“I suppose I do approve. Whether more or less is what I’m trying to determine now. As to why, it was not (I hope) merely the gratification of a father’s natural curiosity. It was so that I’d have the goods on you. It’s all down on videotape, you see.”
“All?” He was aghast.
“Not all, possibly, but enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“To prosecute you, if need be. Bobo is still a minor. You’re guilty of statutory rape.”
“Oh Jesus Christ, Mr. Whiting, you wouldn’t!”
“No, I don’t expect it will be necessary. For one thing, that might force Bobo to marry you against her own wishes, or against yours, for that matter. Since, my lawyer tells me, you could not, in that event, be prosecuted. No, my intention is much simpler, I want to force the issue before you’ve wasted each other’s time in hesitations. Time is too precious for that.”
“You’re asking me if I’ll marry your daughter?”
“Well, you didn’t seem about to ask me. And I can understand that. People generally wait for me to take the initiative. It’s the beard, I suppose.”
“Have you asked Boa about this?”
“As I see it, Daniel, my daughter’s made her choice, and declared it. Rather openly, I should say.”
“Not to me.”
“The surrender of virginity is unequivocal. It needs no codicil.”
“I’m not sure Boa sees it that way.”
“She would, I’ve no doubt, if you asked her to. No one with any sensitivity wants to appear to be haggling over matters of the heart. But in our civilization (as you may have read) certain things go without saying.”
“That was my impression too, Mr. Whiting. Until tonight.”
Whiting laughed. His new, beardless face modified the usual Falstaffian impression of his laughter.
“If I have forced the issue, Daniel, it was in the hope of preventing your making a needless mistake. This plan of yours to precede Boa to Boston is almost certain to lead to unhappiness for both of you. Here the inequality in your circumstances only lends a piquancy to your relations. There it will become your nemesis. Believe me — I speak as one who has been through it, albeit on the other side of the fence. You may have your pastoral fantasies now, but the good life cannot be led for less than ten thousand a year, and that requires both the right connections and a monastic frugality. Boa, of course, has never known the pinch of poverty. But you have, briefly. But long enough to have learned, surely, that it is to be avoided at all costs.”
“I’m not planning to go back to prison, Mr. Whiting, if that’s your meaning.”
“God forbid you should, Daniel. And please, don’t we know each other well enough for you to dispense with ‘Mister Whiting’?”
“Then how about ‘Your Lordship’? Or ‘Excellency’? That wouldn’t seem quite as formal as Grandison.”
Whiting hesitated, then seemed to decide to be amused. His laugh, if abrupt, had the ring of sincerity.
“Good for you. No one’s ever said that to my face. And of course it’s perfectly true. Would you like to call me ‘Father’ then? To return to the original question.”
“I still don’t see what’s so terrible about our going to Boston. What simpler way of finding out if it works?”
“Not terrible, only foolish. Because it won’t work. And Boa will have wasted a year of her life trying to make it work. Meanwhile she’ll have failed to meet the people she’s going to college to meet (for that’s the reason one goes to college; one can study far better in solitude). Worse than that, she may have done irreparable harm to her reputation. Sadly, not everyone shares our enlightened attitude toward these arrangements.”
“You don’t think she’d be even more compromised by marrying me?”
“If I did, I would scarcely go out of my way to suggest it, would I? You’re bright, resilient, ambitious, and — allowing for the fact that you’re a lovesick teenager — quite level-headed. From my point of view, an ideal son-in-law. Bobo doubtless sees you in a different light, but I think, all in all, that she’s made a wise, even a prudent, choice.”
“What about the, quote, inequality of our circumstances, unquote? Isn’t that even more a consideration in the case of getting married?”
“No, for you’d be equals. My son-in-law could never be other than well-to-do. The marriage might not work, of course, but that risk exists in all marriages. And the odds for its working are, I should think, much better than the odds for the Boston trial balloon. You can’t dip your toes into marriage; you must plunge. What do you say?”
“What can I say? I’m flabbergasted.”
Whiting opened a silver cigarette case standing on his desk and turned it round to Daniel with a gesture of invitation.
“No thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“Nor do I, but this is grass. I always find that a bit of a buzz makes the decision-making process more interesting. Almost any process, really.” By way of further endorsement he took one of the cigarettes from the case, lit it, inhaled, and, still holding his breath, offered it to Daniel.
He shook his head, not believing it was marijuana.
Whiting shrugged, let out his breath, and sagged back in his leather chair.
“Let me tell you about pleasure, Daniel. It’s something young people have no understanding of.”
He took another toke, held it in, and offered the cigarette (coming from Grandison Whiting, you could not think of it as a joint) again to Daniel. Who, this time, accepted it.
Daniel had been stoned only three times in his life — once at Bob Lundgren’s farm with some of the work-crew from Spirit Lake, and twice with Boa. It wasn’t that he disapproved, or didn’t enjoy it, or that the stuff was so impossible to get hold of. He was afraid, simply that. Afraid he’d be busted and sent back to Spirit Lake.
“Pleasure,” said Grandison Whiting, lighting another cigarette for himself, “is the great good. It requires no explanations, no apologies. It is what is — the reason for continuing. One must arrange one’s life so that all pleasures are available. Not that there’s time to have them all. Everyone’s budget is limited in the end. But at your age, Daniel, you should be sampling the major varieties. In moderation. Sex, above all. Sex (perhaps after mystic transports, which come without our choosing) is always the most considerable, and cloys the least. But there is also something to be said for drugs, so long as you can hold on to your sanity, your health, and your own considered purpose in life. I gather, from the efforts you’re making to learn to be a musician, despite an evident inaptitude, that you wish to fly.”
“I… uh…”
Whiting waved away Daniel’s stillborn denial with the hand that held the cigarette. Its smoke, in the beam of the lamp, formed a delta of delicate curves.
“I do not fly myself. I’ve tried, but lack the gift, and have small patience with effort in that direction. But I have many good friends who do fly, even here in Iowa. One of them did not return, but every delight has its martyrs. I say this because it’s clear to me that you’ve made it your purpose in life to fly. I think, in your circumstances, that has been both ambitious and brave. But there are larger purposes, as I think you have begun to discover.”
“What is your purpose, Mr. Whiting? If you care to say.”
“I believe it is what you would call power. Not in the crude sense that one experiences power at Spirit Lake, not as brute coercion — but in a larger (and, I would hope, finer) sense. How to explain? Perhaps if I told you of my own mystical experience, the single such I’ve been gifted to have. If, that is, you can tolerate so long a detour from the business in hand?”
“So long as it’s scenic,” said Daniel, in a burst of what seemed to him show-stopping repartee. It was very direct grass.
“It happened when I was thirty-eight. I had just arrived in London. The euphoria of arrival was still in my blood. I had been meaning to go to an auction of carpets, but had spent the afternoon, instead, wandering eastward to the City, stopping in at various churches of Wren’s. But it was not in any of those that the lightning struck. It was as I was returning to my hotel room. I had placed the key in the lock, and turned it. I could feel, in the mechanical movement of the tumblers, the movements, it seemed, of the entire solar system: the earth turning on its axis, moving in its orbit, the forces exerted on its oceans, and on its body too, by the sun and moon. I’ve said ‘it seemed,’ but it was no seeming. I felt it, as God must feel it. I’d never believed in God before that moment, nor ever doubted Him since.”