“Why, Mr. Knott, I didn’t think it was possible to win this much money all at once.” Annie, the embassy cashier gives me a sly smile. “You know gambling’s a vice.”
“There are worse, believe me.”
I told Picard I needed to think it over, but it didn’t take me long to grasp the inescapable. Three days after my conversation with Picard I returned to the Zebu Room and received the first package from Jacques.
“You look like you were up half the night celebrating,” Annie says with a laugh.
I don’t want to tell her that I spent the night staring at the ceiling, contemplating the wreck I’ve made of my life.
“You want this in fifties, Mr. Knott?”
“Can you make it hundreds?”
“Certainly. I’ll just have to get them from Miss Brandt. She keeps them in the—”
“No. That’s okay. Make it fifties.”
She counts out fifteen bills and change. “Sign here, Mr. Knott.” She smiles again. “Congratulations, maybe this is the beginning of a big winning streak.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
Across the narrow street that runs in front of the embassy, a long flight of refuse-encrusted steps, cleaned only by the uncertain rains, leads up to the center of town. Every day a blind accordionist sits at the bottom of the steps playing jaunty little tunes.
Nearly every day for more than two years, I’ve walked by the man without giving him so much as a kind word. This time, as I pass, I drop the musician a thousand franc note, knowing it’s less an act of charity than an attempt to slip a bribe to Fate.
Somehow the man senses the banknote settling on top of the few coins he has received that morning. He tips his head back with that disconcerting appearance of exaltation so characteristic of the blind and says, “Merci, M’sieur Knott.”
“Jesus!” I skitter around the man like a startled terrier. How does he know my name? How could he have known who it was at all? What kind of place is this, where even blind men know the unknowable?
I run up the steps two at a time until I’ve left him far below.
Still shaken, I walk through the gardens in the Place de l’Independence and make my way past the Presidential palace before turning down a narrow street and descending the steps on the other side of the hill.
The sight of the American Cultural Center and the thought of being yoked to its director, Gloria, for the afternoon feels like a dash of salt on the snail of my soul.
I nod at the lone, unarmed guard outside the door—the extent of security at the center—and climb the stairs to the third floor, where I stick my head into Gloria’s office. Without a word of greeting, I tell her, “Let’s go.”
She frowns, but grabs a chi-chi little blazer she wears to appointments and calls down the corridor, “Josephine!”
Josephine Andonaka, a short woman with a beehive hairdo, likes to say she’s been the press assistant for us, “since the invention of the alphabet.” She appears in Gloria’s doorway, a cigarette hanging from her lip and a narrow look in her eye.
“Josephine,” Gloria says, “we’re off to Notre Madagascar to straighten out its owner about that baby parts article.” Gloria invariably speaks to her staff in English. “While I’m gone, can you write up a press release on that book donation to the university?”
Josephine waggles her head. “Certainly, Miss Burris.” She shoots me an indecipherable look and disappears back down the hallway, leaving a wraith of cigarette smoke uncoiling in the doorway.
“She’s not coming with us?” I ask.
“I figured I should go on these visits without staff, establish myself.”
“As someone who can’t take advice from more experienced hands?” I want to ask, but settle for, “You could use a translator at these things.”
She sighs for my benefit. “I can speak French.”
“Yeah, you can hear what this guy says, but Josephine can tell you what he means.” I lean against the doorway. “When I first got here, my predecessor in the political section, a guy named Schenk, told me, ‘They all speak in code around here. When you begin to understand it, it’s time to go.’ Believe me, you’re not there yet.”
Gloria looks at me blankly for a moment, then laughs.
Though I’m accustomed to the hole-in-the-wall nature of all but the biggest Malagasy periodicals, I raise my eyebrows when Gabriel, the Center’s driver, pulls up in front of the ramshackle house near the train station.
“This is it?” Gloria asks.
Gabriel, a pudgy man with a worried smile, nods. “Yes, Miss Burris, Notre Madagascar.”
I look at Gloria “You called, told them we were coming?”
Gloria nods. “Josephine made the appointment two days ago. They should be ready.”
“Let’s hope we are.” I get out of the car and make my way up the dirt walkway. Gloria squeezes by me so she can knock on the door before I reach it.
A thin white-haired man in a raggedy sweater answers. “Yes?”
“Is Monsieur Randrianjana in?” Gloria asks in French.
The man’s clear eyes widen and a smile lights his face. “Why, yes, I am he. You must be my visitors from the American Embassy. Please come in.”
With a surprisingly youthful bounce in his step, Randrianjana tiptoes to the middle of the room and fiddles with the tea things he’s laid out on a wooden table, nervously scooting the cups and saucers half an inch then moving them back again. On a large table against the wall a stack of cheap paper sits beside a grimy printing press of ancient make.
He beckons us to sit down. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Will you have some tea with me?”
The room smells of too much wood smoke and too few baths, an earthy mix of which, over the past couple of years, I’ve almost grown fond. While we seat ourselves, the white-haired publisher circles around the table pouring tea into chipped cups, his lips moving in an internal dialogue that threatens at any moment to become external.
I thank him and sip at my tea, trying to remember the date of my hepatitis inoculation.
The old man’s eyes glow with pleasure. “I have never before received the attention of the American Embassy. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you’ve come.” He takes a swallow of tea, puts the cup down, then lifts it and sips again, like a hummingbird at a flower. Each time he lifts his cup he reveals ragged holes in the elbows of his sweater. “Perhaps you have read the article I published on the United States in my last issue.”
I had anticipated several ways our conversation might begin. Randrianjana’s frank reference to his article was not among them.
“Over to you, Miss Burris,” I murmur in English.
Gloria sets her cup down and puts on her most professional manner. “Yes, Monsieur Randrianjana, that’s exactly why we have come today.” Our host’s smile broadens. He waits for more. “Monsieur Randrianjana, the Embassy was very disturbed by the allegations contained in your article.”
A glint of concern appears in Randrianjana’s eyes. “Yes, I would think so.”
Gloria appears knocked off-stride. “Yes, well. It’s particularly disturbing because the story is entirely false.” Gloria waits for a response. When the publisher continues to gaze at her, she adds, “I suspect the source of this story could hardly be called objective.”
Randrianjana blinks but doesn’t appear to believe that this requires a reply from him.
I step in. “Mademoiselle Burris is trying to say that the Russian government has been known to plant articles like this in local papers.”
The publisher nods and smiles. “Yes, that is exactly where I got it.”
Not much point asking if they paid him. Of course they paid him. “But you made no acknowledgment of the source in your story.”
“Oh, I would never do that,” the white-haired man says with a little laugh.
“Why not?”
“They asked me not to.”
I look at Gloria. “There. I’ve beaten a confession out of him.”
Gloria sweeps a stray bang from her forehead. The little publisher’s happy admission has left us both at a loss. “Monsieur Randrianjana, do you ever check the facts on the articles you print?”
Randrianjana waves shyly at the modest room with its obsolescent printing press. “As you can see, I have no resources for anything like that. I wish I did. Sometimes my wife helps me compose the pages and print them, but other than that…” Still smiling, he says, to me “Besides, who am I to tell anyone what’s true and what’s not?”
I can’t think of an answer that would make sense to the old fellow. So I ask, “I’m curious, Monsieur Randrianjana, how many copies of your publication do you sell each month?”
The publisher closes his eyes and takes a considerable time in making the calculation. “Oh, perhaps a hundred. A hundred and fifty if I have a picture. I don’t have the means to print regularly.” He raises his upturned palms, indicating a publisher’s many cares. “I must tell you that if the Russians, and sometimes the French, did not pay for the articles they give me I couldn’t afford to print anything.” He brightens. “Perhaps you have something on this subject you would like me to print. Then we could let the readers decide which story they believe.”
Gloria closes her eyes and sighs, “Monsieur—”
“I will give you a discount on your first article.”
“I’m sorry Monsieur Randrianjana, but we can’t pay you to run articles for us.”
A look of confusion creases his brow. “But, Mademoiselle, yours is the richest country in the world.”
I step in like a traffic cop trying to untie this snarl. “Mademoiselle Burris means to say that we don’t work that way. We are not allowed to pay anyone to run articles.”
“I see.” Randrianjana frowns thoughtfully. “This is admirable, I think.” He holds out his empty hands. “But it is very hard on a poor publisher like me.”
I can’t help but chuckle. I look to Gloria, expecting her most censorious slow burn. To my surprise, she’s smiling, too.
The editor sits back in his chair, beaming in the pleasant regard of his newfound friends. “You must have some good stories you could tell me. Something I could print.”
“All right,” Gloria tells him, “We’ll send a denial of your previous story that you can run. And we have a press release coming out tomorrow on a major book donation to the University of Antananarivo. I’ll see that you are on the distribution list.”
The man’s smile fades. “But this release is something you will send to everyone. Don’t you have something just for me?” He raises his hand. “I promise I will not charge you.”
“Well, we’re not in the habit of giving exclusives.” Gloria leans across the table toward the old man. “But there’s a funny story about things up at the prison.”
“Gloria.” I can see what’s coming and try to put a note of warning in my voice.
She looks at me like the old fart I no doubt appear to be to her young eyes and goes ahead, relating the story I had told her about the prison guards allowing burglars to roam at night in exchange for a cut of their take. If she sees me squirming with uneasiness, she doesn’t acknowledge it. At the end she only asks, “You won’t mention your source for this?”
Randrianjana puts his hand over his heart and bows his head. “Oh, I would never do that.”
Before Gloria can reply, I get up from my chair and, citing pressing business, tell him we need to go. Gloria’s eyebrows rise in surprise, but she pushes back from the table and we make our goodbyes.
Randrianjana appears sorry to see us go. He accompanies us to the door, inviting us to return anytime he runs an article by the Russians.
“We just might,” Gloria assures him.
“I would be so pleased. Goodbye for now.” He stands in the doorway, smiling and waving, as we retreat down his walkway.
As we get to the car, I tell her, “You didn’t have to do that.” She can see I’m sore.
“Do what?”
“Ingratiate yourself. Tell him that story. If I’d known you were going to spread it around I wouldn’t have told it to you.”
“Is there something eating you, Robert? I mean, what’s the big deal? He’d been fair with us and I figured we could give him something in return.”
“You’re not the spokesman for the Malagasy government. It’s not your job to tell him stuff like that.”
“For crying out loud, Robert, you’re not my daddy.”
“I’m not your—? Well, thank God for small favors.”
“I still don’t see what the big deal is. I—”
“If I’d have let you go another minute, you’d have started talking about Walt Sackett, violating the regs on his privacy.”
“Well, I didn’t, okay? And I wasn’t going to.” Now she’s hot. “Look, he said he wouldn’t mention his source. We gave him a story. And now he owes us one.”
“Well, just see that you don’t start breaking all the regs at these things.”
Gloria puts her hand over her heart and bows her head. “Oh, I would never do that.”