by Tim Finch
But to return to the blinds. To the light. To the dispute at hand. You can imagine the sort of photographs and videos we must view as each side seeks to demonstrate that the other is the more bestial and therefore the more impossible to negotiate with. On the day in question, one such photograph was being displayed on our screens. Let’s call it: Image 1451. (The number is merely indicative.) ‘Image 1451 shows …’ counsel intoned, and she was about to explain what it showed and why it had been tabled when one of the sides (the side that had tabled the image) objected. The amount of sun coming through the skylights was not sufficient to view the image properly, this side contended. (I forget which side it was; it doesn’t matter.) They asked that the blinds be opened slightly, and that happened. But that, of course, was not the end of the matter.
The other side (the side which had committed the outrage shown in the image) raised a counter-objection: that now there was too much light being let in. So, the blinds were adjusted again, and there was less light in the room for a while. Though not for long, because the side which had objected first duly objected for a second time, with the result that the blinds were adjusted for a third time, and more light was thrown on proceedings again. But only for as long as it took the other side to lodge their second objection and insist on a fourth adjustment to the blinds.
And so it went on: ad nauseam if not ad infinitum because, all of a sudden, as often happens, the protagonists tired of the game and an accommodation was quickly reached. Both sides seemed satisfied despite – or perhaps, because – the amount of light in the room was – to the neutral eye at least – all but indistinguishable to the status quo ante. At which point I promise to desist from any more schoolboy Latin, but I must quote Behrends’s Law, which, if you will recall (I do recall), states that: War = the long and bloody route back to square one.
Now, its application to this particular incident is obvious enough, but so too is its application to the wider conflict. For all the indications are that a new peace line will only reinstate the old division of the country; that the post-war settlement will only restore the pre-war balance of power. In other words, if rather inelegantly, all of this just to get back to that.
One last word about the dispute over the blinds. In one sense, nothing was achieved, and we ended up where we started. But in another sense, one side won. A small victory, at least. A temporary advantage. How so?
Simply that, throughout all the back and forth, the image – sometimes in more light, sometimes in less; eventually, in much the same – remained on our screens, and thus imprinted itself on our consciousness in a way that was that bit more compelling than all the other images we viewed that day, thereby putting the side which was alleged to have committed the atrocity shown in the image at a slight disadvantage when it came to us weighing up which of the two sides was the more objectionable. And that no doubt was the reason – or at least, part of the reason – why the issue of the light was raised by the side that did so. For a short while, they had ‘got one over’ on their opponents. They would, they felt, be viewed in a somewhat more favourable light, if you will. And that was important to them, for all that this advantage was short-lived, because they would soon stand accused – with supposed filmed evidence to back it up – of dark deeds of their own.
I try to imagine their thought processes.
Ah, a photograph of one of our soldiers, one of their prisoners-of-war, being crucified. Let’s raise an objection about the light in the room. Let’s ensure that this hideous image lingers on the screen and is seared into your memory. It will delay too the showing of a video of a member of one of our militia dousing a caged woman hostage in petrol and burning her alive. For that will make us look bad. There’s no escaping the fact. Though we will deny all responsibility for the incident. Suggest the image has been photoshopped. Come up with anything we can think of to distract and deflect. But never mind about that just now, look again at this picture on the screen of our soldier – more a boy, really, sixteen or seventeen at most. They are hammering nails into his hands, he will hang on that cross in heaving agony, until he dies from asphyxiation. Or exposure. Look at it! This is what they do to our people, our young people, our women and children. That’s why we need more light. No, that is not enough, open the blinds some more, you need to look at the photograph, really look at it. Don’t listen to them. Don’t let them shroud this atrocity in darkness. Don’t you see what they are doing? They don’t want you to see the full horror. This is what these animals are like …
You see what we have to contend with? To put up with. To endure, to tolerate, to humour, to indulge! Is it any wonder that sometimes one wants to rage and howl? To rain down abuse and contempt. To …
One doesn’t, of course. One keeps one’s cool. Though on this occasion something inside me did snap, because it was with what, in the circumstances, amounted to reckless flippancy that I said: ‘Gentlemen’ (they are, to a man, men), ‘thank you for coming to a compromise on that question. Perhaps we can carry that spirit into the afternoon session?’
And I then called an immediate adjournment for lunch, signing off with a jaunty rat-a-tat-tat of my gavel.
Click. I turn my screen off. And remove my headphones. Click. I turn the screen off in my head. And silence the screams. Click. It is the only way. Click. A spot of lunch now. Think only of that. Of the agreeable hubbub that surrounds the buffet, which is always a splendid one. Click. I think I might have the chicken alla Milanese with the spaghetti in tomato sauce. And then the apple strudel. Click. As a rule, I don’t drink at lunchtime. Today, though, I might have a glass or two of red. Click. And I will have a strong cup of coffee after that. And a breath of fresh air. Click. We resume in an hour. Tick. Fifteen minutes now. Tock. But in the meantime. Click. Switch off. Like a machine. It is the only way.
But this time there was no resumption.
Drat my reckless flippancy, my jaunty rat-a-tat-tat.
Three days we have been in shuttle mode now, with both sides refusing to meet in plenary, or indeed to leave their respective floors. And not because of an issue of substance, or because of the argument over the blinds (that is now entirely forgotten), but because of another trivial incident, which took place in the corridor straight after I adjourned the session, in which one side took offence at a perceived slight by the other and the other took offence at being so accused. The same old story, in other words. The same old fucking, FUCKING, FUCKING … story.
Now, calm down.
These things happen. People have been reminding me of that constantly. And I know it to be true. But the point is this: this particular thing wouldn’t have happened if I had only stuck to our scheduled timetable. Then, security staff would have been in place in the corridor to stop just such an unmediated coming-together of the two sides, it being recognised that whenever that happens, this happens – that is to say, some petty falling-out – another petty falling-out, in a long series of petty fallings-out – that derails the talks for days.
I confess I took refuge in one too many glasses of Scotch, as the sound of evening prayers drifted down from the respective floors of the two delegations. (I swear they compete to appear the more devout.) ‘Bloody hypocrites,’ I cursed under my breath. Then, more vocally – a colleague sitting in a leather chair close to mine peered over his newspaper or Magic Mountain – ‘Bloody fool.’ It really is the most dispiriting aspect of such negotiations: spending hours, if not days, if not weeks (sometimes it comes to that), not having the talks we are here for, but having talks about getting the talks back on, or even – once things unravel an unstoppable regression can take hold – talks preliminary to talks to get the talks back on.
My fellow walkers the following morning had the sense and decency to offer no words of consolation or optimism – or indeed any words at all. (The fact that I obviously had a blinding hangover was doubtless another factor in their consideration.) I trudged across the snowfield, over the icy bridge, through the stand of pines and up the steep s
ection … absorbed in despond. But as I had hoped – there would have been no early surfacing without that hope – the panorama of peaks lifted my spirits. And on the second walk after the breakdown, two days later, I had the moment of inspiration these walks sometimes supply.
Mea culpa (please forgive) is the gist of it. Our strategy since then has been to convince the parties that no blame lies with either or both of them, but only with me: for my insensitivity, my violation of agreed protocol, my deviations from diplomatic norms. And while this constant abasement, offered by me and on behalf of me, is wearing to my sense of self-respect, it has succeeded in wearing them down – and that, as we know when we sign up for the diplomatic life, is the name of the game.
‘Whatever it takes, gentlemen’ (we too were, to a man, men then), I recall old Forrester telling us at the staff college. ‘And that includes wheedling and pleading. Begging the scum of the earth for forgiveness. Please, Mr Scum, please come back to the table, Mr Scum. Thank you, Mr Scum. You are a gentleman, Mr Scum.’ Old Forrester was old school. It’s not like that at the staff college these days, I can tell you. Many more women, for a start. (Though still too few, I hear you add.)
Yet I can’t lose their respect entirely – these Mr Scums of the moment. As ever, it is a fine balance. When – let’s not go there with if – the substantive talks resume, I can see myself deploying a few notably hard raps with my gavel so as to restore myself to tinpot dignity, if not real power, in their eyes. But that is in the hoped-for future. In the meantime:
‘Ambassador, may I respectfully suggest once again that the point to focus on here is not the actions of the other party, but my actions in precipitating all that followed. Both parties fully agree that my actions were clumsy, to say the least, and although mutual recognition of that fact does not clear up all the other matters of dispute, I am hoping that it can serve as a starting point for a resumption …’
We shall see.
One good sign: neither side has walked. They could easily have escalated matters, right up to full suspension, and the fact that they neither embarked on this path from the start, nor have driven themselves down it subsequently, suggests that temporarily collapsing the talks was at least partly tactical. (That it was in other part emotional, even hysterical, goes without saying.) And this means that at some point they will calculate – or at least pretend to themselves – that they have achieved the maximum tactical advantage. And as long as this coincides with a subsidence in emotion (and, more intricately – there are a lot of moving pieces here – with a sense on both sides that the other side, but not their own, has been forced to climb down), the full talks will be back on.
‘Your optimism is ingenious, Mr Behrends,’ the Russian observer said when I gave my report to him. I only just stopped myself from correcting him. ‘You mean …’ He didn’t, of course. He is much too self-possessed to be infected by anything. Ingenuity, on the other hand, is a quality he admires in others as well as himself.
‘We’re still behind you, all the way,’ the American observer said with his usual threat-level enthusiasm. ‘White House, State Department, Pentagon.’
‘The PM is of course concerned to hear about this latest breakdown,’ the UK observer observed coolly. ‘But she has the greatest faith in you, Edvard, you know that.’
‘What is the English expression? “A bump on the road” – that’s it,’ the French observer said with a smirk. (I think he puts on the accent. The French accent.)
I ‘retain the confidence’ of the Quartet, then. How much confidence I have in myself is another matter.
At present, we are on an adjournment from the adjournment, negotiations to reconvene after the latter, having themselves broken down again. The two parties are locked away on their floors talking only to each other – which is to say, to others in their own party.
Or perhaps they are not even doing that. Perhaps, like me – I have stood down my negotiating team and all the support staff – they are in their own rooms, lying on their beds, missing their homes, their loved ones. Such reflection might just make them think of the benefits of peace, it occurs to me: no more bombing of their homes, no more killing of their loved ones. Or – my thoughts circle back on each other like this all the time – it could as easily drive them to think of leaving the talks, reminding them of why they hate each other so and why making peace would be a betrayal.
Such is the damnable contrariety of this business; this peace business.
I am lying on my bed no longer: I have given vertical vent to my frustration by leaping up, striding across the room and pulling open the sliding door to the balcony – the last, a horizontal action, but a great, heaving, heavy one.
That hit. The cold. The clarity. The majesty. The palms of my hands impressed in the stiffening crust of snow on the balcony ledge, I take in, take on, the view. That it is mine – my view from my balcony: a singular configuration of rooftops, snowfields, forest and mountains, twilit by a sky that is a deepening blue and orange bruise – creates a power relationship, a back and forth, almost between equals: somehow, all this stupendousness is at my behest. It is all there, laid out before me, as it were, to draw what strength I will from it.
I stand like this sometimes, on the porch of the cabin, in this sort of light or in early light, it doesn’t really matter. A drink in hand helps – whisky or a mug of tea with a nip of whisky in it. Clumpy grass, chomped over by clumps of sheep; old Gulbrandsen’s raddled woolly bundles. There is invariably one ewe on a rock promontory, chewing gum, ill-fitting dentures, jaws sliding from slide to slide, looking the wrong way, looking at me. It has no appreciation of Caspar David Friedrich or the Lake poets, dumb creature. Blessed creature. We, cursed, cannot look out on all this, there or here, raising our gaze, taking it all in, save through the frame of our making. Ownership again: the Sublime, capitalised by our contemplation of it.
Up in Urke, the panorama is forbiddingly fjordic of course: slabs of sea mountain, squared-off or broken-toothed, shouldering massively into the Hjørundfjord, or hurtling sheer, hurling cataracts ahead in wild screams of spray. Not that the glacial water of the fjord is much put out. A fair-sized apartment block, human specks crowding the rails, barely murmurs the surface, and by evening – the trolls having tossed away the toy cruise ships – it is glass. Reflecting on infinity.
Indulge me: let me say – with the only twinge of embarrassment coming from that have-it-both-ways plea for indulgence – that it puts things into perspective. Little me/all this. The quotidian/deep time. And not one crushing the other, but rather, a throwing-of-an-arm-around, as it were. As if to say: you are part of all this. Just a tiny part, mind. Infinitesimally small. But at the same time no belittling. A due relationship is established. Mankind and nature. Mankind and fate. Mankind and – dare I say (you won’t like it, but you’re not here) – God?
It is why they put us up here, of course. High above the throng. Close to the angels, so to speak. Making of us demiurges. These are immense affairs that we are engaged in. We must pay respect to ourselves for that. (Come out on to your own balconies, I should cry out to every man and woman on the mission, to both delegations. Look out and draw strength, as I am doing.) It is not the petty quibbling of the last few days that defines us, but rather this most noble enterprise: Peace-making …
And yet …
In the grand scheme …
Night is descending over the now familiar hemicycle of ice-blue summits, and one is thankful that here, unlike in Urke, there is the comfort of lights coming on across the darkening valley. All the circuitry of sophisticated civilisation. Liquid light streaming up the sinuous mountain road and disappearing into the underground car parks; lamplight in windows welcoming back parties of skiers to their chalets; hotels and restaurants switching to warm evening après-ski. And fires and lamps are burning rustically in the scattering of farmsteads that still fringe the village, sitting higher on the slopes or deeper down in the valley, where the black river, screened by blac
k pines, seethes under its lid of ice. And all the while, some unseen hand is, one by one, lighting the candles in the churchyard. And then tending the sanctuary lamp in the mountain chapel?
In two banqueting suites in the hotel, cleared out for the purpose, strip lit to their specification, rugs rolled out on the parquet floor, the two warring parties are praying. Facing inflexibly in the same direction. Over the mountains, down to the coast, across the sea, towards the Kaaba. Burning sun and burning sands. Stadium glare illuminating the sahn. Hordes of the faithful. Fanatic devotions fuelled by bitter recrimination. Bitter recrimination fuelled by fanatic devotions. Both sides insisting on the indivisible Oneness of Allah.
And trapped inside screens that have been blank for three days the ghost of an image of a young man dying in agony lingers. When we resume, when we turn our screens back on, that image will not be there. Click. A screen saver will appear. A panoramic image, shot from high in the mountains at night, of the resort glittering in the valley. A prospectus for a good life.
Sharp rap of hard wood against sounding block.
BREAKTHROUGH
We are resuming in an hour. Who knows how the impasse was broken? One moment, deadlock; the next, a note came down from one floor, quickly followed by a note from the other.
Of course, we are only back where we were four days ago. Indeed, in truth, we have lost ground, as every breakdown drains some of the available energy and goodwill from the substantive proceedings. But think of it this way: it is as if we have been sitting in a traffic jam for ages, and now we are moving again. Whatever the time wasted, however slow the progress ahead, there is release in that sensation of resumed forward motion.
And that’s it for this one. I just wanted you to know the good news and to say you shouldn’t worry about me. I was feeling pretty low last time. You know how I get sometimes? But I have recovered my spirits.
