Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  “Quite,” said Cameron, his head again emerging. “Yet if your conjecture is right, then you have understood and even given a name to a principle governing their behavior. That it answers to the name of ‘arbitrary’ still means that one can subsume it under a general law, in other words conclude that by and large one can expect aleatory conduct from them.” “Well, I suppose that’s some comfort, Beryl,” Lily said cheerfully. Beryl laughed. “Can you define ‘aleatory’ by any chance, Mother? Dicey.” “‘Alea jacta est,’” supplied Henry, causing Margaret to shake her large head and sigh. “The ruin of a fine mind,” she pronounced in a carrying bass aside.

  “To understand that there’s no understanding what they’re up to,” Lily mused. “And yet I have the funniest inkling. Maybe I’d better not say it. In case they’re listening.” “For heaven’s sake, how?” said Margaret. “These rooms could be ‘bugged,’” Lily retorted. “Quite true,” said Henk, before Beryl could contradict. “I have been thinking that too.” “Well, whisper it, then, Mother,” prompted Beryl. “Just a minute!” said Frank. “Let’s make assurance doubly sure.” He began to play chopsticks energetically on the harmonium. Lily spoke into her daughter’s ear. In turn Beryl whispered to Sophie: “The Vermeer.” By the time it reached Cameron, it had become “Fear more.” But most had understood. Though not as rich as Johnnie, Helen was the star collector: she owned a Vermeer.

  The gravity of the first-class faces left no doubt as to the inference being drawn. It was as though Lily had voiced a collective thought that had lain too deep for words. The collectors sat with bowed heads, reflecting. Prompted by the naming of the Vermeer, each, evidently, was considering his own valuables. Even the outsiders were moved to sober reflection, like spectators watching a stranger’s coffin pass. “Is it an important Vermeer?” Simmons whispered and, on being assured that it was, fell to pondering. It was not the occasion to tell her that there were no unimportant Vermeers; the parlor was silent, as if it contained mourners. In the next room, the games came to a respectful halt as word of the “inkling” leaked. Sitting with folded hands, Sophie was led to think of the death of Sapphire, she was not sure why. What did Victor’s wickedly murdered pet have in common with a Vermeer of Delft except the color blue? Or—more to the point—that each was a rarity, a “pearl” of its kind? If Sapphire had been an alley cat, would she have got the same treatment?

  Sophie had no idea of what might be in the rest of the collections, but the mere thought of works of art as legitimate prey for terrorists caused her sympathetic nervous system pain. If they could deliberately shoot a superb Persian cat—there had been two shots, she clearly remembered—there must be policy behind it. Sapphire had died as an advertisement of some unusual intention. That strange young man, Jeroen, might view himself and his band as apostles of “desacralization,” which would be terror in a pure state, she guessed. In comparison, treating the lives of adult human hostages as bargaining counters seemed like normal, “civilized” warfare.

  To her surprise, Henk was winking at her. He tapped his head again. Unwillingly, she saw what he was trying to tell her. To a rational mind, he meant, this was a nutty example of group-think: these people had become possessed by the notion that their art treasures were in danger, without asking themselves how that could be or considering it aloud as an objective proposition. They “felt it in their bones,” and the feeling was so strong that it had gripped the whole body of hostages, not just the fraction that had personal cause for anxiety. Only Henk, a Dutch skeptic, seemed to be immune. To judge by the silence, everyone else was just as suggestible as Sophie herself.

  The first sight of Helen removed any uncertainty. Their bones had been right. The tribunes of the people had decreed that she could have her freedom in exchange for the “Girl in a Blue Cap with a Guitar.” Henry’s freedom would cost her a Titian. They had wanted the little Bosch, too—hardly bigger than a postage stamp—but mercifully it was on show in Los Angeles; she had a clipping from Time to prove it. The group had tried her and passed sentence, payment in kind, from which there could be no appeal. She had begged them—on her knees, literally—to take her whole fortune in the place of the “Girl” but without any effect. Snuffling and wiping her pale eyes, rejecting Henry’s effort to quiet her and Denise’s smelling-salts, she now took the entire “family room” into her confidence. Around her an eager ring formed, curiosity proving stronger than pity. Ransoming Henry, she told them, would not be so very painful; the Titian was studio work mostly, and she had never cared for the subject. But she would almost rather die, she had decided, than see harm come to the precious Vermeer—in perfect condition, with its wonderful crackle; when its near-replica, “The Guitar Player,” had been seized from Kenwood House, she had suffered untold agonies, even though its “execution” by the vandals would have made her own unique. They had given her an hour to make up her mind.

  Next Harold was tapped, then Johnnie, then Margaret, then Charles, and finally Lily. “Cheer up, Mother,” counseled Beryl. “The pecking order proves that they don’t know the value of ‘fine English water-colors.’” For a perhaps evident reason the “boys” from Antibes were not being summoned to the bar. “‘Rien à déclarer.’ ‘Nothing to declare,’” John, the younger, hazarded with a nervous giggle, as though apologizing for their luck. One by one, with increasing rapidity, the others rejoined their fellows: Harold was supported by the steward; Lily flew to Beryl’s arms. Unlike Helen, they were keeping their own confidence. Whatever sentence had been passed on them was not for general consumption. Disregarding the compassionate eyes turned on them, they bunched in desolate twos and threes, like stately crows in a flock of starlings. Helen was finally persuaded to go into the parlor, out of the melee.

  If it had been possible, Sophie would have fled the scene. She did not like the position of onlooker. It was obscene, like sitting in perfect health in a surgeon’s waiting-room and watching the patients emerge. “They must resent us,” murmured Henk. “If they’re aware that we’re here,” said Carey. “Doesn’t look much like it.” In her own way, Simmons was respectful of their feelings. “We ought to go in and offer Helen our sympathy, don’t you think? I was kind of mean back then.” “You can try,” said Sophie, unwillingly tagging along. The trouble was, it was impossible to sympathize in the true meaning of the word. You could not put yourself in the place of someone who owned a Vermeer—it was not a universal experience. You might be able to feel with a millionaire who had lost all his money; on a smaller scale, it could happen to you. But here the best you could do was to sympathize with the innocent Vermeer itself. To tell Helen you were sorry only marked the distance between you and her. But “Thank you, my dear,” Helen answered. “I’m sure you mean it.”

  Soon the service of lunch intervened, breaking up the knots of collectors and generally loosening tongues. Discussion of the predicament of the few spread to the many. The greatest puzzle, it was agreed, was how the hijackers could have learned what was in the collections. “Attributed to Titian,” they had said to Helen. Amazing. They were even up on the fact that she had arranged to give her Giorgione—pen-and-wash; unique—to the National Gallery. Most people thought it was hanging there on loan. That they knew about Johnnie’s sporting art was peculiar too, surely. Stubbs was a “name,” but how many hijackers had heard of Ben Marshall? Until a few minutes ago, Sophie had never heard of him herself. “Did you ask how they got their information?” The question was stupid; asking would have been a waste of breath. And not a word had been volunteered, naturally, that would give a clue. Jeroen, it seemed, had had lists in front of him which he consulted, leaving it up to the victim to affirm or deny. Poor Helen had begun by trying to disavow her Vermeer. “But it was all written down there—the size and the tiny restoration and the provenance.” A tear fell onto her paper plate. “She could see that he knew,” explained Henry.

  “But what crime were you charged with?” interrupted Aileen. “I mean, specifically?” “Possession of art wo
rks ‘stolen’ from the people,” answered Johnnie with a short laugh. “What can you say to an arraignment like that? That you bought them or had them left to you? To this kangaroo court, that’s no defense. They shut you up by reading to you from the damn lists they’ve got—the evidence, as they see it. I must say, it’s uncanny, finding they have it all there in black and white. Shakes a fellow up, almost makes him feel guilty as charged. Especially if he tries to hold anything back. Just to give you an example, I thought they’d missed out on my Degas, and so naturally I didn’t call the oversight to their attention. Then damned if they didn’t come up with it. Accused me of lack of frankness.” Sophie nodded. It was cruel of them, she thought—a refinement of malice to let the collectors “prove” their guilt by denials and evasions and then face them with a full bill of particulars obtained from an unguessable quarter.

  The suspicion that someone had informed was inevitable. During lunch it was vacillating between Charles and Warren, the curator. Or so Beryl, who was in on their councils, reported. “Wouldn’t you know they’d want to hang it on a queer?” Beryl herself would have liked to hang it on “Simmie,” but there was no way: “The hag knows nothing about pictures.” The conchie minister, she said, knew about Lily’s collection, but that was from long ago: “Most of the things Ma had then have gone on the block.” The Economy class hostages had all been given a clean bill of health. “Ma pretends to be glad of it. Maybe she really is. Have you noticed that Henk likes her?”

  But if Economy was excluded, it followed that the millionaires had to believe that the culprit was one of their own party or else that a tip had come from an outside source. You would have thought that they would have embraced the second theory, for their own peace of mind, but they were unreasonably slow in coming to it, said Beryl, and only through a process of elimination worthy of Sherlock Holmes. “The finger can’t point to Eddie and John. They don’t know any of us but Warren. And Warren, my God, is just an orientalist. How would he know about Johnnie’s stuff?” The logical suspect, among their own number, was Charles, of course. He had come back from his interrogation crowing that he had been “let off scot-free”; his own explanation was that he had persuaded the gang that the few porcelains he still owned were too fragile to be moved unless he packed them himself. Yet it could also mean that he had been “singing” for his supper. “Harold was all for ‘confronting’ him. Whereupon the others decided that they didn’t want to think that of him, really. You know why? ‘Because we’ve known him all our lives.’ That’s what they call ‘being fair.’” “Why don’t they suspect you, Beryl?” They ought to, in view of Ahmed, Sophie was thinking. Beryl shrugged. “Because they’ve known Ma all their lives, I guess.”

  Anyhow, now they were leaning toward the “outside source” theory. It supported their faith in having been the sole motive for the hijacking. “This proves it to the hilt,” proclaimed Margaret. “Before we ever left our homes, these people knew down to the last brush-stroke what was in our collections. This was planned months in advance, as soon as some revolutionary read in the Museum bulletin about our tour to Iran. But they had to wait till we got to De Gaulle because the security at Kennedy was too tight!” “Idlewild,” said Harold. “But you’re right; this clinches it. How could they have got the nuts and bolts on my Cézannes in this godforsaken hole? No way. The only puzzler is why they waited so long to spring it on us.”

  “Shouldn’t we be helping Helen to think now?” said Lily, looking at her watch. “She has to decide very soon. But there’s so much that she doesn’t know, that none of us knows. What are they plotting to do with the Vermeer, with all our lovely things? They can’t be thinking of bringing them here. I made bold to ask, but of course they wouldn’t say. All they said was that if I wanted to return to my family unharmed I must make a tape instructing them to carry out orders for the delivery of my Samuel Palmer and my Turners and Cotmans—they didn’t seem at all interested in Girtin, although he was so important. I had no need to know more than that, they told me. Just address the tape to a member of my family and precise instructions for packing and delivery would follow. But, as I tried to explain to them, since Joe died my only close family is Beryl. I wouldn’t trust my sister-in-law, dear that she is, to know a Cotman from—”

  “Personally I think I’d go along, Lily. That’s the way I’m tilting myself. Play at being cooperative. I’ve pretty well decided to tell them that I accept. And with my Cézannes, I have more at stake. I’ll just make one stipulation. That I direct the tape to my lawyer. Whatever I instruct my lawyer, he’ll know that I’m under duress, so he’ll have the sense not to play for keeps. With a relative you never can tell. My lawyer’ll be smart enough to go through the motions of obeying instructions, in the interests of my and Eloise’s safety, all the time being damn sure that the government isn’t going to let him turn over a fortune in irreplaceable paintings to some reds representing these gorillas. The Treasury or the Attorney General will get a stay or an injunction or figure out some hokey-pokey. An agreement made under duress isn’t binding. What do you think, Carey? You’re a lawyer.”

  “I can’t advise you,” Jim said, rather stiffly. “But I can tell you the law. It’s against U.S. policy to negotiate the demands of hijackers. If your lawyer starts negotiating at your instance, he will go to jail.” “But he wouldn’t negotiate. He’d fake and stall till the government stepped in.” “It’s not up to the government to do your lawyer’s duty for him. He’s an officer of the court. Of course he could arrive at some agreement with the FBI to seem to play ball with these folks, bait a trap with your works of art or reasonable facsimiles of them…. You’re familiar with the scenario, surely.”

  “Well, fine. It adds up to the same, doesn’t it? If I accept, I’ve been a good boy, so far as the gorillas can see. And I’ll have gained time. They’re not going to shoot me as long as they think they have eight signed Cézannes in the bag. My lawyer’ll need proof that I’m alive before he agrees to deliver. Even if they start getting impatient, they’ll make up their minds to cool it.” Carey sighed. “If you want to address the tape to your lawyer, I see no objection that Jeroen and Company can have. But you’ll put your lawyer in a hell of a dilemma. He gets an instruction with your voice print on it. Is he supposed to carry it out or not? Either way, he’s placed in a questionable position. Your instruction tells him to break the law. As an officer of the court, his first duty, then, is to report it. At the same time, being your lawyer, he will feel bound to respect the confidentiality of the communication. If we assume that he’s scrupulous and reports it, not only does he ignore your express instructions, but he also, by the act of reporting it, frustrates any intention you may have of complying.”

  The warning was clear, Sophie thought, but she was not sure that Chadwick understood. Jim was being cautious, for reasons of his own, and for the first time she saw in him the quality that had disappointed so many of his followers. Simmons saw it too. “He just won’t commit himself. Look at him, Sophie.” He sat lounging on the floor, with his back against a wall and his long legs stretched out, and was idly tossing a coin. Sophie admitted that this show of detachment must appear cavalier to the millionaires. Yet the very fact that their treasures were at stake—to say nothing of their lives, probably, if they refused—might excuse his reluctance to pronounce. She wished Henk would say something; Jim’s being a U.S. senator could be another element, not necessarily an admirable one, in his reluctance.

  “What’s the difference between my lawyer and a relative?” Harold demanded in his customary suspicious tones. Carey caught the coin and with his other hand covered a yawn. “Only that the relative is under no obligation to report a criminal communication of this nature. Otherwise the position is the same.”

  “So do you advise Helen to make the tape?” said Lily, anxiously looking at her watch again. “Sorry. I can’t advise you, Lily. It would be improper on my part. I’ll say this much.” Slowly he got to his feet. “Any of you who agrees to
make a tape under the existing circumstances will not be regarded as an accessory to a criminal proceeding. On that score, you need have no inhibitions. On the other hand, it would be unwise to think that the making of the tape is the easy way out. Having made it, you may find that you are bound to it. Or that our friends will require a promptness in compliance that you don’t envision. Measures of an ugly sort may be taken to induce speed.”

  “But if we refuse,” said Henry, “they’ll kill us, isn’t that the idea?” The collectors exchanged looks. “We had different impressions,” Lily said. “I certainly thought so, but some of us weren’t so sure. I don’t believe the word ‘kill’ was actually used.” “Not to me,” said Johnnie. “It was more of a vague menace.” Again, of course, no one had asked. “They left it to our imagination,” said Harold. “Depends on how much you have.” “They were very definite, though, about the deadline,” Lily put in. “Each of us has an hour from the time he was dismissed. I wonder why.” “Prolongs the torture,” Henry suggested. “And on our side of the fence, I don’t see the possibility of stringing the thing out, playing for time. We must give a Yes or a No.” Charles giggled. “Why, by the bye, is it always assumed that time is on the side of the angels?” “Let’s make the tapes,” declared Margaret, rising. “Where’s the harm in it? There’s many a slip…I shall direct mine to my butler. I’ve implicit confidence in his judgment. One’s children cannot be wholly objective. Remember that, Helen. Your eldest stands to inherit the lovely Vermeer, does he not?”