The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (90 page)

 

 

Yale took Cynthia in his arms. "Yale," Cynthia sobbed, "I'll do anything
for you. I'll have your babies. I'll scrub your floors, but if you love me
. . . if you love Anne . . . then let us both out. You run Challenge by
yourself. I don't want you to give it up. But honestly, I can't stand
it. I'm afraid that I'll crack up. Honey . . . Honey . . . don't you
understand? I just want a quiet home, and the three of us, and our
children."

 

 

Yale tried to quiet her. He told them that from now on when they went out
they would be guarded, but as he said it he knew that they couldn't live
a happy life that way. "We'll build our own private fortress right here.
If you prefer, you won't have to go anywhere."

 

 

"But we'll go on challenging the world?"

 

 

Yale sighed. "Don't you understand, Cindar? What happened to you and
Anne is just what Challenge is fighting against."

 

 

"Do you think that those boys who stripped us and slobbered over us are
God, too?" Anne demanded.

 

 

"Yes." Yale paused. He looked at both of them quietly. "You don't really
have to ask me that. We rewrote Mat's book together. We are agreed that
if men are taught they are sinful or partially evil, then they have an
excuse. When Man knows that he alone is the Ultimate then there is no
shelter for him. He must love his brother."

 

 

"Yale," Anne said, sitting on the bed near Cynthia, "I think you should
know." She paused. "Cynthia . . . you better tell him. . . ."

 

 

Cynthia smiled sadly at him. "I suppose it is too late to complain. We've
hitched our wagons to your star, Yale . . . wherever it may lead." She
looked at him thoughtfully, "I guess for the next few months we'll have
nothing to do but live quietly in your fortress, walking around with
our big bellies. Anne and I are both pregnant . . . about ten weeks."

 

 

Yale grinned as he remembered Anne's remark to Cynthia. "Look at him! He's
really pleased with himself! The male ego. He thinks he is a maharajah
with his harem!"

 

 

He was pleased. Anne and Cynthia's easy acceptance that they would bear
his children was more than a sop to his male pride, it was re-assurance
that all their love for each other had solid foundations. When Yale
realized that they were both pregnant he insisted on calling Doctor
Starkey to examine them. Lurid details had already reached Starkey. He
promised to come immediately. While they were waiting for him to arrive,
Agatha and Barbara came upstairs and listened in shocked silence to Anne
and Cynthia as they recounted what had happened to them.

 

 

"It's Pat's fault, Yale," Barbara said. "He should be ashamed of himself.
What kind of man is he, anyway?"

 

 

Yale pondered that. "I suppose Pat would tell you that it's my
responsibility and I guess he would be right."

 

 

Doctor Starkey thought it was definitely Yale's responsibility. After
he had examined Anne and Cynthia thoroughly, and looked at the black and
blue pinch marks on their arms, and on their buttocks, he said to them,
"I won't withhold my opinion. As far as I can determine you both are
all right. You are lucky young women. Those boys could have hurt you
badly. What I don't understand is why do you girls put up with it? Both
of you are attractive enough to get your own husband. This situation
will only get worse for you." He looked at Yale grimly. "Who in hell do
you think you are, Marratt?"

 

 

Watching the day grow bright and the rain slowly diminish, enjoying
Cynthia's warm breath against his shoulder and feeling the light
pressure of Anne's hand as she intertwined her fingers with his, Yale
asked himself the same question that he had been unable to answer for
Doctor Starkey. Who
did
he think he was? When he told Anne and Cynthia
laughingly that he was God, they understood. They understood that they
were God, too, and that he respected their love so much that he would
never make any attempt to possess it.

 

 

"You understand, don't you, Anne . . . Cindar, I love you both very much.
But I'm not a bigamist. The solution that we made is a solution for us.
It might even be the solution for other men and women . . . but probably
not for most people. What we are trying to say to the world is that the
ultimate for man is to comprehend the grandeur that exists in all men.
If there is a God then this God is an active principle only when men
realize that there are no narrow solutions to living; that life is an
unceasing challenge, and Man is the measure of Life."

 

 

Yale asked them what they thought when they listened to someone like
Doctor Starkey who obviously believed they were all quite cracked.

 

 

"We went to bed with you and you made us pregnant. We wanted to be pregnant.
We helped you with Mat's book. We are as responsible as you are, Yale,"
Anne said. "I love you."

 

 

Cynthia had smiled as she listened to Anne. "Yale, I love you, too.
Don't you realize that right or wrong I've been indoctrinated by either
you or Mat for eight years. I believe as you do. The only thing I'm not
sure about is how far we should challenge the world. Isn't it possible for
us to live our lives together, not in a fish bowl?" She studied Yale's
face as she spoke, and then grinned and patted his cheek gently.
"I should know better than to ask, shouldn't I?"

 

 

"You know," Yale had said, "I sometimes think that both of you wonder
what drives me." His look was solemn. "You see, I have a complex . . .
nothing so simple as an Oedipus complex . . . what I have is an Icarus
complex. You remember the story. Icarus had a father who was a very
progressive and far-seeing man. Both of them were imprisoned. Call that
prison the demands of life itself. Anyway, Daedalus fashioned wings for
both of them. Consider that Daedalus, a sincere man, warns Icarus that
the wings are wax. He tells him not to fly too close to the sun . . . but
Icarus, the son, can't help himself. He has a compulsion to discover
what his father dared not." Yale grinned at Anne and Cynthia who were
obviously wondering if he were joking or sincere. "Don't worry. Because I
have an Icarus complex doesn't mean that I will fly too close . . . just
near enough for a quick look. But what you shouldn't overlook was that
it was Daedalus who had the divine concept to escape in the first place."

 

 

But Yale couldn't help wondering where Challenge was leading them. Would
they always have the courage to overcome the hatreds that they were
inadvertently creating? Would the day come when Anne and Cynthia would
look at him in fear and demand to know why he persisted in trying to
change the world? Would he be able to answer them? What was he trying
to accomplish anyway? Was there some fatal flaw in his personality that
would make him fight for a lost cause until he had ruined all their
lives? If he had never known Cynthia, never had his love for a Jewish
girl attacked because of her religion, never had discovered the depths
of anti-semitism that ran in deep channels throughout much of what
was supposedly known as the civilized world, would he have become so
obsessively involved with leading people and revealing to them, if only
in a small way, the extent of hatred, large and small, dominating their
lives and shriveling their power to love? The answer was yes. Whether he
had known Cynthia or not had little to do with it. His love for Cynthia
had simply triggered the man who had become Yale Marratt.

 

 

Perhaps, as Rabbi Weiner had pointed out to him last week, he was doing
more harm to the Jews in Midhaven than he realized. Rabbi Weiner had
told him that he couldn't fight anti-semitism with a flaming torch.
It was a mistake for Cynthia to be identified with such a volatile program
as Challenge. Yale disagreed with him. "It is you who are making this
identification with Judaism. Challenge is fighting all hatred and
intolerance." Yale pointed out to him that Challenge essentially denied
all religions. "Cynthia is a woman to me. This . . . not her religion
. . . is the all-important fact of her existence."

 

 

But Yale couldn't avoid the certainty that his own sense of mission and
his obsession with the ideas that he, Anne, and Cynthia had found in
Mat's book and paraphrased as Commandments were gradually affecting the
lives of many people. How many people had already been influenced by his
unwillingness to accept the world as it was? Obviously the more than three
hundred thousand people who had purchased the book,
Spoken in My Manner
,
thus indirectly subsidizing Challenge, were having the direction of their
lives changed. For how many of those thousands, he wondered, would it
be a disruptive experience? He could ask himself, for that matter, what
right he had to subject Anne and Cindar to the glaring spotlight of the
bigamy trial? Was he doing it for personal aggrandizement as Saul, who
had tested him thoroughly with a thousand questions in the past few days,
had asked. "I'm trying to find what makes you tick, Yale Marratt." He
grinned when Yale became a little annoyed. "If I detected a false note
in your beliefs or statements, I'd drop this case like a hot potato."

 

 

Cynthia had answered for him. "You won't find a false note, Saul," she said.
"Both Anne and I can tell you that. Crazy . . . yes, but not false."

 

 

No, Yale thought, he had no fear of his motives. What did frighten him
was whether he had the right to tamper with other lives. Would the lives
of Anne, Cynthia, the Chinese girl Tay Yang, his sister Barbara, Pat
and Liz, Paul Downing, Harry and Sarah Cohen, Alfred Latham, and Jim;
even people who had existed on the fringe of his life like Marge Latham
. . . would their lives be happier or more complete (certainly more
placid) had Yale Marratt never existed? How many more lives would be
changed or twisted into new channels because one man was attempting to
use twentieth-century techniques of money and advertising to make all
men aware of their divinity.

 

 

Yale sighed. The questions that would plague him as long as he would live
were fruitless. There were no answers. He was a product of his times.
If he were crushed "assailing the seasons" then the world would have to
wait the coming of a more likely messiah.

 

 

It was strange, that as a result of the frightful attack on Cynthia and
Anne at the supermarket, he had discovered a new ally. When the girls
had come in half naked, escorted by the policemen, John Norwell had
waited downstairs, forgotten in the excitement. Agatha had remembered
him. Sitting in the rocker in their bedroom, she told them, "Unless I
miss my guess, seeing you two girls in tears and hearing from the police
what happened to you wrenched at his Scotch sense of chivalry. I think
he has a proposltion for you, Yale."

 

 

Agatha had been right. Yale had hurried downstairs and apologized to
Norwell for keeping him waiting. Norwell shook his craggy head and told
Yale not to be concerned. "It was a terrible thing," he said, rolling his
"r's". "Those are decent lassies. It's rotten men there are in the world
could do that to women. You should have the city turned upside down to
find them."

 

 

Yale told him that he didn't believe in reprisals as a solution for hatred.

 

 

Norwell smiled at him. "I thought not. I've read your book since I saw you
last. Don't get the idea that I'm a convert. I'm not. But I am interested
in seeing how deeply you believe your own ideas." Norwell stared at Yale
a second. "You probably know without me telling you that the Lathams
hate your guts." Yale nodded, and Norwell continued. "I wouldn't want to
guess who is the angriest at you, Alfred or Jim. Probably Jim. Alfred
is seventy-six, so the prestige of the thing can't mean a damn to him
for long anyway, but Jim has got his life ahead of him. What I want
you to do is to give Jim a moral victory. Re-elect Jim president of
Latham's." Norwell smiled at Yale's surprise. "I know, laddie . . . you
don't have to. You could bring in some bright boy from some other Yard
who could put Latham's on its feet. You wouldn't need me, even. But I
can tell you that if you have the courage to put your hand out to Jim
now . . . I promise you we'll make a better thing out of Latham's than
any outsiders could."

 

 

Norwell told him he had nothing to lose but a little "face." He pointed
out that with Alfred retired, and with his (Norwell's) help, Jim would
have a new lease on life. He expounded at length on Jim Latham's untapped
ability. "He'll work to prove to you a Latham should run the Yards,
and he'll work harder than anyone else because he hates you. But maybe,"
Norwell said reflectively, "like me, he'll end up thinking you're a hell
of a man."

 

 

Yale had grinned at him and said with a burr in his voice, imitating
Norwell's rich accent, "I never knew a Scotchman could be so talkative.
You convinced me some ten minutes ago."

 

 

Norwell chuckled. "I guessed I would. I knew if you thought you were
a latter-day Socrates, you couldn't resist the chance to justify even
your enemies."

 

 

 

 

Yale craned his neck to see the clock on the dresser.

 

 

"It's quarter of nine," Anne whispered. "Twenty-four hours from now we
will be walking in the Buxton County Courthouse."

 

 

"You don't have to whisper," Cynthia said, leaning on her elbow. "I've
been awake for an hour. Look, the sun is coming out. Our last day together
will be a beautiful one." She looked at them, trying to smile through
the tears in her eyes. "it's funny but you know I'm quite attached to
you two."