Man Who Was Late

by Louis Begley

  I was tired from the ride and unhappy and my face hurt from the slaps he had given me, so I drank my wine as quickly as I could and once even gestured for the maître d’hôtel to fill my glass. That was the first time Mamie Decaze spoke. She hissed that I was being indiscreet. The second time it was to call me a tart, but that came a little later. In the meantime, all around me they were talking about their money and who sleeps with whom, and how much they spend on wherever it is they shoot birds, and I even heard Paul say he was going to sell the house in Arpajon and get something smaller in Sologne to be close to good shooting—which he had never discussed with me and after all it’s my house and I was thinking of you and how, if I were in Brazil, you would kiss me and touch me until I was weak with pleasure. So, on an impulse, without knowing in advance what I would do, I stood up, tapped my knife against the wineglass, and said, Up yours, la famille Decaze, I won’t be in your way much longer, because I am leaving Paul to live with my beautiful, clever, funny Ben. And then I told them all about you. They were so stunned that I managed to make quite a speech.

  I won’t try to describe the bordel that followed, but please don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t care what they say or what they do. I want to be with you. Take me, Ben, take me now.

  I have asked your secretary, who is adorably kind, to make sure this letter reaches you quickly.

  Your

  Véronique

  But Ben was not in Brazil; he had left unexpectedly for Tokyo, where he stayed for more than a week. As they had decided to avoid the telephone, news of this change of plans had not reached Véronique. Her letter was waiting for Ben at his hotel in Rio de Janeiro.

  VI

  Excerpts from Notaben dated Tokyo, 29/11/70:

  Sunday in Tokyo.

  I stop the taxi at Toranomon Station and make my way to the Ginza. How to buy a present for V that won’t compromise her?

  At Takashimaya, everything tawdry or opulent prewar Mitteleuropa provincial: cream-colored embroidered tablecloths and napkins (the latter in every size), cloisonné boxes (for storage of ancestral ashes?), toothpick holders, seemingly useless bottles, figurines. In the basement, a treasure trove of Edo and Meiji prints. Bargain prices. No place for them on Olivia’s walls even if I wanted to carry them to Rio and then back to Paris, which I don’t.

  Out.

  Grinding fatigue. Thank God there is no sun. Sidewalks crowded. Schoolgirls in navy-blue uniforms. Nice round faces, pigtails, fixed smiles. Below, mostly bad legs. Also boys in matching uniforms, except they have visored caps and acne. One accosts me: Please, sir, may I speak English with you? Non parlo inglese, replies the brute inside me.

  Leave hateful, cluttered Hibiya on my left and walk toward the hotel. Outer Palace Garden. Naked. Tortured, pampered pine trees. Crows the size of ducks overhead. Three black swans accompany me, gliding along the moat.

  At once, in the hotel arcade, I find the perfect thing. A pale bud vase of such beauty that I ache to give it to V. The shopkeeper tells me it’s celadon and I trust him and pay what he asks. She can say she bought it for pennies in the rue Saint-Honoré. Paul won’t recognize it for what it is.

  Pity that van Oppers didn’t come with me. Had he been at the meetings with the city banks he would have a better idea of why he pays me to make his Brazilian dreams come true.

  All week in the Bank of Tokyo conference room. Sonorous name: one expects transplanted Victorian grandeur—rather like those salons of the Algemene Nederland in Amsterdam, where portraits of burgher directors hang cheek by heavy jowl with the photograph of Prince Bernhard, when still an employee, carnation in his buttonhole, bending over a ledger—only here it should be Japanese barons in cutaway coats, like Hirohito but sturdier and ferocious. Nothing of the sort. Did the firebombings or MacArthur sweep it all away, or did the Japanese do the job themselves? I find a room like the lobby of a good-class motel, with a potted plant or two in the corner no better than the rubber plant at rue du C-M that Véronique makes fun of. In the middle, a long Swedish or Danish coffee table—one of those affairs that might be made of teak but probably isn’t, on either side a row of brown armchairs (from the same motel but with white, sparkling-clean antimacassars on armrests and where one’s head might recline). Behind them, two long sofas covered with green plastic matter imitating leather. Yet farther removed, in profusion, stackable chairs with metal tube legs. Disconsolate, East-meets-West “art” on the walls. Fields of something or other, flowers, a mountain or two, fishermen dragging seines toward the beach, done in the manner of van Gogh, Renoir, and Monet, with that admixture of eccentricity of color and angst I have come to recognize as indigenous.

  The day I arrive, the principals are lined up to greet me, in order of rank, naming themselves and their banks twice—at the handshake and upon the presentation of the business card that they manage with the dexterity of riverboat gamblers. I, too, have cards and in both languages, but deal them out like a rube, wasting precious seconds fiddling with the paper clip that holds them. Beyond the receiving line, an undifferentiated crowd mills about: bubbly, eager, fresh-faced junior “staffs” (I have found that this noun when used in the singular signifies individual members of the team, while the plural denotes them collectively; oversized walking sticks have some other designation, as yet unknown to me), and also older, ineffably seedy men—assistant managers and deputies outdistanced in the race for promotion, loyally, bravely awaiting retirement. Second round of card exchanges, introductions, smiles, and bows: these men are not like spear bearers in Aida; it is they who formulate decisions their sleek bosses will in the end approve and announce. Woe to him who neglects them.

  We settle down.

  I find I am alone in the middle of my row of armchairs (the Lord is my staff, may His presence fill the empty seats on my right and on my left). Facing me across the table (upon which simpering and desirable young ladies are placing bowls of green tea) is the Bank of Tokyo, all atwinkle and personified by Mr. Osamu Yoshida, the directors of the other syndicate banks placed at his sides in descending order of their participation in the loan. Yoshida, who knows English well enough to do the Herald Tribune crossword puzzle in ink, announces we will have interpretation—“so all members and staffs will have good understanding. Please be patient.”

  All right. Let time pass if in the end it will turn into money.

  Gradually, I get the drift. That they want to make the loan, essentially must make it, is beyond question: the Japanese chemical companies are keen on the Brazilian product. If the construction of the project is not financed, they won’t get it. MITI wants the chemical companies to have all the feedstock they need. Ergo, the banks should solve their problems. But how and at what cost they will do it is far from clear. The banks are stuck on two points, and they are related: they and the chemical companies who will borrow from the banks want Japanese government political-risk insurance, and they need a mortgage on the project because without the mortgage they may not get the insurance, or, if they get it, the premium will double.

  So far so good, although it’s hard to see what use the mortgage will be to the banks or the Japanese government if it has to pay for expropriations or civil war in Brazil! And the Brazilians don’t mind giving the mortgage—the problem is that for reasons of “policy” the World Bank wants one too, and being the World Bank naturally it wants a first mortgage. On the other hand, neither the Japanese banks nor whoever in the Ministry of Finance pulls the insurance strings will accept being in the second place and having a second mortgage. This is a mixed question of banking prudence and national pride, where I guess considerations of pride weigh heavier.

  We examined at three meetings my first solution, which I rather liked but the ministry rejected: it was to have the World Bank agree that—although its mortgage would rank first—it would hold any money it recovered in a single pot and share it equally with the Japanese banks as second mortgagees. From my point of view, a lead-pipe cinch, requiring at most a two-page letter of under
standing. But it bothered the ministry to have the World Bank as a big brother or guardian for the Japanese banks, and the banks, for all the noisy sucking of air between their teeth, couldn’t budge the bureaucrats. In the end, perversely, I felt relieved, because I had put forward my solution without finding out whether the Bank wished to be a big brother!

  Impasse. Mr. Yoshida’s assistant drones on translating my most recent remarks, which must be quite titillating, for Mr. Yoshida holds up his hand, says “Just a moment please,” and they fall to chattering among themselves in Japanese with no thought of translation for my benefit. While they are so engaged, I have an illumination. What if I proposed giving the World Bank and the Japanese banks each a mortgage over the same property, each mortgage to have equal rank? True, to my knowledge no such thing has ever been done in Brazil or elsewhere, but there is always a first time; the Brazilian national motto is Order and Progress, and this is nothing if not progress. Best of all, it occurs to me that in case we can’t get all the right lawyers to give the right opinions, I will surely be able to talk the World Bank into signing a sharing-of-proceeds agreement between it and the Japanese banks as though they were both first mortgagees, which will have the same effect as my first solution but won’t make anybody the big brother or keeper of anybody else. Then, the lawyers’ opinions will matter very little.

  Taking brusque advantage of a pause in the hubbub, I advance my proposal.

  Eureka! Another “Just a moment please,” and I am pleased to restate what I have just said in slightly different words. This time, Yoshida doesn’t even bother with “Just a moment.” While they debate, I survey the audience. Notwithstanding the high drama, a good number of the “staffs” are “resting their eyes.” Others are taking notes. Will they share them with the sleepers? I think so. That way everybody can file a report. Mr. Yoshida’s assistant, who doesn’t miss a beat, is perorating. In the excitement of the thing, he has stood up; he uses an English word or two in every sentence so I can almost follow the exegesis of my new invention.

  Mr. Yoshida thanks me. Would I mind waiting just a little, while they call the ministry? I smoke a cigar and drink my fourth cup of tea. Sad not to be able to flirt with the tea lady.

  Yoshida’s assistant and a team of others return from wherever they used the telephone. The ministry is pleased; they will want to “check” the proposal again, but it’s so very nice and clear there should be no problem.

  Airline schedules. Yoshida and a mission from each other bank will be ready to go to Rio next week—this is a good sign—but, horror of horrors, they settle on the flight I am already booked on. Instantly, I lie about my departure plans. I love them all dearly, but I need to be alone. And they will like it better too.

  Five in the afternoon here, nine in the morning in France. Will she be the first to pick up the receiver, will I hear the silver of her laughter? Breaking our new rule, I try Arpajon. No answer. Wave of discouragement. No reason to think Paul is not recording calls in Paris. I can’t pretend I am Lavinia! I give up.

  VII

  THE PETROCHEMICAL PROJECT that had taken Ben to Rio de Janeiro and then, abruptly, to Tokyo when the financing to be supplied by Japanese banks seemed to founder was sponsored by a Brazilian conglomerate. A Belgian consortium advised by Ben’s bank was to participate and engineer many of the facilities. The other foreign partner in the project was an American company whose name was a household word in many countries. The relations among the parties were tense. But the American negotiators were relieved to find at the side of the Belgians a partner of a New York investment bank as renowned as their own company. Ben and the government economist advising the Brazilians had been friends at Harvard, so gradually he assumed the role of everyone’s father confessor. Negotiating on behalf of the Belgian group became mediation and a search for a result that would be fair to all. Ben was exuberant about what he had accomplished: the professional challenge was considerable, greater than any he had faced, and he liked its being intellectual as well as political. The peacekeeping function suited the Belgians. They told him they were pleased. There was no doubt in Ben’s mind about the line he must follow to reach solutions that would work and be acclaimed by all as brilliantly inventive. Being liked and trusted by all, seeing Mr. Nagao, the head of the largest Japanese chemical company and the spokesman in this transaction for the four other companies that would also be buyers of the product (in theory waiting in the wings for the project to coalesce but in fact present at most of the big meetings), prefer his analysis of problems to that of his Japanese colleagues, so much so that after the meetings he sought out Ben to talk “heart-to-heart,” as he put it, was a sweet Ben could not resist. Besides, he was relieved to be away from Paris and the need to come to a decision about Véronique. The notes I have pored over, and talks I had with him in New York early in the following year, leave no doubt that he was quite conscious of this aspect of his feelings. He said it was a great sensation, like playing hooky—Isn’t that, he asked me, how all happily married husbands feel when they are away from wifey?

  When he picked up Véronique’s letter at the concierge’s cramped desk in the annex building of the Copacabana Hotel, he read it immediately while that dignitary’s assistants fussed over his luggage. It was not unlike a truant officer’s summons. He read it again, in the living room of his suite. The weight of the two-day flight was like a lead cloak. Who could tell what had happened since the letter was written? He looked at his watch and calculated the hour in Paris. It was too late and too risky to telephone Véronique. A call to Madame Duhot, his discreet and sensible secretary, was the thing: he would ask her to get in touch with Véronique the next morning. He composed the number and listened for a long time to its thin and useless ring. Should he try Véronique himself before dawn in Rio, if he managed to be awake at that hour despite his fatigue? Exasperation quickly turned into sputtering, uncontrollable anger—at Paul, at Véronique, at himself, and at the circumstance itself of the letter’s reaching him just at that particular moment.

  The meetings with the Brazilian Ministry of Finance and the World Bank scheduled for the next day were all-important: unless they went well, the World Bank would not lend money for the electric plant needed to service the petrochemical plant or for the enlargement and dredging of the harbor. Without that cheap money, which would be Brazil’s sovereign debt and not the project’s, the entire undertaking would have to shrink. His success would be solid, not brilliant—another well-done job, nothing more. How could he be expected to solve the puzzle of his own feelings about living with Véronique—marrying her, no less!—to reassure her, and to give her, from six thousand miles away, counsel on how to deal with her barbarian husband, when all his attention and feelings, yes, feelings, were concentrated on what he must do tomorrow? He must find time, first thing in the morning, to review again his solution for the mortgage problem with his own lawyer and the lawyers for the other participants and wrest from them a common position of approval in principle. Of this he was confident. Then he would have to extract, in the course of one ministerial audience, from a nationalist government operating under the eyes of an agitated economic press, sufficient concessions, some of substance, some of form, some trivial, and some quite important, to convince a bevy of World Bank bureaucrats trained at Tubingen, Cambridge, and Chicago that they were at last “getting a grip” on a relevant segment of the Brazilian budget. That the ingredients to mix such a cocktail were at hand, he was completely sure. The stumbling block would be, as usual, human obtuseness and obstinacy; instead of accepting a hard-won offer on the spot, the World Bank’s Dr. Fritzler would mutter something on the order of “Ja schon gut, maybe I consult Washington,” and while “maybe” he consulted, the minister would withdraw whatever offer he had made, leave for a holiday in the mountains, dissolve into thin air.

  The sun had declined in the direction of the mountain. Ben looked out the window at the huge rectangular pool, now partly shaded, and beyond, toward the bay. Betwee
n the wing of the hotel and the new apartment building facing it he could see only a slice of deep blue. It occurred to him that he could think about Véronique only a little bit at a time, like Swann’s father about his beloved late wife. Possibly, he could not remain angry very long either. There were huge beach towels in the bathroom scrolled with the name of the hotel. He went down to the pool. In the area still in the sun, on deck chairs, around little tables, sat or reclined men and women with bodies the color of ancient gold, darker than the chains on their necks and wrists. Their stomachs were incredibly flat. Self-control, constant exercise, or secret successes of Brazilian plastic surgery? Gentle voices in incessant talk surrounded him—Ben thought it was like an aviary with no roof where the birds had been taught to speak Russian. That was the true sound of Carioca Portuguese. A solitary, elderly figure was doing exquisitely slow laps up and down the pool. Ben found a chair for his towel, made the diving board thump, and swam until his eyes could no longer bear the sting of the chlorine.

  He did not call Véronique or Paris at dawn. Having taken a new sort of sleeping pill recently prescribed by his doctor for travel insomnia, he slept without dreaming. Then, rested but feeling somehow disconnected from his surroundings and from the task at hand, he read over his notes. The coffee tasted bitter. Once more, he confirmed his dislike for papaya. On the other hand, the guava jelly and white cheese, those staples of a Brazilian morning, began to make him feel that he might yet recover the alacrity of spirit and cheer of mind he badly needed. In O Globo he parsed out a description of Willy Brandt kneeling at the monument to the dead of the Warsaw ghetto, visibly overcome by emotion. A well-done background paragraph in the article discussed the recent recognition of the Oder-Neisse line, the burning of the ghetto in 1943, the ultimate destruction of Warsaw a little over a year later, and the extraordinary care with which Poles had rebuilt their capital. Always when he found himself in a strange city, Ben skimmed the pages of the telephone directory, looking for his own name and other surprises. The Rio book listed many Jewish names, extravagantly spelled. Feinbaum from Galicia had become Vainboim. Others retained special, Polish transliterations: Bernsztajn instead of the banal Bernstein; Grynszpan, Lakman, Szpigel, others. They were presumably the clever ones who had smelled a rat in ’36 or ’37 and hightailed it to the land of the coffee bean and moon-shaped beaches—and their happy descendants. It was nice that they too had O Globo to cheer them at breakfast.