Читать книгу Twentieth Century Limited Book Two ~ Age of Reckoning - Jan David Blais - Страница 7

REAGAN THE CANDIDATE, REAGAN THE PRESIDENT – it’s all Reagan all the time. Never in my wildest imagination would I have predicted this. Playing a role, now that I can see. In fact, thinking about it that way is all that kept me from laughing. Or crying. Or both. And what a role! The best script a B actor ever lucked into. I remember my talk with Paul after the shooting. Not to brag, but that little piece of lead did give the man extra time and helped his disaster of a program sail through the Congress.

And how about Paul! I would have guessed Washington, but understanding better the depth of his attachment to things French, it makes sense. And you see him distancing himself from business reporting. A good move to get in, even better to get out. Then of course, there’s Latimer. What a bastard, pandering to all our worst instincts. If it weren’t for him and his ilk the right-wingers would never have got this far.

Haven’t heard from Cahill in a while. I’d better call him and find out what’s going on. Better yet, I’ll look in on Steve. Maybe he knows if they’ve set a date for my deposition. I suppose that will mean many days of preparation. Not looking forward to that, not at all.

* * * * * * *

THE FIRST DAY AT MON BUREAU, Fred called with the news that I’d be running in the coveted right corner of the Opinions page across from editorials, and with a prominent byline. Aided by Didier, I quickly roughed out my first set of stories, leaning heavily on Edouard LaRoche’s tracking of EEC issues. But for my first “Expat Dispatch” – that’s the name we chose – something closer to home.

As we were leaving the States, Ronald Reagan took a step to make his rhetoric reality, and what a step it was. By law Federal employees were prohibited from striking, but this hadn’t kept them from walking off the job with impunity, and PATCO, the air traffic controllers’ union was threatening to do just that. Reagan’s stance was so revolutionary everybody thought he was bluffing, but after a forty-eight hour warning he terminated the eleven thousand controllers who didn’t return to work, barring them from federal employment for life. Though air service suffered, over time it would rebound as replacements were hired. But the impact on U.S. labor relations was profound and lasting. Undercutting the unions’ only real weapon, Reagan encouraged employers everywhere – dared might be the better word – to take a tough line when a strike was threatened. A seismic shift in corporate governance was on, with labor costs at the top of management’s hit list.

I sketched out the European reaction and set it in the context of French labor, for whom causing inconvenience and backing government into a corner is a time-honored tactic. And, the adversaries feeding off one another, government routinely awards the demanded wages and benefits hikes, in effect bribing strikers to mollify the public – that is, voters. In the May general election, for the first time ever Socialists had captured the French presidency, and they followed up with big wins in the summer’s legislative races. Not only would the government’s pro-labor bias continue, but if François Mitterand had his way, the French economy would take on a distinctly socialist cast, exactly opposite from Reagan. A wealth tax. Reduction of the work week to thirty-nine hours. Five weeks’ paid vacation. Forced retirement at sixty. Government-funded education and health services already part of the system. And something to make my readers blanch – Communists in Mitterand’s coalition government! A Dispatch if I ever saw one!

I slid easily into a routine. Everyone was aware top management wanted me to succeed, and I supposed the smiles and kind words of some colleagues covered a degree of animosity. For my part I worked hard to be part of the team, sharing my contacts, taking time to provide American color requested for their stories.

The PATCO Dispatch went over well – I even had an attaboy note from Tom O’Connor. My second Dispatch dealt with Reagan’s unique plan to redirect income from the poor to the wealthy. Tax cuts for the richest 5% of Americans, increases for everybody else. Massive increases in military spending that would fuel inflation, already running near twenty percent. Cuts in social programs, dismantling of social and economic programs for the poor. I described my European colleagues’ disbelief that the U.S. was becoming so reactionary. I couldn’t help laughing – here I am, living in Paris, exploiting the great material Reagan and Company generating. Washington wasn’t necessary, after all.

That second Dispatch provoked a flood of criticism. Of course everything’s provided in Europe – the taxes are extreme. Three-plus days of the week everybody works for the government. Nor does the European enjoy the opportunities Americans have to attain riches and position – limited horizons and modest ambition are his lot. Others disagreed, saying look through Reagan’s rhetoric to the true malice of his plan. A big dose of pain for everybody but the well-off. With unemployment at unprecedented levels, for a lot of folks no jobs equals no income, and with inflation, your savings, what’s left of them, are worth less each day. Then the ultimate despair of the poor, watching the safety nets being shredded just when they’re needed most.

As I saw the reader response and basked in my superiors’ praise, I realized that America’s lurch to the right was going to be my ticket out of business reporting, though it will take time and a deft touch. Meantime, of course, I’ll do my “real job” well, give the Gazette what it wants, plus a whole lot more.

Our Paris newsroom was an obvious and altogether unsuccessful attempt to clone the mother ship. The faux ceiling, the painful indirect lighting, the TVs spotted around the room, signs on the columns, Politique, le Crime, International, le Sport, Sciences, Arts et Culture and our Department, Économie. Foiling the plan, people sat wherever they wanted, though bowing to seniority, the window wall was editor territory. But the biggest difference was the quiet. Hardly any shouting. For a conversation, people used the phone or walked. And no typewriter noise – keyboards and monitors on every desk, while in New York some sizable number of old-timers clacked on, their typewriters echoing a bygone time.

Paris’ output was totally west-directed, stories filed by satellite with New York – the most important of them that is, since the system’s capacity was limited and there were frequent outages. New York had more control over our final product, which was often put to bed without my seeing it. After a review by Didier, typically my copy went on to Harlan Kenny’s Chief Editor, a stuffy Brit named Marshall MacLeod. From time to time I called him on his editing, complaining that what appeared in the paper bore no resemblance to what I’d sent in. For a while things would improve, then they’d slide back. I was planning to go one-on-one with Harlan in December, the first “seminar” I’d be attending.

The Gazette didn’t publish a French language edition, and its ability to offer a same-day product to the European market was entirely dependent on Pan American and TWA. With everything working, New York’s first edition arrived in time to hit the streets in London and Paris and Berlin as a final. Our main competitor, the International Herald Tribune, jointly owned by the Times and the Washington Post, had a marked advantage, as it was printed in a Paris suburb. Our tekkies were working on electronic transmission for printing here, but the Trib was well ahead of us on that score too, and, of course, the Paris papers, Le Monde, Le Figaro, were in a class by themselves.

Outside my scope, but two Middle East developments need comment here. First, the October assassination of Anwar Sadat by a radical Islamist Army lieutenant. Tellingly, no Arab head of state attended the funeral. Late in the year, Israel provoked an uproar with a law consolidating its control in the Golan Heights occupied since the Six-Day War. Don’t call it annexation they said, but there seemed little difference.

Of Mitterand’s new initiatives, most controversial was his proposal to nationalize the leading banks and firms and form them into industrial groups. Given the French tradition of government control of the economy dating from the chaos after World War Two, many didn’t see this as such a departure, but the rightist opposition did, and of course the owners of the companies involved. I wrote several pieces including analysis by economists about the likely impacts. Post-war economic controls had led to Les Trentes Glorieuses, turning the “sick man of Europe” into a country admired for its growth, prosperity and civility. Then OPEC struck and the suffering began again and things hadn’t gotten any better.

By now Diane was at Goldman four mornings a week part-time, though often she didn’t get back until after the children were home from school. She seemed happy with her professional life after the diet of children and homemaking. I found myself in Brussels a day or two nearly every week at the E.U., occasionally in Strasbourg to check on the European Parlement. At least I burned less time on long-distance travel. A forty-five minute flight or a two-hour train ride didn’t even count.

WITH PARIS THE SAME LATITUDE AS NEWFOUNDLAND, a full eight degrees north of New York, by autumn it was dark even if I left the office at a reasonable hour. So apart from a brief assist with homework, my kid time was limited to weekends. Our building had a small courtyard barely large enough for a common garden and a bench, plus a slide and swing well used when rain or wind kept us from venturing further afield. We weren’t worried about the heavy gray skies of Paris winters, though expats warned that too many dull days without a break would mess with our heads.

The Luxembourg Gardens was our backyard, and what a backyard! The children always made a beeline for Emma’s “horsey-piano,” the old-fashioned carousel. The boys could be trusted but she needed help to stay on. Invariably Peter chose an outside horse to snag one of the rings hanging at the attendant’s station, and his brother followed suit. With the wooden baton provided, Peter captured several each visit, Paul fewer, but he was beginning to catch on. In the park’s southwest corner near an apple and pear orchard was another favorite, the Théâtre des Marionettes. Emma’s day wasn’t complete until she had a yellow balloon tied to her wrist by the balloon lady outside the theater. For their part, the boys often brought their wooden sailboats and joined other children splashing in the Grand Bassin. On his leash, Max looked on longingly. We usually finished at the fenced-in playground for a round of climbing and swinging and sliding.

Often I brought the children alone, to give Diane a break from baby farming. On nice days we made the half-hour trek downhill from the apartment, other times we drove. One crisp, bright Saturday a few weeks after our arrival I was getting them ready for an excursion and on the spur of the moment called Pat and asked if he’d like to join us. Though he and I had already got together for a drink after work, he still hadn’t met the kids.

“Bien sûr,” I heard as I cradled the phone, fighting over Emma’s sneaker laces.

We met at the Medici Fountain and Pat got acquainted as they dashed up and down the walkways either side of the long basin. After twenty minutes of this, the four of them collapsed on the bench beside us. Pat looked at me and shook his head. “Day in and day out I could never do that. You must be some kind of saint. How about a coffee? The kids like chocolat?”

“J’aime bien le chocolat. Une tasse de chocolat, s’il vous plaît.” This from Peter.

“Moi aussi!” Paul and Emma shouted in unison.

“That is impressive.” Pat said, tousling Peter’s hair. “Allons-y! Au chocolat!”

Diane and I spoke nothing but French to the kids. After a couple of months we saw the language taking hold, though Peter’s New York accent seemed impervious to change. The boys raced ahead to the little café, Emma lagging behind. Pat scooped her up and hoisted her to his shoulders. “Fun up there, isn’t it?” he said, craning his neck. “Hey, this isn’t so bad after all!” We regrouped at a table outside the café. A young man was standing in front of the nearby gazebo, singing.

“The Magic Flute,” Pat observed. “Papageno’s bird aria, of course.”

“Of course.” I smiled and shook my head. “Still haven’t made much progress.”

“You’re really missing something,” he said, blowing on the hot coffee. “Get a season ticket to something, you’ll be hooked in no time.”

“No time, that’s the problem.”

“Go when you can, give your ticket to me if you have to. You have a Walkman?”

“The kids gave me one for my birthday. It’s still in the box.”

“Get some tapes, listen on your way to work. Not only opera but Bach Cantatas, Stravinski, Berlioz, Poulenc. Paris is very big in music history. Take advantage of being here. You’ll be surprised – before long you’ll be an expert.”

“If I don’t get run over first.”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. He looked around the table. Peter looked shocked. “Sorry,” Pat said, “but you can be a drudge sometimes.”

“That was a joke. I’m better than I used to be.”

After finishing our drinks we walked around the gardens. For every sculpture Pat had a story. Mythological figures, Beethoven, Verlaine, Delacroix, when they lived, what they were famous for. Pat got on the carousel behind Emma and steered her baton out toward the rings. She snared one on her first try as Paul stared. She was upset when she had to give it back, also finding there was no prize. Success as its own reward, a new concept.

Though Peter was still full of energy, Emma and Paul were at the end of their ropes. I decided to hail a taxi to take us back. “If you’d like to see the apartment...”

“Some other time, thanks. Think they’d like a tour of the museum here?” he asked.

“Peter might, the other two, no. If you want to promote art education stick to the sculptures. When they get bored at least they can run around them.”

“Seen Lucie since you’ve been here? I heard you guys got together at the Cloisters.”

“It was interesting, her little books, the Unicorn. I owe her a call.”

“Are you interested in skiing this year?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t given it any thought... you know.”

“You’d do fine. And the French Alps are wonderful – I know some great places.”

“I have friend in London who skis. He might be interested.”

“Who’s that?”

“Hamid Rashid. You know, the writer.”

“I missed him that time in Berkeley. Maybe over Christmas – give it some thought.”

“I have to spend time with the in-laws and there’s a command performance at the home office in December. But I’ll think about it.”

THE SIMPLICITY OF THE SCHOOL SITUATION was a great relief, all three enrolled in the same school – fourth, third and first grades. The first week Diane drove them up the hill to the Place Contrascarpe and Mme. Colbert walked them home. After that they were on their own for mornings, though school activities complicated the afternoons. Under the weather one day, I accompanied them on the twenty-minute walk. Interestingly, the school was around the corner from the Lycée Henri-IV, one of Paris’ most prestigious secondary schools. I had no idea whether we’d still be here when they were ready for high school but if so, what a fabulous opportunity. I wondered if foreigners were welcome – I’d have to check.

The American school offered exercise and music as part of the curriculum and each kid was enrolled in sports programs, soccer for Peter and Paul, gymnastics for Emma. All three were taking private piano lessons from Mme. Peyroux, a noted concert performer in earlier days, according to the framed clippings on her wall. Her studio was in her apartment one street over from ours. We bought a spinet, which set the movers a real challenge.

I immersed myself in my work, getting into a good routine. I didn’t report on it, but I watched French TV avidly as large crowds demonstrated in European capitals, over three hundred thousand in Bonn echoing calls in the U.S. for a nuclear freeze and protesting deployment of U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles on the continent.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at home, American style. Diane invited another recently-arrived family, the Collins, whose Sophie was Emma’s best friend in the American school. Pete Collins was a lawyer with Coudert Frères, Trudy a graphic designer. Diane proved again, when she put her mind to it she was a very good cook. The boys and I shopped for fixings in the épicerie down the block where prices were quite a bit higher than Carrefour and the other hypermarchés, but the intimacy was pleasant and I liked supporting our neighbors. We weren’t entirely faithful to les épiceries, though, for a regular Sunday stop after church was the Place Monge street market, where we loaded up on fresh produce, eggs and baguettes, and patisseries to reward a good week of school.

I DIDN’T ORDINARILY SEE THE ATLANTIC, but just before Thanksgiving Didier left a copy of the December issue on my desk marked Must-read! Place-marked was William Greider’s article, “The Education of David Stockman.” A reporter for the Post, Greider’s name was familiar. At the top of the article a Stockman quote caught my eye. “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.”

No kidding, I thought, settling down with the article. Greider reviewed Reagan’s slash-spending and cut-tax recipe for balancing the federal budget. As I’ve said, economists with and without axes to grind, Democrats with definite axes to grind, editorial writers and plenty of ordinary citizens – few believed Reagan’s approaches could work, separately or together. And grow our way out of the crisis? Not a chance. Didier was right, this was a bombshell. How on earth did Reagan’s canny Budget Director permit himself to drop his guard and speak the truth? That’s not the way of this administration or most others, for that matter. I rubbed my hands together – Dispatch material if ever I saw it.

Stockman admitted he’d been wrong about balancing the budget. Hard to dispute him there, for after nearly a year at the helm, Reagan was still presiding over inflationary deficits. Declining markets signaled Wall Street’s disbelief. Interest rates had risen yet higher, squeezing farmers seeking their annual crop loans, killing auto and real estate sales. Many savings and loan associations were near insolvency.

Stockman’s first telling revelation – he and the Reagan camp had jiggered the OMB computer models with optimistic assumptions about how the economy would respond to their plan. His second, he had no solid basis for thinking tax cuts for the wealthy would work for anybody but them. The whole effort was based on faith – conservative faith that the profit incentive would lead the country out of its malaise. But was it really faith, or something more ominous? Midway through the article, Stockman told us essentially that supply-side is nothing but a scam to benefit the richest Americans at the expense of the rest of us. Fair enough. One analysis I saw showed everybody but the top 5% paying more tax, not less! A giant step toward the hoary Republican dream of reversing FDR’s “leveling.” On the crucial question whether the economy might start to respond, eventually, to the stimulation of the tax cut, Stockman gave this candid and revealing reply – “who knows?”

Can you believe it? “Who knows!”

I began sketching out a Dispatch. To my mind the question was who gets hurt if the scheme fails, and equally important, who does not? The military is protected, its budget actually increased. The wealthy, they’ve already pocketed their tax cut. So the risk falls on the poor and middle class. For them an across-the-board tax cut is useless, and worse yet, the services they need are eliminated or cut up-front to pay for goodies for the wealthy. And through it all the Great Communicator leads the cheering. I ended my Dispatch by observing that the only thing certain about Reagan’s scheme is the Selfish Revolution it will produce. Quite a few nastygrams on that one!

I interviewed Edouard Delors, the French Minister of Economics and Finance, several E.U. officials, a number of European CEOs and union leaders, and à la Alan Mauro, a sampling of gens-in-the-street. Nobody was surprised. The U.S. was odd and unfathomable, and given its recent choice for President, getting more peculiar all the time.

By now, New York was expecting me to provide them with a Dispatch each month, and Fred hinted they might want more. Surveys showed our readers eagerly awaited them. Not that they always agreed with me, as the mail made plain – and I admit I salted the column with enough scratchiness to stir things up and keep it interesting. Fred also told me they were working on a plan for a Parisian newspaper they cooperated with, l’Express, to run my Dispatches in their pages, en français, of course. Formidable!

I FINALLY MADE IT THROUGH THE TUCHMAN BOOK, prompting me to call Lucie and set a date to meet. Even though it would be the Louvre, Diane declined. She had leafed through the book and judged it boring, asking why I wasted my time on stuff like that. Think of it as a business book, I said. Kings and knights, CEOs and VPs – it’s all about the loot. I was waiting at the information desk when Lucie roared up.

“I called your office but you had already left.” Her eyes were flashing. “Je suis si furieuse! I was supposed to receive final approval for the exhibition design and le salaud! – I shall leave him unnamed – is trying to persuade le directeur to change the location which would ruin everything! Pah! Here, come with me.” She raced down a flight of stairs. I followed, wondering why medieval art was always down a flight of stairs, but this was no time for a question like that. Stopping at a heavy door she inserted a large, old-fashioned key. “Sorry, but this has been an awful day.”

“You know, if you want to put it off...”

“No. Perhaps it’ll get my mind off my troubles.”

The lock groaned as she turned the key. We stepped into a small, dimly-lit, windowless room. Lucie reached for a switch and brought up the lights. The low-ceilinged room was filled with ping-pong-sized tables covered by tiny models. Folded white sheets were draped over a chair in the corner, drawings, diagrams plastered on the walls. She stopped in front of a floor plan.

“The exhibition must be here!” she said, swatting the wall with a yardstick. “Here! In the medieval wing! I have agreement to borrow space from l’histoire du Louvre for mes livres, but a certain malhonnête – I thought he had made peace with the idea but apparently no – he wants us upstairs in the Sully. Terrible! That will destroy the exhibition! Forgive my ill temper but cet idiot is interfering with my work.”

“You know, you’re very beautiful when you’re angry.” I didn’t plan that – it just came out.

She blushed. “Alors... let us have our visit.”

She walked over to a diagram labeled Plan de l’Exposition. “Ah well, wherever they put me, the exhibition starts here,” she said, tapping the diagram. “We begin with a series of paintings depicting late medieval landscapes and chateaux, including the great Philippe Auguste fortress in which we now stand, which we show in its original condition.”

She passed on to another diagram on the wall, this one brightly-colored. Her enthusiasm was lightening her mood. “Here we welcome the visitor into the royal drawing room – period furniture, tapisseries, costumed mannequins. The two central figures, le Duc de Berry and Jeanne each hold their own Books of Hours – replicas, of course. Such a conversation might have occurred since their lives did overlap. This conceit introduces the next room – our centerpiece, the two Books of Hours, side-by-side. Good so far?”

“Excellent. I’ll be there.”

“But who knows where or when. That’s an American song, isn’t it?”

“From a Broadway show, I think. Don’t ask me which.”

Lucie turned to a table where two Book of Hours replicas were set. “Here we display the pages life-size. The Condé’s Très Riches Heures was in need of conservation – you would never unbind such a delicate book to make photographs, so this is a wonderful opportunity. The Met has done the same with its Belles Heures, so our technicians will recreate both volumes for us on the computer. The visitor will page forward and back as if he were reading the very books. He will be able to enlarge the pages to compare for similarities, influences, and so on.”

“Pretty neat.”

“And accompanying will be descriptive placards which we are in process of writing. I have an assistant curator drafting them, she’s marvelous.”

“What about the art in the books?”

Lucie returned to the wall and pointed at a set of six panels. “Here we focus on the main themes, the page art and the ornamental margins. And this leads naturally into the next part of the exhibition.”

Now we were standing before the renderings of the workshop. Two mannequins were hunched over a bench, intent on their work, the first lettering with a quill pen, his seatmate sketching the outline of a scene. “For this we use mainly the Metropolitan’s Belles Heures. The calligraphy comes first, the picture is then outlined, gold leaf applied where called for, then it is painted. The border comes last.” She pointed to the picture outline. “This page shows the beheading of St. Catherine. It is one of seven stories, quite extraneous to the devotional function but they permitted the Limbourgs to show their virtuosity. This next artist applies paint with a fine brush to the beheading scene. First the darker areas are filled in, then the lighter ones.”

“I wonder how the older guys got along with the brothers, they were so young.”

“Did they appreciate their genius? I don’t know. Perhaps they were terribly jealous.”

The next craftsman was filling in a border, vines and leaves and flowers, his seatmate painting a border already sketched in. “As you see, this is a team effort.” The next panel shows a worker assembling the leaves that will become the pages. “They then are gathered into what we call ‘quires’ and sewn together. Next leather thongs are attached to reinforce. End covers will be fixed top and bottom and the whole thing enclosed by a cover of wooden boards in leather. One of our carpenters is fabricating a workbench, another display explains the tools, the inks and dyes, the paints and paper.”

“I am impressed.”

“I almost have le directeur convinced to let me produce a workbook for children. We will have copies in an alcove where they can letter and draw and paint while their parents examine le Catalogue de l’Exposition which will be a monumental work in its own right. For a year I’ve worked on a draft, another month perhaps, then my colleagues at the Met and the Condé will read and comment. Finally, outside the gallery we will have a small museum shop where items related to the exhibition will be for purchase.”

“Books, recordings...”

“Exactement.”

“...mugs, t-shirts.”

“Mais oui.”

“Is there anything you haven’t thought of?”

“Only how to make the exhibition happen where it must.”

“You’ll get your way.”

She smiled. “I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.” We retired to the café near the main entrance for lunch. I pulled out my copy of A Distant Mirror and held it up.

“What are your impressions?” Lucie asked.

“Well, it’s long, obviously.”

“So was the fourteenth century.”

“Touché. What I especially liked was how she portrayed the color and density of the times. She made an authorial decision to focus on important people, which is fine, but I would have liked more detail about the ordinary people. While I was reading I tried to get back inside the old cloister, as you put it. Made me realize how little I learned about the times, how little flesh there was on those philosophical bones.”

“What about the popes? Hardly commendable representatives of God on earth, many of them.”

“Here too my memory is fuzzy, but I’d been conditioned to think well of the Church. Needless to say my mentors weren’t inclined to encourage a different point of view.”

“Do I detect some resentment on your part?”

“Let me put it this way. I was comfortable asking questions, stirring things up, but if I’d read this book back then I would have had better questions. The issue of personal gain, or promoting the power of the institution, those were not stressed, I will tell you.”

“The Reformation might have given you a clue, why it happened...”

“But it didn’t.”

“A course in the history of the period might have done it for you, assuming it was fairly presented. Poor thing, you were like our licorne, never thinking to jump the fence.”

“At least the licorne had the advantage of once living in the outside world. It never occurred to me that what lay outside the fence might be important.”

“But the sort of philosophy you studied provides a good foundation, I’m told.”

“True, but you can’t live in a foundation – the rest of the house matters, too.”

Lucie smiled. “By the way, just because I’m asking the questions, don’t think I know the answers. What I can tell you, there was great disharmony in the medieval world. The theory and the practice were far, far apart. Now for me, religion wasn’t as important as for you. Earlier, of course – Jésu and la vièrge, Jeanne d’Arc, Sainte Lucie, they were this little girl’s heroes, but as I grew religion didn’t maintain its hold.”

“You grew out of it, I guess. I never did, probably never will.” I sighed. “What troubles me, why Christ has tolerated so many bad actors to run His Church over the centuries. On the other hand, and here I do fault the author, focusing on the powerful, especially the miscreants, makes her too critical. She ignores the millions of people who led exemplary lives, priests and bishops included. It’s as if those people never existed.”

“They did, and their lives were difficult.”

“God tests most severely the ones he loves the most.”

“That’s a convenient formulation.”

“Yes, but it provides comfort, and if your life is filled with misery isn’t that worth something? To believe they’ll be reunited with that child carried away by the plague, with that father or brother who never made it back from the crusade. Same old story, the boy scout and the old lady don’t sell papers. Or historical narratives either, I guess.”

“That would have been a different book, but Paul, what if there is no God, no afterlife? Those people would have put their faith in something that leads nowhere.”

What she said made me think of the monk and the man in white... was I taking the Inquisitor’s side here? Putting that discomforting thought aside, I went on. “If your beliefs help you treat people fairly, be generous to your friends and loving to your family, what’s so bad about that? And as Pascal said, there is always the chance that when you close your eyes that last time perhaps there will be something else.”

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a betting man.”

“Normally I’m not. You know, Lucie, you asked if I was resentful – the answer is no. But I do feel anger at those who abuse people’s trust. Let me give you a tip – when you see someone abusing his power, look carefully. At the heart of it is lying. Without fail, lying. I have a personal investment in this, it almost got me killed.”

“You just smiled. That’s nothing to smile at.”

“I was thinking of my mother. When I was small she warned me about people in authority. Unfortunately that went over my head too.”

“One should always listen to one’s mother.”

“She was more perceptive than the so-called intellectuals I ran with later.”

We parted, Lucie to her workshop, I to my newsroom. We gave each other a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. I told her I looked forward to seeing her again. She said the same.

At home that evening I offered to give Diane an account of our visit but she declined.

“Sorry, I just don’t like that woman.” Then she added something surprising. “She makes me feel uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?”

“She’s so self-righteous. Oh, let’s drop it. I really don’t want to talk about your Lu-cie.”

I shrugged and turned back to my book. Later that evening other snippets of conversation came to mind and I asked myself, could it be Diane’s jealous? I had never thought she lacked self-confidence, but deep down, was that her problem? And another thing – if she’s jealous of Lucie, maybe she has reason to be.

BY OCTOBER BREZHNEV AND THE SOVIETS, fed up with Poland, forced out the Party’s First Secretary and replaced him with the reliable General Jaruzelski. But the situation worsened and Solidarity’s leaders threatened a general strike. On December 12 Jaruzelski imposed martial law, suspending Solidarity, arresting Lech Walesa, and thousands of others. Having encouraged the stirrings of freedom, John Paul II prayed and, ever the patriot, maneuvered.

We spent Christmas of 1981 in our new home, putting off the complication of a ski vacation with three little people for another time. I avoided the office the week after Christmas, working from home as Diane took Emma back to New York to visit with her parents. I was happy not to go, having just returned from my first Harlan Kenny seminar which got old very quickly. The boys and I cruised around Paris, revisiting the store windows and Père Nöel’s workshop in Printemps. The week before Christmas Diane had taken them into la Samaritaine where they sat on the great man’s knee. Paul was upset that Santa spoke French and wasn’t fat enough. “This doesn’t count! I won’t get any presents.”

One afternoon I showed them to the office then ambled along the Champs d’Elysées as the tree lights came on. At an outdoor market we visited the chalets, enjoying sausage and cheese, gingerbread and hot cider. That evening I chanced a concert at Sainte-Chapelle, one of my absolute favorite places. I was congratulating myself for making it through Bach and Palestrina, but at intermission Paul complained of a stomach ache. We got to a restroom just in time for him to throw up something a ginger-colored sausage mix. Right away he felt better but I steered us to the Metro and packed him off to bed.

Early in the new year I scheduled interviews for a story about British tariffs against French wine imports, also was researching the Reagan-Thatcher duo, and caught up with Hamid. He was supervising the translation of his Arabic stories and verses into several other languages. He was also teaching a writing class at his old school, but his main focus was his next opus, as he told me over dinner, a historical novel about Ya’qub bin Laith as-Saffar, founder of the Saffarid dynasty. “From eastern Iran, humble origins, a coppersmith, that’s what saffar means, then he turned to banditry, built an army and eventually gained control of most of what is now Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

“Talk about an impossible job. When did all this happen?”

“Second half of the ninth century. He’s credited with bringing the Persian language back after centuries of domination by Arabic. His luck ran out when he was defeated in Baghdad. After his death his brother Amr succeeded him but the dynasty faltered and the territory shrank. It’s end date is generally considered to be 1003.”

I laughed. “I thought I was into antiquity but you’ve got me beat. I’ve been reading about the fourteenth century. In Europe, that is.”

“This is a departure,” Hamid said, “though I suppose most of what I write, what anyone writes, is historical, one way or the other. If the author puts made-up characters in a made-up world, he’s writing a fantasy and he can do what he wants. But if he uses the quote-unquote real world he has to get it right, which means history. My world here was once real and so were the characters, so it’s doubly demanding. And I am not trained as an historian.”

“How much longer?”

“Two years, eighteen months if I get lucky.”

“You’re slowing down in your old age.”

Hamid laughed. “Don’t we all? You’re doing well. You already have a Pulitzer.”

“And you almost a Booker!”

“Almost a Booker. From time to time I come across your articles, though I haven’t seen you on television yet.” He sat back. “You know, the other day I was thinking how different what I do is from what you do, I mean on the point of truth-telling. Very different approaches. Not only can I lie, I must lie. That’s what storytelling is all about. Now, if you did what I did you’d be out of a job.”

“Come on, what you do isn’t lying.”

“Oh, but it is. I make things up. That’s what I do for a living.”

I shook my head. “Lying implies malice. That’s not what you’re about.”

“Not deliberately, but if Plato was right, society’s mythmakers do a lot of harm. Not to mention its musicians.”

“In a structured state they make it more difficult to keep order. But that’s hardly what we’re talking about.”

“No? What about Elvis? Or the Beatles? The Sixties – you remember them.”

I shook my head. “Sorry I brought it up.”

“Do you hear from Gus? I haven’t talked with him in a while.”

“Occasionally. He takes full credit for our achievements, you’ll be happy to know. Incidentally, Akiko has been ill, some sort of nerve condition. It’s pretty serious.”

ONE MORNING IN FEBRUARY JUST AS I ARRIVED Didier intercepted me, all excited. “New York’s going crazy. I called your home but you’d left. A drilling rig off Newfoundland just sank in a storm. They need somebody out there but Linda can’t do it...”

“She’s due about now.”

“Exactly. Tom O’Connor wants you to cover it. Can you spare a few days?”

I thought a moment. “What I’m working on I can put in shape for Edouard.”

“There’s no time, just give it to me. He’s not in but you can brief him from the plane. Monique’s getting your tickets. Alors, Paul, not every day does one have the chance to make points with the big boss. Your ready bag, it is equipped for cold weather?”

We all kept a bag at the office, just in case. “Of course! Ski hat, pith helmet – I never know what you’ll spring on me.” I bowed in Three Musketeers’ style. “À vôtre service!”

“It’s not the North Pole but close enough.”

“Actually, I’ve learned Newfoundland is about the same latitude as us but the North Atlantic adds a frisky dimension.”

“That’s what happened. Gale winds blew the thing over, more than a hundred knots, according to the wire. You’d think something like that would be built strong enough.”

“You realize, of course, this means you owe me one. D’accord?”

“D’accord.”

“I’d better call Diane. We had plans but what else is new?”

“Just had a nice chat with her. She says bring her back some native jewelry.”

The back side of the big storm had struck Mobil Oil’s Ocean Ranger drilling rig a hundred-eighty miles east of Newfoundland, and was still pummeling eastern Canada when I arrived in Montreal. After a three-hour delay it was two a.m. when I checked into my hotel which, interestingly, was called the Albatross. The room was fine, though after eighteen hours en route anything soft and reasonably horizontal would have been acceptable. I hadn’t been able to focus on my new le Carré paperback, wearing out my Gazette credit card on the airplane phone, getting up to speed and briefing Edouard. On with Fred I told him they needed to assign somebody to put the event in context. “Update offshore oil, what it means for supply, past disasters.”

“We’re already on it. Did you know drilling platforms have drowned more than two hundred people? Stay warm, amigo.”

I also picked up some skinny, definitely not for attribution, from a Mobil friend in New York. A week before, the Ocean Ranger had a problem with ballast control, an inadvertent shutdown that caused the rig to list severely. The company chalked it up to operator error. Its U.S. Coast Guard certificate had recently expired and ironically, officials were headed there for an inspection as the storm came on. In high seas and heavy wind, the Ocean Ranger reported more ballast control problems, valves opening and closing on their own.

St. John’s authorities told me their first warning was a Mayday picked up by Halifax at 0052 hours. The rig was listing severely and desperately needed assistance. At 0130, Ocean Ranger’s final transmission – “Abandoning ship.” An hour later the first rescue helicopter found the Ocean Ranger barely afloat, and in half an hour it went under. All that remained were overturned lifeboats, a few bodies, debris. As vessels continued searching for survivors another disaster began to unfold. A Russian freighter bound for Leningrad was taking on water nearby and soon went down. Of all things, the Mikhanik Tarasov had originated in the port of Trois Rivières. Dad. Madeleine.

Courtesy of Roger Oakes, its Editor, I set up shop in the St. John’s Express newsroom, made a bunch of calls, then got over to the Coast Guard building where I interviewed officials and, as day broke, sat in on an improvised press conference. CBC was there, of course, and a CBS crew from New York headed by a newsman I knew fairly well, Marty Keller, who covered oil for CBS. CNN also, Montreal and Toronto papers. I seemed to be the only U.S. print reporter, and sitting beside a Times stringer out of St. John’s, my yawns made me wonder why we hadn’t gone local. I figured it was expertise they were after so I’d better reach deep and put some of it in play. From the briefing we learned that of the Ocean Ranger’s eighty four-man crew, none had been found alive, and given the freezing water, none would be. So far eleven bodies recovered. From the Soviet ship five had been rescued.

After spending time with a Mobil VP, I tried to hook a ride out to the scene on a Coast Guard chopper but nothing doing, some nonsense about security. Marty, overhearing me, said CBS had chartered a plane, there was an extra seat and I was welcome to it. “You okay with my taking pictures?” I asked.

“‘Long as you don’t try to scoop us.”

“I’m shooting for tomorrow’s early edition.”

“Not a problem.”

At nine o’clock we clambered aboard the Twin Otter and headed east over the Atlantic toward the Grand Banks and the Hibernia oilfield. “Supposedly the biggest movable offshore rig anywhere,” I observed to Marty across the aisle. “Basically it’s a catamaran with pontoons and heavy anchors.”

“Not heavy enough. A hundred-twenty million bucks, eighty-four men and all of it gone. Our oil habit makes us do funny things, doesn’t it?” He lit a cigarette. “So tell me, how does it feel to win a Pulitzer? If you hadn’t noticed I’m still waiting for mine.”

“It makes you a lot of new friends, if you know what I mean.”

“I have a hunch there’ll be more to come.”

After ninety minutes bumping through the clouds I could feel the plane descend and the pilot came over the intercom. “Sorry about the choppy air but it’s no better where we’re sitting. Cloud base reported thirty-one hundred feet, so when we’re in the clear I’ll level off and make a pass then drop down for your filming. We’ll be making left turns to avoid other aircraft – lot of flies at this picnic today. Set up at the left door, you can buckle your cameraman in now to save time.”

The CBS cameraman positioned himself at the door, someone securing him with a canvas harness bolted to the floor and ceiling. I broke out the Leica, fitting a telephoto lens to it. I’d attempt a few through the window until my turn at the door. We broke out to a sullen yellow-gray horizon and foam-flecked waves. With the turbulence I decided to use 1/1000th, though because of the dim light some slower ones too. I peered through the long lens at the ships, the scattered lifeboats. The co-pilot came back and muscled the door open against the wind. A blast of cold air swept through the cabin. As we began our descent I stuffed my notebook in my pocket and snapped some shots out the window. After a while the co-pilot came back again to shut the door and unbuckle the cameraman. I got up awkwardly. One of those times Mr. Stumpy becomes Mr. Grumpy.

“Give you a hand?” Marty asked.

I slipped and slid over to the door, the cameraman’s assistant stuck a plastic crate under me, buckled me in, and I positioned myself, my good foot wedged in the door frame. “Ready when you are,” I yelled.

The copilot unlatched the door and forced it open, the onrushing wind pressing me against the harness. In the steep bank centrifugal force pressed me against the crate and I leaned out, pointing the camera toward the ocean. On our second pass, I got a couple through the spinning prop, the scene framed by the wing strut and the nacelle’s underside. After two passes I signaled them to reel me in.

The story basically wrote itself – I’d been rehearsing it in my head all day. Roger had his photo lab develop the film and make a set of contact prints. He pointed to the shot of the boats through the prop disc. “Sure you’re not a photographer by trade?”

“At heart, maybe, not by trade.”

We selected a half dozen to enlarge then scanned them into a computer and sent them off via satellite. Such technology way out here, I marveled, then I realized – of course. How else could they function? Everything was in Fred’s hands by five-thirty New York time, beating deadline by a couple of hours. Special Report by Paul Bernard. Pretty neat.

That night a few of us assembled in the bar to drink to our day and anything else we could think of. Over excellent Porterhouses preceded by shrimp from the icy Atlantic waters we swapped lies and stories, no big difference most of the time. “I was concerned, you in that open door,” Marty said, “the leg and all. But you managed okay.”

“Not a problem. It felt like the gunners in Vietnam, the guys who rode in our choppers. They were crazy brave.”

“What outfit were you in?”

“The Twenty-Fifth. In the Central Highlands.”

“I was on a guided missile cruiser. Compared to you guys we had it easy. You must have seen some bad shit.”

“We had our share.”

“That monument, the one they’re calling the Wall, you been following that?

“The drawings look great. I understand some people’re calling it the Gash.”

“One of the functions of a wall is to divide.”

“Yeah, but another’s to protect... I guess maybe the two go together. Before I got into the oil business I covered the anti-war beat, especially the vets. I ought to find out what they’re thinking about the it, though that’d be kind of difficult from Paris.”

Marty laughed. “You got to this godforsaken place.”

“That’s true. I’ll get hold of our guy covering that beat, what’s left of it.”

“You’ve done some spots for CBS from Paris – how’d you like that?”

It’s a nice break from working for a living, is what I tell people. I hear you’re thinking about showcasing our European work, some sort of cooperative deal.”

“I’ve heard that too.” Marty chugged his drink and slammed the glass down. “I been up since four. Time for beddy-bye.”

“Try five for size... five yesterday, that is.” I got to my feet. “See you in the a.m.”