Stochastic Man (17 page)

I said eventually, “Is it a deal? You won’t repeat anything I tell you today?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether I agree with you that it’s best to conceal the thing you want concealed.”

“I tell you, and then you decide?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that, Bob.”

“That means you don’t trust me either, right?”

I considered for a moment. Intuition said go ahead, tell him everything. Caution said there was at least a chance he might override me and take the story to Quinn.

“All right,” I said “I’ll tell you the story. I hope that whatever I say remains between you and me.”

“Go ahead,” Lombroso said.

I took a deep breath. “I had lunch with Carvajal a few days ago. He told me that Quinn is going to make some wisecracks about Israel when he speaks at the Bank of Kuwait dedication early next month, and that the wisecracks are going to offend a lot of Jewish voters here, aggravating local Jewish disaffection with Quinn that I didn’t know exists, but which Carvajal says is already severe and likely to get much worse.”

Lombroso stared. “Are you out of your mind, Lew?”

“I might be. Why?”

“You really do believe that Carvajal can see the future?”

“He plays the stock market as though he can read next month’s newspapers, Bob. He tipped us about Leydecker dying and Socorro taking over. He told us about Gilmartin. He—”

“Oil gellation, too, yes. So he guesses well; I think we’ve already had this conversation at least once, Lew.”

“He doesn’t guess. I guess. He
sees.”

Lombroso contemplated me. He was trying to look patient and tolerant, but he seemed troubled. He is above all else a man of reason; and I was talking madness to him. “You think he can predict the content of an off-the- cuff speech that isn’t due to be delivered for three weeks?”

“I do.”

“How is such a thing possible?”

I thought of Carvajal’s tablecloth diagram, of the two streams of time flowing in opposite directions. I couldn’t try to sell that to Lombroso. I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I take it on faith. He’s shown me enough evidence so that I’m convinced he can do it, Bob.”

Lombroso looked unconvinced.

“This is the first I’ve heard that Quinn is in trouble with the Jewish voters,” he said. “Where’s the evidence for that? What do your polls show?”

“Nothing. Not yet.”

“Not
yet?
When does it start to turn up?”

“In a few months, Bob. Carvajal says the
Times
will run a feature this fall on the way Quinn is losing Jewish support.”

“Don’t you think I’d know it pretty quickly if Quinn were getting in trouble with the Jews, Lew? But from everything I hear, he’s the most popular mayor with them since Beame, maybe since LaGuardia.”

“You’re a millionaire. So are your friends,” I told him. “You can’t get
a representative sampling of popular opinion hanging out with millionaires. You aren’t even a representative Jew, Bob. You said so yourself: you’re a Sephardic, you’re Latin, and Sephardim are an elite, a minority, an aristocratic little caste that has very little in common with Mrs. Goldstein and Mr. Rosenblum. Quinn might be losing the support of a hundred Rosenblums a day and the news wouldn’t reach your crowd of Spinozas and Cardozos until they read about it in the
Times.
Am I right?”

Shrugging, Lombroso said, “I’ll admit there’s some truth in that. But we’re getting off the track, aren’t we? What’s your actual problem, Lew?”

“I want to warn Quinn not to make that Kuwait speech, or else to lay off the wisecracks. Carvajal won’t let me say a word to him.”

“Won’t
let
you?”

“He says the speech is destined to occur as he perceived it, and he insists I simply let it take place. If I do anything to prevent Quinn from doing what the script calls for for that day, Carvajal threatens to sever relations with me.”

Lombroso, looking perturbed and mournful, walked in slow circles around his office. “I don’t know which is crazier,” he said finally. “Believing that Carvajal can see the future, or fearing that he’ll get even with you if you transmit his hunch to Quinn.”

“It’s not a hunch. It’s a true vision.”

“So you say.”

“Bob, more than anything else I want to see Paul Quinn go on to higher office in this country I’ve got no right to hold back data from him, especially when I’ve found a unique source like Carvajal.”

“Carvajal may be just—”

“I have complete faith in him!” I said, with a passion that surprised me, for until that moment I still had had lingering uncertainties about Carvajal’s power, and now I was fully committed to its validity. “That’s why I can’t risk a break with him.”

“So tell Quinn about the Kuwait speech, then. If Quinn doesn’t deliver it, how will Carvajal know you’re responsible?”

“He’ll know.”

“We can announce that Quinn is ill. We can even check him into Bellevue for the day and give him a complete medical exam. We—”

“He’ll know.”

“We can hint to Quinn that he ought to go soft on any remarks that might be construed as anti-Israeli, then.”

“Carvajal will know I did it,” I said.

“He really has you by the throat, doesn’t he?”

“What shall I do, Bob? Carvajal’s going to be fantastically useful to us, whatever you may think at the moment I don’t want to take the chance of spoiling things with him.”

“Then don’t. Let the Kuwaiti speech happen as scheduled, if you’re so worried about offending Carvajal. A few wisecracks aren’t going to do permanent damage, are they?”

“They won’t help any.”

“They won’t hurt that much. We’ve got two years before Quinn has to go before the voters again. He can make five pilgrimages to Tel Aviv in that time, if he has to.” Lombroso came close and put his hand on my shoulder. This near, the force of his strong, vibrant personality was overwhelming. With great warmth and intensity he said, “Are you all right these days, Lew?”

“What do you mean?”

“You worry me. All this lunacy about seeing the future. And so much dither over one lousy speech. Maybe you need some rest. I know you’ve been under a great strain lately, and—”

“Strain?”

“Sundara,” he said. “We don’t need to pretend I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m not happy about Sundara, no. But if you think my wife’s, pseudo-religious activities have affected my judgment, my mental balance, my ability to function as a member of the mayor’s staff—”

“I’m only suggesting that you’re very tired. Tired men find many things to worry about, not all of them real, and worrying makes them even more tired. Break the pattern, Lew. Skip off to Canada for a couple of weeks, say. A little hunting and fishing and you’ll be a new man. I have a friend who has an estate near Banff, a nice thousand-hectare spread up in the mountains, and—”

“Thanks, but I’m in better shape than you seem to think,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasted your time this morning.”

“Not at all a waste. It’s important for us to share our difficulties, Lew. For all I know, Carvajal
does
see the future. But it’s a hard notion for a rational man like me to swallow.”

“Assume it’s true. What do you advise?”

“Assuming it’s true, I think you’d be wise not to do anything that could turn Carvajal off. Assuming it’s true. Assuming it’s true, it’s in our best interests to milk him for further information, and therefore you ought not chance a break over something as minor as the consequences of this one speech.”

I nodded. “I think so, too. You won’t drop any hints to Quinn, then, about what he ought to say or not to say at that bank dedication?”

“Of course not.”

He began to usher me toward the door. I was shaky and sweating and, I imagine, wild-eyed.

I couldn’t shut up, either. “And you won’t tell people I’m cracking up, Bob? Because I’m not I may be on the verge of a tremendous breakthrough in consciousness, but I’m not going crazy. I really am not going crazy,” I said, so vehemently that it sounded unconvincing even to me.

“I do think you could use a short vacation. But no, I won’t spread any rumors of your impending commitment to the funny farm.”

“Thanks, Bob.”

“Thank you for coming to me.”

“There was no one else.”

“It’ll work out,” he said soothingly. “Don’t worry about Quinn. I’ll start checking to see if he really is getting in trouble with Mrs. Goldstein and Mr. Rosenblum. You might try some polltaking through your own department.” He clasped my hand. “Get some rest, Lew. Get yourself some rest.”

21

And so I engineered the fulfilling of the prophecy, though it had been in my power to thwart it. Or had it been? I had declined to put Carvajal’s ice-etched unbending determinism to the test. I had accomplished what they used to call a cop-out when I was a boy. Quinn would speak at the dedication. Quinn would make his dumb jokes about Israel. Mrs. Goldstein would mutter; Mr. Rosenblum would curse. The mayor would acquire needless enemies; the
Times
would have a juicy story; we would set about the process of repairing the political damage; Carvajal would once more be vidicated. It would have been so easy to interfere, you say. Why not test the system? Call Carvajal’s bluff. Verify his assertion that the future, once glimpsed, is graven as if on tablets of stone. Well, I hadn’t done it. I had had my chance, and I had been afraid to take it, as though in some secret way I knew the stars in their courses would come crashing into confusion if I meddled with the course of events. So I had surrendered to the alleged inevitability of it all with hardly a struggle. But had I really given in so easily? Had I ever been truly free to act? Was my surrender not also, perhaps, part of the unchangeable eternal script?

22

Everyone has the gift,
Carvajal said to me.
Very few know how to use it.
And he had talked of a time when I would be able to
see
things myself. Not if, but when.

Was he planning to awaken the gift in me?

The idea terrified and thrilled me. To look into the future, to be free of the buffeting of the random and the unexpected, to move beyond the vaporous imprecisions of the stochastic method into absolute certainty—oh, yes, yes, yes, how wonderous, but how frightening! To swing open that dark door, to peer down the track of time at the wonders and mysteries lying in wait—

A miner was leaving his home for his work

When he heard his little child scream.

He went to the side of the little girl’s bed.

She said. Daddy, I’ve had such a dream.

Frightening because I knew I might
see
something I didn’t want to see, and it might drain and shatter me as Carvajal apparently had been drained and shattered by knowledge of his death. Wondrous because to
see
meant escape from the chaos of the unknown, it meant attainment at last of that fully structured, fully determined life toward which I had yearned since abandoning my adolescent nihilism for the philosophy of causality.

Please, Daddy, don’t go to the mines today,

For dreams have so often come true.

My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away,

For I never could live without you.

But if Carvajal did indeed know some way of bringing the vision to life in me, I vowed I would handle it differently, not letting it make a shriveled recluse out of me, not bowing passively to the decrees of some invisible playwright, not accepting puppethood as Carvajal had done. No, I would use the gift in an active way, I would employ it to shape and direct the flow of history, I would take advantage of my special knowledge to guide and direct and alter, insofar as I was able, the pattern of human events.

Oh, I dreamed that the Mines were all flaming with fire

And the men all fought for their lives.

Just then the scene changed and the mouth of the mine

Was covered with sweethearts and wives.

According to Carvajal such shaping and directing was impossible. Impossible for him, perhaps; but would I be bound by his limitations? Even if the future is fixed and unchangeable, knowledge of it could still be put to use to cushion blows, to redirect energies, to create new patterns out of the wreckage of the old. I would try. Teach me to
see,
Carvajal, and let me try!

Oh, Daddy, don’t work in the mines today,

For dreams have so often come true.

My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away,

For I never could live without you.