Changing the Past by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online Page A

an extremely widespread collar filled with the thick but neat triangle of “Windsor” knot, named for the ex-king of England who had married an American divorcée who was supposedly, uniquely, the cure for his impotence. Whatever the truth of this, the autobiographer at hand, Barry Howard, alluded to it as established fact in his prefatory remarks on the sex lives of the renowned, and then proceeded to characterize his own role as that of male Mrs. Simpson in satisfying the erotic needs of the wife of a president of the United States. Like the Windsors, both this woman and her husband were now deceased, needless to say, and thus without recourse to a suit for libel. Of the famous people of whom he had carnal knowledge and were yet alive to confirm or deny the tale, virtually all were professional performers and could be counted on not to make trouble: either, themselves faded or fading, they could use the publicity, or they were too successful to stoop to self-defense in such a context.
    â€œNot to mention,” said Mark Feld, the actor’s acquisition editor at Rodgers, Wirth & Maddox, a movie addict thrilled to be in this situation, “that he’s telling the truth.”
    â€œEven,” Hunsicker had asked with a scowl, for he had voted with mild enthusiasm for the president in reference, “in the case of Mrs.—?”
    â€œWho could doubt it?” Mark said loftily. Editors, as opposed to copy-editors like Hunsicker-Kellog, often fell under an author’s enchantment and, like Madison Avenuers who believed their own ads, would give credence to all manner of twaddle. For example, Dan Gillespie, a professed atheist, accepted much of what Lilli-Ann Mulholland, whose manuscripts were barely literate, proclaimed as astrological truth. And Susan Hillman, though to all appearances a stern rationalist, was a pushover for any book with a thesis opposed to any tradition whatever, and after reading the appropriate works believed, e.g., that General Custer was a full-blooded Negro, that Hitler was alive and living quietly in New South Wales, Australia, and that Sherlock Holmes had been not only a real person but also had royal blood.
    Martha was engrossed at the moment and did not see her husband until he opened the door. “Oh, hi,” she said then, hardly taking her eyes off the page. She slid to the passenger’s side. She would have done the same without a book. Martha was unreconstructed in assigning roles according to sex. When they were together in a car, unless he was feeling very ill, Hunsicker drove, though he was not nearly so proficient behind the wheel as she, never having mastered the craft of parking next to a curb, for example.
    â€œYou’re enjoying that?”
    She lowered the book and moued. “I don’t know.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss.
    â€œI told you, didn’t I,” Hunsicker asked, then waited till he had backed the car from the parking space and put it into forward motion, “that Howard insisted on writing it himself, refused to use even a collaborator. Naturally it was unpub-lishable in the form in which we received it. We had virtually to demolish it entirely and write what is really a new book. Dorothy did most of it. Everybody was afraid that in view of his original position, Howard would be enraged and never agree, but when the manuscript went to him for approval, he sent it back promptly and with much praise for our work in ‘polishing it up.’ I’m sure he didn’t even look at it. In his egomaniacal way he assumed all we did was correct a misspelling here and there.”
    â€œHe’s not a likable person,” Martha said in her calm but, to Hunsicker, definitive and sometimes even devastating way. As usual, she had found the mot juste . Hunsicker himself would less eloquently have used the term “prick,” which was also imprecise, Howard being well known for his apparently quite genuine