The Manchurian Candidate

He snapped the suitcase shut. He carried it to the bedroom door, worrying about what the hell Jocie would think of him when she saw those idiot newspapers at the airport. He flung open the door then began a tug of war over the suitcase with Chunjin as he dragged both of them toward the square, tiled foyer.

“For, cris sake, Chunjin!” It made him even angrier for having spoken to this pushy little type at all and a loud discussion started.

Chunjin did not want him to take the Long Island Railroad to his mother’s house. Opposing it bitterly, he maintained that it was not sound for a rich man to wrestle with a large bag in a crowded railroad car. Raymond said he certainly was not going to put up with this kind of insubordination and if it continued for just about two more sentences Chunjin could go in and pack his own cardboard suitcase and get the hell out for good. He felt foolish as soon as he had said it because he remembered suddenly that Chunjin did not sleep in and, of course, had no suitcase on the premises.

Chunjin said loudly that he had taken the liberty of renting an automobile and the correct, dark uniform of a proper chauffeur, the jacket of which Mr. Shaw could look upon as he was even now wearing it. Chunjin said he would drive Mr. Shaw to his mother’s house in comfort and at a level with Mr. Shaw’s dignity and position in the world.

To Raymond, all of this was an utterly new conception, perhaps as television would have been to the inventor of the wheel. Raymond had loved automobiles all his life, although he could not drive one, but he had never thought of renting one. He was transformed, enchanted.

“You rented a car?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Shaw.”

“What kind?”

“Cadillac.”

“Well! Marvelous! What color?”

“West Point Gray. French blue seats. Leather. Genuine. Rear seat radio.”

“Wonderful!”

“Tax deductible also.”

“Is that so? How?”

“You will read the booklet in the car, Mr. Shaw.” Chunjin put on his dark chauffeur’s cap. He took the suitcase away from Raymond without a struggle. “We go now, Mr. Shaw? Seven o’clock. Two hours to drive.”

“I don’t know this house, you know. It’s a rented house. I don’t know about a place for you to stay.”

“My job find place. You not think. Ride and read reports from newspaper. Think about condition of world.”

Dressed as a costumer’s conception of a gaucho, Raymond came down his mother’s rented, winding stairs, railed in English copper, stainless steel, and Lucite, and into an entrance hall that might have been hewn by a cast of Grimm Brothers’ gnomes out of a marble mountain. It was studded with bronze zodiacal designs and purred with concealed neon light in an arrangement that pulled Raymond toward the great drawing room on the threshold of which Senator and Mrs. Iselin were receiving their guests. The older guests who shook hands with the Iselins that night had been followers of Father Coughlin; the group just younger than them had rallied around Gerald L. K. Smith; and the rest, still younger, were fringe lice who saw Joh

Joh

“Anxiously? Why anxiously? Did she sound as though she were fearful that I might be here?”

“Oh, don’t be such a jerk, Raymond! If you weren’t here do you think for a moment that the Jordans would come here?”

“Don’t call me a jerk, Mother.”

“Go have a drink or a tranquilizer or something.” She turned to her husband. “Raymond can certainly be a pain in the ass,” she said with asperity.

“She’s kiddin’ yuh,” Joh

“What else?” Raymond answered. He walked through the crowds acknowledging greetings forbiddingly and feeling his heart beating as though it were trying to splinter a way out through his ribs. He walked among, but shu

“My God, you look as though your head will come to a point any minute,” she told him. “Raymond, will you please take a tranquilizer?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I have a revulsion for drugs.”

“You look absolutely miserable. Never mind. A half-hour more and she’ll be here. My feet hurt. Why don’t we just sneak away for a few minutes until Jocie and her father arrive. We can sit in the library and sip cold wine.”

Raymond looked right at her and, for the first time in many, many years, actually smiled at her, and she thought he looked positively beautiful. Why—why he looks like Poppa! Raymond, her own Raymond, looked exactly like her darling, darling Poppa! She clutched his hand as she led him out of the salon and along the two corridors to the library, causing one woman guest to tell another woman guest that they looked as though they were rushing off to get a little of you-know-what, Mrs. Iselin trailing a delicious scent of Jolie Madame because she had read that Lollobrigida wore it and she had always wished she could be short like that, and stopping only to get a bottle of wine and to tell the butler where they would be.

The library was a small, pleasant room and the books were real. The fourth wall was transparent glass and faced that walled deck of land and Jocie’s house. Raymond stood rubbing his hands together, so very tall and so preposterously handsome in the short, shining boots, the ballooning trousers, and the wide expanse of white silk shirt. “Do you know they got in from the airport?” he asked as he poured the lemon-yellow wine into two sherbet glasses.