3
The results of the broadcast were formidable. My small book which until then had enjoyed the obscurity of being briefly noted among the recent books was taken up by excited editors who used it as a basis for hurried but exuberant accounts of the new marvel.
One night a week for the rest of that winter Cave appeared before the shining glass eye of the world and on each occasion new millions in all parts of the country listened and saw and pondered this unexpected phenomenon, the creation of their own secret anxieties and doubts, a central man.
The reactions were too numerous for me to recollect in any order or with any precise detail; but I do recall the first few months vividly: after that of course the work moved swiftly of its own and one lost track of events which tended to blur, the way casualties late in a large war do, not wringing the wearied heart as the death of one or a particular few might earlier have done.
A few days after the first broadcast, I went to see Paul at the offices which he had taken in the Empire State Building ... as high up as possible, I noted with amusement: always the maximum, the optimum.
Halfway down a corridor, between lawyers and exporters, Cavite, Inc. was discreetly identified in black upon a frosted-glass door. I went inside.
It appeared to me the way I’d always thought a newspaper office during a crisis might look. Four rooms opening in a row off one another, all with doors open, all crowded with harassed secretaries and clean-looking young men in blue serge suits carrying papers, talking in loud voices which together made the room sound like a hive at swarming time.
Though none of them knew me, no one made any attempt to ask my business or to stop me as I moved from room to room in search of Paul. Everywhere there were placards with Cave’s picture on them, calm and gloomy-looking, dressed in what was to be his official costume: a dark suit, an unfigured tie, a white shirt. I tried to overhear conversations as I passed the busy desks and groups of excited debaters, but their noise was too loud. Only one word was identifiable, sounding regularly, richly emphatic like a cello note: Cave, Cave, Cave.
In each room I saw piles of my Introduction which pleased me even though I had come already to dislike it.
The last room contained Paul, seated behind a desk with a dictaphone in one hand, three telephones on his desk (none fortunately ringing at this moment) and four male and female attendants with notebooks and pencils eagerly poised. Paul sprang from his chair when he saw me. The attendants fell back. “Here he is!” He grabbed my hand and clung to it vise-like: I could almost feel the energy pulsing in his fingertips, vibrating through his body ... his heartbeat was obviously two to my every one.
“Team, this is Eugene Luther.”
The team was properly impressed and one of the girls, slovenly but intelligent-looking, said: “It was you who brought me here. First you I mean ... and then of course Cave.”
I murmured vaguely and the others told me how clear I had made all philosophy in the light of Cavesword. (I believe it was that day, certainly that week, Cavesword was coined by Paul to denote the entire message of John Cave to the world).
Paul then shooed the team out with instructions he was not to be bothered. The door, however, was left open.
“Well, what do you think of them?” He leaned back, beaming at me from his chair.
“They seem very ... earnest,” I said, wondering not only what I was supposed to think but, more to the point, what I did think of the whole business.
“I’ll say they are! I tell you, Gene, I’ve never seen anything like it. The thing’s bigger even than that damned crooner I handled ... you may remember the one. Everyone has been calling up and, look!” He pointed to several bushel baskets containing telegrams and letters. “This is only a fraction of the response since the telecast. From all over the world. I tell you, Gene, we’re in.”
“What about Cave? Where is he?”
“He’s out on Long Island. The press is on my tail trying to interview him but I say no, no go, fellows, not yet; and does that excite them! We’ve had to hire guards at the place on Long Island just to keep them away.”
“How is Cave taking it all?”
“In his stride, absolute model of coolness which is more than I am. He agrees that it’s better to keep him under wraps while the telecasts are going on. It means that curiosity about him will increase like nobody’s business. Look at this.” He showed me a proof sheet of a tabloid story: “Mystery Prophet Wows TV Audience,” with a photograph of Cave taken from the telecast and another one showing Cave ducking into a taxi, his face turned away from the camera. The story seemed most provocative and, for that complacent tabloid, a little bewildered.
“Coming out Sunday,” said Paul with satisfaction. “There’s also going to be coverage from the big circulation media. They’re going to cover the next broadcast even though we said nobody’d be allowed on the set while Cave was speaking.” He handed me a bundle of manuscript pages bearing the title “Who Is Cave?” “That’s the story I planted in one of the slick magazines. Hired a name-writer, as you can see, to do it.” The name-writer’s name was not known to me but, presumably, it would be familiar to the mass audience.
“And, biggest of all, we got a sponsor. We had eleven offers already and we’ve taken Dumaine Chemicals. They’re paying us enough money to underwrite this whole setup here, and pay for Cave and me as well. It’s terrific but dignified. Just a simple 'through the courtesy of’ at the beginning and another at the end of each telecast. What do you think of that?”
“Unprecedented!” I had chosen my word some minutes before ... one which would have a cooling effect.
“I’ll say. By the way, we’re getting a lot of stuff on that book of yours.” He reached in a drawer and pulled out a manila folder which he pushed toward me. “Take them home if you like. Go over them carefully ... might give you some ideas for the next one; you know: ground which needs covering.”
“Is there to be a next one?”
“Man, a flock of next ones! We’ve got a lot to do, to explain. People want to know all kinds of things. I’m having the kids out in the front office do a breakdown on all the letters we’ve got: to get the general reaction ... what it is people most want to hear, and, believe me, we’ve been getting more damned questions, and not just the main thing but family problems too, things like that: 'Please, Mr. Cave, I’m married to two men and feel maybe it’s a mistake since I have to work nights anyway.’ Lord, some of them are crazier than that.”
“Are you answering all of them?”
“Oh, yes, but in my name. All except a few of the most interesting which go to Cave for personal attention. I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a counselor-service for people with problems.”
“But what can you tell them?” I was more and more appalled.
“Everything in the light of Cavesword. You have no idea how many questions that does answer. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. But of course we follow standard psychiatric procedure only it’s speeded up so that after a couple of visits there can be a practical and inspirational answer to their problems. Stokharin said he’d be happy to give it a try, but we haven’t yet worked out all the details.”
I didn’t want to hear anything more about this; I changed the subject. “What did you have in mind for me to do?”
“Cavesword applied to everyday life.” He spoke without hesitation; he had thought of everything. “We’ll know more what people want to hear after a few more telecasts, after more letters and so on. Then supply Cavesword where you can and, where you can’t, just use common sense and standard psychiatric procedure.”
“Even when they don’t always coincide?”
Paul roared with laughter. “Always the big knocker, Gene. That’s what I like about you ... the disapproving air ... it’s wonderful and I’m quite serious. People like myself ... visionaries, you might say, continually get their feet off the ground and it’s people like you who pull us back ... make us think. Anyway, I hope you’ll be able to get to it soon. We’ll have our end taken care of by the time the telecasts are over.”
“Will you show Cave to the world then? I mean in person?”
“I don’t know. By the way, we’re having a directors’ meeting Friday morning. You’ll get a notice in the mail. One of the things we’re going to take up is just that problem, so you be thinking about it in the meantime. I have a hunch it may be smart to keep him away from interviewers for good.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m not so sure. He’s pretty retiring except when he speaks. I don’t think he’d mind the isolation one bit. You see how dull he gets in company when he’s not performing.”
“Would he consent, do you think?”
“I think so. We could persuade him, I’m sure. Anyway, for now he’s a mystery man. Millions see him once a week but no one knows him except ourselves. A perfect state of affairs, if you ask me.”
“You mean there’s always a chance he might make a fool of himself if a tough interviewer got hold of him?”
“Exactly, and believe me there’s going to be a lot of them after his scalp.”
“Have they begun already?”
“Not yet. We have you to thank for that, too, making it so clear that though what we said certainly conflicts with all the churches we’re really not competing with them, that people listening to Cavesword can go right on being Baptists and so on.”
“I don’t see how, if they accept Cave.”
“Neither do I, but for the time being that’s our line.”
“Then there’s to be a fight with the churches?”
Paul nodded grimly. “And it’s going to be a honey. People don’t take all the supernatural junk seriously these days but they do go for the social idea of the church, the uplift kind of thing: that’s where we’ll have to meet them, where we’ll have to lick them at their own game.”
I looked at him for one long moment: I had of course anticipated something like this from the moment that Cave had become an organization and not merely one man talking. I had realized that expansion was inevitable: the rule of life is more life and of organization more organization, increased dominion. Yet I had not suspected Paul of having grasped this so clearly, using it so promptly to his, to our advantage. The thought that not only was he cleverer than I had suspected but that he might, indeed, despite his unfortunate approach, be even cleverer than myself, disagreeably occurred to me. I had until then regarded myself as the unique intellectual of the Cavites, the one sane man among maniacs and opportunists: it seemed now that there were two of us with open eyes and, of the two, he alone possessed ambition and energy, qualities neither of which I possessed to any useful degree.
“You mean this to be a religion, Paul?”
He smiled, “Maybe, yes ... something on that order perhaps. Something workable, though, for now: I’ve thought about what you said the other night.”
“Does Cave want this?”
Paul shrugged. “Who can tell. I should think so but this is not really a problem for him to decide. He has happened. Now we respond. Stokharin feels that a practical faith, a belief in ways of behavior which the best modern analysts are agreed on as being closest to ideal, might perform absolute miracles. No more guilt-feeling about sex if Cave were to teach that all is proper when it does no harm to others ... and the desire to do harm to others might even be partly removed if there were no false mysteries, no terrible warnings in childhood and so on. Just in that one area of behavior we could work wonders! Of course there would still be problems but the main ones could be solved if people take to Cave and to us. Cavesword is already known and it’s a revelation to millions ... we know that. Now they are looking to him for guidance in other fields. They know about death at last. Now we must tell them about living and we are lucky to have available so much first-rate scientific research in the human psyche. I suspect we can even strike on an ideal behavior pattern by which people can measure themselves.”
“And to which they will be made to conform?” Direction was becoming clear already.
“How can we force anyone to do anything? Our whole power is that people come to us, to Cave voluntarily because they feel here, at last, is the answer.” Paul might very well have been sincere: there is no way of determining, even now.
“Well, remember, Paul, that you will do more good than harm by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new law imposed by enthusiasts.”
“Don’t say 'you.’ Say 'we.’ You’re as much a part of this as I am. After all you’re a director. You’ve got a say-so in these matters. Just speak up Friday.” Paul was suddenly genial and placating. “I don’t pretend I’ve got all the answers. I’m just talking off the top of my head, like they say.”
A member of the team burst into the office with the news that Bishop Winston was outside.
“Now it starts,” said Paul with a grimace.
The Bishop did not recognize me as we passed one another in the office. He looked grim and he was wearing clerical garb.
“He’s too late,” said a lean youth, nodding at the churchman’s back.
“Professional con-men,” said his companion with disgust. “They’ve had their day.”
And with that in my ears, I walked out into the snow-swirling street, into the bleak opening of the new year, of Cave’s year.
I was more alarmed than ever by what Paul had told me and by what I heard on every side. In drugstores and bars and restaurants, people talked of Cave. I could even tell when I did not hear the name that it was of him they spoke: a certain intentness, a great curiosity, a wonder. In the bookstores, copies of my introduction were displayed with large blown-up photographs of Cave to accompany them.
Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I’d taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled ... the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Caveswood was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I’d obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself.
“What do you think about the guy?” the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he’d seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).
“It’s hard to say,” I said. “How did he strike you?”
“Boy, like lightning!” The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. “Of course I’m Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can’t be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he’s on. It’s wild.”
It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure ... well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, not done.
Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris’s apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. “Leave them alone,” I said aloud. “It is enough to open the windows.”
“Open the windows!” The driver snorted. “It’s damn near forty in the street.”