Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  A fight broke out. A group of women locked together ricocheted backwards and forwards across the room. Punches were being exchanged. Some women tried to hold others back. Someone screamed:

  ‘It’s a bloke.’ There were shouts of outrage.

  Ella moved towards the mass of writhing bodies that had fallen to the floor. She could see Felix Caspers with his hands clutched to his head as he desperately tried to hold on to his blond wig. Someone kicked him in the face. The wig was ripped away from him. One woman put her foot on his chest and seized his arm as though to wrench it off. Then people started to claw at his clothes. He had on women’s underwear. His penis lolled insolently against his left thigh poking out from under the lace crotch of his panties. Someone tore at it but he managed to cross his legs and roll away. Ella pushed her way through to him, grabbed him by the forearms and hoiked him up.

  ‘Aaah. I know him. He only wants to dance. You said you wanted to dance with me once didn’t you? Well, come on.’ And she took hold of his hands, crossed his wrists, dragged him to the centre of the floor and started to swing him round. People gathered round and started to take photos on their mobiles. Felix was half naked. He was no weakling but her strength was immense. He was gasping, swallowing lungfuls of air. She leaned back to get a purchase on the ground and swung him around. His body made ugly shapes, all knees and elbows as he tried to keep his balance. His false breasts fell out of his skimpy brassiere. He was losing his footing and when he fell she jerked him to his feet again. She whirled round faster and faster until he was unable to keep his feet on the ground. Then she let go.

  There was a crack as his head hit the doorpost. No-one moved towards him. They watched him crawl away down the stairs on his hands and knees holding his head where the blood seeped through his fingers.

  The shaken DJ had enough sense to put on some hypnotic techno, Terra Diva, hoping the wash of monotonous humming sounds would introduce some calm back into the situation. Everyone danced separately now. The desire to make whole again was enormous. The dancers moved alone in their orbits, each one trying to get back to a centre which no longer existed. Not one of them knew where the centre was. Everything spun further and further apart.

  At the end of the night a calm, lazy stupor overtook everyone. Nothing was said. Ella put on her coat and helped Manuela, who was slumped in her chair at the table, to go and look for her daughter.

  Then Manuela half woke up and said:

  ‘How did he get home without his clothes?’

  Ella shrugged:

  ‘No idea,’ she said.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Two nights later Felix Caspers arrived at my flat with an Elastoplast on his forehead. I mention this in order to exonerate myself from any blame for what was about to happen and to let you see how peripheral my involvement was. I’m only the narrator. I can’t be held responsible.

  He was wearing his airline uniform and looking nervous and agitated. Those were the days when Johnny Caspers’ imminent trial was all over the newspapers. His blue eyes had a feverish glint.

  ‘Good to see you again.’ He shook my hand with a prim handshake. Weight loss had made his Adam’s apple even more prominent. I thought how slightly built he was for a pilot in charge of such a huge machine. He shook his head and refused my offer of a coffee:

  ‘No. Sorry. I don’t have much time. I’m flying to New York tomorrow on a cargo flight and then back to Amsterdam and on to Tel Aviv. I hope you don’t mind my coming but Michael Feynite said that you had all his architectural notes and writings. I’m desperate to get hold of them. Do you think I could have them?’

  I wondered whether to hand the notes over to Felix or not. I knew the effect they would have on him. In the end I decided I would. I’d have to suspend my moral judgement but then it was only hanging by a thread anyway. I went over to the dresser and took them out.

  ‘You want Michael Feynite’s notes? Here they are.’

  Felix started to pore over the files straight away. There were several volumes filled with Feynite’s neat obsessive handwriting. In tune with his opinion of himself he had entitled his work: My Brilliant Notebooks.

  Felix gave a little snort of laughter at the title and then read out from the first notebook:

  ‘The times are such that we have to take individual action – an idea which I understand perfectly well is both noble and pathetic.’

  Felix looked at me:

  ‘I don’t think suicide is wrong or immoral, do you?’ He sounded defensive. ‘Some people find family life suffocating. I do. The trouble is I don’t really belong anywhere else either – or anywhere I’d like to be.’ He hesitated and then carried on:

  ‘Feynite said you might have a gun. He always suspected that you were some sort of hit man on the quiet. It’s a fantasy of his. I could do with a gunman.’

  Oddly enough, I had nursed that sort of fantasy myself.

  ‘Or you could be my driver,’ said Felix.

  ‘I’m getting confused here. I thought you needed a gun.’

  ‘I did, at first. I wanted a gun to shoot myself. Then I thought I’d better get somebody else to do it in case I couldn’t go through with it.’

  I was offended:

  ‘Oh no. I couldn’t do that. I fancy myself as an assassin. Shooting someone who wants to be shot is not the same thing at all. That’s not an assassination. That’s more of an assisted suicide. What’s all this about a driver, then?’

  ‘I thought I’d like someone to drive me to a secluded spot and then do it.’

  ‘Is driving all you would need me to do – if you’re now having to shoot yourself?’

  ‘I think so.’ He was smiling. It was all a joke.

  ‘Why don’t you just get a taxi?’

  ‘Moral support. In case I chicken out.’

  ‘Look. I’m not a hit man. I’m a novelist. It’s not my job to provide moral support. It’s my job to set the moral compass spinning.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Felix looked serious, ‘for a suicide to make any impact there needs to be something bigger …’

  He took off his hat and sat down on the sofa. His blond hair was greased down and crinkled in tight waves. He picked out more fragments of Feynite’s notes to read out loud, stifling a laugh:

  ‘Listen to this. “Violence has stayed in the cupboard for a long time. Time it began to push open the door.” And listen to this bit. “I am not interested in organising mass movements to overthrow the bourgeois order, but interested in killing representatives of that order to bring about a better world or in attacking physically those institutions which do people harm. The arrogance of the strong must be met by the violence of the weak.”’

  Felix shook his head:

  ‘I must take these away with me and read them properly. I haven’t time. Have I got all the notes here?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the lot. There are loads of his draft sketches here as well.’ I passed him the large portfolio and he opened it. The folder was entitled:

  ‘My passionate celebration of destruction and despair, joy and terror.’

  There was sketch after sketch of the magnificently designed ruined cities which were Feynite’s most recent obsession. Felix appeared to be enthralled as he flicked through them. For a moment he looked at me directly. His eyes widened then narrowed with shrewd assessment. He got up suddenly and walked over to the window holding his captain’s hat in his hand. His white shirt with a blue stripe and the narrow blue tie made him look like a young American chief executive officer. There was an odd compression to his lips. He continued to stare out of the window gently fingering the contours of the raised welt on his cheekbone:

  ‘Have you heard what Sursok has done? Sursok has destroyed my father. “God of the rubbish-heap. Bringer of smallpox.” That’s how my grandmother describes Sursok.’

  ‘Why did he treat your father like that?’

  Felix turned to face me:

  ‘Nobody knows. None of us has any idea.’ Felix stared out of the w
indow again for a moment then walked back into the centre of the room. ‘I hope the HCB bank crashes to hell and all the shareholders with it.’

  The vehemence of his hatred was startling. There was a silence. After a while he spoke:

  ‘I want to bring Sursok and the whole of HCB to its knees.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that affect your father too?’

  ‘No. It’s too late for that. My father is not going to escape jail.’

  The mention of his father affected him. Quite unexpectedly his chin wobbled and his eyes filled with tears that overflowed from the bottom rim. He nodded and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down again. He was in a fluster as he gathered up the notes. I had the impression that he wanted to rush away somewhere in private to read them. He picked up his captain’s hat. I saw him to the door.

  ‘Thank you for these,’ he managed to say as he left.

  *

  The following morning Felix drove to the airport. It was October. The sky was bright blue. On either side of the road blazing orange fingers of chestnut leaves drooped from the trees. Further down the road other trees were turning yellow as if sunlight were dripping through them. He was due to fly to New York to pick up some cargo and then return to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam for refuelling and fly from there to Tel Aviv. He felt a sense of calm exaltation. He picked up Feynite’s notes from the passenger seat and kissed them. He had spent the whole night reading them. Then he opened the car window so that the cool breeze would help him stay awake. He put on a CD of Missa Lumba sung by a Congolese choir and hummed along to it.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  The same sense of calm exaltation was experienced by Shahid as he waited in the flat in Javastraat. This was to be the night. He felt noble, spiritual and generous. He had prayed. He offered to cook for the others while they waited for evening but in the end Lukman brought them up some food. It was decided that they must try and eat despite nervous flutters in their stomachs. At three o’clock in the afternoon Sadiq and Abukar arrived. There was a tangible feeling of love and trust between all the men although at different times each one of them experienced a racing heart and terrible doubts. Mark joined in the attempt at cool-headed practicality. They smoked and told jokes. The day before there had been a trial run and Abukar in his nervousness had driven the wrong way round a roundabout. Shahid switched on the television and they watched the build up to the Feyenoord versus Ajax match to be played that night.

  *

  The Boeing 747 cargo plane which Felix was to pilot to Tel Aviv weighed eight hundred thousand pounds. It was early evening and the plane was on the ground at Schiphol airport. Other planes like giant white pessaries were parked in their designated spaces. Two mechanics in green overalls signalled to Felix that everything was in order. Before he taxied down the runway Felix took off his jacket. Eventually, the white nose of the aircraft lifted like a weightless erection and the plane left the airport. On the ground below the city lights of Amsterdam glittered like a spread of cheap jewellery.

  Immediately after take-off the quartermaster went to the back of the plane to check that the cargo was secure. On the manifest it said that the cargo was perfume and flowers. In fact, the cargo also contained fifty gallons of DMMP, a component of sarin nerve gas which the Israelis had ordered. While the quartermaster was in the back of the plane Felix Caspers quietly secured the lock on the cabin door. All flights had recently been fitted with these security locks. They prevented anyone from entering the pilot’s cabin. He had brought some make-up, a red lip-liner and a little rouge which he took out of his airline bag. Then he changed his mind and decided he did not need to put it on.

  *

  The towers of the HCB bank were clearly visible from the air. The flight path overflew the south-eastern outskirts of Amsterdam, the sort of wasteland that accrues round every major metropolis in Europe. Not far from the bank was a dreary estate of nondescript tower blocks called the Zuidermeer. That estate too was a landmark visible from the cabins of overflying aircraft. It boasted two run-down supermarkets and an overhead railway which gave out an electric moan as it rumbled along, weaving its way through the blocks at second-storey height. Local people called the estate ‘Sranen-tonga’, Surinamese for ‘bush-language’ because so many of the occupants were immigrants from Surinam, Ghana or the Dominican Republic.

  From the air the outline of the estate looked similar to the structure of the HCB bank nearby. The flats had a sort of bleak brightness. They tried hard. They did their best. Pa and Ma Tem had migrated there some years before and decorated their walls with paintings and carved wooden pieces from Surinam.

  A few hundred yards away in the Groningen block opposite, early evening lights were already being switched on and off in the flats. As families settled down to watch the Feyenoord versus Ajax football match, different square windows lit up or went out turning the block into a giant arcade pinball machine. Outside, a certain steeliness had already entered the autumn wind.

  *

  Just after seven in the evening with dusk approaching, three men were sailing their boat on nearby Lake IJsselmeer as many of their ancestors had done before them, indulging in that Dutch love affair with water. The colour of the grey sky was one degree lighter than the waters. Each of the sailors wore a waterproof puffa jacket against the wind. They were all looking up at the sky to where the Boeing 747 plane slowly headed east. One of the men leaned forward to switch off the boat engine. The droning whine of the plane engines receded allowing them to hear the sound of the wavelets slapping at the side of the boat and the irregular snapping noise of the sail in the wind. Planes in that area were often low-flying because of the proximity of the airport but something about this plane worried them.

  Their boat passed under a low stone bridge. The men ducked momentarily into the gloom. As they emerged into the early evening light they saw the plane tilt to one side and make an unusual three hundred and sixty degree turn back in the direction of Schiphol. The plane was flying low enough for the men to identify the El Al markings on the body and tail. It was flying far too low.

  The plane climbed a little again before levelling off. Now it was flying horizontally in the direction of the HCB bank and the Zuidermeer. The sailors could see that the plane lacked the rows of lozenge-shaped windows found on passenger planes and knew it must be a cargo plane. One of the sailors used the marine telephone to report what they were seeing. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past seven.

  *

  Groningen block stood directly opposite Kampen block on the estate. Marthi Brandt, a blonde woman with over-treated dried hair sat in her front room drinking Hoegaarden beer. She was angry with her teenage son Hans who had stormed out of the flat earlier. What worried her was that he would go down to the basement where the crack-sellers hung out. She took a swig of beer and went over to the window. From there she could see Pa Tem’s flat and the mad spiders of black and red graffiti that ran along their balcony. Ma and Pa Tem had been good friends to her when she was deserted by her husband. She envied their home life. Domestic accord was what she wanted more than anything. She felt that she was the only woman on the estate whose life was deformed by loneliness. The low growl of an approaching plane hardly registered on her.

  *

  The airport controller radioed through:

  ‘El Al 1917, just to be sure, you say that engines number three and four are malfunctioning?’

  ‘Number three and four are out and we have … er … problems with our flaps.’

  ‘Problems with the flaps? 1917, your speed is?’

  ‘Say again.’

  ‘Your speed?’

  ‘Our speed is … er … two hundred and sixty.’

  ‘OK. If you need to return you have about thirteen miles to go. Speed is all yours. You are cleared to land on Runway 27. Continue descent to one thousand five hundred feet.’

  The sailors on the lake watched in silence as the plane descended in a shallow gradient towards the level high-rise
tops of the Zuidermeer. There was something wrong. The plane was too low.

  *

  Far below in the Javastraat flat, Mark waited while Shahid and Abukar took it in turns to use the toilet, yanking impatiently at the chain when the cistern didn’t fill quickly enough. Sadiq, Abukar, Shahid and Massoud performed their ablutions, washing their hands and feet. When they had finished it was seven fifteen. They checked their watches. The plan was that they should go and park near the bank at eight o’clock which would give them time to make sure the truck was ready and the explosives properly primed. They embraced each other. Sadiq was grinning. Shahid slipped his copy of the Koran into his pocket.

  ‘We’ll set off at half past seven,’ said Mark. ‘It doesn’t take nearly that long to get to the bank but we want to make sure that there are no unexpected hold-ups on the road.’

  After a quick glance round to check that nothing had been left behind the men trotted down the stairs. They said goodbye to Lukman at the door and made their way past the kebab shop to the car.

  *

  When the towers of the HCB bank came into sight Felix Caspers lined up the plane manually and aimed the aircraft in the direction of the bank. Then he spoke to the control tower:

  ‘OK. We are at one thousand five hundred feet now but we have a controlling problem.’

  ‘You have a controlling problem as well? Roger.’ The control tower’s operator sounded slightly disbelieving. He could hear something in the background, a banging and someone’s voice muffled and indistinct saying: ‘What are you doing? Raise all the flaps. Lower the gear.’

  Then came the terse sharp voice of Felix Caspers: