Messiah

impression of being a small drawing room rather than a place of intense business. I was greeted warmly. My hand was shaken firmly. My eyes were met squarely for the regulation-length of time. Then we sat down on a couch which was like the open furry mouth of some great soft beast and his secretary rolled a portable bar toward us.

'Name your poison,' said the publicist genially. We agreed on a cocktail which he mixed with the usual comments one expects from a regular fellow.

Lulled by the alcohol, by the room, disarmed by the familiar patter in which one made all the correct responses, our conversation as ritualistic as that of a French dinner party, I was not prepared for the abrupt: 'You don't like me, do you, Gene?'

Only once or twice before had anyone ever said this to me and each time that it happened I had vowed grimly that the next time, no matter where or with whom, I should answer with perfect candor, with merciless accuracy: 'No, I don't.' But since I am neither quick nor courageous, I murmured a pale denial.

'It's all right, Gene. I know how you probably feel.' And the monster was magnanimous; he treated me with pity. 'We've got two different points of view. That's all. I have to make my way in this rat-race and you don't. You don't have to do anything, so you can afford to patronize us poor hustlers.'

'Patronize isn't quite the word.' I was beginning to recover from the first shock. A crushing phrase or two occurred to me but the publicist knew his business and he changed course before I could begin my work of demolition.

'Well, I just wanted you to know that there are no hard feelings. In my business you get used to this sort of thing: occupational hazard, you might say. I've had to fight my way every inch and I know that a lot of people are going to be jostled in the process, which is just too bad for them.' He smiled suddenly, drawing the sting. 'But I have a hunch we're going to be seeing a lot of each other so we ought to start on a perfectly plain basis of understanding. You're on to me and I'm on to you.' The man was diabolic in the way he could enrage yet not allow his adversary sufficient grounds for even a perfunctory defense. He moved rapidly, with a show of spurious reason which quite dazzled me. His was what, presently, he called 'the common-sense view.'

I told him I had no objection to working with him; that everything I had heard about him impressed me; that he was wrong to suspect me of disdaining methods whose efficacy was so well-known. I perjured myself for several impassioned minutes and, on a rising note of coziness, we passed on to the problem in hand, congenial enemies for all time: the first round clearly his.

'Clarissa got you into this?' He looked at me over his glass.

'More or less. Clarissa to Iris to Cave was the precise play.'

'She got me to Cave last summer, or rather to Hastings first. I was sold right off. I think I told you that yesterday. This guy's got everything. Even aside from the message, he's the most remarkable salesman I've ever seen and believe me when I tell you there isn't anything I don't know about salesmen.'

I agreed that he was doubtless expert in these matters. 'I went to about a dozen of those early meetings and I could see he was having the same effect on everyone, even on Catholics, people like that. Of course I don't know what happens when they get home but while they're there they're sold and that's all that matters because, in the next year, we're going to have him there, everywhere, and all the time.'

I told him I didn't exactly follow this metaphysic flight.

'I mean we're going to have him on television, on movie screens, in the papers, so that everybody can feel the effect of his personality, just like he was there in person. This prayer-meeting stuff he's been doing is just a warming up. That's all. That kind of thing is outmoded: can't reach enough people even if you spoke at Madison Square every night for a year; but it's good practice, and it's got him started. Now the next move is a TV half-hour show once a week and when that gets started we're in.'

'Who's going to pay for all this?'

'We've got more money than you can shake a stick at.' He smiled briefly and refilled our glasses with a flourish. 'I haven't been resting on my laurels and neither has Clarissa. We've got three of the richest men in L.A. drooling at the mouth for an opportunity to come in with us. They're sold; they've talked to him; they've heard him. That's been enough.'

'Will you sell soap on television at the same time?'

'Come off it, Gene. Cave is the product.'

'Then in what way will you, or his sponsors, profit from selling him?'

'In the first place what he says is the truth and it's meant a lot to me and also to them, to the tycoons: they're willing to do anything to put him across.'

'I should think that the possession of the truth and its attendant sense of virtue is in itself enough, easily spoiled by popularization,' I said with chilling pomp.

'Now that's a mighty selfish attitude to take. Sure it makes me happy to know at last nothing matters a hell of a lot since I'm apt to die any time and that's the end of yours truly; a nice quiet nothing, like sleeping pills after a busy day: all that's swell but it means a lot more to me to see the truth belong to everybody and also, let's face it, I'm ambitious. I like my work. I want to see this thing get big, and with me part of it. Life doesn't mean a thing and death is the only reality, like he says, but while we're living we've got to keep busy and get ahead and the best thing for me, I figured about six months ago, was to put Cave over on the public, which is just what I'm going to do. Anything wrong with that?'

Since right and wrong had not yet been reformulated and codified, I gave him the comfort he hardly needed. 'I see what you mean. I suppose you're right. Perhaps the motive is the same in every case, mine as well as yours: yet we've all experienced Cave and that should be enough.'

'No, we should all get behind it and push, bring it to the world.'

'That, of course, is where we're different: not that I don't intend to 'propagate the truth,' rather I shall do it for something to do, knowing that nothing matters, not even this knowledge matters.' In my unction, I had stumbled upon the first of a series of paradoxes which were to amuse and obsess our philosophers for a generation. Paul gave me no opportunity to elaborate, however; his was the practical way and I followed. We spoke of means and ends.

'Cave likes the idea of the half-hour show and as soon as we get all the wrinkles ironed out, buying good time, not just dead air, we'll make the first big announcement, along around January, I think. Until then we're trying to keep this out of the papers. Slow but sure; then fast and hard.'

'What sort of man is Cave?' I wanted very much to hear Paul's reaction to him: this was the practical man, the unobsessed.

He was candid; he did not know. 'How can you figure a guy like that out? At times he seems a little feeble- minded, this is between us by the way, and other times when he's talking to people, giving with the message, there's nothing like him.'

'What about his early life?'

'Nobody knows very much. I've had a detective agency prepare a dossier on him. Does that surprise you? Well, I'm going far out on a limb for him and so are our rich friends. We had to be sure we weren't buying an ax-murderer or a bigamist or something.'

'Would that have made any difference to the message?'

'No, I don't think so but it sure would have made it impossible for us to sell him on a big scale.'

'And what did they find?'

'Not much. I'll let you read it. Take it home with you. Confidential of course and, as an officer of the company, I must ask you not to use any of it without clearing first with me.'

I agreed and his secretary was sent for. The dossier was a thin bound manuscript.

'It's a carbon but I want it back. You won't find anything very striking but you ought to read it for the background. Never been married, no girl friends that anybody remembers… no boy friends either (what a headache that problem is in Hollywood, for a firm like ours). No police record. No tickets for double parking, even. A beautiful, beautiful record on which to build.'

'Perhaps a little negative.'

'That's what we like. As for the guy's character, his I.Q., your guess is as good as mine, probably better. When I'm with him alone, we talk about the campaign and he's very relaxed, very sensible, businesslike: doesn't preach or carry on. He seems to understand all the problems of our end. He's cooperative.'