His fellow Democrats thought he’d put it off too damn long. Alben Barkley wanted to be President, but no one else seemed to want him in the White House. When you were the Vice President in an administration that pulled the country into an atomic war, that was liable to happen to you. Averell Harriman, who was Truman’s fix-it man in Europe and the Middle East, also wanted to be President. He had the same problem on a smaller scale, because fewer people had heard of him. Estes Kefauver wanted to be President, too. Whether the country felt like electing anyone, even a capable Senator, from the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line was anybody’s guess.
And Adlai Stevenson wanted to be President. He was from Illinois, a good state to be from if you had that particular craving. He was smart. He was witty. He had everything a good politician needed except any real connection with the little man.
That would hurt him against McCarthy, who was nothing if not an ordinary Joe. It would hurt him against Dwight Eisenhower, too. Eisenhower had presided over a war America won cheaply and easily. That also gave him a leg up on any Democratic foe.
If the Republicans ran Taft…But Robert Taft was their Stevenson. He had brains. He had integrity. His main reason for wanting to sit in the White House, though, seemed to be that his father had sat there before him, so now it was his turn. Turn or not, he was about as warm as an ice cube.
Put it all together and it spelled a mess. Truman wished the new President would have been inaugurated on March 4 instead of January 20, as he had been starting in 1936. In case McCarthy got nominated and elected, that would have given the outbound Truman six extra weeks to try to set things right.
He didn’t have those six extra weeks. Maybe he didn’t deserve them. Again, he wished he did stash a bottle of bourbon in the desk here. He really wanted a good, stiff knock. He’d done everything with the best intentions-and he’d gone straight down the road paved with good intentions to its appointed destination.
Western Europe smashed even worse than it had been during the last war? Who would have dreamt that was even possible? The West Coast laid waste? Oh, and Russia and Manchuria and Korea? And the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal?
“That’s one hell of a bumpy ride, all right,” Truman muttered. Mercifully, a slick-voiced huckster told him which brand of cigarettes doctors preferred because its smoke was so smooth. That, at least, he could ignore. He wished he could do the same with the news.
He’d done what he’d done. He hadn’t thought Stalin would do what he’d done. How many million people were dead because he’d miscalculated? How many million twenty-first-century schoolkids would learn to curse his name along with Benedict Arnold’s and Aaron Burr’s because he’d miscalculated?
When you looked at it that way, how could Joe McCarthy possibly do worse than he had?
The radio went back to music. It was trying to get on with normal life. So were people all over the world. They didn’t want war to interrupt important things like getting enough to eat and having a warm place to sleep, like falling in love and watching their children.
Too many children wouldn’t grow up now. With a sharp twist of the wrist, Truman turned off the radio.
–
A road led from Smidovich to Birobidzhan. The capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region lay about eighty kilometers to the west. The road paralleled the Trans-Siberian Railway. With Khabarovsk to the east and Blagoveshchensk to the west both hit by atom bombs, the railway was eerily quiet.
Vasili Yasevich walked along the road. His valenki crunched in the snow. The endless pines of the taiga ran close to the road, which was no more than a dirt track hacked through them. The pines were snow-dappled, too. They looked like overgrown Christmas trees in a children’s book.
That thought made Vasili laugh. From what people in Smidovich said, corrective-labor camps were scattered through the taiga. Every day, zeks went out and chopped down more pines. Did the Communists send them forth on that particular kind of corrective labor to attack the trees for being symbols of religion?
He had no answers. From what he’d seen, the Communists had no answers, either. If they thought you thought that, though, you would learn more about corrective labor than you’d ever wanted to know.
His breath smoked as he walked along. His own footfalls were the only human sounds he heard. He might have been the sole person for a thousand kilometers in every direction.
He wasn’t, of course. Smidovich lay only three or four kilometers behind him. Still, the odd feeling lingered. In China, separating yourself from all the other people who swarmed around you was next to impossible. It was the easiest thing in the world on this side of the Amur.
A hooded crow on a snow-covered branch cawed rustily. Nice warm feathers covered its body, but its feet were bare and scaly, like a lizard’s. Why didn’t they freeze? Maybe scientists knew, but Vasili didn’t.
He walked on. A red squirrel chittered, warning whatever else lived in the forest that a dangerous human was running around loose. Its tail made a momentary splash of color as it darted around to the far side of the pine. A moment later, it peered around the trunk to see where he was, showing only its nose and its beady black eyes.
Vasili lit a Belomor cigarette and let the lit match fall into the snow. He got his reward-a tiny hiss he could hear clearly as the flame went out. The squirrel heard it, too, and chittered again. When Vasili blew smoke its way, it vanished to the far side of the pine once more.
He stood there smoking till the coal from the Belomor almost scorched his lips. Then he spat the butt out into the snow. No hiss this time: just a sudden extinguishing.
With a sigh, he started back to Smidovich. He hadn’t felt like working today, so he damn well hadn’t. He had no boss to threaten to sack him for taking the day off. Enough rubles padded his pockets to keep him in food and tobacco for a while. If he wanted to buy a magazine-and if he could find one to buy-he could do that, too.
He didn’t have a big, fancy house or an expensive motorcar, a Cadillac or a Rolls-Royce. He’d soon seen that, as long as he lived in the Soviet Union, he never would. But neither would any of the other tovarishchi who lived here with him. No point mooning after what wasn’t available.
When he got into town again, the first person he saw was Gleb Sukhanov. He waved. He didn’t want the MGB man annoyed at him. But Sukhanov looked like someone with other things on his mind. His face could have doubled for the Mask of Tragedy carved on the facade of the biggest Russian theater in Harbin.
“Gleb Ivanovich!” Vasili said as he drew near the Chekist. “What’s troubling you?” By the way Sukhanov’s mittened left hand kept going to the side of his face, Vasili could make a shrewd guess, but he knew he might be wrong.
He wasn’t. “This stupid tooth is killing me,” Sukhanov answered. “It blew up last night, and I’ve got little men driving spikes into my jaw. I’ve swallowed so many aspirins, my ears are ringing like cathedral bells. Stinking thing still hurts like a kick in the balls. I see the dentist tomorrow morning so he can yank the goddamn bastard, but it feels like a million years between now and then.”
“Maybe I can do something for you, Comrade.” Vasili dug in his jacket pocket. He pulled out a dirty handkerchief wrapped around a lump of dark, sticky stuff. After shedding his own mittens, he pinched off about half a walnut’s worth and offered it to Sukhanov. “Here. Chew half of this now and the rest tonight. That should keep you going till the dentist can do his dirty work.”
“What is it?” the Chekist asked.
“Somebody paid me with poppy juice for some work I did,” Vasili answered, which was true enough.
“How much do you want for it, though?” Sukhanov asked. “I know that stuff’s not cheap on the left.” He meant the unofficial buying and selling that went on in spite of Soviet disapproval. He wasn’t wrong, either.