The Blasphemer

by Nigel Farndale

  Donkey. The word had an unexpected resonance for Daniel. Donkeys led by lions. No, that wasn’t right. Lions led by donkeys. His great-grandfather Andrew had been one of the lions. A fearless lion roaring as he charged across no-man’s-land … The letters … ‘Shit. I’ve left those letters in the safe at the hotel.’

  ‘Well, they’ll be safe there,’ Nancy said. ‘Safe there! Christ, I’m funny. We can pick them up when we get back to Quito.’

  Daniel rubbed his finger and thumb together as he considered the letters, what they meant, why they had spooked his father.

  ‘He doesn’t like it when anyone else uses probability,’ Nancy continued, addressing the others again and breaking into Daniel’s thoughts. ‘Probability is his big thing. His catch-all explanation … He normally takes diazepam.’

  This was true. His doctor friend, Bruce, usually obliged with the prescription, though Nancy had come to the prescriptive rescue on more than one occasion. Diazepam was a better cure for nerves than alcohol. Daniel had read up on it: if you drink alcohol when you are feeling anxious it makes you over-emotional and your blood less able to absorb oxygen, which it is being starved of anyway, because you are panicking. As this was a fairly short flight, Daniel thought he would risk it without diazepam.

  ‘You OK, Dan?’ Nancy whispered, sounding protective. Her breath smelled of chewing gum. At that moment Daniel’s unease about the flight was coupled with an enveloping feeling of affection for his wife-to-be. Seeing that Greg was looking out of the window, he slipped his hand under the sarong tied low around her hips. Unbuckled his seat belt. Stood up. There were thirteen passengers on board – he counted them as he negotiated Nancy’s legs on his way to the aisle. He opened the overhead locker, unzipped his bag, pulled out a map and struggled to rezip it. The padded box containing his specimen jars and test tubes had risen to the top. He pulled them out, removed his swimming trunks, fins and snorkel, stuffed the box down the side of the bag and jammed the trunks, fins and snorkel back on top of them. With a struggle, he was able to rezip. He surveyed the other passengers. A couple in row six had fallen asleep. In row eight, a septuagenarian with hornrimmed glasses and skin hanging down in pleats was nodding to himself as he read the International Herald Tribune. The old-fashioned glasses made him look as if he was in disguise. A retired CIA agent, Daniel thought. Or an international paedophile. Either way, he had swapped seats at the beginning of the flight with the tall, solidly built black man with his legs stretched out in seat 1a.

  ‘How many?’ Nancy asked without looking up from the National Geographic she was again flicking through.

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘Passengers.’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘There are thirteen. I counted them, too. Don’t worry, it’s just a number.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  ‘Lots of people are superstitious about numbers. They’re called triskaidekaphobes.’

  ‘I know they are. And I am not one of them. I’m not superstitious. How many more times?’

  ‘Do you know why the number thirteen is considered unlucky?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘It’s because there were thirteen apostles originally, before Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus.’

  ‘I know.’

  It amused Nancy to imitate his teacherly custom of offering unwanted explanations. She knew that, though Daniel pretended to find it annoying, he enjoyed it really. Daniel sighed again, because he knew Nancy liked to pretend that it annoyed her.

  There was another shudder, lighter this time. It made the gut of the tall black man jiggle. Susie unzipped a bumbag and produced a bright yellow underwater camera. ‘Can I take a photograph, Dan?’

  Daniel pointed a finger at himself. ‘Of me?’

  ‘Here,’ Greg said, taking the camera. ‘I’ll take one of you together. Stand next to him, Sus.’

  Daniel felt embarrassed as Susie put her arm around his waist and the other passengers turned to stare, trying to work out why the young woman would want a photograph of herself with him. The picture taken, Daniel returned to his seat and strapped himself in. Susie took the camera back and framed another shot – of Nancy and Daniel sitting together. She took one of Greg half crouching beside Nancy. As the flash went off, Greg was staring at Nancy’s cleavage, the weight and depth of the press between her breasts rendered more impressive than usual by a black ‘deep plunge’ bra purchased at Heathrow.

  ‘Hang on,’ Susie said. ‘You weren’t looking at the camera, babe. Let me take another.’

  The seaplane trembled for a few seconds. Daniel gripped the armrests and concentrated hard on keeping it in the air. Standard prop blades create a hum, which, along with the airstreams passing over the wings, becomes white noise after a while. Daniel focused on that for a few seconds and felt calmer. As he was sitting near the propellers, his body was vibrating in rhythm with the plane. That calmed him a little, too.

  Nancy put an arm round his shoulder and pulled him gently towards her, so that the side of his face was resting on her neck. He closed his eyes and smelled the Ambre Solaire on her skin. She sometimes wore this in winter, to remind herself – and her patients – of holidays. They couldn’t quite identify what it was, she reckoned, but it nevertheless lifted their spirits.

  A jolt made Daniel sit back squarely in his seat. He checked his belt. Nancy removed her arm and signalled the flight attendant for another beer. Daniel stared blankly ahead, amorphous anxiety mounting. How, he thought, had he got himself into this situation? Light aircraft are not safe. Light aircraft are not safe. Light aircraft are not safe. He should have followed his instincts and taken the boat from Ecuador, as he had on his last pilgrimage to the Galápagos Islands.

  Greg stood up again and used a Handycam to film the other passengers. When Daniel saw he was being filmed he gave a weak smile and distracted himself by reaching into the seat pocket for the safety instructions card. It was in Spanish. He put it back unread, remembered the map, unfolded half of it and laid it out on his knees to see if the sandbanks they had flown over were marked. He followed the line of their flight with his finger, but he could not see them.

  The flight attendant brought Nancy another can of beer and said: ‘The captain asked me to remind you to collect your CD when we land.’

  Nancy chewed her lower lip, turned to Daniel and blinked her long, black eyelashes twice. Daniel’s left eyebrow was forming a quizzical arch. ‘That was your Hall and Oates album?’

  ‘Bought it at the airport.’

  Daniel was laughing. ‘That’s funny. Now that is funny. I like that. How the hell did you remember I hated Hall and Oates?’

  Nancy shrugged. ‘Just did.’

  There was a second jolt. Daniel stopped laughing and folded the map away, breathing slowly and unobtrusively through his mouth. He began clenching and unclenching his fists, concentrating on breathing, on not hyperventilating, on keeping the plane in the air. The trouble was, as well he knew, once your heart rate goes up and you start sweating and struggling for breath, you begin to panic more. You start feeding your own anxiety. Why did no one else notice the bumps?

  ‘How long before we land?’ Nancy said. Thinking Daniel was pretending to ignore her, she repeated her question. ‘Dan? How long before we land?’

  More shuddering, lasting longer this time. Greg returned to his seat and buckled up. Daniel yawned. His fingers were tingling and a release of adrenalin was giving him butterflies. Blood flowing away from the stomach, he thought edgily – the fight or flight mechanism. He now felt his ears pop. We must be beginning our descent, he thought. He swallowed hard and tapped his watch: 9.00am. There was a gentle bump followed by a harder one, more of a lurch. Another yawn. Daniel couldn’t stop yawning – his nervousness had gone up a gear and his brain was trying to get more oxygen. There was a film of sweat on his forehead. The FASTEN SAFETY BELTS sign came on, accompanied by a ping. Greg checked his seat belt. Daniel checked Nancy’s belt and gently raked the backs of his
fingers across a small, exposed part of her abdomen, over the stretch marks she had once compared to sidewinder trails in the desert. He swallowed again and checked the buckle on his own belt. He raised his blind and, without looking down, wiped the window with his sleeve, making a squeaking noise. Condensation was building up. The air outside was a clear, cornflower blue. ‘Do you know why the sky is blue?’ he asked Nancy, trying to take his mind off the turbulence, trying to control the tone of his voice, trying not to give himself away.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Because if it was green you wouldn’t know where the sky ended and the land began.’

  Daniel cracked his knuckles. The back of his neck was feeling prickly. He rubbed it, trying to stifle another yawn. ‘It’s because light arriving from the sun hits the molecules in the air and is scattered in all directions.’ He knew he was talking too crisply, too quickly; trying to disguise his tension.

  Nancy continued her own train of thought. ‘Of course, where the blue of the sky meets the blue of the sea, there you have a problem …’

  ‘The amount of scattering depends on the frequency,’ Daniel added. ‘Blue light has a high frequency and is scattered ten times more than red light which has …’ He swallowed. ‘Which has a lower frequency.’ He yawned again and stretched involuntarily. ‘So the background scattered light you see in the sky is blue.’ His mouth was dry; heart stuttering. He wiped the window again. Closed the blind.

  ‘Do you know why the army term for a friendly fire incident is “a blue-on-blue”?’ Nancy asked.

  Daniel frowned. He knew this one. ‘Is it because …’ He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Nancy grinned triumphantly. ‘It refers to the colour used to mark friendly troops on maps.’

  A hissing sound came from the back of the plane. The passengers turned as one in their seats to see what it was. Then it happened: a dull explosion; a violent jolt; a gut-wrenching plummet. It was so sudden no one screamed. The dive lasted for several hundred feet before the plane levelled off. Nancy grasped for a handhold. ‘Jesus.’ It sounded like she was in a wind tunnel. ‘Dan? What’s happening? Was that an air pocket? What’s happening?’

  An angry metallic sound came from the right side of the plane; the sound of metal ripping. This was followed by a popping noise in the fuselage below, like bubble wrap being burst. The plane banked left. People were screaming now. The flight attendant, who had been thrown the length of the plane, tried to stand up, grabbing a trolley to steady himself. He had a small gash on his head. For the next thirty seconds the plane pitched and rolled and there was a sickening series of thuds, like hammer blows against an anvil. The air tightened. The temperature in the cabin dropped – a chill of terror passing through the plane.

  Daniel flicked his blind up. Five feet out on the wing the engine spluttered and stopped. It was missing a blade. Another blade was bent at a ninety-degree angle. The cowling was mangled, its aluminium peeled back and twisted, its wires and cables whipping in the airstream. Fuel was spewing from steel-braided hoses. With fumbling hands, Daniel reached for a sick bag from the seat pocket, but didn’t manage to open it in time. The vomit splashed over his knees and shins and on to what Nancy always called his ‘scientist’s sandals’.

  The left engine sounded louder on its own – so loud Daniel thought he had gone deaf in his right ear. Partial deafness. An image of his father’s face flashed into his head for a second before his attention focused on the door to the cockpit. It was swinging open and closed and he could hear shouted snatches of the pilot’s broken English: ‘G362ES. G362ES.’ Next came some co-ordinates followed by the word ‘north’, and some more followed by ‘east’. The pilot shouted: ‘We out at two zero zero at this time. Angels twenty. We losing power. We attempt emergency landing. Ecuador Centre. G362ES declaring an emergency. We have engine failure. Repeat. We have engine failure.’

  The plane was gliding in a wide, downward spiral. The engine was no longer loud. A whistle of rushing air could be heard. The screams had turned to whimpers. Behind them, Susie was muttering: ‘Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.’ Towards the back of the plane someone was praying in Spanish. Daniel turned round. An elderly woman was fingering a string of rosary beads. She didn’t notice that she had a nosebleed. Incongruously, Greg was holding his Handycam up to his eye again, filming the scenes of panic. There was a powerful smell of aviation fuel and vomit. Oxygen masks flopped down from the overhead lockers. Daniel stared dumbly at his. We must be below 10,000 feet by now, he calculated with shock-induced detachment, because I am still conscious. With a rapid decompression you have only twenty seconds to get your oxygen mask on; after that you lose the ability to think clearly or co-ordinate properly. And after that a feeling of euphoria comes over you, a symptom of the brain not getting enough oxygen. We are definitely below 10,000 feet. Because I am definitely not feeling euphoric.

  The flight attendant held a paper napkin to his head and made a surprisingly calm announcement over the Tannoy.’ You may notice, lady and gentlemen, we are experience some difficulty. But do not try to panic. We get through this together. This a twin turboprop. It can fly on one engine.’ He began reading from his card. ‘ “In the unlikely event of a landing on water, you find you life vest under seat. Please remove pen and other sharp object …” ’ Daniel could not concentrate. His mind had latched on to the words: We get through this together.

  Nancy felt under her seat for her life vest. Daniel did the same. When they had put them on, they looked at each other for the first time since the explosion. Nancy’s velvet-brown eyes were wide with confusion and fear, her pupils dilated. They kissed clumsily, their lips dry. ‘I love you,’ she said. Her eyes were beginning to water.

  ‘I love you,’ Daniel echoed, taking her hand, his voice sounding distant to him, disembodied. He looked at Nancy’s tear-rimmed eyes. When wet they looked like melting chocolate. He wanted to reassure her, tell her any lie that would stop her looking so frightened. ‘It’s going to be OK, Nance. It’s going to be OK. This is a seaplane. We’re supposed to land on water. We’ll be fine. We’ll be …’ He stopped. They both knew they weren’t going to be fine.

  Nancy gripped his hand. Her knuckles were white. ‘Be brave, Dan,’ she said. ‘I love you.’ Heavy tears were hanging on her lashes. She closed her eyes and repeated. ‘I love you. I love you … Martha! I’ve got to ring her.’ She felt for her mobile in her shoulder bag, turned it on and looked at its screen. ‘No signal. Come on. Come on. There.’ She pressed a speed-dial button and held the phone to her ear. ‘Come on. Come on. Please pick up. Please. Please. Hello? … It’s gone to voicemail … It’s me, darling. I love you.’ She sobbed and passed the phone to Daniel.

  ‘I love you, baby. I love you. Be a good girl. Be a brave girl. Mummy and Daddy love you.’

  They were the only words he could think to say, the only ones that could be said.

  He thought about their life insurance, the wills they had made, how they had named his parents as Martha’s guardians. Martha would be looked after. The baby would be looked after. Grampy and Grumpy would look after her. Daniel thought, too, of the second drawer of his desk, the one that was locked, the one that contained Nancy’s Rampant Rabbit, the ecstasy pills he brought home from Glastonbury but never got round to taking, their stash of grass wrapped in clingfilm. Martha would find them all one day.

  ‘We gonna be OK? We gonna be OK?’ The tall, black man was shouting this to the flight attendant. The question brought Daniel back to the horror of the present tense. The plane was listing and it made him feel disorientated, as though delivered from gravity. He looked out at the wing but there were no visual references, no horizon, just lonely, cloudless sky.

  They were floating rather than falling now. Daniel retched again. The fear had penetrated deep into his gut and was making his hands tremble uncontrollably. He stared at them as if they were not his own. From behind came the sound of Susie being sick, too. There was a jarrin
g sensation as the plane banked right.

  This can’t be happening. Not to me. Not to someone who worries about this happening as an insurance against it happening.

  They seemed to be taking too long to hit the water, given their rate of descent. Daniel rapped at his watch – 9.08am.

  Let’s get this over with. I can’t stand this fear any more, this waiting, this living in fear of dying.

  At this moment he realized that Hall and Oates were still playing on the sound system: ‘I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)’.

  The plane levelled out again, the wings dipping one way before correcting to the other. Daniel sat upright and saw they were within a few hundred feet of the water. The ocean was a deep, vivid blue, almost violet. A coral reef and dark shadows could be seen. It felt as though they were suspended. Time slowed down, distorted, warped, expanded. The intensity of the moment was almost physical, almost too physically painful to bear. Daniel sensed he was living more in the tissue of each of these last seconds, these final heartbeats, than he had in all the frozen years of his life so far.

  The plane trembled, dropped, pulled hard left.

  We get through this together.

  Continuous juddering now. Sporadic screaming. An overhead locker flopped open. Bags of peanuts flew around the cabin. Nancy was clenching her teeth. Her eyes were bulging. She made the sign of the cross. Snatches of the pilot and co-pilot going through a checklist could be heard: ‘Right condition. Lever right. Condition. Lever.’ They were talking in English, the international language of air traffic control. It sounded like an abstract poem. ‘We out at one zero. Angel. Repeat. We out at angel.’ Beeps and synthesized warning voices could be heard as well. A metallic voice confirmed: ‘Altitude one zero. Altitude angel. ‘There was another clatter, a howl of wind, and abruptly it felt as if the air had been sucked out of the cabin. The emergency door across the aisle had opened and the flight attendant had disappeared.

  The pilot’s voice came over the intercom: ‘Brace! Brace!’