Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  Jim was struck, though, by the notion—which had not occurred to him—that the kapers, i.e., Jeroen, regarded them as their peers. If it meant simply that on both sides there was a sound sense of power and its leverage—Jeroen a gifted tyro and Henk and himself old adepts—the idea, though novel, was not especially interesting. But it could imply something else: a mutual recognition. That tied in with a thought he had been pursuing—till interrupted by the arrival of the pictures—that the situation of a terrorist in terms of achievement of ends was hopelessly circumscribed. He was limited by the status quo ante that in principle he was setting out to topple. People liked to say that terrorism “could not really change anything.” And unfortunately that was the fact. The demands it was able to see satisfied were demands in keeping with the established value system: turnover of money or equivalent goods, supply of transport, distribution of food to the poor. Even the freeing of the occasional “class-war prisoner” fell considerably short of amnesty and was more like parole; the liberated comrade nine times out of ten was promptly re-arrested, on suspicion of recidivism, i.e., on sight. The same with safe-conduct; it saw the undesirables safely out of the country, at which point they became fugitives with a price on their heads, obliged to take cover in semi-friendly countries where as terrorists they found no employment. All in all, an unprofitable exercise of juvenile energy and imagination. And yet they kept trying.

  But what had his own career of bucking the system netted in the long run? A few immediate gains compatible with the status quo ante and no fundamental change. He could claim the fall of Johnson and the tempering of the war in Vietnam. But the fall of Johnson had eventuated in Nixon (which had to figure as a debit), and the war in Vietnam would have been winding down anyway. The establishment dipped into its provident fund and gave what it would not feel the loss of to dissent burning its draft card. He had been as much of a millennialist in his hopes as any “misguided” terrorist. Observing that, he laughed, feeling a real fondness for Jeroen. What Greet liked to call the armed politics of the underground—their euphemism, he guessed, for terror—was only the kid brother of minority electoral politics, with the same old Achilles heel.

  Coming out of his abstraction, Jim looked around him. Night had fallen, and they were alone with the paintings. Mrs. Cézanne in a blue apron was propped against the TV set, and the Titian “Gentleman in Armor” was opposite, behind the davenport. The ever-silent Yusuf was on guard. Contrary to expectations, the house felt lonely. Maybe Harold was right that the paintings needed reflectors, for the longer Jim stared at them, the more disappointing they seemed. Longer acquaintance was not helping him to see “new treasures” in any of these canvases, as Lily had promised him it would. The contrary, almost, was true. Probably a trained eye was required. He was relieved anyhow that the Marie Laurencins had been sent back to the shed. Johnnie’s collection, stacked up in the parlor, he found the most rewarding. There was something to look at in those pictures beyond pictorial “values”; some of them even told a story, or you could make a story out of them, and the animals were great, particularly the “Stags Fighting.” He also liked the fact that, as far as he could judge, the horse in the Stubbs, though a breed you did not see now, had its bones and muscles in the right places—Lily said Stubbs had written a book on the anatomy of the horse. By contrast, he was more and more bothered by that arm on one of the “Bathers”; he wished Margaret had never mentioned that it was “out of drawing,” for now he could see that himself; in fact it was the only thing he could see in the picture.

  He had no doubt that he was reacting like a philistine, like the two Dutch pilots, who seemed to be made highly uncomfortable by the pictures, walking up to study them with heavily knit brows, shaking their heads and turning away, then drifting back, unable to resist having another look. Like him, the pilots were more at ease with Johnnie’s pictures. Not Yusuf, though. It occurred to Jim, measuring Yusuf’s inflexible frown, that he was asking himself whether the chief had not gone loco.

  Art had a disquieting power of producing social embarrassment; Jim was familiar with the symptoms in Eleanor. In museums he had noticed that it caused people to make silly remarks and then laugh self-consciously, as if the pictures, which knew better, could hear them. It could not be just ignorance; displays of armor and mummies and natural-history exhibits did not have that effect. And even he was prone to it, for all his self-possession. If you were alone with art long enough, as here—or when he used to wait for a girl he knew on a bench in front of “An Old Woman Cutting her Nails”—you began to get the feeling that it was looking right at you. Like the reproduction in his grandmother’s parlor of a trick painting of Jesus whose sorrowing eyes seemed to follow you: the Hound of Heaven. Lily said there was a room in Mantua with a frescoed horse whose eyes moved when you did. Jim had missed that—and a lot else—in Virgil’s burg while wandering along the Mincio with the Ninth Bucolic in hand: “qua se subducere colles incipiunt.” Fortunately, anyhow, he did not sense the apples eyeing him—what worried him there was that he could not find anything especially clumsy in the way they were painted.

  All these ghostly and somehow demanding presences were unnerving in the quiet house. It would be better when Mrs. Cézanne was replaced by the seven o’clock news—live. He found it impossible to ignore them, though, according to Beryl, that was what collectors did. “They hardly ever look at them. Ask Mother.” There was some truth in that, Lily admitted. One of the boons, then, of being a collector was that you felt at home with art to the point of not noticing its presence; it was just part of the furniture.

  “If you don’t look at the stuff you own, what gives you the right to have it?” Victor. The paintings must have been getting at that touchy customer too. With his sprouting beard and blackheads and the boils on his neck, he looked noisome, as if he were coming to a head; during exercise, he had been playing with the rabbits, and he had rabbit hairs all over him. “The rest of the race isn’t all that jaded.” “One isn’t ‘jaded,’ Victor,” said Lily. “I think one’s constantly aware of one’s beautiful things—what’s the word?—subliminally.” “But tell us something,” demanded Aileen, whose hackles were also up. “What do you gain as a person by living with your ‘beautiful things’? Has it made you any different? Would it make Jim and me any different? Can you pretend that any of that beauty has rubbed off on Harold and Eloise? Why, Harold could be a museum guard, for all the good that being exposed to Cézanne has done him.” “Harold’s rather a new collector,” observed Lily. “And Morgan and Frick?” “But is art meant to be morally improving?” objected Sophie. “Think of Goering.” “Well, leave out morals for the moment,” Aileen agreed. “Show me any result. Really, having been with this tour of yours for a week now, I wonder…. I can’t see what this vaunted ownership has done for you. Well, all right, there’s Charles. I guess it’s made him kinkier than he might have been.” “They don’t claim to be art authorities or scholars, Aileen,” Sophie said. “Art authorities would be worse,” said Beryl. “Poor Ma’s just having fun.”

  “So art gives pleasure to man, can we agree on that?” said Frank. “It’s like God’s own delight in His Creation.” Lily nodded. “Genesis. ‘And, behold, it was very good.’ I often think about that.” “Come off it,” Victor retorted. “Is that why they take schoolchildren to museums? Stop dodging the issue, you folks. We all know in our gut that art educates. In other societies, they’re aware of the power it has of speaking directly to the masses, teaching them to be better socialists, better citizens. The trouble is that with us it’s fallen into the wrong hands. Forget the speculators. I mean you proud possessors that claim to have a corner in it. This isn’t the eighteenth century. The concept of the collector is so rotten by now that it stinks. Why, Yusuf here instinctively has a better appreciation of those apples than all your museum boards. Cézanne painted for him; he’s been hungry and knows what an apple means.” All eyes turned inquiringly on Yusuf, whose scowling features betrayed no interest e
ven in hearing his name. “I want to get this on record,” Victor went on excitedly, raising his thin voice and striking his fist into his palm. “In my considered belief, Jeroen and Greet had a great idea in liberating these pictures from their plushy jailers. The more I’ve seen and heard here, the more I salute them for that.”

  This harangue, coming from that quarter, caused less of a stir than Victor had probably hoped. “Has he been drinking? Where did he get it?” Aileen whispered. “Why, the man’s a common agitator,” Margaret exclaimed, not deigning to lower her voice. “Kind of an uncommon agitator,” Jim said, behind his hand, to Henk. Lily had overheard. “How interesting that you say that,” she murmured. “Why interesting, Lily?” “Well, I don’t like to say it, but I had a little theory of my own.” “Oh?” They moved behind the TV set. “I rather thought, Jim, that he might be connected with—well, with certain initials….” “You mean—?” She meant CIA.

  “What made you think that?” “Oh, little things. He seemed different from the rest of your committee. As if he didn’t quite belong. None of you knew him before. Then that mushroom look he has. The man from underground. I don’t mean to be snobbish. There are a number of well-connected, brainy men in that organization. In fact, Beryl and I have letters to one in Teheran—a cousin of a cousin. He’s quite out in the open, attached to the Embassy. But this cousin said that Teheran was full of them, open and not so open. They have a kind of investment in the Shah. That made me wonder, too. Then I couldn’t help noticing that Victor drank more than was good for him. They say that’s a characteristic of agents. The strain of the life they lead. The constant deception…But of course none of that’s proof.”

  “No.” He pondered. “Have you mentioned this to Beryl?” “Surely not. She’d laugh at me.” “Well, don’t. I’ve no more knowledge than you have, Lily, but if what you think is true and word of it gets to the Committee of Public Safety here, well, we could witness a real execution. Or if it isn’t true, for that matter.” But it was true, he felt confident, and it alarmed him for Victor that Lily should have spotted it. His own case was different; he was a pro. It had become evident to him, some time back, that Victor must be an agent. He had all the earmarks. Starting with the cover: half the university specialists traveling around on grants in the Middle East were working part-time or full-time for the Agency. Jim had nothing against that; as long as they confined themselves to information-gathering, they served some sort of purpose. Moreover, it stood to reason that the CIA would try to plant a man of its own on the committee, to observe and report back via the Embassy cable-room or maybe even to obstruct the committee in its work. As far as that went, Cameron could be an MI-5 plant, although Jim doubted it. Britain’s interests were not so tied to the Shah, and Archie appeared to be what he seemed: a burry don with no secret drawers about him. Jim doubted, too, that either of them would have been reporting directly to SAVAK, which would have made for an interesting time in the Shah’s country, almost as lively as a hijacking. In any case, the hijacking had made the entire question immaterial. Jim had mentioned his thought to Henk, he could not remember when—while they were still at Schiphol, he believed—in confidence, naturally, on a no-action basis. The cat by then had died, and Victor, they agreed, was at present more to be pitied than subjected to any form of ostracism. They had not spoken of it again.

  But that outburst, just now, was troubling. If he was trying to curry favor with the people’s army—which was certainly what it had sounded like, given the raised voice—Victor must be in a bad state. Somehow, presumably, he must have come to fear that his captors were going to get wind of the CIA link-up. Jim knew how such a fear could grow in a nervous mind; he had clients like Victor years ago when he was still practicing law. Every day that passed, far from calming him, would appear to increase the danger. And he had no one to share his worry with, no one to laugh him out of it, show him that it lacked any basis in reality…. Or did it? “Wait a minute, Carey,” Jim said to himself. Victor might have reason. That college where he taught in upstate New York might be swarming with envious colleagues only too eager to denounce him to the nearest “underground” news sheet—Jim doubted that Victor was very popular. And a story like that could be picked up and sent merrily out on the waves by an early-morning newscaster who found himself short of hijacking copy. From that point on, world-wide diffusion would depend on the conscience of journalism, often pretty elastic. Anything damaging to the CIA was considered newsworthy these days, whoever got hurt in the process. Hell, the revelation, duly supplemented by CIA denials, could have been carried already by the news services. “Over” then to Radio Moscow, and back to Ostberliner Rundfunk, coming home to roost finally on the kapers’ short-wave aerial, crowing like the Pathé cock.

  Jim’s imagination, he observed, was quite equal to supplying extra fuel to Victor’s, should it stand in need of it. And he had no difficulty in picturing the sequel: the “trial,” the confession, the sentence, the bullet-plugged body dumped in the field without benefit of funeral service. The only question was, would poor old Victor have the stamina to wait to be accused? Unable to stand the suspense, he might decide to anticipate the workings of revolutionary justice and accuse himself, claiming to have been “re-educated” by his current experiences. That way, he might hope to be pardoned, though Jim, in his place, would not be too sanguine. To maintain credibility, the kapers needed another execution.

  As he glanced at Victor, pale and silent, squatting by the sofa, his arms wrapped around his chest, Jim was feeling sympathetic vibrations. What had been passing through his mind was a troop of mere possibilities, but the possible by definition was a thing that was capable of happening. The idea suddenly gripped him that he would have to save Victor. He did not know who or what had made him Victor’s keeper. Perhaps it was a caprice—the old bottom-dog business—or Victor’s increasing resemblance to a bum calling out the Salvation Army in him. Or his obligation as a senator to a putative federal employee. Anyhow something would have to be done to rescue Victor from the fear he was in, before he did something on his own that was bound to be ill judged.

  If only there were some way of getting him out of here…That was the best hope. Invalided out maybe? On the next departing whirlybird. He asked himself whether Victor was capable of playing sick. He looked sick enough already—doubtless because of bad conscience and attendant lack of sleep. He was a hysterical type, certainly, and that type was gifted at working up symptoms. With a short inner laugh Jim pictured Victor receiving the stigmata. But of course nothing could be done without his cooperation. Jim sighed. He had no choice but to be frank with him, confront him with his guilty secret or—correction needed—the secret Jim was imputing to him. And if he denied having any problem? Or wept and playacted while admitting it? Jim was not in a mood for dramatics.

  To his relief, Victor came clean almost from the start. It was as though he had been hoping that Jim would confess him. “Apologies, Senator, for that goofed-up performance. I figured you’d understand. I was trying to plant the idea that I was getting ready to defect to their side. I thought that if I seemed to be willing to serve in their ranks, they might figure that there was a lot of information I could pass on.” He raised his eyes, forcing Jim to meet his look. “Actually, I don’t know a damn thing. I only had the one contact, the same one I met every time. You knew right away, didn’t you?”

  “No. Not right away. I expected there might be a Spook with us but I hadn’t yet settled on you. The cat threw me off.” “Funny. I thought you knew that first morning on the plane. When you made friends with Sapphire. I decided you were trying to show me you were sorry for me, didn’t blame me too much. You’re a tolerant guy, Senator.” “I’m an indifferent man, Victor. That’s my secret. Enough of these boyish confidences. What we want is an action plan. These folks aren’t indifferent. Before anything rough happens, you and I have to get you out of here. Do you know how to fake a temperature?”

  Victor did, and he could make his
pulse race. At once he was full of energy. “When shall we start? Shall I stretch out on the floor now?” Jim interposed a caution. “Let’s not tip our hand too soon. We don’t want Greet giving you a thorough physical tonight.” For the time being, he proposed, Victor should merely let it be known that he was not feeling too well and wanted to be left alone. Victor nodded. “Then tomorrow I can suddenly be worse.” “Tomorrow morning?” Victor was racing his engine. They ought to be careful with their timing. Victor should not have to play sick for too long; he was not a convincing actor, judging by the recent performance, and it might overtax his abilities to keep up the pretense. “Let’s aim to find out, first, when our pilots are slated to go.” The acute phase, if Victor could manage it, should be arranged to coincide, as if providentially, with a helicopter waiting in the wings. “But I already know that,” said Victor. “Tomorrow. Carlos said so. They’re just waiting to clear the flight landing with the Germans in Aachen.”

  Tomorrow morning, then, Jim agreed. “Denise can take your temperature and report it to Greet. She’ll examine you and order the Royal Air Force to take you aboard. And she won’t waste much time in the process. Hell, you might have a contagious disease.” The promise of action—any action—was enlivening. But Victor, all at once, before he had even started, developed cold feet. A discouraging personality: Jim wondered how the Agency had managed him, but they had experience with unstable types. “Maybe it’s too soon, Senator,” he argued. “We don’t know that Dirk and Pieter will be shipping out tomorrow.” “We don’t. But you just said that we had good reason to think it. And you’ll have to be ready to get onstage with your act.” Their roles had reversed in the course of a half-hour; Jim was impatient to begin, and Victor was hanging back. “I’m afraid, Senator.” “Fine. Let’s see your teeth chatter. But don’t overdo it for now.” Victor lay down on the floor. “I need a bar of soap.”