The Last Good Man

by A. J. Kazinsky

  “The airport in Stockholm is still closed because of snow, sir,” she added, and it sounded as if she meant “sir” with respect. Not like the security guards, who used “sir” as a free pass to subject a person to degrading treatment. Open your bag, sir. Take off your clothes, sir.

  “We’ll be boarding as soon as the airport reopens.”

  The stewardess was still smiling at him, and he felt a slight spark inside. No, it doesn’t matter, thought Abdul Hadi. It’s too little, too late.

  8

  Carlsberg silo—Copenhagen

  The elevator door closed with a gentle sigh and waited for what Niels would do next. He did the same thing he always did: put in the key, turned it, and pressed “21.” He felt a faint hum in his diaphragm as the elevator began its dialogue with gravity. The feeling made him think of sex. It had been a long time.

  A few seconds later, the door opened, and he stepped directly into the apartment. Either he had some uninvited guests, or he’d forgotten to turn off the light. Probably the latter, he decided as he went into the large living room. It was as empty as he’d left it. And yet. Someone had been there. A faint scent of . . . He’d have to ask Natasha in the apartment below tomorrow. She had a key to his place so she could let workmen in and out. Considering the fact that the building had been completely remodeled a few years ago, there was a surprising amount of trouble with the ventilation system, wiring, and gas lines.

  Carlsberg had originally built the 280-foot-tall silo for storing malt. But after the royal brewing company had merged with the other big breweries, the malt warehouse became superfluous. Niels actually didn’t care much for beer anymore. Like so many people his age and in his salary bracket, he’d switched to cabernet sauvignon. And why not have half a bottle tonight? Or a whole one? Should he be celebrating or in mourning? Celebrate that someone had survived or mourn the fact that someone had died? Oh, fuck it. Niels opened the bottle, his mood still undetermined.

  It was almost two in the morning, but Niels didn’t feel tired. The rain was pelting the big picture windows. He put on the Beatles and turned up the volume so he could hear “Blackbird” from the bath. He washed the girl’s blood off his feet before, true to ritual, he sat down in front of his computer. He always did that when he got home. And when he got up in the morning. He hesitated before turning it on. He missed Kathrine, he missed having somebody in the apartment. He felt out of sorts when she wasn’t there.

  Kathrine was a partner in the architectural firm that had handled the remodeling of the silo into luxury apartments. She was the one who wanted to buy the most beautiful of the lot. She was completely in love with it, she said. Niels was also drawn to the apartment. The high elevation at Carlsberg appealed to him. It had the best view of the city in all of Copenhagen. Back then the smell still permeated the whole area whenever the brewery fired up the boilers. Since then the beer production had been moved far away. Niels had no idea where. Maybe to Asia, like so much else. He was glad that the stink of yeast no longer poured in over him every morning. It had felt like having an old drunk breathing on him.

  Niels looked around the room. The two designer sofas facing each other. The solid, rectangular coffee table. A hollow in the reddish granite of the table, which allowed them to light a small fire in it. Bioethanol. Scent-free, and it evaporated completely, as Kathrine had explained to a skeptical Niels. It did look beautiful when they sat there with a fire glowing on the table. He hadn’t yet invited anyone from the station up here, although there’d been no lack of urging from Kathrine. “Invite your colleagues over,” she often said. But Niels couldn’t do it; nor could he tell Kathrine why: He was ashamed. Not because it was Kathrine’s money that had paid for the view from the beer tower—he’d gotten used to that idea—but because his colleagues would never be able to afford a place like this. A 360-degree panoramic view. If you lay in the bathtub in the evening and the only light was from glowing candles, the tiny white flames would glitter on the Italian marble and compete with the lights of the city and the stars in the sky.

  He switched on the computer, wondering if Kathrine was awake yet. What time was it in Cape Town? An hour later . . . three in the morning. On the list of online friends, it said that Kathrine was logged on, but she almost never turned off her MacBook. So that didn’t mean she was awake.

  “Where shall we go tonight?” Niels asked himself as he ran through the list of online friends. Amanda from Buenos Aires was logged on. So was Ronaldo from Mexico. It was too early in the morning for most Europeans to be online. Only Louis from Málaga. Damned if he wasn’t always online. Did he even have a life away from his computer screen? Niels didn’t feel as sickly or abnormal since he’d discovered this network. A global network for people who couldn’t travel. People who, for the most part, had never left their own country. The phobia took many different forms. Niels had chatted with people who couldn’t even leave the city where they lived. So he’d begun to feel quite normal. After all, he’d been to Hamburg and Malmö. And to Lübeck on his honeymoon. The physical discomfort hadn’t set in until he got to Berlin. Kathrine had once forced him to go to that city, but he’d spent the whole weekend shaking and feeling sick.

  “It will pass, it will pass,” she’d chanted over and over as they walked along Unter den Linden. But it hadn’t passed. Nobody understood. Nobody except a couple of hundred people who were part of this network. Or at least it sounded as if they understood. Because it was not an uncommon phobia. “Air and Travel Phobias.” Niels had done a lot of reading on the subject. Several studies said that more than one in ten people on the planet suffered from it to a greater or lesser degree. He’d also tried to explain this to Kathrine. If he got more than a couple of hundred kilometers away from home, his whole system simply stopped functioning. First his digestion. He couldn’t take a shit. That was why he could never be gone more than a weekend. After his intestines stopped working, he would start having trouble breathing. In Berlin, his muscles had begun to protest. Those were the sort of details he exchanged with others on the network. Niels knew that this phobia was the reason why he had a tendency to get depressed. To freeze up. Because he couldn’t travel, on some days he felt like he had a heavy cement block tied to his waist. During other periods, he felt a surge of energy. He could see the positive in life—and that was when people thought he was manic.

  Hi, Niels!!! How are things in Copenhagen?

  That was Amanda from Argentina. She was twenty-two. She was studying at the art academy and hadn’t left Buenos Aires in fifteen years. Her mother had died in a plane crash when Amanda was seven, so for her there was probably a psychological explanation for her travel phobia. For many others, there was no obvious explanation. At least none that Niels knew about. Not for himself, either. He’d tried everything. Psychologists. Hypnosis. But no explanation had ever surfaced. He just couldn’t travel.

  Hello, Beautiful. It’s colder here than where you are.

  He regretted writing “Beautiful.” It made him sound like an old man. But Amanda really was beautiful. He looked at the photo in her online profile. Almond-shaped eyes, thick black hair, full lips. She hadn’t stinted on the red lipstick when the picture was taken.

  Amanda’s answer appeared at the bottom of his screen:

  Wish I could be there to warm you up.

  Niels smiled. Everybody did a lot of flirting with each other in this forum. Good Lord. A couple hundred people who would never meet. And who all possessed the deepest longing to go abroad. They sent each other pictures of their hometowns, personal reports, recipes. Niels had posted a recipe for some good old-fashioned Danish liver pâté for anyone to use. It turned out to be a big hit. He had made Louis’s mother’s recipe for paella while he listened to Spanish music played on a twelve-string guitar—also supplied by Louis. It was almost like being there himself. That was the good thing about their forum. It wasn’t devoted to everything they couldn’t do: travel, drive, fly. It wasn’t devoted to talk about illness. It was abou
t what they could do: tell each other about themselves, their countries, their cultures. Through each other they experienced the world.

  Niels exchanged a few trivial comments with Amanda, and then she had to leave for school. She promised to take a picture of the school and the sculpture she was working on.

  Bye, Niels. Handsome man, she wrote, and then she was gone before he could reply.

  He was just about to log off when Kathrine’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Niels?”

  The screen flickered a bit. As if it needed a moment to get in sync with its African counterpart.

  “You’re not in bed?” Her voice sounded slightly groggy.

  “I just got home.”

  She lit a cigarette and smiled at him. Smoking was something they had in common. Since they couldn’t have children. Niels could see that she was slightly high.

  “Can you tell that I’ve been drinking?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. Did you go out?”

  “Could you turn off the Beatles? I can hardly hear what you’re saying.”

  He turned off the music, adjusted the screen, and studied her.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. Not at all.”

  She smiled.

  Niels didn’t want to tell her about his evening. There was no reason to share the misery; that was how he’d always felt. He hated it when people told horrible stories about sick or dead children. Drowning accidents, car crashes, disasters . . . Why did other people need to hear about it?

  Kathrine adjusted her webcam. She was sitting in the usual hotel room. In the background he could see something glittering faintly. Was that the city behind her? Moonlight skimming over Table Mountain? Or maybe the Cape of Good Hope? Were those tiny bright spots from ships putting the Indian Ocean behind them?

  “Did I tell you about Chris and Marylou? The American architect couple who’ve just arrived here? They’re fucking brilliant. One of them even worked with Daniel Libeskind. Well, they had a little housewarming . . . You’ll meet them yourself in a couple of days. They’ve invited us over on Saturday.”

  She gave him an encouraging look.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Did you get the pills?”

  “Yes. Of course I did.”

  “Can I see them?”

  Niels got up and went out to the bathroom. By the time he came back, Kathrine had taken off her white shirt and was sitting there in her bra. Niels knew perfectly well what she had in mind.

  “Is it hot down there?” he asked, teasing her.

  “It’s great, Niels. The best climate in the world. And you’re going to love their red wine. Show me the pills.”

  He held the package up to the camera.

  “A little closer.”

  He did as she asked. Kathrine read aloud: “ ‘Diazepam. 5 mg. A sedative for fear of flying.’ ”

  “Allan has a friend who used them with great success,” said Niels.

  “Allan?”

  “From the police SWAT team.”

  “I thought you were the only police officer who couldn’t fly.”

  “I don’t mind flying. I just have a hard time traveling anywhere.”

  “What’s the difference? Just take the pills. Take two while I’m watching you.”

  Niels laughed and shook his head. He put two little pills on his tongue. “Cheers.”

  “Swallow them, sweetheart.”

  After he’d downed the pills with half a glass of red wine, Kathrine’s mood changed, just as he’d expected.

  “Shall we play?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “You know I do. Stop teasing. Take off your clothes.”

  Kathrine had been in Cape Town for six months. At first she hadn’t wanted to go. Or rather: She pretended she didn’t want to go. Niels knew this game well. Right from the start he sensed that her reluctance mostly had to do with him and his reaction: What would he say if she left?

  When the decision was finally made, Niels experienced a great sense of relief. Not because he was happy about the idea of being away from Kathrine for an entire year, but because the uncertainty was over. Every once in a while before she left—this was something he never told her—he’d even caught himself looking forward to being alone. He couldn’t explain why, because he knew that the loneliness would hit him hard. The last evening they’d had a terrible fight before they made love on the sofa. Afterward Kathrine had wept, saying that she couldn’t leave him. She was going to call her boss and cancel the whole thing. But of course that hadn’t happened.

  They said goodbye early in the morning as he sat in the car. The air was thick with invisible rain. Niels felt completely drained. His eyes swam. When Kathrine leaned down to kiss him, her lips were warm and soft, and she whispered something in his ear that he didn’t quite catch. All day long, after she’d left, he wondered what exactly she had said. If we don’t see each other again . . . At the same time, he had an inexplicable feeling that it was good he hadn’t heard the rest of her sentence.

  “Move over so I can see you,” said Kathrine.

  When Niels again looked at the screen, Kathrine had beaten him to it. She was sitting naked on the chair, having pushed herself back a little so that Niels could see everything he was missing.

  “Do it slow, sweetheart. You look so good. I want to enjoy it,” she said.

  When it came to sex, Kathrine was from another planet. A planet where sex was not associated with shame or embarrassment or being a little shy. He loved that, even though it did challenge his own boundaries. Kathrine had taught him to like his body; not that there was anything wrong with it. On the contrary. Niels was born with all the right attributes: tall without being lanky, compact without looking like a bulldog. The hair on his chest had turned gray; that was something Kathrine loved, and she’d eagerly observed the transformation. But before he met her, his body was something attached to his head, and it did only what his brain commanded. Kathrine had taught him that his body had its own will, its own desires. And when it came to sex, the commands moved in the opposite direction. Now his body sent messages to his head about what it wanted. And he had to obey.

  “Turn around. I want to see your ass when you take off your pants,” she ordered.

  Niels stood with his back to the camera and slowly let his jeans fall, the way he knew she liked. He looked down at himself. Hmm—it was surprising, actually—he hadn’t expected to see any life down there after what he’d been through tonight. But why not? Sex and death. Desire and fear.

  “Let me look at you, sweetheart,” whispered Kathrine in Cape Town.

  9

  The airspace over Europe

  Her again. That stewardess. Now she was walking up the narrow aisle, serving coffee and tea, juice, and peanuts. Abdul Hadi smiled at the thought. Nuts, coffee, and tea. They were the most important goods sold in the Middle Eastern bazaars. The reason why European merchants had flocked to Arabia for centuries—to bring these items back to the barren north. Now the glories of Arabia were handed out to airline passengers in fancy plastic packaging showing pictures of blond young people. The motive behind the West’s frantic marketing of their products was something that no American or European would notice: The West was selling primarily the idea of itself. Advertising had been invented to sell the West to Westerners.

  “Coffee or tea?”

  Abdul Hadi looked up. It was her. Again that smile, the insistent eye contact. In spite of the many hours spent waiting in the airport, she looked as fresh as if she’d just gotten up.

  “Orange juice.”

  “Peanuts?”

  “Please.”

  Her hand brushed against his as she set the juice on the tray table. A warm current rushed through him. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like that. The stewardess placed a single package of peanuts on the little tray table. Just before she moved on, she added another package. Not hastily, but calmly
and pleasantly as she said, “Enjoy the flight, sir.”

  Abdul Hadi glanced around the cabin. Of all the passengers seated nearby, he was the only one who’d been given two packages of peanuts. Was there some message behind her advances? He leaned into the aisle to look at her. He shouldn’t have done that because at the same instant she turned around and looked back. He could feel the heat. The blood draining from his head to fill a whole different part of his body. He imagined himself with the stewardess in a hotel room. How she would sit on the edge of the bed. He would touch her hair. He’d never touched blond hair; the closest he’d ever come was Caroline’s. He wondered what it felt like. Was it softer? Angel hair. He would run the palm of his hand gently over her hair as she unfastened his belt. In his fantasy, he remained standing while she sat on the bed and slowly wrapped her hand around his genitals. She was wearing nail polish. A discreet red. Was that something he imagined, or was she really wearing nail polish? He turned around and tried to catch her eye. But she was far away, at the other end of the narrow aisle, and a baby had started crying behind him. He tried to push the stewardess out of his thoughts. Tried to think about something else. About the West and its sham self-image. Gunpowder was no longer invented by the Chinese but by the Americans so they could celebrate the Fourth of July. The number system no longer originated in Arabia but in Europe. How many people in the West realized that the cradle of the world’s culture was the Arabian Peninsula? Storytelling, mathematics, science . . . everything on which the West was built and had claimed as its own. It all comes from us, Abdul Hadi reminded himself. From us.

  He ate the two packages of peanuts, and then his stomach began to rumble. He hadn’t had a proper meal in a long time. He promised himself that when they landed, he would get something to eat. That was another reason why his brain was having a hard time focusing. But things were going better now, and he was thinking clearly again, without the fantasies about the stewardess. First you stole everything and made it yours, then you denied the rest of the world access. That was how it was. The West was built on theft and the oppression of others. At some point people would strike back. That was only right.