The Driver's Seat

by Muriel Spark

  ‘Yin and Yang are philosophies,’ he says. ‘Yin represents space. Its colour is purple. Its element is water. It is external. That salami is Yin and those olives are Yin. They are full of toxics. Have you ever heard of macrobiotic food?’

  ‘No, what is it?’ she says cutting into the open salami sandwich.

  ‘You’ve got a lot to learn. Rice, unpolished rice is the basis of macrobiotics. I’m going to start a centre in Naples next week. It is a cleansing diet. Physically, mentally and spiritually.’

  ‘I hate rice,’ she says.

  ‘No, you only think you do. He who hath ears let him hear.’ He smiles widely towards her, he breathes into her face and touches her knee. She eats on with composure. ‘I’m an Enlightenment Leader in the movement,’ he says.

  The stewardess comes with two long metal pots. ‘Tea or coffee?’ ‘Coffee,’ says Lise, holding out her plastic cup, her arm stretched in front of Bill. When this is done, ‘For you, sir?’ says the stewardess.

  Bill places his hand over his cup and benignly shakes his head.

  ‘Don’t you want anything to eat, sir?’ says the stewardess, regarding Bill’s untouched tray.

  ‘No, thank you,’ says Bill.

  Lise says, ‘I’ll eat it. Or at least, some of it.’

  The stewardess passes on to the next row, unconcerned.

  ‘Coffee is Yin,’ says Bill.

  Lise looks towards his tray. ‘Are you sure you don’t want that open sandwich? It’s delicious. I’ll eat it if you don’t want it. After all, it’s paid for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘You’ll soon change your eating habits, though, now that we’ve got to know each other.’

  ‘Whatever do you eat when you travel abroad?’ Lise says, exchanging his tray for hers, retaining only her coffee.

  ‘I carry my diet with me. I never eat in restaurants and hotels unless I have to. And if I do, I choose very carefully. I go where I can get a little fish, maybe, and rice, and perhaps a bit of goat’s cheese. Which are Yang. Cream cheese — in fact butter, milk, anything that comes from the cow — is too Yin. You become what you eat. Eat cow and you become cow.

  A hand, fluttering a sheet of white paper, intervenes from behind them.

  They turn to see what is being offered. Bill grasps the paper. It is the log of the plane’s flight, informing the passengers as to the altitude, speed and present geographical position, and requesting them to read it and pass it on.

  Lise continues to look back, having caught sight of the face behind her. In the window seat, next to a comfortably plump woman and a young girl in her teens, is a sick-looking man, his eyes yellow-brown and watery, deep-set in their sockets, his face pale green. It was he who had handed forward the chart. Lise stares, her lips parted slightly, and she frowns as if speculating on the man’s identity. He looks away, first out of the window, then down towards the floor, embarrassed. The woman does not change her expression, but the young girl, understanding Lise to be questioning by her stare the man behind, says, ‘It’s only the flight chart.’ But Lise stares on. The sick-looking man looks at his companions and then down at his knees, and Lise’s stare does not appear to be helping his sickness.

  A nudge from Bill composes her so far that she turns and faces forward again. He says, ‘It’s only the flight chart. Do you want to see it?’ And since she does not reply he thrusts it forward to bother it about the ears of the people in front until they receive it from his hand.

  Lise starts to eat her second snack. ‘You know, Bill,’ she says, ‘I think you were right about that crazy man who moved his seat. He wasn’t my type at all and I wasn’t his type. Just as a matter of interest, I mean, because I didn’t take the slightest notice of him and I’m not looking to pick up strangers. But you mentioned that he wasn’t my type and, of course, let me tell you, if he thought I was going to make up to him he made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m your type,’ Bill says.

  She sips her coffee and looks round, glimpsing through the partition of the seats the man behind her. He stares ahead with glazed and quite unbalanced eyes, those eyes far too wide open to signify anything but some sort of mental distance from reality; he does not see Lise now, as she peers at him, or, if so, he appears to have taken a quick turn beyond caring and beyond embarrassment.

  Bill says, ‘Look at me, not at him.’

  She turns back to Bill with an agreeable and indulgent smile. The stewardesses come efficiently collecting the trays, cluttering one upon the other. Bill, when their trays are collected, puts up first Lise’s table and then his own. He puts his arm through hers.

  ‘I’m your type,’ he says, ‘and you’re mine. Are you planning to stay with friends?’

  ‘No, but I have to meet somebody.’

  ‘No chance of us meeting some time? How long are you planning to stay in the city?’

  ‘I have no definite plans,’ she says. ‘But I could meet you for a drink tonight. Just a short drink.’

  ‘I’m staying at the Metropole,’ he says. ‘Where will you be staying?’

  ‘Oh, just a small place. Hotel Tomson.’

  ‘I don’t think I know Hotel Tomson.’

  ‘It’s quite small. It’s cheap but clean.’

  ‘Well, at the Metropole,’ Bill says, ‘they don’t ask any questions.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned,’ Lise says, ‘they can ask any questions they like. I’m an idealist.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am,’ Bill says. ‘An idealist. You’re not offended, are you? I only meant that if we get acquainted, I think, somehow, I’m your type and you’re my type.’

  ‘I don’t like crank diets,’ Lise says. ‘I don’t need diets. I’m in good form.’

  ‘Now, I can’t let that pass, Lise,’ Bill says. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. The macrobiotic system is not just a diet, it’s a way of life.’

  She says, ‘I have somebody to meet some time this afternoon or this evening.’

  ‘What for?’ he says. ‘Is it a boy-friend?’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ she says.. ‘Stick to your yin and your yang.’

  ‘Yin and Yang,’ he says, ‘is something that you’ve got to understand. If we could have a little time together, a little peaceful time, in a room, just talking, I could give you some idea of how it works. It’s an idealist’s way of life. I’m hoping to get the young people of Naples interested in it. I should think there would be many young people of Naples interested. We’re opening a macrobiotic restaurant there, you know.’

  Lise peers behind her again at the staring, sickly man. ‘A strange type,’ she says.

  ‘With a room behind the public dining hall, a room for strict observers who are on Regime Seven. Regime Seven is cereals only, very little liquid. You take such a very little liquid that you can pee only three times a day if you’re a man, two if you’re a woman. Regime Seven is a very elevated regime in macrobiotics. You become like a tree. People become what they eat.’

  ‘Do you become a goat when you eat goat’s cheese?’

  ‘Yes, you become lean and stringy like a goat. Look at me, I haven’t a spare piece of fat on my body. I’m not an Enlightenment Leader for nothing.’

  ‘You must have been eating goat’s cheese,’ she says. ‘This man back here is like a tree, have you seen him?’

  ‘Behind the private room for observers of Regime Seven,’ Bill says, ‘there will be another little room for tranquillity and quiet. It should do well in Naples once we get the youth movement started. It’s to be called the Yin-Yang Young. It does well in Denmark. But middle-aged people take the diet too. In the States many senior citizens are on macrobiotics.’

  ‘The men in Naples are sexy.’

  ‘On this diet the Regional Master for Northern Europe recommends one orgasm a day. At least. In the Mediterranean countries we are still researching that aspect.’

  ‘He’s afraid of me,’ Lise whispers, indicating with a jerk of her head the man be
hind her. ‘Why is everybody afraid of me?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m not afraid of you.’ Bill looks round, impatiently, and as if only to oblige her. He looks away again. ‘Don’t bother with him,’ he says. ‘He’s a mess.

  Lise gets up. ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘I have to go and wash.’

  ‘See you come back,’ he says.

  She passes across him to the aisle, holding in her hand both her hand-bag and the paperback book she bought at the airport, and as she does so she takes the opportunity to look carefully at the three people in the row behind, the ill-looking man, the plump woman and the young girl, who sit without conversing, as it seems unconnected with each other. Lise stands for a moment in the aisle, raising the arm on which the hand-bag is slung from the wrist, so that the paperback, now held between finger and thumb, is visible. She seems to display it deliberately, as if she is one of those spies one reads about who effect recognition by pre-arranged signals and who verify their contact with another agent by holding a certain paper in a special way.

  Bill looks up at her and says, ‘What’s the matter?’

  She starts moving forward, at the same time answering Bill: ‘The matter?’

  ‘You won’t need that book,’ Bill says.

  She looks at the book in her hand as if wondering where it came from and with a little laugh hesitates by his side long enough to toss it on to her seat before she goes up the plane towards the toilets.

  Two people are waiting in line ahead of her. She takes her place abstractedly, standing in fact almost even with the row where her first neighbour, the business man, is sitting. But she does not seem to be aware of him or to care in the slightest that he glances up at her twice, three times, at first apprehensively and then, as she continues to ignore him, less so. He turns a page of his newspaper and folds it conveniently for reading, and reads it without looking at her again, settling further into his seat with the slight sigh of one whose visitor has left and who is at last alone.

  It has turned out that the sick-looking man is after all connected with the plump woman and the young girl who sat beside him on the plane. He is coming out of the airport building, now, not infirmly but with an air of serious exhaustion, accompanied by the woman and the girl.

  Lise stands a few yards away. By her side is Bill; their luggage is on the pavement beside them. She says, ‘Oh there he is!’ and leaves Bill’s side, running up to the sick-eyed man. ‘Excuse me!’ she says.

  He hesitates, and makes an awkward withdrawal: two steps backward, and with the steps he seems to withdraw even more his chest, shoulders, legs and face. The plump woman looks at Lise inquiringly while the girl just stands and looks.

  Lise addresses the man in English. She says, ‘Excuse me, but I wondered if you wanted to share a limousine to the centre. It works out cheaper than a taxi, if the passengers agree to share, and it’s quicker than the bus, of course.’

  The man looks at the pavement as if inwardly going through a ghastly experience. The plump woman says, ‘No, thank you. We’re being met.’ And touching the man on the arm, moves on. He follows, as if bound for the scaffold while the girl stares blankly at Lise before walking round and past her. But Lise quickly moves with the group, and once again confronts the man. ‘I’m sure we’ve met somewhere before,’ she says. The man rolls his head slightly as if he has toothache or a headache. ‘I would be so grateful,’ Lise says, ‘for a lift.’

  ‘I’m afraid—’ says the woman. And just then a man in a chauffeur’s uniform comes up. ‘Good morning, m’ lord,’ he says. ‘We’re parked over there. Did you have a good trip?’

  The man has opened his mouth wide but without making a sound; now he closes his lips tight.

  ‘Come along,’ says the plump woman, while the girl turns in an unconcerned way. The plump woman says sweetly to Lise, while brushing past her, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t stop at the moment. The car’s waiting and we have no extra room.

  Lise shouts, ‘But your luggage — you’ve forgotten your luggage.’

  The chauffeur turns cheerily and says over his shoulder, ‘No luggage, Miss, they don’t bring luggage. Got all they need at the villa.’ He winks and breezes about his business.

  The three follow him across the street to the rows of waiting cars and are followed by other travellers who stream out of the airport building.

  Lise runs back to Bill. He says, ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘I thought I knew him,’ Lise says. She is crying, her tears fall heavily. She says, ‘I was sure he was the right one. I’ve got to meet someone.

  Bill says, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry, people are looking. What’s the matter? I don’t get it.’ At the same time he grins with his wide mouth as if to affirm that the incomprehensible needs must be a joke. ‘I don’t get it,’ he says, pulling out of his pocket two men‘s-size paper handkerchiefs, and, selecting one, handing it to Lise. ‘Who did you think he was?’

  Lise wipes her eyes and blows her nose. She clutches the paper handkerchief in her fist. She says, ‘It’s a disappointing start to my holidays. I was sure.

  ‘You’ve got me for the next few days if you like,’ Bill says. ‘Don’t you want to see me again? Come on, we’ll get a taxi, you’ll feel better in a taxi. You can’t go on the bus, crying like that. I don’t get it. I can give you what you want, wait and see.’

  On the pavement, further up, among a cluster of people waiting for a taxi is the sturdy young man in his business suit, holding his briefcase. Lise looks listlessly at Bill, then beyond Bill, and just as listlessly takes in the man whose rosy face is turned towards her. He lifts his suitcase immediately he catches sight of her and crosses the road amongst the traffic, moving quickly away and away. But Lise is not watching him any more, she does not even seem to have remembered him.

  In the taxi she laughs harshly when Bill tries to kiss her. Then she lets him kiss her, emerging from the contact with raised eyebrows as who should say, ‘What next?’ ‘I’m your type,’ Bill says.

  The taxi stops at the grey stone downtown Hotel Tomson. She says, ‘What’s all that on the floor?’ and points to a scatter of small seeds. Bill looks at them closely and then at his zipper-bag which has come unzipped by a small fraction.

  ‘Rice,’ he says. ‘One of my sample packs must have burst and this bag isn’t closed properly.’ He zips up the bag and says, ‘Never mind.’

  He takes her to the narrow swing doors and hands her suitcase to the porter. ‘I’ll look for you at seven in the hall of the Metropole,’ he says. He kisses her on the cheek and again she raises her eyebrows. She pushes the swing door and goes with it, not looking back.

  FOUR

  At the hotel desk she seems rather confused as if she is not quite sure where she is. She gives her name and when the concierge asks for her passport she evidently does not immediately understand, for she asks him what he wants first in Danish, then French. She tries Italian, lastly English. He smiles and responds to Italian and English, again requesting her passport in both languages.

  ‘It is confusing,’ she says in English, handing over her passport.

  ‘Yes, you left part of yourself at home,’ the concierge says. ‘That other part, he is still en route to our country but he will catch up with you in a few hours’ time. It’s often the way with travel by air, the passenger arrives ahead of himself. Can I send you to your room a drink or a coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ She turns to follow the waiting page-boy, then turns back. ‘When will you be finished with my passport?’

  ‘Any time, any time, Madam. When you come down again. When you go out. Any time.’ He looks at her dress and coat, then turns to some other people who have just arrived. While the boy waits, dangling a room-key, to take her up, Lise pauses for a moment to have a good look at them. They are a family: mother, father, two sons and a small daughter all speaking German together volubly. Lise is meanwhile gazed back at by the two sons. She turns away, impatiently gesturing the page-boy towards the lift, an
d follows him.

  In her room she gets rid of the boy quickly, and without even taking her coat off lies down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She breathes deeply and deliberately, in and out, for a few minutes. Then she gets up, takes off her coat, and examines what there is of the room.

  It is a bed with a green cotton cover, a bedside table, a rug, a dressing-table, two chairs, a small chest of drawers; there is a wide tall window which indicates that it had once formed part of a much larger room, now partitioned into two or three rooms in the interests of hotel economy; there is a small bathroom with a bidet, a lavatory, a washbasin and a shower. The walls and a built-in cupboard have been a yellowish cream but are now dirty with dark marks giving evidence of past pieces of furniture now removed or rearranged. Her suitcase lies on a rack-table. The bedside light is a curved chromium stand with a parchment shade. Lise switches it on. She switches on the central light which is encased in a mottled glass globe; the light flicks on, then immediately flickers out as if, having served a long succession of clients without complaint, Lise is suddenly too much for it.

  She tramps heavily into the bathroom and first, without hesitation, peers into the drinking-glass as if fully expecting to find what she does indeed find: two Alka-Seltzers, quite dry, having presumably been put there by the previous occupant who no doubt had wanted to sober up but who had finally lacked the power or memory to fill the glass with water and drink the salutary result.

  By the side of the bed is a small oblong box bearing three pictures without words to convey to clients of all languages which bell-push will bring which room attendant. Lise examines this with a frown, as it were deciphering with the effort necessary to those more accustomed to word-reading the three pictures which represent first a frilly maid with a long-handled duster over her shoulder, next a waiter carrying a tray and lastly a man in buttoned uniform bearing a folded garment over his arm. Lise presses the maid. A light goes on in the box illuminating the picture. Lise sits on the bed and waits. Then she takes off her shoes and, watching the door for a few seconds more, presses the buttoned valet who likewise does not come. Nor does room-service after many more minutes. Lise lifts the telephone, demands the concierge and complains in a torrent that the bell-pushes bring no answer, the room is dirty, the tooth-glass has not been changed since the last guest left, the central light needs a new bulb, and that the bed, contrary to the advance specifications of her travel agency, has a too-soft mattress. The concierge advises her to press the bell for the maid.