It’s nearly ten by the time I get into the office the next morning.
“Where have you been?” Cheryl calls as I come down the hall. “People have been looking for you all weekend. They even called me—as if you’d be at my house.”
I can’t think of a suitable reply.
“Isn’t it just beautiful out today?” she says, “Oh, did you know that Mr. Sackett just up and left Friday night?”
“No kidding.”
“But I’m glad all those police are gone from around the embassy. I didn’t like the way they looked at me.” She glances at her notepad. “Paul Esmer says the government finally put the hammer down over the weekend and the riots stopped.” Her eyes fall on my bandage. “What did you do to your hand?”
“Cut myself shaving.” She doesn’t laugh. “So, what’s in the papers today?”
“Oh, there’s a big story. In the Midi. Le Matin, too. They finally got that man who had been stealing kids. You’ll never guess who it was.”
It’s a page one, above-the-fold story in all the papers, complete with photos of both Andriamana and Picard. A few breathless paragraphs describe how the intrepid policeman cornered the monster who had abducted dozens of children. In curiously identical terms that carry a whiff of government prose, the stories relate how Captain Andriamana attempted to arrest the kidnapper, but the degenerate vazaha fired at Andriamana, striking him in the leg. Ignoring his own wounds, the policeman stood like a rock and fired back, killing the brute, earning the thanks of a grateful nation and marking himself for greater things.
There are a few more paragraphs, but I stop reading.
“And that Mr. Picard sounded so nice over the phone.” Cheryl shakes her head. “Oh, the DCM says you’re to go to the Ambassador’s office”
“Did he say why?”
“Some news he says he needs to break to you.” She lowers her notebook. “I hope your posting to Ouagadoodoo didn’t fall through.”
“Heaven forfend.”
I meet Gloria in the hallway. She’s been called into the meeting, too. I had expected it would be Trapp from Econ taking my place. He has the experience to fill in as political officer until my replacement arrives. I guess someone decided he has enough on his plate already. So it’ll be Gloria. The irony doesn’t amuse me.
Ambassador Herr sits behind her desk like a judge ready to hand down sentence. Pete Salvatore slumps in an armchair, his hands between his knees. Gloria and I take the sofa.
After a surprisingly warm welcome the Ambassador says, “As I’m sure you both know, we wish this weren’t happening. We took a stand on protecting an American citizen and accepted the risks. But having one of our officers declared persona non grata is just wrong.” She grits her teeth as if she can’t bear to go on.
I’d have thought that having me thrown out of the country would put her in a better mood.
“I got the call at home last night,” she continues. “The government of Madagascar will send over a Diplomatic Note this morning. Is that right, Pete?”
Her deputy nods.
She puts her hands flat on the desk. “Personally, I can’t tell you how much I regret this. The embassy is losing a fine officer, one of whom I’m personally fond.”
A valedictory is fine, but laying it on too thick robs it of even faked sincerity.
“Now, Robert, you already know most of the editors in town, yes?”
An odd question. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“And I think you know Gloria’s staff pretty well.”
“Yes, ma’am. But what’s that got to do with me getting PNG’d?”
Ambassador Herr looks at Pete Salvatore. “They just now got to the embassy,” he says to her, then turns to me. “It’s Gloria.”
After the trials of the last few days, my shock absorbers are wrecked and I can’t take it in. “What?”
“It’s Gloria. She’s the one they’re throwing out.”
Gloria looks at me, then the Ambassador. “Me?”
Ambassador Herr takes a breath. “The Malagasy government has made some trumped-up charge.” She casts a baleful look at me. “They’re saying that the events leading to Mr. Sackett’s escape were precipitated by the story about the burglars. And they claim Gloria was the source of that story, when we know it was you, Robert. And they say that she helped a Malagasy criminal escape from prison. It’s all … all so …” She gropes for the word. “… mendacious. But they claim they can back it up with witnesses, whom they’ve no doubt coerced into saying whatever they’re told.”
Pete gives us the details. The Malagasy government is giving Gloria seventy-two hours to leave the country. The embassy has already communicated with Washington. The Department will lodge a protest with the Malagasy embassy and consider expelling a Malagasy diplomat in return. Other than that, there isn’t much we can do.
The Ambassador adds that Gloria needn’t worry about what this might do to her career. She’ll be fine.
Like someone who has been told of a terminal illness, Gloria looks from one to the other of us. “If I’m going to be so fine, why do I feel so bad?”
The mystery of Walt’s whereabouts is resolved that afternoon when a cable comes from the tiny American embassy in Mauritius, stating that a man claiming to be an American citizen has turned up on the doorstep with a young Malagasy woman whose relationship to him is unclear. They say they want to go the United States as quickly as possible. Neither has any identification, baggage, or money. The little embassy’s perplexity rises like fog from the brief cable, which concludes with a pathetic plea to “Please advise.”
Lynn sits in my office, pen in hand, waiting for me to give her some notes for the cable to Mauritius she’s been tasked with writing. I run my hands through my hair. “Well, I guess you can tell them that Walt’s an American citizen who escaped imprisonment here—from jail or from the embassy, however you think it plays best.”
She eyes me for a long time. “You had something to do with their escape. I’d bet my mortgage on it. And that’s why you disappeared over the weekend.”
“How much do you really want to know?”
“I haven’t decided yet. And would you tell it to me straight if I asked?”
“I’ve never been rich enough, good-looking enough, or smart enough to stick to the truth.”
The admin officer leans back in her chair and puts her pen down. “I’m not out to get you, Robert. That’s going to be someone else’s job. I want a lot of things for you. I want to see you kicked out of the foreign service. I want to slap you in the face. I want to see that you’re not hurt. I want to take you to bed.”
“But you’re not going to do any of those things.”
“Probably only one of them.”
“Who gets to pick?”
She sighs. What a trial I must be.
“What do we tell them about the girl, Nirina?” she asks.
“Tell them that if they send her back here she faces imprisonment for helping an American citizen escape persecution. The USG should consider allowing her asylum in the United States.”
“Just remember that you can’t ask for the same thing for yourself. Everyone’s tired of your act, Robert. Shape up, or you’re going to be the next one out of here, and it will be the Ambassador who throws you out, not the Malagasy.”
With that, she gets up to leave. Halfway across the room she relents and smiles back at me. “Hey, come here,” she says.
When I get within arm’s reach, she slaps me in the face.
Suspicions of misconduct swirl around my head throughout the following days, all the stronger for remaining unproven. I come up with a story of going down to Antsirabe for the weekend. No one can prove me a liar, but no one buys it and I’m cast once more into professional darkness. My phone has stopped ringing and no one comes by my office. Only Cheryl has anything to say to me, and then mostly to regret Gloria’s departure, saying from time to time, “She doesn’t deserve this.” I don’t miss the unstated implication t
hat I do.
These lamentations hit a peak when, just before the close of business, Gloria stops by.
After Cheryl has finished making a fuss over her, I look up from the crossword in the International New York Times.
“I came by to say goodbye,” she says.
“You may be the last person on earth still speaking to me,” I tell her.
“I noticed there wasn’t a line down the hall congratulating you on your great weekend.” She leans in the doorway regarding me with a half-smile that suggests equal parts dejection and self-assurance.
If in very short order you take up your first major post, fall in love, decide to keep a dark secret from the embassy, and then get booted out of the country, maybe you gain a stronger sense of yourself.
She tells me, “I’m leaving tonight. I don’t need seventy-two hours to pack out. You’ve seen my place. I never really unpacked. I’ll be in Washington by tomorrow morning.”
“Do yourself a favor. This time stay the night in Paris on the way. It’s within the regs. Take yourself out to dinner or something.”
She smiles and gives me that assertive nod of hers. “Maybe I will.”
As she starts to go, I call after her. “Hey.”
She turns in the doorway.
“Tell Annibal to just meet you at the airport. I’ll drive you out.”
25
As I get out of the car, Gloria waddles out her front door, an overloaded bag in each hand. She ignores my offer to help and makes it halfway down the walk before Speedy comes out of the house and silently holds out his hands to her. She looks into his eyes and sets the bags down. He picks them up. The everyday transaction holds an intimacy that makes me feel as if I should turn my head.
Speedy throws the bags in the trunk then comes back to Gloria, who is standing by the open car door. Watching her face closely, he puts his arms around her and kisses her briefly on the mouth. Gloria leans into him and kisses him twice, lightly, like a chicken picking at seed.
Emotionally exhausted, they both take a step back.
She speaks quietly. “The police will still be looking for you, Dokoby. You have to leave town as soon as you can.”
“I have an uncle in Toliara, in the south. They’ll never look for me there.”
“Okay.” Her eyes stay on his and she lays a hand on his shoulder. “Goodbye, Dokoby.”
“Goodbye, Gloria.”
Her eyes never leave him as she eases into the car like a sleepwalker.
As I drive away, Speedy spreads his arms wide and shouts, “One day, when you come back as ambassador, I will show you all of Madagascar!”
Annibal opens Gloria’s door when we pull up to the terminal. “Good evening, Miss Burriss.”
The air is thick with bus fumes and honking horns. Crowds of passengers and well-wishers flow like water around the piles of suitcases and cardboard boxes that fill the sidewalks.
Gloria takes a breath and clasps her hands in front of her. She suddenly looks very young and very small and I admire the hell out of her.
“So, what happens next in the ‘Exciting Adventures of Gloria Burris, Girl Diplomat?’” I ask.
She smiles and gives a little jump. “Oh, I didn’t tell you. I got a call at the house just before you came up. The Department’s found a post for me. In Geneva.”
“Geneva.” I have to laugh. Twenty-four years in the foreign service and the closest I’ll ever get to Geneva is a bar of Swiss chocolate. “You sure you’ll be able to bear clean streets and phones that work?”
She looks around as if searching for the answer in the crowds of travelers in their brightly colored clothes, in the mellifluous and difficult language, in their very foreignness—and in hers. “I was so sure I wouldn’t miss any of this. Now I’m sure I will.”
I understand. She’s fated for bigger things, tours in the great capitals of Europe and Asia, postings to the UN, policy positions in Washington. She might never again see anything like this.
Like a guy squinting through someone else’s eyeglasses, I look around, trying to see all of it as a newcomer might, as something fresh and wonderfully strange, vibrating with possibilities all the more enticing for lying just beyond understanding. But I can’t hold the sense of wonder I lost long ago. My years in Africa have robbed the scene of its novelty, of its ferment, the sense of community, the honest striving of a people not yet lost in empty individualism—still citizens, not consumers. For me, the novelty has been squeezed to death in the coils of the everyday. It’s the United States that now seems to me like a strange and distant land.
With the end of my career only a couple of years off, I wonder if I’ll ever accustom myself to my own country. Maybe I’d be better off doing as a few of my colleagues have done and find a large house in Zambia or Botswana, one I could never afford in the United States, hire a few servants, take up drinking again and live out my days in Africa, unable to go home, or, more truly, having no home. Just like Picard, but on the right side of the law.
I feel Gloria’s eyes on me.
“You know,” I say, “I’ve been thinking of this place as the end of the line for so long it never occurred to me that it could be the beginning.”
She gazes at the scene a little longer, and with a perky tilt of her chin, says, “Maybe we’ll get to serve together again.”
Only a couple of years in the service and she’s already picked up the clichés. The stated wish to serve together again is the most gracious way to say goodbye.
I shoulder my role in this little scene and deliver my lines with an easy naturalness. “When you make ambassador, pluck me out of whatever hole I’m living in and make me your DCM.”
“Count on it.” Gloria searches the crowds. “No photographer on the way out, I guess.”
“Sic transit Gloria.”
She holds out her hand as she had on the day she arrived, all business again. “Goodbye, Robert.”
I shake her hand and nod toward the entrance. “You don’t want me to come in with you?”
“No. Annibal knows how to see me through.”
So, she’s learned that too.
I drive through the open gate, acknowledging Monsieur Razafy’s enigmatic tilt of the chin, the tug at the hat. Dinner will be waiting for me on the table.
The universe has been restored to its comforting order, though I continue to flounder within it. But, hey, I’m still alive, which is at least a start toward something new, something maybe a little bit better—if I’m willing to make it happen.
Rather than go inside, I stroll into the back yard, taking the evening air. I wonder if Bobby the Chameleon, securely hidden behind a bush or a rock, is watching me as I walk across the lawn toward the metal door in the garden wall.
As I pull open the door for the first time, it cries on its unoiled hinges like a newborn child. I walk toward the knoll and the tree that has always seemed to me the essence of the island’s unknowable nature. It’s closer to my place than I had imagined.
Under the rising moon I can see the rice paddies beyond the knoll and the purple line of distant hills that lay between Antananarivo and the coast.
I’ve seen it all so many times, yet I know it so little, have never allowed it to touch me. I’ve resisted Madagascar at every turn, cursed it, despised it, never understanding I was really cursing and despising myself. I need to reconcile myself to my own life. Once I do that, I can do anything.
I lay my hands on the strangely formed tree. Its texture is surprisingly soft. Yes, I’m sure it’s my spirit tree and its roots go all the way to the center of the earth.
Up close, it appears more beautiful and less alien than I imagined, surprisingly like an evergreen. Timeless.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every book is a group effort. I want to thank my old friend and colleague from Madagascar, Annie Rajao for her help. My gratitude goes also to Virginia Kincaid and Patricia Alston for their sharp-eyed editing suggestions, to Veryl Behrens for his knowledge of firearms, an
d, as always, to my wife, Felicia, for her advice and support. Thanks, too, to my agent, Kimberley Cameron, and to all the good people at Blank Slate Press and Amphorae Publishing, including Kristina Blank Makansi and Lisa Miller. And my gratitude to J. David Ivester for his work on publicity and for his encouragement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native Oregonian and current Portland resident, Stephen Holgate served for two years as a diplomat with the American Embassy in Madagascar. In addition to his other Foreign Service posts, Mr. Holgate has served as a Congressional staffer; headed a committee staff of the Oregon State Senate; managed two electoral campaigns; acted with the national tour of an improvisational theater group; worked as a crew member of a barge on the canals of France; and lived in a tent while working as a gardener in Malibu.
Holgate has also published several short stories and successfully produced a one-man play, as well as publishing innumerable freelance articles. Also the author of Tangier, Madagascar is his second novel.
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