by Betsy Draine
When we were comfortably ensconced, Maggie proposed an after-dinner parlor game. “It’s called the ‘Trolley Problem,’” she explained. “A British philosopher named Philippa Foot came up with it. It’s a test of what you think is the right thing to do. Would you like to try it?”
“Sure,” Montoni said. No one objected.
Maggie stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Okay. Here’s the setup. Imagine a trolley that’s lost its brakes, and it’s barreling down on five people who are tied to the track. Never mind how they got there. If you do nothing, the trolley will hit them and the five people will be killed. You’re standing next to a switch that can divert the trolley to a sidetrack. If you throw the switch, the five will be saved. But there’s a catch. There’s one person tied to the sidetrack. If you throw the switch, he will be killed. What should you do?”
There was a moment’s pause as people deliberated. The first with an answer was Klara de Groot. She put down her cup. “I think you should throw the switch. One person will be killed but five people will be saved.”
“I guess I’d come to the same conclusion,” said Bennett.
“Quite right,” Curry agreed. “Jeremy Bentham. Utilitarianism. ‘Act to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.’” Several heads bobbed in approval.
“Does anyone have a different opinion?” Pointedly, Maggie looked at Sister Glenda.
“What would I do? I would pray for deliverance of the people who are tied to the tracks.”
“But not intervene?” asked Maggie.
Glenda looked at her hands. “I couldn’t purposely take a life. It’s not up to me to play God.”
“Nora?”
“I don’t know what I’d do. I’d probably stand there paralyzed until it was too late to make a choice.”
“A lot of help that would be,” Shelley observed. “I can understand where Sister Glenda’s coming from. But the rest of us live in the world. We have to do stuff when it’s necessary.”
“I take it you would throw the switch,” said Maggie.
“Of course.”
“What would you do?” Montoni asked Maggie.
“I’ll tell you. But first, for a tally, how many would throw the switch?” People started to raise their hands.
“Excuse me,” Didier interrupted. “But your Anglo-Saxon philosophy bores me. Forgive me if I don’t participate.” He tamped out a cigarette and departed.
“The arrogant frog,” muttered Curry.
“I don’t agree with Daniel,” said Jacques, ignoring the ethnic slur. “It’s an interesting question.”
“Then let’s see how everyone feels,” said Maggie. “How many here would throw the switch? A show of hands?” Eight. The Currys, the De Groots, the Bennetts, Montoni, and Thierry.
“And who would not?” Three: Sister Glenda, Angie, and Toby.
“I agree with Sister Glenda,” Angie explained.
“So do I, but not for religious reasons,” said Toby. “I’m thinking of the guy on the side track. Doesn’t he have any rights? Who am I to volunteer him for sacrifice?”
That sounded persuasive to me, but so did the argument about the greatest good.
“That’s three against,” said Maggie. “And how many undecided?” One. Jacques Godard.
“Nora, you didn’t vote.”
I’d been thinking how marvelous Maggie must be as a leader of classroom discussion. “Sorry. Undecided.”
“Now it’s your turn,” Montoni said to Maggie. “You’re the leader here. So what would you do?”
“Well, the first time I heard the debate, I agreed with the majority. But ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ isn’t the only ethical principle that applies. According to Immanuel Kant, you should treat every person as an end in himself and never as a means. If I pull the switch, I’m treating the man on the sidetrack as a means to an end. Kant would call that wrong.”
“So you wouldn’t pull the switch,” said Angie.
“I don’t think I would.”
“Hmm,” mused Hans de Groot. “I see the point. You have two moral principles in conflict, so how do you decide? I would say that even though I regret the harm to the person on the sidetrack, it’s still better to save the five.”
“Good man,” Curry asserted. “No doubt about it.”
“You seem very sure of that.” Maggie sat forward in her chair and placed both hands on her knees. “Well, here’s a variation of the problem. There are still five people tied to the track and a runaway trolley is bearing down on them. But this time you’re standing on a footbridge overlooking the track. The trolley will pass below you. If you had something heavy to throw onto the track, you could stop the trolley. You look around, but the only heavy object in sight is a fat man, who is leaning over the railing. If you push him, you know he will die, but his body will stop the trolley and save the five people tied to the track. Would you push the fat man off the bridge?”
This time I immediately knew my answer was no. Pushing a bystander seemed obviously wrong. Plus it was risky. What if the fat man put up a struggle and threw me off the bridge?
Klara de Groot echoed my thought. “I wouldn’t push the fat man. The result would be too uncertain.”
“Is the fat man a Republican or a Democrat?” Toby wisecracked. I had an image of Governor Christie flying through the air and broke into laughter. “Seriously,” Toby went on, “don’t you have to know something about these people in order to make a choice? Say the fat man was a brilliant surgeon and the five men on the track were condemned murderers?”
“You don’t have that kind of information,” Maggie said.
“Besides,” Curry added, his voice harsh with irritation, “you can’t make decisions like that based on your judgment of people. That would be purely subjective. You need a logical principle, and you should stick to it. I say the greatest good for the greatest number. So, yes, I would throw the switch, and yes, I would push the fat man.”
“Even if he were your father?” asked Toby. “Or your son?”
Curry became flustered. “Now you want to make me look ridiculous. You keep doing that.”
“I’m not trying to offend you,” said Toby. “Just trying to make a point.”
“At my expense.” Curry addressed the room. “This man keeps provoking me. I’m not going to sit here and take any more of his insults. Come, Jane.” Grasping his wife by the wrist, he tugged her out of her chair and pulled her toward the hall. Jane gave Maggie a helpless look, but she went with her husband.
“Well,” said Maggie. “I see I’m beginning to lose my audience. The point I was leading up to is that while most people say it’s right to throw the switch, they say it’s wrong to throw the fat man off the bridge, even if they can’t explain why. But from an ethical point of view, the situations are exactly the same. It must be the idea of physical contact that makes people squeamish about pushing the fat man to save the others. Interesting, eh?”
“I’ve got another scenario,” said Shelley.
“Be my guest,” said Maggie, sitting back and crossing her ankles again. Shelley squared her shoulders. “This time, say you’re walking on a train trestle high above a ravine and suddenly a train is coming at you. There’s nowhere to escape except a small platform a few steps ahead of you. The platform only has room for one person, but there’s a fat man already standing on it. So, do you push him off to save yourself ?”
Angie looked shocked. No one volunteered an answer. “Would you?” Maggie asked Shelley.
“I just might.”
“You wouldn’t,” said her husband.
“If it was him or me? Don’t be too sure.”
“But would it be right?” asked Maggie.
“You know what?” Shelley replied. “In a real emergency, people act on instinct. Afterward they come up with reasons for what they did.”
After that quip, the party wound down. On our way out we had to pass through the bar again, but it turned o
ut not everyone was ready to call it a night. Bruce and Jane Curry were sitting at one of the small cocktail tables, sipping port. Montoni and the Bennetts decided to linger and made a threesome at a separate table. The rest of our troop exited into the cool night air, where the shuttles were waiting to return us to the hotel.
Toby looked up at the ramparts. In the spotlights, the ancient walls glowed like moist amber. “You know, there’s something I’ve wanted to do since the day we got here: walk the parapets at night. This is my chance.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I knew you’d say that. Look, we probably won’t be here again at night. I can do the whole circuit in twenty minutes. I’ve already done it.”
“That was in daylight.”
“Yes, and now I want to see what the village looks like at night from up there. I’ll be careful, I promise.” We went back and forth, and after some sweet cajoling, I gave in. I know. I shouldn’t have.
“Forget something?” Montoni asked, looking up as I reentered the bar.
“It’s Toby. He forgot to grow up.” I explained what was happening.
“You can have a nightcap with us while you’re waiting.” Ray pulled an extra chair up to the table. “What would you like?”
I ordered a pot of tea and made a trip to the restroom downstairs. I wasn’t gone long, but when I returned, Shelley and Jane were alone in the bar, and Shelley was patting Jane’s shoulder.
“What’s going on?”
Jane looked miserable. “It’s Bruce. As soon as you left, he said your husband had made a fool of him, and he ran outside. He said they were going to have it out.”
Shelley read the alarm on my face. “Ray and Ben went after him,” she said. “But Ray’s had a lot to drink, and Ben doesn’t like heights. I don’t think they’ll be much help if Bruce gets to the ramparts.”
“Can you warn Toby?” Jane asked. “Does he have a phone with him?”
Damn it, he didn’t. I was the only one in the family with a phone that worked in France. “Did they all leave together?”
“Bruce had a head start,” said Jane. “Ray and Ben argued for a minute over what to do.”
“I better go. Maybe I can catch up with them.”
It’s a good thing I wasn’t in high heels. I bounded onto the terrace and ran past the man guarding the gate. His chin jerked up. Four guests had just run out the door. That wasn’t how an evening at the Colombe d’Or was meant to end.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the glow of a cigarette and saw Didier standing in the doorway of the café opposite the restaurant, looking across the boules court, watching.
Which way to go? The other day, when Maggie and I were walking outside the village wall, we saw a flight of stairs leading from the path to the top of the ramparts. We didn’t try it, for several reasons. The steps were uneven, worn down by centuries of weather. They were narrow too, as if made for smaller feet than ours. The left edge of the steps was braced against the wall, but the right edge had no railing. An iron bar blocked the stairway. A youngster might take that as a challenge to leap over. Maggie and I had decided to obey the warning. I wasn’t eager now to attempt what I hadn’t dared in the light of day.
Within the village, there were several flights of stairs leading to the ramparts, but how to locate them in the dark? Then I remembered that the lookout near the cemetery was level with the parapets. It was at the farthest end of town—an uphill climb—but I knew I could get easy access from there. I hoped that if I ran fast enough, I’d catch up with Ray and Ben.
The distance seemed endless. I tripped on uneven pavestones and ran into a ground-floor flowerbox as I rounded a corner. When I reached the square at the end of the path, I was frustrated to see that the lookout was dark as a closet. The town fathers must have decided to discourage nighttime wall walkers. The weak glow of a cloud-covered moon cast only enough light to mark the top of coal-black walls, almost indistinguishable from the ground in front of them.
The phantom image of Toby on the ramparts, struggling with Curry, kept me moving forward, even when I saw the white sign I remembered from my first visit to the lookout. In the darkness, it was only a blur. In daylight, the message had been clear: “Dangerous to mount walls. The village refuses any responsibility in case of accident.” I blindly mounted the steps to the lookout, and going by memory from my previous visit, turned left and felt my way to the iron barrier, here so low that it almost said, “Oh, all right—go ahead.”
I stepped over the bar and felt around to get my bearings. With my right hand, I held on to a thin, stone guard-wall at thigh height. I was leaning over a virtual abyss. Fear brought my left hand next to the right. Secure there and on my well-planted right foot, I swept my left foot to the side and then behind me. I found the edge of the wall and estimated that the top of the rampart, my walkway, was about two feet wide. I prayed that it wouldn’t narrow and that the guard-wall wouldn’t drop so low that I couldn’t use it for balance. In the daytime, a daredevil like Toby might not need it. He’d just prance along. But this was nighttime, and when I tried walking forward, keeping only my right hand on the guard-wall, I felt like I was balancing on a wire.
I couldn’t go on like that, so I faced the guard-wall with both my hands holding its top and inched sideways, like a sneak-thief on a window ledge. I took twenty steps that way—I was counting. Then I began lifting my right hand every couple of steps and swinging my left hand forward to give me balance. I must have looked like an orangutan to anyone with night vision. I was moving carefully and listening for someone ahead of me. I could see better as I moved along, perhaps because I was approaching housing and streetlights.
Gingerly, I picked my way along in the direction of the village entrance. On my left I passed a flight of stone stairs descending to the road inside the ramparts. If the others had come up on that stairway, they would be far ahead of me by now. On my right, the guard-wall was jagged and uneven. In places it had eroded, leaving gaping holes. I could topple right over it, into the ravine. And to make matters worse, tendrils of fog drifted along the narrow walkway. I called Toby’s name but got no response.
I had gone some distance by the time I caught a glimpse—far ahead—of a figure moving even more slowly than I was. I called out, “Toby!” He stopped for a moment and then took off at a reckless lope. That wasn’t Toby. I struggled to follow him and called again, “Professor Curry! Is that you?” I picked up my pace, all the while trying to peer ahead through the gloom.
I lurched and gasped. I had stumbled on a medieval pothole, a spot where the surface of the walkway was broken. I grabbed the guard-wall and brought my feet back to balance. In that crouched position, I heard footsteps on my right. I tried to rise and turn in that direction, but before I could see who it was, he slammed me back against the wall. My feet started to slip out from underneath me. In panic, I swirled round to grab the guard-wall again, but the force of my turn was too great, and I felt myself going over, my legs kicking to find a purchase.
Somehow I managed to hold on to the top of the guard-wall with one hand. Desperately, I reached up with the other hand and got hold of a jagged piece of stone. Thank God, the stone was firm and I didn’t lose my grip. But I was dangling over the ravine.
Dread drove me to dig my left knee into the wall while my right foot clawed until it found a rough piece of stonework big enough to support the toe of my shoe. Resting my weight on it relieved the pressure on my hands, but I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up. There was no way I could maintain my position. I screamed as I do in dreams—without breath, silently, failing to call out. For a moment, I despaired. Then I breathed in and made a body-breaking effort to raise myself up. That didn’t work, and I called, “Help!”
My fingers were cramping and losing their grip. My left knee was slipping toward the ravine. I kept calling out. Finally someone shouted, “Where are you?”
“Here! Here!”
“Hold on. I’m coming.”
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sp; In another moment a pair of big hands gripped me by the wrists and began pulling me up. The hands belonged to Ray Montoni. With his effort and mine, my waist reached the top of the parapet, and we struggled until I slumped onto the walkway. Fearing another fall, I positioned my back against the guard-wall and slowly lengthened my body out. I was taking no more chances with balance. “Thank God you came along,” I gasped. “I was falling.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Someone rushed by me and pushed me over the edge. I could have been killed.”
“Was it Curry?” Ray asked.
“I didn’t see.” My shoulders ached, and my knees felt scraped. But that was nothing to my hands. They were on fire. “Where are the others?” I managed to ask. “Have you seen Toby?”
“I haven’t seen anyone. Ben was lagging behind me, but he’s not here now.”
“What about Curry?”
“No sign of him either.”
“Which way did you come from?” I asked. Ray pointed in the direction I was heading. “You didn’t pass Curry? I thought I saw him running ahead of me. I know I saw somebody running that way. You didn’t see anyone?”
“No. Maybe he climbed down. Look, are you hurt?”
“A little.”
He helped me to my feet. “Are you able to walk?”
I took a few steps, testing. “Yes. We need to find Toby.”
We inched our way ahead until Toby suddenly emerged from the mist, hurrying toward us. “Nora! I heard you shouting. What are you doing up here?”
“Curry said he was going after you. We were afraid he’d find you and there’d be trouble.”
“There’s trouble, all right. I just spotted him back there,” Toby gestured behind him. “He’s at the foot of the ramparts. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
