第14章 The President

I am not altogether sympathetic to the new President. He is, certainly, a strange fellow (only forty-eight inches high at the shoulder). But is strangeness alone enough? I spoke to Sylvia: "Is strangeness alone enough?" "I love you," Sylvia said. I regarded her with my warm kind eyes. "Your thumb?" I said. One thumb was a fiasco of tiny crusted slashes. "Pop-top beer cans," she said. "He is a strange fellow, all right. He has some magic charisma which makes people --" She stopped and began again. "When the band begins to launch into his campaign song, Struttin with Some Barbecue, I just. . . I cant. . ."

The darkness, strangeness, and complexity of the new President have touched everyone. There has been a great deal of fainting lately. Is the President at fault? I was sitting, I remember, in Row EE at City Center; the opera was "The Gypsy Baron." Sylvia was singing in her green-and-blue gypsy costume in the gypsy encampment. I was thinking about the President. Is he, I wondered, right for this period? He is a strange fellow, I thought -- not like the other Presidents weve had. Not like Garfield. Not like Taft. Not like Harding, Hoover, either of the Roosevelts, or Woodrow Wilson. Then I noticed a lady sitting in front of me, holding a baby. I tapped her on the shoulder. "Madam," I said, "your child has I believe fainted." "Charles!" she cried, rotating the babys head like a dolls. "Charles, what has happened to you?" The Presi?dent was smiling in his box.

"The President!" I said to Sylvia in the Italian restaurant. She raised her glass of warm red wine. "Do you think he liked me? My singing?" "He looked pleased," I said. "He was smiling." "A bril?liant whirlwind campaign, I thought," Sylvia stated. "Winning was brilliant," I said. "He is the first President weve had from City College," Sylvia said. A waiter fainted behind us. "But is he right for the period?" I asked. "Our period is perhaps not so choice as the previous period, still --"

"He thinks a great deal about death, like all people from City," Sylvia said. "The death theme looms large in his consciousness. Ive known a great many people from City, and these people, with no significant exceptions, are hung up on the death theme. Its an obsession, as it were." Other waiters carried the waiter who had fainted out into the kitchen.

"Our period will be characterized in future his?tories as a period of tentativeness and uncertainty, I feel," I said. "A kind of parenthesis. When he rides in his black limousine with the plastic top I see a little boy who has blown an enormous soap bubble which has trapped him. The look on his face --" "The other candidate was dazzled by his strangeness, newness, smallness, and philosophical grasp of the death theme," Sylvia said. "The other candidate didnt have a prayer," I said. Sylvia ad?justed her green-and-blue veils in the Italian res?taurant. "Not having gone to City College and sat around the cafeterias there, discussing death," she said.

I am, as I say, not entirely sympathetic. Certain things about the new President are not clear. I cant make out what he is thinking. When he has finished speaking I can never remember what he has said. There remains only an impression of strangeness, darkness. . . On television, his face clouds when his name is mentioned. It is as if hearing his name frightens him. Then he stares directly into the cam?era (an actors preempting gaze) and begins to speak. One hears only cadences. Newspaper ac?counts of his speeches always say only that he "touched on a number of matters in the realm of. . ." When he has finished speaking he appears nervous and unhappy. The camera credits fade in over an image of the President standing stiffly, with his arms rigid at his sides, looking to the right and to the left, as if awaiting instructions. On the other hand, the handsome meliorist who ran against him, all zest and programs, was defeated by a fantastic margin.

People are fainting. On Fifty-seventh Street, a young girl dropped in her tracks in front of Henri Bendel. I was shocked to discover that she wore only a garter belt under her dress. I picked her up and carried her into the store with the help of a Salvation Army major -- a very tall man with an orange hairpiece. "She fainted," I said to the floor?walker. We talked about the new President, the Salvation Army major and I. "Ill tell you what I think," he said. "I think hes got something up his sleeve nobody knows about. I think hes keeping it under wraps. One of these days. . ." The Salvation Army major shook my hand. "Im not saying that the problems he faces arent tremendous, stagger?ing. The awesome burden of the Presidency. But if anybody -- any one man. . ."

What is going to happen? What is the President planning? No one knows. But everyone is con?vinced that he will bring it off. Our exhausted age wishes above everything to plunge into the heart of the problem, to be able to say, "Here is the diffi?culty." And the new President, that tiny, strange, and brilliant man, seems cankered and difficult enough to take us there. In the meantime, people are fainting. My secretary fell in the middle of a sentence. "Miss Kagle," I said. "Are you all right?" She was wearing an anklet of tiny silver circles. Each tiny silver circle held an initial: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@. Who is this person "A"? What is he in your life, Miss Kagle?

I gave her water with a little brandy in it. I spec?ulated about the Presidents mother. Little is known about her. She presented herself in var?ious guises: A little lady, 5 2", with a cane. A big lady, 7 1", with a dog. A wonderful old lady, 4 3", with an indomitable spirit.

A noxious old sack, 6 8", excaudate, because of an operation. Little is known about her. We are assured, how?ever, that the same damnable involvements that obsess us obsess her too. Copulation. Strangeness. Applause. She must be pleased that her son is what he is -- loved and looked up to, a mode of hope for millions. "Miss Kagle. Drink it down. It will put you on your feet again, Miss Kagle." I regarded her with my warm kind eyes.

At Town Hall, I sat reading the program notes to "The Gypsy Baron." Outside the building, eight mounted policemen collapsed en bloc. The well-trained horses planted their feet delicately among the bodies. Sylvia was singing. They said a small man could never be President (only forty-eight inches high at the shoulder). Our period is not the one I would have chosen, but it has chosen me. The new President must have certain intuitions. I am convinced that he has these intuitions (although I am certain of very little else about him; I have reservations, I am not sure). I could tell you about his mothers summer journey, in 1919, to western Tibet -- about the dandymen and the red bean, and how she told off the Pathan headman, instructing him furiously to rub up his English or get out of her service -- but what order of knowledge is this? Let me instead simply note his smallness, his strangeness, his brilliance, and say that we ex?pect great things of him. "I love you," Sylvia said. The Presi dent stepped through the roaring curtain. We applauded until our arms hurt. We shouted until the ushers set off flares enforcing silence. The orchestra tuned itself. Sylvia sang the second lead. The President was smiling in his box. At the finale, the entire cast slipped into the orchestra pit in a great, swooning mass. We cheered until the ushers tore up our tickets.