“First, allow me to congratulate you on behalf of everybody here,” said Vera K., in a perfect imitation of a fashionable society hostess, warm but even, “on the splendid job you are doing in The American.”
“Thank you,” responded Charles, naturally picking up the same tone. “I don’t know how I could be doing it without you!”
Everybody laughed heartily.
“No one is clear on what makes a good job a good job when it’s that kind of work you’re doing — all right, that we are doing — but we all agree you do well.”
“Thank you,” Charles repeated, this time with more feeling, but with a great deal of doubt as well, centering mainly on who “we” was.
“Nor do we understand what we’re supposed to do about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles said, doubt metastasizing, “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you don’t understand. Given that you are so intimately involved. Is this some kind of inquisition? Have I been set up?”
“Some of us — if you will allow me to be frank and revealing and come swiftly to my point? Thank you. Some of us feel we ought to tar and feather you.”
“I see!” Charles said. “Yes. Now I understand you.”
“Maybe that strikes you as simpleminded of us.”
“Not at all. I’m glad you could tell me so straightforwardly. I would never have come had I known, but having come, I am very grateful that you could tell me as quickly and succinctly as you have. Really, I am. Very grateful indeed.”
“How very charming of you to be so sympathetic to our really helpless reactions to your play. Because we were helpless. We were just like children. It wasn’t until the illusion had faded that we were able to realize just how much we hated you.”
“Ah, but if it’s hate you feel, then you really must excuse me.”
“If we could excuse you, we wouldn’t hate you!” This was said clearly in an attempt to delay his departure, and Vera continued in different vein. “There’s been a great deal of talk about you. Speculation is running high. Our expectations are consequently exaggerated, and our eloquence fails us just when we would like most to compose a little sinfonietta of clever conversation for you.”
This was such a polite and formal speech that he had to bow. When he straightened he said that he was sure he wasn’t worth all the trouble.
“Whether you’re worth it or not, or whether you think you’re worth it or not, the trouble is being taken.” Vera returned to her seat but did not sit down. “Do you see? What you think of yourself doesn’t matter. Nor do polite demurrals.” She seemed to be trying to be helpful rather than hurtful. Her dark eyes were impossibly large as she studied him, goofily big, and one of them seemed to be canted slightly away, so that the most imperceptible movement, the most minute readjustment of focus, seemed loaded with danger and meaning.
“Jules insists you’re not at all like ‘the American.’”
“Whoever Jules is, I’m flattered that he paid enough attention to me to gather the raw materials necessary to form even a superficial opinion.”
Owner identified himself as Jules, and extended his hand. Charles took it and shook it and smiled at him in just the way his brothers had parodied him years before, confirming whomever in the continuing belief that they were friends putting on not only a polite show but an important one of formal salon manners. And of course they were, but that was not all that they were doing.
“Now you’re flattered! What next, Mr. Minot! Raw materials.!”
“I admit I overextended myself there. That kind of talk might pass in the debating hall, but has a hollow ring, I hear it quite distinctly, here with the radical set.” Charles was angry now, and had become so without actually knowing that it was happening. Vera and he were at the very least friends. There was no call to play him publicly like she was. Or was there? What was the point? Why was she working so hard to appear to hold me in contempt? “You are more amenable to fire-breathing and the violent homilies of failed tradesmen.”
“Let me just ask you this: what is it that you were doing up there on the stage that makes you ‘the American,’ and why was everybody going nuts as they watched you do it?”
“First off, I am not ‘the American.’”
“You’re not?”
“You’re being ridiculously disingenuous, Vera.”
“Well, who the hell are you then?”
“Charles Minot.”
“Who becomes somebody or something eight times a week called ‘the American,’ but who cannot or will not, for undisclosed reasons that nevertheless make him look like either a stooge or chicken, own up to it and tell us what we’re supposed to make of all the whistling and cheering and boot-stomping and flower-throwing he so easily and naturally elicits when he is ‘the American’ he insists he is not!”
“You are pretending to be a simpleton, Vera, just to get my goat and perhaps the applause of this audience here around us. Now are you or are you not a simpleton?”
“What are the consequences of my deceit, Mr. Minot?”
Charles laughed, hoping that Vera might too, but she did not.
“I suppose,” he said, “you get my goat and the applause of your friends!”
“And the consequences of your deceit, Mr. Minot?”
“It’s not deceit, Vera.”
“It looks very much like deceit!”
“Yes, but there’s a long history of people of goodwill, like us, all over the world agreeing that it’s not.”
“Excellent: What is the consequence of this deceit that the world has decided is not deceit? Surely it has a consequence no matter what we call it.?”
“Surely.” Charles smiled.
While he was smiling, Vera told him that the consequence of his deceitful display of American character would be to help spur the country into the war, that he was part of a propaganda machine, a mouthpiece, a puppet, and when everybody was done cheering, a million Americans would have joined the ten million dead Englishmen and Germans and Frenchmen.
Charles, strangely, continued to smile. He said he was doing no such thing, and that the only person he was encouraging to go to war was himself. Even more strangely, Vera broke into a grin. She demanded to know who was being disingenuous now. She seemed on the verge of flirtatiousness.
“I’m not responsible for the fucking crowd,” Charles said, taking himself completely by surprise with the vulgarity. Had her sudden and shocking smile elicited this roguishness? Had he only just remembered that he was amongst safecrackers? He continued with an air of having learned something the hard way. “The audience gets the show they want. And if they don’t get it, they get what they deserve. What I want and what I deserve just don’t figure. What you want and what you deserve are different concerns, you incredibly deceitful and hypocritical woman!”
The dense formation of the people in the room shifted in some small way, and Charles, feeling the movement, looked away from Vera to see Sir Edwin standing next to Jules the Owner. They were standing side by side, two dark men with flamboyant moustaches and luminous eyes, who could have been taken for brothers. Sir Edwin made a face of great disdain and said that the actor was a lightning rod and nothing more. If he was a good one, he might conduct violent force from the heavens for many years, but if a bad one, if there was some small fault in him, he would be burned to death at the first strike.
And Jules said, “He’s an ordinary kid. He’s one of us, or he could pass, even if he is filthy stinking rich. That’s what I told you, Vera, from the very first, and I know you know it’s true.”