Читать книгу Blaming No One - Dan Inc. Whitman - Страница 13

It will take some doing to get used to a world without Alex Almasov. He died last Friday the Thirteenth, of causes I don’t know about, but I don’t suppose it matters. He was sixty-something.

Alex was born to a Russian family in Buenos Aires. Figure those two maternal languages, plus his American English picked up along the way. Later in his career, he learned perfect Polish, then Japanese which became the language of the house after he married Yumiko. He was assigned as our trainer at the U.S. Information Agency when 24 of us came in as a “class” in early 1985. In USIA we were Junior Officers in Training (JOTs), and we dealt with things called AmParts, AmSpecs... Uninitiated friends would tell us, “With those jots and specs and parts, you must be very small people.”

Imagine the stomach butterflies of 20- and 30-something JOTs coming into a pretty mysterious federal agency, bound for God-knows-where in the Foreign Service, and—for all we knew—asked to leave any personal values and ethics at the door on the way in, though they never said so. The United States has no official feeder institute to train FSOs, and less so for the now extinct USIA, which was melded in the Department of State in 1999.

Acronyms, org charts, crash courses in world culture. We all meant well and wanted to do good by doing well. We were children of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Alex was the lodestar we went by, our sort of homeroom teacher. We met daily in the sub-basement across the street from 301 Fourth Street SW, in a low-ceilinged, dusty room we called the “Bat Cave.” The understated Alex guided us like a taciturn Buddha, signaling with body language when we were on the right track to something, gazing with unaccusing blankness when we didn’t get it.

He brought in plenty of speakers during our ten weeks together. Some were better than others. Too many came with a presumptive intimacy, coaching us about something called “corridor reputation,” a highfalutin sort of gossip which randomly made and unmade people’s careers. I decided from the start to ignore people’s judgments of others. Later as an assigning officer, I was well served by this simple principle.

Alex brought the cleverest and the less clever to brief us, but no one came close to him as a solid source of what this profession was all about. We made our various judgments of the smorgasbord, but he never revealed any of his own. This may be the essence of a master teacher.

One morning during our eighth “corridor reputation” spiel, I turned to the classmate next to me, and said, “You’d think they were teaching us to be brain surgeons.” Mind you, this was five years before people used computers. My classmate found this funny, and I now propose that this was the moment of conception of my single contribution to world culture: the expression “It ain’t brain surgery,” and its variant, “It’s not rocket science.” You can dispute my claim, but you can’t disprove it.

Alex sensed our anxieties but never fed them. He informed and encouraged. He either liked us a lot or faked it very well.

Into the fourth week of training, we were all in angst over the question of whether as press and culture officers we might one day be asked to lie for our country. As good Americans, we always took with a grain of salt what our own government said in public. Had we signed ourselves over to Mephistopheles just for a few thrills and foreign adventures? We each stewed alone, and didn’t yet know one another well enough to discuss this dark topic.

How do I know it touched all of us? Because one of the 24 had the gall to broach the topic out loud once, and the fever broke in a minute. The one comment led to another, and another. None of us was purely pleased with U.S. policies we would be expected to understand and explain overseas. None of us was exempt from a sense of dilemma.

“Oh, you mean that one?” Alex said with a twinkle in his eye, and put down his pencil. He knew the moment would come, but dealt with it only after someone verbalized it. Happily, no other speaker was present at that session.

“First, in case you hadn’t realized: journalists abroad are not particularly interested in your personal opinion, they just want your help in getting the information. The good scribe wants the statement from Washington. Your own take on it may amuse, but it’s not part of the story.”

Then in his steady pace, Alex guided us through the options before us: if there is a region in the world where we especially don’t like U.S. policy, well then, avoid serving in that region, there are plenty of others. Second, if you dispute a policy, see about effecting a change from within the bureaucracy. Third, the position is not a prison sentence. You can resign at any time.

The relief in the Bat Cave was palpable that morning; the low ceiling seemed to lift. By logic alone, we knew Alex was right; we just hadn’t thought or talked it through. Yes, we would give it our best try, without abnegating our precious selves. Alex had been through this, the instances of friction between integrity and loyalty. He had made his own peace with it. We mostly did as well from that moment on, and stayed on through Irangate, the Sandinista-Contra struggle in Central America, the Grenada invasion, and the sordid dealings and ultimate arrest of Manuel Noriega in Panama. We stayed on because we thought we could do more good than harm as Foreign Service Officers. Maybe we did.

Toward the end of the training, other compelling questions mounted. The main one of course was, Where would our postings be? Alex knew in each case, but wasn’t allowed to tell us ahead of time. I had a number of hardship posts on my bid list, but really wanted to start out in Milan or Copenhagen. One day after class a few of us were asking Alex about sending cars overseas. He answered the question by the book, then turned to me with his unrevealing smile and said, “In your case, Dan, I’d just wait to get to post first, then get a Volvo locally.” We both knew Danes don’t make cars.

Message received, and a week less of teeth gnashing, thanks to Alex’s enlightened and loving treatment of his disciples. There won’t be many more Alex Almasovs.