"Barry N Malzberg - In the Stone House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

That's Jack's ambition, Joe said. Not mine. But Jacks not going to make that either.
So what's yours? Rhoda said. What do you want, Joe?
Congress, he said, I want to go to Congress.
No you don't.
Sure I do. It will keep me off the streets.
Then the Senate? The Governor's chair? The presidency? You want that, Joe? Is the whole package set with Jack behind you?
He shrugged. I don't want to talk about it any more, he said. You're supposed to be helping with the campaign, not asking questions. You're very pretty, he said. When the light catches you in a certain way--
Blarney will get you everywhere, she said. But you've already been into the sacred trust. I think you have something to think about, she said. I think that you've got some very serious thoughts ahead of you. Because this isn't what you want, Joe, and it's not too late to pull out. How do you know what I want?
I don't. But I know what you don't want and that's it. Let Jack have it, she said. He'd have taken your place anyway if something had gone wrong. If you had been killed overseas, Jack would have been doing what you are right now. He will anyway. So you can get out of this.
You're persuasive, Joe said, pretty and persuasive. But I don't think you understand. There are centuries of family history here, generations of ignorance and slight, the Ambassador and all his forebears working--
I'm not interested in that, she said, I'm interested in you. I haven't been fucking the Ambassador or Jack all night and all morning, it's been you. You're the one I care about and I want you to see, want you to know-
He put a hand on her lips. All right, he said. I understand you. It's enough. I understand what you're trying to say. You don't have to say any more.
But you won't change, she said, will you? One pretty girl in one afternoon isn't going to make any difference at all. All those centuries of family history, generations of ignorance and slight, the Ambassador and his forebears working--
You got me, he said, let's go to bed. Let's make love. I want to see you. I want to enter you, I want to know--
She stared at him, her eyes round and full. In the stone house at Hyannis in that moment, he felt that he could have touched all the deepest parts of her. Maybe, he said. I don't know. I'll think about it. It's too much to think about. Maybe we have a chance, he said. You don't know where you're heading, what this has been, what has become of us. I can only tell you that there's more here than you can know. But we could try--
She put her arms around him. All right, she said, we won't talk any more. We won't say anything more now. I could love you. I don't love you. Maybe I do love you. I just don't know, can you see? We don't know what we are, we have to dig for it. You have to go inside, you have to understand.
Yes, he said, yes, we'll try, we'll try to go inside, and in the light and shadow they had come together in that room, not even leaving for the bedroom, and there had been that night and part of the next day too, and then Rhoda had left because her parents would want to know where she had been all these days and she had still been living at home. Then came Worcester and Boston and the tumult of the campaign resumed; it was not as if they simply fell apart, it was not that simple. They saw each other again and they almost came that close again several times, but as October went into November and then past the election and into the plans which had to be made for Washington it became clear to both of them, maybe Rhoda before Joe, that nothing was going to change, that he wasn't going to get out, not then or ever, that he was going to have to follow it through to the end and there was no room for her because she would have been part of the furniture. I think I'll always love you, she said. I don't think I'll ever marry. Me too, he said, me too, Rhoda, but that had all been what she would have called bullshit; Joe was the sincere one, Joe was the one who had never married (he sure had fucked around, though) but Rhoda was hooked up with a professor of economics in less than six months from their parting, went to UCLA with him, had four sons, a nice bit of collusion there, and had died at forty in San Bernardino in a crazy flood that had washed out a campground and drowned her and the oldest boy. So much for that. The stone house at Hyannis, the pinwheels of light, the soft sounds of her against him and the rising too, and then the end of it as they fell and fell and it was not Rhoda but his condition which embraced Joe as he lay there gasping by the cold fireplace, staring at the crazed and absolute configurations of his life. You kept on going, that was all, followed it through, and then on the beach at Hyannis or in the campgrounds at San Bernardino the waters came, the waters always came and they would take you. Take you up, take you down, take you to the castle of your life. Portraits of the Ambassador hung at every angle in every room, glinting, glinting with their spectral knowledge and absolute pity.

11/22/63 Joe checks the stock again of the M-l, feeling it cold and solid in his hands, the trigger a little rigid but it will yield in the clutch, he is sure. The trigger feels a little bit like a clitoris against his index finger, he will jiggle it a little, then take a firm grip and make the rifle come. The thought of this, the analogy, makes Joe giggle a little and there is a strange, whirring moment of descent in which he wonders if he is really losing control, if this act is truly as crazy as it might seem from the outside. All of his life, he now sees, he has been surrounded by ordnance, by gleaming machinery of one description or another, the planes carrying him like an embryo in their thin, shaking, gusty surfaces, then later in the open cars and closed offices of politics, the experiments with hunting and high-caliber bullets which he had carried on at Hyannisport over the weekends, just as a means of getting away, then the years after the Presidency running around the country in high-speed machines, sometimes with the Secret Service in tow, more often not, tracking the highways of his doom, watching America stream by him. In Las Vegas for a while in the late fifties there had been some real peace, hurling himself against the distant totalizers, the green felt of the craps table, the roulette wheel, feeling himself dispersed in these arenas of chance, and in that machinery he had found for the first time since Rhoda the beginnings of a frail if illusory sense of himself... but that too had ended, Bobby had passed the word, Las Vegas was just too touchy, mob-infested, in the hands of the racketeers and it wouldn't look good if the oldest son and the ex-President were seen at the gaming tables, even if he was surrounded by Federal protection.
Worse if he were surrounded by Federal protection, Bobby had said, because that made the government look like collaborators, made it look as if they were granting special prerogatives to the gangsters. Joe had made something of an issue of it, had even humiliatingly pleaded, but Bobby had been firm, it wouldn't work out. He had to quit. At last the Ambassador himself had brought the word to Joe in a late-night phone call. They weren't talking much in those years, reconciliation had come later if at all, but the Ambassador made the call a special issue. You're entitled to some pleasure, maybe, the Ambassador had said, but you're fucking up things for everybody, Junior. So bury it. Come back East and play the horses at Bowie and Laurel with Hoover, but stay the fuck out of that Mafia trap. And that had been the end for him, he had never gone back since.
But the machinery had persisted, even to this moment when he cradled the M-1 and looked at its dull surfaces, feeling the power humming in the stock, feeling in his wrists the arc of the bullet which would tear off his brother's head. Reconciliation had come later if at all, that was true, but in a way this was reconciliation right now, he would be performing the one last great service for the Ambassador that no one else could have conceived, and that service would change everything.
See, you old bastard, I loved you all the time. I gave up everything for you because it was in you that I would find myself and that is what I have, Father, don't you see?
He didn't have to peer into the distance now, the motorcade was visible, clearly within the arc of his vision, it would be only a little while now. In the meantime, Joe Jr. thought, there was absolutely nothing to do but to stay calm, stay crouched amidst the cartons, let it happen. The worst thing would be to lose control now, to become emotional, to begin to think about it. The thinking had all been done. He had blamed the Ambassador for everything back then, had really fixated upon the Ambassador as being--how foolish, how stupid!--the force which destroyed his life, but then he had learned better, had come to understand that he who bore his name was if anything the Ambassador's greatest creation and now he would have to break the President to prove this to all of them. In the end it all came simple, it was far less complex than anyone thought, one fine line carried through it all, and you simply had to follow that arc. The best part of being Throttlebottom was that you could put on a uniform and lead a guided tour and no one would notice, no one at all. Joe Jr. began to hum, hummed a little marche militaire in a cracked and insouciant tenor, waiting, waiting now for the cars to come. Getting out quickly, out the back way, that was going to be a tricky business. But he would work on it in due time.

11/22/55 Joe had gone ahead with everything up to that point. The Ambassador wanted to stock the cabinet with Massachusetts polls, that was okay with him; he wanted JFK in at HEW even with the nepotism angle, and that was okay too. He had a certain agenda, the Ambassador, and the best thing to do was to go along with it, otherwise he would take to reminding you of exactly who you were and how you had gotten there and what could be next.
So even putting McCarthy in at State, Joe had gone along with it. That had been the real shocker and he had taken plenty for that; it had looked in the beginning as if it would tear the party apart. But the Ambassador had been insistent. I want this and that's the way it's going to be, he said to Joe. Handle it any way you want, take it to the press, make any goddamned liberal excuse you want, but Tail-Gunner Joe is in there and that's the way it's going to be. What about the eighty-seven Communists he can't produce? Joe had asked mildly. What about that faked Tydings photograph? What about the loyalty oaths and that joke committee? The Ambassador had shrugged. That's all politics, he said, that's for show. The real thing is that I want him in there. He's an old friend and a good guy and we can keep an eye on him better there than in the Senate. Listen here, the Ambassador had said and maybe he was telling the truth, that was the thing about the old man, he could lie and lie and lie and then he'd pull something on you which was absolutely the truth and if you ignored it you could really get in trouble, would you rather have that guy over at State where we can keep an eye on him and control him all the time? Or do you want him in the Senate, skulking around with Nixon, making plans and working against us every minute? You'll see how much sense this makes.
Joe had seen it all right, had known what was going to come on him when he made the announcement, the best thing to do was to announce the Cabinet in a bunch in mid-December right around the tree-lighting ceremonies and kind of sneak McCarthy into the back of the pictures and hope that they could get away with it, but that of course wasn't the way it really worked out. The press had been too scared of Tail-Gunner Joe to really make a big issue of it, that had been left for Truman, who went half-crazy back in Independence, and to Alger Hiss, but they had certainly made it the story of the day, then the week. Handle it any way you want, the Ambassador had said, so Joe did just that, went on the radio the day after Christmas to talk about the New Unity Coalition which would come out of Tail-Gunner Joe being brought to State, even let the Tail-Gunner join him in the last ten minutes to make his own unity statement, and it seemed for a while as if it actually was going to work out. McCarthy liked his drinks and his boyfriends in secret and his prerogatives and really wasn't as much of a danger as everyone thought, the Ambassador had been quite right there, but then the situation had started to get really nasty when McCarthy all on his own decided to reconvene un-American Activities and go after a whole flock of homosexuals and Communists who he said had been part of the old China group for years. A hundred were pitched out in October of 1955 in the first wave, and then Tail Gunner Joe had taken some advice from Nixon and had gone on television, shaking his fists and crying and saying that he was standing up for an administration which was too cowed, just too scared to really face up to the degree of corruption, but the penalties had to be paid. Then McCarthy had spoken about how the H-bomb plans had been shipped out to China and maybe the Soviet satellites by some of these hundred people and it might be too goddamned late to save security, they might have to deal with the possibility of a preventive strike against Peking, and looking at the shouting figure on television, looking at the grays and blues of the Secretary of State who was clearly drunker than he had ever been and absolutely out of control, Joe Jr., the President, had seen that he was going to take whatever risks were entailed, wherever they led, and he had fired the Secretary. Had simply called in Sorenson and told him to get the announcement out immediately and then had phoned the UPI himself at midnight to break the word. This is intolerable, the President had said. McCarthy does not speak for this administration, he speaks for no one. He was an attempt at a coalition which simply went wrong and he is out. Then he had gone to bed, alone as always, with the first solidity of conviction he had felt in more than a decade and had waited for all of it to sweep over him.
It had been even worse than he had thought it might be because McCarthy did not make a frontal attack, he sent up Cohn first and then Harriman (how he got Harriman to front for him was something that Joe could not figure out) and then amazingly Adlai had made a call and said that this was simply too extreme, that perhaps some compromise could be worked out. McCarthy might say that he had overstated the preventive strike issue and felt that the warning alone was sufficient. No, Joe said to the old trimmer, the Governor of Illinois who he had beaten back like a crutch at that rigged 1952 convention, there's no compromise. He's out. He is out as of thirty-six hours ago. He is crazy, Adlai, and I am crazy if I keep him. You don't understand the stakes, Adlai had said, and Joe understood then and only at that moment that Adlai was bought too, that Adlai was bent over and Tail-Gunner Joe had him cold. Adlai was a liberal who had spent his whole life waiting to be buggered and Tail-Gunner Joe had seen it and somehow done the job. It was the first insight the President had ever had which he thought might be worthy of his old man, the Ambassador, which he thought the old man might really have liked and respected, but of course it was too late for gaining respect that way.
At last McCarthy himself had come up alone, his eyes bloodshot, his head tilted, the scent of alcohol and frenzy coming off him, and something else, some deeper odor which Joe could not identify but which he knew was profound. Tail-Gunner Joe had already known that it was over, though. I'm not finished yet, he said. I'm not finished with you yet, Boston. There's plenty more to be said here. You aren't going to fuck with me like this. I came over to your side, gave you the advantage for years because I am a great American, but I see you for what you are now. You're part of them.
A Communist too, Joe said, is that what you're saying? Never mind what I'm saying, McCarthy had said, you just remember that you're going to go down on this one.
If anyone crosses you he's a Communist, Joe said mildly. It played for a long time and it's probably going to still play, but I can't tolerate it at this level, Senator. The Chinese don't understand our politics, you understand, they don't know that it's all a game you're playing. They and the Russians are likely to do something which might go out of control and that's why you have to go. So you're gone. Except that you won't go easy. So go hard, but go away before I call the Secret Service and have you thrown out by all the powers of the office I have been given. I don't know how deep you're into all of this but I don't think you can compromise the Secret Service, at least not yet. Get out, he had said. Get out, you stinking, evil son of a bitch, go back to your boys and your press conferences and your glory holes but get the hell out of this White House right now and never come back.
So McCarthy had gone away then, something in Joe's face, certainly not the tone of his voice which was quiet, even choked, must have gotten through to him, but that wasn't the end of it, the Ambassador was up there in two hours, coming right in past Sorenson, past JFK, who was sitting with him, trying to calm Joe down. Get out of here, the Ambassador said to Jack and Jack got up and went, no argument, no response, just cleared out. That was the way it was done. The Ambassador closed the door and turned to the President. Just what the fuck do you think you're doing, he said, what is going on here? I want that man back, you understand. I want him back in office. I don't care how you handle it, a full retraction, a press conference, an arms-around-each-other bit, that's up to you. But you are not going to get this one by me. I have given you a lot of latitude, Junior, but I am not going to give you this one. The Tail-Gunner comes back.
No, Joe said. He's not coming back.
Must I--
No, Joe said. I have given in to you all the way. I have let you have one thing and the other thing, I have gone along with you from the first, I have given you primogeniture and the Presidency and I have not fucked with you, but you are not getting this one. McCarthy is out. He is not coming back. I will stand in the door of State before he ever comes back. I will go to the well of the Senate, I will make a joint session of Congress to hear an address, but he is out. I will get Hoover to release everything from every file on this guy if I have to, but he is out and he is not coming back. He will have us all in flames, don't you understand that? He will have a bomb put in Times Square and another in the Rose Garden here. Joe looked at the Ambassador, felt the tears hopelessly come to him. Dad, he said, he's crazy, don't you see that? He had not called the Ambassador Dad in twenty years, it shocked both of them. He wants us all dead for his own advantage, Joe said. That's the truth and you know it. It has to stop.
But it can't, the Ambassador said, it can't because I won't have it. Because I said so--
What you say goes almost all the time, Joe said, but it doesn't go this time and that's all. I will be impeached for it if necessary, but it ends here. McCarthy is out. Please, Dad, leave now. I won't throw you out, I can't do this to you, you're my father so I'm begging, but I want you to leave.
All right, the Ambassador said. He sat convulsively, took off his glasses, wiped them, stared at Joe. All right, he said, you'll make it stick. I can see that. You are that serious, you fool. You will stake everything on getting him out.
Yes I will. I must.
Then you're finished, the Ambassador said. Don't you understand that? You're all done for. I'll close the books on you. You're a one-term President.
I can't be concerned about that, Dad, Joe said. That's not the issue. The issue is--
The issue is that you can't give me this one. All right then, but it cuts the other way too. I can't give you this one either. You're finished, Joe. Jack is the next President. You're getting out. Ill health, inability to govern. You're going to pass it on to your brother, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. You've got enough clout in the party to do it, you're the President. That's what is going to happen.
And if I don't? Joe said, what's going to happen then?
You will, the Ambassador said. He put on his glasses, stared precisely at Joe, rubbed his hands. You can make it hard or you can make it easy, it's up to you. I'll destroy you, Joe. If I have to I'll finish you off. So just get out.
Make your announcement tomorrow. Otherwise-
Otherwise what?
Otherwise people are going to start to die, the Ambassador said. Maybe a housewife and college professor in San Bernardino for starters, maybe some other people. I'm not playing around, Joe.
Joe stared at him, swallowed, said nothing at all for a while. He tried to keep his mind blank. That was a trick his father had taught him long, long ago, if they hurt you, if you find yourself really bleeding, just shut up, keep your mind blank as a screen, allow them absolutely nothing. That was the only way to handle it until you got control again.
All right, Joe said, say I do it. Then what? Jack becomes President if he wins the election--
He wins the election, the Ambassador said. Don't you worry about that. He wins the election just like you won the election. We'll make sure of that. That's my department as of right now because you, Joe, you are finished. The election will be taken care of.