Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  Dear Lily undertook to pour oil on the troubled waters. “There are socialists and socialists, Harold. One has to know which kind.” “There’s only one kind,” retorted Harold. The Senator gave a brief laugh and went back to pitching. Johnnie came to Lily’s aid. In his understanding, he said, Holland was something like England—what they liked to call a “welfare state,” with the Queen and Labor. “And isn’t Holland in NATO?” ventured Lily. “I feel sure I read that somewhere.” “You’re thinking of Belgium, Mother.” But Lily was right. Indeed Holland was in NATO, Mr. Van Vliet assured them. And he tiptoed over to the “whirlybird” and tenderly patted the little tail-propeller. “The NATO shield.” Even Harold had to chuckle when the humor of it was explained to him. The “chopper” was part of the NATO defense screen. Mr. Van Vliet’s government had borrowed it from the Germans. To oblige a team of international terrorists. “A crazy world,” summed up Lily’s rector-as-was.

  But after that “light moment,” despondency returned. Seven o’clock came and still no sign of the main hijackers. “Abdul” and “Ahmed” were talking in low voices. Maybe they too were getting worried. Harold wondered why Dutch planes had not started looking for the party. “Christ, our course could have been plotted by radar. They ought to have pinpointed where we are. By now we should have heard some action overhead.” But the partly covered sky was silent, and a new tooting of foghorns indicated a very obvious reason: no search plane would undertake a mission in this weather. “I’m scared, Chaddie,” said Eloise. In fact they were all growing frightened. Older people could perish of exposure if left standing here all night. And the odor of whiskey still emanating from the Vuitton case was tantalizing, to say the least. What a pity that Henry had not packed his private stock more carefully.

  If another half-hour were to pass in this vain waiting, some initiative would have to be taken. Everyone might decide to move in a body back into the helicopter, where at least there were seats and some shelter. Or start a bonfire—there were those leafless young trees along the road that appeared to be poplars; the men could tear branches off, although the wood might be too damp to burn. But first one would have to convince the two Arabs, who must be freezing themselves, to let them disobey Gretel’s order; perhaps Beryl could try.

  Life was full of irony. The last thing one would have expected was that one would find oneself longing for Hans and Gretel to return. Why were they staying away so long? Had something dreadful happened back there in that house? The conspirators might have got into an argument and killed each other in a shoot-out. Or blown themselves up while wiring the place with explosives. But then one would have heard the noise. The wildest conjectures must be passing through every mind, though no one dared voice them. It was like being left by one’s nurse as a child in the park with one’s pail and shovel and told to stay put till she came back. The fears that rose to assail one when she did not appear for hours and one’s little feet were getting cold! That she had been run over by a car, that she had got lost in the park, that the bogey-man had taken her, that she had just walked off on purpose and was never coming back. That sense of utter abandonment—it was odd to feel it now. And the same fear one had had then of disobeying by going to look for her. Nurse, as one knew now, had simply been off with some young man and when she came back, she was cross that one was frightened and made one promise not to tell the Missus. Well, most of us have had such experiences, and they leave a mark.

  Of course the situations were not parallel. One had usually loved Nurse. One had wanted her never to leave. While if one was sure that Hans and Gretel had disappeared for good, it would be bliss beyond belief. It was the doubt that was so harrowing. Rather than remain a prey to useless guessing and imagining, not to mention desperately hungry and chilled to the bone, almost anybody, actually, would prefer to see their scowling faces. It was normal to be silently pleading for them to come back soon: “Please, Hans and Gretel, where are you?” And the Bishop, too, of course. How strange to have almost forgotten about him.

  Seven

  IT WOULD BE AN exaggeration to say that these people had never been so glad to see anyone in their lives. More exactly (Sophie estimated), no sound of footsteps had ever been so welcome to them as the purposeful tread advancing almost in march-time—the leaders had changed their footwear and were wearing thick boots. All too soon, naturally, they were perceived again in their true colors—hardly had they shown their faces when it was obvious that the leopard had not changed his spots. Absent, they had been idealized: it was curious how, within the mere space of an anxious hour or so, the group huddled here had succeeded in forgetting what their captors had been like. Apprehension as to what was coming next would have been the rational emotion. Instead, if her own feelings were an index, the nearing steps of the kapers, heralded by a distant snapping of twigs, had evoked simple gratitude: they were a rescue party.

  Their return meant food, shelter, sleep, possibly a blanket—civilization. At any rate, to Sophie: she had been picturing the shadowy house off there as a sort of canteen or mess, with cauldrons of hot soup, bread, Dutch cheese, coffee. She had not eaten a full meal for seventy-two hours. And for the older people, people of her parents’ age, all this must have been much harder. She was hungry, and her legs, encased like sausages in these elegant leather boots, had lost all feeling. Yet as a journalist she was familiar with rough assignments—she had humped about in army trucks and slept in a cave alongside guerrillas eager to be interviewed; she had lived for days on a diet of black beans and rice—and furthermore she was thirty-six, still young. The older people, with their hardening arteries and poor circulation, not to mention proneness to worry, could only be objects of compassion to someone so junior and so far ahead in experience. For their sake, she tried to picture army cots in the house or barn or at least rows of mattresses; if this was to last long, sleep would become essential for keeping a steady head. For her, hay or the floor would do, if only she could get these boots off—a razor, she feared, might be required.

  She felt sorriest for the art collectors. A millionaire’s life was no preparation for the trials of being a hostage. Perhaps, in the light of present-day trends, they should be getting special training courses to harden them up for the eventuality. But in fact the collectors had borne up remarkably well, and she wondered whether her parents could have equaled them—they had the double handicap of being semi-rich and Jewish, which taken together seemed to soften the fibre. These super-rich Wasps had been lambs on the whole: no complaints, no moans, just the stately silliness proper to their station in life. The only black sheep among them had been the quarrelsome man with the Midwestern accent and the younger wife; it was hard to imagine what art he collected—cock-fighting subjects? On the fringe, as if not quite accepted among the super-rich, was a pair of queens with the usual age difference between them. They were bearing up well too, considering the fact that they were on the fringe. She tried to guess what the parched old one collected—the other probably cooked, drove the car, and generally catered—prints, she thought: Beardsley first impressions, Klimt, Cocteau, Japanese erotica.

  The fat girl, Beryl Somebody, Sophie remembered from school; she was the one who had appeared in the sixth-form year with a trunkful of incredible clothes that she had cut to pieces with a pinking shears on a dreary Sunday afternoon in a fit of misery or boredom while her roommate looked on. It was easy to sympathize with the act, which had contrived to get her expelled—a thing that almost never happened at Putney and caused her to stand out in the memory as someone who had put Mrs. H.’s progressiveness to the supreme test. She deserved a commemorative plaque, really, for exposing the hypocrisy of the place. It had been odd to find her again, traveling with her mother and dressed in a long lustrous matronly mink coat but otherwise not much changed from the old Beryl. She was still fat and flaxen with made-up electric blue eyes that blinked like a china doll’s and still a disciplinary problem, or so it sounded. Sophie saw that she could not have changed greatly herse
lf, for it was clear that Beryl remembered her too. “Hi, there,” she had muttered over her shoulder as they were boarding the helicopter. Later they might have a chat, dormitory style, when Sophie’s boots were off and the older generation would be snoozing, having taken its Valium or sleeping-pill.

  But something was wrong with that picture. They were not going to be bedded down yet. And where was the Bishop? The hijackers had not brought him back with them. The realization seemed to steal over the whole group of hostages in the course of an instant, as though they were one body that had been nudged to attention. What had this pair done with the nice old man? Near her, eyebrows shot up, making points of interrogation; shrugging shoulders replied in dumb show. Nobody, Sophie supposed, wished to be the one to ask, partly for fear of learning the answer but mostly for fear of angering their hosts—if that was the right word for these redoubtable people. In any case, for the moment the leaders were unapproachable—they were over by the helicopter arguing heatedly with the pilot; their voices were raised—and the Arabs, though available, could claim not to know. If other members of the band had come back with the leaders, they were waiting silently in the bushes.

  Sophie told herself that there could be an innocent explanation for the Bishop’s disappearance, and no doubt her fellow-hostages were telling themselves the same thing. He might be asleep, for instance. Yet this sop she was offering her conscience for not speaking up—“Where is the Bishop?” she was free to shout, or “Please, where is Bishop Hurlbut?”—failed to be effective, since from long experience she recognized it as a sop. She sensed in herself a reluctance to antagonize that she knew too well, a disabling reluctance for someone in her profession. She had proof of her physical courage and the courage of her pen, but spoken words, for her, were different. It was not mere dread of offending a powerful person but embarrassment: she did not like to ask a point-blank question when the anticipated reply, or evasion, was something only a prosecuting attorney could pounce on with joy. She had given long thought to this subject; was it tact or shyness or femininity that inhibited her? She was sure that if she had had the bad fate to interview Nixon, she would have helped him cover up, at least while she sat in his office under his shifty eye. Poor girl (she sighed to herself), she wanted to be “clean.” She always pitied confessors, who in their stuffy intimate boxes had to hear and wash away such a lot of dirty sins. And tonight, added to that squeamishness was a plain, weak, selfish desire not to incur the special hostility of “Hans” and “Gretel,” as the collectors were calling them—naming the animals, the Senator had observed. She was the only Jew, she guessed, in this whole caboodle; why should it fall to her to speak up?

  But the parson, thank God, had recognized his duty. They watched him approach the Arab guard and secure a permission, apparently. Then he brought out a pocket handkerchief—plaid, but in the dark it could pass for white—and holding it up as a truce flag he manfully crossed the open ground to the helicopter, where the second pilot had joined the loud debate. Two flashlight beams played over the tall missionary form. “He’s asking,” Simmons marveled. “I wouldn’t have the courage; honestly, would you? But then he has to. Being his brother’s keeper, I mean.” “He’s getting the bum’s rush,” commented Harold. It was true. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, the parson was hurtling back toward his companions; a rough final shove from the older Arab caused him to slip on the icy pavement—he fell. “I guess they mean business,” he said, trying to laugh as he picked himself up. He applied the flag of truce, groaning, to his shin. But it was only a scrape. “And so what did they tell you?” Sophie demanded. “Nothing. Not a darned thing. She just gave me a piece of her mind for butting in. Quite a scold, she is. A regular martinet.” Soon the woman herself strode up, as if to enforce the lesson poor Mr. Barber had got. The dispute with the pilots—whatever it had been about—seemed to be over. But something had left her in a vicious humor. “We are not here to answer your questions. We are not accountable to you swine. You were ordered not to disperse, and one of you has disobeyed. Now you will form a line, quickly. We have no time to waste.”

  The erect old collector reached for his wife’s dressing-case. “Here you are, Helen. Margaret, my dear, where’s yours?” “Drop that case!” exclaimed the woman. “And form a line, I said.” “But we need our things,” protested Harold’s wife. “Our night things, don’t you see, so as to go to bed.” She might have been explaining matters to a child, Sophie thought. “‘Beddy-bye,’ ‘do-do,’” the mincing voice went on. “Forget do-do, Mrs. Parasite,” said the woman. “You are going to be put to work.” “Me?” “Some of you. All of you. We will decide.” What work could she mean? Uncertainly, the hostages lined up and faced the two confederates. Like confused recruits, they did not understand the order and were too frightened to ask more. All that was clear to Sophie was that the leaders were making a selection. They went down the long line using their little flashlights like methodical probes. After a brief appearance the moon had gone in again, and the last few stars were covered. The dancing rays of light made the dark seem darker. Sophie was glad to know, anyway, that she had Henk on her right side and on her left Jim Carey, who laced his fingers firmly in hers and murmured “Whatever’s coming, let’s the three of us try to stay together.” On his other side was Simmons; a faint shriek came from that quarter. “He was feeling me, Jim,” the wailing voice confided. “What part of you?” asked the Senator. “I guess you’d call it my biceps,” she admitted, raising a laugh. “Auschwitz,” muttered Sophie, not finding this very funny. Paranoia, perhaps, but it did seem to her that a Nazi-style sifting of those fit to work was going on. What would they do with the others—kill them or save the ammunition and leave them to die of exposure? She asked herself what it meant that neither of the two had bothered to test her muscles. Again she considered the fact of being Jewish: did that classify her as fit to work or the opposite? Hunger was making her light-headed. If she was slightly delirious, that would account for the somber imaginings that were assailing her—her own special pink elephants; her parents had got out of Frankfurt early, but distant relatives from the French branch had died in the ovens. “Fall out,” barked the woman. Sophie jumped. “Ahmed, take him away.” It was Charles the woman was speaking of. How shameful to feel relief.

  Yet the elimination of Charles threw a new and terribly clear light on the Bishop’s disappearance. In a flash the confusion in her head was replaced by hyper-lucidity. The old and the unfit. “Take him away”—a code expression, most likely, on the model of “the final solution” or “Waste ’em” in Vietnam. At the same time, in another part of her mind she was finding it wildly comical that “Ahmed’s” name was Ahmed. And in still a different compartment, her brain was working on a hideous new theory: the Bishop had died of a heart attack, or they had killed him, and they were picking a burial squad. Sophie could not stand it. “I’m going to demand that they tell us. If they won’t say where he is, it means they’ve done away with him.” “What good will it do us to know, Sophie?” Carey said gently, stroking her cold fingers. “It always does good to know,” Sophie said passionately, pushing his hand away. “No talking there!” shouted the man’s voice. A flashlight was turned in their direction. In its path Sophie distinctly saw—unless it was a hallucination—a figure carrying a shovel crossing the road. Her knees began to buckle. “Henk!” she appealed, in a whisper. He was not there. It was like waking up from a bad dream and finding the place beside you empty. But he had merely stepped forward, without saying a word. The leaders saw him. “Back in line there, Deputy. Take your place.”

  He was not going to obey. He stood there quite coolly (she could tell from his profile and the tilt of his chin), his head thrown back as if idly contemplating the sky. As she watched, he calmly folded his arms and continued to gaze upward, like the musing figure of a poet in a German Romantic painting—all he lacked was a black cloak wrapped around him. Sophie smiled; in this half-minute she had grown uncannily calm herself. No doubt
it was the advent of real danger that had done it. She ought to tremble at his daring; instead, she was content—perhaps the true word was “thrilled”—that he was standing his ground.

  If Henk did not move, she reasoned, they would come over to him themselves. The odds were that they would not shoot him unless they had to. A little plume of white vapor, like smoke, came from the nostril she could see and made her think of a bull-god snorting. And of course he was not a political animal for nothing; the bold strategy was working. First the man and then the woman materialized from the shadows, drawn as if by a magnet or by common, normal curiosity—an underrated force of attraction. Henk shifted his head in their direction, like somebody who thought he had heard visitors. The man said something in Dutch. Henk answered with a word that sounded like “Nay.” Stepping up rather too close to him, the woman pointed her flashlight into his face. He ignored it and started talking to the man. Then he made an irritable gesture, as if to ward off the beam of light, like a buzzing fly, from his eyes. The man’s hand suddenly closed over the woman’s; he clicked her flashlight off. His own he kept pointed at the pavement, lighting up patches of ice. Henk continued. “He’s asking about the Bishop,” Sophie murmured to Carey. “I heard him say ‘bisschop.’” They strained their ears to follow. Carey caught the words “oud man” which must be “old man.” But as the rapid exchange went on, they could pick up less and less. Their German was not much help; the pronunciation was too different. The recurring “Nay,” a nasal sound, was evidently “No” or “Nein,” and the woman kept interrupting with what sounded like “haast hebben,” which might be kin to German “Die Hast” and English “hurry.”

  If so, she was not the only impatient one. From the far end of the line, the unmistakable voice of Harold called out. “What’s going on? What are you telling them, de Jonge?” He must have received a cuff or a sharp poke from an Arab gun butt, for there was a loud grunt and he subsided. The discussion in Dutch went on. The word “helicopter,” however spelled, was being pronounced. Sophie turned quickly to Carey. He had got it too. He emitted a soft whistle. She could not guess what he was surmising, but for her part Sophie had just had a sudden joyful suspicion. Was the Bishop going to be evacuated, as an act of mercy—“medevac,” the Army would have called it in Vietnam—and Charles too? “Bishop,” “old man,” “helicopter,” even “hebben haast”—it all added up to that. As for the work-detail the leaders had been choosing, that could be for ordinary chores; collecting firewood, for instance, or KP—nothing would make her happier now than to be set to peeling potatoes, especially if she knew than an ailing old cleric and his ancient crony were going to be flown out. She blessed Henk for his gift of persuasion. The hulking man, she estimated, was more than half convinced; at least he was listening and nodding his head up and down, as if pondering. And the woman was staying out of it. Her restless flashlight was on again, playing over the pavement. Sophie’s eye absently followed it. She froze. Lying by the edge of the road were two shovels.