Messiah

  "Hope we can have lunch tomorrow, Gene. I'll give you a better picture then, the overall picture: and your part in it. Briefly, for now, the organization has been set up as a company under California law with Cave as president and myself, Iris and Clarissa as directors. I'm also secretary-treasurer but only for now. We're going to need a first-rate financial man to head our campaign fund and I'm working on several possibilities right now."

  "What's the . . . company called?" I asked.

  "Cavites, Inc. We didn't want to call it anything but that's the law here and since we intended to raise money we had to have a legal setup."

  "Got a nice sound, ah, Cavite," said Hastings, nodding.

  "What on earth should we have done if he'd had your name, Paul?" exclaimed Clarissa, to the indignation of both Hastings and Paul. They shut her up quickly.

  Paul went on in his smooth deep voice, "I've had a lot of experience, of course, but this is something completely new for me, a real challenge and one which I'm glad to meet head-on."

  "How did you get into it?" I asked.

  Paul pointed dramatically to Hastings. "Him! He took me to a meeting in Laguna last year. I was sold the first time. I got the message."

  There was a hush as we were allowed to contemplate this awesome information. Then, smiling in a fashion which he doubtless would have called "wry," the publicist continued: "I knew this was it. I contacted Cave immediately and found we talked the same language. He was all for the idea and so we incorporated. He said he wasn't interested in the organizational end and left that to us with Iris sort of representing him, though of course we all do since we're all Cavites. This thing is big and we're part of it." He almost smacked his lips.

  I listened, fascinated. "Anyway he's going to do the preaching part and we're going to handle the sales end, if you get what I mean. We're selling something which nobody else ever sold before and you know what that is?" He paused dramatically and we stared at him, a little stupidly. "Truth!" His voice was triumphant. "We're selling the truth about life and that's something that nobody, but nobody, has got."

  Clarissa broke the silence which had absorbed his last words. "You're simply out of this world, Paul! If I hadn't heard you, I'd never have believed it. But you don't have to sell us, dear; we're in on it too. Besides, I have to catch a plane." She looked at her watch. She stood up and we did too. She thanked Hastings for lunch and then, before she left the patio on his arm, she said: "Now you boys get on together and remember what I've told you. Gene must be used, and right away. Get him to write something dignified, for a magazine." We murmured assent. Clarissa said good-by and left the patio with Hastings. Her voice, shrill and hard, could be heard even after she left. "The truth about life! Oh, it's going to be priceless!"

  I looked quickly at Paul to see if he had heard but, if he had, he didn't betray the fact. He was looking at me intently, speculatively. "I think we're going to get along fine, Gene, just fine." Leaving me only a fumbled word or two of polite corroboration with which to express my sincere antipathy; then we went our separate ways.

  3

  I met Paul the next day at his office for a drink and not for lunch since, at the last minute, his secretary called me to say he was tied up and could I possibly come at five. I said that I could. I did.

  His offices occupied an entire floor of a small sky-scraper on the edge of Beverly Hills. I was shown through a series of rooms done in natural wood and beige with indirect lighting and the soft sound of Strauss waltzes piped in from all directions: the employees responded best to three-four time according to the current efficiency reports.

  Beneath an expensive but standard mobile, Paul stood, waiting for me in his office. His desk, a tiny affair of white marble on slender iron legs had been rolled off to one side and the office gave, as had been intended, the impression of being a small drawing room rather than a place of intense business. I was greeted warmly. My hand was shaken firmly. My eyes were met squarely for the regulation-length of time. Then we sat down on a couch which was like the open furry mouth of some great soft beast and his secretary rolled a portable bar toward us.

  "Name your poison," said the publicist genially. We agreed on a cocktail which he mixed with the usual comments one expects from a regular fellow.

  Lulled by the alcohol, by the room, disarmed by the familiar patter in which one made all the correct responses, our conversation as ritualistic as that of a French dinner party, I was not prepared for the abrupt: "You don't like me, do you, Gene?"

  Only once or twice before had anyone ever said this to me and each time that it happened I had vowed grimly that the next time, no matter where or with whom, I should answer with perfect candor, with merciless accuracy: "No, I don't." But since I am neither quick nor courageous, I murmured a pale denial.

  "It's all right, Gene. I know how you probably feel." And the monster was magnanimous; he treated me with pity. "We've got two different points of view. That's all. I have to make my way in this rat-race and you don't. You don't have to do anything, so you can afford to patronize us poor hustlers."

  "Patronize isn't quite the word." I was beginning to recover from the first shock. A crushing phrase or two occurred to me but the publicist knew his business and he changed course before I could begin my work of demolition.

  "Well, I just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings. In my business you get used to this sort of thing: occupational hazard, you might say. I've had to fight my way every inch and I know that a lot of people are going to be jostled in the process, which is just too bad for them." He smiled suddenly, drawing the sting. "But I have a hunch we're going to be seeing a lot of each other so we ought to start on a perfectly plain basis of understanding. You're on to me and I'm on to you." The man was diabolic in the way he could enrage yet not allow his adversary sufficient grounds for even a perfunctory defense. He moved rapidly, with a show of spurious reason which quite dazzled me. His was what, presently, he called "the common-sense view."

  I told him I had no objection to working with him; that everything I had heard about him impressed me; that he was wrong to suspect me of disdaining methods whose efficacy was so well-known. I perjured myself for several impassioned minutes and, on a rising note of coziness, we passed on to the problem in hand, congenial enemies for all time: the first round clearly his.

  "Clarissa got you into this?" He looked at me over his glass.

  "More or less. Clarissa to Iris to Cave was the precise play."

  "She got me to Cave last summer, or rather to Hastings first. I was sold right off. I think I told you that yesterday. This guy's got everything. Even aside from the message, he's the most remarkable salesman I've ever seen and believe me when I tell you there isn't anything I don't know about salesmen."

  I agreed that he was doubtless expert in these matters. "I went to about a dozen of those early meetings and I could see he was having the same effect on everyone, even on Catholics, people like that. Of course I don't know what happens when they get home but while they're there they're sold and that's all that matters because, in the next year, we're going to have him there, everywhere, and all the time."

  I told him I didn't exactly follow this metaphysic flight.

  "I mean we're going to have him on television, on movie screens, in the papers, so that everybody can feel the effect of his personality, just like he was there in person. This prayer-meeting stuff he's been doing is just a warming up. That's all. That kind of thing is outmoded: can't reach enough people even if you spoke at Madison Square every night for a year; but it's good practice, and it's got him started. Now the next move is a TV half-hour show once a week and when that gets started we're in."

  "Who's going to pay for all this?"

  "We've got more money than you can shake a stick at." He smiled briefly and refilled our glasses with a flourish. "I haven't been resting on my laurels and neither has Clarissa. We've got three of the richest men in L.A. drooling at the mouth for an opportunity to come in with u
s. They're sold; they've talked to him; they've heard him. That's been enough."

  "Will you sell soap on television at the same time?"

  "Come off it, Gene. Cave is the product."

  "Then in what way will you, or his sponsors, profit from selling him?"

  "In the first place what he says is the truth and it's meant a lot to me and also to them, to the tycoons: they're willing to do anything to put him across."

  "I should think that the possession of the truth and its attendant sense of virtue is in itself enough, easily spoiled by popularization," I said with chilling pomp.

  "Now that's a mighty selfish attitude to take. Sure it makes me happy to know at last nothing matters a hell of a lot since I'm apt to die any time and that's the end of yours truly; a nice quiet nothing, like sleeping pills after a busy day: all that's swell but it means a lot more to me to see the truth belong to everybody and also, let's face it, I'm ambitious. I like my work. I want to see this thing get big, and with me part of it. Life doesn't mean a thing and death is the only reality, like he says, but while we're living we've got to keep busy and get ahead and the best thing for me, I figured about six months ago, was to put Cave over on the public, which is just what I'm going to do. Anything wrong with that?"

  Since right and wrong had not yet been reformulated and codified, I gave him the comfort he hardly needed. "I see what you mean. I suppose you're right. Perhaps the motive is the same in every case, mine as well as yours: yet we've all experienced Cave and that should be enough."

  "No, we should all get behind it and push, bring it to the world."

  "That, of course, is where we're different: not that I don't intend to 'propagate the truth,' rather I shall do it for something to do, knowing that nothing matters, not even this knowledge matters." In my unction, I had stumbled upon the first of a series of paradoxes which were to amuse and obsess our philosophers for a generation. Paul gave me no opportunity to elaborate, however; his was the practical way and I followed. We spoke of means and ends.

  "Cave likes the idea of the half-hour show and as soon as we get all the wrinkles ironed out, buying good time, not just dead air, we'll make the first big announcement, along around January, I think. Until then we're trying to keep this out of the papers. Slow but sure; then fast and hard."

  "What sort of man is Cave?" I wanted very much to hear Paul's reaction to him: this was the practical man, the unobsessed.

  He was candid; he did not know. "How can you figure a guy like that out? At times he seems a little feeble-minded, this is between us by the way, and other times when he's talking to people, giving with the message, there's nothing like him."

  "What about his early life?"

  "Nobody knows very much. I've had a detective agency prepare a dossier on him. Does that surprise you? Well, I'm going far out on a limb for him and so are our rich friends. We had to be sure we weren't buying an ax-murderer or a bigamist or something."

  "Would that have made any difference to the message?"

  "No, I don't think so but it sure would have made it impossible for us to sell him on a big scale."

  "And what did they find?"

  "Not much. I'll let you read it. Take it home with you. Confidential of course and, as an officer of the company, I must ask you not to use any of it without clearing first with me."

  I agreed and his secretary was sent for. The dossier was a thin bound manuscript.

  "It's a carbon but I want it back. You won't find anything very striking but you ought to read it for the background. Never been married, no girl friends that anybody remembers . . . no boy friends either (what a headache that problem is in Hollywood, for a firm like ours). No police record. No tickets for double parking, even. A beautiful, beautiful record on which to build."

  "Perhaps a little negative."

  "That's what we like. As for the guy's character, his I.Q., your guess is as good as mine, probably better. When I'm with him alone, we talk about the campaign and he's very relaxed, very sensible, businesslike: doesn't preach or carry on. He seems to understand all the problems of our end. He's cooperative."

  "Can you look him straight in the eye?"

  Paul laughed. "Gives you the creeps, doesn't it? No, I guess I don't look at him very much. I'm glad you mentioned that because I've a hunch he's a hypnotist of some kind though there's no record of his ever having studied it. I think I'll get a psychologist to take a look at him."

  "Do you think he'll like that?"

  "Oh, he'll never know unless he's a mind reader. Somebody to sort of observe him at work. I've already had him checked out physically."

  "You're very thorough."

  "Have to be. He's got a duodenal ulcer and there's a danger of high blood pressure when he's older; otherwise he's in fine shape."

  "What do you want me to do first?"

  He became serious. "A pamphlet. You might make a high-brow magazine article out of it for the Readers' Digest or something first. We'll want a clear, simple statement of the Cavite philosophy."

  "Why don't you get him to write it?"

  "I've tried. He says he can't write anything. In fact he even hates to have his sermons taken down by a recorder. God knows why. But, in a way, it's all to the good because it means we can get all the talent we like to do the writing for us and that way, sooner or later, we can appeal to just about everybody."

  "Whom am I supposed to appeal to in this first pamphlet?"

  "The ordinary person, but make it as foolproof as you can; leave plenty of doors open so you can get out fast in case we switch the party line along the way."

  I laughed. "You're extraordinarily cynical."

  "Just practical. I had to learn everything the hard way. I was kicked around by some mighty expert kickers in my day."

  I checked his flow of reminiscence. "Tell me about Cave and Iris." This was the secondary mystery which had occupied my mind for several days. But Paul did not know or, if he did, would not say.

  "I think they're just good friends, like we say in these parts. Except that I doubt if anything is going on . . . they don't seem the type and she's so completely gone on what he has to say . . ."

  A long-legged girl secretary in discreet black entered the room unbidden and whispered something to the publicist. Paul started as though she had given him an electric shock from the thick carpeting. He spoke quickly: "Get Furlow. Tell him to stand bail. Also get a writ. I'll be right down there."

  She ran from the room. He pushed the bar away from him and it rolled aimlessly across the floor, its bottles and glasses chattering. Paul looked at me distractedly. "He's in jail. Cave's in jail."

  Five

  1

  Last night the noise of my heart's beating kept me awake until nearly dawn. Then, as the gray warm light of the morning patterned the floor, I fell asleep and dreamed uneasily of disaster, my dreams disturbed by the noise of jackals, by that jackal-headed god who hovers over me as these last days unfold confusedly before my eyes: it will end in heat and terror, alone beside a muddy river, all time as one and that soon gone. I awakened, breathless and cold, with a terror of the dying still ahead.

  After coffee and pills, those assorted pellets which seem to restore me for moments at a time to a false serenity, I put aside the nightmare world of the previous restless hours and idly examined the pages which I had written with an eye to rereading them straight through, to relive again for a time the old drama which is already, as I write, separating itself from my memory and becoming real only in the prose: I think now of these events as I have told them and not as they occur to me in memory. For the memory now is of pages and not of scenes or of actual human beings still existing in that baleful, tenebrous region of the imagination where fancy and fact together confuse even the most confident of narrators. I have, thus far at least, exorcised demons, and to have lost certain memories to my narrative relieves my system, like a cancer cut whole from a failing organism.

  The boy brought me my morning coffee and the lo
cal newspaper whose Arabic text pleases my eye though the sense, when I do translate it, is less than strange. I asked the boy if Mr Butler was awake and he said he had gone out already: these last few days I have kept to my room even for the evening meal, delaying the inevitable revelation as long as possible.

  After the boy left and while I drank coffee and looked out upon the river and the western hills, I was conscious of a sense of well-being which I have not often experienced in recent years. Perhaps the work of evoking the past has, in a sense, enhanced the present for me. I thought of the work done as life preserved, as part of me which will remain. Then, idly, I riffled the pages of John Cave's Testament for the first time since I had discovered my name had been expunged.

  The opening was the familiar one which I had composed so many years before in Cave's name. The time of divination: a straightforward account of the apparent wonders which had preceded the mission. No credence was given the supernatural but a good case was made (borrowed a little from the mental therapists) for the race's need of phenomena as a symptom of unease and boredom and anticipation. I flicked through the pages. An entire new part had been added which I did not recognize: still written as though by Cave but, obviously, it could not have been composed until at least a decade after his death.

  I read the new section carefully. Whoever had written it had been strongly under the influence of the pragmatic philosophers, though the style was somewhat inspirational: a combination of a guide to popularity crossed with the Koran. A whole system of ideal behavior was sketched broadly for the devout, so broadly as to be fairly useless though the commentary and the interpretive analysis of such lines as: "Property really belongs to the world though individuals may have temporary liens on certain sections," must be already prodigious. I was well into the metaphysics of the Cavites when there was a knock on my door. It was Butler, looking red and uncomfortable from the heat, a spotted red bandana tied, for some inscrutable reason, about his head in place of a hat. "Hope you don't mind my barging in like this but I finished a visit with the mayor earlier than I thought." He crumpled, on invitation, into a chair opposite me. He sighed gloomily. "This is going to be tough, tougher than I ever imagined back home."