Nor you, he wanted to say; but didn’t. He considered joining her in her bed. Love was not often given expression these days. Politics the adulterer?
She looked so gentle and desirable there, waiting for sleep. His Sibiryak. Their sharing, their journey, written on her calm believing face.
Her closed eyelids quivered, her mouth relaxed, she slept.
Vladimir Zhukov turned his troubled thoughts to his daughter, asleep, he hoped, in the room next door. Perhaps they were using her, too, for their plotting. Indisputably she was being used as a bait—as a reward if he did what he was told. (Already he had visited the Massingham home, avoided the ripe embrace of Helen Massingham, made contact with Americans and French, reported views which may or may not have been fed to him.) But the ferret brain of Mikhail Brodsky would never rest with a single accomplishment. If he could find a further use for Natasha he would. Nothing. I should never have brought her here. Better that I had betrayed my own values.
The colour supplement tore in his hand.
He swept the news from his bed, switched out the light and applied himself to the nightly equation that never equated. His one-party homeland, the comparative peace and endeavour that accompanied its obedience; twenty million dead and all the subsequent achievement; lilac around a village waterpump and the knitting-needle rhythms of ping-pong balls on a Moscow beach. Against that freedom. Not prosperity or possessions: just freedom.
He half opened the attic of poetry and doubt; then shut it again firmly.
To his daughter he said, ‘You’re looking very attractive, my dear.’
He was pleased she’d bloomed in the West, pleased that Vladimir Zhukov had a daughter who compared with the American beauties massed in Washington, every vista a fashion magazine background.
Valentina was not so pleased.
You’re wearing too much make-up,’ she pronounced. ‘You don’t have to copy these American girls scavenging for husbands.’
‘I’m not wearing much make-up,’ Natasha said. But, her father noted, some of her spirit was missing. And there was a red blotch on her neck as if coarse material had been rubbed against the skin.
Surely, he thought, she hadn’t acquired a lover—Russian, or American. He was an indulgent father and had forgiven Alma-Ata. He was not the kind who thought that his daughter, unlike anyone else’s, had retained her virginity. Although she’d been young—too young. And a morsel of reaction applauded Georgi’s two-year sentence. (He would emerge all the more mature for it!) During the formal recriminations he’d almost told her that it had been the same thing with Valentina and himself. Except that you couldn’t reveal yourself … and perhaps chastity was more important than people seemed to think these days. Respect did shrivel, as it had done in that wooden room in Moscow many years ago. Irrationally.
Unsolicited, a fragile girl—now a mother or now dead—presented herself from the ruins of Berlin across the cheese and imported black bread and lemon tea and California orange juice.
Vladimir Zhukov asked, ‘You’re not sick, Natasha?’
‘Sick? No. Do I look sick?’
‘You look a little pale.’
She nodded, spreading the cream cheese thickly on the bread. You know how it is, her silence hinted.
‘How are you spending your time here?’ With the subtlety of an inquisitor.
‘Just walking, looking at the city,’ she said.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ There was a scratch, too, on her cheek.
‘There’s nothing wrong, Father.’
He nodded without belief. And delivered his daily warning about the perils of existence in this tribal society. ‘And stay clear of the ghetto area. According to our information there may be trouble soon.’ More than information, he thought: you could smell it, feel it lurking on the intersection of Gentility Avenue and Shabby Street.
Today the paternal lecture was augmented by mysterious injunctions to report to him any approaches made to her by anyone.
She looked at him speculatively, rolling crumbs of bread into a pellet. ‘What sort of approaches?’
‘Any approaches.’
Valentina, already dressed—unlike husband and daughter—asked, ‘What are you driving at, Vladimir?’
‘Just that we are in an alien land and the daughter of a Soviet diplomat must be particularly careful.’
Valentina said she absolutely agreed. ‘But why were you so emphatic about approaches from anyone?’
‘Anyone,’ Vladimir Zhukov repeated.
After which Valentina delivered her gentle dose of doctrine. The homily on focusing the Land of Plenty in its proper perspective. Of equating Garfinkels against Skid Row (she illustrated this with a newspaper picture of winos holding up empty bottles like telescopes). Then mild recriminations about Natasha’s treachery in Alma-Ata.
Odd, Vladimir Zhukov mused, washing away the taste of cheese with pink lemonade, that Valentina was more upset by social intercourse with a dissident than sexual intercourse, aged eighteen, with a man. Although, he supposed, eighteen was usual these days. Certainly in America.
Natasha, my baby, if anyone hurts you then I will kill them.
He contemplated playing The Red Flag on the record-player. Instead he switched on the television. Still amazed at the number of newscasters competing with the munching of breakfast cereals, at the earnest debates at hours intended for yawning and scratching, at Capt. Kangaroo whom he hadn’t quite fathomed.
It was then that the Zhukovs learned that a good man had died. That Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed by an assassin’s bullet.
Luther King was shot at 6.01 CST leaning from a second floor railing outside a room in the Lorraine Motel in a predominantly Negro quarter of Memphis, Tennessee. He was pronounced dead at 7.05. Police took possession of a small suitcase and a Remington pump rifle with telescopic sight.
Zhukov read the newspaper reports in his office in the embassy where genuine shock and grief hovered waiting the official lead from Moscow.
The shooting then the funeral. The body buried in Atlanta after a service at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. The Vice-President of the United States present and a sermon taped by King himself anticipating ‘that day’. ‘I’d like for somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King junior tried to give his life serving others … I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King junior tried to love somebody … I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry … that I did try in my life to clothe the naked … that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison … that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to, say that I was a drum major for peace … for righteousness.’
The President cancelled his trip to Hawaii for a conference on Vietnam and on television said, ‘The spirit of America weeps for a tragedy that denies the very meaning of our land.’
Zhukov grieved with the nation and read with dismay the plodding, insensitive Soviet reaction—like dandruff under a fingernail. Izvestia took the opportunity to recite that the United States was ‘a nation of violence and racism.’ Pravda intoned, ‘Terrorist murders have become as ordinary an aspect of the American way of life as road accidents … Violence and terror roam American streets.’
In the Soviet ambassador’s office on the day after the shooting heads of departments gathered. Including Vladimir Zhukov whose immediate superior was visiting the mission in New York.
Also present was Mikhail Brodsky, a mere third secretary. But no one questioned his presence.
Tea was served.
The participants sipped guardedly awaiting a lead from the ambassador, sophisticated and articulate (often described in the Capitalist press as ‘wily’) successor to unsmiling Georgi Zaroubin and Mikhail Menshikov who used to be called ‘Smiling Mike.’
The ambassador swallowed a small white tablet—informing the gathering that it performed wonders for his asthmatic condition—and said, ‘Gentlemen, it is only a question of time, hours perh
aps, before massive violence erupts. It may even be of the magnitude of a second civil war in this country. In light of this we must formulate plans and policy with some urgency. I suggest we adjourn.’
Which meant, Zhukov knew, that they would move to the bug-proof chamber lined with thick steel. Its locks were changed regularly and it was intruder-proofed with an elaborate system of lights and buzzers.
Brodsky came up beside Zhukov, shaking his head so that curls fell over his ears. ‘Not you, Vladimir,’ he said.
‘Who says so? you, a third secretary?’ He appealed to the ambassador. The ambassador, reluctantly it seemed, confirmed that the deliberations were not for Zhukov’s ears.
‘Don’t forget,’ Brodsky whispered, ‘that you have a meeting with Massingham.’
‘To hell with Massingham.’
‘Our work continues, comrade. In the long run ours is the most important work of all.’
And on this day of historic tragedy Brodsky left Zhukov.
Feeling like a gigolo.
The National Press Building stands on the corner of 14th and F. Once the tallest building in Washington, it is only two blocks from the White House, and short cab rides from the Capitol in one direction and the State Department in the other. It is surrounded by shops and is midway on 14th between porno and poverty and Governmental grandeur. A drugstore, the excellent Brentano’s bookshop and a newstand are within its environs; all that a newspaperman could want—plus, of course, bars—are there. Such is the abundance of provision, such is the welter of tape and press release, that the truth-seekers have to be careful that they are not waylaid by convenience, that in their deliberations they mentally spike much of this facility. Several such spikes are needed to accommodate the evasions and deviations, delivered with intense sincerity, at press conferences, and the incessant flow of esoteric outrage lobbying anything from lettuce growers to prohibitionists—the latter a forlorn cause in such company. Sometimes a newspaperman, frustrated by bureaucracy, will boot the heaps of bumf deposited unsolicited outside his office, down the corridor with relish.
The pressmen are accommodated in hundreds of offices on different floors. There, for the most part, in bouts of frenetic concentration, they arrive at truths which disgust those whose job it is to forestall such accomplishment.
Each office is a microcosm of elsewhere. Midwest, deep south; Moscow, London, Paris, Bonn, Jerusalem, Cairo, Tokyo, Melbourne, Durban, Ottawa, Lima, Dublin, New Delhi. Their countries, creeds and pigments fight; but here they live together, as if the building were a luxurious penitentiary, and only occasionally do battle on the fourth Bloody Mary or across the chess board. Time assists some of them, haunts others filing daytime news when the last edition is going to press in night-time London or Brussels. The agencies have no such considerations: they file on remorselessly, rejoicing in the accolade of a few-seconds beat.
From this building the affairs of the capital of the world’s most powerful nation—or second most powerful, according to which way you look at it—are tossed around and hung out across the globe.
On this particular day, as editors in far off citadels demanded reaction, the atmosphere in this tower of articulate babel was more intense than usual.
In the elevator taking Vladimir Zhukov to his appointment with Massingham, both guests of a German correspondent, the speculation was about the blood-letting that would follow the murder in Memphis. An Italian and a Swede contributed: an Australian dominated.
Zhukov had been in the building twice before to meet correspondents. Because these days, Brodsky had told him, a lot of contact between the White House and the Kremlin was established through the press.
Zhukov had also visited the Occidental restaurant round the corner where in 1962 the Cuban Missile crisis was said to have been settled, the Soviet terms being presented to an American journalist, John Scali. There, still posted on the window, were the Russian terms, the Russian surrender. Kennedy’s triumph. Vladimir Zhukov had regarded the proclamation with confusion.
The elevator took him up to the 13th floor, dispatching various nationalities to their cubicle capitals on the way. On the 13th, in the two bars and restaurant, the journalists—newspaper, magazine, radio and TV—enjoyed their work: debating, scoring, swopping, listening, evaluating, feeding, selling, buying, postulating, fencing, recalling, recounting.
Henry Massingham met him; Irish Guards tie, hair thick above his ears, sensitivity in his long hands getting a little veiny these days, complexion straight from the ski slopes, although his neck had wrinkled in the central heating and he had bloodied his Adam’s apple shaving. Wherever he stood he appeared to be leaning. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said.
Not for the first time Vladimir Zhukov wondered: Who is subverting whom?
They went to the more dignified of the two bars. A clubby sort of place that you didn’t expect to find at the top of a sawn-off skyscraper. The Stars and Stripes prominent, red-carpeted space, a log fire shifting and waving plumes of sparks. The sort of fire for a general or president to toast his buttocks in front of as, long-legged and infinitely just, he relaxed after battle on the field or in Congress.
In the background the A.P. and U.P.I, tapes machine-gunned away, faster than ever it seemed today.
They ordered Bloody Marys and Massingham introduced Zhukov to the German newsman named Helmut Richter. An intermediary, Zhukov presumed, for confidences which it would be improper for two diplomats to exchange. He presumed this with his new awareness.
‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ Richter announced. A man of Zhukov’s age; an adversary, perhaps, during the Siege of Leningrad. No monocle, no boots, no Heils; even now Zhukov found it difficult to see a German any other way. He felt patronizing: the victor. Twenty-three years after the war it was still the Germans that the Russians really hated; not the Americans or British or assorted lackeys.
But Herr Richter was not interested in the atrocious past: his wounds were covered with the roseate skin of good living, the precise suiting of Berlin, the sheen of leisurely brushing on his greying hair. Comfort had a strangle hold on guilt. His handshake was strong, his smile immediate, his accent careful.
He apologized with style. ‘I shall have to dodge lunch. You understand how busy we are today. But please to be my guests.’
Massingham finished his drink long before his companions. He ordered another round and drank thirstily, ice clinking against his teeth. His hands which had been shaking lost their palsy. He apologized for them. ‘Bit of a thrash last night. Needed these,’ pointing at the vodka and tomato juice brewed lavishly by a muscly barman.
Zhukov’s palate searched for the vodka in the juice. ‘You had a party despite the situation?’
‘Why not? There was nothing I could do. I mean I don’t cancel a party if someone is assassinated in Latin America. Why should I behave any differently if someone’s killed in the States? I mean it’s all equally foreign as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I see,’ Zhukov said, divining why Massingham had failed to rise in the diplomatic ranks.
He gazed across the rooftops, stepping-stones to the ghetto. Below the window the shocked streets were emptying; across the road a group of Negroes clustered in a pattern of inchoate anger.
The bar was empty except for the three of them.
The German said, ‘And now I must be off. Duty calls.’
Massingham stopped him. ‘Lunch on Sunday,’ he said. ‘Can the two of you make it? Provided the whole bloody place doesn’t go up in flames, that is.’
‘It’s most kind of you,’ Richter said. ‘If things are not too bad I should be delighted to come.’
‘And you Vladimir?’
‘Of course,’ Zhukov said bitterly.
Richter left without clicking his heels as Zhukov had expected.
‘Charming fellow,’ Massingham observed. ‘And very useful, too.’
They regarded each other with civilized duplicity.
Just what, Zhukov wondered, does he expec
t to get out of me? My own assignment is simple enough: Prepare the way for blackmail. A coup as spectacular as a French Ambassador’s disgrace in Moscow (in bed with a movie actress) disclosed in detail by the K.G.B. traitor Yuri Krotkov. Brodsky had suggested there were distinct possibilities with Massingham. His wife: or Massingham himself if, perhaps, he were a repressed homosexual. Brodsky’s mind worked along certain well-travelled sewers.
Massingham’s assignment was difficult to analyse. He was British and therefore not all that he seemed. But surely he could appreciate that Vladimir Zhukov was not of the calibre to indulge in treason. Although, come to that, I would never have thought I was of the calibre to become a second-rate spy. An agent provocateur. Perhaps, Vladimir Zhukov, now is the time to rebel; to sluice the self-disgust through your bowels. Then he thought of Natasha and his parents—those senior citizens—vacationing from their Bolshevik lives away from Alma-Ata among the apple orchards of Kazhakstan.
He looked speculatively at Massingham who had grown a red, pencil-moustache of Bloody Mary. And thought for the first time: Perhaps the bastard wants me to defect.
Outside he tried to hail a cab. But there were none to be had. He headed for the Embassy watching a stray petal of cherry blossom from the Tidal Basin fluttering along beside him. The Japanese had presented the trees (3,000 of them) in 1912. At the time of Pearl Harbour someone had suggested they be cut down in retribution. Vladimir Zhukov smiled. And at the outbreak of World War I sauerkraut had been renamed ‘Liberty Cabbage.’
He laughed in the lynching-quiet street at the magnificent absurdities of this land. And grieved for what was to come.
All weekend the violence grew and the flowers on the Yoshino cherry trees blossomed. Stokely Carmichael, ex-chairman of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, led young people down 14th urging stores to close; within an hour the window-smashing began. At a Press conference Carmichael said, ‘When White America killed Dr King last night she declared war on Black America. Black people have to survive, and the only way they will survive is by getting guns.’ The President signed a proclamation that ‘a condition of domestic violence and disorder’ existed. A curfew was imposed, police and troops were ordered to avoid excessive violence.
The Red House Page 14