“No.”

  “Sometimes I think I must be. I mean, you tend to become what people say you are.”

  “Well, I don’t say you are.”

  “You are a friend! And I never trusted you. I wonder why?”

  Peter experienced pain. Having known for most of his life precisely what it was he felt for Enid and having been denied the one thing in life he most wanted, he had settled for a friendship, which now, in a word, she proved had never existed.

  “I suppose I thought you were sneaky. Then of course Father preferred you to me and I was jealous.” This was so extraordinarily false that Peter chose not to contradict her, wondering as he occasionally did, if she might not indeed be mad. “Anyway that’s all academic. I’m here and they’re together. What else matters?”

  “Clay’s not living at the house any more. He’s got his own place, on Woodland Drive.”

  “With Alice?” She said her child’s name in a studiously flat way.

  “No. Alice is with Mother. She’s turning out very well, they say.”

  Peter tried to think of a neutral topic. She had mentioned the painting of Aaron Burr. Lately, Peter had been reading the papers of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr and himself the father of Emma, Grandfather Sanford’s second wife. “Aaron Burr isn’t our great-grandfather,” he said.

  Enid was not much interested. “Oh. Father always says he is. Wasn’t somebody a bastard?”

  “Yes. Charles Schuyler. The father of Emma, the princess.”

  “I met a Prince d’Agrigente years ago. In Paris.” Enid was talking about something other than herself. Progress. She described Emma’s son by her first husband. “A tall weedy old thing. With a monocle. He took me to lunch at the Jockey Club. I ate snails for the first time. He called me cousine.”

  “Emma must have been fascinating. I’ve been reading about her in Schuyler’s journals. I think she may have killed our grandmother.”

  “I’m quite sure that murder runs in our family.” Enid was grim again.

  Peter chattered. Anything to distract her. “I’ve got Schuyler’s journal. I’ve also got some pieces of an autobiography that Aaron Burr was working on. For Schuyler, I suppose. He was Burr’s law clerk, as well as son. Only Schuyler didn’t know of the relationship until the old man was dead. I think maybe I’ll try to put it all together. There’s a lot of valuable primary material. Old Burr is self-serving. But always interesting. And Schuyler has his charm, too. I’ve never been able to read any of his books but they were much admired in their day. When he died, William Cullen Bryant wrote the obituary for the Post.” But Enid was not listening. He had lost her attention.

  Enid stubbed out her cigarette: bright sparks sprayed the darkness. “I read that Clay went to the races last Sunday with Elizabeth Watress, the socialite daughter of Mrs. Lawrence Shattuck and Schuyler Watress of Oyster Bay.”

  “They see each other from time to time.” Peter was neutral. “But then I hardly see either of them any more.” Since Elizabeth had taken up with Clay she had made it clear to Peter that new circumstances demanded new friends. He was not offended. At the most she had been a pleasant companion, an occasional alternative to Diana, who still cared for him rather less than he did for her, just as “Clay likes Elizabeth but not as much as she likes him.”

  “He’ll use her, one way or another. Just the way he did me. Just the way he’s using Father. Do you think they are having an affair, Clay and Father?”

  Peter laughed. “You’re the one who thinks so, not me.”

  “Clay would, you know, to get what he wants.”

  “But Father wouldn’t.” Peter was certain that this was true, if only because, sexual preference to one side, neither man would allow himself to appear absurd or vulnerable in the eyes of the other.

  “I’m not so certain.” Enid was stubborn. “I’m sure they’re up to something. For God’s sake,” the voice suddenly broke. “Get me out of here!”

  “I’m trying.” He told her rapidly of his latest legal maneuvers but even to his own ear they sounded unconvincing.

  “I don’t think I can take much more of this.” In the dark she now resembled a statue of a woman seated. “I’ve thought about running away. It can be done. But you’ll have to help.” In a low voice she told him of her plan. She would steal Dr. Paulus’s car (“he always leaves the keys in the car”). Peter would then meet her in Silver Springs with another car and a false passport, and she would drive straight to the Mexican border. Once on the other side, she had a friend in Mexico City who would help her. As she spoke, she sounded as excited and eager as a child describing a holiday. Peter agreed with her that the plan, in theory, had merit but they should wait first to see if the board would review her case; meanwhile, she would have to be patient.

  “And face another Christmas here? No thanks.” She was grim. “They serve turkey, dry as a blotter, and then we all sit around a Christmas tree that’s covered with tufts of cotton and colored paper, made by a pair of old loons who’ve been here thirty years and live only for decorating that tree once a year, and all the while Mrs. Paulus plays the piano and the nuts all sing together and I tell you…I cannot…bear it…one more minute!” She was close to tears, which did not come. Instead, she leaped to her feet, switched on a lamp, and reached for one of the canvases against the wall.

  “Now,” she said briskly, “let me show you some pictures. Here’s my latest. Father burning in hell. It’s a good likeness, don’t you think? And that’s me there, with the pitchfork.”

  II

  Gray diagonals of rain upon a dead lawn turned to mud. Burden groaned at the sight, and said, “Naturally I’ll run again. I’m in good health.” His heart fluttered; a rain of dark specks fell between him and Sam Biermann; hysteria, he decided coldly, and the rain stopped. He had learned how to cope with most of the tricks his mind saw fit to play upon the susceptible flesh of an aging body which more and more reminded him of a time bomb, set to explode at a certain moment, and no way to pull the fuse. Each second brought him closer to the end which would be, he both feared and hoped, nothing. Hoped because nothing is no thing and not bad. Feared because nothing is not good. And so, wanting an alternative, wanting at heart something human and finite, his once desultory search for reassurance had become obsessive. Yet none of the culture’s familiar anodynes would do. Christianity had been ruined for him by Baptist preachers and Jesuit politicians. Attempts to contemplate “Om” had failed; he was no Brahman. He studied his beloved Plato, but found little consolation. Socrates’ argument on the nature and continuance of the soul struck him as peculiarly tinny. He himself could have argued the case better, for a fee. He much preferred the bleakness of Aeschylus. “Take heart, suffering when it climbs highest lasts but a little time.” That was acceptable. Since happiness lasts such a notoriously short time, its shadow, pain, must be as brief. But once the suffering was done, what then? “Men search out God and searching find him.” Here the cold vision of Aeschylus had faltered. Having glimpsed the pit, the poet drew back, arguing that the journey itself was the answer. If it is, I am nearly done, and have found the answer without knowing it, which is useless. He turned from a contemplation of the rain and nothing, to life and politics, to Sam Biermann, his ancient sounding board.

  “You’ve got no competition, I can see. And nationally it ought to be a good year for you Democrats, particularly now the President’s been re-elected. Of course you’ll probably have a primary fight.”

  “I always do nowadays.” Actually, until the previous election, no member of Burden’s party had ever dared challenge him for he had been the state’s most famous son. But now there were a thousand young men ready to take his place. Eventually one would. Meanwhile he held what was his, won fairly in battle.

  “Do you think Clay will enter the primary against you?”

  Burden was amused. “Never!”

  “How can you be so certain?” Sam’s mournful eyes studied him closely.

  “I’m certain of nothing in politics.” Burden felt himself grow irritated. To relieve the familiar tension, he took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “But off the record, Clay’s after Momberger’s seat, not mine. It makes better sense, doesn’t it? Jesse comes up for re-election in ’52. By that time Clay will have spent six years in the House. He’ll have a political identity by then, which he doesn’t have now and which he needs. You just don’t come from nowhere and go to the Senate. You must mean something.” But as Burden spoke he wondered in all conscience just what it was that be had meant when he first proposed himself to the voters, an obscure young lawyer who wanted to be President. The answer was, not much; but as the years passed he had so created himself that, finally, he did become what he seemed to be (despite one lapse), and that was the most any man could hope to achieve in a political system where the one unforgivable sin was to tell the dangerous truth. “Hypocrisy our shield, inaction our sword,” he once had observed in the cloakroom, to the laughter of his peers, who knew exactly what he meant. He had learned very early that to do any good thing in the Senate, one must first present it as an act of self-interest since to do good for its own sake aroused suspicion. Mrs. Roosevelt had been genuinely hated for what seemed to many to be a genuine lack of self-interest. Ultimately she had been effective only because certain Senators, disliking her, decided that she was at heart a superb Machiavelli, using the public money to attract the unwashed to the Roosevelt banner. Self-interest acknowledged, even she could occasionally work a miracle in the Congress.

  “Anyway, nobody’s mad at you, like last time. Those California Niseis.” Sam shook his head sadly at the memory. “That was a mistake.”

  “But I was right.” Burden broke his own rule and sounded virtuous in private.

  “Being right never got a man a vote.”

  “That’s true enough. Do you think I should take a swing around the state in the spring, show the flag?”

  “I do. You’ve been Senator so long a lot of new voters don’t even know who you are. And a lot of the old ones think you’re dead.”

  Burden did not show his distress. “I’m not surprised. I haven’t been too active lately. I need better…” He took a deep breath, hating the new phrase, “…public relations.”

  Sam nodded. “It’s true. Things aren’t what they used to be. Now along with your radio and your newsreels, there’s this television, and even in the backwoods they read magazines! It’s not like when they just read the one paper, our paper. Oh, it does hurt! No doubt of that. Why, at this moment Clay is the most popular man in the state all because of the magazines and the newsreels, and now they say they’re going to make a movie about him, in Hollywood! Like he was Sergeant York. It’s amazing!”

  “A lot of money is being spent,” observed Burden neutrally, glad that he would never have to face Clay in a primary. Clay had made that clear during the election of 1946 when Burden had introduced him around the district, particularly in the farm towns where Burden was strong and Clay was viewed with suspicion. Is he a churchgoer? does he drink? is his wife really crazy? Burden had discreetly allayed all fears. In fact, his confidential talks with church groups about the tragedy of Enid’s madness had created considerable sympathy for the young hero who seemed to have so much and yet, in fact, was doomed to remain married but wifeless for the rest of the madwoman’s days.

  Waiting for the first returns that night in the Sunflower Hotel at the county seat, Burden had said, “You’re going to win big.”

  Clay had agreed. “But one thing I’ll never forget. I owe it to you.” And he had looked at Burden gravely, with a son’s eyes.

  Burden had been embarrassed; sincerity tended to demoralize him. “You owe more to Blaise. To yourself. To what you did in the war.” But Clay had shaken his head. “It’s all those years I spent working for you that made it possible. Watching you, learning the ropes. That’s what did it.” Then he had indicated to Burden that if all went well, he would move for higher things in 1952. On that one issue Clay was absolutely plain: “I’ll support you any time for anything, the way you’ve supported me.” That night, Clay defeated his Republican opponent by the largest plurality in the history of the district.

  So the alliance was made and after four years in the House, the young Representative and the old Senator still maintained their cordial alliance and though it was no longer that of son and father, the new arrangement of grateful pupil and revered teacher was perfectly agreeable. Burden had even been able to show his disciple a number of shortcuts to power within the tightly disciplined hierarchy of the House, so unlike the leisurely even anarchic Senate where Burden’s colleague Jesse Momberger watched with a cold eye the rise of a new power in their state, and sought ways of containing it. But there were none for the source of that power was Laurel House from which flowed endless money and publicity. Even Burden, at times, grew weary of being forever asked, “And what was your impression of Clay Overbury when you first met him?” Had not Sam (his Sam) spent most of their afternoon together discussing Clay? But that was inevitable since “the little bastard’s better known in New York City than he is back home,” the senior Senator had recently observed to the junior Senator, who had said, “It does the state no harm to have a celebrity in Congress.” To which the senior Senator had snarled, “It’s not the God-damned state I’m worried about.”

  Kitty’s voice ended the interview. “She’s here! She’s here!” Indeed she was. Diana came out on the porch, attended by her mother and Peter Sanford, who “met me at the station.” She kissed her father happily and shook hands with Sam, who promptly shook hands again and made his departure, leaving the family to themselves and Peter.

  “Doesn’t she look well!” Kitty hugged her daughter with innocent pleasure and Burden agreed. Even in the dull November light Diana was unexpectedly glowing, face tanned from the desert sun. “She looks just like an Indian. She gets that from Burden. He has Indian blood, but he’s ashamed to admit it.”

  This canard was ignored. One of Burden’s uncles had married an Osage Indian, which was the closest Burden came to being Indian. But in recent years Kitty’s inner voice had begun to reflect a mind which had grown not only lax but melodramatic. At times she alarmed Burden, with her abrupt revelations that murder was afoot, incest common and no one legitimate.

  In the draughty living room they sat about a new fire which improved considerably Burden’s mood. Diana told them about Nevada, where “We lived in cabins, ate nothing but tough fresh beef, and tried to avoid rattlesnakes and lustful cowboys.”

  “Diana!” Kitty’s eyes gleamed with pleasure.

  “Don’t worry, Mother. I avoided both. But many of the ladies succumbed to the cowboys. Poor things. When they weren’t weeping about the past, they were weeping about the future. The cowboys gave them something to do in the present. Anyway, I learned to play bridge and read all of l’Education Sentimentale, in French, slowly.”

  “Now you’re free.” Though Burden had always found Diana’s coolness refreshing, he did wonder at times whether or not that coolness might be simply coldness. Not since her grief at Clay’s abandonment had anything much moved her, as far as he knew, which was not well since for some years they had exchanged no confidences. He was aware that she had come to hate Billy Thorne but by never once admitting this to her father, she had deprived him of a normal pleasure in being able to remind her (but not doing so) that from the beginning he had been right. But right or wrong, the marriage was now over. “Where is Billy?” asked Kitty. “I haven’t seen him in a coon’s age.”

  “I don’t know.” Diana turned to Peter. “Where is my ex-husband?”

  “No one knows. He left us last month, after accusing Aeneas Duncan of being a tool of the bourgeoisie, which I suppose meant me. He left the office without his coat or hat. We still have them, if you’d like a souvenir.”

  “No thanks.” Diana stretched like a cat. “Freedom is nice, isn’t it?”

  Burden told her how pleased he was to see her happy. Yet as he spoke he found himself looking at Peter, who sat like the youthful Buddha, smiling at the fire. If Peter had been having an affair with Diana, would Billy Thorne have continued to work with him? He assumed not but then the arrangements of the young were baffling to him. Apparently, adultery was acceptable if those involved were sufficiently “adult.” At the margin of Burden’s consciousness a social revolution was taking place and though his first instinct was to disapprove, in actual fact he was profoundly indifferent to what others did, except for Diana. Married to Peter, Diana would be rich, with a great name. Of minor importance, Peter would make a good son-in-law for a garrulous politician. More than once Burden had been aware that he was telling Peter things which he would never have confided to a contemporary. Something in the young man’s manner made him want to tell him what he really felt. Not that he for a moment confused the other’s politeness with true interest. Yet Peter Sanford was the sort of person he wished instinctively to persuade; and so, spurred on by that smiling neutrality, he offered confidences which were no doubt betrayed or, worse, forgotten. It made no difference.

  “I read with interest your piece on Hiroshima. Most eloquent, I thought.”

  “Did you really read it?” Peter looked at him with what seemed genuine surprise.

  “I always read your magazine.”

  “In a state of apoplexy,” said Diana, inspiring her mother to say, “I don’t like Burden’s color at all. He’s too red in the face. And not a good red, which means he’ll have a stroke and then I’ll starve to death because there’s nothing in the bank and the insurance is piddling.”

  Feeling the final stroke begin, Burden raised his voice in order to bridge if not to dam Kitty’s boiling stream of consciousness. “I always read Aeneas Duncan with rising blood pressure, that’s true.”