The Deceivers Read Online Free PDF Page A

him to maintain a satisfying level of interest in it. So it was a good life. But at times he wondered where he would be hadhe been able to accept the adjustments and compromises and devotion that high level executive work demanded. He suspected that his mind was good enough to have enabled him to reach that chill climate above the corporate timberline where income becomes a matter of bonuses, stock options and capital gains. At times he felt wistful and half guilty about his inability to commit himself totally, but he justified and rationalized by telling himself that he had and was having a good life, that there were many family advantages in being a nine-to-five guy, that he did not like airplanes and slept poorly on trains, that he was out of that decision-making area where flourish the ulcer and the massive coronary, and that, in the long view of history, it mattered very little whether his split second of existence in eternity was spent as Chairman of the Board of the Ballinger Corporation and advisor to the head of government—or as a sweeper in C Building.
    Yet, on those rare times when he was called to New York, it was not amusing to be called Garrett by some florid and flint-eyed man whose manner was imposing, whose income was fabulous and whose thinking was appallingly fuzzy. It was not enchanting to be summoned like a clever and somewhat mischievous child and be asked to present neatly typed and bound analyses of cost trends and remedies for the approval of men who had not the ability to have composed the reports.
    He had told himself many times that it was very much like the kid game of king-on-the-hill. The kid who was strongest and most ruthless and desired with the greatest desperation to achieve and retain the summit would do so. And the others, weakened by their suspicion that perhaps the top of the hill was not so terribly important after all, could select places on the slope where it was not likely anyone would try to dislodge them. Or they might be weakened by doubt as to their ability to attain and defend the summit.
    This was a philosophy he had once attempted to expound to Cindy Cable. She had caught on immediately, and had looked at him in a mocking way and said, “How wonderfully selfish, Carl. Not your attitude, but the way you’ve kept from relating it to the world around you. Don’t you see that’s one of the very crucial problems of our society? How far can a man justifiably go in search of security?”
    “Or a well-rounded life.”
    “Isn’t that a rationalization rather than a description? The thing that gnaws, dear Carl, is your nasty little suspicionthat a man, to be a man, must involve himself with total commitment.”
    “Or be half a man?”
    “Don’t give me that abused and huffy look. I’m one of the uncommitted too. From twelve years old to twenty, I filled a great box with hundreds and thousands of words of ringing beauty. I burned with that good old hard gemlike flame, I did. But I couldn’t face the complete involvement of sending my deathless works to publishers. So long as I did nothing, I was avoiding the horror of being told the stuff stinks. And so I can keep on half believing in my heart that I had a great talent.”
    Joan, who had been listening, said, with a slightly irritable expression, “Carl, I just do not understand why you say those things about yourself. You have a perfectly splendid job and you’ve been getting raises right along, and I don’t see why you talk yourself down so. I’m very proud of you and so are the kids and … I just don’t follow you at all when you talk about things like commitment and total involvement.”
    And he remembered that Cindy had done an odd and quite touching thing. She had gone over to Joan and kissed her quickly on the cheek and said, “Carl and I have to turn everything into vast problems, Joanie. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a disease. Like Scrabble.” And when she turned away from Joan, Carl saw a