Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes. Jan David Blais
like Jennings but I always watched Paul. Though I switched channels as soon as he was finished.”
“Couldn’t take all that right-wing talk?”
“What got to me was the arrogance and ignorance – no, not ignorance, distortion. Those people aren’t dumb, they know exactly what they’re doing.”
“‘All Points of View, Fairly Presented.’”
“Horseshit.”
“Agreed. Let’s push ahead.”
Later in the day Jonathan is poking around the study, which is fine, I am happy to share my library with him. “That your wife?” He points to a picture on the credenza.
I pick up the picture. Akiko and I on the deck, house in the background. “That was about seventy-five. The campus had pretty well settled down by then.”
He moves to a series of pictures hanging nearby. “Your boarders?”
“Every year we took a group shot.” I bend forward toward one. “Sixty-four,” I point to the legend. “That’s Paul in the middle next to Akiko.”
“What are those, may I ask?” He points to a shelf full of video cassettes.
I smile. “I recorded all of Paul’s big broadcasts. The John Paul II interviews, the Berlin Wall, Colin Powell after the Gulf War. They’re all here.”
“I know how I’ll be spending my evenings.” He runs his finger along the spines, neatly hand-lettered with topic and date. “Yeltsin, 10-16-92 – the Yeltsin debate?”
“It didn’t start out that way but things got out of hand...”
“...and they end up shouting at each other.”
“Then the apologies, the hugs, all on camera. Ever hear what happened after they left Yeltsin’s office that night? Not many people know about that.”
Jonathan shook his head.
“As Paul told it, it involved a considerable amount of vodka and the worst hangover he ever had. Remind me, I’ll tell you later.”
Jonathan puts the cassette back. “Paul Bernard was a hero to my generation of journalists. Some say he was a more effective Secretary of State than the real one.”
“I don’t know about that, but he told me he’d get calls from the White House asking him to carry a message. Or telling him to back off, depending. Everybody respected him, those who didn’t hate his guts, that is. Then came the Iraq business – very ugly, that.
“My sense is the harder people beat on him the more he dug his heels in.”
“You got that exactly right.”
* * * * * * *
GUS, WHY IS IT SOME OF OUR EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS are the most vivid? Because the child isn’t yet burdened with the baggage of reason? Or is it the drama of seeing, hearing, touching for the first time? To this day a singular sound or scent or color can summon those first experiences to mind. Proust had his madeleines, I offer you my first-grade schoolroom.
Sunlight streaming through the patched brown shades, a long hooked pole for raising and lowering. Tree shadows stirring, a movie screen where nothing happens and everything happens. Above the blackboards, maps of the United States, the Holy Land, Ireland, Rome. Saints’ pictures, Christ Child on a ledge, his plaster gown falling in folds from a raised arm, faint smile beneath the gold leaf crown. Our teacher’s face, ruddy above the shapeless habit which provokes the curious or, some said, filthy minds of her charges. What is black and white and red all over? Most amazing, the triple chin forced by her high collar, and that starched white bib. Does she take it off to eat? Does she eat at all? None of us has ever seen this. If not, she wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom. For all we know she doesn’t!
The long day proceeded into afternoon and her robes were covered with chalk dust from filling the blackboard with incredibly precise handwriting, example to us all, every letter identically inclined, every loop the same, every line parallel. “Piece,” “receive,” “neighbor,” “weigh.” The sound of young minds being stretched. Ssstamargramary, for that was her name, peered over the small faces, some attentive, some not, continuous motion, sunflowers in a breeze. This afternoon her face had attained a new hue.
“The rule in this case, what is the rule!” Not a hand. “Someone must know!” She cracked her pointer against the blackboard. “Omer Arsenault!”
Omer and I sat side-by-side in the middle of the room. His face was a triangle, slanting down to a severely pointed chin. His ears were adult-size, cupped forward like handles, which is how some of the older kids treated them during recess. This feature accounted for his nickname, Dumbo, which was unfair, for Omer was plenty smart, though he did often panic. At this moment his face was frozen in the downward position, as if the surface of his desk was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen. The boy behind him whispered but too late. Omer looked up, shaking his head.
“I knew it yesterday, I really did, but I can’t remember it.”
I shrank in my seat until my eyes were at inkwell level. I wouldn’t put my hand up against Omer, not for anything would I do that. I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them Ssstamargramary had me in her sights. “Well, class, luckily there is one person we can always count on. Paul, give us the answer, please.”
I stood, swallowing hard. “’I’ before ‘e’...” I began inaudibly, “except after ‘c.’”
“Louder! Everyone wants to hear you!”
Sure they did. “‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’,” I mumbled and sat down quickly.
“And... and... on your feet again. The rest, please.”
“Andinwordssoundedaylikeneighborandweigh.” Score one for the class brain.
“Thank the Lord somebody in here pays attention!” Her mocking voice enveloped us. “Class, what would we ever do without Paul?”
I sat down, ears burning. After a minute I snuck a look at Omer. His chin was trembling and a thin, wet trail tracked down his cheek. In front of him, Tony Marino was applauding, a smug grin on his pudgy face. Next row, Tommy Clark was making four-eyes at me. Look who’s talking, I thought loudly, don’t need eyes to tell when you’re around. Not for nothing did we call him Skunkweed.
I was the youngest kid in first grade and the only one with glasses, not counting two girls. The girls had their own separate classroom and teacher. Bad enough I was one of the shortest and, I say reluctantly, smartest boys, but those glasses were a killer. Pink horn-rims, the kind that turn amber after a few months. I was already on my second pair! This first classroom was the crucible for that insatiable desire to please adults which bedeviled my young life. I longed to be ordinary and fit in, but as I learned and absorbed I distanced myself from others, others whose offhand attitude I admired, carefree spirits who might have been my friends but were not.
I could read, and pretty hard stuff too, before I ever set foot in St. Teresa’s. This alone was enough to make me a freak or, as Ssstamargramary put it, an “outstanding pupil.” Same difference. I also shone in Deportment, was never kept after, never confined to that cool, dank cellar room with the cartons of milk and Coca-Cola stored for lunch. Sadistic grown-ups had conspired to set me apart, designing not a child but an adult in a child suit. It was like they needed a small, compliant version of themselves as pathetic reassurance of who knows what.
A lot of what we learned was interesting. I loved geography. Augusta, Maine on the Kennebec River. Hartford, Connecticut on the Connecticut River. The Grand Canyon. Teak floating down the Irrawaddy. Australia’s peculiar animals. But nothing could top a book about the Panama Canal that a well-traveled friend had given my mother. There was one page, actually this one particular picture, where two dark-skinned women look straight at you and the only thing they have on is...