Overdrive (30 page)

At noon exactly, Jerry takes Bill Rusher and me up for the luncheon, because when businessmen are invited to lunch someone
always
arrives early. This will be I think our twelfth such lunch, predecessors having featured Spiro Agnew, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, William Simon, James Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Frank Shakespeare, and a few other divinities. The idea is to invite very important and acute businessmen, share a lunch, let them visit with someone in the public eye, and hope that their advertising departments will get an amiable memo about
National Review
, which sometimes happens, usually doesn't. The guest of honor is not asked to pitch in any way for us, and seldom does, though the circuitry of bright men doesn't need many traffic switches.

And sure enough, although we get there at 12:20, two guests have already arrived. A few minutes later I greet with great pleasure Eastern Air Lines President Frank Borman, ex-astronaut moon-man, who is (along with George Bush) one of the twenty-six members of Hillbillies, our little club in the Bohemian Grove.

I cherish an experience last summer with Frank. I put in a call to him, and it went like this:

"Frank, I'm making last-minute revisions of a novel I wrote this winter. It's about the U-2. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Fire away. Only I'm not an expert on the U-2. But I know people who are."

"Well, when I read two books about the U-2 they didn't of course give the speed at which it travels, but I made some deductions based on general inferences, and I figured it traveled at Mach .9, so I made my calculations about my hero's flight from Tokyo to Alma-Ata based on that speed. Do you happen to know if my guess was correct?"

"Well, I'll need to find out 1) if it's classified. 2) What the speed is—I don't happen to know. Can I call you back? Five minutes, maybe ten?"

"Of course, and thanks loads."

Five minutes later.

"Bill? Hi, Frank. 1) It
is
classified. 2) The speed is Mach .7."

I thanked him hugely; and now reminded him of the wonderful context in which he had framed his answer, and we said, jocularly, the usual things about the folly of classifying material obviously known to the Russians.

Our guests were now practically all there, in the smaller red library room, most of them known to each other, and of course the word had circulated instantly that the guest of honor wouldn't be there, but there wasn't, really, any sense of resentment, because by now the radio and the early afternoon papers had made it very clear that
no one
was to travel
anywhere
, and obviously they understood: the Vice-President had to stand out as the exemplar.

Then Jeane Kirkpatrick came—handsome, composed, energetic, charming—bringing with her, by prearrangement, Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, her assistant. I had known Chuck at Yale since even before I knew Pat, and we all exchanged greetings, and I told Jeane what a sweetheart she was, and promised to tell the Third World about her.

We were seated and, if I may say so, no chief of state or prodigal prince ate better that day than we did, thanks primarily to Pat, but also to Julian, and Gloria. And during lunch I was able to give Jeane a little additional briefing on the forthcoming drill, not that she needed it. On her right, Walter Wriston, head of Citibank, began questioning her, with his distinctive intelligence, and soon at our table she was answering everyone's questions.

After lunch we went into the living room for coffee and liqueurs (no one, I noticed, took a liqueur), and after a moment or two I introduced Mrs. Kirkpatrick, easy enough for me to do so enthusiastically, enthusiastic as I am about her.

I served a hitch (28th General Assembly, 1973) as the U.S. public member at the UN, assigned primarily to the Third Committee, which deals with human rights. When, last May, I read Jeane Kirkpatrick's speech on human rights, as delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations, I was, simply, ecstatic. I had begun my column: "In a single speech, delivered in early March ... in New York, Jeane Kirkpatrick . . . shed more light on the subject of human rights and national policy than all the candlepower of the UN Human Rights Commission has shed in a generation. Her statement has liberating force. Such is said about those few statements that cause the scales to fall from one's eyes, even as the epiphany befell St. Paul. Mrs. Kirkpatrick talked about four distinctions 'crucial' to a consideration of human rights and national policy. They are worth memorizing . . ." (The distinctions: 1) between "ideas and institutions," 2) between "rights and goals," 3) between "intention and consequence," 4) between "personal morality and political morality.")

She spoke now like a professor turned advocate; her own evolution exactly. She specified at two points that particular things she was about to say were off the record.

In the ten minutes she had, she made shrewd use of the time, dealing directly with points of interest and concluding with the (requisite) business about how, notwithstanding its frustrations, the UN was a necessary institution—which conclusion it would be very difficult for a resident ambassador at the UN
not
to arrive at. During the question period she sprang to life. She had been recently in the news for doing something absolutely unheard of: she had sent out several dozen letters to ambassadors ostensibly friendly to the United States, asking why they had voted against the United States in one of those virulent anti-American UN-related resolutions implying our vassalization of Puerto Rico or whatever. Apparently it had never occurred to anyone publicly to ask the jolly ambassador you see two or three times a day and who enjoys U.S. favors just
why
he joined in denouncing America in general terms.

How had they reacted? someone wanted to know; and she replied that, surprisingly, she had had replies to three quarters of her letters, that half had been conciliatory, only one quarter hostile. She believes very strongly that an American presence in the United Nations has got to be forthright. In this respect she is much like Moynihan, though the styles are different. One cannot imagine Mrs. Kirkpatrick, after a vote denouncing Zionism as racism, rushing across the room and embracing the Israeli ambassador; although the substitution would almost certainly be pleasing to the Israeli ambassador.

It is 2:30, and I thank her, thank my guests, and say that whatever inconvenience was suffered, it was good to be alive on the day that the government spent no money. Everyone, on the way out, shakes hands with me, Bill Rusher, Rob Sennott, and Mrs. K, thanking her most sincerely. The
NR
contingent gets into the car and we return to the office, whence I wire George: "I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH BOTH FOR YOUR CONCERN AND FOR YOUR FURNISHING THE U.N. COBRA. SINCE DECEMBER 11 IS TOO SOON TO PUT TOGETHER THE KIND OF PEOPLE YOU DESERVE I'LL TAKE YOU UP ON YOUR KIND OPTION TO DO IT ALL AGAIN IN THE SPRING. SO MANY THANKS AND IF YOU RUN OUT OF MONEY AGAIN WALTER WRISTON PROMISED TO HELP OUT. WARMEST REGARDS."

Back in the office, I assembled my own column for
National Review
, "Notes and Asides," which comprises letters received from people saying interesting things, requiring, in some cases, a published retort, which I compose. Then I pluck out the editorials that have been written, and go over them. They are in the dumbwaiter that descends to Priscilla. There is left an hour, reserved by Frances for necessary work on the sailing book, whose proposed jacket, and jacket copy, I didn't like. I designed the jacket for
Airborne
, and whereas I meant that it should convey to the reader that the sea is at the heart of the book, I didn't want it to be thought a "sailing book," which it is not. So is it with
Atlantic High
. I had subconsciously been in search for over a year now for a subtitle. For
Airborne
I used "A Sentimental Journey." The motives were in part preemptive. I didn't want reviewers to think to one-up me by saying, "This is pretty sentimental stuff." Actually, they were kind. I have decided in
Atlantic High
to append "A Celebration," and Sam, and Alex Gotfryd, Doubleday's art director, and Christopher Little, whose photographs are an integral part of the book, like the idea. Christopher, a superb young professional, is coming in for today's cover session. He has a painter friend who will attempt to transcribe our instructions. Almost an hour goes into this, and suddenly it's 6:15.

Jerry takes Priscilla and me to Sixty-eighth and Park Avenue, where Mother lives when she isn't in Connecticut or South Carolina. The heart always beats almost audibly at the prospect of seeing her when one gives the telltale buzz on the buzzer (dash dot-dash dash) and Big Mary, in her white nurse's uniform, opens the door. Mother is seated at the far end of a card table in the living room, dressed, as ever, as if to receive ambassadors. Always there are the pearls, and the touch of lace, and the familiar scent, the dress, the high-heeled shoes. She smiles that smile of fresh ardor, eyes wide open; at eighty-seven she can look like a girl, expressions to match—joy, benevolence, serenity. We kiss, and greet Mother's pizza companions, because indeed she is having a pizza dinner with three grandchildren. With her are Allie and John, siblings in their twenties, and Claude, Reid's son, who at twenty-two retains his Spanish accent, having spent his first twelve years in Madrid. Mother does not follow conversations, though she will pronounce on them, in a vaguely attenuated way, so that, though we are ostensibly addressing Mother, in fact we are conversing among ourselves. We learn from John that he is tremendously excited at the prospect of
The Wall Street Journal's
running one of his rock reviews, from Claude that he loves the art school he is attending, from Allie that CBS is treating her fairly. I go and check the spinet Mother used to play but, really, can't now, though every now and again we essay a duet. Mary brings Priscilla and me a glass of chablis. Mother beams, and occasionally comments on, oh, how cold it was in Paris yesterday.

A year ago, in Mexico, visiting my old retired nurse, who was with us thirty-five years, I put in a call to Mother, so that she and Felipa could speak for the first time over the telephone since Felipa's retirement in 1952. Mother was twenty-two, Felipa twenty-eight when Mother's aunt, for whom Felipa worked as laundress, so to speak "gave" Felipa to Mother for her wedding; and Felipa (and, subsequently, her two sisters) went with us everywhere. Now Felipa, whose mind at ninety-three hasn't wandered at all, was reminiscing with Mother, over the phone to New York, how Mother used to look when she came back from her New Orleans high school to visit from time to time with her aunt in the late afternoon. The conversation, by participants, was about events in the year 1910!— a strange feeling for someone not even born until a generation later. Mother regularly captured by her beneficent fantasies, had replied most distinctly over the telephone that she happened to be
in
Mexico, that she had in hand gifts for Felipa and her two sisters, and that she would bring them around the
very next day
. I had warned Felipa about Mother's absentmindedness, and now Felipa handled the problem with exemplary diplomacy: How
nice
, she said, it would be to see the senora again.

I winked at Pitts and we got up to go. Every time I leave her, I wonder whether it will be for the last time. With help from Mary, Mother sees us to the elevator, and we embrace.

The editors dine at our place on Seventy-third Street the night of the fortnightly editorial meetings, the evening before we go to press. Usually we have guests, but not tonight; it is just Joe Sobran and Priscilla, Jeff Hart and Rick—Bill Rusher couldn't make it. There is great harmony at work, I feel: that graduating congruity of intellect and affection that matures when people are happily in professional and personal contact with one another. Oh, there are disturbances all right, and they reach you, and one does what one can. But
National Review
is a good place to work; after all, Priscilla is there. And then there is enough bite in the product to prevent the fungoid growth of tapioca, which can kill a journal. It matters that one should understand exactly what is meant by "bite." We suffer no lycanthropic compulsions at
NR
. We do not fancy ourselves out preying on victims preferably guilty, but if the biological appetite is not satisfied, then—however regrettably— innocent. I suppose it could be said that, like wolves, we have biological needs that require satisfaction: if there were nothing to complain about, there would be no
National Review
. On the other hand, if there were nothing to complain about, there would be no post-Adamite mankind. But complaint is profanation in the absence of gratitude. There is much to complain about in America, but that awful keening noise one unhappily gets so used to makes no way for the bells, and these have rung for America, are still ringing for America, and for this we are
obliged
to be grateful. To be otherwise is wrong reason, and a poetical invitation to true national tribulation. I must remember to pray more often, because providence has given us the means to make the struggle, and in this respect we are singularly blessed in this country, and in this room.

After dinner there is some general conversation, but Pat, worn out by the Vice-President's non-party, has excused herself. My colleagues leave early, and, upstairs, I find that Pat is already asleep, the television blaring. I turn it off, and so risk waking her. I undress. The chair by my bed is stacked high with books and magazines. But I am tired, and settle for the blaring headline of the evening paper. There is a story that the Stamford
Advocate
has fired the roommate of Kathy Boudin, because the publisher didn't believe her story about not knowing that Ms. Boudin was a fugitive from justice. The Stamford
Advocate
is owned now by the Los Angeles
Times
. It was a suggestion from the then-editor of the Stamford
Advocate
, made to Harry, that caused Harry to call me in 1962 and propose that I write a newspaper column.

But my mind is wandering now, so I turn off the light.