The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  He said, “Do you want to play footsie?”

  He looked across the white linen to the trolley by the window, and through the window to the dark street. He wondered if they were there; probably they were. Well, to hell with them. He sat quietly a moment, remembering the good times in Berlin. He thought he had just enough courage to overturn the water glass, and then apologize for it. Without looking at the waiter he said in a conversational voice, “Two Armagnacs, old ones, the 1936 vintage. Doubles, please.”

  Two balloon glasses filled with Armagnac arrived, with a second bill. The sum could feed a family of four for a month, depending on how much they drank with their meals. He drained half the glass, feeling the liquor burn and his eyes commence to water. The taste was familiar, but nothing else was. He watched the candle flicker in the glass, felt the liquor settling. By God, it was good; it would be even better if she would talk to him. The last time they were at Rockenwall’s, sometime in Carter’s term, they had a table by the window. Kurt Kleust had joined them, had flown in from Bonn for the occasion. Elinor had been very talkative, telling some Washington story, making everyone laugh. The story was funnier in German than it was in English. He sipped the Armagnac, thinking that it would be a terrible mistake to get drunk, definitely contraindicated.

  He murmured aloud, “But I’m already drunk.”

  Elinor leaned across the table. “Please, Bill.”

  She had not touched her glass so he finished his own, and then took hers. He finished that in two swallows. His head began to thicken. He and Elinor were sitting in a little zone of silence, as if they were drugged. She looked very tired, her hair falling in dark commas either side of her face. The long candles threw soft shadows; not a woodcut, a watercolor. This would not be a good time to have an argument, but he could see her watching him; and her expression was not encouraging. He wanted never to lie to her, never keep a secret from her, never betray her. He wanted to be better with her than he was with himself. They were two sides of the same coin, that was what she had always maintained. Except that one side was sober and the other side was drunk. A light went off in the main room. How nice it would be to spend the next two days at table, in semidarkness, drinking fifty-year-old Armagnac at quiet Rockenwall’s, a kind of landlocked anonymous state like Andorra, a neutral nation, never at war, always in repose, serene behind secure borders.

  “Bill?” Her voice was small and hushed. She continued to trace the figure with her fingernail, looking at it with a child’s concentration. She spoke as if she were afraid of being overheard. “Can we go now?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to stay here forever?”

  “No, Bill.”

  “It’s a hell of a nice restaurant.”

  “It was nicer in the old days.”

  “Never mind them,” he said. “You didn’t drink your Armagnac. It’s god damned good Armnagnac.”

  “There’ll be other Armagnacs, Bill.”

  “Not at Rockenwall’s.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to come back here.”

  She said, “All right.”

  “What you said was true, it was better in the old days. Remember the night you made everybody laugh? Kurt, and those English friends of his.”

  She folded her napkin, nodding.

  “You were talking Washington psychobabble, translating into German. You were a scream.”

  “It was your birthday,” she said.

  He had forgotten. That was why they had been drinking the 1936 Armagnac. He lifted the balloon glass, looking through it at her. “This is a 1936, an exceptional year. A hell of a lot happened in 1936, I’ve looked it up. The Spanish Civil War began, Trotsky was exiled, Chaplin did Modern Times. That’s a lot to happen in one lousy year.” He moved the balloon glass from side to side, distorting her features. “It’s fifty years old, same’s me.”

  She leaned across the table and took his hand, pulling at his fingers. She looked at his hand, not trusting herself to speak.

  He said, “It’s not numb anymore.”

  She smiled, squeezing his hand.

  He flexed it. “See?”

  “I’ve always liked your hands,” she said.

  “You know. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I hated the idea of Prowler Fowler fooling around with my hand.”

  She said, “Bill.”

  “Anything could’ve happened.”

  She looked at him sideways.

  “He could’ve screwed it up, sabotaged it. Made it numb for life. Revenge, do you see what I mean? To put me out of business. He always had a thing about you.”

  She said, “Well.”

  He waited for her to say something more and when she didn’t he added, “And I was afraid you had a thing about him. It worried the hell out of me.”

  She said, “Oh, Bill,” quavering a little.

  “But you didn’t.”

  She smiled at him, her warmest smile.

  “And I knew that, so it was all right. You have to act on what you know, not what you suspect.” He put down the balloon glass with a thud. “I would’ve killed the son of a bitch, ripped his teeth out.” He was squinting at her, his eyes unfocused and wavering. “Where would we have been, without each other?”

  She said, “I can’t imagine.”

  “Our belief in each other.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well, I can’t either. Imagine.”

  She said, “You were all I ever wanted.”

  “He dyes his damn hair, did you know that?”

  She squeezed his hand again, and laughed out loud.

  “Good shape, though. Jesus, he’s in terrific shape.”

  “Not such great shape, Bill. You didn’t notice his neck. He has wattles.”

  “Waddles?”

  “Big ones,” she said. “I don’t know how the stewardess stands it. Definitely unsexy.”

  “It’s a relief to know that,” he said.

  “A neck like a turkey.” She made a carving motion below her chin.

  “It would interfere, wouldn’t it?”

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  “Thing like that, screw up a relationship.”

  “But not a marriage,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “That’s what I mean. How could you have a marriage with a man who dyes his hair. You’d never know what was real and what wasn’t. All that camouflage, you’d never know.”

  “No, you never would.”

  “And then you wouldn’t feel good about yourself.”

  “Or him either,” she said.

  “It goes without saying, see what I’m saying,” he said.

  “I see what you’re saying.”

  “I hope you’re comfortable with this.”

  She squeezed his hand again. “You have no idea.”

  He looked at her face, soft in the candlelight. “Okay,” he said.

  “Dear Bill.”

  “It’s never how great you are in the good times, but how great you are in the bad.” He was still looking at her, so blurred across the table. “That’s what I’ve wanted to tell you.”

  She turned, closing her eyes.

  “And it’s time to go,” he said.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Me either, but it’s the way things are. I’ve liked it here with you. And I’ve upset you and I’m sorry.” He took out his wallet, and flipped it open on the table. He was having trouble focusing. A rustle behind him; he imagined he heard the click of heels. He had been droll, they both had; but it was a bad time and he couldn’t sustain it and now she was near tears. He would be too but he was drunk; if you wanted to bawl, Armagnac was not the spirit of choice. He looked at his watch, delaying things a moment, letting the moments accumulate, thickening. “My God,” he said suddenly. His voice was loud, somewhere between amused and outraged. She immediately looked up. He was staring at his watch, at the time and the date. He opened his wallet and began taking out banknotes. “Do you know w
hat day it is? It’s Thursday, and it’s four in the afternoon in America. It’s Thanksgiving, darling,” he said.

  3

  BILL KNEW some spycraft, from novels and from friends; the novels were more reliable than the friends. And of course when he was ambassador he supervised the activities of the station chief. He knew what they did, not always how they did it. The station chief played his cards carefully and when he dealt the deck was often shy an ace or a trey, depending. When security became a problem, they briefed him on certain procedures. He knew, for example, that there was no way to know for certain whether you were being followed, unless you were on a desert or the open sea. But if you suspected that you were, you probably were, and there were steps to take to throw the shadow or confuse him. There were ways to lose shadows, even five or six shadows. If you didn’t want to lose them there were ways to do that, too. All this sounded simple enough, surrounded as it was by an air of unreality. It depended on how much paranoia you could summon, or how little.

  They were loitering now, in the Berlin Zoo, having separated at the hotel and gone in different directions. This was Bill’s bright idea. They had gone first by cab, then on foot, by bus, by cab again, by subway, and then, reunited in front of the Café Einstein, on foot to the zoo. His fatalism had not left him, was, if anything, deeper. He could imagine no good outcome, no happy ending. But he wanted to make his best attempt. Without any evidence for it, he believed that he and Elinor had been traced from Hamburg. Duer’s people had been on the train, had followed them to the hotel, and to Rockenwall’s. Had followed them back from Rockenwall’s as well, though he had seen no sign of a shadow. But of course that didn't mean anything. He had thought briefly of leading them into the East Zone and losing them there. They wanted Bill Jr. very badly but not badly enough to enter the East Zone, which presented a danger to him and Elinor as well, because what would he say to the Vopos when fifteen minutes later they came out again—

  My goodness, this isn’t East Berlin, Communist Berlin? We’ve taken the wrong subway, we only wanted to go shopping, Swiss watches, furs, and electronic gadgetry, pharmaceuticals. Gosh, sorry.

  And then there was his black passport, which would raise other questions. Possibly they would think he was defecting, joining the moles of the West German security services who were flying over the wall like swallows returning to Capistrano. Thinking about the East Zone he had concluded, I am at a disadvantage.

  Now, loitering in the zoo, he believed them alone and unwatched, at least by Duer or Duer’s people. There were two suspicious herren, sharing a bench (suspicious because when he and Elinor strolled by, one of them tipped his hat), but in the gloomy atmosphere everything was suspicious, even the animals. It was a gray northern morning, more winter than autumn, trees bare of leaves, snow in the air, a few old people here and there, many of them with small nasty dogs on long leather leashes. There were no children about, and no vendors. The animals clustered sullenly together in their cages.

  Bill and Elinor walked for an hour, then hailed a cab and went for lunch in a restaurant off the Ku-damm. They had been seated not ten minutes when she asked him, irritably, please not to look at every face as if he expected a ghost, or Herr Duer. Please, she said. If they’re here, they’re here. If they’re not here, they’re not here. You’re driving me crazy, she said.

  He looked up from his beer, surprised. He was not looking for ghosts or for Herr Duer. He was looking for their son, or the girl. That was obvious. He knew in his bones that an approach would be made that day. He explained this to her, the feeling in his bones, and she nodded wearily. But perhaps she was right. He was altogether too eager and conspicuous. They were both on edge, however. And she was becoming as sour and pessimistic as he was.

  After lunch, they took a cab back to the zoo.

  The zoo had always seemed to him a jungle, undefined and lacking in order. The wide paths and bushes, and trees without leaves, the damp soil and animal smell; all this was threatening, a female’s dark uncontrolled energy. Dark and green in summer, and in the autumn and winter merely dark, the zoo was an unpredictable frontier. Yet there was a wonderful serenity, a hush as profound as the interior of a church or a cavern; in the ancient clammy air one waited for the blast of an organ or the drip of water. One waited for an echo. Wolf’s senses stretched, tingling, as he clenched his teeth, smiling, anticipating Gert. She was due any moment; any moment she would come swinging through the zoo entrance, looking neither to the left nor to the right; dependable Gert, a disciplined soldier. He stepped forward into the shadows, thinking of himself as a fearless explorer—Cortez, Columbus—pressing to the edge of the future’s precipice.

  I am the last of my line, he thought. I am the last echo. The last North. They had made their way through the centuries, surviving war, plague, famine, poverty; a tough family, though stingy with their genes. And now he was the last of them, and the judge of them. The idea elated him: the only son of an only son of an only son, and the most American of the three, the least rooted, the least restrained, the boldest, the most individual, the freest spirit, the captive of his deepest self; and the one most removed from Europe and the chains of the past, dead history, discredited faith. He thought, I will be the one to control events, like any good American. Spit in history’s eye. And I will respond, never fear. How symmetrical that Europe would be his theater of operations, the place where he would realize his life and liberty, and sound his own echo. He would reverberate, and the nation that believed itself under God would come to understand that a death was a death after all; a death in Beirut or in Kabul or in Washington or in Berlin, it was the same death. The names changed, the identities of the mourners changed, the consequences changed, the circumstances changed; a life was a life, whether extinguished by a bullet, a bomb, the thrust of a knife, or the unexpected cessation of a heart. By one’s own hand or by another hand, premeditated or at random, natural or unnatural. Call it God’s will, the roll of the dice. The ambassador would understand soon enough. And the ambassador’s wife? Yes, she too. The only daughter of an only daughter; her line would also come to an end, though through different means. She who was so mordant and sarcastic, memorizer of box scores, accomplice; she who was so secure within herself, so certain in the fashion of bourgeois American women, holding things together; she would have ample opportunity to muse over the events, to extract what meaning there was; to reprise her own life, and the ambassador’s; to think, and to paint her pictures while she thought. And wonder if one day his fate would be hers also. In that way she would be introduced to the modern world.

  He watched Gert move to the gate, and pause; she paid at the window, and swept through, eyes straight ahead. She had told him she was frightened always of the zoo, for there was no place to hide; she liked glass and concrete, city streets and electric lights and the noise of automobiles and amplified music. The zoo was so still. She moved to the bench, sat, and took out her pad and pencil.

  Look at the buffalo, he whispered.

  And she did.

  He whispered, You are a bourgeois housewife.

  She primly arranged her skirt, and crossed her legs.

  He smiled happily; they were telepathic, had always been telepathic. He watched her lean forward, concentrating, beginning to sketch the motionless Cape buffalo, her pencil skimming over the page in swift, decisive strokes. Or so it seemed from thirty feet away. Huge beasts, they were frightening. They were not limber. They never moved, and were explicitly unforgiving. He watched her turn on the bench, uncomfortable, ill at ease in her clothes, wearing a smart suit of French manufacture, her hair long and gathered at the neck. A black pullover completed her ensemble. She had concentrated on her role. She was supposed to walk casually but look sharply, as always. Notice everything. She reached down to touch her ankle, grimacing a little; her feet hurt. The shoes were expensive, low-heeled shoes of the haute bourgeoisie. Also, the pantyhose were unfamiliar. He had looked at her in her pantyhose and American bra and said, “Sex
y.” He had told her who she had to be, a bored housewife sketching in the zoo; so bored she thought nothing of sketching in the cold; so bored she moved about, now sketching on this bench, now on that. A bored housewife, uncomfortable in her own skin. Watching her, he believed in her, in the role he had created for her. An observer could be forgiven for thinking she was waiting for her lover; but such a thought would be false.

  He told her what to think about, so her face would have the correct look. She would want to go deep into her imagination, her sense of things in the bourgeois life. It would be a look that would discourage familiarity even as it disarmed. Think about what you’re going to have for dinner, Gert dear. Thinking about what a son of a bitch your husband is, how thick, how insensitive, how cruel, how mediocre. How ungrateful your children are. How routine and unfulfilled your life. Look at the other women in the park, and decide whether they are alluring, and attractive. And if they are attractive, why they are attractive; and then decide whether what they are wearing would look good on you. And how much it would cost, out of pocket. He gave her money to put into her purse so that she would feel like a prosperous housewife. And when you sketch, look beneath the skin of things, the animals and the vegetation, to the essence. Not the top, he said, the spin.