Michael Berthier

Michel Berthier was a French American lawyer perhaps in his mid 30’s when I proceeded to work for him at IBM Japan in Tokyo.  He was their in-house counsel.  He was married at the time; his wife and six year old daughter lived in Paris.  This was during the US Government vs. IBM case.  He was 6’7” tall which in a place like Tokyo really stood out.  He was arrogant and aloof.  He was very in love with some secret mistress.  His middle desk drawer was full of letters from her.

He and I tolerated each other.  He was very old school.  I took dictation, typed his letters complete with typos like “Say hell to everyone.” – a Christmas letter to IBM chief Tom Watson.  

My husband, Bill Laws and I were very involved in a plan that never got off the ground to move to Kurashiki and live in a stone house.  The deal was with an Australian mysogenist, wild man, Michael Gorman, which is probably why it never got off the ground.  Anyway I left IBM when we moved back to London in 1972.  I did not keep in touch with Berthier and never really gave him much thought.

Last year in February, I had hip replacement surgery at Mt. Auburn Hospital here in Boston.  After five days I was transferred to Sherrill House in Jamaica Plain for rehab.  I relentlessly pushed my walker up and down the corridors – not because I was so noble and hard working – but that I was so anxious to get out of the place.  I even had a codicil added to my will that under no circumstances should I end up in such a facility or any facility like it.

On one of my early forays down the hallways, I spied a name sign on the wall next to a doorway which said Michel Berthier.  The extra long bed was empty.  He was obviously away for rehab as his personal belongings were in plain sight.  I thought there is no way there could be two of them.  So I waited.  And in time along came a nurse’s aid pushing a wheel chair and in it all 6’7” of a somewhat diminished and much aged Michel Berthier emerged.  He was silver-haired, slack-jawed and bore little resemblance to the dapper, over-confident, young lawyer he used to be some 40 years earlier; he obviously had been very sick with something.  Privacy regulations did not enable me to find out what exactly had happened to him.

One day in the television room, I grabbed the courage to speak to him.  He clearly did not remember me, but he did remember Tokyo and that after that he became General Counsel for IBM’s head office in White Plains, New York.  He did not remember how that relationship ended but that he found himself living in Cambridge, Massachusetts – apple not far from the tree sort of thing i.e., Harvard University.

He pondered this state of affairs for a few minutes and then he stared up at me with his rheumy old eyes and inquired bitterly “How did we end up here?”