The Red House

by Derek Lambert

  But I’m not seeing America, Zhukov grieved. He wanted to visit the molasses south, the gangster Chicago, the Midwest of dusty endeavour, Florida dripping with suntan oil and orange juice, San Francisco’s little cable-cars, the smoking factories of Detroit, Los Angeles where film stars—now dead or autumn-wrinkled—once took baths of ass’s milk.

  So far permission to tour had been refused—by his own people.

  Vladimir Zhukov, undergoing a menopause of valuation, also sought in unguarded moments the ordinariness of relaxation in the Soviet Union. Even its suburban drabness had, after six months of the permutations of luxury, a certain allure; almost nobility, he thought, gazing into a store selling garden furniture made of white iron scrollwork where ‘all major credit cards’ were welcomed. Purity, too. Gorky Park: guitars strumming, fruit drinks and plump courtship beside a mossy lake, a row of chess players slapping down their pieces flamboyantly to disguise defeat, the evening sunshine that always involved autumn.

  Not that he rejected Washington. He was honoured to be there; even if he no longer bought out the local drugstore. You had to discipline regret—otherwise you could spend the hot summer mourning for the white embrace of winter and vice versa. But sometimes Vladimir Zhukov wondered if, for him, the transition had come a little too late.

  Back in his apartment he poured himself pink lemonade and, in the American papers, followed the Soviet military manoeuvres warning the Czechs.

  A few days later he was reading in the newspapers about the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy, aged forty-two, who had just won the California primary. Reading in grim detail: The shooting at 12.16 a.m. PDT on June 5th, the assassin five feet away firing eight shots from a snub-nosed Iver Johnson Cadet pistol. Kennedy’s last words were ‘Oh no, no, don’t’ or ‘Don’t lift me, don’t lift me.’ Robert Kennedy, whose brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been assassinated less than five years earlier, died on the 6th at 1.44 a.m.

  The President said of Robert Kennedy’s murder that it would be wrong to conclude from this act that the country was sick and had lost its common decency. ‘Let us, for God’s sake, resolve to live under the law … Let us begin in the aftermath of this great tragedy to find a way to reverence life, to protect it, to extend its promise to all of our people, this nation and the people who have suffered grievously from violence and assassination …’

  Reading his papers and watching his television, Zhukov wondered how the Soviet press would react.

  The body lay in state in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, from June 7–8 and in twenty-three-and-half hours 151,000 people filed past the bier. The burial under floodlights took place at Arlington National Cemetery and a service at the White House was conducted by the Rev. Billy Graham. June 9th was declared a national day of mourning.

  Amid the stunned grief there were touches of nobility—such as the mourning figure of Mrs Martin Luther King.

  Izvestia said, ‘A cancer of violence is eating away at the organism of capitalist society. Violence is innate to imperialism … For Washington, international law has been transformed into freedom to murder anyone with different opinions. American society, acting abroad like an international gendarme, is degenerating more and more into a gangster within its own borders.’

  Down came Resurrection City, its City Hall and Freedom General Store, its chicken-hut homes. Plop in the mud before the hammers of the orange-helmeted General Services crewmen. Leaving behind a small swamp as testimony to the labours of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the underprivileged as the privileged euphemistically called them.

  At the Red House reactions to the events of this traumatic presidential summer were predictable. Shock at the violence and death contained within balloons of outrage to conform with Kremlin comment. What did you expect in a bandit society where guns were as available as umbrellas? Where 750,000 had been killed by firearms since the turn of the century.

  But soon a lot of the outrage was quelled by awareness of events across the Atlantic. Inside the Socialist bloc there was a rebel rashly launching democratic reform. And the stalwarts of the K.G.B. intensified their surveillance of their weaker brethren inside the Embassy in Washington; in particular those following for the first time defiance of the Kremlin in the Western press.

  Lying in bed beside his pile of newspapers, or watching the Czech leaders on his Motorola, Vladimir Zhukov wondered how much the Russian people knew about these reforms. Not much from what he had read in Pravda and Izvestia. Soon they might read about an imperialist plot with the C.I.A. indicted as always. A few might pick up the B.B.C.

  Carefully Zhukov sifted American interpretation, tempering it with the Party line. And it seemed to him that the Kremlin was right to take precautions to curb outrageous defiance if it threatened the Socialist dream. I understand that, he informed himself, and I must not pay too much heed to an alien press seeking to undermine the dream through the actions of a few misguided Czechs.

  But there on television were Dubcek and Cernik speaking with decent moderation.

  No Western exaggeration there.

  And gradually and tentatively Vladimir Zhukov became more equivocal, forming the secret opinion that perhaps there was no great harm in Socialism individually styled, provided it stayed within the bloc, within the expanding dream. But would I have formed such an opinion in Moscow fed a strict diet of Soviet journalism?

  Once when they were viewing the Czech leaders Valentina angrily extinguished them with a flick of the dial. ‘That,’ she announced, ‘is enough of that’—speaking for both of them.

  ‘There’s no harm in hearing their viewpoint.’

  ‘The viewpoint of traitors?’

  Vladimir poured himself a Scotch. (Just recently he had been taking a glass or two extra, finding that it helped him to rationalize.) ‘They are good Party members. They talk about the Party all the time.’

  ‘They are poor fools who have been duped by agents of imperialism. The sooner we send in tanks to protect them the better.’

  Vladimir regarded Valentina with apprehension. ‘That won’t be necessary.’ The whisky encouraged confidence in statesmanship. ‘A compromise will be reached.’

  ‘Compromise! Such a feeble word.’

  ‘Compromise means common sense. It’s the language of diplomacy.’

  ‘I pray,’ Valentina said, ‘that you’re not fooled by what you read in that trash,’ she pointed towards the bedroom, ‘that you read every night.’

  ‘I am not fooled by anything.’ He was cossetting his words. ‘But I don’t believe that we will invade Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘Invade? You don’t invade your own kind.’

  ‘They’re Czechs and we are Russians.’

  ‘And we’re all Socialists.’

  ‘You were once very proud of being a Sibiryak.’

  ‘I still am. But there are stronger loyalties than the call of your birthplace.’ She began to set the table for supper—stew again. ‘I’m worried about you, Vladimir. I am worried that you’re in danger of losing all your values.’

  ‘You needn’t be. But tell me, Valentina, can you see nothing good outside the Soviet Union?’

  She clattered the plates around on the table. ‘Of course. The rebellion of the young people for one thing. But progress is a ruthless process, Vladimir. If you start appreciating such merits then your course becomes deflected. And we both agree, don’t we, that the ultimate purpose of everything is a world based on equality.’

  Vladimir said they did, which was true.

  Valentina said, ‘Nothing has ever been achieved without singleness of purpose.’

  Vladimir re-asserted himself by switching on the television again.

  Valentina said, ‘Very little has been achieved without bloodshed. It’s always been so, it always will be so.’ She took his empty glass from him. ‘You’re drinking too much, Vladimir. And now I see that you always take ice with your drinks—it used not to be so.’

  ‘Because we didn’t have a refrigerator,�
� Vladimir pointed out. ‘And for God’s sake leave me alone.’

  ‘You’ve already had three drinks tonight.’

  ‘So I’m a drunk.’

  ‘It’s all those parties you go to. I imagine the drinking at them is disgusting.’

  ‘It’s all for the sake of the Party,’ Vladimir said with satisfaction. ‘Like bloodshed.’

  Dubcek and Cernik were replaced by a commercial for detergents.

  ‘Also,’ Valentina said, ‘I’m worried about Natasha. She’s away far too often and she seems very distracted when she comes home. I think we should stop her going out so much.’

  Vladimir shook his head, fishing deeply in the milky iced soup that preceded the stew. ‘That would be a mistake with a girl like Natasha.’

  ‘A mistake? Why do you say that, Vladimir? She is a Russian girl, not an American. She understands obedience.’

  ‘Like going to bed with an intellectual? An enemy of the State?’

  ‘We weren’t there to control her. Your parents are too old. In any case I suppose it was time that she knew a man …’

  ‘But not an intellectual?’

  Valentina took the cold plates to the kitchen where she usually regrouped her forces: just as his mother used to seek refuge from polemics. She returned with the stew.

  ‘It’s too hot for stew,’ Vladimir grumbled.

  ‘You never complained in Moscow when the temperature was in the eighties. What would you like instead? Escargots, smoked salmon, Dover sole washed down with a bottle of hock? I never thought I would live to see Vladimir Zhukov fussing about his food like some Parisian bourgeois. In any case,’ she added with Soviet practicality, ‘you should eat hot food in the hot weather—it cools you down.’

  Vladimir sniffed the savoury steam. Perhaps she was right. It was your palate that became corrupted first. Yes, a bottle of hock would have been pleasant. And a saunter around a cold buffet, spearing shrimp and sardines, cracking lobsters’ claws and wheedling out the sweet white meat. How soon after the palate did the mind corrupt?

  He remembered her budget and was contrite. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the heat and the humidity—suicide weather. It’s a beautiful stew.’ He ladled it into his mouth.

  Food appreciated always soothed her. She said in kindlier, maternal tones, ‘I didn’t mean to imply weakness, Vladimir, but you mustn’t be so easily influenced. You must surely appreciate that. Your beautiful people, as I believe they are called, thinking they’re starving if they are reduced to one automobile. Compare them with those poor souls in Resurrection City. Can that be right, Vladimir?’

  No, he agreed, it couldn’t be right. Solzhenitsyn could have done just as good a job with post-war America as he had with Russia.

  Valentina served coffee, thick and black. She said, ‘When do you think Natasha will return to the Soviet Union?’

  When Brodsky has dangled the carrot long enough, Vladimir thought. When he estimates that my gratitude is at its zenith. When he wants some particularly reprehensible act committed for the cause: then he will send her back, reminding me daily of what might happen to her in Alma-Ata if her father doesn’t co-operate.

  He switched up the air-conditioner, brought the bottle of Georgian brandy from the warped, bargain-basement sideboard and swung the Red Army into action on the record-player to distract Valentina from the liquor.

  ‘Vladimir, I asked you a question.’

  ‘I don’t know when she’ll return. I think her time here is good for her. She’s becoming worldly.’

  ‘Is that so good?’

  ‘It’s good to see both sides of the coin.’

  ‘I think she’s too young. Too impressionable.’

  ‘Then you admit there’s a lot to be impressed with here?’

  ‘I’m merely saying that she’s too young.’

  ‘But not too young for sex?’

  ‘No.’ Valentina said emphatically. ‘Not too young for sex. In her body she is a woman. It’s her mind that’s still immature.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Vladimir suggested, ‘she’s out with some nice American boy.’ The brandy burned in his belly amid the stew.

  Valentina put a finger to her lips. As if the microphones, if they existed, were selective in their eavesdropping. ‘She said she was going to the National Gallery of Art. I’m sure that’s where she is.’

  ‘Then there’s no need to worry. Shall we watch television?’

  ‘It’s all such trash.’

  ‘But we’re not intellectuals.’

  ‘If you watch television then I shall go to bed.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Vladimir and the brandy. He switched the set on again.

  She hesitated. ‘Vladimir, can’t we talk any more?’

  ‘Of course we can talk.’ A little explosion of stew and brandy up his throat. ‘If only we could just talk. Instead of quarrelling.’

  She sat down again at the table opposite him. ‘Vladimir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You haven’t met another woman, have you?’

  He felt suddenly sorry for her. Her middle-aged waist, her trust in a faith that excluded all debate, their years together that had transformed the once-wild face. They said that, together, you didn’t notice each other ageing. But now he did because in this middle period she was growing away from him. He saw her as he might see another middle-aged woman and it startled him. We should grow old together, he thought. My wife: the mistress of the Party.

  He touched her hand. ‘No, I haven’t met another woman.’

  ‘I’d hate that,’ she said.

  ‘You need never worry.’

  ‘Have I been a good wife to you, Vladimir?’

  ‘The best,’ he said. ‘The very best.’

  ‘I think maybe you need a more affectionate woman. But just because I don’t show it as much as you might wish, it doesn’t mean to say I don’t feel it. And I worry about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said, squeezing the hand of his proud Sibiryak.

  Across the room the television flickered with soundless life. A talk show—faces clowning and grimacing, posturing heightened by the silence. Then, with scant respect for so much wisdom, the commercials for dish-washing liquid and feminine hygiene. Then the news. Race riots followed by Czechoslovakia. Vladimir turned the volume control.

  The newscaster was saying, ‘… and the Czechoslovakian Government has again openly defied the Kremlin. Dubcek has announced that, despite mounting pressure from the Soviet leaders, the reforms will continue …’

  Valentina said, ‘I think I’ll go to bed, Vladimir.’

  ‘I’ll join you in a minute,’ he said quickly, not wanting to miss developments.

  Across the screen trundled a Russian tank, gun questing like an antennae. The newscaster recalled Hungary.

  No, Vladimir assured himself, it will not happen again. You did not crush a show of nationalist pride, which was within the Soviet framework, with guns. All that had changed.

  From his seat at the table Vladimir was then privileged to witness some of the fighting in Budapest a decade ago. Followed by a still of an improvised execution, young faces snarling with disbelief as they died. He didn’t remember seeing any of this on the television in their Moscow apartment.

  The newscaster said, ‘In Washington there are profound fears that the Kremlin may be contemplating similarly drastic measures if the Czech rebels do not come to heel.’

  Washington! What the hell did the pundits know about Kremlin intent in Washington? Only what they gleaned from the cocktail contacts—who certainly weren’t putting out any such theories because he, Vladimir Zhukov, was one of those contacts. The fears were pure speculation based dangerously on historic behaviour. Contemptuously he poured himself another small brandy. Valentina was perfectly justified in condemning such irresponsibility.

  Then another thought occurred: he had been given to understand that armed intervention was out, and dutifully he had conveyed this across to
Massingham, Richter and the other cocktail ears. But here was Valentina, much closer to the party than himself, calling for the intervention of the tanks as if she were urging the implementation of the inevitable.

  Vladimir wondered if he were being duped to dupe others. And that the others, quite accustomed to duping, were presuming the opposite of what he told them. After all there, for God’s sake, there were the tanks on exercises.

  No. You don’t send an army to subdue student patriotism. Moscow should be grateful for such fervour within the Party.

  He went into the bedroom, stumbled over the pile of newspapers as he searched for his flannel pyjamas under the pillow.

  One day in late July the ambassador invited Zhukov to his home at the Embassy for a drink.

  ‘You may be wondering why I have asked you,’ Zuvorin said, pouring them both Scotch.

  Zhukov said he had a little.

  ‘Because I want your advice. Although most probably I shan’t take it.’

  Zhukov waited. The ambassador had four counsellors and one minister counsellor to advise him.

  They sat in easy chairs in high-ceilinged Pullman elegance—the fittings not too elegant—the drinks on a small table beside the window.

  The ambassador put some Tchaikovsky, The 1812 Overture, on the record player and Zhukov wondered if the intention was to drown the conversation in case of bugs. Surely not. He dismissed the possibility, angry with himself for having considered it.

  The ambassador said, ‘Sometimes I like the opinions of ordinary men.’ He laughed, face alive with professional charm. ‘And that, I assure you, is a compliment.’ He lit a cigarette, smoking it with care, a puff a minute. ‘It seems to me, Zhukov, that you are an honest man.’ Sixty seconds elapsed and he inhaled, letting the smoke linger in his lungs. ‘That is a dangerous thing to be and you should be careful about so much honesty. However it is most refreshing. An honest diplomat,’ he mused.

  Not so honest, Zhukov thought. Silence as great a dishonesty as a lie.