The Judgement of Paris, page 1
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Text originally published in 1952 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
BY
GORE VIDAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
DEDICATION 4
PART ONE 5
CHAPTER ONE 5
CHAPTER TWO 20
CHAPTER THREE 36
CHAPTER FOUR 63
CHAPTER FIVE 89
PART TWO 109
CHAPTER SIX 109
CHAPTER SEVEN 127
CHAPTER EIGHT 141
CHAPTER NINE 161
PART THREE 175
CHAPTER TEN 175
CHAPTER ELEVEN 204
CHAPTER TWELVE 221
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 248
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 258
DEDICATION
FOR JOHN LATOUCHE
NOTE: The brief quotations from Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Anaxandrides, Plutarch and Cicero which appear in the course of Chapter Twelve are F. M. Comford translations while the Plato excerpt is from the Jowett translation. The anonymous medieval text which prefaces Part Three is from Helen Waddell’s Wandering Scholars. Also, before I am accused of plagiarism, I think I should here confess that the exchange between Lord Glenellen and Mr. Norman which occurs in Chapter Twelve is a deliberate paraphrase of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius near Philippi: Act Four, Scene Three of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. And finally, my last borrowing, I should like to thank Mr. Antony Tudor for his kindness in allowing me to appropriate the title of one of his excellent ballets for this work.
G. V.
THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
PART ONE
“But what are kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day.”
Marlowe: Edward, the Second
CHAPTER ONE
She wore her trauma like a plume. When she was seven an elderly man attempted to have his way with her in a telephone booth at Grand Central Station (her mother had been buying a ticket to Peekskill). Although in no way defiled, the shock was great and, to this day, she was so terrified of the telephone that she was forced always to compose innumerable messages on pale blue paper for the instruction and pleasure of those acquaintances whom she might otherwise, in a less perilous era, have telephoned.
That was all there was to it, he thought sadly, studying this one paragraph typed neatly at the top of a sheet of fine white paper: there would be no more; he was confident of that. She was lost to the world, trauma and all, and the contents of those messages on blue paper would never be known. She had emerged in his mind one day, clear and precise, a lady of the highest, most Meridithean comedy, with just a trace of something more racy, vulgar even, to give her a proper contemporary relevance, but he had lost her for good after that first paragraph, watched with helpless resignation as she sank back into a limbo of unarranged words, convincing him that he would never be a man of letters: not, of course, that he had ever thought too seriously of becoming one...rather, it had seemed a pleasant way to spend a life, composing sentences day after day with a tight smile on his lips and a view of mountains, or the sea, from a study window.
His failure was complete, however, and he knew with a sad certainty that his lady of the blue notes (not a bad title, he thought, wondering if there might not be a double meaning in it: something to do with music) would remain unrevealed forever, this paragraph her alpha and omega. But that is that for now, he thought, and he gave up literature as he had given up painting and music the year before, having composed one art song to a three-line Emily Dickinson poem, and painted one non-objective painting in the style of Mondrian. “I am not an artist,” he murmured to himself with some satisfaction, putting the paper back into his suitcase and ending forever a never too urgent dream of creativity.
The problem of what to do with his life still existed, of course; but time undoubtedly would arrange all that, he decided, removing the Hotel Excelsior, Napoli, tag which had only this morning been stuck on his new suitcase by a hotel porter whom he had never seen until that moment and who expected, but never received, a large tip for this superfluous service, thus further darkening the none too bright reputation of Americans in post-war Italy. There had been a scene as he got into the taxi but he carried it off well and at the station, as an act of contrition, he gave the cab driver a thick pile of torn and dirty lire.
He hated scenes, he decided, looking out the train window at the green countryside, rippling uncertainly beyond the solid fact of glass, shimmering in the heat of a white spring sun. But Italians need them, he thought wisely, it kept them from succumbing to a hopeless lassitude, especially now that June had come.
Philip Warren sighed happily. He was here at last: Italy, Europe, a year of leisure, a time for decision, a prelude to the distinguished fugue his life was sure to be, once he got really to it, once the delightful prelude had been played to its conclusion among the foreign cities.
He glanced out the window again, looking instinctively for modern ruins which he hoped would not be there: the way one reluctantly examines the remains of a dead dog on a country road; fortunately, there were no ruins in sight, except the ancient, the respectable ones, bits of an aqueduct arched over the plains of Latium, brown-brick against the Apennines…The Apennines, he said the name aloud, with reverence, and as the conductor came to take his ticket, he quoted Macaulay to himself, those heroic stanzas which had made his nose tingle with excitement when he had first read them, years ago, under an apple tree in his grandfather’s orchard.
“Roma?” inquired the conductor, a slovenly man with a body which no uniform would ever fit, including the one he wore. Already, after one day in Italy, Philip had discovered what the last dictator had not: uniforms are not adapted to the Italian figure.
“Roma,” said Philip with a smile and a gesture, indicating that he could speak a great deal more Italian if he chose...he had even rolled the “r,” giving, though he was not aware of it, a somewhat Scottish burr to that wonderfully evocative name.
The conductor did a number of things to the ticket, chatting all the time. Philip continued to smile intelligently until the conductor, recommending him to God, left the second-class compartment and he was again alone, the only passenger in the compartment: the only passenger in the whole car, for that matter, since very few people traveled from Naples to Rome in the middle of a day in the middle of the week.
It’s going much too well, he thought, arranging his gray-flanneled legs on the seat opposite him, conscious that his shirt and collar were still fresh and that his hands were clean, untraveled. On the boat he had dreaded the confusion of arriving in Europe for the first time, without a reservation, no place to go, victimized by the natives, pushed this way and that by furious crowds and, finally, torn apart by an enraged mob, as a blood sacrifice to the dollar, totem of the new Rome of which he was a citizen. Fortunately, except for a debacle or two with the local currency, he had been well taken care of; he had felt like a royalty when the man from the Excelsior picked him up right after Customs and drove him in lonely splendor through the streets of Naples. He had hardly been able to resist an impulse to nod solemnly at the crowds of olive-skinned people in the narrow streets, waving his hand at them in that curious circular manner affected by the British royal family, inherited, no doubt, from the more recondite Druidic ceremonies of their blue-tinted ancestors.
Then a night at the Excelsior, all marble and smelling of new paint: it had been shattered by various bombardments during the war since it was right on the bay, the celebrated blue semicircle of water which contained within its symmetrical arms many of the world’s ships. Everywhere, or rather at the railroad station and at the Excelsior, the only places he had seen in Naples, he had been received with a courtesy which had involved of course, a continual disbursement of lire on his part...but then he knew that good will cannot be had for nothing in this commercial world, and he was willing to pay a little for the flashing smiles of the Neapolitans.
Outside, the countryside was becoming suburban and, as he watched, his heart beating more quickly, the buildings of Rome appeared all about him, rushed past him as the train pulled into the station and he was there, finally there.
Since he had only two suitcases, he carried them himself through the crowd of porters who fought to get them away from him. Finally, having got through to the outside, flushed and breathing heavily, he climbed into a cab. A porter shut the door for him; then he extended his open palm, smiling villainously. Philip having no stone to give him, gave him nothing; his mother’s integrity was questioned as his cab pulled away from the station.
***
“This is your room,” said the clerk, showing him a room as scrubbed and neat as the young clerk himself, a fresh-faced Swiss. A big balconied window looked out onto a quiet street of tall trees against the baroque façades of seventeenth-century houses, all embassies now, remarked the clerk, opening the window and letting in the sunlit air. Then, after a quick briefing on the meaning and the uses of the various bells, Philip was left alone in this handsome room with its feather bed and numerous pillows, its old-fashioned bathtub hidden, along with a bidet, behind curtains. Very happy, he unpacked.
Now then: what does he look like? What sort of man or boy or youth is Philip Warren? Well, it is much too early to draw any conclusions about his character since he is hardly yet revealed. On the other hand, there is a great deal to be said about his appearance. His face, certainly, must be described before he ventures out into the Roman afternoon and as he has not yet looked into a mirror (the usual device for describing one’s protagonist) I must say that, first, he is young and that, second, he is handsome. Now of course he is not remarkably young, unless twenty-eight is considered very young, which perhaps, nowadays, it is as our population grows older and older and the period of incubation in the schools and colleges is prolonged to an inordinate degree. but then the world is as it is and Philip Warren is twenty-eight and fairly handsome, slim, unembarrassed by overdeveloped muscles, flat-bellied (could one ever have a protagonist who was young and stout?) and though not tall, not short (all things to all men obviously); he is, then, of middle height, his face more square than oval, his cheekbones prominent. His nose is unheroic, small and stubby, making him look even younger than he is. His eyes are a dark blue, not very interesting but, as one writer once said of another writer’s eyes, interested. His skin is still boyish and taut and except for a deep line between fair brows he has no outward marks of age or experience or character in his face.
His body, for those who are interested in such things, was well-formed and greatly admired by the not inconsiderable company which had, at one time or another (and on some occasions at the same time) enjoyed it. On the inside of his left thigh, near the groin, a small pretty butterfly had been tattooed, a memento of the war when he had been a junior Naval Officer on leave in Honolulu. His speaking voice was manly but marred by the faintest lisp, a defect which he hated although, unknown to him, it was his greatest charm for, instead of sounding sissy as he imagined, it made him seem very boyish and charming: a puzzled youthful man in need of a woman’s protection. As a result his success with women was quite remarkable not only because of this boyishness but also because he genuinely liked them in an age and nation where, generally speaking, they were less admired than usual.
“Do you play bridge?”
“Why yes,” said Philip, turning, as a stout bald man moved apologetically into the room from the hall.
“I’m so glad. I do hope you’ll excuse my dropping in like this but your door was open and I live right down the hall and we do have so few people in Rome who even play bridge, much less want to play it. You do want to play?”
“Yes, not now, though. Some other time perhaps.”
“Of course, of course...I was thinking of the future, not the present. You play it decently, I hope?”
“Rather,” said Philip, meaning “rather decently” but, in the excitement of the moment, he found himself parodying the other’s British accent.
“I’m so glad. Are you from home?”
“No,” said Philip, already alerted. “I’m from America.” He blushed as he said this unaccustomed phrase, as though he had begun suddenly to unfurl and snap, all red and white and blue in a chauvinistic breeze.
“Yes? Well, one never knows any more. The world is becoming one at last, is it not? Pleasant thought, or is it? Ah well, soon it will be a fait accompli and no concern of ours. My name, if I may introduce myself, is Clyde Norman.” Information of this sort was formally exchanged and Mr. Norman gave him a card, a very proper sort of card which declared that Mr. Norman was a director of the Fabian Trade Mission, otherwise undefined. “I’ve lived in Rome almost all my life, you know. Stayed here all through the war. Very risky. Quite a story in all that, I suppose. If one likes stories, eh? But now I’m sure you have many things to do...”
They agreed, then, that it might be a good idea to have a drink together, to celebrate Philip’s arrival.
***
Mr. Norman was splendidly knowing, decided Philip, as they strolled from the hotel to the Via Veneto: the fashionable street of Rome. He was able to say something amusing about almost everything mentioned or, at least, he spoke as though what he said might be amusing if one fully understood the various references.
Dingy youths stood on street corners, peddling black market cigarettes, candy bars and currency. The streets otherwise were discouragingly familiar. The buildings were either severe and formal or baroque and formal, their stucco façades a weathered gray-gold, the color of Rome. The day was so very fine, however, that this momentary disappointment was succeeded by a sudden elation, a blitheness which he had seldom experienced since childhood. He controlled a sudden impulse to slip away from Clyde Norman, to run as fast as he could until he had reached the Forum, where he would sit among the broken marble and recall Horace and Keats and think how good it was to live, or to die, for both seemed equally desirable, the dark and the light, one meaningless without the other, twins and opposites. But he dared not mention this to Mr. Norman who was, he gathered, more concerned with details than with abstractions.
“In thirty years one picks up quite a bit, you know. One comes to know the city behind the city, if you get what I mean.”
“I certainly do.”
“England is like a foreign country to me now. I hardly know how to act when I’m there, and the climate...do you know English weather?”
“By reputation.”
“Damp, very damp. And from September to May everyone has a cold...ah, here we are, the Via Veneto.”
They paused for a moment, surveying this celebrated thorough fare. Mr. Norman was somewhat proprietary while Philip found it not strange at all. The street reminded him of a minor avenue in Washington, D. C., except that it curved up a slight hill to a massive brick arch and fissured wall behind which could be glimpsed the rich green of gardens, the gardens of the Villa Borghese according to his companion, who indicated various other sights of interest: the Excelsior Hotel, an outdoor café called Doney’s where, presently, they sat in iron chairs at iron tables, the sidewalk between them and the main part of the café.
“This is the center,” said Mr. Norman. “So many cities have no center. London for instance has none, or rather too many: the Strand, Parliament and the Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, the various squares...all very stuffy and impersonal. no place where one can go and see all one’s friends, from every class. No cafés like this one where, sooner or later, everyone in Rome one wants to see will come. I have always thought London must have been like this in the days of the coffeehouses.” He ordered apéritifs with unfamiliar names. Then they sat back to watch. Philip felt as though he were sitting in a theater just as the lights had begun to dim, that expectant moment before the discordancies of an orchestra trying its instruments becomes an overture. Mr. Norman, with a smile, figuratively tapped his music stand with an imaginary baton and the curtain rose as one of the late dictator’s mistresses, a plump little woman in black, walked slowly between the crowded tables of chattering people, accompanied by a plump little chow on a leash, a chow whose sad face was a doggish facsimile of her own.
“I always thought mistresses were beautiful,” said Philip who had thought nothing of the kind but, having been trapped in a role: naive, youthful, American, had the good manners not to confuse the other by assuming a character closer to his own.
“They say she used to be,” said Mr. Norman, watching her as she nodded to numerous acquaintances who nodded back and then, when she was out of earshot, discussed her eagerly, her health, morals and current fortune.
