The Palace Thief

“He had a sister, as did I, and his father, like mine, was never at home, so that in a funny way it might have seemed for a while that our families, in our identical houses, were interchangeable.” 

Roth sets up the premise that he and Eugene Peters had identical family setups to plant the idea that they had equal opportunities to begin with, then destroys it as he explains how their paths diverge, given their families’ different histories and attitudes. 

“In one year, unable to settle on a pattern for our living room drapes, she installed three separate sets. Our living room, I should add, is large, and so are its windows. Of course, I could afford ten sets of drapes, but that is not the point.” 

This passage illustrates the difference between Roth and his spendthrift wife Scheherazade. Whereas she delights in the ability to exercise her consumer rights excessively, Roth exhibits little pleasure in spending and therefore does not enjoy the fruits of his labors as an accountant. 

“The whiskey could be counted on in the course of seconds to bring about a temporary, garrulous ease that I exploited by leaning toward the potential client and saying in an offhand way that came easily after the cocktail, ‘Say, I bet they sock you at tax time.’” 

Roth needs the feeling of a whiskey glass in his hand and the first burn of alcohol in his throat to do what does not come naturally to him. This indicates his unease in social situations. This sort of liquid courage does him no favors, as the one-liner he uses to try and land Willie Mays as a client fails. 

“I found it difficult to fathom that the lazy scoundrel I knew as a boy was now a captain of industry, and as I sat there with the leggings in my hands I tried to remember if our childhoods contained some hint of our futures.” 

Just before Roth steals the prize leggings, he has a moment to reflect on whether he had any premonition that Peters would outshine him as an adult. Roth is filled with injustice and bitterness in the face of Peters’s good luck, which is something more than his accounting can quantify.

“This is what I had: a beautiful and capricious wife, a brooding daughter and an exuberant one, a son cut from my own cloth, a comfortable house, and a career that had proceeded reasonably well though not exactly as I might have liked. This is what I did not have: uproar and disorder, a life of music, and a future unfounded in the past.”

Near the end of his story, Roth weighs the gains and the missed opportunities in his life. While he has many of the accolades that would be deemed the markers of a conventionally successful life, he cannot help thinking about the “uproar and disorder” that calls to him and his desire for a life of surprises. When he envisages the idea of a future that has no foundations in the past, he imagines a life of complete freedom.

“I […] turned the legging in my hands, and recounted the story as the sun fell lower behind her. Although any man who has ever had girls might understand, others will no doubt think it sad for me to say that up until that moment I believe I had never in my life had the full attention of my daughter.”

Roth confesses his theft of the legging to Naomi, his favorite daughter, and the story brings them unprecedentedly close. The setting sun outside the window brings their intimacy into focus, and this previously unseen side of Roth holds the spotlight. He treasures the moment as an incident that gains the regard of his most aloof child. 

“Clive kept his head down. He worked his feet in sandals, while next to me, holding her breath for long stretches, our mother did the same in hers.” 

Clive’s mother mimicking his anxious foot movements and even wearing the same style of footwear is symptomatic of the reversal of roles in the story. As the boys’ father Simon comes to illustrate, parents aim to imitate their children as a means of relating, rather than the other way around.

“We always suspected that something was wrong with Clive, but our suspicions were muddled, especially in those days, by his brilliance. He didn’t talk much, and when he did, he used words like azygous and chemism.”

Clive’s family does not know what to make of him. They sense there is something wrong because he does not fit into the standard social constructions, but they are too dazzled by his intellect and use of incomprehensible words to put their finger on the abnormality. 

“It was the year our parents forsook their religion, the designated hitter stepped up to the plate, abortion became legal, and our father wore bell-bottoms and purple ties. It was the year my brother spoke in his own language, won championship after championship, and began drifting away from us, until we began to fear that one day, like a branch in a storm, he would snap off completely.”

This description of the year 1973 contains a mixture of contemporary world events and incidents personal to Clive and William’s family. The juxtaposition of sweeping cultural changes, such as abortion rights, with changes in the lives of family members gives the impression that the latter is propelled by the zeitgeist. Clive, however, does not merely change his clothes in response to the times, like his father. Instead he is “a branch in a storm,” threatening to “snap off” from the family tree, altogether. 

“I had always assumed that something was wrong with my brother, that something in him was dangerous and shameful, and that my parents and I were allied to repair it, but now […] I first thought of it another way, that I was the one they loved less; that Clive was aloof in order to escape their love, and that I was zealous in order to win it.” 

Following Simon’s earlier announcement that he only has one son left, William tortures himself with the worry, that contrary to his previous assumptions, he is the disinherited, less-loved child. He acknowledges how Clive wishes to escape the love bestowed on him, while he himself is intent on gaining it. 

“The inevitability of it had always been a half-hidden secret to me, a fact that persisted just beyond where I could give it voice. Now at last, as I bowed my head, I recognized it, deep in my own character, as the fleeting ghostly shape of a wish; and for this, fifteen years later, in a stifling room at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, where the doctors told me […] to say goodbye to my brother, I wept and wept and wept.” 

While William recognizes that he always possessed the notion that something would happen to Clive, he understands this is in fact his own “wish” so that he could be the ascendant son. However, 15 years later, he is wracked with guilt for having the wish when Clive dies and leaves him bereaved.

“Wilson Kohler loved baseball. He thanked God for it, for the red base path clay, the green grass, for the trim and piping of the uniforms […] It took his breath away. And he knew all about the game, too, the details of strategy, the pickoff plays, when to give a hitter the green light.” 

Wilson loves baseball because it is an element of continuity in a life that has changed too much for his own liking. The “red base,” green grass,” and sharp uniforms are reassuring visual signifiers, and the rules of the game are easy to understand and ensure that nothing too extraordinary takes place. 

“He could certainly see how women had suffered great difficulty in the world, but he did not understand why this should be of such concern to his son. The female gender, it seemed to him, could take care of itself. […] In truth, it seemed to him that in the last few years there had been a secret communication among women, and this communication was growing and leaving men behind.” 

Wilson, who has been left by his wife Abbie and feels that he has no friend to turn to, resents Brent’s preoccupation with defending women’s rights. While Wilson initially regards the “communication” between women as female solidarity, over the course of the story, he learns that the “communication” is simply a different of relating to the world that can also be relevant to men. 

“Later that night, when she left, he sat at the table in the back of the house, staring at the flowers, so shamed by them that he could not look up. He did not watch her go; he did not listen for the familiar rev and downshift of her Toyota; he did not plead. He sat for a long time in the breakfast room. Then he picked up The Globe and thought to himself, I must continue to read the paper.” 

The night his wife leaves him, Wilson wallows in the embarrassment of having bought her flowers in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. He purposefully does not pay attention to the sensory details of her departure and instead forcibly represses his feelings. 

“He dreaded the moment when he and a woman seemed to come to the end of their humor, because invariably the next step was to become overly thoughtful. Some sort of confession was required. Often, before dinner had even arrived, he found himself expounding about feelings he wasn’t even sure he had.” 

While Wilson is comfortable enough delivering the kind of self-depreciating humor that scores his dates’ attention, he struggles to communicate his more serious thoughts and feelings. The emotionally led “confession” required of him feels both inauthentic and awkward. Wilson feels removed from both the women he dates and from his true self. 

“The Red Sox would always do this, but even after all these years he felt the disappointment each time. No matter who they picked up in trades, no matter who they paid five million dollars for, they were doomed to lose. He sat low in his seat. Coming onto the field now was a team he barely knew.” 

Wilson’s heartbreak over the loss of his nuclear family structure is transferred into his sorrow about his local baseball team’s losing streak. The real-life team on the field is completely different to the glorious team in his head. Wilson’s lingering affection for this team again reflects his loyalty to an idealized vision of the past and his unwillingness to move on.

“There seemed to be a part of him that he no longer controlled, a ruinous version of himself that brought up memories of his old life as soon as he was ready to embark on a new one.”

Although Wilson is doing his best to start a new life with Margaret, he feels powerless to stop ruminating over the loss of his life with Abbie. He worries that this “part of him that he no longer controlled” will sabotage the progress he has made in starting a new life. 

“I tell this story not for my own honor, for there is little of that here, and not as a warning, for any man of my calling learns quickly that all warnings are in vain.” 

Hundert begins his story with two statements: he is neither telling it to defend his reputation nor to teach the reader a moral lesson. In addition to creating an air of intrigue, the reader gains a sense that honor and morality are important values to this teacher of Roman history. 

“I taught the sons of nineteen senators. I taught a boy who, if not for the vengeful recriminations of the tabloids, would today have been president of the United States.”

This passage reveals that even outside of his dealings with Sedgewick Bell, Hundert has taught other sons of powerful men who have abused their privilege. This man of dubious reputation is still a boy to Hundert, a protégé who could have attained worldwide fame. 

“Sedgewick Bell then began to add the dangerous element of natural leadership—which was based on the physical strength of his features—to his otherwise puerile antics.”

This passage shows how Sedgewick’s physical attributes—largeness and vigor—give him the automatic appearance of a leader. Although he is new to the school, his physicality enables him to stand out as someone who should be respected and followed. 

“St. Benedict’s lies in the bucolic, equine expanse of rural Virginia, nearer in spirit to the Carolinas than Maryland, although the drive to Washington requires little more than an hour.” 

The topography of the area surrounding St. Benedict’s school seems in the “spirit” of the Carolinas and therefore more like the rural South. This lends the institution a wholesome, almost monastic appeal. However, the geographical hour’s distance from Washington, DC, the country’s seat of power, is symbolic of the automatic privilege of those who attend it. 

“What had happened was that instead of enforcing my own code of morals, I had allowed Sedgewick Bell to sweep me summarily into his. I did not know at the time what an act of corruption I had committed, although what is especially chilling to me is that I believe Sedgewick Bell, even at the age of thirteen, did.” 

When Hundert reflects on why he allowed Sedgewick to cheat on the Mr. Julius Caesar quiz, he realizes he has been swept into Sedgewick’s decadent and twisted system of morality. While Hundert initially viewed his error as a lapse in judgement, adolescent Sedgewick already knew Hundert was a willing participant in a corrupt system that perennially rigs the odds in the Bell family’s favor. 

“I knew then that he had succeeded in his efforts, that these miners counted him somehow as their own, so that when he actually spoke and they interrupted him with cheers, it was no more unexpected than the promises he made then to carry their interests with him to the Senate, He was masterful. I found my own arm upraised.”

Hundert notices Sedgewick’s ability to seem like a member of the working class and a leader at the same time. Although he is aware that Sedgewick’s promises may be empty, he admires him and finds himself carried along with his former student’s phenomenon. He once again exhibits his unconscious weakness for the boy.