Junket

I TOLD THE NEWFOUNDLAND people that Valdmanis was so highly qualified that I was going to pay him more than three times what I paid myself. I was making about seven thousand dollars a year; Valdmanis I would pay twenty-five thousand.

Valdmanis was a Latvian economist with an obscure past who gave everyone he met a different version of his life story. He told me that as a schoolboy, he was recruited into some sort of elite education corps whose purpose was to turn out the future leaders of Latvia; that during the war he had been a leader of his country’s resistance movement; that sometime between leaving Latvia and coming to Canada, he had been given the highest award the Swedish government could give, the Stella Polaris.

Though rumours flew about that his doctorate was self-conferred; that he had not received the Stella Polaris but some citation that could be had from the Swedish government for the equivalent of box-tops; that far from leading his country’s resistance movement, he had been a Nazi collaborator or quisling during the war, I said I had not the slightest doubt that Valdmanis was the real thing, “a man of honour.”

Valdmanis gave himself the title of director general of economic development, telling me that it would “impress the Europeans.”

I picked him up at the airport myself in the Chrysler Imperial my cabinet insisted I own and drive, as it was more befitting a premier than my battered Dodge, which I had hated to part with.

He was about five foot seven, slightly, compactly built, with a full head of tightly curled black hair, a very high forehead and intense green eyes. His most distinctive physical characteristic was one he brought to my attention, floating irises, he called it, explaining, only hours after we had first met, what he meant by this.

“In most people,” he said, bringing his face to within about six inches of mine so I could get a better look, “the iris” — he pointed, all but touched his eye with his forefinger — “the coloured part of the eye, extends from the upper eyelid to the lower eyelid. In a person with floating irises, people who generally have larger than usual eyes, the iris does not extend all the way to the lids, a portion of the eyeball is visible above and below the iris, so the iris appears to be, and is said to be, ‘floating.’ Only about 2 per cent of the population have floating irises.”

The effect of his floating irises, as I had no doubt he knew, was to focus his stare, to give you the impression that you were being looked at from behind his eyes, as though through a pair of peepholes.

“Where are your wife and children?” I said.

“They’re staying in Montreal for the time being,” he said. “The children have travelled a lot. My wife doesn’t think I’ll last more than a few months in Newfoundland because of what she’s heard about the weather. Once she sees that I’m here to stay, she and the children will join me.” It seemed odd to me that a wife and mother would base such an important decision on weather rumours, but I said nothing.

He quickly took my measure, I suppose, and the measure of Newfoundland — its historical measure, that is. I saw this and did not mind. Perhaps he had some charm or charisma he could turn on or off at will, for though I was greatly taken with him, it soon became clear that my ministers were not. He affected with them a humility and courtesy whose insincerity was meant to be transparent, to offend. He referred to each of them as “your excellency” and whenever he met them bowed in what to me seemed a playfully unctuous manner, like a send-up of some Old World court tradition.

Perhaps, to others, his flattery of me, his devotion to me, was just as transparently insincere. To me, it was as if he believed it was merely a happy coincidence that the one man of real ability in Newfoundland happened to be the man in charge, the elected leader. I convinced myself that it was because of my ability, not because of my office and power, that he took to me.

His belittlement of others I took as an indirect compliment. I thought his contempt of so many demonstrated, not arrogance, but high standards and discriminating judgment, and I was flattered that he should be so impressed with me.

I saw Valdmanis as a kindred spirit together with whom I could accomplish more than I could with all the members of my Cabinet. I also saw him as harmless. He was an outsider and so would never be a political rival.

Five minutes after we met, he said he believed that in Newfoundland, he had found his “spiritual home.” I did not think this was insincere, because I could not imagine that anyone would try in so guileless a manner to curry favour.

Perhaps what appealed to me most about him was that he seemed not only so lonely, but also isolated, enisled, as if the world within which he had been designed to excel had ceased to exist or had never come about in the first place. Enisled.

We were no less enisled for having joined Canada, not yet, at least. Perhaps that is why it seemed to me that Newfoundland, this world apart, was just the place for Valdmanis, and he for it. Enisled, a Newfoundlander by predilection if not by birth.

In his first few months in Newfoundland, he revealed his social and cultural talents one by one until it seemed he would never run out of ways of surprising us. At a Christmas party, he sang Christmas carols in what was obviously a trained voice. A month later, at a Government House ball, he waltzed about the floor, as if their feet were melded to his, women who had no more idea than I did how to waltz. He was a multi-linguist who charmed visitors from other countries by conversing with them in their language while the rest of us stood by in open-mouthed, astonished silence. He played half a dozen musical instruments — the piano, the violin, the flute — flawlessly. But the question was always, faintly comically, what for? For he seemed to take no pleasure in his talents, seemed more to be saddled with them than anything else.

It was at the suggestion of Valdmanis that I switched tactics where Fielding was concerned. Unlike my Cabinet ministers, he did not try to convince me of her insignificance or recommend that I ignore her. He assured me that I was right in thinking that her criticisms of me must somehow be “neutralized.”

He urged me to invite her to travel with us, at government expense. She would, if she agreed, join Valdmanis and me and our retinue of civil servants as we travelled throughout the countries of Europe on what I called, when I announced it to the press, a trade mission, the purpose of which would be to entice “world-class investors” to Newfoundland.

“What would be the point?” I said. “If you think Fielding is going to tone down her attacks on us in exchange for a trip abroad —”

“I want to get to know Miss Fielding,” Valdmanis said. “I cannot think of any other way of contriving to spend time with her than to invite her on such a trip.”

“She’ll write about everything we do,” I said.

Valdmanis shrugged. “She’ll write about us if she comes along or not.”

In the end I agreed, though I foresaw a fiasco. Valdmanis told me how I should extend the invitation. I rang Fielding up on the telephone.

“We want you to come along with us, Fielding,” I said. “We want you to see just how hard we work. Once you get to know Dr. Valdmanis and see close up what he is trying to do on behalf of Newfoundland, once you see the sort of obstacles that we are up against, once you have a feel for what it is really like to be a leader a premier, a politician, I believe you will see us both in a different light.”

“Smallwood, tell me something,” she said, “aren’t you at all worried by how eager all these people of his seem to be to ‘invest’ in Newfoundland?” (There had been a piece in the Daily News about the scores of potential investors Valdmanis had arranged for us to meet.)

“Not a bit,” I said. “After all, you don’t say no to Santa Claus.”

“And you want me to come along so that once I see how hard it is to run a province, FU become a more — what? — a more responsible reporter? Come on, Smallwood, what’s this really all about? I’m not going to mysteriously disappear on this trip or something, am I?”

I laughed. In the end, unable, I suppose, to resist finding out what our ulterior motive might be, she accepted our invitation.

I announced it at the junket press conference as a kind of coup. “Would I invite Miss Fielding along,” I said, “Miss Fielding of all people, if, as the leader of the opposition claims, I had something to hide?”

“It will be interesting to see,” one Telegram reader wrote in a letter to the editor a few days later, “if after being wined and dined and God knows what else for a month throughout the principalities of Europe, our Miss Fielding will ever be the same.”

We flew to London and gathered ourselves there for a tour of the major European cities at the rate of two or three a week. We spent our days in offices and factories and our evenings at the opera, the ballet, the theatre, after which we were wined and dined by people who, in Valdmanis’s obscure former life, had been, as he described them, “associates” of his. Wherever he took us, he seemed not only to know everyone but also to be held in high esteem. “What do you expect?” Fielding said. “If you were showing visitors around Newfoundland, how many Catholics would you introduce them to?”

Fielding’s columns ran daily throughout this month-long junket, filed one day from London, the next from Paris, the next from Hamburg. By three days into the trip, I was receiving word about the columns Fielding was filing, which were appearing in the Telegram back home. She knew I knew about her columns, but I pretended to think that she would eventually come round.

We let her accompany us almost everywhere we went, Valdmanis acting as if he thought the sheer splendour and luxury of her surroundings would win her over.

“I want her to think that this is our strategy,” he said. As for me, I was as interested as Fielding to know what our ulterior motive might be, but whenever I questioned Valdmanis, all he said was that he merely wanted “to get to know” Fielding, and that to do so would take time.

Valdmanis, using his old diplomatic contacts, got us a brief audience with Pope Pius XII at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s “home away from Rome,” as Fielding called it in her column. I kept looking at Fielding to see if she was suitably impressed — I was starting to think we really had brought her along in the hopes of winning her over to our side.

I introduced her. “Your Holiness,” I said, “this is Miss Fielding, a prominent journalist in Newfoundland. She writes for the Evening Telegram, one of the great small newspapers in the world.” My God, Fielding’s expression seemed to say as she looked at me, why don’t you just have me killed if it means that much to you to shut me up? I was surprised myself that I did not choke on the words.

I had with me a suitcase full of prayer beads and holy medals, which Valdmanis had bought in shops near the Vatican, and the pope agreed to bless them after I told him of my plan to distribute them to Catholics back home.

“He plans to hand them out with pictures of himself in Catholic ridings in the next election,” Fielding said. The pope smiled, assuming, I suppose, that she was joking, though that was exactly what I planned to do. I felt myself blushing deep red and I tried to smile as if I too thought it was a joke. Valdmanis remained expressionless, as if Vatican protocol forbade levity in the presence of the pope, which for all I know it did.

Valdmanis was especially well-connected in Germany, where we spent two full weeks, but that, I told myself, was only natural, since, by his own admission, he had spent most of the war there, where he had been sent, as he put it, for “defying the Nazis” while in German-occupied Latvia.

This, I knew, was not the whole truth. He had been chief public prosecutor and director-general of justice in occupied Latvia. He assured me his duties had not entailed what such titles might lead one to believe.

On Valdmanis’s instructions, I frequently pointed out to the Germans that their country was much like Newfoundland, in a state of transition and rebuilding, and I told them they had better rebuild it fast before they were overrun by the Communists.

We negotiated with Alfred Krupp, the steel magnate, to set up a mill in Newfoundland. As Krupp had been jailed by the Allies since 1945 for war crimes, this proved difficult and, as Fielding wrote in her column, “might have been impossible if not for the invaluable A.V., who spent an entire day acting as go-between for Krupp and Small wood, running messages back and forth between our hotel and the prison where Herr Krupp is being held.”

At times, the junket took on an almost surreal quality. In Bavaria, on the lawn of some penniless aristocrat, we were treated to a command performance by a troupe of ballet dancers; when the dancers left the lawn, a display of fireworks began while somewhere offstage a choir half-sang, half-recited a heavily accented version of the “Ode to Newfoundland”: “As luft our fodders, so ve luff/vere vonce dey stoot, ve stant. / Our prayers ve raise to heaven abuff, / Got guard thee, Newfoundland” Later, by way of justifying my promise to give our host for this event a large “loan” to start up some business in Newfoundland, I told the Newfoundland legislature that he was “a great figure in industry” who, though he had “no money in actual dollars,” had in his house “two-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of famous paintings.”

It is all there, in that phrase. Not half a million dollars’ worth of paintings, but two-quarters of a million dollars, as if two of anything were better than one of anything else. “Famous” paintings, that was important, too; that had helped carry the day, in my mind. The mere fact that he owned something whose quality and value were acknowledged outside of Newfoundland made him a worthwhile risk.

“Newfoundland,” I had said, before becoming a confederate, “can be one of the great small nations of the earth.” That oxymoron, “great small,” seems to me now to sum up my view of Newfoundland quite well. Fielding once devoted a column to my habit of using the construction, “one of the great small… of the world.” She quoted me as having said that the Telegram was one of the great small papers of the world. She reported, accurately, that I had pledged to make the newly established Memorial University one of the great small universities in the world. She said I said that the Long Range Mountains were among the great small mountains in the world, that Churchill Falls was among the great small wonders of the world, that the Humber River was one of the great small rivers in the world.

She wrote:

In one of the great small hours of the morning, it occurred to me that our forests were among the great small woods in the world, as is our premier one of the great Smallwoods in the world, not to mention one of the great small Smallwoods in the world, for which we ought to reward him with one of the great small dogs of the world, a Pekingese, perhaps.

I boasted often of how I had met with Truman, been photographed with Gandhi and shaken Churchill’s hand. “Those are great men,” I said to my audiences in an almost chastening tone, “great men” seeming to imply that they were great in a way that neither they nor I could ever hope to be by virtue of our being Newfoundlanders. I acted as if, for a Newfoundlander there was no greater accomplishment than to be judged by some great man to be a credit to your people.

I never addressed Valdmanis directly as anything but “Doctor,” and Valdmanis never called me anything except “my premier.” This formality was never dropped. Even when we talked among ourselves, it was “Doctor” and “my premier.”

I was infatuated, not so much with Valdmanis, as with the man he was impersonating, who had all those qualities that I felt the lack of in myself—worldliness, sophistication, business savvy, education, culture, taste, refinement.

In Zurich, I wound up, because of some sort of a mix-up in reservations, having to share a hotel room with Valdmanis.

Field Day, May 6, 1951

Rather than saddle the Newfoundland tax-payer with the cost of two, we all ride in the same Mercedes. We stay only at the best hotels, but it is also true that only the best hotels have beds big enough to sleep three.

Mr. Smallwood and Mr. Valdmanis are of sufficiently modest stature that there is plenty of room for me between their feet and the foot of the bed, where I lie crosswise, my journalistic objectivity inviolate.

As for your premier and your director-general of economic development, dear reader, they will often lie awake, late into the night, side by side in their pyjamas, their hands behind their heads, talking, planning strategies, devising schemes. To think that their most masterful of which to date may have had their origins in pillow talk!

“We will dot Conception Bay with factories,” your premier said the other night. I, too, lay there, listening, wondering if perhaps I had misjudged them.

They are a lively, fun-loving pair who betimes will wile away the hours playing “pedals,” a Latvian children’s game in which two participants lying flat on their backs at opposite ends of a bed, with their hands behind their heads, place the soles of their bare feet together and “pedal” each other like bicycles, the object of the game being to pedal one’s opponent off the bed, though my premier and the Latvian are so evenly matched that neither can budge the other and they pedal themselves into a state of mutual exhaustion, then fall asleep.

I was, after seeing this column, no longer able to keep up the pretence of having invited Fielding along in the hope that she would see the light.

“I am familiar with most of the great newspapers of the world,” I said to Fielding when a copy of the column was sent to me, “and I can tell you with certainty that none of them would publish this sort of drivel. Two men and a woman in one bed, two men playing ‘bicycles’ or something, what is that supposed to mean? It is the worst sort of trash….”

Valdmanis managed to calm me down somewhat.

“My premier is tired, Miss Fielding,” he said. “This has been a long trip, a great strain on all of us.”

It became an even greater strain as more of Fielding’s columns began to arrive. For the first time since I had hired him, I berated Valdmanis for committing “a blunder of monumental proportions.”

“My premier,” he said, “you must trust me. I cannot explain to you now, but it will soon become obvious to you why it was necessary to invite Miss Fielding along. I cannot tell you now. Most of it I will never be able to tell you, for it will be best if you do not know.”

“You’re doing things without my authorization?” I said.

“You must trust me, my premier,” he said. “There are things that must be done that you are better off not authorizing.”

“Something had better come of this,” I said. “Something worthwhile, something worth the stupid risks that we are taking.”

“There are no risks for you,” he said. I threw up my hands and we spoke no more about it.

Field Day, May 21, 1951: The Foot of the Bed, Room 346, Hotel Hamburg

I have taken to writing my columns at night, while lying in bed. At this moment, my premier and the Latvian are sound asleep, tired out as usual from playing “pedals.” Tonight’s bout was yet another stalemate, though it ended in some animosity when the Latvian accused Mr. Smallwood of cheating by removing his hands from the back of his head, which Mr. Smallwood admitted to doing, though only long enough, he said, to adjust his glasses, which were slipping off.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Latvian. “You used your hands.” Mr. Smallwood’s plea that pedals is a Latvian game, the rules of which he is still learning and couldn’t possibly know as well as someone who grew up playing it, fell on deaf ears, however, and the Latvian told him that next time, he would be disqualified. They went to sleep in a pout and one can only hope that for the sake of Newfoundland, they make up in the morning.

Valdmanis could not keep up with the pace I set. I was energized by sheer rage, unable to look at Fielding, though I knew that it was out of the question to send her home at this point, that if we did we would look ridiculous. Fielding would not have been able to keep up the pace either, but she was free to beg off whenever she wished and spent a fair amount of time alone in her hotel rooms, recuperating from, or laying the groundwork for, hangovers or writing her columns while Valdmanis and I continued our endless rounds of meetings and official functions, often leaving at eight in the morning and not returning to our rooms until midnight.

In Hamburg, during our second trip to Germany, while the three of us were riding in the backseat of a gleaming chauffeur-driven burgundy Mercedes, which I assured Fielding was not being paid for by the people of Newfoundland, Valdmanis, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, seemed on the verge of hyper-ventilation.

“My premier, I cannot continue,” he said. “Don’t you ever get tired? Don’t you ever need to rest?”

“Not much,” I said. “That is what comes from clean living, Dr. Valdmanis. I do not smoke, I do not drink” — I looked meaningfully at Fielding, who looked away — “I do not chase women.”

Valdmanis advised me to play my mock “trump card” a few days before we left for home. Throughout the trip, I had, at Valdmanis’s suggestion, been promising Fielding a “scoop” and finally I told her what it was.

Field Day May 25, 1951: The Foot of the Bed, Room 346, Hotel Hamburg

Never was their pedalling more vigorous than it was last night. It was all I could do to keep from being bounced right off the bed. I held on to one of the bedposts and watched with astonishment the blur of their four ever-accelerating legs.

“My premier, I cannot continue,” A. V protested at last. “I cannot, I am winded, I must rest.”

“I’ve beaten him at his own game,” said the premier gleefully, not even breathing hard as the Latvian flopped down exhausted on his pillow. “I have out-pedalled a Latvian. There are not many who can make that claim. That is what comes from clean living. I do not smoke. I do not drink. I do not chase women. I am easily able to outrun those who chase me.”

His hands still behind his head, he stretched out full-length, showing off his five-foot-six-inch pin-stripe-pyjamaed form to best advantage. He eyed me craftily, the lights from the chandelier reflecting in his glasses, the thick black rims of which had never seemed more becoming.

“I will give you something to write about, Miss Fielding,” he said. He chuckled when I told him I was shocked. “I will give you something you can really sink your teeth into.”

“What?” I said.

“An election,” he said.

“A WHAT?” I said.

“An election,” he said, “an election. You know what an election is, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do,” I said. “I thought you said — but never mind.”

“I’m calling an election as soon as we get back to Newfoundland,” he said. “I just decided it, right here in bed. I can’t tell you the date yet, but you can say in your column that I’m calling an election as soon as we get home. How’s that for a scoop?”

A. V. was overjoyed. “You will win by a landslide, my premier,” he said. “You cannot lose. You will never lose. You will win this election, and the next one, and the next one after that. Our partnership will last forever. Together, we will make Newfoundland great. We will, we will, we will.” He stood up on the bed and began jumping up and down, spinning around in mid-air. Mr. Smallwood lay there, smiling, regarding reflectively his size-six feet, which he wiggled back and forth.

We flew back to Newfoundland.