Far Afield

VIII

54 VIII At the hotel, I bade Wilkie good–bye and said I would phone for him later. I then shuffled up to my room where I dismissed my reporter’s instinct to immediately reread and augment my notes and instead fetched the island’s White Pages. Inside the thin book, I hunted down the home address and phone number of Stanley MacGower (listed as “S. and N. MacGower”) and lay on the bed contemplating my next moves. One matter was clear: given the nonsense of Trevor’s ideas (not to mention how ludicrous he must look presenting them), there was no chance for success on his terms. Rather, the only promise lay in attacking the others’—particularly Stanley’s—proposals and reforms. However, since Stanley’s ideas likely lacked the ringing absurdities of his brother’s, it also was true that a campaign of competing issues, even one in which Trevor’s were mentioned in the deepest of relief, could not be waged and should be avoided at all costs. This left the obvious: the dispiriting but invariably effective bludgeon of character assassination. The thought triggered in me an immediate distaste. As a reporter, I had covered my share of campaigns that had relied exclusively on such electioneering, with some of them completely devoid of any pretense that any issues should form the core of the public debate. I recalled one election ad that featured the grainy video of a man in a bathrobe shuffling down a street and then pitching forth into a heap as an empty whiskey bottle skittered away on the pavement. Over this gloomy night- Scott Brown 55 time visage, the last name of the candidate’s opponent then silently appeared in blood red. And in this case, not only did the senator who sponsored the commercial win the race, but he triumphed over the resulting libel suit as well. Still, while mulling this over I realized with some comfort that my future need not be bound up in such efforts. Whether Trevor won or lost really was none of my concern. My only obligation was that he make a respectable showing, adequate enough to erase the chargespendingagainstme.ItwasamiserablesituationIwaslocked into but not a hopeless one. Bolstered by this, I grabbed a pen and began to attack my reporter’s notebook, sifting for shards of ideas that might be cobbled together into a coherent theme or argument. Fifteen minutes later, I heaved the pad aside, disgusted with myself for thinking there could be any redemption in the words I’d taken down. Since I had recorded everything faithfully, I now was able to view Trevor’s unintelligible thinking in purely literal terms, unencumbered by the force of his personality. If anything, this made it worse since his rants brazenly displayed themselves. Now I truly saw no alternative. Any success that Trevor would achieve would have to come at the expense of his brother’s failings, fabricated or not. Reluctantly, I spread out a map of Momo-Jima on the bed and found Stanley’s block in a suburb a few miles south of the capital, in a neighborhood called Nozomi-cho. I looked up the area in my guidebook but it was not mentioned. I paused, unsure of what I should do next. It was almost noon. Though my philosophy concerning all disagreeable tasks is to finish them as quickly as possible soIcouldbetterforgetthem(a habitthathasoftenearned mepraise for “having initiative”), my inertia, never far away when doing the unwanted bidding of others, was growing. Indeed, I had the distinct feeling that if I were to do what I really wanted—that is, lie down, close the curtains, and pull up the covers—I would not get up until the following afternoon, sleep for now being my only source of refuge. So struggling against this, I found Wilkie’s number in my briefcase and asked him to meet me as soon as was convenient. 56 Far Afield His battered Renault was idling in the same spot as before when I emerged from the hotel a half hour later. He let me open the back door for myself this time. “Where to, Mr. Inoue?” Instead of glancing in his rearview mirror , Wilkie turned in his seat to look at me. I hesitated before answering to perform a quick study on his face. Was there some genuine earnestness in his expression? Some natural sympathy for human circumstance? Whatever...