Raising the Baton

by Herschensohn, Bruce;

  President Johnson said, “I heard all about your showman-ship; that’s what it’s called—and it makes me sorry to tell you that because of the killing—the dreadfulness—the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King we aren’t going to have the kind of—of entertainment at events throughout the rest of April that we had planned.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand that.”

  “I knew you would. And we will wait for brighter times—and maybe when the Prime Minister of your country comes here. How would that be?”

  “India?”

  “That’s your country, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But are you talking about Prime Minister Indira Gandhi?”

  “I am.”

  “Thank you, Mister President, but I don’t want to entertain her. I don’t like her.”

  That certainly cleared the air fast.

  “What’s wrong with her? Is there something wrong with her?”

  “She isn’t any good. She plays on the fact that so many foreigners think she is the daughter of Mahatma Gandhi while she isn’t, you know. She’s the daughter of Nehru—Jawaharial Nehru. He wasn’t much good. Shastri was good. He fought the Pakistanis. I don’t like Nehru or Indira Gandhi. I don’t think she’s good like Shastri. He died.”

  “I know. He died in Tashkent—away from India.”

  “I think they killed him in Tashkent.” Raj had the rare ability to quickly make himself the equal of anyone, and President Johnson who had enough confidence in himself, liked Raj for that trait. After all, Raj was being honest.

  President Johnson asked, “Who do you think killed Shastri?”

  “The Pakistanis.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that.” Then the President changed the subject. “Listen, I have been told that you are a philosopher of sorts—that you do a lot of visionary work—prophetic.”

  “Yes, Mister President. Philosophizing is my major reward for living.”

  “Dr. King was a philosopher, you know. He was a visionary.”

  “I didn’t know that.” If the President could change the subject so rapidly, so could Raj. “I want you to know, Mister President, that I thought your speech to the U.S. Congress after President Kennedy’s assassination was—was thrillng. The one on the 27th of November.”

  “That’s the date alright: the 27th. Five days after that horrible day of the 22nd. You memorized the date and that is commendable.”

  “I did, sir. You started it by saying ‘I would gladly have given everything I have not to be standing here tonight.’”

  President Johnson shook his head. “Close. But it was ‘All I have I would have gladly given not to be standing here today.’”

  “Yes, yes,” Raj nodded his head. “Yes, yes. I heard it in India so I might have gotten it wrong.” (Hearing it in India was immaterial as the language spoken was English and not covered by a Hindi interpreter.)

  “That happens. You got it close enough. Raj—How do you pronounce your last name?”

  “Bhav-nah-nee.”

  “Bhav-nah-nee. I have it.”

  At that, Dora Malloy came to the doorway and while sticking her head beyond the framework of the door she quickly looked down at her wrist-watch, nodded and said, “Mister President, you’re going to be late for that appointment.”

  There probably was no appointment scheduled and Raj knew it, or felt it.

  “Tell them I’ll be a little late, Dora.” There was something about the traits of Raj that were unusual for any guest and the President simply wanted the conversation to go on longer which was not his norm with a total stranger.

  “Of course,” Dora Malloy said and left the entranceway. “Tell me Raj, did you hear that I’m not going to run for President again? Do you understand my reasoning?”

  “Yes, sir. I was sorry to hear that. March the 31st you announced that.”

  “That’s right. You do, indeed, have a good memory for dates. I can’t get all involved in a political campaign when the troubles in the world call for my every moment—for every moment of any President of the United States’ moments during these times. I can’t push aside the events of the moment.”

  “You mean Vietnam?”

  “Vietnam, yes. And all of Southeast Asia and the Middle East and your country; India. And Pakistan and China on your border. You are right: Vietnam is central right now. You can’t hear the demonstrators from here in the Oval Office but overlooking the north lawn you can hear them on the avenue and from the square across the street. I can’t waste time on them or some domestic political campaign. Tell me, do you want me to give you a little tour of the office here? Of the Oval Office?”

  “No, Sir because I want you to talk about leadership. It’s a good office but I want you to talk about leadership. You are a leader, sir.”

  There was no control of Raj. Raj was as much Raj while in the Oval Office than he was anywhere else. He did, however, respect and liked President Johnson and that came through to the President.

  “I’ll tell you, son,” Son? “This takeover of the office of the Presidency had a rough, terrible, tragic beginning. And in this office you feel it every moment. You know, when we got back from Dallas the carpet here was red. A real deep red—red. Mrs. Kennedy had it moved in and laid while we were all on that trip so by the time we got back it would have been on the Oval Office floor as a surprise for President Kennedy. But as it came to be, she asked for it to be ripped out before she ever came into the Oval Office again. Too much like blood. So I asked to have this one put in. It’s a carpet pretty much like F.D.R. had.”

  “Roosevelt?”

  “That’s right. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Not Theodore. Not Teddy. As for the carpet on this floor now,” the President shrugged and gave a slight motion of adjustment in his chair behind his desk. “It’s alright. It’s pretty much llke F.D.R. had,” he repeated. Raj looked down at it. He wanted to compliment it but it was not begging for praise as it was a pale light gray-green carpet.

  “Mister President, I want you to know I support you totally in Vietnam. It is what America always does—gives its own lives for the lives of its friends.”

  President Johnson stared at Raj and nodded. “Do you have Vietnamese friends?”

  “No. But it’s America’s way. And if you don’t do what you’re doing for the South Vietnamese now then America won’t do it for India if it’s attacked by China or if it’s attacked by Pakistan.”

  President Johnson gave a slow nod without saying anything. Instead he turned to what he often turned to in front of visitors: the fascinations of the Oval Office:

  “There are some marvelous conveniences built into this office. I can see all the newscasts. Any time. Last night’s newscasts, if I want to see them.” Then he picked up the receiver of one of the phones on his desk and, as example of what he had just said, without dialing anything he spoke into the mouthpiece of the receiver. “Hello, Honey, this is ya’ President. I need ya to call Signal or whatever they’re calling themselves now. WAHKA, I think now.”

  “Yes, Mister President,” a White House Operator answered. “I think it’s just short for the White House Communications Agency. WHCA.”

  “That’s it! Call and tell them I want to see their tape of Martin Luther King the night before he was assassinated…Has to be April the Third…That’s right…at the church in Memphis. I have the television on right now and the NBC receiver is on 12…I think that’s what WAHKA has been using lately… Good… Good… Thank ya.’ It is WAHKA isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. It took no longer than fifteen seconds before the image came on the set. As both the President and Raj readjusted themselves in their chairs, there on the screen of the middle television set was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to the congregation at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee. The President and Raj Bhavnani watched and listened to the entire speech in absolute attentiveness and silence.

  When the speech was done the President clicked off the televisi
on set and he stared at Raj who stared back at the President. President Johnson said, “And that, my man, is a visionary. That man on that night was prophetic. He knew the future. If some yokel tells me that King couldn’t have had a vision of the future the night before he was killed—then I would be talking to a yokel!”

  When the President said no more but was just staring at Raj, the quiet was talking precedence, and so Raj said very softly, “Mister President I never knew that happened at church the night before he was killed. I never knew he said he wasn’t worried about anything; and he said that like anybody he would like to live a long life—but he said that he wasn’t concerned about that now—and that he wasn’t fearing any man! Isn’t that what he said?”

  The President nodded. “He knew. He must have known because of what he said and then what happened.” And President Johnson adjusted himself on his chair as he told his guest of the horror that came the following early evening. “Close to 6:00 pm outside Room 306 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel at 450 Mulberry Street. Did you ever think that kids in school would be learning about the Lorraine Motel?—About what happened outside that place?

  “And then horrible riots. 14th and ‘U’ and ‘People’s Drug Store.’ Riots. D.C. was on fire. This House—the People’s House; the White House was…this roof had to have enough amo-power to stop any of those rioters.”

  It was a unique visit with the importance of President Johnson enveloping Raj, and the uniqueness of Raj Bhavnani being appreciated by the President of the United States.

  “How do you pronounce that last name of yers?”

  “Bhav-nah-nee, sir.”

  “It’s a tough name for a fella from Texas, y’know. But I got it: Bahv-gah-nee.”

  “Yes, sir; that’s it,” he lied. But a lie to be courteous is acceptable.

  THEME TWENTY-NINE

  CONCEDING

  ONE LATE 1968 NIGHT AT THE BAHIA, when Anna had settled in bed while reading portions of the magazine, TV Guide, Anna told Chris how important it would be to “turn off the TV forever so we could be done with enemies.” She was in the mood to give advice after absorbing some article in the magazine.

  Chris admired those things that stuck with her but he wasn’t in the mood for advice at the moment or any moment and so he assured her that he didn’t have any enemies. “You talked me out of that when I got angry at L.B.J. So I don’t have any.”

  “Then forgive those who would be your enemies if you had any.”

  “Oh, Anna!”

  “What was that you said?”

  “Oh, Susanna. A song title.”

  “Stephen Foster wrote it. I sang it when I tried out for some Broadway talent scouts that never even responded. They never even called. But one of them said to the other, ‘too young,’ or ‘Jail Bait’ or something like that.”

  “Well, don’t hate them, anyway.”

  “I don’t! I try not to ever hate anyone.”

  “How about Hitler? You don’t hate him?”

  “Oh, please. Yes, I hate Hitler. But I’m talking about people I know.” And with that she broke into singing the old Stephen Foster song by singing “Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me” all the way to Alabama and “My true love for to see!”

  And that made Chris smile. The smile was so wide that he almost laughed but he didn’t.

  That conversation lasted in Christopher’s memory and he particularly thought about it whenever he found himself angry at something or someone during the present or even a lingering negative thought of an incident in the past. He hoped that having no hatred was settling into a constant part of him, providing the guide-lines for something he would make happen the next time he went to D.C.

  “You have a guest, Mr. Bahvnani,” Raj’s Secretary, Mrs. Erickson, said through the inter-com box on her desk.

  “Who is it?”

  “He says to tell you he’s an old friend.”

  “I don’t have any old friends. How old is he?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Bhavnani. Do you want me to ask him?”

  “No, no. Ask him his name. I need to know his name—if he has one. If he doesn’t have one then ask him his Prison Number. He probably has one of those.”

  She was mumbling back and forth with the guest and she said through the inter-com, “His name is Christopher Straw.”

  “Christopher Straw!? Good Goddess Parvati! From New York! The space man! I know him alright. I know him. Christopher Straw. He could be old; maybe middle-aged. Send him in unless he’s falling apart.” Raj knew that his guest could hear every word he was telling Mrs. Erickson over that intercom speaker on her desk.

  Raj rose for the occasion and shook hands with his guest, Christopher Straw, and asked him to sit opposite him as Raj sat back down at his desk.

  Christopher nodded. “You have quite an office, Raj. Quite an office. It’s beautiful! And big!”

  “It’s not the biggest in D.C. It’s close but the President’s office; his Oval Office is bigger. That’s why the President doesn’t want to run again. He’s self-conscious about how our two offices contrast. His office is just a little bigger than mine—but not much! And I didn’t have to have an Oval Shape. Pretty good! Right? Right?”

  “Right.”

  “What brings you here? Outer Space? Savannah Lane? I saw her on a late television show. And that’s where I saw you for the first time since President Kennedy’s Inauguration and Mama Leone’s Restaurant where I left you to pay the check!” And Raj gave a doubled-over laugh at his own confession. “Then here I was years later doing some late work and I saw you again—this time in a television audience and you were with Savannah Lane of all people. Through that television set I wanted to shout to you that I owe you a couple dollars for that New York dinner!”

  “Thirty and that’s without the tip.”

  “Did you leave one?”

  “Yes. Six dollars.”

  “Too much! And now that you are here in my office for reasons unexplained, I want you to know that you owe me thousands of dollars for stealing Savannah Lane from me! Poor girl. She could have had me. Pretty girl, too. You know that this office used to be John Farmy’s office?”

  “Man, you drift. You go from subject to subject. Whose office?”

  “Farmy’s. John Farmy’s office.”

  “Sorry. I never heard of him.”

  “It takes a man from India to know that Mister John Farmy was President Roosevelt’s top assistant. He ran the Post Offices in this country. The whole thousands of them. All of them. Every letter posted. He took the responsibility.”

  “You mean Farley! James Fraley and he wasn’t the President’s prime assistant. He was—I don’t know—the head of the Post Office’s like you said; the Cabinet Secretary. I guess he was the Secretary of the Post Office Department. I think he was called Post Master General.”

  “That’s it! Now I have his office. Want to see the safe he had? Want to see the balcony from this office? Best in D.C. Best view in D.C.”

  “No. Thank you, but no. I want to ask you something.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Go ahead. What can I do for you?”

  “I read in Evans and Novak’s column—their political report that you had a meeting with President Johnson. Did you?

  “Yes, yes. You came all the way from San Diego to D.C. to ask me that?”

  “No. I came to D.C. for a number of meetings at NASA. I do that occasionally.”

  “I, too, have been having many meetings.”

  “At NASA?”

  “No. with the President.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. First, he wanted to know what he should do about the assassination of Martin Lewis King, then about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, then about the invasion of the Soviet Union re-taking Czechoslovakia, then just days later about the Democrat’s riots outside their convention demanding that we get out of Vietnam.”

  “Martin Luther King, not Martin Lewis King.”

  “That’s right. Y
ou finally got it right. L.B.J.—that’s what everyone calls him—We—the two of us meet a lot. But I don’t call any man by his initials. I call him by his name: Lyndon is a smart man but he likes guidance. Lyndon calls them Matters of State that we discuss.”

  “Is that what he calls them?” Of course Christopher Straw was more than suspicious about everything he was being told since his host was the man who, some years back, had told him he knew Winston Churchill and was going to hire the builder of London’s Heathrow Airport to renovate the Algonquin Hotel. “Okay. Matters of State. So let me ask you to ask him when—and this is not why I’m here—but you must remind him—although he has to know—tell President Johnson that he hasn’t got much time to meet the objective of President Kennedy to land a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth before the decade is done. Those are President Kennedy’s words and the decade will be done pretty soon—it will be done next year.”

  “Yes, yes. I will remind him. He probably forgot by now. I will tell him that I know this space man who reminded me about Kennedy’s setting—establishing or whatever you call it—landing a man on the moon during this decade and I want to remind him. I will tell him. Now, if that isn’t why you came to see me, why are you here?”

  “Savannah,” he said loudly and bluntly. “I want you to know that Savannah and I live together and maybe we’ll be married. No matter what we do, Raj—she’s my girl. I love her.”

  “And you want me to get out of your picture?”

  “You put it well. Good English. I simply want you to leave her alone. I want her to be safe every moment whether I’m with her or not with her.”

  “You don’t have to warn me. Warnings mean nothing to me. What means something to me is that you came here to tell me that. And that, my good friend, has already taken place in that I have totally left her alone. My leaving her alone has already taken place.”