The Madness of July

by James Naughtie

  The United States Mission to the United Nations, squatting on the corner of 45th and First Avenue, was heavy duty. On his floor, never visited by outsiders, he led a working life that forced him every day to balance flurries of excitement and exhilaration against the weary conviction that conflict would never end. He worried above all about Berlin and points east, and believed he always would; moving pieces on a board which seemed to stretch to infinity. He’d come to believe that the slow-motion struggle in which his life had been subsumed would roll on beyond him and carry him off in its wake. A few cold warriors on the other side would doff their fur hats to him as he disappeared, as he might do for them; that was how it went. There was little he could reveal of such thoughts to anyone except the few who passed through the third-floor doors with him each morning, and from time to time to Hannah, who had been introduced to some, but only some, of the intimacies of his trade. Yet against the grain of his time Grauber seemed to his friends an optimistic man, with a priestly air of calm. He knew that it was misleading, because his hopes were laced with melancholy more often than he would have wished.

  And as he stepped along East 20th Street his upbeat morning mood was tested. Not particularly by the shadow of a National Day celebration in the East 80s in the evening at which he was to be the senior American alongside his ambassador, although that would be a trial, but by the planned meeting with an old comrade-in-arms for lunch in one of the faded city watering holes that he treasured: the Oyster Bar in the depths of Grand Central Station. In the night he had spent two silent hours at his study desk worrying over the encounter while Hannah slept upstairs, the dog bundled at his feet and a friendly glass of whisky in hand, from a bottle he seldom opened, playing war games with the conversation they might have. The drink was almost untouched when he slipped into bed.

  Now as he crossed Irving Place, the memory of the previous night’s ball game took hold. The Yankees had been obliterated in a double-header at Cleveland. He knew what awaited him, and he loved the tangy flavour of old New York that it represented, always taking trouble to let the city play to its strengths. There were surprises and turnabouts enough at work; he wanted this place to stay as he loved it, although he would remain an interloper. He got to Lehman’s corner, and the guy who always sat at the top of the subway steps caught his eye. ‘Go Mets!’ Grauber acknowledged the taunt with a grin.

  Entering Lehman’s shop, bakery on one side and the small deli on the other, connected by a swinging glass door that allowed husband and wife to rule their own domains, Lehman was more sympathetic because he shared Grauber’s commitment. ‘Mr Grauber,’ he said, the formality an endearment, ‘that pitcher!’

  An unknown voice came through the half-open door to the deli. ‘He pitched like my granddad… dead five years.’ A rumpled grey head followed the voice. ‘World Series, my ass! For-ged-about-it. Excuse me, Mrs Lehman.’

  No one disagreed and Grauber took the chance to ask for his bread. A round rye as usual, and a long sourdough, which would see them through the next day or two. Then through the door to the deli, where the pickles glistened in their jars and the air was sharp with sauerkraut. Husband and wife swapped places each day, Monday to Saturday, bakery one day and deli the next, which gave their lives a nice symmetry, and pleased their customers who liked the atmosphere of a shop where something was always happening. He asked Mrs Lehman for a particular salami, tied up in its red string bag, which they’d work through in the course of a week.

  ‘Things good?’ said Mr Lehman as he passed back through the bakery.

  Grauber raised a friendly fist. ‘Can’t complain. Better times coming. Seattle here Friday. Whole new ball game.’ The baker inclined his head, and smiled after him when Grauber stepped into the street.

  He was back on 20th in a few moments, thinking of the box of work he’d locked in his office safe the night before. Nothing too troublesome, although there was a rumour which might be productive about a Czech, new-blown into town, and the mission was alarmed about a secretariat appointment in the wind: the Australian was a disaster, too prone to vodka parties with the wrong gang, and had to be stopped. It was in hand, and a French friend might help. But that could wait, and in the office it would be an easy, catch-up day. Lunch was everything.

  As he turned the last corner, he almost collided with a neighbour whom he knew by sight. He seemed to be Spanish, though whitewashed by the pallor brought on by a high life that was nearly over. He was accompanied by a tiny dog, decorated with a jewelled collar and trotting fast behind him. The matchstick piston legs reminded Grauber of happy days in Paris when just such a precious animal, the only love of the ambassador’s wife, was suffocated on a sofa at the end of a memorable embassy party with one heave of the mighty buttocks of the Norwegian chargé d’affaires, who was never told what she had done. The beast was buried the next day under the magnolia tree in the residence garden, after a night of tears. Grauber smiled. Old times.

  But Bill Bendo was in town, and Grauber couldn’t escape the consequences. By the time he’d crossed the street towards the front door, his brown bakery bag in one hand and the salami swinging from the other, his smile had gone.

  In a minute he was in the hall of their narrow townhouse. ‘Maria called,’ said Hannah from the kitchen.

  Washington.

  And if it was Maria at that hour, as Hannah well knew, it could be London too. She hadn’t waited for him to reach the office. He felt a familiar, welcome prickle of excitement. ‘She’d like you to call. Quickly, I guess.’ Hannah smiled at him, and nodded. He placed the bread and the salami on the table, and went to the door. ‘Back in five. Ten, maybe.’ He never called Maria from home.

  The routine suited Hannah too, because there were parts of his life that could never be shared. He went along the block to Gramercy Park where he had a key to the private gardens, a privilege that came with membership of the National Arts Club across the square, one of his quiet places. He would often spend time in the first-floor sitting room there, under a painting hung near the window. It was calming at bad moments, and in darker times had been a solace to him, bringing the family to mind. He felt the energy and tranquillity of his distant home in all its deep colours and the boldness of the long, familiar brushstrokes.

  There was a payphone at the corner of the garden where he could safely make a call, but only if it was brief. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I need you here.’ No preamble; no names.

  ‘It’s the lunch today.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ she said. ‘But straight after. We have troubles of another kind.’

  So no panic flight, no helicopter scramble from the East Side pad. Grauber would keep his date with Bill Bendo, just rolled in from Berlin. ‘I’ll get the four o’clock shuttle,’ he said. No more.

  ‘Perfect. Dinner at home. Just show up.’

  They rang off.

  A game was afoot. Must be. He was now relishing the day, for all its promised difficulty, and the prospect of Washington always lifted him a little higher, Maria’s troubles notwithstanding. As he turned east along 20th, the low morning sun was brightening the sidewalk. It signalled a clear and warm day, the sky a duck-egg blue and a breeze of perfect strength freshening the streets. The pretzel seller on the next corner was manoeuvring his metal cart into position and it sent out silver flashes in the sunshine. Grauber speeded up as he reached his own steps and pushed through the door to find Aaron and Michaela up and about, full of summer camp talk, getting their bikes and tennis things and their hiking gear in order.

  ‘There’s sailing. Canoes.’ Departure was two days away. ‘Dad, are you sure we have to take our clarinets?’ He would certainly – surely – be back from Washington by the next night, so he could drive them to camp at Kiamesha Lake, a couple of hours north-west of the city. ‘Will there be bears?’

  He drank a quick coffee and gave everyone his news. A short trip. Hannah hugged him. She whispered in his ear, ‘Only Washington?’ He nodded, taking care to add
a little shrug, and grabbed his coat, picked up the overnight bag that he kept ready in the closet, and said he’d take the subway at 23rd to the mission. ‘’Bye, babe. ’Bye, kids.’ He gave them a joint squeeze. ‘Think about those bears.’

  He was at the avenue in less than a minute and, taking in the sunshine again, he changed his mind about the subway, waiting for an uptown bus instead. The traffic was flowing well towards the gentle slope of Murray Hill, and he’d be there by nine. He’d picked up a Times at the bus stop and skimmed the front page, then digested the paper, watching the horizon for any change in the pattern, the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that might yet spread to fill the sky. No puzzle this morning that couldn’t wait. He left the bus at 44th and walked a block to the mission, its frontage on First Avenue dappled with sunshine.

  There was a new pair of security guards when he passed through the door. ‘Sir,’ one of them said, glancing at his pass, and that was all. Sometimes he had to open his shoulder bag, but not today. The other guard nodded in silence, an efficient and sober exchange, stripped of small talk. Grauber got into the elevator and went to the part of the mission on the third floor where he and his immediate colleagues worked and gossiped undisturbed, without the artifice they practised on the other side of the heavy door.

  ‘Hey! Seen a pitcher lately?’ The water cooler was host to a town meeting on the Cleveland disaster. But he wanted to see if there was another message from Maria and slipped away.

  There was, securely transmitted and left for him to decipher alone after it had chattered out of the printer and a marine brought it to his desk in a square green file, flagged with a yellow tag. ‘Priority, sir.’

  It was a paragraph only. He was not going to London – a relief, because he’d make it to summer camp – but something required his attention and advice, now. There was enough in the message to convince Grauber that Maria, the coolest of cats, was rattled. And, because she knew how to do it, she had dropped in a magnetic word: ‘Joe.’

  At their section meeting, his mind wandered. There was time to take the morning slowly. With the arrival of high summer, the tourists were overwhelming the diplomats. Missions winding down, restive bureaucrats fanning out in the heat to find some shady places. Even for lives governed by the whispers that were his daily bread, the pace was slackening. No one rushed.

  Scanning the list of meetings for the day, he checked for Brits, from habit, and found none, noting that Her Majesty’s permanent representative, his ambassador’s opposite number and sailing friend, had left already for a long annual leave, involving a week in Maine (this from a dinner at the ambassador’s residence two nights before, duly logged by one of Grauber’s assistants along with a sharp account of the conversation) and then three weeks in London and Devon, where he would be forgetting New York.

  One of Grauber’s equivalents in the British mission two blocks north of the Americans, nominally a cultural attaché, was in temporary charge. He was a friend with whom Grauber transacted a good deal of business between their agencies at least once a week. Neither ambassador, perched above them, knew everything. Grauber wore his extra skins with ease. It was like having a second name and gave him a special pleasure. He worked with many who had obligations of secrecy but few enjoyed the extra twists and complications that shaped his life. He cherished the mystery, and in the jumble of intelligence outfits that had been mangled and juggled in rolling reorganizations through the years of scandal it was more difficult than ever to work out where the power lines lay. A question that would once have been laughed out of court – ‘who exactly do you work for?’ – was apposite again. Byzantium reborn.

  The more people gave up on trying to work out the lines of communication, the happier he was. He doubted if there was anyone in the mission who knew Maria, where she worked or what she did. ‘I enjoy being the second string to your bow,’ she would say, with a dirty laugh. ‘Or third?’ he’d say. Washington churned, and he loved it.

  He had no worries about his own ambassador, with whom he had a placid relationship, though it was devoid of warmth. Underneath it lay the certainty that the boss, whose white mane gave him a Falstaffian presence but whose diplomatic horsepower was puny, would always be limping miles behind. Grauber preferred the company of those on the other side of the veil.

  He had no cause to inform the ambassador that he was going to Washington, and every reason not to. He passed a routine morning, telling his secretary that he would be out of town for twenty-four hours, and otherwise saying little. No other details were offered and there was nothing odd about that.

  He arranged for a colleague to deputize for him at the National Day party in the evening, and fixed a lunch with his British friend for the following Monday – they’d head off-piste to an uptown German restaurant they enjoyed, both of them having done Mitteleuropa time, where there would be no other diplomats. He would need to tune in. There was some reading to catch up with and personnel files to scan, because of a reshuffle near the top of the mission. He’d have views. Then it was time to walk the five blocks to Grand Central to indulge in a lightning shoeshine before he pushed open the heavy doors from the street.

  He’d contributed to the public campaign to save the old station from the wrecker’s ball two years before and longed for an end to its strung-out, dingy decline. The aged Oyster Bar had begun to recover something of the spirit of great days, and he liked to think it would encourage the rest of the building to throw off its despair. He had another reason for choosing it: he would see no friends there, only Bendo.

  He walked down the ramp from the concourse, the whistle for a departing train sounding at his back, and prepared for a mad city scramble.

  The garish tiles on the vaulted roof reflected a riot every lunchtime. Diners were buffeted in a storm of instructions and demands, their compensation the feeling of being cast adrift in a city at play – they were seafarers in a speakeasy, sluicing and dredging through Bloody Marys and coast-to-coast all-year-round oysters, cherrystones and little-neck clams, Long Island steamers and striped bass and sturgeon; sinking old-style martinis in frosted glasses; shouting at each other across the room; moaning at children and parents; hurling imprecations at the mayor for letting the city go bust; bawling news bulletins about the Yankees or the Mets, and listening to a pink-haired regular, her face limed with chalk-white powder, imprisoned in a dialogue with herself about awful happenings in the street far above. They poured their energy into the communal cacophony, then sucked it back. Their lifeblood.

  He had come early to grab a couple of seats at the end of the long bar, just on the rounded corner, where they could put their heads together and exchange words under the canopy of noise produced by the crowd. There would be no fear of silence, no danger of isolation. They were pebbles on a stony beach, secret whisperers in Bedlam.

  He passed on the Bloody Marys because it would be a long day, but set up a mound of clams and a jug of water. A man next to him was working his way with care into a lobster, poking at the leg cavities with a set of thin blades and spikes. He cracked the claws with a flourish and a happy grunt, sending a hailstorm of shell fragments across the bar. The waiters shouted at each other, made maracas noises with their cocktail shakers.

  ‘Dozen Wainoo, half Moonstone, half Tamagouche. Razors on seven!’ The swing doors to the kitchen banged back and forth. ‘Gotta go, fourteen! Folks in line.’ Then a cry from the door.

  ‘Grauber!’

  ‘Bendo!’ Grauber had prepared for the expected show of enthusiasm – their usual locker-room greeting, followed by a bear-hug. Appearances mattered, even now. Bendo was wide and tall with curly blond hair, of Grauber’s own age, born and bred in the city. He had four children and a wife called Nancy from Poughkeepsie and had never let a party down in his life. They sat together, clinked glasses, Bendo wheezing and succumbing without protest to a Bloody Mary, ordered their food without discussion and caught up. Summer camp talk, wifely updates. They got through it quickly.

&nbs
p; Grauber opened gently, though without a smile, giving some reassurance to his friend, but not too much. There must be no mistake. ‘We may have a deal. If you’re willing.’

  Bendo pulled a bowl of chowder towards him, carefully. ‘So we’re wasting no time. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But here?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Grauber. ‘Kind of place we like. Thought we might remember better times. Fellow soldiers for Uncle Sam, all that. That’s my question. Willing?’

  ‘To talk?’

  ‘Of course,’ Grauber said.

  Bendo picked up, responding to the pace that had been set. ‘Will it help me?’

  ‘More payback for us,’ said Grauber. ‘Something of value. I guess that helps you. A little, anyway.’

  ‘But not much,’ said Bendo. ‘We know that.’ He was chewing a salt cracker, and dropping his voice as he spoke. ‘I’m done.’ In a few moments they had travelled a long way.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Grauber. ‘It’s over for you, old friend. The game’s up. We’ve both been waiting for this moment, and it’s come.’

  Bendo waited for more. It was a question from Grauber. ‘When they fixed this… encounter, did they leave it to you to work out why?’

  Bendo spread out both hands. ‘They knew I was ready. I’d run out of road. Never thought it would be like this, though. Us. Here.’

  ‘But you knew it would come.’

  ‘The confession? Sure,’ said Bendo. ‘Just couldn’t tell how it would feel.’

  ‘And?’ said Grauber, hoping Bendo wouldn’t flag. ‘Relief?’

  But he tried a joke, asking if Grauber had brought handcuffs in his bag. Neither of them laughed. ‘It’s easy to stray,’ he said. ‘Even when you know there’s no way back. We wanted a thrill when we started in this game. We were in love with the danger – me, you too – and we never lose that feeling. It beats away underneath. Always there, promising another adventure. I can hear it now.’