Moscow Nights

by Nigel Cliff

  Liu Shikun was dragged back into the Cold War, too. In 1978 his father-in-law, General Ye, had become China’s head of state, and the following year, Liu was the first Chinese artist to perform in America. In contrast to his youthful pyrotechnics, his style was now broodingly romantic, the harvest of his solitary meditations on Van’s playing. Yet the general’s resignation in 1983 stripped Liu of his political protection, and as part of China’s Anti–Spiritual Pollution Campaign against Western liberal values, the pianist was accused of smuggling and womanizing. Two years later he was visiting his eldest son in Los Angeles when a leading Republican politician heard his story and encouraged him to apply for political asylum. Everything was readied, including an FBI safe house, but despite tearful pleas, he flew back to China, convinced despite everything that the country was opening up. Still, he regretted the lost opportunity to make his name in America, never more so than the following year, when he was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling and gold speculation after a female undercover agent working for the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and the State Security Ministry befriended him to gather “evidence.” When he was released he sat at home, depressed and silent and drained of any interest in music, as factions on the Left and Right continued to toy with him.

  In 1983 Emil Gilels performed for what would be the final time in New York, and he and Van met for dinner. To Van’s surprise, Gilels praised him for taking time off. Then he told him that he had seen in a dream that Van would play again soon, and it would have something to do with Russia. As for when it would happen, neither could say. Just as Van’s triumph in Moscow had marked an uptick in superpower relations, it seemed as if his disappearance had accompanied their downturn.

  Human ingenuity strives to get ahead, which, for all but an exceptional few, means negotiating the system they are given. Yet the skills needed to coax privileges from a bureaucracy are not those that promote industry and initiative, and the Soviet Union was saddled with a sacrosanct theory of history that admitted no possibility of change. After seven decades the great Marxist-Leninist experiment had become a giant charade in which the government pretended to pay, the people pretended to work, and responsibility was shunted along. In the classic Brezhnev joke, a Muscovite enraged by interminable lines for basic foodstuffs picks up a sharp knife and heads to the Kremlin to kill the general secretary. When he arrives he finds an even longer line, which he joins out of habit. He asks the man ahead of him what everyone is waiting for: “We’re all queuing to kill Comrade Brezhnev,” the man replies.

  When Brezhnev died (of natural causes) in 1982, receiving the full state funeral he had denied Khrushchev, long-serving KGB chief Yuri Andropov replaced him at the age of sixty-eight. After fifteen months, Andropov died, still so shadowy that it was confirmed he had a wife only when one showed up at his funeral. His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, was even older—nearly as old as Reagan—and struggled through the eulogy at Andropov’s funeral; he himself was dead after thirteen months. The Kremlin had become a rest home for whiskery revolutionaries, with Red Square the world’s most oversize funeral parlor. Every time Radio Moscow played a slow movement of Tchaikovsky, rumors flew that another leader had expired. From top to bottom, the whole system was so sclerotic that something had to change.

  • 21 •

  The Summit

  IN 1987, Nancy Reagan’s office put in a call to Cliburn Foundation chair Susan Tilley. Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s First Couple, were coming to Washington for a summit in December and they had requested that Van play for the after-dinner soiree. Tilley took the invitation to Van, who was thrilled to be asked and panicked that he had barely practiced in years. He thought it over, tried out a few pieces on Rildia Bee; called his friend Franz Mohr, Steinway’s chief concert technician, to ask him to pray hard; and the next day accepted. By now he was better known for his mysterious disappearance than for his prodigious talent, but he could scarcely have refused the chance to play for the Soviet and American leaders together at long last. He abandoned his owlish hours, began rising at 9:00 a.m., and practiced till his fingers bled.

  Gorbachev had begun his career in the Khrushchev era, and like his forerunner, he launched a raft of liberalizing policies, including glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), in the hope of saving the sinking Soviet ship by encouraging initiative and weeding out corruption. Like Khrushchev, he was also eager to demilitarize foreign policy and free up precious resources. As ever, that hope depended on rapprochement with America, and in the two years since he became general secretary of the Communist Party at the sprightly age of fifty-four, he and President Reagan had met twice, in Geneva and Reykjavik, Iceland. The Soviets had plenty of bargaining chips in the form of forty-five thousand nuclear warheads, twenty thousand more than America. Yet Reagan had restarted the arms race at a time when the capitalist world was enjoying a sustained boom and the Soviet economy was teetering toward collapse. In Geneva, Khrushchev attempted to broker an agreement to reduce nuclear stockpiles, but mutual confidence was lacking. For one heady moment in Reykjavik, total nuclear disarmament was on the table, but Reagan insisted on pursuing his Star Wars initiative. Both meetings had ended without a treaty, and Washington was the make-or-break summit.

  With so much at stake, tempers among the leaders’ advisers were running high, and haggling over diplomatic niceties continued as six thousand journalists converged on the U.S. capital. Van flew in as well, with Rildia Bee, Tom Zaremba, Susan Tilley, and the rest of his entourage. He said nothing during the flight, staring silently out the window.

  The elaborately choreographed spectacle began on the morning of December 8, 1987. Reagan and Gorbachev immediately made history by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first to abolish an entire class of nuclear missiles. Yet the treaty had been agreed to beforehand, and it eliminated only 4 percent of the superpowers’ arsenal. The real business at hand was to negotiate deep cuts in the far larger stockpiles of intercontinental weapons. In public, Gorbachev was all charm and charisma, but in private, his temper was quick to flare, and as the two leaders began talks in the White House Cabinet Room, he was tough and doctrinaire. After a testy exchange over Nicaragua, Reagan cracked a joke about a professor who asked a Soviet taxi driver what he wanted to be: “They haven’t told me yet” was the punch line. Gorbachev icily suggested that Reagan instruct his ambassador to spend less time collecting jokes and more time improving relations. The president took the advice badly and challenged the general secretary to prove that the Soviets had renounced their aggressively expansionist aims. Gorbachev frowned, darkened, and exploded. Every American administration in history, he snapped, gesticulating wildly, had been hell-bent on aggression and expansion. The United States and its powerful military-industrial complex were well known to be intent on world domination. Like a parent reasoning with a wayward child, Reagan quietly replied that the Soviets were even then butchering innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan and had an iron grip on Eastern Europe. Soon he flagged as he tried to remember a Russian proverb and gave the floor to his secretary of state.

  Smiles were pasted on faces at that night’s candlelit White House banquet, but tempers were still high. After dinner the leaders held a short meeting while the guests took their seats in the East Room. Gorbachev was visibly tired when he entered with Raisa and the Reagans, to a smattering of applause. The president was wearing black tie; representing the proletariat, Gorbachev, like Khrushchev before him, had chosen a business suit. This irritated Nancy Reagan, who wore a black beaded gown accented with red-and-white beaded flowers paired with diamond drop earrings; Raisa, who Muscovites joked was the first spouse of a Soviet leader to weigh less than he did, sported an ankle-length brocade gown with a bodice and flared hem offset with a double strand of pearls. The two First Ladies had been conducting their own Cold War since Geneva, where Raisa had pedantically and at great length laid down the law on Soviet policy. “Who does that dame t
hink she is?” Nancy had fumed.

  In addition to the negotiating teams, the guests included 126 stars of business, science, sports, politics, and the arts. The exiled Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya were conspicuously present; also representing the world of music were jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and Zubin Mehta, the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Billy Graham was there, with Joe DiMaggio, Claudette Colbert, and Jimmy Stewart. Vice President George Bush and Barbara Bush, Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Henry Kissinger, and Armand Hammer headed the political and business elite. Rildia Bee looked on proudly from her wheelchair.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the announcer: “Mr. Van Cliburn.”

  VAN WALKS onto the small stage, chest out like an icebreaker, and his nerves dissolve just as they did many years ago in Moscow. He seeks out Mikhail Gorbachev and locks eyes with him, then gives four short bows to the Reagans, the Gorbachevs, and the room. The general secretary flashes him his toothiest grin. Raisa glows: perhaps she, too, fell in love with Van in 1958.

  He sits at the piano and, with a roll, plays the Soviet national anthem. In the front row the leaders exchange confused looks: this was not on the program. Foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze is first to stand up, then the Gorbachevs, and the room follows suit. Van shakes his head and bends down, nodding as he gives emphasis to the notes, leaning his body into the music; the big, resonant sound fills the room. Then he launches into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” its sunnier, simpler music requiring less movement until, near the end, the emphasis grows. The room is completely still. At the end the Gorbachevs lead the applause, and to the sound of scraping chairs and surprised murmurs, everyone sits down.

  Van plays his first billed piece, Brahms’s Intermezzo, op. 118, no. 6. His performance is big, slow, lyrical, and probing: the old Van, undiluted. He finishes and bows. Quickly he sits again, folding back his tails and wiping his palms on his pants. He leans forward, readies his right hand on the keys, lifts his left hand, and drops it on the first jangling, rolling chords of the Rachmaninoff “Étude-Tableau,” op. 39, no. 5. He whips up a storm of sound, tossing his head at tumbling climaxes, swaying at lyrical passages, leaning back at tender moments as his right hand caresses the melodic line, shutting his eyes at the controlled passion, then corkscrewing his torso and collapsing his chest into a pivotal phrase. As the music slips away in a single note, he slides his hands off the keyboard and relaxes, slumping backward. He stands and takes three tiny bows, one hand steadying him on the piano. Gorbachev leans across and speaks briskly to Raisa, three times.

  The last two pieces are the noble, soulful Schumann-Liszt “Widmung” and Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse, a captivating poem of love and hope, air and grace, rendered drivingly dramatic beneath Van’s hands, the tension drawn out and released at the end. Leaning into the last notes, he almost loses his balance and rights himself coming up to bow.

  Bravos fill the room. Reagan approaches and shakes Van’s hand, patting him on the back, then stands in front of the microphone with his prepared speech printed on cards. Before he can start, Van eagerly steps down to shake Gorbachev’s hands. Then he embraces the Soviet leader, his hands splayed across his back, and kisses him on both cheeks. The general secretary’s face disappears into the gabardine wool of Van’s coat.

  Reagan looks at his notes, grinning uncomfortably, one hand on the microphone stand. Gorbachev and Van shake hands again, and Gorbachev, smiling, sits down. Van returns to the podium and nods at Reagan.

  “The American poet Longfellow once wrote that music is the universal language of mankind,” the president begins, his voice husky and a little unsteady. Van gives Gorbachev a little bow, bows warmly at Raisa, raising his hand in greeting, then remembers himself and stands at attention, politely nodding his appreciation at Reagan’s remarks.

  “We’ve certainly seen that confirmed here tonight,” the president continues. “There was no need to translate this magnificent performance by Van Cliburn. Van Cliburn is a musician that is known almost as well perhaps in the Soviet Union as he is here in the United States.” At this, Gorbachev vigorously nods.

  “For young Van Cliburn won the hearts of the Soviet people and the critics during the Tchaikovsky Competition, which he won in 1958. The tickets to his auditions in Moscow were in such demand that people lined up for three and four days in advance. And when the competition ended, Mr. Cliburn performed for Premier Khrushchev”—Van bows his head—“and then for a number of sold-out conferences”—Van shakes his head encouragingly—“in Moscow.”

  The president says a few words about Van’s career and the Cliburn Competition, and then gets lost. He finds his place and adds that Van has not performed since 1978. “And so for this, your first public appearance, I believe, in nine years,” he ends, as Van brightly smiles and the guests applaud, “you are once again speaking in that language of music. I think I can say for everyone here, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”

  Van takes Reagan’s hand and gestures to himself. “May I respond?” he asks, putting his free hand on Reagan’s. Taken by surprise, the president lightly chuckles and moves aside.

  “Mr. President and First Lady,” he begins, his arm behind Reagan’s back, “I’m so grateful for the invitation to get to play. I think there comes a time in one’s life when one feels one wants to have relaxation and to enjoy life. And I know the fabulous, inimitable, and incomparable Russian pianist Emil Gilels once told me, ‘You are very smart to realize that because we all need enjoyment, we must enjoy life and smell the flowers.’ So, unfortunately, I’ve thought about him so often, since he left us recently.” He wreathes his hands in the air, a twitch in his neck the only sign of nerves, a sense of drama never far behind his easy eloquence.

  “And when this opportunity came, I said, you know there are very few things that are as meaningful to me—first of course, I love my home country. And some people like to tease me, Mr. General Secretary, and say that sometimes they think I love Texas better than all the rest of the United States. But we want to have Texas, you know, very healthy. But in addition to that, I think you know my constancy—how very deeply I love the Russian people, and your culture and your art. And you go with me always in my life.” Still looking at Gorbachev, he crosses his hands on his chest. “And it is for both my beloved president,” he adds, bringing Reagan in again with his arm, “and for you that I am so happy to do this. Thank you.”

  Gorbachev raises his hands and applauds. Van bows to him, the room, and the president. Nancy gets to her feet, and Van comes down to kiss her, his hands on her arms. Then Raisa stands up. Reagan stands by the piano, watching as Van takes her and kisses her. The famously sharp-tongued Soviet First Lady melts. She shyly lays a hand on Van’s arm and curls her fingers round his. “Play the Tchaikovsky concerto,” she says in Russian, fluttering her hand across his chest. Van understands and raises his eyebrows. “Tchaikovsky!” he says, gesturing in surprise, and turns to Reagan for help. His arm round Raisa, Van laughs, wondering what to do, and vigorously scratches his forehead. “We have no orchestra,” he says quietly. The Soviet interpreter comes up and translates, but Raisa says again in a merry voice, “Play the Tchaikovsky concerto.”

  “We have no orchestra,” Van repeats, a little louder. Pulling himself up, he improvises: “If you will give me—if you will help me . . .” He looks around, nervously licking his lips, then turns back and gently pulls Raisa in. Reagan grins at him, watching a fellow entertainer at work. Van scratches his cheek and murmurs to Nancy, who looks at Gorbachev. Van looks at him, too, pointing and deferring to him. He has been warned not to go overtime; the day is scheduled down to the last minute, and the parties need to prepare for the next day’s negotiations.

  Van makes a decision. “I will do something,” he says, “it’s all right.” He goes back to the piano. Raisa sits down flushed and smiling, still saying loudly, “Play the Tchaikovsky concerto.” Nancy takes her seat, and the president raises his eyebrows and follows.


  “This is really an aside,” Van says to the audience, still standing. Gesturing to the Gorbachevs, he adds, “But I think you will also realize how very deeply this means not only to me but also to many Americans.” He sits down and fiddles with the stool, inadvertently striking a high key and fluttering apologetically. Then he pulls back his sleeves and leans gently forward into the melancholy first notes of “Moscow Nights.” A few bars in, he starts singing in Russian, his eyes fixed on the Gorbachevs. Raisa mouths the words, but on the fourth word, Gorbachev begins singing, first softly, then louder, then at the top of his voice. The rest of the sizable Soviet delegation joins in: Dobrynin, the ambassador; Yakovlev, the chief ideologue; even Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, who looks uncomfortable.

  Between the verses, laughter breaks out: the sound of relief. The columnist George Will leans over to Adm. William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and whispers, “That song just cost you 200 ships.”