Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  As a girl, she had hoped to be a linguist and travel widely, but her Southern accent was a handicap. She carried it over—pure Arkansas, phoneticians said—into whatever tongue she studied, which meant she could never have taught a language at the college level. History had been a pis aller for her, but her real field, she had soon discovered, was administration. Here her being Southern, as well as petite and a woman and single, was an asset; she was a friendly, outgoing chatterbox and knew how to manage people.

  Her seat companion, she noticed, had not filled in the green-printed card. She had completed her landing-card and tossed the other, which was optional, with a sort of disdainful shrug onto the vacant seat between her and Aileen. She was one of those tiresome new young women, evidently, who resisted all attempts at classification and codification, as though they represented designs to “co-opt” her into the prevailing value framework. She was not going to be helpful to Air France by consenting to be an item in their information-storage system, which must answer, Aileen assumed, to some rational need in the planning of flights, though, come to think of it, she was not sure how it served the company to know whether a passenger was traveling for business or for sightseeing or for “other purposes”—she listed some: death in the family, love, health, crime, though crime, if it paid, ought to come under “Business” surely?

  Aileen’s mind was fond of playing games with itself when it could not find a partner, using whatever materials came to hand; this was the good luck of having been poor as a child with scarcely a new-bought toy in the house. Only rich children were bored; she had pitied them when she had them in class and still did, though with less forbearance, when they came to her now in her office with their dissatisfactions. Her seat companion’s casual clothes and indifferent manner marked her as having been one of them—even though, by now, she had probably broken with her “filthy rich” parents: as a rising star of the “new journalism,” she could afford that luxury. She had yawned and slept throughout most of the trip, rebuffing the Air France meal and the list of things to buy and the earphones for the movie and yesterday’s Figaro, accepting only two cups of tea, without sugar, despite Aileen’s warning that it would be eleven o’clock at night when they got to Paris, too late to get even a sandwich from room service at the hotel. She was now studying herself, rather angrily, in the mirror of an old Louis Vuitton travel case and jerking a comb through her dark short springy hair which finished in a frizzy bang over her high forehead and in which Aileen had detected with interest two gray threads. On an impulse, Aileen leaned over. “Tell me, honey, how would you sum up, if you had to, our reason for being on this flight?” She was prepared for this advance to be rejected, like all her other overtures, including the kindly hint that it would be wise to take those boots off—the elegant skin-tight things she wore, all the way up the calf, were bound to make the feet swell. But this time the dour young woman smiled. “Interference with the internal affairs of another country?” she suggested. Aileen laughed. At least she had broken the ice.

  The hostess came through, collecting the Air France cards. The rector, in the aisle seat, handed his and the Bishop’s over, duly filled in, and thanked the girl for the flight, just as though she were a real-life hostess. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, sir.” “And our compliments to the pilot,” added the Bishop. “I will tell him, sir.” And probably she would; the human equation still counted in a 707. Aileen’s heart warmed to the two courteous Episcolopians (as they called them back home); they were her idea of old-style American liberals and not afraid of a good time either. Before lunch, they had had a couple of bourbons, and the Reverend had got slightly high, shaking his head in ceaseless wonderment and then going off into roars of laughter that shook his whole body, like somebody being tickled. When he relapsed into gravity, he was the picture of the “concerned clergyman,” all frowns and thoughtfulness, as though the fall of a sparrow had suddenly registered on his radar screen, reminding him of his duty to care. Aileen had had a bourbon herself and half a bottle of wine with her meal, which had made her want to talk, so that from her window seat she would lean across her uncommunicative fellow-traveler and address remarks and questions to the Reverend, before she finally got up—when the imprisoning tray was taken away—and circulated through the plane.

  But they did not like to see you drifting down the aisle or perching on the arm of a seat. She had been sent back to her place when the “turbulence” announcement came over the loud-speaker, and after that they had shown the movie, which she had watched without the earphones, trying to analyze what was happening and who the characters were. If she had had it to do over, she would not have elected the window seat, so confining; nor would she have chosen, necessarily, to be across from the clergy. Yet in fact she was glad they were along and glad they were somewhere close by, accessible to waves and smiles and a “Cheers” as she raised her bourbon glass. During the film, when the plane was dark and quiet, she could hear the Reverend’s loud carrying voice quoting from Scriptures—the Book of Jonah, it sounded like. Though she had been a hard-shell agnostic ever since leaving high school and disliked everything about organized religion except the old Methodist hymns, today it comforted her to feel that her spiritual welfare must be of interest to two experienced males, just as it would have relieved her to know that a doctor was on the trip, though she hardly ever caught anything more than a cold when traveling or a touch of “Paris tummy,” for which she had pills handy in her purse.

  The pair inspired trust, particularly the nice ruddy old Bishop, whom she had liked on sight when he appeared in the departure lounge. She had not been so sure at first about the Reverend, in his bow tie, semi-crew cut, and loafers—a masquerade that failed, transparently, to disguise his calling. He was carrying a swollen briefcase and a worn tapestry hold-all that looked as if a doting helpmeet or the Altar Guild had stitched it. The peppy “collegiate” tie had worked itself around to a 45-degree angle, butting against his chin. He had set down the bags to straighten it and adjust his large glasses, appearing utterly distraught as he stood like a lost parcel in the middle of the lounge, seeking someone to claim him. Discouragement and vast perplexity were written all over him, and no wonder—as she told them later, this was the most unstructured committee she had ever in her whole life come across.

  She had hurried right up to them, in her Southern way. “You two must be Bishop Hurlbut and the Reverend Barber.” The Bishop had let out a chuckle. “Well, Frank, you see? She knew us without our dog-collars.” Then he had taken her hand. “And your name, my dear?” “Aileen Simmons. Lucy Skinner College.” He nodded. “We nearly worked together. You came onto the ACLU board the year I stepped down. And where is your home, may I ask?” He had noticed her accent. “Down your way, Bishop, originally, and I still go back most summers.” “Missoura!” he cried, his dark-brown eyes lighting up. “Think of that, Frank!” “Over the border. Arkansas. Fayetteville. But we know about you down home.” That was a tiny white lie: maybe the older folks in Fayetteville were familiar with “Gus” Hurlbut’s exploits as Bishop of Missouri back in the thirties (hadn’t he said “God damn them” from the pulpit preaching against some mine operators?), but she had only come to hear of these ancient jousts up north—as a matter of fact, a few weeks ago, from her Professor of Religion, who had brushed her up on Frank Barber too.

  “Fayetteville. Simmons.” The Bishop seemed to be searching his memory. He shook his head. “And your mother’s name?” “Burdick. Catherine Burdick.” “Bless me. She knew my Rachel. She used to visit down there, at the University. She talked of a family named Burdick.” “There are lots of Burdicks in the area,” said Aileen. “But at the University,” the Bishop insisted. “Rachel Mackenzie, she was then, before her first marriage.” Aileen knitted her brows as if thinking. Her maternal grandfather had indeed had a connection with the University: he was the campus policeman. She was not ashamed of the fact but she doubted that her mother, who had clerked in a feed store, could have known the B
ishop’s “Rachel” as a girl. To go into this at the moment would only disappoint the kindly old man, so bent on establishing a bond, and it was possible that her mother had been kin to some Burdicks at the University. Most of those Southern homonyms were cousins, if not kissing cousins.

  The Reverend finally had had the good sense to interrupt; her genealogy could wait. He wanted to know whether she had seen a rabbi anywhere. “I don’t know as I could spot a rabbi,” Aileen said, with irritation. “Do you mean there’s one joining our group?” Two religious men were already a sufficiency. And there was still a monsignor from Spain in the offing, according to what she had been told. “Oh, Lord!” said the Reverend, sighing. “The mysterious east. So our friend Sadegh didn’t tell you. But I understood him to say, just now, that the rabbi’s wife was here. When I asked him if the rabbi had come, he said ‘Mrs. Weill is upstairs, in the departure lounge. She waits for you.’ Isn’t that what you heard, Gus?” The Bishop said that his hearing was not as sharp as it had been. “Maybe your rabbi is a woman,” Aileen suggested. She watched the Reverend turn this over in his mind. The thought that temples and synagogues might be accepting women for the rabbinate, while his own church tarried, would be uncomfortable for him to accept.

  “I was only joking,” she told him. It had been naughty of her. Having consulted Who’s Who and the New York Times Index, as well as her Professor of Religion, she was aware of the rector of St. Matthew’s (Harvard, D.D.) as an enthusiastic position-taker, most recently identified with the ordination of women, and the impulse to tease him on that sore subject had been as natural as breathing. But he was in too much of a flurry to recognize a joke. She resolved to be more careful in the future; the fact that she knew “all” about him, starting with his birth date (two years before her own), full names of wife, parents, and children, was a temptation to her mischievous side to use its advantage over the poor minister, who knew no more about her, probably, than he did about this missing rabbi.

  But who was the rabbi? What brain had he sprung from? In self-protection, Aileen made it a rule to be well armed with facts about any group she agreed to join. This applied most forcefully to omnium-gatherums such as today’s delegation. As president of a leading women’s college, she was asked in practically every mail to serve on a committee, sponsor a meeting, endorse legislation, sign an appeal, so that she had to pick and choose between contenders for her sympathy: “What suitors have we got this morning?” her PR man would say, riffling through her “In” box. So many of the demands were worthy and (if the unfeeling man only knew!) tore at her heartstrings. But no matter how virtuous the cause, it was the company her name would keep, if only on a letterhead, that she was obliged to bear in mind. In her position, she had to be especially wary of being tarred with a “leftist” brush; thanks to the wicked war in Vietnam, many of the old fellow-travelers had got a foot back into the door of liberal organizations, and the newer “movement” people, with youth’s short memory, did not seem to care.

  She had explained all that to the Iranians. This committee, she had pointed out, was in an unusually exposed position; in passing judgment on the Shah, it would be open to the charge of furthering Soviet penetration into the Middle East, which meant that its acts and membership, as well as its financing (she was glad to know they were all traveling at their own expense), must be above suspicion. She thought she had made that perfectly clear.

  Yet here she was now, with her bags checked to Paris, being informed out of the blue that a rabbi of unknown provenance, whose surname she had not even heard properly, had been added—and his wife too, apparently—to this tiny committee, which would have to live and work together in a closed foreign environment under the eye of the secret police. It was true that a rabbi these days was unlikely to be pro-Soviet, but if he was over forty and a joiner, he might well have sponsored some Soviet-American Friendship rally or signed the Stockholm Peace Appeal…. And a pro-Zionist rabbi would be just as much of a liability, given the tone of the Shah’s pronouncements on Israel. Another point, minor in comparison, but not negligible: supposing he and his wife were orthodox and ate kosher? Had anybody thought of the problems that would create? An administrative mind learned to pay attention to such things, which counted when strangers of different backgrounds were thrown together, as Lucy Skinner’s experience with the Black Muslim girls could tell you.

  He might be Reformed, of course, and have a clean liberal record, but Aileen should have been allowed to check up on that herself, at her leisure, and while there was time to reconsider. Who’s Who, for a starter, could be quite revealing when you knew how to read between the lines. Now, if he turned up, there was nothing to be done. You did not resign from a committee—because the organizers had misled you—at an airport, on the brink of departure.

  She felt incensed with the Iranians but also with herself: she had been lax. In a way, it was understandable. They had come to her with a letter from an old friend in the drama department; before he went to Lincoln Center, where he was now, he had worked in the Persian theatre on a grant. He vouched for the group of young rebels; he had known several of them personally and their families. They were not Communists; quite the contrary. They belonged to the conservative opposition and objected to the Shah on moral and traditionalist grounds. He himself had been greatly disturbed by the reports of torture he kept hearing while in Iran and he urged Aileen to do something to help: “Go dig out the facts, darling. And the country is enchanting.” Aileen had always trusted his judgment and she recognized his thinking in the list of names the young Iranians showed her, with stars opposite those that were “definite.” She agreed, with one exception: “Reston won’t do it,” she said, and of course she was right.

  Yet she ought not to have left it there. She knew that. Several times, in fact, she had been on the verge of telephoning the Reverend Barber, whose number she had found in the Manhattan directory, but then she had reflected that it was Christmas and he would be up to his neck in church doings, hard to catch at his office (she was reluctant to call him at home), and, besides, she herself had been frantic over the holidays, flying back and forth to chair two round tables, look in at the MLA meeting, talk to a Boston alumnae group—it had been as much as she could do to buy some clothes at the sales for the journey.

  None of that, though, was the real reason. The truth was, she would never have said yes in the first place except for her insatiable travel urge and the monotony of the New England winter. Teheran was dull, they said, but there were wonderful remote spots to visit if she could take a little time off from the committee: Naqsh-i-Rustan, Takht-i-Jamshid, Cyrus’s tomb at Pasargadae, Isfahan…. Once those breath-taking pictures had taken shape in her imagination (with some assistance from The National Geographic in the library basement), she had been unwilling, she reckoned, to hear any fresh facts about the committee that might cause her to think twice: she had to see the “Cube of Zoroaster,” Darius’s palace, the graves of the Sassanids, and the rock-hewn tombs of the Achaeminid kings.

  To tell a little more truth (it was wise to be candid with oneself), there had also been the promise of getting to know the Senator, a handsome man in his photographs and recently widowed. She saw them flying to Shiraz over weekends and renting a car to explore the country together, picnicking in the ruins; the others would not be interested in antiquities, probably, and, if some were, they could come along, sharing the expenses.

  “A rabbi is so darned important,” the Reverend was stating, as if to himself. He had sunk down on a bench opposite her while the Bishop had gone to the men’s room. Aileen made no comment. Instead, she voiced her own worries. “They should be calling our flight any minute now. What do you suppose has happened to the Senator? He was meant to be coming in on an early plane from Washington.” “Oh?” That was news, evidently, to the Reverend, but, unlike him, she had not been totally remiss. Last week she had had her secretary call the Senator’s office in Washington; his chief aide said that Iran was certainly on t
he boss’s calendar and asked the girl to tell President Simmons that the Senator was looking forward to meeting her. This had given her the right, she thought, to call again, and yesterday the same aide had said that, yes, he was booked this morning on a flight to Kennedy. But it was typical of Miss Meloney, in many ways an excellent secretary, that she had not thought to find out what flight. It could have been late or canceled. But unless you knew the flight number there was no way of checking up. “Mr. Barber, do you think you could just go downstairs and ask Mr. Sadegh if there’s been a message?”

  “Sadegh has gone,” said the minister. Aileen let out a wail and fell back in a heap on the bench. Unbelievably, while the two clerics were checking in, the Iranian had made a phone call and “discovered” he had an appointment. So he had asked the minister’s son for a ride back to town. “And you let them go,” said Aileen. Useless to wonder why he had not exercised some parental authority. She turned her stricken face to the Bishop, who had seated himself during this exchange and was rocking calmly back and forth with his big umbrella between his chubby knees. “If the young fellow wanted to make himself scarce, plenty of vehicles were available,” he observed.

  Aileen felt ready to cry. The Senator was going to be a No Show—hadn’t she always had the presentiment? The Iranian, somehow, must have known it or found it out from his phone call. “Then he just couldn’t face us and he ran away. Don’t you agree, Bishop Hurlbut? Don’t you know that’s what’s happened? I vote we go home.”