Mister Ambassador
published: 2009-12-03I have made a fresh tomato soup and a salad with crushed walnuts. I have done my utmost to present it well but truth be said: salad looks bland in a standard white bowl. And my sup bowls are chipped.
My main character comes late. The salad has gone soggy. He enters in a flurry of charm, making up for lost time. He is wearing a hat – as he always does – which he gently puts on the table, using both hands. I throw his Burberry jacket on my bed. Beneath it, he wears a suit.
“Tell me,” I say, “how exactly does one address an ambassador?”
He writes it down for me using a fountain pen which was in his inside pocket.
His Excellency M. M. Steenbergen, Royal Kingdom of The Netherlands. He writes another one down, including his university degree. Or one could also simply say: Ambassador. This is how his housekeeper prefers to call him: mister ambassador. He doesn’t insist on it, he is fine with “sir.” But she chooses to herself. It is her way of taking pride in her work.
I watch his hand write all this down. It is pigmented from too much sun, a life in the tropics. As I lean over him, I can see into the collar of his shirt. He wears a gold chain with a cross on it.
After an hour or two he leaves, thanking me for the wonderful lunch and excellent company. Only to return ten minutes later: with flowers. He says, “I had wanted to buy these on the way but didn’t as I was running late.”
I thank him, tell him it really wasn’t necessary. He tilts his hat and bows his head.
“Tchau, meu doce,” he says.
Two months later he dies of heart failure after his third and final chemo.