Far Afield

XXIV

158 XXIV I began the next day a few hours later in the aseptic setting of an old-fashioned television studio where I was being interviewed. Like the US, Momo-Jima had been beset by a proliferation of morning question-and-chat shows (three apiece on each of its three channels) and I was scheduled to be on two of them today. A few other candidates and their handlers were also to appear but since Trevor was considered the primary story of the election, and since he had refused to make any public appearances for several days, my presence was of the highest priority and I led off the panel of guests on both shows. For twenty minutes then, and against a panoramic backdrop of a flock of Guanche birds rising off the early morning waters, I was battered with unanswerable questions asked in the disjointed manner of conversational television. Keeping my part of the bargain , I said absolutely nothing of substance in return, and for this, I was thanked profusely and escorted by a driver (poor Wilkie had finally been given the day off) to a rival channel so I could repeat myself. As I left this first show, I passed several guests waiting to follow me, among them the white-mustached man I’d seen a few weeks earlier on the soap opera. He was helping himself to liberal portions from the morning buffet and shards of cheese, ham, and croissants had become stuck in the heavy brush of his whiskers. As he talked animatedly with the other guests, these crumbs fell to the floor in a circle around him. Scott Brown 159 The second show took longer than the first, which is to say that the guest slated to follow me ran late and forced me to stay on the air an extra fifteen minutes enduring additional conversation. Still, like my first appearance, I resolutely gave out no information, nor said anything of value, conduct for which again I was rewarded with gratitude and this time a gift certificate to a car rental agency on the island. From there I was driven back. By the time my amiable driver (who knew nothing of the election, of Trevor, or of government matters in general, only of European football) dropped me off at Maison Ophelia, it was nearly nine a.m. Despite the early hour, there was a knot of reporters already camped out on Trevor’s wet and scrubby front lawn. I looked for Sono, then recalled her telling me that she was to be roving among the candidates that day, the paper’s only other staffer having come down with a well-timed case of the shingles. Seeing the press, I told the driver to use the driveway onto the property. I then got out at the end and hurried through the back door into the house. From the stillness inside, I understood Trevor to be asleep. To my dismay, however, I also saw Wilkie reclining in the living room. He evidently did not have the day off. I took him aside. “When did you arrive?” I asked him. “Around five, I think,” he replied. “Did he call you to come back?” “She did,” he said, meaning the housekeeper. “I think she wanted a man around in case he got into something.” I nodded and left him alone to rest. More and more, my admiration for Wilkie, already substantial by now, swelled. Not only did he have an unshakable equanimity in every situation I’d seen him, but he also had the rare trait of containing his feelings so they would not interrupt the natural flow of others’ conduct. In this way, he brought out people’s true essence (a born reporter, I thought). Still, despite his refusal to impose on others, his own feelings themselves were deep and complex. You could see some of this in the way he listened to his opera. It was not just a music lover’s rapture but rather the experience of someone who simultaneously appreciated , critiqued, and accepted the destiny of the sound and the 160 Far Afield choices made in the passages. He was at once the listener, composer, and aesthetician. I had never met anyone like him. Now, though, he was worn out and gray-looking. He sunk himself down in an overstuffed chair and soon I heard the deep ligamental rhythms of his hard sleep...