Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

“ La force du destin ,” Buchanan responded. “Beaucoup des hommes américains sont capables, mais peu achèvent, dans les chances d’élection, la position plus haute.” He feared, from the failure of her regal face to pounce upon his meaning, that he had lost her; perhaps achever was the wrong verb, and position imprecise. And yet, even in his uncertainty, and the possibility of inadequacy at the highest reach of his mission here in Russia, he retained a sense of masculine comfort with this woman, who had recently risen from her bed of accouchement , delivered of another Grand Duke. She is remarkably fond of dancing in which she excels , Buchanan wrote Hannah Slaymaker from his apartment on the north side of the Neva. The following year, he wrote John B. Sterigere, I think I may say, I am a favorite here, & especially with the Emperor and Empress. They have always treated me during the past winter in such a manner as even to excite observation. I am really astonished at my own success in this respect . Her doughy Germanic softness in his arms, the careful simplicity of her French, the silken patch of moisture beneath his hand, even the slightly puzzled look in her eyes, which were brown shot through with a honied pallor, all catered to his comfort, his feverish illusion, amid the swinging pressures of the dance, of mastery — of their two weights connected by an attraction kept taut. The empress’s lips, thin but rosy, with a dent of latent smile — of self-appreciation — in the corners, were parted as if waiting for him to give her reason to speak. So Buchanan went on, adding a shrug of his arms to the conjoined movements of the waltz, “ Mais nous parlons des possibilités imaginaires. Je voudrais seulement que le traité de commerce et de navigation entre nos pays se conclure; donc, je retournerai à mon état natal de Pennsylvanie, où j’assumerai les devoirs and les plaisirs très modestes du citoyen privé. Ma carrière publique achève ”—yes, this was the correct use of the verb, but for emphasis he amplified — “ fait sa fin avec cette mission ici, en Russie .”

She smiled; her small round teeth glinted, and the disarming gap where an eye tooth has been pulled. Her jewels and eyes sparkled alike; her naked plump shoulders shone with their glaze of human sweat. “Je pense que vous avez longtemps le mal du pays, de votre pays chaud et fertile, dans le Pennsylvanie, alors qu’il faut vivre dans notre royaume tellement froid, tellement vaste et vieux et barbare.”

“Ah, que non — pas barbare! Pauvres, peut-être — la plupart des gens sont pauvres et aussi, dans la vue d’un homme américain, très superstitieux.”

“Dans les Etats-Unis, personne ne croit?”

“Au contraire, votre Majesté—tous les gens croient dans le bon Dieu, parce que — ça va sans dire — Dieu a les donné, a nous donné, tant de bonheurs. La terre si grande, les beaux temps, les bois, les fleuves, et, au-dessus tout, notre constitution sage et généreuse — toutes les choses, les dons du bon Dieu! Mais, en comparaison du Dieu russe, notre Dieu tient à distance sublime; dans cette manière, il met à l’épreuve notre sincérité, et nous donne l’espace pour l’exercice de la liberté!” Buchanan was not sure he had done justice, in these clumsy idioms, to the mighty subject of faith in his native land, but from a tension on the empress’s face, like that on a bulging drop about to run down a windowpane, she was waiting her turn to speak.

“ Votre pays est très curieux à mon sens — une Russie pleine d’Allemands! Mon mari ,” she went on brightly, “ attend beaucoup de votre pays .”

He was not sure he had heard correctly. Attendre , he supposed, in the sense of “expects.” The czar, absolute ruler of the world’s largest terrain, seemed implausibly miniaturized in the intimate phrase mon mari . Confused, Buchanan responded merely, “ Vraiment? Pourquoi? ”

“C’est simple, n’est-ce pas? La Russie a besoin d’ amis, maintenant que la France et l’Angleterre ont conclus leur traité sur la question belge. Aussi, l’opinion publique et la presse européenne ont été peu aimables à mon mari concernant la question polonaise, et particulièrement les atrocités alléguées de la guerre, sa suppression héroique de leur révolte méchante. Dans toute l’Europe, le mouvement révolutionnaire naisse — ça bouillonne! Et quel pays est la source du mouvement, à l’origine? Le votre! Ainsi, s’il y soit ce traité maritime, l’empereur pourra dire, ‘Voilà, mes bon amis, les américains, les gens les plus révolutionnaires au monde — ils ne résistent pas à ma politique polonaise!’ ”

“Je vous comprends, Majesté, et je vous remercie très sincèrement pour votre explication lucide.” In fact her blithe words did help Buchanan better to understand why the commercial treaty, after years of surly inaction on the part of Russian officialdom, was now, with some prodding from Count Nesselrode, the Foreign Minister, and Baron Krudener, the Ambassador to the United States, making sudden headway against the objections of Count Cancrene, the Minister of Finance, and Monsieur de Bloudoff, the Minister of the Interior; certain tariff reductions (on hemp, sail duck, and hammered iron) in the proposed Congressional bill of 1832, together with a marked increase over the last year of Russian imports of, especially, American sugar, of course had helped, as had Buchanan’s judicious and flattering remarks in those of his dispatches bound to be opened and read by the emperor’s spies. But this insight, that a despotic government might relieve itself of revolutionary pressure by striking a trading deal with the most progressive power on earth, he owed to the empress, and the curious propensity of her feminine sun to shine upon him. His last official communication from Russia, an accounting to Secretary of State Louis McLane of his final days and his official farewells, [8] Moore, ed., Works , Vol. II, pp. 378–82. included this mysterious — almost romantically so — paragraph:

I had, on the same day, my audience of leave of the Empress who was very gracious; but what passed upon this occasion is not properly the subject for a despatch .

Buchanan’s letter to McLane includes a number of passages that deserve quotation. Emperor Nicholas, for instance, inquiring as to Buchanan’s homeward itinerary, expatiated upon the worrisome French people. The French were a singular people. They were so fickle in their character and had such a restless desire to disturb the peace of the world; that they were always dangerous. They had tried every form of government and could not rest satisfied with any. French emissaries were now endeavoring, every where, to excite disturbances and destroy the peace all over Europe .

And Buchanan describes — with how conscious a parallel, one wonders, to Ann Coleman’s death — the virtual suicide of Nicholas’s oldest brother, the handsome, erratic, and in the end melancholy Alexander I. Throughout his last illness, he refused to take medicine and thus suffered his disease which was not, at the first, considered dangerous, to become mortal. When Sir James Wylie, his physician, told him, that unless he would submit to medical treatment his disease must prove fatal; the Emperor Alexander regarded him earnestly and exclaimed, in the most solemn manner, “And why should I desire to live?” He continued to reject all remedies and his death was the consequence. On the truth of this anecdote you may rely. There was no foundation for the report that he had been poisoned .

In parting, the Emperor Nicholas embraced and saluted the stout Pennsylvanian in the Russian manner, a ceremony for which I was wholly unprepared , and told me to tell General Jackson to send him another Minister exactly like myself. He wished for no better . The Russian manner was more fully described in Buchanan’s diary of June that year: Upon taking leave of Antoine, I submitted to be kissed by him according to the Russian fashion, first on the right cheek, then on the left, and then on the mouth. This was my first regular experiment of the kind .