*
George thought the ex-President should go to jail. Many people did. Nixon had committed more than enough crimes to justify a prison sentence. This was not medieval Europe, where kings were above the law: this was America, and justice was the same for everyone. The House Judiciary Committee had ruled that Nixon should be impeached, and Congress had endorsed the Committee’s report by a remarkable majority of 412 votes to 3. The public favoured impeachment by 66 per cent to 27. John Ehrlichman had already been sentenced to twenty months in prison for his crimes: it would be unfair if the man who had given him his orders were to escape punishment.
A month after the resignation, President Ford pardoned Nixon.
George was outraged, and so was just about everyone else. Ford’s press secretary resigned. The New York Times said the pardon was ‘a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act’ that had destroyed the new President’s credibility at a stroke. Everyone assumed Nixon had cut a deal with Ford before handing over to him.
‘I can’t take much more of this,’ said George to Maria in the kitchen of his apartment. He was mixing olive oil and red wine vinegar in a jug to make salad dressing. ‘Sitting behind a desk at Fawcett Renshaw while the country goes to hell.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I want to go back into politics.’
She turned to face him, and he was puzzled to see disapproval on her face. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘The congressman for my mother’s district, the Ninth Maryland, is retiring in two years. I think I can get nominated for the seat. In fact, I know I can.’
‘So you’ve already talked to the Democratic party there.’
She was definitely angry with him, but he had no idea why. ‘Just exploratory discussions, yes,’ he said.
‘Before you talked to me.’
George was startled. Their romance was only a month old. Did he already have to clear everything with Maria? He almost said that, but bit back the words and tried something softer. ‘Maybe I should have talked to you first, but it didn’t occur to me.’ He poured the dressing over the salad and started to toss it.
‘You know I just applied for a really good job in the State Department.’
‘Of course.’
‘I think you know I want to go all the way to the top.’
‘And I bet you’ll do it.’
‘Not with you, I won’t.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Senior State Department officials have to be non-political. They must serve Democratic and Republican congressmen with equal diligence. If I’m known to be with a congressman, I’ll never get a promotion. They will always say: “You can’t really trust Maria Summers, she sleeps with Congressman Jakes.” They’d assume my loyalty was to you, not them.’
George had not thought of that. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘But what can I do?’
‘How much does this relationship matter to you?’ she said.
George thought her challenging words masked a plea. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a little early to talk of marriage –’
‘Early?’ she said, getting angry. ‘I’m thirty-eight years old and you’re only my second lover. Did you think I was looking for a casual fling?’
‘I was going to say,’ he said patiently, ‘that if we do get married, I assume we’ll have children and you’ll stay home and take care of them.’
Her face was flushed with outrage. ‘Oh, is that what you assume? Not only do you plan to prevent me getting any further promotions, you actually expect me to give up my career altogether!’
‘Well, that’s what women usually do when they marry.’
‘Is it, hell! Wake up, George. I realize that your mother devoted herself from the age of sixteen exclusively to caring for you, but you were born in 1936, for Christ’s sake. We’re in the seventies now. Feminism has arrived. Work is no longer something a woman does merely to pass the time until some man condescends to make her his domestic slave.’
George was bewildered. This had come out of the blue. He had done something normal and reasonable, and she was spitting with rage. ‘I don’t know why you’re so goddamn ornery,’ he said. ‘I haven’t ruined your career or made you a domestic slave, and I haven’t actually asked you to marry me.’
Her voice went quiet. ‘You asshole,’ she said. ‘You total asshole.’
She left the room.
‘Don’t go,’ he said.
He heard the apartment door slam.
‘Hell,’ he said.
He smelled smoke. The steaks were burning. He turned off the heat under the pan. The meat was charred black, inedible. He tipped the steaks into the garbage bin.
‘Hell,’ he said again.
Part Eight
YARD
1976–1983
51
Grigori Peshkov was dying. The old warrior was eighty-seven, and his heart was failing.
Tania had managed to get a message to his brother. Lev Peshkov was eighty-two but he had announced that he was coming to Moscow, in a private jet. Tania had wondered if he would get permission to visit, but he had managed it. He had arrived yesterday and was due to visit Grigori today.
Grigori lay in bed in his apartment, pale and still. He was sensitive to pressure, and could not bear the weight of the bedclothes on his feet, so Tania’s mother, Anya, had placed two boxes in the bed, tenting the blankets so that they warmed him without touching him.
Though he was weak, Tania still felt the power of his presence. Even in repose his chin jutted pugnaciously. When he opened his eyes, he revealed that intense blue-eyed stare that had so often struck fear into the hearts of the enemies of the working class.
It was a Sunday, and family and friends came to visit. They were saying goodbye, though naturally they pretended otherwise. Dimka and Natalya brought Katya, their pretty seven-year-old. Dimka’s ex-wife Nina turned up with the twelve-year-old Grisha, who had the beginnings of his great-grandfather’s formidable intensity, despite his youth. Grigori smiled benignly on them all. ‘I fought in two revolutions and two world wars,’ he said. ‘It’s a miracle I lasted this long.’
He fell asleep, then, and most of the family went out, leaving Tania and Dimka sitting at the bedside. Dimka’s career had advanced: he was now an official of the State Planning Committee and a candidate member of the Politburo. He was still a close associate of Kosygin, but their attempts to reform the Soviet economy were always blocked by Kremlin conservatives. Natalya was chair of the Analytical Department at the Foreign Ministry.
Tania began to tell her brother about the latest feature she had written for TASS. At the suggestion of Vasili, who was still working in the Agriculture Ministry, she had flown to Stavropol, a fertile southern region where the collective farms were experimenting with a bonus system based on results. ‘Harvests are up,’ she told Dimka. ‘The reform is a big success.’
‘The Kremlin won’t like bonuses,’ Dimka said. ‘They’ll say the system smacks of revisionism.’
‘The system has been operating for years,’ she said. ‘The regional First Secretary there is a real live wire. A man called Mikhail Gorbachev.’
‘He must have friends in high places.’
‘He knows Andropov, who goes to a spa in the region to take the waters.’ The KGB chief suffered from kidney stones, an agonizing ailment. If ever a man deserved such pain, Tania thought, Yuri Andropov did.
Dimka was intrigued. ‘So this Gorbachev is a reformer who is friendly with Andropov?’ he said. ‘That makes him an unusual man. I must keep an eye on him.’
‘I found him refreshingly commonsensical.’
‘We certainly need new ideas. Do you remember Khrushchev, back in 1961, forecasting that the USSR would overtake the US in both production and military strength in twenty years?’
Tania smiled. ‘At the time he was thought pessimistic.’
‘Now fifteen years have passed and we’re farther behind than ever. And Natalya tells me the East European countries have also fallen behind their neighbours. They’re kept quiet only by massive subsidies from us.’
Tania nodded. ‘It’s a good thing we have huge exports of oil and other raw materials to help us pay the bills.’
‘But it’s not enough. Look at East Germany. We have to have a damn wall to stop people escaping to capitalism.’
Grigori stirred. Tania felt guilty. She had been questioning her grandfather’s fundamental beliefs while sitting at his death bed.
The door opened and a stranger walked in. He was an old man, thin and bent but immaculately dressed. He had on a dark-grey suit that was moulded to his body like something worn by the hero in a movie. His white shirt gleamed and his red tie glowed. Such clothes could only come from the West. Tania had never met him but, all the same, there was something familiar about him. This must be Lev.
He ignored Tania and Dimka and looked at the man in the bed.
Grandfather Grigori gave him a look that said he knew the visitor but could not quite place him.
‘Grigori,’ the newcomer said. ‘My brother. How did we get so old?’ He spoke a queer old-fashioned dialect of Russian with the harsh accent of a Leningrad factory worker.
‘Lev,’ said Grigori. ‘Is it really you? You used to be so handsome!’
Lev leaned over and kissed his brother on both cheeks, then they embraced.
Grigori said: ‘You got here just in time. I’m about done for.’
A woman about eighty years old followed Lev in. She was dressed, Tania thought, like a prostitute, in a stylish black dress and high heels, make-up and jewellery. Tania wondered whether it was normal for old women to dress that way in America.
‘I saw some of your grandchildren in the next room,’ Lev said. ‘They’re a fine bunch.’
Grigori smiled. ‘The joy of my life. How about you?’
‘I have a daughter by Olga, the wife I never much liked, and a son by Marga here, whom I preferred. I wasn’t much of a father to either of my children. I never had your sense of responsibility.’
‘Any grandchildren?’
‘Three,’ Lev said. ‘One’s a movie star, one’s a pop singer, and one’s black.’
‘Black?’ said Grigori. ‘How did that happen?’
‘It happened the usual way, idiot. My son Greg – named for his uncle, by the way – he fucked a black girl.’
‘Well, that’s more than his uncle ever did,’ said Grigori, and the two old men chuckled.
Grigori said: ‘What a life I’ve had, Lev. I stormed the Winter Palace. We destroyed the tsars and built the first Communist country. I defended Moscow against the Nazis. I’m a general and Volodya is a general. I feel so guilty about you.’
‘Guilty about me?’
‘You went to America and missed it all,’ Grigori said.
‘I have no complaints,’ said Lev.
‘I even got Katerina, though she preferred you.’
Lev smiled. ‘And all I got was a hundred million dollars.’
‘Yes,’ said Grigori. ‘You got the worst of the deal. I’m sorry, Lev.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Lev. ‘I forgive you.’ He was being ironic but, Tania thought, Grigori did not seem to realize that.
Uncle Volodya came in. He was on his way to some army ceremony, wearing his general’s uniform. Tania realized with a sudden shock that this was the first time he had seen his real father. Lev stared at the son he had never met. ‘My God,’ Lev said. ‘He looks like you, Grigori.’
‘He’s yours, though,’ said Grigori.
Father and son shook hands.
Volodya said nothing, seeming to be in the grip of an emotion so powerful that he could not speak.
Lev said: ‘When you lost me as a father, Volodya, you didn’t lose much.’ Keeping hold of his son’s hand, he looked him up and down: gleaming boots, Red Army uniform, combat medals, piercing blue eyes, iron-grey hair. ‘I did, though,’ Lev said. ‘I guess I lost a lot.’