Eating Crow (28 page)

“Well, where was he when you last saw him, then?”

“Where he is now. I mean … I’m really sorry to tell you this, Mr. Basset. But he died an hour ago.”

“He did what?”

“He was a very ill man, Mr. Basset.”

“I know. But …” I looked around, half hoping to see him appear from around the side of the ambulance, his face fixed in a mischievous grin, cigarette up above his knuckle. “Did he give you anything for me? A letter? Something? A statement?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Nothing at all?”

“It was very sudden, Mr. Basset. A coughing fit that turned into tightness of breath and …”

“Where’s the body?”

“Behind me.”

We went around to the back of the ambulance and she opened the doors. His corpse was strapped down beneath a red blanket that stretched up over his head.

“Would you like me to leave you alone with him for a moment?”

I ignored her. I was too busy bending over him, pulling back the blankets and rifling through his jacket pockets as his arm flopped down toward the floor, patting him down for a piece of paper or even just an envelope with a few scrawled notes, anything which might prove that I had been unaware of the Caucasia shares.

“Mr. Basset …”

“It has to be here somewhere.”

“Mr. Basset, please! A little respect.”

“He has to have left it somewhere. He said he’d clear me. He promised.”

“Mr. Basset, if you don’t control yourself I will have to ask you to leave.”

I stood up. He lay there, eyes closed, his sharp, gray-stubbled chin pointing up at the ceiling, tie still tied, mouth just open in the suggestion of a smile as if to say, Well, son, at least I didn’t die poor. Perhaps at that point I should have felt grief or regret at the loss of another father figure. But I didn’t. I felt betrayed.

I bent down until the tip of my nose was almost touching his and shouted, “You bastard, Max!,” like I might be able to wake him, but the only thing that moved was his hair, ruffled by my harsh, unfreshened breath. I was on my own.

T
here were no elections in Germany, or anywhere else for that matter. The latest round of the world trade talks in Zurich rumbled on without conclusion and the planet was free of cataclysmic Acts of God. Would it have made much difference if volcanoes had erupted or rivers had flooded or hurricanes come ashore? I doubt it. I was always bound to make the cover of that week’s
Time.

Luke showed it to me when he arrived for breakfast at the Cock Tavern, one of those pubs in Smithfield which opens early to feed the porters from the wholesale meat market across the road. He wanted to meet elsewhere, but I told him that my experience of hunger in Abkhazia had been almost as traumatizing as the sound of bullet and shell; that I needed the encouragement of animal proteins to help me recover. Throughout that night in the barn I had dreamed endlessly about platefuls of the best Gloucester Old Spot bacon and coarse-ground sausages made from belly and loin, of grilled lambs’ kidneys and crisply seared rounds of black pudding and slices of calves’ liver that were still rosy pink in the middle. Just ordering it all made me feel alive.

“You might want a few pints of something very alcoholic to go with that,” Luke said as he threw the magazine down onto the table. There was a big picture of me, grinning foolishly, and the headline:
HOW SORRY CAN ONE MAN BE?
Below that was the inevitable subhead:
The rise and fall of Marc Basset.

I took a sip of hot strong tea and said, “Nothing I didn’t expect.”

Luke turned the magazine around so he could examine it again. “Things must be pretty bad if this is what you expected.”

“I’m not an idiot, Luke. I can see how it looks.”

“They
clearly think you’re an idiot.”

“Thank you. Now order your breakfast.”

When his food had arrived, he said, “So, what are you going to do?”

“The only thing I’m qualified to do.”

He laid down his knife and fork. “Oh god. You’re going to cook a giant almond soufflé and offer it to the world.”

“Kind of. Except without the soufflé.”

He began eating again. “You don’t think there’s been enough apologizing?”

“What else can I do?”

“Shut up?”

“Once I’ve done this, I will. I promise.” We ate in silence for a minute or two. “Will you help me?” I said. “I could do with a bit of moral support.”

“Why should I?”

I thought for a moment. “Because I’m your brother?”

“Is that the best you can do?”

I nodded.

“Fair enough.”

The next day we hired the Lancaster Room of the Savoy, partly for its size and partly because Dad had always admired the hotel. Once, when we were kids, he took us there for tea, to eat dainty sandwiches in the room overlooking the Thames and to worship at the place where the great Auguste Escoffier had cooked a century before. “Without Escoffier,” he said with a gallant wave to the murals on the walls and the chandeliers and the mirrors, “the food in this country would be even worse than it still is.” And then he bowed his head as if genuinely distressed by the thought. The Savoy felt to me then like the kind of place where nothing bad could ever happen, and it was natural that I should choose it now as the venue for my last heroic act.

When the hotel manager asked how many chairs we would need, I said 150, but Luke corrected me. We would need 600, he said, and he was right, or nearly right. The seats filled up quickly that afternoon with print and television reporters so that the photographers had to hunker down on the floor at the front, and both side aisles were filled with television crews like some detachment from the artillery corps taking aim at me with their cameras.

Luke and I sat behind a white-linened table, empty save for a jug of water and glasses and a single microphone attached to a public-address system. The hotel had offered to put a vase of flowers on the table but I had declined. This was not a moment for ornament.

Luke introduced me, said I would be making a statement, promised there would be time for questions, and then passed the table microphone across. I leaned down over it, and to the sound of whirring cameras, I gave them my version of events. I said I had known nothing of the shares and explained that, with regret, I had to blame Max Olson for my predicament.

“Unfortunately Mr. Olson died before he was able to exonerate me,” I said, and I heard a huff of disbelief from the crowd, “so I have nothing to offer by way of proof. But I do know this: that I am not without guilt. It was stupid of me not to pay attention to my investments, stupid of me to take on face value everything I was told. I have been an idiot and for that I really am very sorry. A war that I never wanted, that horrifies me, has been started in my name, and I feel terrible about it. I hope the world will accept my apology because”—I folded up the piece of paper—“it is all I have to offer.”

Luke tried to corral questions, but before he could identify the first speaker a voice called out from the front of the crowd.

“Mr. Basset, do you expect us to believe you when you say you didn’t know you owned three million shares in Caucasia Oil and Gas?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m in a position to expect anything. I can only tell you how it is. I did a really stupid thing and I’m sorry.”

Quickly Luke pulled up the next questioner, an American woman halfway down the room.

“Will you be apologizing to the people of Abkhazia also?”

“I’m hoping this apology will be heard and accepted by the Abkhazians too. But to be honest, I think the best thing I can do after today is just keep quiet.”

“So are you retiring from the apology business?”

“Absolutely.“

Another shouted question: “Mr. Basset, is it true that while Chief Apologist for the UN, you authorized your security detail to harass and intimidate members of the US Women’s Olympic Paraplegic Team after your appearance with U2 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia?”

Luke turned to look at me as if I had just belched offensively. I blinked, swallowed, and leaned down into the microphone. “There was an incident at Veterans Stadium, yes, for which I am very, very sorry. It was a misunderstanding on the part of my security men, who felt I might be under threat. Obviously I’d like to apologize to the women involved for any distress that was caused. It was never my intention that anything like this should happen. I’m really sorry. Really.”

Another question, from the other side of the room: “Mr. Basset, is it true you claimed to be the heir to the legacy of Willy Brandt, the late chancellor of the former West Germany?”

“Pardon?”

“We have a statement from a member of the civilian staff at Dayton Air Force Base in Ohio. He says that on the opening night of the inaugural UNOAR conference held there last year you had a private meeting with Mr. Olson at which you said, quote”—the journalist looked down into his notebook and back up again—“‘I am the new Willy Brandt.’”

I laughed nervously. I could feel the whole room recoiling from me.

“Well, no—I mean, yes, I did say that. But I think it was more of a question.”

“What? You were asking if you could be the next Willy Brandt?”

“No. Yes. Look, it was a weird time and I was under pressure and I was having this conversation with Max—I mean, Mr. Olson—and …” I stopped and attempted to steady myself. “If I have offended anybody, anybody at all, by saying that, then I am, naturally, terribly sorry. I didn’t mean it to be taken wrongly. I was just feeling my way and I thought it was a private meeting and—”

Luke grabbed the microphone from me. “Next question.” He picked out a woman standing at the side of the room and shoved the mike toward me.

“Mr. Basset, is it the case that you cheated on your then girlfriend with two cocktail waitresses from Des Moines, Iowa?”

Luke pulled the microphone back toward him. “Oh yeah, that’s true. He definitely did that.”

I pulled the microphone over to my side once more. “Thank you, Luke.” I turned to the audience. “Yes, I’m afraid something like that did happen …”

Under his breath I heard Luke mutter, “Something exactly like that.”

“… something exactly like that did happen. I suppose the thing is, you know, we all make mistakes in our private lives and those things stay private, but because of how I’ve been employed my life is a little less private than other people’s, so …”

“Are you blaming the young women concerned for revealing what you did?”

“No, no, of course not. All I’m saying is, I didn’t think through the consequences. It was a terrible thing to do, and you know, I welcome the opportunity to apologize here to all involved and I hope they’re able to hear my words of regret and, well, I’m sorry.”

I sat back and folded my hands in my lap. I was exhausted and the press conference had only been going ten minutes. I felt ambushed, overrun, drained, defeated. And there was still more to come. This time, it was a male French voice.

“Monsieur Bass
ay
—”

“Basset,” I corrected.

“Monsieur Basset, the French government has announced that its ambassador to the United Nations will be proposing a motion to the General Assembly next week calling for the disbandment of the United Nations Office of Apology and Reconciliation. They say your activities have brought it into disrepute and they are proposing its replacement by the Nation-State Psychotherapy Unit being piloted in Vienna. How do you comment?”

“I, er, I know some of the people—well,
one
of the people involved in the psychotherapy project—and it’s very promising and it’s doing lots of good work. But I’d hate to think that UNOAR would come to an end just because of a few mistakes I made—” There was a short laugh of disbelief from the room. “Okay, okay, because of the many mistakes I have made. I think we did some great work at UNOAR and I think it has the potential to do much more.”

A British journalist this time. “We’re hearing from New York that Professor Thomas Schenke has issued a statement in which he calls you, and this is a direct quote, ‘a lazy, feeble-minded shyster who has destroyed the good name of Penitential Engagement purely in the interests of greed.’ What do you have to say?”

Now I was cross. “Oh, come on! Schenke’s a madman. He’s deranged, psychotic. You can’t listen to a word he has to say.”

“So your only response is to call the founding father of one of the most influential political movements of modern times a madman?”

I barked into the microphone, “Have you met Schenke?”

Luke pulled it away from me again. “Last question, please.” He pointed to a man waving his arms furiously up by the public-address system control desk. “Mr. Basset, sir …” Another American journalist, his speech gilded with his country’s common courtesies. “Mr. Basset, sir, Lewis Jeffries III of the African-American Slavery Reparations Committee, he’s just made a statement to the media in Louisiana.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, if it’s okay by you, sir, we already have a recording here.” He looked down to a technician sitting on the floor at his side, leaning over a laptop. “It’s downloaded?” The man nodded. “Sir, we have the feed here and we could put it through the PA system for you to listen to and—”

I sat back and raised my arms as if to say, “Whatever.” The crowd hushed and they each turned an ear toward the nearest speakers, which crackled and fussed with digital static. Jeffries’ voice boomed out down the hall.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I had hoped never to have need to make this statement,” he said, “but I have concluded that in the present circumstances to withhold the truth would be to further amplify the offense of which I am talking today.” I closed my eyes and waited out one of Jeffries’ dense theatrical pauses, for what I knew was to come. He sighed deeply, as if the weight of history were on his shoulders. And then: “It is with great regret that I must tell you today that the apology for the Atlantic slave trade made on behalf of the Federal Government of the United States and other colonial powers by the Chief Apologist of the United Nations here at Welton-Oaks was not Mr. Basset’s own work.” There was a gasp from the room, followed by a quick burst of shushing so that not a word should be missed. “Mr. Basset did present an apology, but it was neither robust enough nor elegant enough for the purposes of the process with which we were engaged, and for the sake of that process, I wrote the apology myself.” Another gasp. “Mr. Basset just wasn’t up to the job. It is, I fear, in the nature of the relationship between African-Americans and the rest of the US that we should be required to draft our own apology for the hurt we have suffered at their hands, but I hope, indeed trust, that now that a settlement has been reached, we may as a people be able to move on from the sorry charade over which Mr. Marc Basset has presided.”

There was a little more static hiss as the recording came to an end. I opened my eyes. The room was silent. The photographers had lowered their cameras and were staring at me. The reporters were staring at me. Luke was staring at me.

Slowly I bowed my head over the microphone. “What can I tell you? I’m just so bloody sorry.”

There was a second’s silence before a voice from somewhere in the hall boomed out, “Who wrote that apology for you, Basset?” and the Lancaster room exploded into mocking, exclusive laughter. I pushed myself back from the table and watched as, shaking their heads at the idiocy of it all, at the constant, charming ability of the world to confound their expectations, the press corps rose as one and left the room. So this is how it
really
ends, I thought, here in this grand room with its mirrored doors and its fussy lighting and its row upon row of emptying chairs. Next to me Luke stood up. He looked down at me, opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it as if he had thought better of it. He shook his head and walked away.