It was the same when they would listen to music. He had read, in some book of advice lent him by Mrs. Boismortier, that it was a bad idea to listen to too many records. The way to discover what any piece of music was about was to perform it yourself, or lacking that, to hear it performed live. The habit of listening to records was a form of self-abuse. But, ah, there is something to be said for the habit. Lord God, such music as they listened to that week! Such pleasures as they shared! Such flurries of fingers, such cadences and cadenzas, such amazing transitions to such sighs and smiles and secret sympathies suddenly made plain as in the most brilliant and luminous of mirrors!
It dawned on him that this is what being in love was all about. This was why people made such a fuss over it. Why they said it made the world go round. It did! He stood with Boa on the roof of Worry’s tower and watched the sun rise above the green body of the earth and felt himself to be, with her, ineffably, part of a single process that began in that faraway furnace that burned atoms into energy. He could not have explained how this was so, nor could he hold on for more than a moment to his highest sense of that enveloping Love, the moment when he had felt needles of light piercing his and Boa’s separate flesh, knitting their bodies like two threads into the intricate skein of that summer’s profusions. It was only a single moment, and it went.
But every time they made love it was as though they were moving toward that moment again, slowly at first, then suddenly it would be there again in its immense, arisen majesty within them, and still the delirium swelled as they moved from height to effortless height, exalted, exulting, exiles from earth, set free from gravity and the laws of motion. It was heaven, and they had the keys. How could they have kept themselves from returning, even supposing they had wanted to?
9
Late on the last night of his sojourn at Worry, returning from Boa’s room to his own, Daniel was met in the hallway by Roberts, Mr. Whiting’s valet. In a confidential whisper Roberts said that Mr. Whiting would like to have a word with Daniel in his office. Would he come this way? It seemed useless to plead that he wasn’t properly dressed to visit Mr. Whiting, so off he went, in his bathrobe and slippers, to the drawing room in which he’d first taken tea with the family, then through a kind of lock connecting that room to the inner keep, a sealed corridor of whirling motors, winking lights, and eccentric clockwork contraptions. He wondered, walking through this fairy-trap, if it had ever actually served the purpose for which it had been built. Were there, lost in the perpetual rotary motion of these various whirligigs, or caught in the repeating decimal of some data-bank underfoot, snared souls forever unable to return to their flesh? To which question there could be no answer for anyone who entered, as he did now, corporeally.
Grandison Whiting’s office was not like other rooms at Worry. It did not astonish. It was furnished with only ordinary office furniture of the better sort: glass bookcases, two wooden desks, some leather chairs. Papers littered every surface. A swivel lamp, the only one burning, was aimed at the door by which he’d come in (Roberts had not followed him through the fairy-trap), but even with the light in his eyes he knew that the man who sat behind the desk could not be Grandison Whiting.
“Good evening, Daniel,” the man said, in what was unmistakably Grandison Whiting’s voice.
“You’ve shaved off your beard!”
Grandison Whiting smiled. His teeth, agleam in the subdued light, seemed the exposed roots of his skeleton. His entire face, without his beard, had the stark character of a memento mori.
“No, Daniel, you see me now as I am. My beard, like Santa’s, is assumed. When I’m here quite by myself, it is a great relief to be able to take it off.”
“It isn’t real?”
“It’s quite real. See for yourself. It’s there in the corner, by the globe.”
“I mean…” He blushed. He felt he was making a complete fool of himself, but he couldn’t help it. “I mean — why?”
“That’s what I so much admire in you, Daniel — your directness. Do sit down — over here, out of the glare — and I’ll tell you the story of my beard. That is, if you’re interested.”
“Of course,” Daniel said, taking the proffered chair cautiously, so that his bathrobe wouldn’t part.
“When I was a young man, a little older than yourself, and about to leave Oxford and return to the States, I had the good fortune to come across a novel in which the hero changes his character by buying and wearing a false beard. I knew that I would have to change my character shortly, for I would never be a credit to my position, as they say, until I’d learned to assert myself much more strenuously than I was accustomed to doing. I had tended to be reclusive in my college days, and while I’d learned a good deal concerning economic history, mostly forgotten since, I’d failed utterly to master the essential lesson that my father had sent me to Oxford to learn (and which he had learned there); namely, how to be a gentleman.
“You smile, and you do well to smile. Most people, here, suppose that one becomes a gentleman by adopting what is called ‘good manners.’ Good manners, as you must know (for you’ve picked them up very quickly), are mainly an encumbrance. In fact, a gentleman is something else entirely. To be a gentleman is to get what you want with only an implicit threat of violence. America, by and large, has no gentlemen — only managers and criminals. Managers never assert themselves sufficiently, and are content to surrender their autonomy and most of the money they help to generate to us. In return they’re allowed the illusion of a guiltless life. Criminals, on the other hand, assert themselves too much and are killed by other criminals, or by us. As always, the middle way is best.” Whiting folded his hands with a consciousness of completion.
“Pardon me, Mr. Whiting, but I still don’t quite see how wearing a, uh…”
“How a false beard helped me be a gentleman? Quite simply. I had to act as though I weren’t embarrassed by my appearance. That meant, at first, I had to overact. I had to become, somehow, the sort of person who would actually have such a big bushy red beard. When I did act in that manner I found that people behaved much differently toward me. They listened more closely, laughed louder at my jokes, and in general deferred to my authority.”
Daniel nodded. In effect, Grandison Whiting was stating the Third Law of Develop-Mental Mechanics, which is: “Always pretend that you’re your favorite movie star — and you will be.”
“Have I satisfied your curiosity?”
Daniel was flustered. “I didn’t mean to give the impression that, uh—”
“Please, Daniel.” Whiting held up his hand, which glowed with a pale roseate translucence in the beam of the lamp. “No false protests. Of course you’re curious. I should be dismayed if you were not. I’m curious about you, as well. In fact, the reason I called you from your bed — or rather, from Boa’s — was to say that I’ve taken the liberty of gratifying my curiosity. And also to ask you if your intentions are honest.”
“My intentions?”
“Concerning my daughter, with whom you were having, not half an hour ago, intimate relations. Of, if I may say so, the highest quality.”
“You were watching us!”
“I was returning a compliment, so to speak. Or has Bobo never mentioned the incident that sent her packing to Vilars?”
“She did but… Jesus, Mr. Whiting.”
“It isn’t like you to flounder, Daniel.”
“It’s hard not to, Mr. Whiting. All I can think to say, once again, is why? We supposed you knew what was going on pretty much. Boa even got the impression that you approved. More or less.”