by Fitch, Stona
Had he negotiated a deal with IBIS for my return? For a moment I felt an uplift of hope. My captors had what they wanted and I would soon be released. I sat up slowly, one palm on the futon to steady myself.
Blackbeard waved his cigarette over a stack of papers. “Of course, it’s not enough. Not even close to our stated goal.”
I lay back down.
“Think of this unfortunate… injury, as a great opportunity.” Blackbeard paced the room. “You Americans are always too hungry. Always eating. Eating as you work, as you walk. Devouring meat that your body is unable to digest. The fibers lodge and decay in the colon. It sickens me.”
Blackbeard stopped to shudder for a moment, then went on with his pacing, his ranting. “Your leaders… your true leaders, the American corporate elite… simply want to buy and sell and fuck and eat.” His hands whirled around him, pantomiming a hydra gathering all that was near and bringing it to its mouth. “Ideally, all would happen at once. In this convergence they would find true happiness.” His neck reddened. “They are like bank accounts with fat bellies, small cocks, and art collections.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” My voice was small, pathetic.
Blackbeard stopped pacing for a moment and looked at me, his piercing eyes burning from behind his mask. “We want to present something new. No one has ever done what we are doing before, as far as we know.”
“Done what? Torture?” The muffled words clung to the back of my mouth. “That’s been done before.”
Blackbeard paced again. “To truly change a man, you must take away what is most important to him. You must take a rich man’s fortune. You must take a passionate man’s wife. You are a man of the senses, Eliott Gast. So we are eliminating them. By this method we can leave you thoroughly changed. Through your example, we can change millions.”
I said nothing, stunned.
Blackbeard tugged at his plastic beard and let the elastic pull it back up. “Your nurse tells me the pain is getting better.” He seemed to have forgotten that he was to blame for my present condition. Blackbeard took one of my cigarettes and held it out to me, then noticed the bloody bandage in my mouth and thought better of the offer.
He leaned against the doorframe. “Don’t worry, Eliott Gast. We’ve captured their attention, and now we’re working on getting our message across. So just rest. Relax. Gather your energy. We have much more collaboration to do, Gast. Much more.”
Blackbeard left. I noticed that one of the papers from the stack had fluttered to the ground. Sitting up on the futon, I pulled aside the blanket and walked shakily over to the doorway. The page held two long columns of numbers, nothing more, reminding me of the reports that often crossed my desk at IBIS. They appeared to be dollar amounts, none particularly large. I wadded up the paper and tossed it toward the painted windows, glowing white from the afternoon sun.
It was true – the pain was better today. I could move my head without the unbearable stabbing that seemed to go all the way through to the back of my eyes. I could even move my bandaged tongue a little. My mind was groggy from the codeine. I was weak and hadn’t eaten. But I was recovering. With little effort of my own, my body was mending the damage that the captors had done. The body was always optimistic, rallying again and again until the rallies stopped. It occurred to me that we survive all days but one, and this day, already at its mid-point, didn’t seem fated as my last. I walked into the bathroom to shower away the sweat of fear and pain and begin again.
Day 11.
Dinner was a kind of rice soup, thinner than the usual fare. I used a long plastic teaspoon to carefully spoon the soup past my bandaged tongue and swallow it without too much pain. The soup was plain and unspiced, but whatever I ate had no taste, no sensation at all except that it was warm or cold going down my throat. Blackbeard was right about one thing – I was a man of the senses. For years, I had refined my palate with dishes that few have the pleasure to enjoy. Maura and I explored new cuisines, and cooking together was one of our great passions. We sought out Burmese restaurants in New York, seafood shacks on the Maryland coast, pico roca downtown at La Fontaine. We wanted to taste everything.
A few years ago, the French economic officer and his wife hosted a weekend retreat at the Inn at Fox Creek, a luxurious hotel about an hour outside of Washington. It was billed as an opportunity to discuss our mutual economic concerns, but in fact it was designed to let us all spend a weekend eating and drinking like Romans. Our host had arranged for the kitchen to prepare the traditional southwestern French dish of ortolan. For years, Maura and I had heard of these tiny birds, a type of bunting. Captured alive, they were force-fed grains steeped in butter, then drowned in Armagnac. They were then roasted whole and eaten, bones and all, with the fingers. As each of the dozen dinner guests raised their glasses, our host gave a toast praising the continuation of traditions at all costs, which must have been significant, ortolan being extremely rare. The waiters then draped each of us with a large linen napkin, explaining that these would capture the precious scent of the roasted birds.
“Or hide your face from God,” our host joked. I looked closely at the tiny bird in my hand, roasted to a golden finish. Dipping the ortolan into a brandy butter reduction, I raised it and saw suddenly the darkened eye of the bird, no bigger than a tiny bead, glistening now with a tear of butter. I paused, then gathered my resolve and took a first bite. The flesh was delicately flavored, slightly racy from the Armagnac and rich from the butter. But the real difference between ortolan and other game birds was the crunch of the tiny bones, thinner than matchsticks, then the final reward of the forest of roasted sweetmeats within. I spooned on more sauce and finished the bird in an uncontrollable swoon. Around the table, the others hunched over their plates, shrouded by white linen. Behind each, a waiter stood by quietly to adjust each of our napkins, to refill our glasses with a golden Coteaux du Layon. Each face wore an expression of concentrated bliss, as if we each studied the beauty of the world through a microscope. In all, I ate six ortolans, but I could have eaten thirty given the chance.
To hide from God.
Perhaps I was paying now for my various excesses, for all I had done and left undone. I spooned rice porridge down my throat, though it might as well have been wallpaper paste for all I knew. Though I took no pleasure in this meal, it nourished me and stopped the shakiness in my legs. Perversely, I wondered what had become of the sliver of tongue that had been filleted away. Did it find its way to the public like young Getty’s ear? Perhaps Alec Moore received it along with his morning mail, a raw and primitive message among the arcane financial data. Or had it just been tossed out with the rest of the papers, cigarette butts, empty food canisters, water bottles, and other refuse generated by this perverse community of myself, Nin, Blackbeard, the Doctor, and the unseen others beyond the apartment walls. To these questions and so many others, I had no answers.
I stared up at the grate on the ceiling and saw nothing, though I was surely being watched. “I want to leave, now!” I shouted at the grate, then began crying uncontrollably, tears of frustration and exhaustion. What had happened so far was terrible enough.
Day 12.
After dinner, I shaved with the disposable razor I found waiting at my sink. Gray and black stubble clung to the sink and I splashed water to send it on its way, then laughed at this habit. No one cared what I looked like, how neat I was, how I kept my prison cell. But my father taught me to keep up appearances, to do my chores without complaint.
In the mirror, my eyes were bloodshot and the skin on my forehead was taut and white. I reached into my mouth and began to unwrap the remaining gauze, carefully separating and unwinding it. The final layer stuck to the surface, and I dripped water from my fingertips to free it. I dropped the bandage into the trash, then turned to look for the first time at the damage. The blackened surface of my tongue was lined with glistening pink cracks. Dr
ied blood crusted the edges. I spat the darkened bits into the sink. I spoke, careful not to move my tongue quickly or curl it in a way that would start more bleeding.
“I am Eliott Gast.” The words whistled a little, but they were still recognizable. I could still speak, and in this I found a certain consolation.
I closed my mouth and looked at myself in the mirror. I was thinner perhaps by five pounds or more, but still recognizable. But then I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue slowly, revealing myself as a damaged man, hideously so, forever changed. I shuddered and left the bathroom.
Nin waited in my room, perched on the edge of the chair next to my futon. I used to welcome her visits as a chance to talk. Not any more. When I saw her, face hidden behind her checkered scarf, I could only picture her holding the bowl before her, catching my blood in its ringing center. Her gentle eyes were deceptive, simply part of her disguise.
“You are feeling better?”
I said nothing, just walked to the windowsill and stood looking out at the blank whiteness of another afternoon. I lived among the clouds here, each day flowing from darkness to gray to white to gray to darkness.
“I understand. It must hurt you to speak.”
“You understand nothing,” I said softly, my hardened tongue whistling. “What do you mean?”
“If you really understood, you wouldn’t allow them to continue.”
Nin was quiet for a minute. “Audio off,” she shouted.
No one responded.
“Audio off.” A click, then the disembodied voice muttered oui. Another click.
“I must speak quickly,” she said. “While I believe in our goals, I do not approve of their methods. I said this from the start but was outnumbered. They are very enthusiastic, very persuasive. My voice was not heard among the others. When I question what is happening, they remind me that the only way to eliminate doubt is to eliminate the doubters. So I must keep my opinions to myself.”
“A lot of good that does me,” I said.
“I will help you, Eliott Gast. Believe me. Think of me as the jailer who will hand you the keys.”
“Then hand them to me.”
“In good time.” Her eyes darted toward the doorway, where Blackbeard appeared, mask askew, an actor suddenly summoned onstage.
“What’s going on?” he shouted. “I asked that the audio remain on at all times unless I say so.”
“We were discussing his medical condition,” Nin said. “And Monsieur Gast asked that we keep our discussion private.”
“Private?” Blackbeard began to laugh, hands on his knees.
Nin looked away.
“I just want a few moments of privacy,” I said.
“Let me explain,” Blackbeard said when he had recovered. “It is not monitoring going on, like a camera in a bank. We are not just watching you, Eliott Gast. We are broadcasting you to the world every moment of the day and night. There can be no dead air.”
The black snakes emerged from the ducts.
“Different views. Many angles. Audio. Video. Anyone can watch you right from their computer. What we are doing is like a TV show. You are like a celebrity… the first online hostage.”
The black snakes retracted.
The idea sickened me, it was so ingenious and perverse. Someone at their computer could watch me for a moment, then click over to check the weather or stock portfolio.
“Why? Why not just send photos to the newspaper?”
Blackbeard shook his head. “How twentieth-century! Technology is the great enabler of radical causes. The Internet. Streaming video. Realtime transmissions. An archive of documents outlining our position. We have preserved every moment since you arrived. The incident with your tongue has proved remarkably popular.” He thought for a moment. “Millions have downloaded it.”
“Why are you doing this?” I yelled.
“Sustained interest in you generates more financial contributions for us. It is that simple.” Unlike Nin, Blackbeard seemed to have absolutely no second thoughts about what they were doing. It was as if he were outlining a business plan.
He turned to Nin. “In the future, all conversations must be recorded, understand?” She nodded, her fingers spinning the tassels of her scarf. Blackbeard left, with Nin following. Alone in my room, I sat on the futon and lay back to stare at the ceiling. From one of the ducts, a black snake emerged and hovered for a moment before retracting. These interlopers connected me to the world. They gave people a window on my prison, and they had flocked to it like voyeurs to a women’s dorm. The advent of the first online hostage seemed as inevitable as it did evil.
Most hostages waited in obscurity, shuttled around miserable rooms in Beirut or Teheran. If they were held for long, their stories faded from the newspapers, with updates only on the anniversaries of their capture. But I was being held hostage in public, visible but hidden. Anyone who wanted to could watch me eat my rice, piss in the toilet, sleep. If they were lucky enough to watch at the right time, they might get to see me tortured, to witness my face twist with pain and fear as the Doctor wielded his knife. If they missed it, they could always watch later. How convenient – torture on demand. Our audience was waiting to see what would happen next, an ongoing program.
Though I hated knowing that my every moment was so public, it consoled me somehow to know that I was not alone. When I peered into the glinting end of one of the black snakes, perhaps Maura watched at the other end, her face lit by the computer screen, her hand reaching out to me, diminished but still here.
Day 13.
Beyond the white window there waited a free world of fresh air and desires and motion. It was autumn. Leaves rustled among the cobblestones. Street vendors sold steaming escargot in bowls of broth, handing out tiny glasses of white wine, then shaking them clean afterward. As afternoon darkened the narrow streets, our offices would be brightly lit, my colleagues busy preparing reports for our annual autumn conference.
Within the apartment, I existed in confinement usually reserved for the young or elderly, the injured or criminal. I hated the walls and the useless windows that traced the sun’s arc from room to room. I longed to hide deep in the woods I had seen during my brief glimpse of the horizon, to turn invisible as a white moth on a birch tree.
As a boy, I used to explore the trails along the coffee brown river behind our house. The riverbank smelled thick with rot and life and I pulled mussels from the mud with my eager fingers and pried them open to see the glistening whiteness that pulsed inside. I would build a fire and eat them boiled and salted, savoring their dank taste and then stacking the shells in a cairn. In July, I picked blackberries. In August, dusty wolf grapes that hung beneath star-shaped leaves.
My backpack held Cokes, beef jerky, a book, and my brother’s BB gun. I wandered alone for hours, the river my only map, winding past fields of green tobacco, cattle clumped like black rocks, and farmhouses grayed by wind, rain, and years. I imagined myself a Confederate spy, noting every farmer in his fields, every salesman in his car. All were the enemy. I passed unnoticed among them.
In this childhood pastime came the model for my life, a template for the years to follow. I would wander through the world, invisible but informed, seeking out delicacies and pleasures along the way. Only now I was trapped by the enemy, held far from home, which existed only in memory.
“Americans are simply slaves to the media, always listening to what they want them to do, what to wear, what to think…”
I sat on the futon, only half-listening to Blackbeard’s latest tirade. I had studied Blackbeard closely and tried to get a better idea of what he looked like, so I could identify him when I was released. He moved quickly and gracefully, in the manner of someone in his late twenties or early thirties. He apparently had no morals, no conscience, and no guilt for what he and his compatriots were doin
g. I was the guilty one, and was being punished for it. For this and much more, I hated him. My waking hours were filled with schemes for revenge. In my dreams, I killed him a dozen times.
By the middle of this speech, Blackbeard had worked himself into a state of focused anger, blaming me for the evils of the western world.
“Your efforts, Eliott Gast, have taken us all closer to the globalization that your country envisions for the world. Always luring us to jump in the so-called melting pot that would eliminate all the differences and boundaries that protect us from domination.”
I raised my hand, palm forward. “I’ve told you over and over, I had absolutely nothing to do with any conspiracy. I’m an economist for IBIS, nothing else…”
Blackbeard waved his cigarette, then opened and closed his fingers like a mouth. “Your denials are simply annoying me more and more. Perhaps the time has come to hurt you again.” He smiled.
I said nothing.
“Anyway, we are letting the people decide what’s ahead for you. And this is being done in a truly democratic fashion, not the false democracy that your country puts forth, this every man is equal nonsense, as if the chairman of Microsoft is just the same as a man pumping petrol in Texas.”
“That’s a simplification.”
“One man, one vote. What could be simpler?”
I said nothing.
“We’ve put forth the evidence to the world and asked them to judge you. For a price, of course.” He laughed. “We are like stockbrokers in that regard. No matter how someone votes, they must pay us. We are gathering thousands of contributions every day. I love the Internet. It is truly amazing.” He shook his head reverently.
“They’ll track you down eventually and the game will be over.”
“Hardly.” He shrugged. “I have a staff of computer geniuses that move our site from place to place. Black Hats, they call themselves. Young and devious. They are experts in site-jacking, as it’s called. We are like vagabonds. Made so by your treachery, which tossed us from our homelands,” he added, another superfluous accusation. “Today, you can be found on the Swiss government’s site. I find this very amusing, given the Swiss role in international monetary corruption.”