*
As she left the apartment, Tania found herself wondering where the Bolsheviks had gone wrong, where Grandfather Grigori’s idealism and energy had been perverted into tyranny. She went to the bus stop, heading for a rendezvous with Vasili. On the bus, thinking over the early years of the Russian revolution, she wondered whether Lenin’s decision to close all newspapers except the Bolshevik ones had been the key error. It meant that, right from the start, alternative ideas had had no circulation and the conventional wisdom could never be challenged. Gorbachev in Stavropol was exceptional in having been allowed to try something different. Such people were generally stifled. Tania was a journalist, and suspected herself of egocentrically overrating the importance of a free press, but it seemed to her that the lack of critical newspapers made it much easier for other forms of oppression to flourish.
It was now four years since Vasili had been released. In that time he had shrewdly rehabilitated himself. At the Agriculture Ministry he had devised an educational radio serial set on a collective farm. As well as the dramas about unfaithful wives and disobedient children, the characters discussed agricultural techniques. Naturally, the peasants who ignored advice from Moscow were lazy and shiftless, and the wayward teenagers who questioned the Communist Party’s authority were the ones who were jilted by their boyfriends or failed their exams. The serial was a huge success. Vasili returned to Radio Moscow and was given an apartment in a block occupied by writers approved by the government.
Their meetings were clandestine, but Tania also ran into him occasionally at union events or private parties. He was no longer the walking cadaver that had returned from Siberia in 1972. He had put on weight and regained some of his former presence. Now in his mid-forties, he would never again be movie-star handsome; but the lines of strain on his face somehow added to his allure. And he still had buckets of charm. Each time Tania saw him he was with a different woman. They were not the nubile teenagers who had adored him in his thirties, though perhaps they were the middle-aged women those teenagers had become: smart females in chic clothes and high-heeled shoes, who always seemed able to get hold of scarce nail varnish, hair dye and stockings.
Tania met him secretly once a month.
Each time he would bring her the latest instalment of the book he was working on, written in the small, neat handwriting he had developed in Siberia to save paper. She would type it for him, correcting his spelling and punctuation where necessary. At their next meeting she would hand him the typescript for review and discuss it with him.
Millions of people around the world bought Vasili’s books, but he never met any of them. He could not even read the reviews, which were written in foreign languages and published in Western newspapers. So Tania was the only person with whom he could discuss his work, and he listened hungrily to everything she had to say. She was his editor.
Tania went to Leipzig every March to cover the book fair there, and each time she met with Anna Murray. She always came back with a present for Vasili from Anna – an electric typewriter, a cashmere overcoat – and news of even more money piling up in his London bank account. He would probably never get to spend any of it.
She still took careful precautions when meeting him. Today she got off the bus a mile from the rendezvous, and made sure she was not being followed while she walked to the café, called Josef’s. Vasili was already there, sitting at a table with a vodka glass in front of him. On the chair beside him was a large buff envelope. Tania waved casually, as if they were acquaintances meeting by chance. She got a beer from the bar then sat opposite Vasili.
She was happy to see him looking so well. His face had a dignity he had not possessed fifteen years earlier. He still had soft brown eyes, but nowadays they were keenly perceptive as often as they twinkled with mischief. She realized there was no one, outside her family, whom she knew better. She knew his strengths: imagination, intelligence, charm, and the gritty determination that had enabled him to survive and keep writing for a decade in Siberia. She also knew his weaknesses, the main one of which was an irresistible urge to seduce.
‘Thanks for the tip about Stavropol,’ she said. ‘I’ve done a nice piece.’
‘Good. Let’s just hope the whole experiment doesn’t get stamped on.’
She handed Vasili the last episode, typed out, and nodded at the envelope. ‘Another chapter?’
‘The last.’ He gave it to her.
‘Anna Murray will be happy.’ Vasili’s new novel was called First Lady. In it the American President’s wife – as it might be, Pat Nixon – got lost in Moscow for twenty-four hours. Tania marvelled at Vasili’s power of invention. Seeing life in the USSR through the eyes of a well-meaning conservative American was a richly comic way to criticize Soviet society. She slipped the envelope into her shoulder bag.
Vasili said: ‘When can you take the whole thing to the publisher?’
‘As soon as I get a foreign trip. At the latest, next March, in Leipzig.’
‘March?’ Vasili was disappointed. ‘That’s six months away,’ he said in a tone of reproof.
‘I’ll try to get an assignment where I could meet her.’
‘Please do.’
Tania was offended. ‘Vasili, I risk my damn life to do this for you. Get someone else, if you can, or do the job yourself. Hell, I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Of course.’ He was immediately contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I have so much invested in it – three years’ work, all in the evenings after I come home from my job. But I have no right to be impatient with you.’ He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. ‘You’ve been my lifeline, more than once.’
She nodded. It was true.
All the same, she still felt cross with him as she walked away from the café with the ending of his novel in her bag. What was bugging her? It was those women in high-heeled shoes, she decided. She felt that Vasili should have grown out of that phase. Promiscuity was adolescent. He demeaned himself by showing up at every literary party with a different date. By now he should have settled down in a serious relationship with a woman who was his equal. She could be younger, perhaps, but she should be able to match his intelligence and appreciate his work, perhaps even help him with it. He needed a partner, not a series of trophies.
She went to the TASS office. Before she reached her desk she was accosted by Pyotr Opotkin, the editor-in-chief for features, the department’s political overseer. As always, a cigarette dangled from his lips. ‘I’ve had a call from the Agriculture Ministry. Your piece on Stavropol can’t go out,’ he said.
‘What? Why not? The bonus system has been passed by the Ministry. And it works.’
‘Wrong.’ Opotkin liked to tell people they were wrong. ‘It’s been scrapped. There’s a new approach, the Ipatovo Method. They send fleets of combine harvesters all over the region.’
‘Central control again, instead of individual responsibility.’
‘Exactly.’ He took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘You’ll have to write a completely new article about the Ipatovo Method.’
‘What does the regional First Secretary say?’
‘Young Gorbachev? He’s implementing the new system.’
Of course he was, Tania reflected. He was an intelligent man. He knew when to shut up and do as he was told. Otherwise, he would not have become First Secretary.
‘All right,’ she said, stifling her anger. ‘I’ll write a new piece.’
Opotkin nodded and walked away.
It had been too good to be true, Tania thought: a new idea, bonuses paid for good results, improved harvests in consequence, no input required from Moscow. It was a miracle the system had been permitted for a few years. In the long run, such a system was totally out of the question.
Of course it was.
52
George Jakes wore a new tuxedo. He looked pretty good in it, he thought. At forty-two he no longer had the wrestler’s physique he had been so proud of in his youth, but he was still slim and straight, and the black-and-white wedding uniform flattered him.
He stood in the Bethel Evangelical Church, which his mother had been attending for decades, in the Washington suburb he now represented as congressman. It was a low brick building, small and plain, and normally it was decorated only with a few framed quotations from the Bible: ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ and ‘In the beginning was the Word’. But today it was decked out for celebration, with streamers and ribbons and masses of white flowers. The choir was belting out ‘Soon Come’ while George waited for his bride.
In the front row, his mother wore a new dark-blue suit and a matching pillbox hat with a little veil. ‘Well, I’m glad,’ Jacky had said when George told her he was getting married. ‘I’m fifty-eight years old, and I’m sorry you waited so gosh-darn long, but I’m happy you got here in the end.’ Her tongue was always sharp, but today she could not keep the proud smile from her face. Her son was getting married in her church, in front of all her friends and neighbours, and on top of that he was a congressman.
Next to her was George’s father, Senator Greg Peshkov. Somehow he was able to make even a tuxedo look like creased pyjamas. He had forgotten to put cufflinks in his shirt, and his bow tie looked like a dead moth. No one minded.
Also in the front row were George’s Russian grandparents, Lev and Marga, now in their eighties. Both looked frail, but they had flown from Buffalo for the wedding of their grandson.
By showing up at the wedding, and sitting in the front row, George’s white father and grandparents were admitting the truth to the world; but no one cared. This was 1978, and what had once been a secret disgrace now hardly mattered.
The choir began to sing ‘You Are So Beautiful’ and everyone turned and looked back towards the church door.
Verena came in on the arm of her father, Percy Marquand. George gasped when he saw her, and so did several people in the congregation. She wore a daring off-the-shoulder white dress that was tight to mid-thigh then flared to a train. The caramel skin of her bare shoulders was as soft and smooth as the satin of her dress. She looked so wonderful it hurt. George felt tears sting his eyes.
The service passed in a blur. George managed to make the right responses, but all he could think was that Verena was his, now, for ever.
The ceremony was folksy, but there was nothing modest about the wedding breakfast thrown afterwards by the bride’s father. Percy rented Pisces, a Georgetown nightclub that featured a twenty-foot waterfall at the entrance emptying into a giant goldfish pond on the floor below, and an aquarium in the middle of the dance floor.
George and Verena’s first dance was to the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’. George was not much of a dancer, but it hardly mattered: everyone was looking at Verena, holding up her train with one hand while disco-dancing. George was so happy he wanted to hug everyone.
The second person to dance with the bride was Ted Kennedy, who had come without his wife, Joan: there were rumours that they had split. Jacky grabbed the handsome Percy Marquand. Verena’s mother, Babe Lee, danced with Greg.
George’s cousin Dave Williams, the pop star, was there with his sexy wife, Beep, and their five-year-old son, John Lee, named after the blues singer John Lee Hooker. The boy danced with his mother, and strutted so expertly that he made everyone laugh: he must have seen Saturday Night Fever.
Elizabeth Taylor danced with her latest husband, the millionaire would-be-senator John Warner. Liz was wearing the famous square-cut thirty-three-carat Krupp diamond on the ring finger of her right hand. Seeing all this through a mist of euphoria, George realized dazedly that his wedding had turned into one of the outstanding social events of the year.
George had invited Maria Summers, but she had declined. After their brief love affair had ended in a quarrel, they had not spoken for a year. George had been hurt and bewildered. He did not know how he was supposed to live his life: the rules had changed. He also felt resentful. Women wanted a new deal, and they expected him to know, without being told, what the deal was, and to agree to it without negotiation.
Then Verena had emerged from seven years of obscurity. She had started her own lobbying company in Washington, specializing in civil rights and other equalities issues. Her initial clients were small pressure groups who could not afford to employ their own full-time lobbyist. The rumour that Verena had once been a Black Panther seemed only to give her greater credibility. Before long she and George were an item again.
Verena seemed to have changed. One evening she said: ‘Dramatic gestures have their place in politics, but in the end advances are made by patient legwork: drafting legislation and talking to the media and winning votes.’ You’ve grown up, George thought, and he only just stopped himself from saying it.
The new Verena wanted marriage and children, and felt sure she could have both and a career too. Once burned, George did not again put his hand in the fire: if that was what she thought, it was not up to him to argue.
George had written a tactful letter to Maria, beginning: ‘I don’t want you to hear this from someone else.’ He had told her that he and Verena were together again and talking about marriage. Maria had replied in tones of warm friendship, and their relationship had reverted to what it had been before Nixon resigned. But she remained single, and did not come to the wedding.
Taking a break from dancing, George sat down with his father and grandfather. Lev was downing champagne with relish and telling jokes. A Polish cardinal had been made Pope, and Lev had a fund of bad-taste Polish Pope jokes. ‘He did a miracle – made a blind man deaf!’
Greg said: ‘I think this is a highly aggressive political move by the Vatican.’
George was surprised by that, but Greg usually had grounds for what he said. ‘How so?’ said George.
‘Catholicism is more popular in Poland than elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and the Communists aren’t strong enough to repress religion there as they have in all other countries. There’s a Polish religious press, a Catholic university, and various charities that get away with sheltering dissidents and noting human rights abuses.’
George said: ‘So what is the Vatican up to?’
‘Mischief. I believe they see Poland as the Soviet Union’s weak spot. This Polish Pope will do more than wave at tourists from the balcony – you watch.’
George was about to ask what the Pope would do when the room went quiet and he realized that President Carter had arrived.
Everyone applauded, even the Republicans. The President kissed the bride, shook hands with George, and accepted a glass of pink champagne, although he took only one sip.
While Carter was talking to Percy and Babe, who were long-term Democratic fund-raisers, one of the President’s aides approached George. After a few pleasantries the man said: ‘Would you consider serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?’
George was flattered. Congressional Committees were important. A seat on a committee was a source of power. ‘I’ve been in Congress only two years,’ he said.
The aide nodded. ‘The President is keen to advance black congressmen, and Tip O’Neill agrees.’ Tip O’Neill was the House Majority Leader, who had the prerogative of granting committee seats.
George said: ‘I’ll be glad to serve the President any way I can – but Intelligence?’
The CIA and other intelligence agencies reported to the President and the Pentagon, but they were authorized, funded and in theory controlled by Congress. For security, control was delegated to two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said the aide. ‘Intelligence committees are usually packed with conservative friends of the military. You’re a liberal who has criticized the Pentagon over Vietnam and the CIA over Watergate. But that’s why we want you. At present those committees don’t oversee, they just applaud. And intelligence agencies that think they can get away with murder will commit murder. So we need someone in there asking tough questions.’
‘The intelligence community is going to be horrified.’
‘Good,’ said the aide. ‘After the way they behaved in the Nixon era, they need to be shaken up.’ He glanced across the dance floor. Following his gaze, George saw that President Carter was leaving. ‘I have to go,’ the aide said. ‘Do you want time to think?’
‘Hell, no,’ said George. ‘I’ll do it.’