The Stories of John Cheever

“But you’ve been corresponding with Russia.”

“Yes, there’s this girl. I went out with her once. We write each other.”

“The State Department is very much interested in your experience. Undersecretary Hurlow would like to talk with you.”

“But I didn’t really have any experience. I saw some churches and had three chicken dinners and then they sent me home.”

“Well, the Undersecretary is interested. He called yesterday and again this morning. Would you mind going to Washington?”

“I’m working.”

“It would only take a day. You can take the shuttle in the morning and come back in the afternoon. It won’t take long. I think they’ll pay your expenses, although this hasn’t been decided. I have the information here.” He handed the well digger a State Department letterhead that requested the presence of Artemis Bucklin at the new State Department building at 9 A.M. on the following day. “If you can make it,” Cooper said, “your Government will be very grateful. I wouldn’t worry too much about the A.M. Nobody much gets to work before ten. It was nice to have met you. If you have any questions, call me at this number.” Then he was gone and gone very quickly, because the snow was dense. The well site was in some backwoods where the roads wouldn’t be plowed and Artemis drove home before lunch.

Some provincialism?some attachment to the not unpleasant routines of his life?made Artemis feel resistant to the trip to Washington. He didn’t want to go, but could he be forced to? The only force involved was in the phrase that his Government would be grateful. With the exception of the Internal Revenue Service, he had no particular quarrel with his Government and he would have liked?childishly, perhaps?to deserve its gratitude. That night he packed a bag and checked the airline schedules and he was at the new State Department building at nine the next morning.

Cooper had been right about time. Artemis cooled his heels in a waiting room until after ten. He was then taken up two floors, not to see the Undersecretary but to see a man named Serge Belinsky. Belinsky’s office was small and bare and his secretary was a peevish Southern woman who wore bedroom slippers. Belinsky asked Artemis to fill out some simple bureaucratic forms. When had he arrived in Moscow? when had he left Moscow? where had he stayed? etc. When these were finished, Belinsky had them duplicated and took Artemis up another floor to the office of a man named Moss. Here things were very different. The secretary was pretty and flirtatious and wore shoes. The furniture was not luxurious, but it was a cut above Belinsky’s. There were flowers on the desk and a painting on the wall. Artemis repeated the little he remembered, the little there was to remember. When he described the arrangements for his meeting with Khrushchev, Moss laughed; Moss whooped. He was a very elegant young man, so beautifully dressed and polished that Artemis felt himself uncouth, unwashed, and shabby. He was clean enough and mannerly, but his clothes bound at the shoulders and the crotch. “I think the Undersecretary would like to see us now,” said Moss, and they went up another flight.

This was an altogether different creation. The floors were carpeted, the walls were paneled, and the secretary wore boots that were buckled with brass and reached up past her skirts, ending God knows where. How far they had come, in such a short distance, from the peevish secretary in bedroom slippers. How Artemis longed for his rig, his work clothes, and his lunch pail. They were served coffee and then the secretary?the one with the boots?dismissed Moss and took him in to the Undersecretary.

Except for a very small desk, there was nothing businesslike about the office. There were colored rugs, sofas, pictures, and flowers. Mr. Hurlow was a very tall man who seemed tired or perhaps unwell. “It was good of you to come, Mr. Bucklin. I’ll go straight to the point. I have to go to the Hill at eleven. You know Natasha Funaroff.”

“I took her out once. We had dinner and sat in a park.”

“You correspond with her.”

“Of course, we’ve monitored your letters. Their Government does the same. Our intelligence feels that your letters contain some sort of information. She, as the daughter of a marshal, is close to the Government. The rest of her family were shot. She wrote that God might sit in a submarine, surrounded by divisions of mermaids. That same day was the date of our last submarine crisis. I understand that she is an intelligent woman and I can’t believe that she would write anything so foolish without its having a second meaning. Earlier she wrote that you and she were a wave on the Black Sea. The date corresponds precisely to the Black Sea maneuvers. You sent her a photograph of yourself beside the Wakusha Reservoir, pointing out that this was the center of the Northeast watershed. This, of course, is not classified information, but it all helps. Later you write that the dark seems to you like a house divided into seventy rooms. This was written ten days before we activated the Seventieth Division. Would you care to explain any of this?”

“There’s nothing to explain. I love her.”

“That’s absurd. You said yourself that you only saw her once. How can you fall in love with a woman you’ve only seen once? I can’t at the moment threaten you, Mr. Bucklin. I can bring you before a committee, but unless you’re willing to be more cooperative, this would be a waste of our time. We feel quite sure that you and your friend have worked out a cipher. I can’t forbid you to write, of course, but we can stop your letters. What I would like is your patriotic cooperation. Mr. Cooper, whom I believe you’ve met, will call on you once a week or so and give you the information or rather the misinformation that we would like you to send to Russia, couched, of course, in your cipher, your descriptions of the dark as a house.”

“I couldn’t do that, Mr. Hurlow. It would be dishonest to you and to Natasha.”

The Undersecretary laughed and gave a little girlish tilt to his shoulders. “Well, think it over and call Cooper when you’ve made up your mind. Of course, the destiny of the nation doesn’t depend on your decision. I’m late.” He didn’t rise, he didn’t offer his hand. Artemis, feeling worse than he had felt in Moscow and singing the unreality blues, went past the secretary with the boots and took an elevator down past the secretary with the shoes and the one in bedroom slippers. He got home in time for supper.

He never heard again from the State Department. Had they made a mistake? Were they fools or idle? He would never know. He wrote Natasha four very circumspect letters, omitting his hockey and his bowling scores. There was no reply. He looked for letters from her for a month or so. He thought often of the spot of paint on her mailbox. When it got warmer, there was the healing sound of rain to hear, at least there was that. Water, water.

THREE STORIES

I

The subject today will be the metaphysics of obesity, and I am the belly of a man named Lawrence Farnsworth. I am the body cavity between his diaphragm and his pelvic floor and I possess his viscera. I know you won’t believe me, but if you’ll buy a cri de coeur why not a cri de ventre? I play as large a part in his affairs as any other lights