The American Ambassador (38 page)

“It's good, El.”

They turned. Bill was in the doorway.

“It's just damn good, don't you think, Kurt?”

“Yes,” he said unconvincingly.

“Looks just like me, don't you think?”

Kleust smiled. “Did you have a good sleep?”

Bill looked at Elinor, raising his eyebrows. “Grrrrreat,” he said. They heard the ring of the telephone downstairs and Bill turned, moving out of the doorway.

She put her hand on his arm. “I'll get it. You go downstairs with Kurt. Make us drinks. Big ones.” She went quickly down the stairs.

“You do look better,” Kleust said.

He repositioned the easel, then turned off the lights. He was so preoccupied that he did not think to agree, to say the natural thing: Yes, I do. I needed to lie down. Sleep works wonders. All I needed was a good sleep.

 

Wisconsin Avenue seemed narrower than he remembered it, but it was not narrower, only more crowded. Lights flashed and throbbed, and the smell of food was everywhere. There was noise also, music and traffic and chatter, the American young on the prowl, having at each other in Georgetown. Here and there a matron or bureaucrat walked quickly, homeward bound, blank-faced; hear no evil, see no evil. Bill Jr. stood on the sidewalk in front of the drugstore and watched them; there were all the elements of a European circus. A faggot pranced by with two sleek Afghan hounds. Two dazed teenagers with backpacks pointed at him and giggled. A girl with her right breast exposed strolled by. Three black boys followed the girl, jiving, talking at her. She slowed and moved to partly cover her breast. He thought that compared with this, the Hamburg waterfront was almost demure.

He watched a patrol car, two bored officers in the front seat. Bill Jr. watched them carefully, but they kept their eyes front, like soldiers on parade. One of them appeared to be asleep. When the patrol car stopped in traffic, the black boys began to hiss.
Hisssss.
But the windows were up and the air conditioning was on, so the police didn't hear anything, and it wouldn't have made any difference if they had. The girl went into a leather boutique, but the boys did not follow; a security guard was at the door, conspicuous with billy club and holstered revolver. Packages to be checked at the door. Shoplifting punished to the fullest extent of the law. No smoking. No bare feet. No food. No drink.

American young: empty vessels, you could pour anything into them, chemicals, melodies, basketball scores, a war. But not a revolt. Not an upheaval. Their delicate systems would reject it as completely as salt water. They'd vomit it up, retch it into the gutter. Too much
trouble.
Who needed the hassle? Who
needed
it? Where's the real action, man? They were as useless as the tsar's household guard, lazy and drunken and without fiber. What control the authorities had, to so demoralize and undermine an entire generation. Never underestimate them. Never underestimate the tenacity and cunning of the American ruling classes. He had said it over and over again, but the comrades refused to believe it. Better believe it, he said.

A derelict in fatigues was pulling at his arm now. Bill Jr. had wheeled at the touch, and the derelict did not know how close he came to a broken wrist. A buck, he needed a buck. He was scarcely coherent, unshaven, stinking of wine. His hands shook. One of the veterans no doubt, they were everywhere. One of the comrades had said Washington resembled Berlin in 1920, American streets similar to the noble George Grosz canvases. The derelict stepped back, his hand out, palm up. The security guard was watching them, alert to anything that could interfere with commerce. Then the derelict seemed to lose interest, ambling off; he looked suddenly frightened. At any event, he did not want to push too hard. The man in the leather jacket and blue jeans might push back, and then where would he be? Better to keep to the straight and narrow. Better to ask, not demand. Better not to be too insistent. Better to take what is given, and be thankful. And if nothing is given, that was anyone's right. One had no claim, really. Bill Jr. watched him go, the encounter already forgotten. The derelict in fatigues was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, making pass after pass with his hand; he looked like a vagabond matador, old, overweight, out of touch, out of it. But no one noticed. Passersby passed by, their eyes on the middle distance, up; the old soldier was invisible. But Bill Jr. noticed that as the people passed, swinging their arms, they checked their billfolds, the men patting their rear pockets or their coats, the women squeezing their purses, holding them a little more tightly. Everyone did this. No exceptions.

He stepped back into the shadows and checked his watch. Not much time. He looked left and right, and across the street. A woman interested him. She was walking with a man in a Borsalino hat; they were both carrying briefcases. They were talking animatedly. The woman was wearing very high heels and he fancied he could hear them, even across the street above the noise of the traffic and the music and chatter. Click, click, click. The man was good-looking, no doubt her husband or lover. Bill Jr. quickly crossed the street and fell in behind them, ten feet or so behind, other people in between. She was familiar, a face from his adolescence. What was her name? Wendy? Wanda. The wickedly wonderful Wanda. He and Mel Crown had discovered her in New York; it was some weekend or other. She and Mel had smoked grass and they had taken turns screwing her. She had loved to play games in bed; had been happier, he thought, with Mel than with him. Mel Crown was soooo black. Bill Jr. scrutinized her, noting the changes, a little heavier in the rear; her step didn't have quite the bounce it once did. Her father was a congressman, now she looked like one. The man with her was a lawyer or influence peddler. Possibly a journalist. It was all the same thing. He stopped and let them advance. At Q Street they turned left, and disappeared from his view. They had had a raunchy time that weekend, he, MC, and WWW. She had taken them out for lunch on Sunday, a last meal before they returned to school. An expensive New York restaurant, she had paid with credit cards. She had opened her purse and the cards fell out, one card after another, American Express, Visa, Master Charge, Diner's, Hilton. Brooks Brothers, Bloomingdale's. Hertz, Avis. She was laughing, dumping the cards on the table in a rattle of plastic. Mel looked at her, spoke his favorite word, and left the table. Mel was always quick to identify the enemy. Now Mel was in Attica, she looked like a member of Congress, and he was on the run. Varieties of American experience. He wondered if she knew anything about him. Or if she ever thought about him, where he was or what he did. What ever happened to Bill North, you remember him, the quiet one, the one who never said anything, always glowering and sarcastic, so dissatisfied with things? Probably her father would know, would grunt and say something like “The North boy went off the deep end, and I feel so sorry for Bill and Elinor, such terrific people.” He felt a sudden tug on his arm. The derelict had followed him across the street and stood there in front of him, his hand out, eyes averted. A useful reminder. Time was short.

Bill Jr. crossed the street again and hurried back to the drugstore. He had been stupid. Wanda was trouble, always had been. It was stupid, hanging around Georgetown, anyone could recognize him; he had changed his appearance, but his walk or his posture could ring a bell. And the bell could be an alarm. This fat, dumb country always lulled him. There were too many faces from the past, too much history. It was time to go home, time to return to Gert. He fished in his pocket for a coin and stepped into a telephone booth, closing the door. He dialed and waited. One ring, two, three.

She said, “Hello.”

He pressed the palm of his hand over the mouthpiece so that she could hear no sound. He listened to her breathing. He was concentrating, needing to hear everything.

She said again, tentatively now, “Hello.” Then, very clearly, as if she wanted someone to overhear, “No, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.” And then another long silence.

He hung up and left the phone booth. He was smiling. Why had she lied? She had lied because someone was there, Herr Kleust no doubt; his Mercedes was still parked in front of the house. So she did not want Herr Kleust to know that he had been in touch, that perhaps—perhaps! It was so difficult to know, with the clear overseas connections—he was even in the United States. And that lie meant that they would go to the Kunsthalle.

There was one last souvenir to deliver. His car was parked on 28th Street near P. He drove quickly to Q Street and across Wisconsin Avenue and left on 34th Street to the park. He waited for five minutes, watching for any unusual movement. But there was no one about, either in the park or on the sidewalks. It was drinks time in Georgetown. He left the car and walked in the darkness to the bench near the baseball diamond. He stuffed the paper bag into the trash can.

Back in the car, he checked his watch. An hour to Dulles, and seven hours to Geneva. Geneva to Copenhagen, and by car from Copenhagen to Hamburg. At about the time he was leaving Geneva, the bomb would explode. It would be five in the morning, no casualties, a bench and a trash can destroyed, windows shattered nearby. The fact that it would be five in the morning, and that there were no casualties, would be an ominous message all its own. It would give those terrific people a little something to think about. How vulnerable they were. How easy it was for him to move in and out of his native land. How simple to obtain and transport the materials for an explosive. How far off the deep end he really was, and how necessary, therefore, that they journey to Hamburg for the last act, if that was what it was.

Crossing Key Bridge to George Washington Parkway, he realized that his breathing was shallow and that he was sweating. That was the thrill of it. The doing of it, with no errors. The movement back and forth, the package, the bomb in the package, the timer in the bomb. The danger, the mystery, the unknowableness of the present moment. Coincidences, unexpected sightings. Standing motionless on Wisconsin Avenue for thirty minutes, watching the parade. The telephone call, her breathing, her voice, so brittle, so familiar. And to have control, meaning to have it all in your own hands. Go or No Go. The thought always that you could do this forever, take it to whatever point you wanted. There was uncertainty in everything. At the last minute, there was no reason not to back away, save the last act for another day; the important thing was that it was always there. You never ruled it out; you never signed the treaty renouncing the use of force. It was just a little bit like the Cold War itself, an infinite number of possibilities, meaning calculations and miscalculations. Wasn't that what the old men meant when they talked about the balance of terror? It had been nicely balanced since the end of the Second War. It wasn't only the weapons, fascinating as the weapons might be, it was the calculation of intent, and not only the intent of the venerables in Washington and Moscow, but the intent of younger, harder men in capitals no one ever heard of.

He began to laugh. The beauty of his plan was that it could go either way with no loss of tension or menace. They would always be at the edge of the precipice. His plan was a replica of the time.
The threat was always there.
Kismet.

 

 

 

 

T
HEY SAID
that a cancer cell was a cell that went haywire. One minute it was good, the next it was bad; one minute normal, the next wild, momentous, and out of control. They did not know why. They could observe it under their microscopes, but were powerless to do anything about it.
Tant pis.
Except for a final solution, kill it or it kills you. Take no prisoners. The medical equivalent of the neutron bomb, leaving the body's skin in place but everything within dead. No halfway measures, no patient negotiations. Yet there were decisions to be made. Life was precious, but was it
that
precious?

That's
very
cheerful, Hartnett said.

We are not a witty family, Bill replied.

Hartnett thought that an odd reply, and said so,

They were having a drink in the first-class lounge at JFK. Elinor was at the newsstand, buying the papers and a magazine. Bill had been talking about his father, in response to some question of Hartnett's The old man had been dead ten years, cancer, acute lymphocytic leukemia. That was the time, Bill said, when the only possible reaction to anything was—a kind of caustic benevolence. The old man had reserves of courage and patience that were astonishing in the circumstances; they were his weapons in the final quarrel with God.

Hartnett sipped his drink, not wanting to hear it, but listening anyway. When Bill North had a story to tell, he told it.

They had a program for him, Bill said. A protocol, they called it, an inventory of chemicals, seven specific drugs that acted in concert. This was the strenuously named Regimen B maintenance schedule. I was there when the doctor explained it to him. Doctor was about thirty-five, nice-looking fellow, thin as a pencil, very intense. He had a rubber band he kept winding around his fingers while he talked. No promises, he promised no promises; this was experimental treatment. Might work, might not. He watched my father as he spoke. The old man's eyes never wavered, he never looked more like a woodcut. The doctor started out talking rapidly but he eventually slowed down, and began speaking in complete sentences, often clearing his throat. There were seven drugs and I can remember their names even now. Daunorubicin, vincristine, prednisone, L-asparaginase, 6-mercaptopurine, cystosine arabinoside, methotrexate. He did not rush over the names but enunciated them carefully, the old man nodding as if they were euphonious Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Micah. The doctor said there were dangers which every patient should be aware of. The drugs were toxic and had side effects. The old man had not said a word until then. He raised his index finger and said: “Explain them.” Well, the doctor said, each drug had its own specific side effect. Daunorubicin caused bone marrow depression, which often resulted in infection and bleeding. There was also hair loss. Reversible, he said. Also, possibly, cardiac toxicity. Vincristine caused hair loss, tingling of the fingers and toes, muscle weakness, and loss of reflexes. And, frequently, a mild form of bone marrow depression. Prednisone often caused fluid retention, diabetes, skin rash, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, and curious changes in appearance, which included a rounding of the face. L-asparaginase often caused nausea and vomiting, diabetes, abnormalities of the liver, pancreas, and serum proteins; mental changes and anaphylaxis. (He told me later that it was difficult for him to maintain a straight face. Mental change as a side effect! And if there were no mental change, would that be considered normal? Perhaps that would be an anaphylaxis of its own, a severe allergic reaction, though seldom fatal.) 6-mercaptopurine also caused bone marrow depression. Similarly, cytosine arabinoside. Methotrexate typically caused sores of the inside of the mouth and the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, and hair loss. When it was administered into the spinal fluid, headaches or fever were common. That was pretty much it, the doctor said, not a pretty inventory, though every human being was different and reactions varied, they could be worse or they could be better, that is, milder, but that was what Mr. North could expect, pretty much. The doctor used the collective pronoun “we” when describing what could be expected, “we” being the medical profession, medical science, chemotherapists. At the end, God bless him, he told my father that he was very gravely ill and that the prognosis was not “positive.” The old man listened to this, lying in bed, his hands folded on his stomach (only once did he look at me, and that was at the third or fourth mention of hair loss, the old man being bald as an egg, a condition that the doctor did not notice, being so concerned to get the protocol in its proper sequence). He did not look gravely ill just then, his complexion was still ruddy and his belly round and full. When the doctor had finished, he nodded slightly and glared at the bureau. His Hebrew texts were piled high, eight, nine books, heavy, thick tomes that he had brought from his library. Also Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music.
The doctor looked at me and I made a sign to stay put; my father was thinking. He had been told all he wanted to know, and now he needed to think about it. But the doctor had one thing to add, it was the question he was always asked, and now he moved to anticipate his patient. He said, “You'll be wondering about the odds, in treatment of this kind—”