Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [263]
Inside, I found most of my fellow guests milling about in the entrance hall, looking suitably solemn. The only one I recognized was Robert Abplanalp, a large, jovial-looking man who had been much in the limelight as a Nixon backer and personal friend during the Watergate days. He and Bebe Rebozo had appeared in the press as the ultimate Nixon loyalists, plus royalistes que le roi. There were three Chinese gentlemen present, one of them clearly the senior, with the bland, inscrutable faces of professional diplomats. There were no women present—it was to be a stag dinner.
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.