“You think I should go?”
“But certainly.”
“They invited both of us, Miles. What’s the matter — did you think we were a secret?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, my friends know that you and I are a thing.”
“A thing?”
“Lovers.”
He realized that it had not even occurred to him to wonder whether her friends knew this. When she was with him it was as if she ceased to exist apart from him. No, he corrected himself, it was more that what they shared, what they were to each other, had no points of reference to the rest of the world.
“I thought maybe you’d like to go.”
“Why don’t you go without me? I would be out of place, don’t you think?”
“Well, it’s a couples thing,” she said, not pressing. “I wouldn’t go alone, that wouldn’t be cool. But it’s not important.”
“You would like me to go with you?”
“Only, you know, if you want.”
“Why not?”
There were six couples at the downtown apartment when he and Jocelyn arrived. Two more students came ten minutes later. Dorn smiled through introductions but made no attempt to remember names. He sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor and accepted a glass of too-sweet wine. He listened in on various conversations, ranging in topic from politics to music. His eyes wandered around the large, sparsely-furnished room. Several posters caught his eye. One was a list of instructions on proper behavior in the event of a nuclear attack. It told the reader to curl himself up in a ball and place his head down between his legs. “Now kiss your ass good-bye,” it concluded. Another showed a Nazi flag, a black swastika stark on a red field. Above it, English words were written in German Gothic type: “It’s your flag; love it or leave it.”
He finished his wine and began to circulate around the room, moving from one knot of people to another, joining passively but easily in a variety of conversations. He observed the boys and girls with interest, not attempting to distinguish one individual from another but wanting merely to develop a collective impression of them. Surface aspects — beards, long hair, dress — clouded his view at first. Like James’s blackness, he thought. But familiarity taught one to see past the surface, to gaze through it.
He turned once to find Jocelyn at his elbow. “Having a good time?”
“Yes. I’m enjoying myself.”
“Are you? I was afraid you wouldn’t. But I wanted you to meet my friends.”
He was refilling his wineglass when a voice said, “Mr. Dorn?” He turned to look at one of the boys, taller than he, cleanshaven, hair to his shoulders. The boy had an arm around a very short girl. Nevertheless, Dorn knew instantly that this boy had slept with Jocelyn.
“Miles,” he corrected, smiling gently. “I’d sooner feel no more ancient than I absolutely must.”
“Jocelyn tells me you’re opposed to revolutionary violence.”
“That’s true.”
“I suppose you take the position that violence never solved anything.”
“Not at all. It’s often a solution. Sometimes a final solution, as someone once called it.”
“Then you oppose it for humanitarian reasons?”
The patronizing assurance of the young. “That is reason enough, wouldn’t you say? But it is also beside the point. You needn’t tell me about omelets and broken eggs. I might agree with you, I might not. I oppose violence because of its effects.”
“Which are?”
“Violence in return. Action equals reaction, a law of physics. Except that in politics the reaction is often greater than the action. Rocks bring bullets.”
“So you believe that confrontations have to stay peaceful. That’s a good theory, but how do you explain it to Jon Yerkes when a pig’s bullet takes his hand off? Or what do you say to the Panthers when the cops come through the door with their guns blasting away? Don’t shoot back? Just stand there and get killed?”
The boy had raised his voice, and others were beginning to circle around, hanging on the dialogue. There was a subtle manhood test here, Dorn decided. The boy talked of politics, but it was their mutual relationship with Jocelyn that was the conversation’s raison d’etre. Dorn’s impulse was to give ground.
Instead, he said, “You misunderstand me. You make a greater distinction than I between violent and nonviolent political action. I think either is a mistake.”
“Oh, man, I don’t buy that. Take a look around you. This country is on the way to a revolution.”
“So it seems.”
“And it damn well needs one. You can’t reform the system. It’s gone beyond that point.” He went into an indictment of the country’s ills, making no points that had not occurred to Dorn and few with which he was inclined to disagree. He paused for breath, then looked down at Dorn again, setting his jaw. “The revolution’s coming,” he said. “Everything we do makes it come just that much faster.”
“Absolutely.”
“Even the acts that bring reaction. Every time a student is clubbed or bayoneted or shot, ten more students stop being liberals and turn into radicals. Every time the other side makes a move, our side grows stronger.”
“I agree.”
“Then you’ve lost me, man. If you’ve got a point, I don’t know where you’re hiding it.”
Dorn put down his wineglass. “Everything you do provokes a reaction,” he said carefully, “and every reaction strengthens the left. I think that this is beyond dispute. Every day the left grows and every day the right grows. There is a line of Yeats. ‘Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.’ This happens, it is happening now, even as we talk. Every day more people take a side, one side or the other. Every day more people find a centrist position untenable.”
“That’s my point.”
“And mine,” Dorn said, softly, smiling, “mine is that as soon as you succeed in forcing matters to a crisis, you guarantee that you lose. Because there are more of them than there are of you. Many more of them. Every day brings the left closer to its maximum strength of perhaps twenty-five percent of the population. Every day brings the right closer to a maximum of perhaps seventy-five percent of the population.”
“I don’t know where you get your figures—”
“Out of the air. But I would be surprised if the gulf is not even wider than I’ve postulated it.”
“We have the blacks, we have the students, we have more and more of the liberals, we have the poor whites—”
“The poor whites? I think not.”
“But we will. Sooner or later the poor whites and the white working class are going to see where their best interests lie.”
“Precisely.”
“Huh?”
“Their interests lie in keeping blacks in a subservient position. I do not find it remarkable that they have already figured this out. What I find remarkable is that anyone seriously expects them to decide otherwise.”
They argued this point. Dorn yielded with smiles and soft words. The discussion slowed.
“Anyway,” the boy said, “I don’t see the point of talking in terms of numbers. I don’t buy your numbers, but I think they’re irrelevant. The revolution isn’t going to come about through an election. Maybe democracy is outmoded to begin with. You can’t call this fucking country a democracy.”
“Nonsense.”
“Man, when you look what’s going down—”
“Every stable government in the history of the world has been a democracy.”
The boy’s hands turned to fists. He said, “I think that’s the most outrageous statement I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s because you haven’t heard the rest of it. Every stable government has been a democracy in that it has ruled with the implicit support of the majority of its population. The form of government has been immaterial. Feudalism, monarchy, parliamentary system, fascist or communist dictatorship.”