"Kissinger will die when he reads it," Pomoroy said, looking no gloomier than ever.
Gold thought that might hurt sales. What pissed Gold off most now about the sly schmuck, apart from his coveted fame, was the plentitude of jobs from which he apparently could feed as hoggishly as he wanted, while Gold, on tenterhooks, still starved for only one.
"Why don't you get Pugh Biddle Conover to use his influence?" Ralph had suggested. "It would make things easier."
"Why can't you get your father to use his influence?" Gold complained to Andrea when he returned to Washington to fuck her again and act on Ralph's advice. "I bet that would make things easier."
Andrea responded keenly. "We'll go see him tomorrow. They must owe him something."
They owed Pugh Biddle Conover, as Gold learned by eventide of the ensuing day, a great deal, for the esteemed career diplomat had lied under oath seventeen times under five consecutive administrations and was venerated by all political factions in Washington for such evenhanded altruism.
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V/OME in, my lad, come in, come in," Pugh Biddle Conover sang out with phenomenal gusto from his souped-up wheelchair when his eyes fell on Gold. "I'm so sorry to see you. I have been praying almost daily that one or the other of us would be dead before it was necessary to meet again. You are touched by my sentiments. I can tell by your tears."
Sickening presentiments of the mortification that impended clouded Gold's hopes. He looked toward Andrea for inspiration.
"You must be much nicer, Daddy," she said, cupping her father's trim, courtly face in her hands from behind for a moment.
"I'm feeling poorly, my pet," Conover answered with a devilish smile, fairly bursting with vigor and health. "I was feeling fine until he walked in."
"That's the kind of joke, Daddy," said Andrea, "he may not understand."
"Enjoy your ride, my darling, and put your fears to rest. I promise we'll be as sportive as butterflies
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together while you're gone. By Jupiter, I swear I'll drink his fortune to the lees a hundred times if he fills my medicine cup to the brim and takes a spot himself." Conover dismissed her with a friendly wave.
Gold was glad to see her go. Appearing a foot or two taller with her riding crop, high boots, jodhpurs, scarlet dress coat, and black velvet hard hat, she seemed to embody a curious kind of emasculating sexuality that had set his teeth on edge. He thought of taking a riding crop to her buttocks that very night if her father did not suddenly prove more accommodating. Pouring whiskey from a decanter, Gold allowed his glance to roam past the panes of the French doors to the luxurious space outside and his thoughts to dwell upon himself as master soon of the gardens, driveways, stables, meadows, and woods through an orderly process of dynastic succession. His kids might benefit from the civilizing influence such short visits as he would allow them might have on their character. How the fuck would he meet the taxes and pay so many salaries?
"Enough?" he inquired with a secret smile when the large glass he was holding was filled practically to the top.
"A millimeter or two more and I'll be greatly in your debt," Conover replied politely with an astute look of amusement. "Don't mind if you spill a lot. I have money for more. Your health, you pig!" he shouted when Gold had brought him the glass of straight whiskey. He smacked his lips appreciatively after taking three or four tremendous swallows that had Gold watching as though stunned. "You've saved my life, you skunk. Once more you've given me cause for rejoicing, Goldstein—"
"Gold, sir."
"A thousand pardons for that unintentional slip, my friend. I would not offend you for the world. Today, dear Dr. Gold, it is my sincerest wish to see you thoroughly contented." Conover's trenchant look would have kindled mistrust in someone far more gullible than Gold with far less cause for suspecting the
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presence of evil intentions. "There is something you want from me today, isn't there?"
"I would not have intruded on you otherwise," said Gold in a manner both entreating and refined.
"Then speak freely, my friend. What is it you wish me to do for you, Sammy?"
Gold sighed heavily as another unavoidabie debacle appeared in the making. "Samuel Adams," he said. "Samuel Clemens, Samuel Morse, Uncle Sam, Samuel Johnson."
"But the earliest known appearance," countered Conover with laughter that was mellifluous and foxy, "is in the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. And that Samuel was anything but a Johnson, wasn't he?" Conover was seized with a mild fit of coughing. Gold refilled his empty glass. "You've taken a number of our very best names from us," said Conover, "but Sammy is not among them. Sidney, Irving, Harold, Morris, Seymour, Milton, Stanley, Norman—all of them noble, all no longer ours."
"Abraham Lincoln," said Gold, in spirited rebuttal. "Aaron Burr, Joseph Conrad, and Daniel Boone. Isaac Newton, Benjamin Harrison, Jonathan Swift, and Jesse James."
"Henry," returned Conover, "was the name of English kings. William was a conqueror and Harold the king he vanquished at Hastings. Now every Ikey, Abe, and Sammy goes around called Henry, Bill, and Bernard. We had a saint named Bernard. Now it's a name for dogs. I worked a while with your Henry Morgenthau and your Bernard Baruch. Your Bernie Baruch was an adviser to Presidents, but none of them listened. I've met many like that from all walks of life over a long period, and I've found that not one was as good a person as I was, or thought so either. If I were you, Goldilocks, instead of trying to ape me I would make it a point always to present myself as Jewish since you'll never get by as anything else."
Gold felt the blood rush to his face. "I don't have to
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take this from you, you know," he said with quiet rage, drawing himself up ostentatiously.
"Yes, yes, you do," said Pugh Biddle Conover, "if you want to get anything from me today, even food for lunch. I may even take the Porsche away from Andrea and make you walk back. I often wonder, Neiman Marcus, why anyone with brains and self-respect wants to be as shallow and unproductive as someone like me. Why should it trouble you for a second if I find you detestable? But I am boring you. I can see it in your eyes."
"Not at all," Gold answered very weakly. "It bothers me only," he lied, "because I'm going to marry your daughter. And because you have the influence, perhaps, to be of service to us with my career in government."
His host nodded affably, his shrewd eyes sparkling. "The first makes no difference to me. I am beyond prejudice, as you've surely noticed. You will never be invited here, and I hope I may always feel free never to come to your house. The help I would give you anyway, just to minimize the blot on my family tradition once you become part of it. It's not merely because you're Jewish that I don't like you, Kaminsky. I don't like you because you're human. Mankind stinks, Hymie, and Western mankind stinks no less foully than all the rest. You are not among the individuals, it pains me to note, whom I would judge among the exceptions. I can think of a number of gifted Jews I've admired, but I've never met any of them, which is all to their credit. It's the people who come seeking me out I can't stand, because I know they want something. Although I must confess, my dear Manishevitz, that I've never met anyone I've liked but a rich Protestant."
"Harris Rosenblatt?" suggested Gold with confidence.
"That Jew?"
Gold was pushed off stride. "He thinks he's a German."
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"What's the difference?"
"It made a huge and very tragic difference not too many years ago," said Gold with sincerity.
"It makes none to me now," answered Conover. "Harris Rosenblatt is a stuffy fool." With a pleased smile playing about his face, Conover lowered his pink lids a moment and chuckled in a way that rankled, as though nourishing his spirit on a ruthless and invigorating recollection. "He's bringing his daughter up to be a Protestant, giving her riding lessons and other things like that, which he mistakenly believes will elevate her in class and add to her physical attractiveness. He's thinking of
changing her name. To Blatt." He paused again, seized with a fit of choking laughter, and held his glass out for more. Conover drank deeply until his hilarity had subsided and his voice was restored. "I told him—I told him I'd be honored if he changed her name to mine, and he promised he would. That idiot. Does he really think I'd be honored if he named that little Jewgirl after me? But I pray you—don't misunderstand. I wish him luck. I wish him joy. I wish he fathers a baby boy."
Gold started as though stuck. His tone was icy. "I am pleased to see, sir, that your memory and taste for juvenile doggerel and inscription have not grown smaller since our last meeting."
Conover looked up at Gold from his wheelchair with complete surprise. "What are you talking about, young man?"
"You were speaking in rhymed verse."
"When?"
"Just now." There began to creep over Gold the feeling that he was an unwilling participant in an ominous hallucination.
Conover obviously was no longer entertained. "Have you gone mad?"
Gold floundered defensively. "A minute ago," he sputtered. "You do it all the time. Don't you realize?"
"I do no such thing, sir," Conover informed him. "I
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was discussing our acquaintance in common, Harris Rosenblatt, and expressing the hope that he fathers a boy. And when his boy has grown some curls, I hope he has a pair of girls. He shot a dog of mine last week, you know," Conover recalled with a flush of pleasure.
"He shot a dog?" Gold inquired numbly.
"Yes, he did." Conover was quaking again with a wheezing laughter, almost doubling over. "One of my favorite hounds, a gorgeous animal. I told him it was the custom after a good hunt to pick out the dog who had performed best and kill it. As an act of humility. And then I gave him his choice."
Gold gazed at him in fascinated horror. There had been times in the past when he'd found himself considering human beings he believed he could, in clearest conscience, put to death on the spot with his bare hands—the first ten fashion designers, for example, whose names appeared in the newspapers, or the next six interior decorators—but never in memory had he found himself within arm's reach of someone toward whom that temptation for homicide had been restrained by so frail a doubt.
"And he shot it?"
Conover nodded merrily. "In the head. Blew it to pieces with his shotgun. That fatuous fool. He can look thirty years ahead with his municipal bonds but not six inches in front of his face when it comes to caste. It will take at least three generations and much genetic good fortune for any of his descendants to pass. What does his wife look like?" Conover cocked his head with a cruel light filtering into his face. "Anything like a Hebress?"
"There's no such fucking word," Gold responded quietly, deciding there was nothing to forfeit by reacting with anything less than true emotion to the persistent goading of his skilled tormentor. "She does look Jewish, if that's what you mean."
"Then it will take at least four. You know, Dr. Gold—may I call you Doctor? Your co-religionist
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Henry Kissinger didn't seem to mind, but he was a German too, wasn't he?—but I digress. I was brought up to consider myself superior to most people, and nothing in life I've experienced has caused me to question that premise. So tell me, Lehman Brothers, why should I have to pretend I enjoy someone like you when I don't?"
Gold saw they were quite alone. "To save your life," he answered, putting both hands around the old man's neck and squeezing.
"That's the only good reason I've ever been given," said Pugh Biddle Conover in a much huskier voice after Gold had released him, gently rubbing his flesh where he had been hurt. "Tell me, my good friend, do you like niggers? I have three or four hundred working for me here and I don't care to learn the name of a single one. How many blackamoors do you number among your closest friends?"
The answer was none. "But that doesn't mean I feel they should be discriminated against."
"Nor do I feel that I should be discriminated against," said Conover. "If you want the right to avoid the close association of Negroes, why should I not have the right to keep myself distantly removed from people like you, if I choose to find you just as inferior and distasteful as you find them? And I do choose, Goldman, Sachs, Bache, Halsey, Stuart, and all the rest. The fact is that I want nothing to do with any Jews but my doctor, lawyer, dentist, accountant, bookkeeper, secretary, broker, butcher, travel agent, tailor, business partner, realtor, banker, financial manager, best friend, and spiritual adviser. One thing I like about all you Jews but Kissinger is that you've kept out of foreign policy because we wouldn't let you in. Did he really get down on his knees and pray with that Nixon? What a ludicrous picture, Kissinger on his knees with his head bowed and his hands pressed together devo-tionally. We laughed here for months. Do Jews always kneel when they pray? I thought they merely whimpered."
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"I wouldn't know," Gold said tersely. "I don't pray."
"You're praying today, though, aren't you?" Con-over retorted in mockery. "What position in government are you praying for?"
"Secretary of State," said Gold.
"Oh, I could get that one for you easily," Conover laughed softly. "But I'm not sure I will. Let's think about it seriously during lunch. Lunch should be stimulating. I always eat alone."
Gold ate by himself in a stupor. This time the pickings were slim: a pastrami and lettuce sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise and salt butter and a container of milk served with a straw. There was not a grain of doubt in Gold's mind that it was a diabolic intelligence of infinite capabilities that was toying with him.
The infamous repast concluded, Gold hid with his face in his hands in a corner of the garden until Andrea had returned from her ride and, after showering, was again attired in the dress and shoes in which she was once more feminine, familiar, gorgeous, and dull. She little suspected that her riding days were numbered. Gold was determined to put a stop to that recreational activity the day they married and did not question his ability to crush her spirit if need be and have her driveling in psychotherapy in a matter of months. Andrea often moved gracelessly, bumping into the corners of furniture with her unthinking lurches, and her knees were usually black and blue.
"I'm a Sagittarius," she explained.
Gold's response to this information had been saintly: he pretended he was deaf as a post. She had a habit of leaving things behind forgetfully that was no longer nourishing to his sense of virility and maturity and soon might grow maddening.
She could tell in a glance that his mood was embittered.
"He doesn't like me, Andrea. He just won't approve of me because I'm Jewish."
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"How did he find out?"
"Someone must have spilled the beans," said Gold in a voice that had never been drier.
"We'll tackle him together," said Andrea. "He'll be like an angel if he's had lots of wine."
If color of flesh were proof, Conover had steeped himself in casks, for his face and forehead were ruddier than ever when, with deafening blares from his Klaxon, he came careening around through the doorway of the drawing room in his motorized wheelchair and braked to a halt in a squealing stop that left rubber skid marks on the parquet floor. His manner was jaunty and his eyes fairly bubbled with excellent and insane spirits. Gold noted enviously that the accomplished epicure had changed from fitted tweed to a brown velvet blazer and had doffed his knotted neckerchief for a blue silk foulard that absolutely gleamed. Gold could not conceal from himself the dream that someday he might look and dress exactly that way.
"Ahoy, my children, halloo, halloo, halloo," he was hailing heartily even before he zoomed into view, balancing an emptied brandy snifter in one palm precariously. "How I long for the sight of my dear ones. Zounds and by thunder, what a pity they're not here. Andrea sweet, you must never, never again leave me alone with this sweating mute. I believe he comprehends. I can tell by his sagging jaw. I swear, it's a day's work to extract a
syllable from him. And he wouldn't give me any medicine." Here Conover's tone of buoyant admonition gave way to one of feeble complaint, and Gold could see he was in for another difficult time.
Andrea was not taking him seriously. "I'll get some."
"Let Schwartz do it. He wants to make a good impression. Tell me again what brings you here and what you want me to do."
"We're waiting for a government appointment," said Andrea, twisting flirtatiously a strand of her father's hair. "And Bruce thought—"
"Bruce," laughed Conover.
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"Bruce thought," Andrea pushed on gamely, "you might know people with influence who could speed things up."
"It was clever of you to sense that, Mr. Wise," said Conover as Gold approached.
"The name is Gold, sir. Bruce Gold. Whether you approve of that or not. And I'd be oh so grateful if you would make some effort to keep that in mind. After all, at least a minimum of civility is prescribed even between people who dislike each other."
Conover rested his gaze upon Gold for a minute as though seriously considering the application of those words and said:
"There are gold ships and there are silver ships, but the best ship is friendship. Your health, you frog. Let us both thank God we'll never sail together. Ah, now my mean spirits are banished. Ask anything, my lad, and I could not find it in my bountiful heart to refuse. Please continue, honest Abe."
Gold was suddenly too stubbornly proud to say a word.