kiss kiss KISSINGER

Though the storm over Seymour M. Hersh's The Price of Power rages, Manhattan's Metternich is still going like sixty...

Henry Kissinger's sixtieth birthday celebrations are the perfect new star-studded attraction at Disneyland. Beginning with a black-tie dinner dance at the Hotel Pierre, hosted by a Harvard boffin famous for his contribution to European studies, and climaxing with an intimate supper party at the top of River House, hosted by a Texas blonde famous for making chocolate leaves, the excursion through Kissingerland shows how after he left office the great diplomatic craftsman continued to shuttle between worlds as a panoptic party guest.

Consider the names conjured by the first host, Dr. Guido Goldman, a former Kissinger pupil who seemed as genuinely affable as he is mysteriously rich. Gerald Ford, Mrs. Sadat, the former Empress of Iran, and Helmut Schmidt blew in from the Years of Upheaval. Henry Anatole Grunwald and Katharine Graham from the media galaxies of Time and Newsweek. From Wealth came Stavros Niarchos, from Class Evangeline Bruce, from Fashion Oscar de la Renta, from News Walter Cronkite, and the Baron and Baroness di Portanova from Having a Good Time.

Happy Birthday, dear Henry! The Op-Ed set danced on or sat it out—at tables anchored by clouds of mauve and silver balloons. This was an evening where one finally discovered the size of the power people. Lady Bird Johnson—shorter, definitely shorter. Gerald Ford—taller, definitely taller. Henry's mother, Mrs. Paula Kissinger—prouder, definitely prouder. As Lord Soames (fatter, definitely fatter) rolled up to the microphone to propose a toast, one felt that time, rank and geography had dissolved and anything could happen. Perhaps the strings of Peter Duchin's band would be replaced by a geopolitical cabaret. Sir Harold Wilson on the mouth organ? Mahatma Gandhi on the spoons?

Nancy Kissinger glimmered like a moon through layers of black lace. Yet the more unreal the ambience, the more real Dr. Kissinger himself became. He seemed to grow more tanned and compact by the minute, his precision-machine mind honed and ready to engage on any required level.

"When I got off the plane at Rhodesia at the start of some rather delicate negotiations, I was pleased to get a telegram from Dr. Kissinger," Lord Soames said. "It read, NANCY SAYS NEVER WEAR A BLUE HAT WITH A BROWN SUIT."

Dr. Goldman had ingeniously slipped the toasts between courses, like sorbets. Lady Bird Johnson threw the first bouquet—"Come back to the LBJ ranch, Henry, and bring your charming wife!" Followed by George Shultz (furrier, definitely furrier), Helmut Schmidt, Lord Soames, and the Pakistani Foreign Minister. In his own speech Dr. Kissinger refused to dazzle. Instead he remembered his dead friends: Nelson Rockefeller, "who would have delayed everything by an hour while he rearranged the tables," Anwar Sadat, and Golda Meir, "that tough, human lady who turned her face to the wall and wept when she heard the names of the prisoners of war held by the Syrians."

But the world of the newsmagazine cover was soon superseded by hot nights in Acapulco and Nancy's lunches at Le Cirque. The Portanovas waltzed, Jerry Zipkin chatted. In which milieu is Dr. Kissinger easiest? His own lobster buffet lunch the next day for fifty in his navy dining room at River House suggested he is most relaxed with the bankers, bureaucrats and eggheads like Winston Lord, London's Lord Roll, and Washington's Henry E. Catto, Jr. He adds the societal gloss only to provide an amusing red herring.

But by the evening he had changed gear again, and it was impossible to tell. Upstairs at River House, his neighbors, investment banker John Gutfreund and his wife Susan, threw a sit-down dinner to round off the festivities. Here, the human unreality of the night before was matched by the galactic strangeness of the Gutfreunds' apartment, a minimalist skylab suspended over a 360-degree vista of glittering skyline. Yellow orchids stood guard on either side of an aquatic Monet. Sprinkled in front of the view were a Brazilian millionaire and his madonna wife, the lustrous Mrs. Johnny Carson, and little Stavros Niarchos, who was squiring a very tall German princess in silver shoes.

The hostess was jubilant. Her yellow ponytail shone, her Saint Laurent bugle beads danced. She was so happy to have won the race to bag the birthday boy on the birthday night. As dinner was rounded off with ice cream syringed into a blown-sugar apple, she rose to her feet and bubbled out her delight. "My husband is not going to propose the toast tonight because he makes speeches all week at his work, and when he comes home he's here to rest, so I am going to say, thank you, Henry, for all the beautiful things you've done for your country and what a privilege it was to see you here tonight!"

Dr. Kissinger returned the compliment. "Those of you who came to lunch today must realize that it was held in the slum quarters of River House, though we have applied for a grant under an urban renewal scheme." By now he wore the positively carefree look that comes after twenty-four hours of commuting between identities. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday he had checked, and every one of him was still intact.

UBIQUITOUS