Then the other guards came with blankets and gathered up the pieces of the two men. I turned away, aware for the first time that Cave was standing slightly apart, nearest the house. He was very pale. He spoke only once, half to himself for Paul was still ranting: “Let it begin,” said Cave softly. “Now, now.”
Eight
1
It began indeed, like the first recorded shot of a war. The day after the explosion, we left the island and Cave was flown to another retreat, this time in the center of New York City where, unique in all the world, there can exist true privacy, even invisibility.
The Cavite history of the next two years is publicly known and the private aspects of it do not particularly reveal. It was a time of expansion and of battle.
The opposition closed its ranks. Several attempts were made on all our lives and, six months after our return from Florida, we were all, except the indomitable Clarissa, forced to move into the brand-new Cavite Center, a quickly built but handsome building of yellow glass on Park Avenue. Here on the top floor, in the penthouse which was itself a mansion surrounded by Babylonian gardens and a wall of glass through which the encompassing city rose like stalagmites, Cave and Paul, Stokharin and Iris and I all lived with our bodyguards, never venturing out of the building which resembled, during that time, a military headquarters with guards and adjutants and a maze of officials through whom both strangers and familiars were forced to pass before they could meet even myself, much less Cave.
In spite of the unnaturalness of the life, it was, I think, the happiest time of my life. Except for brief excursions to the Hudson, I spent the entire two years in that one building, knowing at last the sort of security and serenity which monks must have known in their monasteries, in their retreats. I think the others were also content, except for Cave who eventually grew so morose and bored by his confinement that Paul not only had to promise him a world tour but, for his vicarious pleasure, played, night after night in the Center’s auditorium, travel films which Cave devoured with eager eyes, asking for certain films to be halted at various interesting parts so that he might examine some landscape or building (never a human being, no matter how quaint); favorite movies were played over and over again, long after the rest of us had gone off to bed, leaving Cave and the projectionist alone with the bright shadows of distant places ... alone save for the ubiquitous guards.
There were a number of attacks upon the building itself but since all incoming mail and visitors were checked by machinery for hidden weapons there was never a repetition of that island disaster which had had such a chilling effect on all of us. Pickets of course marched daily for two years in front of the Center’s door and, on four separate occasions, mobs attempted to storm the building: they were repulsed easily by our guards (the police, for the most Catholic, did not unduly exert themselves in our defense; fortunately, the building had been constructed with the idea of defense in mind).
The life in the Center was busy. In the penthouse each of us had an office and Cave had a large suite where he spent his days watching television and pondering journeys. He did not follow with much interest the doings of the organization though he had begun to enjoy reading the attacks which regularly appeared against him and us in the newspapers. Bishop Winston was the leader of the non-Catholic opposition and his apologias and anathemas inspired us with admiration. He was, I think, conscious of being the last great spokesman of the Protestant churches and he fulfilled his historic function with wit and dignity and we admired him tremendously. By this time, of course, our victory was in sight and we could show magnanimity to those who remained loyal to ancient systems.
I was the one most concerned with answering the attacks since I was now an editor with an entire floor devoted to the Cavite Journal (we were not able to think up a better name). At first it was published weekly and given away free but after the first year it became a daily newspaper, fat with advertising, and sold on newsstands.