The American Ambassador

by Ward Just

  Photographs of them together in Cape Town, Madrid, Venice, Berlin (the Wall), and at the summit of Kilimanjaro (Elinor pointing to a pile of bones and insisting that it was the carcass of Hemingway’s leopard). And at the rear, partly obscured by Venice and Berlin, Elinor's sketch of Bill Jr. on the deck (in the background, through the windows, the attentive observer could see the table with the photographs in silver frames). Standing in the kitchen, he could not see Elinor’s sketch. He could not see any of the pictures clearly, but he remembered them, each detail, and their locations on the table. The sketch was made on the deck late on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Bill Jr. at seventeen, tall and muscular, clad in chinos and a plain white T-shirt, an austere presence. Any stranger would have thought him sullen. His hands were tucked in his rear pockets, his eyes concealed behind dark glasses. He wore no shoes.

  The ambassador stepped around the counter and padded across the living room to peer closely at the photograph of him and Elinor with LBJ. Dunphy had gone on to become a private lawyer, exactly as he had promised. He was a lawyer who went in and out of government, often as special counsel to congressional committees, famous for his scowl, his sarcasm, and his contempt for academics and bureaucrats, anyone unfamiliar with elections, and the whims of the voters.

  Lawyers, journalists, politicians, diplomats; Washington characters. The ambassador had spent his entire adult life in the milieu of government. On the wall above the table was a drawing of Lincoln, artist unknown, a present from Elinor. In a few decisive strokes the artist had managed to assemble a face broken by remorse. When he looked at the drawing of Lincoln’s face, he always thought of the words from the Second Inaugural: . . . as God gives us to see the right. And if God was misinterpreted?

  It was a face from which all happiness had been erased.

  He massaged his hand.

  Now he was on the deck. The night was balmy and the Sound restless under a crescent moon, empty of boats. He was startled when the cat suddenly appeared, jumping from the lawn to the railing of the deck and then to his feet, where she rubbed her black body against his ankles. She was still agitated by the memory of the surly southwest wind, the pressure causing her to dart nervously here and there in the house. She spent the nights outside, searching for rodents. He had heard once that a cat’s memory was but twenty minutes long, but that could not be true. This cat had an elephant’s memory, though she was old, lame, and no longer frisky. He wondered if she remembered Bill Jr. But of course she would, he listened to her purr while he lit a cigarette, looking at the lighthouse, squinting into the darkness, calculating the intervals.

  BLINK onethousandandone onethousandandtwo onethousandandthree BLINK

  Regular as heartbeat.

  That dreadful week in 1975—Bill Jr. at seventeen, suspended from school. They were on a month’s home leave. Bill Jr. had been standing there, by the wrought-iron table. Dishes and glasses littered the table; it was a beautiful Sunday in May, and they had taken lunch on the deck. They had been arguing. The argument had begun at lunch and continued into the afternoon, Elinor sitting quietly, sketching, occasionally putting in two cents’ worth. He had been trying to explain to his son the consequences of life inside the government, life below decks on the ship of state, the oath of office, your promise to defend the Constitution. How abstract it could seem, yet how grave; it was very abstract and very grave when you were working in countries that had no constitution. Bill Jr. had asked him about the coup, now twelve years old, in the newspapers again that morning. A journalist had been given some documents, and obtained others under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, and the hack’s interpretation of them, were causing a minor scandal. He explained the coup, and how they in the embassy had stopped it. A liberal interpretation of his oath of office, he admitted, since the United States Constitution was not threatened. United States interests were, he admitted; but that was not quite the same thing.

  We made various threats and spent some money, he said.

  Well then, Bill Jr. said, they failed.

  With our help, he said.

  You had that much power?

  Yes. And they didn’t want it badly enough.

  And you did?

  Yes, we did.

  How does it look to you now, that decision?

  He remembered turning, exasperated. What did he think, that they had never replayed that? Did he think it was forgotten? Did he think they needed some wire-service hack to tell them what they had done, and how they had done it, and the results? One of the results was three weeks in a German missionary’s hospital. The newspaper stories were shapely, giving the event the quality of an old film, early Hitchcock or middle Bogart, making visible the creaking machinery of plot, and the hand of the auteur, very grainy, the dialogue enchanting.

  I came to Casablanca for the waters, Rick said.

  There are no waters in Casablanca.

  Rick said, I was misinformed.

  They stood glaring at each other, father and son, in the unseasonable spring heat. Of course the argument had nothing to do with the Constitution or diplomacy or the coup in the famished African nation. It was a surrogate argument having to do with—citizenship, Bill Jr.’s suspension from school, the headmaster’s telephone call preceding the boy’s arrival by a day. Bill Jr. was being “sent down” (the headmaster’s mid-Atlantic locution) for a week, the week being arbitrary, there being no precedent for the offense in the school’s 134-year history. Or at least as far as any faculty member’s memory reached. It was very disturbing. An instructor had been badly beaten by a student, a senior, a, ah, troubled youngster, who had been in trouble for most of the year, had in fact been on multiple warning. His name was Mel Crown and he was Bill Jr.’s roommate. Mel Crown had grown up in a difficult environment, an environment entirely at odds with the school’s stately brick buildings and lawns, and New England discipline. That was the key. The boy, Mel, was undisciplined and angry, always acting out, and that was understandable, given the family background. There was no father in the home. The mother worked. He’s been fired, expelled, needless to say—

  Yes, the ambassador had said, exactly what was it that happened?

  Mel Crown and Bill Jr. had been out after hours, we don’t know where. Probably visiting one of the girls’ dorms, though we can’t prove that. The faculty member was coming home from a function. It was just after midnight. Apparently there had been a dispute in class that morning. Both Bill and the other boy were in his class, and there had been a contretemps. We still can’t sort out the facts. But when the boys saw the instructor, words were exchanged. Mel started shouting, and then attacked him. He gave him a vicious beating, just vicious. The poor fellow’s still in the hospital. He’s a middle-aged English teacher, very popular. He’s not in the best of condition, though he’ll be all right, apparently. The headmaster sighed, and was silent.

  He said, Where was Bill Jr. in all this?

  Bill Jr. didn’t do anything, the headmaster said. Then, fearing misinterpretation, he repeated himself: Bill Jr. didn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t do anything to encourage it, either. He just watched. He was a spectator. Thank God the campus police happened along, and broke it up.

  What was the instructor’s name?

  Frank Horner, the headmaster said. Of course, everyone calls him Jack.

  He’ll be all right?

  The doctors say he will. He’s got a concussion, bruises, cuts, a broken finger. Mel Crown is a big boy, very strong, very, very tough. He’s a boy from the streets of New York.

  He said, I don’t know what to say.

  I don’t either, Mr. North, the headmaster said. As you know, Bill Jr. has been an excellent student, one of our best. A quiet, withdrawn sort of boy. Not very many friends, and he has that caustic side to his personality. He’s got quite a sharp tongue. But he’s never been in trouble.

  What did he say when you asked him why he didn’t do anything? I assume you asked him.


  Yes, naturally. It’s all a bit vague. He said it wasn’t his fight. At the disciplinary hearing, he defended Mel, described the . . . he called it abuse of Mel by the instructor that morning in the classroom. He said there was no power on earth that could have stopped Mel Crown, and that somehow it would have been demeaning to try. I have the feeling that Bill Jr. thought Jack got what he deserved.

  And what did Horner say about it?

  Of course he’s still in the hospital, and understandably reluctant to—go over it again and again. He did say that Bill Jr. did not take part, and was not responsible for what happened.

  He said, I’m appalled.

  Yes, Mr. North. So are we. It’s good that there’s only a month left this term, and Bill Jr. will be allowed to graduate. But it’s our opinion that he needs help from someone. You or your wife, or a professional. It was a very bad episode.

  And his demeanor?

  Cold, Mr. North. Cold as ice.

  No regrets?

  None that we could find. None that he expressed.

  It had always been difficult to see Bill Jr. in full light, undressed, in the round. You got the side he wanted you to have, and the rest was always in shadow. His instructors found him an excellent student, conscientious, thorough, subtle—perhaps a bit mechanical in his approach to the liberal arts, particularly literature and politics. He brushed aside compliments, insisting that schoolwork was easy for anyone with an excellent memory. Until the incident with Mel Crown, he had never been in difficulty with the authorities, yet he was quick to say that he found their rules and regulations “unfair” and “stupid,” the discipline of the tyrant. Discipline, most underrated of virtues, rose from within. It was an individual response to pressure. That night on the school common, Horner had asked for it; and had gotten it. Mel Crown fought his own battles and did not want or need interference. In any case, he would always have to fight alone and unaided. Everyone did, that was obvious. And what about the victim? North asked. The middle-aged English instructor, unlucky enough to be walking across the campus late at night. Well, the boy said, he too was obliged to fight his own battles. And this time he lost. As you have said so often, he didn’t want it badly enough. That must have been the reason. Isn’t that why one side loses? That they don’t want it badly enough? Isn’t that your theory?

  As they stood on the deck that afternoon, facing each other, Elinor looking on, he remembered feeling a chill. He thought it was a sudden breeze, but it wasn’t that at all. It was the look on his son’s face. He was afraid of whatever it was that this boy wanted so badly, he with his mechanical approach and excellent memory, and inner discipline. North understood what Horner felt, the two boys approaching him—the taunts, the shouted words, and Mel Crown’s blows, heavy as hammers. And Bill Jr., the silent spectator, the watchman.

  He remembered Elinor quickly completing the sketch, and handing it to Bill Jr. He took it without looking at it; he was waiting for an answer to his question. How does it look to you now, that decision? The boy’s face was frozen, without expression. Its expressionlessness suggested fury, a fathomless anger without object or definition; without face. When Elinor said, “It’s a sketch of you,” the words seemed as loud as the bang of a door. Bill Jr. put the sketch on the railing of the deck and moved off into the house. Presently they heard the car’s engine in the driveway, and the crunch of gravel. Elinor had turned to her husband with a sardonic, inquisitive expression. What did I do? Or fail to do?

  It wasn’t you, he had said. It was me.

  Yes, she said. Politics.

  Not politics, he had said. Me.

  Dummy, she said. It’s the same thing to him.

  It was all the same thing, one long abrasive conversation: Africa, the coup, Mel Crown, Jack Horner, a single incident played out against that warm first week in May 1975, and when at last the boy left to return to school, Bill and Elinor began to quarrel—about money, modern art, the meaning of Watergate, the price of eggs. It took them days to get back to normal. He wondered if their reckless son united them, in the way that Arabs united Israelis. Was that what he was, a common enemy?

  No, not that. He was a stranger in their midst, the mutinous victim of an army of occupation. They were the invaders, conquerors of his territory. He behaved correctly, with circumspection, giving no more than was required to avoid punishment. Yet they knew that when their backs were turned, when he was out of their sight, he was another person. His character eluded them. Even his looks seemed to change from day to day, a fact the boy recognized. Elinor’s sketch was a violation of his fierce privacy, his shadowy secret self. Lucky Elinor, she was able somehow to move around him, retreating into her own work, her art. She refused to salute. And the boy did not find her responsible, did not find her guilty, an enemy of the people—or, anyway, his enemy. She was more nuisance than enemy. She was an accessory. All sons were judges, but this one was a hanging judge.

  The cat moved against his leg, and he reached down again to gently pull its tail. He leaned against the railing and took a deep breath, forcibly removing himself from the past to the present. He had to concentrate to do it. He flipped the cigarette onto the lawn, then lifted himself off the deck, putting most of his weight on his right hand. Arms stiff, he swung free in the night air, his feet an inch off the deck. The wind was from the west, a sleepy zephyr, so light it barely moved the smoke from the cigarette guttering on the lawn. Still, it caressed and consoled him; it brought a hint of land. It was like a melody, easy to follow, elevating him into the soft darkness.

  He let himself down with a thump. He had left his glasses inside and so his eyes glazed, looking at the lights across the Sound, Falmouth and Woods Hole, the lights blurred and erratic around the edges. He smelled the sea, so tart and adventurous, teeming with life under its still skin. It was how he felt about Africa, alive with heartbeats. West, beyond the Elizabeth Islands, was the sullen glow of the lights of New Bedford, the port of embarkation for Melville’s obsessed whalers, setting sail into the future, the ocean as life itself, terrible in its torment, angelic in its calm. Beneath the surface, things were always in motion. He smiled in the darkness, looking again at his dead hand, inanimate as Ahab’s false leg.

  North raised his eyes to the stars, squinting; but he could see no stars, only the fragments of nervous light inside his own astigmatic retina. He guessed that at age fifty a man should be able to navigate by his own lights, with personal charts from a lifetime of experience, a diplomat’s intimate knowledge of the world: making choices and then living with the consequences. Of course there was never a single lesson, and nothing discrete. Things flowed into each other, the end of one thing the beginning of another. You tried to look into the future but the future receded, as a shoreline recedes astern, the outline of it always in sight. You could locate yourself only with reference to the shoreline, so it was important to keep it in view; and you were satisfied with anything that lasted from today to tomorrow, durable for a single circuit of the earth around the sun. He tapped a little riff on the wooden railing, leaning forward, peering into the darkness, squinting again.

  He had known the last five Presidents, known them as Presidents, not as men; he had no idea what they were like as men. They hadn’t known him except as a vague name behind a familiar title, a man with some special knowledge and responsibility, experience in the field. He was known as a field man, uncomfortable in the Department. Oh, yes, uh, North, good to see you again. In the meetings in the Oval Office he had spoken only when spoken to; on more than one occasion, he had not spoken at all. The senior men conversed in a kind of code, and it took a moment to decipher. The code differed with the President and the occasion; one President liked the language of sports, another of the battlefield, still another of family life. They usually spoke slowly and softly, and with deft humor; no one raised his voice. This was a way of preparing a line of retreat, postponing a decision, always protecting their political interests without seeming to do so. A transcript would have been
misleading. You had to hear the emphasis, where the commas went, where the laughs were; what the faces looked like, and who looked at whom, and when; and in the pauses and the silences there was always ambiguity and nuance, except when the professors were speaking. The professors had a zealot’s faith in history and its lessons, and confidence that it—“it,” they thought of history as a neutral hard science, like physics before Einstein—repeated itself in predictable ways.