God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Read online

  "Kublai Khan, Napoleon, Julius Caesar and King Richard the Lion Hearted all stink," a brave soul declares. The claim is unchallenged, nor are challenges from the parties insulted likely. The immortal soul of Kublai Khan now inhabits the meek meat of a veterinarian's wife in Lima, Peru. The immortal soul of Bonaparte peers out from the hot and stuffy meat of the fourteen-year-old son of the Harbor Master of Cotuit, Massachusetts. Great Caesar's ghost manages as best it can with the syphilitic meat of a Pygmy widow in the Andaman Islands. Coeur de Lion has found himself once again taken captive during his travels, imprisoned this time in the flesh of Coach Letzinger, a pitiful exhibitionist and freelance garbage man in Rosewater, Indiana. Coach, with poor old King Richard inside, goes to Indianapolis on the Greyhound bus three or four times a year, dresses up for the trip in shoes, socks, garters, a raincoat, and a chromium-plated whistle hung around his neck. When he gets to Indianapolis, Coach goes to the silverware department of one of the big stores, where there are always a lot of brides-to-be picking out silver patterns. Coach blows his whistle, all the girls look, Coach throws open his raincoat, closes it again, and runs like hell to catch the bus back to Rosewater.

  Heaven is the bore of bores, Eliot's novel went on, so most wraiths queue up to be reborn--and they live and love and fail and die, and they queue up to be reborn again. They take pot luck, as the saying goes. They don't gibber and squeak to be one race or another, one sex or another, one nationality or another, one class or another. What they want and what they get are three dimensions--and comprehensible little packets of time--and enclosures making possible the crucial distinction between inside and outside.

  There is no inside here. There is no outside here. To pass through the gates in either direction is to go from nowhere to nowhere and from everywhere to everywhere. Imagine a billiard table as long and broad as the Milky Way. Do not omit the detail of its being a flawless slate slab to which green felt has been glued. Imagine a gate at dead center on the slab. Anyone imagining that much will have comprehended all there is to know about Paradise--and will have sympathized with those becoming ravenous for the distinction between inside and outside.

  Uncomfortable as it is here, however, there are a few of us who do not care to be reborn. I am among that number. I have not been on Earth since 1587 A.D., when, riding around in the meat of one Walpurga Hausmannin, I was executed in the Austrian village of Dillingen. The alleged crime of my meat was witch-craft. When I heard the sentence, I certainly wanted out of that meat. I was about to leave it anyway, having worn it for more than eighty-five years. But I had to stay right with it when they tied it astride a sawhorse, put the sawhorse on a cart, took my poor old meat to the Town Hall. There they tore my right arm and left breast with red-hot pincers. Then we went to the lower gate, where they tore my right breast. Then they took me to the door of the hospital, where they tore my right arm. And then they took me to the village square. In view of the fact that I had been a licensed and pledged midwife for sixty-two years, and yet had acted so vilely, they cut off my right hand. And then they tied me to a stake, burned me alive, and dumped my ashes into the nearest stream.

  As I say, I haven't been back since.

  It used to be that most of us who didn't want to go back to good old Earth were souls whose meat had been tortured in slow and fancy ways--a fact that should make very smug indeed proponents of corporal and capital punishments and deterrents to crime. But something curious has been happening of late. We have been gaining recruits to whom, by our standards of agony, practically nothing happened on Earth. They scarcely barked a shin down there, and yet they arrive up here in shell-shocked battalions, bawling, "Never again!"

  "Who are these people?" I ask myself. "What is this unimaginably horrible thing that has happened to them?" And I realized that, in order to get proper answers, I am going to have to cease to be dead. I am going to have to let myself be reborn.

  Word has just come that I am to be sent where the soul of Richard the Lion Hearted now lives, Rosewater, Indiana.

  Eliot's black telephone rang.

  "This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"

  "Mr. Rosewater--" said a woman chockingly, "this--this is Stella Wakeby." She panted, waiting for his reaction to the announcement.

  "Well! Hello!" said Eliot heartily. "How nice to hear from you! What a pleasant surprise!" He didn't know who Stella Wakeby was.

  "Mr. Rosewater--I--I never asked you for anything, did I?"

  "No--no, you never did."

  "A lot of people with a lot less troubles than I got bother you all the time."

  "I never feel that anyone is bothering me. It is true--I do see some people more than others." He did so much business with Diana Moon Glampers, for instance, that he no longer recorded his transactions with her in the book. He took a chance now: "And I've often thought of the awful burdens you must have to carry."

  "Oh, Mr. Rosewater--if you only knew--" And she burst into violent tears. "We always said we were Senator Rosewater people and not Eliot Rosewater people!"

  "There, there."

  "We've always stood on our own two feet, no matter what. Many's the time I passed you out on the street and looked the other way, not on account of I had anything against you. I just wanted you to know the Wakebys were fine."

  "I understood--and I was always glad to get the good news." Eliot couldn't recall any woman's turning her face away from him, and he walked around the town so rarely that he couldn't have offered the overwrought Stella very many opportunities to react to him. He supposed correctly that she lived in frightful poverty on some back road, rarely showing herself and her rags, and only imagining that she had some sort of life in the town, too, and that everyone knew her. If she had passed Eliot on the street once, which she probably had, that once had become a thousand passings in her mind--each with its own dramatic lights and shadows.

  "I couldn't sleep tonight, Mr. Rosewater--so I walked the road."

  "And many's the time you've done it."

  "Oh, God, Mr. Rosewater--full moon, half moon, and no moon at all."

  "And tonight the rain."

  "I like the rain."

  "And so do I."

  "And there was this light in my neighbor's house."

  "Thank God for neighbors."

  "And I knocked on the door, and they took me in. And I said, 'I just can't go another step without some kind of help. If I can't get some kind of help, I don't care if tomorrow never comes. I can't be a Senator Rosewater person any more!' "

  "There, there--now, now."

  "So they put me in the car, and they drove me to the nearest telephone, and they said, 'You call up Eliot. He'll help.' So that's what I've done."

  "Would you like to come see me now, dear--or can you wait until tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow." It was almost a question.

  "Wonderful! Any time that's convenient to you, dear."

  "Tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow, dear. It's going to be a very nice day."

  "Thank God!"

  "There, there."

  "Ohhhhh, Mr. Rosewater, thank God for you!"

  Eliot hung up. The telephone rang immediately.

  "This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"

  "You might start by getting a haircut and a new suit," said a man.

  "What?"

  "Eliot--"

  "Yes--?"

  "You don't even recognize my voice?"

  "I--I'm sorry--I--"

  "It's your God-damned Dad!"

  "Gee, Father!" said Eliot, lyrical with love, surprise and pleasure. "How nice to hear your voice."

  "You didn't even recognize it."

  "Sorry. You know--the calls just pour in."

  "They do, eh?"

  "You know that."

  "I'm afraid I do."

  "Gee--how are you, anyway?"

  "Fine!" said the Senator with brisk sarcasm. "Couldn't be better!"

  "I'm so glad to hear that."

&nbs
p; The Senator cursed.

  "What's the matter, Father?"

  "Don't talk to me as though I were some drunk! Some pimp! Some moronic washerwoman!"

  "What did I say?"

  "Your whole damn tone!"

  "Sorry."

  "I can sense your getting ready to tell me to take an aspirin in a glass of wine. Don't talk down to me!"

  "Sorry."

  "I don't need anybody to make the last payment on my motor scooter." Eliot had actually done this for a client once. The client killed himself and a girl-friend two days later, smashed up in Bloomington.

  "I know you don't."

  "He knows I don't," said the Senator to somebody on his end of the line.

  "You--you sound so angry and unhappy, Father." Eliot was genuinely concerned.

  "It will pass."

  "Is it anything special?"

  "Little things, Eliot, little things--such as the Rosewater family's dying out."

  "What makes you think it is?"

  "Don't tell me you're pregnant."

  "What about the people in Rhode Island?"

  "You make me feel so much better. I'd forgotten all about them."

  "Now you sound sarcastic."

  "It must be a bad connection. Tell me some good news from out your way, Eliot. Buoy up this old futz."

  "Mary Moody had twins."

  "Good! Good! Wonderful! As long as somebody's reproducing. And what names has Miss Moody chosen for these new little citizens?"

  "Foxcroft and Melody."

  "Eliot--"

  "Sir--?"

  "I want you to take a good look at yourself."

  Dutifully, Eliot looked himself over as best he could without a mirror. "I'm looking."

  "Now ask yourself, 'Is this a dream? How did I ever get into such a disreputable condition?' "

  Again dutifully, and without a trace of whimsicality, Eliot said to himself out loud, "Is this a dream? How did I ever get into such a disreputable condition?"

  "Well? What is your answer?"

  "Isn't a dream," Eliot reported.

  "Don't you wish it were?"

  "What would I wake up to?"

  "What you can be. What you used to be!"

  "You want me to start buying paintings for museums again? Would you be prouder of me, if I'd contributed two and a half million dollars to buy Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer?"

  "Don't reduce the argument to an absurdity."

  "I'm not the one who did that. Blame the people who put up that kind of money for that kind of picture. I showed a photograph of it to Diana Moon Glampers, and she said, 'Maybe I'm dumb, Mr. Rosewater, but I wouldn't give that thing house room.' "

  "Eliot--"

  "Sir--?"

  "Ask yourself what Harvard would think of you now."

  "I don't have to. I already know." "Oh?"

  "They're crazy about me. You should see the letters I get."

  The Senator nodded to himself resignedly, knowing that the Harvard jibe was ill-considered, knowing Eliot told the truth when he spoke of letters from Harvard that were full of respect.

  "After all--" said Eliot, "for goodness sakes, I've given those guys three hundred thousand dollars a year, regular as clockwork, ever since the Foundation began. You should see the letters."

  "Eliot--"

  "Sir--?"

  "We come to a supremely ironic moment in history, for Senator Rosewater of Indiana now asks his own son, 'Are you or have you ever been a communist?' "

  "Oh, I have what a lot of people would probably call communistic thoughts," said Eliot artlessly, "but, for heaven's sakes, Father, nobody can work with the poor and not fall over Karl Marx from time to time--or just fall over the Bible, as far as that goes. I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. Life is hard enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about money, too. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'll only share more."

  "And just what do you think that would do to incentive?"

  "You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?"

  "The what?"

  "The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it--and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently."

  "Slurping lessons?"

  "From lawyers! From tax consultants! From customers' men! We're born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes' screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping."

  "I wasn't aware that I slurped."

  Eliot was fleetingly heartless, for he was thinking angrily in the abstract. "Born slurpers never are. And they can't imagine what the poor people are talking about when they say they hear somebody slurping. They don't even know what it means when somebody mentions the Money River. When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, 'My gosh, but that's a dishonest and tasteless thing to say.' "

  "How stimulating to hear you talk of taste," said the Senator clankingly.

  "You want me to start going to the opera again? You want me to build a perfect house in a perfect village, and sail and sail and sail?"

  "Who cares what I want?"

  "I admit this is no Taj Mahal. But should it be, with other Americans having such a rotten time?"

  "Perhaps, if they stopped believing in crazy things like the Money River, and got to work, they would stop having such a rotten time."

  "If there isn't a Money River, then how did I make ten thousand dollars today, just by snoozing and scratching myself, and occasionally answering the phone?"

  "It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own."

  "Sure--provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. 'Go where the rich and the powerful are,' I'd tell him, 'and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.' "

  The Senator cursed.

  "Why did you say that, Father?" It was a tender question.

  The Senator cursed again.

  "I just wish there didn't have to be this acrimony, this tension, every time we talk. I love you so."

  There was more cursing, made harsher by the fact that the Senator was close to tears.

  "Why would you swear when I say I love you, Father?"

  "You're the man who stands on a street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, 'I love you.' And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don't want my square of toilet paper."

  "I didn't realize it was toilet paper."

  "Until you stop drinking, you're not going to realize anything!"
the Senator cried brokenly. "I'm going to put your wife on the phone. Do you realize you've lost her? Do you realize what a good wife she was?"

  "Eliot--?" Sylvia's was such a breathy and frightened greeting. The girl weighed no more than a wedding veil.

  "Sylvia--" This was formal, manly, but uneven. Eliot had written to her a thousand times, had called and called. Until now, there had been no reply.

  "I--I am aware that--that I have behaved badly."

  "As long as the behavior was human--"

  "Can I help being human?"

  "No."

  "Can anybody?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Eliot--?"

  "Yes?"

  "How is everybody?"

  "Here?"

  "Anywhere."

  "Fine."

  "I'm glad."

  "If--if I ask about certain people, I'll cry," said Sylvia.

  "Don't ask."

  "I still care about them, even if the doctors tell me I mustn't ever go there again."

  "Don't ask."

  "Somebody had a baby?"

  "Don't ask."

  "Didn't you tell your father somebody had a baby?"

  "Don't ask."

  "Who had a baby, Eliot?--I care, I care."

  "Oh Christ, don't ask."

  "I care, I care!"

  "Mary Moody."

  "Twins?"

  "Of course." Eliot revealed here that he had no illusions about the people to whom he was devoting his life. "And firebugs, too, no doubt, no doubt." The Moody family had a long history of not only twinning but arson.

  "Are they cute?"

  "I haven't seen them." Eliot added with an irritability that had always been a private thing between himself and Sylvia. "They always are."

  "Have you sent their presents yet?"

  "What makes you think I still send presents?" This had reference to Eliot's old custom of sending a share of International Business Machines stock to each child born in the county.

  "You don't do it any more?"

  "I still do it." Eliot sounded sick of doing it.

  "You seem tired."

  "It must be a bad connection."

  "Tell me some more news."

  "My wife is divorcing me for medical reasons."

  "Can't we skip that news?" This was not a flippant suggestion. It was a tragic one. The tragedy was beyond discussion.

  "Hippity hop," said Eliot emptily.

  Eliot took a drink of Southern Comfort, was uncomforted. He coughed, and his father coughed, too. This coincidence, where father and son matched each other unknowingly, inconsolable hack for hack, was heard not only by Sylvia, but by Norman Mushari, too. Mushari had slipped out of the living room, had found a telephone extension in the Senator's study. He was listening in with ears ablaze.