Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  In that context, the committee’s “mission” to Iran must appear as the height of frivolity—in the stern eyes of actionists a punishable offense. For this young hijacker, surely, the Shah’s crimes against humanity were of minimal interest in comparison with the fact of his comrade’s detention in an Israeli jail. Not to mention the honor roll of other comrades ripe for liberation: the Price sisters, held by the English, Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Esslin, confined in Helmut’s cells, the adjutants of “Carlos” in Giscard’s hands…. And no committee of Western liberals felt the call to investigate their conditions of detainment, though the courtroom in Stuttgart was only an hour’s flight away. Instead, as the hijackers would see it, the conscience of the West was busy looking the other way, at the mote in the Shah’s eye.

  Henk was not sure he saw it in quite that light himself. But they had a point. One might not concur in the notion that violence in self-ordained hands was above the “bourgeois” law, but did it follow that agents of terror had forfeited all their human rights when they treated themselves as sacred instruments? That indeed seemed to be the prevailing assumption in liberal-minded circles. The capture of a terrorist could hardly be expected to produce universal grief, yet the usual reaction “Good riddance,” of which he too had occasionally been guilty, had its own barbarity.

  As for the charge of frivolity, you could find considerable evidence of it in this ill-starred expedition. To be honest, he had been aware from the start that curiosity had played a leading part in his decision to join: the lure of the bazaars, carpets, miniatures, minarets, rose water in the cookery, Shiraz, Persepolis if there was time. Curiosity too about the Americans—where did such a group fit in their system?—desire to know Carey in a working relationship; speculations about the Shah and his consort. And he had probably hoped for a poem or two as a by-product.

  Yet he felt no strong urge to condemn himself for impurity of motives; if a good deed was able to embrace a few stolen pleasures, so much the better. He was no Calvinist. Besides, in the committee’s defense, it could be argued that liberal observers could not be present in all the world’s jails and courtrooms simultaneously; unlike God, the liberal was limited by ubiety. Nevertheless, why pick on the Shah? If the truth were known, Henk feared, Reza Pahlavi’s enormities had been chosen for this group’s attention not just because he had an attractive country with an agreeable winter climate but for a still less pardonable motive: his regime was an easy target. Every good soul was opposed to torture, but it suited the Western soul’s book to be able to attest to it in a distant land ruled by an oil monarch who was neither friend nor foe. A foe would not admit your committee, and to find fault with a friend would give pain. If your committee were to find evidence of torture in Israel, it would meet with little sympathy for its “courage” on its return. And if it failed to find evidence, it would be accused of conducting a whitewash. For liberals, the Shah was ideal; only his ambassadors would write angry letters to the newspapers. And his victims, always described as youths of good middle-class families and of respectable political antecedents, were ideal victims from a liberal point of view-guilty of nothing more than advocacy. The only embarrassment, for the committee, would be to discover a few terrorists among them—unlikely, as domestic terrorists were executed there with great promptitude.

  Henk sighed. Involuntarily, he looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes before one. He hoped that these young bandits were not going to become his surrogate conscience for the duration, however that was to be reckoned, in hours, days, or weeks. It occurred to him that he might be experiencing in his own person a thing he had read about with slight disgust in the newspapers: the incredible tendency on the part of hostages-bank tellers, air stewardesses, motherly middle-aged passengers—to “see the good side” of their kidnappers: “They behaved to us like perfect gentlemen,” “He was as sweet as he could be.” Some carried it to the point of actually falling in love with them; he remembered the Swedish bank employee who greeted her release by announcing her engagement to the leading criminal. Henk would not say that his own symptoms were in any way amorous. Nor did he think that he was in the process of being converted to a terrorist outlook: observing terror at close quarters, he felt more than ever the futility and waste of it. But, being at close quarters, he could not fail to glimpse their point of view, which caused him to turn about and look at his own party with freshened eyes.

  Yet he was feeling something else: pity for the hijackers. Their brief life-expectancy moved him as he studied the moony countenance of the machine-gunner, the soft baby-fat cheeks and incipient dewlaps. Within a year, in all likelihood, this boy would be dead; prison would only be an unwelcome reprieve—if held too long, he would hang himself. There were no active middle-aged terrorists or grizzled retired terrorists. He was a warrior, born to a short life, like the sulky Achilles or his friend’s idol Yoshitsune. And, whatever he had been taught in his training camp, he would not really expect his ideas to live after him. Today’s arch-revolutionaries had no faith in a future life for their ideas; it was gone, like the Christian faith in God’s design.

  If, thanks to this calfish specimen, Henk’s own days or minutes were now numbered, at least he had had his full share of life’s rewards and amusements. The fact that he had just celebrated, after a fashion, his thirty-eighth birthday (where, by the way, was that magazine with the horoscope?) suddenly seemed rather indecent, an actuarial disproportion that was like being overweight in a time of world hunger. And the pity he felt for the kapers, even that brute of a woman, was sharpened by irritation with the sheer folly of their enterprise. The optimum result they could hope for would be to gain the release of a few fellow-terrorists, to engage in more hijackings, daring raids, and kidnappings—a vicious circle, for most would be shot or returned to jail. The ransom money they might extort could only serve to finance a new round of suicidal operations; unlike the normal criminal, they knew of no other use for it. A food distribution, were they to include it in their demands, would turn into a grotesque scene from Brueghel.

  Could reason make them see the vicious circle they were spinning in? That they were all doomed to violent and pointless extinction, on the model of their hero, Che? They would hardly be open to dissuasion at this stage. It would be pointless to make the effort, even if he were summoned again. A plea coming from him addressed to their own self-interest would not be recognized as such, however feelingly it was expressed. But later a time might come. If they got their helicopter and were put down with their freight of captives on the lonely polder, a new chapter could open. Under those circumstances, it might not be impossible, for example, to “reach” the machine-gunner, evidently the most susceptible member of the team. Bashō, as had been demonstrated, was the soft spot in his warrior’s carapace. The cluster of tender sentiment surrounding the poet and the Japanese guerrilla might be the point of entry.

  If the youth was responsive to poetry, in principle he was salvageable, though it was true, Henk sadly recalled, that here in Holland some of the worst SS men had been lovers of Rilke and Hölderlin—his father, the magistrate, had cited the fact ironically when he had gone to witness against them at their trials. Still, poetry, as a frail trait d’union, the thin edge of the wedge, was a hope—the only one available. That Henk had been led by a queer chain of coincidences to recite those lines could be taken for a sign from Heaven, showing him the right way. But the plump gloomy boy, however open to softer influences he might prove to be, was subordinate to the others. Even if he could be gently detached from them, at night as he stood watch, how in fact could he help? He had only the one weapon. And should one aim after all at corrupting a minor? That was what it would amount to. Henk shook his head, feeling distaste for the train of thought he had been pursuing. Once again he despaired.

  Sophie gripped his hand; he raised his eyes. The woman was standing in the doorway, her pistol peeping from her blouse. She had an announcement to make. A light meal was going to be served. As soon as
they had eaten, the prisoners were to gather their hand baggage and proceed to the first-class cabin, where disembarkation would take place. A helicopter was standing by. “And Sapphire?” asked Victor hoarsely, speaking for the first time today; there were cake-crumbs in his two-day-old beard. “You will leave your cat,” said the woman. “The hostesses will dispose of it. And you will not be needing the carrier.”

  Before Van Vliet de Jonge left the cabin, he retrieved the copy of Elle. In captivity he would have time, finally, to peruse his birthday horoscope. But in the aisle the young Arab abruptly took the magazine from him and stood frowning at the cover, which showed a pretty blonde girl wearing a blue-and-white crocheted cap—the winter sports number. His eyes slowly rose and met Van Vliet’s with a look of childish mischief—was he inviting the deputy to a hand-to-hand struggle for possession of a French cover girl? Then with a grunt, as if to denote relinquishment, he handed the fashion magazine back. His white teeth flashed in a broadening, still mischievous smile as he helped himself instead to a cigar from the deputy’s pocket.

  Six

  HUMAN NATURE, THEY DECIDED, was contrary. One would have supposed that they would have been grateful for practically any change, anything to break the monotony—more than a day in the jumbo at that point without even a cribbage-board. Yet the first-class hostages had not welcomed the arrival of a slew of hostages from Economy in their midst. Utterly unannounced: up to the minute the curtain had parted and that procession had filed in, one had thought one was alone in one’s glory; it had stood to reason that when the separation of the sheep from the goats had taken place, eons ago, the whole Economy contingent would have been released. So that it had been a shock to see these people appear and to learn that one was going to have them for company on the next leg of the journey, for no sooner had they made their appearance than the loud-speaker had blared: everyone was to collect his belongings and stand ready to board another aircraft.

  But then a long wait had followed, and in the interval one had had time to sort out who was who, more or less, among one’s future companions. The gangling, bow-tied minister (Lily knew him from ages back) had got himself quite a name for being the worst type of bleeding heart—sad for his sweet wife and family and for his church, which was paying the price; nobody had a pew there any more. The stout tweedy old party with him, who looked quite a dear really with his apple cheeks and his “brolly,” had been a bishop somewhere out west, but he was tarred with the same brush: he had been close to Eleanor, it seemed, though Franklin could never abide him. And dear silly Charles, turning up like a bad penny after his “slumming” tour; one forgave him because one was used to his prattle. He was a nice old thing at heart, wouldn’t hurt a fly. He knew what it was to live with beautiful things. But clinging to him was a little rouged woman with dangling earrings and a screechy voice who could not stop talking—some sort of menopausal cause-person probably that he had picked up for his sins on one of his pinko boards. And there was a red-eyed unshaven creature draped in a filthy scarf and with a basket of cat food and “kitty-litter” who was evidently one of the flock; he had helped himself to several miniatures of vodka from the serving-pantry as he went by, and the steward had just shrugged. What the lot of them had been doing on a flight to Teheran was rather hard to imagine; there was nothing in that part of the world but oil and archaeology, and neither, one would think, was their dish of tea.

  But it fitted that that Senator Carey was with them, a maverick even in his own party. He was a well-groomed man at any rate, rather actorish like so many of his trade but handsome in a theatrical way. He probably used a rinse on that silver hair and dyed his eyebrows. And of course he would be odoriferous of toilet lotion—the Irish in him coming out. He was exchanging witticisms with a younger man, quite handsome too, with a trench coat slung over his shoulders and got up in a flaring whipcord suit coat that must have been “bespoke”; he wore a folded-over scarf for a tie and did not seem like an American. With them was a tall, frowning girl with a long Jewish nose that Beryl said she knew—another lefty, needless to say. Bringing up the rear had been a short bristly man, who looked like a professor, with a pipe. Most of them could have done with a freshening-up in the lavatory.

  Luckily, though, there was room in the helicopter for the two parties to keep their distance. Beryl, right away, had wanted to fraternize, but Lily, exercising a mother’s rights, had made her stay put. Until they had actually laid eyes on the “whirlybird” they were going to have to board—quite a feat for a woman of Margaret’s girth—they had been fearing a tight squeeze. Some of the ladies had armed themselves with atomizers from their toilet cases to ward off odors, and clever Mrs. Chadwick had improvised quite a pretty fan from the Air France menu. But there was space, and to spare, for everybody, including two of the cabin crew. The steward told them that the giant helicopter had been flown in from Germany (West), which was the reason for the long delay, but Harold Chadwick was sure it was an American jobbie—they did not make them that size over here. And one certainly need not have worried about lack of air. In fact, it was awfully drafty. Noisy as well; you could hardly hear yourself think. Johnnie Ramsbotham, who was up front, had kept shouting at the pilot to ask where they were bound for, but any answers he might have got were lost in the din of the propeller-blades. The stewardess—the nice one, with the smelling-salts—had no idea where they might be going. Lapland, it felt like, from the interior temperature. The high-colored, strong-jawed fellow in the whipcord seemed to know; he was standing up, rather dangerously, and pointing out landmarks to the Senator.

  But it was useless to call out and ask him; he would not be able to hear. That was the disadvantage of having stayed with one’s own group, leaving a no man’s land of empty seats in between. Johnnie, who was a sailor and knew how to take his bearings, thought they must still be over Holland. But they had not seen any windmills. And not a sign of a landing field. That had made poor Harold anxious, as the sun was already setting. He flew his own plane, so he understood these things. According to him, the pilot would not dare to put down in the dark, just like that, without ground flares to guide him. They could count on half an hour of light after sunset; after that, they would have to find a proper landing field or crash.

  It was unnerving to have to hear that, considering all they had been through already; it would be the last straw to die at this point in a common ordinary plane crash. So far, except for the little curator, everybody had been amazingly brave, treating it as a lark and fortifying the inner man with drinks; Helen Potter was quite tiddly. They had agreed to be philosophical about their baggage—Air France could keep it for them in Amsterdam, hopefully under lock and key—you could hardly expect hijackers to be interested in whether you had your nighties or clean shirts. On seeing the new additions to the party, the men, typically, had been concerned about rations: wherever they were headed for, there would be a great many mouths to feed, and the lefties, they feared, would get the lion’s share. Foresighted Johnnie, before quitting the jumbo, had stuffed his pockets with Air France candies from the tray. Still, it would not hurt most of the males to tighten their belts a bit; they could make believe they were at one of their “fat farms.” Yet now, with dusk gathering, all the bravely hidden worries peeked out.

  First, the mystifying fact of having been singled out as “hostage material” (Beryl’s funny phrase) when the rest of the first-class passengers had been sent packing. “Do we look so prosperous?” Johnnie had innocently wondered. Well, obviously they did. Johnnie Ramsbotham was one of the two hundred richest men in America. But how could the hijackers know that? Unless Charles had been naughty. The old tease loved to talk about “my millionaires” and “my Republicans.” Of course he would never stop to think that hijackers too had ears. And next there were the collections, which was the point that they all—multi-millionaires or just making ends meet—had in common. Could a little bird have told the hijackers about those? Helen’s Vermeer was famous, and she had been generous
—or foolish—enough to share it with the public by letting it hang on loan in a show for one of her charities. And Harold’s Cézannes were in all the books. Johnnie collected only sporting art, but his Stubbses and Degas were worth fortunes, not to mention his Dufy sailing subjects and his great Ward. As for Lily, some authorities thought her English water-colors, though fewer in number, were every bit as fine as Paul Mellon’s.

  Then of course there was the “couple” little Mr. Walton, the curator, had included on his own say-so—they were of his ilk, evidently. They had joined the tour at the airport, having driven up from their villa in the south of France: that was in the winter; the rest of the time they lived in Duxbury, outside of Boston. No one knew yet what they collected. Prints, one might guess, since, to judge from their battered attaché cases sporting ancient hotel stickers, they belonged to the category of “more taste than money.” But prints, these days, were “in” and could fetch enormous prices. Eventually one could ask.