Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

As the dinner drew to an end, my attention veered to a neighbouring table, where a man was eating almost in solitude: save for a woman who was clearly his wife, the seats around him were vacant. Looking more closely at this forlorn diner, I recognized him from the newspapers: Conrad Black, the newspaper publisher who had given up his Canadian citizenship in order to accept a British peerage. Now Lord Black was an alleged embezzler. The SEC proceedings against him were only several months old and nothing had been proven, yet already a distinct cloud of downfall hung over this man, and apparently one or two of those seated near him had decided to eat somewhere else. I observed all of this unreflectively. I did not feel, stirring within, the organizing of moral faculties. I looked at Black like a boy looking at a duck. In the years since, I’ve kept half an eye on the Conrad Black story, though not out of any special sympathy for its protagonist, who seems unaccountably to have a Napoleonic idea of himself and, to be honest, rubs me the wrong way with his scornful pronouncements from on high, and absolutely doesn’t strike me as the kind of dude I’d like to chill with, not that that’s a valid measure of anything. No, I’ve followed his fate out of the same childish, selfish strain of curiosity that led me to gawk at him in the first place — that yearning to enter the territory where, deep in a forest, a dragon breathes heavily on a hoard of knowledge.

After dinner, there was dancing around the swimming pool. Jenn and I spectated. ‘The richer you are, the worse you dance,’ she said. I wanted to dance but I didn’t ask her to, because she didn’t like to dance, I think because it made her afraid. At a certain point, the Conrad Blacks took to the floor. The wife had eyes only for the husband, and vice versa, and as they swayed and shuffled on the spot, always smiling, they took turns to murmur confidences into the other’s ear. For the duration of a song, they were the only ones on the dance floor, and Jenn said, ‘Who are those two?’ I said, ‘He’s Conrad Black. I can’t remember her name. Mrs Conrad Black.’ ‘Huh,’ Jenn said. I imagine that, like me, she was wondering what to make of this performance of amorousness, which I suspect left many feeling by comparison romantically wan. The uncharitable observer — is there another kind? — would say that the flaunting of a supposed connubial superiority was an important part of the fun the Conrad Blacks were having. I say, Maybe so; but subsequent events have shown that, whatever else they may be accused of, they are not guilty of making an insubstantial marriage. It is reported that Mrs Conrad Black — a personage of independent notoriety, it would seem — has moved full-time to the couple’s Palm Beach residence in order to be near her husband in his correctional facility, this even though she suffers from a skin condition that responds poorly to tropical sunlight, and even though she owns a pair of huge guard dogs, of Hungarian provenance, whose thick white fur makes them, too, ill-suited to Florida living.

As is well known, Lord Black’s relations with the forces of justice only deteriorated after the Trump wedding, and I haven’t kept up with the various convictions, judgments, suits, appeals and proceedings (including moves to ‘strip’ him of membership of the Order of Canada, to bar him from holding US company directorships, and to discourage him from sitting in the House of Lords) that have engulfed him. I take no sides. I will only say that, if the moves against Black show no sign of ending, neither does Black’s strangely joyful struggling. For the time being he remains in prison in Florida. Here, I find myself moved to a certain respect and sympathy — and, is it possible, envy: he has, as it were, surfaced from illusion. He is purely disgraced. He is behind bars. He wears a jumpsuit. His enemies have revealed themselves — as have, I feel sure, his friends. Also, obscurely, he is in the clear. Maybe I’m perverse, but I connect imprisonment to a limit of culpability. It’s certainly true that, so long as he’s inside, Black can hardly be punished more.

The Swedish frictions came to an end some while ago. I have no wish to move. Because of my new phobia or new PTSD, the Pasha now faces away from the windows, and to open my eyes is to see a white wall. In its way, it is a magnificent vista. I could stay where I am, looking at that wall, for a long time — and in fact this is what I do, quite without foreboding. On the contrary: any minute now, Watson, followed soon after by the others, will as it were rat-a-tat-tat on the door.

I am grateful for assistance received from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Corporation of Yaddo.