like a thermometer of malevolent satisfaction. "My mind is as clear as any in the world when I'm not having one of my fits. I won't object to the marriage since it would do no good, and I won't stand in the way of your career, although I can't for the life of me see what business a Jew has in government except to gain social recognition. There've been no good ones, have there? It's hard enough for a Protestant, isn't it, and we have the knack."
Gold would not be deflected into a dispute on comparative religion. "It is my belief, sir, that I might make the same kind of contribution in public service that people of my—ah—ethnic denomination have made in other areas."
"I have four acres of stables, Mr. Goldfinger, with less horseshit than that," Conover replied pleasantly. "You have black and thinning hair too, I see, among your manifold other shortcomings, but I beleive it will last as long as you do, if I am any connoisseur of scalp. If Andrea had to marry a foreigner I would have preferred someone like Albert Einstein or Artur Rubinstein or even Arturo Toscanini. God, what glorious heads of hair they had. But not Joe Louis or Ignace Paderewski. You're better, I guess. I don't think I could stand a Pole as a son-in-law. Son-in-law? Oh, what a sickening term, sickening. Don't you under-
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stand yet? Sickening!" Gold poured him more whiskey. The adventure was over, the romance was gone. The bracing odor of liniment rising from Conover was metabolized liquor, the gleam of acuity in his penetrating eyes a flame of gifted lunacy. Gold was confronting another old kook. "Your health, you weasel," Conover shouted with vigor, and swallowed deeply. "May all your troubles be little ones. I always knew Dean Rusk would never amount to anything, or Benito Mussolini. Too bald. Ah, Andrea, my child. You've come just in time. I have trouble making conversation with all of your boyfriends, but this one is practically a stone."
Andrea was radiant and refreshed after her ride and her bath and looked almost blindingly beautiful. She kissed each of them lightly, saying, "I think you're being rude, Daddy."
"I'm feeling poorly, Daughter dear," Conover said in a whine. "I wanted my medicine and he wouldn't give me any, not a single drop. May I have some now? No, let him get it. Faster, faster, you kike filly-fucker. To the top, the top, dammit, I'm paying for it, not you. Ah, that's better, my health is restored. Bless you, my lad. Never circumcise a bus. They're not Jewish. Arabs wash feet. McGeorge Bundy is the warmest human being I ever met."
"Daddy dear, I think you're babbling."
"I may be failing fast. Your health, sir, and to our everlasting friendship. I never met a man I didn't like till you. May your life be as bright as Edison's electric light."
"Finish your whiskey." Andrea held the glass steady for him. "Your mind is wandering."
"Hip, hip, hooray. Let's call it a day. Daisies are yellow and so is cheese. What is a kiss without a squeeze? You're touched, Mr. Gold. I can tell by your blush."
"I'm mulling it over."
"How wise you are, how wise you be. I see you are too wise for me. For God's sakes, it's been awful for all
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of us. My niggers will feed you. Have Simon whip them if they disobey." Conover juiced up his wheelchair, whipped himself about in a half circle, and rolled from the room without further ceremony.
Gold and Andrea ate silently in an immense dining room illuminated by candelabra, engulfed by impassive ebony servants with large eyes who made no noises. Their separate bedrooms were on different elevations half a mile apart, and Andrea led Gold to his. A mezuzah was on the doorpost.
"Please don't fuck me here," she pleaded.
Gold was incensed. "If you ever use words like that with me again," he answered, "I may never want to tuck you anywhere."
It was his only victory of the day. His room was large, the bed was good. He had the consolation of knowing he had suffered the worst. Things might improve on the morrow.
He awoke at daybreak and waited for sounds indicating others were astir. Past nine, he could bear his solitude no longer and crept forth into the morning in a spirit of cautious dejection. He descended the magnificent curving oak staircase with the mournful cast of a sacrificial victim whose moment for the spotlight had come. The house was inundated by a stillness that seemed eternal. Conover had horses that did not whinny. His dogs did not bark. If there were roosters or cows on the baronial grounds, they did not crow or moo. Doors did not close, toilets did not flush, wood did not creak, leaves did not rustle, and footsteps did not fall. At the base of the staircase a portly old Negro with woolly hair stood in the silver-and-black Conover livery and indicated with a slight bow the direction Gold was to follow.
Maids and dusters and porters with chamois cloths were silently cleaning and polishing wood, brass, pewter, glass, and porcelain. Passing in awe and disbelief down the center hallway of the main floor,
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Gold came at length to an enormous breakfast room containing a buffet of a size he did not know could exist outside the whimsical visions of novelists with extraordinary powers of description. Legions of servants, all of them black, in color of skin as well as by race, were on duty at fixed posts under the canny supervision of a virginal white spinster who was herself subordinate to a nasty-looking white overseer glowering cruelly, even at Gold. The plantation hierarchy was intact.
The serving table was more than sixty-five feet long. Only the staff was present when Gold entered. His line of march was clear and he moved along the counter in a trance. There were turkey, partridge, quail, squab, and goose to start with. There were heavy hams. Too much, too much, was the cry of his soul. His fingers trembled and he could hardly look. Mute figures with high cheekbones waited expectantly to serve him. There were pans of biscuits and baskets of eggs, rashers of bacon and kettles of fish, creamers and crocks and gallipots brimming, compotes and hoppers and casseroles steaming, dry cereals in bushels and hot ones in cauldrons, platters of sausage and trays of beef, kegs of butter and bins of cheese, urns of fresh milk and jugs of hot coffee, and condiments in cruets, flagons, and flasks. On a crested salver of silver embossed with the head of a pig was the eyeless head of a cooked pig. There were basins of fruit and bushels of washed fresh vegetables, and smoking tureens of stews of hare and venison. Glowing like a Christmas fire near the end of the table was a firkin or two, perhaps a whole kilderkin, of fresh wild raspberries, each perfect as a ruby. Gold took only coffee, a cannikin of orange juice from a beaker, and a sample of honey dew melon from a trencher with a trowel. Tables had been set with silver and linen for five hundred persons. He was the only guest.
He sat facing the door and prayed for a sight of Andrea. How long could she sleep? Never had he longed for the arrival of a human being so much as he
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now missed her. The loudest noises in all Christendom seemed to roar in his mouth or flow from his person. His prissy sips of juice and coffee were as hurricanes and wild cataracts in their sound, and his mincing swallows were the thundering explosions of
erupting primeval volcanoes. He feared he would make himself deaf. Each contact of cup with saucer was a vibrating crash of cymbals of which he was positive all thirty-eight staring people there to serve him were critical, although they said nothing to him or to each other. The awkwardness he had felt at first was nothing compared to the sensation of their unanimous and unmitigated disapproval which oppressed him now. Whenever he lifted his eyes to glance at anything a somber form materialized at his shoulder as though by witchcraft and poured another refill of coffee. Finally Gold addressed the servant nearest him in the lowest voice he could find above an immoral whisper.
"Miss Conover? Do you know what time she comes down for breakfast?"
"Miss Conover was here at five, sir. I believe she's gone riding."
"Mr. Conover?"
"Mr. Conover never comes down for breakfast when he has overnight guests. He can't stand them the next day. More coffee, sir?"
Gold had already finished seventeen cups. He left through the French doors opening onto the gardens and aimlessly strolled along the wall of the building. In a minute he came upon Pugh Biddle Conover on a patio, ensconced in his wheelchair like a monarch on a throne. He was dashingly clad in a glove-leather shooting jacket of plover gray and this time the bandana about his neck was of frisky blue. In his hands was a full decanter of whiskey he was examining lovingly in the morning sunlight. His face lit up when his eyes fell on Gold.
"Ah, good morning, dear fellow," he greeted him warmly. "Did you sleep well?"