Thursday

2 November 2017

— random patterns of russet and copper on the lawn

Good Morning All,

The U.S. Embassy sent me an e-mail saying I could come pick up my new passport from “Monday to Thursday at 8:15.” 

I decided that must just be a bit of U.S. Embassy humor, or else they meant from instead of at.

Wrong on both counts. 

Fortunately, I do know from all my years teaching Embassy kids that Embassy personnel are generally hired on the strengths of their order-obeying and anal-retentive tendencies. I also know they are all continuously dreading Benghazi Revisited within the next half hour. 

Therefore, as I approached the front portal of the Embassy fortress, I decided it would not hurt—just to be on the safe side--to go into something of a stooped-over, gamy-legged shuffle up the handicap ramp. A guard dressed entirely in black came down to meet me. “Can I help you, sir?” he asked in a south-of-the-Mason-Dixon accent.

“I sure hope so,” I said, now a little out of breath. “I’ve come to pick up my new passport.”

“What’s your time?”

I looked at my watch. “Twelve fourteen,” I said. What’s yours?”

“No, sir,” he said, patiently. “What time is your appointment to pick up your passport?”

“Sorry,” I said, “I get confused sometimes.” So saying, I grasped the railing, leaned over it a bit and took a couple of deep breaths before reaching down to massage my left knee.

“Did you bring the letter, sir?”

“Letter?” I said, staring up at him as though I were having trouble remembering who he was. “The letter? Oh, right, the letter!” I said, feeling my face brightening. “I got it here somewhere, I think.” I began the slow, methodical search of the thirteen pockets of my L.L. Bean vest. “Unless I left it in the kitchen, of course, which would not surprise me.”

Finally finding the letter, I handed it to him with only a slight indication of palsy in my hand. He read it, held it so that I could see it, and pointed with the antenna of his walkie-talkie. “See, sir, right here, where it says your appointment was at 8:15.”

I looked at him as though he’d just told me my dog had been run over. 

“You need to come back tomorrow at 8:15, sir.”

Now I stared at him as though all purpose and meaning had disappeared from my life, and/or that the biopsy report had come back and the doctor was avoiding my eyes. “Tomorrow?” I managed to say, as though unfamiliar with the concept. “Boy, I don’t know if I can do this two days in a row. I came all the way from Sorø, on the train.”

“That’s only an hour or so, isn’t it?” he asked. 

“Around that,” I said, “but I had to stand most of the way, so it seemed a lot longer. There were a couple of minutes there, I thought I might have to take another one of my pills.”

“Well, sir, I wish I could help you, but we have our rules, and I’m sure you can understand why."

Time, I thought, to pull out all the stops. I did my best to look at him as though he were Saint Peter at the Gate and had it within his benevolent power to help the poor miserable sinner standing hat in hand before him. I said, softly, conspiratorially, desperately, on the verge of hopelessness, “Is there anything we can do?”

He looked at me a long time while I did my best not to overdo a slight wheezing in my throat. He was not happy to be put into such a complex situation. Soldier and human being duking it out inside him. Finally, he said, “I doubt it, but go stand over there, and I’ll see what I can do.”

It took another forty minutes once I’d been through the metal detectors and x-rays and they’d shined a strobe light up my back end to see if I were hiding any AK-47s in there, but eventually I had my passport good until October, 2027, meaning I’ll probably have to go through this rigmarole only once or twice more in my life time.

On my way out, I shook hands with the guard, thanked him, gave him a thumbs up, and he fairly beamed.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. November sonnet postponed until tomorrow. (But there is a Magwaza poem in the Day Book.)

P.P.S. Two Holly snaps.