The Honorable Correspondent Read online

  The Honorable Correspondent

  Henry Scholder

  New York

  For Arrelle, and for Renee and Jordan.

  Chapter One

  November 1973, Junieh, Lebanon.

  Claude Harouni’s thirty-eighth birthday fell on a freakishly hot day in late November. The heat’s parched breath left Claude dazed and made his wife Naama fretful and short-tempered.

  They had taken refuge in hammocks on their back porch, where they lay sprawled, limbs distanced from trunks, eyelids tacky with dried sweat. Naama considered her party, her grand party for him, and slowly retreated into hopelessness. The big event was now only hours away, yet so much was left to be accomplished: tables to be set, chairs placed for more than two hundred people, the carousel to be installed, a van-load of food unpacked, the children bathed. Remembering the carousel, she smiled; it had been Bobo’s find, in the dusty warehouse somewhere in the south, near Beirut airport, where they had made love for the first time. She quickly looked to see whether Claude had noticed her smile. As if he could know from a smile!

  “People barely move today,” she said to him in a dispirited way, meaning their staff. “How will they do it all, Claude? We have two hundred people coming.” She clucked her tongue with self-pity.

  He ignored her. “How strange for it to be so hot,” he moaned. “Only last week I had the men change over to their winter clothes.”

  “Please make this sun go away,” Naama whispered to the pale sky, and thought, Screw him and his men’s winter clothes. She propped her head on her slender hands, gazed out onto the sizzling world beyond the terrace, and thought of Bobo.

  The encouraging screech of a table being dragged across the floor somewhere in the house recalled her. Thank God my cretins are at work, she thought.

  With two fingers she gingerly lifted a chunk of ice from her drink and rubbed it along her lips as she squinted at the dusty glare reflected off pines and cypresses, earth and rocks, all baked into an ashen color by the sun’s scowl. Through the saddle between their hill and the next, she could see the Mediterranean and a bit of the port of Junieh. The sea was limpid and coppery, the yellow shore shimmered like burning desert shrubs. From roasting Junieh itself, a vapor rose. Naama sighed and wished mightily for an infusion of the rash enthusiasm that had inspired this party.

  “I refuse to accept this,” she said in a sudden flare-up of chagrin, speaking to no one in particular. “Yesterday I rushed out to buy coat hangers—well it’s fall, isn’t it? Everyone I spoke with was breaking out their furs, so we’d need hangers. Today? Today I had to order the beach club to send up lounge chairs for guests to sun themselves at the pool. Impossible, just impossible.” A thought cheered her. “Don’t you think I was clever to do that, Claude, getting the beach chairs? Don’t you think so? Claude?”

  Claude lifted his empty glass with some effort, as if it had become enormously heavy, and rolled it back and forth against his forehead.

  “A pool party in November,” Naama muttered. “In Beirut they will make jokes at our expense.”

  “Who cares what they think in Beirut?” Claude growled, sparked into anger. He was touchy about living in this relative backwater, where he felt better able to protect himself, but where Naama sometimes felt in exile. He emitted a gurgling chuckle, putting her on notice that his patience, never abundant, had run out, that he had had enough of this hot day, of the fracas surrounding his birthday, of her chatter about furs and beach chairs. Also, he’d been irritable over some convoluted gun deal he’d been negotiating with Palestinians down in Sidon—she had heard him speak with Bobo about it.

  Naama knew it was best to keep still now; Claude was basically a crude man and it was no use goading him. Even after a dozen years of marriage and the birth of two sons and a daughter, he remained what he was: the autocratic head of a clan from the remote hills of Tripoli, a backward region up north near the Syrian border, a man used to having his word obeyed. After a few moments, however, she felt safe again. “Now Claude darling,” she said, “don’t you dare be in a bad mood, not on your birthday.” She smiled brightly and wrested away his empty glass. “Have some more tamarind drink, sweetie,” she counseled.

  Eight years earlier, Claude had unexpectedly inherited his father’s militia. Before it was known that he, and not his older brother Awal, would assume leadership, the men used to tease him for his excess of good looks. They called him “Mr. Profile,” and “Bebe Delon” because of a supposed resemblance to the French film actor. They thought him frail, because his raven hair made his pale skin appear sallow. An expression of perpetual affability, a sort of priestly simper, also encouraged misleading impressions. In time, however, these men and many others learned that, expression to the contrary, Claude was capable of great ferocity.

  When the time came for the guests to arrive, they went down to the gates at the foot of the hill. Carefully, Naama inspected the huge bouquets of roses and carnations fastened to the gray and cream marble gate columns, ordering the shoring-up of some flowers that had come loose. This party was important to her. “Tout Lebanon” was coming, its proprietors and financiers, its politicians and top soldiers, heads of other clans, ranking Militia officers, churchmen of five sects, the diplomatic corps, her coterie of fashion, art, and entertainment friends.

  She sat on a folding chair at a small table placed on the grass near the gate and sipped more of her chilled tamarind drink, her dark eyes staring up the winding road that led from the Beirut highway. She thought of Bobo and giggled; several militiamen loitering nearby looked to see what caused her laughter, and she stared back at them. The truth was, she had, at one time or another, fancied some of them. Now they looked somehow different, and suddenly she realized why: they were not carrying their weapons, and that made them appear younger than usual, more their true age, really. Teenagers, she thought, not much older than my Antoine, Claude’s army of teenagers, looking as if they belonged in classrooms or on the beaches, but deadly all the same. Most had been hired from small villages near Tripoli, where Claude’s father Suleiman and brother Awal held sway. She looked to see where they had placed their guns. Life around Claude had taught her always to know the whereabouts of people’s weapons.

  The militiamen avoided her gaze, and she chuckled inwardly. It was always the same with them: first a brief acknowledgment, then a refusal to look more. “No matter,” she once told her best friend Chantal. “By the time they look away I have seen their desire. They say to me, ‘I alone would love you as they love in paradise.’” She should write poetry Chantal said. “But then,” Naama had continued, “they remember they are on earth still, and near Claude, and they shit in their pants,” and she’d laughed uproariously.

  For the party, and for Bobo, she was wearing her new Givenchy suit, light blue, trimmed with darker piping. Actually, she wore only the skirt and blouse. Fortunately, these went well without the jacket, which of course had proved impossible in the heat. Her dark blond hair was gathered up from her neck and fixed by gilded clasps. Her neck and bare arms were deeply tanned.

  She heard the clank of metal; the men were picking up their weapons. A plume of dust rose along the unpaved road from the Beirut highway—the first guests were arriving. When the car was about fifty meters away, two of the men signaled it to halt. “Oh Claude,” she protested, “for heaven’s sake, it’s Chantal and Maurice.”

  “All right. All right, there. Let them by,” he barked at the men—as if they should have anticipated his coming change of mind.

  Since his now notorious assault on the Forjieh clan’s compound in Baade, north of Beirut and within sight of the Presidential palace, Claude was taking no chances. Although the raid, brazen and da
ring, had been a success (he and his men having annihilated the Forjiehs—men, women, and children—leaving him uncontested overlord of Maronite militias), he would not permit himself to forget that a single Forjieh, a man named Atrash, was still alive somewhere abroad.

  Chantal, wearing a flowing gauzy turquoise dress with matching green shoes and fabric handbag, emerged from her car with a flourish. Maurice, who fancied himself a wit, said, “I simply adore November swimming parties, Naama.” Chantal rolled her eyes upwards for Naama’s benefit, fanning away at herself with her hands. Naama bussed her cheeks. “I’m so glad you are here before the others,” she whispered.

  Soon the hillside road was jammed with vehicles, throwing the militiamen into a frenzied struggle to carry out Claude’s order, which was to maintain the area in front of the gates clear of cars and potential car bombs. But when they became overzealous, hurrying guests along in a none-too-dignified manner, Claude took his adjutant aside. “Tell them to go easy,” he hissed. “I’m having a fucking birthday party here, not a war.”

  Naama and he stood patiently in the heat to receive a seemingly endless line of well-wishers, many of whom insisted on embracing and kissing them and of making a prolonged show of their presents. There was a lifetime’s supply of dates from an Iraqi businessman, thirty-eight (for Claude’s years on earth) cackling white hens in cages from a Druse elder and his wife (she impervious to the weather in a crimson velvet gown), numberless expensive cigarette lighters, one embedded in the stalk of a scimitar.

  Naama’s face already was aching from too many forced smiles when she saw him—tall and redheaded, regal in his white French navy dress uniform, sunglasses in one hand, a gift in the other. His green eyes twinkled at her, at everyone, and through her weariness a smile true, wide, and happy appeared for her special friend, Claude’s friend too, the French military attaché, Bertrand de Bossier, “Bobo” to all.

  As it turned out, he had brought two gifts: an elaborately wrapped book, a photographic history of the French navy—“an official gift, you see,” Bobo said somewhat apologetically; and a small package of the size that often holds expensive jewelry. “This is from Gaspar and me, Claude,” he said. Naama craned her neck as Claude eagerly tore away the wrapping paper and snapped open the small velvet box. It contained a Rolex diving watch. Claude’s face took on the particular grimace that was his expression of delight. “By my all, I swear this is something I’ve always wanted!” he exclaimed.

  Naama smiled. “Thank you, Bobo dear.” She gestured at his uniform. “You look wonderful,” she said, then caught herself. “But your friend Gaspar, the nice one from Belgium, where is he?”

  “Gaspar … oh, his holiday ended. He went home yesterday.” Bobo said, then, turning to Claude, “My oldest friend, Gaspar Bruyn.”

  “What a pity!” Naama cried. “And I was so hoping to show him our beautiful Lebanon.”

  Bobo smiled his enigmatic smile. At least, Naama thought it enigmatic because she was certain Bobo was a man of many secrets. Her intuition had led her to suspect that he was more than just a naval officer. She had asked about it once, and he had lapsed into a teasing silence which only stoked her fond suspicions.

  She had run her hunch about de Bossier by Claude, whose disingenuous grunt of denial had only confirmed it to her: Bobo was engaged in secret doings; her lover was a spy. With this certainty she had considered herself the luckiest woman on earth: her lover was French, a count, smart, aloof, attractive in an unconventional way—and a spy! How much more exciting could things get!

  Noting the few guests still in line, Claude said to Bobo, “Wait until I’m done, then we’ll walk back together to the house, okay?”

  He is so unaffected, Naama thought, so charming, with his military hair cut and the wire-rimmed glasses he ordinarily wears, and his endless curiosity and ability to speak with the lofty and the lowly in the same easy way. In his simplicity he was more elegant than all the dandies of Beirut put together. She grew warm recalling his thin, long body against hers, his freckled face and elongated lips pressed against her naked stomach, recalling how she had nearly gone mad with abandon that first time, pleading with him to remain in her afterwards and for a few moments caring about nothing but his love, fearing nothing except having it taken away.

  “Thank God,” Claude muttered to Bobo when the line of well-wishers finally came to an end. “One more gift and I would have died.”

  Bobo smiled. “Not just yet, please, Claude.”

  Naama took the watch from Claude and instructed a servant to take it to the house and place it on the mantle in the living room, “so that we may admire it later when this is over.” Then she excused herself to be driven with Chantal up to the house in a golf cart. As they started off, Chantal stole a look at de Bossier over her shoulder, and Naama squeezed her hand to make her stop. They giggled in unison.

  “I’ve wanted one of these for a long time,” Claude said as he and Bobo embarked on the uphill climb, “but I thought it silly, you know, for someone who does not dive. But as you’re a naval officer, it makes it all right.”

  “You’re lucky I settled on the watch, Claude.” Bobo said. “It was a toss-up between that and a bunch of chickens.” Claude exploded with laughter and swatted Bobo on the back. After a short silence Bobo said, “I think we found your missing Forjieh. Atrash?”

  At once somber, Claude said in a near whisper, “Yes, that’s the one. Where is the runt?”

  “Last seen somewhere in Paris, last known to be traveling. We’ll be more exact by tomorrow.”

  Claude placed his hand on his chest. “I am most grateful, Bobo,” he said earnestly. “It is the best of feelings to have you, to have France, for a friend.”

  “We’ve appreciated your past help too, Claude.”

  “Thank you for saying so,” Claude said. Lebanon’s Maronites were closely allied with France, and Claude had from time to time done Bobo small favors, stealing people past borders, providing security for others, and the like. “I hope, my friend, you do not still hold it against me,” he went on, “this little gun deal of mine with the Palestinians. I just couldn’t let a competitor get in with those guys, they’re getting richer every day—you know how it is.”

  Bobo shrugged to indicate the insignificance of the matter.

  The huge white Harouni home came into view with, on its front lawn, the carousel, now surrounded by chattering guests. Claude shook his head in admiration. “Naama’s idea,” he said.

  “I know, I was there when she found it,” Bobo said.

  “Ah, that’s right, Bobo.” Claude smiled magnanimously. People talked about his wife and this Frenchman who, in any event, he did not think particularly attractive. He had made certain there was nothing between her and Bobo; his informants followed them everywhere. Even when de Bossier had taken her swimming down near Naqra, at the border with Israel, and they had been together on the rocks there practically an entire day, he was assured by his man, who had pretended to be a fisherman, that nothing untoward had taken place.

  Naama came towards them in something of a huff. “They are all supposed to be down at the pool,” she said, gesturing at the crowd milling about the carousel, “but they are like children with a new toy. Please Claude, Bertrand, can you help me get them down there?”

  Bobo looked toward the carousel, then smiled at Naama. “Remember how grimy it was when we first saw it?” he said.

  “Unbelievable,” she confirmed to Claude. “It must have been in that warehouse fifty years.”

  Bobo had discovered the carousel and had brought her to see it. Naturally, Claude’s sleuth followed, but as soon as Bobo had ushered her into the huge, dim building he’d shoved the metal gate shut behind him, seized her, and brought her against him. “He’ll tell Claude,” she had protested, but by then Bobo had lifted her skirt and she was taut with desire. “Wrong analysis, Naama; he won’t dare admit he let us out of his sight,” Bobo had whispered, and laughed. After the warehouse incident, the haple
ss sleuth became their cover; whenever he was on the job, they made love.

  Her feast, her immense Levantine banquet for Claude, started when the sun, huge and dark orange, finally slid into the Mediterranean. Endless offerings were stacked atop twenty long tables for the guests to help themselves at will, aided by the Harounis’ staff and by servants hired for the evening. Dozens of huge tureens were filled with finely chopped tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, peppers, and parsley bathed in lemon juice and olive oil, to go with the shashliks and kebabs continuously broiling on upright spits. There were four varieties of fish and three of fowl; bowls laden with spiced rices and trays stacked high with kibbeh (balls of fried semolina wrapped around chunks of mutton); platters heavy with dips of humus and baba ghanouj; jars of pickled peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets; tureens filled with leban (yoghurt spiced with mint), others with cardamom and garnished with sliced cucumbers.

  Between courses, entertainers performed. Naama had worked hard on the variety and pacing of the acts, from a dancing Circassi, terribly dignified in his tall black lamb fur cap, flowing dark gray robe trimmed in black, glistening black boots, and a gleaming saber in his hand, to a slithery, belly-bumping, breast-quivering Egyptian dancer, to a poet reading passionately from Khalil Gibran, to a stripper imported for the evening from Athens. As Naama had expected, the stripper drew the most interest. When the last of her bright silk scarves sank to the floor, men rushed to stuff currency and calling cards under the ornamental string she was left wearing. She rewarded particularly generous givers with embraces and small kisses to the forehead, at which the women guests shrieked and ululated.

  For dessert, pastries and fruits were paraded around by the smiling staff on trays of beaten copper before being set down. Then Naama introduced Danny, the Maronites’ favorite funny man, whom she had chosen for the closing act. “This is the only man I can think of in Lebanon—no, in the world,” she said, her audience already grinning in anticipation, “whose insults Claude suffers, laughs at, and, would you believe it, pays for.”