Read Online American Romantic by Ward Just - Free Book Online Page B

often worked out, each having an empty space that the other filled. Something like that. His mother was easygoing and his father wasn’t. His father wanted today to be very like yesterday and his mother didn’t. His mother was excited by tomorrow, the dawn of the new day and so forth, whereas his father saw unspecified difficulties, illness or foul weather or a moronic call on his valuable time. Harry considered himself easygoing, quick to forgive. Well, that depended on what he was asked to forgive, the specific gravity of the request. Some acts were impossible to forgive entirely or even partially. These unforgivable acts were too numerous to name. Carelessness, for example, heedless of consequence. Or all too aware of it.
    Harry looked again at granite-jawed George Kennan. He had been out of government for many years but retained influence through his books and lectures. Harry tried to imagine himself at fifty or sixty years old and responsible for relations with a leader as malicious as Joseph Stalin. He could not. Hard enough even to imagine Stalin and the mountains of dead he left behind in his great experiment, corpses beyond count. Diplomacy was a great calling but you had to have the nerves for it and the wind, the confidence to look the American president in the eye and say, This is what must be done. Probably to do this successfully you had to have lived through the most desperate days of World War II, the outcome in doubt, and the Great Depression before that. You had to believe without question in the virtue of the American experiment, the project itself. Not that the nation was blessed by God. God’s purposes were enigmatic. At the very most you had to believe that God was not frowning. God did not disapprove. But His thumb wasn’t on the scale either.
    The times have changed, Harry thought.
    The men in charge were insecure, hence the war.
    He closed his eyes and drifted off. God and Kennan went away. Harry conjured the German hospital ship under way on the open ocean, steaming through drizzle, everyone excited at the prospect of home, industrious Hamburg and its riotous nightlife. What did the Germans call home?
Heimat,
more than merely a dwelling or a city, a profound state of mind. Meanwhile the passengers had the featureless ocean to gaze upon, hoping that a dolphin or some other sea creature would show itself. At some point the vessel would have to put in for refueling. He had no idea where that would he. Probably somewhere in the vicinity of the African coast, one of the ancient ports like Mombasa or Aden. They would remain a few days, allowing the crew shore leave, though neither Aden nor Mombasa promised much in the way of sightseeing or recreation. Even so, they would be thinking of Hamburg and
Heimat.
Sieglinde would be dreading Hamburg, the place she disliked so. She did not care for Hamburg’s past, nor the weather, the north wind and the icy rain that came with it. Neither did she care for the men, Germans of the big blond type. Perhaps that, too, was a tall tale.
    Harry?
    He peeked from behind the newspaper.
    Harry, you’re talking to yourself. You said “Aden” and then you said “Mombasa.”
    I was thinking of ancient port cities.
    Mmm, Marcia said. Well. The ambassador’s waiting.
    Announced by Marcia, Harry stepped through the doorway of the ambassador’s office, not as spacious as one expected. But they were short of space at the embassy, so many new arrivals, even the ambassador was asked to make allowances. The old man was seated at his desk, telephone in hand, his feet up, scanning a telegram. He waved Harry to a chair without looking up. Basso Earle said, Give me a minute, Harry.
    Harry stepped to the window and stood looking into the street while the ambassador turned his back and spoke quietly into the telephone, not a word audible, but his exasperation was palpable in the rise and fall of his voice, here and there an ambiguous grunt. Harry