“No, of course not. The siege is still on. Poor devils. Starving to death, and we can’t get any of our stuff through to them. You still have relatives there?”
“No one I’m in contact with. Moscow should be interesting, though.”
“I was there last year, and it was in pretty bad shape. Nightly blackouts, food and fuel shortages, long lines in front of the shops. Pretty tough people, the Russians.”
“True, but they seem so… overwrought… so melodramatic about everything. Worse than the Italians.” She snickered.
Hopkins sat back and crossed his legs, his bony knees outlined through his trousers. “Maybe that’s what appeals to me. They’ve suffered throughout their history. First the tsars, then the revolution, now the Nazis. And even if Stalin is a brutal dictator, I appreciate what they’re trying to do with communism. Not that I’m a communist. Good grief, no. But, like the president, I think government has a responsibility to take care of its people, to see that everyone gets a fair shake.”
“That was the New Deal, wasn’t it? And you worked on that with him.” She sipped her bourbon.
“Yeah. We’ve both been lefties from way back. And I like the melodramatic part of Russian culture. Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. I’m fond of their literature, too. Well, as much of it as I’ve read—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky.”
Mia laughed again. “I agree about the music. And their ballet is pretty terrific, too, but spare me Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. My father made me read them. Too obsessed with God for me.”
Hopkins took another mouthful of whiskey and let it swirl around in his mouth for a moment. “Passionate about God, maybe, but not Christian in the usual sense. Tolstoy ridiculed the miracles and superstitions in the Bible and saw value only in the Sermon on the Mount. He even wrote his own Gospel in Brief with no miracles and no resurrection.”
“Still, every Russian drama is connected with God. Seems silly to me.”
“Well, it’s Christmas Eve, so let’s leave a little room for Him, shall we? You’re coming to the White House celebration later, aren’t you?”
She tossed back the last of the bourbon and stood up. “Definitely. Carols and party food. That’s the kind of theology I like.”
“Bah, humbug, eh?” He chuckled as he closed the door behind her.
When Mia arrived in the East Room, the First Lady was already sitting by the Steinway piano in an armchair. Lorena Hickok stood behind her. A musician in a tuxedo was playing Christmas carols. The Christmas tree, in keeping with wartime austerity, was of modest height and decorated with simple red glass balls and tinsel. Some thirty identical boxes wrapped in red and green paper lay in a ring around its base.
At the conclusion of “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful,” Edwin Watson wheeled in the president. He carried his beloved Scottish terrier Fala on his lap and chanted “Ho ho ho” as Watson parked him next to the tree. Eleanor rose from her armchair and went to stand by him for the official Christmas photo of the first family. Then she returned to her armchair and to Lorena.
Roosevelt gave a brief welcoming speech full of platitudes about tradition and family Christmas, then gestured toward the black-suited man who stood next to him.
“In keeping with the religious meaning behind this lovely evening, I’ve invited Pastor Bainbridge to give us a little inspirational talk. Pastor Bainbridge? You have the floor.”
The pastor cleared his throat and glanced around the room. “The president and Mrs. Roosevelt have asked me to bring a Christian message to this event, and rather than read the usual story from Luke, I’ve decided to break with tradition a bit and perhaps find another meaning for faith. Please bear with me as we explore the thoughts of a great Russian mind.” He held up a thin, red paperback book entitled The Grand Inquisitor.
“This is a short work that appears as a chapter in one of the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In this scene, Christ returns during the Inquisition and performs a few miracles but is arrested by the inquisitor and cast into a dark cell. But then…” The pastor began reading from his booklet.
In the pitch darkness the iron door of the prison suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor came in. “Why art Thou come to hinder us? Tomorrow I shall burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. For Thou mayest not add to what has been said of old, and mayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth with thy three temptations. For fifteen centuries men have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but finally, they have brought their freedom to us, the Church, and laid it humbly at our feet.
The pastor glanced up from his book. “To refresh your memory, Satan offers Jesus three temptations. One, give everyone bread, and they will follow you. Two, jump from a high place without injury to prove you are divine. And three, become ruler of the earth to compel people to do good. Jesus refuses. And why? For the sake of free will, so that men can choose faith or not. But the inquisitor claims that free will is a curse and that, fortunately, the Church has removed it and comforts mankind by claiming absolute authority over human behavior. Believers, he says, ‘crawl to us and lick our feet’ for liberating them from that freedom. And when they ask wherefore comes our knowledge of what God wants, we call it Mystery.”
He looked up at his audience and seemed to catch Mia’s eye before continuing. “But here is the lesson, my friends. Christ never replies. He simply kisses the old inquisitor on the lips in the Russian manner. That is his answer: the kiss, the embrace of the denier, irrespective of the power of his argument. What’s more, the entire tale of the inquisitor is told by Ivan, the atheist in the novel, and when he tells it to his pious younger brother who quarrels with him, the boy kisses him in the same way.”
He closed his little red book slowly, as if it were scripture, and tucked it under his arm. “Here endeth the Christmas lesson, my friends. It concludes with the command to love one another, to counter heartless reason with God’s greatest gift, the kiss.”
He bowed his head to polite applause and did not seem to notice that his listeners were exchanging bewildered glances. “I wish you all Merry Christmas,” he said, and stepped away.
“What the hell was that all about?” Lorena Hickok had wandered over to where Mia stood.
Mia frowned. “Beats me. He couldn’t have picked a worse author than Dostoyevsky. I read that chapter in school. It’s much much longer, and much more boring. And the whole notion of kissing away logic is… well, insulting.”
Harry Hopkins joined them. “I think you’re being a little hard on poor old Dostoyevsky. He was doing the best he could for the time. He saw suffering all around him and used his characters to act out the arguments going on in his head.”
“Don’t all novelists do that?” Mia asked.
Lorena snorted. “The boring ones do. The good ones give you the romance in the first chapter.”
Hopkins laid a thin hand very lightly on her shoulder, urging her toward the bowls of potato salad, plates of toast triangles covered with cheese or cold cuts, and a platters of cakes and cookies. “I say we stop worrying about Russian literature and enjoy the party treats.”
Mia loaded her plate and joined the line to the punch bowl, where one of the kitchen staff ladled out hot mulled cider. While she shuffled forward holding her plate, she had a sudden recollection of the Crusader’s sword Churchill had presented to Joseph Stalin and Stalin’s response of kissing the blade. Not what Dostoyevsky intended, she thought, smiling to herself. Obviously, there were kisses, and kisses—but all of them silenced speech.