Castle of Days (1992) SSC Read online

  She must have looked flustered because he continued, smiling, “You Americans are not the only manufacturers, you see. It happens that a friend of mine is president of Olivetti. A skeptic like all of them today, but …”

  The sentence trailed away in a shrug and a puff of smoke from the black cigar. Miss Bushnan recalled the time she had asked the French delegate about him. The French delegate was handsome in that very clean and spare fashion some Frenchmen have, and she liked him better than the paunchy businessman who represented her own country.

  “You do not know who the man who sits by you is, mademoiselle?” he asked quizzically. “But that is most interesting. You see, I know who he is, but I do not know who you are. Except that I see you each day and you are much more pretty than the lady from Russia or the lady from Nigeria, and perhaps in your way as chic as that bad girl who reports on us for Le Figaro—but I hope not quite so full of tricks. Now I will trade you information.”

  So she had had to tell him, feeling more like a fool each second as the milling crush of secretaries of delegates, and secretaries of secretaries, and unidentifiable people from the Swiss embassies of all the participating nations, swirled around them. When she had finished he said, “Ah, it is kind of you to work for charity, and especially for one that does not pay you, but is it necessary? This is no longer the twentieth century after all, and the governments take care of most of us quite well.”

  “That’s what most people think; I suppose that’s why so few give much any more. But we try to bring a little human warmth to the people we help, and I find I meet the class of people I want to meet in connection with it. I mean my co-workers, of course. It’s really rather exclusive.”

  He said, “How very great-hearted you are,” with a little twist to the corner of his mouth that made her feel like a child talking to a grown-up. “But you asked the identity of the old gentleman. He is Pope.”

  “Who?” Then she had realized what the word meant and added, “I thought there weren’t any more.”

  “Oh no.” The French delegate winked. “It is still there. Much, much smaller, but still there … But we are so crowded here, and I think you are tired of standing. Let me buy you a liqueur and I will tell you all about it.”

  He had taken her to a place at the top of some building overlooking the lake, and it had been very pleasant listening to the waiters pointing him out in whispers to the tourists, even though the tourists were mostly Germans and no one anyone knew. They were given a table next to the window of course, and while they sipped and smoked and looked at the lake he told her, with many digressions, about a great-aunt who had been what he called “a believer” and two ex-wives who had not. (History at Radcliffe had somehow left her with the impression that the whole thing had stopped with John XXIII, just as the Holy Roman Empire had managed to vanish out of sheer good manners when it was no longer wanted. On the teaching machines you filled in a table of Holy Roman Emperors and Popes and Sultans and such things by touching multiple-choice buttons. Then when you had it all done the screen glowed with rosy light for a minute—which was called reinforcement—and told you your grade. After which, unless you were lucky, there was another table to be filled—but Popes had disappeared and you put the Kings of Sweden in that column instead.)

  She remembered having asked the French delegate, “There are only a hundred thousand left? In the whole world?”

  “That is my guess, of real believers. Of course many more who continue to use the name and perhaps have their children wetted if they think of it. It may be that that is too low—say a quarter million. But it has been growing less for a long time. Eventually—who knows? It may turn about and grow more. It would not be the first time that happened.”

  She had said, “It seems to me the whole thing should have been squashed a long time ago.” …

  The Pope straightened his shoulders a little and flicked ashes into the fountain. “At any rate, they make me uncomfortable,” he said. “I always have the feeling they don’t like me. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She smiled and said something about the convenience factor, and having Sal shipped in a crate from New York.

  “I suppose it’s a good thing my predecessor got the government to take responsibility for the Vatican,” the Pope said. “We couldn’t possibly staff it now, so we’d be using those things. Doubtless ours would have stained glass in them.”

  Miss Bushnan laughed politely. Actually she felt like coughing. The Pope’s cigar was the acrid, cheap kind smoked in the poorer sort of Italian cafés. Briefly she wondered if he himself had not been born into the lowest class. His hands were gnarled and twisted like an old gardener’s, as though he’d been weeding all his life.

  He was about to say something else, but Sal, reentering on silent wheels, interrupted him. “Phone, Miss Bushnan,” Sal said at her elbow.

  She swiveled in her chair again and touched the “On” and “Record” buttons on the communications console, motioning as she did for the Pope to keep his seat. The screen lit up, and she said, “Good evening,” to the office robot who had placed the call.

  The robot answered with an announcement: “Her Excellency the Delegate Plenipotentiary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Comrade Natasha Nikolayeva.” The image flickered and a striking blonde, about forty and somewhat overblown and overdressed, but with a remarkably good complexion and enormous eyes, replaced the robot. The Russian delegate had been an actress at one time and was currently the wife of a general; gossip said that she owed her position at the conference to favors granted the Party Secretary.

  “Good evening,” Miss Bushnan said again, and added, “Comrade Nikolayeva.”

  The Russian delegate gave her a dazzling smile. “I called, darling, to ask if you like my little speech today. I was not too long? You did not find it difficult, wearing the headphones for translation?”

  “I thought it was very moving,” Miss Bushnan said carefully. Actually, she had been appalled by the Russian delegate’s references to Hitler’s gas chambers and her cant phrases about restoring economic value to human life. It came to saying that if people had no value alive they should be made into soap, but she had no intention of telling the Russian delegate that.

  “I convinced you?”

  Brad made into soap. It should have been funny, but it wasn’t. One of Brad’s fingers slowly exposed as she scrubbed herself with the bar. The Russian delegate was still looking at her, waiting for her to reply.

  “It isn’t necessary that you convince me, is it?” She smiled, trying to turn the question aside. “I’m merely an observer, after all.”

  “It is necessary to me,” the Russian delegate said, “in my soul.” She pressed a hand flashing with diamonds against one upholstered breast. “I myself feel it so deeply.”

  “I’m sure you do. It was a wonderful speech. Very dramatic.”

  “You understand, then.” The Russian delegate’s mood changed in an instant. “That is wonderful, darling. Listen, you know I am staying at our embassy here—would you have dinner with us? It will be Tuesday, and nearly everyone will be there.”

  Miss Bushnan hesitated for a moment, looking briefly at the Pope, seated out of range of the Russian’s vision, for guidance. He was expressionless.

  “Darling, I will tell you a secret. I have sworn not to, but what is an oath when it is for you? The French delegate asked me to invite you. I would have in any case, of course, but he came to me. He is so shy; but if you come I have promised him I will seat you beside him. Do not say I told you.”

  “I’d be delighted to come.”

  “That too is wonderful then.” The Russian delegate’s smile said: We are women together and I love you, little one.

  “Tuesday? The day after the final vote?”

  “Yes, Tuesday. I will be looking forward so much.”

  When the screen went dark Miss Bushnan said to the Pope, “Something’s up.”

  The Pope only looked at her, as though trying to w
eigh what might be behind her attractive but not arresting face and brown eyes.

  After a moment Miss Bushnan continued, “The French delegate might buy me a dinner, but he wouldn’t ask for me as a dinner partner at an official function, and that Russian woman has been ignoring you and me ever since the conference opened. What’s going on?”

  “Yes,” the Pope said slowly, “something has happened, as you say. I see you hadn’t heard.”

  “No.”

  “I was more fortunate. The Portuguese delegate confides in me sometimes.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “That is why I came. The delegates caucused this afternoon after the public session. They decided to ask for our votes at the final meeting.”

  “Us?” Miss Bushnan was nonplussed. “The observers?”

  “Yes. The votes will have no legal validity, of course. They cannot be counted. But they want total unanimity—they want to get us down on the record.”

  “I see,” said Miss Bushnan.

  “Church and charity. People surrendered their faith in us to put it in the governments, but they’re losing that now, and the delegates sense it. Perhaps the faith won’t return to us, but there’s a chance it might.”

  “And so I’m to be wined and dined.”

  The Pope nodded. “And courted too, I should imagine. The French are very enthused about this; their penal system has been at loose ends ever since they lost their African colonies over fifty years ago.”

  Miss Bushnan had been staring at her lap, smoothing her skirt absently where it lay across her knees; she looked up suddenly, meeting his eyes. “And you? What are they going to offer you?”

  “Not the lost sees of eastern Europe, you may be sure. Mostly flattery, I suspect.”

  “And if we oppose them—”

  “If we oppose them we will be raising standards about which all the millions who detest the idea, and all the millions more who will come to detest it when they see it in operation, can rally.”

  “My husband—my former husband, technically—is in prison. Your Holiness. Did you know that?”

  “No, of course not. If I had—”

  “We plan to be remarried when he is released, and I know from visiting him what the alternative to the motion is. I know what we’ve got now. It’s not as though they’re going to be snatched from some Arcadia.”

  Unexpectedly Sal was at her elbow again. “Phone, Miss Bushnan.”

  The American delegate’s puffy face filled the screen. “Miss—ah—Bushnan?”

  She nodded.

  “This is—ah—a pleasure I have had to postpone too long.”

  In order to save him time she said, “I’ve heard about the decision to ask the observers to vote.”

  “Good, good.” The American delegate drummed his fingers on his desk and seemed to be trying to avoid her eyes. “Miss Bushnan, are you aware of the—ah—financial crisis now confronting our nation?”

  “I’m not an economist—”

  “But you are an informed laywoman. You know the situation. Miss Bushnan, there are close to a quarter of a million men and women in state and federal prisons today, and to maintain each of them there costs—costs us, Miss Bushnan, the taxpayers—five thousand dollars a year each. That’s a total of a billion dollars a year.”

  “I believe you brought out those figures during your speech at the third session.”

  “Perhaps I did. But we are all interested in restoring the preeminent place the United States once held in world affairs, aren’t we? Miss Bushnan, to do that we have had to take quite a few pages from the Soviet book. And it’s been good for us. We’ve learned humility, if you like.”

  She nodded.

  “We used to believe in job security for everybody, and a wage based on classification and seniority. That was what we called Free Enterprise, and we were proud of it. Well, the Communists showed us differently: incentives, and discipline for underachievers. They forced us to the wall with those until we learned our lesson, and now—well, you can say whatever you like, but by God things are better.”

  “So I understand,” Miss Bushnan said. Here it came.

  “Now they’ve got a new trick,” the American delegate continued. “They used, you know, to have these gangs of—ah—laborers out in Siberia. Then one day some smart commissar thought to himself: By God, if the peasants can grow more vegetables on private plots, couldn’t the prisoners be used more effectively that way too?”

  “If I recall your speech correctly,” Miss Bushnan said, “you pointed out that if half the federal and state prisoners could be leased out to private owners at five thousand a year, the revenue would take care of the remaining half.”

  “Lessees, not owners,” the American delegate said. “Lessees with option to renew. It will lift a billion-dollar millstone from about our nation’s neck.”

  “But,” Miss Bushnan continued innocently, “surely we could do the same thing without entering into the international agreement being discussed here.”

  “No, no.” The American delegate waved a hand in protest. “We should enter the world community with this. After all, Miss Bushnan, international trade is one of the few, and one of the strongest, cohesive forces. We need by all means to establish a supranational market structure.”

  The Pope, sitting outside the range of the American delegate’s view, said softly, “Ask him if they’re still going to call them slaves.”

  Miss Bushnan inquired obediently, “Are you still going to call them slaves? I mean in the final agreement.”

  “Oh, yes.” The American delegate leaned closer to the scanner and lowered his voice. “In English language usage. I don’t mind telling you, however, that we—I mean the British and Canadians as well as our own country—have had a hard time getting that one past the Soviets. It comes from the root-word ‘slav,’ you know, and they don’t like that. But it’s a selling word. People like the idea of having slaves; robots have gotten us used to it and tranquilizers and anti-aggressants have made it practical; what’s more, it’s a link with the past at a time when too many such links are phasing out. People feel manipulated today, Miss Bushnan. They want to be master of someone themselves.”

  “I see. And it will get them out of prison. Place them in decent surroundings.”

  “Oh, it certainly will. And—ah—you asked about the necessity of an international agreement and an international market a moment ago. You must remember that our nation needs hard currencies very badly today; and we have the curse—or, ah—the blessing, blessing if you think of it in a positive fashion, of having the highest crime rate among major nations. The United States will be an exporter in this market, Miss Bushnan.”

  “I see,” Miss Bushnan said again.

  “You may have heard some of these rumors about the Soviets pressing a certain number of—ah—country people into the market to satisfy the demand. These are slanders, of course, and in any event that sort of thing would be unthinkable in the United States. I understand you’re a wealthy woman, Miss Bushnan; your father is in the government, I suppose?”

  “He was,” Miss Bushnan said. “He’s dead now. The Department of Agriculture.”

  “Then with a family background of public service you understand that in a democracy we have to listen to the voice of the people; and the people want this. The—ah—most recent polls have shown seventy-nine percent favoring. I won’t try to hide the fact that it would be an embarrassment to our country if you voted in opposition, and it would not benefit the organization you represent—in fact it would do it a great deal of harm.”

  “Are you threatening us?”

  “No, of course not. But I’m asking you to consider what would happen to your organization if you lost your tax-exempt status. I believe a vote in opposition to the motion might—ah—make Washington feel that you were engaged in political activity. That would mean loss of the exemption, naturally.”

  “But a vote in favor of the motion wouldn’t be political activity
?”

  “Washington would expect your organization to support this humanitarian cause as a matter of course. I doubt very much that the matter would come up. You must understand, Miss Bushnan, that when—ah—a measure as revolutionary as this is under consideration humanity must be practically unanimous. Even a token opposition could be disastrous.”

  Paraphrasing the Pope, Miss Bushnan said, “It would raise a standard about which all the millions who detest the idea could rally.”

  “Millions is surely an exaggeration; thousands perhaps. But in principle you are correct, and that must not be allowed to happen. Miss Bushnan, Washington has sent me a dossier on you. Did you know that?”

  “How could I?”

  “Your former husband is confined in the federal penitentiary at Ossining, New York. In the letters you have exchanged both of you have stated an intention to remarry upon his release. Were those letters sincere, Miss Bushnan?”

  “I don’t see what my personal life has to do with this.”

  “I merely wish to use your own case as an example—one which will strike home, so to speak. It will be at least five years before your former husband will be released under the present system; but if the motion passes it will be possible for you to lease—ah—” The American delegate paused, looking at some paper on his desk.

  “Brad,” Miss Bushnan said.

  “Yes, Brad. You could lease Brad from the government for those five years. You would have him, he would have you, and your government would be twenty-five thousand dollars to the better as the direct result of your happiness. What’s the matter with that, eh? In fact, in your case I think I could promise that your husband would be one of the first prisoners to be made available for the plan, and that he would be, so to speak, reserved. There would be no danger of someone else leasing him, if that’s worrying you. Of course you would be expected to supervise him.”

  Miss Bushnan nodded slowly. “I understand.”