Public Burning (49 page)

“A pity,” one of the girls said. “Those two little boys…”

“Well, let's not deceive ourselves, they should have thought more about those little boys when they started working for the Phantom,” I said with a smile. I leaned forward earnestly. “We're fortunate that we have a President of the United States who isn't a sucker and who isn't going to be made one. I think the only man that can save America is Dwight, uh, Eisenhower.”

“Well, maybe,” the girl said, handing me a cup of hot coffee, “but it seems like it should be enough if they just electrocuted the man and let the woman go take care of the kids, maybe just cut off one of her arms or her tongue or something—I mean, it was probably mostly his fault anyway, women always do what men tell them to.
I
certainly do!”

I laughed jovially. “That's funny,” I said, standing up. “I always had, uh, the idea it was just the opposite!”

The girls laughed. “Oh, you men!” one of them said.

I felt pleased with myself. I sat down again. I wasn't usually so successful with this kind of banter. Maybe that encounter with the Phantom and the reporters had loosened me up: a good fight stirs the blood. And other things, too. Certainly, everybody was in a jocular—almost holiday—mood now, and whatever uneasiness there might have been when I entered had apparently been forgotten. “Well,” I grinned affably, “if the dry rot of corruption and Communism, which has eaten deep into our body, uh, politic during the past seven years, can only be chopped out with a hatchet—then let's call for a hatchet!”

This was less successful. “My goodness!” said one of the girls, breaking the silence. “Eight o'clock, did you say? That's only about seven hours from now!” I stood and looked at my watch. “And people are probably going there right now to get the best places!”

“All right,” I laughed in a yielding manner, “I can take a hint! Go ahead and cancel all my afternoon appointments and take the rest, uh, of the day off.” Things were working out better than I might have hoped. I felt freer now—I'd be alone, and alone I could work this thing out, bring it all to some kind of summation, find the words I'd need tonight at the ceremonies. I sat down. But I didn't mean to. I got up again. I chuckled. I tried on the beanie with the five fingers and then handed it back. I strode cheerfully, chin high, into the maelstrom of my office, threw open the heavy red drapes, turned upon the debris as a manager might turn upon his ballplayers—trailing, exhausted, dispirited, but not yet defeated—in the bottom of the seventh. All right, boys, they're all watching us now, let's pick it up and put it together.

While the girls bustled about in the other rooms, tidying up their desks, freshening their makeup, making the necessary phone calls, I pretended to clean up my own office, snatching up the papers disinterestedly from the floor and chairs, stacking them more or less by date, dumping part of them as though carelessly into the wastebasket. “Early hath Life's mighty question thrilled within the heart of youth,” I mused, recalling that Whittier quotation from over the mantel outside the President's office back at college, “with a deep and strong beseeching…what and where is—?”

“Shall I empty that wastebasket for you, sir, before I go?”

“What?
No!
Er, I mean, no, thank you, Rose, that's very kind, but I'll take care of it.” I gave her a fatherly look. “You can run along and, uh, enjoy yourself.”

“Well, if you're sure…”

“Of course, I'm sure.” I forced a smile and gestured casually—wrong arm, it was the shoulder I'd struck the cab door with. I winced.

“Oh, Mr. Nixon,” she sighed, “you're just going to make yourself sick again!”

“If you believe in certain principles of government,” I said in all seriousness—I remembered having said this to my mother once, “you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself if necessary.”

She looked at me. The coffee tasted sour, but I sipped at it nervously. In the outer office there were drawers opening and closing, filing cabinets clicking shut, low hushed titters. “And, uh, anyway…” But she was gone from the room. Well, let them giggle. We all have our liabilities, I thought, I know I won't win any personality contests, each man has his strong points and his weak points. Public-relations experts have advised me to take speaking lessons, to get in more quips and so forth, but like Lincoln I'm at my best when I'm using the language of the people. Only the people aren't the same as in his day, they've all been to college for one thing, and I don't have his appetite for building up to climaxes, I hate all those heroics, those fancy rhythms. Anyway, when you really have a crunch, when it is really tough, when the decision to be made may determine the future of war and peace, not just now but for generations to come, people are going to make the choice in terms of an individual who is totally cool, detached, and with some experience, like me, and not some breezy Adlai Stevenson type or his gag writer. And that goes for my goddamn secretaries as much as anybody else.

Charisma, basically, I think most sophisticates say, is style, and mine is robust, intelligent, determined, articulate, aggressive, clinical, thorough, industrious, conscientious, courageous, and cool. This is not merely my opinion, others have said this of me—I have a rule that I've always followed in political life, never to attempt to rate myself. That sort of juvenile self-analysis is something I've never done. I think that's the responsibility of others. That feature article planned as a wedding-anniversary gift for Pat and me in the Sunday
Post
, for example: I could see that it focused on my long workweeks, my coolness under pressure, my popularity as a public speaker, my modesty, and my trouble-shooting talents on behalf of Ike's amateurs: “catching foul balls and line drives for the administration on the Hill, so quickly that few knew he was in the Capitol outfield.” But especially the workweeks, the discipline: there's no public-relations gimmick, in school, politics, or just growing up, that will take the place of hard work. In order to pass an exam or make a decision, one must sit on his rear end and dig into the books. In this respect, I was like Stevenson: he was an intellectual and he needed time to contemplate. People liked that “old shoe” image of his—the sole with a hole in it—because it reminded them of a butt worn raw by a lot of laborious and conscientious sitting. But there was no iron there, beneath the hard leather surface Stevenson had a butt of cork, a butt of soft rubber, of warm oatmeal, he was all veneer and no substance, a man plagued with indecision who could speak beautifully but could not act decisively. I could do both, and if my style wasn't as euphonious as Stevenson's, it wasn't as phony either: and it got the votes. I'd won oratorical contests, debates, and extemporaneous speaking contests from grade school to law school, and I was, in effect, still winning them.

This was not to be sneered at. I learned a lot from those debates and contests, the plays I was in, too. You're not born with “character,” you create this as you go along, and acting parts in plays helps you recognize some of the alternative options—most people don't realize this, and that's why they end up with such shabby characters. We're all conscious of the audience from an early age—but we're not always aware of the footlights between us. The extempore contests taught me agility, coolness in crisis situations, and how to manipulate ambiguities when you don't have the facts and aren't even sure what the subject matter is. I learned in debates that the topic didn't count for shit, the important thing was strategy, strategy and preparation: to marshal your facts, an army of facts, present them in pyramidal fashion to overwhelm your enemy, undercut his pyramid with slashing attacks on his facts or reasoning, pull off a climactic surprise if possible, and then, win or lose, forget everything and start over again the next morning. Voorhis and Douglas didn't stand a chance against me. Neither did the Republicans, for that matter, when I got invited to give the main speech at their fund-raising dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria a year ago.
Our
dinner, I should say. I knew what was at stake. I knew Dewey had his eye on me. I devoted a full week to preparing that speech, and it turned out to be one of my more successful efforts. When I concluded, the audience gave me a standing ovation. As I sat down, the old kingmaker Tom Dewey grasped my hand and said: “That was a terrific speech. Make me a promise: don't get fat; don't lose your zeal. And you can be President some day.”

Me, lose my zeal? Zeal
is
my charisma! Coolidge liked to say that “four-fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would only
sit down
and keep still”—but I could never understand why anybody would
want
them to disappear. I‘m like Teddy Roosevelt, I like to be down in the arena. They used to say of Roosevelt that “when Theodore attends a wedding he wants to be a bride; when he attends a funeral he wants to be the corpse.” I‘m like that. And what's most important, I have the faith: I believe in the American dream, I believe in it because I have seen it come true in my own life. T
IME
has said that I‘ve had “a Horatio Alger-like career,” but not even Horatio Alger could have dreamed up a life so American—in the best sense—as mine.

Boy, just thinking about this got me all fired up. As soon as the girls had vacated the place, I locked the door, switched off the airconditioner, threw open the windows, emptied the pockets of my jacket and hung it neatly up, put the cigar in the fridge, loosened my tie, removed my cufflinks and folded up my shirtsleeves, unbuckled my belt, retrieved the notes and letters from the wastebasket, spread everything around me again, and sat back to contemplate it all. Outside, I knew, the tensions were building. The streets were filling up fast, Inspiration House was leaking demonstrators like some kind of insidious spore, the city was becoming a thicket of angry placards, a forest of diatribe—reaching the center today had been like negotiating some terrible free-fire zone, and my own home out in Spring Valley now seemed far away across an impassable no-man's-land. Vengeance Valley. The Badlands. Which existed, I knew, not here in the Capital alone, but wound its serpentine way through the whole world, coiling about our periphery, dripping poison as it slithered through the more vulnerable points in the Free World, threatening now to strike at the very heart. Uncle Sam's countermoves had been dramatic and effective, momentous even, but the Phantom was still dangerous—maybe, backed up like this, more dangerous than ever. This was bigger than anyone had anticipated, perhaps even a tactical mistake, but we were committed now, there was no turning back. It was exactly the kind of desperate situation I was best suited for. I began to understand that Uncle Sam had until the last few weeks protected me from this case so as to maneuver me first into this key role, but that now he needed me, needed my skills and talents, my rhetoric—there was something he wanted from me up there tonight that only I could provide.

A cold chill passed through me: was Eisenhower's life in danger? Was the Incarnation to come to me even sooner than I had expected? I sat there for a moment in a kind of mindless shock, staring blankly into space, unable to think of anything but the Inauguration ceremonies, Pat at my side, Mom in the front row, my hand on the family Bible, the blinding light…and then slowly I calmed down. I realized that this was not the best way to get started. I recalled that I was fatalistic about politics, I made myself remember that. I brought my attention carefully back to the Rosenberg papers, my speech for the ceremonies. I picked up a letter from Julius to Ethel. I read: “Somewhere in the long ago I had a normal life with a sweet wife and two fine children and now all is gone and we're facing death….”

I stood, stretched, went to gaze out the open window, get my thoughts in order. I knew better than to try to psyche out Uncle Sam. The important thing was to do my duty here, be prepared, know the facts, find the phrases. I recalled my high-school paper on the Constitution: “There are those who, under the pretense of freedom of speech and freedom of the press, have incited riots, assailed our patriotism, and denounced the Constitution….” Yes, I should look that up, get back to the origins—and I should read the Rosenberg letters again, more seriously this time, also the FBI dossiers, the news clippings. Some mosaic out of all that, a succinct rebuttal, something on brainwashing maybe (I was watching the demonstrators down below), “the deadly danger of the propaganda that warps the mind…destroys the will of a people to resist tyranny….” Needed to rethink the trial through from some fresh angle, too, assimilate more of the background material, examine the Death House years, get an overview. Why, for example, was the campaign to save the Rosenbergs so designed by the Phantom's agents as virtually to ensure their deaths? What was the Phantom up to? Was this some kind of trap?

The people down below seemed to be having a picnic, listening to popular songs on their portable radios, eating ice cream and box lunches, playing checkers, sunbathing. Some of them had placards protesting the executions. Were they all dupes? And the Rosenbergs? Who was behind them? Were they really as transparent as they seemed? Or were there strange patterns of depravity concealed behind the middle-class clichés of their trial testimony, secret messages buried in the banalities of their Death House letters? How had their son managed to get elected president of his fifth-grade class in the middle of all this, and what did this signify? Was he on his way to a Horatio Alger-like career, too? All these questions: why did I feel I had to ask them? Why did I have to keep going back over this material, starting over, driving myself? I felt caught up in some endless quest, a martyr to duty…but duty to what? My self perhaps, its creation and improvement, the need to show I had what it takes, that I
deserved
, no matter what I got….