Good as Gold by Joseph Heller

Author:Joseph Heller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1976-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

He awoke at daybreak and waited for sounds indicating others were astir. Past nine, he could bear his solitude no longer and crept forth into the morning in a spirit of cautious dejection. He descended the magnificent curving oak staircase with the mournful cast of a sacrificial victim whose moment for the spotlight had come. The house was inundated by a stillness that seemed eternal. Conover had horses that did not whinny. His dogs did not bark. If there were roosters or cows on the baronial grounds, they did not crow or moo. Doors did not close, toilets did not flush, wood did not creak, leaves did not rustle, and footsteps did not fall. At the base of the staircase a portly old Negro with woolly hair stood in the silver-and-black Conover livery and indicated with a slight bow the direction Gold was to follow.

Maids and dusters and porters with chamois cloths were silently cleaning and polishing wood, brass, pewter, glass, and porcelain. Passing in awe and disbelief down the center hallway of the main floor, Gold came at length to an enormous breakfast room containing a buffet of a size he did not know could exist outside the whimsical visions of novelists with extraordinary powers of description. Legions of servants, all of them black, in color of skin as well as by race, were on duty at fixed posts under the canny supervision of a virginal white spinster who was herself subordinate to a nasty-looking white overseer glowering cruelly, even at Gold. The plantation hierarchy was intact.

The serving table was more than sixty-five feet long. Only the staff was present when Gold entered. His line of march was clear and he moved along the counter in a trance. There were turkey, partridge, quail, squab, and goose to start with. There were heavy hams. Too much, too much, was the cry of his soul. His fingers trembled and he could hardly look. Mute figures with high cheekbones waited expectantly to serve him. There were pans of biscuits and baskets of eggs, rashers of bacon and kettles of fish, creamers and crocks and gallipots brimming, compotes and hoppers and casseroles steaming, dry cereals in bushels and hot ones in cauldrons, platters of sausage and trays of beef, kegs of butter and bins of cheese, urns of fresh milk and jugs of hot coffee, and condiments in cruets, flagons, and flasks. On a crested salver of silver embossed with the head of a pig was the eyeless head of a cooked pig. There were basins of fruit and bushels of washed fresh vegetables, and smoking tureens of stews of hare and venison. Glowing like a Christmas fire near the end of the table was a firkin or two, perhaps a whole kilderkin, of fresh wild raspberries, each perfect as a ruby. Gold took only coffee, a cannikin of orange juice from a beaker, and a sample of honey dew melon from a trencher with a trowel. Tables had been set with silver and linen for five hundred persons.

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