Said the second:
KISSINGER RETAINS LITERARY AGENT
To enhance the value of his memoirs in the marketplace, Secretary of State Kissinger has retained a powerful literary agency to represent him. The agency is International Creative Management.
I.C.M.'s clients include Barbra Streisand, Steve McQueen, Isaac Stern, Peter Benchley, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Harry Reasoner, Joseph Heller, * and Sir Laurence Olivier.
360
$2 Million to $3 Million Mentioned According to publishing informants, the "extras" being sought include a lifetime consultancy as an editor, magazine and newspaper columns, television adviser-ships or appearances, unlimited staff, chauffeured limousines, and other things.
Gold presumed that "other things" included the two shifts of three bodyguards he was later reported hiring at his own expense.
Gold perused the dollar amounts again with a vitriolic misanthropy greatly exceeding that natural jealousy to be found in every man. His own original plans for a book of Kissinger's memoirs were aborted. Deftly he had rearranged his information for a more combustible line of attack, considering he would easily obtain the Kissinger manuscript as soon as photocopies were made for book club and paperback deals. Six months ahead of publication Gold could rebut assertions and positions before they were proclaimed, in a fusillade of debunking articles that would diminish the commercial value of Kissinger's book while enhancing that of his own. Let the shuttling little bastard publish first if he dared! Each of Gold's articles, of course, would find a place in his book. But the big bucks, unfortunately, still would go to the surreptitious former Harvard professor and Secretary of State who was now, as well as a number of other things, consultant to the University of Southern California's Center for the Study of the American Experience, instead of a primary topic of investigation.
It was disgraceful and so discouraging to Gold that this base figure charged with infamies too horrendous to measure and too numerous for listing should be gadding about gaily in chauffeured cars, instead of walking at Spandau with Rudolf Hess, while Gold had to drive rented ones.
Gold who'd collected everything by and about Kissinger ever published, could certainly do a better job than Kissinger on a book about Kissinger. For one
361
thing, he had an objective antipathy toward his subject possibly lacking, or weaker, in Kissinger himself. Gold strongly doubted that the sneaky man who'd treacherously monitored his telephone calls for eight years and cooperated in the illegal tapping of the family lines of journalists and aides would have the humorous conviviality and that largeness and flexibility of nature to view himself in the comic light of ridicule and loathing he inspired in so many others. Or that he could be anything but oblivious to the despicable character of his small actions and the bloody catastrophies resulting from his large ones. There was the judgment of Anthony C. Lewis in The New York Times:
His agony was at arm's length; there is no sign that the human torment of Vietnam affected him inside, as it did so many others.
There was also a deficiency in imagination likely to circumscribe the value of any study of Kissinger by Kissinger. Asked about his role in the Cambodian war, in which an estimated five hundred thousand people died, he'd said:
I may have a lack of imagination, but I fail to see the moral issue involved.
Whereas another State Department official, William C. Sullivan, had testified:
The justification for the war is the reelection of the President.
Not once that Gold knew of had Kissinger raised a voice in protest against the fascistic use of police power to quell public opposition to the war in Southeast Asia. How honestly would he deal with unfriendly assessments of himself Gold had found: (1) of himself as someone "as shabby as the certified scoundrels in the Nixon administration"; (2) of his policies and record as "marked by ignorance and ineptitude" and likely to bt
362
viewed by history as "thin in diplomatic achievement and shameful in human terms"; and (3) of his major achievement, peace in Vietnam, that "Kissinger brought peace to Vietnam the same way Napoleon brought peace to Europe: by losing," and that "If he had his way we would be bombing Vietnam still." Or with that exultant peroration by an editorial writer for The New Republic who, responding to the report that Kissinger might soon be working in television and not in government, gave thanks to God that now "he can devote his conjuring talents to television land, where they won't do any harm"? Had Kissinger, as alleged, really longed for "a brutal episode of battle" that would result in a convincing Israeli military defeat? Had he really tried to delay arms shipments to that country during the Yom Kippur war? Were his hopes truly depressed when Israel rallied by fording the Suez Canal and encircling the Egyptian armies on the farther side? Gold had ample documentation of the plain silliness of the prick:
KISSINGER CALLS NIXON "UNPLEASANT"
KISSINGER APOLOGIZES FOR OVERHEARD WORDS ON NIXON
KISSINGER CRIES IN SALZBURG AT CHARGE HE LIED ABOUT CHILE
"Power is a great aphrodisiac," this man of vaunted brilliance and wit had said more than once with an arrogance and naivete, in Gold's estimation, that merited contempt. Gold knew from experience that women were a better one. Only a lamebrain, Gold thought, would state to an interviewer in wartime after his own efforts at peacemaking had been failing wretchedly for almost four years, "When I'm talking to Le Due Tho, I know how to behave with Le Due Tho, and when I'm with a girl, I know how to behave with a girl." It did not seem to Gold that Kissinger knew anything at ill about behaving with Oriana Fallaci, the woman conducting the interview:
363
"No, I don't want to engage in polemics on this subject."
"Enough, I don't want to talk of Vietnam any more."
"Oh! No, I shan't answer him. I shan't respond to his invitation."
"Don't ask me that."
"That's a question I can't answer."
"I can't, I can't ... I don't want to answer that question."
"And don't make me talk of Vietnam any more, please."
"But that's really enough about Vietnam now. Let's talk of Machiavelli, Cicero anything except Vietnam."
"No, I have never been against the war in Vietnam."
"But are we still talking of Vietnam?"
"Power as an instrument in its own right has no fascination for me."
"What counts is to what extent women are part of my life, a central preoccupation. Well, they aren't that at all. To me women are no more than a pastime, a hobby. Nobody devotes too much time to a hobby. Moreover, my engagement book is there to show I only devote a limited portion of my time to them."
"... I've always acted alone. Americans admire that enormously. Americans admire the cowboy leading the caravan alone astride his horse, the cowboy entering a village or city alone on his horse."
"This romantic, surprising character suits me, because being alone has always been part of my style, or of my technique if you prefer. Independence too. Yes, that's very important to me and in me. And, finally, conviction. I am always convinced of the necessity of whatever I'm doing. And people feel that, believe in it. And I attach great importance to being believed."
"I'm not asking for popularity, I'm not seeking it. In fact, if you really want to know, I care nothing for popularity. I can afford to say what I think. I am
364
referring to what is genuine in me. Take actors, for instance, the really good ones don't rely on mere technique. They also follow their feelings when they play a part. Like me, they are genuine."
"Oh, he's so full of shit, that self-seeking schmuck" Gold said aloud.
"Why I agreed to it," Mr. Kissinger later commented about the interview, "I'll never know."
Said Mr. Lewis of the Times:
[His] jokes have about them the air of the grave. That we honor a person who has done such things in our name is a comment on us.
The transition from Kissinger to blight, rubbish,
rot, and moral defilement was a natural one, and Gold was not distracted from his article when his daughter entered.
"You want dinner?"
Gold waved her away without looking up from the work in which he was immersed. In an hour he settled on a title:
WE ARE NOT A SOCIETY
or
WE ARE NOT WORTH OUR SALT
It was a title that sang. The divine fires were burning.
365
VIII
We Are Not a Society or
We Are Not Worth
Our Salt
"1
JL LIKE the first part of the title but not the second." As Gold watched with a look of cold dislike, Lieberman took a pencil in his fist and drew lieavy black lines through the offending words as though gouging them from the page with some primitive stone implement. "There, that's much better, isn't it? *We Are Not a Society.'"
"It's hardly a blockbuster that way."
"We can build on it. I'm thinking of wearing polka-dot bow ties. How would I look in them?"
Gold knew he would look just awful. "I think you'd look just fine."
"So do I." Lieberman sat back in his swivel chair with a face too plainly smug and disrespectful. "Now what is all this nonsense about salt? What do you mean 'worth our salt'? What's that supposed to signify anyway?"
Gold considered walking out the door. "It's a play on words," he defended himself. "In addition to any
369
idiomatic value in the metaphor, I feel that salt is one of those basic, shared commodities that give that kind of cohesion to an aggregate of families in a given area that we commonly call a society."
"Well, why don't you just say it as simply as that?" Lieberman instructed with an intolerable air of authority. "Cohesion is better. Salt is too complex."
"Salt?"
"Especially 'worth our salt.' We'll use 'cohesion' instead. Try to remember, Bruce, that we've got a highly educated, very intellectual, politically concerned group of readers who are always very well informed, and they just won't know what you mean when you say 'worth our salt.' What do you mean, anyway? I don't get it. How much is salt worth? And why is it ours? Why not worth our beef?"
"Go on," said Gold.
"We'll call it 'We Are Not a Society or Are We Lacking in Those Basic, Shared Commodities That Give Cohesion to Aggregates of Families in a Given Geographical Area That Enable Us to Call Them a Society?' That just about says it all, doesn't it? 'Cohesion' works like a charm. We can put in plenty of sex now and take out all the salt. Just remember, Bruce, that I'm an experienced editor and you're not," continued Lieberman with a bloated sense of superiority. "Sophie and I had dinner at the White House once, you know. And we got there on my merits, not by sucking up to an anti-Semitt like Ralph."
"You got there," reminded Gold, losing all control as the fury submerged beneath the rather pacific exterior he was striving to maintain finally achieved the upper hand, "by supporting a war with a bunch of other assholes who were too fucking corrupt to tell Johnson and Nixon they were full of shit. If I had a kid hurt in that war I'd cut your head off now. You yellow hypocrite, I never saw you rushing out to enlist. And your kids would have been deferred along with mine, wouldn't they, if they'd been old enough to be drafted? That gives me a good idea for another article."
370
"Let me see it first." Lieberman rose, wheedling. "You owe me that much."
"You wouldn't use it," Gold taunted with a curled lip. "It's called 'My Meal at the White House,' by Skip and Sophie Lieberman."
"As told to Bruce Gold," said Lieberman with a look of almost livid hatred, "who has never eaten there."
"But keeps trying. Good day, you prick."
"Good day, Bruce." In the instant they stood motionless and glared at each other, perhaps nowhere else on earth were so powerfully contrasted two old friends who liked each other not at all and who were so intractably in contention on almost every issue. "You give some thought to improving the title still more while I rewrite the text. Maybe we should be coauthors."
"You change one more fucking word," Gold warned, "and I'll take it back and sell it to another magazine."
"Bruce, it's marvelous," cried Ralph on his hot line from Washington to Gold in his apartment, where the latter was furtively squirreling together the family bankbooks and other testaments of ownership in anticipation of his flight to another domicile when the hour foreclosing further procrastination was at last at hand. "Everyone here agrees."
"They do?" asked Gold in a soaring resurrection of spirit.
"Even the President. The President wants me to tell you he's crazy about it. He asked if you'd be willing to work as a speechwriter."
"No," said Gold.
"I told him that. You're too important in your own right. And you'd be much more valuable to us as an independent voice in our control."
"It would compromise my moral authority," Gold added with a passing chill.
"I'll point that out. He likes your article so much, Bruce, that he doesn't want you to publish it."
371
"He doesn't?"
"He wants to introduce it in sections entirely as his own," said Ralph, "in speeches, and press conferences, and in his next State of the Union message. He loves your phrases, Bruce. You've been promoted again."
"To what?"
"We'll have that nailed down definitely before you fly back unless we don't have time. He especially loves that worth his salt. What a stunning gift you have. How in the world did you arrive at an image like that? It boggles the mind."
"That's worth our salt, Ralph," Gold corrected.
"He might want to change it, Bruce," cautioned Ralph.
"It's already been changed," Gold informed him. "It's out of the article. Cut."
"By whom?"
"Lieberman," said Gold. "He doesn't like salt. He wants to take it all out."
"Salt?"
"He's changing it to cohesion. That kind of cohesion—"
"Cohesion?" cried Ralph in a tone of wounded surprise. "What kind of word is cohesion? He's crazy, Bruce. You mustn't let him ruin it."
"He thought salt was too complex."
"He doesn't know what he's doing," said Ralph. "Cohesion's no good. He just isn't worth his salt."
"Will you talk to him about it?"
"I won't talk to Lieberman about anything," said Ralph. "But he won't have dinner at the White House again while I'm around. We'll have you instead. Then we can have the salt, right? You won't be using it anyway." -
Here Gold's inherent tactical sense surged to the fore. "There are other places, Ralph," he began his negotiations. "And I've been thinking about it for my book. Pomoroy's very impressed. Worth Our Salt. I'd hate to give that up, Ralph."
372
"I can see why," said Ralph. "But let the President have it. After all, he's the only President we have."
"It would be worth a lot to him, wouldn't it?" hinted Gold.
"And this President would repay. Maybe that Ambassadorship to the Court of St. James. Or Secretary of State. That one is not bad, Bruce. You travel free and get all the nights out you want. Would you like to be Secretary of State?"
"Let me think about it," said Gold with a sangfroid he'd not known till that moment was an inner resource he could draw upon. "What about that head of the CIA you once mentioned?"
"You could be that too."
"Too? Ralph, is any of this really possible?"
"I don't see why not, if you're worth your salt. Could you handle both jobs at the same time?"
"I don't see why not," said Gold. "I'll take the piece back from Lieberman. Mum's the word, right?"
"Salt," Ralph corrected and laughed. "And remember—the walls have ears."
"I know," said Gold. "I've been talking to them."
"And I'm going in right now and start fighting for you, if I can get an appointment. We'll shoot for Secretary of State, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, head of NATO—"
> "I'm not sure I want that one."
"—or Director of the CIA. It's high time you got what you deserved, Bruce, although it may be too soon."
"Thank you, Ralph. You're the salt of the earth."
"Would you say that again, Bruce?"
"Lieberman, I don't like Cohesion." "I won't take salt." "Then I'm withdrawing the piece." "You've made a deal somewhere else." "May God strike me dead," said Gold, supremely
content with the terms of the agreement he was forging
373
with the Deity, "if you ever see that article in print in another magazine."
"I wasn't crazy about it anyway," Lieberman retorted with an ugly petulance, and Gold recalled with considerable mental peace an additional explanation for Lieberman's mood of morose and vindictive frustration. But a fortnight earlier, Lieberman had applied with fanfare for membership in a stodgy, obsolescent conservative organization called Young Americans for Freedom and had been rejected because he was too old. He had on a polka-dot bow tie with matching crumbs and grease stains—another wandering Jew, Gold decreed in disavowing lament, converted to a bow tie. He was wearing a shabby leather jacket and looked like a rough beast with slotted eyes on whom it belonged as a hide. "I've got more important things to busy myself with than you and your salt. I want to do something about China, communism, and the grape growers in California."
"What's wrong with China?"
"There's no political democracy there," said Lieberman grumpily, "and no freedom of the press,"