Edge of Eternity (82 page)

They laughed and clapped again. This was just like show business, Walli realized. If you were a star, they would love you just for being more or less normal. At a Plum Nellie concert, the audience would
cheer wildly at literally anything Walli or Dave said into the microphone. And a joke became ten times as funny when told by a celebrity.

“I'm not a politician, I can't make a political speech . . . but I guess you guys hear as many of those as you want.”

“Right on!” shouted one of the boys, and they laughed again.

“But I have some experience, you know? I used to live in a Communist country. One day the police caught me singing a Chuck Berry song called ‘Back in the USA.' So they smashed up my guitar.”

The audience went quiet.

“It was my first guitar. In those days I had only one. Broke my guitar, broke my heart. So, you see, I know about Communism. I probably know more about it than Lyndon Johnson. I hate Communism.” He raised his voice a little. “And I'm
still
against the war.”

They broke out into cheers again.

“You know some people believe Jesus is coming back to earth one day. I don't know if that's true.” They were uneasy with this, not sure how to take it. Then Walli said: “If he comes to America he'll probably be called a Communist.”

He glanced sideways at Beep, who was laughing along with the rest. She was wearing a sweater and a short but respectable skirt. Her hair was cut in a neat bob. She was still sexy, though: she could not hide that.

“Jesus will probably be arrested by the FBI for un-American activities,” Walli went on. “But he won't be surprised: it's pretty similar to what happened to him the first time he came to earth.”

Walli had hardly planned beyond his first sentence, and now he was making it up as he went along, but they were delighted. However, he decided to quit while he was ahead.

He had prepared his ending. “I just came here to say one thing to you, and that's: Thank you. Thank you on behalf of millions of people all over the world who want to end this evil war. We appreciate the hard work you're doing here. Keep it up, and I hope to God you win. Good night.”

He stepped back from the microphone. Beep came up to him and took his arm, and together they left by the back door, with cheers and applause still ringing out. As soon as they were in Dave's car, Beep said: “My God—you were brilliant! You should run for president!”

He smiled and shrugged. “People are always pleased to find that a pop star is a human being. That's really all it is.”

“But you spoke sincerely—and you were so witty!”

“Thanks.”

“Maybe you get it from your mother. Didn't you tell me she was in politics?”

“Not really. There's no normal politics in East Germany. She was a city councilor, before the Communists cracked down. By the way, did you notice my accent?”

“Just a little bit.”

“I was afraid of that.” He was sensitive about his accent. People associated it with Nazis in war movies. He tried to speak like an American, but it was difficult.

“Actually it's charming,” Beep said. “I wish Dave could have heard you.”

“Where is he, anyway?”

“London, I think. I imagined you would know.”

Walli shrugged. “I know he's taking care of business somewhere. He'll show up as soon as we need to write some songs, or make a film, or go on the road again. I thought you two were going to get married.”

“We are. We just haven't gotten around to it yet, he's been so busy. And, you know, my parents are cool about us sharing a bedroom when he's here, so it's not like we're desperate to get away from them.”

“Nice.” They reached Haight-Ashbury and Beep stopped the car outside Walli's house. “You want a cup of coffee or something?” Walli did not know why he said that: it just came out.

“Sure.” Beep turned off the throaty engine.

The house was empty. Tammy and Lisa had helped Walli deal with his grief about Karolin's engagement, and he would always be grateful to them, but they had been living a fantasy life that had lasted only as long as the vacation. When summer turned to fall they had left San Francisco and gone home to attend college, like most of the hippies of 1967.

While it lasted, it had been an idyllic time.

Walli put on the new Beatles album,
Magical Mystery Tour,
then made coffee and rolled a joint. They sat on a giant cushion, Walli
cross-legged, Beep with her feet tucked under her, and passed the roach. Soon Walli drifted into the mellow mood he liked so much. “I hate the Beatles,” he said after a while. “They are so fucking good.”

Beep giggled.

Walli said: “Weird lyrics.”

“I know!”

“What does that line mean? ‘Four of fish and finger pies.' It sounds like, you know, cannibalism.”

“Dave explained that to me,” Beep said. “In England they have seafood restaurants that sell fish in batter with French fries to go. They call it ‘fish and chips.' And ‘four of fish' means four pennies' worth.”

“What about ‘finger pie'?”

“Okay, that's when a boy puts his finger up a girl's, you know, vagina.”

“And the connection?”

“It means that if you bought fish and chips for a girl she would let you finger her.”

“Remember the days when that was daring?” Walli said nostalgically.

“Everything's different now, thank God,” said Beep. “The old rules don't apply anymore. Love is free.”

“Now it's oral sex on the first date.”

“What do you like best?” Beep mused. “Giving oral sex, or receiving?”

“What a difficult question!” Walli was not sure he ought to be talking about this with his best friend's fiancée. “But I think I like receiving.” He could not resist the temptation to add: “What about you?”

“I prefer giving,” she said.

“Why?”

She hesitated. For a moment she looked guilty: perhaps she, too, was not sure they should be discussing this, despite her hippie talk about free love. She took a long draw on the joint and blew out smoke. Her face cleared, and she said: “Most boys are so bad at oral sex that receiving is never as exciting as it should be.”

Walli took the joint from her. “If you could tell the boys of America what they need to know about giving oral sex, what would you say?”

She laughed. “Well, first of all, don't start licking right away.”

“No?” Walli was surprised. “I thought it was all about licking.”

“Not at all. You should be gentle at first. Just kiss it!”

Walli knew, then, that he was lost.

He looked down at Beep's legs. Her knees were pressed close together. Was that defensive? Or a sign of excitement?

Or both?

“No girl ever told me that,” he said. He gave her back the joint.

He was feeling an irresistible rush of sexual excitement. Was she feeling it, too, or just playing a game with him?

She sucked the last of the smoke from the roach and dropped it in the ashtray. “Most girls are too shy to talk about what they like,” she said. “The truth is that even a kiss can be too much, right at the start. In fact . . .” She gave him a direct look, and at that moment he knew that she, too, was lost. She said in a lower voice: “In fact, you can give her a thrill just by breathing on it.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Even better,” she said, “is to breathe on it through the cotton of her underwear.”

She moved slightly, parting her knees at last, and he saw that under her short skirt she was wearing white panties.

“That's amazing,” he said hoarsely.

“Do you want to try it?” she said.

“Yes,” said Walli. “Please.”

•   •   •

When Jasper Murray returned to New York he went to see Mrs. Salzman. She got him an interview with Herb Gould, for a job as a researcher on the television news show
This Day.

He was now a different proposition. Two years ago he had been a supplicant, a student journalist desperate for a job, someone to whom nobody owed anything. Now he was a veteran who had risked his life for the USA. He was older and wiser, and he was owed a debt, especially by men who had not fought. He got the job.

It was strange. He had forgotten what cold weather felt like. His clothes bothered him: a suit and a white shirt with a button-down collar and a tie. His regular business oxford shoes were so light in weight he kept thinking he was barefoot. Walking from his apartment to the office he found himself scanning the sidewalk for concealed mines.

On the other hand, he was busy. The civilian world had few of the long, infuriating periods of inactivity that characterized army life: waiting for orders, waiting for transport, waiting for the enemy. From his first day back Jasper was making phone calls, checking files, looking up information in libraries, and conducting preinterviews.

In the office of
This Day
a mild shock awaited Jasper. Sam Cakebread, his old rival on the student newspaper, was now working for the program. He was a fully fledged reporter, not having had to take time out to fight a war. Irksomely, Jasper often had to do preparatory research for stories that Sam would then report on camera.

Jasper worked on fashion, crime, music, literature, and business. He researched a story about his sister's bestseller,
Frostbite,
and its pseudonymous author, speculating about which of the known Soviet dissidents might have written it, based on writing style and prison camp experiences; concluding it was probably someone nobody had heard of.

Then they decided to do a show about the astonishing Vietcong operation that had been dubbed the Tet Offensive.

Jasper was still angry about Vietnam. His rage burned low in his guts like a damped furnace, but he had forgotten nothing, least of all his vow to expose men who lied to the American people.

When the fighting began to die down, during the second week of February, Herb Gould told Sam Cakebread to plan a summing-up report, assessing how the offensive had changed the course of the war. Sam presented his preliminary conclusions to an editorial meeting attended by the whole team, including researchers.

Sam said the Tet Offensive had been a failure for the North Vietnamese in three ways. “First, Communist forces were given the general order: ‘Move forward to achieve final victory.' We know this from documents found on captured enemy troops. Second: although fighting is still going on in Hue and Khe Sanh, the Vietcong have proved unable to hold a single city. And third, they have lost more than twenty thousand men, all for nothing.”

Herb Gould looked around for comment.

Jasper was very junior in this group, but he was unable to keep quiet. “I have one question for Sam,” he said.

“Go ahead, Jasper,” said Herb.

“What fucking planet are you living on?”

There was a moment of shocked silence at his rudeness. Then Herb said mildly: “A lot of people are skeptical about this, Jasper, but explain why—maybe without the profanity?”

“Sam has just given us President Johnson's line on Tet. Since when did this program become a propaganda agency for the White House? Shouldn't we be challenging the government's view?”

Herb did not disagree. “How would you challenge it?”

“First, documents found on captured troops cannot be taken at face value. The written orders given to soldiers are not a reliable guide to the enemy's strategic objectives. I have a translation here: ‘Display to the utmost your revolutionary heroism by surmounting all hardships and difficulties.' This is not strategy, it's a pep talk.”

Herb said: “So what
was
their objective?”

“To demonstrate their power and reach, and thereby to demoralize the South Vietnam regime, our troops, and the American people. And they have succeeded.”

Sam said: “They still didn't take any cities.”

“They don't need to hold cities—they're already there. How do you think they got to the American embassy in Saigon? They didn't parachute in, they walked around the corner! They were probably living on the next block. They don't
take
cities because they already
have
them.”

Herb said: “What about Sam's third point—their casualties?”

“No Pentagon figures on enemy casualties are trustworthy,” Jasper said.

“It would be a big step, for our show to tell the American people that the government lies to us about this.”

“Everyone from Lyndon Johnson to the grunt on patrol in the jungle is lying about this, because they all need high kill figures to justify what they're doing. But I know the truth because I was there. In Vietnam, any dead person counts as an enemy casualty. Throw a grenade into a bomb shelter, kill everyone inside—two young men, four women, an old man, and a baby—that's eight Vietcong dead, in the official report.”

Herb was dubious. “How can we be sure this is true?”

“Ask any veteran,” said Jasper.

“It's hard to credit.”

Jasper was right and Herb knew it, but Herb was anxious about taking such a strong line. However, Jasper judged he was ready to be talked round. “Look,” said Jasper. “It's now four years since we sent the first ground combat troops to South Vietnam. Throughout that period, the Pentagon has been reporting one victory after another, and
This Day
has been repeating their statements to the American people. If we've had four years of victory, how come the enemy can penetrate to the heart of the capital city and surround the U.S. embassy? Open your eyes, will you?”

Herb was thoughtful. “So, Jasper, if you're right, and Sam's wrong, what's our story?”

“That's easy,” said Jasper. “The story is the administration's credibility after the Tet Offensive. Last November Vice President Humphrey told us we're winning. In December General Palmer said the Vietcong had been defeated. In January Secretary of Defense McNamara told us the North Vietnamese were losing their will to fight. General Westmoreland himself told reporters the Communists were unable to mount a major offensive. Then one morning the Vietcong attacked almost every major city and town in South Vietnam.”