“I’ll skip it.”
“What’s the matter with you? Sick?”
“Sort of.” He didn’t feel too good, he told himself. He took two aspirins, and chased them with bourbon, before he went to bed.
8
He spent the next week in the library of the Foreign Service Institute, studying the departmental regulations. Their complexities awed and alarmed him, but Mr. Dannenberg, the head of the training staff, assured him that the orals weren’t necessarily based on knowledge of the regulations. “If they were,” he said, “nobody would ever get in the Service. It used to be said that there were only three rules for making a good Foreign Service Officer—sit with your back to the light, listen to your superiors, and go to bed before you get drunk. Actually, you learn by osmosis. In the orals you’ll be judged on poise and personality. We want our men to look like representatives of the United States. We want them to look American.”
Dannenberg inspected Jeff, shrewdly as a horseman looks over a yearling at the Saratoga sales. “You do look American. You’ve got that gaunt, mussed-up Winant look.”
“Thanks,” Jeff said. “I’d like to be like Winant.”
“But nobody can tell yet if you’ve got any brains.”
“No,” Jeff said. “That’s the trouble.”
Mr. Dannenberg himself didn’t look like an FSO, or even particularly American. An expensive tailor could have given his stumpy figure and global belly some nobility, but Mr. Dannenberg obviously didn’t have an expensive tailor. His trousers fell in double folds around his shoes, and the three lower buttons of his vest were usually open. His ties were cheap, and badly knotted. Jeff looked up Mr. Dannenberg’s record, and discovered that while he was a Class I he had never held an important, or even an interesting post. Yet he liked Dannenberg, who always seemed eager to open for him the treasure chest of his experience.
9
One day Dannenberg called him and told him his oral was scheduled for Monday of the following week. “Dress carefully,” he advised, “and better not drink Sunday night, and don’t cut yourself shaving, and by all means be on time.”
Jeff bought a new suit. It was a two-button blue pin stripe, a lounge that was being worn that year by all the successful young men, like Charles Luckman, Bob Considine, Richard Kollmar, and Fred Keller. He paid ninety-five dollars for it, which was more than he had ever paid for a suit before. He also bought black socks, and three white shirts with button-down collars—although his shirt drawer was full—and six handkerchiefs of the best linen that cost as much as shirts used to cost before the war, and a maroon tie that announced itself as at once restrained and expensive.
As an afterthought he bought a hat. He rebelled against hats. He had had to wear a cap as a freshman at Princeton, and he had been compelled to wear either a helmet or a go-to-hell cap during his years in the Army. Hats seemed to him a symbol of compulsion and conformity, and he had not worn one since he had been home. He selected a black homburg, size seven and a quarter. The clerk approved. As he wrote a check the clerk said, “You’re in the State Department, aren’t you, sir? When you outfit yourself for going abroad, we’ll be glad to take care of you.”
“Thanks,” Jeff said. “Thanks very much.” All day he wondered how the clerk could guess.
10
On Monday Jeff reported at Dannenberg’s office at ten-thirty, although examination time was not until eleven. Dannenberg seemed excited and fluttery. “It’s not going to be here,” he said. “It’s going to be in the other building. And we’ve had a surprise. The Secretary himself is going to sit in on the examining board. It’s the first time he’s ever done it. He’s deeply interested in recruitment, you know.”
“Will it make a difference?” Jeff asked. “I mean, what’ll it do to my chances?”
“Now, don’t worry,” said Dannenberg, “and don’t be nervous. Just sit down and read a magazine, and take it easy, and when the Secretary is ready they’ll call and I’ll take you over.”
Jeff sat down, and picked up a copy of Fortune, and turned the pages. His eyes scanned sentences and paragraphs, and pretended to read, but his mind did not know what his eyes were seeing. It was stupid to be scared. The presence of the Secretary might even better his chances, for the others would not want the Secretary to waste his time on a failure. Yet he recalled all the gossip of the awful ordeal of the oral, how even graduates of the Georgetown University school came out of it shaken, inarticulate, and disapproved.
He tried to concentrate on Dannenberg’s advice. You should appear confident, and yet respectful; listen carefully to the questions, and don’t rush with the answers; don’t smoke unless you are offered a cigarette; if you don’t know an answer don’t attempt to bluff; reply frankly to personal questions, for remember that the whole record of your life will be known to the board before you sit down; and above all don’t give opinions, but stick to facts.
Dannenberg’s phone rang, and he answered it and said, “We’ll be right over.” They walked out of the Institute building, and then across the street to the marble and limestone building known as New State, which had been New War but which the War Department had never occupied. Jeff remembered how in his boyhood State had shared offices with War and Navy in the rococo gray pile opposite the White House. Now State spread through twenty-six structures in Washington, and was still growing, and would continue to grow until its size and importance in the Capital was comparable to the power of the United States in the world.
They took an elevator to the fifth floor, passed through a double door over which was the Great Seal, through an anteroom with empty chairs lining its walls, through a secretarial office, and then through two more sets of double doors, and into a room deeply carpeted and utterly soundless, as if it were detached from the building, and from the city. Four men were seated at an oval conference table, with the Secretary at the end. The Secretary’s head was down, exposing a bald spot in the gray, and he did not raise his eyes as they entered. He was reading a file of cables. He looked older than his pictures.
Dannenberg waited, standing, until the Secretary closed the file. Jeff was close at his side, trying not to stand to attention. “This is Mr. Baker,” Dannenberg said, “who is to take the examination today.”
The Secretary rose and put out his hand. “This will be a new experience for both of us,” he said, “unless Dannenberg here has put in a ringer who knows all the answers.”
“Oh, no sir!” said Dannenberg. “Mr. Baker’s name just came up in the usual order.” Dannenberg hadn’t noticed that the Secretary was smiling. It was hard to tell when the Secretary smiled. Everything about the Secretary was contained—his strength, the quiet splendor of his bearing, his humor—as if he were conscious of his age and the necessity of conserving his emotions.
Dannenberg introduced the others. “Mr. Matson, Mr. Richards, Mr. Keller.”
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” Jeff said to Keller.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Keller said, but Jeff could see he didn’t remember. He had heard of the others, but never seen them before. Matson was Chief of the Balkans Division. He had been Minister in Sofia and Bucharest. Richards was also of Career Minister rank, an expert on the Far East.
“All right, Mr. Baker, take this chair,” Dannenberg said. Then Dannenberg seated himself at the opposite side of the table, and Jeff realized that Dannenberg would be the fifth man on the board, and that in the instant his manner had changed, and he was impersonal and distant, and seemingly increased in stature.
Dannenberg put his plump, white hands on the table, and said, “Would you care to start, Mr. Secretary?”
“No. You gentlemen follow your usual procedure. I may have a question or two later.”
“Would you care to tell us about your schooling, Mr. Baker?” Dannenberg said.
Jeff told them of Lawrenceville and Princeton. He made it brief. He understood that a question like this was simply to put him at ease.
Keller seemed more
interested than the others. “What class at Princeton?” he asked.
“Thirty-nine.”
“I was twenty-nine myself. Any athletics?”
“No. I went out for freshmen football. Didn’t make it. I was on the Pricetonian staff in my last two years.”
“I didn’t go in much for the literary side myself,” Keller said, “but that sort of training is always useful.”
Then the questions began, really. Richards wanted to know whether he could explain the functions of the Far Eastern Commission and the Allied Council for Japan. He could, in a general way. Did he know what parallel separated the American and Russian zones in Korea? Jeff recalled it was the thirty-eighth. What was the agrarian policy of the Kuomintang? He stumbled badly on that one.
The Secretary said, “This is like ‘Information Please’ in reverse. Five men ask one man questions.”
Matson took over. What sixteen nations participated in the ERP conferences? Jeff thought he remembered them all. Outline the importance of the Danube to European economy. That was easy. He knew the Danube. He remembered watching the river in brown flood all one day in Vienna in ’46, and seeing not one ship pass. He talked of the Danube as a vital artery now strangled by tourniquets of international red tape. He mentioned the Bulgarian fishing fleet, which for three years had been rotting up the Danube, seven hundred miles from its home ports. He noticed that he had captured the Secretary’s attention, and that the Secretary made a note on the cover of his cable file.
Yet his answer did not seem to please Matson. “You understand, Mr. Baker,” he said, “that if our people in Austria permitted those boats to go back to the Black Sea, then they’d only be used to catch fish for the other side. That’s right, isn’t it?”
He saw Dannenberg’s eyes raise in mute warning. No opinions. He found himself saying nevertheless, “We cannot make an ally of hunger. That’s a matter of national ethics. Furthermore, it’s shortsighted to paralyze the Bulgar fishing fleet. It’s just handing another propaganda weapon to the Communists in Bulgaria and Rumania.”
“Very interesting viewpoint,” said Matson. “Very interesting indeed. But obviously arrived at without benefit of complete information.”
Matson’s dark eyes, large and arresting in the pallor of his face, flicked once towards the Secretary. Otherwise he showed no change of expression, but Jeff knew he no longer would be friendly. Jeff’s frankness was his affliction, and he was unable to control it, as some men cannot curb their temper.
Then the questions began to come in French, in Spanish, in Italian and German. He had been told that when they bothered to test your languages you had a chance.
“Now I’m going to ask you a question we ask all our candidates,” Dannenberg said. “Why do you want to join the Foreign Service?”
Could he say that when you were a little boy you looked upon the Department couriers and messengers as most little boys regard firemen and policemen? And that when Tunney and Gehrig and Walter Johnson were the heroes of the other kids on Q Street, your heroes were Ben Franklin, and Silas Deane, and John Jay? Could you say that when you looked at a map, and uttered the names of cities, you heard the music of history? “I’ve always pointed for it, more or less,” he said. “My father was in the Department.”
This drew Keller’s attention. “A legacy, eh?” he said. “I don’t remember any Baker, but I suppose he was before my time.”
“Baker? Baker?” murmured Matson. “I don’t remember him either. Thought I knew everyone in the Department. But then, he probably was in London when I was in Sofia, and in Shanghai while I was back home. You know how it is.”
“He was a clerk,” Jeff said.
“Oh,” said Keller, and the single syllable was toned with surprise and disappointment, as if he had been examining a handsome ring, and then been told the stone was imitation.
“There was another reason I wanted to get in the Foreign Service,” Jeff said. He knew he had to get it out, because it was working inside him.
“Yes?” Dannenberg inquired.
“I don’t want to see any more wars. I want to do what I can to prevent another war.” He saw that they were all eyeing him now with fresh interest, as if he had told them some private thing about himself that was curious, such as his mother was an Indian, or that his heart was on his right side. “I suppose that’s bombastic,” he added, sensing the need of an explanation. “I suppose it’s bombastic to think that I can do anything to help keep the peace, being just one little guy. But that’s the way I feel, and I know that in the Foreign Service I’d have more opportunity to do what I want to do than anywhere else.”
“Well, now, I think that’s very commendable,” said Matson. “Very commendable indeed.”
“Oh, yes,” said Richards. “That’s a splendid aim.” He glanced up at the wall clock, as if from then on they all would be wasting time.
The Secretary raised his head, and Jeff realized he had been watchful, though silent. “I take it you don’t like war, Mr. Baker?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“What outfit?”
“Eighty-fifth Division, 339th Regiment, sir.”
“Coulter was a good general,” the Secretary stated, in the professional way that one doctor speaks of another as “a good man.” He ran a forefinger along the tabletop, and Jeff knew he was exercising his fabulous memory for the minutiae of battle. He knew something that in the room only he and the Secretary knew—that the Secretary was tracing Jeff’s boot prints up the spiny back of the Italian peninsula. He was following Jeff’s mad entry into Rome, through the ambuscades of the 88s on the road to Florence, edging with him across the minefields on the banks of the Arno. He was witnessing the heartbreaking attack on the Gothic Line, and suffering through the terrible winter in the Apennines, exulting a little in the last assault across the Po, and experiencing the sickening letdown and disillusion that followed victory. “I see,” the Secretary said. “I think I see.”
“If there are no more questions,” Dannenberg said, “I suppose that will be all.” They rose, and shook hands, and Dannenberg opened the door for him. “You can find your way out all right?” Dannenberg said. “You’ll be informed by letter, in the usual way.”
“Thanks very much,” Jeff said. “You’ve been very considerate.” He did not think he would see Dannenberg again. He feared he had failed. As he walked back towards Dupont Circle he tried to analyze his answers. He tried to remember what each one had said, and how they had reacted to him, and how the Secretary had looked when he left. He found he couldn’t reconstruct the interview. He must have been very nervous. He looked at his watch. The examination couldn’t have lasted more than thirty minutes, yet it seemed like the whole day. It was amazing that this was still morning.
11
After Jeff was gone, Dannenberg took his seat again. Because of the Secretary’s presence there was not the usual relaxation after the candidate left. “Well, Mr. Secretary,” Dannenberg said, “what did you think of him?”
“I’ll wait to hear your reactions,” the Secretary said.
“I think on the whole he’s a very promising candidate,” said Dannenberg. “He has enthusiasm, background, and he knows Europe much better than most men his age.”
“He doesn’t know Asia,” said Richards. “A man ought to be well rounded, as the world is rounded.”
Dannenberg tried to estimate the Secretary’s opinion, and decided to speak his mind. “On the other hand you can’t expect him to have encyclopedic knowledge at his age. What’s your opinion, Fred?”
Keller lit a cigarette, tilted his head upward, and slowly blew out the smoke, as if deliberating carefully on his reply. “He’s a bit visionary,” he said, “but I think he has the makings of a first-class man. I wouldn’t mind having him work for me.”
“When you said visionary you voiced my objection,” said Matson. “We need hard-headed, practical men in the Department today. After all, we’re engaged in a life-and-death struggle for
our own way of life with a merciless enemy. Why take a chance on a do-gooder?”
“We took a chance on him before,” the Secretary said under his breath.
“What’s that, Mr. Secretary?” Matson asked.
“Nothing. I’d surmise that he probably was a platoon leader, or company commander. He got hurt.”
Dannenberg inspected the sheet of paper before him, headed REPORT ON FORM 57, BAKER, JEFFERSON WILSON. “There’s no record of his having been wounded,” he said.
“The way I look at it,” said Matson, “is like this. We need realists—tough-minded realists—in the Department today as we never needed them before. Now I know from his spot check that this boy isn’t a Communist, or a radical, or anything. But this is war. And the Foreign Service Officers we send abroad at this time are on the front line.” Matson held out his hands, gripping an imaginary rifle at the port position. “We don’t want woolly-headed dreamers out there. Not that I’ve got anything against ideals and ethics, you understand. They’re all right, at the proper time and place. But the men we send out to defend our system of free enterprise and our democratic way of life have got to be hard-headed realists.”
“I think I’ll take a chance on him,” said the Secretary. “How do you gentlemen vote?”
“As I said before, on the whole I think he’s a very promising candidate,” said Dannenberg.
“I’d like to have him,” said Keller. “I think he could be shaped and molded.”
“I’ve got reservations about giving him a post in the Orient at this time, but he might be all right for Europe,” said Richards.
“He is a very personable young man,” Matson said. “That I’ll admit. And as he grows older he’ll no doubt have some good, hard, common sense knocked into him. But right now he should be nursed along. There’s a post open in Tananarive, Madagascar, that we always have trouble filling. I think he’d be a good man for there.”