That summer Dimka and Natalya painted the apartment, with the sun shining through the open windows. It took longer than necessary because they kept stopping for sex. Her glorious hair was tied up and hidden in a rag, and she wore an old shirt of his with a frayed collar; but her shorts were tight, and every time he saw her up a ladder he had to kiss her. He pulled down her shorts so often that after a while she just wore the shirt; and then they had even more sex.
They could not marry until her divorce was finalized, and for the sake of appearances Natalya had her own tiny apartment nearby, but unofficially they were already embarking on their new life together in Dimka’s place. They rearranged the furniture to Natalya’s liking and bought a couch. They developed routines: he made breakfast, she cooked dinner; he polished her shoes, she ironed his shirts; he shopped for meat, she for fish.
They never saw Nik, but Natalya began to establish a relationship with Nina. Dimka’s ex-wife was now the accepted lover of Marshal Pushnoy, and spent many weekends with him at his dacha, hosting dinners with his intimate friends, some of whom brought their mistresses. Dimka did not know how Pushnoy arranged matters with his wife, a pleasant-looking elderly woman who always appeared at his side on formal state occasions. During Nina’s country weekends, Dimka and Natalya looked after Grisha. At first Natalya was nervous, never having had children of her own—Nik hated kids. But she quickly became fond of Grisha, who looked a lot like Dimka; and, not surprisingly, she turned out to have the usual maternal instincts.
Their private life was happy but their public life was not. The diehards in the Kremlin only pretended to accept the Czechoslovakia compromise. As soon as Kosygin and Dimka got back from Prague the conservatives went to work to undermine the agreement, pressing for an invasion that would crush Dubcek and his reforms. The argument raged through June and July in the heat of Moscow and in the Black Sea breezes at the dachas to which the Communist Party elite migrated for their summer holidays.
For Dimka this was not really about Czechoslovakia. It was about his son and the world in which he would grow up. In fifteen years Grisha would be at university; in twenty he would be working; in twenty-five he might have children of his own. Would Russia have a better system, something like Dubcek’s idea of Communism with a human face? Or would the Soviet Union still be a tyranny in which the unchallengeable authority of the party was brutally enforced by the KGB?
Infuriatingly Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary, sat on the fence. Dimka had come to despise him. Terrified of being caught on the losing side, Brezhnev would never make up his mind until he knew which way the collective decision was likely to go. He had no vision, no courage, no plan for making the Soviet Union a better country. He was no leader.
The conflict came to a head at a two-day meeting of the Politburo starting on Thursday, August 15. As always, the formal meeting consisted mostly of polite interchanges of platitudes, while the real battles were fought outside.
It was in the plaza that Dimka had his face-off with Yevgeny Filipov, standing in the sunshine outside the yellow-and-white palace of the senate building among the parked cars and waiting limousines. “Look at the KGB reports from Prague,” Filipov said. “Counterrevolutionary student rallies! Clubs where the overthrow of Communism is openly discussed! Secret weapons caches!”
“I don’t believe all the stories,” Dimka said. “True, there is discussion of reform, but the dangers are being exaggerated by the failed leaders of the past who are now being pushed aside.” The truth was that Andropov, the hard-line head of the KGB, was fabricating sensational intelligence reports to bolster the conservatives; but Dimka was not foolhardy enough to say so out loud.
Dimka had a source of reliable intelligence: his twin sister. Tanya was in Prague, sending carefully noncommittal articles to TASS and, at the same time, supplying Dimka and Kosygin with reports saying that Dubcek was a hero to all Czechs except the old party apparatchiks.
It was almost impossible for people to get at the truth in a closed society. Russians told so many lies. In the Soviet Union almost every document was deceitful: production figures, foreign policy assessments, police interviews with suspects, economic forecasts. Behind their hands people murmured that the only true page in the newspaper was the one with the radio and television programs.
“I can’t tell which way it’s going to go,” Natalya said to Dimka on Thursday night. She still worked for Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. “All the signals from Washington say President Johnson will do nothing if we invade Czechoslovakia. He has too many problems of his own—riots, assassinations, Vietnam, and a presidential election.”
They had finished painting for the evening and were sitting on the floor sharing a bottle of beer. Natalya had a single smudge of yellow paint on her forehead. For some reason that made Dimka want to fuck her. He was wondering whether to do it now or get washed and go to bed first when she said: “Before we get married . . .”
That was ominous. “Yes?”
“We should talk about children.”
“We probably should have done that before we spent all summer screwing our brains out.” They had never used birth control.
“Yes. But you already have a child.”
“We have a child. He’s ours. You’ll be his stepmother.”
“And I’m very fond of him. It’s easy to love a boy who looks so much like you. But how do you feel about having more?”
Dimka could see that for some reason she was worried about this, and he needed to reassure her. He put down the beer and embraced her. “I adore you,” he said. “And I would love to have children with you.”
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Because I’m pregnant.”
• • •
It was difficult to get newspapers in Prague, Tanya found. This was an ironic consequence of Dubcek’s abolition of censorship. Previously, few people had bothered to read the anodyne and dishonest reports in the state-controlled press. Now that the papers could tell the truth, they could never print enough copies to keep up with the demand. She had to get up early in the morning to buy them before they sold out.
Television had been freed, too. On current affairs programs, workers and students questioned and criticized government ministers. Released political prisoners were allowed to confront the secret policemen who had thrown them in jail. Around the television set in the lobby of any large hotel there was often a small crowd of eager viewers watching the discussion on the screen.
Similar exchanges were taking place in every café, works canteen, and town hall. People who had suppressed their true feelings for twenty years were suddenly allowed to say what was in their hearts.
The air of liberation was infectious. Tanya was tempted to believe that the old days were over and there was no danger. She had to keep reminding herself that Czechoslovakia was still a Communist country with secret police and torture basements.
She had with her the typescript of Vasili’s first novel.
It had arrived, shortly before she left Moscow, in the same way as his first short story, handed to her in the street outside her office by a stranger who was unwilling to answer questions. As before, it was written in small handwriting—no doubt to save paper. Its sardonic title was A Free Man.
Tanya had typed it out on airmail paper. She had to assume that her luggage would be opened. Although she was a trusted reporter for TASS, it was still possible that any hotel room she stayed in would be turned over, and the apartment allocated to her in the old town of Prague would be thoroughly searched. But she had devised a clever hiding place, she thought. All the same she lived in fear. It was like possessing a nuclear bomb. She was desperate to pass it on as soon as possible.
She had befriended the Prague correspondent of a British newspaper, and at the first opportunity she had said to him: “There’s a book editor in London who specializes in translations of East European novels—Anna Murray, of Rowley Publishing. I’d love to interview her about Czech literature. Do you think you could get a message to her?”
This was dangerous, for it established a traceable connection between Tanya and Anna; but Tanya had to take some risks, and it seemed to her that this one was minimal.
Two weeks later the British journalist had said: “Anna Murray’s coming to Prague next Tuesday. I couldn’t give her your phone number because I don’t have it, but she’ll be at the Palace Hotel.”
On Tuesday Tanya called the hotel and left a message for Anna saying: “Meet Jakub at the Jan Hus monument at four.” Jan Hus was a medieval philosopher burned at the stake by the Pope for arguing that mass should be said in the local language. He remained a symbol of Czech resistance to foreign control. His memorial was in Old Town Square.
The secret police agents in all hotels took special interest in guests from the West, and Tanya had to assume that they were shown all messages, therefore they might stake out the monument to see who Anna was meeting. So Tanya did not go to the rendezvous. Instead she intercepted Anna on the street and slipped her a card with the address of a restaurant in the Old Town and the message: “Eight P.M. tonight. Table booked in the name of Jakub.”
There was still the possibility that Anna would be followed from her hotel to the restaurant. It was unlikely: the secret police did not have enough men to tail every foreigner all the time. Nevertheless Tanya continued to take precautions. That evening she put on a loose-fitting leather jacket, despite the warm weather, and went to the restaurant early. She sat at a different table from the one she had reserved. She kept her head down when Anna arrived, and watched as Anna was seated.
Anna was unmistakably foreign. No one in Eastern Europe was that well dressed. She had a dark-red pantsuit tailored to her voluptuous figure. She wore it with a glorious multicolored scarf that had to come from Paris. Anna had dark hair and eyes that probably came from her German-Jewish mother. She must be close to thirty, Tanya calculated, but she was one of those women who became more beautiful as they left their youth behind.
No one followed Anna into the restaurant. Tanya stayed put for fifteen minutes, watching the arrivals, while Anna ordered a bottle of Hungarian Riesling and sipped a glass. Four people came in, an elderly married couple and two youngsters on a date: none looked remotely like police. Finally Tanya got up and joined Anna at the reserved table, draping her jacket over the back of her chair.
“Thank you for coming,” Tanya said.
“Please don’t mention it. I’m glad to.”
“It’s a long way.”
“I’d travel ten times as far to meet the woman who gave me Frostbite.”
“He’s written a novel.”
Anna sat back with a satisfied sigh. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” She poured wine into Tanya’s glass. “Where is it?”
“Hidden. I’ll give it to you before we leave.”
“Okay.” Anna was puzzled, for she could see no sign of a typescript, but she accepted what Tanya said. “You’ve made me very happy.”
“I always knew that Frostbite was brilliant,” Tanya said reflectively. “But even I didn’t anticipate the international success you’ve had. In the Kremlin they’re furious about it, especially as they still can’t figure out who the author is.”
“You should know that there’s a fortune in royalties due to him.”
Tanya shook her head. “If he received money from overseas that would give the game away.”
“Well, maybe one day. I’ve asked the largest London firm of literary agents to represent him.”
“What is a literary agent?”
“Someone who looks after the author’s interests, negotiates contracts, and makes sure the publisher pays on time.”
“I never heard of that.”
“They’ve opened a bank account in the name of Ivan Kuznetsov. But you should think about whether the money should be invested somehow.”
“How much is it?”
“More than a million pounds.”
Tanya was shocked. Vasili would be the richest man in Russia if he could get his hands on the money.
They ordered dinner. Prague restaurants had improved in recent months, but the food was still traditional. Their beef and sliced dumplings came in a rich gravy garnished with whipped cream and a spoonful of cranberry jam.
Anna asked: “What’s going to happen here in Prague?”
“Dubcek is a sincere Communist who wants the country to remain part of the Warsaw Pact, so he presents no fundamental threat to Moscow; but the dinosaurs in the Kremlin don’t see it that way. No one knows what’s going to happen.”
“Do you have children?”
Tanya smiled. “Key question. Perhaps we may choose to suffer the Soviet system, for the sake of a quiet life; but do we have the right to bequeath such misery and oppression to the next generation? No, I don’t have children. I have a nephew, Grisha, whom I love, the son of my twin brother. And this morning in a letter my brother told me that the woman who will soon be his second wife is already pregnant, so I’ll have another nephew or a niece. For their sakes, I have to hope that Dubcek will succeed, and other Communist countries will follow the Czech example. But the Soviet system is inherently conservative, much more resistant to change than capitalism. That may be its most fundamental flaw, in the long run.”
When they had finished, Anna said: “If we can’t pay our author, can we perhaps give you a present to pass to him? Is there anything from the West he would like?”
A typewriter was what he needed, but that would blow his cover. “A sweater,” she said. “A really thick warm sweater. He’s always cold. And some underwear, the kind with long sleeves and long legs.”
Anna looked aghast at this peep into the life of Ivan Kuznetsov. “I’ll go to Vienna tomorrow and get him the best quality.”
Anna nodded, pleased. “Shall we meet again here on Friday?”
“Yes.”
Tanya stood up. “We should leave separately.”
A look of panic crossed Anna’s face. “What about the typescript?”
“Wear my jacket,” said Tanya. It might be a bit small for Anna, who was heavier than Tanya; but she could get it on. “When you reach Vienna, unpick the lining.” She shook Anna’s hand. “Don’t lose it,” she said. “I don’t have a copy.”
• • •
In the middle of the night Tanya was awakened by her bed shaking. She sat up, terrified, thinking the secret police had come to arrest her. When she turned on the light she saw that she was alone, but the shaking had not been a dream. The framed photograph of Grisha on her bedside table seemed to be dancing, and she could hear the tinkling sound of small jars of makeup vibrating on the glass top of her dressing table.
She jumped out of bed and went to the open window. It was first light. There was a loud rumbling noise coming from the nearby main street, but she could not see what was causing it. She was filled with a vague dread.
She looked for her leather jacket, and remembered that she had given it to Anna. She quickly pulled on blue jeans and a sweater, stepped into her shoes, and hurried out. Despite the early hour there were people on the street. She walked swiftly in the direction of the noise.
As soon as she reached the main street she knew what had happened.
The noise was caused by tanks. They were rolling along the street, slowly but unstoppably, their caterpillar tracks making a hideous din. Riding on the tanks were soldiers in Soviet uniforms, most young, just boys. Looking along the street in the gentle light of dawn, Tanya saw that there were dozens of tanks, perhaps hundreds, the incoming line stretching all the way to the Charles Bridge and beyond. Along the sidewalks small groups of Czech men and women stood, many in their nightwear, watching with dismay and stupefaction as their city was overrun.
The conservatives in the Kremlin had won, Tanya realized. Czechoslovakia had been invaded by the Soviet Union. The brief season of reform and hope was over.
Tanya caught the eye of a middle-aged woman standing next to her. The woman wore an old-fashioned hairnet like the one Tanya’s mother put on every night. Her face was streaming with tears.
That was when Tanya felt the wetness on her own cheeks and realized that she, too, was weeping.
• • •
A week after the tanks rolled into Prague, George Jakes was sitting on his couch in Washington, in his underwear, watching television coverage of the Democratic convention in Chicago.
For lunch he had heated a can of tomato soup and eaten it straight from the pan, which now stood on the coffee table, with the red remains of the glutinous liquid congealing inside.
He knew what he ought to do. He should put on a suit and go out and get himself a new job and a new girlfriend and a new life.
Somehow he just could not see the point.
He had heard of depression and he knew this was it.
He was only mildly diverted by the spectacle of the Chicago police running amok. A few hundred demonstrators were peacefully sitting down in the road outside the convention center. The police were wading into them with nightsticks, savagely beating everyone, as if they did not realize they were committing criminal assault live on television—or, more likely, they knew but did not care.
Someone, presumably Mayor Richard Daley, had let the dogs off the leash.
George idly speculated on the political consequences. It was the end of nonviolence as a political strategy, he guessed. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had both been wrong, and now they were dead. The Black Panthers were right. Mayor Daley, Governor Ronald Reagan, presidential candidate George Wallace, and all their racist police chiefs would use violence against anyone whose ideas they found distasteful. Black people needed guns to protect themselves. So did anyone else who wanted to challenge the bull elephants of American society. Right now in Chicago the police were treating middle-class white kids the way they had always treated blacks. That had to change attitudes.
There was a ring at his doorbell. He frowned, puzzled. He was not expecting a visitor and did not want to talk to anyone. He ignored the sound, hoping the caller would go away. The bell rang again. I might be out, he thought; how do they know I’m here? It rang a third time, long and insistently, and he realized the person was not going to give up.
He went to the door. It was his mother. She was carrying a covered casserole dish.
Jacky looked him up and down. “I thought so,” she said, and she walked in uninvited.
She put her casserole in his oven and turned on the heat. “Take a shower,” she ordered him. “Shave your sorry face and put on some decent clothing.”
He thought of arguing but did not have the energy. It seemed easier just to do as she said.
She began clearing up the room, putting his soup pan in the kitchen sink, folding newspapers, opening windows.
George retired to his room. He took off his underwear, showered, and shaved. It would make no difference. He would slob out again tomorrow.
He put on chinos and a blue button-down shirt, then returned to the living room. The casserole smelled good, he could not deny that. Jacky had laid the dining table. “Sit down,” she said. “Supper’s ready.”
She had made King Ranch chicken in a tomato-cream sauce with green chilies and a cheese crust. George could not resist it, and he had two platefuls. Afterward his mother washed up and he dried the dishes.
She sat with him to watch the convention coverage. Senator Abraham Ribicoff was speaking, nominating George McGovern, a last-minute alternative peace candidate. He caused a stir by saying: “With George McGovern as president of the United States, we would not have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.”
Jacky said: “My, that’s telling them.”
The convention hall went quiet. The television director cut to a shot of Mayor Daley. He looked like a giant frog, with bulging eyes, a jowly face, and a neck that was all rolls of fat. For a moment he forgot he was on television—just like his cops—and yelled vituperatively at Ribicoff.
The microphones did not pick up his words. “I wonder what he said,” George mused.
“I can tell you,” said Jacky. “I can lip-read.”
“I never knew that.”
“When I was nine years old I went deaf. Took them a long time to figure out what was wrong. Eventually I had an operation that restored my hearing. But I never forgot how to lip-read.”
“Okay, Mom, prove it. What did Mayor Daley say to Abe Ribicoff?”
“He said: ‘Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch,’ that’s what he said.”
• • •
Walli and Beep were staying in the Chicago Hilton, on the fifteenth floor, where the McCarthy campaign had its headquarters. They were tired and dispirited when they went to their room at midnight on the last day of the convention, Thursday. They had lost: Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president, had been chosen as the Democratic candidate. The presidential election would be fought between two men who supported the Vietnam War.
They did not even have any dope to smoke. They had given that up, temporarily, for fear of giving the press a chance to smear McCarthy. They watched TV for a while, then went to bed, too miserable to make love.
Beep said: “Shit, I’ll be back in class in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I can face it.”
“I guess I’ll make a record,” Walli said. “I’ve got some new songs.”
Beep was dubious. “You think you can patch things up with Dave?”
“No. I’d like to, but he won’t. When he called me to tell me he had seen my folks in East Berlin, he was real cold, even though he was doing a nice thing.”
“Oh, God, we really hurt him,” Beep said sadly.
“Besides, he’s doing fine on his own, with his TV show and everything.”
“So how will you make an album?”
“I’ll go to London. I know Lew will drum for me, and Buzz will play bass: they’re both pissed at Dave for breaking up the group. I’ll lay down the basic tracks with them, then record the vocals on my own, and spend some time adding overdubs, guitar licks, and vocal harmonies and maybe even strings and horns.”
“Wow, you’ve really thought about this.”
“I’ve had time. I haven’t been inside a studio for half a year.”
There was a bang and a crash and the room was flooded with light from the hall. Walli realized with incredulity and terror that someone had beaten the door in. He threw back the sheets and jumped out of bed, yelling: “What the fuck?”
The room lights came on and he saw two uniformed Chicago policemen entering through the wreckage of the door. He said: “What the hell is going on?”
By way of reply one of them hit him with a nightstick.
Walli managed to dodge, and instead of hitting his head the truncheon landed painfully on his shoulder. He yelled in agony and Beep screamed.
Grasping his injured shoulder, Walli backed toward the bed. The cop swung his stick again. Walli jumped back, falling on the bed, and the club hit his leg. He roared in pain.
Both cops lifted their clubs. Walli rolled over, covering Beep. One nightstick smashed into his back and the other his hip. Beep screamed: “Stop it, please, stop, we haven’t done anything wrong, stop hitting him!”
Walli felt two more excruciating blows and thought he would pass out. Then suddenly it stopped, and two pairs of heavily booted footsteps sounded across the room and out.
Walli rolled off Beep. “Ah, fuck, it hurts,” he said.
Beep knelt up, trying to see his injuries. “Why did they do it?” she said.
Walli heard, from outside the room, sounds of more doors being broken down and more screaming people being dragged from their beds and beaten. “The Chicago police can do anything they like,” he said. “It’s worse than East Berlin.”
• • •
In October, on a plane to Nashville, Dave Williams sat next to a Nixon supporter.
Dave was going to Nashville to make a record. His own studio in Napa, Daisy Farm, was still under construction. Besides, some of the best musicians in the business were in Nashville. Dave felt that rock music was becoming too cerebral, with psychedelic sounds and twenty-minute guitar solos, so he planned an album of classic two-minute pop songs, “The Girl of My Best Friend” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Woolly Bully.” Besides, he knew that Walli was making a solo album in London and he did not want to be left behind.
And he had another reason. Little Lulu Small, who had flirted with him on the All-Star Touring Beat Revue, now lived in Nashville and worked as a backing singer. He needed someone to help him forget Beep.
On the front page of his newspaper was a photograph from the Olympic Games in Mexico City. It was of the medal ceremony for the two hundred meters race. The gold medal winner was Tommie Smith, a black American, who had broken the world record. A white Australian took silver, and another black American bronze. All three men wore human rights badges on their Olympic jackets. While “The Star-Spangled Banner” was being played, the two American athletes had bowed their heads and raised their fists in the Black Power salute, and that was the photo in all the papers.
“Disgraceful,” said the man sitting next to Dave in first class.
He looked about forty, and was dressed in a business suit with a white shirt and a tie. He had taken from his briefcase a thick typed document and was annotating it with a ballpoint pen.
Dave normally avoided talking to people on planes. The conversation usually turned into an interview about what it was really like to be a pop star, and that was boring. But this guy did not appear to know who Dave was. And Dave was curious to know what went on in the head of such a man.
His neighbor went on: “I see that the president of the International Olympic Committee has thrown them out of the games. Damn right.”
“The president’s name is Avery Brundage,” Dave said. “It says in my paper that back in 1936, when the games were held in Berlin, he defended the right of the Germans to give the Nazi salute.”
“I don’t agree with that either,” said the businessman. “The games are nonpolitical. Our athletes compete as Americans.”
“They’re Americans when they win races, and when they get conscripted into the army,” Dave said. “But they’re Negroes when they want to buy the house next door to yours.”
“Well, I’m for equality, but slow change is usually better than fast.”
“Maybe we should have an all-white army in Vietnam, just until we’re sure American society is ready for complete equality.”
“I’m against the war, too,” the man said. “If the Vietnamese are dumb enough to want to be Communists, let them. It’s Communists in America we should be worried about.”
He was from a distant planet, Dave felt. “What line of business are you in?”
“I sell advertising for radio stations.” He offered his hand to shake. “Ron Jones.”
“Dave Williams. I’m in the music business. If you don’t mind my asking, who will you vote for in November?”
“Nixon,” said Jones without hesitation.
“But you’re against the war, and you favor civil rights for Negroes, albeit not too soon; so you agree with Humphrey on the issues.”
“To hell with the issues. I have a wife and three kids, a mortgage and a car loan; they’re my issues. I’ve fought my way up to regional sales manager and I have a shot at national sales director in a few years’ time. I’ve worked my socks off for this and no one’s going to take it away from me: not rioting Negroes, not drug-taking hippies, not Communists working for Moscow, and certainly not a softhearted liberal like Hubert Humphrey. I don’t care what you say about Nixon, he stands for people like me.”
At that moment Dave felt, with an overwhelming sense of impending doom, that Nixon was going to win.
• • •
George Jakes put on a suit and a white shirt and a tie, for the first time in months, and went for lunch with Maria Summers at the Jockey Club. It was her invitation.
He could guess what was going to happen. Maria had been talking to his mother. Jacky had told Maria that George spent all day moping in his apartment doing nothing. Maria was going to tell him to pull himself together.
He could not see the point. His life was wrecked. Bobby was dead and the next president would be either Humphrey or Nixon. Nothing could be done, now, to end the war or to bring equality for blacks or even to stop the police beating up anyone they took a dislike to.
All the same he agreed to have lunch with Maria. They went back a long way.
Maria was looking attractive in a mature way. She wore a black dress with a matching jacket and a row of pearls. She projected confidence and authority. She looked like what she was, a successful midlevel bureaucrat at the Department of Justice. She refused a cocktail and they ordered lunch.
When the waiter had gone, she said to George: “You never get over it.”
He understood that she was comparing his grief for Bobby to her own bereavement over Jack.
“There’s a hole in your heart, and it doesn’t go away,” she said.
George nodded. She was so right that it was difficult not to cry.
“Work is the best cure,” she said. “That and time.”
She had survived, George realized. Her loss was the greater, for Jack Kennedy had been her lover, not just her friend.
“You helped me,” she said. “You got me the job at Justice. That was my salvation: a new environment, a new challenge.”
“But not a new boyfriend.”
“No.”
“You still live alone?”
“I have two cats,” she said. “Julius and Loopy.”
George nodded. Her being single would have helped her at the Justice Department. They hesitated to promote a married woman who might get pregnant and leave, but a confirmed spinster had a better chance.
Their food came and they ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Maria put down her fork. “I want you to go back to work, George.”
George was moved by her loving concern, and he admired the steady determination with which she had rebuilt her life. But he could not work up any enthusiasm. He gave a helpless shrug. “Bobby’s gone, McCarthy lost the nomination. Who would I work for?”
Maria surprised him by saying: “Fawcett Renshaw.”
“Those bastards?” Fawcett Renshaw was the Washington law firm that had offered George a job when he graduated, only to withdraw the offer because he went on the Freedom Ride.
“You’d be their civil rights expert,” she added.
George relished the irony. Seven years ago, involvement with civil rights had debarred him from working at Fawcett Renshaw; now it qualified him. We have won some victories, he thought, despite everything. He began to feel better.
“You’ve worked at Justice and on Capitol Hill, so you have priceless inside knowledge,” she went on. “And, you know what? Suddenly it’s become fashionable for a Washington law firm to have one black lawyer on the team.”
“How do you know what Fawcett Renshaw wants?” he asked.
“At the Justice Department we have a lot to do with them. Usually trying to get their clients to comply with government legislation.”
“I’d end up defending corporations who violate civil rights legislation.”
“Think of it as a learning experience. You’ll gain firsthand knowledge of how equalities legislation works on the ground. That would be valuable if ever you returned to politics. Meanwhile you’ll be making good money.”
George wondered if he ever would return to politics.
He looked up to see his father approaching across the restaurant. Greg said: “I’ve just finished lunch—may I join you for coffee?”
George wondered whether this apparently accidental meeting had in fact been planned by Maria. He also recalled that old Renshaw, the senior partner at the law firm, was a boyhood friend of Greg’s.
Maria said to Greg: “We were just talking about George going back to work. Fawcett Renshaw wants him.”
“Renshaw mentioned it to me. You’ll be invaluable to them. Your contacts are matchless.”
“Nixon looks like he’s winning,” George said dubiously. “Most of my contacts are with the Democrats.”
“They’re still useful. Anyway, I don’t expect Nixon to last long. He’ll crash and burn.”
George raised his eyebrows. Greg was a liberal Republican who would have preferred someone such as Nelson Rockefeller as presidential candidate. Even so, he was being surprisingly disloyal to his party. “You think the peace movement will destroy Nixon?” George asked.
“In your dreams. The other way around, more likely. Nixon isn’t Lyndon Johnson. Nixon understands foreign policy—better than most people in Washington, probably. Don’t be fooled by his dumb-ass talk about Commies, that’s just for the benefit of his supporters in the trailer parks.” Greg was a snob. “Nixon will get us out of Vietnam, and he’ll say we lost the war because the peace movement undermined the military.”
“So what will bring him down?”
“Dick Nixon lies,” Greg said. “He lies just about every time he opens his damn mouth. When a Republican administration came into office in 1952, Nixon claimed we had discovered thousands of subversives in the government.”
“How many had you found?”
“None. Not a single one. I know, I was a young congressman. Then he told the press we had come across a blueprint for socializing America in the files of the outgoing Democratic administration. Reporters asked to see it.”
“He didn’t have a copy.”
“Correct. He also said he had a secret Communist memorandum about how they planned to work through the Democratic Party. No one ever saw that, either. I suspect that Dick’s mother never told him it’s a sin to tell a lie.”
“There’s a lot of dishonesty in politics,” George said.
“And in many other walks of life. But few people lie as much and as shamelessly as Nixon. He’s a cheat and a crook. He’s gotten away with it until now. People do. But it’s different when you’re president. Reporters know they’ve been lied to about Vietnam, and more and more they scrutinize everything the government says. Dick will get caught out, and then he’ll fall. And you know something else? He’ll never understand why. He’ll say the press were out to get him all along.”
“I sure hope you’re right.”
“Take the job, George,” Greg pleaded. “There’s so much to be done.”
George nodded. “Maybe I will.”
• • •
Claus Krohn was a redhead. On his head, his hair was a dark reddish-brown, but on the rest of his body it was ginger. Rebecca was particularly fond of the triangle that grew from his groin up to a point near his navel. It was what she looked at when she was giving him oral sex, which she enjoyed at least as much as he did.
Now she lay with her head on his belly and tangled her fingernails idly in the curls. They were in his apartment on a Monday night. Rebecca had no meetings on Monday nights, but she pretended she did, and her husband pretended to believe her.
The physical arrangements were easy. Her feelings were harder to manage. It was so difficult to keep these two men in separate compartments in her head that she often wanted to give up. She felt miserably guilty about being unfaithful to Bernd. But her reward was passionate and satisfying sex with a charming man who adored her. And Bernd had given her permission. She reminded herself of that again and again.
This year everyone was doing it. Love was all you needed. Rebecca was no hippie—she was a schoolteacher and a respected city politician—but all the same she was affected by the atmosphere of promiscuity, almost as if she were inadvertently inhaling some of the marijuana in the air. Why not? she asked herself. What’s the harm?
When she looked back on the thirty-seven years of her life so far, all her regrets were for things she had not done: she had not been unfaithful to her rotten first husband; she had not got pregnant with Bernd’s child while it was still possible; she had not escaped from the East German tyranny years earlier.
At least she would never look back and regret not having fucked Claus.
Claus said: “Are you happy?”
Yes, she thought, when I forget about Bernd for a few minutes. “Of course,” she said. “I wouldn’t be toying with your pubic hair otherwise.”
“I love our time together, except that it’s always too short.”
“I know. I’d like to have a second life, so that I could spend it all with you.”
“I’d settle for a weekend.”
Too late, Rebecca saw where the conversation was going. For a moment, she stopped breathing.
She had been afraid of this. Monday evenings were not enough. Perhaps there had never really been a chance that Claus would be satisfied with once a week. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” she said.
“You could get a nurse to take care of Bernd.”
“I know I could.”
“We could drive to Denmark, where nobody knows us. Stay in a small seaside hotel. Walk along one of those endless beaches and breathe the salt air.”
“I knew this would happen.” Rebecca stood up. Distractedly, she looked for her underwear. “It was only a question of when.”
“Hey, slow down! I’m not forcing you.”
“I know you’re not, you sweet, kind man.”
“If you’re not comfortable taking a weekend away, we won’t do it.”
“We won’t do it.” She found her panties and pulled them on, then reached for her bra.
“Then why are you getting dressed? We have another half hour at least.”
“When we began doing this I swore I’d stop before it got serious.”
“Listen! I’m sorry I wanted a weekend away with you. I’ll never mention it again, I promise.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“I want to go away with you. That’s what bothers me. I want it more than you do.”
He looked baffled. “Then . . . ?”
“So I have to choose. I can’t love you both any longer.” She zipped her dress and stepped into her shoes.
“Choose me,” he pleaded. “You’ve given six long years to Bernd. Isn’t that enough? How could he be dissatisfied?”
“I made a promise to him.”
“Break it.”
“A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It’s like losing a finger. It’s worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul.”
He looked ashamed. “You’re right.”
“Thank you for loving me, Claus. I’ll never forget a single second of our Monday evenings.”
“I can’t believe I’m losing you.” He turned away.
She wanted to kiss him one more time, but she decided not to.
“Good-bye,” she said, and she went out.
• • •
In the end, the election was nail-bitingly close.
In September Cam had been ecstatically confident that Richard Nixon would win. He was far ahead in the polls. The police riot in Democratic Chicago, fresh in the minds of television viewers, tainted his opponent, Hubert Humphrey. Then, through September and October, Cam learned that voters’ memories were maddeningly short. To Cam’s horror, Humphrey began to close the gap. On the Friday before the election, the Harris poll had Nixon ahead 40–37; on Monday, Gallup said Nixon 42–40; on election day, Harris put Humphrey ahead “by a nose.”
On election night, Nixon checked into a suite in the Waldorf Towers in New York. Cam and other key volunteers gathered in a more modest room with a TV and a refrigerator full of beer. Cam looked around the room and wondered excitedly how many of them would get jobs in the White House if Nixon won tonight.
Cam had got to know a plain, serious girl called Stephanie Maple, and he was hoping she might go to bed with him, either to celebrate Nixon’s victory or for consolation in defeat.
At half past eleven they saw longtime Nixon press aide Herb Klein speaking from the cavernous press room several floors below them. “We still think we can win by three to five million, but it looks closer to three million at this point.” Cam caught Stephanie’s eye and raised his eyebrows. They knew Herb was bullshitting. By midnight Humphrey was ahead, in the votes already counted, by six hundred thousand. Then, at ten minutes past midnight, came news that deflated Cam’s hopes: CBS reported that Humphrey had won New York—not by a whisker, but by half a million votes.
All eyes turned to California, where voting went on for three more hours after the polls closed in the East. But California went to Nixon, and it all came down to Illinois.
No one could predict the Illinois result. Mayor Daley’s Democratic Party machine always cheated brazenly. But had Daley’s power been diminished by the sight of his police bludgeoning kids on live television? Was his support of Humphrey even reliable? Humphrey had uttered the mildest of veiled criticism of Daley, saying: “Chicago last August was filled with pain,” but bullies were thin-skinned, and there were rumors that Daley was so disgruntled that his backing for Humphrey was halfhearted.
Whatever the reason, in the end Daley did not deliver Illinois for Humphrey.
When the TV announced that Nixon had taken the state by one hundred forty thousand votes, the Nixon volunteers erupted with joy. It was over, and they had won.
They congratulated one another for a while, then the party broke up and they headed for their rooms, to get a few hours’ sleep before Nixon’s victory speech in the morning. Cam said quietly to Stephanie: “How about one more drink? I have a bottle in my room.”
“Oh, gosh, no, thanks,” she said. “I’m beat.”
He hid his disappointment. “Maybe another time.”
“Sure.”
On his way to his room Cam ran into John Ehrlichman. “Congratulations, sir!”
“And to you, too, Cam.”
“Thank you.”
“When do you graduate?”
“June.”
“Come and see me then. I might be able to offer you a job.”
It was what Cam dreamed of. “Thank you!”
He entered his room in high spirits, despite Stephanie’s refusal. He set his alarm and fell on the bed, exhausted but triumphant. Nixon had won. The decadent, liberal sixties were coming to an end. From now on people would have to work for what they wanted, not demand it by going on demonstrations. America was once again going to become strong, disciplined, conservative, and rich. There would be a new regime in Washington.
And Cam would be part of it.