Edge of Eternity (67 page)

This was an embarrassing question. Dimka did not dare tell Khrushchev that people thought he was mad. Desperately improvising, he said: “The harvest. They blame you for last year's drought.” He hoped this was so implausible it would be inoffensive.

Khrushchev was not offended, but irritated. “We need new methods!” he said angrily. “They must listen to Lysenko!” He fumbled his jacket buttons, then let Tepper do them up.

Dimka kept his face expressionless. Trofim Lysenko was a scientific charlatan, a clever self-promoter who had won Khrushchev's favor even though his research was worthless. He promised improved yields that never materialized, but he managed to persuade political leaders that his opponents were “anti-progress,” an accusation that was as fatal in the USSR as “Communist” was in the USA.

“Lysenko performs experiments on cows,” Khrushchev went on. “His rivals use fruit flies! Who gives a shit about fruit flies?”

Dimka recalled his aunt Zoya talking about scientific research. “I believe the genes evolve faster in fruit flies—”

“Genes?” said Khrushchev. “Rubbish! No one has ever seen a gene.”

“No one has ever seen an atom, but that bomb destroyed Hiroshima.” Dimka regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

“What do you know about it?” Khrushchev roared. “You're just repeating what you've heard, parrot-fashion! Unscrupulous people use innocents like you to spread their lies.” He shook his fist. “We will get improved yields. You'll see! Get out of my way.”

Khrushchev pushed past Dimka and left the room.

Ivan Tepper gave Dimka an apologetic shrug.

“Don't worry,” said Dimka. “He's got mad at me before. He won't remember this tomorrow.” He hoped it was true.

Khrushchev's rage was not as worrying as his misapprehensions. He was wrong about agriculture. Alexei Kosygin, who was the best economist in the Presidium, had plans for reform that involved loosening the grip that ministries held on agriculture and other industries. That was the way to go, in Dimka's opinion; not miracle cures.

Was Khrushchev just as wrong about the plotters? Dimka did not know. He had done his best to warn his boss. He could not start a countercoup on his own.

Going down the stairs, he heard applause from the open door of the dining room. Khrushchev was receiving congratulations from the Presidium. Dimka paused in the hall. When the applause died down, he heard the slow bass voice of Brezhnev. “Dear Nikita Sergeyevitch! We, your close comrades in arms, members and candidate members of the Presidium and secretaries of the Central Committee, extend special greetings and fervently congratulate you, our closest personal friend and comrade, on your seventieth birthday.”

It was fulsome even by Soviet standards.

Which was a bad sign.

•   •   •

A few days later, Dimka was given a dacha.

He had to pay, but the rent was nominal. As with most luxuries in the Soviet Union, the difficulty was not the price but getting to the head of the queue.

A dacha—a weekend home or holiday villa—was the first ambition of upwardly mobile Soviet couples. (The second was a car.) Dachas were normally granted only to Communist Party members, naturally.

“I wonder how we got it,” Dimka mused after opening the letter.

Nina thought there was no mystery. “You work for Khrushchev,” she said. “You should have been given one long ago.”

“Not necessarily. It generally takes a few more years of service. I can't think of anything I've done recently that has been especially pleasing to him.” He recalled the argument about genes. “In fact just the opposite.”

“He likes you. Someone handed him a list of vacant dachas and he put your name next to one. He didn't think about it for longer than five seconds.”

“You're probably right.”

A dacha could be anything from a palace by the sea to a hut in a field. The following Sunday, Dimka and Nina went to find out what theirs was like. They packed a picnic lunch, then, with baby Grigor, took
the train to a village thirty miles outside Moscow. They were full of eager curiosity. A station attendant gave them directions to their place, which was called the Lodge. It took them fifteen minutes to walk there.

The house was a one-story timber cabin. It had a large kitchen-cum-living-room and two bedrooms. It was set in a small garden that ran down to a stream. Dimka thought it was paradise. He wondered again what he had done to get so lucky.

Nina liked it, too. She was excited, moving through the rooms and opening cupboards. Dimka had not seen her so happy for months.

Grigor, who was not so much walking as staggering, seemed delighted to have a new place in which to stumble and fall.

Dimka was imbued with optimism. He envisioned a future in which he and Nina came here on summer weekends year after year. Every season they would marvel over how different Grigor was from last year. Their son's growth would be measured in summers: he would talk next season, count the summer after, then catch a ball, then read, then swim. He would be a toddler here at the dacha, then a boy climbing a tree in the garden, then an adolescent with spots, then a young man charming the girls in the village.

The place had not been used for a year or more, and they threw open all the windows, then set about dusting surfaces and sweeping floors. It was partly furnished, and they started a list of things they would bring next time: a radio, a samovar, a bucket.

“I could come here with Grigor on Friday mornings in the summer,” Nina said. She was washing pottery bowls in the sink. “You could join me on Friday night, or Saturday morning if you have to work late.”

“You wouldn't mind being here on your own at night?” said Dimka as he scrubbed ancient grease off the kitchen range. “It's a bit lonely.”

“I'm not nervous, you know that.”

Grigor cried for his lunch, and Nina sat down to feed him. Dimka took a look around outside. He would have to erect a fence at the bottom of the garden, he saw, to prevent Grigor falling into the stream. It was not deep, but Dimka had read somewhere that a child could drown in three inches of water.

A gate in a wall led to a larger garden beyond. Dimka wondered who his neighbors were. The gate was not locked, so he opened it and went
through. He found himself in a small wood. Exploring, he came within sight of a larger house. He speculated that his dacha might once have been the home of the gardener at the big house.

Not wanting to intrude on someone's privacy, he turned back—and came face-to-face with a soldier in uniform.

“Who are you?” said the man.

“Dmitri Dvorkin. I'm moving into the little house next door.”

“Lucky you—it's a jewel.”

“I was just exploring. I hope I haven't trespassed.”

“You'd better stay on your own side of that wall. This place belongs to Marshal Pushnoy.”

“Oh!” said Dimka. “Pushnoy? He's a friend of my grandfather.”

“Then that's how you got the dacha,” said the soldier.

“Yes,” said Dimka, and he felt vaguely troubled. “I suppose it is.”

G
eorge's apartment was the top floor of a high, narrow Victorian row house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. He preferred this to a modern building: he liked the proportions of the nineteenth-century rooms. He had leather chairs, a high-fidelity record player, plenty of bookshelves, and plain canvas blinds at the windows instead of fussy drapes.

It looked even better with Verena in it.

He loved to see her doing everyday things in his home: sitting on the couch and kicking off her shoes, making coffee in her bra and panties, standing naked in the bathroom brushing her perfect teeth. Best of all he liked to see her asleep in his bed, as she was now, her soft lips slightly parted, her lovely face in repose, one long, slender arm thrown back to reveal the strangely sexy armpit. He leaned over her and kissed her armpit. She made a noise in her throat but did not wake up.

Verena stayed here every time she came to Washington, which was about once a month. It was driving George crazy. He wanted her all the time. But she was not willing to give up her job with Martin Luther King in Atlanta, and George could not leave Bobby Kennedy. So they were stuck.

George got up and walked naked into the kitchen. He started a pot of coffee and thought about Bobby, who was wearing his brother's clothes, spending too much time at the graveside holding hands with Jackie, and letting his political career go to hell.

Bobby was the public's favorite choice for vice president. President Johnson had not asked Bobby to be his running mate in November, nor had he ruled him out. The two men disliked one another, but that did not necessarily prevent their teaming up for a Democratic victory.

Anyway, Bobby needed to make only a small effort to become Johnson's friend. A little sucking up went a long way with Lyndon. George had planned it with his friend Skip Dickerson, who was close to Johnson. A dinner party for Johnson at Bobby and Ethel's Virginia mansion, Hickory Hill; a few warm handshakes in full view in the corridors of the Capitol; a speech in which Bobby said Lyndon was a worthy successor to his brother; it could be easily done.

George hoped it would happen. A campaign might bring Bobby out of his grief-stricken torpor. And George himself relished the prospect of working in a presidential election campaign.

Bobby could make something special of the normally insignificant post of vice president, just as he had revolutionized the role of attorney general. He would become a high-profile advocate for the things he believed in, such as civil rights.

But first Bobby needed somehow to be reanimated.

George poured two mugs of coffee and returned to the bedroom. Before getting back under the covers he turned on the television. He had a TV set in every room, like Elvis: he felt uneasy if he was away from the news too long. “Let's see who won the California Republican primary,” he said.

Verena said sleepily: “You so romantic, baby, I like to die.”

George laughed. Verena often made him laugh. It was one of the best things about her. “Who are you trying to kid?” he said. “You want to watch the news, too.”

“Okay, you're right.” She sat up and sipped coffee. The sheet fell off her, and George had to tear his gaze away to look at the screen.

The leading candidates for the Republican nomination were Barry Goldwater, the right-wing senator from Arizona, and Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal governor of New York. Goldwater was an extremist who hated labor unions, welfare, the Soviet Union, and—most of all—civil rights. Rockefeller was an integrationist and an admirer of Martin Luther King.

They had fought a close contest so far, but the result of yesterday's California primary would be decisive. The winner would take all the state's delegates, about 15 percent of the total attending the Republican convention. Whoever had won last night would almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president.

The commercial break ended, the news came on, and the primary was the top story. Goldwater had won. It was a narrow victory—52 percent to 48 percent—but Goldwater had all the California delegates.

“Hell,” said George.

“Amen to that,” said Verena.

“This is really bad news. A serious racist is going to be one of the two presidential candidates.”

“Maybe it's good news,” Verena argued. “Could be all the sensible Republicans will vote Democrat to keep Goldwater out.”

“That's worth hoping for.”

The phone rang and George picked up the bedside extension. He immediately recognized the Southern drawl of Skip Dickerson, saying: “Did you see the result?”

“Fucking Goldwater won,” said George.

“We think it's good news,” said Skip. “Rockefeller might have beaten our man, but Goldwater is too conservative. Johnson will wipe the floor with him in November.”

“That's what Martin Luther King's people think.”

“How do you know that?”

George knew because Verena had told him. “I talked to . . . some of them.”

“Already? The result has only just been announced. You're not actually in bed with Dr. King, are you, George?”

George laughed. “Never mind who I'm in bed with. What did Johnson say when you told him the result?”

Skip hesitated. “You won't like it.”

“Now I
have
to know.”

“Well, he said: ‘Now I can win without the help of that little runt.' I apologize, but you did ask.”

“Damn.”

The little runt was Bobby. George saw immediately the political calculation Johnson had made. If Rockefeller had been his opponent, Johnson would have had to work hard for liberal votes, and having Bobby on the ticket would have helped him win them. But running against Goldwater he could automatically count on all the liberal Democrats and many liberal Republicans too. His problem now would
be securing the votes of the white working class, many of whom were racist. So he no longer needed Bobby—in fact, Bobby would now be a liability.

Skip said: “I'm sorry, George, but it's, you know, realpolitik.”

“Yeah. I'll tell Bobby. Though he's probably guessed. Thanks for letting me know.”

“You bet.”

George hung up and said to Verena: “Johnson doesn't want Bobby for his running mate now.”

“It makes sense. He doesn't like Bobby, and now he doesn't need him. Who will he pick instead?”

“Gene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, or Thomas Dodd.”

“Where does this leave Bobby?”

“That's the problem.” George got up and turned the volume of the television down to a murmur, then returned to bed. “Bobby's been useless as attorney general since the assassination. I still push on with lawsuits against Southern states that prevent Negroes from voting, but he's not really interested. He's also forgotten all about organized crime—and he was doing so well! We got Jimmy Hoffa convicted, and Bobby hardly noticed.”

Shrewdly, Verena asked: “Where does that leave
you
?” She was one of only a few people who thought ahead as fast as George himself.

“I may quit,” George said.

“Wow.”

“I've been treading water for six months, and I'm not going to do it much longer. If Bobby really is a spent force I'll move on. I admire him more than any man, but I'm not going to sacrifice my life to him.”

“What will you do?”

“I could probably get a great job with a Washington law firm. I've had three years' experience in the Department of Justice, and that's worth a lot.”

“They don't hire many Negroes.”

“That's true, and a lot of firms wouldn't even give me an interview. But others might hire me just to prove they're liberal.”

“Really?”

“Things are changing. Lyndon is really hot on equal opportunities.
He sent Bobby a note complaining about how few female lawyers the Justice Department hires.”

“Good for Johnson!”

“Bobby was mad as hell.”

“So you'll work for a law firm.”

“If I stay in Washington.”

“Where else would you go?”

“Atlanta. If Dr. King still wants me.”

“You'd move to Atlanta,” Verena said thoughtfully.

“I could.”

There was a silence. They both looked at the screen. Ringo Starr had tonsillitis, the newsreader told them. George said: “If I moved to Atlanta, we could be together all the time.”

She looked pensive.

“Would you like that?” he asked her.

Still she said nothing.

He knew why. He had not said
how
they would be together. He had not planned this, but they had got to the point where they had to decide whether to get married.

Verena was waiting for him to propose.

An image of Maria Summers came into his mind, unbidden, unwanted. He hesitated.

The phone rang.

George picked it up. It was Bobby. “Hey, George, wake up,” he said jocularly.

George concentrated, trying to put the thought of marriage out of his mind for a minute. Bobby sounded happier than he had for a long time. George said: “Did you see the California result?”

“Yes. It means Lyndon doesn't need me. So I'm going to run for senator. What do you think of that?”

George was startled. “Senator! For what state?”

“New York.”

So Bobby would be in the Senate. Maybe he could shake up those crusty old conservatives, with their filibusters and their delaying tactics. “That's great!” said George.

“I want you to join my campaign team. What do you say?”

George looked at Verena. He had been on the brink of proposing marriage. But now he was not moving to Atlanta. He was going on the campaign trail, and if Bobby won he would be back in Washington, working for Senator Kennedy. Everything had changed, again.

“I say yes,” George said. “When do we start?”