Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  His arch-sin and political crime was lack of humility. It was why he could never have been fitted for the monastic life, still less for the parish circuit, though he might have starred in the confessional. In politics, on the cocktail circuit, it was a crime he was drawn and quartered for every four years during the hunting season for presidential “hopefuls.” Back in the home territory, the folks did not seem to mind—the older ones still remembered him as an end on Saint Ben’s famous unbeaten high-school eleven and a crack third baseman on the spring nine. Even so, as he had heard his campaign workers say, it was a miracle that such an arrogant guy kept getting elected and re-elected to the House and then the Senate; some of it could be explained by the law of inertia, but the first time? Some said he owed it to Eleanor, a born campaigner and particularly effective with women’s groups, but most argued that it could not be all the wife, which coincided with his own view. He was proud but not vain, and each time the returns came in showing him out in front, he began by suspecting a miscount. True, it was a Democratic state with a mixed German and Irish population and a Farmer-Labor tradition, but the machine had tried more than once to unseat him in the primaries and never even come close. Natural causes, Eleanor included, were insufficient to account for the phenomenon, and he too was inclined to consider it a miracle, proof of a Divine intention that for its own inscrutable reasons had chosen him to be a legislator rather than a small-town lawyer and weekly poet for the county newspaper.

  Or an actor. At Veblen’s old school (where he had enrolled under the GI bill after the War), the head of the drama department had urged him to take a screen test, but Carey had thought he was too old and his mouth was too small, like a woman’s. The truth was, he did not care to be an idol. Yet there was an actor somewhere in his make-up, along with the priest and the ballplayer and versifier; he was a vocational mongrel or alley cat for all his royal ways. Like his only friend in the Senate, old Sam Ervin (now, alas, retired), he was a Shakespearean and resorted mischievously to quotation. During the uproar in the ’72 campaign over the question of homosexual marriage, he had fielded queries from the audience with “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.’ Next?” He supposed he must project a saturnine image from the depths of a private melancholy unfathomed by his conscious intellect. Though he was a ready laugher and chuckler, news photographers liked to catch him in a brown study or with an eyebrow that appeared to be wincing in cerebral pain. His silver hair (hereditary; his father had been snow-white at thirty) lit up the paradoxes of his public personality by contrasting with his soft, smooth features, unlined except for the amused wrinkles around the eyes, so that he looked like a Drama School performer made up for the role of a senator. And in fact he was detached from his simulacrum, though not totally out of sympathy with it. Like a finished actor, he observed himself playing his part and made critical notes; he was rarely satisfied with a performance and distrusted audience reaction.

  According to Eleanor, his greatest liability was his unwillingness to “throw himself into” whatever he was doing. “You make it so obvious. Some part of you is just standing there coldly and watching.” She was right, though “coldly” was a typical editorial injection—compared with most of his colleagues, he was an incinerator. It was something else that tempered his commitments; whether he was interrogating a witness before one of his committees or sub-committees or receiving a delegation of dairy farmers or “meeting the press” on the tube or simply copulating, there was always a playful element. It was in sports and games, as she noted too, that he was most serious and concentrated. “Anybody watching you play Softball would think you really cared.” But sports were playful by definition except to the pros; you could “give yourself” without equivocation to pitching or a game of poker, whereas in politics and so-called interpersonal relations, amusement was a necessary solace, like a boon companion you brought along to keep you honest.

  On the other hand, he was accused of “having too high standards.” He himself could never make out whether they were too high or too low—his expectations of humanity were slim. If it were not for God’s grace, all would surely burn—he had no trouble in believing that. Yet God’s grace was meant to be “sufficient” to each and every occasion, and on this cardinal point he doubted: judging by the evidence, there was not enough of it available for present-day needs. It was supposed to be limitless but perhaps it was running out like the underground reserves of coal and oil on this unhappy planet. A good man, like Pope John or this old Bishop, was now a museum wonder, and Jim Carey, as a born-and-bred plains democrat, could not help regarding that as a suspicious circumstance.

  Since he had left the seminary, he had never taken much interest in the question of whether he himself was a good man or a bad man; that was the Lord’s business, not his, to tote up. The sin of pride, in his private experience, was unconquerable: curb it here and it reared up its head there. God, who had made him intelligent, would have to allow for the incisiveness of judgment that went with it. He lacked charity. If he loved anybody, it was God, the only person to whom he could talk, who angered him (unlike his human associates, who, for all their efforts, could never fully rouse his ire), who made him happy in the contemplation of His handiwork, who filled him with a longing for union and abandoned him during long intervals. Maybe his mistake was to expect God to approve of him for his truthfulness, the only quality in himself he greatly valued. The theologians, his confessor reminded him, had not numbered that among the virtues. In their catalogue (lifted from Plato, as his confessor had forgotten), there were only prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. He feared he saw what his spiritual mentor was getting at. Since nothing could be concealed from Him who knew the secrets of all hearts, honesty was no virtue in His regard, and a man who laid claim to truth-telling was very likely committing the old Greek sin of hubris, aspiring to dispense a commodity that only the gods possessed. In short, his dry candor, so attractive and yet so disturbing to his adherents, was only another form of satanic pride.

  President Simmons was nudging him. He opened his eyes. Across the aisle, the Dutchman’s right hand was up and signaling for attention. “Please, Teacher! Can I go to the toilet?” Some nervous snickers were heard. “What the mischief?” exclaimed the Bishop, waking up. After a suspenseful moment, the gunman accorded permission. The deputy, looking now somewhat sheepish, made his way to the toilets; it was not easy to saunter with an AK trained on your back. “Whatever possessed him?” said Aileen. “Why couldn’t he just ask? Don’t you legislators ever grow up?” “He was testing,” said Carey. “Like inserting a straw in a cake. You must have seen your mother do it.”

  The deputy, Carey estimated, must be using his promenade to get the lay of the land. It would be interesting to know what the grenade-carrier was up to, and from the vantage-point of the toilet block both the serving-pantry and the cabin behind could be inspected. But before Van Vliet could return with whatever facts he had collected, a collective gasp directed Carey’s attention forward. In the entry from the first-class cabin, a tall elegantly dressed figure stood leaning calmly on a cane. “Mr. Charles!” whispered Aileen. “So I see,” said Carey. In the far aisle, the machine-gunner, intent on the rear toilets, had not noticed the new arrival. As the frail old party came abreast of him, he swung about, startled, and moved to block the way. Muttering something—an Arabic curse or an order?—he thrust the gun-barrel into Tennant’s fawn-colored waistcoat, which covered a slight gentlemanly paunch. “Nonsense,” they heard Tennant reply in his high piercing voice. “I don’t propose to return to where I belong, as you call it.” He made a deterring motion with his cane. “Don’t be frightened, my dear fellow. I have no intention of harming you. I have a longstanding sympathy with the Arab cause. And if you shoot me, you will simply waste your ammunition on an eighty-two-year-old non-combatant. I am quite prepared for death. My affairs are in order, and I’ve already begun divesting myself of my worldly goods.”

  He gently d
eflected the gun with his elbow. “Come, let’s not fence about. We both know you’re not going to shoot me.” Lifting his head, like a rooster getting ready to crow, he addressed a stage aside, or confidential parenthesis, to the cabin at large. “I sensed immediately that something was wrong. Engine trouble, I feared, when I noticed the plane was veering about, but then a little bird told me it was a hijacking. Not a word of sense to be got from the stewardesses, of course. So I decided to come back and investigate. When the steward tried to interfere, then I knew, and he admitted—he had to; it was obvious—that there’d been a détournement d’avion. Now, if you’ll just let me by—I believe I see my friends back there.”

  The gunman let him pass. Settling his waistcoat, he lowered himself into Van Vliet de Jonge’s seat. He sighed. “So much nicer, if one is going to be hijacked, to be among friends, one’s own kind.” The Dutchman came back from the toilet. “Oh, dear me, were you sitting here? I’m afraid we haven’t met.” Aileen did the introductions. “Van Vliet de Jonge…? That rings a far-off bell. Adriaan van Vliet de Jonge. The novelist. Now utterly forgotten, I suppose.” “His grandfather,” supplied Aileen. The old man sprang up. “How delightful. My dear boy, I knew your grandfather. Charming man, and so very kind to me. I was only a lad, you see. Before the First War, in Germany. I was doing my Wanderjahre, with my tutor. A house party, it was, in the Rhineland, near the Dutch border. I wanted to see Zutphen, in your country, where Sir Philip Sidney fell, and your grandfather arranged to take me. I believe Hugo von Hofmannsthal was staying in the house too. He had no idea of Philip Sidney’s falling in Flanders. Between ourselves, I don’t think he knew who Sidney was. When I happened to speak of the Countess of Pembroke—‘Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother’—he asked whether she was a guest in the house. But your grandfather knew. He gave me one of his books, translated into German. Splendid writer. Harvard has it now, inscribed to me of course. As I indicated to our captor, I’m divesting myself of my possessions. Two strapping young men came from the Lamont and packed up my library. Next I must part with my porcelains. At the end of one’s journey, one must travel light, don’t you agree?”

  “You missed something, Mr. Van Vliet,” interposed Aileen. “The most thrilling scene. ‘I am quite prepared for death,’ he said. With a gun-barrel right in his stomach, he coolly stared that hijacker down. Chapeau, Monsieur Charles.” The old man gave a delighted whinny of a laugh. “Well, you see, I have so little to lose. I mustn’t expect to live forever, must I, and in Boston one is mugged at every corner. Then one can’t get staff any more, so that at times one feels quite ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. But you mustn’t let me usurp your seat, Deputy.”

  It was not his seat, the Dutchman explained. “I was sitting back there, in fact.” He looked around with a perplexed face. “There’s room here,” put in Sophie Weil, turning. Before the old man could rise, she was swinging her long legs aside to let Van Vliet de Jonge pass. Jim Carey flexed an eyebrow. He had been wondering how long the handsome hazel-eyed deputy would resist this other call of Nature.

  Cameron and Tennant were now seat-mates—an ill-matched pair. “A sword cane?” came the screech after a spell of quiet. “Dear me, no. In my stick collection, I have a few examples, but this isn’t one. I don’t believe they’re permitted in airplanes. Quite right too. I should drop that line of thought if I were you. Had I been carrying a sword cane, I should have had far less moral authority with our friend up there. Unarmed, unharmed, I always say. Look at your London bobby.” They heard Cameron mention a “duty to resist.” Tennant cackled. “What a strange notion! I’m quite comfortable and enjoying myself, aren’t you? But everybody to his own taste. If yours runs to deadly weapons, they supply razor blades in the lavatories, as I recall.”

  The Dutchman and Carey exchanged smiles. It was a long time since an airplane had carried complimentary razor blades, probably not since the advent of hijacking. But the Bishop’s toilet kit would be well stocked, surely, with Gillette steel, perhaps even with an old-fashioned straight razor and a strop to give it an edge. In fact, Carey mused, a resourceful man would see this crate as an arsenal. The glasses they gave you these days were plastic, but the wine bottles were still made of glass; apparently Cameron had never been present at a barroom fight or he would not be asking for better than a jagged broken bottle. Or, coming on an opponent from behind, you could garrote him with a leather shoelace, such as the Bishop was wearing in his stout brogues. What to do, however, about a live grenade in an enclosed space?

  “Are all of you charming people traveling together?” the fluting voice inquired of Aileen. “Dr. Cameron and Deputy Van Vliet de Jonge too? I see. Now don’t tell me. I must put my thinking cap on. What can you have in common that’s taking you to Teheran or is it Tel Aviv?” He counted on his white ringed fingers. “My old friend Augustus Hurlbut, the Reverend Mr. Barber (St. Matthew’s, isn’t it?), Senator Carey…Why, you must be a committee!” He looked around him triumphantly. “I see I can take silence for consent. A bishop, a senator, a parson, the president of a distinguished college. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. A Dutch parliamentary leader, a don from the British Isles. A trouble-shooting young woman journalist. It’s as plain as Pikes Peak. What you lack, if I may say so, is a rabbi.” In the seat ahead of Aileen, the Reverend had one of his fits of merriment. He slapped his knee. With an air of contented malice, Tennant continued. “Now what can your committee be up to? Are you off to quiz Golda, poor dear? No, I remember. We agreed to meet in Teheran, didn’t we, Augustus? Ah, yes, well.” He sighed. “I fear I can guess your business. And the Shah started out so well. Charming man, I’m told. But a visionary, always so dangerous. And he fell under the influence of that dreadful vizier of his.” “Nassiri,” said Sophie. “That’s it, his secret police chief! A thoroughly wicked person. My dear, the shocking things they do to those young men in prison, some of them from excellent families. Well, you know better than I, naturally. That electric grill. They slide those young bodies into the device and toast them. A friend in England sent me a clipping on the subject which quite put me off my feed. It came in the morning mail, which I open while I wait for my toast to pop up. I couldn’t look at an English muffin.” “St. Lawrence on the gridiron. Old idea,” said Carey.

  “How clever of you, James. Yes, with all our technology, we’re relapsing into barbarism. One sees the proofs of it all around one. Sheer medieval savagery. I shan’t live to see the dawn of a new Renaissance.” “That was damned barbaric too,” growled Cameron. “Yes, one can’t deny that. But there were compensations—glorious art and literature. The main enemy of civilization—you’ll excuse me, Augustus—has always been religion, the spirit of fanaticism. Hunting down heresy, those dreadful dogs of the Inquisition, St. Dominic’s hounds, that one sees in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Today we find them amusing. We don’t stop to think that we ourselves are living in a new age of wars of religion. Persecution of unbelievers. One thought one had seen the last of that with Hitler.”

  “And Stalin?” demanded Aileen. “Quite right, dear lady. One ought to have known. But I confess that for a long time I simply refused to believe in the horrors of the Soviet camps. I opposed the cold war on principle and then, you see, I belong to a generation that taught itself not to accept atrocity stories. The ‘rape of Belgium.’ Now one wonders whether Kaiser Willy’s troops weren’t impaling babies on bayonets and crucifying nuns.” His shrill ululating laugh caused Carey to wince and duck his head.

  Though he had known Charles Tennant for years, he had seldom felt entirely easy in his company. By now, thanks to death and retirement, Carey had moved up (he reckoned) to second or third on Charles’s senatorial mailing list for regular advice and remonstrance—Charles never wrote to a newspaper but to selected members of the upper house, presidents, secretaries of defense and state. Those voluminous, closely penned “epistles” on pale blue monogrammed stationery usually wound up, Carey assumed, in the burn bag, which was a pity bec
ause Charles, while long-winded, was a sharp old bird and moreover had “done his homework,” as was evidenced by the quantity of heavily underscored enclosures clipped from technical journals, the Times of London, Stars and Stripes, the Guardian, Barron’s Weekly, stockholders’ reports. He was never without a silver clipping tool resembling a small pen and had a horror of photostats. As a moderately active legislator, Carey could rarely do justice to that hand-crafted correspondence (if only Charles had learned to use the typewriter or would dictate to a secretary!), but he kept a fair amount of it in a file he had marked Vox Populi. To his credit, the far-sighted old liberal had been an early opponent of the war in Vietnam; he boasted that his reproaches to Kennedy on that subject, though uncatalogued in the Kennedy Library, dated back to ’61. And on the day Carey announced himself as an anti-war candidate against Johnson, a check from Charles W. Tennant on the State Street Trust was in the mail. “Accept a thousand ‘iron men’ for your ‘war chest.’ Gratefully…” Dated October 7, 1967. Carey would not forget that. When, rising from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall (for he was taking some flak from the home front and from his old enemies, the columnists, who had hit on the word “lackluster” for his performance), he went into New Hampshire that brave winter, he would frequently find Charles, wrapped in layers of scarves, shawls, and steamer rugs, seated in a front row of the hall—generally a chilly high-school gymnasium—with a box lunch containing chicken and watercress sandwiches, a large damask napkin, and a silver Thermos of his cook’s bouillon on his lap. A somewhat unwelcome cynosure of attention, as was his antique Armstrong-Siddeley stationed outside, with a chauffeur at the wheel. “All that guy lacks is finger bowls,” one of the young campaign workers had commented. “What would you call him, Senator?” “A philanthropist, I guess,” Carey had said shortly. “Can’t you persuade him to stay away, Jim?” Eleanor had entreated. The old hedonist’s shrieked observations on “the quality of life” (meaning the hotel accommodations) in rural New Hampshire were being poorly received in the hall. “‘I know not the man,’” Carey had cited sardonically. “No. I won’t.”