Acts of Mercy

Three

Nicholas Augustine sipped wine from his crystal goblet and looked around the table and wished fervently that he and Claire had decided to dine alone tonight. The evening had begun amiably enough with cocktails in the Green Room, but once they had all come in here to the State Dining Room for dinner, conversation had inevitably gotten around to Israel. It was Briggs who had brought up the subject, over the consomme, and of course Wexford had had to have his say over the salad; only Dougherty and Claire’s secretary, Elizabeth Miller, had remained silent on the topic, although it was apparent how the two of them felt. By the time the chateaubriand was served, silence had mercifully resettled-but Augustine had long since lost his appetite for anything except the wine.

A damned shame too, because he liked chateaubriand. He even liked the State Dining Room, with its restful green colors and its oak paneling. Claire preferred to eat here instead of in the Family Dining Room, which was why they had company for dinner most evenings; it would hardly have been appropriate, she said, for them to dine here alone. But if they had dined alone, damn it, he might have been able to enjoy his meal and to unwind a bit, instead of suffering a fresh onslaught of aggravation.

Why wouldn’t they leave him alone, all of them, for just a little while?

Out of the tail of his eye he saw the huge portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hung over the fireplace, and he smiled wryly. You and me, Abe, he thought, and raised his glass in a small silent toast.

He took another sip of wine and put the goblet down; but as he did so it struck the edge of his plate, making a sharp ringing sound that cut heavily into the silence. Everyone looked at him as though he had rapped for attention-Claire, Austin Briggs, Julius Wexford, Ed Dougherty, Elizabeth Miller, and Wexford’s gray little wife Rachel. Rachel blinked at him like a startled bird; her eyes were as gray as her hair, as her complexion, and the white evening gown she wore only served to complete the colorless study. In contrast, even Elizabeth, an angular brunette in her middle thirties, wearing a dark blue gown and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that gave her a properly secretarial air, seemed attractive. And Claire, Augustine noted with some pride, looked even more stunning than usual: blonde hair done up with a jeweled comb, china-blue eyes alert and inquisitive, skin so smooth it seemed translucent; gracious and poised as always, although she seemed somewhat subdued tonight. Her dress was blue-green, the same color as her eyes, and it seemed to flow against her when she moved, like seawater.

She said, “Yes, Nicholas?”

Well, Augustine thought, I might as well have my say too; Briggs had the consomme, Wexford had the salad, and I’d better take the chateaubriand before Dougherty does. The evening is ruined anyway. As if there had been no fiveminute lull in the conversation, he said, “Have any of you heard the story about the old Jew, filled with poverty and misfortune, who one day shakes his fist at the heavens and says, ‘God, I know we’re Your chosen people, but will You please, for Your own sake, choose someone else.’ ”

Rachel Wexford made a small choking sound, covered her mouth with a napkin. Wexford scowled and patted her hand. Dougherty and Elizabeth looked at each other and then down at their wine goblets. Briggs opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and finally put a forkful of potato inside it. Claire watched him steadily, neither surprised nor shocked, merely attentive.

Augustine said, “No? Well how about the one where the two old Jews-old enemies who have hated each other for forty years-meet on a railroad platform in Czarist Russia?” He finished his wine. “These two old Jews, you see, hadn’t spoken to each other for years, but finally one of them is unable to hold his silence and he says to the other, ‘Moshe, where are you going on this fine day?’ And Moshe, you understand, is a stubborn man, he doesn’t want to give his old enemy the satisfaction of a quick answer; so he considers for a time and then he says, ‘Well, Schmuel, to tell you the truth, which is more than you deserve, I am going this fine day to the province of Minsk.’ Schmuel looks at him then, shrewdly, and he says, ‘I know what you are, Moshe; you are a liar whose word can never be trusted; you would betray me at every opportunity. You hope to deceive me into thinking you are really going to the province of Pinsk, but I know you so well that the truth is, you are obviously going to Minsk after all.’ ”

Augustine burst out laughing. None of the others joined in, although Claire seemed to smile faintly; they continued to stare at him.

“Do you understand?” Augustine said. “Schmuel says,

‘You think I am to believe you are not going to Minsk, where you say you’re going, but to Pinsk, but I know you lie so you must really be going to Minsk.“’

Silence.

Augustine shrugged. “I believe I’ll have a little more wine,” he said, and motioned to Edmund, the staff waiter, who was standing quietly to one side. Edmund approached and poured more beaujolais into Augustine’s glass.

Briggs said stiffly, “Mr. President, I hope you don’t intend to tell either of those stories publicly…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Austin, they’re jokes. Wry comments on the nature of the Hebraic mind.”

“And very funny, I’m sure,” Rachel Wexford said.

Augustine thought: Christ, she’s a twit.

Wexford wiped his hands carefully on his napkin, put the napkin down, and took a long, careful sip of water. He was a heavyset man, florid, jowly, wearing a dark suit with a patterned red tie; his face had taken on more color, so that it seemed now to have achieved a hue remarkably similar to that of the beaujolais. The two of them, Julius and Rachel, made quite a pair, Augustine thought. One of them gray, one of them red.

Wexford said, “Well I hardly think either story is funny, Mr. President. They seem more like racial slurs-”

“They are not racial slurs,” Augustine said. “Why does anybody who tells an ethnic joke automatically become guilty of a racial slur? And by extension, of bigotry?”

“The Jewish people are very important to us,” Wexford said sententiously. He took a cigar from his coat pocket, rolled it between his fingers, and then put it away again when his wife frowned at him. “In terms of the demographics of the vote, and because they contribute disproportionately well to their actual percentage of the population-”

“I am not demeaning the Jews,” Augustine said. He was beginning to lose his temper. “I fully understand their political importance, Julius, and their racial importance, and the public record makes it clear that I am not an anti-Semite. I’m only trying to make a damned point here-”

Claire reached across to touch his hand with cool fingers. “I think you’ve made it, Nicholas,” she said quietly. “Don’t get yourself upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Augustine said, and put his hand on top of hers, squeezed it briefly and then pushed it away. “Damn it, what’s wrong with a little honesty? A few years back Moynihan made a comment about ‘benign neglect’ where blacks are concerned, and right away people twisted his words into something totally alien to what he meant. That is exactly what is happening to me right now: I’m being convicted of a crime I didn’t commit on the basis of semantics. The truth is, what I said in yesterday’s press conference is absolutely defensible.”

“Anything is defensible, Mr. President,” Dougherty said. He was a thin deliberate man in his early forties, like Briggs a bachelor, though not for much longer if Elizabeth Miller had her way: they had been keeping steady company for the past year. “But certain defenses create more complications than others.”

“Yes,” Briggs agreed, “and with the convention only two months ahead at that.”

“History has a way of accelerating nowadays,” Elizabeth said. “This will all be forgotten news by the time we convene in Saint Louis.”

“Will it?” Wexford shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“What do you think I ought to do then, Julius?” Augustine asked with forced calm.

“What I said earlier. Call a meeting with members of the Jewish community-the senators from New York and Connecticut, the heads of B‘nai B’rith and the Council of Rabbis and the United Jewish Appeal. Issue a clarification.”

“There’s nothing to clarify, how many times do I have to tell you that? Any so-called clarification is going to look defensive, as if we’re conceding fault. We’d lose all respectall self — respect.”

Briggs said, “We’ve got to have something to give to the press. They’ve been relentless, and all I’ve had to say to them are no-comments or referrals to previous statements. I’m beginning to feel a little like Ron Ziegler and I can’t say I like that very much.”

Augustine looked at him with increasing dislike. Young (thirty-seven, wasn’t it?), boyish-looking with his overlong hair and his freckles, glib most of the time, but with a nasty penchant for whining in moments of stress; the kind of man who, if he had been on a derailed train, would have rushed to save himself first and to hell with everyone else. Augustine wondered what the hell possessed him to give Briggs the press secretary’s job in the first place.

As if interpreting his thoughts, Claire said to Briggs, “If you don’t like your position, Austin, you can always resign.” Her voice was soft, pleasant, but there was an undercurrent of toughness in it that Augustine knew well.

Briggs seemed taken aback. “Excuse me?” he said.

“After all, Austin,” she said, “you don’t have to run the Presidential press office if you’d rather not. You could certainly go back to work for the Los Angeles Times, if that’s what you’d prefer, and the deputy press secretary could assume your duties. I’m sure Frank Tanaguchi would be delighted at the promotion.”

Briggs blushed, coughed, and lowered his gaze to his water glass; he had been put in his place and he was intelligent enough to realize it.

Claire turned to look at Augustine, a long, searching look that seemed to have some meaning he could not quite grasp. Then she smiled and said, “Now I think this discussion has gone far enough for one evening. This is supposed to be a quiet dinner party, not a shouting match. Why don’t all of you sleep on the matter and discuss it again tomorrow?”

The anger inside Augustine faded. Claire had always had a calming effect on him. She was a strong woman; sometimes he thought she was stronger than he was, and more stable, and more perceptive. Sometimes she intimidated him just a little, because he never knew exactly what was going on inside her head, while she always seemed to know what was going on inside his.

He said, “I suppose you’re right.”

Wexford nodded reluctantly, and Ed Dougherty said, “Yes, we might as well table it.”

“Fine,” Claire said. “Then we’ll have coffee and dessert. Edmund.”

But she kept on looking at Augustine, and it was only after the table was cleared that she took her eyes from him and then leaned forward to say something cheerful about current fashions to Rachel Wexford. Who blinked and bobbed her head and kept her chin tucked against her thin breast.

And with sudden belated insight, Augustine understood the meaning in his wife’s eyes, understood that it was not only Austin Briggs whom she had put in his place, but Augustine himself; that she had been telling him he did not have to run the presidency either if he would rather not. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen…

Edmund brought in a cart bearing a silver coffee service and silver dishes of cake. Claire said, “Black Forest cherry cake, Nicholas-your favorite.”

Augustine poured himself another glass of wine.