Levanter reached into his pocket for some coins and pressed the window control button on his door, lowering the glass. A hot steaming odor filled the car. Levanter offered the money to the beggar, who jerked his hands off, refusing to take it. The diplomat started to press the button to close the window, but Levanter restrained him.
The beggar put his head next to Levanter’s. Spittle drooled from his toothless mouth and a dry rattle came from his throat. Finally, in halting French, he managed to say, “Do you — do you know Cecil Beaton?” He watched Levanter in suspense, waiting for an answer. Levanter nodded; a smile crossed the man’s face. “When I was young, Cecil Beaton knew me well. He photographed me. He said I was the most beautiful boy he had ever met.” His sighted eye blinked; he watched Levanter’s face as if expecting some response.
Just then the camel moved off the road. Obviously annoyed, the diplomat sent the window the rest of the way up and stepped on the gas. As the car took off, the rear fender grazed the beggar, and he fell to the ground.
Back at Levanter’s residence, the diplomat politely escorted Levanter to the door. “Have you had a chance to visit the new baths in Hammamet?” he asked.
Levanter replied that he hadn’t.
“You must.” The diplomat placed his hand on Levanter’s. “There you can enjoy some of the most stunning creatures nature has devised,” he said, lowering his voice. “Young, so very young. And how beautiful!” He smacked his lips in appreciation. “I’ll be glad to take you there,” he added in a whisper, his fingers pressing Levanter’s wrist.
“That’s most kind of you,” said Levanter. “Where do these girls come from?”
The diplomat looked at him with unabashed amazement. “Girls?” he said, chuckling and patting Levanter’s forearm. “Who mentioned girls?” He glanced at Levanter as if seeing him for the first time. “My dear George, you are a fetishist, aren’t you?” He was still laughing as he left, calling out, “I guess I’ll see you when we’re both back in New York.”
A New York hostess invited Levanter to a party at which the United States Secretary of State and a Soviet poet whom Levanter had known at the university in Moscow were also to be guests.
At one point in the evening, Levanter saw the poet talking with the Secretary of State and removing his wristwatch. He moved closer and overheard the poet urging the Secretary to do the same. Exchanging watches, the poet explained, was a Russian custom carried out in the spirit of friendship: one man’s watch times his friendship for another. Aware that other guests were watching him, the Secretary, always the consummate negotiator, removed his Tissot and reluctantly gave it to the poet, accepting the poet’s Pobyeda in return.
When Levanter returned home from the party, he had hardly walked in the door before the phone rang. It was the Arab diplomat, who was one of the guests, calling on behalf of the hostess. He told Levanter that the wife of the Secretary of State had just called the hostess to say her husband wanted to renegotiate the wristwatch exchange. The hostess did not feel she knew the Soviet poet well enough and had asked if Levanter could tactfully persuade the poet to take back his generous gesture of friendship. The relative monetary values were apparently not at issue, the hostess assured the diplomat, although the Tissot was vintage and expensive and the mass-produced Pobyeda was cheap and new. The reason the Secretary wanted to retrieve his own watch was that it had been given to him during his youth in Germany, and there was a lot of sentiment attached to it.
The next morning, Levanter picked up the Pobyeda and went to see the poet to collect the Tissot. When he explained his mission, the poet went into a rage. He shouted that during his poetry-reading tour in the United States he had traded many Soviet-made Pobyedas for the watches of some very distinguished Americans, many of them Harvard colleagues of the Secretary of State, and no one had ever reneged on the exchange. As evidence, he brought out an impressive collection of Rolexes, Omegas, Pulsars, and Seikos. He plucked the Tissot from the collection and handed it to Levanter.
“Who does he think he is?” the poet ranted in Russian. “Just because he was born in Germany and speaks with a German accent, he doesn’t have to behave like a German!” He shouted that “pobyeda” might translate as “victory,” but it certainly did not mean the victory of pettiness over friendship.
The Arab diplomat was relieved and grateful. “This was a delicate incident,” he said, “and I knew I could count on you to handle that poet.” He paused. “Although, by coincidence, I learned that the Secretary of State just bought his Tissot on a recent junket to Geneva.”
At another time, Levanter was invited to a small dinner party at the New York home of an American businessman and his wife. The guest of honor was Madame Ramoz, wife of the President of the Republic of Deltazur, a small, underdeveloped country of many islands that depended on tourism and American economic and military assistance. Madame Ramoz often represented her husband abroad, and it was said that at home she commanded greater power than all the other government figures put together.
Madame Ramoz arrived in the company of several heavily armed bodyguards, who waited outside the apartment during the party, and an aide, a handsome colonel of the Palace Guards, who placed himself discreetly inside.
She was strikingly elegant, and Levanter was pleased to be seated beside her at dinner. Madame Ramoz explained that she had come to New York on behalf of her husband, the President, to address a Press Club luncheon the following day.
American newspapers had been publishing articles and editorials highly critical of the President, she said, reporting that on the pretext of fighting Communist rebels he had established martial law and that he was suppressing political opposition to his dictatorial rule through merciless arrests. As the economy of her country depended on American investments and its safety on American military aid, Madame Ramoz admitted one of the main purposes of her visit to the States was to present the truth and to counteract what she termed the antagonistic, Communist-inspired, liberal attacks on her husband, who had made the Republic of Deltazur a bastion of democracy and freedom.
Madame Ramoz spoke coolly, charmingly, and Levanter found himself staring at her. She was one of the most beautiful Eurasian women he had ever seen.
When she finished her polite discourse, Levanter said he was certain that because of American concern over the political situation in her country, the audience at the luncheon would be listening to her speech most attentively. Madame Ramoz told him that she had taken precautions against being misquoted or misrepresented by preparing her speech in advance and providing copies for distribution before she spoke. He said he regretted that he was not a member of the Press Club, and asked how he could obtain a copy of her speech.
After dinner, Madame Ramoz casually handed Levanter a copy of her prepared text. As she went off to talk with some of the other guests, Levanter quickly read the speech. He waited until Madame Ramoz returned to where he was sitting.
“Is this the final text of your speech?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she replied with confidence. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m afraid there’s a serious error in it.”
“An error? What sort of error?”
“One that might cause you, Madame, and your husband a great deal of embarrassment,” Levanter said quietly. “However, the error can easily be corrected.”
Madame Ramoz looked at him with anxious curiosity. “Tell me about it,” she said.
“If I point out the error to you, Madame, will you, in good faith, tell me if you intend to correct it?”
She looked at him intently. “Of course I will.”
“Then,” Levanter continued, “if, thanks to me, you recognize and rectify this error, will you do something for me in return?”
Madame Ramoz gave him a reproachful look. “That depends on what you want me to do.”
Levanter watched her eyes as he spoke. “Through my role in Investors International,” he said, “I have learned that two prominent reporters for
an opposition newspaper in your country have been in prison for months without trial, on vague charges of subversion.”
She did not react.
“There was some evidence of torture,” he went on, “of resettling their families. If I save you from an error in your speech, will you intervene on their behalf?”
Madame Ramoz looked away, toward the handsome colonel, who stood across the room watching. Then her gaze moved back to Levanter. “I am merely the wife of the President, Mr. Levanter, but I promise to use whatever limited influence I have on the Ministry of the Interior. Now tell me about this error.”
Levanter opened the speech to a page with a bent corner and indicated a passage he had marked with pencil. He moved closer to Madame Ramoz so she could read it with him.
“‘And so my husband, the President,’” he read, “‘took upon himself the arduous task of hatchet man to his country.’” He paused. “As it stands now,” he said softly, “this passage suggests that President Ramoz became a vicious killer.”
Madame Ramoz stiffened. Leaning over Levanter’s arm, she examined the text closely.
“Surely you didn’t mean that,” said Levanter. “What you undoubtedly meant was that Mr. President took upon himself the task of trailblazer for his people.”
“But of course,” exclaimed Madame Ramoz. “Everyone who has known and loved him through all these difficult years knows that! The speech was originally written in our language,” she said. “The error must have been made when it was translated into English. I will make the correction. Thank you for your assistance to me and the President.”
“Then I have been of some help, after all?”
“Yes, you have,” she said. “Now, who are these two supposedly innocent reporters?”
Levanter scribbled the names on the back of his calling card and handed the card to Madame Ramoz, who took it and held her hand out. The colonel strode over from across the room and, bowing, took the card from her.
The two reporters were released from prison soon after Madame Ramoz’s return to her country. Presumably under instructions from their government, they notified Investors International that all charges against them had been dropped and they were reunited with their families. A subsequent inquiry by Investors International confirmed that they were free.
Levanter had nearly forgotten about the incident when one day, some months later, a middle-aged, poorly dressed, Eurasian-looking woman stopped him as he was leaving the Investors International headquarters.
“Are you George Levanter?” she asked, shaking.
“I am.”
The short woman edged closer. Her hair was matted and smelled of grease. “If I could, I would kill you,” she stammered, her face pale and her movements jittery. “I swear I would,” she whispered.
Levanter was startled. “Why? What have I done to you?”
“You have put my brother in prison,” she snapped. “He was tortured.” Her face twitched and she started to cry.
“You’re wrong,” said Levanter. “I have never put anyone in prison.”
The woman grabbed his arm. “But you work for that bitch, the wife of that hangman Ramoz.”
“Madame Ramoz?”
The woman spat up at him. Her saliva dribbled down his chin, but Levanter did not move.
“You’re wrong,” he said slowly. “Utterly wrong. I merely pleaded with Madame Ramoz to set two men free. Nothing else, I assure you.”
The woman looked up at him. “My brother was a translator. Now he’s imprisoned for sabotage, kept in a ‘safe house,’ the government interrogation center. They put him on ‘cushions of air’ — his feet on one bed, his head on another, his body suspended in midair. And whenever he dropped, they gave him ‘falanga’ — beating on the soles of the feet. The person who wrote to me about him learned from someone in the Palace Guards that it was George Levanter, from Investors International, who denounced my brother to the Ramoz woman at a party in New York.”
Levanter was driving from Switzerland to France. He passed the Swiss border guards and entered no man’s land: a quarter-mile stretch of highway separating the two borders. It was there that he saw a young woman standing next to a car, its hood open, its emergency lights flashing. She wore a tapered T-shirt with FOXY LADY printed in large block letters across the front and back. He pulled up beside her and asked whether she needed any help. She said she was waiting for a mechanic and needed only someone to wait with her.
She told him she was from the Middle East but had gone to school in the States and now lived in New York. Levanter remarked that anyone would assume she was an American. She wore skin-tight jeans and had thick black hair, evenly cut to shoulder length. Her make-up had been applied with such skill and care that her complexion appeared quite natural even in the glaring sunlight. Her T-shirt displayed a smooth neck and large breasts. She had a slim waist, gently rounded hips without a fold of fat, and long, slender legs with small, narrow feet; and she carried herself with grace. Everything about her appearance was sensual and provocative. On both sides of no man’s land, customs inspectors and border guards were eyeing her with delight.
As Levanter chatted with Foxy Lady, the Swiss mechanic finally arrived. He took one look at the car’s engine and announced that he could not fix it on the spot. He hitched it up to tow it to his garage in the small border town. Levanter turned his car around and, accompanied by the friendly cheers of the border guards, followed with Foxy Lady in his car.
He invited her to have lunch with him while she waited for her car. As they ate, she mentioned that she had just come from a Swiss clinic. The second time the clinic came up in their conversation, Levanter asked her why she had been there. At first she hesitated; then she said she had just undergone surgery for the removal of a tumor in her uterus. Her lids shyly lowered to half cover her eyes as she explained that, even though the tumor was not malignant and the doctors had discharged her, her sexual activities would have to be restricted for some time. Levanter found her frankness enticing.
The mechanic was unable to repair the car before the garage closed. Levanter assured Foxy Lady that his business in Paris could wait and offered to keep her company. They took adjoining rooms in a motel. That evening they were the only dinner guests in the motel’s restaurant, and the manager, a hospitable, elderly Swiss woman, treated them to a rare white wine. This wine, the woman explained, was made of grapes from the vineyards high in the glacial region of the Alps. The vines had been planted centuries ago by religious sects that had settled among the inaccessible peaks to escape persecution. She offered the glacier wine, she said, in honor of the beauty of Foxy Lady. She stared at her, repeating again and again that many chic people passed through this border area, yet she had never seen such a beautiful woman. Foxy Lady appeared to be excited by the compliments. Her cheeks were flushed. When she looked at Levanter, her lips quivered. As the woman spoke, Foxy Lady nudged Levanter under the table with her foot. Gently, she pushed his legs apart and he felt her toes on his calves. After dinner he and Foxy Lady retired to their rooms.
Later, Levanter knocked on her door to say good night, expecting to find her ready for bed. Instead, she was dressed, her makeup fresh and immaculate. He assumed that she wanted to go out again. But when he said that the motel bar was still open, she said she wanted them to stay in her room to get to know each other better. She surveyed herself in the mirror and hastily adjusted her clothes. She looked at Levanter with her expressive, shiny eyes; then she came to him and very softly began to stroke his hair. She kissed him, nibbling his neck, her tongue plunging into his ear. She pressed her breasts against him, then quickly unbuttoned his shirt and started to kiss his chest, her tongue caressing his nipples, her hands loosening the belt of his trousers. Levanter was aroused but he pulled away, afraid he might hurt her. She pouted. He explained that he was concerned about her operation.
Without a word, she began to undress, scattering her clothes and sandals around the floor with abandon. Her breast
s were full and firm with small aureoles and short nipples. As if to tease him, she paused before removing her panties. Then she slipped them off and moved toward Levanter, exposing her flesh and a pad of white gauze, the final remnant of her visit to the clinic. She lay down on the bed and reached for him.
In her lovemaking that night, she was very inventive, eager to compensate for the part of her body that still had to remain dormant.
They returned to New York together. Foxy Lady adored dancing. Each time she entered a new nightclub or disco, she told Levanter, she felt as if she were on a high diving board, about to take her first jump before a crowd of spectators. Since Levanter did not dance well, he took it upon himself to introduce Foxy Lady to the best dancer in the place. She would always select the table that gave her the best view of the floor and offered others the best view of her. Then she and Levanter would screen the dancing couples, looking for a partner who could keep up with her frenetic energy without trying to upstage her. When the two of them had agreed on which man qualified as a candidate, Levanter took Foxy Lady to the floor. There, in the first few steps, they would veer toward the unsuspecting couple, making certain that the candidate could get a good look at Foxy Lady. Once he began to stare at her, Foxy Lady knew she had him. Feigning clumsiness, she would bump into the man and his partner. Levanter always promptly apologized, but in the process made sure to introduce himself and Foxy Lady, casually remarking that, after his mishap, he was through dancing for the night. Amicably, he proposed to Foxy Lady that if she wanted to dance, she would have to find herself another partner. He would chat with the couple until they volunteered to join him and Foxy Lady at their table. Soon the candidate would ask Foxy Lady to dance. Within minutes, she and her new partner were the center of attention.