Page 366 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

In the middle of the night Tanya was awakened by her bed shaking. She sat up, terrified, thinking the secret police had come to arrest her. When she turned on the light she saw that she was alone, but the shaking had not been a dream. The framed photograph of Grisha on her bedside table seemed to be dancing, and she could hear the tinkling sound of small jars of makeup vibrating on the glass top of her dressing table.

She jumped out of bed and went to the open window. It was first light. There was a loud rumbling noise coming from the nearby main street, but she could not see what was causing it. She was filled with a vague dread.

She looked for her leather jacket, and remembered that she had given it to Anna. She quickly pulled on blue jeans and a sweater, stepped into her shoes, and hurried out. Despite the early hour there were people on the street. She walked swiftly in the direction of the noise.

As soon as she reached the main street she knew what had happened.

The noise was caused by tanks. They were rolling along the street, slowly but unstoppably, their caterpillar tracks making a hideous din. Riding on the tanks were soldiers in Soviet uniforms, most young, just boys. Looking along the street in the gentle light of dawn, Tanya saw that there were dozens of tanks, perhaps hundreds, the incoming line stretching all the way to the Charles Bridge and beyond. Along the sidewalks small groups of Czech men and women stood, many in their nightwear, watching with dismay and stupefaction as their city was overrun.

The conservatives in the Kremlin had won, Tanya realized. Czechoslovakia had been invaded by the Soviet Union. The brief season of reform and hope was over.

Tanya caught the eye of a middle-aged woman standing next to her. The woman wore an old-fashioned hairnet like the one Tanya's mother put on every night. Her face was streaming with tears.

That was when Tanya felt the wetness on her own cheeks and realized that she, too, was weeping.

*

A week after the tanks rolled into Prague, George Jakes was sitting on his couch in Washington, in his underwear, watching television coverage of the Democratic convention in Chicago.

For lunch he had heated a can of tomato soup and eaten it straight from the pan, which now stood on the coffee table, with the red remains of the glutinous liquid congealing inside.

He knew what he ought to do. He should put on a suit and go out and get himself a new job and a new girlfriend and a new life.

Somehow he just could not see the point.

He had heard of depression and he knew this was it.

He was only mildly diverted by the spectacle of the Chicago police running amok. A few hundred demonstrators were peacefully sitting down in the road outside the convention center. The police were wading into them with nightsticks, savagely beating everyone, as if they did not realize they were committing criminal assault live on television--or, more likely, they knew but did not care.

Someone, presumably Mayor Richard Daley, had let the dogs off the leash.

George idly speculated on the political consequences. It was the end of nonviolence as a political strategy, he guessed. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had both been wrong, and now they were dead. The Black Panthers were right. Mayor Daley, Governor Ronald Reagan, presidential candidate George Wallace, and all their racist police chiefs would use violence against anyone whose ideas they found distasteful. Black people needed guns to protect themselves. So did anyone else who wanted to challenge the bull elephants of American society. Right now in Chicago the police were treating middle-class white kids the way they had always treated blacks. That had to change attitudes.

There was a ring at his doorbell. He frowned, puzzled. He was not expecting a visitor and did not want to talk to anyone. He ignored the sound, hoping the caller would go away. The bell rang again. I might be out, he thought; how do they know I'm here? It rang a third time, long and insistently, and he realized the person was not going to give up.

He went to the door. It was his mother. She was carrying a covered casserole dish.

Jacky looked him up and down. "I thought so," she said, and she walked in uninvited.

She put her casserole in his oven and turned on the heat. "Take a shower," she ordered him. "Shave your sorry face and put on some decent clothing."

He thought of arguing but did not have the energy. It seemed easier just to do as she said.

She began clearing up the room, putting his soup pan in the kitchen sink, folding newspapers, opening windows.

George retired to his room. He took off his underwear, showered, and shaved. It would make no difference. He would slob out again tomorrow.

He put on chinos and a blue button-down shirt, then returned to the living room. The casserole smelled good, he could not deny that. Jacky had laid the dining table. "Sit down," she said. "Supper's ready."

She had made King Ranch chicken in a tomato-cream sauce with green chilies and a cheese crust. George could not resist it, and he had two platefuls. Afterward his mother washed up and he dried the dishes.

She sat with him to watch the convention coverage. Senator Abraham Ribicoff was speaking, nominating George McGovern, a last-minute alternative peace candidate. He caused a stir by saying: "With George McGovern as president of the United States, we would not have to have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."

Jacky said: "My, that's telling them."

The convention hall went quiet. The television director cut to a shot of Mayor Daley. He looked like a giant frog, with bulging eyes, a jowly face, and a neck that was all rolls of fat. For a moment he forgot he was on television--just like his cops--and yelled vituperatively at Ribicoff.

The microphones did not pick up his words. "I wonder what he said," George mused.

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