Eating Crow (10 page)

I was now deep into my speech. “You see, the thing about men is that, deep down, they know their involvement with the reproductive act to be tiny … women are the makers … that leaves us feeling desperately inadequate … Our value in sex can be measured in centiliters …” That last line got a small laugh, although whether of ridicule or recognition I couldn’t be sure. They all seemed genuinely gripped. And onward went my televised self, my eyes now becoming glassy. “I wanted the vital intelligence. You gave it to me. You made me a man and I went and behaved like one.” I watched myself blink hard. The picture moved into a tight close-up on my face. I couldn’t recall Jennie touching the camera at this point, but clearly she had, or perhaps she had been holding a remote control. However she had done it, my eyes—my moist, imploring, cow eyes—now filled the screen as a single fat self-pitying teardrop escaped to roll down my nose.

I felt sick. My humiliation was complete. Jennie had got her revenge.

Maybe Lynne was right. Maybe I was being a fool. I was throwing my life away in pursuit of … what? Catharsis? Righteousness? An overdeveloped interest in the past? It had already gone too far, now that anybody with an Internet connection could witness me at work. In that instant I concluded that the time had come to give it all up. Strip down the Wall of Shame. Phone Hunter and make nice. Rebuild my relationship with Lynne. Reclaim my life.

But there was that muttering again: “Oh, great. Fab.” “Spot-on … just what we’re looking for.” When I reached the climax of my speech—“I’m sorry, Jennie. I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. For everything”—everyone in the room slumped back in their seats and started applauding. I’m sure one of them shouted, “Bravo!” Joe reached over and paused the picture on my tear-streaked face, teeth just bared, cheeks coloring a blotchy pink.

Forster called the meeting to order. “Right, everybody. Now we have all seen what we are dealing with, let’s fill in poor Marc.” He turned to me. “How much do you know about what you’re doing here?”

“I don’t… I’m not sure I—”

Jennie jumped in. “I thought it would be better if I let you explain.”

“Fine,” Forster said. “Introductions first. My name is Stephen Forster and I am Deputy Undersecretary in FO26, which essentially means I have responsibility for relations with the United Nations and so forth.”

He indicated the middle-aged man across the table from me who wore a brown tweed jacket and a mismatched tie with too fat a knot. “Francis Wilson here is head of Historical and Verification.”

“Very excited to meet you, Mr. Basset,” he said. “You really do have spectacular antecedents. Your file is remarkable.” He patted the fat manila folder in front of him.

“Er, thank you,” I stammered. “I think.”

“Next to him is our very own Will Masters from Legal.” Masters, my age and dressed with a determination to prove it—suit by Boss; shirt, probably by same, buttoned to the throat; rimless glasses—raised one open-palmed hand in salute. “Hi!”

“Joe there is from Psych.”

“Psychiatry?”

“No no no,” Forster said soothingly. “Psychology.” As if that made things clearer.

“Obviously you know our own Jennie Sampson.”

“I don’t know what she does.”

Forster nodded. “Jennie?”

“Er … liaison, I suppose,” she said with a grin.

“Yes,” Forster said,
“special
liaison,” with knowing emphasis on the “special.” “Next to Jennie we have Satesh,” he said, indicating a young, neatly dressed Asian man in steel-rimmed glasses. “Satesh works with me at FO26.” Satesh leaned across Jennie to shake hands.

“And finally, down at the other end of the table, we have Maxwell Olson, on temporary assignment to us from our friends at the US State Department.”

“Just call me Max,” the American said, with a smile dripping with shared purpose. “I’m here to tell you, son, my government is very interested in what you have to offer.” I muttered another thank-you because I couldn’t think what else to say.

It was time to take control. I took a deep breath. “Fine. Lovely to meet you all, I’m sure. I’m delighted everyone’s so very excited by me. Now, can someone please tell me what I am doing here?”

Forster leaned back in his seat and nodded slowly. “Of course. Of course. Tell me, Marc, what does Professor Thomas Schenke’s name mean to you?”

I
shook my head. “Never heard of him.”

“And why should you?” Forster said. “Not much of a prose stylist, our Mr. Schenke. Unlike you.” Everybody else around the table laughed knowingly, including Jennie, which irritated me. I said nothing.

“For all his failings as a writer,” Forster said, filling the silence, “Schenke has nevertheless become the founding father of a new and exciting strand of international relations theory known, in diplomatic circles, as ‘Penitential Engagement.’”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“Oh it is,” he said, ignoring my stab at deathly irony. “Penitential Engagement is the future.”

“The very near future,” Max Olson said dryly from the other end of the table.

“Indeed,” Forster said. “I’ll give you a copy of Schenke’s book when we’re finished here, but for now let me précis.” He leaned toward me as if taking me into his confidence. “According to Professor Schenke, the conduct of calm international relations is being stymied by the enormous weight of emotional baggage that world history has given us. There are too many countries, too many peoples—call them what you will—with unresolved grievances. If we could resolve the issues of the past, then the conduct of world affairs in the present would be that much smoother.”

Again Max Olson chipped in. “All it requires is for one half of the world to be willing to apologize to the other.”

“Apologize for what, exactly?” I said.

Forster sat back. “Take your pick: slavery, colonialism, the Opium Wars, Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland, the Rwandan genocide, support of apartheid—”

“Is that all?” I said tartly.

“No, no,” he said. “There are endless cruelties for which an apology is applicable and, dare I say it, appropriate. Indeed a lot of the background work has been done. It’s fair to say that we’ve worked out the how, where, what, and when of international apology.”

Olson jumped in again. “But we’re still looking for the who.”

Forster nodded. “Exactly. What’s important is finding the right person to make the apology. Or apologies. The identity of the apologist is crucial.”

I sat back, incredulous. “You mean you’re actually going to start doing this?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Forster said. “All the important global players are right there behind it, partly because of the economic benefits, which you can read about for yourself later. The main point is that an Office of Apology is being established at the United Nations in New York, with a research and registration secretariat. Many countries have nominated their apologists. The one thing it is missing”—he slowed down now and spoke very deliberately—“is a Chief Apologist.”

The whole table stared intently at me.

“And you think I’m the one …?”

Forster nodded slowly. “We have been searching for the right individual for many months.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Britain and the US,” Max Olson said. “It was agreed at a special session of the steering group in Geneva four months ago that as Britain and the US carry the burden of apologizable events, the Office of Apology would accept whomsoever we nominate.”

“Although others have been involved in the decision to nominate you,” Forster said. He nodded toward the screen. “A digitized copy of Jennie’s video was sent electronically to every single member-state delegation at the United Nations in New York.”

I leaned toward him. “It was emailed?” He nodded slowly. I looked at Jennie. She whispered, “Sorry.” I turned back to Forster. “Which is how my face came to be on every damn computer screen in my office?”

Forster pressed his hands together as if he were praying. “Regrettably it appears one or more of the UN delegations forwarded the video to friends or associates outside diplomatic circles, and for that I apologize, though I believe they only did so because they were so impressed by the passion you displayed. Either way it was never our intention to embarrass you.”

Jennie leaned over toward Forster, like a pupil eager to impress. “It has had a positive effect, though, hasn’t it, Stephen?”

“Oh yes, indeed. Your apology has rather taken on a life of its own.”

Jennie again: “It’s become the most emailed video in the history of the Internet, actually.” It was quickly becoming regarded as an icon of the weblog movement, she said. In an age when the monolithic corporate websites were being overtaken in popularity by the diaries and electronic jottings of millions of individuals determined at last to grab control of editorial content for themselves, my video had come to represent an ideal: the use of the Internet for the expression of intense and personal emotion. My video was the victory of the individual. And it had happened in a matter of days. She squeezed my arm fondly. “There are millions of copies out there now.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “And that’s good because …?”

Forster smiled indulgently at me. “You have to understand, Marc, that bureaucracies are, by their very nature, terribly conservative. They don’t tend to recognize talent until it has been recognized elsewhere.” He waved at the table. “Those of us here were certain from the moment we viewed the tape that you were the man for the job, but it took the sudden and informal success of your apology to Jennie for others to see your virtues too. In the past twelve hours we’ve had dozens of messages of support from other UN member states encouraging us to go forward with your nomination. Even the French appear to be impressed by what you can do.” I couldn’t help but feel a shiver of pride flow through me.

I said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Completely. There’s a conference at Dayton, Ohio, in a couple of weeks’ time, and we want to be able to announce your name then.”

I looked over at the television screen, still filled with the damp cheeks and bloodshot eyes of my remorseful face. “Why me?” I said.

Forster nodded very slowly. “Francis, will you …?”

The man across the table with the badly knotted tie opened the file in front of him. “The key phrase is ‘Plausible apologibility,’” he said, enunciating each syllable as if it belonged to a foreign place name. “Under the Schenke Doctrine no apology can be made unless the apologizer is entitled to make it. Which means that if somebody is to apologize for an event of great or even midrange antiquity, there must, on their family tree, be a person who was directly involved with that hurt.” He looked down at the papers in front of him. “Your tree on your mother’s side is remarkable. You have plausible apologibility over, well, pretty much everything: Welton-Smiths were deeply involved in the slave trade, obviously big in various colonial administrations, and were enthusiastic prosecutors of military campaigns throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Frankly, there have been few atrocities in which a Welton-Smith was not involved.”

“I’ve never been so proud,” I said.

The historian’s eyes lit up. “So you should be, so you should be. It’s a truly stunning historical record.”

“And that’s all on my mother’s side?”

“Indeed.”

“What about on my dad’s side?”

“Oh, well,” the historian said, closing the file, “he was Swiss so he gives you plausible apologibility for almost everything else.” A ripple of knowing laughter went around the table, which Forster silenced.

“Joe …?”

“Thank you, Stephen. What matters, Marc, is not just your historical antecedents, which as Francis says are remarkable. It is who you are, too. There’s no point us nominating a Chief Apologist who has nothing to say for himself or no way to say it. But you … well …” He gestured toward my tear-drenched face on the television beside him. “It’s all up there to see, isn’t it? You clearly have massive reserves of empathie understanding, plus a profound ability to live fully within and through the moment.” He looked at the sheets in front of him and ran his finger down a list. “Fiona Hestridge described you to us, and I quote, as ‘the authentic voice of remorse.’ Ellen Barrington used the phrase ‘convincingly anguished.’ Even Marcia Harris called you—”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“Just doing a little research,” Forster said, cutting in.

He reached across to the white cloth in the middle of the table and pulled it away to reveal a silver dish full of dark chocolate, cocoa-dusted truffles, and glossy chocolate-coated nuts. He pushed the dish in front of me. “You’re among friends,” he said. I hesitated for a second, both infuriated by the knowingness of the gesture and attracted by the high-quality product in the bowl. I took a Brazil nut and focused on how my teeth slid through the dense outer layers to reach the crunch at the center. I ran my tongue around my teeth.

“I’ve told you I’ve never heard of this Schenke guy. Shouldn’t I meet him before we go any further?”

Forster sniffed and studied the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“But I know nothing about international diplomacy.”

“That’s the point,” Forster said, looking back at me. “It’s what makes you ideal for the job. A Chief Apologist plucked from among the usual suspects would have no credibility at all. A former restaurant critic with an interesting backstory—”

“What do you mean, ‘former restaurant critic’?”

“We heard you had resigned. Isn’t that so, Jennie?”

“That was what I was told by Sophie in the press office at the paper. You did resign, didn’t you?”

Max Olson got up and walked to the window. He lit a new cigarette and rested his elbow on the high windowsill like a cocktail party guest propping himself up at a marble mantelpiece. “Mr. Basset,” he said, killing a flaming match with a quick, deliberate flick of his wrist, “you are worrying too much about what has been. My government … our governments are in a position to make you an offer which it would be foolish for you to refuse.”

Forster said, “You will have your own team of advisers—historians, psychologists, political, legal, everything you need—many of its members drawn from around this table. And Jennie here will go along with you as your chief of staff to take care of admin.” I turned to her and she raised her eyebrows as if to say, “How about it?” I shoved a crumbling truffle into my mouth and felt its soothing liquid fall across my tongue as the soft center of salt caramel broke out from the chocolate’s heart.

“They are superb,” I said, pointing to the bowl. “L’Artisan du Chocolat?” I said, naming my favorite chocolatier on Lower Sloane Street.

Forster said, “Jennie, are they …?”

She nodded. “Gerard sends his regards.”

“He knows his chocolate, does Gerard.”

“Of course,” she said. “And so do you.”

I took another, and then a third. The room was watching me. “Okay, then. And if I say yes, what will I get?”

Forster said, “Will?”

The lawyer picked up a sheet of paper. “Diplomatic status, from Her Majesty’s Government, as necessary. The apartment on the twenty-sixth floor of the Millennium Hotel at number one United Nations Plaza, rent free, naturally, plus another official residence, to be decided, in Geneva. A tax-free salary of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum as an advance against point zero zero one percent of the Schenke scale differential plus—”

“Hang on a moment. Point zero zero what of what?”

Will Masters put down the sheet and took off his glasses. “It’s a little technical, Mr. Basset, and I suggest you read up on the Schenke scale in the book. I also have to advise you to get independent legal advice on this contract and I will happily suggest some names of good people who can help you through. But be assured that the minimum you will receive is a quarter of a million dollars a year, payable in monthly installments, which could be topped up in a significant manner depending upon your performance.”

“What do you call significant?”

He replaced his glasses and returned to his sheet. “Best to read the book,” he said, distractedly. “All expenses will be taken care of, naturally, and you will have a minimum severance payment of two years’ salary—half a million dollars—this contract to run, in the first instance, for two years blah blah blah.” He put down the sheet. “There’s a lot of other stuff here about domiciles, jurisdictions, and your nationality—which may, at times, have to be flexible—but those are the main points.”

I shoved two Brazil nuts into my mouth in quick succession. $250,000 a year as an advance against point zero zero one percent of something. “A lot to think about, isn’t it?” Forster said. I nodded because my mouth was too full.

He slid a book across the table to me. “Go home. Read this. And call us,” he said. “But do it quickly. There’s only fourteen days before Dayton kicks off and we need you in place by then.”