(1969) The Seven Minutes (84 page)

A half minute later they had got off the pygmy train, and seconds after that they were riding up in an elevator. It was a short walk to Senator Bainbridge’s suite.

In the reception room there were two secretarial desks, and the walls were decorated with scenic photographs and a huge relief map of Connecticut. To his right Barrett could see two more rooms filled with desks and files and members of the staff, male and female, Negro and white. Barrett loitered before the relief map, wondering whether it would be the Senator alone or the Senator and Jadway, and he listened to Miss Xavier, at her telephone, announcing his arrival. He tried to hide his anxiety.

‘Yes, Senator, I’l send him right in,’ she said. She nodded to Barrett. “This way, sir.’

She had reached the polished oak door and had begun to open it.

In those seconds. Barrett hesitated. It had been such a long and despairing hunt, so many peaks and valleys, so many bright dreams and black nightmares, so much that was tangible and so much more that was mirage. And throughout this odyssey, going forward into the past, he had always felt that he had been drawing nearer and nearer to that shade of Jadway that was hidden around

every next turning. And though Jadway had taken form in his mind, a substance, a person, a companion finally, who deserved to be saved and in turn might save them all, Barrett had always accepted, until recently, that Jadway was no more, was ashes to ashes and dust to dust literally, and not a substance in fact, or a person or a companion or a savior. But now, as Abe had put it, J J Jadway was real, a Lazarus brought forth from those ashes scattered over the Seine. A few steps, and lo, Jadway, to be touched, to be heard, to be spoken to - that strange and mysterious author of one book, the most condemned book, the most suppressed book ever to come from the pen of a man. There he would be, that lover of Cassie, that conceiver of Judith, that creator of Cathleen, that poet of a panegyric to love who had made ‘fuck’ a word that could be printed without shame and the symbol of an act of beauty. Jadway, that magical name which Duncan and Yerkes had evoked as their Sesame to power, that basilisk name which fanatic thousands, millions, had used to put flames to books and to freedom of of speech.

Barrett held back. He was gripped by an emotion that he struggled to understand. It was an emotion that he supposed the reporter Henry Morton Stanley had felt on that day - after a two-month search through Central Africa for a missing Scottish explorer-missionary - when he came to the village of Ujiji and found alive the one who had so long eluded him. ‘I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob - would have embraced him, but that I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what moral cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing - walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”’

Stanley had concluded: ‘Finis coronat opus.’ Barrett understood: The end crowns the work.

He wanted to run to Jadway now, to embrace him, but instead he walked deliberately toward the polished oak door that Miss Xavier held open.

He went inside.

There was one man, alone. There was Senator Thomas Bainbridge. There was no J J Jadway. Only Bainbridge, Friend and Go-between.

Senator Bainbridge was standing as straight as if his spine were made of steel - standing beside his desk, rigid, bloodless, aloof, immaculate, resembling more a portrait by Gilbert Stuart or Thomas Sully than a living and breathing twentieth-century man. He was, Barrett perceived in his disappointment, like one of those early American portraits of a Federalist judge, one such as Chief Justice John Marshall. His features were even more chiseled than Marshall’s, Barrett decided. They were Caesarean, the personification of instant authority. His, smooth iron-gray hair was parted on one side. His brow was large, his eyes penetrating, his nose Roman,

his lips tight. He had height, no excess weight, and the carefully tailored, conservative gray suit bore not a wrinkle. Here, the austere Connecticut Yankee.

It surprised Barrett when Bainbridge moved. He was extending a hand. ‘Mr Barrett, I presume?’

Momentarily, Barrett was startled, remembering Stanley to Livingstone, and knowing that his host had appropriated the one line that he himself should have spoken. Was it offered with irony or humor? Or with neither? Barrett couid not tell. He shook the outstretched hand, and the grip was firm.

As he released the hand, Barrett’s eyes left Bainbridge’s and automatically strayed about the room, just to be certain.

‘No,’ said Bainbridge dryly. ‘I thought it best to receive you by myself. Do have a seat, Mr Barrett.’

There was a dark-green upholstered chair before the carved desk, and Barrett took it. Waiting for the Senator to fortify himself behind the massive desk, Barrett now examined - instead of searched - the office briefly. There was a conference table, a luxurious leather sofa, a low-slung leather chair and ottoman, several bookcases, a craggy Giacometti sculpture on a lamp table, and numerous diplomas and citations hanging on the walls, and through the window behind the Senator’s high-backed swivel chair Barrett could see the Carroll Arms Hotel across the way.

The Senator was in his chair, and the patrician countenance offered no verbal amenity.

Barrett determined to offer one. ‘I understand you’ve recently been appointed to the Senate. My congratulations.’

‘Thank you. It was nothing I sought or desired. It was a duty. Have you read de Tocqueville? A little spot, he called our Connecticut, a little spot, one that gives America the clock peddler, the schoolmaster, the senator. “The first gives you time; the second tells you what to do with it; the third makes your law and your civilization.” Someone must make our law. Perhaps I am as qualified as most.’

‘From your background, I’m sure you are more than qualified.’ But Barrett was concerned with the time allotted him and what he must do with it. ‘Based on the little 1 do know of your background, Senator, I must say I’m surprised to find J J Jadway figuring in it.’

Bainbridge’s eyes were unwavering. ‘Life makes strange bedfellows, Mr Barrett. I grew up with Jadway. We were in the same fraternity at Yale.’

‘Have you remained in touch with him all these years?’

‘More or less.’

‘The fact that you have maintained contact with Cassie McGraw - but he has not - strikes me as odd.’

‘Does it ? You are the counsel for The Seven Minutes. You have heard the calumnies heaped upon the book and its author. Do you find it surprising that in his later years he does not wish to be

burdened by a past that might make his present position in life untenable?’

‘If you are acquainted with our trial -‘

‘I am, sir.’

‘ - then you know that my colleagues and I regard the work we are defending as a work of art, of genius, and as one that its author, we had hoped, would have as much pride in defending as we have.’

‘I am afraid you are a romantic, Mr Barrett,’ said the Senator. ‘Life is less so. Jadway learned that soon enough.’

‘So he did not want to keep in personal contact with Miss McGraw for fear of being exposed?’

“That is correct. In matters concerning his long-buried past, I have, out of consideration for his wish for anonymity, represented him in those matters. In the trifling business of an annual birthday memento for Miss McGraw, for one thing. And a few others, very few.’

It was going to be difficult, Barrett could see, and he wished that he had Cassie McGraw beside him, and Abe Zelkin, and Maggie, to help, to soften this Yankee. But the seconds were ticking away, and the minutes, and he had better use them well and use them fast.

‘Senator, J J Jadway is alive, isn’t he?’

‘You knew that before you telephoned me last night. I saw no reason to deny it.’

‘I merely wanted to hear you affirm it again. You made a curious remark last night. You said that you and Jadway were wondering how long it would take me to learn he was alive, and you implied that you had both been expecting I’d get to you sooner or later,, Jadway thought I’d find him? What gave him reason to think so?’

Bainbridge leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, interlocking his fingers. ‘From the moment that you bid on the Jadway letters in the possession of the autograph dealer, Olin Adams, we suspected that you might find us.’

‘You knew about those letters?’

‘Certainly, Mr Barrett. How else could I have acquired them? It was I who recovered them for Jadway.’

Barrett sat up, astonished. ‘You were the buyer? I would have sworn it was the Los Angeles District Attorney who beat me to them. My phone was bugged at the time, by Luther Yerkes, an industrialist who’s supporting District Attorney Duncan politically.’

‘Yerkes may have more power than I. But perhaps I have better connections.’

‘Better connections, Senator ?’

‘Sean O’Flanagan, for instance. He’d been told the letters were for sale. He thought he had better inform Jadway of them. So he called me. I authorized him to buy them at once. But when he tried, it was too late. A Mr Michael Barrett had purchased them and was flying in from Los Angeles the next morning to pick them up. So I

flew into New York, also, and I picked them up in Mr Barrett’s name. Forgive me, Mr Barrett. Again, remember I am pledged to help Jadway preserve his anonymity.’

‘Even at the cost of allowing Jadway’s name to be traduced and maligned?’

‘You forget. Jadway is dead. He is buried with the past. Only history is interested in the past. Jadway has built a new and better present.’

Barrett took hold of the edge of the desk. ‘Senator, as long as Cassie McGraw and Sean O’Flanagan live and The Seven Minutes exists, Jadway can never turn his back on the past.’

Bainbridge unlocked his fingers and drew himself up. ‘Cassie McGraw - O’Flanagan - Jadway has taken care of them -I have taken care of them for him. I saw that O’Flanagan was provided for. First with his poetry quarterly, and then, when it went under, he was given a yearly stipend, sufficient to keep him with a roof over his head and in food and drink.’

‘And in silence.’

‘Yes, of course, that too. As for Cassie, we had O’Flanagan keep an eye on her. When she was no longer self-sufficient, physically or financially, O’Flanagan was empowered to see that she received convalescent care. We’ve managed this through him until lately, when excessive drinking has made him less reliable. More recently, Miss Xavier has been writing the checks sent to Mr Holliday and the florist. So, you see, Jadway has provided for these two friends from the past. And soon enough, being merely mortal, they and he will be cremated or entombed as Jadway’s own name was in Paris. This would leave only The Seven Minutes. But it will die, too, when your jury in Los Angeles returns its verdict.’

‘And Jadway would let it die?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? Because he’s ashamed of it?’

‘No, Mr Barrett, he is not ashamed of it. I often sense that he is very proud of it. He feels it was honest, true, perhaps even of value to some readers. Certainly, I can say to you, it was created out of love. But in the end, the law of survival pertains to books as well as species. If the world will not let it live, it must die.’

‘It is not just a book that will die, Senator. I don’t want to sound pompous, but I believe this with all my heart. If that book dies because of legal suppression, then a human freedom dies in our society.’

For the first time, Bainbridge gave an indication of human emotion. He frowned. ‘What are you saying, Mr Barrett?’

‘1 am saying there is more at stake in our trial than a mere book,’ said Barrett passionately. ‘I am saying freedom of speech is on trial. It has often been on trial, but it has never had so many enemies gathered together before. Recent years of permissiveness in the arts have made freedom’s advocates complacent, made them

blind. They have not seen the massive gathering of the forces of censorship. We’ve reached a crossroads. If Jadway’s book goes under, I foresee the beginning of a new Dark Age.’

‘You need not lecture me about freedom, Mr Barrett. All I have asked you to tell me is - what are you trying to say?’

‘I am trying to say that now that we have learned Jadway is alive, now that he can reveal the facts about himself and about his book, we implore him to do so. We feel it is imperative that he do so, no matter what the cost to his privacy. The impact of his appearance in court, the sensation of his testimony, the exposure of truth for the first time, these can overturn the case that the prosecution has built, and win us a verdict of not guilty, and defeat the censors and free The Seven Minutes. Senator, I want Jadway to know what I am saying -‘

‘1 promise you that he shall know.’

‘ - and I want you to ask him to appear in person as a witness for the defense in Los Angeles tomorrow.’

‘I can ask him. I can also give you his answer. His answer will be no.’

‘You are sure of that?’

‘I am positive.’

Barrett came to his feet, agitated. ‘I can’t understand it, I simply don’t understand it, how a man who has accomplished such a miracle of liberation in his past can now disown the miracle and the past. How is that possible? What kind of cowardice or selfishness is that? What kind of man is Jadway, anyway?’

He was aware that Bainbridge had been watching him, listening to his every word, and now he saw that Bainbridge wanted to answer. Barrett waited, and the Senator spoke, choosing his own words with care. ‘I will tell you what kind of man Jadway is, and then you will understand his reason for not coming forward. If, in his youth, Jadway was an idealist, he is now, in his advanced years, a pragmatist. He knows that what is best for the many, for the common weal, is in the end best for Jadway himself, since he is a part of the whole. Anything less would be self-indulgence. Do I sound enigmatic? Then I will resolve the riddle for you. Jadway graduated from law school when I did. He had no taste for the law. He felt his greater talent lay in writing. He went to Paris. He tried to write, and under the influence of Miss McGraw, he wrote. He was satisfied that he could do more for the cause of freedom, do more to liberate the human soui, through writing than through practicing law. But other circumstances intervened - do not inquire what circumstances, for I cannot divulge them - but as a result, Jadway had to forfeit his writing career, and law as well. Some years later, when there was the possiblity of a choice, he had lost his interest in writing, but there was still the law. So he returned to it, to serve it as best he could. He has risen high. Now he will rise higher. In short weeks, I can tell you in confidence, there will be a vacancy on the