In London, on Hays Mews, in fact, the phone rang. The phone calls began. But, no, in London, as well, an elderly priest made a pass at me. I thought, I must be mistaken, I have misunderstood it, he thinks I’m sad; it is his custom to take sad parishioners in his arms, to console them, but no. There was no mistaking it, a strong, self-confident, by no means repellent or ungentle pass. And I burst into tears. When we had settled then, perhaps more improbably still, on the sofa, with drinks, I said, Father, do you think I should seriously consider becoming a Roman Catholic. He said, Heavens no. I thought, It’s come to this. And yet. I cannot explain by what series of misunderstandings, or perhaps not misunderstandings, by what sequence of events we had arrived at this moment. He took out his wallet and showed me pictures of the young woman and small children whom he referred to as his Italian family. He phoned. He even sent a telegram, signed love Father Riley. And yet. Well, what did we do instead, I ask you that, what shall we do instead. But I believe, you know, I actually, naturally think, in long, sad, singing lines.
And in London, there was that lunch, in a small restaurant, with Annabel. I asked about her children; and in talking about her younger son, she said, You know, he flew the other day. I said, Flight school? She said, No, in his meditation, actually. I asked how it was. She said, Well, you know, it rather hurt. I mean, he only rose six inches, and he didn’t fly for long. But he’s lanky, and as he hadn’t expected to fly so soon, he said it hurt rather when he came back down. She was smiling as she told this; I was smiling. But we both believed it, and were pleased for him. Moreover, there has already been a practical application: he meditates with his grandmother, from time to time, and it helps with her arthritis; partly the meditation, in and of itself, but also because, perhaps herself on the brink of flying, she becomes so light.
She said, Of course I haven’t left. But she really thought, at first, it was too late, she had been too long alone by then. He said, You see, I didn’t know. I said, I would never leave.
This is about friendship and my tantrum and how I both was and failed to be a citizen of my time. The conference on refugees was meeting that week, under UN auspices, in Geneva. We were sitting down to lunch, Diana, daughter Sylvia, a few other guests, and I. John was off covering the conference, which had begun, as international conferences routinely began in those years, by voting to exclude Israel. And Diana’s daughter said, in that embittered, bored tone children of highly political parents often have: I suppose, all the same, they’ll do nothing, as usual, this year, about the Libyan refugees. The what? I said. She said, still somehow cynical, resigned, pained, complacent, the Libyan refugees. I said, But there are no Libyan refugees. Diana explained that the Libyans are rich, that their country is sparsely populated and rich with oil. Well, then, the Palestinians, the daughter said. There was a pause. Then, Diana, perhaps to turn the bitter tone at least to good effect, said, You know, it’s very interesting. People used to denounce hijackings. What they do not realize is that this is the means, by the hijackings and then secret blackmailing agreements with the airlines, by this means the Palestinians have been supporting the people in the camps. Because the camps, as you know, are a UN responsibility. But from the UN they were only getting one dollar, per month, per family. I said, rather mildly, Surely not, surely it was more than that. And she said, No, it is true; I know it for a fact. I said, But Diana, when were the first hijackings, the early sixties, and the UN mandate began in 1948; surely, in the years between, the Palestinians were living on something. And she said, Yes, on one dollar, per family, per month. It is simply not generally known. And as she went on, explaining, as she thought, what had happened in the Middle East, I said, with an inner irony but ashamed of myself for lying this low, It is odd that no one has ever written this history. Diana said, Pierre, of course, will write it, in his book about Israel and the Palestinians. Until now, he has not had time. But, when he has time, he will write it. In his research, at Princeton, he has found many documents, previously unknown. And Sylvia muttered something, which I thought included the word collaboration. I said I hadn’t understood. There was a pause. Sylvia said, more loudly, About the collaboration. I said, Collaboration between whom? And Diana said, Well, you see, Pierre has discovered in his research these documents, at Princeton, about collaboration between the Nazis and the early Zionists. I said, Surely, Diana, that would be a considerable scoop, and it is odd that Pierre has not gotten around to it. She said, Yes, it would be of enormous value to the Palestinians. Pierre has simply, so far, not had the time. I said, Look, there are not, there do not exist, at Princeton or elsewhere, previously unknown documents about such a collaboration. It is the most exhaustively, publicly, documented period. Ah well, Diana said, certain interests of course would like to suppress them, but Pierre has seen them; the documents exist.
I should perhaps have left the table then, or minutes before, or never been at the table, but I thought, still trying, there must still be some way, some way to repair this. And one of the other guests said, pacifically, Well, you know, they may not have deliberately suppressed them. The documents may just not have been found till now, in all those boxes. And I said, very slowly, This is the nineteen-eighties, here we are at lunch, but if we are talking about any documents at all, the sort of documents you mean are the Protocols of Zion. Well, Sylvia edged a little away, and the other guests became rather intent on their eating. Diana said, I should perhaps have studied the matter more deeply before I speak, because with your background, your heritage, you would be sensitive to all the implications. And we were, how to put this, we were still at this point, friends. I said, Look, it’s not a matter of background. I should hope I would know enough, feel obliged to know enough, about this matter in our century, no matter what my background was. And it went on, this edgy, awful conversation, and the point is, I did not leave. I argued, but I did not leave. Later, when Diana walked me to the courtyard, I was still trying. I said, I’m sorry, your poor daughter, she must have been surprised to have set off such a stormy discussion. Diana said, No, it was my fault; I should have studied the matter more deeply, so that I had the documentation when I spoke. I said, Diana, there is no documentation. She said, again, something about my background. I said, It’s not a question of my background. There was, after all, the catastrophe of the six million. She said, Even if it was only three million, I should be more careful what I say. The clear implication of her three million was derisive, as though the actual quantity were fewer and she was being generous. I said, Look, I don’t want to haggle over millions. Some people have begun to say that there were no millions at all, that the whole story is untrue, a conspiracy of Zionists and bankers. Now she said, Yes, and in a way I am more concerned with the millions of Russians, for instance, who died also; but who received much less publicity.
He said, Kate, give me your flight number. I’ll meet you at the airport. We need to spend some time together. He said other things as well.
This is how it began. The turning point at the paper, as it happened, was the introduction of the byline. There had always been bylines, of course, but only on rare stories and those of the highest importance. Sometime in the early sixties, the paper began to put bylines on nearly all stories, by everyone. No one could have predicted where this would take us. It seemed, at first, a step in the direction of truth, of frankness. Part of every story had always been, after all, says who? But the outcome, in retrospect, was this. From anonymous reporters, quoting, as a matter of the highest professionalism and with only the rarest exceptions, from named and specific sources, we moved gradually, then rapidly, to the reverse: named reporters, with famous bylines, quoting persons, sources, who remained anonymous. There were several results. The reporter himself, with his celebrity, his byline, became in many cases the most powerful character, politically and otherwise, in his own story. The “sources” lapsed, became sometimes highly placed officials floating as facts rumors to which, like pollsters, they wanted to test a reaction, sometimes disenchanted employees or rivals, trying to exact a revenge, or undermine a policy, or gain an advantage, sometimes “composites,” a euphemism for a more or less fictional character introduced for some specific purpose of the reporter’s own; finally, perhaps inevitably, absolute fictions, inventions of the reporter’s to enhance his byline, meet completely new journalistic pressures, advance his own career. Within a period of months, three of the most important newspapers in the country printed stories that were absolute fabrications. The first of these, which invented a child and implied that he was typical of a whole, heretofore unrecognized category of children, was the most obviously false. Any editor, any reader whose intelligence, whose common sense, had not been blunted by the new appetite for this sort of investigation, would have recognized at once that the story was not and could not be true. But first, they tried to get it a prize, and got it. Then they called it a hoax (not the mot juste, surely); and went on to say that the story existed, somewhere, just not in this instance, that they were the victims of on the one hand a hoax and on the other a vendetta, and that they would find the true instance of just such a child. Finally, they spoke of the talent for fiction. What an odd notion it was that fiction was just a matter of getting facts completely, implausibly wrong.