They drifted into the Bay of Naples without a light showing. Powerless, helmless, they floated stern foremost on the ebb tide. Two tugs came out from the port to tow them in, and a portable generator on the dock was connected to the ship’s lines so that there was light enough to disembark. Honora was one of the first to go ashore. The noise of Neapolitan voices sounded to her like a wilderness, and, stepping onto the Old World, she felt in her bones the thrill of that voyage her forefathers had made how many hundreds of years ago, coming forth upon another continent to found a new nation.
Part Two
Chapter XVIII
The cast of characters in the Nuclear Revolution changed so swiftly that Dr. Cameron has long since been forgotten excepting for a few disorders he incited. A crucifix hung on the wall behind his desk. The figure of Christ was silver or leaden and it was the kind of thing tourists pick up in the back streets of Rome and carry to the Vatican for a Papal blessing. It had no value or beauty and its only usefulness was to state that the doctor was a convert, a sinful one perforce, since he was known to believe in neither the divine nor scientific ecology of nature, but the priest who had given him instruction had stressed the mercifulness of Our Lord and the old man believed passionately that there was some blessedness in the nature of things although his transgressions were repeated and spectacular. He believed, and said so publicly, that matrimony was not an adequate means of genetic selection. He had administered, for the Air Force, some experiments in the manipulation of chromosomal structures for the production of what we call courage. He believed in sperm banks and, for the immediate future, a clear command of the chemistry of personality. He loosely embraced his belief in blessedness, his science and his own unquiet nature by thinking of himself as a frontiersman, approaching a future in which he would be obsolete. He was a gourmet and knew the foolishness of stuffing himself with snails, beef filets, sauces and wines but he classed his interest in good food as a mark of obsolescence. He similarly classified as obsolete his own sexual drives—that nagging inquietude in his middle. His wife had been dead for twenty years and he had kept a series of mistresses and housekeepers, but the older and more powerful he grew, the more discretion was demanded of him and he had not been safely able to enjoy a relationship with anyone in the United States.
He was one of those blameless old men who had found that lasciviousness was his best means of clinging to life. In the act of love his heart sent up a percussive beating like a gallows drum in the street, but lewdness was his best sense of forgetfulness, his best way of grappling with the unhappy facts of time. With age his desires had grown more irresistible as his fear of death and corruption mounted. Once, lying in bed with Luciana, his mistress, a fly had come in at the window and buzzed around her white shoulders. The fly had, to his old man’s mind, seemed like a singular reminder of corruption and he had got out of bed, bare as a jay bird, and raced and jumped around the room with a rolled-up copy of La Corriere delta Sera trying, unsuccessfully, to kill the pest but when he got back to bed there was the fly, still buzzing around her breasts.
It was in the arms of his mistress that he felt the chill of death go off his bones; it was in the arms of his mistress that he felt himself invincible. She lived in Rome and he met her there about once a month. There was a legitimate side to these trips—the Vatican wanted a missile—and a side more clandestine than his erotic sport. It was in Rome that he met with those sheiks and maharajas who wanted a rocket of their own. The commands from one part of his body to another would begin with a ticklish sensation that in a day or two, depending upon how hard he drove himself, would become irresistible. Then he would take a jet to Italy and return a few days later in a most relaxed and magnanimous frame of mind. Thus he flew one afternoon from Talifer to New York and spent the night at the Plaza. His need for Luciana mounted hour by hour like some simple impulse of hunger and lying in his hotel bed he granted himself the privilege of putting her together—lips, breasts, arms and legs. Oh, the wind and the rain and to hold in one’s arms a willing love! He was suffering, as he would put it, from a common inflammation.
In the morning it was foggy and leaving the hotel he listened for the sound of planes to discover if the airport was closed but it was impossible to hear anything above the clash of traffic. He took a taxi to Idlewild and waited in turn to pick up his ticket. Some mistake had been made and he was booked on a tourist flight. “I would like this changed to first class,” he said.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the girl said, “but there is no first-class space.” She did not look at him and went on filing papers.
“I have made thirty-three flights on this line in the last year,” the doctor said, “and I think I am entitled to a little preferential treatment.”
“We do not give preferential treatment,” the girl said. “It is against the law.” She had obviously never seen him on television and was unimpressed by the bulk of his eyebrows.
“Now you listen to me, young lady . . .” His voice sawed, soared, made enemies for him everywhere within earshot. “I am Dr. Lemuel Cameron. I am traveling on government business and if I should report your attitude to your superiors—”
“I am very sorry, sir,” she said, “but things are backed up because of the fog. The only available first-class space we have is for the evening flight next Thursday if you wish to wait.”
Her imperviousness to his importance, her indifference or overt dislike flustered him and he remembered all the others who had looked at him with skepticism or even antagonism as if his whole brilliant career had been a fatuous self-delusion. It was especially her kind, the girls in uniform with overseas caps, their hair dyed, their skirts tight, who seemed as remote to him as a generation of leaves. Where did they go when the flight was over, the office shut? They seemed to bang down a shutter between himself and them, they seemed made of different ingredients than the men and women of his day, they seemed supremely indifferent to his appearance of wisdom and authority.
“I must explain,” he said, speaking softly, “that I have a top priority and that I can demand a seat if necessary.”
“Your flight is loading at gate eight,” she said. “If you wish to wait until Thursday evening I can get you first-class space.”
He went down a long corridor to where a shabby-looking huddle of men and women were waiting to board the plane. They were mostly Italians, mostly working class, waiters and maids going home for a month to see Mamma and show off their ready-made clothes. He liked to stretch his legs in first class, sip his first-class wine and admire the caves of heaven from a first-class port as they traveled swiftly toward Rome but the tourist flight was very different from what he was accustomed to and reminded him of the early days of aviation. When he found his seat he beckoned to the hostess, another impermeable young woman with a brilliant smile, a tight skirt and hair dyed silver and gold. “I’ve been promised first-class space if there’s a cancellation,” he said, partly to acquaint her with the facts, partly to make clear to this motley group around him that he was not one of them. “I’m very sorry, sir,” she said with a smile that was dazzling in its insincerity, “but there is no first-class space on this flight.” Then she kindly ushered into the seats beside him a sickly-looking Italian boy and his mother, who had a baby in her arms. He smiled at them fleetingly and asked if they were going to Rome. “Sí,” the woman said wearily, “ma non speaka the English.” As soon as they were seated she took a bottle of medicine out of a brown paper bag and offered it to her son. The boy didn’t want the medicine. He put his hands over his mouth and turned toward Cameron. “Si deve, si deve,” the mother said. “No, mamma, no, mamma,” the boy pleaded but she forced him to drink. A little of the medicine spilled onto his clothing and it had a vile and sulphurous smell. The stewardess closed the cabin door and the pilot announced in Italian and then in English that the ceiling was zero and that they had not received their clearance but that it was expected that the fog, the nebbia, would lift.