Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 12

Table of Contents

He spent the next week in the library of the Foreign Service Institute, studying the departmental regulations. Their complexities awed and alarmed him, but Mr. Dannenberg, the head of the training staff, assured him that the orals weren’t necessarily based on knowledge of the regulations. “If they were,” he said, “nobody would ever get in the Service. It used to be said that there were only three rules for making a good Foreign Service Officer—sit with your back to the light, listen to your superiors, and go to bed before you get drunk. Actually, you learn by osmosis. In the orals you’ll be judged on poise and personality. We want our men to look like representatives of the United States. We want them to look American.”

Dannenberg inspected Jeff, shrewdly as a horseman looks over a yearling at the Saratoga sales. “You do look American. You’ve got that gaunt, mussed-up Winant look.”

“Thanks,” Jeff said. “I’d like to be like Winant.”

“But nobody can tell yet if you’ve got any brains.”

“No,” Jeff said. “That’s the trouble.”

Mr. Dannenberg himself didn’t look like an FSO, or even particularly American. An expensive tailor could have given his stumpy figure and global belly some nobility, but Mr. Dannenberg obviously didn’t have an expensive tailor. His trousers fell in double folds around his shoes, and the three lower buttons of his vest were usually open. His ties were cheap, and badly knotted. Jeff looked up Mr. Dannenberg’s record, and discovered that while he was a Class 1 he had never held an important, or even an interesting post. Yet he liked Dannenberg, who always seemed eager to open for him the treasure chest of his experience.