Cannibals and Missionaries

by Mary McCarthy

  In any case, Yusuf was a source of disaffection. He was intent on revising the demands and on starting to kill hostages to enforce the one close to his heart. “He has a cousin, you must know, that the Israelis are torturing.” And he had half won over Hussein. “But the Germans?” That was different, Jeroen said. The Germans and Carlos, more developed politically, were in full agreement with the demands as they stood. But they, too, were arguing that it was time to kill a first hostage. “So you are outnumbered.” “Not altogether. Among themselves, the comrades disagree on the timing and order of the executions. The German comrades prefer to go slow and to start with you, Deputy. The Arab comrades would start with the Jewish woman.” Henk felt himself turn pale. “You need not be afraid,” Greet said with a smile. “This dissension means that we are still masters. But you must offer us a solution.”

  There was no solution, Henk thought, and, before long, Jeroen would see that. The woman already knew. Surrender with promise of safe-conduct might still be acceptable to the authorities but not any longer to the comrades, he judged from what he had heard. Some, at least, among them were on a suicidal course. In his clever planning—admirable, the touch of the German “television team” that the boer had told of!—Jeroen had overlooked the time factor. For all concerned, this had gone on too long. Nevertheless he pondered. If there was no visible solution, there could be an immediate alternative that would take the edge off their hunger for executions. A substitute could be offered, as in an old story. Instead of a hostage, why not a painting? One not sufficiently “priceless” to seem a flagrant provocation. A Marie Laurencin? As he spoke the words, he felt a strange sorrow, as though he were condemning a frail living thing—a moth or butterfly—to death.

  Jeroen and Greet nodded. He had chosen well. “We shall tell the comrades that this is our decision.” The door opened. Horst and Elfride entered. “Ah,” said Horst in German, “you are instructing the prisoner to tape an appeal? Excellent!” Henk closed his eyes. He had hoped to avoid that stupid imperative. But the Germans, evidently, had been conferring too. They had decided that a plea from the deputy might work as well, for the time being, as an execution; finding him there persuaded them that the other two had come to the same conclusion. Henk shrugged and looked at Jeroen. It could have no effect on The Hague, but, if Jeroen wanted it, he would do it. He had enlisted, he saw, as Jeroen’s ally and Greet’s in their contest with their own dissident elements. That was the result of having been taken into their confidence; he would do whatever would help them. An hour ago, if ordered to tape an appeal, he would have cheerfully refused, not desiring to sound like a fool or a coward to his governmental colleagues. And when it became known that he had made a tape for transmission—should that be Jeroen’s will—his fellow-hostages would be surprised and shocked. They would not have expected that of him. Even if he did not immediately tell them what he had done, there would be no way of concealing the fact from them: tonight he would be back on the screen—still campaigning or talking with the Queen in her feathers at the opening of Parliament—as his craven words were registered on the sound track. He felt sad in advance for Sophie. She would not know what led him to it; that a majority of the kapers had been calling for executions was a fearsome thing he must keep from her.

  “And what, pray, am I to beg of my government?” Acceptance, of course, of the second demand. “You will add,” said Elfride, “that if they fail to give a positive response, acts of justice from our side will commence.” Jeroen met his eyes; he, too, shrugged. This must mean that he, too, saw the futility of it. “You will state in your own words what the comrades require.” In the end, the tape was dispensed with. With the four standing over him, he sat in a chair and spoke directly to the shortwave radio. Though the idiot words were shaming, when he had finished, he felt satisfied, rather proud. He had been careful to keep his voice light to obviate the suspicion that he had been tortured or drugged.

  Horst and Elfride went out. Jeroen and Greet remained with the radio. “You expect a response?” said Henk. “You ironize, Van Vliet de Jonge,” Jeroen answered, without hostility. “You do not believe there will be one.” “In any case, negative. I have told you why already. Nothing has changed.” “I would like to hear again,” Greet said. Wearily, Henk repeated the arguments demonstrating the impossibility of the second demand. As he spoke, he felt compunction for Jeroen; if finally he was convincing him, brute force of reason was killing a long-held dream. He was sorry for that; it would have been wonderful if the brave fellow, single-handed and by sheer persistence, could have taken the Lowlands out of NATO. He would have gone down in the national annals like William the Silent or the boy with his finger in the dike. “You have only your will on your side, Jeroen. Den Uyl has reality—the power of circumstances. His individual will does not count. You see a battle of wills but you are wrong. It is your single will against the inertia of facts. Holland will not send the NATO forces away unless many facts change and evolve, of their own weight, independently.” The woman was nodding. Jeroen only stared at the silent radio. He drew a deep breath. “It is exercise time,” he said. “You will go out with the others, Van Vliet de Jonge. And you also, Greet. Everyone must have exercise today. I order it.”

  Henk’s conscience misgave him. Jeroen’s voice was dull; there was the lead of despair in it, and his arms hung heavily by his sides. With a violent gesture, he had turned off the radio. It had been wrong to discourage the dream without offering something in its place. “Look, Jeroen, here is another thought. Why not sensibly ask for a food drop? They will accept, because of the hostages, and the mood of your comrades will soften. Hungry men are prone to mutiny. Then we can think together of what is to be done.” “He is right, Jeroen,” said Greet with a sigh. Jeroen smiled. “Thank you. You are a man of good will. I have seen that. It is a pity that your lot has been cast with the class enemy. Yes, we will consider, as you say, what is to be done. Yet if we give up our second demand, what is left? Nothing.” Henk was silent. “You have not killed anyone,” he said finally. “That is in your favor.” “If we surrender, you imply….” “He implies that the imperialists will allow us safe-conduct out of the country,” said Greet, “Since you’ve committed no capital crime,” Henk agreed. “It is likely that they will concede that, yes,” said Jeroen. “But to Yusuf and Hussein unbelievable. They have another mentality.” “With food, they may be less suspicious,” Henk argued. “And you can impress on them that many capitals will be proud to receive your band, now that you are famous.” “Thank you. While you are having exercise, I shall be thinking.” He moved to the door. “Carlos!”

  Only Ahmed remained behind, to be with Jeroen. He would not be dissuaded. It was a sunny cold afternoon. They saw a flock of snow buntings around the house, and in the field near the canal the binoculars showed them mallards walking in pairs, like couples on a Sunday outing. “And it is Sunday,” cried Aileen. “Isn’t that funny? Do you suppose they know it?” Henk welcomed her chatter. “You were in there a long time,” Sophie had said to him as he was helping her on with her coat. “What was it?” “I was advising them to ask for a food drop.” “Oh, glory. And will they do it?” “I don’t know. Jeroen is thinking.” They walked briskly in threes and twos—Sophie with Henk and Jim, Aileen with Archie and the dominie, Horst and Elfride with Carlos, Denise with Greet, Hussein and Yusuf bringing up the rear. “We look like a procession,” Aileen called out. “It’s the first time, isn’t it, that so many have been out together. I wonder what it means.” Henk wondered too. Any departure from custom had a significance, they had learned. It was the first time, also, that Greet had left the house, and evidently she did not feel easy.

  “We shall return now,” she announced abruptly, seizing Denise’s arm and wheeling about. Cries of protest arose. “Oh, Greet, that’s not fair,” remonstrated Aileen. “Jeroen said we were to have thirty minutes. We all heard him. And we’ve only been out ten.” “Another five,” pleaded the pastor. “It’s such a wonderful
day. You need the fresh air, Greet. It’ll put roses in your cheeks.” Greet did not bother to answer. With big strides, almost running and pulling Denise along, she was on her way back to the house. “What’s got into her?” said Archie. “She’s gone white as tallow.” “She’s jealous of the Vermeer,” Aileen said. “Haven’t you noticed? She hates it when he shuts himself up with it.” But suddenly, as if stampeded, they were all rushing toward the house, Greet in the lead and the Germans just behind her. Henk felt Yusuf’s rifle at his back and irritably pulled away. He and Sophie were the last into the shed. As they stumbled in—Sophie’s boots were bothering her—they heard a fearful yell: Jeroen. “Uitstappt!” “Get out!” “Berserk,” estimated Archie. They could not see Jeroen, but those ahead—who could, apparently—were turning back in a rout, choking the narrow entry hall, when the first explosion came. A second explosion followed, then a third. Wood and plaster were falling. As if transfixed, Henk watched the profile of a painted stag’s head with a big baleful eye alight on his own head; he brushed it off. His last action—at any rate, that he remembered—was flinging himself on Sophie, to shield her from a huge piece of jagged glass that was hurtling toward them through the air. Then something—a timber or window frame—hit his skull with a loud crack, and he “knew no more.”

  Envoi

  AILEEN AND FRANK WERE taking the plane—KLM—to New York. They had been the only ones to survive without serious injury when Jeroen blew himself and the house up. Most had been killed instantly: Jeroen and Greet, Archie and the Senator, the Germans, Carlos, Denise. Two of the Arabs had died from burns before they could be evacuated; the cookstove, run on propane, had caught fire. Ahmed had died two days later in the hospital; his lung had been punctured by a falling joist, and transfusions could not save him. Sophie was in a kliniek, having lost an arm. Henk was at home now, still in bed; he had had a concussion and gone into deep coma. For a time it had been feared that his brain, if he lived, would be affected. He had also lost a good deal of blood from splinters of glass that had pierced his neck and hands and had had to be removed by surgery.

  He and Sophie had been unconscious and bleeding badly when the military were finally able to enter what was left of the house, in time to put out the fire, which had spread beyond the kitchen to the entry hall and was just licking at the stairway. Frank and Aileen, making their way through the debris, had found the two of them under a pair of children’s bicycles before the guardsmen came and had not known what to do: whether it would be more dangerous to move them or to wait for help. They had lifted the bicycles off them and waited, with Frank praying his heart out and Aileen counting to a hundred, while they smelled the smoke and listened to the nearing crackle of the fire. Outside there was nothing but rubble, which had had to be partly cleared before the stretchers could enter. All the pictures had been blown to pieces, except for Lily’s water-colors—though sections of the floor had caved in, the upstairs was not much damaged, apart from broken windows. In the yard, even the chickens had perished. Yet Frank and Aileen, though dazed and shaken and temporarily deafened, had emerged with only superficial cuts and bruises. They had been strong enough to visit the mortuary and identify the bodies, and Frank, after a physical, had been allowed to give a pint of blood to Ahmed.

  Identifying the bodies had been an ordeal they could not yet describe. Some were horribly dismembered; they had known Jim Carey principally by his silver hair. Yet Jeroen, who had been at the very center of the explosions, as if in the eye of a hurricane, had hardly been touched, so far as one could see. His glasses had been broken, and his chest had been crushed by a beam, but that was not visible under the sheet. On the slab he looked peaceful, though he must have died in a fury of rage, because his orders had been disobeyed.

  They had learned from Ahmed what had happened. In the hospital he had been too weak to have visitors, but he had talked to them on the medical helicopter that had come to take the living to Amsterdam. And he must have talked to the police at some point, since the whole story was in the papers. Frank and Aileen had read it in the Herald Tribune and in the London Times while staying at the house of the U.S. Consul General, who had contrived to keep the press away. They had brought copies to Sophie, for when she would be up to reading about it; the amputation had caused her a great deal of pain, and she was still under sedation. The stories had carried all their pictures and a drawing of the interior of the house showing the wiring system and where the fuses had been. The Times had found an old photo of Greet in her KLM hostess uniform, just like the two girls today. But they did not have a good picture of Jeroen.

  In the medical helicopter, Ahmed had been very sad. It was not just that so many lives had been wasted, though he was sorry about his comrades and had shed tears when he heard about the Senator, who had encouraged him to recite Arab poetry. Rather, it was that he had wanted to die himself—a warrior’s death—with Jeroen. Jeroen, he said, had not decided on the spur of the moment. He had been thinking of it for a long time. He had not told Ahmed, but Ahmed had known. He had come upon him one day in the parlor with the detonator—no bigger than a little pencil—in his hands, sitting there quietly with the Vermeer. But even if Ahmed had not seen the detonator, he would have understood what was in Jeroen’s mind. Greet had begun to guess too, he thought, because she loved him, though with a woman’s love, which was more interfering than a brother’s. She had always mistrusted the paintings. Bending to catch Ahmed’s words, Aileen and Frank had nodded. It must have been a sudden suspicion that had driven her back to the house that fatal afternoon, to frustrate Jeroen’s design.

  He had planned to die alone with the “Girl” he had fallen in love with—like a bride, Ahmed said. After the others had gone out walking, he had sent Ahmed away too, ordering him to follow them and not linger around the house. But Ahmed had been determined to die with him; it was a privilege he wanted for himself which the others would not share. He had crept back through the front entrance, which no one used, and observed Jeroen’s arrangements: the time device ticking to activate the battery, and the sticks of dynamite wired to the joists as usual—Yusuf had tested the wiring, as a matter of routine, that morning. Hiding in the pantry, Ahmed had known that he would not have long to wait; Jeroen would have timed the blast to allow ten or perhaps fifteen minutes for the others to be well away. But Greet, woman-like, had destroyed her man’s plan and herself as well. Absorbed in his thoughts, Jeroen could not have noticed them returning across the field. The first Ahmed knew of it, in the windowless pantry, had been the sound of voices, a door banging, and in the same moment, a fierce startled yell from Jeroen. Yelling angrily in Dutch, he had sought to drive them back, out of the house, where they had no business. But they had not understood, losing valuable seconds in mystification, though in fact that had not mattered. It had been too late anyway.

  “I can’t get that picture out of my mind,” Frank confided as they unfastened their seat belts. “Him standing there with that wild look and his arm raised, to expel us, like the angel with the flaming sword, at Eden’s gate, you know. It was all so darned Biblical.” “Lot’s wife,” Aileen said. “Greet. Turning around in that field to look back. Lot’s wife was disobedient too. A pillar of salt. Could you face Greet’s remains in that mortuary? Barely identifiable.” Frank shook his head to dispel the memory. “I keep thinking of Samson, Aileen. I guess that comes the closest to our big strapping fellow….” “Pulling down the temple,” she agreed. “On himself and all the Philistines. But Jeroen didn’t intend to kill anybody but himself. I think we have to accept that. Himself and the pictures. It was more like suttee in a way.”

  The hostesses circulated menus. “I still don’t understand what drove him to take his life,” Frank resumed after a cursory look. Henk, they had discovered, took the blame on himself. When they had visited him—sitting up in bed and mournfully eating a piece of smoked eel—he had told them about his last interview with Jeroen. Even then, it seemed, he had sensed that he was doing wrong to mak
e him see that their enterprise had no future. It was true, but he should not have demonstrated it, not at that juncture, when Jeroen’s own people had been turning against him. He had let his love of reasoning carry him away. Frank had tried to reassure him: according to Ahmed, Jeroen was going to blow himself up anyway. Henk had been interested to hear that, but he still held himself responsible; whatever Jeroen’s intentions, their talk had been the precipitating cause. “You think you triggered it,” Aileen had summed up. He did not take to her verb, Henk had answered, making a wry face, but, yes, he was persuaded that the impulse to sudden action had come from him. Despair—the ultimate sin against the Holy Ghost—had resolved Jeroen, and he had been the source; he had despaired for Jeroen, and Jeroen had known it. He had not had the right to take hope away.

  “It was peculiar, Reverend,” Aileen said now. “I suppose he can’t help blaming himself for Sophie’s arm. He hasn’t seen the poor girl yet, of course. But, aside from that, from the way he talked I almost got the feeling that he sympathized with his kapers and their project. As though he grieved for them and wished for their own sake that he hadn’t disillusioned them. That’s crazy. You have to take hope away from dangerous criminals, show them they can’t win, don’t you?” Frank guessed that was true. “But Henk’s conscience may tell him that he should have added some positive suggestion. I wonder myself why they never thought of surrender. Wouldn’t that have been the logical thing?” “You’ve said that before,” Aileen reminded him. “But I don’t see Jeroen as the type to surrender. Can you picture him marching out with a white flag? And the Arabs were planning to kill us all anyway—the kamikaze idea. Henk said so. If Jeroen had tried to surrender, they would have started shooting, don’t you see? I wish we’d asked Ahmed about that.”