"Barry N Malzberg - In the Stone House" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)
It's enormous, he said, I don't believe it. This cannot be. This cannot be happening to us.
It was always meant to happen, JFK said. Now I told you. We can sneak you out the back way so that no one knows you were here.
How is Bobby taking it, Joe said, does he know?
JFK grinned. I guess he would know, the President said. I mean, I fired him face to face. It would be difficult to do that and for him not to know, right? Oh, he's in a ruddy gloom, Bobby is. But he'll get over it. We all get over it sooner or later. I've had my heart broken more times than you were up over Germany, Joe, and I've lived to tell the tale. You've lived pretty good yourself, and they could have shot you down anytime. Life goes on as long as you have it, that's all, you know? I'll get you down the back stairs. Anyway, that's the deal. How's your love life? I'll tell you, it's never been the same for me since the blonde did herself in. But that's another story.
Don't talk to me about the blonde, Joe said. How can you talk about the blonde? This is vile, do you hear me? It is enormous. It is impossible, it is the end of all of us, don't you see? You have destroyed us.
No, JFK said. He patted Joe's hand. That's why you're still trapped and I'm free now. Because you don't see it, you never got away, even when he made you quit you were still his property. But I see it and I tell you that this is the making of us. This is the beginning. It is the true beginning of the story. It is the beginning of the Kennedy story and someday you will see that. And now it is time for you to go, brother, but you may take a paperweight from the Oval Office as a reminder of why you no longer miss the place.
10/26/63 He hadn't been able to reach the old man first, of course. That was impossible. He had put in the call to the compound right after the conversation with Jack but no luck, the word was that the old man was getting physical therapy and couldn't be bothered. Not even by his son, the ex-President of the United States. Which meant that the old man was fucking or trying to fuck the nurse again. Half of his brain had been shut down, but the old man was still in there fighting and for all Joe Jr. knew he was having a kind of success. You had to give the old man credit, he was in there fighting until the end. In the second place, no one was really returning his calls or picking him up now, it was amazing how far an ex-President could fail if he had been out of office for almost seven years and if he had a brother-successor who was a real bastard. A real maneuverer, that was JFK. Thinking about it could get Joe sick so he tried not to consider what had happened to him, how quickly it had all unraveled. Throttlebottom, wasn't that the name? the little Vice President in Of Thee I Sing who gave guided tours around the White House wearing a uniform and who had lunch with his mother every day. Joe hadn't turned into a Throttlebottom, not quite, he could probably seek paying employment and get it if he wanted (he didn't want it) and probably half the adult population could name his previous occupation, but it was still a hell of a thing.
So he had settled for trying to get through to Bobby. Bobby at least would take his calls, would listen to him, and this time maybe Joe could say a few words to the Attorney General that might be of some comfort. It was a hell of a situation, that was for sure. But Bobby wasn't available, he was locked up incommunicado somewhere in the Justice Department, maybe with Hoover for all Joe knew, and there was no word on whether he would return the call if ever. So Joe had been absolutely at loose ends, the first time it had been that way for him in years. He literally did not know where to go. Surfacing, showing up in public would be suicide now, the press would be all over him, would want quotes, would want to know what Jack had in mind. The city was exploding, absolutely on fire with this, with the unbelievable news that JFK had ditched his younger brother, the Attorney General, and had announced that he was going to back the Vice President for the nomination. The end of the dynasty, it seemed, the planned succession of Kennedys. Ted had been smart, he was hiding out in the Senate well, holding the gavel for the absent LBJ and denying comment of all kind. Besides, what the hell could a freshman Senator have to say about any of this? Teddy was thirty-one years old, he was in the Senate on a family pass, everybody knew that they had used up every bit of credit this time to sneak him in and if there was a next stop for the dynasty it wouldn't be at his house for a long time, maybe never. So Joe stayed away from Teddy too. He hung out in the secret apartment on K Street, just him and his one Secret Service guy, sharing a bottle and telling stories about the war yet again, they had both been pilots over Dresden and Secret Service had had worse luck than Joe, had had to make an emergency landing and evade capture over land. It was kind of an interesting story, but Joe was sick of it. He was sick of the whole damned thing, that was the truth, the war and the hero stories and the dynasty and the old man's plans, all of it, the whole business. There was enough of it now, and with JFK pulling this rotten move there would be nothing but a recycling of all that stuff over and again.
There had been a time, just a few moments it seemed, after his discharge, when Joe thought that he might be free of it. Just as JFK had planned to go on and teach history at Harvard or Tufts or Haverford, hang out some place and be an academic, avoid the whole thing, Joe had thought that he might go to law school and then into pro bono work of some kind, maybe go into the down-and-out district around Scully Square and try to pay back some of Honey Fitz's debts. It wouldn't have been a bad life and somewhere along the way there might even have been a woman, one of the succession who would have stock. He could have gotten a subscription to Friday Symphony, gone to Symphony Hall in the early afternoons and sat in the slant light of that cathedral and listened to Brahms, just Brahms and pro bono and one woman who would listen to him but that shimmering little moment had passed when the old man had sat them down early in the year and had laid out the situation. You and you and you. Joe would have tried to balk, but what was the point? No one got anywhere with the old man, Gloria Swanson had been the strongest-willed actress in the world, stronger than Marion Davies had been with the Ambassador's friend Hearst, and where had it gotten her? She was a slut on a boat, just gash for the old man and that's how she stayed. If Gloria Swanson couldn't beat this guy, then Joe who bore his name with the diminishing Jr. below didn't have a chance. JFK didn't have a chance, Bobby with his verve and his big eyes was down on the list but he was locked in too. Only Ted among them might have gotten through, he was fourteen years old then and the old man hadn't noticed him yet.
So Joe had capitulated. Run for Congress? All right he would run for Congress. Spring for the Senate because you had to keep on moving or get shot out of the water? That would be okay too. The presidency? Well, that had been a big leap, the biggest, but the Ambassador had put it to him bluntly. No one is going to beat the general unless we do it, the Ambassador had said, Truman is finished and the Democrats are done for unless they get a complete overhaul. And then what? Do you want that bastard Nixon just a heartbeat away, waiting for the old general to keel over? You know that the general is a figurehead, it will be Nixon and McCarthy running the show and we don't want that, do we? Joe Jr. had fallen for that, not Nixon so much, a thirty-nine-year-old shit who Joe had gotten to know in the Senate as too much of a nut case to ever be dangerous--but McCarthy in control... that was another story. (He hadn't known the Ambassador's full cunning, hadn't measured the Ambassador's plans.) So okay, he had run. He shrugged. What the hell? It was the presidency, there were people who had been forced to do far worse, like march to their deaths in gas chambers or take rickety planes high in the air to be open targets for every ground gunner in Dresden. You couldn't complain that being forced to run for the presidency was perdition. All right, Joe had said, all right then. We'll try it. There was the good possibility they would lose, the general had his points, and if he didn't lose, how bad could it be? He already knew that he was just keeping the seat warm for Jack, who the Ambassador was beginning to suspect was the real political guy here, the real son-in-waiting. Joe Jr. didn't care about that either. If they would just leave him alone, he could put it together. Sure he could. That was the plan.
Oddly, it was LBJ who took him out of this recursive brooding, this spiteful hammering at his history, the infinite and repeated measure of the betrayals which had become his post-presidential lot and now seemed in the wake of the Ambassador's unavailability, JFK's implacability, Bobby's invisibility, to be his complete fate. LBJ had turned him up at the secret apartment and had invited him over to Blair House for a confidential talk, just a courtesy he hoped he would get from the ex-President in hope of his continued support. That was LBJ for you, still maneuvering around, even when the maneuvering was unnecessary and made him look silly. But he couldn't get off the can. All right with me, Joe Jr. said. He told his Secret Service to take the afternoon off and went over on his own. No one seemed to care. Security had really been so lax with the ex-President for years that it was almost as if they had wanted him to get taken down, just end the whole problem. LBJ was full of courtesies, of winks and nods, of little pats on the hand and flourishes with the bottle of Jack Daniel's which he insisted Joe Jr. partake. I hope, LBJ said, that I can persuade you to put my name in nomination. It would be a great honor.
I don't know, Joe said, I haven't thought about it.
A serious honor, LBJ said. Or you can be a second if that's all you want. Anything you say. It would be a great unifying gesture.
I haven't thought about it, Joe said. I'm still in shock. I just haven't worked this out.
Yes, LBJ said, it is sure a shock. That is a boy of many surprises, our Jack, isn't he? He is one surprising boy in good times and bad. But certainly a good-looking boy and a great President. I hope that I can honor him in succession.
That was LBJ. Blair House, the sitting room, no one there, Claudia knocking around somewhere upstairs, the staff dismissed or in hiding for the afternoon, an audience of one, then, and LBJ was still making speeches. You had to give him all kinds of credit, he never stopped. But wasn't that the Ambassador's lesson? You couldn't let go, you couldn't let down, not even once, because then you got led into bad habits and soon it would all unravel. So LBJ was still working the territory, audience of one, audience of a thousand, it was all the same. Still, Joe was the ex-President, that should count for something. So maybe he was an audience of a thousand.
Tell me, LBJ said. His cunning features, those of a hound, became even more shrewd, he leaned toward Joe. Fifty-five years old, he had the sudden, frightening ingenuousness of the thirteen-year-old kid in the schoolyard saying to the first grader, I sure could use your lunch money now, so why don't you pass it over? Why did he do it? LBJ said. What does he have up his sleeve?
I don't know, Joe said. I really don't know.
You talked to him. He had you in there the day after he did it, the day after he told me and Bobby what he was going to do. He must have told you something. What is the plan? Is he straight on this?
As far as I know.
Why would he ditch Bobby? Did Bobby do something bad? LBJ said, nudging Joe's elbow. Was that it, was it some kind of get-even, or to protect him? Because I've got to know that. If something comes out when I'm running, in mid-campaign, I ought to know that now. Why would he ditch his own brother?
I can't answer that, Joe said. I don't think there's anything bad, though. I just think maybe that he's had enough.
Who's had enough? The President?
Oh, that Ambassador is something, LBJ said, he is really something. Fighting back from a stroke and all that. Still as stubborn as they come, a real guy. One of my favorite people. He paused. You say Jack has had enough of him?
Maybe, Joe said. Maybe that's it. I can't be sure. You have to draw a line somewhere. Maybe Jack has drawn that line.
I don't know, LBJ said. It's too deep for me, I'm just a simple son of the South, a man's man, a drinking derby of one. He lifted the glass. I sure would appreciate your support though, he said. And that's a fact. Your support would be very important to me. The Kennedys are this country, you know that, don't you?
Oh, I hope not, Joe said. I hope that's not the case. But it's true. Sure you boys are. You put it together. You're in the movie magazines and the newspapers, you're on television and you're a soap opera too. You are America. A poor Southern boy like me, he hardly has a chance to get his name in nomination these days. Which is why Jack astounds me, why I can't figure this out.
Don't ask me, Joe said, I am the ex-President. If I could figure things out I would be in a different condition.
LBJ put a hand on his wrist. He wouldn't double-cross me, would he? he said. That's what I want to know. This isn't some slick maneuver, is it, and at the convention Bobby storms it and looks like an opposition candidate when it's really you all the same? That would be a bad business.
Joe shrugged. I don't know, he said, I'm out of all this. It's just headlines and memories to me now.
That stuff with Cuba, LBJ said, that was a pisser. I thought that Bobby was going to shit, I swear. I thought he was going to have a fit right in that office. But the guy went along with the plan in the end, didn't he? He fell into line. You boys, you all fall into line with each other, no matter how it seems. That's family, right?
Joe put down the glass, shook it, watched the ice revolve. Maybe, he said. I tell you, I don't know. You have me up here for a special reason, to pump me for information, and I tell you I can't give you what you want. I'm going to go now, I'm going to pack it in. Maybe you'll hear from me later.
A nomination would be a good thing, LBJ said. And there would be something in it for you. How would you like to be Secretary of State? How about that? Or UN ambassador? I've had enough of Adlai, I think, we all have. Or how would you like to be your old man and go to the Court of St. James's? You'd be the first ex-President to do some real government service. Why don't you think about it? You're a young man, younger than I, you still got it all ahead of you. We can work out something.
That was it. That was LBJ. He could always work out something, that was the way he saw life, everyone was stumbling around, looking to have an angle or to enact one, and Joe was just part of the party. Any man could be bought, any man could be sold. By all rights of experience, LBJ was on the bail, that was the way it happened. I don't know, Joe said, I'll think about it. We can talk about it next year. It's a long way to the convention.
It's going to be Atlantic City, LBJ said. That's where I want it. Jack said it was my choice and that's it.
Sure, Joe said, sure. There had to be a way out of Blair House. He had been over when he was in office a few times, Sparkman had shown him the corridors and hallways, he ought to remember. Sparkman was good at getting out of Blair House and so was he. He walked. LBJ sat on the chair at attention, his hands folded, peering at him brightly, letting him go unescorted. That was LBJ. Ferally alert, right through to the very end. It got you a reputation and you had to eat a lot of shit along the way, but at the end you were around all right, and there to pick up the pieces. All of the pieces. So much for the succession. Joe snapped back, came away from the parapet, looked no more at the imponderable, unspeakable future, felt himself hurled again and again into the hard wail of the past.
Somewhere back there were the conditions which if only understood could have changed all of this, even yet. Or so he thought. But you never knew. You never knew.
8/28/46 In the stone house at Hyannisport, Joe Jr. had sat with the girl, Rhoda, through the early afternoon and talked, talked through the soft dwindling light cuffing in the windows and into the early dark. They had made love through the morning, past stupor and into that high, fine, dense place which Joe had known only a few times in his life, most of them at high altitude and in dread of imminent death, but this was different. They had only known each other for three days but the connection was there, even a sense of possibility. The campaign was going all right, it was more than a safe seat, it was so easy that even the old man had slacked off on him and had allowed him to take a few days off for what the old man called with a smile, rejuvenation. The big push would begin right after Labor Day, but now there was some time for Rhoda. She was pretty in an unconventional, Wellesley-girl kind of way, the body wasn't much but she knew how to use it, and beyond that there was something else, something which touched Joe and showed him parts of himself which he had never been convinced were quite there. Knowing that they were there would have been too risky, dangerous maybe, but in this late August the Congressman-to-be didn't care. Rhoda was a secretary at the Worcester office, detailed to be on the road, just filling in the summer after college while she made decisions about her life, she said, but Joe suspected that she didn't much care either. Not caring was precious, there was so little of it in life and even then Joe must have known that it would never be happening for him again, that this was a weekend knocked out of eternity.
I don't understand, she said to him, I don't understand what it is with you boys. Young men. The three of you. I mean I haven't met Eddie yet, but it's probably the four of you. What is it with you and your father?
I don't know, Joe said. I don't know what you're asking. I've seen how you talk about him. I've seen how you act when he comes to headquarters or gets up on that rostrum with you, I've watched Jack's face, and Bobby's too. You're afraid of him, aren't you? He really scares you, all of you, very badly.
This is not the way to make points with the Congressman, Joe said. You are not playing your cards right if you are looking for my heart.
I'm not looking for your heart, Rhoda said. She held his hand, looked at him with much intensity. I'm looking for you, don't you know that? I'm trying to find you, Joe, I'm trying to help us both see who you are. You were in the war, you flew planes, dropped bombs, you were a hero. Jack did Navy duty. Bobby didn't do much of anything but that wasn't his fault, the two of you boys though were out there making the world free for democracy. What does he have over you?
It's not fear, exactly, Joe said. It's not that. The Ambassador-- He paused. The Ambassador is a very strong man. He is very insistent. He has big plans and has had them for a long time. Sometimes it is just easier to get out of the way and let him have his plans, you know? It is not worth opposing him.
This makes no sense at all, she said. You know that you're not a coward. So why are you acting like one? You saved the world for him, Joe. So why do you want to please him so? What is there about him that he holds over you?
Plans, Joe said. He has large plans. It's hard to explain. It's hard for anyone outside of the family to understand--
That's bullshit, she said and smiled at him when she saw him twitch. Bullshit, she said again. You don't have to be in the family to figure out what he has in mind. He wants you to be President. The first Catholic President. Primogenitor, because you're the oldest. Then Jack. Then Bobby. Then for all I know, Edward. One, two, three, four. Those are his plans. He's always had them, from the time his sons were born. He would have drowned his daughters if Rose hadn't taken on the responsibility for them. Am I shocking you, Joe? You know it's the truth. Anyone can see it. You talk of his big plans as if it's some kind of sacred secret, but the fact is that everyone knows it. So why don't you admit it and decide if you want to play or not? You don't have to play, you know. You can go off and have a nice life. She squeezed his hand. You're good-looking. You've got lots of money, even if he cuts you off you can make your way. You're not dumb. You can go and be a professor of history.
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