The Eastern Shore

by Ward Just

  Milo said, That’s my first memory of the newspaper business.

  Ned Ayres said, You should write a memoir.

  Ned, sometimes you surprise me. Whatever would I want to do that for?

  A tiny peek behind the scenes, Ned said. What do you call it? The Chinese screen?

  Venetian blind is more like it, Milo said.

  Even so, Ned said.

  So that’s one story of growing up in the newspaper business. Does it sound like a business to you? Not to me. But that’s what it is all the same. That’s why we’re having dinner together. To make decisions. Did you know that our accountant thinks our building should be sold at the earliest possible moment, as it would be ideal for a department store or automobile showroom? Our furnaces are old and inefficient. Same with the pressroom. The price fetched would be substantial. The newspaper would be far better off in a leafy suburb somewhere, close to the circulation base, a tax advantage, a no-brainer according to our accountant. Ned spoke up at once, adamant in opposition. The present building was only a short ride to Capitol Hill and the Pentagon and within walking distance of the Treasury and the White House. Milo, perhaps teasing a little, though teasing was not his long suit, said that perhaps distance would be an advantage. Gain perspective. A building in the suburbs would put them amid suburban life. The life of the readers instead of the lives of the sources of news. Maybe our customers deserve some consideration. Milo offered a gray smile, perhaps insincere. Ned Ayres thought his attention was elsewhere. Milo was looking for the waitress.

  The silence at the table continued to gather, Milo waiting patiently for Ned’s ante, if he had one. Ned took a swallow of the Rioja. Speculation was useless with Milo Passarel, whose mind took unexpected turns before it came to a full stop. Somehow Ned was reminded of the publisher’s office, the long desk with the company’s spreadsheets neatly stacked. The framed photographs of his family on the wall, an Emil Nolde landscape above the credenza, the deal table with its cargo of arcane journals, Dædalus, Scientific American, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Sewanee Review, the Listener and the Economist, El País. The journals were there for intellectual relief from the spreadsheets that would occupy him in the afternoon hours, circulation down slightly and gathering speed, want ads—classifieds, in the jargon—falling off a cliff. Each year the average age of the paper’s readers advanced. The most loyal subscribers were middle-aged and older who found comfort in the crackle of newsprint. Younger readers were bewitched by the Internet, altogether more convenient and lively, a refuge the publisher, in a rare display of humor, likened to an Irish bar, loudmouths filled up with whiskey and half-baked opinions, sarcasm the coin of the realm. A deluge of cant, the publisher said, a fact-free zone supervised by bullies, showoffs, and nutcases. They are ascendant. And they will drive us out of business.

  The publisher glowered in the direction of the kitchen, eager to taste the shad roe. Ned Ayres had never heard him employ slang, certainly nothing demeaning about the Irish—his own tribe, although he was not observant. Milo Passarel seemed to transcend the normal alliances, race, nationality, religion. Once he described himself as a freethinker but did not explain what that meant precisely and how it applied to his own life, if it applied at all. Now the publisher took another sip of wine.

  The paper’s revenues are down this quarter, he said. And expenses are rising, in part because of our own efforts to gain a seat at the Internet table, unsuccessful so far. People like it all right but they don’t want to pay for it. They want it free, and when they don’t get it free they’re annoyed and think we can’t be trusted. Milo went on about the price of newsprint, up and up again. Pension contributions are up, though there’s some fudging. He said, It’s only a matter of time before the news budget has to be looked at in a serious way.

  That’s why we’re here, Ned.

  I think I get the picture, Ned said. Thing is, with the paper going digital, think of the savings: all those trucks and their drivers, too, and the pressroom and the accounting that goes into subscriptions. You’re saving a fortune.

  The foreign file is costing a fortune.

  Our jewel in the crown, Ned said.

  An ornament, I agree, the publisher said. But nevertheless I want you to look at the news budget and see what you can do right away. Here’s the point: not one single trend line is positive, not one. And where is our dinner, for godsakes.

  Just then the waitress was at the table, murmuring apologies. Ned noticed her accent and asked where she was from. Greece, she said, and smiled. When she moved her head a comma of auburn hair fell over her left eye. She was enchanting, alluring in her white blouse and black miniskirt. She smiled tentatively and went away. Milo Passarel looked fondly at the plates of shad roe, a rasher of bacon on the side. Nicest thing about spring, the publisher said. Spring brings shad roe. Our local delicacy. Thank God for reliable tides.

  But we were talking about the newsroom, Milo said. Look everywhere, look high and low. And when you begin to cut, cut like this—and he drove his dinner knife through the largest lobe and began to eat.

  Ned was silent, thinking that publishers always took a dark view of things. Ned’s task was to determine just how far Milo Passarel was prepared to go. He said, You mean real cuts. Cuts that go bone-deep. I can stuff Latin America right now, Ned went on. Hire a stringer instead. The man we have is excellent, as you know. Energetic. First-rate mind. Keeps expenses down. He might stay on as a stringer if we made it attractive. Or, Ned said, more drastic. Close down Madrid.

  Milo said, Leave Madrid alone.

  But I have to look at all the possibilities.

  Madrid is not one of them.

  Okay, Milo.

  There’s going to be more of this, the publisher said. In the newsroom and elsewhere. It’s necessary.

  And unfortunate, Ned said. The paper’s journalism has never been better. And never been less read.

  That’s one way of looking at it, the publisher said. His voice was grudging.

  Ned smiled. Do we have to destroy the paper in order to save it? And the moment he made the remark he regretted it, a slippery remark, a show-the-flag remark meant as an assertion of editorial independence, but now it sounded churlish.

  Milo Passarel did not smile back. He said instead, Are you on board?

  Of course, Ned said.

  I can’t do it alone, Milo said. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. I have no interest in going it alone. We have to fly into this together. This job is primero. I have to know if I can count on you.

  You always have, Ned said.

  This is a new phase, Ned. I mean to clean up the balance sheet.

  A second helping of shad roe arrived. The waitress asked if they liked their meal, and Ned said they did. And what’s your name? Gretta, she said. Her voice was soft, and when the comma of hair fell once more, she pushed it back and slid away. They ate in silence. The room was quiet except for the rustle of newsprint from those dining alone. Milo looked up and called for Gretta to bring them another bottle of wine. Ned peered over the rim of his glass at Milo’s frown, from which all courtesy had vanished, his eyes half shut, his cheeks red. “Clean up the balance sheet” had a particular meaning in the newspaper business, as in other businesses, including, Ned supposed, the used car business, where it meant, Clean the car before you sell it. Set the odometer back a believable twenty thousand miles, give it that new-car smell. For the moment Ned was nonplussed, and then the wine arrived, Gretta pouring slowly. Milo was busy cutting the shad roe, not very expertly. Gretta vanished. Ned thought the fish too salty and its appearance too reminiscent of human brain matter. The bacon was good, though. Ned watched Gretta stopping by the other tables. She was beautifully built and slow-moving, taking her time with each table. She moved with élan, always smiling, actually more grin than smile, a grin being less neutral. He wondered what she was doing in this fussy men’s club. She could be a model or an actress. She seemed self-possessed in the best way, meaning without presumptio
n. Good at her job. She was built for Matisse, especially the grin.

  Milo said, Will you stop looking at that girl, please?

  Hard not to, Ned said.

  Too young, Ned.

  I was thinking. Maybe she’s a girl with a grandfather complex.

  Milo laughed at that, his mood apparently improving.

  Milo Passarel was large of build, well over six feet in height with thinning gray hair and restless hands. His firm jaw and deeply lined face recalled one of Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil-drawn anatomy lessons. Milo had the look just then of an Italian grandee, one who could take care of himself should the occasion arise. He was, on most occasions, even-tempered, affable when the situation called for it. Ned had been his editor in chief for three decades. They were not friends in that they knew very little about each other’s personal life. They were colleagues and in a certain sense collaborators. Ned Ayres was the public face of the newspaper. Milo Passarel was content to remain in the background, in fact insisted on it. He was uncomfortable in crowds. He did not want to be recognized on the street nor asked to give speeches. He never gave a speech. Now and then one of the glossy magazines would attempt a profile, but the attempt always fell short because Milo Passarel retreated behind his kindly smile and deferred to Ned Ayres, always in the room to add a detail or subtract one. Faced with a probing question, Ned would laugh and say, Oh, no. We don’t go there and you shouldn’t either. The interviews became a vicious little game of Go Fish until the publisher tired of it, looked at his watch, and called it quits. Milo’s office was immaculate, the spreadsheets now tucked away, invisible and unmentioned. In fact, Milo’s insistence on anonymity and the most severe privacy was not unusual for a newspaper publisher, many of whom believed that the normal rules did not apply to them. With Milo, anonymity seemed to be a condition of employment. Occasionally, out somewhere or at a meeting, Ned observed Milo Passarel glance into a mirror with a sly look, as if to say, Fooled you again. But who was “you”? Whom, exactly, was he fooling? Ned had concluded that his publisher believed he was fooling everyone and anyone. In a moment of conceit he might have thought he was contributing to a legend, a man as reclusive as Howard Hughes. Perhaps what annoyed him was publicity itself, any sort of notoriety. Naturally there were suspicions that Milo Passarel had a secret life, a worldly life that could not stand scrutiny. A life that would not play well in daylight’s glare or on the front page of a tabloid newspaper. These suspicions were false. He did look upon his job as a civilian version of trench warfare that made him vigilant. His private life was exemplary, most ordinary, law-abiding, strait-laced. It’s fair to add that, like pharaohs and kings, like all the explorers of the ancient world, when Milo Passarel arrived home in the evening the first thing he did was take a bath. In the warmth of his tub he thought often of his father, who had presided over a world of plenty. The newspaper had been a cash register, no expense spared. Milo wiggled his toes and recalled that when a correspondent went to Indochina, he traveled PanAm, first class, the envy of his peers.

  Milo Passarel had a wife who was seldom seen and two married daughters who lived in Europe. Milo and his wife flew to Spain every few months for long weekends with “the girls,” their artist husbands, and the grandchildren. He confessed once to Ned Ayres that he felt more at home in Spain than he did in America; and then he fell silent, realizing he had given up an incriminating fact. When young he had taken a graduate course at the university in Salamanca but dutifully left the university when his father suffered the first of two heart attacks. He was needed at the paper, no excuses. Milo Sr. would be lucky to live another year or so—which, in the event, turned out to be twenty-one years. So Milo Jr. was installed as associate publisher, sent to Harvard Business School for a year, and returned with a knowledge of spreadsheets. Milo had always been good with numbers, having received a degree in applied mathematics. He, his wife, and the girls settled in a four-story row house on 34th Street in Georgetown. His office at the paper was next to his father’s, the better to see how a real publisher operated. Throwing his weight around, as Milo Jr. put it to his wife, Lana. They led a sedate, uncomplicated life, very much a family. When they went on vacation, the girls always went with them. The month of August was spent in Spain, first the Costa Blanca south of Barcelona, and when that filled up with Germans they went to San Sabastian. They made one more stop and settled finally in Granada, a pretty whitewashed villa north of the city, the bulk of the Alhambra in clear sight from their patio.

  They came to love Spanish food and the Spanish temperament and the relaxed way of life, a nap in the afternoon and dinner at ten p.m. They liked the rough laughter in the streets and tabernas. The Spanish people were composed and dignified. Behind their composure they were a passionate people with austere souls, not a contradiction when Milo thought about it. The family’s guide through the Spanish labyrinth was the paper’s Madrid bureau chief, Susan Griffin, a bon vivant who had lived in Madrid for forty years. She knew everyone in the city, including the king and queen. She knew the matador El Cordobés, and her husband, Harold, knew everyone else, police officials and the foreign minister, flamenco dancers and the chef at the Ritz. Harold wrote mystery novels, one a year. Susan and Harold Griffin were the Passarels’ guide to Spain high and low. For the long weekends and the month of August Milo could forget about the paper. Ned Ayres was instructed not to bother the publisher except for an emergency of the most serious character. Nor to expect too much copy from Susan Griffin, who brought such merriment into the family’s life.

  Each August Milo and Ms. Seldom Seen traveled to their villa near Granada to spend the month with their daughters, Susan and Harold often in residence. Milo had bought a van seating ten people for journeys into the backcountry to search for birds. They were a family of birders, the Griffins too. When not birding, Milo and Lana took long lunches and even longer naps, rising at six to mix mild cocktails and dine amid their backyard cedar trees, where they discussed the churches of the region and the grottoes of the hillsides. They were often joined by the Griffins, who brought the latest Madrid gossip, usually hilarious and subterranean in the Spanish manner. The film community, such as it was, made a commedia dell’arte all its own. Susan Griffin confessed that when she first met Milo and Lana, she thought them dour and uncommunicative; perhaps the word was unresponsive. But they improved with age and now she saw them in a different light altogether. Milo spoke only a little Spanish, but his accent was superb and in his espadrilles and his straw hat he easily passed as a native, or if not native, then Portuguese. His height and his bearing lent him authority. Señor Milo, the villagers called him, an important American publisher who tipped generously and remembered everyone’s name and never asked awkward questions. He himself volunteered little, perhaps a comment on the weather or on an unusual bird sighting.

  All this information came from Susan Griffin, who retailed it to Ned Ayres on her biennial visits to Washington.

  Some people are temperamentally displaced, Susan said. They are in one place and imagine themselves in another. There are two Milos that I know of. Maybe there’s a third somewhere, known only to Lana or the children. But you should see them in Spain at the end of the evening, laughing uproariously, slightly tipsy from the flasks of Rioja. The party never broke up before midnight and sometimes went on much later.

  You would not recognize him, Ned.

  Of course the paper and its affairs were never mentioned.

  That was the Rule.

  The Passarel Rule, Lana called it.

  Violate the Rule and you’re not asked back.

  Susan said, He’s a charming man, Ned. Witty, beautiful manners, quiet disposition. That Leonardo head brown from the sun even though he always wore a hat. Go figure. And Lana was good company once you got her going, which was not hard to do. I always tried to see them off at the end of the month, not that he showed any appreciation. You see, he was already in Washington mode, a dark suit and a fedora, a leather briefcase, a copy of the Fi
nancial Times in his jacket pocket. He was going home to Washington but that was not where he wanted to be, so he removed his sunglasses and pulled on his American personality. I was often impertinent with him but he never seemed to mind. When I asked him what he thought when he thought about Washington, and he said, Spreadsheets, I had to ask him what they were because we do not have spreadsheets in Spain. So he explained about the spreadsheets and their contribution to an understanding of the bottom line, a mudslide of declining revenues. He was talking about the government but he meant the newspaper, his voice rising as he went along. I never heard him utter one word about the paper’s troubles, and that was frustrating to me, Susan said, because I had heard all the rumors and was eager to know how many of them were true as opposed to the usual sloppy gossip. In some respects he reminded me of an art collector looking at his Old Masters and realizing he was on the downside of things, as if his beauties were—quaint. I think that was how he thought about his paper. Whenever we got near the subject, even when someone mentioned a piece in the Herald Tribune or the FT, Lana put a finger to her lips and shook her head. Off limits. Verboten. Interdit. Not to be discussed in Milo’s hearing. I think that was Lana’s job, keeping the business caged so that Milo could run free, at least for those days when he was in Spain. My Harold was baffled by him, and her, too. People in the newspaper business loved it. You could say they loved it to death. Couldn’t live without it, and here was the publisher of one of the most important papers in America who preferred a backwater region in a backwater country to spend his summers. He could be dining at Chequers or shooting pheasant in the Sologne, yet here he was in the Spanish countryside, the campo. It was a campo all right. Like any well-fixed tourist from Chicago or Houston, content in his cedar grove, looking at churches and stalking birds, reading Dædalus in his spare time, a Cinzano and soda at the end of the afternoon. Well, Susan said, my Harold was always a bit of a romantic about the newspaper business. I think, secretly, Harold wanted to own one. But he didn’t have the money, so he turned to mystery novels instead.