Democracy: A Novel Part 5

"Will you remember doing this," Jack Lovett said.

"I suppose," Inez Christian said.

Her refusal to engage in even this most unspecific and pro forma speculation had interested him, even nettled him, and he had found himself persisting: "You'll go off to college and marry some squash player and forget we ever did any of it."

She had said nothing.

"You'll go your way and I'll go mine. That about it?"

"I suppose we'll run into each other," Inez Christian said. "Here or there."

By September of 1953, when Inez Christian left Honolulu for the first of the four years she had agreed to spend studying art history at Sarah Lawrence, Jack Lovett was in Thailand, setting up what later became the Air Asia operation. By May of 1955, when Inez Christian walked out of a dance cla.s.s at Sarah Lawrence on a Tuesday afternoon and got in Harry Victor's car and drove down to New York to marry him at City Hall, with a jersey practice skirt tied over her leotard and a bunch of daisies for a bouquet, Jack Lovett was already in Saigon, setting up lines of access to what in 1955 he was not yet calling the a.s.sistance effort. In 1955 he was still calling it the insurgency problem, but even then he saw its possibilities. He saw it as useful. I believe many people did, while it lasted. "NOT A SQUASH PLAYER," Inez Christian wrote across the wedding announcement she eventually mailed to his address in Honolulu, but it was six months before he got it.

It occurs to me that for Harry Victor to have driven up to Sarah Lawrence on a Tuesday afternoon in May and picked up Inez Christian in her leotard and married her at City Hall could be understood as impulsive, perhaps the only thing Harry Victor ever did that might be interpreted as a spring fancy, but this interpretation would be misleading. There were practical factors involved. Harry Victor was due to start work in Was.h.i.+ngton the following Monday, and Inez Christian was two months pregnant.

The afternoon of the wedding was warm and bright.

Billy Dillon was the witness.

After the ceremony Inez and Harry Victor and Billy Dillon and a girl Billy Dillon knew that year rode the ferry to Staten Island and back, had dinner at Luchow's, and went uptown to hear Mabel Mercer at the RSVP.

In the spring of the year, Mabel Mercer sang, and this will be my s.h.i.+ning hour.

Two months to the day after the wedding Inez miscarried, but by then Harry was learning the ropes at Justice and Inez had decorated the apartment in Georgetown (white walls, Harvard chairs, lithographs) and they were giving dinner parties, administrative a.s.sistants and supremes de volaille a l'estragon at the Danish teak table in the living room. When Jack Lovett finally got Inez's announcement he sent her a wedding present he had won in a poker game in Saigon, a silver cigarette box engraved Residence du Gouverneur General de l'Indo-Chine.

2.

IN fact they did run into each other.

Here or there.

Often enough, during those twenty-some years during which Inez Victor and Jack Lovett refrained from touching each other, refrained from exhibiting undue pleasure in each other's presence or untoward interest in each other's activities, refrained most specifically from even being alone together, to keep the idea of it quick.

Quick, alive.

Something to think about late at night.

Something private.

She always looked for him.

She did not really expect to see him but she never got off a plane in certain parts of the world without wondering where he was, how he was, what he might be doing.

And once in a while he was there.

For example in Jakarta in 1969.

I learned this from her.

Official CODEL Mission, Dependents and Guests Accompanying, Inquiry into Status Human Rights in Developing (USAID Recipient) Nations.

One of many occasions on which Harry Victor descended on one tropic capital or another and set about obtaining official a.s.surance that human rights remained inviolate in the developing (USAID Recipient) nation at hand.

One of several occasions, during those years after Harry Victor first got himself elected to Congress, on which Inez Victor got off the plane in one tropic capital or another and was met by Jack Lovett.

Temporarily attached to the emba.s.sy.

On special a.s.signment to the military.

Performing an advisory function to the private sector.

"Just what we need here, a congressman," Inez remembered Jack Lovett saying that night in the customs shed at the Jakarta airport. The customs shed had been crowded and steamy and it had occurred to Inez that there were too many Americans in it. There was Inez, there was Harry, there were Jessie and Adlai. There was Billy Dillon. There was Frances Landau, in the same meticulously pressed fatigues and French aviator gla.s.ses she had worn the year before in Havana. There was Janet, dressed entirely in pink, pink sandals, a pink straw hat, a pink linen dress with rickrack. "I thought pink was the navy blue of the Indies," Janet had said in the Cathay Pacific lounge at Hong Kong.

"India," Inez had said. "Not the Indies. India."

"India, the Indies, whatever. Same look, n'est-ce pas?"

"Possibly to you," Frances Landau said.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I don't quite see why you decided to get yourself up like an English royal touring the colonies."

Janet had a.s.sessed Frances Landau's fatigues, washed and pressed to a silvery patina, loose and seductive against Frances Landau's translucent skin.

"Because I didn't bring my combat gear," Janet had said then.

Inez did not remember exactly why Janet had been along (some domestic crisis, a ragged season with d.i.c.k Ziegler or a pique with Dwight Christian, a barrage of urgent telephone calls and a pro forma invitation), nor did she remember exactly under what pretext Frances Landau had been along (legislative a.s.sistant, official photographer, drafter of one preliminary report or another, the use of Bahasa Indonesian in elementary education on Sumatra, the effects of civil disturbance on the infrastructure left on Java by the Dutch), but there they had been, in the customs shed of the Jakarta airport, along with nineteen pieces of luggage and two book bags and two tennis rackets and the boogie boards that Janet had insisted on bringing from Honolulu as presents for Jessie and Adlai. Jack Lovett had picked up the tennis rackets and handed them to the emba.s.sy driver. "A tennis paradise here, you don't mind the ballboys carry submachine guns."

"Let's get it clear at the outset, I don't want this visit tainted," Harry Victor had said.

"No emba.s.sy orchestration," Billy Dillon said.

"No debriefing," Harry Victor said.

"No reporting," Billy Dillon said.

"I want it understood," Harry Victor said, "I'm promising unconditional confidentiality."

"Harry wants it understood," Billy Dillon said, "he's not representing the emba.s.sy."

Jack Lovett opened the door of one of the emba.s.sy cars double-parked outside the customs shed. "You're parading through town some night in one of these Detroit boats with the CD 12 plates and a van blocks you off, you just explain all that to the guys who jump out. You just tell them. They can stop waving their Uzis. You're one American who doesn't represent the emba.s.sy. That'll impress them. They'll back right off."

"There's a point that should be made here," Frances Landau said.

"Trust you to make it," Janet said.

Frances Landau ignored Janet. "Harry. Billy. See if you don't agree. The point-"

"They'll lay down their Uzis and back off saluting," Jack Lovett said.

"This sounds like something Frances will be dressed for," Janet said.

"-Point I want to make is this," Frances Landau said. "Congressman Victor isn't interested in confrontation."

"That's something else he can tell them." Jack Lovett was looking at Inez. "Any points you want to make? Anything you want understood? Mrs. Victor?"

"About this friend of Inez's," Frances Landau had said later that night at the hotel.

Inez was lying on the bed in the suite that had finally been found for her and Harry and the twins. There had been a mix-up about whether they were to stay at the hotel or at the amba.s.sador's residence and when Harry had insisted on the hotel the bags had to be retrieved from the residence. "We always put Codels at the residence," the junior political officer had kept saying. "This Codel doesn't represent the emba.s.sy," Jack Lovett had said, and the extra rooms had been arranged at the desk of the Hotel Borobudur and Jack Lovett had left and the junior political officer was waiting downstairs for the bags with a walkie-talkie and one of the ten autographed paperback copies of The View from the Street: Root Causes, Radical Solutions and a Modest Proposal that Frances Landau had thought to bring in her carry-on bag.

"Which friend of Inez's exactly," Inez said.

"Jack whatever his name is."

"Lovett." Janet was examining the curtains. "His name is Jack Lovett. This is just possibly the ugliest print I have ever seen."

"Batik," Frances Landau said. "A national craft. Lovett then."

"Frances is so instructive," Janet said. "Batik. A national craft. There is batik and there is batik, Frances. For your information."

Frances Landau emptied an ice tray into a plastic bucket. "What does he do?"

Inez stood up. "I believe he's setting up an export credit program, Frances." She glanced at Billy Dillon. "Operating independently of Pertamina."

"AID funding," Billy Dillon said. "Exploring avenues. Et cetera."

"So he said." Frances Landau dropped three of the ice cubes into a gla.s.s. "In those words."

"I thought he was in the aircraft business," Janet said. "Inez? Wasn't he? When he was married to Betty Bennett? I'd be just a little leery of those ice cubes if I were you, Frances. Ice cubes are not a national craft."

"Really, the aircraft business," Frances Landau said. "Boeing? Douglas? What aircraft business?"

"I wouldn't develop this any further, Frances," Harry Victor said.

"I'd definitely let it lie," Billy Dillon said. "In country."

"It's not that clear cut," Harry Victor said.

"But this is ludicrous," Frances Landau said.

"Not black and white," Harry Victor said.

"Pretty gray, actually," Billy Dillon said. "In country."

"But this is everything I despise." Frances Landau looked at Harry Victor. "Everything you despise."

Inez looked at Billy Dillon.

Billy Dillon shrugged.

"Harry, if you could hear yourself. 'Not that clear cut.' 'Not black and white.' That's not the Harry Victor I-"

Frances Landau broke off.

There was a silence.

"The four of you are really fun company," Janet said.

"This conversation," Frances Landau said, "is making me quite ill."

"That or the ice cubes," Janet said.

When Inez remembered that week in Jakarta in 1969 she remembered mainly the cloud cover that hung low over the city and trapped the fumes of sewage and automobile exhaust and rotting vegetation as in a fetid greenhouse. She remembered the cloud cover and she remembered lightning flickering on the horizon before dawn and she remembered rain was.h.i.+ng wild orchids into the milky waste ditches.

She remembered the rumors.

There had been new rumors every day.

The newspapers, censored, managed to report these rumors by carrying stories in which they deplored the spreading of rumors, or, as the newspapers put it, the propagation of falsehoods detrimental to public security. In order to deplore the falsehoods it was of course necessary to detail them, which was the trick. Among the falsehoods deplored one day was a rumor that an American tourist had been killed in the rioting at Surabaya, the rioting at Surabaya being only another rumor, deplored the previous day. There was a further rumor that the Straits Times in Singapore was reporting not only an American tourist but also a German businessman killed, and rioting in Solo as well as in Surabaya, but even the existence of the Straits Times report was impossible to confirm because the Straits Times was said to have been confiscated at customs. The rumor that the Straits Times had been confiscated at customs was itself impossible to confirm, another falsehood detrimental to public security, but there was no Straits Times in Jakarta for the rest of that week.

Inez remembered Harry giving a press conference and telling the wire reporters who showed up that the rioting in Surabaya reflected the normal turbulence of a nascent democracy.

Inez remembered Billy Dillon negotiating with the wire reporters to move Harry's press conference out in time for Friday deadlines at the New York Times and the Was.h.i.+ngton Post "I made him available, now do me a favor," Billy Dillon said. "I don't want him on the wire so late he makes the papers Sunday afternoon, you see my point."

Inez remembered Jack Lovett asking Billy Dillon if he wanted the rioting rescheduled for the Los Angeles Times.

Inez remembered: The reception for Harry at the university the night before the grenade exploded in the emba.s.sy commissary. She remembered Harry saying over and over again that Americans were learning major lessons in Southeast Asia. She remembered Jack Lovett saying finally that he could think of only one lesson Americans were learning in Southeast Asia. What was that, someone said. Harry did not say it, Harry was too careful to have said it. Billy Dillon was too careful to have said it. Frances Landau or Janet must have said it. What was that, Frances Landau or Janet said, and Jack Lovett clipped a cigar before he answered.

"A tripped Claymore mine explodes straight up," Jack Lovett said.

There had been bare light bulbs blazing over a table set with trays of sweetened pomegranate juice, little gold chairs set in rows, some kind of trouble outside: troops appearing at the doors and the occasional crack of a rifle shot, the congressman says, the congressman believes, major lessons for Americans in Southeast Asia.

"Let's move it out," Jack Lovett said.

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit I'm not through," Harry Victor said.

"I believe some human rights are being violated on the verandah," Jack Lovett said.

Harry had turned back to the director of the Islamic Union.