The Dismal Science (8 page)

Still, doing his part, Vincenzo said that the Bank welcomed new ideas. He then went on to explain that they were continually adapting their policies; specifically, he said, they had been
softening
their policies since the seventies. He deliberately used that word, softening, although it wasn't politic to do so. Then, rushing toward his conclusion, he said, “We are gravely concerned about the deforestation in the Amazon and elsewhere, and we are doing what we can to address that, but we also have a population there that is desperately poor. Our principal goal, at this point, has to be to alleviate the human suffering.”

“Brazil is one of the richest countries in Latin America, by your measure,” Jonathan said.

“There are persistent problems with inequality.”

“Are you trying to fix that? Are you pushing for fiscal reform? Are you asking for an increase in taxes on the rich?” Jonathan was hitting his stride now.

“That kind of thing is really a domestic political issue. At best, it is a question for the
IMF
territory, but I don't think they would want to insert themselves that deeply into a country's fiscal policy,” Vincenzo said. The truth was more complicated, but there was no point in trying to explore it with Jonathan Paris. He had finished his cappuccino and was eager to get back to his office to await any fallout from his argument with Hamilton, or maybe there had been a message from Leonora. When he was at his computer, he sometimes
hit
refresh
on his e-mail again and again and again, as if trying to draw up something new that couldn't be drawn up. “Anyway,” Vincenzo said, aiming to deal out a quick coup de grâce, “I thought your position was that we should interfere less in their governance?”

Jonathan shook his head and pursed his lips. “Where did you learn how to make a conversation into a game of dodge-ball?
God
—is there a special school for people like you?”

“Yes, there is.” Vincenzo stood up. “I think you went there.”

When Vincenzo called Wolfowitz's office the assistant patched him through.

“Vincenzo,” Wolfowitz said, “did you talk to the kid from that rainforest group?”

“I did.”

“And what was his position? That we shouldn't favor development over ecology?”

“More or less.”

“But we're the World Bank, not the World Rainforest Preservation Organization.”

“That's what I said.”

“Good,” he chirped.

A pause. Vincenzo looked at his vanilla pudding phone, the butterscotch pudding console. It was awful how little a person had to be concerned, how little a person had to awaken before the whole event—what was now underway—was understood to be useless. As a rule, it was all useless. Every conceivable
way of being upset, that was useless, too. Every form of sorrow, confusion, fury—each one a small thing pretending to be something big, each masquerading as another feeling. But life was more astonishing and terrestrial than the great gestures that seemed to be occurring here.

“By the way,” Vincenzo said, sensing with some certainty now that this mission he'd been sent on had been a cover for something else, something to do with Hamilton. It was too convenient a coincidence. So instead of playing the innocent, he thought he'd put Wolfowitz on the spot with a direct question. “Have you spoken to William Hamilton today?”

“No. Why do you ask?” That sounded honest and Paul wasn't going to lie, after all, not like that. And this was not what Vincenzo expected.

Moreover, Paul's question was framed with a distinct forward momentum, which demanded a true and clear answer, so Vincenzo made room, saying, “We had breakfast today.” Then he added, “He wanted to talk about Bolivia.” And by now he was starting to wonder if he shouldn't have just kept his mouth shut.

“Bolivia?” Wolfowitz sounded circumspect. “Did he want to know whether we would be cutting aid in response to Morales's election?”

“Yes.”

“And you told him to get lost?”

“That is exactly what I did.”

“Well done.” Neither of them said anything for a while. Vincenzo was baffled. Was Paul not so friendly with Hamilton, after all, or was he just not going to put that friendship in front
of his duties? Vincenzo, having lost sight of his understanding of what was happening here, said nothing for a moment. So Paul said, “Is that it?”

“Yes, that's it,” Vincenzo said, and then he saw that it would be better to clarify this all with Paul now than let Hamilton, who now
would
be roped into the conversation, do the clarifying, so he added, “Except that I told him that if he managed to get me fired over this, I'd go to the press. I said I'd talk to the
Washington Post.”

“You did?” A firm pause. “Why did you say
that?
”

“I was concerned about my job.” This was how things disintegrated.

“Well. Then let me be clear: Bill Hamilton has absolutely no control over your job. None at all. But for you to threaten to go to the press—that's not very sportsmanlike. I appreciate your position, he was trying to bully you, but I hope you don't feel like talking to the press about sensitive issues is a parachute for you. It's not going to save you. If anything, it's got more in common with a kamikaze's strategy.”

“I understand.” He looked at the phone, aware that something was shifting in the conversation, and in his understanding of his situation. This wasn't new information, it was old information seen anew. “But you are saying you support me in this?” he clarified, although already he sensed that Wolfowitz wasn't interested in working out détente.

“I support you as long as you don't make a goddamn scandal out of it, yes,” Wolfowitz said. “Hamilton is a friend of mine, but he had no place threatening your job.”

Half an hour later, Vincenzo called Walter and told him that he wanted to go on the record about something that had happened that day at the Bank.

Walter was silent for a moment, then cleared his throat. “You aren't trying to put me into a difficult position, are you?”

“No,” Vincenzo said. “But I am serious.” If the moment he'd made the decision had to be pinpointed, he'd say it happened while he was talking to Paul. Or maybe just after. Or there was no specific moment, really, just the entire circumstance, just everything about the year, too, and the year before, and the one before that. It was time to drive the boat ashore. In case Walter was still vacillating, he added, “I'm just going on the record about something.”

“You're kidding?”

“Not at all.”

Walter laughed nervously and then sighed. A little silence ensued while Walter thought it through. “Is this something where I have to weigh your interests against my interests? That's not something I want to do.” He was a barker on the phone, unnecessarily loud all the time. Even in person, he tended to be argumentative and brash and unnecessarily loud.

“No, we have the same interests.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” There was another long pause while Walter groaned, mulling it over. Walter verbalized, perhaps unknowingly, his harsher emotions: groaning under his breath (but nonetheless audibly) at boring people, sighing loudly at exasperating conversations and also, evidently, at friends
steering themselves into the weeds. At last, he said, “Fuck it. Okay. Go on.”

Much of the rest of the conversation was a blur, as are most of the truly important moments in life. Those great events always seemed to be formalized in interactions that, when recalled, appeared bright and blurry—like an iridescent watercolor left out in a rainstorm. The memory of his proposal to Cristina was like that, as was the conversation when she told him that she was pregnant. Leonora's birth: the only remaining image was of the thick dark blood seeping slowly from the freshly cut umbilical cord—and later, in Italy, when Leonora lost her leg, he remembered only huddling with Cristina, her nails digging deep into his wrist, while the electric saw screamed in the next room. Of the conversation with the doctor who told him that Cristina was dead, he remembered nothing whatsoever, just a hand on his shoulder. And, of this latest incident, telling Walter about the conversation with William Hamilton, Vincenzo would remember mainly that Walter offered him several opportunities to back out, but he continued.

At one point, Walter even said. “God! Have you talked to Wolfowitz, because I bet he'll take your side.”

“I actually did talk to him. And you're right. He took my side.”

“So, what's the point?” Walter shot back with unusually stark emotion in his voice. Like so many of the old guard in the DC press, Walter was a wan and debauched preppy—blond and fond of seersucker in the summer, tasseled loafers whenever; he was Buckley-esque. Still, his mind was a ferocious instrument dulled only around the periphery by years of monomania and heroic boozing. That his ex-wife had endured
nineteen years with him, sans children, only spoke to her own delicious kind of madness, and his infuriating magnetism. But he was clipped now. That ballooning vein beside his eye was a newer development, and it did, Vincenzo thought, almost irreparable damage to his roguish authority.

“I don't know.” Vincenzo had started going through the drawers of his desk and putting anything he wanted to keep in a plastic garbage bag. Things he kept included several pens he'd picked up at annual meetings, pictures, a dull rock he'd found on a hill in Scotland while on holiday with Cristina, some foreign currency, unread mail from the credit union and from other official organizations—then he got up and started shoveling files, his crucial outgoing correspondence, into the bag. Things he didn't keep: everything else. He didn't keep four other drawers of documents, including letters of recommendation that he'd written and all the contracts. He put the painting by his daughter into the bag, along with several of the books on his shelf, but left the rest, which he didn't care about anymore, or not enough to take it past the threshold.

“Vincenzo, do you have any idea what you're doing?”

By now, he was winded. So he paused. The easiest explanation was what Wolfowitz had alluded to, that this was the kamikaze's strategy. It had an appealingly straightforward quality: he resented the Bank and he despised himself for participating in its work, so he torpedoed himself into the Bank. Unfortunately, that wasn't the truth. Yes, he was exhausted by the Bank's bloated ineptitude and inefficiency, its inertia, but this wouldn't change any of that. William Hamilton was only as cunning as his job required him to be and his request,
in retrospect, wasn't even that inappropriate. Vincenzo had seen worse.

And, contrary to what many onlookers would inevitably assume, it wasn't about ideology, either. The fact that Vincenzo, and more or less everyone else who was paying attention, detested George W. Bush was, in the end, beside the point. Actually, as he saw it, the kind of policies that Evo Morales was proposing made very reasonable grounds for at least a partial suspension of Bolivian aid.

Although even he had trouble understanding why he was doing it, he knew with an immaculate, blank certainty that he wouldn't regret this. Or, alternatively, he knew that it was the right decision, even if he did regret it. This was a problem to be sorted out later. There was an opportunity here, today, and there might never be another. The time to act was now. The way to act was this.