Page 29 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 2 Winter 2013

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whispers. I looked across the table from me, and here was
someone I had known at St. Paul’s. He was a diplomat
now, a job that well suited his temperament and capacity
to convince. This posting was testing that temperament.
He told me that, more than once, the local authorities had
broken into his home and rifled through his family’s be-
longings. They had left the front door ajar, making sure
that their point was understood: we can get to you anytime.
He told me this story calmly, as though he hardly minded.
But I knew. He wouldn’t let it get to him. We looked at each
other, then looked away, said nothing more about it. There
was no need, in the ethic that we shared.
That ethic led me to a café in Singapore, for a meeting
with a criminal figure. I opened the door, and there he
stood. We both paused, and he said, “I think we have an
eye for each other.” We spoke for several hours. We talked
about his business. Beijing backed it, he told me, and it
operated on every continent. I had a beer, he had an
espresso, and as our conversation continued, his tone
began to change. He had influence. He had a name. But
his voice was faltering. He asked me to make a deal for
him with the authorities. He wanted out. I saw that if a
man knows that you are not judging him, he is inclined
to befriend you. I saw also the moral burden that this man
had never expected to carry. He understood too late what
he had to do.
It is not enough to be able to identify the right thing to
do. You must have the strength also to do it. St. Paul’s gave
me the capacity for both. I don’t always do the right thing.
Who does? But I ask myself a question: What would my
life be had I not had the good fortune to be admitted to
St. Paul’s? Would I have the strength to stand firmly while
in moral distortion? Don’t falter. Don’t judge.
These are questions in the abstract, with no answer,
and that’s why I ask them from time to time. All I can
answer is that without St. Paul’s, my life may have
meandered. Let the reader moralize.
one another. It was a lesson I encountered more than
once. I remember the day that fall when I was cut from
the hockey team. It was something I had wanted, but for
which I was not suited. I was in my room, tying my tie for
Seated Meal, when a knock rapped out on my door. I was
surprised to see Mr. Matthews, the hockey coach, stand-
ing in the hall. Mr. Matthews had interviewed me when
I applied to the School. He had been a captain of the
hockey team as a student at St. Paul’s. To my mind, he was
the formulation of all lesson and experience at St. Paul’s.
He took a seat on the dust-bomb, hand-me-down couch
in my room, and I sat on the chair opposite him. He said
that he had just called my father and told him what had
happened earlier in the day. Mr. Matthews expressed his
regrets to me, for he knew that my family had achieved
some success in the game, that he knew I had worked
hard to make the team. By the strain of his voice and the
hard setting of his features, I realized that this was not
an easy or enjoyable task for Mr. Matthews. Nor did he
even have to be there. But he had come anyway, and this
let me know that I was not alone.
St. Paul’s gave me the moral footing to go out into the
world as an equal with others, no matter how society
perceives them. Many times I have walked beside myself
– joining the retinue of an Emirati sheikh, herding reindeer
with a one-eyed nomad on the Arctic tundra of Yamal,
running through Manila’s pool halls with the best shooter
in the world, bargaining in the Gobi with poachers of
Mongolian dinosaur bones – and thought, “here we are
in another strange place with another strange dude.” And
it continues. I am writing this on the train from Sochi to
Krasnodar, in Russia’s southwest. The railroad tracks
follow the shoreline of the Black Sea. Dolphins arc through
the water’s surface now and again. Walking through the
wagons, from over-spilling third class to the coupés of
first, feels like tracing the path of human evolution. I
have just met with the Russian prime minister, and now
it is time to join Cossack patrols around the Caucasus.
Again, I am granted perspective, and I know that these
images pass before me on one flickering strip direct
from St. Paul’s and my time there years ago. St. Paul’s
gave me the idea that I may attempt fluency in the world.
I have worked in a few dozen countries. That’s more
than some people, fewer than others. To tell the truth, I
remember it all as a single trip: provincial passengers
applauding a safe airplane landing, a deadline glaring
through the fog of the time zones, knowing someone
quickly and then never again, nights chased too late
while reaching for the strand of a story, that moment
when the reporting crystallizes and you know you have
what you need, the goodbyes that you miss. Or avoid.
I have looked into the eyes of others and seen myself. I
once walked into a hotel lounge in St. Petersburg. It was
a tsarist-era palace that had survived the Soviet period
and had now returned to its former usage. Wealthy, fash-
ionable, questionable people talked to one another in
rmly while in moral distortion?
Forrest (fourth from left) with the Coordination of Special
Resources (CORE) unit in Rio de Janeiro. Standing next to
the author, in the white shirt, is unit chief Rodrigo Oliveira.