Irving Wallace - The Man

Kasatkin had moved his head, caught Dilman’s glance, and smiled. “Yes, you are familiar with this dynastic relic, I see. It is my first visit. Has it changed much since you were here after the Second War?”

Dilman blinked. “How did you know I’d been here before?”

“I have no time for strangers,” Kasatkin said. “I must know of a man before I consent to meet with him.”

“Yes, I came to Versailles, this place, twice, with an attorney friend from Chicago. It was during the liberation period. We were flown over. We were officers, Judge Advocate’s Division of the Army.” He searched off. “As far as I can make out, it hasn’t changed much, though I’m not sure I recognize everything. I knew the way to the Petit Trianon-you know, Louis XV built that little palace for Madame Du Barry, then his son gave it to Marie Antoinette-because my friend, a very learned man, told me a modern-day ghost story about it, which I never forgot. It was one of those things that sticks in your mind.”

Dilman turned toward Kasatkin, as they continued walking. “Have you ever heard about the two lady tourists, English schoolteachers, who came here to do some sightseeing one afternoon in 1901, and about the people they ran into and the objects they saw that did not exist then or now, but did exist over a century before? I mean, those two schoolteachers, walking through the Versailles gardens in 1901, just as we are walking tonight, they somehow walked backward in time and stumbled on Versailles as it had been in 1789.”

Kasatkin was staring at Dilman. “Surely, my friend, you give no belief to that story?”

At once, Dilman felt foolish. Here he was speaking to the hardheaded, materialistic graduate of the Moscow Industrial Academy, the boss of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, the dictator of 280,000,000 people, with whom he had spent nearly a week discussing trade agreements, ballistic missiles, outer space, Baraza, Berlin, India, Brazil, peace and coexistence, and here he was telling him a psychical experience as if it were as real as the issues over which they had debated. Kasatkin must think him mad or drunk or, worse, a moron. Dilman’s instinct was to puncture the tale good-naturedly and change the subject, but his loyalty to Nat Abrahams and to Nat’s intelligence, imagination, curiosity, would not allow such defection. There was nothing to do but go on, commit more of his forces to what had originally been a casual and innocent conversational foray.

“I don’t presume to say whether it’s true or not,” Dilman said. I know only that we are insignificant mortals, not certain of where we came from or where we are going or why we are here. Nor am I certain that all there is of ourselves or the world around us can be comprehended with our five known senses. How can we be sure we know everything?”

Kasatkin’s shrewd eyes twinkled. “We’d better be sure, my friend.” Then he added, chidingly, “Go on, go on with your tall tale. It will give me something to tell my grandchildren when they refuse to sleep. Evidence, my friend-what is the evidence that those school spinsters of yours broke the time barrier and were witnesses to events of the past?”

Rapidly, to get it over with, Dilman went on. “Both those school-teachers-one was named Anne Moberly, the other Jourdain-taught in the city of Oxford. They were intelligent, sober, conservative ladies. When they went on a vacation to France together in 1901, and decided to visit Versailles, they knew next to nothing about Versailles except for the information they had got from the Baedeker they carried with them. During their walk in the gardens, one such as we are making, they came across Frenchmen strangely attired in what appeared to be masquerade costumes. There were officials in green coats and tricornered hats. The Moberly woman thought the scenery unnatural and lifeless, one-dimensional, no breeze, no light and shade, no sense of aliveness. Then, and this is important, they crossed a small, rather rustic bridge over a ravine. And on the lawn, before the Petit Trianon over there, they saw an aristocratic lady in a large straw hat and full skirt, sketching at an easel. Not immediately, but afterward in Paris, they discussed the eerie, haunted quality of their day here, and they decided they had undergone a unique adventure, and secretly they began to research it.”

“A playlet,” said Kasatkin. “Maybe they saw actors in a playlet being put on for them?”

“No, there had been nothing like that. Anyway, they researched for nine years. You know what they found out? There was no ravine and no bridge over it in 1901, even though they had crossed it together. La Motte ’s map of the gardens, done in 1783, did not show the ravine or bridge either. But listen to this-two years after they’d had their adventure-the original map done by Mique, the Queen’s architect, from which La Motte had made an inaccurate copy, was discovered in the chimney of some French house. This original map showed the ravine and bridge that no longer existed. Furthermore, from a portrait done by Wertmuller, and from the journal of the Queen’s dressmaker telling what the Queen wore in the summer of 1789, our two schoolteachers ascertained that the aristocratic lady sketching on the lawn in 1901 was none other than Marie Antoinette herself… There you have it-well, a small part of it-what psychic experts have called the best-authenticated account of Serialism, stumbling backward through time, on record.”

Premier Kasatkin was silent as they tramped over a worn footbridge, and then he said, “Amusing… amusing, Mr. President, especially if one dreams of escaping present-day realities of possible nuclear horror by being transported into the past of 1789.” He made a short gesture toward the mist-clad grounds and trees and Petit Trianon. “The atmosphere invites escape. But it is false, a Potemkin lie to beguile and lull. All that is truth is our nuclear age, our power to destroy one another and life itself. For us, the two of us, we cannot be two old ladies running away into the past, Mr. President. The past is dead. It does not exist today. We have only ourselves and tonight and the future. Our unique adventure is to save, to guarantee, the reality of the future.”

“That is another story,” Dilman said with a smile, “still unwritten.”

“We are writing it,” Kasatkin said flatly. He sniffed the air. “The weather is changing. France can be unhealthy for common men if we are to read its dead past. Come, let us leave the Trianons and return to the present and the future.”

Kasatkin veered left, to a new path that would bring them to their motorcades waiting outside the Palace. The bodyguards, both American and Russian, were hastily doing their turnabouts, falling into position as the two leaders resumed their walk.

It was Premier Kasatkin who was speaking once more. “Mr. President, to be blunt, I like you more than the one who was President before you. The other one, he was a stranger. He came from a life that never knew oppression or want, he was like a sterile machine, and his ministers, such as your Secretary Eaton, were no better.” Kasatkin held up his hand. “Do not protest, do not defend. It is only my way of being complimentary to you. We understand each other because we have both been underdogs, like most of the people on the earth. When I use the word underprivileged , I know your experience makes you define it as I do, and not with the numerals of statistics and reports.”

“That much of what you say is true-” Dilman began.

“I have not spoken everything that is on my mind,” the Russian said. “More than any American President that has come before you, I think you understand my people and myself. You are surrounded by a reactionary clique, an elite class of capitalists, interested in promoting only their white-skinned version of freedom and prosperity. They regard us, as Communists, their enemy, as threats to the privilege and special interests they wallow in like hogs, just as they consider you, as Negroes, their enemy, and will allow you no freedom and no prosperity. Since you suffer, and therefore understand, such selfishness, I feel you and I are better able to-”