Eating Crow (18 page)

I’
m sorry?”

“No need to apologize again, Mr. Basset.”

“No, I mean, I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?”

“You did nothing wrong. Indeed there are elements of your speech which I find myself admiring. I’m just not a big fan of this whole apology thing in general.” This, with an airy wave of one hand, as if my words had settled in a light haze above his head.

I glanced at my watch: 5:40
PM.
Looking out the open window, I could see in the distance the satellite dishes and aerials of the television trucks preparing for our moment. This was not good. Not good at all.

I said, “What is it you don’t like?”

“Mr. Basset, if you apologize for making me a slave, what does that make me?”

“Well, I—”

“It makes me a slave, Mr. Basset. I remain the victim of the offense for which you apologized. In short, the act of apology only serves to emphasize victimhood.”

“Well, I’m not sure—”

“It emphasizes the fact of our history and therefore makes us prisoners of it.”

“I don’t think of you as a slave.”

“Thank you, Mr. Basset.”

“What I mean is, it’s a real apology. I’m genuinely sorry.”

“Of course you are, Mr. Basset. You are genuinely sorry that my great-grandfather was born a slave.”

“Exactly. I’m very sorry about your great-grandfather.”

“I understand that. But nothing you say can change the fact. Randall Jeffries will still have been born a slave.”

5:43
PM.

“What is it that you do want then, Professor Jeffries, if not an apology?” I could feel the panic rising, the stickiness of tongue and the shallowness of breath. I didn’t want to screw up my first assignment. Not now. Not after all that Montrachet and Petrus, d’Yquem and Apache.

Jeffries looked up at a corner of the ceiling, as if trying to draw up a mental list. “What is it I want?” he muttered to himself, mockingly. “Just what is it I want?” He looked back at me. “I know! Same as the white folks. A condo in Florida and a Lexus with the executive walnut trim.”

“But you already have this place. What do you want with a house in Florida?”

“This house? Oh, Mr. Basset, you think I own this? On a professor’s salary?” He roared with heavy laughter. “No no no. It’s owned by a trust. The committee thought it would be cute if I lived here to make a point.” He took another sip of the wine. “In any case, you are being too literal. What I’m saying is, all we want is your money. Only with economic muscle, the economic muscle we are due, will you stop thinking of us as slaves, for our history will no longer be relevant. As I say, a condo in Florida each and a Lexus with walnut trim should just about do it. And maybe a GPS and onboard DVD player.”

I stood up and walked over to the window. Heavy tropical rain clouds had rolled in to darken the sky to a gloomy smudge above the oaks. A bloated wind blew through the branches, and down in the lane at the bottom of the drive, sharp white television lights were fizzing into life.

5:49
PM.

My cell phone vibrated. It was Jennie’s number on the screen; presumably she was calling to see how we were doing. I imagined that anxious tinge that comes into her voice when things aren’t going precisely as she planned them. I turned off the phone without answering it.

“Did you need to take that?”

“No, it can wait. Professor Jeffries, if you don’t approve of apologies, what are we doing here?”

“A fair question. Two points.” He raised a single, bony finger. “One. There are many in the African-American community who do want an apology, and for entirely laudable reasons. They want recognition of their hurt, and nothing I say will convince them that this is other than a reasonable and useful demand.”

“And the second point?”

“Process.”

“Process?”

“Yes, process.” He ate a few more of the macadamias. “These are very good, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“As was the whole meal.”

“My pleasure.”

“You must give me the recipe for the sauce that went with the scallops.”

“I will, Professor Jeffries, I will. Forgive me. Time is a little short. What do you mean by ‘process’?”

He stared sadly into the nut bowl. It was almost empty. “We are involved in a process here. The federal government has bought into the idea that any compensation package must first be preceded by an apology. Once an apology has been made and accepted, they will simply have to move forward to the question of money. They will have no choice. That is the process which in the interests of compensation, I too am willing to participate in.”

“I’m sorry, Professor Jeffries. Under the Schenke laws—”

“—‘no apologee may define or assume, from the shape, form, or scale of the apology they have received, the shape, form, or scale of any settlement that may follow.’ Sub-law four. I know my Schenke, Mr. Basset.”

“Of course you do. I was just saying—”

“And sub-law four is the most phony of the lot because everybody knows that the whole point of Schenke is that it should result in reduced compensation payments, which means everybody has already made assumptions about the scale of the cash settlements that will result. But I will tell you this, Mr. Basset, I will tell you this. The African-American community will not be settling for a twenty-three percent reduced payment simply for hearing the word ‘sorry’ from your lips, however finely said. We’ll be going the whole nine yards. Only suckers will settle for less.”

“I see.”

Another interruption from the long-case grandfather clock outside, as if tapping its foot in irritation.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Basset. There are a lot of suckers in the world. There are still those who will settle for less and you will still get your cut.”

A grubby silence fell between us.

“What time is it?” he said.

I looked at my watch. “Five to six.”

Jeffries nodded slowly. “We better get to work, then, if we’re going to make the six-thirty bulletins.”

“Get to work?”

“We need to write ourselves a new apology.” He stretched in his chair and yawned. “Yours was good, but it will never fly with my committee.”

“Oh.” I looked mournfully at the wooden floor. “Just so I know—for future reference, what was wrong with it?”

Jeffries smiled indulgently. “A little too … cute?” He stood up and made for the door, humming to himself. “I think in your country they’d call it ‘chocolate box.’”

I felt cross: I’d put a lot of effort into this afternoon. I’d cooked like a demon and pulled off something remarkable. My speech had been thought through. It was the product of care and planning. And now, as with everything I’d done that day, Jeffries was undermining it. I’d come into this for the buzz of apology. I wanted to feel the warm glow of emotional wounds salved. Now all I felt was humiliated. I wasn’t going to stand for it.

“Professor Jeffries. I know I’m new at this job, but I also know you can’t go writing the text of apologies made to you.”

“Can’t I?”

“It’s against the rules.”

“And that matters because …?”

“How do you know I won’t spill the beans?”

He looked me up and down. “Anybody can see you’re having the time of your life, Mr. Basset. You’re not about to put that in peril now, are you?”

“… And these wounds, though they shall never be bound up, are now recognized. The pain and hurt that has passed from generation to generation, from father to son, from mother to daughter, is our pain too, for we the perpetrators accept our guilt. The tongue that we now share, that was forced upon the peoples of Africa by our ill deeds, is overburdened by the language of domination but ill equipped when it comes to the making of amends. Only one word presents itself, a tiny word compared to the magnitude of the task set before it, but we offer it now in all humility, for it is all we have.

“That word is ‘sorry.’ We are sorry for the grievous crimes of slavery, sorry for the centuries of deprivation, sorry for the river of blood that we have caused to flow. On behalf of myself, my family, and the peoples of Britain and the United States of America, I ask now that you accept both this apology, late though it be, and the sincerity with which it is given.”

Jeffries stared silently at the piece of paper in his hand before carefully folding it away. Above us the early evening rain thundered its applause onto the huge golfing umbrella under which we were sheltering. The photographers’ shutters clicked and whirred while the television cameras fixed us with their steely gaze, their magnesium lights causing our shadows to dance against the underside of the canopy. I stood still, impassive, at Jeffries’ side. He spoke again.

“Those were Mr. Basset’s words to me this afternoon. They are fine words, considered words, and on behalf of the millions dispossessed by history, I now humbly accept them. The work to settle slavery’s debt has begun.” He tucked the sheet of paper into an inside jacket pocket and turned away to give individual interviews while reporters started their match-play commentaries to camera.

Standing next to me, speaking in a half whisper, Jennie said, “That was a beautiful speech, Marc, really beautiful—”

“But they weren’t my words,” I whispered back. “They were—”

She silenced me with one delicate finger pressed lightly against my half-open lips. “I know, sweetheart. They were the words of history speaking through you.”

I said nothing.

I couldn’t see what else I was supposed to do. Call the cameras back and confess? Interfere with the “process”? Jeffries was happy enough. The television people were getting great pictures. And if Jennie wanted to believe I had written that speech, so full of rich African-American rhetorical cadences, what right did I have to disappoint her?

Anyway, as the man said, I was having the time of my life.

A
few hours later Max sent me a text message.

It read:
WILLY WLD B PROUD.

Max hadn’t put his name to it, but his signature was there in the message. I was sitting in a roadside diner a few miles from Welton-Oaks, with Jennie and Satesh, Will Masters and the security boys. We were slugging cold beer and eating fried chicken and talking in the busy, self-important way of people who have been working too hard for too long but who have finally closed the deal.

I slumped back into the warm leatherette of our booth, cell phone in hand, reading the glowing screen, on pause from the banter.

“Marc?”

“Text from Max.”

“Oh yes? What does he say? Share it with the class.”

“Nothing. Congrats, is all.”

“Come on. Full citation please.”

“Jennie …”

“Don’t be shy.”

“Oh god. He says …, ‘A fine day’s work. Yours. Max O.’”

It was less embarrassing than the real thing. The crowd looked nonplussed but remembered to smile encouragingly, before returning to the retelling of their part in the day’s heroic narrative of helicopters and vintage wines and satellite feeds.

I have no idea whether Willy Brandt would have been proud; I didn’t need praise from dead men. Still, if Max was impressed and this was his way of saying so, that was good enough for me. As the evening wore on, and the beer softened my mood, I became increasingly comfortable with my role in the day’s events. Did it matter that the words were not mine? Hadn’t they become so? It was like when I was a kid and I used to claim Luke’s crimes as my own. I remember once he smashed a neighbor’s greenhouse window with a stick intended for the horse chestnuts lodged high up in a tree (he never could throw), and in taking the rap, I also inherited the legend of the crime. Mum used to tell the story over and over, with nannyish indulgence, as if it were proof of my tendency to mischief, until even Luke forgot he was the guilty party. A piece of family history was mine. Couldn’t the same apply here?

There was more than enough encouragement to think that way. Three days later we flew in a private jet to Zambia for the annual congress of the African Union, where I was to follow my first apology for slavery with a second to the entirety of Africa. There is nothing better calculated to give a man faith in himself than flying in his own Gulfstream V executive jet. Before Jennie, before any of this, I had only one wealth ambition: to be rich enough to need never to turn right ever again as I boarded a transatlantic flight. That shows the narrowness of my aspirations. I thought only in terms of business-class leg room for my ludicrous thighs and in-flight meals on bone china. Now I knew better. The true definition of success is being on first-name terms with the pilot of your Gulfstream V. Mine was called Chris.

If I needed any further encouragement, there was also the presence on board of a reporter from
Time
who was to profile me. She was a tall, big-limbed Midwestern woman of Scandinavian stock called Ellen Petersen, who favored long earrings that emphasized the length of her neck. She wore beige canvas trousers with ancient scuffs at the knee and Timberland boots and a black canvas jacket with an awful lot of pockets. She had dressed for an overland trip by Jeep to somewhere remote; we were headed for the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Centre, Lusaka.

Jennie said, “She looks like the kind of woman who would positively enjoy clear-air turbulence,” and I couldn’t argue.

Her interview technique, though, was soothing. They were the sort of questions you would never ask yourself but which, in the answering, help you take a position.

“So, tell me: what qualities does an apologist need?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Ellen. An understanding of the self? A willingness to free your emotions? It’s hard to say.”

“You must be capable of feeling genuine remorse?”

“Absolutely. And you also mustn’t get carried away by the surroundings in which you’re feeling it. All of this: the private jets, the white leather seats—you have to keep it real.”

“Is that tough?”

“It’s just a case of remembering who you are. Where you’re from. Have you tried the Roquefort, by the way? It’s on a plate up by the galley. Very good. It’s just about the only thing that can withstand the deadening effects of altitude on the taste buds.”

“Of course—you were a food critic.”

“A restaurant critic, actually.”

“That background? It informs what you are doing now?”

“An interesting question, Ellen. I do think it gifted me an understanding of how people can come to feel pain.”

“Pain you inflicted?”

“Ultimately, yes. I’m not proud of it, but perhaps some good came in the end from …”

And so on, question after question. During the flight. Over drinks at the opening reception. As we checked out our apology room, with its heavy armchairs in brown velour and its overactive rubber plants and its French windows overlooking a courtyard of wilting palms. Until she became just another part of the team floating about this curiously sealed corner of Africa: air-conditioning; poolside drinks service; the sickly sweet back smell of decaying vegetation.

Late on the afternoon of the first full day she drew me aside.

“Listen, I’m getting great words but we need to discuss pictures. Is there any chance of something …?”

“Yes?”

“… penitential?”

“How do you mean?”

“Perhaps I could have a photographer in for the apology itself?”

“Absolutely not. It would contaminate the apologibility zone.”

“Well then, could we sort something else out? The better the images, the more space I’ll get up in the front of the book.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Head in hands? Tears, maybe. Something like that.”

“Come on, Ellen, I can’t do that. I’ve been talking to you about keeping it real and now you want me to fake it?”

“All I’m saying is, the better the art, the more the space, the bigger the audience for what you want to say.”

“Sorry, Ellen.”

“Well, think about it.”

The idea of stunting anything in this hotel was ludicrous given how much of the genuine article was going on about us: the AU Congress was to be the site not just of my apology, but of many other nation-specific acts of penitence. It was as if the Dayton conference had been lifted up from one continent and dropped onto another—the cast list was the same. A tiny, balding Frenchman in a beige safari suit could be seen rushing about the corridors, frayed volume of Molière in hand, from the Tunisians to the Algerians, from Mali to Cameroon to Chad, apologizing for the excesses of his country’s particular brand of colonialism. The Portuguese were slated to deal with both Angola and Mozambique on the morning of day two, while the Dutch were spending almost a whole afternoon cloistered with a delegation of South African bishops. We could hear them singing.

In the bar I ran into Rashenko, who according to rumor had been bursting into tears on the shoulder of any African delegation leader he happened across, just to be on the safe side. In penitential terms Soviet involvement in Africa during the Cold War was a gray area.

“Mr. Basset, I am so sorry …” He reached down to embrace me, his eyes flooding. I backed off.

“Vladimir, we’ve already done this.”

“We have?” He hung over me like a giant ape about to scoop up its young from the forest floor.

“Back at Dayton.”

He thought about it, then grabbed me anyway and sniveled into my neck. “I’m sorry, I forgot. Such a bad man. I am such a bad man.”

The combined efforts of all these apologists, along with those of the Italians and the Belgians, so overwhelmed the media center that press conferences for the announcement of each new apology had to be limited to thirty minutes, in an attempt to get through them all before the congress concluded. At one point on the final day so many different apologists and delegations were meeting around the hotel that the apologies were being made quicker than the media center could announce them. They were stacking up like jets over an international airport.

My contribution, to the president of Zambia (which this year was chairing the AU), was scheduled to be the last of the entire event. It should have left me with time to sit by the pool and work on the text of my apology, but on the evening of the first day we ran into trouble.

An advance group of us had just grabbed a table in the hotel restaurant. Jennie, Will, and I were checking out the menu (Caesar salads, Maryland crab cakes, rib eye steaks and home fries—exactly what you would expect from an international hotel in Africa) when Satesh bounded up, panting slightly.

“Just seen Max.”

I said, “Olson? He’s here?”

“Working with the Sierra Leone delegation. The thing is—”

“It’s hard to keep up with him.”

“I know. He gets about. The point is—”

“Did you ask him to join us? You should ask him to join us.”

“Marc! There’s a situation developing, a serious one.”

According to Max, Cyril Masuba, the president of Sierra Leone, was coming under heavy pressure from both opposition politicians and the military back home to extract from me a slavery apology specific to his country. This shouldn’t have been an issue. Under Schenke’s third sub-law, which propounded the doctrine of self-direction, I was obliged to abide by the AU’s decision that the apology should be made to the head of state of whichever country happened to be holding the chair at the time, in this case Zambia. But there were practicalities here. Masuba was the first successful civilian president Sierra Leone had enjoyed in years. He was a liberal and a democrat and he had balanced the competing powers against him with immense skill and tact.

“If he doesn’t get his apology,” Satesh said, “it could destabilize him, and result in a coup.”

“And that in turn could destabilize the entire region,” Will said. “Thousands will die.”

“Exactly. We’ve been here before.”

Silence. Jennie looked around the table. “Okay. What are the options? Will, what happens if Masuba gets his apology?”

He shook his head. “Disastrous. First up, we’ll come under immense pressure to supply every one of the fifty-two other AU states with their own site-specific apologies. Put aside the logistical nightmare of trying to research and deliver those apologies—which is impossible within the time frame—we’ll also be trampling all over the sovereignty of the AU and contravening sub-law three of Schenke.”

“Not an option, then.”

“Positively illegal, I’d say.”

“Satesh?”

He took off his frail, steel-rimmed glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Let’s find an excuse to delay the apology. Say Marc’s been taken ill or just announce that the text of the apology needs more work. Something. Give Masuba breathing space to argue his case back home and return when the ground is ready.”

“By which time,” Will said, “another country will demand their own apology.” He shook his head. “In any case, no one will believe us, when there have already been so many other successful apologies here. We’ll undermine UNOAR. We’re meant to be above this sort of dirty politics. We get caught up in this and …” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

Another pause. Around us diners clinked cutlery against porcelain. Slowly Satesh looked up, as if he had just surprised himself. “What about the Frankfurt Maneuver?”

Will allowed himself a half smile. “The Frankfurt Maneuver? That’s a thought.”

Jennie sniffed irritably. “What is the—”

Satesh interrupted. “In the early nineties, there was a series of meetings between the European Union and some of the former Eastern Bloc countries in Frankfurt to discuss moves toward inclusion. Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia as then was. The Russians protested that they should be in on the talks, which was unacceptable to the Hungarians and the Poles. To everyone, actually. A couple of the backroom boys at the Foreign Office surmised this was simply the Russian culture of pride.”

“They accepted the likely outcome but they didn’t want to lose face,” Will said.

“What did you do?”

“We set up a cocktail party to precede the opening dinner,” Satesh said. “The Russians were invited for drinks and then hustled out the door before the serious business began. That way they could go home and tell everyone they had met the EU and the former Warsaw Pact powers and engaged in amicable discussions, blah blah blah.”

Jennie said, “I like the sound of this. But we can’t throw a drinks party just for Masuba.”

I leaned into the table. “No, but we can throw a drink over him.”

They turned to look at me irritably, as if the child who had been allowed to stay up for dinner with the grown-ups had just interrupted. “Hear me out. We get Max to arrange for Masuba to take up position in one of the bars when it’s quiet. Middle of the afternoon, say. I come in, strike up a conversation, order a drink, and accidentally on purpose spill it all over him. Then I love-bomb him with apologies for the mess, sorry for this grievous stain, all of that.”

Satesh slapped the table with one open-palmed hand. “We get one of the boys from the Sierra Leone press corps into the room to witness it.”