“Jesus,” he said. “If I went home I might be spotted by the old lady or one of the kids.”
“You’ve got a family? Your children would be older than I!”
He took the bottle from his mouth and swallowed loudly. “You know how it is. They been taken care of. Military allotment.”
“Wouldn’t that have ended years ago?”
“But they got the GI insurance, I’m sure. Just before I went over the hill from Germany to here, see, I found a dead Nazi of the right size, hung my dog tags around his neck, and dressed him in my uniform. The ball-’n’-chain would’ve got ten grand. That was real mazooma in those days.”
“You could avoid her part of the country. But I think it’s imperative that you get away from here. Gregor and Company aren’t your kind of people, McCoy. You see what they’ve done with the prince’s cellarful of drinkables, and I hardly think they’ll look kindly on the sort of writing you do. Let’s head right for the airport.”
“I have to stop by the hotel and pick up my stuff,” said he, hurling the now empty bottle from the window and starting up the catarrhal engine.
We hurtled downhill. When we reached the bottom we proceeded to pass most of the places with which I had had some association during my short time in Saint Sebastian. Already these had been altered or were in the process of changing. Of the open-air markets, only a stall selling potatoes was open for business. The birds had disappeared, along with the fake fish and the fishwives. The pillory was gone from the square, and a number of workmen were erecting a scaffold that looked ominously as if it might well become a gallows. A cul-de-sac that greatly resembled the old Street of Words was now signposted as Truth Lane. At the moment the pavement in front of the writers’ pink building was being scrubbed, with soap and brush, on hands and knees, by what looked from my distance like some of the authors I had met, Spang, Boggs, and poor sybaritic Riesling, provoking whom I now regretted.
When we reached the hotel a Blond functionary, in gray suit and black tie, was behind the desk.
“Mr. Wren,” said he, and handed me an envelope he had taken from one of the pigeonholes behind him.
It was a cablegram from Langley, VA.
NOBODY NAMED RASMUSSEN AT THIS ADDRESS, AND NOTHING CALLED THE FIRM. BE ADVISED IT IS ILLEGAL TO IMPERSONATE AN EMPLOYEE OF A FEDERAL AGENCY. THE COMPANY
This was Rasmussen’s idea of a joke.
I peered at the man behind the desk. “Aren’t you Helmut?”
“Formerly. I’ve made a successful transition. Of course, I would have liked to be a secret policeman for the new regime, but I failed to pass the entrance exam.”
“A difficult test?”
“Yes. I was supposed to throttle one of my old colleagues with my bare hands.”
I shudderingly changed the subject. “You did a good job in washing the dye from your hair, unless that’s a wig. Which reminds me: what became of the old concierge?”
“Transferred.”
So despite his desperate efforts to climb onto the revolutionary bandwagon the fat opportunist had not been able to save himself.
“Do you now manage the hotel?”
“No, sir. I simply work here. One of Mr. Gregor’s associates is in charge. Do you wish to see him?”
Helmut made a swift movement below the counter and brought up a sheet of paper. “Your bill, sir.”
This was one obligation I could scan with a light heart. “Haha! I see you charged me two hundred dollars a day. I’d certainly object, if I actually had to pay that, for I have merely shared the room in which Mr. McCoy lives permanently, which is not even equipped with a bathroom, nor with twin beds. Not to mention that I haven’t stayed overnight in it. And then, haha, I would scarcely be paying you in US currency.”
Helmut’s expression remained impassive. “But you’re leaving the country, sir. I’m afraid your credit is effective only while you remain here, and we have no currency of our own.”
“Well, I don’t have two hundred dollars.”
Helmut smiled sadly. “If you will notice, the meals make it a bit more.”
I had quickly glanced at only the first line of the bill. I now raised it for a more careful study and saw the following itemization:
Café complet, Sebastian! Airlines $15.00
Lunch at Palace (prix fixe) 65.00
champagne 110.00
Late lunch, House of Authors (visitor’s rate) 45.00
Pesto & jug wine 35.00
Movie (Gats ‘n’Gals) 7.50
subtotal 277.50
41.63
value added tax 27.75
NYC sales tax 23.59
Total room & board 570.47
Revolutionary surtax 57.05
Grand Total $627.52
“I don’t know where I should begin,” I said, with the overwhelming sense of defeat I get when outrage exceeds a certain limit (this of course was a daily phenomenon on the city streets). “Perhaps by simply pointing out that charge which is among the least in money but the most heinous in its moral status, namely, New York City sales tax. I’m here, not there.”
Helmut said patiently, “But you’re from there.”
“Look, Gregor has asked me to leave the country. That, conjoined with the fact that I have no money whatever, should be enough to close the discussion.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said Helmut, “but it was Gregor himself who just phoned me to ask that I be sure to collect payment from you before you left. I’ll have to call the manager.”
He depressed a new bell push that had been installed at the edge of the desk, and in a trice a thickset man, with heavy eyebrows and a forehead that began an inch above them, came through a rear door and glowered at me.
Fortunately McCoy returned at the same moment, stepping off the elevator with a faded green duffle bag in one hand and my suitcase in the other. “I brought your shit, too,” said he.
“Oh, I didn’t wan—” I caught myself and, taking the valise from him, turned to the new manager of the Bristol Hotel. “I don’t have the money for the bill,” I said, “but as a man of your sophistication must surely know, it is traditional in such cases for the hostelry to confiscate the luggage.” I put the suitcase on the countertop and opened it. Quickly extracting the knitted shirt and old cords, which McCoy had thoughtfully included, I said, “Here’s an entire wardrobe for travel, in the most fashionable American colors, every item guaranteed to be of a synthetic material that will look new eternally.” I began to disrobe and add the items I had been wearing to the collection, and I donned the clothes in which I had been shanghaied.
I had finally made a sound judgment. An expression of delight came over the simian features of the manager as he inspected the gaudy garments, the madras jacket, the plastic shoes, the Day-Glo socks, etc.
He grunted his assent, and McCoy and I left the hotel. The veteran journalist was subdued and drove to the airport with none of his usual verve.
As opposed to the informality in which I had landed, we were now obliged to run the gantlet of a number of Blond functionaries in gray suits, with an occasional glimpse of one of the thugs imported by Gregor. An exit visa was waiting for me, but it had to be examined and stamped by one official after another in the terminal building, and when that process was finally completed, I was taken into a lavatory and forced to undergo a humiliating spread-cheek strip search, more thorough than that conducted by Blok: this one was managed by a Gregorian wearing a rubber glove.
McCoy, for whom no exit permit was ready, had been separated from me and taken elsewhere in the terminal. Under the old regime he would not have suffered this ordeal of red tape, but he was displaying a new docility. When he had not reappeared by the time I was finally ready to be led out to the airplane, I protested. The gray suits appealed, in what had apparently been established as the line of command, to the nearest of Gregor’s men, and the latter’s continuous brow came down over his small eyes as he drew a wicked-looking sap from his back pocket and rais
ed it to strike me.
But McCoy saved me one more time, reappearing from a door near at hand and, in the imperious style of old, shouting at the secret policeman. The man was startled, but no doubt hearing what he took as the note of authentic authority, he complied.
To me the vintage newsman said, “Look, Wren, I’ve just had a phone talk with Gregor. He can use my professional skills, as it happens. He offered me the job of Minister of Information. I’ll be writing about the achievements of the revolution.”
My expression must have reflected my thoughts.
“I don’t care what you want to call it,” McCoy said defensively. “I’m too old to go back to the States at this late date. This is a good job. Turns out that though Prohibition will be in effect for most of the population—except on certain holidays honoring phases of the revolution—you can drink all you want if you’re an insider.”
“Do you realize what you’re going to have to write?”
He let his mouth droop on one side, presumably to indicate wryness. “Piece of cake.”
Suddenly I saw the light. “It was your idea, wasn’t it? How’d you talk Gregor into it?”
“Hell, man, I’m an old pro! I assured him that in the dispatches I sent out to the world I would naturally fail to mention any atrocities committed by his crowd while exaggerating or inventing altogether the vicious outrages of the opposition, if there was any opposition: if there wasn’t, I’d invent one. Were he to find it necessary to massacre people en masse, I would present such events as counterattacks against forces that far outnumbered his own small band of gallant freedom fighters. I assured him I could also be counted on to honor the principle of revolutionary modesty and denounce the cult of personality, exalting only those members of the prevailing power elite and expunging the names of persons who, despite their contributions, had been outmaneuvered by their comrades.”
I realized I had underestimated the old fellow, but did wonder why he had wasted so many years at sex-reportage and not the kind that had a greater sway amongst persons of culture.
“All right, McCoy. Though much younger than you, I’m already too old for expressions of moral indignation.”
“Fuck you too, Wren,” said he, but rather blithely, without spite.
Two of the gray suits led me out onto the field where the airplane, a propeller-driven craft reminiscent of the old Icelandic machinery, was waiting. I climbed the steps, entered the cabin, and saw several recognizable persons.
I greeted the stewardess, who was back in the old familiar abbreviated uniform. “Back at your post, I see, Olga.”
She gave me the synthetic smile of the profession and the ritualistic welcome-on-board, then went forward, to the cockpit, with a trayful of coffee and cups.
I moved along the aisle to my favorite midship area and said good day to my nearby fellow passengers, the ex-concierge of the Hotel Bristol and the catamite bellhop for whom he had served as ponce. They were both now in subdued mufti.
I did not expect the man to be embarrassed, and he was not. “Well, Mr. Wren,” said he, “soon we’ll all be making our fortunes in New York.”
“Frankly,” I said, not without a tinge of bitterness, “I expect you will be quite at home there in no time.”
“Yes,” said he, hovering on the verge of a smug simper, “I’ve been offered a position as maître d’hôtel at Les Cinq Lettres.” This was one of Manhattan’s most expensive and therefore most publicized eateries, visited at least once a year by the human-interest reporter on each TV channel’s news team, who ordered a conspicuously nouvelle dish—say, sea urchins on artichoke pasta, blueberry-vinaigrette sauce—and was wry about the astronomical price.
“And him?” I indicated the former bellboy.
“My son,” said the concierge, “has been hired by Mr. Rasmussen for his male burlesque theater.”
“Your son...Rasmussen...” The astonishments continued to be greater as the sequence proceeded, for at that moment the man himself, Rasmussen in the flesh, emerged from one of the forward toilets. He had coarsely saved the zipping of his fly as an exhibit for his fellow passengers.
“Rasmussen!” I cried, going up the aisle. “You—”
He looked up from his crotch. “Wren! The very man I wanted to see. I just flew in, and I’m flying right back out with this load of Sebastiani boat people.” His complexion was as bad as I remembered.
“Are you or are you not CIA?”
“I never said we were. I always said Firm, not Company.”
“Then what’s the Firm?”
“Private enterprise, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe. You’ve used me, you’ve taken advantage of my patriotic feelings.”
“The term you’re looking for is ‘jerked off,’ I believe,” he said grinning. “Actually, if you were really patriotic, you ought to commend me.”
“For what?”
“What do you think, you dork? For bringing Saint Sebastian into the democratic camp.”
“Gregor is a totalitarian!”
“I don’t mean that shit,” Rasmussen said, rubbing some dandruff from his sandy hair. “I’m selling them a lot of seconds in stereo equipment, surplus canned goods, recalled models of certain cars, and, hey, can you beat this: a big stock of Nehru jackets, in storage in Jersey for fifteen years. And you helped. You oughta feel some pride.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll expose you, Rasmussen! There are investigative reporters who would kill for such a story as I can give them.”
He laughed negligently. “You’re welcome to try, but I think most of the media are in my pocket. See, we got the big star. Prince Sebastian signed an exclusive contract with us.”
“Sebastian the Twenty-third?”
“Of course. I already got him booked with dinner theaters, women’s-rights organizations, and self-realization groups across the country.”
“Then he’s been allowed to leave here?”
“It’s part of my package deal with Gregor and Company.”
“So you’re a talent agency?”
“Among other things. We’re a conglomerate, babe.”
No doubt they published Crotch, the paper for which McCoy had been foreign correspondent, as well. I didn’t ask. I was still seething. But there was nothing I could do about my hunger for revenge until we reached home, and frankly I had my doubts as to what I could do even then, for Rasmussen was obviously much closer to the ruthless center of the New York mainstream than I was likely ever to be. He could even afford to eat in such restaurants as the one in which the concierge would be maître d’. And he also could hold his own with the likes of Gregor. The people who know how to handle themselves seem to be similar, irrespective of ideology.
“I assume it was you who got him”—I indicated the former concierge—“his new job. Well, then, I—”
Rasmussen interrupted. “Isn’t he the perfect mater? Subservient to a clique of the initiates, yet mercilessly abusive to the humble stranger who wanders onto the premises under the erroneous impression that it is a foddering place.”
“What I was going to say was, if you would render such aid to a foreigner, perhaps you’d do a favor for a fellow American whose life you’ve disrupted in the interests of a commercial scheme of questionable morality. I don’t suppose any of your enterprises are involved with the theater?”
“Why, they certainly are!” said he. “We bring a lot of shows to Broadway.”
“Broadway? You don’t mean it!” One’s opportunities come in the most bizarre ways. What a grueling experience I had had to undergo to meet a producer at last!
“I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned this, but I am essentially a playwright.”
Rasmussen leaned very close to me and poked me in the chest with a rigid forefinger. “Let me tell you something, Wren: so is everybody.”
I had briefly become obsequious, but I bridled now. “You bastard you! You owe me something.”
He took a step back, and his eyes widened to show
even more discolor. “Where’d you get the spunk all of a sudden? I like that, Wren. It’ll take you farther than that habitual bitterness of yours. Read your Nietzsche and you’ll find that all the world’s ills can be traced to ressentiment.” He reached into an interior pocket and brought out a rectangle of pasteboard. “Bring your stuff up to the office when we get back. I can’t promise you more than a reading, but I’ll tell you this: it’ll be read by somebody who’s fluent in English.”
He gave me the card, which proved to be something called American Cousin Productions, with an address in Shubert Alley.
Not wishing to be near the concierge, I took a seat up front, but had not sat there long when Olga emerged from the cockpit with her tray. When she reached my row she stopped and said coldly, “I’m sorry, sir, but this is the First Class section.”
“I’m being ejected from the country,” I said. “Your country, which has just had a revolution in which you, the leader of the liberation movement, obviously played no part. And which has left you in the same position as before.”
“At least I don’t have to pretend to be a cretin any more,” said she, with what I must admit was a certain dignity. “Now, unless you can produce a First Class ticket, you must return to the Tourist section.”
“I don’t have a ticket of any kind.”
“But if you did have one,” she said stubbornly, “it would be Economy.”
I sullenly got up and she moved on. Farther along the aisle I encountered another familiar face: that of the cable clerk.
“Yes,” he said, before I could speak, “I’m exiling myself while it’s still possible. I’m heading for Hollywood. I want to take a tour of the stars’ homes, see where some of my favorites live: Ginny Simms, Gloria Jean, Bob Burns: I love to hear him play the bazooka.”
“A forward-looking project,” said I. “But did you know that your former sovereign is soon to become a popular lecturer in America?”
“That big palooka will take the cake!” the clerk told me enthusiastically. “He’s triple threat. Call him anything but late for breakfast. Who you think’s flying this egg-crate?”