by Ward Just
“I went with a boy, brief time, a year or so before we met,” she said, pausing tilting her head, smiling privately, listening to the whish-whish of the hairbrush. “He was a boy from Connecticut. He had the strangest family. No one worked. One night after dinner his mother and I were alone in the study. We began to talk and she asked me how her son was in bed.” Elinor looked up, grinning; she hadn’t thought of the boy or his family in years. “What kind of lover he was,” she said. “Was he—was he ardent?”
Bill began to laugh.
“Well, you know, those days. We weren’t sleeping together. We were making out a little, you know, in cars. We were kids, teenagers.”
“I remember,” he said.
“Remember the Chevrolet?”
“Of course I remember the Chevrolet.”
“You’d better,” she said.
“What did you say to her?”
“I—” And Elinor faltered, turning away, her hair covering her face, the brush motionless. She reached for his hand in the silence and heat, turning toward him, her eyes bright; she took his hand, squeezing it, her eyes beginning now to patrol the big bedroom, the family pictures on the bureau and on the walls, as if by sheer force of eyesight she could summon the teenager, not the long-forgotten boyfriend but her own son. Did he have a girl? Did they neck in the back set of a car? Well, he was no longer a teenager but that was how she remembered him, a boy, not yet formed, not prepared for the world. Was he ardent? She had no idea. Probably he was. He burned in other ways; why not that way. She looked down at the bed closing her eyes.
He said gently, “El.”
“I don’t remember what I said to her, she was such a fool.” Elinor tried to nudge her memory back to that place, a large house on the Connecticut shore, the two of them alone in the study, the boy’s mother anxiously leaning over the coffee table, her own stunned surprise—and then it was gone, vanished in the silence of the present moment. “I think I was too shocked to say anything. Let’s forget it.”
He said, “All right.”
She gritted her teeth and looked at him helplessly. “Damn it.” Then, “Now you tell me about some episode. And make it funny, Bill.”
But memory did not work in that way, so those mornings when their son would arrive unbidden they would wait quietly together until he disappeared, as he always did; they knew he would disappear, as they knew he would return. They just didn’t know when.
In the mornings when he lifted the window, they heard the sound of birds and the occasional cough of a motorcycle. For a while it would be cooler outside than in. The power always failed around midnight, and toward dawn the refrigerated air would grow stale and humid. They lay in bed, feeling the warm breeze. He rolled over on his stomach and turned on the radio, the BBC World Service. Ba Owen tapped at their door and withdrew, leaving coffee and fresh fruit, and a flower in a fingerbowl, and The Boston Herald. The Herald arrived in bunches and was kept in the kitchen. Each morning, Ba Owen would select one and place it on their breakfast tray. The newspaper was damp in his hands and the ink stained his fingers. It did not matter that the news was weeks old; in Africa, a month was the blink of an eyelid. And the Herald did not contain news. It was colorful Boston propaganda, a long whine of complaint directed at Cambridge academics, welfare cheats, the proprietors of local sports franchises, phony docs, killer dogs, gay nuns. And it was as easy to read as a comic. Later, Elinor took it to the pool, where she read it as she floated on a red rubber mattress as the vultures circled overhead.
That was the morning. Some days, he couldn’t wait to get home from the office. A couple of times he faked headaches, it being unseemly for the ambassador to leave the office at three in the afternoon, setting a bad example for the junior officers. But he could not keep his mind on his work. He saw her sitting crosslegged on the bed, brushing her hair, watching him. He saw her delighted look, the half smile, the curve of her thigh. So he made an excuse, a headache, and went home at once, telling his driver to hurry it up, he was late for an appointment. He’d yell, I have a headache, and they’d tumble into bed. Then he realized that this embassy was not Moscow or Peking, or even Pretoria or Ottawa. This was a country at the nether end of Washington’s list of serious missions. Any business that needed doing could be done before noon.
In the morning, and again in the evening, they would swim in the pool. After thirty minutes in the water he would go to work at the embassy and she would move upstairs to her studio, if the power had been restored and the air conditioning was working; otherwise she would stay outside, setting up her easel in the shade of the big tree, unless it was so hot that her oils melted. There was always a reception or dinner at night. Once or twice a month they would have house guests, visitors from Washington, or a traveling foreign correspondent, occasionally a colleague from a neighboring country. The visitors brought gossip from the outside world.
That morning—the morning in question, the morning the Germans were due at the office—they swam together as usual. Then on impulse he went back into the house for a second pot of coffee. It was very hot on the terrace. When Bill brought the coffee tray to poolside, Elinor was out of the water, drying her hair with a towel. They sat on the edge of the pool, watching Ba Owen move in the shade of the large tree near the guest wing of the house, the wing that sheltered their visitors. Odd-looking tree, he could never remember its name; it resembled a linden, and that reminded him of Berlin. He started thinking about the Germans.
At the sound of a car in the street, they both looked up. The guard moved his head out of the sentry box at the end of the driveway. It was a British embassy Land-Rover, the minister on his way to the office. Through the shrubbery they recognized the color and the long whip aerial on the rear bumper. The guard left the sentry box and suddenly began waving his arms.
She said, “What’s he doing?”
He said, “I don’t know. Get inside.” He was already helping her out of the water, keeping himself between her and the guard twenty yards away. A woman appeared in the street, and they heard a high keening, a kind of wail. She was one of the lepers. The guard moved to cut her off, and force her back the way she had come, out of sight. The guard shouted at her but she did not move. Her face was shrouded with a red bandanna. She commenced to yaw, rocking from side to side, her face to the sky. The guard had his carbine at port arms, moving her away from the driveway. Ba Owen had slipped out from under the tree and had joined the guard, standing a little behind him. They were both shouting at the woman, Go back! She came from out there, the district away from embassy ghetto, across the golf course and railway tracks. She did not appear to hear them, but continued wailing. Bill and Elinor put on shirts and walked down the lawn. Elinor told the guard to stop, but he and Ba Owen had advanced into the street, moving the woman back. She stumbled backward, her fists moving from side to side. Her face was concealed, but one enormous bangle hung from an ear. Her face seemed to be misshapen. Bill called to her and she gathered her skirts and in a moment was gone, as quickly as she had come. The guard and Ba Owen stood watching her go. They were talking in low tones and shaking their heads. Then, to the white people, the guard said it was all right. She was gone now, back to her place, back there.
“What did she want?” Bill asked.
Ba Owen shook his head. He didn’t know.
“Did she want money?”
Ba Owen said no, he didn’t think so.
“Then what did she want?”
“She sometimes comes here. She evades the security.” He meant the police vans that patrolled embassy ghetto.
“Do you know her name?”
“She likes the flowers,” Ba Owen said. “She wanted to pick the flowers from the garden.” He solemnly pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger. The woman had been fetid, and surrounded with flies, huge bluebottles.
“Let her, then,” Elinor said.
Ba Owen shook his head firmly. “No, Mrs.” Then, to Bill, he spoke in rapid dialect, gesturing. He av
oided looking at Elinor. He said finally, “The woman is a leper.” He and the guard turned and strolled up the street to assure themselves that the woman was gone. The odor of her was still around them, clinging to the street and the shrubbery. Bill and Elinor walked back to the pool.
Elinor said, “What did he say to you?”
“Ba Owen says she has bad juju.”
She said, “I can’t get used to her wail. It’s unearthly. I’ve heard it before, but this is the first time I’ve seen her.”
Bill said, “She shouldn’t be here, in embassy ghetto.”
She looked at him archly. “Too exotic for our delicate sensibilities?”
He said, “No. This area is off-limits. Embassy ghetto is supposed to be secure.”
Elinor said, “The poor thing.”
“Ba Owen says she’s a witch. Powerful witchcraft. He advises us to be careful. She has bad juju.” He smiled. “She scares Ba Owen.”
Elinor snorted. She dipped her hands in the water and splashed some on her belly and thighs. She lowered herself into the water, pushed off, and floated on her back to the middle of the pool. The heat was rising, and the dense smell of Africa with it, overwhelming the chlorine in the water and the fume of the flowers. She floated on her back without moving her head. Bill watched her a moment, then said, “Kurt’s coming by today.”
She lifted her head, paddling slowly. “Here?”
“The office. But maybe I’ll bring him home for lunch, after. Would you like to lunch with Herr Kleust?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe I’ll bring him home with me, then.”
“All right.”
“He and some of his people are coming by this morning.” She moved her arms, sending little ripples over the surface of the water, looking at him steadily. He looked very tall, standing by the edge of the pool. “They didn’t say what it was about. But I think it’s Bill Jr. Something about Kurt’s manner.”
She scissored to where he was sitting and lifted herself out of the water, standing dripping at his side. “Call me when you leave the office, will you do that? I’ll plan lunch for three on the terrace. Do you really think so?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what Kurt said?”
“It’s just a feeling.”
“Bill—”
“That’s all I know.”
“But why in your office? Why doesn’t he just come here?”
“He has some people with him. Who knows? Maybe he wants to make it official.”
“Oh, God,” Elinor said.
He remembered leaving Elinor at the pool, dressing quickly, and driving to the embassy to read the overnight cable traffic: bulletins from the West. His DCM, Harry Erickson, had brought him the folder and now sat in the leather chair in the corner of the room, silent while the ambassador read. There was nothing new and he read swiftly, initialing each page. The last document was a transcript of the President’s latest press conference; loose questions, casual answers. It was the performance of a nimble public relations man. The ambassador scanned the cable for references to Africa; there were none. No surprises, Africa was low on everyone’s list, and the President had no interest in the continent; he had never been to Africa. His generals had never been to Africa either, so the region was the State Department’s problem. Of course it was no different in the Soviet Union. In his forty years as a foreign policy specialist, Andrei Gromyko had never been south of the Sahara. They knew nothing firsthand so naturally they saw the continent as an abstraction. The people in it were not real. This President and every President since Teddy Roosevelt saw Africa in the faces of her mzees, in their English suits or tribal robes; or in the fiction of Hemingway or Waugh; or from the films, America’s memory.
When he was done he rang for coffee and handed the folder across the desk to Harry.
Harry said, “God, he is a yo-yo.”
North looked at him. “Is that what you think?” Harry Erickson smiled and shrugged. “Well, he isn’t. He is a lot of things, but he isn’t that.”
“I’m entitled to my opinion. He’s the baas, I’ll go along with you there.” Harry looked at him, a suggestion of belligerence. “I thought, if you don’t mind, I’ll go upcountry today. There’s a ceremony in the north, I’d like to see it—”
“Go ahead,” North said.
“—tribal ceremonies.” He smiled. “Centuries-old customs. Weird rites. Fertility dances.”
“Go ahead, Harry.”
“Interior minister’s invited me. I thought I’d take Josh along, that’s right up his alley.” Josh Pafko was the station chief. Harry stood looking at him. “Alice is taking a trip. She and Jan are going to Salisbury. For the shopping.”
“Nairobi would be better.”
“Alice hates it here. She just hates it and feels she has to get away, to take a trip somewhere. Africa’s not her cup of tea. The atmosphere, she doesn’t like it. Of course she’s excited about this trip. They’ve been planning it for a while.”
“How long are they going to be away?” He was thinking about Kleust, due any minute.
“A week, she says,” Harry said. He stood tapping the file folder into his open palm. “Jan Francis is a cunt.”
North smiled, nodding. He wondered how many people Kleust would bring with him. Kleust liked to travel in groups, the more spear carriers the better.
“There’s nothing to be done about it,” Harry said. “Alice doesn’t travel well. She said she did, before we were married. She said that was what she liked about the Foreign Service, the travel. But she doesn’t like Africa.”
“I can try to hurry up your transfer.”
“The hell with it,” Harry said.
North rose and went to the window, and looked down into the embassy courtyard. He watched the guard rise slowly from his chair, his hands on his knees. He stood a moment, swaying in the heat, then walked slowly to the barrier, where a car waited, its engine idling. Waves of heat rose from the skin of the car. The barrier was a simple red-and-white-striped pole, comical to look at; it resembled an elongated barber’s pole. The guard, Benson, stepped over it, inspecting the flag that hung limply from the car’s left fender. He bent his head down as the driver’s window descended. He tipped his hat, then checked the clipboard, his finger moving ponderously down a list of names. And with a great smile, saluted and turned to raise the bar. It lifted easily. The Germans.
North said, “We have visitors.”
“It won’t do any good,” Harry said.
“I can talk to the under secretary.”
Harry shook his head.
“Alice—” North began.
“Alice can go to hell,” Harry said.
North watched the car float into the courtyard, a mirage. Benson slowly lowered the barrier and returned to his chair in the shade. He was smiling and fanning his face. Air conditioning in cars was a great thing.
North said, “Have you read the new security orders?”
“Sure. It’s all crap. Nothing ever happens here. But we have to do it.”
North turned from the window. The security division’s orders: an iron gate and ashcans filled with sand so that a car or truck would have to approach in a tight S-curve. No one could get into the curve until an embassy civilian checked papers. There were four marines, one at the entrance to the S-curve, two flanking the gate, a third out of sight in the guardhouse. Mines left and right, everyone armed. The ambassador’s office would be relocated at the rear of the building, next to the code room. Bulletproof glass, reinforced doors, a safe that would explode at the twist of a key. This was an order that confirmed the task force report, two years in the writing. Or was it three? In that time, two ambassadors had been kidnaped, and three killed. Threats were routine. How quaint it was now to read Kennan’s memoirs, his descriptions of wandering alone late at night through European cities, listening to café chatter, getting a feel of things in the streets. “It’s not crap,” he said.
Harry said, “All rig
ht, it’s not crap. But why don’t they give us combat pay?” He signed, and shifted direction. “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into. She doesn’t understand anything. She’s just a small-town girl.”
“Jan’s been out here a long time.”
Harry said, “She’s native. She’s slept with every man, woman, and child. And animal. I’ve heard she sleeps with animals. That’s the rumor.”
North watched the car doors open and three men hastily exit, hurrying across the asphalt to the embassy entrance. White men in white suits. It was only twenty yards but he knew they would be sweating by the time the Marine corporal opened the door to admit them. The flag of the BRD hung damp as a dishrag. Almost as damp as Harry Erickson, he thought.
He said to Harry, “I can arrange some leave, you and Alice, get away together—”
“There isn’t anything to be done about it.”
He saw the younger man’s reflection in the window glass, a slender, thin-lipped, thirtyish man, white short-sleeved shirt, blue cotton trousers, a shock of sandy hair; he had a tattoo on his forearm, an anchor. He did not look like a man who would have a tattoo. It was as incongruous on him as love beads would be on Averell Harriman. He and Alice, midwestern stoics; except she had begun to lose it. They were from a small town in Minnesota, the upper Midwest, the winters so cold steel would snap. For three years they had been trying to have a baby. They had been two years in Washington, two years in Morocco, a tour on a desk in the African bureau, and now here. Harry’s record was excellent. On paper, he was formidable.
“It’s easy for you to be cool about it, Bill. You’ve got Elinor. And I know you think I’m not fitting in and that’s why you want my transfer speeded up. But how is that going to look, wife trouble in Africa? They know how to read between the lines. The Department hates instability, and you can’t deny it.”
“I wouldn’t,” North said.
He tucked the file folder under his left arm and took a step to the door. “It’s Alice who needs the transfer, not me. She’s the one who’s fucked up.” He opened the door. “I want to do a good job, Bill. She’s never left Minnesota, that’s the problem. I don’t know what to do about Jan Francis. You know what Alice does all day?” He looked away, hesitating. He said, “Never mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.”