The Apprentice Lover (18 page)

Holly and I were fixed on him, even transfixed, and he understood that he had attention. Like a bulb caught in a surge of current, he brightened, momentarily, then lapsed into the usual glow.

“Sorry, chaps. Must get to work,” he said. “Capri calls.”

He referred to the subject of the novel underway. He was making progress, as Holly and I well knew. Lately, reams of handwritten manuscript had landed on my desk—I guessed I was typing fifty pages a week, although a good deal of this was revision. I was astonished by the productivity of this man, who got to his study most days before I was awake, and who often returned to his study in the evenings, after dinner—even after several glasses of wine. He was driven by forces I could only just comprehend. (I once heard him say, “I'm chased out of bed every morning by a pack of hungry wolves, but they haven't caught me yet.”)

“It's absurd,” Vera said, one day, when I mentioned how hard Grant seemed to be working. “He's working harder now than before. It's the age, I suspect. Time's chariot and so forth.”

“Wingéd chariot,” I said.

She wisely ignored my pedantry. “He has some absolute in mind—always whoring after it. He considers himself a failure, you see. Hasn't quite matched his potential.”

“He's human.”

“My God,” she said, in a feigned hush. “Don't let him hear you say that. He doesn't know.”

I went back to the cottage to rework my poem about Holly and draw a few more of Grant's ink-scrawled pages into the deceptive clarity of type. My mind, though, was on our dinner at the Villa Clio that night. It was not the food that interested me—though Vera had already gone into high gear in the kitchen. The Grants were expecting dinner guests: Gore Vidal and Howard Austen. Graham Greene had arrived in Anacapri a couple of days before—the news had drifted through the piazzetta, and he'd been invited, too. The news had been delivered casually, by Vera. “Gore
is coming tonight,” she said, when I helped Maria Pia bring the remains of morning coffee into the kitchen. “Howard will be here, too. They're staying with the Bismarcks. Graham will join us.”

“Graham?” I asked, in near disbelief.

“Yes, Graham, as in Greene.”

Gore and Howard and Graham. It seemed a long way from Uncle Vinnie and Aunt Gloria.

I
n 1948, Graham Greene bought a small villa in Anacapri, Il Rosaio, with royalties that had been frozen in Europe during the war. Yet the island had never been a permanent home; the idea of permanence itself held no appeal for him. He was a perpetual foreigner, a man on whom art and architecture—culture, in the usual sense—were lost. What engaged him most were politics and people, especially those with a revolutionary and leftist tinge. By nature, he was an outsider, a spy, an itinerant. He had often traveled to exotic and dangerous places—Sierra Leone, Haiti, Mexico, the Congo, Vietnam. And he had managed to capture the atmospheres of these famously corrupt and decaying countries in his fiction.

I was no expert, but I'd fingered many of his novels in bookstores, skimming pages, noting titles and subjects. I'd only read with care
The Quiet American
and
The Heart of the Matter,
both of which I admired, with reservations. I expressed these to Vera as I worked beside her in the kitchen, stuffing prunes into a pork roast. (This would be the main course—arrosto di maiale alle prugne, one of her fail-safe recipes: “You don't try something new when you have guests,” she said. “If you must poison someone, poison your family.”)

“I'm not a critic,” she said, regarding Greene. “But you might enjoy
Stamboul Train
. That's Graham at his best—light and breezy, a bit irreverent. A conventional thriller, but well done. Not the pompous Graham
of
The Power and the Glory
. I've never understood that Catholic business. If he's a Catholic, I'm an aboriginal.” She tucked a row of prunes under the bone, laying them end to end like stones edging a garden plot. “Rupert prefers
The Comedians
. It's the one about Haiti, and the trouble there. The movie was horrid…that dreadful Elizabeth Taylor. I don't know what Americans see in her.”

I felt uneasy whenever Vera fell into this chattering mood, which often seized her in the kitchen. Her opinions were, in general, quite interesting, but she lacked faith in them. Her bold assertions seemed hollow and ungrounded.

“You won't get much out of Graham, I'm afraid. He's not very talkative.”

“What about Vidal?” I asked.

“Gore? He is marvelous. Howard, too. Everyone loves Howard.”

“Do you like his novels?”

“Of course,” she said, wiping her forehead with a slippery palm. “I haven't read them all—he's very prolific. I suppose he's at his best when it comes to history. He should have been an ancient Roman. Maybe he is.”

“Is what?”

“A visitor, I mean, from the past. He can't live in the States. They can't tell when he's joking and when he's serious. It drives him mad.” She recommended
Julian
as his best novel, and
Burr
after that. “I adore the essays, too,” she said. “He's the only amusing American I've ever read. The only
intentionally
amusing American.”

Vidal had arrived a couple of days earlier, from Rome, with Howard Austen, his companion of two decades. They were staying in an imposing house overlooking the Marina Grande with Vidal's old friend, Mona Williams, a wealthy American from Kentucky who had married various wealthy men and was now attached to Eddie von Bismarck, a grandson of the famous German chancellor. (“You've met Eddie,” Vera said. “He's queer as a coot. Their marriage has none of the usual features—they rather like each other, for example. It's a kind of formalized friendship. Admirable in its way.”)

Greene had recently arrived from southern France, where he now
spent much of the year in the company of a French woman called Yvonne, who rarely came with him to Capri. “Graham hates being coupled with anyone,” Vera said. “In any case, he still has a wife back in Oxfordshire. Poor old dear.” I wondered if he spent much time in England. “Good lord, no,” she said. “England appalls him. The rain, the food, the people. He despises France, too. Capri is another matter. He likes it well enough to visit, once or twice a year. But nowhere is home. He prefers it that way. Mysterious old Graham.”

In the sitting room at about seven, I was introduced to Greene, Austen, and Vidal by Grant, who called me “his American assistant.” Vera added that I had become a member of the family, adding that I wrote poetry.

“I used to write poetry,” said Vidal. “Somehow the idea of having no readers was disconcerting.” He glanced at me. “Voluntary readers, that is—not the sort of readers who get assigned a book in school.” The novel, he suggested, was fading as fast as poetry had in the past decades. “I don't think anyone wants novels anymore, not even your novels, Rupert. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

Vidal was tall, physically imposing, with an angularly handsome face designed to grace magazine covers. Having once studied ballet, he retained something of the dancer's poised way of carrying himself, keeping his center of gravity in just the right place. This was quite the opposite of Greene, who had never lost his English schoolboy's slump. A lanky man in his sixties, with meticulously combed but thinning hair, he seemed to shy away from me when I shook his hand. His nose—the snout of a drinker—was blue-veined, fleshy, and rose-tinted.

I sat next to Vidal, with Greene on the opposite side of the table beside Howard, a short, barrel-chested man with a Bronx accent and a warm, outgoing manner. He smoked an American cigarette, blowing the smoke away from the table. Marisa had been seated at my other side, while Holly was next to Greene. She looked ethereal in a pale blue dress that would have suited a nun; it swept below her knees, with her blond hair freshly washed and shampoo scented. Greene was entranced by her, and it was difficult for Grant to get his attention, although he made several attempts.

Maria Pia, assisted by her cousin Alfredo, brought course after course to the table. An older man called Gabriele, in a white jacket, was employed to keep everyone's wineglass full, and he worked assiduously at this task, which in the case of Vidal and Greene was no small assignment. Bottle after bottle of Corvo was opened and emptied as we ate.

There was gossip about various local worthies, including the Bismarcks and Bonanos, all of whom both Vidal and Greene knew quite well. Grant talked more freely about his book on Capri than I'd ever seen him do before, describing the shape and content of the book. There was talk of the British Labour government, which Grant seemed to despise (much to the annoyance of both Vidal and Greene). Then, inevitably, the subject I most dreaded came around: Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. Kent State was mentioned. Greene and Vidal joined forces against Grant, and appeared to silence him. They had trunkloads of facts stored in their formidable brains, and Grant had not troubled to find out much about the war. He unleashed a few lines about “the domino effect,” but these were swept aside by Greene, who delighted in baiting Grant. I remained avowedly on the sidelines, praying that an angel would soon pass over the roof of the Villa Clio, bringing conversation on this uncomfortable subject to a halt.

Without warning, Vidal turned to me. “And why aren't you in Vietnam?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “I would have thought you were about the right age for cannon fodder.”

No question could have been less welcome, and I swiveled toward Vera.

“What an awful question,” she said. “Leave the boy alone, Gore.”

“He isn't in Vietnam because he's in Capri,” said Grant, crushing a piece of bread into the sauce on his plate. “It's one of the laws of physics. If you're here, you can't be there.”

“I liked Vietnam in the fifties,” said Greene, intercepting Vidal. “Met Ho Chi Minh once, a sly little chap. Yellow toenails. Rather clever.” He swept everyone's attention into a small bag. “Amusing, too. Spoke lovely French—the old boy studied in Paris. He arranged for me to fly over Hanoi in a small plane during the French war. There was rocket fire, and
it grazed one wing, but I never really thought we'd go down. I wouldn't try it now. The North Vietnamese have extremely accurate ground-to-air missiles, I'm told. Russian-made. Quite deadly.”

“You were never in a plane over Hanoi,” said Vidal. “That must come from one of your books.”

Greene relished this challenge. “Nonsense, Gore. I've been over Hanoi a number of times, in various aircraft. I quite liked Hanoi—some charming old colonial architecture. The Americans will see to that, I suppose.”

“Did you visit the opium dens?” Vidal asked.

Greene nodded. “And the brothels. I'd go back in a second.”

“Tell Mr. Nixon. He's looking for a few good men. Put you right up front with the infantry.”

“I'd be fighting for the other side, I'm afraid.”

“No wonder they never gave you the Nobel, Graham,” Grant observed.

“I don't want their bloody prize.”

“Neither do I,” said Vidal. “I already belong to the Diner's Club.”

“Richard Nixon is a butcher,” said Greene, still obsessing over Vidal's previous remark. “He belongs in a meat factory, not the Oval Office.”

“Gore knows a lot about meat factories,” said Austen, lighting another cigarette. A gold chain glistened on his neck.

“Be quiet, Howard.”

“Fuck you,” said Austen, smiling.

Grant shifted uneasily, stretching his back. “I can see no reason to object to this intervention on the part of your country, Lorenzo,” he said, looking directly at me. “Someone has to stand up for something. It's a bloody awful world.”

“Pax Americana, is that it?” Greene said. He chewed and talked at the same time. “You sound more and more like Kipling, Rupert. If you're not careful, they will appoint you Poet Laureate. No one has survived that fate, and that includes Tennyson.”

“Tennyson bores me, but I don't mind Kipling,” said Vidal. “
The Man Who Would Be King
—now that's a story I wish I'd written.”

“I was talking to Rupert,” said Greene.

Grant sipped his wine before talking—a way of controlling the pace of the conversation. “Grew up on Kipling,” he said, side-stepping Greene. “First writer I ever really knew. Still go back to the early stories,
Plain Tales from the Hills
. Swift, clean, sturdy.”

“I like the
Just So Stories
,” said Holly.

“Me, too,” said Greene, “but Kipling was a jingo, nonetheless. Rather an embarrassment at the end. The belief in empire, and so forth. A thing of the past, even then. Only America seems bent on acquiring one now. Shopping around for jewels to place in their crown. Talk about falling dominoes.”

Grant was shaking his head. “You've been hoodwinked, Graham,” he said. “You don't mean to tell me that the Americans actually want to control Vietnam? Why would anyone bother? It's a wretched place. No oil, no precious metals—not that I'm aware of.”

“Empire is like any other lust,” said Vidal. “After a while, any body will do.”

“Not mine,” said Austen.

“I rather admire Nixon,” Grant said, playing the devil's advocate.

“So do I,” said Vidal. “One rarely sees vice on this scale. It's inspiring. Only a great nation can support such maliciousness.”

“Unpatriotic Gore,” Vera put in.

“In fact, I'm quite patriotic,” Vidal insisted. “Why else write about my country at such length?”

“They seem to have forgotten their history,” Greene said.

Howard Austen was shaking his head. “The schools gave up a long time ago.”

“The United States of Amnesia,” said Vidal, who launched into a short history of the empire, beginning with the Louisiana Purchase and moving up through the acquisition of the Philippines. “It's an invisible empire now,” he said. “We leverage the world with a dollar bill.”

“People prefer it like that,” said Austen. “You get the benefits of empire without having to exercise direct control. No cops running around with American flags on their helmets.”

Holly, Marisa, and I watched the spectacle in silence, intimidated, with Vidal quipping away, with Greene making grand statements, with
Grant reflexively taking the opposing side. I hadn't thought of Grant as having reactionary politics, or any politics; but that evening he seemed a cross between Kipling and Churchill. At first, I'd been alarmed by the superior tone of the table. Then I realized that nobody here would go to the wall for an argument. One could say outrageous things in this company, testing them on the air, propositionally.

Vidal, in particular, seemed eager to try out various ideas, seeing how they would play in intelligent company. There was a solid core of belief there—a sense that America had betrayed its original democratic impulses, and that it had become a sham democracy, where only the rich have a say. All politicians, he claimed, were “bought men, controlled by their owners.” He disparaged the two-party system: “We have only one party, the party of business. It has two wings, Republican and Democratic.”

I waded in, gingerly. “It's still a fairly classless society.”

Vidal laughed. “You don't really believe that?”

I did. The fact that I, for example, was the grandson of Italian immigrants on both sides meant something to me. I could not quite reconcile my own story with Vidal's appealing and ear-catching formulations.

“One day, you'll see that the Bank, as I call it, controls everything.”

“I don't believe in conspiracy theories,” I said.

Greene was smiling broadly. “Good chap,” he said. “You mustn't let Gore badger you.”

“He's a bully,” said Austen fondly, lighting a cigarette.

“I grew up in Washington,” Vidal said. “My grandfather was a senator. I've seen how the system works, and it's not pretty.”

“You should run for office,” said Vera.