Zuckerman Unbound

coldhearted betrayer of confessions and women, cutthroat caricaturist of your own mother --zuckerman, you're looking for bad trouble

Although his new number was unlisted, Zuckerman paid a service $30 a month to answer for him and find out who was calling. "How's our gorgeous writer?" asked Rochelle, when later that evening he phoned for the day's messages. She was the manager of the service and treated customers she'd never laid eyes on like old friends. "When are you going to drop around and give the girls a thrill?" Zuckerman replied that he gave them enough thrills when they listened in on his line. Good-natured banter, yet he also believed it was true. But better their eavesdropping than his having to fend off the unlikely people who seemed to have no trouble getting his unlisted number. There was supposed to be an outfit supplying the unlisted numbers of celebrities for 25 bucks a great name. Could even be in cahoots with his answering service. Could even be his answering service.

"The Rollmops King called. He's gone on you, hon. You're the Jewish Charles Dickens. Those were his words. You've hurt his feelings, Mr. Zuckerman, by not calling back." The Rollmops King thought Zuckerman should endorse appetizer snacks on a television commercial--an actress could play Mrs. Zuckerman if his own mother were unavailable for the job. "I can't help him out. Next message." "But you like her ring--it's in the book." "Everybody likes herring, Rochelle." "Why not do it, then?" "Next message." "The Italian. Twice in the morning, twice in the afternoon." If Zuckerman did not grant him an interview, the Italian, a Rome journalist, was going to be out of a job. "Do you think that's true, doll?" "I hope so." "He says he doesn't understand why you should treat him like this. He got very emotional when I told him I was only the service. You know what I'm afraid of? That he is going to make it up, a personal interview with Nathan Zuckerman, and they'll pass it off in Rome as the real thing." "Is that something he suggested as a possibility?" "He suggested a lot of possibilities. You know when an Italian gets going." "Anyone else ring?" "He left a question, Mr. Zuckerman. One question." "I've answered my last question. Who else?"

Laura's was the name he was waiting for.

"Melanie. Three times." "No last name?" "No. Just tell him Melanie collect from Rhode Island. He'll know." "It's a big state-- (continued on page 242)Zuckerman Unbound(continued from page 127) I don't." "You would if you accepted the charges. You'd know everything then," said Rochelle, turning throaty, "for only a dollar. After, you could deduct it." "I'd rather bank it." She liked that. "I don't blame you. You know how to accumulate it, Mr. Zuckerman. I'll bet the IRS doesn't take it from you like they do from me." "They take what they can get." "But what about tax shelters? Are you, by any chance, on to Macadamia nuts?" "No." "How about cattle?" "Rochelle, I can't help the Rollmops King or the Italian or Melanie, and much as I'd like to, I can't help you. I don't know anything about these shelters." "No shelters? In your bracket? You must be paying seventy cents back on your top dollar. What do you do, take 'em to the cleaners on entertainment?" "My entertaining is a grave disappointment to my accountant." "What do you do, then? No shelters, no entertainment, and on top of your ordinary tax, Johnson's surcharge. Pardon my saying it, but if this is really so, Mr. Zuckerman, Uncle Sam should get down on his knees and kiss your ass."

More or less what the investment specialist had told him earlier that day. He was a trim, tall, cultivated gentleman not much older than Zuckerman, who had a painting by Picasso hanging on his office wall. Mary Schevitz, sparring partner and wife to Zuckerman's agent, André, and would-be mother to André's clientele, had been hoping that Bill Wallace would influence Nathan by talking to him about money in his Brahmin accent. Wallace, too, had written a best-selling 'book, a witty attack on the securities establishment by a card-carrying Racquet Club member. According to Mary, a copy of Wallace's exposé, Profits Without Honor, could do wonders for the conscience pangs of those well-heeled Jewish investors who liked to consider themselves skeptical of the system.

You couldn't put anything over on Mary, not even on upper Park Avenue was she out of touch with the lower depths. Her mother had been an Irish washerwoman in the Bronx--the Irish washerwoman, to hear her tell it--and she had Zuckerman pegged as someone whose secret desire was to make it big with the genteel WASPs. That Zuckerman's in-laws were genteel WASPs, by washerwoman standards, was only the beginning. "You think," Mary told him, "that if you pretend not to care about money, nobody will mistake you for a Newark Yid." "I'm afraid there are other distinguishing features." "Don't cloud the issue with Jewish jokes. You know what I mean. A kike."

The Brahmin investment counselor couldn't have been more charming, Zuckerman couldn't have been more Brahmin and the Blue Period Picasso couldn't have cared less: Hear no money, see no money, think no money. The painting's theme of tragic suffering absolutely purified the air. Mary had a point. You couldn't imagine they were talking about what people begged for, lied for, murdered for, or even just worked for, nine to five. It was as though they were talking about nothing.

"André says you're more conservative in financial affairs than in your fiction."

Although Zuckerman was not so well dressed as the investment counselor, he was, for the occasion, no less soft-spoken. "In the books, I've got nothing to lose."

"No, no. You're just a sensible man, behaving as any sensible man would. You know nothing about money, you know you know nothing about money, and, understandably, you're reluctant to act."

For the next hour, as though it were opening day at the Harvard Business School, Wallace told Zuckerman about the fundamentals of capital investment and what happens to money when it is left too long in a shoe.

When Zuckerman got up to go, Wallace said mildly, "If you should ever want any help...." An afterthought.

"I will, indeed...."

They shook hands to signify that they understood not only each other but how to bend the world their way. It wasn't like this in Zuckerman's study.

"It may not seem so to look at me, but I'm familiar by now with the sort of goals artists set for themselves. I've tried to help out several of you people over the years."

Self-effacement. "You people" were three of the biggest names in American painting.

Wallace smiled. "None of them knew anything about stocks and bonds, but today they're all financially secure. So will their heirs be tomorrow. And not just from selling pictures. They no more want to worry about peddling than you do. Why should you? You should get on with your work, totally indifferent to the market place, and for as long as the work requires. 'When I think that I have gathered my fruit, I shall not refuse to sell it, nor shall I forfeit hand clapping if it is good. In the meantime, I do not wish to fleece the public. That's all there is to it.' Flaubert."

Not bad. Especially if the Schevitzes hadn't tipped Wallace off beforehand to the millionaire's soft spot.

"If we begin swapping great quotations disavowing everything but the integrity of my singularly pure vocation," said Zuckerman, "we'll be here till midnight tomorrow. Let me go home and talk it over with the shoe."

Of course, the one he wanted to talk it over with was Laura. There was everything to talk over with Laura, but her good sense he had lost, just when his was being challenged as never before. If he had consulted first with levelheaded Laura about leaving her, he might never have left. If they had sat down in his study, each with a yellow pad and a pencil, they could have laid out together in their usual orderly and practical way the utterly predictable consequences of starting life anew on the eve of the publication of Carnovsky. But he had left for the new life because, among other things, he could not bear to sit down anymore with a pad and a pencil to lay things out in their usual way.

It was more than two months since the movers had carried away from the downtown Bank Street floor-through his typewriter, his worktable, his orthopedic typing chair and four file cabinets crammed with abandoned manuscripts, forgotten journals, reading notes, news clippings and with hefty folders of correspondence dating back to college. They also carried away, by their estimate, nearly half a ton of books. While fair-minded Laura insisted that Nathan take with him half of everything they had accumulated together--down to towels, silverware and blankets--he insisted on taking nothing but the furnishings from his study. They were both in tears and holding hands while the issue was debated.

Carrying his books from one life into the next was nothing new to Zuckerman. He had left his family for Chicago in 1949, carrying in his suitcase the annotated works of Thomas Wolfe and Roget's Thesaurus. Four years later, age 20, he left Chicago with five cartons of the classics, bought secondhand out of his spending money, to be stored in his parents' attic while he served two years in the Army. In 1960, when he was divorced from Betsy, there were 30 cartons to be packed from shelves no longer his; in 1965, when he had been divorced from Virginia, there were just under 60 to cart away; in 1969, he left Bank Street with 81 boxes of books. To house them, new shelves 12 feet high had been built to his specifications along three walls of his new study; but although two months had passed, and although books were generally the first possession to find their proper place in his home, they remained this time in their boxes. Half a million pages untouched, unturned. The only book that seemed to exist was his own. And whenever he tried to forget it, someone reminded him.

Zuckerman had contracted for the carpentry, bought a color TV and an Oriental rug, all on the day he moved uptown. He was determined, despite the farewell tears, to be determined. But the Oriental rug constituted his first and his last stab at "decor." Purchases since had fallen way off: a pot, a pan, a dish, a towel for the dish, a shower curtain, a canvas chair, a Parsons table, a garbage pail--one thing at a time, and only when it became a necessity. After weeks on the fold-up cot from his old study, after weeks of wondering if leaving Laura hadn't been a terrible mistake, he gathered his strength and bought a real bed. At Bloomingdale's, while he stretched out on his back to see which brand was the firmest--while word traveled round the floor that Carnovsky, in person, could be seen trying out mattresses for God only knew who else or how many--Zuckerman told himself, Never mind, nothing lost, this hasn't changed a thing: If the day ever comes for the movers to truck the books back downtown, they'll take the new double bed, too. Laura and he could use it to replace the one on which they had been sleeping together, or not sleeping together, for nearly three years.

Oh, how Laura was loved and admired! Heartbroken mothers, thwarted fathers, desperate girlfriends, all regularly sent her presents out of gratitude for the support she was giving their dear ones hiding in Canada from the draft. The homemade preserves, she and Zuckerman ate at breakfast; the boxes of chocolate, she circulated among the neighborhood children; the touching items of knitted apparel, she took to the Quakers who ran the Peace and Reconciliation Thrift Shop on Macdougal Street. And the cards sent with the presents, the moving, anguished notes and letters, she kept as cherished memorabilia in her files.

How could you not love generous, devoted, thoughtful, kindhearted Laura? How could he not? Yet during their last months together in the Bank Street floor-through, virtually all they had left in common was the rented Xerox machine at the foot of their tub in the big tiled bathroom.

Laura's law office was in the parlor at the front of the apartment, his study in the spare room on the quiet courtyard at the back. During an ordinary productive day, he sometimes had to wait his turn at the bathroom door while Laura rushed to photocopy pages going out in the next mail. If Zuckerman had to copy something especially long, he would try to hold off until she took her late-night bath, so they could chat together while the pages dropped. One afternoon they even had intercourse on the bath mat beside the Xerox machine, but that was back when it was first installed. To be running into each other during the course of the day, manuscript pages in hand, was still something of a novelty then; many things were a novelty then. But by their last year, they hardly even had intercourse in bed. Laura's face was as sweet as ever, her breasts were as full as ever, and who could question that her heart was in the right place? Who could question her virtue, her rectitude, her purpose? But by the third year, he had come to wonder whether Laura's purpose wasn't the shield behind which he was still hiding his own, even from himself.

Although looking after her war resisters, deserters and conscientious objectors kept her working days, nights and weekends, she managed nonetheless to note in her calendar book the birthday of every child living on Bank Street, and would slip a little card into the family mailbox on the morning of the event: "From Laura and Nathan Z." The same for their friends, whose anniversaries and birthdays she also recorded there, along with the dates she was to fly to Toronto or appear at the courthouse in Foley Square. Once Zuckerman watched her negotiate the length of a crowded subway car to point out to a straphanger that his billfold was protruding from his back pocket--protruding, Zuckerman observed, because he was a drunk in rags and most likely had found it in somebody's leavings or lifted it off another drunk. Although Laura wore not a trace of make-up, although her only adornment was a tiny enamel dove pinned to her trench coat, the drunk seemed to take her for a sassy prostitute on the prowl and, clutching at his trousers, he told her to piss off. Zuckerman said afterward that maybe he'd had a point. Surely she could leave the drunks to the Salvation Army. They argued about her do-goodism. Zuckerman suggested there might be limits. "Why?" asked Laura flatly. This was in January, just three months before the publication of Carnovsky.

The following week, with nothing to keep him locked behind the study door where usually he spent his days complicating life for himself on paper, he packed a suitcase and began again to complicate his life in the world. With his page proofs and his suitcase, he moved into a hotel. His feeling for Laura was dead. Writing this book had finished it off. Or maybe finishing the book had given him time to look up at last and see what had died; that was the way it usually worked with his wives. The woman's too good for you, he told himself, reading page proofs on the bed in his hotel room. She is the reputable face that you turn toward the reputable, the face you have been turning toward them all your life. It isn't even Laura's virtue that bores you to tears--it's the reputable, responsible, drearily virtuous face that's your own. It should bore you. It is a goddamn disgrace. Coldhearted betrayer of the most intimate confessions, cutthroat caricaturist of your own loving parents, graphic reporter of encounters with women to whom you have been deeply bound by trust, by sex, by love--no, the virtue racket ill becomes you. It is simply weakness--childish, shame-ridden, indefensible weakness--that condemns you to prove about yourself a point that you only subvert by everything that enlivens your writing, so stop trying to prove it. Hers is the cause of righteousness, yours the art of depiction. It really shouldn't take half a lifetime for someone with your brains to figure out the difference.

In March, he moved into the new apartment in the East 80s, thereby separating himself by much of Manhattan from Laura's missionary zeal and moral reputation.

•

The mail.

He had decided that it would be better to end than to begin the day with his mail if he were ever going to get back to work; best to ignore the mail completely if he were ever going to get back to work. But how much more could he ignore, dismiss or try to elude, before he became one with the stiffs at the undertakers down the street?

The phone! Laura! He had left three messages in three days and heard nothing. But he was sure it was Laura, it had to be Laura, she was no less lonely or lost than he was. Yet, to be on the safe side, he waited for the service to pick up before quietly lifting the receiver.

Rochelle had to ask the caller several times to make himself more intelligible. Zuckerman, silently listening, couldn't understand him, either. The Italian in pursuit of his interview? The Rollmops King still hungry for his commercial? A man trying to speak like an animal or an animal trying to speak like a man? Hard to tell.

"Again, please," said Rochelle.

In touch with Zuckerman. Urgent. Put him on.

Rochelle asked him to leave a name and number.

Put him on.

Again she asked for a name and the connection was broken.

Zuckerman spoke up. "Hello, I'm on the line. What was that all about?"

"Oh, hello, Mr. Zuckerman."

"What was that? Do you have any idea?"

"It could just be a pervert, Mr. Zuckerman. I wouldn't worry."

She worked nights, she should know. "Don't you think it was somebody trying to disguise his voice?"

"Could be. Or on drugs. I wouldn't worry, Mr. Zuckerman."

The mail.

Eleven letters tonight--one from André's West Coast office and ten (still pretty much the daily average) forwarded to him in a large envelope from his publisher. Of these, six were addressed to Nathan Zuckerman, three to Gilbert Carnovsky; one, sent in care of the publishing house, was addressed simply to "The Enemy of the Jews" and had been forwarded to him unopened. They were awfully smart in the mail room.

The only letters at all tempting were those marked photo do not bend, and there was none in this batch. He had received five so far, the most intriguing still the first, from a young New Jersey secretary who had enclosed a color snapshot of herself, reclining in black underwear on her back lawn in Livingston, reading a novel by John Updike. An overturned tricycle in the corner of the picture seemed to belie the single status she claimed for herself in the attached curriculum vitae. However, investigation with his compact Oxford English Dictionary magnifying glass revealed no sign on the body that it had borne a child, or the least little care in the world. Could it be that the owner of the tricycle had just happened to be pedaling by and dismounted in haste when summoned to snap the picture? Zuckerman studied the photograph on and off for the better part of a morning before forwarding it to Massachusetts, along with a note asking if Updike would be good enough to reroute photographs of Zuckerman readers mistakenly sent to him.

From André's office, a column clipped out of Variety, initialed by the West Coast secretary, whose admiration for his work led her to send Zuckerman items from the show-business press that he might otherwise miss. The latest was underlined in red. "Independent Bob 'Sleepy' Lagoon paid close to a million for Nathan Zuckerman's unfinished sequel to the smasheroo...."

Oh, did he? What sequel? Who is Lagoon? Friend of Paté and Gibraltar? Why does she send me this stuff?

"Unfinished sequel--"

Oh, throw it away, laugh it off, you keep ducking when you should be smiling.

Dear Gilbert Carnovsky:

Forget about satisfaction. The question is not is Carnovsky happy, or even, does Carnovsky have the right to happiness? The question to ask yourself is this: Have I achieved all that could be done by me? A man must live independent of the barometer of happiness, or fail. A man must....

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

Il faut laver son linge sale en famille!

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

This letter is written in memory of those who suffered the horror of the Concentration Camps....

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

It is hardly possible to write of Jews with more bile and contempt and hatred....

The phone.

He reached for it this time without thinking--the way he used to get on the bus and go out for his dinner and walk by himself through the park. "Lorelei!" he cried into the receiver. As if that would summon her forth, and all their wonderful Bank Street boredom. His life back under control. His reputable face toward the world.

"Don't hang up, Zuckerman. Don't hang up unless you're looking for bad trouble."

The character he'd overheard with Rochelle. The hoarse, high-pitched voice, with the vaguely imbecilic into nation. Sounded like some large barking animal, yes, like some up-and-coming seal who had broken into human speech. It was the speech, supposedly, of the thickheaded.

"I have an important message for you, Zuckerman. You better listen carefully."

"Who is this?"

"I want some of the money."

"Which money?"

"Come off it. You're Nathan Zuckerman, Zuckerman. Your money."

"Look, this isn't entertaining, whoever you are. You can get in trouble like this, you know, even if the imitation is meant to be humorous. What is it you're supposed to be, some punch-drunk palooka or Marlon Brando?" It was all getting much too ridiculous. Hang up. Say nothing more and hang up.

But he couldn't--not after he heard the voice say, "Your mother lives at 1167 Silver Crescent Drive in Miami Beach. She lives in a condominium across the hall from your old cousin Essie and her husband, Mr. Metz, the bridge player. They live in 402, your mother lives in 401. A cleaning woman named Olivia comes in on Tuesdays. Friday nights, your mother has dinner with Essie and her crowd at the Century Beach. Sunday mornings, she goes to the temple to help with the bazaar. Thursday afternoons, there is her club. They sit by the pool and play canasta: Bea Wirth, Sylvia Adlerstein, Lily Sobol, Lily's sister-in-law Flora and your mother. Otherwise, she is visiting your old man in the nursing home. If you don't want her to disappear, you'll listen to what I have to say, and you won't waste time with cracks about my voice. This happens to be the voice that I was born with. Not everybody is perfect like you."

"Who is this?"

"I'm a fan. I admit it, despite the insults. I'm an admirer, Zuckerman. I'm somebody who has been following your career for years now. I've been waiting for a long time for you to hit it big with the public. I knew it would happen one day. It had to. You have a real talent. You make things come alive for people. Though, frankly, I don't think this is your best book."

"Oh, don't you?"

"Go ahead, put me down, but the depth isn't there. Flash, yes; depth, no. This is something you had to write to make a new beginning. So it's incomplete, it's raw, it's pyrotechnics. But I understand that. I even admire it. To try things a new way is the only way to grow. I see you growing enormously as a writer, if you don't lose your guts."

"And you'll grow with me, is that the idea?"

The mirthless laugh of the stage villain. "Haw. Haw. Haw."

Zuckerman hung up. Should have as soon as he heard who it was and was not. More of what he simply must become inured to. Trivial, meaningless, only to be expected--he hadn't, after all, written Tom Swift. Yes, Rochelle had the right idea. "Only some pervert, Mr. Zuckerman. I wouldn't worry."

Yet he wondered if he shouldn't dial the police. What was worrying was all that his caller had said about his mother in Florida. But since the Life cover story and the attention she subsequently got from the Miami papers, details on Nathan Zuckerman's mother were not so hard to come by, really, if you happened to be looking. She had herself successfully resisted all the determined efforts to flatter, beguile and bully her into an "exclusive" interview; it was lonely Flora Sobol, Lily's recently widowed sister-in-law, who'd been unable to hold out against the onslaught. Although afterward Flora insisted she had spoken with the newspaperwoman for only a few minutes on the phone, a half-page article had nonetheless appeared in the weekend amusement section of the Miami Herald, under the title "I Play Canasta With Carnovsky's Mother." Accompanying the article, a picture of lonely, pretty, aging Flora and her two Pekingese.

•

Some six weeks before publication--when he could begin to see the size of the success that was coming, and had intimations that the Hallelujah Chorus might not be entirely a pleasure from beginning to end--Zuckerman had flown down to Miami to prepare his mother for the reporters. As a result of what he told her over dinner, she was unable to get to sleep that night and had to cross the hall to Essie's apartment finally and ask if she could come in for a tranquilizer and a serious talk.

I am very proud of my son and that's all I have to say. Thank you so much and goodbye.

This was the line that she might be wisest to take when the journalists began phoning her. Of course, if she didn't mind the personal publicity, if she wanted her name in the papers--

"Darling, it's me you're talking to, not Elizabeth Taylor."

Whereupon, over their seafood dinner, he pretended that he was a newspaper reporter who had nothing better to do than call her up to ask about Nathan's toilet training. She, in turn, had to pretend that some such thing was going to be happening every day once his new novel appeared in the bookstores.

" 'But what about being Carnovsky's mother? Let's face it, Mrs. Zuckerman, this is who you are now.' "

" 'I have two fine sons I'm very proud of.' "

"That's good, Ma. If you want to put it that way, that's all right. Though you don't even have to say that much, if you don't want to. You can just laugh, if you like."

"In his face?"

"No, no, no need to insult anyone. That wouldn't be a good idea, either. I mean just lightly laugh it off. Or say nothing at all. Silence is fine, and most effective."

"All right."

"'Mrs. Zuckerman?'"

" 'Yes?' "

" 'The whole world wants to know. They've read in your boy's book all about Gilbert Carnovsky and his mother, and now they want to know from you, how does it feel to be so famous?' "

" 'I couldn't tell you. Thank you for your interest in my son.' "

"Ma, good enough. But the point I'm making is that you can say goodbye any time. They never quit, these people, so all you have to do is say goodbye and hang up."

" 'Goodbye.' "

"'But wait a minute, not yet, please, Mrs. Zuckerman! I've got to come back with this assignment. I've got a new baby, a new house, I have bills to pay--a story about Nathan could mean a big raise.' "

" 'Oh, I'm sure you'll get one anyway.' "

"Mother, that is excellent. Keep going."

" 'Thank you for calling. Goodbye.' "

" 'Mrs. Zuckerman, just two minutes off the record?' "

" 'Thank you, goodbye.' "

"'One minute. One line. Won't you please, Mrs. Z., one little line for my article about your remarkable son?' "

" 'Goodbye, goodbye now.' "

"Ma, the truth is you don't even have to keep saying goodbye. That's hard for a courteous person to understand. But by this time, you could go ahead and hang up without feeling that you've slighted anyone."

Over dessert he put her through it again, just to be sure she was ready. Any wonder that by midnight she needed a Valium?

He knew nothing about how disturbing a visit it had been until his last trip to Miami just three weeks ago. First they went to visit his father in the nursing home. Dr. Zuckerman could not really speak comprehensibly since the last stroke--just half-formed words and truncated syllables--and there were times when he didn't know at first who she was. He looked at her and moved his mouth to say "Molly," the name of his dead sister. That you could no longer tell just how much of anything he knew was what made her daily visits such hell. Nonetheless, she seemed that day to be looking better than she had in years, if not quite the curly-headed young madonna cuddling her somber first-born son in the 1935 seaside photograph framed on his father's bed table, certainly not so done in as to frighten you about her health. Ever since the trial of caring for his father had begun for her four years back--four years during which he wouldn't let her out of his sight--she had been looking far less like the energetic and indomitable mother from whom Nathan had inherited the lively burnish of his eyes (and the mild comedy of his profile) than like his gaunt, silent, defeated grandmother, the spectral widow of the tyrannical shopkeeper, her father.

When they got home, she had to lie down on the sofa with a cold cloth on her forehead.

"You look better, though, Ma."

"It's easier with him there. I hate to say it, Nathan. But I'm just beginning to feel a little like myself." He had been in the nursing home now for some 12 weeks.

"Of course it's easier," said her son. "That was the idea."

"Today was not a good day for him. I'm sorry you saw him like this."

"That's all right."

"But he knew who you were, I'm sure."

Zuckerman wasn't so sure, but said, "I know he did."

"I only wish he knew how wonderful you're doing. All this success. But it's really too much, dear, to explain in his condition."

"And it's all right, too, if he doesn't know. The best thing is to let him rest comfortably."

Here she lowered the cloth over her eyes. She was beginning to weep and didn't want him to see.

"What is it, Ma?"

"It's that I'm so relieved, really, about you. I never told you, I kept it to myself, but the day you flew down to tell me all that was going to happen because of the book, I thought--well, I thought you were headed for a terrible fall. I thought maybe it was because you didn't have Daddy now as somebody who was always there behind you--that you didn't on your own know which way to turn. And then Mr. Metz"--the new husband of Dr. Zuckerman's old cousin Essie--"he said it sounded to him like 'delusions of grandeur.' He doesn't mean any harm, Mr. Metz--he goes every week to read Daddy 'The News in Review' from the Sunday paper. He's a wonderful man, but that was his opinion. And then Essie started in. She said that all his life, your daddy has had delusions of grandeur--that even when they were children together, he wasn't happy unless he was telling everybody how to live and butting in on what was none of his business. This is Essie, mind you, with that mouth she has on her. I said to her, 'Essie, let's leave your argument with Victor out of this. Since the man can't even talk anymore to make himself understood, maybe that should put a stop to it.' But what they said scared the daylights out of me, sweetheart. I thought, Maybe it's true--something in his make-up that he got from his father. But I should have known better. My big boy is nobody's fool. The way you are taking all this is just wonderful. People down here ask me, 'What is he like now, with his picture in all the papers?' And I tell them that you are somebody who never put on airs and never will."

"But, Ma, you mustn't let them get you down with this business about Carnovsky's mother."

All at once, she was like a child at whose bedside he was sitting, a child who'd been cruelly teased at school and had come home in tears, running a fever.

Smiling bravely, removing the cloth and showing him the burnish of his eyes in her head, she said, "I try not to."

"But it's hard."

"But sometimes it's hard, darling, I have to admit it. The newspapers I can deal with, thanks to you. You would be proud of me."

To the end of her sentence he silently affixed the word Papa. He had known her papa, and how he'd made her and her sisters toe the line. First the domineering father, then the domineering father-dominated husband. For parents Zuckerman could claim the world's most obedient daughter and son.

"Oh, you should hear me, Nathan. I'm courteous, of course, but I cut them dead, exactly the way you said. But with people I meet socially, it's different. People say to me--and right out, without a second thought--'I didn't know you were crazy like that, Selma.' I tell them I'm not. I tell them what you told me: that it's a story, that she is a character in a book. So they say, 'Why does he write a story like that, unless it's true?' And then, really, what can I say--that they'll believe?"

"Silence, Ma. Don't say anything."

"But you can't, Nathan. If you say nothing, it doesn't work. Then they're sure they're right."

"Then tell them your boy is a madman. Tell them you're not responsible for the things that come into his head. Tell them you're lucky he doesn't make up things even worse. That's not far from the truth. Mother, you know you are yourself and not Mrs. Carnovsky, and I know you are yourself and not Mrs. Carnovsky. You and I know that it was very nearly heaven thirty years ago."

"Oh, darling, is that true?"

"Absolutely."

"But that isn't what the book says. I mean, that isn't what people think, who read it. They think it even if they don't read it."

"There's nothing to do about what people think, except to pay as little attention as possible."

"At the pool, when I'm not there, they say you won't have anything to do with me. Can you believe that? They tell this to Essie. Some of them say you won't have anything to do with me, some of them say I won't have anything to do with you, and the others say I'm living on Easy Street because of all the money you send me. I'm supposed to have a Cadillac, courtesy of my millionaire son. What do you think of that? Essie tells them that I don't even drive, but that doesn't stop them. The Cadillac has a colored driver."

"Next they'll be saying he's your lover."

"I wouldn't be surprised if they say it already. They say everything. Every day I hear another story. Some I wouldn't even repeat. Thank God your father isn't able to hear them."

"Maybe Essie shouldn't pass on to you what people say. If you want, I'll tell her that."

"There was a discussion of your book at our Jewish Center."

"Was there?"

"Darling, Essie says it is already the main topic of discussion at every Jewish wedding, bar mitzvah, social club, women's club, sisterhood meeting and closing luncheon in America. I don't know the details about everywhere else, but at our center, it wound up a discussion of you. Essie and Mr. Metz went. I thought I was better off minding my own business at home. Somebody named Posner gave the lecture. Then there was the discussion. Do you know him, Nathan? Essie says he's a boy your age."

"I don't know him, no."

"Afterward, Essie went up and gave him a piece of her mind. You know Essie, when she gets going. She's driven Daddy crazy all his life, but she is your biggest defender. Of course, she's never read a book in her life, but that wouldn't stop Essie. She says you are just like her, and you were even when you wrote about her and Meema Chaya's will. You say what's on your mind and the hell with everybody else."

"That's Essie and me, Momma."

She smiled. "Always a joke." Whether or not the joke had eased her of her burden was something else. "Nathan, Mr. Metz's daughter was down here last week to see him, and she did the sweetest thing. She's a schoolteacher in Philadelphia, pretty as a picture, and she took me aside in the sweetest way to tell me that I shouldn't listen to what people say about the subject matter, that she and her husband think the book is beautifully written. And he is a lawyer. She told me that you are one of the most important living writers, not just in America but the entire world. What do you think of that?"

"It's very nice."

"Oh, I love you, my darling. You are my darling boy, and whatever you do is right. I only wish Daddy was well enough to enjoy all your fame."

"It might have distressed him some, you know."

"He always defended you, always."

"If so, it couldn't have been easy for him."

"But he defended you."

"Good."

"When you were beginning, he was unhappy about some of the things you wrote--involving Cousin Sidney and the friends he had. He wasn't used to it, so he made mistakes. I would never dare to say it to him or he would chop my head off, but I can say it to you: Your father was a doer, your father had a mission in life for which everybody loved and respected him, but sometimes, I know it, in his excitement to do right, he mistakenly did the wrong thing. But whether you realize it or not, you made him understand. This is true. Behind your back, he repeated the very words you used, even if with you he got upset sometimes and argued. That was just a habit. From being your father. But to other people, he was behind you like a wall until the day he got sick." He could hear her voice beginning to weaken again. "Of course, you know and I know, once he got into the wheelchair, he was unfortunately a different person."

"What is it, Ma?"

"Oh, just everything at once."

"You mean Laura?" He had finally told her--weeks after leaving Bank Street--that he and Laura were no longer together. He had waited until she was over the immediate shock of having a husband move into a nursing home from which he would never return to live with her. One thing at a time he had thought, though, as it turned out, to her it was still everything at once. Of course, it was just as well that his father wasn't in any shape to get the news; all of them, including Laura, agreed he needn't know, especially as, in the past, each time Zuckerman left a wife, his father brooded and suffered and grieved, and then, utterly cast down, got on the phone in the middle of the night to apologize to the "poor girl" for his son. There had been scenes about those calls, scenes that summoned up the worst of the son's adolescence.

"You're sure she's all right?" his mother asked.

"She's fine. She's got her work. You don't have to worry about Laura."

"And you'll get divorced, Nathan? Again?"

"Ma, I'm sorry for everyone that I'm compiling such a bad marital record. On dark days I, too, put myself down for not being an ideal member of my sex. But I just don't have the aptitude for a binding, sentimental attachment to one woman for life. I lose interest and I have to go. Maybe my aptitude is for changing partners--one lovely new woman every five years. Try to see it that way. They're all wonderful, beautiful, devoted girls, you know. There's that to be said for me. I don't bring anything home but the best."

"But I never said you had a bad record--oh, my darling, not me, never, never, never in a million years. You are my son and whatever you decide is right. However you live is right. As long as you know what you're doing."

"I do."

"And as long as you know that it is right."

"It is."

"Then we are behind you. We have been behind you from the very beginning. As Daddy always says, 'What is a family if they don't stick together?' "

Needless to say, he wasn't the best person to ask.

•

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

I read my first erotic book seven years ago when I was 13. Then there was a lapse in sexy (and emotionally stimulating) reading as I had the real thing (seven years with the same putz). When that ended last winter it was back to books to forget, to remember, to escape. It was heavy for a while, so I read your book for a laugh. And now I feel as if I'm in love. Well, maybe not love but something as intense. Mr. Zuckerman (dare I call you Nathan?), you are just a definite up emotionally for me--as well as an excellent way to increase my vocabulary. Call me crazy (my friends call me Crazy Julia), call me a literary groupie, but you are truly getting through. You are as therapeutic as my shrink--and only $8.95 per session. In these times when a lot of what people communicate to each other is nothing but grief, guilt, hate, and the like, I thought I'd express my gratitude, appreciation and love for you, your great wit, your fine mind and everything you stand for.

Oh, yes, and one last motive for writing you. Would you consider doing something as impulsive as accompanying me to Europe, say during semester break? I'm somewhat familiar with Switzerland (I have a secret numbered account in the largest Swiss bank) and would love to turn you on to some of the most surreal and moving experiences to be had in that country. We can visit the house in which Thomas Mann spent his last years. His widow and son still live there, in a town called Kilchberg in the canton of Zurich. We can visit the famous chocolate factories, the sound Swiss banking institutions, the mountains, the lakes, the waterfall at which Sherlock Holmes met his destiny--need I go on?

Not-so-crazy Julia, Numbered Acc't 776043

Dear Julia:

I am not so crazy either and will have to say no to your invitation. I'm sure you are a completely harmless person, but these are strange times, in America if not Switzerland. I wish I could be friendlier, since you sound friendly and affectionate yourself, not to mention playful and rich. But I'm afraid you'll have to go to the chocolate factories without me.

Yours, Nathan Zuckerman, Bankers Trust 4863589

Dear Nathan,

I was so sad to leave without saying goodbye. But when Fate changes horses the rider is carried along.

But this was a real letter, from someone he knew. Signed "C." He found the envelope in his wastebasket. It had been mailed several days earlier in Havana.

Dear Nathan,

I was so sad to leave without saying goodbye. But when Fate changes horses the rider is carried along. And so I am here. Mary had always wanted us to meet, and I shall always feel that my life has been enriched by the moment--however brief--of knowing you.

Vague memories, nothing but memories.

C.

"Vague memories, nothing but memories" was Yeats. "Fate changes horses" was Byron. Otherwise, he thought uncharitably, it looked to be the form letter. Even the intimate "C." That stood for Caesara O'Shea, keeper of the screen's softest, most inviting lilt, of a languishing air so sad and so seductive that a Warner Bros. wit had accounted for the box-office magic thus: "All the sorrow of her race and then those splendid tits." Two weeks earlier, Caesara had come to New York from her home in Connemara, and on the phone, Zuckerman had been summoned by his agent to be her dinner partner. More Carnovsky booty. She had asked specifically for him.

"You'll know most of the people," said André.

"And Caesara you should know," Mary told him. "It's about time."

"Why?" asked Zuckerman.

"Oh, Nathan," said Mary, "don't look down your nose because she's a sex symbol to the hordes. So are you to the hordes, in case you haven't heard."

"Don't be intimidated by the beauty," said André. "Or the press. Everybody gets nasty or shy, and she's nobody to be afraid of. She's a very unassuming, gentle and intelligent woman. When she's in Ireland, all she does is cook and garden and sit at night and read in front of the fire. In New York, she's content to walk in the park or just go out to a movie."

"And she's had terrible luck with men," said Mary, "men I'd like to murder, really. Listen to me about you and women, Nathan, because you're as bad as she is. I've watched you mismated three times now. You married the fey elfin dancer you could crush with one finger, you had the neurotic society girl betraying her class and, as far as I could tell, this last one was actually a certified public saint. Frankly, how you picked that mother superior I'll never know. But then, there's a little mother superior in you, too, isn't there? Or, maybe that's part of the act. Keeping the Kike at Bay. More Goyish than the Puritan Fathers."

"Right to the heart of my mystery. Can't fool Mary."

"I don't think you fool yourself. For God's sake, come out from behind all that disgusting highbrow disapproval of the fallen people having fun. What's the sense of it after that book? You've thrown all that professor shit precisely where it belongs--now enjoy a real man's life. And this time with a certified woman. Do you really not know what you're getting in Caesara O'Shea? Aside from the most beautiful thing in creation? Dignity, Nathan. Bravery. Strength. Poetry. My God, it's the very heart of Ireland you're getting!"

"Mary, I read the movie magazines, too. From the sound of it, her grandfather cut the turf to warm the hut of Mary Magdalene. I may be a comedown from all that."

"Nathan," said André, "I promise you, she'll be as unsure of herself as you are."

"Who isn't," replied Zuckerman, "aside from Mary and Muhammad Ali?"

"He means," said Mary, "that you can be yourself with her."

"And who's that?"

"You'll come up with something," André assured him.

•

Her gown was a spectacular composition of flame-colored veils and painted wooden beads and cockatoo feathers; her hair hung in a heavy black braid down her back; and her eyes were her eyes. Serving herself the haddock mousse at dinner, she dropped a bit on the floor, making it easier for him to look directly into the celebrated Irish eyes and say things that made sense. Easier until he realized that maybe that was why she'd dropped it. Every time he turned her way, there was that face from those movies.

Not until after dinner, when they were able to move away from the other guests, and from the presumptuous intimacy of place cards inches apart, could they manage to speak intimately. It lasted only five minutes but did not lack for fervor on either side. They had both read Ellmann's biography of Joyce and, from the sound of it, had never dared to confess the depths of their admiration for the book to anyone before; from the hushed tones, you might have thought that to do so was a criminal offense. Zuckerman revealed that he had once met Professor Ellmann up at Yale. They had actually met at a literary ceremony in New York where each had been awarded a prize, but he didn't want to appear to be trying to impress, given how hard he was trying.

His meeting Ellmann did the trick. He couldn't have come off better had it been Joyce himself. Zuckerman's temples were damp with perspiration, and Caesara had two hands drawn emotionally to her breasts. It was then that he asked if he could see her home later. She whispered yes, twice, mistily, then sailed in her veils across the room--she didn't want to appear oblivious to all the other guests she had been utterly oblivious to. So she put it.

Unsure of herself? A case could be made against that.

On the street, while Zuckerman waved to attract a cab a block away, a limousine pulled up. "Take me home in this?" Caesara asked.

Curled down beside him in the back seat, she explained that she could call day or night from Ireland and Mary was there to buck her up and tell her whom to hate and revile. He said he got much the same service in New York. She told him about all that the Schevitzes had done for her three children and he told her about convalescing at their Southampton guesthouse after having nearly died of a burst appendix. He knew it sounded as though he had almost died of wounds incurred at Byron's side during the struggle for Greek independence, but talking to Caesara O'Shea in the velvety back seat of a dark limousine, you began yourself to sound a little like Caesara O'Shea in the velvety back seat of a dark limousine. Appendicitis as a passionate, poetic drama. He heard himself being awfully sensitive about the "slant of light" on the Southampton beach during his convalescent morning walks. On and on about the slant of light, when, according to an item in that day's paper, a certain scene in his book was considered responsible for a 50 percent increase in the sale of black-silk underwear at smart New York department stores.

"You'll come up with something," André had said. And this was it: the slant of light and my operation.

He asked whom she was named for, if anyone. Who was Caesara the First?

In the softest voice imaginable, she told him. "For a Hebrew woman, the niece of Noah. She sought refuge in Ireland from the universal flood. My people," she said, her white hand to her white throat, "were the first to be interred there. The first of the Irish ghosts."

"You believe in ghosts?" And why not? What better question to ask? How the movement should respond if Nixon mines Haiphong harbor? Haven't you been over that enough with Laura? Just look at her.

"Let's say the ghosts believe in me," she replied.

"I can understand why they would," said Zuckerman. And why not? Fun was fun. A real man's life.

Still, he made no attempt to embrace her, neither while she was curled girlishly in the back seat, feeding him her gentle, harmless, hypnotic blarney, nor when she stood nobly before him at the doorway of the Pierre, a woman nearly his height, with her black braid and her heavy gold earrings and her gown of veils and beads and feathers, looking in all like the pagan goddess they made the sacrifices for in a movie of hers he'd seen at college. Perhaps he might have drawn her to him, had he not noticed, on entering the car, a copy of Carnovsky lying on the seat beside the driver. The mustached young man must have been reading to pass the time while Miss O'Shea was at dinner. A hip Smilin' Jack in sunglasses and full livery, his nose in Zuckerman's book. No, he wasn't about to impersonate his own hungering hero for the entertainment of the fans.

Under the lights of the hotel portico, with Smilin' Jack watching sideways from the car, he settled for shaking her hand. Mustn't confuse the driver about the hypothetical nature of fiction. Important to have that straight for the seminars back at the garage.

Zuckerman felt precisely the high-brow fool that Mary Schevitz had him down for. "After all you've been through," he heard himself tell her, "you must be a little suspicious of men."

With her free hand, she drew her silk shawl to her throat. "On the contrary," she assured him, "I admire men. I wish I could have been one."

"That seems an unlikely wish coming from you."

"If I were a man, I could have protected my mother. I could have stood up for her against my father. He drank whiskey and he beat her."

To which Zuckerman could only think to reply, "Good night, Caesara." He kissed her lightly. Staggering to see that face coming up at his. It was like kissing a billboard.

He watched her disappear into the hotel. If only he were Carnovsky. Instead, he would go home and write it all down. Instead of having Caesara, he would have his notes.

"Look--" he called, rushing after her into the lobby.

She turned and smiled. "I thought you were hurrying away to see Professor Ellmann."

"I have a proposal. Suppose we cut the crap, as best we can, and have a nightcap."

"Both would be nice."

"Where shall we try it?"

"Why not where all the writers go?"

"The New York Public Library? At this hour?"

She was close to him now, on his arm, heading back out the door to where the car was still waiting. The driver knew more than Zuckerman did about Zuckerman. Or about the lure of Miss O'Shea.

"No," she said, "that place they all love so on Second Avenue."

"Elaine's? Oh, I may not be the best person to show you Elaine's. The time I was there with my wife"--he had gone for dinner one evening with Laura, to see what it was all about--"we were seated as close to the lavatory as possible without actually having the hand-towel concession. You're better off going with Salinger when he gets to town."

"Salinger, Nathan, won't be seen anywhere but El Morocco."

Couples filled the doorway waiting to get in, customers were lined up four-deep at the bar waiting for a table, but this time the Zuckerman party was seated with a flourish of the manager's arms, and so far from the toilet, that had he needed it in a hurry, he might have been at a serious disadvantage.

"Your star has risen," whispered Caesara. Everyone looked at her while she pretended that they were still talking alone in the car. "People in line out on the street. You'd think it was a Sadean brothel," she said, "instead of just somewhere where they stir up the mud. How I hate these places."

"You do? Why did we come, then?"

"I thought it would be interesting watching you hate it, too."

"Hate this? To me it's a great night out."

"I see that by the grinding jaws."

"Sitting here with you," Zuckerman told her, "I can feel my face actually blurring out. I feel like the out-of-focus signpost in a news photo of a head-on collision. Does this happen wherever you go?"

"No, not in the rain in Connemara."

Although they hadn't yet ordered, a waiter arrived with champagne. It was from a smiling gentleman at a corner table.

"For you?" Zuckerman asked Caesara, "or me?" and meanwhile rose half out of his chair to acknowledge the generosity.

"Either way," said Caesare, "you'd better go over--they can turn on you if you don't."

Zuckerman crossed between the tables to shake his hand: a happy, heavy-set man, deeply tanned, who introduced the deeply tanned woman with him as his wife.

"Kind of you," said Zuckerman.

"My pleasure. I just want to tell you what a great job you've done with Miss O'Shea."

"Thank you."

"She only has to come on in that dress and she's got the room in the palm of her hand. She looks great. She's still got it. The tragic empress of sex. After all this time. You've done a wonderful job with her."

"Who?" asked Caesara, when Zuckerman returned.

"You."

"What were you talking about?"

"The great job I've done with you. I'm either your hairdresser or your agent."

The waiter uncorked the champagne and they raised their glasses to the corner table. "Now tell me, Nathan, who are the other famous people, aside from yourself? Who's that famous person?"

He knew she knew--everybody in the world knew--but they might as well start having a good time. It's why they were there instead of at the public library.

"That," he said, "is a novelist. The establishment roughneck."

"And the man drinking with him?"

"That's a tough journalist with a tender heart. The novelist's loyal second, O'Platitudo."

"Ah, I knew," said Caesara, with the lilt, "I knew there would be more to Zuckerman than nice manners and clean shoes. Go on, why don't you? Who is that with the hair and the bangles?"

"That is the auteur, the half-wits' intellectual. The guileless girl is his leading lady, the intellectuals' half-wit. That's the editor, the gentiles' Jew, and that man who is looking at you devouringly is the mayor of New York, the Jews' gentile."

"And I had better tell you," said Caesara, "in case he makes a scene, the man at the table behind him, looking furtively at you, is the father of my last child."

"Is it really?"

"I know him by the sinking of my stomach."

"Why? How is he looking at you?"

"He isn't. He won't. I was his 'woman.' I gave myself to him and he'll never forgive me for it. He's not merely a monster, he's a great moralist, too. Son of a sainted peasant mother who can't thank Jesus enough for all her suffering. I conceived a child by him and refused to allow him to acknowledge it. He waited outside the delivery room with a lawyer. He had papers demanding that the child bear his family's honored name. I would rather have strangled it in the crib. They had to call the police to get him to stop shouting and throw him out. All in the Los Angeles Times."

"I didn't recognize him with the heavy glasses and the banker's suit. The Latin life force."

She corrected him. "The Latin shit. The Latin devious lunatic and liar."

"How did you get involved with him?"

"How do I get involved with the devious lunatics and liars? I work with the he-men in the movies, that's how. Lonely on location, in some ghastly hotel, in some strange place where you can't speak the language--in this case, from my window the view was of two garbage cans and three rats crawling around. Then it starts to rain and you wait on call for days, and if the he-man wants to charm you and see that you have a good time, and if you don't want to sit reading in your room for sixteen hours a day, and if you want somebody to have dinner with in this ghastly provincial hotel...."

"You could have gotten rid of the child."

"I could have. I could have gotten rid of three children by now. But I wasn't raised to get rid of children. I was raised to be their mother. Either that or a nun. Irish girls aren't raised for any of this."

"You seem to the world to do all right."

"So do you. This fame is a very crude thing, Nathan. You have to have more insolence than I do to pull it off. You have to be one of the great devious lunatics for that."

"You never like to see your face on all the posters?"

"When I was twenty, I did. You can't imagine all the pleasure I got at twenty just looking in the mirror. I used to look at myself and think that it wasn't possible that somebody should have such a perfect face."

"And now?"

"I'm a little tired of my face. I'm a little tired of what it seems to do to men."

"What is that?"

"Well, it gets them to interviewing me like this, doesn't it? They treat me like a sacred object. Everyone is terrified to lay a finger on me. Probably even the author of Carnovsky."

"But there must be those who can't wait to lay a finger on you just because you are a sacred object."

"True. And my children are their offspring. First they sleep with your image, and after they've had that, they sleep with your make-up girl. As soon as it gets through to them that your you isn't the world's you, it's a grave disappointment to the poor fellows. I understand. How often can you get a thrill out of deflowering the kneeling nineteen-year-old novice of that touching first film, when she's thirty-five and the mother of three? Oh. the truth is that I'm really not childish enough any longer. It was exciting at twenty, but I don't see much point to it now. Do you? I may have reached the end of my wonderful future. I don't even enjoy anymore observing the despicable absurdities. It was a bad idea, coming here. My bad idea. We should go. Unless you're enjoying yourself too much."

"Oh, being here has delighted me enough already."

"I should say hello to my child's father before we go. Shouldn't I?"

"I don't know how those things work."

"Do you think all present are waiting to see if I can do it?"

"I suppose it's the sort of thing some of them might wait up for."

The confidence so dazzling to him at the Schevitzes had all but disappeared; she looked less certain of herself now than any of the young models waiting out on the sidewalk with their boyfriends to get in and catch a glimpse of the likes of Caesara O'Shea. Still, she got up and walked across the restaurant to say hello to her child's father, while Zuckerman remained behind and sipped the champagne intended for her hairdresser. He admired that walk. Under the gaze of all those stargazers, it was a true dramatic achievement. He admired the whole savory mixture, sauce and stew: the self-satirizing blarney, the deep-rooted vanity, the level-headed Hatred, the playfulness, the gameness, the recklessness, the cleverness. And the relentless beauty. And the charm. And the eyes. Yes, enough to keep a man on his toes and away from his work for a lifetime.

On the way out, he asked, "How was he?"

"Very cold. Very withdrawn. Very polite. He falls back on the perfidious courtliness. Out of his depth, it's either that or the cruelty. Besides, it's not only the new young mistress he's with; there's also Jessica, Our Sacred Virgin of Radcliffe College. Daughter of the first lucky masochist who made a film in his arms. The innocent child isn't supposed to know yet what a twisted, disgusting, maggoty creature Father is."

When they were back in the limousine, she drew herself up straight inside the flame-colored veils and looked out the window.

"How did you get into all this?" he asked as they drove along. "If you were raised to be a nun or a mother."

"'All this,' meaning what?" she said sharply. "Showbiz? Masochism? Whoredom? How did I get into all this? You sound like a man in bed with a prostitute."

"Another twisted, disgusting, maggoty creature."

"Oh, Nathan, I'm sorry." She gripped his arm and held it as though they had been together all their lives. "Oh, I got into all this as innocently as any girl could. Playing Anne Frank at the Gate Theater. I was nineteen years old. I had half of Dublin in tears."

"I didn't know that," said Zuckerman.

They were back at the Pierre. "Would you like to come up? Oh, of course you would," said Caesara. No false modesty about her magic but, on the other hand, no swagger, either: A fact was a fact. He followed her into the lobby, his face blurring out again as hers now caught the gaze of people leaving the hotel. He was thinking of Caesara starting at 19 as the enchanting Anne Frank, and of the photographs of film stars like the enchanting Caesara that Anne Frank pinned up beside that attic bed. That Anne Frank should come to him in this guise. That he should meet her at his agent's house, in a dress of veils and beads and cockatoo feathers. That he should take her to Elaine's to be gaped at. That she should invite him up to her penthouse suite. Yes, he thought, life has its own flippant ideas about how to handle serious fellows like Zuckerman. All you have to do is wait and it teaches you all there is to know about the art of comedy.

The first thing he saw in her drawing room was a high pile of brand-new books on the dresser; three were by him--paperback copies of Higher Education, Mixed Emotions and Reversed Intentions. Beside the books was a vase holding two dozen yellow roses. He wondered who they were from, and when she put down her shawl and went off to the bathroom, he sidled over to the dresser and read the card. "To my Irish rose, Love and love and love, F." When she came back into the room, he was in the wing chair that looked across the park to the towers on Central Park West, leafing through the book that had been open on the table beside the chair. It was by Sören Kierkegaard, of all people. Called The Crisis in the Life of an Actress.

"And what is the crisis in the life of an actress?" he asked her.

She made a sad face and dropped into the settee across from him. "Getting older."

"According to Kierkegaard or according to you?"

"Both of us." She reached across and he handed her the book. She flipped through to find the right page. "'When,'" she read, "'she'--the actress--'is only thirty years old, she is essentially passé.'"

"In Denmark, maybe, in 1850. I wouldn't take it to heart if I were you. Why are you reading this?"

He wondered if it had come from "F," along with the roses.

"Why shouldn't I?" asked Caesara.

"No reason. I suppose everybody should. What else have you underlined?"

"What everybody underlines," she said. "Everything that says 'me.'"

"May I see?" He leaned over to take the book back.

"Would you like a drink?" said Caesara.

"No, thanks. I'd like to see the book."

"You can look across the park from here all the way up to where Mike Nichols lives. That's his triplex where the lights are. Do you know him?"

"Caesara, everybody knows Mike Nichols," Zuckerman said. "Knowing Mike Nichols is considered nothing in this town. Come on, let me see the book. I never heard of it before."

"You're making fun of me," she said. "For leaving Kierkegaard out to impress you. But I also left your books out to impress you."

"Come on, let me see what interests you so much."

Finally, she passed it back to him. "Well, I want a drink," she said, and got up and poured herself some wine from an open bottle by the flowers. Lafite-Rothschild--also from F? "I should have known I was to be graded."

"'And she,'" Zuckerman read aloud, "'who as a woman is sensitive regarding her name--as only a woman is sensitive--she knows that her name is on everyone's lips, even when they wipe their mouths with their handkerchiefs!' Do you know that?"

"I know that, I know things even less enchanting than that, needless to say."

"Say it anyway."

"No need. Except it isn't quite what my mother had in mind when she took me down from Dublin in my Peter Pan collar to audition for my scholarship at RADA."

The phone rang, but she ignored it. F? Or G? Or H?

"'She knows that she is the subject of everyone's admiring conversation,'" Zuckerman read to her, "'including those who are in the utmost distress for something to chatter about. She lives on in this way year after year. That seems just splendid; it looks as though that would really be something. But if in a higher sense she had to live on the rich nourishment of their admiration, take encouragement from it, receive strength and inspiration for renewed exertions--and since even the most highly talented person, and particularly a woman, can become despondent in a weak moment for want of some expression of genuine appreciation--at such a time she will really feel what she has doubtless realized often enough, just how fatuous all this is, and what a mistake it is to envy her this burdensome splendor.' The hardships," said Zuckerman, "of the idolized woman." He began turning pages again, looking for her markings.

"You're welcome to borrow it, Nathan. Of course, you're also welcome to stay here and just proceed right on through."

Zuckerman laughed. "And what will you do?"

"What I always do when I invite a man to my hotel room and he sits down and starts reading. I'll throw myself from the window."

"Your problem is this taste of yours, Caesara. If you just had Harold Robbins around, like the other actresses, it would be easier to pay attention to you."

"I thought I would impress you with my brains and instead it's Kierkegaard's brain you're impressed with."

"There's always that danger," he said.

This time, when the phone began ringing, she lifted the receiver, then quickly put it back down. Then she picked it up again and dialed the hotel operator. "Please, no more calls until noon.... Fine. I know. I know. I have the message. Please, I'd just appreciate it if you'd do as I say. I have all the messages, thank you."

"Would you like me to leave?" asked Zuckerman.

"Would you like to?"

"Of course not."

"OK," she said, "where are we? Oh. You tell me. What is the crisis in the life of a writer? What obstacles must he overcome in his relation to the public?"

"First, their indifference; then, when he's lucky, their attention. It's your profession having people look you over, but I can't get used to the gaping. I prefer my exhibitionism at several removes."

"Mary says you won't even go out of the house anymore."

"Tell Mary I never went out of the house much before. Look, I didn't go into this line of work so as to stir the masses to a frenzy."

"What, then?"

"What I set out to do? Oh, I was a good boy, too, in my Peter Pan collar, and believed everything Aristotle taught me about literature. Tragedy exhausts pity and fear by arousing those emotions to the utmost, and comedy promotes a carefree, lighthearted state of mind in the audience by showing them that it would be absurd to take seriously the action being imitated. Well, Aristotle let me down. He didn't mention anything about the theater of the ridiculous in which I am now a leading character--because of literature."

"Oh, it's not all ridiculous. It seems that way to you only because you're so intensity-afflicted."

"And whose epithet is that? Mary's?"

"No, mine. I've got the same disease."

"In that dress?"

"In this dress. Don't be fooled by the dress."

The phone began its ringing again.

"Seems like he's slipped past the guard," said Zuckerman and opened the book to pass the time while she decided whether or not to answer. So now for the metamorphosis, he read. This actress was constituted by feminine youthfulness, though not in the usual sense of the term. What is normally called youthfulness falls prey to the years; for the grip of time may be most loving and careful, but it seizes everything finite just the same. But in this actress there has been an essential genius which corresponds to the very idea: feminine youthfulness. This is an idea, and an idea is something quite different--

"Is the point you're making, reading in my little book, that you are nothing like the notorious character in your own? Or," she asked, once the phone had stopped ringing, "is it that I'm not desirable?"

"To the contrary," said Zuckerman. "Your allure is staggering and you can't imagine how depraved I am."

"Then borrow the book and read it at home."

•

He came down into the deserted lobby at close to four, carrying the Kierkegaard. The moment he stepped out of the revolving door, Caesara's limousine pulled up in front of the hotel, and there was Caesara's driver, the dude who'd been reading Carnovsky, saluting him through the open window. "Drop you somewhere, Mr. Zuckerman?"

This, too? Had he been instructed to wait until four? Or all night, if need be? Caesara had awakened Zuckerman and said, "I'd rather face the, dawn alone, I think." "Painters coming early?" "No. But all the brushing of teeth and flushing of toilets is more than I'm ready for." Sweet surprise. First faint touch of the girl in the Peter Pan collar. He had to admit he was feeling swamped himself.

"Sure," he told her driver. "You can take me home."

"Hop in." But he didn't hop out to open the door as he did when Miss O'Shea was along. Well, thought Zuckerman, maybe he's finished the book.

They drove slowly up Madison, Zuckerman reading her Kierkegaard under the lamp in the soft back seat.... She knows that her name is on everyone's lips, even when they wipe their mouths with their handkerchiefs! He didn't know if it was just the excitement of a new woman, the thrill of all that unknownness--and of all that glamor--or if it could possibly be that in just eight hours he had fallen in love, but he devoured the paragraph as though she had inspired it. He couldn't believe his luck. And it didn't seem such a misfortune, either. "No, not entirely ridiculous. Much to be said for stirring the masses, if that's what stirred you, too. I'm not going to sneer at how I got here." To her, and silently, he said this, then wiped his mouth, a little stupefied. All from literature. Imagine that. He would not like to have to tell Dr. Leavis, but he didn't feel the least sacrilegious.

When they got to his house, the driver refused his ten dollars. "No, no, Mr. Z. My privilege." Then he took a business card from his billfold and handed it out the window. "If we can ever put your mind at ease, sir," and sped away while Zuckerman stepped under the streetlight to read the card:

Rate Schedule

Per Hour

Armed Driver and Limousine .27.50

Unarmed Driver and Armed Escort with Limousine......32.50

Armed Driver and Armed Escort with Limousine......36.00

Additional Armed Escorts.... 14.50

Five-Hour Minimum Major Credit Cards Honored

(212) 555-8830

He read for the rest of the night--her book--and then, at nine, he phoned the hotel and was reminded that Miss O'Shea wasn't taking calls until noon. He left his name, wondering what he would do with himself and his exultation until they met at two for their walk through the park--she'd said it would be happiness enough just doing that. He couldn't look at The Crisis in the Life of an Actress again, or the two essays on drama that filled out the little volume. He'd been all through them twice already--the second time at six a.m., making notes in the journal he kept for his reading. He couldn't stop thinking about her, but that was an improvement over trying to take in what people were thinking, saying and writing about him--there is such a thing as self-satiation. "You would imagine," he said to the empty bookshelves when he came in, "that after wine at dinner, champagne at Elaine's and intercourse with Caesara, I could put the homework off until morning and get some rest." But at least sitting at his desk with a pen and a pad and a book, he had felt a little less goofy than lying in bed with her name on his lips like the rest of the fans. It didn't, of course, feel anything like a good night's work; he hadn't felt the excitement of working straight through the night since his last weeks finishing Carnovsky. Nor could he lay claim to some lively new idea about what book to write next. All lively new ideas were packed away like the volumes in the 81 cartons. But at least he'd been able to focus on something other than himself being stuffed to bursting at the trough of inanities. He was bursting now with her.

He called the Pierre, couldn't get through, and then didn't know what to do with himself. Begin to unpack the half ton of books, that's what! Bank Street is over! Laura is over! Uncarton all the boxed-in brains! Next uncarton your own!

Then he had an even better idea. André's tailor! Hold the books and buy a suit! For when we fly to Venice, for checking in at the Cipriani! (Caesara had allowed, as he was leaving, that the only hotel in the world where she truly enjoyed awakening in the morning was the Cipriani.)

In his wallet, he found André's tailor's card, his shirtmaker's card, his wine merchant's card and his Jaguar dealer's card; these had been ceremoniously presented to Zuckerman over lunch at the Oak Room the day André had completed the sale to Paramount of the film rights to Carnovsky, bringing Zuckerman's income for 1969 to just over $1,000,000 or approximately $985,000 more than he had previously earned in any year of his life. Placing André's cards in his wallet, Zuckerman had withdrawn a card he had prepared the night before for André and handed it across to him--a large index card on which he had typed a line from the letters of Henry James. All this is far from being life as I feel it, as I see it, as I know it, as I wish to know it. But his agent was neither edified nor amused. "The world is yours, Nathan, don't hide from it behind Henry James. It's bad enough that that's what he hid behind. Go see Mr. White, tell him who sent you and get him to fit you out the way he does Governor Rockefeller. It's time to stop looking like some kid at Harvard and assume your role in history."

Well, at Mr. White's that morning--waiting for Caesara to get up--he ordered six suits. If you're in a sweat over one, why not six? But why in a sweat? He had the dough. All he needed now was the calling.

On which side did he dress? asked Mr. White. It took a moment to fathom the meaning, and then to realize that he didn't know. If Carnovsky was any indication, he had for 36 years given more thought than most to the fate of his genitals, but whither they inclined while he went about the day's uncarnal business, he had no idea.

"Neither, really," he said.

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. White, and made a note.

On the new fly, he was to have buttons. As he remembered, it was a big day in a little boy's life when he was old enough to be trusted not to get himself caught in a zipper and so bid farewell to the buttoned-up fly. But when Mr. White, an Englishman of impeccable grooming and manners, wondered aloud if Mr. Zuckerman might not prefer to change to buttons, Zuckerman caught the tone and, mopping his face, replied, "Oh, absolutely." Whatever the governor has, he thought. And Dean Acheson. His picture also hung among the notables on Mr. White's paneled walls.

When the taking of the measurements was over, Mr. White and an elderly assistant helped Zuckerman back into his jacket without giving any sign that they were handling rags. Even the assistant was dressed for a board meeting of A.T.&T.

Here, as though retiring to the rare-book room at the Bodleian, the three turned to where the bolts of cloth were stored. Fabrics that would serve Mr. Zuckerman for the city and his club; for the country and his weekends; for the theater, for the opera, for dining out. Each was removed from its shelf by the assistant so that Mr. Zuckerman might appreciate the cloth between his fingers. In North America, he was told, with its extremes of climate, a dozen suits would be best to cover every contingency, but Mr. Zuckerman stuck at six. He was drenched already.

Then the linings. Lavender for the gray suit. Gold for the tan suit. A daring floral pattern for the country twill.... Then the styling. Two-piece or three-piece? Double-breasted or single-breasted? Two-button front or three-button front? Lapels this wide or this wide? Center vents or side vents? The inside coat pocket--one or two, and how deep? Back trouser pockets--button on the left or the right? And will you be wearing suspenders, sir?

Would he, at the Cipriani, for checking in?

They were attending to the styling of his trousers--Mr. White, most respectfully, making his case for a modest flare at the cuff of the twill--when Zuckerman saw that finally it was noon. Urgent phone call, he announced. "Of course, sir," and he was left to himself, amid the bolts of cloth, to dial the Pierre.

But she was gone. Checked out. Any message for Mr. Zuckerman? None. Had she received his message? She had. But where had she gone? The desk had no idea--though suddenly Zuckerman did. To move in with André and Mary! She'd left the hotel to shake the unwanted suitor. She had made her choice and it was him!

He was wrong. It was the other guy.

"Nathan," said Mary Schevitz. "I've been trying all morning to reach you."

"I'm at the tailor's, Mary, suiting up for every contingency. Where is she if she's not with you two?"

"Nathan, you must understand--she left in tears. I've never seen her so distraught. It killed me. She said, 'Nathan Zuckerman is the best thing that's happened to me in a year.'"

"So where is she, then? Why did she go?"

"She flew to Mexico City. She's flying from there to Havana. Nathan, dear, I didn't know anything. Nobody's known anything. It's the best-kept secret in the world. She only told me to try to explain to me how badly she felt about you."

"Told you what?"

"She's been having an affair. Since March. With Fidel Castro. Nathan, you mustn't tell anyone. She wants to end it with him, she knows there's no future there. She's sorry it ever began. But he's a man who won't take no for an answer."

"As the world knows."

"He had his UN ambassador phoning her every five minutes since she arrived. And this morning, the ambassador went to the hotel and insisted on taking her to breakfast. And then she called me to say she was going, that she had to. Oh, Nathan, I do feel responsible."

"Don't, Mary. Kennedy couldn't stop him, Johnson couldn't stop him, Nixon won't stop him. So how can you? Or I?"

"And you looked so charming together. Have you seen the Post?"

"I haven't been out of the fitting room."

"Well, it's in Leonard Lyons, about the two of you at Elaine's."

Later that day, his mother phoned to tell him that it had been on the air as well; in fact, she was phoning to find out if it could possibly be true that he had flown to Ireland, without even calling her to say goodbye.

"Of course I would have called," he assured her.

"Then you're not going."

"No."

"Bea Wirth phoned me just a minute ago to say that she heard it on the radio. Nathan Zuckerman is off to Ireland to stay at the palatial country estate of Caesara O'Shea. It was on Virginia Graham. I didn't even know she was a friend of yours."

"She's not, really."

"I didn't think so. She's so much older than you."

"She's not, but that isn't the point."

"She is, darling. Daddy and I saw her years ago already, playing a nun."

"Playing a novice. She was practically a child then."

"It never sounded from the papers as though she was a child."

"Well, maybe not."

"But everything is all right? You feel well?"

"I'm fine. How's Dad?"

"He's a little better. I'm not saying that just to make myself feel good, either. Mr. Metz has been going every afternoon now to read him the front page of the Times. He says Daddy seems to follow perfectly. He can tell by how angry he gets whenever he hears Nixon's name."

"Well, that's terrific, isn't it?"

"But you going away without calling--I told Bea it just couldn't be. Nathan wouldn't dream of going that far without telling me, in case, God forbid, I had to get hold of him about his father."

"That's true."

"But why did Virginia Graham say you did? And on TV?"

"Someone must have told her an untruth, Ma."

"They did? But why?"

•

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

For a number of years I have been planning to film a series of half-hour television shows (in color) to be called, "A Day in the Life of...." The format, which is no more than a carbon of the ancient Greek Tragedy, is a recitation of the hour-by-hour activities of a well-known person, and offers an intimate personal look at someone who, in the normal course of events, the audience would not see or meet. My company, Renown Productions, is fully financed and ready to embark upon its opening show. Briefly, it involves filming one complete day from breakfast to bedtime, of a celebrity who will excite the interest of millions of onlookers. To achieve one day without dull spots, we will average four days of filming candid unrehearsed material.

I selected you as our first celebrity because I think your day will be as interesting as any I can envision. Also, there is broad public interest in you and your "offstage" life. Everyone, I think, would profit by watching a candid portrayal of you at work and you at play. My guess is that such a production will enhance your career--and mine, too.

Please let me know your feelings, and, if we agree, I will send a couple of reporters to start the research.

Sincerely, Gary Wyman, President

Dear Mr. Wyman:

I think you underestimate how many days, weeks and years of filming it would take to achieve "A Day in the Life of ..." of me that would be without dull spots. A candid portrayal of my offstage life would probably put millions of viewers to sleep and, far from enhancing your career, destroy it forever. Better start with somebody else. Sorry.

Sincerely, Nathan Zuckerman

Dear Mr. Zuckerman:

I have written a short novel of approximately 50,000 words. It is a romance with college characters and explicit sex but has humor and other interest as well, and an original plot. As in your latest book, the sexual activity is an integral part of the plot, so is essential.

I intended to send it to Playboy Press but have backed down because there could be repercussions. My wife and I are retired, living very happily in a retirement village in Tampa. If the book turned out to be successful and the people here found out that I wrote it, we would lose our friends at once and would probably have to sell our home.

I hate to do nothing about the book, because I believe it would be entertaining for readers who like explicit sex and also those who don't mind it as long as there is something worth while accompanying it. You are an established author and can publish such a book, as you already have, without worrying about adverse opinion.

Please let me know if I may send you the manuscript, and also the address I should use. Then, if you like it, you may wish to buy it outright from me as an investment and publish it under another name than your own.

Sincerely, Harry Nicholson

The phone.

"All right, then," cried Zuckerman, "who is this? You, Nicholson?"

"Right now we are asking for only fifty thousand. That's because we haven't had to do the job. Kidnaping is an expensive operation. It takes planning, it takes thought, it takes highly trained personnel. If we have to go ahead and get to work, fifty thousand won't begin to cover costs. If I am going to keep my head above water, you won't get out of a kidnaping like this for under three hundred thousand. In a kidnaping like this, with nationwide coverage, we run a tremendous risk and everybody involved has to be compensated accordingly. Not to mention equipment. Not to mention time. But if you want us to go ahead, we will. Hang up on me again and you'll see how fast. My people are poised."

"Poised where, palooka?" For it was still with something like the caricatured voice of a punch-drunk pug that the caller was endeavoring to disguise his own--and threatening to kidnap Zuckerman's mother. "Look," said Zuckerman, "this isn't funny."

"I want fifty thousand bucks in cash. Otherwise, we proceed with the full-scale operation, and then you will be out three hundred thousand at least. Not to mention the wear and tear on your old lady. Have a heart, Zuck. Haven't you given her enough misery with that book? Don't make it any worse than it already is. Don't make it so that she regrets the day you were born, sonny."

"Look, this is call number three and has by now become a disgusting sadistic, psychopathic little joke--"

"Suppose it was cancer, would you think that was a disgusting joke, too, would you make her go through that, too, rather than dig into the margin account? Christ, you have just got close to another million on the sequel. How much more do you need in one year? The way the world gets the story, you're so pure you hold your nose when you have to handle change from the taxicab. You fraud, you hypocrite! Your talent I can't take away from you, but as a human being exploiting other human beings, you haven't got the greatest record, you know, so don't get high and mighty with me. Because if it was my mother, let me tell you, there wouldn't be that much to debate about. I'd act, and fast. But then I would never have gotten her into this to begin with. I wouldn't have the talent for it. I wouldn't have the talent to exploit my family and make them a laughingstock the way you have. I'm not gifted enough to do that."

"So you do this," said Zuckerman, wondering, meanwhile, what he should do. What would Joseph Conrad do? Leo Tolstoy? Anton Chekhov? When first starting out as a young writer in college, he was always putting things to himself that way. But that didn't seem much help now. Probably better to ask what Al Capone would do.

"Where did you hear that I just made a million on 'the sequel'?" If only he had a tape recorder. But the little Sony was down on Bank Street in Laura's office. Everything was that he needed.

"I didn't 'hear' it. I don't operate that way. I've got it right in front of me in your file. I'm reading it right now. Variety, out Wednesday. 'Independent Bob "Sleepy" Lagoon paid close to a million--' "

"But that is a lie. That is Independent Lagoon puffing himself up without paying a dime. There is no sequel."

Wasn't this the right approach, the one they recommended in the papers? To level with the kidnaper, to take him seriously, to make him your friend and equal?

"That isn't what Mr. Lagoon tells my staff, however. Funny, but I tend to trust my staff on this more than I trust you."

"My good man, Lagoon is promoting himself, period."

"Haw, haw, haw. Very funny. No less than I expected from the savage satirist of American letters."

"Look, who is this?"

"I want fifty thousand in United States currency. I want it in hundred-dollar bills. Unmarked, please."

And how would I get you the fifty thousand unmarked dollars?"

"Ah, now we are talking, now we are making some progress. You just go to your bank in Rockefeller Plaza and you get it out. We'll tell you when, at the time. Then you start walking. Easy as that. Doesn't even require a college degree. Put the money in your briefcase, go back out on the street and start taking a walk. We take care of everything from there. No police, Nathan. If you smell of police, it'll get ugly. I detest violence. My kids can't watch TV because of the violence. Jack Ruby, Jack Idiot Ruby, has become the patron saint of America! I can hardly live in this country anymore because of the violence. You aren't the only one who is against this stinking war. It's a nightmare, it's a national disgrace. I will do everything in my power to avoid violence. But if I smell police, I am going to feel threatened and I am going to have to act like a threatened man. That means police stinking up Miami Beach and police stinking up New York."

"Friend," said Zuckerman, changing tactics, "too many grade-B movies. The lingo, the laugh, everything. Unoriginal. Unconvincing. Bad art."

"Haw, haw, haw. Could be, Zuck. Haw, haw, haw. Also real life. We'll be in touch to set the hour."

This time it wasn't the novelist who hung up.

author of Portnoy's Complaint

"No tax shelters? In your bracket? Uncle Sam should get down on his knees and kiss your ass."