Eating Crow Read online

  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, stee
l-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.”

  “And then,” Will said, “we brief him when he comes to us for a quote that we cannot possibly comment on a private meeting between the Chief Apologist and the president.”

  “But,” Jennie said, “we don’t deny anything.”

  “Exactly,” Satesh said. “It’s the apology that never happened. Enough to dig Masuba out of his hole, but slight enough to protect the integrity of the main event.”

  “Okay, Satesh,” Jennie said. “Set it up with Max. For tomorrow PM if possible.” Satesh wasn’t listening. He was staring across the table. We all followed his line of sight to where Ellen Petersen was seated, head down, furiously taking notes. We had become so used to her presence that we had forgotten she was there. Alerted by the silence, she looked up to find us watching her.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Ellen,” Jennie said quietly, “you can’t report any of this.”

  She looked down at her notes and then back up at us. “I didn’t hear anybody say it was off the record or—”

  “Ellen,” I said self-importantly, “we’re trying to save lives here. You report any of this, and it will be wasted effort. People will die.”

  She closed her notebook very deliberately. She put the lid back on her pen and placed it across the notebook as if laying down her weapon. She looked at me.

  “Okay. Quid pro quo?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That photograph?”

  “I won’t stunt anything.”

  “My magazine would not allow anything to be contrived. It must be authentic. We need to capture an authentically penitential moment.”

  I let this pass. “And that notebook stays shut?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Meet me tomorrow morning in the foyer.”

  “Foyer?”

  “Lobby.”

  “Done.”

  The next morning Ellen Petersen got her photograph, something spontaneous and sharp, as I happened to rub my face with both open hands. Later that day Cyril Masuba got his apology, as I emptied a glass of Perrier over his navy blue, brass-buttoned blazer. After I had loudly showered him with words of regret and sorrow at the mess I had made I placed a hand on each of his shoulders, pulled him to me, and whispered in his ear, “Now you may go home and tell whoever you need to tell that you had a private meeting with the Chief Apologist where he expressed regret over a number of issues. We will not contradict you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Basset,” he said, with a shy nod of his head. “You have the gratitude of my people.”

  “Think nothing of it, Mr. President.”

  At 3:00 PM on the third and final day of the congress, I settled into the warm embrace of a brown velour armchair opposite the aging president of Zambia and delivered the slavery apology. Essentially it was the Jeffries text but recombined with an element of my family’s story, which made the sentiment my own. The old man sat across from me, a solid meaty hand placed on each armrest, chin down on his chest, lips pursed, listening. When I was done, he sighed heavily and closed his eyes for a minute, until I thought he had fallen asleep. He opened them again and in thickly accented English said only, “History will remember us both.”

  Which was fine by me. If history needed people to remember, why shouldn’t it recall me? I was back in the game, back in charge of my own emotions. The buzz was there and it was rich and it was profound and it was fulfilling. Together we had done a good thing, the president and I.

  As we boarded the Gulfstream for the flight back to the States, Ellen Petersen said, “You’re a sharp political operator.”

  I said, “Don’t make too much of that. I prefer to think of myself as an ordinary man who happens to be in extraordinary circumstances.”

  “I like that. An ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. Very good.”

  “How do you think the magazine will play it?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Oh, the usual things. The outcome of the German elections. Whether the current round of the world trade talks reaches a conclusion. Acts of God.”

  I liked the sound of this. Marc Basset was now jostling for position with Acts of God.

  Marc Basset; Acts of God.

  Acts of God; Marc Basset.

  I could see how this would be a tough call for any editor.

  Twenty-three

  At the German general election the incumbents were returned. The latest round of the world trade talks in Zurich ended in a stalemate. And there were no earthquakes, floods, or other divine interventions that resulted in major loss of life. As a result Ellen’s profile made the cover of that week’s Time: a huge close-up of me, my face hidden behind my fleshy, feminine hands.

  The headline read: WHO’S SORRY NOW?

  Beneath it was the subhead: The man who can’t get enough humble pie.

  The article began: “Marc Basset is an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances.”

  Other interview requests followed.

  “… and we’ve had one from a Mr. Robert Hunter in London,” Francine said, reading from a long list in her message book. “Told me to say hi, wonders whether you’d like to write a diary of a week in the life of the Chief Apologist. He says it can be as positive as you like.”

  “Nice.”

  “He sounded lovely.”

  “Jennie, is it okay with you if I just tell him to fu—
”

  “Don’t burn any bridges, Marc.”

  “You deal with it, then. Tell him I’m …”

  “… really sorry, but up to your eyes?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jennie scribbled in her own notebook. She said, “There’s one invitation I think you should accept. Helen Treasure’s people called. They want you for Sunday night.”

  This was an unrefusable offer. Treasure’s program, Powertalk, was a clear hour of live one-on-one chat with People Who Count. Millions watched it, coast to coast, though less for the razor-edge insight than the Kleenex moment. Somehow Treasure always got her interviewees to weep on camera: vice presidents, senators, retired generals—all of them had sobbed in her armchair. If you only ever watched Powertalk you would presume the United States to be ruled by a tight coterie of emotionally incontinent men. Through it all, Treasure would remain clear-eyed, her glossy lips pursed in close-up sympathy, head tilted to one side. The words “Just take a moment” had become her catchphrase. Well, I was done with the weeping thing. I had wept for the world. I would not need a moment.

  We flew south in the jet to Washington, DC, took a couple of suites at the Willard, and ordered lousy pasta from room service.

  “You want me to come with you?” Jennie said, spooling up another forkful of overcooked, underseasoned linguine.

  “I think I can handle Treasure by myself,” I said.

  I was collected from the hotel at sundown by a television company limo, which drove around two sides of the White House, as if giving me the tour. We picked up Pennsylvania Avenue going west, and then turned south again to an industrial-looking block tucked away in the shadow of the Watergate complex. In the middle of the building, reached through corridors overlit by buzzing fluorescent tubes and past darkened scenery stores, stood Treasure’s set. It looked much like the hotel suite I had just left: overstuffed sofas and armchairs; heavy, rucked floral drapes; priapic-standard lamps. And in the middle of it all, Helen Treasure, a hostess waiting for a party to begin, knees together, shapely calves shining in glossy tights, one high-heeled foot tucked demurely behind the other.