Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story-How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (30 page)

Gifts had also piled up uncontrollably, many treasured heirlooms that had been hidden from the authorities and uncovered, polished, mended, and passed on to the young visitor as secret tokens of lives unlived. An unnamed family gave him a porcelain platter decorated with a troika that they had cherished for seventy years:
“Look at it in your bad moments,” read the accompanying card, “and think there are people who love you and always will.” Most moving of all was a lilac shrub that a group of students had clubbed together to buy after they heard he wanted to plant one on Rachmaninoff’s grave in New York.

If he had stolen the Soviets’ hearts, they had equally stolen his.
“I tell you,” he confided to Paul Moor, “these are my people. I guess I’ve always had a Russian heart. I’d give them three quarts of blood and four pounds of flesh. I’ve never felt so at home anywhere in my whole life.” He was speaking in the heat of the moment and never expected his words to appear in print, even when Moor mentioned that his
Time
article might become a cover story.
“Oh sure,” Van thought, not taking it too seriously. He that expecteth nothing is never disappointed.

THERE WAS
no chance of any rest before leaving Moscow. He was invited to ballets and operas at the Bolshoi and visited the
Central Music School, where he played a duet with a young pianist while yet another film was shot. There were more recording sessions, one
lasting until
half past five in the morning. By the time of his final marathon with the Moscow State Symphony, they had shared the stage for three concerts and forty-five hours of recordings.
“We have something for you,” the players said as he entered the hall, and they presented him with an album containing pictures of every place he had visited during his stay. With it was an enamel box of chocolates decorated with scenes from Pushkin’s fairy tales, an enamel cigarette case for his favorite Kents, and a poster for their final concert, signed by every member of the orchestra.

The next day, he walked out to take his place in the Great Hall one last time. He picked up a letter from the keyboard, used it to brush off some petals, read it, and put it on the floor, then thought better of it and slid it in his pocket. The orchestra players craned to see what he was doing, and laughter rippled through the hall. The accumulated tension dissolved, but the moment he began to play, the audience and the seventeen million watching on state television hung forward and let his poetry flow through them. At the end, the rhythmic clapping echoed and reechoed like thunder. Women rushed up to present flowers, and a man handed up a balalaika. After three encores, Van stepped forward and read a
message in Russian. Pronouncing the words with great effort, he said that he had come to love Soviet audiences and would try to be worthy of his gold medal. Since he could take only half the prize money out of the country (and none of his earnings), he asked the Ministry of Culture to establish two memorial prizes at the Moscow Conservatory in the names of Josef Lhévinne and Sergei Rachmaninoff. He also asked that Lev Vlassenko, Naum Shtarkman, and Eddik Miansarov be sent to
perform in America.
“Today,” he ended, “when I have to tell you ‘goodbye,’ my heart is full of memories and sadness. Until the end of my days I cannot forget your kindness. Thank you!”

Then he went back to the piano. Earlier in his visit he had heard the melancholy strains of “Moscow Nights,” the hit song from last summer’s World Festival of Youth. Now he improvised his own version, gently, ardently, a tribute to the city and its people. The audience
melted in delight and love for this romantic stranger who loved them. They cried, and the viewers at home cried, and the
next day they talked about nothing but their feelings and their tears.

In the morning a
reporter for
Sovetskaya Kultura
tracked Van down in his hotel room, where he was exchanging photographs and embraces with the violinist Valery Klimov while a team from Moscow Radio recorded his parting message to the Soviet people. The journalist managed to get in a question when a call came in from Van’s parents. “I’m so sad to leave Russia,” he overheard Van say to them: “I would love to come to Russia with you.” As the interview went haltingly on, an artist sketched Van’s portrait, and when it was finished Van looked and decided he liked it. He took it, thought for a moment, and wrote on it: “To the readers of
Sovetskaya Kultura
newspaper, I would like to express my deep satisfaction about being able to visit Russia and play for such a captivating audience and to fall in love with the Soviet people. My most heartfelt greetings, devotion and gratitude. Van Cliburn.”

Halfway through the conversation the news came that a third Soviet
Sputnik
had been launched. Van broke out in an admiring smile and exclaimed, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

THE FOLLOWING
day, he headed to Vnukovo Airport with many new friends,
fourteen extra suitcases, and one six-foot lilac shrub. The Intourist officials refused to let him pay the surcharge for overweight baggage, which at
4,800 rubles approached a fifth of his winnings. As the cameras whirred and crowds of fans, officials, and students pressed in, he made a little farewell speech, again in Russian, and backed toward the waiting plane, his cheeks wet with tears. Henrietta Belayeva glowed with pride. She had lived Van’s triumph every day and was as madly in love with him as was Naum. They and Eddik and everyone else waved as the SAS plane took off for Copenhagen.

When it could no longer be seen, the crowd drifted thoughtfully apart. For many people, life had perceptibly brightened, but it was far from clear that the mighty gears of state would shift to match.
Two weeks earlier, on May 1, Labor Day, Khrushchev had watched from the Lenin-Stalin mausoleum’s viewing balcony as vast squads of troops goose-stepped in unison and bulky military hardware rolled past. Heavy rain had turned Red Square into a black lake, but nothing could dim the premier’s grin. Standing stiffly at his side, a reminder to the West of its clumsy meddling abroad and (so Khrushchev thought) the talismanic power of Soviet missiles to check its ambitions, was the hero of Suez and his new ally, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Later in the month, the premier changed tack. Heeding scientists’ warnings that years of nuclear tests were poisoning the atmosphere, Khrushchev announced a unilateral moratorium just as the United States was about to begin a new round. To his fury, America went ahead. A few weeks later, Imre Nagy, the leader of the failed Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution of 1956, was executed after a secret trial: in a cynical ploy worthy of Stalin,
Khrushchev allegedly ordered his death as a lesson to aspiring rebels. When protests broke out round Soviet embassies in the West, busloads of Soviet demonstrators arrived at the American embassy in Moscow and lay about the building in
tit-for-tat revenge.

Spinning and kicking, barracking and blustering, Khrushchev continued his ungainly
gopak
on the international stage. His embrace of the young American pianist had stunned the world, but it remained to be seen if Van and his beloved music would prove to be partners in peace or pawns in a brutal game.

•
12
•

“He Played the Piano and the World Was His”

ON BOARD
the departing SAS flight, Van watched Russia recede for a long while before looking down at a card that a spokesman for Soviet musicians had slipped in his hand at the last minute. It was another touching paean to an unforgettable few weeks and a heartfelt plea for him to return soon. Yet again he choked up, but during the short flight to Copenhagen there were plenty of thoughts waiting to crowd in. Could anything in his life match up to this feeling he was carrying away? What did his extraordinary stroke of fortune signify? How was he ever to live up to it, when the Leventritt Award had seemed an onerous responsibility? And what did it mean that if the piano competition he’d won had been in Berlin, scarcely anyone would have noticed?

The plane was late arriving, and Van
missed his connection to New York. While he waited for the next flight an enterprising reporter tracked him down, and he gave a
telephone interview. “I’m going home with the most exciting memories of my life,” he gushed. “There are moments I will never forget. Of course I will go back to Moscow one day to play there again. Russian audiences inspire me. All Russians are very warm. They’re sweet people. The only thing that the Russians want from the Americans, English or Scandinavians is to meet them in an atmosphere of friendship, sincerity, and
mutual understanding. I’m glad to be going home but still I’m going to miss Russia. I have friends there in the world of music and this friendship will live forever.”

Eventually the new flight began boarding, and the hostess came over.

“Oh!” she said, “you’re the one on the magazine!”

“What magazine?” Van asked.

“
Time
magazine,” she replied. “Your picture is on the cover.” She fished out her copy, and there he was, drawn with a pained expression and reddish hair waving like a sea anemone. A banner across the masthead read:
THE TEXAN WHO CONQUERED RUSSIA
. On the reverse, unpromisingly, was a full-page advertisement for the “CONVAIR-
Astronautics’
ATLAS . . . the free world’s first ICBM,” with a color picture of a giant rocket rising into the night amid furies of fire. The U.S. Air Force had just conducted a successful test flight of the burly missile, which was touted as “a vital weapon for our national security and a key to ultimate peace.”

Van turned to the lengthy cover story, “The All-American Virtuoso.” After reading a few words, he shuddered with dismay. “Ah swear to goodness, ah just can’t believe all this is happenin’ to li’l ole Van Cliburn from the piney woods of East Texas!” it began, purporting to quote him, Van. It made him out to be a comic rustic, “as Texan as pecan pie.”

He read on. There was private information about his failed relationship with Donna, his health troubles, and his debts, which were said to be so heavy that he “took to such money-saving devices as playing classical music for his supper in Manhattan’s Asti Restaurant.” There were lines about his childhood being hell and his schoolmates thinking him queer, things he had never intended people back home to read. There were intimate descriptions of his preconcert routine and his fits of sobbing, including at Richter’s recital, which made him sound kooky. Over and over, there were private words spoken to just one person: a cynical aside about the prospect of “all those people making money out of me” as offers rolled in; moments of elation after
his Moscow concerts. “I tell you, these are my people,” he read himself quoted as saying. “I guess I’ve always had a Russian heart. I’d give them three quarts of blood and four pounds of flesh. I’ve never felt so at home anywhere in my whole life.” Paul Moor, his purported protector, had betrayed his confidence. Or, rather, Van realized to his chagrin, he had trusted in Moor’s discretion. He would never make the same mistake again.

The plane banked through dense clouds and landed at Idlewild at 9:45 a.m. on Friday, May 16, four hours late. The crew let Van off first, and as he climbed down to the wet tarmac,
photographers came running. Flashbulbs flared, movie cameras whirred. Like a pro he stopped and smiled, stretching his arm out to wave.

An official diverted him to a packed conference room. He glimpsed his beaming parents in the last row, but reporters surrounded him,
shouting questions. One brandished a copy of
Time.

“Why does this say, ‘These are my people?’” the man demanded.

“Who put those words in my mouth?” Van retorted. He had brooded all the way home and had steeled himself for an inquisition. “I actually said, ‘These all remind me of Texas people.’” His welcome in Moscow had been so warm, he explained, that he was certain there “must be a little bit of Texan in the Russians.”

“And I told them so,” he brightly added, spotting a group of hometowners who had come up from Texas to welcome him back. Mrs. Leo Satterwhite Allen’s speech and dramatics training was finally coming in handy.