Cannibals and Missionaries
Page 26
The final ridiculous touch was to discover this morning that the farm couple had had their telephone service suspended: the farmer had indicated to Horst that there was a coin box down the highway in case the crew needed to place long-distance calls. That was of no significance, so long as they had the radio, but the sight of the dead instrument on the kitchen counter was a sour reminder of the meanness and mistrust in the bourgeois nature, preparing petty frustrations for the foreigner in return for his generosity—what if the “crew” from Hamburg had urgently needed a doctor?
Adding to Jeroen’s own frustration was the feeling that the comrades here were showing a certain reserve toward his plans for the collectors. He could count on Greet; she was loyal, in spite of her cavils. And in fairness he could not expect Horst and Elfride and Carlos to immediately share his enthusiasm; not having been on the Boeing, they had learned only last night of the abrupt revision of the program that had raised the number of hostages from eight to twenty. As for the Arabs, they had not yet had the collectors explained to them—there would be time enough for that when New York had pronounced—and had not been moved to ask; for them, the evidence that these additional people were rich was doubtless sufficient reason for their being here. It was depressing, though, that Werner, on being told late last night by radio of the unforeseen development, had responded almost with ecstasy (“Wunderbar, nicht? Unglaublich!”), while those here on the spot had had only neutral comments, as if to say time would tell. Nor had they warmed up appreciably as time had gone by.
It must be the waiting and watching him fiddle uselessly with the radio. Werner, in freedom, had the active part, telephoning New York, and on his own initiative making roundabout inquiries of a famous Aachen collector, who, however, knew only hyper-realism, post-op, post-pop, earth art, and the Americans who collected such rommel. Here the comrades were condemned to unemployment; they had nothing to do but eat and stand guard and rebuff the hostages’ incessant demands for news.
Inactivity was the problem. From being masters of the situation, they were slipping into a state of dependency and powerlessness in respect to the outside world. The moment they got the information, good tidings or bad, it would be necessary, Jeroen decided, for the commando to assert itself and abandon this cat-and-mouse game. There could be no further need for hiding and waiting, maiden-like, to be found. An announcement from the command post would declare its location—why not? A flag might even be flown, boldly, from the roof. Making one on the Singer from the housewife’s scraps of dressmaking material would give the hostages something to do. Some of the present precautions could be relaxed. There was no reason that the prisoners should not be permitted to go for short walks around the house, twice a day, under guard. For aerial reconnaissance to observe them at their exercise could do no harm. Jeroen did not agree that the headquarters should be regarded as a punitive re-education center—Elfride’s idea, typically German. Contrary to what she said, it was not his intention to coddle the hostages, but last night’s experience showed that given favorable conditions even the most unpromising human material was capable of cooperation.
The evening meal was being distributed when Aachen finally signaled that it was ready to transmit. Horst was monitoring the set, and the stewardess came running to bring Jeroen from the family room, where he stood looking at television. They were showing Royal Navy dredges dragging the Ijsselmeer for the helicopter—good entertainment; a few of the hostages, seated on the floor, were laughing and clapping. From the shadows on the screen, the time would appear to have been early afternoon, now several hours in the past. Just before dark, doubtless at the close of that costly and fruitless operation, a plane had circled over the farmhouse and disappeared into the sunset; the hostages had watched it through the pastor’s binoculars. Now the house stood in darkness, except for the family room, lit by the television and a single lamp, the playroom upstairs, where the farm children would be doing their homework, the stairway, and the kitchen.
Jeroen seated himself at the table, fitted the gray rubber earphones on his head, took the pencil Horst was holding out to him, and prepared to write. The message was coming through clearly. The code they had settled on was simple, more like a shorthand used by children in a family to communicate among themselves when elders were listening than like the usual ciphers, which were child’s play for the experts to “break.”
Horst peered over Jeroen’s shoulder as he wrote. “Your prognosis justified. Grandma Potter much better than was first thought. Dr. Van der Meer from Delft in constant attendance, also Dr. Tiziano but the one they call Big George unavailable for consultation. Sheer bosh that she cannot recover. Uncle Widderhintere’s condition complicated by history of sporting activity. Keeps Duffy at bedside, also British specialists highly regarded in field, such as Stubbs, Ward, Marshall. The Gas fellow drops in from race track to see patient but Uncle Widder unwilling receive Ed’s dancers in home. Since husband’s decease, Cousin Margaret has mild religious mania, much attached to the Greek, sees visions in sepia of archangels but enjoys more colorful commerce with angelic monk and Italian primitive types, including older monk called Laurence.” The next was unintelligible, then “Chadwick, sagt Anna, hat 8 grosser kinder.…”
With a sudden motion, Horst turned the radio off; he had heard a plane’s motor. They listened. Out the window they could see a searchlight playing. Jeroen removed the head set and yawned. Let them come. He had heard all he needed. With the pencil he beat time to the beam of light dancing across the snow. He hummed an air from the hymnal—an old Dutch Resistance marching song—and wondered whether he would still be able to pick it out on the parlor harmonium. But Horst had not caught the mood. He frowned at the piece of paper lying on the table. “Was soll das heissen, Jeroen?” What the devil did all that mean? His heavy voice was plaintive.
Patiently Jeroen translated the message. There was a Vermeer in the Potter woman’s collection, as well as a Titian, but no Giorgione, alias “Big George.” In compensation, there was a Bosch. “Widderhintere” was Ramsbotham; he collected sporting art, including Dufy (“Duffy”) and Degas racing subjects—no ballet dancers. “Cousin Margaret” was the big woman; sacred art was her field. She owned El Grecos (“the Greek”), sepia drawings by Michelangelo and Raphael (the “archangels”), a Fra Angelico, and a number of Italian primitives, unidentified except for Lorenzo Monaco (“Lorenzo the Monk”). The last passage to come through was hard to decipher, perhaps garbled: “Chadwick, sagt Anna, hat 8 grosser kinder.” Eight important pictures, but what? It was good that Horst found the answer. “Sagt Anna” equaled “Says Anne”: Chadwick had eight Cézannes.
The search plane had completed its mission; the sound of the motors grew fainter as it gained altitude. The others, bursting into the kitchen, did not need to be told that the news was tremendous; they could read it on the faces of Horst and Jeroen. These collectors were the real thing. A Vermeer, a Titian, a Bosch, eight Cézannes—those were sufficient credentials. Yet, as always, there were some—the greedy Greet, in particular—who were not satisfied, who had to know more. What was in the rest of the collections? Only four had been summarized. “Elfride, we must speak to Aachen again. They should finish their report to us.”
She moved to the set. Jeroen held up a hand. “Neen.” Another contact with the comrades, he warned her, was not to be dreamed of at the moment. Supposing the search plane’s radio had picked up even a small portion of the last transmission? She had not thought of that. There was a silence. The stewardess put in her head and withdrew. “Wir haben das Wesentliche,” Horst said. “I support Jeroen. Now let us have some soup.” At the stove, Greet picked up the soup ladle and filled seven bowls: “Ahmed, what are you doing here? You should be on guard duty.” She raised her bowl. “Eight Cézannes. I toast you, Jeroen.” “To Werner,” he corrected. “To the revolution.” From now on, he could see, his leadership would be uncontested. Tears came to his eyes. He had proved himself.
Nine
IT WAS THEIR FOURTH day of captivity, and their second pent up in this farmhouse. The worst, Sophie thought, was not the crowding and lack of sleep or even the endless guessing based on ignorance but the fact that there was nothing to read. The only books were a kind of farmer’s almanac, a children’s encyclopedia, and the Bible—all in Dutch, naturally. Last night they had had the distraction of watching television, with Henk doing simultaneous translation, but this morning the screen was an empty gray, matching the weather and their tired minds. In Holland, it seemed, there were never any television programs in the daytime, when people were assumed to be at work—“Very civilized, Mynheer,” gamely commented Simmons. “I could do without Barbara Walters, couldn’t you, Sophie?” In the kitchen, the hijackers had a radio and they had let Denise, the stewardess, listen to Radio Belge while she was preparing breakfast. A development in the case, she heard, was expected within a few hours; there was a report that a message had been received from the hijackers but as yet no official confirmation.
Henk thought that if there were any real breakthrough, television, exceptionally, would be on the air with photo bulletins; they would not have to wait, like last night, for the evening news to show them that the Air Force and the Navy were still looking for them. In any case, since early morning there had been activity overhead, which offered the hope that their place of imprisonment had been spotted. Military planes passed and repassed, possibly taking photographs, but then flew away without trying to land. From the farmhouse windows the highway was invisible, and the men, when they went out to pee and relieve their bowels after breakfast, had heard no rumble of traffic that would indicate the approach of a rescue force. It was strange that in all this time—Tuesday and nearly half of Wednesday—not even the mailman or a traveling salesman had come up the entry road that led to the kitchen door.
After the milling and confusion of yesterday, the hostages were settling in, establishing routines alarmingly suggestive of permanence, though they did not see this themselves. Routines gave them a feeling of security, Sophie supposed; the first-class passengers must be used to having their wealth of time organized for them, as on cruises and “cures” and country house-parties. In the parlor today, by general request, Frank had conducted morning service. Now, warming to his role of pastor cum cheer-leader, he was trying to pick out Episcopal hymns on the old Calvinistic harmonium, which wheezed and groaned as if in dissent. It was a solo performance; invited to “sing-along,” the others only hummed or beat time with a foot and eventually ceased to follow. Margaret, the big millionairess—they were on first-name terms this morning—had installed herself, like one administering a hint, on the horsehair sofa with the green folder “Torture and Illegality in Iran.” It should have been reading time—study hall—for everybody, but the blue and green folders were the only fresh reading matter aside from archaeological guides to Persia, an English pocket Bible, Wild Life of the Near East, and the Book of Common Prayer that the hand baggage had yielded. The news magazines, Vogues, and Harper’s Bazaars they had had with them in the Boeing had exhausted their usefulness during the long wait at Schiphol. In Sophie’s carryall was an old copy of Harper’s with an article by her in it which she had brought along as a credential, but she was too shy as yet to offer it—selfish of her, she feared.
Just beyond, in the family living-room, a checkers game was in progress, with coins for pieces. Using Eloise’s manicure scissors, Johnnie was cutting photos from a Dutch illustrated magazine to make a set of playing cards. It was a sign of something maybe that the dread “Gretel”—whose real name proved to be Greet, short for Margaretha—had not seen fit to confiscate the scissors. The two gays from Antibes were playing “I packed my grandmother’s trunk” with Beryl and the curator, their suggestion of charades having been rebuffed. Sophie had played it ad infinitum on rainy days, which was most of the time, in a Wasp girls’ camp in Maine; the idea was to fill the “trunk” with unlikely and giggle-producing articles that each player had to name over in the correct order before adding a new one. Thus, this morning: “Sunpruf cream, a rosary, Muhammad Ali’s jock-strap, Odorono, Les très riches heures du duc de Berry, Nixon’s Six Crises…” For a while, the Senator had been refereeing but now he was showing Victor a match game, “Cannibals and Missionaries,” that had been popular with navy flyers during the War.
Here in the parlor, as Frank pumped out “JEsus CALLS us O’ER the TUmult,” those allergic to games in the morning were resorting to conversational gambits to make the time pass. “Are you related to the lovely old rose?” Beryl’s mother inquired of Henk. “She means Dr. Van Fleet,” interposed Margaret, looking up from her reading. “Of course,” said Lily. Her soft blue eyes dwelt encouragingly on Henk. “A pure pale pink climber and a great New England favorite. One doesn’t find it any more in the catalogues. Mother had it on a trellis outside the library door of the old house in Yarmouth. Ideal for cutting, like a hybrid tea. I believe there was a Mrs. Van Fleet too.” “He spells it differently, Lily,” Helen Potter ventured. “With a V.”“V into F.A common New World corruption,” observed Charles. “We Americans wrote down words as we heard them—phonetically, don’t you see? But the great hybridizer, Dr. W. Van Fleet, can hardly have been ‘family’ to our distinguished young friend. The Dutch connection there would have been remote. His work was done at Bell Station, Maryland. And the family of climbers associated with him were of Japanese origin, the Wichuraiana—not your China teas at all.” “Silver Moon,” said Helen. “Dorothy Perkins. Now I ask myself who she was.” It was astonishing to Sophie how much knowledge such “old money” people hoarded, like string-savers; its value, apparently, lay in its total uselessness and inapplicability to the practical world. “Ah, yes,” fluted Charles, as if responsive to Sophie’s thought. “Those old dooryard hybrids mean nothing to the rose fancier today. They were ‘retired’ from service years ago, like a line of automobiles. One cannot guess the reason; your Dr. Van Fleet was extremely hardy and free-flowering. But no doubt if one looked into it one would discover a Marxist explanation. The eternal profit motive.” The Bishop, who had been dozing in a straight chair, opened his eyes. “Damn them!” he pronounced, fiercely, and then continued his nap.
Lily seemed disappointed. The hope of “placing” Van Vliet must have been brightening her empty morning. As a practicing lady, she was bent on pursuing connections; in her world, Sophie guessed, everyone had to be related, if only to a rose. The pursuit of connections extended “one’s” boundaries; the poor souls did not wish to feel narrow in their outlook. This had led to a quite comical incident with the Tupamaro on the first night. “I am Carlos,” he had said, introducing himself to the roomful of hostages he was to guard. At which Lily had risen from her couch of folded mink, as if from her tea-table, to receive him. “Not the Carlos!” she had breathed. But he too had to disappoint her. He was not the “most wanted,” Number One terrorist, Vladimir Ilych Ramirez, but just a Carlos. Lily’s graciousness had thereupon abated, but not so that he could feel an abrupt loss of interest; the cooling of her manner was gradual, a gentle drop in temperature that only another perfect lady could measure.
Now, to cover her little let-down on having failed to strike a sympathetic chord with the bright-cheeked deputy, she turned to Margaret and lightly tapped the green folder. “Is it interesting?” “Not exactly hammock reading,” Margaret growled. Lily spied a second folder peeping out of Frank’s briefcase. “May I?” She slowly turned the pages. No one spoke. Henk was studying the Flevoland listings in the regional telephone directory. Helen was dead-heading the housewife’s plants, dropping the faded blossoms into an outspread Kleenex. Sophie, her loose-leaf notebook on her knee, was starting to keep a journal—it would be something to read tomorrow. Underneath the plant table, Cameron was busy with pencil and paper constructing a crossword puzzle; he was half hidden, as if in a rich tent, by the oriental rug that hung down over the sides like a tablecloth. At the harmonium, Frank had shifted to “Fairest Lord Jesus.”