Then it was as if a large hand seized the plane to play with it. It shook it, dropped it, caught it again, then dropped it again. The seat belt held my body but my insides felt as if they’d lost their place; I put my hands on my stomach to hold them tight. On the other side of the aisle a woman vomited, in front of me a man called for help, and behind me pieces of luggage came crashing down. Only when the plane resumed its peaceful flight did fear strike, not just fear of what had happened but fear of what might still be to come. It wasn’t over yet. The plane dropped again and gravity exerted its pull again on the body and its organs.
5
“That’s just how it was when we were together again. We were shaken and torn. It was like a poison. Sometimes everything went along calmly, but we didn’t trust each other. We eyed each other suspiciously till one of us couldn’t take it anymore, then things would get cold and cutting and loud and rough.”
He was talking again? What was he talking about?
“You were shaken and torn. By what?”
“That’s how it felt. Like the storm that’s shaking our plane. A force that’s more powerful than we are. We fell into each other’s arms in the reading room and I held her in my arms all night that first night and the nights that followed, and we moved in together, which we hadn’t trusted ourselves sufficiently to do before, and we thought everything would be fine. But she didn’t want to make love with me, and at first I thought, she’s traumatized, like after a rape, and needs time and tenderness and being cared for, but then I asked myself, does she still love me? Had a piece of her heart stayed with the attaché? Had things finally been not so bad with him?”
“With the attaché?”
“Yes, he was the one who had her abducted.”
“The attaché? Has he been sentenced?”
“She needed a temporary identity card to be able to fly from Geneva to Berlin, and we drove to the German ambassador in Bern and told him the whole thing. He spoke to the Swiss police, who said we should talk to the German police in Germany. The German police said they could only turn to the Swiss police. Nobody wanted political trouble with Kuwait. We could have gone to the media; after an article in Bild and an interview in Stern maybe the police and the Foreign Office would have done something. But we didn’t want to hand ourselves over to the media.”
“You suspected your girlfriend although she …”
“Although she ran away?” He nodded several times. “I understand your question. I’ve kept asking myself the same thing. But being overpowered and abducted and used can have its own sexual attraction, for women as for men. She had flirted with him and he with her. She didn’t want to spend her life in his harem so she had to escape. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have the sexual experience of her life with him. And her refusing to sleep with me and my suspecting her wasn’t the whole thing, either. She suspected me too. I had put her in danger by going to Kuwait, and I hadn’t done all I could have done after she was abducted.”
The cabin lights came on, and the stewardesses took care of the vomit on the other side of the aisle, the whimpering passenger in front of me, and the fallen luggage behind. My seatmate kept talking, but I was concentrating on the rumble of the engines, which didn’t sound right, and was no longer listening to him. Till I heard him say:
“But she was dead.”
“Dead?”
“It was only two floors up, and I thought she’d broken something, her legs or an arm. But she was dead. She landed on her head.”
“How—”
“I pushed her, but she’d hit me. I was only trying to fend her off, I didn’t want to get hit again. I know I shouldn’t have pushed her. We shouldn’t have been fighting. But we fought a lot then, it’s pretty much all we did anymore. Nor was it the first time we’d gone for each other physically. But it was the first time on the balcony, and my girlfriend was tall and the railing was low. I grabbed for her arms and tried to hold her, but she smacked my hands away.” He shook his head. “I think she didn’t realize the danger and didn’t know what she was doing. But I don’t know. What if she preferred to die than to let me save her?”
6
I grabbed his hand again and squeezed it. How could anyone live with a question like that? But then it wasn’t just the rumble of the engines that sounded wrong. “Didn’t you say your story was in all the newspapers and on all the TV channels? The media aren’t interested in a fall from a balcony!”
He took his time. “There was also the matter of the money.”
“Money?”
“Well,” he spoke slowly and awkwardly. “The attaché had told her he’d bought her from me. She didn’t really believe it, but it still preoccupied her, and she sometimes asked me about it and sometimes also talked to her girlfriend. After she died the girlfriend told the police.”
“That was all?”
“The police found the money in my account. As soon as the three million was deposited, I tried to send it back. But it had been paid in cash in Singapore or Delhi or Dubai, and couldn’t be returned.”
“Someone simply deposited three million in your account?”
He sighed. “When we got to know each other, the attaché sometimes made jokes and played the Bedouin who still lives according to his ancient customs. Ah, beautiful blond woman! Swap woman? Want camels? I played along and we bargained and haggled. We set the price of a camel at three thousand, and I drove the price of my girlfriend up to a thousand camels. It was a game.”
I didn’t believe my ears. “A game? In which you finally laughed and said okay and struck a deal? And when you went to Kuwait, you didn’t worry that the game could turn serious?”
“Worry? No, I wasn’t worried. I was a bit curious to see if he’d take the game further and show me a thousand camels or offer me racehorses or sports cars. I was tickled, but I wasn’t worried.” He put his hand on my arm again. “I know I made a dreadful mistake. But if you knew the attaché, you’d understand me. Educated at an English public school, cultivated, witty, cosmopolitan—I genuinely thought we were playing a harmless intercultural game.”
“But when your girlfriend disappeared—in any case when the money arrived, you knew who had her. When did it arrive?”
“When I came back from Kuwait, it was in my account. What should I have done? Fly back to Kuwait and tell the attaché to take his money back and give me back my girlfriend? And when he laughed in my face, complain to the emir? Beg our foreign minister to talk to the emir? Hire a couple of guys from the Russian mafia and invade the estate where the attaché lived and was probably holding her captive? I know, a real man who loves his wife busts her out. And if he dies doing it, he dies. Better to die with dignity than live as a coward. I also know that with three million I had enough money to organize the Russians and the weapons and the helicopter and whatever else you need. But that’s out of the movies. That’s not my world. I’m not up to it. The guys from the Russian mafia would simply take my money, and the weapons would all be rusty, and the helicopter would have gearbox trouble.”
7
I had forgotten the engine. But the pilot had also heard the wrong rumbling and perhaps he’d also seen little lights come on and indicators go wild. He announced from the cockpit that we would be landing in Reykjavik in an hour. There was no cause for alarm, it was only a small problem, we could fly to Frankfurt with it, but to be on the safe side, he wanted to have it checked out in Reykjavik.
The announcement made some passengers uneasy. No cause for alarm? Why would he be landing if we were okay to keep flying? Maybe in fact we couldn’t keep flying? In which case, wasn’t the situation in fact dangerous? Others started telling one another what they knew about Reykjavik and Iceland, the summers when it never got dark, the winters when it never got light, the geysers and the sheep, the island ponies and the island moss. Seat backs were raised, tables and monitors opened, stewardesses summoned. The passengers became cheerful, noisy, busy, until one of them noticed black smoke coming out of
one of the engines. The news went from mouth to mouth, and each person who passed it on then stopped talking. Soon there was silence on the plane.
My seatmate whispered, “Maybe in the storm a bolt of lightning hit an engine? I’ve heard it’s quite common.”
“Yes.” I was whispering too. It seemed to me that I could hear the engine grinding, as if something had inserted itself into the turbines and it was trying in vain to grind it into little pieces. As if it were wounded and exhausted and couldn’t keep going. I was afraid, and the sound of the wounded machinery was like the groaning of a wounded man. “What did you do with the money?”
“I know I shouldn’t have touched it, I should have left it there. But I have a knack with money. I’ve always invested what little money I had, and beat every benchmark and every index.” He raised his arms in apology. “Now I had real money. Now I could finally get going. In three years I turned the three million into five. What use would it have been to anyone if the money hadn’t been put to work? To no one. Do you know the parable of the talents? About the man who gives each of his servants ten pounds and after he comes back he rewards the two servants who’ve put the money to work and punishes the servant who’s just let it lie? For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. That’s the way it is.
“But in court I realized that other people don’t understand it at all.” He shook his head. “The judges talked to me as if I’d really sold my girlfriend. Why else would I have taken the money and worked with it? As if I’d killed her. Had she worked it all out and threatened me or blackmailed me? The prosecutor couldn’t prove a thing. Until the neighbor surfaced.”
8
I couldn’t watch the engine and the black smoke, but I was listening to the grinding noise. Till it stopped. At that moment a sigh ran through the plane, a collective sigh as the passengers saw a burst of flame shoot out.
My seatmate trembled and held tight to the armrests with both hands. “I can’t help myself, flying frightens me, even after I’ve flown around the globe I don’t know how many times. We weren’t created to fly through the heavens and fall to earth or into the sea from thirty thousand feet. Yet my head gives its total assent to death in a plane crash. You know it’s about to happen, you have a last glass of champagne, you say goodbye to life, and boom—it’s over.” He had been whispering again, but when he said “boom” his voice rose and he clapped his hands. The stewardess came and he ordered champagne. “You too?”
I shook my head.
After the stewardess had poured him a glass, he started talking again. “You know, I begin to feel at home in a new house or a new neighborhood only when I get to know people. When I know all about the life of the woman in the newspaper shop and I don’t have to tell her what I want each morning. When I know the pharmacist so well that he gives me my prescription medicine without a prescription. When the Italian restaurant a few houses down the road makes me a pasta that’s not on the menu.
“The neighbor who can see my balcony from hers is an old lady who has trouble walking and even more trouble carrying things; I often helped her across the street and up the stairs with her shopping. I like her, and she likes me too. During the trial she calls me up and invites me over and says she hopes she’s mistaken but can only say in court what she saw, and to her at least it looked like not only did I push my girlfriend but I forced her over the balcony. The neighbor had fought with herself about what to do and told me she was sorry and she was sure everything would clear itself up. Was it really me who’d been fighting with my girlfriend on the evening in question? She hadn’t been able to recognize me.
“What chance would my defense attorney have had with the court against an adorable old lady, a retired teacher, alert and lucid, and who also liked me? On top of it all an old friend of my girlfriend’s, a journalist, got into the act and ensured that the case made headlines and I looked bad. You know the kind of old friends women sometimes have? From school or even from kindergarten? Who don’t end up with the woman but cling to her obsequiously all through life? And make the woman wonder why her actual partner isn’t as clinging and obsequious as they are? He didn’t like me even without knowing a single thing about the whole thing. It was enough that my girlfriend and I were together.
“I didn’t want to go to prison. Because I was only accused of negligent homicide I wasn’t taken into custody and my money wasn’t seized. I got the money transferred to the Virgin Islands and myself out of Germany the night before the old lady was due to testify.”
I couldn’t let it alone. “Did you love your girlfriend? She doesn’t even have a name in your story.”
“Ava. Her mother was mad about Ava Gardner. Yes, I loved her. She was gorgeous and we never had any problems. I mean till we had the real problem. Going places with her, to a reception or a premiere or even just a restaurant or driving through town in a convertible or out into the country or wandering around the market or having a vacation in a hotel on the beach—we were a very visible couple and we liked being noticed. Does that sound a little superficial? Less like passion and more like vanity? It wasn’t superficial. We both loved the good life. We both liked it when the world was beautiful and we were a beautiful part of it. We didn’t just like it, we loved it passionately. It was a different sort of passion, not Romeo and Juliet, not Sturm und Drang. But it was a genuine, deep passion.”
“But when it wasn’t all beautiful anymore, why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you let Ava leave?”
“I don’t understand it either. When she began to cross-examine me and accuse me of things and judge me, I just wouldn’t stand for it. I had to defend myself, I had to attack her back. I wanted her to respect me.”
“Did you apologize to her?”
“She wanted me to.”
I waited, but he didn’t answer my question. Before I could decide whether to ask again or let it be, the plane gave a gentle shudder and touched down on the runway in Reykjavik.
9
The stewardess said welcome to Reykjavik, the local time is two a.m. The runways were empty, the buildings dark, and the plane soon reached the gate. We were told to take our hand luggage with us as another plane might be sent to pick us up.
Even in this situation correct form was observed; we first-class passengers were led from the upper deck to the lower deck and out of the plane while the passengers from the other two sections waited. In the lounge, which had been opened up specially, the first-class and business-class passengers sat together. The same first-class passengers who’d been standing at the bar in New York were now standing at the bar here. There was no champagne, and anyone who didn’t have his own story of a plane crash or a plane near-crash to tell listened dully to someone else’s. Why should they be interested in dangers that other people had escaped?
Once again my seatmate was standing there wordlessly. I sometimes looked over at him and he smiled back, and his smile was as faint and soft as his laugh. Otherwise I listened to the stories. Till a glass broke on the floor. The narrator interrupted his tale and his listeners turned their heads. My seatmate was the one whose glass had fallen, but he didn’t bend over to pick up the shards, nor did he wipe the stains from his pants. He didn’t move.
I went to him and put my hand on his back. “Can I help you?”
He had trouble seeing me and responding. “He … he is …” He felt everyone looking at him and stopped. A waiter came and swept up the fragments and wiped up the wine. I tried to lead my seatmate to the window, where it was quieter, but he declined with an oddly querulous tone in his voice. “No, not the window.” I looked around. It was also quieter over by the newspaper rack.
“Should I ask them to put out a call for a doctor?”
“A doctor … no, a doctor can’t help.” He took a couple of deep breaths in and out, then he got hold of himself again. “Over there by the window, the man in the pale suit—I knew he was followin
g me, but I thought I was one or two flights ahead of him. A couple of years ago he took a shot at me. I don’t know if he wanted to shoot me and I just got lucky, or whether he wanted to put me on notice.”
“He took a shot at you? Did you press charges?”
“Hospitals call the police when they have cases of gunshot wounds. I described him and looked at photos again but it went nowhere. In Cape Town, where it happened, there’s a lot of shooting, and the police thought maybe I just got caught in the crossfire. I knew better. But what good would it have done to tell that to the police?”
I waited to see if he’d explain.
“When I left Germany, I flew from one place to another and eventually stopped in Cape Town. If you have money and behave yourself properly, in South Africa they leave you alone. I rented the gatehouse of a winery on the edge of Cape Town, with the sea on one side and the vineyards on the other, a miniature paradise. But after a few months his letter arrived. He hadn’t written his name as sender on the back of the envelope, he didn’t have to. The story he sent me said it all. A woman runs away from the sheikh with another man. She’s his darling, the apple of his eye, as young and beautiful as the dawn. The sheikh is sad, but although he’s a proud man he has a big heart, and understands that a woman who loves must follow her heart. Years later the man kills the woman in anger. The sheikh, who has tolerated his property going its own way, will not tolerate that property’s destruction by someone else. So he has the other man killed.