The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  He moved along, across the street. The music began again, fading at the sound of a motor. A helicopter overhead, and the sound of a horn on Wisconsin Avenue. A limousine slipped by, its smoked windows concealing the passenger or passengers within; it had official plates. Georgetown’s narrow streets were not designed to accommodate twenty-foot Cadillacs, and this one navigated as carefully as a yacht approaching a dock. The limo stopped in the middle of the block and a woman with a briefcase got out. She paused to say something to the driver. The limo pulled away and she looked warily up and down the street before she rang the bell of the brick row house, and was admitted at once. He used to know who lived there. It was a senator from Pennsylvania. Either Pennsylvania or Michigan; he had been dead for years. The woman with the briefcase had the combative look of an attorney. But she had smoothed her skirt before looking up and down the street, raising her chin a fraction before taking off her eyeglasses. Not an assignation. She was dressed for success, not passion.

  She had taken no particular notice of him. But neither had the troubled young woman across the street from his own house. They were both preoccupied, as self-absorbed as he was. He was anonymous, an invisible man, no threat or opportunity to anybody, an object of brief attention only because he was a pedestrian and there were so few pedestrians in Georgetown. The chopper had flown away and the street was silent again, stiff and formal as an old print. The violin music remained in his memory, however. He was suddenly depressed, walking lethargically toward the park, only a block away now. This part of town was a museum and he was one of the permanent exhibits, Stuffed Diplomat. He knew that he must look a very old man—hesitant, without vigor, not in heat, a convalescent. And truthfully, he felt cold and weary, without weight, slack around the edges, dull. An old fart out for an afternoon constitutional, when serious people were at their offices or arranging assignations. He flexed his left hand, and noticed that in the heat his wedding ring had become tight on his finger. His hand was alive, though, and there was no pain. It had been seven days since his release from the hospital.

  “Sir?”

  He turned, one more young woman walking toward him, looking at a piece of paper in her hand. She seemed in a great hurry.

  “May I trouble you? I am looking for Dent Place?” Breathless, almost. She did not look at him, she looked at the paper in her gloved hand, a postcard from the look of it. She was smartly dressed in gray slacks and a sweater, ascot around her neck, tiny gold earrings.

  “It’s three blocks up,” he said.

  “Only three blocks?”

  “Straight on,” he said. She wore enormous sunglasses, of the sort that reflected your own image; in the mirror he appeared round-faced, almost healthy.

  She looked at him at last, or over his shoulder; straight through him. She offered a brilliant smile, and thanked him, and hurried away, dropping the postcard after she had gone a dozen steps. Or not dropping it, throwing it to the sidewalk, as if it had no more use.

  Careless young woman, he thought. People who littered, it was probably what she did in Paris or wherever she came from. She was much too chic for Washington, and she had an accent. He moved ahead and picked up the postcard, looking for a trash bin. It was a reproduction of one of Kirchner’s lithographs, a street scene, Hamburg. And the card was from the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. There was nothing written on it. He stood a moment, looking at the card, turning it over. The Kunsthalle, he knew it well, a great repository of the Expressionists. He had last visited it in 1979, with Elinor and Bill Jr. The street was empty now, the young woman gone in accordance with his directions. She had looked right through him, as though he were a pane of window glass. He put the card in his pocket and stood a moment, lost in thought. He turned, thinking he would go back home, share this news with Elinor; then he thought, No, and walked on. Perhaps it was dangerous news, and perhaps there was more to come.

  Two young men in white were playing slam-bang tennis, serve and volley. At the far edge of the park a woman walked her dog. He looked left and right, like a general surveying the battlefield, then sat on the wooden bench under the shade tree and watched the tennis players. The bench was covered with initials. He ran his hand over the grooves and wondered if somewhere there were Bill Jr.’s initials, or Elinor’s. Perhaps the women had carved the names of real and imaginary lovers two decades earlier when they gathered in the park to talk about sex, giants, and runts, and what the future contained. He traced a heart with an arrow through it. Populated with ghosts, the park seemed alien to him, a zone of insecurity, not at all what he expected. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and he thought of Elinor cool in her studio, listening to music, rock and roll or Mahler, “I have become a stranger to the world.” His mind raced, remembering the old days; the past was close enough to touch but the future seemed out of reach, obscure and inscrutable. It couldn’t even be imagined, even if he had the strength to try to imagine it. Trying to connect this to that, he foundered, his thoughts incoherent, and he was sorry now that he had left the house, and the safety of the portentous and impressive autumn of 1957. Things then were near to hand. He stretched his legs and closed his eyes, hearing the thump of the ball and the grunts, unh-unh, as it was served and returned. He tried to concentrate on a single thing, to take his mind off the young woman and her dropped postcard, Kirchner, the Kunsthalle at Hamburg, the mordant message from his son, if that was what it was, and he couldn’t imagine what else it could be.

  Of course he would choose that bench, it would be familiar to him. Always, people returned to that which was familiar. It gave them a sense of security, the past being inherently more stable than the present. He watched the ambassador’s fingers move over the rough wood of the bench, tracing initials. Everything in the park was familiar, the swings and teeter-totters, the tennis courts, the baseball diamond, all of its ringed by low row houses, obscenely expensive, houses of the haute bureaucracy. Their reward for the burden of public service, sigh. The trees were bigger and leafier than he remembered, but it had been a few years. The light was so fine and golden, it glowed with well-being, a spirit of public happiness, autumnal, an agreeable middle age; that, too, was familiar. He looked at the diamond, the dusty infield and wire backstop, and remembered a long-ago baseball game. He was nine or ten years old. He was playing third and someone hit a high pop fly. He went back and back, and when he looked up the golden sun blinded him. He flung up his mitt hand to block the sun and the ball fell into it, plop. People clapped and cheered. It had been the play of the day.

  Bill Jr. drummed his fingers on the dashboard of the car, a Japanese sedan with tinted windows. Easy to see out, not so easy to see in. He had watched the ambassador’s progress up 34th Street, watched him give directions to Olga, watched Olga drop the postcard, watched the ambassador pick it up, look at it; watched his head tilt, his hand go to his chin; watched him squint at the card, watched the light bulb ignite as Olga hurried away. Olga wiggling her ass just a little bit more than was necessary, not that the ambassador would take notice of that; the ambassador looked a little bit beyond that. Olga adjusting her big sunglasses, turning the corner and breaking into a run. A young girl running to an appointment, running to catch her bus, meet a lover, whatever. It was ludicrous. God, he looked old as he stood swaying in the street. His clothes didn’t fit properly, and he needed a haircut. He looked a hundred years old. And he was pale, the ambassador who had always had a ruddy complexion. He looked as if a breeze could blow him away. He had watched the ambassador hesitate and turn, as if to retrace his steps, go back to the house on O Street, cry on his wife’s shoulder, then decide against it; decide, perhaps, that the afternoon held promise, that there was an act yet to come, that if he went the last inch—why then, the drama might reveal itself.

  Whose phrase was that? It was the egoist Solzhenitsyn, the Vermont squire. A dying man was obliged to go the last inch, to fully feel and appreciate the magnitude, the momentousness, of death. Otherwise it was just another event in a life. No pois
on, no bullet in the brain, no matter how painful or squalid the disease. It must be felt, or it was meaningless.

  Christ, this was nerve-racking.

  Bill Jr. watched the tennis players in the distance; young men from the look of them. On the edge of the infield, a woman walked her dog. The ambassador was sitting slumped on the bench. He looked almost to be dozing, except from time to time his hand would go to his chin. So he was not dozing, but thinking; and his eyes would be wide open. But the question was, How much would he see? What would he recognize? Bill Jr. reached over the back of the seat to touch the package on the floor. A plain brown paper bag, the sort of bag that might contain a bottle of wine. The ambassador was not being watched; he was certain of that. The tennis players were intent on their game; they had been playing for an hour. The woman with the dog was—a woman with a dog. At the last moment, Bill Jr. had trusted his instinct, that the ambassador would go to the park, and choose the familiar bench, the one with the carved wood, and the convenient trash barrel beside it.

  A young woman in black crossed the street in front of the car. She reminded him of Gert. He watched her walk into the park, and stand a moment in the sun. She moved aimlessly, as Gert often did. He looked away then, sad beyond measure; he felt tears behind his eyes. He wanted her now. He worried about her, where she was and how she was keeping. Well, he knew where she was; she was well looked after by people who liked her and were kind to her, but he worried just the same. Gert was unfathomable, and that was part of her allure. But sometimes she went so far inside herself that she became lost, as anyone would in an uncharted ocean. When she was lost she panicked, terrified. Her instinct was not to retreat, but to advance. He feared always that she would disappear, and be lost to him forever. And he could not live without her, literally; she was his other half, his secret self. She defined him. Without her, he was just another abandoned American boy. If she were lost, she would never be found; and he would break down. Up the street, behind the maple tree, was the little house, the first homestead; two stories high, twelve feet wide. The Bertram stories, Dr. Seuss. People in and out of the house, friends. He tried to imagine him and Gert living there, sleeping in the front bedroom with the rattling air conditioner, cooking outside in the back yard on warm evenings. What was the life they wanted for him? He would be a second-generation Washingtonian, a certified cliff dweller, involved some way in the government. Government business, the family firm. He stared at the house. It had a new coat of paint, but it did not look lived-in. He imagined Gert at the second-floor window, looking out at the park, remembering Germany, trying to fit that into this. She would look into the park and see dead men. She would watch a simple baseball game, see a little boy go for a fly; and she would hate him. She would despise all of it, and one day she would wander away and never return.

  He shuddered; shook his head to clear it. The woman in black was circling the park, staying in the sunshine. She had a free and easy gait, a kind of sexy swing, a young woman alone in a public park on a lovely afternoon in early November, unseasonably warm. She cast a long shadow that undulated over the brilliant leaves. The ambassador was watching her or seemed to be. Sexual thoughts creeping into his dead head? A little stirring of the groin, thoughts of the way things used to be? Doubtful: he was so out of it. She moved around the perimeter of the park in the direction of the tennis courts. The boys in white were beginning to slow down, it had been a long game. Something about their movements on the court suggested European tennis. They tended to stay back, and their footwork was unusual; perhaps there was something about their outfits, too. Hard to know. Hard to know exactly what it was that alerted him. Bill Jr. looked left and saw a black Mercedes slip down 34th Street, pause, and pull into a parking place. A Mercedes on 34th Street, and a limo idling on the other side of the park.

  Too many questions, too many things seen, all at once.

  So it would be later. He had a plan for that also. Bill Jr. put the car in gear and drove away, a little faster than he needed to, not so fast as to attract attention. His eyes were on the rearview mirror, but Volta Place behind him was empty. No one followed. He had not been seen.

  Mordant messages. Maybe she was listening to rock, maybe to Mahler. Bet on Mahler. A stranger to the world, I have become. That one. Oddly, for the alto voice; one would have thought a baritone. But Mahler was always evenhanded. Women got out of joint no less than men, when the world got up and wandered away. Perhaps women did not mind it quite so much, having a more complete inner life. It was hard to imagine a woman lost inside herself.

  He crossed his legs, idly watching the tennis players. He touched the postcard in his pocket. A tangible clue, evidence for Carruthers, for Dunphy and the committee, dapper Warren Winston. He could approach them voluntarily. I am an officer of the government, and this is my full disclosure. On 34th Street, Northwest, at four in the afternoon, she was an attractive young woman, enormous sunglasses, slender and chic. Foreign, French from the sound of her accent. A professional approach. If he had neglected to pick up the card, she would have tried again, some other way; or someone else would have. He knew every question they would ask. He was one of them, after all. They thought alike, government men; he had been one his entire working life. He was more a part of them than Elinor was. Elinor had looked at him and said: Nothing, give them nothing. So the world had wandered away, but he had wandered away, too. Elinor remained where she had always been. And the boy? He was to the back of beyond.

  Well, the world was neither coherent nor consistent. You played for time; time was the prize, though not always the prize you wanted.

  His vision blurred but he made out, across the park, the young woman in black. Her hour had run its course, and he wondered now what had taken place between her and sensitive Dr. Bixby, the Talleyrand of the female orgasm. Nothing good, from the look of her slow step, arms at her sides, head down; she looked like a priest advancing on the altar, a vivid figure, black against the red and gold of the trees. Probably she too was a child of the Establishment, perhaps consoled by its moral disarray. What is to be done? No doubt Bill Jr. had asked the same question, already knowing the answer. He was not interested in the next question, What is to be done after we do what we have todo? First things first. Bixby would be a big help. After a glance at the clock, he would lead her back over the difficult terrain of the past, the past imperfect, mommy, daddy, nightmares, daydreams, the shadow of love, the absence of justice, the day the dog died. Christ, it was such a sham. He imagined Bixby leaning forward, so solicitous, staring into her dark eyes as she unraveled. You’ll feel better with your clothes off, my dear. By God, she was a good-looking young woman in black. All afternoon, surrounded by young women; and he had not felt the slightest sexual urge. He had no desire. Maybe somewhere in Georgetown there was a female Bixby, who for a hundred dollars an hour could coax him out of his shell. Make yourself comfy, put your feet up. Have a cigarette. Like some warm milk? Tell me your dreams, Bunny.

  “Hello, Bill.”

  He turned, startled. He shaded his eyes from the sun, burst suddenly through the trees. Turning, he twisted his neck and the pain shot into the small of his back. For a moment, he didn’t know what to say. He waited for the pain to ease, and when it didn’t he turned away, groaning, gaining time. The tennis players had paused in their game and were watching him. He felt a great rush of gratitude, why he couldn’t say; this visit was nothing to be grateful for. He rose slowly and they shook hands. He said, “Hello, Kurt. Take me home.”

  4

  KLEUST SAID, “The car’s over here.”

  Standing, lightheaded, he was conscious of a stillness in the park, a cessation of movement. The young woman in black had disappeared, and the tennis players had abruptly finished their match. They were sitting on the grass, breathing hard. One of them was smoking a Gauloise, the unmistakable raw French odor saturating the air. He and Kleust walked in silence to the car, an old black Mercedes sedan with ordinary DC plates. Bill got in, stumbling once,
then leaned back against the leather cushions and closed his eyes. The leather gave off a wonderful oily smell, the rotund atmosphere of a gentleman’s club. Old Kurt, looking stiff and formal as a line of German script, while he himself felt like a child’s hand, erratic, vague, hard to decipher. You have me at a disadvantage, he thought.

  He said in German, “What a surprise. The day is full of surprises. How did you know where I’d be?”

  Kleust said, “I guessed. It wasn’t hard. They told me you took a walk in the afternoon.”

  He opened one eye, and looked at Kleust. They?

  Kleust said, “You look half dead.”

  “And everyone says how well I’m getting on.”

  Kleust smiled. “They’re lying.” Then, “We have to talk, Bill. I don’t have much time.”

  “Are they yours, the Hitler youth on the courts?”

  “Two boys from the embassy. They play every afternoon.”

  He said, “Christ.”

  “They’re nice boys,” Kleust said.

  “The woman in black?”

  He said, “Bill,” reprovingly.

  “The dish in the limo?” It was parked up the street, the chauffeur leaning against the hood smoking a cigarette. While they watched, he flipped the cigarette into the street, got into the car, and pulled away. Kleust laughed, and put the key into the ignition. He started the car and let it idle, the engine quieter by far than the Beethoven quartet on the cassette. After a moment, Kleust cleared his throat and put his hand on Bill’s arm. “Look,” he began, but Bill shook his head. Later, when they were at home, when Elinor could join them. When he had taken a pill, and had a drink in his hand, and was in his own house, safe.