As it does at most hours, the broad tarmac at Ivato Airport looks like a deserted parking lot. The cavernous terminal, built in the ‘60s, echoes the shuffling steps of a ragged line of travelers burdened by woven baskets and boxes tied with string, making their way toward a door marked Departures. The high ceilings and vast interior swallow my sighs as I wait in the Arrivals section.
Given a moment of idleness, my thoughts turn, as they do too often, to my standing in the embassy. It’s not good. I’m popular enough with the Malagasy employees that make up the great majority of our staff. But the American officers, embarrassed that someone with my years is holding such a minor post, expend little time on me and less respect. The Ambassador, Michelle Herr, a political appointee from Tennessee, regards me with a mixture of pity and disdain. In my worst moments of unhinged suspicion, I picture her and Lynn comparing notes about me, arriving at the same unflattering conclusions.
Herr’s deeply bred Southern graciousness does not allow her to give me the sort of formal upbraiding I deserve for my unpredictable hours, sour disposition, and lack of productivity, so she lets her displeasure show in other ways, tasking me with unpleasant burdens such as making the long trek out to the airport today to greet the incoming Public Affairs Officer, a duty more appropriate to the head of Admin or one of the junior officers.
I get up from my hard, plastic chair and again check the Arrivals board mounted high on the wall, though it only lists the official ETA of each flight, no matter how late, early, or even non-existent the plane itself might be.
I ask the young woman at the information desk when the Air France flight from Paris might arrive. “It will come soon.” Her smile is reassuring. An hour later she tells me the same thing with the same smile. I make a note to ask again in another hour. I think I’m falling in love.
Pushed by a sour gust of ennui, I go upstairs to the lounge and slide into one of the many empty booths, order a coffee, and replay my conversation with Rabary. I’d hoped to do better by Walt Sackett. And if I didn’t already feel enough motivation from within, I’m being prodded from without. Sackett’s girl, Nirina, has called my office three times this week. I don’t take the calls and tell Cheryl, my secretary, to put her off.
What’s in it for her? She’s already lost her bet on one American, the red-haired Marine. Bud eventually went back to Camp Pendleton without her. She must see that Sackett is played out. So why is she calling me? Even if I spring him, he hasn’t got the money to take her to the States. Maybe it’s me she wants to take a run at. Sure, why not? Try a diplomat, squeeze what she can out of me in exchange for whatever she has to offer.
The thought stirs my imagination. I can almost feel her long black hair and see her dark almond-shaped eyes—her heritage, like that of most Malagasy, anciently Indonesian. I think of how her skin might feel to the touch. I shake my head and blow out a breath, exhaling the succubus stealing into my vitals.
I distract myself by looking around the lounge for familiar faces. Usually, I run into someone I know at the airport, one of those like myself, whom the poor refer to as “the people who travel in airplanes.” Like the rest of the airport, though, the lounge is nearly deserted, and the few faces I see belong to strangers.
I look at my tab and throw a couple of bills onto the plastic tray. I leave a large tip. No point making little economies now. How much did Picard say I owe him—twelve thousand dollars? Perhaps I can win it back, or at least enough to make repayment of the balance a realistic possibility. A mental reflex warns me of the danger in such thinking. Besides, Picard doesn’t want me to win, not only for the obvious reason that it would cost him money, but because he needs me to remain in his debt, providing him leverage to—what? His predatory smile tells me we’ll have to make some sort of arrangement. But what can I offer that would be of any interest to him? There had been desperation behind Picard’s eyes. And, in Rabary, the Frenchman has his own wolf to feed.
Picard and Rabary. Both want out of here. Picard longs to see his daughter. And anyone who knows Rabary has heard him groaning like a lovesick schoolboy over his unrequited longing for Paris, his hunger for a life of good food, good wine, and a better brand of cigarettes.
Weighted with worry, stupefied by the sun beating through the tall windows, I let my chin sink to my chest and close my eyes.
I nearly break my neck snapping to attention, trying to remember where I am.
“Ten minutes.” Annibal, the embassy’s airport expediter, stands in front of me. A long-headed man with dark, intense eyes, it’s his job to know everyone at the airport, from the director to the baggage handlers, and, with a bottle of Johnny Walker here, a carton of cigarettes there, cut through the bureaucratic tangle that makes dealing with them such a nightmare.
I try to sound alert. “How do you know?”
Annibal smiles. He knows. He cocks his chin toward the arrival hall. “Come, Mr. Knott. We’ll see if Miss Burris made the plane.”
From the first, I don’t like her. Short, young, and vibrating with energy, sporting a sexless pageboy cut, she comes up to me and grips my hand like she’s running for office.
“Gloria Burris,” she announces.
“Robert—”
“I need your help with those people in there,” she interrupts, nodding over her shoulder toward the customs and passport desks. “They’re holding up a crate of books for the library. They claim they don’t consider them covered by diplomatic—”
Adopting my best old bull manner, I cut her off. “Our expediter can—”
“He’s the one who helped me clear immigration? Are you sure he can clear—?”
“Annibal could clear a pork chop past a hungry wolf.”
On cue, he strides through the doors from Immigration and Customs. “Everything’s taken care of, Miss Burris.”
The embassy’s new Public Affairs Officer blinks in surprise, then gives Annibal what she no doubt regards as a warm smile. “Well done,” she says.
A skinny young man with a camera walks up and snaps Gloria’s picture.
She recoils and looks at me. “Who’s this?”
“Jean-Francois.” I shake the young man’s hand and explain to Gloria, “Photographer for Le Matin. As a newly arrived diplomat, you’re news.”
“Really?” She allows herself to look pleased. “Le Matin. That’s the morning paper?”
“Actually, it comes out in the afternoon. And Midi comes out in the morning. Legend has it that years ago they each got twelve hours behind schedule and never caught up.”
“Here.” She shoves her purse at me and strikes a chin-up Joan of Arc pose. “Tell him I’m ready now.”
I don’t want to tell her that the photo will, like most of Le Matin’s photos, print up badly, showing only a black shadow against a gray background, like something from one of those charts that identifies airplanes by their silhouettes.
After the photographer takes his pictures, Annibal loads Gloria and her baggage into the embassy’s ancient Land Rover.
“Welcome to Madagascar, Miss Burris,” Annibal says and gives me a “she’s your problem now” wave as Charles, the admin driver, pulls away from the curb.
I’m content to endure the ride in silence, but the new PAO feels like talking. “I came straight through from Washington. Didn’t overnight in Paris. Twenty-seven hours since I walked out of my apartment,” she says, making masochism sound like a virtue.
I can only look at her and shake my head.
For a while she contents herself with gazing out the windows of the embassy car as it makes its way toward town, threading around the ever-present crowds that walk along the ragged margins of the road.
“Where’s everyone going?” Gloria asks.
“Sorry?”
She nods out the window. “Where’s everyone going?”
“Running errands, visiting friends.”
“No, I mean—” Her eyes widen with sudden understanding and she claps her mouth shut.
I don’t feel like letting her off easy. “Ah. You mean, why’s everyone walking? No one can afford cars here, Miss Burris. They must walk. They are poor.”
She turns away, embarrassed.
“Where have you been posted?” I ask her.
“I just finished a consular tour in Montreal.”
“Well, you’re not in Canada anymore.” It’s a cheap shot, but at this range I can’t miss.
I look out the window at the mostly barefoot Malagasy in faded cotton clothes, regard their two-story mud-brick houses, some of them roughly white-washed, others the color of the red earth from which they rise.
Canada. Wouldn’t it have been good to have gotten even one posting where I could drink water from the tap? But I’ve spent my entire career in the Third World, mostly in Africa, at first out of a sense of adventure, then for the quick promotions, lastly from inertia and the low cost of living that makes alimony and child support easier.
I look at Gloria Burris and for a moment see it through her eyes—everything foreign in the most profound sense, lacking any reference point to the familiar.
I remember my first day in Madagascar, arriving at my new house straight from the airport. After looking over the generously furnished yet somehow empty rooms, I stepped into the back yard and saw a knoll just visible over the top of the wall. On its crown stood a bizarre tree with wide branches growing in even rings, like a stack of rimless bike wheels with their spokes sticking out—as odd to the eye as something out of Dr. Seuss. It’s a daily reminder of the unknowable world I inhabit now. Though my garden wall has a metal door to the outside, I’ve never walked through it to take a closer look at that weird tree. I prefer keeping it and, yes, the island itself, at a distance.
That was the same day I saw the chameleon for the first time, sunning itself in the back yard, rotating one eye to look at this parvenu who would occupy the building at the center of his principality, and with the other watching out for the dreaded Mr. Razafy. Right there, I christened him Bobby. I swear the thing winked at me.
Her head leaning against the window, Gloria suddenly looks worn out and drifting into shock, her long, sleepless travel beginning to catch up on her.
With a little start of surprise, I realized she’s about to cry.
“You’ll be home in a few minutes,” I tell her. The last thing I want is to deliver up a weeping junior officer to her new house. Word will get around that I made a pass at her or told her I didn’t like her haircut. “Take a nap, then call Lynn Brandt at the embassy. She’s your sponsor. She’ll come over with some dinner about—”
With a visible effort, the new PAO sits up. “I want to go straight to the office.”
“You’re out of your mind,” I tell her, not without admiration.
Ambassador Herr sits on her couch and folds Gloria’s hands into her own. “I’m so pleased to have you with us.” Her soft Tennessee accent adds its warmth to her greeting. A major fund-raiser in the previous presidential campaign, the tall, gracious woman of sixty-two claimed as her reward the generally unsought prize of ambassador to Madagascar. It had something to do with reading a book about lemurs as a child. Though she occasionally makes career officers roll their eyes with her naiveté, she overcomes with enthusiasm what she lacks in experience, and things usually turn out all right. Though, as Steve Trapp, the Econ officer, put it, “But when they don’t—well, my God.”
She evidently sees a kindred spirit in her new PAO.
“We’ve been so long without a Public Affairs Officer,” Ambassador Herr sighs. “And I’m so glad that you’ve had a consular posting. Our consul, Don Schiff, is on home leave and we’ve all had to pick up the slack.”
“I’ll be happy to help out,” Gloria says, sitting on the edge of the Ambassador’s couch, her back as straight as a sergeant major’s.
“That’s wonderful.” The Ambassador realizes she’s been neglecting me and forces a smile in my direction. “Robert, I guess we haven’t spoken in a day or two. Tell me what you’re dealing with right now.”
Should I tell her I’m up to my neck in gambling debts, my daughter hates me, my career is all but over, and Lynn Brandt has dumped me? Perhaps another time.
“I delivered that demarche to Rabary about the U.N. vote. It’s a non-starter for them.”
Ambassador Herr grips the arms of her chair as if it were my neck. “But you simply must persuade them. The Secretary expects me to have them on board.”
I want to tell her I’m sure the Secretary expects no such thing, probably never thinks about Madagascar at all. Instead, I say, “The Ministry isn’t going to budge, ma’am. You’ll have to take it up with President Ramananjara himself.”
“I certainly will,” she says.
The hell of it is, despite my decades of experience and an understanding of political realities that runs even deeper than Michelle Herr’s grasp of how to raise money, she just might browbeat Ramananjara into saying yes. If she does, her already shaky estimation of her political officer will drop even further. God, I want a drink. She has a bottle of cognac stashed away for special occasions. Maybe I could suggest toasting the new PAO. No. It isn’t even ten in the morning. She’d see right through me.
“That reminds me, Robert, have you drafted that cable on the Chinese ambassador’s visit with President Ramananjara?”
Of course she’d remember that. I promised it a week ago. “Not yet.”
The Ambassador purses her mouth, more resigned than surprised. “What else, Robert?”
“I talked to Rabary about Walt Sackett, the American in prison. He didn’t seem willing to help.” Her frown sinks all the way to her chin. I hastily add, “But I’ll keep working on it.”
“Good. I’m sure Gloria, with her consular experience, can help us out on these matters.”
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!”