beside Waldo and I slump back into my position/ “How’s Pamela?” she says as I readjust my napkin.
“Coming along well, I think.”
“Yes. Coffee seems to feel she’s making great strides. And for that we thank you, don’t we Waldo.”
“Of course. Of course,” Waldo says. He has swiveled about and is gesturing energetically to the waitress at the far end of the room. “But what happened?”
“Claire bowed out, so Frances called it off. Probably the best thing. I couldn’t imagine what we were going to say to each other. Knowing glances, vague references to Jack. The whole depressing, boring affair. I’m glad I’m out of it. And Frances’s notion of Thai food is more than a bit pathetic.”
“Eh, heh,” Waldo agrees.
A tall bourbon and soda arrives, then a plate of potato skins, then four stuffed mushrooms.
“Aren’t you boys off to save the Republic tonight?” she says working a fork through one of the skins.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on Van Shuten, if that’s what you mean,” Waldo answers.
Is there a trace of irritation in his voice? I can’t quite decide.
“Well, don’t let me keep you. After all, the bombs can fall almost anytime now that Waldo’s finished his Drambuie. Haven’t you darling?”
“Well, I think I’ll have one more, to keep you company through the entrée, at least,” Waldo says, head cocked to one side.
“Splendid. Well said. I hate to eat alone. And now young Snell why don’t you tell me some good chess stories, since your little column is the talk of the town.” She smiles, pops one mushroom into her mouth.
Waldo and I watch her precise mastication for the next half hour. Waldo talks about some of the quirkier aspects of some of the champions. He is a fund of anecdotes—a slick litany of personal disintegrations, aberrant behaviors. Hillary seems to be enjoying the recitation, but just before dessert she interrupts Waldo’s prized story with a curt, “You’re certainly more cogent the second time through, but less interesting.”
“Ah, I forgot I mentioned all of this before,” Waldo apologizes, smiles weakly.
“Since he has nothing to say,” Hillary gestures toward me. “It’s just as well and your telling has improved enormously. But you’ve spent more than enough time with this boring companion. Why don’t you hurry to Van Shuten’s and tell him doom is not around the corner, but merely across the bay?”
Chapter 6
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
