The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

She said, “What?”

  He said, “It’s hot.”

  “No,” she said. “What?”

  He said, “We wait.”

  She said, “It was the church.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She bumped his shoulder and said deadpan, “Not the Rathaus.”

  “No,” he said, smiling. Unpredictable Gert. She loved to make puns in English and German, and now turned the screw once more.

  “Rats,” she said, lapsing into baby talk so that it came out “Wats.”

  Outside the rain continued and Gert began to hum. It was the hymn they had heard on the sidewalk. He turned to look at her. Her head was moving slightly from side to side and she was smiling, her mouth half parted. She stood a little back from the bar, her coat open, its skirt swaying. She wore brown leather boots and black tights and a short sheath dress. Over her shoulder he saw the elderly man looking at her with open appreciation. In the dark light of the café Gert could have been almost any age, though in fact she was twenty-seven. In a certain light she looked forty, and in another kind of light sixteen; it depended on the light and her own mood. Her face sometimes went slack, the features thickening. She would pull her long neck into her shoulders and stare straight ahead, looking as if something momentous were about to happen. Now she moved from one foot to another, her hands in her pockets. She had drawn the attention of the teenager. Presently pop music filled the room, but she seemed not to notice; she was “in the zone,” as she said, another pun. The light was flattering, and her head high and girlish as she continued to hum the Lutheran hymn.

  The elderly man came up behind them, so stealthily that Bill did not notice until he heard his breathing, an old man’s asthmatic wheeze. The elderly man bent down to pick up Gert’s rain hat, smoothing it with his fingers, examining it, then looking her up and down, a caress, undressing her. He said, “Fräulein,” handing her the hat.

  She replied, “Thank you,” not looking at him.

  He said mildly, “You are English.”

  “No,” she said.

  “That is good. You are very lovely,” he said softly. His lips hardly moved. “You are a very beautiful young German girl. Why do you not speak our language? I do not mean to be presumptuous.” The elderly man smiled and gave a little bow and walked off, out the door and into the rain.

  He had not looked up, not when the elderly man approached, and not when he departed. Now he said, “Fine, Gert.”

  She did not reply.

  “Fifteen minutes more,” he said. “Finish your chocolate.” He glanced at his watch, it was noon. The café was beginning to fill up, pedestrians coming in out of the rain, laughing and complaining. The odor of chocolate filled the café. He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head. He moved close to her so that they stood facing each other, not speaking. Gert had withdrawn, way inside, back into a region of her mind where there were no people, only a stark and restless landscape, menacing in its simplicity. It was a warm day and a thin autumn mist covered the hillside. Running along the grassy ridge she could see for miles and miles, left and right. She could see to the very margins of an empty nation, a land without people. She felt that she was running along a knife’s blade, one slip and she would be cut in two, sliced like a turnip. Birds wheeled overhead in a cloudless milky sky. Below in the valley there were sheep and shepherds’ huts. She was crying. Her dress was torn and her face bruised. Her hands were bloody. The nail of her little finger was torn to the quick, and she tucked it into her palm. She stumbled and fell, rolling down the hillside, over and over, out of breath, her hands banging on the earth, her hair flying, tangled—

  “Gert.”

  She turned to him, suspicious.

  “Stop it now,” he said, his mouth close to her ear, his voice very low but sharp.

  “What?” She looked at her left palm, bloody where the nail had dug into it. He handed her a paper napkin which she pressed into her palm. The café was very crowded now, noise rising all around them. It was a neighborhood place, everyone knew each other. She moved closer to him. He said in a natural voice, “You’ve hurt your hand.” But her eyes were far away and she seemed not to hear; at any event, she did not reply. He buttoned up the raincoat and put a bill on the counter, steering her out of the café and into the street. There was only a light shower now and she did not bother with the rain hat as she stood staring at the apartment buildings, no longer bland and featureless but singular and important. She dropped the napkin. He put his arm around her waist and they walked back the way they had come, past the church and across the boulevard. The elderly bearded man was ahead of them, strolling, looking into shop windows. They followed each other for a block, and then the elderly man crossed back to the other side of the street and they walked parallel for a while. There was very little traffic and no pedestrians. They were headed in the general direction of the Ku-damm. Gert pulled on his arm when they passed an art gallery. In the window were faceless mannequins, decorated with fruit and vegetables; apples for one, oranges for another, corn for a third. Gert looked at the figure with corncobs around its neck, and between its legs.

  She said, “Soft-pore corn.”

  He smiled. All the while he was glancing across the street. The elderly man had stopped and now moved on, turning at the intersection. Gert was a few feet away, staring into the window of a sex shop. Women’s undergarments in black and red, stiletto-heeled shoes, wigs, a leather chain. He said, “Here we go, Gert,” and for the first time that day, she smiled.

  They continued for another block, Gert striding out, leading the way. She began to hum. He was not familiar with the district, though he knew that the zoo was not far away. The elderly man was waiting for them at the stop light. When they were twenty feet away, still showing no sign of recognition, he quickly crossed the street and mounted the steps of a three-story apartment building, disappearing inside. They followed, up the stairs to the third floor. Gert took the stairs two at a time. The stairwell was dark but the third-floor door was open.

  The apartment was light and pleasant, yet plainly furnished. It looked like a hotel room, with a threadbare carpet and nondescript pictures on the wall—a landscape, a pot of flowers, plums in a bowl—and no personal items of any kind except a pile of newspapers in the corner, and a copy of Der Spiegel on the coffee table. The elderly man was standing back from the window, looking here and there into the street. Apparently satisfied, he turned and took their coats and disappeared into the kitchen where, presently, they heard the banging of pots and china, and the rush of water. There were two chairs, one on each side of the coffee table. Gert took one of the chairs and Wolf remained standing.

  The elderly man, beardless now and looking younger, returned with a tray, placing it in front of Gert. He said, “We were not more conspicuous than a battalion.”

  Bill said, “It wasn’t too bad.”

  He put out his hand. “My name is Max.”

  Bill said, “I am Wolf.”

  Max raised his eyebrows, smiling, then sat down heavily, folding his hands across his belly. “Wolf? I know who you are, Herr North. There’s no need for any of that here. We are quite safe.” Then he turned to Gert, regarding her fondly. “How are you, darling?”

  “Fine, Papa.”

  “You are looking very well. Isn’t she looking well, Herr North?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I am called Wolf here. It is short for Wolfgang.”

  “Yes, of course. You are taking care of my Gert. Good care. You have a fine reputation, Herr Wolf. Pour the tea, darling.”

  Bill said, “You can talk German if you want.”

  “I prefer English.”

  Bill said, “As you wish.” He moved to the window, standing back from it as Max had done. The filthy glass reflected his own image, distorting it. He watched a Volkswagen accelerate and disappear around the corner, not fast enough. He said, “The boy in the café, the one playing the jukebox. The one watching me. He just drove by. What the fuck am I supposed t
o think about that, Max?” He turned from the window, facing the older man.

  Max said, “He is one of mine.”

  “Not part of the arrangement, Max.”

  Max said, “Wait two minutes. He’ll come by again, and park across the street. And when he does, I’ll go outside and tell him to leave, if you’d like me to do that. I’ll be happy to do it. The boy is a precaution. He has a device in his car that can signal if anything goes amiss. Awry. Just anything at all. He pushes a button on the little pocket calculator he has and there’s a signal here.” Max pulled a calculator out of his trouser pocket and placed it on the table. They all looked at it. “So we know if there’s anything out of the ordinary on the street, a car that shouldn’t be there, unfamiliar people. And the boy’s clean, no worries about him.” As Max spoke the Volkswagen reappeared, but there was no parking place across the street.

  “Is he there?”

  “Yes, but he can’t park.”

  “You can always park in this street on Sundays.”

  “He double-parked.”

  “Ah, why can’t things go smoothly, as they do in the cinema?” He laughed. “No one ever double-parks in the cinema.”

  Bill said, “Tell him to go.”

  Max did not protest. He rose and left the room. They heard him clumping downstairs. Still looking out the window, Bill said, “Is he as you remember him?”

  “What?”

  “Does he look the same?”

  Gert thought a moment. “Yes.”

  He watched Max walk across the street and lean into the side window of the Volkswagen. Then the driver and Max looked up at him, grinning. The driver had an object in his hand. He made a sudden motion and Bill jumped back from the window. The little light on the calculator on the table flared, and went out. Bill returned to the window. The Volkswagen drove off. Max returned to the sidewalk, shaking his head.

  Bill said, “He’s a swine.”

  She said, “What?”

  He turned to look at her, sitting so quietly, lost again in her own thoughts, staring at the tea things, her hands working in her lap. She was stroking the sore in her palm.

  “Well,” Max said, closing the door. “Herr Wolf. Give you a start, did we?”

  Bill continued to look out the window, left and right.

  Max said, “Yours is down the street, the Volvo next to the intersection.” He settled into his chair. “The boy is very good, he made him right away.”

  Bill smiled. There was no one down the street, at least no one he knew. His group, what was left of it, was in Hamburg. He and Max would have to go around once again. “He’s not mine.”

  Max said, “Look again. Look left. He’s youngish, your age, perhaps a little older. Red jacket, blue jeans, no hat, driving a Volvo. It’s a little peach-colored Volvo.”

  “We don’t drive Volvos.”

  Max said, “This is exhausting.”

  “Perhaps your boy is mistaken.”

  “Perhaps so. He is inexperienced.” Max sighed. “Darling, please pour the tea.” Then, to Bill: “I am so pleased to see her again. It’s been—years. I’ve worried about her day and night, as only a father can. But she has not changed at all, she is as I remember her, and as lovely as ever.” He was talking to Bill as if Gert were not present. “And now she has a reputation as fine as yours. But of course it is sentimental for me, her father, to boast.”

  “It is not correct,” Bill agreed.

  He looked at Gert. “The poor darling. But it is good after all these years that we meet, you and I. We both have much at stake. Does she still speak of her mother?”

  “No,” Bill said.

  “Her mother was a tragedy.”

  “In what way?”

  “Ill so many years,” Max said vaguely. “I was not able to be with her, owing to my own work.”

  “And where have you been, these six years?”

  “Here and there,” Max said.

  “You were in America.”

  “Yes.”

  “And for a time in France.”

  “For a year only. It was very pleasant. The food and wine.” He patted his stomach. “I have been trying to lose weight, but alas.”

  “And in Great Britain.”

  “You’ve been attentive.”

  “It’s not difficult.” Bill gestured at the newspapers in the corner of the room. “It’s not hard, following your movements.”

  “So you’ve read the paper.”

  “Of course,” Bill said.

  “And Gert. Does she read the paper, too?”

  “Sometimes I read it to her, if the dispatch is important or amusing. Or if it carries your by-line.”

  “In Washington I saw your father. A briefing at the State Department, something to do with southern Africa. A briefing for the European press, even the free lancers. I looked at him carefully, trying to imagine you.”

  “And was that easy to do?”

  “No,” Max said. “But now I can see the resemblance, you are tall, as he is. But you are sturdier, and the speech is very different. Perhaps because you have been in Germany. Is that it?” Max did not wait for an answer. “They say your German is excellent, a native’s German. Of course your grandfather was a Berliner. What else is one to expect? Your father is thoroughly an American. He has a State Department face and uses State Department English, but naturally you know that. I listened carefully and at the end of the briefing—specially arranged for the foreign press, with drinks and a little food afterward, all very fraternal—I went up to him and asked a rude question, which he answered carelessly. I wanted to observe him up close, to see if he could be made uncomfortable.”

  “And could he?” Bill tried to imagine them together, Max and the ambassador: the rude question, and the bland institutional answer. The ambassador so tall and—contemporary, an inhabitant of the twentieth century, clean-shaven, good teeth, clear complexion, the evidence of a lifetime of wholesome nutrition. Max looking up at him as he asked his rude question and received his answer, the answer as smooth and neutral as oleo, nothing to grasp or to savor. Max so squat and contained, his face a mirror of central Europe: an old-fashioned face that an American might call “full of character,” if by character one meant dolor. It was a face easy to overestimate—as the ambassador’s was easy to underestimate. That was how the Americans had got as far as they had: always underestimated and misread. He wondered how Max had escaped detection all these years. He would have a dossier as thick as a telephone book, but the dossier would be disorganized, filed under half a dozen different identities—his Polish identity before the war, his Maltese, Greek, Rumanian, after the war. He would not have many years left because the computers would discover common facts, and sooner or later they would all lead to Max Mueller, foreign correspondent, veteran hack.

  “He seemed to be irritated, no more,” Max said. “I thought that through him I could see you. The son is always the shadow of the father, is that not true? But alas. These State Department people have no weight. And it was unequal, I had him at a disadvantage. I knew so much more than he did. I felt like a professor in the presence of a student. There was this familial link between us, of which he knew nothing: I was proud, he ashamed. And of that, too, he was unwitting. He was aware of nothing. He seemed distracted, bored with me, anxious to return to his office. He is not skilled at public relations, your father. He did not even know who I was! He had to look at my nametag, and even then there was no recognition: and I have been a foreign correspondent for thirty years. How simple it would have been to surprise him, to move him back a step, to interfere with his complacency. To watch his face when I said, Herr Ambassador, let me bring you some news. Let me tell you about the children, who are celebrated in Europe. You and I, we have much in common. Your Bill and my Gert are lovers! They are the most dangerous revolutionists in Europe! And they are ours, yours and mine. They are so smug in Washington, so self-satisfied. To have watched his face at such a time, it would have given me much pleasure. Wh
at do you suppose he would have done? Taken me off into a corner? Called the security guard? Perhaps both at once! But I said nothing. I listened to his answer, trying to control my excitement. And then he looked at his watch, and was gone.” Max paused, staring at the ceiling, then grunting as if struck by another thought. “And do you see anything of me in Gert? Not physically, of course. Physically, she follows her mother. The hair, and the way she carries herself. The shape of her body, her legs and bosom. But in the general way of things, do you see a resemblance? Perhaps she has my resilience and tenacity, my patience. It worries me, I don’t mind telling you. It is only a matter of time before they have a picture, and then they begin the process of winding back. These people are worse than the Nazis, and I am covered and intend to stay covered. I am an old revolutionist, nothing more and nothing less. I am a living history of postwar Europe. Me! It is my life, and I am the last of my kind. And her. She is the first of her kind. Gert is my great legacy. She is my inheritance to the world. And as I look at her now, I see she is her mother’s daughter. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in Berlin, it was well known. A beautiful, pitiless woman.” He stopped abruptly, having said too much; or having said the wrong thing.

  “I would have to know you better,” Bill said.

  “Which is impossible, alas.”

  “It is very unlikely.”

  “I want tremendously to be a grandfather. Does that surprise you?”

  “No.”

  “It is time for me to be a grandfather. All my friends are grandfathers, those who have families, and are still alive. It is thrilling to watch them with their grandchildren at the zoo, looking at the animals, eating an ice.” He looked at Gert a long moment, up and down. For the first time, she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes widening; it was an innocent look, without guile or complexity. They could have been strangers. She smoothed her dark hair with the palm of one hand, tucking stray curls behind her ears. Max leaned forward, and suddenly he looked very old. “It would be a wonderful thing, if you could make me a grandfather.” Gert continued to stare at him, smiling brilliantly now, as if posing for a photograph. “Oh,” he said, “I hope you are not barren. That would be a great pity.”