The American Ambassador (5 page)

 

BLINK onethousandandone onethousandandtwo onethousandandthree BLINK

 

He turned, sensing the telephone before he actually heard the ring, moving quickly back into the house, snatching the receiver from its cradle. Fiercely: “Hello!” A moment's dead air, and a soft click. He held the receiver a moment, then replaced it, hoping that Elinor had not been disturbed. Pleasant to think of it as a misdial; or if he were a jealous husband, his wife's lover, the lover morose at daybreak, needing the sound of her voice. He stood by the phone, looking at it with malevolence, willing it to ring again. But after you were a certain age, a telephone call late at night was never good news. On the other hand, Dick Hartnett once confessed with his bad-boy grin that, infatuated with a young woman who did not return his affection, he regularly practiced telepathy, telephoning her late at night, allowing the phone to ring once, then hanging up. It was his way of saying,
Here I am! I exist! It's me, thinking of you.
He always waited for a call back but it never came; it turned out that she was a heavy sleeper, and never heard the one ring.

This phone call was along that line.
Here I am! I exist! It's me!
And what are you going to do about it?

He returned to the deck, peering into the darkness, squinting again. He hated the early morning, always thick with dampness, his mind still heavy, half asleep, in neutral. He heard a noise and reached down to pat the cat, but she skittered away.

Elinor stood watching him. She watched his body bend and shift position. He stood with his foot hiked up on the railing, his foot beating time. He was muttering to himself, and although the words were not audible she knew he was singing his decline-of-the-West blues, diplomat's ja-da. He wanted people to have the patience and fatalism of the great blues singers. He wanted the secretary of state to have the wisdom of Bessie Smith. Elinor had argued once that his was a plantation mentality, he wanted everyone singing in the fields to the clank-clank of their chains. She watched her husband lift his head, staring at the sky. He said loudly, “God damn it, anyway.” He wasn't wearing his glasses so he couldn't see anything. She said, “Bill?”

He turned quickly. Her face was in shadows and her nude body lit by moonlight. The crevices and fall lines of her body were defined by shadows, deep and alluring. His eyes registered all this but his expression was morose. He smiled sadly and made a little gesture with his hand.

“What's wrong? Why aren't you asleep? What are you doing out here? Come to bed.” She spoke crisply, fully alert.

He said, “Insomnia.” Seeing her, he thought of the boy; he had been just offstage, waving from the wings.

“You were muttering.”

“Did I wake you? I'm sorry.” He spoke automatically. The boy was at the center of his thoughts, on the edges of the known world.

“You didn't wake me. I woke up and you weren't there. I was having a dream, but it's gone now. So I came out here.” She was silent a moment, yawning; it was so still. The breeze was cool on her warm skin. The hair of her forearms rose. “You were shaking the railing with your foot, baby. What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

She said, “I heard the telephone.”

He turned back to face the Sound. “I was thinking about Bill Jr.”

She moved to his side, slipping her arm through his. In the east, the sky was lightening, becoming gray. She imagined the sun racing across the Atlantic. Where Bill Jr. was, or was presumed to be, it was almost lunch time. When last they heard, he was in Germany; but he was probably somewhere else now. He could be anywhere. Nearby she heard a bird, the first of the morning. “Listen,” she said.

He said, “Whoever it was hung up.”

She said, “You know who it was.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Yes, necessarily,” she said firmly. She put her hand around his waist, his skin warming her hand. “It's pretty out here. It's a warm night.”

“I was looking at the sketch.”

“Not a good likeness,” she said.

“A pretty good likeness, El.”

“No animation,” she said.

He said nothing for a moment. Then, “He was always a good-looking boy.”

She said, “I'm surprised. I had the feeling you weren't thinking about him, but about the decline of the West. You had that look. That look you get when you think you've lost your juju. And you were keeping time with your foot.”

“No, it was him.”

She said nothing.

“I was remembering the time when you made the sketch, the argument we were having.”

“That's not productive, Bill.”

“Well, it was what I was thinking. Maybe a little of the other, too. Do you think he thinks about us?”

“No,” she said.

“I think he does.”

“He does not think about us in the way that you think about him. A telephone call in the middle of the night, and when you answer he hangs up. Reach out and touch someone.”

“No, El.”

“And I don't want to talk about him anymore.”

“Just don't—be so rough.” He smiled bleakly at her, but he couldn't think of anything more to say, anything that hadn't been said a hundred or a thousand times before, so he shrugged and made a face. She hated it when the mood came upon him but there was nothing he could do about it. He was possessed by him.

“What's wrong with your hand?”

He was absently rotating his left wrist, massaging it. He looked at it, shaking it as if it were wet. “I don't know. It fell asleep. Probably I slept on it the wrong way.”

“Well, come to bed.” She leaned into him, and kissed his neck. He put his arm around her, squeezing. A second bird answered the first and the eastern sky was now definitely light. Boats were moving on the Sound, fishermen searching for Blues; the lighthouse was dark. New England was waking up, and the morning would be gorgeous. She said, “Come on, it must be almost six.”

He looked at his wrist. “It's the damnedest thing.”

She took his hand in hers and turned it over, palm up. She peered at it closely, as if reading his palm for a clue to the future. “Does it hurt?”

“No, that's the point.”

“Well, you slept on it.”

“I haven't slept. I haven't slept at all. I've had insomnia.”

She rubbed his hand, playfully pulling his index finger.

“I can't feel a thing. It's numb.”

“Bill?”

“The damn thing's been numb since dinner.”

“Do you feel all right otherwise?” She was wide awake now.

“I dropped a cigarette and didn't even notice.”

“Any pain? Or anything else? Nausea?” She looked hard at him. “What do you think it is?”

He said, “I don't know.”

She put her hand on his arm, then her palm on his forehead.

“It's not a heart attack, El.”

“We'll call the doctor when it gets light.”

“What'll we tell him? That I dropped a cigarette?”

She began to walk toward the door. “We'll start with that.”

“El—”

“Are you dizzy?”

“No.”

She opened the door to the kitchen and looked back at him. “We'll call the doctor now. I will.”

He laughed. He didn't want to be the one to suggest it. He felt a great relief. He said, “We can wait until daylight.”

 

The doctor had no idea what the trouble was, and the ambassador left his office without so much as an aspirin. For a few days, the numbness went away, and the welcome pain returned. Then one morning on Middle Ground the numbness came back, accompanied by another unmistakable symptom. He made the necessary telephone calls and they left the island for Washington. Two weeks to the day after the incident with the cigarette, Ambassador William North, fifty, was in the Washington Hospital Center, a semiprivate room, third floor. The Department sent a routine signal to AmEmbassy Bonn that the charge's leave would be extended at least one month, medical reasons.

T
HE HOSPITAL
was crowded and not even the Department's strings could secure North a private room. The boy in the bed next to him was recovering from a motorcycle accident. He had a fractured skull and a broken neck. They wheeled him in early in the morning of North's second day. He was awakened by the creak of the stretcher table and the muttering of the attendants. The boy had been in intensive care for three days, but was now off the critical list and expected to survive, barely; this from the nurse as she tucked in the sheets. That was on Tuesday. He was unconscious for two days, or at any event did not speak or move. He had no visitors. The first words he said were “I'd like it if you'd stop smoking.” A sardonic pause. “It just bothers the hell out of me.”

He and Elinor looked at each other and put out their cigarettes. Elinor asked the boy if he needed anything and he shook his head. She was conscious of the irony of her words, and grimaced. North introduced himself and the boy nodded, but did not reply. He introduced Elinor and the boy nodded again.

“Do you have a name?”

“Richard,” the boy said. His hands were folded primly. He was swathed in bandages, black holes for the nostrils and mouth. It was impossible to know how old he was, except that he was not a child. His voice had timbre. Greasy black hair curled around his neck where the tape had become unstuck.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Almost seven,” Elinor said.

“This is Tuesday?”

“Thursday,” she said.

He said, “I was in an accident.”

Elinor said, “You're going to be fine.”

“Is that what they told you?”

“It's what the nurse said.”

He turned his head away from them. His body began to shake, and for the life of them they did not know if he was laughing or crying.

 

Late that night, unable to sleep, North lit a cigarette in the darkness. It was very still, the only sound the breathing of the boy in the bed next to him. The door was open and he could see the dull fluorescence of the corridor, an unhealthy blue. In this hospital he felt like a laboratory animal, a six-foot one-hundred-and-eighty-pound swaybacked gerbil, “Bill,” ill, undiagnosed, ripe for vivisection. And the attendants were so cheerful; they had exciting results from one of the tests. He had looked at them, as if he expected to find the word on their foreheads, like the impression on the shroud of Turin; cancer. And one of them had leaned down and whispered: It's not cancer. We know that much. Whatever it is, it's odd. But it's not that. And you're not going to die from it, whatever it is.

Such an efficient hospital, superbly equipped with the latest medical devices, and only $600 a day plus extras. Still, he was safe enough; he was as safe as if he were in prison. The hospital was built of steel and reinforced concrete, it could survive a direct hit of any weapon short of a nuclear device. The bed was as heavy as a Buick and fully motorized, though not as comfortable. TV on the wall opposite, control panel to the left, steel tray on rollers, plastic thermos, plastic vials, plastic straws for the plastic glass. The place had all the charm of a ship's mess.

He blew a smoke ring. The windows were permanently sealed, the temperature inside always a comfy 76°F. The last time he was in a hospital was twenty-three years before, a hospital run by German missionaries, a bungalow with windows open to the air. The room had a comfortable bed made of wood. There was a thick wooden crucifix over the bed. There were cotton sheets and soft pillows and you could smoke when you liked. Drink, too. Each room came equipped with the familiar triangular ashtray with the Cinzano logo. On the opposite wall, hung where the patient could see it, was an old travel poster, one of Kirchner's neurotic Berlin street scenes,
Potsdamer Platz, 1914
, all vertical lines, the streetwalkers in rayon and ostrich feathers, the buildings sharp-edged and ominous. It could have been the guest room of someone's house. Visitors came and went as they chose. By God, it was hot, though, never less than a hundred degrees during the day, yet there was always a light breeze and the nights were cool and sweet-smelling, filled with the rustling sounds of Africa. The nights were never still.

He blew another smoke ring, his eyes fixed on the closet where his suitcase was stowed. He thought, What the hell, and put his cigarette in the ashtray. Ambassador didn't have cancer, ambassador was owed a reward. He heaved himself out of bed and stood, swaying, lightheaded. He walked slowly to the closet, opened the suitcase, and brought out a silver flask, engraved

 

To You

From Me

1963

 

The flask was from that time. He poured two fingers into the water glass and replaced the flask.

He took a sip and smiled. He wished he were back in the African hospital because there was no question then what was wrong with him, and no doubt that he would get well. The nurses were sexy; more sexy than competent. They seemed to have no great faith in German medicine. The doctor was a missionary of an obscure Lutheran order, a field surgeon in the Wehrmacht 1939—1945, and therefore skilled with wounds, a conservative man. There was a question about whether to open North's stomach to probe for fragments and the doctor decided that was not wise, the risk of infection was too great. Infection was a greater menace than the fragment, if actually there was a fragment; there was no way of knowing for certain. The x-rays were inconclusive and North could tell them nothing, being only intermittently conscious and delirious as well, muttering strange prayers, lying on his stomach in the wide, wooden bed, eyes closed. He remembered all that very well, despite the delirium. His prayers sounded like gibberish to the doctor, whose English was faulty. North remembered the doctor's round face and black beard and what he took to be the sour smell of wine, though it could have been disinfectant. The doctor looked him over (puncture wounds everywhere, legs, back, hips, upper arm, left temple) and decided not to operate, a risky decision but one which he knew that North would approve; doctor and patient, both conservative men. When the patient was compos mentis the doctor would visit after dinner, bringing a bottle of schnapps and a radio. The doctor would look him over, tell him how well he was doing, what a strong heart he had, what a robust constitution. And a robust spirit, Herr North was never pessimistic. Then they would sit quietly, drinking schnapps and listening to accounts of the Profumo crisis on the BBC, laughing uproariously. The German could not restrain himself, he laughed and laughed, saying over and over again, English swine. He did a wonderful imitation of Der Alte, Konrad Adenauer, receiving news of the tarts Keeler and Rice-Davies cavorting in the swimming pool at Cliveden and, later, classified pillow talk with the secretary of state for war and the Soviet naval attaché.