(1964) The Man (71 page)

“A playlet,” said Kasatkin. “Maybe they saw actors in a playlet being put on for them?”

“No, there had been nothing like that. Anyway, they researched for nine years. You know what they found out? There was no ravine and no bridge over it in 1901, even though they had crossed it together. La Motte’s map of the gardens, done in 1783, did not show the ravine or bridge either. But listen to this—two years after they’d had their adventure—the original map done by Mique, the Queen’s architect, from which La Motte had made an inaccurate copy, was discovered in the chimney of some French house. This original map showed the ravine and bridge that no longer existed. Furthermore, from a portrait done by Wertmuller, and from the journal of the Queen’s dressmaker telling what the Queen wore in the summer of 1789, our two schoolteachers ascertained that the aristocratic lady sketching on the lawn in 1901 was none other than Marie Antoinette herself. . . . There you have it—well, a small part of it—what psychic experts have called the best-authenticated account of Serialism, stumbling backward through time, on record.”

Premier Kasatkin was silent as they tramped over a worn footbridge, and then he said, “Amusing . . . amusing, Mr. President, especially if one dreams of escaping present-day realities of possible nuclear horror by being transported into the past of 1789.” He made a short gesture toward the mist-clad grounds and trees and Petit Trianon. “The atmosphere invites escape. But it is false, a Potemkin lie to beguile and lull. All that is truth is our nuclear age, our power to destroy one another and life itself. For us, the two of us, we cannot be two old ladies running away into the past, Mr. President. The past is dead. It does not exist today. We have only ourselves and tonight and the future. Our unique adventure is to save, to guarantee, the reality of the future.”

“That is another story,” Dilman said with a smile, “still unwritten.”

“We are writing it,” Kasatkin said flatly. He sniffed the air. “The weather is changing. France can be unhealthy for common men if we are to read its dead past. Come, let us leave the Trianons and return to the present and the future.”

Kasatkin veered left, to a new path that would bring them to their motorcades waiting outside the Palace. The bodyguards, both American and Russian, were hastily doing their turnabouts, falling into position as the two leaders resumed their walk.

It was Premier Kasatkin who was speaking once more. “Mr. President, to be blunt, I like you more than the one who was President before you. The other one, he was a stranger. He came from a life that never knew oppression or want, he was like a sterile machine, and his ministers, such as your Secretary Eaton, were no better.” Kasatkin held up his hand. “Do not protest, do not defend. It is only my way of being complimentary to you. We understand each other because we have both been underdogs, like most of the people on the earth. When I use the word
underprivileged
, I know your experience makes you define it as I do, and not with the numerals of statistics and reports.”

“That much of what you say is true—” Dilman began.

“I have not spoken everything that is on my mind,” the Russian said. “More than any American President that has come before you, I think you understand my people and myself. You are surrounded by a reactionary clique, an elite class of capitalists, interested in promoting only their white-skinned version of freedom and prosperity. They regard us, as Communists, their enemy, as threats to the privilege and special interests they wallow in like hogs, just as they consider you, as Negroes, their enemy, and will allow you no freedom and no prosperity. Since you suffer, and therefore understand, such selfishness, I feel you and I are better able to—”

Listening, Dilman perceived Kasatkin’s unsubtle strategy. Deftly the Russian was trying to sever Dilman from his American citizenship, leave him as a second-class Negro citizen who would have more in common with the U.S.S.R. than with his own country.

“Premier Kasatkin, let me interrupt you here,” Dilman said. “I am an American who happens to be Negro. I am one person, not two who can be separated. I am more aware than you of inequality and injustice in my country. Nevertheless, progress has been made, is being made. Once our Negroes were slaves. Now they are free men. Once they were kept entirely segregated in certain areas. Now they are not. Once it would have been unthinkable for a colored man to be the Chief Executive of the United States. Now—well, here you see me.”

“Yes, you may think of yourself as an equal of the whites in your own country, but the ruling clique does not think so. I have read the reaction to your speeches and acts. Your life is in peril every second—”

“It was a Negro who tried to kill me,” said Dilman.

“Because he believed you were bending to white masters,” said Kasatkin shrewdly. “American you may be, very well,” he added. “But Negro you are, no matter what you tell me. I have observed it the entire week. What other reason could there be for your passionate interest in that little, unimportant tribal nation in Africa?”

For the first time this evening Dilman was pricked by annoyance. “Are you implying my interest in Baraza stems from my being a Negro rather than an American? If that is what you mean, you are wrong, dead wrong. Baraza chose, by plebiscite, to live under our democratic system rather than yours, and I am committed to see that their wishes are safeguarded and that nothing they have rejected is imposed upon them.”

“Come now, do not tell me they know what is best for them. What is this Baraza, really, truthfully—eighty tribes, fifty languages, primitives, leprosy-ridden and starved. You guarantee them alleged freedom, when they want food. You give them newspapers and radio stations and books and electricity, when they want wheat and livestock. No matter, no matter—as you remark, they will find their own way, decide for themselves, as we in Russia did one October week. All I have been saying is that your former President, as a white American capitalist, saw them for what they were, and saw how they could be used, as a potentially rich pawn for trading and bargaining. You see Baraza as an African American, and your interest is out of proportion to that little country’s worth. But, no matter. I understood this from the start at Chantilly, even admired it, and that was why I did not make a greater argument in our own bargaining. I appreciated the Negro feelings in you as you must appreciate the peasant feelings in me. I said to myself, Nikolai, let him have the good feeling of defending his fellow Negroes in Baraza, as long as he allows me to have the good feeling of defending the open freedom of the impoverished natives there who wish the right to support ideals of socialism. Now we understand each other fully, no?”

Moving through the light and darkness of the gardens of Versailles, Dilman had heard the Russian out with a rising sense of hopelessness. The gulf that separated them, that had almost been closed, now seemed wider than ever. He said, “I am sorry, Premier Kasatkin, but I still am unable to agree with your analysis of me, of my interest in Baraza. It absolutely does not spring from my color—”

“You cannot be unconscious of your color, Mr. President,” Kasatkin cut in. “When you go back to your America, what awaits you? Brutal racial riots on every street corner, fury, dissension. Why? Because you do not and cannot practice the democracy your white salesmen try to sell.”

Dilman had tired of being defensive. “You,” he said, “do you practice what you sell? True communism? The system of social organization in which goods are held in common? The system of Plato and Karl Marx?”

“The system of Karl Marx, yes,” said Premier Kasatkin coolly. And not only goods held in common, but brotherhood, respect—”

“You read our newspapers, but I read yours, too, Premier Kasatkin.” Dilman tried to keep his tone level, reasonable, to save what had been gained these last five days, yet let this mule-headed adversary know that he knew the U.S.S.R. was anything but a utopia. You speak of your brotherhood, your equality, in Russia. You have twenty-three members of your ruling Presidium, yet not one is a Georgian, a Uzbek, a Ukrainian. Not one is a Jew. Why the discrimination? Why the starvation purges? Why the constant treason trials? Why only one political party instead of two or three or many? Why the deposing or killing of those who are anti-Party? Why the persecutions of Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov, Beria? Why no kosher shops and the dwindling handful of synagogues for one-fifth of the world’s Jews? Why the growing anti-Semitism? Why the beatings and ridicule of African students from Senegal and Nigeria at Moscow State University? Why those endless rural revolts against fixed prices and gouging taxation? Why the KGB
and
the MVD secret police? Why half a dozen Hungarys under your fist? Why do thousands flee from East Berlin, from all of your satellite provinces, when they can, if there is so much brotherhood? Why do your masses protest threadbare clothing and several families live cramped in one apartment while members of your entourage wear handsome suits and live in palatial
dachas
outside Moscow? Is this the comradeship you sell, Premier Kasatkin?”

He halted, winded, and was relieved to hear Kasatkin chuckling. “Good, good,” the Russian was saying, “spoken like a true son of the robber barons. I miscalculated. You feel you have more equality than I thought. Well, my friend, we would have to be here five more days for me to reply to you, and correct you, and I would get nowhere with you, and you would accomplish less with me. Let us forget ideologies, their strengths and weaknesses. Let us concentrate on coexistence in peace. We have glued together much these last days. Let us make it stick.”

“That is all I wish,” said Dilman.

They had arrived at the Palace. Ahead, their counselors and aides, and their French hosts, waited in curious groups beside the fleet of gleaming Citroëns.

Premier Kasatkin halted. “Our last moment alone, Mr. President.” He extended his hand. “We will keep the peace. As for Baraza, you have my pledge, we will not interfere with
your
people there.”

Dilman took his hand. “I shall reassure Kwame Amboko you will not intefere with
his
people there.”

Their grips relaxed, their hands parted. As they moved ahead, separating as they walked, Dilman remembered two lady schoolteachers who had once come to Versailles. He envied them their magical escape to the past, where all had already happened and where there could be no terror of the unknown, unlike Kasatkin’s realistic future, where there lurked tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Dilman mourned leaving what was behind, as he mourned Grandpa Schneider, who had not been at his side after all, and he said cheerlessly, “All right, Secretary Eaton, let’s head for home. There’s work to do.”

H
is life was so filled with telephone calls from so many varied persons, at all hours, on all subjects, with so many degrees of urgency, that it was surprising how one more call, no matter how unusual, could have possessed the devastating power of an earthquake.

All of this he would remember later.

It was five days since his return from Europe, and Douglass Dilman sat at the head of the mahogany dining table in the intimate Family Dining Room on the first floor of the White House, enjoying the informal luncheon with United Nations Ambassador Slater and key members of the American delegation. In spite of the necessary presence of Arthur Eaton, who had been disapproving and excessively formal with him since his veto of the Minorities Rehabilitation Bill, the friendliness of his United Nations colleagues made the meal pleasurable.

Dilman had reported upon every detail of his foreign policy talks with Premier Kasatkin. His listeners agreed that the air had been cleared, and peace was probable and wonderful, and that the President had achieved a real success. Basking in the unanimity of this favorable opinion, Dilman had the appetite for a second helping of the baked salmon loaf.

Then it was, with the luncheon almost over, that Sally Watson appeared, and came quickly to him. While Ambassador Slater politely shifted his discourse from the President to Eaton, Dilman leaned toward his social secretary as she bent close to his ear.

“A telephone call, Mr. President,” she whispered. “Miss Foster says that the party calling insists it is important.”

“Who is it?”

“Miss Foster didn’t say, except—”

“I’m sure it can wait, then.”

“—except it is personal, from someone with the Vaduz Exporters.”

Dilman’s immediate reaction of concern broke across his features. He was sure that Miss Watson was not unaware of his reaction. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I’d better take it.”

“Shall I transfer it in here, or—”

“No, no.” He pushed his chair back, made hasty apologies, and followed Sally Watson into the State Dining Room, and then into the Main Hall.

She was leading him to the Red Room. “Right in here,” she said. By the time he entered the nineteenth-century Empire parlor, he could see Miss Watson taking up the receiver from the marbletopped circular table. “Miss Foster,” she was saying, “I have the President. One moment—”

Dilman accepted the telephone. “Thank you. That’ll be all, Miss Watson. Please close the door when you leave.”

He waited. The moment that Sally Watson had gone, he turned away, receiver pressed to his mouth and ear, and said, “Miss Foster? You can put the call through.”

Again he waited.

The call had unsettled him. Not once before, in all his weeks in the White House, had Wanda Gibson telephoned him here. This was the first time. Of late, he had kept their tenuous relationship alive by trying to telephone her at least once a week, during evenings only, when the Spingers were home to answer the phone, and so avoid arousing any suspicion in the minds of operators or anyone else who might overhear him.

Now here was Wanda coming to him openly. He wondered. Of course, the message had not said that Miss Gibson was calling, but rather, someone from Vaduz Exporters. Perhaps Wanda had fallen ill, met with an accident, and someone in her office, or her employer, Franz Gar, was trying to notify him. But no, Wanda would have told no one in her firm that she was a friend of the President. He was baffled.