Senseless

by Fitch, Stona

  Maura and I had been in Miami for a brief visit with her elderly aunt, who had an apartment in West Palm Beach and had fallen and broken her hip. I had work in Miami as well, a presentation at a conference. It was 1973, and I had just started with IBIS. The oil crisis had overshadowed our work. Our arcane white papers advocating reduced foreign imports, tighter monetary controls, and higher levels of business incentives seemed like so much scrimshaw – ornate but superfluous in an era of plastic. I remember driving along the ocean, the cerulean waves out of synch with the glum mood Maura and I were both in, as if a stagehand had accidentally lowered a cheery background behind a Chekov play.

  On the flight home, we read, drank terrible white wine, and ate a mango we had bought along in our carry-on bag, the juice going everywhere. Far beneath us, the Atlantic shimmered, the white line of breaking waves tracing the curve of the coast as we headed north.

  Suddenly, a man in the front section rose and shouted at the top of his lungs. “This plane is being hijacked to Cuba by the H.C.E.!” He waved something small and black in his hand.

  The other passengers groaned and shouted, more with a sense of annoyance than fear. We had drawn the unlucky lot and were going to be the next hijacked plane. There had been so many. The man turned and spoke urgently with a stewardess, who rushed up front and disappeared into the pilot’s cabin.

  “Everyone else must stay seated!” His voice was too loud, his words too fast. We were not in the hands of a trained revolutionary, a compatriot of Ché or Fidel. Instead, we were being hijacked by a tall, nervous, skinny man with bushy hair, a kind of white person’s afro that was popular at the time. He looked like a graduate student.

  Our hijacker walked up the aisle slowly, glaring at each of us, measuring our potential to cause trouble or threaten him. There was little to fear. Most of the passengers were elderly snowbirds returning from a winter in Florida.

  He passed quickly by the row where Maura and I sat staring down between our feet. I could smell his stale T-shirt, sweatstained at the armpits. Panic raced through me for a moment, urging me to stand up and run away, though there was no place to hide. It was easily resisted. I was, after all, at the beginning of my career, a young husband with his wife by his side. The weight of my limited responsibilities pressed on my shoulder. I would leave any resistance to someone more interested in the hero’s role.

  The hijacker paused in the section ahead of us, where a couple in their mid-forties sat, talking nervously. They seemed wealthy, the man balding and in a brown suit, the woman slightly overweight and pressed into a white dress. She was hyperventilating and her ample chest rose and fell with each breath like that of a Shakespearean lover. She clutched her husband’s hand tightly, but he stared straight ahead, his face white, the skin sweat-glazed, forehead sepulchral.

  “Give me that.” The hijacker pointed to the wife’s hand, interlocked with her husband’s. On her shaking wrist sparkled an impressive diamond bracelet.

  Without a word, she took off the bracelet and handed it to the hijacker, who slipped it in his pocket.

  “No!” The husband said suddenly, then looked surprised, as if the word had sprung from his mouth of its own volition.

  “What do you mean, no?” The hijacker squinted at the husband, who said nothing, just looked away.

  The hijacker raised his pistol and pressed it into the shining forehead of the husband until the flesh puckered around it. The husband stared toward the front of the plane, lines of sweat dripping down his face.

  For what seemed like an impossibly long time, the trio stayed frozen in this posture. Then the husband made a strange gurgling noise and broke his hand free from his wife’s to raise it to his chest. He bent forward and the hijacker pulled his gun away.

  “Oh my God, he’s having a heart attack!” The wife shouted.

  The husband’s eyes bulged like those of a clubbed fish and a meringue of spit trailed from his lower lip. The hijacker turned and shook his head, waving the gun across the aisles to keep us all in our seats. He leaned forward and whispered to the husband, dying now in his seat in first class. I couldn’t hear what he said. Then he walked back up to the front of the plane, satisfied somehow at the death of a rich man, not exactly at his hands, but close enough. He wore a smug smile of accomplishment all the way to Havana.

  We landed on a narrow, bumpy runway at José Marti Airport and stopped in front of a low hangar. A group of men in uniform approached and the airplane door opened, letting in a blast of hot air and letting out our hijacker. The soldiers spoke for a moment and he handed his pistol to them. They handcuffed the hijacker and threw him in the back of a jeep. He wore a puzzled look as he was hauled off like so much baggage. It was the time of hijacking, one every week it seemed, and he had misjudged how tired the Cubans were of earnest young men guiding 707s to their shores. I never found out what happened to him, what the H.C.E. was, or any other details of our brief ordeal, which ended hours later with our safe arrival at Dulles. The dead man sat strapped in next to his sobbing wife for the rest of the quiet trip. The red circle, where the gun barrel had pressed, slowly faded back to white while the other passengers talked loudly of their ordeal and I held Maura’s hand, still sticky with mango juice.

  Fear, not a bullet, had killed the passenger. In this way the mind is stronger than the body, able to end a life by simply imagining what might happen. Despite my escalating fear, I knew that I would survive this ordeal. If I were going to slump over in a heart attack or give in to hopelessness, it would have happened already. Whatever strength I had left would sustain me. All hostages live, as Nin had told me. Unless they decide not to.

  Day 19.

  Taste. Smell. Gone now. Each hour of healing sealed them over beneath scar tissue. I was changed for good. I would never smell wet sidewalks after a rain, the fall leaves in the woods behind the farm, bread baking in the kitchen. And I would never be able to taste bread, wine, coffee with cream and sugar in the morning, steak au poivre, coquilles St. Jacques, ice cream in July, walnuts roasted in a skillet… my favorites went on and on. I had spent a lifetime collecting tastes. Even thinking of food brought about a nostalgia as painful as wounds. I sat on the windowsill and tried to clear my mind and focus on my plan for escaping this room. I needed to bring some order to the jumble of details, the sequence of events that would need to take place. But it was no use. Memories surfaced, one after the next.

  When I was skinny, quiet boy, I was uninterested in the time-honored family recipes my mother would make. Aunt Ida’s pecan pie. Grandma’s lemon tarts. Aunt Whatever’s grits casserole. I just didn’t care about tasting anything. I ate to live. Had I continued to eat the way my parents intended, I would have grown truly Orsonian by my life’s midpoint, like my brother Darby. After he joined our father’s firm, he ballooned to fill the space behind his desk like a deployed airbag. His hunger was of a different nature, the urge to fill unhappiness with food. Mine was more academic. I explored the realm of the senses to avoid the more difficult world of people.

  When Maura and I were first married, we were too busy working to spend much time cooking or going out to meals. It was only later, at the time when most people have children, that we began to crave. This fervor came upon us with a missionary zeal. We recited magazine recipes to each other, sought out the freshest ingredients at the Eastern Market and farm stands deep in Virginia. We spent vacations walking the food halls of Barcelona and Paris. We read the food section of the Post with the same infinite appetite for detail as boys obsessed with baseball. I carefully measured the temperature along the fieldstone foundation of Triangle Farm and found it perfect for storing wine. I built special shelves indented to hold bottles. Then I bought cases and cases of our favourite Bordeaux, convinced that the expense would be justified in the future. Calon-Ségur. Haut-Bailly. Léoville-Las Cases. Gruaud-Larose. My lovingly recorded insights on decades of wine were brought to a
quick conclusion by the Doctor’s fillet knife.

  I heard footsteps approaching from the other room and brightened at the thought of seeing Nin again, of sharing my plan with her, the one that would set us both free. But these footsteps were heavy and loud, without Nin’s grace.

  Blackbeard barged in. “Feeling better?”

  His interest seemed perverse to me. He was like a cattle rancher butchering his herd piecemeal, a leg off this steer, a flank off another.

  I stood and moved to the far corner of the room. “Where is she?”

  “Your nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Around. She has responsibilities beyond tending to you.”

  “Why are you doing this?” A small clot fell from my nose to the floor. I smeared it with my shoe, creating a carnelian accent worthy of any fine home. Scab, it would be called in the decorating booklet.

  Blackbeard shrugged. “Because we can?”

  I shook my head. “You could do anything. You could flay me alive, draw and quarter me, hang me slowly, scalp me… just get it over with.”

  Blackbeard shivered. “What a hideous idea, scalping.”

  “And this is better?” I pointed to my face, blackened, reddened, burnt, cut.

  “You are so naive.” He shook his head. “Once, there was a time when we might have hurt you and let you go. This used to be the way things were done. But now, the people want more. If you want attention, Eliott Gast, you have to go completely over the top.”

  “Over the top,” I repeated. “Exactly. This week an earthquake in China has killed thousands. Dissidents in Bellarus are occupying a nuclear reactor. A new virus has been identified in India, and has already infected three villages. A young mother in Liverpool killed her newborn in a microwave.”

  I said nothing. “This is our competition, Eliott Gast. We must do something so audacious that people will notice it. Small acts… a bank robbery, a killing… they simply splash on the surface once and sink, like a child throwing rocks into a pond. One rock. One splash. End of story. You, on the other hand, are continuing to set new records.” He held out his clipboard. “Millions of people have watched you as of today. More every day. We are making money hands over fists.” He paused for a moment. “And you are too, Gast.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know that you think I am a pitiless man. One who simply enjoys watching you suffer. Like a small boy who pulls the legs from insects.” He shook his head. But I am not truly like this. I am simply doing my part, following my instructions.”

  “I would disagree with that.”

  “Of course you would. You are in pain. I am not. You feel that I am responsible for your pain. Therefore you are blaming me. It is completely logical. But perhaps your pain will be less knowing that there is a reward at the end of it all.”

  I sat on the carton of water bottles. I couldn’t imagine what reward could possibly equal the amount of pain I had felt so far, not to mention whatever lay ahead.

  Blackbeard began to strut around the room, speaking in the louder, more urgent tone that I had come to recognize as his speaking-to-the-masses voice. He wanted to make sure our audience could hear every word. “Given your unique and important role in our endeavor, I have decided that you should have ten percent of all our gross earnings.” He leaned toward me, hands open and outstretched. “It is very generous, isn’t it?”

  “It’s sick. Only a very twisted mind would find it generous.”

  Blackbeard walked closer. “Audio off!” he shouted. “You are already wealthy. And if you play your cards right during the remainder of our time together, you could end up with millions. My advice? Practice your screaming, Gast. You have to scream very loudly to be heard over the incredible din of the world. You have to go over… the… top.”

  “Go away.” I waved my hand in front of me.

  He turned at the doorway. “You are a fool. Your time in the trenches of the American economic conspiracy has left you remarkably out of touch. You have no idea what the world is really like, no imagination.” Blackbeard shook his head for a moment, then rushed off like a businessman on his way to an urgent meeting.

  He was wrong. My imagination was filled with plans. I wanted to grab his infuriating mask and rip it away. I would turn the tables and reveal him to the world. The same cameras that recorded my every move would capture his image, if only for a moment, and broadcast it to the world. Certainly someone in our audience would recognize him, identify him. Then he would have no place to hide. The world would be his prison. I savored this plan for revenge, so slow arriving.

  Day 20.

  The apartment was invaded by a dozen people, a work crew of some kind that clustered around a short ladder near one of the ducts. They all wore jeans, dark shoes, white T-shirts, and green alien masks with huge eyes and stunned mouths open in ovals. One of the aliens at the top of the ladder held a sheath of cables and the others poked at it with screwdrivers. When I walked to the doorway, they turned, acknowledging my presence briefly. In the center of their eyeholes, I could see narrow, squinting glances. They were surely the Black Hats, the young computer geniuses that Blackbeard was so proud of. They turned back to their work.

  I drifted over to the windowsill, then toward the bathroom. I was unimportant, a human clown in their technological circus. The burns, my swollen face, had no effect on them. It was just my mask, no more real to them than their own.

  They were intent on their work, whatever it might be. Perhaps the images of my ongoing torture were not of high enough quality. Or maybe now I would be broadcast in stereo. I took a chance and assumed that the cameras were off while they were working. In the bathroom, I reached up and grasped the showerhead with one hand and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t budge. I reached up with both hands and turned it a few inches. The strain sent pain shooting across my face and blood trickled from one nostril. In a few moments, I had the showerhead off. It was about the size of a baseball and made of heavy steel coated with shiny chrome. I tucked it under my shirt and pressed my arm down to hold it in place. I stepped out of the shower and pulled the curtain closed. I slipped the showerhead beneath the mound of damp towels under the sink.

  One of the Black Hats pushed open the door abruptly with his foot and looked in. I turned to the mirror and pointed at my bleeding nose. “I need to wash up,” I said, then reached for the tap. He left.

  I washed my face slowly. For all I knew, the cameras were back on again.

  When I came out a few minutes later, the Black Hats were through with their project. The one at the top of the ladder replaced the cables far inside the duct, screwed the grillwork back in place, and climbed down. Another dutifully folded the ladder and carried it under his arm. Their work complete, they left like a team of alien plumbers.

  At the door to my room, the last to leave paused for a moment and gave a backward glance. Perhaps in that moment, he imagined what it was like to be trapped in this room, awaiting what the next level might bring. Or maybe he was just checking to make sure they brought all their tools with them.

  The room was empty again. I tried to smoke a cigarette, my first in days, but the smoke dried my tongue painfully and I couldn’t taste it. There had been enough burning. I stabbed out the cigarette, an action broadcast to viewers perched in front of computer terminals around the world.

  What possible interest, much less pleasure, could they be taking from my imprisonment? Being held hostage was numbing and terrifying at the same time, as if I sat beneath a dangling piano, waiting for it to fall. Meanwhile, the piano played the same song over and over again – a boring song of sleep, food eaten from cartons, long hours at the whitened windows mulling over my plan. Blackbeard issued his diatribes. The playing would become intense in brief bursts with the arrival of the Doctor. Otherwise, the days were spent waiting beneath the piano, watchin
g its shadow sway around me.

  Day 21.

  “Goedemorgen, Eliott.”

  One of the black snakes dropped lower to capture Nin’s quiet voice. I said nothing, not wanting to seem glad to see her.

  I gazed out at the whiteness where anything could be imagined. She moved over next to the windowsill, her long print skirt rustling.

  “You are angry at me?”

  “Where have you been the last few days?”

  “They had other work for me,” she whispered. “My time is not my own.”

  “He says this is all your idea.” I watched her eyes between the scarf’s folds.

  “Hardly,” she whispered. One of the snakes dropped lower. She stood up straight. “Of course it’s my idea. You must be punished for your role in the American economic conspiracy. In this way, we can send a powerful message to the world.” She said these phrases in her own careful dialectic tone – acquired, perhaps, during her recent re-education. I knew she didn’t mean what she said. She was simply trying to make sure she didn’t get in any further trouble.

  “You told me you would help me,” I whispered. “I think I know how you can. We need to talk.”

  “I am not in a position to do that right now,” she whispered back.

  A black snake lowered from the ceiling.

  “Our purpose is clear, our resolve unshakable,” she said curtly. “We are telling the world that the American economic conspiracy will not be tolerated any longer.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Argue with me, Monsieur Gast, s’il vous plait,” she hissed through her teeth.

  I thought for a moment. “What is happening here will in no way affect national policy. This is a personal assault.”

  “In a way, yes, but your work makes you a public figure. You represent that vast apparatus that your government has put in place to control the world economy.”

  “I represent only myself,” I yelled. “And your attempts to turn me into a kind of symbol are truly misguided. Why not kidnap a senator?”