NORMAN MAILER
Harlot's Lady
I was introduced to Kittredge toward the end of that junior year at Yale.
Just before Easter vacation, a summons came by telegram:
COME MEET MY FIANCEE HADLEY KITTREDGE GAR–
DINER. SPEND EASTER AT THE KEEP WITH KITTREDGE
AND JEAN HARLOW.
Back to Doane. I had not been to the island since my father, in
need of the money a couple of years ago, had pushed and cajoled his
two brothers and a single sister into agreement on the sale. Why his
funds needed replenishment remained one more family mystery. Among
the Hubbards, windfalls, disasters, and outright peculation were kept at a
greater distance from the children than sexual disclosure; all we knew
(and it was talked about in whispers) was: "A damn shame. Got to sell
the Keep. Boardman's idea." My father walked about for two weeks
that summer with a mouth as tight as a South American dictator under
palace arrest. I hardly cared. I loved the Keep less than the others, or so I
thought. It was only over the next summer which I spent at loose ends
in Southampton with my mother, getting drunk with new, rich friends I
did not like, and banging tennis balls through August days, that I came
to understand what it was to lose the splendor of afternoon silences over
the Maine hills.
The call to go back to the Keep was agreeable, therefore; the op–
portunity to see Harlot spoke of more. I was still like a girl who fell in
love with a man who went away to war. If he had not come back for
three years, no matter. The
girl
went on no other dates; she did not
even accept telephone calls from nice boys.
I was in love with the C.I.A. I am one of those types - is it one in
ten, or one in fifty? - who can give up just about
all
of life for concen–
tration upon a part of life. I read spy novels, made island hops from
word to word in Skeat, attended foreign-policy forums at Yale, and
studied photographs of Lenin and Stalin and Molotov, of Gromyko and
Lavrenti Beria; I wanted to comprehend the face of the enemy. I es–
chewed political arguments about Republicans and Democrats. They
hardly mattered. Allen Dulles was my President, and I would be a com-
Editor's Note: "Harlot's Lady" is excerpted from the novel
Harlot's Chost
by Norman
Mailer. Copyright 10 1991 by Norman Mailer. To be published by Random House.
