Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [265]
Nixon seemed to be distancing himself not only from the media but from the White House. He leaned closer to Han Xu, eager to explain to him the workings of the American mind. “When Nixon was president and leader of the free world,” Nixon said, his voice rumbling, his eyes locked on Han Xu (who continued to eat methodically and with enthusiasm while the translator whispered in his ear), “we had troubles of our own here in the United States.” He paused to let this sink in, while Han Xu’s attention remained fixed on his plate. “We, too, had so-called student riots, protests, anarchy in the streets of Washington,” Nixon said, just in case Han Xu was unfamiliar with the antiwar movement. “When you go home, you should tell your people that many of us understand.” He paused dramatically. “When Nixon was president and leader of the free world, he found that—firmness paid. You tell them that.”
The words firmness paid were uttered with the full force of Nixonian emphasis, familiar to anyone who remembers his television appearances at such moments as the Cambodian incursion: the frown, the steely focus of the dark eyes, the out-thrust jaw, the even deeper lowering of the voice, and the slow delivery, as if to say, “This is the important bit, so pay attention.”
My fellow guests nodded, apparently all in favor of firmness toward student demonstrators. The Chinese smiled too, for the first time: Firmness had so far been a hard sell for them in the United States—even in the Bush White House, where running over students with tanks was seen as, at the very least, poor PR for the Beijing regime. Han Xu finished what was on his plate, put his knife and fork down neatly, and raised his glass of red wine—a gift from the president of France, we had been informed—in a gesture of gratitude, not quite a toast but by no means casual, either. He whispered something to the translator. “He is grateful for the president’s understanding,” the translator said. “He will communicate it at home.”
“Good,” Nixon rumbled.
It occurred to me that part of the problem in current Sino-American relations might be that the Chinese had simply been listening to the wrong Americans over the years. Not unlike European explorers of Africa in the nineteenth century, who stumbled into the uncharted interior and latched on to whatever self-proclaimed kings and chiefs they first met up with, without having the slightest idea of what these supposed authority figures might represent, what their real power might be, or what their people and their neighbors thought of them, the Chinese had been “opened up” by Nixon and accepted him blindly as representing American hearts and minds. Just as the English in Africa had backed native rulers long after it should have been apparent to them that the rulers’ own people had abandoned them, the Chinese remained loyal to Nixon after his fall and seemed unable to accept the legitimacy of his successors. It was one of the odd paradoxes of Nixon, whose rise to power was driven by anticommunism, that he ended up being taken more seriously in Beijing (and, eventually, in Moscow) than in Washington. Indeed, he soon came to be a kind of lobbyist in Washington for the two mutually antagonistic Communist regimes.
He showed no discomfort at the thought; quite the contrary, he was proud of the faith the Chinese had placed in him. After dinner—at which, once again, each of the guests in turn presented the host with a little speech about the hopes and dreams of his own little segment of American capitalism (the Chinese were tactfully exempted from sharing their hopes and dreams with us), followed by a detailed tour d’horizon of the world situation from Nixon—I could not help wondering if there had been a little more frivolity when Pat Nixon was the hostess, and wishing for the presence