The Imperfectionists: A Novel

by Tom Rachman

  He returned to his desk and started a new letter. It was time, he decided, to explain matters.

  As days passed, copies of the paper piled up outside the mansion. The maid who left Ott's meals noticed that they were not being consumed. She unlocked the mansion.

  "Mister Ott?" she called out. "Mister Ott?"

  His family in Atlanta, against all evidence, had always expected him to return.

  Now they could not even retrieve his body. Legally, there was no way: his will specified burial in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. They refused to believe this had been his wish and boycotted the funeral in Italy, holding an alternative service in Atlanta.

  The paper came out with a black border around page one, accompanied by a front-page editor's note in tribute to the founding publisher. Leo sent Ott's brother, Charles, a letter of condolence (he did not respond), then followed up with a polite entreaty that the paper be allowed to survive. Again, Charles--now chairman of the Ott board--did not respond. Nor did he halt funding.

  Six anxious months passed before Charles announced that he was coming for a visit. On arrival, he shook hands coldly with Leo and ignored Betty altogether. He made one demand--that at the top of the masthead, in bold print and in perpetuity, it state:

  "Founded by Cyrus Ott (1899-1960)." Betty and Leo heartily endorsed the idea.

  "This is an enterprise that mattered a great deal to my younger brother," Charles said. "Letting it end now would be, I believe, a smear on his memory."

  "I thoroughly agree," Leo said.

  "How many copies do you people sell?"

  "Around fifteen thousand on a good day."

  "Well, I want more. I want my brother's name in front of as many eyes as possible.

  It may not mean much in the grand scheme, but it does mean something to me and to my family."

  "We were extremely fond of him," Betty said.

  This irked Charles for some reason. He concluded the conversation and went into the newsroom to address the staff.

  "Putting out the paper each day is your business," he told them. "But that the paper gets put out--this is my business. I consider the enterprise to be a standing memorial to my brother, and it'll keep standing as far as I'm concerned."

  The staff, seeing that he had finished, broke into applause.

  "U.S. GENERAL

  OPTIMISTIC ON WAR"

  * * *

  EDITOR-IN-CHIEF--KATHLEEN SOLSON

  W HEN SHE REALIZES THAT NIGEL IS HAVING AN AFFAIR, HER FIRST

  sentiment is satisfaction that she figured it out. Her second is that, despite all the palaver about betrayal, it doesn't feel so terrible. This is pleasing--it demonstrates a certain sophistication. She wonders if his fling might even serve her. In principle, she could leave him without compunction now, though she doesn't wish to. It also frees her from guilt about any infidelities she might wish to engage in. All in all, his affair might prove useful.

  She toys with this while onstage during a media conference at the Cavalieri Hilton in Rome. The subject of the panel discussion is "How the International Press Views Italy," an enduring preoccupation in the country. She resents having to attend--it's clearly a task for their young publisher, Oliver Ott. But he has gone missing again and ignores her phone calls. So the conference is left to Kathleen and the paper must manage in her absence. It is not managing well, if the constant stream of text messages on her BlackBerry is any indication.

  "Will the newspaper industry survive?" the mediator asks her.

  "Absolutely," she tells the audience. "We'll keep going, I assure you of that.

  Obviously, we're living in an era when technology is moving at an unheralded pace. I can't tell you if in fifty years we'll be publishing in the same format. Actually, I can probably tell you we won't be publishing in the same way, that we'll be innovating then, just as we are now. But I assure you of this: news will survive, and quality coverage will always earn a premium. Whatever you want to call it--news, text, content--someone has to report it, someone has to write it, someone has to edit it. And I intend for us to do it better, no matter the medium. We are the quality source among international newspapers, and I encourage anyone who doubts this bold claim to buy the paper for a month. Better yet"--lilt in voice; complicit smile to audience; pause--"better yet, buy a two-year subscription. Then you'll really see why our circulation is rising." The audience laughs politely. "My work is putting together the outstanding publication in its class. If we can do that, readers will turn up. Those of you who have followed the paper's progress since I became editor in 2004 will know the radical changes under way. There are more to come.

  It's thrilling to be a part of, to tell the truth."

  What truth? The paper is hardly at the cutting edge of technology--it doesn't even have a website. And circulation isn't increasing. The balance sheet is a catastrophe, losses mount annually, the readership is aging and dying off. But she has acquitted herself well onstage. The audience applauds and hurries out for the free lunch, while she excuses herself to the organizers. "I wish I could stay," she tells them, "but that's life at a daily newspaper."

  On her way to the cloakroom, she is approached by a Chinese American student from the audience. He introduces himself as Winston Cheung, dabs sweat from his face, wipes his glasses, and proceeds to rattle off his academic credentials. Since he won't get to the point, she gets there for him. "Okay," she interrupts. "And the punch line is, Do I have a job for you? You said you're studying primatology, right, so I'm guessing you'd be interested in a science section, which we don't have. If you wanted to report general news, lots of publications are hunting for people with language skills. Do you speak any Asian languages?"

  "My parents only spoke to me in English."

  "Pity. Languages are key. You don't, by any lucky chance, speak flawless Arabic?"

  "Not flawless Arabic, no."

  "Meaning you speak flawed Arabic?" she says. But this guy is a nonstarter--no experience, no languages, and look how jittery he is. She needs to get rid of Winston Cheung. "Look, if you want to send us something--purely on spec--we'd look at it." She rattles off Menzies' email address and ducks into the cloakroom.

  As she heads for the exit, someone touches her shoulder. She turns irritably, expecting Winston Cheung again. But it's not him.

  She steps back with surprise. "My God," she says. "Dario."

  Dario de Monterecchi is the Italian man she lived with in Rome during her twenties. When she left the city in 1994 to take a reporting job in Washington, she left him, too. Now here he is, temples graying, eyes bagged, slightly handsome but slightly jowly, wearing the sleepy surrender of the family man. "Sorry to sneak up like that," he says. "Did I scare you?"

  "You have to try harder than that. I am somewhat caught off guard, though. My God, it's so strange seeing you. How are you?"

  "I'm well," he says. "And you were excellent today. I'm most impressed. But are you leaving?"

  "Sadly, yes. I have to. They need me at the office," she answers. "I'm sorry, by the way, that I haven't been in touch since I got back to Rome. It's been crazy. You knew I was back, right?"

  "Of

  course."

  "Who

  from?"

  "Just heard--you know how small Rome is."

  "Weird having my private life pop up when I'm in professional mode. Puts me off balance," she says. "You might not believe this, but I really wish I didn't have to go."

  "Not even time for lunch?"

  "I don't get lunch, alas. We close the first edition in a couple of hours. If I'm not there, the world ends. What are you doing at this event anyway?"

  He hands her his business card.

  "Oh, no," she exclaims, reading the card. "I'd heard a rumor about this. But Berlusconi? Ouch."

  "I do press for his party, not for him personally."

  She raises her eyebrows skeptically.

  Dario

  says,

  "I

  was always on the right,
remember."

  "Yes, yes, I know. I remember you."

  "Well, anyway," he says, "I should let you go." He kisses her cheek. She rubs his back. "You don't need to keep comforting me," he says, smiling. "I'm not still upset."

  She grabs a taxi outside. As the cab speeds toward the city center, she consults her BlackBerry, which is pulsating with messages from Menzies: "General Abizaid testifying to Senate about Iraq. How should we cover?? Call please!" Meanwhile, Dario--who slept beside her and woke beside her for six years of her life--has vanished from mind. She can't help it: she's of the newspapering temperament, and he's no longer front page.

  When, she wonders, do people have time to contemplate anything? But she has no time to answer that.

  She passes through the paper's various departments to consult on tomorrow's edition. Her arrival halts conversations, prompts sheepish expressions and flurries of phone calls that should have been made earlier. The afternoon meeting is a farce. The usual suspects trickle in and settle around the oval table. Kathleen listens. Then she speaks. She isn't shrill--she never is. She is deliberate and pulverizing. She commands actions, concludes with "All right?" and walks out of the room.

  Her chief ally--the only person she holds to be her intellectual equal at the office--is Herman Cohen. He is waiting in her office when she returns. At the door, she covers her face playfully to block him from view, then enters, crossing her index fingers as if before a vampire. "Please don't."

  "You know you want it," he says, handing her the latest copy of his in-house newsletter, Why? , with which he chronicles mistakes in the paper. "Everything well, my dear?" he asks.

  "I go out for one morning and this office turns into the monkey enclosure."

  "You're starting to sound like me."

  "And I'm getting bombarded with emails from Accounts Payable," she says, meaning the chief financial officer, Abbey Pinnola. "Supposedly I have to offer human sacrifices."

  "She wants layoffs now?"

  "So it seems. Not clear how many."

  "Technical staff or editorial?"

  "We'll see. Who would you pick from editorial?"

  At the top of his list is Ruby Zaga, a copy editor who's notorious for inserting errors into stories.

  "Is she really the worst?" Kathleen asks.

  "I forgot, Ruby's a friend of yours."

  "Hardly a friend. But can't we fire Clint Oakley?"

  "Someone has to put together Puzzle-Wuzzle, my dear."

  "I'm telling Accounts Payable that I'll consider layoffs if I get money for a stringer in Cairo, plus someone to replace Lloyd in Paris."

  "Good for you. Stick to your guns."

  "It's beyond me," she says, "how Abbey can say that covering Cairo and Paris is a luxury. How is that a luxury? It's a necessity. Luxury these days is actually having a conversation about what goes in this paper. All I do is cover over cracks. It's depressing."

  "Learn

  to

  delegate."

  "Who

  to?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "To

  whom," she corrects herself. "I thought I'd delegated to you. Aren't you supposed to be helping me?" She means this but must convey it as jest--he is an institution here, and she can't risk alienating him.

  "I was delegated to be in charge of these." He shakes a packet of hard candies at her.

  As she closes her glass office door after him, a few staffers in the newsroom glance over, then look away. It's strange to be the boss, knowing they discuss you, doubt you, resent you, and--since they are journalists--complain, bitch, and moan about you.

  Her BlackBerry rings. "Menzies," she answers with a sigh, "why are you phoning me? I'm right here across the room." She raises her hand.

  "Sorry, sorry--didn't see you. Can you come over? We need you."

  She

  obliges.

  That night for dinner, Nigel makes osso buco.

  "Smells wonderful," she says, arriving home later than promised, as always.

  Their apartment off Via Nazionale is spacious enough for an extended family but houses only the two of them. It is thinly furnished, as was her intent, with chrome chairs in the living room, granite in the bathroom, a gas range and matching overhead fan in the kitchen. In each room, the only decoration is a giant black-and-white photograph framed in the center of the wall. Each is obliquely themed to its room, so the kitchen contains a huge photo of cooks stuffing dumplings at the Luk Yu Tea House in Hong Kong; the dining room has a gargantuan picture of empty tables at El Bulli on the Costa Brava; the salon shows the interior of Skogaholm Manor in Stockholm; and in the bathroom is a vast photograph of the crashing sea off Antarctica.

  "Glass?" He pours her one.

  "What is it tonight?"

  He displays the bottle, then reads the label: "Montefalco. Caprai. 2001." He thrusts his nose into the wineglass.

  She takes an unceremonious gulp. "Not bad, not great," she says. "You must be starved. Sorry I kept you. Can I get us some water?"

  "Allow

  me,

  pasha."

  Nigel, an attorney-at-rest since they left D.C. more than two years earlier, thrives on this life: reading nonsense on the Internet, buying high-end groceries, decrying the Bush administration at dinner, wearing his role of househusband as a badge of progressive politics. By this hour, he's normally fulminating: that the CIA invented crack cocaine; that Cheney is a war criminal; that the September 11 attacks were conceived by agents of Big Oil. (He talks a lot of shit about politics. She has to smack him down intellectually once a week or he becomes unbearable.) This evening, however, Nigel is restrained. "Good day?" he asks.

  "Mmm, yeah, not bad." She's amused--he's so transparent. He has clearly done something and is writhing about it. That English girl--Nigel and she had been meeting weekly to discuss the failure of the left. Then, abruptly, he stopped mentioning her. To Kathleen's knowledge, the left hasn't stopped failing. Presumably, an act occurred.

  And yet, savoring her osso buco, tickled by his mendacious face hiding in a fishbowl wineglass, she cannot bring herself to care terribly. If it is a full-blown affair, she will be angry--such a development would jeopardize their situation. But this doesn't have that feel. He is more a skulking fornicator, not a marriage-busting cheater. If Kathleen ignores the matter, what happens? It will seep away.

  At work the next day, her desk phone rings.

  "Hi there--it's me again."

  "Sorry, who is this?"

  "Kath, it's me."

  "God--Dario, I didn't recognize you."

  "I wanted to invite you to lunch. Forza Italia will foot the bill."

  "In that case, definitely not," she says. "No, I'm kidding--I'd love to. But I'm insanely busy. I told you, I don't get lunches, tragically." Then again, she thinks, a contact with Berlusconi's people could be useful. The Prodi government is bound to fall, meaning early elections, at which point having ties to Dario could prove handy. "But it would be nice to meet up. What about an early aperitivo? "

  They meet at the Hotel de Russie garden bar, a courtyard of shaded cafe tables upon sampietrini cobblestones, as if this were a private Roman piazza for the use of paying guests only.

  "If you misbehave," Kathleen says, studying the drinks menu, "I'll order you the Punjab health cocktail: yogurt, ice, pink Himalayan salt, cinnamon, and soda water."

  "Or how about the Cohibatini?" he responds. "Vodka, Virginia tobacco leaves, eight-year-old Bacardi rum, lime juice, and corbezzolo honey."

  "Tobacco leaves? In a drink? And what is corbezzolo honey?"

  "Boringly,"

  he

  says,

  "I'm taking the Sauvignon."

  "Boringly,

  me

  too."

  They close their menus and order.

  "Odd weather," he remarks. "Almost tropical."

  "Sitting out in November--not bad. I think I'm in favor of global warming." She resolves to stop making this fatuous rema
rk, which parachutes off her tongue anytime someone mentions the climate. "Anyway, nothing more boring than talking about the weather. Tell me, how are you?"

  Thin--that's how he is on second sight. He wears a mauve tie and a spread-collared shirt that hangs on his shoulders as if upon a hanger. His countenance--naive and affectionate--is the same, and this makes him younger somehow.

  "You're not the same," she says.

  "No? Well, that's good. Imagine if I was unchanged after all these years."

  Unchanged: this is how she thinks of herself. Fresh as ever at forty-three, legs long and strong under the business slacks, tight midriff under tight waistcoat, lustrous chestnut hair with only a couple of strands of gray. She takes unearned pride in her looks.