The Manchurian Candidate (23 page)

“I’ll take care of everything, Raymond,” Marco said, and they both hung up.

Raymond opened the door.

“Chunjin isn’t here,” he said. “There’s no dinner to offer you.”

“Or you.”

“But I did find a note. It’s from him and it says you beat him up and that he’s now in St. Luke’s Hospital.”

“One thing is for sure,” Marco said. “There are plenty of sensational delicatessens in this neighborhood.”

“Why, that’s a marvelous idea!” Raymond said. He walked away from the door, allowing Marco to close it or not close it as he chose, and flipped open a telephone book across the square foyer. “I never seem to be able to think of it myself. And I love it. Pastrami and those pickles and that crazy rye bread with the aphrodisiacal seeds and maybe a little marinated herring and some pot cheese with a little smoked salmon and some of that indigestible sauerkraut they make out of electric bulb filaments and some boiled beef.” He began to dial. “On account of this I am absolutely grateful to you for getting Chunjin out of the way.”

“Ah, that’s all right,” Marco said. “Glad to do it.”

“The elevator man was singing the blues so I gave him five.”

“He sure can keep a secret. He just sang a second chorus for me and I gave him five.”

“What did you hit
him
for?”

“He was determined to play peacemaker.”

“What did you whack Chunjin for?”

“That’s all part of what I came to tell you about.”

“Hello—Gitlitz? This is Shaw. Right. Now hear this.” Raymond ordered food for ten, as one does when one calls a delicatessen situated anywhere on Broadway in New York between Thirty-fourth and Ninety-sixth streets, and told them where to send it.

“I’ve been in the hospital off and on quite a bit over the past two years.”

“Hospital? What was the matter with you?” Raymond opened a can of beer. The room was fragrant with the smell of furniture polish from Chunjin’s working weekend. Marco looked very thin, but no longer drawn. The Cheyney method of soul massage had elements of greatness. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and his face had a distant, inactive look such as a man about to practice a banquet speech alone in a hotel room might have. Eugénie Rose had him coked to the gills on tranquilizers.

The authority which had come with writing a successful column on national affairs had settled Raymond considerably, Marco thought, and had made him seem taller and broader. Raymond was thirty years old. He could not have moved up the scale to a better tailor because he had always used the best. He could not have worn whiter linen. His fingernails gleamed. His shoe tips glowed. His color shone. His teeth sparkled. The only fault with the lighting circuit was behind his eyes. Raymond may have believed that his eyes did light up, but unfortunately they could shine only within the extent of his art as a co
unterfeiter of emotions. Raymond did not feel emotion, and that could not be changed. When he was content he would try to remember how other people had looked when they had manifested happiness or pleasure or satisfaction, and he would attempt to counterfeit the appearance. It was not effective. Raymond’s ability to feel anything resembling either sympathy or empathy was minimal and that was that.

As Raymond listened to Marco’s story with all of his attention he could only understand that an all-out attack had been mounted against his friend and that it had almost destroyed him. He supposed he would be expected to be upset as they went on to talk about that lousy medal which had always been a lot of gas to him—tin-soldier-boy stuff: he had never asked for it, had never wanted it, and if there was some strange way that medal could keep his friend in the Army and get him his health back, then they had to make sure that he found out exactly what that was, and, if necessary, to straighten this out and keep Ben safe, why, for chrissake, he’d even call in Johnny Iselin. He did not say any of this to Marco. He concentrated on trying to counterfeit some of the reactions he felt Marco must expect.

“If what you’ve been dreaming actually happened, Ben,” he said slowly, “then it happened to me and it happened to everyone else on the patrol.”

“Such as Chunjin,” Marco replied.

“How about an investigation?” Raymond said. “That ought to do it.”

“Ought to do what?”

“Uncover what happened that made you dream all that.”

“What kind of an investigation?”

“Well, my mother can always get Johnny Iselin’s committee in the Senate to—”

“Johnny Iselin?” Marco was utterly horrified. “This is
Army!”

“What has that go to do with—”

“All right, Raymond. I won’t explain that part. But what happened is inside my head and Melvin’s head and the best head doctors in this country haven’t been able to shake it out and don’t have even the first suspicion of what could be causing it. What could a Senate committee do? And
Iselin!
Jesus, Raymond, let’s make an agreement never to mention that son-of-a-bitch ever again.”

“It was just an idea. To get started. I know Johnny is a swine better than you do.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“Because we have to dump a thing like this on the specialists. What the hell, Ben, you said so yourself—the Army can’t cope with this. What there has to be, if we’re going to get anywhere with it, is a big, full-scale investigation. You know—somebody has to make people talk.”

“Make who talk?”

“Well—uh—I—”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the patrol. If my Medal of Honor is a fake, and believe me I don’t see how it could be anything else because it doesn’t figure that I’m going to stand up in front of a lot of bullets and be a big hero for that passel of slobs, then somebody has to remember and somebody else has to make the rest of those guys remember that we’ve all been had. That’s all. We’ve been had. If you can’t stand the idea of Johnny Iselin, and I don’t blame you, then I guess you’ll just have to demand your own court-martial.”

“How? What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Marco looked as though he was just beginning to understand what Raymond was talking about, almost but not quite.

“You have to charge yourself with falsifying your report that led to me getting the Medal of Honor and you’ll have to demand that the Army investigate whether or not that was done in collusion with the men of the patrol. That’s all there is to it.”

“They wouldn’t be able to comprehend such a thing. A Medal of Honor—why, a Medal of Honor is a sacred thing to the Army, Raymond. I mean—I—Jesus, the roof would come off the Pentagon.”

“Sure! That’s what I’m saying! Throw it wide open! If the Army can’t understand, then, what the hell, believe me, Iselin’ll understand. He’ll get you off the hook.”

“No. No, never.”

“It’s got to be done the sensational way just to make sure it’s done and that the Army doesn’t get to sit on another ridiculous mistake and let you stay sick like this. What would they care? You’re expendable. But they made a hero out of me so I’m not expendable. They couldn’t take back a mistake as big as this one.”

“Raymond, listen. If it wasn’t for those Soviet generals and those Chinese in that dream, I’d be willing to be expendable.”

“All right. That’s your problem.”

“But with the chance, just the sick chance that there may be such an enormous security risk involved I have to make them dig into this thing. You’re right, Raymond. I have to. I have to.”

“Why should I have gotten a Medal of Honor? I can’t even remember being in the action. I reme
mber the
facts
about the action, sure. But I don’t remember the
action.
”

“Talk about it. Keep talking about it. Please.”

“Well, look. Let’s reconstruct. We’re on the patrol. You’ll be at the center of that line and I’ll be off on their right flank. You know? It will be dark. I’ll yell out to you, ‘Captain! Captain Marco! Get me some light twenty yards ahead at two o’clock!’ And you’ll yell back, ‘You got it, kid,’ and very soon a flare will break open and I’ll pour on some enfilade fire on their column and, as everyone who reads comic books knows, I am a very good shooter. I’ll start to move in on them and I’ll take up one of their own heavy machine guns as I go and I’ll move eight of their own grenades up ahead of me as I move along.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marco said. “But you don’t remember
doing
all those things.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Raymond answered irritably and impatiently. “Every time I’m directed to think about the action I always know what
will
happen exactly, but I never get to the place where it actually happens.”

“Do you remember anything about a blackboard? Chinese instructors?”

“No.”

“Memory drills? Anything about a movie projection room and animated cartoons with a sound track in English and a lot of Chinese guys standing around?”

“No.”

“You must have gotten a better brainwashing than I did. Or Melvin.”

“Brainwashing?” Raymond did not like that note. He could not abide the thought of anybody tampering with his person so he rejected the entire
business then and there. Others, told the same set of conjectures, might have been fired into action or challenged, but not Raymond. The disgust it made Raymond feel acted like a boathook that pushed the solid shore away from him to allow him to drift away from it on the strong-flowing current of self. It did not mean that he had instantly closed his mind to Marco’s problem. He most earnestly wanted to be able to help Ben find relief, to help to change his friend’s broken mechanism, to find him sleep and rest and health, but his own participation in what he had started out to make a flaming patriotic crusade when he had first started to speak had been muted by his fastidiousness: he shrank from what he could only consider the rancid vulgarity of brainwashing.

“It has to be a brainwash,” Marco said intensely. “In my case it slipped. In Melvin’s case it slipped. It’s the only possible explanation, Raymond. The only, only explanation.”

“Why?” Raymond answered coldly. “Why would the Communists want me to get a Medal of Honor?”

“I don’t know. But we have to find out.” Marco stood up. “Before I take this first step, before I leave here, I’d like to hear you say that you understand that I’m going to explode this whole thing with a court-martial, not because—not to save myself from those dreams—”

“Ah, fuh crissake, Ben! Whose idea was it! Who gives a goddam about that?”

“Let me finish. This is an official statement because, believe me, pal, I know. Once I get that court-martial started—my own court-martial—it can get pretty rough on both of us.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “My father—well, it’s a good thing my father is dead—with me starting out to make a publ
ic bum out of a Medal of Honor man. Shuddup! But I have to do it. Security. What a lousy word. I look right into the horrible face of something that might kill my country and the only word for the danger is a word that means the absolute opposite. Security. Well, as you said—with stakes like that I’m expendable. And so are you, Raymond pal. So are you.”

“Will you stop? Who thought it up? Me. Who practically made you agree to do it? Me. And you can shove that patriotic jive about saving our great country. I want to know why a bunch of filthy Soviet peasants and degraded Chinese coolies would dare to confer the Medal of Honor on me.”

“Raymond. Do me a favor? Tell me about the action again. Please.”

“What action?”

“Come on! Come on!”

“You mean go on from where I was?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Well—you will throw up another flare but you’ll throw it about twenty yards ahead of me at maybe twelve o’clock, at maybe dead center of the line, because you will figure I’ll be moving across the terrain up that ridge so—”

“Man, oh man, this is something.”

“What?”

“Each time you talk about the action you even tell it as though it hadn’t happened yet.”

“That’s what I’m saying! That’s the way I always think about it! I mean, when some horrible square comes out of nowhere at a banquet, the paper makes me go too, and he starts asking me about it. Come on, Ben. You made your point. Let’s go meet your girl.”

Marco ran his fingers through his thick hair on both sides of his head. He put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. Raymond stared down at him, almost tenderly. “Don’t be embarrassed if you feel like you’re going to cry, Ben,” Raymond said gently.

Marco shook his head. Raymond opened another can of beer.

“I swear to sweet, sweet God I think I am going to be able to sleep,” Marco said. “I can feel it. There isn’t anything about those crazy voices and those fast, blurring colors and the eyes of that terrible audience that frightens me any more.” He took his hands away from his face and reflexively reached over to take Raymond’s can of beer out of his hand. Raymond reached down and opened another. Marco fell asleep, sitting up. Raymond stretched him out on the sofa, brought him a blanket, put out the lights, and went into his office to listen to the river wind and to read a slim book with the highly improbable title of
Liquor, the Servant of Man.

Marco was still asleep when Raymond left the apartment the next morning. Eugénie Rose Cheyney called him soon after he reached his office. She asked if Marco had been sleeping quietly. Raymond said he had. She said, “Oh, Mr. Shaw, that’s just wonderful!” and hung up.

Thirteen

RAYMOND’S MOTHER CALLED HIM FROM THE
Idlewild Airport. She wanted him to have lunch with her. He tried to think quickly of somebody whom he could say he had to have lunch with but she said he was not to stall her, that she was well aware that he disliked people too much to be stuck for an hour or more at a luncheon table with one, so he could damn well show up wherever they let ladies eat luncheon at the Plaza Hotel at one o’clock. He said he would be there. Beyond having acknowledged that his name was Raymond when she had first spoken, it was all he said to his mother.

She was hard at work making a scene by bossing the
maître d’hotel,
a table captain, and two waiters at a table that faced the park in the big corner room when he arrived at the Plaza at ten seconds before one o’clock. She motioned him to stand beside her chair until she finished her oration about exactly how they were to stuff the oysters into a carpetbag steak and that she wo
uld not tolerate more than eleven minutes of broiling on each side, in a preheated grill, at four hundred degrees. The waiters bowed and left. Raymond’s mother gave the
maître d’
the full glare of her contempt for an instant, then spoke to Raymond. “I ask you to imagine a restaurant,” she said, “which does not list Clos de Lambrays or a Cuvée Docteur Peste!” She waved the man away, with bitterness. She permitted Raymond to kiss her on the right cheek, ever so lightly, then motioned him to his chair at the table for four, not at her right or directly across from her, but at her left, which made it impossible for either of them to look out of the window at the park.