The Name of the World - Denis Johnson [11]
“You’re not slapping my hand, are you?”
“No. Really. Nobody’s ever asked.”
“It’s just that he’s in the news right now. I saw him last night on the tube, dueling with journalists.”
Questions about the Senator’s ethics had come before the public recently. Not for the first time. “‘Fight every battle on TV,’” I quoted. “One of his mottoes. He’s got a million.”
J.J. said, “Many predict the end of his career.”
“Not me.”
“Did you accomplish anything? Working for him?”
“In D.C. I experienced what I once heard called ‘the temptation to be good.’ It’s a curse. As soon as it hit me I got confused. I still don’t know if, by quitting, I gave in to a bad temptation, or managed to resist a good one.”
“Wow. Sounds like Zen,” he said. “Am I supposed to make sense of it?”
“There’s a perfect stillness at the center of Washington,” I said, and he folded his hands before him with the pleasant air of someone stuck beside a psycho on a public bus. “It’s natural to talk about it in paradoxes,” I insisted. “Everything in the world is going on there, but nothing’s happening. It’s all essential, but it’s all completely pointless. The motives are virtuous, but whatever you do just stinks. And then you retire with great praise.”
“Well, we sort of guess all that, don’t we? So why did you enlist?”
“I’ve got a half-dozen explanations,” I said, “but I’ll give you the shortest one: It was financial. I was restless, and I was curious, but mainly I was just poor. I wanted to leave behind the pinchpenny life of a high-school teacher. The prospect of money somewhere down the line meant a lot to me.”
“But you didn’t get it.”
“I got a raise.”
“But you didn’t get rich.”
“No.”
“And you don’t care.”
“No. Not right now. Should I?”
“No,” he said. Then: “How much of a raise?”
“I went from the low thirties to—after two or three years—just about eighty thousand. Just under.”
“Hey. That’s not bad!”
“I was designated executive legal staff. That put me at the high end.”
“And how are your politics now? Or am I prying?”
“You mean, will I vote for Senator Thom?” The Controversial Senator Tom-Tom, he was called by his constituents. The Big Chief, he was also called. I had stayed with the Senator at first in the hope of having influence, later in the hope of being there on the day of his defeat, finally in the hope of gathering evidence to bring him down. But he was clean, and it wouldn’t be fair to omit saying that he was even a good man. It’s just that his principles were small and his horizon was November. He should have been a Republican, but he was a Democrat—why? Why not? I think very little of either party now, and I can’t understand how I ever managed to see any difference between them. Worst of all, somewhere in the middle of my visit to that planet, I’d misplaced my sense of humor about all this. Would I vote for Senator Thom?
“I no longer vote,” I told J.J.
The spaghetti and the lasagna came. J.J. changed the subject, wanted to know how I felt about teaching, about students, about the academy. And now I got it—he was conducting an interview after all.
How many interviews, how many J.J.s winding what quantity of pasta around how many forks, did the future hide? The question dropped me in a pit. Is there any limit, I thought, to how boring this place can be? By the time we’d both turned down dessert and were halfway through our cups of coffee, I’d decided no. No limit. “Do you know what?” I said. “I think I’ll let this next year be my last. I believe I’m through with the life of the mind.” Getting it said felt like a minor thing, but necessary. Like finally taking a second to tie a flapping shoelace.
“Through with the life of the mind! Now I’m convinced you’re just the guy we need at the Forum.”
“No. Thanks, but no.”
A bit of silence between us now. We heard a man and a woman talking at the table just next to ours. The woman mentioned somebody’s funeral. J.J. took an interest.
He stopped eating. He was clearly eavesdropping. Now the woman said, “I think it’s muggy in Alabama. Isn’t it?”
“Muggy?” the man said. “It’s Alabama.