American Romantic

by Ward Just

  Do you think you won their trust?

  No, Harry said.

  I don’t think so either.

  As for me, the ambassador said, I’m another story. Washington may need a head and I’m the head on offer. Funny thing is, I’ve liked it here. I like the country. I even like the people, and they’re not a likable people. But I intend to retire anyway, next year or the year after. I have a place on Nantucket and I think I’ll go there, maybe write my memoirs, everything except this last episode. It’s too early for a drink or I’d offer you one. Let me know where you’ll be, telephone numbers and so on. This thing may still blow up. Have a good leave. When you return I may be here or I may not be here. I do expect to be called back to Washington. More consultations, but this time they’ll end with my retirement.

  Dumb of them. The enemy claims a scalp.

  Just so, young Harry. Just so. Complicates matters for them, doesn’t it?

  Harry stood and offered his hand. The ambassador took it and they shook.

  It’s been a pleasure, Harry said, as if he had come by for a drink at the end of the day instead of meeting with a boss about to be heading into early retirement.

  Me too, the ambassador said. I do hope this business hasn’t put paid to your career. I don’t want that to happen and I’ll do what I can to prevent it. The old man’s face grew cold, a twitch to his jaw and a hardness around the mouth that Harry had not seen before. An ambassador had a variety of faces, one for every occasion. Basso Earle also liked to hide behind his accent, the crushed syllables and slow diminuendos, slippery as glass. He gave the impression of being slightly hard of hearing. In other words, an easy man to underestimate. He did not sound the way an ambassador was supposed to sound, vaguely British like Dean Acheson or High Church like Foster Dulles. Basso Earle had a sly wit, and in telling a story, its ins and outs and twists and turns and frequent digressions, he sounded almost French. He’d been successful from the beginning, his first posting as second secretary at embassy Rome working for a political appointee, Boston born. They got on famously. The Bostonian was a student of Italian culture, its uses of illusion, brio on the surface and melancholy beneath. An attractive people, he thought, ill served by their wretched church. They had no talent for governance, but that, too, was more subtle than it seemed. Fundamentally, Italians did not wish to be governed. They wished the appearance of government, meaning a mighty bureaucracy, quite another thing. Alas, in Boston the Irish and the Italians did not get on. A pity. Each had much to learn from the other.

  Basso was popular in the Department, taking care not to insult those he stepped over on the way up because they were eternal, like Nosferatu, and knew how to insult back. Everyone had friends, and friends looked after one another as friends were supposed to do. Basso Earle had friends on every continent. Typical of him that he should choose Nantucket as a place for his retirement. A whaling island of the previous century, independent of spirit. The people were hard as iron and the accent was a fortress.

  Ambassador Earle retreated now to the safety of his desk, looking down and reading something, a sarcastic frown. Harry was at the door and knew that it was time for him to go. He knew also that this was probably the last time they would meet, at least in this office. He said, Goodbye, Ambassador. I’d work for you anytime.

  Remember, the ambassador said without looking up, our business is not a straight-line affair. We deal with curves and switchbacks, the yes that means no and the no that means maybe. We are obliged to be comfortable with ambiguity. I have always thought that in diplomacy you are the master of your own fate so long as you keep your eyes wide open, understanding always that things can turn on a dime. It’s wise to take the long view, Harry. Be patient. The black cat is there somewhere and now and again it’ll come for you.

  Harry stopped by his office to collect whatever he would need for his trip. There was a raincoat and he took that, along with his checkbook and his passport and some stationery for letter writing. He put these in a canvas bag, along with a manila envelope from Marcia. On the way out he looked in at Ed Coyle’s office but Ed was not there. Outside the building, he stood in the raw heat, already beginning to sweat. A cyclo driver stopped at the curb but Harry shook his head, preferring to walk. Across the street the one-legged veteran with the black beret was on his usual rounds. Harry watched him a moment, listening to the erratic click of his crutch. He said to himself what he always said, Poor old bastard. Harry waved at him with his cane but the old man did not wave back.

  He walked slowly, the canvas bag over his shoulder, not heavy but bulky. In twenty minutes he was in his own neighborhood and five minutes after that was walking up the driveway of the villa and into the kitchen. Chau was not there. Harry poured a large glass of lemonade and thought about his leave, where to go and how to get there. He was dubious about a vacation taken alone at a resort hotel in an unfamiliar country. He stood on the porch with the glass of lemonade in his hand and looked at the silk-string hammock, a kind of mockery. He had never been to Australia, but Australia was a far distance. Hawaii was even farther. He had no idea what you did in the Philippines except visit Bataan. Climbing in the Himalayas was a possibility, a view of the summits of Everest and K2. He assumed the road to the mountains began in Nepal but wasn’t sure. He remembered his feet and decided the Himalayas were a bad idea. Someone had told him that the west coast of Malaya was pretty, good beaches, a good climate, decent food. The accommodations were adequate and not expensive. There were guesthouses all along the shore. The fishing was superb. He would need a library, half a dozen books at least. A couple of bottles of gin. But he could buy the gin at the airport; three bottles would be about right for a two-week stay. Harry lit a Chesterfield and blew a smoke ring, still staring at the lawn, shaggy at the edges. The hedges needed trimming. He sat in the bamboo chair and fished around in the canvas bag for the manila envelope. In it he found six letters, three from his family, two bills, and one with unfamiliar handwriting, though he knew at once whose it was. The postmark was Tananarive and that was a puzzle, unless the hospital ship was equipped with jet engines.

  Sieglinde wrote that she was sorry not to have been in touch before but she had been on the move. She had quit the ship at Columbo and taken a plane to Tananarive. She had always wanted to see Madagascar, for the flowers and the wildlife. It was very beautiful and she thought she would stay for a week or so. And then resume her odyssey. By the time he got this letter she would be gone, most likely.

  I did not say goodbye, she wrote, because goodbyes are always painful to me. I never know what to say. Whoever I’m saying goodbye to doesn’t know what to say either, and so it’s painful, especially if the likelihood is that we won’t see each other again. The ship’s departure was abrupt and there was nothing I could do about that. I stood at the rail and watched our city recede. The captain remarked that we had done some good, being there. Saved lives. Helped scores of children. But our time was up. We had overstayed as it was. When he asked me if I had enjoyed myself I said yes, but I did not wish to go further than that, even though we had come to know each other quite well and were in the way of being friends. I had no wish to tell him about us. And if I had chosen to, what would I have said?

  Harry looked up from the letter, her words recalling her voice, its rise and fall, and her accent. She had never hidden behind her accent. Just then it was as if she were sitting beside him and talking, her hands expressive, the rise and fall of her voice very nearly a song sung parlando.

  I am looking at the sea while I am talking to you, she wrote, huge thunderheads to the east. I am assured they will not bother us today, perhaps tomorrow. I am on the verandah of my little cabin. Dusk is in the air but still an hour or so away. I wonder about you, where you are and what you are doing. I imagine you upcountry somewhere. Is there a Village Number Six? I bet there is. And if there is, that’s where you are. I meant to tell you our last night together that you needed a haircut. I’m a good haircutter and I would have given
you one, no charge. But I forgot to mention the haircut. I think there were many things I forgot to mention and one of them was—to tell you how much I care for you. How much I worry about you in the war. Please stay safe. I think you can sometimes be reckless, my Harry. Do not let them push you into doing something reckless. I feel you are all too ready for reckless adventures. But I should talk. That’s my way, too.

  When Harry turned the page he found her writing now in green ink. Evidently she had stopped and continued the letter later. But there was no mention of that. However, she did change course. A fresh thought.

  I know nothing of my family, Sieglinde wrote. I was so young when my father was killed and my mother was lost to me not long after. My memory of my father is contained in a snapshot. My mother began to disappear almost at once. My aunt in Lübeck is dead. If there are other family members I have no idea who or where they are. I worry about this. I worry about what sort of people they were. Where did they live and what did they do? Were they humanists—or the other kind? Did any of them resemble me? If I saw one on the street would I recognize her? I know there are places you can go to find out such things but I have never found the will to do so. I believe it would take years, searching records, searching birth certificates, old telephone books—assuming my family had telephones. Where to begin? I could spend a lifetime and I refuse to do that. And perhaps I was afraid of what I might find. These were terrible years, terrible years. I did not choose to be German but it is my burden, is it not? I was put at odds with the world. And the odds grew longer from day to day. I am in every sense orphaned and I feel great loathing for Hitler’s war. The war took my family from me and showed not one iota of remorse. It is a great fault line and not only for me. I listen to you talk about fine country houses in Connecticut and the good living that supposedly went with it, and I do not know what to make of this. Of course I am envious. How could I not be envious? And I also know that you and I have something between us that is quite apart from my Hamburg and your Connecticut and your ancestors and my own. But I do find myself alone in the world and I fear that will go on and on. That is why I am in Tananarive to look at the animals and the flowers. To watch the thunderheads to the east. Rain tomorrow. I know no one here. And no one knows me.

  I do not know how I can live a normal life. My love, my heart is broken. I am lost.

  With you, I am afraid of what I might find.

  When Harry arrived in Tananarive two days later, he drove from village to village on the east coast looking for Sieglinde. He spoke to restaurant owners and cyclo drivers and proprietors of guesthouses, describing her, a German woman, five feet five inches tall, ash-blond hair, a shuffle-walk, a sad face. He found no trace. If someone truly wants to disappear there are always ways and means to do so. On the fifth day, with no success at all, he gave it up and rented a one-room villa on a pleasant cove with a good restaurant nearby. He stayed a week, beachcombing and reading one novel after another, getting a bronze tan. Late each afternoon he returned to the porch of his villa with a drink and a bowl of peanuts, waiting for Sieglinde to appear. He made another drink, and a third, before walking to the restaurant for dinner. Harry had the idea that Sieglinde might simply appear, out of nowhere as it were, and they would fall into each other’s arms and be together forever, leading a normal life. He was devoted to proving the ambassador correct. Surely it was possible that, from time to time, a man was master of his own fate.

  A group of Americans had rented a large villa at the cove and were always in the restaurant when Harry appeared to take his corner table. On the second night they asked him to join them for a drink in the bar. When they asked him what he did for a living he said he was traveling, no fixed destination. He did not go beyond that and the Americans did not press the point. They were pleasant enough Americans, two lawyers and their wives, a businessman with his girlfriend, a doctor and her husband. The doctor warned Harry about the sun; there were alarming studies about skin cancer and the like. They had all been to school together and traveled as a group each year. Harry was interested in hearing what constituted a normal life in America and they obliged with stories of their country club in the Chicago suburbs, the annual Darby and Joan golf tournament, summer dances with a jazz band from the South Side of Chicago. Their children were doing well at New Trier. All in all the region was prospering, except for the Negro element. But in time the Negroes would catch up. Education was the answer. Harry nodded. Nothing new so far. They were all mildly tipsy, Harry too. He asked them what was doing politically in Chicago but got no clear answer beyond the comment that the Democratic machine ruled with an iron hand. They were not political. Politics was a distraction. They did not recall whether the governor was a Democrat or a Republican. Harry was careful not to mention the war and they didn’t either. The evening wound down. Harry took his leave with a glass of cognac and wandered back down the beach to his villa. He had only two days remaining. He sat on his porch sipping cognac and thinking about a normal life. He knew it required money, the more money the better. Good health, certainly. Children who did well. Nothing wrong with a jazz band on a summer evening. Sieglinde must have a particular definition of normal life. She never mentioned money.

  Harry sat awhile on his porch, watching the stars disappear as the front moved west. He took small sips of cognac, wanting it to last. He was very tired but did not want to go to bed. He wished he had asked them about the war, its place in their lives. War conversation did not occur to them. Harry wondered about the government of Madagascar, if there were communist elements. Probably there were. The Russians were active in Africa. He had no idea about the government of Madagascar. The war had been his life, crowding out events elsewhere. He was not up to speed. Harry fell asleep on the porch with the glass in his hand, waking near morning, bright shafts of sunlight and a light breeze from the west. The weather front had not moved one inch and the air smelled of peaches. The front looked to be a permanent fixture in the eastern sky.

  Two days later in the airport, Harry picked up one of the British newspapers. A three-inch-high headline announced that his embassy had been bombed, one dead, six injured, and the injured included two marine guards. Ambassador Basso Earle III was not present; he was believed to be in Washington for consultations. The dead man was a political officer, Edwin Cayle, thirty-one. The idiot reporter had misspelled Ed’s name. Ed had been standing at his office window when the bomb exploded and had been killed by flying glass. The bombing occurred at ten a.m., when the embassy was at full staff. Among the injured were three women, including the ambassador’s secretary. A cordon had been established around the building, which was closed until further notice. The bomber—and here Harry lifted his eyes to the ceiling, thinking about Ed Coyle, always among the first to arrive at work. Harry gave himself a minute, then finished the paragraph. The bomber was a one-legged army veteran. Eyewitnesses said he removed his beret and set himself alight, and moments later the bomb exploded. American officials said the bomber was a familiar figure in the district but no one knew his name.

  Inside the paper, together with photographs of the damaged embassy, was a sidebar datelined Washington. The story cited unnamed American officials denying reports of a recent meeting with high-level communist military officers. The meeting was said to be the first known contact between the adversaries. Absolute falsehood, the American officials stated, disinformation designed to sow distrust between the allies, a well-known communist tactic born of desperation. There was no such meeting and would not be one until the communists laid down their arms, ceased terrorizing native villages, and promised to pursue their objectives in a nonviolent manner. The United States and its allies were always open to constructive discussions.

  The newspaper article noted that rumors had circulated for weeks that an American embassy official had met with communist representatives at an undisclosed location in the south of the country. It was unknown if the alleged conversations had produced results. But an American official said that the e
mbassy bombing was answer enough as to whether any contact with the enemy would have official endorsement.

  Six

  SIEGLINDE departed Madagascar by ship the day Harry arrived by air, neither aware of the proximity of the other. Sieglinde watched the coastline disappear with the certainty that she would never again see Madagascar, an island that seemed to her forlorn despite the exotic animals and flowering plants, a profusion of color. The people were friendly but reserved. They were very poor, often malnourished. Sieglinde was restless and felt herself in the wrong place. Whatever in the world inspired her to go to Madagascar? Surely not the dozens of species of bats. She devoted her days to beachcombing and her nights to stargazing, lost in thought. The first few nights she stopped in at the hotel bar for a glass of Löwenbräu, but after some unpleasantness with a French bush pilot she stayed away from the bar and finally bought passage on a steamer bound for the Mediterranean. Each day brought her closer to Germany, though she did not consider Germany her destination. Sieglinde stopped for a day in Aden, then continued on through the Suez Canal to Cairo, where she visited the pyramids and rode a camel. She thought that in their massive gray brutality the pyramids could well have been designed by Hitler’s architect, what was his name? Herr Speer. Sieglinde was often the object of scrutiny and conjecture, such a pretty young woman traveling alone. From her distant manner she was assumed to have suffered misfortune, no doubt of a sentimental nature, an affair of the heart. She discouraged conversation yet was adventurous. She rode the camel as if born to it, arms spread wide as she held the reins and cried, Hut! Hut! That night she attached herself to a tour group from California and spent the night in the desert.