by flying from reality—by running away to the phoney protectedness of a hospital bed and a nurse’s uniform.... Let the damned sore do its worst, burn through to the surface if it must. Perhaps then we will finally get some clarity and harmony into this warring combination of flesh and spirit.
Also September 5, 1951 (contradicting what he had told himself in April): Write, you bastard, write. Write desperately, frantically, under pressure from yourself, while God still gives you the time. Write until your eyes are glazed, until you have writer’s cramp, until you fall from your chair for weariness. Only by agitating your pen will you ever press out of your indifferent mind and your ailing frame anything of any value to yourself or anyone else.28
Given Kennan’s tendency to blame himself for so much, the offense could have been almost anything: a covetous glance, a casual dalliance, a full-blown affair. Did Annelise know? Nothing in George’s diary confirms that she did, but she didn’t miss much. If she suspected something, or even if she knew a lot, she would not have let whatever it was imperil the marriage or hurt the family. That was the way of a wife who saw no contradiction in simultaneously loving her husband and anchoring him.
George, at this point, badly needed anchoring, for the upheavals of April 1951 had come close to overwhelming him. He was lecturing on history in Chicago, having been told, by historians, that he was not yet one. He was carrying the weight of a personal crisis as wrenching as the ones he had gone through in Vienna in 1935 and at Bad Nauheim in 1942. His audiences were expanding as his texts were diminishing. He spoke at a moment when the part of the country from which he came seemed to be sinking into dementia. And he was filling his diary with despair: perhaps his ability to do that, together with Annelise’s anchoring, was what got him through this bad month—although never beyond the bad dreams.
VI.
One of Kennan’s better dreams had been the possibility that he might represent the United States—alone, on a top-secret basis, using his knowledge of the Russian language and of the Soviet system—in some form of direct negotiations with the U.S.S.R. looking toward a relaxation of Cold War tensions. Stalin’s sabotage of the Smith- Molotov initiative killed any chance of this while Kennan was on the Policy Planning Staff, and he himself opposed approaching Moscow after the Chinese intervened in Korea at the end of 1950. By May 1951, however, the situation had changed. Truman had sacked MacArthur. The new U.N. commander, General Matthew B. Ridgway, had halted Mao’s offensive in the vicinity of the 38th parallel. And an opportunity for diplomacy had arisen—strangely—from a high-level hitchhike.
With the permanent headquarters of the United Nations still under construction alongside New York’s East River, the Security Council had been meeting in temporary quarters at Lake Success, on Long Island. The drive into Manhattan could take almost an hour, and at the end of a session on May 2, two American diplomats, Thomas J. Cory and Frank P. Corrigan, found themselves without transportation. A large Chrysler drove up, stopped, and its occupants offered a ride. They turned out to be Jacob Malik, the chief Soviet representative at the United Nations, and Semyon K. Tsarapkin, his deputy. The Russians were in an unusually good humor, and after pleasant exchanges about American automobiles, military bases, imperialist ambitions, capitalist profiteers, and warmongers, the conversation turned to how the Korean War might be settled. The four men agreed that some sort of Soviet- American consultation would have to take place, whereupon Malik, returning to the theme of warmongers, asked what had become of George Kennan.
Cory explained that Kennan was “engaged in advanced study at Princeton.” Kennan had had “a great and unfortunate influence,” Malik observed: no doubt his voice was still heard in Washington. When Cory protested that Kennan admired the Russian people and hoped to write Chekhov’s biography, Malik was unimpressed. But by the normal standards of Soviet diplomacy, the two Americans reported to their superiors, he had been “a charming and cordial host.”29
Their account set off speculation within the State Department as to whether the pickup had been deliberate. Cory thought not but added that he had suggested dinner sometime and that Malik had agreed. “The question,” Davies wrote Nitze, “is whether we should follow up on Malik’s evident willingness to talk about American-Soviet relations. I think we should.” Stalin might be planning another trick, but the risks would be minimal “if our representative is someone [who] . . . although not a high American official, is in a position to speak with authority and in confidence for the Government. That person is Kennan.”30
As Davies probably knew, Kennan was thinking similarly. He had advised Acheson in March that as the military front stabilized in Korea, the time would come to deal with the Russians. The talks should take place “through informal channels” and in “complete secrecy,” using “some intermediary who could be denied in case of necessity.” They would acknowledge a simple reality: that the situation in Korea was unsatisfactory to both the Soviet Union and the United States. There should be, then, “a mutuality of interest” that might make a settlement possible.31
That made sense to Acheson, who had come through the difficult winter of 1950–51 with renewed admiration for Kennan. And so, when the Malik report came in, the secretary of state accepted Davies’s suggestion. “On Friday, May 18,” Kennan wrote in his own report of the events that followed,
having been called to Washington by P, I talked with O in the presence of P and two other persons. O asked me whether I would be willing to undertake the project in question, and I told him that I would. It was agreed that arrangements would have to be made by E in New York, and that I should see him when I was up there the following week.
P was Doc Matthews, then serving as deputy under secretary of state. O was Acheson. E was Malik’s passenger, Tom Cory. E agreed to suggest to X—not Kennan, who had given up pseudonyms, but Tsarapkin—that it might be useful for him to talk with the former Mr. X, but there was no reply. Whereupon Kennan wrote to Tsarapkin on the twenty-sixth, asking him to tell Malik that it might be useful “if he and I could meet and have a quiet talk some time in the near future. I think that my diplomatic experience and long acquaintance with problems of American-Soviet relations should suffice to assure you that I would not make such a proposal unless I had serious reasons to do so.”32
Three days later Kennan’s secretary at the Institute received a cryptic telephone message informing her that the “gentleman Mr. Kennan had asked to see” could receive him on the afternoon of the thirty-first at a Long Island address. This turned out to be the Soviet U.N. delegation’s dacha, an estate in Glen Cove, to which Kennan drove himself alone. Malik began the conversation nervously, upsetting a tray of fruit and wine. After each man had expressed regret about the isolation of diplomats in the other’s country, Kennan explained that he had come to explore the possibility of a Korean cease-fire, roughly along the current line of military operations, to be supervised by some international authority. Malik said he would think about it, which Kennan took to mean consulting Moscow. When asked if it would be useful to meet again, Malik replied “that it was a good thing in general for people to talk things over and that he would always be happy to receive me and to pass the time of day.”33
They did meet again, at Glen Cove on June 5, and Malik was ready with an answer: the Soviet Union wanted to end the Korean War at the earliest possible moment, but because its forces were not involved it could take no direct part in any cease-fire negotiations. The United States should contact the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists. Kennan promised to pass this message to Washington, noting however that it would be difficult to rely on anything those adversaries might say. The Soviets, in contrast, “took a serious and responsible attitude toward what they conceived to be their own interests.” Malik deflected this compliment with the complaint that a Wall Street conspiracy dominated American life. “You see our country as in a dream,” Kennan replied. “No, this is not [a] dream,” Malik insisted, “this is the deepest reality.”
