Madagascar

by Stephen Holgate

  Her experience? Jesus. I’ve got to do something to tip things back my way. “By the way, I asked Rabary about rumors of disturbances in the last week or so. Maybe on the east coast. Tamatave.”

  “Disturbances? What did he say?”

  “Denied everything, of course.”

  “What do you think?”

  “The way this government has screwed things up, the real surprise is that the whole country isn’t going up in flames.”

  The Ambassador nods. “I’ll talk to Alain,” she says, referring to the French ambassador, Alain Jovert.

  “If he doesn’t know anything, I could go off to the coast to see what’s going on.”

  Worry lines appear between her eyes. “Robert, if you go, do it quietly.” She speaks like a grandmother who fears she has been overindulgent. “Stay out of the newspapers.”

  “I’m the soul of discretion, ma’am.”

  “Of course you are,” she says, trying very hard to make me believe she believes it. “Oh, that reminds me. Do you know a newspaper called, Notre Madagascar, ‘Our Madagascar’?”

  “Yeah, vaguely. Sensationalist. Poorly written. Published irregularly. Printed on paper that looks like it was stolen from a men’s room dispenser.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Ambassador Herr says. “They’ve run an atrocious article, saying the United States Government is killing babies overseas to use their organs for transplants in the United States.” She actually shudders. “It just makes me sick.”

  “It’s an old disinformation scam, ma’am,” I tell her. “The Russians pay some newspaper to run this stuff. Then they can write up their own story, citing this one. ‘An independent newspaper in Madagascar reports, blah, blah, blah.’ So no one sees their fingerprints on it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” she says, meaning she half-believes me. “When Gloria is settled in, you should take her to see the publisher and tell him how displeased we are with the story. Ask him to run a retraction.” She turns to Gloria. “What a marvelous way to start your public affairs duties, talking with the local press. And you’ll have Robert to back you up.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Gloria says with an emphatic nod. If she sits up any straighter she’ll blow a disc.

  Ambassador Herr rises and once more welcomes Gloria to “our family.”

  I lead our new PAO down to the basement offices of the admin section. Lynn is talking to her bespectacled cashier, Annie Rabenarivo. Lynn’s eyes turn toward me with an indifference that chills my blood.

  The two women hit it off immediately, of course. Lynn gives Gloria a fat sheaf of papers to fill out. “Sorry. We live off forms like bacteria live off decay. Our political officer”—she gives me another bland gaze—“has taken you to meet the Ambassador?”

  Gloria nods. “I’ve never worked for a political appointee.”

  “She’s not bad. She may not know her way around the Department, but if the Malagasy need something big she can phone the White House directly.”

  I’m feeling neglected. “Hey, so can I.”

  Lynn bores a hole through me with her eyes. “Yes, but she won’t get fired for it.” She turns back to Gloria. “You’ll like your house.”

  “A house? I only got an apartment in Ottawa.”

  “I had the General Services crew over to paint the interior yesterday and generally clean up. The Boswell’s medivac came on pretty suddenly and they left a bit of a mess.”Lynn launches a ferocious smile in my direction, warning me not to add any commentary.

  Fine, but gossip is the common coin of every embassy. Gloria will find out soon enough that her predecessor, Peter Boswell, was sent back to Washington on what was called a medivac—medical evacuation—because psychovac is not in the official vocabulary.

  The strain of living in a foreign culture, especially one as alien as Madagascar’s, affects people differently. Some thrive on the challenge. Most persevere. A few crash.

  I liked Boswell. And he’d been a boon drinking companion. But here’s the difference; after our late nights, I always managed somehow to get into the office the next morning and deal with my work, at least in a haphazard sort of way. Boz couldn’t do it. His fall was quick. He became moody and missed work. With little provocation, he would launch into bitter tirades against all things Malagasy. When he began locking himself in his office during the day it was time to go. Ambassador Herr’s fierce if occasionally misplaced loyalty to her staff led her to expunge any hint of Boswell’s drinking problem from his annual evaluation, but gossip is relentless and the damage to his career was done.

  Afterwards, I toughed out the killing looks I got from the other Americans, who blamed me for Boswell’s disintegration. And I could see in their eyes that they expected me to be next. That’s when I decided to stop drinking—just to prove the sonsabitches wrong. I was surprised how easy it was. I guess I’d never been an alcoholic, not in the classic sense. I just drank to fill the empty spot in my life, or at least have a few hours when I forgot about it. I had hoped that the transformation from drunk to former drunk might elevate the regard in which I was held by my fellow Americans. If anything, though, they seemed more guarded than before, as if I were trying to put something over on them. And maybe I was—trying to pretend that I’m a consummate professional and a decent human being. But I’m neither, and they know it.

  “I bought some groceries for you,” Lynn tells Gloria. “You’ll find them in the refrigerator. You can pay me for them next week. I’ll come over this evening with some dinner.”

  Gloria turns to me, her previously flagging spirits thoroughly renewed. “This is going to be fun!”

  6

  The weekly meeting of the Country Team—the heads of the embassy’s various departments—looks like a gathering of the recently dead. Sitting at the head of the table in the second-floor conference room, Ambassador Herr is pale with overwork. Her right hand, Pete Salvatore, the Deputy Chief of Mission, or DCM, and Steve Trapp, head of the Econ section, both have the ghostly and haggard look that comes with amoebas. The gunny, Sergeant Estes, has developed a cough and a weird rash and everyone wishes he would just stay the hell away from the embassy until he’s better. I’ve been through this in other countries that are tough on your health. None of us will be entirely well again until we go home.

  I understand the nature of their maladies. It comes from resisting Madagascar, attempting to lead their lives as if they were still back in the States, as if they were not foreigners in the most foreign of lands. They refuse to acknowledge limits to what they can understand, can’t reconcile themselves to uncertainty. That, not the booze, is what finally got Boswell.

  Me? I’m never sick. This worries me. Sure, after years in the tropics I’ve built up enough antibodies to resist anything short of a meteor. In fact, I possess in spades the one great necessity of the foreign service—I’m adaptable, flexible as a snake, able to bend, change shapes, speak in tongues, do whatever it takes to remake myself as needed. There’s a downside. One of the hundred torments that makes me lie awake at night is the fear that my talent for adaptation has left me with no self to protect.

  Have I accepted Madagascar better than the others? Is that why I remain preternaturally healthy? No, I think it’s just the opposite. I don’t even try. I just let it roll off my back. I’m not here. Maybe I never have been.

  Pete Salvatore sighs with fatigue and waves a hand in front of his face, a tic he has acquired over the past few months. He’s a pretty decent guy, but working for the irrepressible Michelle Herr has worn him down and he’s seldom at his best. “Okay, we’re getting vague stories in the papers about child kidnappings. Just something to be aware of. There’s an article in Midi about some guy in a market town near Tamatave getting beaten to death over a child he couldn’t prove was his.”

  I give Pete a lift of the eyebrows and he lets me speak. “I’ve seen it in other countries,” I tell him. “When the economy tanks and the government looks unstable and things are really falling a
part, you start getting reports of children being kidnapped. It works great as metaphor. The future is being stolen. Who knows? Maybe it’s even true. Maybe when things start going to hell some people have this urge to start stealing children.”

  In the ensuing silence, I feel Salvatore’s assessing gaze. He’s trying to decide if I’m a prophet or a lunatic, with the betting going heavily toward the latter. Without comment, Salvatore’s eyes slide from me and turn to Gloria. “You’ll keep an eye on this story for us?”

  “I will,” she says with an emphatic nod. God love her because I can’t quite manage it.

  Ambassador Herr clears her throat. “Robert has mentioned something to me about disturbances in the countryside. I brought it up with the Foreign Minister yesterday. He said there was nothing to the rumors. But I’m thinking of sending someone down to Tamatave to take a look.” She looks around the table, desperately searching for a volunteer. Anyone but me.

  Normally, I’d have little desire to traipse off to the coast to chase down what might turn out to be no more than gossip. But this particular task is a political officer’s job, and I have even less desire to suffer the humiliation of seeing it handed to someone else.

  Besides, a tantalizing thought has occurred to me. Rather than regarding this task as another opportunity to get food poisoning in a roach-infested hotel, the trip might offer a way out of the professional purgatory into which I’ve sunk. Through a quiet gathering of facts and the drafting of the sort of incisive and succinctly drafted reporting cable with which I once made a reputation, I might gain a little taste of redemption. With some well-deserved props, maybe I can work up the mojo to start climbing out of the hole I’ve been digging for myself over the last how many years. Possibilities shimmer on the horizon of my mind like the Seven Cities of Gold. I can’t let this chance slip away.

  “I think the job is mine.”

  The Ambassador tries to smile but it looks more like she’s stepped on a nail. “Of course it is, Robert.” She looks around the table as if hoping for someone to contradict her. When no one does her this service, a pall of resignation momentarily clouds her customary graciousness. She quickly recovers and asks, “Any advice before he goes? Paul?”

  Paul Esmer, the tall, dark-haired ex-cop who serves as embassy security officer essays a lop-sided shrug, a hint of his habitual bad Bogart imitation. “He should see Captain René Andriamana, head of the national police in that region.” He squints at me. I’m sure he’s about to say, “And how about all that money you owe Picard over at the Zebu Room.” A cold sweat slithers down my back. Instead, he just asks, “You know him—Andriamana?”

  He apparently knows nothing about my debts. I try to keep my relief from showing. “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Well, step lightly down there. He’s the Prince of Fucking Darkness.”

  The worry lines between the Ambassador’s brows grow deeper. “Now, Robert, you be careful down there.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ve been around.”

  The Ambassador smiles, clearly asking herself what folly she has let loose in allowing me to roam outside the capital.

  The only fun in the meeting occurs when Lynn mentions that the Ambassador’s recently-fired protocol secretary, a Malagasy woman named Colette, has tried to make herself literally irreplaceable by putting a curse on her office, threatening with illness and death anyone who crosses its threshold. The problem, Lynn tells the Ambassador, is that the proposed remodeling of the embassy’s ground floor will punch a new entrance through what was Colette’s office. “Most of the Malagasy employees are saying that if the door goes there they won’t come through it.”

  Michelle Herr slumps in her chair. “They actually believe in this curse?”

  “Enough of them to give us real heartburn.”

  To anyone on the outside, anyone back home, this would sound preposterous. But this is Madagascar, and the Malagasy think the same of us and half the things we do.

  The Ambassador sighs. “They never mentioned this sort of thing in the ambassadorial training course. All right, Lynn, come see me after lunch.”

  As the meeting breaks up I drift into the Ambassador’s outer office, still anxious that word about Picard and the money I owe him might reach the embassy. I could make a hundred reporting trips to Tamatave, but they wouldn’t help me survive that.

  The room’s empty. Sitting on her secretary’s desk, I quickly riffle through the Ambassador’s inbox.

  “Looking for something, Robert?”

  My internal organs fail. Still, I manage to look blandly over my shoulder at Alice, the Ambassador’s secretary, standing behind me with the I’m-on-to-you expression she always uses with me.

  “No. I was just … Say, did the Ambassador mention anything about following up on that UN resolution with the President? Maybe I should go back to the Ministry, try to bring Rabary around. With enough time, I think I could do it.”

  Alice’s eyes narrow. Even if she can’t figure out exactly what I’m up to, she knows bullshit when she hears it. I can already hear her gossiping with the Ambassador about catching me looking through her mail.

  “She’s decided this looks like a job for Ambo,” she says, not bothering to add, “because the Pol officer can’t get the job done.”

  “Great.” I don’t bother to add that the Ambassador should bring me along, because I know she won’t.

  I head back toward my office feeling the momentary relief of knowing there’s no letter from the Zebu Room waiting for the Ambassador. At least not today.

  It takes me so much longer than usual to lose ten thousand Malagasy francs that my night feels like a victory. Neither Picard nor Jacques, his manager, have shown any interest in me this evening. And, evidently, my credit is still good for now. Why? I can’t escape the feeling that I’m a fish enjoying the bait while the hook digs deeper into my mouth.

  It’s nearly midnight before I head down toward the parking lot. The shortest way is through the hotel bar on the ground floor. Like an idiot, I take it.

  I struggle against the riptide of the crowd as I squeeze my way toward the far door. Behind the bar, tall shelves of booze twinkle like Christmas lights. It occurs to me that I could demonstrate how I’ve beaten the stuff. All I need to do is take one drink, just one, then walk away. What better way to show that I’ve broken the hold of demon rum? I just need that one drink to prove my point.

  I’m already veering toward the bar when I feel a hand on my arm.

  “Monsieur Knott.”

  I turn toward the sound of the voice. “Jesus!”

  “I’ve been trying for a week to reach you, Monsieur Knott.” In the press of the crowd I can feel the warmth of Nirina’s body against mine. I try to step away, but the crowd pushes me back. Does she know what she’s doing to me? Of course she knows. Beautiful women always know what they’re doing to men. “I’ve called your office, Monsieur Knott, but your secretary . . .” She puts a hand on my arm.

  “Yeah, I’ve been busy.” I try to brush her hand away, but she tightens her grip. “Okay, you got lucky and ran into me.”

  “I know you come here often. Everyone knows about the vazaha with no luck.”

  So, I’m a legend, am I?

  “I need to talk to you about Monsieur Sackett. About Walt.” She says it “Wolt.”

  “I have no time for that tonight.”

  For a moment I can see myself as if from a great distance. And what I see isn’t a man trying to fend off an importunate young woman, but someone who doesn’t trust himself enough to talk to her. I mutter some excuse about talking with her later in the week and push through the door.

  Once outside, I breathe a deep lungful of the clear night air, panting like a rabbit who’s just escaped a trap. Then I hear the noise of music and voices momentarily spilling through the door behind me, and I know she’s followed me out.

  “Monsieur Knott.” Something in her voice—not pleading, only insistent—tells me I won’t get away. “Walt h
as been very kind to me. Now I have to help him.”

  Can she mean it? The thought bothers me. I want her to be a gold digger preying on Sackett. Instead, she may be what my instincts tell me she is—a good woman who’s trying much harder than I am to get Sackett free.

  “Look, the embassy is doing everything it can,” I tell her. The words sound feeble even to me.

  “Are you?”

  Before I can tell her to shove off, a young man pushes through the door open behind us. He’s dressed in a thin shirt and shapeless slacks, clothes that belong in a village byway rather than at what passes in Antananarivo for a glitzy nightspot.

  “Nirina,” the young man calls.

  She turns and says something in Malagasy that clearly means, “Go away.”

  I maybe see a way out of this. “It looks like your boyfriend doesn’t want you standing out here in the parking lot talking to a vazaha.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she snaps back at me. “He’s my brother.” Again, she speaks sharply to the young man in Malagasy, and this time waves him back inside.

  The boy stands his ground and calls to me, “You should not listen to her, m’sieur.” After her precise but unfussy French, his sounds poorly formed and heavily accented. “Her father wants her to return. Her father does not want her to be like this.”

  What the hell does that mean?

  Flicking her arms at the young man like a farmwife shooing a chicken across the yard, she finally impels him back toward the bar. When the door has closed behind him, Nirina turns again to me. “I’m sorry. He … Well, you know how we are about family.”

  If I’ve learned one thing during my time in Madagascar, it’s the importance of family—the living, certainly, but especially the dead. The ancestors hover over the shoulder of every Malagasy, judging their every move against impenetrable layers of fady—taboo—formed by timeless custom into webs so complex that even the Malagasy can’t master their intricacies, leaving them unable to propitiate the silent but exigent dead. I once asked a Malagasy friend, a European-educated civil servant, how he knows when he has offended his ancestors. The friend replied, “Things go wrong.” In Madagascar, where so much has gone so wrong, the pervasive sense of melancholy owes no small part of its burden to the half-conscious realization that the endless demands of the ancestors prove that even death does not release the soul from the torments of life. Over the course of my two years here, I’ve come to understand why the Malagasy call their land the Island of Ghosts.