The American Ambassador (21 page)

Well, the ambassador said, the Japanese had something to do with that.

We had warning, Harry said darkly. Roosevelt chose to ignore the warning. That's the most charitable explanation.

The ambassador offered more turkey all around, but there were no takers. No wonder.

Elinor said, What are you going to do, Dad?

Let's ask the ambassador, Harry said. The ambassador is skilled at difficult situations. What do you do, when things aren't working out? Well, we know what you do. You turn tail and run. You break your promises. A little heat in Washington, you just fold your hand. No matter how many've died, or relied on your
word.
You just let them walk in without opposition. I thought it was
disgusting
, the last days. That chopper on the roof of the embassy. Throwing people off so that the god damned
newspapermen
and their servants and mistresses got away. You should be ashamed of yourself. I'm ashamed, if you're not. Brave boys, dead for nothing. Brave ally, lost. Love your enemies, screw your friends. Christ, even Roosevelt wouldn't've behaved that way.

The ambassador was silent a moment. He looked at Grandfather North, raising his eyebrow in his characteristic way. He was very uncomfortable. Then he began to talk about the last days of Saigon, and the ten years that preceded them. He said something about a coherent strategy. You have to know whether victory is possible, he said. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes victory is not possible, and then—

That's why half the world's Communist, Harry said. “Coherent strategy.” Faint hearts. No balls.

The ambassador put the carving knife down, a clatter.

Then Jerome North cleared his throat. He was sitting at the table as though it were his office desk. His arms were resting on the cloth, his hands folded in front of him, just touching the napkin. His eyes were focused on the middle distance. He said softly, I have never found it wise to depend on friends, in the last analysis. Friends may be helpful in the beginning, until their own interests are at stake. It is asking too much of friends to put your interests above their own. And in extreme circumstances, it is very foolish. This is why I have always worked alone. I own a seat on the Boston Exchange. I do not even have a secretary, for my investments are few. Easy for me to keep track of them; and no one can keep track of me. Because of my method of operation, I have declined numerous profitable proposals; and I have losses of my own, of course. But I have found it imprudent to rely on friends or the government or any system apart from one's own appreciation of God's way. You would call this “the odds.” These have rarely been in my favor. I suspect you have had better luck, but your temperament is more optimistic than mine, and your history more benign, with the exception naturally of the Depression. There was a depression also in Europe, though perhaps the surprise was not so great; we in Europe are accustomed to depressions. I agree with the poet who said that this is the worst century so far. I believe it is unwise to rely on luck, or on the experience of the past, if you have been lucky. Each day is new, like no other day; each day has its perils and requirements. Each day must be
lived.
You don't like me. I understand that. Perhaps I undermine your position. I have sympathy for your situation, and I do not envy you. However, the problem is larger than Baum. It isn't
Baum.
And it isn't O'Reilly. It's the—you would call them odds.

Harry Ballard was looking at his enemy with a fixed smile. He dropped his cigarette into the mashed potatoes, and reached across the table for the wine. His body arched, reaching; but his hand fell short, toppling a water glass. His face drained of color. Elinor and the ambassador looked away. Jerome did not move. Harry said, I think I'm going to be sick. And he left the table; and he was sick.

Ah, Gert
, he said.
What a nest of snakes. Thanksgiving in the capital, the ruling class tearing and eating one another, and the ambassador, the host of the banquet, watching it all spin out of control while reciting his government's platitudes. I had some admiration for my mother, a woman who had clearly risen above her environment. And the ambassador? He did not know how to listen, and he would never learn. He did not know who he was, at that table. And the old men: neither of them lived a year. In a year they were both dead, victims of their own arrogance and greed. Vicious old men. Good riddance.

That was the story. She listened with her whole heart. It had the enchantment of a fable. Varieties of American experience, the capitalist heartland.

That night she went with him to meet his friends, and the next week she left her father and the apartment for good. She said she was going to live with a boy and when her father asked for his name she told him Wolf. She believed he would hit her, but Wolf said he would not; Wolf would be close by to ensure that he did not. And in the event, her father was calm, almost nonchalant. She took her things, and her money, and left.

That was past, and still she lived inside Wolf's brain, behind his forehead. And Wolf lived in her, too. They had been everywhere in Europe, but lived mostly in Paris. It was easy for them to be anonymous in Paris, a beautiful young woman and her American boyfriend. Sometimes she pretended to be French, other times German. He was sometimes American, but mostly German. They pulled on identities like suits of clothes. They were fluent in languages and manners. They had found targets in Paris, Munich, and Rome. There were many enemies, dating from as far back as she could remember. Yet they were easily targeted, being for the most part unwitting. Always, however, there was meticulous preparation. Wolf insisted on it. Because of his obsession with security, the authorities had never discovered them. They remained free, masters of their own future, and she compared it to living in a dream, obeying no laws but their own.

In that way they—lived. They ate, slept, made love, went shopping, saw friends, took trips. The years passed. There was the rendezvous in Hamburg, where Gert was able to watch the ambassador and his wife. Gert and Wolf moved from place to place, settling finally in Berlin. They were waiting for something but she did not know what it was. She knew that Wolf was impatient, and it was in Berlin, sitting in a café on the Ku-damm one afternoon in October, that plans suddenly jelled. She was drinking coffee and watching the people; he was reading
Die Welt.
He muttered something in English, and then began to chuckle. He tapped her on the arm and showed her a short item on page five. The American diplomat, William North, would be delayed taking up his post as chargé in Bonn by an unspecified illness. Wolf tapped the paper with his finger, grinning. Then he moved to the rear of the paper, the television listings. Max Mueller the journalist would appear on weekend television, one of a panel of experts who would discuss NATO strategy.

Have you been thinking about him? he said in English.

She nodded.

How would you like to see him again, darling? he asked.

She shuddered.

I think so, he said. Yes.

T
HREE DAYS LATER
they were in the open, on the street. Somewhere on the threshold of consciousness, Gert sensed a great mass of people. They were without recognizable faces or distinguishing characteristics of any kind. Anonymous urban life, faces you saw in a subway or supermarket, glimpsed and instantly forgotten. Gert scanned the wide boulevard, apartment buildings rising either side, high as the walls of a prison, and as bland. They were featureless brick buildings, shades pulled against the afternoon sun.

Wolf leaned forward, cocking his head, listening hard; there was music, an insistent guitar and hard bass, falsetto voices, modern Western music overhead, an angel's chorus. She turned and saw Wolf, the expression on his face one of radiant enchantment, as if he had entered a charmed circle.

Gert sensed the people inside the apartments moving restlessly, like rats in a maze. They would create a great pressure, their bodies bumping and sliding, tumbling down stairwells, falling over each other, scratching at the walls. There were more of them in the houses on the side streets behind the apartment buildings, far as the limits of the district, miles and miles, each house filled to overflowing; and everywhere a pressure to get away, to evacuate. They were unable to free themselves and each day there were more of them, younger and stronger, more determined and high-strung, pressing against the thick walls and shaded windows.

He felt the pressure inside his own skull and stepped back, away from the curb, giddy, a fixed smile on his face. Sunday in Berlin. A window slammed and the music stopped, midchorus. Up the street was a commotion.

Gert said, “Look.”

All activity in the boulevard ceased, vehicles suddenly still. Gert looked at the faces of the occupants and could see they were terrified, their faces gray and drawn like the faces in church windows. What next? The light failed, as if a great hand had seized the sun, squeezing shut, releasing little lemon drop fragments of liquid light. An explosion crashed overhead, Boom! Gert did not flinch, and perhaps did not notice. Police appeared in their leather jackets and jodhpurs and steel helmets, dense with menace. It began to rain. Bells commenced to toll, and from the doorway of the largest building the rats began to pour. Gert watched them intently. The traffic waited as they scrambled out the door and into the street.

Gert continued to stare at the frightened faces.

Wolf stepped back from the curb, pulling the hood of his raincoat over his head. Gert shuddered. He knew she was suspicious; they had waited too long at the curb. He brusquely took her by the shoulders and moved her so that she was facing him. A raindrop hit her forehead and she blinked, surprised. He put his finger to his lips. Then he buttoned her raincoat and handed her a black plastic hat. Rain fell in huge fat drops, and thunder crashed once more.

“What?”

He said, “It's the church. Mass is letting out.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she did not reply.

He took her by the arm and they walked quickly up the boulevard. The police had halted traffic, allowing them to cross the street to the church. Organ music, an exhausted recessional, filled the street. The priest nodded at them, but they ignored him. He hurried her along and at the next intersection steered her into a cafe. They stood at the bar and he ordered hot chocolate for them both.

He said, “Take off your hat.” She looked at him and he nodded. She slowly removed the hat and let it fall to the floor, tossing her head as she did so, her dark hair swaying from side to side.

The chocolate arrived but when she moved to grasp the cup, he touched her wrist.

“It's hot, let it cool off. Let it cool.” Her hand continued to move, as if she hadn't heard him. He said roughly, “Don't.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, laughing gaily. He turned casually, eyes patrolling the room. An ordinary bourgeois café on a Sunday in Berlin, two couples at tables by the window, engrossed in conversation. An elderly bearded man drinking coffee at a table in the rear. The elderly man was looking appreciatively at Gert, admiring her profile. A teenager in blue jeans bent over the jukebox, punching buttons. He and Gert were the only ones standing at the bar.

She said, “What?”

He said, “It's hot.”

“No,” she said. “
What
?”

He said, “We wait.”

She said, “It was the church.”

“Yes,” he said.

She bumped his shoulder and said deadpan, “Not the Rathaus.”

“No,” he said, smiling. Unpredictable Gert. She loved to make puns in English and German, and now turned the screw once more.

“Rats,” she said, lapsing into baby talk so that it came out “Wats.”

Outside the rain continued and Gert began to hum. It was the hymn they had heard on the sidewalk. He turned to look at her. Her head was moving slightly from side to side and she was smiling, her mouth half parted. She stood a little back from the bar, her coat open, its skirt swaying. She wore brown leather boots and black tights and a short sheath dress. Over her shoulder he saw the elderly man looking at her with open appreciation. In the dark light of the café Gert could have been almost any age, though in fact she was twenty-seven. In a certain light she looked forty, and in another kind of light sixteen; it depended on the light and her own mood. Her face sometimes went slack, the features thickening. She would pull her long neck into her shoulders and stare straight ahead, looking as if something momentous were about to happen. Now she moved from one foot to another, her hands in her pockets. She had drawn the attention of the teenager. Presently pop music filled the room, but she seemed not to notice; she was “in the zone,” as she said, another pun. The light was flattering, and her head high and girlish as she continued to hum the Lutheran hymn.

The elderly man came up behind them, so stealthily that Bill did not notice until he heard his breathing, an old man's asthmatic wheeze. The elderly man bent down to pick up Gert's rain hat, smoothing it with his fingers, examining it, then looking her up and down, a caress, undressing her. He said, “Fräulein,” handing her the hat.

She replied, “Thank you,” not looking at him.

He said mildly, “You are English.”

“No,” she said.

“That is good. You are very lovely,” he said softly. His lips hardly moved. “You are a very beautiful young German girl. Why do you not speak our language? I do not mean to be presumptuous.” The elderly man smiled and gave a little bow and walked off, out the door and into the rain.

He had not looked up, not when the elderly man approached, and not when he departed. Now he said, “Fine, Gert.”

She did not reply.

“Fifteen minutes more,” he said. “Finish your chocolate.” He glanced at his watch, it was noon. The café was beginning to fill up, pedestrians coming in out of the rain, laughing and complaining. The odor of chocolate filled the café. He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head. He moved close to her so that they stood facing each other, not speaking. Gert had withdrawn, way inside, back into a region of her mind where there were no people, only a stark and restless landscape, menacing in its simplicity. It was a warm day and a thin autumn mist covered the hillside. Running along the grassy ridge she could see for miles and miles, left and right. She could see to the very margins of an empty nation, a land without people. She felt that she was running along a knife's blade, one slip and she would be cut in two, sliced like a turnip. Birds wheeled overhead in a cloudless milky sky. Below in the valley there were sheep and shepherds' huts. She was crying. Her dress was torn and her face bruised. Her hands were bloody. The nail of her little finger was torn to the quick, and she tucked it into her palm. She stumbled and fell, rolling down the hillside, over and over, out of breath, her hands banging on the earth, her hair flying, tangled—