The American Ambassador (35 page)

He said, “What else, Kurt?”

Kleust put ice in his glass, and Scotch on top of the ice. He was entirely American in his drinking habits. He said nothing for a moment, stirring the drink with his index finger. They could all hear the ticking of the clock in the hallway.

Elinor said, “Why is she here, Kurt?”

“She hasn't been in touch, then?”

“No,” Bill said. Elinor glared at him:
Nothing
meant nothing, not no, not yes, not maybe.

Kleust caught the look and said softly, “You're certain?” Then, realizing suddenly where he was and with whom he was talking—a colleague, one of his oldest friends—he looked at the floor, understanding that he'd caused offense. “I'm sorry, Bill.”

“You've had a long day.” He placed his hand on Elinor's temple, caressing her. He touched her neck, and placed his hand flat on her shoulder. She was cool to the touch, but he could feel her trembling. She was trembling inside. Probably she had it now. “And it's not over, is it, your day?”

“No,” Kleust said.

“Why do you suppose he didn't come himself? My son.”

Kleust shook his head. “He is careful.”

“He's waiting in Hamburg,” Bill said.

“Probably in Hamburg,” Kleust said.

Bill leaned down and spoke only to his wife. “I'm the next target, El. That's why she's here. That's what the hugger-mugger is about, her setting up a rendezvous. Except I'm not supposed to know that. I'm not supposed to know what'll happen at the rendezvous. I'm such a dumb son of a bitch. He thinks I'm so stupid or ignorant or arrogant I'll miss that.” He took his wife's hand. God, he was tired. He was only fifty and he felt at the end of the road, out of gas, the last ambassador. He held her hand more tightly. He had to fight, but he didn't know if he had the strength. He had the will but not the strength. He wondered if Bill Jr. knew the difference. Probably he did. The lad was quite a military historian, and would know the example of the Battle of Hamburg. Bomber Command under the authority of Air Chief Marshal Butcher Harris deciding that the war could be won by terrorizing the civilian population of Germany. Hamburg was convenient in 1943, as London had been convenient in 1939. Destroy the morale of the people of Hamburg and you've won the war. This, a virtue of necessity; Bomber Command did not have the skill to destroy military installations, the precision bombing of the penny press being in reality bombs dropped out of planes helter-skelter. Forty thousand men, women, and children dead in a single night of firestorm, five thousand more in the next month. July 1943. Christ, he thought, what an attractive analogy, though not without edge. The ambassador was as irrelevant as the Hanseatic League. And the boy every bit as brutal and careless as Butcher Harris and his German opposite number. The strategy worked, too. Hamburg's spirit was destroyed and driven mad, as any would be under merciless medieval torture. Hamburgers called the events of July 1943
Die Katastrophe.

Elinor looked at Kleust.

“That's what we think,” Kleust said.

“And what do you advise, Kurt?” Bill rose, swaying.

“Don't do it.” He smiled helplessly. “And keep me informed.”

“What does Duer think?”

“They have killed once. Probably more than once. Almost certainly more than once. As for Herr Duer, Herr Duer has other priorities.”

“I'll bet he has,” Bill said.

“He has his own job,” Kleust said stiffly.

“Duer,” Bill said. He put his glass down. He thought he was going to collapse. He said, “I'm going upstairs to rest. Call me in ninety minutes. We can have dinner together after all.”

“Please stay,” Elinor said.

“Do. I'm bushed, but I'll be all right after a little rest.”

“You're sure?” Kleust said.

“Yes,” Elinor said.

Walking upstairs, putting one foot laboriously in front of the other, he paused and leaned against the wall. He knew that Elinor was at the bottom of the stairs, watching him. Ahead of him was one of her pen-and-ink portraits, an old man behind a desk; he thought it was a drawing of his father, though she denied it. Generic old man, she said. He worked his way down the corridor, her pictures on the wall, either side, and entered their bedroom and lay down on the unmade bed, not bothering with his shoes, though his feet hurt, and he hated to dirty the spread. The room was dark and cool. He felt the presence of the girl outside, sensed her as he had sensed the hot African wind. The girl was waiting for him, just out of reach; she would be in the shadows, waiting. He stared at the ceiling, absently flexing the fingers of his left hand. He knew Elinor was at the door and he wanted to make some reassuring gesture, a wave or a wink, but instead he said, “El? What do you suppose my father would do?”

She smiled wryly, as if about to make a smart remark. Then she shook her head. “I don't know, baby.”

“I don't either.”

“He didn't like it when you joined the Foreign Service.”

“Hated it.”

“But he didn't think it dishonorable.”

“No,” he said. “Not dishonorable.”

“And you didn't threaten him.”

He looked at her a long moment, wondering; threats came in various guises. His father was skeptical of diplomacy—it had not been a conspicuous success in the Second World War, not even in Italy, where it was invented. However, it would be a struggle, as one hears struggle in Beethoven or Brahms. The old man had had a turbulent history, very much of the Old World, not an optimist. He felt the necessity of making himself obscure, half visible. Bill said, “I think he was frightened of America. America's potential, its reach, its
grab
, its ignorance of the dark side of things. America had no understanding of true malevolence.” That was what he thought about in the evening, studying his texts. The notion that God had a special place in His heart for the American continent seemed to him fantastic, ludicrous, and dangerous.

“I've got to see to Kurt,” she said.

“He thought, you know, that I'd find anti-Semitism in Washington.”

“Yes,” she said. It seemed to her so long ago.

“He thought the Foreign Service was like university presidencies and New England banks.”

“I know,” she said.

“He said, ‘You'll have to lie low.' ”

“I know, Bill.”

“And I said I wouldn't have to because things were changing. In Washington no one gave a damn, except some of the old farts and they were on their way out.”

“Go to sleep,” she said.

“I saw the prettiest girl today.”

“Goodness,” she said with a broad smile.

“She was gorgeous. Sexy, too.”

“Young, I suppose. I suppose she didn't have a gray hair in her head.”

“She's the one who sees Bixby.”

“I've seen her. She's a very pretty girl. Too young for an old fart like you.”

“What about Bixby? He's older than I am.”

“It's part of the therapy.”

“Maybe we can have some therapy tonight.”

“I'd love it,” she said.

“Who was the one with the orgone box?”

“Reich,” she said.

He patted the bed. “Orgone box, right here.”

“Dear Bill,” she said. “What a good idea. It's been weeks.”

He said, “You go, look after Kurt.”

“All right,” she said.

He said, “I'll be down in an hour. I'm not so tired anymore. Thinking about the therapy.”

She smiled. “Pretend you're in Back Bay.”

He laughed. “God, all those ghosts.”

“Sleep for an hour, Bill.”

“I'll think about the Back Bay, be asleep in seven seconds.” She left, closing the door behind her. The golden sunlight stirred his memory. It was reminiscent of Marlborough Street in October, and when he closed his eyes he could see his father, expressionless, so still in his heavy dark suit, the light coloring his bald head pink. They lived on Marlborough Street, but the old man had never left central Europe. He had a ghetto mentality, always apprehensive, fearful of the future. The old man had not chosen Marlborough Street; his wife had. It was a Gentile street in a Gentile city, and she had to convince him. She had to convince him of its anonymity and privacy. She had to convince him that she knew best, being both a Bostonian and a Gentile. But he could never refuse her, she understood him so thoroughly, and loved him without reservation. They loved each other and their music, and their privacy. In time he came to cherish Marlborough Street because it reminded him of a residential district near the Grünewald, big, heavy houses, a district that seemed indestructible. In the street there was always the sound of German music, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert. And the same was true of Marlborough Street, in the 'forties and 'fifties. Gas lamps, narrow streets, and the Public Garden two blocks away. Walking distance to Symphony, the Goethe Institute around the corner. People kept to themselves, it was almost a condition of residence. The hurly-burly of political Boston was infinitely remote; it might as well have been taking place in Dublin. The old man came to understand that on Marlborough Street he could be as inconspicuous in Boston as he had been in Berlin, even after the advent of the National Socialists. And with a Gentile wife, he remarked drolly, he was covered. She always surprised him. He was surprised when he married her, surprised that he wanted her so; and surprised that she wanted him, a European refugee, tormented sometimes beyond understanding. Of course he had no immediate family that would object, not that he would have respected their wishes. Some demands you had to refuse, no matter how painful; and without pain, life was not life. The old man thought that to be invisible was to be secure, or less insecure. For that reason, among other reasons, he hated New York. Or was it fear? He guessed it was fear, though the old man had never said.

That afternoon, so long ago. In fact it would have been the portentous and impressive autumn of 1955. They had been talking about Washington, the Presbyterians, and the meritocracy. Bill had said that the center of the nation was shifting from Wall Street to the Federal Triangle. This was obvious, anyone could see it.

The old man had said, And this is a good thing?

Bill remembered gesturing with his hand, brushing the comment aside. This was not something you could observe from Marlborough Street. Good or bad, he said, it's what's going to happen.

It might not be so good, his father said.

One more example of the old man's hopeless provincialism. Boston had always been a backwater, a distinguished past, no future. In that way it was identical with central Europe, a regional museum. He remembered his excitement, describing the surely imminent demise of the old Establishment. You could hear the death rattle. The government was filled with old, tired men, mired in the past, obsessed by it. The country yearned for a new beginning, for freshness and change, and action. The country was falling behind.

There wouldn't be any room anymore for anti-Semitism.

The old man moved, the chair creaking. He lifted his head, his eyes focused on a far corner of the dark room. He said, “What do you know about Jews?”

In the dizzy silence that followed, he suppressed an urge to cry out. He felt his face grow hot. The dark room, with its residue of absolute authority, discouraged any challenge. He could have been standing in the Oval Office of the White House.

He'd said, “I know enough. I'm your son.”

The old man looked at him oddly, up and down, but did not speak.

He thought, Perhaps that doesn't count. To a man imprisoned in the past, obsessed with texts, with the history of a tribe, their relations with God; perhaps, to such a man, paternity was only a detail, an accident. It was not the fact of birth, it was the experience of life; once a Jew always a Jew, except it did not mean that you automatically knew the territory. To know the territory you had to work the territory, understand the terrain, survey the various battlefields and holy places (sometimes they were the same). But he was not interested. Let the North family silver stay buried. He remembered bending down close to his father and saying quietly, “There's more to the world than this house and Back Bay. More to humanity than the Jews. More to us than just us. We're cosmopolitan people, isn't that true? We've been cast out, isn't that true? We're wanderers and we have a conscience and we know there's justice to be done. We know that better than anyone. Who would know it better than we? And aren't we under an obligation?”

“An obligation?” the old man said dully, turning again, his hard glittering eyes fixed on a far corner of the room. He was looking at his texts, the wisdom of the Jews, which covered, the wall, floor to ceiling. When he turned back he seemed to look straight through his son, though his eyes were moving up and down, appraising the wrapping—polished loafers, gray flannel trousers, nubby sweater over a blue buttoned-down shirt, a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. He had always thought he had a New England face, a stranger might think his forebears were seafaring men and the stubborn women who saw them off at the docks and waited ardently for their return. A coastal face, windblown, not a face of the interior; a well-made face, and at odds with the soft flannel and tweed—

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you mean an obligation to God?”

“From God,” he said, then stepped back, surprised; the words had popped out. The room, so familiar in the dark afternoon, seemed to beckon him. It seemed to pull him into the ambiguous darkness at the edges of the light. Surely there was a loyalty higher than a family, or a tribe, or history. He thought his father wanted to bind him to a dead European culture, a culture of the discredited past; an odious past; a holocaust, in fact. Sometimes it was necessary to banish memory, as a government sent an agent provocateur into exile. He waited, trying to find voice, wanting to speak of America's position in the world, the importance of a vigorous and rational foreign policy, the necessity of exposing the brutishness of the Soviet system without rocket rattling. . . . Well, he didn't want to talk about Jews. All this time his father remained motionless.