Cockpit

by Jerzy Kosiński

  To prove that I was serious, I showed her enough cash to keep her more than comfortable for a year and assured her it would be hers as soon as she agreed to my offer. Three hours later, she called to accept.

  In a few weeks, she obtained her new driver’s license and a passport that had just been issued in the name I had chosen for her. I also had opened savings and checking accounts for her and applied for several credit cards in her new name. But I warned her that a careful investigator could still discover her real identity.

  Veronika immediately left for Vail and hired a ski instructor. Since she had learned to ski as a child, I expected her to progress rapidly. After only a month of lessons, she had placed third in an intermediate competition.

  Her call stimulated my fantasies. I imagined flying to Vail to see her. In my improvised dream-scenario, I check into a hotel across the street from hers. The next morning I discover where Veronika’s lesson is to be held and in the afternoon I rent skis and boots. I arrive at the cable car station wearing my ski boots and carrying my skis but still dressed in a business suit and silk tie. I wait until Veronika and the instructor arrive in his sports car. He takes their skis from the rack and together they walk toward the cable car.

  Veronika is dressed in a skin-tight white outfit with yellow side stripes. Its glossy surface gleams in the light. Her face is deeply tanned, her hair soft and shiny.

  I don’t wait for them but take the gondola that is just leaving. On the top of the mountain, I put on my skis and wait. Veronika and the instructor get out of the next gondola, step into their skis, and start down the slope, with the instructor slightly ahead. I follow Veronika, admiring her grace. When the instructor is far ahead, I pass her and come to an abrupt stop in her path. Barely missing me, she halts angrily.

  She does not recognize me behind my goggles and assumes that the stranger in a suit and tie is a clumsy novice. Just as she turns, I call her by her former name. She stops short. I remove my glasses and she recognizes me. Before she has a chance to speak, I tell her that I very much wanted to see her ski during her last days in Vail, but that I’ll leave her alone because she does not attract me on the slopes as much as she does in the city.

  I turn away and ski down the mountain at full speed. She attempts to follow but I disappear from sight. Farther down the mountain, I spot the instructor waiting for Veronika. I ski across the backs of his skis and race away. He is livid and asks Veronika if she saw the clown in street clothes who almost ran into him.

  When Veronika returned from Vail, I telephoned the bachelor’s personal secretary, pretending to be a European supplier. She told me her boss was staying at a private chalet in the French Alps, and gave me the name of a hotel nearby, where he picked up mail and messages.

  Two days later, I escorted Veronika to the airport and, as we walked through the departure lounge, I noticed that all the men in the room turned to stare at her. In a few days she called from abroad. She had already set up a date with the bachelor, after attracting his attention during a ski competition. In a couple of weeks, she telephoned to tell me she had become the bachelor’s lover and was about to fly to Chile to ski with him. She advised me to keep an eye on the society pages. In a month, he married her.

  Following her marriage, Veronika and I began to talk regularly on the phone. Before the year was out, the calls had become a catalogue of her complaints. She claimed that she found her duties as wife and hostess increasingly tedious; she was exhausted by the ceaseless travel to the same few places, she said. She was sick of her life and sick of her husband. I commiserated with her.

  Despite her disenchantment, Veronika had hired a press agent to establish her reputation as an international celebrity, and her photographs began appearing regularly in fashion magazines and society columns. She was shown attending a ballet class in Leningrad. She was photographed beside an antique car in Rhode Island and dancing at an after-hours bar with a celebrated rock star. A well-paid society photographer caught her skiing with the Shah, or reasonably within the vicinity of his person, and there was even a photograph of her in a tailored cloth coat visiting a Harlem orphanage. She disclosed in a TV interview that she was working on an autobiographical novel.

  During the second year of her marriage, she came to see me only six out of the fifteen times I summoned her. On three of these occasions, she stopped on her way to another appointment, staying only an hour or two. The third year, she visited me only twice, and both times she refused to participate in what I prepared for the two of us. After that, whenever I called using my own name or voice, her secretary would dismiss me with a transparent excuse.

  I decided to confront her at her apartment building. As she came out, I approached and embraced her like an old friend. Kissing her cheek, I whispered that if she didn’t go with me she would regret it. An attendant brought her car. I got in next to her and gave her the address of one of my apartments she had never visited. As she drove, I told her about a young call girl who had been with me the day before. The girl reminded me of her, I said, because they were both common hustlers.

  The girl told me, I continued, that although she tried to select as clients only well-behaved men, she still had had her share of accidents and arrests. One of her customers, she said, had kept her in his apartment bound and gagged for two days, while he ate, slept and watched TV. He abused her during the commercials.

  Another time, a middle-aged businessman had approached her in a hotel lobby. He invited her to join some other girls and his business associates at a party he was giving out of town. He appeared respectable, and when he offered her in advance twice what she would normally make in a night, she agreed to go. He had rented an entire motel, and within an hour his chauffeur-driven limousine had reached it. There, the men gave her and the other hired girls plenty of food and drinks, then asked them to put on a show in which they made love to each other and to their employers. By midnight, additional men had arrived. The night was turning out to be more than the girls had bargained for, and they demanded to be taken back to town. Instead, the men raped and beat them. When she was too exhausted to respond, they forced whiskey down her throat and ice cubes and pep pills up her rectum. Then she was gang-raped again.

  At dawn, the men took money and costume jewelry from the girls. Then they dragged them into cars and dumped them in the woods. After crawling for two hours, the girls reached the highway, where they were picked up by the state patrol for vagrancy and prostitution and kept in jail overnight. The girl told me that she had lost several pounds. Still, she wasn’t complaining, she said. Every profession had its risks and hers was no exception.

  When I finished the story, Veronika made no comment. She turned on the radio and kept on driving.

  We parked her car a few blocks from my building. I took her arm to guide her toward the elevator, but she pulled away.

  Inside my apartment, I drew the curtains and turned on the lights. Even before she could put down her purse, I shoved her into a heavy armchair, bound her to it with electrical cords and taped her mouth shut. She strained against the chair, and her terrified eyes followed my every move as I filled a disposable syringe with colorless fluid.

  I squatted beside her, removed one of her shoes and rolled down her pantyhose. Holding her leg fast between my knees, I found a vein near her ankle, dabbed the skin with alcohol and carefully pierced the vein with the needle. I slowly squeezed the fluid into the vein, then removed the needle and disinfected the area again. After pulling her pantyhose back up and replacing her shoe on her foot, I sat down across from her and waited. Not knowing what to expect increased her dread, and she trembled and cried.

  Had it never occurred to her, I asked, that the man who was now her husband had paid me to find a girl of a certain type he could marry and that she was that girl? Was she stupid enough to believe that I would let her forget her personal debt to me or that she could abort our relationship when it pleased her to do so?

  I planned to leave her bound in my ap
artment, I said; I would be back in less than an hour, I told her, but if, for some reason, I did not show up, and accidents do happen, I hoped her last thoughts would be of me.

  Turning off the lights and drawing the soundproof curtains behind me, I left the apartment. I locked all three locks and walked out from the building through a side entrance. I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to a run-down section of the city. He was surprised I wanted to go there and asked again for the address. When we arrived, I told him to follow me in his cab as I walked along the derelict-littered streets. I finally settled on three men, two blacks and a white, who swayed as they staggered, as if their knees were about to buckle. Their bodies were covered with lesions and carbuncles. They all appeared to be middle-aged.

  I took each of them aside, flashed some bills and said I was willing to pay twice that amount for two hours of his time. All he had to do was come to my place, where my girlfriend was ready for a bad boy she had dreamed about but had never had. Short of killing or crippling her, he could do anything he wanted to her, and I would be taking pictures of whatever he did. The photos, I said, were just for her and me, to excite us when we were alone. The men looked at me in disbelief, and when I asked how often they had been paid to screw a lovely young girl they giggled like pubescent boys. I handed each of them a cash down-payment, and they got in the taxi with me. In the rear-view mirror, I caught the driver’s disapproving glance.

  Soon, the four of us stood in front of my apartment door. Slowly unlocking one lock after another, I remarked that from the inside the door could be opened only by someone who knew the combinations. This, I added jokingly, should keep them from attempting anything foolish with me. I let the three of them enter first. Shutting the door behind us, I secured the locks. During the brief moment that we were in darkness, I smelled the men’s unwashed clothes and sensed their nervousness. Then I drew the curtains apart and turned on the lights.

  The derelicts saw Veronika sitting as I had left her, blinking at us in the sudden glare. They stared at her slyly with downcast eyes, like dogs who’ve been regularly whipped. I came closer, patted her head and looked into her face. When I removed the tape from her mouth, she told me she was thirsty and a little dizzy. I mockingly introduced her to our guests, and they smiled sheepishly, unsure of themselves. After I invited them to help themselves to a drink, they rushed to the bar. A pungent odor of brandy spread through the room.

  I gave Veronika a stiff shot of vodka, making sure that she drank it all. She demanded that I untie her, and I told her that our guests would do that. While I set up the spotlights and loaded the cameras, the men, still gulping liquor, watched me, waiting for instructions. I told them to take off all their clothes, and, when they started for the bathroom door, I suggested they strip in front of the girl.

  The derelicts began undressing clumsily, embarrassed that Veronika and I were not joining them. They hesitated before they took off their trousers, but finally stood nude before us, their naked flesh more fetid than it had been when clothed in rancid rags.

  I began snapping pictures of them posed around Veronika. Then I suggested they begin. I reminded them that she didn’t mind being roughed up. Veronika grew pale. She watched our every move. They hesitated a moment, then set about untying the cords. The white man approached Veronika first. As she stared at him he grew excited. With a twist of his mouth that resembled a grin, he grabbed her hair, yanked back her head and forced his mouth on hers. He drew her up out of the chair and raised her skirt. In one quick move, he thrust his hand up into her. She arched her back, writhing; her whole body tensed, pinned by the man’s mouth at one end and by his fist at the other.

  Now the other two men moved in. They threw her down on the carpet. All three of them swarmed all over her, licking and squeezing. I climbed on the desk and took pictures from above. The spotlights shone on her hair, on the embroidery, of her dress, on the derelicts’ gaunt bodies. The men’s arms moved over her like skeletons’ limbs, peeling off her clothes until she was naked and spread-eagled on her back, her arms flailing at the three scrofulous heads that eagerly bent over her.

  Looking at her naked body, the men momentarily stopped as if shocked. But they quickly regained their courage. Their hands ran tentatively over the length of her body, stroking Veronika’s flanks with their fingers. They played with her as though she were a small girl, passing her gently from one to the other. They rocked her in their arms, caressing, sniffing and kissing her, pressing their mottled chests against her belly and buttocks. As the alcohol built their courage, they began nibbling at her nipples. They sucked and chewed on her flesh, their bloody gums studded with a few broken teeth. Like leeches, they seemed to be drawing nourishment from her. When one of the bums bit her, short spasms shook his emaciated frame.

  Two of the men turned Veronika sideways, and, steadying each other with their hands, squeezed into her simultaneously from the front and rear. Her harsh moans rose to a howl of pain. Quickly, the third man twisted her toward him, straddled her narrow chest, and pinned her arms and breasts under his buttocks. Her face framed by his spindly thighs, his scrawny hands on her chin and forehead, he plied her jaws open and filled her with his flesh. The screams subsided into a gagged silence. I moved in for close-ups.

  The men were spent. They looked to me for further instructions. I suggested the bathroom treatment. They grinned, grabbed her by her hands and legs and dragged her, like a marionette, into the bathroom.

  I heard their snickering mingled with Veronika’s pleas, their wheezing and her retching, then silence, then again shrieks.

  Then it was over. The men, exhausted and giddy, dressed quickly, as though anxious to leave before I changed my mind and punished them. Each one seemed relieved when I gave him his wages. I turned off the spotlights, picked up Veronika’s clothes and handbag and went into the bathroom. She was lying in the tub, shivering and moaning, her eyes open but unfocused, her face, belly and thighs smeared with dirt. When I leaned over her, she uttered a short cry, then struggled to get up on her unsteady legs. She stretched and turned on the shower. I left her alone, locking the door after me.

  I escorted the men down the service elevator and put them into a cab, which would deposit them where I had found them. After I returned to the apartment, I was surprised to see how quickly Veronika had pulled herself together. She had stopped shaking and her make-up was artfully applied. I told her I had arranged the session to give her a hint of what diversions I planned for her if she decided to cut me off. I suggested that she have herself checked for disease, making certain that her doctor was discreet. Now she was free to leave, I said, but she would hear from me soon. As I opened the door for her, she looked at me and said she would never forget her blind dates.

  I called her house the following week. She was out. I called several times. She was never there. It was obvious she wanted nothing further to do with me.

  I began trailing her. Although she took great precautions against being followed, such as changing taxis two or three times and walking several blocks out of her way, I traced her repeatedly to the apartment of a sculptor, a young man who had recently arrived from Europe. In the trade, he was considered an untalented fraud. He would present his smaller sculptures to various society and show-business people who were known collectors, then use their letters of acknowledgment to claim that his trash had become part of their permanent collections. As he could hardly be earning a living from the few sales he made, I assumed Veronika was supporting him.

  I decided to visit the sculptor while Veronika and her husband were abroad. I noticed a maintenance crew working on various floors of the building the sculptor lived in, and one day, just after they all left for lunch, I put on a pair of overalls, picked up a spatula and a bucket of cement, and arrived in his studio claiming to be sent by the management to fix the cracks in the floor of the terrace. The sculptor led me out through a large studio full of partly chiseled blocks of stone. On a table near the window stood a framed
photograph of Veronika. When I finished patching up the terrace, he offered me a beer, and, as I drank it, I wandered over toward the photograph, commenting on how pretty the lady in it was.

  I began talking about women. I said that the day before, when I had been doing some work in the apartment of a beautiful woman, a model, I had overheard her tell someone on the phone that the man she had been seeing had left her. I couldn’t understand, I said, why some men desert gorgeous women so easily. I told him I wished I were dashing enough to console the model, who certainly seemed to want and need a man. The sculptor casually asked where she lived. I gave him an address, finished my beer and left.

  I quickly called the girl with whom I had made an arrangement. I described the sculptor and asked her to encourage his advances. She reported the following day that he had come by on a flimsy pretext. I told her to get him away from his apartment for a whole night. When I phoned the next afternoon, I got her answering service: she had left a message for me that she would be gone overnight, which meant she had been successful and the sculptor would not be spending the night in his apartment.

  I entered his apartment around one in the morning and went through his file cabinets, his desk, his closets. In one drawer, I found his personal diary. Reading it, I discovered that Veronika had met the man when she was a student in Europe. He had been her first lover, and their affair had continued over the years. It was through her husband’s political contacts that Veronika had arranged for the artist’s emigration. In a separate folder were Veronika’s letters and postcards, all written in Flemish, which I read with only slight difficulty. They were recent and had been sent from abroad. I flipped through them until I came across a letter dated a few months earlier. In it she described how easy it was to convince the world that her husband had given her the power to run his estate, and unlimited access to his family’s wealth. No one suspected, she wrote, that in reality neither she nor he had control of the estate yet.