Another Life

by Michael Korda

  Before we could introduce ourselves to one another, Nixon appeared at the top of the stairs at exactly the moment we had been summoned for. He descended halfway, stretched out his arms just as he used to do when he was campaigning, and with a broad smile announced in his deep voice, “Gentlemen, the good news is—the bar is open.”

  We trooped into the living room and sat down in a rough circle around Nixon, while the butler took our drink orders. As I was shortly to discover, drinks in the Nixon household were not to be taken—or even held—lightly. They were served in immense, heavy tumblers, and every time a guest took a sip, Nixon, who had an eagle eye as a host, attracted the butler’s attention and said, “You’d better freshen up that drink.” Like the ever-replenished “Bottomless Cup of Coffee” that used to be the pride of Prexy’s, the now-defunct New York City hamburger chain, glasses at the Nixons’ were impossible to empty.

  In homage to Nixon, I had asked for one of his famous daiquiris, made with almost no sugar, the recipe for which was said to be one of his more closely guarded secrets, and I can report that it lived up to expectations: The president’s claim that his was the best daiquiri ever was no more than the truth.

  What I was not prepared for was the odd formality that he imposed on himself and his guests. There was no conversation as such. One guest, Richard Solomon, who was then assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, had just returned that day from Paris, where the Cambodian talks were going on. Nixon asked him to give us a report on the state of the negotiations, which he did, at some length, while we sat and listened. When he was through, Nixon gave us his views on the subject, during which absolute silence reigned, while the butler freshened up our drinks. Except for the drinks, it was rather like a tutorial. The three Chinese men—later introduced as Han Xu, the departing ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, who had been chief of protocol at the time of Nixon’s visit there in 1972; Minister Zhao Qixin, from the embassy; and Chen Mingming, the ambassador’s principal secretary, who translated for them—were presumably accustomed to feigning interest at the interminable meetings of the Chinese Communist Party and gave these disquisitions their full, rapt attention, while most of the Americans slumbered gently, arms crossed in front of them, chins resting on their chests.

  What kept my attention focused was not the subject of Cambodia but the fact that Nixon was in the habit of referring to himself in the third person, something I had never heard anyone do before—not even members of the British royal family. “When Nixon was president …” he said, in his deep, sonorous voice, his dark eyes flickering over his guests as if he expected one of us to challenge him. Even stranger, he often expanded his self-description, as in “when Nixon was president and leader of the free world,” as if the latter were also an office to which he had been elected. It was as if Queen Elizabeth II, having abdicated the throne, referred to herself in the third person as “the queen and defender of the faith.”

  Roused from slumber by the announcement that dinner was ready, we filed into the dining room, where the first course proved to be a contribution from Abplanalp, who had branched out from manufacturer of aerosol valves for spray cans to entrepreneur of smoked fish—a kind of Gentile Barney Greengrass. While we ate our smoked tuna, smoked trout, and smoked salmon, the real purpose of the dinner became apparent. The massacre of the Chinese student protesters in Tiananmen Square had occurred only two months earlier, and Nixon was debating whether he should continue with his plans to revisit China. He was also deeply concerned that the reaction of “the liberal media” toward events in China might prejudice Chinese-American relations, on which he set great store as the major achievement of his foreign policy.

  Han Xu had won Nixon’s respect and friendship in 1972, and he was in a position to carry to the Chinese leaders an informal message that, despite the unfortunate events in Tiananmen Square, Nixon was still on their side. The role of the rest of us was, on the one hand, to flesh out the dinner party—surely orchestrated because a social occasion would be more palatable than a simple face-to-face meeting between Nixon and Han Xu—and, on the other, to provide a suitable audience of industrialists (Abplanalp, of the smoked fish, and Dwayne Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland), high-level mandarins (Solomon and Robert Ellsworth, a former representative and ambassador to NATO), and a media figure and/or intellectual (me).

  A year or so later, when Nixon came to lunch at Simon and Schuster, his genial, good-natured aide, John Taylor, actually provided in advance a list of suitable questions for us to ask the former president. Each of us was allocated one question, to which Nixon then gave an articulate five-minute reply; to at least one editor’s regret, though, Watergate was not on the list of suggested subjects. In his own home, Nixon followed much the same formula in reverse. He went around the table, introducing each of us in turn (when it came to my turn, the president chuckled wickedly and said, “He’s a type we don’t often get at this table, heh heh—a New York intellectual!”) and asking us to give a short summary of the state of our business or concern. He listened intently—nobody was a more intent listener than Nixon—and then, for the benefit of the Chinese, gave his own views on what we had said.

  Needless to say, the Chinese were not there to hear about the book-publishing business, agricultural products, precision valves, or smoked fish. Ellsworth brought up the key question—the pièce de résistance, as it were—which was how America was reacting to Tiananmen Square and whether Nixon should go to Beijing.

  The Chinese came to full attention at this. I could not help admiring the way Nixon had managed to get somebody else to raise the question—surely the diplomats must have appreciated the subtlety of it, too—and the way he gave it careful scrutiny, as if it had caught him by surprise. Nixon, I seemed to remember, had done some acting at school and had put on amateur theatricals to amuse the troops when he was a naval officer in the Pacific; it occurred to me that if fate had called him to the stage instead of to the bar he would have made a fine actor. He knitted his brows and appeared to give the matter serious consideration. He believed, he said, that there was more to be gained by Nixon’s going than not. Some people (he frowned darkly)—naysayers, pinko parlor liberals, professional skeptics—would doubtless criticize Nixon. Nixon was used to that. It had never stopped Nixon in the past.

  The Chinese nodded.

  Great powers, the former president went on, could not allow their foreign policy to be determined by the scruples—he chuckled—“or prejudices” of the liberal media.

  A set of deeper nods, with a hint of puzzlement, from the Chinese, for whom media scruples were surely not a problem.

  The interests and the good relations of two such powers as China and the United States were more important than transitory events, Nixon continued, warming to his theme. Ordinary Americans, he affirmed solemnly, his voice lowering to a confidential pitch, had a better sense of what really mattered than the media did. Ordinary Americans liked and respected China and were not dismayed by horror stories.

  Nixon seemed to be distancing himself not only from the media but from the White House. He leaned closer to Han Xu, eager to explain to him the workings of the American mind. “When Nixon was president and leader of the free world,” Nixon said, his voice rumbling, his eyes locked on Han Xu (who continued to eat methodically and with enthusiasm while the translator whispered in his ear), “we had troubles of our own here in the United States.” He paused to let this sink in, while Han Xu’s attention remained fixed on his plate. “We, too, had so-called student riots, protests, anarchy in the streets of Washington,” Nixon said, just in case Han Xu was unfamiliar with the antiwar movement. “When you go home, you should tell your people that many of us understand.” He paused dramatically. “When Nixon was president and leader of the free world, he found that—firmness paid. You tell them that.”

  The words firmness paid were uttered with the full force of Nixonian emphasis, familiar to anyone who remembers his television
appearances at such moments as the Cambodian incursion: the frown, the steely focus of the dark eyes, the out-thrust jaw, the even deeper lowering of the voice, and the slow delivery, as if to say, “This is the important bit, so pay attention.”

  My fellow guests nodded, apparently all in favor of firmness toward student demonstrators. The Chinese smiled too, for the first time: Firmness had so far been a hard sell for them in the United States—even in the Bush White House, where running over students with tanks was seen as, at the very least, poor PR for the Beijing regime. Han Xu finished what was on his plate, put his knife and fork down neatly, and raised his glass of red wine—a gift from the president of France, we had been informed—in a gesture of gratitude, not quite a toast but by no means casual, either. He whispered something to the translator. “He is grateful for the president’s understanding,” the translator said. “He will communicate it at home.”

  “Good,” Nixon rumbled.

  It occurred to me that part of the problem in current Sino-American relations might be that the Chinese had simply been listening to the wrong Americans over the years. Not unlike European explorers of Africa in the nineteenth century, who stumbled into the uncharted interior and latched on to whatever self-proclaimed kings and chiefs they first met up with, without having the slightest idea of what these supposed authority figures might represent, what their real power might be, or what their people and their neighbors thought of them, the Chinese had been “opened up” by Nixon and accepted him blindly as representing American hearts and minds. Just as the English in Africa had backed native rulers long after it should have been apparent to them that the rulers’ own people had abandoned them, the Chinese remained loyal to Nixon after his fall and seemed unable to accept the legitimacy of his successors. It was one of the odd paradoxes of Nixon, whose rise to power was driven by anticommunism, that he ended up being taken more seriously in Beijing (and, eventually, in Moscow) than in Washington. Indeed, he soon came to be a kind of lobbyist in Washington for the two mutually antagonistic Communist regimes.

  He showed no discomfort at the thought; quite the contrary, he was proud of the faith the Chinese had placed in him. After dinner—at which, once again, each of the guests in turn presented the host with a little speech about the hopes and dreams of his own little segment of American capitalism (the Chinese were tactfully exempted from sharing their hopes and dreams with us), followed by a detailed tour d’horizon of the world situation from Nixon—I could not help wondering if there had been a little more frivolity when Pat Nixon was the hostess, and wishing for the presence of wives and/or girlfriends. Then we withdrew to a somber room, with a huge rough-stone fireplace, for coffee and liqueurs. While some of the other guests got down to the serious business of the evening—telling old political war stories from the Nixon campaigns and drinking monster stingers—I followed Nixon, who had offered to show his Chinese guests around the house.

  At first, nothing caught my eye. Most of the rooms had a certain formal, unlived-in quality, rather like an expensive hotel suite or, more to the point, the White House. The unlived-in feeling apparently extended to Nixon: He didn’t seem familiar with the layout of the house himself. At one point, he opened a closet door, apparently thinking that it was the door to his study, then slammed it shut hastily, with a muttered oath. Like people lost in a museum, we circled aimlessly, it seemed to me, for some time, searching for a particular piece of art he wanted to show his guests, until he finally said, “Here it is!”—as if somebody had moved it, which was unlikely, since it was fastened elaborately to the wall, with a plaque underneath. As it happened, the piece was undoubtedly worth finding—a magnificent silk tapestry of a cat playing, a gift from Mao to Nixon. The Chinese seemed to me more interested in the plaque, on which Mao’s name appeared, than in the tapestry itself.

  Nixon did not seem particularly interested in his collection. Perhaps he had shown it to visitors too many times before: the screen from the Japanese government, the Philippine folk art from President Marcos, the endless ceremonial gifts that are among the perks of being a head of state. With considerably more animation, Nixon flung open the door of his study—lucky on the second try—and ushered us in. “This,” he said solemnly in the third person, “is where Nixon works.”

  The Chinese assumed a reverential expression—one they had perfected, presumably, for the display of any of Mao’s artifacts. All the same, it was difficult to imagine any work being done in this unused room: It had something of the quality of a stage set furnished with expensive new props. No doubt Nixon was a clean-desk man, but this particular desk, shoved uncomfortably into a corner, showed no sign at all of use. There was not a paper in sight, and the desktop, like everything else in the room, was polished, spotless, and apparently brand-new. The desk chair showed no signs that Nixon had ever sat in it. “This is the desk at which Nixon wrote all his books,” Nixon said. He patted its shiny leather top affectionately, as if it were a horse.

  I looked around the room, searching for a single sign of Nixon’s occupancy, for a single personal possession. There was none to be seen. We stood uncomfortably around the empty desk, and then Nixon told Han Xu that he wanted him to have a souvenir of this visit—something that would convey some part of the American spirit. There was a man in the forties and fifties, he said, whom Nixon had always respected as a true patriot—a prophet without honor in his own country, a man who had made great sacrifices for the truth and had been martyred for his pains but had lived long enough to play an important part in Nixon’s own career. That man wrote a book, Nixon continued, one of the most important books of the twentieth century, a book that every American ought to read, and not just Americans, either, for his message was universal.

  We stood around Nixon, spellbound by his emotion, for he was speaking, it was apparent, from the heart, and his eyes, normally piercing, were humid. I racked my brain trying to think who this great American might be. Eisenhower seemed all wrong, and anyway I knew that the Nixons harbored a certain resentment toward Ike and Mamie, who seldom, if ever, invited them to a private dinner, just the four of them, during the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency. John Foster Dulles crossed my mind, but it seemed unlikely that his views on China would commend themselves to Han Xu. Then it came to me. Of course! Nixon was talking about J. Edgar Hoover. Probably nobody had been a more loyal Nixon booster than Hoover, from the very beginning of the young congressman’s career, and Nixon, during his presidency, had once paid Hoover the supreme compliment of accepting an invitation to dinner in Hoover’s house, with the smoked mirrors, the overstuffed easy chairs in which Hoover and Clyde Tolson used to sit companionably in the evenings watching television game shows while eating their dinners off TV trays. “Remind me never to do this again,” Nixon was reported to have whispered to John Ehrlichman as they made an early departure from Hoover’s dinner party. Yet there was no doubt that Nixon owed Hoover a lot.

  But I was wrong. Nixon bent down and opened the bottom drawer of his big desk and withdrew a copy of Whittaker Chambers’s Witness. I was fascinated to see that the drawer was full of hardcover copies of Chambers’s book. Had Nixon bought up the entire stock? I wondered. Briefly, Nixon summed up Chambers’s life for the politely bewildered Chinese. Had they heard about the Pumpkin Papers, about Alger Hiss, about the discovery of the typewriter on which Hiss committed treason? Succinctly, from long experience, Nixon filled the Chinese in on the Hiss case and Chambers’s part in it, explaining to the three Communist bureaucrats the undoing of the Communist conspiracy in the United States and the way the liberal media persecuted all those who had tried to bring the truth to light, Nixon himself not excepted. Names emerged from the dim past: Helen Gahagan Douglas, Mrs. Hiss, Joe McCarthy—a whole chunk of American history, which now seemed as remote as the Long March probably seemed to the Chinese, and during which, as could hardly have escaped their notice, their own country had been billed as one of the principal villains. The Chinese nodded amiably—no doubt
they were accustomed to hearing far more unlikely glosses on the past from their leaders, and at far greater length. Besides, they were not diplomats for nothing. Han Xu showed every sign of agreement with this view of history, and after Nixon autographed a copy of Witness for him he clutched it to his bosom as if it were the Holy Grail. Would he take it home? I wondered. Would scholars in China dissect Chambers’s narrative carefully, looking for clues to understanding the United States, or to understanding Nixon? Would they puzzle over the Pumpkin Papers and write dissertations on the microfilm that marked the beginning of Richard Nixon’s rise to power?

  We returned to the fireplace, where the atmosphere, fueled with stingers, was getting boisterous. Nixon, I could tell, had had enough of the Chinese by now, and they seemed to have tired of him, too. They had what they had come for—a friendly signal from Nixon, a veiled assurance that he would not call off his visit—and a signed copy of Witness besides. I took my leave with them.

  Nixon walked outside with us, to shake hands. He saw the Chinese into their waiting limo, then said good night to me. He looked across the blacktop at my Porsche, studied it carefully, and said, “What the hell is that?” He then went back indoors.

  I left feeling like Dorothy leaving Oz. As I drove home, around me in the night was suburban New Jersey and behind me was a kind of magic world where the past was still alive, where the Wizard was still wise and all-seeing, and where Whittaker Chambers was still an American hero. It was a testimony to Nixon’s power that he could make his world of exile seem more real than the world around him—that he could create, somehow, the illusion that he was still president, that Watergate had never happened, that the bombing of Cambodia or the shooting of the Kent State students hadn’t really mattered.