“Decadent! It is decadent!” Pelazi shouted.
“Only for a Realist. For the Vike, there is pure escape. It does things better for him, with no strain and no pain. Three cheers for it, I say.”
Pelazi’s face seemed ready to erupt. It turned a deep red, and then modulated the chromatic scale until it reached its normal shade again. “Your answer,” he mumbled. “Your... your answer to my proposal?”
“You just had it, Pelazi. I say stuff your proposal. Stuff it up your nose like a peanut!”
“You will continue with your submissions? In spite of...”
“I damn well will.”
Pelazi rose, stiffly. “Thanks for the history lesson, Mr. Branoski. I appreciated it.” He turned brusquely and started for the door, stopping halfway across the carpet. “You’ll remember that you were warned? You will remember that?”
“Sure, I’ll remember.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to crush you now, Mr. Branoski. You and the others. We’ve started already, and we won’t stop until we’ve won. The Vicarion Movement is finished, believe me.”
Van didn’t answer. Pelazi seemed ready to say something else. He opened his mouth, and then shook his head when he saw the grin on Van’s face.
Quickly, he turned on his heel and walked out.
Brant should be here, Dino Pelazi thought. Brant should see the Ree in his natural habitat. Brant should be here.
He had thought of the Vike ever since leaving his office. He could not get Brant out of his mind. Even now, surrounded by Rees, in the secure comfort of a Ree home, listening to Ree conversation, he could not get Brant out of his mind.
Perhaps I’m going Vike, Pelazi thought. Wouldn’t Schultz love that? Wouldn’t Schultz exult in saying, ‘I suspected Dino of tendencies all along.’?
A good Realist, Schultz. If there is such a thing as a good Realist. Now come, come, Dino, there are good Realists. You are a good Realist, aren’t you? Am I? And Schultz?
Why, surely Schultz is a good Realist. Why, he’d been a Realist from away back in the old days. It was Schultz who’d organized picket lines whenever a doubtfully moral movie showed at one of the alleged art theatres. It was not important that Schultz had been two-timing his wife at the same time. It was not important that Schultz was indulging with that little blonde — what was her name — during the period in which he carried signs stating, “This motion picture advocates adultery!” That was not important. What is important? Pelazi wondered.
Surely, the Vikes are wrong. They can’t be right, no they cannot, because they are so obviously wrong. But are we right? And just what the hell, in essence, is the Realist philosophy — or have we allowed it to become so damned clouded over the years that we honestly cannot say any more?
Is it, Do as I say, but not as I do?
No, that’s making a mockery of the whole thing, and the Realist cause is certainly not a mockery. Or is it?
Where did it begin? You’re a Realist, Dino, and Brant was able to tell you just where the Vikes began. Where did the Realist begin? In Salem days, with the witchcraft trials? (Heavens, that far back?) In the beginnings of state laws governing the sexual practices of state citizens? Or the Ku Klux Klan — the burning of a cross — the whipping of an adulteress? In the committees to banish books? And, oh, did the paperbacks take out full page ads in counterattack! In the committees advocating censorship of motion pictures? And, oh, did some producers fight these committees right up to the Supreme Court! Where then?
For we have tried to censor movies and books, oh yes, we have. And did we hope to accomplish anything by such censorship? Did we really feel that a blackballed book or a picketed movie would really discourage, let us say, adultery? And conversely, did we feel a suggestive novel would truly be suggestive to someone whose moral code, whose principles of behavior had already been established? Is that what we believed?
Did we believe that smoking was a vile thing, did we reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, finally allow women to appear on cigarette advertisements — but did we still cling in the meantime to the outdated notion of a female smoker on the streets being something akin to a streetwalker? Did we condemn the drinking habit, even the social drinking habit, did we — the Realists — do that? And while we ranted and raved about these minor, petty, social ills, what did we do about some of the real menaces? Did we really believe the books and movies were causing the widespread use of narcotics? Could we really have believed that? Did we hope to convince ourselves that the delinquency bred and nurtured in our city schools was a result of the printed word? This was a real disease, but we chose to sue the transit companies, instead, because they carried placards discussing the avoidance and conquest of syphillis.
I think we lost sight of the forest, Pelazi thought. I honestly believe we were incapable of separating the crap from the cream. I honestly believe we donned a Puritan hat, and we refused to take off that hat; we stuffed everything into that hat, good and bad alike, mistaking artistry for smut, mistaking honest reporting for dishonest distortion.
We wore our clothing to our throats, pretending our women did not own breasts, casually ignoring the brassiere ads which denied the nonexistence of breasts, and which offered remedies and hidden treasures for those unendowed.
We denied stimulation, and at the same time we propagated like rabbits. We tried to tell everyone that two people mating in a piece of literature was a disgusting thing. We didn’t stop to explain away the fact that two people (who did or did not read the literature in question, it didn’t matter) would undoubtedly hop into bed that night and mate anyway, without the convenient literary double space and the clichéd “Afterwards.”
We denied what was. We denied what was, and the Vikes went us one better. We denied what was by refusing to permit representation of it, while secretly admitting it existed. The Vikes denied what was by allowing the representation to replace the reality. They...
“Because smut is smut,” a young man was saying, “and there are no two ways about it. I read a book the other night, one on the Spit List. Well, I’m telling you...”
“Where’d you get a Spit List book?” the hostess asked. She was an attractive woman, and her breasts were molded firmly within the confines of her rigid brassiere and her throat-hugging dress.
“I picked it up,” the young man said.
“And did it stimulate you?” the hostess asked archly.
“Stimulate? That’s putting it mildly. I threw Marge into bed, and wouldn’t let her get up for a week.”
“Oh, David,” Marge protested.
“And I think I’d have had enough left over for you, Betty,” the young man said to his hostess.
“I’ll try you sometime,” Betty answered archly.
The gathering laughed. Pelazi did not laugh with them. The marriage jokes, he was thinking. When, exactly, in a marriage, does the sex joke begin? Attend any gathering of Rees who’ve been married for — oh, let’s say three years at the most — and the marriage jokes will crop up as a matter of course.
Why was it that the crux of the Ree marriage had become a success or lack of success in bed? And could the Ree really be serious about something if he constantly joked about it?
Always the jokes, but always with the half-seriousness behind them, a generation whispering behind its hand in an attempt to cover up its disappointment. A Ree marriage, at best, was disillusionment. A termination of the courtship, a dutiful resignation to the nuptial couch, a boredom born of repetition.