LITMIR.BIZ

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a page, inkwell at his elbow. I watched a young painter infuse his miniature masterpiece with a brilliant blue hue.

      “What is that color?” I asked the workbench maker, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

      “Ultramarine. It’s made from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone they ground and made into a pigment. Unfortunately, these days they use less costly synthetics.”

      I watched the binding take shape and saw the book enclosed in its leather-and-board cover, clamped with a sturdy brass clasp for protection and to mold it into shape. In another room the mannequin Duc de Berry engaged a magnificent Jeanne d’Evreux in animated conversation, gesturing with his Très Riche Heures, her tiny Belles Heures in her lap, a finger marking the place. The larger-than-life-size computer images of individual pages were indescribable, though I knew Pam and Celeste would do a superb job if it. I resolved to return at a quieter time, when I could focus better on what was going on.

      The reading room displayed the exhibition catalog and computers for visitor study. There was Lucie’s coin des enfants, an alcove off the reading room with low tables holding child-sized cahiers recounting the story of the Books, also tins of water colors. Children in smocks earnestly daubed in notebooks their parents had acquired at an outrageous price. One particular child took my breath away – a blond boy about Paulie’s age who had spilled water in his notebook. My eyes filled with tears... Paulie would have been here this night, he and his nascent interest in antiquities. After watching the boy for a moment I left the room, wiping my eyes with my hand.

      I passed on the T-shirts and mugs for now but did spring for a catalog. At the dinner the director hosted for Lucie and her counterparts, I asked Lucie if she’d sign my copy. When Pat and I arrived in the Metro station where we would part company, I showed him the inscription. “Pour Paul, bon ami, supporteur fidèle, avec admiration et affection, Lucie.”

      “You see,” Pat said, “she has a thing for you. You could do a lot worse.”

      I shook my head and laughed ruefully, thinking to myself I already have. “My net’s already full, Pat. As long as I’m in this I’ll try to make it work.”

      In September a letter arrived from Gus, postmarked Maine. “Good news and bad news,” he wrote. “I made it here, but I can’t find anything.” I called his new number to congratulate him and see if I could do anything. “I’m fine,” he said. “My niece and her husband came up with their kids – it’s nice having life around. He’s out of work so I’m paying him to winterize the place. And I found a local guy who’ll help after they leave, with the cooking and so on. Come visit! The way we’re going this place is going to look like the Ritz.”

      “Next time I’m back I will. Count on it.”

      “Remember to ask for the student dropout discount.”

      “That should bring down to my price range.”

      “Aw, come on, you’re rolling in dough.”

      I laughed. “Not exactly, but it isn’t bad.”

      “Aren’t you happy you didn’t go into teaching? Church mice are cute but you don’t want to be one, especially when you’re raising a family.”

      “Very happy.” I was tempted to open up but I figured no, he’s got his hands full. Anyway with something like that face-to-face is the only way.

      EVEN DURING THIS FRENETIC TIME I had to give the Gazette what it was paying me for. In July, a terrorist attack on French soil – a bomb exploding in a suitcase being checked through to a Turkish airliner at Orly. It killed eight and injured fifty-five. Members of an Armenian militant organization would be convicted and imprisoned. I used the occasion to explore the destruction by the Ottoman Empire of its Armenian population and other ethnic groups during and after World War I. Massacres, burnings, poisonings, forced marches, deportations – estimates place the Armenian toll alone at over a million. A debate continues whether these brutalities constitute “genocide.” What’s in a name, I thought.

      On September 1, we received word of a Korean Air Lines 747 missing in the area of the Sea of Okhotsk in the Soviet Far East. Reports began to filter in that it had crashed into the ocean. A week later the Soviets acknowledged they shot the plane down after it violated their airspace, believing it to be a spy plane. I learned later that from NSA intercepts the U.S. knew this indeed was the Soviet military’s belief, mistaken though it was, but – still smarting from the embassy bombing, his popularity low – Reagan saw fit to blast the USSR for “a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten.” In the next weeks he reaffirmed an existing ban on Aeroflot service to the U.S. and announced limitations on scientific, cultural and diplomatic exchanges – a tepid response given the tough rhetoric.

      On October 23, an event occurred with far-reaching consequences. At 6:20 a.m., a Mercedes-Benz truck packed with explosives crashed through a barbed wire fence, two sentry posts and a gate, and drove into the lobby of the Marine barracks at Beirut Airport. The detonation leveled the building and killed 241 American servicemen and a Lebanese custodian. Moments later, at the French barracks six km away, same thing. Sixty-two paratroopers and five civilians. Though never definitively established, the Lebanese Shi΄a group Hezbollah was generally credited with the attacks, with aid from Iran and Syria. Reagan denounced the despicable act and pledged that the U.S. would not be intimidated. Within days, however, he had moved the Marines offshore out of harm’s way, and by February next they were gone from Lebanon. It turned out Reagan had his sights on a different target.

      Two days after the barracks tragedy, U.S. troops landed on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. A former British colony, Grenada had been independent since 1974 though it still was a member of the British Commonwealth. A 1979 revolution brought a Marxist-Leninist government to power and the new Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, established ties with Cuba and other Communist governments. In October 1983 Bishop was deposed but he escaped and tried to reclaim power, before being murdered. The Army then took over. On October 25, after months of menacing talk the U.S. invaded, citing a Soviet-Cuban build-up, pointing to a new airport with a military-length runway under construction. Danger to American students at a local medical school was also cited.

      After unexpectedly stiff resistance, U.S., Jamaican and Caribbean regional defense forces overwhelmed the small Grenadian Army and a band of “construction workers” – actually members of Cuba’s secret police and the KGB – as well as advisors from other Communist countries. Within a week, the fighting was over and constitutional government was soon restored. Some 7,000 U.S. troops took part in “Operation Urgent Fury,” with 19 killed and 116 wounded. Opposing casualties were somewhat heavier. This was the first major military action for the U.S. since Vietnam, trumpeted by Reagan as our first combat victory over the Soviets and an eradication of the stain of Vietnam.

      I scheduled an interview with the British Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, who was fuming over this attack on a Commonwealth country, as well as at Reagan’s misleading statements. Reagan had assured Mrs. Thatcher that an invasion was not contemplated and Howe repeated this in the House of Commons. When it appeared the invasion was imminent, she called Reagan and insisted that the landings be cancelled. Reagan later admitted he couldn’t bring himself to tell her they had already started. By a vote of 122 to 9 (the U.S. and its Caribbean allies) with 27 abstentions, the U.N. General Assembly “deeply deplored” the armed intervention, calling it “a flagrant violation of international law.” But for a U.S. veto, the Security Council would have done the same. Dissenting voices were raised at home, seven Democratic Congressmen in fact calling for Reagan’s impeachment.

      I remarked on the sequence of events. Lebanon. Bombings – embassy and barracks. Grenada. What timing – far from coincidental. Shamed one day, forceful and manly the next. Only problem – Lebanon and Grenada. What is the connection? Leave it to the great communicator, he found one: Communism. The USSR, backer of militant Arabs and author of a military threat in our neighborhood. If you can’t check them where you should, do it where you can. Using my “who stands to gain?” test, I found the big winner was the defense establishment, which periodically needs to prove its mettle and justify itself.

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