He moved easily into range, his eyes cast down. Not until he had placed himself in front of the table and the camera had squarely centered him, did he look up, look directly into the lens. Clarissa gasped and I felt suddenly pierced: the camera, the lights had magnified rather than diminished his power. It made no difference now what he said. The magic was working.
Clarissa and I sat in the twilight of her drawing room, entirely concentrated on that vivid screen, on the dark figure upon rich blue, on the pale eyes and the hands which seldom moved. It was like some fascinating scene in a skillful play which, quite against one’s wish and aesthetic judgment, pulled one to it, became, at least for that short time beyond real time, a part of one’s own private drama of existence, all sharpened by artifice, by calculated magic.
Not until Cave was nearly finished did those first words of his, spoken so easily, so quietly, begin to come back to me as he repeated them in his coda. His voice increasing a little in volume, yet still not hurrying, not forcing, not breaking the mood which his first glance had created and which voice and eyes together maintained without once letting go. The burden of his words was, as always, the same. Yet this time it seemed more awesome, more final, undeniable ... in short, the truth. Though I’d always accepted his first premise, I had never been much impressed by the ways he found of stating it, even though I always responded to his particular power. This night, before the camera and in the sight of millions, he perfected his singular art of communication and the world was his.
When he finished, Clarissa and I sat for a moment in complete silence, the chirping of a commercial the only sound in the room. At last she said: “The brandy is over there on the console. Get me some.” Then she switched off the screen from her chair and the lights of the room brightened again.
“I feel dragged through a wringer,” she said after her first mouthful of brandy.
“I had no idea it would work so well, like this, on television.” I felt strangely empty, let down. There was hardly any doubt now of Cave’s effectiveness yet I felt joyless and depleted, as though part of my life had gone, leaving an ache.
“What a time we’re going to have.” Clarissa was beginning to recover. “I’ll bet there are a million letters by morning and Paul will be doing a jig.”
“I hope this is the right thing, Clarissa. It would be terrible if it weren’t.”
“Of course it’s right ... whatever that means: if it works it’s right ... perfectly simple. Such conceptions are all a matter of fashion anyway. One year women expose only their ankle; the next year their derrière. What’s right one year is wrong the next. If Cave captures the popular imagination, he’ll be right until someone better comes along.”
“A little cynical.” But Clarissa was only repeating my own usual line. I was, or had been until that night on the Washington farm, a contented relativist. Cave, however, had jolted me into new ways and I was bewildered by the change, by the prospect ahead.