The Death of a Journalist
(Page 4 of 11)
September/October 1996
Lynda Schuster, Granta (www.granta.com)
'It was here that I composed for you my first letter of love and trivia, away back last October, when I came here newly and madly in love. How long ago that seems, so many miles and so many feelings and so many capitals. And what changes in my life, my ways of living it, my perceptions of myself and where I stand in time and place -- and all because of you. Sometimes I wonder: Could I ever go back to being that old me? Now that I've gotten back to feeling, to really caring, I don't think I could ever return to my old ways. To measuring myself out in coffeespoons and two-week increments, to pleasant-enough times with friends who never learned that when I tell the truth, my eyes tear over.'
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Dial started carrying his divorce papers around with him wherever we went -- he had been divorced for several years -- on the off chance that I would agree to marry him in one of the tropical capitals we frequented. He became downright insistent when we were both sent to Argentina in the spring of 1982 to cover the Falklands War. I refused; I didn't want to embark on a life of conjugal bliss in a country engaged in a thoroughly idiotic armed conflict. But I promised to marry him before my next birthday.
I was in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on August 23, when Dial called from his home in Mexico. 'Lynda, I cannot not be married to you any longer,' he announced. 'Your birthday is in three days, and if you are a woman of honor, you must marry me. I'm flying down tomorrow with Jordy (his daughter) and two rings, and we're going to get married.'
'But I have interviews all day,' I said.
'You can still do your interviews. Just be back at the hotel by five.'
I set out early the next morning. There was a dreamy quality to the city that defied the knife-edge atmosphere in the region: the cottony clouds sailing low across the horizon; the tiny, pastel-painted houses that dot the hillsides; the plodding burros. I raced from interview to interview with no time to think until, during a break at noon, it occurred to me that I had nothing to wear to my wedding. After making inquiries, I was directed across the main plaza, its phlegmatic fountain dribbling forth a rivulet of greenish water, to what was probably Tegucigalpa's only boutique. There I bought a white blouse, a white skirt, and a knitted white belt.
For my last meeting of the day, a man I didn't know, but whose car had been described to me, picked me up at an appointed street corner and drove a circuitous route to a house on the outskirts of the city. The rendezvous was with representatives of the Contras, the guerrilla group trying to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. It was an astonishing interview at a time when the U.S. government was refusing to admit the Contras' existence, let alone the fact that it was providing them with aid. Suddenly I looked at my watch: it was 4:50. 'Gentlemen, I'm very sorry but I have to go,' I said. 'I'm getting married in ten minutes.'
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