Edge of Eternity (98 page)

This was their third day in the studio. They had spent the first jamming, playing old favorites, enjoying getting used to one another
again. Walli had played wonderful melodic guitar lines. Unfortunately, on the second day Walli had suffered a stomach upset and had retired early. So this was their first day of serious work.

On an amplifier beside Walli stood a bottle of Jack Daniel's and a tall glass with ice cubes. In the old days they had often drunk booze or smoked joints while they worked on songs. It had been part of the fun. These days Dave preferred to work straight, but Walli had not changed his habits.

Beep came in with four beers on a tray. Dave guessed she wanted Walli to drink beer instead of whisky. She often brought food into the studio: blueberries with ice cream, chocolate cake, bowls of peanuts, bananas. She wanted Walli to live on something other than booze. He would take a spoonful of ice cream or a handful of peanuts, then return to his Jack Daniel's.

Fortunately he was still brilliant, as the new song showed. However, he was getting irritated with their inability to come up with the right transition chord. “Fuck,” he said. “I have it in my head, you know? But it won't come out.”

Buzz said: “Musical constipation, mate. You need a rock laxative. What would be the equivalent of a bowl of prunes?”

Dave said: “A Schoenberg opera.”

Lew said: “A drum solo by Dave Clark.”

Walli said: “A Demis Roussos album.”

The phone flashed and Beep picked it up. “Come on in,” she said, and hung up. Then she said to Walli: “It's Hilton.”

“Okay.” Walli got off his stool, put his guitar in a stand, and went out.

Dave looked inquiringly at Beep, who said: “A dealer.”

Dave kept playing the song. There was nothing unusual about a dope dealer calling at a recording studio. He did not know why musicians used drugs so much more than the general population, but it had always been so: Charlie Parker had been a heroin addict, and he was the generation before last.

While Dave strummed, Buzz picked up his bass and played along, and Lew sat behind the kit and began to drum quietly, looking for the groove. They had been improvising for fifteen or twenty minutes when Dave stopped and said: “What the fuck has happened to Walli?”

He left the studio, followed by the others, and returned to the main house.

They found Walli in the kitchen. He was stretched out on the floor, stoned, with a hypodermic syringe still stuck in his arm. He had shot up as soon as his supply arrived.

Beep bent over him and gently pulled out the needle. “He'll be out now until morning,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

Dave cursed. That was the end of the day's work.

Buzz said to Lew: “Shall we go to the cantina?”

There was a bar at the bottom of the hill, mostly used by Mexican farm workers. It had the ridiculous name of the Mayfair Lounge, so they referred to it as the cantina.

“Might as well,” said Lew.

The rhythm section left.

Beep said: “Help me get him to bed.”

Dave picked up Walli by the shoulders, Beep took his legs, and they carried him to the bedroom. Then they returned to the kitchen. Beep leaned against the counter while Dave put on coffee.

“He's an addict, isn't he?” Dave said, fiddling with a paper filter.

Beep nodded.

“Do you think we can even make this album?”

“Yes!” she said. “Please don't give up on him. I'm afraid . . .”

“Okay, stay calm.” He switched the machine on.

“I can manage him,” she said desperately. “He maintains in the evenings, just keeping going on small amounts while he works, then in the early hours he shoots up and nods out. This was unusual, today. He doesn't often just crash like that. Normally I score the stuff and ration it.”

Dave was appalled. He looked at her. “You've become nursemaid to a junkie.”

“We make these decisions when we're too young to know better, then we have to live with them,” she said, and she started to cry.

Dave put his arms around her, and she wept on his chest. He gave her time, while the front of his shirt got wet and the kitchen filled with the aroma of coffee. Then he gently disengaged himself and poured two cups.

“Don't worry,” he said. “Now that we know about the problem, we can work around it. While Walli's at his best we'll do the difficult stuff: writing the songs, the guitar solos, the vocal harmonies. When he's not around we'll lay down backing tracks and do a rough mix. We can get it together.”

“Oh, thank you. You've saved his life. I can't tell you how relieved I am. You're such a good man.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips.

Dave felt weird. She was thanking him for saving her boyfriend's life and, at the same time, kissing him.

Then she said: “I was such a fool to give you up.”

That was disloyal to the man in the bedroom. But loyalty had never been her strength.

She put her arms around his waist and pressed her body to his.

For a moment he held his hands in the air, away from her; then he gave in, and put his arms around her again. Perhaps loyalty was not his strength either.

“Junkies don't have much sex,” she said. “It's been a while.”

Dave felt shaky. At some level, he realized, he had known this was going to happen, from the moment she drove up in that red convertible.

He was shaking because he wanted her so badly.

Still he said nothing.

“Take me to bed, Dave,” she said. “Let's fuck like we used to, just once, for old times' sake.”

“No,” he said.

But he did.

•   •   •

They finished the album the day FBI director J. Edgar Hoover died.

Over breakfast at noon the following day, in the kitchen of Daisy Farm, Beep said: “My grandfather is a senator, and he says J. Edgar liked to suck cock.”

They were all amazed.

Dave grinned. He was pretty sure old Gus Dewar had never said “suck cock” to his granddaughter. But Beep liked to talk that way in front of guys. She knew it turned them on. She was mischievous. It was one of the things that made her exciting.

She went on: “Grandpapa told me Hoover lived with his associate director, a guy called Tolson. They went everywhere together, like husband and wife.”

Lew said: “It's people like Hoover give us queers a bad name.”

Walli, up unusually early, said: “Hey, listen, we're going to do a reunion concert when the album comes out, right?”

Dave said: “Yeah. What's on your mind?”

“Let's make it a fund-raiser for George McGovern.”

The idea of rock bands raising money for liberal politicians was catching on, and McGovern was the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in this year's presidential election, running as a peace candidate.

Dave said: “Great idea. Doubles our publicity, and helps to end the war as well.”

Lew said: “I'm for it.”

Buzz said: “Okay, I'm outvoted, I concede.”

Lew and Buzz left soon after to catch a plane to London. Walli went into the studio to pack his guitars into their cases, a job he did not like to leave to roadies.

Dave said to Beep: “You can't just go.”

“Why not?”

“Because for the last six weeks we've been fucking our brains out every time Walli nodded out.”

She grinned. “Been great, hasn't it?”

“And because we love each other.” Dave waited to see whether she would confirm or deny this.

She did neither.

He repeated: “You can't just go.”

“What else am I going to do?”

“Talk to Walli. Tell him to get a new nursemaid. Come and live here with me.”

Beep shook her head.

“I met you a decade ago,” Dave said. “We've been lovers. We were engaged to get married. I think I know you.”

“So?”

“You're fond of Walli, you care for him, you want him to be okay. But
you rarely have sex with him and, what's even more telling, you don't mind that. Which tells me you don't love him.”

Once again she did not confirm or deny what he said.

Dave said: “I think you love me.”

She looked into her empty coffee cup, as if she might see answers there in the dregs.

“Shall we get married?” Dave said. “Is that why you're hesitating—you want me to propose? Then I will. Marry me, Beep. I love you. I loved you when we were thirteen years old and I don't think I ever stopped.”

“What, not even when you were in bed with Mandy Love?”

He smiled ruefully. “I might have forgotten about you just for a few moments now and again.”

She grinned. “Now I believe you.”

“What about children? Would you like to have kids? I would.”

She said nothing.

Dave said: “I'm pouring my heart out here, and I'm getting nothing back. What's going on in your head?”

She looked up, and he saw that she was crying. She said: “If I leave Walli, he'll die.”

“I don't believe he will,” Dave said.

Beep held up a hand to silence him. “You asked me what's going on in my head. If you really want to know, don't contradict what I say.”

Dave shut up.

“I've done a lot of selfish bad things in my life. Some you know about, but there are more.”

Dave could believe that. But he wanted to tell her that she had also brought joy and laughter into many people's lives, including his own. However, she had asked him just to listen, so he did.

“I hold Walli's life in my hands.”

Dave bit back a retort, but Beep said what had been on the tip of his tongue. “Okay, it's not my fault he's a junkie, I'm not his mother, I don't have to save him.”

Dave thought Walli might be tougher than Beep reckoned. On the other hand Jimi Hendrix had died, Janis Joplin had died, Jim Morrison had died . . .

“I want to change,” Beep said. “More, I want to make up for my mistakes. It's time for me to do something that isn't just what grabs me at the moment. It's time for me to do something good. So I'm going to stay with Walli.”

“Is that your last word?”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye, then,” said Dave, and he hurried out of the room so that she would not see him cry.

T
he Kremlin is in a panic about Nixon's visit to China,” said Dimka to Tanya.

They were in Dimka's apartment. His three-year-old daughter, Katya, was on Tanya's knee, and they were looking through a book with pictures of farm animals.

Dimka and Natalya had moved back into Government House. The Peshkov-Dvorkin clan now occupied three apartments in the same building. Grandfather Grigori was still in his original place, living now with his daughter, Anya, and granddaughter, Tanya. Dimka's ex-wife, Nina, lived there with Grisha, eight years old and a little schoolboy. And now Dimka and Natalya and little Katya had moved in. Tanya adored her nephew and niece and was always happy to babysit. Government House was almost like a peasant village, Tanya sometimes thought, with the extended family minding the children.

People often asked Tanya whether she did not want children of her own. “There's plenty of time,” she always answered. She was still only thirty-two. But she did not feel she was free to marry. Vasili was not her lover, but she had dedicated her life to the undercover work they did together, first in publishing
Dissidence,
then in smuggling Vasili's books to the West. Occasionally she was courted by one of the diminishing number of eligible bachelors her age, and sometimes she would go on a few dates and even go to bed with one of them. But she could not let them into her clandestine life.

And Vasili's life was now more important than her own. With the publication of
A Free Man
he had become one of the world's leading writers. He interpreted the Soviet Union to the rest of the planet. After his third book,
The Age of Stagnation,
there was talk of a Nobel Prize, except that apparently they could not award it to a pseudonym. Tanya
was the conduit by which his work reached the West, and it would be impossible to keep such a big, terrible secret from a husband.

The Communists hated “Ivan Kuznetsov.” The whole world knew that he could not reveal his real name for fear that his work would be suppressed, and this made the Kremlin leaders look like the Philistines they were. Every time his work was mentioned in the Western media, people pointed out that it had never been published in Russian, the language in which it had been written, because of Soviet censorship. It drove the Kremlin mad.

“Nixon's trip was a big success,” Tanya said to Dimka. “In our office we get news feeds from the West. People can't stop congratulating Nixon on his vision. This is a giant leap forward for the stability of the world, they say. Also, his poll ratings have jumped—and this is election year in the United States.”

The idea that the capitalist-imperialists might link with the maverick Chinese Communists to gang up on the USSR was a terrifying prospect to the Soviet leadership. They immediately invited Nixon to Moscow in an attempt to redress the balance.

“Now they're desperate to make sure Nixon's visit here is also a success,” Dimka said. “They'll do anything to keep the USA from siding with China.”

Tanya was struck by a thought. “Anything?”

“I exaggerate. But what did you have in mind?”

Tanya felt her heart beat faster. “Would they release dissidents?”

“Ah.” Dimka knew, but would not say, that Tanya was thinking of Vasili. Dimka was one of a very few people who knew of Tanya's connection to a dissident. He was too cautious to mention it casually. “The KGB is proposing the opposite—a clampdown. They want to jail everyone who might possibly wave a protest placard at the American president's passing limousine.”

“That's stupid,” said Tanya. “If we suddenly put hundreds of people in jail, the Americans will find out—they have spies, too—and they won't like it.”

Dimka nodded. “Nixon doesn't want his critics saying that he came here and ignored the whole issue of human rights—not in an election year.”

“Exactly.”

Dimka looked thoughtful. “We must make the most of this opportunity. I have a meeting tomorrow with some people from the U.S. embassy. I wonder if I can use that . . .”

•   •   •

Dimka had changed. The invasion of Czechoslovakia had done it. Until that moment he had clung stubbornly to the belief that Communism could be reformed. But he had seen, in 1968, that as soon as a few people began to make progress in changing the nature of Communist government, their efforts would be crushed by those who had a stake in keeping things just the same. Men such as Brezhnev and Andropov enjoyed power, status, and privilege: why would they risk all that? Dimka now agreed with his sister: Communism's biggest problem was that the all-embracing authority of the party always stifled change. The Soviet system was helplessly frozen in a terrified conservatism, just as the regime of the tsars had been sixty years earlier, when his grandfather had been a foreman at the Putilov Machine Works in St. Petersburg.

How ironic that was, Dimka reflected, when the first philosopher to explain the phenomenon of social change had been Karl Marx.

Next day Dimka chaired another in a long series of discussions about Nixon's visit to Moscow. Natalya was there, but unfortunately so was Yevgeny Filipov. The American team was led by Ed Markham, a middle-aged career diplomat. Everyone spoke through interpreters.

Nixon and Brezhnev would sign two arms limitation treaties and an environmental protection agreement. “The environment” was not an issue in Soviet politics, but apparently Nixon felt strongly about it, and had promoted pioneering legislation in the States. Those three documents would be sufficient to guarantee that the visit would be hailed as a historic triumph, and go a long way toward guarding against the dangers of a Chinese-American alliance. Mrs. Nixon would visit schools and hospitals. Nixon was insisting on having a meeting with a dissident poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whom he had met previously in Washington.

At today's meeting the Soviets and the Americans discussed security and protocol, as always. In the middle of the meeting Natalya said the words she had previously agreed on with Dimka. Speaking in a casual tone to the Americans, she said: “We have been carefully considering
your demand that we release a large number of so-called political prisoners, as a token gesture toward what you call human rights.”

Ed Markham threw a startled look at Dimka, who was chair of the meeting. Markham knew nothing of this. That was because the Americans had made no such demand. Dimka made a quick, surreptitious brushing-away gesture, indicating that Markham should keep quiet. A skilled and experienced negotiator, the American said nothing.

Filipov was equally surprised. “I have no knowledge of any such—”

Dimka raised his voice. “Please, Yevgeny Davidovitch, do not interrupt Comrade Smotrov! I insist that one person speaks at a time.”

Filipov looked furious, but his Communist Party training forced him to follow the rules.

Natalya went on: “We have no political prisoners in the Soviet Union, and we cannot see the logic of releasing criminals onto the streets to coincide with the visit of a foreign head of state.”

“Quite,” said Dimka.

Markham was clearly mystified. Why raise a fictitious demand only to refuse it? But he waited in silence to see where Natalya was going. Meanwhile Filipov drummed his fingers on his writing pad in frustration.

Natalya said: “However, a small number of persons are denied internal travel visas because of connections with antisocial groups and troublemakers.”

That was precisely the situation of Tanya's friend Vasili. Dimka had tried once before to get him released, but had failed. Perhaps he would have more luck this time.

Dimka watched Markham intently. Would he realize what was going on and play his part? Dimka needed the Americans to pretend they had made demands about releasing dissidents. He could then go back to the Kremlin and say the USA was insisting on this as a precondition of Nixon's visit. At that point any objections from the KGB or any other group would fall away, for everyone in the Kremlin was desperate to get Nixon here and woo him way from the hated Chinese.

Natalya went on: “As these people have not actually been sentenced by the courts, there is no legal bar to action by the government, so we offer to ease the restraints, permitting them to travel, as a gesture of goodwill.”

Dimka said to the Americans: “Would that action on our part satisfy your president?”

Markham's face had cleared, and he had now understood the game Natalya and Dimka were playing. He was happy to be used that way, and he said: “Yes, I think that might be sufficient.”

“That's agreed, then,” said Dimka, and sat back in his chair with a profound sense of accomplishment.

•   •   •

President Nixon came to Moscow in May, when the snow had thawed and the sun shone.

Tanya had been hoping to see a large-scale release of political prisoners to coincide with the visit, but she had been disappointed. This was the best chance in years to get Vasili out of his hovel in Siberia and back to Moscow. Tanya knew that her brother had tried, but it seemed he had failed. It made her want to weep.

Her boss, Daniil Antonov, said: “Follow the president's wife around today, please, Tanya.”

“Fuck off,” she said. “Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I have to do stories about women all the time.”

Throughout her career Tanya had fought against being given “feminine” assignments. Sometimes she won, sometimes she lost.

Today she lost.

Daniil was a good guy, but he was not a pushover. “I'm not asking you to cover women all the time, and I never have, so don't talk shit. I'm asking you to cover Pat Nixon today. Now just do as you're told.”

Daniil was actually a great boss. Tanya gave in.

Today Pat Nixon was taken to Moscow State University, a thirty-two-story yellow stone building with thousands of rooms. It seemed mostly empty.

Mrs. Nixon said: “Where are all the students?”

The rector of the university, speaking through interpreters, said: “It's exam time, they're all studying.”

“I'm not getting to meet the Russian people,” Mrs. Nixon complained.

Tanya wanted to say:
You bet you're not meeting the people—they might tell you the truth.

Mrs. Nixon looked conservative even by Moscow standards. Her hair was piled high and sprayed rigid, like a Viking helmet and almost as hard. She wore clothes that were too young-looking for her and at the same time out of fashion. She had a fixed smile that rarely faltered, even when the press corps following her became unruly.

She was taken into a study room where three students sat at tables. They seemed surprised to see her and clearly did not know who she was. It was evident they did not want to meet her.

Poor Mrs. Nixon probably had no idea that any contact with Westerners was dangerous for ordinary Soviet citizens. They were liable to be arrested afterward and interrogated about what was said and whether the meeting was prearranged. Only the most foolhardy Muscovites wanted to exchange words with foreign visitors.

Tanya composed her article in her head while she followed the visitor around.
Mrs. Nixon was clearly impressed by the new modern Moscow State University. The USA does not have a university building of comparable size.

The real story was in the Kremlin, which was why Tanya had been bad-tempered with Daniil. Nixon and Brezhnev were signing treaties that would make the world a safer place. That was the story Tanya wanted to cover.

She knew from reading the foreign press that Nixon's China visit and this Moscow trip had transformed his prospects in the November presidential election. From a January low, his approval rating had soared. He now had a strong chance of getting reelected.

Mrs. Nixon was dressed in a two-piece check suit with a short jacket and discreetly below-the-knee skirt. Her white shoes had a low heel. A chiffon neck scarf completed her outfit.
Tanya hated doing fashion. She had covered the Cuban missile crisis, for God's sake—from Cuba!

At last the First Lady was whisked away in a Chrysler LeBaron limousine, and the press pack dispersed.

In the car park Tanya saw a tall man wearing a long, threadbare coat in the spring sunshine. He had unkempt iron-gray hair, and his lined face looked as if it might once have been handsome.

It was Vasili.

She stuffed her fist into her mouth and bit her hand to suppress the scream that bubbled up in her throat.

He saw that she had recognized him, and he smiled, showing gaps where he had lost teeth.

She walked slowly over to where he stood, hands in the pockets of his coat. He had no hat, and he squinted because of the sun.

“They let you out,” Tanya said.

“To please the American president,” he said. “Thank you, Dick Nixon.”

He should have thanked Dimka Dvorkin. But it was probably better not to tell anyone that, not even Vasili.

She looked around warily, but there was no one else in sight.

“Don't worry,” said Vasili. “For two weeks this place has been crawling with security police, but they all left five minutes ago.”

She could restrain herself no longer, and threw herself into his arms. He patted her back as if to comfort her. She hugged him hard.

“My,” he said, “you smell good.”

She broke the embrace. She was bursting with a hundred questions and had to restrain her enthusiasm and pick one. “Where are you living?”

“They gave me a Stalin apartment—old, but nice.”

Apartments from the Stalin era had bigger rooms and higher ceilings than the more compact flats built in the late fifties and sixties.

She was overflowing with exhilaration. “Shall I visit you there?”

“Not yet. Let's find out how closely they're watching me.”

“Do you have work?” It was a favorite trick of the Communists to make sure a man could not get a job, then accuse him of being a social parasite.