Cockpit

by Jerzy Kosiński

  I went into the club to watch the performance. There were fifty or sixty people in the audience, mostly men. The bartender told me that many customers who had seen the act twice in one night returned the next, drawn back not by the stunt but by the woman.

  The horseshoe-thrower walked onto the stage alone. He was in his fifties, short but powerfully built. His large head seemed to weigh so much that it forced his chin down into his massive neck, spreading the layers of fat out onto his shoulders. His hair had receded beyond his jug-shaped ears, and, when he glanced around, his eyes seemed to function independently of one another.

  The horseshoe he hefted was cast-iron, omega-shaped, two or three times the size of an ordinary horseshoe. Raising it above his head with both hands, he held it still for a moment, then dropped it onto the stage floor with a crash. The audience applauded and the man smiled, displaying uneven teeth.

  At that moment, the woman appeared and walked toward him. She embraced him as if they were lovers. This was the woman portrayed in the poster, but the photograph had made her look hard by comparison with what she was. Her hair, piled high on her head, was the color of ripe wheat, and her large wide eyes gave her face an innocent look. Her neck was long, her shoulders delicate, her breasts small and perfectly formed. A short silk skirt clung to her firm thighs and buttocks, and her legs were shapely as a sixteen-year-old’s. She strutted across the stage on high-heeled shoes, with just a hint of a stripper’s sway.

  The horseshoe-thrower stepped down from the stage with the horseshoe and approached the audience. In an amiable voice that rang through the room, he asked for someone to test the weight of the horseshoe. I stood up, took it in my hand, and almost dropped it. The man took it back and raised it high over his head. He announced that he was going to throw this horseshoe at his daughter’s neck, but that it would land on her shoulders without even disturbing a single lock of her hair.

  He returned to the stage, where he and the girl positioned themselves about twenty feet apart at opposite ends of the proscenium, he on the right, she on the left. The spotlight encased her as she took her time fastening heavy, protective pads to her shoulders. Then the spotlight moved to the man. Apparently weighed down by the horseshoe, he bent forward, and then, as casually as a child playing with a plastic hoop, he raised the horseshoe and shook it, testing its feel in his hand. Across the stage, the girl turned toward him, completely at ease, her head held high, her hands on her hips. She nodded that she was ready.

  As additional spotlights lit the stage, a drum roll began, and the man lifted the horseshoe with his right hand, kissing the metal tenderly. He set his feet and swiveled his body to the left, bringing the horseshoe down below his waist. For a moment he stood still, then suddenly spun to the right, and the horseshoe shot from his hand.

  The audience gasped, and the girl was smiling serenely, her eyes fixed on the man. The horseshoe seemed to land smoothly on her shoulders, yet her whole body shuddered under its impact. The clash of cymbals mingled with thunderous applause. The girl removed the horseshoe with difficulty and carried it to the man, who met her at the center of the stage. Again, he kissed the horseshoe; as the applause continued to grow, he embraced the girl.

  I paid my bill and went backstage, where I caught the pair just as they were leaving. I introduced myself and told them how stunned I was by the perfection of their act. Not only did I plan to return to the club, I said, but I would pay them the equivalent of one week’s nightclub salary for a private performance. They were taken aback, but accepted my invitation to discuss the proposal over supper.

  At the restaurant, the man told me he had performed the act with his wife for twenty years. After her death, he said, his daughter had begun working with him. He had been doing the stunt for so long now that he barely needed to practice, and for the money I offered he would gladly perform for me on their day off. Jokingly, he asked if I would like to take his daughter’s place as the target.

  While the man and I talked, the girl remained silent. I turned toward her and asked if she objected to the arrangement. She shrugged, faintly annoyed, and answered that she didn’t care if one or a hundred people watched the performance.

  Saying he had to make a telephone call, her father left us, and I asked the girl what I had done to offend her. After some hesitation, she replied that like all spectators, I seemed to assume that her father did the hard part of the act: after all, I had offered him the money. But no one ever realized that without her, her father would never be able to perform. He’d never find another partner. I reminded her that, apparently, her mother had also been able to work with him. The girl looked away for a moment, and then replied that it had been easier for her mother because she had been born blind.

  I told her that if she would consider breaking with her father and become my steady companion I would gladly see to it that she had money and a career on the stage if she wanted it.

  Her expression changed completely. Since her mother’s death, she said with vehemence, she was all her father had. He could not live without her. By suggesting she leave him, I proved how little I understood people.

  Her father returned to the table considerably more jovial than before he left. He announced that he was ready to celebrate our deal, and, noting his flushed cheeks, I suspected that he had taken a couple of drinks during his absence.

  I ordered a bottle of champagne, and as he drank he recalled the places where he had performed and the people who had come to see his act. His daughter scarcely touched the champagne, but each time her father downed a glass, her face betrayed deep concern. Toward me she remained cool and aloof. As the evening passed, I became intensely aware of how much she disliked me. She tolerated me only for her father’s sake.

  As we drank, her father told me that he had run away from home as a small boy and had never learned to read or write. All he had learned, he said, was to throw the horseshoe. Later his wife took care of him and their baby. Now his daughter ran the house, worked with booking agents, signed contracts and paid the bills. Without her to control his drinking, he said, he would be reduced to nothing.

  Before we parted I gave the man some money as an advance for their private performance. He took the bills, exclaiming how happy he was with our arrangement, and told me where and when to meet them.

  At the appointed time, I drove to their rented trailer on the outskirts of town. It was obvious the man had been drinking and his euphoria increased when I presented him with a case of whiskey. Hearing our voices, the girl stepped out of the trailer, hardly acknowledging me. She was visibly upset when her father opened one of the new bottles and drank directly from it, but said nothing.

  When she went inside to make coffee, the man explained that it did not matter to him where or at what he threw the horseshoe. He could do it on a stage, he said, in a pit, in an open field. He disappeared into the trailer and came back with his great iron prop. He handed me the liquor bottle and told me to place it where I wished. I walked the length of the trailer, set the bottle down and came back to where he stood. He waited for a moment, as if gauging the distance between himself and the bottle, boasting that he could perform the stunt blindfolded. When I expressed doubt, he asked me for a handkerchief and, in a highly theatrical manner, told me to check it for holes. I took out my handkerchief, examined it and tied it securely over his eyes.

  Blindfolded, he readied himself just as he had done on the nightclub stage. He spun and hurled the horseshoe as if it were light as a lasso. It flew high up, then made a perfect landing around the bottle. The man tore off the blindfold.

  Shaking my head in astonishment, I went over and retrieved the horseshoe. The man laughed, took the horseshoe from me, pitched it high in the air and caught it as if it were a Frisbee.

  His daughter brought coffee. While she and I sipped it from our cups, her father picked up the bottle and began drinking from it. A troubled look crossed the girl’s face, but again she said nothing.

  Now the man told the girl
he wanted her to stand even farther away than the bottle had been. I protested that he had performed enough that day and that I would be glad to come back another time, but he insisted that no matter how drunk his body became, his hand would always guide the horseshoe where he wanted it to go.

  He bet a month’s wages that he could drink a whole bottle of whiskey and still throw the horseshoe without harming his daughter. I pleaded with him to postpone the performance. She was not afraid to be his target, he said, but he could see, he shouted, that I was afraid of losing the bet. He would never hurt his daughter. But if I wanted to talk her out of it, I could try, he said angrily.

  When I saw him uncorking a second bottle of whiskey, I took the girl aside and said that the only reason I had arranged a private performance was to see her and persuade her to leave. Didn’t she realize how terribly she was being exploited? Each time she walked onto a third-rate nightclub stage, I said, she was sacrificing herself to an old drunk who cared more about booze than he did about her safety.

  It did not take much imagination, I continued, to tell what would happen if the horseshoe hit her. The ten-pound weight would pulverize every bone in her head. Or it would crush her eyes and nose, it would ram her chin and teeth into her throat. It could break her neck and, for the few moments she would live, her head would dangle like a yo-yo on a soft rope. As I spoke, she stopped attaching her shoulder padding; her face was flushed, her eyes full of rage. In a calm voice she answered that she preferred to be maimed for life by her father than be touched by me even once.

  Walking defiantly away from the trailer, she went to the spot where the bottle stood and walked far beyond it. Just as her father finished draining the second bottle, she shouted that she was ready.

  The man picked up the horseshoe. I felt my heart pounding, but gave him the signal to throw. He bent, as if weighed down by the horseshoe, then in a second, he straightened out and the horseshoe shot into the air. As I looked on, the weight seemed to slow down and hover in midair before landing with a thud squarely on the girl’s shoulder pads.

  She removed the horseshoe and went straight to her father, laying the horseshoe at his feet. She kissed his cheek, his neck and his hands, and he patted her gently on the back, as if restrained by my presence. When she had finished caressing him, I handed him the money. I was about to leave when the girl asked to talk to me. We walked away from her father.

  “Why did you bring him the whiskey?” she asked.

  “I wanted him to drink it.”

  “So you could see me crippled or killed?”

  “Or so I could imagine it happening after I’ve gone.”

  “Why?”

  I did not answer.

  “Because you know you can never have me?” she asked.

  “Perhaps.”

  She gazed at me as if she were acknowledging my presence for the first time. “Tell me,” she asked, “are you a gambler?”

  “This is a gambler’s town.”

  “All right. Now, I will bet you. I’ll bet you anything that you would never, never have the guts to be his target when he is as drunk as he is now.”

  “I’m not eager to die,” I said.

  “But you paid money to see me die. You’re a killer. I’ll tell you what: if you stand as the target right now, I’ll put myself up as the stake.”

  “Yourself?”

  “Yes. You can have me. Providing you’re intact enough to collect your winnings.”

  “I accept.”

  She was surprised. “If I told him that you had come here to take me away, you wouldn’t leave here alive,” she said.

  “Tell him whatever you want,” I told her, “I’m ready for him.”

  The man lay on the grass staring at the sky, a half-empty glass beside his head.

  “We’ve made another bet,” she said to him. “This time he’ll be the target.” She pointed to me.

  “What?” the man grunted.

  “He will stand where I did,” she announced.

  “Have you ever been a target before?” he asked, getting up with difficulty.

  “Many times,” I said.

  “Is that so?” he mused.

  The girl fetched the shoulder pads and escorted me to the place where she had stood before. “You sweat a lot. Better take off your jacket,” she remarked, laughing.

  “I sweat when I’m frightened,” I replied, removing the jacket. As she fastened the leather pads on my shoulders, her hand brushed my chin and she pulled back quickly.

  “It does not take much imagination,” she mocked, “to know that if the horseshoe hits you it will pulverize every bone in your head, remember?”

  The pads felt securely fastened. “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “But you must stand absolutely still. If you move while the shoe is in the air …”

  “I know. A big yo-yo on a soft rope.”

  She nodded and left me alone. I remembered an execution I had witnessed during the war. The soldiers had escorted a young deserter into the barnyard and strapped him to a stake. Then they turned, marched away, turned back again and formed a line. The commanding officer took his position and raised his sabre. I heard the salvo and I saw the top of the prisoner’s shaved skull sliced off above his thick eyebrows. Blood, chunks of brain and bone foamed out of what remained of his head. His body tottered, went limp like a deflated rubber toy and slid down the stake to the ground.

  “Are you ready?” the girl shouted.

  “I am,” I shouted back. I closed my eyes. It was too late to run away, and I might never know if the man had intended to kill me, miss me or land the horseshoe on my shoulder pads. Because of a whim, my future lay in the hands of an old drunk. In the silence like the one in an air raid shelter before a bomb hits, I imagined the horseshoe gliding toward me, ready to strike me at any moment.

  Suddenly, two iron hands gripped my shoulders with such force that my whole body shook. Hesitantly, I reached up to touch them and felt cold metal. I opened my eyes and saw the horseshoe resting on the pads that were soaked with sweat. I tried to control my trembling and removed the horseshoe before the girl came over to assist me.

  “So you’ve survived,” she said tonelessly.

  “So far, yes. I am ready to collect my winnings.”

  “As you wish,” she nodded.

  We went back to the table. The man, who could barely walk by now, wanted to toast my courage with more whiskey. I told him that, instead of drinking, I wanted to take his daughter for a ride. He settled down with a full bottle, indifferent to what either of us did.

  She accompanied me to the car without saying a word. We drove directly to my motel. On the way to my room, I ordered drinks to be brought up. After the waiter had left, she turned to me casually. “How do you plan to have me?” she asked. “Straight or kinky?”

  She started to undress. When she was naked, she stood before me as cool and unconcerned as the first time I’d seen her on the nightclub stage. “Any particular place?” she asked.

  I pulled back the blanket, and she climbed onto the bed, grabbing a pillow and propping herself against it.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Now,” I said.

  I took hold of her shoulders. They felt too delicate to have withstood the weight of the horseshoe. “Lie down,” I ordered. She stretched out. “Anything else?” she asked. In the semidarkness of the room, I moved next to her, uncertain how to touch her. As she turned her head away to avoid my lips, her hands moved lightly behind my hips and her legs spread invitingly. I took it for a sign of desire, and my body responded.

  I poised myself to ease inside her, but when I tried to enter her, she was closed tight. I moved her thighs farther apart, again attempting to push myself into her. She groaned, but remained closed. I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her tight against me. Still she did not open herself to me. I played with her to get her aroused, sucking her nipples, burying my face in her. Finally, I tried to enter her by sheer strength. She was unyieldin
g.

  “Are you finished?” she asked, drawing up her knees and pulling away from me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “It would take surgery to open me up,” she said. “I’ve never wanted to have the operation.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because of men like you,” she answered. She got up and began to dress.

  I reached for her. “Don’t,” she commanded sternly. “You wanted what you won, but you’ll never win what you wanted.” She finished dressing and was gone.

  I remember an old bicycle wheel that I used to roll in front of me when I was a boy, guiding it with a short stick. I believed the wheel was animated by a powerful spirit. I ran behind it barefoot, urging it on, the soles of my feet hard as its rim. Whenever the wheel began to totter, my stick would whip it back to life and the wheel would suddenly leap forward, as if daring me to pursue it. Sometimes, like a horse abruptly tearing the reins from a rider’s hands, the wheel would escape and surge far ahead of me, slowing down and speeding up at will.

  Whenever I rested and the wheel lay still, I felt impatient and guilty. Its very shape demanded movement, and soon I would leap up and send it on its way again. In the early morning, I followed it across withered fields, toward the misty blur of the forest, through the gaunt skeletons of ancient birch trees. The life of my wheel was superior to the lives of men and beasts: a dog would chase it only to surrender to its indifference; a tattered-looking crow would swoop down to investigate the mystery of its speed and then flap off into the wilderness, croaking his defeat.

  On the roads, we raced past mud-covered peasants, who trudged alongside their overloaded carts and slow, bony horses. I guided the wheel with my stick, lashing at it when it slowed down, making it skim over the empty fields and ditches like a stone over water. The wind whipped my face and chilled my fingers, but I felt nothing. I was conscious only of vaulting through space.