SHORT STORIES: The Ambassador to Armenia

I got there early, there was no point wandering around out in the wind. I ordered a basket of chips, but held off on getting a drink. When my friend arrived he waved to me and, as there was no beer waiting for him on the table, went to the bar. He got two large bottles of Emerson’s Pilsner. What did one of those cost? Sixteen dollars or so.

So how are you finding your new job, surely you’ll go back to teaching one day? He asked, it’d been awhile since we’d met up.

I don’t think so. You know the truth is I’d rather forget most classes I’ve taught, most of the students too. If they feel the same way about me, as in they don’t remember me – well, that’s the most I can really ask for…

Yes, sounds about right…

However, there was one gig I remember quite fondly: I used to teach English to the French Ambassador to New Zealand.

Here we go, showing off again now…

Fair enough, fair enough…you want to hear about him or not though?

But an ambassador would already know English…alright then, let’s have it.

The cultural attaché’s office had a magnificent view of Wellington central; a bloody beautiful day it was too – the compact toy city nestled in the hills around the harbour fairly glistened. The longer I looked at the sky, the bluer it got. Too nice that scene, made me think of Zurich, a place I once got stuck in for three days, and detested – scenic, expensive, super civilised and convenient….ugh!

Not your sort of place.

The attaché, my new student, finally arrived. He was a snowy-bearded Sean Connery with a nice tan. Speaking near faultless English he explained he was half German, half French – born in 1943 in Paris to a member of the occupying army and a local chick. What was I going to say to, let alone teach this fellow? Luckily I’d come prepared: I put him through the hell that was my phrasal verb exercise book. Sean Connery seemed impressed; he was the gatekeeper and I had passed his test. So the next time, I was to have lessons with those who really needed help with their English: the secretary, the visa officer and the cook.

The cook was a robust woman of fifty. Never trust a thin cook, was her catch phrase. She liked to do her lessons in a cafe near the embassy. Her francophone way of speaking English was entrenched…and she had little concentration for studying grammar. I was happy not to make photocopies for our lessons. She told tales of wondrous dinner parties in present tense, linking sentences with ‘dong’ – thus helping me to at least learn one word in French. She was a truly upbeat spirit, I envied her happiness.

The visa officer was an ageless woman of forty. Down to earth, not of the roaming, ambitious diplomatic type. She was married to a local guy and lived out in the Hutt Valley. Sadly, she quit her job about month into our lessons. She told me that she had actually learned something from me – a comment I rarely received, and even less often believed. If you weren’t you, you’d have a wife like that.

The secretary was thirty, small with an intense gaze. She wasn’t unattractive, but her head looked a bit like a skull – this was either the effect of vigorous pilates, or too much time stressing looking at the ambassador’s schedule for the right place to ‘pencil in’ such and such an event….She had woeful colloquial English, but relished the phrasal verbs the visa officer didn’t have a clue about. I felt vaguely sorry for her as she wrote definitions and translations onto the photocopies I gave her; all these notes would be faithfully memorized…I’ll move up a gear here in my character sketching – now the ambassador…

Third gear would be top for you…

After about six weeks of going to the embassy, I finally had my chance to ‘teach’ the ambassador.
‘Just a minute I will go check’…said the secretary… ‘yes’, she whispered, ‘you can go in’…
First thing I noticed as he crossed the room to shake my hand was he was very tall and easy limbed, but not athletic (well, not any more). Another snowy beard, this time on a ruddy, homely face rather than the hawkish and haughty one of the attaché. He didn’t sit behind his desk, but had his leather chair positioned in the middle of the room. So here he was, a true career diplomat! Minister Plenipotentiary of the first class. Son of a chemical engineer and a lawyer, he had studied languages and civilizations in Paris, specialising in Russia and China. His military service had been done in Mongolia and China leading him smoothly into the diplomatic world as an attaché to the embassy in Beijing. From there he kept building – three years in Budapest, a stint back in France; he moved up the chain to become cultural affairs officer in Moscow in the age of glasnost and perestroika. By the mid-nineties he had really made it…becoming an ambassador…but not in China or Russia, countries he was expert on. No, he became their man in Armenia…and it was this country he liked to talk about. I never got anything out of him about China, even though I too had spent some years there. You would’ve thought we could have had some interesting discussions about the Middle Kingdom; it wasn’t the direction he wanted to go in. In our lessons he talked a lot – apparently he got little chance to expound in English. I was to listen – not even to correct – which would have been hard. He needed a fairly educated audience to comprehend his stories…

Here we go again…so lucky it was you who got the gig you are saying…

Then again maybe even comprehension was not required.

The Ambassador had finished up in Armenia ten years before coming to New Zealand, so I’d better just finish off his career summary. He was Commissioner General of the year of China in France and the year of France in China. Subsequently he travelled the world as an inspector for the department of foreign affairs, looking at how French embassies were carrying out their business. He was member of the order of merit, legion of honour and had some other French honours I can’t remember.

And so what did he say about Armenia?

He was upset about a brandy factory. Brandy was a big deal in Armenia. There was a French owned brandy factory in the capital city of Yerevan, which was really struggling, because just down the road the Armenians had set up one using the same brand name. A blatant breach of copyright, intellectual property etc. He kept telling the Armenian president that he was unhappy and the factory had to close, but the president would just smile. He even suspected the ‘fake’ brandy was served at official functions; what an outrage. It was cheaper of course…But that was just the start, he had many complaints about Armenia, many of them about how people continually bugged him to grant/sell them French passports.

So it can’t have been Armenia all the time for a man of such rich experience…

Well, as I mentioned I always tried to discuss China, but could never get him to bite. I did get a few stories about Russia. His chauffeur in Moscow got lost all the time; the KGB went into his apartment and installed listening devices – and they were so inept at covering their tracks that the ambassador suspected they wanted him and his wife to know they were watching them.

And what of New Zealand…?

Well refreshingly he didn’t seem keen on this place. While I was teaching him, the French rugby team visited. One of the players appeared at training all beaten up and claimed he had been beaten up outside a bar – but later admitted he had just got drunk and fallen over. He was sent home from the tour. An outrage was made of this by the press. ‘This French rugby player damaging Wellington’s reputation, painting it as a violent place! And it was all lies!’ Apparently there were many calls to the French embassy to complain – which the ambassador found absolutely perplexing. ‘This had nothing to do with us!’
Once, he’d parked his car in downtown Wellington, paid at the parking-metre but still received a ticket. He challenged the nearest parking warden about this – and on unwisely revealing that he was the French ambassador, the rather well informed, but out of date, warden told him he deserved a ticket because of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. When the ambassador mentioned these incidents which pained him, the displeasure only showed on one side of his face. Most people have this to some degree: emotional lateralization – the left side of the face a reflection of the emotion in the right side of your brain – but the ambassador was an extreme case. His right side maintained an elegant calm, while the left crumpled in distaste. This effect was very evident when he talked about the English. He reckoned Britain had left a lot of its ex-colonies in the lurch by not giving the people there citizenship; whereas the French had granted this right to former subjects. This was a point, granted – but he also liked to rant that the English couldn’t survive in hot climates without tea…it seemed that despite his years in the diplomatic orbit, Englishmen remained rare beasts to him. I was interested in pressing this, if I wasn’t going to get his opinions on China, listening to his rather irrational view of the English would just about make up for it. However, I never got the chance…

I was waiting for you to fuck things up…

The cook was to receive some sort of medal for services to diplomatic cuisine. It was quite a big deal and there was to be a function at the residence over in Thorndon…with wine and canapés. I was invited. I thought the event wouldn’t start on time. The French aren’t punctual, right? So I went to the pub first…and turned up an hour late. Apparently the cook had thanked me during her speech, and this had lead to everybody noticing I wasn’t there. The secretary, quite a stickler for times and dates, gave me a bit of a bollocking. I thought that would be the end of it…but…

I’d got the embassy gig through the English institute that I taught at in the mornings. About a week after the cook’s do at the residence, the boss at the institute wanted a word with me….
‘You’ve done well at the embassy, but it’s kind of a privilege…getting to talk to a guy like the ambassador. Anna has been doing really well in her teaching…and we reckon it’s time to give her a go there.’
So that was that, and to top it off the boss put me on a six week cycle teaching an elementary class…six weeks of pulling syllables.
Anna kindly told me new anecdotes about the ambassador’s time in Armenia whenever she wasn’t preparing class…that wasn’t often, she was a nerd.

Or, unlike you, doing her job properly. Can’t keep out of trouble can you…

Yes I’m afraid I have to agree with you…

I left the pub feeling that my friend didn’t particularly like me. Well, one had to have a beer with somebody, and neither of us had many other options. I felt quite guilty that I’d been gasbagging so much, although talking had prevented me drinking a lot, I was quite sober – something to be thankful for as I trudged along buffeted by the wind.