Читать книгу Manila Gambit - John Zeugner - Страница 11

The group at Van Shuten’s consists of a surgeon, a pediatrician, a supermarket owner, three bank vice-presidents, two ministers, one systems analyst from Saturn Inc., in the northwest corner of Hane County, two high school teachers of American history (part-time basketball and soccer coaches respectively) and three older gentlemen whom Van Shuten introduces as friends from a long time ago in the old country. They have Russian sounding names, but in truth I am not clearly focused—as I imagine Waldo is not, too. The gin and wine and Drambuie gives the assemblage, nearly arranged in rows of folding chairs in Van Shuten’s large living room, the aura or radiance or fellow feeling that I sometimes get at bars during closing hours, or what I hope it’s like in locker rooms after a big victory. We all know instinctively why we’re here at this crucial decline of the great republic.

Waldo is introduced as the owner-publisher of the Hane Tribune to the three Russian gentlemen. These fellows are apparently the center of this month’s meeting. Waldo adopts a certain distance and a sturdy, nodding patrician air. Can he be grappling for the ability to stand straight, I wonder. This is the third time I have attended one of these meetings and Waldo sees no reason to introduce me once again. I take a seat, naturally enough in the back, let my legs go straight forward under the seat before me, almost touching the neatly polished loafers of the pediatrician.

Van Shuten, short, gnome-like, stands before the group and mentions something about the treasurer’s report. One of the ministers stands and reads off cash figures. He remarks that the number of calls to the recorded message is steadily declining, as if people are tiring of the litany of despair. Van Shuten emphasizes that the recording needs more than a weekly change. The group sponsors a telephone message evaluating the current political situation in terms of freedoms lost. There is another report on the continuing attempt to reestablish ROTC at Hane High School, and then another on the campaign to unseat Hane County’s long-term and rather suspiciously liberal Congressman who floated to power “During,” Van Shuten notes sarcastically, “during the cataclysm of the New Deal and has been sleeping at the socialist switch ever since.”

Someone commends Waldo for adding the Buckley, Safire and Buchanan columns to the Tribune but wonders why the Tribune doesn’t take a firmer stand against deficit spending. Waldo nods, but doesn’t respond—an interesting tactic that clearly nonplusses Van Shuten. After an appropriate or inappropriate silence Van Shuten goes ahead and introduces the three gentlemen who speak briefly about their lives in America as outcasts from their beloved Russia. The three must be beyond seventy-five years of age, but there is clarity and immediacy in their reports of remembered Russia—details of servants, and freedoms and expansivenesses, and blessed safety. Then each finishes with a small hymn to American constitutional guarantees and the continuing threat from the temporary displacers and rapists of Russia, the Soviet Communists. Was life truly over for them in 1917, I wonder? A long time for leftover existence. Being leftover.

I imagine Hillary and the shards of lamb or whatever it was she was chewing as we watched just a while ago. What was she eating? I try to recollect it, but the booze has worked a wonderful relaxation. These old men are really splendid people, filled with a vision of the past that makes the present endurable, is that it? They want to return to their native land. Who would not want to join them? Let’s all go back, I think. Especially Waldo and Hillary, surely the sharpest two people I know.

But something is not quite right. I hear hostility in the buzzing air. The nostalgia is gone and eyes are turning toward me. What can be happening? Clearly someone is upset. Someone is very upset. Better listen. Better listen carefully now, but the accents are peculiar—ingratiating but peculiar. Difficult to fix on. One of them is saying something about chess. That’s it. Someone is talking about chess. No need to feel hostile about that. But, ah, such an automatic response. A clue there? Maybe I can’t last through the Interzonals. Such a long time away.

Van Shuten restates the argument, looking this time at Waldo, who merely turns toward me. Van Shuten says, “So the position is clear enough. Even publishing a column on the game lends a kind of support to Soviet hegemony. I can understand that. The Soviets have put enormous investment into their chess prowess, and we here simply call attention to that achievement. Every other day reminding hapless readers that, after all, the Soviets are masters of this intellectual endeavor. Why should we become the vehicle of publicity of Soviet pre-eminence, is that your position?” Van Shuten turns toward the three gentlemen

“The game seems innocent enough,” says one, “but that is the point. It is not innocent to the Soviets. They see it as a wedge into the intellectual aspirations of the rest of the world.”

“More than that,” the other says, “publicity about the game legitimizes a despicable system that robs the youth of Russia of their own intellectual freedom. Making heroes out of these automatons created by the Soviet chess system.”

“More than that, the last says, “it sanctions the whole elitist framework by which Soviet masters lead an elevated life while the masses in Russia continue in their long lines and in their endless suffering.”

I am thinking, who is suffering? Let me get this right. The masses of Russia—they are suffering because of my chess column? Can that be it?

“Three powerful arguments,” Van Shuten says, “perhaps we can hear from the publisher?”

Waldo slowly gets to his feet. “Good points, but why not hear from the horse’s mouth. Maybe not everybody knows it, but Mr. Snell who bylines the column, is actually here tonight. Right back there.” Waldo points at me. Waldo’s meaty and surprisingly red hand goes up and down gesturing at me.

I start gathering my legs up. It takes an enormously long time to reel them in from under the pediatrician’s chair. They are like the old time dental drills, weird springs bobbing back into place under the chairs, despite conscious summonings. And Waldo’s menacing hand is like the dentist’s light above the group. I struggle to my feet. “Ah, ah,” I say, conscious of turning flaming red, “Ah, I’m sorry. I don’t quite, ah, I don’t quite,” I take a deep breath, thinking this is very peculiar. “I don’t quite see the issue. Maybe if you could state it again, I could respond a little more coherently, a little more—”

“Chess,” Van Shuten interrupts me, “is a Soviet achievement—”

“But Fischer was an American,” I interrupt him.

“True enough. But no one would deny Soviet supremacy in the chess world.”

“It’s a game, a game the Soviets have only recently, very recently, dominated it. Maybe in a while—”

“You’re missing the point,” Van Shuten says, a little too loud it seems to me.

“You are not thinking deeply about what you are saying,” one of the elderly gentlemen says slowly, in a kindly fashion. “It was a game, but the Soviets have transformed it into an instrument of propaganda, a constant reminder to the world of the edge they feel their system has. You have to stop thinking of it as a game.”

“There are no games,” another says.

“There are no games,” I repeat. That seems like good sense. I can begin to relax. “There are no games. There are no games. I didn’t want to write the column. I really didn’t.”

“You didn’t?” Van Shuten shouts.

Waldo is back on his feet, four fingers against the back of the chair in front of him.

“You didn’t want to write the column? Someone forced you to write the column, is that it?” Van Shuten fairly howls with interest. “Someone told you to do it. Ordered you to do it?”

“Technically,” Waldo says firmly, “technically,” he repeats louder, “Mr. Snell is correct.”

“Who ordered you to write the column?” Van Shuten cuts Waldo off. “Who? Who?”

“Wait a minute,” Waldo says, taking his fingers off the chair. “Wait a minute.”

Van Shuten stops. The rooms falls silent. Waldo waits, then he says “Wait a minute.” We wait. “The decision to initiate the column, the decision to initiate the column,” Waldo speaks slowly, doubtless trying to find some way out. “The Tampa Tribune has a chess column. So does the Fort Myers Sun.”

“So does the St. Petersburg Times,” Van Shuten sneers.

“And the New York Times. And the Daily Worker,” someone shouts.

“I understand that, “Waldo says, “The decision was an editorial decision and a circulation decision. We were losing readership in the trailer parks. Isn’t it better they should find their chess interests met by the Hane Tribune with its columnists, than by the St. Petersburg Times and with its columnists? Isn’t it?” Waldo begins to ride an evidently appreciated point.

“Besides,” I add, getting into the loopy swing of things, “the column will have a very American focus. I want to write about younger American masters. People like Fischer who can humiliate the Soviets, the Soviet system, make a mockery of it. Prove it to be stultifying, insulting, to the natural function of the most advanced minds.” I wonder what are the natural functions of advanced minds?

“Good point,” someone says.

“Fischer was an exception,” someone disagrees.

“America is full of Fischers,” Waldo says, resonantly. “That’s the secret of America, the secret of this great republic!”

The phrase echoes in the long living room, under the slowly revolving bamboo ceiling fans. And before Van Shuten or someone less enthusiastic can react, an elderly black man in a white jacket wheels in a tray of coffees and nineteen tiny, filled brandy snifters. With tacit swiftness the groups stands and moves quickly toward the trays.