“No. But I’m standing by. There’s a meeting of Congressional leaders at nine tonight. So I am preparing.”

  “Funny, I never thought this would happen.” Momberger rested one hand on the head of what he took to be a poor likeness of his old friend William Jennings Bryan.

  “I wonder if he did, the President.”

  “He’s a mean cuss but I don’t think he’d lose the whole fleet deliberately.” At heart Momberger was a New Dealer. As a result, relations were often strained between the two Senators, for the President saw to it that all patronage was funneled through the senior Senator, a situation that would not make easy Burden’s fight for re-election in 1944.

  “Even Franklin miscalculates on occasion.” Burden was neutral. He could afford to be. The President was directly responsible for the greatest defeat inflicted on the United States since the War of 1812. He might yet be impeached. “We must all rally ‘round,” said Burden.

  They sat in silence, with time suspended, as the winter afternoon came to a close and there was nothing anyone could do but wait for the President to lead them into battle.

  “How’re you feelin’, by the way?” Momberger sounded like a concerned friend but Burden knew that he was merely an interested politician.

  “Never felt better.” This was almost true. “It wasn’t really a stroke.” This was not true. “But what they call a temporary blockage in the brain, like a spasm.” This was euphemistic. “I had difficulty speaking for a week or two, and that was the end of it.” The end of it! He still awoke in the middle of the night, panicky lest an artery had burst in the lobes of his brain, depriving him of speech, sight, movement, or, worst of all, creating hell beneath the skull’s curve, since he knew now that all the agony and terror of which man is capable can be created simply by a drop of blood seeping into the wrong passage of the brain.

  Clay entered with a sudden burst of sound from the corridor behind. “Hello, Senator.” He shook hands warmly with Momberger who said, “Howdy, Congressman!” Momberger seemed to like Clay and had already given him tacit support in the special election.

  “Not Congressman, Captain Overbury, Army of the United States.” Clay turned to Burden, as though in apology. “It’s all arranged.”

  “So fast?” was all that Burden could say.

  “I’ve been in touch with the War Department for the last six months, just in case. Well, this is the case.”

  “Then you’re not goin’ to run?” Momberger was suddenly alert.

  Clay shook his head. “How can I, when there’s a war?”

  “Good boy.” Momberger turned to Burden. “We better pass the word on to the Judge.”

  Burden nodded. “I’ll call him tonight.”

  Momberger crossed to the door. “Tell me what the President says.” He was gone and Burden knew that within minutes, national disaster or not, his colleague would be on the telephone to the Judge, proposing his own candidate for the Second District.

  “Are you seeing the President?”

  “I assume so. According to the radio, all Congressional leaders are to be briefed at the White House tonight. Better get me the Far East file.”

  Clay put the file on Burden’s desk. “Also that memorandum I made right after I talked to Ambassador Kurusu.” Burden shook his head with wonder. “Just think, he was in there with Hull, talking, while Pearl Harbor was being bombed. Fantastic people!”

  Clay spread papers on the desk as Burden asked, “What are they saying at Laurel House?”

  “That it’s a plot. What else? Blaise thinks the President blew up the ships himself.”

  “Maybe he did! Was Enid there?”

  Clay frowned. “No. She’s at home, as far as I know.”

  A Senate page appeared at the open door to the inner office. In a rapid singsong he said, “Senator, majority leader says there’ll be joint session Congress tomorrow twelve-thirty. President will speak.” The boy was halfway out the office when Burden said, “Come back here, son.” The boy stopped. “Is that all the majority leader said?”

  “Yes, sir. Same message to all Senators. President speaks tomorrow, twelve-thirty joint session.” The boy was gone.

  Burden frowned. “Clay, you better check with Senator Barkley’s office and find out just when and where we’re supposed to meet tonight.”

  Wanting comfort, Burden telephoned Ed Nillson in New York. But Nillson gave none: he was glad that the United States was at last committed, to which Burden replied, suddenly fervent, “I want no war, of any kind, ever. Nothing is worth a man’s life.”

  Nillson made a dry crackling noise in the receiver. “May I quote you, Senator?”

  Burden laughed, too. “No, you may not. But I do mean it.”

  “But surely Hitler should be discouraged. And how can that be done without war?”

  “I don’t know the answer. No one has ever known it.” Distressed by the resonance of his own unexpected despair, he changed the subject and told of Clay’s enlistment.

  “A good idea,” said Nillson. “He’ll make a better candidate if he’s been a soldier, with a good record.”

  “But suppose he’s killed.”

  Clay returned, unaware that it was his death that was being considered. “Let the future take care of itself.” Nillson was cool. “How are you feeling, by the way?”

  Burden gave the usual answer and rang off. He looked expectantly at Clay, who said, “I’m afraid you’re not on the White House list.”

  “Not on it?” Burden was astonished. “But Senator Austin is going and I certainly outrank…” He stopped abruptly, refusing to reveal his pain. “Well, that’s Franklin’s revenge, I suppose.”

  Clay nodded. “Senator Barkley was apologetic. He said you’d understand that it wasn’t his doing.”

  Burden said good night to Clay and left the Senate Office Building. In the cold twilight, he saw the old anonymous Senator making his slow way toward Union Station and his hotel, where he lived, no doubt, in small rooms filled with piles of yellowing Congressional Records, scrapbooks that smelled of old paste and signed photographs of forgotten celebrities. Depressed, Burden beckoned to Henry who opened the car door with a flourish.

  “The White House, Senator?”

  “No. Home.” As Burden settled back in his seat, he realized that what disturbed him was not so much the President’s insult as the fact that he had not anticipated it. One could not survive for long in politics with senses so impaired. Do I begin to fail? he asked himself, and nowhere in his mind could he with much conviction sound the negative.

  III

  If Enid was surprised, she did not show it. Wearing an old silk kimono, she sat alone in the sitting room, painting her nails with a solution that smelled like model airplane glue and looked like blood. “Welcome home.” She frowned at the nails, not at him.

  “I guess you heard the news?”

  “News?” She looked at him blankly.

  “About Pearl Harbor.”

  “Oh, that. Yes. It’s awful. If you’ve come to see the baby, you can’t. She’s gone to bed without supper. Children need discipline.” She spoke defiantly as though she expected to be challenged.

  “I came to see you.”

  “Well, that’s nice. How’s Daddy?” Malice gave unexpected life to her face.

  “Doing nicely. I’m going into the Army.”

  “You’ll look sweet in one of those white suits with that thing about the neck, like gym clothes for girls.”

  “That’s the Navy.” Clay had no idea what response he wanted from her. Doubtless a protestation of love which he could then reject coldly or accept warmly. At the moment he was capable of either.

  “Anyway, you’ll have a good time. Men always do. Do you like this red?” She displayed her talons.

  “A bit bloody.”

  “My mood exactly. I’m going to Harold Griffith’s tonight. Are you? No, I guess not, since he’d never ask us both together. He just phoned to say he’s going to be a war correspondent if Daddy will let him. Imagine Harold in a war! It’s too silly!” She took a sip from a half-finished glass of whisky and Clay realized that she was drunk.

  “Drinking alone?” Automatically, he added to the brief.

  “You’re here. That’s not alone, technically anyway.” She finished the glass. “Fix me another,” she ordered, indicating the bottle on the coffee table. “This stuff isn’t dry yet.” She waved her hands in the air to dry the lacquer while he made her a drink.

  * * *

  —

  “Listen,” she said, taking the glass. “I don’t want a divorce. Do you?”

  “No. I never did.” He had to say this; and yet, in a way, he meant it.

  “Then why did you move out?”

  “How could I stay? Besides, you wanted me to.”

  “I did not! Why do you say things like that?” She stared at him reproachfully. “You moved out just to spite me. Father put you up to it, and don’t say he didn’t. He’s getting back at me for having married you. Oh, he’s sly as they come, and never forget it and never start thinking you can manage him like that Senator of yours, because you can’t. Not Daddy. He’s managing you, to hurt me. Why don’t you come with me to Harold’s tonight. It ought to be fun.”

  Clay had never got used to her sudden changes of mood, not to mention her dazzling dialectic. Starting with a false premise, she could build such a logical case that by the end she had almost made the premise itself seem true. Even more virtuoso were her sudden revelations, always egocentric, usually false, and yet often perceptive. On the face of it nothing was more absurd than that her father should take up with him to get back at her. But Blaise was mysterious and passionate. Enid had deeply offended him by marrying Clay (or so it had seemed), and now by taking Clay’s side against Enid he could at last get back at her. For want of a better theory, Clay accepted Enid’s; otherwise there was no understanding Blaise, who supported him while believing Enid to be the injured party…Clay had told no one the truth about the adultery on the excellent ground that it is not the aggressor but the victim the world despises and fears. The more Enid told her story of Clay’s adultery “in my own bed with the baby in the next room,” the less sympathy she was able to evoke even from those strangers whom, after three martinis, she took into her confidence.

  “No. I can’t go to Harold’s. I’ve got work to do. For the Senator.”

  “I was in Bloch’s today. They’ve got some marvelous clothes for children, much cheaper than Woodward and Lothrop’s. Is the Senator still seeing Irene?” As usual, Enid mocked the name, stressing the terminal “E” as did all her set, to whom Irene Bloch was a source of constant diversion.

  “I don’t think he ever saw much of her.” Clay did not believe the popular story that there had been an affair between the Senator and Irene and that in the act itself he had suffered a stroke. The Senator’s own story seemed more likely; he had gone to tea with Mrs. Bloch, a new acquaintance, and promptly fainted.

  “No use protecting him! Everyone knows, the old goat! Serves him right. What on earth could he see in her, aside from the money? Oh! Did you know that her husband doesn’t mind at all who she goes to bed with as long as it’s someone important? Isn’t that disgusting? But then the town’s full of that sort of thing nowadays.”

  Clay could not resist this opening. “You mean it would be less disgusting if they were not important, just sexy?”

  “That’s not very nice,” she said mildly, holding her dark gold drink up to the light. “Why do you keep harping on poor Ernesto? I said I was sorry.”

  “But that’s the one thing you never said!”

  “I certainly did! Don’t tell me I didn’t. I tried to make up. But you distort everything so. I mean, let’s face it, your pride was hurt.”

  “At the time you gave the impression that not only were you not sorry but it was all somehow my fault that you got laid by that spick.”

  “Charming. Well, I never said it was your fault, though you were certainly as responsible as I was. I mean, let’s face it, it takes two to make an adultery between man and wife.” Enid had now reached the stage in her drinking when argument became obscure and syntax difficult. “Anyway, you know exactly what I mean. Obviously if you were never going to go out with me at night I was bound to meet someone sooner or later who did like to go out and have a good time, unlike you who spend all your time conniving, unsuccessfully…well, until recently unsuccessfully since God knows you and Daddy are up to no good, two of a kind, really, except you don’t have his balls. In fact, you don’t have any balls at all, which I noticed very early on.” She took a deep swallow.

  He reminded himself to be tolerant. “You’re drunk.” At least that true statement was a legitimate counteroffensive in their war; never a knockout blow but always good for a diversion.

  “That is no excuse,” she said firmly, more muddled than usual. “You can’t get out of it that easily. Let’s face it, I wanted a man and what did I get? A secretary. Somebody’s secretary! And why, did I get somebody’s secretary?” She paused for emphasis; and promptly lost her train of thought. Clay answered for her.

  “Because it was the first time you’d ever gone to bed with a man because that’s the way you were brought up and so because Peter saw us in the poolhouse, you married somebody’s secretary….Let’s face it,” he added, happy at having caught the style.

  “Very funny.” She swung her legs onto the coffee table. The dressing gown fell open. She wore nothing underneath. But she was not trying to be seductive. It was part of her character that she had no physical sense of herself.

  “Anyway,” she organized her thoughts with an effort. “Anyway what’s done is done and it’s all water under the bridge what happened between Ernesto and me. Besides, he’s going back to Argentina, with that wife of his, who is a marvelous girl who can’t help the way she looks though they say there’s a new operation now where they put this silver thing in your chin or where your chin ought to be and then stretch the skin over it so it looks like you were born with a normal chin, but the operation would scare me to death….I mean, suppose something went wrong?”

  Clay got to his feet. “I’ve requested active duty. I don’t suppose I’ll be in Washington much longer.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “Ernesto thinks there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that the operation will work so Flora will have the new chin before they go back.”

  “Oh, Christ!” It served him right for soliciting sympathy: soldier off to the wars was really not his style.

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Knit you a sweater?” The voice was hard and the enunciation, which had begun to slur, was suddenly precise. A phenomenon of her drinking was the speed with which she could seem to sober up when she wanted to. With some surprise, he realized that she hated him for what he had allowed her to do to him.

  “No. I just thought you’d be interested. That’s all.”

  “Well, before you go marching off, I want you to give me permission to sell this house. Don’t worry, I’ll split with you.”

  “Where are you going to live?”

  “I’m looking for something in Georgetown.”

  “O.K. I’ll write you a letter.”

  Suddenly she was on her feet. She threw her arms about him. “Oh, damn it! Why do we act like this?” She started to cry. “I don’t know why I say what I say. I want you back. If you want to, that is. If you want to, I will.” The words came out jerkily. But though he wanted to tell her that he did love her still, a freezing pride made him mute, punishing not her but himself. And so by saying nothing, he gave each the most pain.

  Enid stepped back. “Well,” she said through tears, “that’s that. I seem to’ve got nail polish on your sleeve.”

  “That’s all right.” His voice was hoarse. “I’d better get back to the hotel.”

  “Of course. You know I never said anything to Father about what happened.”

  Clay wondered if this was true.

  “Did you say anything?” She looked at him suspiciously.

  Clay shook his head. “Not a word.”

  “I wish I could believe you.” She dabbed at her eyes with Kleenex.

  He lost all patience with her. “If you never said anything to anyone, why does everyone think I’m the one who’s been carrying on, with some South American’s wife?”

  “You know how people are.” She gestured vaguely. “Use plain alcohol or lighter fluid to take the nail polish off.”

  They parted without physical contact. As he drove through the cold darkness to the hotel, he wondered if Enid had been telling the truth. In vino veritas was, he knew, a demonstrable fraud, since the truly devoted liar is never so uninhibitedly inventive as when drunk. Some day he would have to ask Blaise, his new and unexpected friend.

  IV

  The leisurely pace of prewar Washington was now replaced by a positively New York surge of people coming and going, particularly women hurrying to do manly jobs: their short skirts revealed knees, while mountainous hair fell to padded shoulders, despite urgent warnings that long hair, by getting into machinery, not only slowed down production thereby delaying America’s inevitable victory over tyranny, but scalped its owner. The hair, however, was necessary to maintain a femininity compromised by so many hundreds of thousands of women fitting altogether too easily into the jobs of absent husbands and lovers. It was the army of women in the streets (the servicemen he took for granted) that most astonished Peter when he returned to the city on a warm June day, after intensive training as a rifleman in the swamps of Florida. Influence had saved him from a more active participation in the war. Now assigned to the Pentagon, he had every intention of surviving a war which so far had failed to interest him.