Flying Hero Class (28 page)

The voice had the same liquid and desperate emphasis in it as the earlier outburst on their behalf. But it suffered from competition. Someone else was crying, “Shame, shame!” It was impossible to know whose shame they were talking about—Taliq's, Bluey's, McCloud's.

The balding chief purser rose and made some observation to Taliq which could not be heard above the hubbub.

And then Pauline could be seen, climbing upright on a seat she shared with another woman, her voice rising in contest with the cries of “Shame” and the cripple's imputation of Taliq's lawlessness.

Pauline was determined to be heard. She called, “Absurd! Absurd! My husband's guiltless.”

McCloud lost his breath. It was taken up by admiration for her high Irish-Scots color, the mark of her divine forthrightness. He wanted to tell her to stop, though he felt exalted that she would not.

“My husband,” said Pauline, “writes his books and makes a living managing cultural troupes. To cast him as one of the three guilty people on this plane is … is
utterly
absurd.” Under pressure of noise, including the hisses of those who did not approve of her, her voice grew shrill. But it sounded to McCloud an appropriate shrillness. She was gesturing and prodding the air with an outstretched arm, her gift of genuine oratory echoing Bluey's terrible eloquence. “That dancer, that Barramatjara man, is a very disturbed man and not to be listened to! Listen, Brother Taliq. You haven't even asked about the accuracy of this story you mention. You haven't even done that! I tell you that if you shoot my husband, you had better be sure to shoot me, too, because I'll hound you. I'll testify against you wherever they try you. I'll put you in prison, where men will beat you and sodomize you in a most unenlightened way. I do not recognize your power to appoint any judge, to carry out any sentence at all.…”

It should have been ludicrous: a small woman unsteady on a seat and uttering threats of a relentless pursuit. Yet it wasn't. It had a most serious authority. No one else had dealt with Taliq as frontally, as thoroughly, as this.

Except that now Pauline was forced to yell at increasing volume because other passengers were crying out now, submerging her argument, utterly nullifying the young German cripple's voice and that of the man shouting, “Shame! Shame!”

“Sit down, bitch!” men yelled.

“What's wrong with her?” cried the suddenly visible blond woman who had earlier hit McCloud in the back and who was now trying to cast Pauline as a dangerous and heretic voice.

Some of the furor may have been kindly advice to Pauline—McCloud hoped so—but most of it sounded hostile. A solid man in a ski jacket left his place and reached over two other passengers to begin silencing the young German by putting a hand over his mouth. Pauline was being dragged down; hands—maybe kindly, maybe not—grabbed her beneath the knees; blows landed on her hips. Intentions blurred. People raised fists to strike Pauline, and other people caught the wielders by the wrist.

McCloud stepped forward but was pushed into place again by Hasni.

“Please,” said Taliq indulgently but with force. “Please, ladies and gentlemen.”

The melee subsided, and everyone faced Taliq. There was a sound of sobbing, but McCloud was pleased to find it did not seem to be Pauline's.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Taliq at last, “I see you have the dissenters well in hand. You can recognize the enemy as clearly as we can. For all else we are in the hands of others. Please return to your seats now in good order with no more outbursts, however well intentioned. I would simply remind you that we shall land within an hour.”

McCloud heard a cry from Pauline as he was pushed and hurled forward again, shivering. Glancing back, he saw her borne aft by two determined people, a man and a woman. Both of them looked as if they might be acting from a regard for her safety, as if they were either rushing her from danger or else were very functional jailers.

“Pauline!” he could not prevent himself from screaming. His cry for the nurturing and familiar woman. He realized it was the sort of cry heard on battlefields from terrified men, and that by letting it out he had in a sense defined himself as finished. He looked at Cale, open for advice. But Cale shrugged.

“Save it, son,” muttered Cale through lips which in this air higher than Everest's had turned purple. “They won't hurt her,” he wheezed. “A good woman! Not too ashamed to go over the top.…”

Forced forward, McCloud saw, laid across four seats in the middle of the plane, Bluey. Tended by a doctor and a stewardess, gazed upon by Paul the
didj
man and Phil Puduma, he did not see the prisoners go by on their way upstairs again. His eyes were not closed, but he had no focus.

Kanduk. Torn apart by demons. Of which, McCloud knew well, he himself was considered one; the false voice, speaking the language of unbottomable slyness.

The German doctor called to Taliq, “I have given him some sedatives I had. It was a grand mal fit. This young man should be in hospital on medication.”

There was contempt in the doctor's voice: he was an unquiet hostage, not easily scared.

Behind the prisoners, Taliq groaned. “It is very likely we can let the poor fellow go. But in the end, it depends on the goodwill of our Western masters.”

“That's nonsense,” murmured the doctor. “Surely you could let him go anyhow.”

But Taliq was not going to let his judge go, his one clear success from the sessions on the upper deck!

Returned to his seat upstairs and in despair about the messages he had not passed on to Pauline, McCloud watched the condemned Cale and Stone, thrown onto their seats, slip glibly back into sleep or reflection. They reminded him again of two rival scientists: each believed his theory could be proved right only by the passage of time.

Through his own fevered, speckled vision he observed the four Barramatjara men as they mounted the spiral staircase and passed him. He noticed that Paul Mungina had fetched his
didj
and carried it in a way which gave McCloud an indefinite hope, as if Paul meant to use it as part of some reasonable transaction or feed its sound subtly to others through the intercom.

“Make us some music, Paul,” McCloud pleaded, thinking irrationally that it might reach and soothe Pauline.

Mungina looked at him. Other than Bluey, he was the youngest of the dancers, and very earnest.

“Okay, Frank,” he said. “If that's what you want.”

But he seemed confused about it.

Phil Puduma the Christian's eyes were half-closed, and his lips moved. He gave you the idea he was voiding into the air something crucial, though you couldn't tell whether what was being jettisoned was something of the Christ of the river bed or of the marsupial rat at Mount Dinkat.

Tom Gullagara, in his high-fashion version of a stockman/cowboy's uniform, a big brass bull still contending with the lariat-swinging brass cattleman in the middle of his enormous belt buckle, looked embarrassed. Beyond all wishfulness, McCloud felt certain it was a kind of shame for Bluey, one which he couldn't have the comfort of uttering.

Whitey's eyes, it turned out, immense and neutral in passing, sought McCloud's.

“That German doctor,” he said. “Seems a good man in his field.…”

“Yes,” said McCloud. I have been condemned to death, and my wife has been abducted or rescued to the back of the plane. And we discuss the professional manners of a doctor.

“Bluey's beyond himself,” Whitey murmured, as if in apology.

Whitey bent to the aisle seat where Bluey had kept the bandanna and lifted and pocketed the thing with one easy, gliding motion which signified possession.

It struck McCloud that Whitey believed nothing would come of the judgment downstairs. This was astounding. Why would Whitey imply it? Unless he was right. Infallibly right.

But he did not stay to be questioned.

The next one to appear at the head of the stairs was Daisy Nakamura. “Hi, honey,” she whispered to McCloud. “This has all got right out of hand.” She lowered her voice even further. “That brave girl down there who did all the yelling? That's your wife?”

Again McCloud's tears asserted themselves.

“Oh Jesus, hon. I'll see what I can find out.”

But she staggered aft as if Taliq, who came next, were her shepherd.

Hasni was the last to rise up the steps. He looked haggard, and he and his Polish automatic leaned over the back of the seat in front. “Your wife is not hurt,” he murmured. He sounded resentful. His eyes flickered away and then back to McCloud. After his earlier speeches, the lifting up of his grandfather's history above that of any other miserable being, after his references to shitty little marriages, why did these politenesses and compassions continue?

“Thank you for telling me, Hasni.”

“Would you like me to take a message to her?” he asked. It was as if a lack of immediate gratitude from McCloud had forced him into this further offer.

Trying to find the right small message, McCloud's head ached. He seemed to be looking up at the underpinnings, the wires and struts of his family history and attachments, trying to make of them a simple shape.

A tailor called Mr. Katz, who had once done invisible mending on one of McCloud's jackets, had looked out on New South Head Road, Rose Bay, and told McCloud, “You want to know the reason I'm here? I'm here because I was the favorite of a certain NCO in Mauthausen. I don't know why I was his favorite—he chose me, I didn't choose him. He had his reasons, I had my reasons. And he is dead forty years, and here I am!”

Would Hasni be McCloud's NCO?

“Tell her,” McCloud asked Hasni, “not to make any more outcries for my sake.”

Hasni blinked. “Do you have any messages of … affection?”

McCloud looked at the young man. He wants all the fathers to be brave, McCloud saw with surprise. All the husbands to be true.

“Of course I have. If you would be kind enough to do that, give her my affection.
Undying
and grateful affection. And tell her to pass on to my children the news that I was thinking of them with love.” He coughed. “Just in case your friend Mahoud al-Jiddah doesn't turn up at our next stop.”

“Don't joke about Mahoud. He has been to hell frequently. But when I see your wife again I'll tell her what you said.”

“Thank you,” said McCloud. “I do feel worried about my son and daughter. About what they might go through.…”

“I will pass it on,” said Hasni through noncommittal lips.

Hasni did not go at once, though. He sat for a while. At last McCloud ventured, “Could I use the toilet now?”

Hasni deputized the husky one, the one called Musa, who had got some sleep up here earlier in the morning and had now just again arrived on the upper deck to take McCloud to the cubicle. Musa stood armed at the open door and looked in at McCloud. McCloud took off his placard and placed it against the wall of the compartment. His bowels were creaking and cramped. He attempted to excrete with dignity. He watched Musa's square nose wrinkle.

“What car do you have, Mr. McCloud?” Musa asked from the door.

“Not much of a car.”

“You were flying in first class. Your car must be a hot model. Mercedes 420 SE? That would be your style. Understated and not too jazzy.”

“No,” said McCloud. “Mine's a little Japanese thing. A Datsun. Quite serviceable.”

“I like the BMW Six series. They're the peak of the market in my opinion. The American cars, the Lincoln Continental and the Cadillacs—they're right over the top. No restraint. The West can make fun of Arab taste, but not while they buy Lincolns and Cadillacs.”

“I've never bought a Cadillac,” said McCloud in weary self-defense.

McCloud began wiping himself. Unless Taliq remembered these things, the paper would run out after one more stop. McCloud had never known and could barely envisage a world without toiletries. Though, in view of his condemned state, he might not have to live in one.

“Japanese cars,” said Musa, keeping his eye on all McCloud's operations, “are very good and serviceable. But far too electronic for the Third World.”

“Are you a mechanic?” asked McCloud, upright now and beginning to wash his hands.

“I am a student of mechanical engineering.”

“Oh?” said McCloud, and asked, “Where?”

“I am not allowed to say. And you know that already. You're being
cute
. You see a time when you're speaking to some fat policeman and saying, ‘Yessir, one of them said he was a student of engineering at Such and Such Polytechnic.'” Musa laughed, a very young laugh, not an unpleasant one. “I don't blame you for trying.”

The soap was but a sliver. There was only enough of it too for a very short life.

“Do you notice,” asked Musa, “that in the Middle East the car bomb is the universal weapon? Generally placed in Mercedes and Peugeots. I could find you twelve-year-old cousins of mine who know how to install one. What a world, eh?”

The building pressure of their descent woke him by the ears, taking him from another shallow sleep where he moved amid dreams of school and father, wife, agent, accusation, exoneration, failure, acclaim. There were no delays in this landing. There was no tentativeness, hardly any circling. So direct was the plane's approach that you could believe the promised Mahoud al-Jiddah must be watching its descent, smiling up at his clever brother Taliq who had arranged his freedom.

Glancing sideways, McCloud saw that the window blind at which Bluey had sat was still raised and revealed a sunlit beach, some irrigation, some long aluminum structures which could have represented agribusiness anywhere in the world, from the Sudan to western New South Wales. The city they swept over then was flat-roofed—the Mediterranean again, perhaps Africa. The Arab world, anyhow, since there were glimpses of minarets, and some of them were very modern and sharp-edged in their architecture, brilliant in their ceramics, their Moorish filigree exact, too, reproduced in prestressed concrete.